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Comment by JSavageOne | Hacker News Reader

As an American it's not surprising at all. Six figures of student loan debt, job insecurity, healthcare insecurity, rampant poverty / homelessness, the most despicable president to disgrace the white house (who didn't even win the popular vote), stay-at-home orders because the U.S. couldn't manage the crisis, lack of community (doesn't help that 99% of the country is sprawl), rampant obesity, and general lack of hope. The U.S. is more and more resembling a failed state, a mere shadow of what it used to be.

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I can't say I share the same feelings as you, but it certainly would be great to see young Americans be more excited about the future and I think some big investment in infrastructure could be a way to make that happen. There are many people worse off in other Countries that are happy because they are seeing vast improvements year over year and their own value goes up proportionately to how much effort gets put in.

We have low interest rates so I'd love to see shovel ready projects like the Gateway tunnels in NYC get off the ground. I'd love to see emerging industries in America get bigger like Robotics, new Energy Ventures, anything related to Space and Advanced Manufacturing.

Anecdotally, the largest problem I think we have is that there are vast amounts of people who feel like victims and just about everyone feels like they are under attack or have been violated. I want to create value with my life and hope that I can provide opportunity for others in the process. There are many culture wars things that are debated on social media that I see disingenuous actors from many angles that I need to drown out so I can focus on other things.

What future? What is there to be excited about? Can't actually spend money at the federal and state level aside from tax cuts and the military without being met with resistance and a subset of politicians and economists screaming bloody murder about super dooper hyper inflation that's totally going to happen any day now we promise (but don't worry about the last 40 years of us saying it, this time we're sure we're correct).

We have low interest rates now. We had low interest rates in 08 through the early 10's too but the ~i n f l a t i o n~ boogyman and super serious debt hawks said we couldn't do it, all while passing tax cuts and giving the military essentially unlimited money, while continuing to erode our rights.

American infrastructure is beyond saving and will require new deal levels of spending to even get it to a shape resembling the amount of wealth this country has, and we are never going to do it because we live in an oligarchic state and the billionaires are fine, so why do we need to do anything more?

False optimism about the future from older generations is nothing new - been happening for years now

sorry but typically in the past older generations have been optimistic about the future and younger generations have been pessimistic. That is a a common phenomenon observed by social scientists which is that people in their twenties are a lot more pessimistic than people in their 40s and 50s.

Let's be clear: globally the world is much better off than it has ever been and therefore the optimists were correct. Even in the US I remember how in the early '90s the Gen xers were always complaining about how the future was going to be f*. They were wrong too.

based on historical trends you are most likely wrong as well.

I mean listen to yourself. you are talking about generations of false optimism and yet the world and even this country has a much higher standard of living than it has ever had.

If the world is better overall it's due to technological advancement, not due to governance. Our current president is Trump, an idiot who completely mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic, lied about how well he was handling it, refuses to be televised wearing a mask while mask-shaming others, and spends his time peddling conspiracy theories on Twitter, and now threatening to shut down the platform for fact-checking his blatant disinformation. We have probably the worst president to ever disgrace the office next to Andrew Jackson, so yea people are pessimistic.

Also this is the first time in our history that the youth are expected to make less than their parents. The older generation stripped away pension plans, affordable university, affordable healthcare, job stability - basically everything that was working well, and sold their kids off into student loan debt.

I agree that Trump sucks. Rhetorically, worst president. But as policies and outcomes go, there have been worse. Hoover? How about the fact that we banned alcohol for over a decade? Bush started a ruinous war on false pretenses. FDR incarcerated Japanese Americans in internment camps. LBJ and Vietnam. What about the chain of corporate owned presidents that allowed, and encouraged, outsourcing of manufacturing? That certainly hurt coronavirus response. SK and China were able to make their own PPE. US factories have dwindled over decades. Trump didn't create that mess. Clinton and Newt Gingrich did in a bipartisan sell out of the working class.

Read a history book and gain some perspective. You lack it.

By the way, you left out affordable housing. That is a huge generational theft, and is the worst in areas like California, where baby boomers used zoning laws to prevent an adequate supply of new housing from being built.

The different is that in the 90s, there was no clear evidence for pessimism about the future. The same is not true now.

Standard of living for most Americans is actually bad right now - trillions of student loan, no prospect of home ownership, no jobs, extreme income interest, weak authoritian governments,and let me know even start of climate change.

But hey, we have a new iPhone so I guess it's all fine.

