TimmyDeanSausage

Far-right people really don’t understand what peer review is…

Well yes, there are outliers. My grandma was one of them. She participated in countless protests throughout her life, starting with the civil rights movements in the 60’s, and never stopped. She was part of the group that stopped the keystone pipeline from stealing people’s land in Texas. She was an amazing woman, may she RIP.

My point is, there wasn’t enough like her among boomers. There were, of course, plenty of boomers that didn’t have it easy. I too was raised in poverty and have known boomers who struggled. But, by and far, the boomers believed in the “American dream”, and even the ones who were struggling believed things could turn around for them eventually. The majority of them bought into or allowed reaganomics, propaganda, and blatant emperialism to thrive under their watch.

The difference I’m seeing in people below the age of 40 is that we talk politics openly, and we know who the bad guys are (the billionaires and their lackeys). We know that the billionaire’s, and their corporations, have been extracting our wealth for decades, that healthcare and higher education are scams, that we can’t trust anything the establishment media says. Even the younger right wing people know this stuff, the’ve just bought into the propaganda channels on TikTok and YouTube. But, I think the demographics have truly shifted in that the amount of people buying into the propaganda is no longer the majority. Young people actually are waking up, which is why we’re seeing all of these truth-to-power movements like BLM, quiet quitting, and “cancel culture”. These movements are growing despite major resistance from the establishment. Mostly because, those of us below 40 feel the effects of the status quo the hardest. They’ve extracted so much from us that we have nothing left to lose. We just need the older generations to fucking listen for a change, and stop fighting us at the polls every time. And we need young people to realize they can work around their work schedules with early voting. I’ve spent much of my adult life working 60 to 80 hour work weeks and I’ve voted in every federal and local election of the past decade. There’s really no excuse to not properly educate yourself on current politics and vote. Congress.gov and cspan are great resources for unfiltered information. Use them!

Sorry for the rant, OP, that last bit wasn’t directed at you. xD

I agree that we shouldn’t let the oligarchs divide us, and that there are boomers that haven’t been voting towards oligarchy for the past 60 years. But, at the same time, I have a hard time giving any boomers a pass because I think they didn’t fight hard enough. The vast majority of them stuck their heads in the sand and stayed there for most of their relatively comfortable lives. They let their government slide further and further towards oligarchy and didn’t talk about it because talking politics was considered uncouth… Or because they’re religious and “this earth isn’t our eternal home anyways”, or some other hand-wavy bullshit. It’s very hard for me to not feel betrayed by their collective ignorance and ineptitude.

Bernie Sanders (AFAIK) has done two 12 hour sessions of this in the past week or so. It feels surreal to watch an American politician at his age show such an impressive feat of stamina and determination to fight for the American people. I’m eternally grateful for that man and his lifelong efforts in working for the interests of the working class.

Geeeez lol. We’ll here’s to hoping there’s no needles inside me! xD

Well… The surgeon wasn’t very good… He made multiple mistakes, that I’m aware of, and my issue is coming back a little over a year after the surgery… Now with staph infections because he used non-degradable sutures on the inside and they’re coming out! And I still haven’t financially recovered from the last round… Yay America!

Sorry, I’m not trying to unload on you. Really just venting to the void. No need to respond to this one haha.

Thank you for reading and sympathizing.

Same! I’ve dealt with several major health issues and been burned so many times. I spent almost a full year bed ridden, waiting for a surgery that was deemed “elective” when I could barely walk, and was in 10/10 pain while on the max amount of pain killers, and fighting with insurance every step of the way to have them cover things my plan covered. All the while, bleeding thousands of dollars to get all kinds of tests done, sometimes multiple times for the same test, and at an already significant financial strain due to being mostly bedridden… Anyone that tells me the healthcare system in this country is OK gets a 20 minute lecture, minimum.

Anyways, I found a seemingly legitimate primary care physician the other day. He was available, on time, knowledgeable, his staff could answer questions, and knew how to read blood pressure correctly. I was astonished. I’m still waiting to find out how his office is too good to be true but, in the mean time… 🤞

This happened to an old co-worker of mine. His wife was deported after they had been married for awhile and had a kid. It took them something like 6 or 7 years, and tens of thousands of dollars, to get her back to the US, and she almost died in the process. The cartel found out her husband was American and mugged her on her walk home from work. They stabbed her in the neck, barely missing her carotid artery. Their story is crazy af, and still breaks my heart for them, when I think about. Dude, lost out on most of his first daughter’s early childhood and almost lost it all because the US thinks it’s necessary to punish people that were brought here as children. So stupid.

Thankfully, they’re all in the US now and, last I heard, they had another kid and are doing great. :)

She literally stood and spoke out against genocide at the DNC. Granted, it came off a little soft but, she very clearly said that her administration does not condone genocide and that they would use various strategies to put pressure on Israel, while “maintaining strategic military alliances in the region”. It was a tactful/“politically-savvy” way to say it, but she did speak on it and promise action. I may be wrong, but I don’t think we can say the same for Donny.

Can we get a relocation care package for all of the reasonable people stuck in red state hell-holes!? I’d move to literally any blue state if I had the resources and reassurance it won’t be sucked into US federal far right bs. So done with this scam country.

