They've realized Elon Musk isn't going to invent an immortality serum and they need to move on to Plan B.

I think about that too, but the more likely explanation is that this is the end result of any capitalist country with no left-pulling opposition, combined with psychopathic levels of individualist propaganda. Especially with the ideological threat of the Soviet Union out of the way, and Unions at home quashed, there is absolutely no reason in the minds of the wealthy to maintain a society or a state. Only the media seems interested in even maintaining the façade of a state. Fuck, even the elected officials can barely pretend to give a fuck anymore.
Concepts like "civilization" and "society" and "public" do not exist in these people's minds. It's not their problem, it's not their concern, and because they run everything everywhere, well...

Something can be cute and gross at the same time. But you're not an anti-natalist weirdo just for thinking babies are gross. Cus they are. Even when they're cute.

They still need surplus bodies to die in wars or it's slightly harder to justify buying all those weapons.

They still need surplus bodies to shove into any nook and cranny they can't automate.

They still need surplus bodies to scare us into submitting and working lest we end up in the gutter like them.

... I'm just not convinced they realize that.

"To solve the absolutely plummeting birth rate, Democrats proposed a bill that would launch a committee to investigate the possibility of using tax credits to incentivize large corporations into designating at least one walk-in closet a 'maternity room'. The bill was struck down in committee. This is NPR."

Yeah no nothing's turning this shit around, because no matter how worried the ruling class is about birth rates, they're way more worried about giving workers a single fucking concession. I can't even envision a full fash America managing to pull off a Handmaid's Tale type system, because even THAT would somehow be construed as a too much of a handout.

"Wait wait wait, the broodmare's wouldn't be paying for the kids they're forced to have?"

"Well they wouldn't be paid a wage. They're slaves."

"Well who's paying for the kids then? Shut it down."

I can't tell if he's on the verge of a breakthrough or just valorizing moderates as selfless martyrs.

"And yet for all our means-testing, we are the least appreciated. And for all our pragmatism, we are the least rewarded. And for all our bipartisanship, we are the most loathed. Why?"

Well when ya put it that way...

And Libs will become ever-more psychotic every foot of the way down

Didn't they do that to the concrete in Berlin in Wolfenstein?

Around 2015 I was a recovering AnCap who fell back into vague South Park Liberalism / Libertarianism. Seeing the open bloodthirst of Trump's election campaign (and the base of /r/the_donald specifically) kinda jump-started the empathy center of my brain. It was the first time in a long time I remembered "Oh, other people exist and don't seem to be having the same experiences as me... I should look into that...". Basically the vitriol and garishness of the Right under Trump helped me check my privilege for the first time.

Then, Trump getting elected single-handedly convinced me American Exceptionalism couldn't be more of a sham and Capitalism couldn't be less of a meritocracy. I suddenly saw the rot, I could see the direction every part of this country and planet was hurtling toward and it looked like Children of Men at best... So I was radicalized and disillusioned then and there. The US wasn't "an ambitious egalitarian experiment with some forgivable mistakes", it was just a mass-slaughtering machine sucking the life out of everything around us. There was no Master Plan, there were no Great Men, there wasn't even an Illuminati, the problems weren't clandestine they were right in front of us, banal and broad as daylight. For the first time, I realized institutions weren't coming to save us, institutions I had assumed were fucking magic and full of Aaron Sorkin type specialists with their hands on the rudder. NOPE. That priviledged as I am, I had more common with sweatshop workers in Indonesia than I did with my employers. I realized nobody was coming to save us. (And with Bernie out of the picture, now it's safe to say nobody is coming to save us. I've lost any hope he could have anyway.)

Was ready to be radicalized, and luckily, took an American History from Black Perspective course shortly after. Went from "We need to restore America to when it was good, to stop the Make America Great Again people!" to "America has literally never been good. There is no political party demanding Leftward change except that one they outlawed. It's all a sham, and everything I have to my name was earned by dice rolls on top of a mountain of skeletons..."

