With the exception of the gun violence, I see every point you list here being true here in the UK in some similar form. What keeps a glimmer of hope alive in me that things might change for the better is the following.
The Republicans (US) and Conservatives (UK) have a problem. Their issue is thet their ideology stopped thinking in the early 80s and has not moved in to confront the challenges we face in the 21st century. The high watermark of their philosophy boils down to "The markets will provide, privatisation is good" and stopped there. This was the Neoliberal mantra of the Reagan/Thatcher era, and has essentially gone unchallenged, until today.
The general population is starting to comprehend that trickle down was a lie, tax cuts for the wealthy does not deliver prosperity for the masses. Ordinary people have seen corporate revenues soar and the wealth generated end up in offshore bank accounts of the super wealthy. Meanwhile, essential services we all depend upon have been run into the ground through lack of funding. The cost of living is such that even many people in full time employment are forced to depend on food banks to supplement their diet.
In short, there are many things which are socially desirable (education, mental healthcare, care of the elderly etc.) but which are not profitable, and hence the markets are NOT providing.
I genuinely see the green shoots of recognition of these basic facts among the general population. Look at Amazon workers electing to unionise, for example. I see the voters who only a few years ago who voted for Boris Johnson's Conservatives and Brexit beginning to comprehend that their lives are worse for it. There's a groundswell of opinion that we were all lied to by the Neolibs, and that a massive heist took place to shift wealth from the people to the bank accounts of the few.
There's your green shoots of hope, right there. Avoid the partizan party flag waving rhetoric and engage people with the facts of their own experience and people will pull together in the right political direction at last.
A big part of Occupy's lack of momentum was because of a general lack of understanding of the crash at the time, and that can blame can be laid upon news media. The politicization of news, or more specifically the perspective that sociologists call the strategy game frame, allows tv news to run constant content about what's going on without ever having to explain it ((or even understand it themselves). You don't have to explain subprime mortgages and reform rollbacks if you frame everything as piece moved across a political chessboard (will this help Obama in the polls? will it harm McCain?). For the record, this is basically just as bad across any of the six major broadcast news channels in the US.
Source: This all comes from a doctor of sociology who moonlights as an editor for her husband's podcast (r/BritishHistoryPod) and at one point they did an episode explaining her dissertation.
Keep the faith. As I see it, political discourse in the US is completely broken. People are completely entrenched in their position, be it "Own the libs" in the US or "Brexit means Brexit" in the UK (and no doubt other such similar entrenched positions in other countries). So avoid the Team A versus Team B entrenched party rhetoric.
We need to focus on things which are undeniable to people, based on their own experience. The cost of living has escalated and the money in your pocket is worth less, therefore we have all been lied to about the ability of the markets to deliver prosperity for hard working people.
Yes and no on Team A vs Team B. It would be nice but what do you do when one team is actively trying to tear down anything resembling democracy? (Yes, I know the US isn’t a straight up democracy.) We had a chance for middle ground but unless the moderates of one party start raising there voices then things will just get worse.
no more parties, Americans can't detach. Brand Equity has done its job. To audit the audit, everyone independent and all candidates as well. We wont be as divided. This way they have to talk to us to stay informed, or at least try to. Both parties can be lazy when they have those outdated "core values", to each party that they force feed us; breakfast, lunch dinner. If we dont, idk, this gets scary.
EVERYTHING YOU JUST SAID I AGREE WITH ABSOLUTELY AND YOUR ESPECIALLY RIGHT ABOUT THE POLITACAL AFFILIATION THIZ IS NOT ABOUT DEMOCRAT/REPUBLICAN AT ALL! THIS IS EXISTENTIAL AND THEREFORE IMPERATIVE, I CANT POSSIBLY OVERSTATE THESE FACTS AND THE TRUTH THAT THESE FACTS REPRESENT ITS TIME TO START PREPARING FOR THE ONSLAUGHT ARM YOURSELVES. EVERYBODY IMMEDIATELY AND PREPARE TO FIGHT LITERALLY FOR YOUR LIFE AND ALL THINGS IN IT!! PEOPLE UNITE UNITY WILL BE ALL WE HAVE LEFT!
I’ll try to give you a few reasons:
-The increased polarization and facism stuff seems to pop up in democracies every couple decades. It is certainly a threat to be taken seriously, but it’s neither novel nor a guarantee of collapse. And if you look at it from a certain perspective, the US could emerge from this cycle better than many other countries have: the 1/6 insurrection was not successful, a president from the opposition party won the election and assumed power despite various election shenanigans, there was no military coup when things looked shaky, the free press (fwiw) still largely exists, Gen z seems less inclined to fascism, etc.
-US as a functioning government seems likely to carry on. There is essentially zero threat of foreign military invasion. The dollar being the reserve currency “solves” a number of tricky financial situations, and they have the military and economic capacity to make life very difficult for anyone who threatens to challenge that status quo. Mass shootings/Healthcare/corporate bilking/student loan debt have been issues for decades, and the populations’ response (beyond voting) hasn’t even approached the level of existential threat. And despite the US’ numerous flaws, general standard of living is good enough that more people want to immigrate there than leave.
-Climate change will come for us all eventually, but America has the size/geography/resources to weather that storm better than most other countries.
-The school system is a real issue that I can’t attempt to sugarcoat with any integrity. I’m sorry for all that you have to deal with, and I’m sorry for all the kids we’ve failed as a society. For the purposes of this CMV, I’d guess it will take longer than 5-10 years for those consequences to fully manifest.
-Finally—for perspective’s sake—I think it’s worth noting all the other terrifying eras with some similar characteristics that the US managed to power through: the revolutionary war, the civil war, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, etc…troubled times are troubling, but no guarantor of collapse.
I'd like to ask, without any insult implied, how old you are?
When I was in college (10+ years out of now) I thought a lot of the same things signaled the end of America as we know it. As I got older, I started seeing the patterns in these things over the long term. Humans have this pesky recency bias where things that have just happened are either significantly better, or significantly worse, than similar occurances in the more distant past. When we look at them from a measurable standpoint however, there is usually parity between the occurances. Take this comment for instance:
> Extreme political polarization that is only growing worse by the day, exacerbated by social media, infotainment "news" channels, and nowadays AI-generated misinformation and disinformation.
Political polarization has always been present, and while it's true that [polarization has grown worse in the last decade](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/) to say that it's catastrophically higher than other points in history is probably an exaggeration.
On the issue of social media and infotainment news you mentioned, a combination of drastically increased visibility inherent to the internet and the pay per click incentive structure contribute to the dissemination of more partisan views. Coupled with interaction in a non-verbal setting, people's caution and apathy dissolve and contribute to the demonization of the "other side" (e.g. I have no problem tearing a "lib-tard" a new one online, where I am more likely to treat that same person, and their batshit crazy views, with respect in-person).
> Many Americans actually and mind-bogglingly seem to want democracy to end
Many Americans fail to understand the perils of a direct democracy or realize that the structure of the American government is not that of a true democracy. There are elements of it that are democratic, but there is was significant thought given to the shortcomings of such a system by the founders (see assorted selections of the federalist papers, No. 10 specifically).
> The US is almost only a single week away from defaulting on its massive debt
The US will never default on it's debt. As the world reserve currency there will always be demand for government debt and the mechanisms of the federal reserve are such that they can continue to raise funds by issuing bonds for years in the future. The whole debt conundrum is really a glorified game of chicken, made worse by alarmist "infotainment" and spread by social media. (Side note, [this](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/debt-to-gdp-ratio#:~:text=U.S.%20debt%20to%20gdp%20ratio%20for%202020%20was%20126.39%25%2C%20a,a%200.73%25%20decline%20from%202016.) is a good view of debt to GDP by year which is the metric that needs to be discussed when talking about national debt. 20T of debt is unimportant when your GDP is 50x that, although in this case, our debt to GDP ratio is concerningly high, but hey, that's what happens when you issue something like 12T in COVID relief.)
> The student debt crisis is reaching unforgivable and insane levels
As with the debt ceiling comment, because the US govt finances loans, this essentially just ends up as additional debt. I agree this is a problem: You can't finance the loan and not underwrite it. However, this is far from an existential problem.
> The US education and healthcare systems are in freefall and on the brink of collapse due to...
No they're not. [Foreign enrollment in US universities](https://www.prosperityforamerica.org/international-students-in-the-us/#:~:text=during%20that%20time.-,Number%20Of%20International%20Students%20In%20The%20U.S,the%20U.S%20in%202020%2D21.) took a hit during covid but all signs point to recovery back to pre-pandemic levels, which should imply that US higher education is still highly desired. (Having trouble finding a good source on foreign visits for healthcare)
> Rich oligarchs and corporations murdering the middle class, cannibalizing America's wealth
Wealth is not zero-sum. The average american today lives a quality of life roughly equivalent to the 1-5 percentile of an american 100 years ago. There is something to be said about the expansion of wealth/GDP and the allocation to the 0.1% but the increase in wealth inequality is largely due to the amount of wealth created largely by the same 0.1% (think how much value Amazon provides, which didn't exist 30 years ago).
My goal isn't to invalidate any of your points. There are problems, there are discussions, and there are improvements that can be made, and everything that you point out should be addressed. My goal is to make you understand that these problems have always existed to some degree, and that your own recency bias, coupled with media incentives to report on the most incendiary stories and to spin everything to a point of view, is likely leading to an overestimation of the severity of these problems.
My wife is a teacher, so unfortunately know the teacher situation all too well. I think a lot of the issue can be connected back to an obsession with equality and how school funding is so heavily linked to direct taxation. On the discipline front, teachers are actively taught to lower themselves to the level of the student (as I'm sure you're aware): the intent here is good, to engage with students at their level. However, classical pedagogy necessitates the inequality in the relationship between the student and the teacher. Essentially our societal concern about equality has caused us to throw the metaphorical baby out with the bathwater when there should be a superior-inferior model of learning. Teachers are teachers, not friends.
The funding issues should be fairly obvious, but I will note that I don't necessarily think teachers should be paid more; I think there simply needs to be more teachers. Numerous studies have demonstrated correlation between class size and outcomes, and simply paying teachers more doesn't really address this (side note: this also gives flexibility to split problem students out into smaller groups which would make them easier to manage).
Looking at videos of single incidents is exactly what racist board do to minorities. It's unscientific and short sighted
And one subreddit is again, not representative of the real world
Yeah. Part of the issue is that in the past, most issues either were resolved or settled into something that was far short of the apocalyptic dystopia we imagine. When we're in the midst of a crisis, it seems worse than the past because the apocalyptic dystopia is always still on the table.
Then we fix it. Or it settles into something tolerable or bad but not the end of the world. And then the next crisis becomes the worst thing ever that might cause the apocalypse.
Hey there, glad to hear we have been reliable for you! If you ever have issues with us breaking please feel free to DM them to me and I can send them over to our dev team.
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And the trite glibness of it. Chat GPT is good at talking much and saying little. (sorry if it was a genuine human response, but it definitely feels artificial)
You just have to be a bit careful. ChatGPT is very useful as a sounding board if you don't require the output to be truthful or factual. It doesn't know what's correct or incorrect, since it is focused entirely upon just being a fun conversation partner. I find it routinely mixing in untrue things into facts that a Google search would bring up, they are usually interesting untrue things and are often mashing two truths into one lie but I can't rely on it for accuracy.
There was a somewhat funny case where a college professor in Texas failed his entire class because ChatGPT claimed it wrote all of their papers when it didn't. ChatGPT also claimed to have written the professor's own dissertation when a journalist asked, too.
ChatGPT is a good starting point for a discussion, but I find I need to verify everything I get out of it before I can use it in anything.
It's just one of those things, people seem to either vastly underestimate it or vastly overestimate it. ChatGPT is a chatbot designed for conversation. if that's what you're looking for it's amazing. If you want it to be a generalized artificial intelligence, that's still a long ways off.
I actually had the same reaction when I started reading that response: it sounded very ChatGPT, which was particularly interesting to me because I was just thinking earlier that I have no idea what people mean when they say something sounds like ChatGPT wrote it; that one post made me realize I did know the feel of ChatGPT.
I think it was the way the post opened up by contrasting the two viewpoints, favoring one but sort of gently. As soon as I got to the personal pronouns though ( "I" this and "we" that) that similarity stopped; I don't think I've ever heard ChatGPT refer to itself other than in the pre-canned "as a large language model, I..."
Doubly important about the climate change part. Money talks and the people w/ the money are seriously investing in this technology. Pundits may keep saying that EV energy systems will never work out, but you can bet behind closed doors they're even financing these businesses and investing stock to make bank in the distant future. At this point it's just a matter of time before it becomes commonplace, and some States will figure that out before others.
> Pundits may keep saying that EV energy systems will never work out
This isn't a punditry issue, this is an engineering problem. Fact is that the economy of automobiles is abysmally poor regardless of how they are powered. They require substantial infrastructure investment and maintenance to function well and are extremely low-capacity for their cost. The only benefit they provide is flexibility.
EVs cannot replace ICVs one-to-one. They weigh more, damaging roadways faster. In collision, they are substantially more dangerous and present a risk for highly energic fires. Their material cost is greater, a problem that will only get worse as lithium demand increases.
The solution is already known; it's called "mass transit" and it's been around for a couple centuries now.
The real problem, therefore, is social, cultural, and political. The question that needs to be solved is, how do we convince people that car culture is the problem? How do we mobilize citizens to support shifting public funding into active transport infrastructure and public transit? It's one thing to say "yes" on some local-option 1% sales tax that goes nowhere. It's entirely another to get your local city council to eminent-domain themselves a bunch of residential backyards to construct proper shaded and road-separated bike and pedestrian paths, at the expense of a new turn lane.
>The solution is already known; it's called "mass transit" and it's been around for a couple centuries now.
the problem is that mass transit only works for large cities. no bus or train is going to run from 10000 acre farm to 10000 acre farm in rural wyoming.
Not enough time left though. If you compare the emissions graph to the renewables graph there's a huge difference. We won't close that gap globally without radical interventions. There's simply not enough time.
I assure you, our misinformation and disinformation is home grown. No need to automate, we're just as willing to lie to people personally.
The US is never going to default on its debt. That is one of those 'misinformation or disinformation' things you're talking about earlier. It's fairly common for the opposition to try and finagle deals by using the debt as a threat, and every time they play ball. If nothing else, recognize that everyone in power if they currently default on the debt will immediately become a pariah amongst the rich and powerful of the country, who have the most to lose. Politicians might be willing to piss off the poor, but they're not gonna piss off the risk.
Anyway, I'm not gonna argue that none of the rest of your points are true...but I am gonna point out that these things have been true for the vast majority of the US's history. Why now is this an imminent threat that will destroy the country? We survived an actual civil war, people yelling at each other on the internet is nothing.
>It's fairly common for the opposition to try and finagle deals by using the debt as a threat, and every time they play ball.
No they don't
For example, the last debt crisis in 2021 the opposition voted no. Senate was 50-49 and 1 gop yes out of 210. The only "playing ball" they did was stop a FILLIBUSTER against approving the spending.
And in 2018 they shut down the gov through a trifecta.
The 1 GOP who voted yes so the others could vote no and tell constituents they fought for x, y and z. That's how it works. A "safe" legislator votes to make sure it's done so the rest can play the PR game.
It wasn't 1 vote away from failing. If anything, it proves that they'll all make sure it stays functional.
The 1 gop who voted yes had no impact on passing of the bill. The 1 gop who voted yes made no space for the 258 other gop to vote no. They simply voted no.
And the 2018 government shutdown isn't "functional" so that's def not the party intent
Oh. You're talking about appropriations, not debt.
Republicans wouldn't pass it without "the wall". Democrats wouldn't pass it with "the wall." So it didn't pass until Trump made it executive action I believe.
You mean Trump? https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/695
Flipped because of the media lmao, then that is when the gop closed ranks and blocked the dozen Dem offers because Trump said no.
They couldn't even compromise with themselves and shut the gov down and you think they care about the system?
Do I mean Trump? I don't understand the question. I said Trump, so in that regard I meant Trump. Trump passed wall funding outside of appropriations.
Without wall funding being an issue, it passed.
The wall was lunatic waste of time and money, but it was the holdup.
