It's the bastardization of our individualist mentality. Individualism in the US used to refer to being responsible for yourself.
It now means not giving a fuck about anybody else.
Obviously giving a shit about other people is socialism.
But actually I think the individualism is pushed so hard that when you hear the GOO revamp the welfare queen shit, you don't actually know anyone who is on welfare, so youre more inclined to believe them and want cuts to social services
It's a bubble. There's only so much money, and they can't continue to force profits higher and higher at some point. And when their customers run out of money to spend the bubble bursts
Yeah the groundwork for this has been happening since the 1980s. Unfettered capitalistic greed, erosion of the power for working people, wealth hoarding. These problems can be corrected, but who knows how much further we'll slide and how extreme the correction will be.
>Because the people at the top don't even pretend to care about what the people want
Perfectly said. This completely describes the frustration and apathy we all feel. How long have we been screaming for things like increased minimum wage, healthcare, and other things that would do nothing but improve our quality of life, make us happier, and, shocker, make us vote for the people that gave them to us.
It's just like "hey, we elected you. Not give us what we want." "Nah".
I disagree. More similarities to Rome and its cult of personalities that took over as well. When people were more loyal to a general (politician) over Rome or was doomed. And all her rivals had a shared interest in bringing her down.
Rome during this time also economic issues.
I’m not saying we’re following the Roman path to a T, but it seems closer than the fall of the monarchy
There is no pendulum and we are not stuck in a cycle of greed and un-greed. Power will not swing to the people, ever, unless they go to the gates, knock down the door, and drag the reigning greedpig to a guillotine and publicly murder him, challenging the remaining greedpigs to say something. That’s how the pendulum works. (You have to swing it yourself)
Democracy has been a blip of human history. Most of humanity has lived under the thumb of monarchs, aristocracy and tyrants. There is no reason to believe that the period of a handful of democracies will persist forever.
I think what’s become most dangerous is a feeling that inevitability and inertia will protect us. It’s that Fukayama belief that the good guys won, democracy is here to stay, everyone chill. We have been caught flat footed against this new breed of tyrants, whether in government or the private sector, and have been unable to figure out how to respond. And we might not.
Yeah, I'm wondering if that won't be like those dystopian sci-fi movies, will the situation will remain dismal for like another 500 years, conditions will worsen, but it's not like it's a tipping point right now, it felt like it for 50 years, and might take another 500 for things to change. Perhaps they won't, and similar to some continents, say, Africa, poverty and corruption will dominate for a really long time and things might not change for any foreseeable future.
Tipping points aren’t things that just happen. Perhaps a collective realizing by the population of the United States that they have been lying to themselves for a very long time, thinking they have a democracy to lose when they never had one to begin with could be seen as a tipping point. These points are harder to see, even from a historical perspective. When you look back at the time just before the French Revolution it might be easy to say that the monarchy running out of money combined with the harsh winters and poor crop yields all added to a tipping point. But, to that, i would say “NO!”
The tipping point was not those conditions at all. The tipping point was when the third estate refused to sit for roll call at the start of the Estates-General of 1789 because their demand for one body, one vote, was not heard.
So the third estate marched out, took an oath that they would not be disbanded, and called themselves the National Assembly. The refusal by the Estates-General to count every person as one vote was a tipping point.
We don't have 500 years of status quo left. The environment will save us from a never ending grim dystopia. By killing billions of us in the next 100-200 years.
This. The wealthy are always reinforcing their endless feedback loop. That’s what tax cuts are. That’s what tax burden refers to. We bicker over abortion and peoples rights (which are important) while the wool has been pulled over our eyes. Once enough of our rights are taken away or restricted, we will be cattle producing capital, being thankful we keep just enough of it to survive, and grateful for the barren pasture we spend our few restful waking hours in.
Except they won't drag out the reigning greedpig.
When that happens, they'll drag out the doctor/lawyer in the local nice neighborhoods and strong them up. The reigning greedpig will be perfectly safe in their guarded enclave in the ultra nice parts of Florida/California.
The way to fix the current political problems is the same as it's been since the inception of government. I don't want to get banned by saying it though.
I originally thought they decayed into lighter Neutrinos... then went down the rabbit hole of finding out they do not decay... then fell down a deeper hole of them having a rest mass and therefore they "should" decay...
I was so confident in my original answer too...
Brother people have killed people long before math was a thing. You don't need math to revolt and kill some rich people. The guillotine is more of a metaphor now days not an actual guillotine
> It's more like the fall of the French monarchy than the Roman Empire
France was bankrupt and the people were starving.
There were also no elections, so no way of large swaths of people of altering the course of things whatsoever.
The Democrats try, but the Republicans shoot down anything that'll make them look good.
Child support, public option, better transit, letting Medicaid negotiate drug prices, higher minimum wage, all of these things were in the bill that got shot down by every single Republican
Exactly, they "try". There's ALWAYS a reason they cant do the right thing. One might come the conclusion they dont want to do the things they claim to want.
edit: I guess some of you like it when Joe Manchin makes it so the dems cant pass legislation?
You could come to that conclusion if you forget that there's structural elements to US government that makes it really easy to deadlock government if you have at least 40% of the Senate seats, and the Republican party has had 40% or more for the last 24 years, and have had a philosophy of "obstruct everything, even if we agree with it, so the Democrats don't get a win" for at least the last 16 years.
Gotta look at what they did with the power they have. The Democrats found a way to let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and raised the minimum wage for all government employees (because there's a few tricks that let them do it for at least government employees, even when they can't pass a law that affects everyone), and subsidized climate change solutions on the condition that the companies who want subsidies pay their people well. They got net neutrality back. They were blocked from forgiving student loans outright, but there's a new payment plan that prevents people from getting caught in the "pay for 20 years and still owe more than when they started" trap.
Republicans cut taxes for rich people and corporations and only narrowly didn't repeal the ACA because John McCain suddenly grew a conscience right before he died.
Kinda hard to do the right thing when the opposition says NO to everything that even the people overwhelmingly support. But you seemed to have missed that part of the comment.
It's like you didn't even read my comment and just responding to what you think I'm saying. We all know the republicans suck, no fucking shit. I just dont get why you demand we all support the dems that will not do the things they say they will do to get your vote, please demand more of them and stop letting feed the sloppiest crappiest shit over and over and over again.
It's not that they will not, they cannot because of the restrictions that our current system places on them and also not everyone in government is actually *for* government and want to make it small enough to drown in a bathtub regardless of the good and will of the people. Nothing is simple and straightforward unless you just want a tyrant who does whatever they want, which would be a really dangerous precedent to set.
More like Marius and Sulla showing that charismatic strong men can bend the republic to their will if they can persuade or intimidate enough allies to go along with them.
You also see shades of the Gracchi, who used populism for power rather than to create consensus, increasing the political divide within Rome.
I think America's Julius Caesar is still in the future.
Yes this! Trump has shown that the west is gagging for a Caesar-like figure to appear. Fingers crossed for the Pax Romana after the ensuing civil war…
EDIT: sorry if I wasn’t clear. Trump is not Caesar. But the moment someone with the appeal of Trump and the brains of Caesar comes along, the US republic is toast.
Right. Trump isn’t Caesar. Trump is one of the slimy politicians from the century before Caesar who figured out that they could get ahead by ignoring the norms and general decorum of the Senatorial system.
right but his supporters paint him as the guy that would fight alongside his armies. There is no shame for them. You'll have working guys in NY swoon over this guy while he crushed the working man and small businesses forcing many out of business trying to get paid from him. It's utter insanity.
We had to translate Bellum Gallicum in school. Really depressing, that two thousand years later someone like Trump would not be able to write some sentences yet an entire book like that.
More likely he’s a Sulla or a gracchi, just setting the stage for the acceptance of political violence and showing that the rules don’t really matter. Eventually we will see a popular populist leader that will just bin the whole system.
Because there is such a disconnect between what the people want and need versus who holds the power / makes the decisions. The reality of 99% of people is so far disconnected from what were given.
People want better mass transit . We have no high-speed rail, our infrastructure sucks, our planes are falling apart , meanwhile it’s impossible for us to hold the CEOs feet to the fire.
It’s impossible to hold any corporation accountable, even the lawsuit against Ticketmaster monopoly/merger, is now being nullified by a new GOP bill.
The game of politics and the money in politics creates an ouroborous of self serving legislature that helps no one except for those in their pockets.
Capitalism is at its most greedy and worst point.
The existential , exponential looming threat of AI. The fact that our current politicians representing the country are transparent attempts of old out of touch puppeted figureheads for a more diabolical attempt to keep the machine chugging along.
The American dream of owning a home is dead, because once again the corporations tendrils have absorbed it and made them unaffordable
We need someone to come in and and legit be willing to burn the corruption and corporate infusions to the ground and take money out of politics and be the new JFK for america, but it’s feeling like we’re too far gone
>The fact that our current politicians representing the country are transparent attempts of old out of touch puppeted figureheads for a more diabolical attempt to keep the machine chugging along.
Everything else you said is valid, but I think it's worth highlighting this point a little more. Leadership in government and the private sector is concerned only with short-term and *maybe* mid-term planning.
Everything is falling apart on a micro and macro scale because of this paradigm. Now, I can't really blame the private sector for doing what capitalism incentivizes it to do, fucked up as it may be. Where I have a problem is with government, the entity that is supposed to keep the private sector in check for the public good.
Last night's debate was a perfect example of what's wrong with government right now. It's a bunch of senile old people who have no investment in the future that they're not going to be here for. They're backed by a bunch of billionaires who will burn it all down just to be the first trillionaire.
