The US civil rights movement and MLK are often trotted out as examples of nonviolent resistance bringing change, but people forget that he was the carrot to Malcolm X’s stick. MLK brought change because the threat of Malcolm X arming the black community and calling for violence was hanging just over his shoulder.

In a better timeline this is one of the many things a Neuralink could be good for

From all the information I’ve been able to gather, all signs seem to point toward “being born”

Based still has the innate connotation of doing your own thing without caring how others perceive you, which can still be a crackhead kind of trait.

The fact that they’re not even good at being evil somehow pisses me off even more at the whole situation

I would wager it was the codeine painkillers that were dynamite and the burger was mostly a side effect

Agreed. But we’re in the shit now, and the only way out is through. We can’t afford to only have the country mostly break down but continue to limp along for another few decades. If we want to make a real difference we are going to have to change some fundamental assumptions about American society. The only way that happens is to have enough people care to make the change, and the only way that happens is by having a majority of Americans become personally hurt by this situation. We have proven time and again that we have a remarkable talent for ignoring anything that doesn’t affect us personally. So now I’m in favor of big, horrible things that personally hurt everyone in the country because that’s what is required to make people wake up and open their eyes to the reality that exists around them.

I do not wish any suffering on anyone beyond what is required to make them see. I find it upsetting and immoral that this suffering is what is required to make them see. But this has been a problem for a very long time and we are now at a crossroads where this all comes to a head and explodes. If people won’t pay attention to anything that doesn’t hurt them personally then you’re going to need to hurt them personally to make them pay attention. Simple as.

The world of Morrowind, in aggregate, is beautiful and sometimes genuinely breathtaking.

Individual models may look like deep fried asshole, but they come together to form an aesthetic that I personally like quite a lot.

No, no, you just deport the battery so it explodes in someone else’s country.

Microplastics dissolve the soul

I know WoW guild leaders that turned that experience into a resume point. “Managed a large group of disconnected people to accomplish group tasks”

If they can pull that off then you can pull this one.

Then why are you trying to say that Nazi Germany was directly created by communism if they never practiced communism?

Never expected this to be so relevant

Here we had the freedom to believe whatever we wanted, and we let ourselves get brainwashed.

This is true, but I have to nitpick this a little bit. Here in America everyone is constantly bombarded from all sides, every minute of every day, with constant propaganda of all types. People have to choose what to believe now because any story will have at least three conflicting accounts of it being told. There is no reliable source of truth. There are no reliable fact checkers. There are no laws enforced about truth in reporting.

I think this more than anything led to the problems that we have now.

Good news! America is about to rejoin the rest of the world in having multigenerational households, because we can’t afford to all have our own places for much longer. This has been coming for a while. If you have a home large enough to support that, this is probably a good thing. In fact if that becomes the norm (again) it would probably support future development of the country in good ways, having a higher population within a given area and having a significant percentage of that population be both children and grandparents incentivises walkable communities with accessible shops. It could go a long way towards decreasing car dependence.

But that’s all long term. In the meantime we’re all broke as hell so get ready to possibly live in the same house with your grandkids too.

Worse. They treat people how they think they are treated. They think it’s getting even, or not falling behind. Everyone in the world is going to try and grift you for something, so you’d be stupid not to try yourself.

The “support our troops” movement went right into the shitter around the Iraq War. A majority of Americans do not approve of our military operations or expenditure.

And that was when the operations in question were across the entire world almost as physically far from the US as it is possible to be. If the government tries to start a war in our literal backyard you’re going to see a different side of Americans.

I wish you’d see it without having to come to that, but, unfortunately, I do share a lot of your views about our inaction. We’ve never had to deal with something like this before. We don’t know what to do about it. The obvious solution could cause even more problems that we can’t foresee, and would guarantee the complete destruction of whatever hero carries it out. Most people aren’t willing to die for their political beliefs unless they’re backed against the wall. We are very swiftly approaching that wall though.

Obliterating the United States on the world stage stands a pretty good chance of doing that in the long term, actually. He just won’t be around to see it. Neither will most Americans.

He inherited a straight flush but threw it all away to play an 8 high card hand.

Anybody out getting tear gassed in today’s environment is a friend of mine