this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
951 points (99.5% liked)

politics

27280 readers
2415 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 193 points 1 week ago (10 children)

21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.

https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics

Illiteracy is a huge and intentional crisis in America and is a major reason we're in the mess we're in now. American education has been steadily hollowed out since public schools were integrated and now those chickens are coming home to roost. We are in for a long, bad time of rebuilding I'm afraid.

[–] MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works 62 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Gonna be one of those shithole countries trump was talking about first time around

[–] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The strange thing is that is has been, for some of us, for a while now. The screws have been tightening my whole life and people don't realize how close to destitution they are until it hits them. It's like the poverty version of "If my neighbor loses their job it's a recession, if I lose my job it's a depression."

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] NotSteve_@piefed.ca 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The US has been for most of its existence

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 44 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yet 54% of U.S. adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level

That's nuts.

[–] SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (7 children)

My kids school promises literacy by 4th grade and hasn't mentioned it since. They're in 8th grade now. It's brutal, I've been working on thier reading level but it's hard when the school isn't making it a priority.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

isn't ICE where all the proud boys and oath keepers went after "standing back and standing by" and going in and out of jail?

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 99 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Sorry idr if this from source article or one linked in it:

Training was slashed from 16 weeks to six, with sit-ups eliminated because recruits couldn't handle them.

These nazis are so fucking pathetic in every conceivable way lol

it would be so much funnier if they weren't destroying lives and killing people

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 42 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

But we can't have women in 'men's jobs' because they can't meet the physical requirements...

[–] dermanus@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)

In most states hairdressers need more training than that.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works 71 points 1 week ago (3 children)

So we fired hundreds of thousands of competent civil servants, including highly specialized scientists and doctors, and hired these stupid fucking losers?

Awesome. Glad that waste, fraud, and abuse is gone I guess.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 67 points 1 week ago

The shooter is a 10+ year veteran of the agency. ICE has always been bad and filled with violent nationalists.

Also, this is far more damning of our education system. It should be difficult to find and recruit that many illiterate people.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 64 points 1 week ago (3 children)

"The explosive Daily Mail report..."

Not to defend ICE or nothin', but Daily Fail isn't exactly known for accurate journalism...

[–] CaptainPedantic@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've always called it the Daily Heil.

They kinda liked the Nazis.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 50 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

My thought went to "This particular individual is unscannable" cops from Idiocracy. Reality is curving towards the Judge-verse but not the fun parts.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 49 points 1 week ago

They offered lots of money to join ICE to the worst people. Why is this surprising? They wanted thugs, they got thugs, not Harvard grads.

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"This isn't the department of baking cookies," one source said. "This is the Department of Homeland Security, where you can be deported from the country. And we're now employing people who are not equipped to tie their own shoelaces”

And giving them firearms

[–] Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

THAT is an American tradition.

For a country as obsessed with firearms as the USA the level of knowledge on how to use them safely is shockingly low.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 41 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I mean, if you can read and write, you can probably get a real job.

Being a pedophile protector isn't a real job. It's a temporary job where you either get killed, arrested, or commit suicide.

[–] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 39 points 1 week ago

Damn, if only they were qualified, surely things would be better. Sorry, seriously who gives a shit at this point, these people are all nazi scum, i don't care if they are fat and cannot read, the issue is what they are doing and what they believe.

To boot, sex harassment accusations emerged, with a source describing to the Daily Mail predatory behavior during training.

