We are just finding out about a child sex trafficking ring involving politicians and billionaires, the world’s richest man does a Nazi salute at a political rally, and the President being an adjudicated sex criminal is probably not the worst thing he has done…

Meanwhile I’m standing here in the checkout line feeling guilty about whether or not I should tip a barista

Something is wrong with our collective notion of morality, and my individual understanding (Oh well, here we are)

  • roofuskit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1302·
    3 days ago

    Just finding out? Haha, no, we’ve known about this ring for the better part of a decade now. The wealthy and powerful probably a lot longer than that.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      65·
      3 days ago

      Even the next part:

      world’s richest man does a Nazi salute at a political rally,

      Don’t get me wrong, horrible and completely unacceptable.

      But sure as shit is nowhere near the line of what’s happened with the last 100 years:

      The Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch[1] and the White House Putsch, was a political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as dictator.[2][3] Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general, testified under oath that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization with him as its leader and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified under oath before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the “McCormack–Dickstein Committee”) on these revelations.[4] Although no one was prosecuted, the congressional committee final report said, “there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

      In case anyone’s eyes glazed over instead of reading, two key points:

      wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization with him as its leader and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow Roosevelt.

      And even more importantly:

      Although no one was prosecuted, the congressional committee final report said, “there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

      Shit didn’t just get bad, it’s been bad.

      And the way to fight it is an opposition party like FDR.

      • skisnow@lemmy.caEnglish
        12·
        3 days ago

        A fairly wide range of problems in modern society can be traced to the judiciary’s reluctance to both prosecute and sentence the rich with the same rigor they apply to the poor.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        158·
        3 days ago

        Everyone acting like these are the worst times ever, makes me wonder about their history education. Yeah, America’s taken a steep dive this century. Yeah, that’s normal for empires to fall. Usually to greed.

        I’m hoping we crash hard, Great Depression hard. That clusterfuck ushered in liberal politics dominating until the 90s. We had conservatives, Reagan comes to mind, but they didn’t have unchecked power like today.

        Only exception I got is global warming. We’ve never played this particular game before.

        • postcapitalism@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
          151·
          3 days ago

          False premise. I never said it was the worst time ever, or even that I was surprised.

          This is just about the relativity of my morality and what society is willing to tolerate

          (this to the above two smart comments as well - although I don’t fundamentally disagree)

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          3 days ago

          Only exception I got is global warming. We’ve never played this particular game before

          I mean…

          Anatomically modern humans have been around, what, 300k years?

          Like you could grab someone from back then as an infant, raise them today, and they’d just be a regular dude.

          The last ice age ended about 50k years ago, and that’s why we say civilization was finally able to start. But that ignores that humans went thru the same ice age cycle 4-5 times in those 300k years.

          If all it took was “no ice age” then logically the chances of the first civilization being 50k years ago is pretty much zero.

          Climate change is like the inevitable reset for humanity. We’re making it happen fast this time, but we can’t really be sure that’s unique either. It doesn’t even take us, just a supervolcanoe or asteroid.

          Bright side is it makes it more likely humanity as a species makes it thru the next one. I think evidence shows we’ve been down to like 1,000 humans world wide 70k years ago? Maybe as little as 50 adults of reproductive age?

          But we’re 8 something billion now.

        • The_Decryptor@aussie.zoneEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Only exception I got is global warming. We’ve never played this particular game before.

          We also never had nukes before.

          The conditions have been worse in the past, but the risks are so much worse these days.

      • Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.netEnglish
        5·
        3 days ago

        The Business Plot never ended, they just regrouped. All those fuckers involved should have been hung.

        The way to fight it isn’t a FDR-style party that will just give concessions to staunch the momentum of the working class, which was rallying behind communist ideology through unionization efforts, that was threatening the capitalist status quo at the time. That status quo is the entire root of the problem. The only way to fight it is to dismantle the system that gives them their power and build something new, not to continue enabling the very systems that keep us on our knees.

    • BurgerBaron@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Reminds me of something. Martin Luther’s own writings dating from 1531, in which he stated that Pope Leo X:

      Vetoed a measure that cardinals should restrict the number of boys they kept for their pleasure, otherwise it would have been spread throughout the world how openly and shamelessly the Pope and the cardinals in Rome practice sodomy.

      Our tech changes but we don’t.