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Statements like this seem to originate in that environment polluted by propaganda that the previous comment mentions. For example, I genuinely don't know how s

by slg 2y ago

Statements like this seem to originate in that environment polluted by propaganda that the previous comment mentions. For example, I genuinely don't know how someone can look at something like the dismantling of USAID as anything but an increase in "large pain". Sure, there are almost certainly individual programs within that organization that are wasteful and aren't the best use of our tax dollars, but there is (or at least was as of a few weeks ago) broad bipartisan support for this type of investment in humanity and stopping it will clearly inflict pain on people and this administration is at best indifferent to that pain.

HEmanZ 2y ago
Just using your example tho, I feel there are two kinds of framing. 1. This is literally a worse outcome than the alternative you prefer. You should care enough to try to fight it politically, especially if you are well positioned to do so. 2. This case (and 99% of cases of political outrage I see on the news) is trivial in the context of what is “normal” for human political history, even the political history that many people alive today were around for. Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? Is a framing I ask myself when I’m mad about something in the world. I think a lot of people walked from a world where they had no idea what the normal tumult of human political society is like, even normal American political messiness, and into the world of 24/7 current political news without any context what came before. It’s like, the sausage has always been made this way, you’re just now finding out. I say these things and it always pisses people off. But I don’t recommend not caring, the world moves forward one micrometer at a time by caring, it’s just not worth the existential angst I see so often.
- slg 2y ago
  >2. This case (and 99% of cases of political outrage I see on the news) is trivial in the context of what is “normal” for human political history, even the political history that many people alive today were around for. >Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? Is a framing I ask myself when I’m mad about something in the world. To me, this is an utterly nihilistic framing that renders one's entire life meaningless because the logic doesn't just apply to bad things. Like why did you even leave this comment? Maybe you or I remember for a little while. Maybe a handful of other people who read it will too. But no one is going to remember it, let alone genuinely care about what either of us said 100 years from now.
  - HEmanZ 2y ago
    How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning? I don’t connect distant political to my own personal experience of meaning in the world, so i can’t follow this line of reasoning.
    - slg 2y ago
      >How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning? The primary difference I see between these two is how you define "your immediate experience". At what distance does something become "distant political changes" that can be ignored? Because almost all of us lead "par for humanity" lives that "don’t matter in the long run" so why care about any of it if that is the extent of what matters?
      - HEmanZ 2y ago
        I’m not advocating for ignoring the world. I’m advocating for contextualizing it so that your emotional response is sane. I think I put it in another post, but someone I know closely has become catatonically depressed this year because of what political news he reads on Reddit. He makes statements like “there has literally never been a worse time to be alive”. His personal life was great, there was nothing in it to suggest the US president’s decisions affect him, but his emotional response to Reddit news is about as extreme as if his wife died. He stopped going to work and won’t get out of bed most days, which will actually impact his life and give him things to be depressed about. Caring should not be binary. If in your life, caring about things is all or nothing, and a political event that is extremely common and minor in the context of political history feels as acute as the death of a loved one, then I’m really sorry for you. The world will always be a miserable place for you.
        2y ago
- magicalist 2y ago
  > Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? My family could be murdered in front of me and it wouldn't qualify as a trivia question for you or most other people in one year. This feels like a version of stoicism that missed the point of stoicism.
