Impotent as in helpless against our oppressors, I’m sure you’re really good at sex :p
This really is one of the calmer, better reasoned takes I’ve encountered online recently, thanks for sharing it. There’s something I’d like to expand on more than debate though. Really more about my own fixation on that propaganda than anything. Even the oligarchy and obvious corruption are themselves symptoms of the worship of wealth that drives our civilization. Even if every decision maker were replaced with a benevolent humanist the systems we’ve built exist to make number go up, not quality of life. Our morality, our cultural values, our very perception is constructed around the idea of more being better and the inevitability of the process of coercive extraction through which we’re all meant to compete in consolidating our hoards at one another’s expense. We’re strung out and impotent (yes, all of us) and addicted to intensity of experience itself. Red team/blue team were arbitrary divisions to capture tribal identity long before MAGA or even KKK coalesced as focal points, and I don’t think it’s wise to approach them as a root cause or core issue. The “MAGA” that wants you dead is a freakish abberation amplified and presented to you because of the utility that has to the status quo. It’s an essentially nonexistent bogeyman, a narrative counterpoint to the transwoman scheming to make your kids gay. A division, an escalation, a distraction. KKK was likewise not an organic groundswell of hatred but carefully orchestrated political theater. I highly recommend looking into their history, these things are often much clearer from a distance. We are all victims of propaganda, like Garfield tshirt says “you are not immune”. Even the miserable billionaires with every material luxury and still no contentment. Especially them, in a sense. They’re certainly the least connected to humanity and most thoroughly processed of us. I spend a lot of time on the street and can promise 1/3 of the country does not want you dead. The vast majority of us all want the same thing, and it’s lot more like a hug and a sandwich despite all efforts to the contrary.
I kinda lost whatever point I may have been trying to make, but thanks for the opportunity to ramble. Going to cut it off here before I start going on about AI as a way for capital to replicate human output convincingly enough to directly manufacture consent, and the consequences of atomization and the escalation between engaging in more and more granular subcultures on heavily monitored platforms and just each engaging with the machine directly, and 9/11 being used to establish a near-omniscient surveillance apparatus and covid being used to force its adoption, and how… I need to touch grass.
All three options in the meme are real world examples…