One thing this previous election result did for me was to have the scales fall off my eyes on the propaganda I've believed about my country for my entire life. I really and truly believed that...
One thing this previous election result did for me was to have the scales fall off my eyes on the propaganda I've believed about my country for my entire life.
I really and truly believed that Americans, while we disagreed on many things, were at their heart decent and honest people who believed in the fairness of law. That when the chips were down, we would band together and help each other even if we did not agree on some fundamental things. That at the end of the day, no matter where you came from or who you were or what you looked like, we would help each other out when circumstances outside our control happened.
Now, after Trump won a majority of votes (slim as it was) and people have started down this road of "We won't help them unless they bend to our political will," I see this country for what it truly is. And that makes me sad.
I have always said I like individuals but hate people. And now that is truer than ever. I do believe most individual Americans are good people who really just want to have a comfortable life where they are left alone. But as a collective, we are vindictive, petty, and just downright mean. We've been trained to live in fear of "others" and to bootlick the wealthy elites so that we can continue to collect their crumbs and feel grateful for what little we have.
A heartbreaking moment to have as I reach mid-life. I believe I've seen the USA at it's peak and am now witnessing the beginning of the end - what comes next is anyone's guess, but I am pretty certain it won't be better than what we had. Maybe in another 100 years people will get their shit together, but by then it may be too late.
I have similarly been pulling scales out of my eyes for what feels like my entire adult life. Each time I think I'm done and I understand, I'll become aware of something new and my heart breaks a...
I have similarly been pulling scales out of my eyes for what feels like my entire adult life. Each time I think I'm done and I understand, I'll become aware of something new and my heart breaks a little more. I agree with you that as a collective our society seems to be petty, vindictive, selfish etc. And the evidence of that is all over the internet and discussions and comments sections are kind of soul crushing. But also, the portrayal of that collective is curated and spun by people who get richer if we are hyper individual consumers who fear their neighbor. They made algorithms to promote division. You can't believe in it.
I know this is just an anecdote, but I have family in Erwin Tennessee and Western NC that were impacted by Hurricane Helene, and my partner and my childhood best friend are in LA right now (I am north of there). We couldn't reach my elderly aunt in the mountains by phone for many days after the storm, and her road was gone. But she's fine because a compassionate neighbor kept her safe. Community grocery stores popped up run by citizens, where everything is free for those in need, it's stocked by other Americans. All of my right leaning republican family in the south east has been texting me to ask how they can help. I watched/am watching both of those events as closely as a person can. And I just wanted to tell you that I don't feel anything but hope in the collective right now. They want people to believe there is looting and people living in fear, when the opposite is true. Thousands of people have mobilized to help. The ruling class want us to believe we can't trust each other, and that we are on our own, that people will only do things if they personally benefit, and there is nothing at all we can do, and it's a lie from the fucking devil's own mouth.
Here is a link to just one resource sheet that made me feel hopeful, there are many more like it. I hope it refills your hope meter a little bit. If it was "too late", they wouldn't be trying this hard to keep dividing us. https://mutualaidla.org/
I have kind of lost hope that I will see any meaningful progress in my lifetime. It seems like backsliding is the order of the age. That said, I still think that it's not that people are...
I have kind of lost hope that I will see any meaningful progress in my lifetime. It seems like backsliding is the order of the age.
That said, I still think that it's not that people are fundamentally indecent. I think that people have been ground down by uncaring systems, alienated from each other and from themselves by modern lifestyles, and bathed in deliberate, self-perpetuating propaganda.
I just don't see any of those conditions improving in my lifetime.
Huh? *My kids get free lunch and breakfast at public school: I always had to pay. *I attended a Gay wedding last year: when I was 30 years old Gay people were still banned from marriage. *I have...
Huh?
*My kids get free lunch and breakfast at public school: I always had to pay.
*I attended a Gay wedding last year: when I was 30 years old Gay people were still banned from marriage.
*I have (relatively affordable) solar on my house: when I was a kid, having solar was expensive and you were a weird crunchy hippy or a conspiracy theorist. Now there have been so many solar companies that many have gone out of business.
*I can buy an EV for less than $10k: EVs were a laughable concept when I was a child. A pipe dream. Sure it's not well funded public transit, but it's better than what we have.
