In my head they are very normalburger if that makes sense. They think Trump can stop the war enough to affect the market, right?
I am, definitely struggling to give a single fuck about anything not associated with my immediate survival. I’ve been expecting things to get really bad for a long time, i didn’t expect it would be this fucking stupid and irritating
Behavioral standards plummeted during the pandemic and never recovered. People are a lot more stressed, and they refuse to behave. We’re divided, and it really does not help that our leadership literally believes that AI is going to replace most jobs.
i think it doesn’t help that our leadership will try anyway
I do not think the leaders believe that AI is going to replace most jobs. They definitely believe that they can use the threat of AI taking most jobs to further exploit the working class.
They really do though. Like, you’re assuming a level of rationality that they don’t possess.
Americans really struggle to come to terms with their elites and leaders being fucking evil instead of merely stupid.
Jesus christ, look at your fucking history. Evil doesn’t always look like some hollywood ass villain.
After a certain point it doesn’t matrer, but still come ON
You say that like it has to be one or the other. Most evil people in history were also stupid.
These billionaire dipshits are not as bright as you think
Yeah that’s mostly a justification for layoffs. They’re not competitive robotics manufacturing AI that cuts down the need for enormous chunks of capital for factory floor space + varied equipment + switching things up to change what you’re producing. They’re not competitive on the large computational engineering models important for R&D (which they’re not doing either) and iterating new rocket engines. It’s a giant grift, but people need to be careful not to universalize the values of Silicon Valley AI companies.
How are the schools
Where I am (major metro) the schools are still decent but severely underfunded.
In fucking shambles. One of my dreams, if I ever win big on the rarely purchased lotto tickets, is to open a free clinic with free pharmacy, and a private, means-tested Pre-K12 Montessori school that only accepts on the poorest first and donations only buy your name on a plaque.
I live in a rural area in the US. Public school teachers are generally very good at their jobs, but a lot of the school boards around me have been taken over by the far right and so-called conservatives. They run on platforms like “ending forced vaccines for children” and banning transgender flags and they mostly win because there’s a lot of dumb racists here.
Hectic and our teachers are constantly complaining about how kids can’t do basic reading comprehension tasks. Like copy a sentence from the board into their notebook and then repeat it back to you in their own words. There are 13 year olds who cannot do this. There are adults who can’t do this. The majority of Americans read at or below the level of an 11 year old.
Actually attempting to come back to this thread now and it’s hard not to shimmer out of this plane of reality with anger
Mostly okay. Slow discussion building on why test scores are dropping and are they still dropping. Is it COVID (immeidate shock), Long COVID (long term health issues), or nearly all course work and books being on tiny laptop screens (money showed up for a wholesale transfer to Chromebooks during COVID. They were actually helpful during lock-downs, but were kept after.).
What do you mean by that? The standards of education or mental health in schools?
In the U.S., schools are funded by property taxes, so schools in rich areas are fine, although educational standards suck across the nation.
Seconding this. We’re in freefall right now.
Side topic:
ls “normalburger” a word commonly used in English?
If so, what does it mean (I assume it does not refer to grilled beef patties?)My English dictionary draws a blank here…
🚨 Breaking: the Americans have questions about the burgers
I am not an American.
The word “Normalbürger” is a very common expression in my own language, but that’s clearly not how you used it in your post, hence my question.
So, what does it mean?
Oh, how burgerbrained of me not to think outside the target audience, my mistake man, sincerely, but it also doesn’t work without the assumption of nationality. I made up the word on the spot to indicate an American in declining mental and physical health but overall stability, let me check if someone else used the word first in English.
Burgerbrained would be an actual example of a trending portmanteau in English. Invest now
Then better use burgerbrained (which doesn’t seem like a portmanteau to me btw), avoids possible confusion with the existing word.
“Normalbürger” in German-based languages just means “average citizen” in a completely neutral way.
So not what you have been going for.Bürger has the same root as bourgeois, and Wiktionary lists “bourgeois” as a definition of the German word (besides “citizen”).
The portmanteau in English is presumably not derived in the same way. It’s a reference to the favorite American treat found at cultural landmarks such as McDonalds. Only tangentially related to the German thru Hamburg -> Hamburger sandwich -> Cheeseburger
It’s likely closer to normal+burgerreicher or normal+burgerlander.
Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I don’t think it’s a common phrase. I’ve heard “nothing-burger” a lot, and this may be someone playing off that.
I’ve heard magaburger a few times, normal burger is new to me.
No, I think the expression it plays off of is “nothing-burger” which is more common. Like, when everyone is expecting a very bad or very good thing to happen and nothing comes of it: “Well, that was a big nothing-burger” … that and leftist online discourse calling the US “burgerland” or the burger-reich
I just recently got a bunch of medical stuff and psychiatric stuff sorted out after decades of barely being able to function. So I’m finally feeling “normal” and the state of our politics has me stressed to the point of action, but not to the point of curling up in a ball and doing nothing, which is unusual for me. Very surreal to be functional in a nonfunctional world.
