Trump fanatics
People being terrified of cities and public transit.
I’m terrified of public transit only because of my social/generalized anxiety disorder, otherwise I’d love to use buses and trains. I wish we had more passenger trains in the US.
I don’t know where you live, but in PDX it’s a hit or miss. If you go during rush hours on a work day in the suburbs, then you are mostly fine. Otherwise… You have high chances of being harassed by homeless people, spat on, threatened, leered at, smelling something awful. So yeah, not divorced of reality.
I live near Chicago, and the worst I’ve experienced is someone yelling or playing loud music. I’m not saying bad stuff never happens, but it’s much safer than driving (admittedly a very low bar).
Live in a city in the south where driving is required. Went to Chicago last year and decided to stick to public transit when we saw how much it cost to park. It was amazing. Sure some people were loud or smoking in the trains, but I could def live like that. Idk what everyone is complaining about with the 15 minute thing
I’m from the South and I always hated having to drive. I think it’s also nicer/safer to drive in a place with public transit than without, because some bad drivers know they’re bad drivers and will take another option if it’s available, plus it just means fewer cars on the road. No public transit just sucks for everyone.
Yeah I lived in Boston and never had problem with public transit, same in Europe. I guess left cost IS different and not in a good way.
You just described the for-profit mental health crisis which only persists because it is for-profit healthcare is detached from reality
How does this knowledge help me take the train safely?
I work in the development office of a tiny city that’s surrounded by a major city. It’s an enclave for the mega-wealthy. Literally every household is at least millionaires, and we have our share of billionaires.
It’s surreal doing code enforcement on people you see in international news, or getting a call about potholes from a Hollywood director. Mundane civic stuff, but with extremely weird, powerful, entitled people.
Also, the houses we review are insane. We were doing irrigation inspections the other day and a lot of the sprinkler system served arboretums (plural) inside the house.
There’s one I was reviewing that has 3 bedrooms, but 14 bathrooms. Because they have galleries, a library, wine cellar bigger than most houses, the staff kitchen, etc.
Our municipal code has separate ordinances for Guesthouses and Servant’s Quarters (not allowed to be as big if it’s servant quarters).
We have a family that bought a 10 million dollar property to tear it down and build a private soccer field for their kids to use.
We had a homeowner cut down a bunch of historic trees to make room for a new patio, resulting in a 6-figure fee for illegally removing the trees. We dropped off the citation, and they pulled out a checkbook and paid the fine in about a minute.
Rich people live in a different world, and I drive there daily.
Why do I do it? It pays half-again more than my previous city, and I occasionally get to say “no” to billionaires.
In a fair and equitable world, communities like this would not exist, because these people would not have that wealth.
All extreme wealth has been stolen from the working class. That’s the only way it can be obtained.
No disagreement here. I work there for the paycheck and make no illusions about it. Everyone on the entire staff feels the same way. We’re absolute professionals, but we hold zero personal loyalty to the city or its citizens. They may be super rich and have the power to crush any of us, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re all beneath us.
And, oddly enough, that attitude is why we’re good at our jobs. Rich assholes loving together are gonna have disputes, and having a city staff that looks down on them instead of being subservient like their household staff means we’re uniquely qualified to make them be better neighbors to each other.
Just this week, I got into an enforcement discussion with an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. It takes a special kind of officious prick to disarm entitled assholes and their lawyers with the power of bureaucracy.
For about 50 hours a week, I am that prick.
The hexbear instance. I have a fascination where everytime I see a post I can’t help but try to understand the thought process logically. I can only ever come up with deliberate misinformation or genuine dillusion.
I realised the rest of this comment is just me stream of consciousness trying to understand something so feel free to stop reading here.
One thing I personally can’t understand is their defending to the death of every socialist government. But by that I mean every government that has called itself socialist or been called socialist by the US as some sort of justification for undermining them, not if they’ve actually done anything socialist. Like do we have to simp for North Korea. They are probably the furthest country in the world from what I’d consider socialist. Every government does bad things you don’t have to defend them because they ideologically allign with you on paper. And the same logic goes for any country that doesn’t allign with you having only bad ideas and obviously they then must be fascist/ follow nazi ideology. Like what?? Is there no nuance here. Please if there are any actual genuine humans on hexbear can you talk to me about that instance. I what’s going on over there?
