The 2008 bank bailouts. Watching our government spend nearly a trillion dollars to bail out some unelected bankers who made some bad decisions and were "too big to fail (true)". Watching them spend that money on bonuses for their execs, while none of them went to jail. Watching the social response to that (occupy) and then watching a coordinated federal crackdown of those protests across the country. And then watching bailouts happen again and again since then. Meanwhile in Iceland, they overthrew their government over it. The global financial system has deeply rooted flaws, and bailouts are an inevitability in it. We will inevitably, every so often, make another huge wealth transfer like that because so longs as lending exists, particularly private lending, and all banks are interconnected so that if one fails they all fail, there will always be bank runs and bailouts. Even the most well-intentioned bank cannot hedge against all risks and market shocks. And the government will just turn on the money printer every time it happens while you watch your hard-earned money lose its value.
GWB publicly condoning torture.
I grew up during the tail end of the cold war. Torture was something the Soviets did. We were better than that.
And sure, I knew the CIA did stuff like that under the table, but it was never OK.
It's what got me interested in politics, and why I feel that we shouldn't try to hide the bad things we've done when we teach history. Knowing what we're capable of is necessary to keep ourselves from repeating the mistakes of the past.
we 'shouldn’t' try to hide the bad things we’ve done when we teach history
The keyword here is shouldn't. Most people don't do lots of things they should.
Not out of malice but simply laziness, it is a lot easier to just default to the norm and go on. Try comparing what should get done in politics(campaign promises) to what actually gets done in washington. In short what should happen and what actually happens are two different things in a lot of areas.
Snowden file leaks lead me down the path to privacy and to reading books like Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. Lead me down the path to degoogling and linux and now decentralized services like Lemmy.
It seems like every week some article comes out with big tech abusing their rights. This week was Philips hue and last week or so it was a mom getting 2 years in jail because Facebook gave up information about her giving abortion pills to her daughter.
I am using all these foss services myself and making my friends and family use them and be aware of these events. It's a slow car crash and if people are apathetic and say "I have nothing to hide" and eventually "I have nothing to say", soon we'll be stripped of more rights until it's too late.
“The cells of death row are filled with guys who had nothing to hide.” - Kenneth Eade
In retrospect, was probably the Battle of Seattle in 1999. Not that I wasn't aware of the issues before, but that really ripped off the mask to show me that the U.S. is fundamentally rotten at its core: The police are not the good guys, they don't serve and protect, they are there to visit violence on the enemies of capital. And if innocent people in their homes or going to work get caught up and harmed, fuck 'em, they're not wealthy enough to matter. The media will flat-out lie to maintain the good-cops-vs.-evil-protesters narrative. Our leaders will eagerly sell out American citizens to the interests of global capital, with only lip service to democratic traditions. And Americans are too disengaged to really question any of it.
For me, it provided the keys to understanding the events since, from Bush v. Gore to today. At least now the rot has become so obvious that the younger generations are forced to notice.
It was the result of anti-World Trade Organization protests organized at the group's gathering in Seattle in 1999. Basically, the police see protesters axiomatically as bad, so they showed up in riot gear and started a riot. The media reported it as violent protestors, despite some of the people who just lived nearby and were trying to get to and from work getting caught up, kettled, teargassed, and beaten alongside protesters. I wasn't there, but the Internet had become a thing, and IndyMedia.org had lots of first-person coverage. It was the same pattern we've seen ever since cell phones with cameras have become ubiquitous: The video shows that the cops get violent and then lie about it.
I started to understand what "institutional racism" means when george zimmerman was acquitted
As a non American, i always thought that Zimmerman’s was also a perfect demonstration of why the whole gun culture thing is inherently fucked/dangerous. When it’s ok for a guy to be walking around with a rifle for the purposes of community safety or whatever, of course people are going to be killed, that’s what guns are for.
Apart from the racism angle (which I don’t intend to diminish), it seems to me a natural consequence of gun rights that at some point a murderer will be acquired because the killing was just part of their second amendment rights.
what bothers me the most about the case is that conservatives often say one of the reasons they should have guns is "what if I'm out at night and someone starts following me, I have the right to have some way to defend myself" which, sure, I get it. but if you look at the details and evidence, trayvon was unarmed, and more or less keeping to himself, until george, who was armed, started following him. maybe it's true that trayvon attacked first (there's no hard evidence indicating this, only testimony from george), but would it be so unreasonable after being followed by some random stranger with a gun at night? why is it not seen as a case of trayvon defending his life using whatever means available in the moment? after all, defending yourself from potentially harmful strangers is so important to them that they believe it warrants having access to lethal weapons (which again, I don't really disagree with, I just think you need people need to be held responsible with how they use that, but I guess chuds are willing to make exceptions...)
but would it be so unreasonable after being followed by some random stranger with a gun at night?
