I love America, I have lived here for 30 years, I am an American citizen, I pay my taxes and mostly don't break any laws. America has been good to me, I have a beautiful home by the beach, great car, sexy girlfriend no debt and everyone is superficially nice. However I am seriously considering leaving and going back to Europe. Why?

I have watched America slowly fold in on its self, for a country built by immigrants its virtually impossible to emigrate here, actually not many really want to. America used to do the right things for the right reasons, they used to manufacture some of the best products, lower income families could afford to live and eat, it used to strive to be the best place to live, that's all gone! There has not been good leadership for a very long time.

Now they monitor everything, there is no privacy, I pay 27% in taxes, healthcare in very broken, I recently visited a Hospital for a 20 min visit and get a bill for $50,000!!! Everything is more expensive than Europe, even gas/petrol is close to European prices. Inflation is not what is reported in the news its out of control and over 12% a steak from the store will cost me US$26+. There is no gun control, you can buy a 50 cal from a gun show without even showing your ID, education is a joke unless you are very very rich, a very large percentage of the population struggles to just maintain an existence. Even if you use t' energy the power company still charges you and they charge $40K to $50k to install it, so no one does it. Defense spending is off the charts, and the US is far from the most powerful armies in the world, in fact the world hates the US for trying to be the world fucking police! This is far from the number one country in the world and it makes me very sad.

With the laws beginning to tighten up to match the provincial attitude in the capital its becoming like the movie 'V for Vendetta' If you don't live in California or NY women no longer have control of their own bodies, if you are slightly different from the rest of society here people will shun you, I never tell anyone I produce smut or that I am Pagan. Fuckers would be outside my house with pitch forks and torches, I know that sounds unnecessarily exaggerated but that's how we are made to feel. The old, white christian men/women in Washington want the rest of the country in line with there views. How long before they burn witches at the stake? Take the vote away from women? Make porn illegal?

I get asked a lot if I should produce WAM content. I always answer the same way, no! You will not make money, 90% of my movies lose money, the rest go to making the next movie, I will continue making moves as long as its legal and I have the income. The business world hates adult companies and you are over charged for everything from Credit cards and web space, most companies will just refuse to do business with you. If America continues on its current path I see a time when creating smut will made so difficult to do its basically illegal.

I am planing a Month+ long trip back to Europe soon, I will be looking for a house, if that does not work out my next trip will be back to Asia. If things improve in the US I would love to stay, but I have my doubts. What does everyone else think?

Phil

my guess would be Yes, Yes

To quote one of my favorite movie lines - "The situation is hopeless, but not critical"

I suggest laying off the news or whatever your echo chamber of choice happens to be.

I see the points being made here and I must admit, Living in the USA is not one of my lifelong dreams. I feel sorry for people trapped by financial circumstances who would like to live elsewhere. Nowhere is perfect, every place has difficulties and disappointments, but the US does seem to be tearing itself apart at the moment in almost every sphere. Everything seems to be splitting the country down the middle, from people who seem to want everyone armed, to those who want to ban guns altogether. Quite how a solution to Covid could become a political matter is beyond understanding. God help and bless Americans, may they soon return to normality (some would say sanity) .

BTW Mods, should this discussion be in the Non-WAM forum?

So, first, no one knows the future with absolute certainty. A bunch of Important People used to think we were living through "the end of history," and you can see how that turned out. So prepare your grains of salt.

(tl;dr yes there will be WAM, no America is probably not doomed but your experience of America might well be doomed, depending on who you are and what you're trying to get out of life)

That having been said, WAM and porn aren't going anywhere, even in the US. A large percentage of WAM is not immediately recognizable as porn to begin with and would therefore be exempt from any normal ("normal") anti-sodomy law that gets passed. (For those who are wondering what the one has to do with the other, "sodomy" is often the umbrella term used in American laws to refer to illicit sex.) Especially with all the random messy content out there - YouTube, mainstream TV, TikTok, etc. etc. etc. - I have to believe that WAM producers would still have avenues under which to operate legally even in the worst-case scenario.

What's more, smut has a long and basically uninterrupted history of existing no matter what else is going on. As it turns out, humans really like sex. Who would've guessed! So, I mean, would it be harder to produce WAM content, especially explicit WAM content, under a moralistic, hard-right political regime? Yeah, it would. Would it be less profitable? Probably, I guess. So in that sense, there's the possibility that we'll have less WAM content, and especially less WAM sex and nudity. But humans are outrageously creative, especially when it comes to porn, so WAM definitely won't go away altogether, even for US producers and viewers.

