I agree with you, the Democrats aren’t going to reform anything, even if they wanted to (and they don’t).
A financial collapse seems inevitable at this point, Balkanization may be a very good thing. There’s no need for a civil war, we’re nicely divided already and have functioning state governments that will quickly replace the Federals. That’s best case scenario.
Worst case scenario? Civil War II, but really, “The South” has even less of a chance of winning now. This seems unlikely. Best to just cut them off and stop propping up their miserable states, within a generation or two they will learn that they need us (coastal cities) far more than we need them.
Jesus isn’t going to come save the day, no matter what The Christian Broadcasting Network says.
Last time US suffered the pains of war in their land was late 1860’s. I believe American politics are stuck in that era.
I would vote for a candidate that begins the process of devolving the Union so we can eventually divorce into separate countries. I think we are doomed for civil war either way. As a Californian, when they’re doing stuff like systematically disenfranchising us, withholding our Medicaid dollars and attacking our public universities despite us contributing more to the treasury than we take back, it’s hard to feel like an American. I’d prefer to be a citizen of California than share a country with these freaks. Winning elections won’t make me feel any better after seeing how they despise and want to destroy us.
I think you’re right
This is related to why I’m so nervous about teaching social studies next year. Can anyone help me think about how to teach US history without shoving a bunch of propaganda down middle school throats?
Give out copies of Larry Gonick’s textbook?
I’ve always believed that we were living through the collapse of the American Hegemony, but I could never describe the system until I read about the Imperial Boomerang and the Five Phase Lifecycle which captures the US’ expansionist policies post WW2. Except we never needed war, we had the petrodollar.
The problem when you have a system that centralized, you have one major factor, and then the inability to grow leads to the empire turning within with its expansionist policies towards its people. Its the perfect system to have an incompetent boob turn cruel. And once that happens, everyone senses something wicked on the horizon. Soft power with allies completely vanishes. New allegiances are forged. A new hyperpower emerges. And the most defensive behavior is to protect your own interests – which accelerate the inevitable collapse.
The US is a very big country, and any future shape will have it more like a confederation – either officially in its successor states, or more likely by Balkanization. Whether or not its the New America we want, well, I’m not that clairvoyant.
I hope this makes sense, I’m not a political expert. All I am certain of, in my gut, is that Trump is the final manifestation of the decline phase, and this is the final act. The Roman empire went through many drastic ‘collapses’ in its span, this doesn’t mark the end of America, but of the current post-WW2 hegemony? The one driven by the GI Bill and Technological progress? We aren’t coming back from this.
There won’t be real reforms from Democrats because they’re complicit and invested in the system staying exactly as it is. Just “nicer.”
Noooooooooo! STOP SAYING THIS! YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE THE REPUBLICANS WIN!!!
STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP! THIS IS WHY KAMALA LOST!
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!
I have traced your IP Address and confirmed you are a Russian Bot! MODS! MODS! BAN THIS ACCOUNT!
You must be bad at tracing IP addresses because I’m not a Russian bot. And the Democrats have ALREADY made the Republicans win, in case you haven’t noticed. I’m pointing out that political parties are a corruption of our politics and should not have direct electoral access. They should be like any other special interest group.
I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking but Kamala lost because her policies were fascism light instead of anything representing the working class. If the Dems want working people’s vote they have to do something for them, not just say “I’m not Trump”.
I voted blue but completely get why people wouldn’t, lessor of two evils is still evil. If the only thing a system has to offer is evil then it’s time for that system to collapse, simple as that
I couldn’t tell either.
We need to work to change the system. Ranked choice voting, nonpartisan elections and legislatures, etc. Oh, and money isn’t speech. It’s power.
Kamala lost because her policies were fascism light
Okay, but that’s better than fascism, right? So stop criticizing fascism lite! It’s only hurting the opponents of fascism!
Well… okay, maybe the police and prosecutors that Kamala Harris organized during her time as California AG hurt the opponents of fascism a bit more. But that was before we had a dang Cheeto in the White House. So, let bygones be bygones and focus on the future.
