Is the US a dystopia?

option 3 ftw

US perfidy always comes back to tea

not really

hm sounds like you're either a "no" or "The Beatles" but afaict you can still secretly vote however you wish

it's going to take a lot of restraint not to shoehorn this in to thread connections

I figured it was what it was for.

least serious answer is the correct one

by that you mean "yes"?

oh misread "least" as "last" nevermind

This question is unhelpful and I have no idea why it is being asked.

Badly trimmed shrub = dystopiary

Dropped the clay - dyspottery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeu3iH0R_GM

I mean, pulling up the forecast today and seeing tornado warnings for Chicago in mid-December doesn't make me not think it's a dystopia.

an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.

not imagined, authoritarian rather than totalitarian and pre-apocalyptic instead of post IMO

so maybe it's not a dystopia but merely dystopic

dystopic? I dunno. but ilx is def dyspeptic today.

I did not remotely intend this thread to be serious, but there's an argument to be made that 1492 counts as the apocalypse

Can the apocalypse be local?

Americans rly struggle with not being the world and i think its quite telling tbh

let it beatles

Climate catastrophe is going to be pretty universal IIRC.

which is v little to do with the point about 1492 is it

you can get with dystopia, or you can get with datopia

just throwing this out there but maybe dystopia fans are blind to dystopias

I dunno I think most fans of the crust punk band Dystopia probably would agree that the USA is a dystopia fwiw

let me see, is the US a dystopia.

the republican party is trying to actively KILL a lot of people. let me just see how that plays in the polls

The approval rating among those who voted for [Biden] has dropped from 80% to 69% in the April survey. There have been notable declines among Americans 18-34 and suburban residents, both of whom, in dramatic swings, now register net negative views on the president.

As bad as Biden’s number may be, the polling data for Democrats in Congress is far worse.

Republicans now sport a historic 10-point advantage when Americans are asked which party they prefer to control Congress, holding a 44%-34% margin over Democrats. That’s up from a 2-point Republican advantage in the October survey.

In the past 20 years, CNBC and NBC surveys have never registered a double-digit Republican advantage on congressional preference, with the largest lead ever being 4 pints for the GOP.

“If the election were tomorrow, it would be an absolute unmitigated disaster for the Democrats,″ said Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research Associates and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

yes it's a full blown dystopia

nah but rich people have never had it better tho

A 4 pint lead is difficult to overcome tbh. sorry

Can the apocalypse be local?

Americans rly struggle with not being the world and i think its quite telling tbh

― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Friday, December 10, 2021 8:10 PM (one hour ago)

I was addressing "the apocalypse" that it could be argued helps to confirm the US as a dystopia, the subject of this important poll. So I guess I do think it can be local, idk, why not? Anyway Columbus never even entered future-US territory, it's more of a symbolic hinge year for everything being terrible from then on

I'd figure most people using the term think in the sense of dystopian science fiction and I kinda think 2021 has quite a few elements that seem like out of such.

There's no utopia that's not someone's dystopia, and vice versa.

The notion of local dystopias is an interesting one. Could be that there was an egalitarian paradise unfolding just a continent or two over from Mad Max.

If the US ticks all the boxes- and there's a case- then clearly plenty of very nice places to live in exist besides so id say thats a clear yes

Have we ever not been? Slave state — apartheid state — Vietnam/Watergate — Corporate state — Fury Road (2016-present)

the people in the mayfield candle factory that collapsed worked 12-hour shifts that paid $8 an hour. 110 ppl were inside. 40 ppl are still unaccounted for. they haven’t recovered a survivor since 3 am. pic.twitter.com/CsIIfLw3Pc

— Tracy Moore (@iusedtobepoor) December 11, 2021

it’s legal in kentucky to fire someone for refusing to work mandatory overtime

— Tracy Moore (@iusedtobepoor) December 11, 2021

The notion of local dystopias is an interesting one. Could be that there was an egalitarian paradise unfolding just a continent or two over from Mad Max.

Zardoz is another one. Although The Eternals are mainly a bunch of insufferable bores and their egalitarian paradise is pretty lame, but you wouldn't complain about it if you were being held captive by Charlotte Rampling.

Slave state — apartheid state — Vietnam/Watergate — Corporate state — Fury Road (2016-present)

We didn't start the fire, etc.

Let's see what all we have...you got this one.

US combined laissez-faire capitalism on it's drug industry and combined with heroin blow-back from the 'war on terror' created the opioid epidemic for fun and profit killing over a million Americans since 1999.

Getting back to the topic at hand, Le Guin wrote a book about a moon. Also was there some Cold War global political framework in her gender-bender book? I don't recall.

