Saying Americans are too comfortable is just reinforcing US propaganda that the USA is this free capitalist paradise where food and luxury rains from the sky. It ignores the psychological war constantly being waged against the working class in the heart of the empire. Yes they have food, but they're malnourished because it's made of cheap plastic slop. Yes they have circuses but even cavemen had entertainment, that's not a luxury. I can't believe I have to tell leftists that 'but you have iPhone' isn't a sign your life is easy. Especially because half of these 'luxuries' are just tools that:
- You can't take part in society without.
- Everyone fucking hates them but you're damned if you do, damned if you don't (good luck getting a job and feeding yourself without a phone, car and social capital of being a good consumer).
Ask the people working three jobs just to afford rent if they're comfortable.
Ask the people living in tent cities in they're comfortable.
Ask the young people grimly joking that they're going to die before they retire if they're comfortable.
Ask the people on the kill line who are one medical bill away from being on the street if they're comfortable.
Are there countries where life is harder? Yes, but playing the suffering Olympics ignores the real material conditions that the US (and it's vassals) face and we would be stupid to ignore it. Ignoring mental anguish and the exsaution of being human cattle just because they aren't being physically bombed is downplaying the severity of psychological violence. Telling the single mother burnt out working multiple dead end jobs worried if her kids are going to ever have a home or even a habitable planet that she's too comfortable is fucked and isn't going to create the vanguard.
Nearly every single person I talk to (excluding the owning class) is running on empty. Everyone is sick. Everyone is depressed. Everyone is hopeless. They have seen countless protests amount to nothing. They have seen our rulers commit every single unspeakable crime and go unpunished. They've watched the surveillance state grow and record their every move. They know, they fucking know. But their hope has died. The lack of riots over the Epstein files isn't the inaction of someone who has it too good to care, it's the inaction of a beaten spouse who knows their place.
They're doing nothing because their spirits are broken, not because they're too well fed. From their perspective they're too busy making sure they have the energy to put food on the table to start a revolution.
My point is that downplaying the struggles of the US working class is ignorant, reactionary, and ignores material conditions and therefore is unhelpful in mobilising anyone. I think this rhetoric needs to change if we are to be effective.
Not American, Australian, but this also applies to US vassals.
Additionally, a lot of the iPhone style tools people have require constant subscriptions and money spent for the "service" so people are nickel and dimed out of every bit of money they earn. They might make a total amount more money than elsewhere in the world but also end up losing the overwhelming majority of that just to afford to continue to exist.
And sometimes these companies just say "fuck you" and screw you over, like my phone bill this year has a 5 times price increase of what it used to be because they just got rid of the plan I was using and there isn't a single phone plan provider that offers anything close to the price I was previously paying. And I can't just not have a phone, because that completely isolates a person socially and professionally.
And that's just one part of this, everything in the west is like this, everything requires you to pay more and more and more and it is mandatory to do so, there's no escape, no chance for a break, any money you make just goes straight into a black hole, you want to help people but don't have the money or the time to do so, because you're barely able to keep yourself afloat.
And you can't organise with people because people are so atomised and hyper-individualised over here that they view mutual aid as a scam half the time and if you mention the scary "S" word, or god forbid, the "C" word, you'll end up with people screaming at you, red in the face with rage, for thinking there is any other option than this.
We aren't comfortable, any luxuries people buy(and you have to buy them! Can't do anything for free over here) are just a form of self-medication, a quick easy distraction from the nonstop pain of existence.