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Oh 100% I agree. We do live in trying times. But we also live in probably the best time to be alive at least if you live in the western world.
I just want to bring some context from the past because when you look at history we're doing quite a bit better than we used to.
While the no Kings protest didn't really achieve a whole lot mobilizing up to 10 million people is a huge achievement and not one that many organizations could have dreamed of doing 50 years ago.
Yes, this shitty world is definitely the best we could reasonably hope for.
Oh I didn't say that. The world could be a lot better.
Only that we generally live in the best time historically wise. Most of us have a roof over our heads and steady food in our bellies which is not historically how things have been.
It's foolish to try and look back in history for a better time because there is none. It is up to us to create a better future going forward.
Yeah sorry, it may be better in some ways but a large amount of powerful people want us back in serfdom/slavery, instead of actually improving life. 90s was peak, it's downhill from there.
I know quite a few minorities that would disagree with you. Also I think a lot of people in poverty probably have a better now with the institutions and systems we have then they were in the 90s when after they had been gutted by the Reagan Administration and not restored by the Bush Administration or the Clinton administration.
Wait until FY2026 appropriations are released. Things will get worse.
Yeah things will get worse in some ways and things will get better in others. Not that it balances out but it's not like there won't be objectively good things that happen in the future.
I have hope. We shall see what the future holds for us
Agreed, it definitely wasn't better for minorities or women really (except wealthy ones of course) but Im saying they had the chance to keep improving, and chose to form regressive policy and now here we are.
Oh that's just capitalism doing what capitalism does. Mainly the pursuit of profit over all else
Most of us have a roof over our heads and steady food in our bellies which is not historically how things have been.
I don't have the outright stats to say so definitively, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is true for the smallest percent of the US population since the Great Depression. The average American has less than $300 in their bank account. Credit card debt is increasing as fast as it ever has, and people are defaulting on that debt at the highest rates of all time. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck (at least 60% of the population), and there is not a single county in the country where a person making the median wage in that county can afford the median cost of a home in that same county. We lost more money during the 2008 recession than during the Great Depression, and most people never recovered even though the economy recovered that money in about a year - 90% of it went to the wealthy, who had also lost the least. The homelessness crisis has become so bad that it's called the homelessness epidemic, and the homeless population is also increasing at the fastest rate that it ever has. Wealth disparity is worse in the US today than during the French Revolution, where the price of a loaf of bread hit an all-time high of a day's wage for the average worker.
The average American is one medical emergency away from going bankrupt, and diseases that we had thought were on the verge of eradication are making a comeback while we continue to ignore the ongoing COVID pandemic that we still don't know how it truly affects us. COVID has been found in everything from the brain to the testicles and is linked to infertility and a million other issues that will cripple the size of the workforce in the years to come due to Long COVID symptoms preventing people from working.
These are hard times made by weak, greedy men who refuse to hand over the reins and want to make things even worse.
Things have always been worse if you weren't a straight, white, able-bodied man, but I think it's been a long time since it was this bad for such a large swath of the population on the basic metrics of food, shelter, and financial security - at least in the US.
I think things are getting worse for white people exactly the way you say. I think for minorities though it's kind of always been this bad or even worse made by people being far more racist.
Things are still pretty systemically racist but there has been somewhat of a correction and that probably does result in things being a bit better for some minorities.
Ultimately I think that means that We live in better times today because they're more accepting than we did Even 20 years ago.
As far as getting by I think things have been like this for a really really long time and people were patient and sold a crock of shit and with covid it's forcing a lot of these things to come to a head.
Not only that Trump himself is a governmental crisis and when there's chaos in the government there's absolutely chaos in society. Simmering tensions tend to get exposed.
But we won’t. We could have been creating a better world for the past 30 years and we didn’t.
And now it’s too late to prevent the Ross Ice shelf and all of Greenland from falling into the sea.
True irreparable harm has been done to the world through climate change.
But I see a second wave of people's revolutions coming. Hopefully it'll be in time to react to the changes of the world.
Even in Hopeless times we must have hope comrade.
Nah, I’m done hoping. I’ve seen them dashed constantly.
Fair enough. At least remember what the stoics have said. Shift in perspective can make a depressed man happy. I like to qualify stoicism as "finding happiness in misery"
An important lesson from Epictetus that even in the most dire circumstances ( he was a slave to a cruel master) you can still choose to be happy. Happiness is dependent on the state of mind not your material conditions according to him although he might be taking it a wee bit far.