*My city is building housing, job training and addiction recovery for homeless people, funded by my tax dollars: unfathomable even 20 years ago.
*My sister in law had her student loans forgiven and now has been able to buy a home and get her life back in order.
I'm sick of this narrative. I'm sorry if this sounds confrontational, but this defratest, online bubble attitude sucks. Things have improved and continue to do so; yes, we've taken steps back, but we've taken pretty big strides forward in just 20 years, even with a crap administration for at least 4 of those so far.
This is all meaningful change and only but a fraction of the change I've seen in my 40 years, both at a State and Federal level.
I suppose I should have said something like "I'm no longer convinced that things will look much better at the end of my life than they did at the beginning." I agree that some things have gotten...
I suppose I should have said something like "I'm no longer convinced that things will look much better at the end of my life than they did at the beginning."
I agree that some things have gotten better, but I also see things moving in the wrong direction, and at an accelerating pace. If that goes on for long enough, many of those gains could be wiped out.
(Yes, even technological ones, because vindictiveness and spite is a pillar of the modern international conservative movement, and I would not put it past them to use the government to punish technologies that they don't like. Sure, you'll always be able to get low-cost solar panels and EVs somewhere, because it's simply not possible for the entire world to outrun economics, but America? Who knows.)
I've lost faith that enough Americans actually want progress---or that enough of them still understand what progress even looks like---to sustain the conditions that enabled it here in the first place.
I think this is a problem with how progressives frame things. Your typical person does not view human progress as a purely linear chain of events occurring in sequence. They do not believe that...
I've lost faith that enough Americans actually want progress---or that enough of them still understand what progress even looks like---to sustain the conditions that enabled it here in the first place.
I think this is a problem with how progressives frame things. Your typical person does not view human progress as a purely linear chain of events occurring in sequence. They do not believe that simply seeking "progress" is good because that sounds like progress for progress's sake.
To them, you are declaring to have the ultimate perspective that the future will objectively, unequivocally agree with when you say "they don't know what progress looks like."
Yes, they don't understand what progressives want. That's not their fault. They've been misled. Most people want the same things. That's why so many policies are popular when described even when half the country spits venom whenever they hear the name of the policy/bill/law.
Stop saying you want progress and say that you want to make things better for everybody or somethin. Declaring yourself the objective truth kinda makes you look out of touch at best.
I'm no longer convinced things will look much better without bad things happening that kicks off the better things. Much in the same way someone born in 1910 would by 1950 go "wow aren't things...
I'm no longer convinced things will look much better without bad things happening that kicks off the better things. Much in the same way someone born in 1910 would by 1950 go "wow aren't things better here now than in 1910", but they'd still have lived through two world wars and massive genocides (plural, not just the Holocaust).
It might even feel worse now with how much hindsight and history to pull on, and the connectedness and advanced technology of the world, what excuses do we as a people have? We should know better -- we do know better, but we don't act better.
Then again what do I expect? My favourite show growing up was the various Star Treks, and those all envision a beautiful utopian future where people are provided for -- but only after world war 3 and the massive nuclear apocalypse that almost destroys the planet! Can't have good stuff without the bad, the very, very, terribly, awfully bad, I suppose.
I mean it depends on what kind of progress you mean. In many ways, the world is a better place than it was 10 years ago, but it's all relative to your benchmark for your desired metrics.
I mean it depends on what kind of progress you mean. In many ways, the world is a better place than it was 10 years ago, but it's all relative to your benchmark for your desired metrics.
I think this is one of the many issues for people. Change is slow. It always has been. It sucks, but it mostly always will be. It takes a VERY large number of people to make it fast, and more...
I think this is one of the many issues for people.
Change is slow. It always has been. It sucks, but it mostly always will be. It takes a VERY large number of people to make it fast, and more often takes a smaller number of people dying of old age. Incremental progress seems like its no longer good enough, so no compromise can be reached.
Thinking of America as a singular thing is a core part of your dissonance. There has never been a unified culture or belief, the "thirteen original colonies" represented at least thirteen...
Thinking of America as a singular thing is a core part of your dissonance. There has never been a unified culture or belief, the "thirteen original colonies" represented at least thirteen different ways people thought things should be run. That further stratified with slave relations, the annexation of Texas, the Civil War and subsequent abject failure of Reconstruction... we have always had diametrically opposed powers that disagreed over the concept of human rights and the role Government should have.
