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If everyone votes egotistical, you will get an egoist in power and everyone loses except the egoist in power.
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.Douglas Adams
While the discordant text color makes that a little like reading while driving down a road with potholes, Adams is correct.
Hahaha, I was not able to read it 🤪
So fucking hard to read that first one
The people represent the government, i am ashamed of my people.
Or mabye im not, here in Italy the meloni got elected by only 40% of the people, only beacouse of a law made by the DC
In 2016 both Hillary and Trump had a lower than 50% approval rating and yet they were the frontrunners: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
Congress has a less than 50% approval rating and it’s made up of elected politicians: https://www.statista.com/statistics/207579/public-approval-rating-of-the-us-congress/
We don’t have a democracy, we have a system where you can only choose which representative for billionaires you dislike the least. They’re all corrupt, any that aren’t are quickly drowned out by well-funded opposition.
People tend to approve of their own representatives, and blame others in Congress for unsolved issues. We have become good at identifying problems while minimizing our own contributions to them. And in general, as a country we are very divided on the way things should be changing.
For presidential candidates especially, I’ve found people tend to latch on to reasons to dislike someone and ignore positive things, except perhaps for their favorite candidate. It’s a form of tribalism. But from what I remember Trump and Hilary were both considered distinctly weak candidates at the time.
Hilary […] considered distinctly weak
Not by the same proto blumaga libs who insisted Biden and Harris were strong candidates. If you pointed out people were suffering and her policies and messaging was “get a high paying job lmao”, you got bombarded with “sHE iS ThE mOsT qUaLiFiEd cAnDiDAtE iN hIsToRy”.
You are right. Americans are slaves, tricked into thinking their votes count. But people must understand the enemy is the corruption found by members of both parties. Democratic and Republican
Never ask a man his salary
Never ask a woman her age
Never ask what George Orwell was doing in Myanmar in the 1920s
He literally wrote a novel that was heavily inspired about his time in Myanmar.
You can kinda ask him yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Days
Set in British Burma during the waning days of empire, when Burma was ruled from Delhi as part of British India, the novel serves as “a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj.” At the centre of the novel is John Flory, “the lone and lacking individual trapped within a bigger system that is undermining the better side of human nature.”[1] The novel describes “both indigenous corruption and imperial bigotry” in a society where, “after all, natives were natives—interesting, no doubt, but finally…an inferior people”.[2]
To be clear, that last bit of that last sentence is meant to be read as hideously haughty and privileged… it is dripping with irony, a self-cariacature, as the novel showcases the craven nature of characters in all kinds of social positions, from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds.
The whole thing is meant as an unflinching critique of how colonialism ruins everyone involved.
I guess we could also maybe ask Orwell what he was doing in Spain in the 1930s, but at the time, he would again have difficulty telling you.
Turns out that when you join an internationalist anti fascist militia to go personally shoot fascists yourself, well, sometimes they shoot back, and sometimes they hit you in the neck.
… thankfully, writing exists.
I find it absolutely incredible that George Orwell, a man who has likely personally shot more fascists than probably anyone you’ll find on the internet… somehow doesn’t clear the ideological purity test these days.
And that is because Orwell, while literally shooting at fascists in Spain, also found himself as the target of a pro-Soviet, pro-Stalin smear campaign, which tried to paint him and his outfit as Trotskyists and also as fascists.
Apparently, this smear campaign remains quite influential, to this day.
Orwell wrote openly about the things he did throughout his life, both in casual letters and widely read short stories
He certainly wrote a version of it.
Tautologous
Kind of? Many of them, if not most, are also victims of the same system that indoctrinated them. Like an awful, evil feedback loop of victimization.
Not to say that makes it okay ofc, but all people are fallible and all can be cast as fools under the right circumstances, which is just a very important thing to remember at times like these.
Yeah, I view them as catspaws. They are assisting someone working against their interests without understanding how they are being used. You can show sympathy for them while nonetheless opposing them.
And you’re right that everyone should have the humility to accept they also sabotage themselves sometimes. But electing who will lead the country is high stakes and some accountability is fair.
I didn’t mean to insinuate that anybody should not be held accountable for their actions. Just the opposite is how I feel, really. But I also believe that many of them can do and learn better if provided with the right care and resources. That’s not to say I know how to make that work, but that there is always, always, always a better path forward if enough qualified and caring people put their heads together and make it happen.
Very few of us are truly and entirely irredeemable. Some just take a lot more resources and time to be redeemed than others, is how I see it. I believe it is worth it, for the sake of all of our futures as well as those of people yet to be born, to try and see to it that paths like this are taken and doubled down on as soon as is possible.
Despite being a fan of Orwell’s and, more often than not, in agreement with the views he shared, I took his wording to be a bit too absolutist for my tastes on this quote. Understandably, given what we know of his lived experience, but still. There is always a better way as long as there are still people trying to find it. I don’t believe in all of us, but I do believe in the capital ‘u’ Us, you know?
And I’m not familiar with the term “catspaws”. Feel like teaching a stranger something new?
