In my head they are very normalburger if that makes sense. They think Trump can stop the war enough to affect the market, right?
There have been many organized protests against Trump since he took office. I’m not sure how much press they’ve received outside the US. Though many still support him because they are indoctrinated into the MAGA cult, I would say that most (over half) of Americans are against the war for a variety of reasons.
The problem is that there is not much we can do in the short term to create change. Our system of government does not have an effective means to recall a leader.
The threat of legal action does little to deter this administration. For one thing, it’s slow. For another, they’ve shown that they can and will ignore court orders and this far don’t suffer any consequences. Finally, the administration has done as much as possible to install loyalists and remove honest people in every part of government, including the legal system.
Impeachment is a joke. Even if the process was started again, Republicans in the Senate would never convict one of their own.
So the average citizen doesn’t approve of what is happening but don’t see any effective means to change. It’s a very helpless feeling. Many disgruntled communities have been able to create some change in their local government but even changing political parties is not real change. We still have 2 right wing parties bought by special interests. I think many of us just try to do good where we can in our own sphere of influence.
The reality is none of this insanity has directly effected me. So day to day life, working, raising kids, etc. is completely normal for me. However, keeping up with news. Feeling empathy for people being effected now, and worrying about when the other shoe is going to drop on me and my family stresses me out. I don’t like being stressed out and avoid stress as much as possible, so I find myself just trying to stay distracted with hobbies, video games, etc. Then I feel guilty about distracting myself. If I can’t do much about the situation, I should at least inform myself about it. But then there comes the stress again…
So yeah, in a way add me to the crashing out list I guess.
This is exactly me. Fired up the Xbox to play my favorite title, unfortunately its the Battlefield series. So there i am clawing at it in an oil field on fire or some middle Eastern city streets thinking about dead school girls and nothing I can do about it.
I feel powerless. Since there’s nothing I feel I can do, it’s pretty much business as usual.
Am American/USian/Yankee what does “crashing out” mean?
Behavioral standards plummeted during the pandemic and never recovered. People are a lot more stressed, and they refuse to behave. We’re divided, and it really does not help that our leadership literally believes that AI is going to replace most jobs.
i think it doesn’t help that our leadership will try anyway
How are the schools
In fucking shambles. One of my dreams, if I ever win big on the rarely purchased lotto tickets, is to open a free clinic with free pharmacy, and a private, means-tested Pre-K12 Montessori school that only accepts on the poorest first and donations only buy your name on a plaque.
Where I am (major metro) the schools are still decent but severely underfunded.
I live in a rural area in the US. Public school teachers are generally very good at their jobs, but a lot of the school boards around me have been taken over by the far right and so-called conservatives. They run on platforms like “ending forced vaccines for children” and banning transgender flags and they mostly win because there’s a lot of dumb racists here.
Mostly okay. Slow discussion building on why test scores are dropping and are they still dropping. Is it COVID (immeidate shock), Long COVID (long term health issues), or nearly all course work and books being on tiny laptop screens (money showed up for a wholesale transfer to Chromebooks during COVID. They were actually helpful during lock-downs, but were kept after.).
What do you mean by that? The standards of education or mental health in schools?
In the U.S., schools are funded by property taxes, so schools in rich areas are fine, although educational standards suck across the nation.
Your personal impressions based on either your consumption of social science papers, rumors, or gathered by hearsay and lived experience.
Seconding this. We’re in freefall right now.
I do not think the leaders believe that AI is going to replace most jobs. They definitely believe that they can use the threat of AI taking most jobs to further exploit the working class.
These billionaire dipshits are not as bright as you think
Yeah that’s mostly a justification for layoffs. They’re not competitive robotics manufacturing AI that cuts down the need for enormous chunks of capital for factory floor space + varied equipment + switching things up to change what you’re producing. They’re not competitive on the large computational engineering models important for R&D (which they’re not doing either) and iterating new rocket engines. It’s a giant grift, but people need to be careful not to universalize the values of Silicon Valley AI companies.
They really do though. Like, you’re assuming a level of rationality that they don’t possess.
Americans really struggle to come to terms with their elites and leaders being fucking evil instead of merely stupid.
Jesus christ, look at your fucking history. Evil doesn’t always look like some hollywood ass villain.
After a certain point it doesn’t matrer, but still come ON
You say that like it has to be one or the other. Most evil people in history were also stupid.
In the Midwest, nothing has changed at all.
I keep it together because a lot of young people are around me. But on the inside I’ve kind of given up on anything good and dread the next fucking crazy thing to come up.
Same boat. I work with small kids, oblivious to politics, full of hope for the future because that’s how they should feel. I clock in and lose myself in their version of the world for 8 hours a day. It’s no wonder why I’m actually happier at work than at home these days.
Glad I’m not alone, but also sad
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Look at American history. This really is business as usual, sad as it might be.
and even with all the death bombs and regime change in these last few decades, the us spent a lot of time being more chill than usual just there.
At this point, many of us are numb to the impending whatever. There is always 6 things happening that shouldn’t be happening (that we know about) and that could upend our lives. And usually there is very little we can do besides yell on the internet.
