That’s one of my main worries with the current situation. That Trump will leave office or die and everything will go back to ‘normal’, because all the issues supposedly disappeared with him. All the while the USA will continue terrorizing the EU, bombing civilians and mass murdering their own citizens.
Trump or no Trump, the current USA needs to go. Abolish the federal government, return sovereignty to all individual states, pay reparations to all countries harmed by American imperialism, prosecute all oligarchs to the fullest extent of the law.
your political system is the problem
capitalism
Forgive my ignorance: isn’t capitalism an economic system?
From a classical economics (1700s) perspective, yes. However in the 1800s economists, political scientists, and philosophers started seeing the division in how we as a society study economics and politics as separate entities as a mistake and started analyzing groups of people through the lens of how their economy and politics effected eachother. It is to the benefit, however, to the capital holding class to sustain the divide and to never engage with the idea that the structure of civilization as we know it fundamentally exists to create a tier-based class system in which a small number of people own everything and produce nothing, and a large class of people own nothing and produce everything
Humans are the problem
Do you not think you’re able to improve and do better by others? If you do, don’t you think others are human as well and can also do so? If you don’t, don’t you think you should be more ashamed about it?
This kind of misanthropy is either pointless doomerism or telling on yourself.
Nope. Marx already covered this. People are a product of their material reality. When people get desperate their morals can be warped. You give people what they need and want, crime drops. 99.9% of people just want to live their life in peace when given the option.
Google dialectical materialism.
Wake me up when you get past it
Oligarchs are the problem. They are creating the system, where small group of people have all the power.
If you look in to the history, it was always like that. They would change the name of the system, but it works the same way. From monarchy to religious regimes, from capitalism to other authoritarian regimes. From time to time they will use left wing slogans i.e. Nazis was pretending to be socialists.
Look where’s the power. Who has it. If it’s in a hands of a small group, you’re fucked.
Socialism solves all of that.
How we can get there? How we can create true socialist country, without oligarchs, state capitalism or authoritarian emperor?
Authoritarianism of the proletariat is required. It sucks and would be cool if it could be done peacefully, but that is how you deal with oligarchs. Re-education centers for the reactionary masses, and the chopping block for the oligarchs.
Keep waiting for your perfect moral socialism while they slowly kill us all…
I used to be afraid of the “authoritarianism”, but all socialists need to realize the class war is a real war being waged, a war between the people and the most advanced and all-encompassing enemy in history. We must have a serious and disciplined response and it requires organization like that of an army. Is it authoritarian to follow the commands of your captain when you are in battle? Maybe it is, but without this coordination and discipline we will be destroyed.
And then the most psychopathic and power hungry individuals get filtered to the top of that authoritarian structure and whoops you’ve got a political ruling class who control everything and have no interest to relinquish their power. Totalitarian state capitalism à la Stalin.
I’m not saying that you can’t break a few eggs for the omelette, but you absolutely need to keep things decentralized and democratic. The alternative sets the stage for failure. The “dictatorship of the proletariat” shouldn’t be a literal dictatorship as in rule by the few.
Sorry, but those landlords deserved what they got.
How you want to choose your new leaders, how do you want to make decisions? There’s not a lot of freedom in authoritarian.
If through the democracy, voting, discussions, then you system is opposite of authoritarian, it’s a direct democracy and it’s somewhere in the anarchy, syndicalism area (I like that idea).
If power will be given to group of people, how you want to choose them, how you want to take power from them after some time. Power corrupt people, and this is leading to authoritarian state.
And giving a lot of power to group of people creates new rulling class. How do you want to prevent it?
All forms of government and all forms of state are inherently authoritarian. You live under authoritarianism right now…
What matters is who is doing the authoritarianism. China has figured this out and I find their political model to be favourable.
China well known for state capitalism. Lack of basic human rights, genocides, and so on?
Dude. You know that in china regular person have almost sero power of what’s going on?
You cannot call a country free and rulled by the people, when there are laogai, hundreds or more of them.
