Ah yes, being born in a country makes you an expert on it and you are magically imbued with everything about its history with total accuracy. That’s why everyone born in the US is famous for being in total agreement on everything.

Well, partly I’m thinking of like people who lost jobs or journalists who got temporarily locked up over speaking out for Palestine. But those two are maybe a bit different, one is the corporate wing punishing people and the other is the state wing punishing people, and you’re probably right that for the most part, the state wing only goes after regular non-specialist roles like a journalist if they’re taking action. Or I guess we could say it’s like, the amount of perceived threat (to the empire) of what you do is directly correlated to how quickly they sweep aside their “free speech” spiel.

Yes, there is that too. You can still get in trouble for saying stuff that opposes imperialism, but you can purchase any one of fifty-seven brands of frozen peaches. :P

Funny and, unironically, good advice. I’ve burned out before doing stuff in a way that wasn’t sustainable for me. There is something to be said for finding out what your limits are rather than limiting yourself purely to what you believe you can do, but also, you can push too hard too fast and burn out, and a lot of goals take marathon effort.