That got a surprised snort-laugh out of me lol

Oh, I know it’s ridiculous. They took my family member, that’s all I needed to see to realize that.

by a howitzer

It was (kind of) an option at one point: blowing from a gun.

It’s not much of a protest when many of the people participating are doing so involuntarily because they can’t afford to buy things anyway.

You can have a high IQ and still be an utterly inept moron. I have family in Mensa and they are hands down some of the laziest, stupidest people I know.

Many people in the US have that “fear of the other” drilled into them starting at a very young age.

You are so very right. I was born in the mid-70’s and I grew up in a rural area, lots and lots of low-income farmers outside of the valley, no minorities. There was a city to the west, and a notorious maximum security prison to the east. The news focused almost solely on the non-white people inhabiting both, and as a result I grew up absolutely terrified of those “others”, because the bad things was all I ever heard. I had no real contact with any minorities until I was an adult and had to get a job in the city. One morning driving in to that job, my car broke down a couple miles from where I worked, in a pretty run-down area. I had to walk the rest of the way to work. Not a soul bothered me, but that fear of the “other” was so strong that by the time I got to the office I was physically ill from it. Reactions and fears like this were the norm with the people I knew back then, and the media and those in power continue now with the propaganda that the “other” are to be feared and distrusted, because keeping us on edge and divided makes us easier to control.

Lots of bears where I am. If you hit them head on, your car is usually totaled.