Not really. Not to be dismissive of the harms of a 2nd term trump.
But you have to understand what American history has been.
People were literally enslaved in the early days, then the country was literally at war with itself over slavery. Then Jim Crow and Segregation. Black people were lynched. White mobs would kill black people.
Chinese people were targeted by the Chinese Exclusion Act and banned from entry, some were US Citizens too and they weren’t except either.
The US had a major economic crash in 1929. Got into 2 world wars. American Citizens of Japanese ancestry were literally arrested and held in camps because of their ancestry. Went through cols war, the red scare, mccathyism. People randomly getting accused of being “communists” and arrested. Unions get cracked down. Protests were brutally suppressed, more violently than in modern day. Black people protesting for their rights and took a bus down south got burned. Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. literally got assassinated.
That is the American history.
And here we are, through such a shitty history, democracy survived, and voting rights expanded to so many people. First to Black people, then to Women.
Back then a majority of the population supported segregation, institutionalized racism. But today, a majority of people are okay with interracial marriage.
I have high hopes we can survive another trump term.
It won’t be pleasent, but we’ll survive.
democracy survived
LMAO!!
Choosing between two candidate picked by lobbyists/corporations, and anyone else not having a slightest chance in hell isn’t a democracy, but hey, you do you.
It’s slightly better than China/Russia having a single candidate and everyone else is just for show.
I think the problem here is the concurrent effects of climate change. The US couldn’t have picked a worse time to move from flirting with facism to full-on marrying it.
You can deal with one crisis if you’re coordinated enough but the chaos that’s already occurring with the climate - and is set to become exponentially worse - doesn’t give me much hope for a harmonious conclusion to this. Obviously, I hope I’m wrong and you’re right.
The part about our history you’re forgetting is that we never, through any of that, gleefully elected a guy that has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t give a fuck about democracy and will work to subvert or destroy it if it doesn’t suit him.
This is new territory.
And we’re about to experience the deconstruction of things that will be very difficult to build back.
Your point is that we’ve been around for a few hundred years, so we can bounce back. But history would like to point out that nations that were around much longer than us have ceased to exist many times over.
I wish I had your optimism.
It should be noted that through all this people fought for those rights. So don’t fall asleep, dear America, because organizing even within small communities will make a difference.
If done correctly, massive change can happen. Dream big so that those who fear negotiate back down to the levels you’ll accept.
The Beastie Boys certainly did.
I feel like a lot of people online need to read this comment, go outside, and live their life. This is not defeatist, and it’s not unreal optimism. Thank you for this.
Dont forget the trail of tears.
The US has been through a lot and will likely recover, but it would be nice to avoid making the same mistakes again. How many more people have to get hurt before humanity learns?
one difference today is that govt/establishment/utra-rich have centralised way more power than anytime in human history.
add that with extreme surveillance & automated weaponry, “govt” can do basically anything they want. 1% can easily crush any opposition to them with no matter how strongly united the rest of us are. dnc just ignored its entire voter base to continue a genocide & support fracking while letting corporate greed run rampant for last 4 years.
with ai+drones it will become way worse. it’s not unimaginable what’s happening to palestinian will happen to the non-white population here in next 10-15 years.
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.
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.
It’s so fucking disgusting to be honest… I’m just a worthless dumb shit uneducated factory worker and at 17 I could see right through that garbage… We’re a hateful group of people whether we care to admit it or not, there was a lot of anti-islamic/Muslim/Arab sentiment in the US at thst time. People were bloodthirsty.
I was going to join the military after highschool to get training since I’m poor and had no real direction to gamble on college, and then take it from there whether to stay in or not. Once talk started of invading Iraq I immediately said fuccccck that. I still blame Bush partially for my current situation. :/
No. It will be bad and might set us back a few decades, but we will fight back or die trying.
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.
The difference between recession and collapse is a bounce back on the other side.