  - HEmanZ 2y ago
    You’re making such an absurd comparison in situations. The death of your own family has an immediate and extreme impact on you personally. 99% of what you see on the news you would never know happened if it wasn’t presented to you. And I’m not saying not to care. I’m saying put big things into perspective. You don’t need to become catatonically depressed because the US changed its foreign aid in a way that you would never know about unless presented to you. As I write this I’m thinking about one of my best friends, who literally has been so depressed because of world news he reads on Reddit this year that he can’t get out of bed, stopped going to work and got fired. There are appropriate and healthy levels to care about things.
    - immibis 2y ago
      > You’re making such an absurd comparison in situations. The death of your own family has an immediate and extreme impact on you personally. > 99% of what you see on the news you would never know happened if it wasn’t presented to you. What I'm hearing is that if the government kills someone, only their immediate family members are allowed to protest. We shouldn't protest when the government is killing people who aren't related to us, even if our relatives could be next.
      - HEmanZ 2y ago
        You seem very emotionally uncalibrated if the first place you go is that the majority of news must mean your family is going to die. I’m not going to stop you from becoming emotionally destroyed by impossibly-worst-case-scenario perseverating any time something doesn’t politically go your way. I’m also not going to stop you from blowing 99% of political events so far out of proportion that you can’t sleep at night. I’m not going to stop you from existing in a constant cycle of mental angst because the world isn’t perfect by your vision (and because someone on the news tells you 24/7 just how imperfect the world is, because your angst is their profit). That sounds like a nightmare existence to me. But if you really want it, maybe because it makes you feel righteous in your pain and holy in your angst, then go for it I guess.
MarkPNeyer 2y ago
> I genuinely don't know how someone can look at something like the dismantling of USAID as anything but an increase in "large pain". Maybe try asking people why they think it’s bad? Here’s people arguing it’s doing all kinds of destructive behavior, - like setting up a fake vaccine clinic for the CIA. https://youtu.be/wtgT_u2rWs0?si=bFX476_JgC81vJuM https://youtu.be/wtgT_u2rWs0?si=bFX476_JgC81vJuM I haven’t seen anyone arguing against these claims. They just say “oh but it’s helping poor people” without answering whether or not it’s been doing covert work for the CIA under the pretense that it’s aid.
- slg 2y ago
  Are you arguing that USAID is entirely some CIA operation or are you arguing for throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Because this is not evidence that the entire organization is a net negative for the world.
  - quetzthecoatl 2y ago
    It is. It's just tip of the iceberg. All they do is foment troubles in other countries while providing high paid employment for nepo babies. It's amazing how Americans downplay direct interference in other countries internal affairs with long lasting negative impacts (like people attacking government healthcare workers during vaccine drive) while claiming russians spending 10k usd on an election cycle in which parties spent billion+ was WW3. Al though the current US admin is just bringing in USAID within the admin controls, USAID is massive net negative (as it is with any other american influence/aid) for the world.
gadders 2y ago
I don't think anyone is saying that the US shouldn't have an organisation that distributes aid. But I think it is right to pause it when it is doing things like funding Politico magazine.
- fullStackOasis 2y ago
  My current understanding is that USAID was not doing funding Politico, but had a subscription (or multiple subscriptions). You can check out the description here: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/05/media/politico-usaid-subscription-government/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/05/media/politico-usaid-subscrip... It sure does sound like Politico Pro is expensive, however. There have certainly some other kind of fishy things going on with USAID, but so far as I can tell, all with full approval of the US government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development#Controversies_and_criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...

