this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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Maybe gen a will be the ones with the balls to actually rise up, set everything on fire, and kill the people responsible for destroying everything. Because of the rest of us are just sitting around complaining.
And yes, I admit, I'm in that category.
Ah, gen Z
Us millenials tried that. It was called Occupy Wall Street and we got tear gassed, beaten, and driven away. And then there was a massive effort to erase what they could from media and history, and tarnish the rest.
It was a massive turning point for our generation. It broke us. We went from angry to depressed. We couldn't beat them. They have the power of massive physical violence behind them, AND control of the media.
Gen Z is trying via unionization, which is a tactic much more likely to succeed. Don't try to overthrow those in power, they're too powerful for that. Build up your own power first in whatever manner possible, and then use their own levers of control against them.
Unions need to make a move on the media next. Shawn Fein has been very good at this but it needs more action.
Occupy Wall Street started strong but quickly decended into uncoordinated nonsense. The initial message was simple, popular, and actionable about how it's bullshit that global austerity and government cutbacks were hurting the 99% whilst the 1% who caused the crash got off scott free with massive bailouts and tax cuts.
Because it was a "leaderless" collective action it quickly got occupied itself by all sorts of weird and wacky movements who diluted the message and gave the right wing media all the ammo they could ever want to paint the whole thing as "just some crazy hippies chatting shit about communism" or whatever.
It's pretty typical of movements on the left unfortunately. Everyone wants to be super inclusive so all ideas are equally important and you can't just dismiss ideas as not being relevant without creating a load of infighting. The alternative however means people with bad ideas (ones who often have more time and energy to boot) can easily take over the conversation and your whole message gets diluted, confused, and easily disarmed by the media.
I think the left's problem isn't inclusiveness (in things like this) it's the inability to give power to "strong" leadership. The same mental firewalls that prevent those on the left from falling victim to mountebanks keeps them from letting others speak on their behalf.
It also creates mental roadblocks for anyone on the left who tries to lead. "How can I speak for these people? I am not one of them." That's not a limitation of inclusiveness it's just empathy. So when anyone on the left challenges a left wing leader with anything, really that leader--if they are truly left leaning--will not fight back without near certainty about their position.
This makes it easy for a left wing leader to denounce the illogical and/or racist positions from those on the right but extremely difficult to take a stand on issues where everything sucks like Israeli/Palestinian conflict or immigration. This leaves them open for charlatans to point to them and say, "See? They're weak!" Which is the exact thing the right hates and fears from left wing leaders.
Maybe inclusiveness wasn't the right word to use, but your second and third paragraphs are exactly what I meant. It's because we want to make sure everyone's voices are hard and ideas are considered that movements end up standing for everything and nothing at the same time. To me creating that space and opportunity for all ideas and people is inclusivity, which is a great thing overall but can make affecting change difficult when your opposition all fall into line behind "strong" leaders.
We need a raised militia in open, violent rebellion against the police and national guard. Anything less than that is theater.
I hear Texas is already on it.
Lol I'm a millennial too I definitely remember that and it's not what I'm talking about at all. They just stood around yelling for the most part.
It looks like if gen Z’s massive wave of unionization doesn’t work that’ll be the case. Gen A is likely the water war generation unless we clean up our act enough for it to be gen ß
fails self-restraint check
gen β, not ß
Good old Gen SS
I can’t believe I have never seen this joke made in any context before
SS seems powerful, sure but the godlike powers of SSS class generations could put black holes to shame with their inescapable might.
SSSS class generations can harness the power output of a galaxy
No, the Troika changed it when Germany took control of Greece 10 years ago.
We cannot name one gen Alpha and the next Beta, that is too mean
self-restraint, not self-restaint
:)
I have been educating my child on unions and workers' rights. When he's old enough, we move on to the proper engineering and maintenance of guillotines.
Have you considered teaching him welding and bulldozer operation?
programming still better
Programming your foot up a billionaire's ass
The funny thing is that we have politicians here in Australia that complain about "woke" environmentalists standing up for the environment by sitting down on the road. They're trying to have them labelled as terrorists for simply sitting down in the street.
