Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say that the best times of the country are behind them
This has been true since Reagan gutted the New Deal.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
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Nixon was the first president to start down the path of the Unitary Executive. Ford, Regan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Trump was the pathway.
But this all started long before the New Deal was even signed. This started before J. Edgar Hoover too.
This is all a result of the civil war. Had Lincoln not been assassinated and Andrew Johnson kick-started "reconstruction" and giving the South basically everything they wanted, we ended up where we are.
Only 49% of us seem to live in the real world, apparently.
I wouldn't rule out things being better in, say, 100 years, but it would take a lot of luck and effort to get to that point.
We know. Problem is, a third of us thinks the solution is killing the other third and the rest can't be bothered. As the famous saying goes.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
Elie Wiesel
You had me until the faith part. In my experience indifference is not the opposite of faith, compassion is.
I’m out of work. Someone from our church gave us $1000 to get by, and another person gave me $200 this morning. We had a member of our choir and AA group talk about gratitude this morning. Our reverend also talked about her AA experience & speak on gratitude.
I’m a Unitarian Universalist. It’s not the religion you’re used to. But as someone that was an angry atheist for ~25 years, I get the critique of faith.
Wishing you much love & compassion homie.
I grew up UU. It hasn’t changed how I feel about faith. I’m glad things are working out for you though.
I stand humbled!
Wiesel felt very strong connection to his Jewish faith for obvious reasons
Good quote, I’m gonna need to read some of his works. Any recommendations?
Ah, so a bunch of geriatrics vote Republican, believe the best times are ahead, and also believe the country is more divided than ever. Contrasted by, the younger voters believe the American dream is dead, and we need radical change.
Also if we’re anonymous, we hate everyone just a little bit more.
We’ve lost the moral center in this country that we pretended to believe. Now we’re steeped in pessimism & sardonic irony. Everything is more expensive to boot.
The older generations in this country have barely any connection to reality. We’re bleeding social services, creating massive debt, & the planet is clearly worse each year. It’s hard to be positive about anything in America right now, unless you love fascist secret police and drink the authoritative, agitprop koolaid.
Ah, so a bunch of geriatrics vote Republican, believe the best times are ahead, and also believe the country is more divided than ever.
It's not quite like that. Those geriatrics remember when they were children in the 60s and 70s through rose-tinted glasses. People were respectful to their elders, Technology was simple and could be understood by the layman, and the economy was great and only getting better.
Then they hear some politician who is their age that wants to bring all that back, starting by sticking it to the freaks and weirdos that made the country so strange in the 90s and 2000s.
They simply don't understand why things were so good in mid century America, and took the wrong lessons from history.
In short, they want to be the class of old people that the young were forced to respect out of fear of violence, they want technology to regress to a point where you don't need a CS degree to effectively use it, and they want their money to be worth more than it is.
Wait a minute, I thought America was great again. Are you trying to tell me it isn't?
It is if you're a billionaire.
Even millionaires think so too. They're all living comfortably and it is easy for all of them to see nothing wrong going on. Obviously because they aren't on the receiving end of any accountability or struggle like the rest are.
The 41% who think the best times are ahead still believe that, but its probably just because they're fascists and have a very particular notion of "best times".
I have to believe the best times are ahead. I look back at any point in US history and there was more hatred for different people, more formal oppression of those people, more imperialist aggression. Maybe, there were times when certain segments of the white male population could get material goods more easily, but that was often at the cost of just just accepting poverty for everyone else. Not to mention literal famine and plagues.
There's a whole world of people out there making shit better all the time. Curing incurable diseases, building alternatives to fossil fuels, converting crowded streets to greenways. There's a lot of political pressure trying to preserve the bad old ways, even trying to bring back long-forgotten plagues, but we are still finding better ways to do things despite those malicious fucks.
55% of Trump voters thinking the best is 'yet to come'. They're basically just waiting for something or someone to take America out of its misery, probably.
"YUP IT'LL COME ANNNNY MOMENT NOW..."
Until we're like what? $100 Trillion in fucking debt?
I bet the person at the tavern at 10 am with a plastic fry basket full of opened pull tabs thinks better times are just around the corner too.
Not gonna get that far, other countries are holding less and less US debt as colateral which is unfortunately an even worse problem.
Those people are probably so deluded and have heads so full of Faux mush that they think medbeds are a real thing.
Don't they get it yet? The United States is over. That country doesn't exist anymore.
It's 100% certain pedonald is looking for a way to rename the country after him and at least 40% of the population would be ok with it. I would suggest TPNA, Trump's Pedo-Naziland of America, or something similar.
Ah geez, I meant that the Constitution is irreparably broken, and that the nation it created is gone, but yeah, you're right. I hadn't even thought about him trying to rename the nation that we have now, but it makes total sense.
Mike Judge is a time traveler and idiocracy was a documentary.
That’s not true at all.
In Idiocracy, the president and his cabinet put their smartest people (well, person) in charge with zero pushback and listened to and trusted expert opinion. When a policy failed (Brawndo went out of business and took the economy with it), there was swift punishment for those directly responsible, and when policy succeeded (crops were growing), they quickly pivoted and elevated those responsible. In Idiocracy, the most competent people were put in charge.
What we have is MUCH worse; people stupid and short-sighted enough to destroy everything in the name of ego and greed, and just smart enough to be successful in their destruction of our societies, governments and planet.
I would much rather be in Idiocracy if I’m being honest. At least those people were trying their best; can’t fault them for that.
Damn, I've never felt envious of the government in idiocracy.
Now, check to see if the powers that be give a shit. All these articles about how people feel about things, and not a single one about anyone doing a thing about it.
I'd sell my country out for a few hundred thousand and a plane ticket to Europe ... if I had anything to sell.