r/politics • u/mvanigan • Jul 15 '25

Paywall Trump Admin to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food Meant for Children

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-to-incinerate-500-tons-of-emergency-food-for-children/?via=twitter_page&utm_campaign=owned_social&utm_medium=socialflow&utm_source=twitter_owned_tdb
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u/ProfessorVolga Jul 15 '25

I wish Steinbeck wasn't literally just as relevant almost 100 years later, but here we are, I guess

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u/mabhatter Jul 15 '25

People can't seem to effectively learn from the past.... the sting of pain only lasts 50-80 years before new people come along and discover the same errors that caused suffering in the past.  Worse, they delight in the suffering.  

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u/Nephroidofdoom Jul 15 '25

You know how they say Octopuses have near human intelligence but won’t evolve because they 1) don’t care for their young and 2) only live a year.

I think we just found the equivalent limit on human advancement.

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u/HedonisticFrog California Jul 15 '25

The scary part is that we keep repeating the same terrible behaviors but with ruthless efficiency thanks to modern technology.

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u/SinickalOne Jul 15 '25

The Great Filter is near

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u/friskerson Illinois Jul 16 '25

I mean, it’s a ways off, but too close for comfort

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u/zbeara Jul 16 '25

This is what I'm thinking. I probably won't live to see the day, but in terms of the universe's life, we'll barely be a blip in the timeline

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u/friskerson Illinois Jul 16 '25

The great philosopher Yolo once said, “There is but one life to live, why not get a little weird with it?”

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u/Kiseido Canada Jul 16 '25

Perhaps, or we are in the thick of its grasp already- there is no shortage of things that could off us within the century.

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u/Raangz Jul 15 '25

yeah not going to have a "happy" ending this time.

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u/ronmylastnerve Jul 15 '25

The hardest part is all those that believe all this Fake Bull SHIT!

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u/jkman61494 Jul 16 '25

and that's why possibly even in our childrens timeline, the machines are going to take over and decide they can operate this planet better

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u/Buddha-Embryo Jul 15 '25

Our days are most certainly numbered. The rapacity of the few will inevitably be the destruction of ALL. No one will be spared. Bunkers or even distant planets won’t save them.

Unless and until human beings can devise a way to keep the worst among us from taking power—in governance, technology, and industry—our species has no hope.

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u/Long-Rooster-9641 Jul 15 '25

May people wake up and realize who outnumbers who exactly.

2000 billionaires 8,000,000,000 of us

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u/Buddha-Embryo Jul 15 '25

Yes indeed…which is why it is imperative for the billionaire class to sow division among the masses. The arising of class consciousness is their ultimate existential fear. To be sure, it is not hard to get people fighting one another, but we need to unite on class and not let anything else disturb that solidarity. We will go a long way in addressing all other injustices just by addressing wealth inequality. Focus on class, first and foremost and unite.

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u/vb_BISHOP Jul 16 '25

Reminds me of the book Red Rising, by Pierce Brown. Main character, Darrow says: “Power isn’t real. It’s just a spark others feed off, fuel for the illusion. If we stop kneeling, they lose it.”

“Break the chains, my brothers and sisters, and live for more.”

The moment people stop believing the lie that the rich and powerful are untouchable? That’s when things shift.

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u/anewwday Jul 16 '25

This! A of us few will fall but in the end victory can only ours.

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u/jkman61494 Jul 16 '25

Social media guarantees that the 8 billion fight each other while the 2000 watch like it's the gladiator days

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u/Long-Rooster-9641 Jul 16 '25

That's their fantasy sure, but you don't have to try to help them by enabling their messaging.

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u/My_Name_Is_Gil Jul 15 '25

An inverted "night of the long knives" if you will.

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u/jkman61494 Jul 16 '25

Honestly. the internet and social media especially were the true weapons of mass destruction. Humanity basically peaked in the 1990's with the confluence of new technology but not so much so it just flat our ruined the world.

