I honestly don’t know if Americans have what it takes to change the path we’re headed down. I haven’t really got much faith left in our society. We’re pretty pathetic.
Hope I’m wrong.
With all the uneducated, divisive disinformation, and faith-based worldviews out there it’s hard to even get people to agree that a problem exists, and therefore even harder to convince the electorate how to appropriately address it. Public medicine would fix this problem like it has in the rest of the world yet still many Americans believe it’s Marxism for some stupid reason.
Public medicine would fix this problem like it has in the rest of the world yet still many Americans believe it’s Marxism
for some stupid reason.…because a group of politicians who need campaign funding to stay elected tell them “government bad” at every opportunity.
There is one party to blame here. Republicans. They made up the death panels bullshit. They made it so Lieberman could filibuster for the big insurance companies and keep them rich. They made it a goal to “own the libs.”
Democrats deserve criticism for their Neo Liberal bullshit too, but this wouldn’t have been pushed this far without the Republican propaganda and lies.
I think at this point it’s clear that there are problems to most people. The difficulty is more about agreeing on a) what the problems are and b) why they are problems, and c) how to fix them.
With the added difficulty that a decent portion of people have taken the “it’s hard to prove anything definitively” stance and for some reason decided that means they should believe alternative sources rather than the more logical “be skeptical of everything but also be rational about it”. If someone is able to get disinformation into official sources, they’ll have an even easier time getting it into alternative sources.
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
Yeah there’s 350 million of us but only one of these incidents in the decade+ since Occupy Wall Street?
We don’t have the guts.
Remember who the big spokesperson for Occupy Wall Street was? Tim Pool remembers.
All we can do it keep moving forward and try to take care of each other as we go.
By donating to each others GoFundMes for hospital bills.
Are you shooting down CEOs? No? Then you’re part of the problem with being pathetically weak.
Friendly reminder that killing CEOs isn’t the only answer. Sometimes it’s throwing tea in a harbor. Or tarring and feathering a tax collector.
Just do your part.
Those lead to violence though
All those things are from a past where democracy wasn’t a thing and indeed you needed to uprise to an oppressive power.
This is still the case for the majority of the planet.
It is not the case in the developed nations. And even in the US Trump has won the popular vote.
You feathering a tax collector is an act against the will of the majority. This is not a revolutionary act, because you’re not acting brave and sacrificing yourself to voice a majority’s opinion.
Contrary, your actions are radical activism. You represent a minority, and yet you so firmly believe in your own righteousness that you justify violence.
You are wrong.
You just have to realize it.
We’re pretty pathetic.
I’m not some flag saluting, Lee Greenwood asshole, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You are on Earth and the truth is 5 billion light years from you wondering about your existence. Americans may not all have the best education. They may be apathetic at the polls due to distrust in the system. However, Americans are NOT pathetic. The media may have you convinced that we are divided on the left and the right, but we are divided up and down. You start to take away things and I’m sure you will find out how strong they can be. Americans have fought and will fight tooth and nail for what they believe in.
Americans are NOT pathetic
Buddy, we just RE-ELECTED a convicted felon and rapist who instigated an insurrection and illegally attempted to overturn an election AFTER we already fired him for massively failing, including in regards to the biggest crisis America has experienced since WW2. A guy that has openly stated he is anti-union and worker rights. We can’t even get on the same page about healthcare, despite having examples from other first world countries across the globe showing what we could do to better our situation. We targeted black people (still are), then gay people (still are), and now we’ve moved on to targeting trans people. Wealth disparity is increasing by the year. Billionaires OWN our politics top to bottom.
We’re categorically fucking pathetic.
I don’t think this speaks to how pathetic Americans are, but instead to how much the rich have us under their thumb.
We need to start working against atomization if we want things to get better, and I think this is/was a really good way to bring people together. Talk to the uninformed people in your life, be the healthy opposition to their beliefs that many people dont have. Make them understand who their real enemies are.
