Monday, 8 October 2018

Realpolitalk

quote [ Wanted to have a discussion on The Future of the USA (TM). ]

Prompt for discussion in extended entry.

So... now that Rs have (at least) two sexual predators on SCOTUS the question has come up for me again of what's the line in which I'm like, "Ok, now is the time when if people were smart in The Purge or The Pianist or whatever they'd pick up and leave, seeing the direction things are going."

I feel like now is that time to "get in while the getting is good" and find a new job, get a visa, etc without being thought of as a refugee or laws regarding immigration/emigration get harder, etc.

This is mainly because I can't see a viable way to not have a slide into something significantly worse in the country. Let's step away from the quite possible failure of the blue wave, keeping the Rs with congress for another two years, or the -quite possible- reelection of our command and chief. So, that's on the table and quite possible, perhaps more-so. In that timeline things continue their not so slow slide towards fascism, which I use without hyperbole as the US has always been pretty buddy buddy with the ideals of fascism and that ever more seems to be the case. But what's the alternative? Let's say D's take the congress and POTUS back... and then what? There is no solution to 30 years of propaganda and aggressive tribalism.

Does anyone have a "likely" scenario that has a positive outlook? I hope I'm missing something and just being myopically pessimistic but how does this not end with violence of some sort?
[SFW] [politics] [+1 Insightful]
[by conception@2:58pmGMT]

Comments

ComposerNate said[3] @ 3:42pm GMT on 8th Oct [Score:1 Informative]
Republicans choosing GW Bush after their Lewinsky nonsense was what confirmed my need to escape, choosing Germany and the EU to raise a family and new life. When the economic collapse happened, I didn't expect it to be global. It's now been 15+ years and I've felt better about paying taxes considering where they go, better about raising a son here without all that religious, gun murder, racist, war hungry toxicity, and have a higher income with greater savings than anyone in my stateside family. The downside is needing ask my wife to help me read some of my mail, and having left behind many worthwhile childhood and young adult friends, none of whom visit, even with promises of guest room and financial help and free tours of Europe with me. Also the risk that any war upcoming will be global, from climate change desperation or aggression, and the increasingly isolationist USA has nearly all the weapons. I have reverted my apartment's cellar space back to a useable post-WW1 bomb shelter, my city having been bombed twice the last century and NATO now being less reliable.
steele said @ 6:17pm GMT on 8th Oct
You could run, it's a valid strategy, sure. But, considering the magnitude of the issues we're dealing with, I don't know where you're going to run to? Whether it's climate change, the spread of fascism, (and yeah, those two totally go hand in hand) or something more specific to your life, these things are pretty much going to follow you around the globe.

Personally, I think there's a very narrow window here in the US in which things don't go totally tits up within the next few decades. Thanks to Bernie, we've got something of a resurgence of the kind of attitudes we need to build the kind of strong communal society that might actually get us through the hardest times... But realistically, as a nation, we're fucked. The power to get shit done, to change the way people think, are in the hands of the most greediest... And that puts a lot of weight on the scale in our disfavor.

There's a pretty Mahatma Ghandi-like quote: Be the change you wish to see in the world. And while it may not be something he's ever said, there is something there to think about. The world we live in, the world we're moving towards, has a lot of people that are going to need a lot of help. You may even end up being one of them, but while you're not, you can be one of the people that helps them. At the end of your life, when your brain fires out its last burst of electricity, you'll be erased from the world, but the actions you take have the possibility of creating impact that can last far beyond our own existence. I mean... they will last beyond your own existence, how long and whether the impact happens to be positive or negative... That's up to you and what you do.
conception said @ 6:32pm GMT on 8th Oct
Sure - an right now I implement the most effective use of my energy to effect change - money. But is the education and attitudes to steward the planet through the coming crisis being developed in the US? Is my effort being placed in the right spot?

I mean sure, there is no "greener grass" for everything, but I'm pretty sure there are parts of the world where you don't have to debate with people about why having more cars on the road is bad for the environment. Not everywhere, but there are some places.
steele said @ 6:45pm GMT on 8th Oct
I don't think there's going to be one place where you're going to be able to save the world from. This is a global issue that requires distributed efforts in community organizing. The fascist method to shutdown our tribes to as small as possible and treat everyone else as the enemy is literally the issue we're fighting. That's what allows the rich and powerful to maintain their control that's going to destroy us. That's why they spend so much money union busting and trying to sow discontent among the different demographics. Massive movements that don't have the benefit of a massive bankroll with their own collaborative media distribution network require a more distributed approach to a simple unifying idea. Basically what we're looking for is Guerilla Altruism. A virally mass distributed network of Mister Roger's "Helpers." That's our hope. Anything less than that... is basically what we've been doing that hasn't worked so far.
conception said @ 7:50pm GMT on 8th Oct
I think you may be right but I don't see that as viable. It's just too easy to pit tribes against each other. Is this your narrow window?
steele said @ 8:14pm GMT on 8th Oct [Score:1 WTF]
Was that not narrow enough? ;)
The narrow window is american politics taking a hard left. Pretty unlikely, to be sure, but not impossible thanks to Bernie.
rhesusmonkey said @ 4:04am GMT on 9th Oct
in the US specifically, but likely other regions Globally, you aren't going to get much benefit out of the current political structure. The solution is really to fragment the USA into separate unions, possibly four or five, and then let the successful states remain so and the unsuccessful ones die a horrible death.

Evangelical Christians in the US are (currently) the Worst. you have people that a) take the Book of Revelations literally and b) are actively looking forward to Armageddon so they can get their Rapture on. i was reading today about religious activist groups that are trying to get out the vote for their respective "teams", and the Dobson Family fucksticks have some message about "Voting our Values" which, apparently means hating your fellow citizens and actively seeking to punish them for their heresey of being "Non-believers".

