its going to be a shit 32 years.
In the US, is this actually the moment past the point of no return?
Submitted 6 months ago by Snapz@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
Fedizen@lemmy.world 6 months ago
RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com 6 months ago
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It’s unlikely.
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That’s hard to impossible to answer in the moment but easier for historians to determine in retrospect.
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pineapplelover@lemm.ee 6 months ago
No. It will be bad and might set us back a few decades, but we will fight back or die trying.
mvirts@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Every moment is a point of no return, unfortunately.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 6 months ago
One definition of a collapse is a sudden drastic reduction in the complexity of a thing.
I’m not sure whether we’re going to have a societal collapse or a slow decline, but either way the US is in a downward spiral. I think Trump increases the likelihood of us going into the collapse trajectory.
All that said, on the other side of a collapse, there is some room for hope. The incendiary portion of the collapse will definitely suck to live through (if you’re lucky enough to do so), but our country could probably use some simplification long-term because the people within it largely cannot navigate a country this Byzantine. A lot of this country’s systems are too complex for an average person to understand let alone administer.
Most of these complexities were probably birthed via intentional decisions by the system creators, and others were a product of unintended consequences. I think the gap in education between our commoners and “the elite” – to borrow an awful trope – also played a part here.
No matter how we arrived, I don’t think the current population can actually operate these systems anymore and long-term one way or another our people require a drastic reduction in the complexity of our society.
There is another path in which the United States invests more in education and scales up the average intelligence of its citizens so that they can handle the complexity of modern life, nuance, do research, and create better policy…but at this point I think we’re frankly too far fucked to ever go down that path.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Did Britain or Rome know the moments when Pax Britannia or Pax Romana had hit their tipping point to decline? I doubt it.
I think the tipping point will only be observable through the lens of history many years from now with a subject heading of: This event was the beginning of the end of Pax Americana.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The exact point will be the advent of the internet.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 6 months ago
USA was still very much on the rise at the advent of the internet. If you define the advent of the internet to be Arpanet, then that was 1969, the same year the USA landed on the moon. If you define the advent of the internet to be the first use of the World Wide Web that would be 1989 the same year the Berlin wall came down and 3 years before the Soviet Union collapsed, which was arguably the most powerful the USA has ever been as it was before China’s rise.
superkret@feddit.org 6 months ago
The US has had presidents who were literally more evil than Mr. Burns.
They haven’t been a real democracy (where the will of the majority influences policy) in decades, if ever.Climate change is still the thing that’s most likely to fuck us all, and it’s not like the US were actually helpful in that regard under Democratic leadership.
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Would you ever allow yourself to accept that truth if so, or will you need to see actual bodies in the streets before you believe it’s over?
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 6 months ago
This isn’t something you’ll be able to determine in the moment. It will only be clear in hindsight.
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
People do see it, it’s not easy to see it and act, but they did. I know directly of people that gave up ownership of multiple factories and a very comfortable life in Germany in about this phase of the fascist uprising there. They left to America and Australia, split family, with what they could carry, and started back over from a very modest place. Not too long after, the worst gained momentum in Germany, nazis took over the factories and a horrible fate befell many in their community who didn’t acct when they could have.
Pacattack57@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We’ll be fine. It will be a hard 4 years but based on last time trump will spend a fuck load of money to keep the masses happy. 2028 and on are going to be harder because trump will get some bullshit tax cuts passed that will target the middle class when he’s out of office.
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We won’t be fine, this is meaningfully different
Treczoks@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Earth will not care. Life on earth may suffer, but Earth will not care.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Then I guess we shouldn’t worry about Earth, because it’ll be fine.
Raab@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The save the earth movement isn’t about earth, it’s about humanity.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Doubt it.
The rest of the world isn’t lucky enough to never have to hear about the perpetual US election cycle again, and frankly there’s just too much money in it for them to give it up.