It is in the upper classes best interest that we close ourselves off, entering echochambers as we talk about how evil it is for someone to disagree with our own beliefs.
US politics are a ship. They don’t turn on a dime. We are headed in a better direction in the grand scheme. Short downturns happen. When Bush was president everyone thought the government was going to become a Christofacist regime. The end of times are not near. If you truly believe there is no hope, then why aren’t you taking to the streets with violence? I think THAT’S pathetic. You think the end is coming and you just sit and bitch online and do nothing.
You watched the news even once in the last ten years? What the fuck do you think the BLM and Antifa movements were about, planting daisies?
So we are in agreement, right? America isn’t full of pathetic do-nothings.
You are on Earth and the truth is 5 billion light years from you wondering about your existence.
Quote is crazy hard but I disagree with you so much lol
You can’t act like the Civil War didn’t happen. We put men on the moon. We developed the Atomic bomb. We have 11 aircraft carriers. Whether it fits your argument or not Americans have grit and we will take back our power.
I find it interesting that nothing you listed is contemporary. Even the aircraft carriers. We’ve have a lot of aircraft carriers for a long time.
You’re reaching pretty far back to find anything of significance Americans have done that’s positive. And some of what you listed is decidedly not positive.
Maybe you’re thinking about what Americans USED to be.
And you are just as easily invalidating things they’ve done because it fits your narrative.
There are a lot of points in history I’d bring up to show the grit of Americans before those specific ones. The Civil War was fought to keep the wealth-generating plantations under the federal tax jurisdiction, the moon landing was a cool thing that happened 50 years ago and produced no real tangible benefits at a point of time where those resources could’ve been put to much better use, the A-bomb was a war crime and our aircraft carriers are used to support illegal wars to kill brown people protect the interests of oil companies.
You are saying that these things are bad things. I’m not saying they aren’t. I’m saying Americans achieve things. Americans are fucking tough. Also, I will argue that you couldn’t pop a pimple of truth on this statement: “he moon landing was a cool thing that happened 50 years ago and produced no real tangible benefits”.
Oh, by golly, are you wrong.
These lists are completely disingenuous. Just because something was the first use case doesn’t mean it was the only use case for a thing.
For example. Freeze dried food. It’s completely impossible to say we would not have freeze dried food without the space program.
You’re doing the country equivalent “I’m not pathetic, look at how big my muscles are”. Doesn’t matter if you have shitty public education, shitty public transportation, shitty worker rights, shitty health care and a shitty political system that makes change impossible, you can beat the shit out of anyone calling you pathetic.
Such a simplistic view I can absolutely believe you’re American.
“I don’t like the things republicans do, so all of America are shitty wimps.”
-You.
Assuming all of those things are inflicted by republicans, how can they get away with it? You’re supposed to have grit and take back power, but somehow you’re letting republicans run wild? How doesn’t this rub of on all Americans?
No, fucker, WE didn’t do any of that. WE are shitposting on Lemmy. I know for a fact you didn’t build any aircraft carriers yourself. So can “WE” stop talking credit for things less pathetic Americans have done?
Ugh…Yeah…we did. My fucking neighbor welds submarines. I work in manufacturing assisting in building cars, tanks, radar systems, military vehicles. You name it. You might be some tech nerd like most people on Lemmy, but most of us out here in the real world are doing hard shit.
Pretty bold of you to claim us nerds don’t do hard shit. I’m only going to speak to my experience, but I’m only one small slice of the nerd demographic. My background is in network design, security, availability, and global network design. I started out life in a car parts factory, graduated to being on the line crew here, before going inside to work on computers.
How much of your logistics would crumble without us? Exchange of knowledge around the globe? Sales and interfacing with other corporations and customers? Security to keep personal information somewhat protected?
I’ve contracted with several fortune 100 companies in all sorts of different industries all over the world, from manufacturing to attorneys.
You sound a lot like my family. Only hard labour is virtuous, if you aren’t sweating you aren’t working. Do you look down on people who do what you consider menial labour? I doubt you’ll admit it, but I’m pretty confident you do.
