I was a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit against a huge company. It was so rigged. The judge had overseen the class action lawsuit that we opted out of and acted like we were ungrateful little shits. But never in front of the jury; in front of the jury, he was all perfect law and order. But when they weren’t there, he was so obviously biased. I lost basically all faith in our justice system (USA). And I only had money on the line; for someone in a criminal case, it would be sooo much worse.
Yeah. Found myself in the system due to a misunderstanding. I was helpful and cooperative, they gave me the maximum sentence.
This would probably be the gist of my answer as well, both as an observer as well as someone in a dispute.
I’ve watched my best friends fight battles one could say are incredibly unnecessary, from the guy best friend having his family torn apart by the CPS based on false accusations before they went after his mom to harass her since they couldn’t successfully arrest her like they could with his dad on a false basis, to his GF (my other best friend) constantly having friends pulled away from her, to what me and my BF have gone through often (it should be noted what we consider the actual issue and what their active ingredients are has differed).
Ironically I generally don’t have the negative relation with officials that these other experiences would imply I would have. I’m more accurately described as someone the people always seem to be after, not the officials in a society, albeit it might be said semantics don’t do that justice until it has been paraphrased a few times. Another way it’s been explained is that I incur “guerilla dissatisfaction” and that even seeming technicalities have some element of that, even when I’m being productive in its face, with their “three weapons” being denial, justification, and pretending to not understand.
On the authoritarian side of things, it has only been recently (as in an epiphany that dropped out of nowhere some weeks ago) realized that an enormous amount of what could be called covert targeted bias against some of us, especially when the individuals who the bias is in favor of have the bias in favor of them as a form of some sort of social prestige, has been or is boiled down to secretly wanting to “humble” the person the bias is against.
Example:
A superior might say out loud “you acted in self defense against a killer, but it was still assault, so I’m going to give you a bigger sentence than the person who killed your dog.”
In their minds: “maybe this is the perfect tool to humble them, they never seemed humble to me and an extraordinary large sentence might serve as a good character builder, not actually given to punish them.”
My country is currently doing a big anti-crime campaign and I was there for a family members trial as moral support. It became grossly clear that anti-crime just means prossecuting everyone and anyone regardless of guilt to pump up conviction numbers. The prosecution was given 6 months to prepare, the defense was given a single day; the prosecution was explicitly allowed to present evidence in any context including oppenly censored conversations, the defense wasn’t even allowed to present evidence unless it was deemed relevant by the prosecution.
Totally shattered what little faith I had in my countries legal system, I always knew it was rigged in favour of the wealthy but to see just how blatantly tilted it is in favour of convictions was a big shock.
My very best friend in the whole world mentioned a trans person, shook his head, and remarks that “we need a purge”.
I really, truly thought that different ideologies could get along until then. With that comment, I realized that, no, I cannot get along with an ideology that believes that marginalized groups “should not exist”. Because, deep down, a belief for their “non-existence” is a belief for their death. And I now refuse to have friends who believe things like that.
Civility is compliance. I kicked him out of my house, my final words to him, as he angrily screamed at me, being “bye, bitch, bye!” It hurt me so badly to lose my closest friend that day, but my life really did improve after that. Now he might actually have to pay for the therapy he so desperately needs. God knows, he won’t, because he believes that “mental health excuses are just pussy shit”, but considering he’s howling that no one has wanted to fuck him for the last x amount of years shows that his anger and bitterness are still holding him back. He’s insufferable.
Fuck any belief that punches down. Y’all deserve to exist peacefully and not be fucking bothered by dickheads about how you live your life.
I recently got introduced to a new friend group with plenty of trans people. It was quite eye opening. Not that my views changed, but rather upon hearing their stories, realizing how much senseless hate there is towards them. Imagine not getting a job after a successful interview, because some asshole looking at your ID sees that your appearance doesn’t match your birth assigned gender. It’s one thing to be indifferent or not get queer people, it’s another to actively fucking harm them!
I especially hate the project2025 rhetoric of “Economy bad” followed by “Let’s spend our entire budget, murdering the queers”. These people are monstrous…
The only thing we do not tolerate is intolerance itself.
2016 and the yeas since, but especially the US presidential election that just happened, have absolutely destroyed my faith in the people of my country.
Always figured the govt was fucked, but that the average Joe had a shred of good in him. After the bullshit of the 2016 election, the 4 disastrous years after, and the 4 years following of nonstop Nazi rhetoric from Trump… 74 million of my neighbors decided he’s the guy who represents them; and another 90 million or so decided not to lift a fucking finger to intervene.
No. Good people are a minority. I’m surrounded by hateful bigots who will go as far impairing their own quality of life if it means they can can harm others by doing so. This country and the majority of its inhabitants are evil. We deserve what’s coming.
