5 ms·

America is not “on the right track” We had a half baked coup attempt in 2020. People are polarizing in ways that weren't around only a few years ago. The con

by rank0 4y ago

America is not “on the right track” We had a half baked coup attempt in 2020. People are polarizing in ways that weren't around only a few years ago. The congressional deficit has ballooned to unsustainable levels. Our annual interest payments are ~400B/yr. Social Security is projected to default next decade. We’re back to fighting proxy wars with the Russians, which the supposedly progressive author presents as a positive! We’ve destroyed South America and the Middle East in pursuit of our strategic goals. I hope we don’t provoke china into a war over Taiwan… I love my country but shit is seriously fucked up right now.

agloeregrets 4y ago
> People are polarizing in ways that weren't around only a few years ago. This one gets me the worst. America's political landscape is forever changed. 1. Political discourse between sides is so aggressive that morals, the truth, etc, are trumped by 'Who cares? My team is winning.' 2. Congressional cooperation has fallen to levels where the entirety of the government is incapable of making simple, easy decisions, and even when they do, it must help a talking point. 3. This divide has spread outwards into other branches of government in such a way that breaks the entire intent of checks and balances. At this point, the Supreme court is just doing a congressional party's bidding. This seems like 'balance' to other branches but it actually limits the ability for the supreme court to make impartial choices and means that a regime change in congress/ president will fully eliminate checks and balance. The government will answer to a party's bidding rather than the constitution or people. 4. A majority of people in one party no longer trust the electoral system while a majority in the other party see signs that the game is rigged against them (Gerrymandering). This causes a general feeling of 'We lost because of X, not because of us.' But finally, to me, the worst item... 5. Politics in America are now about feeling right and 'winning' rather than promises and goals. This was always in the background and any marketer will tell you this is how human minds work...but this change accelerates the rest. It doesn't matter what policy is passed or how it plays out, as long as 'I feel right.' Politics now realize that success is a 'sick burn' or a 'scary claim about "them"', not actual improvement of the country. Why? One of these is publicity and moves individual donations...it helps get you elected. It fires up your base because it is way easier to sell negative emotions ("I hate them", "They are going to kill america, we have to save it") rather than positive ("Our government is doing good things.") This means you need puppets, people in your party for their party to hate and people in their party for your party to hate. Alas, you get Trump, AOC, McConnell, Pelosi, Gatez. Each party knows this agreement is fantastic, or has learned it at least. Why? Because if, say, the GOP did not have a 'them' it would be impossible to sell.
- tootie 4y ago
  Not to sound condescending, but this reads like someone who started reading the news last week. It has absolutely always been that way. We had segregationists in the Senate 20 years ago. Backbiting and media hijinks are the thing we do now instead of assassinations. When Al Smith was the first Catholic to be nominated by a major party for the presidency, he was greeted in the south by burning crosses. This was less than 100 years ago https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/nyregion/gop-path-recalls-democrats-convention-disaster-in-1924.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/nyregion/gop-path-recalls...
  - agloeregrets 4y ago
    Of course these things happened...but 20 years ago we didn't have Social media echo chambers that amplified all of it, we didn't have your representative being on your feed daily. All the signals that enable it have been amplified.
    - tootie 4y ago
      That's kinda the point of the article though. People feel much, much worse about a situation that is, if anything, marginally better.
the_gastropod 4y ago
> which the supposedly progressive author presents as a positive David Brooks is absolutely not a progressive. The very first sentence of his Wikipedia page is: > David Brooks (born August 11, 1961)[1] is a conservative political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times
- rank0 4y ago
  I stand corrected. I just assumed so because he’s writing about the anti-trump coalition, and defending the “liberal world order”
  - the_gastropod 4y ago
    Liberal is one of those words that is almost meaningless. It can be used almost synonymously with "progressive" at times. But it's also, when used in this context, it's more about free market capitalism, individualism, etc. Things we tend to associate more with conservatism. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
    - havblue 4y ago
      I thought the best term is simply "neo-liberal": the progressives in power that are mostly interested in staying in power and not actual human progress. The same term applies to neo-conservatives as well. Ideology is more a means to maintain power and less about a realistic goal.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    He's an anti-trump republican. RINO is what he would be called now I guess. Family values + free market kind of guy.
eunos 4y ago
> Our annual interest payments are ~400B/yr. Last time I heard it is closer to 700B per annum
crote 4y ago
Don't forget the partial ban on abortion and anti-LGBT laws.
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  If that's your standard for the country falling apart, then nearly the entire history of the country was a complete hellscape. There has been a regression in abortion rights in some states, but there is still significantly better access to abortions than any time prior to the 1970s. There has been a hint that there might be a regression in LGBT rights, but there are still far more rights than any time pre-2010.
  - renewedrebecca 4y ago
    For some people, it certainly has been. We have entire states where abortion has been effectively outlawed. Transgender people, a tiny minority of the population have been relentlessly targeted: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republican-states-aim-to-restrict-transgender-health-care-in-first-bills-of-2023 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republican-states-aim-... If it doesn't affect you or someone you care about, it might be a "hint", for the people it does affect, it's a disaster in the making.
jacobriis 4y ago
