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A phenomenon that we've been able to observe in politics for awhile now is how it tends to be dominated by meaningless bullshit. https://politics.theonion.com/poll-bullshit-is-most-important-issue-for-2008-voters-1819594689
E.g., Bloomberg loses the nomination fight because he was accused of saying "kill it" to a pregnant woman. Maybe he was gonna lose anyway, but a campaign that cost half a billion dollars was sunk just like that, by some foid politician bringing that kind of stuff up in a debate via a few well-memorized zingers. And probably some feminists feel like they struck an important blow for feminism, kinda like how they already saw her as a hero because when she was told to quit calling a fellow senator a disgrace, "nevertheless, she persisted". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevertheless,_she_persisted Probably female happiness and well-being has actually continued to go down, but they see these gestures as victories.
For people to care about an issue, they have to see it as (1) affecting them, and (2) something they can actually do something about. Think how many conversations you've had where you were like, "Yeah but isn't this issue important?" And someone said, "Yeah, but what can you do about it?"
When I was in prison, I made a big deal about how they were making me serve 35 extras days behind bars because my paruresis prevented me from peeing for a drug test. I was gonna appeal it to the highest levels, yadda yadda yadda. Then the Bureau of Prisons refused to provide me the carbonized form BP-11 I needed to appeal my case to the general counsel, plus it turned out it was gonna cost me like $350 to file a case in the U.S. District Court. They've really made it hard to get justice; see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Litigation_Reform_Act
Well, anyway, I tried to bring that to the public's attention, but initially nobody cared, and by the time I got some notoriety, I was being deplatformed from putting my content (including my arguments and documentation related to what happened to be me in prison) before the public. And then of course Antifa/Anonymous came in my house and physically stole and/or destroyed the devices holding my data.
At that point, I mostly stopped caring about paruresis because I was like, "Obviously nobody cares, and the forces arrayed against those fighting for reform are pretty strong." At least they do have an organization devoted to it; that's something, even if it is mostly a one- or two- or three-person operation (like one advocate, and one executive director, and probably a secretary, by which I mean an administrative assistant, not some kind of officer). https://paruresis.org/
Last year I was like, "I must contact my elected officials to stop these red flag gun laws!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_law This year, since the Democrats had taken over the state legislature, I realized it was pointless trying to fight it, so I didn't even bother trying, and now it's going to become law. https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB240
So that's the thing -- just because people aren't complaining, doesn't mean they aren't being oppressed. It could just be that they've been silenced, and/or that they've simply given up and accepted their fate.
Now the fight, with regard to guns, has shifted to trying to keep large capacity magazines from getting banned. https://vintologi.com/threads/democrats-are-making-it-a-felony-to-bring-a-large-capacity-magazine-into-virginia.308 Eventually, maybe we'll accept that infringement of liberty, and end up retrenching further back and fighting to stop some other more grevious infringement, like a total gun ban. And maybe eventually we'll give up on that too. I mean, think how much ground we've already lost, with regard to so many civil liberties, to the point that we hardly even talk about them anymore, except as a historical footnote.
Because we can only try to address a small percentage of our grievances -- those that are a big enough deal to us to be worth putting effort into addressing, but not so insurmountable that we feel like it's hopeless -- all of our discontent at our situation ends up being channeled into a few proxy issues that serve to represent all of the others. So we may end up pitching quite a fight over something seemingly trivial, just for the symbolism of it, because some kind of wedge issue or whatever
It's kinda like how it is with women -- if you're a nice guy who makes known to her that you'll listen to her complaints, she may complain forever. If you get brutal and slap her around, though, she may shut because she realizes, you don't care what she thinks, or at any rate, you're not gonna listen to it endlessly.
Probably a populace where, as leader, you take away all their freedom and respond viciously to any criticism of your leadership, will be pretty docile, because they have to be. You'll attract more criticize if you allow them to criticize you, and give them any leeway to claim they have rights. Maybe being a brutal dictator actually works better than giving your people some liberty.
One might say, an unfree people can't accomplish as much as a free people, but that could just be cope on the part of weak leaders who don't have the guts to be brutal, or it could be propaganda spread by those who want to undermine a leader. Aren't Russia and Turkey pretty authoritarian, and wasn't Nazi Germany pretty authoritarian? What about the 19th century; weren't a lot of the European states under monarchical rule? Yet didn't they accomplish quite a lot? Meanwhile, the U.S. is in decay, and in fact the decline of the conservative authoritarian rule meant that everything gave way to letting the SJWs impose their leftist authoritarian rule.
One could argue, nonwhite races need authoritarian rule because they can't handle democracy; and maybe the reason the U.S.'s decline is that we let in too many nonwhites or at any rate gave them too many rights to start influencing our government. E.g., the Democratic primary is mostly determined these days, it seems, by the elderly black vote. The main argument people were having was about whether that should continue to be the case, or whether we should let progressive Latinos have more sway so they can nominate Bernie Sanders.
