The US has lost faith in the American dream. Is this the end of the country as we know it?
The US has lost faith in the American dream. Is this the end of the country as we know it?
The Republican’s second presidential term heralds a more inward-looking US where resentment has replaced idealism and nobody wins without someone else losing
After one Trump presidency and on the eve of another, it is now clear that a once mighty global superpower is allowing its gaze to turn inward, to feed off resentment more than idealism, to think smaller.
Public sentiment – not just the political class – feels threatened by the flow of migrants once regarded as the country’s lifeblood. Global trade, once an article of faith for free marketeers and architects of the postwar Pax Americana, is now a cancer eating away at US prosperity – its own foreign invasion.
Military alliances and foreign policy no longer command the cross-party consensus of the cold war era, when politics could be relied upon to “stop at the water’s edge”, in the famous formulation of the Truman-era senator Arthur Vandenberg.
Now the politics don’t stop at all, for any reason. And alliances are for chumps.
Yes. When you elect a convicted criminal fascist with no guard rails or restraints, this will be the end of the United States as we know it.
Fascism has come.
Not fair. You didn't mention that he's a rapist, racist and Jeffrey Epstein's closest friend.
Possibly a pedophile as well
Yes. One of the parties has embraced dictatorship. Democracy cannot continue in that environment.
Don't forget, their cultists will vote for anything they say.
american dream was lost a while back. now its a matter of losing american sanity.
The American dream has changed so many times through the generations I'm not sure there's any cohesive vision. I remember it used to be owning a house, having kids, and being self sufficient. Nowadays I don't think young people even want kids- having time and money to have fun seems like the dream, which is sort of... bleak? That should be the bare minimum, but the older generations failed them.
I'm still amazed at the catastrophic damage one single generation can do to a country, voting for terrible policies over and over again (Reagan, Bush, Trump). Refusing to admit when things are not working, turning instead to a propaganda apparatus, preferring to detach from reality. And they're not even done (dead) yet...
If the kids in middle school are any indication the American dream is now to become a popular streamer
I still think a bloody class war would go a long way.
More than half your class is too busy licking their boots to unite against them. They’re grateful for the scraps they’re being given, while worshipping their masters.
"The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin
The Republican war on the middle class is what's killed the American Dream. Doing everything possible to reduce the buying power of white and blue-collar workers has gutted class mobility. The Democrats have played along to keep shifting the Overton Window towards the right to help make it happen. Donors happy all around as they move production offshore for low labor cost.
System working as intended.
Yes.
Right wing propaganda networks pumping out fear of immigrants 24/7 was all too successful. We need to find ways to combat this and the type of drivel this article purveys. We have to find ways of coming together instead of letting these populist movements divide and conquer.
ask again in 4 years when the rapist refuses to step down and his court lackeys back him on it
I dont think he makes it 4 years. He is just the means to an end. Vance i think 25th amendments him Jan 21, 2027. That way he wont serve 2 years and can run for 2 full terms. Its that or they just kill him. Dems will 100% get the blame and it could get even worse.
I think it is if you serve more than half a term it counts as 1 term for purposes of the 2 term limit.
I've been thinking a lot about this, like others, and found one kernel of hope to hang onto: the only way to know a democracy is safe from internal threats is to test that democracy. This is that test. This is the tyranny of the minority that the founding fathers were worried about. This is the stress test for democracy and I pray wiser men have stymied the most malicious people in American history.
If we get through this, and are faced with another Reconstruction period, we must be diligent and exterminate bigotry and corporate undermining of government bodies.
There are worse ways to spend your life than chasing the American dream. But once you've found it, like I did in Vegas, what's called the old Psychiatrist's Club, then it is kind of puzzling. You feel kind of naked and alone out there, because once you've found the dream, it is generally just a slab of burned-out concrete in Las Vegas called the old Psychiatrist's Club, then it's kind of hard to go on from there on the same.
- Hunter S. Thompson, November 1, 1977, Lecture at the University of Colorado (Boulder)
Pfft, they havent lost faith in it. They just voted against it because they're all uneducated morons who take lies at face value.
If I can quote the late George Carlin: "They call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
I would argue that George was right and the American dream doesn't exist, and never existed. You cannot destroy that which does not exist..
Yes.
Yes it is.
Yes
It was an obvious lie decades ago. Nothing has changed
Oh yes it's changed alright, the lie has become bigger.
Consider the TV show married with children, a shoe salesman is married and has 2 children a house and a car, on a single lower end income.
And it wasn't completely unrealistic back in the late 80's to mid 90's.Here's a very brief explanation of what happened.
In 1960 minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the price of the average US home was $11,000.00 A popular tour guide was called "Europe on $5.00 A Day" [over the years they did specific cities like Paris or Rome or London...]
