this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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[–] hector@lemmy.today -3 points 1 day ago (4 children)

You do not realize.or care they are doing the same with palantir now, to be used in secret in biz and gov against us.

Since you already accept democracy such as it is still, being replaced with an eastern style autocracy ala russia it should be an easy transition for you, until you cannot pay your bills at least, after they take breakfast and dinner from you and not just lunch.

It will give you something to think about during your 6-12 work week, 6 days a week 12 hours a day for starvation wages.

[–] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago

hey state department, come pick up your guy he's getting tired

[–] Rom@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It will give you something to think about during your 6-12 work week, 6 days a week 12 hours a day for starvation wages.

Dawg we literally have that in the US.

[–] hector@lemmy.today -1 points 1 day ago (4 children)

You are so hip with your dog references there buddy. But pal I must tell you, we have 5-8 work weeks, and anything over that is time and a half. Because unions.

Because your grandfather's, instead of manufacturing politically correct in fractions to attack people on, organized and fought to get a fair share of economic output for their labor.

[–] Sickos@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How can you simultaneously say "unions fought and died for your rights and we need to keep up the fight" while also being mad at leftists on the internet? I'm starting to think you have no coherent ideology.

(Also there is way too broad a category of "exempt" worker to say amerikkka has 40 hr weeks with time and a half overtime)

[–] hector@lemmy.today -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe that is part of the problem, do not look left or right, look up.

[–] T34_69@hexbear.net 5 points 23 hours ago

Some kind of uhhhh third way hillgasm billdawg obama-drone

[–] SwitchyandWitchy@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Because unions.

Maybe if we had enough of them and they were powerful enough to actually take charge things would be okay for more than just the highly privileged. Maybe even without the extreme exploitation of the global south.

We could call it a union of unions. A Soviet union so to speak. Or would that be too eastern for you?

[–] hector@lemmy.today -2 points 1 day ago

Ah you started off so well but then you ruined it with a gratuitous insult, piss off mate

[–] Rom@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Union membership is the lowest it's ever been and minimum wage hasn't been raised in 16 years. We are not, in fact, getting a fair share of the economic output for our labor, and we never have, because capitalists have been stealing our surplus value since day 1.

[–] hector@lemmy.today 0 points 1 day ago (2 children)

No shit?

Yet in the post war years a minimum wage job would pay for a house and a cheap car and life's essentials.

They changed the way inflation is measured starting around the 70s. After the 1972 business roundtable made a long game to undo the new deal and workers gains.

[–] 666@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Woah in the post war years anyone who was a suspected anarchist or communist got blacklisted and was unable to work, have a home or live a normal life. Hundreds of thousands of people! Some of whom I know personally in real life!

So much for that freedom in the West!

What about Indonesia murdering hundreds of thousands of suspected communists with U.S military and financial support? Where is the freedom there? How did my western freedoms end up in a pile of dead indigenous people? It always seems to happen!

[–] hector@lemmy.today -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh my God this is the dumbest logic that the rich sponsor to derail any example to meet from the great generation. Because everything was not perfect nothing from that era counts.

You could not use a single example from history with that logic. You could discredit anything anyone has done ever if there was injustice.

Give me one example, one historical example that could be used while not being discounted because their society was not perfect?

And regardless a minimum wage job paid for life, the factory job paid for a downright prosperous life, antitrust laws were enforced, we paid a reasonable amount of money for goods, and so forth.

[–] Wakmrow@hexbear.net 4 points 21 hours ago

Are you serious

[–] Rom@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago

Yet in the post war years a minimum wage job would pay for a house and a cheap car and life's essentials.

Yet this is no longer the case in America. So, what, are the Asians responsible for this, too?

[–] 666@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You are so hip with your dog references there buddy. But pal I must tell you, we have 5-8 work weeks, and anything over that is time and a half. Because unions.

Wait, I think I remember you talking about freedom of expression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954

Despite being ruled "unconstitutional" these were just more of the flagrant attempts at legislating anti-communism legally. Taft-Hartley was active for a while as well. We all know how "strong" the Supreme Court is these days anyways :)

[–] hector@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It had a lot to do with tens of millions of union members and their Associates standing up and fighting together. Without that the United States would still be sending kids down in Coal Mines, the old thrown out in the street to die, etc.

