It was supposed to be Space travel. Flying cars. Automatons and lasers. Deep sea robots that could explore any shipwreck and show us the animals of the deep. Nanobots and cancer-cures.
We were promised the world would be ready for millenials to get into every field and make the differences they wanted to be, and so much more, as Dragons hoarded all the money and chopped the legs out from every ladder.
I always think about this when this topic comes up. 9/11 happens and Bush says ‘Drill baby drill’.
What if we had a president that was like ‘hey maybe we should get over our addiction to fossil fuels and sever this toxic relationship with the middle east?’ All the lives and money and time wasted on wars, and the destabilization it lead to in the USA and Europe which pulled people even further rightward toward this autocratic environmental suicide pact.
I wonder how different things would be if 1% of the people in Florida got off their couch and voted Gore.
EDIT I get y’all and agree but the point is that if Gore had won but just a bit more they wouldn’t have been able to stop the count and send it to SCOTUS
Or if the Supreme Court hadn’t given Florida to Bush.
Are elections rules by the courts? What?
britannica.com/event/Bush-v-Gore
For anyone genuinely wondering
Turns out Gore did win, but the election was handed to Bush anyway. We could’ve been in a much different world.
A relatively long video on the topic (half hour) but a good one. https://youtu.be/jucDFrO89Ko
I legit think this is the pivotal moment where everything started going downhill (at first, so slowly that we didn’t notice, but downhill still)
…Gore won Florida. Jus’ saying
Well it’s on my list of things to change if a time machine is ever invented.
And we (millennials) went off and got our educations, and returned to the “real” world just to run into the brick wall that is Boomers- who’ve refused to retire, and who refuse to improve anything unless it benefits themselves, but are perfectly willing to gaslight everyone within earshot because they’re incapable of admitting they’re out of their element.
And now 20 years have gone by. Same fucking Boomers still hoarding and refusing to step off the top rungs of Corporate ladders.
Baby boom generation ended in 1964. Retirement age for full social security benefits for people born between 1960-1964 is 67 years. Someone born in 1960 has slightly more than two years until full retirement age. Most boomers were/are not c-suite executives. Most boomers will rely heavily on social security benefits.
Unfathomable why so many boomers are enthralled by the candidate/party that want to destroy social security. Something something, no war but class war.
I mean we do have lasers. We’ve had lasers for ages.
Deep sea robots, too. We did it, everyone!
Jetpacks!
April fools!
Well my US public school system spent 75% of history class and 25% of English class on the Holocaust so I’m actually feeling really well prepared for this section, the trick is not to go along with genocide if your country is supporting it
I mean time on the Holocaust but no time whatsoever on the 30 years before it.
Go to school in the south, spend months on the minutiae of 1830s trade law and constitutional construction of enumerated powers, then WHOOP! We’re in 1914, being dragged in to WW1 against our will!
That’s crazy it misses out all of the important bits. In the 1830s the United States was on the international stage a relative backwater by the first world war it was a major superpower. Some interesting stuff happened in the middle of those two time periods to make that switch.
Yes, but those periods didn’t involve them much, they felt sidelined and resentful so they don’t matter.
I went to (an otherwise okay, but still a catholic) school in Connecticut and I learned that we won the Vietnam War.
My dad was the right age, but neither he, nor his close family members or friends (nor my mother’s) were drafted. My friends’ parents were younger, so I didn’t personally know any Vietnam vets well enough for them to talk to me about it, and I didn’t think to doubt it. I didn’t find out until college (it was rightfully embarrassing, I was a libertarian arguing for the USA’s right to “bring democracy” to Iraq).
We’re in 1914, being dragged in to WW1 against our will!
Honestly, a bit of a canard given how much of a Dixiecrat eugenics loving imperialist shit Woodrow Wilson was.
Neo-Confederates bit hard on the Zimmerman Telegram and were some of the most enthusiastic WW1 hawks.
The Zimmerman telegram was the story that Germany was trying to convince Mexico to attack the US right? I’m deep in my memory for this one lol
That’s the story, yes. There are a number of still-classified documents surrounding the Zimmerman Telegram that raise a number of questions about how it was obtained and how well it was received.
