In three weeks, Donald Trump has imploded whatever positive image the United States might have had internationally.
“The empire that defined the last century is falling apart at the seams. People notice.”
It’s not “falling apart.” It’s being intentionally dismantled.
Rubio’s statement at his conformation hearing was basically “the Post WWII order isn’t working for us, so we’re ending it.”
Intentionally dismantled by a fascist theocracy.
And the theocracy is faked
It always has been
Right from when Constantin co-opted the Jesus movement to use it for state control of people’s behavior.
Nah. Parts of it, sure. But a substantial portion from top to bottom sincerely believes the fairy tale. We’re primed to have an old-fashioned power struggle between The Church and The King.
falling apart➡️actively being destroyed since RBG passed awayIf only she had retired when there was a chance to replace her with a progressive instead of hanging in until she died.
“Progressive”!? I wouldn’t even be that optimistic. All she had to do was retire when her health was failing and Democrats could get someone fair and nonpartisan appointed.
Obviously a very intelligent woman yet so fucking stupid at the end. I wonder if she wasn’t already in the clutches of dementia when she decided Hilary was certain to win.
Sadly that’s what power does to people. It’s more addictive than crack, they can’t let go.
One, she should of retired under Obama, and two, the US has failed as a country since bush stole the 2000 election and nobody did shit about it.
Didn’t Obama have a chance to name a justice and kicked the can until Trump got there? These clowns are working for the same corporate circus.
Some say the US failed when it allowed Nixon to get away Scott free.
Didn’t Obama have a chance to name a justice and kicked the can until Trump got there?
Why the fuck are you blaming that on Obama instead of McConnell? That’s some fucking blatant spin.
Wow, so history is already being rewritten to change it into Obama fucking around and not bothering to nominate a Justice (the fondest dream of every president), instead of knowing that McConnell who was Senate majority leader (repubs controlled the Senate), blocke it and refused to allow a vote on Obama’s nominee (Merrick Garland). JFC, it wasn’t even that long ago and people have already forgotten, or never bothered to pay attention in the first place, or believed some propaganda they came across. We’re so doomed.
Hand shaking meme:
Fascists 🤝 Leftists
Center: Using misinformation to blame Democrats for literally everything.
Leftists need to grow some damn braincells and accept responsibility for putting the US in this situation.
Russia loves how easily manipulated they are.
If you wanna get mad at Obama, he campaigned on closing Gitmo, but did nothing while in office. You know, that same facility Trump is currently using to detain people.
Congress blocked him on straight closure but they went from 250 to 41 detained there under his administration. Trump stopped all closure progress, Biden got the number down to 15, and now we have Trump again.
“Did nothing” is worse than exaggeration, it’s not like you have to lie to make Obama look like the massive disappointment he was for progressives.
And the democrats did nothing to stop the blatant power grab. They always act powerless and republicans do whatever the fuck they want.
The Democratic Party is the Washington Generals. They’re part of the show, but they’re not there to win.
Not punishing the Confederacy, in my opinion, is where this country went to hell.
Agreed. They should have hanged the Southern elite, and occupied the former confederate states under martial law for at least three generations.
history without President Andrew Johnson, so much could have been different
RBGHarambe
In our hubris we put our dicks away. We were warned of the consequences and we didn’t listen. Indeed, the only way forward is forward is, once again, DICKS OUT FOR HARAMBE!
Sigh… unzips
actively being destroyed since
RBG passed awayThe Nixon administration.
RBG
who?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Though I’d hardly signal her death out as the defining factor or turning point of the US’s decline…
Some would say Reagan, but personally I think it was doomed from the wild west days. Rugged individualism bred the selfish nature that’s led to where it is today.
We were built on a native American genocide. Maybe they cursed us lol.
In theory, if Ruth Bader Ginsberg chose to retire when she was sick, instead of continuing to act on her principles until she died in office, we wouldn’t have a Conservative dominated Supreme Court. It would have changed who got to appoint her successor.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg - supreme court justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg - progressive Supreme Court justice.
say what you want about the brits, but they wouldn’t have voted for brexit twice.
They kept voting for the conservatives for a while after Brexit. They kept voting for Boris fucking Johnson.
To be fair the other side was just as much for brexit as the tories
To be fair, we don’t have only two options. The Greens, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, and SNP were all opposed to Brexit.
You could say the same about the US though, but we still have the same shitty voting system that ultimately boils down to 2 parties barring massive upheaval.
Not at all, look at the linked map. We’ve only one party in ultimate control which flicks between the big two but we don’t have only 2 parties with any viable chance at politics at all. The SNP etc, despite having no executive power, still manage to influence political thought. The same can’t really be said for the USA in any meaningful way.
Except of Scotland none of these got enough votes, I guess it wasn’t important enough to sway most voters at that time.
You underestimate Putin’s psyops and overestimate people’s intelligence.
Well to be fair, you can’t exit something twice
You might think that, but the United States exited from the Paris agreement on climate change mitigation twice: Trump first withdrew in November of 2020, then Biden rejoined in February of 2021, and now Trump is withdrawing for the second time.
Except the UK didn’t rejoin the EU
yet
Eh, they just haven’t had a second chance yet. That kind of bigotry enhanced stupidity doesn’t go away easily.
Don’t be so sure about that. That piece of excrement Farange is back.
You say that, but don’t forget they rejected alternative vote (abolishing FPTP) then voted for Brexit
good old lefty progressivism reduced to: “look at what trump is doing!”
if you’re truly progressive or left, you have as much ire for the democratic party-- if not more.
You’re getting downvoted by the same people who got upset by calling out that Kamala and Biden were not good candidates.
If they were, they would have beat this idiot.
The DNC has no idea, nor does it care, what people really need or want. They don’t represent our reality. The only Dems who do are… You guessed it: Progressive.
AOC, Bernie, Ro Khana, Cori Bush, Nina Turner… None of them are supported by the establishment wing of the Democratic Party. All of them have people in mind over reelection.
It’s time for a sea change.
