You have people like that everywhere.
They’ll stop acting out when they understand there is a not insignificant risk that they will be on the losing side and there will be consequences in a independent court that won’t look kindly on their actions. That’s if they don’t get caught before that and get to experience a symmetrical response.
Successful protests reach a scale and determination where this doesn’t matter.
Don’t mean to be a doomer, if anything I am trying to show a realistic option beyond doomerism.
No offence taken. Nah it’s not an LLM. It’s just my writing style (and occasionally speaking style when discussing more formal topics). I do that in other languages too. That being said, the other languages that I speak have a formal sounding tone with written text by default. I started learning English when I was very young and I’ve been speaking/reading/writing from an early age. LLM output may have a similar tone (the formalism), but they don’t output the same context/arguments without extensive prompting (which would require more work than just writing out the reply by hand). And you are correct that you would need elaborate prompting to simulate minor grammar errors and typos. :)
For me, centre-right = Democrat, far right = Republican. It’s not a translation issue, I am well aware that my language style doesn’t align with commonly used terminology. That’s the basic distribution of the US political spectrum in a global sense. The word “liberal” is used incorrectly by Americans. Even the term “conservative” in the American context is more borderline. From my experience conservatives globally tend to have a subtle, but different outlook than what is marketed as conservatism in the US.
Honestly, my reply was badly thought out in retrospective. The reply was indeed boilerplate what I would say to any American (I make the same arguments to my American friends albeit I modify how explicit I am depending on who I am talking to) and the emphasis was by design. I was trying to emphasize that there is benefit to “novel approaches” 😆 and that standard methods and even analysis (in the US context) can work, until the day comes when it doesn’t work.
I will happily concede the discussion about US exceptionalism if there is reason for it. An example would be changing the situation on the ground via mass scale, bottom up protest (the Democratic party is too corrupt, too cowardly and have no new ideas) with the government losing control over parts of the country (e.g. institutions like local courts and admin, key transport infrastructure like airports) and showing the rest of the country that the scale of the protests (e.g. 60 million strong daily protests, with weekend peaks approaching 100 million), their determination (no compromises, immediate resignation of the current administration and all senior enablers) and most importantly gumption (letting both senior business leaders and security forced understand that they risk going down with ship and the captain and his team will be the first to bail if things get hot).
Me ignoring the “my country is dying I hate this” was a lack of compassion on my part. My bad. The doomer last paragraph in my OP was also uncalled for. I am trying (and failing in this case) to point out that now is not the time to think of exceptionalism, the time is to make it happen.
I was living in a small, relatively well off town, it was a bubble both economically and culturally.
My foreign friends and I travelled extensively when they were visiting and we stayed in Detroit multiple times, visited Gary and Flint, stay in random despondent rural trailer parks (my local friend was from there).
We visited many local cultural locations. There was a funny situation in a small rural museum where the bored receptionist was like “Oh wow, you are from Ukraine/[another country]. You know what, there are no other visitors, I will give you a private tour on a complementary basis.” She was really excited. I was polite and was asking questions and telling her about Eastern Europe and topics related to the museum content. She loved that we were visiting.
Also did some DIY tourism. Climbed over the fence to explore abandoned buildings with interesting graffiti. Took photos of random stuff in the ghetto. We had locals come up to us and ask if we were students doing research. I answered that I am a student at a regional university, but we are here not on university projects. It was crazy to see the number of young children hanging out seemingly alone during school time no less.
The trailer park home I was staying at was via a guy who burned down part of their school (he was good friends with one of my local university friends who invited to me to this town). One of his friends was buying drugs through a contact from the school burning guy’s father’s girlfriend. The father demanded a cut of the drugs (not financial comp). Stayed at another house in a completely rural area. The family would be considered poor by local standards, but their house was huge. At one point they converted it into a strange (by my standards) conservative church.
I was shocked how empty downtown Detroit felt outside of sport games and events. Even the major museums felt empty. I remember going to this nightclub that was on the top storey of a beautiful art deco skyscraper.