I went to nazi boot camp and they guys there were all nazis

shocker

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago

USA recreating Hitlers SA "Brownshirts"

"Hitler also relied on terror to achieve his goals. Lured by the wages, a feeling of comradeship, and the striking uniforms, tens of thousands of young jobless men put on the brown shirts and high leather boots of the Nazi Storm Troopers (Sturmabteilungen). Called the SA, these auxiliary policemen took to the streets to beat up and kill some opponents of the Nazi regime. "

source

These ICE thugs and their direct leaders should also turn a few more pages in a history book to find out what Hitler did to the SA brownshirts:

"Night of the Long Knives, in German history, purge of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler on June 30, 1934. Fearing that the paramilitary SA had become too powerful, Hitler ordered his elite SS guards to murder the organization’s leaders, including Ernst Röhm. Also killed that night were hundreds of other perceived opponents of Hitler."

source

[–] FosterMolasses@leminal.space 35 points 1 week ago

high school grads who can "barely read or write"

'Merica.

Looks like the decades-long reputation of educational institutions is finally crumbling and Americans will at last be forced to suffer through the same "Back in my country, I was doctor. But since my degree is considered no good here, now we run a convenience store" cliche.

[–] pipi1234@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I never in my life would have imagined that Idiocracy Movie would be used as a playbook to USA politics.

[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 14 points 1 week ago

Idiocracy on the front and cyberpunk in the back.

[–] notwhoyouthink@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 week ago

I would still vote for Kamacho over Trump or any other conservative any day. Kamacho valued intelligence and worked for the people.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] j_elgato@leminal.space 30 points 1 week ago

The trigger men for the killing fields of Cambodia and the Tiananmen Square Massacre were illiterate peasants from rural areas...

[–] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago

Why is that a bombshell? Most of these recruits probably came from terrorist cells like the Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers and other Nazi groups.

[–] GuyFawkesV@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Noite_Etion@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Sorry, but yeah you are all fucked unless you do something now.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

I mean... a good chunk of the US (and apparently also at least Western Europe) can't read or write. That is a sadly normal problem at this point. And the rest? We actively teach kids to pattern match and "guess" what the other words are from the ones they recognize. Think about that the next time it is painfully obvious that someone replying to you didn't read what you actually said.

A friend who teaches middle school has come to accept that a good chunk of why their students (and presumably the adult populace) flock to "AI Assistants" is that it is literally giving them text to speech and putting things into a format they understand. Which... combined with the tendency towards hallucination and overly praising the user is fucking horrifying.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (2 children)

We actively teach kids to pattern match and “guess” what the other words are from the ones they recognize.

Unless you're talking about something totally different, that just sounds like using roots and context clues – a normal, healthy, and constructive way of understanding language.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

No. They are talking about how phonics and “sounding out” words wasn’t taught for a while. It was a very damaging fad in academics. It produced a generation of kids who cannot read and cannot spell.

Very similar to what happened with “new math” mess of the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Some real Meal Team Six holding the thin crust line.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Suriel@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's hardly an argument in case of US. Afteral folks out there aren't sharpest pencils...

On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024.

21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.

54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).

https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

What portion of that 21% considered illiterate are actually literate, but just not in English. I'm sure there are many who grew up in other countries and moved here but never bothered properly learning English. Like that would be like saying 1 in 5 people cannot use a phone, because surely they have to be able to read to know how to sign in to websites and search things, and I find it hard to believe that many Americans can't use a cell phone

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Lon3star@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Sounds like the target audience of MAGA

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ding ding ding! If you don’t educate your populace, they are much easier to control and manipulate. Can’t read or write? Here’s a $50k sign up bonus to do what we tell you and not ask questions.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] devolution@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

So standard American cops are ICE. Tracks.

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 19 points 1 week ago

So they couldn't graduate from 6th grade?

[–] MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The South Park episode about ICE recruiting was hilarious.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well doesn't this all sound like 1932 all over again.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

So educated people AREN'T looking for jobs that egregiously violate everything law enforcement is supposed to be? Color me surprised.

[–] danekrae@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They're not sending their best...

[–] shane@feddit.nl 16 points 1 week ago

I think they are...

[–] hardcoreufo@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (8 children)

I kinda want to sign up for ICE just to record and leak everything that goes on. I don't think I'd be able to stomach a second of being around these Nazis though.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›