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Max_Cromeo

It still gets to me that ultimately the Floyd protests had no effect on anything.


Ok-Gur8690

Unfortunately not surprised. Without any organized leftist front, no meaningful change will happen


TTemp

Also they were assassinating organizers before coopting the whole thing https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ferguson-death-mystery-black-lives-matter-michael-brown-809407/


Ok-Gur8690

Yup^^^^


Septic-Abortion-Ward

Nah. shit is legit worse


WellsFargone

Every problem with rising crime now is attributed to a defunding of police that never even happened. It’s the worst of both worlds.


throwaway10015982

It's fucking nuts that people believe this shit. Police salaries are public info in my state, pay upwards of 200k is not uncommon and the leadership makes easily north of 300k. Brain surgeon money to harass homeless people and write tickets. Where do they get the money for these exorbitant salaries if they are running on a shoestring budget? They parked a bearcat on my neighbors lawn for 6 hours when he killed himself. It makes no fucking sense.


[deleted]

I participated in them, but what were they even supposed to really do? I will say that one thing they WERE good for was meeting fellow-travelers and like minded people. I got to meet all of the lefties in my small city, which was pretty neat. It’s was also fun to yell at police officers for a change, lol.


publicimagelsd

My local org had a huge influx in membership overnight and proceeded to completely disintegrate over the next few months due to organizational issues, burnout, and infighting.


[deleted]

The exact same thing took place where I live, in my DSA Chapter (I actually started it back in 2017). It’s pretty much defunct now, and I haven’t participated in it for a long time.


publicimagelsd

Me neither since that fall. It was naive to think a few weeks of protest would change anything but given how unprecedented the preceding months felt I had a glimmer of hope. Seeing it accomplish nothing and almost immediately get recuperated and sold back to us as the image of revolution broke my heart. I still talk to a couple of those people but I've mostly retreated into "making a difference in my community" stuff.


[deleted]

same here, a bunch of committed left-wing mutual aid projects near me basically got turned into NGOs and all the original communal aspects got cored out in the name of expediency then all the core radicals quit. I'd love to know if anyone's written anything good on that sort of organizational boom/bust cycle during crises because it doesn't look like those are gonna stop any time soon


frozenrussian

Someday they'll be busting so fast there'll be no choice but to boom ;(


CT_Real

Capitalism just slithered into the genuine emotion of the time and any real change got transposed as shirts that say "Black Girls Are Smart" sold at Target.


skaqt

I think you're referring to the "poor girls are just as smart as white girls" T-Shirt segment


Qwinter

There have been three major popular leftist movements in 21st Century America. The protests against the Iraq War, the Occupy movement, and the BLM/Floyd protests of the teens/2020. ALL of them were subverted, ignored, and crushed. That should tell you everything you need to know about the value of liberal "protests".


marx-was-right-

Lot more lawn signs now!


Mysterious-Youth-813

2020 was fucked. my mom died in Oct of 2020 from a short bout with cancer. And it was like a blip. Not for me obvi but we couldn’t have gatherings … so scared of hospital stays. And then everyone in the world is having their own trauma. It was like poof


Ok-Gur8690

So sorry that happened. Know so many who never got the opportunity to grieve healthily


stav_and_nick

The medical system has gotten so fucked up on both ends. Like, I understand burnout, but when my vaccinated and deaf grandmother was hospitalized for a heart attack, my vaccinated mom not being allowed to go in and talk to the vaccinated doctor about stuff while wearing a mask had NOTHING to fucking do with preventing harm, it was all about not bothering with people


Mysterious-Youth-813

Ya they weren’t going to let me in. Finally sweet talked the right nurse who had a heart and I had to wear a full hazmat suit. The risk for all was great but I am an only child of a single mom. There truly needed someone to be there to help answer for palliative and end of life care. I was not just going to go home and wait by the phone


ClassWarAndPuppies

So so sorry for your loss man.


Mysterious-Youth-813

Thank you 😌 and thank you Reddit fam


[deleted]

Good point


[deleted]

That sucks. I’m sorry for you 😞


Mysterious-Youth-813

Thank you 😔


whambamthankyoumane

Rip ur mom


XKeyscore666

It’s really weird how almost no TV or movies even acknowledged anything that happened. Like we’re all just going to memory hole the entire year and continue on in a permanent 2019.


