Doomposting containment thread

Rather than shitting up threads where people are having reasonable conversations, put your doomposts here & spare everyone else your misery.

My paranoid thoughts these days run along the lines of “Why would the ultra-rich let the middle class collapse, isn’t it more profitable in the long run for there to be a strong stable working and middle class so that everyone can keep spending and spending (and also not shooting CEOs in the street)?” and the little voice goes “They have more info than we do — they know there isn’t much time left — they know shit is going to fall apart so hard and so fast the rest of us won’t know what hit us so their strategy is just crushing as much wealth out of society as possible so they can live sci-fi lives in a bubble while the rest of us scavenge rat carcasses.”

if there's one thing the last decade has taught me its that the ultra-rich don't know shit

thats not a doompost

honestly the respect for thread rules is through the floor these days

It can be, if you combine the belief that the ultra-rich don't know shit with the belief that nonetheless any attempts to take the steering wheel away from them will fail.

We’re all doomed, doomed I tell ya

When do we get our super shotguns?

(bookmarks thread for predictable future need. sighs)

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPYmD7CyHlY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiMZCgpXuO4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuN83hqsn8U

Scott you have got to get off of youtube lol <3 How are you doing? Are you good?

That said I'm stocking up on things that might get...less available soon. Just in case.

The end is nigh!

Wasn’t thinking about this in terms of prepping, but since you mention, IO, what kinds of things are you stocking up on / anticipating shortages of?

Women's health-type stuff broadly speaking, Narcan, personal Rx that include some controlled stuff...those are top level. Under that is general first aid and personal care supplies.

The former are because I fear availability will drop, the latter because I expect prices will rise and/or they might be needed unexpectedly.

If you thought "Ehh it's a long shot, I don't need those things, that's for other people" may I suggest that the worst that could happen is someday you get to save someone's life? You can be a person who has a life-saving resource in an emergency! Especially if they get harder to...get.

"Are you good?"

haha, i'm okay! i watched ONE doomy economist video and all of a sudden my Youtube was filled with scare headlines like the ones above.

i'm so scared lol

Definitely see if we can get a lifetime supply of SSRI’s now lest RFK Jr. make us detox doing manual labor on an organic farm

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/rfk-jr-kennedy-addicts-wellness-farms-b2585835.html

haha, i'm okay! i watched ONE doomy economist video and all of a sudden my Youtube was filled with scare headlines like the ones above.

― scott seward

yeah i gotta be careful about what i click on or the algo starts feeding me crap

the stuff i'm most careful about trying to avoid is beato-adjacent content

so far things are looking ok

mostly what i wind up getting recommended are extremely long jammidodger reaction videos

i've started watching more baseball videos to switch things up, which means i get recommended Baseball Doesn't Exist videos - "The Most Illegal Baseball Bat Ever Created" is the new one

i also got poetic wax doing a 20 minute video on the Eno/Television recordings, don't care

a 40 minute breakdown of HIM, the "lost gay jesus" film. i'm more interested in the _other_ gay jesus film, the unmade Jens Jorgen Thorsen film _The Many Faces of Jesus_. technically he's bi in this one. apparently the script was published but only translated into danish (the original script was in english). there's also a 1975 danish porn film called Jeg så Jesus dø ("I Saw Jesus Die"), but it's apparently heterosexual. i guess i should check that one out.

i just ran across a low-quality copy of an episode of the 1970 low-budget Star Trek knockoff Phoenix Five - i was trying to find a complete youtube upload of the pilot of the Fifth Glacial Era. god, i know so little aobut australian '70s television. it's in colour too! they must've had high hopes for that, considering colour tv didn't hit australia until, like, 1975

did prussian hitler just say he was going to "crush the ducks that oppose us"? sinister ducks indeed

now the algorithm is recommending me a kat blaque video entitled "the best BDSM film is korean". no it's doing good for me today.

i keep watching random analog synthesizer videos, microgranny noise jams with 200 views. means i get recommended a lot of videos on the history of the 303. the LOC just posted a 90 minutes video on Morton Subotnick and the Buchla 100, 500 videos, ok, i'm in on that. here's a 90 minute video called "FEMME: Lesbian History, Identity Politics & Invisibility", ok, i'll give that a shot.

"the great calculator wars of the 1970s"? ok that sounds good. cornelius 30th anniversary special? ooooh. ouch. "which is the best home video release of rudolph the red-nosed reindeer?" interesting but i don't actually care. "black people rate black anime characters' hair". i guess this is what happens when i watch FD Signifier videos and anime videos.

i know the preceding isn't actually doomposting. even though this is a dystopia i will say the dystopian megacorporation does seem to have a good idea about my niche interests.

um. my ass won't stop bleeding and i can't figure out why. it's not cancer.

The calculator wars sounds interesting! I got my dad a book about the history of the calculator and what Texas Instruments brought to the industry, slide rules to graphing machines, the whole nine yards...for Christmas last year. lol

My first time programming anything was with a HP-34C calculator. I still have to have RPN calculators ever since and can easily spend hours on that HP Calculator Museum site

lest we forget

every news headline i accidentally see throws me into quiet panic and rage and that's fine

I was very proud of myself yesterday, while I was making lunch I told my partner:

—I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years telling you every stupid, infuriating thing that the people in power said or did.

Which lead to this exchange when we sat down to eat:

—What was the thing you wanted to tell me earlier?
—What thing?
—You said "I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years telling you every infuriating thing, but..."
—Oh. I didn't though! I left out the "but"! There was absolutely gonna be a "but," but when I heard myself speaking, saying "I promise I'm not gonna spend the next four years..." I was like, Why wait? Why not start today. Aren't you proud of me?
—...Yeah!

(For the record though, the "but" was some jackass GOP congressman braying about deporting Bishop Budde)

The tariff stuff and other bans made me contemplate a career change into smuggling and trying to decide whether I would be good at it. I wouldn’t do it if I thought I wouldn’t be good at it.

The other day I had a minor panic at the thought of our city and state having to decide between deporting immigrants vs being banned from federal funds for affordable housing and education.

