Comments

1
Exactly right.

The US has been in Empire-Decline mode since the '80s, it just hasn't been quite as obvious as it is now. Depressing, but also energizing it seems.

Trump diddles while the American Rome burns.
2
Our problems go all the way back to the beginning, in fact.

Over the years, I’ve come to the realization that the Revolutionary War was one of history’s collossal mistakes, and we would’ve been far better off remaining part of the British empire. As evidence, may I present Exhibit A: US history 1776 to present.

Slavery would’ve ended decades earlier, and we would’ve benefited from the far superior Westminster parliamentary system, rather than the anti-democratic, unrepresentative, dysfunctional mess that we’re stuck with now, which constantly produces disastrous results and guarantees that our nation’s worst, most backward assholes are always in charge due to the supremacy of geography over population when allocating political representation and power.

It’s funny when talk of Twitler impeachment mentions “overturning the will of the people.” Well, the Supreme Court did it in 2000, then the (s)Electoral College did it again in 2016, and look how great that all turned out. Twitler “won” by -3,000,000 votes, and now we’re gonna spend the rest of our lives explaining how a bullying, lying, fascist psychopath seized the presidency and plunged the nation into an amoral, lawless abyss.
3
That said, rather than a Soviet Union-style crackup or a Pence-esque totalitarian theocracy, I expect that this crisis in tandem with wealth inequality will produce a far more polarized and balkanized society, at least for the next decade until the Great White Racist Die Off, with city dwellers waging a cold war against rural residents and vice versa.
4
@2 - I dunno dude, I don't think ⊥rump, selfish & destructive as he is, is the one doing plunging of the nation. If the wealthy authoritarians in this country didn't want him and what he could enable, he wouldn't have made it to the GOP nomination round. He didn't do that shit by himself. The road to the amoral, lawless abyss has been the massive contamination of corporate money in politics. ⊥rump is merely the most fitting symbol of that corrosion.

In fact, we know that corporations as "personas" are sociopathic (or psychotic) ... And we know ⊥rump, an obvious sociopath, has effectively 'branded' himself, right? He has merged with and morphed himself into a corporation. ⊥rump is a corporation made flesh.

So, he is the perfect expression of the ascendancy of the corporation to the heights of US political power. A process that has been happening since Reagan, finally come to repulsive fruition.

Did you know the Koch Bros. are making moves to call a freaking Constitutional Convention? They want to rewrite the fucking Constitution to enshrine corporate power into our legal DNA. They are a fucking corpo-political virus.
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@3 - Next decade? My, you are hopeful! I'm thinking a century or two.
5
@ 4,

Agreed on all points, with the qualification that politicians have used racism since this country's founding in order to turn white Americans against everyone else in order to surpress labor uprisings.

Racist hatred is the most powerful force in US politics, which is why working class whites continue to vote against their own well-being and keep obviously corrupt, incompetent, dishonest RepubliKKKans in power. Most importantly, these Trumpissts are old: The Silent Generation is in their late 70s to 80s, while the eldest Boomers are in their early 70s. Life expectancy is actually trending downwards due to obesity-related illnesses, so the GOP's hate-crazed, white trash power base will be shuffling off to somewhere way hotter within the next nine-ish years.

The Millennials then will be the largest demographic group, and hopefully we'll be finished with the malicious RepubliKKKan party. There will still be a smaller number of psychopathic racists of course, but they'll be permanently relegated to the political fringes. This is why the 'pubs want to do as much damage as possible now while they still can.
6
Indeed, you are right about racism being used as a powerful political force... it triggers emotions & actions at a core level, subverting rational thought.

You might appreciate this book: Stamped from the Beginning: A Definitiv…. The author points out that economic interests are the impetus for cultural suppression, and racist ideas are then used to justify those actions. The final stage is a kind of cultural ignorance that then perpetuates racism. Most people think that ignorance breeds racism -- but it's the reverse. Racism breeds Ignorance. And Economic Exploitation breeds racist thinking to justify an unequal system. It's an identifiable pattern. One that feeds right in to the general pattern of exploitation that capitalism requires for constant profit "growth". (Cheap mining rights, logging the national forests, slavery, etc.) Always taking something for low-cost, and selling it for high-cost. Never repaying the 'debt' to those exploited systems or people.

While your demographic points are true, racism is not at all contained to the Silent & Boomer generations. There remains strong economic interest in keeping Blacks incarcerated (ie. the private profit from captive prison labor, for only one),.. so racist ideas will be --are being-- actively perpetuated vertically through family generations and peer groups. We are so not out of this yet. The virulent hatred that is fermenting in numerous pockets around the nation, actively fed by Spencer's ilk, is really only starting to bubble back up... it's gonna get crazy, I fear. White-on-black, and Police-on-black attacks will probably increase, generating a strong reaction, which will then be used to justify more violent suppression, and arrests, and incarceration.

Millennials, interestingly, are one of the more philanthropic generations in a while. The Boomers are known to be the most selfish, Scrooge-like, non-donating-to-charity-causes generation in current lived memory. Talk to someone from a non-profit who works in the 'philanthropy' department, receiving donations: The Boomers are selfish jerks who don't give. The 1940's & 50's were a time of massive social control (war & "nuclear families"), and those fuckers received some bad, highly anti-social memetic concepts ("Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!").

In many ways, ⊥rump is the last revenge of the Boomer generation, as you point out. Me!, me!, me!, ME!

And yes, the known shift in demographics is why the GOPpers are gerrymandering like crazy and gaming the system so hard so that they can remain in power for as long as possible.

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