How does the World view America these days?

[thefxbip]

The ruling american neo-aristocracies sure did a good job of rigging the game didnt they?

The system, the way of life and philosophy that allow their existence is extremely well protected against any change and is very well supported by propaganda and education.

Psychopaths are are efficient as hell.

Edited November 20, 2021 by thefxbip

[Rubin Farr]

4 hours ago, ignatius said:

a lot of it is a sort of ego inflation. perceived personal attacks. "this makes me look weak. the only way to eradicate that perception is to shoot this person".

there's a lack of maturity and reason, of course, in a lot of people. there's no thought on how to resolve differences or solve a problem other than making it go away. doing hard work is too inconvenient. "it's not my problem.. it's yours."

also, in some communities when 'beefs' and anger, bullying etc amongst young people could be solved by some fists people today reach for a gun. 

but there's a long history of "might makes right" and the person w/the gun is right. old west bullshit. 

Remember when we solved beefs on the dance floor

 

[auxien]

5 hours ago, Rubin Farr said:

It’s obsolete now.

people owning basic small scale guns/weapons and using them responsibly isn't obsolete, especially given how much of America is terribly rural (for your 'wild animals' comment which is just fucking absurd)...but also given how basically every other 'advanced' society allows small scale weapon ownership and usage in some respects or another. owning a gun isn't itself the issue, nor will it be changing in this country ever.

5 hours ago, thefxbip said:

USA has a violence fetish since day 1.

It's true for many countries but USA seems reluctant to even QUESTION the fact it could be the cause for many of its problems.

pretty much, yeah.

5 hours ago, ignatius said:

bullying etc amongst young people could be solved by some fists people today reach for a gun. 

yep. but it ain't just the young anymore, it's everyone....because the gun culture inundation over the last decades has normalized open carry on the person/concealed carry in vehicles at all times. these grown ass & old ass bitches are too scared to drive down the road to get groceries without a pistol in their console.

[Rubin Farr]

2 minutes ago, auxien said:

people owning basic small scale guns/weapons and using them responsibly isn't obsolete, especially given how much of America is terribly rural (for your 'wild animals' comment which is just fucking absurd)...but also given how basically every other 'advanced' society allows small scale weapon ownership and usage in some respects or another. owning a gun isn't itself the issue, nor will it be changing in this country ever.

pretty much, yeah.

yep. but it ain't just the young anymore, it's everyone....because the gun culture inundation over the last decades has normalized open carry on the person/concealed carry in vehicles at all times. these grown ass & old ass bitches are too scared to drive down the road to get groceries without a pistol in their console.

I’m saying the Amendment as written is obsolete, if we had a decent Congress, and the NRA was out of the picture, they could draft modern and responsible gun legislation, that takes into account things like automatic weapons and assault rifles. I don’t know if that would require a new Amendment, which is an almost impossible process in this age.

[auxien]

13 minutes ago, Rubin Farr said:

I’m saying the Amendment as written is obsolete

ah, yeah. it is. and yeah, Congress and the NRA etc are fucking jokes. nothing is changing any time soon, unless something happens that is somehow bigger than any events of the last decade or so of mass shootings. after Sandy Hook and Vegas tho, i shudder to try to imagine what could be any worse that would resonate with enough people to matter. 

[Rubin Farr]

Just now, auxien said:

ah, yeah. it is. and yeah, Congress and the NRA etc are fucking jokes. nothing is changing any time soon, unless something happens that is somehow bigger than any events of the last decade or so of mass shootings. after Sandy Hook and Vegas tho, i shudder to try to imagine what could be any worse that would resonate with enough people to matter. 

They’re  going after the NRA finally, but only because of their ridiculous greed. I’m sure they will reincorporate in another state, but WLP ain’t getting any younger either.

[ignatius]

1 hour ago, Rubin Farr said:

Remember when we solved beefs on the dance floor

 

 

[ambermonk]

This got me thinking about the Old West mentality a bit more. This attitude is especially prevalent among white conservative males in my city. Some of them will go full-on keyboard Duke Nukem in the local Facebook pages or subreddits, oblivious to how cringe they sound.

I'm liking this dance-off revival idea though to settle disputes. High Noon is so 1880s. Time to bring back the mutual Service.

[ignatius]

[chenGOD]

12 hours ago, ignatius said:

also, in some communities when 'beefs' and anger, bullying etc amongst young people could be solved by some fists people today reach for a gun.

