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Only some. Most of which hold and own the reigns of power. The rest of us “peons” are unable to stop them with our placards and megaphones. Pitchforks and torches require getting in their faces that are prevented by their mercenary guardians whose weaponry will keep our pitchforks and torches beyond their effective range
Also:
“Here’s a rule you can call upon in case some guy starts eating all the ice cream so you can stop him from doing so.”
five ice cream factories and several warehouses later
“Hey maybe, just MAYBE, we could consider talking about that rule again? I’m not saying implement it right away but we should look at it.”
Monstrous, its far more than just selfishness. We actively hate The Other.
Given Europe’s own demonstrated islamophobia and treatment of asylum seekers, and the various genocides going on in east Asia at the moment, I hardly think that we Americans are alone in that regard. The primary difference being that the American Mythos props up America as this place where everyone should be ready to take up arms to protect their rights and the rights of others, and we’re getting to see precisely how hollow such fantasies truly are.
Maybe if people actually gave a shit about each other it would be different.
checks notes Almost 4,500 children were shot in 2025 in the USA.
I don’t mean to be rude, but the US doesn’t even care about it is own children considering dying from a gunshot wound is the number one child killer in the US.
But you see they need the guns to defend against tyrannical governments….oh wait…
Saying it was gas prices alone is ignoring the years of protesting and agitation the left has put exerted. No kings protests don’t just happen and didn’t just start. They are an extension of the George Floyd/BLM protests from the first Trump era.
The only thing gas prices changed are the minds of the 25% who voted for Trump. And there are still die hard idiots who won’t change or recognize the problem. Europe and much of the world also has this stupid type of voter, like being a pro-Russian Polish citizen.
You are agitating to make progress feel dimished. Trump will fall soon and you will still find a way to complain about how long it took. Yeah, because we don’t coup shit here. We have process and order and we follow it, even in the bad times because we believe (even against our better judgement) that people are not wrong until they do something wrong. Try it out and you might find out how corrupt your country is too.
the years of protesting and agitation the left has put exerted.
There’s a left in Murica?
Damn right I’ll complain you took so long, people are literally being fucking killed while you wait for “the system” to fix it for you.
Meh, keep complaining. Things are changing and no one is listening to you.
What do you want him to do exactly?
Beyond being outraged that people aren’t doing “enough” or “quickly” what do you want people to actually do? It’s easy to complain, it’s difficult to actually come up with a solution.
Beyond being outraged that people aren’t doing “enough” or “quickly” what do you want people to actually do?
What they’ve been doing in Minneapolis, but amplified?
That they put down a tyrannical government as their beloved 2A states?
There’s more population than politicians, the whole “we’re powerless” is bs that’s been conditioned unto most peoples worldwide via controlled media 'cos those in power know how dangerous it is for people to get together and start building up critical mass.
What they’ve been doing in Minneapolis, but amplified?
What do you mean, “but amplified?”
That they put down a tyrannical government as their beloved 2A states?
What are you actually asking for here?
There’s more population than politicians,
And approximately half the population is in support of it and the other half aren’t the 2A gun nuts.
the whole “we’re powerless” is bs that’s been conditioned unto most peoples worldwide via controlled media 'cos those in power know how dangerous it is for people to get together and start building up critical mass.
Go ahead and say what you really mean here and stop dancing around the bush.
They want armed conflict and don’t understand how to actually overthrow power. They’re being idiotic reactionaries who think dying is the best part of living. They don’t actually know how to live with their actions or choices and would quickly become ICE agents with a head injury.
Yes, well, the raping children was what caused me to first question the current American political leadership but that’s just me apparently.
Some people draw a line at raping kids. While others draw their line at $5 gallon
News don’t report on the suffering of Iranians. However, high gas prices are impossible to conceal by the media because you experience it every day.
My MAGA relatives called for the extermination of all the Somalians in Minnesota at Easter. I don’t think benefit of the doubt that people just don’t KNOW about the suffering of the Iranians is really justified. If they don’t know, it’s because they don’t care or don’t want to care.
