I take offense to this, the country has not been crap for years, problems yes, but every country has problems, what happened to us was a long term calculated take over fed by people like the Mercers, Steve Bannon, the Heritage Foundation and more. The prize is great, billionaires rule, long term plan, use the ring master as the front and feed the base, the 30% give them power, give them freedom to do anything, rile them up, create angst, disrupt it all , confusion, lie, cheat and steal and bait the media , pump out only the shit they will believe, and they did. This country wasnt garbage, it became garbage in January with the inauguration of the MUMP OLIGARCHY and now everyone but the uber rich are going down with the ship full of holes. Those who are weary and cheering from the sidelines have seen nothing yet, its al coming down and they (we) will all lose everything that meant anything as the raiders are walking in through the back doors to pillage and burn .
"crap for years" is a relative phrase. It's been getting worse and worse generation after generation. People have been working harder for less. That is my point. People see it. They sense it. They know something isn't working. That is my point.
What they miss is that almost everything they might think of as having “gone to shit” is a result of the rape of workers by the capital class. Reverse that and everyone would be happy except for about a thousand of the wealthiest. Tax the rich!
You comment about unions is way off the mark and quite frankly bullshit. It goes to show how little you know about unions or how they actually work. Which is exactly why they are not as strong as they once were.
I was just sent this article so excused my tardiness. People, Americans have seen this as you have. No America is not crap. But yes, as usual the country and its people relied on the very people who were stripping them of all the things that made America a great concept.
American was never of, by, or for the people. Unless you were a rich, white, man. Early America, plantation owners, RR barons, industrialist, the press, bankers, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, they each and collectively have the same things in common…Rich, White, men. Oh, for sure some strays got in there too. But look at the numbers.
And now the rich white men, and their cultists are finishing what was started 258 years ago: to create a country stripped down of culture, diversity, and morality. A country of, by, and for the authoritarian rich, white, males.
And why has this happened? Because we the people have purposely been stripped of any power to oppose in any meaningful way. They tried in the 1960’s, 70’s, 90’s, and now. But to what effect? Minor changes to placate and give a false sense of power/change. Voters’ right, Equal rights, women’s’ rights, LBGTQ+ rights, children’s rights, renter’s rights, yada, yada, yada. But those things were window dressing for the long term goals of the very patient rich, white men and their religious nationalists.
And so, here we are. We are losing a country that many of us loved, especially those who have been most affected by the rich, white men. This includes Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Afghanis, Irish, Scotts, Germans, Italians, Ukrainians, many who came here with little to their names and made it work. And what about the indigenous people who had everything but lost everything to…rich, white, men who believed and acted on Manifest Destiny. If this shit show is to be fixed, it will have to be
Fixed by, you guessed it: rich, white men. The rest of us will support your efforts if and when you show that we have enough value to you to save this country and make it the U.S. that many rich, white men believe it is….for the rest of us too.
There are many rich that are not white men. (yes I know they are disproportionate) so when the society turns on them, it must be based on net worth, not only race. Maybe leave women out of it- just look at McKenzie Scott and Melinda French Gates, for example.
Danny, I go out of my way to acknowledge people of color around me, reach out to them, shop in the little Mexican grocery store, talk to the people in Spanish, offer my extra front row seat to a black woman at a Gospel concert, wave, smile and befriend (or attempt to) everyone I meet of every hue and national origin, and I am as much a WASP as can be found. There are more like me, and we all need to keep it up until it becomes a cultural norm. We are all Americans, and we all damned we’ll need to start acting like it.
Stop it. Stop choosing one political thief over another. They are both thieves. Fact is, the problem is financialization of our economy, everything packaged for the most efficient consumption without regard to the price paid by workers and communities. If you don't understand that then you don't understand what happened in 2008. The people who gain from financialization and rehypothecation of assets as instruments hiding risk to squeeze every last penny from us are very few in number and are mostly distributed outside politics but controlling the lifeblood of politics which is wealth.
I don't see where what you are saying diverges from what I've said thus far. More to come. This is the first post in long line of thoughts and ideas to come.
If this is your first article of misinformation about unions then make it your last. Or, at the least back up your claims. Pretending the majority of unions somehow brokered back room deals or front room deals to be self serving purpose without negotiating for the betterment of their members you need to prove that claim. Or you’re just as bad as the ones who have been passing regulations against unions. The few states with constitutions that protect their unions have been something the right has been after a very long time, unfortunately those state constitutions don’t apply to the labor unions not employees directly thru their states. It’s very complicated and having someone on our “side” spouting off with no real valid proof is exactly what I said in my previous comment. BULLSHIT
This is letting the Democrats off way too easy. In the 1990s, Clinton and the New Dems gutted financial regulations (a process actually started under Carter, accelerated under Reagan and Bush, and super-charged by Clinton). The same is true with respect to de-regulation of the telecom industry. Clinton was in the process of negotiating Social Security privatization with Newt Gingrich until the Lewinsky scandal broke and bought us another 20+ years. In terms of international politics the Clinton team pushed hard to privatize state assets in Russia, which cleared the way for Putin, and has produced its own blowback. As with a lot of this stuff, there are winners and losers, but the pool of winners keeps getting smaller, which is just fuel for a politician like Trump who positions himself as a kind of anti-system politician (backed by a segment of "winners" who see an opportunity to do even more looting).
"In the evening of Oct. 28, 1997, House Speaker Newt Gingrich headed to the White House to meet with President Bill Clinton, ostensibly to hammer out final details of the 1998 budget. In reality, Gingrich and Clinton were putting finishing touches on a deal to create a centrist political coalition to fix long-term problems facing Social Security and Medicare. In his new book, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation, Steven Gillon, resident historian of the History Channel and a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, reveals the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the meeting and how the potentially historic effort was derailed in an instant by the Monica Lewinsky scandal."
Financial De-regulation included the repeal of the last parts of Glass-Steagall (Gramm-Leach-Bliley). The Telecommunications Act of 1996, among other things, gutted regulations that were put in place during the New Deal era. Russia privatization is also well documented.
