It's really fucking common in the internet wild. It's even common offline.

"Just pack up your entire life and move out of here if you don't like it here. No one is holding a gun to your head to stay." smuglord

Oh, I did, but it took years of planning, preparation, savings, and an early retirement with the penalties that entailed. There was no gun, but I couldn't whisk myself out of Bazinga Land in CA any faster than I could sell a flooded house to Aquaman.

That's it. That's the post. No one held a gun to my head to post this, but I did it anyway.

    • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]
      ·
      3 months ago

      the version that's been rattling around in my head for a bit is "laws are the codification of political violence"

      part of the problem is that ruling class ideology defines "political violence" as something that attacks mainstream society, never the violence that mainstream society inflicts. police clearing a homeless encampment isn't "political violence" it's just they way things work.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      All legal constructs are an implicit threat of violence.

      A certain halfling that works at the post office taught me that.

    • Hexboare [they/them]
      ·
      3 months ago

      All legal constructs are an implicit threat of violence

      I'm a sapient corporate entity, there's no threat to me

      Worse case scenario, I'll have to phoenix myself

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    "If you hate this country so much why don't you just leave?!?"

    Can't. Costs 4.000$ to renounce your us citizenship.

    • blame [they/them]
      ·
      3 months ago

      cost aside you need to have a second citizenship in order to renounce your first one.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Is that actually adhered to? I know rendering someone stateless is a crime under international law but idk if states actually care.

        • blame [they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          where would they send you? I'm sure part of the bureaucratic process for this is them asking "what is your other citizenship and can you prove it?" and if you can't they just don't process it. Not because they necessarily care about your personal status but that it would become a bigger hassle to deal with some person who is legal nowhere than to just forgo the $4000.

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    Under capitalism there's always a choice, that's what so great it.

    You can't get a job? lol, I guess you should've not studied underwater basket weaving. smuglord

    Can't get a place to live? lol, guess you should move somewhere cheaper. smuglord

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      Lost your job to bazinga treat printers? Should have learned to code. smuglord

      Lost your coding job to bazinga treat printers? Should have learned a trade. smuglord

      Back gave out at the trade because it's actually grueling hard work that punishes the body? Should have been born a failson. smuglord

  • citrussy_capybara [ze/hir]
    ·
    3 months ago

    the people saying “no one is pointing a gun at your head” support the outsourcing of violence and want to help capitalists have plausible deniability so the “voluntary labour exchange” myth can continue. “you can quit, no pointed gun” but then due to capitalism requiring a large unemployed labour pool, people will become homeless and then actually get guns pointed at them.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      I've seen that shit said about women (CW: coerced sexual violence)

      spoiler

      getting coerced into "sugar daddy" arrangements where they have nowhere else to go and are expected to have sex with their effective landlords.

      "NO ONE HELD A GUN TO THEIR HEAD TO EACH THEIR OWN IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DONT BECOME SO POOR YOU HAVE NO MEANINGFUL CHOICE" smuglord

      • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        That's the beauty of denying people the human right of housing. You can create all sorts of great scenarios to trap women in sexually abusive situations. This is how the right gets STEMLords laid.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 months ago

          This is how the right gets STEMLords laid.

          This is also how domestically violent grillman types maintained their abusive and toxic family arrangements for decades without challenge.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              3 months ago

              It's the rock-solid spiritual core of the MAGA movement, I nonjokingly believe: monsters that feel their cozy little monster lairs feeling vaguely threatened by the possibility of change. grill-broke

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 months ago

          I'm glad someone else knows about that death camp gate slogan getting flung around as profound unspecified ancient wisdom too. yea

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    ·
    3 months ago

    I think they talk like this to themselves. Every time they realize how awful life is they silence their own critique with "gun to your head" discourse to dismiss their suffering as a self-created illusion.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      I think you may be right; it's a sunk-cost fallacy expanded over a lifetime where it'd be too painful to admit they were slowly fucked over by the system they supported.

  • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    The gun is collective which lets the people holding it all wash away their own liability for holding it - "not my fault, I was just getting my bag"

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      The moment the first corporate charter came into being, liability became limited, and that fake personhood allowed untold and perhaps unimaginable death and destruction ever since.

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Gestures vaguely at all the forms of explicit violence if you can't pay, are profiled or othered, elect the wrong kind of leaders, try to unionize, or contradict the status quo in anyway.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      It's that "Spongebob tearing down the wallpaper and pointing outside the window" meme, applied to centuries of capitalism saying "dae commies kill gorillion"

  • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    you're guilty if you lock all the food away from a child and you're still guilty if you lock all the food away from an adult

  • Infamousblt [any]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Well see you could choose to not participate in capitalism and just die. That's totally a choice you can make! I am super intelligent! smuglord

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      You're not allowed to criticize capitalism if you have phone or Nikes. smuglord

      Oh those primitives without phones or Nikes are in the way of humanity saving rare earth minerals. If they didn't like getting invaded, they should have modernized sooner. smuglord

  • PKMKII [none/use name]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Yeah try setting up a camper van on one of Bezos’ estate to find out how much gun pointing is used to enforce this political economy.

  • peeonyou [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    where did you go, i'm currently in bazingaland and i want to gtfo too

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      I live on the northeast coast of Burgerland. There's local chuds and other problems here, but I have not seen a single ZYBERTRUKKK and absolutely no one has pitched internet funny money or startup grifts to me, and I haven't had to hear a single peep from unsolicited strangers about who murderfucked who on whatever the current P R E S T I G E T V treats are.

      I don't even know what the current pop culture murderfucking sensation is because I didn't have to absorb it unwillingly by sheer saturation and osmosis and I love it! sleepi