 

[zlemflolia]

14 hours ago, beerwolf said:

Never understood how Americans are so passionate about their political parties, wether it be left or right, going completely happy bonkers at their rallies when they roll into town (whereas folks over this side of the pond are mainly sneering and cynical at our politicians) but then also have this massive paranoid mistrust of ‘central’ government. Which also plays in with the comments above about the obsession with guns and the right to bear arms. I’ve seen plenty of documentaries with American folk saying they need guns to defend themselves just in case government come after them. Maybe I’m missing something, but it all seems odd to me. 

it is odd but it's also not.  the american political parties are simply two wings of a single central party, the democratic-republican party.  america is a one-party dictatorship under the hands of the owning class, with republicans representing raw unbridled capitalist exploitation of everything from people to the environment, and religious cruelty against minorities and poor people, whereas the democrats represent the facade of civility and reeling in capitalism for its own good for longterm imperial geopolitical stability. 

the tribalism of party politics is strong in direct proportion to the lack of actual political power in the hands of the people. the only solution is socialism and communism, nothing else will help develop the consciousness of the people than the journey to achieve it

[zlemflolia]

ironically the ones who want guns the most are the ones most likely to be wanting to use those guns not to protect themselves from the government, but to form fascist militias and defend corporate private properties.  BLM represents the most concentrated form of grassroots power directed against concentrated power of capitalist entities, and right wing gun nuts all universally oppose BLM and instead stand with the state and private property.  this inversion of the theoretical spirit of even the American revolution itself is merely an indicator of the deep, omnipresent hegemony of the ruling class ideology of capitalism

Edited November 21, 2021 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[ignatius]

this is a really good podcast about portland, anarchists, unsolved murder, cops, radicalization, ACAB, proudboys etc. pretty clear why  a lot of people hate cops in portland. it focuses on the murder of Sean Kealiher

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fault-line-dying-for-a-fight/id1531812209?i=1000534903104

[ignatius]

[zlemflolia]

48 minutes ago, ignatius said:

they charge fucking boomers the price of a hamburger, they charge us enough to enslave us to those same boomers through what is basically indentured servitude

guilotine.jgp

[prdctvsm]

2 hours ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

guilotine.jgp

[usagi]

I don't see how cancelling student debt as a one-off event at this point in time is going to solve anything, no matter how much redditors and pandering politicians keep talking about it. in the end someone is going to be left holding that bag of shit, probably ordinary taxpayers, and nothing will change. reform the education sector, reduce fees, lower the barriers to higher education for everyone by all means. but this idea of giving the current crop of debt-burdened students/ex-students a pass while doing nothing to solve the bigger problem seems stupid and shortsighted to me. and what about international students who universities bleed dry in order to keep their revenue and their profile up? is everyone going to be able to swallow the "ew foreigners getting a free ride" pill to make the this pet cause fair or is it just going to be a free ride for some and not others?

[ignatius]

10 minutes ago, usagi said:

I don't see how cancelling student debt as a one-off event at this point in time is going to solve anything, no matter how much redditors and pandering politicians keep talking about it. in the end someone is going to be left holding that bag of shit, probably ordinary taxpayers, and nothing will change. reform the education sector, reduce fees, lower the barriers to higher education for everyone by all means. but this idea of giving the current crop of debt-burdened students/ex-students a pass while doing nothing to solve the bigger problem seems stupid and shortsighted to me. and what about international students who universities bleed dry in order to keep their revenue and their profile up? is everyone going to be able to swallow the "ew foreigners getting a free ride" pill to make the this pet cause fair or is it just going to be a free ride for some and not others?

it's the federal loans that would be forgiven. it's really not that much $$ in the scope of things.  but, what it would do is give a generation of people room to breath and ability to save money for larger life purchases like down payments on houses or whatever the fuck.. or just be able to afford to live in a 1 bedroom apartment instead of having 7 roommates in a house in the shitty part of town. 

imagine a young married couple who wants to have a kid but can't because they each have $80k in student loans. 

all the complaints from media boomer talking head shits about "millenials are breaking society/millenials aren't having kids/ millenials/milenialsnskanslkndfld etc.. is because wages are down, they carry a shit ton of debt as a generation and can't afford to do shit.

this is a new thing for american students. forgiving debt is not uncommon. doing it now with additional reforms like 2 years of free community college or reduced cost to state universities or whatever makes sense.. can change society in the same way the child tax credit helps people make it from month to month a lot easier w/o worrying about being made homeless after their car breaks down or having to eat one fewer meal a day in order to pay for medical care etc. 

