[benreesman]

It comes and goes in seasons. There is always a tension between the needs of the many and the pathological acquisitiveness of the few, but this is the worst in the West in living memory.

The last remotely compatible situation was the late USSR, and a dysfunctional Soviet corpse plundering by middling oligarchs to even more pathic notional leadership is precisely what it is.

Be of good cheer, it collapses under its own weight in this neighborhood of dysfunction. Its almost over.

There will be a mess to clean up, then it'll be summer again until we get lax again.

Always been this way, always will be. Empires grow in power, then corruption, then only corruption, and then they're done.

[sneak]

A lot of people suffer greatly and die to cause that mess.

A perfect example is the terrible mismanagement of the epidemic in the USA; over a million people dead, many (most?) of them unnecessarily for the active rejection of basic infection control measures. A perfect example of the corruption of which you speak: many countries got €1-2 rapid tests (I bought a 50 pack) where the US only approved the $30 two-pack. Thousands died unnecessarily so the state could funnel money to their buddies.

This is just one of a million examples. The rate of degeneration seems to be increasing further.

You’re right about it getting close, but unfortunately “almost over” in this context usually means a generation or two. Children born today might only know a lifetime of suffering only for their own adult children to finally emerge in the spring.

This is why I don’t like takes like this. It is impossible to be in good cheer when there will be millions of preventable and utterly unnecessary deaths and hundreds of millions of lives and bodies damaged and stunted irreparably due to lack of access to medicine and education and equal protection of law. Preventable diseases not being prevented, treatable conditions going intreated. Forced and unnecessary poverty costs lives. It is no different than any other genocide or intentional mass murder.

[benreesman]

Take it up with the people who could easily prevent it by instituting reforms, not with me, that's shooting the messenger because I'm easier to get to. But I'm fighting those people tooth and nail precisely because every small victory however symbolic is one pebble in the scale and there are degrees of "mess": plenty of corrupt elites make a deal, let's pray these do.

If there's a genocide level event it won't have my endorsement, I'm still mourning a kid brother who would still be here if it weren't for a lot of the factors killing men his age in stupendous numbers. That genocide? It's been happening for a minimum of 5 years, more like ten.

I appreciate the merits and gravity of your complaint (to put it mildly) but mine is the wrong complaint box for it.

[sneak]

I'm not taking it up with you and I'm not shooting the messenger. The only issue I have is takes like this:

> Be of good cheer, it collapses under its own weight in this neighborhood of dysfunction. Its almost over.

There's nothing remotely cheerful about how bad it's going to have to get first before it gets better. The fact that a genocide eventually ends is not a reason to be happy about being in the beginning of a huge one.