The Final Stages of American Collapse

[Nevilledog]

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https://eand.co/the-final-stages-of-american-collapse-ad21774c4f2

*snip*

America’s in an eerily similar position to the Weimar Republic. And when I say eerily, I mean it. From the fringes, a triumphant kind of sadistic fascism has gone mainstream. Making inroads amongst the white working class, it champions a nostalgic return to an America of the pure of blood and pure of faith. It’s captured what was left of the GOP lock, stock, and barrel — so much so that it now holds the country hostage via the Supreme Court, which is now far right fanaticism’s enforcer and representative.

That’d be bad enough, but the parallels to the Weimar Republic don’t stop there. They just…keep right on going. America’s experiencing the kind of runaway inflation that’s simply shredding life — which was already tough enough before it. Prices are skyrocketing to the point that people can’t afford housing, bills, the basics of life. A two bedroom apartment in minor-league cities, not LA, DC, or Manhattan is reaching $2500 a month — which is almost 100% of Americans’ median income. To say that this is a crisis is to vastly understate the problem. When housing begins to cost 100% of a nation’s median income — what’s left over for living on?

Why did America turn to fascism to begin with? The fortunes of the average American suddenly imploded. To our eyes, the process might have been relatively slow, but in historic terms, it was frighteningly fast. In the 70s and 80s, Americans enjoyed some semblance of the Dream: upward mobility, rising living standards, lives better than their parents, a stable place in a secure and safe social hierarchy made of community, where social bonds were relatively strong and enduring. America’s social structure was still healthy: a broad middle class, a small number of wealthy, and a growing but still small number of poor.

But by the 90s, all this had begun to implode. By 2010, the middle class had become a minority. The working class’s lives were in tatters. Americans no longer enjoyed the things they once took for granted — now downward mobility was becoming the norm. They began to live paycheck to paycheck, mounting up ever larger debts, of new kinds — “medical debt,” “student debt,” and so forth. Paying the bills became an existential challenge. Entire generations — four, at this point, Gen X, Millennials, Zoomers, and now Alphas — face sharply, sharply cratering living standards, each one worse off than the last.

*snip*

[duckworth969]

1. Fantastic essay

In my opinion , it pays to understand the history of Germany from at least 1930 until they got their asses beat by the mid-forties.

[hedda_foil]

2. More...

Who was responsible for the shattering decline in America’s fortunes? Ronald Reagan, who made it impossible for America to have functioning systems for basics, in lieu of everything private and for-profit. His acolytes, like Newt Gingrich, who famously wanted to “drown the government in a bathtub” — which meant Americans would never enjoy the public goods Europeans took for granted, from healthcare to transport to education. And the increasingly fanatical, radical wings of the GOP who pushed this absurd ideology of profit over purpose, money over the public interest, individualism over community, to a shocking extreme — towns with fire departments, young people saddled with debt for life,

How did America end up broken? Because this doesn’t work. This social contract. This economy. Thanks to all this post Reagan-era fanaticism, America now has the most one of the imbalanced economies in the world. Just 25% of it is public expenditure, and 75% is private, meaning basically hedge funds and mega corporations. In Europe and Canada, by way of contrast, that ratio is 50/50.

That might sound like a meaningless number to you, so let me translate it.

The effects of the decision to have an economy like this were brutal. Life became an existential struggle. Mega-corporations held down wages, forever, for everyone except CEOs, owners, and lieutenants. Communities simply fell apart. The average American lived and died in debt. Young people grew up with no prospects, underemployed perpetually, unable to start families, afford homes, retire. Life became a bitter, brutal, never-ending battle, each person for themselves, against the rest — and the prize was just self-preservation, subsistence, survival.

[Johnny2X2X]

3. They're assaulting everything sacred

Social Security is next. They want nothing more than to end Social Security payments completely and give that money to the rich. Their primary goal is work until you die and if you can't work you just die.