there is a solution

I keep being told it's my own fault for not voting. I'm not even a non-voter. But every time things get worse, I'm told that I deserve it for not making Texas a winning Dem state by... idfk, sneaking into the back of a voting booth and spamming "D" into the console until someone drags me out.

People love an easy answer to excuse why they can treat someone else with less care or not listen to them as if they are already wrong. We love the little lies that make life easier. Its far less effort needed than trying to understand.

100% there.

look for local mutual aids, or political organisations fighting for your rights.

being active will make you feel better and will actually make the world around you better.

"They" want you to give up and doomscroll

Given that this is Lemmy I suspect that OP's "solution" is to repeat yet another failed geopolitical experiment.

Sign a strike card, baby https://generalstrikeus.com/ we've got a long way to go but I've been handing out flyers on the street... Spread the decentralized jeezus-i-wish-we-had-labor-unions word. Please. No really... I'm begging.

I’m right there with you. For all of you that say to just wait this out — how many of these am I supposed to wait out?! I’ve been doing this since Reagan, and it’s only gotten worse.

Insert (I’m tired boss) meme.

I just want out at this point.

to quote jreg, "these people have physical bodies"

Make an app that tracks them ... it seems to bother them. They dont seem to care if companies spy on us, so spy on them. Im sure nothing bad could happen just from an app that shows the physical location of a politician, CEO, or billionaire.
- Make an app
  I've seen this Rick & Morty episode.

I feel overwhelmed a lot lately.

I think one of the causes for the situation in the U.S. is isolation. Both that the bad actors are too isolated from their fellow human, and that people of good will feel alone in facing rising assholedom.

It's helped me to physically go to gatherings of people who are like minded. To be reminded that you're not alone. We'll never get everyone on our side, but I believe we can get enough.

Yes.
The rich used to take the same transport as the rest of us. They could be in a separate car on the train but they were still attached. Then they got automobiles and could drive on their own and we built highways to connect their favorite places. But can only get so far and planes were invented. Now they are stuck with the poors again but up in first class.
Now they have private jets and all the roads full of the regular people, the trains and the planes. They remote in or call in from their cellphone instead of being in the actual office.
The wealthy dont live like the rest of us anymore. And their social group is much more carefully curated to not let us in. They dont want to know regular people.
How do you find these in person gatherings, most of my socialization with other Americans happens through work and I cannot be my authentic self at work because that has negative consequences in my experience, the American work culture is kind depressing, where everyone seems to be in some rat race to be the most busy and most productive or at least pretend to be so, most of my interactions lack human warmth and it all feels fake and performative, I have to be guarded about what I say so that it doesn't come back to bite me even with colleague's of the same level and I am tired of the expectations of overwork and constant threat of being laid off of the right people don't have a high opinion of you.
- Many organizations - like churches and NGOs - offer some kind of organized approach to do community projects, like feeding people, repairing houses and things (especially for a single mother household that has fallen on hard times?), so you could join one of those?
  If such is not done in your area, then all the more reason to start something on your own! 😉 (Or else find a new area)

🫂

The core human problem is Sociopathy / Narcissism (Cluster B Personality Disorders). 5% of people cause 95% of all problems. And it has always been that way.

No matter what systems or institutions you put into place, public or private, and no matter how rock-solid your constitution or by-laws or institutional culture is: eventually and inevitably, one day, sociopaths and narcissists will conspire to take it over, by hook or by crook, and ultimately they will succeed.

Government, company, charity, church, club, movement, whatever; they all fall to sociopathic takeover, no matter how initially well-led, well-planned, well-founded. In fact, the more successful your organization or movement, the more lucrative a target for takeover it becomes. Corruption, therefore, is inevitable. The best you can do is keep it at bay as long as you can before the cycle of corruption, destruction, and renewal takes place.

It’s the ever-perennial Problem of Evil.

No one has ever solved it, though many have tried.

You cannot educate it away, you cannot religion it away, you cannot forgive it away, you cannot shame it away, and you cannot punish it away. It keeps coming back.

