

UnderpantsWeevil
I’m trying to imagine applying this logic to anything else.
Telling a friend not to try out for the baseball team, because playing baseball will increase your stress. Warning my sister not to watch a scary movie, because evidence shows they cause fear and discomfort. Breaking off a date with a cutie, because I’ve got butterflies and I don’t want to feel anxious.
What do these sociologists think about rollercoasters or car races or heavy metal concerts, I wonder?
better to make 3mil+
This seems to be the logic stumble in the anti-natalist brain. “If I just don’t have kids, then I’ll be rich one day!”
At some level, you need to dismiss the fantasy of being rich in the future and think about being happy in the moment.
I spent five years fostering before we finally landed a permanent placement. I’ve had the pleasure of hosting kids from age 0 to 4. And I’ll say that the work of taking care of another person is so much more fulfilling than bullshit office work or some shitty service sector job.
I go to bed early and tired but satisfied, rather than staying up late and dreading the next day. I’m not counting the hours to a retirement 20 years from now. I’m focused on my son’s first words and steps.
Just like with dating or caring for a pet or visiting family abroad, the value isn’t bound by the money I’m spending. It’s about bonding with others and continuing a relationship I can only measure in hours together.
Maybe the external factor is the final kick, knocking over a rotting house of cards, but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth.
Rome was a place where power consolidated, but the various eras might as well have been different empires.
The system collapsed, dissolved, reconstituted, and expanded several times during the 1400 years it existed.
Same with China. 5000 years of history emerging from Beijing, but each dynasty was distinct.
Even the US has reinvented itself several times over by now. Antebellum America might as well have been a different country. New Deal America was radically different from it’s Coolidge Era predecessor. Reagan’s America became it’s own thing in turn. Trumpian America is a new thing, not an end point.
But most other people don’t.
People who lived through 2000 and 2004 and 2016 can do barely more than shrug, because it’s just more of the same.
Republicans were allowed to rig the democratic process in their favor, run the board on multiple branches of government, and suffer no meaningful consequences… again.
Most people aren’t responding to this because it’s been normalized. Republicans stepping into office and crushing minorities, gouging federal bureaucrats, and shredding constitutional principles is just the Reagan Era standard.
Now you have a pedophile dictatos and a nazi running your country.
I’m old enough to remember Dennis Hastert (confirmed pedophile) as House Speaker and Dick Cheney (unapologetic fascist) running the Executive Branch.
Nevermind the litany of Klan members and Apartheidists littered through governor’s offices and Senate seats straight through my childhood.
But they knew where the line was. They knew the Real Common Enemy was anti-colonialist insurgencies in Vietnam and Cuba and Iran and Chile. They knew how to work with the Clintons and Schumers and Pelosis to crush Radical Islamism and Fuck The CCP.
Now fascism is returning to the imperial core and liberals are terrified of being treated like an Iraqi or Haitian. Absolutely intolerable!
Trump’s threatening to send white people to Gitmo!!! That’s not supposed to happen!!!
A bunch of government agencies are being told to do business exclusively on X, The Everything App.
Musk’s also trying to build out a financials tool within his ecosystem and to incentivize more people to do business in his preferred basket of shitcoins.
He’s a monopolist, working with other monopolists to corner the Internet as a marketplace. He’s not looking to give people a choice to use other tools.