LOL the “vote 3rd party” crowd really is trying their adorable damnedest aren’t they
8 yearold me would not have been able to grasp your position and 30 yearold me can’t either. Guess I’m too soft to compromise on ethnic cleansing.
3rd party has literally zero chance of winning. a vote for 3rd party is a vote going straight into the trash. 3rd party voters are not making a “statement.” they are not “morally superior,” nor is anyone applauding them for their “principles.” in fact, the only people that actually like 3rd party voters are republicans, because they’re actively helping trump win. everyone else is either laughing at you or just shaking their head
also spoiler alert: trump will be orders of magnitude worse for palestine than ANYONE on this planet. yes, including netanyoohoo.
you do you pal
edit: i want to add: i voted for jill stein in 2016 because trump was a pathetic joke even then, but i just didn’t much care for hillary. just like i don’t much care for kamala
NEVER. AGAIN.
EVER.
I didn’t mention third parties and will not be casting a vote for president at all as I believe the problem is regime wide. That said, 3rd parties aren’t the problem the problem is democrats promised they would vote democrat no matter what and they took your word for it and decided to ignore public opinion and international law and international courts and basic human decency and now you’re complicit in a genocide just like the german people were.
i have a problem with genocide, so im going to make sure it happens on a much larger scale.
It really does feel like the people sitting on their hands are trying to be morally superior while the rest of us accept the dirty work and are doing what we can to not further enable genocide.
A vote isn’t a person’s whole voice. Let’s take the small victory of “not a fascist” then protest the shit out of the continued US involvement with Israel. Political action doesn’t just end with the election.
More than 100 Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders have signed a letter making the case for those reluctant to support Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.
“We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide,” the letter, published Thursday night, reads.
“Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones,” the letter continued. “As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities.”
The letter describes an “awful situation where only flawed choices are available.”
“In our view, it is crystal clear that allowing the fascist Donald Trump to become President again would be the worst possible outcome for the Palestinian people. A Trump win would be an extreme danger to Muslims in our country, all immigrants, and the American pro-Palestine movement,” the letter states.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/extreme-danger-harris-earns-stunning-143857259.html?guccounter=1
i guess literal palestinians are “complicit” too?
GTFO bro. take your self-righteous “i’m not voting” bullshit and shove it back up your ass where it came from
Not to worry, if the GOP gets their way that’s the end goal in the US anyway
if the GOP gets their way
“Nothing would fundamentally change” is superior to “everything would get a fuck-ton worse.”
Not when your baseline is 2019.
I don’t understand it, either. I’ve seen comics and comments about how not voting for a genocidal candidate might get trans people killed, while children are actively being blown apart and incinerated in hospital beds, currently, as we type.
I don’t like that trans people have to live in fear. I would like them to be as comfortable in their communities as the whitest, straightest, most christian dude in Texas is in his community.
Any argument for or against the current candidates that is laced with hyperbolic slippery slopes cannot overcome the actual murdering of an entire people that’s unfolding in front of us all.
I cannot buy into any argument that plays on the lesser of two evils, as we would still have to choose an evil.
Let’s be clear that this isn’t an easy world we live in, but I refuse to support a literal ethnic purge.
…dude you’re writing off a genocide against me with “some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make” shit
You are actively advocating for people to be complicit in not preventing another genocide.
Has it happened? Are trans actively being bombed in their hospital beds? Are they being piled in the streets and run over with bulldozers, dead and alive?
To claim that trans are the victims of genocide is disingenuous and minimizes the experience of the people currently experiencing genocide.
I am not discounting the potential threat against trans in america, but Palestinians are being shot, burned, and bombed right now. Entire families, gone.
Have you listened to a single fucking thing the right has been nearly shouting from the rooftops that they’re going to do? Have you read Project 2025? Or are you just willfully ignorant, just tuning out whenever they start talking about things that won’t affect you personally?
Oh and hey let’s not forget a national abortion ban, mass deportations, and an almost certain recession if not depression. Those are also on the table with a second Trump term, which fucksticks like you are helping ensure.
