I think America will walk back from this particular brink, but I don’t think the American people have the chutzpah to liberate themselves from their shackles.

C’est la guerre, I wouldn’t raise kids here.

America has been dead to me for years. It’s a crumbling empire and I have no respect for any of its leadership. I will never give up on myself or the working class, but we have far too much rabid individualism and egos to work together.

The people will weather the storm and come out the other side, albeit differently, but any semblance of government here is trash. Both parties are nothing but greed-driven parasites and everyone knows it. The new generations aren’t fooled by the same bullshit propaganda and the ruling class knows it. That’s why they’re ruling with an iron fist and the cops have zero accountability.

Cop cities going up everywhere; a military base on every continent; Israeli money weaving into everything; the Democrats are useless fucks; the Republicans are unmasked fascists. This country is in the final stages of late capitalism. I don’t want to live here and haven’t for years, but I persevere for family and friends. I’ve already told my wife if a revolution ever happens, I’m probably going to be the 65-year-old man that dies in it.

This is something my fellow Americans need to come to terms with:

There are some lovely, smart and aware people in that huge country. It’s not homogeneous. But overall? It won’t get much better without a revolution. And that’s a huge ask. It’s possible, other countries have managed despite police repression and mass illiteracy, but it’s a long journey, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the people with the awareness and the means will just try fleeing instead.

I will continue to fight, annoy, and agitate the capitalist status quo. Majority of Americans do not agree with current politics, our current “leader”, or oligarchs controlling everything.

Absolutely. Left America 15 years ago. The culture is glorified narcissism. The culture believes the earth is infinite. The culture believes they are the best in the world. The culture believes any criticism is self hatred and must be removed.

I’m not your target audience (sorry), as I left in 2021, but I left because I had given up on it during the pandemic when people couldn’t muster up enough care for each other to just mask up in public during a deadly pandemic. It was a combination of that and the realization that living in close proximity to my loved ones didn’t ensure I could visit them with any regularity, but that I could socialize with them from afar, so the pandemic gave me an impetus for and removed the main barrier from my emigration.

I was really missing a sense of community in a societal sense that I’ve found in Germany. My social circle is definitely smaller here, as I was pretty firmly rooted in the US, but strangers on the street are kinder (though not necessarily friendlier or nicer) to each other here and they take care of each other better. I live in an area with a specialized clinic for a certain handicap, so that plays a role, but there’s especially a lot of care taken for disabled people and the elderly, who are therefore a lot more present in the community. There are a lot of ways in which Germany is a lot more sink-or-swim than the US, but the most vulnerable people are embraced in a way that I find comforting and refreshing.

I left almost 10 years ago lol. It was always going to get worse before it gets better. This too shall pass.

Given up? I don’t know. I’ve been appalled pretty much non-stop since 2000, though. When we were taught history, the X’ers learned that the pendulum always swings back the other way. And when you looked back, the notion always kind of held water. But, draw a line from Nixon through Reagan, the Bushes, to Trump, and the conclusions you’ll draw are pretty grim.

There was an influential statement that was true in 1990 that was haunting, though: “The only presidential democracy with [more than 41 years] of constitutional continuity is the United States.” (I think there are around 5 others now between 40 and 70-something years old now.) Despite having a long run, this system isn’t particularly sturdy.

We’ll see, I guess.

The US Empire cannot be reformed from within, it needs to be completely dismantled as a state. This new state needs to place indigenous Americans at the forefront as a starter for decolonization, must be Socialist in character, and comprehensively democratic with minority protections. The current US State works entirely off of Imperialism, and maintains hundreds of overseas millitary bases to terrorize the world into bending the knee. The state is not democratic, candidates are pre-approved by the capitalist class. Megacorps rule the US, and have dominance over both parties.

This does not mean “genocide against all who live in the US.” Rather, it means that the working class of the US must overthrow the state and replace it with one run by and for the working class, in an anti-Imperialist and de-colonial manner.

If everyone gave up on a place when futures there look bleak, there wouldnt be a place left in the world worth living in.

No, but the country has problems. It’s always had problems. Even with all of the economic hardship and political strife we have today, most people are safer, healthier and have better prospects today than they have had in most of US history. It’s by no means perfect and we have a lot of work to do. But, giving up and checking out has never improved anything. It also doesn’t help that we have a steady drip-drip-drip of negative information fed to us by our phones and algorithms. We are also facing one of the largest Constitutional Crises in US History, with the President pushing the boundaries of his Constitutional powers. Even if nothing breaks, we are likely to see many changes from all this. Hopefully, those changes result in better guardrails on the Presidency. And maybe even a repudiation of the Roberts Supreme Court. But, such a future is hard to see when we are in the middle of the storm.