The Trump stuff is just a matter of paying attention (e.g. right out of the gate firing independent inspectors general, gutting the OMB, signing an executive order stating he would no longer enforce bribery statutes against U.S. businesses operating overseas; repeal of "beneficial ownership" disclosure requirements regarding ownership structure -- basically an anti-money laundering tax evasion law, long list of nakedly corrupt actions in just his first two months).
Thank you again for responding but with all due respect my opinion is a great deal stronger than a “distrust of Trump” or “thinking specific tings he is doing are bad”. Might I share with you an article by another who explains the WHY voters were tired of the status quo quite well (which supports your original statement) . It however combines this with the reason this regime (Trump), is not the right CHOICE to make the changes they wanted, it states things more eloquently than what I stated above. https://open.substack.com/pub/frankschaeffer/p/the-trump-moment?r=1hz9uo&utm_medium=ios. To add to this the political model of the current situation is classic patrimonialism, a dangerous precursor to authoritarianism.
Lmfao this is exactly the type of ignorant, pro establishment response the author discussed in his piece. The “Malcom in the Middles” who were barely hanging on twenty years ago are cooked heroine junkies today. And the DNC solution was simply to replace them with mass migration. Disgusting.
I am going to ask you to explain what exactly you mean my this comment, help me understand where YOU are coming from. I am not following this line of thought but am open to listen to what you have to say.
Ok, I’ll bite, and try with less snark and hostility.
Basically, your attitude is exactly what the author is saying is wrong, and backs up with examples and arguments.
“For decades, Americans have watched their country fall apart. Jobs disappeared, wages stagnated, purchasing power eroded, healthcare became unaffordable, roads crumbled, and schools decayed. “
This is exactly what people like me see when we look at America. By no stretch of the imagination was the country “fine” until Trump got elected. The 2008 financial crash was not “fine” and we did not recover. Obama was a great orator and articulated the hope and change most Americans wanted, but did not get at all out of his presidency. This is all more or less restating the author. Enough voters have fundamentally lost faith in the state and want serious change, which is impossible with the deep state (unelected bureaucrats, lobbyists, intelligence agencies, etc). So Trump is outright attacking those things in order to make change possible. This is exactly what people who voted for him wanted, even if the outcome is bad for them.
First I would like to thank you for responding and with civility , it is welcomed and appreciated. Perhaps my choice of words were far too simple and did not define my intent so so I will try to explain.
I hear what you are saying and agree, the country was not “fine” a lot needed to be done and the only way to do that is to demand change, the problem is the “change” promised by the choice they made is not the change that was needed, it was a clear run headlong into a brick wall at 100 mph and may well result in our collective demise .
Those of us who saw it coming tried to scream it outloud, albeit, too late and too little, and guessing it sounded more like chicken little and “the sky is falling”. SO Trump won (barely) and within five weeks has shown the true colors we feared. We are in the throws of a COUP , not a democracy to fix problems but an outright COUP, where jobs, civil rights, healthcare, the environment, world order and so much more are being trashed. The CHANGE that the “voters wanted” is a pipe dream, they will be the first in line to fall. Trump is playing KING with clear ties to the Kremlin and the billionaire boys club who couldn’t give a rats ass about the PEOPLE who voted for change. The events of last Friday in that now infamous Oval Office horror show were reminiscent of another day, long ago, February 12, 1938, the place was Berghof, the visitor was the chancellor of Austria and the bully was Adolf Hitler, the events of that day were strikingly similar to those of last Friday. The victim country is Ukraine the Bully country is Russia, but the US is the facilitator and it’s all tied up in a neat ugly knot. We are in very dark times and it has just begun. I do not believe for a minute this is the type of change anyone, with oxygen to the brain and a soul wanted.
CHANGE yes, needed, but first we need to come together collectively and oust the monsters in our house before the it burns to the ground. A “Phoenix rising” aside, this regime is not going to save anyone but the 1% at the expense of the people of this country and beyond, I call on those voters, red and blue to see the light of what is happening and , help stop the COUP together , then we can rebuild the change that is needed to save America , and the world. That is my take on this.
I don’t blame you for distrusting Trump and thinking specific things he is doing are bad, ie removing the CFPB. However, the cold reality is that the deep state has been ignoring the will of presidents and running the show to their liking for a long time, and that’s equally unconstitutional to what Trump and musk are doing with DOGE. Support for trumps admin at this point boils down to which unconstitutional champion you prefer: the deep state bureaucracy, or the Trump admin. You aren’t wrong this is likely to backfire, but the author is writing about perspective , and from Trump voters perspective, the deep state/establishment presided over a decades long decline, and its response to complaints is to call people uneducated or bigots. The “coup” was first done by bureaucrats entrenching and empowering themselves and making the executive branch irrelevant or beholden to their plan. The second “coup” is Trump and musk attacking that bureaucracy by any means necessary. This is why the voters supported it. What you seem to be suggesting is “change is needed but first save the previous bureaucrats!” And for many of us, it’s just too little, too late.
Regarding Russia, I do not believe in the slightest putin is comparable to Hitler, mayyyybe Stalin but that’s a stretch. Further, this is not a USA problem, it’s a Europe problem. Europe is going to have to put its pants on and fight Russia for territory if they want to defend territory. The USA has two gigantic oceans and has never, ever been at risk of being invaded by Russia or the USSR, this is obvious propaganda to further neoliberal, globalist, corporate geopolitical ambitions that don’t benefit normal US citizens at all. The real enemy is Israel and their incessant lobbying to funnel our Tax dollars to their bizarre ethnotheocracy, dragging us into endless Middle East misadventures.
In the big picture our country has been significantly undemocratic since its founding. Capitalism also has a long history of repression and suppressing human dignity here in the United States. The labor movements for example were smashed by the abuse of power and wealth going back to the first Gilded Age. If not slavery itself.
600,000 people died in a Civil War that the political system was incapable of preventing. America has been at war since it's founding, and as Smedley Butler himself said, war is a racket.
If you don't wanna live in a democracy congratulations, you don't. But if you do want a democracy, you're going to have to organize American's to create one. That has not yet happened. But it could.
I agree with this. What the alternative is to live under Trump regime who wants to cut all aid for poor and middle class. And funnel trillions of $ to billionaires..I don't think most Americans are for this.
