this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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This is why I don’t believe people who say things can get better.
Is this what the Romans felt at the end? Walls falling, raiders raiding, terrible leaders-- it's not looking good.
lol, yep, things have only became worse over time through my whole life, and I just got laid off from a sick job I scored during the Covid chaos, so i'm job searching on top of all of that
They certainly can - post-WWII was certainly an improvement for most people - but there's no guarantee that they will.
Yeah it's not like our ancestors went through two world wars in a period of 20 years along with the first Global economic depression or anything like that, and the realization that Humanity can now wipe itself off the planet.
No it's definitely us that lives through the most interesting time
It doesn’t have to be the most interesting time. Just an interesting time.
Still sucks and we’ve got climate collapse to worry about in addition to nukes. And PFAS. And microplastics.
Oh 100% I agree. We do live in trying times. But we also live in probably the best time to be alive at least if you live in the western world.
I just want to bring some context from the past because when you look at history we're doing quite a bit better than we used to.
While the no Kings protest didn't really achieve a whole lot mobilizing up to 10 million people is a huge achievement and not one that many organizations could have dreamed of doing 50 years ago.
Yes, this shitty world is definitely the best we could reasonably hope for.
Oh I didn't say that. The world could be a lot better.
Only that we generally live in the best time historically wise. Most of us have a roof over our heads and steady food in our bellies which is not historically how things have been.
It's foolish to try and look back in history for a better time because there is none. It is up to us to create a better future going forward.
I don't have the outright stats to say so definitively, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is true for the smallest percent of the US population since the Great Depression. The average American has less than $300 in their bank account. Credit card debt is increasing as fast as it ever has, and people are defaulting on that debt at the highest rates of all time. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck (at least 60% of the population), and there is not a single county in the country where a person making the median wage in that county can afford the median cost of a home in that same county. We lost more money during the 2008 recession than during the Great Depression, and most people never recovered even though the economy recovered that money in about a year - 90% of it went to the wealthy, who had also lost the least. The homelessness crisis has become so bad that it's called the homelessness epidemic, and the homeless population is also increasing at the fastest rate that it ever has. Wealth disparity is worse in the US today than during the French Revolution, where the price of a loaf of bread hit an all-time high of a day's wage for the average worker.
The average American is one medical emergency away from going bankrupt, and diseases that we had thought were on the verge of eradication are making a comeback while we continue to ignore the ongoing COVID pandemic that we still don't know how it truly affects us. COVID has been found in everything from the brain to the testicles and is linked to infertility and a million other issues that will cripple the size of the workforce in the years to come due to Long COVID symptoms preventing people from working.
These are hard times made by weak, greedy men who refuse to hand over the reins and want to make things even worse.
Things have always been worse if you weren't a straight, white, able-bodied man, but I think it's been a long time since it was this bad for such a large swath of the population on the basic metrics of food, shelter, and financial security - at least in the US.
I think things are getting worse for white people exactly the way you say. I think for minorities though it's kind of always been this bad or even worse made by people being far more racist.
Things are still pretty systemically racist but there has been somewhat of a correction and that probably does result in things being a bit better for some minorities.
Ultimately I think that means that We live in better times today because they're more accepting than we did Even 20 years ago.
As far as getting by I think things have been like this for a really really long time and people were patient and sold a crock of shit and with covid it's forcing a lot of these things to come to a head.
Not only that Trump himself is a governmental crisis and when there's chaos in the government there's absolutely chaos in society. Simmering tensions tend to get exposed.
Yeah sorry, it may be better in some ways but a large amount of powerful people want us back in serfdom/slavery, instead of actually improving life. 90s was peak, it's downhill from there.
I know quite a few minorities that would disagree with you. Also I think a lot of people in poverty probably have a better now with the institutions and systems we have then they were in the 90s when after they had been gutted by the Reagan Administration and not restored by the Bush Administration or the Clinton administration.
Agreed, it definitely wasn't better for minorities or women really (except wealthy ones of course) but Im saying they had the chance to keep improving, and chose to form regressive policy and now here we are.
Oh that's just capitalism doing what capitalism does. Mainly the pursuit of profit over all else
But we won’t. We could have been creating a better world for the past 30 years and we didn’t.
And now it’s too late to prevent the Ross Ice shelf and all of Greenland from falling into the sea.