In 1964 LBJ decides that he can win the War in Vietnam with a massive buildup and increased bombings. He prints paper money to pay for it, because he doesn't want to raise taxes. The plan is a miserable failure and protests force LBJ to step aside. In 1968 we elect 'peace candidate' Nixon [who sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks]
Nixon kept LBJ's plan and increased spending. He knew the War was unwinnable but thought he could kick the problem down the road and let the 1976 President deal with 'losing' the war.
By 1976 inflation was a major problem, not helped by the Arab Oil Boycott that tripled the price of gas overnight. All those cool loft buildings you see in places like Manhattan used to be small factories making things like purses, clothing, toys etc etc. The owners moved the businesses to the US south where there were fewer Unions.
Jimmy Carter hired a man named Paul Volker to deal with inflation. Carter got voted out before the Volker plan could kick in, so Reagan got the credit for Carter's ideas.
Reagan's own Veep, George HW Bush called the Reaganomics trickle down "voo doo economics" until Reagan offered him the #2 spot on his ticket.
In 1968, when Nixon started waging War with paper money, "middle class" was one Union job paying for a family of four with a nice savings account. In those days, $1 million was still considered a vast fortune. By 1992, when Bush Sr. was finished, middle class was two incomes to run the house and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
"late 80s to mid 90s"
Calm down cowboy! Grunge music didn't come from nowhere, the X generation started to feel the pain in the 80s with high unemployment, McJobs and crazy interest rates! Things didn't look good for them either!
Everyone reading this right now should recognize that America will be on a steady decline for the rest of our lives.
There's no point in waiting for it to improve. There's no point in waiting for it to fall.
Just accept that it is a trend that will not end while we are still living. Don't waste your life waiting for the day that never comes.
Could have settled into a northern Europe socialist type country. Good social safety net, good labor laws. Instead the country is going the way of petty, central American, dictatorships.
That would be nice.
Americans have proven that they don't want anything that reduces the disparity in wealth, though.
That's why democrats nominated Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders in 2016, resulting in a Trump presidency. I also think that if Trump didn't win in 2016, he wouldn't have had a better chance in 2020 or 2024. So I actually blame 2 Trump presidencies on the people who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democrat Primary.
What this person is asking you to do is roll over and accept defeat. To embrace the fall into Fascism without a fight.
Don't listen to people like this. America declines because we let it decline. Fight like hell for a better world, please.
That's not at all what I'm suggesting and this isn't specific to fascism.
Greed and unchecked entitlement is what made America what it is today. As long as people can't see past their own wealth, these problems will continue to perpetuate. This generation is proud to take advantage of others and envies those who get rich off of exploitation.
Framing it as a culture war instead of a class war helps contribute to the steady decline of America.
Edit: The fact that you immediately jumped to 'fascism' instead of 'greed' or the growing disparity in wealth further proves my point that these problems will not be solved in our lifetime. We're not even looking in the right direction at this point.
Always has been. It's just that the thin veneer that was always on top has now has come off.
Bit more than that, it’s maybe the end of American influence in the world because the neocon 3.0 agenda will bring intense economic strife and social suffering. The environmental and regulatory policies will lead to infrastructure deterioration and polluted air, water etc. The health policies will lead to a weak and sick population. The rich and upper middle class will live in Nordic countries or Europe, as they mostly already do, where they will enjoy the social policies that they deprive Americans of. Most talent will likely go to other countries. But I seriously hope I am wrong.
lights tip of rag protruding from bottle
Or is it just the beginning?
The US has lost faith in the american dream and the world has lost faith in the US.
We're moving on!
The american dream hasn't been a reality for decades
Cool 😎
i hope so. we need it to collapse asap so the rest of the third world can thrive
Sudden collapse of the world's largest economy will severely fuck up third world countries.
it wont be sudden. we are preparing for tge eventuality already. the writing is on the wall.
it wont be sudden, and we are ready for the eventuality
That's unrealistic. You think the fall of America is going to be a simple affair? Here's just one reason it won't. All those aircraft carriers and submarines full of nuclear weapons. What happens with those?
Be careful what you wish for.
That’s unrealistic. You think the fall of America is going to be a simple affair?
You think
think
You are asking a lemmy.ml user...
How would that in any way help developing countries?
Not saying I agree that the fall of the US would help others, but we sure have fucked up a lot of countries over the years and it would be great if we stopped doing so. We've illegally prioritized the capitalist agenda at the expense of international progress time and time and time again. Imagine what South America might be like without US interference in their governments.
we wont get forced to use your financial system, and we wont be under constant influence to liberalize and sell assets to the us. under threat of invasion and destruction.
did you ever notice every single country not subjugated by the us is considered a "brutal dictatorship" that must be invaded and killed?
Many of those countries use the USD as their primary or only currency. Though if the collapse is more gradual I suspect they’ll be using the RMB like the rest of us before it’s all said and done.