No. Of course not!
Failing to Reject the Reagan Revolution, and mass embrace of the Jack Welsh style “trickle down” economics lie, by BOTH parties was the point of no return, almost half a century ago at this point. This car was already totaled.
Citizens United years later was just a victory lap by the owners pissing on the long dead corpse of the dream of societal equity.
Trump is just another symptom of that intransigent reality we all live in.
I’d say hope for collapse, as painful as it is, to have any hope for a better life for our children, maybe, but oligarch greed made climate change and at this point inevitable ecological collapse in the coming decades means there really isn’t hope for a better society/civilization for generations(if they eventually develop technologies to better cope with the new hellish climate reality) if at all.
Why would US collapse though?
I am not following.
The current regime showing zero signs of distress, in fact they could extract even more and it seems plebs will accept it.
Half the country is doing OT on bootlicking and regime whore worshipping.
Most people on here too, and fedi is pretty redical by mainstream lol
In the near term, people increasingly not being able to afford basic necessities like housing and food will lead to increased societal violence, but that likely won’t cause collapse.
Climate scientists are increasingly warning of ecological collapse, meaning core climate systems will fail, like the Atlantic Gulfstream which will cause global famine and destruction, and that might be the end of human civilization all together, we won’t know until we do it within the next half century, and see the full extent of our fine work, a climate hostile to agriculture, dependable fresh water, possibly even standing structures not made of steel and concrete.
But man are we speeding towards that cliff for short-term private shareholder profit, wheeeee!
Yeah but even the bleakest estimates would take generations. Owners are getting paid today.
Also, us is the holy land, food and energy sufficient. So us itself can survive the climate change unlike most other countries.
Sure some plebs will die but that’s a small price to pay for success.
Time will tell
Nobody can predict the future. That being said, I am no longer optimistic.
Why do we call it united?
Last I checked the math books, 50 is Divided.
I always did find it amusing that they are called the United States when it seems like it’s constantly teetering on brink of another civil war.
teetering on brink of another civil war
Shit has to get much, much, much worse before people are willing to take up arms against their own family member 'en mass. A civil war isn’t one in which you fight a far away enemy, a civil war is one in which many of your family members and friends are on the opposite side. We are nowhere near a civil war, not even close.
Heard that!
I’m a united individual of one, can’t help where I was born…
We’ll be fine. It will be a hard 4 years but based on last time trump will spend a fuck load of money to keep the masses happy. 2028 and on are going to be harder because trump will get some bullshit tax cuts passed that will target the middle class when he’s out of office.
We won’t be fine, this is meaningfully different
I think the real answer is that we end up kind of like the UK – going from the worlds ultra-dominant superpower to a sort of slow regression to the mean, as China, India and others take the spotlight.
When you look at what China is doing with their Belt and Road Initiative, and their move to dominate the transportation infrastructure of developing nations – the US isn’t anywhere near equipped to counter that. We’re still in a cold war mentality thinking that we will dominate as the world’s police force.
Meanwhile, all the actual economies will be run by Chinese companies operating with state support.
It’s going to be a really shit 4 years. There could be a point of no return anytime along that based on a variety of issues, but IMO the most likely point of no return is if/when Trump moves to take a third term in '28. If that happens it’s clearly dead no hope.
Just feels life another goal post moved… He literally worked to overthrow the American government and have his VP killed on live TV and was then clinched of dozens of felonies. . There can’t always be a *“yeah, but if THIS next thing happens…”*I
He failed to overthrow the American government and have his VP killed. And the reason he wanted his VP killed was because he wouldn’t help him overthrow the American government.
It’s undeniable that some very powerful people want US democracy dead, but from that to the actual death of US democracy is a long way
Yes.
In my opinion we’ve already passed the point of no return and recent events have just confirmed as much.
This isn’t about having differing political opinions. A profoundly unfit, amoral criminal with a very public history of being an awful person came along and started spewing extremely dangerous rhetoric, some of which is almost verbatim to Hitler’s, and our society ate it up and made him president in 2016. This man, who leads a party who courts racists/sexists for their votes, utterly failed his tenure as president, bombing his response to the greatest American crisis since WW2 and presiding over the highest White House administration turnover rate in U.S. history. Since then he has become a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and illegally attempted to overturn our democratic institutions by various means.
This go around the American people were presented with a choice between that person, who only managed to make himself appear even more unfit during this campaign season, openly stated he is anti-worker rights, and is directly responsible for removing women’s federally protected right to bodily autonomy, or a successful prosecutor with a doctorate in law, backed by a party that, despite misinformation, has a voting history proving they vote in favor of the average American FAR more than the opposing party…and Americans STILL managed to drop the ball and go with the CLEARLY worse choice. And when I say clearly, I’m talking about by every conceivable metric that exists in reality.