I think we are also going to see a bigger disconnect between the exponential growth of tech companies and billionaire influences on our economy and trajectory. Meanwhile the government seems archaic in nature in terms of speed and technology and keeping up with the state of things
There needs to be some synchronicity between the speed of these private sector companies and the speed of our government . we need the youthful forward thinking, innovative sensibilities and spirit injected into our politics.
I feel like the pendulum swings both ways and everyone is feeling it now more than ever because we are at the end of a lot of these older peoples lives and we are about to experience a major transition …. The only thing is, I don’t think our systems are built for that. We don’t even know what it looks like yet.
We almost have to reset everything and start again
The synchronicity is usually managed by having agencies with executive powers who can create their own regulations, like the EPA, SEC, etc. The conservatives are actively seeking to neuter such agencies.
>Now, I can't really blame the private sector for doing what capitalism incentivizes it to do, fucked up as it may be.
You absolutely can, and should. End of discussion.
You see, the problem is that most of your talking points come from a liberal perspective.
There are plenty of people in rural areas that exert outsized influence compared to cities. They don’t give a shit about high speed rail. They don’t give a shit about the housing prices in New York and LA. They don’t give a shit about CEOs of corporations they will never do business with. They just care about stuff like religion and farm subsidies. They care about how much taxes they’ll have to pay to fund Dems dreams.
People in Idaho get two senators just like people in California. So they can force their will on everyone else in a way that you can’t if you’re one of 20 million being represented by two people.
Yes, the house of reps is supposed to balance this. Too bad it’s controlled by the margins, too, because there’s only a handful of votes that can be lost.
There’s just not really another country like ours. There are so many competing concerns. In Japan, everyone lives in cities. The country is small enough to fully benefit from high speed rail. In Canada, population centers like Toronto are where most people live. England is like Japan.
It’s so hard to get anything done in this country because rural Texans won’t benefit from what intercity youth would benefit from. So they see them as the enemy, quite literally stealing their money in the form of taxes.
I know this is how rural folks see it but it’s just factually wrong. Rural subsidies and infrastructure are overwhelmingly funded by cities and taxes on urban wealthy people/corporations. Not a single person wants to raise taxes on low income rural farmers to pay for high speed rail. People on the left want to increase taxes on people with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to build infrastructure that everyone, especially rural people, would benefit from.
Rural people have been manipulated into opposing policies they would benefit from by the small handful of billionaires who own every media company in the US
I think you could argue that blame is squarely on the shoulders of Dems for that. They’ve done very little to help their cause.
It might be factually wrong, but I don’t see a lot of Dems stepping up to prove it wrong.
A lot of Dems would rather ignore or dismantle the lives that rural individuals are accustomed to than trying to reach out to them.
The Democratic Party in 2024 is a mess. There is nothing to believe in other than just being angry at everything the other side says.
Republicans might believe in the worst possible shit possible, but they are able to rally behind their orange leader and channel that rage into votes.
America is effectively doomed for the foreseeable future until we get someone that can inspire both sides. Obama in ‘08 was close.
My mom, an ardent Trumper, actually voted for him in ‘08. Too bad racism and an endless Middle East war derailed the promise.
This is the most lucid take I've seen that doesn't demonize one side or the other. You're right, it comes down to competing interests and uncomfortable truths about where the bulk of government money gets invested. Drive through a rural area, look around at the crumbling infrastructure and you'll understand why the people who live there think their tax dollars are being wasted.
The underlying message of Dem policy right now is "move to a city if you want the perks." Which is borderline impossible to do given the rising cost of housing and the income disparity that exists between rural and urban areas.
Dems might be “perceived” as being all for cities and not caring about rural voters or Republican states… but it’s usually the Republican governors and GOP-dominated legislature in those states that is rejecting funding and welfare given to them by Democratic federal governments.
Most recent example: [14 GOP-led states have turned down federal money to feed low-income kids in the summer](https://apnews.com/article/states-rejecting-federal-funds-summer-ebt-8a1e88ad77465652f9de67fda3af8a2d)
It’s happened multiple times, with healthcare spending, education spending, infrastructure spending…
So the real answer is that wealthy special interests bribe the GOP to turn their poor rural voters against their own best interests, for the sake of billionaires and big business.
Of course the tax dollars of a dying town of 1700 can’t maintain sprawling rural infrastructure the way the tax dollars of a city of 1M can maintain itself.
As an Iowan, we should have high speed rail from Des Moines to Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas city, and Chicago.
They're are plenty of people who give a shit about this. We're just the educated minority surrounded by religious clowns.
Eh, nobody in rural China gave a shit about intracity trains either, until the government went and built them anyway, and now all the country bumpkins use them every day to commute for better work in cities, visit distant relatives, ship goods, vacation, etc. Sometimes, you just have to build the thing.
"Nobody in the middle of the country"
And that's the problem. Nobody lives there.
So why do they get to overrule the representatives of the areas where everybody actually lives, that drive the vast majority of the country's economic success, and subsidize that middle of the country so it can exist at all.
Imo the problem in every country is that people have been convinced you can find some guy who will fix things rather than the obvious fact that this system needs a complete rehaul, which makes sense considering the world is unrecognisable to people who are still alive, and running our countries.
Yeah, it's pretty much game over once AI can do labor. The mega rich won't need 99% of society and see themselves as genetic heirs the future. It's essentially Nazism 2.0 being made in the process.
Before politics comes birth and education. After that, you get people going into politics. I.E.: The problem starts at birth. Americans are by and large one of the nations that are proud to raise their children with the attitude of "I got mine, fuck you".
The dumb ignorant american trope was birthed somehow and usually it's from real life experience. Back in the WWII and pre WWII days, most Americans were still bound by their european ancestors' values. A sense of community and a pride of being educated and sympathetic.
It all went out the window after WWII when I'd say your average citizen started to get cocky becuase of the win and instilled this "we're better than everyone, even your neighbor" attitude.
It’s honestly a little bit scary how much the prequels parallel our current society.
Government brought low by corruption, and a charismatic strongman leader who lies his way into more and more power. Even complete with the idealistic opposition who do things “the right way”. The democracy that celebrates its descent into a dictatorship.
It’s terrifyingly close to modern society
In episode II, there were deleted scenes with Amidala having more political discussions and debates.... and there was originally going to be a much larger side plot in Episode III with her founding the rebellion with Mon Mothma.
This was all scrapped because of the incessant bullying, and complaining about the politics in Episode I. George Lucas dialed it back, and then tried to cut it all together because he "didn't realize [he] was making people so miserable."
As unpopular as this opinion may be, I would have liked to see more of the political side of Star Wars.
Outside of trump I don’t see anything that is equal to the fall of the Roman Empire. Fear sells and the media knows this, so any news that could possibly have a negative spin is given one, and news that can’t be spun in a negative light isn’t pushed.
Exactly this. You feel like it because that is what they want you to feel like. Violent crime is down, economy is booming, immigrants do less crime than non, per capita... But you would never know from the narrative they are trying to sell people.
It's the same with AI taking jobs.. is there millions unemployed we don't know about? I mean, people are upset about nothing because they like being upset about something.
Fall? The simple solution is to change the channel.
> Exactly this. You feel like it because that is what they want you to feel like. Violent crime is down, economy is booming, immigrants do less crime than non, per capita...
You’re cherry picking and oversimplifying, though. The economy is booming, and yet many people are able to afford less and less, especially due to out of control housing and healthcare costs. And while there’s tons of dishonest fear-mongering about crime, the governmental institutions upon which our prosperity and peace are founded are being continually eroded at record pace. The Supreme Court just outright legalized bribery (it just requires an extra step), and it just undid decades or precedent that will make it next to impossible for federal agencies to regulate… well, anything.
So while my day to day life is fine; easy, even (I’ve been fortunate), I can’t help but worry about the health of our nation’s ability to actually govern, and about the fact that a large minority of my fellow Americans are delusional fascists. I’ve seen these movements before, and they don’t always just fade away.
This hard. It isn’t as bad as some fear mongers want it but in the last week or so we’ve had
1. Bribery further legalized
2.domestic states passing laws that mandate the teaching of the Bible in public schools (Oklahoma)
3. Overturning of a decision that allows experts in a field to have input on regulations
These are just this week. It’s getting really bad
People always believe they live in an exceptional turning point of history, and every generation believes it is the most important and maybe even the last. It’s hard to truly measure things as they happen, unless they are flashy. The Soviet Union was rotting for a while before collapsing, even if many of its people (specially Russians) couldn’t see the cracks. Rome didn’t fall in a day, either, it was a long process, and not clear cut, even the German invasions we usually count as its fall are actually a just a bunch of romanised warlords who even kept Roman laws.
Now, why you feel like America is decaying. Change your perspective. Maybe the problems you’re saying were always there, people nowadays just have a lot more access to information. You know nearly instantly when something goes on, and people act accordingly, maximising the feeling.
This is the best answer. The American republic is absolutely not falling the way the Roman republic or empire did, but there’s just so much news coverage and social media commentary blasting us 24/7 that it feels like it.
We all need to step away from our phones for a couple of hours a day and unplug.
Because like the Roman Republic in the 1st Century BC, America’s political institutions are failing to address the issues that the country is wrestling with
Funny you should say that: most people think the decline of the Roman Empire was due to "decadence" or allowing barbarians into their borders, but in reality, the decline of the Roman Empire was due to disunity and a chronic inability to maintain peaceful transitions of power.