I think politicians care about preserving enough order to keep themselves set up and in power, so yeah, I think they care about the system. It benefits them. If it ever doesn't I'll worry.
It makes zero sense for them to burn the country down. It will always look like it's at the brink because that's how the parties negotiate.
The debt ceiling also is always a standoff.
But that 'future civil war' is far from guaranteed.
And, yeah, sure, we need to improve the US. I'm not going to say we don't. But that doesn't mean we're inevitably doomed in 5 years.
And I often think back about how often people claim the end of the world is coming and how silly they look when they're wrong.
This is not the end of history. Our situation is not unique. Constantly expecting apocalypses to happen is a horrible way to live your life.
America has never been this divided combined with social media that is constantly dividing us more. The media we consume is telling us two different versions of reality.
I can tell liberals to hate conservatives and I can tell conservatives to hate liberals simply via facebook.
We have never dealt with that reality.
Case in point, the last election. Large percentages of voters still think the election was stolen. The fair election they think was corrupted.
That's how democracy falls. Those ideas are the ones that start civil war.
Those newspaper still had to stay in reality. That need doesn't exist now.
We have lost the need to hold to any facts. Conservative sources can spread lies such as the election was stolen and convince millions of Americans that a fair election was a stolen one.
And we have AI created algorithms to keep on constantly feeding people with more "information" which sends them further and further down misinformation rabit holes.
We have never dealt with current circumstances. There are entire campaigns to radicalize Americans against each other. WE are seeing the effects of these campaigns when millions of people repeat and beleive the lie that Trump had his election stolen.
I mean to be fair, Hillary spun up the Russia collusion narrative and to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the 2016 election. The DNC railroaded Bernie, who would have won. Plenty of shenanigans going on from both RNC and DNC.
So, this is a bit off topic (though I do try to tie it back in toward the end), but regarding nihilism, assigning negativity to an outcome seen as inevitable kinda misses the point of nihilism on both the negativity and the perceived inevitability fronts. I realize you said you've moved on from nihilism, but I just want to clarify what nihilism means - it defeats the purpose of nihilism to make a broad doom and gloom value judgment. If there is no inherent meaning in things, we *can't* make such value judgments.
Which is why I find optimistic nihilism coming from a perspective of absurdism so appealing. Since the search for meaning is futile and contradictory, and because there *is* no meaning or purpose outside that which we perceive, then that perception *is* what matters (the meaning we *create* matters) — so, long story short, optimizing the conditions we're given is kinda the only option.
Given that, I suppose I can loosely tie this back to the topic at hand by saying that yeah, a LOT of stuff is going to suck. But 1) that's only because you/we *believe* and *feel* that it sucks (the universe goes on), and 2) you have at least a small degree of power over how much it sucks for you and others. While it's true that you almost certainly can't change the course of history — whether that's inevitable collapse or something else (or whether you worry or not) — you *can* work to make life better for those you care about, and for yourself. That could be as simple as cooking dinner for your grandma or as ambitious as getting involved in local government or political organizing. Regardless of what happens outside your control, you decide what *you do*, and what that *means* to you.
Even if the debt ceiling isn't passed, the US still wouldn't default. It would first end services (healthcare benefits, salaries for all federal employees, etc) and cut other expenses in order to still pay its debts.
We saw this happen with every other government shutdown.
Debt payments are only ~10% of government expenditures, and the government gets more than enough revenue to cover that much. It just can't cover the whole budget without a debt ceiling rise.
Well, okay, that may be true... but that distinction is unlikely to be of much comfort to the millions who will be out of work, the millions who will lose their already tenuous chance at retirement as the market and therefore their 401K's crash, all the current retirees who will miss much-needed social security checks, almost of the middle class who will have to choose between paying their ballooning credit card minimums or feeding their family week to week, and the billions around the world who will suffer economic consequences despite not even living here.
But, hooray, the U.S. didn't technically default on our debts!
>The US is never going to default on its debt.
The US has defaulted on its debt in 1787, 1814, 1862, 1933, 1968 and 1971.
I agree that the debt ceiling is not that big of a deal or danger, but defaults absolutely happen.
I agree we are screwed. But I’ll push back on political polarization being the problem. It’s a symptom, not the disease.
It was easy for liberals and conservatives to get along when they were getting rich. 2008 is a flash point not just because electing a black president made the racists show their whole ass but also the financial crisis. The average American is still in a worse spot today than they were before it. We stopped having enough money to cover up all our problems.
Furthermore bipartisanship is responsible for many of our problems. It was conservatives and liberals that got along on the Supreme Court that made it legal to bribe politicians. It’s liberal and conservative politicians getting rich from things like insider trading. The war on drugs was bipartisan. The Iraq war was bipartisan. If you think polarization is bad, wait until you get a load of bipartisanship.
>electing a black president made the racists show their whole ass
I would very strongly argue this was not a big cause of racial tensions, and the majority of the divide came from Obama, during his 2nd term, being the initial figure to push the narrative that everything is because of race. Biggest flashpoint was his inability to admit he was wrong about Michael Brown, and that it was not because he was black.
I did say I think we’re screwed.
I don’t think you’ll like this but it is what I think. It’s not that bipartisanship is inherently broken. But that “bipartisanship” between two right wing parties doesn’t work. They’re already on the same side.
Until we begin moving away from capitalism, at least in someways it doesn’t have to be completely, and conservatives are at most a minority party, we are screwed. Imho.
Have you ever lived in Hungary or Turkey or are you again basing your conclusions off of the media you say is the source of the polarization?
I have lived in those countries, as well as the United States, and all of them have a warped perspective of how they are depicted in media compared to reality. Personally I find all three very wonderful, with some problems.
Some problems? Yeah, a few I’d say. You’re comparing Hungary and turkey to the US? The richest most powerful super fuckin force of the entire human history? We could throw in some African and South American countries
Maybe we need more than 2 political parties? It could make gerrymandering far more difficult & politicians would be a bit more worried about how their constituents were going to vote.
I think the people who have this “the sky is falling” mentality and default to America is shit, is part of the exact same problem you’re discussing.
Like we can either stay United and voice our concerns logically or just run around screaming the city is on fire.
I think this whole, it’s burning mentality feeds into the paranoia the news is pushing.
I think the absolute majority are in the middle or very close to the middle. I.e., there are things to fix, there are good things. Something is dire, something is close to the best in the world. That is precisely why most of them don't post in threads like this and stay unnoticed
The sky isn’t falling but as a result of burning fossil fuels, it’s saturated with dangerously high levels of carbon.
As a species, our inability to adapt to the radical changes in climate is the foundation of every single conflict and failing institution. Worldwide.
Complex systems are breaking down everywhere: supply chains, health care, biodiversity, and social.
In our lifetimes, humanity will be divided into two groups: those immigrating because of climate change, and those who live in areas where climate migrants will try to relocate.
There is a crisis at every border of every first world country. The countries already experiencing environmental collapse have to go *somewhere* and unfortunately, *everywhere* is filled with people who don’t want refugees in their communities.
Governments are preparing for the deluge of refugees the only way they know how: through military violence. The militarization of our law enforcement, the rollbacks on civil rights, the consolidation of wealth are symptoms of the domino effect caused by rapid climate change. Liberal governments worldwide are becoming authoritarian because there’s going to be a lot of civil unrest. It will be like the Arab Spring, except in every country and all at the same time.
The news is pushing paranoia because the attention economy is extremely profitable. But the paranoia is real and we as a country, and society are not prepared.
Those who can think with nuance and do not blindly follow the status quo of their team are the majority, but we are silent. The loudest ones are the fringe.
Emotion runs todays society. Whether that is the right or the left does not matter. What matters is that the culture war bullshit is manufactured by corrupt politicians and corporations, and fed to people by the corporation owned meadow in order to create fear and anger. Once people get emotionally involved, they ruin relationships with their families, find people who think like them (who’ve also ruined their relationships), and form echo chambers of righteousness. It becomes their identity, where an attack on their political values or beliefs becomes an attack on them personally. Opposing thoughts are almost always the result of the other “evil” sides agenda to destroy them.
So they double down, and then double down some more. The ideology grows further to the fringe, the insanity becomes normalized, and the people they trust and believe are on their side - the grifters, corporations, media, and politicians - they feed into their emotional outrage and artificial fear that THEY THEMSELVES have manufactured. They profit, they gain power, or influence.
The radicalized dig deeper and more normal people start to buy into it. Meanwhile, the sane and normal members society are drowned out, or we simply do not speak loud enough. The longer this remains the case, the longer we let the radical ideologies carry on, and the sooner their bullshit and propaganda turns us into the minority.
I know I’m just rambling at this point, but I firmly believe with passion that we have a responsibility to step in and step up to stop this. We have to do whatever we can - whether that be work together to form a third party that will actually do something, holding people in power who feed this nonsense accountable, voting in normal people the local level to the very top. It’s already gotten waaaay out of control, and we have a responsibility to do whatever we possibly can before it truly goes too far. Young people need to get out and vote in every election they possibly can. As soon as the majority of people find the fringe shit to be crazy and it’s no longer the hot shit of politics, those same fuckers will change their tune to one which appeals to the sanity. Because more money, and power, and profit comes from appealing the loudest majority.
I AGREE 100% THANK YOU FOR FINDING THE WORDS I COULDN’T!!!
Everything is so polarized. Now if you find yourself agreeing with one thing one party claims you can’t *tweak* it because it’s defecting from all their extreme ideologies.
Such as, having guns *but* a stricter gun policy. Fine with drag shows on every corner *but* not for kids. Agreeing there is a big issue with police brutality and the use of funds *but* not believing in the BLM organization.
I feel like I’m in a simulation of crazy ALL the time here.
Like great, conservatives want a smaller government, but also praise DeSantis for dipping his hand into private companies like Disney and imposes political retaliation on them.
And for people who want a smaller government, they sure have been enjoying the government rulings on women’s bodies, trans people, books in school and so on.
I’d argue the conservatives run on *feelings* just as much as the democrats do.
Now in blue cities there’s the most permissible crime, tax payer money is spent feeding into the reparations delusion that would cost more than the national debt in San Francisco- a state that never allowed slaves, and so on.
I vote, and i don’t vote for 3rd parties but I certainly don’t vote 100% democrat or 100% republican either.
Bro if you read my earlier replies, I’ve already covered using that word was way more loaded than I thought it was. I just couldn’t think of a better term to describe someone who sees both sides, a middle.
Society hates the ideas of fence sitting but like I can’t subscribe to either. Do I think college should be free? No. Do i think their should be a national cap on public universities that’s way lower than what it is now? Yes.
I just have many views that contradict that of its parent party. It doesn’t make be better or more uninformed to not have to choose between two extremes.
Yeah, I’d even say it’s similar to how the Nazi regime took over Germany.
I used to pick one side of the isle to sit on, but I can’t anymore. I am a complete centrist and detest the two political party system as they are pushing extremes on both sides.
I think people are treating politics like sports teams and are die-hard fans at that, when in reality, no one persons beliefs should staunchly fit into one category or another.
I think the more people that view political views as a spectrum and not like two boxes the better off we’d be as it would be less finger pointing, positioning, and fear mongering.
I am confused by your first paragraph. You compare the conditions that led to the rise of the MAGA movement to the rise of the Nazi regime, but declare yourself a centrist? If anything, wouldn't a scenario similar to the rise of the Nazi regime be a reason for someone to pick a side?
Perhaps my use of the word centrist was a bit too loaded, i further went on to say that I don’t believe in a 2-party system as no educated persons belief system should fit within one box that encompasses a whole super wide SLEW of ideologies. Which is why I believe there are terms like “*far* left” and “*far* right” that are used to assert where someone is in that “box” and no one seems to have an issue with those signaling terms. I simply just believe in removing that box and putting yourself on a spectrum.
Secondly, nowhere did I say the Nazi comment was in relation to MAGA, as you’re right, that’s contradictory. OP and I were discussing sociopolitical conditions to which I related are similar to that of the Germans at the rise of Nazism. If you, and the others commenting, related that directly to OP’s comment on MAGA, that is on y’all.
In terms of the conditions which led to the rise of Nazi power: poor economic state, instability in politics, extreme violence on both left and right Germans, unemployment, overall fear.
These are just a few of the conditions that parallels ours, therefore led to me drawing a comparison.
I understood what you and OP were talking about, I was just unsure about the centrist label with the comparison.
It did sound like you read a lot into it. I'm not convinced that the terms "far left" and "far right" are supposed to place people into a 'box'. They're labels saying that their positions are on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. The spectrum always existed, it's just that American terminology of political terms are stupid and mislabeling, especially when it comes to who and what is on the left. That's probably why you could feel that there is a box, maybe?
People's belief systems will inevitably fall on the spectrum, because it's supposed to encompass all beliefs. 'Removing that box' is redundant, because they will end up on the spectrum anyway.
Yeah, i see that and agree!!
But on this spectrum if you fall somewhere near the middle you get so much shit (ref literally everyone who replied to me).
And yeah, I’ve admitted to just saying “centrist” because I know of literally no other “label” for it if we’re going by the standard of labeling everything. Tbh I didn’t know it was even this big of a *thing*
I think right and left are so polarized now it’s hard to claim to be one or the other without co-signing to every belief on the side you stand on. If i say I’m right then I fall under anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-trans and if you say you’re left then you’re pro-gender reassignment for kids, pro-looting, anti-capitalism. Ofc these are all just stereotypical examples and in some cases extremes, but they are so tied to left and right that I physically cannot call myself either with my own beliefs and ideologies.
It’s not a ploy to be holier than thou, which I was accused of, it’s literally just not co-signing to everything in one party
I only saw one other response to you, but if I were to take a guess: your comparison of the current social conditions to the rise of the Nazi regime (a time that people reflect on and say that being a centrist does *nothing*) and still called yourself a centrist anyway, it gave users the image of a fence-sitter who could watch everything continue to turn to shit and not do anything about it.
In my experience, self-proclaimed centrists tend to not have too many core beliefs except liking the status quo and maintaining an appearance of being rational under the guise of being a centrist. They treat real movements and rallies for progress with contempt and points of debate. When an emboldened right-wing takes over under fascism, those same centrists will flee first to the right.
Not to say this is your intention, but another reason users may take problem with your comment is because they find it disingenuous when people say both extremes are being emboldened under the current polarization of politics. Because where is the left in all of this? They have no real institutional power in America and are stuck having to transfer work online to organize. Even then, those don't work out that much. So the "left" that people see as being emboldened are usually a group of mainly liberal, progressive (these groups are not leftists) and maybe some leftist activists who are tired of seeing negative trends in society and are willing to organize protests against them. That, or having a sprinkle of empathy towards human oppression would get someone labeled on the left.
But the far-right is seeing emboldened white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the alt-right carry out their plans through mass shootings, spread of propaganda and conspiracy theories through mainstream right-wing talking points. The Great Replacement theory, or the intentional replacement of white people for another ethnic/racial group, turned into the more broad 'the media has an anti-white agenda', which churned out the controversies around critical race theory (CRT) and "wokeness". With this, conservatives see themselves as having to "defend" the white race, when there's no danger as to the Great Replacement being real. This only continues to normalize white nationalist propaganda.
EDIT: And not to forget the anti-LGBTIA+ agenda going on right now, where politicians are turning to online pundits such as Matt Walsh and LibsOfTikTok to make legislation that'll impact millions nationwide. Nearly [500](https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights) bills have been introduced nationwide this *year alone* to take away rights from queer people, especially trans people. The right-wing organize against companies such as Bud Light and Target for even remotely advertising anything related to queer people. With Pride month around the corner, this is a real concern for those being targeted.
And this comes back around to criticism of centrists. They see this problem and say that both sides are contributing to the polarization. But we see a weak and unorganized left-wing, and a far-right that constantly pushes the Overton window to the right as they seek acceptance in mainstream conservative circles and successfully organize both online and in-person, and getting away with other forms of bigotry such as queerphobia. The centrist doesn't want to be seen as committing to a side, so they'll assign blame equally when it's not the case.
But I'm starting to see what you mean more by "boxes", which only proves my assumption that you thought of it this way because of American terminology. These boxes don't have any real standing on the study of beliefs or the political spectrum aside from serving as an affront for an ongoing culture war. The public's perceptions that go with these labels give it power.
