• diocesegoldmine@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    It’s easy to call us cowards, in reality we live in a surveillance state that makes trillions of dollars by killing and torturing it’s own citizens. In a place like this lacking morals becomes a question of survival. Definitely not excusing it, but it’s the truth.

    • volore@scribe.disroot.org
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      9 days ago

      that, and none of the people who so flippantly dismiss us all as cowards have ever seriously considered the realities of spending considerable time in the American penal system, our favorite way of breaking people who color outside the lines. They’re usually people from countries where prison is a place of rehabilitation and not punishment.

      Everyone wants to see another Luigi, nobody wants to go through the kind of grief he is going or will go through.

      • Jack@slrpnk.net
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        9 days ago

        No, just last week 250 comrades were arrested from a sister group of ours in Turkey.

        Turkish prisons are not very pleasant. But when you have something to strive for, you do what is right and not what is easy.

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Most people don’t protest exemplars of justice, egalitarianism, and good government. And if 250 people were arrested while doing so, they’ve got a different understanding of either the word “protest” or the word “exemplar” from mine.

            Given that, I’m not sure what answer they could have given which wouldn’t have prompted the same reaction.

      • Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml
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        9 days ago

        I guess it was easier in Nazi Germany to keep your head down and go with the flow, too.

        Don’t worry, people don’t forget!

    • Jack@slrpnk.net
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      9 days ago

      The problem is not that you are cowards, the problem is that you are stupid cowards.

      You don’t organize, you don’t know how to either. And yeah going to prison sucks but that is true for the whole world.

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        There’s just very little solidarity. I’m from the US, and I didn’t realize it was missing until I moved to a country where it’s normal. Nobody trusts others to have their back, so why would they risk anything?

        That said, it looks like it’s slowly developing. Ten years ago, I would not have expected Minnesotans to en masse refuse to help ice agents caught in the snow, for example. That may be because of my own ignorance, but in my home state of Connecticut there is a group of insurance professionals (not your local brokers, more like actuaries and people who work at the insurance company headquarters-not a group inherently predisposed to solidarity with immigrants) who coordinate shopping for local immigrants.

      • GodlessCommie@lemmy.worldOPM
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        9 days ago

        This was the purpose of the oligarchy sponsored NoKings bullshit, to give the illusion of organization and resistance in a nonthreatening format.

    • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
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      9 days ago

      Well, they’ve also been brainwashed into extreme individualism, “if you fail at life it’s your fault” kind of thinking. The fact that losing your job means homelessness, no healthcare, and with extremely powerful corporations handling pretty much everything you do or own makes it incredibly hard to organise.

    • Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml
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      9 days ago

      You’re right, it is easy. Seems to me there are exactly 3 people in America who aren’t too cowardly to take a shot at the pedophile king.

      • HoopyFrood@lemmy.zip
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        9 days ago

        In America it is somehow, inexplicably, easier to organize and coopt conservatives into betraying their cause than it is to get more than even 2 or 3 self proclaimed leftists to agree to do anything at all substantial.

        edit: This has been my experience, at least. The American “left” mindset is so very performative and seems to think that doing anything other than voting the problem away is too scary or too much or too something. I cannot imagine we will see actual organization until something so bad happens that not being organized seems more dangerous than being organized, and i’m pretty sure it’ll be way too late to get started safely and cleanly by then.

        • architect@thelemmy.club
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          9 days ago

          It’s my experience, too. Even worse they freeze you out for speaking like this. They just want to march and getting killed or tossed in jail for it isn’t enough to convince them.

  • Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz
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    9 days ago

    Always hard to interpret these bottom procentile numbers because a certain procentile has 0 wealth or negative wealth. A quick search says 25% of Americans have 0 or negative wealth. I myself have negative wealth because I recently graduated and I have student loans. A homeless guy with 0 debt and 1 dollar in his pocket therefore can be said to be wealthier than 25% of Americans, and myself. However my quality of life is very good with an above average wage. And I can be expected to start going into positive net wealth later in life as I start paying off those student loans.

