Is the US a dystopia?

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/

I guess this could go into one of the general COVID threads but running an anti-vax psyop in the middle of a global pandemic as part of Cold War II: The Coldening seems pretty dystopian.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

fuuuuuck.

Americans when they need to grocery shopping in the suburbs pic.twitter.com/XlCvI3eIB8

— sean (@_sn_n) June 15, 2024

Can't believe this isn't an SNL skit.

This seems like the inevitable accoutrement for those at the top of the disaster capitalism pyramid (not even joking)

Better looking than the Cybertruck

have we considered not having an Orange County?

not a high bar, but milo otm

on the other hand, what could possibly go wrong with a lot of terrified people driving around in vehicles that can blind any vehicles behind or in front of them?

Looks to me like some small time chop shop is modifying Cadillac Escalades to cater to some role-playing lunatics (or drug lords) with money to burn, hoping to make a few bucks from an ultra-niche market. They'd probably quote you a price in crypto if you ask them to. Not exactly representative of anything more dystopian than capitalism in general.

There was a time when profound face-melting psychosis might have been a barrier to owning a tricked-out Psychomobile but luckily for unhinged maniacs capitalism keeps hurtling towards it's inevitable conclusion

https://www.rezvanimotors.com/rezvani-vengeance#vengeance-home-page

based in Montana

Ha, of course.

"Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the LORD? SORRY GOD! Vengeance is yours for $1499 a month for a 48 month lease!"

Hopefully that thing is incredibly top heavy and hard to drive resulting in a rash of single vehicle fatalities (sorry mamas).

She blinds everybody with her super high beams,
She's a squirrel crushing, deer smacking, driving machine!
Canyonero!-oh woah, Canyonero! (Yah!)

I like how she shot one take with the gas mask on and another without, and then cut them together all willy-nilly

silly to ask i know, but... surely smoke-screens, "blinding" lights, pepper spray and electrification are not legal on US roads?

The existence of laws that prohibit owning or equipping a vehicle with such devices would be very unlikely, just because who would ever think to write a law so specific? But using such devices would presumably fall under laws against reckless endangerment, or other similar statutes, depending on the outcome of their use. If you cause an accident resulting in serious injury or death the exact cause won't matter as much as the culpability.

ain't no rule against a dog playin basketball

^has not heard of the Air Bud Accords apparently

I am sure there are no laws specifically prohibiting those things. But a creative prosecutor can get the driver using one of those stupid laws banning neon underglow lights that were passed in the 90s, when those were the public menace of the moment.

end times: Dolly Parton in the crosshairs of cancel culture

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/19/opinions/dolly-parton-conservative-liberal-centrism-hope/index.html

There's no way that little hole-and-corner dustup can 'cancel' Dolly Parton. She's up in the same Pantheon where Elvis lives on. (Yes, I know that Elvis gladly accepted a "Jr. FBI" credential from J. Edgar Hoover. This only proves his political naivety.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/19/louisiana-ten-commandments-schools/

Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed legislation Wednesday requiring every public classroom in Louisiana to display the Ten Commandments, becoming the first state with such a law and inflaming tensions over the separation between church and state.

“This bill mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom — public elementary, secondary and post-education schools — in the state of Louisiana, because if you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses,” Landry said at a bill-signing ceremony.

well its MY idea of a dystopia anyway.

Landry might want to post them in his own office. There’s a little known commandment he will want to refresh his memory on: “thou shalt not kill”

Governor Landry now plans to authorize additional execution methods and start up executions after a 14-year pause in the state

“which was Moses” my dude has problems with relative pronouns, perhaps he should focus on that instead of imposing his christofascist vision on the citizenry

Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed legislation Wednesday requiring every public classroom in Louisiana to display the Ten Commandments, becoming the first state with such a law and inflaming tensions over the separation between church and state.

“This bill mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom — public elementary, secondary and post-education schools — in the state of Louisiana, because if you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses,” Landry said at a bill-signing ceremony.

― scott seward

hammurabi was robbed

i’m not sure moses was really responsible for those laws, which is kind of the entire point of the ten commandments iirc

- related, to both hammurabi and the thread - i was walking my dog this morning and someone was smiling at her big and clearly wanted to pet her, so i walked over to let her get some adulation and spread the good dog vibes.

DOGS ARE SO SWEET! DON'T YOU LOVE THEM?!
aw, yes i
CAN YOU BELIEVE PEOPLE HURT THEIR DOGS?! CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!
yeah that is really bad, i
WHO WOULD DO SUCH A THING? YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN NORTH COUNTY, RIGHT? THE 11-YEAR OLD BOY AND THE DOG?
yes (lying, trying to walk away now)
WHO WOULD DO THAT? THAT'S JUST SICK!!!!
yeah i can't believe
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SHOULD DO TO HIM? EXACTLY WHAT HE DID TO THAT BOY AND THAT DOG!
mmhmmm
DISGUSTING!!!

times were simpler back when the code was posted nice and tall in the town square, nobody could read it, and everyone's eyes were ripped out

I walked my young spaniel this morning, he freaks out at any dogs he isn’t roommates with, and got caught in a dystopic Stalkker-esque no man’s land stalemate when two dog owners on opposite ends of the road stopped walking to watch me try to calm my dog down while he did his insane Fred Astaire on lsd impression or whatever.

i’m not sure moses was really responsible for those laws, which is kind of the entire point of the ten commandments iirc

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand)

that's the whole point, though, that's why landry calls him the "lawgiver", that's why it's a portion of mosaic law and not the code of hammurabi that he's mandating be in there

folks like him don't believe they're enforcing human law over a civil society made up of many different people of many different backgrounds and faiths. they believe they're responsible for enforcing the One True Divine Law as given to Moses by the One True God Himself, as interpreted by _them_, God's faithful servants. it's that law that says that guys who get it in the bussy must be put to death (pretty sure those are God's exact words). it's that law that says that AMABs who dress femme must be put to death. now, that belief is a gross distortion of mosaic law, but that's what they _believe_. that belief is what makes them categorically unsuited to hold civil authority. but they do, and hey presto, dystopian theocracy!