Funny thing is, my wife and I have had healthcare for the past four years for the first time in over a decade thanks to the Dems finally having control in our state senate and accepting the ACA subsidies. We’ve finally been able to have our back surgeries done. My kid was able to get help for their opiate addiction that we were struggling to afford. We’ve been able to piece a life together with some apps on our phones to work for ourselves for once. I was able to care for my parent’s as they died in hospice together. We live simply but we were happy (as happy as we could be obviously). I was making a little money investing. But they’ve wrecked the damn stock markets! Now we stand to lose it all again. Its like going back to the 2007 housing crises for us. Which we never really came back from. Watching the rich take control and cater to themselves openly, while saying “We the People” are the corrupt ones. After watching the opiate manufacturers get rich off our deaths and we are the parasites?!?! Everything you said about corporate profit taking and all of that is correct yet Im being told by Elon Musk that Im the fucking problem? Our countrymen are literally cheering our demise.
The ACA has done some good things, but this is one of those cases where we are setting the bar too low. As a country we spend an absurd amount of money on coverage -- about twice as much as other wealthy countries. Unlike those other countries, we still have a large uninsured population, we have high out of pocket expenses, and we have medical bankruptcies. This is not normal. Given the amount of money we spend overall (over $5 trillion for public and private funding of health care annually as a nation), care and coverage should be free at the point of service and universal. Obama and the Dems shoveled billions of dollars to the health insurance industry as part of the ACA. They levied the equivalent of a 10% income tax on people who were too rich to qualify for subsidies. e.g. i$54,000 of income is considered "rich" under the ACA for an individual. These health insurers spent several hundred million dollars in the next four election cycles after 2008 electing Republicans who wanted to get rid of parts of the ACA that limited their profitability and to right-wing Democrats who were opposed to universal health care. My recollection is that about 25-30% of the money that main Democratic House committee (the DCCC) received in 2018 was from the medical industry -- insurers, hospitals, Pharma, medical device manufacturers -- a portion of that money was used to beat back primary challengers who were pushing for single-payer, universal coverage. Effectively we pick up the tab in the form of higher prices for a system of political bribery that impacts both major parties. The irony of the ACA funding is that a portion of the new money from the health care law went to electing right-wing politicians, who in some cases wanted to overturn the law, and in other cases, it went to politicians who pushed to remove consumer and taxpayer protections built into the law.
It’s exactly what bush jr did in 2007 crashing the stock market. I remember that well because my sister retired that year w way less in her investments.
I can't buy a slow rot of everything. Yes things decay, but an economy in balance can rebuild. In the 70’s Nixon caused “stagflation” and Carter had the feds raise interest trying to slow it down. It was with Reagan and his trickle-down economics that we went off the rails. Corporations had been kept in relative check; it had been understood the power needed to be with the people. Corporate tax rate in the 50's and 60's was 35 to 50%. From Reagan on, the power keep shifting to corporations and the size of the corporations exploded. Wages stagnated, credit cards were introduced with little control over interest. Greed went out of control. Then we added Citizen's United, making our political system completely non-functional for the sake of the people.
There are 3 things we could do to turn our economy back in the right direction: 1. Raise corporation tax from the current 3.5% on a sliding scale upward to 20%, 2. Abolish Citizens United and take the money out of politics, forcing politicians to listen to the people rather than pay back their corporate donors, and 3. Get rid of the electoral votes and go back to every vote counts. Every vote counting means no Jim Crow laws anywhere.
It will do no good to tear everything down if we don't get rid of the mentality of greed that controls our country due to changes in the laws that allowed that to happen. If greed is in charge of the rebuild, it could be worse. A torn apart nation is a haven for investment for the wealthy.
I think the problem started after WWII and we simply can't continue to run the country with war-stimulus spending. It leaves us vulnerable when the inevitable happens and we actually end up in a war with existential ramifications. I think the last thing we want is the kind of coalition governance that is so common in Europe.
Was it that Biden didn’t build anything or that the “news” couldn’t bother to tell anyone who was responsible for improvement. I’ve seen a Spectrum ad recently touting their rural broadband without a word on the money made available by Democrats. Republicans have systematically destroyed this country and lied about what they’re doing so don’t pretend both parties are the same.
Bernie Sanders offered what we needed - real populism - and he would have been able to get it for us. He’s still fighting for us. The crowds he got during the election, it was phenomenal - a lot of people voting now weren’t old enough in 2016 to have experienced it and a lot of people have forgotten. The excitement and hope, the solidarity he inspired…. But the DNC cheated him out of his win in the primaries and a chance to run, because they didn’t want change. They wanted to keep their power, even if it meant letting Trump win. That’s how democracy for the people was lost.
Bernie is a corporate democrat. He plays the role of trying to trick progressives into thinking the democrats will represent them. He’s just another lying POS. He’s a warmonger and a liar.
Hey Corbin, loved the clarity of the email you sent promoting this article. Couldn't agree more. I've been living in Italy for seven years and it's something to see the same happening here. At least Italians have health care and more of a federal security net, but they say "the social elevator is broken." Food prices and housing prices are impossible. I'm looking forward to your thoughts on it all.
My point is that our institutions have failed to function well for so long that public support for them has eroded, limiting vocal Democratic opposition to their dismantling.
It's not so much that it's negative. It's that “accelerationists” come in all shapes and sizes, not really caring who dies in the fire, so long as everything burns. Dems are shit sometimes. But I'd rather that than the non-vision presented by others. Who in some cases, might as well be maga scum.
My point is that our institutions have failed to function well for so long that public support for them has eroded, limiting vocal Democratic opposition to their dismantling.
Maybe so. But they’re not enjoying the radical change Trump is bringing. I’m inclined to believe you though. But what radical change can the Drmocratic Party push that will have the support of the majority? That is the question.
I like your article though. You are sadly onto something here. Fascism arises out of a crisis in democracy. From Weimar to Hitler. From the Civil War to Franco. The odd thing is that in times like this people move towards extreme collectivist solutions, either fascism or socialism/communism.