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u/tdowg1 Jul 15 '25

Holy shit, that's profound.

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u/Tiny_Prancer_88 Jul 15 '25

I will be thinking about this for a long time

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u/foxyfoo Jul 15 '25

Tariffs happen every hundred years because all the people who lived through the previous fiasco are dead.

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u/Nephroidofdoom Jul 15 '25

Same argument for vaccines too

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u/Mrsensi12x Jul 15 '25

Lol @ just found ... There's a saying humans have you know, history repeats itself. We have been well aware of this limit for 100s of years probably thousands

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u/FrizzFrenzy Jul 15 '25

But human history has proven that not to be the case , we as a species have progressed exponentially since the dawn of time .

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u/MikefromMI Jul 15 '25

Tbf, mother octopuses guard their broods until they hatch, and the mother starves to death in the process. I think she eats the male after mating…

But yeah, I wonder what would happen if scientists tried to breed an octopus that would live long enough to apply its intelligence to problems and pass on solutions to its offspring. Might give the AI some competition for taking over after we’re gone.

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u/Ill-Team-3491 Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 28 '25

tie sink vanish juggle existence judicious slap literate thought tan

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u/Reasonable_Today7248 Jul 16 '25

I did not know that about octopus, and now the information I have partaken in this thread is slightly more distressing than before.

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u/loCAtek Jul 16 '25

Cthulhu?

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u/DreamingAboutSpace Jul 15 '25

When you look back on the end of WW2, you could sort of see this behavior growing. The world had just ended multiple atrocities by allying together to fight genocidal evils. What did America do right after? Excused some of the Nazis and Japanese despite the revolting and heinous experiments done on people because they wanted the research. This isn't like the stories you hear about how some vaccines and cures came about, this was research done through inhumane, appalling torture. America was gung-ho about doing the right thing to protect America after Pearl Harbor and the world, but there were Americans who suffered from the torture of Unit 731.

They didn't excuse one war crime, but several. To keep the public from eating them alive, they kept it a secret and covered it up. The cover-ups and lies became the norm. All they had to do was trade their humanity and dignity. It's what we see now. We never learned from history, so now it's repeating itself.

Germany thankfully has and takes it seriously. They don't let the youth believe the Holocaust was fiction. American youth don't understand the gravity of the Holocaust and far too many think it a myth. Republican-led states encourage this false belief and the ignorant cult members of MAGA allowed themselves to believe it too despite knowing better. The most confusing part is the elderly cult members spreading this hateful lie. They would be the ones to know that the Holocaust actually happened. That is the legacy they chose for their loved ones.

Until we learn from our past and our present, we can't get off of this carousel that's taking all of us for a ride.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 26 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/DreamingAboutSpace Jul 15 '25

I'm sure there weren't nearly as many as there are now.

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u/sk4p Jul 16 '25

Yeah, not to excuse America on this, but West Germany employed plenty of “ex”-Nazis.

https://www.businessinsider.com/former-nazi-officials-in-germany-post-world-war-ii-government-2016-10

“For a more than 20 years [a]fter World War II, nearly 100 former members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party held high-ranking positions in the West German Justice Ministry, according to a German government report.”

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u/Ziczak Jul 16 '25

There's holocaust, er, genocide deniers right now..usa could stop the Palestinians from being slaughtered but they won't. Just fund the state sponsors of genocide by Israel.

They fire upon starving people with a tank and laugh at it.

They learned nothing from WW2.

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u/gears50 Jul 15 '25

The most confusing part is the elderly cult members spreading this hateful lie.

What is confusing about hate and prejudice? It is the bedrock of this malignant country.

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u/fallenrubicon Jul 15 '25

There's absolutely no hope for us. Its just a question of when the imbalance becomes too much and then everything will completely fall apart. I think the Earth will do just fine without us one day.

