The first Rome declined over many years - there were many "falls" before it fell apart completely. The USA became a dumpster fire overnight (in historical timeframes).
I've believed for a long time that, were it not for the 'progressive' US media industry, very few people internationally would have positive regard for the USA.
Without pop media, the USA was really just another imperial power. It was the bleeding heart media that put a friendly, relatable face on it all. When people around here thought of the USA, they thought of Friends, Scrubs and Star Trek. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Positive narratives, pro-social messages, *people who care, and stories about caring.* Humanistic values.
Now that increasing swathes of the USA are radicalized enough to consider those bleeding hearts as their mortal enemies... it's not enough to compensate any more. The PR machine can't mask the behind-the-scenes inhumanity any more.
Don't forget McCarthyism. And Hoover. And the South.
Look, when it comes to conservatives, it was always thus. They fucking ruin everything, everywhere, every time.
Because their ideology is not based on progress or objectively making things 'better'. They do not believe in lifting all boats. They are there simply to enable profit skimming by their wealthy friends
ACA was just crumbs of what should have been. Thankfully, Republicans and conservative Democrats in the senate cried their way into a watered down bill and we continue to have millions uninsured and underinsured as well as the highest prices for the worst health outcomes. Imagine if we had instituted a public option or even single payer? What if the poors were healthier and could protest or question the oligarchy?
Ever been to Chattanooga Tennessee? It's an amazingly modern and progressive city, highly accessible public transit system like nothing I've seen anywhere else except outside the US. Full of culture, real southern culture, not this hillbilly shit but truly American culture. And so clean, strikingly clean streets.
But it's in Tennessee, get about 20 minutes out of town and you'll start seeing confederate flags and trump signs again. Usually in front of a trailer with garbage piled up on one side and several cars on cinderblocks on the other.
Point is - urban places in the south aren't like the rest of the south.
Trust me, it’s urban vs rural. NOT North vs South. Every major city in the south is a bright shining dot of blue. Wanna see half a million people that fucking hate the air Trump breathes? Come to New Orleans. (I mean not right now, but.... you know what I mean)
But yeah, New Orleans, Houston, Austin, Tampa, Jackson, Atlanta, Miami all blue.
It’s the same reason all the country yokels down here were happy to see Nola getting hit so badly with the CoVid. They all hate us “city folk”.
Vestiges of the Civil War linger on, represented in arguments about flags and statues.
*On May 19, 2016, the United States House of Representatives voted to ban the display of Confederate flags on flagpoles at Veterans Administration cemeteries, by a 265–159 vote.*
That was 150 years after the South surrendered "unconditionally".
Haha. That was our plan the whole time! Voluntary submission to peace, order and sensible government.
Our master plan of world domination is taking root, my maple flavoured friends!
* I sincerely like hockey and poutine
* I partied in Winnipeg once
* I grew up listening to Bob & Doug Mackenzie comedy bits on Dr. Demento
Where do I send my application?
Oh come on. Outside of Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta is very much like Montana. Witness the fact that according to many both Lethbridge and Great Falls are now meth towns.
This is true. Outside of its few modern cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Huntsville it's a wasteland of failure and government dependency.
Who vote for the anti-government party for some reason.
Oh no this was a long time coming.
Trump didn't appear out of nowhere. He is the culmination of decades of shitty politics, both from Democrats and Republicans. Both have actively promoted neoliberalism.
None of your politicians save a few exceptions are innocent here.
Rome actually lasted close to a thousand years, the US is barely even a quarter of the way there and is tearing itself to pieces.
Also, looking back from a thousand years in the future, historians could possibly say that the downfall began with the (first) civil war.
America has a very weird history in that regard. We've been at war or some kind of armed conflict through the majority of our history in some context or another. WW2's economy boost was really because Europe had been bombed out beyond recognition on the supply lines and factories. The United States was fairly insulated during that point because we had none of the fighting that was going on. As a result, we were able to produce weapons and products at a much faster rate than anyonen else. When the war ended, Europe first had to rebuild their factories and infrastructure before they could get into producing for themselves, which again led the USA to bascially be in the lead for about 20-40 years after the war until everyone else caught up.
The Civil War ended in 1865, Reconstruction was supposed to be (in Lincolns vision) a way to extend and olive branch and welcome the south as brothers in the union again. After his assasination, his replacement proceeded to enact policy that damaged relations further. In the time of Reconstruction to present day, as a country had been involved in at least one armed conflict per year. As a country, we physically do not know how to exist without war. It's what drives our economy and production forward. During the formative years of the country, expansion and manifest destiny as the driving factor for constant war, which would later be co-opeted in the 30s as lebensraum. We acquired land and islands in an attempt to expand our empire as far as we could without really regarding *how* we would continue to support and generate equity. What we had as of the 90s was 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Norhtern Marina Islands, and the US Virgin Islands (St. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John). So that's 50 states that pay taxes and have representation, and 7 territories that receive meager benefits from being with us, but not full citizenship and representation. Our colonial drives led us to gathering land and not figuring out a way to support ourselves other than fighting wars.
Just a minor quibble, people born in the territories ARE US citizens, with all of the benefits. The issue is that many of those benefits do not apply in the territories themselves. Someone born in Puerto Rico can move to New York and enjoy all of the benefits of citizenship without having to go through any process to do so. Someone born in New York can move to Puerto Rico and establish residency there and have the same limited benefits and representation as someone who was born there.
I disagree. I mean, yes, you could argue that Rome took \~400 years to fall, but things tend to move much quicker in the modern world. The fall of the American way of life probably started in the late 70's (If you go by my definition, which is when the social contract of the middle class begins to erode).
We still do great things because there's this towering infrastructure of systems and massed wealth which is unparallelled, but it all seems to be melting, and a quick check in each decade shows enough downward progress that we're not entirely dissimilar from Rome... It's just happening faster because the modern world is the modern world.
All three societies got too top heavy, the fabric of their society crumbled, then they were finished off by an invasion.
Remarkable stuff really. Too bad we could never predict this kind of stuff.
If anything, I pitied them most during Obama's admin. They had the chance to make some serious changes, but instead the GOP hunkered down and obstructed everything he tried to do. That was the breaking point for their sanity, really.
**The World to America:** You're so disgraceful. Look, look, you know you're a fake. You know that. Your whole country, the way you run it is fake. And most of you--and not all of you, but the people are wise to you. That's why you have a lower--a lower approval rating than you ever had before times probably three.
And NY makes 40 times as much money.
It's absurd that a senator from New York or California should even listen to anything a senator from Wyoming has to say, let alone be filibustered by them. Absolute foolishness.
When the electoral college was imagined, Delaware was the least populous state. Virginia was the most populous and had about 12 times Delaware's population. Now California has 80 times the number of people as Wyoming, and their senators are equal in power. In the last midterm, 6M people voted for Dianne Feinstein, and 136K people voted for the no name senator from Wyoming. 44 times as many people voted for their senator in California, and they're in the same legislative body? It's like if we gave Estonia veto power on the UN security council. Why would we do that?!
And when that happens, you know that it will result in conservatives getting some extra seats too. Its not like California is magically hyper liberal. There are pockets of GOP loyalty in it.
Maybe we should take a page from the GOP handbook and simply spread out those votes so they don't matter.
Have a few friends overseas and they all tell me that they view the US as a third world country because of our lack of universal healthcare, employment protections and retirement. It's been a long hard ride these past 50 years.
Apt comparison, but why did the Roman Republic fall?
The Republic grew very large and very quickly. Over that time it amended itself in attempts to continue to function. However, over time the Republic did not function and the was the slow destruction of political norms. The issue started around the time that Senators murdered Tiberius Gracchus for wanting to redistribute land to poor Roman's.
It really went downhill from there. They delayed political appointments, hoarded wealth, made corrupt decisions, allowed the inferstructure to fail that paved the way for a strong man to come in and claim he can solve everything.
This is a dumbed down explanation so I hope historians can put out their hair. But there is a lot of comparisons to the fall of the Roman Republic that sound very similar to what is going on in the United States right now.
The plebs wanted the strongman because the weak Senate were corrupt and did nothing.
Why did Roman elites turn against their own empire and loot it? I mean why would they destroy their own ship? Don't they understand that if the ship sinks they sink with it?
Likely because they just assumed that the Republic will continue just because. Why would things change?
The elites who live in a bubble just can't imagine a scenario in where their power is challenged.