The bedrock of democracies are the people. So yes, Contrary is correct. We are complacent. We elect people every four years, and inbetween that time period, and keep in mind, no matter what happens,what they do, all we Do is complain and moan and bitch, and elect the same guy over again. Or a New Same guy? Every four years.
While some of what you say is true - I can tell you are younger and not well read enough to put our 250 year US short history in some context. You are wrong about US productivity - it has been on the increase for the last half century in spite of NAFTA manufacturing jobs going over seas to exploit cheap labor and in spite of the fact of stagnant wages for the last half century as well. You make it sound like America was once awesome and just crapped out in the last few decades. The truth is is quite different for different groups of people. For a majority white citizens - the golden age was post WW2 late 1940s up to the 1970s when the cost of living was in balance with wages and the rich paid their fair share of taxes (90%) which allowed for the GI Bill after WW2 which created the educated white middle class and paid for all the infrastructure/super highways that allowed for corporations to flourish, get rich and pay their employees a decent wage plus pensions. After Reagan sold the US out to corporations in the 1980s - and SCOTUS as well in the early 2000s via the Citizen's United Decision which helped destroy our Democracy further and now the Billionaire coup via the silver spoon Nazis is in full swing. And finally Senator Sanders was winning the Populist movement but Hillary Clinton sabotaged him because she controlled the purse strings to the DNC in 2016 and then lost the country to Trump the crook and later traitor to the Constitution (J6). But as you write - his cult of angry ignorant MAGA white people and some POCs don't care, but I think they will when they start to feel the affects of this reckless tearing down of a system that took generations to build. The Billionaires are bullies who pick on the lowest hanging fruit working people in the Federal government versus taking on the real gangsters in the Pentagon which eats up half of all our tax monies and has 0 accountability. Did the US Bureaucracy need some fixing - surely but they what DOGE and Trump are doing is reckless and myopic and we will all feel its disastrous results very soon - already happening! Context and details are important when examining history or anything else for that matter.
Not “someones’s”, *corporations*. Back then, they got tax breaks from reinvesting in the business (equipment/facilities, etc) and their employees thru pension funds and education, both of which were good for the economy and middle class prosperity. Now those profits go to stock buy backs (only good for share holders and previously illegal), and leveraged buyouts where a corporation buys a company, sucks it dry by laying off employees (leaving the remaining ones to do all the work), cutting any beneficial perks for customers that don’t make money, and then eventually, leasing or selling the buildings to themselves, making the original business pay inflated rent or declare bankruptcy. This is happening in many critical areas such as healthcare, and elder care (to name just 2). You can see how the 90%tax or tax incentives were better for the country and for the middle class.
Recently I stumbled across a video of Sen Paul Wellstone on grassroots leadership. The formula he laid out 25 years ago still holds true today. Change at the federal level that actually benefits ordinary people typically only happens in response to changes in local politics and the process of people becoming politicized, becoming leaders themselves, and gaining some confidence in their own political power. Sanders had his own version of this message. Of course it is easy to see what needs to be done, the hard part is the doing. It is also understandable why people go the anti system route given the sad state of the two-party system and the fact that it is much easier to organize money than people. Relatedly, I appreciate the work that you, Saikat and others did in 2016-2018. You can really tell the difference between then and now in terms of the reaction of the Democratic Party to this past election. The political leadership feels no pressure at this moment from the grassroots, or the threat of primary challenges, so we get a completely hapless response from the party leadership to its most recent election loss. Instead of going to voters and asking for forgiveness for political failure, we have an apology tour that starts with the biggest donor interests. The good news and the bad news is that political conditions and circumstances change and the cycle we are in right now, will not last forever. Things will likely get worse in the near-term, but the longer view gives some basis for optimism.
Wellstone makes Bernie look conservative. The only reason he had a political career was being at the right place at the right time. Otherwise, he'd be the Commie street punk instead of Bernie.
The sad thing is there is no good replacement for what we are tearing down, as justified as we are in doing so - Trump and his Cabinet will eventually prove to only care for Oligarchy and likely will take the skeleton of America's governing institutions - which is already pro-Oligarch - and grow a monster out of it. Worse, is how the 'opposition' has absolutely nothing to say, except to scream about how much they hate Trump, and that is it.
I agree in part. I’m older-71-and I’ve lived through some of these changes. I remember learning in college about myths, and especially American myths-not that they didn’t contain truth, but that they weren’t factual. The great American myth in the 20th century was the Lone Cowboy and the Wild West. But the factual truth of America has always involved community. And I’d like to explore that, going forward.
Very timely and agree 100%. We should perhaps also think of what the solution is. How do we deal with the need for expertise and organization for the complex needs of society today if these institutions don't exist anymore? How do we turn anger or apathy into constructive participation. Not sure what the answers are but definitely time to wake up and realize why this is happening.
But Bernie was about investing in ourselves and it would have come without the destruction of a few generations. It would have helped out so many and made us so much stronger rather than choosing the opposite of hate, rage, and pure destruction.
I take offense to this, the country has not been crap for years, problems yes, but every country has problems, what happened to us was a long term calculated take over fed by people like the Mercers, Steve Bannon, the Heritage Foundation and more. The prize is great, billionaires rule, long term plan, use the ring master as the front and feed the base, the 30% give them power, give them freedom to do anything, rile them up, create angst, disrupt it all , confusion, lie, cheat and steal and bait the media , pump out only the shit they will believe, and they did. This country wasnt garbage, it became garbage in January with the inauguration of the MUMP OLIGARCHY and now everyone but the uber rich are going down with the ship full of holes. Those who are weary and cheering from the sidelines have seen nothing yet, its al coming down and they (we) will all lose everything that meant anything as the raiders are walking in through the back doors to pillage and burn .
"crap for years" is a relative phrase. It's been getting worse and worse generation after generation. People have been working harder for less. That is my point. People see it. They sense it. They know something isn't working. That is my point.
What they miss is that almost everything they might think of as having “gone to shit” is a result of the rape of workers by the capital class. Reverse that and everyone would be happy except for about a thousand of the wealthiest. Tax the rich!