I voted blue but completely get why people wouldn’t
I will be very angry at you anyway. If you upset even a single independent voter on the fence about voting for Kamala, you have committed Word Crime against the cause of the Stopping Trump.
lessor of two evils is still evil
That’s exactly what a Russian would say. I’ve outed you as a nefarious FSB superagent here to bring down American Democracy and turn us into a nightmare hellscape of Soviet Style Communism, which is what Russia is right now.
Exactly. The current system of government isn’t democracy, it’s competitive authoritarianism.
Yes. We need to work to create a democracy.
Revolution is necessary, because the bourgeois state cannot be dismantled and a proletarian state put in place via peaceful means.
If they thought we could vote our way into socialism, they wouldn’t let us vote.
Definitely true!
Hence the supreme court decision and the mad rush to gerrymander the fuck out of every state they can.
The DNC isn’t socialist though, it’s just two factions of capitalists duking it out.
While that’s true, I do think that neither of those camps is willing to so much as slide back into a welfare state (even with extra imperialism on the side). The DNC doesn’t want any more Mamdanis (even though he’s a socdem at best), and if they think this’ll prevent that, they’ll let it happen, no matter how much they claim to oppose it. If there were any possibility of an actual socialist being elected, we’d see way worse than this.
Agreed! I actually think the current factional war within the DNC might make room for a third party.
We should make room for for third and fourth party candidates wherever we can. There are states that implement nonpartisan elections in some ways. Nebraska has a unicameral, nonpartisan legislature.
I think you may be right. I just hope we can get them to move left instead of right. Nate Bear’s recent post really gave me pause, because I know a lot of people who want to maintain their treats above all else. I want to have some faith in humanity, but we’re definitely going to have our work cut out for us, I think.
I won’t hold out for the DNC moving left. Entryism doesn’t seem to be a valid approach.
☭ 🫡
I think you’re probably right, but I do worry about any violence that would ensue . . .
Violence is an unfortunate necessity when pacifism ensures loss.
I think the United States as we knew it is dying. I feel no kinship with the MAGA nor the Epstein Class, my desire to be kind and fair towards that lot has long since evaporated. Odds are, many folks in Tennessee and Minneapolis feel the same.
I think the United States as we knew it is dying
I grew up in the US south.
This IS the US as I’ve known it.
The rest of the country got complacent about the people that supported the splitoff faction that wanted to own people as backwoods hicks and not as a viable threat despite them infesting many of the states that literally sent men to die to stop them. Laughed when they said “The south will rise again” despite them having an outsized power in politics and when called out were nice when they said “It’s heritage, not hate.”
They were ready to arrest those who went against the president during Bush Jr era. Nixon welcomed them into the fold after LBJ pissed off the Dixiecrats by signing in the Civil Rights Acts and every Republican since, just as the Democrats did before. The country never finished the job and now the house is infested.
The United States as those of us who read books knew:
- https://archive.org/details/DemocracyForTheFew16147062951821
- https://files.libcom.org/files/A People's History of the Unite - Howard Zinn.pdf
- https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/rogue-state-9781350362253
- https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S126C2462237
- https://www.michael-parenti.org/book-inventing-reality
- https://archive.org/details/pdfy-q0ULBH2DJICRS3Vg
- https://november8ph.ca/psychological-warfare-in-the-strategy-of-imperialism-v-l-artemov
- https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1958-america-as-overlord
good post
O7
I’m afraid the rot has spread much farther than that. Yes, without a violent upheaval of some sort, the U.S. is fucked but the problem had long since broken containment…
In the Borderlands in-game universe, there’s references to historical “corporate wars”, when the corporations seized political power and promptly began to duke it out to see who was going to be on top of the pile. At least that’s how I imagine it in my head. But fuck if it doesn’t look like that’s the most likely future coming our way.
Never forget, it was Taco Bell that won the Franchise Wars.
“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.”
- John Brown
Democrats have no intention of changing anything meaningful. We learned that when Obama had a supermajority and became a black Dubya, despite his extravagant progressive promises.