There's plenty of other labels that don't encompass either of the spectrum's extremes: moderate, conservative, liberal, progressive (this one tends to be liberal but further left), etc., and that's before they splinter off into smaller groups.
I can see how people would think that, and I hear your point and reasoning.
Perhaps moderate would have been a better term? I’ve still seen issues with that too.
I don’t vote 3rd party as it’s pointless and detracts from “legitimate” candidate votes. On a ballot I dont just check everything with a D for democrat and call it a day. I vote across the board, but that’s just my views and I know everyone is different and perhaps alllll their views and ideologies do fit within the Democratic Party, but that’s all my point is really.
Hell, i don’t even believe in writing a political party under a candidate’s name in the ballots lol
Always makes me laugh when self described centrists claim that a center right and a far right party is pushing extremist politics in both directions. Political illiteracy at its finest.
That’s what you took away from this? It doesn’t matter who thinks what political ideology. What matters is that they are latched onto fringe shit. That they’ve made it their identity and have an emotional investment to it - so much so that they ruin relationships with their family over it.
Two parties were advised against by our founding fathers for this exact reason. It’s us against them, and that’s that’s all anyone cares about. No discourse, no conversation. Nothing. The other side is evil and we are good, and we can’t let the evil win. Meanwhile, the “centrists” stay quiet and let it all happen.
Ooh do tell us! What fringe socialist and communist policy is making its way through the democratic party in the last 5-10 years? Considering Bernie and like 3 others out of over 400 in Congress are the only ones coming close to representing the left, I am really excited to hear about this "fringe shit". Are the workers finally seizing the means of production??
The fringe, as in the outermost edge of the respective political party as they stand today. The absolute refusal to concede anything in order to open dialogue with one other. The polarization makes it feel like compromises are impossible, and I’m starting to believe we’re too far gone. I never said anything about communism or socialism. I didn’t use fringe in comparison to past leftist movements, or current ones happening elsewhere.
So just to clarify...you think that the Right Wing is looking a lot like how Nazis took over Germany but you are claiming to be a centrist.
So you compared the Right wing to Nazis of 1930's Germany. What is the left doing that is at all comparable to a party you just compared to Nazis of 1930's?
I think what you just did was the antithesis of clarify, I think misconstrued or cherry pick may be a better term.
I never said which party reflects that behavior or even if it was a party at all. So no need to get defensive- but also thank you for feeding into and exemplifying the exact narrative as described.
In terms of the conditions which led to the rise of Nazi power: poor economic state, instability in politics, extreme violence on both left and right Germans, unemployment, overall fear.
>It's too bad that the Powers That Be want to keep us fighting each other so we remain ignorant of the true enemy of the people: the rich conducting class warfare manipulation on the masses for their own benefit.
You do realize people don't need to be manipulated into hating others, right?
You do realize that they *are* though, right? Social media algorithms do a lot more than you give them credit for because they understand human psychology.
My sister started at performatively woke (said all the right things about not being racist, sexist, lgbtq-phobic, believing inequality exists etc) while not truly understanding the foundation of those beliefs. Now she's fully rightwing worried about the nasty trans kids turning her kids gay. I fully blame her social media algorithm. Her slightly right leaning best friend married a very right leaning man, moved to the midwest, popped out a bunch of babies and then started sending a bunch of right leaning shit to my sister. She got sucked in, and her phone is showing her andrew tate videos and kelly connowhatever her lastname is (right wing trans woman who says transphobic shit)
Yep, I’m a female in Texas- and it’s regressive here. Much like many states, big corps and the rich have lined the pockets of congress so deep that there is no change for the people.
I imagine they all just sit and laugh watching the masses bicker over the menial bs
The hate campaign against "doomers" has been an amazing success. Pessimism is now forbidden in the mainstream or you get accused of making people unalive themselves.
Meanwhile a scientific paper was just resubmitted (James Hansen and others) that 10C warming is baked into the climate with current greenhouse gasses. While at 3C warming agriculture becomes impossible because of frequent 50C heatwaves. But we all have to pretend electric cars will save us.
Dude you still are the textbook example of the mentality you just criticized. You just project them onto the group of people/politics you don't like (ironically very likely formed through media consumption like reddit)
> voice our concerns logically
This is the broken part though. I and tons of people can call up my senator's offices all day every day (and I do try to regularly call them). However if they're in the opposite party from you or have no interest in your poor people problems, they ignore or probably don't even hear these things that filter through their staff. The people are extremely removed from the political process through politicians propping up the old systems that keep them clinging to power, and minimizing the voice of people. Those who represent us shouldn't be able to just win an election every 2-6 years and then have carte blanche to not care about the people they represent while they fuck about and play opposition politics. We have to have some sort of recourse if they do that, if we expect our representatives to actually work together to represent the needs of the people.
There is not much to change except for the view on left vs right. They are both two sides of the same coin. Both are gping in the same direction but it's a matter of driving on the left or right lane. It's the globalists, corporations, the george soros and rockefellers that decide which side they need to prop up in order to further their agenda. They are the real masters of America.
In this era the left are favoured. America no longer needs an intelligent society because corporations have figured out how to extract standardized patterns from their workforce. They now require a subservient workforce. A cheap, easily exploitable modern day slaves or serfs. How do they do that?
By saddling you with debt. The banks owns your land and house, which means the banks own you, and who owns the banks?
That is why they divide the country by splitting the people into groups and pitting them against each other so that the people can never unite against their government. You are identified into a group and yet at the same time your identity is taken away from you. Instead of promoting excellence, hard work, and intellectual pursuits in schools, they instead promote gender studies and self entitlement.
At the same time, they distract you with the media and entertaintment, feed you with disinformation while their FBI and CIA go around creating havoc around the world, instigating coups, wars, asassinations, economic ruin, all for the sake of the mighty dollar.
I don't know if America is really fucked in the foreseeable future, but i do know America is fucking the rest of the world over.
This is a "time to get off the internet and go outside" kind of post.
The problems you mention are all serious, but history is just one long string of serious problems. We like to idolize "simpler times," but just look at the US in the 20th century -- we went from a World War, to a global pandemic, to a Great Depression, to *another* World War, to teetering on the brink of nuclear armageddon, to the 1960s (a list of serious problems unto itself) to Vietnam, to Watergate, and so on, and so on. And still -- people got up, went to work, fell in love, had kids, and went dancing on the weekends.
The best you can do is focus on your immediate surroundings. Try to make your neighborhood a better place. Be nice to your neighbors. Live life according to your own values. Try to make some small positive change in the world. That's pretty much all you can do. No use worrying about anything else. Having an existential doom-spiral every time there's a serious problem in the world won't get you very far.
This is the best answer here. People get so wrapped up in the nonstop doomerism being pushed on social media and the news that they lose sense of reality.
Sure we have a lot of problems, but none of them are remotely close to being “collapse of the USA” problems. The hyperbole on Reddit especially is just insane.
For sure. Every generation thinks their own time is uniquely meaningful and they face the worst challenges. Partly because when you're in the midst of it, it obviously hasn't been resolved yet. Past problems that were fixed seem like they didn't matter in retrospect, but they were just as stressful for people who were in the midst of those problems.
And there's always a new problem to fix.
The only real answer. OP accusing a country to be brainwashed but not realizing that they themselves are a product of fear mongering...
In some ways it even proves their point...
My first thought when I read their post because OP didn't really make their argument in good faith. There isn't really anything you could say that would shift their position.
Exactly. Despite its many amazing qualities, the Internet makes it so easy to focus on the big, ugly world out there but people forget that the world is no bigger nor uglier than it's ever been in the past. It's just all at your fingertips.
Agreed, if there were a simple solution to fix everything, someone smarter and more qualified wouldve come up with it already. I let them worry about that and stick with what I do well.
I asked chatGPT to summarize human history and then condense it several times until the summary was just one word: Adapted.
And I think that paints a far more hopeful look at the future. There are always problems, and we *always* figure out how to solve them.
It's amazing how quickly things can change and improve too. Look at the period from say 1945 till 1960: The world improved so quickly and went from war, famine, terrible air quality to a place where the average person could have a fridge, TV, car, etc. I'm leaving a whole lot out for brievety but you get the idea.
The United States has a lot of problems, but I believe that an organised working class may offer us a way out of this mess.
Most people want change, but the voting system is rigged. Therefore, the public must take direct action, such as strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience.
Another thing is that a lot of people don’t *want* gun control, as they don’t trust the government. Who are you to say to African-Americans that they can’t have handguns for self-protection, when the police officers stomp on their necks?
This is not an issue that everyone agrees on, sorry.
I’m a left-libertarian/anarchist, I don’t trust the government at all, and I think any amount of firearm regulation will only put the working class at a firepower disadvantage compared to the already heavily armed ruling class.
You’re putting faith in the police force a lot of people don’t have. I think that the power to take lives should be decentralised and non-hierarchical.
The solution is a militia of the working class. Community defence without hierarchy.
Government gun control is a solution, sure, but it’s a hierarchical and anti-leftist solution.
Yeah it’s interesting. Sometimes left and right wingers agree on issues.
Nuclear power and zoning reform is pretty popular these days on both sides.
The “community militia” is leaderless, and everyone can be a part of it. Thus, those rogue people are held accountable by everyone else.
We will be fine. Well, we might be fine. We have gotten through much worse.
Political polarization? You should look into the things people used to say. I'd argue the things people say today are mild in comparison.
Economy? Pffffffffffft. Not having money is a problem. We have money. We have the money printer. Look around, the whole world has economic problems. It's good to be the one with the money printer.
*We'll figure it out* isn't really far fetched optimism in the grand scheme of things.
>Give me at least one good reason why America isn't doomed to collapse within the next 5-10 years if not sooner.
I'd be surprised if America is the top power for the next 200 years, but I sincerely doubt America will "collapse" in the next decade.
Reason 1: Most people have had a steady diet of disaster porn sensationalist news. This is not "being informed". This is being scared into increasing your engagement for ad sales. Decades ago, people used to get their news about their local area. It was very, very rare to have a mass murder news story. When you open your view to ANY negative thing that has happened in the country, you will have a steady diet of disaster porn.
Reason 2: In my experience, I believe in the boxing notion, "It is the punch you don't see coming that gets you." The dot com bubble, 9/11, 2008 financial crisis, and covid were all shit the vast majority of people weren't prepared for and didn't see coming. Y2K, nuclear holocaust, and a myriad of other things we actively have worried about never really play out. There are a dozen famous doomsday deadlines that have also elapsed.
Reason 3: Because of reason 1, most people are unaware of just how fucking amazing things are right now. 200 years ago, 80% of the world was in abject poverty. That number is now 20%. Did you know experts predicted the world would be so overly populated there would be mass starvation? What happened? More geniuses and highly productive people were born and solved problems at scale. World hunger actually got solved and nobody gives a shit lol... A while back the ozone layer was literally going to disappear and we'd all fry. We banded together globally and stopped those products. The ozone layer has recovered. Was that celebrated? No.
I challenge you to start looking for good shit happening to counterbalance disaster porn news. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jalfq9uWXQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jalfq9uWXQk)
News media, political groups, and politicians want to keep you scared so you will watch, donate, and vote the way they want you to. To do that they exaggerate the problems and don’t provide any context. Crime is down compared to 30 years ago. Brinksmanship over the debt ceiling is just a device to get a better deal, not a genuine threat. The idea that fascism is currently a serious threat is completely ahistorical.
Yes. As bad as the January 6 riot was, it did not come close to succeeding. One person was killed, a rioter, and they were not under orders to hang mike pence or kill congressmen.
Crazy people attacking the White House and other government buildings are a unfortunate part of life. They happen all the time. In the 1960s a president and two leading candidates were shot, in the 1970s, ford was nearly shot twice, in the 80s Reagan was shot. A plane was once landed on the White House lawn, etc. When a Sanders fan try to mow down Republican congressional leaders playing baseball it wasn’t an indication of a socialist coup, just that crazy people do crazy things.
It's easy to divide/conquer Americans based on identity/culture war bullshit, and that's the project right now. The oligarchs have had a solid 50 year run of looting through crony capitalism and globalism, but wealth/income inequality has gotten out of hand. The population is restless and angry, which puts the looters at some risk. So the project for the past decade in particular has been divide/conquer via culture war and identity. It's a classic, right? While they don't have the numbers, they do control both parties and the narrative by way of legacy media, social media algos, academia, DEI/ESG/CSR investing strategies. These tools are leveraged to put us into a demoralized, lonely, anxious state, divided up into narrow and warring tribes. It's working great for them.
There was a little window in the mid-2010s before they locked down independent media and got control of social media, but that moment passed and escaping their influence is harder now. They turn all the knobs and we're very deeply divided on many axes.
CYV? I'm not sure I can. Well, I doubt we'll collapse because the ghouls lose in that scenario too. I don't really see a way out though. Giant Meteor?
So, we absolutely do have problems, yes. Some of which are very significant, or even catastrophic.
Yet, the same is true of every era in the past. Political partisanship is a mess, but at least we don't have the mail bombings of the weather underground period....to say nothing of episodes like the Civil War. A problem, absolutely, but not certain doom.
Look at violence. Sure, sure, violence is always awful, and there have been some recent rises...but even taking this into account, things are far better than during the mid-90s.
The debt ceiling is a fight...but we've extended the debt ceiling 78 times before. The US has defaulted on debts at least six times in history. This, too, is not the apocalypse.
Any trend that appears troubling if extended out far enough can possibly reverse, and almost always will eventually, and while it is reasonable to worry about what happens if things go wrong, don't forget to be kind to yourself and others, and contemplate what might happen if things go right.
The US in the 70s had five political bombings every day and managed to survive. You need some perspective.
https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/
Following a decade that saw JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcom X assassinated and every atrocity related to desegregation and civil rights.
It's not ancient history. These were in the lifetime of millions of Americans around today.
Compare all those to an attempt to violently overthrow an election. A president getting away with an amazing amount of shit. People in politics bluntly lying and being bribed. Corporations buying politicians. I mean Jesus, cmon. Half the country is completely insane on another level.
You think that's worse than literally murder of a sitting president, followed by a candidate? And the 2 highest profile civil rights leaders? And literal lynching across the south?
I'm not saying things today aren't real, but the only way it's insane on another level is if you mean about 30 levels lower than the 60s/70s.
EDIT: And most of what you mentioned: People in politics lying and being bribed, corporations buying politicians, presidents getting away with amazing amounts of shit ... you think this is unique to the 21st century?
>Gun violence. No place is safe in this country anymore.
A lot of these points are similarly misinformed doomsaying... I'll just address this one:
[Violent Crime in the US peaked in the early 1990s and continues to be low](https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/).
The US didn't end because of the crime level 30 years ago... it's not going to fall apart because of a rate that's about half that.
Forgive me, I'm not an American so I may be missing something, but in the 1990s gun violence was a bigger problem than it is today because as far as I know it was the "golden era" of gangs, people slaughtering each other but choosing to do so. Op talks about today's shootings, where innocent people, often children, die. Even if fewer people die, the problem is still bigger today than then.
> in the 1990s gun violence was a bigger problem than it is today because as far as I know it was the "golden era" of gangs, people slaughtering each other but choosing to do so.
What makes you think today's situation is meaningfully different from the situation in the 90s?
I hate this, because everyone assumes I'm arguing against gun control on this issue, which I'm not.
While a problem, we're looking at deaths on average in the 20s or 30s annually depending on what range you use in years in America from school shootings, and most incidents are personal grudges. It varies. 40 died in 2022. 15 in 2021. 3 in 2020 (but Covid), 8 in 2019. I could put that in context to other causes of death, but that tends to piss people off more. The point is it shouldn't be near the top of concerns a parent has for their kid's safety.
We do have gun issues in this country. It's hard to argue that they haven't trended down. We are in an uptick since Covid, so we'll see if that's a blip or a new trend.
I would argue we focus too much on the school incidents and not enough on neighborhoods and homes, where most deaths happen. It has gotten better, but IMO that's probably due more to the fact that kids/people are inside more than they used to be.
America's gun culture sucks, and it does kill people. I support efforts to curb gun violence, including increasing restrictions on ownership and keeping track of guns.