These are irreconcilable differences and one side will stamp out the other eventually or both will lose. Lately (since WW2, McCarthyism, Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, the Bushes, and the rising oligarchy) the "fuck you, got mine" side has grown immensely in political power and media control. Shit's fucked, the empire is burning, and I don't think America as it was ever thought of is going to survive. But there was never a collective that agreed on what the law should be, let alone that it should be applied fairly. That's been propaganda the whole time.
I think you're correct here, but I think there was a collective belief in the "American experiment" and the basic idea that you can compromise your way to a better world. Maybe that's a scale...
But there was never a collective that agreed on what the law should be, let alone that it should be applied fairly. That's been propaganda the whole time.
I think you're correct here, but I think there was a collective belief in the "American experiment" and the basic idea that you can compromise your way to a better world. Maybe that's a scale still on my eyes, but I think there has been evidence of that in my lifetime, but not in the last 10-15 years.
I do think that 9/11 royally messed up our national psyche and I don't think we have ever really recovered from that.
I think 9/11 was the excuse the Right needed to make serious moves against our rights and to attack fair media coverage of the presidency. They stole Florida, pounced on a convenient tragedy to...
I think 9/11 was the excuse the Right needed to make serious moves against our rights and to attack fair media coverage of the presidency. They stole Florida, pounced on a convenient tragedy to sculpt the narrative they wanted, then blatantly lied us into a decades-long military involvement to shore up relationships with their favorite totalitarians. And they found out that Liberal pundits will never do more than wring their hands in response.
The GOP used 9/11 as a whip against the general public but the ghouls with power were already corrupt and broken.
Of course! Home of Joshua Tree National Park! There are trees in the name! Right‽ In all seriousness, this is a good article with some pithy quotes. I grew up in California, so I will admit to...
are there forests in Los Angeles?
Of course! Home of Joshua Tree National Park! There are trees in the name! Right‽
If the United States of America doesn’t take care of its own citizens, wherever they live and whatever their politics, we should drop “United” from our name.
In all seriousness, this is a good article with some pithy quotes. I grew up in California, so I will admit to just a hint of bias in this discussion. When natural disasters happen, it isn't the time to wring hands over whether the recovery effort is worth it. We do it because we are a society, and this is one of the things that society needs to pay for. I don't care if it is in Massachusetts (contributes most according to the article) or New Mexico (contributes least). It just doesn't matter. It isn't a political issue, it's a human issue. Fix the human issue, stop the fires raging through cities, and then get to the political issues.
Are there things California can do to manage the risk better? Absolutely so. Should we not have built housing in ecosystems that are literally designed to burn every few years (Not sure if that is true for the current fire area, but it is definitely true for large parts of California that have burned in the last few years)? Maybe not. But should we have built housing in areas that get hit by multiple hurricanes literally every year? Again, maybe not. But none of that matters when people are at risk.
When an area floods, we don't say "We will send the rescue helicopters in when you build better flood prevention".
One thing this previous election result did for me was to have the scales fall off my eyes on the propaganda I've believed about my country for my entire life.
I really and truly believed that Americans, while we disagreed on many things, were at their heart decent and honest people who believed in the fairness of law. That when the chips were down, we would band together and help each other even if we did not agree on some fundamental things. That at the end of the day, no matter where you came from or who you were or what you looked like, we would help each other out when circumstances outside our control happened.
Now, after Trump won a majority of votes (slim as it was) and people have started down this road of "We won't help them unless they bend to our political will," I see this country for what it truly is. And that makes me sad.
I have always said I like individuals but hate people. And now that is truer than ever. I do believe most individual Americans are good people who really just want to have a comfortable life where they are left alone. But as a collective, we are vindictive, petty, and just downright mean. We've been trained to live in fear of "others" and to bootlick the wealthy elites so that we can continue to collect their crumbs and feel grateful for what little we have.
A heartbreaking moment to have as I reach mid-life. I believe I've seen the USA at it's peak and am now witnessing the beginning of the end - what comes next is anyone's guess, but I am pretty certain it won't be better than what we had. Maybe in another 100 years people will get their shit together, but by then it may be too late.
