HalfSalesman

What is your goal? Are you content with Linux being niche?

If not, what group do you think this appeals to?

The casual device user continues to ignore Windows desktops and use their phone let alone Linux at this point.

The normie desktop user who just wants a internet browser and basic office software can easily be won over to Linux Mint. You advocating everything be CLI based will kill that.

The casual desktop enthusiast & PC gamer will get irritated and impatient and go back to comfy Windows. They mostly just want their games to run smoothly and maybe look pretty. Maybe install an application that does something moderately technical for them with tweaks here and there.

You already have the hardcore techy users. They don't need to be converted.

In my opinion, Linux and its various distro's main goal ought to be to undermine for-profit OS. Not to turn everyone into computer techs. The latter is a pipe dream anyway.

You do understand that any USA person who does that would have to check their head for attitudes right?

Attitude as in instability or propensity to commit war crimes against MAGA people? I might fail that check admittedly.

Responsibility for society starts at young adulthood, which is a fuzzy line because it varies per person. Bizarre that you would try to dissociate being a member of a culture and society without acknowledging participation and maintenance and responsibility…

I'm not "trying to dissociate" anything of the sort. I've thought and read and debated about about the nature of human existence for an abnormally long time and what I've told you is simply a major piece of my current conclusions.

If anything I'm ravenously seeking out someone to convince me my ideas are wrong. Partly because when someone does that it to me it means my beliefs become just that much more refined and accurate. Not enough people are willing to challenge their own beliefs or actively engage in defending them. They attach their ideology to their very identity and react emotionally to counters to their beliefs. I don't do that or respect that. My loyalty is to reality, not my sense of belonging or identity.

Another reason is a lot of my own beliefs about life and existence (and for instance the current political realities of the country I live in) are quite unpleasant and many of them I'd like to be rid of if I could find some counters convincing enough to break from them I'd honestly be relieved.

If anything my lack of dissociation is making me cripplingly depressed and angry and probably part of why I'm on track for a high blood pressure diagnosis.

but very “American.” It capitulates to authority.

I can assure you that my specific beliefs are not the norm for Americans. Most Americans do not have any desire to think deeply about their own ideology at all, and even those that talk of ideology often just embrace some well developed "counter cultural" identity and call it their ideology without much further analysis.

I do discuss and argue with unlike minded people. I just do not do so with MAGA people.

Not because I think MAGA are hopeless, there might be a very very small portion of them that is swayable back to sanity via discussion. I refuse to talk to them and advocate more people do the same because I think doing so legitimately does more harm than good on average. For every MAGA you convert to moderation you further legitimize the beliefs in 99 other MAGA by engaging with them in good faith and even put your own safety at risk on multiple levels.

Admittedly, I also legitimately really fucking hate them. I'd be lying if there wasn't a void in me that couldn't be filled with MAGA people suffering or even dying at this point. The antipathy I feel is extraordinarily and irrationally intense.

Its quite simple. The events reported on this post would not have happened if Kamala Harris had won the 2024 Presidential election.

If you disagree, you are either willfully stupid or malevolent and no one should listen to a word you say.

I think you believe I and other Canadians are saying no USA citizens should move to Canada. I have heard a few people mention this but it’s fringe.

I never thought this, you made it clear that wasn’t your belief. No worries here.

So it sounds like you are suggesting we should welcome those who hold us in contempt by hiding behind ideology. “Oh you’re just overreacting” say the US centrists.

I'm not fan of centrists, but I don't think requiring people to be leftwing to enter Canada would be good.

So yes, perhaps we should be screening immigrants for their position on our pending invasion. I’m not asserting that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if security protocols are enacted at borders.

I actually kind of think that would be a reasonable thing to ask. But of course I’ll admit it’d be likely impossible to verify. You’d at least filter out the most brazen rightwing US patriots.

I'll even go so far as to say that in some level of my own fleeting suicidal ideation, I've thought about joining the Canadian military on the front line. And I'd be lying if I did not fantasize a little about seeking revenge on my "excompatriots"... quite directly via such a route. Specifically of the MAGA variety.

I'd probably be a bit more Sherman-esque in my attitude.

These MAGA people... they are simply no longer people I'm interested in empathizing with at virtually any level. My hatred of them is at an intensity that is almost certainly irrational and self destructive.

I'd bet there are many other Americans that feel very similarly.

lol well statistically a large number of US immigrants do believe in original sin. However I am pointing out that it will be difficult for someone who was raised in a highly individualistic culture to take responsibility for the society they come from, and for the beliefs they carry forward. So yeah, if you come to Canada, and pretend we are just as individualistic as the USA, you’re going to feel like a hero around all these meek and diminished folk. And that has been happening my whole life, “americans” who move here and talk down while acting convivial and take over all the little ponds they swim in. It’s a type. Usually professional or middle class. Often they are “fleeing” the States… but not really. I grew up with an influx of draft dodgers, and yeah, they were welcomed, but there were problems, and here’s the thing: they are often oblivious to the fundamental cultural differences.

