How bad do we let things get? Should we wait until the planet can't sustain life anymore? Should we wait until it's 100 degrees F in the Artic? Until wildfires blanket entire continents or the last glacier is gone? Should we wait until fascist billionaires take even more from us? Until there are Flock cameras at every mail box? Maybe we should wait until the wells run dry or the tornadoes never stop. When is it going to be enough? I'm so tired of seeing things getting worse. Every. Single. Day. I'm ready. I've been ready. How about you?

How do we coordinate? How do we look after each other? What is the signal? If we don't work together then we are just continuing our slow march to destruction to the drum of the parasitic billionaires. Please, for us, for the cats, the dogs, the birds and trees. The fish and the whales, the beatles and the centipedes. Please tell me it's worth it to you, that you're willing to get uncomfortable, that you're willing to fight. There are more of us than them, and we are rapidly running out of time to make that mean something.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 228 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Historically speaking, the riots start when the bread runs out.

  • source
  • hideshow 11 child comments
  • [–] 20 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    Which IMO is going to happen in the USA before 2028. Their dependance on food imports and climate change interrupting the food supply is only half of it. The other half is that they've isolated themselves economically both trade and labour wise.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 57 points 1 week ago (10 children)

    The US is one of the biggest exporters of food in the world and while it would definitely change what we eat and when, the idea that the bread runs out anytime soon is actually insane nonsense. 2038, fucking maybe. But in a little over a year? We'd need multiple blights and animal plagues that sweep across the country killing everything, and that's more of a "global apocalypse" scenario. And yes global warming bad but also, the US has a lot of land and like 90% of it is not in use. There will be places to farm, even if the place changes.

    I think a more realistic prediction is like... 2045-2060 and honestly, I'm not sure it'll matter much.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 10 child comments
  • load more comments (10 replies)
  • [–] 17 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    Dependence on food imports? The US is a large net food exporter. And will remain so for a long time. Especially in wheat, corn and soy beans. Harvesting grains is incredibly labour efficient. The labour crisis is mostly in fruits and vegetables which are very labor intensive. Even if soy and grain yields would be unexpectedly badly impacted by climate change it will first impact the exports and lastly animal feed and agro ethanol. The yields would have to be unrealistically devastated for it to lead to shortages in human food like bread. So at worst we are looking at a shortage of meat, fruits and vegetables but we are extremely far away from any situation involving starvation. This also includes Canada, the EU and Australia. And it's not all vegetables either. Potatoes, carrots, peas and onions are machine harvested and won't get affected by a farm labour crisis and will continue to be available. No one is gonna starve for having to substitute broccoli and asparagus with carrots and peas. No one is going to starve when fruits gets expensive either, they are healthy but you can live without them.

    It's the part of the third world which currently relies on western food exports that will have food insecurity in a worsening climate crisis. The west is at worst facing a more boring and monotone diet.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (4 replies)
  • [–] 14 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    I think you underestimate how much some countries are willing to support having a positive relationship with the US in spite of it being in their best interest to do otherwise.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
  • load more comments (7 replies)
    [–] 82 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    If anything is done it's done offline. The best way to fight back is to build community and solidarity. Meet your neighbors, volunteer, get out there off the computer.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    [–] 76 points 1 week ago* (5 children)

    I know I'll get downvoted for this, but...Lemmy and related are an "echo-chamber" of sorts. You'll find that a vast amount of people "in the real world" don't share this sort of imminently apocalyptic mentality. I really mean no offense in my phrasing and I'm not trying to shit on anyone here. It's just the way things are.

    I remember being almost surprised at how "normal" life was when I first moved to a place that had polar opposite political views than me. Life went on...in mostly the same way it did when I was surrounded by people who mostly shared my ideologies. Life goes on...especially in the western world. Even in different parts of the US, it's a far cry from some place like Somalia or Iran or Israel/Palestine or North Korea.

    Idk. Sorry I got a bit rambly. Suffice to say that I don't think you're ever going to find what you seek.

  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago*

    I know I'll get downvoted for this, but...Lemmy and related are an "echo-chamber" of sorts. You'll find that a vast amount of people "in the real world" don't share this sort of imminently apocalyptic mentality.

    Not really sure about the echo-chamber thing though, but I feel like most people outside the Fediverse only doomscroll “brain-rot” content on social media.