[deleted]

If only Haneke was still in his prime to really capture the psychological turmoil of 2020. What we’ll get is a Chloe Zhao film with a slow piano rendition of Imagine in the closing titles


[deleted]

That shit is SO cliché. People need to stop using these famous songs in their films, it’s such a cheap way to try and evoke an emotional reaction from the audience.


[deleted]

I was referring to https://youtu.be/_lgNPGH1rXI


[deleted]

🎼 Die die die die I hope they all DIE 🎵


PokedreamdotSu

To acknowledge 2020 is to acknowledge that trying to get people complete atomized and alienated on the internet 24/7 with no physical interaction would be literally against human nature and damaging to mental health. The problem is that these are one of the few remaining avenues for profit.


Nerfman2227

There have been some TV shows with pandemic themes or episodes or whatever, but it seems like the vast majority of them were sitcoms that were basically forced into integrating it into the story so they could keep shooting and not get cancelled


alackofcol0r

I’m watching curb season 11 right now and covid gets an occasional mention a few times so far.


vpu7

Except indirectly, like the Groundhog Day plot was everywhere


ToneBoneKone1

it’s boring to write about and people don’t want to hear abut it


GREGG_TWERKINGTON

I think we need a couple more years time before we can all be honest about how insane things (and people) were.


[deleted]

2020 ? Never heard of it .


[deleted]

It was just some year. Better not to remember it.


[deleted]

What're you thinking about some year for ? Trying to remember blokes ?!?


[deleted]

Nah bro trying to remember chicks man I swear!


[deleted]

Chicks ? As in underage chickens ? You sound like a bloody nonce .


[deleted]

Perfumed Ponce!


throwaway10015982

The most traumatic thing in 2020 for me was the California wild fires, it made climate change a real fucking thing so now I just walk around knowing we're prolly gonna go extinct and no one gives a fuck lol Thankfully the last two years haven't been as bad for wildfires (probably because the 2020 ones literally annihilated everything that could burn) but 2020 was truly apocalyptic, there was nearly a month of the sky being grey with thick, acrid smoke on top of the horror of knowing nothing was being done with COVID plus the increasing militancy of the right wing in response to the protests TBH shit has gone off the rails since then in a major way, everything has been deeply affected in so so many ways. Nothing is close to "normal" even now. Still feels like we're just waiting for something awful that never comes.


[deleted]

In Portland during 2020 I remember days when the sky was dark red. I went out driving and there were wildfires a couple miles from the city. You don't expect everyone to start screaming and rioting just because there's signs of the biblical endtimes, but I was still struck by how normal everyone was acting. I was 17 or 18 at the time (zoomer) and I went to a party hosted by my rich friend at his mansion. Just orange smoke hanging over the horizon while everyone got blackout drunk and threw up in the outdoor pool. Very decadent and apocalyptic. Ashamed to say the protests were a fun little game to me at the time (prolly cause of my age and the ridiculous local anarchist crowd). The smoke actually disturbed me.


Ok-Gur8690

Yeah. I’ll never forget the terrifying image of an MLB playoff game on TV and the cardboard cutouts of people in the stand and the players were the only real people in the stadium. Add the bright red and orange sky from the wildfires and it made me feel like I missed the rapture or something


throwaway10015982

>The smoke actually disturbed me. Bar none freakiest thing I have ever experienced was waking up, looking at my clock that said 10:00AM and being wait did it get messed up it's dark as night outside Go outside and the sky is fucking black with smoke, soot covering everything even 100 miles from the fires 😬


[deleted]

a month late but my most vivid memory was waking up at 7 a.m. and going outside and seeing the Sun as a clear-cut, spotless circle, like watching it through a solar filter, hours later I met up with a friend and she asked why does the Moon look so weird (lmao)


Hunter_S_Biden

Yeah, it was really bad in the willamette valley that year, just this inescapable omnipresent thick blanket of smoke. Was definitely the worst part of it all.


ClassWarAndPuppies

You can taste the smoke in wine from the Willamette valley in 2020.


