Oh, for sure. I am still f-ing pissed about McGill covering up that they experimented on kids. I was personally screwed out of a proper childhood because of RCMP and Social Services corruption, and I'm about as white-looking as any half-Colombian, half-Ukrainian can get including accent and mannerisms, I have no doubt that what those poor women said McGill did to their children was really what happened, that the full details were unimaginably horrifying, and I honestly feel like the University should be forced to shut down for doing such a thing at the full expense of those who were profiting from the University as running their business or investing in a business.
I think I know why I never liked Westerns. Even at 5 years old, discriminating against natives never sat right with me. Sometimes I feel like I have no country, even though my family isn't currently being oppressed and even my grandfather lived his whole life here, because so many things happen here in Canada that go against everything I was told this country is supposed to be that I never really became a "Canadian". I value the ideal, but I refuse to be blinded and I cannot deny that Canada has failed to uphold its own values so much that if not for the UK having been in control until the 60s I would have already written us off as not even trying.
On that note, I get that racial issues are not as clear as they seem in the US. White plantation owners and most of their descendants have acted like greedy assholes but " white" = / = white and even white = / = racist, and while I get life as a black American sucks, stealing from even other black neighbours is not okay (though it should be noted that intraracial crime - against those who are categorized with you for whatever trait or excuse outsiders invent - is universally more common than interracial crime) by the victim's standards or by the standards of any fair-judging outsider.
The point being, I don't think much of America is salvageable, but you have to realize you're doing far better from being exposed to the need to discuss it than many Europeans feel they are towards Muslims and Roma ("gypsies", though it would be more understanding to remember that they exist because Rome didn't collapse in a day and not owning land is extremely financially debilitating in Europe) considering that despite what those plantation owners claim, slavery in some form has been legal since 1776 and has only been restricted and not banned for, well...
When slavery was "banned" after the American civil war, it was indeed banned and reparations to be given to former slaves... For two days or something upon which Lincoln was assassinated and his vice president reversed it all (presumably while meraphorically twirling his moustache, since true bigots who are sure they've done no wrong all seem to think like a spiteful Disney villain) like the scumbag the VP apparently was. Slavery proper was not banned until 1942 (as a wartime PR move) and everything from sundown laws to private prisons has kept a form of forced labor, especially forced on disadvantaged persons, in use in America. But that being said...
Canada has "only" been attempting to move away from the UK for 80-ish years and I still think we can get over spitefulness instead of getting stuck in intergenerational feuds. America hasn't even reached that point yet, as far as I'm concerned the US is well-prepared for the day private prisons are outlawed.
I'm angry because I think we can succeed if not for people that only ever seem satisfied when they can toy with the fate of an individual like capitalism is literally how it was portrayed in Mun Mun (terrible book, IMO but in some sense I feel like "littlepoor" has always described me) and the kind of condescending pretentious "visionaries" of the Solarpunk genre...newsflash, vegan organic homegrown space Amish, you're ableist if you think anyone with Aspergers/Autism/whatever my condition should be called is going to consider your "unplugged" world desirable, especially without my pharmaceutical psychiatric medications which would leave me not just angry and bitter but foaming at the mouth with enough rage to go around burning down every civilization that tries to rebuild after the loss of the internet and video games)... and people keep trying to prevent that from happening by encouraging discrimination by everyone against everyone else. Everyone else that cares this much about the way the world works tends to be not just insane (I'm saying this as someone who is already mentally unstable) but arrogantly so.
I just want to see the world get better, and I feel like everyone else that cares about how humans progress only cares how that will benefit them personally. Of course I have personal values and selfish reasons, but this isn't a high school and I have to know better than to propose anything that is global or national in scope unless it also benefits as many people as possible and screws not one person over because the means always must justify the ends, not the other way around. I've tried sites like Change.org but the fact is that when it comes to fixing the world I refuse to work with someone who clearly exclusively cares about their own interests. Homeowner's ASSociations and narcissists don't get to have a say over the individual right to do something that is actually beneficial in my hypothetical near-utopia, and that spinelessness has been enraging me by screwing me over and over for the past 7 years. I get screwed, I ask someone to help, and in most cases they can't but even when they can they won't because they'd lose something.
I have a game console, a OneXPlayer. Custom preorder with the exclusive nametag. It's my prized possession.
I'd give it up as fast as I could if my option was to save it from a fire or save a child from a fire. All I ask is that when heroism is within easy reach, that people grab onto it for dear life. It might not be only their own dear life that they save by doing so, and if someone can't live with that knowledge, then pretending you/I/they don't remember a child's haunting cries of pain means they're a coward. If you have kids and can't afford to lose them, I get it, but this is a Millennial talking. I don't have kids and neither do "they" in many cases, but from what I've seen people honestly seem to believe that kids dying is "normal".
Tell a 10 year old that kids dying is just how things are, and watch how fast they decide on some level that adulthood is no different from any other inner party. Unfortunately, none of the world's many other activists had to live with a foster mother because of illegal conduct by the Ministry of Children and Families. Yeah, sure, Ministers of " Truth" and "Plenty" and "Love", you just want to Atlas Shrug off to some private island...
Sorry for the rant. Thanks for having a good faith argument despite my temper, you're clearly living up to your username!
You know the saying about terrorists and freedom fighters? The thing the politicians don't like to have people acknowledge is that democracy only works when the governing understand that, within reason, they SHOULD fear the people. The world, regardless of ideologies, has been governed by the terrorists in some form ever since people proved that 9/11 worked because most people have (had) too much to lose to not give in.
You're right to question, is my point. Unfortunately, at some point you have to roll the dice at the casino of revolution. The house seems to always win, unfortunately, so that's why that should be a last resort. I will admit I don't know what the Godzilla Threshold is for a civil war, but I suggest if Trump is not barred from running in November, and if you're an American, that you not be willing to take the risk.
