This is applicable to Americans in the country and better answered if you actually live in it. The question stands - have you given up on America or do you really think there is a shred of a chance for a turnaround?
I think I have given up on America for it to do anything better for itself. I think the passing general election nailed the final nail in the coffin, that people who voted wrongly, wanted to worsen things in general to appease selfish personal agendas.
I think Americans in general really are set in stone about baking a cake and having it too with their interesting levels of double standards. They complain about big tech having your information, but turn around wanting you to sign a petition that asks for your information. They complain about commercials all year long, but will tune in by the millions for a Super Bowl. They complain about unfair wages, bad workplace environments and shitty bosses but didn’t make so much of a fuss during the pandemic.
There’s just too many things internally wrong with this country, that dampens what hope I ever had for it. Politicians and the “Real Owners” want to keep Americans dumb, complacent, tight and stressed to do anything. But if you give Americans a bit of leverage that could chip at those odds, they shit the fucking bed with their own incompetence.
So what gives, really? Live your life, do the best you can for yourself and those around you. Live another day but god damn fuck the majority of Americans and this country in general.
Pretty much. I don’t see how we can fix what’s wrong with this country from within the system. The US is fundamentally broken because we have lost any semblance of a shared reality. There are four distinct and incompatible realities fighting for dominance: MAGA, republicans, democrats, and leftists. All four groups believe in a different set of facts about the world we live in and let their fear and cruelty drive their actions. It’s not sustainable.
I wish there was something we could do to reunite our understanding of the world we share, but it’s too far gone now.
The sad thing is that it takes tragedies to unite a country.
When 9/11 happened, the country was united for once. Nothing mattered, two planes just destroyed 3,000 lives for everyone to see and feel. Granted, the aftermath of the matter could’ve totally been handled better in all angles. But for a while, it really felt great to feel united.
But it has been 24 years since and even that has worn off.
You can’t just depend on the villain du jour and bloodthirst for unity though. I mean, I guess you can as recent history shows, but you also cannot believe yourself and your country to be anything but a rabid dog and a danger to everyone else…
I’ve never taken down on them to begin with
Yep.
There are some lovely, smart and aware people in that huge country. It’s not homogeneous. But overall? It won’t get much better without a revolution. And that’s a huge ask. It’s possible, other countries have managed despite police repression and mass illiteracy, but it’s a long journey, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the people with the awareness and the means will just try fleeing instead.
Yeah, it would take a particularly competent, wise and self-sacrificial dude/tte or team to wrangle the masses of hateful morons, kindly direct them towards thought, morality and prosociality, and make something new out of country that was baptized in the blood of innocents (and loves taking blood baths!).
Hey, please don’t use ableist slurs. It’s easy to criticize conservatives without doing so.
Fair enough, I made the adjustments. 🙏
Thank you!
Make no mistake, this is far beyond one dude/ette. You’d need a whole (non-electoral) well-organized party to educate and agitate, and earn the support of many thousands or even millions of citizens through their actions, in order to build the necessary movement.
Again, it’s been done before and under more oppressive conditions, but it’s a tough road.
Forgive my ignorance but would you be willing to list those more opressive conditions where they were successful?
Could really use some hope right now…
Russia, China, Cuba, etc. Many such cases of successful Working Class revolutions in more dire circumstances.
Maybe I give up too easily. Let’s hope God heard ya and has some plans for the few (?, am I just too negative?) Americans that can still be saved/lay the foundations for a new society. I kinda feel they’ll need Him, lol.
Absolutely. Left America 15 years ago. The culture is glorified narcissism. The culture believes the earth is infinite. The culture believes they are the best in the world. The culture believes any criticism is self hatred and must be removed.
I left almost 10 years ago lol. It was always going to get worse before it gets better. This too shall pass.
I’m not seeing much hope in the future, so yes I’ve given up. I want to leave so goddamn bad.