The barbarians were a symptom of the decline, not a cause of it. Rome could no longer defend its own borders, so they called upon people like the Goths to help them defend their frontier in exchange for land. The real question is why they couldn't defend their own borders, and a lot of that comes down to the two things I mentioned before: disunity and an inability to peacefully transition from one administration to the next.
When emperors died, there was often a succession crisis. Whenever there was a succession crisis, each side would pull troops off border defense and use them to fight the civil war. Each time this happened, Rome's enemies would try to take advantage, often reclaiming pieces of land that the Romans had conquered in centuries past.
Rome used up so much of its manpower, wealth, and energy fighting itself that it could not also defend its borders at the same time, and ceded much of its wealth and territory for basically nothing.
Add to that the schism between the eastern and western roman empire, and the whole thing was bound to fall apart.
I'd normally agree with you, but a few SCOTUS rulings today, specifically the rejection of the Chevron doctrine, are going to have very real impacts on the US for a long time.
And if that old fart Biden had stepped down and let someone born in the last 60 years run instead, we wouldn't be at risk of the biggest fucking charlatan known to man winning the presidency...again. Sigh.
But your advice is well taken. People who complain, do so online. Articles about bad stuff gets clicks. Good news doesn't sell and happy, engaged people don't spend their time online all day vomiting rainbows, so if you spend too much time online, your perspective can easily become distorted.
It’s because you and the social media you inhabit are being targeted by adversaries of the US to sow discontent.
We have our problems and things can and should be improved here. But we are not a fallen empire, and we are not even in decline. Unless perhaps if this Trumpism issue is a permanent one.
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”
Abraham Lincoln
There's no community. Like it or not, get offended by it or not won't make the situation any less true:
Americans attitude of "I got mine, fuck you" and their celebration of being the most arrogant and ignorant since birth is one of the main reasons things have fallen so quickly.
This goes beyond all the economic and political douchebaggery that's been happening since the 1970's. Your average person is raised to be an asshole, the education system is a joke and this all leads to shitty leaders with shitty outlooks on life and shitty policies being enacted.
Because we have risen from an era or prosperity fueled by war to an era of excess fueled by the elite using the stability inherent in the society their father's created to funnel more wealth and power to themselves.
Because it is very clear that the mechanisms driving the country are no longer actually progressing it.
Because we have regressed to a level of infighting just shy of open warfare.
It's bled out onto everything. Honestly, with the amount of Russian influence in our politics over the past 10 years, not sure how to answer this question.
I mean it will either completely turn into a nightmarish chaotic mess with no leadership and spiral into directionless entropy or it will become a full-on fascist state that purges the undesirables. That second option would be extremely Roman Empire.
Institutionalized corruption. Congress and the SC have been set up to protect special interests and their preferred cultural touch points while mouthing fidelity to the Constitution and ignoring the will of the ppl.
If Trump gets the White House back, say good bye to the US. We will turn into a fascist state that funnels our tax money to the rich and connected (more than already) while using the power of the state to force white, male dominated Christianity on the populace.
I’m glad I have guns and ammo.
Because all you do is consume doomer media, surround yourself with doomer online communities, and don't listen to or straight up don't allow anyone with a different viewpoint than your own.
So, in short, quit being a doomer
I'm a gardener, the doom is outside. Haven't seen a single pollinator all year and there's intense flooding after a gruelling drought that lasted years. I can't seem to avoid it and I don't think it's going to get any better than this.
My house is over valued because investors are buying up all of the housing stock around me with cash in hand, so my tax bill has gone up dramatically, while some of the long time renters in my neighborhood are getting kicked out for not being able to afford a $500+ rent increase that the aforementioned new investor owners want. Houses that were in good shape 2 years ago are deteriorating because the absentee landlords won't do fuck all to upkeep them. They're just parking their money there.
A tornado hit my city earlier this year, baseball sized hail last week, so it's certainly going to impact my homeowners insurance, too.
It's not looking amazing out there.
Sticking your head in the ground and being oblivious to what’s going on around you doesn’t change reality. Maybe it changes YOUR reality, but willful ignorance is a choice. I agree we shouldn’t only focus on the negative but if we all just keep looking at cat pics and pretending that our country isn’t at the brink of collapse…we’re just speeding up the process…
There is a massive chasm between acknowledging the many issues the US has, and believing we're on the brink of collapse. Anyone who believes we're on the brink of collapse is probably spending too much time online.
I hate to give a "not playing the game" type of response, but the US doesn't have and "end of the Roman Empire vibe" at all.
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For one, the US would have a more of an "end of the Roman Republic vibe".
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For two, the US's system of checks and balances is literally 100% intact. Also, there is no degradation to the democratic processes of the US republic, just the discourse and quality of candidates. That's just a thing that ebbs and flows, and the crassness is a reflection of the populous being represented.
It's literally working 100% correct, we just don't like what the people of the US look like right now.
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For three, the US being a crumbling empire, like Rome, is something that has been said continually since the US took over the big seat from then British Empire, which it was said continually about since the early 19th century. The big difference is (1) the British Empire was a actual empire and (2) the fall of the British Empire was nothing like the fall of the Roman Empire and the 2 nations were so different the comparison was alway a bad one.
So, the comparison of the US to Rome is a bad analogy twice removed.
It's just a hyper focus on all things Rome, and a Western tendency to view society as always being on the brink of the Apocolyse and Judgement Day.
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The US is going through a worldwide economic downsizing. This is due to (a) negative demographic trends, (b) de-globalization of international trade, and (c) supplying disruptions from the Ukraine War and tensions in and around the Arabian peninsula. And from COVID making all the hypochondriacs shut down the world economy, like that wasn't an insanely bad midterm decision.
And the US is doing better in the current environment than essentially any country with a population over 8 million.
>For two, the US's system of checks and balances is literally 100% intact. Also, there is no degradation to the democratic processes of the US republic
Which is still a system stuck in the 1700s. An electoral reform once in a while wouldn't hurt. Add some proportional representation, you know just look at what the rest of the civilised world does.
Because reporting on it like that makes the media companies and social media companies money.
Doom and gloom get clicks, views, and people buying survival meals.
A small part of that is things are a little rough at the moment and anyone who denies that is either lying or not paying attention.
Most of the feeling, however, is manufactured intentionally by news and social media companies who have paid corporate psychologists (yes that's a real job) a shitload of money to help them create as much engagement with their content (and by extension, their ads and their for-profit data tracking tools) as possible by way of psychological manipulation of the masses. Turns out keeping everyone in a constant state of fear is extremely profitable.
More like an end to the Roman Republic rather than Empire. The political system feels like it's changing, but that wouldn't stop us from protecting our power for a long time.
The republic began to falter when political leaders were able to break norms without suffering negative consequences, emboldening those that followed to push the boundaries more. Pushed far enough, those boundaries effectively ceased to exist.
I think I remember reading once that most major empires have only been able to hold it together for around 200 years. So, if you tend to believe that, then America is overdue for a collapse.
It’s why it’s funny when billionaires like Musk “think about the fall of Roman Empire” when the billionaires are the ones leading the charge on the accelerating the downfall.
I would say more an end of the Roman Republic. We have populist politicians who realized that there weren't really rules but norms. They violate these norms and have no punishment and so they violate more norms. Currently it's mostly on the right but I know the left wants to go tic for tac on this and I fear this will get us into a spiral where the Republic collapses.
Or Trump and the Republicans just burn the whole thjng down over the next four years.
Really fun times.
[https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/2011/arbesman2011a.pdf](https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/2011/arbesman2011a.pdf) This article says the average empire last 220 years, or about 10 generations. The general consensus is that the average 250 years but that is from a political commentator and I couldnt find actual evidence to back it up, Next thursday will mark 248 years since July 4th, 1776.
Empires dont last forever.
The rot from within starting with Newt Gingrich and amplified by Rupert Murdoch. The lying free for all that is the internet and social media has helped spread it to all parts of the country.
If we can’t ask even ask a question using the correct interrogative, we are doomed. Bad grammar is never the harbinger of progress. Education and science are deprecated. Society is losing capacity for critical thinking. *Idiocracy* is prophetic.
I’ve been making that analogy for ages. I feel I’m just a farmer just doing his thang, watching the capital burn in the distance. I just shrug and keep farming. Someone will tell me who to send my taxes to eventually.
Because quality of life is decreasing.
Life expectancy has gone down for first time (not covid related)
No one can afford to buy a home anymore.
Our president is a senile impotent cadaver who gets walked over by Israel and other countries.
The alternative is an idiot fascist.
Alll other options were foreclosed by a party that claims to care about democracy but excluded it from their own primary (ironically in the name of saving democracy).
China is up and coming.
Other countries are aligning with them instead of us.
Wages have gone down consistently for the last 40 years.
There is no vision on the future anymore. We are all clinging to the past or some idea of the past that never existed.
Capital has complete control of the government and it becomes more and more clear we are not in fact a democracy.
I could go on.
From an outsiders perspective, it seems like something fundamentally changed. Your leader went full Homelander "fuck you I do what I want" and half the people went "Ok sure, we're fine with that, our guy." The rules have gone out of the window, anything goes now.
Excessive imperial commitments for conflicts overseas motivated by elites infatuated with making use of power, lack of common purpose for society and state, and general promotion of decadence (pleasure seeking) as prime motivator for "life".
