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.

i guess hammering nails up one's nose isn't much harder than doing a COVID swab.

Narrator: It is.

Omg that’s…there’s a decent chance I know someone who knows someone in Fruitport. I used to live there.

it was a manufacturing company, how else are you supposed to sell your boss on new methods for assembling technology

The largest pharmacy chain in America is accused of "unlawfully dispensing massive quantities of opioids and other controlled substances to fuel its own profits at the expense of public health and safety," according to a civil lawsuit filed by the Justice Department, which was unsealed Wednesday.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/cvs-knowingly-dispensed-massive-amount-invalid-opioid-prescriptions/story?id=116927855

^^^^ CVS soon to donate to Trump's inauguration

i go to CVS
and I see BS

its old news kinda. all three of the big chains made massive profits during the opioid crisis and when you read what walgreens did back then...its truly horrible. the whole not caring about people thing. hell, all those doctors overprescribing for all those years...i don't remember the AMA putting out an apology to people about what doctors did here. a chain like walgreens should have been put out of business. they should have had every license revoked. all these chains overbuilt thinking the opioid ride would go on forever and now they are all bankrupt and closing everything AFTER they put every independent drug store in the country out of business. its maddening.

anyway, now, the dystopian thing to me is just the not caring part. not on the part of the companies. the people who live here. the vast majority of people in this country do not care that almost everyone relies on these horrible chains for medicine. nobody is going to stop going to CVS after reading that story. nobody is going to stop using amazon after watching a scare documentary about amazon. that's that suicidal aspect of a dying superpower. people just kinda give up. they know things are horrible...eh...at least weed is legal...

i was reading/watching some thing about the 10 million or more men who have just stopped doing anything. they don't work. they don't go anywhere. it was bleak. also i totally saw myself in that cohort if things had worked out differently for me.

I'm imagining a CVS-sponsored inauguration with lots of songs like "Midnight Blue" and "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?"

Lol

My home town used to have a family-owned pharmacy that was in the 2nd or 3rd generation and they shut a couple of years ago. I don't know for sure but it probably didn't help that a Walgreen's opened in the shopping plaza near the highway.

I was really sad when our local indie pharmacy shut down, it was by far the most pleasant good-vibes pharmacy I’ve been to. And it had that charm of fixtures etc that hadn’t been replaced since the 80s

When I call in prescription refills my pharmacy's voice mail menu starts "Thanks for calling [drugstore], your local independently owned pharmacy."

the problem is that when something similar happened to Walgreen's, it resulted in them making it near impossible for patients to pick up controlled substances at their stores after that for patients that actually needed them for their pain. This was around 2013-2014 I think but many people shared they got told filling the prescription was "feeding an addiction" and to seek other pharmacies to fill their Rx at, or people who had to wait excessive amounts of time. Walgreen's was putting all of the pressure on their pharmacists to go through a really long, secret checklist before dispensing them, and it was actually hurting people who depended on the drugs.

so I'm guessing CVS will be the same (tbh, it might already be that way today, idk)

i was reading/watching some thing about the 10 million or more men who have just stopped doing anything. they don't work. they don't go anywhere. it was bleak. also i totally saw myself in that cohort if things had worked out differently for me.

― scott seward

my mom's youngest brother - early gen x - lost his job in 2008. he was a research scientist. he tried going back to law school. tried getting a job as an EMT. didn't work out. he kinda scraped by, lived in his basement studio listening to prog rock, sometimes playing prog rock. his wife kept working, kept working through the breast cancer. idk. maybe he did more for the family, more for their son, than he seemed to. seemed like she did a lot and he didn't do as much. anyway, he had a stroke and lost the ability to form memories, which made it even harder for my aunt, caretaking him full-time, until he died a couple years back.

my mom's second youngest brother was a real estate lawyer... when the '08 crash happened, he couldn't get work. he'd just bought a big new house for his big family. they were underwater, it got repo'd. got into doing sales. i don't know that he's really good at it. he gives off kind of a willy loman vibe. he had a stroke too, though it wasn't as damaging. last i heard of him he seemed to be doing ok, went in for the deaconate, which seemed to be giving his life meaning. trad cath, opus dei type. black sheep of the family in that regard. he became dead to me after he made a big deal about being a "never trumper" and then voted for trump anyway, because borchen. i have no idea what him or his family think of me and don't much care.

