Like living in a live documentary with shitty actors who are happy to portray their historical characters by committing acts of violence against other humans.
Maybe you shouldn’t just be sitting, and actually do something
i think younger generation that are school right now, or like close to the youngest gen z arnt learning history like they did in the 2000s. history channel in 2000s was much better quality than the alien crap later on.
How could anyone see this coming when until 2016 we were just minding our own business invading small countries in the east.
Yeah, no. That was 2015. Then from 2016-2019 it was:
Then from 2020 to 2023 it was:
Then in 2024 it was:
And now in 2025, it’s:
That’s me, with a degree in history, and a lifetime of watching it play out. My anxiety level has never been this high. This is not normal life, and we are absolutely careening towards disaster, and NOBODY at the top has the slightest idea how to drive this car. I don’t think some of them are even smart enough to know what a car is, or how it works.
I know where this all leads to. I know how many people have said “It will never happen in my beautiful country.” Every German said that in 1939. In 5 years, entire cities were bombed to rubble, and millions of their fellow citizens were dead.
In 1984, Sarajevo hosted the Olympics, and showed their beautiful modern city and nation to the world. In 1992, less that 10 years later, they were under siege in the Bosnian War:
Lasting from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 (1,425 days), it was three times longer than the Battle of Stalingrad and more than a year longer than the siege of Leningrad, making it the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.[11]
The Huns used to come to a beautiful city, and kill literally every single person. One day, the people are enjoying their lives, and the next day, every single one of them is dead.
The horrors of war happen to normal cities all the time, throughout history. Too many people on both sides don’t understand how easily it can happen to them. Nobody is immune.
I wish we weren’t like this
The worst part is, we don’t have to be, all this is purely design choices
World Wide Financial Crisis ✅
World Wide Pandemic ✅
Fascist Take Over of a Super Power ✅
History doesn’t repeat itself but it sure rhymes.
History is fractal. Self-similarity and infinite repetition with an overall semblance of chaos.
If only it were that. This is an evolution of what happened then, and even though the descent is less drastic it has far more downward momentum because of what’s involved. Given the most likely global victors this time around, the narrative shift that Europe is going to experience this time around is not going to look good.
People think this is going to be World War III when the reality might be closer to the silence following the height of extinct civilizations, except involving the whole world and with a pending environmental catastrophe to displace humanity to boot.
Not great in history but normal higher education in Europe…
Nah this is all unique. This has definitely never happened anywhere else and they’re are absolutely no parallels that can be drawn.
The US is such an exceptional democracy, land of the free and all that.
That’s right, Citizen, good correct-think. We can always bomb our way to peace and invade our way to diplomacy.
I am guessing that Mexico and Canada might be the winners from this in a couple of decades. If they enter a conflict together against the USA during a civil war, they can potentially annex a fair bit of territory. Plus, many world powers would likely support that fight - it is an opportunity to give a black eye and remove the US from the world stage.
The government would start an external war before it would let a civil war happen. Just like Germany, its likely the world will need to come together to stop the US.
“let a civil war happen” - I don’t think you understand what a civil war is.
Can’t have a civil war if we are too busy attacking our neighbors.
Nobody in North America is going to be a winner from this. It’s going to be chaos. A lot of productive capacity that could otherwise have been used to make useful things or provide useful services is instead going to have to be spent on preventing the chaos in the US from spilling over the border.
I also don’t think Canada or Mexico would want to annex territory. Annexing requires a strong military to hold the territory, and neither Canada nor Mexico has a strong military. What’s more likely IMO is that there’s some kind of a civil war and the US is split into multiple smaller sovereign states. After the dust settles, some will be on great relations with Canada and Mexico. Others will be isolated states that are closely tied to Russia or Saudi Arabia or something.
The US is famous for its advanced weapons but those depend on massive supply chains all over the country.
They can’t even supply Ukraine with artillery shells.
All the factories the US had to spin up in their last conventional war are gone and are the people who knew how to run them and work them.
A civil conflict would be pretty short unless an external power started supplying one side with arms.
And nobody would do that, of course…
Yall the history majors have been freaking the fuck out for over a decade
Source: am history major and have been freaking the fuck out for over a decade as have several classmates and other historians
I am not a history major, but I got a 5 on AP US History… and have degrees in Econ and Poli Sci.
Basically, the last 10 years for me has been everyone I know thinking I am literally insane.
And then roughly 90% of what I was saying would happen, has now happened, within +/- 2 years of when I said it probably would.