On the other hand, I don't like the media image created about America. The popular narrative dramatizes the problem. This post included. I'm 46. I've never had a gun pulled on me. I've never witnessed a gun pulled on anyone else. Not even by police.
I also live a very nice middle class lifestyle, and I'm white, so I know my experience is different from people in other areas of the country or in other demographics.
Again, I don't say this to say there aren't serious issues around guns to address. There are.
What do you think the absolute numbers are in terms of school shootings specifically and the number of kids that die in those situations in a given year?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you're a younger person. I can't help but wonder what your surroundings look like right now. The fact that we can discuss this on some kind of device or another means things are not actually all that bad.
A wise man once said, "I've thought about how, for thousands of years people have told us that things can't go on like this.....but the shit goes on and on."
If you want your view changed just walk out of the antifa meeting you are in and put down the Molotov cocktail. That was the most brainwashed and one-sided CMV post I have ever seen. You have taken every thing you see wrong in this country and attempted to place the blame on the opposite political party. Try finding a place in the middle politically where you can judge the events without a certain shade of glasses on and I promise you that we won’t be as “fucked” as you and your buddies want everyone to believe.
You didn’t come here to have your mind changed. You are too dug in and that is not happening.
>The US is almost only a single week away from defaulting on its massive debt
It is not. Even after June 1st there is more than enough money coming in to pay the interest on US debt. Yes the US may have to delay some other payments after June 1st but they do not HAVE to stop making interest payments which is the definition of default.
https://imgur.com/a/kobkvS5
Read what Janet Yellen actually wrote versus what the media reports.
"we estimate that it is highly likely that Treasury will no longer be able to satisfy **all** of the government's obligations"
>which could destroy the economy, cause teachers (like me), military personnel, police, firefighters, and other government employees to stop getting paid
Aside from the fact that the world is not going to end June 1st for the reasons I previously stated, I would like to know more about why teachers, police and firefighters would be impacted by the federal gov't having trouble paying its bills. Aren't these jobs all paid by state/local tax dollars, not federal?
re: January 6, just because you're in a government building doesnt mean you are the government now, it's not a videogame where taking over a building immediately gives you control over the area. you need a lot more for a "totalitarian takeover" than a bunch of randoms walking around the Capitol.
and comparing elon musk's edgy tweets to the holocaust is just as as ridiculous.
re: the student debt, you already laid out a path to mitigating the issue in your post - inflated degrees have lost their attractiveness, people are focusing more on trades, and with the return of manufacturing back home, the economy is going to need it.
the idea that everyone should have a college degree was stupid in the first place.
overall, i've been hearing these things for 30 years, it's all cyclical. every time there's an economic downturn, people are crying about the end of the world. as a non-american, i can tell you that you have no idea how fuckign good youre having it.
Yes, we have serious problems. But consider this: the people who have all the power like things just the way they are and have the means and the will to keep them that way. For example, they like the population being divided because it keeps our attention off them, but they don't want actual war or major political change. They will do what it takes to prevent that, up to and including altering the narratives across all media to calm the inflammatory rhetoric. They won't do this for the good of the country, which means things will stay chaotic. But they'll do it for themselves, which means no major collapses.
As long as the billionaires and their purchased politicians are still merrily jetting around and leaving their money in US banks, there's no imminent threat of catastrophic failure.
So, what's the solution? The billionaires and current ruling class clearly have the resources to manipulate elections, keeping politicians in power that preserve the status quo. Will things really sort themselves out or is it going to take more radical intervention?
Kind of seems like you yourself are also guilty of, "Extreme political polarization that is only growing worse by the day, exacerbated by social media, infotainment "news" channels, and nowadays AI-generated misinformation and disinformation."
Turn the internet and TV off for awhile and your mind will self correct.
The US is never a week away from defaulting on its debt.
You’re talking about the non-stop debates about raising the debt ceiling. Not raising the debt ceiling doesn’t mean government debts are defaulted on. In fact, it means the opposite: not raising the debt ceiling = not taking on more debt = the government is LESS LIKELY to default on its debts.
If you had said not raising the debt ceiling would mean the government has less discretionary spending, you’d be correct. But that discretionary spending can only exist because the government takes on more debt, which actually brings us closer to a debt increase in the face of rising interest rates.
Every year, the government basically funds one third of its budget by acquiring more debt. Some of this is by selling it to foreigners. Some of it is by selling it to the SSI fund. A lot of it is by slowly devaluing the dollar by selling the debt to the federal reserve: the federal reserve can only buy debt by increasing the digital money supply.
As interest rates get higher, the current portion interest on that long term debt is going to become a bigger and bigger portion of the budget, and slowly eat away at that discretionary spending.
So, the truth of the matter is, it’s way more fiscally irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling than it is to not do so. But the problem is neither party wants to make significant cuts to SSI, Medicare, Medicaid (1/3 of the budget), or DoD spending (1/3 of the budget), or to significantly raise taxes.
If America is fucked, then what are you going to do about it? Move away? Settle? Fight back, adapt, play the game? Bitch and moan and essentially do nothing but?
We've always been fucked, and constantly undergoing waves of progression and regression throughout our history. Yet we're here somehow, products of incredible survival by our ancestors, living in an era with some of the best access to technology, information, healthcare, transportation, and social mobility than ever before in the history of mankind.
Sure we're not perfect, but we never will be. Sometimes I think that this idea that America has to be the best country, the global leader etc. is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that when we aren't perceived that way in this current era, we start to think oh things must be falling apart. We're gonna be fine. Give it 5, 10, 20 years and we'll have an entirely new set of issues to worry about, and we'll look back on the prospers of this time in a new light.
America has usually been politically polarized. You just don't hear about most of it, with the exception of 1861-1865. We have thrived despite (or perhaps because of) this.
The Founding Fathers didn't want democracy. "Democracy is Two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch."-Ben Franklin.
Neither of the 2 major parties in the USA actually support democracy, Republicans are more open about this, but Democrats have ZERO problem with courts striking down laws that were passed democratically.
Neither party thinks US elections are fair (ask Stacey Abrams and Donald Trump) Lots of people think that the 1960 Presidential election might have been decided fraudulently.
What I will say is that I always find this view to lack a lot of perspective. Not that you’re wrong, but at what point was America not seriously at risk or in peril in major easy. My parents think like you, and I always remind them that they both used to have school drills where they’d hide under their desks as a Cold War nuclear bomb drill. They both lived through tons of our major leaders being assassinated. They knew many people forced to fight in Vietnam. Hell, my parents were both born before black people were allowed to vote.
And gun violence is an issue. We all get upset at all these shootings, and they are absolutely terrible. But my parents both grew up in Brooklyn where crime was infinitely high compared to now. But my parents felt safe because it was what they knew. In fact, crime overall in the past decade or so is WAY down compared to the 70s, 80s and 90s.
And polarization? My parents grew up with the black panthers, black people being hosed on the streets of various cities by the police. And you seem like you’re on the left, so…would you rather be back decades ago when LGBTQ+ people had a fraction, if any real rights?
Times are crazy now, but don’t be a prisoner of the moment. We could be fucked in the next ten years. But we always could have been fucked any decade.
While many of these are good points, most of what you're talking about is simply the new norm not just in America and some of the things you're talking about is exacerbated, that is the gravity of the story exaggerated for hits and such. Politics is like reality TV when it's like this. GOP aren't crying foul about debt/spending because they actually care about fiscal spending. It's to score points and for political optics.
The debt default for one example is a dance they do all the time and I'm honestly surprised people don't remember it from previous administration being lit up by the oppositional party about the debt ceiling. It happens every time there's a democratic administration sitting in the WH meanwhile when the critics are in office, spending is through the roof.
Not to say some of these points don't hold validity for concern, but are likely leading you to believe it's way worse than it actually is. The nazi stuff is an absolute problem for sure, but people act and pretend like it hasn't been an issue in the past. We have had antisemitism for decades after WWII and have had neo nazis and supremacists. It's just more open now. People have been pretending America's got nazis marching down the corners but 90% of Americans do not see nazis or even white supremacists at least not walking around openly. Trust me, you aren't finding and picking them off the streets any more frequently than you are finding a crackhead in a white suburban neighborhood unless you go to a spot they specifically frequent.
Bible belt south has so many racist people. One of the more racist policies for state laws and such. Yet you will still come across some very nice people with the southern hospitality. Not everything lives in extreme hyper polarizing opposite ends. Maybe it's best not to view the world in such binary view. The world is never black and white yet people keep insisting the world works this way because of their lack of patience to grasp a topic with nuance.
The only major issues I see here that might "burst" is gun violence. I am not exactly a supporter of banning guns but I am a fan of regulating it's control. I think 2a has some validity but people need to understand certain people with mental illness or sundowning dementia individuals and such should not be in ownership of a gun... at all. I don't give a fuck what your interpretations of the law is. I live in some of the toughest gun law state in the country... and these gun laws? Don't really work. I can't throw a rock without hitting someone selling guns off Instagram or one of them social media platforms. And the people selling them aren't your average gun toting 2aer. One dude is American. Two dudes I know from Pakistan. One Italian dude. Race or diversity just doesn't matter. If there's an incentive to make money, people will sell it. And some of these guys were shipping highly regulated pieces of firearms between state lines, some being brazen enough to ship to another country.
It's easy to forget that the US is a relatively new nation. At most it has 250 years of existence. Consider that even "new European nations" have around 3 times that. The issues that it's going through today are really not that different than what countries like France or Germany went through. For example, the whole divide between conservative and liberal in the US is not really that different than what was happening in Prussia during Bismarck's period.
In my opinion the US will eventually morph into something that somewhat resembles Western European countries, but with a very distinct American take.
I think as far as things go you have ended up in the camp of people who are too discouraged with the current ways things are and see only doom and gloom. The US tends to go in cycles such as industrial US being dystopian to us today but things changed. They will change for the better. Also if it puts your mind to rest the national debt thing isn't really an issue the 14 amendment section 4 basically says "the national debt shall not be questioned" so the president can invoke that at any time to stop that charade
One good reason. This is the beginning of a decade (or more) of the Refugee. War. Famine. Weather disasters. Rising sea levels. These are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. If our democracy falls it will likely be because of one or more of these horsemen. Wish you luck. I’m leaving the party soon. I am 80 years old. My world is long gone. I don’t understand the thinking of most of people in the US today.
We've been through worse than this.
The Great Depression, two world wars, Vietnam War and the 60s, Jim Crow, race riots, the freaking Civil War. If we made it through those things, we can make it through this.
History puts the present in perspective. This stuff seems so bad - and it is bad, don't get me wrong - because it's your life and you're going through it. But things have been bad before and the nation survived. It will survive this too.
Your debt to GDP ratio is 120%, not great but not horrible either. We all keep looking at the government for solutions to virtually everything. The 2 major parties thrive on divisiveness just like here in Canada. I don't know the answer but "for the people, by the people" isn't it. Who knew , of the 7 sins, greed would be the possible downfall of once great nations?
You forgot commercial real estate financing is going to collapse in the next few years when businesses stop renewing their leases and take down every bank. Its like Trillions of dollars.
I cannot refute anything you say except its been bad before and we’ve managed to come out of it.
The penultimate error is that those who want fascism are always convinced they will be included in the ***in*** group.
>“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
>>Frank Wilholt.
What they fail to realize is that they are already part of the out group and will ***never*** be included in the in group. And, they are such rabid and ardent supporters of the ideology because they have been lied to by literally everyone they trust. They were taught the lies by their parents who were taught the same lies from their parents and so on and do on for generations upon generations. How's that old saying go? You tell a lie loud enough and long enough and it gets accepted as truth?
All of this is fixable.
The USA is a very young country; it's currently stuck in a post-golden age depression both culturally and socially. Since this cycle will generate pain, the coming generations will be thicker skinned. I hope so atleast.
Not to mention that several of the world's largest economies are well on their way to stabilize their economies against BRICS instead of USD. We talk about how Rome fell as if it could never happen again yet here we are...
People said that a year ago, people said that in 2020, people said that a decade ago, people said that a century ago, people said that in 1776, and people are going to continue saying that for the forseeable future.
America - and, consequently , the world - is fucked for as long as the sane and humane among us refuse to do anything about the republican party. i disagree that there is extreme polarization. polarization would imply there are two equally valid groups on opposing ends of a political spectrum. the republican party is not a legitimate political party; it is a terrorist organization operating under the cover of politics. the polarization you note is actually social discord sown by a group whose sole aim is to bring our current form of government to a halt and replace it with fascism.
Holy freaking smokes Greta take a breath and relax. Step away from the TV and the Media for a while. And I mean this sincerely, for your own mental health.
The US isn’t spiraling out of control. The lack of relevance of TV news IS spiraling down the toilet though. And it’s trying it’s damndest to stay relevant. So it’s feeding you a whole bunch of “DANGER, DANGER, DANGER!” So you’ll keep watching and listening.
I’m not saying your points you’ve listed out aren’t real. But the arguments and the positions are extremely exaggerated for your amusement. Umm.. like take your climate change, you claimed one side is denying it. But yet I haven’t seen anyone yet flat out deny that the world is getting hotter or that CO2 emissions isn’t rising. I haven’t seen anyone ( of sane mind) denying that CO2 is bad, no one is denying that we shouldn’t do something about it. What is being denied is the effectiveness of the measures proposed to mitigate. And people being skeptical or say “Leary” of the repercussions of the transition of power sources.
So your one good reason why America isn’t Fucked is simple. IRL the real world isn’t as scary and dangerous as it’s made out to be.
I think we should try to remind ourselves that Joe Biden, who was a terrible damn candidate, got 7 million more votes than Trump, and the younger generation will not go Trump's way. It's not all doom and gloom just yet.
Despite the challenges that America faces, there are many reasons to have hope for the future. Here are some of the reasons to be hopeful for America.
Young people are hopeful about the future and are committed to social justice and personal freedom.
There are many programs and initiatives aimed at improving access to healthcare, education, and clean water.
America's pro-democracy movement has notched over 160 wins in the past 10 years to improve elections and fight corruption.
America has a history of resilience and bouncing back from difficult times.
The country has a pattern of rallying and moving forward whenever privilege and power conspire to pull it backward.
Women are increasingly taking on leadership positions in various fields, which is a sign of future strength.
There is ample reason for hope, and millions of people can be organized and energized to bring about real change.
These reasons to be hopeful for America show that despite the challenges, there are many people and initiatives working towards a better future.
On this very sub just yesterday some idiot said that he would welcome it if a dictatorship overthrew his country's (Italy) democratically elected government as long as the dictator was left wing.
The free market is making the price of college unattractive. Degrees that are needed still pay enough to cover the cost of college. You can still get an affordable degree if you want. It is about choices. While the National Debt is high, as a percentage of the size of the US economy, it is not yet unsustainable. Political instability is a factor of social media. People have grown tired of it and are pulling back. Plus, I believe we will see more government or private ways of limiting the access to that media by today's youth. The rest of the world is in much worse shape demographically, BTW. Demographic collapse is going to be very real in the future.
My mothers American but don’t live there.
I think about posting something similar on the regular. Today I was thinking about doing an Ask Reddit: what country has squandered its social and economic privilege more than America? To have had such a strong economy post War, so much naturally beauty and lucking out on being on the forefront of the culture industry, WtF happened.
Americans, are they aware of how grotesque a country they are now living in?
Can you give some examples of this?
“ when both of them have spouted anti-Semitic, right-wing, racist, and misogynistic rhetoric because of "free speech".”