As to the larger questions, "doomed" is a very broad word. The American empire is ending - that much is inarguable. For about 70ish years, we got to do whatever we wanted because we were the only rich nation that (a) had an army and (b) hadn't been bombed flat. Some of the things we did during that time were good, but overall they weren't good enough. There's an open question about whether we could have done better - empires don't exactly have a good historical track record - but, either way, the fact is that we didn't do well enough, and so now the empire is ending.

Does that mean America is ending? (Or "doomed" in some other way?) I dunno. I don't think anyone knows. Obviously things are going to hurt for a while. Things hurt right now. The end of an empire is never a smooth or relaxing process. But there are examples of countries that have stayed intact and have even grown after their empires fell apart. It just depends on what we do now.

Now, I don't expect that to be a comfort. In the worst case, we do what we've been doing and current trends continue. But in order to achieve the best case, a lot of us are going to have to fight really hard for a really long time, which means giving up a lot of the ease and optimism that make life feel rich and satisfying. My personal opinion is that we're going to land somewhere in the middle, at least in the near term, and if we're lucky the next couple of generations might stabilize the ship long enough to make some badly needed repairs. So I guess I don't really expect us to be "doomed" per se. But yeah, if you're looking to make things immediately better for yourself (as opposed to gearing up for a longer campaign to make things better overall in the next, like, 40 years), then I can understand why you might want to either move to a very blue area or else move out of the country altogether.

Hopefully in the future it will become a theocracy based around open legged savory humiliation type stuff and there will be like a whole TV channel of it, and it will regularly happen on game shows and reality shows and stuff.

When you think about it, it would actually suit the ruling political/business global elite if there was porn on all tv channels all day.

If a percentage of the world's population is in front of the telly with its trousers round it's ankles, they're not going to be taking to the streets in protest are they?

Europe isn't doing much better- inflation is going to match yours, and the cost of living is pretty much doubling the effect at the moment. Combine that with a highly inefficient government that's hell bend on expanding it's power and control, and further hiking taxes to cover the costs. Freedom of speech has been thoroughly holed below the waterline and sinking rapidly, self defense is on shaky ground at best. Certain EU states have violated rights to bodily autonomy and self determination so badly you'd mistake it for love.
Oh, and if you suffer an accident you might be stuck in a waiting room for 9 hours before someone can see to you. If they can spare the ambulance to pick you up.

Truthfully I'm not sure if you'll be better off here, at least over there you can still buy a gun. Personally I'd rather own one and hopefully never need it than be stuck here and caught without should the need arise.

I'm not sure attitudes to those of us who are different have ever changed, in my life 2 family members and one close friend have told me people like me should be strung up (not realising that it applied to me) that was over 20 years ago. Only my wife knows about my kinks. What we are seeing is the results of Globalisation I.e the dropping of tariffs allowing industry to export manufacturing to exploit cheap labour in the east, combined with the environmental campaigning restricting fossil fuels and increasing the cost of energy production massively. At the same time the economy of the west has struggled since the 2008 crash with increasing poverty for many people. As poverty increases peoples politics become more extreme. We are witnessing peoples politics both left and right going more extreme I'm just hoping the world can avoid WW III because that's the usual result of the situation we find ourselves in

As bad as American government is, every other world government is worse. The rights and freedoms of Americans eclipse anywhere else by miles to the point that some people are confused at how much freedom we have here.
The current regime is certainly looking to take away as many freedoms as possible but the most recent elections have shown a clear shift away from that far left train of thought.
America isn't going anywhere, but we do have 2 major enemies now...well really 1 major enemy and 1 enemy that is struggling to take over a country that should have been steamrolled but that 1 enemy has tons of nuclear weapons which makes it bothersome. Kind of like an old man with a rocket launcher. You know you could whip his butt but that rocket launcher could do some damage first.

Yes. There are at least 2 different sets of realties in our citizens heads. I don't see how a country can function when half of the population feels the government is illegitimate.

As a former Republican and current independent who truly believes this country would be better off if places like Texas are allowed to secede. I think everyone would be happier, even though it would be very challenging at first. The situation we are in reminds me of a sick marriage where the parents try to stay together for the sake of the children, but end up scarring the children way worse by constant fights and dysfunction.

