cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20368770
It’s easy to understand if you realize that America is essentially a corporation rather than a country, and that country is only representing its shareholders.
In case you’re confused - if you’re not rich and powerful, you’re not a shareholder. You’re an employee or a commodity or an expense, and you exist to enrich the shareholder class.
Yep truth…one of the only candidates I ever gave serious money to. His platform was basically “Hey let’s catch up to the rest of the 1st world nations shall we?”…
America is not a real country, it is three corporations in a trench coat.
America had a moment in the 60s and 70s where real change might have been possible. Then Reagan took over in the 80s and selfishness and greed somehow became virtues.
They instilled a sense that helping others makes you dumb and gullible. Strong, smart people get theirs and fuck everyone else.
People who need help are just taking your money to buy drugs and can easily get a job and become middle class instantaneously.
Then a few decades later, the middle class disappeared, and everyone became poor and struggling. Corporate profits keep breaking records, though. Economic inequality in America has surpassed pre-Revolution France. Every billionaire is Louis XIV-level rich and indulgent.
Honestly, it’s incredibly naive to think that America’s issues started with Reagan. The McCarthy witch hunts against communism happened in the 1950s. They targeted education institutions, as well as people that believed in democratic socialism. It stopped a generation from coming up through college and having those values instilled. It was that generation that passed reforms like universal healthcare in other western countries. Reagan was just a product of that system, he wasn’t the root cause.
We survived the Gilded Age. We can survive this, if we fight. Labor revival, revitalized progressive movement, voting reform…
Nothing in life is guaranteed, but I still hold out hope that we’ll join the developed world in the coming years.