At least 521 U.S. towns and cities with populations of 1,000 to 200,000 disbanded policing between 1972 and 2017, according to a peer-reviewed 2022 paper by Rice University Professor of Economics Richard T. Boylan.
In the past two years, at least 12 small towns have dissolved their departments.
That works out to an average of 11 per year. I haven’t needed to think about numbers in a long time. Did I fuck that up? Cause if not, this sounds like a lot of panic over losing fewer police departments than the norm.
On top of the other comments, I’m also depressed because I don’t see myself having much of a future. I’m likely not going to be able to retire because I won’t be able to afford it. We are already seeing people reite later and later. It’s a slow build, sure. But where are we gonna be in the next 30 years when I should be at that age? Am I gonna be working till I’m 75? Can we even retire at all? Most of us can’t get enough money to build a retirement fund. We are way behind fancially where we should be. That’s not only harming us now, but at this point I’ve seen a lot of people say they just don’t have any hope at retirement. It’s just no longer a thing people are striving for, because it doesn’t look like it’s gonna be possible. Right now you’re looking at needing around a million for many people, and we can’t even get a couple thousand saved up.
On top of that, I have to worry about global warming. Which not only will fuck up things even more for the stuff in the first part, but I don’t even know if I’ll be alive to retire. And living is gonna fucking suck in so many ways. I’m in Oregon, and we have fires every year now. Last year we had some days reach 115°F. Things are going to be fucked.
It’s sometimes hard to be happy and optimistic when there’s not a lot to look forward to in the future.
I’m old enough to remember a time when the future seemed bright and optimistic. It felt like everyone was excited about what’s next, and we wanted to get to the future more quickly. In the late 80’s and part of the 90’s we had tv shows like “Beyond 2000” that painted this utopian future, and all the promises of the democratization of ideas and information were promised by the internet.
Now it’s just wealth gaps, social media poisoning society at large, climate change intensifying, and the consolidation of the social middle class into a uniform lower class. We don’t see the seeds of any positive change, and only expect things to get worse.
The one thing I can say is that the future also looked bleak around WW2. We had come off a world war, pandemic, the Titanic sinking, and then went right into WW2. I could understand why people back then had even more dire survival types of concerns. Not that it makes us feel any better today, because the catalysts for progressive changes back then were horrifying events.
If anything that makes me feel worse, as the true fix for today’s issues mean we have to be super-fucked before it’ll get better. Right now we’re just fucked.
It’s a milder strain, but that’s no relief for the immunocompromised and elderly. It’s all over airports with people coughing, and will tear through schools now.
Then the war is against those who profit most from inflicting climate change.
As with pretty much any human caused problem in human history, you need only follow the money.
That’s the core problem, the perpetrators of climate change have become effectively untouchable, leaving us nibbling around the edges so as not to inconvenience our owners.
No amount of peasants sorting recycling or putting up private solar panels will even begin to address this cataclysm. The enemies are big oil, big manufacturing, and big livestock. Unless we magically become willing to slap the profiteers/significant shareholders of those industries back down to Earth, sharply reduce them without concern for their continued profits as we should, and change our lifestyles to adapt to less ridiculous levels of consumption, we’re all fucked.
We are all just fucked. The proven unsustainable, unending Capitalistic growth/metastasis needs to stop for the sake of civilization, and our civilization has proven we would literally rather burn then reign our capitalists in and say “no” to their insatiable, sociopathic greed. After all, they are our glorious, benevolent job creators.
How do we convince millions of true believer capitalism worshipping peasants who’ve been propagandized since birth to labor and consume as their sacred duty that what our species needs to do is abandon the idea of growing the footprint and consumption of our species without end and seek homeostasis/equilibrium with this world instead?
Seditious conspiracy comes with a max 20 years sentence (for one charge). Most people that day were caught up in the events as they unfolded without thinking through their actions and understanding what they were doing, to various degrees. They didn’t wake up that day to start a coup but they did follow along with it, thus they were guilty but given leniency and their sentences were greatly reduced to reflect that. Those people got their 1-3 years for partaking.
Unlike those individuals this guy didn’t just wake up knowing a coup would happen that day, he actually organized it. Through his direction actions and that of his co-conspirators the events of January 6th unfolded thanks to his efforts. Him and his co-conspirators who organized and created this coup are indirectly responsible for the violence that followed that day. So his sentencing wasn’t lenient because of his leadership role coupled with the violence that occured he was given a stronger sentence.
In the off chance you know - The fucker who planted shitty bombs in the important rooms - is he considered an opportunist or part of the group? Is the insanity of almost-bombing the entirety of Congress considered part of the “coup attempt”?
I don’t remember most details. I only remember bombs were found, but they weren’t very good bombs.
I imagine they would have to be part of the conspiracy to have planted them when they did otherwise it would be a really big coincidence. Also I am not 100% sure of everything that happened but it looks like they were planted at the DNC and RNC HQ’s so I don’t think they would have affected Congress. Also, from looking at some information from the FBI it looks like these devices were never intended to go off but instead possibly used for diversions.
It’s also possible they just never had a chance to use them as things didn’t go according to their plans that day.
So… do you think he has the objectivity to regret all of his actions yet? Not regret as in that he did anything morally wrong because he’s far too much a narcissist to think that. But rather regret that he put himself in the crosshairs to be actually held to account for the first time when he’s previously been able to mostly get away with criminal shit his whole life.
If he hadn’t run for office, he could have continued to be just another sleazeball rich gangster wannabe in New York and probably lived out the rest of his life without any real consequences for being a piece of shit. He’d have been insulated by low expectations and mostly being a forgettable joke of a man. But now that he poses a real and ongoing danger to the public and democracy itself, people are motivated to hold him liable for his dozens of crimes in several major high profile cases.
Do you think he wishes he’d have just stayed in Manhattan and continued screwing people over in his property deals and business schemes? I bet it keeps him up at night, and it should.
Remember the look on his face when he won? He was horrified! Same when he first met with Obama and they had a joint press conference. His body language was like, "oh fuck, what am I even doing here."
I think regret is hard for him though, because to regret something means you have to feel, in some way, you could have done something better or differently. You have to take ownership of bad feelings and in your part of bad outcomes. I just don't think his brain will let that happen. Everything bad is always someone else's fault.
But yeah...maybe in some dark, cobweb encrusted corner of his mind, he wishes he was just a NY scam artist and fake "tycoon." It served him well enough, as you noted.
He’s incapable of all those feelings. His personality disorders won’t allow him to feel regret or remorse. On another note his personality disorder absolutely will not allow him to not respond to this decision by defaming Ms Carroll again.
I agree with the people saying he didn’t really plan or expect to win, but I think you have to at least balance that with the fact that becoming president brought him more fame, more power, the adoration of millions of (disgusting) people, new avenues for bilking people out of their money, etc. No matter what the price that’s gone along with it, I don’t see any possibility that he regrets running/winning. As always, he just blames other people for anything bad that came from it
His ego is more important than his instincts of self-preservation. He ran on spite because he fucking hated Obama for some reasons, maybe for dunking on him on that special dinner. Anyway, he’s too busy being in constant war mode to ever self-reflect. He thinks all he ever did is perfect, it’s all Biden’s fault you know.
IIRC he had to put the money in trust to appeal the first verdict, so she probably already has it her her bank account. He has way too much property to be judgement-proof.
That's great! I hope so. If it's not in a trust, even without being judgement-proof it can be difficult to get people to pay anything, like you have to pay people to physically seize their property or file additional lawsuits.
I know all of this is important, but I can’t get past the mention of something called “olive oil infused coffee” without being too thoroughly disgusted with humanity to continue.
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