Also china is closed ally of north Korea, totalitarian regime, with small rulling class and starving people.
China is just better in capitalism than neoliberal countries, but this is not make it great.
lol genocide? Don’t tell me you fell for Uyghur “genocide” propaganda in 2026… You got some work to do still my friend.
Lack of human rights, where everyone gets a home, free healthcare, education, affordable healthy food, and nobody dies in the street. Even “vagrants” that are unemployed are taken care of.
Compared to America…
You will literally never see the above imagine in China. I bet if told you this was China and these were Uyghur Muslims you would outraged.
People of China absolutely have power. Corporations are required to have 5 year plans that provably better the country and its citizens. Corporations even have credit scores to keep them in check, while America only subjects its citizens to a similar system.
In America you are free to die. That’s it.
China? Genocides? Even the US-funded rubes pushing that narrative have given up. How many Chinese people living in China are you friends with?
To all the Americans waiting for Trump to leave and things to go back to normal…
The world is never going to trust you while the half of the country who voted for him is still alive
By “the world” you probably mean US allies so like 8% of the world by population. The real world didn’t trust the US well before Trump.
I think that’s too generous, but “fortunately” we won’t have to worry about that because Trump won’t leave and things won’t go back to normal. 2025 is America’s 1933.
I live in a fairly conservative area that’s working class.
People intuitively understand when you describe how much capitalism sucks because they’re living it.
If you say “capitalism sucks”, you are going to get reactionary thought and action. You have to say things in a way to engage their experience and understanding without tripping the propagandized brain worms.
If you can do that, you’ll find that they’re primed to reject capitalism, they just don’t know it yet.
“These rich fuckers don’t give a shit about us, but they have no problems helping each other out.”
“Everybody’s boss is the same, they want you to work harder, more hours, and do it all for less money. They want us to be able to barely survive.”
“The only way we can make them change is to all work together. They’ll screw over each one of us individually, but if we’re together they’ll know it’s actually them who needs us.”
To my endless frustration leftwing thought and policy is popular until someone knows it’s left wing.
I spend so much time talking to people and skirting around terminology/avoiding describing things in clear terms because they set off alarm bells.
As you say everyone gets that we’re screwed and pitted against each other while dipshits up top have their snouts in the trough. There is a spectrum on how far we ought to go to address this but it’s also really hard to get any action out of people because they’ll nod along until you try point them at a union or something and then the propaganda kicks in.
If you say “capitalism sucks”, you are going to get reactionary thought and action. You have to say things in a way to engage their experience and understanding without tripping the propagandized brain worms.
Extending your metaphor, this is what your average American’s brain looks like. There is a lot of propaganda and social conditioning working against you here.
I know the gif isn’t from Entrament, but it reminded me of this.
Extending even farther, there’s nothing especially different about the American brain. Propaganda and social conditioning are natural to human cognitive bias and on the other side of the coin is our ability to learn.
Now the environment of conditioning and propaganda may be another story.
GOOD post
You have to say things in a way to engage their experience and understanding
This! You can’t teach someone without appealing to their lived experiences and current understanding of the material conditions.
Well said, and thanks for including some examples at the end!
Shame is also important. Laugh at these people. Call them idiots and treat them like children when they start talking about politics. Shame is a great motivator and was a big part of my transition to anti-capitalism. Not joking.
That’s close, but not quite correct
Guilt helps people change. Shame gets them to more deeply entrench themselves into their current behaviors because they’re going to seek out ways to alleviate that shame through social connections that alleviate the pain of shame. The thing to understand is that guilt is a feeling of wrong doing, and shame is a feeling of lacking social value. When deprogramming someone from their previously held propagandized views, you have to give them an avenue to travel from their current position to where they are going. They need the opportunity to apologize and make amends. This is the process for atonement.
All that said, you also have to not give out too many chances. That just lets people continue to perpetuate their harm. If someone shows no sign of being willing to go through the atonement process you have to find ways to keep your community safe from the things that they do. How to do that is a discussion for another forum. Mostly in person discussions in mutual aid or community defense space, as this process is also context dependent.
