this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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A Boring Dystopia

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[–] Fracturedfox@sh.itjust.works 121 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Glad to see we've progressed in a hundred years time...

(/s in case you missed it)

[–] Bonehead@kbin.social 82 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Technically, we have made progress. The US is no longer known for bootlegging.

[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 46 points 1 year ago

Yep, the bootleggers (drug sellers) are now legit.

[–] BaroqueInMind@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Alcohol is a drug. Drugs dominate the markets; we export more drugs than any other country. Bootlegging never went away.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the fentanyl crisis is significantly worse, and the US is known for poor quality alcoholic beverages (even when that reputation is undeserved).

Alcohol I think mildly saves itself on accident too. For instance I had moonshine last night, made by a member of a local biker gang, not the stuff at the store labeled moonshine. Many of the makers charge quite a bit because it isn't all that cheap to make unless you are mass producing. Generally that means you end up having other Alcoholic beverages with moonshine which the main issue with is methanol poisoning if not distilled properly. ( The methanol boils off at a lower temperature than the ethanol) So if they don't distill it perfectly the methanol poisoning can set in, but one remedy for methanol poisoning is Ethenol. So if someone is drinking some moonshine and some actually produced by a legitimate company liqour on the side (shots of whiskey or such) they are actually fighting the impurity of the moonshine.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So we got that going for us I guess..

[–] Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You see to have misinterpretted the opinion. They're stating that the newspaper focuses on those things so much so that one would assume that's the only thimg that matters. Much the same as today's news media with their 24/7 focus on doom and gloom for the views and clicks.

That is, or course, if you're like the others who seem to interpret the opinion as a commentary on how the world truly was.

[–] Fracturedfox@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If over the course of 100 years, nothing more newsworthy has prevailed to get people's attention, that the doom and gloom of a century ago is the same as it is today, it's saying something about the world in general that we haven't changed. Should we have changed in 100 years? I'd like to think so, but as I get older I know that's a pretty optimistic view of things.

That author's paragraph out of context could mean a lot of different things which we can leave up to each viewer to decide.

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[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 81 points 1 year ago (2 children)

YES YES are people gonna start posting old newspapers on here??

[–] explodicle@local106.com 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hope in another 100 years, someone continues the joke on the comments posted today.

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[–] Caboose12000@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I'm confused, doesn't the way this is written imply that none of that is true, but rather that their newspapers are sensationalized? why is everyone going "same as it ever was"?

edit: yes I'm aware corruption existed 100 years ago just as it exists today, I was just confused about people ignoring the written words of the post

[–] pandacoder@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Except Standard Oil has been broken up 13 years earlier and 1924 was smack in the middle of Prohibition and the illegal transportation of alcohol was called bootlegging. Both the breakup of Standard Oil and the alcohol ban are written down in legal documents, so we can confirm their existence wasn't sensationalized.

Bootlegging would be the only part that could have been sensationalized, but I see how people drink today and I don't think thousands of years of human behavior with alcohol was sensationalized, leading me to a conclusion that we as a society wouldn't just give up alcohol for a decade, bootlegging was almost certainly not sensationalized.

If the contemporary context wasn't the above, I might have agreed with the implication of sensationalization. Due to that contemporary context however it doesn't read like that.

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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

Or that the people of 1923 were not as informed as the people of 2023, so they could self delude enough to believe corruption was the exception and politicians were generally well-meaning except for a few profligates.

In 2023 we can actually do some research and see that by far the majority of them are rotten to the core and the few left have to condone it to some degree in order to negotiate with them. Much like law enforcement, in which there are violent, corrupt officers and those who are willing to lie in court to protect them. Everyone else has long since been ousted.

The non-white neighborhoods in the 1923s (including the Irish and Italian neighborhoods) would be able to tell you from experience that the corruption is through and through.

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[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This poor idealist would have an aneurysm if he had a portal to today.

Everyone thinks the world is crumbling because of modern politics, but ‘modern politics’ have been killing us for thousands of years.

It’s very hard to fix things when we can’t even get people to learn that they’re just remouldung yesterday’s issues. Many of these issues have already been solved, but people don’t want to hear the solutions.

So let’s just keep on killing each other, because that helps.

[–] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

An idealist from 1924 would probably come to the conclusion that overall, the world has changed for the better. Well, until you explain climate change to them.

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[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] jasep@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Yep Always has been 🔫

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting, I feel like you see “grafter” basically not at all today in comparison with “grifter.”

[–] Sadbutdru@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still hear 'graft ' as a noun to mean corruption/bribery her in the UK (tho it's a bit old fashioned). But if you call someone a 'grafter' it usually means they're good at physical labour.

Or they’re good at attaching things to other things.

[–] Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Have any historians written back yet?

[–] VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 5 points 1 year ago

They tried, but turns out that anyone who was old enough to do "our times are the worst ones and the future will agree" takes 99 years ago have since shuffled off those mortal coils that seemed to chafe so much.

[–] treetop@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

"same bro lol"

[–] EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nothing has changed.

Our government's system is corruption.

[–] diskmaster23@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Aye. Capitalism is repackaged monarchism and the gentry of the middle lords that grew out of the failed lordships and monarchist politics of the late 1700s, which has expanded to now.

** We were willing to eat the rich back then, and I still am

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[–] Kjatten@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Truly inspiring, so much we've changed since then. That sense of ideation of the future would be nice to have.

[–] stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I love when people like to complain about how things were better before…before when?

Before bacteria evolved, or so I read on that one web comic.

[–] wazoobonkerbrain@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love when people like to complain about glee things were better before…before when?

Before the glee things went downhill.

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[–] JoeKlemmer@lemmy.myserv.one 15 points 1 year ago

Everything old is new again.

[–] Subverb@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Politics has always been a rough business. From the assassination of Julius Ceasar to the infamous Caning of Charles Sumner in 1856 which Congressman Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death on the Senate floor with his cane.

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Wait, so the politicians were grafters (hard workers), not grifters? So among all the negatives, they found a positive for politicians?

[–] mycatiskai@lemmy.one 13 points 1 year ago

I believe it is the regular definition rather than the slang definition.

a person who obtains money or other advantage by dishonest, unfair, or illegal means, especially through the abuse of position or influence in politics, business,

[–] 15liam20@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

Boodlers (according to Webster) or Sharpers

Hooligans
Reprobates
Swindlers
Blackguards
Profligates
Scoundrels
Wastrels
Miscreants

[–] Cfords@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

1924 ??? Really ? The real date ?

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