No, but the country has problems. It’s always had problems. Even with all of the economic hardship and political strife we have today, most people are safer, healthier and have better prospects today than they have had in most of US history. It’s by no means perfect and we have a lot of work to do. But, giving up and checking out has never improved anything. It also doesn’t help that we have a steady drip-drip-drip of negative information fed to us by our phones and algorithms. We are also facing one of the largest Constitutional Crises in US History, with the President pushing the boundaries of his Constitutional powers. Even if nothing breaks, we are likely to see many changes from all this. Hopefully, those changes result in better guardrails on the Presidency. And maybe even a repudiation of the Roberts Supreme Court. But, such a future is hard to see when we are in the middle of the storm.
I even have hope for the slight voting majority which put Trump back in power. It’s easy to dismiss those folks as a bunch of <insert invective terms here>. And some of them almost certainly fit those descriptions. However, there are a lot of them which are just scared and confused by the FUD sandwich being fed to them by the 24-hour news cycle, social media algorithms and politicians looking for easy votes. It’s going to be hard work to pull them back off the brink. And if you’re not up to that work, I understand. It’s hard to want to put in the effort for folks who seem so far gone. I’ve spent a lot of hours arguing with folks with whom I disagree wholeheartedly. It’s tiring and I can only take so much before I decide it’s time to move on for a while. But, I would rather keep up the argument than let the country slide into full blown autocracy.
So ya, I have hope. It’s a grim hope and one which recognizes that we could lose. But, giving up now feels premature.
I even have hope for the slight voting majority which put Trump back in power. [whole paragraph]
Many of them, probably the majority of them, have core mutual interests with us at the end of the day. We are the worker class. Once you’re able to strip away culture war crap and electoralist talking points, there’s a large amount of shared ground.
There truly are some people who are too far gone, and some other people who benefit from looting the country, but if you can find shared ground and teach instead of argue, picking battles, I’d say there’s a better shot at reaching through to some of them. In fact, to prove the point through exaggeration, if you’re a decent communicator who’s able to explain technical concepts in familiar language, you can straight-up outline Marxist economic theory to them without triggering an argument. This is more a playful example than a strong example, but it gets the point across, that you can sometimes draw out some smart insights from the rubble, because many of them are oppressed by the same system and fed up at it, they’ve simply been encouraged by that mass media towards the wrong way targets or the wrong solutions. For a personal example, I’ve seen union members complaining about legitimate grievances at work and the company’s abuse of progressive language (e.g. abusing the term “diversity” as a cover to outsource jobs to unqualified cheaper foreign labor) but unfortunately haven’t learned the tactful language to properly express their critique, so one could understandably mistake it for reactionary “them chinese took er jerbs!” rhetoric, falsely accuse them of racist values and push this person further anti-left. It’s certainly important to be aware of wolfwhistles and red flags, but it’s also important to not jump to conclusions either.
Only half my life ago, but as a surly teen I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to explain why
i have given up. I mean, I had when I was a developing young adult and while I am in my mid 40’s now, it’s only embiggened my concerns. it’s taboo here on .world but I truly think the problem is the current era’s phase of capitalism’s expansion especially with the adaptation to technology in the last 50 years.
there was, truly, no time when this country was great; and I’d posit there is no time when any country is as they exist to extract and exploit.
there is no where to go.
so what I do and have done for 20 some odd years now is try to affect (effect??) change in my community. my “city” is like 14k people. I am a firefighter, first responder, and help where I can elsewhere when I see it. i vote. make my concerns known at town hall, especially against how much our PD is expanding due to “safety” horseshit. I help others vote, I mean to say help them realize they can, where to go, etc. I joke but am kind of serious too when I tell our selectmen that the reason I like supporting my small town is because we know where they live. They get the point with a chuckle and then ask for my votes.
affect (effect??)
