Ask Lemmy

Sweden. I'm happy. But I have a hard time watching the rise of a fascist dictator and the collapse of the dollar reserves as the planet still gets eviscerated by mega corpos entities several orders of magnitude more powerful than any government. What I wish most is that the humans that do the biddings of the megacorps realised that they are just temporarily allowed to be their "ceo" or "cfo" and that in reality they are being used but the allure of money as a means of success, while mindlessly ignored goes the fact that joy and success is found in people that avoid money as much as possible. The demons can and should be revoked the status of being "legal humans" and correctly categorised as entities that exist to serve and protect humans. How can so many people be revoked the status of human and even killed while the destructive hateful entities that ruin our souls and habitat are continually worshipped by its zealots when they provide net negative happiness and health is so tragic.

As a Canadian who generally fits this category, i am fairly privileged, have all my basic needs met and some security for the future under status quo conditions. I have my struggles, but they have not so much to with marginalization or oppression. But it depends on who you are. Indigenous women are still going missing, racists are still gonna racist, billionaires are still exploiting people struggling with food and housing security, etc. same goes for the USA. For millions of Americans who are upper-middle/upper class, heteronormative, and white, life is continuing on just fine, feeling safe and experiencing a government that functions as well as it ever has from their perspective. They're too busy living their lives to get caught up in the "noise of angry squabbling of childish politicians". Maybe expenses have gone up, but they can still sustain all their expectations out of life. He'll you can imagine there are a not insignificant proportion of the Russian population are like this.

We are not living in the safe world anymore. We are all threatened with Ruzzia and its lapdog US.

The USA isn't particularly functional at the moment, but I'd hesitate to say it's lost much of the safety it had YET.

Most are still going to work, not being robbed, not being shot in the street, and so forth SO FAR.

Those things may change, but I'd be cautious about calling the USA unsafe until it actually is. I'd still rather be in most of America than most of, say, Syria right now from that standpoint.

Enough to thrive

This feels a bit out of touch. Firstly, anywhere in the USA, even Mississippi, is richer than almost anywhere else in the world in dollar terms. That is always going to buy a certain level of function and safety compared to most countries in the world, which are, well, poor. Next, "the US" is continent-sized federation. Vermont, say, is clearly safer and more functional, by any measure, than all but handful of independent countries.

In terms of figures, the USA is currently #43 out of 105 in the Safety Perceptions Index. Admittedly not a great score (but I can't help noticing that #1 is Uzbekistan, which is a literal police state). Even harder to measure "functional" but the US is at #20 out of 193 in the Human Development Index, which measures wealth, education and healthcare.

Whatever the current frame of mind of Americans, it's important to remember that the USA remains a privileged place.