Violent revolutions almost always result in bad governments for exactly this reason, i.e. it’s only fringe idealists that get it together enough to lead one, and such people are usually terrible at doing actual grown-up governing.
It’s why it’s so infuriating to see right-wingers claim that basic social safety nets and tackling inequality are Communism, because it’s like, if you want Communism then pushing half the population towards that level of desperation is exactly how you end up with it.
And before all, who is willing to intentionally miss (perhaps forever) the remaining episodes of their favorite show to make that all happen?
Yeah. We can’t even get people to agree to stop using social media networks that spread misinformation and fund the worst elements in society. You can’t even SUGGEST it to them without being met with angry, ignorant, defensive nonsense. If we can’t even manage that, how are we going to convince them to risk everything on revolution? I think we’ve Brave New World’d too hard - the old rules do not apply.
I don’t know what the answer is. But the problem is clear.
i’m kinda hoping that social media gets less interesting over time to many people. the reason why everybody spent 15 hours a day in front of their smartphone for the last 2 decades was mostly because of the novelty of it all. once we’ve seen it all, it’s less interesting and people will stop using it so much.
I’d like to think so too, but there’s a whole generation growing up without anything else in their reference frame to switch to - this IS their lives. It’s easy for old farts like me to change to something else - we had a couple decades BEFORE the internet.
I don’t think they’re making any more episodes of Firefly
Must you upset me so?
Turns out they could take the sky from us. 😞
Hey you’re here at least - they couldn’t stop the signal.
Until they kill me with a sword. How weird would that be?
I’m not currently on any shows or series, so…
In many successful revolutions, an army was a part of uprising. Serving in the army does not make you any less of a voter.
I dunno. I think blackjack and hookers would go a long way actually.
Kurzeghast(sp) has a great little video that ends with essentially “there is literally nothing stopping us from having a better healthy post scarcity society but ourselves. There is no reason for it except for the mindset that perpetuates that we can’t”
“Kurzgesagt” is German for “briefly put.”
I think the English channel used to be called “in a nutshell”
No, the English Channel used to be called “Oceanus Britannicus”
How about “curtly said”?
Curtness is not implied here.
It certainly is. “Curt” and “brief” are synonymous, at least in some definitions. Curt has an implication of rudeness but that is not strictly so.
It would be simpler to avoid the implication by using a more apt term.
“In short” would be another less-incorrect translation, but I think “briefly put” is more elegant in conveying the tone of the message.
Well, I think they subtitle it “in a nutshell” which is also more elegant but less literal.
Translation does not require literalness. That’s arguably the most elegant given the apt idiom.
There are also lots and lots of guns wielded by lots of misguided poor people being paid by very rich people who have nearly infinite resources at their disposal.
I’m not saying the conclusion is wrong - but it’s not easy either.
Strap up
There is no reason for it except for the mindset that perpetuates that we can’t
Theoretically every human could just cooperate too, but that’s not how humans work. Humans are animals and a lot of society exists to suppress and channel animal behaviours.
We should try, bit by bit, to get to a post-scarcity society, but we should also acknowledge it’s going to be hard and take a long time.
“How would they deal with the army?” Probaby even better then other folks in shitty technicals like Afghanistan and Vietnam did to be honest. They aren’t going to nuke American rebels because then they’d win a big radioactive pile of shit. Think they’d shoot missiles in NYC? Fat fucking chance. Even tanks rolling down Main street is gonna set off alarms.
The soldiers, firing into the crowds, brought death to tiananmen square. Survivors were simply run down. The tanks never fired a shell, because they didn’t need to. In the decades since then, nothing has emerged to shift that power dynamic in the favor of the people.
We’re not worried about missiles, stealth aircraft, armor penetrating rounds, their stupid microwave cannons, drone strikes or whatever other sci-fi bullshit looks good on television. We’re worried about armored vehicles rolling down mainstreet while there are thousands of people there, and the crowd crush that results. We’re worried about one zealous national guardsman with an M2 firing blindly into a march as it crosses a bridge. We’re worried about any leaders that emerge being quietly disappeared overnight, about our families being singled out by a teen at a fusion center that’s watching Joe Rogan on their phone, or about the simple fact that the military could just turn off critical infrastructure and our cities would grind to a halt. We have no way to stop that.