Actually the central banks are very good at causing inflation. The problem is that the only way to get access to central bank money is through a mortgage or a student loan. Corporations are not in need of financing beyond surviving the current lock down. So what we get to see is inflation in higher education and house prices.

If you want to borrow money from a bank as a 26 year old startup founder you are probably getting a bad deal with high interest rates. You're not seeing the benefit of the negative interest rates. Going from a 13% interest rate to 10% isn't going to magically make your startup profitable.

Basically the policies have an effect but they are completely inaccessible for those who actually need them. Because of the selective access the stimulus is actually causing market distortions that hurt those who don't have access to the stimulus.

> Anecdotally, the largest problem I think we have is that there are vast amounts of people who feel like victims and just about everyone feels like they are under attack or have been violated.

its easy to feel that way when the news media from fox (especially) to cnn is pumping that stuff out daily as they almost seemingly yell at you from the screen...

> I think some big investment in infrastructure could be a way to make that happen

I'm curious what infrastructure you think would excite young Americans. With the exception of changing energy generation from fossil fuels to renewables, I can't think of a single thing that I could generalize young Americans caring about, much less be excited about.

Not saying that there aren't people like yourself and others that get excited about infrastructure, but is there anything that would excite more than just a tiny subset of us nerds that care about such things?

> Anecdotally, the largest problem I think we have is that there are vast amounts of people who feel like victims and just about everyone feels like they are under attack or have been violated.

I wholeheartedly agree that many feel this way, but how does getting excited about infrastructure projects address this? The root cause of people feeling this way is because they are constantly being told by the MSM and social media that they should feel this way.

I'm a "young"-ish American (lower end of millenial), and the growth of public transit in my local city was immensely exciting. New trains and bus routes were probably a huge factor in me staying where I'm at, and I feel more engaged in local politics than anything happening on the national stage.

Contrast that with some of the underfunded, addiction-riddled states where nothing new has been built since the 1960s...I mean, I'm going crazy just from staying inside for the last couple months. I couldn't imagine what it'd be like if I was born in and terminally stuck in a town that looked exactly the same for entirety of my life. That's incredibly depressing and demotivating.

I grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC. My suburb still 30 years later still looks exactly the same, just with less local businesses and more big chains, and more homeless people. There is still no viable public transportation accessible without a car. Needless to say I left a long time ago (to NYC, where I saw firsthand the subway get worse and worse every year and is currently in a dire state).

I ended up leaving the U.S, and was surprised to learn that public transportation and not needing a car is pretty much standard in the rest of the world.

> it certainly would be great to see young Americans be more excited about the future and I think some big investment

I don't think it's the fault of young Americans. It's more the fault of those in charge. We haven't been investing in young Americans like we did in the post WWII era. It's no wonder they're pessimistic given high amounts of student debt and political rulers that are basically trying to milk all the money out of the masses to enrich the themselves and their wealthy friends.

Don't forget the internet and the constant FOMO and comparisons to people at their best points in life, or the fact that the social dynamics of dating have gotten crazy.

Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder, while even median men are mostly ignored.

America is in the worst shape in the West, but these trends are getting worse here in Canada and elsewhere too.

uh “Attractive, fit, intelligent” seems like a winning combination regardless of the era.

Yes, but Attractive, fit and intelligent are different in every era.

I agree about the toxicity of social media, it's why I don't have an Instagram and, well, Facebook is dead among my generation anyway so it's not an issue.

>Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder, while even median men are mostly ignored.

Is this a real problem though? I've heard about how women rate most men as below average, yada yada, but monogamy is still dominant, it's not like these hot men are building harems---on aggregate the vast majority will end up with a life partner, just as always. Am I missing something?

You're missing a few pieces that contribute to the decay of society:

- No they don't build harems, but they are more likely to wait before settling down with a long term partner.

Also, perhaps it's the circles I've run in, but monogomy is far less dominant than it was in the past, and serial dating is far more common, especially when you start looking at some folks interpretations of 'empowerment'. I'm using airquotes here because I'm thinking of someone who would literally always be 'getting over' her last relationship with her current one, but would be checking OKCupid and POF because they were starting to have doubts about the current one.

There's a question of how much psychological damage online dating scene does to how one deals with interpersonal relationships. Most of the 'serial' daters I know get more and more bitter with every failed date, and post more and more vitrol on social media about the opposite gender.

There's also the issue that Dating profiles really often remove so much of the important part of a relationship; getting to know someone, which is a good test of communication.