    Politics, climate change, science, Star Wars/Trek, programming, GNU/Linux, etc, are such niche topics that don’t drive that much interest, unless it’s rage-bait.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] [S] 12 points 1 week ago

    I don't think that's entirely accurate. I try to talk to people every day about the greed of billionaires, the invasion of our privacy, the fascist takeover of the US government and the actions of ICE, and the horrible state of our climate. And I've yet to have anyone argue against me in real life. If anything, it's worse on lemmy. We can do something about this, but we have to do it together, and that doesn't happen without talking to people face to face. So many people know the situation is terrible, but feel completely helpless. We have to support each other so they see they aren't alone.

  • source
  • parent
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 55 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    Don't look on the internet, you won't find the community you're looking for here. Find the coolest candidate running in your local area and volunteer for their campaign. Even if they kinda suck, show up for their events. You aren't there to meet the candidate, you're there to meet other people who care about their community. Talk to the other volunteers. You'll be surprised at who you meet.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (4 replies)
    [–] 43 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Rioting is illegal and usually it's poor people smashing the windows of other poor people's shops.

    The word you're looking for is "uprising" or "revolution"

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 34 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    I was ready in February 2025. But after 12 months of being surrounded by people who don’t know/don’t care, and the growing threat of illegal detention of my legal immigrant spouse, I packed my family up and left.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 26 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Smallscale you want a laugh?

    10 odd yrs ago we and a friend were exploring and abandoned building......had 13 squaddies and a chopper on us....had reportd we were stealing lead (we werent....obv) yet when our forests burn our gov cant send a chopper with water......shits been burning over a week now.

    Priorities!?!?!?

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 24 points 1 week ago (1 child)
    load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 22 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    https://generalstrikeus.com/

    We need a general strike to start. It has to be big enough that is disrupts the ongoing social order, then revolution. Unfortunately many people are appeased by their treats and unwilling to commit to opposing the status quo in any effective way.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 20 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    https://youtu.be/0YFdwfNh5vs

    The issue is that the powers that be did learn their lesson and they learned it well. If you keep the masses JUST sufficient enough that they still have something "to lose" they'll be to busy chasing that to be able to mount any kind of resistance to their exploitation. It's the splash and dash mentality. It's also why they are so against abortion. they frame it as a moral issue, but it's really about ensuring a good crop of fresh people to exploit when the current crop wears out. It's a common fascist tactic: Concentration Camps were usually billed as "work" camps where people would be set to menial or meaningless tasks, so they would waste away on purpose, and the deaths could be logged as "by natural causes" and not murder. (only what the regime defined as "undesirables" were sent to be euthanized.)

    Competing Lords owned the land and extracted labor from the peasants, and this was feudalism. Then peasants overthrew the lords so they could seek ownership of those lands, but that only benefited those who already had the means to fill the vacuum left by the lords. Capitalism only shuffles the deck of Feudalism. it doesn't solve the underlying flaw in the game, namely that there will always be someone with more means than you extracting value from people whose only asset to sell is their labor and time. Eventually a group of gentrified individuals will emerge that fill the rolls that the old lords did, and given that nepotism is rampant in industry, it's not even really that different at all from feudalism. The idea that a CEO should be president of a democracy is such a perversion of the idea of public rule that it is anathema to it. Extreme wealth should be disenfranchising in of itself, as if you are that wealthy, you no longer need the protections of a popular government, but rather, you are what that kind of governance is supposed to be protecting against.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (63 children)

    Are you guys fucking nuts?

    You can't even utilize the tools giving to you to muster a solid defense online. You're all just showing up everyday giving up/down votes and reading your daily alloted news article about Trump in your over moderate hug box.

    You probably had to review multiple rules just to post this message in case you pissed off some almost homeless 18 year old moderator. I know the instinct is to say fuck me over this stuff. But think how moderation is actually a tool to destroy creativity, originality and effort. Moderation is a tool created by corporations to sanitize the internet so it could be sold piecemeal to advertisers. But what this also does is prevent us from keeping events in the forefront. If i have a political content community that only allows one type of content, that is fucking boring and stifling. When we separate our politics into [discussion], [political memes] [news] it may look nice but you kill free form thought and how people actually communicate. This is what feels different from the internet back in the day and the internet today. We have moderation sanitize our efforts. Compare this to MAGA or the right whose spaces are more creative. They combine multiple types of media into a menagerie that keeps things alive and interesting. Their spaces are filled with new, memes, in jokes plus calls to action. Because that's exciting. That's how content works. There's collaboration and mixing of media to create new stuff, like we use to before 15 years ago.