One thing I personally can’t understand is their defending to the death of every socialist government. But by that I mean every government that has called itself socialist or been called socialist by the US as some sort of justification for undermining them, not if they’ve actually done anything socialist. Like do we have to simp for North Korea.
There’s a couple of points I would make in response to that.
First, a problematic aspect of the internet is that your existence is defined by the last thing you posted. Which is to say, if someone says that a story about North Korea is fake, then to a reader they are a “North Korea defender,” regardless of whether they hold more critical beliefs about it that they didn’t happen to voice in that particular comment. And there have been plenty of sensationalist, fake news stories about North Korea, as well as about other countries the US doesn’t like.
Second, most Hexbears are Marxist-Leninists, and an important thing to understand about that ideology is that it isn’t about one specific set of policies that are universally applicable. When an ML defends a country, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they think that country should be held up as a model for other countries to emulate.
So if they’re not a model to emulate, then why defend them? First off, because the only means we in the West have of influencing their policies is through our government using military force, clandestine operations, or crippling economic sanctions. Second, because even if a socialist government is a failure, the extent to which it failed is important, because it will be held up as a criticism of socialism in general. Many Western leftists believe in simply putting as much distance as possible between themselves and AES (actually existing socialist) states, and will be some of their harshest critics to that end. But others, myself included, would argue that that’s the wrong approach, because it allows false and exaggerated claims to go unchallenged, which will then still be used to criticize the left no matter how much one tries to distance themselves from it. Like, people will call Obama and Harris communists, so it doesn’t seem to matter how much distance there is.
Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds is a good starting point for understanding the perspective.
“the US doesn’t like”
OMG, like North Korea isn’t bad, it’s just the US that “doesn’t like them”.
Anyobe not knowing North Korea is the worst dictatorship on planet earth should get their brain tested.
I mean this is what OP talks about (or so I feel), people so out of touch you can’t even have a normal discussion with them.
It’s like talking about sexual abuse and someone saying that the person raped is now not “liking” the rapist, but a million times worse.
I’m a capitalist. The person you are responding to sounded very reasonable.
“the US doesn’t like”
That’s very true. The us does not like north Korea. That isn’t saying north Korea is good. It’s just saying there are motives at play to make north Korea look as bad as possible.
If I said Jeffrey Epstein was a cannibal, you can say “no he wasn’t” without thinking he was a good person.
Not really important, but a capitalist is someone who has a significant amount of capital.
Someone who supports the existence of capitalism is called a liberal.
I’m a capitalist.
Do you work for a living? If so, then you aren’t part of the capitalist class.
Funny side note I think the problem with both systems is lazy people not doing what they should.
I won’t go over the example for how lazy people could effect socialism because I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times before.
I skip straight to capitalism.
People don’t vote with their dollar like they should. Everyone hates Walmart, they still shop at Walmart. Everyone hates child slavery, they still buy chocolate. Women want real pockets in their clothing, they still buy clothing that does not have pockets.
I’m lazy too in that way. I don’t shop at Walmart, and I don’t really like chocolate… But I hate how shitty airlines are… When I fly tho, I buy the cheapest ticket on the cheapest airline. Every single time.
That’s the problem with capitalism. I’m lazy, we’re all lazy.
It’s not laziness.
Most people are too resource poor, too time poor, and too exhausted from being violently forced to be profitable to someone else, to have the headspace to do what you suggest.
You can indeed spend every waking moment optimizing your life, but then you would be just one person among tens of thousands who could be successful doing that. 99.999% of people would utterly burn out trying to achieve the same. They don’t have the underlying intergenerational wealth that would give them the ability to do so, or don’t have the free time to do so, or have too high of a cognitive load just putting one foot in front of the other to do so. Vanishingly few people are “just too lazy” to do so, and of those who are, they are the ones who can monetarily afford to be lazy.
