There is no use in getting overwhelmed. I am merely getting more practiced in drinking larger and larger amounts of whiskey and smoking larger and larger amounts of cannabis to deal with it.
We all have a process
And hopefully, at least most of us will survive.
If not, for all of you fascists: I have a plan to destroy all of you that involves an enormous amount of pee. Like, so much, you can’t fucking imagine. An absolute cavalcade of pee.
Don’t try me
#PeeStrong
After the election, I gave myself permission to become an alcoholic if I wanted. I don’t see a great future ahead.
Don’t do it. It’s not worth it. It makes you bitter more often than numb. It’s better for your mental health to channel your frustrations into something useful. Get involved somehow, make yourself useful for others. Collaborate with some direct aid org. Start making content on the internet where you speak your mind and talk about how you see the world, you might end up turning a few people.
The thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of the alienation we feel is because most paid work doesn’t really touch people. It’s either too abstract (office work that only helps your company make money by servicing other companies so that they can make money) or direct servicing of disgruntled customers in a hurry (most customer facing work, like barista, cashier, call center, etc.). Really there’s few jobs where you feel like you do something worthwhile, so try to get involved in something for your soul, something that contributes to directly building the world you want to build.
I appreciate it. Even though my drinking has increased, I’ve actually become a community organizer in my city and it’s been therapeutic for me to hear people thanking us for organizing events where we build community and give people an outlet for their frustrations with the administration.
I’m also living my life at this point with as much substance as I can have. I have health issues and when they roll back ACA protections, I’m really screwed. So I figured if I don’t have the luxury to grow old, I will do what I can for my community for the greater good.
You seem like a really good person. Have a great day.
The future is still not written. There’s no reason to give up in advance as we really don’t know how things will shake out, there’s so much stuff happening. Make sure to make connections you can fall back on for rainy days. Hang in there, friend.
Appreciate the kind words, you seem like a good person too.
The rest of us, in the civilised world, watch on from behind our fingers in horror and bewilderment
America is a classic case of the elephant chained to a small stake as a baby
The learnt helplessness of the population is nuts
Yeah, it seems to me, school is really just a process that mostly exists to teach you to adhere to nonsensical processes. At least that was largely how it was in my case.
People are told to sit and listen for the first 18 years of their life, and then they’re told to stand up and do something the rest of their lifes.
People are educated to not think for themselves, feel for themselves, and make life experiences. Everything is regulated. Parents have too much control. It takes a village to raise a child, yet we’ve normalized the “core-family”-household. What a perversion of nature.
School starts in 'Murica with the worship of the flag
It’s indoctrination at its finest
Chained to a small stake, yes. But there’s also the greater threat of being shot and told it was your fault if the stake comes out.
Bold of you to assume this post is limited to American neo-fascism. It absolutely resonated with me here in Germany. This “civilized world” you speak of - is it here in the room with us right now?
Oh, Germany is a mess. Hungary is a disaster, Turkyie is fucked,
There are lots of problems
I’m grateful to live in Australia
Turkiye is fucked
Not quite - or at least they have the best chance at recovery if (and that’s a big if) they can oust Erdoğan and his cronies. If they manage that, Turkiye would soon be more democratic than most of the EU in its present state.
Yep
Erdoğan is poison, and has been for so damned long
It’s a beautiful country with such potential
I never got the insistence of people that “stop immigration” would be a far-right thought.
Being against immigration can have lots of reasons, primarily economical reasons. It objectively (I’d say) is a good thing that the birth rate is dropping, because that improves the socio-economic position of the people. I.e., it reduces the supply in workforce, which increases prices for labor (a.k.a. wages). And it also means that more resources are available per person, which reduces the cost of living.
Yet, many people (especially the “greens”) seem to argue that we need more workers to fulfill the demands of our economy, which, frankly, is just bullshit and plainly wrong. … and that assumed need for more workers is then used as a justification to import people, as if they were a shippable product. It’s disgusting, really. First we start a war in the middle east; then we move the people to a foreign country. It’s a double shame.
how about we fucking do neither.
Being against immigration can have lots of reasons,
And all of them are racist. Normal people, with a shred of decency, can acknowledge the limits of a country’s ability to take in more immigrants without being AGAINST immigration.
This weekend I built a shed in my back yard, which was a nice bit of father-son bonding, and stockpiled ammo in case civil unrest causes widespread violence to break out in our neighborhood.
Definitely a strange vibe.
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And pay the overwhelmed fee, no thanks.
Bro, I have just seen so much bad shit happen for months and all my girlfriend will say is, “Something’s gonna happen, something is coming, I’m believing and praying and everything is gonna work out and be okay” and inside, I’m screaming like Atreus from God of War (2016), “HOW DO YOU KNOW?!”
Watch she doesn’t fall victim to a cult or something with that mindset.
The real question is what can we do about it
“We should boycott Amazon for firing all their workers in my province.”
“Why bother, boycotts do nothing.”
How is that the default response and not “FUCK THIS COMPANY”
To me, it’s only because they use their services and the concept of inconveniencing themselves is absurd. “It didn’t happen in MY province, and Prime delivery is next day! I’m sure they’ll all find better jobs.”
They work a job and are probably underpaid, so instead of thinking about someone else, especially when that other person makes more than they do, they view it as the other person just isn’t “surviving” as hard as they are… maybe? There’s tons of possibilities, but that’s my anecdotal take on it.
…and instead of joining the boycott, proceeds to do nothing.
SO much learned helplessness in the “geeks” around me. They’ve given up on privacy, ownership, seemingly democracy, certainly peace for Palestine. Never been to a protest, or even considered boycotting. I’m surprised they even bother voting (centrist ofc).
Sorry I realise I’m being a doomer about the doomers. It’s not all like that, and they can be stirred to passion sometimes.