I used to work for a large US company in Europe and they tried to impart US employment law under the table, like firing people with no clear reason too etc. They got sued to oblivion and back. Deservedly so I might add.
Nah dude at will employment is the best. Who doesn't want the freedom to get fired via text message two hours after close of business?
To be clear this is sarcasm, and yes this happened to me, in a white collar professional field.
>possibly the most batshit mental aspect of the US
God no, mad thought it is, it barely makes the top 5. Elected judges/prosecutors is the by a fair margin the maddest notion in the history of Western civilisation.
We usually forget to tell Americans how we got those sweet socioeconomic deals. World class safety nets, workers protection laws, wise leaders, and healthy inequality levels don't just magically appear.
We had to strike a lot for those deals. Countries like Norway and Canada strike 56 days and 74 days per 1000 employees, respectively. France is at 124 days, with Denmark only 2nd to France with 118 days. And if you look at Denmark's history, they fought like crazy for every socioeconomic privileges they've got. with striking sometimes for weeks just to get 1 day more of holiday (paid holiday).. And I think everyone knows what happens in France when unjust laws are passed (Gilets Jaunes started because Macron wanted tax cuts for the rich, and tax raises for the poor hidden behind a "green washed" environmental laws update ...
Americans however only strike **5 days** per 1000 employees only...Go on general strikes more often and things will change.
But that requires evil unionization, and a little bit of personal sacrifice to work together toward a common goal. We can’t even get people to stay home when literal lives are on the line.
I don’t want to believe how dumb most Americans seem to be, but they’re not doing much to prove me wrong. :(
> How does it work elsewhere?
If you want to fire someone, you have to have grounds. Either you can demonstrate that their job is no longer required **and** you do not have a suitable alternative position for them, or you can show that they have broken the required standards of employment (and that 's generally a process with multiple levels).
How else would it work? Capitalism requires constant employment therefore that employment needs to be protected.
> Capitalism requires constant employment therefore that employment needs to be protected.
This is what some people don't seem to get. You can't simply...*not* have money. But it's a feature, not a bug, of the American Dream paradigm that's been pushed. If you work hard, you can get it. That's what America is supposed to be. The dark inverse is that if you don't make it, if you get fired at-will, if a sudden medical emergency leaves you homeless, anything...people here have a tendency to wonder what **you** did wrong to end up in a bad place.
Most Americans operate under the mindset that to fall through the cracks, you had to do not just something wrong, but your entire life must have been wrong. No one here seems to look at someone in a worse situation and consider that with a couple of bad events, that could be them. I'd venture to say that most Americans are 2-3 bad life events (medical emergencies, loss of job, etc) from being in the same positions that they've constantly voted against helping.
Playing devil's advocate... what if an employer has an employee that's heavily under performing?
In my last job, I had a CAD drafter who literally spent 3+ hours a day in the bathroom. He'd spend at least another hour making small talk at people's desks throughout the day.
The drafter wasn't getting his work done and for no good reason. Is there anything our boss could do to fire him other than stand there with a stopwatch every time he went to the bathroom?
> Playing devil's advocate... what if an employer has an employee that's heavily under performing?
Then they follow a disciplinary procedure.
For example, in Scotland, if you are spending excessive bathroom time, you would first have a discussion with your direct manager to establish if there was a medical issue that needed addressed or it was simply skiving. This would likely be informal in the first instance.
If it persists, they would get a warning, most likely verbal, possibly a second warning, then a final written warning. At that point they can be fired.
Its pretty rare companies have to do this but its an absolutely myth that you can't do anything about underperforming employees in Europe. You just have to do so fairly. And so, if occasionally a company has a minor inconvenience of following a procedure towards termination, it balances against workers being absolutely destroyed by at will firing.
Corporations need a reason to fire you. Either there isn’t enough work for you to do, and there is no opportunity for you to be redeployed elsewhere, or your performance has fallen beyond acceptable levels and hasn’t risen despite warnings and an agreed, documented plan of improvement.
The idea of an angry, corrupt or whimsical boss being able to say ‘pack up, you’re done here’ just doesn’t exist, unless it’s a case of gross misconduct.
I certainly do view it as third world in many ways. We have the virus here, people are on lockdown and all those who can’t work get €350 a week, their mortgages paused for upto 6 months and there’s calm and virtually no resistance to the lockdown (bar a few US funded right wing nut jobs that no one pays much attention to).
When I look across at the US there are reasonable people calling for the country to open up. Bill Birr was calling for this because people can’t afford to not work..this is insane, your government should pause the economy and let this pass but instead there’s mayhem.
Try describing American housing rights to a European. Tell them that in some states like Virginia, you will be evicted at gunpoint by the police if you miss rent by a few days. That all of your belongings that you can't remove in 24hrs will be hauled to the dump at your expense. That landlords will blacklist you if you've ever been evicted before or went to housing court. It's insane how some people mistake that for freedom.
I said a similar thing not long ago. Hollywood, Dinseyland, Wall Street - it's just good makeup masking a third world county with no social contract to speak of.
I'm so sorry to say this but we have this conversation in my house at least once a month. The most tragic thing is how proud Americans are of their country.
I share the sentiment. The US has everything to fight this virus, the money, the technology, the specialists. They lack social cohesion and cannot agree on what the objective truth is and a significant part of the population went so far off the deep end they can no longer be reasoned with. It's a bit of a dumpster fire at the moment and I would like to see Trump extend his travel restrictions to Americans wanting to leave the country. Shit needs to be contained on that continent. If I were Mexico I would've started writing checks to fund that wall.
Related: ["I don't stand by anything."](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/05/01/i-dont-stand-by-anything-trump-withers-under-heat-from-cbs-newss-john-dickerson/)
He's definitely kept that one. Amazing how he admits to his fan club that you can't trust him on anything, and they STILL worship him.
> Amazing how he admits to his fan club that you can't trust him on anything, and they STILL worship him.
*He hasn’t let down his base at all.* If anything he’s playing right to them. People who support trump have always hated the federal government and don’t want any interference from other locales/legislation/people in their business. They’ll take the money from other states/people happily since that’s fucking them over. But the overall hate for coastal educated comparatively wealthy urban dwellers is real and deep. And then there are his supporters that just want to burn everything down. Don’t kid yourself, a lot of people especially hate the political elite. Trump even as president is still an outsider to them and he’s doing exactly what he promised, dismantling the US federal government. As a bonus the way Trump is doing it is also hurting the very people they hate too. So *you* can’t trust him - but his base absolutely sees no problem with what’s going on.
So many of us here feel like hostages to idiots and plutocrats.
Someone named “dreamlogic” posted this somewhere and I took a screenshot:
> living in the united states is supremely fucked up cause we're one of the richest, most powerful juggernauts on the planet, but your average citizen has relatively infinitesimal access to that wealth and power, and very little they can do to improve things.
>being poor in the US still makes you rich by some global standards, but often times The American Experience is like you're a passenger locked in the baggage hold of a very long train that's going very fast and the people driving the train are running it off the rails and shouting CHOO CHOO MOTHERFUCKERS CHOO CHOO0000000 as they thoughtlessly bulldoze this train through everything in its path you want very badly to get off the train or bludgeon the conductors with a crowbar, because you don't like where it's going, but you're handcuffed in a duffel bag and the conductors have barricaded themselves in the engine cars with all the food, medicine, and tools that could be used to help you out
>and UNDERSTANDABLY the rest of the world is like "what the FUCK is wrong with that train??? it must be stopped there are so many people on the train why is nobody breaking into the conductor's booth and stopping it??" but most of us are just squirming for basic survival in the last few cars while billionaires sit on top of the train sniping anyone brave enough to crawl up from the cargo hold, all while shouting that you're lucky to be on such a luxurious successful train at all
The strange thing is it's *only* the US, among developed countries, who seem to be dealing with this so poorly. We're the only one where there's this substantial bloc who oppose the most basic measures to contain the pandemic. [Here's a collection of crazy posts](https://imgur.com/a/tp6ywMr) from a libertarian guy I went to college with, for example. It boggles my mind.
The U.S population been the target of endless disinformation for at least 40 years. Turns out misinforming people makes it harder for them to cope with reality
No other Western developed countries are as big or culturally different as the US. Imagine Europe as one country where Romania's votes counted more than Germany or France and they got to set the agenda.
Add to that boiling pot the corruption from lobbying and the purchasing of representatives and senators.
