Is the US a dystopia?

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.

NEW: Drone startup BRINC, which just pulled a $25 million VC round, says it was inspired by the 2017 Vegas shooting to build non-violent robots. I obtained a video showing their original mission was a border patrol drone system designed to tase migrants https://t.co/TclkWOO3eM

— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) December 13, 2021

It would have happened eventually.

Right but I'm saying the timeline where America turns the Earth into a toilet wasn't necessarily predetermined.

oh yay, on to the next school shooting, when by the time they realize what's happening, panicked armed teachers will successfully take down a window, a wall, and a desk, while people still die all around them as before.

next you know they'll be deporting people to rwanda

― mookieproof, Thursday, 25 April 2024 bookmarkflaglink

That's right

Most teachers I wouldn’t worry about them having guns aside from incompetence

See why anyone on this boards listens to you on any topic after saying shit like this is 100% a mystery to me

Do you think those last three words mean I believe the idea is just grand? Incompetent people with guns - generally not good, I think most would agree.

The point was that some teachers are psychos and it won’t surprise me when one shoots a student for misbehaving down the road.

Which is not, as of yet, a problem since the psycho football coach being forced to teach geography has to make the conscious decision to break multiple laws by bringing his Glock to school on a regular basis. Not just removing those decisions but encouraging him to do so will inevitably result in new tragedies.

Much more worried about competence with guns.

i look at where i live and i see a sort of "laissez-faire" dystopia, where people do all kinds of fucked up shit and nobody does anything about it because what are you gonna do? talk to the cops about it?

alabama, tennessee, are they like that too? i don't really _know_ what the rest of the country is like these days. i don't know what "normal" is supposed to be.

stochastic incompetence doesn’t count the same

ahhhh, i don't feel that way. _334_ is a perfectly good dystopia if you ask me. for that matter stochastic incompetence is _part and parcel_ of any true dystopia, the way that incompetence is weaponized against marginalized people without even _needing_ any overt exterminatory action to be taken. that's what makes something a dystopia, when something is enshrined as an institutional norm.

Milo and I often don't see eye to eye but even I know what he meant

(my own 'stochoastic incompetence' comment was pure, unfunny in too too many ways, dark wise assery, sorry all).

no worries, that's one of those instances where the 'tism flared up and i literally didn't recognize the layer of sarcasm lol

Zeno of Elea: "bye, Hon, I'm just running out to the stoa for a few things."

Zeno's wife: "careful, bro - you'll never get there if your plan is to repeatedly travel half the remaining distance."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/25/flint-michigan-water-crisis

Years after the emergency, the Michigan city is yet to replace all lead pipes and affected families are still awaiting justice

replace this whole thread with one of the pictures of SWAT snipers setting up at campus Gaza protests

otm. I'm trying not to spam the board with stuff about the protests, but it sure feels like a police state this morning

It's simple. pic.twitter.com/M6pHdOA4YU

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 1, 2024

I no longer have a Twitter account but that seems destined to become the most-ratioed tweet since Elmo's

I used that exact four-word phrase the other week in a discussion of assisted suicide (I'm very pro-, and think depression is just as valid reason as, say, ALS to pull the plug on oneself). Wonder if President Joe shares my feelings.

quick, it's international workers' day and the cops are busy tear-gassing students protesting genocide, now's the perfect time to overthrow capitalism

going to a rally in a bit, will bump thread later if capitalism overthrown

"To Hatzifotinos, such tragedies were avoidable. “ ‘Don’t have money’ is not an excuse right now,” he told me. “I don’t know why people are choosing to get evicted. It never used to be a choice. Now I believe that it is.”"

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/04/the-eviction-experts/

"Can American Policing Be Fixed?"

"Lunch with the QAnon Shaman"

https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/HA0424-0C1DS_001.png

NC legislature votes to ban the wearing of (medical) masks in public, with a carve-out for members of secret societies, aka the fucking klan

texas governor pardons a convicted premeditated murderer (who also sexted 16yos) but it's okay because the murder victim was a black protestor

Good luck with chemo in NC.

https://www.newsweek.com/jasmine-crockett-marjorie-taylor-greene-diss-track-1901743

The US world has always been a dystopia, with snatches of something slightly less horrible occasionally emerging from the morass for the sake of contrast

The US world has always been a dystopia, with snatches of something slightly less horrible occasionally emerging from the morass for the sake of contrast

― Great-Tasting Burger Perceptions (Old Lunch)

fuck this manichean blackpill shit

we can have better

we _deserve_ better

no personal offense to you OL

fuck it i'm just gonna post the thing i wrote here instead of the autism thread, #onethread

-

I mean the thing is it's not accidental, you know? The "top shortage" here isn't accidental.