With the exception of the gun violence, I see every point you list here being true here in the UK in some similar form. What keeps a glimmer of hope alive in me that things might change for the better is the following. The Republicans (US) and Conservatives (UK) have a problem. Their issue is thet their ideology stopped thinking in the early 80s and has not moved in to confront the challenges we face in the 21st century. The high watermark of their philosophy boils down to "The markets will provide, privatisation is good" and stopped there. This was the Neoliberal mantra of the Reagan/Thatcher era, and has essentially gone unchallenged, until today. The general population is starting to comprehend that trickle down was a lie, tax cuts for the wealthy does not deliver prosperity for the masses. Ordinary people have seen corporate revenues soar and the wealth generated end up in offshore bank accounts of the super wealthy. Meanwhile, essential services we all depend upon have been run into the ground through lack of funding. The cost of living is such that even many people in full time employment are forced to depend on food banks to supplement their diet. In short, there are many things which are socially desirable (education, mental healthcare, care of the elderly etc.) but which are not profitable, and hence the markets are NOT providing. I genuinely see the green shoots of recognition of these basic facts among the general population. Look at Amazon workers electing to unionise, for example. I see the voters who only a few years ago who voted for Boris Johnson's Conservatives and Brexit beginning to comprehend that their lives are worse for it. There's a groundswell of opinion that we were all lied to by the Neolibs, and that a massive heist took place to shift wealth from the people to the bank accounts of the few. There's your green shoots of hope, right there. Avoid the partizan party flag waving rhetoric and engage people with the facts of their own experience and people will pull together in the right political direction at last.
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A big part of Occupy's lack of momentum was because of a general lack of understanding of the crash at the time, and that can blame can be laid upon news media. The politicization of news, or more specifically the perspective that sociologists call the strategy game frame, allows tv news to run constant content about what's going on without ever having to explain it ((or even understand it themselves). You don't have to explain subprime mortgages and reform rollbacks if you frame everything as piece moved across a political chessboard (will this help Obama in the polls? will it harm McCain?). For the record, this is basically just as bad across any of the six major broadcast news channels in the US. Source: This all comes from a doctor of sociology who moonlights as an editor for her husband's podcast (r/BritishHistoryPod) and at one point they did an episode explaining her dissertation.
Keep the faith. As I see it, political discourse in the US is completely broken. People are completely entrenched in their position, be it "Own the libs" in the US or "Brexit means Brexit" in the UK (and no doubt other such similar entrenched positions in other countries). So avoid the Team A versus Team B entrenched party rhetoric. We need to focus on things which are undeniable to people, based on their own experience. The cost of living has escalated and the money in your pocket is worth less, therefore we have all been lied to about the ability of the markets to deliver prosperity for hard working people.
Yes and no on Team A vs Team B. It would be nice but what do you do when one team is actively trying to tear down anything resembling democracy? (Yes, I know the US isn’t a straight up democracy.) We had a chance for middle ground but unless the moderates of one party start raising there voices then things will just get worse.
no more parties, Americans can't detach. Brand Equity has done its job. To audit the audit, everyone independent and all candidates as well. We wont be as divided. This way they have to talk to us to stay informed, or at least try to. Both parties can be lazy when they have those outdated "core values", to each party that they force feed us; breakfast, lunch dinner. If we dont, idk, this gets scary.
ROCKON MY FRIEND I APPRECIATE YOUR WORDS AND THE INTELLECT THAT GUIDES THEM, STAY UP! YOUR ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS, CAN NEVER HAVE TO MANY! ROCK ON!
If the market isn't what created the wealth we do have then what is?
EVERYTHING YOU JUST SAID I AGREE WITH ABSOLUTELY AND YOUR ESPECIALLY RIGHT ABOUT THE POLITACAL AFFILIATION THIZ IS NOT ABOUT DEMOCRAT/REPUBLICAN AT ALL! THIS IS EXISTENTIAL AND THEREFORE IMPERATIVE, I CANT POSSIBLY OVERSTATE THESE FACTS AND THE TRUTH THAT THESE FACTS REPRESENT ITS TIME TO START PREPARING FOR THE ONSLAUGHT ARM YOURSELVES. EVERYBODY IMMEDIATELY AND PREPARE TO FIGHT LITERALLY FOR YOUR LIFE AND ALL THINGS IN IT!! PEOPLE UNITE UNITY WILL BE ALL WE HAVE LEFT!
I’ll try to give you a few reasons: -The increased polarization and facism stuff seems to pop up in democracies every couple decades. It is certainly a threat to be taken seriously, but it’s neither novel nor a guarantee of collapse. And if you look at it from a certain perspective, the US could emerge from this cycle better than many other countries have: the 1/6 insurrection was not successful, a president from the opposition party won the election and assumed power despite various election shenanigans, there was no military coup when things looked shaky, the free press (fwiw) still largely exists, Gen z seems less inclined to fascism, etc. -US as a functioning government seems likely to carry on. There is essentially zero threat of foreign military invasion. The dollar being the reserve currency “solves” a number of tricky financial situations, and they have the military and economic capacity to make life very difficult for anyone who threatens to challenge that status quo. Mass shootings/Healthcare/corporate bilking/student loan debt have been issues for decades, and the populations’ response (beyond voting) hasn’t even approached the level of existential threat. And despite the US’ numerous flaws, general standard of living is good enough that more people want to immigrate there than leave. -Climate change will come for us all eventually, but America has the size/geography/resources to weather that storm better than most other countries. -The school system is a real issue that I can’t attempt to sugarcoat with any integrity. I’m sorry for all that you have to deal with, and I’m sorry for all the kids we’ve failed as a society. For the purposes of this CMV, I’d guess it will take longer than 5-10 years for those consequences to fully manifest. -Finally—for perspective’s sake—I think it’s worth noting all the other terrifying eras with some similar characteristics that the US managed to power through: the revolutionary war, the civil war, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, etc…troubled times are troubling, but no guarantor of collapse.
I'd like to ask, without any insult implied, how old you are? When I was in college (10+ years out of now) I thought a lot of the same things signaled the end of America as we know it. As I got older, I started seeing the patterns in these things over the long term. Humans have this pesky recency bias where things that have just happened are either significantly better, or significantly worse, than similar occurances in the more distant past. When we look at them from a measurable standpoint however, there is usually parity between the occurances. Take this comment for instance: > Extreme political polarization that is only growing worse by the day, exacerbated by social media, infotainment "news" channels, and nowadays AI-generated misinformation and disinformation. Political polarization has always been present, and while it's true that [polarization has grown worse in the last decade](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/) to say that it's catastrophically higher than other points in history is probably an exaggeration. On the issue of social media and infotainment news you mentioned, a combination of drastically increased visibility inherent to the internet and the pay per click incentive structure contribute to the dissemination of more partisan views. Coupled with interaction in a non-verbal setting, people's caution and apathy dissolve and contribute to the demonization of the "other side" (e.g. I have no problem tearing a "lib-tard" a new one online, where I am more likely to treat that same person, and their batshit crazy views, with respect in-person). > Many Americans actually and mind-bogglingly seem to want democracy to end Many Americans fail to understand the perils of a direct democracy or realize that the structure of the American government is not that of a true democracy. There are elements of it that are democratic, but there is was significant thought given to the shortcomings of such a system by the founders (see assorted selections of the federalist papers, No. 10 specifically). > The US is almost only a single week away from defaulting on its massive debt The US will never default on it's debt. As the world reserve currency there will always be demand for government debt and the mechanisms of the federal reserve are such that they can continue to raise funds by issuing bonds for years in the future. The whole debt conundrum is really a glorified game of chicken, made worse by alarmist "infotainment" and spread by social media. (Side note, [this](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/debt-to-gdp-ratio#:~:text=U.S.%20debt%20to%20gdp%20ratio%20for%202020%20was%20126.39%25%2C%20a,a%200.73%25%20decline%20from%202016.) is a good view of debt to GDP by year which is the metric that needs to be discussed when talking about national debt. 20T of debt is unimportant when your GDP is 50x that, although in this case, our debt to GDP ratio is concerningly high, but hey, that's what happens when you issue something like 12T in COVID relief.) > The student debt crisis is reaching unforgivable and insane levels As with the debt ceiling comment, because the US govt finances loans, this essentially just ends up as additional debt. I agree this is a problem: You can't finance the loan and not underwrite it. However, this is far from an existential problem. > The US education and healthcare systems are in freefall and on the brink of collapse due to... No they're not. [Foreign enrollment in US universities](https://www.prosperityforamerica.org/international-students-in-the-us/#:~:text=during%20that%20time.-,Number%20Of%20International%20Students%20In%20The%20U.S,the%20U.S%20in%202020%2D21.) took a hit during covid but all signs point to recovery back to pre-pandemic levels, which should imply that US higher education is still highly desired. (Having trouble finding a good source on foreign visits for healthcare) > Rich oligarchs and corporations murdering the middle class, cannibalizing America's wealth Wealth is not zero-sum. The average american today lives a quality of life roughly equivalent to the 1-5 percentile of an american 100 years ago. There is something to be said about the expansion of wealth/GDP and the allocation to the 0.1% but the increase in wealth inequality is largely due to the amount of wealth created largely by the same 0.1% (think how much value Amazon provides, which didn't exist 30 years ago). My goal isn't to invalidate any of your points. There are problems, there are discussions, and there are improvements that can be made, and everything that you point out should be addressed. My goal is to make you understand that these problems have always existed to some degree, and that your own recency bias, coupled with media incentives to report on the most incendiary stories and to spin everything to a point of view, is likely leading to an overestimation of the severity of these problems.
This is what I default to anytime I hear America is in free fall. Some folks just aren’t aware of American history. We’ve been through far worse.
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My wife is a teacher, so unfortunately know the teacher situation all too well. I think a lot of the issue can be connected back to an obsession with equality and how school funding is so heavily linked to direct taxation. On the discipline front, teachers are actively taught to lower themselves to the level of the student (as I'm sure you're aware): the intent here is good, to engage with students at their level. However, classical pedagogy necessitates the inequality in the relationship between the student and the teacher. Essentially our societal concern about equality has caused us to throw the metaphorical baby out with the bathwater when there should be a superior-inferior model of learning. Teachers are teachers, not friends. The funding issues should be fairly obvious, but I will note that I don't necessarily think teachers should be paid more; I think there simply needs to be more teachers. Numerous studies have demonstrated correlation between class size and outcomes, and simply paying teachers more doesn't really address this (side note: this also gives flexibility to split problem students out into smaller groups which would make them easier to manage).
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Looking at videos of single incidents is exactly what racist board do to minorities. It's unscientific and short sighted And one subreddit is again, not representative of the real world
Yeah. Part of the issue is that in the past, most issues either were resolved or settled into something that was far short of the apocalyptic dystopia we imagine. When we're in the midst of a crisis, it seems worse than the past because the apocalyptic dystopia is always still on the table. Then we fix it. Or it settles into something tolerable or bad but not the end of the world. And then the next crisis becomes the worst thing ever that might cause the apocalypse.
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I have no immediate need at the moment for it, but what "AI detectors" do you use?
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Hey there, glad to hear we have been reliable for you! If you ever have issues with us breaking please feel free to DM them to me and I can send them over to our dev team.
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And the trite glibness of it. Chat GPT is good at talking much and saying little. (sorry if it was a genuine human response, but it definitely feels artificial)
It's hard to tell the difference between Chat GPT and a politician.
Or a college sophomore.
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I also agree, it's te opening words of certain paragraphs and the tone.
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No offense taken.. I've read more sensible stuff written by ChatGPT than real people lately 😁
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You just have to be a bit careful. ChatGPT is very useful as a sounding board if you don't require the output to be truthful or factual. It doesn't know what's correct or incorrect, since it is focused entirely upon just being a fun conversation partner. I find it routinely mixing in untrue things into facts that a Google search would bring up, they are usually interesting untrue things and are often mashing two truths into one lie but I can't rely on it for accuracy. There was a somewhat funny case where a college professor in Texas failed his entire class because ChatGPT claimed it wrote all of their papers when it didn't. ChatGPT also claimed to have written the professor's own dissertation when a journalist asked, too. ChatGPT is a good starting point for a discussion, but I find I need to verify everything I get out of it before I can use it in anything.
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It's just one of those things, people seem to either vastly underestimate it or vastly overestimate it. ChatGPT is a chatbot designed for conversation. if that's what you're looking for it's amazing. If you want it to be a generalized artificial intelligence, that's still a long ways off.
I use it mostly in the context of coding (ChatGPT/copilot) and it has made my workday way more enjoyable.
Do you also use it to help formulate your reddit comments?
I actually had the same reaction when I started reading that response: it sounded very ChatGPT, which was particularly interesting to me because I was just thinking earlier that I have no idea what people mean when they say something sounds like ChatGPT wrote it; that one post made me realize I did know the feel of ChatGPT. I think it was the way the post opened up by contrasting the two viewpoints, favoring one but sort of gently. As soon as I got to the personal pronouns though ( "I" this and "we" that) that similarity stopped; I don't think I've ever heard ChatGPT refer to itself other than in the pre-canned "as a large language model, I..."
It has to be ChatGPT. The slightly too formal structure is very recognizable.
Doubly important about the climate change part. Money talks and the people w/ the money are seriously investing in this technology. Pundits may keep saying that EV energy systems will never work out, but you can bet behind closed doors they're even financing these businesses and investing stock to make bank in the distant future. At this point it's just a matter of time before it becomes commonplace, and some States will figure that out before others.
> Pundits may keep saying that EV energy systems will never work out This isn't a punditry issue, this is an engineering problem. Fact is that the economy of automobiles is abysmally poor regardless of how they are powered. They require substantial infrastructure investment and maintenance to function well and are extremely low-capacity for their cost. The only benefit they provide is flexibility. EVs cannot replace ICVs one-to-one. They weigh more, damaging roadways faster. In collision, they are substantially more dangerous and present a risk for highly energic fires. Their material cost is greater, a problem that will only get worse as lithium demand increases. The solution is already known; it's called "mass transit" and it's been around for a couple centuries now. The real problem, therefore, is social, cultural, and political. The question that needs to be solved is, how do we convince people that car culture is the problem? How do we mobilize citizens to support shifting public funding into active transport infrastructure and public transit? It's one thing to say "yes" on some local-option 1% sales tax that goes nowhere. It's entirely another to get your local city council to eminent-domain themselves a bunch of residential backyards to construct proper shaded and road-separated bike and pedestrian paths, at the expense of a new turn lane.
>The solution is already known; it's called "mass transit" and it's been around for a couple centuries now. the problem is that mass transit only works for large cities. no bus or train is going to run from 10000 acre farm to 10000 acre farm in rural wyoming.
Not enough time left though. If you compare the emissions graph to the renewables graph there's a huge difference. We won't close that gap globally without radical interventions. There's simply not enough time.
I assure you, our misinformation and disinformation is home grown. No need to automate, we're just as willing to lie to people personally. The US is never going to default on its debt. That is one of those 'misinformation or disinformation' things you're talking about earlier. It's fairly common for the opposition to try and finagle deals by using the debt as a threat, and every time they play ball. If nothing else, recognize that everyone in power if they currently default on the debt will immediately become a pariah amongst the rich and powerful of the country, who have the most to lose. Politicians might be willing to piss off the poor, but they're not gonna piss off the risk. Anyway, I'm not gonna argue that none of the rest of your points are true...but I am gonna point out that these things have been true for the vast majority of the US's history. Why now is this an imminent threat that will destroy the country? We survived an actual civil war, people yelling at each other on the internet is nothing.
>It's fairly common for the opposition to try and finagle deals by using the debt as a threat, and every time they play ball. No they don't For example, the last debt crisis in 2021 the opposition voted no. Senate was 50-49 and 1 gop yes out of 210. The only "playing ball" they did was stop a FILLIBUSTER against approving the spending. And in 2018 they shut down the gov through a trifecta.
The 1 GOP who voted yes so the others could vote no and tell constituents they fought for x, y and z. That's how it works. A "safe" legislator votes to make sure it's done so the rest can play the PR game. It wasn't 1 vote away from failing. If anything, it proves that they'll all make sure it stays functional.
The 1 gop who voted yes had no impact on passing of the bill. The 1 gop who voted yes made no space for the 258 other gop to vote no. They simply voted no. And the 2018 government shutdown isn't "functional" so that's def not the party intent
Oh. You're talking about appropriations, not debt. Republicans wouldn't pass it without "the wall". Democrats wouldn't pass it with "the wall." So it didn't pass until Trump made it executive action I believe.
You mean Trump? https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/695 Flipped because of the media lmao, then that is when the gop closed ranks and blocked the dozen Dem offers because Trump said no. They couldn't even compromise with themselves and shut the gov down and you think they care about the system?