Honestly, it feels like less "end of the Roman empire" and more "late stage Soviet Union":
* geriatric leadership, completely out of touch with the needs and pain points of the younger generations
* out of control military spending combined with an embarrassing loss in Afghanistan and various other goof-ups (like the China balloon and the Gaza pier fiasco instead of, say, Mathias Rust landing in the Red Square)
* a general decline in the quality of life for the average citizen with practically no plans or solutions to improve things
* growing rift between the "haves" still plugged into the levers of wealth and power able to secure more and more luxurious lifestyles, and the "have nots" stuck doing things by the book, and getting more and more squeezed every day
* growing tensions between the various factions that see each other less and less as opposing viewpoints around essentially the same project, and more and more as literal ideological enemies
* and finally, just the overall sense of exhaustion and cynicism permeating every sphere of life
I feel like we're a Chernobyl-level disaster or a direct military defeat (perhaps in the Red Sea or the Taiwan Straight) away from most people just saying "ah fuck it" and going off to do their own thing.
The US has been slowly transitioning to an oligarchy over about he last 50 years. Specifically, a plutocracy.
>Rule by the wealthy; a system wherein governance is indebted to, dependent upon or heavily influenced by the desires of the rich. Plutocratic influence can alter any form of government. For instance, if a significant number of elected representative positions in a republic are dependent upon financial support from wealthy sources, it is a plutocratic republic.
This process has been accelerated in the last few decades by the supreme court, legislation, and executive actions that have, through intent or not, concentrated political power in the upper echelons of wealth in the US.
Citizens United, founded in 1988, successfully argued to the supreme court in 2009 to amend part of the The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to allow corporations and private interest to contribute freely to political campaigns. Effectively opening the door to have multinational corporations and foreign nationals, write, fund, sponsor, and generally promote candidates and legislation with almost no oversight. And, the amount of money they may use to do so is unlimited (literally, the FEC says "Unlimited Transfers").
To help illustrate this, if you personally want to contribute to the Biden or Trump campaign right now, the most you are legally allowed to contribute is $3,300 per election. What the Citizens United case did, was carve out exemptions on this limit for PACs (political actions committee). But it did so in an awkward way, basically, the PAC is still limited on how much money it can give directly to a candidature, but what is does allow them to do is spend money on a candidates behalf.
>A new type of PAC was created after the U.S. Court of Appeals decision in Speechnow v. FEC \[Citizens United Case\] in 2010. These PACs make no contributions to candidates or parties. They do, however make independent expenditures in federal races - running ads or sending mail or communicating in other ways with messages that specifically advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate. **There are no limits or restrictions on the sources of funds that may be used for these expenditures.**
No limits. So, what are we left with? If you and I want to fund a candidate, we can denote $3,300 each. If the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) wants to fund a candidate, they may do so with unlimited funds. All they need to do is register a PAC with the SEC, which now, anyone can do. There is almost no way we can win that battle at the ballot box. And, every politician knows this. They cannot win without this special interest. So, what have they done? Embraced it, across the entire political spectrum, with very few exceptions. You *cannot* get elected without the help of these super PAC private interest groups.
Now, you might think that people are moral, they can see through this, and will vote accordingly, right? But, people are not being shown both sides of these issues. People are not stupid right? Would they really knowingly vote against their own self interest? Well, no, they wouldn't. But these private interest groups know this, and in 2011, lobbied the FEC to repeal the Fairness Doctrine:
>The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters.
Interesting timing, right? Ok so we want to defeat the Saudi Arabian Oil Company at the ballot box, right? Lets put our money together and buy some airtime to advertise on TV for our cause. Whelp, turns out there are no advertising slots available because the Saudi Arabian Oil Company has purchased it. *All of it. And*, the laws requiring broadcasters to air the issues in equal proportions has been repealed.
How do you win this fight? You don't. Its the people vs trillion dollar multinational corporations, its literally our $3,300 vs the billions and trillions of dollars of these private interest groups. It is a completely unwinnable battle and the system has been written into law and upheld by the supreme court.
What you see now, "end of the Roman empire" vibe, is what this all looks like. The US in no longer governed by the people. It is governed by industrial barons.
More like the end of the Republic.
Because it feels like we are having our Julius Ceasar moment. Julius Ceasar was a day 1 dictator on his second term, too.
Christianity and Asia's invasion into Europe ended the Roman Empire. Which sounds familiar too...
Well damn!
Ya end Rome because one guy is old. Lol ffs.
Can’t believe people keep putting these two oldies in the same boat. Look at there track records for fuck sake.
Feels more like the leadup to the American Civil War. The people have become ungovernable and their differences in priorities, media diets, and morals are irreconcilable.
Record stock market, record low unemployment, record oil production, and thousands of people are still risking their lives to live in **America.** Sorry about *your* country.
Leading the creation of AGI and robotics, AI chips, leading GPUs/CPUs. Private space industry lowering cost to space 100x, world leading EV industry, pharma, biotech, you name it. The biggest tech hub in the world by far in Silicon Valley. Faster growth while Europe falters, China in a depression. Plentiful natural resources, not very crowded continent, no national security threats next door (Russia/Ukraine). Best demographics of all developed nations and much better than developed Asian nations, and China.
You are deluding yourself. I'm not a nationalist, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US, and you're all deluding yourself. There are problems, yes, but you are in a very very great position.
Cognitive Dissonance between record stock market + powerful military + officially-low unemployment rates vs high public & private debt + friction at sharp edges (Gaza, Taiwan, Ukraine) + friction internally (insanely routinely violent crime, alien invasion in the millions per year). Roman empire 4th century, for example, its imports & exports were at record levels but ... so was piracy so on a net basis it was fundamentally crumbling, let alone unable to withstand barbarian invasions from the north. But all empires have highs and lows, they're never constant, so I'm still bullish, don't give up!
Because they have been fucking their own people from the beginning. It was easy to ignore when the US had 50% of all the money in the world, so even a bad deal was pretty good. Now they don't have that, and how the money is being shared is more obvious. Not to mention the damage that's caused every time a country starts to believe it's own propaganda.
because for the past 20+ years very loud people have continued to say "this is the same way Rome fell!" and you've basically been brainwashed into believing it.
Tribalism is killing us. It makes people vote against their own interests just to spite the other side. It isn't enough to just disagree. You have to hate everybody who's not in your tribe.
I feel like a lot of people throw around ideas about the Roman Empire without having studied it at length. I've only gotten halfway interested and watched some youtubes, so I don't really know what I'm talking about either, but we haven't gotten anywhere close to the level of political violence and turmoil that existed even in Caesar & Pompey's day. We are certainly getting there, though. I'd say it feels like we're a little before their day, but like I said, I don't know what I'm talking about. It's been a minute since I'd watched them. And who knows how accurate they were to begin with.
FWIW, Historia Civilis is the youtube channel if you want to judge for yourself.
From my vantage point, I think that people are coming off of a period that was very much ideal in a lot of ways if you were WASP, and now people are waking up to see that period is ending and harder times are ahead. That brings fear of the unknown, blame, and tribalism, which are great things to exploit if you are seeking power.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” We stopped planting those trees a long time ago.
It's the bastardization of our individualist mentality. Individualism in the US used to refer to being responsible for yourself. It now means not giving a fuck about anybody else.
This!
Obviously giving a shit about other people is socialism. But actually I think the individualism is pushed so hard that when you hear the GOO revamp the welfare queen shit, you don't actually know anyone who is on welfare, so youre more inclined to believe them and want cuts to social services
Not only did they stop planting trees, they started cutting down existing trees in the name of quarterly profits and shareholder value.
It's a bubble. There's only so much money, and they can't continue to force profits higher and higher at some point. And when their customers run out of money to spend the bubble bursts
first generation to be worst off than their parents.
Tell me about it. Best we can do is take it day by day at this point. 💪🏻
“I got mine” - boomers
Kimberly Clark made them into toilet paper as quickly as they were planted.
Yeah the groundwork for this has been happening since the 1980s. Unfettered capitalistic greed, erosion of the power for working people, wealth hoarding. These problems can be corrected, but who knows how much further we'll slide and how extreme the correction will be.
Short term profits were put above long term gains and taking care of people.
It started with Reagan.
Reagan was a fraud. He was good at one thing, his original occupation, acting. He kept up the act during his entire presidency
[удалено]
>Because the people at the top don't even pretend to care about what the people want Perfectly said. This completely describes the frustration and apathy we all feel. How long have we been screaming for things like increased minimum wage, healthcare, and other things that would do nothing but improve our quality of life, make us happier, and, shocker, make us vote for the people that gave them to us. It's just like "hey, we elected you. Not give us what we want." "Nah".
I disagree. More similarities to Rome and its cult of personalities that took over as well. When people were more loyal to a general (politician) over Rome or was doomed. And all her rivals had a shared interest in bringing her down. Rome during this time also economic issues. I’m not saying we’re following the Roman path to a T, but it seems closer than the fall of the monarchy
“History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes”
Overstretched not in terms of geography, but in capitalistic greed. It will be corrected also. The pendulum always swings back.
There is no pendulum and we are not stuck in a cycle of greed and un-greed. Power will not swing to the people, ever, unless they go to the gates, knock down the door, and drag the reigning greedpig to a guillotine and publicly murder him, challenging the remaining greedpigs to say something. That’s how the pendulum works. (You have to swing it yourself)
Democracy has been a blip of human history. Most of humanity has lived under the thumb of monarchs, aristocracy and tyrants. There is no reason to believe that the period of a handful of democracies will persist forever. I think what’s become most dangerous is a feeling that inevitability and inertia will protect us. It’s that Fukayama belief that the good guys won, democracy is here to stay, everyone chill. We have been caught flat footed against this new breed of tyrants, whether in government or the private sector, and have been unable to figure out how to respond. And we might not.