The problem is that politics has become extreme. Brexit (I voted remain) opened up a massive fault line in Britain, and I think the left have given up on the economy, where I think they are right, and obsess now over fringe stuff that their core working class support base either don't care about, or are actually hostile to.

The right just hide behind flag waving bollocks and parrot tax cuts, which just means that public services are cut, so you have to pay more for crap private firms to run them. Also they wrap themselves in "patriotism" then flog the country's arse off to foreign corporations .

I think the private sector is ok at providing what people want, like consumer goods etc, but it's useless at providing what people need, like public utilities and affordable housing.

I can't be doing with a lot of the left's woke shite, but I equally can't be doing with capitalist free market economics. I no longer vote

I hope this is satire!

American exceptionalism is toxic and plays a big hand in a lot of the country's problems.

All else aside failing to vote is wrong, how can you wish for change but not vote for it? I agree with the likes of Australia where it is a legal requirement to vote and you can be heavily fined for not doing so.

I've given up on change and politics. Fuck it all.

I feel just as pessimistic about the UK, to be honest.

Never a true word:
https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk

This is exactly the premise of Nigel Kneale's acclaimed 1968 teleplay "The Year of the Sex Olympics." It's a science fiction TV movie about how a totalitarian government pushes a steady stream of smutty TV to keep the masses docile. The problem arises when the public starts getting bored with it all, at which point the TV producers are tasked with devising something more shocking for public consumption. Oh, and everyone's illiterate. What is it with science fiction writers and their strangely accurate predictions of the future?

You're not alone in wondering if you should move. I've been quietly picking around online on the subject too. I don't know how do-able it is for me but I really don't like how things are going.

I don't think WAM in its basic form -- the casual pie scene on TV or the inadvertent splash into a pool or the accidental splat into the mudpit -- will ever go away. However, being open about the fetish aspect of WAM could eventually become a problem.

That's because everything sexual whatsoever lands in the crosshairs of many religious conservatives, no matter what it is.

I only said "could", though, not "will". Smut has proven to be remarkably resilient. And some people in power watch it in secret. So they don't want to get rid of it, not really, because then they wouldn't have it.

They may even read this and know that I am talking about THEM.

Nessie

Nessie said:

There's a rumor going around that one of the U.S. presidents banged a porn star. I think it was Calvin Coolidge.

This was enlightening

https://youtu.be/xguam0TKMw8

I was impressed by this speech (and the show it came from) all those years ago when it first aired. There was a lot of truth in the show, indeed it could be just as relevant today. For those in the UK it is available on catch-up.

Yeah, it's the left removing women's rights to medical procedures, or the left looking to remove gay marriage.
Yup, those pesky progressives.

Please tell me which freedoms we enjoy that the people of Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden lack. I would love to be properly enlightened.

As an Australian, this is one of the reasons why support for mandatory voting has always been so high. everyone will bitch and moan if their party doesnt get (re)elected at each election but nobody ever bitches about the other side getting elected but forgetting they didnt bother to vote (though donkey votes are starting to become a similar problem).

Apart from an outsized unhealthy obsession with wanting to be the first country to implode after eviscerating the energy system for a 'powered 100% by wind and solar' delusion by our political class and the rich climate activists with lots of money and no understanding of anything useful (despite the fact every man and his dog buys our resources to power themselves), i'd say we of the land down under arent doing too badly. sure, things could be better but they could also be a hell of a lot worse *looks at US and UK*.

One of you yanks can set up some WAM commune once the empire collapses. Like Heavens Gate but more wholesome.

Seriously though, the collapse won't be pretty but history continues regardless. Settler colonies have fallen before (Algeria recently had the anniversary of their independence, a long seemingly impossible and astoundingly brutal war but one that ended a reality anyhow). So this won't be unique to America, same will likely happen in Israel and the north of Ireland and other holdovers of colonialism as economic progress stunts and barbarism goes inward to the homelands of Europe as accumulation fails to get the results needed to prop up the parasite economies (I'd recommend the work of Gotfred Appel on this).

WAM will still exist unless we're all wiped out by nukes or we start getting fuckin electroshocked (we won't, the fash have less care for niche fetish and go straight to the jugular and target LGBT people generally).