Climate catastrophe is going to be pretty universal IIRC.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Saturday, December 11, 2021 1:14 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

which is v little to do with the point about 1492 is it

― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Saturday, December 11, 2021 1:17 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It is though (unless I'm misreading). The USA is the biggest historical contributor to the climate crisis. An argument could be made that if 1492 never happened, there would be no global crisis. Same for much of global environmental destruction -- Amazon forest all gone? Thank Ronald McDonald.

Local teachers in South Dakota “Dash for Cash” to help their classrooms by fighting over $5,000 in $1 bills while the crowd hoots and hollers. pic.twitter.com/azwGJKhaKU

— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) December 12, 2021

they're going to remove that rug at some point

and then charge them for it!

An argument could be made that if 1492 never happened, there would be no global crisis.

Are we talking a world where Europe never came into contact with the Americas?

I can’t live without potatoes

-LL McCooljay

It would have happened eventually.

I can’t live without potatoes

OTM

Lol, Neanderthal.

Also, if we no longer live in "America" (the collective delusion under which we all labored from our birth through January 2025), I see no reason why the states should continue to pretend they're "United."

until we can ensure the constitution's electoral rules will provide a national government that reflects the will of the people of the united states without overweighting minority positions so much, it is a fraud to its original intent

I think that protecting the interests of the wealthy minority was exactly the intent of the electoral rules that ended up doing just that.

The US electoral rules are so weird because the constitutional convention had to come up with rules that all thirteen original colonies could ratify, whereas their economic interests and local cultures were wildly divergent. Protecting the interests of the gentry was among the least controversial of the principles being debated. The delegates all agreed that creating a true democracy was far too dangerous and they never intended one.

xp I don’t think it only had one intent and I erred in stating it had one. Its creators had intentions, and I suspect they had many many different and even opposing ones. I do think most or all of them would have hated how it’s being handled, but I’m no historian.

Barack Obama has pressed pause on his annual summer playlist.

The former president revealed Wednesday that he wouldn’t be releasing a list of his favorite tunes this summer, the first time he hasn’t done so since 2015.

ok, now we're cooked.

Looool.

He did the reading list and showed each entry in his handwriting, which is gorgeous for a) a man who is b) left-handed. I can’t help but feel that’s a dig at Mr. Sharpie.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/federal-agents-arrest-firefighters-working-on-wa-wildfire/

Two people fighting the Bear Gulch fire on the Olympic Peninsula were arrested by federal law enforcement Wednesday, in a confrontation described by firefighters and depicted in photos and video.

Why the two firefighters were arrested is unclear. But a spokesperson for the Incident Management Team leading the firefighting response said the team was “aware of a Border Patrol operation on the fire,” that it was not interfering with the firefighting response and referred reporters to the Border Patrol station in Port Angeles.

Over three hours, federal agents demanded identification from the members of two private contractor crews. The crews were among the 400 people including firefighters deployed to fight the wildfire, the largest active blaze in Washington state.

Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday about the confrontation.

It is unusual for federal border agents to make arrests during the fighting of an active fire, especially in a remote area.

Gotta make your quotas

he will keep this up til everyone picks sides, because that is the true goal of these operations. it is a loyalty test and has little to do with anything else. he doesn’t even want violence against protesting citizens, at least too much yet. just, are you in, or are you out? the culling or jailing or elimination will come later when he has more lackeys ready to enforce them. these things are part identification, part enlistment.

it does not seem doompost-y to me even, it just is how i read it as a mostly normal person. and no predictions as to their success, tho i think it will depend on where you are. the countervailing force is as likely to be economic immiseration as much as deprivation of rights, or senses of moral or legal injustice. hope i’m wrong on about all of it.

countervailing force is as likely to be economic immiseration

this. so long as the public is allowed to express its choice in elections, history indicates that being blamed for economic immiseration is the quickest way to lose any election. the right wing will attempt to overcome this disadvantage by seeking to create an acute civil and social crisis that requires a suspension of civil liberties and an authoritarian government, while also undermining elections as much as they dare.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/03/ai-startup-flock-thinks-it-can-eliminate-all-crime-in-america/

With more than 80,000 AI-powered cameras across the U.S., Flock Safety has become one of cops’ go-to surveillance tools and a $7.5 billion business. Now CEO Garrett Langley has both police tech giant Axon and Chinese drone maker DJI in his sights on the way to his noble (if Sisyphean) goal: Preventing all crime in the U.S.

grim lol at this part:

Flock isn’t without regulatory troubles of its own. The state of Illinois is investigating whether cops broke the law there when they gave out-of-state agencies access to their Flock feeds to hunt down breaches of immigration or abortion law. (Flock has since updated its tools to prevent out-of-state sharing in states with laws prohibiting it.) Last year, a Forbes investigation found Flock had regularly failed to get the correct permits and licenses to deploy its devices, appearing to break a number of local laws. Langley admits the company is “still very far from perfect” but that in cases where it has struggled to get quick permit approvals from transportation agencies, waiting 12 months “just doesn’t make sense.” He complains that “it feels like we were penalized for saving a kid from being hit by a car and we got caught for jaywalking.”

