this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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(page 3) 50 comments
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

According to history? Yes, but I guess there's a chance that the USA will beat the odds

[–] SomeAmateur 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Sure the US may be past it's glory days. Hell even the Rand Corporation (who write a bunch of stuff for govt leaders and other high ups) says it's been trending downhill since some point in the early 2000s. They didn't mention 9/11 but it seems like a good historical milestone.

Essentially the paper says the last 200 years have been an anomaly and we're slowly sliding back to historical norms. They call it the neomedieval era and it's not just the US.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Neo Feudalism is upon us, the frog got to comfortable in this warm water... Now it is too late.

The trend is set and reversal is not on the menu.

Best you can do is quit being poor, otherwise you gonna get progressively more fucked each year.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Yeah pretty much. We're 2-3 generations deep into a cultural expectation that "some one else" will deal with all these problems.

The constant threat of this being "the most important election of our lives", when the party making that argument campaigned as if the outcomes were irrelevant (because from their privileged perspective, the outcomes are irrelevant).

Back during covid a boat got turned a bit sideways in a canal and it seemed like the whole world economy was going to collapse. The system we have is actually incredibly fragile and built largely on trust, both in one another but also in institutions and systems. Not only the US, but western Europe is about to get smacked up-side the head by the 2x4 of failing to maintain a civil society (US at fault within its borders, EU at fault beyond its borders).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Every moment is a point of no return, unfortunately.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (13 children)

Assuming you are talking about who won the US presidential election. Happened 8 years ago too, it wasn't the end of America then. It won't be the end of America now.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Earth will not care. Life on earth may suffer, but Earth will not care.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Then I guess we shouldn't worry about Earth, because it'll be fine.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (8 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days 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 a tired trope -- also played a part here.

No matter how we arrived at this point, 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, understand 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.

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