You comment about unions is way off the mark and quite frankly bullshit. It goes to show how little you know about unions or how they actually work. Which is exactly why they are not as strong as they once were.
I was just sent this article so excused my tardiness. People, Americans have seen this as you have. No America is not crap. But yes, as usual the country and its people relied on the very people who were stripping them of all the things that made America a great concept.
American was never of, by, or for the people. Unless you were a rich, white, man. Early America, plantation owners, RR barons, industrialist, the press, bankers, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, they each and collectively have the same things in common…Rich, White, men. Oh, for sure some strays got in there too. But look at the numbers.
And now the rich white men, and their cultists are finishing what was started 258 years ago: to create a country stripped down of culture, diversity, and morality. A country of, by, and for the authoritarian rich, white, males.
And why has this happened? Because we the people have purposely been stripped of any power to oppose in any meaningful way. They tried in the 1960’s, 70’s, 90’s, and now. But to what effect? Minor changes to placate and give a false sense of power/change. Voters’ right, Equal rights, women’s’ rights, LBGTQ+ rights, children’s rights, renter’s rights, yada, yada, yada. But those things were window dressing for the long term goals of the very patient rich, white men and their religious nationalists.
And so, here we are. We are losing a country that many of us loved, especially those who have been most affected by the rich, white men. This includes Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Afghanis, Irish, Scotts, Germans, Italians, Ukrainians, many who came here with little to their names and made it work. And what about the indigenous people who had everything but lost everything to…rich, white, men who believed and acted on Manifest Destiny. If this shit show is to be fixed, it will have to be
Fixed by, you guessed it: rich, white men. The rest of us will support your efforts if and when you show that we have enough value to you to save this country and make it the U.S. that many rich, white men believe it is….for the rest of us too.
There are many rich that are not white men. (yes I know they are disproportionate) so when the society turns on them, it must be based on net worth, not only race. Maybe leave women out of it- just look at McKenzie Scott and Melinda French Gates, for example.
True.
Danny, I go out of my way to acknowledge people of color around me, reach out to them, shop in the little Mexican grocery store, talk to the people in Spanish, offer my extra front row seat to a black woman at a Gospel concert, wave, smile and befriend (or attempt to) everyone I meet of every hue and national origin, and I am as much a WASP as can be found. There are more like me, and we all need to keep it up until it becomes a cultural norm. We are all Americans, and we all damned we’ll need to start acting like it.
Pues, somos bendecidos de conocerte, wey. Grx.
Years ago, the ratio of homeowners to renters was 60/40. Now it's the opposite. Enough said.
Stop it. Stop choosing one political thief over another. They are both thieves. Fact is, the problem is financialization of our economy, everything packaged for the most efficient consumption without regard to the price paid by workers and communities. If you don't understand that then you don't understand what happened in 2008. The people who gain from financialization and rehypothecation of assets as instruments hiding risk to squeeze every last penny from us are very few in number and are mostly distributed outside politics but controlling the lifeblood of politics which is wealth.
I don't see where what you are saying diverges from what I've said thus far. More to come. This is the first post in long line of thoughts and ideas to come.
If this is your first article of misinformation about unions then make it your last. Or, at the least back up your claims. Pretending the majority of unions somehow brokered back room deals or front room deals to be self serving purpose without negotiating for the betterment of their members you need to prove that claim. Or you’re just as bad as the ones who have been passing regulations against unions. The few states with constitutions that protect their unions have been something the right has been after a very long time, unfortunately those state constitutions don’t apply to the labor unions not employees directly thru their states. It’s very complicated and having someone on our “side” spouting off with no real valid proof is exactly what I said in my previous comment. BULLSHIT
This is letting the Democrats off way too easy. In the 1990s, Clinton and the New Dems gutted financial regulations (a process actually started under Carter, accelerated under Reagan and Bush, and super-charged by Clinton). The same is true with respect to de-regulation of the telecom industry. Clinton was in the process of negotiating Social Security privatization with Newt Gingrich until the Lewinsky scandal broke and bought us another 20+ years. In terms of international politics the Clinton team pushed hard to privatize state assets in Russia, which cleared the way for Putin, and has produced its own blowback. As with a lot of this stuff, there are winners and losers, but the pool of winners keeps getting smaller, which is just fuel for a politician like Trump who positions himself as a kind of anti-system politician (backed by a segment of "winners" who see an opportunity to do even more looting).
Well said.
Wrong. False
Social Security privatization is widely reported. e.g. source from US News and World Report from 2008:
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/05/29/the-pact-between-bill-clinton-and-newt-gingrich
"In the evening of Oct. 28, 1997, House Speaker Newt Gingrich headed to the White House to meet with President Bill Clinton, ostensibly to hammer out final details of the 1998 budget. In reality, Gingrich and Clinton were putting finishing touches on a deal to create a centrist political coalition to fix long-term problems facing Social Security and Medicare. In his new book, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation, Steven Gillon, resident historian of the History Channel and a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, reveals the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the meeting and how the potentially historic effort was derailed in an instant by the Monica Lewinsky scandal."
Financial De-regulation included the repeal of the last parts of Glass-Steagall (Gramm-Leach-Bliley). The Telecommunications Act of 1996, among other things, gutted regulations that were put in place during the New Deal era. Russia privatization is also well documented.
The Trump stuff is just a matter of paying attention (e.g. right out of the gate firing independent inspectors general, gutting the OMB, signing an executive order stating he would no longer enforce bribery statutes against U.S. businesses operating overseas; repeal of "beneficial ownership" disclosure requirements regarding ownership structure -- basically an anti-money laundering tax evasion law, long list of nakedly corrupt actions in just his first two months).
Thank you again for responding but with all due respect my opinion is a great deal stronger than a “distrust of Trump” or “thinking specific tings he is doing are bad”. Might I share with you an article by another who explains the WHY voters were tired of the status quo quite well (which supports your original statement) . It however combines this with the reason this regime (Trump), is not the right CHOICE to make the changes they wanted, it states things more eloquently than what I stated above. https://open.substack.com/pub/frankschaeffer/p/the-trump-moment?r=1hz9uo&utm_medium=ios. To add to this the political model of the current situation is classic patrimonialism, a dangerous precursor to authoritarianism.
