There’s a propagandized version of a “nation” as a country with functional and supportive social systems, which I think most people subscribe to. Whether or not their country every really qualified as a “nation” by that metric is debatable.
Comment on An American city has been without power for 2 weeks, unacceptable.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 21 hours agoThe government is no longer serving everyone.
When did it ever?
The US is no longer a nation.
Most nations have historically operated like this. Hell, it’s the foundation of feudal societies. Oversized robber-baronies which violently extract wealth from their residents, for the aggrandizement of the aristocracy. If you go back to the old school 19th century Anarchist literature, it’s this view of government that underpins their belief in the abolition of state systems.
But to claim the US has stopped being a nation because it has shit domestic policy? I just don’t know what kind of definition of “nation” you’re working with.
qarbone@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
There’s a propagandized version of a “nation” as “a country with functional and supportive social systems,”
Or, more generically, a set of borders that define the reach of a national bureaucracy, sure. I don’t think anyone can argue that the US has borders. And I certainly don’t think it can be argued that we lack a bureaucracy.
A lot of the argument boils down to whether or not you like what the current bureaucracy is doing within and around those borders. Which, hey, don’t get me wrong. Death to America. But it’s one thing to say the country should die and quite another to suggest it’s already dead.
As soon as the election churns some of our legislative and state-exec bureaucrats, you’re going to see a liberal renaissance in patriotic nationalism coming up against a sudden Neo-Confederate fervor in the Usual Suspect territories. Expect the streets to be full of parading chuds screaming “We want our country back!” the week after the polls close. This happens damned near every election cycle. But it’s little more than a social release valve. Half the people screaming about succession and civil war and Revolution 2: Electric Boogaloo are going to be penthouse neocons in bright blue cities and Silicon Valley soar sports.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
At this point, the federal government is divesting itself of its responsibilities to the states. The Trump regime is actively seeking to not provide services and support to those parts of the nation that didn’t vote for him, but in doing so is actually hitting red states (and red counties in blue states) harder than he is the blue ones.
But the message is clear: Some of us no longer count as Americans, according to MAGA or the White House. The individual states are responding accordingly, either challenging these denials of support legally, or creating state-level alternatives. But some places are being left in a state of disaster. Puerto Rico is rationing water (to the people while corporate interests retain water access) and Gary, Indiana has been without electrical service for two weeks now. Then there’s the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Here in California, we’re fighting wildfires without FEMA support, but that’s been the case since early 2025. And there are a few other natural disaster hot zones to which FEMA has been unresponsive.
So, the US is behaving like a failing state. That’s not a strict boolean. The decline and fall of a nation a long, slow, non-linear process. We don’t know if it’ll devolve into civil war or toward the fracturing of the US into separate allied clusters of states. It’s up to the individual historian (say a century from now) to decide exactly at what point the US actually failed. Rome, for instance, fell across centuries.
Right now, the federal government has pretty much abdicated its duties to the states, and only serving corporations who pledged fealty to the Trump regime early on. (Again, some government action is taking place due to court orders, but the administration isn’t always obedient to them.) The states are on their own for anything they don’t fight for.
I suppose there could be more severe symptoms that might indicate the failure of the federal government. Civil war between states, anarchy in municipalities, or the rise of martial law in some counties, whether by the National Guard, by local police departments, or by regime paramilitaries such as ICE.
For me, I’m still a Californian, but the Trump Department of Justice and Department of State would not consider me American anymore, for being a leftist and disabled, and in fact might regard me as a terrorist. I am, after all, the chief regional officer of Antifa.