ameancow @ ameancow @lemmy.world

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1 yr. ago

You're right, and what you need to understand is that the reason half of our idiots voted for an idiot is because we allowed corporations to atomize society so people didn't mix anymore, we don't have shared perspectives of the world anymore, everyone gets their information about literally everything algorithmically. This atomization of society is what took down the USA and it's coming for you next if it's not already happening wherever you are.

Almost every American just wants to stay home and play video games, we didn't want any of this. We wanted healthcare.

You have just spent too much time talking to the chronically online individuals or whatever the term is.|

I have, and I know it, and those are who I am speaking to the most because that's who are here in sites like this in the most numbers. I am here trying to rally people, even if it's out of spite and anger and offense, to stay involved.

The last presidential election we had has had some of the highest voter participation and youth participation in history, and they still voted for Trump, so the problem isn't exterior, it's coming from inside the house, and as long as we're lamenting and feeling like shit about it, we're falling into their trap.

Except talking to people I don’t agree with is exactly what I do. I am doing it to you now! Think about that!

It's literally ALL i wanted out of this.

The problem is culturally, they didn’t see a need to fight for it because of apathy.

Thank god we don't have to worry about that happening he- err.... fuck.

I tried. If anyone gets what I'm saying, power to them and the kernel of hope rides in their hands. Otherwise I'm done. Peace.

Our population voted someone into the highest office riding on the promise of drilling for more oil and increasing factory farming. We have atomized our culture so much that corporate forces have stripped people of their empathy and care and passion like an overripe banana and we don't mix perspectives anymore so that we can pull people back.

There's no hope of ending this misery until those of us who remain thinking with our minds get off the computer and start socializing, organizing, challenging people and pulling people into our idea of a better tomorrow. Most people don't even know where to find other people to talk to and debate with and this is by design. That's the trap we're in we need to break free of, and then maybe if we can get to that point we can start making cultured meats and alternative proteins a thing.

Otherwise, we're going to fish the oceans until they're dry and we will create hellish suffering for every life form involved until there's nothing left to feel pain.

So wait for a charismatic and perfect savior. We see what happens every time someone of this stature reaches the actual federal election stage.

I'm talking about what people can do here and now, which is built coalitions and not have purity tests about who is in it, just focus on single-issues like the right has done successfully over and over and over.

For some reason whenever someone says "compromise" every lefty immediately pictures "submitting on trans rights and abortion" or something.

I'm saying as individuals, you and me, scared lemmy browsers who don't think they have power: build social connections, make more friends, build activism groups, start in local communities and keep it fixated on solving ONE populist problem that we can get a much wider array of people behind, like childcare or school lunches or yes healthcare and unions, social security or other public safety nets and the whole long laundry list of items we want, but instead of overwhelming a population, local or national, with a huge list of inclusivity and ideals, we attack one thing at a time. I have watched the right do this over and over and each time they fucking WIN.

Again, your notions of an ideal candidate you would vote for are spot-on, I would vote for that person in a heartbeat, most would, but that person doesn't exist and they won't exist until they can ride on the momentum of grass-roots movements to tackle populist issues. The democrat party is not our ally here, not without a mandate under it and if we're more clever about building those mandates and then tying them together when it's time, we might have success.

But I'm getting really pessimistic here. Voter turnout is not the problem. Everyone, everywhere, is avoiding mixing. The atomization of our world is the problem. We had the highest voter turnouts and youth involvement in the last several elections than we've ever had, and they voted Trump. That's my whole point, that's the key we have to fight against, how someone like a brazen fascist and idiot can sway so many people, and it starts with re-mixing our values and perspectives and this may take some kind of "compromise" that may make a lot of isolated lefties really uncomfortable, like having conversations with people you don't like, like accepting people who hate you into your protest so you can both tackle a problem you both hate. If we can cross that boundary we can start mixing together again and pulling people out of this programming that corporate media does. Isolationism is killing our whole world and all our hope for the future.

