847
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
847 points (100.0% liked)
interestingasfuck
6122 readers
1 users here now
interestingasfuck
founded 2 years ago
I honestly don't know if Americans have what it takes to change the path we're headed down. I haven't really got much faith left in our society. We're pretty pathetic.
Hope I'm wrong.
With all the uneducated, divisive disinformation, and faith-based worldviews out there it's hard to even get people to agree that a problem exists, and therefore even harder to convince the electorate how to appropriately address it. Public medicine would fix this problem like it has in the rest of the world yet still many Americans believe it's Marxism for some stupid reason.
…because a group of politicians who need campaign funding to stay elected tell them “government bad” at every opportunity.
There is one party to blame here. Republicans. They made up the death panels bullshit. They made it so Lieberman could filibuster for the big insurance companies and keep them rich. They made it a goal to “own the libs.”
Democrats deserve criticism for their Neo Liberal bullshit too, but this wouldn’t have been pushed this far without the Republican propaganda and lies.
I think at this point it's clear that there are problems to most people. The difficulty is more about agreeing on a) what the problems are and b) why they are problems, and c) how to fix them.
With the added difficulty that a decent portion of people have taken the "it's hard to prove anything definitively" stance and for some reason decided that means they should believe alternative sources rather than the more logical "be skeptical of everything but also be rational about it". If someone is able to get disinformation into official sources, they'll have an even easier time getting it into alternative sources.
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
All we can do it keep moving forward and try to take care of each other as we go.
By donating to each others GoFundMes for hospital bills.
I'm not some flag saluting, Lee Greenwood asshole, but you couldn't be more wrong. You are on Earth and the truth is 5 billion light years from you wondering about your existence. Americans may not all have the best education. They may be apathetic at the polls due to distrust in the system. However, Americans are NOT pathetic. The media may have you convinced that we are divided on the left and the right, but we are divided up and down. You start to take away things and I'm sure you will find out how strong they can be. Americans have fought and will fight tooth and nail for what they believe in.
Buddy, we just RE-ELECTED a convicted felon and rapist who instigated an insurrection and illegally attempted to overturn an election AFTER we already fired him for massively failing, including in regards to the biggest crisis America has experienced since WW2. A guy that has openly stated he is anti-union and worker rights. We can't even get on the same page about healthcare, despite having examples from other first world countries across the globe showing what we could do to better our situation. We targeted black people (still are), then gay people (still are), and now we've moved on to targeting trans people. Wealth disparity is increasing by the year. Billionaires OWN our politics top to bottom.
We're categorically fucking pathetic.
I don't think this speaks to how pathetic Americans are, but instead to how much the rich have us under their thumb.
We need to start working against atomization if we want things to get better, and I think this is/was a really good way to bring people together. Talk to the uninformed people in your life, be the healthy opposition to their beliefs that many people dont have. Make them understand who their real enemies are.
It is in the upper classes best interest that we close ourselves off, entering echochambers as we talk about how evil it is for someone to disagree with our own beliefs.
US politics are a ship. They don't turn on a dime. We are headed in a better direction in the grand scheme. Short downturns happen. When Bush was president everyone thought the government was going to become a Christofacist regime. The end of times are not near. If you truly believe there is no hope, then why aren't you taking to the streets with violence? I think THAT'S pathetic. You think the end is coming and you just sit and bitch online and do nothing.
You watched the news even once in the last ten years? What the fuck do you think the BLM and Antifa movements were about, planting daisies?
So we are in agreement, right? America isn't full of pathetic do-nothings.
I went through your comment history to see if you are a gun owner, and I think you are not. So this makes you part of the problem you just posed in your comment here, since you have no means to commit to peaceful but aggressive armed protesting.
That's not the right way to encourage people to arm themselves.
I don't have anydesire to encourage people to do anything.
There are people out there who will always be useless bitches that passively complain all day other people aren't doing things when they themselves don't bother to make any effort themselves to try to change shit.
I'm the audience you're talking too. I'm 32 and just got my first rifle. It was awkward for me at first, and attitudes like yours contributed to that.
So fuck you man.
Good stuff. Be sure to regularly train with it, or you might as well wrap a bow on it and give it to the people who will be trying to take it away from you.