I think Kamala was an embarrassment that deserved to be called out, Biden is evil, and the establishment often cares more about suppressing progressives than beating Republicans, but I absolutely downvoted that dumb as shit comment.
The Democrats can be responsible for failing to defeat fascism, complicit in genocide and the backsliding of civil rights, and a problem in need of active and forceful change without saying stupid things like they’re just as bad as the guy empowering Nazis, destroying the civil service, and persecuting trans people with deadly results.
That’s fucking stupid online edgelord politics.
complicit in genocide
stupid things like they’re just as bad as the guy empowering Nazis
They’re the same picture
The Democrats can be responsible for failing to defeat fascism, complicit in genocide and the backsliding of civil rights, and a problem in need of active and forceful change without saying stupid things like they’re just as bad as the guy empowering Nazis, destroying the civil service, and persecuting trans people with deadly results.
No, they’re literally the same thing. They’re the genociders. Backsliding of civil rights? No they cynically campaigned off roe v Wade for fifty fucking years. Persecuting trans people? Oh they’re now pivoting further right because they learn all the wrong lessons in service to capital and are helping the republicans with anti trans bills of their own.
Your defense of the indefensible and irredeemable is fucking pathetic.
The people you’re arguing with and you always seem to want the same progressive candidate, but it ain’t reflecting in the vote counts. I’m not even gonna argue from my viewpoint anymore, cause it doesn’t matter when we want the same thing. What can we do together to make sure that changes? Especially in local and state elections, that seems to be where we can make the most impact.
You’re going out and voting for every primary for progressive candidates, right? Cause we both gotta do it, cause there’s just that many Nazis out there. And we need our friends and families to do so too, and I imagine you are just the same as I am and talking with them.
So if everyone is doing their best in their small world, what’s the next step, or what are we missing in your opinion? And I’m asking this with sincerity, whether you believe it or not.
And since it’s a while to the next voting time, do you see any worthwhile plan of resistance? There’s a couple of general strike/don’t work days planned coming up, but pessimism seems strong there. How are you feeling about them or other options?
They don’t even want the same candidate. Whenever those candidates come up they complain that they sold out or they’re not radical enough. Whatever the deeper motivation is, their only perceivable act seems to be to complain.
As to action, I do agree with the general sentiment that it needs to be sustained. The protests need to have a cost and disrupt regular life beyond just people taking a day off. But I think things are tense enough that something like BLM could kick off again. People just need to believe it’s time. A protest day after day, or a multiweek protest on a specific day, could convince people it’s real. A one and done protest following the prescribed route isn’t useless (it reminds people that basically half the country hates the guy), but it’s something people see and think they did their resistance and now it’s back to regular life.
We’re not voting again. There won’t be another election. There hasn’t been free and fair elections since 2000 but most have their heads in the sand about electoral theft.
I’m done protesting. I’ve been protesting since the Iraq war. The people organizing protests are lame, want the protest to be peaceful and not annoy anyone. Fuck that. They’re such fucking losers. Completely brainwashed since birth that non-violence is the answer. The government is violent towards us every goddamn day and holds a monopoly on violence. There was a protest by me with a set time of a few hours and then everyone goes home. Total fucking losers. About as useful as making a social media post.
Give me a gun and some coordinates on where the capitalists are hiding and I’ll shoot. That’s the only way forward now. More Luigi.
Your actions are indistinguishable from someone trying to suppress progressive action. You call for something no one is going to do (take up arms) and make moronic absolutist statements to drive rancor within progressive action.
You don’t need someone to give you coordinates or get you a gun. You could do that yourself. If you’re serious, just go do it, and mention Lemmy so we all get to say we interacted with the guy online. You don’t need our help or approval if you think that’s the next step. But you’re not going to do anything, just bitch about everyone else doing things you say are pointless. You’re just here to talk a big game and criticize everyone else to kill any sort of organizing or solidarity.
Protesting does not work. if it did we wouldn’t be in this fucking position.
You know what the right does? They show up fucking armed.
If you’re going to be a martyr, that’s a huge commitment. Right now, folks like you and I are just toeing the line and hoping someone else makes the decision for us. But if you’re going to toe that line and you’re not already armed, you’re just volunteering to be slaughtered. Get armed, train, and be ready for when your rights are violated.
Give me a gun and some coordinates on where the capitalists are hiding and I’ll shoot.
You’re so smart but you don’t know where they are? Looks like another Internet Tough Guy.
You’ve got a GPS tracker on these technofascists?
Uhh, you could just post up within 5 miles of Wall Street and see about 15,000 of them on an average day. Is the US short of capitalists? Are you really not acting only because you have no targets?
Although, I guess your original message DID say “Give me a gun…”. So it seems like your only asset is some vague ambition to do something, but you seem to lack the equipment and motivation. Keep it up with your tough guy internet posts though, it’s really making an impact.
I have a very real fear that even if a truly progressive democratic candidate runs for president, they still won’t win.
Don’t get me wrong, they still should actually give it a shot. There’s literally no other winning alternative for the Dems.
Instead, I think you’re very right about the DNC not knowing what people want. There is a huge, mildly surprising amount of support in this country for bigotry. There is a surprising amount of people locked into the Nazi vote, and you know I’m not exaggerating. This is what people actually want. As it turns out, they chose fascism over treating specific people as people, same as last time, and times before.
This is America. And it has allies with other bigots and land grabbing warmongers.
May we both survive, and here’s to hoping we can get a progressive candidate next time, if we get a next time. It’s always worth it to fight for someone’s right to just exist.
I have a very real fear that even if a truly progressive democratic candidate runs for president, they still won’t win.
I get what you mean, but remember that many people voted for Trump because they wanted change, not because they were exceptionally thrilled about his bigotry. The Bernie-Trump pipeline is a very real phenomenon (see also AOC-Trump voters) and makes the GOP seem like they have more popular support than they really do.
I don’t see it that way, where are these supposed trump regretting folk? I haven’t seen them. I thought I saw one in a friend I miss, and then he spews the qanon bullshit that passes for doge talking points.
By overwhelming majority, they’re cool with this. This is America, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.