One last thing regarding options generally. The left id argue still gans for economics (at least Marxists do, i don't really have a high opinion of social democrats). It's just that material reality is grounded within identity too since capital assumes everything under its orbit (including class itself, see the way private school posh boy cunt politicians pretend they know workers cos they don't drink coffee or drink shite pints or some other performative bullshit). So things like abortion, queers rights and race burn class issues since they are used to steal wealth or punish working people and assume control (for example section 28 in the UK harboured job ambitions for many queer people, placing working class people at most risk or being driven into poverty whilst those who are rich can withstand it). By placing class and these issues side by side we see how capitalism works through division and treachery and can assume that a United and inclusive workers movement provides the best challenge to capital (see the the support given to the Miners Strike of 1984-85 by the revolutionary queer movement who recognised that Thatcher sought to fuck us all).

That's not on the ballot box though, it's in the streets. You won't get it from shuck and jive class traitors or other forms of scab. You'll get it from unionising the work place, supporting your community against state brutality and providing solidarity for those still colonised by Empire. Collapse of a certain system is inevitable, what replaces it is not. It's up to us to decide whether we go down with the fuckin ship, or take control before it capsizes.

This is still a sober, and accurate go to reminder for me.

The thing is while the grass can look greener on the other side, I don't think it is. What modern nation in the world ISN'T going down this fucked up path?

Democracy has become polarized to the point that when one side gets elected it just tries to undo what the previous side does. This is not exclusive to one side either.

And the republic side of things? The worshipped constitution? Well, when one side takes power they just load the courts with their judges to strike down the written laws.

Competence, empathy, morality, these are not sought out qualities anymore. And the reasons we get shitty leaders is because most people with these qualities DON'T SEEK POWER. ASSHOLES seek power. ASSHOLES want to rule over you. SO when we have an election, our choices are ASSHOLE 1 or ASSHOLE 2. You get Coke or Pepsi, when you need water.

Is it really better somewhere else? The UK is shit, the EU is falling the fuck apart. Australia is...well fucking Australia. Russia is openly going back to it's imperial roots. South America is a run by drug lords. Asia has been on the precipice of all out war for 60 years. And the Japanese Prime Minister who was assassinated the other day was instrumental in turning Japan from the pacifist nation it was for 70 years after World War 2 to Number 4 in global rankings of defense.

And the cunt that wants to go to Mars is one of the dumbest megalomanic cunts around.

It's not that the Earth can't support 10 billion humans, it's that it can't support 10 billion opinions, each increasingly becoming more selfish, radicalized, and militant. And unless we physically sunder the planet, Earth and life will go on long after we've wiped each other out.

It's not just America that's doomed, we just like to be first at everything.

BINGO! Exactly! It doesn't matter if 99.99% of Americans were a mix of Greens, Socialists, Libertarians and Transhumanists. If the ones actually running for power/office care only about
ramming the status quo down our throats, instead of maximizing fairness, being well disciplined and diligent about truth + logical consistency, investigating billionaires before showering them with even MORE unearned undeserved money, and asking hard questions,
about what they actually do for the world, whether it's necessary, or can be done better,
and cheaper, then nothing will change for the better. Yes - change for the worse. But not the better.

This critical thinking, asking hard basic questions and demanding answers, is done in public schools, trade schools, universities, military academies and boot camps (I assume)
But this all gets FORGOTTEN when people get out in politics, corporations, ...

Unfalsifiable. Man, that is a word I want to ram through the skull of every politician, judge,
and, frankly, organism. That's what the US constitution is. Unfalsifiable. Untestable.
Unquantifiable.

I was SUPPOSED to have devoted my life to hard, creative, useful stuff.
I had been laser-focussed since the age of 14 or even 12 on the pursuit of this stuff. My ONE wish in life is still to make ONE PRACTICAL contribution to mankind through engineering and science and math (the math being the core, essential step to all the science and bionanoengineering) before I croak. Always wanted a "work hard, play hard" attitude.

But, instead, 45 years later, I find I have lost my laser focus and am instead fighting idiots and idiocy on YouTube (flatearthers, creationists, AGW deniers) and calling legislators, trying to fix government, and responding to and correcting massive hypocrisies and illogical inconsistencies in media, and just correcting people's basic illogic.

Not only is that nearly a pointless fight as more and more people will continue to pop up online who think that way even if you cured them. Also possibly naracassistic to think youre the messiah of truth and others must be illogical.

Lots of idiots on the internet but I dont judge or generalize on a grand scheme anymore. Learned in my mid to late 20s that kinda makes me a jerk. Especially when I dont know these people.