Middle-class malaise
I think the timeline is going to accelerate greatly thanks to the pandemic. It has really just underlined the fact that america is hollow. All support structures all public institutions have been hollowed out in the pursuit of profit. The richest country in the world is utterly incapable of any large scale (non military) action, thatâs a vacuum that china will seek to fill very quickly. The problem is that america will very soon be under military rule (before the 2024 election, book it) and that military will still be 10X stronger than the rest of the world combined including enough nukes to destroy the planet 1000X over. Itâs gonna be a wild ride folks.
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Havenât been to a single country in Europe where the locals I interacted with didnât complain about things like it was their second job.
Anyway, rich people are seen by most in America as harder working and more intelligent than they are. Thereâs a level of respect and in some cases worship for people who really got their money through illegal or immoral means that is incredibly unhealthy. After all, if you hold up criminals as American success stories for future generations to follow, youâll just encourage more people to become criminals.
People are more class-conscious in Europe and so they have a far less positive take on the wealthy. Theyâre viewed as a ruling class that was born into their position and that their goal is to accumulate as much wealth and power as possible. Americans view being wealthy as something that can be achieved through hard work and determination and that conflicts with the fact that most wealthy people are born into it. If the latter is true, then the American Dream that underpins the decisions of so many people is total bullshit and that millions lived their lives based on a lie. People would rather be ignorant of that and work at the American Dream than admit to themselves that it doesnât exist.
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Yeah this is somewhat accurate. The top 40% and the bottom 60% really do live in different worlds and itâs gotten super dystopian in that lower world. I donât know about the military dictatorship part (beyond to the degree that we already have one) but I do know that the really serious fracturing is about to start.
Itâs becoming very clear that the federal government is trying to solve problems at too big a scale. I expect to see the power and funding of the federal government shrink and state and local governments to fill the vacuum. Itâs going to become an even more divergent experience living in a big rich city vs living in the rural south⌠and they already very much feel like different countries.
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That reverence for the wealthy is way way lower among millenials and gen zâers. I think most of us know that the rich were born into their money and didnât earn it in any way shape or form. Weâve been watching the rich kids get the opportunities diverted to them by their parents our whole lives. We know that the game is rigged in our bones.
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Obviously no one knows the future, but itâs the only public institution left in america that maintains any positive feeling. No one trusts the government no one trusts the media no one trusts the police no one trusts corporations and mcconnell just spent the last decade making a mockery of the judiciary but who doesnât love and trust our brave boys? Just traitors basically. The libs would absolutely love a strong quiet sensible general to take over from the crazy orange man and bring everything back to normal. The maga chuds would just think itâs Q part 2 trump did great work now heâs stepping aside voluntarily to let the big beautiful generals take charge. Everyone else checked out long ago.
In fact they may not even need to coup theyâd just need to say âsir we are promoting you to lifetime amazing ideas guy. You go round the country doing rallies and coming up with amazing ideas. Weâll handle all the boring politics stuff from here on out sir.â and thatâd be it. Like the reason politicians stay in power in countries without institutions is that they have a base of power that it would be dangerous to upset. But trumps base love the generals more than they love him and Biden has no base. Whoever wins is holding up the constitution to try and stop a bullet.
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No question it is. But the people who are in power are either part of that wealthy group or are of the generation that reveres them.
I donât necessarily see that changing even when millennials get into power because the current system self-selects for selfish narcissistic sociopaths out of any generation. It would take a revolution to change things for the better at this point and I donât think Americans are at that breaking point just yet.
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Go spend a day in a place like Nelsonville, OH or Wheeling, WV. The people legitimately look like different species. The bottom half of this country is living in absolute misery with no prospect whatsoever for improvement. If I lived like that Iâd get hooked on oxy too.
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I dunno. The 60s hippies and the 70s free lovers became the original helicopter parents in the 90s and are now todayâs deplorables.
A whole lot of people didnât get the ironic point of Alex P Keaton and Gordon Gecko.
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Yet, itâs those people who vote for a party that actively enacts laws and executive orders that make their lives worse because apparently liberals are baby-killing socialists looking to take away muh guns and let in a bunch of rapists. There are times where I almost feel sorry for them.
Guarantee you that per capita, conservatives have killed way more babies than liberals.
Donât feel sorry for them. They are gleefully trading a worse life for themselves as long as the trade off is an even worse life for blacks, immigrants, transgendered people, etc. They donât truly believe Trump will make their lives better. They just want to lord it over someone else. Itâs despicable.
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So what does this look like? Intel, Apple, Google leaves the US? Another country starts making better software, hardware design, movies, TV than us? People stop sending their kids to go to college here?
Which of those things happens in 5-10 years?
Perhaps the US Dollar loses its reserve currency status, we find our ability to fund the continual and ever increasing national deficit impossible and the entire economy craters causing massive unemployment, riots and general unhinged mayhem
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Yah like, the American Dream is just a lottery system. It motivates people to grind away because in America, anyoneâs numbers can come up. Working hard isnât so much a way to manifest wealth as to survive long enough to spin the wheel one more time.
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Yeah but all the 2A stooges think they are going to save us from the government.
We have had 70 plus years of massive military growth and I think most Americans never thought about what happens when that might is turned on us.
I think many of us used to think a âdo the right thingâ mentality would win out, but I have no such belief in us anymore. I am confident most people will act against their own self interest and that of their friends and family.
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One of those things that seems surprising but inevitable once you mention it. I wouldnât be surprised if exactly this happens.
Damn man, that is powerful imagery. I feel shook.
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Are you referring to rap music or?
This is mostly wrong.
The cops that beat them up and those who cheered from home â-> todayâs deplorables.
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There was a name for this type of bargain. Iâm sure of it. Basically an unspoken bargain by the ruling class that implied that so long as white people were willing to oppress minorities, their lives would be better than those they oppress.
Of course their lives would still be miserable compared to the elite. Itâs that they would be less miserable.