It's important to remember what we're working ourselves to death for.
All that's left are tears at the reality, or laughter at the gallows absurdity of the reality.
Most Americans at this point are a product of capitalist indoctrination via privately owned for profit media propaganda, and public schools defunded and in utter ruin by capitalist captured government to cut their taxes, despite still profiting directly from a pre-literate workforce to draw from that they just don't want to pay for.
And now, through the long laid, long paid for installation of capitalist interest to the SCOTUS through their Federalist Society judicial extremist group, they now effectively own our... I'm sorry, their judicial branch of the government we have to suffer without recourse or appeal.
...They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it...
-George Carlin, decades ago.
This is also why study of the humanities is under attack in academia, btw. Believe it or not, maximizing growth/metastasis/GDP isn't healthy as society's sole practiced value and pursuit. Gotta hurry, a few thousand greedy sociopaths aren't getting richer fast enough, herp derp.
I don't like Joe Biden, I'll never forget the Neoliberal bullshit he did with the Republicans in the 90s we are still suffering from further eviscerating the safetynet to the draconian war on people suffering addiction. He's one of the OG former opposition party members the Reagan Revolution convinced to take the bigger bribe checks from Wall Street than Unions could ever match, today's neoliberal(D) party.
That said, I voted for him in the last election, and I will again out of harm reduction. He has improved on policy, but l even if he didn't, the American people do not get a vote on whether or not to elect a senile President this cycle.
You can have any President you like, as long as he's senile. If you vote, we'll get a senile President. If you don't, we'll get a senile President.
The question is whether you want senile and gleefully cruel(R), or just senile(D). I'll take just senile.
The entire capitalist controlled media, and even K-12 curriculum informed by capitalist captured state governments is a hell of a propaganda pulpit, not to mention the vast majority of state and federal politicians who are bribed sock puppets preaching the false, self enriching word of Wall Street as the only truth, regardless of party on economic policy.
https://youtu.be/ksb3KD6DfSI?si=XM5uzKSNe_FK2DWq
You have to be able to... and still be willing to despite that constant force fed propaganda, critically think to rise above it. Yes, it's obvious to some of us, but most just want to follow the path of least resistance, which has been telling them their whole lives through our institutions that privatized, for profit healthcare is the pinnacle of freedumb juice, and a system where all citizens have access to quality Healthcare they can rely on regardless of their socioeconomic situation is evil commie marxist leninist socialism.
They don't understand the meaning any of those words, of course, but they've been taught through that same capitalist propaganda machine to fear them and rail against them, or again, they will lose their intentionally warped, incorrectly defined concept of freedom. Freedom of course having been warped in American vernacular to mean everything that makes our owner class wealthier faster.
"They must hate freedom"
-Literally any American movement advocating a policy that would increase socioeconomic equity or corporate accountability at this point, according to for profit domestic "news."
The US is trying to keep these tiny ones out because they want you you buy their big gas vehicles or larger, more expensive electrics. Larger vehicles consume more resources, take more to produce, and even large electric vehicles draw more from the dirty grid than a small personal conveyance like these designed to move you and your groceries.
And that's a strawman to infer that our self-destruction hinges on this single point. This is yet another example on the heap of the larger problem. "it might hurt short term PROFITS for our greed mongers, so we won't allow something that might begin to mitigate the scale of the problem."
That said, it sounds like you agree with them, and if that's the case, I have good news, they'll continue to get their way in every economic sector, and yes, cumulatively, our species is paying and will pay an even greater price for allowing blind, insatiable greed to make every decision.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/mexico-central-america-us-heatwave
If we cared about having a future for the species at all, Humanity's only mission right now would be to END the global economy's jihad of growth/metastasis, every major nation would institute child limits, and we would work to end consumerism and find homeostasis/equilibrium instead for the sake of our very survival, because this reverse terraforming we've done in decades will take millions of years for the earth to heal from. That's nothing to Earth's 3.8 billion year old story of life, but it might as well be eternity to our short term monkey brains. Our reality, our world will continue to heat, and if we stopped tomorrow entirely, would take many times longer to go back to normal than our species has existed for.
But as common economic decisions like this demonstrate, we have decided to burn the future so as not to disrupt the reckless party of avarice and gluttony for our owners today. Is what it is.
My fellow homosapiens, it has been an honor habitating with a few of you.
Thats a new spin to me. The only thing monopolies secure is their own existence.
Because "free markets, competition, being voluntary" are propaganda by capitalists using their owned media and purchased government to make its victims double as its defenders.
The goal of market capitalism is to end competition often by buying out up and coming rivals to kill the threat, manipulate the markets to your advantage using anything from bribery to cost benefit analysis of potential consequences/fines for sociopathic actions to potential profits, and conspire with your economic sector to coerce the workers you need into accepting less.
This is just expanded indentured servitude with a marketing team.
Capitalism is clearly going to death us first.
The Earth is 🔥burning🔥, by our own hands, and we'd still rather play team sports for greedy sociopaths than prioritize even doing it a little slower with cheap EVs.
The Earth will heal in a few million years once we've destroyed ourselves. ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
... And The anecdotes ride off into the sunset together, their anecdotal futures so bright, they gotta wear shades...
Oh shit guys, nevermind! Rah says he's doing great! Hows Bezos? Also great? Welp, that settles it, we're gonna be ok!
"So long as I'm free to exploit you into subsistence, you're free to die in the gutter when you're too broken to produce value for me!"
-The capitalists destroying us and the habitability of the world for any future humans, solely to run up their ego scores.
And there's no making it right. This is the world. At least for this year.
And it will be hotter next year, and the next.
Why? Toleration that led to celebration that led to worship of unchecked, insatiable greed.
I'd say maybe lets force the owner class to stop though revolution and dismantling of our needless consumer culture so our children and theirs have at least a minimally habitable planet for humans and the other surface dwellers we don't give shit one about to live on, but we're not going to anyway. So burn baby burn I guess.
Israeli warmongers like Netanyahu perverting what it means to "learn from history," and dishonoring the struggles of those that came before them by taking on the methods of those that tried to snuff them out to snuff out a different people. (and it wasn't just camps, they starved them in the ghettos they locked them in as well.)
The I'm sure intentional lack of self-awareness is darkly cartoonish.
If you force the peasants to stayed paired off and breed, especially in desperate, abusive conditions, they will produce the best kind of exploitation livestock for our glorious capitalist owners: the desperate kind that tolerates any abuse.
Would I hurt other people in some strange hypothetical to literally save my family's life from certain death? Maybe, and I'd be guilt ridden about it for the rest of my life.
Would I hurt people to make more money? Of course not, and that's not a defensible reason to hurt others... at all, and it makes you deeply broken at your core, especially as habit.
Really the only thing I can think of as a more horrifying reason to be cruel to others than "for money herp derp" would be "because its fun!"
Hurting others for profit in the name of business shouldn't be a defense, it should be considered an admission of guilt and come with consequences.