At this point it isn’t about Democrat vs Republican or Trump vs Kamala or Biden. It’s about the American people. We are not a society of intelligent voters. We have failed our responsibility as citizens in a democracy by being too lazy to learn and by allowing misinformation to mislead us and emotions to cloud our better judgement. We are not engaged in responsible involvement in our own politics. We gleefully elect people that only offer hate and fear and lies, despite how hard they try to prove how awful they are to us. And THAT is why we have passed the point of no return. If you remove the parties and the politicians out of the equation, you still have a society that fails at responsibly preserving a democracy. That gives in to hateful rhetoric and fear. That wants to get the better of the “others”.
There is no happy ending for a society like that. A society like that can only decline. This was not an election about one political ideology against another. It was an election about morality. And we categorically failed that moral test.
There are excuses. We’ve been through a lot. Lots of people are desperate. Desperate people make bad decisions. But the bottom line is we don’t live in a society with a majority of responsible adults making responsible, fact-based decisions about the most important things.
In the arc of history we may end up reaching a better place, but personally I believe we’re embarking on a decline that will most likely last the rest of our lives. It simply isn’t a problem that can be fixed short term. And we’re about to experience a sort of deconstruction. A deconstruction of norms. A deconstruction of institutions. A deconstruction of education and safety nets. And those things take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to build back, because it’s easier to destroy than it is to create or maintain.
Buckle up. Try to find happiness where you can. It’s probably not getting better anytime soon.
I’ve never been more happy to be childless by choice.
And I’m childless, not by choice, and sadly glad too.
I don’t understand this line of thought. As in you are childless by choice BECAUSE of what is going on in the US?
I’m childless by choice because I don’t like children. I’m happy I don’t have kids because they’d be experiencing this shit storm during their formative years and I can’t even imagine how badly that would fuck them up.
Did Britain or Rome know the moments when Pax Britannia or Pax Romana had hit their tipping point to decline? I doubt it.
I think the tipping point will only be observable through the lens of history many years from now with a subject heading of: This event was the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.
The exact point will be the advent of the internet.
USA was still very much on the rise at the advent of the internet. If you define the advent of the internet to be Arpanet, then that was 1969, the same year the USA landed on the moon. If you define the advent of the internet to be the first use of the World Wide Web that would be 1989 the same year the Berlin wall came down and 3 years before the Soviet Union collapsed, which was arguably the most powerful the USA has ever been as it was before China’s rise.
From an outsider’s perspective, I think a lot of people think you guys sailed past the point of no return back in the 80s.
Remember when the entire world was convinced there was absolutely no way Bush, an idiot, fascist, religious bigot, etc could get re-elected?
Nucular. 🤦
Nobody thought that at all. Most presidents sitting during outbreaks of war retain their positions. You’d have to have been in a complete echo chamber to believe this stance. The moment 9/11 happened, it solidified Bush’s Second term in stone.
I assume you mean Jr. Because Sr wasn’t the moron that Jr was.
Yeah no, I’m gonna disagree. Being outside of the US at the time, most people did think that. And yes, obviously I’m talking about Jr since Sr didn’t get re-elected. 9/11 was a full three years before the election of his second term. And most importantly before he started the war in Iraq. A war that was widely viewed as illegitimate outside the US.
It was viewed as illegitimate inside the US too. And yeah, I remember, even as a 17yr old at the time, seeing the event happen live and lamenting to my mother that we were going to have another Bush term over it. Historically for America that’s always been the case.
It was viewed as illegitimate inside the US too.
You’re recollection of events is clearly skewed. Something like 80% of the population approved of it at first. Meanwhile there were protests in the millions of people around the world against it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq
A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons.
You should read your own link, because it also mentions that by the end of his term, most disapproved. By 2006 it was viewed as illegitimate by most. My recollection of events is fine, thanks.
America will generally approve of measures when they are led to believe it affects their security and safety. It’s the years afterwards that determine if it continues to hold support.
You should read your own link, because it also mentions that by the end of his term, most disapproved
I clearly stated “at first”. Mind you by the end of his term a majority still thought it was the right thing to do.
It’s so fucking disgusting to be honest… I’m just a worthless dumb shit uneducated factory worker and at 17 I could see right through that garbage… We’re a hateful group of people whether we care to admit it or not, there was a lot of anti-islamic/Muslim/Arab sentiment in the US at thst time. People were bloodthirsty.
I was going to join the military after highschool to get training since I’m poor and had no real direction to gamble on college, and then take it from there whether to stay in or not. Once talk started of invading Iraq I immediately said fuccccck that. I still blame Bush partially for my current situation. :/
It was, but there were people bitching about it. It may be an unconventional way to show it but if you look at Eminem’s album released in 2004 the second track was Mosh.
