I choose to believe that we are not. The true fight for our democracy by the working/middle class hasn't even started yet. Some think it won't. I choose to believe that good will again triumph and life is roller coaster of good and bad.
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Will it start any time soon? It's only going to get harder and harder to resist, from now on.
The true fight for our democracy by the working/middle class hasn't even started yet.
Seems like we'll need to form our own political party if we want any representation because we're certainly not getting it from either one of these two dominate parties.
Count me the fuck in. I'll grab my pitchfork.
One definition of a collapse is a sudden drastic reduction in the complexity of a thing.
I'm not sure whether we're going to have a societal collapse or a slow decline, but either way the US is in a downward spiral. I think Trump increases the likelihood of us going into the collapse trajectory.
All that said, on the other side of a collapse, there is some room for hope. The incendiary portion of the collapse will definitely suck to live through (if you're lucky enough to do so), but our country could probably use some simplification long-term because the people within it largely cannot navigate a country this byzantine. A lot of this country's systems are too complex for an average person to understand let alone administer.
Most of these complexities were probably birthed via intentional decisions by the system creators, and others were a product of unintended consequences. I think the gap in education between our commoners and "the elite" -- to borrow a tired trope -- also played a part here.
No matter how we arrived at this point, I don't think the current population can actually operate these systems anymore and long-term one way or another our people require a drastic reduction in the complexity of our society.
There is another path in which the United States invests more in education and scales up the average intelligence of its citizens so that they can handle the complexity of modern life, understand nuance, do research, and create better policy....but at this point I think we're frankly too far fucked to ever go down that path.
The US has had presidents who were literally more evil than Mr. Burns.
They haven't been a real democracy (where the will of the majority influences policy) in decades, if ever.
Climate change is still the thing that's most likely to fuck us all, and it's not like the US were actually helpful in that regard under Democratic leadership.
In terms of seeing more credible people take office that has an honest mind in what's best for the country and not for themselves or their party. I say we certainly are likely past the point of no return. That wall was cracked when Reagan took presidency and then the wall was just demolished just by one Trump term.
So now we're going to be expected to see all sorts of crazy people, just jumping at the bit, for their shot to take some sort of office, despite having had no credibly solid background of politics or understanding in managing the big office. Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California, Kane (wrestler) became mayor of a county, Dr.Oz is now in a political position after scarily coming close to a senate position. It's just maddening all around.
We've been experiencing numerous government shutdowns or coming close to another government shutdown because all politicians collectively could not get their shit together. If we're past the point of no return, about whether America has any credible influence and sincere posture on the rest of the world. Yes, it is the point of no return and it'll take many generations to fix. It won't be this one though.
Nobody can predict the future. That being said, I am no longer optimistic.
I guess we'll see.
Maybe. US history is full of crazy fucked up shit that the nation has made its way through thus far. This kind of situation hasn't really happened in the US before though, and historically these kinds of situations do not work out well. We are past the point of no return in that the status quo Washington Consensus or whatever you want to call the previous era is gone now, whatever is coming is something new and different and the US role and position in the world are never going back to what they were before. Really I would say this process started with Bush II but there is no reversing it now that Trump has won a convincing electoral victory. Whether we're past the point of no return for the US constitutional order isn't really clear yet but it's not looking good.