We are facing a huge problem that nobody seems to be able to identify, which is not voter turnout. The sad, horrible truth is the last couple election cycles we had record turnout and more young people involved than ever before... AND THEY VOTED FOR TRUMP. It's going to happen all across the world as more and more people have access to their little algorithmic ideology bubbles.

So what's the problem? Atomization of groups. Everyone is isolated and not exposed to each other's perspectives and it's making a vacuum that corporations are easily leveraging to get their right-wing puppets installed so they can make line go up. This atomization is literally turning people delusional, and if we don't push back on it we are going to lose not just the USA but all democracy and organization.

We fight it with activity and community and socialization. If it takes screaming at people to get off their asses, I will do that and I will do it in ways that piss people off if it gets attention.

You berate neurodivergent and queer people specifically

Exactly the kind of bad-faith, seething, atomized perspective I want to fight by forcing people like YOU to listen to people like ME who will say things to piss you off and make you reconsider what someone else is saying. We need to do that not on Lemmy but out in bars, in family gatherings, in social media, in public lectures, in town council meetings and so on. Withdrawing now will kill you all. I am being dead serious. This avoidance of conflict except with people who want the same outcome as you is ruining our entire world.

If you have a way to make it work without compromise let me know, I'm all ears. Expert Mode: something that doesn't involve waiting for some charismatic and perfect savior figure to somehow come out of the sky and start successfully advocating for socialism. Nobody is coming.

Because what we're doing now isn't working.

Absolutely true, and what's really wild is most of the left is broadly prideful of being intellectual, and so desperate to have intellectual fights that they tear each other down and find ways to nitpick their own allies into destruction. Just because they need to fight someone they can win on their own terms.

The enemy army is OVER THERE, it's JUST RIGHT THERE! I want to shake everyone and aim all this effort to call out "problematic tones" and "cultural insensitivity" into actual action before we're all just pawns in a techno-feudalism state, disposable as robots slowly replace even the workers, the last playing piece we had as people.

Lefty former martial-art teacher and gun owner here. I fully agree and have to argue about it a lot. This generation of lefties is completely dulled by short-attention-span self-medication and escapism and pseudo-socialization through discord and other online chats substituted for real socialization.

Whenever you talk about the need for actual organizing, forming groups, taking action, suddenly everyone has nine-hundred very special "conditions" that prevent them from doing anything. We may have co-opted the term "snowflake" from the right but it was targeted accurately at the start. Everyone thinks "someone is coming" or that there's going to be a revolution "any day now" as if there's some underground left-wing movement planning things and they're just not invited. Motherfuckers you all ARE the left-wing in this country, ya'll think the fucking democrats are gonna save you?

The left also gave up on the american flag, easily isolating itself in the public eye as an anti-american group. I hate that. I don't get it. Yes, America has been awful and continues to be so, but if you don't claim ownership of the goddamn land you live on, someone else is going to take it... and guess what's happening.

This is just what it's like to get old and grumpy. Youth is wasted on the young. I did my time organizing, I did volunteer work and phone banking for my local community and leaders, I tried. I really, really tried. I even narrowly, accidentally avoided assassination a while back but details would dox me. And I get lectured here about the ten thousand reasons why they can't do hard things, why they have been relegated to retreating to back-water websites nobody visits having imaginary fights with imaginary nazis. Part of me is so done with humanity I feel like a lot of these kids deserve the consequence of being self-absorbed and undisciplined. But I guess I still have some lingering hope that someone will read something that makes them get off the couch.

This site, and honestly modern leftism in general, is utterly weak and in a sorry state. Lotta tender kids hiding in their discord groups talking hard about punching nazis, overthrowing the government, revolutions, etc. But if even half of them went out and organized and voted as regularly as the conservative orc army we wouldn't need to be boarded up behind cultural firewalls.

