Self-Censorship – Unfortunately not Surprising

Is that the famed "free speech absolutism"?
- Always has been
- He meant absolutely no free speech, maybe.
- It’s Free Speech Abolishism, it was a typo

This is the kind of thing I mean when I say, we won't be able to fix the damage being done in our lifetime.
The fundamental mistrust of our country and government being created right now, in mere weeks, will not go away, even if we manage to weather four years of this. Trump is only doing one thing effectively, and that is destroy America's standing both inside and outside of the country, but the damage is so much deeper than we can process.
And Russia is the only country in the world benefiting from that right now. So I also am going to make a prediction. Once America is fully gutted, potentially in civil war, and a nightmarish dystopia, Putin will reveal he was manipulating Trump all along, probably by allowing a leak of some of the secret communications Trump has had with Putin, with Trump inevitably making outright treasonous statements. We'll all already know it was happening, but Putin will then gain one last trophy from Trump: confirming to the world he was able to manipulate and destroy the most powerful nation.
It's why Putin uses trademark assassination methods, like polonium tea. He wants everyone to know he did it, and he got away with it. It's why Trump is dropping the facade of democracy now that he has power, because he's mimicking Putin.
- And Russia is the only country in the world benefiting from that right now.
  Eh, many countries will benefit from it when the gutting of America goes beyond superficial stages.

What does it mean if I can't tell the difference between my culture's reality and my culture's bogeymen? Does it make my reality false, my bogeymen true, or a third, unthinkable thing?

I'mma just gonna say:
It is real easy to argue "Freedom of Speech" (which doesn't actually apply to corporate environments but...) and so forth up until you are the one hosting a server and you are the one getting the angry emails and ominous letters.
If you think the average lemmy admin is going to fight for your right to say whatever the fuck you want then I got a bridge to sell you. Obviously being hosted in a different country helps but it also only goes so far when you are getting that letter from a foreign country's militarized law enforcement. And even if the admin wants that smoke, the actual hosting company most likely won't.
- I wouldn't blame any Lemmy admin who's facing a legitimate threat for shutting down rather than fighting it. But the thing about the fediverse is, everything we say is copied to hundreds of instances. If that one instance shuts down, it's still there to see in many, many other places.
  
  Which will resolve itself REAL fast if lemmy ever becomes popular enough for governments to (officially) care.
  Admin: "But Agent Bauer, I can't delete that post. It is on the dot zip instance and we are the dot world"
  ???: "Okay. Hey, can you go pick up a car battery by next Tuesday and keep it in your apartment? No reason"
  Admin: " Okay. We'll defederate from zip, I guess?"
  ???: "Good. But could you get the battery anyway? And can you help by letting me know who these dot zip people are so we can contact them too?"
  That said, I do think it will come to a head real fast. Which is why so many instance owners are proactively making complete bullshit "rules" (see: the world admins and how they decided to handle Luigi Mangione in the early days).

For Putin, the Cold War never ended - and right now, they’re gaining far more than they should be able to…

And if this goes on long enough, we’ll have samizdat resistance ‘zines typewritten and passed around at dead drops to avoid ISPs having data any to give up to a warrant/less search, or metadata to trace the authorship
Vladimir Bukovsky summarized the samizdat process as follows:
“I write myself, edit myself, censor myself, publish myself, distribute myself, go to jail for it myself”
I’d rather not find out what else that future entails
- i'm gonna have to buy ink again dammit i hate ink

Capitalism and Democracy are incompatible. You only have freedom of speech if you have no impact. And if you use your freedom of speech, it's just because you're volunteering to be put into your correct cohort. There are background processes that determine what jobs we get and the amount of money we make. That's why stupid people are in charge of things. There's no such thing as the free world when we live in a world of capitalism.
- Actually, I think they are compatible...but in a VERY specific way. I believe that government should provide all basic necessities to people, such as food, shelter, healthcare, transport, gasoline, and so forth. Capitalism can be used for luxury items, such as fashionable clothing, bigger houses, flavored toothpaste, singing bass decorations, ect. In this way, money is used for lifestyle, rather than being a requirement for survival.
  This effectively allows people to strike or protest at will, since the coercive power of government and corporations is much reduced. We get to keep the efficiency of capitalism, while keeping it from metastasizing into a cancer.