Meanwhile in France, Farmers who are angry about stopping of diesel concessions are setting things on fire, blocking streets with tractors and dumping manure and dirt into the street to block public servants responsible into buildings.
The point is two fold, French have always done protests better. And the west conservatives have a massive raging boner for eroding ones rights to protest.
I support protesting wholeheartedly, but blocking a road is among the most moronic ways to protest I can think of.
They are blocking emergency vehicles, people going to work, people doing errands, visiting family, goods being transported etc.
There is a reason people get pissed off and pull them off of the road themselves. It does absolutely nothing to further their cause.
It doesn't even effect the people they protest against.
Imagine missing your kids show, mothers dying breath or the flight to your long awaited vacation and family visit because someone couldn't think of a more appropriate way to protest than sitting down and being an absolute butthole.
Isn’t the inconvenience literally the point though?
I don't call people potentially dying an inconvenience.
They have no moral right to decide wether or not people make it to where they are going.
So what do they hope to achieve?
If it is awarenes, then there are much better ways of doing it
Just wondering if you’ve ever participated in a protest or this is just an academic exercise. In my experience well behaved protests are basically ineffective. It’s true that you can actually end up vilifying the cause in the eyes of people that you’ve inconvenienced.
But that creates social pressure on our leaders to address the problem. Either by compromise with the protests demands or clearing them out by force.
I get that it may block the direct path of an ambulance potentially. But most gps algorithms when they see a ton of stationary phones in the street interpret that as traffic and try to route around it.
At the end of the day, yes there is the small potential for harm to a few individuals, but (hopefully) the benefits to a larger group offset that.
I went to UT and there were protests in the street all the time. It always inconvenienced me and I actually came to blows with a few of the protesters, but they should know that’s a possibility going into it. There’s really no right or wrong here. There’s only large organized group against a few impacted drivers.
I appreciate your arguments but respectfyully disagree.
A GPS guided detour should not be necessary for vital social functions to operate.
I also dislike the small potential for harm to a few individuals when there are better ways to get the point across.
Block construction.
Occupy offices and locations.
March.
Send letters and run awareness campaigns.
Vote.
Do anything you can that makes people see you. Just don’t block the road. To me that is too risky. If everybody would protest like that to achieve their political goals we would live in total anarchy.
Hope my opinions make sense even though you might disagree.
Totally. No animosity here. Never considered occupying an office.
It is getting to the point that is the only option. Voting doesn't matter, protesting doesn't matter, complaining doesn't matter. Millennials were raised that those are the processes, we have come to realize they don't work and our kids are being raised with the understanding that that doesn't work. If they want things to change, and it literally HAS to, that is what needs to happen. Either accept the status quo or forcefully change it. If I understand history, that is the most American thing you can do.
i'd rather complain than be complacent at least
I'm gonna be honest, I'm a zoomer (ahhh yes I'm a zoomer, I'm a zoomer, yippee! Everyone look at me, I'm the zoomer) and, looking towards the future, my future, I'm already kinda there. I just think we both haven't quite hit the critical mass where everyone else is at that point, yet, and I think that the narrative about, you know, why things suck, I think that's been co-opted with a mixed level of success, forcing people to feel "fine" with their circumstances, or, forcing people to feel personally responsible for their circumstances, as the case may be. I also think there's a good amount of cynicism about standing up to the US government and institutions, since we've been fed a shitload of stuff against that, and then, you know, we're all fucked and have limited resources and whatever. I also think people are probably too nice for their own good, most people just kind of want to chill, even if that means they're actually not allowed to chill because they have to work 2 jobs and have no energy and one financial emergency could wipe them out instantly.
I dunno, I feel pretty cynical, but I also feel like things will probably get at least a little bit worse, before they get better. I just hope they get worse in the right way, instead of in the whole like, world ending kind of way. Or, localized apocalypse, kind of way, more likely.