I mean, I want to have hope, but the major first world nations of the world didn't build a god damned surveillance state over the last 40 years for nothing. Those fourteen eyes are watching.

What's coming is Hitler's Shutzstaffel on absolute fucking steroids. We used to say, regarding the Patriot Act, that the tools being developed were the kind the Nazi SS would have fucking wet dreams about.

Anne Frank wasn't followed by a GPS tracking unit & surveillance device in her pocket tied to her real name and address that she regularly used to talk with friends. Anne Frank didn't have to worry about heat-scanners that find people hidden in walls. Anne Frank didn't have to worry about the internet at the home she was being hidden in was monitored. Anne Frank was still found and murdered by the Nazis, with much less surveillance, and much lower tech.

I'm not gonna drown myself in hopium and copium. I'm ready for our ramshackle poor-man's cyberpunk world to pop off and start the Water Wars. Because that's sadly way more likely than humans getting their fucking shit together.

EDIT: You want it to get better, start organizing, even for things as simple and small as local mutual aid networks, only using encrypted channels. No, people won't like it. Yes, they're hard to use. If you want to not be constantly infiltrated by people trying to stop you doing good works, go ahead and keep organizing in cleartext. If we want to actually make headway against corrupt governments and corporations yes that means you'll have to learn to do some shit on your own and it won't be as fancy and clean as the corporate option. Stop relying on the groups oppressing you for the tools to fight your oppression by them. The groups oppressing you will never give you the tools to dismantle them.

Imagine how much good could be done if we just took Elon Musk's stuff and used it to fund public education, public healthcare, poverty reduction, drug abuse treatment, and the like. Instead that shit strain is hoarding all that money that came from our pockets.

EDIT: Like...instead of letting him DOGE NASA for the benefit of SpaceX, what if we just took SpaceX and folded it in to NASA?

They barely mix with us, peasants. They will probably follow this trend and live in inexpugnable, extremely well defended citadels. Apartheid, in a word.

I want to believe that the working class will finally take back its power, the first step of which will be forming strong and effective unions. The second step is ensuring high taxes on the wealthy, coupled with accountability for how that tax revenue is spent

But I look at all the previous decades of failure, and I recommend that young people in particular should make alternative plans in case they have to fend in a hostile social, political and economic environments

1—do nothing else but learn some skill or trade (or several) which you can use to get paid

2—don’t excessively drink, don’t excessively do drugs, don’t excessively sleep around, and get and stay fit

3—create a network of friends and family, but don’t stress if you cannot. Get a hobby, try to get married, but don’t stress if you don’t. Cut out toxic people and family from your life

4—do whatever else you care about if you’ve done the above

Conventional wisdom still helps, don’t be fooled by people who say that it doesn’t work

I agree with you about sentiment. Idk if actions will be taken but I feel like the CEO shooting did set a certain tone.

Now the question is, will that create further escalating tension or would it be repackage and sold to us as a media trope to show us that “hey, some oligarchs aren’t that bad.”

Or just rich people getting stronger and ever more lethal security teams...

The rich already control the narrative and peoples mind. They effectively got whole nations to vote against their own interests. They are absolutely fine. This is copium.

If I learned something over the years, is that people are FUCKING STUPID, as in no matter how vile, greedy, treacherous pieces of shit are the candidates, they will always vote for the same person because they truly believe that they're doing the right thing. And no matter how much proof or information you give them, they will delude themselves that you're trying to trick them with propaganda.

At the end, I simply gave up on the idea of people not being brainless pieces of meat.

one can hope.

im not holdin my breath though. even luigi there wasnt one of those stuck at the bottom with nowhere to go but violence. hes a little rich kid that acted out of conscience.

a better example is that kid that nearly saved us another trump administration by inches, but it hasnt exactly been a trend.

We all need more Luigi.

Letting them get this far will be a painful lesson for us.

So....what you going to do about it?

It really pisses me off that we find ourselves here again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c&t=263s. (its the Canada asylum scene from handmaid's tale)

because of the DNC's corrupt desire to game the electoral system to maximize for the most funding -- dirty or not-- rather than whats good for society. Pelosi's corruption as evidenced by her getting FILTHY rich off insider trading is not a one-off, its systematic and formalized at every leadership level of the party (Exactly the same as it is in the rethuglican party). As is enabling AIPAC's genocide and land theft, against the wishes of the majority of Democratic party voters.

People need to choose now: fund and enable Progressivism and join the "woke dirty hippies" or more of the same traitorous "woopsie" failure from centrism, and Putin and Netenyahus hands crushing whats left of this country. People may not even have a chance to exercise this choice, much less another after this one-- so the last minute to save ourselves has arrived, if not passed.

Time to choose. Supporting a third party (or a much more progressive dem party where we toss the centrist leadership to the curb) needs to start now, not in 3 and a half years.

None of this matters in a ubiquitous surveillance state, which is either here now or a couple years off.

And they will probably try out of fear to take Americans' guns, which is going to be hilarifying

Oh yes, let there be blood.

Let them eat cake.

Who is we ? are you not bearing witness to the fawning obsiquisness ?

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments - Adam Smith

No, it isn't.

This was one pissed-off kid out of 330,000,000 who are being purposefully kept in poverty, and nothing fundamental will change as long as 99% of voters are only going to pick a candidate based on team color.