I can’t tell if you’re being snide with that comment, but yes. That should absolutely be the first step.

Oh, for sure. I am still f-ing pissed about McGill covering up that they experimented on kids. I was personally screwed out of a proper childhood because of RCMP and Social Services corruption, and I’m about as white-looking as any half-Colombian, half-Ukrainian can get including accent and mannerisms, I have no doubt that what those poor women said McGill did to their children was really what happened, that the full details were unimaginably horrifying, and I honestly feel like the University should be forced to shut down for doing such a thing at the full expense of those who were profiting from the University as running their business or investing in a business.

I think I know why I never liked Westerns. Even at 5 years old, discriminating against natives never sat right with me. Sometimes I feel like I have no country, even though my family isn’t currently being oppressed and even my grandfather lived his whole life here, because so many things happen here in Canada that go against everything I was told this country is supposed to be that I never really became a “Canadian”. I value the ideal, but I refuse to be blinded and I cannot deny that Canada has failed to uphold its own values so much that if not for the UK having been in control until the 60s I would have already written us off as not even trying.

On that note, I get that racial issues are not as clear as they seem in the US. White plantation owners and most of their descendants have acted like greedy assholes but " white" = / = white and even white = / = racist, and while I get life as a black American sucks, stealing from even other black neighbours is not okay (though it should be noted that intraracial crime - against those who are categorized with you for whatever trait or excuse outsiders invent - is universally more common than interracial crime) by the victim’s standards or by the standards of any fair-judging outsider.

The point being, I don’t think much of America is salvageable, but you have to realize you’re doing far better from being exposed to the need to discuss it than many Europeans feel they are towards Muslims and Roma (“gypsies”, though it would be more understanding to remember that they exist because Rome didn’t collapse in a day and not owning land is extremely financially debilitating in Europe) considering that despite what those plantation owners claim, slavery in some form has been legal since 1776 and has only been restricted and not banned for, well…

When slavery was “banned” after the American civil war, it was indeed banned and reparations to be given to former slaves… For two days or something upon which Lincoln was assassinated and his vice president reversed it all (presumably while meraphorically twirling his moustache, since true bigots who are sure they’ve done no wrong all seem to think like a spiteful Disney villain) like the scumbag the VP apparently was. Slavery proper was not banned until 1942 (as a wartime PR move) and everything from sundown laws to private prisons has kept a form of forced labor, especially forced on disadvantaged persons, in use in America. But that being said…

Canada has “only” been attempting to move away from the UK for 80-ish years and I still think we can get over spitefulness instead of getting stuck in intergenerational feuds. America hasn’t even reached that point yet, as far as I’m concerned the US is well-prepared for the day private prisons are outlawed.

I’m angry because I think we can succeed if not for people that only ever seem satisfied when they can toy with the fate of an individual like capitalism is literally how it was portrayed in Mun Mun (terrible book, IMO but in some sense I feel like “littlepoor” has always described me) and the kind of condescending pretentious “visionaries” of the Solarpunk genre…newsflash, vegan organic homegrown space Amish, you’re ableist if you think anyone with Aspergers/Autism/whatever my condition should be called is going to consider your “unplugged” world desirable, especially without my pharmaceutical psychiatric medications which would leave me not just angry and bitter but foaming at the mouth with enough rage to go around burning down every civilization that tries to rebuild after the loss of the internet and video games)… and people keep trying to prevent that from happening by encouraging discrimination by everyone against everyone else. Everyone else that cares this much about the way the world works tends to be not just insane (I’m saying this as someone who is already mentally unstable) but arrogantly so.

I just want to see the world get better, and I feel like everyone else that cares about how humans progress only cares how that will benefit them personally. Of course I have personal values and selfish reasons, but this isn’t a high school and I have to know better than to propose anything that is global or national in scope unless it also benefits as many people as possible and screws not one person over because the means always must justify the ends, not the other way around. I’ve tried sites like Change.org but the fact is that when it comes to fixing the world I refuse to work with someone who clearly exclusively cares about their own interests. Homeowner’s ASSociations and narcissists don’t get to have a say over the individual right to do something that is actually beneficial in my hypothetical near-utopia, and that spinelessness has been enraging me by screwing me over and over for the past 7 years. I get screwed, I ask someone to help, and in most cases they can’t but even when they can they won’t because they’d lose something.

I have a game console, a OneXPlayer. Custom preorder with the exclusive nametag. It’s my prized possession.

I’d give it up as fast as I could if my option was to save it from a fire or save a child from a fire. All I ask is that when heroism is within easy reach, that people grab onto it for dear life. It might not be only their own dear life that they save by doing so, and if someone can’t live with that knowledge, then pretending you/I/they don’t remember a child’s haunting cries of pain means they’re a coward. If you have kids and can’t afford to lose them, I get it, but this is a Millennial talking. I don’t have kids and neither do “they” in many cases, but from what I’ve seen people honestly seem to believe that kids dying is “normal”.

Tell a 10 year old that kids dying is just how things are, and watch how fast they decide on some level that adulthood is no different from any other inner party. Unfortunately, none of the world’s many other activists had to live with a foster mother because of illegal conduct by the Ministry of Children and Families. Yeah, sure, Ministers of " Truth" and “Plenty” and “Love”, you just want to Atlas Shrug off to some private island…

Sorry for the rant. Thanks for having a good faith argument despite my temper, you’re clearly living up to your username!

That show is my guilty pleasure. At least I am not giving them my money, if you know what I mean 🏴‍☠️🦜

Fun fact - the Hays Code was set up to preempt real government censorship. If Hollywood hadn’t started censoring itself at the time it’s possible that the federal government would have. Some city and state governments were already doing it, and SCOTUS had ruled that movies were not art and that somehow made them not subject to the First Amendment.