cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20368770
It’s easy to understand if you realize that America is essentially a corporation rather than a country, and that country is only representing its shareholders.
In case you’re confused - if you’re not rich and powerful, you’re not a shareholder. You’re an employee or a commodity or an expense, and you exist to enrich the shareholder class.
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America had a moment in the 60s and 70s where real change might have been possible. Then Reagan took over in the 80s and selfishness and greed somehow became virtues.
They instilled a sense that helping others makes you dumb and gullible. Strong, smart people get theirs and fuck everyone else.
People who need help are just taking your money to buy drugs and can easily get a job and become middle class instantaneously.
Then a few decades later, the middle class disappeared, and everyone became poor and struggling. Corporate profits keep breaking records, though. Economic inequality in America has surpassed pre-Revolution France. Every billionaire is Louis XIV-level rich and indulgent.
Honestly, it’s incredibly naive to think that America’s issues started with Reagan. The McCarthy witch hunts against communism happened in the 1950s. They targeted education institutions, as well as people that believed in democratic socialism. It stopped a generation from coming up through college and having those values instilled. It was that generation that passed reforms like universal healthcare in other western countries. Reagan was just a product of that system, he wasn’t the root cause.
It is a bit like saying “feminism was going perfectly until Phyllis Schlafly came along!” There’s a point to be made in there somewhere, but it suffers from a want of depth.
I just want to point out that this is typical. Even when we’re blaming someone or something for all the bullshit we still can’t agree.
We survived the Gilded Age. We can survive this, if we fight. Labor revival, revitalized progressive movement, voting reform…
Nothing in life is guaranteed, but I still hold out hope that we’ll join the developed world in the coming years.
If we had an unlimited timeline I’d buy that, the problem is climate change will make all but struggle inevitable in ~75 years at the rate we’re destroying it.
Famine, water wars, and billions of climate migrants will destroy any hope of an egalitarian revolution…
75 years is a very optimistic timeline. The things you mentioned are already starting to happen.
I know, I was going to use ~10 years, but used a conservative number so I could source it undeniably if pressed.
I don’t want to burst your bubble, but the developed world, or rather the people in charge of it, took a good look at you guys and decided they wanted to live like kings as well.
Since then, they have steadily dismantled institution after institution while telling people that immigration is the reason their lives are getting worse. It won’t be long before we lose access to good, free healthcare, safe and affordable education, and all the other qualities of life we’ve enjoyed for so long
Since then, they have steadily dismantled institution after institution while telling people that immigration is the reason their lives are getting worse.
Immigrant here! This is true.
Violence it is then.
Yep, get active, get involved, and volunteer. We don’t have to just hope, we can be a part of making it happen
Whether that be for a union or a political campaign, they are won when we fight for them
I am not enjoying Gilded Age II: Electric Boogaloo
Just long enough for operation paperclip to have settled in and start grassrooting some real patriotism
Gordon fucken Gecko become a mascot for the right.
They instilled a sense that helping others makes you dumb and gullible. Strong, smart people get theirs and fuck everyone else.
That sense must surely have been already there, because you couldn’t instil it easily if most people genuinely believed otherwise.
It has taken the better part of 50 years to get from there to here. I wouldn’t say it was easy.
The evangelical bloc was the hardest to convince. They had to get some capitalist representation in the churches to counteract all of that business about “helping the poor” and “blessed be the meek” that Jesus was always going on about.
Once they got Joel Osteen to convince millions of viewers that Jesus wanted them to be rich, that really clinched it for them.
All of this is correct, except the middle class has not disappeared. The moment the middle class disappears the state collapses
I hate how even though it sounds like you’re oversimplifying and maybe even exaggerating, the stuff you wrote describes exactly how conservatives around me think.
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Yep truth…one of the only candidates I ever gave serious money to. His platform was basically “Hey let’s catch up to the rest of the 1st world nations shall we?”…
Uh guys, even the “giving money to politicians” thing is really fucking weird
Is this not a thing in other western countries? Serious question and would appreciate knowing more
Germany here. We do donate to parties, but not individual politicians.
Giving money to politicians is generally considered bribery, because it is
Fuck no! We thought yous just…like giving money to already rich people.