"We had a half baked coup attempt in 2020.... People are polarizing in ways that weren't around only a few years ago." I'm not American and I'm only interested in this for the entertainment value. I enjoy very much the lack of self awareness.
- rank0 4y ago
  What do you mean? Isn’t the jan 6 event a perfect example of recent polarization?
  - jacobriis 4y ago
    Now is an event not a coup d'état?
    - rank0 4y ago
      Yeah a coup attempt could be called an event… You should just make your comment clearly idk what you’re getting at.
fallingknife 4y ago
> We’re back to fighting proxy wars with the Russians, which the supposedly progressive author presents as a positive! Fighting and winning. We've managed to degrade the Russian army to the point where they are fielding tanks from the 1970's and all for less than $50 billion and 0 US casualties. If that's not a positive, I don't know what is.
- rank0 4y ago
  The strategic argument I respect much more than the moral one. I agree it’s working to destabilize the Russian federation. The question is: “is it worth it?” 100B+ in military spending, destroying Ukraine, dramatically weakening the European economy seems like a pretty steep price for fighting the ghost of the USSR. In general we have a pretty terrible track record for acting as world police. Arming the Mujahideen during the Soviet-afghan war did defeat the soviets…but the aftermath was horrendous for the region.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > In general we have a pretty terrible track record for acting as world police. That’s the difference in this situation—we’re not acting as world police. We’re helping an allied nation defend itself.
  - _kbh_ 4y ago
    > 100B+ in military spending, destroying Ukraine, dramatically weakening the European economy seems like a pretty steep price for fighting the ghost of the USSR. You should keep in mind that Ukraine would be more destroyed without American and other western help, not less. The US for the first time in a long time is supplying a side in a war that has a clear good a bad side.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
America is not “on the right track” > We had a half baked coup attempt in 2020. Which failed and had little popular or organized military support. We've had a lot worse throughout our history. McVeigh, civil war, et cetera. > People are polarizing in ways that weren't around only a few years ago. But compared to the polarization of late 1800's? > The congressional deficit has ballooned to unsustainable levels. Our annual interest payments are ~400B/yr. Much of that is left hand owing the right hand type stuff, and it's all in our sovereign currency. It's not nothing, but it's not nation-busting levels either. > Social Security is projected to default next decade. Only if you make really stupid assumptions. > We’re back to fighting proxy wars with the Russians, which the supposedly progressive author presents as a positive! Russia is self-destructing on the Ukrainian bulwark. > We’ve destroyed South America and the Middle East in pursuit of our strategic goals. Which we've been doing for the last 150 years or so. > I hope we don’t provoke china into a war over Taiwan… We're not substantially closer now than we were at many other points in the last 70 years. > I love my country but shit is seriously fucked up right now. If the country is seriously fucked up right now, it's pretty much always been seriously fucked up. I could agree with that statement.
- rank0 4y ago
  I cannot possibly understand several of your points: The coup attempt is somehow a GOOD sign for American politics?! The debt is absolutely an existential threat. The “right hand left hand” BS is directly responsible for the growing wealth gap. Social security is not sustainable. The default projections are not controversial. Go look it up! We’re single-handedly financing the war in Ukraine. The president announced he would defend Taiwan with force but don’t even recognize it as a sovereign nation. The CCP has begun unprecedented military activity around Taiwan. They’re violating their air space on a daily basis probing for weakness. Same as always?! What planet are you on?
  - Nomentatus 4y ago
    None of these are truly new - even the quarter-baked coup attempt (see FDR times.) As for outrageous debt, that began with the US itself. Which raises the possibility that we're looking at the nasty part of a regular oscillation. However. The very low birthrate is genuinely new. Drugs/homelessness not new but astonishingly severe. Steep housing prices due to collusion (vs manufactured homes, housing laws, and more) are a large cause of both.
tootie 4y ago
You can list a bunch of things, but that's not really measurable and doesn't list the millions of data points that go into a country's well-being. You can look at Jan 6 as a disaster or you can look and say it failed, many of the perpetrators are going to jail and the next election cycle went off without a hitch. You can't stop people from being nuts, but honestly this speaks volumes to the incredible resiliency and durability of our institutions. Similarly, you can look at the economic disasters of the past 20 years as disasters, but you can also look back and say that despite constant doomsaying we never got within a country mile of an actual collapse. Nobody starved, poverty actually decreased during the pandemic despite the deepest economic shock in our history. Again, our institutions did an absolutely phenomenal job of backstopping disaster. Our engagement in Ukraine is hardly our doing. Russia committed massive aggression against a weaker neighbor and America rallied support with impeccable timing to turn the tide without having the fighting spread. You can't prevent bad things from happening, but we've been able to handle the worst of it with aplomb. And speaking of South America and the Middle East, that's now mostly in the past. To the author's point, the shit we did in the 70s was way worse than now. The shit we did in the 30s was worse than the 70s. You don't have to go back very far to see almost everything being worse than now. So the point isn't so much "Everything is Great" as much "(Almost) Everything is as good or better than it ever was despite not being so great". The assertion is very much that we have a long ways to go, but are absolutely moving in the right direction and pretty consistently so at that.
- rank0 4y ago
  I appreciate the response but I don’t have the energy to respond to all your points. However: The west absolutely has some blame for the Ukrainian invasion. It’s a lot more complicated than the narrative of “naked aggression” and has been brewing for decades. Also we just ended occupation of Afghanistan 18 months ago. It’s not exactly ancient history.