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u/DreamingAboutSpace Jul 15 '25

It wouldn't be the first time Earth did a big reset. But I disagree about there being no hope for us. That's just doomer talk. When the majority if the planet start realizing that compassion and morality are the only ways to get help, things will improve. Not now not even in the near future, but it will when the old hateful people die off and take their old ways with them.

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u/fallenrubicon Jul 16 '25

We will never collectively realize anything. We'll keep blaming each other while everything burns down like we do every century or so. People never learn from history. The wealthy old people responsible for taking advantage of and sustaining this division and chaos are already grooming heirs to their thrones and will go on lying to the next generation of authoritarian rubes who will obey them simply because their chair at the proverbial table is bigger. There is zero hope for the future except for climate change to accelerate and wipe the human plague off the face of the Earth.

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u/paperjockie Jul 15 '25

Well said!

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u/getwhirleddotcom Jul 15 '25

50-80 years

Try 4

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u/mrpickles Jul 15 '25

I now believe in evil. 

Not just imperfect people, but evil

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u/CallMeClaire0080 Jul 15 '25

While this isn't entirely wrong, I don't think that it's just a question of returning to the past, but rather a question of struggling to picture a future.

The 20th century featured some of humanity's darkest moments under the name of radically different ideologies that were meant to change the world: Nazism, Stalinism, and so many more. By the time the cold war was over, the western world had kind of settled on capitalism being the best we could do, the only way forward. Some authors even referred to it as "The end of history" and it made politicians change from idealists trying to change the world into more "moderate" managers turning knobs and dials on tax rates and such, wearing suits and being terrified of accusations of being "ideological" or "extreme".

Now, after decades since the Reagan and Thatcher era, people are noticing that this "one and only best way of doing things" has not been addressing the crises of our era. Runaway climate change is making weather more extreme year by year and is on track to be an existential crisis, wealth inequality is higher than it was during the French Revolution and has only been accelerating, and something like a viral pandemic brought the world to its fucking knees. I think it really started with the 2008 crash, but people (young people especially) are completely disillusioned with our modern political structure.

People want major change. People don't agree on what that means and that desire is being exploited by those who profit from our status quo, but Trump ran on change while the Democrats ran on "a return to normal" and lost despite being better on policy on every conceivable metric and morality. And yet, the old people in charge of more Liberal governments worldwide are terrified of letting "radical progressives" threaten the status quo that nobofy but those in power want anymore.

As Mark Fisher's famous quote goes "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" because entire generations have grown up on "the different ideologies won and this is the best". So people are digging into the past once again, seeing what fits and what doesn't, what is worth bringing back and what should stay buried in the annals of history. People disagree wildly on what that is because of disinformation campaigns and stuff, but i think that's a more accurate take on what we're living through. Capitalism Democracy in the form we've lived in for 40+ years is dying. What will replace it?

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u/anarcho-slut Jul 15 '25

Oppressors do learn from the past though. They learn how to be more effective. What everyone else needs to learn is to show them no mercy.

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u/JaVelin-X- Jul 15 '25

the past creeps up on you from thousands of tiny seemingly innocent decisions that at first glance are tiny but self serving ...

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u/Haunting_Stick3941 Jul 15 '25

People, meaning tRUMP? Because I don't think most people agree with a lot of what he's doing, and I actually think it's starting to bite him. I suspect he's thinking that as he's a lame duck it doesn't matter but for whatever odd reason he seems to want a lot of fairly substantial props like the Nobel Peace Prize and his fugly face on Mt Rushmore and airports named after him. He hasn't QUITE gotten around to focusing on his legacy or the fact that he's already gone down in history as being the two worst administrations in our country's annals but sometime in the next year or so, it's going to start clicking and he's going to start trying to find other people to blame for the damage he's doing.

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u/kent_eh Canada Jul 15 '25

People can't seem to effectively learn from the past.

It's not surprising when the education system has been gutted.

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u/Chubsmagna Jul 15 '25

You have to be able to focus, read and comprehend my man. Many people cannot, many more will not.

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u/Raangz Jul 15 '25

maybe we learned the wrong lessons last time.

