Oh, laws were broken.
“As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”
-Commissioner Pravin Lal, ‘U.N. Declaration of Rights’
That’s wild, I never knew the origin of that last sentence.
Well, Commissioner Pravin Lal is a fictional character, one of the faction leaders in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, truly a gem of a game that most passed over. Most figured it was Civilization in space. But while in theory a successor to Civilization, it was actually a whole sci fi epic with its own original story, future history, and deep explorations of future technology, ecology, and philosophy. The quotes from the tech discoveries and secret projects really illustrate some of the essence of the game.
But I do take great pleasure in quoting Pravin Lal as if he is actually some great historical diplomat.
Ah, that explains it. It didn’t sound like a quote that would come from the real UN. Maybe in some other, superior timeline…
That reads a little bit like victim-blaming, because the worship of billionaires only applies to one segment of the working poor. Another big part of the problem is billionaires corrupting the political system to the point where whoever gets elected immediately gets love-bombed by the richest people in the world who promise them a share of the loot. Convincing people that voting “for the other guy” won’t solve the systemic problems of our political systems is a tremendously difficult job and the billionaires and their bought lackeys know this.
Another big part of the problem is billionaires corrupting the political system to the point where whoever gets elected immediately gets love-bombed by the richest people in the world who promise them a share of the loot
And if you reject them the billionaires will order all of their lackeys to sabotage you in a million little ways, some of which will be blatant and some of which you’ll only ever be able to guess about, so you’ll be constantly under attack and unsure of who you can trust and end up spending all of your time on both of those things instead of more directly serving the public
It’s not victim blaming, cause You’re not victims. Americans are trying to play victims to their own stupidity now, you guys deserve every bit of what’s coming. Call it karma for what you did to me and countless others
what an idiotic attempt at rage baiting lmao
“You know what you did!” *shakes fist at sky
I love how Americans are just so openly awful that they will downvote brown people for daring to be mad and hateful towards your garbage country. Even the left has turned racist in America. Im indigenous and I haven’t experienced as much racism from the American left as this past year.
I mean, it’s kind of easy to victim blame when the victims are utter shitbags
I think this take misunderstands the political reality: in the U.S. we have what could charitably be called a flawed democracy. Just because laws are passed or policies enacted doesn’t mean there is majority support.
The house of representatives is elected under rules which are determined state by state. Many states have gerrymandered districts, which is just legal cheating.
Each state receives two senators, regardless of population. Places like North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, each get two senators even though they have smaller populations that individual cities in other states.
The president is selected by the electoral college, not the popular vote.
Supreme Court justices are appointed for life - random chance of when they die determines how many justices one party or the other gets to appoint (before we get to Republicans cheating Democrats out of an appointment).
All of which sounds and is grim, but I take a little encouragement from the fact that the majority of Americans do support many reasonable policies and improvements.
Also, more than a third of people sit home on national election day. Which is the highest rate of attendance of any election. State and local elections get an even smaller portion of the electorate.
It’s not that they choose this, it’s that they choose not to oppose it.
One empire to collapse, but for another few to rise to fill the void it leaves.
And those few are not so much more merciful. I’m trying to imagine what the world would look like if it’s only Russia and China on top, while the US implodes like the Balkans.
“If they didn’t want it, they shouldn’t have dressed that way.” Yeah, no.
Make no mistake about it: this is ENTIRELY because of religion, which allows the rich to fool the lower classes into hating groups that the magical books say are bad.
Sadly, if Democrats were a party in favor of workers and benefits and also gave angry speeches saying how gays and trans people were going to an evil afterworld of torture, the world wouldn’t be like this. The bulk of the lowest classes of society are not only scientifically illiterate, they are prejudiced, idiotic, and cruel. They deserve what they fucking get for their religious idiocy.
The problem is that there are good decent middle class people and some lower class people who don’t believe in fairy tale garbage religious myths and THEY are the ones that get massively fucked by this voting block of the ultra wealthy and ultra stupid, and since that voting block is over 60 percent, and the psychopathic upper classes won’t change and the lower classes won’t stop being stupid, political mobilization sadly will continue to not work until something like market collapse, environmental collapse, or some sort of destructive force changes things.
Even among the 40 percent of people not in that block of idiots and upper elites, there is still a large part that is religious and can’t name the enemy: it’s religion, it’s idiocy, it’s the psychopathic upper classes, and this moderate group of complacent people will doom us all.
There’s not really a good solution to the problem. Education doesn’t work on the religious, it just creates a group of people who can’t think critically and can claim to be educated. Violence won’t work when only 20 percent of society is willing to act and a large part of the religious 50 percent is armed and part of the police apparatus in society. The only thing that will change this is technology that somehow destroys or creates poverty specifically for the religious ignorant classes while passing over those who understand science and technology.
It’s hard to even blame the upper classes for exploiting the lowest classes when they are so stupid and unwilling to learn basic scientific thinking. Everyone religious is delusional and going to collectively destroy the planet.
Same goes for almost every other western country
No, Americans are a special breed of stupid
Mexican here, can confirm, the country is being ripped from every little progress we made and there are a lot of civilians who are happy about it because it’s going to make everyone else as miserable as them.
