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When it's all done and dusted, I hope it's the beginning of the end for corporate capitalism as we know it. Allowing them to become that big and powerful through corruption that they literally think that they can control the world, is insane.
This is happening because of greed.
It always happens because of greed. All of history.
Yet not one lesson was learned. If anything, they've made it worse. No accountability, monopolies in almost every sector, or vast majority ownerships.
Don’t discount religion in that mix.
Whether it's now or later, life has to get a lot worse before it gets better. People will have to feel a lot more pain than they're feeling now before they do more than bitch and moan online.
So, in the best case scenario, the US as we know it is done and, after a hard fall and hitting rock bottom, will emerge as a country that is less of a capitalist hellhole. Ideally, in the process, other countries will find more independence from the USA, be it trade wise or security wise.
The more realistic scenario is that everything will stay the same/similar and just get slightly worse all the time but every other country will still suck up to the USA and everything gets a little worse. Oh yeah and climate change will fuck everyone up the ass.
The worst case scenario, I would argue, is that this ends in the destruction of the world via nuclear war within less than an hour. This is what I am scared of the most.
We are about to become a cautionary tale other countries use to warn eachother not to go too hard into capitalism
In a sense it is done. That sense is being a beacon of progress. All presidents before Trump understood the relationship America had with the world as being a world power. While there always was a conservative voice in America, conservative presidents were always able to mask self interest under the flag of progress, bringing democracy, peace and free markets. Now ultraconservative fascist are no longer masking, Trump and Musk are literally not smart enough to understand. The USA played a very important role in the world order and the current administration is basically giving that up.
Trump and Musk, because they really aren't smart (i can't stress this enough, they lack the mental capacity), are not considering the value of that role, the services the US provides. They only think about the value of things and of money. More rockets, tarifs on goods, expenditure... And see these as things along which progress is measured.
While that does, to a small extent, captures progress. It forgets the foundations of progress, peace, education, financial security, social cohesion, to name a few. Sorry, i say forget... But really what i should be saying is dismantling. They are also clueless about the value of services and the service economy. Which is, or has become, another measure of progress.
Anyway the point is, the US can't maintain their position in the world order. They can't maintain a government that understands their responsibility in that order. They abandoned their classic role without providing the world with a new/better one.
The US has been degraded to a trade partner.
I joined Lemmy today, and while reading the TOS I had a sigh of relief when I got to the end and the US was not on the list of countries it follows the laws of. Instead it's the three countries at the top of my wishlist of places I'd like to flee to to avoid being sent to a camp, even! Well, Finland has the same problem Canada has of having one of the worst neighbors in the world right now, but Germany and the Netherlands are great options. Rule 1 would have only weeks, maybe months, to live before Elon Musk ordered discrimination against minorities to be mandatory instead of prohibited if Lemmy was following the laws of the dying country I live in. Well, "laws". We don't really have laws anymore, it's all royal decrees now. Everybody is currently holding their breath on whether they've consolidated dictatorial power well enough to enforce them.
Just wanted to say: react now. Their actions will slowly get normalized and it will be a much harder fight once culture starts working against you
We live in a criminally stupid country but Musk is doing his best to show everyone that being a billionaire should be a crime.
Edit: the tweet is fake, btw
It's scary how plausible this tweet sounds in this age. I had to frantically Google to make sure this wasn't a true tweet haha 😅
There's usually stuff "unspoken" and it seems the folks in power are slowly removing that veil.. with minimal repercussions.
I hate this dumbshit as much as trump, but we shouldn't be sharing fake twitter posts. It doesn't help anything.
Yes. How much and for how long is the real questions, luckily I live in CA and if the country dissolves we'll just do everything ourselves. In fact, We'll be better off as we provide 60% of the US tax revenue, and we get noting close to that in return.
We been screwed for decades; all the minor plot threads, foreshadowing, and chekhov's implements are all just coalescing at the same time for one last grand finale.
Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingerich, Mitch McConnell, and now Trump (and arguably many others along the way) have been choosing self over country and intentionally breaking safeguards for longer than most of us on Lemmy have been alive. It's indirect violence. But it's violence regardless. And they've gotten away with it so far.
It's never over.
Even the worst dictatorship can collapse. They get internally couped until the dictator learns to purge anyone capable of challenging them, then human mortality fixes that dictator and the government collapses
It's not good though. The best time to fix it was ages ago before Reagan. The second best time is right now before the police state is firmly in place
The second best time to fix this was 4 years ago, when the Capitol was attacked to try to overturn a democratic election. But the USA has a big problem: nothing was done. A criminal staged a coup and failed. And nothing was done. He was allowed to go free, run for president and now he is in charge. The USA already failed years ago and now is just reaping what it allowed fascism to sow. Because nothing was ever done about it.
Probably.
We're cooked fam. Can't wait for the reboot.
I hate to say it, but yes. Everything we've predicted from trump has come true thus far.
The insurrection was predicted
The migrant camps were predicted
The ice raids were predicted
Roe v Wade was predicted
~~Selling~~ Giving Ukraine to Russia was predicted
Banning DEI was predicted
The list goes on but more importantly these were all seen as hypothetical worst case scenarios. We should stop treating the next steps like they are hypothetical. America has fallen, and civil war is next.
Former presidents at least recognized they had the responsibility to take care of both the people who voted for them and the people who didn't. Trump only sees the people who voted for him and the people he needs to make an example of.
I hate to say it, but the DNC is weak and won't help us anymore. I supported Kamala like hell and believed that they could figure it out but they just don't and won't.
I'm not a violent person. I hate the thought that I'd ever be forced into a situation where I need to either learn how to fight or die (because right now I'm SOL). I never wanted to find myself rooting for assassins and feeling like the world would be better off of certain people were dead. I'd rather believe the world would be better off if certain people were alive.
But all I see in the future is a federal coup backed by sycophants in the Senate and supreme Court that then collides with the governors of blue states who won't bend the knee.
TL;Dr if we don't go full dictator, we are going to civil war, and we deserve it.
Trump only sees the people who voted for him and the people he needs to make an example of
Let's not pretend like Trump gives a shit about the people who voted for him.
No, I don't think so. Large portions of government like the CDC, USAID, FEMA and the IRS will take 20 years to rebuild, but the dialed in states like the West Coast will probably be largely fine. It's just such an unnecessary waste of time, resources, and human lives.
Apparently some of us don't remember our values unless they get their mouth curbstomped every 70 years and remember some serious pain and suffering. Then the majority of people start voting for people that weren't dropped as babies and we will go back to a democracy again. Fuckin idiots.
In the meantime, enjoy the unencumbered spread of diseases like measles and HIV, preventable economic meltdowns from disassembling shit like the Fed, SEC and IRS and infrastructure stagnation due to gutting tax infrastructure and the firing of educated and experienced public workers that keep out road, bridges and internet working to say nothing of shit like sewers, water, power, rail, aviation, etc.
And just think, all of this rebuilding could have been prevented with one single vote for a normal candidate. We could have had 20 years of relative progress under our belt instead. 😊
It's telling that nowhere in this thread there's mention of the US demolishing it's relationship with its most important ally, Europe.
The US is a lost cause, nationally and globally. It might save it's state, but repairing a (already wobbly) international reputation will take decades.
Yeah destruction is done quickly, reputation and generally constructive policies (especially internationally) takes time.
What the US/Trump-Administration is doing, is just dumb (even for themselves). Europe almost has to slowly(?) cut ties with them, with what they're currently doing. And I do think "cutting ties with the US" increasingly gets more popular for a reason... Let's just hope that the same fate won't come over europe and that the current success of right-wing parties in europe is temporary...
Screwed is always relative.
I'm hearing chat that immigrants from places like Turkey or India are going "oh yeah this is what it's like back home".
So it's possible it just goes full neoliberal (i.e. no consequences or regulations for the rich) and the division of wealth grows even further.