You're such a jackass dude
He is 100% a jackass but in this particular point he is right. Please learn and practice with your rifle. Untrained gun owners are a huge danger to themselves and others and they usually don't realize it. And owning a gun doesn't do you any good if it gets taken out of your hands in the first 5 seconds of an altercation.
For your safety and others this is actually legitimately good advice.
Welcome to the Assumption Club, where everybody is an ass!
I bought it so it can sit in the rear window of my truck and make me look tough, obviously.
Jesus Christ I couldn't put a .22 through your skull at 50 feet, not because I'm a bad shot, but because it's so FUCKING DENSE
Truly an appropriate attitude for the owner of an unsecured firearm
You dunce I don't own a truck, I drive a fucking Subaru, and the rifle is in a locked closet with the bolt removed and stored with the ammunition separately until I can afford a safe.
You are continuing to part of the reason I was hesitant to purchase it in the first place, so sincerely, go fuck yourself.
Given the attitude on display here I'm not convinced that was a bad thing. People are in here trying to give you legitimate life saving advice and you're telling them all to go fuck themselves. Gun ownership is not for everyone. Hell I'd argue it's not for most people. That's why I don't own one, but I know how to use them and I'm very up to speed on firearm safety.
First guy was being an asshole but had one good point about training, because the majority of gun owners have a rifle or a pistol locked in a closet and they've never fired a round out of it. That is a recipe for disaster in one of several ways.
It's not my place to insist that you shouldn't have a firearm, and I'm not going to do so. I will say that your attitude surrounding the subject has been very poor and alarming. A simple "I know what I'm doing, thanks" would have sufficed but instead when faced with well meaning advice your response is to immediately start calling everyone names and telling them to go fuck themselves. If someone in my community had a firearm and this attitude alongside it I would feel extremely unsafe around them.
I also admit that when responded to in such a manner I also became a bit of a jackass and you have my apology for that. I shouldn't have taken the bait. But this whole exchange has not been a good look for you. I'm not going to press this any further though.
I'm well aware of what I'm doing with it, it's just MY first gun, not the first time I've shot.
Storing like that is wise, but instead of wasting your time waiting for purchasing an expensive safe, just buy a very good Pelican case for it and a high quality padlock and keep itin a closet so you can simply toss it into your Subi when you inevitably hit a local range.
What brand rifle and caliber did you end up purchasing?
It's a Remington 510 p single shot .22 from the early 60's. It's hardly for defense, mostly for practice and getting comfortable with firearms. It was actually my grandfather's and "purchase" was a simpler way of saying inherited somewhat unwillingly.
Next is a Ruger 10/22 my recently late father in law left me along with a Winchester 20g single
That's actually a really great collection. Rim fire is extremely fun to plink targets with and the ammo is cheap, which is all that really matters at this point.
... or maybe they're not reveling every aspect of their lives on a public forum for personal safety reasons.
Armed protesting, by definition, is not peaceful.
I am not a gun owner.
I have never fired a gun in my life. I have terrible hand-eye coordination. I know from just playing video games with guns and carnival "shoot the target with BBs" things how bad my aim is.
Also, I'm a coward and I know I could never kill anyone.
I would be of no benefit of you in the glorious revolution with a gun in my hands. You would be more likely to be shot by me accidentally.
This is really important knowledge to know about yourself. I wish more people were this self aware.
But a war requires a lot more than just soldiers. Even if we end up in a hot shooting Civil War 2 there are still many things you and other nonviolent folks could do for your fellows to keep them safe. Safe shelter and food mean even more than guns and bullets in a conflict like that.
I hope with every bit of my heart that we don't have to go there. But if we do, you are not useless. Soldiers may fight a war, but logistics wins one. And in this hypothetical situation a lot of us are going to be very charged up with hot tempers and someone with a cooler head and an aversion to violence will be important to keep things from falling to chaos.
Don't sell yourself short, Squid. A coward with a good head on them is a good person to have on your side in a fight. A coward knows how to prevent that fight that might not have been otherwise necessary.
I'm not selling myself short. I said, "I would be of no benefit of you in the glorious revolution with a gun in my hands." I agree, there are other things that need doing.
You are wrong.
You just have to realize it.