Sorry I know this is the onion, but legit talk, with what power? the democrats were unilaterally rejected from the government by the people, we the people made our bed, we can’t rely on those we chose not to elect to save us.
They only have a slim minority. What, 2 seats or so in the Senate? It wouldn’t take many Republicans siding with them to flip. But it also would help if they didn’t do things like vote in support of Trump’s cabinet picks. And Republicans made it their entire existence to prevent things from happening when they were the minority power.
While I understand and generally agree with the idea, I think a large part of how we got here is that they’ve shown time and time again that even when they have power, they won’t use it. They had how many decades to codify Roe? They kneecapped the ACA before the Republicans ever even saw it. People lost faith in them, both in their lack of flexing the power they had and in their taking their voter base for granted.
At this point I don’t think there are democrats. At all. They’re a myth. There’s republicans, and other republicans who claim to be democrats.
I have given up ANY hope of this country being morally superior to any country. When I was growing up, the idea among people was that we were the greatest country on earth. Being a kid I was like “Wow! Lucky I was born here!”
But as I grew up, I began to realize that all the things they use to claim we’re the greatest are mostly lies. I heard how this government looks out and cares not only for our people, but polices the world into doing the right thing.
Really??? THATS the story we’re going with? Because there’s an entire generation out there who turned 18, got packed into a plane, shipped to the other side of the planet, and were told to go fight an enemy they couldn’t see, in the boobytrapped jungles of vietnam as we flew overhead and poured agent orange on them.
Only to have that war make NO difference at all. The “goal” of the war was to prevent vietnam from turning communist. Well, 2 years after we left, they turned communist. So in the sense of ackomplishing your goal…it failed.
Yes, we DID kill more vietnamese than we lost americans. So, body count wise we “won”. With those airquotes doing some heavy lifting there.
And the whole reason we fought a war in vietnam was to prevent the domino effect of laos, cambodia, india, ect also turning communist.
Well, vietnam DID turn communist, and then nothing happened. Meaning, the whole war, from 1955 to 1972, all of it, every dead soldier on both sides, they all died for nothing.
And between agent orange, the booby traps of the jungle, the war itself, we have an entire generation of males who were traumatized if not permanently disabled before they had a chance to even reach proper adulthood. Go into a McDonalds, or a Wendys tomorrow. You see that dumbass teenager working their part time job probably getting your order wrong? If they’re male, imagine them with a gun. And camo military gear on. Thats who fought and died in that war. That age. They were blinded, they lost limbs, they were burned, scarred, mentally and physically, paralized, left for dead. And none of them asked for it. Their government mandated it.
Then when they got back, they were pelted with rocks from the general public. Made to feel ashamed for “supporting” the war. Again, those airquotes are powerful with all that heavy lifting.
So for everything they went through, supporting their country, being mamed in a foreign jungle, many permanently disabled, what did our country do for them? A life of poverty, pain, suffering and insurmountable debt. Many made to live a life of homelessness after suffering mental issues as a result of the war, and the chemicals used within. And the governments response to this? Fuck you. Fuck all the veterans who served, but aren’t actively serving. Fuck em! And that’s been the governments response to each and every person of that generation.
But it’s not just that generation. I’m not of that age. Vietnam ended a decade before I was even born. But I can remember being 17 years old myself. One day in september, it was an ordinary day. Nothing strange at all. I wake up, I turn on the TV, and the pentagon is on fire. Oh shit! What happened? I thought they caught the unibomber. Plus there’s no way he could ever hit THAT target…then the tv changes to another set of images. The world trade center is on fire. Now what the hell is THIS shit! Those are in NYC! The pentagon is in D.C! What the hell is going on today! MOM! TURN THE NEWS ON! I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO CALL THIS! Silence. My mom is not the silent type. MOM!!! TURN THE NEWS ON!!! Silence. MOOOOM!!! Silence. So I go downstairs, and see my mom wrapped in a blanket like a burrito, which I’d never seen before. Crying her eyes out. Which I’d only ever seen at her fathers funeral, and now the TV has images of a plane in a feild in PA. I know if my mom is sitting like that, unresponsive, crying her eyes out, I need to sit down, shut up, and watch the tv until I know what the hell is going on. When I grasped the levity of the situation that was 9/11 happening on live tv, I knew there would be a war. I knew it would be my generations vietnam, with unecissary fighting and death. I thought the draft would have been reinstated. Which to be fair, is a fair thing to think as you’re being told terrorists are blowing up multiple sites within the country all before 9am on a Tuesday.
