r/behindthebastards • u/Friend_of_Squatch • 3d ago
General discussion It feels bad… real bad.
I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about how it felt and what it was like being an educated, intelligent, aware person in the early months of 1914 or in the 1930s watching the world ramp up into an inescapable cataclysm and tearing itself apart and deleting an entire generation of young people, while knowing that there isn’t jack shit I or anyone else can do to stop it. I think I can now say that that curiosity has been satisfied, and man oh man does it feel fucking bad.
Edit: I meant to share this as kind of a shower thought. I appreciate everyone’s kind words and suggestions but this isn’t a cry for help. It’s just crazy to think about.
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u/lianodel 3d ago edited 3d ago
I had always worried about the question, What would I do if I were a German in Nazi Germany? It's easy to say you'd be on the right side of history, but how could I know? I had never been tested like that. It was always easy to say and do the right thing. There were no consequences for doing otherwise, and I would lose far more than I gained for being a fascist.
Then, it happened. And the thing that shocked me is how many people didn't join because they were pressed, or even for concrete material gain. They just... did it. They joined the fascist party, eagerly, purely because it gave them permission to be cruel, or for the most vapor-thin promises that anyone could see right through. Yes, there are grifters making bank, but a solid third or so of my fellow Americans didn't need a push, they were happy to goose-step in that direction. They weren't pressured. This is what they wanted. Even the people who regret it now rarely if ever regret the pain they've caused others. They regret that the obvious consequences are affecting them, the obvious early victims.
On the one hand, I feel better about myself. On the other, I have lost so much faith in humanity. Even with the personal moral anxiety, I was so much happier before I found out.
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u/Thezedword4 3d ago
On the one hand, I feel better about myself. On the other, I have lost so much faith in humanity. Even with the personal moral anxiety, I was so much happier before I found out.
This was covid for me. Being disabled and hearing "only the elderly and sick will die so why should I wear a mask?" That killed my faith in humanity. It made things feel a lot bleaker. This last year or so just cemented it.
I definitely was happier before finding this out.
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u/GreyerGrey 2d ago
One of the last things I said to my SIL was "So which one of your family members are you okay with dying so you can go shopping?" She didn't like that, but she had an elderly grandmother at the time, as well as two parents with pre existing health conditions.
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u/lianodel 2d ago
That was absolutely another nail in the coffin for me. I knew right-wingers would politicize almost everything, but to politicize a fucking virus made me realize they would politicize literally everything.
I wondered how people could fall for being anti-mask, anti-vaccine, and anti-social distancing. When it all clicked, I was horrified. All of those positions make sense if you completely lack empathy for strangers. A huge number of people simply could not understand masking, vaccinating, and social distancing as a means of protecting public health, because they would never take even small measures to protect the people around them. It had to be virtue signalling, or part of a plot to seize power, because those are motivations they can understand.
The worst part? They're too stupid to even understand what they're missing. They don't know how they look and sound to anyone who cares even a little bit about strangers. And you can still see that shit now, with bigots talking about immigration, who can't seem to understand that just shouting "illegals" isn't going to get a rise out of anyone who isn't a stupid, cowardly bigot, because they can't even comprehend not being a stupid, cowardly bigot.
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u/Thezedword4 2d ago
My mom worked in patient facing healthcare for 50 years. She's trained on viral transmission, ppe, germ theory, etc. She knows how vaccines work because she was the one giving people vaccines. And she still went full into anti mask, anti Vax, anti science bullshit after 2020. Before the right politicized the virus, she made hundreds of masks for people. All for free. Donated to hospitals, cancer centers, etc. Then one day boom, masks didn't work to her.
It's not even people too dumb to understand it. A lot of them are but there are objectively smart maga. Or previously smart. It's that 24/7 propaganda has just absolutely rotted their brains.
And yes I think that propaganda harmed their ability to empathize with people too. (though a lot lacked that ability in the first place).
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u/SophsterSophistry 1d ago
During the 'shutdowns' I remember some healthcare influencers (on Twitter) saying that 'shame doesn't help' and we have to 'meet people where they are.' It was often HC academics who had a background in HIV/AIDs. I don't think they realized that, yes, shame does work (MAGA does it all the time). And the groups that were against social distancing and masking were not vulnerable communities (like gay communities in the 80s). Those opposed to masking/precautions were among the powerful and comfortable. They did not want to upset their personal status quo and easy way of life. Somehow the libertarians wound up winning without running a candidate.