It’ll be a fucking clown show for the next four years though.
theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Don’t believe there really is an absolute point of no return without the plot of Genesis of the Daleks happening. The future is long, and we don’t know how the next four to eight years will play out, but dictatorships have risen and fallen before. Spain was a fascist dictatorship for decades, now it isn’t. Also, lots of people died in the meantime and not all vestiges of the dictatorship are gone.
NineMileTower@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I choose to believe that we are not. The true fight for our democracy by the working/middle class hasn’t even started yet. Some think it won’t. I choose to believe that good will again triumph and life is roller coaster of good and bad.
Xeroxchasechase@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Will it start any time soon? It’s only going to get harder and harder to resist, from now on.
Curiousfur@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, people really don’t understand how powerful a surveillance state can be when it focuses it’s eye on you. It’s not safe to talk about resistance around basically anything internet connected with a microphone.
NineMileTower@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Let’s try this: magic-8ball.com
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 6 months ago
The true fight for our democracy by the working/middle class hasn’t even started yet.
Seems like we’ll need to form our own political party if we want any representation because we’re certainly not getting it from either one of these two dominate parties.
NineMileTower@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Count me the fuck in. I’ll grab my pitchfork.
yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
According to history? Yes, but I guess there’s a chance that the USA will beat the odds
Kaboom@reddthat.com 6 months ago
No. Just the next chapter in the story.
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Rome had a final chapter.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
The Germans are good at ending things, aren’t they?
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Remember that time we as a country condoned owning people as property? No matter how bad shit gets in the next four years, there’s no point of no return
stringere@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Mass deportations sweeping up agricultural workers will need to be replaced when a national emergency is declared because crops can’t be harvested. President declares the crops can be harvested by prison populations…what’s the word for captives forced to labor for no pay indefinitely?
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Slavery. Notably not the same thing as chattel slavery. I’m not saying we can’t get worse than we are right now, what I am saying is that no matter how bad things get, we can come back from it. Hell, Germany came back from being controlled by the actual Nazi party.
I know someone is gonna reply saying how awful life was in Germany for several decades between Nazi rule and modern Germany, and I’ll note again that I never said life can’t get worse, I only said there’s no point of no return for a country.
jaxxed@lemmy.world 6 months ago
May I suggest that you give Vlad Vexler’s youtube a listen? He describes this as a period of dlweaking democracy, but explains why all is not lost.
0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Democracy dlweaks in darkness
over_clox@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Why do we call it united?
Last I checked the math books, 50 is Divided.
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I always did find it amusing that they are called the United States when it seems like it’s constantly teetering on brink of another civil war.
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 6 months ago
teetering on brink of another civil war
Shit has to get much, much, much worse before people are willing to take up arms against their own family member 'en mass. A civil war isn’t one in which you fight a far away enemy, a civil war is one in which many of your family members and friends are on the opposite side. We are nowhere near a civil war, not even close.
over_clox@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Heard that!
I’m a united individual of one, can’t help where I was born…
Lightsong@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It might be for some stuff. I’m worried that it’ll have a lasting impact on women inside the USA as well as outside. Inside, they’ll have their rights taken away over time. Outside, morale will be impacted. But I’m hoping it’ll cause an uprising rather than the other way around.
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
👊
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Someone who has been president before, for four years, was elected president again.
I cannot think of anything less similar to a “point of no return”.
You may think of him or his policies what you want (I personally have a mostly negative opinion of him too!), but we have all had four years of opportunity to observe what he does when he is president.
If you are thinking that Trump is like Hitler, then please point me to anything similar to:
- a Capitol Fire Decree of 2017 that says several parts of the Bill of Rights are suspended until further notice
- an Enabling Act of 2017 that gives the president full power to make law including law that violates the constitution
- laws on the Coordination of the States with the Federation of 2017 or a Law on the Reconstruction of the Federation of 2018 giving the federal government full legislative and executive power over the states
- a Law Against the Formation of Parties of 2017 declaring that the Republican Party was the only political party in the US and anyone attempting to form another party would be imprisoned
- a Law on the Abolition of the Senate of 2018 doing exactly what the title implies
- a Law on Measures of State Self-Defense of 2018 retroactively legalizing dozens of extrajudicial killings of Trump’s political rivals
Oh, none of those things happened in the late 2010s? Then why exactly are you expecting them to happen in 2025 or 2026? What is different now?
