What do you propose I do?
Or did you just want my permission to be personally angry at me? Not sure you needed it, but you’ve now got it.
When it comes to the bad stuff there’s a shift in language. There’s no “we” anywhere to be found. It’s vague but it’s definitely someone else in another state who’s responsible. A crazy politician. A corrupt interest localized elsewhere. Overall result is blurry, meaningless. The blame belongs to someone specific.
The usual first reaction is “but those were different people you were talking to” and you’re right. But what a coincidence that when someone assigns blame there’s always an answer like yours to deflect it, but when they were assigning “awards” nobody ever came up to deflect those. Either most Americans think they should only get the praise and every other voice is drowned, or maybe it’s a balanced split but you only speak now to tell is you feel slighted and victimized but chose to be quiet back then when you were honored as an American.
It’s this coincidence you should be upset with. When the right hand only brags about the good stuff and puts the golden crown on your head, and the left hand only shirks responsibility when it’s pointed out that there’s gunk all over the crown and the backside is wooden.
Which is fine, but attempting to grandstand while doing it is just boring to read.
Or maybe you just need more practice at this kind of internet kickdown.
If you thought I was wrong you wouldn’t spend 3 paragraphs (yes, a sentence can be a paragraph, and in this case it is) talking about me, you’d show me it’s not like that, not like everyone else sees it.
Funny thing is that unlike you who only had some 2bit ad-hominem to offer, GP is probably not wrong. They really aren’t responsible for the current situation and maybe even did their part to fight it. But they were immediately triggered and had to object when they felt unfairly bundled with the “losers”. Did you ever see anyone objecting to being unfairly bundled with the “winners” (i.e. never really contributed to the win)?
Your edit to claim a sentence can be a paragraph just makes you look even more pathetic
Success always has many fathers, failure is always an orphan, anywhere. At least I am recognizing failure, if only to disown it!
(And if I rightly feel shame now, even without personal responsibility, cannot I not be allowed some sober pride in equal measure in other circumstances?)
American voting systems are bad. Average Americans have minimal influence on the policy that's enacted[1]. I wonder if where you are from these don't apply as much, and you are used to having more control over what the government does.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error?...
[1] https://pnhp.org/news/gilens-and-page-average-citizens-have-...
Congrats on discovering that people claim credit collectively and blame individually. That’s not a uniquely American sin, that’s every human tribe since forever and you just gave it a paragraph structure and called it a diagnosis.
COVID was another vivid illustration of how you're just along for the ride with people who can act contrary to everyone's collective self-interest
Seems it's people with outsized media influence that have the most agency for change, beyond that a fish rots from the top down
If the question was “what do I do to fix it” that’s not something you’ll get answered in a comment.
They asked to stop deflecting. Take that literally. Imagine this page without the comment and the comments hanging off it.
"Don't do this thing". "What should I do instead?" Your choice. Maybe nothing. When there is nothing serious to say, maybe sit with the silence, that space where a little joke or some cynicism would relieve the pressure without doing any productive work, and let it work on you. At least until you can't take it anymore, and maybe tomorrow you'll last longer, and maybe next week you'll have a breakthrough.
At any rate, others can't tell us how to fix a situation we're not part of causing. In a society of millions, while each can say "I'm just one of many", nobody else can say more, so we always have "full" responsibility, that is, the maximum possible. Put differently, it is not possible for a single person to be solely responsible for what two people do, but that doesn't change the responsibility they do have.
This isn't about spilled milk, but rather about the question on who it is to fix this. It is on you. If you cannot do it alone, you have to organise with others. But there is nobody, as long as you're an adult and a citizen, that you can point to that should be expected to "do it" instead.
Though I don't mean this in a finger-pointy way either because we all sit in glass houses. There may be differences in degree and all that, but when it comes to what should or could be, and how it is, we're all so far from the mark that bickering about who is the worst and who should get "the" blame for the situation, rather than how to change it, seems pointless.
> Or did you just want my permission to be personally angry at me? Not sure you needed it, but you’ve now got it.
I personally wish you a really awesome weekend, stranger. You insisted on making this personal, now deal with it >:[
That's merely a symptom of the underlying problem, which is that capital interests run the show, and have for many decades.
What we refer to as a democracy is illusory. We basically have a uniparty, but most people are fooled by the sports team arrangement of good cop / bad cop. Those who aren't fooled feel powerless, and they are right to.
Anyone who balks at this need only consider which things receive bi-partisan support.
I wish we could open trade talks with these people instead. But, alas, that’s not how it works.