The US is failing, though. The entire world has always been fucked up. Every place has its problems. There was a point of divergence between the US and countries that have things better off where the US stopped improving, though. This moment happened after FDR died in 1945. With his death, the movement to universal healthcare died. Then, just two years later, the Taft–Hartley Act passed and gutted the power of unions. That same year, McCarthyism became a thing. And after that, it just took a while for the momentum to die and for everything gained to be lost. If we want to look at the moment of failure for the US, it happened long before Trump, Bush, Reagan, and Nixon. Henry Wallace was the vice president of FDR from 1941-1945. Then, the party decided to replace him with a conservative, Harry Truman. This decision is ultimately what screwed the US. Had FDR refused to replace Henry Wallace, history would have taken a very different path.
parricc
Kreuz still at least has pretty good jalapeno sausage, and at a cheaper price than some of the other places. It's still worth going to for that.
Eh, only a few people I've known have ever been able to match an on point barbecue place like Terry Black's in Lockhart or Franklin's in Austin. Most of the people that know what they're doing end up matching a middle of the line place like Chisholm Trail in Lockhart. But if someone really doesn't know what they're doing, it'll come out as bad as something from Rudy's or worse. Unfortunately barbecue restaurants charge out the ass now. $35 per pound is highway robbery. But making it at home requires the right equipment and enough friends to take shifts babying it at 2 in the morning. On the other hand, a lot of restaurants end up getting bad as the years go on as well. Places like The Salt Lick, Smitty's Market, Kreuz Market, Cooper's, and City Market all turned to crap ages ago.
Honestly, you're getting a bad bias from the kinds of Americans that currently are immigrating there. The important thing to understand is you don't want the Americans with money, you want the Americans without any money that are willing to work and help other people out. Lol. See, what you've got right now are all of the rich assholes that don't care about the culture or people of where they're moving to - they just want to live like kings in a cheap city that they can turn into an asshole bubble that prices all of the normal people out. Rich people are leeches. Ultimately, the world would be a better place with open borders everywhere, but no rich assholes. Think about why borders even exist. In what world does it matter? The only reason is ultimately just rich assholes not wanting to dilute their wealth. The best thing we can do at this point is to convince them to go to Mars and leave them there.
It won't be a huge number, though. Capitalism still works to consolidate wealth. While there never has been any private individual with that much wealth before in human history, that kind of wealth is not unprecedented. The main reason is that people with that kind of wealth have historically been emperors. And make no mistake, anyone with that kind of wealth carries with them the threat of becoming an emperor. After someone becomes an emperor or a dictator, they gain absolute control over the GDP of whatever they control. But even now, Musk's wealth is not even 1% of the world's GDP. Someone like Augustus Caesar would have had several times more wealth, and direct control over something like 25% of the world's GDP. Musk having this much wealth is disgusting - nobody should even be a billionaire. But, at the same time, in the grand scheme of things, he will be nothing more than a footnote in history. He has never done anything actually memorable. People only know him now because he's a cunt with a lot of power. But power fades, and the world has had countless cunts. In the end, he's not anyone special. In 100 years, the average person will likely have no clue who he was. Nor will they care.
Of course, but someone should keep it going anyway by making an actual fork of arch called arch btw.
I do think there's a lot of eyes opening now.
There's definitely a rise of the far right happening all over that's very alarming. One of the things that makes it scary is how low key all of it can be. It's easy for people not to notice until all of the cards are in place, and then everyone is completely caught off guard. Like consider France - despite how frequent, powerful, and progressive all of the protests have always been in France, Le Pen got scary close to getting into actual power. All of the oligarchs have their tentacles spread throughout the planet. Albania is protesting stuff involving Jared Kushner. It's really got me thinking that there's some very specific things that need to happen in countries all over the world while there's still time, otherwise they'll inevitably turn into authoritarian hellholes. But right now, the cards aren't in place for a lot of countries. What just happened in Hungary inspires hope.
But billionaires need to get taxed out of existence, large companies need to be broken up or nationalized, money needs to be kept out of politics in every way possible, and the world needs to move completely off of US based technology as well as fossil fuels. I know a lot of people are trying in Europe, and I hope that even if my country turns into a hellish nightmare, that it opens enough people's eyes that they can at least save their own. Climate change is coming, and it's going to cause civil unrest like we cannot even comprehend. Nobody anywhere is going to escape it unscarred. Hopefully some of us can at least make it. But that will require societies working as societies and leaving nobody behind, and everywhere is very far from that point.
And what country do you live in? What are you doing to help? You never answered.
It's easy for you to talk on the Internet from your armchair of job protections and privilege, where you've probably never had to resist anything in your life. Most people are 1-2 months from homelessness without an income. This isn't a hypothetical situation. It's a cold fact. And if you are homeless, your kids get taken away. Do you think people are able to protest more effectively in that kind of situation? Which single protest is going to make the immediate difference to bring about change.