The amount of self reported individualism in Canada vs the US is virtually identical. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2004/01/14/americans-and-canadians/ (under “Values: Similarities and Differences”) this is an old survey, but I would be doubtful the numbers have meaningfully shifted since.

But this is besides a far more interesting point for me that I really hope you will engage with.

That is just a bizarre conservative attitude that works well for neo-aristocracy goals. It’s destructive to other societies and we wish you wouldn’t export that unwelcome shit in your media and migrants.

And here is the most interesting element of the conversation and I'll admit its almost a tangent. That said, I'm disagreeing in good faith.

Its not an “attitude” it is factual. Before you were born, did you get some kind of “create a character” prompt? Of course not.

It is sheer pure reality: no one chooses to even be here or anywhere for that matter. That would make no sense.

Nonetheless, to support the pressure to conform and serve a society that arguably as a collective has a far more significant culpability for one’s non-consentual existence as an individual I find as a sort of absurdity. Individuals should respect each other, but they owe nothing to the society (or parents) that birthed them, if anything society (and parents) owe them an unpayable and infinite debt.

Of course, I also don't believe in free will, and that in of itself complicates my thoughts on these matters.

My understanding is because of the way its worded that it could be generously interpreted by SCOTUS to favor Trump running as VP. I can't remember the specifics but I remember reading such.

The people who voted for Trump are only angry that they are being hurt. Even if they read Project 2025, they'd assume they'd be exempt and that it'd only hurt the right people.

There is no reason to engage in smug gloating to shame them into repenting or trying to gently reason with them. You shouldn't even be talking to them. You should seek to undermine them at every level possible. They need to be kneecapped.

Technically, he could run as VP with the explicit plan to have the actual president step down as soon as they're in.

But I don't know if Trump would even be down for that. He just wants to run for a third term full stop.

Let me just state the obvious: They fired her due to the current US administration. She got harassed in the first place because of the current US administration.

Trump is effecting corporate decisions without even making in specific executive orders as well bolstering the common rightwing individual's boldness in harassing people.

I apologize for the late response, I only use this account during breaks/lunch at work and I couldn't help wanting to continue the conversation.

Your response tells me you have a ways to go before decolonizing your mind. First you must acknowledge your inadvertent participation in the bullshit.

I'm going to try some extra effort to internally translate what you probably mean and respond to that from both a personal and meta perspective starting with the personal if only to hear your thoughts on both and sate my curiosity:

On a personal level: I'd be willing to listen to any counter arguments of any ideological belief I hold. I thrive on challenging my own and other's belief systems through discourse. Its a major reason why I spend time on Lemmy (and used to spend time on Reddit writing novelas in response to other novela sized posts). If one's argument is compelling enough, I will change my views (and have had my views changed in the past via this very method.)

On a meta level: What I think would be unreasonable to expect of anyone is to tell them they must believe in anything in order to live somewhere outside of some very basic things. On a systemic level it would be authoritarian and draconian otherwise.

That said, if I were to interpret your words here less charitably, it sounds like almost like you are asking people to repent for the sin of having been born and raised in the US regardless in order to take refuge by going through a re-education program or something.

I keep seeing “don’t blame me” posts from USA folks who don’t want to take any responsibility for the society they live in… and they want to bring that attitude here!

Individuals are not responsible for the society they are born in and are raised in, regardless of context. People don't even choose to be born in the first place, let alone where.

As a Canadian I would not move to Bolivia, because our mining companies are neocolonial blights on their economy… unless I could be clearly employed mitigating that colonialism.

Are you as a Canadian, directly responsible for the neocolonial blights in Bolivia because you are a Canadian citizen?

The average “not a computer person” does not own a computer at all, they use their smartphone for literally everything

Absolutely. If anything, this reinforces my thought towards many Linux evangelists. Hell, I am arguably a Linux Evangelist myself, but I know realistically the biggest group of people Linux has a shot at getting on board (that aren't already) are the "middle group". People who are semi-techy who insist on having and using a desktop but still want to be able to do things as easily right up front as they could with a new Windows OS. And this is the group many Linux users seem to aggressively despise for a lack of purity.

This group in particular is made up of a lot of "casual enthusiasts" and PC gamers, which is probably why the Steam Deck represented such a huge bump in linux usage.

This is just anti-immigrant sentiment disguised as anti-colonization rhetoric.

That said, I am curious about your thoughts. What if one thinks culture itself is just window dressing and don't care? People who identify as part of an in-group and hate the out-groups are insufferable, and being attached to a regional culture is just a form of that, cultivating hatred for the 'other'.

Admittedly, I dislike the very region of the US I live in and think the culture here is a combination of intellectually vacuous, sexually puritanical/traditionalist, and generally boring nonsense. I view the individuals who attach themselves to my local culture as kind of pathetic. My feelings towards them somewhat mirror Emil Cioran's negative view of his own countrymen. I have no desire to spread this culture, I'd like to escape it: I'm functionally culture-less as one can be.

I've just been chronically too broke to escape. The election has lowered the bar for what I'm willing to put up with in my escape, but unfortunately so have my resources been somewhat lowered, slowing me down.