    I would love to see numbers in lifetime wealth generation or something similar that would take into account that a lot of people are understably at 0 or negative wealth at early points of their life. Otherwise I have a hard time interpreting these bottom procentile numbers. Makes for great headlines though!

    • bstix@feddit.dk
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      9 days ago

      You make the assumption that negative wealth is okay when you’re young.

      I don’t agree with that.

      Some say that time is wasted on the young. They have so much of it that they don’t know what to do with it. I say that wealth is wasted on old people, for the same reason.

      A society should invest in young people. They spend the money back into the system and shape the future they have to live in by how they spend it. Old people do none of that. They just tuck it away, and clutch their pearls.

      I’m grateful to live in a society that has welfare to pay young people to study, so they don’t start their lives in debt. I hardly used it myself, but I’m still happy to pay my taxes knowing that our society has raised the bar so that nobody is forced into negative wealth just to get their life started. Poverty is low, homelessness is low, education is high. This is the society that I want to live in and pay for.

      Some would call it socialism. It’s not really, and it isn’t perfect, but whatever it is, it’s surely better than a casino where the house always wins, also known as the American Dream.

  • wakko@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    And yet, people still think the top tier earners deserve to live in houses with unbroken windows and unburnt lawns…

  • VoteNixon2016
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    8 days ago

    Seriously, what should I do as an individual to singlehandedly change this?

    Not in a fedposting get-you-to-incriminate-yourself way, I’m genuinely asking what you expect me to do, one person out of nearly 400 million

    I’m fucking trying, I’m doing everything I can in my rented apartment and my shitbox from the '90s

    Who the fuck is the target audience for this on Lemmy, Europeans glazing each other because they did their imperialism before the internet existed?

    • Abyssian@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      I killed seven obscenely wealthy people last week and ate their flesh to redistribute their wealth. Pretty sure that’s how it works. Even if it isn’t, it can’t hurt for us to all give it our best shot.

        • Abyssian@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          Nothing to share, sadly. Obscenely wealthy humans are so rotten inside nothing can make them taste good. With the possible exception of MacKenzie Scott. I can’t be sure, but I’d be willing to test. For science.

          … like, without the murder. On that one. Just sex stuff. No combining sex stuff with murder and nightmares, or we will become like them.

    • bagsy@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      You can not single handeely change this. They only way is to work together. If you havent already, find a group (ideally in person), and meet regularly. Find a project you can all work on together. Everyone needs to chip away at the hydra.

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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      8 days ago

      This week, each one of you has a homework assignment. You’re gonna go out, you’re gonna talk to a coworker about pay. You’re gonna tell a coworker how much you get paid even if that’s cringe.

      • VoteNixon2016
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        8 days ago

        Unfortunately, even thinking the word “solidarity” is grounds for termination here

  • damwab@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Not just America, the entire world works like this. It’s sadly our obligation to make people aware and understand how to fight against it, every small step we take will slowly build towards a more just place especially when we have big communities.

    • BeardededSquidward
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      9 days ago

      It’s not distinctly a USA problem and has been a world wide problem with the start colonization.

      • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        8 days ago

        Well the problem we have here and now is that the USA does moronic things (like anti vax conspiracy, “social security is expensive”, the hustle economy, I can go on…) and then that bleeds over here, because we have morons too.

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    I’ve always said this, the Americans who ended the gilded age and elected the Roosevelts will be rolling in their graves after seeing how spineless their descendants have been.

  • mineralfellow@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Reading the graph, it looks like the bottom 50% have about $4T. A quick glance at the wealthiest 5 individuals shows that they have about $2T.

    Not good.

  • NM_Gringo@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    This may be hopium but my perception is that the first few stem cells are finally coming together and starting to form the framework of a spine.