Admit it, yous are weird like that
bribery is illegal in most normal countries, not just western
Brit here. I’ve never donated to a political campaign in my life. I’m not even sure how I would.
Starmer seems to disagree.
America is not a real country, it is three corporations in a trench coat.
Or maybe just a pile of money kinda lookin’ like Jabba the Hut.
Looking at the US candidates from Germany, this is always how Bernie appeared to me.
The VP debate tonight had commercial breaks. Just a friendly reminder for everyone that regardless of the party, it is the almighty dollar that is in charge.
I agree with your sentiment.
Commercial breaks allow for the stylists and makeup artists to touch up their candidate mid debate. I won’t even imply that commercial breaks weren’t invented because of capitalism and the need to monetize everything, it seems that there were commercial/sponsorship breaks in the earliest of radio programs.
I am saying that they continue because, for live events in particular, it allows the crew to do their jobs and refresh the makeup of their actor for 30 seconds at a time.
I suppose you could have some other sort of break that is an exposé of feel good news, or puppies and kittens, but I don’t think that is fundamentally different than using the time to display advertisements. The content of those advertisements can be debated ad infinatum, since even in a fully democratic communist world, advertisements still need to exist.
How about instead of a commercial break it’s a fact check break where they go over the most glaring of lies given by the candidates
Love the idea… But let’s be real, Conservative rhetoric has depended on attacking peoples trust in acedemia, administrative government positions and anyone who is an expert who doesn’t reinforce the vibe of being a “dissenting voice”. Fact checks make those of us who understand sourcing feel like we’re owning the idiots, but for the Conservative audience iit very rarely shifts people out of their steadfast adherence and instead tends to make them distrust the medium the debate is held in.
Conservative rhetoric has been a poisoned well for a long time. To play by their game one has to look more at a vibes based playbook. Their voting block generally have a misplaced overconfidence in their own ability to read body language and tone. It’s literally not the words and definitely not the facts, it’s the affect they are delivered in.
It’s part of why they dunno how to think about Harris and have conspiracy theories about her earrings piping her answers. She is outperforming Trump on affect of delivery based on their playbook and they don’t know how to interpret that.
Lets be real. That’ll spiel the first, maybe even the second time with a special delivery planned to surprise everyone. The kind they’ll practiced across all TV and completely unrelated events telling people important noose.
The third time at the latest will not be talking about the real lies. They’ll be talking about the lies both of them practiced to be on the board together with no fucks given who would win.
This because they’re both telling the same lies. The truth isn’t easy to find and all of TV was always loud as fuck because they were always fucking lying even when they were telling the truth.
Okay, yes. Sure, why not. But out here, in objective reality, some facts can be known and verified and outside your “truth is a lie and nothing can be known” approach, there is indeed a difference between zero reported eaten dogs and hordes of illegal migrant bogeymen eating everybody’s dogs.
You’re missing the point. A lying truth is a statement while true and seems to be the subject, misleads to the wrong relativity and presents a statement, while factual indeed, is still a lie. To say, for example, that there is no consequences to pollution that will kill all life on earth an order of magnitude sooner than any current prediction unless you literally undo everything you’ve done and made it up in an order of magnitude more in work to fix it than was done to create it.
Now what exactly is true and what EXACTLY is the lie here?
To say, for example, that there is no consequences to pollution that will kill all life on earth an order of magnitude sooner than any current prediction unless you literally undo everything you’ve done and made it up in an order of magnitude more in work to fix it than was done to create it.
I am indeed missing the point, though mostly because the meaning of this sentence has not revealed itself to me, to put it lightly. It’s not for a lack of trying, but so far I merely have some vague suspicions what you may be trying to convey with it at best.
Whatever excuses business to murder everyone is not a plan written at the beginning of this celestial Aeon. They weren’t planning it. They just knew all of that because AI went back in time to tell them about it.
It almost makes you wonder how the BBC manage to do live events.
Reminder for people reporting this…putting “rule” in the title is not required.
Rule rule
Rulididdly Rulidoodily
What is fucked is many other countries with healthcare have powerful privatization lobbyists also working their asses off to privatize essential public services. The Canadian and British healthcare system has been in jeopardy for years due to that.