The Oligarchy can only roll over one protest. After that it is guerilla time.
The US is prime real estate for that. Large thinly populated areas, large remote mountain areas, densely populated urban areas. Population with access to guns at large, access to chemicals for explosives…
Tiananmen worked, because it crushed the resistance. Once the resistance decides not to be crushed, it is usually game over for the Oligarchy. It won’t be pretty though and it can take a while.
The key is that in asymmetric warfare, the regular army needs to defeat every single resistance fighter. The resistance just needs to survive as it pecks away at the regular army.
The US only fights insurgencies it creates - and on terms it dictates. A civil war is invariably the bloodiest kind, and should one break out in the US there would not be a coalition to help reign in the ROI this time. It would not be vietnam, or afghanistan - both wars that were lost in congress, not on the battlefield - it would be palestine.
The wars were lost on the battlefield. It was impossible to achieve any of the goals set out by military means. The military failed in its objectives and there was no reason to believe, that tossing another trillion dollar and another half a million soldiers onto it, would have changed the equation.
The US pulled out because it lost. As we have seen time and time again it is not that the politicians were reluctant to engage in another attempt in another country later. They did it time and time again. So it is not for a lack of political will, but for the ability of the US to achieve any of their stated or real objectives by a prolonged military occupation on the other side of the globe.
I don’t want to trade rhetorical quips with an ally - we both gain nothing from me waxing didactic about doctrinal warfare. I just want to caution that the political landscape shapes all wars, and the metaphorical terrain on which a US civil war would be fought would be abjectly alien to what you’re envisioning.
Not sure what the point is here exactly. Every single country that has ever had a revolution had to deal with these things.
Yes let’s downplay the US military like it’s just any other. No biggie
the military is what the ghandi trap is for. one doesn’t defeat them in combat, we be brutalized by them publicly in a way that radicalizes enough of the remaining population that they have to kill everyone in order to prevent the revolution.
so in order for it to work you have to lay the groundwork beforehand teaching people how to have empathy for the victims of systematic violence. in which your enemy isn’t the military but propogandists.
I remember some guy from history saying something along the lines of “turn the other cheek”, if only I could remember who that was and what happened to them and if they achieved any sort of meaningful impact on society.
Don’t think that was Ghandi but it was definitely a winning strategy in gaining India’s independence.
however, as a counter point to that comic:
Yeah my point was rather that “we can conquer with peace” is a few thousand years old, at least. Jesus, Gandhi, all of them.
And exactly because it was working, they got killed. Little men in power got scared.
Edit Also I don’t really understand what I’m looking at. Fallout 3 pipe gun prop? Prolly a diy gun. But in the US lots of those rely on parts that are free to buy. Making a pipe shotgun isn’t too challenging… but something like a repeating pistol? That’s a bit more work.
that’s valid. I would like to propose that the ghandi trap and conquering with peace are a useful technique among many that we must use. like, it’s specifically for militant violence like those individuals were facing but it’s countered with proganda like the past three decades of fox News has produced.
so sometimes ducktape Shinzo Abe guns are necessary too, so is deradicalizing the old-heads, and building coalitions like the NAACP
edit: shit, yeah I should explain. that’s the gun that was used to kill Shinzo Abe, former nationalist PM of Japan
You forgot to mention Abe’s enabling of the Moonies cult, who exploited the assassin’s mother. After that made headlines, opinions on Abe shifted and started actions to address the issue (dissolution, looking into corruption etc).
Yes and they had cooperation and a plan and the US population does not have either.
Given how messy many revolutions were, i don’t think that to have been the case most of the time.