It’s why poverty is fiendishly expensive, and why it is almost impossible to escape poverty
I’m new to this platform and can’t tell if I already replied to this or not.
I totally understand and agree with your point. In case I already replied to this I’ll just give my short answer.
If I could snap my finger and magically make a perfect capitalist system (or socialist for that matter) no corruption or greed. Starting absolutely fresh and right with the perfect principles in place for the system… And also all of us people started fresh, well rested, well fed, thinking clearly…
I think people would still buy the cheapest chocolate and ignore the slaves, they’d still shop at Walmart, and I’d still book the cheap airline ticket and complain I have no leg room, and a handful of super rich elites would quickly regain literally all the power.
You absolutely nailed it on the head with everything thing you said, that’s exactly why I don’t call out system true capitalism. I also agree the lives we are forced to live prevent us from having time to sort this stuff out.
I just don’t think we’d be less lazy (myself included) even if we did have the time and energy. I feel the same problem in both systems.
1)good idea
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revaluation
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get lazy
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back to essentially where we started.
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Yes someone explain my poor phrasing. They even mentioned the word I mentioned but I forget.
I’m not the capitalist version of a tanky.
I believe the concept of capitalism could work, and I believe it would work better than socialism. Another common ground I have with socialist is that I understand the examples of my preferred… Arrangement of society have been corrupted and not run under the ideas they claim.
That’s what I mean by common ground and that’s where I sympathize. I wouldn’t want someone pointing at trump and saying “that’s capitalism!” And I would never point at Kim jun un and say “that’s socialism”
I also understand the “ideal, pure, perfect implementation” of either idea probably isn’t possible.
I lean more to capitalism.
That’s what I meant when I said “I’m a capitalist” I misspoke.
What on earth do you think you saying you are a capitalist does?
There are smart communists, and as you so succinctly prove, capitalists that are less so.
Pointing out I can disagree with someone’s ideas and still recognize when they are being very reasonable.
capitalists that are less so.
Ah the ol’ “you’re stupid” rebuttal. Works every time. Automatic win in every debate lol
I’m slowly learning to stop arguing with people whose first instinct is to throw out an insult
Yesh, look at OBJECTION s response, and call that smart if you like lol. There are people who are smart, and others who, well, aren’t.
Others
Ftfy
OMG, like North Korea isn’t bad, it’s just the US that “doesn’t like them”.
You’re linking North Korea to the conversation about communism, when that alone is a fatal error: NK is equally as much communistic as they are democratic. As in, not in the least.
There has never been any kind of a long-term (5+ years) communist country on the planet. Prior power structures have always stepped in to decapitate communism in favour of a violently autocratic dictatorship much like a monarchy. What remained of communism was only ever kept as a thin veneer of legitimacy, much like a rotting Edgar suit.
This is what I’m talking about. The US not liking North Korea is an objective fact. But because people on the internet treat whatever you last posted as your entire identity and belief system, then you assume that’s the full extent of my position on North Korea. You expect me to do the typical signals to disavow and denounce the country as part of the strategy of the Western left distancing itself from AES states. But I’m not interested in signalling anything, for the reasons I explained. The strategy of allowing and repeating all sorts of sensationalist nonsense for fear that pushing back against it will tie you to the state in question just doesn’t work.
Is North Korea really “the worst dictatorship on planet Earth?” Are they worse than, for example, Saudi Arabia? Are they so much obviously worse that anyone who thinks Saudi Arabia is worse “should get their brain tested?”
It’s like talking about sexual abuse and someone saying that the person raped is now not “liking” the rapist, but a million times worse.
Ok, maybe you’re right. Perhaps it’s important to mention the horrible things the US and North Korea have done to each other. Like when the US invaded and killed 15% of their entire population (primarily civilians), carpet bombed the country, and deployed all sorts of chemical weapons, or when North Korea, er, sorry, what did North Korea do to America that’s “a million times worse than rape?” Gonna have to refresh my memory on that one chief.