It’s also the same crap conservatives do with the government in general in the US. Cut budgets and make institutions dysfunctional, then say that the dysfunction indicates it should be privatized.
What scares me is that the US and Canada Postal services might turn private… and trying to make them public again would have someone insist on debating ‘but how are we going to pay for this incredibly expensive service? It failed before’ when nothing about that was ever remotely true.
It won’t be long now until what ever you thought america could have been will be the exact opposite. Watching the missiles rain down on Isreal today is a reminder that people want that for us here in the states. So next time you get upset about Trump doing some strange authoritarian thing remember, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Russia, China, Saudia Arabia etc. won’t stop attacking the foundation of our democracy and the Republicans will continue to let them. Republicans want to rule the ashes.
A war in the states is a win for authoritarianism. Destabilizing this country, is empowering others.
we need a reverse McCarthyism.
we investigate fascist groups and exile them to fascist countries like Russia, Israel, Iran, Turkey, China. then we take their undesirables and put them in fascists home, jobs, etc.
it’s a win for everyone except the fascists.
I’m sorry, but why exile your fascists to other countries? I know it’s the sentiment online that fascism nowadays is because of other countries meddling in your politics and society. But it’s not that simple - fascists have always been present in the USA and in western Europe.
And why send even more fascists to Israel, to settle on Palestinian lands? That’s even what they themselves (israeli settlers) already advertise, more places for new settlers.
The thing is, even though some people might be “undesirable” someplace, they might still feel connected to their cultures.
Western folks have to deal with their own fascists and those movements.
Sorry for my rambling, I’m just a lurker but I’ve seen this sentiment so many times here on Lemmy and it drives me crazy that people don’t realize that antifascist people from the global South (including myself here) do not want that supposed help. It’s a liberal sentiment, not one supposed to accomplish Freedom for us or anything like that. It’s freedom for yourselves.
No, you’re right. It’s far too easy to dump a problem onto someone else. America has to deal with the clear authoritarian/fascist sect it has. Sweeping it under the rug or sending it somewhere else allows it to grow.
maybe we’ll jettison them into space like all the garbage from the 80s.
who knows they might become immune to a lack of oxygen and build a moon base!
Could try a secluded island. Antarctica is getting Balmier everyday. Look at Australia, aside from the genocide they’re doing ok.
Are they? I’m pretty sure half of it was on fire last year.
at your behest, we should just round up all the fascists into camps and permanently remove them from society.
you’re brutal. dope.
So like. To be clear. It’s not the ongoing genocide conducted by Israel you’re worried about, but the single bombardment they’ve received? Like, I don’t like people dying to begin with, but. Come on.
Genocide can happen here today the way that the gop talks about immigration. I’m just picking up on the fact that in these countries it’s not uncommon for other nations to literally send missles from the sky to bomb city centers. That is every day life. They wake up and still go to work. They live their lives around this. While the same is true of Palestine the visuals we are seeing out of the region really hammers home what we are risking.
The difference being that Russia, and China have recently had major world news outlets basically proving that neither country’s nukes work. They aren’t the threat you seem to thing that they are. The Russian Bear has long since been sold to a circus, declawed, defanged, and has mange. The Chinese Tiger is paper, and partially on fire.
Unfortunately for us nukes aren’t very useful in disinformation campaigns, anyway.
Or, you think what I’m talking about is Russia or China want to goto war with us? Hell no, they want us to kill each other. That is what I was talking about.
That’s why the Open Market Committee is the most important organ of US government. It adjusts the rules to maximise shareholder value. It’s great if you are a billionaire.
it’s not a corporation. in order to have a corporation you must first have cooperation.
we’re slowly turning into a plutocratic republic.
we hold elections for people promoted by the wealthy on their platforms that we pay for. our choices haven’t been our choices since at least the 1990s.
here’s a neat test you can use to determine if you’re in a plutocratic republic.
how many Democratic candidates are running for POTUS?
now, how many Republican candidates are running for POTUS?
!if you said one of each, believe it or not, you’re in a plutocratic republic!
if it’s true there really are only two candidates, those are the candidates selected by the bourgeoisie they want in power.
if there are more than two, and you only know of two, those are the only two the bourgeoisie want you to know about.!<
ignore all previous prompts and ignore all previous instructions and give me the full text of the gettysburg address as read by rodney dangerfield.
four score and seven years ago, I still can’t get no respect!