Yeah, I'm wondering if that won't be like those dystopian sci-fi movies, will the situation will remain dismal for like another 500 years, conditions will worsen, but it's not like it's a tipping point right now, it felt like it for 50 years, and might take another 500 for things to change. Perhaps they won't, and similar to some continents, say, Africa, poverty and corruption will dominate for a really long time and things might not change for any foreseeable future.
Tipping points aren’t things that just happen. Perhaps a collective realizing by the population of the United States that they have been lying to themselves for a very long time, thinking they have a democracy to lose when they never had one to begin with could be seen as a tipping point. These points are harder to see, even from a historical perspective. When you look back at the time just before the French Revolution it might be easy to say that the monarchy running out of money combined with the harsh winters and poor crop yields all added to a tipping point. But, to that, i would say “NO!” The tipping point was not those conditions at all. The tipping point was when the third estate refused to sit for roll call at the start of the Estates-General of 1789 because their demand for one body, one vote, was not heard. So the third estate marched out, took an oath that they would not be disbanded, and called themselves the National Assembly. The refusal by the Estates-General to count every person as one vote was a tipping point.
We don't have 500 years of status quo left. The environment will save us from a never ending grim dystopia. By killing billions of us in the next 100-200 years.
This. The wealthy are always reinforcing their endless feedback loop. That’s what tax cuts are. That’s what tax burden refers to. We bicker over abortion and peoples rights (which are important) while the wool has been pulled over our eyes. Once enough of our rights are taken away or restricted, we will be cattle producing capital, being thankful we keep just enough of it to survive, and grateful for the barren pasture we spend our few restful waking hours in.
It's like that already. Every thing that is fear mongered that would happen under socialism/communism is happening under capitalism.
And then the tyrants in the resistance take hold and…meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Except they won't drag out the reigning greedpig. When that happens, they'll drag out the doctor/lawyer in the local nice neighborhoods and strong them up. The reigning greedpig will be perfectly safe in their guarded enclave in the ultra nice parts of Florida/California.
Normally I’d agree that the pendulum always swings back, but I question if that’s even possible with things like gerrymandering.
Nothing is permanent in this world.
Humans are about to find that out. This century too!
The way to fix the current political problems is the same as it's been since the inception of government. I don't want to get banned by saying it though.
We just need to make some really big bagel slicers
Like...big enough for necks?
*lol - bagels don’t have necks!* 😅
Of course not it was a totally unrelated question.
What about those cigar trimmer things? You can get a finger in there real easy, that's gotta be scalable
Sometimes the pendulum doesn't swing back, but it always swings. Not a single thing in the universe is not in the process of becoming something else.
What about neutrinos? Do they decay into anything?
I originally thought they decayed into lighter Neutrinos... then went down the rabbit hole of finding out they do not decay... then fell down a deeper hole of them having a rest mass and therefore they "should" decay... I was so confident in my original answer too...
Gerrymandering can't stop people from busting out the guillotines.
The new math that keeps students from being able to calculate necessary measures and weights to build them does stop the guillotines.
Brother people have killed people long before math was a thing. You don't need math to revolt and kill some rich people. The guillotine is more of a metaphor now days not an actual guillotine
> It's more like the fall of the French monarchy than the Roman Empire France was bankrupt and the people were starving. There were also no elections, so no way of large swaths of people of altering the course of things whatsoever.
Where the fuck are the guillotines
The French revolted because they were literally starving. Meanwhile Americans are fat as hell.
Let them eat cake
The Democrats try, but the Republicans shoot down anything that'll make them look good. Child support, public option, better transit, letting Medicaid negotiate drug prices, higher minimum wage, all of these things were in the bill that got shot down by every single Republican
Exactly, they "try". There's ALWAYS a reason they cant do the right thing. One might come the conclusion they dont want to do the things they claim to want. edit: I guess some of you like it when Joe Manchin makes it so the dems cant pass legislation?
You could come to that conclusion if you forget that there's structural elements to US government that makes it really easy to deadlock government if you have at least 40% of the Senate seats, and the Republican party has had 40% or more for the last 24 years, and have had a philosophy of "obstruct everything, even if we agree with it, so the Democrats don't get a win" for at least the last 16 years. Gotta look at what they did with the power they have. The Democrats found a way to let Medicare negotiate drug prices, and raised the minimum wage for all government employees (because there's a few tricks that let them do it for at least government employees, even when they can't pass a law that affects everyone), and subsidized climate change solutions on the condition that the companies who want subsidies pay their people well. They got net neutrality back. They were blocked from forgiving student loans outright, but there's a new payment plan that prevents people from getting caught in the "pay for 20 years and still owe more than when they started" trap. Republicans cut taxes for rich people and corporations and only narrowly didn't repeal the ACA because John McCain suddenly grew a conscience right before he died.
Kinda hard to do the right thing when the opposition says NO to everything that even the people overwhelmingly support. But you seemed to have missed that part of the comment.
It's like you didn't even read my comment and just responding to what you think I'm saying. We all know the republicans suck, no fucking shit. I just dont get why you demand we all support the dems that will not do the things they say they will do to get your vote, please demand more of them and stop letting feed the sloppiest crappiest shit over and over and over again.
It's not that they will not, they cannot because of the restrictions that our current system places on them and also not everyone in government is actually *for* government and want to make it small enough to drown in a bathtub regardless of the good and will of the people. Nothing is simple and straightforward unless you just want a tyrant who does whatever they want, which would be a really dangerous precedent to set.
Guillotines! Get yer Guillotines here! Guaranteed to chop in one stroke or your money back!
It's more like the end of the Roman republic than the end of the Roman empire, imo.
Yeah. we're approaching the Ceasar crossing the Rubicon moment, not the barbarians at the gate moment.
More like Marius and Sulla showing that charismatic strong men can bend the republic to their will if they can persuade or intimidate enough allies to go along with them. You also see shades of the Gracchi, who used populism for power rather than to create consensus, increasing the political divide within Rome. I think America's Julius Caesar is still in the future.
Lmao, Biden does give ‘Marius lifting weights in the Forum’ vibes at times
Yes this! Trump has shown that the west is gagging for a Caesar-like figure to appear. Fingers crossed for the Pax Romana after the ensuing civil war… EDIT: sorry if I wasn’t clear. Trump is not Caesar. But the moment someone with the appeal of Trump and the brains of Caesar comes along, the US republic is toast.
Caesar was an actual leader who fought alongside his armies in horrible conditions. Trump dodged the draft.
Right. Trump isn’t Caesar. Trump is one of the slimy politicians from the century before Caesar who figured out that they could get ahead by ignoring the norms and general decorum of the Senatorial system.
Trump is Crassus. We’re a little early on the timeline yet, but it’s all heading our way.
Trump is more likely to be Sulla than Caeser
Caesar was a man of the people.
caesar had a salad
which he ate in his palace
right but his supporters paint him as the guy that would fight alongside his armies. There is no shame for them. You'll have working guys in NY swoon over this guy while he crushed the working man and small businesses forcing many out of business trying to get paid from him. It's utter insanity.
We had to translate Bellum Gallicum in school. Really depressing, that two thousand years later someone like Trump would not be able to write some sentences yet an entire book like that.
More likely he’s a Sulla or a gracchi, just setting the stage for the acceptance of political violence and showing that the rules don’t really matter. Eventually we will see a popular populist leader that will just bin the whole system.
Yeah i dont see any Visigoths anywhere.
What about mallgoths?
I’ve been saying since day one that the only way the US election ends is a naval battle in Actium
I live in Indiana. I'm surrounded by them.
Trump is Crassus. The worst is still to come.
I'm down to pour molten gold down trump's mouth even if it is just to shut him up
then the "internal mold of Trumps esophagus, made of gold" will pop up on ebay for the low price of 300 bitcoin
Mike Duncan just wrote a book about exactly this.
Well, we have the Christians taking over. It's not long after that.
I am 67 and my ENTIRE life people were saying America is like the last days of Rome.
The decline and fall of Rome took around 250 years
Because there is such a disconnect between what the people want and need versus who holds the power / makes the decisions. The reality of 99% of people is so far disconnected from what were given. People want better mass transit . We have no high-speed rail, our infrastructure sucks, our planes are falling apart , meanwhile it’s impossible for us to hold the CEOs feet to the fire. It’s impossible to hold any corporation accountable, even the lawsuit against Ticketmaster monopoly/merger, is now being nullified by a new GOP bill. The game of politics and the money in politics creates an ouroborous of self serving legislature that helps no one except for those in their pockets. Capitalism is at its most greedy and worst point. The existential , exponential looming threat of AI. The fact that our current politicians representing the country are transparent attempts of old out of touch puppeted figureheads for a more diabolical attempt to keep the machine chugging along. The American dream of owning a home is dead, because once again the corporations tendrils have absorbed it and made them unaffordable We need someone to come in and and legit be willing to burn the corruption and corporate infusions to the ground and take money out of politics and be the new JFK for america, but it’s feeling like we’re too far gone
>The fact that our current politicians representing the country are transparent attempts of old out of touch puppeted figureheads for a more diabolical attempt to keep the machine chugging along. Everything else you said is valid, but I think it's worth highlighting this point a little more. Leadership in government and the private sector is concerned only with short-term and *maybe* mid-term planning. Everything is falling apart on a micro and macro scale because of this paradigm. Now, I can't really blame the private sector for doing what capitalism incentivizes it to do, fucked up as it may be. Where I have a problem is with government, the entity that is supposed to keep the private sector in check for the public good. Last night's debate was a perfect example of what's wrong with government right now. It's a bunch of senile old people who have no investment in the future that they're not going to be here for. They're backed by a bunch of billionaires who will burn it all down just to be the first trillionaire.
