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I sometimes really want to emigrate. I'm not sure if this site and a few others have brainwashed me with communist brainworms but I can't help feeling that this country just sucks ass. I don't like the people all that much, I don't like the weird racialized dynamic, I don't like being treated differently just because of my skin color despite pledging allegiance to the same stupid flag everyone else did everyday
Like just thinking about not having health insurance in a few months because of no longer being covered by my dads plan is like, what the fuck. I want to try to get diagnosed with ADHD and I basically won't because I put it off so long not realizing I may have it. My older brother insists that I don't actually need health insurance, and that the USA has more freedoms than Europe and that everything south of the border is basically a savage wasteland because "Mexicans are quitters" and all this other shit insisting that racism isn't real and that Mexican Americans are just brown white people and you just gotta act white.
It's late and I can't collect my thoughts all that great, but as I get older there's just so many things that piss me off. The overall attitudes towards the poor, including towards themselves (my older brother blaming my parents poverty on poor choices as opposed to both of them being raised by illiterate parents in 3rd world slums and then immigrating to this dump), the weird bootstraps rhetoric, the weird loneliness despite how fucking crowded it is here sometimes, the unwillingness to do anything positive ever because I mean you just can't...
The rest of the West doesn't seem much better in that regard, nor does anywhere else really since capitalism is essentially world dominating but I've just been deeply disillusioned by the last two years, and I was already growing increasingly unsatisfied before that. I would just sit in traffic on the way to school and think, "is this all there fucking is? Just sitting in my car and going to some shitty job that I don't even like?"
I kinda just want to leave but sometimes when I think about all this communism shit I think I've just gone completely off the deep end. TrueAnon? Citations Needed? Alan Dershowitz? Allende? The Right to Be Lazy? C-M-C? Adrian Zenz? are any of those things real?
I genuinely hate working. I'm a bit strange in that I have some views that would be considered idealist but like, why does no one else seem as ridiculously unhappy with this whole country and way of life as I am? Ever since I started working, I've always thought: "Does everyone just accept the fact that we're meat-robots who will pass into a dreamless night after working the drive thru for FORTY FUCKIN YEARS?"
Does no one ever stop to like think about what it means to be human? All of this seems insane to me. Most people seem to be happy here. They have freedom, there is no authoritarian regime watching our every move and there is a McDonalds on every street corner. Am I the insane one?
I think I'm too emotional, too bleeding heart. I think I should follow my brothers advice and finish my degree and just accept that some people make bad choices and should be condemned to suffering for the rest of their brief lives, and never question my own station or relation to this weird structure that seems to have always been here.
in Limmy voice
Ah don't get it.
Someone who lives in the outskirts of Detroit and someone who lives in a gated Hollywood community practically live in 2 different countries.
You say the state is not Authoritarian but if you've been institutionalized it couldn't be farther from the truth. If you vacation in the Hamptons though, the state might as well not exist. Alienation is felt on a spectrum in this country.
But if you're between the two, the ladder of social mobility is visible and the precarity of not being rich pushes you towards it.
Adrien Zenz, Allende, podcasts, none of them are as real to you as this situation.
Your brother's solution is to just climb the ladder then flip off everyone else not at the top. And your solution is to move?
The thing is being non-white, if you move to a Scandinavian country where the safety net is stronger you'll become even more racialized. Same for China. Cuba has the safety net and is less racialized, but the absence of the little treats of consumerism (like that McDonald you mentioned) and the Economic blockade is doing a number on them. Moving is also an expensive and emotionally taxing process.
I think your main problem is a lack of community/friends judging from your earlier posts.
