This is applicable to Americans in the country and better answered if you actually live in it. The question stands - have you given up on America or do you really think there is a shred of a chance for a turnaround?
I think I have given up on America for it to do anything better for itself. I think the passing general election nailed the final nail in the coffin, that people who voted wrongly, wanted to worsen things in general to appease selfish personal agendas.
I think Americans in general really are set in stone about baking a cake and having it too with their interesting levels of double standards. They complain about big tech having your information, but turn around wanting you to sign a petition that asks for your information. They complain about commercials all year long, but will tune in by the millions for a Super Bowl. They complain about unfair wages, bad workplace environments and shitty bosses but didn’t make so much of a fuss during the pandemic.
There’s just too many things internally wrong with this country, that dampens what hope I ever had for it. Politicians and the “Real Owners” want to keep Americans dumb, complacent, tight and stressed to do anything. But if you give Americans a bit of leverage that could chip at those odds, they shit the fucking bed with their own incompetence.
So what gives, really? Live your life, do the best you can for yourself and those around you. Live another day but god damn fuck the majority of Americans and this country in general.
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:
If everyone gave up on a place when futures there look bleak, there wouldnt be a place left in the world worth living in.
I have given up. Collectively, we’re incapable of long range planning. Climate change and non-renewable resource depletion are intractable problems. A significant number of us refuse to even acknowledge the existence of the problems. Things will have to get massively worse before anyone will have any success in changing approaches.
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.
When the US tries it’s hand at nation building, and our government diplomats, consultants, and mentors are making suggestions to nascent nations in what kind of republic framework to use, we do not suggest the same Constitutional system we have. We normally try to guide others to a variation of parliamentary systems with a weak president figurehead.
Our own government knows not to use it’s own model for other nations! It’s not that we’re exceptional, just that we’ve beaten the odds so far. We used to try to copy the US system other places, but they kept failing to executive branches that seized power. How the US held on as long as it did is a wonder. That said, it looks like our exceptional run is effectively over. The fox is in the henhouse and Congress is cheering the bloodbath.
Of course, if you’re going to use US foreign policy, you have to include things like the 1973 coup in Chile when the US overthrew a democratically elected leader to install a dictator, because the US didn’t agree with the democratic leader’s politics
Yeah, our big democracy talk is just like the pirates code from Pirates of the Caribbean: flexible, with a strong vein of selfishness.
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.
Yeah, it would take a particularly competent, wise and self-sacrificial dude/tte or team to wrangle the masses of hateful morons, kindly direct them towards thought, morality and prosociality, and make something new out of country that was baptized in the blood of innocents (and loves taking blood baths!).
Make no mistake, this is far beyond one dude/ette. You’d need a whole (non-electoral) well-organized party to educate and agitate, and earn the support of many thousands or even millions of citizens through their actions, in order to build the necessary movement.
Again, it’s been done before and under more oppressive conditions, but it’s a tough road.
Forgive my ignorance but would you be willing to list those more opressive conditions where they were successful?
Could really use some hope right now…
Russia, China, Cuba, etc. Many such cases of successful Working Class revolutions in more dire circumstances.
Maybe I give up too easily. Let’s hope God heard ya and has some plans for the few (?, am I just too negative?) Americans that can still be saved/lay the foundations for a new society. I kinda feel they’ll need Him, lol.
Hey, please don’t use ableist slurs. It’s easy to criticize conservatives without doing so.
Fair enough, I made the adjustments. 🙏
Thank you!
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.
Only half my life ago, but as a surly teen I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to explain why
Yes. I do not believe there is any chance whatsoever to make America great again, as we were 1 year ago.
America is in a very bad situation in current freedoms and, worse yet, the trajectory is wrong-headed too. However, Europe is in no shape or form in any better situation. The erosion of liberties is really appalling in both side of the Atlantic.
Now, the question is if Americans have given up. Mostly do, specially since it has become clear that millions of voices can be silence with just a resourceful lobby. However, the lack of social net in the US, if a crisis like 2008 ensures again, Americans will demand changes like never before. I see more possibility of real change in the US than in Europe if both are affected by a similar recession.