Lmfao this is exactly the type of ignorant, pro establishment response the author discussed in his piece. The “Malcom in the Middles” who were barely hanging on twenty years ago are cooked heroine junkies today. And the DNC solution was simply to replace them with mass migration. Disgusting.
I am going to ask you to explain what exactly you mean my this comment, help me understand where YOU are coming from. I am not following this line of thought but am open to listen to what you have to say.
Ok, I’ll bite, and try with less snark and hostility.
Basically, your attitude is exactly what the author is saying is wrong, and backs up with examples and arguments.
“For decades, Americans have watched their country fall apart. Jobs disappeared, wages stagnated, purchasing power eroded, healthcare became unaffordable, roads crumbled, and schools decayed. “
This is exactly what people like me see when we look at America. By no stretch of the imagination was the country “fine” until Trump got elected. The 2008 financial crash was not “fine” and we did not recover. Obama was a great orator and articulated the hope and change most Americans wanted, but did not get at all out of his presidency. This is all more or less restating the author. Enough voters have fundamentally lost faith in the state and want serious change, which is impossible with the deep state (unelected bureaucrats, lobbyists, intelligence agencies, etc). So Trump is outright attacking those things in order to make change possible. This is exactly what people who voted for him wanted, even if the outcome is bad for them.
First I would like to thank you for responding and with civility , it is welcomed and appreciated. Perhaps my choice of words were far too simple and did not define my intent so so I will try to explain.
I hear what you are saying and agree, the country was not “fine” a lot needed to be done and the only way to do that is to demand change, the problem is the “change” promised by the choice they made is not the change that was needed, it was a clear run headlong into a brick wall at 100 mph and may well result in our collective demise .
Those of us who saw it coming tried to scream it outloud, albeit, too late and too little, and guessing it sounded more like chicken little and “the sky is falling”. SO Trump won (barely) and within five weeks has shown the true colors we feared. We are in the throws of a COUP , not a democracy to fix problems but an outright COUP, where jobs, civil rights, healthcare, the environment, world order and so much more are being trashed. The CHANGE that the “voters wanted” is a pipe dream, they will be the first in line to fall. Trump is playing KING with clear ties to the Kremlin and the billionaire boys club who couldn’t give a rats ass about the PEOPLE who voted for change. The events of last Friday in that now infamous Oval Office horror show were reminiscent of another day, long ago, February 12, 1938, the place was Berghof, the visitor was the chancellor of Austria and the bully was Adolf Hitler, the events of that day were strikingly similar to those of last Friday. The victim country is Ukraine the Bully country is Russia, but the US is the facilitator and it’s all tied up in a neat ugly knot. We are in very dark times and it has just begun. I do not believe for a minute this is the type of change anyone, with oxygen to the brain and a soul wanted.
CHANGE yes, needed, but first we need to come together collectively and oust the monsters in our house before the it burns to the ground. A “Phoenix rising” aside, this regime is not going to save anyone but the 1% at the expense of the people of this country and beyond, I call on those voters, red and blue to see the light of what is happening and , help stop the COUP together , then we can rebuild the change that is needed to save America , and the world. That is my take on this.
I don’t blame you for distrusting Trump and thinking specific things he is doing are bad, ie removing the CFPB. However, the cold reality is that the deep state has been ignoring the will of presidents and running the show to their liking for a long time, and that’s equally unconstitutional to what Trump and musk are doing with DOGE. Support for trumps admin at this point boils down to which unconstitutional champion you prefer: the deep state bureaucracy, or the Trump admin. You aren’t wrong this is likely to backfire, but the author is writing about perspective , and from Trump voters perspective, the deep state/establishment presided over a decades long decline, and its response to complaints is to call people uneducated or bigots. The “coup” was first done by bureaucrats entrenching and empowering themselves and making the executive branch irrelevant or beholden to their plan. The second “coup” is Trump and musk attacking that bureaucracy by any means necessary. This is why the voters supported it. What you seem to be suggesting is “change is needed but first save the previous bureaucrats!” And for many of us, it’s just too little, too late.
Regarding Russia, I do not believe in the slightest putin is comparable to Hitler, mayyyybe Stalin but that’s a stretch. Further, this is not a USA problem, it’s a Europe problem. Europe is going to have to put its pants on and fight Russia for territory if they want to defend territory. The USA has two gigantic oceans and has never, ever been at risk of being invaded by Russia or the USSR, this is obvious propaganda to further neoliberal, globalist, corporate geopolitical ambitions that don’t benefit normal US citizens at all. The real enemy is Israel and their incessant lobbying to funnel our Tax dollars to their bizarre ethnotheocracy, dragging us into endless Middle East misadventures.
Your opinion, not mine.
You must have been asleep for a long time.
I think you are responding to this from a very angry position. Which is valid, anger is a normal response!
I don’t think the writer would disagree with you at all?
Why are you offended? I found this piece very uplifting.
In the big picture our country has been significantly undemocratic since its founding. Capitalism also has a long history of repression and suppressing human dignity here in the United States. The labor movements for example were smashed by the abuse of power and wealth going back to the first Gilded Age. If not slavery itself.
We exterminated almost 100,000,000 indigenous people getting to where we are today. Let's not forget about what we did to the wildlife and nature in America Good job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples#Native_American_Genocide
600,000 people died in a Civil War that the political system was incapable of preventing. America has been at war since it's founding, and as Smedley Butler himself said, war is a racket.
If you don't wanna live in a democracy congratulations, you don't. But if you do want a democracy, you're going to have to organize American's to create one. That has not yet happened. But it could.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/peaceful-political-revolution-in-america/id1592429626?i=1000543022499
The country was built on the blood of slaves and Indigenous peoples. It has always been rotten to the core.
The State is Violence.
I agree with this. What the alternative is to live under Trump regime who wants to cut all aid for poor and middle class. And funnel trillions of $ to billionaires..I don't think most Americans are for this.