With all respect to Palestinians and their plight, we need to worry about our country and the possible fall of our democracy before we can start fixing the problems on the other side of the fucking globe. Problems which, under Trump, would only get worse. If you genuinely think he won’t give Israel carte blanche to flatten Palestine, you’re dumber than I thought. Oh, and if you think that genocide is bad, wait til he gives Russia Ukraine on a silver platter. Ever heard of the Holodomor?
If the highly publicized project 2025 and constant rhetoric is all you’re going off of, you’re not paying close enough attention. The right is propping up a dementia patient like it’s Weekend At Bernie’s, and they’re doing well.
Trump is backed by some of the world’s richest people, and a super power that is known for propaganda and disinformation. If you can’t tell which way the pendulum is swinging, it’s not my intelligence that should be called into question.
The right learned from their mistakes when they tried to rig the last election, and they’ve been putting in the work. I don’t know if it’s naïvitè or arrogance to believe that you putting a check in a blue box is going to stop the storm that is coming. If you’re waiting for November to see if you’re going to be safe, you are well behind the curve.
All that bad stuff you mentioned is going to happen, they’ve stacked the deck and they’re counting cards. This democracy is already done, you just don’t see it yet.
At the end of the day, all you have control over is what you support, and apparently you’re cool with supporting genocide. I’d like to be able to live with myself and not support an ethnic purge. You’re going to come up with all these reasons why you’re fine with selling Palestinians up the river, and still lose.
US public school system spent 75% of history class and 25% of English class on the Holocaust
How many of your classmates are Zionists? By comparison, how many are enthusiastic about First Nations civil liberties or reparations for Slavery?
mods, please deal with this
MFW I see them coming for the jews again: https://giphy.com/gifs/firstwefeast-nba-complex-lakers-1GljPAy19hO991lkvh
The great beast is dying, sick with it’s own poison. In it’s final moments, it dies as it lived, devouring everything.
The problem with knowing any amount of history is that any time anything happens you’re just like:
‘Oh. This again’.
It’s somehow both tedious and horrifying.
What are your recent “oh, this again”s?
Is there an analog for an extinction level event of our own creation and which persisted because of a variety of absolutely crawl reasons even after denial became the domain of idiots?
Have you ever heard of the great oxidation event? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
Though I doubt the anaerobic bacteria was aware enough to be able to deny what was happening in the first place.
Every time I read about how we’re finding micro plastics in places we thought they couldn’t reach (blood-brain barrier recently) I think of the GOE.
And that’s why the phrase “May you live in interesting times” is a curse.
Well we got rich people spending billions of dollars to go to space for a bit. Unfortunately they come back too…
They should try subs
Took me a while to realize which definition of subs you were referring to, but yes they should!
Best i can do is commercialized privately owned slave space travel organized by daddy musk.
Two weeks!
You won’t be able to afford it unless you’re going to work in the mines.
Our universe is disappointing. Space travel would suck as much as you think. Like living in a can? Because that’s what the laws of physics and our biology say will be space travel for us. We can’t get places quickly, and there’s no materials that can make a comfortable living space for any number of humans for that long.
Our Star Trek future is not coming. It’s going to be like The Expanse, but worse.
I’ve got one question…
How big is the can?
Instead all we get is AI-assisted Space Fascism.
Space Karen
WHERE’S MY GOD-DAMN HOVERBOARD?!
At least onewheels are pretty rad.
Best I can do is collapse of democracy.
Dismantling of.
American democracy has been under attack since the Civil Rights Era. We’re in the latest stage of “If we can’t run things, nobody can!” bigot counter-revolution.
At least we finally got Europa Clipper 🙃
Honestly space travel is finally getting good again. Give it ten years or so and either the US or China will have people on the moon.
India is putting in effort too, it’s not great but once they figure out the kinks they’re gonna catch up.
I watched the launch in class. Lol
It was supposed to be space travel, instead it was the internet and cell phones. Good trade.
Can’t imagine space travel without high speed telecommunications
Not sure what you mean. Apollo 11 used radio communication. It would have been possible to develop laser communication (i.e. light speed) without building a worldwide internet.
Apollo 11 used radio communication
Thanks to satellites launched a decade earlier. They were at the bleeding edge.
the frizz: let’s see where the magic school Bus took us today!
or when!
oh, dear…
keesha furiously whispering to ralphie.
ralphie: a WHAT auction?
