USA Rapidly Becoming a Pariah State

[Garrison]

I agree. I fully think we have past the peak of western civilization and are now on the downward slope. Its not just Trump, he is a symptom of a greater problem.

I can't say when exactly the peak happened. Was it the 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s? Historians can figure that part out. But the post WWII order that has enriched us all in the west is gone and I am convinced the good old days are not coming back.

I would place it at the fall of the USSR. The USA had spent decades defining itself by what it opposed and in no small part profited from doing so. Internal divisions could be glossed over and the fragility of the institutions of state ignored so long as everyone was willing to play along. With no serious external threat the cracks showed, combined with a series of economic ideas that backfired badly, for example outsourcing to China has come back to bit the USA. There's a point where changing circumstances mean a system that used to work just can't cope and I think the USA has passed that point, but no one was willing to embrace the need for change, they just want to go back to the familiar, safe, world they imagine existed in the past.

 

[dirtywick]

unfortunately a bunch of investors and various capitalists left to guide the economy by all doing what is in their own self interest has not lead to a better outcome for the entire economy. and soon we will find out first hand what giving them complete control of even more means for the economy

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Meant to post this here, apropos of wealth concentration. Capital understands "freedom" as the ability to pretend they are not part of a system, and should neither be asked to behave by that system, nor pay into its upkeep. So it keeps offing whatever is in power and is taxing and/or subjecting them to control, democratic or autocratic. It is capital that gives gravity to the age-old pendulum between political freedom and subservience to power.