So, does evil win?

All I keep thinking of is this quote from Martin Luther King-

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

My mom has survived poverty, child abuse and emotional neglect through her early years. She's not an easy woman to like or know, but she's tough. She locked her bedroom door this morning. She did let me in when I knocked. She had her medications lined up and told me she was thinking of ODing. I sat and talked with for an hour and now she's listening to bread recipes and cleaning her office.

I never thought I would ever have to have the conversation I just did.

I hate Trump and his vile cabal so much I can't imagine worse people.

Read Susan Faludi's "Terror Dream." This is all actually based on Republican embrace of Freudian psychology as a way to manipulate people. It can be destroyed the same way. But the most important thing to do is to find a way to neutralize the billionaire class because this never could have happened without a commitment from them on a scale you still wouldn't believe.

This deep dive into Fascism, world wide is really about who will control the resources as our planet dies. The food, fresh water, and energy. We are ushering in the era of corporate police states.

Ugh. Just terrible

I guess I just don't get it. If I had billions of dollars I'd be trying to save this planet. I love this planet. It's amazing.

R2 my heart aches for her and everyone else who feels hopeless against the forces arrayed opposite us. To those who want to leave the U.S. I say go now while you can. Seriously. But the countries of Europe and South and Central America are not far behind us and the bad shit is coming their way too.

I don't know how bad it's gonna go. This current environment reminds me a lot of 1933 Germany. The government is singling out a weak group to gang up on, and it already tells everybody (down to school curricula) what to think and believe in. It feels like shit is going down even quicker from here - Stephen Miller setting things up for the time after Trump. But even Hitler failed at some point. Very few regimes stay forever and when they failed people made a great leap in their societal development. I'm just not sure I'll still see it in my lifetime. I feel (don't know) it'll go even worse for a while.

Sorry for being a downer right now. It's so important to stay engaged. And a major task of a fascist system is disenfranchising all people from politics. I'll bounce back, but right now I can't.

OP the most quintessential American genre in not the Western but the film noir, and the best film noirs were made by Europeans - Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), Michael Curtiz (Mildred Pierce), Roman Polanski (Chinatown), Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) - because they saw an America that many Americans refused to see for themselves. Some of these filmmakers had even fled Hitler (Wilder) or been among his victims (Polanski.)

Watch the ending of Chinatown every day until you get this in your pretty little head.

We've entered the Survival of the Fittest stage globally and clearly have passed the point of no return. The Jetsons have gone Soylent Green: "In the endgame, towards 2050, global warming is out of control and results in large-scale natural catastrophes globally. Whereas the richest nations are forced to afford the exploding costs of adapting to this world and pay significant shares of their GDPs to survive, vulnerable regions that cannot afford these measures become uninhabitable. Regional wars over remaining resources add to an extraordinary high number of human casualties that results from the unprecedented floods, droughts, and storms. With the death of roughly one third of humanity and the massive destruction of productive factors, the world will see veritable global de-growth, de-industrialisation, and, therefore, a slump in energy production and consumption. Survival of the Fittest sees the world as we know it cease to exist. A wave of isolationism erodes the global world order and depresses the international economy. Energy security starts to dominate agendas, and most nations rely on their (fossil) endowments. Without multilateral agreements, climate issues disappear from most agendas. Informal agendas and regional champions govern this world, whose energy consumption doubles over the coming decades. Towards 2055, near-apocalyptic climate catastrophes destroy much of human civilisation, and only the richest nations can afford the adaptation measures required to survive."

But you don't have billions of dollars R6. If you did you'd be about something else.

In 1978 Deng Xiaoping became chairman of the People’s Republic of China, in 1979 Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and in 1980 Ronald Reagan became President of the United States. These three events, ushering in the era of globalism, tipped the world inexorably on the axis it sits on today. Ridley Scott was inspired by Reagan and Thatcher’s elevation to create the world of Blade Runner.

This is the world we live in now. We live in the cyberpunk era.

This is the Cyberpunk Theory of History. Late stage capitalism will look exactly like it was depicted in cyberpunk films and literature. In particular, Blade Runner and Steven Spielberg’s two cyberpunk films, AI Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report.

There are several central tenets:

A) the wealthy will live in a fortress

B) cities will become urban hellscapes for everyone else

C) environmental catastrophe will predominate

D) empty, garish consumerism will trivialize life

E) fascistic elements will infiltrate society (law enforcement in Blade Runner and Minority Report, the Flesh Fair in AI)

F) people will behave increasingly autistic (the socially isolated protagonists of the two Blade Runners & Minority Report)

G) Artificial Intelligence will win

Just accept this now. Then breathe and go on with your daily life.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but do androids dream of electric sheep?

Farenheit 451 is more apropos I think

This is The End. With a whimper.

There is evil ever around -- fundamental! System of government quite incidental.

There is something inherent in evil in that it will eventually eat itself. It’s part of it. Like a black hole it will eventually fall into itself. You just have to survive until then. And committing small acts of resistance. When possible. Until you get your big shot.

Earth Overshoot Day fell in August this year.

That is the day on which all the product that the earth can provide in a single year has been consumed and after that, we begin consuming saved-up resources. When scientists began asking the question that led to naming the phenomenon of consuming more than can be produced, in the 1980s, Earth Overshoot Day fell in November.

Earth cannot give more than it has and we are using more than it can give.

I don’t think anyone alive today will see the end of a habitable earth, but people blind enough to reality to bring new children into existence astound me.

I know this sounds stupid.

But Blade Runner was beautiful. A great city haunted by centuries of culture and regret.

This will not even be beautiful.

"Love always bats last."

The planet isn’t dying, it’s just becoming inhabitable for human beings. If that makes you feel any better. Scar tissue will form over the blip of time that was the human race and it will regenerate itself. Don’t fear for the planet.

^ Human beings affect on the timeline of a planet is not even 1/10th the time of the side affect warnings of a drug commercial.

No one ever asked MLK about his arc of history quote while he was being shot.

No, the feedback loops and atomic trash will consume all of life itself for millions of years

How quickly we've forgotten how frightening the Cold War was.

OP, stop doom scrolling.

OP, we don't start sentences with "So" in this manner.

Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb

You came fucking HERE for answers on that question? Jesus.

If we are as bad as they are, we will win. That's the lesson.