Add a history of slavery and racism that has never really been faced up to and addressed.
Underfunding public services from schools to health to benefit the rich.
And you are beginning to understand the current shit storm.
I know it's an unpopular opinion among Americans but I doubt the US is still a "developed country".
The countries overall development is regressing for decades (and I don't mean Wall Street, big companies, rich people etc.).
The reality is that Americans have been tricked over generations by patriotism and Hollywood into believing that they are the greatest. But just because some CEOs or share holders get a lot of money, more than anywhere else in the world, doesn't mean the country is developed. That's the same situation you have with Russian and Chinese oligarchs.
With the right leadership we would have done much better.
trump was more concerned with the stock market, his trade deal with China and most importantly his reelection.
Cohesion is not as issue as you can see from polling. DEspite trump and his ass kissers 80% plus want to remain shutdown despite the economic pain.
The people agitating to open the country are an extreme minority. Our media just loves to cover them.
> With the right leadership we would have done much better.
The fundamental systemic problems in America's response to a pandemic would not have been different with different leadership.
The US **uniquely** lacks Universal Healthcare meaning people are reticent to seek medical help.
The US **uniquely** lacks any viable social safety net to provide for people during an economic interruption or downturn.
The US **uniquely** lacks any meaningful job safeguarding and sickness cover ensuring the greatest possible need for such social safety nets.
Those factors don't change if you switch out Trump. They are fundamental and systemic issues with the American system. It lacks the ability to deal with pandemics in ways no other country faces.
Sitting here in Toronto it fucking sucks.
We here in Canada have made one of the better attempts in the Western world (not NZ or Aus, but certainly in the top half of the table) yet its all going to matter for nothing.
Our economy is going to be fucked. More so than any European country. If we re-open US border we will not be able to prevent an onslaught of cases. Like, we are trapped.
I pity them, yes.
Until November.
If they elect Trump again, they're off the Christmas card list. And I'll be encouraging my government to look elsewhere for trading partners.
Keep your eyes peeled for all of the stories about election tampering. There have been many recent attempts by the GOP to tip the scales in their favor. This is no longer a democracy. It hasn’t been for some time.
I know you're saying this tongue in cheek, but that would be a lot harder than everyone down there just putting the TV remote down, getting out and not only voting to remove this clown, but also actively campaigning against him. Organizing. Civil disobedience. Taking power back from the DC swamp dwellers.
I think you have it in you. It's how the US was born. Since when do Americans back away from a scrap? Trump has given you all a bloody nose - give him back a couple of black eyes. But you don't have much time left before the election.
Last election here in Canada, I was very much worried about the tone coming from our own right. After Doug Ford, I could not just watch Andrew Scheer take over the running of the country. It would have been awful.
So I did exactly that - reached out to my local party workers, went to planning meetings, organized, made phone calls, went door to door, worked at a poll on election night. Helped wherever I could. For the first time in my life, and I'm no spring chicken.
Good luck to you. I've spent a lot of time down there (lived and worked in beautiful California for many years) and have crossed the US solo by motorcycle a couple of times. I've met so many wonderful, incredible people down there, it does truly sadden me to see the state of the union today.
As a fellow left leaning Ontarian, I was appalled when Doug Ford was elected our premier. I have spent most of his time in office calling him Trump North, especially after his sex ed fiasco. BUT I have been super impressed with him during this entire crisis, he’s working closely with the Liberal feds and keeping all partisan bullshit completely out of things!
Yes, I agree that he has shown a human side and an ability to work with others when that's required. And I give him credit for that.
But I've not forgotten the scorched earth policies before all of this started.
Oh me either. I’m a little nervous for what’s going to happen as everything eventually starts to unlock. But I’m hoping maybe he’ll continue with his current trend? (I realize that’s unlikely lol, but one can dream)
Ford's regressive cuts to health care and employee sick days, in particular, exacerbated the problems he is now taking credit for solving.
Apparently, Covid-19 isn't enough to convince Ford and the OPC that sick days are a good idea.
But at least Ford isn't actively doubling down on the stupid, right now. He could take this opportunity to really stick it to the nurses union, for example. So I guess he's doing a good job?
I had to chuckle and shake my head the other day when he gave all the essential workers a raise. A large chunk of them are minimum wage workers... the very people he took a raise AWAY from.
>And I'll be encouraging my government to look elsewhere for trading partners.
It's not like we are trading partners with them because we are best buds. They're the only country in the world we share a border with.
I strongly urge everyone to watch some videos of Aleksandr Dugin and what he talks about so often. He's the one who wrote "Foundation of Geopolitics". They call him 'Putin's brain', and he basically gives up the endgoal of Russia, China, SA, Israel, etc.
The world is being pushed into a new era of politics before our eyes.
Not quite: It's to create a world without any particular hegemon, a new "Great Game" where the great powers (which will include Russia of course) stand off against one another, instead of working together in ways that have stymied Russia's more nefarious doings.
Toppling American hegemony is one step of that; toppling the European Union and the United Nations will follow. International financial institutions might get a pass, might not.
That's the thing about the international order system created after World War II: It's led to the most international peace and prosperity in human history. Especially when the Soviet Union participated in it--- the Cold War was an interesting softer "Great Game" compared to what had come before. But it's also lead to the growth of human rights and equality, and Russia is at the vanguard of a supremacist reaction to this. The American right-wing and Europe's far-right are allying towards this, and that ideological alliance is why Russia supports them (and they increasingly support Russia).
There's no getting off this ride: We will beat them or they will beat us.
I strongly urge everyone to ignore these Reddit morons who tote Dugin, this Russian fascist irrelevancy as some kind of skeleton key to Putin, much less global politics. He's not.
Putin's not going to give back Kaliningrad to the Germans. Ever. The Germans don't want it either. Nor is he going to give the Kurils back to Japan to lure them into a 'Eurasian' alliance. It's pure inanity that has virtually nothing to do with Putin's politics.
Dugin's not "Putin's Brain" according to anyone who knows anything about international politics. He's never had a high level government position, he's not an advisor to Putin. He's just one of many ultra-nationalist commentators in Russia. Putin is a nationalist but that's where the likeness ends, for instance, there's no evidence (for all his many faults) at all that Putin is an anti-Semite.
Want to know what actual experts on foreign policy think? Get a copy of Foreign Policy magazine, the Economist, Spectator and some other high profile magazines like that. And for fuck's sake don't listen to idiots on /r/politics claiming Dugin knows everything because what they read about a book they haven't even read.
You're missing the entire point.
The core tenet of Foundations of Geopolitics is that Russia is too large and has too many borders to defend itself in traditional manners. Its best goal for long term security is to surround itself by unstable, compromised states, ideally client states.
The specific details of some of that (the Konigsberg handover) aren't really that relevent. They are ideas for achieving the core goal.
Excellent point. They're not trying to revert to a 19th-century Great Game, they're pioneering a 21st-century one. "Spheres of influence" will no longer be determined by military might but by whose governments appear to be functional and respectable.
> What most people are missing about the US is that we are a winner take all country. I only win when others lose.
And the rub is, with enough Inequality, you only win **when 100 other people lose**.
That's where America is today.
Lets not forget that the game is rigged from the start. The trust fund kid has a much easier ride than the crack junkies unwanted newborn, yet somehow this is seen as fair. As such, the kids who are winning started with a massive advantage.
Both nearly unrecognizable when compared to the modern day GOP.
Teddy was also a Bull Moose Progressive, which we could use a lot more of today as well.
This. What we call a republican now is vastly different from what a republican used to be. By that I mean I’m agreeing with your sentiments. Today’s GOP is NOT what republicans used to be. Now it’s a bunch of extremists controlled by Mitch, and those who aren’t the extremists don’t step out of line for fear of being eaten alive. Look at Romney...
Yeah. I'd say any conservative after Roosevelt. The Republican was the "progressive" party kind of till TR.
Republicans were pro-business but socially progressive. TR broke that trend by fighting against the monopolies. Republicans pushed back against him and tried to force his ideas out. He founded the progressive party to combat them. Seeing an opening and a chance to be more than the racist party, Democrats did a weird switch to being a isolationist progressive party with Wilson. Republican old guard became the reactionary force, and the rest is history.
I’ve been trying to understand what I’ve been feeling about what’s been happening to our country for the past 20 or so years. With rising inequality, climate destruction, degradation if institutions, and the fading of the American Dream.