Serial dating? Parallel dating is in nowadays!

Definitely agree with this.

I have a roommate that serial dates and she's gradually gone from "im getting over my breakup" after dating a man for 3 years to "ug can we just get rid of men" and telling my girlfriend to dump me when I'm standing in the room. She's gotten very bitter, and self-destructive to her original intention (finding a soulmate) breaking things off with new guys when they don't pick her up random things or run odd errands.

While this is just one example of the few I've seen, and of course this is just my experience, but I would hypothesize that serial dating combined with a culture of "empowerment" + unlimited options is detrimental.

> Attractive, fit, intelligent men

By and large these are results of choices people make, not accidents.

A guy with visible abs didn't just wake up one day and have abs. He put in the work. Same goes for attractive or intelligent.

Taking time to find clothes that fit, discovering a flattering hair style, and generally not being a slob can put an average man into the "attractive" group.

By intelligent, I mean "witty" or a good conversationalist. Wit/conversation are learned skills. Yeah, some people are better at it than others, but you can still learn.

Don't feel trapped on the outside. You can be excellent if you so choose.

Read these books:

1. How to win friends and influence people 2. The Art of Seduction 3. She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman

They all seem like terrible/manipulative books, but read them anyways. Glean what fits your ethics.

In terms of online dating: work out, buy nice clothes, get 2-3 good photos. Or don't do online dating and go out to the same (mixed gender) place over and over for a while.

It's all work. It sucks. Good luck.

If the above is too much, beat Dark Souls, then try again.

Two books that have been useful to me are "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "When I Say No I Feel Guilty".

I didn't feel right about putting it in my original comment, since it didn't seem relevant and honestly it feels weird to type this out on HN, but I'm attractive. Before Tinder and Bumble I didn't have trouble dating but now it's crazy. It's effortless to get dates with attractive, successful women. Things didn't used to be this imbalanced and I don't think it is completely fair to say to someone with a less attractive face or to someone that isn't over six feet that they should learn how to dress properly and that will sort things out for them. Yes exercise and proper nutrition go a long way, and I tell multiple people a month about the basics of nutrition[0] or about how to exercise[1] but I don't pretend that this will fix everything. I think it is important that lucky people are honest about the current situation.

[0] Way more fibre, no refined sugar, more protein, no transfats.

[1] Bike to get around and http://reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness

Adding: 90% of health and fitness is momentum and environment. If you live in a food desert, you're screwed. If you have a history of bad gym experiences, you're screwed. If you have a job that makes gym-time difficult, you're screwed. If your housing costs preclude a gym membership and the necessary quantities of healthy food, you're screwed. If you can't cook or afford healthy takeout, you're screwed. If you have sleep apnea and can't get it treated you're screwed. The list goes on and on. And getting back on the wagon is harder than staying on it.

If you provided a robust right to housing (low waiting lists, high choice) and expanded the armed forces' commissary program to build and stock stores in places where it would be unprofitable or undesirable for a private entity to operate, obesity (or, at least, morbid illness) rates would plummet. (This would also completely reshape our economy, so I understand any reticence to implement.)

“Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder, while even median men are mostly ignored.“

Is that even true? I am not very pretty (but fit and some level of intelligence ) . When I did online dating I had no problems connecting to women around my age and with similar attributes. Most guys who were complaining wanted a supermodel half their age. And they were surprised that they only attracted crazy people that way.

Yes, OkCupid did a study awhile back which they unfortunately took down. You can still find archived versions of it.

Is this the one? https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/yourlooksandyo...

That's the one.

> Attractive, fit, intelligent men get a completely outsized proportion of the interest on apps like Bumble and Tinder, while even median men are mostly ignored.

I exported my data from Tinder and I've had to swipe 25,000 times per successful long-term relationship.

That's a pretty terrible ratio but it only works out to ~10 hours of swiping and another ~10 hours of dating per successful relationship that lasts months or years (or maybe forever!)

As a result I've only been single for a small minority of my adult life.

This sounds like the philosophy that drives the incel groups.

If you were to ask women they would say the exact same thing as well. And internet dating is very heavily driven towards superficial things, whereas if you meet someone IRL you might be able to find things to connect on.

>And internet dating is very heavily driven towards superficial things

No, internet dating is no different than real life, it just mirrors the nature of things and is very harsh. Some people might find things that certain people want superficial, but that's ascribing morality to a very biological and carnal need.