by rank0 4y ago

agloeregrets 4y ago

> People are polarizing in ways that weren't around only a few years ago. This one gets me the worst. America's political landscape is forever changed. 1. Political discourse between sides is so aggressive that morals, the truth, etc, are trumped by 'Who cares? My team is winning.' 2. Congressional cooperation has fallen to levels where the entirety of the government is incapable of making simple, easy decisions, and even when they do, it must help a talking point. 3. This divide has spread outwards into other branches of government in such a way that breaks the entire intent of checks and balances. At this point, the Supreme court is just doing a congressional party's bidding. This seems like 'balance' to other branches but it actually limits the ability for the supreme court to make impartial choices and means that a regime change in congress/ president will fully eliminate checks and balance. The government will answer to a party's bidding rather than the constitution or people. 4. A majority of people in one party no longer trust the electoral system while a majority in the other party see signs that the game is rigged against them (Gerrymandering). This causes a general feeling of 'We lost because of X, not because of us.' But finally, to me, the worst item... 5. Politics in America are now about feeling right and 'winning' rather than promises and goals. This was always in the background and any marketer will tell you this is how human minds work...but this change accelerates the rest. It doesn't matter what policy is passed or how it plays out, as long as 'I feel right.' Politics now realize that success is a 'sick burn' or a 'scary claim about "them"', not actual improvement of the country. Why? One of these is publicity and moves individual donations...it helps get you elected. It fires up your base because it is way easier to sell negative emotions ("I hate them", "They are going to kill america, we have to save it") rather than positive ("Our government is doing good things.") This means you need puppets, people in your party for their party to hate and people in their party for your party to hate. Alas, you get Trump, AOC, McConnell, Pelosi, Gatez. Each party knows this agreement is fantastic, or has learned it at least. Why? Because if, say, the GOP did not have a 'them' it would be impossible to sell.