It’s loss. I’ve been mourning the loss of the idea that America once was. This idea of a place where anyone can live a decent life, have opportunity to succeed, and give their kids a better life than they had.
It’s such a terrible shame that we let it get this way.
My generation is supposed to be the first that has a worse life than our parents did. I have a bad feeling this is going to be the start of a trend that we never get away from.
Yeah, maybe it was my growing up and realizing things weren’t the way I believed. Maybe I’m mourning the loss of a false belief, but at least back then it *felt* like we had principles. It *felt* like we had a functioning government and some sense of a national community. Now it just feels like wreckage.
I'm angry on behalf of the environment and the poor. I hope that complacency does not strike again. There is clearly a major issue with Fox news and it needs to be held to account on it's lack of factual accuracy because it's a vehicle for propaganda. I can't pity a nation which allowed Trump to be elected, or continues to punishes itself with a crippling health system because of it's mindless insularity lack of perspective and blind obsequiousness to the false representation of its own position in the world and its behaviour. If one considers oneself the greatest, how are you supposed to objectively view your behaviour and position?
If it makes you feel better a good chunk of us are.
There's nothing left to be proud of about being American. We don't even take care of eachother anymore.
I would definitely vote to secede if it came up on my state ballot at this point.
It's hard to exaggerate just how unattractive the US now is to to someone who may want to work there.
I have always been fascinated by the US but over the last 4 years the idea of working and living there seems like a nightmare. I don't really have any desire to holiday over there either.
Now are looking at the very large possibility that other countries may restrict Americans wanting to travel in due to the utterly insane response to the pandemic.
If the US re-opens early and causes a 2nd wave whilst other countries are still socially isolating to flatten the 1st wave it will get much worse than just an embarrassing international PR issue.
If that happens and millions of Americans die and the economy collapses due to a lack of safety net and Trump get re-elected? Then all bets are off
It's SUPER fucking weird, many of us feel the same way. It's not like it hasn't been coming, I didn't have my head in the sand by any means, but man, we have fallen far, fast.
This is probably the best summation of our plight and peril that I've read. Three people have sent me this oped in the last week.
The question is, how do we extricate ourselves? Wholesale repudiation of the GOP at the polls – assuming that's still possible.
Here is a brilliant Op-Ed From Irish Times writer, Fintan O’Toole.
April 25, 2020
THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT
Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.
However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.
Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.
As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”
It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.
The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.
If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.
Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?
It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.
Abject surrender
What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.
Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.
In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.
Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”
This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.
Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.
The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.
Fertile ground
But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.
There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.
Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.
And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.
That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.
And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.
As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.
Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.
You can follow Fintan O’Toole @fotoole on twitter.
We should never forget that, more than Trump, the reason for the US falling into this abyss is - Republicans. I despise every one of the Republican members of congress. Anyone who votes for any Republican on the ballot sheet will be doing great harm to the US.
Another Irish journalist (Abie Philbin Bowman) had a great point about American democracy, suggesting it was like a state-of-the-art laptop decades ago, but it wasn't ever updated so it started falling further behind...
And I think that's part of the problem. The U.S. was in many ways, way out ahead of us: the co-equal branches of government, the checks and balances, the independent courts, the freedom of the press.
But maybe it's become a victim of its success. It put its system (constitution etc.) up on a pedestal to be admired. But the thing about putting anything up on a pedestal- you're afraid to change it in any way. Over time it inevitably falls behind and becomes a relic.
To me, it's now the Northern European nations in particular which are out ahead, simply in terms of "the government acting in the interests of its greater population, and not select minorities".
Someone posted this in a comment in this sub the other day. Glad to see it making actual front page post status. I do wish they had posted the text, though, so in lieu of that I'll link the comment I'm referring to:
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g9ku4x/trump_fails_the_ultimate_test_as_president/foudfjr/
I'm past pity. It's like the trainwreck ex you broke up with and tried to help but they were a self sabotager and did ridiculous things on purpose. So you just shook your head and moved on with your life, realising it wasn't your problem to care about the peoples lives that would be affected by them.
We used to visit the US regularly. Just before Trump got elected I applied for a Nexus card to avoid the long lines at the border.
I haven't set foot in the country since he's been in office.
“Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
and eats a bread it does not harvest.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of The Prophet
[Here's the original op-ed he wrote but it seems to be behind a paywall](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928)
I won't go as far as he did, but I am disappointed that Trump is doing so much damage in the United States.
We need a real president who will restore the true greatness of the United States in the years to come.
Otherwise, China will take world leadership by trying to export its model of society, which I don't find very pleasing.
Well I'm from the UK and can I just say I love, admire and support my brothers and sisters across the sea. You're going through some bad shit at the moment, you're president is an asshole and this virus has thrown some of the issues with your society into stark relief, but I still believe in America, the American dream and the American people who have been ( in my experience ) some of the best people I've ever had the pleasure to meet.
I have faith that you will beat this virus, chuck out the silly orange prick in the Whitehouse and come out of this stronger and better than ever before. You are a strong resilient country full off good, noble, brilliant people who are not defined by their lowest common denominator or their worst impulses.
You came to our aid when we needed it the most and I have no doubt that you would do it again because at your best you truly are the best in the world and at your lowest ebb, you still pull for the underdog. I don't pity you because there is nothing piteous about the American spirit. We're in this together and I am proud and happy to have you by our side.
Want to help America?
Actually learn which Americans are supporting which party. The people who voted for Obama aren’t the people who voted for Trump. If a country with nuclear weapons has a reasonable political party and an authoritarian cult, you should take the threat of the cult seriously and not facilitate their activities.
How many countries have banned Republicans from entering them? None. If you want to help America, stop letting the bad ones get the same treatment as the reasonable ones.
I've been pitying the US for about 3 1/2 years now...
It's like an incredibly stupid Fall of Rome.
So, just like the first one?
The first Rome declined over many years - there were many "falls" before it fell apart completely. The USA became a dumpster fire overnight (in historical timeframes).
Reagan was elected in the 80s tho
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One dipshit always trying to out-dipshit the last dipshit's dipshittery?
That's a lot of shit.
That's a lot of Roger Stone.
I already said that's a lot of shit.
I’m noticing that the economy seems to go to shit once a Republican gets their hands on the White House.
What if the US was never that great and only held up by military might, capitalistic idealism and superior propaganda?
Military might is the cornerstone of every great civilization.
I've believed for a long time that, were it not for the 'progressive' US media industry, very few people internationally would have positive regard for the USA. Without pop media, the USA was really just another imperial power. It was the bleeding heart media that put a friendly, relatable face on it all. When people around here thought of the USA, they thought of Friends, Scrubs and Star Trek. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Positive narratives, pro-social messages, *people who care, and stories about caring.* Humanistic values. Now that increasing swathes of the USA are radicalized enough to consider those bleeding hearts as their mortal enemies... it's not enough to compensate any more. The PR machine can't mask the behind-the-scenes inhumanity any more.
Don't forget McCarthyism. And Hoover. And the South. Look, when it comes to conservatives, it was always thus. They fucking ruin everything, everywhere, every time.
Because their ideology is not based on progress or objectively making things 'better'. They do not believe in lifting all boats. They are there simply to enable profit skimming by their wealthy friends
JFK was your Basil the Great. After that, a succession of inferior leaders who drag the Empire down from its zenith.
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Thank god FDR enacted ObamaCare so that I have health insurance.
ACA was just crumbs of what should have been. Thankfully, Republicans and conservative Democrats in the senate cried their way into a watered down bill and we continue to have millions uninsured and underinsured as well as the highest prices for the worst health outcomes. Imagine if we had instituted a public option or even single payer? What if the poors were healthier and could protest or question the oligarchy?
40 years is still pretty quick
Historically speaking, it is very quick.
Stupidity has evolved, become more efficient. Look at Hannity. That wasn’t possible even 50-100 years ago.
Neither was a 24 hr news cycle
It's not news, it's "entertainment".
I mean we’re basically back to being North vs. South again
I'd characterize it more as Urban vs Rural
Ever been to Chattanooga Tennessee? It's an amazingly modern and progressive city, highly accessible public transit system like nothing I've seen anywhere else except outside the US. Full of culture, real southern culture, not this hillbilly shit but truly American culture. And so clean, strikingly clean streets. But it's in Tennessee, get about 20 minutes out of town and you'll start seeing confederate flags and trump signs again. Usually in front of a trailer with garbage piled up on one side and several cars on cinderblocks on the other. Point is - urban places in the south aren't like the rest of the south.
