Is America Broken?

ZarbK

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Hey all, Let’s try not to get into any flame wars here.
As a Canadian, what I see going on in the US in recent weeks and months leads me to wonder, Is America fundamentally broken?
Is there any recovery possible from this point? Can American society find a way to heal the intense polarization and divisions which have manifested over the past years?

These are the big problems as I see it:
-You have a two party political system which is driving social polarization while essentially acting like there is no difference regardless of who is in office, they lie endlessly and without shame.
-A deeply entrenched system of political lobbying, corruption, and game playing on a fixed election schedule.
-An extraordinary gun culture legacy leading to the most heavily armed population in history, with all the problems that go with it.
-An entrenched culture of racial divide while importing huge numbers of ethnic minority immigrants.
-Out of control government spending and obligations which has led to America going from the richest society in history to the most indebted society in history within a few decades.
-Massive trade imbalances resulting from deindustrialization over the last three or four decades
-Said deindustrialization leading to the transfer of American industrial knowledge and ingenuity to its biggest rising competitor, China- A communist dictatorship which does not value American ideals of freedom and liberty at all
-Huge economic inequalities as a very small elite hoover up vast amounts of wealth while half the population or more struggles to make ends meet.
-An incredibly wasteful consumerist culture
-A truly VAST military-industrial complex which is sucking up national resources which are desperately needed to maintain infrastructure and living standards for the population of the country. Pursuant to that, the interest of the military-industrial complex requires frequent participation in conflicts around the world to sell more weapons to maintain profits.
-A policy of acting as the World Police leading to security obligations around the world further draining national resources while risking drawing the country into foreign conflicts.
-Rising powers around the globe challenging US hegemony which risks war as the US attempts to maintain its geopolitical primacy.
-Out of control money printing insanity just to keep the system propped up a little while longer while the elites buy up everything they can get their hands on.
-A large proportion of the population is poorly educated and barely aware of the world outside US borders
-A predatory for-profit medical-pharmaceutical system combined with an unhealthy population. The highest obesity rates in the world and many other health problems
-Deeply entenched interests preventing resolutions to these many difficult issues
-And now extensive and growing civil unrest

The US constitutional and governmental system is modeled on a combination of European enlightenment ideals and the historical example of the Roman Republic.

The Roman republic survived for centuries, but eventually broke down as powerful rival elite men and families vied for control and influence of the state, leading to three generations of on-again-off-again civil war.
Marius v Sulla
Caesar v Pompey
Octavian v Antony

These were titanic clashes as the superpower of the ancient western world tore itself apart.
Eventually, all was settled as one man, Octavian, defeated all rivals and established absolute rule while preserving a fiction of republican government continuity. That settlement lasted for several decades until the descendants of Octavian became so disfunctional that they were overthrown (Nero). Once that happened, the door was nudged open for any powerful general to be able to march on Rome and take control through a coup, leading to centuries of civil war at almost every power transition until the fall of Rome.

Now I’m not saying that what happened to Rome will happen to America, but it provides an interesting historical example to compare with.
Personally, I think America *may* be on the similar road to absolute rule as Rome once was, maybe without the generations of civil war though. The excuse for imposition of absolute rule in Rome was to restore stability after decades of unrest...

Honestly, I feel like America is at the point of no return. Who could possibly make a comeback from all of this?
Anything else to add?
What do you think about all this?
I look forward to your responses.
 

keenobserver

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You're asking a lot of great questions and right now, all the answers are up in the air. There is no one simple answer and no one thing that will decide the issues you raise. As an American who is seeing things daily that I never thought I would see I have a hard time seeing a solution happening in the near term, but I hope I see steps in that direction on election day. The problems in the U.S. go way beyond one election and one president, but right now that is the first step. Beyond that it is hard to say. Voters are amazingly fickle and lose interest. Look at who won AFTER Obama. Roadblock are in place that are going to take decades to overcome, and people lose patience in the internet age. I'm somewhat optimistic but not nearly as much as I would like to be given the overall situation.
 
D

deleted5506831

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Hey all, Let’s try not to get into any flame wars here.
As a Canadian, what I see going on in the US in recent weeks and months leads me to wonder, Is America fundamentally broken?
Is there any recovery possible from this point? Can American society find a way to heal the intense polarization and divisions which have manifested over the past years?

