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.

That's Tim Daly, as per the post.

And yesterday the fucking Arizona Supreme Court used an AI reporter to announce that a man’s death sentence was being upheld

It's deliberate disrespect, like when the Trump admin requested a 1-day sentence for the man who killed Breonna Taylor

I don't think that's a picture of Tim Daly the actor, maybe some rando with the same name

https://planetcomicon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/PCKC25_DALY_anncmnt-800x800.png

That's Tim Daly, as per the post.

― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf)

thank you. i know my writing's not always clear, and i think i wasn't clear here. that's a picture of _a man named tim daly_. it's not a picture of the voice actor who's also tyne daly's younger brother. (is tyne daly more famous than tim daly? i guess it depends on how into theater you are. i'm not into theater and i do know tyne daly, but then i grew up in the greater new york area and i saw a _lot_ of ads for her performance in "gypsy".) the point i was trying to make, and wasn't clear on, is that searching for "tim daly" turns up WRONG DUDE pictures pretty quickly.

mind you, tim daly only played superman early on. when the justice league series started, george newbern took over the role. wikipedia says george newbern is primarily known for his role in scandal, which might be true - i haven't seen scandal. it looks like he has a comparatively minor role on that show though. anyway if he's not primarily known as superman, he's the only superman actor i can think of who isn't...

i know we're supposed to be talking about dystopia right now, look i just needed to take a break, it's too depressing.

i looked him up and duckduckgo gave me this picture

classic duckduckgo lol

ah, tim daly! the heart and soul of Wings!

Also the son of James Daly, memorably the harried businessman who exited at Willoughby, per the classic Twilight Zone episode.

Have Tim and Tyne Daly been seen in the same room together?

https://3brothersliquor.com/cdn/shop/products/PhotoRoom_20230316_005340.jpg

xp probably, as they are siblings?

Did not know that! Daly is such a common last name!

in the last two days I've seen both Coco violence (knocking over a coco so it literally couldn't go anywhere) and Coco friendship (helping it out of a rut in the sidewalk).

If you're not familiar, Coco's are these little doghouse-on-wheels type things that are driven by remote drivers in South America that deliver food around town.

Did not know that! Daly is such a common last name!

Kate I admit I also cannot always read the entirety of your posts during a single straphang but just want you to know you are seen and appreciated today

that's a picture of _a man named tim daly_. it's not a picture of the voice actor who's also tyne daly's younger brother. (is tyne daly more famous than tim daly? i guess it depends on how into theater you are. i'm not into theater and i do know tyne daly, but then i grew up in the greater new york area and i saw a _lot_ of ads for her performance in "gypsy".)

xp do they have “I’m in love with the co-co” ads?

Kate I admit I also cannot always read the entirety of your posts during a single straphang but just want you to know you are seen and appreciated today

- Nancy Makes Posts (sic)

awww, thanks sic

Have Tim and Tyne Daly been seen in the same room together?

― Black Sabaoth (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, August 7, 2025 12:31 PM (yesterday)

please do not transvestigate tim daly, thank you

lol

NPR just said 2/3 of the prisons in TX have no AC. No law that says inmates need temp control. TX has laws that req animal shelters to maintain temps between 65-85. They arrest ppl for leaving dogs in cars cooler than prisons. Ppl caring more about animals than ppl is not a myth

— Habitual Smiler (@Frediculous) August 10, 2025

I heard that story too. A man was found dead with internal body temp of 107.

God..

While Little League® International continues to monitor the complexity and ever-evolving world of sports betting, we feel strongly that there is no place for betting on Little League games or on any youth sports competition. Little League is a trusted place where children are learning the fundamentals of the games and all the important life lessons that come with having fun, celebrating teamwork, and playing with integrity, and no one should be exploiting the success and failures of children playing the game
they love for their own personal gain.

Having fun, celebrating teamwork and playing with integrity can be safely left once you hit 16 iirc

here's an video the White House put out of 20 cops arresting the guy who threw a sandwich at a fed. He'd already been arrested and released earlier and his lawyer was working out how to voluntarily surrender:

https://bsky.app/profile/noturtlesoup17.bsky.social/post/3lwg2j2nth22k

tHiS Is wHaT i vOTed fOr

Good run of sandwich joeks but carne asada's was the finest. A+

https://apnews.com/article/trump-dei-schools-lawsuit-ruling-education-department-4c1dbb5f7b3997ba78c17b25a935fb3f

^ “Judge strikes down Trump administration guidance against diversity programs at schools and colleges”

The Big Money and High Cost of the US Military’s On-Base Slot Machines
"The Defense Department operates slot machines on US military bases overseas, raising millions of dollars to fund recreation for troops—and creating risks for soldiers prone to gambling addiction."

https://www.wired.com/story/us-military-on-base-slot-machines-gambling-addiction/

Stealing money from domestic used car lots trying to sell Chargers at 30% APR.

