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The end began with the Lewis Powell Memo in 1971
this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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America ended with Reagan. It only got worse after him. The 1950s/60s were the last period in which America could be considered the greatest country on Earth.
I blame mitochondria
No, it started with Reagan
No, it started with Nixon
No, it started with Prescott Bush
All of history is built on what came before. I think if we really want to get to the root of America's collapse, we have to look way back. Doing so, I can only conclude that the Agricultural Revolution was a mistake.
Death by a thousand cuts. No single event led to the Nazis seizing power, no single even led to the Conservatives enacting their fascist regime in the US. Yeah, some steps were bigger than others, the likes of Reagan, W, and Trump shoving things faster and further right than others, but none of them singlehandedly achieved the coup d’etat. Trump benefitted from all the groundwork laid before along with the hard work of the likes of McConnell that did everything they could to prevent democracy from working.
My God damn great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandpa wanted to distill more grain so now here I am, working a god forsaken 9-5 :(
Also it was because we didn't do reconstruction, which was because the landowners were too strong.
And the landowners were too strong in the 1860s because of compromise in the 18th century, on account of their ancestors being too strong.
Actually, come to think of it, aren't those the same people that elected Nixon, Reagan, and Bush?
Perhaps it's not so much that history repeats itself as that we have had the same intractable problem for hundreds of years: aristocrats.
Feed all oppressors to the Almighty Meat Grinder!
If we’re being honest with ourselves it goes back much further than that. It has never, at any point, been what it set out to be or what it claimed to be.
Kinda hinted toward it in another post but its more about my own personal perspective. At a young age my life was mostly devoid of politics and america seemed like an ok place. Since the attack on the twin towers, for me personally, america has only gotten worse. To me, 911 marks the end of america, as an idea.
I was an adult when 9/11 happened. After growing up in cold wars, Gulf wars, recessions, etc. that day was extremely horrible, but also felt like just the latest big symptom of an ongoing downfall.
My parents' generation had the Vietnam War as their One Big Important Thing, their parents had WW2, etc. Like other commenters are saying here, what seems like the One Big Important Thing to you is really just a matter of where on the running timeline you happen to be. I find the best way to gain perspective is to examine and understand the entire thing, that's the only way I think anything constructive can be done about any of it.
The commentary is more about the idea of america. Usually death isn't perceived as a bill getting signed or a person getting elected, its the consequences of of those things. So maybe you joined the military and witnessed war crimes. For that person, someone you assume has some sort of patriotism, they might switch from believing in their country to not believing in it.
For me, being very young when the towers fell, I started to understand how hopeless and fucked we are as a people.
I think it's also important to compare America to other Western countries, and see what other paths it might have chosen.
Another American here, I think it's important to be aware that those attacks happened as a direct result of evil -empire level shit the US is responsible for in the 20th century.
I disagree with the last sentence. I think we made an attempt. But everything after WWII has been headed this direction without much checking.
gonna just say fuck it and say it started with the USS Maine sinking itself
That awkward moment when terrorists win.
"All men are created equal"
Is slave state
Always has been
Don't forget about the genocide of the natives.
I think this is the right place to look.
At the bare minimum, back then the founders wrote a constitution designed AND INTENDED to be amended, if not rewritten every once in a while.
As of like 80 years ago people started to get it in their head that the USA was somehow the greatest nation to ever exist and could never be better. Maybe because of how it helped out in WWII? Maybe because of how the economy boomed following the war? Who knows. But Nationalism has certainly put the nails in the coffin.
They were slave owners, who fought a violent war against a democratic country. They could have asked for representation in parliament, but they decided to go to war. Why, because England, was about to clean up the colonies and eliminate slavery. With peace between England and France in the 1760s, England's attention was once again on domestic issues, and people in England were getting sick of slavery in the colonies. The rich slave owners, most educated in law, knew slavery was about to end when the ruling of Somerset v Stewart (1772) was handed down.
Wait, really? I mean I didn’t know that England was looking to abolish slavery. Is there a good place to read about this?
This guy "The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America"'s
I thought we all agreed it was the gorilla.
That was but a symptom, a healthy society wouldn't have let that happen to our boi Harambe in the first place
I think the dawn of neoliberalism under Reagan and the 2008 crisis are essential. 9/11 was just a great sensation to focus on
9/11 was a catalyst for forces that were already in play.
Casus belli* 😅
What does that mean? Without looking it up I would say, "pretty case", so a good example?
Not a bad guess NGL (it's belli as in bellicose, not bella 👍), but no, it means "case for war"/reason for war.
Interesting no one has mentioned the 2000 election shenanigans yet. That was some real stolen election shit
That's exactly where the timeline jumped the tracks. if Gore's election is properly counted, there's potentially no 9/11, but certainly no Iraq and probably no Afghanistan as we know it. And without Bush and the whiplash against him and those events, there's no Obama. And without the mouth breather whiplash to Obama, there's no Trump.
So yeah, I would say that the republicans fucking around in south Florida is what caused the rift.
Florida? Yeah I heard a podcast about this, eerily similar to all that's been happening around the last 2 elections.
I lived through it - in Florida - and it was every bit as shady and disgusting as you would think, and then some.
Especially that Brooks Brothers Riot of “concerned citizens” who were actually GOP operatives demanding a recount. That fucking sickens me to this day.
(I showed my spouse an article about that a few years ago and he was horrified. He’d had no idea, although I don’t fault him for that since he was on float at the time)
I think the assassination of JFK was the first kill shot that signal the end of America. Nixon and Regan becoming president was the cancer that inflicted the backbone of the working class. And 9/11 helped kick off anew wave of white hatred that had been boiling since the 90s. And now we are where we are now to the point of no return. I’m 42 years old and have seen and lived through some terrible and crazy times and we are all about to head straight into a country wide car crash and idk what will happen after it or if this country will survive it.
Let's throw some wild cards to keep your world entertaining
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