So, what then. Continue this mindless pendulous torture? You think what we’ve done until now has been effective?I think I was being a bit reactive because I’m so used to the knee-jerk negative. You make good points, in your third paragraph especially. That said, I don’t think you’re entirely wrong about the Nazi vote there, even though it’s tongue-in-cheek. There are Dems reaching across the aisle to vote for Trump’s nominees. They need to be blockading the same way the GOP did for legitimate good-faith votes proffered by Dems. Merrick Garland for SCOTUS under Obama comes to mind. (I feel like Garland as a Justice would have done less harm than his milquetoast performance as the Attorney General.)
You seem to think I’m arguing with you. Fight the good fight. Progressive or bust, encourage everyone to vote in primaries. There’s literally no other alternative for a future. We either resist from here at every point, or we’re done. Let’s see how the lawyers do over the next few days, reevaluate, and let’s see how far we get until we get enough public outcry to actually do something.
What else do you think we could do?
My apologies. I think I was just flying off the cuff. Amending my initial reply to you, as I see you were indeed being constructive.
see above.
Valid points on Merrick Garland too. He was disappointing in many respects, but yeah, they fucked him hard on the supreme court nomination didn’t they.
Fuck them back, let’s be entirely clear, if the pendulum does swing… This is how it’s supposed to go, right? Living wage is gonna get a whole lot easier when you can just throw executive orders at private business, and launch lawsuits for not listening good enough. No takes backsies for the fucking pigs this time.
The democrats will never give people what they want because they work in service to capital.
That sea of change is coming whether it’s DNC-approved or not. That change appears to be in the form of a far-right authoritarian regime in part for its failure to participate in change in more meaningful ways that actually mobilizes voters.
Yup. Nazis for the next 50 years. Great move America. We can cry all we want about the Dems, the party is dead. We need to focus on the future.
If they were, they would have beat this idiot.
I love the shifting of blame. I worry we’ll still have to repeat “Binary choice with one option between a 34-time felon and insurrectionist” and people will still blame the dems for not fielding Mother Theresa. A can of spiced ham should have won.
Shift? I predicted that shit from the start. They were always to blame and destined to fail because they were asleep at the wheel.
“Oh, how could we lose to him twice?”
You forgot that the other choice was a genocidal corporate stooge who barely hid his racism before bowing out too late to have a primary and sticking us with brown Hillary Clinton.
They didn’t even try to win progressive or working class votes and instead doubled down on genocide and courted the endorsement of the Cheney family.
If you can’t even pay lip service to the working class and instead just constantly talk down to them and blame them for their problems, why would they ever vote for you?
Also choosing a religious zealot who promoted suffering a sacred as you example of a perfect candidate shows how out of touch you are.
Brown Hillary Clinton
😭
I actually think that’s offensive to Hillary clinton, she had more substance in her fucking pinky than Kamala had at all. Kamala was the definition of an empty suit but she checked all the demographic identity politics triangulating democrat bullshit that they’re well known for. She was the ultimate DEI hire. No substance, no platform, minimal experience, and didn’t win a single fucking vote to be nominated.
If 1990s Hillary ran I would of voted for her. She genuinely seemed to want to make a positive change in the world back then, especially with healthcare.
She was the ultimate DEI hire.
DEI is something leftists use as an epithet. You’re definitely here to advance leftism.
She was shoved down our throats because she’s a black and Indian woman. Not because she has popular support, not because she has vision, not because she has a platform. She received zero votes for the nomination and was anointed in back room deals.
She’s the ultimate DEI candidate, an empty suit who checks all the diversity boxes while not pissing off the capitalists in charge.
There’s plenty of other minority women out there far more capable than her but they’re probably too uppity for the capitalists.
Nothing will fundamentally change.
That’s the biden and Harris campaign in a nutshell. Vote for me I’m a black Indian woman who isn’t trump! Not vote for me I’m gonna work towards universal healthcare, raising the minimum wage, or ending wars. Nope.
Edit - right off the top of my head I’d love to see NY AG Leticia James in a larger position of power, such as president. She’s a black woman and she fucking gets shit done. And she’d greatly piss off the capitalists so it’s never going to happen.
I’ve seen this DNC shill talking point before.
Your irredeemable party only cares about the capitalists it represents, stop simping for a party that doesn’t give a fuck about you and will happily throw you in a meat grinder if they get something out of the deal.
It’s time for a sea change.
Well, you’re getting your wish. The only problem is we’re chained to the rock on the beach and your requested tide is rising. We’re not going to survive your sea change.
Ain’t that the truth.
is the democratic party currently destroying every american institution at record pace?
No. They’re the ones who could not beat the most deplorable piece of shit to run and win the US presidential elections.
We all need to recognize this if we ever get a chance to vote fairly again.
I mean I’m no fan of Biden or Harris and the Democratic establishment deserves some blame. But with a decades long concerted effort by the billionaire class which owns pretty much all relevant media to undermine democracy and gaslight uninformed citizens (and outright bribe them in some cases) it wasn’t exactly a fair fight.
I mean that advantage should have been counteracted by the very existence of Trump. The fact that the DNC failed to capitalize on that is unequivocally their fault.
But with a decades long concerted effort by the billionaire class which owns pretty much all relevant media to undermine democracy and gaslight uninformed citizens (and outright bribe them in some cases) it wasn’t exactly a fair fight.
Sounds like something for the democratic party to have considered when they had the power to do something about it
Absolutely. Which I why I haven’t been a supporter since Obama, it’s clear they didn’t have a plan of attack nor took the threat seriously. But still if one person commits a murder and another person saw it coming but didn’t act in time, you can be critical of the second, but it’s still the murderer that’s to blame.
So, just stay the course? We’re good?
The same billionaire class the new DNC chair was fawning over???