Friend of mine went to go get coffee at a new place in the west vil and they would only take her order if she dl’d the store’s app. Needless to say she walked out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CILmd9QMgBo
Brooklyn homeowner losing house over unpaid water bill

first 10-15 minutes of watching the new Devo documentary and i was reminded how there was no other answer than "yes"

https://zeteo.com/p/watch-prem-spots-fbi-agents-responding

on the ground with ICE and the FBI as they tackle…. fare evasion in the DC metro

🙄

Florida will phase out certificates of completion for students with disabilities
https://www.cfpublic.org/education/2025-08-20/florida-phase-out-certificates-completion-for-students-with-disabilities

https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/its-time-for-americans-to-start-talking

thanks, i need to read that because it's been heavily on my mind for six months or longer that something like regional secessions may become necessary, and colorado has no region.

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 have a lot of time for these ideas but i don’t feel great about just leaving women, immigrants and minorities to the wolves in “red states” (there are a lot of red states)

like i’m thinking particularly about all the blue cities (and they’re all blue) in these red states, but also of course everyone else

it is terrible.

if fair elections continue to be denied to the people (and it looks to become much much worse), i'd say that until a large group shows that it is willing to actually fight for those interests, the descent to magaville will drag on. do i know what actually fighting is? no. but i have some fears.

but if elections more accurately reflect normal people, we may pull out of it. it would help if teh socials were not at this point lying propaganda machines, but that is hard to stop at this point.

oh no i posted doomposting in the dystopia thread.

xp to Tracer
I'm not sure anything mentioned in that piece would make things *worse* in the red states, would it?

i have a lot of time for these ideas but i don’t feel great about just leaving women, immigrants and minorities to the wolves in “red states” (there are a lot of red states)

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, August 24, 2025 6:50 AM (one minute ago)

i mean, i don't feel great about watching my friends suffer and die and not being able to do anything about it either. it's happening, though, and it's been happening for a while.

people who can get out are getting out. not everybody has the privilege to be able to get out. i'm _not_ helpless, i'm doing what i can by living my values, _and_ that's not going to _fix things_ immediately.

https://cmarmitage.substack.com/p/its-time-for-americans-to-start-talking

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, August 24, 2025 2:09 AM (four hours ago)

i don't think calling it "secession" is accurate! not even "soft secession". it's one of those phrases like "quiet quitting" - it's alliterative, sure, but it doesn't represent what's really going on. what's going on is that america, on a federal political level, isn't _for_ us, it's _against_ us. we have to find other ways to get by. it's technically a "choice", but it's not much of one. the federal government under trump says stupid, incoherent things that are impossible to comply with. i used to work in compliance, before the working conditions at my place of employment degraded to the point where i couldn't work there anymore.

I don't think compliance is a bad thing! compliance is a natural human tendency. we go along to get along. this is, however, a large part of why totalitarianism tends to keep happening. personally? i don't want to make a fuss either. i want to live a nice, quiet life and mind my own business. one of the big problems with the trump administration from day one, back in 2017, has been that it's basically impossible to comply with it. there are downsides and upsides to this. i genuinely am not sure i'd have been able to come out if clinton had been elected. one of the major problems with the democratic party's idea of "returning to normalcy" is that pre-2017 "normalcy" was actually pretty fucked for a lot of people, including but by no means limited to me personally. i wish more people could recognize that.

another effect of the trump administration's blatant misrule - and again, i'm shocked that people don't acknowledge this more - is that america has a potemkin government and now, increasingly, it has a potemkin economy. if we're talking dystopias, what america under trump reminds me most of is brezhnevian malaise. "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us", was the joke - it wasn't _new_ to brezhnev, but it's what i associate the joke with most. under the trump government, companies have increasingly dispensed with that particular pretense.

the thing to understand though is that i don't _want_ a bullshit job. so much of industrial capitalism has revolved around training humans to imitate machines. there's no real reason to do that now, no real reason to pay people to act like machines. in my lifetime, technological advances have obsoleted multiple careers of mine. i was a medical transcriptionist - computers can now perform medical transcription much more quickly than i could. you still _do_ need human beings to catch errors (something our current corporate dystopia perhaps undervalues), but yeah, you can do a lot more with a lot fewer people. so then i went into medical coding, and again, it's increasingly something machines are better at than humans. it's _designed_ to be a rigorous, ordered task, something that machines can do better than humans once you get the clocks to run on time - which _isn't_ something fascists do, they just steal the credit for it. i saw trump promising he'd bring back coal mining jobs and people being enthusiastic about it and damn, talk about the tyranny of low expectations. i guess it's easier to be enthusiastic when one hasn't seen the effects of black lung firsthand, when black lung is an abstraction.

