From an outsider’s perspective, I think a lot of people think you guys sailed past the point of no return back in the 80s.
Reagan, he is the starting point of everything: the tax cut from 73% to 28%. USA never got back on track after this.
Nope. Johnson.
No, not that one.
Andrew Johnson.
So many ways it could have been better.
He could have punished the Southern Aristocracy for starting the civil war. He could have ensured that the evil that led us there was exterminated forever.
Failing that, they could have actually removed him via impeachment instead of falling just short. That would have at least established forever that the presidency is not some sacred “unimpeachable” office.
But Raygun did a great break dancing set in the Olympics.
Remember when the entire world was convinced there was absolutely no way Bush, an idiot, fascist, religious bigot, etc could get re-elected?
Nobody thought that at all. Most presidents sitting during outbreaks of war retain their positions. You’d have to have been in a complete echo chamber to believe this stance. The moment 9/11 happened, it solidified Bush’s Second term in stone.
I assume you mean Jr. Because Sr wasn’t the moron that Jr was.
Yeah no, I’m gonna disagree. Being outside of the US at the time, most people did think that. And yes, obviously I’m talking about Jr since Sr didn’t get re-elected. 9/11 was a full three years before the election of his second term. And most importantly before he started the war in Iraq. A war that was widely viewed as illegitimate outside the US.
It was viewed as illegitimate inside the US too. And yeah, I remember, even as a 17yr old at the time, seeing the event happen live and lamenting to my mother that we were going to have another Bush term over it. Historically for America that’s always been the case.
It was viewed as illegitimate inside the US too.
You’re recollection of events is clearly skewed. Something like 80% of the population approved of it at first. Meanwhile there were protests in the millions of people around the world against it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq
A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons.
You should read your own link, because it also mentions that by the end of his term, most disapproved. By 2006 it was viewed as illegitimate by most. My recollection of events is fine, thanks.
America will generally approve of measures when they are led to believe it affects their security and safety. It’s the years afterwards that determine if it continues to hold support.
You should read your own link, because it also mentions that by the end of his term, most disapproved
I clearly stated “at first”. Mind you by the end of his term a majority still thought it was the right thing to do.
Nucular. 🤦
What?!
The 80s were fucked, but if you’re saying it was worse than the response to the Civil Rights movement…
McCarthyism…
Jim Crow…
Or the KKK destroying reconstruction…
Like, I could see saying that last one was the point, only if you start the clock immediately after resolving the civil war. Cause obviously a Civil War is what really happens after a point of no return. We lasted a couple years in between the two points.
For as fucked as the last 40 years has been, as far as America goes we’re beating the average on basic human decency.
What’s happening now isn’t new, it’s a slip backwards, which is unfortunately common when you try to fight fascism with moderate politics. It works for a little bit because they’re coasting off the last people who really fought. But all moderate politcs really are, is giving fascist time to regroup in the shadows like fucking Sauron.
It’s a cycle, and we live in a time when you can learn pretty much anything about history in a few minutes on Wikipedia
America can not afford for voters to stay ignorant. We need people who know what happened last time, what worked then, and what might work again. Stop acting like we live in unprecedented times, and start reading up on how fascism has been defeated historically.
Cuz we’re up, like it or not shits getting real again. And the more people know what we’re doing then better.
Yes.
In my opinion we’ve already passed the point of no return and recent events have just confirmed as much.
This isn’t about having differing political opinions. A profoundly unfit, amoral criminal with a very public history of being an awful person came along and started spewing extremely dangerous rhetoric, some of which is almost verbatim to Hitler’s, and our society ate it up and made him president in 2016. This man, who leads a party who courts racists/sexists for their votes, utterly failed his tenure as president, bombing his response to the greatest American crisis since WW2 and presiding over the highest White House administration turnover rate in U.S. history. Since then he has become a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and illegally attempted to overturn our democratic institutions by various means.
