| I'm some young person with brightly colored hair and weird fashion. I sound a little strange when I talk, and if you see me around, my group of friends will probably look a little eclectic. But I've spent years in the tech healthcare industry devoting all of my work to things that would directly and significantly improve the lives of patients and doctors. I created tens of millions of dollars of value, all while simultaneously saving many many lives. I flat out refused to do work that would very clearly only benefit the wallets of elites, though at the financial and healthcare well-being of many many many patients. Now, I myself and many many of the people I am close to and care about are living in day-to-day terror for our lives. In america. In california. In the SF bay area. Bluest of the blue. I am a transgender american. Our president signed an executive order stating that all transgender people are fundamentally dishonest and untrustworthy. We are having our vital id documents confiscated and/or refused to be issued, thus preventing many of us from leaving the country. The president signed an executive order demanding the cessation of one of the most effective life-saving, extremely well studied medical treatments in all of medicine for 18-year old ADULT citizens. These days, I'm afraid to step outside my home, since especially in recent weeks, about half the time I do so, I face some form of harassment from bigots emboldened to express their hatred onto another human being. The architect of project 2025, which details an explicit plan to eradicate transgender people, has been appointed to one of the most important positions in the federal government. And yet here on hacker news, it's so very, very eerily quiet. Please hear me, friends. We are on the precipice of GENOCIDE. Make no mistake, and know I don't say that lightly. Every new day brings a new horrific step along the darkest of paths a country can take. Please don't wait to take action until there's clear, abundant, and undeniable evidence that millions of americans are being slaughtered right before your very eyes. We still have time to stop this madness before existence in America becomes truly hell on earth. Please remember, inaction and preemptive compliance with wildly unethical and unconstitutional demands equates to passive support for the atrocities being enacted by the current administration. Don't be silent. Don't let our lives and loves be eradicated. Please, I'm begging you. I'm begging you for my life. Have mercy. Have the courage necessary to have mercy. Do not relinquish your morality and ethics just for the sake of conformity. Stand for something. Don't be silent. Don't allow for silence. The most terrible drumbeat of the spectre of genocide is growing louder by the day. It won't be long before it's so loud that you can't hear anything else. So loud it'll deafen you. Will you notice when we start disappearing? Have you noticed that we already have begun? Will you walk downtown and think to yourself, "huh, I haven't seen that weird colored hair person around in a while...". All those lives I saved, and now I don't even know if I can save my own from my government. And at this point I honestly don't know what hurts more- that my government could exhibit unimaginable cruelty upon myself and many I care deeply about, or the deafening silence I am hearing from the vast majority of people who are not involved in the queer community. Silence buys our deaths. Will you truly be willing to make that purchase? And what will you have to give up in order to meet that price? |