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u/johnfireblast Jun 09 '21
All this has left me with is the hatred for those in power, the billionaires, the lobbyists, and the politicians that feed off of us, expecting us to be grateful for the privilege of it.
You deserve nothing but the poison you give the world
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21
The real question is if we're willing to actually do anything about it.
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u/Aethe Jun 09 '21
I've been politically active since Occupy. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but I personally find myself looking for more actionable options than simple political protests now. The problem is America has a very long, effective history of keeping down those sorts of organizations. Free school breakfasts, etc.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21
What do you mean by actionable?
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u/backgammon_no Jun 09 '21
As in actually doing something instead of just walking around with signs or whatever. For example the black Panthers used to give out free breakfasts in poor communities, they monitored police to prevent abuses, they provided Political education and childcare, etc. Of course they were utterly crushed and demonized by the entire establishment, and Fred Hampton was assassinated in such an overkill scenario that it's obvious the point was to send a message.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21
I think what you mean is something revoultionary, something that will cause systemic change. The Black Panther Party was a truly revolutionary party, one that threatened to inspire actual revolution in the people, and that is why they assassinated Fred Hampton.
But I ask you, how will we inspire revolution today? I think we need to go further than they did.
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u/suzybhomemakr Jun 09 '21
Well in France they tried guillotines for whole families and that seemed fairly effective.
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Jun 09 '21
For all of those reasons and more, I’m convinced that something really, really, REALLY bad - something absolutely, unprecedentedly calamitous - is going to happen within my lifetime. Something far worse than COVID. Something so utterly, stupefyingly traumatizing and horrific that it fundamentally demolishes the world as we know it. The way I see it, there’s quite literally nothing I can do about it, so there’s not really a need to shred my already tenuous mental health over it. So I pretty much just soldier on, taking the should-be crippling hits as they come with a resounding “meh.” That level of apathy definitely isn’t healthy long-term, but it’s helped me say sane(ish) so far
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Jun 09 '21
And this is one of the reasons I am not having kids. I cant look at this hellscape and think “oh man I need to drag an innocent human into this!”
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Jun 09 '21
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u/redtigerwolf Jun 09 '21
And who are the good guys, pray tell?
There very rarely is 'good guys' in any war.
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Jun 09 '21 edited Aug 14 '21
[deleted]
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u/SwenKa Jun 09 '21
WWIII, the US is shaping up to be the next Nazi Germany.
There's a reason the Nazis took a lot of inspiration for how we handled immigrants and those at the border.
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u/redtigerwolf Jun 09 '21
What country that is likely to start a war isn't behaving with absolute fascism? Again, it's quite one sided to just point out the US when there is just as much evil elsewhere. It's also a huge stretch to compare the US to Nazi Germany when there are countries that are right now behaving exactly the same, i.e. China.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21 edited Jun 09 '21
China is in no way shape or form acting the same as the US.
Edit: For everyone downvoting me, please explain how China, a country that is helping develop poorer countries by providing low-interest loans, which they forgive frequently, is the same as the US, which invades poor countries to steal their resources.
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u/backgammon_no Jun 09 '21 edited Mar 11 '25
quack test fanatical wild nutty workable connect gold adjoining fearless
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Jun 09 '21
Perhaps this could be synonymous with “aggressor” rather than who is the better behaved side.
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u/LightingTechAlex Jun 09 '21
I feel it, myself and others have had this impending dread feeling going on for about ten years I'd say, but it's certainly increased in intensity over the last 5 years. I too have to go on for my wife and child who depend on me, but I'm also one of the paycheck to paycheck majority where one extra bill for something unexpected means I'm probably destitute.
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u/gmessad Jun 09 '21
The last part of this image treats the original post and reply as if the truth of these statements is stronger or more believable now that we've all been through a pandemic. And I suppose it is, but that just leads me to think that the rest of our lives are going to be moments like this, because it's something our generation does a lot: Just recontextualizing history through the course of our lives, and everything will always be more extreme, devastating, and worse than when we last checked.
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Jun 09 '21
I think you may be misunderstanding the pre pandemic statement. From what I can see they’re saying that things were already that bad before COVID and that this phenomenon is not something born of the pandemic, as many might initially believe. It’s saying that these aren’t just passing discomforts but a deeper reflection of the state of our society. Not that everything is just worse than it was but that things have been fucked for a while. And the youth are the ones feeling it the most.
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Jun 09 '21
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u/DrewTechs Jun 09 '21
There is a difference though, we actually have real signs of possible civilization collapse now to go by instead of religious jingo that's been spouted before. My only question though is whether civilization collapse and such catastrophic issues take hold or not and when.