I wonder how many of these “micro-retirees” are people looking for jobs, or people who are burnt out and no longer looking after having been looking for months. My main freelance gig dried up over a month ago, and I haven’t been able to find anything substantial, that pays my bills, since then. I’ve been looking at all sorts of different things, but the reality is, I can leave the industry I’ve worked in for 15 years and take a big pay cut to take a job with skills I gained from hobbies. Or, I can somehow come up with ~$5k to pay for additional training and certifications I would need to get a better job that would pay my bills. That’s an oversimplification of my situation, but I really wonder how many people are caught in situations similar to mine in which, there aren’t really many options that work for me, or that I can reasonably obtain without outright lying on my resume.

Found it!

https://youtu.be/NTw5wkS29Sc?si=UxEJlAZHVostFf4O

While I generally agree, I would still be extremely skeptical of those changes coming from the people that have spent the last 60 years sliding us into a situation were we desperately need those changes. If that was the play, I would see it as a decades long scam with the intent being to purchase legitimacy with a lie. The logical conclusion being they want absolute power and see a working strategy to obtain that by following in the nazi’s footsteps, with some modern revisions.

Well, it started with Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning, which is more about what happened after the coup, until nazi’s downfall. Then, I read parts of The Third Reich by Thomas Childers, which prompted a documentary watch and I haven’t gone much further than that. But both of those books are amazing and very informative. I can try to find that documentary too, if you’re interested.

To expand on this for the unaware: Hitler came back into power for his second term in 1932. His first term, similar to trumps, was rife with turmoil and political/administrative blunders. One of the first things he did, upon returning to power, was a German version of The New Deal. They massively invested in their country’s infrastructure and provided tens of millions of jobs for the young working class, who had been suffering the worst unemployment crisis in an age. For the first time in their lives, young Germans had good jobs (with great benefits) and were contributing towards building a better, cleaner, safer Germany, all facilitated by “the national socialist party”. This was the part of nazi history that actually included socialism, and it’s how the nazi party duped an entire generation into becoming their foot soldiers. They actually delivered substantive, positive change for the people, allowed people to get comfortable with the new status quo while they further built propaganda machines, then turned that status quo into a carrot on a stick. Young nazi’s were very fearful of a backslide, so when nazi propaganda started saying all these bad people were trying to take away their newfound financial freedom, it was very easy to convince these young, relatively ignorant, working class people to “defend” the country they proudly built with their own hands.

If the GOP did a 180° on all of their economic policy, of the last 60+ years, to follow a similar story arc, I would be extremely concerned. With how down-trodden our 3 youngest generations are, the conditions for an American copy of nazi Germany couldn’t be more perfect than they are right now.

I’m not a historian. I just read a book on this subject recently. Feel free to correct or add to anything I got wrong/missed!

Their formatting was dog dukey, but I was still able to parse what they were saying fairly easily. They’re saying “good job judge Jackson. Too bad you won’t be able to get a free house from insert evil billionaire here (/s)”. While I agree with your sentiment, the way you go about pointing these things out can backfire, if done with a rude tone, such as the way you chose to do it. There you go; an unsolicited constructive criticism for an unsolicited constructive criticism. :)

I don’t get how you don’t get it. I mean that with no animosity of any kind. I’m genuinely curious when people talk about buying a house like it’s a common sense option.

As a millennial in my early 30’s, the only people I know my age that own a house are people with parents that essentially handed them a fully built life when they came of age. As in, paid for college, bought their first (or first few) cars, floated them after college, paid for their weddings, then paid half or the full deposit on their “starter” home. And that’s not a specific person I have in mind. That’s every friend I have who owns a house. Their parents had that kind of money. Every other person I know that doesn’t have rich parents (I’m in this camp) is working themselves to the bone just to scrape by. After 16 years in the workforce, 14 of those years being in a highly niche (but terribly paid) tech role, I can barely afford to keep a car running doing all of the work myself, let alone scrape together an extra $200 to get a secured card so I can finally start building credit. My pay checks are already consumed by the time they hit my account, and there’s a seemingly endless backlog of debt from decades of poverty. My parents are finally at a point were they can help their kids at times, but it’s in small amounts and they can only help one or two of us at a time. But, they’re boomers who might never retire, so even taking small loans from them feels bad. It’s an incredibly disparaging state of existence. I’m leaving out a lot of details for the sake of not writing a novel, but, I’m not financially illiterate, and I’m not giving up. I’ve just accepted the bleakness of my reality while I slowly grind myself (hopefully) out of it over the next 2 to 3 decades.

I’m not trying to whine, or point out your privilege. What I’m saying is; this is my reality. One in which the concept of “extra money” you can put aside for smart investments is a nice delusion to entertain. The fact that people like you are out there wondering why someone our age wouldn’t buy a house boggles my mind, but also shows a very stark contrast in the lives of working/povery-class people and middle class and up. That is a huge problem.

But that’s just my perspective. As I said, I’m genuinely curious to hear yours. How are you in a position where buying a house is the obvious option when statistics show that is very much not the case for most people under 40?

Edit: spelling.

My SO and I live in a 4 bedroom house with 4 other adults in their 30’s. I haven’t had this many roommates since I was 17, but I’m finally making some progress on my ridiculous medical debt. Best country in the world.

Right. Republicans, the “party of personal responsibility”, aren’t responsible for any of the problems. Obviously.

So… The current president is not only responsible for decisions made by other branches of government, but also decisions of previous administration’s? Really great take there buddy…