Overall, 39% of U.S. adults say they are “extremely proud” to be American in the most recent poll.
Meanwhile, only 18% of those aged 18-34 said the same, compared to 40% of those aged 35-54 and 50% of those 55 and over.
18% is still too high. As Obama’s pastor said, God damn America! Americans have very little to be proud of at this point.
The kids under 35 have only known post-911 snooping, bigotry, military adventurism, the 2008 mortgage crash, housing and education costing multiples of what previous generations paid (in adjusted dollars), COVID insanity, a political system that is completely inaccessible to them and utterly uncaring about their needs, and, finally, a climate being actively accelerated to disaster.
The wonder here shouldn’t be at their lack of patriotism. It should be at the fact that they aren’t setting fire to everything, murdering politicians, billionaires, and their lackeys, and generally grinding everything to a halt.
I feel like there’s also the fact that everyone who has comfortably been established tells them they’re lazy and aren’t trying hard enough…to get past all the barriers those greedy people have set up
And that we have the resources to make sure they don’t die and their teeth don’t fall out…but they don’t get it
And the fact that the elites have convinced them somehow that voting is pointless… They need to get shaken out of that.
If everyone who was in that 82% voted, the republican party would die overnight
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Yeah but we bombed the shit out of Slobodan Milosevic, which was based.
They still love America over there because of that! Definitely check out Bosnia and Albania if you ever get a chance. And it’s a really cool region in general.
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Don’t forget seeing kids their age murdered in classrooms just about every day!
I don’t know a lot of teens but the handful I do know all tell me that active shooter drills are extremely terrifying and traumatic, because they aren’t told in advance if it is real or not, so they never know if they’re about to get fucking murdered. Teachers don’t know either. Can you imagine? They’re going to be able to vote in 2024 and all told me they’re voting down the line democrat, even though we are in a blood red city in a reddish purple state.
'Murica and 'Muricans are sooo behind in the world. I’m not sure why but I think that the media veil enclosing USA is doing a fair bit of lifting. There’s now alternative/new ideas and examples of how countries work today. The mental exposure for the regular American is mostly infighting, some fluff piece or threats from other countries. It’s a bit interesting to see how it works but also scary since, you know… Military
Do you really think this would improve things?
I won’t deny that there are a lot of very serious problems and that progress is far slower than it ought to be. I also don’t think that wanton murder and anarchy tend to actually improve things very much - ask the victims of the Holodomor if the Russian Revolution improved life for them. Things can always be much worse. That doesn’t mean we have to accept the status quo, to be clear, but it is important to maintain a bit of perspective. “Grinding everything to a halt” also includes such useful things as food supply chains and having any job at all. Is it really that much of a surprise that most people wouldn’t be super eager to throw away everything they have and plunge the country (and by extension, world) into chaos just in a vague hope that the end result will be better? That’s not a small ask.
Do you like modern constitutional democracies over monarchies? You can thank people setting fire to everything, murdering politicians, billionaires, and their lackeys.
Do you like when workers have rights? You can thank people setting fire to everything, murdering politicians, billionaires, and their lackeys
Do you like civil rights? You can… well you get the idea
I’m not discounting that violent protest can work, and has worked in the past.
At the same time, ask the 20,000 people that were executed without trial or died in prison during the Reign of Terror if they think overthrowing the French monarchy was worth it. These things have costs, and that’s generally not a door I want to open unless things are getting very very bad. It’s easy to start calling for executions when you’re confident the gun won’t eventually be pointed at you, but historically, that’s not a very safe bet to make, because plenty of innocents die in these kinds of things.
Or you just convince yourself that anyone who dies simply must have deserved it. That’s not a judgement I feel comfortable passing.
It’s easy to be fine with the way things are when you can be just comfortable enough hiding behind privilege. But sure, wait until things get worse, there are no time sensitive current threats to the existence of humanity anyway.
Maybe, but I think you’d find that most Americans, even young ones, wouldn’t actually want to open up Reign of Terror: American Boogaloo. Perhaps that’s privilege; maybe it’s Maybelline.
The very existence of humanity is not something that is under meaningful threat according to any climate scientists I’m familiar with - even if there will be very significant challenges and changes that will disproportionately affect vulnerable populations - but I’m more than open to any evidence of actual apocalypse if you’ve got any.
Reign of Terror: American Boogaloo? Is that the official name of US foreign policy?
Anyhow, let’s see how great and humanely the wait out and see strategy works when irreversible damage has been done and millions of displaced people show up, I’m sure it’ll all work out fine.
Unless you’re planning on picking up a gun yourself (in which case, best of luck with that), yes, I do think the more boring approach of slow incremental change is indeed what we’re kind of stuck with. It’s certainly not ideal or fair, and a lot of people will unduly suffer for it, but I’m skeptical that there’s the kind of pent-up political demand for more radical alternatives that you seem to think exists. From some recent Pew data, only about 1/3 of Americans see a pressing need to fully phase-out fossil fuels. I can’t imagine those people are exactly itching for literal terrorism.
It is curiously noted that you’ve casually moved the goal posts from “literal extinction of humanity” to “very challenging mass displacement”.
At any rate, this conversation has obviously stopped being productive for either of us, so I’m happy to leave things there.
Well, good luck in your future endeavors protecting the precious status quo.
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