• @Treemaster099
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    10510 months ago

    The US really is becoming a third world country by the day, isn’t it. God I hate it here

    • Jay
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      9410 months ago

      And it’s bleeding into Canada.

      • @AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca
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        6310 months ago

        This is the part that pisses me off the most. The cancer that is American politics is infecting our country. Now we got dumb fucks like Danielle Smith and PP crying about the “woke” agenda and other imported republican bullshit. Even worse, it’s working extremely well on the dumbest of our population and spreading like wildfire.

        Fuck America and their sports team politics. People need to realize it should be working class VS the rich, but they keep us distracted and divided with this dumb fucking culture war and the morons are lapping it up.

          • @floofloof@lemmy.ca
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            10 months ago

            Remember when Poilievre accused the Liberal government of starting the wildfires? Apparently he embraces nutty conspiracy theories and climate change denial, American style.

            Here’s a clip from Question Period a few months back:

            https://twitter.com/ThunderBayEd/status/1656734773014822926

            At the 0:49 mark, Karina Gould mentions the fires in Alberta, and at 1:02 Pierre Poilievre can be clearly heard saying “started by your government”. It’s very disheartening to see how there’s no Republican low Canada’s Conservatives won’t stoop to, given the chance.

            • @Lammy@lemmy.world
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              1110 months ago

              The irony here is that trump did start the camp fire in California. He purposely stopped wildfire prevention efforts on the federal lands surrounding Paradise, California because “those people didn’t vote for me”.

              To make it dramatic irony, over 75% of Paradise actually did vote for Trump.

              Please Canada, learn from America. Don’t make the same mistakes.

        • @SiegeRhino@lemmy.world
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          110 months ago

          I hope you appreciate the irony of saying it should be rich vs poor instead of anything else, right after saying “fuck America”

      • Grant_M
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        2110 months ago

        PP, Ford, Smith, RW municipal politicians are grinding away at Canadian democracy as we speak.

    • @Lileath@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1010 months ago

      Well akchually the USA can never become a third world country, because the designations come from the cold war and first world means US aligned, second world means UdSSR aligned and third world are the neutral countries.

      • @Treemaster099
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        110 months ago

        Idk. The us population definitely isn’t aligned with the us government or vice versa.

        Jokes aside, that’s pretty interesting. I didn’t know that’s where those terms came from

      • OtterM
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        110 months ago

        Yep a better one might be developed/developing, since that’s what people are usually thinking about when they use those terms

    • @corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      610 months ago

      I’m sorry, man. I came back from America because if the healthcare, but now I avoid visiting my friends in NY/NJ/GA/WA/CA because of all the usual concerns – and me with so much privilege I need a boat or a Dodge ram.

      Stay safe. We’ll gain land in the 2029 water wars and you can either join us or join the independent states then.

      • Enkrod
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        310 months ago

        AfD still convinced Trump will save Germany ಠ_ಠ

    • I agree that in a lot of the states people can be pretty nasty towards LGBTQ+ people, but saying it is becoming a third world country is a bit extreme no?

        • I can’t speak about Alabama specifically, but all the states I’ve been to seem to be pretty nice places to live. Maybe I’ve only been to “the good ones” if what you said is true

          • @dom@lemmy.ca
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            1210 months ago

            And I’m sure you traveled to the nicer places of the cities you were in.

          • @Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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            110 months ago

            Did you specifically seek out the bad places?

            Crazy thought, but tourist destinations are usually pretty nice for a reason. You’re never going to see the slums or the backwaters if you’re just doing the tourist thing.

            • @TheTallestOfMidgets@partizle.com
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              10 months ago

              When I travel somewhere I don’t intentionally look for places that are shitholes, but I didn’t seek out good spots either. I try to get a feel of what living in the state is like, not just in it’s flagship city. Yes I haven’t done that for every single state I’ve been to, but I have for a lot of them.

              Regardless, there’s no need to be rude about it man

      • @Khotetsu@lib.lgbt
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        1910 months ago

        One of the common data points used by organizations to rate a country as “third world” or not is the state of its infrastructure. In that department, the US is certainly closer to third world countries than we are to our European brethren. It’s been ignored and underfunded for so long that there are many places where it’s quite literally falling apart, and that’s not even getting into the state of public transit (or lack thereof) or how the single family suburb sprawl is slowly bleeding cities dry of their capital.