Our only power is local now, and they know this, which is why they swift-boated Mamdani and ran a Democratic partisan against him.
Yes, it will take a major disruption to necessitate any meaningful change at the national level.
Correct to answer OP, yes you can’t vote your way out of fascism. So we will need a war to get out of this mess.
Then to the Democrats the current Democratic Party is already right of Regan. It’s that racket effect. Fuck up part if things keep going as business as usual. Then your next major Democratic candidates will be no different then Trump.
But all that moot. Again we can’t vote our way out of this nightmare. And before 2030 we will all be living in hell run by oligarchy tecno bros. With all the AI data center sucking up all our water and they rounded up as much of the population that they can. Then it over.
You think North Korea is bad wait until we are living in just that type of world in America were statues of Trump liter the country and anybody that doesn’t worship him is locked in a work camp.
Small nit-pick it is “ratchet” effect
It is a racket though
You aren’t the only one, this has been the rhetoric from the far right for over a decade now. The “Boogaloo Boys” were named for what they forsaw as “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo”. They gained notoriety during Trump’s first term, and later rebranded/forked into the Proud Boys. Now you don’t hear about any of them as much because they’re all hired as ICE agents, military, or working for Hegseth at the Pentagon.
The thing to recognize is, while we’re all flirting with the idea that maybe, if we’re not careful, we might see a civil war in the US’ future, the Trump administration is talking and behaving like we’re already in phase 1: determining allegiances and positioning forces.
The trump administration has a lot of factions involved with a lot of different long-term goals, but right now their common goal is to dismantle the US, and they are currently on track. If at some point one or more states decide the only way to put a stop to unconstitutional federal action is through force, they’ll use the military to “keep the peace”. But that will be the tipping point, and they’ve been preparing for a while…
What leads you to the belief that the elite have a common goal of dismantling the US?
First off, I’m not a fan of the fuzzy term “elite”, but I’ll assume we both know what that refers to.
People think the rich just like to get richer, that Musk and Bezos are competing to have the biggest number in their bank account. But no, they have no interest in “USD”, they don’t care about being crowned “richest person on the playground”, they want to own the playground. They don’t want to be confined by some government’s laws. After a certain point, the only reason to keep accruing wealth is to one day become the government and write your own laws. To me, that goal IS what makes someone “elite”. Conversely, a wealthy person who welcomes high taxes on the rich because it makes the society around them better is still wealthy, but not “elite”.
The elite are always looking for a route to absolute power, and they all see the Trump administration as an opening and are all jumping at it. The only thing they have in common is they want the US govt to be weakened beyond repair, but where they differ is they all want to be the one to take its place (or retain a position of influence like Little Finger).
Got it. We generally agree on the elite motivation. But I think we disagree on government.
For me, bourgeois government is the structure of collaboration between and among the elite, not a separate entity. So I don’t think Musk wants to dismantle the US government, he is playing the game between and among other elites and the field of play is the government that represents the collaboration. In so far as the government limits the power of the elite, it generally does so with the consent of the elite. The problem is that the laws remain even though the state of play changes. The system designed by and for the robber barons of the gilded age didn’t work for the entrepreneurial 1950s and the system of the 1950s didn’t work for the financial transformation of the 1980s and the regulation of the 1980s didn’t work for the tech revolution. None of these were dismantlings of the US but reformations of the system from the old state made by the old elites for the old conditions into a new state by the new elites for the new conditions.
They fundamentally want the US to continue. It gives them a military, a way to repress the masses, access to massive natural resources, a reliable money spigot, and dominating power globally. They don’t want to dismantle it. They just need to reconfigure the machine collaboratively to maximize their power.
The difference in what we’re saying is semantic.
They fundamentally want the US to continue
If this means a government “of the people, for the people, by the people” that maintains a monopoly on violence to ensure no one is above the law/Constitution, then I disagree.