And I mean I really can't state this hard enough, I really genuinely feel like I've fucking lost it. I was kind of dumb 4chan "muh diversity in video games" idiot for a while but I realized most people there would exterminate me due to my ethnic persuasion despite being "based" and the views I have now just are so detached from normalcy I feel like it's genuinely aberrant to give a shit about anything. Animals? Fuck em. The poor, the homeless? Fuck em. The environment? Fuck em. Being treated with dignity at work? Fuck em. I open my mouth to say something like,
"Hey did you know that technology keeps progressing yet we're still locked in this weird fucking medieval relationship were some rich pedophiles can launch into fucking space while the average person can't even get their goddamn teeth fixed during a global pandemic almost nobody even thinks is a real? Like, we could just feed and house everyone but we don't like isn't that crazy? Why do I have to work so much to procure an existence? Why does material success have to be this weird fucked up game of Twister with ever changing rules where if you aren't a specific role you're doomed to destitution? Oh you do something useful like a janitor? Fuck you, you don't get to eat. Isn't that crazy?"
I get looked at like I just fucked their mom. I am not kidding, sometimes I wanna drive off a cliff just because I think it's all 100% bullshit. Maybe all the reactionaries are right. What do I know? I dropped out of highschool.
You hit so many great points there. I also feel like I'm going crazy sometimes. Like, all the time. Is anything real? There seems to be history that is taught, then there's the history covered in left wing spaces, trueanon, citations needed, all the stuff you mentioned before. The existence of Alan Dershowitz or the reality of the Bush family. Like, is that stuff really true?
I also have noone to talk to about it other than here -- and none of it seems to affect day to day life, but does explain a lot about the "ruling" rich class.
So, overall, can you join a local organization? Find some real people who are doing stuff to help locally and build community and parallel infrastructure. Learn about the local reality on the ground. I think that will help put things in perspective.
Caring about good things can only make you this crazy in bad country because you're constantly surrounded by propaganda and enthusiasts to the contrary. I don't know if you've encountered the concept of Capitalist Realism, but I think it conceptually describes why you're worried you're gaslighting yourself. You're not. I also fantasize about "running away" from the u.s. That's not crazy either.
They have freedom, there is no authoritarian regime watching our every move
I have to disagree with this statement. The government has literally built giant data centers that hoover up all internet traffic, including encrypted communications for the eventual future when they can bypass the encryption and go back to read everything.
I think the only people who are actually free in America are those who are wealthy enough that they could stop working and continue to thrive do whatever they want, and buy whatever they want. Literally the only thing that matters in America is money, and if you cannot buy your freedom your are a slave.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.truthdig.com/articles/american-anomie/%3famp
They have freedom, there is no authoritarian regime watching our every move
:snowden:
I think about this every day. America fucking sucks and living here is actively bad for you. I want to move to china bc at least they're trying to improve living conditions. Here in the US it's taken for granted that conditions will never, ever get better, and the best we can do is simply slow down the rate at which things fall apart. It's depressing as fuck
I just want to live in a society that believes in something besides the individual market actor
Same. It's really depressing the extent to which the average westerner has internalized the whole "there is no alternative" thing
most people here probably know about it, but just in case
known as "capitalist realism" and is a book by Mark Fisher, check it out [PDF]
opening line:
It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism
Yeah reading that book was what converted me from a left-curious lib to an actual communist. Rip mark fisher
I understand and feel the exact same way a lot of the times but, and I know this might brainfuck you considering all of what you read on the online space regarding this country, have you considered that USA is one of the most racially tolerant places in the west and much of the world?
I know, you might want to kill me for suggesting this, and I don’t know this for a fact since I haven’t been toe every country in the world but I know for a fact that things are way more racialized in South America.
Out of all places I’ve been only Cuba is less racist than mainland States but it’s really hard to be a foreigner in Cuba. How will you get a job, how will you survive?
OP is not facing any violence and the violence is nothing compared to the genocidal practices in South America. Where are all the black people? They killed them all. They still exist in Brazil but guess what, state violence is much worse there.
The States are pretty trash, especially with regards to its healthcare deathdrive and the insidiousness amof its racial politics - people will tell you that it's actually pretty progressive for the rest of the world, but that's only true insofar as people won't take pictures of you in the street for being a novelty, and pretending that it's not a racist colonial state at its core seems pretty idealistic.