“Stomp, push, shove, mush, Fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home”
“Let the president answer a higher anarchy Strap him with an Ak-47, let him go, fight his own war Let him impress daddy that way No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil No more psychological warfare, to trick us to thinking that we ain’t loyal If we don’t serve our own country, we’re patronizing a hero Look in his eyes its all lies The stars and stripes, they’ve been swiped, washed out and wiped And replaced with his own face, Mosh now or die If I get sniped tonight you know why, Cause I told you to fight.”
To me that’s pretty obvious mainstream music pushing us to turn back against exactly what this false patriotism that exists today in MAGA is.
Reagan, he is the starting point of everything: the tax cut from 73% to 28%. USA never got back on track after this.
But Raygun did a great break dancing set in the Olympics.
Nope. Johnson.
No, not that one.
Andrew Johnson.
So many ways it could have been better.
He could have punished the Southern Aristocracy for starting the civil war. He could have ensured that the evil that led us there was exterminated forever.
Failing that, they could have actually removed him via impeachment instead of falling just short. That would have at least established forever that the presidency is not some sacred “unimpeachable” office.
What?!
The 80s were fucked, but if you’re saying it was worse than the response to the Civil Rights movement…
McCarthyism…
Jim Crow…
Or the KKK destroying reconstruction…
Like, I could see saying that last one was the point, only if you start the clock immediately after resolving the civil war. Cause obviously a Civil War is what really happens after a point of no return. We lasted a couple years in between the two points.
For as fucked as the last 40 years has been, as far as America goes we’re beating the average on basic human decency.
What’s happening now isn’t new, it’s a slip backwards, which is unfortunately common when you try to fight fascism with moderate politics. It works for a little bit because they’re coasting off the last people who really fought. But all moderate politcs really are, is giving fascist time to regroup in the shadows like fucking Sauron.
It’s a cycle, and we live in a time when you can learn pretty much anything about history in a few minutes on Wikipedia
America can not afford for voters to stay ignorant. We need people who know what happened last time, what worked then, and what might work again. Stop acting like we live in unprecedented times, and start reading up on how fascism has been defeated historically.
Cuz we’re up, like it or not shits getting real again. And the more people know what we’re doing then better.
9/11
You mean the 1780s, right?
In terms of seeing more credible people take office that has an honest mind in what’s best for the country and not for themselves or their party. I say we certainly are likely past the point of no return. That wall was cracked when Reagan took presidency and then the wall was just demolished just by one Trump term.
So now we’re going to be expected to see all sorts of crazy people, just jumping at the bit, for their shot to take some sort of office, despite having had no credibly solid background of politics or understanding in managing the big office. Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California, Kane (wrestler) became mayor of a county, Dr.Oz is now in a political position after scarily coming close to a senate position. It’s just maddening all around.
We’ve been experiencing numerous government shutdowns or coming close to another government shutdown because all politicians collectively could not get their shit together. If we’re past the point of no return, about whether America has any credible influence and sincere posture on the rest of the world. Yes, it is the point of no return and it’ll take many generations to fix. It won’t be this one though.
Yeah pretty much. We’re 2-3 generations deep into a cultural expectation that “some one else” will deal with all these problems.
The constant threat of this being “the most important election of our lives”, when the party making that argument campaigned as if the outcomes were irrelevant (because from their privileged perspective, the outcomes are irrelevant).
Back during covid a boat got turned a bit sideways in a canal and it seemed like the whole world economy was going to collapse. The system we have is actually incredibly fragile and built largely on trust, both in one another but also in institutions and systems. Not only the US, but western Europe is about to get smacked up-side the head by the 2x4 of failing to maintain a civil society (US at fault within its borders, EU at fault beyond its borders).
I was as surprised and disappointed as anyone, and I think we WILL take a few more steps backwards over the next few years, but I don’t expect an unstoppable fall into fascism.
Most of the votes for Trump weren’t actually FOR Trump. They were against the current situation they are in. They see him as the revolution. The anti-politician that will bring real change. They think all his court battles are the “Man” trying to hold him down and keep him from disrupting a system that gave up on its people long ago.
Of course that’s all bullshit, but, assuming that all “normal” people can see through his lies and that only evil, woman hating racists would support him, is a big part of why he was elected.
Trump denied Project 2025 because he knew most people wouldn’t want it. (Honestly, I would be surprised if he even knew what was in it) If he lets the Christian nationalists push that whole agenda on day one, he’ll become the oppressive government that is taking away their freedoms. And nothing is more important to Trump than making Trump look good.
I’m way more concerned with Vance. Like you say, Trump does what’s best for Trump. If Vance becomes President for whatever reason then ideology takes center stage.
Vance and Bannon
Every moment is a point of no return, unfortunately.
I’m 14 and this is deep?
🤣 yes
its going to be a shit 32 years.
Earth will not care. Life on earth may suffer, but Earth will not care.
Then I guess we shouldn’t worry about Earth, because it’ll be fine.
The save the earth movement isn’t about earth, it’s about humanity.