I think the comment above hits on some important truths:
- The country wanted more, not less, populism. Kamala offered good economic populist policies, but failed to message them to the populace in a way that mattered
- The entire political machine failed to respond to that the people on the ground are either in support of ending genocide, or at least are indifferent to genocide. No votes were ever won by supporting a genocide. Yet there they were, supporting a genocide and acting like it was the only way. The people indifferent to genocide were far more likely to vote republican in the first place
- The democrats failed to hold the republicans responsible for the January 6th insurrection accountable, enabling them to just simply come back and do what they’re doing right now
- The democrats failed to use the blueprint the republicans handed them for passing legislation without full bipartisan support because they’re a bunch of decorum addicts
- The democrats are now failing to use the blueprint republicans handed them for how to obstruct the shit out of things (why the fuck is anyone voting “yes” on any of trump’s nominees regardless of whether or not they’re good, they fit into an overall system of bad
Kamala offered good economic populist policies,
She kind of did, kind of didn’t. A trend that could be observed during her campaign (I saw this quantified somewhere but for the life of me can’t find it again) was that while she started with economic populism, as the campaign progressed she watered down, took back or outright ignored her early promises and tried to fill the gap with “orange man bad”. This wasn’t a coincidence; corporate representatives would systematically ask for “clarifications” and “explanations” about her policies and have her walk them back one by one into something acceptable to them. So anyway, the result of this was that the Kamala of election day was not running on an economic populist platform.
The democrats failed to use the blueprint the republicans handed them for passing legislation without full bipartisan support because they’re a bunch of decorum addicts
And instead of standing up their still holding on to the decorum. Almost like they’re complicit and getting rich being complicit.
did the democratic party lose twice to trump?
Yeah, confirming trumps picks. Pay fucking attention.
I used to think that the Democrats were the lesser evil, now I know they are a more insidious evil with polite rhetoric.
100% where I am.
were you saying this throughout the election or only after it?
A few months after I voted for Biden and having realized I was fooled. But the realization came into full force after the insulting response I got from my Democratic representative in November 2023.
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No, I helped get Gaza flattened. I never voted Republican and never will. I think the DNC helped get Trump reelected.
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The best way to keep trump out of the Whitehouse was Bernie. Dems refused that and joined a genocide, Trump is the consequence that Americans have to sadly suffer.
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I only agree with half your statement. I can be appalled by the majority government and still think the Dems are dumb as stumps. What do you suggest “lefty progressivism” talk about?
it is the framing of the article that set me off because it is so typically one-sided. “The United States is imploding. The reign of Donald Trump is…”
as though the democrats weren’t funding genocide in gaza and spending hundreds of billions on nato expansion and the predictable (essentially promised) war that ensued.
I hope the people who refrained from voting over the genocide stance feel proud of what they accomplished.
spoken like a true democrat… you lot love to blame the voters for the party’s bad policy. (unless i am misreading you-- you’re criticizing people who hold genocide to be a red-line?)
I haven’t been a democrat since 2017. I registered with the DSA. I vote progressive left when possible or against the gop when it’s a toss up. Don’t presuppose my affiliation based on a couple of posts and your own sour grapes.
I hope the people who refrained from voting over the genocide stance feel proud of what they accomplished.
If Gaza didn’t exist the Democrats would still have lost.
Agreed.
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Say I’m given a choice to have a finger cut off, or my hand. I can choose the finger without being happy with it; nor does my choice imply I’m “defending” the act: I’m merely choosing the least bad of the options I’m given. Protest voters are like people choosing a toe; sure, they can certainly voice that opinion, but the fact is the person doing the cutting is going to ignore them and they’ll lose a finger or a hand and they’ll just be fucking lucky if it’s only a finger. Abstainers are just pretending that they’re not going to lose something, and then act all indignant and shocked when their hand is cut off.
I think a lot of Democrat voters would like to have more progressive options. The issues are that the US has (a) primaries, (b) the electoral college, and © a first-past-the-post voting system for the presidency. In this system, your only choice is to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Primaries ensure party leaders choose who gets to be nominated.
The electoral college gives more weight to votes by voters in the middle of the country - the less populated states.
FPTP is recognized by voting experts as among the worst systems of voting, with the worst outcomes.
The only thing protest votes achieve is as a tool for one of the two major parties to draw votes from their opposition. It has absolutely no value for “sending a message” to any party. Protest voters are tools.
Abstaining from voting is similar, but worse as it both allows one party to capitalize on unpopular positions while also abdicating the individual’s moral responsibility to participate in government in almost the only way they can. Abstainers are contemptible.
The founders made several mistakes; they got close enough that democracy had a pretty good run in the country, but it’s not surprising given the deficiencies that it would fall apart after only 250 years.
- We need to abolish the electoral college
- We need to establish proportional representation in Congress
- We need to replaced FPTP with… well, almost anything. STV. IRV/RCV. STV would be a good choice because it could be used for both proportional and single-winner elections, and voters would have to understand only one system. IRV has the benefit of already being used by many countries and in several local elections within states, and it’s simple enough both to explain & understand, as well as being not too complex to perform by hand if necessary. But we need to be quit of FPTP.
Until we have electoral reform, the only rational voter choice is strategic voting for the lesser of two evils. For a great many progressives, that’s the Democratic party.
This is where liberals lose the plot. The fascists don’t give a fuck about laws or procedure or democracy. Pay attention. The United States has already fallen.
Your reforms - well intentioned and probably workable under an opposition that believed in democracy - aren’t going to work. The fascists couped the government and the only fight left is economic by mass strikes (not going to happen or it would of already) or by violence.
Oh, I agree; I’m not sure there’s any non-violent path to reform anymore. Maybe before Trump was re-elected there was a small window where the Pubes come back center a little and we’d have more time. I believe reform at the national level would only have been possible after widespread reforms at the state level, when the general population was already comfortable with RCV; there’s been a lot of progress in many states to implementing some form of IRV, always with positive outcomes.
But I think we missed that window. Trump’s busy wrecking what he can so that in four years there’s no organized resistance to him forcing himself a third term. Unless people get off their asses and there’s a wave of Mangiones; unless the middle and lower class realize the only war is class war, and combine to fight the oligarchs, we’re on a path to dictatorship. With the media controlled by the oligarchy and efficient messaging pitting the middle and lower classes against each other, that’s not going to happen.
