Technology

It was not unexpected. Most big powers in history end like that. The rich always want more and eventually start taking it from everybody else, even if it's detrimental to the future of the nation.

It was inevitable and kind of expected.

The US wasn't built on that solid of a foundation. In fact the founding fathers have said explicitly that said foundation - the Constitution itself - should be a living document updated regularly by the people, for the people, to reflect the changes in the world and in the people themselves. It was literally written at one of the most prominent times of change, so of course those who saw said change and were responsible for enacting it, weren't idiots who thought things would never change!

The first cracks appeared in the US a hundred years later with the industrial revolution kicking into high gear and transforming the so far mostly rural, self-sufficient communities into manufacturing giants. That's when factory and mining towns began to boom, and when the US truly began to claim its world power status - without adjusting the laws of course since it benefited the handful few who managed to get their fingers deep into those oh so lucrative pies.

And it's not like there haven't been warning signs of the impending capitalist doomsday. Capitalism was literally built on the back of the industrial revolution (which allowed the means of production to transfer into and concentrate in private hands), and immediately people saw the issue with it - no wonder Marx saw the need to work out a competing socioeconomic system that, if you think about it, was truly in the spirit of the American independence and the US Constitution (aka by the people, for the people).

All that capitalist rush? That allowed a handful of people to become obscenely rich, without the curtails of previous obscenely rich (aka kings, royalty, nobles), allowing them to grab power without any of the responsibility. Kings paid with their heads for their wrong decisions, but in the US, that was deemed excessive, so instead y'all elected people who then got paid off by said obscenely rich to go against the people electing them... and the worst that happens was that the elected official got rich, then got replaced by another who got bought out the same way.

And all that money/power concentrated in such a small number of hands would ALWAYS lead to them wanting more and more until they sucked the host dry like a parasite. There's no symbiosis with capitalists because wealth (resources and man-hours) are finite, unlike their greed. And since the US made it harder and harder to amend the constitution, to make that document truly living and serve the people... The fall thus became inevitable.

USA is on a path to become a shit-hole country - FTFY.

Don't get complacent. The EU countries are toying with the idea of collapsing with us. AfD doesn't seem to be shrinking, and there will be a lot of money and propaganda dumped that way soon.

I hope you're better at resisting it than we were, but seeing as how we're all still on vulnerable social media...

How can you say this with a straight face? All fascist parties have record numbers, workers rights are being targeted across the board, digital privacy is a thing of the past. We're like barely half a step behind. The oligarchy doesn't care about states or continents. The EU is on the menu just as much as the US

Not if said Dem actually does something about it. (Unlikely)

Problem is that, if we elect a Democrat, it will be a fabulously wealthy person with no empathy or understanding of the working class and working poor, so the likelihood that they will do anything about it is minimal. Remember when Obama had the balls to walk into Flint, pretend to drink a glass of water, and tell all of those people whose water had been poisoned that everything was a-okay? That's what I mean. Zero empathy.

I no longer believe things will change for the better within my lifetime.

Funny. That was sort of the subject of a YT video I made today. Basically the whole of my working life has corresponded to the decline of economic liberty for the working class and working poor, so I don't really celebrate New Years. I expect every year to be worse than the one before.

When you are too old to leave the country because you are too invested, not old enough to be dead before it gets really bad. So living through the next 40 years is going to be fucking grueling.

Since 1981 the large decline began. Like 80% of bad policies and shitting on the working class in america can be traced back to the 80s.. I wonder what happened then.

Kamala would just have been a party line corporate puppet like Obama 2.0. But undoubtedly 100x better than trump.

The trends and forces would have been no different, but it was a choice between a collapse of empire versus a soft landing a la UK. They chose collapse.