    The left has been boxed in on purpose. We are in a snuff box. MAGA seized every platform that's full of kindling and energy while we placed ourselves into a snuff box. Until we fix some core problems and understand how the internet works to engage people then nobody should be encouraging any kind of revolution. If you cannot fight in an online digital space and get measurable victories in a low effort maximum impact environment then a revolution is just going to get people killed and laws that push us towards more authoritarian state.

    And maybe I'm wrong. Could be full of shit. But if you want things to change we need to look at us as a whole and address our faults because we all fucked up big time. For decades the left went from a dominate culturally relevant position to a fucking joke. We're still using the most outdated playbooks and refusing to adapt to a new world. MAGA fucking sucks. But their victories is directly related to how we reacted and interacted. How did we show up for no kings with millions and nothing happened. How did we show up to BLM and only thing that lasted was the idea that the organization was corrupt and stealing millions. How did we show up for the woman's march and still they're dying in states because they can't access abortion. What we did is not working and I think it's a systematic problem in the left that needs to be reviewed before attempting anything.

  • source
  • hideshow 63 child comments
  • load more comments (63 replies)
    [–] 16 points 1 week ago

    The second paragraph answers the first. We wait until we're coordinated.

    If you want to speed up the process, get out there and coordinate. You might be ready, the people here might be ready, but a few thousand geographically isolated people on a left-leaning niche forum aren't gonna do it. Getting out into the community and getting active, that could actually shift sentiment.

    Find a local organization with at least a hundred members. Even if you don't align 100% with the DSA, join and go to meetings. That's where you're going to find people to coordinate with. Network with people, find out who has which skills, and volunteer your own. Participate in mutual aid. Canvas for leftist politicians. Even if you only care about revolution, going to these events and interacting with these causes will bring you in contact with the people who will coordinate with you.

  • source
  • [–] 15 points 1 week ago

    No one REALLY feels the threat posed by the polycrisis. It's all complex, intellectual worries about things that FEEL like they're still just a little ways out, not quite here. People are mostly focused on the here and now and the very near future. The riots happen when people literally can't feed their kids in the here and now. As long as it's just difficult, and not impossible, people will struggle on with their nose to the grindstone. Watch for rises in unemployment. CoViD showed what can happen when millions if people find themselves with mountains of free time to use on political action. When enough people are hungry and have no job to distract them, the fires will come.

  • source
  • [–] 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    We couldn't organize enough people to go stand in a line for 20 minutes and scribble in a few little pencil bubbles to prevent the hell upon earth that is currently happening.

    Unfortunately there will be no revolution or uprising or meaningful riots until things are far, far, far worse than where they are now.

    Our citizens couldn't sacrifice 20 minutes out of their lives to prevent what appears to be the beginning of the end of the USA; they're certainly not going to give up their homes and livelihoods and freedom anytime soon.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 13 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Well, when the working class is organized enough to do it, so organize.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

    I tell people all of the time

    "I won't throw the first brick, but when the bricks start flying give me a call"

    The thing that broke me wasn't data centers or hot weather, it was when I had to pay $7 for hot dog buns

    The business men who put a $7 price tag on hot dog buns during the 4th of July are not nearly as afraid of the public as they should be.

    It's fucking bread. Bread!

    When stealing bread to feed your family is almost a felony... burn it down.

    Problem is, if it happened, you would need to choose your targets wisely for it to be effective. Looting a Target isn't the answer. The point is not to get yourself a new TV; it's to advocate for real change. Don't burn down your own place of business, don't burn down your own neighborhood... burn theirs

    Find the motherfuckers in the Epstein Files, sink yachts, tear down the walls surrounding billionaire neighborhoods, etc...

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • load more comments (4 replies)
    [–] 13 points 1 week ago

    Its when people have nothing to lose.

  • source
  • [–] 12 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Looking at Gen-Z protests around the world, it's kinda already started, though the success rate/level in each case may be an issue. But yeah, for the US specifically I've been amazed things haven't really escalated to the same level yet outside of maybe Jan 6 and even that was running in the wrong direction

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 11 points 1 week ago* (3 children)

    Too late

    It's literally already too late.

    ... not that billionaires should see no consequence, but... what consequence are you going to make them see?? They've ALREADY ruined the planet.