The tariff stuff and other bans made me contemplate a career change into smuggling

I mean

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gonewiththewind/images/1/1c/Rhett1.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/295?cb=20081103033236

https://medias.spotern.com/spots/w1280/356/356134-1646043443.webp

The dog is sitting at the table and drinking a nice relaxing beverage. The room is in flames. The dog knows it is not fine. The dog is engaging in self-care. The dog radically accepts that the room is on fire and they are not able to put out the flames. The dog cannot get out of the room. The exists are blocked. The dog prefers not to think about the reason the exits are blocked.

Nobody is coming for the dog. The people outside know the dog is there, but it is not safe for them to try and rescue the dog. The people outside love the dog very much and really, really want to help the dog. They can't. The dog accepts this. The people outside may not have radically accepted this yet.

The dog considers that she might perhaps be suffering from smoke inhalation. The dog wonders if she should stop, drop, and roll, like she was taught in obedience school. If the dog did this, though, she wouldn't be able to drink her tea. It is a very nice cup of tea. One wouldn't think drinking hot tea in a room that is on fire would provide much solace, but it does. The dog is very glad and grateful for the cup of tea.

is this for US politics specifically or was it envisaged as like wide use

Do you mean like...Spurs?

wide use

spurs haven't got any width

I think it was last year. I think it was after the election. The human memory isn't as reliable as we like to think it is, and the longer ago something was, the less reliable my memory is. So I want to write it now, at least, as fully as I can remember it.

I don't follow the media, as a harm reduction measure. It wasn't until after the election that I heard about what he said he was going to _do_. One of my friends said that she was worried for her father-in-law, that
That Man said he was going to deport all immigrants, legal and illegal, and her father-in-law was a naturalized citizen. (Her father-in-law voted for Trump, incidentally.)

And I... have learned to think before I speak. And at the same time, it was like... of course That Man said it. That Man was a fucking lunatic. He had no idea about anything. I mean, you can't just deport people who are _legal_ citizens to countries they are _no longer_ legal citizens of, the logistical hurdles alone are...

"Leave the Bronx."

Oh. Oh, _fuck_.

It is like that, sometimes, The stupidest possible things. There's this terrible mockbuster of "Escape From New York" called _Escape From the Bronx_. Made in Italy, naturally. When Henry Silva sends people around with loudspeakers assuring people that they'll give everyone a nice place to live in Arizona, it's obvious that he's actually going to kill them. He's evil. That's what evil people do. I mean, not just in movies, the movie didn't just make that up. There's precedent. A well-known precedent. A man who said in public that he was going to "deport" a certain group of people, and what he meant, very obviously meant, was that he was going to kill them all. And he did, in fact, kill a large number of people. Millions.

And I know this, have known it for quite a long time. And Trump is so obviously like this other man that it doesn't even bear saying, at this point. And somehow my brain didn't make that connection until I thought of _Escape From the Bronx_. My brain couldn't get there by direct flight. It needed to make a transfer.

And then I was suicidal for, I don't know, maybe a week or so.

I've learned to think before I speak. I've learned to watch what I say and to who. If I'm not careful about what I say and how I say it, I could put people I care about at risk, the way I was at risk for a little bit. The flipside of that is that I'm carrying a lot in my head. A lot I can't really say. And sometimes I don't know if something's really true until I say it.

Yesterday I said it out loud to someone else for the first time. It was my therapist. I said that if things didn't change, a lot of people were going to end up dead. And it's normal... it's normal for patients to say things like that, and one gently pushes back, in a way that doesn't make the patient feel challenged or invalidated but encourages them to "check the facts". She said, lots of things could happen. You don't know that for certain.

And I'd been thinking about this in a while, trying to de-escalate that thought, "check the facts" on that thought for a while, and I said it. A lot of times I do check the facts on something and it doesn't hold up. Usually only takes a day or so for me to realize. And like I said, it'd been months. So I told her. I told her about how he said he was going to "deport" all those people, and she said what I thought when I first heard about it - oh, that's ridiculous, I don't know how he thinks he's going to manage something like that, and I said (therapist's name). He doesn't intend to. When fascists say they're going to "deport" people, they mean something else.

And she believed me. I'm cautious about... I don't want to be a Cassandra to the extent that I can help it. I'm never quite sure if people will believe me or not, when I say some things, even if they are true. She believed me, though.

Last night I was at movie night with some friends, and my friend who has a car gave me a ride home. And she said, how are things going. It's difficult for people to talk about things like that these days, not just me. I don't want to be negative, I don't want being around me to be an unpleasant or traumatic experience. And I talked for a little while about watching movies with friends. I've started doing a lot more of that, because a lot of times I just don't know how to talk, things being the way they are. And I said look, I don't want to be... I don't want to be negative, but I think it's important to say this. When a fascist says he's going to deport a certain group of people, a large number of people, he doesn't mean deport. And she's culturally Jewish. (Pretty sure anti-Zionist. It's not a conversation I initiate, but in my social circle it's a safe assumption.) She knows immediately what I'm saying. And she says yeah, I think it was important to say that.

So I'm gonna say it here. It's easier to say it to cis people, simply because, well, you're overall a lower suicide risk. I get the impression... I'm not hugely socially connected, my world is pretty small... but I get the impression that most people haven't made that connection. To me it's not... I don't look at it judgmentally. My experience is that there are personal consequences, it can be pretty traumatic for me to _think_ certain things, _especially_ if they're true. And so I don't want to say those things. It's important to say, though. If That Man is not stopped... that is something he _will_ do to the people he's saying he's going to "deport". That those are, literally, the stakes here. I think it's important for people to know that and be able to accept that.

But I'm not going to say it outside of the doomposting thread. Yet.

You're not the only one, Kate. I've seen more than a handful of people saying out loud that these ICE raids and threats of deportation aren't about deportation, they're about the other thing. Things. Most people are at the very least connecting the dots to labor camps and effective slavery. The proposed Missouri law makes this very clear: life in prison without the possibility of parole for being undocumented, and humans being hunted by bounty patrols.

hi all ... just dropped in to see what's happening in this thread. i'm going to go now. thanks!

