Is just such a shock from being in China. Just got harassed and essentially threatened for being a socialist. They searched my bags and commented on my China flag and my little red books and my copy of Blackshirts and Reds. Fucking police state. The security in China is strict, but they don’t give a fuck about your thoughts, whereas this guy was very aggressive about “consequences” for being a socialist.
consequences for being a socialist.
What… like healthcare? pension? affordable housing? Shit dawg, sign me up!
Right? I get the feeling he was more thinking Ethel and Julius Rosenberg though. And fair enough, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
the US really sucks now and is just going to keep getting worse. it still sucked 5+ years ago, but at least you could say treats were cheap. food was cheap. housing prices weren’t as exorbitant as they are now.
now even living is unaffordable, the infrastructure is falling apart, I really don’t see what’s left.
I really don’t see what’s left.
waiting for everyone to realize that their society is in free-fall collapse. but it’s more likely that civilization will completely collapse before the working class of the west wakes up.
Empires take a lifetime to fall apart. At some point it will be just another country. Who knows how many wars we will put the rest of the world through on the way down, though.
They can take that long, even longer, but there is no law of empires that states collapse can’t happen extremely quickly either. The material circumstances on the global scale that we find ourselves in are different in significant ways from the way things were historically during the collapse of the other large hegemonic empires. One of these important differences is the speed of information. And the increasing rate that climate change is drastically altering the world helps ensure that geopolitical change will also unavoidably be seeing rapid changes as a result. Don’t forget what Lenin said about decades and weeks.
there won’t be a “free-fall collapse” - like a single event - though. things are just going to slowly get worse and worse every year. the right wing courts will get rid of more rights. businesses will be more free to exploit workers and the environment. infrastructure will continue collapsing. life will keep getting more difficult for the working class. just like how the UK went from a globe spanning empire to a backwater.
I’ve read accounts from people returning to the US after a visit in China saying it feels like returning to the 20th century after experiencing what 21st century infrastructure is like. Did you get that sense that all? I suppose it is highly dependent on which city you visited.
Not just infrastructure, payments are also convenient with Ali pay/WeChat pay. Everyone pays everything by phone, most haven’t used cash or card in years, although you can if you want. Apps are also ridiculously well designed and integrated, less visible as a foreigner, as much if it is obviously in Chinese and you have a language barrier. But you can really do anything you can imagine in WeChat. Alipay can also translate in miniapps. Say you are in a restaurant, you will scan a qr code on the table, can have a menu that you can automatically translate if you so chose. You also can order and pay through that menu on your phone.
Bureaucracy exists like everywhere else, but tends to be faster and more efficient in my experience. It’s not perfect, but the country does feel very different.
Also, it doesn’t depend that much on the city. I have been to most large cities in China, many small and medium sized ones too. I have also been to the countryside. The latter is more relaxed, but everywhere has technology and infrastructure. Basically all cities are serviced by train. Towns will all have bus systems that mean you can get anywhere in the country with public transportation.
Yes. I literally was just telling someone it felt like it was both a century ahead and a century behind in some ways. Infrastructure and walk ability are amazing. The trains are so nice and so fast. I took multiple high speed trains, and next time I go back I intend to do the maglev train from Shanghai to… wherever it goes, I just want to ride the train 😂
I’m sure they’ll develop the areas it went. Like when the high speed trains were going to “nowhere” and now that “nowhere” is a bustling metropolis. Maybe not though, I guess we’ll find out.
The rural areas are still quite bad (compared to the big cities that are amazing), unlike Western Europe where even backwaters are pleasant (the US is halfway between both though).
Traffic is madness and I don’t understand how there’s not constant accidents all the time. It basically seems like a lawless land where everyone just does whatever they want wherever they want. Cars just sort of play chicken and force their way through gaps by just sort of… going and the other guy will either slow down or he won’t. Lots of people fail to stay in their lanes and many times my driver would have to honk to get someone to get back over into their lane instead of driving in the middle of two lanes.
I watched arguments between taxi drivers and regular drivers because some dude would just stop in the middle lane of a three lane road and play on his phone, and everyone just sort of had to go around them.
At the same time, traffic lights are tied into Didi and you can see when the light your driver is at will turn green while they’re on their way to you.
It’s not as bad as like the infamous videos from India and other countries , but it was still unsettling until I got used to it.
it’s always such a kick in the face when I go from Mexico to the US. I usually sink into a depression for the first two weeks or so due to the isolation and just kinda oppressive feeling of the United States.
usually the customs officers don’t hassle me much because I’m white but tsa is always happy to help themselves to a groping, which is why I typically do not fly in the US. usually I cross in tijuana so I can deal with sane and pleasant mexican authorities instead of like getting groped for my sunscreen or whatever insane shit the US be smoking this week
TSA is so bizarre, they’re literally on guard for a terrorist attack that became unfeasible DURING 9/11 when that one flight crashed in a field in Pennsylvania because the passengers fought back. Not to mention they’ve deadbolted the cockpit doors, there’s always a chance of an Air Marshal on the flight and many pilots are armed…
Some claim they could “simply” bomb the plane. As if it were that easy. Explosives are tightly regulated and controlled and even a homemade 9/11 event simply isn’t happening. Look at every other airplane based attacker from the shoe-bomber, to the underwear bomber to the guy that tried to mix the liquid explosives in the lavatory. Which apparently wouldn’t work, anything liquid that’s unstable enough to be a high explosive couldn’t be casually brought in your hand luggage, and “mixing a binary explosive” in the bathroom is extremely difficult.
They’re chasing ghosts.
What’s even funnier is like they failed to catch something like 80% of the weapons snuck through in undercover testing a few years ago lol. so they’re not even good at it.
one of the things that cracks me up about the bolting the pilot in the cockpit thing… Latin American airlines don’t do that. the pilot will come out, have nachos, go to the bathroom, and you know why?
because Latin American countries don’t conduct themselves in a manner that people wanna hijack their planes and fly them into buildings
Yeah, I recently got back from a trip to Costa Rica and I could immediately feel the fascistic shift in atmosphere coming back. As soon as the plane touched down the immediate first thing I hear is, “LET’S CLAP AND CHEER FOR OUR TROOPS, EVERYONE ELSE WHO BUST THEIR ASS AT NORMAL JOBS, FUCK YOU YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT.”
Jesus Christ that’s bad. I got rerouted and came back through Vegas airport, and seeing people not even make it out of the airport before getting sucked into gambling really made the differences apparent.
Question: I know gambling, prostitution and pornography are all illegal in China - is this strictly enforced or do they kind of informally allow it to happen like most other countries do where such bans are in place?
I know that for gambling it’s pretty common for Chinese people to vacation to Macau and Hong Kong to do it, and I have to imagine that online gambling is just as prevalent and hard to spot and stop as it is here.
I believe pornography production and sale is illegal but consumption is not.
I don’t know, because I am not a consumer of any of those things. I have a Chinese friend who often jokes about erotic massages, but that’s about as far as my exposure to that goes. I know Macau is basically the gambling den of China though.
