Phones. I haven't been excited about a phone launch in literally years and I really think they're getting worse by the year. Whenever I have to buy a new phone, I feel frustrated and angry because it's never because I wanted to upgrade to the latest model or anything, it's because my previous phone's glued in battery has degraded so much that it's unusable while the rest of hardware is still perfectly capable of running the latest software (or they arbitrarily decide to ban your device from the latest update meaning you either get a new one or expose yourself to even more cybersecurity risks than having a phone already entails).
Man mine was warping MONTHS after I got it home. This was especially brutal as a handtool woodworker with ADHD. Plane boards flat, get side tracked, come back and BOOM cupped to shit. Plane it flat again, and BOOM cupped again to shit. It took 6 months for it to finally stabilize, and by that point I have planed it flat literally 5 times.
At this point why dont people just fucking use greenwood instead of dimensional lumber, about equally as dry at least, and way cheaper.
Airlines. When JetBlue was new they were genuinely enjoyable to fly. After a few years they realized they only needed to be the least worst option, and now they suck like everyone else.
Because too many of us who had selfish political actions, and for decades kept saying "both sides are bad" while the side nearest facism kept acting in bad faith.
Democratic elections have always in the end been about picking the least-bad option. And, like it or not, elections and their consequences shape the rest of the world.
It's true that "both sides are bad" is what led us to being closer to fascism than ever.
But you've got it backwards.
The "less bad" party being able to count on securing votes simply by being "less bad" allows for the "more bad" party to lead the march, and the "less bad" party to follow while still being "less bad". This creates a slow march towards fascism while maintaining the illusion of choice in the population instilling passivity as they can always just "vote for less bad".
I don't know how you square the circle of asserting that 'both sided are bad' is what got us here and still echoing "less bad" to buttress their thesis
Waiting for the left to be "good" instead of "less bad" is what makes "both sides are bad" such an effective demobilization tactic.
The uniparty thing started with like Clinton... Throughout our history, we had choices. Very meaningful ones. Maybe not the ones we wanted, but we had different courses for the county. It was always towards something
Click through some of these. This was the first rise of a fascist movement in the US, one that went on to influence Germany.
Did we hold the line and insist everything is fine? Fuck no, if you click back you'll the Republicans held everything, the other two candidates had zero chance. Click forward and you get the largest wave of progressivism in our history, it took generations to tear down those safety nets, and they're still not completely gone
That's where we are now. Harm reduction doesn't win, movements win.