Alpine Static’s condition was in no condition to be in this thread.

I hear you, Kate & IO. I have a lot of the same thoughts and I have them a lot. I think about that famous passage from “They Thought They Were Free” about how people accustom themselves to the intolerable incrementally. I think about the boy who cried wolf — there’s a version of the story where he wasn’t making it up, someone was putting wolf-shaped decoys up all over the place and whisking them away before the villagers could get there, and — “see, it’s always wolves with you shepherd boys, everything’s a wolf.” And when they send in the real wolves nobody will come.

I think about how many people — myself included — would be willing to give up their livelihood to confront the horrors, in the face of almost certain failure & consignment to the horror-house. Not many of us. Myself included, probably, depending.

They’ve been preparing for this for years. We’ve been crossing our fingers that our roommates wouldn’t invite the vampire across the threshold. Now we’re in the room with the vampire. Our roommate has gone to get the vampire a beer. The vampire doesn’t care about me. Yet. But he’s looking at the closed door of our other roommate. She works nights. We both know she’s not sleeping in there — she knows the vampire is in the living room. She and the vampire are acutely aware of each other. They can hear each other thinking.

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

I'm sure the FDIC is on some right-wing maniac's kill list.

Added “what if there is a bank run?” to my doom list that needs containing

― Elvis Telecom

Yeah I don't spend much time thinking about it because, well, it seems trivial in light of the other things happening, but one of the... less awful possibilities in this whole thing is that That Man actually winds up implementing some fucking Larouchite economic policy in order to, I don't know, pay off the national debt or something, thereby rendering global currency basically worthless. Or maybe he'll decide the official currency of the United States is Trump Memecoin. Or something. IDK. Everything seems so up in the air that doing any long-term planning - like, say, looking for a job - seems pretty fucking pointless.

I've started relying a lot more on less "healthy" coping mechanisms. Alcohol. Sleeping pills. Not to an extent that it's likely to cause problems. I've just historically been kind of an ascetic about substances. "Drink more" doesn't _seem_ like the kind of thing that would be a good life decision, but neither did "come out as transgender", which was such a good decision that it's _still_ a good decision even if it winds up getting me killed.

Serious-Not-Serious thought: I was at coffee the other day and this older couple had flyers printed up saying "TAX THE VAMPIRES". I get the metaphor, but I am a nerd, and I tend to think about literal vampires. Also, I am gay, and while I am not a monsterfucker, I do think vampires are hot in a gay way.

I definitely understand the desire to dehumanize fascists, and at the same time... I'm not a monster. It's taken me a long time to accept that. The problem with all fictional points of comparison for fascists is that most of them are more sympathetic than That Man. I while away my time talking with friends about whether this fictional villain or that fictional villain is as bad as That Man. A lot of them just aren't.

IDK. A lot of people do like the villains, the bad guys. In my generation it seems like it's always been that way. There are people who like the Joker because he's evil, and there are people who like the Joker because he's gay, and as the meme goes, we are not the same... but we do have the same cultural reference points, the same _heroes_ in a lot of cases. We just understand them differently. The Matrix? Fantastic film. I think that. Some dumb kid who shot up his high school thought that.

I guess that's not "doomy" as such. Just interesting.

the thing with that is all the villains that my generation empathized with or found 'relatable' - Tyler Durden, Walter White, Tony Soprano, Jordan Belfort, Joker...they all at least had some personality. they said cool things and had moments that were badass. because they are fictional characters. the real life versions of them have none of this, they are in fact the most cringey, uninteresting, miserable people on the planet, at least Trump circa the 2015 debates kinda looked like he was having some fun, now they're just throwing their entire being behind some dude who has literally everything a human being could ever ask for but instead spends 12 hours a day responding "so true!" to race science on Twitter. they're all just unbelievable losers

Hence the meme

https://64.media.tumblr.com/8ce692e029d948264cea6f9a8be08bf8/4b6f27f088f1cc81-ad/s540x810/4d6299ada59d80087e653cde8133bf0152a47464.jpg

I'm sure the FDIC is on some right-wing maniac's kill list.

Hence the meme

― the real slim pickens (Ye Mad Puffin)

every generation gets the hannah arendt it deserves, ig

xp I can't believe this took until 2025, but it finally occurred to me the other day: When Donald Trump looks in the mirror, he sees Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, right?

I don't think he knows what that is.

Apply same scenario to Elon tho and I'd agree.

Trump's mirror fantasy is probably closer to 1981 Arnold

The left has surely been accused of eating itself long before the internet, let alone social media. Partially it's that if you want radical change that's a much more difficult thing to get right than if you're just advocating for the system as is, which nets you immense financial support and also you have enthropy on your side. The silver lining here used to be that since the far right also want change they are as prone to splintering and infighting as the left, but sadly this no longer holds as much.

What social media did do is mainstream these identities, so now everyone can have a taste of what it was like to be in a marxist discussion group in the 70's (my mother could tell some stories!).

Re: centralized social control, I know silicon valley advocates against that but I do think it still exists on most networks, even current twitter. But since these are companies, said control is always directed towards what makes the most money and, to a lesser extent, what will not lead to lawsuits. To the extent that we manage a more livable atmosphere here on ILX I'd say it's because nobody's making a profit.

The silver lining here used to be that since the far right also want change they are as prone to splintering and infighting as the left, but sadly this no longer holds as much.

I dont think this is true, or at least not to the same degree. They all fall in line, as long as you display fealty to the big man. I think fractures in the past are mostly around the failure of a big man to be big enough to be the big man, but if someone assumes that mantle, any dissent or splintering is short lived. And the right and far right are just more concerned with winning. They turn up to vote on the sharpening of a pencil. If it turns out someone used to be a lib or woke or a socialist there's no inquisition about whether they can be forgiven of not, its another body to throw into the trenches, and a victory to be celebrated.

