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I was born in a war, in the third world. I often say that Americans wouldn’t be so gung ho about war if the war was fought on their soil for once. They’ve had it nice and cozy, using other people’s homes as battlefields and policing what everyone else is doing globally.
I don't think it's a war thing at all. America was THE world power, and there were a lot of people working against American ideals because it was the largest economy/country that could fight back, but if you look around, even countries that have seen war are struggling with the rise of the right. Brexit, the AfD, and Poland/turkey in general, not to mention Russia have all shown that what's happening in America isn't America specific. There's a collection of bad actors everywhere and it's happening regardless of if a place had seen war or not. Governments everywhere are being corrupted by the wealthy and/or being dismantled in favor of religious authoritarianism/nationalism.
If anything, you're seeing Trump pull back from war, and soft and hard power that would prevent war, and it's in an effort to lessen Americas impact on the world stage.
I think the government is like IT. The people assume they don't need it or as much of it because everything is fine. We're about to see what it's like when they fire half of the IT staff and slash the budget to ribbons.
That's a pretty good analogy IMO.
This is exactly what it is. Life is a movie and even if their guy isn't the hero, the hero will still come and save them. The complacency is astounding. I think it's because it was so long since they had any war on their soil and they have a superiority complex. Kids are indoctrinated with american superiority porn in schools, almost like religious indoctrination.
My school had tape on some of the windows, because of the bombings in WW2. They left it there on purpose as a reminder. My grandparents were adults when our country was blitzed (bombed) every night, and a lot of that history is learned and seen by every schoolkid. We remember.
Democrats: "I'd like to speak to your manager, Mr. Trump."
Trump: My hand- uh, manager will be back soon. He's the one in the black ballcap.
The adults are supposed to be at the polls.
The adults didn't show up.
And why didn't they show up?
The guard rails held last time. Barely. But the thing with guard rails, is that when someone smashes into them, you have to fix them or else they won't hold the next time they get smashed into. And we did fuck all to fix the government after the last trainwreck so there's no guard rails this time. There might not even be a chance to vote in a fix in a year and a half, things may be too fucked by then.
The guard rails last time where the democrats having a majority in one half of congress. That guard rail is gone.
The Neoliberals are fine with that.
They don't care if they lose, or are in the White House, they just want their half of the corpo bribe gravy train Reagan set up for them when the American people lost their vote on the shape or priorities of our economy.
Standing against the capital markets ending the country and the planet itself for short term profits would cost them those bribes. Those bribes are why most of them are in politics.
They had no incentive to fix the guard rails. Biden/Pelosi/Schumer still see Republicans as their esteemed opposition, aka partners in their culture war stoking divide and profit grift, and those with a desire to help us become a society again like AOC and Sanders as their enemies.
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/12/aoc-pelosi-oversight-committee-connolly-raskin Neoliberal priorities The month before Trump took power. Assembling Guard rails to their left, exclusively.
https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-8685e82eb6d6e5b42413417f3d5d6775 Neoliberal priorities in general.
Honestly I see Biden's parting comments, not actions but comments after a career of enabling oligarchs, as latent guilt by a senile old man who was an OG neoliberal sellout to the Reagan capitalist coup.
100%
"Lord of the Flies" type feeling.
I've been asking myself since i turned old enough to vote, what the fuck happened to America's collective spine?
We sold our collective spines for the confidence scheme lie of oligarch urine raining down on us in the 80s.
We surrendered the class war with no terms, and have been living under class occupation ever since. Many to most Americans still defend that surrender even here at the end rather than admit the capitalists successfully played them for fools and got them to vote for their own desperation.
The Ronald Reagan Jack Welch confidence scheme was the end of the United States, it's just taken this long for a meaningful number of people to be willing to admit that we were and continue to be conned into giving away the store for not only nothing, but our own destruction. Unrestricted capitalism always leads to fascism, it is its natural goal and conclusion, a captured zombie government that exists solely to further the short term profit of big business, scapegoating using for profit media and captured political pulpits to blame the powerless without such pulpits for the capitalists sociopathic, avarice driven malice.
Citizens United was just pissing on the nation's already long dead corpse.
Another big part is that Americans have been taught that protesting is the only valid method of affecting change. Our history books spend a lot of time talking about MLK’s peaceful protests. It totally glosses over all of the violence and angry mobs that were the other side of the same coin. My history book in high school only had the Black Panthers as a footnote.
The government has a vested interest in not teaching Americans that violent protest is effective. It’s like the history books cover the American revolution, and paint the revolutionaries as proud patriots who were justified after dealing with an oppressive monarchy. And then there’s a hard pivot towards “oh and also violent protest is never okay, and you should just chant at your local park instead.”
Hell, look at the comments sections of any protest coverage, and you’ll see people blatantly stating that they’d make a point of running over protestors who blocked a highway. There are plenty of people who fully believe that protest is only supposed to be directed at the government, and should never inconvenience the citizens.
method of effecting* change
Hauntingly true
Died a while ago unfortunately. The realization for me was when they dems rolled over for W after the steal in Florida tho the weakness of the dems was present before even that.
Yeah that was just 12 white guys in suits chanting and it made them stop the entire recount