I have similarly been pulling scales out of my eyes for what feels like my entire adult life. Each time I think I'm done and I understand, I'll become aware of something new and my heart breaks a little more. I agree with you that as a collective our society seems to be petty, vindictive, selfish etc. And the evidence of that is all over the internet and discussions and comments sections are kind of soul crushing. But also, the portrayal of that collective is curated and spun by people who get richer if we are hyper individual consumers who fear their neighbor. They made algorithms to promote division. You can't believe in it.
I know this is just an anecdote, but I have family in Erwin Tennessee and Western NC that were impacted by Hurricane Helene, and my partner and my childhood best friend are in LA right now (I am north of there). We couldn't reach my elderly aunt in the mountains by phone for many days after the storm, and her road was gone. But she's fine because a compassionate neighbor kept her safe. Community grocery stores popped up run by citizens, where everything is free for those in need, it's stocked by other Americans. All of my right leaning republican family in the south east has been texting me to ask how they can help. I watched/am watching both of those events as closely as a person can. And I just wanted to tell you that I don't feel anything but hope in the collective right now. They want people to believe there is looting and people living in fear, when the opposite is true. Thousands of people have mobilized to help. The ruling class want us to believe we can't trust each other, and that we are on our own, that people will only do things if they personally benefit, and there is nothing at all we can do, and it's a lie from the fucking devil's own mouth.
Here is a link to just one resource sheet that made me feel hopeful, there are many more like it. I hope it refills your hope meter a little bit. If it was "too late", they wouldn't be trying this hard to keep dividing us.
https://mutualaidla.org/
I appreciate the comment, and it does refill my hope meter a bit.
I have kind of lost hope that I will see any meaningful progress in my lifetime. It seems like backsliding is the order of the age.
That said, I still think that it's not that people are fundamentally indecent. I think that people have been ground down by uncaring systems, alienated from each other and from themselves by modern lifestyles, and bathed in deliberate, self-perpetuating propaganda.
I just don't see any of those conditions improving in my lifetime.
Huh?
*My kids get free lunch and breakfast at public school: I always had to pay.
*I attended a Gay wedding last year: when I was 30 years old Gay people were still banned from marriage.
*I have (relatively affordable) solar on my house: when I was a kid, having solar was expensive and you were a weird crunchy hippy or a conspiracy theorist. Now there have been so many solar companies that many have gone out of business.
*I can buy an EV for less than $10k: EVs were a laughable concept when I was a child. A pipe dream. Sure it's not well funded public transit, but it's better than what we have.
*My city is building housing, job training and addiction recovery for homeless people, funded by my tax dollars: unfathomable even 20 years ago.
*My sister in law had her student loans forgiven and now has been able to buy a home and get her life back in order.
I'm sick of this narrative. I'm sorry if this sounds confrontational, but this defratest, online bubble attitude sucks. Things have improved and continue to do so; yes, we've taken steps back, but we've taken pretty big strides forward in just 20 years, even with a crap administration for at least 4 of those so far.
This is all meaningful change and only but a fraction of the change I've seen in my 40 years, both at a State and Federal level.
I suppose I should have said something like "I'm no longer convinced that things will look much better at the end of my life than they did at the beginning."
I agree that some things have gotten better, but I also see things moving in the wrong direction, and at an accelerating pace. If that goes on for long enough, many of those gains could be wiped out.
(Yes, even technological ones, because vindictiveness and spite is a pillar of the modern international conservative movement, and I would not put it past them to use the government to punish technologies that they don't like. Sure, you'll always be able to get low-cost solar panels and EVs somewhere, because it's simply not possible for the entire world to outrun economics, but America? Who knows.)
I've lost faith that enough Americans actually want progress---or that enough of them still understand what progress even looks like---to sustain the conditions that enabled it here in the first place.
I think this is a problem with how progressives frame things. Your typical person does not view human progress as a purely linear chain of events occurring in sequence. They do not believe that simply seeking "progress" is good because that sounds like progress for progress's sake.
To them, you are declaring to have the ultimate perspective that the future will objectively, unequivocally agree with when you say "they don't know what progress looks like."