They have their splits and their fights, but when push comes to shove, they fall back in line, lockstep

At least they'll probably splinter badly once he drops dead

I dont think this is true, or at least not to the same degree. They all fall in line, as long as you display fealty to the big man. I think fractures in the past are mostly around the failure of a big man to be big enough to be the big man, but if someone assumes that mantle, any dissent or splintering is short lived. And the right and far right are just more concerned with winning. They turn up to vote on the sharpening of a pencil. If it turns out someone used to be a lib or woke or a socialist there's no inquisition about whether they can be forgiven of not, its another body to throw into the trenches, and a victory to be celebrated.

They have their splits and their fights, but when push comes to shove, they fall back in line, lockstep

― anvil

oh authoritarianism has a different problem. leftists have internecine squabbles. authoritarians have purges of real _and imagined_ opponents. they also have very _vivid_ imaginations. if their enemies don't stop them, eventually the praetorian guard will throw them in the tiber.

make no mistake - fascism fails, always. the only question is that of how many people a fascist regime kills before that happens.

At least they'll probably splinter badly once he drops dead

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles)

doomposting hat on - cold comfort to those who wind up ruled by warlords

Most optimistic scenario is we muddle through and either elections change things up or he dies on the shitter before the utter collapse of society as we know it.

now trying to imagine how niall quinn would get on as a dictator

Most optimistic scenario is we muddle through and either elections change things up or he dies on the shitter before the utter collapse of society as we know it.

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles)

ok, look, i'm an inveterate doomer, you can't just blithely talk about "the utter collapse of society as we know it". what does that _look_ like? when the future is unimaginable, to me, the only answer is to be imaginative. i have thought a _lot_ about this. part and parcel of my doomerism is my belief that elections are _no longer capable_ of providing stable american democratic (small-d) governance. i fundamentally believe that the rubicon is crossed and there's no turning back. my optimism isn't based in that, it's based in the ability of people to establish better systems than the bullshit we're stuck with now. we can do so much better than this, but to get there we gotta get through the "oh my god without our Constitutionally Guaranteed Rights we're all going to die" _completely justified_ panic response.

f'rinstance, the doomer scenario i'm most concerned about is a siege-of-sarajevo style scenario - living in an area that's fundamentally not physically safe, not being able to get out, and having to figure out how to scrounge for resources and stay alive with whatever small number of people i'm cooped up with. that may or may not happen - the thing about doomerism is that it's _not_ conclusively supported by evidence. i gotta talk about my fears somewhere, or else they'll fuckin' eat me alive. and i try to do it in the most healthy way possible.

The question about phrases like "the utter collapse of society as we know it" is always for what value of "we"?

These are all good points. My comment was meant to point out that there are feasible scenarios in which things stop sliding into turmoil and go back to sputtering along in a more predictable manner, with the typical ups and downs. Not great by any means, but marginally better than we are going.

My nightmare scenario is basically ICE thugs on every corner, leading either to societal collapse and a protracted civil war or just a total consolidation of power in the billionaire class with everyone else turned into prisoners and slave labor. This is where I think the people in power want to take things, but there's no reason to assume they'll be successful.

They could be successful, it's difficult to predict from here but it can't be ruled out.

The thing about this preferred direction is that the oligarchs themselves become less safe, more vulnerable to other oligarchs. But what's strange is I think at least some of them sense this already. This consolidation led to the imprisonment and assassination of oligarchs in Russia. If plans do come to fruition there's no reason a tech billionaire couldn't be sent off to CECOT along with a home depot worker. I think some of them know this already and are on board anyway

I dont think this is true, or at least not to the same degree. They all fall in line, as long as you display fealty to the big man. I think fractures in the past are mostly around the failure of a big man to be big enough to be the big man, but if someone assumes that mantle, any dissent or splintering is short lived.

The conditions the far right was in before their new ascent made the creation of a big man impossible, exactly due to the factors I outlined. When the Big Men did appear, they mostly did so outside of the traditional far right circles. Your characterization only works once the far right has a strong possibility of power, which is why I mentioned the situation has changed. But I can't really take seriously the idea that the far right "turns up to vote on the sharpening of a pencil", the votes cast for far right parties across Europe from the postwar era to the end of the 20th century show pretty clearly that's not the case.

I think the reason for that is these aren't inherent traits, and conditions play a large role. This is the reason I used the present tense in the previous post. I don't think there's necessarily anything inherent about any particular group and I've never been a big fan of the idea of things always being the same. I think things are very much not always the same

I don't think these are inherent traits or that everything is always the same either - I was just pointing out what sort of conditions lead to a lack of unity.

I also think the current period and the period you mentioned are fundamentally different periods

not in terms of the left's access to power from what I can tell

And in terms of framing I should have been clearer. The far right will absolutely show up to vote for the sharpening of a pencil. That doesn't mean they always did, it doesn't mean they will in the future either. What it does mean is they'll do it today

My point was explicitly that it didn't used to and that is now changing, I don't really get what you're arguing with.

Probably not too much disagreement, I think this part really

Your characterization only works once the far right has a strong possibility of power, which is why I mentioned the situation has changed.

I think the order is the wrong way around here. I think the far right got more organized before they had a strong possibility of power, and put a lot of time, work, and money in. But its too easy to throw hands up and say "well billionaires deep pockets what can you do". They put work in as well, they didn't just get a strong possibility of power purely because of the failures of neoliberalism, the ball unexpectedly falling nicely for them. They'd been getting their act together for a decade prior

I think you might have seen some of that with the FN, where the only transition was from father to daughter (tho even there acrimonously), but mostly I see a constant in current far right success stories being built not from the traditional far right, and often indeed facing hostility from it - I remember the leader of the PNR, previously the far right party of Portugal, very distraught at seeing his movement "taken over by opportunists" (ofc now that they hold more power he's changed his tune). The efforts leading to that were about media branding and reaching new demographics via social media, i.e. the kind of thing you do when you have the money for it, not so much the day to day organising that grassroots activism entails. By and large the far right you speak of had their act together from day one because they were created with capital already onboard.

I think its fair to say opportunists came in and took over, but the traditionalists let them. They didn't care about winning, they couldn't even energise people to show up to vote for the sharpening of a pencil, the door was left open by complacency and inertia.

