It seems like nobody is willing here in the US to actually throw themselves into a revolt or meaningful change because our conditions are just good enough.
I still see everyone around me going for the best social status, the best job, the best car, the biggest house, and completely ignoring all the major flashing red lights.
I feel like a crazy person, like one of those people that’s missing the point. I feel surrounded by lunatics and typically that means you’re the crazy one but I just know I can’t be in this situation, it makes no sense.
Why is it like this? Why do I feel surrounded by NPCs? I can’t connect to pretty much anyone here. It all seems so trivial.
I don’t want to sound elitist or anything I just can’t see how people still don’t see the full picture
What to do?
Here’s a simple test to see if you’re the crazy one who’s overreacting or not: If you don’t give a shit about the Chinese weather balloon, then you’re completely fine.
You can read Rainer Shea blog, he write a lot of doomerism about USA, but in quite different angle and meaning. You can try to compare.
Multipolarity will strike a huge blow on the US and probably launch popular movements across the country as living conditions further deteriorate. Now yes the sad thing is that countless good hearted liberals will die because of the militarized police and fascist militias, and that’s why I would advise to not take risks during that phase. However eventually state violence will be met with revolutionary violence.
The most propagandized ones you are talking about will all react in different ways, and you must keep in mind that all political movements at their base contain a non negligible amount of people who are here for the wrong reasons and blindly support what came to them first. That’s just how it is. Keep in mind that humans a especially unpredictable and that the US only survived until that point because of its hegemony.
My visual picture of it is that Americans have eternally been conditioned to “capitalise” on everything possible, and since USA is reaching its final conclusion in the chapter of superimperialist capitalism, people are probably subconsciously thinking of it as capitalising off of the remains of their country as it collapses away. Seems to me like a perfectly fitting end to the last bastion of Anglo empire.
That last sentence does seem cathartic in a sense, but only until you realize that if that occurs, the ones who will suffer are the millions of workers, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, and the countless other regular people who all lead lives just as valuable as everyone else’s. What will happen to those people in the collapse? Yes, if they are right wing or neo-liberal it can be easy to handwave them away as “justified” loses. But what about the rest? The one’s doing the capitalizing will simply pack up their bags or call it a day, far removed from the suffering they have caused.
It is a very saddening train of thought.
It sounds mean, until you realise these people enable US government only to enjoy their rich lives thanks to the overseas profit-generating genocides and foreign regime changes, never commit revolution against their state, conveniently screamed the past year how Russians should have overthrown Putin and his party so NATO could balkanise Russia, and demonise China everyday when after centuries they finally get to enjoy better quality life in the past few decades.
This does not stop with Russia, China and war machinery business. They see outside of Europe (now they are even exploiting Europe) and themselves, rest of the countries and continents as cattle meant to serve them either as slave pets or as beef. Now, one could say, it is the state, but it comes back to proletariat committing revolution, instead of which they chose to enjoy American/white privilege.
Until 2008 crisis, and even after that, they loved their privileged environment gained by all the exploitation and genocide, and you can even see this in the form of nostalgia they sell the world in the form of “oh before 2008/09 it was all bliss and merry, wish those times were back”.
The ones who lose, only have themselves to blame, for they could have chosen to forgo the comfort of genocide-derived privileges, and committed revolution against the state. It was a matter of picking the greater, longer good but they chose to pick the shorter happiness, because USA apparently in their heads was an infallible Goliath.
To add a little, I value more the importance of 5+ billions of lives over 0.35 billion lives.
Edit: I think I missed something important. Not every average common person is a deranged Twitter liberal, however, it does not excuse them of being revolutionary. They choose to be, and openly admit being passive in drawing room discussions. If they had an excuse of being vulnerable from state actors due to having family/children, well now they and/or their children will face the consequences of their inaction.
I agree with many of your points here, but I am still weary of a lot of your discourse. Especially the “they” classification. Who is “they”? Would I be part of the “they” simply for being an American not by choice? Would American comrades be part of the “they”? Would people that have never been exposed to leftist thought and do not know any better be part of the “they”?
