My very best friend in the whole world mentioned a trans person, shook his head, and remarks that “we need a purge”.
I really, truly thought that different ideologies could get along until then. With that comment, I realized that, no, I cannot get along with an ideology that believes that marginalized groups “should not exist”. Because, deep down, a belief for their “non-existence” is a belief for their death. And I now refuse to have friends who believe things like that.
Civility is compliance. I kicked him out of my house, my final words to him, as he angrily screamed at me, being “bye, bitch, bye!” It hurt me so badly to lose my closest friend that day, but my life really did improve after that. Now he might actually have to pay for the therapy he so desperately needs. God knows, he won’t, because he believes that “mental health excuses are just pussy shit”, but considering he’s howling that no one has wanted to fuck him for the last x amount of years shows that his anger and bitterness are still holding him back. He’s insufferable.
Fuck any belief that punches down. Y’all deserve to exist peacefully and not be fucking bothered by dickheads about how you live your life.
I have a good friend like this. He says quite extreme things like that from time to time. I don’t attack him for it. Instead we talk about it. I ask him questions, share my view on the matter etc. more often than not he then walks back what he said and openly admits that he shouldn’t generalize and understands that the few bad apples he has had to deal with don’t represent the majority.
People change. I did too. I used to say horrible things about gay people myself too when I was younger. Then I grew up and realized I’d actually like to have some of that dick too.
Your friend on the other hand probably only holds down to those beliefs even stronger now because of how you reacted. These are the people who vote for Trump to “screw with the libs”
I recently got introduced to a new friend group with plenty of trans people. It was quite eye opening. Not that my views changed, but rather upon hearing their stories, realizing how much senseless hate there is towards them. Imagine not getting a job after a successful interview, because some asshole looking at your ID sees that your appearance doesn’t match your birth assigned gender. It’s one thing to be indifferent or not get queer people, it’s another to actively fucking harm them!
I especially hate the project2025 rhetoric of “Economy bad” followed by “Let’s spend our entire budget, murdering the queers”. These people are monstrous…
2016 and the yeas since, but especially the US presidential election that just happened, have absolutely destroyed my faith in the people of my country.
Always figured the govt was fucked, but that the average Joe had a shred of good in him. After the bullshit of the 2016 election, the 4 disastrous years after, and the 4 years following of nonstop Nazi rhetoric from Trump… 74 million of my neighbors decided he’s the guy who represents them; and another 90 million or so decided not to lift a fucking finger to intervene.
No. Good people are a minority. I’m surrounded by hateful bigots who will go as far impairing their own quality of life if it means they can can harm others by doing so. This country and the majority of its inhabitants are evil. We deserve what’s coming.
This was a moment of disillusionment for me as well. I had faith that the country would pull together and do what I perceived as the right thing, but it seems greed and hate won in the end. Something shifted in me as the results came in. Something I can only describe as a loss of hope. Like I knew that whatever greater good we were working toward as a society was just thrown away for trivial reasons. Ever since I’ve had a more “glass half empty” feeling about the U.S. and the world as a whole and the outlook is just bleak.
Did you consider voting for Kamala the right thing? Because, IMO, it was BARELY the right thing. She offered nothing other than Not Trump to her voters. To me, it was expected that people didn’t vote for her because she had no vision and ENTHUSIASTICALLY promised to continue the ongoing genocide. She even sent Bill Clinton to Michigan a week before the GE to tell the Muslims there that they should be OK with innocent pacifist members of their family being turned into a pink mist because of where they live.
If one of the only two possible parties that is supposed to be left leaning refuse to stand by leftist ideas, a two party sham election system is going to inevitably push any country with Citizens United straight into fascism.
With all due respect, the Gaza genocide is a moot point as it’s likely to get turbo charged under a Trump admin. If you talk to most American voters they want this, as well as us to stop funding Ukraine. I don’t agree with these positions but that’s what most people here think. They believe that those funds will be allocated back to them via tax cuts and/or economic stimulus payments.
For me; my issues surround the environment, healthcare, education and workers rights here in the USA. Protection of the BWCA and the CHIPS act are of grave importance to me. A Harris administration would have protected these things. The Trump campaign specifically targeted these things. So while it’s nice to imagine a just government that cares about every specific group of disaffected people in the world, we simply do not have that here, and likely never will.
For sure, I grew up in a rural conservative area. I thought i knew these people. I thought they were just like me and I could understand their perspective even when I disagreed with it. But 2016 went against everything they claimed to believe in, and they just started making less and less sense, they just started getting more toxic, more hateful and spiteful , more anti-everything and everyone. No. No I can’t.
Maybe I’m falling for the echo chamber effect also, maybe I’m falling prey to those who would keep us divided and at each others throats, but I’m finding it difficult to sympathize, difficult to even want to understand them again. Difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are decent people being manipulated with base emotions. No, this is them
I got older.
(Edit: I was caught by the grammar police, for my heinous crimes.)
I had my coming of age when going to college abroad. Oh what a time that was.
