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This comic depicts four people who couldn't be bothered to pay attention to anything for ten years.
I have no sympathy.
So the vast majority?
That is correct.
That doesn't help the cause though, in fact this exact attitude might be a pretty big part of why we're all in deep shit now.
Correct! One of the most important tools we need to obtain, the most important weapon we need to arm yourself, isn't obvious, or simple, or easy.
It's Messaging.
Want to spend your time bitter? Apathetic? "I-told-you-so"?
I don't blame you.
But you're not actually working towards a solution. If all you have to say is "I told you so," or "what's the point?" or "everything's fucked" - I get it. But you're not contributing to the conversation any more than the people in this comic have been for the last how many years. You're not helping any more than they were.
We need messaging. We need to be willing to fight these battles. Not fighting the embittered trolls, but spreading truth. Sharing solutions. Making plans. Fighting this. Apathy. Pointlessness. Accelerationism.
Spread free platforms. Spread free ideas. Have meaningful conversations with your friends and families and coworkers. Try again, and keep trying. In little steps, in great acts. Don't let the shock paralyze you, the size overwhelm you. Don't get washed away by the flood of hate. This is the second best time to act. Your opportunities are growing by the minute.
Life is about to get very, very hard for many people. Many of the obvious targets will suffer, but it's pretty clear that nobody is "safe". Even the poster boys are under threat of retribution for stepping out of line. And everyone, everyone is facing the inevitable economic downturn that is speeding toward us.
But hardship shakes beliefs. It changes minds. Things will become personal for even the most detached, apathetic, or privileged. And when politics become personal all bets are off.
But don't bother if you're not going to try. Really, really try. Think about yourself, and the world, and the person you're talking to, and really try to make them see.
Take - and make - your opportunities to change minds. Don't be afraid, but be careful. Don't be polite for the sake of politeness, but be kind, be considerate, even be gentle when you think it will help, but don't be polite.
Whatever they can say to you can't compare to what is being done to you or about to be done to everybody. Whatever they say can't be worse than their complacency.
Your one and only goal: stay on message. This is bad and it needs to stop. Here is how it affects you. Here is how it affects your family. Here is how things are going wrong, and why.
More than anything else, we need each other. We need solidarity, community. We need to genuinely start asking ourselves: how do we win? And then make the answer happen.
We kneel beneath the weight of wealth and tradition and fear. But despite the growth of AI, at the end of the day the people we kneel beneath are people. Humans decide what happens next. They are human. We are all human. We can decide what happens next.
I like you. Keep spreading the message.
Well said, my friend.
I oy wish i were actually capable of that. But my autistic ass is inherently alienating for some reason. Best thing I could do is shut up
Please don't feel that the best thing you can do is shut up! You deserve a voice in the matter, even if it is much harder for you to use it the way others can use theirs.
Besides, not everyone can always be or even needs to always be the person who spreads the message. We need people to help figure out what the problems and solutions are just as much as we need people to share those problems and solutions with the world.
It is usually a necessary evil that we have marketers to sell the things that wouldn't exist without the engineers to produce them.
People tend not to like the solutions I come up with. Something something collateral damage, violence is always bad (except when it helps found the country for some reason?), no 2024 totally wasnt stolen, ect ect.
The only people we need to be messaging are the DNC. Policy that improves people's material condition is louder than any of us can hope to be. Same goes for genocide.
There is nothing you can say to someone who sees people just like them getting massacred by American bombs that will make them vote for you. I spent over a year screaming this, but I was drown out by people saying "no, actually because the republicans will do it worse, all the anti-genocide voters are still gonna vote so the democrats don't need to change course". And now those same people are saying the voters learned their lesson and will vote blue no matter who next time or that democrats issue is messaging.
Take - and make - your opportunities to change minds. Don't be afraid, but be careful. Don't be polite for the sake of politeness, but be kind, be considerate, even be gentle when you think it will help, but don't be polite.
Not to put too fine a point on it: No.
The horses have been led to the water many times. They are welcome to drink whenever they choose. The time for talking is over.
Then you're not actually advocating for change. If you have no interest in changing minds then you have no interest in any meaningful difference in the future. Besides, the consent has been manufactured and the horses have been lead to a poisoned pool.
The apathetic dismissal of people as helpless - the belief that they are, individually and as a whole, incapable of change or redemption or worse, unworthy of it - is a small but meaningful part of the machine that has altered reality in front of our very eyes.
We appear to be in one of many pivotal moments in history, where economics and politics and technology all tip the dominoes that are human lives toward an entirely new and irreversible state.
Hard times tend to meet demagogues and easy answers, but they also tend to force people to come together and face hard truths. I'm not saying you personally can save or change them all - perhaps not even save any. But there are plenty of good, ignorant people that will have opportunities to learn some terrible lessons very soon.
ten65 yearsWhat option were they given?
To pay attention or to not pay attention...
Pay all the attention you want, it's not like anyone was ever actually given the option out of this mess through the system.
