Quinneapolis
[politics and capitalism and stuff]
Quinneapolis
While I am in general trying to hang on to the belief that positive change is possible
Quinneapolis
one thing has definitely been gradually broken for me over the last five years
Quinneapolis
and that is the notion of a breaking point
Quinneapolis
that eventually, things will get so bad that something will give
Quinneapolis
eventually climate change will get so bad that people will admit it's real and take action
Quinneapolis
eventually Trump will do something so evil that the country realizes that they were conned and puts him in prison
Quinneapolis
eventually corporations funneling all their money into the 0.01% will break the economy and the kings will be toppled
Quinneapolis
I don't think these are necessarily true
Quinneapolis
because the people in power are REALLY good at maintaining status quo
Quinneapolis
and for a lot of people there's just no tipping point
Quinneapolis
half the country could end up underwater and people would still be saying it's a hoax
Quinneapolis
Trump probably genuinely could have choked a man to death on public television and still gotten millions of votes
Quinneapolis
class disparity will continue to expand until... I don't know
Quinneapolis
I don't know how we get that one in check again
Rama
Breaking points are a thing, but they're a thing that can be managed by a savvy enough power structure
TWO OF THEM
Quinneapolis : "again"
Quinneapolis
yes i know
Rama
Especially in a country as rich as America where so many people are affluent enough to be insulated from problems until their own house is underwater.
Quinneapolis
I'm trying to focus on "but surely there is some other way for these problems to be at least slightly mitigated"
Quinneapolis
instead of going into a nother catastrophe spiral about how everything is, always has been, and always will be horrible
AzureChrysanthemum
The breaking point is when there are ENOUGH people fed up, and I think the scale of America makes this a tricky thing to gauge
AzureChrysanthemum
But we are kind of seeing it on a smaller scale with the current job market shakeup
Quinneapolis
if enough people aren't fed up after 2020 I don't know when they will be
AzureChrysanthemum
And all the shithead restaurant owners whining about no staff
ғᴏxʏᴍᴏʀᴏɴ
my thoughts are that it will change as certain old people die, basically
I just hope they die soon enough.
AzureChrysanthemum
That's the thing - PROBABLY we're close if not there but it also requires an organization and that's the other tricky part
Cold XC
'scientists shove green tech at capitalists hard enough that the cost hopefully goes down enough for them to begrudgingly adopt it before we're all swimming'
Cold XC
which like... progress has been made on that front. it keeps being made. the pace is the problem.
Quinneapolis
there's one thing I see sometimes from environmentalists that I hate, honestly true or not
Quinneapolis
which is the people saying "we're past the point of no return on climate change, have fun with the decades you have left"
Quinneapolis
like I legitimately don't care if that's true or not, don't fucking say it
Quinneapolis
you're giving people an excuse to give up
TWO OF THEM
people are already seeing biden continuing trump era policies and sitting back and going "he's not trump, we did it" so 2020 not being a factor at all is mostly just because a fair amount of people were mad about the mouth the message came from rather than the message
TWO OF THEM
the problem is just figuring out how to get people to care about the message
Quinneapolis
the problem with getting people to care about the message is that half the country is controlled by a group that turned language into a game for exchanging power instead of a method of communicating ideas, and that doing that is REALLY effective at getting and keeping power
TWO OF THEM
yup
Quinneapolis
so if the left says 'the planet is dying' then the right says 'everyone who says 'the planet is dying' wants us to LOSE, so you have to disagree with them on principle'
Quinneapolis
reasoning and logic don't matter
Quinneapolis
only winning
Dragomorph
here's something to feel a little better about some of that at least?
Quinneapolis
yeah i've heard that big oil is in trouble
Rama
Oil capitalists are getting quietly smothered by renewable energy capitalists and that's at least an improvement.
mózhēngist
Acceletationism is indeed bankrupt for me
RobotApocalypse
i do think there is probably a breaking point but that it's much, much farther down the hole than anyone expects, and there's no sense in trying to predict what and when it will be. so like....if we can turn things around before we hit that breaking point, that's probably best.

but idk. i struggle with this kind of hopelessness a lot too.
RobotApocalypse
i try to take some comfort in the facts of things like:
- "get money out of politics" (ie reversing Citizens United) is an extremely popular bipartisan issue that something like 90% of all voters support and would be an instant game-changer if we could make it happen
- a lot of shitty republicans are so scared of their own party that they're retiring soon
RobotApocalypse
which gives us the chance to try and replace them with democrats or, god willing, actual progressives
RobotApocalypse
- democrats are starting to learn that they need to at least pay lip service to progressive ideas, because they realized they can't afford to lose our votes, which also means that these ideas are being slowly mainstreamed to the general public too
mózhēngist
Dialectically, a breaking point is whenever the strength of the working class (or whatever social forces you deem able to drive change) will mobilized to stage a successful uprising. Now the issue is that this social forces is very disorganized, much more so than 1930s. Therefore capitalism gets away with much worse crimes than in other periods.
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