Suddenly, it was like I could see the Matrix code. Every thing I was politically confused about was explainable with "Does this help the property-owning class make more money? That's why it do." Every shitty thing at work, every shitty thing outside, every shitty thing happening from top to bottom. "It's for the property-owning class. It's all being done for them."

Having the most soul-crushing job on Earth at the time helped a lot. I was already thinking "Why is some trust fund baby in a suit the owner of everything a thousand engineers and technicians work on? How does this guy own this building if he's never even set foot in it? Why is he in charge of anything at all?" well before I read Marx.

A harry potter themed explanation on the shortcomings of Liberalism helped a lot.

That Socialism for Dummies video by Richard Wolff helped a lot too.

A freaking civic option's flavortext in a Stellaris mod helped too. "Socialist Economy: The means of production are owned by the workers who use them. If you don't use it, you can't profit from it." That was my first "Oh, that's what Socialism is? That sounds ... great. Wait..." moment.

Just seeing the differences between Liberals and any kind of Red in Kaiserreich helped too. "Sexual, Racial, and Economic Equality, Worker Co-Ops, and abolishing Landlordism ... versus ... minor banking reforms and feel-good campaigns."

A picture of world leaders all sitting on toilets pooping helped shatter that weird Great Man idea I was raised on. Seeing a queen with her granny panties down as she stares listlessly at the toilet paper roll is ... well it helped remind me they're just human beings in fancy suits. They aren't geniuses from a crop of superhuman elites, they're just people doing what makes the most sense at that point in time for them.

Took about a month from learning the correct definition of Socialism for the first time in my life to realizing I was a goddamn Red.

___

No, no, the people exist to serve the elites, very specifically by voting for them. You're not supposed to vote for POLICIES and shit, you're supposed to vote to prove you're a smart and good person who picked the good smart one and not the loud scary one. Expecting politicians to do things for you just because you voted for them? Crass selfish populism.

i know right?

This is how my brain operated when I was 18. "Oh it's so easy to live completely alone in the wild with basically nothing, why don't homeless people just build a house from some trees and rock?"

It's what led my sheltered-ass brain to going full-on AnCap, every Ayn Rand book read, all friends alienated, total contempt for the poor before I had ever worked a job in my life.

That, and I'm one of the fucking idiots who played Bioshock and somehow thought "Oh, it only failed because Andrew Ryan betrayed his own Free Market Principles, it only failed because it wasn't Free Market Enough."

I outgrew it all in less than a year when I realized universal healthcare was just objectively superior by every metric and started realizing corporations were destroying everything with or without oversight, but then I was a feckless South Park Lib until Trump won and my faith in this shithole crumbled overnight.

And then I saw that fucking Harry Potter jpeg explaining the shortcomings of Liberalism and watched a Richard Wolff video.

Sorry for the backstory but I actually feel like a shit ton of recently-radicalized people have gone down this embarrassing-ass road or something similar to it. And remembering what we used to believe before we read Marx or saw a shitty jpeg or whatever can't hurt when talking to people who are still there. Some people are primed and ready, and just need the definition of Socialism explained to them properly once.

am high, done ranting

2022: Dems lose congress, spend the next two years campaigning entirely on "You have to vote in 2024 so we can resume Trump's impeachment."

2024: Tucker Carlson wins in a landslide by promising literally any amount of popular policy. Dems accuse Putin of rigging the election.

2026: The atmosphere catches on fire.

I remember watching James Bond movies as a kid and thinking "Ya know, most of these lunatics wouldn't be able to nuke the planet or whatever if they weren't rich enough to buy a private army in the first place..."

Well, at least he's ensuring even the wealthy won't be able to safely escape Earth any time soon.

I normally hate "future tech will solve blank" arguments, but odds are nothing short of a future surface-to-space laser system is going to clean up all the space debris Elon alone will cause.

I think it's to shoot down China's first manned mission to Mars so Elon doesn't have to be sad and we can keep pretending we're not an empire in collapse. I wish I was joking more than I am...

When China puts a person on Mars, American media won't give it 1/100th the attention they gave to the royal wedding.

I can already see the headlines for the day it happens... "China Turns Dead Planet Red: 'This is a tragic day for the human race' tweets President Musk."