You just keep mentioning that this group of people, the “they”, believe all these things, when truly it is only the ruling capitalist class. The population is just kept complicit by immense propaganda that serves to protect those capital interests. Do you think that majority of people in the US generally think about or wish to exploit other countries and continents? Or that the people of the US have any method of action that could stop NATO or the IMF in its tracks? To magically fight back against the most extreme state intelligence apparatus in history to stop the horrific actions of their government? They do not. They are as subjugated as the exploited overseas. The only ones who benefit are the capital. So how do they only have themselves to blame?
You also mention “comfort” and “privilege” many times throughout and how that is preventing people in the US from stepping outside their comfort zone. I’m sorry to tell you, but that is not true at all. That privilege is a shiny fake veneer. There are of course some well off groups of people who live in million dollar homes with lavish luxuries and privilege, but the vast majority of the US population is struggling. Everyday on my drive to class I see countless people living in absolute squalor, children in tattered unwashed clothing, shuttered stores, and brutal policing of the poor. There are swaths of people working 3 full time jobs to barely pay rent and feed their children, massive numbers of people with rotting bodies that are unable to receive basic medical treatment or sanitation, massive homeless populations, and countless more failings of a capitalist system. There is no “short term happiness” here, or do you think those people are happy?
Their is no “they”, there is only the proletariat and those that oppose them. The people of the US are not your monolithic enemy. They have just been subjugated, brainwashed, and oppressed by the will of capital. So counting 350 million people (an absolutely absurd number), as “acceptable losses” and “deserving of punishment” is cruel and Non-Marxist.
As Sankara said, we must never stop explaining ourselves and we must never stop fighting. Another group of proletariat are not the enemy, they are instead comrades that have been led astray or oppressed to the point that they cannot fight back. Yes there will be those that will defend capital to their last breath, and those that will not able to be rehabilitated, but that number is minuscule compared to the number that can be saved.
By “they”, I mean the bourgeoisie rulers and their worshipper proletariat. It obviously does not mean the working class that opposes the structure, however, it also happens to be a negligible part out of the “working class”, and liberals and conservatives, that make up a lot of the working class, actively choose to surrender in front of capitalism, and go as far as worshipping it, because all the alternative systems have been apparently tried and are horrible.
The population is just kept complicit by immense propaganda that serves to protect those capital interests.
This is the more important part. Why has the population not considered critically thinking and dissecting what is wrong with the existing system? It is not that hard to see the obvious blatant wrongs that have continued to exist in the face of people since decades. It is way too easy to see the marketing, the billboards, the bias in TV and print news media and so on. The problem is, people accept and take everything like good little boys and girls.
Do you think that majority of people in the US generally think about or wish to exploit other countries and continents?
Definitely most people never think of it in this way. Some actually do though. However, I will change your question a little, and the answers will become yes. Rephrasing it suitably – is it okay if US government continued to exert and expand its sphere of influence across the world, and suppress any and all near peer competitors like China ad Russia, so that US citizens could enjoy more prosperous lives? You should hear a lot of “yes” for this.
Yes, its a bit harsh when I say 350 million people do not matter as much as 5+ billion people. But, do you realistically, and not idealistically, expect an awakening among US citizens on this scale? Something like the Joker movie has been culturally one of the most eye opening movies in recent decades. The whole Ukraine thing is being cheered on, where you would have expected some call out on the ridiculousness of it. China weather balloon became a spy device shot down by million dollar missiles.
I am being realistic, not idealistic when I say this. If the people are not interested and want to continue being ignorant, how can you awaken them? Yes, it is true that we must never stop explaining, and sure it sounds good in theory. However, the barriers to practicing the theory far exceed just the media propaganda mechanisms of US government.