I'm out of this mess through the system. They didn't do shit to stop me getting on a plane and flying across the ocean last Monday to a more civilized part of the world. It has its own problems, but at least people don't get into things like massive healthcare debt.
Yeah that's taking advantage of a privilege that practically zero other people have to flee to a safer distance from the problem. That isn't helping clean up the mess and doesn't entirely fully remove you from it.
It allows you to claim you aren't involved because you stay uninvolved but it's not the same as being helpful or even being offerable advice to anyone else other than a percentage so small it rounds down to zero.I am saving my queer daughter's life.
I suppose you would rather me stick around and have her marched into a camp?
Do you have any kids? Would you sacrifice children for your cause?
I didn't say that. I was pointing out the privilege of your statement when you offer that as a solution to this issue.
You can use the idea that anyone pointing it out is some villain who would have your family hurt but that's not reality. It's just an emotional response to protect your mindset. That's fine. Don't treat me poorly because of it though. You already got more privileges than the queer people left behind who may be in what you fantasize and have nightmares of.
It's not a sacrifice if we can't leave. It's just reality. Something you have a privilege to alter to ignore.
This is what you said:
It allows you to claim you aren’t involved because you stay uninvolved but it’s not the same as being helpful or even being offerable advice to anyone else other than a percentage so small it rounds down to zero.
As if that was why I left.
I never even claimed I wasn't involved, so it's just a lie anyway. For one thing, my wife is still in the U.S. and, since she's a librarian, she's facing the possibility of prison. Meanwhile, my meager savings are running out and I don't have a job.
So maybe I don't have this amazing privilege like you seem to think.
You have said that you are out the mess through the system, not entirely true, but through a privilege of the system. I have seen your other comments around telling people that there is no more action that can be taken and that this was the only choice but for most people the ONLY choice IS to stay.
Just because it's not working out for you doesn't mean it wasn't a privilege. The amount of people that could walk that path that you are taking is again very small.I'm sorry that it's not working out like you hoped but going around telling people the only way out is apathetic leaving to another country and then to now feel bad for you for. I can only offer my general empathy for dealing with struggles but I have no other for you. Not while you still seem to admonish everyone else without the same privilege you don't recognize.
I’m sorry that it’s not working out like you hoped but going around telling people the only way out is apathetic leaving to another country and then to now feel bad for you for.
That is utter horse shit. I never said or even implied such a thing. That is a disgusting lie.
I keep saying this to people- I know I'm stupid, I know I'm worth everyone's contempt, there's all kinds of horrible things you could say about me that are true... so why do you and others make up lies?
Talk about how shitty of a parent I am by failing my daughter. Talk about how everything I do is worthless. Talk about how I will never accomplish anything anyone will admire or be proud of. All of those things are 100% true.
But don't say that I am going around telling people the only way out is to be apathetic and to leave the country because I never said that.
Voting. They were given the option to vote, but chose to be the type that "don't care much about politics"
Why would they bother? Who actually represents them? Both major parties are corporate captured.
One of them isnt trying install a theocracy.
No, they just stepped aside and profited from donations while it happened
Sure buddy, Dems might be nearly uselesss because of that, but they weren't actively trying to overthrow the goverment or kill democracy
No, they just stepped aside and profited from donations while it happened
Did you ever canvass for any alternative candidate or do you expect them to just rise out of the ether?
So replace the term “both parties” with “the only party” by categorically discarding all faith and worship in all political parties that have done absolutely nothing for anyone of the working class.
Then make a new party that’s even better.
That's what the Greens and PSL elected to do. They're the best way out that doesn't involve bloodshed.
And I'm sure their policies would introduce runoff voting for future elections; but as it stands, most voters are currently voting out of fear of "the other big party" - for which voting Green poses an extreme risk.
but as it stands, most voters are currently voting out of fear of "the other big party"
Which is a confidence game. The big parties only matter because people have been convinced that they matter. Once this illusion is broken, real progress can begin, but until it is broken the US will simply continue its vicious cycle into oblivion.
Besides, what chance to Dems have of winning at this rate anyway? What chance did they have leading up to this past election as they covered up Biden's dementia, enabled a genocide, and imposed a candidate of their choosing after denying the people actual democracy? Are they redeemable?
What, the anti-nuclear "green party" with the vaccine hesitant Jill Stein? Pass. We need a scientifically aligned, pro-labor party not a career spoiler candidate.
Yeah, because things are going great as they are, right?
The status quo vs ... gestures wildly ???
If the status quo was working, people would have gone with it
Well, this new alternative is working out wonderfully.
Doesn't mean that people weren't desperate for an alternative. People don't have the knowledge you do and often don't think through every possible outcome. If they know they are suffering and there is a chance for change they will leap towards it even if it's out of the pot and into the fire. Humans crave change and the status quo has been used as a cludgel against them for decades.
You can be upset that this is the change that's happening but don't blame people that are suffering and try not to be smug about it when they suffer more or they will never view you as kind to their plight.
"BoTH siDes aRe the SAme!"
Yes, yes they are. Actually the Republicans at least have the virtue of being honest about being evil. Dems are too craven to even admit that.