This go around the American people were presented with a choice between that person, who only managed to make himself appear even more unfit during this campaign season, openly stated he is anti-worker rights, and is directly responsible for removing women’s federally protected right to bodily autonomy, or a successful prosecutor with a doctorate in law, backed by a party that, despite misinformation, has a voting history proving they vote in favor of the average American FAR more than the opposing party…and Americans STILL managed to drop the ball and go with the CLEARLY worse choice. And when I say clearly, I’m talking about by every conceivable metric that exists in reality.
At this point it isn’t about Democrat vs Republican or Trump vs Kamala or Biden. It’s about the American people. We are not a society of intelligent voters. We have failed our responsibility as citizens in a democracy by being too lazy to learn and by allowing misinformation to mislead us and emotions to cloud our better judgement. We are not engaged in responsible involvement in our own politics. We gleefully elect people that only offer hate and fear and lies, despite how hard they try to prove how awful they are to us. And THAT is why we have passed the point of no return. If you remove the parties and the politicians out of the equation, you still have a society that fails at responsibly preserving a democracy. That gives in to hateful rhetoric and fear. That wants to get the better of the “others”.
There is no happy ending for a society like that. A society like that can only decline. This was not an election about one political ideology against another. It was an election about morality. And we categorically failed that moral test.
There are excuses. We’ve been through a lot. Lots of people are desperate. Desperate people make bad decisions. But the bottom line is we don’t live in a society with a majority of responsible adults making responsible, fact-based decisions about the most important things.
In the arc of history we may end up reaching a better place, but personally I believe we’re embarking on a decline that will most likely last the rest of our lives. It simply isn’t a problem that can be fixed short term. And we’re about to experience a sort of deconstruction. A deconstruction of norms. A deconstruction of institutions. A deconstruction of education and safety nets. And those things take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to build back, because it’s easier to destroy than it is to create or maintain.
Buckle up. Try to find happiness where you can. It’s probably not getting better anytime soon.
I’ve never been more happy to be childless by choice.
Progress isn’t a straight line, and sometimes there are setbacks on the way. I’m disappointed, of course, but I’m optimistic that we’ll manage.
We may yet manage as a country, but the millions that die from this election won’t get to see it.
And progress without testing it’s resiliency against malicious actors will not last. As much as we hate Trump being elected and staffing clowns in each position, it will test what has been made so far. Row v. Wade, as we now know, should have been stronger. The Voting Rights Act too. The states that required the law to be fair have pulled back the law and reveal little has changed.
No one likes getting burned but fire is useful for showing us what burns easily and what withstands the heat. We will rebuild stronger and know what works.
Nah.
That was Reagan. You’re about 40 years late.
If you want to play that game, it was likely Nixon and the southern strategy.
But neither of those were point of no return. They were just foundational groundwork to set up this moment that likely is.
It’s going to be a really shit 4 years. There could be a point of no return anytime along that based on a variety of issues, but IMO the most likely point of no return is if/when Trump moves to take a third term in '28. If that happens it’s clearly dead no hope.
Just feels life another goal post moved… He literally worked to overthrow the American government and have his VP killed on live TV and was then clinched of dozens of felonies. . There can’t always be a *“yeah, but if THIS next thing happens…”*I
He failed to overthrow the American government and have his VP killed. And the reason he wanted his VP killed was because he wouldn’t help him overthrow the American government.
It’s undeniable that some very powerful people want US democracy dead, but from that to the actual death of US democracy is a long way
I was as surprised and disappointed as anyone, and I think we WILL take a few more steps backwards over the next few years, but I don’t expect an unstoppable fall into fascism.
Most of the votes for Trump weren’t actually FOR Trump. They were against the current situation they are in. They see him as the revolution. The anti-politician that will bring real change. They think all his court battles are the “Man” trying to hold him down and keep him from disrupting a system that gave up on its people long ago.
Of course that’s all bullshit, but, assuming that all “normal” people can see through his lies and that only evil, woman hating racists would support him, is a big part of why he was elected.