None of them have bothered to apologize for being wrong, emphatically, derisivesly wrong, about basicsally everything, so, fuck em, and fuck this country honestly.
Two books you might want to check out are The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols and “The Tyranny of Merit” by Michael Sandel. Here is a link to his TED profile and talks. Both talk about why this is happening and how we got here. While somewhat depressing, I found both books very validating(? can’t put a word to it) of all the frustration with family/friends these last years. Education has been gutted and imho real history is no longer taught. Add the internet and social media to the culture and suddenly everyone is an expert. In less than a year, he has destroyed the integrity, reputation and effectiveness of every federal agency made to keep us safe and let us sleep at night. The UN has been effectively neutralized by our vote on the security council. It’s maddening beyond words and I’m scared shitless of what’s to come.
I will try and check those out, thanks for the reading list =D
But uh… yeah.
I had a terrifying ‘validation’ moment when I realized that +/- 1 year of when I graduated Uni…
That was the peak of average US literacy and math abilities.
I have always gotten a lot of shit for describing myself as usually the most intelligent person I know personally, in the real, in most social situations I am in…
And well now the chances of me personally running into someone on my level who is younger than me are approaching zero.
Most people I meet, even doctors, other kinds of professionals… they do not believe me when I tell them I have two degrees and used to work for MSFT, a Fortune 500 logistics company, that I independently taught myself how to code in multiple programming languages and SQL, unrelated to my degrees, that I have enough knowledge to build a video game from “scratch” (yay Godot!), because I have also been making video game mods for two decades…
They just think I am literally crazy and making it up, because I don’t look or talk like a corpo type.
Yep, I just love it here.
You literally described my experience of the past decade. I’m an undereducated nitwit who happened to have grown up in one of the old nazi occupied countries and remembers the stories my grandparents used to tell.
I also had an unfortunate amount of exposure to narcissists (yay generational trauma) and the narcissist’s playbook is nearly identical to the fascist’s playbook.
In Trump’s case, they’re one and the same. They’re laughably easy to predict.
Sadly, us Americans and our Exceptionalism taught us that ‘it couldn’t happen here’, and we are so arrogant as to truly believe we are somehow immune to the forces of history that broadly apply everywhere and at all times.
Fucking oh well I guess, at least I can sleep soundly knowing that I tried my damndest.
You sound exactly like who i imagine i would be if i had grown up in the US.
Send an eagle to save me, Gandalf!
unfortunately i’m currently bird-less :/
Welp, guess I’m getting out of Mordor on foot then, lol.
Not only do they never apologize for being wrong, they never apologize for accusing you of wearing tinfoil when what you said would happen, happens.
Then they continue telling you you’re over-reacting about the current thing you’re telling them.
Its like consistently predicting the lottery numbers, and then arguing with you when they keep losing even though you tell them the winning number the day before every time.
My new motto:
Suffer no fools.
It’s like being Cassandra
People hate prophets especially when they are right
IIRC there was a funny tale … in christian medieval times, it was illegal to tell the future. (like, fortune tellers and such)
in the text i read, people predicting the future was seen as a “real” thing, i.e. they believed it really worked. they still didn’t like it though. i wonder why.
Hey, uh, great wizard, perhaps you shouldn’t throw stones? ;)
For real, though, witch hunts were always adventures in scapegoating. People are always easier to placate when you can redirect their fear and anger away from the establishment (whether that’s your chieftain, congregation, parish, fiefdom, governor, or king) and onto someone who can’t defend themselves. That’s usually the marginalised – the homeless, disabled, religiously ‘deviant’, or just annoying – because they can’t fight back. Bonus points if they have property or assets you can seize.
It’s never been about beliefs, and it’s always been about taking from people who can’t defend themselves – and making them that way by separating them from their community. This is what sociopaths have always done when we put them in charge.
Yes this! There’s literally no space for them between treating you insane and then freaking out.
No one could’ve known!
I feel for you, none of us are getting apologies of any kind, nor are we likely to get any accolades for being right. Shit sucks
Fuck em, they are bad people.
A friend would not mock someone for being mostly correct about things most of the time.
This is the behavior of either an insecure person, an idiot, a narcissist, or some combo of all three.
They also have low EQ and low self awareness and low empathy if they cannot figure out 1) how wrong they were and 2) how much they emotionally hurt you by being pigheadedly wrong.