In my experience belittling and shaming disenfranchised people results in them harboring deeper resentment.
Obviously mileage varies. It worked for you, but not everyone is willing or able to do self crit in response to their beliefs being attacked.
Many times people need to come to the shameful realization themselves.
American here. Both are a problem and need to be burned to the ground.
+ a myriad of other things
If you think the dismantling of capitalism doesn’t eliminate Trump on its own then I dunno what to tell ya.
Trump is a cult personality. Even if tomorrow capitalism fell apart a la soviet union style, Trump would still have his ignorant worshipers like a mega church pastor.
Not if you follow the Soviet/China method.
Re-education camps will be a necessity.
Snow Crash those Cultists like a rolled up card to snort with. Especially if that F-less criminal armpit Jerried his DarkNet supplied them with rigset into “their” brain for a Ravenesque bonus double re-supply.
You’re fighting 2 generations of built in propaganda and warped history taught in schools. When I was in school I was taught Hitler came to power because he was a great speaker. Not that he championed a police state that maximized corporate success at the expense of the people. A terrible expense.
If people learned capitalism leads to fascism they would stop teaching capitalism. The world is unjust and will continue to be.
People don’t know better because the system is geared towards ensuring the average person doesn’t understand politics.
They look for the most visible change and place all the blame on that, and they don’t understand that the most visible thing is usually a symptom of a deeper issue.
We all need to be making sure every time shit goes bad due to right wing politics, that we don’t let them pin it on one guy. The whole school of thought is destitute. It’s not always pleasant to have those conversations, but the alternative is it gets worse.
It seems a lot of people on Lemmy at least think capitalism is bad, and most of my IRL friends do too, but tbf they’re not American
As an American on Lemmy, I feel very much alone. Most Americans I know don’t know what Lemmy is, and they aren’t interested in learning. The average American is barely engaged with politics or technology, and rarely both.
I do remember a time when the word “capitalism” was synonymous with “freedom” and “democracy,” and I consider it progress that it isn’t anymore. But now, if an American hears the word “capitalism,” they think, “ugh, here comes some political bullshit. How can I get out of this conversation immediately?” Doesn’t much matter where they fall on the ideological continuum.
Conservatives won by burning out the tolerance for dealing with crises. Support for progress is subsurface and dormant, as most moderates are simply waiting for fascism to blow over, like a parent at a mall food court eating their lunch stone-faced while their toddler throws a tantrum on the floor.
No local DSA or PSL branch for you?
Lol no.
It’s tough out there, I hope you fine a way to get connected with people in your area. It may even be worth changing your area is that’s a possibility for you.
These are silly… like not even treating the knife wound because a violent society is really the problem
The orange pedophile is the immediate and urgent problem… sure, let’s not get complacent after (if) we survive it
Trump was voted out in 2020, look how effective that was.
This analogy doesn’t work. If we fixed the root problems (a feckless dem party, billionaires poisoning the media ecosystem, etc), Trump wouldn’t have the power to be a problem anymore. But I’m all for getting rid of Trump; he makes the root problems worse.
The point is that, in almost all cases, you need to address the most urgent thing and THEN deal with the root cause
It doesn’t matter if the Pedophile came to power because of Capitalism, you are not going to change the system before the Orange Turd ruins the entire planet, so maybe focus on that FIRST and then move on with Capitalism
The way I see it, this is yet another excuse for inaction coming from Americans… same as the “it’s too hard to organize a protest because we are too big”
focus on that FIRST and then move on with Capitalism
Let’s face it, the libs will go back to brunch and not give AF about anybody else like when Biden put kids in cages, helped genocide Palestinians or when any/every other Dem president bombed brown people.
They never have. That’s why I don’t even have the littlest amount of sympathy for them now, whatever may happen.
On the contrary.