I don’t see a French Revolution in the US. Too much bread and circuses. I don’t think we’ll see an uprising because people are too busy having arguments on Lemmy.
We missed most of the off ramps. There’s a very real chance that trump will ignore the courts and do whatever the fuck he wants. He’s said as much.
We’re out of time because of technology. The israel genocide? They used AI to come up with targets based on social media and other stuff. Look at the sheer death toll this time vs the last time israel attacked Palestine. The numbers are crazy and it’s because of the new targeting method.
What gives me hope is I think musk is actually fucking dumb enough or incompetent enough to fuck up social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and snap, that people will revolt. Three days without food is a revolution. So many people on social security are barely scraping by, and many of them voted for him and are gun owners. They just didn’t think the fascism would hurt them.
I think if trump defies the courts or starts threatening the profits of major corporate industries (like RFK going after big pharma) there’s a chance the capitalists will turn on him if he makes things too ugly.
But the technofascists want to destroy the US so they can create a bunch of “network states” and genocide the poor
Also, it’s not because people are too busy arguing on lemmy, it’s because people are too busy trying to survive. They’re stuck on a hamster wheel and don’t even realize they can get off.
social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and snap, that people will revolt.
My wife points out that a bunch of geriatrics revolting sounds anticlimactic. OTOH, the visuals of cops beating senior citizens would be an interesting media event.
I think if trump defies the courts or starts threatening the profits of major corporate industries (like RFK going after big pharma) there’s a chance the capitalists will turn on him if he makes things too ugly.
This is a really good point that I hadn’t considered. I think he’s a smart enough grifter to avoid pissing off people with actual money-based power. But who knows. Corporations are sniveling Quislings at the best of times. You’d think Apple, one of the richest companies in the world, would be able to resist, but no: they went belly-crawling back to X to lick Elon’s boots as soon as he won the Presidency. I mean, as soon as his puppet won the Presidency.
Also, it’s not because people are too busy arguing on lemmy, it’s because people are too busy trying to survive. They’re stuck on a hamster wheel and don’t even realize they can get off.
Agree to disagree. Bread and circuses, man. Bread and circuses. TikTok, X, Meta, Lemmy, Mastodon… people think being indignant on social media is going to cause change.
My wife points out that a bunch of geriatrics revolting sounds anticlimactic. OTOH, the visuals of cops beating senior citizens would be an interesting media event.
A whole lot of them have guns and also family members that will be resentful that they have to take them in like abandoned animals when their funding dries up. Also a bunch of armed people with nothing to lose is dangerous even if they’re old and disabled.
Agree to disagree. Bread and circuses, man. Bread and circuses. TikTok, X, Meta, Lemmy, Mastodon… people think being indignant on social media is going to cause change.
Well yeah. All of social media, sure. Although x and meta both block leftists. I’ve been banned from both and Reddit too for “inciting violence” by being anti fascist. But liberals are far too happy to make snarky clap backs and change their profile picture than take over the federal judiciary.
How many human rights campaigns are you a member of?
I 100% blame everyone who voted for Hillary over Bernie in the primary for why we have 2 Trump presidencies.
were you saying this throughout the election or only after it?
I’ve been saying this since they let bush steal an election in 2000 and go on to commit war crimes without any repercussions. Or how Obama also expanded the executive branches power and authorized drone strikes on Americans abroad without due process (trump will use this in America, just wait). Or how Obama filled his cabinet with Goldman Sachs thieves and refused to hold a single banker accountable for 2008, and worse, bailed out Wall Street and let Main Street rot. Gee, I wonder where the support for trump initially came from. Can’t imagine. Couldn’t be democrats complete and utter failure to be an effective political party for the masses.
Meanwhile, the rich got richer, the government got more powerful, and our lifespans have dropped from deaths of despair and most of us are one emergency away from homelessness.
But yay! Let’s paint rainbows in the street, put pronouns in our bio and fly blm flags and kneel in congress wearing Kente cloth! (I’m queer so miss me with the hOmOpHobIc TrAnsPhObIc bullshit) That’s all the democrats have to offer anymore. Performative bullshit. They -just like the republicans - work to serve the capitalists that own them.
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Your inability to hold democrats to account is how trump got elected, genius.
so are you happy with trump in the whitehouse, would you rather have Harris?
I’d rather the United States dissolve at this point. I feel like I’ve lived under a dictatorship of capital my entire life and as someone who doesn’t live in a “swing state” I’ve had no say on federal matters my entire life.
The US has fallen. It’s time for individual states to do what’s best for them. I want mine to leave and join Canada.
in fact supporting the fall of the US makes perfect sense. of course you campaigned against harris in the guise of protecting gaza. so you could get trump elected. so putin and all the enemies of the US could profit from your treasonous actions.
you’d sacrifice the country in the dream that the individual states would not become little capitalist fiefdoms? apart from that quite a few states could not function on their own.
why wait to become part of canada when you can just pop over the border?
maybe you can find another way to get politically involved in the country rather than hastening its demise
“how dare you criticize the party!”
The Roman Empire fell because of a series of invasions by “barbarian tribes.”
I cannot take this author seriously after they wrote this. It was, you know, just a little more complicated than that.
I don’t think the author meant that seriously. You see the quote around “barbarian tribes”? I think he considered this notion sarcastically, as this is “barbarian tribes” is often used by people less knowledgeble abou the topic.
And for the US to implode within a few weeks, there must have been considerable rot inside. I am really not sure where precisely it started, but I consider Bretton Woods (both the system and it’s breakdown), Nixon with the final breakdown of honor in politics, Reagan and his “trickle-down economy” lie Reageanomics, and Bush Junior with his Gulf War key milestones in that process. Notice a trend? They were all Republicans. That Trump puts the final nail into the US’ coffin is only consequential.
Isn’t it crazy for Nixon to be a point of honor? Recent presidents have gotten away with a lot worse, but there is no resignation in dishonor, there are no consequences, nobody cares any more
This is actually a big part of what keeps pushing me farther left. The party of righteousness, fairness, strict legal enforcement, strictly adhering to the constitution, was always dishonest but they’ve completely dropped any pretenses in favor of outright criminality, corruption, throwing out the constitution, enriching their corporate benefactors. They no longer even pretend that oppression is about family values anymore or that we will be trickled upon
What made Rome fall?