One missing politician started WWI but Franz Ferdinand was more than a random aristocrat, he actually tried to make the world better and people universally loved him. Ferdinand was not killed for treason, he was killed to falsely justify every King in Europe's shot at domination of their continent and to justify sending an entire generation to slowly and painfully die or return home a permanent cripple with irreversible percussive brain damage in combination with PTSD (shell shock). Trump is not a hero, his death will not be worth fighting a war over, and even Kennedy and Lincoln dying did not kill the USA. Nobody should have to die if they are innocent or redeemable, unfortunately narcissists like that they think they're "superior" and don't like being told that they're being a jerk because they're flawed anymore than a normal person. The difference is, a narcissist will then strike back for daring to not see them as perfect.
I will admit, Mary Trump agrees her family is shit and I have a nasty, unprovable but sinking suspicion that "the Don" has raped his own daughter. That kind of abuse tends to trigger the very genes that make a clinically narcissistic person a narcissist. It's not truly inherent or even biologically inevitable, it can be unininherited and it can be avoided.
The thing is, you do that by treating the next generation, every last child, as equals to each other and as if they were your most treasured friend. Kids are ignorant because they're new to reality, not because they are legitimately ignorant, not because they are too stupid or undeveloped to understand (at least not after grade 3), and never because they are "cruel". It's not kids that are cruel, it's spoiled brats. Nobody likes spoiled assholes, not even kids, yet people say that immaturity is evil? Immaturity is a recognition that you are and always will be flawed and that you accept that you don't know how to be responsible. Maturity is an acceptance of responsibility for your actions and responsibility for letting your flaws get out of hand. Brattiness? That's wanting two cakes so you can have one and eat the other too, even though you were told that getting it means other people won't get any.
When you break a kid's trust, they will never recover from that. If anyone in Israel or (by some miracle) the Gaza strip is reading this, I wish no harm upon your children but this campaign against Gaza is such obviously hypocrital Hitleresque bullshit that if you are under the age of 18, you need to start threatening your own side with extreme physical violence if this war and this X-thousand-year-old feud your ancestors started doesn't end now, because I guarantee that if you live on either side, you will be killed by the other side's children's parents or you will live to see me dedicate my life to having your parents charged in an international court for this pointless, overblown war. Why? Because your parents killed their children and vice-versa and all of it just to spite the adults of each side. Killing someone as "revenge" for something their parents did is not revenge, it's spite, and spite isn't even justifiable by the standards of someone whose longest grudge goes back to when I was 4 years old.
I don't want to get "revenge" on that then-teenage girl (long story, irrelevant too) by hurting anyone she cares about, that's not justice and revenge is supposed to be the substitute for justice, not an excuse to justify hurting someone who has never directly hurt you and has never intentionally and unrepentantly hurt anyone. Tbh, considering what she did was not even severe... I admit it's petty, but can you blame someone who has always felt too irrelevant and "different" to have real influence over even his own life for wanting even a small victory, when he tells his brother "I never succeeded at or won anything" and his response of "that's hyperbolic" is met with "name one time I ever succeeded with an untainted victory, a victory that wasn't taken away after the fact" and his horrified response is "oh shit" and not "what about X" despite him knowing me better than I know myself, that is seemingly disproportionate, except I just want to take away something that is super-important to her now but will not be detrimental in any debilitating way, something that she'll look back on in 29 years and realize I just wanted justice and it never came, and what I did didn't destroy her in the long run.
It's called "an eye for an eye" and not "a life for an eye" and especially not "an innocent child for the death of someone who would be long dead by now anyways". Taking eyes so to speak is controversial for obvious reasons, yet people seem to think that taking the eyes of a person who hasn't even taken any eyes is the way to punish the person who did.
And you know what? I bet it fucking started because two guys wanted a woman or a stash of riches and one point in the triangle decided to murder the hypotenuse and suddenly everybody is taking sides. If I had a time machine, I would go back in time,and tell both those idiots "NO, FUCK YOU, you ruined every life that came after you fighting over something that either has a mind and will of her own except apparently not to the minds of you two, or something inanimate that was shiny enough to sell someone else to death for. I'm going to kill both of you, paradox be damned, and then I'm going to stick around to make sure your families hate only one thing, me, because clearly somebody has to play god or you insignificant yet entitled assholes will think that playing god is acceptable if you call it "sins of the fathers". Enjoy the bullets my not-magic wand is going to put in you, I hope I'll see you in hell for all we've done."
I've got issues. Unfortunately, someone irreparably sabotaged my reputation by essentially drugging and gasliggting me for 7 years, I'm not exactly in a forgiving mood at the best of times. Maybe it's a good thing I'm not able to play god, if the one in the bible is anything to go by that kind of anger is understandable but only because free will deserves immortality. Unlike that god, I'd give that immortality but I'd also be too much like the vengeful thundergod with a temper who I honestly think deserves a smack upside the head if he thinks anyone should have to go through THIS shit to be entitled to having a soul, because any god who lets kids die more than any other group in history just because he hates what he created is no better than the devil opposing the heavens.
Tl;Dr: Life is not unfair. People are unfair, and I am currently having a mental crisis because I no longer even care about the laws of reality let alone the laws of people. I am dangerous because I have nothing to lose but I am not a monster, I am a cornered animal and if the world does not back off (not anyone here on the FediVerse specifically, but like I said my life was shit and it only got worse after 2017) I don't think I am capable of taking even a slight inconvenience right now without destroying the last worldly possession of mine that every person needs but I can no longer make use of, my freedom (legal or mental or even "still alive"). At least I know I'm not likely to encounter that if I'm occupied with Lemmy.