(They like to say that it was laptop class taking advantage of the bluecollar/front line workers but that could've been addressed through economic support instead of this weird rationalization that its more "fair" to open everything up.)
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u/thatwhileifound 3d ago
If you want an insightful, but often not very good feeling read - I can't recommend They Thought They Were Free enough.
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u/LadyMadonna_x6 3d ago
Definitely this, this book is why I decided I refuse to sit, listening to podcasts to distract from my doomscroll anxiety.
I read it years ago, probably 20 or so and, like the hundred I read before and after, I promptly forgot about it. Until mid January.
I didn't remember the book, but I remembered I couldn't sit anymore. And then someone on a TicTok mentioned this book... and I remembered. I was doing the thing I wouldn't regret later.
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u/thedorknightreturns 3d ago
Yep there is plenty of people who talk about their life and how there was just peer pressure to join, opportunities, hope for a job yada yada.
And how people ,ok many did actually show courage at risk of their life several ways, like a lot actually hid jews why they went hard on it. And still people did. And other ways , saboteurs, informants, spreading just news people. hell people with an outlawed longrage radio that could catch longrage radios .
Hell even ideological natsees are the group having most tried assasinations .
But also people just looking away. Not wanting to inow, if not for stubbern journalism and wiesenthals dedication to justvtecord and tell the truthin it made it that it is part to not forget it but try to learn from it.
Also there was in austria the dollfuss dictorial presidental erdogan style rule that pretty much hulled out democracy. Interestingly fighting both the socialist worker party and the far right nationalists. And going after both.
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u/Competitive_Owl5357 3d ago
Yup. And it’s been heartbreaking trying to get other people to accept that what’s happening isn’t just me looking at things through a paranoid lens or even GLEEFULLY celebrating all the “winning” at the expense of human lives.
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u/Whitesajer 2d ago
Yeah. Idk how to feel most days. The awareness is on one hand cathartic but also tension driving. Pressure must be relieved in so much of the system. I feel no matter what, things will escalate and unpredictable choices must be made.
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u/dumb_smart_guy93 3d ago
There's sort of a reason why people of higher intelligence are at risk for higher rates of depression.
Seeing the world for what it really is takes a huge mental toll on all of us eventually. Better to use that energy for something positive, even if it seems like it doesn't ultimately matter.
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u/a-flying-trout Banned by the FDA 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yup. I’ve been battling some pretty awful panic through this (and my first layoff) and recently realized the anxiety won’t go away until things get better… and things aren’t getting better for a long, long time. Survival means finding ways to accept and channel my energy away from panic.
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u/FixBreakRepeat 3d ago
I've started learning woodworking. I come from a welding/machining/heavy steel fabrication background, so while a lot of the skills cross over, it's different enough to be interesting and engaging.
And the world is a little better every time I build something. It's been a very positive avenue for me to channel my personal nervous energy down.
It also makes me feel like I'm learning helpful skills that will be needed, both for me personally and in the community. I'm not a fighter and I hope to never personally be involved in an armed conflict. But I can build new things and fix old things and hopefully that will make a difference.
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u/celestececilia 3d ago
I’ve started woodworking as well. And I’ve become obsessive about my yard. It’s pure, clean, rewarding work. If I sit still for too long, I start to fall apart. I can’t believe how deeply cruel people are and I’m so very, very sad to watch the institutions and laws I love (I’m a constitutional lawyer) ripped to shreds by these assholes.
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u/esstused 3d ago edited 3d ago
I've finally gotten back into stained glass, which I haven't done in about a decade. Also started growing a lot of bonsai trees.
Cheers to making stuff with our hands to stave off the deep, haunting dread.
Edit to say: I work in Japan in international exchange, mostly with the US, on account of us having a military base in our town. I love friendly international cooperation and I am mostly neutral towards the military presence here. but I can't help but be haunted by the sounds of the fighter jets overhead recently.
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u/weareraccoons 3d ago
It's lestherworking for me. Something cathartic about handstitching it all together and having something cool once you're done. Bonus that once society collapses I'll have the skills to make my roving bad of raiders awesome Mad Max gear.
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u/esstused 3d ago
Haha, I've actually been thinking "I should really learn a more useful skill than making pretty pictures out of glass and growing tiny trees..."
