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.
The main reason I don't engage in protests near me is that to get to them I have to drive to like an hour to two hours depending on traffic and then pay for parking and I have to pay for gas and then if I actually get arrested at this protest which is a possibility I will have to deal with legal fees not to mention medical fees from getting the shit beaten out of me by the cops. Having a criminal record will make it more difficult to find a job. Any job. Like working the fryolater at McDonald's or wiping shit out of toilets. I already don't make enough money to pay rent anywhere in the state on my income and still feasibly drive to work instead of sleeping in my car.
I am honestly at a loss as to what I could materially do to stop the war machine that leeches off my paycheck when every action I take costs me money which I don't even have enough of to cover my existing medical expenses and vehicle maintenance. When I get home, driving through windy canyon roads with LED headlights blinding me every 30 seconds, I feel too exhausted to do much apart from drown my sorrows in ethanol and THC and video games and YouTube slop.
I feel weak and impotent and morally complicit through inaction but mostly I just feel tired. Spent. Rage burns you out after a while. I watched this government march millions of poor people to their death rather than implement robust pandemic protections, throw children into concentration camps, fully fund a genocide being broadcast to the world in real time, and move heaven and earth to protect a cabal of child molesters. I know I'm fucking overwhelmed and exhausted and I also know a lot of my fellow Americans genuinely do not fucking care about any of this shit and it enrages me even further but I feel lost and alone and what little energy I do have I would prefer to save for protecting my nonbinary partner from all the horrific shit personally affecting them in the midst of this nightmare.
My fondest hope right now is this war humiliates us on the global stage and costs us all of our allies and the machinery of the empire degrades to the point that we're straight up less capable of evil. I don't dare fool myself imagining more might happen.
What exactly are you implying about working at McDonald's or wiping shit out of toilets? I clean shit out of toilets, and it pays well. It allows me to own a home and keep a roof over four heads. Someone has to clean up after you, and someone has to feed you too.
Let me know what you do so I can be sure I talk badly about it.
I didn't mean it that way, it's just that those have a low bar to entry in comparison to many other positions. I cut meat for a living. Hardly glamorous, similar bar to entry, and the main thing I dislike is the fact that management is composed entirely of assholes.
But getting a cushy office job or one of those do nothing email jobs when you have a criminal record? Forget it. They won't let you in the door. Forget respectability, that's just bad for finding work by the numbers.
That’s obviously not what they meant and you are being intentionally disingenuous, arguing in bad faith, unnecessarily hostile, and frankly just waiting for an excuse to show off your income if you think being a minimum wage custodian, as was the clear implication, is enough to own a home and support a family of four anywhere in the USA.
By the way, you ain’t the only professional making money here. The rest of us just don’t talk about it. And demanding users under federal monitoring to dox themselves should be a bannable offense.
lol.
They meant it exactly as they said it. Imagine thinking it's alright to talk down on what others do to put food on a table. You're actually defending that behavior to boot. What's wrong with you?
I don't think he meant to imply people working those jobs are lesser in anyway nor that that we don't need janitors and restaurant workers, just that working these jobs tends to really suck, you will be abused by your employer and often thrown away like trash when they are done with you, and in most cases they do not pay a living wage.