And our labor protections were already eroded several generations before I was born. Almost nobody has union representation. It is illegal for a union to require members to pay membership fees. It is illegal for a union to require a company to hire only union members. It is illegal for a union to require its members to participate in collective bargaining. And it is illegal for unions to take action on anything not directly involving the company its members specifically work for, including general, solidarity, and political strikes. Furthermore, the executive branch can obtain injunctions to declare any strike illegal if it is ruled to be a threat to national health or safety. While there have been attempts as recent as this year, there hasn't been a single successful general strike in the United States since the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947 passed.
And WE ARE protesting. There are people are protesting EVERY SINGLE DAY all over the country. But you will never see that on the news. Many other people and I have attended numerous protests when we are able to. Have you ever stood in 40+°C heat all day weakly holding a sign while trying not to black out from heat exhaustion at a protest? I have. What have you done? You might not live here, but you are affected by some US actions too. You have politicians too, which could be doing more for your people. Your rights could be slowly getting eroded away right now. And if there are any billionaires that exist in your country at all, I guarantee they are. It's easy to talk shit, but the impactful thing is to stand in solidarity and do what you can from your side of the pond. There are a lot of things you need to be pushing for. Like what the people in Albania are doing right now. You are in a good place to be making a difference. You don't have to live in fear of the stuff we're dealing with. You don't have to continually worry every single day about whether any of your friends are going to get murdered by ICE or a cop.
And please, almost nobody has used Twitter since it went to shit (I've never even had an account), only boomers have used Facebook for the past decade, and everyone is pissed about the AI stuff. You love to make generalizations. I get that you're frustrated. What do you think the frustration is like here?
You realize we've been having large protests, right? For example, the city I live in is not even one of the top 10 largest cities in the US, but it has had multiple anti-Trump protests within the last year with a turnout of over 50k people. There were also other cities within 130 km of mine that had crowds with over 10k people.
The turnout in Tirana is similar in scale, but when you account for how small of a country Albania is and the fact that the entire country can easily travel to the capital to protest, the Albanian turnout is actually far less. The farthest anyone has to travel in Albania to reach the capital is 300 km. You don't even need a car. You can take an 8 hour bus ride.
In comparison, if I wanted to go to the US capital to protest, it is over 2500km away. That's like traveling from Tirana to Estonia, but without the option of easy public transportation. Not only that, but US politicians live in highly secure areas far away from where the public can reach. They never have to face us if they don't want to. No politicians even go to the building of my state capital except for a single 5 month period every two years. So the last several protests in my state capital have been people protesting at an empty building. Look dude, just because the media doesn't report stuff doesn't mean people aren't protesting. But a protest is going to be a lot more effective when you live in a tiny country with an easy way to travel.
Can the average person in your country afford to potentially lose their job while simultaneously being disqualified from unemployment benefits? My current job has 0 days PTO, and yes, I would be fired and disqualified from unemployment benefits. Can the average person in your country spend over $620 per person to fly to Washington DC? Yes, it costs that much for me. And going by bus would be even more expensive and take me over a week in travel time round trip. Can the average person in your country afford to spend over $500 in hotel costs even when splitting a room? If not, please kindly shut the fuck up. Me and many other people have been protesting regularly. But it's not possible for most of us, me included, to protest where the politicians are. Not to mention, the politicians don't care in the least. They mock us regularly. It's difficult to coordinate anything across a country that is as massive as the US, but we're at least trying.
While I fully agree that everyone should vote, the "voting is easy" bit you're saying is complete BS. Every single early voting day in both the 2016 and 2020 election still involved 2-4 hour lines. Not just for the November election, but even the primaries. In one of the elections, I had to stand in line outside in 90° F heat for 4 hours. A huge number of people in front of me gave up after standing in line for hours, either because they had to pick up their kids or go to work. There was no way around the long lines, otherwise I would have taken the steps to avoid it.
Not only that, but it's hard for a lot of people to register to vote. If you don't have a driver's license, getting an appointment for a photo ID takes MONTHS. To put things into perspective, I have a friend that lives in San Antonio that needed one. We looked, and there was a single location for the entire metropolitan area of over 2.6 million people. The earliest opening for an appointment was 3 months out. Then, after getting an ID, it's still necessary to register to vote at least a month before an election. Don't think for a minute that voter suppression isn't a thing. Just because you live in an area where it's easy to vote and there are no lines doesn't mean it's that way for everyone.
I personally will stand in line for over 6 hours if that's what it takes. But a lot of people simply can't. It frustrates me, but I don't really blame them. A lot of people have multiple jobs and can't afford to miss work or get fired. These methods of suppression are used because they are very effective.
It's a different situation in different areas. In parts of Alaska, it's not a slur, but in parts of Canada, it is a slur. Ultimately you need to know which situation you're dealing with for the area you're in.