With or without an autism diagnosis, people gotta find ways to get by. I went off to college when I was 18 and I didn't have the skills, social or practical, to take care of myself, so I moved back in with my mom. I moved out again to get a job, and again, I didn't have the practical skills or the emotional support network to function, so I moved back in with my mom. I spent a couple years addicted to drugs, cold turkeyed them, was fortunate enough to survive. Met someone who had low enough self-esteem to become my caretaker despite my, like, not having the skills to treat other people with basic kindness and respect, married her, and the trade-off with caretaker relationships is that it... Like you have a job that sucks and you steal office supplies, right? Being a caretaker is a shitty, demanding job. I don't blame my caretakers for doing the things they did. Judging them as beside the point.

I spent a long time trying to learn skills that I the people in my life didn't have the skills or support to teach me, and so I'm out here living on my own, taking care of myself. It's really hard, and I'm not really good at it. And it's not just me. I have dozens of memes humorously expressing the sentiment of "God, taking care of myself is so fucking hard." And some of them are puppygirl memes. I do know a fair number of people who are autistic puppygirls. The shit the right-wingers say on TV, that there are people out there who identify as dogs, who wants to sleep in a cage and drink water out of a dogbowl, that's true. That's not me, I'm not like that, but I understand where that comes from. I've looked at a guy out in public with his dog and looked at how he treated her and sighed and said "God, I wish that was me."

But it's not, and you know, I'm proud of myself and I'm happy about what I've been able to accomplish. I'm better off where I am now, to be able to live on my own, live independently. I buy my own groceries. I do my own laundry. I pay my own bills. I sweep my floor occasionally. I check the mail. I'm able to take the bus to and from medical appointments. I'm able to manage, by myself, the large number of medications I'm taking to be able to function independently.

I mean all this is a lot. Maybe for some people it's like "Oh well of course that's just normal people stuff" and for me it's not. It's work, it's really hard work. And I've learned to celebrate that for myself, what a good job I'm doing, how hard I'm working, because nobody's going to go out there and say "Good job, Kate! You checked your mail today _and_ you took a shower even though you really didn't want to!"

The hardest bit right now for me is holding down a job. Because, I know this is a very autistic thing to say, the job I am working for is meaningless and stupid, it has no value, provides no value to the world at large, and knowing this, it is very hard for me to do this job. I'm work from home, I'm isolated, I live on my own, and this is I guess supposed to be a "privilege". With autism, though, there's this thing called "parallel play", which means that when I'm around other people, it's easier for me to do things. Having friends is important for me for a number of reasons, and one of the main ones is that I can invite them over to my place. There's this assumption that when you invite someone over it's for, I don't know, immoral purposes, unnatural acts, and that's not how it is for me. I have someone over and once they're over it's a lot easier for me to do functional tasks to take care of myself.

Or even, like... just having a good time by myself, it's not something I can do. I mean like. I got a TV and a video game system and thousands upon thousands of movies I could watch. I want to watch these movies, they seem really cool, but it's just not something I can do by myself. So I have friends and I say "Hey why don't you come over, we can watch anime". Or not anime. I've been meaning to watch Jacques Tati's _Playtime_ for over a decade, and I had a friend over a couple weeks ago and I said "Hey, why don't we watch this?" And it is, in fact, a great fucking movie. Also I guess maybe a little relevant to autism, isn't it? These systems, these machines made of people, these small absurdities. And they're funny, but these little meaningless routines, walking slowly down a wall to press a button and pressing slowly back... sometimes it's how I make meaning of things. It's how I make sense out of a chaotic and overwhelming environment.

I mean I do get overstimulated by my environment and people act like that's, like, a functional deficit, and Christ, I don't understand how someone can _not_ be. There's _so much shit_ going on around me _all the time_. For me it's sound, I focus on sounds, and there are airplanes and drag racers and ambulances and shit that I don't even know what it is. Yes I have a hard time looking people in the eyes and it's not because I don't _feel emotion_ it's because there's so _much_ there. So much of everything.

And holding down a job I'm supposed to do ten thousand stupid things at once, and I'm supposed to do them by myself with a boss who makes frequent immediate and factually incorrect demands of me, and I'm supposed to do it while I'm sitting alone in my apartment by myself. Except for the lesbians and puppygirls and fetish artists and I don't even know who, the ones who I alt-tab over to. Because if I'm going to be by myself of course I'm going to want to be by myself with _them_. I don't even know how to talk to a lot of the people at my workplace. I'm sure they're fine people but they have no idea what my life is like. They want to understand, but they have no clue about how to go about it.

Which of course what people say about my "functional deficit". I don't think we're, like, equal. Me and allistic people. I don't think that the way I go about things is _equally valid_. I'm glad I've learned the social skills I've learned. I think it's necessary to... I mean when I was younger someone would say the stupidest thing I'd ever heard and I'd just say, without thinking, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." I mean now I know it's not helpful or valuable or _kind_ for me to say that. I know how to not say that, and I know that it's not _lying_ just because it's true and I don't say it.