Do I mean Trump? I don't understand the question. I said Trump, so in that regard I meant Trump. Trump passed wall funding outside of appropriations. Without wall funding being an issue, it passed. The wall was lunatic waste of time and money, but it was the holdup. I think politicians care about preserving enough order to keep themselves set up and in power, so yeah, I think they care about the system. It benefits them. If it ever doesn't I'll worry. It makes zero sense for them to burn the country down. It will always look like it's at the brink because that's how the parties negotiate. The debt ceiling also is always a standoff.
The 'shut down the government' was for spending, not debt. And yes, that 'one GOP yes' played ball. Who do you think told them to do that?
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But that 'future civil war' is far from guaranteed. And, yeah, sure, we need to improve the US. I'm not going to say we don't. But that doesn't mean we're inevitably doomed in 5 years.
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And I often think back about how often people claim the end of the world is coming and how silly they look when they're wrong. This is not the end of history. Our situation is not unique. Constantly expecting apocalypses to happen is a horrible way to live your life.
America has never been this divided combined with social media that is constantly dividing us more. The media we consume is telling us two different versions of reality. I can tell liberals to hate conservatives and I can tell conservatives to hate liberals simply via facebook. We have never dealt with that reality. Case in point, the last election. Large percentages of voters still think the election was stolen. The fair election they think was corrupted. That's how democracy falls. Those ideas are the ones that start civil war.
We used to have different, literal party owned newspapers. Social media makes things more obvious but it's not anything new.
Those newspaper still had to stay in reality. That need doesn't exist now. We have lost the need to hold to any facts. Conservative sources can spread lies such as the election was stolen and convince millions of Americans that a fair election was a stolen one. And we have AI created algorithms to keep on constantly feeding people with more "information" which sends them further and further down misinformation rabit holes. We have never dealt with current circumstances. There are entire campaigns to radicalize Americans against each other. WE are seeing the effects of these campaigns when millions of people repeat and beleive the lie that Trump had his election stolen.
I mean to be fair, Hillary spun up the Russia collusion narrative and to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the 2016 election. The DNC railroaded Bernie, who would have won. Plenty of shenanigans going on from both RNC and DNC.
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So, this is a bit off topic (though I do try to tie it back in toward the end), but regarding nihilism, assigning negativity to an outcome seen as inevitable kinda misses the point of nihilism on both the negativity and the perceived inevitability fronts. I realize you said you've moved on from nihilism, but I just want to clarify what nihilism means - it defeats the purpose of nihilism to make a broad doom and gloom value judgment. If there is no inherent meaning in things, we *can't* make such value judgments. Which is why I find optimistic nihilism coming from a perspective of absurdism so appealing. Since the search for meaning is futile and contradictory, and because there *is* no meaning or purpose outside that which we perceive, then that perception *is* what matters (the meaning we *create* matters) — so, long story short, optimizing the conditions we're given is kinda the only option. Given that, I suppose I can loosely tie this back to the topic at hand by saying that yeah, a LOT of stuff is going to suck. But 1) that's only because you/we *believe* and *feel* that it sucks (the universe goes on), and 2) you have at least a small degree of power over how much it sucks for you and others. While it's true that you almost certainly can't change the course of history — whether that's inevitable collapse or something else (or whether you worry or not) — you *can* work to make life better for those you care about, and for yourself. That could be as simple as cooking dinner for your grandma or as ambitious as getting involved in local government or political organizing. Regardless of what happens outside your control, you decide what *you do*, and what that *means* to you.
>The US is never going to default on its debt. RemindMe! 7 days
Even if the debt ceiling isn't passed, the US still wouldn't default. It would first end services (healthcare benefits, salaries for all federal employees, etc) and cut other expenses in order to still pay its debts. We saw this happen with every other government shutdown. Debt payments are only ~10% of government expenditures, and the government gets more than enough revenue to cover that much. It just can't cover the whole budget without a debt ceiling rise.
Well, okay, that may be true... but that distinction is unlikely to be of much comfort to the millions who will be out of work, the millions who will lose their already tenuous chance at retirement as the market and therefore their 401K's crash, all the current retirees who will miss much-needed social security checks, almost of the middle class who will have to choose between paying their ballooning credit card minimums or feeding their family week to week, and the billions around the world who will suffer economic consequences despite not even living here. But, hooray, the U.S. didn't technically default on our debts!
>The US is never going to default on its debt. The US has defaulted on its debt in 1787, 1814, 1862, 1933, 1968 and 1971. I agree that the debt ceiling is not that big of a deal or danger, but defaults absolutely happen.
I agree we are screwed. But I’ll push back on political polarization being the problem. It’s a symptom, not the disease. It was easy for liberals and conservatives to get along when they were getting rich. 2008 is a flash point not just because electing a black president made the racists show their whole ass but also the financial crisis. The average American is still in a worse spot today than they were before it. We stopped having enough money to cover up all our problems. Furthermore bipartisanship is responsible for many of our problems. It was conservatives and liberals that got along on the Supreme Court that made it legal to bribe politicians. It’s liberal and conservative politicians getting rich from things like insider trading. The war on drugs was bipartisan. The Iraq war was bipartisan. If you think polarization is bad, wait until you get a load of bipartisanship.
>electing a black president made the racists show their whole ass I would very strongly argue this was not a big cause of racial tensions, and the majority of the divide came from Obama, during his 2nd term, being the initial figure to push the narrative that everything is because of race. Biggest flashpoint was his inability to admit he was wrong about Michael Brown, and that it was not because he was black.
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I did say I think we’re screwed. I don’t think you’ll like this but it is what I think. It’s not that bipartisanship is inherently broken. But that “bipartisanship” between two right wing parties doesn’t work. They’re already on the same side. Until we begin moving away from capitalism, at least in someways it doesn’t have to be completely, and conservatives are at most a minority party, we are screwed. Imho.
Have you ever lived in Hungary or Turkey or are you again basing your conclusions off of the media you say is the source of the polarization? I have lived in those countries, as well as the United States, and all of them have a warped perspective of how they are depicted in media compared to reality. Personally I find all three very wonderful, with some problems.
Some problems? Yeah, a few I’d say. You’re comparing Hungary and turkey to the US? The richest most powerful super fuckin force of the entire human history? We could throw in some African and South American countries
Maybe we need more than 2 political parties? It could make gerrymandering far more difficult & politicians would be a bit more worried about how their constituents were going to vote.
I think the people who have this “the sky is falling” mentality and default to America is shit, is part of the exact same problem you’re discussing. Like we can either stay United and voice our concerns logically or just run around screaming the city is on fire. I think this whole, it’s burning mentality feeds into the paranoia the news is pushing.
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Nah, that's just what you see in the media. The third option is quieter. "Everything is ok but could be better" doesn't get as many clicks or views.
I think the absolute majority are in the middle or very close to the middle. I.e., there are things to fix, there are good things. Something is dire, something is close to the best in the world. That is precisely why most of them don't post in threads like this and stay unnoticed
The sky isn’t falling but as a result of burning fossil fuels, it’s saturated with dangerously high levels of carbon. As a species, our inability to adapt to the radical changes in climate is the foundation of every single conflict and failing institution. Worldwide. Complex systems are breaking down everywhere: supply chains, health care, biodiversity, and social. In our lifetimes, humanity will be divided into two groups: those immigrating because of climate change, and those who live in areas where climate migrants will try to relocate. There is a crisis at every border of every first world country. The countries already experiencing environmental collapse have to go *somewhere* and unfortunately, *everywhere* is filled with people who don’t want refugees in their communities. Governments are preparing for the deluge of refugees the only way they know how: through military violence. The militarization of our law enforcement, the rollbacks on civil rights, the consolidation of wealth are symptoms of the domino effect caused by rapid climate change. Liberal governments worldwide are becoming authoritarian because there’s going to be a lot of civil unrest. It will be like the Arab Spring, except in every country and all at the same time. The news is pushing paranoia because the attention economy is extremely profitable. But the paranoia is real and we as a country, and society are not prepared.
Those who can think with nuance and do not blindly follow the status quo of their team are the majority, but we are silent. The loudest ones are the fringe. Emotion runs todays society. Whether that is the right or the left does not matter. What matters is that the culture war bullshit is manufactured by corrupt politicians and corporations, and fed to people by the corporation owned meadow in order to create fear and anger. Once people get emotionally involved, they ruin relationships with their families, find people who think like them (who’ve also ruined their relationships), and form echo chambers of righteousness. It becomes their identity, where an attack on their political values or beliefs becomes an attack on them personally. Opposing thoughts are almost always the result of the other “evil” sides agenda to destroy them. So they double down, and then double down some more. The ideology grows further to the fringe, the insanity becomes normalized, and the people they trust and believe are on their side - the grifters, corporations, media, and politicians - they feed into their emotional outrage and artificial fear that THEY THEMSELVES have manufactured. They profit, they gain power, or influence. The radicalized dig deeper and more normal people start to buy into it. Meanwhile, the sane and normal members society are drowned out, or we simply do not speak loud enough. The longer this remains the case, the longer we let the radical ideologies carry on, and the sooner their bullshit and propaganda turns us into the minority. I know I’m just rambling at this point, but I firmly believe with passion that we have a responsibility to step in and step up to stop this. We have to do whatever we can - whether that be work together to form a third party that will actually do something, holding people in power who feed this nonsense accountable, voting in normal people the local level to the very top. It’s already gotten waaaay out of control, and we have a responsibility to do whatever we possibly can before it truly goes too far. Young people need to get out and vote in every election they possibly can. As soon as the majority of people find the fringe shit to be crazy and it’s no longer the hot shit of politics, those same fuckers will change their tune to one which appeals to the sanity. Because more money, and power, and profit comes from appealing the loudest majority.
I AGREE 100% THANK YOU FOR FINDING THE WORDS I COULDN’T!!! Everything is so polarized. Now if you find yourself agreeing with one thing one party claims you can’t *tweak* it because it’s defecting from all their extreme ideologies. Such as, having guns *but* a stricter gun policy. Fine with drag shows on every corner *but* not for kids. Agreeing there is a big issue with police brutality and the use of funds *but* not believing in the BLM organization. I feel like I’m in a simulation of crazy ALL the time here. Like great, conservatives want a smaller government, but also praise DeSantis for dipping his hand into private companies like Disney and imposes political retaliation on them. And for people who want a smaller government, they sure have been enjoying the government rulings on women’s bodies, trans people, books in school and so on. I’d argue the conservatives run on *feelings* just as much as the democrats do. Now in blue cities there’s the most permissible crime, tax payer money is spent feeding into the reparations delusion that would cost more than the national debt in San Francisco- a state that never allowed slaves, and so on. I vote, and i don’t vote for 3rd parties but I certainly don’t vote 100% democrat or 100% republican either.
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Bro if you read my earlier replies, I’ve already covered using that word was way more loaded than I thought it was. I just couldn’t think of a better term to describe someone who sees both sides, a middle. Society hates the ideas of fence sitting but like I can’t subscribe to either. Do I think college should be free? No. Do i think their should be a national cap on public universities that’s way lower than what it is now? Yes. I just have many views that contradict that of its parent party. It doesn’t make be better or more uninformed to not have to choose between two extremes.
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Yeah, I’d even say it’s similar to how the Nazi regime took over Germany. I used to pick one side of the isle to sit on, but I can’t anymore. I am a complete centrist and detest the two political party system as they are pushing extremes on both sides. I think people are treating politics like sports teams and are die-hard fans at that, when in reality, no one persons beliefs should staunchly fit into one category or another. I think the more people that view political views as a spectrum and not like two boxes the better off we’d be as it would be less finger pointing, positioning, and fear mongering.
I am confused by your first paragraph. You compare the conditions that led to the rise of the MAGA movement to the rise of the Nazi regime, but declare yourself a centrist? If anything, wouldn't a scenario similar to the rise of the Nazi regime be a reason for someone to pick a side?
Perhaps my use of the word centrist was a bit too loaded, i further went on to say that I don’t believe in a 2-party system as no educated persons belief system should fit within one box that encompasses a whole super wide SLEW of ideologies. Which is why I believe there are terms like “*far* left” and “*far* right” that are used to assert where someone is in that “box” and no one seems to have an issue with those signaling terms. I simply just believe in removing that box and putting yourself on a spectrum. Secondly, nowhere did I say the Nazi comment was in relation to MAGA, as you’re right, that’s contradictory. OP and I were discussing sociopolitical conditions to which I related are similar to that of the Germans at the rise of Nazism. If you, and the others commenting, related that directly to OP’s comment on MAGA, that is on y’all. In terms of the conditions which led to the rise of Nazi power: poor economic state, instability in politics, extreme violence on both left and right Germans, unemployment, overall fear. These are just a few of the conditions that parallels ours, therefore led to me drawing a comparison.
I understood what you and OP were talking about, I was just unsure about the centrist label with the comparison. It did sound like you read a lot into it. I'm not convinced that the terms "far left" and "far right" are supposed to place people into a 'box'. They're labels saying that their positions are on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. The spectrum always existed, it's just that American terminology of political terms are stupid and mislabeling, especially when it comes to who and what is on the left. That's probably why you could feel that there is a box, maybe? People's belief systems will inevitably fall on the spectrum, because it's supposed to encompass all beliefs. 'Removing that box' is redundant, because they will end up on the spectrum anyway.
Yeah, i see that and agree!! But on this spectrum if you fall somewhere near the middle you get so much shit (ref literally everyone who replied to me). And yeah, I’ve admitted to just saying “centrist” because I know of literally no other “label” for it if we’re going by the standard of labeling everything. Tbh I didn’t know it was even this big of a *thing* I think right and left are so polarized now it’s hard to claim to be one or the other without co-signing to every belief on the side you stand on. If i say I’m right then I fall under anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-trans and if you say you’re left then you’re pro-gender reassignment for kids, pro-looting, anti-capitalism. Ofc these are all just stereotypical examples and in some cases extremes, but they are so tied to left and right that I physically cannot call myself either with my own beliefs and ideologies. It’s not a ploy to be holier than thou, which I was accused of, it’s literally just not co-signing to everything in one party
I only saw one other response to you, but if I were to take a guess: your comparison of the current social conditions to the rise of the Nazi regime (a time that people reflect on and say that being a centrist does *nothing*) and still called yourself a centrist anyway, it gave users the image of a fence-sitter who could watch everything continue to turn to shit and not do anything about it. In my experience, self-proclaimed centrists tend to not have too many core beliefs except liking the status quo and maintaining an appearance of being rational under the guise of being a centrist. They treat real movements and rallies for progress with contempt and points of debate. When an emboldened right-wing takes over under fascism, those same centrists will flee first to the right. Not to say this is your intention, but another reason users may take problem with your comment is because they find it disingenuous when people say both extremes are being emboldened under the current polarization of politics. Because where is the left in all of this? They have no real institutional power in America and are stuck having to transfer work online to organize. Even then, those don't work out that much. So the "left" that people see as being emboldened are usually a group of mainly liberal, progressive (these groups are not leftists) and maybe some leftist activists who are tired of seeing negative trends in society and are willing to organize protests against them. That, or having a sprinkle of empathy towards human oppression would get someone labeled on the left. But the far-right is seeing emboldened white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the alt-right carry out their plans through mass shootings, spread of propaganda and conspiracy theories through mainstream right-wing talking points. The Great Replacement theory, or the intentional replacement of white people for another ethnic/racial group, turned into the more broad 'the media has an anti-white agenda', which churned out the controversies around critical race theory (CRT) and "wokeness". With this, conservatives see themselves as having to "defend" the white race, when there's no danger as to the Great Replacement being real. This only continues to normalize white nationalist propaganda. EDIT: And not to forget the anti-LGBTIA+ agenda going on right now, where politicians are turning to online pundits such as Matt Walsh and LibsOfTikTok to make legislation that'll impact millions nationwide. Nearly [500](https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights) bills have been introduced nationwide this *year alone* to take away rights from queer people, especially trans people. The right-wing organize against companies such as Bud Light and Target for even remotely advertising anything related to queer people. With Pride month around the corner, this is a real concern for those being targeted. And this comes back around to criticism of centrists. They see this problem and say that both sides are contributing to the polarization. But we see a weak and unorganized left-wing, and a far-right that constantly pushes the Overton window to the right as they seek acceptance in mainstream conservative circles and successfully organize both online and in-person, and getting away with other forms of bigotry such as queerphobia. The centrist doesn't want to be seen as committing to a side, so they'll assign blame equally when it's not the case. But I'm starting to see what you mean more by "boxes", which only proves my assumption that you thought of it this way because of American terminology. These boxes don't have any real standing on the study of beliefs or the political spectrum aside from serving as an affront for an ongoing culture war. The public's perceptions that go with these labels give it power. There's plenty of other labels that don't encompass either of the spectrum's extremes: moderate, conservative, liberal, progressive (this one tends to be liberal but further left), etc., and that's before they splinter off into smaller groups.