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Thank you for the solid points. People are dooming way too hard, simply because their preferred candidate lost this round.
TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Nobody can predict the future. I am no longer optimistic.
Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Just to be the nihilist in the room, I honestly think that the point of no return for humanity occurred the moment we stepped down from the trees and started to evolve. And I’m not actually kidding.
I’m not an evolutionary expert, so I’m more than likely talking out of my ass, but I was an Archaeology Major with a focus on the Bronze Age Collapse and what I can tell you is this…
From a certain perspective, the same evolutionary traits that brought our species to this point, are the very same traits that will keep us from moving forward past it. Selfishness, resource hording, greed, the urge to continually expand at the expense of others. Fear of “others” outside of ones own community; all these things in some form were beneficial to growing from hunter gatherers to urban/agricultural societies. We needed organisation to build cities, so we created monarchies. We needed ways to control the growing population, so we created a fear of a deity.
We needed a reason to not allow too many people in to our society so that we didn’t waste resources, so we created borders and the concept of “others” that aren’t like us. Now, all of that has to get binned if we have any hope of getting past this point because the only way forward is as single planet, not petty nation states. But every single thing that brought us to this point prevents that from happening.
steel_nomad@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Of what?
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What color paint? And did it have a distinct flavor?
steel_nomad@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You tell me? I don’t understand all this “end of the world” nonsense. Not saying everything is fine, but holy crap y’all are going way over the edge.
ultranaut@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Maybe. US history is full of crazy fucked up shit that the nation has made its way through thus far. This kind of situation hasn’t really happened in the US before though, and historically these kinds of situations do not work out well. We are past the point of no return in that the status quo Washington Consensus or whatever you want to call the previous era is gone now, whatever is coming is something new and different and the US role and position in the world are never going back to what they were before. Really I would say this process started with Bush II but there is no reversing it now that Trump has won a convincing electoral victory. Whether we’re past the point of no return for the US constitutional order isn’t really clear yet but it’s not looking good.
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Appreciate your measured response. I’m wondering how long it will take folks to stop coping out of self preservation and say out loud that this isn’t anything we’ve seen before - it’s brand new and can go as far as has been threatened.
OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Point of no return for what?
Do you mean it’s fall, like Rome?
No, I don’t think so at all.
I actually think we’re on the cusp of actual, true reform.
But if I’m wrong, just try to remember that millions of people lives happy, fulfilling lives, even while Rome fell around them. We will too.
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You sound like a scoundrel…
“You can drown out the screams and dance if you just hustle hard enough!”
OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Uh, no, that’s not what I said. It’s just a fact that when empires fall, almost everyone living in it just live their lives regularly
WhyFlip@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You don’t understand Americans at all.
blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 6 months ago
We’re here in “no stupid questions”. The OP asked a question. So if you want to offer some of your knowledge and insight - go for it. But simply telling OP “you don’t understand” isn’t really adding anything of value.
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It’s like not commenting, but with more effort.
johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I guess we’ll see.
dan1101@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Could be, but we have thought that before.
Snapz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
As others have stated, this is an entirely new depth to that thought.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
From an outside observer: it’s gonna be harder, but I don’t think so. Still, the playbook Trump is gonna try and follow with his trifecta is what Orbán did in Hungary. How hard that is going to be to undo depends on how far he gets.
Wilzax@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Unless there’s nuclear war, there’s no such thing as the point of no return. Just a further slide into more egregious civil rights violations. Eventually it will get better, hopefully through democratic means and not violent ones.
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
You don’t vote out a dictator. The only way out is through violent revolution.
Jackthelad@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Trump is the worst dictator ever, seeing as he literally got voted out last time and could do nothing about it.