It’s a rather complex topic, but the short answer isn’t barbarian invasion.
The simplest correct answer is the Roman elite became less interest in preserving the Roman state and more interested in increasing their own personal wealth and influence.
Hey that sounds like the USA
We’re doing the thing! Yay!
high five
What’s wild is that “being Roman” persisted a lot longer than the tax system and patronage networks that had collapsed. It wasn’t until a large portion of the people who thought of themselves as “Roman” were invaded by the Eastern Roman Empire that the Roman identity was broken up, to be replaced by the regional identities that people rallied around to defend themselves.
I feel like if the ERE’s leaders had taken a different approach, they could have stitched the Western Empire back together, but they broke it.
Also people stopped having enough kids
define “enough kids” for me please.
do you mean enough kids that their parents can’t feed them off their own little farm, and the kids had to be sent to the cities as slave / poor workers, so that the machines can keep churning for the sake of profit?
edit: sorry but i’m pissed and angry now. “not enough kids” like what? not enough kids to make sausage of them? not enough kids to burn them in the kettle of capitalism? not enough kids to flood the labor market with undervalued workers?
i tell you what, it’s capitalist propaganda that “people should have more kids”, because they think it makes the wages fall. what it actually does is create poverty, mass unemployment, working poor, and civil unrest. may the empire be intoxicated by its own poison. may the corporations fall due to the civil unrest that they helped create.
Like the birth rate was too low overall.
Of course more people makes wages fall. That’s why immigration is so popular in western world.
That’s potentially a global problem. It’s not specific to the US as long as we keep making ourselves an attractive destination for immigrants and keep welcoming them ………… crap
There are whole books on that topic, but this article gives a very basic explanation of some of the major factors that were involved.
Thanks
It was the barbarian tribes, the kids are just being pedantic lmao
it took 100 or so years to really collapse and effective organization and leadership were big factors in that process. They didn’t lose a war and poof, everything was over, they were always fighting several other civilizations for dominance, they started consistently losing when the soldiers started showing up in rags.
It all started with the reform known as the Pax Romana. Rome stopped waging wars that kept the influx of slaves, which were fundamental for their economic model. They didn’t realize the implications of such a decision and didn’t design a viable alternative in time.
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Take a history class.
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Rome eventually fell, All Empires do eventually
A more apt comparison is Sparta. The bulk of the work was done by (wage-) slaves, the citizens lived in constant paranoia of an upheaval, constantly fighting real and imaginary enemies both domestic and foreign. Persia (Russia) worked in the shadows to undermine the state, and their frenemies the Athenians (Europeans) are viewed with distrust and contempt. Other city states (China, Israel, the Arab countries) would flip-flop their allegiance depending on circumstance.
Not fast enough. Look at what it did to Gaza and realize that it can still do that to anywhere else it wants.
What happened in Gaza is a taste of what the undesirables in America are going to face. Especially Israel’s AI targeting tech.
That’s what democrat supporters don’t understand. We can’t accept genocide anywhere, not just for moral and ethical reasons but because genocide will come for us too.
If you’re in the US and voted anything but Democrat, or didn’t vote at all, then this is your fucking fault.
Fuck the democrats, fuck Kamala. They suck. But look what your rigid morality has made.
All Harris had to do was stand for Palestine, or even something basic like healthcare for all. She would have won and it wouldnt have even been close. But she didnt. You had an extremely unpopular neoliberal that you thought was going to beat Trump?
Was it worth it to throw the election because of zero progressive policy?
No it was not worth it. Biden should have stuck to one term president, there should have been a primary. Kamala was so embarrassing with her line of “fundamentally, nothing will change” when asked how she would be different from Biden.
I don’t care for the Democrats. Kamala’s campaign was misguided. Continued unwavering support for fascist apartheid Israel. Democrats always reaching right for more votes while the left is right fucking here if you’ll throw us a goddamn bone!
That being said, if you didn’t vote for her you have literally caused what is happening now.
Palestine saved! USA destroyed! Mission Accomplished!
Run on healthcare and you win, the dems cant even do that yet you blame the people and not the system, pathetic.
Keep burying your head in the sand and see how much better it will get
I’m wide awake. I used to travel for work and now I’m staying home so I have my rifle ready.
Everyone knows what Trump is! I feel like I’m screaming into the void. His cult loves what he is, the other oligarchs love what co prez Elon is up to!
“Blue maga, genocide Joe” has disappeared because it was an op. Leaving us with the useful idiots who parroted that shit.
As I’ve said several times I hate the fucking democrats! They learned absolutely nothing from when the republicans were the opposition. Do nothing, sit on your hands, threaten to shutdown the government. Over and over.
If you voted for anyone but Kamala you knew what Trump was going to be. Got them clean hands. Hope they stay clean of others’ blood and don’t end up catching your own life spilling through your fingers when the SS shows up.
“Blue maga, genocide Joe” has disappeared because it was an op. Leaving us with the useful idiots who parroted that shit.
No we haven’t, we’re absolutely still here. And no, it was not “an op”, you conspiracy theorist.
bidens no surprise billing was a significant improvement to obama care. they did not run on it as a single issue but its nuts that anyone would not want to keep stuff like that going as opposed to when trump was last in and kicked out one of the legs.
All Harris had to do was stand for Palestine, or even something basic like healthcare for all. She would have won and it wouldnt have even been close
Because the alternative stood for Palestine or better healthcare for Muricans, right? Makes sense…
So was it worth it to throw the election to stand with genocide? You were never going to beat Trump with an unpopular neoliberal candidate.
I don’t know, was it?
you now get the genocide (even worse actually) and a fascist as president… good job
Then the dems should run on something, like healthcare. Otherwise it’s a dying (dead) party.
even worse actually
No, you were just denying and downplaying the extent of the genocide when it was your team doing it.
