My take on this is that the US truly experienced a period of ‘greatness’ for around 40yrs, starting with FDR’s response to the Great Depression in the mid-30’s. Then you have post WW2, and the US was considered something of a hero nation around much of the world, plus was one of the few major countries with lots of intact production going on, with lots of demand around the world. For some decades there, you could work a job like gas station attendant and make a salary good enough to buy a home and support a family (I may be exaggerating somewhat, but the point’s made).
Nothing is ever perfect, and of course you had various minorities getting the short end of the stick, or outright blatantly discriminated against, as with African and Native Americans. But for the larger populace, I understand that you really could live a pretty comfortable life, with social safety nets available if you were struggling.
Cue Jim Crow laws being struck down in the mid-60’s and a huge hippie movement to relax norms and expand one’s mind, and by the late 60’s you had the furious right-wing, dog-whistling movement responding by electing Tricky Dick, and it’s been a slow (but increasingly quick) return to the robber barons, blatant discrimination and the breakdown of democracy.
I’m not super well-read on all this, so might be missing some key points, but my take is that the USA as a whole has not remotely appreciated how good things were for ~40yrs, starting with most Boomers. It took the Muckrakers, two Roosevelts and the Great Depression to claw our way out of Monopolies and corporations taking over everything, and now we’ve lost most of that, and are hurtling towards 1984, even as civilisation itself is heading towards… a pretty rough ending.
you present it more eloquently but I very much feel this. I think one big thing is the fall is so slow at first that it is barely noticable but its an accelerating function so eventually the veolocity was such that it was becoming very obvious. Its amazing that so many seem to respond at this point with the head in the ground reaction.
I’m forced to believe that, but it also makes my head spin. I believe it, because the general populace and a bunch of talking heads and (otherwise) smart comedians were doing ‘business as usual’ in the 80’s and 90’s. For example, mercilessly mocking Clinton for his affairs and that kind of thing, while meanwhile Nixon had opened the gates of capital elitism and Reagan had bull-rushed his way through, greatly dooming democracy right there.
But few people of influence were sounding the alarm, maybe because ‘American greatness’ had existed as recently as the mid-70’s, and too many people wanted to sort of lazily believe that ‘things go in waves,’ implying that somehow, magically, democracy would right the ship. Something like that, anyway.
yeah there was a kind of oh this is just a thing and we will get back to normal. While the slow velocity was kinda fall we could climb back up and that was kinda true if you looked at reagan clinton. One thing though was bush sr. was still a saner old school type republican and actually did not do more damage and kinda started a recovery that made it easy for clinton. Increasingly we can’t right the ship so easily. Its like if we get through this we might plug the holes but the ship will still be filled with water and republicans will of course blame it on the administration that plugged their holes.
Right-wingers have massive pockets of dumbass voters who don’t have any real perspective on facts & reality, and just ‘do what everyone else around them is doing.’ You can hear people in Southern States sometimes talk about this online. Similar groups routinely fall for ragebait, and therefore insulate themselves from facts & reality in that way, too. The hope obviously is that the Orange regime and swing states haven’t totally gamed the electoral process for this coming election. Otherwise the USA is lost IMO.
My take on this is that the US truly experienced a period of ‘greatness’ for around 40yrs, starting with FDR’s response to the Great Depression in the mid-30’s. Then you have post WW2, and the US was considered something of a hero nation around much of the world, plus was one of the few major countries with lots of intact production going on, with lots of demand around the world. For some decades there, you could work a job like gas station attendant and make a salary good enough to buy a home and support a family (I may be exaggerating somewhat, but the point’s made).
Nothing is ever perfect, and of course you had various minorities getting the short end of the stick, or outright blatantly discriminated against, as with African and Native Americans. But for the larger populace, I understand that you really could live a pretty comfortable life, with social safety nets available if you were struggling.
Cue Jim Crow laws being struck down in the mid-60’s and a huge hippie movement to relax norms and expand one’s mind, and by the late 60’s you had the furious right-wing, dog-whistling movement responding by electing Tricky Dick, and it’s been a slow (but increasingly quick) return to the robber barons, blatant discrimination and the breakdown of democracy.
I’m not super well-read on all this, so might be missing some key points, but my take is that the USA as a whole has not remotely appreciated how good things were for ~40yrs, starting with most Boomers. It took the Muckrakers, two Roosevelts and the Great Depression to claw our way out of Monopolies and corporations taking over everything, and now we’ve lost most of that, and are hurtling towards 1984, even as civilisation itself is heading towards… a pretty rough ending.
you present it more eloquently but I very much feel this. I think one big thing is the fall is so slow at first that it is barely noticable but its an accelerating function so eventually the veolocity was such that it was becoming very obvious. Its amazing that so many seem to respond at this point with the head in the ground reaction.
I’m forced to believe that, but it also makes my head spin. I believe it, because the general populace and a bunch of talking heads and (otherwise) smart comedians were doing ‘business as usual’ in the 80’s and 90’s. For example, mercilessly mocking Clinton for his affairs and that kind of thing, while meanwhile Nixon had opened the gates of capital elitism and Reagan had bull-rushed his way through, greatly dooming democracy right there.
But few people of influence were sounding the alarm, maybe because ‘American greatness’ had existed as recently as the mid-70’s, and too many people wanted to sort of lazily believe that ‘things go in waves,’ implying that somehow, magically, democracy would right the ship. Something like that, anyway.
yeah there was a kind of oh this is just a thing and we will get back to normal. While the slow velocity was kinda fall we could climb back up and that was kinda true if you looked at reagan clinton. One thing though was bush sr. was still a saner old school type republican and actually did not do more damage and kinda started a recovery that made it easy for clinton. Increasingly we can’t right the ship so easily. Its like if we get through this we might plug the holes but the ship will still be filled with water and republicans will of course blame it on the administration that plugged their holes.
Right-wingers have massive pockets of dumbass voters who don’t have any real perspective on facts & reality, and just ‘do what everyone else around them is doing.’ You can hear people in Southern States sometimes talk about this online. Similar groups routinely fall for ragebait, and therefore insulate themselves from facts & reality in that way, too. The hope obviously is that the Orange regime and swing states haven’t totally gamed the electoral process for this coming election. Otherwise the USA is lost IMO.