Trump denied Project 2025 because he knew most people wouldn’t want it. (Honestly, I would be surprised if he even knew what was in it) If he lets the Christian nationalists push that whole agenda on day one, he’ll become the oppressive government that is taking away their freedoms. And nothing is more important to Trump than making Trump look good.
I’m way more concerned with Vance. Like you say, Trump does what’s best for Trump. If Vance becomes President for whatever reason then ideology takes center stage.
Vance and Bannon
Yeah, I think this could be the end of free and fair elections in the U.S., and there’s no coming back from that without a revolution. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think most of us will directly be killed by this change; our lives will just be shittier. It’ll be like living in Russia. Given how utterly incompetent the administration is looking, and the things they say they’re going to do (mass deportation of a significant part of our workforce, blanket tariffs, gutting social safety-nets), we may speed-run an economic and societal collapse. That could sow the seeds for a horrible and bloody revolution.
Or, maybe I’m wrong and the important institutions will somehow hold against a christo-fascist party controlling all branches of the federal government and a president with immunity. If there are still are free and fair elections, then congress could block a lot of things in 2026, and start repairing some of the damage in 2028.
Still, it does not bode well that the U.S. elected these people in the first place, and at best, the U.S. will slowly crumble for decades.
Free and fair elections have never been anything but an ideal in this country. It started with voters were wealthy landowning men, often who owned slaves.
What we’re seeing is years of undermined reforms by the momentarily wealthy after the previous empires in europe tore themselves apart.
Meh, I would’ve given 3/5 stars to U.S. democracy since the Voting Rights Act. Stars taken away for FPTP, gerrymandering, campaign finance, “lobbying,” and the electoral college. I believe we’re going to go to 0/5 stars with completely rigged elections rather than just manufacturing consent and lightly tipping the scales like they’ve been doing.
No. Of course not!
Failing to Reject the Reagan Revolution, and mass embrace of the Jack Welsh style “trickle down” economics lie, by BOTH parties was the point of no return, almost half a century ago at this point. This car was already totaled.
Citizens United years later was just a victory lap by the owners pissing on the long dead corpse of the dream of societal equity.
Trump is just another symptom of that intransigent reality we all live in.
I’d say hope for collapse, as painful as it is, to have any hope for a better life for our children, maybe, but oligarch greed made climate change and at this point inevitable ecological collapse in the coming decades means there really isn’t hope for a better society/civilization for generations(if they eventually develop technologies to better cope with the new hellish climate reality) if at all.
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It might be. Only time, and the actions of Americans themselves, will tell.
It’s the biggest crisis in my lifetime. But we have survived other crisises, some-fucking-how, so maybe we’ll luck our way out of this one too.
God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.
- Otto Von Bismarck
Yeah, we’re a strangely resilient nation. Things that topple other nations have been crises to us. This may be the end and this may be a disaster so great we dismantle the right wing media dominance or any number of things.
I think the real answer is that we end up kind of like the UK – going from the worlds ultra-dominant superpower to a sort of slow regression to the mean, as China, India and others take the spotlight.
When you look at what China is doing with their Belt and Road Initiative, and their move to dominate the transportation infrastructure of developing nations – the US isn’t anywhere near equipped to counter that. We’re still in a cold war mentality thinking that we will dominate as the world’s police force.
Meanwhile, all the actual economies will be run by Chinese companies operating with state support.
It would seem that way. The people elected a guy that tried to overthrow democracy
How do you recover from that
You probably don’t.
Even with a contentious subject like abortion. That’s a disagreement about a specific topic. You can reach a middle ground. It’s one of many topics to debate over and forge legislation regarding.
But the majority gleefully electing a guy that effectively looked us all straight in the face and said “I don’t give a fuck about democracy and will attempt to subvert or overthrow it if it doesn’t suit me”? Yeah, there’s really no recovering from that. At least not without a long period of serious decline and suffering, followed by lots of struggle and death to earn back what we lose.
We disrespected the shit out of our democracy and everyone that fought/died for it. There’s no way that ends well.
