this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Political Memes

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[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

I get this feeling when I watch Jon Oliver. Jon's really good at identifying the problem, demonstrating why its a problem, and making you kind of upset about it.

God forbid you ever watched Jon Oliver back to back because you'd go mad with the immediate understanding that you live in bizzaro world.

So, it would be nice if HBO had a second show which was more like myth busters where people championed each of the problems Jon pointed out and left the viewer with a clear understanding what they can do or at the least, what can be done.

[–] FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 1 points 1 minute ago

I feel like Jordan Klepper would be perfect for that, he does great on the street engaging with folks and trying to explain their ignorance slowly

(FYI Jon is the frazzled old mensch, John is the increasingly frustrated Brit)

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Grow your own food, make your own things, slash your expenses. If everyone does this, the enemy loses most of their power

[–] walktheplank@lemmy.world 4 points 18 minutes ago* (last edited 17 minutes ago)

As someone who lives this type of lifestyle, also share and barter within your community. It takes more than one household to manage everything. Meet your neighbors. Share skills and ideas. Support one another.

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 38 points 1 day ago (3 children)

He does try to give a solution. It's just that there is little to nothing the average viewer can do to make it happen. Sadly, that is just the way it is. Same with Bernie. We actually can't make the solutions happen. But both are raising public awareness, which "can" impact policy. So I guess watching and listening is what we can do.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 0 points 11 minutes ago* (last edited 2 minutes ago)

It’s just that there is little to nothing the average viewer can do to make it happen.

That's simply not true though, there are tremendously powerful actions Bernie could be suggesting we do to fix this mess. The reason he doesn't is that he seems unwilling to tell people to fully give up on electoral politics, and instead to advocate for direct action nearly exclusively (still worth throwing in a vote, but more than that is likely wasting time that could be directed elsewhere).

For example, he could be publicly calling for people to:

  1. Find local communities and get involved in to participate in direct action and make connections, since resisting alone without a community makes us much less effective, and easier to suppress.
  2. Prepare for and participate in a general strike, which would targets the establishment's income streams, and is capable of bringing a fascist government to its knees if done on a large enough scale. Immigrant farm workers are already potentially going forward with this plan of action.
  3. Contact a grassroots decentralized union like the IWW and attempt to unionize your workplace so that the general strike is even more effective (plus, ya know, better pay and working conditions as a bonus!)

Vaguely calling for the end of oligarchy instead of loudly calling for those very actionable steps is a massive missed opportunity for the resistance.

However, If we put in the work, we can resist this and we can win. Look at how effective the above mentioned methods were when used in Chile in 2019.. If we completely reject the political system and rebel on a mass scale, there is NOTHING they can do to stop us. But we won't hear to do those things from establishment figures like Bernie or AoC, not until it's too late, anyway.

[–] andxz@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

...and if nothing else, documenting what is being done, if it will ever come to a point where it can be turned around.

There's a reason the Nazis paved over and planted fucking trees on as many concentration camps they possibly could before they got overrun.

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah I love it when he provides solutions.

[–] mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I do think that "the system" (not any particular person or group of people, but the more abstract social meta-organism) is evolved, all systems are, to integrate and channel possible destabilizing forces into neutralized or even system-reaffirming forces. The system does not "platform" people who would legitimately threaten the system as a general rule. Jon Oliver is a pressure release valve, if he was to propose solutions that threatened to alter the system too much (systems see significant alterations as akin to death), he would be deplatformed organically. Again, I must stress that it is not an actual person or organization explicitly setting out to do this, like some sort of shady Comedy Central Illuminati. It's just the same as how our body has a bunch of independent organs and cells that all work together without exactly trying to or knowing that they're doing so.

Unfortunately Bernie is largely the same sort of thing. We can be assured of this by the fact that he is influential. Almost without exception, the more influential someone wants to be, the more pro-systemic they must be. In Bernie's case he may not even realize how pro-systemic he is, he likely sees himself as more anti-systemic. But he is anti-systemic in the same way as a white blood cell is anti-systemic - that is, not at all, and only in appearance without inspection of the bigger picture. I suspect this is why he ends up not proposing any clear course of action. His role, although again I think he is unaware of this, is to create the sense that establishment dissent exists and is possible, that change and reform is possible. I say this without taking a stance on whether it is actually possible or not. Both in a system where it is possible and in a system where it is not possible, there would still be a flag bearer for that possibility regardless of its actual existence.

What I mean to say is that the system self-selects for the type of people who acknowledge problems but not the type of people who make proposals to fix them. It wants to appear to be investigating the desires of its constituents while not actually doing so - the system only cares about its constituents in so far as its constituents lead to the system's well-being as a whole. The system does not intrinsically care for its constituents well-being. So while systems do indeed evolve and legitimately investigate ways to improve their own well-being, they will only appear to investigate ways to approve the well-being of their constituents, if they can help it.

All just my impressions of course, I hate talking in an authoritative voice about my ideas, but it's better than prefacing every sentence with "I think", "it seems like", etc.