I even have hope for the slight voting majority which put Trump back in power. It’s easy to dismiss those folks as a bunch of <insert invective terms here>. And some of them almost certainly fit those descriptions. However, there are a lot of them which are just scared and confused by the FUD sandwich being fed to them by the 24-hour news cycle, social media algorithms and politicians looking for easy votes. It’s going to be hard work to pull them back off the brink. And if you’re not up to that work, I understand. It’s hard to want to put in the effort for folks who seem so far gone. I’ve spent a lot of hours arguing with folks with whom I disagree wholeheartedly. It’s tiring and I can only take so much before I decide it’s time to move on for a while. But, I would rather keep up the argument than let the country slide into full blown autocracy.

So ya, I have hope. It’s a grim hope and one which recognizes that we could lose. But, giving up now feels premature.

No, the US is lost. This is a situation that voting cannot possibly fix. We cannot say what needs to be done without getting banned. We cannot even post pictures of a guillotine or a Mario based video game character on most sites.

It’s not political, that is the distraction game … it is the billionaires doing this; however, we cannot break out of the disinformation they create.

Turnaround to what, exactly? A retreat from fascism would be great, don’t get me wrong, but what we had before wasn’t exactly working otherwise we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this situation. As much as Democrats like to blame Donald Trump for literally everything (and he’s certainly done enough), he’s just the manifestation of peoples’ resentment and desperation at how much this country doesn’t work for most of its people.

Worse still, even if there is a return to the status quo from say 10-20 years ago, aside from not fixing the problem, that will just make everyone focus more on their relief at not being under a fascist regime anymore and thus they will become even more complacent about the things that didn’t work before. The politicians who opposed this backslide into fascism - and their ‘vote blue no matter who’ supporters - will be ever more convinced of the rightness of their position and thus have even less reason to change anything, so we’ll just wind up right back here again.

But also, let’s address your specific complaints.

They complain about big tech having your information, but turn around wanting you to sign a petition that asks for your information.

Yeah, let’s not actually try to, you know, do anything about any of this, let’s just sit around and let those tech-bros enshittify their platforms and cram ads down our throats. Let’s not inconvenience anyone with a protest or a petition or a call to your representative, for shame! Also if you can’t see the difference between a giant, all-devouring megacorporation having your data and putting your email/phone# on a petition then I’m afraid it’s going to take more effort than I care to muster to unfuck your worldview, so, uh, good luck figuring that one out on your own.

They complain about commercials all year long, but will tune in by the millions for a Super Bowl

Are you sure these are the same people? You’re painting with an extremely broad brush here. I only have anecdotal evidence to offer, but I complain about commercials and I haven’t watched a Super Bowl ad in probably 20 years.

They complain about unfair wages, bad workplace environments and shitty bosses but didn’t make so much of a fuss during the pandemic.

So your issue is both that they complain, and that they don’t complain hard enough? Talk about having your cake and eating it too, you’re straddling that fence so hard you’ve found a way to whine about both sides of the same issue.

So what gives, really? … fuck the majority of Americans

Apparently what gives is that you are confused and angry and lashing out at people you don’t know for perceived slights you don’t seem to understand, wishing for the impossible return to a magical happy place that never existed (go ahead, ask those of us who remember the 2008 crash how great the world of 20 years ago was, I dare you) because you don’t understand that there is a world of distance between ‘not a complete dumpster fire’ and ‘actually decent.’ You seem to be mad at people who don’t vote the way you think they should without even attempting to understand where they’re coming from or what their motivations might be, you don’t seem capable of learning from the mistakes of the past that led to where we are today, or even particularly interested in acknowledging that they exist. You seem convinced despite generations of evidence that just voting harder will fix anything, and you ridicule the fact that other people have not somehow received this ultimate self-evident truth from on high as you have. And worst of all you seem too exasperated or confused by all of the above to try to actually change anything, you fail to understand, much less support and encourage, the means by which others are trying to do that, and you’re way too up your own ass to realize that everyone around you is a person with their own internal life, hopes, dreams, etc just like you, much less to have a shred of fucking empathy for anyone who isn’t within arm’s reach (and I’m skeptical about even that.)

In short, what gives is: Fuck you, and while you’re at it read a book, you’re embarrassing yourself.

bury the past, rob us blind, leave nothing behind

If the people can cast off the shackles of the two party system, there could be a tiny chance of turning this boat away from shore. But I wouldn’t count on that.

The tribalism runs deep. Perhaps Stockholm syndrome would be more accurate a description because we are most definitely not a part of the tribe of either mainstream political party. Advocating to add democracy to our voting system via electoral reform runs into a surprising amount of resistance. People cling to their preferred political party with a white knuckle grip.

Should future elections occur, the wagons will be circled, the most important election ever ™ will be declared, and any dissent will be labeled as Russian disinformation agents. People will howl for the blood of 3rd party voters and yet do nothing about the First-past-the-post voting system.

Nothing will fundamentally change unless things are to get worse somehow, then everything will change.