You cannot teach Character. For example, Seneca attempting to tutor Nero into becoming a man of Wisdom and Character is a tragic tale as old as human time. To a Narcissist, everything is merely a tool for gaining power and influence, even lessons in Ethics and Character. Pearls before swine.

Only a Sisyphean resolve to constantly and persistently RESIST, every hour, every day, every generation - every moment that one can, no matter what, and knowing that bullies and a control-freaks will always be with us, and the struggle to resist and restrain them will ever be refreshed anew with every sunrise, that is all we have right now.

Learn the signs of Malignant Narcissism. Be proactive. Protect yourself. Stand up to bullies.

Individualism is a dead end, the forces you describe are powerful because society is organized for their benefit. The cruel and psychopathic have avenues to make themselves useful to the ruling class. This is a social construct not an individual virtue or vice.
We can only make changes together. I def think people need to be more individually courageous, but the most common source for courage is social support, not some inherent trait. Some people are oppositional defiant in a way that can make them practical for a time, but without something larger steering circumstances then these individuals end up becoming tyrants all the same.
I agree that this is the root of all human problems, but I think there's more to it also. There aren't 95% of people willing to resist it. I imagine the opposite kind of people, those deeply selfless and incapable of tolerating injustice, also make up less than 5% of people.
And so even though only a small minority are naked power seekers, something like 80+% of all humans are just looking for someone to tell them what to do. They don't want responsibility, power, or self-determination. They want to be made to feel safe, and be given orders.
Is authoritarianism also cluster b? There are a lot of people who seem to get off on being part of the group. Like, it brings them chemical joy to be screaming in a crowd about how that other group of people need to die. Those people kind of suck, too.
I don't think every maga hat is a narcissist, but a lot of them are trash humans who value their in-group feelings of solidarity over everything else.
- Yes.
- I don’t know, but I suspect there might be a link.
I mean there are some options for dealing with that.
A. Early monitoring in childhood followed by extensive therapy
B. Eugenics if a genetic link is identified (least savory option and likely not possible)
C. Rebuild our social circles and communities
To expand on C, I think a lot of what you're identifying as narcissistic behavior or sociopathy is actually caused by the destruction of our communities. The way our society is built it rewards anti-social action with money and it's cold and depersonalized. It's easy as a upper executive to fire 500 people you've never once met and you will never meet. You don't have to know them beyond a few spreadsheets of data. People will absolve themselves of personal responsibility and refer to the financial aspects. Additionally, our communities have been destroyed. The addition of the nuclear family structure encourages you to provide as much as possible to as few individuals instead of valuing extended family and community. Plus in some places in the world it is possible to go days or weeks without ever interacting with members of your community.
- Eugenics
  hitler approves
Luigi.gif
- I don't think this is a long term sustainable solution.
Another pseudoscientific theory about how a small minority of society are naturally bad in a way that causes all social ills?
This is sorta why I think capitalism is both a useful pragmatic system and a terrible idea.
It’s the whole greed is good thing. It’s this clever little hack of “well let’s let the greedy sociopaths be that way, and we will just arrange the game so it benefits everyone.”
It sorta work in the beginning stages of capitalism. They realize that they can make profits exploiting workers and go to town and consumers reap the benefits of there being lots of stuff to buy to meet their needs.
Sure your boss is an amoral exploiter, but it means the widgets get made.
But capitalism is not static, it’s a game played over time where those least bound by morals and ethics trap greater and greater rewards. Leading to where much of western civilization finds itself today, beholden to a handful of the worst human beings.
The only mechanism to keep them in check is competition, and it’s a system that devolves over time to have little to no competition, so we shouldn’t be surprised.
I often wonder what the world could be if we took seriously the job of restraining the impulses of that 5% of the population. We teach young children to share and be kind and the golden rule. Then you reach adulthood and realize that all of that is still true but unrewarded, and the way to get ahead is to exploit people. The wealthiest and most “successful” amongst us in this society are those most willing to exploit their fellow man for their own benefit. You get a billion dollars by being willing to steal a billion dollars from your workers. No one can earn a billion dollars you have to have thousands of people working for you everyday, and for each one of those people you have to be willing to extract value out of them, what in any other context we would call theft.
- I think we underestimated the harm that capitalism would do in terms of normalizing greedy sociopaths. It's turned into a giant propaganda machine that serves to gaslight the masses into believing that the sociopaths are good and right and deserve what they've stolen.
  And we've built a world that silos people away from other normal people so it's even harder to use your community to fight back.
  It's going to be incredibly hard to do any sort of reset now. Most people refuse to even see any sort of problem with it.
- Adam Smith agreed with you in the 1600s when he thought up the system. He specifically said that capitalism couldn't be the end goal, but he wasn't aware of what the end goal would be, just that it would necessarily benefit the people, not the rich.
- Capitalism might be the mechanism, but it's not the root cause. Any system will eventually be corrupted in the same way without constant vigilance.
  The worship of capitalism certainly contributed. Capitalism needs heavy controls.
- just got to reset it every 100 years or so. we may be overdue
Has anyone made a tarpit for these types? Some sort of scoring system to trap them in.
Well it would be nice if we ever return to normalcy to overturn CU and clamp down HARD on the issues that enable the rampant abuse of the system. Like I'm talking union busting levels of "No you're complicit in this more than X% you are out, forever"
- I agree that our only way, truly, out of our current mess here in the United States is to get hardcore, focused, and doggedly persistent. Overturning CU, if we ever have a remote chance of even getting close to doing it, will be a hard slog, but it is fundamental, absolutely necessary, and singularly non-negotiable.
  It should be our primary issue, I think, even though it’s not a sexy one.
  If Democrats don’t deliver on this fight, then we must fight the Democrats tooth and nail, too.
  The real problem is that our elected representatives are not sufficiently afraid of us.
  We should be verbally abusing Democratic party leadership until they “radicalize” with us, or join MAGA in fighting us outright.
  If good, strong, brave people can fight the good fight and win, then perhaps we can turn the tide and we’ll keep evil at bay for another 40-year cycle or whatever.
  Or it might be too late, and we have to go through a real destructive cycle of severe suffering at the hands of tyrants first. I hope not, but I don’t know.
Fucking YES. Thank you, extremely well said

