this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2025
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Well I try to do my part by telling the protestors that they're doing it wrong.
This isnt unique to the first world. In fact, I'd argue it's even more prevalent in many developing countries where government incompetence and corruption is more appearant.^1^ In places where things like war and famine are in living memory, a shit government can seem like an acceptable tradeoff.
- A relative rule of course, the current US executive branch would give any tinpot dictator a run for their money.
This guy cites
Keep the peasant happy and they will not revolt.
New rule: Let 'em be unhappy - as long as they can feel like badass justice warriors by venting online, they will not revolt.
You know sometimes when you're in bed, and it's the middle of the night, and you're thirsty, and you'd love a glass of water, you need a glass of water, you know you're not going to be able to go back to sleep if you don't get up and get some water... but you still lie there for awhile, comfortably uncomfortable, cozy and warm and parched and suffering?
Anyway, stay hydrated.
Then you grab your phone and post an angry meme, salivate with the taste of sweet justice in your mouth, and drift back off.
Casually subversive poetry is hot
No, since I keep a bottle of water next to my bed. Who doesn't do the same?!
You manipulate an actual bottle? Last week there was a guy who hung a 3L water bag above his bed with a tube he could just bite on. You're workin' way too hard!
An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure! Small but consistent proactivity can make life much more tolerable than big but infrequent reactivity.
Voting doesn't change anything.
*doesn't vote*
Things get worse.
*surprised pikachu*
When local elections only have a 20% turnout we actually don't know if voting works or not
tbf the lower the turnout, the more powerful your vote is, so that should be a good reason to vote on its own
Yeah unfortunately that's how minority views (racist bullshit) gets pushed through easily
Yup. Thats why i say to people, vote locally or run locally. If you actually want change.
When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.
When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town.
I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family.
My family and I could have made an impact on our town.
Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.
There are two lessons here:
- Start local. This will have a greater impact on your life anyway. The desire to have a large, world-affecting impact is more likely motivated by a desire for attention and recognition than it is by a desire to help other people.
- You cannot force other people to change, and in fact you have no moral ground on which to expect that other people will or should behave the way that you personally think they ought to.
I wouldn't recommend running unless you're really invested in municipal issues. Most people cannot be arsed about road maintenance schedules and budgeting.
Whether or not people care enough to do something is the first and most important factor in determining whether it works or not.
*voted*
Things get worse anyway.
*cat shrug*
*votes once in a presidential election*
Thinks they did everything there is to do in democracy.
Unfortunately, lots of people who don't vote need to for this to work.
I hate my government but I'm too disabled to do anything about it
And that is why they succeed.
That and all of us just scraping by each day with no capacity left to spare.
Also the voter suppression, gerrymandering, court shopping, SCOTUS stacking, propaganda channels...
yeah, I really want to do something. I want to fight back. but my job has taken everything out of me and it's barely enough to skirt above the line of a depressive state nowadays. I hate how I can't will myself to fight
Which is by design.
Circuses and bread.
100%. As long as we have 2 day shipping and streaming services, we'll just let it all burn.
Living too comfortably is not the main problem. There problem is when you are struggling. When you are struggling you don't care about anything else but your immediate circumstances. You are in constant triage. And now and more people are forced into that .
Happy cake day, but comfortable and satisfied are two very different things, and most people in the West are still very comfortable. What you're saying might apply to Gaza. Here, 90% of people honestly haven't considered that they're part of history and bad things could happen.
Have you tried vacillating between comfortable indifference and acute outrage on an hour-by-hour basis?
Damn didn't have to come for me like that
thank past governments for that
Nomad Capitalist
https://www.youtube.com/@nomadcapitalist/videos
Why I WON'T Return to Trump's USA