Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

cryospam t1_j53uk9b wrote

Reply to comment by friedmpa in Bernie Sanders tells Starbucks to stop busting unions in scathing letter to CEO by VermontArmyBrat

There will come a time, I fear in my lifetime, when life will get to the point where it sucks badly enough for all normal Americans that votes will cease to be the primary method for driving political change, and that worries me.

I really don't want to experience the next US civil war, but I don't doubt it's coming.

5

mojitz t1_j54xy5m wrote

>life will get to the point where it sucks badly enough for all normal Americans that votes will cease to be the primary method for driving political change

They already have — at least at the national level. We live in an effective oligarchy where the "democratic" institutions at our disposal are so poor that the public serves more of an advisory role than anything else. We've just deluded ourselves into believing our own propaganda about "freedom" and "democracy." At the end of the day, though, most of our problems boil down to precisely a lack of those things.

11

cryospam t1_j558495 wrote

We're almost there, and it scares the shit out of me. It will come to a point where this country is going to explode into civil war.

1

mojitz t1_j55963l wrote

Not to get too bleak, but honestly the odds are just as good if not better that we just sort of slowly degrade into a more and more openly authoritarian state without much of any significant resistance to speak of.

10

cryospam t1_j5610ow wrote

I'm not sure I agree. There are a large number of Americans who would become active domestic terrorists under an actual authoritarian fascist government.

It is not just the far right who are amassing firepower.

Politicians go down with one bullet just like anyone else. Piss off the majority of Americans and it will explode into civil war, and then politicians become legitimate targets of that war.

0

thisoneisnotasbad t1_j54p3rn wrote

I don’t think armed civil war is a reality any time soon and I don’t think economic boycotts or other acts of non approved civil disobedience will be tolerated by the power class at any level that has a real impact.

Reddit seems to get foamy at the mouth and call people fascist when they say both sides but come on man, both sides. One side is openly shitty with openly shitty people the other side is a little less shitty on social issues, with a couple decent people, but mostly full of greedy opportunistic profiteers.

At this point voting on a federal level is akin to making the decision to treat a gunshot would with a bandaid or dirty rag. Neither will really help, one will cause an active infection but both are going to leave you dead in roughly the same amount of time.

The US experiment is failing due to greed and a political system designed to keep the rich rich and the poor begging for crumbs.

I wish I had a better attitude about all this but even this article is a perfect example. Someone in Washington takes note of a union busting organization and what do they do? Write a strongly worded letter and people cheer.

We are at a point where we need to do something, anything, to make a change. Half measures will avail us nothing and lip service is getting old.

Be the change you want to see in the world but prepare for shit to get worse, and not better. I predict legal weed will be the 2024 distraction. Hey all, our healthcare system continues to crumble.... but you can buy legal weed now.

8

[deleted] t1_j54nqyv wrote

You may be interested in this podcast. I linked episode one, season one is all this story. It is a STORY, but it was written by a journalist who has seen the worst of American imperialism carried out since 2008/2009 or so when he began his career.

2

VoyageursWitch t1_j55lpl2 wrote

Fun fact, the last time it took this long to elect a speaker of the house was 1 year before the civil war...

Though we took a week and they took two months, but still it's a scary sign of how broken shit is.

2

ReverseMoses t1_j54z6gy wrote

As long as we agree this is all the fault of the wealthy it shouldn’t last long tho

1