I’d avoid mint if you have an nvidia card or newer hardware. They ship older more “stable” versions of systems packages and kernels that just make it a pain. You may try something with built in nvidia support like PopOs or Catchy.

To be honest, this shift in our politics has been brutally quick and more federally far reaching than anything that happened while I was growing up. People used to be able to just exist. Camp in parks, sleep on benches, etc. This authoritarianism is… Somewhat new.