Subjugating a ton of third world countries and stealing their resources sounds more like history and current events than crazy.

Interesting post, but the final point is debatable.

Most white-controlled countries (expressed this way to include South Africa) south of the equator are orders of magnitude more racist than the US, sure, but most of Western Europe is a lot less racist than the US. Eastern Europe is another kettle of fish. Xenophobia in black Africa tends to be more centred around tribalism than racism, so is on the whole much less racist than the US.

It's not crazy at all, and is well supported by historic events across different nations when previously shameful acts are given validation by a new regime.

Definitely debatable, and I'm on the south island as well which is more rural. Googling for data came up with this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.c1ee56ff8997

Which actually shows NZ and Australia to be the same as USA, among the least racist countries. I find both Aussies and NZers to be very open about their dislike of Chinese/Indian tourists and immigrants. They seem to be pretty fine with anyone that has western culture though.

If you're of Asian descent I'd be prepared to be treated poorly here. There are road-rage incidents all the time where vigilantes will pull over bad Asian drivers and take their keys.

True. Just seems crazy to think America could go full evil empire on the world in this day and age. The level America could do it at too is just insane.

But yeah thats why I think we gotta resist to the bitter end here, if things just get completely out of control and these types of people don't have opposition then the entire world is going to ****.

I'm still kinda optimistic overall though. I think dems are gonna win the house in 2018, and I think presidency in 2020. I think 2016 was just a perfect storm of complacency from voters, nobody thinking Trump could win, lot of people just not realizing how awful he truly was. Plus I think millennials favor democrats by a pretty huge margin and boomers are dying every day.

There has been some discussion around.. let's say 'upheaval', and I'm curious what vision of America would inspire people to actions of that nature. When I take stock of where we are currently and, given our trajectory, what the next few decades almost certainly entail, there's an enormous ****ing abyss to address before I'd be willing to take action. Reason being: If you're going to get locked up over some ****, make sure to get it right the first time.

There's the immediate crises of Trump's overwhelmingly cruel immigration and asylum policies, as well as ICE terrorizing communities. Beyond that, state level GOP are freerolling voter suppression and gerrymandering schemes while the administration is trying to get a citizenship question added to the census. Beyond that, Pruitt, DeVos, Mulvaney, and co. are laying waste to the federal regulatory regime. Up to this point it's reasonable to expect that our institutions (primarily the courts, relevant legal groups) will provide the friction necessary to slow or block the most egregious outcomes.

But then we'd still be left with the raft of systemic policy issues that have had little to no honest debate at the national level like:

• A gutted safety net.
• A billionaire class making the basic functions of democracy at all levels virtually impossible since Citizens United.
• The revolving door between officials and the industries they're nominally regulating.
• The absurd outlays for the military and war profiteers.
• The inability to provide health care for the populace.
• Just about every god damn thing to do with our criminal justice system.
• The drug war and the cycle of misery that it has perpetuated on, primarily, people of color and our neighbors to the south.
• The inability to educate the populace without burdening them with crushing debt loads.

And maybe there's a minute glimmer of hope that through a re-awakening and civic renewal of the American people, along with some mystery disease striking the judiciary, comprehensive reform could be achieved to make interactions between citizens and govt feel more just and equitable. For a lot of posters, this would be a kind of democratic socialist paradise worth taking action. And compared to what we have now they'd be right, so I expect to lose a lot of people at this point. However, we haven't even touched on the primary mechanism driving much of the misery and malaise of the last few decades. The economic order that by its nature reinforces many of the negative outcomes that we try to mitigate via reform. If we want to make a real, lasting impact on the future of us and our kids, to my mind we have to dispose of capitalism as our principal organizing theory.

In a brief defense of capitalism, I'll say that absent its adoption there's a decent chance all of us here would be peasants laboring under some feudal lord. As a means to maximize resource extraction and expand population on a global scale, its efficiency can't be denied.

But after we eclipsed the threshold of resource scarcity, capitalism has ramped into some disturbing trends in order to sustain growth, as measured by GDP:

• Pharma
• Over the last decade, an estimated 94% of corporate profits have been returned to shareholders as stock buybacks or dividends. Between 2005 and 2015, S&P 500 companies spent $4T on buybacks and $3.9T on dividends.
• Over the past fourty years, real wage growth has been effectively flat. Even as we have neared full employment recently, wage growth is nonexistent. This apparently has baffled economists.
• As a cost reduction strategy, companies frequently lay off chunks of their workforce only to rehire them as an independent contractor without their previous benefits.
• Starting in the 80s with junk bonds financing hostile takeovers to the current rage of vulture funds virtually freerolling LBOs via the targets' assets, the capital class has ruthlessly exploited tax advantages surrounding debt. As an example of the short-sightedness and free money involved, the firm Alden Global Capital bought up dozens of newspapers (where journalists work), under the basic premise that it was a failing industry that needed new management. It then proceeded to slash staff, sell off iconic office space, and raise subscription rates. All the while, it siphoned tens of millions in revenues from the papers to gamble on greek bonds and other high-risk assets. This brand of rapaciousness among hedge funders can be found in pretty much any industry that has an element of public good like nursing homes, child care, and education.
• The complete breakdown in moral hazard starting with the S&L bailouts in the aftermath of the junk bond crisis and ending with the bank bailouts after they turned the housing market into a casino. Repeatedly, profits have been privatized while losses have been socialized.
• The "disruption" of silicon valley, which is really just the final resting place for the free money that starts its life with near zero interest rate policy at the fed. In the desperate search for returns, gullible people with too much money think that throwing money at a charismatic "visionary" with little relevant experience and no existing infrastructure will produce outcomes that long-standing industry leaders couldn't achieve, because.. I don't know bureaucracy or something. See: Theranos, Elon Musk, continued subsidizing of Uber/Lyft/MoviePass with no plan for profitability beyond abusing potential monopoly advantage.
• The grifting economy exemplified by reverse mortgages, payday loans, financial advisers, ICOs, and MLM schemes are hopefully the dying breath of an economic theory that has evolved to require human beings to exploit one another's trust, desperation, or ignorance in order to provide for their family.
• Pharma

All of this economic behavior was tolerated and often worshiped by politicians and regulators because it was perceived as growth, as measured by GDP. Without that perceived growth the entire global system of debt-financed deficit spending would collapse in relatively short order (after, of course, the banks repositioned themselves). This unquenchable need for economic activity is why the middle class in developed nations has been and will be continuously ground down by optimizations in the global supply chain and tax sheltering. This process will continue to be gradual and non-threatening, as it has been for the last forty years or so in US terms, and will inevitably leave us in an entrenched caste system.

So for me to see any point in major actions ending in social upheaval, on the table would have to be:

• Death of capitalism, with all the political and social reorganization that entails. The end of the growth-above-all-else regime would also have the benefits of stopping the destruction of our remaining natural environments, slowing climate change, possibly reducing the impact of the ongoing mass extinction event.
• Decriminalization of all drugs.
• Breakup of the big tech companies and a privacy overhaul.
• Liberal use of the guillotine.
• Massive public expansion of housing stock.
• Open borders.
• Expansion of animal rights.

People conflate capitalism with the industrial revolution and science and technological development. They aren't all the same and didn't happen at exactly the same times either. Technological advancement, often acheived by non-capitalist means, is the primary driver of making us all not live as peasants.

Something else mentioned in that last post on fuedalism....just today I was listening to a take by David Graeber about how modern corporate managerial systems are regressing to something more like fuedalism than capitalism. The management class is increasingly inefficient (his latest book is "Bullsh*t Jobs") and people are valued based on how many people report to them. He likens large corporate meetings to jousting and conspicious displays at court where teams of vassals prepare reams of reports that no one reads and highly produced presentations in support of their Lord/manager. Profits are generated from huge increases in productivity from the working class via technological advancement and the wealth is distributed to managers and consultants as patronage to justify positions and solidify power.

Something tells me if you started up the guillotines you'd soon find a lot of your poorer pro-Trump populists gladly lopping heads off their hated coastal 'elites.' The first guillotine sighting would be a good time to leave the country for safety.

Not to suggest the US doesn't have an outsized share of insanity, but:

Holy **** that is ****ing insane behavior

Indeed:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-heral...to-take-action
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/ne...ys-confiscated
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/668...foreign-driver
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/667...-a-last-resort
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/new...ys-confiscated

The one thing my mother was surprised about in the UK was the lack of road rage despite the traffic and occasional poor driving.

I'm not sure if it's because of the stereotypical UK reservedness that they just mutter to themselves incoherently rather than yelling out or if they're just more que sera sera when it comes to driving.

I find the idea of road rage in America absurd given how suicidal driving is in nearly every other country in the world.

ya there is no way that I would raise my kids in this shthole country.

as is, I can live here and not really mind it. and maybe sht will hit the fan and I can fight some deplorables.

And you can make the opposite mistake as well. Like people who fled America during the Great Depression for Stalin’s workers paradise. While the Netherlands might be fine for a rich white guy and his family, they also have a major political party that wants to ban Mosques and the Koran. I just don’t see much selfishness in staying in the US when leaving is the ultimate expression of lily white privelage.

To be fair the guy talking about Dutch teen happiness and the selfishness of staying might have just been trolling.

Yeah, you can make the opposite mistake. And? Without exception, before a war or chaos erupted, there are people who misjudge the level it will get to and are caught up in it.

I obviously am privileged to be afforded a choice. But since you are okay with characterizing it and calling it out, what do you suggest? What are you doing to make a difference? What are the practical alternatives? I'm ****ing listening. Because so far all I am seeing is a lot of devil's advocate and hole-poking.