Well said. To be clear, I agree with your outlook on human nature, but I try to check myself on not being optimistic to the point of ignoring people’s history. People do change, but we can’t presume in which direction that will be. We must remember improvement is a hope and a genuine possibility, but not an expectation. On the other hand, Orwell is regarded as insightful for good reason but of course he is also very cynical about people and the future.
A catspaw is just a term for someone who is used as a tool of another to their detriment. It comes from a French fable where a monkey convinces a cat to grab some roasting chestnuts for them to eat, but the monkey eats them all while the cat ends up burning its paw.
Edit: This is the fable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_and_the_Cat
I have been known to think and act with hope-clouded vision at times. It is known. I think you’re right, but will continue to choose to hope for the better of people, because I believe that hope, sometimes even the irrational varieties, is the fertile earth from which necessary changes most often grow. It is sometimes even the only ground that positive change can take to at all. If I keep at it on my end while enough others do the same on theirs, a better future will be made that much more accessible to everyone.
With that mindset, I don’t feel I have the time for cynicism past a certain threshold (on some days, at least), and I am pretty certain that can be an invaluable asset in the right hands. Hopefully myself and enough others have such hands rather than these allegorical paws. Thanks for filling me in on that btw. Your comparison with it was spot on.
Most people simply are cowards and fools.
Victims, yes, but also still cowards and fools.
On the one hand yeah sure, but on the other hand in the USA youre an accomplice if you didnt vote or if you wasted your vote on a 3rd party.
Vote for baddy, your fault. Vote for less baddy, youre propping up the system. Vote for good guy, you wasted your chance to vote against baddy. Dont vote, you wasted your chance yo vote against baddy.
Everyone gets the boot on the neck, everyone gets the blame, there are no winners
Can you stop with the whole, “if democrats would a won everything would be fine” bullshit?
Try saying this yourself, without a famous pen name to append after it, and people call you absurd, extreme, unrealistic, violent.
… I call those people cowards.
May all cowards go extinct. It’s up to the brave to change the world
Sadly, it is the cowards who invent nightmares and conjure them into reality, and who also have little hesitation toward cruelty and violence when they lash out at those they project their inner demons onto.
Thus, all that is necesarry for the triumph of evil is for the good to do nothing.
History clearly shows that no rights simply exist; no status quo can simply be assumed, no priveleges or standards cannot be corroded… they must always be actively fought for, deliberated over, studied in detail.
Apathy, complancency, incuriousness… that is the first step toward regress, toward barbarism.
The better future is a concept that must continuously be actively struggled for… it is not a definable state of permanent victory, no, it is a constant fury against injustice that must be wielded with control and discipline… but never extinguished.
Sadly, it is the cowards who invent nightmares and conjure them into reality, and who also have little hesitation toward cruelty and violence when they lash out at those they project their inner demons onto.
You say that in response to a comment from a person considering themselves courageous and asking to the death of most people on the world…
You say that in response to a comment … asking to the death of most people on the world…
So firstly, that isn’t a sentence.
You cannot ‘asking to the death’ of anyone.
Assuming you meant to say ‘for’ instead of ‘to’…
Well then what you are saying is just factually wrong.
You’ve read ‘people who elect facsists to office are accomplices’ as ‘people who elect fascists to office should all be killed’.
Uh, nope, nobody said that, that’s a completely different concept, a whole different sentence.
Going extinct is not the same thing as a genocide or massacre or murder.
Neanderthals are extinct, trilobytes are extinct, velociraptors are extinct.
Extinction can happen as the result of direct, proximate, single cause, but it generally occurs simply because that kind of creature is weeded out of the biosphere by natural selection over time.
Hoping that cowards go extinct is no more radical or direct than saying that you hope for bravery and courage to prevail, unless you think that ‘coward’ is some kind of clearly distinct genotype of humans, which it obviously is not.
Cowardice, bravery, these are concepts applied to describe the actions of a thinking being, how they respond to their surroundings, their context… they are a spectrum of mindstates and subsequent actions that are inherent to the human condition.
The only way to eliminate cowardice is to educate people, equip them with the tools to think critically, trust nothing blindly, don’t fall for bullshit or a false sense of security, teach them that it requires courage to keep a safe and prosperous world as such.
Simplifying your understanding down to ‘kill all cowards’… is how an incurious coward would read this.
You are doing the thing, you are inventing nightmares to be afraid of.
You also misread the comment I replied to in that you think they are saying they themselves are courageous.
They did not say this, at all.
They said that it is the brave who change the world.
They did not attempt to define bravery or courage… I did.
I do not know that person or what they truly believe, but I will tell you that it does require bravery to stand up against the perceived slander of another person you do not even know, simply out of principle.
All according to plan so farmland can be bought up by large corporations and billionaires. They want to control and commodify every aspect of survival.
In some cases.
In other
I got the book 1984 for $1 on Kobo a couple months ago
Still haven’t read it. (Surely next year)
Is this a shitpost?
How do you do that, specifically in the US?
Revolution. Rebellion in organized fashion
This includes people who give everyone shit for not voting for the “lesser” corruption. Accomplices all.
Ooh that’s a good one