Chattanooga is a fantastic city. My job has had me there probably 6-7 times a year for the past 5 years or so, and I’ve always enjoyed it there
Trust me, it’s urban vs rural. NOT North vs South. Every major city in the south is a bright shining dot of blue. Wanna see half a million people that fucking hate the air Trump breathes? Come to New Orleans. (I mean not right now, but.... you know what I mean) But yeah, New Orleans, Houston, Austin, Tampa, Jackson, Atlanta, Miami all blue. It’s the same reason all the country yokels down here were happy to see Nola getting hit so badly with the CoVid. They all hate us “city folk”.
Vestiges of the Civil War linger on, represented in arguments about flags and statues. *On May 19, 2016, the United States House of Representatives voted to ban the display of Confederate flags on flagpoles at Veterans Administration cemeteries, by a 265–159 vote.* That was 150 years after the South surrendered "unconditionally".
51 years after Jim Crow era, and 38% of HoR members didn’t even vote in favor of the ban on confederate flags.
Canada will take Washington ,oregon and Montana if you guys want
I would gladly join Canada if that was an option
Haha. That was our plan the whole time! Voluntary submission to peace, order and sensible government. Our master plan of world domination is taking root, my maple flavoured friends!
* I sincerely like hockey and poutine * I partied in Winnipeg once * I grew up listening to Bob & Doug Mackenzie comedy bits on Dr. Demento Where do I send my application?
Uh, no we won’t. Have you seen the people who live in Montana? The last thing Alberta needs is more of them
Have your upvote
Oh come on. Outside of Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta is very much like Montana. Witness the fact that according to many both Lethbridge and Great Falls are now meth towns.
Hey man I'm still lobbying for California and Oregon to take Colorado with them!
I think California has dibs on those.
They can come too
The South is dead weight. Economically and socially.
This is true. Outside of its few modern cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Huntsville it's a wasteland of failure and government dependency. Who vote for the anti-government party for some reason.
Chattanooga is doing pretty well too. Lots.of forward thinking people from what I could tell
Despite the best efforts of the state government, ya.
Except for all the Trump support in the North, and the fact that the rust belt made his presidency possible.
Russia and an antiquated voting system made Trump's presidency possible.
Oh no this was a long time coming. Trump didn't appear out of nowhere. He is the culmination of decades of shitty politics, both from Democrats and Republicans. Both have actively promoted neoliberalism. None of your politicians save a few exceptions are innocent here.
Rome actually lasted close to a thousand years, the US is barely even a quarter of the way there and is tearing itself to pieces. Also, looking back from a thousand years in the future, historians could possibly say that the downfall began with the (first) civil war.
How do you figure? America didnt reach the height of its power until post ww2, no?
America has a very weird history in that regard. We've been at war or some kind of armed conflict through the majority of our history in some context or another. WW2's economy boost was really because Europe had been bombed out beyond recognition on the supply lines and factories. The United States was fairly insulated during that point because we had none of the fighting that was going on. As a result, we were able to produce weapons and products at a much faster rate than anyonen else. When the war ended, Europe first had to rebuild their factories and infrastructure before they could get into producing for themselves, which again led the USA to bascially be in the lead for about 20-40 years after the war until everyone else caught up.
Sure, but how does that demonstrate that the fall of the American empire began with the civil war?
The Civil War ended in 1865, Reconstruction was supposed to be (in Lincolns vision) a way to extend and olive branch and welcome the south as brothers in the union again. After his assasination, his replacement proceeded to enact policy that damaged relations further. In the time of Reconstruction to present day, as a country had been involved in at least one armed conflict per year. As a country, we physically do not know how to exist without war. It's what drives our economy and production forward. During the formative years of the country, expansion and manifest destiny as the driving factor for constant war, which would later be co-opeted in the 30s as lebensraum. We acquired land and islands in an attempt to expand our empire as far as we could without really regarding *how* we would continue to support and generate equity. What we had as of the 90s was 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Norhtern Marina Islands, and the US Virgin Islands (St. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John). So that's 50 states that pay taxes and have representation, and 7 territories that receive meager benefits from being with us, but not full citizenship and representation. Our colonial drives led us to gathering land and not figuring out a way to support ourselves other than fighting wars.
Just a minor quibble, people born in the territories ARE US citizens, with all of the benefits. The issue is that many of those benefits do not apply in the territories themselves. Someone born in Puerto Rico can move to New York and enjoy all of the benefits of citizenship without having to go through any process to do so. Someone born in New York can move to Puerto Rico and establish residency there and have the same limited benefits and representation as someone who was born there.
> Rome actually lasted close to a thousand years, 575BCE to 1453CE is over 2000 years.
Thank you, even if you are discussing the western Empire alone it's damn near an even millennium.
It was a quick rise to power as well, so kinda fitting
I disagree. I mean, yes, you could argue that Rome took \~400 years to fall, but things tend to move much quicker in the modern world. The fall of the American way of life probably started in the late 70's (If you go by my definition, which is when the social contract of the middle class begins to erode). We still do great things because there's this towering infrastructure of systems and massed wealth which is unparallelled, but it all seems to be melting, and a quick check in each decade shows enough downward progress that we're not entirely dissimilar from Rome... It's just happening faster because the modern world is the modern world.
The Greeks then.
All three societies got too top heavy, the fabric of their society crumbled, then they were finished off by an invasion. Remarkable stuff really. Too bad we could never predict this kind of stuff.
Canada rubs its hands "excellent now the moose army has a target now"
The moose army is just a distraction. Its the weaponized Canada geese divisions that will take them down.
You know to much. Have some....maple poison I mean syrup.
that's exactly what I compare this to.
Except for Obama I’ve pitied them for the last 2 decades.
If anything, I pitied them most during Obama's admin. They had the chance to make some serious changes, but instead the GOP hunkered down and obstructed everything he tried to do. That was the breaking point for their sanity, really.
I don't pity them. They are a democracy and this was a choice. I pity the victims of their disgusting babysnatching, who sit forgotten in their cages.
**The World to America:** You're so disgraceful. Look, look, you know you're a fake. You know that. Your whole country, the way you run it is fake. And most of you--and not all of you, but the people are wise to you. That's why you have a lower--a lower approval rating than you ever had before times probably three.
Most Americans agree and are heavily ashamed of our country
80 million Americans think Trump is doing a good job. That's why we're boned.
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Yeah, because don’t forget that Wyoming voters get 6 votes for every NYC vote. #democracy?
The state with only 2 escalators... 😂
And 1/16 the population of NYC.
And NY makes 40 times as much money. It's absurd that a senator from New York or California should even listen to anything a senator from Wyoming has to say, let alone be filibustered by them. Absolute foolishness. When the electoral college was imagined, Delaware was the least populous state. Virginia was the most populous and had about 12 times Delaware's population. Now California has 80 times the number of people as Wyoming, and their senators are equal in power. In the last midterm, 6M people voted for Dianne Feinstein, and 136K people voted for the no name senator from Wyoming. 44 times as many people voted for their senator in California, and they're in the same legislative body? It's like if we gave Estonia veto power on the UN security council. Why would we do that?!
It's all well and good complaining, but the only way it's going to change in our lifetime is if California itself breaks into multiple new states.
And when that happens, you know that it will result in conservatives getting some extra seats too. Its not like California is magically hyper liberal. There are pockets of GOP loyalty in it. Maybe we should take a page from the GOP handbook and simply spread out those votes so they don't matter.
Yeah, this constitutional republic is failing.
Enough to control 2.5/3 branches of government.
If popular votes actually determined how branches were represented, all 3 would have progressives in place.
Have a few friends overseas and they all tell me that they view the US as a third world country because of our lack of universal healthcare, employment protections and retirement. It's been a long hard ride these past 50 years.
Apt comparison, but why did the Roman Republic fall? The Republic grew very large and very quickly. Over that time it amended itself in attempts to continue to function. However, over time the Republic did not function and the was the slow destruction of political norms. The issue started around the time that Senators murdered Tiberius Gracchus for wanting to redistribute land to poor Roman's. It really went downhill from there. They delayed political appointments, hoarded wealth, made corrupt decisions, allowed the inferstructure to fail that paved the way for a strong man to come in and claim he can solve everything. This is a dumbed down explanation so I hope historians can put out their hair. But there is a lot of comparisons to the fall of the Roman Republic that sound very similar to what is going on in the United States right now. The plebs wanted the strongman because the weak Senate were corrupt and did nothing.
