cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/54239937
During the Great Depression, when banks foreclosed on farms, neighbors often showed up at the auctions together.
They’d bid only a few cents, and return the land to the family that lost it. Sometimes a noose hung nearby as a warning to outsiders not to profit from someone else’s ruin.
It was rough, but it worked, communities protected each other when the system wouldn’t.
If a collapse like that happened today, do you think people would still stand together or has that kind of solidarity disappeared? Could it happen again?
No chance. Everyone is “me, me, me, me!” now. Even the loudest voices around the internet, banging on about LGBT rights, and immigrants being harassed by ICE, and every other social justice issue, is only doing so for what it gives them. Worthless internet points.
And these the supposedly the very best of us. The rest? They’ll be on all the auction sites, buying up foreclosed and then punting them on ebay for a massive profit. Covid showed us who most of us really are. And it wasnt pretty. Hell, some of us cant even leave kids in peace to collect pokemon cards. No, some of us have to buy them all up, and then sell them on ebay at a markup.
We are mostly, very scummy people. In order to get what we see here in these old pictures, is community. And we dont really have that anymore. We are all at each other throats over everything now. Community has become niche. Calling people cunts because you slightly disagree with them about something has become the baseline.