Harris got the votes to win. It’s just that those votes were suppressed. The 2024 result was not democracy. Here are hard numbers: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
You are hallucinating. Harris is a woman and she’s black. The racist misogynist US will not elect a woman as POTUS in the years I’ve got left. Much less a black woman. I saw an interview with some 2020 Biden voters from Philly. When asked if they were going to vote for Harris, they all said something along the lines of “No, it’s too much power to give a woman.”. They’d rather have a treasonous felon as POTUS than a competent and comparatively honest woman. It’s morally laudable that the Dems will run minority candidates, but in these racist misogynistic United States, it’s a guaranteed loss.
Yeah the racism here is beyond fucked, and agree was also another reason she lost. How am I hallucinating? If she stood for anything I said she could have really won. You cant be that unpopular and stand for nothing and expect to win.
If she stood for anything? How about if you read what she wanted to do, you’d not say something so stupid. Granted, it was damn near impossible to find what she wanted to do by the mass media.
She didnt even stand for healthcare my dude lmao, she stood for nothing. Spineless.
You really think Palestine would have pushed Kamala over?
Most Americans don’t even know what’s going on over there.
TBH I don’t think any policy would’ve mattered, Kamala’s problem was they campaigned like it’s 1950 instead of 2024. Look at any poll exit interview, and you’ll see pretty much everyone has their reality completely warped, and whatever Kamala was proposing did not matter.
Cry about it. It’s the democrats fault that they love sucking Israel’s cock so much that theyre willing to throw an election to a fascist.
THEY DONT CARE ABOUT WINNING THEY CARE ABOUT PROTECTING CAPITALISTS
Average genocide apologist
No matter how much you want it, the world is not going to destroy Israel on behalf of
Iranthe people of Palestine.It’s happened before with the South African apartheid government. States change all the time. They’re getting increasingly isolated, their leader is wanted by the Hague, they can’t vacation abroad, they’re being berated on social media in every app, etc. Not saying the time is soon, but people are starting to see Israel for what they are, and it won’t help them.
OK, you get 4 more years of Biden 2.0, 2028 comes, what’s the plan for the elections against Trump 2.0?
Trump will be fucking dead in four years.
Every day, I wake up and hope Trump has died from the most humiliating and painful natural causes imaginable.
Once he’s hollowed out the entire country, he will do some random thing and someone will give him an award for it. Once he’s done masturbating (imagine someone passing you a blunt), he’s going to enact his ultimate dream. He’s going to get the SS to pick him up ten big macs and ten filet o fish. He will assemble his ultimate favorite sandwich, eat about half of it, and pass out. Two days later he will die trying to take a shit.
I did specify Trump 2.0. It’s not Trump, it’s the entire Republican party that’s gone mask off
It’s everyone, regardless of politics even, with their mask off.
Even my sentence structure is lawless.
Not for long. Their economy is gonna tank soon because they are starting trade wars.
If there was anything the US was good at, it would be marketing. Creating the image that it’s the greatest nation on earth, influencing mainstream media to tell their version of the story, keeping up appearances of a strong nation.
The moment these smoke clears and the mirrors break, that is when we see the real US. I think we have Trump to thank to show it to us.
Unfortunately they believe their own bullshit
The education system has one goal: teach people critical thinking. In the US they deliberately did the opposite, that’s why there’s so many idiots. That and the fact that mass media is amazing at spewing propaganda
Well, you have to drink the kool-aid because there’s lead in the tap water.
Once, the US was actualy very food at funding innovation. The shit that Bell Labs alone discovered are things that shape the world today. But in the nature of US capatialism, if discovery can’t turn I to profit, why bother? It’s easier to market 2nd or 3rd place as 1st, then to actually be the 1st, especially if the Chinese are constantly breathing down you neck.
One of the stories about the US that I find inspirational is how, during the space race, NASA relied on various experts from somewhat unconventional places. It’s what I always think about at times like this, because it’s a snippet of what I consider to be genuine greatness, amongst all the propaganda and geopolitical awfulness.
The first example is how the Apollo spacesuits were sewn by seamstresses from an underwear company. This was because they needed craftspeople skilled enough to be able to reliably cut fabric and sew seams within a margin of error of a fraction of a millimetre. Whereas in regular garment manufacturing, you can typically tear out incorrect stitches and try again, this wasn’t possible for the spacesuit, so they needed to be perfect first time; many of the fabrics they were working on were so cutting edge that they needed to be locked away in a safe when not working on them. Synthetic fabrics were still fairly new, and this partly explains why an underwear manufacturer had seamstresses who were up to this challenge — the group of sewists who worked on the spacesuit were probably among the most experienced people in the world at sewing synthetic fabrics, and this experience allowed them to be an active part of the design and manufacture process for the spacesuits.
Another example from the same era is when NASA engineers were having difficulty getting the honeycomb insulating material they were using to adhere to the shuttle. This part of the program was happening near Seal Beach, in California, and when it was discovered that the local surfers were already experienced in using a material like this for their surfboards, NASA hired a bunch of the surfers to work with their engineers to figure out the problem. There’s a quote I absolutely adore from Donald Binns, a Project Engineer with North American Aviation[1]:
“[The surfers] did a great job with it. The only downside of those guys was that when the surf was up, there was a big absentee problem — they were out there doing their trick.”
I just find this incredibly sweet, because it captures both the strength and the difficulty of working with diverse skill sets. If ever there was greatness to be found in the US, we can see it in stories like this. I think this spirit of innovation has been lost over the years, due to the pressures of capitalism on individuals in particular.
Edit: forgot to add link for quote citation
[1]: Quote is from episode 1 of the 2008 documentary “Moon Machines”, accessible via the internet archive. Insulation section starts at around 16:45 https://archive.org/details/moon-machines/Moon+Machines+Part+1+The+Saturn+V+Rocket.mp4
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Like, as much as i have to complain about the US meddled in other countries, i have to disagree that they only were good at marketing.
Lots of technology have been developed in the US, primarily computer chips and everything that has to do with it, including the internet. That can be a good invention, depending on what you use it for.