Civilization doesn’t work if we think like you. Every single person in my life, from the guys picking up my trash to the surgeon that saved my life are important and necessary to making modern life what it is.
Trying to be divisive between blue and white collar in the working glass is definitely a suspicious fucking take in this climate.
So you agree then? America is not a bunch of pathetic people who are going to bend over to fascism?
A.) I don’t believe you. B.) I don’t care.
Top quality comment. Do you feel good about yourself for commenting that?
The atomic bombs and iarcraft carriers are for “Americans (people)”
the truth is 5 billion light years from you wondering about your existence
What?
Yeah, no idea what they were getting at with this.
Far from the truth.
No fucking clue what they’re on about there.
deleted by creator
I went through your comment history to see if you are a gun owner, and I think you are not. So this makes you part of the problem you just posed in your comment here, since you have no means to commit to peaceful but aggressive armed protesting.
That’s not the right way to encourage people to arm themselves.
I don’t have anydesire to encourage people to do anything.
There are people out there who will always be useless bitches that passively complain all day other people aren’t doing things when they themselves don’t bother to make any effort themselves to try to change shit.
I’m the audience you’re talking too. I’m 32 and just got my first rifle. It was awkward for me at first, and attitudes like yours contributed to that.
So fuck you man.
Good stuff. Be sure to regularly train with it, or you might as well wrap a bow on it and give it to the people who will be trying to take it away from you.
You’re such a jackass dude
He is 100% a jackass but in this particular point he is right. Please learn and practice with your rifle. Untrained gun owners are a huge danger to themselves and others and they usually don’t realize it. And owning a gun doesn’t do you any good if it gets taken out of your hands in the first 5 seconds of an altercation.
For your safety and others this is actually legitimately good advice.
… or maybe they’re not reveling every aspect of their lives on a public forum for personal safety reasons.
Armed protesting, by definition, is not peaceful.
I am not a gun owner.
I have never fired a gun in my life. I have terrible hand-eye coordination. I know from just playing video games with guns and carnival “shoot the target with BBs” things how bad my aim is.
Also, I’m a coward and I know I could never kill anyone.
I would be of no benefit of you in the glorious revolution with a gun in my hands. You would be more likely to be shot by me accidentally.
This is really important knowledge to know about yourself. I wish more people were this self aware.
But a war requires a lot more than just soldiers. Even if we end up in a hot shooting Civil War 2 there are still many things you and other nonviolent folks could do for your fellows to keep them safe. Safe shelter and food mean even more than guns and bullets in a conflict like that.
I hope with every bit of my heart that we don’t have to go there. But if we do, you are not useless. Soldiers may fight a war, but logistics wins one. And in this hypothetical situation a lot of us are going to be very charged up with hot tempers and someone with a cooler head and an aversion to violence will be important to keep things from falling to chaos.
Don’t sell yourself short, Squid. A coward with a good head on them is a good person to have on your side in a fight. A coward knows how to prevent that fight that might not have been otherwise necessary.
I’m not selling myself short. I said, “I would be of no benefit of you in the glorious revolution with a gun in my hands.” I agree, there are other things that need doing.
I’ve always said this but got chased out of the room (downvoted to hell), peaceful protest is a bunch of bullshit and won’t do shit. It never will. It’s always just ignored. Rioting and violence IS the only option when protesting peacefully is ignored. I mean look at the George Floyd protests and how they actually made change. Look at the French and their protests…etc. Peaceful protesting is quite literally a bunch of people kidding themselves.
People love to use examples like MLK and Gandhi as the poster children for peaceful protest achieving results, and years ago I’d have naively agreed.
But the reality of it is that they could not have succeeded without the threat of violence from more militant alternatives, such as Malcolm X/The Black Panthers or the Ghadar revolutionaries/Babbar Akali Sikhs.
