YonderEpochs @ Benjaben @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Well, I don't really mean this as a positive per se, but it's entirely possible the incoming administration tosses a few crumbs to keep things just simmering (while of course further dismantling everything of any real value). That's been the playbook for the power brokers for some time. I didn't mean there was some possibility there'd be any actual good. The incoming folks are essentially the most predatory version of that class of people, I'm under no illusions.

Edit to add: I tentatively reject the idea that your country is not far behind, respectfully. That's my point. I am fairly sure the differences are bigger than you realize.

It's been real popular to knock Americans around these parts for a while, I've noticed, and we certainly earn our share of it. But I get the sense Europeans don't quite understand how bad things have gotten here and how truly cornered and out of options many of us feel. Folks are being squeezed past their breaking point.

Impossible to guess exactly when that'll be true for enough people to cause something dramatic, but any populace has its limit and we seem to be approaching it. I really hope we start heading the other direction soon, but this incoming administration does not make that look likely.

Thompson managed kind of a spinning...well fall, as he fell, does The Adjustor get to incorporate that now?!

I bet that guy is finding sleep elusive.

Hear, hear! There's nothing* holding the worst back any more, they've practically rubbed our fucking faces in it by now. Culminating in the Supreme Court ruling in favor of literal immunity for any presidential action? For real? How is anyone supposed to read that?

Look there's been a goddamn parade of degradations over the years, but boy. The weird inhuman parasite class sure couldn't help but take it too far, could they? Couldn't even just sacrifice one of their own to keep some plausible deniability on normalcy? Well, of course not, they wouldn't be what they are otherwise, I guess.

Well. Not nothing...

A critically important piece of our history, yes! The notion of gun control practically at all in this country actually came about because black people organized. Not only did the Black Panthers openly carry while carefully witnessing / observing law enforcement in their community, they also ran many aid programs and focused on the need for education and self-reliance.

And that had to be stopped, and it was.

Sure thing! It was certainly eye opening, I'd stop short of calling it a page-turner myself, but I think it's important to give myself a better education about our history than our classrooms were able to.

Also, as a sometimes-neurotic reader, in case this is useful - nonfiction especially you can just choose which bits to read if that makes a difference for ya. It's got a flow and a narrative of course, so you'll lose a bit that way, but I've had struggles with other nonfiction books and needed to just try to get to the meat and forgive myself for that, lol. Turns out it's totally allowed, no one even says anything!

I strongly recommend a book called The Sword and The Shield, about the dual roles Malcom X and King played in the civil rights era. King very well understood the need for a credible threat of violence, and actually he grew closer to Malcolm X's beliefs as time went on, and that is why he was killed.

At our worst moments, when all else fails, violence is the only answer and everyone, deep down, knows that.

Edit to add: washing King's legacy via history so he appears as purely nonviolent is, I believe, a very deliberate strategy to make us easier to pacify. You'll notice that no high school curricula (barring I'm sure some notable exceptions) have ever taught Malcolm X. Only King, and only his nonviolence! Civil rights safely defanged.

This is fantastic, thank you. Going to hammer this home to anyone who makes even a whiff of disapproval over that bastard's killing.

Hmm, fair point.

Really? Have you watched the uninterrupted start-to-finish footage? I struggled to find emotion of any kind. The way he walks toward Thompson after shooting him, clearing his pistol's misfire, is so unhurried and casual - it's what I look like putting my earbuds back in their case as I walk. The dude does not look emotional or even remotely stressed that he just shot someone in full view of another person.

Eh, maybe, as long as wrong guy doesn't get arrested and harassed and / or martyred for the sake of closing the case.

Huh, weird! It's almost like they see some value in trying to rehab the least sympathetic crime victim of maybe our whole lives!

They damn sure aren't telling stories people want to hear, we've echoed pretty loudly, from about every corner of the Internet, something to the tune of "lmao fuck that guy".

Completely agree, zero sympathy in my case for anyone in this man's orbit. That's not to say I find them culpable, I simply do not care, at all, I find it irrational to the point of absurd to care about them. This man's actions are some of the vilest crimes against human life, inflicting so much misery and death on so many, purely for the basest greed. People often say the fight against the insurance companies is worse than the (terminal!!) cancer. Let that sink in.

Meanwhile, this guy's family led, and will lead, lives of extreme privilege, forever.

Lemme put it this way - if there's any kind of cosmic balance sheet, even be it just the pedestrian moral reckoning of we humans...the limited suffering of anyone in this guy's life as a result of this...in comparison, I mean it's a fuckin rounding error. Nothing.

You're absolutely right, I did kind of momentarily forget that, even having lived through it. They could also just deny care or coverage for "pre-existing conditions" and just drop you as a customer as soon as you get a major illness. And guess what, they did! That's maybe the most egregious, but hey, we're not lacking for contenders.

The ACA felt like a serious change for good in this country at the time. And I gotta say, watching the way it got ratfucked, misrepresented, deliberately destroyed...I dunno, it was heartbreaking. I think it showed me what we were in for, I guess, almost a straight line passing through that and other things like Citizens United, repeal of Dodd Frank, and everything else that led to today. Some of those I can't fault everyone for being unfamiliar with, but damn.

Seeing how we responded to the ACA in particular as a nation was really telling. I knew idiots whose lives got directly measurably better by using it for their own insurance, and still thought it should go and voted for the folks who said they'd get rid of it. What do you even do there? Sad stuff.

Bit of an ambiguous one, when I look back at it myself lol

Rock over London, Rock on Chicago, Wheaties! Breakfast of Champions!

Denying someone with crippling medical issues access to treatment with lies and misinformation to shave one more sliver of profit for a parasitic middle man is so many orders of magnitude above evil it's breath taking.

Well said. Really wish people understood this better and how utterly psychopathic and heartless the entire idea of "maximizing profits" in this context is.

Put another way - a for-profit insurance firm is a weird kind of company that does better when it refuses to provide what its customers pay for. It's not some surprising or counterintuitive result, it's baked into the business model, on purpose. That's deeply malignant just at a glance, and it's all we really need to know when deciding whether it should be involved with healthcare.

Hell yeah!

Love this guy, he tells it like it is! Straight-shooting leopard.