Absolutely not. It’s the moment where everyone digs in harder.
Ask anyone with skin darker than yours, or whose sexuality or gender was once or still is illegal. You don’t fuckin give up
No. There were two ways the trump admin was going to go. He was either going to run an effective fascist regime, or become the ringmaster of the largest dipshit fucknugget circus. Seeing how things are going so far (and he isn’t even the president yet) it’s going to be the latter.
Sure, there will be long term damage that is going to take years, if not lifetimes of hard work and good policy to undo, but it can be undone. Assuming 2024 was a wake up call and people vote more effectively instead of throwing their voice away at propped up Russian disinfo candidates.
That’s what the Americans said after the first Trump election
And the Americans are still here because he ran a clown show last time too. Palestine might not make it through the next 4 years though, but that’s what the abstainers and 3rd party voters were pushing for.
Are you one of those people who seriously thought that Harris was going to do anything to help Palestine? If so, you bought into something much dumber than Russian disinfo.
Out of the two and only two choices Americans had (thanks, first past the post), she was overwhelmingly and objectively the best.
But yes she was weak on Palestine and that was bad. Ranked choice for actual third parties, please.
I voted for Jill Stein. She advocated an arms embargo against Israel to end the genocide, which I believe is the best course of action.
Nope I’m not.
we don’t actually know what Harris would have done to be intellectually honest, we just have what she said.
the problem is that people learned nothing. The pandemic gave trump a get out of jail free card, I guess, even though he fucked it up
For democracy? Yes.
The longer the rubes hold on to this pipe dream that the dems can make a come back the further we will slip and longer it will take to recover. Unfortunately, I don’t think democrat party members will ever give up on the democratic party and they will spend all their political goodwill investing in this farce of a party long after the elections are still free and fair.
Say, free and fair elections survive by some act of god. That doesn’t change the fact the GOP can beat them handley in a free and fair election. The only thing trump needed to cement his win was the Supreme Court to sign off on everything. Given immunity all the road blocks trump had before have been lifted.
We have till January and you will see what the executive is actually capable of, with limp dick biden kicked to the curb.
The terror that will be trumps deportation methods will have your jaw drop and I’m not kidding. We tolerated kids in cages, Abu Ghraib is coming to America and our own sex trafficker and chief will begin some truly despicable shit. You better believe media capture is part of it because there is no way other country’s will be let in on this side of the veil.
I’m not a doomer. It’s not hyperbole. Im not an oracle and would pay with my own life just to be wrong.
I still am hopeful though that my countrymen can snap out of it and quit dismissing reality in real-time, allowing us an actual chance at resisting this upheaval. If we wait till the midterms though, this shit is cooked, packed, and on the shelf.
If you want to say, look at American history, I’d quickly defer you to the 90s. Whatever we might have once been we are no longer that. We are consumers educated by infomercials who only know reality TV and “influencers”. Coke was the first plague, Springer the second. Followed by real world and road rules. All of this media “culture” stripped us of what it ever ment to be American. No one sits around and wanes intellectual about the founding fathers unless you’re a fashie supreme court justice or Lin-Manuel Miranda. Today, in 2024, the Apprentice is more American than George Washington.
There was a time when a single black women sitting at the front of a bus could change a nation. Today Rosa would hit the front page of reddit on a Wednesday and fall off by the time Europeans woke up to see.
Some very profound points.
I think we were fucked once we had a window to all the world’s knowledge in our pockets. The line was immediately blurred between having access to that knowledge and the capacity to truly know and process, to possess, that knowledge.
That used to be the casual dividing line between the adults that considered politics and the people puking up shrimp and strawberry wine at the jersey shore. Now the shrimp and strawberry people count fox-scented infotainment as “news” and really just as their sports team of choice - and they line the paths to polling stations holding automatic rifles. They feel emboldened by knowledge they don’t actually possess but feel confidence in the fact that they “could look up whenever, just don’t want to right now”.
All the “Good Liars” clips are a front row seat on American democracy bleeding out.