Obviously we have been going back to that place for a long time, half a century, that is the problem.

[–] Sickos@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

Common ground found! Time to put bullets in bosses again. left-unity-2

[–] 666@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 23 hours ago

You have a resounding agreement from the rest of us on here on that.

[–] 666@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It will give you something to think about during your 6-12 work week, 6 days a week 12 hours a day for starvation wages.

Migrants think about providing a better life like this for their family as the U.S intervenes, destroys and annihilates any nascent leftist movement or anti-imperialist movement in Latin America. With over 100 interventions to boot, there's plenty of migrants to fulfill that role in the governance of the west while a comfortable, captured proletariat and their ruling class suck up the wages and resources from the global south.

until you cannot pay your bills at least, after they take breakfast and dinner from you and not just lunch.

Well, funny enough, I had that in glorious America. I didn't have a washing machine, hot water, a microwave or oven, proper housing and grew up inside of a demunincipalized slum. You think I got regular breakfast and dinner? Haha. Sorta, until they cut food stamps and social services further and my family didn't apply anymore.

People in "horrible eastern-style autocracies" had more than me and hundreds of other people in the neighborhood I grew up in. Weird how that works, huh?

[–] hector@lemmy.today 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What does that have to do with the West having their representative governments replaced with autocracies?

In case you are unaware by the way, plenty of people go without here. We have been getting squeezed for 50 years and we are now at the point where a full-time job does not pay for life for a larger number of people.

And I bet if you need to see a doctor you would not be forced to pay 10 times what everybody else in the world pays and a hundred times for a drug.

The victims of the United States government includes United States citizens.

The war on poverty of Linden B Johnson turned into a war against those in poverty. Their own undesirables. A rank that will grow and grow in numbers in time.

To reiterate, I did not originally say anything wrong, and to refer to Eastern governments principally refers to the near East and Middle East. But it also does apply to China.

[–] 666@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

What does that have to do with the West having their representative governments replaced with autocracies?

Because most of us believe that they are already autocracies; not of divine might or of stereotypical dictator-fashion but of a dictatorship of capital. Where your worth is determined by how much value you can generate for a middleman that controls the means of productions. Where constant warfare is waged against the poor on the basis of race, nation or creed by the ruling capitalist class that puts the majority of the world in abysmal poverty while the West gets to live out it's façade of elections held together by imperial extraction and exploitation of the global south. I mean an actual façade of electoral districts state-side and local politics completely marred by racial divide, segregation, gerrymandering and religious dogma.

The original constitution of the United States existed to serve and protect landowners, slaveholders and the merchant-class that was the foundation of the republics at the time. Your ability to vote was based on how much land you own, to which moved onto racial strife as a dominating factor as the transition from agrarian to plantation-industrialized economy. There was never the workers, the industrial revolution in mind. The workers are what exists these days and the representative governments of the west have never existed to protect them or their right of speech but their right to exploit and create capital.

The government structure of your imagined "East" no matter how repressive in your imagination, is still a vast improvement over racially stratified free market economies that depend on vast plunder AND exploitation of the global south. That's really the honest cut of it.

[–] hector@lemmy.today 0 points 23 hours ago

When the Constitution was written if you had land you could vote, it did not matter if it was a million Acres or a half an acre. You each got one vote. Also there really were very few manufacturing workers, like 90% was in agriculture.

Now you want to talk about the failings of the western governments go ahead, I am the first to bring those up. But it would be a whole lot worse with a one-party state. A lot worse. We have different groups of people and deep divisions within our groups and the worst people in the country in charge. At least some of these other large autocracies have a smart person in charge evil and ruthless though they may be. We have evil ruthless and utterly malicious. Nihilistic. We are not starting with Octavian caesar, but with caracalla.

Now if you think Western governments are worse towards their citizens than Eastern ones I would straight up disagree. Due to honest elections we have extracted more from lawmakers than an autocrat who's only fear would be a bloody Revolution.