Not in stem but the same thing happened to me. I used to be able to speak to a room and be heard. Now I need to raise my voice, sound a little whiney or bitchy or nobody hears me. Only my closest friend still asks me for advice or to share my knowledge. Used to happen all the time.
This is evidence that the white house is riddled with Russian plants/propaganda not that the reality on the front is worse for Ukraine than we thought.
We always knew it was bad. It has never been good for Ukraine. If it ever gets good for Ukraine you will see Russians retreating. Nobody knows where that point is, but they are almost certainly closer today than they were a year ago.
Yes the Democratic party is oriented towards resisting change. You act like the people have no power, no say. If you think the votes are rigged please explain how.
Voters do have a say. Republican voters wanted someone more extreme than milqtoast mitt Romney, and they got it in Trump. They wanted republican congresspeople that would support Trump instead of obstruct him like McCain. They got them.
Democratic leadership can make it hard for leftists to win, but they aren't changing vote totals. If Americans voted for leftists in primaries for mayor and city council there would eventually only be leftists running for Congress and eventually a leftist would win the nominee for president.
Democracy has never done anything, not the creation of the Republican party, the abolition of slavery, the 19th amendment, the new deal, or the civil rights act.
Those were all conspiracies of the elites leadering the population kicking and screaming into modernity.
Dems could become a left wing party if that's where voters wanted them. They would lose their donors, yes, so the reps would become the much better funded party.
But if voters voted for left wing candidates there is nothing the donors or centrist politicians could do about it. It would be a generational project, winning primaries and general elections, but it could be done.
They have enough on their plate protecting themselves. Effective militaries are not made in a few years. (Not without shifting your whole ass economy at least.)
Africa and South America and Asia better keep their eyes peeled.
Are tankies pro trump? I see the grim irony of trump dismantling America's empire, (grim for us, and the rest of the world doesn't seem to be celebrating.)
I suppose I should not be impressed by mental gymnastics.
If ICE comes for you or someone you would fight to protect, I think you should consider it. Trump said he wants Bukele to build five more prisons. He signed and order and bid a contract to expand Guantanamo to 30k beds. No one is coming back from Cuba or El Salvador until Trump is out of office and even if he doesn't succeed in his third term plans there are no guarantees any one person would survive until then. Or that the next administration will do anything for the prisoners.
I don't want anyone to be shot, but our lives on on the line.
I don't think anyone is coming out of El Salvador. And I think if I did there is an excellent chance if I did survive it, I will wish I had been killed instead. I don't think they have women's prisons down there and if they did I would 100% be sent to the men's. I used to learn about the Holocaust and wonder "why didn't the Jews fight back?" And the truth is that some of them did, but most did not they didn't have access to guns and they just hoped they would get through it.
When school kids are learning about the American Holocaust I don't want to be one of the victims that kids wonder "why didn't the trans Americans fight back?"
ICE needs to be resisted at every level. By Congress, by the states, by cities, and by individuals. I only have discretion over myself. I don't want to shoot anybody, but I don't want to die in a mass grave in Cuba or El Salvador either.
Will it work? Probably not. Am I talking tough on the internet? I hope I never find out the answer to that. But I know that if Americans decide to stop ICE as a group we could, even if Congress and the courts and so on are compromised.
Robert Evans had an episode of Behind the Bastards about the little Nazis. The middle class shopkeepers and middle managers that weren't top level but were in the party.
Most of them never admitted it was a mistake to support Hitler.
Not in stem but the same thing happened to me. I used to be able to speak to a room and be heard. Now I need to raise my voice, sound a little whiney or bitchy or nobody hears me. Only my closest friend still asks me for advice or to share my knowledge. Used to happen all the time.
At least I pass. I got that going for me.