I don't know how this resolves itself without bullets, but by and large the challenge Progressives face in the US is they think they are dealing with other rational adults, and that they can negotiate a compromise that benefits them all. the "other side", who i will not call Conservatives, since they aren't, do not want to negotiate. they do not want to share the spoils, and they don't believe in egalitarian ideas. They are the resurgence of the Aristocracy as seen in Europe several centuries ago, and they deserve to be dealt with in the same fashion (aka Guillotines).
Paracetamol said @ 9:25pm GMT on 8th Oct
Just saying: in Nazi Germany, a sizable number of persecuted people was covered by the population. Like separated jewish families surviving undercover in Berlin. I read that it took ca. 50 people per person to get them through that time, like providing shelter, communication and the like.
rhesusmonkey said @ 4:09am GMT on 9th Oct
i'm debating returning to Canada. discussed with my partner after the Saturday clusterfuck about what threshold would be necessary to force our hand. We are advantaged in that it is only a one hour flight (or six hour drive) to our home country - many other immigrants here have to cross one ocean or another to do the same.

So to be honest, having Citizenship elsewhere would be nice, if you have a technical skill set you can get a TN VISA into Canada or Mexico (assuming this is still part of NAFTA2.0) which is good for up to 6 year, or the hopeful worst-case Trump Presidency duration.
perezoso said @ 7:44pm GMT on 9th Oct [Score:1 Informative]
If you can scrape together $100,000 or, better, $250,000 or more, and bring it with you, there are lots of places that will grant residency. And after a few years of "investor" residency, something more permanent.

My wife is from South America and we've always given thought to moving there (again - we did it for a few years over a decade ago). Its especially possible if one of us were to develop some nasty health condition that is impossibly expensive to treat here.

I do think this is the dying gasp of a certain brand of angry (mostly) white (mostly) guys, but it's really hard to know how long it will last, and how something like climate change (flooded beach houses, "mandates" for low emissions lifestyles) will feed into it. If I felt confident it was going to last a very long time (say 20+ years), I might make plans to commit overseas myself, but I'm not quite there yet.
rhesusmonkey said @ 3:26am GMT on 10th Oct
we are Canadian citizens already, so "return" is unencumbered by visa issues. money also unlikely an issue, could liquidate and walk away with six figures in both of my 401k and RRSP and live off that for a year easily (longer if living with family vs renting /owning).

really it is the social aspect, the less attractive job prospects, and the idea that maybe, just maybe, things will blow over in a few years. i am financially incentivized to stay here through summer of 2020, so walking away before then would require significant adverse change to the status quo (for me and my family, obviously other people have bigger problems already).
norok said @ 12:46am GMT on 10th Oct [Score:-1 Boring]
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rhesusmonkey said @ 3:50am GMT on 10th Oct [Score:0 Underrated]
you know, when my children say "I can't do it!" i respond with "Yet."

Same applies here. the stimulus that comes from the new Tax plan has good short-term benefit (Thanks Keynes!) but at the expense of larger deficit spending and debts. were the same funds applied to an infrastructure (shovel ready jobs!) bill, i would be quite happy. it is what Obama was pushing for for several years and the Republicans wouldn't budge (because deficit spending is bad! at least for the black President). it was good policy then and is good policy now.

But the tax thing, and particularly if they get around to part2 where they stop taxing Capital Gains, is simply a forcing function to transfer more taxpayer wealth to corporations and the financial elites. like me. i'll be honest that the tax bill was a windfall for me personally, but not as much as for the top 1% or the 0.1% or the 0.01% For average Americans it was really not that much benefit, and we'll see what horror stories come out next April when people find out they haven't been contributing enough to their tax bill because the IRS calculator gooses your paycheck numbers (or so i have heard - the tax code is as byzantine as it ever was).

Long term what does this bubble of an economy do? why burst, of course. Student debt is going to be the next big hurdle, and DeVos is working hard to make sure the for-profit schools can't get sues to reimburse students who payed then real dollars for a fake education.

War? i wouldn't rule it out in the next few years. South China Sea tensions are rising. Issues with Russia and Georgia could get ugly (NATO implications there). This recent thing between Turkey and Saudi Arabia could get messy, waiting to see.

But wait, i forgot WE ARE ALREADY AT WAR - or did you forget the sixteen years we've been in Afghanistan? the fifteen (ish) years we've been in Iraq? Syria? you realize we haven't "won" against ISIS or Al Quada, right? that's still WIP.

Terrorism is a domestic problem now instead of foreign, it also hasn't gone away. almost 5 times as many people have died from gun violence in 2017 than in 9-11.


But you're right, now that we're drilling in ANWR and ripping out more coal we won't have an energy shortage. So there's that.

What I and i'm sure others fear is that we will have to look back to 2018 as a more civil time when things could have stopped our slide into chaos but did not.
0123 said @ 4:09pm GMT on 8th Oct [Score:-2]
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conception said @ 5:05pm GMT on 8th Oct [Score:-1]
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0123 said @ 6:15pm GMT on 8th Oct [Score:-2 Boring]
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rhesusmonkey said @ 3:51am GMT on 9th Oct [Score:-2]
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0123 said[1] @ 10:14am GMT on 9th Oct [Score:-2]
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arrowhen said @ 7:34pm GMT on 9th Oct [Score:-3]
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rhesusmonkey said[1] @ 3:20am GMT on 10th Oct [Score:-3]
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rhesusmonkey said @ 3:46am GMT on 9th Oct [Score:-1]
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1111 said @ 1:02pm GMT on 30th Jun [Score:-1]
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