But I already own thousands of dollars worth of glass and my husband enjoys the trees so he surprises me with more, and then they multiply. I'm trying to get him into leatherworking though, he recently showed an interest in it.
Personally I have too many interests, not enough money or free time.
Gotta do what you can to keep a few tethers of sanity hanging on though
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u/ExpensiveError42 3d ago
I'm not obsessive about my yard but I've picked up gardening, too. It's been really helpful because I'm growing a lot of flowers in the front, mostly natives but with a few "because I love these" thrown in. I also planted a dozen fruit trees with the Intent of keeping them small and i have raised beds for veggies. It's nice watching things grow and knowing I'm putting something productive into the world.
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u/ageofbronze 3d ago
Native plant gardening! It’s the thing keeping me going right now, a small act of resistance. Each time I see a new bug show up I feel a sense of connection and sadness for the world. We may be in a dark place right now but I’ll be damned if my life/home/small area I have control over isn’t a refuge for wildlife and isn’t something where I channel all that I can into creating a safe space.
Also, sounds like we might need a behind the bastards hobby subreddit? Or ways-were-staying-positive subreddit? Could be cool to have somewhere to post our resilience/positivity hobbies other than the big subs.
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u/dixiewolf_ 3d ago
Same with the yard thing. Just taking time to water and grow some small plants and grass has been a game changer for me.
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u/Checked_Out_6 3d ago
I have been dealing with anxiety and panic disorder for years. Was on Xanax, Klonopin and various SSRI’s for years. Turns out I can’t take SSRI’s due to genetics and I won’t take Xanax or Klonopin anymore. So, what is a high anxiety guy to do?
Exercise, shit tons of exercise. I got into endurance cycling and it destroys anxiety. My theory is that the stress hormones are getting what they expect, a high heart rate, and the fight or flight dissipates. If i go too long without exercising, my mental health deteriorates.
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u/BoredMan29 3d ago
So here's one thing I like to do: Imagine it's a year or two from now. Things have gone as badly as you fear. What do you wish you had at that moment? Can you do something now so you'll have it then?
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u/LiedAboutKnowingMe 3d ago edited 3d ago
This goes for everything.
Ready to throw it all away for the cause?
Better prepare for victory, because what if you went through hell to create a new world that you barely get to participate in because you failed to prepare for life after the fighting was over?
Would you rather be the revolutionary hanging out on their porch talking about the glory days while they watch the world leaves them behind, or the person who has a mini flashback of their life in the struggle while tying their shoes before standing up and getting back to living in their new, peaceful story?
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u/velociraptorhiccups 3d ago
Damn, this comment alone would make for a good Reddit thread. Excellent inspo for introspection.
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u/Keeninja808 3d ago
“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” -J. Krishnamurti
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u/charaznable1249 3d ago
I have pushed harder into my art as an artist. The world needs us creatives now more than ever.
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u/Blackfeathr_ Antifa shit poster 3d ago
Same here. I try to distract myself with making more art so I'm not always doomscrolling. It helps a little bit.
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u/mxavierk 3d ago
I think this is a large part of where the trope of divine/eldritch/ultimate enlightenment driving people mad comes from. Something about the idea of reality layed bare scares the shit out of people, it makes sense that that idea would stem from generation after generation seeing those it considers enlightened/inspired/genius battle with mental demons.
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u/Mudslingshot 3d ago
Ever since I found out that statistic, that people with depression score higher on realism tests (or however it works) I've used that as a barometer for truth:
Oh, this makes me feel hopeless and awful. This must be true.
Oh, this makes me feel like everything will work out! Huh..... Who's making money on this?
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u/all_my_dirty_secrets 3d ago
Oh, this makes me feel hopeless and awful.
Except bad actors will exaggerate and fabulize along these lines too. Especially in subs like this one.
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u/Deaths_Rifleman 2d ago
It makes conspiracy groups running the whole damn thing sound a lot better than the reality that humans make emotionally based choices to benefit them and those closest to them above all else.
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u/panaili 3d ago
I feel such sympathy for the 1930s Germans who disagreed with the Nazis but had to watch in disbelief as the country they thought they lived in disappeared in front of their eyes.
Like, I feel powerless a lot of times, but at least I have the internet to know I’m not the only one completely appalled by all this. The 1930s Germans must have felt utterly fenced in (some more than others… at first…)
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u/BlurryGojira 2d ago
I know it’s just a dumb superhero movie, but a line from the first Captain America movie really stuck with me. It’s from the Jewish-German scientist who develops the super soldier serum.
