I am a tick on this dog’s back.
Hopefully, we’ll be able to survive. Ain’t nobody asking me for directions though.
If history ever recorded the experiences of people like us during those falls, we might have the wisdom today to associate with historic events far beyond the scope of our lived experience. But only the lives of the wealthy and powerful are recorded. Our stories don’t get told. So maybe the best we can do today is to ensure our peasant descendants have our stories for when their empires fall. Perhaps posting on social media is the wisest thing we can think to do?
Edit: A couple other thoughts struck me. The wealthy have been the only ones capable of passing their hard earned knowledge to their descendants by affording the written word and preserving it. Today is the first time in history, we, the peasantry, can afford to leave the hard earned knowledge of experiencing poverty and subjugation, to our peasant ancestors and we can do so in much greater detail than the written word alone.
Preserving the experiences of the poor and working class is paramount to the protection of future generations. Yet most of it is stored on servers and hard drives owned by companies that would rather future workers not known our hard earned lessons about what it’s like being working class and how were kept subjugated. X and Facebook and Twitter etc. deleting or barring access to, our collective history should be considered class warfare across generations. Yet they have no issues using all that data to train the systems they will use to reduce their own dependency on a labour class at all and reducing the value of our existence to the economy to what is, perhaps, below subsistence.
The only war is class war…
I’m thinking of it more as the decline of the Roman Republic.
don’t worry, there’s still a lot of way to go for the American empire.
Rome couldn’t obliterate itself in a nuclear fire during its innumerable civil wars as it heads towards inevitable global climate collapse.
Seems like a completely normal and natural reaction to large-scale disturbing changes. Staying sane is the first priority. Or as they put it in Wrath of Khan…
Carol Marcus: “How can you think of food at a time like this?”
Kirk [eating an apple]: “First order of business - survival.”
Nothing new, though. People have always tried to stick to normality during momentous events. It’s not like everything immediately dissolves into anarchy.
It’d be a lot cooler if it did
I mean… You can’t think about it 24/7 or else you will go insane. This kind of thing requires endurance for the long haul.
Was it ever really worth saving
yeah it was
others will disagree with me and I dont care
Why dont you explain for those who disagree when exactly a country founded on genocide, that has always stood for the domination of the capitalist over the workering class at home, but mostly abroad was worth saving? The brief period the brief period they supported the USSR?
Cuz real people live here and the majority of them don’t deserve to have to suffer over it
I’d say none of them deserve to suffer. I’ll cheer on the death of America all the same.
Really liked that time the cia couped my democratically elected government
Even if it wasn’t, fact of the matter is that innocent people would have died in its collapse, and that would be unacceptable regardless.
Keeping the murder machine on because people might die if we turn it off
We like watching America’s Got Talent and big talents shows like that … recently I just began to realize …
Historians will be noting how we were all wrapped up in these big talent shows and feel good programs while the entire political landscape just slowly slid into WWIII without anyone really paying attention.
Not totally accurate, there’s a huge group of people actively cheering all this on. Read opinion polls on this stuff, and the approval rate is surprisingly high.
Much of American seems to think we’ve elected Tony Stark Warren Buffett Jesus to save us from what seems so grim, and there’s a massive machine making money off that fantasy, perpetuating it. It’s what opposition doesn’t seem to understand, and a big differentiator vs old dictators.
I think that’s what historians will see. Not that most were apathetic. Many really care, but reality warped around us.
I can only consume so much bad news before I go binge watch something funny or a show where good triumphs over evil.
It might be learned helplessness, but right now there don’t seem to be a lot of things normal citizens can do. Crazy people took over, and all the protesting and pleading in the world won’t prevent them from doing what they want to do.
My guess is the protests will be escalated by the administration. Maybe they’ll toss in a few paid agitators. A cop or ice agent gets shot. Trump makes a rambling speech about law and order. Declares martial law and becomes a real dictator. The protests have been largely cool so far and it is obvious that is not what he is looking for.
Anyways yeah, sorry I’m going to watch some TV and dissociate.
I’m fairly certain this is the plan, but he’s going to wait to pull out his martial law card for when they need to suspend elections. I 100% expect to see some fuckery in '28. I’m guessing that’s when the war will begin.
I hate to say it but on many nights and evenings … I feel and do the same.
I’m older, my wife is chronically sick, we can’t leave house and I spend most of my days reading and watching how the world is falling apart and there is not much I do about it all.
We are paying attention but we all feel like there’s nothing we can do to stop it so we try to numb the pain.
Dear future historians: You wil look back in horror but know that we feel helpless. The only parallel we have ended in a world war that had to be ended by a newly arisen superpower. And that scares the shit out of us.
Yeah, watched Adam Curtis’ ‘Hypernormalisation’ dokumentation and was like, oh that’s why I feel like this. Goes to show, the sleep of reason produces monsters.
