The left should start arming themselves. That’s my takeaway anyway.

It’s a situation with no correct answer, and that’s what makes it so frustrating. That’s generally why I point out that we’re just looking at different flavors of fascism, but people should still vote however the hell they want, or don’t.

This is actually a thing. It’s called “Model Collapse”. You can read about it here.

It’s not giving up; it’s acknowledging the reality of the Groundhog Day movie we’re stuck in, and doing what you will with that information. This endless circle of the working class bickering over “the lesser of two evils” every 4 years needs to end.

It’s not giving up though; it’s acknowledging a reality and making a decision with that information. The alternative is that we get stuck in this nauseating infinite loop of voting for “the lesser of two evils,” while the working class bicker. Both sides aren’t the same, but they lead to the same outcome—as we’ve seen over and over. This is the trap they have put us in and these are the intended results.

Fascism is already winning. It’s going to win regardless of whether we vote for Trump or Biden. That’s just the reality of it. Vote for whoever the fuck you want. That’s your freedom. Just know that in America, the ruling class will never part with even a shred of their power.

No matter what choice you make, fascism still wins. That’s just the American way. You can have covert fascism, or overt fascism.

Yeah, exactly. There are tons of people out there that have amazing soft skills and curiosity they don’t get paid anything extra to put forward. Now we have this stupid phrase “quiet quitting” for people that are doing exactly what they are paid to do, while contributing nothing over and above. Capitalists will constantly demand the “over and above” in things like annual reviews etc, but they rarely compensate to match it. It’s a system where one side holds all of the leverage.

We should remember who is parroting the “unskilled jobs” thing over and over. It’s always capitalists that benefit from paying these folks poverty wages like the meme states. So while the category can be called “unskilled” to differentiate from jobs that require months/years of formal (or informal) training, capitalists use it as an excuse to exploit. Both things can be true at the same time for different reasons.

I learned how to drive a forklift in a day for a stock room. Capitalists would still call it an “unskilled” job because I didn’t put myself into massive debt with a student loan, spending time I don’t have in a classroom. When does that job suddenly become “skilled”? Is there some imaginary threshold capitalists will accept?

Anyone that is contributing to the pool of labor is using a skill of some sort. Whether you think your job is easier than another or not doesn’t matter. All of the voids are filled with people willing to do a skill. CEOs and landlords, on the other hand, are contributing nothing to the labor pool. Simply owning a thing is not skilled work, but they will tell you otherwise, just like they set the standards for what is “skilled” vs “unskilled.” It’s all skewed to benefit the ruling class and give them an excuse to not pay a living wage.

For context, I’m a programmer that has been in the field for 18 years. Until the working class undoes this conditioning and equally supports each other, nothing will change for the better.

Temu?

The “bad” ones just float to the top when a government is around long enough. It’s human nature. The ones seeking power and money see others seeking the same, and they look at them as a rung on a ladder. They help each other because it benefits them. They actively work to shut out the “good” ones because they know they’ll lose their spot to them if they aren’t careful. Suddenly the “good” ones are lost in the noise. The incorruptible become powerless.

It’s similar to the police force in the US, for example. People go in with good intentions, but the force has been around long enough that the mad dogs have already permeated all of the top ranks. So the “good” ones either wash out, or they assimilate. One of my relatives washed out, while the one that had been there much longer turned into a massive racist. Which one do you think climbed the ranks quicker?

Power structures automatically attract selfish, self-serving people that just become worse offenders the more wealthy and powerful they become. Power is a vacuum after all, and there are plenty of bad people standing in line to fill it. This is why I don’t trust a single politician. Whether they want to admit it or not, under that facade of wanting to change their city or “do good,” there is some underlying desire for power and attention. That doesn’t mean none of them do anything good in their time though; it just means we should be cautious.

As soon as I smell authoritarianism, it’s a no from me. Even as someone that reads communist and socialist theory. I think people take too much of the past and try to apply it as-is to the world of today. But it doesn’t work. Modern times require modernized ideas, and I sometimes wish people had more imagination.

I’m against both of them. It’s imprisonment, torture and forced assimilation. It should be an easy decision for anyone that is also against what the Nazis did and Israel is doing.

The TikTok ban is a weird gray area. It’s one of those things where I don’t like any of these tech companies or the fact that they are essentially monetizing terror, and I will never have allegiance to them or the entities that influence them to deceive and profit themselves, but it’s also a pipeline for information either way—which is something we are lacking more and more of every day with the constant deaths of journalists and journalist outlets. People need to remember that no one is immune to propaganda and we should take all of the information with a grain of salt.

But if we’re talking about the things happening in Gaza, any eyes we can get add value. It’s not like this is some new event that we don’t have documented history on. We’re witnessing the next stage of the genocide, and TikTok (hate it or love it) has helped expose a lot of the atrocities (in the same way that Twitter used to).

It’s really not a stretch to say that anti-imperialist governments and individuals benefit from this because it exposes the atrocities the US and Britain have been perpetuating for years. Of course that’s a benefit to them. It’s also a benefit to the people forced to live under the governments committing those atrocities.

I have a feeling these questions are trying to feel out whether or not I’m a fan of the authoritarian flavor of communism and that’s a nope lol. I’m not on Lemmygrad or Hexbear. I don’t like police regardless of the continent or any other factor. We are seeing power vacuums in 2 very different types of authoritarian structures and none of them pan out to anything good for the working class.

I keep it simple: it’s always the working class vs the ruling class.

That said, refreshing myself on the Uyghur internment camps and then comparing them to the recently uncovered concentration camps that Israel has in the desert, and seeing the similarities, is unnerving. One exists to allegedly indoctrinate a population, while the other exists to exterminate it. There is a Venn diagram here somewhere.

It didn’t invent it. It just caught on at the right time and amplified that knowledge. It’s also a network. I don’t get TikTok but I’ve seen how popular it is in the new generations. This isn’t new knowledge; it’s just new packaging for a plugged-in-since-birth generation.

I’m too old for TikTok. Old Twitter, Reddit before it went to shit, niche message boards. That’s where I used to hang. Now it’s gathering communities I like on my own Lemmy server.

It’s not about trusting TikTok. It’s about understanding that we have a terrible tech company, vs a terrible government. But at the same time, it has helped radicalize and inform so many in the ranks of Gen Z, amongst other generations. Even if you skip past the 24/7 stream of Gaza coverage ( which we absolutely need since Israel has murdered something like 121 journalists in Gaza), you’ll find videos of Gen Z and other folks making videos that layout documented history, protest methods, agitprop, and their own amateur journalism to others. That has value, even if the source is just in it for the notoriety and money. It’s an awkward position where it becomes a tool to the revolution, because it’s in opposition (for its own gain), but is never trustworthy.

Oh shit, I forgot all about Telegram. Bluesky is in the ring now too, but I don’t really know much about it.

I actually found meds that work! Non-stimulant but they help my focus a ton. I’m actually taking the same as you, it’s just under a different name.

Laziness definitely playing a part for me lol. That and adjusting to getting older. I still do solid workouts and feel like I’m in my prime, but it’s still hard to fight the exhaustion of life.

The thing is, it doesn’t have to lie or twist the truth. All it has to do is give people a window into what the US has been doing around the world for years. The US has done this to itself. The younger generations are onto the ruling class and their playbook is no longer working. They want to ban TikTok now because of the massive amount of unfiltered Gaza content it provides. I should note, TikTok simply promoting this stuff in its algorithm is enough (look up “Heating” in regards to TikTok).