Ya'll desperately wish there were right-wingers and nazis on this site. The isolationism of the internet has left the entire population having arguments in the shower and imagining how thoroughly they owned their imaginary opponents.

Protip: you can ACTUALLY go outside and punch ACTUAL nazis at protests and demonstrations in towns near you! themoreyouknow.gif

The things that never happen are happening right now but our collective attention spans have been dulled to the point that you can't recognize the actual swing of history as it's unfolding. Everyone just gets used to incremental changes to life so that it feels like nothing changes, because time isn't real and your memory is malleable.

Honestly, true.

We are indeed going to face massive, catastrophic changes to society broadly.

But they will take place over such timespans that most people are just going to get used to things being shitty and the death-tolls from storms, flooding, starvation, forced-migration... it will just be more dull noise in the background for decades and decades.

The "nothing ever happens" shitheads are in the middle of things happening, but our attention-spans have been so thoroughly eroded that people don't think anything is real unless it literally shakes them out of their bed.

Before it was coopted by the right to mean "child predator" or "deadly threat to everything holy" it was just a style of burlesque show, a whole niche cultural thing that never bothered anyone, open to anyone who wanted to take part.

They had problems with the fact that most performers are males or assigned male at birth, and the whole thing is basically parody of gender norms and style, but embraced rather than hated, and it was just a generally fun time. (Never mind that it's kinda what stage performance has been like across the globe for hundreds or even thousands of years when it comes to gender-bending performances.)

Speaking as a CIS straight male, I have been to a couple shows and don't really get it, it's not my thing, but everyone is having fun and they're being welcoming and happy and sharing a thing together, and it's far more harmless than a million other silly things people do for fun as social groups.

Being "smart" and "thinking" are two very different things. You can be very smart but have no conscious thought. You can be a great thinker without ANY formal education or experience. (Calm down internet geniuses, you're not that special.)

We might start figuring out how to get either one if we start understanding that there's a difference.

Your brain doesn't work the way you think it does. Your mind isn't entirely your own. Your language influences your internal dialogue, and if you have no internal dialogue, you need to exercise that by reading a lot more and thinking about your thinking.

Yah I love how places like Lemmy are packed to overflowing with "radical leftists" who scream murder at liberals and moderates and how broadly appealing progressive policies aren't going far enough to address [issue X].

Guys, we're getting literally murdered out there, figuratively and literally. If there was ever a time to start building larger coalitions, it's now. No, you're not getting everything you want. No, we're not having a revolution, we don't have the military. Yes, you will have to compromise. And if you hate that word because you think it means walking alongside someone you despise...

Tough shit.

Pick an issue, gather allies, overwhelm it, then repeat for the NEXT issue and realize nobody is coming, you may not see a better world in your lifetime, your immediate sense of resignation at this fact is manufactured. Get your shit together. Your personal problems are clouding your thinking.

They're winning because they don't recoil in horror at the idea of working towards mid-way goals or making deals they find distasteful, that's how they pushed the overton window off the fucking map.

But yeah, lets continue to fuss over if our flags represent enough people and if [popular content creator] said the word "retard" once, while our administration builds camps and readies for war for funsies.

edit: just because I'm ready to soak up hate on this, you all also need to make real friends. You don't build movements in discord, not ones that have impact at least. You are medicating your loneliness while the world burns outside. Get out and push through the discomfort of your introversion, your ADHD, your ASD, your sexual identity insecurity, your looks or your accent or WHATEVER it is that you think is keeping you from being social and building community. We lost because we're isolated. Online groups don't count. Don't reply to me, go outside.

Nothing I said is to even suggest that you shouldn't talk about your passions, just that you can temper it and gain the emotional intelligence in how to make it engaging for others, but I do hope you continue to take care of yourself and seek the happiness you deserve.

edit: i so love how people are literally addicted to the idea that they can't change or be helped. We have truly given up as a species.