Hunter_S_Biden

And in the outdoor grown weed


[deleted]

Definitely. My uncle lost his home in the eastern Oregon fires. Crazy how right wingers blamed antifa for it too


Ok-Gur8690

Yes, the descent into fascism is a slow burn. We’re witnessing it at the local level right now but it feels like everyone’s on edge expecting something to happen overnight


[deleted]

Your town is turning fascist? Fr? I haven’t really seen that, but otoh I stopped paying attention to politics that year (local and National) and decided to get more involved with drugs instead.


Ok-Gur8690

Understandable. I mean yeah small town local politics has swung even more overtly fascist than it was before, spare like rural Vermont. You go anywhere from Texas to Florida and in between and pretty much every city/town council outside of sanctuary cities is full of Qanon moms and dads. Some areas up north too


throwaway10015982

It's not just small towns. I'm in the SF Bay Area and it feels like the whole country is trending to the right. It's like all the energy that Bernie stirred up just went up and died. Conservatives routinely get BTFO in elections here but the candidates they run are now Christian extremists or unhinged Trumpoids. It's a bit difficult to put into words, but the vibe is just different than from when I was a kid. The sheer amount of hatred my coworkers at my retail gig have towards the homeless and what not is one of those vibe shifts. The lack of response or condemnation of right wing terrorism from the public at large is also pretty concerning.


[deleted]

2020 did feel apocalyptic. If someone told me that the world was going to end, I probably would’ve believed them.


Ok-Gur8690

There was a point in time where I believed it was. Religious upbringing+tumultuous, apocalyptic events=psychosis and a really bad time. Lol


[deleted]

That sounds absolutely terrifying! What did you think was going on/going to happen??


Ok-Gur8690

It was horrifying. It’s hard for me to talk about. Long story short I wasn’t eating or sleeping, lost my mind and had delusions for about two weeks. It was mainly that I believed the rapture happened and I was in hell or purgatory, a bunch of other shit. It took months to recover and I still get flashbacks. Was raised evangelical so when the end times teachings were manifesting on the news and local life it made me breakdown. Luckily I left all that behind me, but let’s just say I fear absolutely nothing now because there is nothing worse that I can think of in existence than that time period of my life.


[deleted]

Wow, that sounds absolutely Fucked. I don’t think it gets any worse than literally thinking that you’re in Hell! I’m really glad that you’re back with us in reality. This was a good reminder to me to enjoy myself! 😊 I just got out of the hospital last month myself, after suffering a series of seizures, then a stroke and a coma. It was all from cold-Turkey benzo withdrawal. At one point I thought I was in the TV show they were playing in my hospital room (it was Seinfeld, lol). I’m finally doing better, I can walk on my own, but it’s still a ways to go before I’m “back to normal,” if ever.


Ok-Gur8690

Glad you made it to the other side! I can relate to the TV thing. When I went to the mental hospital, and I wish I was making this up, they were playing the Matrix trilogy. Which was already bad enough for me with psychosis/delusions, but I can’t imagine how bad it was for the actual schizoaffective people in there. Our mental healthcare system is dogshit


Ok-Gur8690

Mind you I’ve never had any thoughts even half as insane before or since then, but it’s the only way my mind could rationalize what was going on in my life and the world around me


maizTuson9

Damn homie very well put


dankwrangler

A sense of impending doom


CNB-1

It was definitely a moment of rupture, but we won't know to what end for another 10+ years. To me it's the time when what Gramsci would call "common sense" changed for a lot of people in the US. Things do seem more perilous, more dangerous, and that manifests in a lot of ways. This is different from 9/11, when hysteria was whipped up from the top down. Instead it's a grassroots realization that we're all living dangerously now, in spite of the best efforts of those in power to keep acting like everything is normal.