Also there was no rail access to Detroit, only busses which are not as comfortable or convenient. One of the students in my dorm wrote low quality article about how building a railway line would be bad thing. He was likely right due to the lack of feeder infrastructure, but his argument was more polemical. Cars equal = freedom. Cars are of course nice and convenient. But from my perspective you have much more freedom and independence when you have an expansive, convenient and “on time” railway system while having the option to use a car. In a way, it requires more personal responsibility to build such a society (not to mention the CCP’s massive success in building out national railway infrastructure).
Gary honestly felt a lot less interesting than Detroit or some other places. Even the downtown did not have anything distinctive. Just liquor stories, paydown loan places and mini marts. Jackson family home was tiny. I was expecting a gigantic museum considering how well know Michael Jackson is around the world. I would strongly recommend staying in Detroit over Gary.
I have positive memories about all these trips. This felt more real and satisfying than the small town I was living in. It felt fake with a lot cognitive dissonance. There was a funny situation were I wasn’t allowed in a fraternity party (even though I was invited by a junior member) likey because I didn’t look like a member of athlete fraternity community that hanged out exclusively with the blond sorority community. I lived in a major metropolis and we went to both underground rave events at high-end night clubs, so this was a funny situation.
The funny thing is that they could just speak the truth and state that the Kirk fellow was a demagogue who believed in nothing and would shill for any oligarch copytext that would benefit him. They could even make a glib remark that he would shill the idea that “a mayonnaise enema supports freedumz and shit and will allow you to fly” as an example.
I don’t think Kirk was a fascist in the ideological sense and likely knew that what he was pitching was both immoral and factually wrong, but didn’t care as long it materially benefited him.
This is honestly a horrible situation not just for the US, but the democratic world at large. US moving from proto-fascism to full fascism in not a good thing for the global democracy and human rights.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/mores
It seems that the singular form of mores is non-standad, although I could have sworn I read it in more formal works.
Look man, I genuinely don’t want steer things in an even more negative direction.
Perhaps I misread things. Honestly, I regret writing my OP in such a negative tone and I should have been more constructive.
I was just sharing things that came to mind.
I would disagree.
From my time living in the US, I got the impression American society is generally meek, conformist and often a bit shallow in their claimed political beliefs and attitudes (this is not true for everyone of course). See the postscriptum for some additional clarification
I thought the “rebel” attitude was primarily theatrical and aimed more at maintaining and conforming with the local cultural milieu. When everyone claims to be an “independent-minded free thinker”, then no one is really a rebel.
Take the tendency for localism, “rural posturing”, alleged libertarianism and faux-survivalism. The impression I got is that this is a sort of a “theme park” for adults movement. The localism is a bit superficial, it’s not like the rural areas have their own language or a truly distinct culture relative to the rest of the country.
In US rural areas everyone drives around in expensive off-road style vehicles (from both a cost and opex perspective). Infrastructure is well developed you can access all ecosystems for every manner of product and service with ease and relative cost efficiency by local standards (I will specifically note eCom delivery being universal ).
Compare that to the situation in that town when the Maoist bomb railways, most people cannot afford getting an off-road vehicle and would have to switch to busses which are heavily overloaded and prone to accidents and breakdowns. This is especially true during the monsoon season.
Or consider the gun culture in the US. My family are from very run-down towns in Asia and Europe, lots of poverty, challenges, no growth and so. One of my first experience of the US was Detroit, Gary (the where town Michael Jackson is from) and Flint. Never could I imagine that the towns where my family is from could have a much higher standard of living than large areas of the US (at least you don’t risk getting shot or robbed if you are out at night).
US lacks any functional to limit the negative externalities of gun ownership and much of the gun culture is built around opposing all common sense measure to reduce externalities purely out of malice and conformist culture. There is an abstract beauty to this level of stupidity and backwardness.
“Gun ownership” is a massive cultural signifier. Thinking that having a gun makes you “independent-minded, powerful, free thinker” is the most stereotypical American cultural motif there is. It’s not very “rebel” to think that merely owning a gun makes you independent and free. The whole “gun ownership to help fight back against the risk of oppression” is Hollywood style fanfic. This might have been true 250+ years ago, a lot has changed this days. I live in Ukraine, gun ownership would do nothing to help fight back against the russians. You need APCs, tanks, ballistic missiles, anti-air, bunker infrastructure in cities, mine clearing ships.