The average American barely has any idea there’s a war even happening or who the president is. Half the people I know think Biden is still president. Even people who do know there’s a war wouldn’t be able to find Iran on a map. Everything about our government and everything it does might as well be a TV show to my fellow Americans. They see it as fiction that doesn’t impact our lives and most people think it’s extremely boring so they tune it out.
People are crashing out but for different but associated reasons. Everyone’s broke, no one can afford healthcare, there’s a mass shooting every 3 days. Everyone’s tired and the alienation is so thick that people are all pointing in different directions to where they think the problem is. People are getting more conspiracy brained and twitchy.
Even people who do know there’s a war wouldn’t be able to find Iran on a map.
I work a customer service facing job at the poop factory. The only person I’ve ever heard mention the war is one overly chatty customer who asked me “so did you hear we’re in another war now?” with the same cadence as “did you catch the big game last night?”
Americans are deep fried in every sense
The ‘background noise’ is getting louder but for the most part, people are just carrying about their day worried about their own personal lives
People rarely distinguish between the sentiment of a demographic versus the sentiment of the individuals that make up that demographic. Hence, stereotypes.
“Americans” are not a monolith. There’s almost 400 million people in this country. Idk how each individual is doing, but most of the people I know are too busy trying to keep their heads financially above water to care. The actual American people have very little say over what happens in this country, and most are just as trapped in the horror as the rest of the world.
Does a country without public transit, universal healthcare, or any social safety nets sound like a country where the average person is in control to you?
Depends on the person. I’m a therapist, tons of my clients are very upset, scared, crying, having trouble sleeping, depressed, feeling powerless and angry, etc.
This administration’s actions are taking a huge toll on some people’s mental health.
And people who are trans or gay? They are scared and many want to get out but can’t.
Having said all that… there are plenty of people who are not bothered because they are not informed and don’t realize how bad things really are.
it’s propaganda… they are using all media (which they essentially not control) to overwhelm and force people to stop paying attention. you’ll probably notice that your clients, slowly over time are getting less and less angry/extremely emotional and are essentially becoming numb to all the random information that they are consuming.
their goal with propaganda isn’t to make you think, it’s to make you not think. our human tendencies to rationalize and question is essentially being bombarded to the point of emotional collapse. this is the end goal for propaganda, to force complicity through emotional shutdown.
Steve Bannon said to “flood the zone.” That’s what they are doing.
Traumatize them back
You’re a fucking coward.
“they”? the idea there is a singular “they” is laughable at best.
most people are tuckin their heads down tryin to make it to their next paycheck… like they have for 40 years. thats the problem.
too many people think their votes dont matter (~35% dont vote at all ever), so we end up in a world where the north lost the civil war and fascists have come to roost.
My mom STILL insists that the war wasn’t about slavery, and so thinks the South should’ve won and isn’t offended by the Confederate flag.
But she’s “not a racist, I like all those black people more than this white person”.
Have you told her about the cornerstone speech, where the vice president of the confederacy says, literally, that the institution of slavery is the cornerstone upon which the entire confederacy was built
too many people think their votes dont matter
They’re correct
We don’t live in this world because of elections, we live in this world because Northern leadership refused to execute the Southern leadership and officers and put the soldiers on some kind of list (they were good friends)
To be fair, it really doesn’t seem like people’s votes matter. That’s why there is currently a corrupt criminal in office.
Living the American Dream
Personally? I am extremely worried, yet at the same time I’ve become so used to all the crazy shit that I’ve become almost too comfortably used to it. I live day to day and not try to think about how much more horrible the future is going to get.
I have a “conservative” friend. We both had a bit of a crashout discussion last night. We’re American.
The economy is crashing in front of our eyes. We’re both extremely privileged and lucky and we both recognize it and we recognize how fucking stupid everything is in our society. We recognize we’re powerless to even change the nature of our jobs.
There have been many organized protests against Trump since he took office. I’m not sure how much press they’ve received outside the US. Though many still support him because they are indoctrinated into the MAGA cult, I would say that most (over half) of Americans are against the war for a variety of reasons.
The problem is that there is not much we can do in the short term to create change. Our system of government does not have an effective means to recall a leader.
The threat of legal action does little to deter this administration. For one thing, it’s slow. For another, they’ve shown that they can and will ignore court orders and this far don’t suffer any consequences. Finally, the administration has done as much as possible to install loyalists and remove honest people in every part of government, including the legal system.
Impeachment is a joke. Even if the process was started again, Republicans in the Senate would never convict one of their own.
So the average citizen doesn’t approve of what is happening but don’t see any effective means to change. It’s a very helpless feeling. Many disgruntled communities have been able to create some change in their local government but even changing political parties is not real change. We still have 2 right wing parties bought by special interests. I think many of us just try to do good where we can in our own sphere of influence.
In the Midwest, nothing has changed at all.
Trying to conduct my day as normal (food needs buying and bills need to be paid, after all), but with a marked increase of episodes of staring of into space internally shrieking as avenues of opportunity and life plans made years ago are irrevocably altered.
What’s the alternative? Give up? That doesn’t help anyone.
If crying most days is crashing out, then yes.