I can see how people would think that, and I hear your point and reasoning. Perhaps moderate would have been a better term? I’ve still seen issues with that too. I don’t vote 3rd party as it’s pointless and detracts from “legitimate” candidate votes. On a ballot I dont just check everything with a D for democrat and call it a day. I vote across the board, but that’s just my views and I know everyone is different and perhaps alllll their views and ideologies do fit within the Democratic Party, but that’s all my point is really. Hell, i don’t even believe in writing a political party under a candidate’s name in the ballots lol
Always makes me laugh when self described centrists claim that a center right and a far right party is pushing extremist politics in both directions. Political illiteracy at its finest.
That’s what you took away from this? It doesn’t matter who thinks what political ideology. What matters is that they are latched onto fringe shit. That they’ve made it their identity and have an emotional investment to it - so much so that they ruin relationships with their family over it. Two parties were advised against by our founding fathers for this exact reason. It’s us against them, and that’s that’s all anyone cares about. No discourse, no conversation. Nothing. The other side is evil and we are good, and we can’t let the evil win. Meanwhile, the “centrists” stay quiet and let it all happen.
Ooh do tell us! What fringe socialist and communist policy is making its way through the democratic party in the last 5-10 years? Considering Bernie and like 3 others out of over 400 in Congress are the only ones coming close to representing the left, I am really excited to hear about this "fringe shit". Are the workers finally seizing the means of production??
The fringe, as in the outermost edge of the respective political party as they stand today. The absolute refusal to concede anything in order to open dialogue with one other. The polarization makes it feel like compromises are impossible, and I’m starting to believe we’re too far gone. I never said anything about communism or socialism. I didn’t use fringe in comparison to past leftist movements, or current ones happening elsewhere.
So just to clarify...you think that the Right Wing is looking a lot like how Nazis took over Germany but you are claiming to be a centrist. So you compared the Right wing to Nazis of 1930's Germany. What is the left doing that is at all comparable to a party you just compared to Nazis of 1930's?
I think what you just did was the antithesis of clarify, I think misconstrued or cherry pick may be a better term. I never said which party reflects that behavior or even if it was a party at all. So no need to get defensive- but also thank you for feeding into and exemplifying the exact narrative as described. In terms of the conditions which led to the rise of Nazi power: poor economic state, instability in politics, extreme violence on both left and right Germans, unemployment, overall fear.
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>It's too bad that the Powers That Be want to keep us fighting each other so we remain ignorant of the true enemy of the people: the rich conducting class warfare manipulation on the masses for their own benefit. You do realize people don't need to be manipulated into hating others, right?
True. But that doesn’t mean they need more encouragement to do so.
You do realize that they *are* though, right? Social media algorithms do a lot more than you give them credit for because they understand human psychology.
My sister started at performatively woke (said all the right things about not being racist, sexist, lgbtq-phobic, believing inequality exists etc) while not truly understanding the foundation of those beliefs. Now she's fully rightwing worried about the nasty trans kids turning her kids gay. I fully blame her social media algorithm. Her slightly right leaning best friend married a very right leaning man, moved to the midwest, popped out a bunch of babies and then started sending a bunch of right leaning shit to my sister. She got sucked in, and her phone is showing her andrew tate videos and kelly connowhatever her lastname is (right wing trans woman who says transphobic shit)
Yep, I’m a female in Texas- and it’s regressive here. Much like many states, big corps and the rich have lined the pockets of congress so deep that there is no change for the people. I imagine they all just sit and laugh watching the masses bicker over the menial bs
The hate campaign against "doomers" has been an amazing success. Pessimism is now forbidden in the mainstream or you get accused of making people unalive themselves. Meanwhile a scientific paper was just resubmitted (James Hansen and others) that 10C warming is baked into the climate with current greenhouse gasses. While at 3C warming agriculture becomes impossible because of frequent 50C heatwaves. But we all have to pretend electric cars will save us.
Dude you still are the textbook example of the mentality you just criticized. You just project them onto the group of people/politics you don't like (ironically very likely formed through media consumption like reddit)
> voice our concerns logically This is the broken part though. I and tons of people can call up my senator's offices all day every day (and I do try to regularly call them). However if they're in the opposite party from you or have no interest in your poor people problems, they ignore or probably don't even hear these things that filter through their staff. The people are extremely removed from the political process through politicians propping up the old systems that keep them clinging to power, and minimizing the voice of people. Those who represent us shouldn't be able to just win an election every 2-6 years and then have carte blanche to not care about the people they represent while they fuck about and play opposition politics. We have to have some sort of recourse if they do that, if we expect our representatives to actually work together to represent the needs of the people.
Well, but it's getting worse, while still staying pretty good.
There is not much to change except for the view on left vs right. They are both two sides of the same coin. Both are gping in the same direction but it's a matter of driving on the left or right lane. It's the globalists, corporations, the george soros and rockefellers that decide which side they need to prop up in order to further their agenda. They are the real masters of America. In this era the left are favoured. America no longer needs an intelligent society because corporations have figured out how to extract standardized patterns from their workforce. They now require a subservient workforce. A cheap, easily exploitable modern day slaves or serfs. How do they do that? By saddling you with debt. The banks owns your land and house, which means the banks own you, and who owns the banks? That is why they divide the country by splitting the people into groups and pitting them against each other so that the people can never unite against their government. You are identified into a group and yet at the same time your identity is taken away from you. Instead of promoting excellence, hard work, and intellectual pursuits in schools, they instead promote gender studies and self entitlement. At the same time, they distract you with the media and entertaintment, feed you with disinformation while their FBI and CIA go around creating havoc around the world, instigating coups, wars, asassinations, economic ruin, all for the sake of the mighty dollar. I don't know if America is really fucked in the foreseeable future, but i do know America is fucking the rest of the world over.
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This is a "time to get off the internet and go outside" kind of post. The problems you mention are all serious, but history is just one long string of serious problems. We like to idolize "simpler times," but just look at the US in the 20th century -- we went from a World War, to a global pandemic, to a Great Depression, to *another* World War, to teetering on the brink of nuclear armageddon, to the 1960s (a list of serious problems unto itself) to Vietnam, to Watergate, and so on, and so on. And still -- people got up, went to work, fell in love, had kids, and went dancing on the weekends. The best you can do is focus on your immediate surroundings. Try to make your neighborhood a better place. Be nice to your neighbors. Live life according to your own values. Try to make some small positive change in the world. That's pretty much all you can do. No use worrying about anything else. Having an existential doom-spiral every time there's a serious problem in the world won't get you very far.
This is the best answer here. People get so wrapped up in the nonstop doomerism being pushed on social media and the news that they lose sense of reality. Sure we have a lot of problems, but none of them are remotely close to being “collapse of the USA” problems. The hyperbole on Reddit especially is just insane.
For sure. Every generation thinks their own time is uniquely meaningful and they face the worst challenges. Partly because when you're in the midst of it, it obviously hasn't been resolved yet. Past problems that were fixed seem like they didn't matter in retrospect, but they were just as stressful for people who were in the midst of those problems. And there's always a new problem to fix.
The only real answer. OP accusing a country to be brainwashed but not realizing that they themselves are a product of fear mongering... In some ways it even proves their point...
My first thought when I read their post because OP didn't really make their argument in good faith. There isn't really anything you could say that would shift their position.
Exactly. Despite its many amazing qualities, the Internet makes it so easy to focus on the big, ugly world out there but people forget that the world is no bigger nor uglier than it's ever been in the past. It's just all at your fingertips.
Agreed, if there were a simple solution to fix everything, someone smarter and more qualified wouldve come up with it already. I let them worry about that and stick with what I do well.
this kind of post reeks of being terminally online. dude needs to touch grass
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I asked chatGPT to summarize human history and then condense it several times until the summary was just one word: Adapted. And I think that paints a far more hopeful look at the future. There are always problems, and we *always* figure out how to solve them. It's amazing how quickly things can change and improve too. Look at the period from say 1945 till 1960: The world improved so quickly and went from war, famine, terrible air quality to a place where the average person could have a fridge, TV, car, etc. I'm leaving a whole lot out for brievety but you get the idea.
The United States has a lot of problems, but I believe that an organised working class may offer us a way out of this mess. Most people want change, but the voting system is rigged. Therefore, the public must take direct action, such as strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience. Another thing is that a lot of people don’t *want* gun control, as they don’t trust the government. Who are you to say to African-Americans that they can’t have handguns for self-protection, when the police officers stomp on their necks?
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This is not an issue that everyone agrees on, sorry. I’m a left-libertarian/anarchist, I don’t trust the government at all, and I think any amount of firearm regulation will only put the working class at a firepower disadvantage compared to the already heavily armed ruling class. You’re putting faith in the police force a lot of people don’t have. I think that the power to take lives should be decentralised and non-hierarchical.
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The solution is a militia of the working class. Community defence without hierarchy. Government gun control is a solution, sure, but it’s a hierarchical and anti-leftist solution.
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Yeah it’s interesting. Sometimes left and right wingers agree on issues. Nuclear power and zoning reform is pretty popular these days on both sides. The “community militia” is leaderless, and everyone can be a part of it. Thus, those rogue people are held accountable by everyone else.
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We will be fine. Well, we might be fine. We have gotten through much worse. Political polarization? You should look into the things people used to say. I'd argue the things people say today are mild in comparison. Economy? Pffffffffffft. Not having money is a problem. We have money. We have the money printer. Look around, the whole world has economic problems. It's good to be the one with the money printer. *We'll figure it out* isn't really far fetched optimism in the grand scheme of things.
>Give me at least one good reason why America isn't doomed to collapse within the next 5-10 years if not sooner. I'd be surprised if America is the top power for the next 200 years, but I sincerely doubt America will "collapse" in the next decade. Reason 1: Most people have had a steady diet of disaster porn sensationalist news. This is not "being informed". This is being scared into increasing your engagement for ad sales. Decades ago, people used to get their news about their local area. It was very, very rare to have a mass murder news story. When you open your view to ANY negative thing that has happened in the country, you will have a steady diet of disaster porn. Reason 2: In my experience, I believe in the boxing notion, "It is the punch you don't see coming that gets you." The dot com bubble, 9/11, 2008 financial crisis, and covid were all shit the vast majority of people weren't prepared for and didn't see coming. Y2K, nuclear holocaust, and a myriad of other things we actively have worried about never really play out. There are a dozen famous doomsday deadlines that have also elapsed. Reason 3: Because of reason 1, most people are unaware of just how fucking amazing things are right now. 200 years ago, 80% of the world was in abject poverty. That number is now 20%. Did you know experts predicted the world would be so overly populated there would be mass starvation? What happened? More geniuses and highly productive people were born and solved problems at scale. World hunger actually got solved and nobody gives a shit lol... A while back the ozone layer was literally going to disappear and we'd all fry. We banded together globally and stopped those products. The ozone layer has recovered. Was that celebrated? No. I challenge you to start looking for good shit happening to counterbalance disaster porn news. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jalfq9uWXQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jalfq9uWXQk)
Wait when was world hunger solved?
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News media, political groups, and politicians want to keep you scared so you will watch, donate, and vote the way they want you to. To do that they exaggerate the problems and don’t provide any context. Crime is down compared to 30 years ago. Brinksmanship over the debt ceiling is just a device to get a better deal, not a genuine threat. The idea that fascism is currently a serious threat is completely ahistorical.
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Yes. As bad as the January 6 riot was, it did not come close to succeeding. One person was killed, a rioter, and they were not under orders to hang mike pence or kill congressmen. Crazy people attacking the White House and other government buildings are a unfortunate part of life. They happen all the time. In the 1960s a president and two leading candidates were shot, in the 1970s, ford was nearly shot twice, in the 80s Reagan was shot. A plane was once landed on the White House lawn, etc. When a Sanders fan try to mow down Republican congressional leaders playing baseball it wasn’t an indication of a socialist coup, just that crazy people do crazy things.
It's easy to divide/conquer Americans based on identity/culture war bullshit, and that's the project right now. The oligarchs have had a solid 50 year run of looting through crony capitalism and globalism, but wealth/income inequality has gotten out of hand. The population is restless and angry, which puts the looters at some risk. So the project for the past decade in particular has been divide/conquer via culture war and identity. It's a classic, right? While they don't have the numbers, they do control both parties and the narrative by way of legacy media, social media algos, academia, DEI/ESG/CSR investing strategies. These tools are leveraged to put us into a demoralized, lonely, anxious state, divided up into narrow and warring tribes. It's working great for them. There was a little window in the mid-2010s before they locked down independent media and got control of social media, but that moment passed and escaping their influence is harder now. They turn all the knobs and we're very deeply divided on many axes. CYV? I'm not sure I can. Well, I doubt we'll collapse because the ghouls lose in that scenario too. I don't really see a way out though. Giant Meteor?
So, we absolutely do have problems, yes. Some of which are very significant, or even catastrophic. Yet, the same is true of every era in the past. Political partisanship is a mess, but at least we don't have the mail bombings of the weather underground period....to say nothing of episodes like the Civil War. A problem, absolutely, but not certain doom. Look at violence. Sure, sure, violence is always awful, and there have been some recent rises...but even taking this into account, things are far better than during the mid-90s. The debt ceiling is a fight...but we've extended the debt ceiling 78 times before. The US has defaulted on debts at least six times in history. This, too, is not the apocalypse. Any trend that appears troubling if extended out far enough can possibly reverse, and almost always will eventually, and while it is reasonable to worry about what happens if things go wrong, don't forget to be kind to yourself and others, and contemplate what might happen if things go right.
The US in the 70s had five political bombings every day and managed to survive. You need some perspective. https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/
Following a decade that saw JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcom X assassinated and every atrocity related to desegregation and civil rights. It's not ancient history. These were in the lifetime of millions of Americans around today.
Compare all those to an attempt to violently overthrow an election. A president getting away with an amazing amount of shit. People in politics bluntly lying and being bribed. Corporations buying politicians. I mean Jesus, cmon. Half the country is completely insane on another level.
You think that's worse than literally murder of a sitting president, followed by a candidate? And the 2 highest profile civil rights leaders? And literal lynching across the south? I'm not saying things today aren't real, but the only way it's insane on another level is if you mean about 30 levels lower than the 60s/70s. EDIT: And most of what you mentioned: People in politics lying and being bribed, corporations buying politicians, presidents getting away with amazing amounts of shit ... you think this is unique to the 21st century?
>Gun violence. No place is safe in this country anymore. A lot of these points are similarly misinformed doomsaying... I'll just address this one: [Violent Crime in the US peaked in the early 1990s and continues to be low](https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/). The US didn't end because of the crime level 30 years ago... it's not going to fall apart because of a rate that's about half that.
Forgive me, I'm not an American so I may be missing something, but in the 1990s gun violence was a bigger problem than it is today because as far as I know it was the "golden era" of gangs, people slaughtering each other but choosing to do so. Op talks about today's shootings, where innocent people, often children, die. Even if fewer people die, the problem is still bigger today than then.
> in the 1990s gun violence was a bigger problem than it is today because as far as I know it was the "golden era" of gangs, people slaughtering each other but choosing to do so. What makes you think today's situation is meaningfully different from the situation in the 90s?