Maybe the Epstein files changed something… Maybe? But it seems there is always a new thing coming up to distract the masses.
IDK based on all my conversations lately (admittedly my contacts are mostly suburbanites and anarchists on the rim of society) they’re pinning that on Israel and Russia and nobody is showing signs of a reckoning with the exposed wires of imperialism
I am not worried about the war, the only affect it has on me is that gas prices have gone up.
I am worried about the fact that Hegseth has managed to replace the entire command structure with cristofacists that believe they are going to initiate armageddon.
I am worried about what those commanders will do when it comes time for this administration to step down.
I am also very worried about how many people I know who cannot find work and are unable to pay their mounting debts. I’ve been helping a friend pay for her cell phone bill while she tries to get a new job. I have multiple friends who cannot even get minimum wage jobs because they are “over qualified”.
I am worried about how much damage and harm the AI industry is doing to our entire fucking society.
The war in Iran is nothing compared to all of this.
You said it yourself, gas prices are up. That’s the first of many knock-on effects.
All food is transported using fuel. All packaging, from the case your computer is in to the wrapper around your bread, is made from plastic. It all must be manufactured and then transported as well.
Every job available also needs fuel and power to exist.
Oil prices will affect everything above that you already mentioned.
Things are not normal. It is like a lot of people are waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Resistance is legal, so long as it does not go “too far”. I am near an “ICE” city. When empty cars with cut seat belts started showing up, there was an added level of horror film unease. The kidnapping by random “not ICE” didn’t amount to much, though we have yet to truly know who was kidnapped by “not ICE” (likely few). The murders have on not been good, but are at least fairly public.
No one is arming, as a shooting war on American soil will get everyone killed. There were days I wondered if we would be bombed. So far the “keep calm, and resist.” Crowd is making progress, which helps keep tensions from boiling over.
Elections are coming up, which is providing an outlet for energy. Real voting won’t be until November, and zero changes will happen until January 2027. Expect crazy shit to ramp up.
America is huge though. For any trend in one location, the opposite is happening elsewhere.
This is a very good time for the privileged to take a “mini-vacation”. It both slows production and gives one a chance to enjoy their last days on Earth.
There were days I wondered if we would be bombed. So far the “keep calm, and resist.” Crowd is making progress, which helps keep tensions from boiling over.
What progress?
Guess you missed neighborhood checkpoint videos in Minneapolis. They were blocking streets and checking IDs to make sure people driving through lived there rather than ICE agents from out of town. Citizens have busted ICE’s balls to keep citizens from being arrested. Those guys are pitiful sissy losers.
But yeah, progress is certainly hard to see sometimes.
No one is arming
This is anecdotal, but I’m basically what passes for being the “gun guy” among my mostly very liberal friends
Basically my qualifications are that I went shooting when I was in boy scouts, have a few friends who own guns and have gone shooting with them, and have a lot of outdoorsy hobbies that have overlap with hunters and such (my own attempts at hunting have been with a bow, and I wasn’t very successful,) and generally have a casual interest in guns, but don’t really have money to throw at them, I have plenty of other hobbies and things I’m worried about and guns are near the bottom of my priority list.
Which isn’t all that much, but it’s a lot more firearms experience than most of them have. And they also know I’m someone who will do some research and not just make stupid recommendations.
But a good handful of those people have been asking me about guns because they’ve been thinking about buying one themselves. And some of these same people were, at one point, fervently anti-gun.
And those who already have guns have been going to the range more, trying to stockpile a little extra ammo, maybe acquiring some new guns, getting a carry permit when they never felt the need to and we’re content to leave their guns at home in a safe before, etc.
They’re not out there talking about it, spreading it all over social media, posting pictures of their guns or at the range. Some of them, I think, are a little ashamed of it, others just (probably justifiably) think it’s not wise to spread that knowledge that they have them.
So there is arming happening, I don’t think it’s on a massive scale but I do think it’s happening, but you probably won’t hear much about it unless you’re someone those people have already decided that you’re a safe person to discuss guns with.
And I don’t think it’s specifically building up to any sort of an armed revolution or anything. I think it’s mostly people wanting to be prepared to defend themselves if/when things get bad. I think we’re a long way off from liberals wanting to take to the streets, pull a Jan 6, or even show up to protests armed in any significant numbers. The overwhelming sentiment I’ve gotten from most of my liberal gun owner friends is that they really don’t want to be the ones who take the first shot.
I’m in the Twin Cities, I’m guessing the person you’re responding to is in a first or second ring suburb (and I’m not dismissing their experience for that - ICE never left Minnesota, they’re just operating in the suburbs now where it’s harder to build a response against them so they’re seeing some shit right now), but concealed carry permit requests are way up right now in the twin cities proper. People here are buying guns in response to the gestapo. I don’t know anyone personally who has purchased a firearm, but I’ve seen the local news articles about the phenomenon.
I’m sure some people are. But constantly crashing out isn’t useful even in the worst situations. What is useful is taking real steps that have real effects. Action is the antidote for anxiety.
Here’s American right now