> No, internet dating is no different than real life, it just mirrors the nature of things and is very harsh.

It's a little different. People are typically more polite in person. Their behaviour online reflects what they would do if there were no consequences.

Also, I think if presented with a list of interests online, you'd be more inclined to rule people in or out of contention. Whereas, if you met in person, you might notice chemistry before you realised you liked different movies and music, for example.

It’s a logical fallacy to imply that someone’s argument sounding similar to the ideology of people you don’t like has any bearing on whether it’s valid or not.

Don't date online? It's not surprising that an image-based communication medium will favor physically attractive people. You don't have to play that game if you would actually make a good partner.

This effect is called hypergamy and it's always been around. Tinder and the likes just exaggerate it. It's sort of like increasing wealth inequality but for men's dating. There's been genetic studies which show that most women that have lived procreated, while during some periods most men did not. Upside is that if you belong to the top 5% of attractive men this is the best time to be alive :)

As a non-American, why do you care about who is in the white house so much? How does it affect your life concretely?

Try watching less talking heads/browsing Twitter less, maybe, and you'll feel better?

A lot of people didn't think the guy in the white house could matter that much until Trump. As a non-American a lot of Americans would likely be envious of your lifestyle right now. The 30 million currently unemployed for sure, the people who also can't get to a hospital if they need surgery or healthcare because they're closed because of our botched (guy in wh) response care as well. The essential workers with no healthcare who are making an extra $2/hour to possibly die.

This isn't a vaccuum in America. A lot of us have friends, family and coworkers affected by this.

Even if I ignore the president or the news I'm still trapped inside my house for the most part. If I leave my house it's an experience figuring out whether something is open or not, what their rules are, etc.

I mean I can go sit in my backyard and ignore the world but I still need to function day to day and right now I can't do half of my chores, errands, etc. So it's something definitely affecting my day to day.

And I'm on the lucky end, I can wfh and sit here and respond to you. I can't imagine having to go to work at some gas station to pay rent right now.

The guy in the white house isn't doing anything to calm anyones nerves or concerns. He's exacerbating them greatly. He has the largest microphone in the country, it's hard to ignore him or his affect on peoples mental health.

Everywhere we look is a reminder of our failure of a government. It's on everyones mouths. Now imagine going to work and fixing bobscars.com database while this stuff is in your face everyday.

I'm sorry you feel this way, but it kind of feels to me like you're linking everything back to a political landscape that you don't like, but which doesn't have a lot to do with the current state of things.

I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under most possible govts.

> I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under most possible govts.

We are literally in the polar opposite government than we were from 2008-2016.

I don't think we'd be at 100k dead today if our government was different and responded properly. Is this what we're debating? Why did Hong Kong only have 4 deaths the last I looked a few days ago? The government and societal response?

Maybe we're miscommunicating. Yeah, 90% of my life is the same but we all have friends and family affected by some part of it (healthcare or unemployment typically). The most mutual thing right now is our combined stress (except for the people partying at the beach).

Sorry to read that, mate. FWIW I don't think your government had a course of action that would have made a lot of difference. It caught everybody on the planet off guard and exhausted already-provisioned healthcare resources pretty fast.

When did you quarantine? Most States have only been closed for a month and now they're opening. This "didn't catch us offguard" it is more like "our leader didn't tell us how bad it was for 3 months while the rest of the world shut down so most of our businesses didn't close and it's worse than it should be". That's the government. It's coming from the top. Companies weren't going to close offices until govs/Pres told them to do so, they had NO idea what to do.

Most of our Republican Govs will do whatever Trump tells them. That is the problem.

I just moved out of a red state that acts like this is nothing to blue state that is almost completely shut down until next week and has had FAR FAR fewer cases.

So yeah, I think government matters now.

> I don't think your government had a course of action that would have made a lot of difference.

The obvious counter-argument to this are China and India. Significantly larger populations, living in far greater densities, possessing fewer healthcare resources, yet far fewer overall deaths. Even if China had 10x the deaths they're reporting (which would be hard to cover up, but you never know), it's still lower than the US. Their lockdown wasn't for as long. Schools in Wuhan reopened this month.

> It caught everybody on the planet off guard.

It caught China, and maybe Italy and Iran off guard. Surely after learning that a Chinese province of 20 million people had been put on house arrest, the rest of the planet should have cottoned on.

I see your points and I don't understand those who disagree with you. 1. Your life is directly affected by the actions of those in power. 2. The future of your country is directly affected by the actions of those in power.