they're trying to make the child tax credit permanent but it's an uphill battle. it started a while back w/one of the pandemic relief bills that went through and it's genuinely life changing for many families who are stressed to the eyeballs with financial worry and piecing their lives together paycheck to paycheck. 

so, forgiving student debt is a big injection into the economy in a thousand different ways. 

edit: also, regarding federal loans and foreigners.. i don't know the fine print but i'm sure there's a lot of it when it comes to foreigners. shit, even going to a college in another state comes w/a big out of state additional cost per college credit. i'm sure a chinese student who gets into an american university can't get federal loans unless they're planning to remain in the US or something.. idk.. i'm guessing they get loans or grants in their own country. 

Edited November 22, 2021 by ignatius

[zlemflolia]

13 minutes ago, usagi said:

I don't see how cancelling student debt as a one-off event at this point in time is going to solve anything, no matter how much redditors and pandering politicians keep talking about it. in the end someone is going to be left holding that bag of shit, probably ordinary taxpayers, and nothing will change. reform the education sector, reduce fees, lower the barriers to higher education for everyone by all means. but this idea of giving the current crop of debt-burdened students/ex-students a pass while doing nothing to solve the bigger problem seems stupid and shortsighted to me. and what about international students who universities bleed dry in order to keep their revenue and their profile up? is everyone going to be able to swallow the "ew foreigners getting a free ride" pill to make the this pet cause fair or is it just going to be a free ride for some and not others?

taxpayers "holding the bag" of government debt is a right wing talking point.  money isn't real

[usagi]

7 minutes ago, ignatius said:

it's the federal loans that would be forgiven. it's really not that much $$ in the scope of things.  but, what it would do is give a generation of people room to breath and ability to save money for larger life purchases like down payments on houses or whatever the fuck.. or just be able to afford to live in a 1 bedroom apartment instead of having 7 roommates in a house in the shitty part of town. 

imagine a young married couple who wants to have a kid but can't because they each have $80k in student loans. 

all the complaints from media boomer talking head shits about "millenials are breaking society/millenials aren't having kids/ millenials/milenialsnskanslkndfld etc.. is because wages are down, they carry a shit ton of debt as a generation and can't afford to do shit.

this is a new thing for american students. forgiving debt is not uncommon. doing it now with additional reforms like 2 years of free community college or reduced cost to state universities or whatever makes sense.. can change society in the same way the child tax credit helps people make it from month to month a lot easier w/o worrying about being made homeless after their car breaks down or having to eat one fewer meal a day in order to pay for medical care etc. 

they're trying to make the child tax credit permanent but it's an uphill battle. it started a while back w/one of the pandemic relief bills that went through and it's genuinely life changing for many families who are stressed to the eyeballs with financial worry and piecing their lives together paycheck to paycheck. 

so, forgiving student debt is a big injection into the economy in a thousand different ways. 

edit: also, regarding federal loans and foreigners.. i don't know the fine print but i'm sure there's a lot of it when it comes to foreigners. shit, even going to a college in another state comes w/a big out of state additional cost per college credit. i'm sure a chinese student who gets into an american university can't get federal loans unless they're planning to remain in the US or something.. idk.. i'm guessing they get loans or grants in their own country. 

this all sounds fine in isolation and I am in favour of reducing debt burden in a sensible way to allow people to live, particularly if the size of the debt is inflated/overvalued (in which case at least partial cancellation/reduction makes sense) and the education that has resulted from it hasn't helped put the person on a better footing (i.e. employment opportunities are still shit). but it doesn't sound sustainable in the long term to me. what about the next crop of students? are the sorts of measures being proposed here something that should just be repeated ad infinitum instead of fixing the actual root problem? and what's the point if wages are going to be stuck where they are for the foreseeable future? it doesn't make sense to throw energy behind this while not moving forward on wage increases and better employment opportunities.

at the very least there should be a clearer game plan around how cancelling student debt will result in a reinjection into the economy and more long term growth, in concrete not theoretical terms. so some sort of actual system for putting people's debts on hold for the time being while they're able to get into a better position, then repaying those debts more comfortably down the road - this would be a lot more sensible to people on the fence and win a lot more support than just dumb redditors jumping on a bandwagon.

[usagi]

32 minutes ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:

taxpayers "holding the bag" of government debt is a right wing talking point.  money isn't real

so you should have no problem paying for rent or groceries then. use your partial multisig timelocked revokable cold storage smart contract mechanism to fart out some fake money, what do you need debt cancellation for?