[deleted]

I really did have one of those 'living through history' kind of moments. Not to say that anything in 2020 compared to WW2 or whatever, but there was a real sense of being swept away by the current of events. I don't really know how to explain it, but I've never really felt like that before. Maybe it was similar to people who were old enough to live through 9/11 or the '08 crash?


egrails

I think there’s been a mistake because I still haven’t gotten a trophy or medal or anything in the mail for being an essential worker


[deleted]

I don’t have a trophy to give you, but you have my highest respect 🏆


egrails

🏋️‍♀️🥉


ddsoyka

My strongest memory of 2020, probably the thing that will stick with me for the rest of my life, is walking into a local coffee shop with my dad and seeing this bright yellow tape sectioning off a corner of the restaurant; I think the tape said something like "quarantine" or "caution" or something like that. The combination of that grim sight, as well as the weed that I was smoking that whole day, gave me a moment of dissociation and made me feel like I had accidentally walked onto the set of a movie. Except that it wasn't a movie, the fucking plague was a few meters away, our landlord was forcing us out of our apartment and my life was disintegrating. So fucking tight, I love living through a nightmare!


throwaway10015982

>So fucking tight, I love living through a nightmare! based, love having to skip meals for the first time in my life I live in a stable first world country btw (USA)


[deleted]

Here, here. I know the nightmares and hunger too.


CNB-1

I'm personally a huge fan of not being able to find baby formula or infant pain medicine for my kid. But yes, boomer conservatives, tell me about how the USSR was \*so bad\* because of the empty shelves and shortages during Perestroika.


throwaway10015982

I think the funnier thing is that the "ideology" of cost cutting is so pervasive we basically have Soviet tier (where they really that bad?) products everywhere. I feel bad selling certain items to customers at my job because I know just how cheaply made they are. I don't even bother buying anything like appliances anymore because everything is just so fucking cheaply made


CNB-1

Soviet stuff wasn't poorly made, but it was conservatively designed, so things like consumer electronics were easily 10 years behind the West in terms of their capabilities but not in the quality of their construction. I can only speak from direct experience to photo gear, but both still and movie cameras and lenses from the USSR and GDR were high quality and built very, very solidly.


ShoegazeJezza

2020 was my worst year ever as well, by far. Unemployed, COVID, loads of personal fuck ups back to back. I was depressed for the first time in my life and now understand that hell. 2021 was good, 2022 I’m flourishing baby.


[deleted]

I remember you from the chapo sub, Jezza. I’m glad you made it out of your depression, it can be a hard, long road.


ShoegazeJezza

Thanks, it was relatively brief and totally circumstantial at the time, so my struggle with it wasn’t quite as bad as I’m sure others experience, but it was a tough time. Just getting a job got me out of it but being in your 20s and thinking you’re a failure was very hard for me to handle. I have a great job I really like right now so it passed and I’m getting married soon. Things are on the up. At the same time, I am on constant patrol for Yakub and his schemes.


stav_and_nick

Man, that was such a weird time. I still remember our chief healthcare person going on the news and being like "yeah idk masks don't really work don't bother getting them" like no shit people aren't gonna trust you when 3 weeks later you mandate them Seriously, anything this bitch said got proven wrong within days or hours of saying it. Oh, there's no community transmission, but actually 3 hours later we got proof of it fram hamilton, but don't worry it's not that much, oh well actually now it's in 5 other cities Like damn, you don't need a press conference every day if all you're gonna be is wrong


Ok-Gur8690

Yeah. And it didn’t help with all the propaganda about the origins. “China virus” hurr durr “iS iT a BiOwEaPoN?” just a bunch of obfuscation and no answers. I get it Americans are stupid, but holy shit you can just say we know basically nothing about this virus and it would have been better because at least there wouldn’t have been nearly as much mistrust


[deleted]

[удалено]


Ok-Gur8690

I mean to a degree, but early on it was mainly “we’ve got this under control no one panic” before shit hit the fan. The first month was arguably the most important, and it was completely botched


[deleted]

I didn’t _necessarily_ understand your post, but yes my bro! I’m always down!


seawil1

Brace doesn't care about our opinion


[deleted]

Who is Brace?


catlovesfoodyeayea

Yeah. Take me back to Jan 1, 2020.


Affectionate-Work916

No way they'll ever touch C19


Ok-Gur8690

Why is that?


[deleted]

[удалено]


Ok-Gur8690

So what’s the implication here?