Funny thing is, my wife and I have had healthcare for the past four years for the first time in over a decade thanks to the Dems finally having control in our state senate and accepting the ACA subsidies. We’ve finally been able to have our back surgeries done. My kid was able to get help for their opiate addiction that we were struggling to afford. We’ve been able to piece a life together with some apps on our phones to work for ourselves for once. I was able to care for my parent’s as they died in hospice together. We live simply but we were happy (as happy as we could be obviously). I was making a little money investing. But they’ve wrecked the damn stock markets! Now we stand to lose it all again. Its like going back to the 2007 housing crises for us. Which we never really came back from. Watching the rich take control and cater to themselves openly, while saying “We the People” are the corrupt ones. After watching the opiate manufacturers get rich off our deaths and we are the parasites?!?! Everything you said about corporate profit taking and all of that is correct yet Im being told by Elon Musk that Im the fucking problem? Our countrymen are literally cheering our demise.
The ACA has done some good things, but this is one of those cases where we are setting the bar too low. As a country we spend an absurd amount of money on coverage -- about twice as much as other wealthy countries. Unlike those other countries, we still have a large uninsured population, we have high out of pocket expenses, and we have medical bankruptcies. This is not normal. Given the amount of money we spend overall (over $5 trillion for public and private funding of health care annually as a nation), care and coverage should be free at the point of service and universal. Obama and the Dems shoveled billions of dollars to the health insurance industry as part of the ACA. They levied the equivalent of a 10% income tax on people who were too rich to qualify for subsidies. e.g. i$54,000 of income is considered "rich" under the ACA for an individual. These health insurers spent several hundred million dollars in the next four election cycles after 2008 electing Republicans who wanted to get rid of parts of the ACA that limited their profitability and to right-wing Democrats who were opposed to universal health care. My recollection is that about 25-30% of the money that main Democratic House committee (the DCCC) received in 2018 was from the medical industry -- insurers, hospitals, Pharma, medical device manufacturers -- a portion of that money was used to beat back primary challengers who were pushing for single-payer, universal coverage. Effectively we pick up the tab in the form of higher prices for a system of political bribery that impacts both major parties. The irony of the ACA funding is that a portion of the new money from the health care law went to electing right-wing politicians, who in some cases wanted to overturn the law, and in other cases, it went to politicians who pushed to remove consumer and taxpayer protections built into the law.
It’s exactly what bush jr did in 2007 crashing the stock market. I remember that well because my sister retired that year w way less in her investments.
I can't buy a slow rot of everything. Yes things decay, but an economy in balance can rebuild. In the 70’s Nixon caused “stagflation” and Carter had the feds raise interest trying to slow it down. It was with Reagan and his trickle-down economics that we went off the rails. Corporations had been kept in relative check; it had been understood the power needed to be with the people. Corporate tax rate in the 50's and 60's was 35 to 50%. From Reagan on, the power keep shifting to corporations and the size of the corporations exploded. Wages stagnated, credit cards were introduced with little control over interest. Greed went out of control. Then we added Citizen's United, making our political system completely non-functional for the sake of the people.
There are 3 things we could do to turn our economy back in the right direction: 1. Raise corporation tax from the current 3.5% on a sliding scale upward to 20%, 2. Abolish Citizens United and take the money out of politics, forcing politicians to listen to the people rather than pay back their corporate donors, and 3. Get rid of the electoral votes and go back to every vote counts. Every vote counting means no Jim Crow laws anywhere.
It will do no good to tear everything down if we don't get rid of the mentality of greed that controls our country due to changes in the laws that allowed that to happen. If greed is in charge of the rebuild, it could be worse. A torn apart nation is a haven for investment for the wealthy.
Carter instituted neoliberal capitalism.
I think the problem started after WWII and we simply can't continue to run the country with war-stimulus spending. It leaves us vulnerable when the inevitable happens and we actually end up in a war with existential ramifications. I think the last thing we want is the kind of coalition governance that is so common in Europe.
Was it that Biden didn’t build anything or that the “news” couldn’t bother to tell anyone who was responsible for improvement. I’ve seen a Spectrum ad recently touting their rural broadband without a word on the money made available by Democrats. Republicans have systematically destroyed this country and lied about what they’re doing so don’t pretend both parties are the same.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/at-its-two-year-anniversary-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-law-continues-to-rebuild-all-of-america/
It's the former. Here is one example: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/04/biden-broadband-program-swing-state-frustrations-00175845
Except clearly it’s now getting out there, or did you think Spectrum was suddenly doing this out of the goodness of their little hearts?
STOP CELEBRATING THE FUCKING MAN THAT DIDNT PROSECUTE TRUMP
FUCK YOU
Listen, Biden selected Garland as AG who then hired Jack Smith. They did things by the book.
But it was too slow and not sufficiently aggressive. And the Trump lying train just kept on chugging.
Blame the 70 million voters for why Trump's prosecution ended.
Bernie Sanders offered what we needed - real populism - and he would have been able to get it for us. He’s still fighting for us. The crowds he got during the election, it was phenomenal - a lot of people voting now weren’t old enough in 2016 to have experienced it and a lot of people have forgotten. The excitement and hope, the solidarity he inspired…. But the DNC cheated him out of his win in the primaries and a chance to run, because they didn’t want change. They wanted to keep their power, even if it meant letting Trump win. That’s how democracy for the people was lost.
Bernie is a Communist. He can go fuck himself.
If only lol 😂
Bernie wasn’t cheated. Warren was doing well in her primary until Bernie got back in because he thought he owned those voters.
Bernie is a corporate democrat. He plays the role of trying to trick progressives into thinking the democrats will represent them. He’s just another lying POS. He’s a warmonger and a liar.
Speculation led us to disaster in the 1920s and we are on the same path now.
Hey Corbin, loved the clarity of the email you sent promoting this article. Couldn't agree more. I've been living in Italy for seven years and it's something to see the same happening here. At least Italians have health care and more of a federal security net, but they say "the social elevator is broken." Food prices and housing prices are impossible. I'm looking forward to your thoughts on it all.
Thanks! Hope you're well!
I do not agree with this negative article.
My point is that our institutions have failed to function well for so long that public support for them has eroded, limiting vocal Democratic opposition to their dismantling.
They have failed because of republican sabotage. Which, I believe is part of the point you are making.