        There are other horrible things like parts of the US that have never had plumbing (Appalachia comes to mind) or things like the Flint, Michigan crisis (do they have drinkable water? I think as of last year they still didn’t. They might be able to take showers again, though, without causing permanent health issues for their kids). We have higher rates of women who die during childbirth than some third world countries. The quality of healthcare here is ranked the worst out of the first world nations while also being the most expensive. The wealthy go to Canada for prescriptions and surgery, or Mexico for dental work - Mexico apparently has better dentists than the US from what I’ve heard. We are #1 in number of incarcerated citizens per capita. The wealth disparity in the US today is supposedly worse than it was in France in the years just before the French Revolution, where the price of a loaf of bread was more than a day’s pay for the average worker. Upward class mobility (being born into a poor family and being able to become wealthy) is the lowest it’s been, I think, since the country was founded. A year or two before COVID happened, I was looking into starting a side business and found studies saying that a new business was more likely to fail today than in the Great Depression. If I remember the stats right, it was something like 40% of businesses fail in their first year, another 20% in their second year, and by year 4, 80% of new businesses have gone under.

        I’ve heard the US described as “a third world country in a Prada belt,” and I think it’s an apt description. Policy-wise, we’re closer to third world countries than we’d like to admit. We’ve just been living off the postwar economic boom from WW2 that centered the US as the world’s largest economy and wealthiest nation to ever exist. The sheer amount of money circulating in our economy has kept the nation chugging along through whatever stupid things the corporations and the politicians have done over the years.

      • @jerkface@lemmy.ca
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        310 months ago

        It’s a meaningless term that is mostly used as a libel and only muddies discussions.

      • Cylusthevirus
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        -210 months ago

        It’s hyperbole brought to you by keyboard doomers who’ve never left their state much less their country. Talk to me when huge regions lack electricity or indoor plumbing.

        Anybody interested in seeing that can hop over the border to Tijuana and check out villages on hillsides essentially made from trash where all the buildings are particle board and cinder block. There’s shitty parts of the rural south, but to claim they’re the same demonstrates a profound lack of perspective. I dunno, maybe it’s gotten better since the late 90s when I was there, but there are degrees to these things.

        We can discuss America’s fascism problem without being ridiculous muppets and or Kremlin/CCP propaganda vehicles.

        • @Taleya@aussie.zone
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          10 months ago

          Talk to me when huge regions lack electricity or indoor plumbing

          cough Texasgrid cough

          • Cylusthevirus
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            -2510 months ago

            Texas is a state, dear. Administrative incompetence notwithstanding, it still has better infrastructure than a good portion of the world and pretty much all of what we’d consider the “3rd world.” And also, they only have the problems they have because they deliberately cut themselves off from the national grid.

            • @Taleya@aussie.zone
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              2410 months ago

              Cut the goalpost crap. You said talk to you when huge regions lose power, texas is 7% of the goddamn country and it lost power for an extended period - and still has an unstable grid! - due to corrupt pocket lining.

              • Cylusthevirus
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                -1610 months ago

                Do you understand the difference between power outages and there being no infrastructure at all in the first place? And, AS I MENTIONED, Texas is in the spot it’s in because they refuse to work with the rest of the grid.

                The goalposts aren’t moving, you just have no idea where they were. I’m guessing due to critical failures in reading comprehension or being paid in rubles.

            • @corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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              1510 months ago

              Texas is a state

              … but, you seem to be suggesting, not a huge region.

              Have you seen it? It’s huge! And it’s a region!

    • Franzia
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      310 months ago

      Hey good news! I just picked up several prescriptions and there was NO COPAY!!! Yay!

      • pbjamm
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        410 months ago

        I just moved to BC and have no medical/dental insurance yet. Last week I had to pay out-of-pocket to see a dentist and got a prescription for antibiotics. I paid less than I ever did in the US where I did have insurance. Less than CA$100 to see a dentist, get an xray and the prescription. Mindblowing.

        • Franzia
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          310 months ago

          Wow. Good for you though! I hope BC keeps treating you well!

          • pbjamm
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            110 months ago

            Thanks! So far I am loving it. Real test will be when the kids start school next week :)