Look they first thing I’m confused about is why you started your comment with a sympathetic viewpoint to North Korea, like I would’nt open my essay about how nuclear energy is good with Chernobyl wasnt that bad. Your basically delegitimising everying else after that, which is unfortunate because there’s a lot of interesting things in your comment.
And then I disagree with the false and exaggerated claims unchallenged part. What exactly do you mean. This seems like a catch all to dismiss anything that you disagree with. Nuance is everything embrace it. More importantly, because the only state you’ve mentioned is North Korea I’m now prompted to assume the AES’s you’re talking about is north Korea.
Look they first thing I’m confused about is why you started your comment with a sympathetic viewpoint to North Korea, like I would’nt open my essay about how nuclear energy is good with Chernobyl wasnt that bad. Your basically delegitimising everying else after that
That’s a perfect demonstration of my point. The only thing I said about North Korea is that there are fake stories about it, which is true. I have no interest in saying or tolerating false claims just to make my position seem more appealing, or to avoid being accused of something. If speaking truth delegitimizes me somehow, if it makes people think I’m a bad person or something, then so be it, it doesn’t change what’s true.
And then I disagree with the false and exaggerated claims unchallenged part. What exactly do you mean. This seems like a catch all to dismiss anything that you disagree with.
I linked a video to give an example of what I was talking about. I recommend watching it, it’s a little long but it’s informative while being entertaining and well-produced (it has 3.6 million views with good reason). The video describes a story that was very widespread in the media with lots of mainstream sources talking about it, which claimed that everyone in North Korea had to get the same haircut as Kim Jong Un. That story was completely and totally false, it was a wholesale fabrication. The two guys in the video travel to North Korea and get a perfectly normal haircut to disprove it. It also mentions several other stories that turned out to be fake news.
You’re jumping to conclusions when you say that I “use it as a catch-all to dismiss anything I disagree with.” I’m not going to dismiss claims that are actually backed by evidence, but I am going to investigate whether there is actually evidence backing up a given claim.
More importantly, because the only state you’ve mentioned is North Korea I’m now prompted to assume the AES’s you’re talking about is north Korea.
That’s a silly assumption, as there’d be no need for a term like that if it only applied to one country. AES states also include for example Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, China, and the USSR (prior to it’s collapse).
I’m still confused why you’re including north Korea as a socialist state
Because they either live in their own dream world, or they are pushing the idea that communism is good, which is hard if you use and listen to facts.
Start off with an enormous lie, everything after that might feel not that un-true.
People use all sorts of metrics to determine whether or not a state is socialist or not, so it’s hard to find neutral terminology everyone can agree with. North Korea calls itself socialist and has a centrally-planned economy, and has been historically aligned with other countries that also call themselves socialist (such as the USSR and PRC), so it seems reasonable enough to me to call them socialist. Should I call them capitalist instead? Seems a little odd, especially since I live in the US which has a much larger proportion of the economy in the private sector.
North Korea calls itself socialist
They also call themselves democratic.
Are they? Would you call their system democratic? No?
Why one and not the other?
For one thing, virtually every country on earth claims to be democratic, whereas only some claim to be socialist. There are many countries that claim the label of democratic that don’t consider the DPRK to be a democracy, but the countries that claim the label of socialist, such as Cuba, generally recognize the DPRK as socialist. If would be strange to refer to a group of countries as socialist and then exclude a country that those countries recognize as being socialist.
It’s worth noting that one of the main reasons the DPRK is not considered democratic is not because of the way the government and elections are structured, but because it doesn’t allow its elections to be monitored by international observers.
They’re not socialist because the means of production is owned by literally one guy?
The means of production are mixed between public/state ownership, collective ownership, and private ownership, actually.