Capital is part of it but only part, grassroots is massive. Look at the US where the right wing targetted school board and other low level elections sometimes running unopposed because who is else is going to show up for this type of sharpening a pencil type election. And then buiding up a lot of local power from the bottom up often completely unopposed. All kinds of power available at different levels that doesnt require capital at all, just praxis, and a pencil sharpener

The question about phrases like "the utter collapse of society as we know it" is always for what value of "we"?

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson)

dingdingding! you got it, unperson. cuz for me, "society" wasn't what i thought it was. i spent my whole life thinking their was something bad wrong with me, thinking i was a failure, and not knowing why, and then in my 40s i find out that there _wasn't_ actually something wrong with me. and the people in charge of "society", they genuinely meant well, a lot of them, but they weren't doing me any favors. because they wanted to rule for the universal "we". and there isn't, in fact, a universal "we".

i was terribly afraid of what would happen if i wasn't part of that "we". and now i'm not, and yeah, it's scary. not just because we're in danger, but because the institutions who make the "we"... again, i think they mean well, but they don't understand that i'm _not_ part of their "we". that they can't get us into their "we" just by passing a resolution honoring the history of Black drag in the state of Oregon.

and i wouldn't go back. even if i could, i wouldn't. it wasn't benefiting me. it was killing me. and if it was just me, if it was just _trans people_, that would be one thing. it's not _just us_. "society" as it exists now isn't helping anybody except a handful of billionaires. my problems are basically the same as everyone else's, just more severe. i'm more precarious. more afraid. more at risk. but it's not like my situation is categorically different from that of any other American here. the supreme court ruling that i don't qualify for human rights sucks but it doesn't actually affect me right now, on a practical level.

you know what my problem is? i can't get a job with decent pay, decent benefits, stable health insurance, good benefits. i have a lot of really good skills. i'm _so_ capable of making the world a better place. that's not what employers are interested in. they want someone who can send out eviction notices.

My nightmare scenario is basically ICE thugs on every corner, leading either to societal collapse and a protracted civil war or just a total consolidation of power in the billionaire class with everyone else turned into prisoners and slave labor. This is where I think the people in power want to take things, but there's no reason to assume they'll be successful.

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles)

the past few years have been interesting for me, politically. the way things are now, there's a nonzero chance i will die in a death camp. that's scary. it's also out of my control. there is a _far greater_ risk right now that a trans person will die of suicide than murder. speaking as someone who has suffered from chronic suicidality, i _get_ this. the weird thing about transition is that it did, in some sense, save my life. my life has meaning and value. i hate how much life sucks, but i'm glad to be alive.

so my doomer shit is weird. what other people as worst case scenarios, for me that's a starting point. that's something to build from.

the "boot stamping on a human face forever" isn't _practical_. nothing is forever in this world. there are so many _other things_ happening. i do foresee, for instance, a tremendous ecological collapse. i do foresee mass geopolitical upheaval. i do think that a lot of people will die in this upheaval.

i also foresee a future for humanity, a better future. i see something beyond world war iv fought with sticks and stones. i see people who are capable of so much more than our current institutions permit of us. as things get worse, we have less and less to lose and more and more to gain.

Capital is part of it but only part, grassroots is massive. Look at the US where the right wing targetted school board and other low level elections sometimes running unopposed because who is else is going to show up for this type of sharpening a pencil type election. And then buiding up a lot of local power from the bottom up often completely unopposed. All kinds of power available at different levels that doesnt require capital at all, just praxis, and a pencil sharpener

― anvil

this is one of the things that scares me most. a majority of american voters voted for a guy whose intentions are openly exterminatory. that's bad. i don't like that. the problem, for me, isn't just the guy. it's the institutions that legitimize him, the ordinary people, the Good Americans who support him. i went to that no gods no kings rally and there were a lot of people who loved america, who protested because they loved America. i'm ok with that. me personally, when they showed rev. jeremiah wright on tv saying not god bless america but "god damn america", i listened to what he said and i thought, you know, the man has a point. i don't think it's bad for trump opponents to love america. the america they love, though, isn't the america we live in now.

i believe in a better world. whether or not part of that is called "america" makes no particular difference to me. what matters to me is that people are showing up for what they believe in.

fwiw anvil I don't think the targetting of school boards and etc was some grassroot tactical genius, I think it got into the playbook after the money and media training poured in, not before. so yeah, I think where we disagree is we both think the other one's got it the wrong way around.

"society" wasn't what i thought it was.

What opened my eyes was marrying someone who immigrated to the US as a child (legally; her dad got employment sponsorship and two or three years later was able to bring her and her mom over, and eventually they all became citizens) and moving from a very white suburb into a city with a large immigrant population and spending most of my time socializing with those people — her parents and their friends and co-workers. The problems they had just getting through daily life sounded insane to me at first; I would hear about some out-of-nowhere catastrophe happening financially or legally and my first thought was, How could something like that even happen? That doesn't make sense! There are rules and ways to do things, but every time it happened I became a little more aware of all the ways the system and the rules were not at all designed to make things easy or helpful. Growing up, my wife had been her parents' caretaker in a lot of ways, navigating English-language bureaucracy for them, and after we got married, I took on a somewhat similar role — I did my father-in-law's taxes, and when my wife needed something handled, I got on the phone and handled it, because a white male voice was just granted access and cooperation in a way that she never would be. It could be maddening at times, but as a result I became really good at navigating bureaucracy and finding ways to tunnel through and get whatever I or someone else needed.

welp.

Given that this ruling opens the door for the next Dem president to run wild as well, I truly believe they have no intention of allowing a free and fair election again.

Next Dem president? There's optimism for you.

Nah, of course we'll have a Dem president. I worry more about a Dem president having the cojones to use the superpowers the conservative Court has handed Trump and his successors.

You don't have to worry. They never will.

Yep. As I saw it stated on Bluesky today:

"They sure seem to be governing like folks who don’t think there’s any danger that the opposition will ever be in power again."

Honestly feels more and more likely there is a civil war in our lifetimes.

(note that i am not itching for that, just noting my own doomy feeling)

That's my fear in my doomier moments. Maybe not a "war" as we think of it, but absolutely some schism between red and blue states is coming. This isn't sustainable and things are going to boil over soon.