by slg 2y ago

HEmanZ 2y ago

Just using your example tho, I feel there are two kinds of framing. 1. This is literally a worse outcome than the alternative you prefer. You should care enough to try to fight it politically, especially if you are well positioned to do so. 2. This case (and 99% of cases of political outrage I see on the news) is trivial in the context of what is “normal” for human political history, even the political history that many people alive today were around for. Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? Is a framing I ask myself when I’m mad about something in the world. I think a lot of people walked from a world where they had no idea what the normal tumult of human political society is like, even normal American political messiness, and into the world of 24/7 current political news without any context what came before. It’s like, the sausage has always been made this way, you’re just now finding out. I say these things and it always pisses people off. But I don’t recommend not caring, the world moves forward one micrometer at a time by caring, it’s just not worth the existential angst I see so often.

slg 2y ago
>2. This case (and 99% of cases of political outrage I see on the news) is trivial in the context of what is “normal” for human political history, even the political history that many people alive today were around for. >Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? Is a framing I ask myself when I’m mad about something in the world. To me, this is an utterly nihilistic framing that renders one's entire life meaningless because the logic doesn't just apply to bad things. Like why did you even leave this comment? Maybe you or I remember for a little while. Maybe a handful of other people who read it will too. But no one is going to remember it, let alone genuinely care about what either of us said 100 years from now.
- HEmanZ 2y ago
  How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning? I don’t connect distant political to my own personal experience of meaning in the world, so i can’t follow this line of reasoning.
  - slg 2y ago
    >How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning? The primary difference I see between these two is how you define "your immediate experience". At what distance does something become "distant political changes" that can be ignored? Because almost all of us lead "par for humanity" lives that "don’t matter in the long run" so why care about any of it if that is the extent of what matters?
    - HEmanZ 2y ago
      I’m not advocating for ignoring the world. I’m advocating for contextualizing it so that your emotional response is sane. I think I put it in another post, but someone I know closely has become catatonically depressed this year because of what political news he reads on Reddit. He makes statements like “there has literally never been a worse time to be alive”. His personal life was great, there was nothing in it to suggest the US president’s decisions affect him, but his emotional response to Reddit news is about as extreme as if his wife died. He stopped going to work and won’t get out of bed most days, which will actually impact his life and give him things to be depressed about. Caring should not be binary. If in your life, caring about things is all or nothing, and a political event that is extremely common and minor in the context of political history feels as acute as the death of a loved one, then I’m really sorry for you. The world will always be a miserable place for you.
      - 2y ago
magicalist 2y ago
> Will this even register as a trivia question in 100 years? My family could be murdered in front of me and it wouldn't qualify as a trivia question for you or most other people in one year. This feels like a version of stoicism that missed the point of stoicism.
- HEmanZ 2y ago
  You’re making such an absurd comparison in situations. The death of your own family has an immediate and extreme impact on you personally. 99% of what you see on the news you would never know happened if it wasn’t presented to you. And I’m not saying not to care. I’m saying put big things into perspective. You don’t need to become catatonically depressed because the US changed its foreign aid in a way that you would never know about unless presented to you. As I write this I’m thinking about one of my best friends, who literally has been so depressed because of world news he reads on Reddit this year that he can’t get out of bed, stopped going to work and got fired. There are appropriate and healthy levels to care about things.
  - immibis 2y ago
    > You’re making such an absurd comparison in situations. The death of your own family has an immediate and extreme impact on you personally. > 99% of what you see on the news you would never know happened if it wasn’t presented to you. What I'm hearing is that if the government kills someone, only their immediate family members are allowed to protest. We shouldn't protest when the government is killing people who aren't related to us, even if our relatives could be next.
    - HEmanZ 2y ago
      You seem very emotionally uncalibrated if the first place you go is that the majority of news must mean your family is going to die. I’m not going to stop you from becoming emotionally destroyed by impossibly-worst-case-scenario perseverating any time something doesn’t politically go your way. I’m also not going to stop you from blowing 99% of political events so far out of proportion that you can’t sleep at night. I’m not going to stop you from existing in a constant cycle of mental angst because the world isn’t perfect by your vision (and because someone on the news tells you 24/7 just how imperfect the world is, because your angst is their profit). That sounds like a nightmare existence to me. But if you really want it, maybe because it makes you feel righteous in your pain and holy in your angst, then go for it I guess.

MarkPNeyer 2y ago

> I genuinely don't know how someone can look at something like the dismantling of USAID as anything but an increase in "large pain". Maybe try asking people why they think it’s bad? Here’s people arguing it’s doing all kinds of destructive behavior, - like setting up a fake vaccine clinic for the CIA. https://youtu.be/wtgT_u2rWs0?si=bFX476_JgC81vJuM https://youtu.be/wtgT_u2rWs0?si=bFX476_JgC81vJuM I haven’t seen anyone arguing against these claims. They just say “oh but it’s helping poor people” without answering whether or not it’s been doing covert work for the CIA under the pretense that it’s aid.

slg 2y ago
Are you arguing that USAID is entirely some CIA operation or are you arguing for throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Because this is not evidence that the entire organization is a net negative for the world.
- quetzthecoatl 2y ago
  It is. It's just tip of the iceberg. All they do is foment troubles in other countries while providing high paid employment for nepo babies. It's amazing how Americans downplay direct interference in other countries internal affairs with long lasting negative impacts (like people attacking government healthcare workers during vaccine drive) while claiming russians spending 10k usd on an election cycle in which parties spent billion+ was WW3. Al though the current US admin is just bringing in USAID within the admin controls, USAID is massive net negative (as it is with any other american influence/aid) for the world.

gadders 2y ago

I don't think anyone is saying that the US shouldn't have an organisation that distributes aid. But I think it is right to pause it when it is doing things like funding Politico magazine.

fullStackOasis 2y ago
My current understanding is that USAID was not doing funding Politico, but had a subscription (or multiple subscriptions). You can check out the description here: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/05/media/politico-usaid-subscription-government/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/05/media/politico-usaid-subscrip... It sure does sound like Politico Pro is expensive, however. There have certainly some other kind of fishy things going on with USAID, but so far as I can tell, all with full approval of the US government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development#Controversies_and_criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...