But anyways - it sounds like a lot of your issues are structural. Alienation is everywhere, and moving across the world to escape it is gonna suck when you just end up pouring coffees and living in the same crappy apartment somewhere else. You'll need to figure out what you want to do differently once you get there. That said, your day to day life elsewhere might be better even if it's just by virtue of not living in a place that puts you in a car for 40% of your day.
What languages do you speak? What's your degree, and how much left do you have on it? How willing are you to move somewhere where you don't know anybody?
The problem with this solution is that it assumes that:
A) OP will never be able to move to another country with better conditions.
B) OP is in fact the problem for being unhappy in this situation, not the fact that working under US capitalism destroys the soul of an individual and is tantamount to slavery on a fundamental level. Sure one can still find some peace of mind, but still, its a coercive arrangement, a deliberate assault from the outside. What OP said is a perfectly sane and valid reaction to material conditions, not the skewed result of an "unhappy" mind.
OP is justified in being unhappy, not at all insane or irrational, because of the exact reasons they stated. I agree it sucks to be American. There is nowhere they could go in the world to fix being an American. There is nowhere they could go in this life not to be subject to toil, unless they are rich. You are right that the problem is with the world, not OP. Nonetheless they live in the world and will continue to do so until they die
when I think about all this communism shit I think I’ve just gone completely off the deep end
sometimes I feel like a crazy person too but then I remember that basically every type and shade of American is going though their own personal psychosis rn with the ever-compounding national crisises. I mean the chuds are eating so much horse dewormer it's clogging the hospitals for gods sake. The libs are renovating new floors in their Russiagate mind palaces trying to figure out why it's actually okay (or someone else's fault) for Biden and the Dems shitting the bed with abortion, covid, and Afghanistan. They are going to break come the 2022 midterms. Thinking the CIA did 9/11 (both of them lol) is bush league "crazy". Do what you think is right and remember that the riches of America were bought with slavery and genocide.
I don't fault anyone for leaving, but we need to people in the US to organize for socialism and against empire.
I'd love to, but the only language I can confidently communicate with is English and there's no point uprooting just to move to another mediocre colony in the Anglosphere (although New Zealand seems captivating, but their immigration policy is too selective for my substandard qualifications). So I guess I just have to rot here in the festering corpse that is The Land of the Free.
don't be discouraged by a new language, they're so fun! the secret is letting go of the fear of saying something wrong or messing up and just trying to use it as much as possible, the way kids do
once you're immersed and have to function you'll totally get it
There are always English speaking Caribbean countries to move to
Hey sorry you're having such a hard time, I get it and I'm right there with you. Woke up this morning and within five minutes of thinking about my own situation, started to panic a little bit about the dystopia we're living in, and how I'm seemingly one misstep away from being ground up in the cogs.
You might want to chill on being online for a while, it's pretty bad for your health. I got pretty well roasted on a utopian forum for "shilling for communism," and it affected me emotionally more than it probably should have. Feels like being stabbed in the back when it comes from other socialists.
It'll make you feel crazy and wonder whether you've been brainwashing yourself. I think of it more like a phase, where if you're going to question things and push back against the toxic optimism and capitalist realism, that's going to lead you to some extreme opinions and some inevitable arguments.
You've got to stay grounded in reality and realize that these are global problems, and even if you've got the right idea about leaving, a lot of people are going through the same thing right now. And when it comes down to it, humans collectively haven't really figured out how to do better yet.
And yet, people have this need to feel normal and valid, part of society and not an outcast, and this is what's behind the drive towards conformity and like your older brother's denial.
Not sure what else to say apart from I feel you big time and maybe try logging off for a bit and taking up a cardio activity like running, boxing, gardening, etc. If you're already doing these things then you can always add another one, it's healthy. This has the benefit of giving yourself an opportunity to, uh, take a break from your brother's deal while helping your adhd.
Good luck to you, take care of yourself, the world needs more thoughtful and sensitive people like you.
It's probably a good idea to live closer to the borders, you know just in case
The borders are merely where the power of states swell up against each other. Wherever their power fades or is effectively nullified within their official perimeter, there too is a border.
If a government doesn't exercise its authority in a location, you might as well be outside the country.