Is there really such a thing as a 'blue state' though? The divide is between cities and suburban/rural areas.

yup

cases in point: eastern WA and Oregon.

Sure, agreed. But there are some blue states currently run by strong Dem governors who will fight for their state and won't easily back down. Illinois, for one.

or what’s happening here, where the regional transportation agency for the entirely of the Philly metro area is having its funding threatened by the Republican state legislature… which would essentially lead to five (of eight) regional rail lines, all streetcar services, and half of the bus lines being eliminated over the next six months. it would be an unmitigated disaster for the city and for the state, but the dumb fucking honky pricks want to punish Philadelphia because they’re racist trash, so this is what’s happening unless the funding comes through last minute

ok long post again

That's my fear in my doomier moments. Maybe not a "war" as we think of it, but absolutely some schism between red and blue states is coming. This isn't sustainable and things are going to boil over soon.

― better than ezra collective soul asylum (jon /via/ chi 2.0)

since this is the doomposting thread, let's talk "civil war". i don't like the phrase because it implies some repeat of the conflict of the 1860s, which isn't going to happen.

i am a history nerd and i _absolutely_ do think there are certain parallels between the events happening today and the events of the 1850s. you want to talk bloody sumner? a minnesota state senator was just murdered by someone pretending to be a cop. you want to talk about institutions splitting into two over a divisive issue like the northern and southern baptists? the _satanists_ are split. there's the Satanic Temple, who are the Woke Satanists, and the Church of Satan, who represent Traditional Satanic Values. SEXUAL FETISH communities are split. Seriously, apparently (yeah this gets into some pretty hardcore shit and you can skip this bit and lose nothing) the cannibal fetishist community is split between advocates of Traditional Cannibalism, in which the man eats the flesh of the woman AS GOD INTENDED and the queer cannibal communities. I know people can be pretty judgemental of stuff like that. I used to be judgemental of stuff like that, until I realized that wait, almost no cannibalism ever ACTUALLY HAPPENS, despite the apparently large number of people (i'm not one of them) with cannibalism fetishes. Once. It happened once, more than 25 years ago and it was a Big Fucking Deal for _everyone_ in that community. I wish I lived in a world where SA was as common as cannibalism is in this one.

i'm not going to make a direct comparison because the civil war was over slavery. and i'm not going to compare the plight of any marginalized group today _especially_ not my own, to the institution of slavery.

at the same time, when i do think of the supreme court, and its legitimacy, i absolutely think of the taney court's decision in the Dred Scott case of 1857. if any event made civil war inevitable, i think it was that decision. i mean what the fuck is someone supposed to say to a decision like that? keep voting for the whigs for the next 80 years and eventually they'll put in enough new judges to overturn the ruling? were there people in 1857 who were stupid enough to try and say that was the solution?

if anybody was going to be that stupid, it was the whigs. the whigs, astonishingly, were _unable to articulate any policy on whether or not slavery was good_. insofar as they had any issues at all, it was opposing manifest destiny. now, i mean, they won _one_ presidential election and then got their asses whooped in 1844 by a "dark horse" who won _specifically because he was in favor of manifest destiny, unlike the favored candidates_ of both parties. they kept trying to run henry clay, the hillary clinton of the mid-19th century, who somehow managed to rig an election in his favor and _still lost_. this guy was the genius leading light of the party. who else did they have? daniel webster, who apparently could out-argue in a court of law. i mean that's the thing about the whigs, they were the kind of party who'd treat the literal devil like the Distinguished Opposition. webster probably played rounders with the dude.

anyway they won twice. both times they won by running incredibly old war heroes who had no policy ideas whatsoever and who promptly died, leaving the vice presidential candidates who were only there to "balance out the ticket", _both_ of whom were strongly in favor of slavery.

I want to be super clear here - history does not repeat itself. It iterates. The Democratic Party of 2025 is not the Whig Party of 1857. It's the longest-lasting American political party, dating back to, I don't know, 1800 at a minimum. It outlasted the First and Second Party Systems, outlasted the Federalists and the Whigs. America has changed a lot since 1860. I genuinely am not sure if it's possible for the Democratic Party to _die_ like the Whigs did.

They can't govern. They haven't been able to govern since 2016 at a _minimum_. I didn't turn against the Democratic party for ideological reasons. I turned against the Democratic party because Hillary Clinton _lost_.

-

So yes. I do think more widespread conflict is probably going to happen. I think things are going to escalate from here. How the fuck can they possibly de-escalate? Seriously.

Innuendo Studios were right on the button with this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YFdwfNh5vs

I know it's scary to acknowledge that America is a fascist state. This was my home. For all my life it was my home. It's hurt like hell to lose it.

But how do you fight what you can't see?

Here's another thing to know about the Civil War. The North didn't start it. The South has always insisted on calling it the "War of Northern Aggression". It's one of their many lies. Lincoln didn't start a war. Lincoln wasn't even _president_ when the South "seceded". The South declared independence and ordered the US Army to evacuate an army base. When they refused, the South took the fort by military force.

Lincoln didn't start the war. All he did was have principles and get elected on those principles. _That_ was what the South considered "Northern Aggression".

People who have principles and peacefully stick to them will blamed for any conflict. By the actual aggressors. Probably by some of the Democrats, as well. It won't be true.

-

The problem for me hasn't ever been a _moral_ or _ethical_ issue. It's not about right or wrong. If all I felt like I had on my side was that I was _morally right_, I'd be despairing right now. I'm morally opposed to fascism, of course, but in terms of conflict, the central issue for me is that fascism _doesn't work_. We've seen it over and over again.

People keep asking over and over again what the world would be like if Hitler had won World War II, and when I listen to historians, they get kind of exasperated and say the same thing - Hitler couldn't have won World War II. The only way Hitler could have won World War II was by NOT BEING HITLER. Fascism just... doesn't build. Doesn't create. Fascism is an ideology of hatred, fear, and destruction. I _don't_ mean that in a moral sense. It's not "fascism bad, democracy good". I mean that entirely in functional terms. It's subservient to power, control, order. It projects strength, but is in actuality weak. It's brittle, fragile.