Banking system is already vulnerable to real estate prices. Commercial real estate has been in zombie mode with banks hiding their losses on the sector. The US government has already unsustainable debt levels that can’t afford major adventures or catastrophes. Adventures include mass deportations or wars. The problem with austerity measures for the non-oligarchs is strong degrowth and crime from multiplier effects.
While Trump is likely to be extremely divisive and angering socially, it is economics and geopolitics that will collapse the US. Deregulating banks is letting the fractional reserve system use a riskier lower fraction. Biden was very good at strengthening the subjugation of US colonies, but he pushed away majority of the world. There is major risk that Trump pushes away colonies without making the world more trusting of US. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/requiem-for-an-empire.html
What destroys America is the hubris of thinking it is winning, and that it can win over the world. Fighting China instead of getting cheap stuff is a mistake. Investing in dead ender climate terrorist energy is a mistake. Promising reindustrialization is a lie, and tariffs won’t do it. It will bleed Americans dry while letting oligarchs pillage what’s left.
Weaponizing AI to control population, and kill people is the new priority. Putting your hopes in DNC so that they can undo project 2025 is controlling you in a way that doesn’t avert the path to collapse in any way.
The only escape is UBI and peace. Not something a Israel supremacist neocon DNC wants, because UBI is power redistribution instead of wealth redistribution. The binary of AI and automation is either cooperation where abundance and the profits from abundance can be shared, or extermination of useless riff raff that dares to whine about oligarchy and empire.
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.
Assuming you are talking about who won the US presidential election. Happened 8 years ago too, it wasn’t the end of America then. It won’t be the end of America now.
It WAS the end for a lot of people. Not everyone survived the last Trump regime.
Be prepared for the doomers to tell you why you are wrong. God speed, brother.
How fast is God speed?
Well, by now the Supreme Court has been supplanted and intent to overthrow democracy has been shown. That’s a big difference to last time. So it’s not exactly the same situation.
But we’ll see how robust American democracy is.
Why do we call it united?
Last I checked the math books, 50 is Divided.
I always did find it amusing that they are called the United States when it seems like it’s constantly teetering on brink of another civil war.
From an outside observer: it’s gonna be harder, but I don’t think so. Still, the playbook Trump is gonna try and follow with his trifecta is what his mate Orbán did in Hungary. How hard that is going to be to undo depends on how far he gets.
Point of no return for what?
Do you mean its fall, like Rome?
No, I don’t think so at all.
I actually think we’re on the cusp of actual, true reform.
But if I’m wrong, just try to remember that millions of people lives happy, fulfilling lives, even while Rome fell around them. We will too.
It’s the point of no return for something, but I suspect there’s still a future to fight for. Anyone pushing a full doomer view is trying to suppress you. In case the worst happens, you should try to build a community around yourself and support other people. Join a mutual aid group if you can (or start one). If you grow produce or something, talk to your neighbors and exchange resources.
If we build a strong foundation, nothing that happens can break us. In the worst case, they’ll try to break us and break themselves upon us. We need to be strong so we can come back stronger in the future.
Anyone pushing a full doomer view is trying to suppress you.
This is so stupid. Can’t we just be really fucking discouraged because the reality of the situation is mind-bogglingly grim?
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.
This is based on nothing but vibes and my observations but I think so. We were cooked the moment we elected the clown the first time, just been a slower slide than I anticipated. In truth though we already had the disease at that point but it was then it became terminal.
I desperately want to be wrong and will do what I can to prove myself a moron. Fingers crossed.
It might be for some stuff. I’m worried that it’ll have a lasting impact on women inside the USA as well as outside. Inside, they’ll have their rights taken away over time. Outside, morale will be impacted. But I’m hoping it’ll cause an uprising rather than the other way around.
The US has had presidents who were literally more evil than Mr. Burns.
They haven’t been a real democracy (where the will of the majority influences policy) in decades, if ever.Climate change is still the thing that’s most likely to fuck us all, and it’s not like the US were actually helpful in that regard under Democratic leadership.
