The comment about the world feeling pity for the US resonates with me and my wife; we watch your rising death toll with abject pity (it’s now 25 away from 166,000 dead). Your situation was totally unnecessary and preventable and half the US population is being held hostage by a bunch of ignorant, stupid, gullible low-lives.
I think this is just the beginning of the end. I think of leaving for another country more and more. Maybe it’s just daydreaming at this point, but I’m feeling we’re beyond repair.
I don’t think we are beyond repair.
We just need to get people to stop breaking things.
Nah. Sorry, dude. I think we’re getting to the point of cracking into little pieces. When was the last time a president or even a major world leader embraced a group of crackpot conspiracy theorists who believe in secret cabals and pedophile rings? Supported and welcomed by the head of the GOP, no less.
If it’s not QAnon, Republicans are supporting militia members, white separatists, and people who hoist rifles at capitol buildings because they don’t want to be told to wear a mask. The sad, brutal reality is that, like it or not, whether we want to believe it or not, one of the two major political parties in this country - the one that holds the most political power in fact - is becoming a home for extremists. The Republican party is becoming the American Hezbollah.
I get that you and most people reading this want to go back to being a country and a cohesive society bound by certain shared values, but a good chunk of this country doesn’t want to be unified if it means sharing space (not to mention occasionally sharing power) with “those people.” They’re willing to resort to violence to make their displeasure absolutely clear, too.
That’s the people breaking things.
I agree with you that we are no longer the country we were. We will be lucky if we manage to maintain an average level of standard of living and world influence. Republicans have ensured that we will not be any better, and have made it difficult to achieve even that level of mediocrity.
My point was only that it is not things, it is people that are the problem.
There are two types of problems. Problems you can solve, and people.
The answer to your question is an unequivocal no. Humans are not capable of changing what they are doing to destroy themselves, and they never will be either. Humans only don’t destroy everything that makes their own lives sustainable when they don’t have the means to do so. See “the tragedy of the commons”, most recently popularized by Garrett Hardin in the 1970’s but a 19th century concept.
Humans on an individual level cannot.
On a society level, maybe we can.
Theoretically, I suppose. But in the real world, not one fucking chance in fucking hell. And if there was a country which has an even worse chance than that, it would be the fucking USA, a country which I have been ambivalent about for half a century until recently, when my ambivalence solidified into white hot rage.
Yeah, I have to agree with Siam_Sam here. Shit happens. You try and make do the best you can.
Look, I get that 160k new deaths from COVID-19 is terrible. But every year over 600k Americans die from heart disease and we don’t shut down McDonalds.
There are less than 25000 murders per year in the US. That’s less than how many die of heart disease. Clearly, by your argument, we should abolish the police.
Replace “new deaths” with “deaths that would be mostly preventable were it not for a significant population of stupid, ignorant, narrow-minded ass-holes who don’t understand science and the public good”,
Heart disease isn’t contagious.
And I choose whether or not to eat fast food. I can’t always choose to not breathe exhaled contagion.
Aren’t we doing that already?
So what else is new? My point is the world goes on.
Yes, yes it does.
Trying to compare this to fast food is the silliest thing I thing I’ve ever seen. Perhaps you got that from a Trump Tweet?
My point was that your argument is bullshit. And fairly old, tired bullshit at that. Just because X is bad doesn’t mean that Y should be dismissed. Just because lots of people die of heart disease doesn’t mean that it’s cool that Trump and his fucktard idiots are deliberately endangering human life.
I think what this means is that we’re supposed to just sit back, relax, and let shit happen
You know, when it’s inevitable…
Shit is going to happen regardless of what you “do” because you are nobody, just like the rest of us. You just go and deal with it. I don’t know. Go read “Who Moved My Cheese” or something.