# Resolved: America is a dystopian shithole. Also, leopard hijacks
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [August 20, 2025, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330 "2025-08-20T17:47:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 8
### Author:  [@DeadTreasSecretaries](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadTreasSecretaries)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2025, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/141 "2025-08-21T23:37:01Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> and there’s also no shame in staying and fighting (which is my plan, at least for now).
I’m staying in America but im not sure what staying and fighting means.
I went to two protests in 2025. I held a sign. Then I went back to my day job and the irs took money out of my paycheck that may well just be a slush fund for trump and his corruption and his private army. In a year I’ll vote in my state that has elected 1 GOP senator since bush (maybe even the first one?).
If there is a general strike or the whole country is out in the street blocking traffic ill probably do that. I’m not going out proactively to do anything more disruptive. What am i really doing to resist trump by staying here?
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### Author:  [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2025, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/142 "2025-08-21T23:39:35Z")
There’s also no shame in staying and surviving which is what I am doing.
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### Author:  [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2025, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/143 "2025-08-21T23:47:25Z")
It’s interesting to consider our, correct, attitude towards folks that point to their ‘Freedom seed drills’ and the Second Amendment’s clear ‘allow the citizenry to take up arms and oppose a tyrannical government’ purpose while keeping ‘Come the mid-terms’ in mind.
Anyone that doesn’t know that what’s happening right now is yet another move in a multi-generational plan to fundamentally change how America is governed should just go back to sleep.
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### Author:  [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2025, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/144 "2025-08-22T01:01:38Z")
> [@madmonk28](#):
>
> I don’t want to get in to the where right now. I’ve also got to figure out the dog, he’s very high stress and I’ve shipped a dog internationally before and it is rough on them. If he can’t go, I can’t go, it’s as simple as that. We also have a cat that I think can sleep in a carrier in the cabin.
If you’re going to Europe and have the $ to spare, an option that’s less stressful than the hold of an airliner is Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 from New York to Southampton or Hamburg with a kennel for cats and dogs. [Link.](https://www.cunard.com/en-us/cruise-ships/queen-mary-2/queen-mary-2-kennels)
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### Author:  [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2025, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/145 "2025-08-22T11:53:47Z")
> [@John\_Bredin](#):
>
> If you’re going to Europe and have the $ to spare, an option that’s less stressful than the hold of an airliner is Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 from New York to Southampton or Hamburg with a kennel for cats and dogs. [Link.](https://www.cunard.com/en-us/cruise-ships/queen-mary-2/queen-mary-2-kennels)
I appreciate that. I had thought of a ship and then driving the last leg. We still have a while. There are a million details, but Bartleby getting there is at the top of the list.
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### Author:  [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2025, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/146 "2025-08-22T12:19:05Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#):
>
> We can’t isolate people for their opinion. Not here.
>
> What kind of isolation do you mean?
Sure we can. Or at least we used to be able to do so. That ship sailed around 2015, but before that the Ted Nugents, Roseanne Barrs, Mel Gibsons, etc. were isolated and marginalized. We as a nation are no longer capable of doing so, but it used to happen all the time back in the “old” days.
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### Author:  [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2025, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/147 "2025-08-22T12:20:37Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#):
>
> Sure we can. Or at least we used to be able to do so. That ship sailed around 2015, but before that the Ted Nugents, Roseanne Barrs, Mel Gibsons, etc. were isolated and marginalized.
Were they? Or did _we_ stop talking to them, pat ourselves on the back, and then ignored the festering alt media environment that started growing up around those figures we “isolated”?
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### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2025, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/148 "2025-08-22T23:36:10Z")
I could have picked a better thread title. AFAICT nobody is especially angry with @madmonk28, least of all me. I just wanted a topical repository for leopard hijacks.
Mods: I recommend a thread title change to, “Resolved: America is a dystopian shithole. Also leopard hijacks.”
I anticipate more hijacks moving forwards and there’s no reason to pick on madmonk in particular.
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2025, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/149 "2025-08-22T23:38:13Z")
Done!
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### Author:  [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2025, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/150 "2025-08-24T00:03:18Z")
Without the connection to a specific poster, though, how is this thread any different from the dozens of others we already have about how meaningless life and happiness are?
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### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2025, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/151 "2025-08-24T02:48:46Z")
I haven’t noticed those dozens of threads, but here at least we have a connection to a specific thread.
