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In these dark times, discourse has become completely incoherent

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America has supremely lost the plot. As everyone knows, there was a tragic shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7th. Renee Good was shot in the head by masked ICE agent Jonathan Ross, which has inspired protests throughout the city.

On the face of it, the shooting looked completely unjustifiable. There is video evidence from multiple angles, and it’s frustrating that ICE is even doing traffic stops harassing citizens in the first place. This whole thing shouldn’t have happened, and the argument that the officer felt threatened for his life makes little sense when there isn’t even sufficient reason why federal agents need to be in cities like this making “Kavanaugh stops” which contribute nothing to public safety.

These kinds of shootings which become viral on the internet are always disturbing. It’s sadly become commonplace to watch what are essentially snuff videos in this day and age, both because of the prevalence smartphone videos that everyone has and because of the epidemic of police shootings in the violent landscape that is America. People shouldn’t have to see this, and people should be mad when they see this.

But what may disturb me the most, is that the online discourse is so vitriolic and so incoherent. You’d think people could at least agree this was a tragedy? Social media websites have been right-leaning for a long time, and there’s even been new data showing that many accounts spewing the talking points are bots from third-world countries that make money by boosting engagement. All that being said, one can usually expect so-called debate no matter what the issue is, even when citizens are needlessly shot in the head by masked secret police.

It’s not 2020 anymore, back when there was at least something of a consensus that law enforcement outright murdering people on video is wrong…

But this era has become increasingly insane. There’s no other way to put it. Decent human empathy has gone out the window, and every site seems to be flooded with monstrous sociopathic comments about how this woman deserved to die. There are lies after lies about her, much of it obvious nonsense and misinformation simply making up notions about how she supported terrorism or whatnot, yet strangest of all are the lies contradicting all the videos we have seen. Serious journalists have analyzed the angle of the vehicle and the gunfire and all that, it’s worth getting deeper into if someone is serious about understanding what happened. Even still, just on the basis of having eyes, it’s easy to see that the shooting was unnecessary and this man’s life was not at risk.

Right-wing sources recently leaked a video from the point-of-view of the agent, which they claimed somehow proved he was in the right. It infuriates me to no end, because I really can’t understand the mindset of people who think this way. It’s been pointed out that the video was actually released not to exonerate Jonathan Ross, but to mock Renee Good because her queer wife is in the video talking back and that apparently proves they are bad people.

Overall, the narrative online is basically that anyone who doesn’t comply with the police deserves to be killed. Again and again these comments boil down to: If only you’d comply with orders then you will not be killed. Disturbing enough in a supposed free society already. What I find most bizarre about this take, is that it’s well-known that police are only supposed to shoot if they’re life is threatened. Isn’t that common knowledge by now? That’s what the eventual legal court case is going to be about. All this muddying of the waters, going on and on about compliance and victim-blaming, it’s all besides the point. And this is the incoherence of the era we live in now.

America is in a dark place. The far right government is failing and life is getting objectively worse for the majority of people, we can all see it happening, and the only policy that motivates their base seems to be the killing of “libs” and the worship of corrupt and incompetent law enforcement. The reasons why don’t matter at all, the reasons why get made up and all sorts of motivations are thrown like shit against the wall, and the truth eventually gets lost amidst all the screaming and bad faith flooding of the zone…

This is the real Putin-esque strategy in order to get people to disengage politically. It’s often not actually about getting people to believe in lies. It’s about getting people to give up trying to figure out what the truth is, so that there is no such thing as the truth and the people become apathetic. This is what authoritarian government wants in the end.

I have a terrible fear that it’s working. America is in a goddamn terrible place right now.

New life plan: Live until I’m 90, so I can see the world make any progress at all

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New life plan: Live until I’m 90, so I can see the world make any progress at all

I’m going to have to be very patient. It’s more than waiting just four years, which will indeed be a long four years. The consequences of the Supreme Court especially will stall any societal progress for 50+ years. So I really will have to wait until the 2070s…

Still trying to make sense of all this. Once upon a time, I had hope. I’m not a naturally optimistic person, but there were rational reasons. Real signs. Basically, there was a narrative that Bernie Sanders was this generation’s Barry Goldwater. Although he lost, he inspired a new generation which would signal a shift in governing philosophy over the coming decades . These things take time. In the past it was Goldwater’s failed 1964 presidential campaign that signalled the end of the Roosevelt era, and solidified in the 1980s when Reagan was triumphant, and then Reaganism basically defined the next 40 years no matter who was in office.