If they don’t know, it’s because they don’t care or don’t want to care.
If they don’t know, it’s because fox news doesn’t report on it.
If Fox News reported on it, they would switch news providers. And if there were no news providers castigating the Iranian people, then they would revert to their “liberal media lies to us” belief system. The ignorance is willful.
I’ve thought about this for awhile before posting. To me, it’s not just Americans. It’s every country on earth (except strangely enough for Dictatorships)
ALL countries look out for their own interests. And a content populace is a large part of that. It’s just that some countries are better at it than others.
It is not in their own interests to support a war on Iran even if it doesn’t affect americans
Foreigners when it’s convenient: “America is the most propagandized nation in the world”
Foreigners responding to American Propaganda: “Clearly the news is 100% right about everything they say about the American people”
Foreigners responding to American Propaganda: “Clearly the news is 100% right about everything they say about the American people”
Why would murican propaganda say crap about muricans? You’re not making sense.
A lot of Westerners, especially Americans ofc, got very much used to third worlders suffering/dying for their comfort, or sometimes for no reason. Do you remember how much extreme media attention it took for Americans to realize that war in Ukraine was ‘serious’ and not just ‘another war where no civilization exists’? And it’s literally Europe. I have no idea what you’d need to do to get the average American to care about people from ‘rest of world’.
I was very fucking upset my government didn’t step in when Russia annexed Crimea, Ukraine disarmed with the agreement we’d fight Russia with them and we just wrote a letter. Not all of us are asleep, but our media is owned by demons.
Another betrayal by the US.
Russia attacking Ukraine was wrong on so many levels with the least being they signed treaties after giving up the third largest nuclear arsenal for protection from the US, UK, and Russia.
The reality that Ukraine is essentially brothers and sisters to Russia is the real heartbreaker. It was like murdering your own family, absolutely disgusting.
after giving up the third largest nuclear arsenal for protection from the US, UK, and Russia.
To be fair, Ukraine never had capabilities to actually utilize that arsenal and bare minimum maintenance was very costly. The deal was beneficial for both sides, even if Russia disregarded a part of it (which still should have never happened).
America is the most propagandized place in the history of humanity. The stranglehold that capitalists hold over American worldviews begins in public schools and is constantly reinforced through media.
I honestly don’t believe Americans can think about the rest of the world until either capitalism is dismantled and the propaganda machine destroyed, or they lose a world war and are made to change.
the most propagandized place in the history of humanity
Sorry, that’s pretty ridiculous. Even with all its flaws, Americans still mostly have freedom of speech, and they use it. They still have access to real news if they seek it out. Trump is becoming more like a North Korean style dictator, but North Korea already has one of those.
Americans can’t think about the rest of the world, meanwhile roughly 1/3 of all foreign aid comes from America.
They still have access to real news if they seek it out.
Which they don’t, 'cos they’re conditioned not to by the media, advertising industry, Big ___, schools, etc.
Don’t make it an american thing, selfish people exist everywhere
It’s not “All americans are selfish”. However, there is a case to be made that the culture itself promotes such a behaviour. The mindset seems to be that an individual tries to get on top of everyone else, that achieve the american dream. And this appears to be instilled since childhood.
Capitalism is not an american exclusive either.
Every nation has had some degree of a superiority complex at some point in their history, but while most nations dialed down over time, the US has dialed up. A lot of that are reverberations from Cold War propaganda.
I see that complex in a hand full of other nations and they’re all either at war or preparing to go to war. It’s disgusting and terrifying.
I strongly disagree with that. The American dream is that you get ahead through hard work, etc, but it’s not at the expense of others. It’s not winning the rat race. It’s creating something of value from your own hard labor. It’s carving a farm out of the wilderness, it’s not being under someone else’s thumb, it’s starting your own business and providing something of value.
Now I’m not saying this is always true, but the fantasied American Dream ™ isn’t about pulling down others, it’s about rising up yourself.