  • source
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 51 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    we saw how quickly the planet started to heal during covid. It's not too late

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    I heavily disagree with this sentiment. Go work with your local conservation groups if you feel hopeless about the environment, God knows they need the help. You’ll be doing something useful and see that recovery and adaptation is possible. Endangered species can rebound, damaged ecosystems can recover, and societal views about our obligations to each other and the planet can change.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    [–] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

    Hey OP here's a song that matches this post. (seriously it's so fucking hardcore everyone needs to give it a listen)

    Beast - Devil

    If the sun vaporized one day And the moon just faded away Would we still, keep going on At this pit of the mining pace

    Should the birds fall to the ground And the fish die of thirst Would we still keep on living The way it's always been

    Now if the air could burn my lungs And the earth were only rocks Would it make us stop and realize That we rot, that we can't go on like this

    Devil, oh, devil Why don't you tell me why I'm a slave in these desperate times

    In this time that we could almost choose The color of our children's eyes Can we still, keep going on living When the monster turns on us

    Before the sun doesn't rise one day, huh And the moon just dies away There is one thing (What?) One thing what, uh That we'll never change Is that we're only learning to survive You might also like Microcyte Beast (CAN) Mr. Hurricane Beast (CAN) Total Eclipse of the Heart Bonnie Tyler Devil, oh, devil Why don't you tell me why I'm a slave in these desperate times

    If the sun vaporized one day And the moon just faded away Would we still, keep going on At this pit of the mining pace

    Should the birds fall to the ground And the fish die of thirst And the earth were only rocks Would we still keep on living The way it's always been

    Now if the air could burn my lungs And the earth were only rocks Would it make us stop and realize That we can't go on like this

    Devil, oh, devil Why don't you tell me why I'm a slave in these desperate times

    Devil, oh, devil Why don't you tell me why I'm a slave in these desperate times

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Yes, that might have to happen. Historically it's how things tend to go. And in the mean time, boycott everything you can, hit them in the hip pocket, find groups with listings that make it clear what's owned by "the bad guys" unsubscribe, disengage and lock down privacy, they make money from you, by you just engaging. There's a creator who led a boycott on Kelloggs after the ceo said, when asked about the cost of living, how people should cope, he said people should eat cereal (which had recently doubled in price) I'm retelling it poorly, but it drove people to gather and start a boycott. And it was big.

    If we led instructors on how to unsubscribe, disengage and engage privacy, that would hit their hip pocket.

    If we figured out who sucks the most, and targeted them, one by one, boycotting, they'd feel it.

    Figure out and share reports on local candidates and politicians, because the news is owned by the billionaires.

    Remember that they want you to believe change isn't possible, they will fight you with big shows of how what you're doing isn't causing change and isn't worth the risk, by putting people in prison for ridiculous lengths of proposed time, and filming their own atrocities to keep everyone in fight or flight, (in a head space where you can't organise and fight back)

    A lot of their warfare against the public consists of driving you into despair, driving you into fight or flight, etc. You can see that, in some of the ansers here. People who have or are giving up and exasperated, thinking what they're doing isn't making a change. A huge way to prepare yourself for the fight is learning nervous system regulation tools and practicing them daily. You need your faculties about you. Let the turkeys around you gobble all they want, keep on your path.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (2 replies)
    [–] 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Part of the problem is that there's a thing called "Co-opting the Revolution" that's been figured out, that you can neatly repackage dissent as a product to sell.

    Like how you get Che Gueverra as merch now.

    And it's done an incredible job at making people feel like they're doing something, whilst actually doing nothing.

    I've done my part! I wear a ACAB pin that I purchased from Hot Topic

    Or

    I've done my part! I participated in the Reddit Blackout, and then bought the memorabilia

    And the sad thing is, IT FUCKING WORKS

    Psychologically, for many people, it silences the parts of the brain that are like "FIX THIS! DO SOMETHING!" for quite a lot of people

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • load more comments (3 replies)
    [–] 10 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    It depends where you live.

    I honestly feel bad for the doomers in these kinds of comment sections who feel confused and aimless, like nothing is happening. I live in Oakland, California, and it's clear to me that my community is not waiting around.

    If you're feeling adrift, let me know where you live and I'll make suggestions. This sense of idleness is situational, and you can get involved in planning a revolution is you know where to look.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (1 reply)
    load more comments
    view more: next ›