I’m at the limit of survival, which is not ideal. By this, I mean I have no income, no financial support, and my van doesn’t start. This last bit turbocharges the first. If I can’t shower, I can’t go into an interview.
And so, my ex shows up, as she always does. She moved back to Oregon and discovered that where one is at does not assist what one wants. So she’s in Texas now, needing to be useful in some way that her increasingly shitty job cannot provide.
Which puts us on the same path for the first time since meeting 14 years ago. There was a lot of throat-clearing on the call last night before we realized we’d found our own paths to the same place. I don’t know what this means … I don’t think regaling y’all with details is particularly helpful, but she has energy I don’t to throw at my family, who’s given up on me because I see late-stage capitalism for what it is.
Given prior art that would necessitate a trigger warning, I can’t see being part of the machinery that tells us to obey.
But what’s so absurd is the person who may be my biggest exponent is also the person who crushed me and turned me into who I am. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome on steroids.
This has come to my mind many times. I have this gut feeling that a large portion of our population will just come to the end of their rope with nothing to lose. I believe that a massive civilian uprising could begin to dismantle civilization as we know it. It could get ugly here.
I’ve seen the writing on the wall since occupy. I was a relatively young adult with experiences that gave me a far left mindset, so maybe I saw it too early, and was too ready for it… but I’ve seen where this train is headed and I know that the bridge has been out for years and years. And everyone in charge of the train is adding fuel to increase speed instead of trying to stop.
That was… fuck over a decade ago? And it’s only been getting worse, at an accelerating rate, since then…
When you strain people to the point they don’t have time to live, you take their ability (through money or pollution) to even live a healthy life, and make sure they can’t openly support what they support… revolt is the only option…
It’s like if you looked through history and cherry picked all the conditions that led to a revolution, and then that was 100% the game plan of the oligarchs…
Yeah…I believe a revolution could, easily, break out in America.
I hope we are both wrong and we stop this train before it goes over.
Russia has a way to stop revolutions: vodka.
The Tsars knew it, Stalin knew it, Putin knows it.
Another powerful way to stop revolutions is: an UBI.
Lenin knew it, Heinlein knew it, the Arabs know it, Norway knows it, Iran forgot it.
Whether it will be vodka, an UBI, or rivers of blood for the US… only time will tell.
Is UBI = Universal Basic Income?
Yup. It’s not as morally great as an actual resource redistribution, but seeing how those redistributions have worked historically (as in, not at all), it’s the next best thing in order to keep people happy enough to not revolt.
That is, unless religion (see Osama bin Laden: the guy had a $7M/year “stipend”, and what did he do? Instead of living his life in luxury, he went and bought himself an army, just to get himself and a lot of others killed 🤦)