Formerly /u/[email protected]
That’s a great analogy as well, though with the stakes as high as they are, I don’t think either side is likely to fold. I think we’ll have to show our hands and see who wins. I’d love to hear that the government caved in to our demands and everything is fine, but if that doesn’t happen we need to understand that our work isn’t done until we get what we need, regardless of whether or not they decide to give it to us willingly.
My mom was a huge speeder. She almost never went below 10 over the limit. Any time someone told her something along the lines of “The sign says 60, and you’re going 80.” she’d respond along the lines of “Well, good thing signs can’t stop me then, huh?”
She’d always slow down if she thought she saw a cop, though.
I always think about that when people talk about protests as if they’re the final step and not just the warning before a revolt. If you want self-centered people, like the ones running our government, to listen to your signs, you need them to fear what comes afterward if they don’t.
Well, the country was founded by one, so there’s that.
I have no doubt in my mind that the wealthy view the non-wealthy in the same way that an average person would view an ant. They may not hate it, but they don’t like it, and wouldn’t feel the slightest bit guilty killing one if it happens to be in their way, or killing thousands if they feel as though they’ve “infested” what they view as their property.
What you see as “spot the error” type training, another person sees as absolute fact that they internalize and use to make decisions that impact the world. The internet gave rise to the golden age of conspiracy theories, which is having a major impact on the worsening political climate, and it’s because the average user isn’t able to differentiate information from disinformation. AI chatbots giving people the answer they’re looking for rather than the truth is only going to compound the issue.
This is the real concern. Copyright abuse has been rampant for a long time, and the only reason things like the Internet Archive are allowed to exist is because the copyright holders don’t want to pick a fight they could potentially lose and lessen their hold on the IPs they’re hoarding. The AI case is the perfect thing for them, because it’s a very clear violation with a good amount of public support on their side, and winning will allow them to crack down even harder on all the things like the Internet Archive that should be fair use. AI is bad, but this fight won’t benefit the public either way.
Which is why they pump the uninformed majority of voters full of the idea that the current system will always save them. My father in law has a degree in political science and still thinks that we’ll vote Trump out in 2028 to fix everything. Decades of things generally continuing to function for the middle class white demographic has brainwashed every democratic voter over 50 I know to believe we’re still well within the acceptable bounds of politics.
It’s like voting; obviously all I can control is my own actions, so I’ll do what I can, but if too many people stay home our chances drop significantly.
Regular people who have been pacified by a lifetime of “violence isn’t the answer” and “if you fight back, you’re just as bad.” I hope we find the will to resist, but I worry we’re too far gone.
I would think this guy was being so over-the-top cartoonishly evil on purpose just to get us to grow a spine and rise up to overthrow the corrupt government if we were actually growing a spine and rising up to overthrow the government.
4 beers had me puking in my friend’s bathroom. 1 beer would probably make me an unsafe driver.
I got shitfaced drunk from 4 beers once; I can’t handle alcohol for shit. But yeah, the big concern is a sober alcoholic accidentally relapsing.
Yeah, I’ll often grab an energy drink from the gas station and chug it before continuing on during a long drive. Luckily I don’t drink this brand.
He absolutely can blame it on Biden, and when he does - if he addresses it at all - all of his constituents and plenty of other people who aren’t paying attention will believe him. I know this was just a funny observation, but it’s important that we’re cognizant of how the truth won’t save us, and won’t expose him as a fraud to his supporters. We’re in this position because the wealthy have taken control of the narrative to the extent that they decide what the majority of the people think, and the only way to make things right again is to physically take it back. If pointing out the inconsistencies in Trumps statements was enough to stop him, he’d have been out of the presidential running in the 2016 primaries.
You shouldn’t have to, but you do have to. The world isn’t going to fix itself - these things are happening because our country and its people have been slowly influenced over the course of decades specifically not to put up a fuss about it. We need to fight against that conditioning that tells us we deserve to be able to step away and ignore it. We do deserve that, but to allow ourselves that out is to continue allowing these atrocities to happen. We’ve been pushed into such stressful, overstimulating lives that putting up a fight seems impossible, but we need to fight it even if it means putting our lives on the line.
Not even your own money, you’re killing people for more money in the pockets of weapons dealers, oil barons, and the politicians they employ - I mean “lobby.”
The thing is that they don’t think the government thinks they owe taxes. They think that what we know of as the government is a fake organization that we don’t have to listen to, we just think we do. My mom was one of these people, and though she died over a year ago, my sister and I are still in a legal battle with the organization she was a part of, because they keep saying that the state of Minnesota doesn’t actually exist, so the laws that govern it don’t apply, and that means they have the right to do whatever they want with the money that was supposed to go to me and my sister.
Yeah, she had just broken up with her boyfriend and found a bunch of “self-help” youtube videos that basically just said everyone who disagrees with you is a narcissist, then the algorithm started recommending her videos that said everyone who disagrees with you is actually an “energy vampire” literally and maliciously draining you of your life force. From there she got into all the crazy health conspiracies - which of course happened right as she was diagnosed with DCIS, which is easily treatable, but if left untreated becomes breast cancer. She dove head-first into all of the conspiracies after that, throwing money at anyone claiming to cure cancer so long as the method wasn’t backed by “big science,” and died of breast cancer a few years later.
It took my mom less than 4 years to go from crying in horror when Trump was elected in 2016, to crying in horror when he wasn’t elected in 2020, and lamenting her inability to join Jan 6 due to her cancer that was mysteriously worsening in spite of all the 5g blockers and expensive heal-all herbal teas she bought.
That’s why we deify them - they represent the ultimate goal: finding someone else to do the dirty work fixing the problems for us while we keep feeling safe and morally superior in our pacificity.