Provided he doesn't cause a war or some kind of other mass-death problem (chemical spills, reactor meltdown etc) it might just have a cost primarily in human suffering, as opposed to human life.
Well, it depends on how you define the USA. You mean the Republic of the United States of America? Yeah, no, that's dead. It is currently dead. It died when the SCOTUS made the president functionally beyond criminal prosecution, and everyone has just kind of been playing weekend at Bernie's since then (though the Trump administration is dropping the pretense pretty quickly). Don't get me wrong, it's been dying for a long time, but that was the exact moment it was declared dead. No matter what happens, the republic as we knew it is dead and is not coming back. Nobody believes in the constitution anymore; among our leadership there are only either those who are in a hurry to destroy it, or those who are unwilling to defend it. I think a lot of the American populace haven't sincerely believed in the constitution as an effective charter for governance for a while, too. Imo, we're less than a year from the legislature being dissolved in some fashion of another, unless they just hang on like some ceremonial vestigial organ.
What we get to decide now is what comes next. That's what nobody's sure about. Are we going to have a middle-east style theocratic government? Italian fascism? Maybe the military defends the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic and we re-form the republic? German fascism? Neofeudalism? Peaceful balkanization? Hot balkanization? COULD IT BE?! BY GOD, it's the ghost of Lenin with a steel chair! Or maybe we'll get something entirely new? It's frankly impossible to guess while we're living in it. I think cold balkanization is both the most likely and most optimistic scenario. IN THE MEANWHILE, yeah, you're still going to see all the window trimmings of the USA; the maps will still say USA, we'll at least nominally still have the things that make America America (like the constitution still sitting in its fancy protective case, as though the GOP didn't just wipe Trump's ass with it), it'll all look weirdly normal while they make the republic's corpse do a funny little jig.
Honestly we were screwed long before now, but yes. Its going to be a slow decline into fascism until we collectively wise up. I do think there's a real possibility of that happening, but its going to take a lot of work.
Yes.
The amount of harm already done to your country by Trump and Musk is immeasurable, and will take a generation or more to recover from.
The amount of harm done to your standing in the world is equally bad. The world was skeptical after Trump's first term fucked over the rest of the world, but we were hopeful that maybe the US had learned their lesson?
Nope. They elected a fascist. They RE-elected a known fascist, felon, rapist, idiot-child, psychopath. Worse, they bolstered Musk to get into a seat of unauthorized and unimaginable power.
When Trump announced his idiotic tarrifs, Canada collectively said "that's it - we're divorcing." When he pulled back on the idea for 30 days, Canada said "don't care, still divorcing."
Trump is following the exact model of Hitler, and it's only a matter of time until he actually invades either Greenland or Canada if he's not stopped. The USA has to collapse into ruin and rebuild from scratch before anyone is going to trust them again.
Yep. We will need Nuremberg trials to actually move on from this.
In the short term, yes.
If trump remains in office after this term, absolutely yes.
If we get a different admin - not just another republicrat trump clone - they’re going to have to spend an inordinate amount of time fixing all of trump’s fuckups. One of which should be restricting any wannabe monarch’s ability to rule by decree in the US. So yeah, we’re fucked, and we’re gonna have to spend a lot of effort getting unfucked, digging ourselves out of an oligarchy hole, instead of moving forward from a continually advancing starting point.
E: allies are already turning away from us, politically and economically. They’ll form new alliances and relationships that the US doesn’t get to be a part of, or at least won’t get a leading position in. Same with things like soft power from international aid. China will step in, maybe the EU or even Russia. We lose the goodwill, stability, and any economic “ins” we could have achieved with that soft power. We’re fucked in lots of ways.
In the short term: Yes. Unless the US military decides to remove a sitting president but that is extremely unlikely.
In the long term: Yes, but also no. Fascism is extremely inefficient and expensive and the US is destroying its own economy and pushing away all of its allies and former trade partners. Things will get very rough but it will not last forever. There will be a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done.
Unfortunately this has been a long time coming. The United States has never really been united and it was only a matter of time before another possible civil war loomed on the horizon.