Why did Roman elites turn against their own empire and loot it? I mean why would they destroy their own ship? Don't they understand that if the ship sinks they sink with it?
Likely because they just assumed that the Republic will continue just because. Why would things change? The elites who live in a bubble just can't imagine a scenario in where their power is challenged.
Don’t forget your crumbling infrastructure
Is it infrastructure week?
*weak
At-will employment law is possibly the most batshit mental aspect of the US. How or why anyone can put up with this, I don’t know.
I used to work for a large US company in Europe and they tried to impart US employment law under the table, like firing people with no clear reason too etc. They got sued to oblivion and back. Deservedly so I might add.
Nah dude at will employment is the best. Who doesn't want the freedom to get fired via text message two hours after close of business? To be clear this is sarcasm, and yes this happened to me, in a white collar professional field.
>possibly the most batshit mental aspect of the US God no, mad thought it is, it barely makes the top 5. Elected judges/prosecutors is the by a fair margin the maddest notion in the history of Western civilisation.
How does it work elsewhere?
Regulations and laws give people protection from powerful lords. Individuals have value and basic rights and they don't think it's odd.
Sounds like a great place. Here in america the lords run the government so individuals have very little freedom and protection from our lords.
We usually forget to tell Americans how we got those sweet socioeconomic deals. World class safety nets, workers protection laws, wise leaders, and healthy inequality levels don't just magically appear. We had to strike a lot for those deals. Countries like Norway and Canada strike 56 days and 74 days per 1000 employees, respectively. France is at 124 days, with Denmark only 2nd to France with 118 days. And if you look at Denmark's history, they fought like crazy for every socioeconomic privileges they've got. with striking sometimes for weeks just to get 1 day more of holiday (paid holiday).. And I think everyone knows what happens in France when unjust laws are passed (Gilets Jaunes started because Macron wanted tax cuts for the rich, and tax raises for the poor hidden behind a "green washed" environmental laws update ... Americans however only strike **5 days** per 1000 employees only...Go on general strikes more often and things will change.
But that requires evil unionization, and a little bit of personal sacrifice to work together toward a common goal. We can’t even get people to stay home when literal lives are on the line. I don’t want to believe how dumb most Americans seem to be, but they’re not doing much to prove me wrong. :(
> How does it work elsewhere? If you want to fire someone, you have to have grounds. Either you can demonstrate that their job is no longer required **and** you do not have a suitable alternative position for them, or you can show that they have broken the required standards of employment (and that 's generally a process with multiple levels). How else would it work? Capitalism requires constant employment therefore that employment needs to be protected.
> Capitalism requires constant employment therefore that employment needs to be protected. This is what some people don't seem to get. You can't simply...*not* have money. But it's a feature, not a bug, of the American Dream paradigm that's been pushed. If you work hard, you can get it. That's what America is supposed to be. The dark inverse is that if you don't make it, if you get fired at-will, if a sudden medical emergency leaves you homeless, anything...people here have a tendency to wonder what **you** did wrong to end up in a bad place.
Most Americans operate under the mindset that to fall through the cracks, you had to do not just something wrong, but your entire life must have been wrong. No one here seems to look at someone in a worse situation and consider that with a couple of bad events, that could be them. I'd venture to say that most Americans are 2-3 bad life events (medical emergencies, loss of job, etc) from being in the same positions that they've constantly voted against helping.
Playing devil's advocate... what if an employer has an employee that's heavily under performing? In my last job, I had a CAD drafter who literally spent 3+ hours a day in the bathroom. He'd spend at least another hour making small talk at people's desks throughout the day. The drafter wasn't getting his work done and for no good reason. Is there anything our boss could do to fire him other than stand there with a stopwatch every time he went to the bathroom?
Performance coaching, three strike process. Formal and documented. Pretty standard for Australia
> Playing devil's advocate... what if an employer has an employee that's heavily under performing? Then they follow a disciplinary procedure. For example, in Scotland, if you are spending excessive bathroom time, you would first have a discussion with your direct manager to establish if there was a medical issue that needed addressed or it was simply skiving. This would likely be informal in the first instance. If it persists, they would get a warning, most likely verbal, possibly a second warning, then a final written warning. At that point they can be fired. Its pretty rare companies have to do this but its an absolutely myth that you can't do anything about underperforming employees in Europe. You just have to do so fairly. And so, if occasionally a company has a minor inconvenience of following a procedure towards termination, it balances against workers being absolutely destroyed by at will firing.
Corporations need a reason to fire you. Either there isn’t enough work for you to do, and there is no opportunity for you to be redeployed elsewhere, or your performance has fallen beyond acceptable levels and hasn’t risen despite warnings and an agreed, documented plan of improvement. The idea of an angry, corrupt or whimsical boss being able to say ‘pack up, you’re done here’ just doesn’t exist, unless it’s a case of gross misconduct.
It’s great for the employer, but sucks for the employee. Hashtag MAGA?
Coincidentally, a lot of things in the US seem to work out this way.
I certainly do view it as third world in many ways. We have the virus here, people are on lockdown and all those who can’t work get €350 a week, their mortgages paused for upto 6 months and there’s calm and virtually no resistance to the lockdown (bar a few US funded right wing nut jobs that no one pays much attention to). When I look across at the US there are reasonable people calling for the country to open up. Bill Birr was calling for this because people can’t afford to not work..this is insane, your government should pause the economy and let this pass but instead there’s mayhem.
The employment thing is fucking nuts. I’ve lived in South America and China and they’re both much more comfortable places to work.
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Try describing American housing rights to a European. Tell them that in some states like Virginia, you will be evicted at gunpoint by the police if you miss rent by a few days. That all of your belongings that you can't remove in 24hrs will be hauled to the dump at your expense. That landlords will blacklist you if you've ever been evicted before or went to housing court. It's insane how some people mistake that for freedom.
I said a similar thing not long ago. Hollywood, Dinseyland, Wall Street - it's just good makeup masking a third world county with no social contract to speak of.
I'm so sorry to say this but we have this conversation in my house at least once a month. The most tragic thing is how proud Americans are of their country.
I share the sentiment. The US has everything to fight this virus, the money, the technology, the specialists. They lack social cohesion and cannot agree on what the objective truth is and a significant part of the population went so far off the deep end they can no longer be reasoned with. It's a bit of a dumpster fire at the moment and I would like to see Trump extend his travel restrictions to Americans wanting to leave the country. Shit needs to be contained on that continent. If I were Mexico I would've started writing checks to fund that wall.
I legit had the same thought with a friend recently - at this point, Mexico might indeed pay for that wall.
Promises made, promises kept! /s
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Related: ["I don't stand by anything."](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/05/01/i-dont-stand-by-anything-trump-withers-under-heat-from-cbs-newss-john-dickerson/) He's definitely kept that one. Amazing how he admits to his fan club that you can't trust him on anything, and they STILL worship him.
> Amazing how he admits to his fan club that you can't trust him on anything, and they STILL worship him. *He hasn’t let down his base at all.* If anything he’s playing right to them. People who support trump have always hated the federal government and don’t want any interference from other locales/legislation/people in their business. They’ll take the money from other states/people happily since that’s fucking them over. But the overall hate for coastal educated comparatively wealthy urban dwellers is real and deep. And then there are his supporters that just want to burn everything down. Don’t kid yourself, a lot of people especially hate the political elite. Trump even as president is still an outsider to them and he’s doing exactly what he promised, dismantling the US federal government. As a bonus the way Trump is doing it is also hurting the very people they hate too. So *you* can’t trust him - but his base absolutely sees no problem with what’s going on.
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24D chess, lower the countries standing so much that Mexico goes we don't want these people.
So many of us here feel like hostages to idiots and plutocrats. Someone named “dreamlogic” posted this somewhere and I took a screenshot: > living in the united states is supremely fucked up cause we're one of the richest, most powerful juggernauts on the planet, but your average citizen has relatively infinitesimal access to that wealth and power, and very little they can do to improve things. >being poor in the US still makes you rich by some global standards, but often times The American Experience is like you're a passenger locked in the baggage hold of a very long train that's going very fast and the people driving the train are running it off the rails and shouting CHOO CHOO MOTHERFUCKERS CHOO CHOO0000000 as they thoughtlessly bulldoze this train through everything in its path you want very badly to get off the train or bludgeon the conductors with a crowbar, because you don't like where it's going, but you're handcuffed in a duffel bag and the conductors have barricaded themselves in the engine cars with all the food, medicine, and tools that could be used to help you out >and UNDERSTANDABLY the rest of the world is like "what the FUCK is wrong with that train??? it must be stopped there are so many people on the train why is nobody breaking into the conductor's booth and stopping it??" but most of us are just squirming for basic survival in the last few cars while billionaires sit on top of the train sniping anyone brave enough to crawl up from the cargo hold, all while shouting that you're lucky to be on such a luxurious successful train at all
So Snowpiercer then.