tootie 4y ago
Not to sound condescending, but this reads like someone who started reading the news last week. It has absolutely always been that way. We had segregationists in the Senate 20 years ago. Backbiting and media hijinks are the thing we do now instead of assassinations. When Al Smith was the first Catholic to be nominated by a major party for the presidency, he was greeted in the south by burning crosses. This was less than 100 years ago https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/nyregion/gop-path-recalls-democrats-convention-disaster-in-1924.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/nyregion/gop-path-recalls...
- agloeregrets 4y ago
  Of course these things happened...but 20 years ago we didn't have Social media echo chambers that amplified all of it, we didn't have your representative being on your feed daily. All the signals that enable it have been amplified.
  - tootie 4y ago
    That's kinda the point of the article though. People feel much, much worse about a situation that is, if anything, marginally better.

the_gastropod 4y ago

> which the supposedly progressive author presents as a positive David Brooks is absolutely not a progressive. The very first sentence of his Wikipedia page is: > David Brooks (born August 11, 1961)[1] is a conservative political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times

rank0 4y ago
I stand corrected. I just assumed so because he’s writing about the anti-trump coalition, and defending the “liberal world order”
- the_gastropod 4y ago
  Liberal is one of those words that is almost meaningless. It can be used almost synonymously with "progressive" at times. But it's also, when used in this context, it's more about free market capitalism, individualism, etc. Things we tend to associate more with conservatism. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
  - havblue 4y ago
    I thought the best term is simply "neo-liberal": the progressives in power that are mostly interested in staying in power and not actual human progress. The same term applies to neo-conservatives as well. Ideology is more a means to maintain power and less about a realistic goal.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  He's an anti-trump republican. RINO is what he would be called now I guess. Family values + free market kind of guy.

eunos 4y ago

> Our annual interest payments are ~400B/yr. Last time I heard it is closer to 700B per annum

crote 4y ago

Don't forget the partial ban on abortion and anti-LGBT laws.

TheCoelacanth 4y ago
If that's your standard for the country falling apart, then nearly the entire history of the country was a complete hellscape. There has been a regression in abortion rights in some states, but there is still significantly better access to abortions than any time prior to the 1970s. There has been a hint that there might be a regression in LGBT rights, but there are still far more rights than any time pre-2010.
- renewedrebecca 4y ago
  For some people, it certainly has been. We have entire states where abortion has been effectively outlawed. Transgender people, a tiny minority of the population have been relentlessly targeted: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republican-states-aim-to-restrict-transgender-health-care-in-first-bills-of-2023 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republican-states-aim-... If it doesn't affect you or someone you care about, it might be a "hint", for the people it does affect, it's a disaster in the making.

jacobriis 4y ago

"We had a half baked coup attempt in 2020.... People are polarizing in ways that weren't around only a few years ago." I'm not American and I'm only interested in this for the entertainment value. I enjoy very much the lack of self awareness.

rank0 4y ago
What do you mean? Isn’t the jan 6 event a perfect example of recent polarization?
- jacobriis 4y ago
  Now is an event not a coup d'état?
  - rank0 4y ago
    Yeah a coup attempt could be called an event… You should just make your comment clearly idk what you’re getting at.

fallingknife 4y ago

> We’re back to fighting proxy wars with the Russians, which the supposedly progressive author presents as a positive! Fighting and winning. We've managed to degrade the Russian army to the point where they are fielding tanks from the 1970's and all for less than $50 billion and 0 US casualties. If that's not a positive, I don't know what is.

rank0 4y ago
The strategic argument I respect much more than the moral one. I agree it’s working to destabilize the Russian federation. The question is: “is it worth it?” 100B+ in military spending, destroying Ukraine, dramatically weakening the European economy seems like a pretty steep price for fighting the ghost of the USSR. In general we have a pretty terrible track record for acting as world police. Arming the Mujahideen during the Soviet-afghan war did defeat the soviets…but the aftermath was horrendous for the region.
- mcphage 4y ago
  > In general we have a pretty terrible track record for acting as world police. That’s the difference in this situation—we’re not acting as world police. We’re helping an allied nation defend itself.
- _kbh_ 4y ago
  > 100B+ in military spending, destroying Ukraine, dramatically weakening the European economy seems like a pretty steep price for fighting the ghost of the USSR. You should keep in mind that Ukraine would be more destroyed without American and other western help, not less. The US for the first time in a long time is supplying a side in a war that has a clear good a bad side.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