It's a lot of work, though, to be kind, because a lot of people in power say and do things that are very stupid and cruel and I say nothing because there's nothing I can do about it. I radically accept it, is what I've learned.

But it's hard and yeah I'd drink out of a dog bowl and sleep in a dog cage and wear a collar if it meant I didn't have to do that. Even though none of those things are really things I want to do. I just want someone to care for me. Sometimes. And so does, like.... everybody else here. And that's how you get a top shortage.

ahh cool, cool cool cool

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/15/harris-county-election-challenge-180th-district-court/

xpost That was just the inky sludge festering inside of me briefly escaping into the world, my apologies. Just getting harder to keep it tamped down these days.

no worries OL we all get that way sometimes, it wasn't about you personally

Billionaire CEOs didn't just reach Mayor Adams in a private chat urging him to arrest pro-Palestine Columbia students, they also offered PRIVATE staff to help NYPD. The Mayor accepted.

Members of the group also coordinated with Israel's war cabinet, UN ambassador and former PM. pic.twitter.com/r54yv87eqy

— Rafael Shimunov (@rafaelshimunov) May 17, 2024

Go Bernie... I've felt this way for years

A bill introduced by the US senator Bernie Sanders would dramatically expand access to oral healthcare by adding dental benefits to Medicare and enhance them in Medicaid, public health insurance programs that together cover 115 million older and lower-income Americans.

Despite Americans’ reputation for the flashy “Hollywood smile”, millions struggle to access basic dental care. One in five US seniors have lost all their natural teeth, almost half of adults have some kind of gum disease and painful cavities are one of the most common reasons children miss school.

“Any objective look at the reality facing the American people recognizes there is a crisis in dental care in America,” Sanders told the Guardian in an exclusive interview. “Imagine that in the richest country in the world.”

An extraordinary case of police "psychological torture" in Fontana, CA: When Thomas Perez reported his elderly father missing, cops brought him in for a 17-hour interrogation + coerced him to falsely confess killing his dad.

His dad was alive.

🧵https://t.co/3WLOUQ3lnB

— Sam Levin (@SamTLevin) May 24, 2024

absolutely horrifying. one especially dystopian part: they settled out of court because the victim feared the case would not ultimately succeed due to the qualified immunity doctrine.

From another article.

Perez agreed to the settlement rather than take the case to trial out of concern that a jury award could be overturned on appeal on grounds of qualified immunity for police. Generally, qualified immunity protects law enforcement officers unless they violate clearly established law arising from a case with nearly identical facts, according to the Legal Defense Fund.

So essentially they can get away with anything as long as it's bizarre enough?

yes - the "clearly established" thing comes early in a string of bad Supreme Court decisions on this. ime the episode of the 5:4 podcast on Qualified Immunity was an informative and sobering listen.

The scale of the US military-industrial complex's grip on higher education is just staggering—if you want to understand why schools went so ballistic over calls to divest from war, start here https://t.co/PDb64wGUPP pic.twitter.com/BwLP7zPV2y

— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) May 29, 2024

The M-I complex has had a death grip on US universities and colleges for most of the past 70 years. It started seriously gearing up in the 1950s and was unshakably entrenched by 1970.

reminds me of the Cyber Patriot program in grade schools, which is available thru LAUSD for example, and while it's not explicitly military-industrial complex it's sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Air Force Reserve, American Military University, and founded in part by CIAS (not to be confused with the CIA but still....)

7th graders should just be in chess clubs.

it's not a *direct* pipeline to the MIC, and school districts don't invest in it afaict, but it's amazing how that stuff just trickles all the way down in education.

The Cyberpatriot (mobile) site is even datedly creepy like something produced for a Starship Troopers deleted scene.

The M-I complex has had a death grip on US universities and colleges for most of the past 70 years. It started seriously gearing up in the 1950s and was unshakably entrenched by 1970.

I think I ranted about this on the Oppenheimer movie thread, but American academia wasn't exactly pushed into this - it should be M-I-A, the invisible partner. By the beginning of '43, every physicist in America knew that the Manhattan Project was a science Skull & Bones - whoever got the tap on the shoulder was going to be part of setting the direction of american physics - which leads to the UC running Los Alamos and Livermore, electrical engineering school partnerships with corporate towns like IBM in Kingston, and the o.g. Silicon Valley. All the M & I hired from the A like they were pro football teams. When I entered UC Irvine in 1983, the number of corporate partnerships the university had was front and center as advertising.

FWIW, in 1981 General Dynamics took my entire high school to Disneyland for free. All of the rides were free. Way more effective propaganda than Cyber Patriot

i recently went to a book fair where the author of this book happened to be and i meant to check it out -- has anyone read it?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61108472-palo-alto

I read his first book, but the length of Palo Alto put me off.

yes it is HUGE! i would only read as ebook

I kinda lost a bit of interest in that book after reading this review: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/grieving-redness-in-the-west-reading-malcolm-harris-after-mike-davis/