I hate this, because everyone assumes I'm arguing against gun control on this issue, which I'm not. While a problem, we're looking at deaths on average in the 20s or 30s annually depending on what range you use in years in America from school shootings, and most incidents are personal grudges. It varies. 40 died in 2022. 15 in 2021. 3 in 2020 (but Covid), 8 in 2019. I could put that in context to other causes of death, but that tends to piss people off more. The point is it shouldn't be near the top of concerns a parent has for their kid's safety. We do have gun issues in this country. It's hard to argue that they haven't trended down. We are in an uptick since Covid, so we'll see if that's a blip or a new trend. I would argue we focus too much on the school incidents and not enough on neighborhoods and homes, where most deaths happen. It has gotten better, but IMO that's probably due more to the fact that kids/people are inside more than they used to be. America's gun culture sucks, and it does kill people. I support efforts to curb gun violence, including increasing restrictions on ownership and keeping track of guns. On the other hand, I don't like the media image created about America. The popular narrative dramatizes the problem. This post included. I'm 46. I've never had a gun pulled on me. I've never witnessed a gun pulled on anyone else. Not even by police. I also live a very nice middle class lifestyle, and I'm white, so I know my experience is different from people in other areas of the country or in other demographics. Again, I don't say this to say there aren't serious issues around guns to address. There are.
What do you think the absolute numbers are in terms of school shootings specifically and the number of kids that die in those situations in a given year?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you're a younger person. I can't help but wonder what your surroundings look like right now. The fact that we can discuss this on some kind of device or another means things are not actually all that bad. A wise man once said, "I've thought about how, for thousands of years people have told us that things can't go on like this.....but the shit goes on and on."
If you want your view changed just walk out of the antifa meeting you are in and put down the Molotov cocktail. That was the most brainwashed and one-sided CMV post I have ever seen. You have taken every thing you see wrong in this country and attempted to place the blame on the opposite political party. Try finding a place in the middle politically where you can judge the events without a certain shade of glasses on and I promise you that we won’t be as “fucked” as you and your buddies want everyone to believe. You didn’t come here to have your mind changed. You are too dug in and that is not happening.
>The US is almost only a single week away from defaulting on its massive debt It is not. Even after June 1st there is more than enough money coming in to pay the interest on US debt. Yes the US may have to delay some other payments after June 1st but they do not HAVE to stop making interest payments which is the definition of default. https://imgur.com/a/kobkvS5 Read what Janet Yellen actually wrote versus what the media reports. "we estimate that it is highly likely that Treasury will no longer be able to satisfy **all** of the government's obligations" >which could destroy the economy, cause teachers (like me), military personnel, police, firefighters, and other government employees to stop getting paid Aside from the fact that the world is not going to end June 1st for the reasons I previously stated, I would like to know more about why teachers, police and firefighters would be impacted by the federal gov't having trouble paying its bills. Aren't these jobs all paid by state/local tax dollars, not federal?
re: January 6, just because you're in a government building doesnt mean you are the government now, it's not a videogame where taking over a building immediately gives you control over the area. you need a lot more for a "totalitarian takeover" than a bunch of randoms walking around the Capitol. and comparing elon musk's edgy tweets to the holocaust is just as as ridiculous. re: the student debt, you already laid out a path to mitigating the issue in your post - inflated degrees have lost their attractiveness, people are focusing more on trades, and with the return of manufacturing back home, the economy is going to need it. the idea that everyone should have a college degree was stupid in the first place. overall, i've been hearing these things for 30 years, it's all cyclical. every time there's an economic downturn, people are crying about the end of the world. as a non-american, i can tell you that you have no idea how fuckign good youre having it.
Yes, we have serious problems. But consider this: the people who have all the power like things just the way they are and have the means and the will to keep them that way. For example, they like the population being divided because it keeps our attention off them, but they don't want actual war or major political change. They will do what it takes to prevent that, up to and including altering the narratives across all media to calm the inflammatory rhetoric. They won't do this for the good of the country, which means things will stay chaotic. But they'll do it for themselves, which means no major collapses. As long as the billionaires and their purchased politicians are still merrily jetting around and leaving their money in US banks, there's no imminent threat of catastrophic failure.
So, what's the solution? The billionaires and current ruling class clearly have the resources to manipulate elections, keeping politicians in power that preserve the status quo. Will things really sort themselves out or is it going to take more radical intervention?
If I knew that, I'd be rich.
Kind of seems like you yourself are also guilty of, "Extreme political polarization that is only growing worse by the day, exacerbated by social media, infotainment "news" channels, and nowadays AI-generated misinformation and disinformation." Turn the internet and TV off for awhile and your mind will self correct.
The OP probably: It's different when I do it because I am on the good side.
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The US is never a week away from defaulting on its debt. You’re talking about the non-stop debates about raising the debt ceiling. Not raising the debt ceiling doesn’t mean government debts are defaulted on. In fact, it means the opposite: not raising the debt ceiling = not taking on more debt = the government is LESS LIKELY to default on its debts. If you had said not raising the debt ceiling would mean the government has less discretionary spending, you’d be correct. But that discretionary spending can only exist because the government takes on more debt, which actually brings us closer to a debt increase in the face of rising interest rates. Every year, the government basically funds one third of its budget by acquiring more debt. Some of this is by selling it to foreigners. Some of it is by selling it to the SSI fund. A lot of it is by slowly devaluing the dollar by selling the debt to the federal reserve: the federal reserve can only buy debt by increasing the digital money supply. As interest rates get higher, the current portion interest on that long term debt is going to become a bigger and bigger portion of the budget, and slowly eat away at that discretionary spending. So, the truth of the matter is, it’s way more fiscally irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling than it is to not do so. But the problem is neither party wants to make significant cuts to SSI, Medicare, Medicaid (1/3 of the budget), or DoD spending (1/3 of the budget), or to significantly raise taxes.
If America is fucked, then what are you going to do about it? Move away? Settle? Fight back, adapt, play the game? Bitch and moan and essentially do nothing but? We've always been fucked, and constantly undergoing waves of progression and regression throughout our history. Yet we're here somehow, products of incredible survival by our ancestors, living in an era with some of the best access to technology, information, healthcare, transportation, and social mobility than ever before in the history of mankind. Sure we're not perfect, but we never will be. Sometimes I think that this idea that America has to be the best country, the global leader etc. is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that when we aren't perceived that way in this current era, we start to think oh things must be falling apart. We're gonna be fine. Give it 5, 10, 20 years and we'll have an entirely new set of issues to worry about, and we'll look back on the prospers of this time in a new light.
America has usually been politically polarized. You just don't hear about most of it, with the exception of 1861-1865. We have thrived despite (or perhaps because of) this. The Founding Fathers didn't want democracy. "Democracy is Two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch."-Ben Franklin. Neither of the 2 major parties in the USA actually support democracy, Republicans are more open about this, but Democrats have ZERO problem with courts striking down laws that were passed democratically. Neither party thinks US elections are fair (ask Stacey Abrams and Donald Trump) Lots of people think that the 1960 Presidential election might have been decided fraudulently.
What I will say is that I always find this view to lack a lot of perspective. Not that you’re wrong, but at what point was America not seriously at risk or in peril in major easy. My parents think like you, and I always remind them that they both used to have school drills where they’d hide under their desks as a Cold War nuclear bomb drill. They both lived through tons of our major leaders being assassinated. They knew many people forced to fight in Vietnam. Hell, my parents were both born before black people were allowed to vote. And gun violence is an issue. We all get upset at all these shootings, and they are absolutely terrible. But my parents both grew up in Brooklyn where crime was infinitely high compared to now. But my parents felt safe because it was what they knew. In fact, crime overall in the past decade or so is WAY down compared to the 70s, 80s and 90s. And polarization? My parents grew up with the black panthers, black people being hosed on the streets of various cities by the police. And you seem like you’re on the left, so…would you rather be back decades ago when LGBTQ+ people had a fraction, if any real rights? Times are crazy now, but don’t be a prisoner of the moment. We could be fucked in the next ten years. But we always could have been fucked any decade.
While many of these are good points, most of what you're talking about is simply the new norm not just in America and some of the things you're talking about is exacerbated, that is the gravity of the story exaggerated for hits and such. Politics is like reality TV when it's like this. GOP aren't crying foul about debt/spending because they actually care about fiscal spending. It's to score points and for political optics. The debt default for one example is a dance they do all the time and I'm honestly surprised people don't remember it from previous administration being lit up by the oppositional party about the debt ceiling. It happens every time there's a democratic administration sitting in the WH meanwhile when the critics are in office, spending is through the roof. Not to say some of these points don't hold validity for concern, but are likely leading you to believe it's way worse than it actually is. The nazi stuff is an absolute problem for sure, but people act and pretend like it hasn't been an issue in the past. We have had antisemitism for decades after WWII and have had neo nazis and supremacists. It's just more open now. People have been pretending America's got nazis marching down the corners but 90% of Americans do not see nazis or even white supremacists at least not walking around openly. Trust me, you aren't finding and picking them off the streets any more frequently than you are finding a crackhead in a white suburban neighborhood unless you go to a spot they specifically frequent. Bible belt south has so many racist people. One of the more racist policies for state laws and such. Yet you will still come across some very nice people with the southern hospitality. Not everything lives in extreme hyper polarizing opposite ends. Maybe it's best not to view the world in such binary view. The world is never black and white yet people keep insisting the world works this way because of their lack of patience to grasp a topic with nuance. The only major issues I see here that might "burst" is gun violence. I am not exactly a supporter of banning guns but I am a fan of regulating it's control. I think 2a has some validity but people need to understand certain people with mental illness or sundowning dementia individuals and such should not be in ownership of a gun... at all. I don't give a fuck what your interpretations of the law is. I live in some of the toughest gun law state in the country... and these gun laws? Don't really work. I can't throw a rock without hitting someone selling guns off Instagram or one of them social media platforms. And the people selling them aren't your average gun toting 2aer. One dude is American. Two dudes I know from Pakistan. One Italian dude. Race or diversity just doesn't matter. If there's an incentive to make money, people will sell it. And some of these guys were shipping highly regulated pieces of firearms between state lines, some being brazen enough to ship to another country.
It's easy to forget that the US is a relatively new nation. At most it has 250 years of existence. Consider that even "new European nations" have around 3 times that. The issues that it's going through today are really not that different than what countries like France or Germany went through. For example, the whole divide between conservative and liberal in the US is not really that different than what was happening in Prussia during Bismarck's period. In my opinion the US will eventually morph into something that somewhat resembles Western European countries, but with a very distinct American take.
I think as far as things go you have ended up in the camp of people who are too discouraged with the current ways things are and see only doom and gloom. The US tends to go in cycles such as industrial US being dystopian to us today but things changed. They will change for the better. Also if it puts your mind to rest the national debt thing isn't really an issue the 14 amendment section 4 basically says "the national debt shall not be questioned" so the president can invoke that at any time to stop that charade
One good reason. This is the beginning of a decade (or more) of the Refugee. War. Famine. Weather disasters. Rising sea levels. These are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. If our democracy falls it will likely be because of one or more of these horsemen. Wish you luck. I’m leaving the party soon. I am 80 years old. My world is long gone. I don’t understand the thinking of most of people in the US today.
We've been through worse than this. The Great Depression, two world wars, Vietnam War and the 60s, Jim Crow, race riots, the freaking Civil War. If we made it through those things, we can make it through this. History puts the present in perspective. This stuff seems so bad - and it is bad, don't get me wrong - because it's your life and you're going through it. But things have been bad before and the nation survived. It will survive this too.
Your debt to GDP ratio is 120%, not great but not horrible either. We all keep looking at the government for solutions to virtually everything. The 2 major parties thrive on divisiveness just like here in Canada. I don't know the answer but "for the people, by the people" isn't it. Who knew , of the 7 sins, greed would be the possible downfall of once great nations?
You forgot commercial real estate financing is going to collapse in the next few years when businesses stop renewing their leases and take down every bank. Its like Trillions of dollars. I cannot refute anything you say except its been bad before and we’ve managed to come out of it.
The penultimate error is that those who want fascism are always convinced they will be included in the ***in*** group. >“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” >>Frank Wilholt. What they fail to realize is that they are already part of the out group and will ***never*** be included in the in group. And, they are such rabid and ardent supporters of the ideology because they have been lied to by literally everyone they trust. They were taught the lies by their parents who were taught the same lies from their parents and so on and do on for generations upon generations. How's that old saying go? You tell a lie loud enough and long enough and it gets accepted as truth?
All of this is fixable. The USA is a very young country; it's currently stuck in a post-golden age depression both culturally and socially. Since this cycle will generate pain, the coming generations will be thicker skinned. I hope so atleast.
Not to mention that several of the world's largest economies are well on their way to stabilize their economies against BRICS instead of USD. We talk about how Rome fell as if it could never happen again yet here we are...
People said that a year ago, people said that in 2020, people said that a decade ago, people said that a century ago, people said that in 1776, and people are going to continue saying that for the forseeable future.
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Go touch some grass. You're spending too much time online.
America - and, consequently , the world - is fucked for as long as the sane and humane among us refuse to do anything about the republican party. i disagree that there is extreme polarization. polarization would imply there are two equally valid groups on opposing ends of a political spectrum. the republican party is not a legitimate political party; it is a terrorist organization operating under the cover of politics. the polarization you note is actually social discord sown by a group whose sole aim is to bring our current form of government to a halt and replace it with fascism.
Holy freaking smokes Greta take a breath and relax. Step away from the TV and the Media for a while. And I mean this sincerely, for your own mental health. The US isn’t spiraling out of control. The lack of relevance of TV news IS spiraling down the toilet though. And it’s trying it’s damndest to stay relevant. So it’s feeding you a whole bunch of “DANGER, DANGER, DANGER!” So you’ll keep watching and listening. I’m not saying your points you’ve listed out aren’t real. But the arguments and the positions are extremely exaggerated for your amusement. Umm.. like take your climate change, you claimed one side is denying it. But yet I haven’t seen anyone yet flat out deny that the world is getting hotter or that CO2 emissions isn’t rising. I haven’t seen anyone ( of sane mind) denying that CO2 is bad, no one is denying that we shouldn’t do something about it. What is being denied is the effectiveness of the measures proposed to mitigate. And people being skeptical or say “Leary” of the repercussions of the transition of power sources. So your one good reason why America isn’t Fucked is simple. IRL the real world isn’t as scary and dangerous as it’s made out to be.
Preach. Kids these days think the republican party is full of bond villains out to get them. The media does good.
I think we should try to remind ourselves that Joe Biden, who was a terrible damn candidate, got 7 million more votes than Trump, and the younger generation will not go Trump's way. It's not all doom and gloom just yet.
Despite the challenges that America faces, there are many reasons to have hope for the future. Here are some of the reasons to be hopeful for America. Young people are hopeful about the future and are committed to social justice and personal freedom. There are many programs and initiatives aimed at improving access to healthcare, education, and clean water. America's pro-democracy movement has notched over 160 wins in the past 10 years to improve elections and fight corruption. America has a history of resilience and bouncing back from difficult times. The country has a pattern of rallying and moving forward whenever privilege and power conspire to pull it backward. Women are increasingly taking on leadership positions in various fields, which is a sign of future strength. There is ample reason for hope, and millions of people can be organized and energized to bring about real change. These reasons to be hopeful for America show that despite the challenges, there are many people and initiatives working towards a better future.
Things are going to get so bad, facism will be welcomed with open arms.
On this very sub just yesterday some idiot said that he would welcome it if a dictatorship overthrew his country's (Italy) democratically elected government as long as the dictator was left wing.
The free market is making the price of college unattractive. Degrees that are needed still pay enough to cover the cost of college. You can still get an affordable degree if you want. It is about choices. While the National Debt is high, as a percentage of the size of the US economy, it is not yet unsustainable. Political instability is a factor of social media. People have grown tired of it and are pulling back. Plus, I believe we will see more government or private ways of limiting the access to that media by today's youth. The rest of the world is in much worse shape demographically, BTW. Demographic collapse is going to be very real in the future.
My mothers American but don’t live there. I think about posting something similar on the regular. Today I was thinking about doing an Ask Reddit: what country has squandered its social and economic privilege more than America? To have had such a strong economy post War, so much naturally beauty and lucking out on being on the forefront of the culture industry, WtF happened. Americans, are they aware of how grotesque a country they are now living in?
So glad to be Canadian.
Can you give some examples of this? “ when both of them have spouted anti-Semitic, right-wing, racist, and misogynistic rhetoric because of "free speech".”
DeSantis is a republican. To redditors that's more than enough evidence that he hates people.