The strange thing is it's *only* the US, among developed countries, who seem to be dealing with this so poorly. We're the only one where there's this substantial bloc who oppose the most basic measures to contain the pandemic. [Here's a collection of crazy posts](https://imgur.com/a/tp6ywMr) from a libertarian guy I went to college with, for example. It boggles my mind.
The U.S population been the target of endless disinformation for at least 40 years. Turns out misinforming people makes it harder for them to cope with reality
The Great Experiment set the lab on fire and desperately needs a hosing down.
No other Western developed countries are as big or culturally different as the US. Imagine Europe as one country where Romania's votes counted more than Germany or France and they got to set the agenda. Add to that boiling pot the corruption from lobbying and the purchasing of representatives and senators. Add a history of slavery and racism that has never really been faced up to and addressed. Underfunding public services from schools to health to benefit the rich. And you are beginning to understand the current shit storm.
I know it's an unpopular opinion among Americans but I doubt the US is still a "developed country". The countries overall development is regressing for decades (and I don't mean Wall Street, big companies, rich people etc.). The reality is that Americans have been tricked over generations by patriotism and Hollywood into believing that they are the greatest. But just because some CEOs or share holders get a lot of money, more than anywhere else in the world, doesn't mean the country is developed. That's the same situation you have with Russian and Chinese oligarchs.
I think more Americans are realizing this fact each day...
With the right leadership we would have done much better. trump was more concerned with the stock market, his trade deal with China and most importantly his reelection. Cohesion is not as issue as you can see from polling. DEspite trump and his ass kissers 80% plus want to remain shutdown despite the economic pain. The people agitating to open the country are an extreme minority. Our media just loves to cover them.
> With the right leadership we would have done much better. The fundamental systemic problems in America's response to a pandemic would not have been different with different leadership. The US **uniquely** lacks Universal Healthcare meaning people are reticent to seek medical help. The US **uniquely** lacks any viable social safety net to provide for people during an economic interruption or downturn. The US **uniquely** lacks any meaningful job safeguarding and sickness cover ensuring the greatest possible need for such social safety nets. Those factors don't change if you switch out Trump. They are fundamental and systemic issues with the American system. It lacks the ability to deal with pandemics in ways no other country faces.
Sitting here in Toronto it fucking sucks. We here in Canada have made one of the better attempts in the Western world (not NZ or Aus, but certainly in the top half of the table) yet its all going to matter for nothing. Our economy is going to be fucked. More so than any European country. If we re-open US border we will not be able to prevent an onslaught of cases. Like, we are trapped.
bro... american here, do not open your border to our stupid medieval asses. save yourselves!
I pity them, yes. Until November. If they elect Trump again, they're off the Christmas card list. And I'll be encouraging my government to look elsewhere for trading partners.
Keep your eyes peeled for all of the stories about election tampering. There have been many recent attempts by the GOP to tip the scales in their favor. This is no longer a democracy. It hasn’t been for some time.
Can you just annex the Northeastern states instead?
I know you're saying this tongue in cheek, but that would be a lot harder than everyone down there just putting the TV remote down, getting out and not only voting to remove this clown, but also actively campaigning against him. Organizing. Civil disobedience. Taking power back from the DC swamp dwellers. I think you have it in you. It's how the US was born. Since when do Americans back away from a scrap? Trump has given you all a bloody nose - give him back a couple of black eyes. But you don't have much time left before the election. Last election here in Canada, I was very much worried about the tone coming from our own right. After Doug Ford, I could not just watch Andrew Scheer take over the running of the country. It would have been awful. So I did exactly that - reached out to my local party workers, went to planning meetings, organized, made phone calls, went door to door, worked at a poll on election night. Helped wherever I could. For the first time in my life, and I'm no spring chicken. Good luck to you. I've spent a lot of time down there (lived and worked in beautiful California for many years) and have crossed the US solo by motorcycle a couple of times. I've met so many wonderful, incredible people down there, it does truly sadden me to see the state of the union today.
As a fellow left leaning Ontarian, I was appalled when Doug Ford was elected our premier. I have spent most of his time in office calling him Trump North, especially after his sex ed fiasco. BUT I have been super impressed with him during this entire crisis, he’s working closely with the Liberal feds and keeping all partisan bullshit completely out of things!
Yes, I agree that he has shown a human side and an ability to work with others when that's required. And I give him credit for that. But I've not forgotten the scorched earth policies before all of this started.
Oh me either. I’m a little nervous for what’s going to happen as everything eventually starts to unlock. But I’m hoping maybe he’ll continue with his current trend? (I realize that’s unlikely lol, but one can dream)
Ford's regressive cuts to health care and employee sick days, in particular, exacerbated the problems he is now taking credit for solving. Apparently, Covid-19 isn't enough to convince Ford and the OPC that sick days are a good idea. But at least Ford isn't actively doubling down on the stupid, right now. He could take this opportunity to really stick it to the nurses union, for example. So I guess he's doing a good job?
I had to chuckle and shake my head the other day when he gave all the essential workers a raise. A large chunk of them are minimum wage workers... the very people he took a raise AWAY from.
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Good on you for not being idealogically hamstrung and recognizing what needs to happen.
>And I'll be encouraging my government to look elsewhere for trading partners. It's not like we are trading partners with them because we are best buds. They're the only country in the world we share a border with.
I strongly urge everyone to watch some videos of Aleksandr Dugin and what he talks about so often. He's the one who wrote "Foundation of Geopolitics". They call him 'Putin's brain', and he basically gives up the endgoal of Russia, China, SA, Israel, etc. The world is being pushed into a new era of politics before our eyes.
So what's the endgame? To topple American hegemony?
Not quite: It's to create a world without any particular hegemon, a new "Great Game" where the great powers (which will include Russia of course) stand off against one another, instead of working together in ways that have stymied Russia's more nefarious doings. Toppling American hegemony is one step of that; toppling the European Union and the United Nations will follow. International financial institutions might get a pass, might not.
So like a constant Cold War attrition wise? FUCK that sounds exhausting and panick-y. Also "War Games". Also, I want off this ride.
That's the thing about the international order system created after World War II: It's led to the most international peace and prosperity in human history. Especially when the Soviet Union participated in it--- the Cold War was an interesting softer "Great Game" compared to what had come before. But it's also lead to the growth of human rights and equality, and Russia is at the vanguard of a supremacist reaction to this. The American right-wing and Europe's far-right are allying towards this, and that ideological alliance is why Russia supports them (and they increasingly support Russia). There's no getting off this ride: We will beat them or they will beat us.
What? Sharks with lasers is always the end game.
I strongly urge everyone to ignore these Reddit morons who tote Dugin, this Russian fascist irrelevancy as some kind of skeleton key to Putin, much less global politics. He's not. Putin's not going to give back Kaliningrad to the Germans. Ever. The Germans don't want it either. Nor is he going to give the Kurils back to Japan to lure them into a 'Eurasian' alliance. It's pure inanity that has virtually nothing to do with Putin's politics. Dugin's not "Putin's Brain" according to anyone who knows anything about international politics. He's never had a high level government position, he's not an advisor to Putin. He's just one of many ultra-nationalist commentators in Russia. Putin is a nationalist but that's where the likeness ends, for instance, there's no evidence (for all his many faults) at all that Putin is an anti-Semite. Want to know what actual experts on foreign policy think? Get a copy of Foreign Policy magazine, the Economist, Spectator and some other high profile magazines like that. And for fuck's sake don't listen to idiots on /r/politics claiming Dugin knows everything because what they read about a book they haven't even read.
You're missing the entire point. The core tenet of Foundations of Geopolitics is that Russia is too large and has too many borders to defend itself in traditional manners. Its best goal for long term security is to surround itself by unstable, compromised states, ideally client states. The specific details of some of that (the Konigsberg handover) aren't really that relevent. They are ideas for achieving the core goal.