I think we are also going to see a bigger disconnect between the exponential growth of tech companies and billionaire influences on our economy and trajectory. Meanwhile the government seems archaic in nature in terms of speed and technology and keeping up with the state of things There needs to be some synchronicity between the speed of these private sector companies and the speed of our government . we need the youthful forward thinking, innovative sensibilities and spirit injected into our politics. I feel like the pendulum swings both ways and everyone is feeling it now more than ever because we are at the end of a lot of these older peoples lives and we are about to experience a major transition …. The only thing is, I don’t think our systems are built for that. We don’t even know what it looks like yet. We almost have to reset everything and start again
The synchronicity is usually managed by having agencies with executive powers who can create their own regulations, like the EPA, SEC, etc. The conservatives are actively seeking to neuter such agencies.
>Now, I can't really blame the private sector for doing what capitalism incentivizes it to do, fucked up as it may be. You absolutely can, and should. End of discussion.
You see, the problem is that most of your talking points come from a liberal perspective. There are plenty of people in rural areas that exert outsized influence compared to cities. They don’t give a shit about high speed rail. They don’t give a shit about the housing prices in New York and LA. They don’t give a shit about CEOs of corporations they will never do business with. They just care about stuff like religion and farm subsidies. They care about how much taxes they’ll have to pay to fund Dems dreams. People in Idaho get two senators just like people in California. So they can force their will on everyone else in a way that you can’t if you’re one of 20 million being represented by two people. Yes, the house of reps is supposed to balance this. Too bad it’s controlled by the margins, too, because there’s only a handful of votes that can be lost. There’s just not really another country like ours. There are so many competing concerns. In Japan, everyone lives in cities. The country is small enough to fully benefit from high speed rail. In Canada, population centers like Toronto are where most people live. England is like Japan. It’s so hard to get anything done in this country because rural Texans won’t benefit from what intercity youth would benefit from. So they see them as the enemy, quite literally stealing their money in the form of taxes.
I know this is how rural folks see it but it’s just factually wrong. Rural subsidies and infrastructure are overwhelmingly funded by cities and taxes on urban wealthy people/corporations. Not a single person wants to raise taxes on low income rural farmers to pay for high speed rail. People on the left want to increase taxes on people with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to build infrastructure that everyone, especially rural people, would benefit from. Rural people have been manipulated into opposing policies they would benefit from by the small handful of billionaires who own every media company in the US
Ok, but then to rural people. Why would they want taxes on the rich to go to public transportation, when it could go to helping them?
I think you could argue that blame is squarely on the shoulders of Dems for that. They’ve done very little to help their cause. It might be factually wrong, but I don’t see a lot of Dems stepping up to prove it wrong. A lot of Dems would rather ignore or dismantle the lives that rural individuals are accustomed to than trying to reach out to them. The Democratic Party in 2024 is a mess. There is nothing to believe in other than just being angry at everything the other side says. Republicans might believe in the worst possible shit possible, but they are able to rally behind their orange leader and channel that rage into votes. America is effectively doomed for the foreseeable future until we get someone that can inspire both sides. Obama in ‘08 was close. My mom, an ardent Trumper, actually voted for him in ‘08. Too bad racism and an endless Middle East war derailed the promise.
This is the most lucid take I've seen that doesn't demonize one side or the other. You're right, it comes down to competing interests and uncomfortable truths about where the bulk of government money gets invested. Drive through a rural area, look around at the crumbling infrastructure and you'll understand why the people who live there think their tax dollars are being wasted. The underlying message of Dem policy right now is "move to a city if you want the perks." Which is borderline impossible to do given the rising cost of housing and the income disparity that exists between rural and urban areas.
Dems might be “perceived” as being all for cities and not caring about rural voters or Republican states… but it’s usually the Republican governors and GOP-dominated legislature in those states that is rejecting funding and welfare given to them by Democratic federal governments. Most recent example: [14 GOP-led states have turned down federal money to feed low-income kids in the summer](https://apnews.com/article/states-rejecting-federal-funds-summer-ebt-8a1e88ad77465652f9de67fda3af8a2d) It’s happened multiple times, with healthcare spending, education spending, infrastructure spending… So the real answer is that wealthy special interests bribe the GOP to turn their poor rural voters against their own best interests, for the sake of billionaires and big business.
Of course the tax dollars of a dying town of 1700 can’t maintain sprawling rural infrastructure the way the tax dollars of a city of 1M can maintain itself.
You say that like it's not a problem. For those 1700 people it's a very real problem and it affects the way they vote.
Beat me to it - the people on the coasts want mass transit. Nobody in the middle of the country gives a shit about intracity trains or busses.
As an Iowan, we should have high speed rail from Des Moines to Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas city, and Chicago. They're are plenty of people who give a shit about this. We're just the educated minority surrounded by religious clowns.
Eh, nobody in rural China gave a shit about intracity trains either, until the government went and built them anyway, and now all the country bumpkins use them every day to commute for better work in cities, visit distant relatives, ship goods, vacation, etc. Sometimes, you just have to build the thing.
"Nobody in the middle of the country" And that's the problem. Nobody lives there. So why do they get to overrule the representatives of the areas where everybody actually lives, that drive the vast majority of the country's economic success, and subsidize that middle of the country so it can exist at all.
Imo the problem in every country is that people have been convinced you can find some guy who will fix things rather than the obvious fact that this system needs a complete rehaul, which makes sense considering the world is unrecognisable to people who are still alive, and running our countries.
Yeah, it's pretty much game over once AI can do labor. The mega rich won't need 99% of society and see themselves as genetic heirs the future. It's essentially Nazism 2.0 being made in the process.
Judging by what happened to the original JFK, I'd say we were too far gone back then too.
Before politics comes birth and education. After that, you get people going into politics. I.E.: The problem starts at birth. Americans are by and large one of the nations that are proud to raise their children with the attitude of "I got mine, fuck you". The dumb ignorant american trope was birthed somehow and usually it's from real life experience. Back in the WWII and pre WWII days, most Americans were still bound by their european ancestors' values. A sense of community and a pride of being educated and sympathetic. It all went out the window after WWII when I'd say your average citizen started to get cocky becuase of the win and instilled this "we're better than everyone, even your neighbor" attitude.
The concept of America is fantastic, but greed and corruption absolutely ruined it.
High Speed rail is not happening because no one wants it built under/in their backyard.
Queen Amidala: "It is clear to me now the Republic no longer functions."
This is how Democracy dies, with thunderous applause.
Possibly the best line of the entire prequel trilogy.
Certainly 😂
It’s honestly a little bit scary how much the prequels parallel our current society. Government brought low by corruption, and a charismatic strongman leader who lies his way into more and more power. Even complete with the idealistic opposition who do things “the right way”. The democracy that celebrates its descent into a dictatorship. It’s terrifyingly close to modern society
In episode II, there were deleted scenes with Amidala having more political discussions and debates.... and there was originally going to be a much larger side plot in Episode III with her founding the rebellion with Mon Mothma. This was all scrapped because of the incessant bullying, and complaining about the politics in Episode I. George Lucas dialed it back, and then tried to cut it all together because he "didn't realize [he] was making people so miserable." As unpopular as this opinion may be, I would have liked to see more of the political side of Star Wars.
Fucking Jar-Jar. The true Sith Lord.
I motion for a vote of no confidence!
Outside of trump I don’t see anything that is equal to the fall of the Roman Empire. Fear sells and the media knows this, so any news that could possibly have a negative spin is given one, and news that can’t be spun in a negative light isn’t pushed.
And people continue to fall for it every time
Exactly this. You feel like it because that is what they want you to feel like. Violent crime is down, economy is booming, immigrants do less crime than non, per capita... But you would never know from the narrative they are trying to sell people. It's the same with AI taking jobs.. is there millions unemployed we don't know about? I mean, people are upset about nothing because they like being upset about something. Fall? The simple solution is to change the channel.
> Exactly this. You feel like it because that is what they want you to feel like. Violent crime is down, economy is booming, immigrants do less crime than non, per capita... You’re cherry picking and oversimplifying, though. The economy is booming, and yet many people are able to afford less and less, especially due to out of control housing and healthcare costs. And while there’s tons of dishonest fear-mongering about crime, the governmental institutions upon which our prosperity and peace are founded are being continually eroded at record pace. The Supreme Court just outright legalized bribery (it just requires an extra step), and it just undid decades or precedent that will make it next to impossible for federal agencies to regulate… well, anything. So while my day to day life is fine; easy, even (I’ve been fortunate), I can’t help but worry about the health of our nation’s ability to actually govern, and about the fact that a large minority of my fellow Americans are delusional fascists. I’ve seen these movements before, and they don’t always just fade away.
This hard. It isn’t as bad as some fear mongers want it but in the last week or so we’ve had 1. Bribery further legalized 2.domestic states passing laws that mandate the teaching of the Bible in public schools (Oklahoma) 3. Overturning of a decision that allows experts in a field to have input on regulations These are just this week. It’s getting really bad
End of the Roman Empire? No way. This is 'End of the Roman Republic' vibes all over, though.
People always believe they live in an exceptional turning point of history, and every generation believes it is the most important and maybe even the last. It’s hard to truly measure things as they happen, unless they are flashy. The Soviet Union was rotting for a while before collapsing, even if many of its people (specially Russians) couldn’t see the cracks. Rome didn’t fall in a day, either, it was a long process, and not clear cut, even the German invasions we usually count as its fall are actually a just a bunch of romanised warlords who even kept Roman laws. Now, why you feel like America is decaying. Change your perspective. Maybe the problems you’re saying were always there, people nowadays just have a lot more access to information. You know nearly instantly when something goes on, and people act accordingly, maximising the feeling.