Anyways completely unrelated to this, I’m limiting my social media intake and am now looking to unionize my workplace lol.
I watched that a couple of years ago and it was a definite realization of the world we live in and how it got this way. One of the most necessary documentaries that everyone should watch.
Move your social media use to places like Mastodon and get your new union members to talk there. You will find plenty of union minded people there once you start exploring the communities everywhere. Mastodon is still so new that not many company minded people go there … those same corporate people instead go to the big private social media sites instead and don’t even think that there is any alternative.
America was created by violence any change that ever occurs has occurred through conflict. You don’t ask a bully to stop
TOS s2e25 “Bread and Circuses”
One of my biggest peeves, things that end before
‘Panem et circenses’ … a phrase that’s been used, suggested, implied and actually played out for hundreds of years in society.
Also never noticed how built Bones was until I saw that jiggly bicep.
The vast majority, yes. And some are standing next to you, shaking you, dying on the streets, getting shot by murder groups called “police”.
Its like “boring dystopia” reshaped into “boring horrormovie”
The historians will not mention it like this, most likely. They will rewrite history as we have always done to fit the narrative of the current dictator.
And they will keep smearing better systems as “the real evil”.
Its like idiocracy and dont look up had hateful sex and got a disgusting supercharged dystopia baby.
You make an interesting point. If I flip it around. WWI and II both began in a mostly pre-television world. I guess you could say televison has brought safety?
Back in olden times unless you were a total nerd you could get a few radio stations and, if you’re lucky, three whole TV stations. Getting everyone to think the same thing was easy when they all got their news and culture from the same place.
Now we are extremely fragmented, with tons of niche groups. Yet we seem more influenced than ever by the news feed of current events.
I think it’s worse … much much worse.
A hundred to two hundred years ago, it was hard to control people and entertain them enmasse … the best way they knew how was through violence … yet WWI and WWII happened anyway.
Now we have a million ways to entertain and distract people but at the same time a million ways and reasons to start WWIII
Aliexpress still got em cheaper.
That’s exactly how we got here
I don’t remember this episode of Deep Space Nine…
My tiny screen convinced me this was Sisko at first
Then my indoctrination of Trek media is working.
Did you find any good dog hats?
Hopefully not like that
America is an imperialist empire and fascist are the useful idiots of empire. And the Democratic Party is a neoliberal party, which if you look at the global spectrum of conservatism versus liberalism, it is actually a right wing ideology. So it can be argued there isn’t even a left wing in America, and a lot of people are just confused about their political affiliations. We are in a time of reactionary populism. America is a right-wing country and liberals just choose to ignore our brutality overseas. And so every time there is a conflict there is a high chance that liberals will get sucked in to being a part of the military industrial complex and the imperialist aims of the imperial core since Yankees live in a vacuum… This is why they’re still confused about Ukraine. And like, if you study history, you know this like cycle repeats itself. It’s frustrating. People don’t have framework. Depending where you are on the social hierarchy, you either are comfortable and happy with your life. Or you realize how low on the totem pole you are. And it’s kind of like you live in North Korea with a mixture of Disneyland, but you forgot your wallet and you’re not allowed to leave. It’s so frustrating when liberals take up the space that’s supposed to be occupied by the left wing, and then they police us and tell us how to think. What we are experiencing is the imperial boomerang, or in the intelligence communities, they call it blowback. Yankees create terrorism. Yankees create their own problems. Not only are Yankees stupid, but that stupidity makes them terrifying. They like to frame anarchist as reactionaries, but it is really the liberals and the Christofacist that tend to be reactionary, but in their own little ways. It’s like you’re Sunni and Shia and Trump and his inner circle are… playing you like a fiddle as Rome burns. The rich just care about their status. They have no loyalty to national pride or the betterment of the world that they control. I think they plan on lowering standards and changing norms and kind of running things with a hands off approach but not letting things improve on purpose. The more you know, the angrier you get, and then eventually you get tired. Yeah, Orange Man bad and so every fucking American president ever. Every single social improvement was just the compromise of the rich. They put their nonsense on pause so they can continue with their plans and everything is going according to plan. It’s like you gotta pull yourself out of the situation. Look at it from an Eagle’s view. But it seems like eagles become vultures. “Love me, love me, I’m a liberal.” - Phil Ochs
Hands off is not a good description imo. These right populist movements are always in reaction, like clockwork, to the crises of capital and to the rising need for socialism and general socialist sentiment. Fascists basically started as violent anti communist gangs. We are just beginning im afraid. I agree the modern bourgeoisie has no nation tho. Tough situation indeed.
Picturing the cops as roman soldiers helps.
Hats for dogs or hats with dogs???
Both.