Well, now it’s very clear now that Sanders is not the future, despite polling young voters or whatever. It’s MAGA that is going to set the defining tone for the next four to five decades.

It’s such a shame, because there are serious problems with the world due to neoliberal economic policies. And the only remedy is to bring back what worked in the New Deal era, as democratic socialist countries have already proven themselves around the world to have the highest standard of living, it truly is the only path to fixing anything. Unions, higher wages, environmental regulations, labor rights, minority rights, police brutality, housing costs, education costs, all those issues!

And yet now we are on a path to make every single one of those far, far worse. A second Gilded Age, with even more income inequality than the first. Historians note that rising inequality is a major sign of civilizations falling. So apparently, when these problems worsen it just causes people to become more bitter and aggrieved, blaming marginalized groups for why they can’t afford to live, and whining about niche ‘woke’ issues, and generally pushing the Overton Window further and further to the bigoted right.

Why does it have to be this way? There is an international trend that all over the world incumbent parties have lost due to voters being mad about inflation. Just goes to show how irrational voters are, since right-wing governments with austerity had it worse, but whoever is in charge gets blamed and most don’t look at what’s happening around the world.

It’s so crazy how random history is—he lost in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then he won in 2024 because of the pandemic-caused inflation.

With all the hindsight over the election and the campaigning, shoulda been more left or shoulda been more centre, nobody really knows what might have been. Biden was a risk in 2020, but it seemed to have paid off that time. Then it turned out not to work well. He probably should have withdrawn earlier and allowed a primary, but then who knows maybe it was inevitable that the opposition party would win. Or maybe it’s simply sexism that doomed America. Debates and ridiculous shitshow of a campaign and a billion dollars wasted, none of it seemed to matter in the end.

(I just wish so much he went away in 2020, and at least it would have been a normal Republican destined to win now. But normal Republicans are essentially extinct.)

Misinformation online also seems to be a huge factor in why the world is getting crazier. Social media completely ruining the very concept of objective reality. It even appears that the youngest generation isn’t getting more progressive, as earlier assumed, but rather are influenced by far right podcast bros. This misogyny is only going to cause more social unrest as young women go in the other direction and resentment will build up even more.

The 21st century, frankly, sucks. The second half of the 20th century, for all its problems, did have quality of life steadily improve with each generation. Now it is going backwards, by every metric from income to lifespans, and it’s going to continue to go backwards. There’s very little reason to have any hope.

And the goddamn climate. We’ve all given up. We are a society gone mad. Leaving the Paris accords, denying reality. Rising temperatures are becoming increasingly obvious, we are all feeling it, and we do nothing but vote in science deniers. Absolute madness.

Sigh, it’s so frustrating. It’s like the world we live in is a badly written story. There’s no Karma. No arcs. All those scandals, all those laws broken, the indictments and felonies and proven sexual assault. It doesn’t matter.I was stupid enough to believe that there was a trend towards justice, that problematic old men get theirs in the end, and the gross far right had kept losing elections since 2018 so that seemed like a rational take. But looks like all that was happening was normalization.

Turns out, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter did not have the biggest impact on history. Old-fashioned bigotry was the future after all. Herein Elon Musk gets to destroy government services, RFK Jr gets to destroy healthcare, all those horrible trolls online get to feel vindicated. Furthermore, expect AI slop to grow even more prevalent on a dead internet devoid of truth, as Zuckerberg said himself. 

It’s certainly possible, even extremely likely, that the economy will implode and Democrats will win a trifecta in 2028. But by then, I believe, it will be too late. The opposition party, already corporatized and lame, will be pushed rightwards. There will be no going back. It will be too hard. And no revolution rebooting the system either. The damage will simply be permanent. 

No one is going to save us.

Personally, I never wanted to believe in the Great Man theory of history. It gives individuals too much credit. But it looks undeniable now that it’s his world, that fucker, and we’re just living in it. 

So, who knows what exactly will be, but for me it’s going to have to be a lesson in patience. If I am to have any sense of optimism, it will be for the very long-term. I will wait out the next 50 years, see if I can experience some progress in my lifetime, and then at 90-something I’ll allow myself to have hope again…