The fall of the Tory party

nihilistic

Not at all. I wasn't trying to say that 'objectively worse' isn't a thing, but that the assessment criteria for that is probably not something you can just pull out of your arse in order to straw-man someone.

Here in 'the global north', or western civilisation as it was once known, we're somewhat insulated from the reality of human existence; we're the lucky ones who get to pretend our little house of poisonous, blood-soaked cards can just keep on standing without inflicting untold immiseration on the less fortunate humans and all. the. other. life.

Gaza, ultimately because Anglophone hegemony and its perceived need to destabilise the middle east to keep that oil flowing into our tanks at a price we like. A river gets poisoned here because people like a little chrome strip on their shit, a forest gets cut down there because we don't seem to mind busy-ness being about nothing but profit, and government being about little more than corruption.

The routine atrocities are part and parcel of our colonialistic, extractive, zero-sum way of life. We're the one true vermin. It would be nice if we could just learn to stand still and stop breaking shit. Or at least maybe give the neurotypical bum-sniffers some sort of sandbox where they can play their silly status games without making such a mess of that actual reality which is apparently so very secondary in their considerations.

not something you can just pull out of your arse in order to straw-man someone.

But that describes 98% of your comments. You almost never engage with what somebody has actually said, you just say "It's all so shit that the details of your argument are irrelevant". Endlessly.

Meanwhile. Sir Christopher Chope thinks Badenoch can't be Tory leader because she's a woman and mother. The unelectable Old Guard taking a pop at the unelectable New Nazis.

Wife of Tory Councillor gets 31 months for race hate posts

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3wkzgpjxvo

Well, obviously, this whole leadership contest is the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unelectable.

There is something slightly deliciously meta about someone saying something about Badenoch getting huffy having their words repeated back to them.

Also it's a bit weird that the article avoids mentioning whatshischops' kids ages. Not fact checked but found this:

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Bearing in mind Boris Johnson was elected, I would certainly not put it past the UK electorate to put either Badenoch or Jenrick in to number 10.

It's all so shit that the details of your argument are irrelevant

Well, if your argument is that things aren't so bad, then yeah, that's my TL;DR. If you want it to be otherwise, then wishing that rearranging deckchairs will cut it, won't cut it.

It's more a matter of, how do we smash enough furniture quickly enough to provide the material for enough lifeboats to minimise the inevitable consequences of our indifference.

Well, if your argument is that things aren't so bad, then yeah, that's my TL;DR.

It's what you say almost regardless of the topic and the other person's point, in the bad faith assumption that anybody talking about anything else is implicitly making that argument. It's the reductio-ad-absurdam version of "You're treating the symptoms, not the cause". In case you care, the unavoidable consequence of not caring what others say is that you have nothing interesting to say.

bad faith assumption

Hang on a sec - no. I may well be in the habit of making some faulty assumptions, but certainly not in bad faith.

that anybody talking about anything else is implicitly making that argument

Sorry, I don't quite follow; would you mind expanding and clarifying that? You seem to have a pretty strong impression you're trying to convey there. Seems to me that it's probably somewhat mistaken, but then again, that's how it would seem to me in either case. And I dislike being mistaken so much, I'll freely admit when I realise I am.

In this instance, it just seems vanishingly rare to me that folks are capable of recognising the collapse of civilisation is probably less than a couple of decades away, and that truly radical action is required to avoid the worst. I want to discuss the nature of that action, but it seems very difficult to find others who agree that we've hit the iceberg and there aren't enough lifeboats.

I'm super curious in what other contexts you see an echo of the underlying dynamic there. It's hard for me to imagine that I've cooked my whole impression of humanity's impending doom in order to play some dismissive psychodrama on others...

A stopped Nostradamus is right twice a day.

In this instance, it just seems vanishingly rare to me that folks are capable of recognising the collapse of civilisation is probably less than a couple of decades away

Snotty already summarised this more pithily, but millenarianism is nothing new. This doesn't mean we aren't facing an apocalyptic event, but is it decades away or a century or more? Will it be a catastrophe or a decline? Is radical change the only solution, or would that make it worse and incremental improvement lead somewhere better? Well, maybe start a thread on it. But while you're at it, consider the psychopathology of millenarianism, where people give themselves a messianic sense of self-importance by dismissing any other concerns as irrelevant and themselves as lone visionaries. Ask yourself if you're really that visionary, or just another asshole pissing on other people's real concerns to make yourself feel better. Because you're coming across as just another asshole.

Even if you're right, is telling people on a cycling website how trival their daily concerns are going to stop it, or just make you the asshole who made other people's last two decades of "civilised" life less pleasant?

Yeah, I've come across that Pollyanna line before.

I actually have a bunch of ideas regarding a way out of the mess, but they require discussion with folks on the same page to advance one iota...

'Cycling website' is perhaps a tad disingenuous; bike forums.net, for instance, locked their politics sub forum, probably because it's mostly yanks and you know how a lot of them roll. There's a pretty solid lefty slant here, so I thought maybe one or two folks might figure there's a better way forward than trying to enjoy the band under half a dozen swords of Damocles.