I do tend to go along to get along. I don't have a strong will, a strong sense of self. I'm used to not being treated very well. I'm used to going along with unreasonable demands. I started working in healthcare compliance in 2017, before my transition. The administration... they didn't know what they were doing. That was the issue. I would see these directives from the latest Temporary Undersecretary of HHS and shake my head and say "How the hell am I supposed to comply with this?" No guidance. No direction. I concluded that I couldn't. That it was impossible.

It's not just about "bullshit jobs". It's not just about "quiet quitting". It's about, for me, how the fuck am I supposed to _do_ this shit? Nothing works. We all know nothing works. And everything is centralized in these corporations, and we have no power, they have absolute control, and they think that they can get whatever they want. And they're not. There's that old Soviet Communist joke - "we'll keep pretending to work as long as they keep pretending to pay us".

It's not like 1861. They have all the guns. They have all the money. And this government got elected by promising lower dairy prices, and then put everything into guns. I mean, cool. Great. If nobody's going to pay me for the valuable work I can do, I guess I don't have a job, and I'm unhappy because of it. If the government says I don't have any rights, I guess I don't have any rights. I'm still here. If the government wants me to _not_ be here, I guess they have the power to do something about that.

And then what? No, I don't foresee pitched battles. I think it would be very easy for the President to declare Portland an "enemy city" and blockade us. And nobody would relieve us. And we'd suffer. And they could control a lot of information, too, just like they're controlling it now. People don't see how we're suffering. You can isolate each people from each other, you can keep us weak. It's not going to make them _strong_, though. What are they left with? An army of deluded white people who are completely out of touch with reality? What happens when the day comes - as it must - when they have to something _besides_ kill?

Here's the other difference between 2025 and 1861: The South's win condition was very simple. They just had to get the North to stop fighting them. That was it. The cities? They can subdue America's cities militarily. They can run America like the military ran Iraq, like the military won Afghanistan. My win condition is different. My win condition is "these motherfuckers quit trying to destroy us".

-

I'm not a Christian, I'm not Jewish. It's my cultural background. I was raised Catholic. A friend showed me this clip from The Prince of Egypt the other day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJleW4TCQM0

I never saw it before. After my time. It just makes me look at the Exodus story in a new light. I know it's been an inspiration to all kinds of oppressed people, and I always thought, you know, the curses were just malediction, wish fulfillment, I wish the people who were doing all this awful stuff would suffer. I wish there was justice.

I don't know. Maybe that's how the Torah portrays it. That's not what I see, when I see this clip.

This was my _home_. He was my _brother_. They can blame me for the plagues all I want, and I'm _not actually responsible_. It doesn't matter WHO they blame for COVID. COVID doesn't go away just because you say it's my fault. Where my story is different is the idea that the plague is visited only on _them_. It's not. They may discriminate, but plagues don't.

The people who hate me, I don't hate them. I don't want to see them destroyed. I don't think they're bad. I just don't understand why they keep doing this stupid shit. Why they keep blaming us for things that are under their control, that were always under their control. It rips my heart out. It rips my heart out that _I can't stop it_. I can't keep them from facing the consequences of their own actions.

It rips my heart out because all wars are the same, the same as it was in ancient times. People get anxious and afraid and they want power, and they think - I don't understand this, but for some reason we all have this in our backgrounds - they think that if they kill their children, that will give them power. Why would you do that to your own children? I don't understand. I don't understand, these people call themselves Christians, why they don't see what I see in their holy texts. They're killing their own children in the name of their God.

People who practice those values are destroying their own future.

The cities? They can subdue America's cities militarily. They can run America like the military ran Iraq, like the military won Afghanistan.

No. They can't. This is my core belief — that if it comes down to it, a country this big (and this heavily armed) is ungovernable by military force. That they don't have enough soldiers and enough tanks to crush the entire country. Can't be done.

henry clay, the hillary clinton of the mid-19th century

lol <3

great post k8

No. They can't. This is my core belief — that if it comes down to it, a country this big (and this heavily armed) is ungovernable by military force. That they don't have enough soldiers and enough tanks to crush the entire country. Can't be done.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson)

oh that was kind of my point, afghanistan and iraq weren't ultimately governable by military force either :) you crush the entire country and then what? the closest situation i can think of would be north korea, but as far as i can tell north korea only exists because china finds it strategically useful to have a buffer state

i also think that there is simply no way that the corporations that run this country would survive if blockades were put into place. there would be absolute war if that happened.

Yeah, that's the other thing. At some point Trump (or more accurately Stephen Miller) could make things bad enough for business that Jeff Bezos would have no choice but to take him out.

Honestly feels more and more likely there is a civil war in our lifetimes.

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table), Friday, June 27, 2025 11:17 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

someday our grandchildren will be taught about the War of Woke Aggression

let's talk "civil war". i don't like the phrase because it implies some repeat of the conflict of the 1860s, which isn't going to happen.

The main ingredient of a civil war is the existence of an intractable political polarization that escalates to the point where mediation or compromise are abandoned as unworkable and the two sides resort to organized violence in their effort to impose their will upon their opponent. That violence will tend to escalate and spread until one side or the other capitulates or exhaustion sets in.

Dozens of civil wars have played out during history that do not involve large scale battles carried out by opposing armies. The (first) US civil war was an anomaly in that it involved opposing two rival governments and their armies clashing in formal battle. Most of them start as barely organized internecine warfare with a variety of 'strongmen' emerging as the war progresses.

Here in the US, the next crucial step has already taken giant steps toward its end game: the total seizure of government power and the systematic expulsion of the opposition. We are already market-testing government by the decree, as legitimized by the declaration of a national emergency.