All states have their own privacy laws and IL is more protective of certain things than any other state, such as biometrics. This is an area that blue states should band together and create some unified privacy framework that would make it more difficult for these kinds of companies to operate.

they should also arrest this criminal for breaking the law and then confessing to it in a magazine

I forgot what thread this was and thought you meant the Eat Pray Love writer

Is the US a literary clusterfuck?

I think my worst instinct about the future is that dystopia would be aesthetically compelling in some way: https://gizmodo.com/trumps-new-history-exhibit-features-fake-quotes-from-ai-generated-founding-fathers-2000652792

if you hate yourself, I recommend watching a clip

I forgot what thread this was and thought you meant the Eat Pray Love writer

is that being discussed in another ilx thread? read an extract in a uk mag the other day and the mind boggled so hard my head still aches

Rudy is out of the hospital and back doing his podcast. pic.twitter.com/jpoJaYmOcU

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 3, 2025

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon infamously referred to AI as “A1” (like the steak sauce) at a recent speaking engagement.

The proper way to refer to it is as Al (as in Al Green).

Generative Al. Let's ask Al. Al is revolutionizing the way we do business.

Like and subscribe for more language tips

is that being discussed in another ilx thread?

some discussion in the New Yorker Alert thread

Ah, thx

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/south-korean-women-sue-us-062831445.html

The proper way to refer to it is as Al (as in Al Green).

― je ne sequoia (Ye Mad Puffin)

or al jardine, even

i went no-contact with al after he wouldn't quit calling me "betty". and of course betty gets called "jackson", even though she insists her name's marie...

I can call you Betty

Weird

with all media owned by either Disney or Larry Ellison, we're going to have to reject poptimism across the board in the future

All those early Judge Dredd comics are looking pretty prescient in these days. 80s scifi have called this s##t pretty well.

This just bummed me out so much

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/technology/roblox-lawsuit-child-safety.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mE8.fO2G.Ij0ubWFmrWaf&smid=url-share

That poor little boy. And that happened in a family where the parents were involved and engaged.

yeah. just awful.

A friend’s daughter was groomed in this same way. I’ve sent my friend the article jic it happened on the Roblox platform.

not that any of us are looking for more evidence of our dystopia, but this is tragically not an isolated incident. Roblox seems like it is either a path to being abused/taken advantage of somehow, or a total gateway drug to being toxically terminally online and being the abuser. Presumably (hopefully?) not for the average user, but high enough risk that I count my lucky stars my kids never got into it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_safety_on_Roblox

My god.

Just days after a Fox News host called for euthanizing homeless people there's been a mass shooting at a homeless encampment in Minneapolis pic.twitter.com/zpU0bCIMAs

— 🥀_ Imposter_🥀 (@Imposter_Edits) September 16, 2025

Fox News host still has a job.

This is pretty tame compared to the stuff happening elsewhere, but sheesh. https://www.theverge.com/news/780757/samsung-brings-ads-to-us-fridges

the most acute dystopian feeling i get regularly is seeing the auto-play video ads at the gas pump

I can handle that. I get that when I’m in a shop or garage they’re trying to sell you stuff. In your own home, give me a break.

Happy to stick with an analogue fridge.

For about two years every time I got gas the pump was playing "As It Was" or "Sunroof."

that gas pump stuff is horrific 100% agree. the fact it's not "on" until you start pumping. . . jeez

some pumps have a button to turn it off, and I always do if that option exists. A lot of them don't seem to have an "off' button, though.

Second button down from the top on the right-hand side mutes it in most cases

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSLhk23601w

Supposedly at BP stations pushing the top-right and top-left buttons together will drop the pump into diagnostic mode, but can't confirm

a lot of the gas stations near me have a big arrow or a “mute” sticker next to the button that mutes the ads

Bummer for you suckers that have to pump your own gas. nj strong!

Bummer for you suckers that have to pump your own gas. nj strong!

A few days after arriving in Montana I had to ask a gas station cashier in her 20s to teach me how to work a gas pump. It was weirdly exciting to learn a new skill at 51.

ha thanks for the gas hacks i will try it!

"this button delivers you, temporarily, from a dystopia"

https://kuathletics.com/news/2025/8/13/football-ku-athletics-receives-historic-300-million-gift-from-longtime-donor-and-alumnus-david-booth