The plan doesn’t have to be complex and e.g. the cuban revolution wouldn’t have been possible without widespread support from people. Also, relatively un-bloody, comparatively, btw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Revolution single digit thousands on both sides? Bloody enough that everyone probably knows someone affected by two or three degrees separation, but besides that?
The point is that if you convince yourself there’s no chance of succeeding, then maybe you won’t feel so guilty about not even trying.
ill add that some of their methods are pretty well documented too. and worked multiple times.
yes, that’s why most revolutions result in dictators.
They always talk how they need guns to prevent tyranny and they are in a tyranny for over 6 months now and nothing…
Be thankful that enough of us are armed that the fascists aren’t yet kicking down doors. Can you imagine where we would be if they could enter any home without fear?
That was never the reason.
Like anything else, conservatives only want things because smarter people suggest to them that they don’t need them.
Guns, unhealthy food, horse paste, religion, fossil fuel power, gendered bathrooms…
Everything is pigheaded contradiction like a 2 year old.
I’m very ready to defend myself against the Nazis. And I’m regularly on the outside of protests in my area just waiting for one of these fuckers to hurt anyone. And there are plenty of us there.
You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
Okay, I overgeneralized… I don’t mean EVERYONE who owns guns falls into that category.
But you can’t deny it’s the vast majority, and at the very least the LOUDEST group.
Edit: Oh, it’s you again! Hey, buddy! How’s life?
Maybe loudest. But 15-30% of Dems, depending on what your reading, already own guns compared to 30-40% GOP’er. Hardly a peer reviewed paper but it’s easy to immediately dismiss vast majority.
We’re far off topic but stop acting like progressives aren’t ready to defend themselves. You’re making excuses for your own unpreparedness.
Okay, before we get too far into ANOTHER argument here based on taking a generalization as a universal assertion…
I’m not saying progressives aren’t ready to defend themselves, I’m not saying progressives don’t own guns, I’m not saying every gun owner is this.
I was responding to this:
They always talk how they need guns to prevent tyranny and they are in a tyranny for over 6 months now and nothing…
Which is very clearly talking about a VERY SPECIFIC kind of VERY VOCAL gun owner. I’d like it very much if you could just take my acknowledgement that I asserted something about a group that DOES NOT apply to everyone as the grumbling, empathizing complaint about conservatives it was intended to be, and we can both just get on with our days without degenerating into another unnecessary, pointless slap fest.
Honestly a whole bunch of somewhat respectable progressive comedians and whatnot who I know have gotten guns in the US and I don’t really fault them that much with how shit is going.
They’re plenty available and if you don’t have kids in the house you need to worry about, why not? It’s not like the gun companies are gonna shut down via boycott of some leftists.
Harmontown - Shooting Range Suicides And Why Dan Bought A Gun
Horse paste
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3043740/
Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug ivermectin, a dihydro derivative of avermectin—originating solely from a single microorganism isolated at the Kitasato Intitute, Tokyo, Japan from Japanese soil—has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world. Originally introduced as a veterinary drug, it kills a wide range of internal and external parasites in commercial livestock and companion animals. It was quickly discovered to be ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries. It is now being used free-of-charge as the sole tool in campaigns to eliminate both diseases globally. It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found.
Research takes like, no effort. Still perpetuating this “it only for horses” bullshit does nobody any good. “Viruses aren’t parasites,” is better.
It still doesn’t do shit for covid, but it is widely used to great effect in humans for, y’know, what it actually does do. Hell maybe RFK needs a dose lol.
The point you’re missing is that MAGA morons aren’t getting human prescriptions for ivermectin, they’re buying the emulsified horse paste from farming supply stores because they don’t need to go through a medical professional for that.
Appropriately dosed ivermectin is quite safe, but these people are eyeballing horse doses and ending up with fulminant liver failure.
Tbf they could actually math out the dose, and it is the same stuff. Same with fish antibiotics actually, and people without insurance have been doing that for years because our medical system is fucked. If they OD that’s on them, tbh, same as if they took a whole packet of the human pills.
That said, again, in no dose will it ever do what they claimed. It’s still for parasites.