/doomposting

Here in the US, the next crucial step has already taken giant steps toward its end game: the total seizure of government power and the systematic expulsion of the opposition. We are already market-testing government by the decree, as legitimized by the declaration of a national emergency.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

"expulsion" lol

aimless where do you think they're gonna send me, transalpine gaul?

fascists don't _expel_ their opposition. they _exterminate_ them. haven't you seen Enzo G. Castellari's classic 1983 film "escape from the bronx"?

since you are in the doomposting thread let me lay it out for you. fascists _do_ have complete control of united states federal government power, in all three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. the "opposition" party has taken no meaningful action to half this takeover. they are in fact acquiescing to it. right now, there is _no_ federal united states institution protecting my alleged "rights".

so the first step as been accomplished. the second step is what you all the "expulsion". to what extent this succeeds is not up to american institutions. it is up to american _people_. ball's in your court, aimless. i'm doing what i can, but i have no rights. no power to speak for myself. i'm dependent on other people for my defense. for the trans community to undertake "organized violence" in self-defense would not be effective. any "civil war" will be not dissimilar to what we're seeing in palestine - well-organized, overwhelmingly powerful government forces against a dispossessed, marginalized people whose means of self-defense are barely better than sticks and stones. of course, the people with the guns are portraying themselves as the victims and their actions as "self-defense".

why do you think us queer people wave all those palestinian flags around? how do you think stonewall would go if we tried that shit today? a party that doesn't stand against the genocide of the palestinian people sure the hell isn't going to stand up for _us_.

the democratic party isn't doing _any_ of us any favors, aimless. including _you_. i hope at some point, you will figure that out.

Extermination is step that comes after expulsion. It is easier to exterminate people who have no access to any of the mechanisms of government, such as legislatures, courts, or even ordinary jobs in the bureaucracy. After that they are sitting ducks.

i mean, they are doing the expulsion part in real time

Extermination is step that comes after expulsion. It is easier to exterminate people who have no access to any of the mechanisms of government, such as legislatures, courts, or even ordinary jobs in the bureaucracy. After that they are sitting ducks.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

oh gotcha. sorry, i misunderstood you, i thought you meant literal expulsion. it didn't occur to me that you thought we all had equal recourse to the law.

i don't blame you for believing that. i was taught the same thing, in school, in civic classes, all these places, and i believed it. it seemed true, as long as i did what i was supposed to do.

what changed is that i learned about a saying... there are many forms of it. one of the first was by a guy named stafford beer, who said "the purpose of a system is what it does". i was raised by lawyers, and i learned to believe in The Law, the laws that guaranteed our rights, the laws that guaranteed our freedoms. lots of americans do. lots of americans remember that fight, remember fighting hard for equality under the law. that was an important fight. i value greatly the people who fought for freedom and equality, even if now, under american law, people don't have that freedom, don't have that equality.

and eventually i understood. the purpose of a system is what it does. when i was young, a bigot published this book called _the bell curve_, which argued that the reason there was so much racial inequality in america was that _black people were genetically inferior to white people_, and white america, of which i am a part, took it _seriously_. i mean i didn't _agree_ with the conclusion, but i _considered the question_. i think that's awful! that was awful of me. i'm not a bad person for doing that, i don't think, but it's awful that when i was young, i actually took shit like that seriously. it's not my fault, and at the same time, yeah, i'm responsible for what i say and do, whether or not it was something i did intentionally, whether or not it's something i chose.

and to me, my response to that is to say that look, i don't know the "real america" or whatever, but this is what i was taught, this is what we were taught. and i think there's a lot of value, a lot of merit, in looking at america now, in looking at america _does_ and how it stacks up to what we were taught.

so for instance, in america today, it's legal for police to shoot Black people. i don't know how long it's been that way, because for a long time i wasn't paying attention, i wasn't listening to what Black Americans were saying. now, i look at how routine it is for police to shoot Black people, and i see how somehow it's always, _always_, the victims who are blamed for being shot. i see that the cops aren't held responsible. maybe they're suspended from duty for a while. with pay. these are the people who are, under the law, there to _protect_ people. to serve and protect. and if you're Black in America, they don't. even "the good ones". when the people who are responsible for "protecting" someone can kill them at any time, for any reason, nobody can "protect" them on behalf of that institution. because part of the _purpose_ of the police is to kill Black people.

rape is legal. not just _legal_, it's _socially acceptable_. it's _normal_ in america. if a person (particularly a man) sexually assaults someone else (particularly a woman), that person doesn't face any consequences. the victim is held responsible. often, as in my case, the victim actually blames themselves. that's how normalized sexual assault is in America. and i see so many guys, and they don't understand why women don't _trust_ them, why women treat them as _threats_. they're Good Men, in the same sense that the police who don't kill Black people are Good Cops. in the same sense that it _doesn't matter_, "good" or "bad", that if they _do_ sexually assault someone, sexually abuse someone, under American patriarchy, it's the _victim's fault_. that's how america works. that's how america has worked as long as i've been alive. the purpose of a system is what it does.

this is what america does. this is america. (when jimi hendrix started playing "the star-spangled banner" in 1968, he called it "this is america", did you know that?) this is an america that everybody except cis white men know from birth, everybody but cis white men take for granted. and even cis white men can experience it. it's super easy. all a cis white man has to do to experience it is wear a dress in public. doing that doesn't make someone gay. it doesn't make someone a woman. it's not even wearing "women's clothes". they're clothes. there's nothing inherently gendered about a dress. it's just a style of clothing. and in fact i recommend that every single cis man try doing. as an experiment. just to see how people treat them differently.

of course, i know that most cis men won't. and i have a hypothesis about why this is. my hypothesis is that a lot of men have a very good idea about what the results of that experiment would be, and they'd rather keep it as an idea. they'd rather not have to confront the reality. they'd rather not have to experience the true purpose of the system. that's _why_ i encourage cis men to do that - not for _my_ sake, but for _theirs_. because i believe that freedom and power comes not from a certain set of fixed, orderly rules. i believe freedom of power is learning to acknowledge and understand what the rules actually are and how they are enforced. once someone understands that, one very rapidly discovers how to most effectively challenge those rules.

we learn that we have power. not power that comes out of a ballot box. not power that comes out of the barrel of a gun. power that i don't want or need to _describe_, because it's something every one of us can experiences for _ourselves_.

come to the doomer thread, the one place on ilx where kate's an optimist! haha.