Apologies for sounding like a broken record, but the very notion that “America has a lot of rebels” is a conformist attitude. It really does not (definitely not more than average).
P.S. This is not an anti-American rant. It’s a great place, lots to see, with friendly people, good food from all over the world even in smaller towns, it’s a good to place to earn money, many world class companies, very strong R&D and higher education culture (at least historically). I’ve travelled a lot and a good policy is to focus on the positive things in a country/region and be flexible and try to be understanding about the negatives. In this case though, we are discussing the negatives, these are actual things I encountered while living in the US (as someone who didn’t necessarily wanted to move there permanently, immigrants are often a bit biased in their evaluations).
America has heart in a way that a lot of countries don’t seem to have.
…
…and that’s very much a part of the American character,
…
Maybe it will heal stronger after the break. It’s a unique type of country, it doesn’t have to follow that same decline and fall.
So I’ve lived in ~5 countries (across three continents) for multiple years, I speak multiple languages and I’ve visited maybe another ~25 countries.
Every country has its own beautiful and unique things. Every country also has its own bad things.
That being said, I am very proud of my own country, Ukraine.
While you should be proud of your own country, I would argue it is unproductive to focus on exceptionalist rhetoric in this context.
Arguably, it is this sort of superficial, exceptionalist rhetoric is at the root cause of the situation:
Please note, while it does come off as if I am being a doomer and anti-American (honestly, I starting to think I shouldn’t have added the last paragraph, even though I think it is true), this is not true at all. Beyond general humanism, I would stand to benefit from a democratic America. However, I am not really seeing any desire among Americans to take any meaningful action and consider novel approaches (I am referring to both the leadership of the centre-right and common voter who supports them).
US Democrats are so fucking corrupt.
The user is from ML.
There is big chance he is a teenager roleplaying as a communist online.
Centre right = “liberal” in American parlance, supporter of the Democratic party.
They are not Nazis (I am assuming you referring to my other friend, not the centre-right one). I am not white. If they were Nazis we wouldn’t be friends for almost 20 years. They’ll come about (and they don’t fully support Trump and have reservations), they are good people.
Cool story bro
Thank you for this. You are literally proving my point. I couldn’t have done a better job myself.
Keep up with the “Cool story bro”, this is the exact nihilist attitude that I was talking about. US is rife with these sort of nihilists and performative roleplayers. Cyberflunk does not know me (I have far more to lose with Trump than Cryberflunk), does not know my friends and yet the only thing that he took from post is that I have “Nazi” friends (while being not white).
This is why the following recommendation is harsh, but true:
Not to be a doomer, but by recommendation would be to either forget about politics (enjoy the relatively high material standard of living in the US, the marvel movies, the fast food and so on) or leave the country, move to Canada (or even Mexico) or Europe.
No disrespect, but from my time living in the US (and I still have very good friends on both sides of the political spectrum) it is extremely unlikely Americans will be able to do anything about the current oligarch regime.
Do you honestly think Americans are capable of not just bullshit protest, but actually taking major urban areas (particularly of significant symbolic value) and fighting back against attempts to put down the protest. And I am not just talking out of my ass, I was at those protest both during the daytime and during the night building out barricades.
I will note that when I use the term “bullshit protest”, I am not necessarily saying protest won’t work. But you would need 60-70 million Americans protest almost daily and shutting the country down. Let’s be real, this is not happening in the US.
Paradoxically, talking to my centre-right American friend is what led me to the conclusion that the current US system is basically at a dead end. They mentioned the “gilded age” and how the US managed to “make it through”. History is unpredictable and institutions save you, until they don’t.
Not to be a doomer, but my recommendation would be to either forget about politics (enjoy the relatively high material standard of living in the US, the marvel movies, the fast food and so on) or leave the country, move to Canada (or even Mexico) or Europe.