I used to read through history and so frequently I would wonder things like “how did these serfs just put up with this for so long?”
I no longer wonder these things.
I was thinking something similar in regards to the amount of time it takes. If dystopia and dictatorship is coming to the “free world” the dictators have learned to land that plane gently. It’s nuts that things haven’t properly broken completely. We just keep putting up with small adjustments. I don’t think the serfs would have gone from, say, 2008 to 2025 without some sort of uproar or downright rebellion. Then again. Not my area of expertise.
there’s also the matter that most of the time, you didn’t have to deal with noble strangers with horses expecting your loyalty (often, not the same nobles and horses as the last ones to come around). There may be the local lord but he had good cause to keep things consistent and open up the grain reserves whenever the winter was bad and crops failed.
But the keen thing that changed in the 20th century is we went from a desperate labor shortage to a labor surplus. There was just tons to do and no giant machines with which to do them. Death was right around the corner: A boar attack here, a bad influenza there, any kind of infection (no antibiotics), so people were dropping dead often enough that every last idiot, hunchback and bastard daughter were celebrated as a strong back that could churn butter or assemble barrels or pitch hay.
In fact, society was so fraught that clergy who knew the deal would look the other way when peasants were rutting like bunnies out of wedlock in springtime. (Stories are told and songs are sung of parish priests who were a bit strict on the sins, and how they had a tendency toward morbid mishap.)
We have crusades and territorial disbutes to thank for higher ranks getting into common business. The Third Crusade (King Richard v. Salah ad-Din) squeezed the peasants hard in England. Then Richard went cooky, disguised himself as a merchant, and was seized for ransom, and a king’s ransom was a lot. So the peasants were squeezed so hard it hurt the earls, and John of England (last of his name to this very day) was already a Trumpian / Neroesque asshole, and the economy was already tanked when Richard died in 1199, and at that point enough people were pissed off at unilateral monarchy they made John sign the Magna Carta at swordpoint. Several times.
And that was the beginning of the end of monarchy.
I’m just over here hoping we destroy ourselves for the benefit of the universe as a whole. We’re a blight.
over here hoping we destroy ourselves for the benefit of the universe
… and Trump took that literally.
don’t say things such as this, not even as a joke :)
Do you ever statement framed as a question?
I felt this feeling as we were finding out we invaded Iraq under false pretenses to make money for blackrock. We never did anything. I figured people would change but after voting in same clown after the shitshow he did last time……
Didn’t that actually happen (not the Blackrock part)? I thought it came out in a Congressional hearing that there was oil which motivated the whole thing. The U.S. went in to find WMDs but after many years could not find evidence of any.
I guess to call out Blackrock exclusivity is incorrect as they were just security in Iraq. My point was using private contractors and then allowing firms to profit. This government to private is now infecting everything.
2007, an internal Department of Defense census on the industry found almost 160,000 private contractors were employed in Iraq (roughly equal to the total U.S. troops at the time, even after the troop “surge”). Yet even this figure was a conservative estimate, since a number of the biggest companies, as well as any firms employed by the State Department or other agencies or NGOs, were not included in the census
I was 12 when the U.S. went into Iraq. I remember watching cable news the moment that began. I think I was too young to understand. Why was Blackrock there?
It was the first time that (as I remember) private firms were used for security in a foreign war. They ended up shooting a bunch of civilians when they came under fire. I read that it started in Afghanistan but it was the start of private firms fighting our wars. It made war profitable by getting rid of only being a manufacturer for weapons. It’s our biggest industry and totally hidden
It was just because W wanted to finish what his dad started and remove Saddam. There was no exit plan or grand strategy.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Saddam wasn’t bad, but why not let the citizens of Iraq decide that?
Norman Schwarzkopf said if we take him out worse people would fill in and he was right
As a dictator he weaponized his ethnic minority to violently oppress the majority. The people in Iraq had no say.
As though Americans are in any position to judge.
The average American reads at an 8th grade level, with slightly more than half reading at a 6th grade level.
We have been cognitively neutered, by design.
All day everyday
William Gibson wrote: The future has arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed.
Yeah I’ve been feeling bizarre as the US falls into fascism and ill just be at work like any other day
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That is pretty much how the mechanics of human consciousness works. We also know we are going to die some day, and that it is most likely not going to be very pleasant leading up to it. But we still manage to block out that knowledge of finality in our daily life.
I feel like it’s always been? I read a lot of history and there’s not many instances of peace and prosperity for all. Things considered im happy i live in the modern world, wish I could live in the pre 9/11 sweet spot, shit wasn’t off the deep end as far as it is now, and homes were affordable
Shit wasn’t of the deep end… for some countries.
It’s not possible to have prosperity and peace globally, it’s just not human nature. So even in the most prosperous utopia, war and shit always gonna happen. Reminds me of the bio shock quote “even in an equal utopia someone has to scrub the toilets”
But if you see scrubbing the toilets as a needed and fair work, paid accordingly, scrubbing the toilets stops being a shitty work (pun intended).
pre 9/11 sweet spot
There’s a line in Fight Club about how Jack’s generation has no great war, out no way to prove themselves. It really is a great example of how things felt pre-9/11.
I am Jack’s overwhelming sense of buyer’s remorse.
I recently watched that movie when I turned 40. It hits different when you’re older, when you’re a teen or young person half of it goes over your head. Especially how young people glorify it and the whole fight club thing, not grasping that the movie is about toxic masculinity among other things
No, the current climate change situation is unparalleled in human history.
Humans have been at risk of ending their own species for almost a hundred years now.
Ok but that’s hardly what this post is talking about, and tbh the Roman’s gave us a run for their money with climate change and we’re lucky they didn’t have fossil fuels