"I got mine, fuck everyone else".

This is very true, as an American. There's almost no difference in the vast majority of daily life for most Americans if you just pretended like the president doesn't exist.

Scant comfort for immigrants whose residency and livelihood are under threat, or Americans who have lost loved ones indirectly due to bad decisions made by the president, or non-Americans who have to live in a world shaped by American action or inaction on foreign policy.

The president has not had a dramatic impact on my life directly. The people who follow him and listen to him absolutely have. I'm getting real tired of seeing armed protests, nazi/confederate flags, and Make America Great Again signs at my state capitol every other day. I'm tired of his threats to punish my state after a massive flood because he doesn't like my governor. I'm tired of one of his cabinet members riling up these armed protests with nazi/confederate flags.

And even if the president hasn't done anything to me specifically, I'm getting real tired of hearing all the stupid shit he does/says every night on the news or the next morning when my coworkers talk about it. If I could figure out a way to block the words "twitter", "hydroxycloroquine", "inject disinfectant", etc... I'm sure he'd make up even stupider things for people to talk about.

It's tiring. It's exhausting. And knowing that nearly half of my countrymen agree with what he says just makes it worse. But the worst part of all is having a president who is actively attacking my state and its elected representatives while we're in not one but MULTIPLE states of emergency.

Have you ever had your president declare war on your state? It's not normal. And it's really hard to pretend it doesn't exist.

> why do you care about who is in the white house so much

He raised my taxes last year, rather significantly. So it's not just Twitter rants.

The cap on SALT deductions is insane. More punishment for having to pay city and state taxes...

How is it insane? Allowing SALT deductions at all allows states and municipalities to skip out on federal taxes by taxing themselves. That's money that isn't going into medicare, the VA, etc, etc, (thereby defeating the point of funding those things at the federal level) and instead is going directly into state/local coffers which defeats the point of having uniform federal taxes for funding federal programs.

I'm personally paying more thanks to the deduction cap but I understand the principal of it.

My taxes went up significantly because of this administration.

It's sad to see the racist actions they take at borders.

Trump is riling up groups of people with the things he says.

> How does it affect your life concretely?

Right now, he has tanked our country. We could have had a plan for the virus, and instead we are muzzling scientists.

Multiple people I know have died, almost everyone I know is out of work. The shithead in the White House killed all the programs that would have helped us.

Within a week of him assuming office in 2017, all of my extended family was (and still is) banned from visiting the country. It was his campaign promise and executive order.

Right now the US is the leader in COVID19 cases and deaths. Bigger countries like China have so far performed better than the US. Yes, there are structural issues, like the obesity epidemic. But it doesn't help the government is spending time arguing about masks and drinking disinfectant instead of building out test, trace & quarantine infrastructure.

As an American I completely agree with you.

The fact of the matter is that the federal government does not have a huge bearing on most Americans lives. I live in Colorado and therefore get to enjoy marijuana whenever I want despite the fact that it's not legal at the federal level. I like it that way.

Yet when we talk about this virus that is making everybody so miserable via lockdowns and for some killing them, suddenly everyone talks about it at a federal national level.

As if the United States is a small homogeneous country.

The virus hit New York City hard and nowhere else in the country. if you remove New York City from the equation the United States is at the top as far as low numbers of deaths per 100,000.

if you include New York City the United States is still doing better than the United kingdom Spain, Italy, and Belgium etc.

However the news media in this country is in the mode of if it bleeds it leads. they like to scare people to get them to keep their eyeballs glued to their screens and their prescription drug advertisements.

The most recent thing that they've been doing is focusing on absolute numbers rather than relative numbers with the deaths. Same for positive tests. The number of tests being administered has gone up radically and therefore more positive cases are turning up. The media in this country has conveniently left out the fact that the positive test rate is the number that matters and that has gone down all over the country.

I really really dislike Donald Trump like most of the people on this website. However I'm old enough to remember when a previous Republican president started a needless war that cost thousands of American soldiers their lives as well as trillions of dollars and I'm not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that were killed. The current president is incompetent and just says dumb s* all the time. That's honestly the extent of it and I have to constantly hear the whining and complaining as if the world is coming to an end. It's frankly very irritating and the media doesn't help.

The whole reason the U.S. had to go into lockdown was because of the failure at the federal level to contain this crisis.

You say that as if it COULD have been contained. What is unique about the USA compared to every other country that locked down?

Whose fault was it that Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium, Germany had to lock down?

