People here will literally tell you “I don’t want to hear about it” but then complain about the gas prices. It feels like a total Don’t Look Up moment.
I haven’t watched cnn for years but this weekend they started talking about “enemies of our country like Iran ….” where their starting assumption was that bombing Iran was a normal thing to do, so the rest of the newscast wasn’t worth listening to
They’re MAGA, and want to keep pretending that they haven’t broken the entire fucking world.
Trump is the kid that would come to your house to visit, and break YOUR toys.
Because there’s NOTHING we can do about it right now. Nothing.
Because Americans are idiots
Republicans want whatever trump wants.
Centrist democrats want whatever netanyahu wants.
I’m on the left. What I want doesn’t matter and I’m tired of getting blamed because centrists have to pretend they don’t love everything turmp is doing.
It’s about time we start having a war that affects us negatively even in a limited capacity. Honestly, I think the fact most USA citizens haven’t experienced war, especially as the being invaded side, makes them complacent and just war happy.
Because they are directly responsible for it.
Because don’t look up wasn’t about covid.
Thats because Americans tend to be lazy, apathetic, and generally quite privileged. Most Americans dont want to think about their privilege nor about the suffering needed to perpetuate American dominance. They just want to live in comfort and thinking about these things make them deeply uncomfortable so most choose not to at all.
I think you put it perfectly
They’re like the rabbits in Watership Down who know they’re being farmed, but can’t admit it to themselves
They don’t want to be confronted with the point that their own vote for Trump caused this whole mess.
There’s a lot of evidence suggesting this presidency was stolen. What would you say if you learned that the majority of America didn’t want him back in the oval office?
It is not just the last election. The downfall of US politics is coming for decades now, and is not only caused by the recklessness of the Republicans, but also by the infighting and lethargy of the Democrats.
What about lethargy and infighting of leftists? You don’t even make it onto the ballot lol. My point is that many Americans are opponents of the trump regime and being critical of them is blaming the victim
They may see themselves as opponents to Trump, but a lot of things they did actually lead to the Republicans and Trump come to power. Shit did not happen to start in 2024, 2020 or even 2016. It started promising in 1776, and went downhill from there because of the lack of political maintenance.
This is a national responsibility, starting with simply accepting an outdated voting system, politics based on outdated and ambiguous documents and a failure to update them to be more precise. There is no flow of lessons learned back into the core of the system. There are no attempts to keep political corruption in check.
I mean, basic math already showed us that the majority didn’t want him in office either time. But even with all of the shady shit and even straight up election fraud he couldn’t have won without the votes from a large number of people who purposely chose the hate filled pedophile option.
Do you know what election fraud is?
Because they can’t bear the fact that they Fucked Around and are now at the Finding Out. Accepting blame has never been a cultural touchstone for the United States.
Are you Canadian Navy?
Oddly enough, yes.
It’s weird how “taking personal responsibility” is so fetishised, but only for stuff that’s not actually something that comes as a result of people’s acts, like childhood cancer and stuff
A reporter for the New York Times went to a bar during the Watergate hearings and asked if they could put it on the TV and he was kicked out
I mean, if I was at a bar and trying to relax, I’d consider kicking out whichever cunt decided to put on something stressful like that. Imagine going to a yoga class and insisting that they change their binaural tone background soundscape to death metal instead. If I want to watch the news, I’ll tune into it. I get enough doom and gloom in my daily life, I don’t need it shoved in my face when I’m trying to relax.
TVs in bars is such a weird American thing
Even reasonably classy places have them.
I thought it was just a TV trope, but I am always amazed at how it’s normal to have an antisocial device in a place for socialising
Its not uniquely American. Plenty of Mexican and Japanese bars have TVs too. Mexican and American bars love putting on a sports game while Japanese ones show a lot of music videos.
Because I’ve been hearing about wars and chaos for decades now. I hear about this stuff literally everywhere. I’m aware of it. I don’t need it shoved in my face 24/7. It’s exhausting.
It’s also addictive for a lot of people. They get so engaged with this stuff online that they neglect their real lives. That’s not healthy.
addictive
Go fuck yourself. Staying abreast of current events (especially horrifying ones committed by your own government against other nations on your behalf) isn’t “addiction,” it’s called being a responsible person. Pull your head out of your ass.
This IS your real life. You need to start paying attention.
Sounds like you may need to speak to someone about it. I’m sorry for upsetting you!
This encapsulates why it’s so hard to get the majority of Americans to care. The cycle of war, price increases, dwindling quality of life, crumbling infrastructure, growing wealth inequality, racism, misogyny, bigotry; it’s all normalized over decades. Americans don’t get shocked by anything unless it happens directly to them. And not “oh gas prices are up again, that sucks”, but “a cop gunned down my child”. Without having to suffer personally a lot of us will continue to abide the suffering of others and act like being made aware of it is an affront to our right to blissful ignorance.
