Is the US a dystopia?

option 3 ftw

US perfidy always comes back to tea

not really

hm sounds like you're either a "no" or "The Beatles" but afaict you can still secretly vote however you wish

it's going to take a lot of restraint not to shoehorn this in to thread connections

I figured it was what it was for.

least serious answer is the correct one

by that you mean "yes"?

oh misread "least" as "last" nevermind

This question is unhelpful and I have no idea why it is being asked.

Badly trimmed shrub = dystopiary

Dropped the clay - dyspottery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeu3iH0R_GM

I mean, pulling up the forecast today and seeing tornado warnings for Chicago in mid-December doesn't make me not think it's a dystopia.

an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.

not imagined, authoritarian rather than totalitarian and pre-apocalyptic instead of post IMO

so maybe it's not a dystopia but merely dystopic

dystopic? I dunno. but ilx is def dyspeptic today.

I did not remotely intend this thread to be serious, but there's an argument to be made that 1492 counts as the apocalypse

Can the apocalypse be local?

Americans rly struggle with not being the world and i think its quite telling tbh

let it beatles

Climate catastrophe is going to be pretty universal IIRC.

which is v little to do with the point about 1492 is it

you can get with dystopia, or you can get with datopia

just throwing this out there but maybe dystopia fans are blind to dystopias

I dunno I think most fans of the crust punk band Dystopia probably would agree that the USA is a dystopia fwiw

let me see, is the US a dystopia.

the republican party is trying to actively KILL a lot of people. let me just see how that plays in the polls

The approval rating among those who voted for [Biden] has dropped from 80% to 69% in the April survey. There have been notable declines among Americans 18-34 and suburban residents, both of whom, in dramatic swings, now register net negative views on the president.

As bad as Biden’s number may be, the polling data for Democrats in Congress is far worse.

Republicans now sport a historic 10-point advantage when Americans are asked which party they prefer to control Congress, holding a 44%-34% margin over Democrats. That’s up from a 2-point Republican advantage in the October survey.

In the past 20 years, CNBC and NBC surveys have never registered a double-digit Republican advantage on congressional preference, with the largest lead ever being 4 pints for the GOP.

“If the election were tomorrow, it would be an absolute unmitigated disaster for the Democrats,″ said Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research Associates and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

yes it's a full blown dystopia

nah but rich people have never had it better tho

A 4 pint lead is difficult to overcome tbh. sorry

Can the apocalypse be local?

Americans rly struggle with not being the world and i think its quite telling tbh

― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Friday, December 10, 2021 8:10 PM (one hour ago)

I was addressing "the apocalypse" that it could be argued helps to confirm the US as a dystopia, the subject of this important poll. So I guess I do think it can be local, idk, why not? Anyway Columbus never even entered future-US territory, it's more of a symbolic hinge year for everything being terrible from then on

I'd figure most people using the term think in the sense of dystopian science fiction and I kinda think 2021 has quite a few elements that seem like out of such.

There's no utopia that's not someone's dystopia, and vice versa.

The notion of local dystopias is an interesting one. Could be that there was an egalitarian paradise unfolding just a continent or two over from Mad Max.

If the US ticks all the boxes- and there's a case- then clearly plenty of very nice places to live in exist besides so id say thats a clear yes

Have we ever not been? Slave state — apartheid state — Vietnam/Watergate — Corporate state — Fury Road (2016-present)

the people in the mayfield candle factory that collapsed worked 12-hour shifts that paid $8 an hour. 110 ppl were inside. 40 ppl are still unaccounted for. they haven’t recovered a survivor since 3 am. pic.twitter.com/CsIIfLw3Pc

— Tracy Moore (@iusedtobepoor) December 11, 2021

it’s legal in kentucky to fire someone for refusing to work mandatory overtime

— Tracy Moore (@iusedtobepoor) December 11, 2021

The notion of local dystopias is an interesting one. Could be that there was an egalitarian paradise unfolding just a continent or two over from Mad Max.

Zardoz is another one. Although The Eternals are mainly a bunch of insufferable bores and their egalitarian paradise is pretty lame, but you wouldn't complain about it if you were being held captive by Charlotte Rampling.