[zlemflolia]

1 hour ago, usagi said:

this all sounds fine in isolation and I am in favour of reducing debt burden in a sensible way to allow people to live, particularly if the size of the debt is inflated/overvalued (in which case at least partial cancellation/reduction makes sense) and the education that has resulted from it hasn't helped put the person on a better footing (i.e. employment opportunities are still shit). but it doesn't sound sustainable in the long term to me. what about the next crop of students? are the sorts of measures being proposed here something that should just be repeated ad infinitum instead of fixing the actual root problem? and what's the point if wages are going to be stuck where they are for the foreseeable future? it doesn't make sense to throw energy behind this while not moving forward on wage increases and better employment opportunities.

at the very least there should be a clearer game plan around how cancelling student debt will result in a reinjection into the economy and more long term growth, in concrete not theoretical terms. so some sort of actual system for putting people's debts on hold for the time being while they're able to get into a better position, then repaying those debts more comfortably down the road - this would be a lot more sensible to people on the fence and win a lot more support than just dumb redditors jumping on a bandwagon.

the root of the problem is that education is not free, yes, remove all costs.  not hard

[joshuatxuk]

On 11/20/2021 at 4:01 PM, ambermonke said:

This got me thinking about the Old West mentality a bit more. This attitude is especially prevalent among white conservative males in my city. Some of them will go full-on keyboard Duke Nukem in the local Facebook pages or subreddits, oblivious to how cringe they sound.

I'm liking this dance-off revival idea though to settle disputes. High Noon is so 1880s. Time to bring back the mutual Service.

It's incredible how much the mythos of the Wild West permeates when the reality of history is far different. This can be said of right-wing gun culture's deluded, childish yet very dangerous world views and rhetoric. 

Some of the first municipalities to ban guns were Wild West settlements. Wyatt Erp literally enforced a law that all citizens turn in deadly weapons when entering the town, the opposite of "open carry." 

https://chipschweiger.medium.com/history-of-the-american-west-the-reality-of-guns-and-the-wild-west-151af6e0a055

Marx's views on gun ownership are more blunt than the 2A. https://www.factcheck.org/2019/09/marx-engels-quote-falsely-attributed-to-reagan/ Obviously vanguard communist party states (USSR, CCP, Vietnam, Cuba, etc) don't have U.S. style firearm rights and distribution but they all have a well-established marksmanship culture coupled with conscription. China has steered away from it but to this day Vietnamese students learn how to field strip and operate AKs. 

Reagan spearheaded gun control in the 1970s explicitly to de-arm Black Panthers. Both major gun control laws after the NFA in the 1930s and NRA endorsed regulations in the 1960s were under Reagan and Bush in 1986 and 1989. In fact Clinton's Assault Weapons ban was a bi-partisan follow up. The irony of the gun debate in the US is a lot of gun control was implemented before mass shootings became increasingly deadly and frequent. The problem is the US keeps defunding and undermining public health and resources and what little gun control it has implemented has done very little, especially for white males who are the main demographic of both mass shooter and right-wing militia gun and ammo hoarding. This also falls very much on urban vs. rural lines which is exploited by the GOP a lot unfairly, but something I think many don't consider is guns used to be a household fixture as a tool and basic self-defense option, especially pre-war and pre-suburbs America. It was more universal aspect of American life before the increasingly divided ID politics of the last 50-100 years made them so understandably controversial. 

[ignatius]

11 hours ago, usagi said:

this all sounds fine in isolation and I am in favour of reducing debt burden in a sensible way to allow people to live, particularly if the size of the debt is inflated/overvalued (in which case at least partial cancellation/reduction makes sense) and the education that has resulted from it hasn't helped put the person on a better footing (i.e. employment opportunities are still shit). but it doesn't sound sustainable in the long term to me. what about the next crop of students? are the sorts of measures being proposed here something that should just be repeated ad infinitum instead of fixing the actual root problem? and what's the point if wages are going to be stuck where they are for the foreseeable future? it doesn't make sense to throw energy behind this while not moving forward on wage increases and better employment opportunities.

at the very least there should be a clearer game plan around how cancelling student debt will result in a reinjection into the economy and more long term growth, in concrete not theoretical terms. so some sort of actual system for putting people's debts on hold for the time being while they're able to get into a better position, then repaying those debts more comfortably down the road - this would be a lot more sensible to people on the fence and win a lot more support than just dumb redditors jumping on a bandwagon.

debt relief is one step in fixing the problem. there are more steps to follow but it has to start somewhere. people are trying to move forward on wage increases and improvement in employment opportunities. but debt relief is a huge component. but it'll take years to implement real change or reform in the university system etc. people should understand that and not get hung up on the idea of debt relief on its own. 

