There's also people who are absolutely going to get fucked but are still living in a comfortable dream-world where they think someone is going to come make everything normal again.

Some of us know its fucked and are just trying to get by.

I'm also 40 something. Oh for the dizzy optimism of the 90s...

The 90s were seriously such a bop.

The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland.

Put a bird on it.

I'm a public librarian. Just dreading the day we are defunded. They’ve already attacked our national orgs.

This is the saddiest shit ever. Young men being angry at the « Men » will vote for the men that will sold them to the bone mill in a heart beat.

There’s a Turkish proverb : and the forest vote for the axe because they where made of the same wood

I know a surprisingly large amount of MAGA/Trump adjacent fans because of my type of work.

• They're all single dudes. Maybe divorced. Maybe never went on a date.
• There's Joe Rogan involved.
• After a few beers, they all will unprompted share their views on Jews, blacks, trans, lesbians, or some other racist shit then back off and pretend it's just a joke.
• Tell them anything involving empathy "Sorry your dog died" is met with silence or coldness.
• They all don't give a shit about anybody else besides themselves. And often see themselves as the victim. "Oh Trans person was brutally beaten? Yeah it's a violent world like one time some guy threatened me gotta stay strapped."
• They may not like Trump's antics. But to them, the Democrats aren't helping THEM. Remember that lack of empathy?

Unfortunately Musk didn't get bullied out of politics, his office was always meant to expire at the beginning of May. He achieved what he set out to do: dismantling federal government completely to make deruglation, tax avoidance and corruption much easier.

This is just him doing the typical right wing martyrdom whining whenever somebody criticises them.

I won't contend with small wins anymore. I want it all, heaven or hell

Plenty of my gen X friends have come to accept that they will never retire like the boomers. A lot of millennials never thought they would.

The under 40s are going to be the ones fighting the wars, as always. Even if there is an other side for humanity after what's coming, no one alive today will ever have a peaceful life ever again.

The under 40s will be sent to die at the front

Same age-ish, and I feel the same.

The hard part is trying to figure out what part of that comes from societal collapse, and how much of that comes from just getting older and seeing more and more of how the world works... or doesn't work.

Despite all we see and hear, objectively the world is better than it's ever been. We are at a shocking low level of international conflict, starvation, disease, crime, famine, even teen pregnancy has fallen to the lowest rates we've ever seen.

But all of these gains have been made by people forming communities of various kinds, of linking up, sharing ideals and compiling resources. This "downturn" we're feeling is a localized result of a lot of people turning their backs on community.

We are incredibly communal animals, we need social identities to survive. This has been studied. When community abandons you, or when it feels like they have, people broadly stop caring about things and themselves and become selfish, bitter, cynical and hateful. We're feeling this all around us, and inside us. And I don't think it's a natural phenomenon, there are active groups working to cause this, they want to undo all that progress and bypass war and pillaging and destruction and just rot out the world's wealthiest countries from the inside out.

I don't know if these objective, global gains will continue for everyone. But I fully believe that the USA at least is in a nose-dive it won't pull out of. Things are breaking as we speak, in ways we can't repair.

Idk man, I’d kill just to have mine agree on the trump bad part. You do you, but tuning out our shit news cycle is low on the offense scale for me. It can be much worse.