So maybe throw a bit of sociopathy in there too.
Again, fuck em, they are bad people if it never occurs to them to apologize to you.
Way after the fact but sober question, are there people in your life that you know have realized you were right and you can tell but they don’t actually say it? I have one or three of them
Nope. Not myself no.
Most of the people who used to be in my life probably think I am dead, as I ghosted everyone.
Without going in to a lot of detail, I got very tired of being a doormat in many other ways, absued in many other ways, some actually criminal, some resulting in serious physical injuries to myself, and I disappeared myself.
Frankly, with few exceptions, if one of these people managed to contact me somehow, I would literally just demand they pay me to speak to me, and then after they pay me, I would change my phone number and/or move again, wipe out and redo my (ephemeral) online presence/accounts, etc.
serious question, if you have no acquaintances in the US anymore, what’s keeping you from moving somewhere else?
I am crippled.
Been doing physical therapy full time for about the last 6 months, I am making good gains, but uh, yeah, still got a ways to go… kinda hard to migrate when you cannot ambulate.
Other than that, literally nothing, I have occasionally been unironically asking (on lemmy) if anyone in another country wants to do a sham marriage for months now.
I have had friends start to freak out this term. I told them that most of this same stuff happened last term, you just didn’t hear about it (or listen to what I was saying) for some reason. Granted, he’s become much, much worse since our conversations in February because of SCOTUS backing him, but he had concentration camps last time as well.
I mean, Trump did Jan 6th, said he wanted to be a dictator, Project 2025 outlined everything that was going to be, and is currently being done.
It was not any kind of difficult to figure this out lately, unless one just prides themself on being ignorant or has some kind of unexamined onion layers of normalcy bias at the same they are angry and worried about how not normal things are.
Oh well, cognitive dissonance is a bitch I guess, time for the Great Filter to attempt to cull that out of the gene pool.
They weren’t voting for him, but they have kids and both work full time jobs. They just didn’t know how bad it was. The media hides most of this stuff from the front page as well. You have to figure it out for yourself.
I remember reading about them sterilizing migrant women in camps at the border last term and just staring at the wall for a good minute.
Can’t wait (/s) to see what escalations await us.
Holy fuck.
Yeah. The news broke in 2020 during the later part of the election cycle, but the incidents started around 2018.
A fourth of the population swore up and down it didn’t happen (“But if it did, they shouldn’t have been here illegally in the first place!”), a fourth said “I don’t know who to trust so I’m going to ignore it 😔”, a fourth said “I don’t follow politics/I’m more worried about consumer prices”, and a fourth was pissed.
Welcome to American politics. Leave your sense of decency at the door.
So when is the last chance to get out before it’s too late?
As soon as you can. You will get no advance warning when it is no longer possible, that is the point of it.
Come on like 5 years, 10 years?
It depends on who you are and what potential minorities you fall into. But things are accelerating. By the time you think you are in danger, it will likely be too late.
It’s the whole mythical frog in a boiling pot situation.
Same.
Bro why are we not working together at this point
I’ve been busy crying, it’s a lot easier than work and about as effective
Same comrade, fucking same. If dragonball z abridged didn’t exist as a fun distraction I’d have collapsed by now. Don’t know how you’re doing it and mad respect
Medication, running on anger, and long periods of dissociation.
Also, a good social circle.
Can’t say I’m not envious, but I’m happy for you dude, out here doing work. I’m personally appreciative of all the stress you’ve taken on. Hard salute and I hope you can and do stay safe
It’s not much, honestly, especially as I don’t live anywhere particularly important. But local political groups often need hands, and it makes me feel less useless, even if all it is is raising awareness and trying to connect at-risk folk with resources.
The US has been clearly moving downhill since 2001. But the acceleration they got this year has been incredible.
And for everybody not there, remember they have the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth.
2001?
Dude, it started long before that. One could argue that it was Newt Gingrich, and the Contract With America in 1994. Or the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, which allowed unregulated propaganda. Or 1986, when Rush Limbaugh’s show proliferated around America, quickly becomes the Conservatives most successful recruiter and indoctrinator. Or in 1974, when the Republicans took advantage of the post-Watergate chaos, and passed a new tax code that baked in Trickle Down Economics.
Personally, I maintain that it all started in 1968, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. He would have ended the Vietnam War earlier, saving thousands of lives, and taken America in a completely different direction. Instead, Nixon was elected, and took us down the path of evil that has led to us being occupied by treasonous, corrupt, pedophile MAGA Nazis.