Slave state — apartheid state — Vietnam/Watergate — Corporate state — Fury Road (2016-present)

We didn't start the fire, etc.

Let's see what all we have...you got this one.

US combined laissez-faire capitalism on it's drug industry and combined with heroin blow-back from the 'war on terror' created the opioid epidemic for fun and profit killing over a million Americans since 1999.

Getting back to the topic at hand, Le Guin wrote a book about a moon. Also was there some Cold War global political framework in her gender-bender book? I don't recall.

Climate catastrophe is going to be pretty universal IIRC.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Saturday, December 11, 2021 1:14 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

which is v little to do with the point about 1492 is it

― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Saturday, December 11, 2021 1:17 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It is though (unless I'm misreading). The USA is the biggest historical contributor to the climate crisis. An argument could be made that if 1492 never happened, there would be no global crisis. Same for much of global environmental destruction -- Amazon forest all gone? Thank Ronald McDonald.

Local teachers in South Dakota “Dash for Cash” to help their classrooms by fighting over $5,000 in $1 bills while the crowd hoots and hollers. pic.twitter.com/azwGJKhaKU

— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) December 12, 2021

they're going to remove that rug at some point

and then charge them for it!

An argument could be made that if 1492 never happened, there would be no global crisis.

Are we talking a world where Europe never came into contact with the Americas?

I can’t live without potatoes

-LL McCooljay

It would have happened eventually.

I can’t live without potatoes

OTM

Lol, Neanderthal.

https://eugenesrobinson.substack.com/p/in-defense-ofgreg-ginn

Later during a session for the Black Flag inspired Black Face, a band Dukowski and I had formed to play all of his Black Flag tunes, as well as his unreleased Black Flag songs, he had told me that Ginn was “evil.”

“Totally fucking evil, man…” and we sat in the fading light of a Los Altos Hills evening where we had just been rehearsing.

I heard it all. But, and this is the thing with me…Ginn had always been nice to me. Though the list of people who I had met who had always been nice to me — Charles Manson, Anton LaVey, John Wayne Gacy, Bill Clinton — doesn’t seem to say much, I did value this.

More than that when perusing all of what he had contributed to my life it seemed almost easy to forgive. Records by Bad Brains, Minutemen, Husker Du, Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth, nevermind Oxbow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EabebOlDkUw

most damning thing i can say about bill clinton is that i was watching the chevy chase documentary and he opened a birthday card from bill clinton, and chevy chase said nice things about bill clinton

CHEVY
CHASE

the man who's so evil that hardly anybody loves him

i mean i can say more damning things about bill clinton, a lot of us can, but that's the most damning thing i can think of right this second

Obviously Clinton had to get on Chevy's good side to avoid a devastating parody where Clinton falls down a bunch of times.

is Greg Ginn a dystopia?

is Greg Ginn a dystopia?

― The Immortal Bird of Avon (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, May 26, 2026 9:50 AM

known close associate of donald rumsfeld

(that's a pun, i'm making a pun, to my knowledge that's not literally true)

Rumsfeld also had an album called “My War.”

I love Eugene but his riff in that essay about not knowing if Ginn smoked weed must at best be some deadpan comedic thing

Rumsfeld also had an album called “My War.”

LOL

Enjoyed this from Rebecca Solnit -

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/circuses-vs-roses-notes-on-pleasure-and-scold-culture/

https://bsky.app/profile/joshuajfriedman.com/post/3mmxjlv5qp22s

i lack the energy to make this non-bsky available, sorry

jokes on them robots of the future will only be programmed to do the “Billie Jean” dance

Enjoyed this from Rebecca Solnit -

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/circuses-vs-roses-notes-on-pleasure-and-scold-culture/

― If your ass is a Bible, 213 will regulate (Neanderthal), Wednesday, May 27, 2026 10:59 PM (two days ago)

lol start of that post immediately reminded me of the old Onion article about Saddam Hussein referencing "Hot in Herre" in one of his videos. irrationally annoying pet peeve: posts that aren't time/date stamped. maybe it's trivial but in a dystopia a month feels like a year.