America is not “on the right track” > We had a half baked coup attempt in 2020. Which failed and had little popular or organized military support. We've had a lot worse throughout our history. McVeigh, civil war, et cetera. > People are polarizing in ways that weren't around only a few years ago. But compared to the polarization of late 1800's? > The congressional deficit has ballooned to unsustainable levels. Our annual interest payments are ~400B/yr. Much of that is left hand owing the right hand type stuff, and it's all in our sovereign currency. It's not nothing, but it's not nation-busting levels either. > Social Security is projected to default next decade. Only if you make really stupid assumptions. > We’re back to fighting proxy wars with the Russians, which the supposedly progressive author presents as a positive! Russia is self-destructing on the Ukrainian bulwark. > We’ve destroyed South America and the Middle East in pursuit of our strategic goals. Which we've been doing for the last 150 years or so. > I hope we don’t provoke china into a war over Taiwan… We're not substantially closer now than we were at many other points in the last 70 years. > I love my country but shit is seriously fucked up right now. If the country is seriously fucked up right now, it's pretty much always been seriously fucked up. I could agree with that statement.

rank0 4y ago
I cannot possibly understand several of your points: The coup attempt is somehow a GOOD sign for American politics?! The debt is absolutely an existential threat. The “right hand left hand” BS is directly responsible for the growing wealth gap. Social security is not sustainable. The default projections are not controversial. Go look it up! We’re single-handedly financing the war in Ukraine. The president announced he would defend Taiwan with force but don’t even recognize it as a sovereign nation. The CCP has begun unprecedented military activity around Taiwan. They’re violating their air space on a daily basis probing for weakness. Same as always?! What planet are you on?
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  None of these are truly new - even the quarter-baked coup attempt (see FDR times.) As for outrageous debt, that began with the US itself. Which raises the possibility that we're looking at the nasty part of a regular oscillation. However. The very low birthrate is genuinely new. Drugs/homelessness not new but astonishingly severe. Steep housing prices due to collusion (vs manufactured homes, housing laws, and more) are a large cause of both.

tootie 4y ago

You can list a bunch of things, but that's not really measurable and doesn't list the millions of data points that go into a country's well-being. You can look at Jan 6 as a disaster or you can look and say it failed, many of the perpetrators are going to jail and the next election cycle went off without a hitch. You can't stop people from being nuts, but honestly this speaks volumes to the incredible resiliency and durability of our institutions. Similarly, you can look at the economic disasters of the past 20 years as disasters, but you can also look back and say that despite constant doomsaying we never got within a country mile of an actual collapse. Nobody starved, poverty actually decreased during the pandemic despite the deepest economic shock in our history. Again, our institutions did an absolutely phenomenal job of backstopping disaster. Our engagement in Ukraine is hardly our doing. Russia committed massive aggression against a weaker neighbor and America rallied support with impeccable timing to turn the tide without having the fighting spread. You can't prevent bad things from happening, but we've been able to handle the worst of it with aplomb. And speaking of South America and the Middle East, that's now mostly in the past. To the author's point, the shit we did in the 70s was way worse than now. The shit we did in the 30s was worse than the 70s. You don't have to go back very far to see almost everything being worse than now. So the point isn't so much "Everything is Great" as much "(Almost) Everything is as good or better than it ever was despite not being so great". The assertion is very much that we have a long ways to go, but are absolutely moving in the right direction and pretty consistently so at that.

rank0 4y ago
I appreciate the response but I don’t have the energy to respond to all your points. However: The west absolutely has some blame for the Ukrainian invasion. It’s a lot more complicated than the narrative of “naked aggression” and has been brewing for decades. Also we just ended occupation of Afghanistan 18 months ago. It’s not exactly ancient history.