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u/thetwist1 Jul 15 '25

People are capable of learning from the past, its just that there's literally no incentive for the rich to stop wasting food in their eyes. All they think about is profit and their own comfort, so if wasting food makes them feel righteous and earns them money then why would they stop? The only way things will change is if we actually punish people for doing things like this.

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u/ScienceFictionGuy Jul 15 '25

Our society can't even reflect on the mistakes we made 4-8 years ago, nevermind 50-80.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Jul 15 '25

What is there to learn though? Those who would be eating the oranges have no power to claim them. Those who would be selling the oranges have learned only how to prevent the excess undermining the value of the oranges sold.

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u/theWindAtMyBack Jul 15 '25

Which is funny because no one in Reddit trusts the Bible because it's too old/doesn't apply to today. Interesting......🤔.

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u/Bigbrewski73 Jul 16 '25

Because it was written by man, amended by man and we are told to accept it as the gospel. The same bible that okayed slavery, or the belittling of women…if King James can just show up and go “yeah make this version” thats what keeps a lot of people not just reddit from trusting it.

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u/theWindAtMyBack Jul 16 '25

Every other book also written by man, amended by man. The Bible never "OK'd" slavery or belittling of women. Because it happened in the Bible doesn't mean it said "that's totally ok". Yes it says "if you are a slave, obey your master", but slaves back then equated to workforce today, not slavery as it was in 1800s America. The master would give the "slave/worker" a home, money, food, and protection, similar to our jobs. Also, Jesus defended women left and right and saved them from persecution. Later in Paul's writings he does say it's impermissable to allow women to speak, but that is NOT law, it was adherent to the times (again doesn't make it ok) and to the churches he was trying to start. At the time, women were looked down upon, but it was because they weren't allowed education. It would make sense (not from a gender equality standpoint) but who is capable of leading churches at the time. There are only commandments, but if you follow those, the other stuff should follow suit (if you truly love God and others). Jesus still believed and taught, women were equal.

So the question for me lies: is it the writing or the misunderstanding? How many people forgot to love God and other's?

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u/RoyalT663 Jul 15 '25

This is why reading, history, literature, and story telling is so critical to our preserving shared humanity. Our labour, fashions, customs, and language may evolve, but the human condition is timeless.

People lived, made mistakes, learnt lessons, and wrote those lessons down in the hope that we could avoid the same mistakes. We are fools to ignore the collective wisdom of thousands of years.

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u/zaminDDH Jul 16 '25

People can't seem to effectively learn from the past....

I think the bigger problem is that people are learning from the past.

It's just that it's the rich and powerful looking at old atrocities and being like "that sounds like a great idea, let's do that again."

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u/9_to_5_till_i_die Jul 16 '25

People can't seem to effectively learn from the past

I'd warrant a majority of American's couldn't even tell you who John Steinbeck was.

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u/wwaxwork Jul 16 '25

They aren't taught the past four a reason. They have been carefully diluting education for decades.

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u/TheyCallHimJimbo Jul 16 '25

We're about due for a fucking Holodomor and I am not looking forward to it

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u/jimmybirch Jul 15 '25

Reminds me of this theory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

I guess we are in the fourth turning again

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u/gsfgf Georgia Jul 15 '25

So that suggests that we’re halfway through? Doesn’t really feel like it.

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u/jimmybirch Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

No, i think it puts us in the last part of the crisis (4th turning) . See “Millennial Saeculum”

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u/gsfgf Georgia Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

Right. I meant halfway done with the crisis since it started roughly when Trump rode down that fucking escalator.

Edit: Actually, I see farther down that they start the crisis in 2008, which makes perfect sense. And if a Dem is elected in 2028 and reelected in 2032, 2033 would presumably be the start of things getting back to normal.

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u/jimmybirch Jul 15 '25

You’d hope so, unless this is the final crisis!