- Going to Amsterdam, and seeing how unconditionally nice and supportive people can be. Even if something is obviously your fault, nobody will ever give you shit for it and will actually help you.
- The absolutely pointless full scale war in Ukraine starting, shattering the “age of unprecedented peace” propaganda I was fed since birth. Especially once I started educating my self about all the wars that took place in this age.
- Visiting my American (now ex) friends. Realizing that yes, Americans really are that uneducated and spiteful. Wanting others to suffer, way more than wanting to be happy them selves. And today, the 2024 election cemented those feelings.
Normally you need to put a coin in shopping trollies around here to take them out. When you properly return them you get the coin back. It’s not a lot of money, usually 50 cents. And if you don’t happen to have a coin on hand most shops will give you a key chain with a properly sized round bit of metal. It being so common, most people have one of those key chains anyways. I’d always thought it was a fine system, but people were pretty decent anyways.
Then during corona because of hygiene reasons shops could only reopen if they cleaned the trollies after every use and that meant not using the coin system. Later the cleaning part was delegated to customers using facilities from the shop and then got rid of entirely. But the coin system wasn’t put back due to hygiene.
To my surprise people would just dump the trollies everywhere. They would not care one bit where they put them. Some people put them away neatly, some just shove them sort of in the right place. Others would just leave them on the parking lot or shove them aside to end up in a ditch.
As soon as possible the coin system was put back into place. Later some shops got rid of it again, because it’s easier for customers. But only in select places where people are decent I guess, or the shop puts in the effort to monitor and handle the carts. You would think it’d be the crowded inner city parts where the coin system was needed. But near me in a rich part of town they use the coin system because rich folk just leave the carts in the parking lot, feeling like putting it back is beneath them or something. In a more crowded normal part of town one shop I go to doesn’t use the coin system and I’m surprised every time. The carts there are always perfectly placed. Although that shop has an issue with people using the disabled parking spaces if they need to run in and out quickly, which is a terrible thing to do.
This whole experience changed my view of humanity. I used to think almost all or at least most people were decent. Trying to do the right thing, with only a few assholes spoiling stuff for the rest of us. It showed me that a tiny little coin, not really worth anything is all that stands between a functioning neat system and total chaos. And it’s not just a couple of people, it’s more like half of them. A lot of people are lazy and inconsiderate, caring only about themselves. If it costs them money, no matter how little, they will do what’s required (because money is everything in this fucked up capitalist world). But if it doesn’t cost them money, they will just do whatever and not care.
This experience, along with many other during the past 10 years have spoiled my view on humanity. I tend to assume everyone is a total asshole in some way or another, which is honestly kind of a sad way to live. So I make an active effort to give people the benefit of the doubt, but it can be hard and a lot of people shortly prove they are indeed assholes.
“Assholes” imply that its malicious, when people are just very, VERY lazy. Only the “laziest”, most energy conserving humans would have survived, exhibiting the least amount of energy required to sustain themselves. Since putting away a cart isn’t strictly required, a lot of people just don’t care. Only those who know better will.
Good point, however I don’t know if I agree actually. That’s looking at a human in a very simplistic way, which probably means it isn’t fully true.
For example humans live (and always have lived) to a relative old age, well past their prime and past the point where they can produce offspring. Even back when the average life expectancy was low, people still easily lived to 50 years old. It’s just that a high infant mortality and death due to accidents and illness pushed the number down, a single human could easily live to be 50. At this age they don’t work as hard, can’t produce offspring and can’t really compete, so why keep them around? Many other species don’t live that long or are even actively killed off. The theory is with humans being very social creatures, always working together to outcompete everything else, keeping the older ones around must serve some kind of benefit. It is thought they could no longer work hard in terms of hunting and gathering, they could still look after offspring whilst the rest does those tasks. They could also do smaller, less demanding tasks and so still contribute. This made them earn their keep so to speak, providing more benefits than the extra resources they consume. This meant a group which had elders around had a better chance of survival than a group which didn’t or had less of them. Thus there was an evolutionary gain to living into old age and it was selected for, giving humans (and other hominids who we are related to) a much longer lifespan than one would otherwise expect.
This means being lazy to conserve energy isn’t the full story, there’s also the social aspect. Someone contributing to a tribe not only helps boost the survival of that tribe and therefor themselves, it also helps them not be ousted from the tribe and thus significantly decreasing survival odds. This means going the extra mile for the tribe, even self-sacrifice, would be selected for in terms of evolution.
Another side would be I expect a modern human to be slightly more advanced than our hominid cousins and not be driven purely by instinct. We live in a society with rules and expectations and it’s a conscience choice whether to adhere to them or ignore them. It is generally accepted that in normal circumstances a person is fully responsible for every action they do or do not undertake.
But the theme I’ve noticed is people are caring less and less about society and more and more about their own bubble, so in that sense they might not be malicious. They might be driven by this general trend and the causes for them, which I’m unable to speak of with any kind of expertise. I shared my personal experience, which might or might not be reflected by reality.
But thank you for shining your light on this, I agree the term assholes implies it’s malicious.