EDIT: In retrospective, the post and the last paragraph was honestly too negative and lacking in compassion. What I really should have said is that now is not the time to think of exceptionalism, the time is to make it happen.
US is truly turning into an oligarch run mafia state dominated by chauvinists, fake-christians, nihilists and criminals. There is a large amount of sane Americans too (I’ve lived in the US for many years and have travelled extensively), but they are too well off and risk averse to take any actions to protect their freedoms and American society.
I’ll just quote another post I made on this topic:
While I genuinely hope this will serve as a wake up call (not in the seemingly fake and preformative way done by the California governor) for the locals, from my time living there I have my doubts, it seems that Americans are a bit too well off and risk averse to take action.
Perhaps it may make sense to share a vignette from an Asian country I was travelling in.
We took the train from a regional capital to a smaller city. A week later, we were on our way back to the regional capital to catch a plane.
We go to the railway station and find out that Maoist rebels bombed the railway. So we we find a driver with an off-road vehicle to travel through the jungle road (it was in a terrible state, don’t think a regular car would have managed) to the regional capital.
On the way through the jungle we approach a group of burned out trucks with the military surrounding them. We ask them what happened. The military said the Maoist rebels stopped the trucks, let the drivers go (I believe they were actually treated well and the military said they were dropped off at the nearest village completely unharmed and with their belongings). The truck drivers were merely employees and get shit pay with significant dangers (trucks are often heavily overloaded, you constantly see them crash because of this).
So you might say, well what does this have to do with the US? While I don’t support Maoists (even though they likely had good reasons as that region was particularly corrupt and did not benefit from broader national economic growth), one has to admit that they definitely are not risk averse and are willing and able to go through.
To cite another (fictional) example, it’s like that scene in The Godfather 2 where Michael Corleone sees the commitment of the Cuban rebels and realizes that the Batista regime is not going to hold after he sees the Cuban rebel blow himself up to take out the goon leader, rather than face arrest (and likely torture and death).
America is not that kind of place (for better or worse).
EDIT: I will also add that I really hope that I am completely wrong. Without context the post is overly negative. There is a chance for things to change; none of us (including me) can predict whether it will happen or not. That being said, I think we can all agree that it’s not going to be easy and will require novel approaches outside of the standard processes that drive American political culture.
Motherfuckers.
Exactly, and do it in the most humiliating way possible.
Records an pre-deportation interview video asking him the meaning of what he said and clarifications around his understanding of the UK democratic system.
Are the Americans going to strike the Sackler family yachts next? Or is that a violation of their rights?
Foreign oligarch meddling in internal affairs and calling for violence is IMO a good enough reason for a permanent ban.
He is not a citizen of the UK, is he? How would you even apply treason in such a case.
I don’t know about the UK, but in several countries that I’ve lived in the government can most definitely kick out non citizens that call for violence and aim to undermine the democratic order.
Shouldn’t Elmo be banned after from the UK after such actions?
If we ignore Polish solidarity, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian Revolution of 1989, protests against the Soviet Union started in the Baltics and quickly to other occupied countries.
The protests eventually even reached Moscow, with estimates of protest size ranging from 200 K to 500 K.
I will note that US population density isn’t that much lower than in Ukraine (38 per KM2 versus ~70 per KM2 in Ukraine). Assuming there are 4,500 KM between LA and NY (and 2M persons per 675 km) around 13.3 million people to replicate the Baltic Way, a mere ~4% of the population, compared to 25% participation rate in the Baltics as a whole (that would be about 80 million for the US population).
There are of course many differences between Warsaw Pact/USSR and modern US (with the issue that the Soviet economic system was collapsing and was irreversibly discredited), but that’s always the case with any situation.
The bigger point is that it’s never easy and successful anti-regime protests find a way through the challenges. Sure there is some measure of luck involved, and you have to take risks, but that’s true of literally anything in life.
And yes, the decline of democracy is a global issue. The old system/model is clearly reaching a breaking point. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters.” We’ll get through it. My only hope is that this breakthrough won’t take 50 years when I’ll be in my 80s.