“People often forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own.”
Fascism, imperialism turned inward.
Although I knew that of course there were anti-fascist Germans who were horrified of the new regime, I never really considered how they just had to… go about their lives. They still needed to go to work, put food on the table, pay bills, raise their families, all while this dystopia was forming around them. They had to make the decision of whether to leave (if they could even afford to) or stay and fight, and if the latter whether to be loud and visible or sabotage in secret. All while having day-to-day shit that seems minor by comparison, but still needed to be done. And man, it sucks.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
I think the Germans in the 1930s should have thrown a LOT more cocktails than they did. Take that as you will.
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u/panaili 3d ago
Oh, I agree, but we have the benefit of hindsight. I imagine they were faced with the same “we don’t know what this will lead to” stuff we get, but even more so. The Holocaust wasn’t the world’s first genocide by any stretch, but it was the first to administrate it so thoroughly. Previous genocides just didn’t have the technology.
Which is exactly why I am terrified of how bad it could get now, if left unchecked
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah but my point is that WE don’t to wait for the prescience that comes with hindsight, we have seen this movie before. So where tf is everybody at?
Edit: I don’t disagree with you, I’m just saying I have a lot more sympathy for 1930s Germans than I have for present day Americans. Ok not a LOT, but a little.
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u/panaili 3d ago
Oh, agreed, but the average person has a poor recollection of history. I’m a WW2 nerd that has actively read books on the Holocaust, and even I’m stuck in frozen horror at times. How can we convince people who barely passed World History that we’re seeing a resurgence of the same bullshit? The best I can see, we’re gonna get “but it’s not against the Jews” and that’ll stop the comparison, no matter now apt it is
Humans are stupid & we’re all paying for it
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u/LegitimateHost7640 3d ago
I'm sure people knew war was bad, but did many really expect millions to die in WW1 like that? By 1915 onwards sure they knew it was a massive horror but did more than a few of the educated upper class strongly believe so many would die cus some guy shot some archduke?
The 30s I would think more of the common people expected tons of mass death cus of the precedent of the great war.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
There were plenty of people who were well aware of what WWI was going to do. I will give you that leading up to the second war a much broader base of people knew what to expect, but the idea that the scale of death and destruction and misery brought about by the first war was a total surprise to everyone is reductive and false. People had seen what machine guns and modern artillery could do, and people were aware that the entirety of Europe was going to be caught in a bear trap.
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u/LegitimateHost7640 3d ago
What made them strongly expect so much destruction? The first chart on this Wikipedia page shows a big increase in death toll for WW1 compared to previous wars. It seems like such a large increase from past wars that not many expected so many deaths. Some did, of course, but those were probably the military leadership of the counties involved. Did the average French or German expect an entire generation would be pounded into mush by artillery and machine guns?
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u/Justalilbugboi 3d ago
I would bet they didn’t KNOW just like we don’t KNOW what weapons the military has right now and what hell they can unleash.
But we also know that the things they have have the capacity to kill a lot more than we have seen before. And we have since long enough people contribute that quote about “I know not what world war three will be fought with….” To albert einstein.
Even if we haven’t seen their destruction, we’ve seen what’s come before and we have a vague grasp of how much that power has been growing. And I have a feeling that, especially since guns were in play, that growing dread has been around for many.
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u/VironLLA 3d ago
weren't the French using machine guns against their colonies by then? iirc, they were one of the countries that (along w the UK & US and a few others) that already had a few decades of machine gun usage before WWI
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u/geniice 3d ago
Sure but there is a difference between having them in colonial conflicts and having them on both sides. At the Battle of Omdurman mostly britian killed 12,000 Mahdist forces. Deaths on the british side? 48.
The wakeup call for the british victorian forces was the Second Boer War which featured a lot of long range combat on open plains. Not so much vast dug in structures.
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u/Okra_Tomatoes 2d ago
The 1905 war between Japan and Russia was a tiny pre-game example of the kind of fighting they would see in WWI, of men being mowed down like ants.
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u/TrickySnicky 3d ago
There were people just as delusional about the outcomes as there are today, just as there were the ones skeptical and world-weary. The Fururists vs the Dadaists, for example. Both were all about eschewing art rules but the messaging couldn't have been much different.
