• Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    50 years of cuts to the education system and the demonization of the Liberal Arts (history, sociology, etc…)

    A country that would rather keep a football program than an arts program is always going to suffer.

  • mrcleanup@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    5th stage of grief… Acceptance.

    We know we’re fucked and the government believes it’s role is to wield power, not help people.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      As an example of the deeply ingrained disinformation and brainwashing, see a comment I made earlier today regarding Liberals continuously blaming progressives for Trumps win — without evidence — instead of the statistically verifiable, and multi-decade ratfuckery by the fascists… not to mention the ~100 million American adults who refuse to vote in every election (aka. the 100 million adults Liberals continuously fail to motivate), or the ~80 million voters who support fascist authoritarianism, or the corporations who have corrupted the political class and propagandized the entire population for 5 decades, or the political class who continuously serve the oligarchy.

      War is peace! Freedom is slavery! The political class, bought and paid for by fascists, will save us from fascism!

      • lemminator@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        Honestly, I just block the people who keep repeating that kinds of BS. They aren’t worth my mental energy.

        Does that mean I miss out on a bunch of discussions on .world? yes, but not wasting my mental energy on bad-faith arguments is worth it.

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Anyone know why someone would think being in a house fire means you’re relatively unconcerned about dying in a fire?

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    This is one of those scenarios where it may be better to look at fiber detail

    • life expectancy by state has an 8 year range, from 72 to 80 years
    • our nightmare of health coverage … In 2018, …coverage rates ranged from 82.3% of people in Texas to 97.2% of people in Massachusetts.
    • average income almost doubles, from $87,063 down to $46,511.

    You can go down a list of stats related to quality of life, and see similarly large ranges by state, and the ones on the low end correlate strongly with people who voted Republican. These are poorer people with worse education, worse health, much less income, voting for disrupting the status quo without understanding what that means

    • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      The leading cause of death is the same. The leading cause of death of poor Republicans is the same as that of wealthy cardiologists: preventable forms of heart disease. There is so much toxic masculinity and superstition about food in the USA, even people who know better conform to the cultural norms, and kill themselves with unhealthy food.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        That’s exactly the type of stereotype I was refuting. Some states have life expectancy similar to developed countries and some are more like developing, and I’ll bet preventable heart disease is the leading cause of death everywhere.

        • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          And I’m saying that’s looking for a reason to be helpless. The behavioral differences between educated and uneducated are shockingly small. Regardless of your education, you (AA5B) are probably doing the same stupid things, some of which you know you shouldn’t be doing, but you keep doing them because of cultural conditioning. Leading to your own predictable, preventable death. Knowing that is hard to cope with and there are entire industries dedicated to helping people find a reason to be helpless and just accept their situation, when they could easily change. And some do.

          Preventable heart disease is the leading cause of death in every US state, but not of every nation. It is not the leading cause of death in Japan, and nearly that alone enables them to have one of the highest life expectancy of any nation. Any two US states are more alike each other than they are a healthy country.

          Canada is the USA with good (for the sake of discussion…) healthcare. The life expectancy is only slightly better, because they share the “Standard American Diet.” There is only so much medicine can do with people are killing themselves at every meal.

  • ssillyssadass@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Because, quite frankly, Americans are idiots. They would rather scarf down misinformation given by their news anchors than open a book and/or think for themselves.

  • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    Americans are not a monolith. Tons of Americans are concerned. Tons are not. Also many Americans have lives where these issues the news typically stirs up don’t really actually impact their daily lives. Others are dramatically affected. It really depends on location and status, among so many factors.

    Various news and online channels might have you thinking all Americans are basically the same and experiencing things the same, but they are definitely not.

    • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      And yet every state has the same leading causes of death. Nearly any two states are more alike than either of those states and another country.

  • bluegreenwookie@bookwormstory.social
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    3 days ago

    If you’re referring to the gains in the anti vax movment

    It’s the same reason why a large portion of Americans are anti environment.

    It got politicized and instead of using critical thinking one side wants to win and thinks the other is lying to them about everything

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Because

    1. taxing the rich is a partisan stance

    2. people are unaware that the government would spend less on singlepayer than it spends currently dealing with middlemen

    3. a non-negligible number of people don’t believe in micro-organisms, nutrition, or cancer as it is understood by doctors

    TLDR: decentralized education with zero funding makes a whole country of dumb assholes.

    • remer@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Congressional democrats have no interest in actual taxing the ultra wealthy either. It’s bipartisan to not “bite the hand that feeds.”

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Well the last tax bill was written and passed by the GOP in 2017, it got 0 DNC votes in the house the first time and it passed but with 3 congressional violations which would otherwise protect budget bills from filibuster at the time and so it was filibustered, then it passed the house again with changes and then the Senate 51 to 48 with 0 DNC votes and this time was immune to filibuster.

        Now they get to write the new bill again this time because it is about to expire.

        We DO have an idea of the DNC tax plan from the Kamala Harris Campaign promising to tax unrealized gains over 1M and to remove the upper limit that rich people pay to Socia Security Taxes, while also keeping or lowering taxes on anybody who made less than 400k.

        We also know that the previous Biden Administration supported the IRS and gave them every resource and incentive to Audit the Rich, which they absolutely did.

        So I guess if you ignore literally everything that happens then you can make that claim. Take your pick: ignorant or liar, which do you claim to be?