my mom's third and fourth youngest brothers are retired too. i think of them as more "late boomers". one was a doctor, one was a lawyer. the doctor, he's a pretty amazing guy. does a lot of good for the community in a lot of ways. problem is, the head of surgery... well, i won't get into details, but the head of surgery was doing some stuff that my uncle felt, with good reason, was... sacrificing the health of his patients for profit. and advocated on behalf of better patient care. anyway, my uncle's retired now. i guess that guy is still running the surgery department over there.

i got maybe one trans friend who works. a lot of us lost our jobs this year. i'm losing my job. i was perfectly good at this job seven years ago, but, well... i mean, i've talked about this job. i'm not sad to be leaving it, but where the fuck am i gonna work? i've stopped telling people i'm trans when i apply to places, which gets me interviews, but damn, it's rough to get a job doing anything. no, no, it's rough to get a job doing _nothing_, because nobody _does_ anything these days, really. i'd like to do something, but none of us have the power, none of us have the authority. my one friend who has a job... it'd be good work if the institutional support existed for her to do it well. one of my other friends, she got sacked unexpectedly recently. she was working at a non-profit supporting queer healthcare. they couldn't get the funding. she was telling me... she was a teacher for 20 years. the last straw for her was when the first brought kids back in school after COVID, the first fucking thing they did was standardized testing. first fucking thing.

my mom's youngest sister is an educator, tries to get books in for the curriculum. in ohio. there's only so much she can do, you know, in ohio. she's too young to retire, can't really afford to. she says mostly they're coming after the immigrants. i got a pretty distorted view of what the world looks like, probably, me being white, me being born here. i just know that a lot of people who were loud about supporting trans people in '19 aren't as loud these days. media that supports trans people gets quietly shelved, trans-affirming scenes get cut. it's too controversial. god, these days it seems a miracle that a show like _the owl house_ got made at all. i don't think a show like it would get on the air today.

i don't know where all this goes. i got unemployment for a while. i'm not gonna get kicked out of my home anytime soon, which makes me privileged. a lot of my friends are homeless. there's probably a future for us somewhere out there, but i can't really see it from here. i'm doing what i can to get by, to take care of myself. trying to get out there and socialize with other people. one's world gets smaller when things get hard the way they are. that's not good. i know the statistics. community is a matter of life and death - for everyone, no matter who.

i don't talk about it much because it's depressing. people don't want to listen. i don't want to talk about it. i got less to say. very little to say at all, really, these days.

My health insurance company has their own hospitals and pharmacies. It’s the one that ranked the “best” in that infographic where United was the worst. I have had this company since birth.

I think I have only had to get a prescription from Walgreens etc when I had dental surgery. It’s still absurd that dental is a separate thing…. because dental pain jfc the only times I have had opiods were for dental pain.

My uncle was a doctor who may have been one of the overproscribers … it wasn’t a getting bribes from pharmaceutical companies in his case, he just was really sympathetic to patients in pain, and wanted to help. Idk … he never talked about it and he has severe dementia now so we’ll never know lol

the family-owned former pharmacy that’s about a mile away from me is now just an ice cream shop, in the vein of old-timey soda fountain shops. they’ll never have a pharmacy license again after moving 700,000 (!) hydrocodone pills, most out the back door

it’s absolutely insane how many opioids were moving through the system for years

when you read about walgreens setting up their own distribution because they couldn't sell oxy fast enough back then...oof. talk about a menace to society.

i spent two hours on the phone with insurance trying to understand how they processed some claims for my son and got basically nowhere... in the end they were basically like 'oh yeah we messed something up we have to redo the whole thing'. they were very nice but also impossible to hear 1/2 the time because the customer service person appeared to have the entir emouthpiece of her phone in her throat.

when that Trump picture was supposedly the “hardest image of the year” we couldn’t even conceive of this pic.twitter.com/iktmtKk3C6

— Skyler Higley (@skyler_higley) December 19, 2024

fucking Adams, what is this Batman shit

funny haha news hit about cops in South Carolina chasing and tasing the Grinch made me feel very dystopia-queasy. Gosh that's hilarious chasing a guy and electrocuting him!

must-read article about our tech/app dystopia, posted by frogbs in the "backwards steps" thread

https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/

local indie pharmacy

Indie pharmacies had the edgy new meds. Not like that mass-market focus-tested crap put out by CVS, maaaan.