Yeah, I think ‘affect’ is right. ‘Affect’ (verb) means ‘to change’, while an ‘effect’ (noun) is the result. Shining a light on your face will affect you by creating a blinding effect. I may be oversimplifying it but there are plenty of articles about the two often-confused words that go into more detail if you care.
i do care. thanks! always overthinking it. :)
Given up? I don’t know. I’ve been appalled pretty much non-stop since 2000, though. When we were taught history, the X’ers learned that the pendulum always swings back the other way. And when you looked back, the notion always kind of held water. But, draw a line from Nixon through Reagan, the Bushes, to Trump, and the conclusions you’ll draw are pretty grim.
There was an influential statement that was true in 1990 that was haunting, though: “The only presidential democracy with [more than 41 years] of constitutional continuity is the United States.” (I think there are around 5 others now between 40 and 70-something years old now.) Despite having a long run, this system isn’t particularly sturdy.
We’ll see, I guess.
When the US tries it’s hand at nation building, and our government diplomats, consultants, and mentors are making suggestions to nascent nations in what kind of republic framework to use, we do not suggest the same Constitutional system we have. We normally try to guide others to a variation of parliamentary systems with a weak president figurehead.
Our own government knows not to use it’s own model for other nations! It’s not that we’re exceptional, just that we’ve beaten the odds so far. We used to try to copy the US system other places, but they kept failing to executive branches that seized power. How the US held on as long as it did is a wonder. That said, it looks like our exceptional run is effectively over. The fox is in the henhouse and Congress is cheering the bloodbath.
Of course, if you’re going to use US foreign policy, you have to include things like the 1973 coup in Chile when the US overthrew a democratically elected leader to install a dictator, because the US didn’t agree with the democratic leader’s politics
Yeah, our big democracy talk is just like the pirates code from Pirates of the Caribbean: flexible, with a strong vein of selfishness.
America has been dead to me for years. It’s a crumbling empire and I have no respect for any of its leadership. I will never give up on myself or the working class, but we have far too much rabid individualism and egos to work together.
The people will weather the storm and come out the other side, albeit differently, but any semblance of government here is trash. Both parties are nothing but greed-driven parasites and everyone knows it. The new generations aren’t fooled by the same bullshit propaganda and the ruling class knows it. That’s why they’re ruling with an iron fist and the cops have zero accountability.
Cop cities going up everywhere; a military base on every continent; Israeli money weaving into everything; the Democrats are useless fucks; the Republicans are unmasked fascists. This country is in the final stages of late capitalism. I don’t want to live here and haven’t for years, but I persevere for family and friends. I’ve already told my wife if a revolution ever happens, I’m probably going to be the 65-year-old man that dies in it.
This is something my fellow Americans need to come to terms with:
If everyone gave up on a place when futures there look bleak, there wouldnt be a place left in the world worth living in.
I’m going to start with one phrase of yours that galls me: “voted wrongly”. There’s no such thing. There’s votes that you or others disagree with, but no such thing as a wrong vote. And as long as you keep going with the narrative that any vote against your preference is wrong, you’re going to make more enemies in places and times when you need allies.
As far as my own hope? I don’t know. I only know that some people who were prosperous before are suffering now, and that some who were suffering are now prospering. I’m sure it will keep going like that. So I don’t know if it’s hope, but rather comfort in the knowledge that nothing ever ends. Giving up isn’t an answer I can accept, so I have to keep going and do what I can to build a future for myself and those I love.
If the people can cast off the shackles of the two party system, there could be a tiny chance of turning this boat away from shore. But I wouldn’t count on that.
The tribalism runs deep. Perhaps Stockholm syndrome would be more accurate a description because we are most definitely not a part of the tribe of either mainstream political party. Advocating to add democracy to our voting system via electoral reform runs into a surprising amount of resistance. People cling to their preferred political party with a white knuckle grip.
Should future elections occur, the wagons will be circled, the most important election ever ™ will be declared, and any dissent will be labeled as Russian disinformation agents. People will howl for the blood of 3rd party voters and yet do nothing about the First-past-the-post voting system.
Nothing will fundamentally change unless things are to get worse somehow, then everything will change.