I take it that your metric for whether or not a state is socialist is something like, “Worker ownership of the means of production.” But that metric has a lot of ambiguities that make it difficult to apply practically in an objective way. Which workers own which means of production, and in what form? Suppose we have a system where everything is state-owned and the state determines who can use what when based on a truly democratic process - but then, an organization of trained professionals in a given field go on strike to demand things be done the way they want. If all the workers should own all the means of production, then the strikers are out of line, but if the workers in a particular field should own the means of production in that field, then the state is out of line.
And should the economy be transformed, fully and immediately, to that ideal? Historically, both the USSR and PRC attempted widespread collectivization of farms, like with the Great Leap Forward, which was an abject failure. That’s not to say that farming collectives cannot be successful, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect immediate and total transformation to that model or else a state isn’t socialist.
“This”, honestly.
US politics.
SUVs
Immigrant parent that hates new immigrants. Of course, he’s a trump supporter.
Gender dysphoria feels unreal sometimes…
Are you okay, sis?
Honestly, I’m good right now! thanks for asking though! :)
I was reflecting more on how surreal gender dysphoria feels like, some days I’m just happy because I know I get to be a woman. On others I feel disconnected from reality, the latter happens less and less :D
Dreaming.
Driver’s in Atlanta Georgia.
The left two lanes on i85 are for faster drivers and right of way is a real thing!
Customers. Seriously, how absolutely incapable are some people. I wish I could force some of them to write down all the questions they have, make them watch a 5 minute YouTube video and then only bother me if they still need help. Jesus Christ it’s a hardware store not kindergarten where I’ll take you by the hand and tell you not to eat the crayons.
You mean, apart from liberals?
Boo
I was gonna say “tankies” but I see they’ve already announced their presence for me.
So kind of them to go out of their way to help a liberal like me 🤷
These guys really do a good job of being unlikeable
How is your genocide coming along?
Lol, my Genocide.
Oh, it’s going to stick to you and every other liberal. And we’ll be here to make sure you never forget it.
Ok
Donald Trump is not only running for president again, he might actually win.
If 2016 taught me anything it’s to not trust polls. Doesn’t matter how hard ahead Kamala is polling until your ballot is actually cast.
It also doesn’t help that you have the “Lemmy.ml” crowd calling you a fascist if you vote for Kamala, because in their twisted world having trump win is better eomehow
To your second point, it’s because most of them hate the US and/or capitalism, and want to see it implode.
…Without realizing that the only things that are going to fill that power vacuum are worse.
Are there better countries than the US? Damn skippy there are. Do any of them have enough power to do anything if the US implodes? Absolutely not.
That would be terrible for worldwide peace and stability. US has too much power and influence for an implosion to not cause worldwide chaos. Trump would mean US siding with other dictatorships, like Russia, China, Iran. Russia would likely succeed in Eastern Europe. Taiwan would likely be occupied by China. NATO vs an alliance made of US, Russia and China would be very uncomfortable.
Stupid doctors. Starting in the medical field, I had this notion that a doctor is this kind of universally intelligent, best-of-humanity kind of person.
Some of them are.
But some of them are absolute dumbasses who happen to have a photographic memory that carried them through med school… Like, full blown trumpanzee, falls for conspiracy theory bullshit, superstitious nutjob, knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed idiot.
It shouldn’t be possible. No one who makes it through med school should be mentally capable of instantly plummeting to the rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study (which fortunately most of those types deliver at least passable quality of care).
I do the same with lawyers. Some of the Trump lawyers have been so bad that I question the Bar exam’s ability to weed out the worst.
I’m not sure if there’s any field where everyone is qualified. It seems there is no perfect method for objective qualification, without letting idiots slip through the cracks.
One of the better methods is to have a supervisor watch them in practice, but how do you qualify a supervisor? The whole cycle repeats again
There are some really stupid doctors, scientists, electricians, architects and welders, all of which are occupations where incompetence can have dire consequences.
There are recent cases of flawed scientific papers, used as guidance for procedures (ex: surgery), and causing potentially thousands of deaths.
https://youtu.be/HTlKGKaOQPY?si=2oXTn6UdR0Fuxtgj
Cases like this is what feeds anti science movements and conspiracies. In many circumstances “science” shouldn’t be trusted when there is no line between flawed science and good science.
rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study
That’d be too many people around me, from the qualified kind. I’m not a doctor though.