The major pharms are just all about the money, maaaan.

That Luigi photo has some real Rorschach going to jail energy

sorry to hear how rough things are for you rn rushomancy.

scott, just want to push back on your narrative above. people have given up not because they don’t care, but because they don’t see any other options— blaming individuals for an issue related to monopoly control of industries and rapacious capitalism puts the onus on the wrong side, imho

yep. CVS is actually my provider for prescriptions. the other day i went to the local pharmacy because my script was on backorder at CVS and they could not tell me when it would arrive. so the local pharmacy filled my script. the next time i needed a refill i went straight to the local pharmacy but was told CVS won't cover it. gotta try to get it from CVS first.

the CVS pharmacist do not want to talk to you or help in anyway. they are rightfully frightened of engaging with customers.

Now we can't even party anymore

Party City is closing down all of its stores, ending nearly 40 years in business, CNN has learned.

CEO Barry Litwin told corporate employees Friday in a meeting viewed by CNN that Party City is “winding down” operations immediately and that today will be their last day of employment. Staff were told they will not receive severance pay, and they were told their benefits would end as the company goes out of business.

As a concept, it's just a bunch of stores full of cheap crap that I wouldn't buy if they paid me to cart it home with me. Fucking awful for the employees, though.

Merry Christmas

Staff were told they will not receive severance pay

jeez, even Scrooge sent Bob Cratchit a christmas turkey

The relationship between billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and billionaire Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk is warming up, a Friday morning exchange on Musk’s social media app X suggested.

Two days after the tech titans dined together with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Bezos broadcast his agreement with Musk’s opinion that it is necessary to cut regulation and government payrolls.

“Shifting people from the government sector, which is low productivity, to the private sector, which is high productivity, results in greatly increased prosperity,” Musk tweeted Friday morning. “Deregulation helps tremendously too.”

A few hours later Bezos replied, “Both of these are correct and the first is widely under appreciated.”

Bezos also owns The Washington Post.

It was only a month ago that Bezos accused Musk of spreading false information about him on X. On Nov. 20, Musk tweeted that he had heard Bezos was “telling everyone that @realDonaldTrump would lose for sure, so they should sell all their Tesla and SpaceX stock.” Bezos fired back: “Nope. 100% not true.”

Musk, whose donations to Trump’s campaign made him the biggest political donor in U.S. history, is set to co-chair a committee aimed at deregulating the government with Vivek Ramaswamy called DOGE.

Bezos, meanwhile, has expressed optimism about Trump’s second term despite previous conflict with the president. Last week he gave $1 million to the Trump inauguration fund via Amazon, matching donations from other tech leaders including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

In October, Bezos spiked a Washington Post endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, sparking allegations that he was using his ownership of the paper to curry favor with Trump, charges that he denied in an op-ed published in The Post later that month.

Bezos and Musk have multiple business interests in direct competition, including their private space exploration companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, as well as Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet company, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper. While Musk has the lead in both arenas, Bezos said in a recent New York Times interview that he trusts that Musk won’t abuse his close relationship with the president.

“I take at face value what has been said, which is he’s not going to use his political power to advantage his companies or disadvantage his competitors,” Bezos said.

Glad these two are getting along

Heartwarming

“Shifting people from the government sector, which is low productivity, to the private sector, which is high productivity, results in greatly increased prosperity”

This is the kind of propaganda that becomes pure nonsense when you analyze it in depth, but neither Musk nor Bezos cares to think it through with any rigor because it's their own prosperity they are talking about.

Supervillain billionaires with rocket ships, I feel like reading comics as a kid gave me a good foundation for all of this. Now we just wait for the league of avengers to put things right.

honestly, while not subscribing to accelerationism’s mishmash of ideologies and tenets, i am starting to actually believe that there will be some major, world-changing revolutions in my lifetime. the contradictions and inequities are becoming so stark and so maddening that it seems a little inevitable.

