• CCAirWater@lemm.ee
    21·
    3 days ago

    Ive actually thought about this a lot, specifically since 2020, but for the past 15 years as a white LGBT person.

    I think the reason millennials are the ones to make fucked up depression jokes is in part because of the crisis after crisis being shoved in our faces through social media at an extent never really seen before compared to newspaper and TV. But the other part is how we could learn about all the atrocities that have happened. Like, in WWII’s Pacific theater, a lot of that never got discussed in school. Or how Korean war or Vietnam war or even civil rights were all just a footnote after the WWII section which took the bulk of my history class’s time.

    I feel the Internet wasn’t mainstream as a kid, at least not in today’s sense. My whole family didn’t get a Facebook till the 10s. And I think millennials got to see past a lot of the propaganda because even the gov hadn’t figured out how to monopolize on the idea. Which I think is why GenZ is turning more fascist. Since the powers that be have figured out how to reach out through YouTube shorts and insta reels or whatever. It’s like it skipped millennials for a minute and swung full force once it figured out how to target a generation who grew up on iPads instead of IRC or AIM chats.

    To add to that, the black loves matters movement and civil rights in the 2020 era, is the first time there was an awakening to white folks like me at a deeper level to start researching heavily into what civil rights even meant beyond who MLKJr was and who the Black Panthers even were beside ‘militant black people.’

    I feel like the 2020 era was when white millennials as a whole, but also Gen X and Z to a degree, started to really see how much systemic injustice really effects us all, but especially POC and native Americans. I only had a vague awareness of anything up until I was in my 20s.

    Now, the more I learn of the struggles, the more I can see how easy it is to be buried by propaganda. So when I hear “make America great again” all I can think is how it was finally starting to be truly great with progressive movements and that my definition of ‘great’ hasn’t even existed before.

    And as a final note, that making America great again, to the standards of those who tout that concept as a banner, is to revert to where everyone who’s in the struggle together just goes back into silence and submission.

    And that ain’t too great, imo.

  • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
    101·
    3 days ago

    The Great in MAGA is not about having a great

    • quality of life
    • affordability
    • healthcare
    • education
    • etc

    It’s about great power for the elite, and maintaining the hegemony and oligarchy in place.

    Anything else reaching the general population are the leftovers.

  • logicbomb@lemmy.worldEnglish
    70·
    3 days ago

    Speaking of MAGA, I recently heard a history professor say that, regarding fascism, your society is in trouble when you feel the need to assure yourself that you’re not going to be targeted because you’re in a “safe” group.

    • papalonian@lemmy.world
      12·
      3 days ago

      How about when you’re anxious and taking fairly extreme precautions because you know you’re not in a “safe” group?

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
        15·
        3 days ago

        Then you are probably not worried about the question whether your society is in trouble or not, you know it.

  • wanderwisley@lemm.eeEnglish
    44·
    3 days ago

    Same for us Native Americans the last time things were “great” here this place was know as “unknown territory”

  • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
    20·
    3 days ago

    Dude is funny. To be funny you need to be smart. If you pair that with a bit of empathy you get a decent human being. That is the formula.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      3 days ago

      To be funny you need to be smart.

      Eh. To be funny, it helps to appear insightful and transgressive. But you can make up for a lack of one by exceeding in the other.

      People find Johnny Knoxville’s Jackass show incredibly funny, for instance.

      Hell, people find Donald Trump quite funny. Like, if he was a TV Show President on a spin-off of Veep, where the character Donald Trump beats the character Selina Miers to the Presidency? Solid gold. Best show on HBO, no contest.

  • Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.caEnglish
    54·
    3 days ago

    I hear that before all those illegal immigrants showed up in those big sailing ships things weren’t THAT bad.

      • Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca
        15·
        3 days ago

        They sent middle eastern (side of the Atlantic) religious fundamentalists over from Europe to the west.

        Some were rapists, I’m sure some of them were nice people.

  • taladar@sh.itjust.works
    583·
    4 days ago

    America (or any other country) was never great in the past, they just claim that because it is easier to sell “going back” to a time in the past people remember fondly than to change things to something completely new (like entirely new forms of exploitation by the rich). And for some reason people are too stupid to understand that doing the same things as in the past despite drastically different circumstances wouldn’t even yield the same outcomes.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
      6·
      3 days ago

      I know an older gent (like 65) who firmly believes the descendants of slaves should be thankful that the slaves were taken over here. Because it was better than living in Africa and their descendants wouldn’t be alive in the USA if it weren’t for this enslaved population.

      Blew my fucking mind but I guess that’s what growing up in (parts of) Tennessee will get you.

      For the record, that’s obviously a dumb as fuck take and slavery was abhorrent - particularly chattel slavery that the USA was the expert of.

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        2 days ago

        Because it was better than living in Africa

        This is mind-boggling. What could be so great about the US that it would make up for a lifetime of being enslaved? I’ll bet approximately zero of them thought it was better.

        • LePoisson@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 days ago

          Nothing, but the civil war was a thing for a reason and after the Union pussyfooted around during Reconstruction and didn’t enforce educational standards the Southern states adopted a history that isn’t exactly aligned with reality.

          Grow up in a system where you’re told you’re better, black people are lucky to even exist in the USA, segregation is normal and good, and plantation life wasn’t that bad for the slaves (comparable to just being regular farmers). Top it all off with the notion of “states rights” and that the Confederacy simply wanted to protect the idea of our founding fathers … Well that’s the result.

      • 13igTyme@lemmy.world
        21·
        3 days ago

        We even later freed them and gave them so low paying jobs we ALLOWED them to pay us to work off what they owed. /s

  • orcaA
    12·
    3 days ago

    Once you finally realize that America is one big collective scam and we’re simply seeing the paint scratch off and the old advertising fail on the new generations, it all makes sense. The working class exists here as a constant resource for the wealthy. We’re slaves that are finally discovering the end of the leash. They know the jig is up so now they’re fast-tracking all of the upward wealth shifts, while essentially trying to kill off or shut out our most vulnerable communities. They want the Israel model but without the universal healthcare (which we all pay for but can’t even get ourselves).

    The US is the pot the ruling class reaches its grubby hands into whenever it needs money for wars and conquering other countries.

    • DeathsEmbrace@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      The social mobility they sell you is essentially a lottery ticket that the 1% hold regardless.

  • GhostedIC@sh.itjust.works
    71·
    3 days ago

    I can guarantee you’d find some African Americans who would say, notwithstanding some social issues, that things were better before manufacturing moved out of the US EG in Detroit.

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
    31·
    3 days ago

    On reading the title, and small thumbnail, I was wondering what Harvey Keitel had been saying.