3 ms·
What's different to the war years (hot and cold) is the absence of hope. In those cases there was unity that things were bad and we were all going to fix them.
by anotherhue 3y ago
What's different to the war years (hot and cold) is the absence of hope. In those cases there was unity that things were bad and we were all going to fix them.
In our times the answer is 'things are bad and the system is working as intended'.
I read some harrowing pieces about the AIDS epidemic and the hopelessness that came from the dismissal of the rest of the world and it felt similar (worse obviously).
- readyman 3y ago>there was unity that things were bad and we were all going to fix them. Correction: Working people were organized so the capitalist class had to do what the workers told them to do.
- NoGravitas 3y agoTo some extent, certainly. In the US and Western Europe, there was a period of class collaboration or class reconciliation that lasted from the end of WWII to the early 1970s. Labor unions were strong, but were also willing to settle for fairly limited demands and avoid open conflict. The existence of a strong Communist bloc meant that capitalist countries had to treat their workers well enough to win the propaganda war. This detente started breaking down in the 1970s, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all bets were off, leading to the enshittification of capitalist society we see today.
- readyman 3y ago"the war years" is not "the end of WWII to the early 1970s"
- silverquiet 3y agoI had hoped that the pandemic might give us a common cause to unite against, and instead I learned that people were unwilling to make the token gesture of wearing a mask and became vaccine deniers (reaching beyond the covid vaccines now). I did not have much hope before then, but I lost essentially all of it after that.
- NoGravitas 3y agoThis is 100% it.