this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
343 points (90.0% liked)
Political Memes
11924 readers
1802 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
1) Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
2) No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
3) Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
4) No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
5) No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I struggle to understand how the collapse of the United States would do anything but make life worse for literally everyone on the planet for decades if not longer.
You want to make things better? Change the system from within slowly. You want to accidentally make things much much worse? Burn a system down and watch what emerges be horrible beyond what you could imagine.
Why would it automatically be "horrible beyond what you could imagine"? I have watched the US murder thousands of people through illegal wars, poison the entire planet, and now for years the US has supported an open genocide in Gaza, not to mention previous genocidal regimes propped up by the US.
The things I have seen are already literally more horrible than I could have imagined. I wouldn't imagine they would send a Tomahawk missile into a crowded elementary school, and especially wouldn't imagine they would hit it two more times, ensuring nearly every young girl in a small town was killed. I wouldn't have imagined these things years ago except maybe from a country like Nazi Germany. But I've seen it, and there is ample evidence, and we know that there is more that they do in the shadows that we might never know. Tell me why we shouldn't stop it as quickly as possible? What would you say to the parents of these children? People have been pushing for change slowly and steadily for the entire history of the US and we are still a bloodthirsty, heartless monster, imprisoning more people than have ever been held in history.
Millions.Take Vietnam and the completely illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos alone, and you're already at millions.
Sure, let’s take a government that controls tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and just make it cease to function. Who gets them? Who decides if they stay in their silos? Are they turned on regional rivals first, or does someone who wants a particular ethnic group to disappear send some to one part of the world?
Just think for a second. It can always get worse. Billions.
We are in the middle of a historic mass extinction event because of the global ecocide commited by the wealthy elite. We will ALL suffer immensely and billions will die if nothing is done to stop them. Saying we can't do anything because it will just get worse is a position only the very privileged could take, able to ignore the massive bloodshed happening every day.
I sort of agree with you but the chance for that is over. I can't come up with a single way to change anything slowly at this point. We've had 46 years of pillaging the working class and now we're about to get nuked by an illegal IPO during the biggest bubble we've ever seen. Please help me understand how we'll have the option to change anything once Palantir rolls out the robot dogs next year.
I've attempted to connect with my neighbors. They all worship Trump and are currently flying homophobic flags cause they hate that it's pride month.
RIP autistic people
You’re trying to frame me as someone who is being ableist, but you’re the one who’s saying autistic people can’t go outside and talk to people.
I think they can, and it might be difficult, but it’s worth it.
Idk I've tried that a lot in the past and have had mostly bad results
When was the last time a system remotely this bad was actually redeemed slowly? The Mongols were defeated by disease, storms, and violence; the Nazis were defeated by extreme violence; the Japanese Empire was defeated by extreme violence; the French monarchy and Napoleon were defeated by extreme violence; the Russian monarchy was defeated by extreme violence.
Things get worse before they get better with a revolution, but they can get better. That isn't to say that we should decline to reduce harm inside the current system, but it seems naive to expect the current system to stop being terrible. Harm reduction is a temporary measure.
Let’s go with one of your examples, and I think the quintessential one: France, 1792. The monarchy is crumbling. It’s terrible. Let’s burn it all down. Yay! The monarchy is over!
Wait, what now? War with Austria for no reason? Executing tons of nonviolent and political prisoners? Terror as a form of government (that killed more peasants than aristocrats)? Coups and counter-coups and then Napoleon who plunges Europe into basically the zeroth world war. Millions die. Napoleon is eventually defeated, twice.
What came after? A slightly reformed (1814), and then slightly more reformed (1830), Bourbon monarchy. Boy, I bet the third estate might have preferred to get to that kinda boring reformed era a little faster and without all the dead people. (I guess I don’t blame the third estate, I blame Danton. But still.)
And then they overthrew that monarchy, had a second republic for four years, Napoleon III declared himself emperor, the empire collapsed, and they had a third republic, which was overthrown by the Nazis, and then a fourth republic after the Nazis lost, which only lasted another twelve years before they changed enough laws to call it #5.
Boy, I bet they would have preferred to skip ahead to overthrowing the monarchs indefinitely.
The third estate had effectively politically overthrown the old regime by like day five of the estates general. There would still be a king, but the clergy-nobility-commons divide was gone and there would be representative government. Not enough, obviously, but a step in the right direction.
Denton decided the people he didn’t like needed to die and that sent things spinning out toward murderville for everyone, including eventually himself. Basically everyone who would have built upon those small steps fled the country or were murdered. Many of them were shitheads, yes. But I think France would have been better off without the head-choppy parts of the revolution.
