I didn’t know how messed up it was at the time, but with the hindsight of what I know now: Hebrew school telling me I could go on a free trip to Israel after my Bar mitzvah. I didn’t go mostly because I didn’t like religion or having to go to boring temple all the time, but now that I know about the genocide and the Birthright trip being this super messed up propaganda tool for impressionable teenagers I’m really glad I didn’t go.
I’m also pretty sure that cats understand human languages and just choose to ignore us most of the time.
Semi recently. I’ve got a group of college friends who hang out on discord most nights to game and chat. Most of the time it’s shooting the shit, but we occasionally mix in life talk. We all have some bundle of mental health issues, so stuff related to that comes up a lot. One of my friends has been trying to find a romantic partner and we’ve been giving our fairly limited advice to him on his search.
It’s kind of a shame that we’re not geographically close enough to see each other in person to be more directly supportive, but it is what it is and we’ve had a few visits over the years. ATM I’m with 2 of them on a trip and we got to spend a lot of time chatting.
Yeah, but why did it turn out differently like that? Europe surely had its own class of capitalists and other entrenched interests. They could have pushed for similar suppression measures.
Maybe it had something to do with the difference in fallout from WWII? Idk. I’m not super well read on this subject in particular, so I don’t know enough to do anything but speculate.
Like most of these kinds of problems, the answer can be boiled down to a simple commonality: The people who stand to lose the most from things changing for the better are the same people who have the most power to influence the outcomes. The only thing that can counter that is a strong labor movement.
Now, there is a more complicated question to be asked about why US labor movements have been less successful than their European counterparts, but that I don’t have an easy answer for.
Do you think they’d actually bring back the draft? I feel like after Vietnam they realized that it’s too hard to send the general population to do terrible shit without getting a lot of pushback. A professional military that’s already filtered out anyone with a conscience is half of why they can just do shit like this while most of the country doesn’t want it. Plus technology has improved a lot, allowing a smaller force to do the same thing.
As for me. I’m already out of that age range, but I’ve already been wanting to move for a while. Maybe that would be the last kick in the pants necessary to get me to actually do it. But with the depression it’s still kind of a coin flip so….
The thing that bothers me about the whole discussion around the Epstein files is why do people think THIS will be any different? The rich and powerful have been getting away with heinous and illegal things in public for a long time. Wars which aren’t just immoral, but illegal by both international law and the laws of our own country. Gross violations of civil liberties and human rights. Police just straight up kill people and get away with it. Illegal torture facilities. Companies have killed tons of people through either negligence or outright malicious greed. Etc.
We KNOW about all of these thing already. Some were just straight up done in public, some done in private but eventually got leaked or declassified, but either way, we’ve had plenty of evidence of these people doing things that should have put them away for the rest of their lives and the worst consequences they’ve ever suffered were slap on the wrist fines if they even got those.
To me, the Epstein files are a perfect crystallization of the broader reality that the rich and powerful can use their money and influence to commit crimes with impunity. The idea that they are distracting from these crimes by committing even bigger crimes is just sheer absurdity. Not in the sense that it may be wrong, but rather how it shows how fucking insanely broken our system is. If you can get out of one crime by going out and murdering a bunch of people… what the hell are we even doing? Why do we think any of these people will ever pay for their crimes? The very system that would do that has been corrupted by those same criminals. They’re not going to put themselves, their buddies, or their benefactors in jail.
Something needs to change. Something needs to be done. But the idea that all that we need is for people to see the complete evidence of this particular set of crimes and the legal system will finally work properly is beyond delusional.
This is just reminding me of my current cat who will open the door to my room, then get inside and close it. I think it’s to get my attention, but the funny part is always when he is ready to leave and he realizes the consequences of his actions.