Low and behold, Iraq, which had nothing at all in any way to do with 9/11, get’s invaded. It would be like invading China for Pearl Harbor. Hey, it’s all Asian, right?
And it was all done because the had “proof they had weapons of mass destruction”. It was a phrase used so hard in that exact way, it was like a catch phrase. Or a copyrighted promotional term for the war. Never said nuclear weapons. Never once. It was always “weapons of mass destruction”. And we had proof they had them. What proof? Probably the reciepts from when WE SOLD THEM THE WEAPONS IN THE 80S TO BEGIN WITH!!!
So we go and find this OTHER guy, who America had beef with in the past, even during the current presidents daddies time in office, and pull him out of a hole in the ground surrounded by fecies, snickers wrappers, a PS2, and a fuck ton of porn. Yeah, they don’t teach the specifics in schools I bet. Me personally if I were going to live in a dark hole in the ground surrounded by my own fecies, I wouldn’t choose snickers as my exclusive diet. In the dark, those might look awfully similar. But I’m getting side tracked.
That war had no draft. It was just “Hey guys, wanna go blow some arab shit up for america? 9/11!” And the response wave is still to this day the largest influx of new soldiers since the civil war.
And that war wasn’t as brutal as vietnam, but you still had guys getting blown up, losing limbs, dying. Thankfully there weren’t poison arrows or spike traps in the ground, or trip wires. But is still…ya know…a WAR. Shit happens, and the government knew this.
So what happened when each individual soldier, most of which were again, 18ish, finished their service? Oh, fuck you. Go live in poverty now. Same as the vietnam vets.
I’ve been typing this message by hand, on a cell phone now for half my work day. I don’t even remember what sparked my innitial anger, or what the topic is.
I guess my overall point is, don’t trust the government. They lie. They steal. There’s no reason to feel patriotic to be an American. This entire country is bullshit.
Canada, can I come live with you? I like hockey, and I promise to try to keep my snickering to a minimum every time I see your pink money. Hehehehe, I mean…I’ll try.
But it’s not just that generation. I’m not of that age. Vietnam ended a decade before I was even born. But I can remember being 17 years old myself. One day in september, it was an ordinary day. Nothing strange at all. I wake up, I turn on the TV, and the pentagon is on fire. Oh shit! What happened? I thought they caught the unibomber. Plus there’s no way he could ever hit THAT target…then the tv changes to another set of images. The world trade center is on fire. Now what the hell is THIS shit! Those are in NYC! The pentagon is in D.C! What the hell is going on today! MOM! TURN THE NEWS ON! I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO CALL THIS! Silence. My mom is not the silent type. MOM!!! TURN THE NEWS ON!!! Silence. MOOOOM!!! Silence. So I go downstairs, and see my mom wrapped in a blanket like a burrito, which I’d never seen before. Crying her eyes out. Which I’d only ever seen at her fathers funeral, and now the TV has images of a plane in a feild in PA. I know if my mom is sitting like that, unresponsive, crying her eyes out, I need to sit down, shut up, and watch the tv until I know what the hell is going on. When I grasped the levity of the situation that was 9/11 happening on live tv, I knew there would be a war. I knew it would be my generations vietnam, with unecissary fighting and death. I thought the draft would have been reinstated. Which to be fair, is a fair thing to think as you’re being told terrorists are blowing up multiple sites within the country all before 9am on a Tuesday.
When the PATRIOT[sic] Act passed, that was when I knew the terrorists had won. That was the moment of their success in destroying America. The subsequent war was just incidental at that point.
(BTW, for those of us in EST, it was after 9AM. I was, appropriately enough, sitting in my civics class when it happened.)
America is one of the most propagandized countries in the world, and we don’t even know it. I began to realize it when I heard that most countries find it creepy how we have an American flag in every school classroom. We are one of maybe 4 countries in the world to do that - one of which is North Korea. And then I learned about Nazi Germany and Hitler’s Youth, and I felt really uncomfortable about how we make little kids pledge their undying loyalty to the country every morning in school. We have military recruiters going into high schools to advertise to kids, calling them on their cell phones and visiting their houses. We have ads on TV and Hollywood blockbusters that are also just ads for the military.
Most Americans die within 10 miles of where they were born, and many never leave their hometown. Even fewer leave their home state, and even less visit another country.