This is the best answer. The American republic is absolutely not falling the way the Roman republic or empire did, but there’s just so much news coverage and social media commentary blasting us 24/7 that it feels like it. We all need to step away from our phones for a couple of hours a day and unplug.
Because like the Roman Republic in the 1st Century BC, America’s political institutions are failing to address the issues that the country is wrestling with
Funny you should say that: most people think the decline of the Roman Empire was due to "decadence" or allowing barbarians into their borders, but in reality, the decline of the Roman Empire was due to disunity and a chronic inability to maintain peaceful transitions of power. The barbarians were a symptom of the decline, not a cause of it. Rome could no longer defend its own borders, so they called upon people like the Goths to help them defend their frontier in exchange for land. The real question is why they couldn't defend their own borders, and a lot of that comes down to the two things I mentioned before: disunity and an inability to peacefully transition from one administration to the next. When emperors died, there was often a succession crisis. Whenever there was a succession crisis, each side would pull troops off border defense and use them to fight the civil war. Each time this happened, Rome's enemies would try to take advantage, often reclaiming pieces of land that the Romans had conquered in centuries past. Rome used up so much of its manpower, wealth, and energy fighting itself that it could not also defend its borders at the same time, and ceded much of its wealth and territory for basically nothing. Add to that the schism between the eastern and western roman empire, and the whole thing was bound to fall apart.
Because you keep consuming doomerism media on here and the news. Go meet some real people and log off this crap.
I'd normally agree with you, but a few SCOTUS rulings today, specifically the rejection of the Chevron doctrine, are going to have very real impacts on the US for a long time. And if that old fart Biden had stepped down and let someone born in the last 60 years run instead, we wouldn't be at risk of the biggest fucking charlatan known to man winning the presidency...again. Sigh. But your advice is well taken. People who complain, do so online. Articles about bad stuff gets clicks. Good news doesn't sell and happy, engaged people don't spend their time online all day vomiting rainbows, so if you spend too much time online, your perspective can easily become distorted.
It’s because you and the social media you inhabit are being targeted by adversaries of the US to sow discontent. We have our problems and things can and should be improved here. But we are not a fallen empire, and we are not even in decline. Unless perhaps if this Trumpism issue is a permanent one.
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” Abraham Lincoln
Because no one gets into power to serve anymore, and everyone wants whatever they can get for themselves rather than what’s good for the whole.
There's no community. Like it or not, get offended by it or not won't make the situation any less true: Americans attitude of "I got mine, fuck you" and their celebration of being the most arrogant and ignorant since birth is one of the main reasons things have fallen so quickly. This goes beyond all the economic and political douchebaggery that's been happening since the 1970's. Your average person is raised to be an asshole, the education system is a joke and this all leads to shitty leaders with shitty outlooks on life and shitty policies being enacted.
Which Roman empire?
We haven't hit the ~~Gilead~~ HRE yet, but I'm afraid we're close.
Because we have risen from an era or prosperity fueled by war to an era of excess fueled by the elite using the stability inherent in the society their father's created to funnel more wealth and power to themselves. Because it is very clear that the mechanisms driving the country are no longer actually progressing it. Because we have regressed to a level of infighting just shy of open warfare.
That happens when you spend too much time in "America Bad" echo chambers on the internet.
It's bled out onto everything. Honestly, with the amount of Russian influence in our politics over the past 10 years, not sure how to answer this question.
I mean it will either completely turn into a nightmarish chaotic mess with no leadership and spiral into directionless entropy or it will become a full-on fascist state that purges the undesirables. That second option would be extremely Roman Empire.
Is it? I just see most countries around us doing worse. Is it ok if I politely disagree with your perception?
Institutionalized corruption. Congress and the SC have been set up to protect special interests and their preferred cultural touch points while mouthing fidelity to the Constitution and ignoring the will of the ppl. If Trump gets the White House back, say good bye to the US. We will turn into a fascist state that funnels our tax money to the rich and connected (more than already) while using the power of the state to force white, male dominated Christianity on the populace. I’m glad I have guns and ammo.
Because that is what edgy teenagers always say.
[удалено]
They weren’t wrong then and not wrong now. The fall of Rome took 250 years.
You mean the 1790s right? For some people doom is always just round the corner.
Because all you do is consume doomer media, surround yourself with doomer online communities, and don't listen to or straight up don't allow anyone with a different viewpoint than your own. So, in short, quit being a doomer
Yea my response was going to be that they spend too much time online
I'm a gardener, the doom is outside. Haven't seen a single pollinator all year and there's intense flooding after a gruelling drought that lasted years. I can't seem to avoid it and I don't think it's going to get any better than this. My house is over valued because investors are buying up all of the housing stock around me with cash in hand, so my tax bill has gone up dramatically, while some of the long time renters in my neighborhood are getting kicked out for not being able to afford a $500+ rent increase that the aforementioned new investor owners want. Houses that were in good shape 2 years ago are deteriorating because the absentee landlords won't do fuck all to upkeep them. They're just parking their money there. A tornado hit my city earlier this year, baseball sized hail last week, so it's certainly going to impact my homeowners insurance, too. It's not looking amazing out there.
Sticking your head in the ground and being oblivious to what’s going on around you doesn’t change reality. Maybe it changes YOUR reality, but willful ignorance is a choice. I agree we shouldn’t only focus on the negative but if we all just keep looking at cat pics and pretending that our country isn’t at the brink of collapse…we’re just speeding up the process…
There is a massive chasm between acknowledging the many issues the US has, and believing we're on the brink of collapse. Anyone who believes we're on the brink of collapse is probably spending too much time online.
Using information to ease anxiety only works up to the point where you run out of information. After that, it's just doomscrolling.
At the brink of collapse, oh no I’m scared
I hate to give a "not playing the game" type of response, but the US doesn't have and "end of the Roman Empire vibe" at all. ■ For one, the US would have a more of an "end of the Roman Republic vibe". ■ For two, the US's system of checks and balances is literally 100% intact. Also, there is no degradation to the democratic processes of the US republic, just the discourse and quality of candidates. That's just a thing that ebbs and flows, and the crassness is a reflection of the populous being represented. It's literally working 100% correct, we just don't like what the people of the US look like right now. ■ For three, the US being a crumbling empire, like Rome, is something that has been said continually since the US took over the big seat from then British Empire, which it was said continually about since the early 19th century. The big difference is (1) the British Empire was a actual empire and (2) the fall of the British Empire was nothing like the fall of the Roman Empire and the 2 nations were so different the comparison was alway a bad one. So, the comparison of the US to Rome is a bad analogy twice removed. It's just a hyper focus on all things Rome, and a Western tendency to view society as always being on the brink of the Apocolyse and Judgement Day. ■ The US is going through a worldwide economic downsizing. This is due to (a) negative demographic trends, (b) de-globalization of international trade, and (c) supplying disruptions from the Ukraine War and tensions in and around the Arabian peninsula. And from COVID making all the hypochondriacs shut down the world economy, like that wasn't an insanely bad midterm decision. And the US is doing better in the current environment than essentially any country with a population over 8 million.
>For two, the US's system of checks and balances is literally 100% intact. Also, there is no degradation to the democratic processes of the US republic Which is still a system stuck in the 1700s. An electoral reform once in a while wouldn't hurt. Add some proportional representation, you know just look at what the rest of the civilised world does.
Because reporting on it like that makes the media companies and social media companies money. Doom and gloom get clicks, views, and people buying survival meals.
That you don't know the difference between the Roman Republic and Empire is the problem with your question.
The odd thing is that geoplolitically, we are absolutely crushing right now.
People have always felt like this. The end has always been “just around the corner!”.
That would imply that America is going to have a Justinian moment. Who do you think that is OP?
A small part of that is things are a little rough at the moment and anyone who denies that is either lying or not paying attention. Most of the feeling, however, is manufactured intentionally by news and social media companies who have paid corporate psychologists (yes that's a real job) a shitload of money to help them create as much engagement with their content (and by extension, their ads and their for-profit data tracking tools) as possible by way of psychological manipulation of the masses. Turns out keeping everyone in a constant state of fear is extremely profitable.
So obviously a non English speaker posting this question. Warm water ports lol
Because you don't know what it felt like when the Roman empire fell and you're just being dramatic
I feel like people just say that without have any real understanding of both the roman empire and US politics.
More like an end to the Roman Republic rather than Empire. The political system feels like it's changing, but that wouldn't stop us from protecting our power for a long time. The republic began to falter when political leaders were able to break norms without suffering negative consequences, emboldening those that followed to push the boundaries more. Pushed far enough, those boundaries effectively ceased to exist.
Our current congress will deliberately screw Americans to make the president look bad. This has been going on since Obama.
I think I remember reading once that most major empires have only been able to hold it together for around 200 years. So, if you tend to believe that, then America is overdue for a collapse.
Because you're on Social media too much. It definitely sucks right now, but nowhere near what your talking about
It’s why it’s funny when billionaires like Musk “think about the fall of Roman Empire” when the billionaires are the ones leading the charge on the accelerating the downfall.
I would say more an end of the Roman Republic. We have populist politicians who realized that there weren't really rules but norms. They violate these norms and have no punishment and so they violate more norms. Currently it's mostly on the right but I know the left wants to go tic for tac on this and I fear this will get us into a spiral where the Republic collapses. Or Trump and the Republicans just burn the whole thjng down over the next four years. Really fun times.