I do feel bad for the few authentic left in that shit country, both of them.Agreed, which is why the American people need a revolution, otherwise, if the orange kid menace is not your new Hitler, whomever comes next will be
Americans haven’t got a revolutionary bone in their body.
I’m European, a new Hitler will have to confront a lot more than signs, slogans and interpretative dance.
Even if there’s plenty of fascists here.
“Someone threw a Molotov cocktail through my window. Better board up the window so it can’t happen again instead of putting out the fire.”
Suffers from the same problem. In your analogy, fixing the root problem doesn’t also fix the systemic problem. In reality, if we fixed the media, dem party, shored up labor, etc, Trump would be powerless.
Again, I’m all for getting Trump out of power. I just don’t think there’s a shortage of people motivated to do that, but there is a huge shortage of people who understand he’s just a symptom.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying it’s a matter of priority. It doesn’t matter if people can no longer throw Molotov cocktails through your window if your house is a pile of ashes.
All of the things you’re talking about take time, which we don’t have.
I agree that Trump is a symptom of a much larger problem, but it’s like telling someone whose throat is actively swelling up that they really need to focus on allergy immunotherapy instead of grabbing an adrenaline shot.
The reason they’re ramping things up so much right now is because he’s probably going to die soon, and without him the maga movement is going to lose a lot of steam. That’s the point where it makes sense to focus on systemic changes.
a much better analogy than mine, thank you
Feel free to use it!
The knife wound is capitalism. Trump is merely doing what his handlers want him to do. You get rid of Trump and they just replace him with someone else. Get smart fella.
to continue the GP’s metaphor: trump is part of an infection entering thru the open gaping wound.
which is why the American people have fought neither? LOL this is not smart, is just another excuse for inaction
lol inaction? Buy a fucking gun already fella. Were all waiting 🤣
That’s also another Murican myth completely exposed by this fiasco… instead of preventing a fascist gov take over, it is enabling it
Were all waiting
Exactly my point, all the “braves” in America just sitting idly until someone else comes to the rescue
Nope, read a fucking book for once in your life my man. You will have to arm yourself whether you like it or not. That is how these things go.
“We” is referring to the rest of the world, not Americans. We are not gonna save you assholes, you gotta do it yourself. Stop being a lazy coward and buy a gun.
Nope, read a fucking book for once in your life my man. You will have to arm yourself whether you like it or not. That is how these things go.
Now that I get it I agree… I think you owe me some slack by mentioning guns in a convo about America… 11 out 10 would have assumed you were talking about the 2 together
“We” is referring to the rest of the world
Again dude, I can only read your lines… I have no clue where you are from
If I talk about “my pet”, you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s a dog or a cat… I would expect you to magically know I have a Gharial swimming in my pond
When your house is currently up in flames, you don’t worry that it’s going to be foreclosed on. You gotta priorities the most imminent problem.
“I can’t call an ambulance, I have to stop the bleeding first! Prioritise the most imminent problem!”
We put that fire out completely in 2020 but left all the faulty wiring in place. Now suddenly the house is on fire again. Funny how that works.
With legislative capture you no longer have capitalism. At best you have crony corporatism.
Ah, yes, crony corporatism, that system where checks notes economic power is wielded by private investors who can convert that power into political power. I wonder where I heard that before.
I don’t know that distinction is super valid or meaningful when capitalism will always tend towards increasing power and profit, including breaking the systems that try to keep it’s ‘purer’ forms.
Also Trump is bad as if he couldn’t be rotting in prison for life if it pleased GOP. But the descend to fascism is what pleases GOP.
But the descend to fascism is what pleases
GOPcapital.FTFY.
if it pleased GOP
Or if Dem leadership had a spine
Bruh, they’re almost done with the rough draft for their next letter. It’s going to slam.
if OP zoomed out there would be like 500 more imporrant problem booths. some of which are on fire, others attacked by masked ppl with guns and flashbangs.
How dare those other stalls exist! Get them!
There has to be only two problems! Maximum!
How else will we know which pill to swallow?