The article is true.
It's not so much that it's negative. It's that “accelerationists” come in all shapes and sizes, not really caring who dies in the fire, so long as everything burns. Dems are shit sometimes. But I'd rather that than the non-vision presented by others. Who in some cases, might as well be maga scum.
block this bluewho
This is not correct. 60% of Americans oppose the DOGE project. 52-46 Americans oppose Trump.
My point is that our institutions have failed to function well for so long that public support for them has eroded, limiting vocal Democratic opposition to their dismantling.
Imagine if he weren't a bumbling idiot. People are indeed looking for radical change.
Maybe so. But they’re not enjoying the radical change Trump is bringing. I’m inclined to believe you though. But what radical change can the Drmocratic Party push that will have the support of the majority? That is the question.
I like your article though. You are sadly onto something here. Fascism arises out of a crisis in democracy. From Weimar to Hitler. From the Civil War to Franco. The odd thing is that in times like this people move towards extreme collectivist solutions, either fascism or socialism/communism.
The system hasn’t failed anyone! We the people have failed the system!
what does that mean?
The bedrock of democracies are the people. So yes, Contrary is correct. We are complacent. We elect people every four years, and inbetween that time period, and keep in mind, no matter what happens,what they do, all we Do is complain and moan and bitch, and elect the same guy over again. Or a New Same guy? Every four years.
Yes! Spot on!
Complacency!
While some of what you say is true - I can tell you are younger and not well read enough to put our 250 year US short history in some context. You are wrong about US productivity - it has been on the increase for the last half century in spite of NAFTA manufacturing jobs going over seas to exploit cheap labor and in spite of the fact of stagnant wages for the last half century as well. You make it sound like America was once awesome and just crapped out in the last few decades. The truth is is quite different for different groups of people. For a majority white citizens - the golden age was post WW2 late 1940s up to the 1970s when the cost of living was in balance with wages and the rich paid their fair share of taxes (90%) which allowed for the GI Bill after WW2 which created the educated white middle class and paid for all the infrastructure/super highways that allowed for corporations to flourish, get rich and pay their employees a decent wage plus pensions. After Reagan sold the US out to corporations in the 1980s - and SCOTUS as well in the early 2000s via the Citizen's United Decision which helped destroy our Democracy further and now the Billionaire coup via the silver spoon Nazis is in full swing. And finally Senator Sanders was winning the Populist movement but Hillary Clinton sabotaged him because she controlled the purse strings to the DNC in 2016 and then lost the country to Trump the crook and later traitor to the Constitution (J6). But as you write - his cult of angry ignorant MAGA white people and some POCs don't care, but I think they will when they start to feel the affects of this reckless tearing down of a system that took generations to build. The Billionaires are bullies who pick on the lowest hanging fruit working people in the Federal government versus taking on the real gangsters in the Pentagon which eats up half of all our tax monies and has 0 accountability. Did the US Bureaucracy need some fixing - surely but they what DOGE and Trump are doing is reckless and myopic and we will all feel its disastrous results very soon - already happening! Context and details are important when examining history or anything else for that matter.
How can you think that taking 90% of someone's wealth is fair?
Not “someones’s”, *corporations*. Back then, they got tax breaks from reinvesting in the business (equipment/facilities, etc) and their employees thru pension funds and education, both of which were good for the economy and middle class prosperity. Now those profits go to stock buy backs (only good for share holders and previously illegal), and leveraged buyouts where a corporation buys a company, sucks it dry by laying off employees (leaving the remaining ones to do all the work), cutting any beneficial perks for customers that don’t make money, and then eventually, leasing or selling the buildings to themselves, making the original business pay inflated rent or declare bankruptcy. This is happening in many critical areas such as healthcare, and elder care (to name just 2). You can see how the 90%tax or tax incentives were better for the country and for the middle class.
Recently I stumbled across a video of Sen Paul Wellstone on grassroots leadership. The formula he laid out 25 years ago still holds true today. Change at the federal level that actually benefits ordinary people typically only happens in response to changes in local politics and the process of people becoming politicized, becoming leaders themselves, and gaining some confidence in their own political power. Sanders had his own version of this message. Of course it is easy to see what needs to be done, the hard part is the doing. It is also understandable why people go the anti system route given the sad state of the two-party system and the fact that it is much easier to organize money than people. Relatedly, I appreciate the work that you, Saikat and others did in 2016-2018. You can really tell the difference between then and now in terms of the reaction of the Democratic Party to this past election. The political leadership feels no pressure at this moment from the grassroots, or the threat of primary challenges, so we get a completely hapless response from the party leadership to its most recent election loss. Instead of going to voters and asking for forgiveness for political failure, we have an apology tour that starts with the biggest donor interests. The good news and the bad news is that political conditions and circumstances change and the cycle we are in right now, will not last forever. Things will likely get worse in the near-term, but the longer view gives some basis for optimism.
Wellstone makes Bernie look conservative. The only reason he had a political career was being at the right place at the right time. Otherwise, he'd be the Commie street punk instead of Bernie.
The sad thing is there is no good replacement for what we are tearing down, as justified as we are in doing so - Trump and his Cabinet will eventually prove to only care for Oligarchy and likely will take the skeleton of America's governing institutions - which is already pro-Oligarch - and grow a monster out of it. Worse, is how the 'opposition' has absolutely nothing to say, except to scream about how much they hate Trump, and that is it.
I agree in part. I’m older-71-and I’ve lived through some of these changes. I remember learning in college about myths, and especially American myths-not that they didn’t contain truth, but that they weren’t factual. The great American myth in the 20th century was the Lone Cowboy and the Wild West. But the factual truth of America has always involved community. And I’d like to explore that, going forward.
Very timely and agree 100%. We should perhaps also think of what the solution is. How do we deal with the need for expertise and organization for the complex needs of society today if these institutions don't exist anymore? How do we turn anger or apathy into constructive participation. Not sure what the answers are but definitely time to wake up and realize why this is happening.
But Bernie was about investing in ourselves and it would have come without the destruction of a few generations. It would have helped out so many and made us so much stronger rather than choosing the opposite of hate, rage, and pure destruction.