I never intended to become a dad, but here I am at fifty trying to kindle some hope from a bit of fluff I found in my pocket.

Yeah, I've come across that Pollyanna line before.

Yes, that's what people call me here. The relentlessly positive, cheery optimist who just wants everybody to be happy. Checks notes hang on, even the people who like me don't say that. Nor is this website full of such; most of the current affairs debate is grimly cynical, but...

I thought maybe one or two folks might figure there's a better way forward than trying to enjoy the band under half a dozen swords of Damocles.

Delusional millenarianism it is, then. Good luck with that. But then, as the messiah surrounded by fools, you're already in your happy space.

I actually have a bunch of ideas regarding a way out of the mess, but they require discussion with folks on the same page to advance one iota...

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/297238/

Anyone catch the GB debate? Jenrick came off worse by the looks of it? Edit: oh dear, just caught up...

Q: is it time to end the so-called culture wars?
Badenoch: Well, it depends who started it.

Delusional millenarianism it is, then.

O rly. So the fact we've only avoided a nuclear exchange so far through dumb luck counts for nothing, I guess.

Or that absolutely fuck-all reason exists to believe we'll meet our woefully insufficient (yet somehow hopelessly ambitious) CO2 reduction targets, while every time climatologists' models improve, it turns out they underestimated the rate of change, and consistently understate their concerns anyway... Not like the precautionary principle should apply here, huh.

Or that something like half to two thirds of the world's population depends on fertilisers we use fossil fuels to create, and AFAIK there's no plan to address that situation if we were to phase out their use - oh wait, that's because there's no plan to phase out their use.

Or that we're one large solar storm away from widespread failure of power grids, with a hopelessly inadequate supply of replacement transformers, meaning many areas would be dark for years. But hey, just keep those fingers crossed. We dodged the bullet in 2012 by nine days, right? Surely our luck will just keep on holding up.

Also, the vast drop in numbers of critters at the bottom of the food chain is actually a good thing; we don't have to clean our windscreens and headlights nearly so much anymore. I'm sure old mate Elon will come to the rescue any minute with self-replicating robot bees.

And of course, covid was a complete aberration, right? That epidemiologists warned us over and over for decades that industrial livestock farming brought such risks was just like the bleating of tree-hugging hippies running out of trees to hug. Stupid scientists, what do they know. Big pharma sorted out all out in only a couple of years - nothing to see here, least of all the precarious fragility of our supply chains it revealed, and the near-total lack of substantive action to reduce the length of those supply chains.

Why do we hate Tories? Is it just a tribal thing, or is it because they're clueless toffs who couldn't give a fuck about the common good? Gee, it sure was a relief to see the back of those cunts, huh. Totally different story under Starmer and Albo. Phew. We can continue abrogating our collective responsibility to the rest of the life on the planet and all future generations to the fiction of representative democracy.

It ain't broke. It ain't. The adults in charge will clean up all the shit.

Fucken Polly. Anna.

This 'system' where most of us have zero agency regarding our collective situation, utterly regardless of what we may have to contribute, while a few insular sociopaths determine the fate of everything? Pretty sub-optimal, if you ask me. I bet it wouldn't be too hard to come up with something better, if we could only learn to disregard all the propaganda of the ruling class which utterly saturates our society...

All those old chestnuts about how this is the least terrible setup predate the communications revolution, but somehow still have currency. Hang on... communications revolution... currency... Hmm

Just get a fucking room, you pair.

Folks who agree the capitalism; money; dominion complex is the root cause of our unsustainability are probably no larger a subset there than here? The climate crisis is just one of the biggest symptoms of us failing to effectively organise ourselves.

Where is the movement dedicated to leveraging modern science and tech to forge the foundation of a civilisation which actually stands a chance?

Where is it? I can only find it in my head. What the actual fuck, people

I’m being serious here, are you okay? Most of us tend to agree with most of what you’ve said here.

Yeah, this isn't relevant to you; the fate of life on earth is a special interest that belongs in some dark little corner

I'm tired of pretending nothing is wrong while the list of wrong things continues to grow.

It would be nice if we could maybe get our shit together enough to at least try to close the stable door before the horse has bolted in this instance.

Because after the shit his the fan, we're going to have a great many fewer options.

Most of us tend to agree with most of what you’ve said here.

That's what I assumed. What I don't understand is getting nothing but pushback. How about some interest in the notion that we might be able to seize some agency and DIY a way out of this?

Okay, so what’s the best course of action? If you’d like to be a part of a movement do you think this is the best way to go about it?

Didn’t catch your edit:

the notion that we might be able to seize some agency and DIY a way out of this?

Yeah that sounds great. And basically what I think too. But, sadly, this takes some serious effort in real life, not on a couple of politics threads on the internet, even though that might make a small difference (depending on how reasonable you come across)

Have you ever actually changed someone’s opinion? I’m not sure I ever have. This shit takes decades, and I’m sorry, it just does.