Yea, that's the thing about a gun, the escalation it causes is through the roof ... it's fatal, at a distance ... with that threat you both having nothing left to lose and also, in just about everyone's case, no experience in managing the emotions of that situation so of course you're going to react in some way that might be surprising, unpredictable or even arguably irrational. Merely carrying a gun, and posing the threat of immediate death, is an assault in itself.
COVID. Really never understood before how little of a shit the U.S. government has for its people. But they straight up let us fucking die while telling teenagers they needed to get back to work for minimum wage so they could get their shit Mcdildos and mochafuckaccinos and add gold spinning rims to their yachts. I can't wait until these old fucks start dying off, I don't care what political leanings they claim to have, we need a fuckin overhaul.
2008 Beijing olympics.
I was in high school and the teacher (who said that if you make racist remarks in her class, she'll kick you out of the course) decided to show a comedy show where the journalist went to a Chinese night market and show people they have roast insects, animal penises and shit like that to eat.
For 2 days i got mocked/asked in a belittle tone why my ''people eat those stuff''
You would think that it was just young people being stupid and ask stupid shit. 2020, covid hits and Canada decided to go WFH, my manager decided to say: ''wow those mesures seem dragonian, but you (refering to me), you are used to it consider you come from China''
This reminds me of an old friend I had at work.
She was in HR and looking to hire a new employee and she complained to me about how all the people applying weren't from the country and they weren't capable of doing the job because they didn't know how to behave...
At the end of her small rant I guess she realized I was one of those "outsiders" and then she said "oh but you're one of the good ones!"
An immigrant's acceptance is always conditional and you shouldn't show dissent towards the white master. This is why most of the gen 2 asian immigrants are all apolitical or outright anti-country of origin and has a mostly white friend circle
Being treated for cancer in hospital (in remission now, thank you) during COVID lockdowns gave me lots of time to reflect on my life. Realised that probably I was the asshole all these years; and also came to the realisation that I’m autistic and socially awkward. Reading David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs helped me to understand all the corporate games and garbage that I’d been part of for most of my career.
When I think about my life, it’s divided into pre-cancer diagnosis, selfish workaholic and part of corporate life; and post-cancer remission, unemployed, living off my savings, kinder to the people and the world, but unable to find a job that resonates with the new me.
For me it was when I was watching Soul with some friends and eventually came to some emotional realizations. I realized that I only had a superficial understanding of how to communicate. I could discuss ideas in the abstract, but I had trouble with expressing myself emotionally and personally because I was always conditioned to repress how I feel. I guess like 22 in the movie I only saw myself as a casual observer. It took a couple rewatches for me to process the difficult emotions I was feeling into something I could explain but when I did it really helped my overall mental outlook on life.
Being an adult in 2003 and being forced to pay taxes to destroy the country my family comes from for no fucking reason
Once computers went online. It was fascinating to experience in real time.
Trump
winninggetting carried by the EVs made me a bitter, jaded, hopeless husk. I lost faith in the republic, in america, in people, in common sense...I don't know if I ever truly recovered.
Come to think of it, i've lived through at least two instances where the direct opposition of the public's will have lead to death, suffering, and the collapse of represenative democracy: Bush v Gore, and the Trump Presidency. Odd how that's a common trend.
I already knew we'd collapse before COVID, but seeing the reaction to COVID made me realize how absurdly stupid the average person is
Like at least with racism, you could tentatively argue that a mayo indirectly benefits from it. But the COVID brainworms is reminiscent of AI bots. Calling them cattle would be generous
- 9/11
- Bush v Gore
- GWB re-election (despite war, recession, etc.)
- Trump election
- COVID
All chipped away at notions of stability, fairness, and sanity.
Still have hope, but tend not to believe the hype so much.
The coup in Bolivia shook me of any demsoc liberalism I still had in me and made me understand that a worker’s movement can only be defended with force
Less profound, but it destroyed my remaining lingering faith in any mainstream media sources and confirmed The Guardian had completed it's transition from a bunch of socialists in the 70s to a neoliberal establishment mouthpiece today.