There are people who want things to get better - things did for a brief period of time. We went from having to make up a new kind of sexuality to convince women that men who showered more than once a week and wore nice clothes weren’t gay to gay marriage and openly trans people in the government. But there are so many goose stepping “I’m a Republican, I vote for the nominee” idiots and white suburbanites who care more about a negative peace than real change that it took just a little push in the country Hitler referred to as “the sisterland across the ocean” for “Never again” to happen again.
We are a deeply fucked up country whose entire identity is built on the idea of a reality that has never existed. We have a slim chance of changing that, but it’ll be impossible until we clean the fascists out of office and the white supremacy at the core of our culture.
Sorry I know this is the onion, but legit talk, with what power? the democrats were unilaterally rejected from the government by the people, we the people made our bed, we can’t rely on those we chose not to elect to save us.
They only have a slim minority. What, 2 seats or so in the Senate? It wouldn’t take many Republicans siding with them to flip. But it also would help if they didn’t do things like vote in support of Trump’s cabinet picks. And Republicans made it their entire existence to prevent things from happening when they were the minority power.
While I understand and generally agree with the idea, I think a large part of how we got here is that they’ve shown time and time again that even when they have power, they won’t use it. They had how many decades to codify Roe? They kneecapped the ACA before the Republicans ever even saw it. People lost faith in them, both in their lack of flexing the power they had and in their taking their voter base for granted.
At this point I don’t think there are democrats. At all. They’re a myth. There’s republicans, and other republicans who claim to be democrats.
I have given up ANY hope of this country being morally superior to any country. When I was growing up, the idea among people was that we were the greatest country on earth. Being a kid I was like “Wow! Lucky I was born here!”
But as I grew up, I began to realize that all the things they use to claim we’re the greatest are mostly lies. I heard how this government looks out and cares not only for our people, but polices the world into doing the right thing.
Really??? THATS the story we’re going with? Because there’s an entire generation out there who turned 18, got packed into a plane, shipped to the other side of the planet, and were told to go fight an enemy they couldn’t see, in the boobytrapped jungles of vietnam as we flew overhead and poured agent orange on them.
Only to have that war make NO difference at all. The “goal” of the war was to prevent vietnam from turning communist. Well, 2 years after we left, they turned communist. So in the sense of ackomplishing your goal…it failed.
Yes, we DID kill more vietnamese than we lost americans. So, body count wise we “won”. With those airquotes doing some heavy lifting there.
And the whole reason we fought a war in vietnam was to prevent the domino effect of laos, cambodia, india, ect also turning communist.
Well, vietnam DID turn communist, and then nothing happened. Meaning, the whole war, from 1955 to 1972, all of it, every dead soldier on both sides, they all died for nothing.
And between agent orange, the booby traps of the jungle, the war itself, we have an entire generation of males who were traumatized if not permanently disabled before they had a chance to even reach proper adulthood. Go into a McDonalds, or a Wendys tomorrow. You see that dumbass teenager working their part time job probably getting your order wrong? If they’re male, imagine them with a gun. And camo military gear on. Thats who fought and died in that war. That age. They were blinded, they lost limbs, they were burned, scarred, mentally and physically, paralized, left for dead. And none of them asked for it. Their government mandated it.
Then when they got back, they were pelted with rocks from the general public. Made to feel ashamed for “supporting” the war. Again, those airquotes are powerful with all that heavy lifting.
So for everything they went through, supporting their country, being mamed in a foreign jungle, many permanently disabled, what did our country do for them? A life of poverty, pain, suffering and insurmountable debt. Many made to live a life of homelessness after suffering mental issues as a result of the war, and the chemicals used within. And the governments response to this? Fuck you. Fuck all the veterans who served, but aren’t actively serving. Fuck em! And that’s been the governments response to each and every person of that generation.