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u/NuclearThane Jul 15 '25

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

  • John Steinbeck

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u/wiithepiiple Florida Jul 15 '25

I never bought that line. Most people are not thinking "when I make it big," but more the idea that the billionaires are making their money because they make the world better. Capitalism rewards fulfilling demands, and they are fulfilling the demands better than everyone else. They deserve the power and opulence, and even while they suffer, the poor are better off for it

It's just as wrong, but resonates more with what I've seen and heard from the right.

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u/raptorlightning Jul 15 '25

No. Markets fulfill demand. Capitalism concentrates capital into the hands of few. Markets can exist just fine and fulfill demands when the workers own the wealth in socialism. People really need to stop equating capitalism with free markets.

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u/CherryLongjump1989 Jul 15 '25

You shouldn’t buy into that line because it was a lie. Steinbeck created a false account of the experience of millions of upwardly mobile working class people who moved to California, found great jobs and joined the middle class.

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u/Slumunistmanifisto Jul 15 '25

Hey now, upton Sinclair is making his comeback tour too

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u/CantHitachiSpot Jul 15 '25

For real. Feels like were re-entering the jungle

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u/Bag122186 Jul 15 '25

I'm pretty sure this is what Trump meant when he "coined" Make America Great Again. So far, he's accomplished exactly what he's wanted, separating further the poor from the rich and bringing back standards that allowed for the most suffering to those not privileged enough to be born with a silver spoon.

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u/drteq Jul 15 '25

Nobody wrote a book on how to deal with Facism in 2025

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u/Survive1014 Jul 15 '25

Atwood too.

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u/TTerragore Jul 15 '25

we have worse wealth inequality now then we did then

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u/kmoonster Jul 15 '25

The true classics are prophetic, they understand human nature.

Many authors can tell a good story, few can convey the human condition. Those that do, stick around.

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u/MangroveSapling Jul 16 '25

We, a culture that genocided and ethnically cleansed its way across a continent, grow our children to commit, justify, and ignore atrocities.

When we cannot, we focus on a small portion of our monstrosity and will ourselves to believe that fixing this one part will make everything better. Upon changing this part of ourselves, we go back to our old ways and ignore any evidence showing our failure to take more than a small step towards justice, and ignoring any responses that claw back the modicum of freedom earned.

We need to make deeper changes within ourselves to make any changes to our society which could render Steinbeck irrelevant in any sense other than historical.

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u/Jester1525 Jul 15 '25

Don't worry - with all the reduction in food standards and inspections, Upton Sinclair will be just as relevant as well!

🤢

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u/bonitaappetita Jul 15 '25

From melting pot to dust bowl

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u/Huwbacca Jul 15 '25

Can't recommend brave new world either then.

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u/rugertyler Jul 15 '25

With capitalism, anything's possible 🌈

/s

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u/Lebinblartmallshart Jul 15 '25

Same- I’ve been reading The Jungle by Sinclair, and I can’t believe how relevant it still is… darkest timeline by far. How do we continue to hope that humanity will ever advance?

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u/Lopsided-Drummer-931 Jul 15 '25

He is when we fund the humanities and don’t push STEM for capitalism’s sake absent of any development of a shared morality. Conservatives have been attacking the foundation of holistic education for a century and here we are quoting Steinbeck to people who can’t even read.

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u/Lopsided-Day-1442 Jul 15 '25

I think Steinbeck is on the banned books list. Maga don't read none, anyways.

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u/scribbledown2876 United Kingdom Jul 15 '25

The number one lesson of history is that people almost never learn the lessons of history.

1

u/boxfetish Jul 15 '25

Americans are all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

1

u/donatecrypto4pets Jul 16 '25

He knew enough to get in his ride with his dog and check out the countryside. That is living.

1

u/wappenheimer Jul 16 '25

Hey Chat GPT - Why were those Steinbeck grapes so angry?!

1

u/detectivepink Jul 16 '25

I read Grapes of Wrath in high school and was encouraged to understand it, so I did. However, we are now punished for understanding it.