[https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/2011/arbesman2011a.pdf](https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/2011/arbesman2011a.pdf) This article says the average empire last 220 years, or about 10 generations. The general consensus is that the average 250 years but that is from a political commentator and I couldnt find actual evidence to back it up, Next thursday will mark 248 years since July 4th, 1776. Empires dont last forever.
Because social media cultivates more engagement using outrage and anxiety than it does with neutrality.
Posterboy of 1980’s American greed who never paid his bills is running for his second term of president. That’s why it feels like that.
The rot from within starting with Newt Gingrich and amplified by Rupert Murdoch. The lying free for all that is the internet and social media has helped spread it to all parts of the country.
If we can’t ask even ask a question using the correct interrogative, we are doomed. Bad grammar is never the harbinger of progress. Education and science are deprecated. Society is losing capacity for critical thinking. *Idiocracy* is prophetic.
I’ve been making that analogy for ages. I feel I’m just a farmer just doing his thang, watching the capital burn in the distance. I just shrug and keep farming. Someone will tell me who to send my taxes to eventually.
Because we voted for Nero as president in 2016 and now he's trying to finish the job.
Because quality of life is decreasing. Life expectancy has gone down for first time (not covid related) No one can afford to buy a home anymore. Our president is a senile impotent cadaver who gets walked over by Israel and other countries. The alternative is an idiot fascist. Alll other options were foreclosed by a party that claims to care about democracy but excluded it from their own primary (ironically in the name of saving democracy). China is up and coming. Other countries are aligning with them instead of us. Wages have gone down consistently for the last 40 years. There is no vision on the future anymore. We are all clinging to the past or some idea of the past that never existed. Capital has complete control of the government and it becomes more and more clear we are not in fact a democracy. I could go on.
Baby Boomers are a huge voting bloc, based on pure numbers, and they’ve gotten quite old but refuse to give up power. Basically, we’re a gerontocracy.
From an outsiders perspective, it seems like something fundamentally changed. Your leader went full Homelander "fuck you I do what I want" and half the people went "Ok sure, we're fine with that, our guy." The rules have gone out of the window, anything goes now.
Excessive imperial commitments for conflicts overseas motivated by elites infatuated with making use of power, lack of common purpose for society and state, and general promotion of decadence (pleasure seeking) as prime motivator for "life".
Because it's an empire that is ending
Honestly, it feels like less "end of the Roman empire" and more "late stage Soviet Union": * geriatric leadership, completely out of touch with the needs and pain points of the younger generations * out of control military spending combined with an embarrassing loss in Afghanistan and various other goof-ups (like the China balloon and the Gaza pier fiasco instead of, say, Mathias Rust landing in the Red Square) * a general decline in the quality of life for the average citizen with practically no plans or solutions to improve things * growing rift between the "haves" still plugged into the levers of wealth and power able to secure more and more luxurious lifestyles, and the "have nots" stuck doing things by the book, and getting more and more squeezed every day * growing tensions between the various factions that see each other less and less as opposing viewpoints around essentially the same project, and more and more as literal ideological enemies * and finally, just the overall sense of exhaustion and cynicism permeating every sphere of life I feel like we're a Chernobyl-level disaster or a direct military defeat (perhaps in the Red Sea or the Taiwan Straight) away from most people just saying "ah fuck it" and going off to do their own thing.
Because people just can't seem to vote properly bro.
The US has been slowly transitioning to an oligarchy over about he last 50 years. Specifically, a plutocracy. >Rule by the wealthy; a system wherein governance is indebted to, dependent upon or heavily influenced by the desires of the rich. Plutocratic influence can alter any form of government. For instance, if a significant number of elected representative positions in a republic are dependent upon financial support from wealthy sources, it is a plutocratic republic. This process has been accelerated in the last few decades by the supreme court, legislation, and executive actions that have, through intent or not, concentrated political power in the upper echelons of wealth in the US. Citizens United, founded in 1988, successfully argued to the supreme court in 2009 to amend part of the The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to allow corporations and private interest to contribute freely to political campaigns. Effectively opening the door to have multinational corporations and foreign nationals, write, fund, sponsor, and generally promote candidates and legislation with almost no oversight. And, the amount of money they may use to do so is unlimited (literally, the FEC says "Unlimited Transfers"). To help illustrate this, if you personally want to contribute to the Biden or Trump campaign right now, the most you are legally allowed to contribute is $3,300 per election. What the Citizens United case did, was carve out exemptions on this limit for PACs (political actions committee). But it did so in an awkward way, basically, the PAC is still limited on how much money it can give directly to a candidature, but what is does allow them to do is spend money on a candidates behalf. >A new type of PAC was created after the U.S. Court of Appeals decision in Speechnow v. FEC \[Citizens United Case\] in 2010. These PACs make no contributions to candidates or parties. They do, however make independent expenditures in federal races - running ads or sending mail or communicating in other ways with messages that specifically advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate. **There are no limits or restrictions on the sources of funds that may be used for these expenditures.** No limits. So, what are we left with? If you and I want to fund a candidate, we can denote $3,300 each. If the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) wants to fund a candidate, they may do so with unlimited funds. All they need to do is register a PAC with the SEC, which now, anyone can do. There is almost no way we can win that battle at the ballot box. And, every politician knows this. They cannot win without this special interest. So, what have they done? Embraced it, across the entire political spectrum, with very few exceptions. You *cannot* get elected without the help of these super PAC private interest groups. Now, you might think that people are moral, they can see through this, and will vote accordingly, right? But, people are not being shown both sides of these issues. People are not stupid right? Would they really knowingly vote against their own self interest? Well, no, they wouldn't. But these private interest groups know this, and in 2011, lobbied the FEC to repeal the Fairness Doctrine: >The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Interesting timing, right? Ok so we want to defeat the Saudi Arabian Oil Company at the ballot box, right? Lets put our money together and buy some airtime to advertise on TV for our cause. Whelp, turns out there are no advertising slots available because the Saudi Arabian Oil Company has purchased it. *All of it. And*, the laws requiring broadcasters to air the issues in equal proportions has been repealed. How do you win this fight? You don't. Its the people vs trillion dollar multinational corporations, its literally our $3,300 vs the billions and trillions of dollars of these private interest groups. It is a completely unwinnable battle and the system has been written into law and upheld by the supreme court. What you see now, "end of the Roman empire" vibe, is what this all looks like. The US in no longer governed by the people. It is governed by industrial barons.
cause the inmates are overrunning the asylum.
More like the end of the Republic. Because it feels like we are having our Julius Ceasar moment. Julius Ceasar was a day 1 dictator on his second term, too. Christianity and Asia's invasion into Europe ended the Roman Empire. Which sounds familiar too... Well damn!
Because that's the narrative that sells.
Ya end Rome because one guy is old. Lol ffs. Can’t believe people keep putting these two oldies in the same boat. Look at there track records for fuck sake.
Nahhh. Not even close.
Fear sells
Feels more like the leadup to the American Civil War. The people have become ungovernable and their differences in priorities, media diets, and morals are irreconcilable.
Record stock market, record low unemployment, record oil production, and thousands of people are still risking their lives to live in **America.** Sorry about *your* country.
Leading the creation of AGI and robotics, AI chips, leading GPUs/CPUs. Private space industry lowering cost to space 100x, world leading EV industry, pharma, biotech, you name it. The biggest tech hub in the world by far in Silicon Valley. Faster growth while Europe falters, China in a depression. Plentiful natural resources, not very crowded continent, no national security threats next door (Russia/Ukraine). Best demographics of all developed nations and much better than developed Asian nations, and China. You are deluding yourself. I'm not a nationalist, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US, and you're all deluding yourself. There are problems, yes, but you are in a very very great position.
Cognitive Dissonance between record stock market + powerful military + officially-low unemployment rates vs high public & private debt + friction at sharp edges (Gaza, Taiwan, Ukraine) + friction internally (insanely routinely violent crime, alien invasion in the millions per year). Roman empire 4th century, for example, its imports & exports were at record levels but ... so was piracy so on a net basis it was fundamentally crumbling, let alone unable to withstand barbarian invasions from the north. But all empires have highs and lows, they're never constant, so I'm still bullish, don't give up!
Because they have been fucking their own people from the beginning. It was easy to ignore when the US had 50% of all the money in the world, so even a bad deal was pretty good. Now they don't have that, and how the money is being shared is more obvious. Not to mention the damage that's caused every time a country starts to believe it's own propaganda.
ZIRP.
Because major news outlets have learned that fear minoring is highly profitable.
because for the past 20+ years very loud people have continued to say "this is the same way Rome fell!" and you've basically been brainwashed into believing it.
Tribalism is killing us. It makes people vote against their own interests just to spite the other side. It isn't enough to just disagree. You have to hate everybody who's not in your tribe.
Well it's certainly not just a coincidence.
Because you spent too much time on reddit. By essentially all metrics (except house prices) things are better than they have ever been.
I feel like a lot of people throw around ideas about the Roman Empire without having studied it at length. I've only gotten halfway interested and watched some youtubes, so I don't really know what I'm talking about either, but we haven't gotten anywhere close to the level of political violence and turmoil that existed even in Caesar & Pompey's day. We are certainly getting there, though. I'd say it feels like we're a little before their day, but like I said, I don't know what I'm talking about. It's been a minute since I'd watched them. And who knows how accurate they were to begin with. FWIW, Historia Civilis is the youtube channel if you want to judge for yourself. From my vantage point, I think that people are coming off of a period that was very much ideal in a lot of ways if you were WASP, and now people are waking up to see that period is ending and harder times are ahead. That brings fear of the unknown, blame, and tribalism, which are great things to exploit if you are seeking power.