• Entropy_Pyre@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    I think I need to apologize to some old relatives who were spouting “both sides” conspiracy theories.

    It’s not that I didn’t think rich pricks were doing rich prick things. I knew about some of these groups, I knew about secret meetings, secret rituals, handshakes, phrases, even odd religious things. I knew people band together to push their own interests, I know people work in the dark.

    But I dismissed a lot of it as probably mundane and probably blown out of proportion. These days I try not to catastrophize, but I also try not to trust any reassurances at face value. I try to check everything I can. The more I look into various groups, the more corruption I see. While we’re expected to keep our toes in line. We’ve been lied to a lot. And lied to about being lied to.

    I’m tired, boss.

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      7 days ago

      It’s good you came around on this.

      It’s frustrating because the people saying what was going on had proof, and people like you only had vibes.

      It’s the process that denies victims their justice.

      I hope more people come to understand this.

      • Entropy_Pyre@lemmy.ca
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        7 days ago

        Absolutely. And now, to make it worse, I feel intimidated to talk about it as well, because —how do you even talk to someone about any of this? When others talked to me about anything of the sort I dismissed it as silly. And to be sure, I do still think there are a lot of silly people down these rabbit holes, but same as anything else where something is being hidden, the craziest person will be put up as a poster child to deter further looking into it.

        I’m glad Wired put out an article on this. Puts more eyes on something and shifts the needle a bit.

        • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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          6 days ago

          I feel intimidated to talk about it as well, because —how do you even talk to someone about any of this?

          The problem with “both sides” is that it doesn’t really fit the perception of most people. The upper leadership is very much “both sides”, and the majority of the policies are also “both sides” as a result. However, most people aren’t interacting with Nancy Pelosi on a daily basis. The nice old lady down the street who volunteers for the democratic party and bakes cookies is pretty apparently not the same as the dude in a lifted pickup with a maga flag and a gun rack. The closest most people are gonna get to a “both sides” democrat is going to be the local mayor, in a community of 20k+.

          I don’t really have an easy answer. ACAB ran into similar issues, but the nature of police work is routinely and publicly violent. That made it much more readily apparent.

  • robocall@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    If we set up guillotines around the world and killed the global 1%, what would happen after that?

    • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
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      7 days ago

      If I go into my garden now, and pull up all the weeds, the garden will look good for a bit, and the nutrients they were stealing from other plants will be spread out amongst the remaining plants.

      However, there are likely some smaller weeds just under the surface, so within a few weeks, there’ll be some weeds again, and they’ll begin taking nutrition away from all the other plants. A year from now, there’ll be just as many weeds as before, and they’ll have strangled and starved many of the other plants in the garden.

      It’s generally accepted that there’s two ways to deal with such weeds.

      1. Regular maintenance. You need to cull all the weeds, every week, to keep on top of them. Eventually this will weaken the roots, rhizomes and seeds and then there’ll be fewer weeds. Over time there’ll be fewer weeds to remove each week, but you must never stop maintaining, or else they’ll take over as before.

      2. Preventative measures. Look at the circumstances that cause weeds to form, and make structural changes to stop this. This may include things such as ground-cover plants, which protect the soil from weed growth, but store and then distribute their nutrients back into the soil. It can also include things like organising, supporting and strengthening your other plants, using things such as companion planting (where two plants take and release opposing nutrients, both working together and feeding each other to become stronger). When the garden is unified and stronger and working harmoniously, there are fewer opportunities for weeds to thrive.

      It’s best to take both approaches simultaneously.

      Oh, sorry, I accidentally posted this gardening tip in a comment about billionaires!

        • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
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          6 days ago

          Depending on the specifics type, you can normally eat it, which might help get rid of it quicker?

          p.s. Do not eat billionaires.

      • wanderinglurk@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        This could be coopted by others to deal with species of plants that gets labelled as weed too.

        Mint, dandelion, thistle, etc.

        So, uh, I’d be careful with that.

        • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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          6 days ago

          Any given population is approximately 30% highly authoritarian. Their behaviors can be summarized as:

          1. high degree of submission to established, legitimate authorities in their society
          2. high levels of aggression in the name of said authorities
          3. a high level of conventionalism Often, a high authoritarian individual can be identified with the following question: To what degree should society be dictated by authority? Low and medium authoritarian people will both answer “not at all”, while highly authoritarian people will say something like “an average amount”. This illustrates the need to be normal in their lives. The need to see oneself as average.

          So, one of the most effective ways to prevent this is for highly authoritarian people to see others acting in defiance of authority, as well as interacting with other, non-authoritarian people. Basically showing that continuous submission to authority is not the only way to live a normal life.

          https://theauthoritarians.org/

    • justaman123@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      The remaining top 1 percent would take their place and things would continue as usual. Maybe some of their heirs would spread some money around but I doubt it. We need structural change.

    • some pirate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 days ago

      There’s a movie where a virus kills only billionaires, there’s a quick chaos as they try to hide their wealth but it turns very stupid quickly, society collapses as people stops trusting the rich and burn everything for some reason. Such a wasted premise

      • architect@thelemmy.club
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        7 days ago

        Right, i get a feeling few would notice how it immediately felt like the boot was removed from our neck.

    • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      You’d have a lot fewer engineers, scientists, doctors, and lawyers. Pretty much anyone with half-decent money management and enough income to not live paycheck to paycheck in the western world makes the global 1% in their lifetime. That’s only about a mil in total assets.

      Median american (so probably not the four careers I listed) will earn ~2mil in their lifetime.

    • kreskin@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      some are, some arent. All of them have learned how to assume unquestioned power in any situation and to be the center of attention in the room. They arent like the rest of us. Massive money and extraordinary privilege will do that to anyone. And if any of them seem to have humility they are faking it.

    • keimevo@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I know your comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I’ll say it anyway: wisdom is not the same as intelligence, and though they are probably very smart individuals (most of them), they are terribly unwise.

      Foolish, not dumb.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        7 days ago

        In a lot of cases they’re really only good at manipulating other people into giving them money, but otherwise not particularly intelligent. They’re highly skilled at that one thing, and basically nothing else.

        It’s that Bruce Lee quote; “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Except instead of practicing kicks they practice lying.

      • TommySoda@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        I guess what I mean by dumb is that it’s surprising they even kept it a secret as long as they did based off their incompetence. Supervillains in cartoons are better at hiding their secret societies.

        • architect@thelemmy.club
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          7 days ago

          They are out here on alts fully discussing in the open taking over the world and they aren’t subtle about who they are when they do it. Is just that everyone has believed anything the media says and the media simply does this: “hey x’s alt. Are you x?” X:”no” media:”and we have confirmation it is indeed not x even though it has a cult where they voice chat and it’s clearly x’s voice while simultaneously always knowing every detail about x’s life down to the minute.”

          • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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            7 days ago

            I mean, the only reason we know the specific groups is because of that.

            It’s been glaringly obvious for decades that the elite have been controlling things from behind the curtains. It wasn’t even particularly hidden. Hell, The Wizard of Oz literally had a guy running the Emerald City from behind a curtain, and that was released in 1939.