That’s not what makes it hard for them to care.
What makes it hard for them to care is none of the proposed solutions have been more than barely slowing the decline, and eventually you have to accept that it’s not stopping.
It’s not that it’s constant, it’s that there’s no hope.
At least that’s why I stopped caring.
America is only in a decline because you choose to see it as declining. Conservatives saw the progress that was being made as the decline of their version of “how it should be”, proposed an entire Project book of solutions, and have rapidly stopped the decline of their way of life at the expense of everyone not in their camp (well, a lot of them are fucked by it but they never thought it would happen to them).
Sometimes progress is revolutionary and rapid, sometimes it’s tunneling through bedrock with your fingernails. You might not see the other side in your lifetime, but what you achieved makes the job of the person who comes after you that much easier. Right now conservatives are filling every hole we’ve ever started tunneling- from women’s right, to minority rights, to civil rights regardless of what race/gender/or orientation you are- with concrete and they’re not going to stop until they erase what we have done.
There’s a lot of things that happen in the world that neither you or I have the power to change. But every day you chose to let something you could affect be trampled unchallenged, your apathy is their gain. Conservatives banded together despite their differences and showed they were willing to commit violence to get their change, and they empowered the most selfish among them to be their figurehead. I really don’t know what left-wing Americans want, their own super-lib version of Trump that will use authority to make all their dreams come true, or to sit around and be well-meaning victims who blame a decline on the inability to find a dictator of their own. You have agency, go use it even if it’s not going stop every wrong currently happening.
Bla blah blah. Heard it all before. It wasn’t convincing when I was saying it to myself, what makes you think you’ll have any better chance?
A better chance is relative to the action taken and the ability of the person taking it. If I watch a house burn from across the street I have a better chance of not getting burned than if I go in to try and help someone escape. If I go in to help someone escape I have a better chance of helping them than if I stood outside and watched. Now the best chance they have is if the fire department is there, as they have the skill and equipment to do it the safest, but sometimes you have to make a choice and do the best with what you’ve got.
In Trump’s America, I have a great chance of avoiding the worst of his policies because I’m a cis white dude. If I embraced it there’s a good chance I can get ahead. If I continue to loudly express my opposition to it there’s a good chance I’ll get arrested/assaulted/killed.
Not every action needs to be monumental, nor does it all require risk. It takes next to no effort and poses minimal risk for me to pick a worm up off the concrete and toss it into the dirt. The worm’s got a better chance at living, even though whether it does or does not has no affect on affect me, the world, or the universe in any meaningful way. Nobody will ever know what I did, the worm doesn’t understand, and if I didn’t do something the only consequence would be pondering “why didn’t I help when doing so cost me nothing?”
I ain’t here to convince you because apathy is a choice of selfish convenience. You’d take action (or I guess if you’re really invested in apathy, die) if outside forces threatened you, but you’ve got to will yourself to do it on behalf of others.
Do you really think you can shame someone into having hope?
The shaming is for the self-awareness that you are know of the problem, have the ability to act, but chose not to care and do nothing. Nature doesn’t care about hope. As far as we know humans are the only animals with a concept of “hope” because we deeply understand that our actions have consequences, good and bad/short term and long term, excel at pattern recognition, keep detailed histories, can plan for the future, and can build or destroy to such an extreme we’ve changed the climate of the planet itself. We know our personal nature has a very ugly side like selfishness, hate, greed, lust, and that we often treat each other like commodities or barriers to our own success. Hope is the mentality that comes from being self-aware of our own limitations and is how we convince ourselves we can do something, personally or collectively, when everything says “it’s not possible”. There’s a fine line between that and bashing one’s head against a wall trying to get a different result out of the same wrong method, but innovation is what made us succeed. Hope isn’t a bad thing, but you don’t need it to attempt to do anything since hope does nothing but make yourself feel better about your odds of success when the struggle is real. Lacking hope doesn’t make you helpless, just unhelpful.
Americans have a bit of a reputation abroad for ignoring the fact non-Americans exist and are people. This sounds like an example.
If you never need anything from the outside world and the outside world makes you feel unsure or bad about yourself, it makes emotional sense. I hear China tends to be the same way.
Congrats, now you know the situation in Russia regarding the Ukraine war.
People feel powerless, are swamped by trying to make a living (which is by design), and at the same time feel like this is all wrong and someone ought to do something about it, which leads to a sense of guilt and shame.
So they shield themselves from it and wait for it to pass.they also can’t do anything about it.
just like, you can’t do anything about your loved ones getting cancer or other misfortunes of life. And presuming that you can… is just going to destroy you emotionally. All you can do when subjected to forces beyond your control is just keep on moving on and accept it that you have no control over it.