I agree that is how the Dream is sold, but the reality of capitalism is that it is founded on exploitation. One person can rise above others because the system is pushing them down. And in order to justify that inequality, we have the ideology of American Individualism, which says to always take care of “number one” first. So people who are born into privilege get told that they deserve it, and that people who don’t have it are undeserving because of some moral failure.
The very system breeds the ideologies of selfishness. It doesn’t matter if some Americans are different, on a societal level, we are crazily selfish.
I’m with you, but it also reminds me of the George Carlin quote:
It’s called the “American Dream” because you have to be asleep to believe it.
it’s still a more commonly insideous attitude within the imperial cores of the global north
Bullshit. The fat orange fuck topped out at 40% support for the war, which is 10 points over his cultists (29% of US adults voted for him in 2024). You can be blackpilled that a third of the country joined a cult, but people are fucking stupid and the electoral system is rigged anyway.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/iran-war-polls-popularity-approval
I think it depends. Sometimes it feels like were surrounded by idiotic selfish people. But other times I remember that those in power made good education and higher education harder to obtain. I believe that and the decision on Citizens united has molded some scary ass human beings in the USA.
But its not all Americans. There are some good people here. People who tried to do the right thing.
Americans are reaching very high levels of political disengagement. Most Americans know it doesn’t matter who they vote for. They haven’t seen real reforms out of either party, except to make the rich a lot richer. Combine that with the hassle it is to vote in many places and people have just stopped caring unless their personal life gets too bad.
It’s exhausting voting for promises that never materialize or seem to always monkey paw into a way for corporations to suck up all the benefits. People are tired.
And yeah, it’s on purpose. The more disengaged people get, the more the elite can legally rob them.
it doesn’t matter who they vote for
I get the disengagement since I see it constantly online, but taking part in politics shouldn’t be only about who you vote for. It’s also about trying to affect what candidates you get, the boring groundwork that requires a lot of effort
I agree. And the Americans who need help the most do not have the time or energy to put into it. So it’s left to the people who do and very few of them actually care about the working poor.
This is such a cop out. American people have been actively supporting the growth of the rich because they have always believed that as individuals they are just one step away from being there themselves and don’t want anything interfering. People have tried over the last 4-5 decades to change things but they get voted down continuously.
That way of putting it has always belied the sheer amount of propaganda the rich have poured into making people believe they can be the chosen one to get rich. From scam artists selling get rich quick schemes to syrupy news stories about the kid who dropped out and got rich. Financial news regularly runs stories meant to make people think they’re not budgeting hard enough if they can’t make ends meet. (spoiler alert there’s always a tertiary source of income involved, but it’s buried deep in the article.)
And when things are clearly enunciated, like plans to tax people over 400k, there’s suddenly tons of stories about how they’re just normal people who can barely make ends meet. They’re just like Mr. Fast food worker, they might even have to sell their house if you taxed their stocks! (Just never ask which vacation house that is or how many rooms it has)
Rather than “copping out” by pointing all this out, I want a counter narrative. Until we get a strong counter narrative people will continue to succumb to this propaganda.
I almost forgot, the numerous commercials where corporations swear they’re a good corporate citizen and you can trust them to have your best interests in mind. While they put all their wrong doing under legal secrecy so people can’t even see the problem we need to fix. For example did you know Walmart and Pepsi got caught in a massive price fixing scheme? One that likely extends across most Walmart grocery products and could be partially responsible for our high grocery prices? (Pepsi collaborated to make sure no other store could afford to sell Pepsi products for less than Wal-Mart by charging those stores more if they dropped their prices. This effectively let Wal-Mart set the price floor wherever they wanted.)
You don’t get this stuff on CNN. And it’s the stuff that actually impacts our daily lives.
Lots of people need to be personally affected to act. People who act for morals, ethics or some wise or noble are not that common. Stories of humanity have filled people’s heads with fictions about how good people are. Leaders and businessman are some of the worst offenders yet they affect the most. Donald Trump is an extreme version of this, he cares only about things he’s personally affected by while wanting to be capable of affecting the world.
Acting on morals and ethics is only valuable if it is wise to do so. Otherwise its just a sacrifice for no benefit.