If this means a puppet state that the “elite” holds oligarchal control over, but maintain whatever facade of democracy they need to, then I agree. But I would not call that the US govt. You could say that because they call it the “US Govt” it’s still the US govt, and you could say that because they call it the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, it’s a democratic republic. But I would disagree on both points.
Yeah obviously they’re not going to personally crown themselves as supreme ruler on a towering citadel constructed where the whitehouse once stood like a caricature of a villain. But if the structure of “government” that we end up with is completely powerless against them, then it’s objectively not the US anymore; it’s just the “elite”, the govt is whatever they say, they are the govt, wealth only flows wherever they say it’s allowed to in order to maintain power.
And that’s always their goal, to become the govt, that’s what I mean.
If this means a government “of the people, for the people, by the people” that maintains a monopoly on violence to ensure no one is above the law/Constitution, then I disagree.
Given that the US was never that, obviously that isn’t what it means.
If this means a puppet state that the “elite” holds oligarchal control over, but maintain whatever facade of democracy they need to, then I agree. But I would not call that the US govt.
Incredible. No notes.
But if the structure of “government” that we end up with is completely powerless against them, then it’s objectively not the US anymore
Fucking incredible
It’s always been an oligarchy. At no point were the masses in charge of the US. It was founded by rich, landed gentry from Europe leading the common man to battle under the banner of liberal values, but they formed the entire government to be by of and for the land owners. They even gave MORE power to land owners who also owned people. That’s how committed they were to oligarchy from the beginning. It’s always been a structure by which the elite manage their affairs including how best to prevent a revolt by the masses.
Tell me not to go vote in midterms, then.
I don’t waste time telling people how to vote. Electoralism is a total waste of time. I vote how I vote, keep it to myself, and spend the rest of my time not thinking about electoralism. None of these politicians deserve my free labor when 100+ Democrats just voted to expand ICE and DHS power to obtain consumer data from retail companies to use in their operation. I put my labor into deconstructing white-supremacist patriarchal capitalism in the hearts and minds of my people in my neighborhood and online, and when I do put in physical effort equivalent to door knocking, it’s doing food distribution for the people around me who need food.
Go ahead. Vote in the midterms. The Ds in the house just proved to you that they’re onboard with the whole fascist panopticon policing program. They’ve always been collaborators with the Rs. But vote. It’s literally the least you can do. Don’t let anyone stop you. And then, forget about elections immediately after and do something about the fact that your neighbors, their kids, and their teachers are all replicating the white supremacy myths of this country into every single generation and glossing over it all with a simple “vote for the good guys and bad things are because of the bad guys” narrative.
The US has always been a project of the elite; US democracy was only ever a facade.
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The bourgeoisie will not allow their power to be voted away. There’s a reason the choices in the voting booth are always so narrow; you’re only allowed to vote for a candidate that they’ve pre-approved and bankrolled. Vote or don’t, it doesn’t actually matter.
you could say the same of every democracy that has ever existed, and yet they did (and do) exist.
I have a feeling we would disagree as to which countries are actually democracies.
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I would like to see the “United States of America” burn to the ground and cease to exist entirely as a political and military entity.
If the petrodollar fails that’s exactly what’s going to happen. The rest of the world won’t miss the opportunity to hamstring the US during their moment of weakness and ensure they turn into an insular, regional isolationist power. It’ll be well deserved too…
The petrodollar will fail. It’s a certainty now that it will happen soon, historically speaking.
Yeah I agree with you there. It’s going to be a free for all once that happens…
when*
It’s an interesting question for the pseudo-communist progressives attached to the democratic party: are they really the kind of people who would be in charge of a communist North America? They don’t look Mexican, Black, or Native American to me. I’m not an identity essentialist but the way they’re attached to white political & intellectual apparatuses proves it’s not serious before you even get to discussing tactics.
Anything else on your wish list? Just curious.
I guess that you have to live outside the US to see what a scary man-baby it is. If a country has all the power in the world, and then decides that rules don’t apply to them, it quite a short step to wishing that they would fail and leave the rest of us alone. The delusion is that they have adopted the world cop role. The reality is that they are the world bully.