but yeah that meme in question is clearly dumb, if one is tired of people always talking about taylor swift (and i am, at this point), and one feels the need to say that (which i do right now, apparently), then one should just say it (which i just have, in parentheses). it doesn't make me morally superior or The Resistance, just tired.

the reason i don't engage with the media (including the main politics thread, interestingly enough) isn't because i'm tired of hearing about taylor swift. it's because i'm tired of hearing about awful shit. last week i spent the first 10 minutes of my therapy session figuring out how to make the content of a new Edge tab a blank page because my therapy link only works on Edge, and whenever I open Edge I get smacked in the face with some horseshit. i don't want to hear about what jeff bezos thinks of zohram mandami, and it's _not_ because i think it's "trivial". it's because jeff bezos, unlike taylor swift, is an evil fucking oligarch. it's important for me to acknowledge that the US is a dystopia, and it's also important for me to do that on _my_ terms. having that shit smack me in the face right before therapy means that i spend the first ten minutes of therapy thinking about those assholes instead of what i _want_ to be focusing on

that's really what it comes down to - choice. when i was younger, i had a burning, passionate hatred for phil collins, because he was omnipresent. i was always hearing about him, hearing about his music, and i didn't really want to. these days idk, he's fine, i guess. he was a good drummer. i don't have to listen to anything by or about phil collins unless i want to, and i guess sometimes i want to!

i had to do radical surgery on the Edge new page feature, too, it was exhausting. felt like I knew coding by the time I got a page with just the weather on it.

A drug that promotes muscle growth could significantly reduce the loss of lean body mass when using slimming jabs, research suggests.

Reminds me of those superbowl ads for a drug that combats opioid-related constipation

I saw the Flag tour, it was absolutely great, Morris, Dez, Stephenson, Dukowski, and Steven Egerton from Descendants/All doing a note perfect Ginn impression

Got behind a SUV this morning that had an "Army Mom" license plate frame and window sticker, but the other sticker was "Live, Laugh, Love but if that doesn't work Load, Aim, Fire".

I mean, I hate the "Live, Laugh, Love" signs as much as the next person, but that's a deeply fucked up thing to put on your vehicle.

Keep Calm and Carry Arms

Is there any way to interpret that other than being pro-suicide?

I thought that too

there used to be an army dad in the vehicle but he stopped loving

Is there any way to interpret that other than being pro-suicide?

Pro-homicide?

Presuming there isn't much actual "aiming" involved in suicide

"He Stopped Shooting Her Today"

not to waste too much of my precious life parsing a sociopathic bumper sticker, but I did try to think about it as homicidal and it doesn't really make sense imo. of course, I assume the owner of the sticker thinks it's just an amusing pro-gun statement, but still: they should have workshopped this one a little longer

Definitely pro-homicidal. It's basically a "bless his heart" for our times.

Otoh I'm glad they wore a "I'm a terrible person who should be shunned" nametag on their car. Saves me the time of finding out later

there's a lot of pro-homicide signs in this country. my neighbor across the street has a big sign on their front door that says "warning: you are no longer trespassing, you are a target" with a big gunsight on it. i live in a residential neighborhood

a good friend of mine is the mail delivery person for my block, i should ask him about that door i'm sure he knows it

we live with sociopaths, what can I say

I mean, people spend lots of money on the “Stormtrooper Edition” of a white Jeep, utterly missing the point of the film and thus showing themselves to be both a fascist and a fucking moron.