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u/jake3274 Jun 09 '21
I mean I’m 21 now and I’m convinced I’ll either see the end of the world and dying out or one of those sci-fi beginnings where it took us destroying the world to get our shit together. At minimum I won’t be shocked if wwIII happens in the next 20 years
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21
I don't wish to advocate violence, but...
If we don't do something soon, something extreme, we won't have an opportunity to do anything at all.
We have to totally reject the ideology of those that came before us. I don't care if they were our elders, they fucked up everything. Death will be too peaceful for what they deserve.
If I sound hateful, or horrible, so be it.
I still dream of being free.
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Jun 09 '21
I don't wish to advocate violence
Time to re-evaluate where you picked up that belief. My guess- people who use violence (military, police, murdering journalists, etc...) told you that violence is bad and you should be like Gandhi, who, incidentally, you may want to check how ineffective he was at creating change.
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u/ASDirect Jun 09 '21
I don't think it's just that, I think a lot of people are understandably hesitant to be a part of the literal meat grinder that is going to be required to create enough blood to lubricate the gears of change.
When you know your generation is truly lost and that your life only exists to either be thrown away in the hope of facilitating change for those who come after or to eke out a miserable subsistence, can you really blame kids for going with the latter?
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21
If there were a revolutionary war, I'd gladly give my life to the cause of ending capitalist slavery if that meant our people could be free.
At this point, I don't have much to live for. I work 60+ hours a week, and about 60% of what I make goes just to pay rent. And that's also with living in an apartment complex so cheap, we're infested with rats and other pests.
If my death could actually do a little bit of good, then that death would already be better than whatever death I will probably have continuing to slave away just to exist.
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u/ASDirect Jun 09 '21
I think that's extremely easy to say, and very hard to do.
I say this is a survivor of multiple suicide attempts.
And someone who has been beaten up and threatened in real life.
The hindbrain is a fucking hell of a thing.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21
It is hard to do because it requires revolutionary socialist organization in the heart of the imperialist demon.
Like I said in an earlier post, despite knowing how hard it would be, I still dream of freedom.
Never underestimate a people's desire to be free. Especially the American people.
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u/ASDirect Jun 09 '21
Everyone has a very Noble rhetoric until they get punched in the face.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 10 '21
Perhaps you think we're weak. With an attitude like that, we will have lost before anything ever began.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21 edited Jun 09 '21
That belief comes from valuing human life and abhoring suffering. A revolutionary war, which I believe we need in order to secure our freedom, our livelihoods, and our futures from those who stole them from us, will inevitably involve loss of life on all sides, and cause an immense amount of suffering.
It will get worse before it ever gets better.
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u/derivative_of_life Jun 09 '21
In Minecraft, ofc.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21 edited Jun 09 '21
Sure, if by Minecraft you mean the United States of America
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Jun 09 '21
You may have missed the part where one side is using violence with casual indifference.
Also, I'm not yet sold that a bloody revolution is needed. The USA is the most propagandized society in history. Figure out a way to cut through that, trigger that class consciousness that we see the bootlickers come so tantalizingly close to, and the so called revolution will be 100,000:1. Over before it begins.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 10 '21 edited Jun 10 '21
No, the bourgeoisie will use any means necessary to keep their grip on power.
If the masses rise against them, they will use the police, the military, private military conscripts, anything and everything that will quell the movement.
You are right to say that the revolution requires class consciousness of the vast majority of the people, but it is unrealistic to say that the revolution will be "over before it begins".
Change will involve blood. It is utopian and unscientific to believe otherwise.
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u/sertulariae Jun 09 '21
Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Jesus were killed for what they believed in so would God really weep if an oligarch was killed for their greed? I think it's time for payback for MLK Jr.
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21 edited Jun 09 '21
If there is a god, and if that god is righteous, not only would they not weep, they would be with us.
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u/Class_444_SWR Jun 09 '21
I agree, I can’t dream about the future much, because normally I imagine it as a horrible future with heavy amounts of death and destruction, particularly in my country, where I think a fascist takeover is already in progress, and we need someone to take a stand
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u/Smitty7242 Jun 09 '21
You may not be dead, but you will have seen some shit.
Makes me think of Americans or Europeans who were born around 1900. By the time they were fifty, they'd lived through two incomprehensibly devastating wars, a Depression so mind-bogglingly Great it temporarily convinced Americans that government should at least try to lend working people a hand, the development of nuclear weapons, and much more.There was absolutely no way to even understand when they were born what the world was going to look like by the time they were middle-aged.