-

abstraction is at the heart of dystopia. it's how dystopia thrives. there's the famous quote attributed (_highly questionably_) to stalin, "a million deaths is a statistic". i'm a data analyst, and professionally, i look at things the other way. to me, a mortality statistic is a million deaths. we have the fucking statistics! so many of them! we can document health outcome disparities. this is what the idea of "health equity" is ABOUT. one of the most powerful leftist statements to me is the idea formulated by Stafford Beer as "the purpose of a system is what it does". I think Stafford Beer was a bad leftist and that "cybernetics" was mostly bullshit, but he was OTM with that. america has created a racist carceral state that denies Black men opportunity. it has created a healthcare system that systemically kills its patients in enormous numbers. americans fucking _know_ this, viscerally. that's _why_ so many americans hail luigi mangione as a hero. i don't, for the record. i'm not that kind of anarchist. assassinations don't _fix_ things.

i'm also not a leftist - communist, anarchist, call it what you want - for _ideological_ reasons. it's more that it's the set of beliefs most supported by the _data_. i haven't read marx. again, marx is an _abstraction_, and a poor abstraction at that, considering he only had access to data from the 19th century and before. horseshoe theory is bullshit, but what is true, what has always been true, is that the radical left and the radical right share something in common - the experience of dispossession and marginalization. it's that experience that's pivotal. individual humans can choose how to act on that, and - with difficulty - we can choose to learn to change. i'm an ex-liberal, not an ex-fascist, but the principle is the same, i think. people do have choices. if someone chooses to support patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalist dehumanization, whether they're on the right, left, or center, it's necessary for me to treat them as my enemy. supporting those values doesn't _help_ any of us, though. not really. when i was a liberal, i implicitly supported all of those things. i explicitly disavowing all those things. my mouth, however, was writing checks that my ass didn't cash. that was _convenient_ for me, but it wasn't in my long-term best interest. contrary to jello biafra, i found that the situation was much more like "give me convenience _and_ give me death". is it easy to sell people on inconvenience? ask al gore. is it _necessary_? probably. i love brioche but i _need_ bread. the values i try to practice now - values which are in significant portion _derived_ from the values i held as a liberal - are much _harder_ to put into practice than the ideas supported by trump, but unlike fascist populism, putting those values into practice has the possibility to _make my life better_, to make _most people's_ lives better.

ok i know that was another speech, look, again, i just woke up and i had caffeine and i'm passionate about my values, at length.

-

back to the actual topic at hand. the problem with "soft secession" is that states _don't_ have the economic resources to compensate for the lack of federal government support, particularly not when we're still paying taxes to the federal government to, i don't know, build concentration camps for children or something. it's not like we can just quit paying federal taxes, though. that wouldn't be "soft". so in blue states like oregon, we have _rights_, we just don't have the infrastructure or resources to get our needs met. cut federal funding and a whole bunch of jobs go away. the jobs that are left tend to be with dystopian corporations, and even then...

i mean yeah, a lot of the reason nobody here has jobs is because we don't have a "business-friendly climate". you start mandating that people treat their workers like human beings, they can just take the jobs to places that don't have those laws. "soft secession" doesn't do anything to solve the tragedy of the commons. for someone like me, who wants both human rights _and_ a meaningful job that pays the bills...

well, i just keep trying to live my values. i have skills, real skills. you know what i'm good at? caring. i care a lot. a _lot a lot_. put me in an environment where i can succeed, where i don't get burned out from trying to do the impossible, and i _will_ succeed. i know because i've had that environment before. i've been in that environment before. it is possible to _construct_ an environment that helps people to care in a healthy, sustainable way. i've been in therapy for 30 fucking years, that's what it's _done_ for me. machines can't replace therapists because machines _aren't capable_ of caring. this dystopia we're in, it's not just doomed to fail, it's _stupid_. we _know_ what works, and sooner or later, we will do it. _because_ it works. you know what works? paying people to care about other people, paying people to _support_ other people. not caregivers. _helpers_. a world where we don't have to look for the helpers, because we've all been _taught_ to be helpers, because people and institutions help _us_, because we're all _rewarded_ for helping? i don't believe in utopia, but it's fucking worth a shot. we're not going to get there with mean tweets and gerrymandering.

Interstate pacts aren't about leaving people behind, its about getting creative and trying something to throw some sand in the gears of red state dominance of the entire country.

assassinations don't _fix_ things.

Assassinations send things down a different path, though. In William Gibson's last two books, The Peripheral (very good; I didn't like the Amazon TV series, though) and Agency (not as good, though I liked it better the second time I read it), he deals with alternate timelines called "stubs." In one stub, Hillary Clinton became president. Anyway, assassinations swerve us onto a new road. Whether for good or bad, who can say? But when things get fucked up enough, I absolutely consider them worth a shot (pun intended). As I have said here and elsewhere many times now, the left (defined as broadly as you like) needs snipers.

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.