True irreparable harm has been done to the world through climate change.
But I see a second wave of people's revolutions coming. Hopefully it'll be in time to react to the changes of the world.
Even in Hopeless times we must have hope comrade.
Nah, I’m done hoping. I’ve seen them dashed constantly.
Fair enough. At least remember what the stoics have said. Shift in perspective can make a depressed man happy. I like to qualify stoicism as "finding happiness in misery"
An important lesson from Epictetus that even in the most dire circumstances ( he was a slave to a cruel master) you can still choose to be happy. Happiness is dependent on the state of mind not your material conditions according to him although he might be taking it a wee bit far.
Just have to vote for Dems and there's a decent chance 9/11 wouldn't have happened, so no Afghanistan, Iraq wouldn't have happened, pandemic would've been handled better and the pandemic response plan wouldn't have been axed, and we wouldn't have bombed Iran. Not to mention women would still have health care.
I’ve been voting D for years and it still didn’t help.
The problem is the Democratic Party isn't a working class/labor party. The Democratic Party's primarily purpose is to occupy space on the political spectrum and prevent the rise of a true workers party. There will never be a time to walk away, abandon a clearly irredeemably broken edifice, and build something new. It will always be the most important election of your life, and you will always be a traitor to your nation for daring to suggest it's time to scrap the morbidly obese old man, fused into his couch, sucking up all the oxygen out of the room on the left side of the political spectrum.
No, the entire structure of our government is unable to deal with the world it exists in.
Iraq War resolution vote in the Senate.
Dem President wouldn't have been pounding the war path, with lies, and pretty much the entire nation pushing their representatives for it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-israeli-militaries-jointly-drilled-iran-strike-during-biden-administration-report/
Where do you get that idea? The Trump admin has only been in place for five months. The strike the US just carried out took years of planning. Trump's attack on Iran was just a continuation of Biden admin policy.
All the evidence I've seen my whole adult life is that the Democrats, or at least the Democratic leadership structure, are just as bloodthirsty and warmongering as the Republican leadership.
We don't actually know that Dems wouldn't have been pushing an Iraq war. Ultimately the real push for the war came from the Israeli leadership, and the Israelis control both the Democratic and Republican parties. Israel ultimately decides US Middle East policy, not the American citizens. What party you vote for has very little impact on it. That's the conclusion you reach if you look at the actual evidence, not just the vibes that each party likes to portray. The Dems like to portray themselves as some 1960s peace-nicks, but both parties let Israel control their entire Middle East policy. Israel wanted to invade Iraq, and that was going to happen regardless of what party was in power.
Maybe the Dems would have handled the Iraq war a little more competently, but Saddam had been a villain in the US media for years. People were talking about invading Iraq while the bodies at ground zero hadn't even cooled off.
Most damning of all? Al Gore supported military intervention in Iraq. He just wanted a more international effort than what Bush did.
Gore supported invading Iraq. The majority of Democrats in the US Senate supported Iraq. What evidence do you have that a Democratic president wouldn't have invaded Iraq? I think the only case is vibes-based.
Militaries work on plans for everything. I would be surprised if they didn't have a plan to invade nearly every country on Earth. It's what the military does. The decision is made by the politicians. Vastly different things that you're trying to hammer together.
Thank you for showing me you're nuts. No point in real discussion, this will be my only reply.
But to address
That reads nearly like an academic discussion on the topic and that he was actually focused on WMDs. Sounds like he wouldn't have done it without people/nations researching and agreeing that Saddma Hussein had WMDs (or was trying to make them), which would have lead to international cooperation and support. Not quite to the point of wanting UN agreement (because vetos) but he keeps discussing the UN. And sounds like if he didn't have both the domestic and international agreement, it wouldn't have happened. This is just another thing you're trying to hammer together. I thought this part was cool "the president is publicly taunting Democrats with the political consequences of a 'no' vote", he was obviously not a fan of Bush's browbeating - which along with Bush's lies is how the Iraq war went through. And the whole thing is just ripping Bush's administration and approach apart.
That you keep trying to hammer different things together shows me you either can't separate them yourself, or that you're discussing in bad faith. So ciao.
Winning is binary, so me voting doesn’t make Trump any less the president.
I’ve been trying to do that too and people are too stupid to convince and I’m bad at it.
