supersquirrel

I mean I would love to immigrate to somewhere that had a functioning health care system and I actually could envision a future as a millenial where I was allowed to participate in society meaningfully and do major things like maybe have a kid.

It beats living at the end of a book where the author ran out of money to keep running the story, but the characters are still forced to get up and go to work even though there is clearly no story left for them like some forgotten nightmare.

Fuck the U.S.

USian here, stop buying American, buy European.

I worked for Google's contractors doing GIS work, I have ZERO respect for US companies in terms of the value they bring to the table or the fundamental indecency with which they will try to rip you off or force you into shitty subscriptions. In the past 10 years large U.S. corporations have completely gutted what made them agile and valuable in the first place, these are just dead husks wobbling over totally termite ridden foundations, and the current economic crash completely makes sense to me for the value of these companies crashing.

There are many smart people here, I don't want to condemn the labor of all of the good people here in the US, but we the average people of the U.S. barely get any share of the money you pay to large corporations for our labor, we don't control our politicians, our economy, our largest corporations, our military, our immigration enforcement....the list goes on and on. DO NOT SUPPORT large US corporations that are holding our futures hostage, DO NOT BUY US PRODUCTS until the U.S. stops heading towards violence and fascism.

If there is any way you can obtain the fruits of U.S. labor without paying large U.S. corporations, now is a great time to do so.

Stop believing in the veneer of smartness and superiority around these genocidal fuckers.

There is no NON ELI5 explanation here of how they're using AI for genocide, because the truth is horrible, stupid and brutal.

They are using AI because it is the best tool bullshitters have currently to offload blame for things they, individual human beings, chose to do onto obscure abstract entities like corporations, AI decisions and other bullshit.

There is nothing more to it than that, I promise you, it is all just layers of bullshit that is attempting to obscure culpability for participating in a genocide, and honestly it is the perfect technology for that.

The George Floyd protests ABSOLUTELY did something, don't believe that bullshit. Primarily what they achieved was to publicly demonstrate to anyone that was still paying attention (most especially internationally) and unsure of whether the police state in the US was dangerous or not, that yes in fact the police state had such a strangle hold over power that effectively nowhere in the U.S. actually changed policy despite MASSIVE popular support.

The George Floyd protests changed how people in the US think about their country, their communities, it obliterated the old Overton window and got people to stand up and not tolerate being treated like shit.

Don't let cynics spit on that protest, all you have to do is look at the ferocity and more importantly complete saturation of police state/neoliberal blowback from the George Floyd protests in terms of what actions and policies were actually enacted by government at all levels to see the idea that conservatives in the U.S. would ever allow for any material change is an illusion. There are a few exceptions, but the fact that they are exceptions speaks volumes to how fucking cooked the U.S is.

If you want to know why leftists in the U.S. hate centrists/neoliberals with such passion, it is because they played a crucial role in maintaining that illusion by being incompetent losers who never really wanted to win if it meant addressing the actual issues at hand, they set the table for fascism and then gleefully swung the doors wide. If you want to know why leftists in the U.S. make fun of centrists/neoliberals with such unrelenting glee it is because one of the only silver linings here is how funny this is, neoliberals are like the second tier fool in a comedy who is even more pathetic than the fool because they take so much pride in not quiteee being the biggest fool.

No, the George Floyd protests achieved a strategic success that doesn't have to do with material gains or losses or having any degree of leverage on the status quo power structure at all (which in the U.S., the left doesn't), it changed the hearts and minds of people all over the U.S. to a truly massive degree, that is backed up by polling and changing attitudes towards issues, as well as a rise in awareness of issues where previously a lot of people unconnected to police violence were comfortable ignoring it and letting it happen.

The George Floyd protests changed so much, and were so large that any honest account of U.S. history will surely locate them as a watershed moment in U.S. culture, that both spoke to the desperation of the moment but also of the future to come.

Nah we are gonna shut this shit down. I am not trying to defend the US, or say that we win will win. This is likely a shift into a new era of a gilded age in the U.S. with a very stark enforced difference between the ruling class and the poor, but believe me, this isn't happening quietly and you haven't seen ANYTHING yet in terms of the general U.S. populace being fed up with this.

There have been protests, will be protests, and they will continue to get bigger.

I don't want to take away from the general thrust of your point, I just don't think we have actually seen boycotts that people were actually fired up en masse to enforce.

I think up until right this very moment the general center of mass of society has been largely ok with most of what capitalism is, I think that is going to continue to drastically change, and we will see a lot more wildcat boycotts of companies that significantly hurt them.

That being said I agree that overly focusing on that as a strategy isn't necessarily wise, but boycotts are definitely a weapon that can absolutely blow up the bridges of corporate 'Murica.

Boycotts are performative stunts that feel good but don’t have impact on companies and even gets more attention ON those companies.

No they aren't? People just haven't actually been pissed off enough to actually wield the weapon of "ok, fine, now I will not buy ANYTHING from you".

Boycotts most definitely work, Tesla's stock is plummeting, and one of the major reasons is an aggressive and enthusiastic boycott of buying Telsas (also they suck).

This isn't to say in any given situation a boycott is the best strategy to use, or that your organizing energy isn't better spent elsewhere, but don't dismiss boycotts when we are seeing one of the most effective high profile ones in recent memeory be VERY successful.

Exactly

Well see there is just the problem, TERF island needs more toxic masculinity so the men can be tough!

/s

lol you sound like such a boomer

lol what Trump didn't give a rapist boxer a boost in popularity for a presidential bid in Ireland by doing some BS PR with him? What??? What madness has this world come too?

This is how quickly the cancer of militarism spreads and why war is the favorite tool of the ruling class rich, time immemorial, to put off making concessions to society so that the average person can live a somewhat decent life.

Modern professional militaries don't need hundreds of thousands of troops, you don't need to mainline jingoism and nationalism straight into your fucking veins to defend your country from Russia, just make sure your military has the right capabilities to make a Russian land invasion as absolutely costly as possible.

What conservative warhawks will hear though is "tear our society apart and pre-emptively destroy everything we hold dear because of the threat of an enemy invader, and then in that militarism invite in corruption from Russian aligned assets anyways that exploit the opening created by the deafening roar of righteousness of the military industrial complex".

Resist them with everything you have.