Yes, they don't understand what progressives want. That's not their fault. They've been misled. Most people want the same things. That's why so many policies are popular when described even when half the country spits venom whenever they hear the name of the policy/bill/law.
Stop saying you want progress and say that you want to make things better for everybody or somethin. Declaring yourself the objective truth kinda makes you look out of touch at best.
I'm no longer convinced things will look much better without bad things happening that kicks off the better things. Much in the same way someone born in 1910 would by 1950 go "wow aren't things better here now than in 1910", but they'd still have lived through two world wars and massive genocides (plural, not just the Holocaust).
It might even feel worse now with how much hindsight and history to pull on, and the connectedness and advanced technology of the world, what excuses do we as a people have? We should know better -- we do know better, but we don't act better.
Then again what do I expect? My favourite show growing up was the various Star Treks, and those all envision a beautiful utopian future where people are provided for -- but only after world war 3 and the massive nuclear apocalypse that almost destroys the planet! Can't have good stuff without the bad, the very, very, terribly, awfully bad, I suppose.
I don't know what you consider meaningful, but it only takes one election to start to turn things around.
I mean it depends on what kind of progress you mean. In many ways, the world is a better place than it was 10 years ago, but it's all relative to your benchmark for your desired metrics.
I think this is one of the many issues for people.
Change is slow. It always has been. It sucks, but it mostly always will be. It takes a VERY large number of people to make it fast, and more often takes a smaller number of people dying of old age. Incremental progress seems like its no longer good enough, so no compromise can be reached.
Not only is change slow but every step forward always comes with a backlash.
Thinking of America as a singular thing is a core part of your dissonance. There has never been a unified culture or belief, the "thirteen original colonies" represented at least thirteen different ways people thought things should be run. That further stratified with slave relations, the annexation of Texas, the Civil War and subsequent abject failure of Reconstruction... we have always had diametrically opposed powers that disagreed over the concept of human rights and the role Government should have.
These are irreconcilable differences and one side will stamp out the other eventually or both will lose. Lately (since WW2, McCarthyism, Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, the Bushes, and the rising oligarchy) the "fuck you, got mine" side has grown immensely in political power and media control. Shit's fucked, the empire is burning, and I don't think America as it was ever thought of is going to survive. But there was never a collective that agreed on what the law should be, let alone that it should be applied fairly. That's been propaganda the whole time.
I think you're correct here, but I think there was a collective belief in the "American experiment" and the basic idea that you can compromise your way to a better world. Maybe that's a scale still on my eyes, but I think there has been evidence of that in my lifetime, but not in the last 10-15 years.
I do think that 9/11 royally messed up our national psyche and I don't think we have ever really recovered from that.
I think 9/11 was the excuse the Right needed to make serious moves against our rights and to attack fair media coverage of the presidency. They stole Florida, pounced on a convenient tragedy to sculpt the narrative they wanted, then blatantly lied us into a decades-long military involvement to shore up relationships with their favorite totalitarians. And they found out that Liberal pundits will never do more than wring their hands in response.
The GOP used 9/11 as a whip against the general public but the ghouls with power were already corrupt and broken.
Of course! Home of Joshua Tree National Park! There are trees in the name! Right‽
In all seriousness, this is a good article with some pithy quotes. I grew up in California, so I will admit to just a hint of bias in this discussion. When natural disasters happen, it isn't the time to wring hands over whether the recovery effort is worth it. We do it because we are a society, and this is one of the things that society needs to pay for. I don't care if it is in Massachusetts (contributes most according to the article) or New Mexico (contributes least). It just doesn't matter. It isn't a political issue, it's a human issue. Fix the human issue, stop the fires raging through cities, and then get to the political issues.
Are there things California can do to manage the risk better? Absolutely so. Should we not have built housing in ecosystems that are literally designed to burn every few years (Not sure if that is true for the current fire area, but it is definitely true for large parts of California that have burned in the last few years)? Maybe not. But should we have built housing in areas that get hit by multiple hurricanes literally every year? Again, maybe not. But none of that matters when people are at risk.
When an area floods, we don't say "We will send the rescue helicopters in when you build better flood prevention".
Joshua Tree National Park is east of Palm Springs, which is itself east of Los Angeles. There are Joshua Trees all over that area, though.
And don't forget the Manzantias and Madrones in the chaparral!