Microblog Memes

Pictured here sending down good ideas

I don't think this is strictly accurate. The 20th century was rife with problems we failed to address (in part or in total).

• Lead and Asbestos were rolled out despite their known hazards and were never properly cleaned up
• Our nuclear weapons stockpile is as big a threat as its ever been. We never really solved the problem of nuclear waste disposal, either, so we've just got these cesspools congealing in spots around the country.
• Aggressive industrial agriculture has drained a number of major aquifiers, while industrial fishing and ocean dumping has obliterating the native marine population
• Oil spills plague us to this day, utterly despoiling major riverways and polluting the Gulf of ~~Mexico~~ America at record rates.
• De-industrialization has stripped much of the Midwestern interior of economic activity, plunging the region into poverty
• The Oxycontin/Heroin/Fentanyl epidemic only gets worse with every passing decade and the only response we seem capable of initiating is "more cops!"

What we've seen over the last 40 years hasn't been a steady series of policy wins nearly so much as a consolidation of media into the hands of a small corporately controlled cartel. It isn't that computer bugs and food shortfalls and environmental catastrophes and even outright genocides aren't happening. Its just that we've decided to stop talking about each of them in turn, as the public loses control of its independent information streams.

Most Americans have lived in a largely functioning democracy for so long they don’t really comprehend that it’s possible for America to not be as it is.

Point to the decade in which America had a "largely functioning democracy".

Was it during the 60s, when it was open season on civil rights leaders and populist presidents? Was it the 70s, when the Nixonian War on Crime/Drugs stripped millions of Americans from the voting rolls through felony disenfranchisement? Was it the Reagan Era, of brutal police violence and race riots and MOVE bombings and the FBI/CIA in open war with anyone to the left of Tip O'Neale? Was it Clinton's 90s and the disaster capitalism that forced a wildly unpopular series of international trade deals with the intent of dismantling trade unions? Was it the Bush War On Terror, with its blacksites and misinformation campaigns and endless wars? How about Obama's bank bailouts followed by the GOP spearheaded 2010 gerrymanders that packed and cracked state and federal legislatures nationwide?

Where's this democracy I keep hearing all about? I'm 40 years old and I struggle to point to a moment in my life when this country ever felt like more than a White Dude's Caliphate.

More of what already works. Keep the masses busy with Disney, Fox, and fast food. Divide the population with wedge issues like abortion, LGBT, guns, etc. Give outsized presence to Trump‘s topics in corporate media. Consolidate media ownership further. Go hard on nationalist and imperialist rhetoric (MAGA). Wave the flag and cross. Blame immigrants. Blame foreigners. Stoke racial tensions. All the while make shitloads of money by manipulating the market and cutting regulation. Run elections but make sure democrats always lose. Depoliticize the population. Start a war. Spread so much crap information that people tune out. Privatize everything, empower billionaires.

Honestly yeah, civil war 2025 baby!!! There's already AltGov organizations popping out... We need to organize better, to learn from Hong Kong and its residents.

Fascism is imperialism turned inward, etc.

You feel this way because you've been intentionally individualized.

There is strength in community, but community threatens the capitalist class so they've done everything they possibly could to drive wedges between us.

You're absolutely right that nobody is coming to save us. That means it's up to us to save each other. It's not too late.

The biggest and most truthful conspiracy is not that there's some shadowy cabal puppet masters pulling all the string, but nobody has any fucking clue what's going on and the world lives in a constant state of anarchy and our notions of "government" or "the state" is just a coping mechanism to help us believe that "somone is in control." We feel like we need to believe in it like we used to believe in the church, until the Enlightenment of course (and we all know what that entailed.)

PS Edit - Give people bread and they will realize they hold all the power, and won't need that sense of someone else being in control.

Decades ago I walked out of a play and had the very blackest black pill moment you describe… I was shuddering in an alleyway in a large city, weeping uncontrollably. We walk around thinking… surely there is someone who can solve it. Solve this problem or that puzzle. And then for the big issues that plague humanity, you realize… if there was such a person, they would have done this. And then the abyss opens.

Shit I try not to think about for $1200, Alex!

(But I can't disagree with a word.)

When they don't cede it we take it. There's hundreds of millions of us and only a handful of them.

https://generalstrikeus.com

yeah those fuckin NO guys were likely the ones trump fired though

I think everyone has a “fuckin NO! Line”, but for some people it’s just when they personally start to suffer.

What baffles me is that it takes them personally suffering to realize what was plainly obvious to every non-MAGA adult. You vote for the guy who said he would cut support programs you depend on and impose sweeping tariffs despite every economist predicting what would happen, basic necessities suddenly become unaffordable for you, and then it’s surprised Pikachu.

Executive Orders aren't unconstitutional on their own.

The president can do meaningless gestures in an Executive Order, like declare a happy birthday to a foreign head of state or something, and that's not unconstitutional.

The president can also exercise the inherent constitutional powers of the office through executive order, too: grant a military medal to somebody, tell executive branch employees that they have Christmas Eve off, provide for a system of classifying state secrets, etc. Those might have real effects, but so long as it's the exercise of power that the presidency actually has, there's nothing unconstitutional about that.

Then the president can also exercise the powers given by Congress: tell the EPA to start a rulemaking process, declare a public health emergency and invoke some of the powers under the procedures previously defined by Congress, etc. If the powers involved were granted by Congress, and the power itself was not unconstitutional, then there's no problem there.

The big issue is that a lot of people misunderstand when an executive order is performative and has no legal effect, or when an executive order merely directs an agency to do something with legal effect. That agency's actions need to be evaluated for legality, but the executive order itself does nothing, except communicates the president's preferences to that agency in a public way. The president could just as easily call up that agency head by phone and say the same thing, and wouldn't even need to publish that order.

It's not the procedure that's unconstitutional. It's the actual contents and substance of the orders that are probably illegal.

I never thought I'd be a cheerleader for arteriosclerosis, but here we are!

Why are you being coy at Lemmy? Aren’t we safe here to speak freely?

Is this boomer for real chat?!

Anyway, this 30 lbs of Ramen is about to disappear!

The Republicans had no problem stopping the show when they were the minority party in all branches.

When Democrats have power they can't do anything, when Republicans are in power everything they want done gets passed by Democrats.

The USA/CIA will infiltrate your gov/various militia groups to over throw socialist governments democratically elected? What?

Bold of you to assume we get more free elections.

... until there isn't