But it’s not just that generation. I’m not of that age. Vietnam ended a decade before I was even born. But I can remember being 17 years old myself. One day in september, it was an ordinary day. Nothing strange at all. I wake up, I turn on the TV, and the pentagon is on fire. Oh shit! What happened? I thought they caught the unibomber. Plus there’s no way he could ever hit THAT target…then the tv changes to another set of images. The world trade center is on fire. Now what the hell is THIS shit! Those are in NYC! The pentagon is in D.C! What the hell is going on today! MOM! TURN THE NEWS ON! I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO CALL THIS! Silence. My mom is not the silent type. MOM!!! TURN THE NEWS ON!!! Silence. MOOOOM!!! Silence. So I go downstairs, and see my mom wrapped in a blanket like a burrito, which I’d never seen before. Crying her eyes out. Which I’d only ever seen at her fathers funeral, and now the TV has images of a plane in a feild in PA. I know if my mom is sitting like that, unresponsive, crying her eyes out, I need to sit down, shut up, and watch the tv until I know what the hell is going on. When I grasped the levity of the situation that was 9/11 happening on live tv, I knew there would be a war. I knew it would be my generations vietnam, with unecissary fighting and death. I thought the draft would have been reinstated. Which to be fair, is a fair thing to think as you’re being told terrorists are blowing up multiple sites within the country all before 9am on a Tuesday.
Low and behold, Iraq, which had nothing at all in any way to do with 9/11, get’s invaded. It would be like invading China for Pearl Harbor. Hey, it’s all Asian, right?
And it was all done because the had “proof they had weapons of mass destruction”. It was a phrase used so hard in that exact way, it was like a catch phrase. Or a copyrighted promotional term for the war. Never said nuclear weapons. Never once. It was always “weapons of mass destruction”. And we had proof they had them. What proof? Probably the reciepts from when WE SOLD THEM THE WEAPONS IN THE 80S TO BEGIN WITH!!!
So we go and find this OTHER guy, who America had beef with in the past, even during the current presidents daddies time in office, and pull him out of a hole in the ground surrounded by fecies, snickers wrappers, a PS2, and a fuck ton of porn. Yeah, they don’t teach the specifics in schools I bet. Me personally if I were going to live in a dark hole in the ground surrounded by my own fecies, I wouldn’t choose snickers as my exclusive diet. In the dark, those might look awfully similar. But I’m getting side tracked.
That war had no draft. It was just “Hey guys, wanna go blow some arab shit up for america? 9/11!” And the response wave is still to this day the largest influx of new soldiers since the civil war.
And that war wasn’t as brutal as vietnam, but you still had guys getting blown up, losing limbs, dying. Thankfully there weren’t poison arrows or spike traps in the ground, or trip wires. But is still…ya know…a WAR. Shit happens, and the government knew this.
So what happened when each individual soldier, most of which were again, 18ish, finished their service? Oh, fuck you. Go live in poverty now. Same as the vietnam vets.
I’ve been typing this message by hand, on a cell phone now for half my work day. I don’t even remember what sparked my innitial anger, or what the topic is.
I guess my overall point is, don’t trust the government. They lie. They steal. There’s no reason to feel patriotic to be an American. This entire country is bullshit.
Canada, can I come live with you? I like hockey, and I promise to try to keep my snickering to a minimum every time I see your pink money. Hehehehe, I mean…I’ll try.
When the PATRIOT[sic] Act passed, that was when I knew the terrorists had won. That was the moment of their success in destroying America. The subsequent war was just incidental at that point.
(BTW, for those of us in EST, it was after 9AM. I was, appropriately enough, sitting in my civics class when it happened.)
America is one of the most propagandized countries in the world, and we don’t even know it. I began to realize it when I heard that most countries find it creepy how we have an American flag in every school classroom. We are one of maybe 4 countries in the world to do that - one of which is North Korea. And then I learned about Nazi Germany and Hitler’s Youth, and I felt really uncomfortable about how we make little kids pledge their undying loyalty to the country every morning in school. We have military recruiters going into high schools to advertise to kids, calling them on their cell phones and visiting their houses. We have ads on TV and Hollywood blockbusters that are also just ads for the military.
Most Americans die within 10 miles of where they were born, and many never leave their hometown. Even fewer leave their home state, and even less visit another country.
There are people who want things to get better - things did for a brief period of time. We went from having to make up a new kind of sexuality to convince women that men who showered more than once a week and wore nice clothes weren’t gay to gay marriage and openly trans people in the government. But there are so many goose stepping “I’m a Republican, I vote for the nominee” idiots and white suburbanites who care more about a negative peace than real change that it took just a little push in the country Hitler referred to as “the sisterland across the ocean” for “Never again” to happen again.
We are a deeply fucked up country whose entire identity is built on the idea of a reality that has never existed. We have a slim chance of changing that, but it’ll be impossible until we clean the fascists out of office and the white supremacy at the core of our culture.