I am an American. I used to be proud of my country. Now it feels like a turd circling the drain. Is there anything going on behind the scene that America is actually doing good in?

https://lemmy.world/post/44446120

I am an American. I used to be proud of my country. Now it feels like a turd circling the drain. Is there anything going on behind the scene that America is actually doing good in? - Lemmy.World

Lemmy

The only difference between now and what it used to be is that the mask has been taken off of US politics. Who you see in Trump and the entire Republican administration is who this country has always been. Regardless of whether it’s Democrat or Republicans, they’ve always been war hungry, serving only the CEOs bankers and Wall Street while tossing us occasional table scraps, so we didn’t get too loud in our grumbling.

The only effort that Democrats have put in is trying to put that mask back onto US politics and back to business as usual. Once the mask comes off it can’t be put back on.

Edit sp

“It was real. I’d seen it. I’d seen it in reality.” • The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone – everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed." And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death… the sweetest, most courageous people in the world." “You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know. That the bourgeois are not human.”
Disco Elysium?
Da

Hell yeah. I need to do a replay one of these days.

Here’s my favorite quote:

"TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD—FOR NEW PEOPLE IT IS TOO LATE FOR US

WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS”

That’s not entirely true. We had a brief period after WWII until the 70s when the middle class actually existed, the rich were taxed at 91%, and unions had leverage. This has eroded quickly since the dawn of neoliberalism.
Middle class does not exist, that’s a tool of the oligarchy to divide the working class into subsections, to give those higher up someone to look down upon. It reinforces individual over collective

Not a historian, but wasn’t that boom hugely from war profiteering and the fact that none of the bombs went off in the USA? Our factories were all spun up and ready to go while most of Europe was rebuilding. Oh, and the decimation of German and Japanese industrial or technical powers.

But to your point, many graphs showing how much wages have flattened disproportionate to production do show that the period in question was a better time for the average worker.

Yes absolutely. Also not a historian, but AIUI that’s probably the largest factor in the overall boom for the US economy at the time.

I didn’t mean to claim that the US was ever a peaceful nation. The best I could say is that the US sat out from the world wars until they had both (1) a way to sell war to the public and (2) a clear financial interest. Post-WWII, every US war has been a bullshit war.

I also don’t mean to sound positive about capitalism. My only real point was that for a brief period, (white) workers actually had an OK social contract with the ruling class. It didn’t last long at all in the grand scheme, and was probably a fluke, not real evidence that capitalism works.

We are in agreement