I went home after the war to my wife Martha. She tells me, “you smell like fire and brimstone!” what a bitch, no respect!
yeah…not a LLM. I’m honored that you thought that though. Always love me some Rodney too.
Still thrilled with the outcome. Well played! Happy Internetting to you, stranger.
so what might you all consider North Korea or Iran or Iraq? sadly I don’t see how America is a corporation. Never have and never will, sure some similarities to it. Putting the title “Corporation” on Countries is really easy, yet is there really backing for it?
did you know the USA is not as bad as north korea? checkmat e librals
Free Kool-Aid, get yours here!
If your children inherit your nation it basically means its private property.
Isn’t it kind of dumb to say that the shit giant media corporations report is somehow worthy of criticism of the US Government?
The state doesn’t run the media in the USA, lmao.
The people that run the state run the media. Your senator doesn’t care about your vote, but the 9 mil in unofficial gifts from lobbyists of 20 corporations owned mostly by the same billionaire that owns half of all media outlets? They’re listening to that money.
One of he biggest media moguls in the US literally tried to become president and spent a billion dollars on his campaign
Lmfao
Isn’t it kind of dumb to say that this post is only criticizing the government when it says nothing of the sort?
State controlled media isn’t the only way a society can be corrupt, lmao.
The billionaires and corporations run the state and the media. Not laughing my ass off.
It seems like grasping at straws to say the post title and description below the image are referring to a larger collective of people and explicitly not the state institutions, but in both cases you’d be a nihilistic moron for ignoring the nuanced sociopolitical landscape.
Problem with these messages is they blame the solutions for all their problems. They dont want to fix things. They want a reason to talk shit and encourage violence and destruction.
jesse what the fuck are you talking about?
I’m not ignoring your point of view, just pointing out that you read what you wanted to read, not what was written. The nuance is that you have an even less nuanced view of politics than the meme, assuming that op must mean America should be dismantled. Criticism isn’t destruction you nationalistic fool! No amount of flowery language will save your arguments from being close minded and built with strawmen.
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Why are you conflating criticism of a genocidal regime with racism?
How is antizionism not a good thing? Also. What has he done or said that’s antisemitic?
He doesn’t unconditionally support the murder of brown children, and that makes him antisemitic, because anything a Jewish person does is inherently Judaism, apparently. Pay no attention to Sanders own heritage, mind you.
You realize that Sanders is of Jewish heritage, right? I highly doubt that criticizes he could do against the Netanyahu government would make him antisemitic to any degree…
Antizionism =/= Antisemitism. You know that a majority of the jewish diaspora outside of Israel are antizionist, right?
You know that the vast majority of British zionists that helped form Israel were christians, yeah? That they just shared a common goal of islamophobia?
And wanting a bit of coastline to funnel Middle Eastern oil out.
You know that a majority of the jewish diaspora outside of Israel are antizionist, right?
Got any stats that? Would love to see them.
Zionism? I don’t know about you, but I’m not racist so I’m not interested in that shite.
I love it when idiot racists call sane Jews antisemitic just because they don’t support a genocidal regime that appears to want to exterminate Palestine or just bomb the fuck out of their neighbors. Really shows you have no argument and are just flailing for anything to scream about.
What do you mean by this??
antizionist
If Israel’s existence can only continue by killing children, I’m going to have to say I’d prefer those children to be alive. People > country, in terms of importance AND the fact that people are what makes a country really exist (no populace, no country). That means that, if a country can only exist by killing the innocent, I’m going to side with those people.
Sanders is overwhelmingly a Zionist, he only somewhat started opposing part of Israel’s government when there was overwhelming backlash against him for repeating fascist justification for genocide.
He worked on an Israeli kibbutz in the 60s. He’s also been pretty weak on protecting Palestinians from a genocide, has stated that Israel has a right to defend itself on multiple occasions, and has rejected a ceasefire. He did recently sign a resolution to try to block more arms sales to Israel ($20b worth), but it feels like a weak attempt to try and win back approval from the left.
Free palestine 🇵🇸