I used to think that but (1) there won't be any revolutions; and (2) if there are, the revolutionaries will be gunned down by police/military/private security forces before they even touch the door of a single mansion.

The best one could hope for is that such violence and fascism required to maintain this system of inequality will make life unpalatable for the uber-rich, but I wouldn't bet on it. I think they are fine with it and will happily hose down the blood if it allows them to keep all that wealth.

“Shifting people from the government sector, which is low productivity, to the private sector, which is high productivity,

To me this reads as "Let's fire all these black federal workers."

this system of inequality will make life unpalatable for the uber-rich

Once you've started to ride the tiger, there's no safe way to dismount.

such violence and fascism required to maintain this system of inequality will make life unpalatable for the uber-rich

I forget whether it was here or elsewhere, but I saw that the Popbitch email (a thing I had forgotten existed) ran a joke about CEOs hiring security and that the perks of the job included a gun and close proximity to the CEO in question.

I heard some Russian opposition figure on NPR or somewhere, and he reminded the world that in Russia, nothing happens for years and years, but when it does come - the fall of the Tsar, the end of the Soviet Union - it usually happens really fast, like in three days

It's a quote that get misattributed to Lenin quite a bit
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lenin-decades-quote/

Based on posts by ilxors who work for big private sector companies… they don’t seem very high productivity tbh… though i do appreciate the contributions to ilx!

having worked in a similar role in both the public and private sector (admittedly in Australia)

working for a private for-profit - the waste was unbelievable! we absolutely pissed money away constantly, had ridiculous perks and very meagre expectations re actual work

in a similar role for a governmental org - everybody is making do with a tiny amount of resources, often across multiple roles - and making it work because they are motivated by drivers other than personal financial reward

My father was part of the SoCal late 70s evangelical born-again Reagan Republican thing and when I was growing up he told me he'd disown me if I ever joined the military or worked for the federal government, because the government was so inefficient and wasteful. He eventually started a company and it was later bought by a larger corporation who he went to go work for and he took it all back. He said he'd never seen inefficiency like he had with the private sector.

I kind of thought the "government is inefficient" overtones of the Tea Party/Paul Ryan era had died away with the rise of the Trump GOP but to paraphrase Oscar Isaac, somehow it's returned.

every dollar spent by the federal government that goes into the US economy has a greater than 1 multiplier in how much it contributes to the economy, typically much more than the publicly-held private sector. the issue is that publicly-held companies try to make that ratio go up, but to enrich shareholders and private equity rather than contributions to the nation at large, regardless of how the company’s core business is affected

the issue that’s been ongoing for decades is the tightrope that publicly-held companies that service government contracts walk isn’t sustainable. the stock market capitalism lie is that investors drive efficiency, but it’s extraction of value, and that value isn’t just dollars, it’s effectiveness and quality of output

I used to think that but (1) there won't be any revolutions; and (2) if there are, the revolutionaries will be gunned down by police/military/private security forces before they even touch the door of a single mansion.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR)

if the police/military/security forces are able to do that without reprisals, _they're_ the ones who run the country, not people like bezos and musk

eventually, the people they pay to protect them will figure out that they can just, like, kill the people who are paying them and take the money and power for themselves

which i wouldn't really call a good thing, but then, i don't think revolutions are a good thing in general

best i can say that there are certain circumstances where i might consider them _less bad_ than a continuation of the existing order

for instance, in the case of a state that's actively trying to eradicate marginalized demographic groups, _particularly_ demographic groups i happen to be a member of

the problem being that marginalized demographic groups tend to be the ones who suffer most in situations of revolutionary disruptions of the established order

can't win for losing, i guess

every dollar spent by the federal government that goes into the US economy has a greater than 1 multiplier in how much it contributes to the economy, typically much more than the publicly-held private sector. the issue is that publicly-held companies try to make that ratio go up, but to enrich shareholders and private equity rather than contributions to the nation at large, regardless of how the company’s core business

Not sure if this belongs here but found this incredibly dystopic https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

This one too https://wcbm.com/national-headline/missing-gop-congresswoman-not-seen-for-six-months-finally-found-living-at-dementia-care-home/