E.g., Bloomberg loses the nomination fight because he was accused of saying "kill it" to a pregnant woman. Maybe he was gonna lose anyway, but a campaign that cost half a billion dollars was sunk just like that, by some foid politician bringing that kind of stuff up in a debate via a few well-memorized zingers. And probably some feminists feel like they struck an important blow for feminism, kinda like how they already saw her as a hero because when she was told to quit calling a fellow senator a disgrace, "nevertheless, she persisted". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevertheless,_she_persisted Probably female happiness and well-being has actually continued to go down, but they see these gestures as victories.
For people to care about an issue, they have to see it as (1) affecting them, and (2) something they can actually do something about. Think how many conversations you've had where you were like, "Yeah but isn't this issue important?" And someone said, "Yeah, but what can you do about it?"
When I was in prison, I made a big deal about how they were making me serve 35 extras days behind bars because my paruresis prevented me from peeing for a drug test. I was gonna appeal it to the highest levels, yadda yadda yadda. Then the Bureau of Prisons refused to provide me the carbonized form BP-11 I needed to appeal my case to the general counsel, plus it turned out it was gonna cost me like $350 to file a case in the U.S. District Court. They've really made it hard to get justice; see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_Litigation_Reform_Act
Well, anyway, I tried to bring that to the public's attention, but initially nobody cared, and by the time I got some notoriety, I was being deplatformed from putting my content (including my arguments and documentation related to what happened to be me in prison) before the public. And then of course Antifa/Anonymous came in my house and physically stole and/or destroyed the devices holding my data.
At that point, I mostly stopped caring about paruresis because I was like, "Obviously nobody cares, and the forces arrayed against those fighting for reform are pretty strong." At least they do have an organization devoted to it; that's something, even if it is mostly a one- or two- or three-person operation (like one advocate, and one executive director, and probably a secretary, by which I mean an administrative assistant, not some kind of officer). https://paruresis.org/
Last year I was like, "I must contact my elected officials to stop these red flag gun laws!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_law This year, since the Democrats had taken over the state legislature, I realized it was pointless trying to fight it, so I didn't even bother trying, and now it's going to become law. https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB240
So that's the thing -- just because people aren't complaining, doesn't mean they aren't being oppressed. It could just be that they've been silenced, and/or that they've simply given up and accepted their fate.
Now the fight, with regard to guns, has shifted to trying to keep large capacity magazines from getting banned. https://vintologi.com/threads/democrats-are-making-it-a-felony-to-bring-a-large-capacity-magazine-into-virginia.308 Eventually, maybe we'll accept that infringement of liberty, and end up retrenching further back and fighting to stop some other more grevious infringement, like a total gun ban. And maybe eventually we'll give up on that too. I mean, think how much ground we've already lost, with regard to so many civil liberties, to the point that we hardly even talk about them anymore, except as a historical footnote.
Because we can only try to address a small percentage of our grievances -- those that are a big enough deal to us to be worth putting effort into addressing, but not so insurmountable that we feel like it's hopeless -- all of our discontent at our situation ends up being channeled into a few proxy issues that serve to represent all of the others. So we may end up pitching quite a fight over something seemingly trivial, just for the symbolism of it, because some kind of wedge issue or whatever
It's kinda like how it is with women -- if you're a nice guy who makes known to her that you'll listen to her complaints, she may complain forever. If you get brutal and slap her around, though, she may shut because she realizes, you don't care what she thinks, or at any rate, you're not gonna listen to it endlessly.
Probably a populace where, as leader, you take away all their freedom and respond viciously to any criticism of your leadership, will be pretty docile, because they have to be. You'll attract more criticize if you allow them to criticize you, and give them any leeway to claim they have rights. Maybe being a brutal dictator actually works better than giving your people some liberty.
One might say, an unfree people can't accomplish as much as a free people, but that could just be cope on the part of weak leaders who don't have the guts to be brutal, or it could be propaganda spread by those who want to undermine a leader. Aren't Russia and Turkey pretty authoritarian, and wasn't Nazi Germany pretty authoritarian? What about the 19th century; weren't a lot of the European states under monarchical rule? Yet didn't they accomplish quite a lot? Meanwhile, the U.S. is in decay, and in fact the decline of the conservative authoritarian rule meant that everything gave way to letting the SJWs impose their leftist authoritarian rule.
One could argue, nonwhite races need authoritarian rule because they can't handle democracy; and maybe the reason the U.S.'s decline is that we let in too many nonwhites or at any rate gave them too many rights to start influencing our government. E.g., the Democratic primary is mostly determined these days, it seems, by the elderly black vote. The main argument people were having was about whether that should continue to be the case, or whether we should let progressive Latinos have more sway so they can nominate Bernie Sanders.