> [@Surprises coming for voters for the Leopards-Eating-Faces Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surprises-coming-for-voters-for-the-leopards-eating-faces-party/1010166):
>
> There may not be much schadenfreude ahead for those us observing the triumphant fascists (other than for Chief Fascist-discarded attorneys like Rudy Giuliani and a few others). So we may want to start noting consequences heading the way of Donald’s voters—who believed, quite delusionally, that none of Donald’s promised actions would touch them. They will be touched. (Unfortunately, so will all of us who did NOT vote for the face-eating leopards. But that’s another thread.) In 2015 the immortal…
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### Author:  [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2025, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/152 "2025-08-24T05:07:18Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#):
>
> I haven’t noticed those dozens of threads
Every single one about Trump and his actions.
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### Author:  [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2025, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/153 "2025-08-25T22:24:09Z")
> [@Leaper](#):
>
> Every single one about Trump and his actions.
Trump gets name-checked because he’s the figurehead under which Bring-the-Dystopia is being carried out. Of course he’s contributing substantially to that himself. But the tendencies have been here for many decades (or longer). Certainly Americans have been pondering emigrating somewhere more civilized for a long time.
A cyclic pattern has been observed by many. Saturday, Robert Reich wrote:
> … Just as the “muckrakers” of the first years of the twentieth century had spawned the Progressive Era in response to the wide inequalities and corruption of the first Gilded Age and its “robber barons,” the reformers of the 1960s were on the verge of spawning another progressive era that would rebalance the American economy in favor of all its stakeholders. Louis Powell thought so, too, but he was deeply alarmed by it. He told corporate America that businesses must pour money into political campaigns, public relations campaigns, and litigation all aimed at putting an end to this wave of reform.
He’s referring to then-future SCOTUS Justice Powell, who thought we needed a hell of a lot more oligarchy and autocracy to thrive, back in 1971. (His desires have been fulfilled.)
Unspoken is a phantom hope that today’s outrages could inspire another Progressive Era, in which Donald and his kleptocratic corruption are rejected. (Then we wouldn’t have to emigrate!)
> **[Today is the anniversary of the worst memo in history](https://robertreich.substack.com/p/today-is-the-anniversary-of-the-worst/comments)**
>
> Friends,
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### Author:  [@Sylvanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sylvanz)
#### Post date: [August 27, 2025, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/154 "2025-08-27T02:10:52Z")
It is truly a shame that he died too soon to see what his ideals would bring. It’s also a tragedy that his name sake will never be half the man his father was.
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### Author:  [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/155 "2025-09-05T21:04:32Z")
Leopard hijack getting too interesting. Move it here.
> [@Surprises coming for voters for the Leopards-Eating-Faces Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surprises-coming-for-voters-for-the-leopards-eating-faces-party/1010166/4533):
>
> That’s faith. This is _exactly_ what the skeptic community warned people about for years; that constantly playing up faith as something good and desirable meant we were creating a population that would proudly deny reality when it’s right in their face, because they’ve been told all their lives how _that’s what good and virtuous people do._ Changing your beliefs when the facts contradict them is weak and sinful. Only wicked people like scientists do that.
Noah Smith, quoting the facile Douthat of the NYT: “If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right.” Once you strip away religion (and religious authority) what you are left with is conspiracy theory. Noah, “Conspiracy theories have replaced Christianity as the animating cosmology and purpose-giving belief system of a whole segment of American society.” He links to a Rawstory article: " Fox’s new Jan. 6 documentary implies 9/11 was a false flag."
This doesn’t exactly conflict with Der’s POV: it’s more in the way of elaboration. Substantively, we are left with a knotty causal problem for social scientists: “To what extent does religion _cause_ an anti-scientific mindset and to what extent does it merely reflect pre-existing non-scientific views of a slice of its followers?” These sorts of questions are not statistically unanswerable in general, but they do require careful specialist analysis.
> [@Surprises coming for voters for the Leopards-Eating-Faces Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surprises-coming-for-voters-for-the-leopards-eating-faces-party/1010166/4533):
>
> Also, they’re wrong. _Factually_ wrong, about basically everything they believe. They _have_ to avoid or deny reality in order to continue to be conservatives in the first place. If people were somehow magically forced to only believe in things that are real, conservationism would pretty much evaporate overnight. Underneath the lies, there’s no there _there._
Change-skepticism would remain though, appropriately. Your claim applies to American conservatism, sociologically/electorally speaking, but not center-right politics of the other-high-income-democracies variety. The latter wouldn’t be affected much more than center-left politics, again outside of the US. IMO.
Again, by way of clarification. Conservatism is an ambiguous word, much more so than other ideological characterizations.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2025, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-america-is-a-dystopian-shithole-also-leopard-hijacks/1022330/156 "2025-09-06T00:07:49Z")
_Especially_ as applied to 1990s-present day RW Americans.
There is fuck all that is truly conservative about what these folks want or believe in. Reactionary? yes. Conservative? no.
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