I think the failure to prosecute Nixon and the gang of criminals around him is where it started. If they were brought to justice back then everything would be different now. All of the breakdown we have now flows from the lawlessness that failure unleashed.
If Bobby Kennedy had been elected, there never would have been Watergate.
Long before that. So much of what happened in the 50’s and 60’s is the same as today. Witch hunts, denouncing education for the wrong people (poors and women), surveillance, illegal wars and actions, detaining people for no reason, no checks and balances.
This isn’t the US going downhill, it’s the US incarnate. The country is founded on the genocide of Native Americans, Hitler openly expressed admiration and inspiration from the Manifest Destiny. In the early 1900s, the US was already applying so-called big stick ideology and staging coups in Central America. Hell, when was Jim Crow repealed? This isn’t the US going downhill, it’s the US doing what it’s always done, but slightly towards the inside too.
Largest conventional military as big as the rest of the world combined plus the nukes. The US is beyond scary.
And it is infinitely complex. MAGAs are too stupid to wield our military effectively.
Luckily most of that military will be turned inward.
Yeah, I don’t know how well their supply lines would cope against basically the entire world. But it’s still scary.
Not the entire world, not by a long shot. Realistically the entire third world would have absolutely no problem trading with Trump’s America, at least not any more than with business as usual America. Then you have Europe which is ran by pussies who would never go to war unless European mainland territory (i.e. not Greenland) is threatened, which would never happen, and Japan and South Korea are right out. This leaves the only realistic belligerents as Canada and/or Mexico if they’re invaded, Venezuela and/or Iran if Trump picks a fight with them and China if and when they decide to take Taiwan. And of course throughout all this Russia would support America, providing easy access to resources and shipping. Point being: Even in a WWIII-ish scenario America will have plenty of people willing to give it resources for the war machine; the “against the entire world” thing is very eurocentric and unduly optimistic. Now that I’m typing this out, I’d honestly bet on America in WWIII.
PS: Europe has plenty of fascists who would trade with America in such a scenario.
Just enjoy the ride until it ends. People are worrying but there is not much anyone can do.
The true test of being here is managing to stay a good person in the middle of a world telling you to become a bad one.
It’s impossible to stay a good person if you’re just “enjoying the ride.”
Evil flourishes when good people fail to act.
Just be careful so you dont become what you are fighting. :)
Not much anyone can do? You’re MAGA, right?
No, more like megabyte. Huge nerd. I dont have any political interests.
Do you also not care about the extreme violence being applied to immigrants or the hate campaigns towards black and trans people?
Damn, I just had the conversation with my partner saying this. The patriot act kicked all of this off. The invaded our privacy in the name of protection. We didn’t get protection then and now we are being actively attacked.
since the 80s or 90s perhaps
Not just right now. For more than a year, at least, for the sweating. If they really paid attention, they’d be off packing their things and planning their escape.
refreshes frontpage/new for the 60th time today to see if the other shoe has dropped
It definitely is falling though. I hope someone catches it before it hits the ground.
They will not. It’s way too late.
It’s never too late unless we give in to cynicism and apathy. It is heart breaking that so many people already have given up the fight.
I’m sorry but it really is too late. The US government has access to all the money, information, and weapons they need to be 100x worse than Hitler. There is no chance this is stopped by overcoming apathy.
The literal only hope is a coup, and I’m pretty sure that if it was going to happen, it would have already happened by now. Hopefully I’m wrong.
I don’t read that comment as apathy, more an acknowledgement that fighting seems inevitable at this point. It’s probably too late for a peaceful resolution to the current crisis.
It’s not too late, but given how little resistance to Trump’s regime is taking place in America, there’s no indication that anything will happen before it’s too late.
So anyway, now may be a good time to:
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Reach out to our foreign friends and ask to help lobby their governments to provide refugee programs before we are cut off from the outside world.
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Look into decentralized mesh internet infrastructure.
Given the general trend of far-right everything, fat chance of 1 happening before it’s too late. Better hope Mexico is taking people.
You’re right that its a general trend, but there are exceptions.
Australia presently has a progressive government, with the largest majority in living memory. Our conservative parties have been gutted.
Granted, we have our share of dickheads, and id be happy to swap them for US lefties.
I2P
Don’t have high hopes for my own fate, honestly. More interested in convincing our foreign friends to look after themselves and their own government. Take us as a lesson, first and foremost.
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