Lukas Muttenthaler

As an American citizen, the last thing I want is government using AI for mass surveillance of Americans.

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The murder in Minneapolis by the government’s secret police this week has stirred something in me. A mother was gunned down in the street by ICE, and the government doesn’t even have the decency to perform a scripted condolence. No matter which way the tires were pointing, this is a tragedy for her family, her children, and yet JD Vance, Palmer Lucky, and others instantly became the judge and the jury on twitter proclaiming the 37 year old white mother was a domestic terrorist and was trying to murder a federal officer; thus she *deserves* to be shot in the face. And you do too if you don’t comply. Where is the humanity? How is everyone not terrified that this could happen to them, their mother, their sister? Isn’t it terrifying that the Vice President is immediately defending murder of american citizens? I normally keep my politics quiet here because of how toxic twitter is and how annoying it can be to people who want a clean tech feed. Right now it just feels wrong not to say anything. I haven’t quite been able to figure out the right words for how I feel. My first instinct is “fuck ICE” and “what the fuck is wrong with these people”. Those are my lizard brain reactions. But there’s something deeper that’s bothering me. I can’t shake this feeling that the moral foundation that much of modern society stands upon is infected, and is festering. We teach kids that right and wrong exist, not to lie, that you don’t hurt people, and that you protect the vulnerable. And yet our highest elected officials encourage the burning and pillaging of these sacred lessons. I could go on about how our current leadership just wants money and power, and they’re using immigrants as scapegoats to do so. Our economy is transforming rapidly, both with AI and because of greedy capitalist policies — the country is angry about legitimate things and democrats are not actually listening. Republicans are listening but are redirecting anger for their own power. The next 5 years are going to look a lot different because of technology; yet our heads are buried in the sand and we’re losing our way. But maybe the only real thing we can do is to keep living and teaching the lessons of right and wrong, not to lie, that you don’t hurt people, and that you protect the vulnerable. Teach your kids these lessons in spite of Trump, Vance, Noem being lost beyond repair. Teach your kids that everyone deserves to be treated as a human being and not an object to be deported to a brutal prison cell. I do believe that most people are still good, and that the best thing we can do to combat dehumanization by the government is more humanization of our neighbors. Go spend time with your republican cousins / neighbors and break bread with them. Don’t talk politics, play with their kids. Find common humanity. But I don’t really have a call to action beyond this. I don’t really know what to do other than vote in November and refuse to pretend this is normal, publicly, even if it’s terrifying that you might get targeted and attacked. People in Nazi Germany stayed silent for this very fear, and we’re certainly living through a cosplay of that now. The president called a 37 year old mother a domestic terrorist and that her 3 shots to the face by the gestapo was a tragedy of her own making. The actual tragedy is that the Oval office propped up millions of people arguing about the direction of the tires of the car without having the humility to step back and ask if we want the government murdering civilians in broad daylight. I am terribly sad for this country, our broken moral compass, and for hard working immigrants living in fear here. But I do believe we will eventually heal.

White people are a rapidly diminishing minority of global population