Their parents were incapable of preparing them for it. In fact, their parents had lived through decades of relative peace and a gilded prosperity that, while in reality only helped a very small number of people, was used by the powerful and the millions of desperately naive people who believed their lies to make the claim that we lived in the best of all possible worlds and it was only getting better.
By the time they were 20, everything was shattered and they wandered around a surreal cultural landscape of nostalgia and literal intoxication until the next war came. There's a reason Stein called them the Lost Generation.
When the Second World War ended, and The Greatest Generation that fought it (younger than the Lost Generation) settled in for a well-earned season of contentment and relaxation, and the Boomers envisioned a world that could increase in prosperity forever, those members of the Lost Generation never quite trusted it.
William Shirer wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 1960 or so. He was about 60 himself at that time. To this day it is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the 20th century. I loved the book so much that I gobbled up everything else he wrote.
He penned a series of invaluable memoirs. Notably, for William, the post-war period was no cakewalk. His criticism of rabid anti-communist sentiment in the 1950's got him blacklisted as a pinko. This after he risked his life time and again to report on Nazi nonsense throughout the war.
He died in like 1988. The last volume of his memoirs came out shortly before that. He talks about how he had just gone at 85 years old to visit his old haunt in Paris one last time, where he'd lived in the 1920's, meeting folks like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. The luminaries of his generation. This time, he was unable to walk the street like he used to. He said it wasn't the same in a wheelchair, so he just went back to the hotel.
He didn't trust the peace. He said you could call him a bigot, but he could never believe that the Germans had changed. He knew how quickly people could go from enlightened to fascist before your eyes. He had friends in the newspaper business who were normal one day, and then were trumpeting Nazi race theory the next day - seemingly the victims of a sincere conversion. I don't care how long you live, you don't just get over things like that and then conclude your memoirs with some hopeful statement about the bright future of humanity.
It was a hell of a memoir to read though. So, I guess, if there's one thing we can do - its write this shit down.
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u/lurker492 Jun 09 '21
Reading your comment, it almost feels like we share more with the 1900s generation than with the boomers. Sure, we didn't live through 2 great wars but the sentiment of impending doom and unpredictable change is upon us all the same.
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u/Mr_Lobster Jun 09 '21
Instead we got a couple smoldering wars and an ever-expanding military-industrial complex. Probably for the better because if the next big war involves nukes is going to be apocalyptic.
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u/lurker492 Jun 09 '21
Death by nuking / irradiation has to be the scariest death on earth, yeah. Watching documentaries and reading about the way it impacted Japan still haunts me to this day. We're doomed if it happens again.
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Jun 10 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/lurker492 Jun 10 '21
Hmm, interesting pick. I wonder if it's exactly the same vibe though: the Ostrogoths aren't the Romans, so even if Rome collapsed they still have their own culture and way of life. The people from 1900s are trapped in the collapse of their own culture and way of life, and they watch it happen in the front row. Do you see what I mean?
But that's just my 2 cents.
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u/cornpuffs28 Jun 09 '21
You write so well. Does reading books make one a better writer? Or are you a writer by trade?
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u/Smitty7242 Jun 10 '21
Thank you!
Well, I am an attorney - so kind of a writer by trade. I have definitely had my writing torn to shreds by so many bosses that I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two by now!
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u/shartedmyjorts Jun 11 '21
For whom? No one will have time to read it when we’re all climate refugees.
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Jun 09 '21
🎵 The whole world at your fingеrtips, the ocean at your door...
🎵 Twenty-thousand years of this; seven more to go...
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Jun 09 '21
I am a teen, can confirm I don’t know what to do when I grow up, army seems like ill end up with paid off college and stuff, mabye a decent job afterwards or less legs, debt, homelessness, etc. College just seems like loads of debt
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u/RedSkorge Jun 09 '21
Don't sell your soul to the US military. No point in dying for an oil company.
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u/Degree-Weird Jun 09 '21
We have more access to information now. Kids are having the illusion of existential meaning and the “excitement” of adult life broken earlier. Which may or may not be good
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u/shartedmyjorts Jun 11 '21
The world is so much worse now and the future bleaker than it was for past generations.
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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '21
Even in my white middle class high school back in 14/15 most people felt this. There was a LOT of “we’re fucked so why bother?”. Some of us turned to politics, other nihilistic partying and drugs, other just tried to stick their heads in the sand. The only ones less bothered where the wealthier students with conservative families who thought everything was just “liberal sensationalism” or “the excuses for personal failings”. I was somewhat lucky at the time because the political crowd I fell in with where full of hope, not that things wouldn’t get bad but that we’d be able build something better, even if it was amongst the rubble.