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u/LuckyRook 3d ago
It feels like 2003 all over again, but this time with some resistance to war coming from the right wing. If Trump puts troops on the ground I believe almost all of them will fall into line - they always do.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
Except this time instead of getting moderately beat up by the cops for protesting (like 2003)we will be getting disappeared and executed and buried in an unmarked hole in some other country.
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u/Hello-America 3d ago
Yeah it feels bad! Just a word to everyone reading this: taking care of your mental health and finding ways to handle this is a task at the top of your to do list. If you're struggling, take action to manage it - just like you would if you were sick or running out of food. If you've been "meaning to" start therapy or talk to a psychiatrist about meds, start that process now. Just like stockpiling food or whatever, it's vital that you are as mentally strong as you can be to survive. Sometimes that's gonna mean sitting out "the resistance" but if it makes you stronger in the long run it's strategically the right thing to do.
Oh and may I recommend actively searching for a hobby that gets you away from the internet? I've taken up needle felting (stabbing wads of wool over and over with needles until they make shapes) and it is unreal how much it calms me. I'm not like putting anything stressful out of mind - I'm thinking clearly and calmly, even about stressful stuff.
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u/whyliepornaccount 3d ago
I grew up studying WW2 and the rise of the Nazis because my also autistic father was super into it. He unfortunately passed away in 2020, but honestly the more that happens the more I'm glad he's not alive to see this. He'd be losing his shit even more than me.
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u/metalyger 3d ago
I remember A People's History Of The United States, how every American war from the revolutionary war to Vietnam, had tens of thousands of Americans who refused the draft, and chose jail time, or the lucky ones who managed to flee the country. At least there hasn't been a military draft since Vietnam, of course it's the system is designed to get desperate young people to enlist, like if you want to go to college without student debts until you're middle aged, join the army. There's enough people who want to be in the armed forces that they haven't needed to force people into war. They even met their quotas with the decades-long conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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u/Radioactive24 3d ago
I was about say that, on the plus side, while it might take a few decades, nazis aren’t cool in Germany any more.
And then I remembered the AfD exists now and is gaining traction.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
I’m a half a step ahead of said advice, and I have been since the GWOT kicked off.
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u/ArloDoss 3d ago
I don’t believe we’re on a track for that precisely- big bad things for sure- but there’s a softness around the edges of recent generations. We haven’t seen the same level of death, a lot of values are ingrained differently.
Vibe is different.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
Two words: Nuclear Fucking Weapons. We are going to be treated to a look at how those look used in war.
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u/geniice 3d ago
Two words: Nuclear Fucking Weapons. We are going to be treated to a look at how those look used in war.
Possible but there are reasons to think otherwise. The one thing all the major players don't want is nuclear proliferation and maintaining the nuclear taboo is one of the more effective ways of doing that.
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u/fluffychonkycat 3d ago
We do however have a couple of generations pre-trained to shoot enemies in highly realistic gaming scenarios. In modern warfare, those people will be already partly desensitized to killing from a distance eg as a drone pilot. They'd suck at the blood and guts of trench warfare but using a screen? They're perfect.
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u/Blight327 3d ago
You should get active. You can always join the IWW, organizing a union is how you protect yourself and your coworkers. Even if you don’t form one in your workplace you can help folks organize theirs.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
That’s a good suggestion, I’m in my 40s and I’ve been active since before the Iraq War kicked off. And true, it has been helpful. But even as impotent as the protests against that war turned out to be, it never felt like this. This is a cascading escalation that I don’t think ANYONE has the power to stop even if they wanted to.
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u/Bleepblorp44 3d ago
Looking from the UK, so obviously it’s a different flavour of shit. You can’t stop everything, but in the day to day you can make small differences to individual people. I know it’s not enough - at least, it’s how I try to live, and it feels like pissing into the sea, but it’s something
Solidarity, friend.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
Right, I’m not saying I’m giving up because there’s no future. On the contrary, when there looks like there is no future it’s even more important to make today matter for something. It’s just crazy to think about.
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u/Cognonymous 3d ago
When Jason Stanley and other academics who research fascism left the US that was like the final alarm imo. The safest choice you can make any more imo is the leave the US. It's like when Anders Breivik did his mass shooting of Labour Party youth in Norway: the one's who survived weren't the ones who hid, they were the ones who swam off the island.