This election year absurdity has warped the reality of this virus.

The virus is insanely transmissible with a long incubation period and high percentage of asymptomatic carriers. It couldn't have been contained in a free country.

The "had to go into lockdown" is debatable for most of USA. NYC needed a lockdown. Rest of US probably not.

Remember when Sweden was going to be a disaster a few weeks ago? Georgia and Florida? Yeah, they ended lockdowns, moron journalists pretending to be epidemiologists predicted doom.

All wrong. Sweden is fine. Georgia is fine. Florida is fine.

Why? Because they aren't the same as NYC and shouldn't be treated the same.

I'm not condoning the lockdown and agree that the danger of coronavirus has been vastly overstated, my point is that the U.S. government was not prepared. There were not enough tests, masks, and ventilators, and so NYC had to go into lockdown. Anecdotally my friends in NYC who suffered from all the symptoms of coronavirus were not able to obtain tests.

Meanwhile South Korea never had to resort to any lockdown. Both the U.S. and South Korea reported their first case on the same day (Jan. 20th), and Korea had tests available in a week while the U.S. took 5 weeks.

Agreed 100%.

1 detail that I think is relevant to the US learning lessons from this:

As incompetent as Trump is (and boy is he incompetent), having worked in the Federal gov't for 8 years, including 6 years under the Obama administration (I left after the Snowden revelations on moral grounds), there is nothing in my experience that tells me the Federal gov't in the US is competent in any way to deal with things like this virus.

Obama tried, but the dude inherited a steaming pile of old bureaucracies that make IBM look like a hot, nimble start-up. It is beyond horrible.

If you think that Trump made this worse, I agree. However, if you think it was anything more than a drop of water added to an ocean of mediocre apathy, then you haven't seen the Federal government agencies and the talent they retain (if you want to call it "talent").

Americans (whether left or right) need to stop arguing over the size of government and start focusing on it's spending efficiency and efficacy. It really is a travesty. Every now and then, I encounter a random coworker who is highly ineffective, and typically on the edge of being fired. I think back to my time working in the Federal sector, and realize that said person would be above average in any of the agencies I dealt with. We deserve better. And it's going to take a LOT more than a new president to get it. Trust me, I watched Obama's executive orders (for example, an open data executive order) get ignored or partially obeyed in optics only by the various bureaucracies. The Deep State is real, but it's not some nefarious, coordinated conspiracy. It's just a calcified collection of old, dispirited, soulless agencies filled with people riding their desks and avoiding risk at all costs. They avoid risk in the easiest way possible: defer action in favor of deliberation and meetings to ensure that blame is diffused if any action results in something bad happening. The government isn't like "House of Cards." It's like "Veep."

It's harder to feel optimistic about the future when there's an idiot in office who's actively trying to dismantle everything that's good about the country.

Trump still being in office points to a systemic failure of our government, which nobody is really talking about changing. Sad to feel optimism in a country with a failed government.

The only two Republican presidents in my adult life have both been directly associated with mass death and economic collapse. That's why I care.

I would take sprawl over being trapped in an apartment for 2 months.

True but it's not either/or. In Korea everyone lives in apartments, and they never had a lockdown. Live has practically been carrying on as usual throughout the whole pandemic, minus the closing of schools, libraries (checkout only), and churches for a brief period of time.

> lack of community

To a large extent we already had that in most of America. Suburbia is a very lonely place. See the book Bowling Alone.

Our cities and rural areas aren't exactly in a great state either. I would imagine the average resident of a dense city does not know the names of all of their next door neighbors.

You forgot the scourge of anxiety and inferiority spawning social networks.

All of these are extreme and very myopic takes. 6 figures of student loan debt? That's < 5% of all borrowers (and many of those are post-grad education), 92% of Americans have healthcare and a fraction of the already small number of bankruptcies are related to medical debt, poverty rate has been relatively steady since the 60s.

Sure a lot of people hate Trump (I think if the media stopped talking about him, and he stopped tweeting that'd help a lot of anxiety - it's more media spin than his actual policy that seems to anger people), the US ranks better than most countries in Western Europe in terms of death rate per 1000, lack of community I'd agree with.

My point is: if you shut off some of the news and social media, your perspective would likely drastically improve. Things aren't actually that terrible if you tune out all the alarmists.

this guy has it figured out: https://youtu.be/FM5HkpyXxsQ . We need to throw a party. It's time to celebrate. Emancipation is in sight.

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