(Side note, not all of them were using the paste. Friend of mine gave me a pack as a joke [still have it, it’s expired now but still funny], he got it illegally from a pharmacy like drugs used to be before xanax became fake bars pressed with fent! Don’t need a prescription when you know a drug dealer either lmao. But those were floating around too for sure.)
I guarantee you that the people gullible enough to fall for the ivermectin lies cannot math out the dose correctly. And yes, the primary problem is that most of these people don’t have parasites (yet, give the raw milk some time) that would actually see any benefit from the drug.
The fish stuff was hydroxychloroquine which is typically used as an immunomodulator for diseases like Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (not an antibiotic), and that’s a medication that has to be dosed very carefully with regular screening labs to ensure that patients don’t end up with organ damage. The stuff for aquariums is in a vastly different concentration (and commonly mixed with all kinds of other stuff), and again, would be profoundly difficult to dose appropriately.
Interestingly, there is some physiologic basis on which hydroxychloroquine may have helped with the original COVID-19 strains. The original strains of the virus early in the pandemic had the ability to hijack immune cells that would then attack and destroy lung tissue, so an autoimmune treatment might have had some benefit had the virus not mutated so quickly.
I guarantee you that the people gullible enough to fall for the ivermectin lies cannot math out the dose correctly.
Ha-ha, but jokes are not reality. I mean, maybe you’d be surprised how many blue collar workers that have to use math daily are maga, but it really shouldn’t be that surprising.
Though yes, it is indeed for parasites, not viruses.
The fish stuff was hydroxychloroquine
Nope, Amoxicillin. Antibiotics given to people with a penicillin allergy (among other reasons.) Though yes, it is a different dose than normal for humans, it is still possible to do math. Of course it’s always better to go to the actual doctor, but welcome to America.
Now that last bit is kind of interesting actually. Didn’t know that, neat!
I remembered there being a spate of people poisoning themselves with Hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic, so that’s what I thought you were referring to.
As far as people being able to do math? There are plenty of people with STEM degrees that struggle with unit conversion and the orders of magnitude of the metric system. The reason pharmacists are so important is because it isn’t uncommon for NPs/PAs, and physicians to write a prescription in milligrams that should have been micrograms. If people with advanced medical education fuck it up, I don’t have high expectations for other folks. Also, there isn’t a lot of readily available information that is accessible to the layperson that explains what dose would be useful/safe.
Edit: ALSO!! AMOXICILLIN IS A PENICILLIN. DO NOT TAKE AMOXICILLIN IF YOU HAVE A PENICILLIN ALLERGY!!!
“Professionals are predictable but there are a lot more amateurs to account for.”
But but but, I thought the guns… I was promised it solved things.
it would if the people who wanted tyrants dead were also the people who bothered to own guns and attempt insurrections.
The right is regularly claiming there are tyrants and they love their guns.
they abandon that narrative when their beloved pedophile is in office. you kind have got to hold what they say as informed by an alternate reality where anything but a Christian ethnostate is basically white genocide.
Its cause they don’t think he’s a tyrant.
A general strike for 2 weeks. Will bring the economy to near destruction and force change
Tell everyone to stock up on two weeks worth of supplies and look for a new job hoping everything works out? The hardest part is getting enough people to actually commit to it
And the majority of people are libs and conservatives that think ”capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best we got.”
Forget blackjack, we’re just gonna let the Hookers run this one. They will always do a better job than those fascists.
Every single hooker I’ve ever met had more of a moral compass than the US far right, so I’m with you there.
My biggest fear is what emerges after.
No, no, don’t you know, this time it’ll be different. Every time a government was violently overthrown by the local population what came after was either dictatorship or warlordism. But this time it’ll be different! Trust me, bro!
I’d be willing to accept help from France again
I’m sure there were people in Rome that saw the fire, looked around and realized they were surrounded by self destructive fools.
30 years ago when I learned about the fall of Rome, I thought “how cool would it have been to be there in person and see what happened live?” Fuck me if I’m not finding out