People today choose to be ignorant. There is no way people cannot see things for what they are. They are so blatantly clear, and there is no requirement for deep, critical thinking today. It is the unfortunate truth, as hard it seems to digest. And I say this as someone who, for the past 3 years, has been teaching and advocating digital privacy and freedom via a huge privacy subreddit I founded myself. Most of the Western audience is happy to ignore something like Snowden and Assange revelations, and go for the China boogeyman, and this is after I have managed to open up and persuade many minds to see the façade.
Honestly, that’s just how people in the US are, or that’s how I think they are, since I don’t live there, it’s not like in other countries is far better, but at least not so rampantly voracious and neoliberal as in there. If you ever can, move the hell out of that country.
You are not crazy, they are brainwashed and alienated.
I want to really bad. The only reasons I’m staying are because I can’t afford to and also don’t want to give up on the potential of a revolution here but it seems dimmer by the day
Depends what you mean, but I don’t think people should be willing to throw themselves into a revolt. First they need to ‘organize, organize, organize’, in the words of Kwame Ture.
They should want meaningful change, but they won’t for as long as the majority is in the labour aristocracy and benefits so much from imperialism. Use your effort for something more productive. Bring class consciousness to those who are ready for it and want change. I can’t remember the exact quote, but Lenin said, to paraphrase: ‘Haters gonna hate; better fewer but better.’
In a way, it doesn’t really matter. I’m a little nihilistic with this kind of thing: it will take a long time, but the US cannot survive it’s own contradictions. No empire can. It’s just a matter of time and while people in the US could hasten it’s dissolution, nobody in the US can prevent it, whether individuals see and care about the flashing red lights or not. It doesn’t matter much because none of us can do anything alone.
The most important things are getting experience organizing, creating communities of care, and supporting the most oppressed peoples, because they already have it a lot worse and are going to get it a lot worse until meaningful change arrives. That means being ready to argue, etc, against imperialism and in favour of neocolonial subjects outside the US, even when the ‘radical orgs’ argue for a greater slice of the imperial profits. Within the US (looking from the outside at least), that seems to be humbly joining the Indigenous struggle and the struggle against the military-prison industrial complex. The former, especially, is organized, alive, and kicking.
First they need to ‘organize, organize, organize’
That is kind of what I mean. I don’t mean just throw yourself into a suicide mission or anything like that. I just mean like, it doesn’t even seem like those in the US want to organize. They won’t even start the process of revolution. I don’t really understand how even those in the labor aristocracy don’t want something to change though. Sure, we import exploited labor’s value here and have better circumstances, but they still aren’t that great. Those who make a good living are still chained to the grind, still forced into jobs they often don’t like, still living in a drab, capitalist hellhole. Is it a fear of what they have to lose?
I feel like it does matter though. It will affect the rest of the world for a very long time. It isn’t like the 20th century revolutions anymore; we have an existential time limit and it is getting very close to being too late to act. Yes, the US will collapse on it’s own due to its contradictions, but if it lives for another 50 years, that fucks the planet and the rest of the world.
It doesn’t matter much because none of us can do anything alone.
That’s what I am saying, it’s so sad to see people not willing to unite and make changes.
I don’t know, my head feels like it has a tornado inside. So many things I don’t know or understand. So much passion and desire to change something. I hate being young and lacking experience lol
Just try to reach out to the oppressed and work together on a project. You can claim you are starting a non profit which you might be. You can describe creating a worker owned co-op as another way to get rich while hiring disenfranchised people and call it the libertarian term “Decentralized Autonomous Organization”. Start a book club with not so obviously marxist books and then slowly get people into marx. Maybe explain that Marx had interesting ideas and reading volumes 1-3 together can help you found your own hedge fund.
It seems like nobody is willing here in the US to actually throw themselves into a revolt or meaningful change because our conditions are just good enough.
Damn that article really is a great read, thanks for sharing!
It sounds like you have one of two choices; you can either do you best to ignore those flashing red lights and get with the programme, or you can find comrades and dive head first right down that rabbit hole.
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