This was a moment of disillusionment for me as well. I had faith that the country would pull together and do what I perceived as the right thing, but it seems greed and hate won in the end. Something shifted in me as the results came in. Something I can only describe as a loss of hope. Like I knew that whatever greater good we were working toward as a society was just thrown away for trivial reasons. Ever since I’ve had a more “glass half empty” feeling about the U.S. and the world as a whole and the outlook is just bleak.
For sure, I grew up in a rural conservative area. I thought i knew these people. I thought they were just like me and I could understand their perspective even when I disagreed with it. But 2016 went against everything they claimed to believe in, and they just started making less and less sense, they just started getting more toxic, more hateful and spiteful , more anti-everything and everyone. No. No I can’t.
Maybe I’m falling for the echo chamber effect also, maybe I’m falling prey to those who would keep us divided and at each others throats, but I’m finding it difficult to sympathize, difficult to even want to understand them again. Difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are decent people being manipulated with base emotions. No, this is them
I don’t think you need 2016 for this. All you need is to be remotely awkward in grade school and this side human nature is abundantly clear.
leaving my home country for the first time.
all the “immutable facts of life” are a plane ticket way from becoming weird rituals or disagreeable foreign affairs.
(Edit: I was caught by the grammar police, for my heinous crimes.)
I had my coming of age when going to college abroad. Oh what a time that was.
- Going to Amsterdam, and seeing how unconditionally nice and supportive people can be. Even if something is obviously your fault, nobody will ever give you shit for it and will actually help you.
- The absolutely pointless full scale war in Ukraine starting, shattering the “age of unprecedented peace” propaganda I was fed since birth. Especially once I started educating my self about all the wars that took place in this age.
- Visiting my American (now ex) friends. Realizing that yes, Americans really are that uneducated and spiteful. Wanting others to suffer, way more than wanting to be happy them selves. And today, the 2024 election cemented those feelings.
Some Americans are. Way too many Americans are. Feel free to disconnect. However not everyone is and there are like 380 million of us
coming*
college*
And today (,) the 2024…*
Thank you for helping him represent himself so well.
Different people in different places.
If you never leave your hometown, you’re keeping your brain in a baby crèche for the rest of your life.
It’s much easier to understand how the world works if you’ve seen it yourself
I have been exposed to hospitals as a guy who worked on their software, as a friend to a doctor, and as the relative of a patient. What I have seen is that hospital staff are generally well intentioned but extremely overworked, to the point that they can overlook obvious signs of a life-threatening illness. You can’t just assume that if you’re in a hospital then you’ll be taken care of. The doctor can be too busy to pay attention to you or too tired to think clearly about your condition. The doctor might even just forget that you’re there. You have to make sure that you’re getting a doctor’s attention, even if that means acting in a way that makes you feel like an entitled jerk.
My grandmother went to the hospital a couple of years ago because every few hours her heart would stop for several seconds. After she was in the emergency room for a day without receiving any treatment, some hospital employee came and wanted to discharge her. She and I refused so she ended up in a hospital bed for a couple of days, still with no treatment. Finally my sister came from another state, and my sister is less shy than I am. She actually found the cardiologist and made sure he looked at my grandmother’s condition. Once he did, he immediately sent her to surgery. She had a pacemaker put in and recovered.
(In case anyone is curious, my grandma says that when her heart stopped for long enough that she lost consciousness, she felt a wave of heat go through her body, her vision faded to black, and then she passed out. It didn’t hurt. In her case, her heart started again on its own but I suppose that for someone less fortunate, that would have been what it felt like to die.)
Visiting ground zero of Hiroshima and then visiting pearl harbour. Super different vibes. Note: the aftertaste of visiting pearl harbour and their attitude towards war in general felt just so wrong. Hiroshima gave a definite sense of war is very wrong, and PH was just like “we’re not done yet”. It was ick.
Up until quite late in my teens I often felt that I would make friends with people that had similar interests.
I started going to more rock and metal gigs, and bars that played the same music. I’d also talk to people that were into the same games as me, and engaged them in a friendly manner since, you know, we like the same stuff - we should be friends, right?
It was a shock to the ol’ belief system that someone that likes the same bands you like might also be a huge cunt, or that dude that likes the same anime as you is also really fucking racist. I found all that out in one night after talking to two dudes that had a Thrice shirt and one dude that mentioned he was a huge DBZ fan. I found myself growing closer to people that didn’t necessarily like the same stuff I did, and my closest friends like a varied range of music, sports, and shows. That realisation allowed me to stop changing myself for others, to stop gravitating towards people that simply like things I like, and to just be open and friendly to everyone.
I got older.