‘people voted wrongly’ is an incorrect framing
People voted against genocide
America is in the death spiral of late stage capitalism. It will implode, as the scientific material analysis of Marxist theory predicts. So its not about ‘giving up’ per se, it’s more like how do we manage the implosion
I’m not seeing much hope in the future, so yes I’ve given up. I want to leave so goddamn bad.
I’ve never taken down on them to begin with
Whenever I hear some famous American talk about how they weee gh good guys and that they want to be the good guys again…
You never were the good guys, its just now for the first time that Americans really too suffer the consequences of their shitty leadership.
The US funded and directed a dictator to come to power in Iran, which directly caused current theocracy
Same for Chile same for Nicaragua same for…
The US always has been the evil one, it’s just that it was slightly less evil than the USSR and it gave it’s citizens slightly more rights and it treated its allies well.
THAT is what’s gone now. Allies are now treated like enemies, and citizens are now being fucked, and it’s rapidly becoming more evil than the USSR ever was.
The US always has been evil
On a side note: Well controlled capitalism is great for everyone and can be the power source for a huge socialist system, see Finland, the Netherlands. Unbridled capitalism gets you the shit in the US. You were warned, ma y many times, you k ew this would happen and didn’t care. That is what changed, now you have out of control billionaires. You have a choice: go like France a few hundred years ago, or become slaves. I’d you want to be a slave, that’s fine, that’s your choice, but don’t force that fate onto the test of the world
The US was always far more evil than the USSR, and gave its citizens fewer rights. The US committed numerous genocidal invasions against Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and much more, while the USSR supported anti-colonial liberation movements in Cuba, China, Palestine, Angola, and much, much more.
Further, Finland, the Netherlands, etc are not Socialist. They are Social Democracies. Their safety nets are deteriorating, the state is under the control of capitalists, and they fund their safety nets through Imperialism. They all are reliant on the US millitarily. You cannot “control” Capitalism, Capitalism directly means the system is under the control of Capitalists. Socialism is required, meaning overwhelmingly public ownership of large firms and key industries, and power in the hands of the working class.
When the US Empire falls, the rest of the Global North will fall with it, or will have to pivot to the Global South.
Nope. America has been through all of these things before. It’s why reading history gives me a lot of comfort.
Reading history and analyzing trends gives me comfort in knowing the genocidal settler colony of the US Empire can’t save itself for much longer, and a new, democratic, anti-Imperialist, de-colonial, Socialist state can take its place.
I know you’re looking for people currently living there, but I left not long after Trump got elected the first time (coincidence, not cause), and I feel like it’s helped me be a bit more objective about it.
I’ve seen my dad go from a die-hard conservative who makes a couple edgy jokes to someone who isn’t even trying to hide his support for Trump. At best, he says that Trump’s statements are overblown, at worst he supports them wholeheartedly. It didn’t improve under Biden’s term, and his behavior was one of the big reasons I feared a Trump victory in 2024. He felt no need to hide what he had before (that is, if he had it then. It could have grown over time as well). There was no reform coming for him, just deeper entrenchment.
On the other hand, my sister and Mom represent some of another segment of the US. Neither one follows politics because they’re just busy. When they do have time to relax, the last thing they want to do is catch up on things they’ve missed. Unless my sister has something blasted across her social media feeds, she doesn’t know about it. My mom just doesn’t really watch anything at all, mostly because she’s dealing with her own stuff.
I got to see the US change drastically when Trump got elected, with issues that affected literally everyone, and it turned out that part of my family ignored it, and the part that did know about it supported it. I know my immediate family isn’t a representative sample of the entire US (hell, they’re not even representative of my entire family), but seeing is believing. I never would have thought that people could be like this, but if this can happen to people I know, it’s not that hard to see it happening to others.
So, yeah. Even assuming Trump peacefully leaves power in 2029 (I’ve got no hopes of removal from impeachment), that’s four years of destroying good will, soft power, government services, and legal protections, and this is happening just after we had a president who, at best, could stabilize the country a bit before building back some of what was torn down in the four years prior. This time, the administration is moving faster and with more purpose in some of these areas, too. Assuming it takes twice the amount of time to completely rebuild all that the Trump administrations have removed, that’s still 20 years down the road to be at par with where we were 8 years ago. Foreign countries don’t trust the US to not elect a lunatic. It can be a normal country, some day, but not until I’m old, and not without a lot of internal changes I don’t see happening yet.