You should be fair and give credit where due, and part of the US’ power was because of technological proficiency. Of course, other countries also achieved good technological developments, like the Chinese with their solar panels, and the Europeans with lots and lots of scientific groundwork and cultural developments.
I feel bad for the innocent Americans who are gonna suffer… people who honestly didn’t ask for or want any of this.
We may not have wanted any of this, but none of us are innocent. We all play our parts whether that’s the sociopathic capitalist or the empathetic commoner, with the consequences of our actions/inaction causing harm and suffering to the world. The very devices we’re having this discussion on were created with suffering.
We’ve collectively destroyed this entire planet - that was intended to sustain us all - so none of us are innocent, except the children who’ve no idea yet what right and wrong even mean. As for the rest of us, there are very real degrees of guilt and also sincere ignorance, and also repentance… if not, we would all deserve to just lay down and let evil roll over us.
I mean the conservatives definitely asked for this, as did the democrats who didn’t vote, and the majority of Americans who don’t vote at all.
So you don’t believe there are any Americans who don’t deserve to suffer for what’s happening?
There is a minority who didn’t directly contribute to it, yes.
It was something like 48.5% of voters, maybe over 49% depending how you count third party voters
Ok, so we at least partially agree.
I mean, everyone who voted for Hillary/Biden in primaries wanted this.
They would rather have Trump than Bernie, so that’s what they got.
It’s like watching an old friend sink into senility. The person you know is slowly being replaced by something else and you are powerless to stop it.
Living in it is like that individual, but that individual is head of the household, has all the money and keys, has locked the door and is wildly armed.
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I feel like saying it’s normal for empires to fall due to external causes is not accurate? It’s usually the exception. Maybe the external factor is the final kick, knocking over a rotting house of cards, but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth. An empire is much more likely to collapse under its own weight than it is to have Alexander the Great kick its teeth in. The Ottoman Empire was called “The Sick Man of Europe” for a reason.
It’s absolutely not. It’s their very internal policies that force them into destroying themselves. They start believing their own propaganda. For both Rome and Constantinople it was wasting huge amounts of it’s power on fighting Persia and trying to extend its borders in ways that outran it’s logistics capacity. For the Ottomans it was the rise of nationalism and their ham fisted attempts to combat it. For the modern Western imperialists it was the base fact that direct colonial rule was always a monetary drain for the state and only made businesses money. Making these stupid decisions was because each empire had created a web of political commitments and internal propaganda that was unsustainable.
The Roman Empire took centuries to eventually collapse and a lot of it was corruption, hyperinflation, and complacency. It’s happening here but at a much quicker rate.
Maybe the external factor is the final kick, knocking over a rotting house of cards, but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth.
Rome was a place where power consolidated, but the various eras might as well have been different empires.
The system collapsed, dissolved, reconstituted, and expanded several times during the 1400 years it existed.
Same with China. 5000 years of history emerging from Beijing, but each dynasty was distinct.
Even the US has reinvented itself several times over by now. Antebellum America might as well have been a different country. New Deal America was radically different from it’s Coolidge Era predecessor. Reagan’s America became it’s own thing in turn. Trumpian America is a new thing, not an end point.
Didn’t Constantinople outlast the Persian empire by quite a while?
They did, and were so weak and ineffectual afterwards that they even got sacked by the crusaders. It was essentially a long decline.
but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth.
I refer to it as atrophy. Once it becomes easier and more profitable for the empire to exploit its own populace instead of others, this is what we get.
Anacyclosis, Polybius was motivated by the fall of the Hellenistic society. When Rome conquered Greece it was unfathomable to them that they could ever even be conquered, let alone so quickly. They were swept aside in such a rapid fashion that it was a cultural shock.
The US has this image of being unassailable, but the reality is that apathy is the greatest enemy we have ever faced. We have no faith in our leadership, and we’re short on supply of actual warriors despite what the keyboard warriors would have everyone thing.
All the gun toting rednecks driving large pickup trucks shrink when they’re actually confronted with anything, and we’ve devolved into a system of cowards.
The day America stands up and puts the ruling class heads on spikes, that’s the day the rest of the world should fear, but the rest of the world can just live comfortably knowing we’re all weak and worthless.
Seriously, just look up “peopleofwalmart”, that’s the insanely low bar we go by these days.
LOL empire. They haven’t lasted for even a century. It will be a footnote in history.
The US…?
This fucker just swings at everyone.
I think someone shit on their waffle this morning.
yes
Damn and they say American education is bad.
But it’s been around for more than two centuries?
As it should. The rise of fascism shouldn’t go unnoticed. The United States is capable of better but, the rot of capital needs to be expelled first.
It’s a cultural problem which is why Americans would rather have Trump over Bernie.
Even liberals prefer this because Trump isn’t going to make any effort to reduce the disparity in wealth.
Not falling so much as being torn apart. We are in no way doing this voluntarily
They voted for the madman twice. This time around he even got a plurality. Not everyone volunteered, but enough to make it happen.
Americans would rather have Trump than Bernie, so that’s what they got.
Anything to avoid reducing the disparity in wealth.
I know it’s conspiracy adjacent but I would be very unsurprised to find out Leon helped Trump steal the election.
It wasn’t “stolen,” votes weren’t fraudulent. Probably. It was influenced.
It turns out, propaganda is extremely effective on a social media addicted population with no regulation to curve any of it.
Trump is creating a lot of enemies. Even turning allies into enemies. The reputation usually mostly recovers when there’s a Democrat in the WH, but since American voters walked right back into the same chaos again, eyes wide open, it’s going to be a lot harder to recover this time around. There’s just very little trust and credibility left.
Its Been falling apart for decades already, it’s just being torn apart faster now
As someone watching from the outside, there’s definitely a qualitative difference these past few weeks. It’s very obvious there’s no adults left in the room anymore.
It’s very obvious there’s no adults left in the room anymore.
Yes, this generation has refused to grow up. We value avoiding conflict above all else.
It’s sad. Anyone who tries to legitimately fight back is considered the bad guy.
Burning up at the entry of the other side.