It’s the carrot-and-stick metaphor. The powers that be will ignore any nonviolent attempts for reform until a violent movement makes the nonviolent alternative more appealing.
Capitalism has long asserted that there are checks in place to protect people. Consumer protection laws, industry regulations, collective bargaining, and voting with your wallet are some of the myths that capitalism says are supposed to stop bad businesses from hurting people. But when we see these systems failing en masse, and the powers that be refuse to do anything about it, what recourse is left?
Both are necessary. The first creates public support. The second “creates government support”
A little direct action can be surprisingly effective
The peaceful protest has a purpose. It is the purpose of due diligence. It is to show an escalation. A point at which other avenues were tried and ignored leaving one with no choice but to try others that are more militant. You try all the avenues. And leave the last resort as a last resort. But historically we know that more often than not real change happens when there is either the threat of violence or the actuality of violence.
People as a whole don’t seem to be invested until it impacts them. It’s hard to impact people enough with peaceful protest to change their minds. That’s why blocking highways or major thoroughfares were threatened with violence. Because the point of protest is twofold. It is to educate. But more importantly it is to inconvenience people. Because without the inconvenience, they do not get invested.
Exactly. It is reaching that point where a lot of people are realizing that peace doesn’t work anymore.
People don’t understand that more than protecting people, social policies such as housing, welfare, and medical aid programs protect the capitalist system itself.
social policies such as housing, welfare, and medical aid programs protect the capitalist system itself.
It was not always like this but yes over as 40 years the money has been looted and used against the working class.
It took wage slaves all this time but I think it is finally registering:
How is everybody working so hard, we are working more and we are more productive but nobody but few have any more money
The money is being extracted via complex legal, social and propaganda mechanisms and we are letting it happen by being obedient dogs fighting rich man’s fake news stories.
If you take a look at europe, there is plenty of countries who score way better on these issues, and the underlying system is still capitalism. It might not be perfect but if you include a social aspect and regulate in the interest of the population I believe it is the best system we have.
You live in a country that couldn’t elect Bernie as a president. There’s no peaceful protest happening. And yet you claim violence is the only option.
In reality, half of your country simply disagrees with you. Start your violence, get a civil war, and maybe you’ll finally settle things somewhere somehow.
But don’t bullshit about effectiveness of peaceful protest.
Trump won a majority vote in the most recent election. Peacefully, your country chose corpos over moderate middle (there’s no left in your politics). Their peaceful protest works flawlessly. You’re just not on the winning side of the protest so you call for violence. You will lose this fight too.
I understand why people are upset but its a sad reality, that you just don’t have the masses on your side. I think your point is the crux to all of this. If a majority doesn’t get behind your conviction then violence will not solve your problem.
It’s a point that’s impossible to get across in this echo chamber. But it’s also why this echo chamber will never achieve anything.
Via democracy or violence, for a regime change you first need to figure out a way to get the majority to agree with you.
If the political pressure was high enough, political powers would buckle. But see who got voted for president? Its clear that the people chose this themselves sadly
Organized labor can also take some non violent action like general strikes. The important thing is the organization part, once you’re organized you’ve got power whether it’s violent or not.
A smaller less organized population can definitely use violence effectively, but it still takes critical mass to affect permanent change.
Join or create community groups and labour unions
If peaceful protesting worked to affect change, it would be illegal
That reminds me of another quote.
Thank you!!!
and how they actually made change
Uh…
I mean look at the George Floyd protests and how they actually made change
Did they really, though?
Yeah, I agree with their point but I really don’t think this is the example to use
The one time I resorted to violence, it 100% solved my problem. I slapped my bully in class so hard people’s ears rang. We ended up becoming friends later on lol.
I had a guy trying to bully me a long time ago, i got fed up with him pretty quickly.
I turned around, grabbed him by the throat and pushed him up against the wall after which i punched him.
Never bothered me again, his and my own parents both agreed: “he had it coming”.
Now that i’m more mature, i actually feel bad for him because even his own parents didn’t try to defend him. Seeing how he behaved, this was definitely part of the cause.