One of the things I appreciated about Star Wars retroactively is its depiction of the First Order. when The Force Awakens came out, I'm not even sure if Trump had declared intent to run yet. We knew a little about the alt-right but we considered them cosplaying dorks. So I saw that movie and I'm like "man, this is just lame, the First Order is just a copy of the Empire".

but really, they were like the radical racist right in America, who are obsessed with the Civil War/Confederacy but won't admit the real reason why, and they incorporate that old iconography into their clothing, flags, bumper stickers, "The South Will Rise Again", etc. From the ashes of the Confederacy, they have sought to re-institute the cis-white supremacy and strengthen the patriarchy, and have helped enact this by lobbying, entering and winning political races, getting appointed to the White House/etc.

like in the original Star Wars, Vader and the Emperor are truly evil motherfuckers, true believers swayed by the Dark Side, and they seize power through violence and a coup. People acquiesce out of fear, whilst propaganda wins new devotees over time, but you get the impression over time that the coalition is held together mostly by fear and eventually it even gets to be too much for Vader himself. The shit's in the ash-heap of history, the Republic reforms, and it is clear to mostly everyone how evil the Empire was and 'never again', but below the surface, young fetishists of the Empire who bought into the lore, iconography, and broad strokes, probably learned from the distorted, wistful memories of older, unrepentant collaborators, decide "the Empire wasn't WRONG, it was ineffective", and they actually create a more fucked up version where people are snatched from their families to be trained as Stormtroopers from birth, and entire solar systems are vaporized.

the parallels are unintentional but so glaring.

seriously if only the sequel trilogy had run with that concept fully, but we were stuck with JJ Abrams and not the Gilroy brothers.

also Kylo Ren was an alt-right teen rebelling against his lib parents.

Alex Keaton in space

seriously if only the sequel trilogy had run with that concept fully, but we were stuck with JJ Abrams and not the Gilroy brothers.

― omar little, Monday, July 6, 2026 1:21 PM bookmarkflaglink

yeah tbh much of this content existed in the canon novelizations only, lol

i had to do radical surgery on the Edge (...)

― The Immortal Bird of Avon (Boring, Maryland), Friday, May 29, 2026 6:58 AM (one month ago)

my brain stopped reading at this point, this would make a great short story prompt

Got behind a SUV this morning that had an "Army Mom" license plate frame and window sticker, but the other sticker was "Live, Laugh, Love but if that doesn't work Load, Aim, Fire".

I mean, I hate the "Live, Laugh, Love" signs as much as the next person, but that's a deeply fucked up thing to put on your vehicle.

― better than ezra collective soul asylum (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, July 6, 2026 8:23 AM (five hours ago)

a couple years ago i was out getting a haircut when i saw someone with a bumper sticker that said "I'M OUT OF ESTROGEN AND I HAVE A GUN"

i laughed because i remember that meme from, like, the 90s, the whole erma-bombeck-but-edgy- / if-you-can't-handle-me-at-my-worst- / white-women-whose-personality-is-betty-boop-and-who-assume-betty-boop-is-also-white- core thing. it's always been with us. do they still run "andy capp"? do they still run mel lazarus' "momma"?

anyway it was funny because i could never in a million years get away with saying something like that lol, i'd be in a men's prison so fast your head would spin

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/06/nx-s1-5883784/dhs-ice-critic-lawsuit-free-speech

yeah, I just heard that story.. really scary that they feel empowered to do this, cranks have been writing letters far worse for decades

Kate, Andy Capp is still with us:

https://www.gocomics.com/andycapp

Momma, however, was discontinued after Lazarus passed away in 2016, at which point (according to the Comics Curmudgeon) the strip had been in reruns for some time.

https://dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to-be-able-to-buy-things

^^^
The greatest concentration of Flock cameras in my town
https://i.ibb.co/vxvDcg0H/Screen-Shot-2026-07-21-at-9-19-53-PM.png

are the clusters that surround Home Depot and Lowe's.
https://i.ibb.co/fY9tJ0KP/Screen-Shot-2026-07-21-at-9-20-52-PM.png
https://i.ibb.co/sJ1BjTzc/Screen-Shot-2026-07-21-at-9-20-14-PM.png

Even the big mall (in the upper right) isn't covered.

And hmmmm. Wonder where one might be the most likely to find undocumented workers?

Great article, Raymond, thanks for sharing.

very heartened by the anti/Flock movement

https://i.ibb.co/sJ1BjTzc/Screen-Shot-2026-07-21-at-9-20-14-PM.png

hide in a cardboard box, smoke a cigarette, steal some reeboks

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/22/calvin-duncan-louisiana-maga-white-supremacy