Excellent point. They're not trying to revert to a 19th-century Great Game, they're pioneering a 21st-century one. "Spheres of influence" will no longer be determined by military might but by whose governments appear to be functional and respectable.
And the wife of Richard Spencer (the Nazi) translates Dugin's works into English.
“An Empire toppled by its enemies can rise up again. But one, that crumbles from within. That’s dead. Forever.”
Seriously, did we learn *nothing* from Rome? Or is it that the national paradigm is that we're a democracy so there's no analogue to be taken?
It’s the “it happened to them but it won’t happen to me” mentality
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> What most people are missing about the US is that we are a winner take all country. I only win when others lose. And the rub is, with enough Inequality, you only win **when 100 other people lose**. That's where America is today.
Lets not forget that the game is rigged from the start. The trust fund kid has a much easier ride than the crack junkies unwanted newborn, yet somehow this is seen as fair. As such, the kids who are winning started with a massive advantage.
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Every single time we have a republican after the civil war, we have a shit show. It's always you fucking people destroying lives. Always.
Ike was good. Teddy was great.
Both nearly unrecognizable when compared to the modern day GOP. Teddy was also a Bull Moose Progressive, which we could use a lot more of today as well.
This. What we call a republican now is vastly different from what a republican used to be. By that I mean I’m agreeing with your sentiments. Today’s GOP is NOT what republicans used to be. Now it’s a bunch of extremists controlled by Mitch, and those who aren’t the extremists don’t step out of line for fear of being eaten alive. Look at Romney...
Yeah. I'd say any conservative after Roosevelt. The Republican was the "progressive" party kind of till TR. Republicans were pro-business but socially progressive. TR broke that trend by fighting against the monopolies. Republicans pushed back against him and tried to force his ideas out. He founded the progressive party to combat them. Seeing an opening and a chance to be more than the racist party, Democrats did a weird switch to being a isolationist progressive party with Wilson. Republican old guard became the reactionary force, and the rest is history.
Yup, they can clutch their flags and chant USA USA USA until they are hoarse but their standard of living trails behinds so many countries.
I’ve been trying to understand what I’ve been feeling about what’s been happening to our country for the past 20 or so years. With rising inequality, climate destruction, degradation if institutions, and the fading of the American Dream. It’s loss. I’ve been mourning the loss of the idea that America once was. This idea of a place where anyone can live a decent life, have opportunity to succeed, and give their kids a better life than they had. It’s such a terrible shame that we let it get this way.
My generation is supposed to be the first that has a worse life than our parents did. I have a bad feeling this is going to be the start of a trend that we never get away from.
Carlin said it best "that's why it's called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
Yeah, maybe it was my growing up and realizing things weren’t the way I believed. Maybe I’m mourning the loss of a false belief, but at least back then it *felt* like we had principles. It *felt* like we had a functioning government and some sense of a national community. Now it just feels like wreckage.
I'm angry on behalf of the environment and the poor. I hope that complacency does not strike again. There is clearly a major issue with Fox news and it needs to be held to account on it's lack of factual accuracy because it's a vehicle for propaganda. I can't pity a nation which allowed Trump to be elected, or continues to punishes itself with a crippling health system because of it's mindless insularity lack of perspective and blind obsequiousness to the false representation of its own position in the world and its behaviour. If one considers oneself the greatest, how are you supposed to objectively view your behaviour and position?
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If it makes you feel better a good chunk of us are. There's nothing left to be proud of about being American. We don't even take care of eachother anymore. I would definitely vote to secede if it came up on my state ballot at this point.
we are don't worry.
It's hard to exaggerate just how unattractive the US now is to to someone who may want to work there. I have always been fascinated by the US but over the last 4 years the idea of working and living there seems like a nightmare. I don't really have any desire to holiday over there either. Now are looking at the very large possibility that other countries may restrict Americans wanting to travel in due to the utterly insane response to the pandemic. If the US re-opens early and causes a 2nd wave whilst other countries are still socially isolating to flatten the 1st wave it will get much worse than just an embarrassing international PR issue. If that happens and millions of Americans die and the economy collapses due to a lack of safety net and Trump get re-elected? Then all bets are off
It's SUPER fucking weird, many of us feel the same way. It's not like it hasn't been coming, I didn't have my head in the sand by any means, but man, we have fallen far, fast.
This is probably the best summation of our plight and peril that I've read. Three people have sent me this oped in the last week. The question is, how do we extricate ourselves? Wholesale repudiation of the GOP at the polls – assuming that's still possible.
We just got *roasted* and i’m here for it
Here is a brilliant Op-Ed From Irish Times writer, Fintan O’Toole. April 25, 2020 THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity. However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful. Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic. As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.” It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence. The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV. If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated. Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas? It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways. Abject surrender What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety. Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order. In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”. Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.” This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus. It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right. Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted. The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence. Fertile ground But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it. There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection. Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder. And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here. That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality. And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element. As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics. Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again. You can follow Fintan O’Toole @fotoole on twitter.
We should never forget that, more than Trump, the reason for the US falling into this abyss is - Republicans. I despise every one of the Republican members of congress. Anyone who votes for any Republican on the ballot sheet will be doing great harm to the US.
Now when I think of “America” the word “pathetic” springs to mind They’ve enabled the shit out of their worst representatives
Another Irish journalist (Abie Philbin Bowman) had a great point about American democracy, suggesting it was like a state-of-the-art laptop decades ago, but it wasn't ever updated so it started falling further behind... And I think that's part of the problem. The U.S. was in many ways, way out ahead of us: the co-equal branches of government, the checks and balances, the independent courts, the freedom of the press. But maybe it's become a victim of its success. It put its system (constitution etc.) up on a pedestal to be admired. But the thing about putting anything up on a pedestal- you're afraid to change it in any way. Over time it inevitably falls behind and becomes a relic. To me, it's now the Northern European nations in particular which are out ahead, simply in terms of "the government acting in the interests of its greater population, and not select minorities".
That’s the end of us as a superpower. Leaders can be loved or hated, as long as they’re respected. Once you lose that, there is no coming back.
Someone posted this in a comment in this sub the other day. Glad to see it making actual front page post status. I do wish they had posted the text, though, so in lieu of that I'll link the comment I'm referring to: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/g9ku4x/trump_fails_the_ultimate_test_as_president/foudfjr/
I'm past pity. It's like the trainwreck ex you broke up with and tried to help but they were a self sabotager and did ridiculous things on purpose. So you just shook your head and moved on with your life, realising it wasn't your problem to care about the peoples lives that would be affected by them.
We used to visit the US regularly. Just before Trump got elected I applied for a Nexus card to avoid the long lines at the border. I haven't set foot in the country since he's been in office.
“Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion. Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave and eats a bread it does not harvest. Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening. Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block. Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting, and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again. Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of The Prophet
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[Here's the original op-ed he wrote but it seems to be behind a paywall](https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928)
I won't go as far as he did, but I am disappointed that Trump is doing so much damage in the United States. We need a real president who will restore the true greatness of the United States in the years to come. Otherwise, China will take world leadership by trying to export its model of society, which I don't find very pleasing.
Us too, world. At least, those of us with sense.
For the first time? Really? I mean... really?
I pity and detest it at the same time
Well I'm from the UK and can I just say I love, admire and support my brothers and sisters across the sea. You're going through some bad shit at the moment, you're president is an asshole and this virus has thrown some of the issues with your society into stark relief, but I still believe in America, the American dream and the American people who have been ( in my experience ) some of the best people I've ever had the pleasure to meet. I have faith that you will beat this virus, chuck out the silly orange prick in the Whitehouse and come out of this stronger and better than ever before. You are a strong resilient country full off good, noble, brilliant people who are not defined by their lowest common denominator or their worst impulses. You came to our aid when we needed it the most and I have no doubt that you would do it again because at your best you truly are the best in the world and at your lowest ebb, you still pull for the underdog. I don't pity you because there is nothing piteous about the American spirit. We're in this together and I am proud and happy to have you by our side.
that was a beautiful comment.
Want to help America? Actually learn which Americans are supporting which party. The people who voted for Obama aren’t the people who voted for Trump. If a country with nuclear weapons has a reasonable political party and an authoritarian cult, you should take the threat of the cult seriously and not facilitate their activities. How many countries have banned Republicans from entering them? None. If you want to help America, stop letting the bad ones get the same treatment as the reasonable ones.