TheBeege

How are you defining "normal?"

I think the main thing is that Korea's government still has some fear of its people, which is very, very important. Enough stupid moves and millions of citizens can be on your doorstep (see Park Geunhe).

Yes, there's a bunch of corruption. Yes, working culture blows. Yes, birth rates have been tanking for a reason (but reversed recently?!).

But there's a reason those soldiers heading to the parliament building had no ammo except one guy in a squad with less lethal rounds. There's a reason the martial law was ended so quickly. There's a reason Yoon is actually getting his on a reasonable timescale.

In Korea, once you hit that tipping point of people realizing you're a dick, you're gonna have a real bad time.

My initials are BJB.

I was in jazz band in high school. We were doing a joint thing with the choir, so everyone was running around moving stuff to make space. My parents had bought me a nice music bag with my initials on a plate on the front of it. Someone held up my music bag asking who owned it. I figured they just wanted to let the owner know where it was being moved to, so I spoke up... "Hah, your initials are BJ!"

Hence, my name became blowjob. The completionists called me Blowjob Betty (I'm male) to get that last initial in, too. At the time, I was quite quiet and took myself maybe a little too seriously. This ended that.

One day, I was at my buddy's place, and he called me "Beege," saying he didn't want to say "Bee and Jay," as it was too long. At that point, I said fuck it. My name is Beege. Let's go.

Over time, my friends added an article because why the fuck not.

Over 20 years later, and it's still my name. It actually taught me to not take myself so seriously. Although, one interviewer at a job had a really hard time keeping it together when HR told her my nickname without catching the meaning. She and I are good friends now.

In any case, I always get a slight chuckle inside when people hesitate slightly after introducing myself. I'm great at keeping a deadpan face about it now, too

It seems there's no content on the White House website before Jan 20... pfft, who needs history?? /s

Thank you, OP

I've been jamming to this for the past few weeks. It's actually within my pitch range, and long live workers' rights

Presidential pardons are only for federal crimes. Rape is likely a state crime. I haven't checked

I might have laughed out loud on a silent bus. But worth it

Not necessarily. You don't know why they're making that claim.

I live in Korea, where the letter of the labor laws are quite strong. However, they're not enforced. Workers don't sue companies because they're either afraid to rock the boat due to cultural norms or afraid they will develop a reputation and become unhirable.

Korea and China are very distinct cultures, but there are key facets that are common between them. Confucian (or at least neo-Confucian in Korea) values prioritize maintaining the peace and deferring to authority. This is one of several factors that causes Koreans to endure intense working hours, and I'm more willing to believe Chinese folks overwork a lot due to the few shared values.

My ideas are similar to a couple of other comments, but maybe I'll phrase them in a way that unites them and is easy to understand. Let's see.

American exceptionalism is deeply ingrained in culture and associated with patriotism. See reciting the pledge of allegiance in schools. This includes the concept of the American dream: working hard = good life.

I'm not sure if the US was ever like that, but it's certainly not like that now. The key thing is that it's becoming more evident if you pay attention. There's a rift between people paying attention and people not paying attention. The people paying attention have discarded the American dream and maybe even exceptionalism, but those not paying attention have not. Additionally/alternatively, people may see different reasons for the American dream no longer being valid.

So you kind of have 2 + N camps. One camp still believes in American exceptionalism and the American dream and gets pissed that other people are seemingly trying to change/ruin it. One camp believes these concepts are dead and blames on various systems that need changing. (More on that later.) N camps believe these concepts are dead because of , e.g. blacks, Muslims, communists, foreigners, pick your poison. Sadly, this last group is the most visible because they're the most rage-inducing.

So the first and last sets mentioned above provide pretty clear reasons for anger: either frustrations at what should be fellow Americans in solidarity or bigots. The systems people also have a reason to be angry: the systems are well entrenched via various methods, and it's unclear how to start untangling the mess. Some blame billionaires. Some blame politics. Some blame both. But even if there's agreement about which problem is the highest priority, people get frustrated about conflict around potential solutions or the general inability to acquire focus on solutions due to the sheer number of them.

Combine all of this with an economic squeeze on standard of living, the rage-bait nature of social media and mainstream media, psychological negative bias, and just general (unfortunate) virtuous cycles, and you get a recipe for an ever growing angry society.

The people with the most ability to fix this have no incentive to. The people in power benefit from the current system. An angry and divided population is easier to manipulate and control. It also helps that the US is very geographically large, making physical threats less of an issue (except for CEO assassinations, I guess).

Lastly, the internet fucks us. Research shows (normally I'd cite sources, but I gotta get back to work in a minute. Internet points to whomever can find the source and share) that the social media echo chambers aren't actually the problem. People can be very open to new ideas depending on the presentation and the source. We already had echo chances of geography before the internet, and people were generally more trusting of the people physically nearby, even if their ideas differed. The problem is the anonymity of the internet, the volume of conflicting/unfamiliar ideas, and the way they're presented (e.g. rage-bait). Given that Americans are spending more time on the internet, they're exposed to more seemingly madness from crazy strangers and sometimes associate even the people around them with those crazy online strangers. We group them into these tribes and define them as the enemy. When we start recognizing that these people could be our neighbors, societal trust plummets. When you can't trust the people around you, how are you supposed to relax and feel safe? If you feel like you're always in psychological or physical danger, won't you be more prone to anger and defensiveness?

We weren't ready for the internet

Actionable, yes, but it's lacking specificity. What phrases or concepts in the post were condescending?(Not saying I agree or disagree, but I'm a fan of making feedback more effective.) Ideal feedback should also have examples of an improved version of the behavior, if possible.

I can corroborate, anecdotally, the behavioral side of this.

When I have conversations with notoriously angry people and can maintain my chill and treat them with dignity (despite whatever behavior they're exhibiting), they usually chill out. The more of angry person they are takes more effort, but patience, calm, and respect diffuse things very effectively. The patience is really hard, but it has worked for me.

The problem, which is relevant to the physical changes you described, is that the effect is only temporary in isolation. I have found the repeating this over time with a person does cause their baseline anger level to reduce over time, but it's a fuckton of work and difficult to scale due to the time commitment. It also doesn't scale via media because this kind of behavior doesn't draw attention. It's an unfortunate bug in our psychology

Ohh, sweet. I'll look those up. Thank you!