try thinking smaller. where can you help in your community? volunteering is my emotional bastion against the larger, more uncontrollable horrors of the world.

Bingo. Anytime I see a too-large way of thinking, I try to suggesting thinking small. You can't save the rainforest, but you can plant a tree in your community, you know? And it feels good.
I volunteered as en EMT for about 10 years, until the second kid came, and COVID and all that. It was difficult, took me away from work and my family, long days, mentally and emotionally taxing at times, and one of the more rewarding experiences I've had in my life. And it was all done within a few miles of my home. I (like to think) I had an impact on my community, and it feels good.
As well as helping, make sure to connect with these people and build up community bonds. Our power comes from unity.
I second this, and add that if you have an area of expertise, you will have more impact if you utilize that expertise. Some examples:
If you have access to a commercial kitchen during off hours, you could cook food for the poor.
If you are good at socializing, try meeting with local political groups, influencing election candidates, or running for office.
If you are a software engineer, volunteer on an open-source project related to a cause that you care about.
And if you don't want to spend effort, you can always donate to a cause.

Me in my 40s, who’s been feeling this way since my teens:

It's not a competition, and if it is, it's not one anyone should want to win
- It's not a meme about making it a competition. It's a meme to point out how this shit isn't new nor novel.
- Relevant username?

Hey, OP. Welcome to your 30s. 🎉 New to the US, or just seeing it for the first time?

New to the US World, or just seeing it for the first time?
What is the benefit of making a comment like this?
- Pointing out how it's not a new phenominon. This is an entrenched fight that will take decades. Not some sudden scrap where everything can go back to normal after covfefe is out...

You may not be able to stop the idiocy, but you can stop the feeling of isolation. Get out there and connect with political groups that are working against fascism.

went to my first protest this decade for labor day! met some really interesting folks and found a couple local groups i'm gonna meet up with later this week. can't really recommend this enough

Such a shame we cant mention it here.