Sorry, it’s impossible. It’s normal for people to be what you described. Just human.
I mean, if you actually manage to create a working procedure for such selection, half the people in the profession will have Aspergers, always red eyes and sleep at work, and the other half will be NT, but some bloody geniuses whose abilities would rather be used in something like fundamental science.
I know a few people closely that I’d consider a genius. I only know one that went into a field where their genius mattered. He changed fundamentals of microbiology. One high school dropout, one just surviving and making decent money doing whatever they try.
I only know one that went into a field where their genius mattered.
That’d be one more than I know, if we don’t count relatives.
One high school dropout,
My tribe.
one just surviving and making decent money doing whatever they try.
That actually sounds nice.
It’s not that doctors are stupid. Quite the opposite; I strongly suspect that, by any seemingly-objective measure of intelligence, doctors are going to average significantly higher than the general population. (…And veterinary doctors even more so.) Having cognitive biases, believing in conspiracies, etc., isn’t a symptom of stupidity; it’s a side effect of being human and having emotions. You’ll find that very highly intelligent people end up being more effective at rationalizing dumbass, batshit crazy beliefs; the number of engineers, computer scientists, attorneys, etc. that are, for instance, Mormon is astounding.
step foot
Bone apple tea!
Wooaah I had to google this one, it’s a bone apple tea I’ve definitely used!
I work in a manufacturing facility where the assemblers, mechanics, machinists, and technicians, are unionized. My white collar, not unionized colleagues simultaneously express jealousy about the benefits the union members get while also saying they shouldn’t exist while also complaining their own salaries are too low and not keeping up with inflation.
My dudes, this is what unions are for. If I worked one of the covered jobs, I would join the union in a heartbeat.
Join them, don’t try to tear them down.
Crazy how union participation peaked in the 50s with 1/3 of the workforce in one, at a time where a man without advanced education could provide for a wife, multiple kids and own a house.
Crazy that people aren’t rioting in the streets.
The Parasite Class. That’s what happened. These are people for whom any amount of wealth will never be enough. So they extract it out of the working class by cramming down wages, making all aspects of life precarious, and raising prices.
We all suffer and the 0.1% accumulare more wealth than they could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes.
Yeah, my white collar, salaried, not unionized brother works for a major manufacturer and constantly complains about unions. Then he’ll go on to talk about all the overtime pay he gets while traveling … not appreciating that salaried positions don’t get overtime pay (in the US), and he has the union to thank for that.
while also saying they shouldn’t exist
what is their argument?
Nothing substantial, just parroting propaganda. Union workers are lazy. Unions are anti free market. Unions get in the way of businesses being profitable, which would in turn benefit employees.
…And yet, if the company treats employees in a way that employees feel is fair and reasonable, then employees are extremely unlikely to choose to unionize.
For a short time I had the pleasure of working with a small site that treated the union as a partner and not an adversary. On the company side, it was an EH&S manager, not even the EH&S lead, who led annual negotiations with the union. There were disagreements and compromises, but both sides walked away every year feeling benefitted and ready to collaborate for another year.
Well, Corporate can do better than that. They sent in HR to run things this year. Everything is an aggressive conflict. EH&S dude was immediately recruited to a company down the road and left. Cue HR’s surprised Pikachu face when all goodwill with the union disappeared overnight and the union is just as ready to play hardball.
I am glad I got to see one example of a company and union working together for mutual benefit. I think there will be vanishingly few situations like this throughout the rest of my career
I think that there are probably a lot of small companies that run in a more collaborative way. I also think that the probability of labor abuses increases along with the size of a company; once the owner/president doesn’t personally know everyone that works there, the odds of shitty things goes up sharply. Not that small companies don’t also have shitty owners, but it’s usually hard to be an asshole directly to someone’s face, unless you’re a raging narcissist or sociopath.