        • remer@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          It’s all posturing. When they actually have the power to fully pass tax bills they don’t. It’s only when they know it won’t become law that they pander to their voters. It’s all a show.

          • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            They have not had that power. We refuse to give them that power.

            With that power we have every reason to believe they would tax the rich. Any incentive to stand against this policy would be on the campaign trail: and they don’t use the card even then.

    • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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      4 days ago

      Sad thing is that I don’t think gun restrictions would work cos criminals get their guns unlawfully

      • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        You can’t make concentrated firearms to smuggle into a country. They’re bulky, expensive and made from metal. They’re not heroin. Also, most of those illegal guns were legally purchased in another US state with looser laws, not smuggled in from another country.

          • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            They purchase them from straw purchasers who get away with it because of lax laws in some states. Most states with stricter gun laws, the guns on the streets come from states with lax gun laws. If there were no states with lax laws there would be less of those guns on the streets.

            • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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              3 days ago

              It’s sadly not as simple as that when there’s already a lot of guns in the country. Realistically that can’t be changed in the current system. What would help in the immediate future is PSAs, training for professionals, risk assessments etc that can identify perpetrators. It’s not massively expensive and can be implemented in the existing system.

      • shrodes@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Which other countries with stricter gun restrictions than the US regularly have school shootings?

        • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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          3 days ago

          Yes, I agree publicised school shootings are generally in the US. Did any of the other countries go from firearms being lawful to unlawful over the last few decades? The US has a huge amount already there, and that’s a significant difference.

        • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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          4 days ago

          I don’t feel countries can be compared like that. School shootings are often carried out by juveniles who can’t lawfully get a gun. They’re committing mass murder showing they’re not law abiding. Realistically there’s so many guns in America that even making guns illegal wouldn’t prevent guns in the country.

          Instead there’s other things that could help, such as training professionals to identify perpetrators and warning signs they’re going to attack. PSAs could be done so people can ID people around them.

          • notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            ^OP, here’s the answer to your question

            (Intellectual laziness and uncritical acceptance of propaganda).

            School shootings are often carried out by juveniles who can’t lawfully get a gun.

            Cut this crap, this isn’t reddit. Most kids them get the guns from a relative or friend who obtained it legally and adequate storage laws reduce both suicides and homicides in kids. BTW, guns kill more kids now than cancer or car accidents, but only in the US. Your take is the best example of americans being unconcerned about preventable deaths.

            • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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              3 days ago

              Please let me reassure you, thats inaccurate. I do voluntary work in DA, work in the supportive sector and have personally funded related uni courses (DA being linked to crime perpetration, incels, firearm misuse etc). I’ve done considerable research into academic articles on lone actor grievance fuelled violence. I do far more than the average person does, I just have a different perspective… partly due to the academic research I’ve read.

              • notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                Please let me reassure you, thats inaccurate…

                What’s inaccurate? I made like 5 statements.

                1. Guns kill more school-aged kids than motor vehicle accidents and cancer (i had to recreate the stats from the CDC wonder database myself excluding anybody over 18 because schmucks kept on complaining about the NEJM article including 19-year-olds, which apparently invalidated the data, except that it didn’t)

                2. Gun suicides are mostly committed using firearms from friends and relatives.

                3. If you look at UK’s homicide stats and the US’s (BJS) homicide stats you can tell that actually the homicide rate difference is driven by firearms.

                4. It’s a fact that it is much harder to kill someone including oneself without a gun.

                5. States that have gun storage laws have lower firearm mortality in kids.

                6. Blablabla on your trust me because I did some research. I’m in academia and published half a dozen (non-gun) epidemiology papers to date as a side hustle so I do know how to use the CDC databases. I’ve been forced to dive into the gun violence data because I’m really fed up with all the disinformation.

                7. What I have seen no supportive evidence for to date is “that training professionals to identify perpetrators” (“hardening schools?”) has any effect on school shootings.

                -

                Now let’s see your papers.

                • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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                  3 days ago

                  I’m referring to the personal remarks you made about me, they were inaccurate. Do you retract them?

          • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Sure, the shootings won’t stop the day legislation changes. But it prevents more guns from entering the US, making it more difficult to get one, even illegally.

            I get that some people in the states need guns. Some communities have a real danger from bears etc. But those people can get a license to own a gun, the way it works in most countries.

            • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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              3 days ago

              Yes hopefully it would. It’s a slow drawn out process though, and america isn’t an island. It’s not a fix

        • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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          3 days ago

          Is there another country that illegalised guns when there were already a massive amount in the country? I’m unaware of one but happy to be enlightened if there is.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            3 days ago

            Buyback programs tend to work, because they’re “no questions asked” and illegal guns still get bought and taken off the street. Australia did one that was very effective, though they’re cheating since it’s an island.

            But one thing you have to remember is the US is the largest source of illegal guns in the world, because it makes them legally and they get smuggled. 40% of guns used in crimes come from just four manufacturers.

            If the US stopped making so many fucking guns it would actually make the whole world safer. Especially Mexico! Trafficked guns are the main source of the cartel’s armory.

            • CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al
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              3 days ago

              It’s a fair point on ceasing manufacturing, I agree that would help with preventing incidents for future generations.

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        Probably something like 99.9% of guns or more are legal guns when they’re manufactured. If there were fewer legal guns produced and out there, there’d be fewer illegal guns for criminals, would-be or otherwise, to get their hands on.