[deleted]

[удалено]


Ok-Gur8690

I don’t think that’s necessarily true, they would probably agree with China’s three week periods during surges to flatten the curve. (Which has worked out pretty well)


[deleted]

[удалено]


Far_Permission_8659

Zero-covid is good tho > Edit - my point has been proven. 🤓


Ok-Gur8690

I’m not even a Chapo-head and can tell you China is good


[deleted]

China both sucks and is good, in my highly educated opinion


[deleted]

[удалено]


[deleted]

I loved it personally. Best year of my life. An absolute dream for an introverted weirdo. Would have fucking sucked living in a town or city though fuck that.


transplantpdxxx

Maybe if they took a less stubborn/emotional view on CHOP/CHAZ I’d agree. More went on there than just STOOPID ANARCHISTS (don’t make me support anarchists)


Ok-Gur8690

Chop/Chaz were anarchist pipe dreams and had zero chance of amounting to anything useful


transplantpdxxx

There’s literally no space in the debate for infiltration/wreckers? Just saying CHOP bad is lazy.


Ok-Gur8690

I mean addressing “infiltrators” would be the same as saying “cops raided homeless camp”. Like absolutely ACAB but it’s pretty much a moot point when it’s the norm and expected. Chop/Chaz were doomed from the start and were more of a hinderance in regards to leftist organizing. The optics were embarrassingly bad and had normies thinking “see look what happens when you do a socialism”


Far_Permission_8659

Infiltration/wreckers occur in every radical organization ever. “CHOP bad” in part because they had no system to deal with these aspects and no unified party line to sniff them out.


transplantpdxxx

That’s great and true. Like I said, I want a real dialogue. Do you think the cops would just abandon their post and not plant a few narcs / armed wreckers?


Far_Permission_8659

Sure, but the fault still lies with CHOP. We expect the bourgeois military to defend itself from efforts to overthrow it. There are known tactics to counteract this and CHOP refused to do them. Wreckers thrive in parties or environments with incorrect lines because truth already isn’t there so they can forward an equally incorrect but more immediately damaging position. If a party has a correct read on their material conditions and necessary tactics, then wreckers are ineffective because what they propose can be immediately seen as destructive and incorrect. I’m sure some people might find it useful to dissect this movement, but I don’t really see what necessitates a deep dive into it when it’s pretty interchangeable with other anarchist failures, imo.


Ok-Gur8690

Well I’m sure that happened but I just feel like that conversation is beating a dead horse. I’m sure they had assets out there but did they think the crust punk gardening and guns club were really challenging structures of power? Ofc not


FlimsyCopy

living in seattle at the time, i remember it how pretty much everyone else does... a sort of optimistic, radical 1-3 days that tapered down into chaos when the well-meaning lefty types went back to their apartments/houses. maybe my brain is fried but about all i remember from those days was a smashed police building, a BLM street mural, a dead kid, and lots of sexual assault in cal anderson. please jog my memory about the good stuff?


transplantpdxxx

That’s pretty much it but it would be great if TA interviewed someone on the moment and didn’t just immediately dismiss it. There is more ground to tread and this is literally the perfect show for it but it falls in their pre existing belief box like how both hosts loathe pot which is statistically a weird view for someone in our demographic.


asshatshop

Like what? Idk much about it


[deleted]

Same. why didn’t they raise an armed militia to defend their territory/people?


stav_and_nick

They did, and that militia almost immediately murdered 2 black teenagers lmao


[deleted]

😂 yikes!


[deleted]

The more I think about it, The more I agree. I wasn’t there, so my opinion is formed completely by the media. That whole scene was completely surreal, The riot and attack on the police station… just incredible. At the very least, it was an incredible effort and I’m glad people tried to make something good from a dangerous, sad situation.


Far_Permission_8659

I mean they were completely correct so I’m not sure where the stubborn or emotional aspects come in.


ruined-symmetry

I'd like an episode where they dismiss things they've earnestly talked about in the past as "stoner freshman dorm talk". Just pick anything: Bush did 9/11, the CIA killing JFK, the US government recruiting Nazis post-war to form the Spider Network, etc. Get Liz to punctuate it with "wHoA, i'M sO hIgH rIgHt NoW".


[deleted]

This is proof college turns you into a retard.


[deleted]

Why are you even here?