As I mentioned in my previous post I only exist at all because my great grandparents were privileged and selfish enough to acquire fake documents and escape late enough to need them. Slaves that made it north early were selfish I suppose. I'm not likening my current situation to those at this point, and the real reason I'm having these thoughts is I'm being agitated to action but have no direction. So how about you spit out the rest of what a non-coward would do besides wait, see and complain on the internet about it, which is just as privileged?

I mean at a certain point it is time to be realistic about what is possible even here in God Blessed America. Slavery, Native American genocide, Japanese internment, segregation, what was inflicted upon Chinese immigrants and others, and that is just the top of the list on this soil. The only country that dropped nukes, the never-ending war...the worst case scenarios need not be characterized as some Nazi Germany replay, it can be decidedly American through and through.

I’m only calling out the notion that rich white people need to move to the Netherlands to give their kids a decent shot at happiness. That’s absurd.

From a morality standpoint you can use your wealth and whiteness to have a good life there....or you can just do that here. I wouldn’t call either one substantially less selfish than the other.

Yeah, my life is ****ing amazing. Like, really. I'm one of the most privileged people to walk the earth at any time in history. As of now, I have not been disrupted at all from the capitalist dream. My kids are happy and healthy, my finances stable, I am not 1% but not far from it in any practical sense and on a path to get there potentially, my marriage is sound, I live in a relatively safe neighborhood, relatively good schools, leisure time, comfort, friends...you name it. I am not searching for a good life. I am also not motivated to guard against losing a good life. I have been roused from the god-damned slumber that allowed me to enjoy the list above even knowing that drones were striking with my funds, prisons were chewing up communities, oppression was built into the system against friends and neighbors and all the rest. Being outraged occasionally was enough as long as I was "woke" enough to identify that I was enjoying the advantage I have.

If Hilary won, as I expected her to, I imagine I would be eye-rolling the current repub obstruction, the email trials and impeachment talk, the SCOTUS blocking, whatever war mongering she was involved in etc but still allowed to take full joy in my garden, pool access and mini vacations content with the idea that "progress" was happening on some level.

Well, that cushy, vapid dream is disrupted. I've mourned it. That was my selfish moment. Now? Well, I know people who are literally having their lives FUBAR by the policies being enacted, at the tip of the spear. I don't get to hide behind my woke outrage anymore and have it pay the toll for me to enjoy the trappings.

I don't want to leave. I don't want to give up. I certainly do not want to continue to be selfish and just look out for me and mine. Someone up thread made the comment that it is weak waiting for others to figure it out and create the movement for you, and I can see that, but it has got to start with a conversation. As a non-citizen, I am at a disadvantage with more risk, but I'm not looking for shelter there, I'm trying to figure out what makes sense besides waiting until the choices are made on my behalf. Leaving is only one option. I would love to head it off as the only good option before it is too late, but making snarky posts on a forum isn't working for me so far.

So there are 4 incidents cited here and the two with details involved a guy overtaking 3 cars and a bus (all at one time) across a no-overtake line on a blind corner and a guy driving on the wrong side of the road for an extended period. Given that NZ law provides for legally confiscating the keys of other drivers if you witness dangerous driving, this seems like poor evidence of racism. That does seem like a weird law, but it's the law.

I don't really know if NZ is racist or not, but I would bet the South Island is at least a bit racist, it's rural. I definitely think that in NZ and Australia you are more likely to hear open conversations about racial stereotypes etc. Racism is broad and it's hard to compare different varieties. For instance, which of these is more racist?

a) Talking about the tendency of Asians to be bad drivers (which is a very common stereotype in Australia and NZ).

b) Steering clear of bad words and stereotypes, but being "for small government", which involves spending lots on the military and Social Security/Medicare but less on "welfare", which is defined as any money spent on the "urban poor".

I think a) type of racism is at least as common in Australia and NZ as in the US and that open conversations about such things are more common, but that b) type of racism is less common than in the US.

?!?!?!?!?!? That's ****ing bananas to me, in USA#1 that would probably wind up with people shooting at each other

Yeah, that is wacko.

Doing a bit more reading on it, it seems that the majority of cases wouldn't be justified under the law. Basically it has to be very clear that criminal and dangerous behaviour is about to happen. The example is confiscating the keys of an obviously intoxicated person who is about to drive. That said, in both the cases I listed the rental company terminated the agreement and the police issued the drivers with infringements.

Also while I agree it's a strange legal grey area, it is not anything like as crazy as Stand Your Ground laws.

I agree with your post about the systemic vs. casual racism. There are also a lot of Chinese tourists that can't drive at all here. Very common to see them go the wrong way around roundabouts, or stop in the middle of the road to get out and take photos, and things like that. So some of the key-taking is justified.

Taking someone's keys in the US would be completely deranged and a great way to get shot by either a citizen or the police.

Welp. It is logistics time.

Ugh. Getting closer and closer

Bumming around Mexico and Central America sounds better and better.

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