That doesn't seem compatible with the summaries I've found. I'm not an expert by any means, but it looks like the constitutional monarchy you mentioned was repeatedly sabotaged by Louis XVI until he was violently deposed. You can argue against his beheading the following January all you like, but deposing him was not a change from within, it was a violent revolution. They stormed the palace and threw him in jail.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-great-french-revolution-1789-1793#toc27
Yeah, Louis XVI was not going along with the program willingly. But on occasion he felt the need to at least pretend to, and made some concessions, and told his asshole brother to stop making such a fuss in exile.
I guess the whole thing just contrasts with what was happening across the channel in the same time period. England / the UK did not have a violent revolution in 1848 like the French, Austrians, Prussians, and Italians did. A bunch of smaller German states avoided it too. Because their leaders saw the writing on the wall and made small concessions. It’s not like the late 1800s were a great time in those places, but they ended up in similar spots as the more violent revolutionary -> reactionary -> liberalizing places did but without all the suffering that came with (admittedly cathartic) chucking bricks and chopping heads.
"Tear it all down" is for weak minded imbeciles who get frustrated trying to confront issues and think of practical resolutions.
I find "tear it all down" people hilarious. Like... yea, ok, we'll tear it all down. And who's gonna rebuild after? You and your keyboard?
revolutionaries will do it, just like the bolsheviks did.
The Bolsheviks relied on existing structures, functionaries and specialists because they HAD to. Nothing else was possible, they existed in the real world in the midst of a civil war, not some childish fantasy.
Trotsky aggressively recruited Tsarist military officers, many of which served without really aligning with Bolshevism.
And just a few other facts to add: world war, civil war, famine, coercion, mass violence, dependemce on inherited infrastructure and harsh repression. That's what you want for the US? Because real people, the ones not playing make believe on the internet, do not.
I never denied that revolutionaries in the US shouldnt utilize already existing state apparatus, do you even understand what collapsing means?
Change requires sacrifices, but american left thinks americans need to babysat into revolution, america is already inflicting civil war, famine, coercion, mass violence and harsh repression on many countries.
you should study history instead of bullshit. only thing you got right in your profile is wannabe
I am more aware about history than avg american lib whose ideology is shaped by pedophile billionaire owned media.
yes, i am sure you are aware history exists. you need to actually learn what happened though.
ironical, youre literally an american
see how little it takes to make you admit you're a nationalist?
I hate Nazi Germany, I guess I'm a nationalist
do you even know what nationalism means
hilarious to say this as your entire political position is to vote every 4 years and slowly see the people moving closer towards fascism and still saying "we will do it slowly!!"
I vote more often than that and if more people did, society would be more aligned with that they want. But most don't, because stupid fucking morons like yourself convince them it doesn't matter.
Voting does matter
Voting democrats however dont
Are you aware that not enough people vote 3rd party for a 3rd party to be viable?
Are you aware that no 3rd party is putting in the effort to make people want to vote for them?
Are you aware that it's possible to reform political parties, but not if we descend to deeply into actual fascism due to an actual fascist party being in control?
So wouldn't it make sense, in that scenario, to vote for a party that isn't actually fascist (despite what tankies believe) so that we can have a less oppressive situation that is more likely to foster the kind of change that could potentially make a 3rd party viable some day?
I mean, unless you want to become a historical figure by starting a violent revolution. For which I hope you have a post-war plan so things don't collapse even more.
If you dont try to build a 3rd party, they will never become viable
You cant reform a liberal imperialist party like the democrats who have a long history of pursuing imperialist capital goals. Its like saying "we will reform nazi party to be sympathetic to jews"
Have at it, champ. Maybe you should go talk to those 3rd parties and tell them to.....do something?
I guess in the meantime your goal is to whine about the only party that can win that isn't actually fascist. Yes, I know you think both are equally fascist. I don't care and am not responding to a stupid sentiment like that.
Even you know both parties are:
The only thing they differ is on the culture war. There is not much difference if you really look at it
I mean you guys call names to people who vote and organize for those parties, proves they are doing stuff for sure.
Ok. I've read enough of your comments.
What's your solution to our general problem and what are you personally doing about it?
I am not an american to do anything about it
My solution is to organize in an alternative party that is out of the bourgeoisie imperialist democratic party and put candidates from those parties in elections, however elections would be just one part, keep organizing and keep spreading class consciousness. If you are looking for immediate leftist gains through electoralism vote for a 3rd party that already has significant base like for example the green party.
I think more what I meant was, I prefer none of this have happened, but when trump and his fellow cult members choose to do something insane, I'm pretty happy to see the rest of the world cutting us out of their decision making so this insanity is seen as unacceptable.
Its hilarious how you think US does even one bit of good to the world
Collapse of tsarist russia made soviet union which was much better for the world. Collapse of USA will do much much better things for rest of humanity
When you grow up you're going to come to understand that politics/countries/humans can't be boiled down to black and white. There are many shades of grey.
The U.S. isn't JUST evil. That you think so indicates that you aren't ready to have a real discussion.
There are alot of nuances to this, however it boils down to US being evil.