He needed his parents to be there for him, but they just gave up on him from the start.
Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.
classic defeat means friendship trope
That looks like something that could have been written on here or reddit a week ago and would have been met with at least modest approval in regards to the oligarchy.
Yeah, still really dumb though.
Dude, read the bhagavad gita. It’s all about inner peace during violence. A soldier not wanting to fight his kin on a battlefield. When you recognize that sometimes the cost of peace is enslavement you can take extreme action without any attachment to the outcome and remain in peace in your heart. I used to abhorrent violence still do, but I will act without attaching and face rip any monkey that is hoarding and hurting my fellows. MFRA… monkey face rip association… even Buddha has stories stating no karma is incurred for some situations of violence. You might be stuck in good vs evil dichtomous thinking. There is no good and evil in nature just nature. We make the definitions and than we suffer them. Cast off your definitions and cultured personality and see the real that exist in many many sahdes.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about where I’m coming from here, so let me clarify a bit why I think it’s dumb: the OP essay inherits the flaws of the Unabomber Manifesto it is signal boosting. It’s hand waving rhetoric and rationalization, right wing extremist flavored. Its only argument that violence will be useful is to bake in an assumption that of course it will, criticize other, independent options, frame the debate as a moral one about whether saving the world justifies violence, and make that argument with name calling.
I recognize that many people respect this type of argument, but they are wrong, it’s bad and stupid.
What’s the alternative? The health insurers are actively killing people by denying claims. I’m curious.
An absence of a clear alternative isn’t a substitute for an argument that slaughtering corporate leaders will help the problem. There are practical differences between the circumstance of a wild animal literally fighting for its survival, and a member of a population being abstractly squeezed to death by systemic problems, in that killing is a clear immediate solution in the former but extremely questionable in the latter. Not bothering to acknowledge this makes it a bad argument. Also, all the other reasons I mentioned why it’s a bad argument. Kind of reads like edgy highschooler cringe bait too, though that’s subjective.
Maybe a better argument could be made, idk. But this one is dumb.
I hear what you’re saying. My issue with your position is that Thompson is not a mere bystander or segment of the ‘machine’ that is killing - or in your words “squeezing” - other humans. Thompson, by his own admission, was actively pursuing mechanisms by which denial of care and ultimately death are effected. Why does he get a pass, I’m curious?
My criticism is of the writing in the OP, and of Kaczynski’s writing, which while contextually relevant, isn’t actually about Thompson or even specifically health insurance.
To answer your question though, I don’t think he gets a pass, ethically. But I also don’t think justice trumps striving for better outcomes in society, and in fact it’s the other way around. This isn’t exactly being contested; the rhetorical focus is on means and results.
Keep bootlicking lol
Oh good lord. He kept the gun and the fake ID?
I guess MS in Computer Science doesn’t mean you’re smart.
I spend my working life surrounded by PhDs, have done so for ~28 years now, and let me assure you: education and intelligence are orthogonal.
I worked in higher ed computer support at a major research university for 12 years, believe me I know.
I’m guessing he kept it all intentionally. He had the manifesto on him, probably expecting “accidental” suicide by cop in hopes that his message would continue and not be painted over by the media. Yeah, he could have ditched the gun, but again, perhaps he didn’t want there to be any shadow of a doubt that he is guilty. This was an intentional sacrifice in hopes of making a change.
Yeah, I realized about 30 seconds after I wrote that… “he wanted to keep the gun and the ID as proof that he was the guy”.
He escaped clean, and then let himself get caught so he could make his case in court.
Let’s see if he plays the next hand: plead ‘not guilty’, refuse all plea agreements, and demand a jury trial.
To be fair if you’re never caught that’s probably the smartest thing to do.
Someone discovering a gun is 100% gonna call the police and bam they have a good clue.
I can walk 1/2 a mile in any direction and find a body of water or deep woods where it would never be found. Also, I’d field strip it and chunk the parts in different places.