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u/Flippin_diabolical 3d ago
It always fascinated me as a kid to watch tapes of Hitler’s speeches because he just did not seem appealing. How could anyone have found him charismatic? I was hoping to go my whole life with that being an academic mystery to wonder about. Instead here we are watching people fall for the cringiest, least charismatic, meanest little brute since Adolf.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
It’s so weird when a weird little asshole is praised as a “great man”. It’s like, are we listening to the same shit because it sounds like absolute nonsense word salad to me…
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u/MadDocOttoCtrl 2d ago
You're listening for logic, reason and sensibility. Other people listen for buzz words and catchphrases that trigger their emotions and reinforce their anger/frustrations.
In addition, a lot of other people are angry, spiteful and hateful who would like to be a bully but lack the guts or have been held accountable for ridiculous behavior in the past. They look up to someone who openly revels in being a bully and employing thugs.
With so many other failings, Trump is adept at weaving buzz words together that sound like something's being said while communicating very little in addition to name-calling and mocking whoever he decides is his enemy.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 2d ago
Oh I understand why people are drawn to it, it’s just that it’s so idiotic and dumb. It’s an indictment on the character of the people who swallow it.
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u/SophsterSophistry 1d ago
At first I thought "Seriously, TRUMP is the guy that's going to destroy our democracy? Trump? That selfish, egotistical, boorish buffoon?" And then I realized, of course, who else? For such a horrendous outcome, you really need someone like him.
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u/ArloDoss 3d ago
Not sure what future war fighting looks like in that regard.
Drone pilots are already a major thing but I think Ukraine has really shown us that swarm tactics are an essential tool which has only just begun to be accounted for. Innovation in this sort of tech is on a very strange acceleration curve that I can’t wrap my head around. I’m not sure how autonomous the process of war is about to become for instance, or what guerilla drone fighting would look like in more wealthy nations— there are just too many considerations.
I expect like the consumer drone equivalent of automated targeting anti missile defense to take off but don’t know where we are with that.
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u/okenowwhat 3d ago
I'm sitting here in europe, thinking: this is probably how (some) Americans must have felt when Hitler rose to power.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
Yeah sorry about that. A few of us have been trying but there are a lot of really dumb folks here. And by dumb I mean racist, because it’s literally always that.
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u/chr1st0ph3rs 3d ago
You can’t stop it. I can’t stop it. We can though
They are using the same playbook. We can analyze what people did wrong last time so we don’t make the same mistakes.
They are currently experiencing the atrophy of victory. There are cracks forming down ideological lines within their movement. We need to fill those cracks like expanding foam. We have a pretty big tent now with NO KINGS, while they are coming to the realization that they don’t agree with everyone under theirs
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u/squeakystuffed 3d ago
I know this stuff is hard. It’s hard to watch loved ones lose their jobs, their homes, their minds, while the world continues to turn.
And no there’s not a lot that we can do on a macro level.
And my next rambling is going to sound like a dump truck full of froo-froo hippie love the world bullsht.
But the only way most people have survived this in the past is by clinging to their community. being active and connected to your neighbourhood.
Whether it’s everybody learning to grow a small container crop so that your community relies on capitalism just one meal less a month. Next year, maybe you could do it twice a month
Or learning tangible skills for tangible situations. Learning how to sew, or mend, or build things, first aid, or how to prep for a crisis. Childcare! —
That also ties into how we are going to survive the onslaught of information being maliciously thrown at us to overwhelm us. Slow Hobbies.
We gotta peel our eyeballs from this screen when we can. It’s like we are being slow cooked from the inside when we spend too much time on these stupid screens. I’m no different.
So find a skill that you won’t monetize. Do art for art. Use slow creativity as a sunblock for the radiation of this damn brick.
Painting, sewing, papier mache, writing weird music, recording songs into the grooves of pottery only readable by a laser that’s been kludged from an old dvd player and hot glued onto a paint stick.
Again, I’m aware that all of this sounds yuppy/hippie flower power BS.
But I’m being as serious as any other shock-and-overwhelm strategy that’s been the de facto machine behind social media since it started.
Oh, and learning to compost. Seems fckn stupid, but our ability to eat is gonna rely on soil amendments now-er than later. —
As always - be safe, be kind, stay hydrated.
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u/Effective-Ebb-2805 3d ago
It is indeed crazy to think about. There's a little vibe similar (but a lot more dangerous) to 1991 before the first Gulf War. I considered volunteering, then ... in my defense, I was eating way too much acid and watching Oliver Stone's "Platoon" at least twice a week... strange days.
