Comment on The US in one image
Soup@lemmy.world 1 day agoThat really makes the rest of us in the world happy to hear that the country bombing everyone and trying to intimidate allies is full of citizens who are utterly fucking useless.
Ya’ll would do well to remember that, unless you actually do something, we don’t give a shit about how upset you are. You are a citizen of the US and I have some sympathy for that but when try to deflect like this that sympathy quickly evaporates. It reads loud and clear like you care more for your personal reputation than anything else.
backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Well, we do murder and assault each other at rates about 5x that of our European allies, and our cops kill us sometimes 20x the rate of our allies. We don’t just export violence, we have a thriving domestic trade in it as well. And it’s becoming increasingly politically motivated. My neighborhood has a squad of paramilitary Proud Boy wannabes that goes jogging every morning in their tactical gear and ARs. They’re not cops, not military, not ICE, just dudes drilling for the war. While the left didn’t ever not own guns, it’s surging. We’ve got LGBTQ gun groups, women only gun groups, socialist gun groups, and mutual aid networks on both sides kicking into high gear for the hunker down. I get that it’s frustrating to watch American leadership sow chaos globally, but internally our fight isn’t just with them, it’s with every one of our neighbors that supports it. Remove Trump and they’ll just move on to the next strong man. It’s the legacy of letting the Confederacy stew in its loss generation after generation and failure to prevent them from seeking power. There’s still a sliver of hope we can vote our way out of this when elections come, though I doubt that will work. It’ll be interesting to see what goes down when that fails and the regime declares itself dictator for life. You’ll either see the US decline into Russian style authoritarianism or a bloody shitshow as the most heavily armed populace in world history revenges itself on itself.
Soup@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I know that the whole thing is more nuanced and I know of the stuff that you’re speaking about, but what I’m saying is that, right now, people from the US are guilty until proven innocent.
Let me put it this way: Saying “it’s just the government” is the same thing as saying “not all men”, but somehow even dumber than that since the government overwhelmingly holds way more power. As a man, I understand my part in the latter and do not expect women to trust me because I think I’m safe, and as US citizens people need to understand that no one cares what they think of the former if our interaction with the United States is done at the end of their threats and through the smoke left behind by their bombs.
backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 1 day ago
If Americans want to exonerate themselves they can either suffer the indignity of being complicit to the violence inflicted abroad and at home while waiting for the next election to maybe, possibly, thread of hope change its course. Or they can throw caution to the wind, put their lives and livelihood on the line, and attempt to wrest control back through force. Doing the latter will be a mess, cause more bloodshed, and is up against a powerful machine better equipped to crush it. But no one outside of America is going to save it from itself. The people in power have a world class military, relative geographic isolation, and the nuclear option to keep them at bay. Other states could sanction, isolate, deny trade, but they won’t fight the fight for us. If you want absolution, earn it. Destroy what destroys you and countless others. You don’t have to fight alone, in fact I highly recommend not doing that.
Soup@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
And really, I would just like to see the US working class band together. There is nothing without workers, and people can only be forced so much. Maybe it’s the privileged AuDHD talking but I’m always so shocked with the amount of crap people put up with and how much they’d rather tell their coworkers to chill out than tell their bosses to pay up.
jello8_@lemmy.today 1 day ago
We completely lost control of “our” two political parties, we are a lot more like China and Russian than people want to admit, we can talk shit about the government but we have about as much control over it as the Chinese and Russians have over theirs. Anything Military gets rubber stamped by congress with like maybe 10% of them voting against any of it, even what passes for Left. Democratic Party goes along with it all while whining, basically a mistreated housewife, but Democratic Party won’t actually leave their abuser. Rather than try and make themselves attractive to progressive voters they instead try and lean “Conservative.”(Corrupt) The can’t lean progressive because the progressives want to tax the rich and regulate Big Business, etc, but those are their sugar daddies.
They have to take “Lobby and Campaign Finance money”(bribes) to buy advertisements on Corpo-Media, also if they don’t kiss the ring(turns their back on Progressives) the media shadow bans them and all the other “politicians” outcry how unqualified for the job they are and how they will ruin “America.” To be fair If those other politicians didn’t take bribes they wouldn’t have gotten elected, therefor it’s hard to keep out the type who are threatened by progressives. We are just a lot more sophisticated in having a rigged system, internally our propaganda is subtler, externally I bet we look like malignant idiots, we kind of are but we were somewhat turned into it. A blend of Russia problems and Chinese Problems, we call it USA, the social progress is non existent or at least I haven’t seen any in 30 years.
Of course if Democracy/society had two brain cells to rub together than would notice they could vote for the opposite minor party, drawing away votes from the The Republicans and the Democratic Party inversely while also doing cultural exchange(divisiveness immunization), Pressuring their hated blob of choice to up their game lose or get replaced. Shifting power away from the two big blobs and create two more options to vote for but they only know how to wave the flag of Lesser Evil. To be fair Politicians are supposed to guide them into those kind of cleverness, but maybe they are too busy making $1000 plate fund raising dinners and rubbing shoulders with the rich somewhere. Or if they are different they are someone we never heard or of heard of because they didn’t spend lots of money trying to compete for our attention with the Corpo-slop-trough.
Soup@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
We have a similar problem to the last thing you mentioned here in Canada. We keep voting for the “esser of two evils”, never for the actually progressive party, and have done so to the point where the centrist party has simply become the conservative party from a decade ago. We did nothing with our “strategic voting” except the kick the can ever-so-slightly down the road while, in a sense, attacking the party many of us claim to actually want. The centrist party was elected in 2015 largely because they promised electoral reform and, when a non-partisan committee found that much more democratic systems would lead to them probably never winning again, they quickly threw the whole thing out because it was apparently going to be “too hard.” Then we elected them a few more times because we are stupid. I’ve always voted for the progressive party and refuse to ever engage in this useless, short-sighted, “strategic” voting nonsense. It’s never truly worked in our two countries and we can see it so painfully clearly.
The curse of being even margainally intelligent, I suppose. I ain’t a genius but boy-howdy the bar just gets lower every passing day.