Or at least a necessary step in it,

I mean, you could mention it. You could probably mention it easier if people would stop using .world as the default for everything, but you can mention it.
I think it's a little too quick to be thought of as THE SOLUTION. Everyone seems to have absorbed just a teeny bit of the action hero mentality though, because that action will never be cleanly carried out. It will be a massive shit show for decades.* Every martin luther king jr. needs their malcolm x, sure, I absolutely believe that viewpoint, but the peaceful community advocating and community building needs to be emphasized and practiced (that's the important bit, after all) more.
*There are far too many folks (in the US part of the "clowns of the world" mentioned) that are literally next door to the people that they will want to go after, and they've been itching to do it. Nothing that breaks the peace will see inaction from those folks, and that's what pushes me to always advocate. I don't want to be the cause of innocents suddenly being lynched because they happen to live in a deep red area and some sort of 'civil war 2: electric boogaloo' breaks out... And I use that electric boogaloo specifically because it is a pretty stark reminder (I hope), that those sorts of folks have been literally talking about what they have wanted to do for decades at this point. Unless the lefties break out some secret plans, they're going to be out-organized and very out-planned.
The first step is to organize, start a local community group and exercise your combined people power.
"Step in it"? Present tense? Nah. Past tense. Way past tense.
- I'll step in you! (Sorry if thats too forward)

George is not the sensible one

he had his moments

I see pedo Zionist meme I downvote

Vote.

*Protest-no-voters in shambles downvoting.

Organize.
Voting is doing the bare minimum.
- And protest-no-voting is actively punching yourself in the face.
Voting feels unsatisfying and the message telling people to just vote, have fallen on a lot of deafened-by-despair ears.
The last three election cycles have had the highest turnout of voters in American history, so the problem isn't a lack of voting. The problem is that the people doing the voting have had their brains melted out their ears by having to work 7 days a week, being hooked on scrolling mindless content, and a news cycle that is completely owned by commercial/political interests boosting the most loud and distracting issues on both sides of the political divide to worsen it.
Don't stop voting, but if you are really looking to be involved in a way that does some good, one of the best things you can do is hold a yard sale.
It sounds weird, but if you have a house or driveway that supports it, just have a weekend yard sale. You may make a couple bucks and get rid of some junk, but more importantly, you meet your neighbors. You meet the people on your street and hear what's on their minds. It gives you good exposure training for being more social.
Get to know your community and exchange contact info so you can have each others backs. Start forming community, which people value more than political ideology. People adopt political ideology just for the sense of community. If we all worked harder to get connected and connect people, we would have fewer people latching onto incel forums or pseudo-science fads.
You can learn from your community what the local issues are, who's in charge of what, who's running for what seat... maybe it's unchallenged? Maybe your area needs better options for representation? It doesn't have to be you, but you can possibly find someone to promote and help represent you and your community.
If we ALL did this, we would kick the fucking legs out from under this oligarchy that has hijacked our democratic process.
Definitely! Always vote, even if you have low confidence in the election's integrity or your influence on the overall outcome. You have nothing to lose by voting anyway.

too damn true. same as it ever was.

yep… get off social media

And which problems would be solved by that? The housing crisis? The rise of fascism? The neocolonial exploitation of the global south? The Climate crisis?
- American adults who are employed (using that as a proxy for people who can be reasonably expected to do something about the problems you listed) spend about 132.8 billion hours a year on social media. The US military (largest military in human history, capable of taking on the entire rest of the world combined) works about 3.33 billion hours per year across all six branches.
  If the average working American reduced their social media usage by about seven minutes a day, it would equal about double the amount of hours worked by the US active duty military. I would agree with the comment you replied to that a good first step to making proactive change in our communities with an eye to resolving these larger global issues could start with getting off social media, even for literally seven minutes.
- And which problems would be solved by that? The housing crisis? The rise of fascism? The neocolonial exploitation of the global south? The Climate crisis?
  You're a 32 year old guy, you can't stop these things, they are outside of your control.
  Learn to let go instead of being anxious and depressed about things you cannot change
Oh it's the racist.
Your opinion isn't needed thanks.