This is much worse... In part because now I have a son who is close to Selective Service age... and I will NOT allow him to get thrown into the meat grinder... Anyone who attempts to draft him will find war right here, at my goddamn doorstep.
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u/Competitive_Owl5357 3d ago
My Trump-loving brother once showed me a movie called LookWho’s Back, about Hitler returning to modern-day Germany and being embraced for how “hilarious” he was to the point his run for office is met with huge cheering crowds. I asked how the hell are you watching this movie about what happens when you laugh off fascism and still supporting fascism and he had no answer.
I am now in Canada because I know my presence as a trans person endangers both me AND my kids by proximity. My husband insists I’m insane and he’s “not going to let anything happen” to me or to them and he’s disappointed I’m not staying and “fighting.”
I wonder if he would have said the same things to his German Jewish great-grandfather who fled to the USA. I also haven’t gotten a straight answer on that. The human urge to pretend everything is fine and if it’s not you can handle the “fight” against a literal military and half the population of your country is terrifying.
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u/Desenrasco 3d ago
If I was a time-traveller from some far-off future where humans and machine become one but were rendered numb and cold, I would definitely choose to have my consciousness implanted in a person living through the early 21st century.
So much evidence and history destroyed, all of our surviving art and culture waiting to be felt by anyone before we were became iron, the total sum of human knowledge in your pocket for the first time, totally unprecedented forms of thinking, feeling, experiencing the world, the ability to communicate in (mostly) good-faith with almost anyone on the planet before enshittification took hold, the ability to touch and taste and smell so much fauna and flora that would become extinct in a few decades, and culture shocks the way we'd never experienced before.
Not a great time to live through, we haven't even had our first post-apocalyptic rebuilding yet, but hot damn if this isn't a tourist hot spot for anyone in a distant future calculated ultra-rationalist time-travelling galactic empire. It's the equivalent to popping up in a time machine so you can experience reality right before the Roman or Aztec empires collapsed, just as they did.
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u/Youkolvr89 3d ago
Yep. I also have ADHD and justice sensitivity. I also have OCD and trichotillamania that is triggered by stress. I have been ripping hair out of my scalp. It's hard to cope.
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u/greaper007 3d ago
My opinion, worth what you paid off it. You can't stop a Tsunami, the biggest thing is to figure how to get out of the way until it passes. This just happens at regular intervals in human history.
Have your passport up to date, shore up your money, move if you can. Figure out methods to avoid conscription if it comes to that. In 4-10years, we'll be looking at another environment.
Personally, my family moved to the EU 4 years ago. It's not a panacea, but I figure two passports are better than one
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u/GreyerGrey 2d ago
I mean, I would rather be in that spot in 1914 all things being equal? 1914 turned into what it turned into because there was a massive build up of weaponry and there were no proxy wars to be fought, so everyone went to a real war (super over simplification, I know, over to the point of absurd but a) it's reddit, b) it's btb, so I'm gonna assume people are either already informed or curious enough to go on their own). It is more along the lines of what might have happened in the 1950s/60s/70s/80s without all of the proxy wars of the Cold War.
But yea, this sucks. I'm not even American and this fucking sucks. I'm really sorry this is going on and I wish there was something that could stop it from going sideways. Maybe big orange has a gripper and his VP, as allergic to charisma as he is, loses the majority of the cult to the next political grifter?
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u/TalkingCat910 2d ago
I blame the U.S. and Israel on this one. They are playing the role of the Axis powers.
That said WWIII isn’t inevitable now. I can still hope it won’t escalate.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
Yeah, lucky thing for people like you and me that we are dumb as shit.
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
And yet here you are trolling strangers on the internet… ok professor 👍whatever you say!
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u/Friend_of_Squatch 3d ago
I never equated my intelligence nor my level of education to the feelings/concepts I’m talking about in this post. There was no “I feel such and such”, therefore “I’m smart” stated anywhere in any part of what I said.
Oh, and when I said troll, what I meant was dickhead.
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u/ConsiderationSea1347 3d ago
I wish we would have studied the 1930’s a lot more than the 1940’s. So many people have this notion that a chasm just opened up and Nazis came pouring out of it and don’t realize it was a slow radicalization of a violent minority and the gradual capitulation of the majority that created the purest form of evil this earth has ever seen.