[joshuatxuk]

On 11/20/2021 at 8:16 AM, auxien said:

this paragraph feels terribly contradictory. it definitely is a gun culture issue, as you make clear after the first sentence: America in the 21st century is a gun culture, where the laws and social norms all perpetuate the sins of the last decades, allowing for not just plain old hunting rifles/pistols/etc. 17 year old Rittenhouse wouldn't have been walking around with an AR-15 on him at that protest looking for trouble without the gun culture of America he grew up in. it is also definitely normalized vigilantism, no doubt. but vigilantes without the gun focused worshipping of the NRA and AR-15s and fucking militia culture and media etc would be a totally different threat. 

you're 100% right that the cat is out of the bag, but that doesn't mean you should keep feeding that cat more and more rats outside so he gets bigger and bigger and still nips and fights. get that fucker neutered and teach him that living inside ain't half bad and actually pretty chill most of the time, give him some nice pâtė and some nice toys. federally gut the ability to produce and obtain weapons of mass destruction by the hands of old lonely uncle Jimmy that lives in that trailer out of the way, and incentivize programs to buy them back at high prices so when he's retired and wants to buy a year's worth of beer he sells them back to the gov who can destroy them. it may take a few decades but it's a start, and the time will allow for the fetishization to slowly drop off as the generations tumble slowly into the future.

I don't disagree with your logic or concerns but unfortunately gun buybacks and regulation just doesn't work because the people who it's intended to de-arm and regulate 100% refuse to participate. When they go in the U.S. it's literally a shitshow of people cashing in on crap they inherited or would not be able to sell for as much on the used marker. It's not akin to the buybacks in Australia that worked and I think part of that is because there's a massive, massive difference in the state of both countries systematically. 

I tout the consideration of people who are gun wary to arm up anyway as a pragmatic worst case scenario recommendation not some absurd "starting an arms war with the far right nutters will help" - it's more of a plea that things are looking so dire and dangerous for maligned and vulnerable communities that the last thing they need to do is make it harder for them to acquire means of adequate self-defense. Gun free zones and heavy anti-gun regulation generally works and is considered reasonable in liberal leaning (if not outright liberal/progressive) cities and states. They are bubbles essentially for many there and it's hard to justify gun ownership especially as crime is far lower than it was in the 70s and 80s. But even NY and CA have very, very far-right pockets. In liberal states in the PNW it's def one extreme or the other.

Gun control in America has been historically racist, classist, and indirectly directly oriented toward de-arming people rich powerful and historically white Americans wish to oppress and control. If civil unrest escalates to the point of civil war / government failure the people in the most danger are going to be the ones in rural areas or even suburbs where they will be surrounded by gun owning extremists with local allies in the forms of corrupt sheriffs and cops. Owning a gun would very easily be necessary for them to defend homes and properties and/or escape to safer areas. MLK notably carried a gun until he explicitly decided personally he would be a pacifist, and felt that would be more powerful for his cause. It was a personal decision, not an outright position he believed in as many of his peers attested to gun ownership as a precaution and historical asset in the decades before.

I would point to the fact that countries with far less gun violence don't just have fewer guns and stricter laws but far, far more stable governments and robust healthcare, public services, public infrastructure, higher standard of living, etc. Those metrics the U.S. is often so behind or woefully lacking go hand in hand with the incidence of gun violence here - not just mass shootings but suicides and financial stress induced robberies and murders. Those things being improved in this country would mitigate it greatly, it's essentially really.

The irony of the US gun control issue is people would not need guns if they had a safe and providing society in place. That won't happen until we can get and keep progressives in office. The call for aggressive gun control is understandable but it's putting the cart before the horse and to be very specific it very well might cost more Dem efforts to flip seats in the next election. There are a lot of otherwise apolitical or even liberal people who get sucked into the GOP vote via guns. Abortion is the other, but honestly that one just maintains religious right votes. To truly go after guns in a substantive manner would prompt the kind of civil war right-wingers dream about. Dems could very well score better with working class voters if they lay off gun control for the next few cycles. Bernie Sanders literally did not touch it for decades in order to safely ensure his reelections there. It's a seemingly contradictory and tough pill to swallow but I feel like it's a necessary one.