In the rare cases a Democrat I vote for wins they’re either hamstrung by Republicans winning everywhere else or have a stroke and turn into Republicans.
So we're back to 1. More GOP wins means it would have been even worse and 2. Convince your fellow voter and non voter to vote.
Seriously what is the purpose of your moaning.
Confusing on the face of it no? How can someone vote for Barack twice, and then pull the lever for Trump? And the map is not clear either; counties in New England, the Rust Belt, southwest, and northeast. All over the country, red and blue states. So what happened?
Low propensity voters, now disillusioned with politics. These are the people who got sold a vision of hope and change after the Great Recession in 2007-2008, and while yes things changed, not in a fundamental way. They still drive on crumbling roads to take their kids to the same underfunded schools. Still watch their taxes fund overseas wars, for nebulous ‘foreign policy’ reasons that aren’t clear. Still paying out the ass for their dialysis care. Watching standards of living regress around them, knowing their kids will be worse off regardless of a college degree.
You see, there’s a part 3 that you’re forgetting that needs to happen, otherwise another opportunist grifter can slide in with false promises and spam-abuse the populism cheat code:
Obama had a majority for 2 years. And he got through major healthcare reform. Part 3 accomplished. His reward? To lose the majority for the next 6 years and the gop blocking everything. Part 3 was accomplished and the voters did not turn out.
So we're back to asking, what's the solution? 1. Vote for Dems and give them majorities.
The tragedy here is that so many people are uniformed and think he had 8 effective years when he only had 2.
I feel you’re missing the point I’m making; Obama did have legislative victories yes. Did usher in an economic recovery from the precipice and a (relatively) speaking soft landing. But what fundamentally changed in healthcare? Especially for the low propensity and/or information voter? Nothing from their perspective, unfortunately. The reality delivered did not match the marketing, and though childish and petulant the reaction may be because of real issues like thin majorities or constitutional limits on power, that is the perception. And that is all that matters.
I don’t see Trump’s rise as being caused by his unique policy stances, white nativism, or better electoral strategy than the Democrats. He’s mediocre-to-awful, but has no institutional fealty or cogent ideology which is what makes him uniquely suited to the current populist vibe. Trump is a bomb that voters sent to blow up the established order in Washington, and in 2016 they got what they asked for. The palace coup that is MAGA, ate the Republican Party from the inside out, within a single four year cycle. Now you’re seeing the base souring on him as his second term has has been co-opted by capital and power structures, and is abandoning the ‘maverick outsider’ policies like “no new wars” or “I want to sell off the national parks to foreign nations”.
Sounds like a "n n not good enough" response.
Lots of people benefited. Your own step 3 was completed. That's basically all there was to it. And Obama's reward was to lose congress for the next 6 years. I've already said it all.
Ahh. “Why don’t these ingrates appreciate what they’re given?” cool, keep blaming voters. Your 1-2-E-Z electoral strategy has no issues with circular reasoning, yesss no reason to develop further
Their universal suffrage will keep ignoring your demands for loyalty. Voting is transactional. Give them what they asked for. Or don’t I guess..? The Whig party refused to change too, and look how they turned out
What's fascinating here is that you rely on completely ignoring that your own step 3 was accomplished. They delivered. But you can't acknowledge that because it undermines your point. Their delivery (yes) is rewarded with them losing majority.
If the voter wants even more then, drumroll please, they need to give Dems consistent and overwhelming victories. Not 4 years of majority out of the last 24 years and then wonder why progress is so slow. That's 2 years under Obama and 2 years under Biden. That's it. If you want to include Bill Clinton then it's 6 years of the last 32 years. Go back further and it's 6 years out of the last 44 years that Dems have had all 3 houses. That's what they need to pass things. Do the math yourself, that's it. Think about about that.
You may continue ignoring that Dems deliver and your step 3 was accomplished. Ciao.
So your solution is to keep trying the thing that I’ve already indicated doesn’t work.
Unless you’re advocating for me committing interstate voter fraud to flip half the Republican districts blue.
Because we’ve already established that I’m shit at convincing people to vote because I’m a whiny asshole.
I'm gonna leave this conversation because I just keep saying the same thing and you keep moaning the same thing.
If the GOP having control of all three branches of government is the system working then we need a new system.