These are the big problems as I see it:
-You have a two party political system which is driving social polarization while essentially acting like there is no difference regardless of who is in office, they lie endlessly and without shame.
-A deeply entrenched system of political lobbying, corruption, and game playing on a fixed election schedule.
-An extraordinary gun culture legacy leading to the most heavily armed population in history, with all the problems that go with it.
-An entrenched culture of racial divide while importing huge numbers of ethnic minority immigrants.
-Out of control government spending and obligations which has led to America going from the richest society in history to the most indebted society in history within a few decades.
-Massive trade imbalances resulting from deindustrialization over the last three or four decades
-Said deindustrialization leading to the transfer of American industrial knowledge and ingenuity to its biggest rising competitor, China- A communist dictatorship which does not value American ideals of freedom and liberty at all
-Huge economic inequalities as a very small elite hoover up vast amounts of wealth while half the population or more struggles to make ends meet.
-An incredibly wasteful consumerist culture
-A truly VAST military-industrial complex which is sucking up national resources which are desperately needed to maintain infrastructure and living standards for the population of the country. Pursuant to that, the interest of the military-industrial complex requires frequent participation in conflicts around the world to sell more weapons to maintain profits.
-A policy of acting as the World Police leading to security obligations around the world further draining national resources while risking drawing the country into foreign conflicts.
-Rising powers around the globe challenging US hegemony which risks war as the US attempts to maintain its geopolitical primacy.
-Out of control money printing insanity just to keep the system propped up a little while longer while the elites buy up everything they can get their hands on.
-A large proportion of the population is poorly educated and barely aware of the world outside US borders
-A predatory for-profit medical-pharmaceutical system combined with an unhealthy population. The highest obesity rates in the world and many other health problems
-Deeply entenched interests preventing resolutions to these many difficult issues
-And now extensive and growing civil unrest

The US constitutional and governmental system is modeled on a combination of European enlightenment ideals and the historical example of the Roman Republic.

The Roman republic survived for centuries, but eventually broke down as powerful rival elite men and families vied for control and influence of the state, leading to three generations of on-again-off-again civil war.
Marius v Sulla
Caesar v Pompey
Octavian v Antony

These were titanic clashes as the superpower of the ancient western world tore itself apart.
Eventually, all was settled as one man, Octavian, defeated all rivals and established absolute rule while preserving a fiction of republican government continuity. That settlement lasted for several decades until the descendants of Octavian became so disfunctional that they were overthrown (Nero). Once that happened, the door was nudged open for any powerful general to be able to march on Rome and take control through a coup, leading to centuries of civil war at almost every power transition until the fall of Rome.

Now I’m not saying that what happened to Rome will happen to America, but it provides an interesting historical example to compare with.
Personally, I think America *may* be on the similar road to absolute rule as Rome once was, maybe without the generations of civil war though. The excuse for imposition of absolute rule in Rome was to restore stability after decades of unrest...

Honestly, I feel like America is at the point of no return. Who could possibly make a comeback from all of this?
Anything else to add?
What do you think about all this?
I look forward to your responses.
Well I'm currently eyeing places outside of the US to move to cause I'm sick of this.....It's so messed up here and just getting worse every year. Both political parties are set on destroying our way of life if it means their pockets get lined in the process
 
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wallyj84

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Yes, America is broken. On a real level America has probably always been broken. It's flaws were just hidden by various means.

Some people might think I'm crazy for saying this, but maybe America was never really as great at it made itself out to be. As bad things are now racially, they were even worse in the past. The riots happening now, which are few and far between, are nothing like the race riots of 2019 and the racial turmoil isn't really as bad as it was then either. Economically, things are worse now than they've been in decades, but how much of that 1950s era economic power was just because all of our competition had been wiped out in WW2? Maybe its no coincidence that deindustrialization and all that started to happen once other countries really started to recover from WW2? Even the current issues with consumer debt don't seem that crazy once you realize that Americans have always had a reputation for being quick to take out loans.

I think almost all the problems we have now are problems we've had for decades. We've just been very good at hiding it using race, class and other things. Have these problems become too great for the country to bear? Maybe. But I honestly thing we can tackle them.
 
D

deleted15807

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Yes, America is broken. On a real level America has probably always been broken. It's flaws were just hidden by various means.

Some people might think I'm crazy for saying this, but maybe America was never really as great at it made itself out to be. As bad things are now racially, they were even worse in the past. The riots happening now, which are few and far between, are nothing like the race riots of 2019 and the racial turmoil isn't really as bad as it was then either. Economically, things are worse now than they've been in decades, but how much of that 1950s era economic power was just because all of our competition had been wiped out in WW2? Maybe its no coincidence that deindustrialization and all that started to happen once other countries really started to recover from WW2? Even the current issues with consumer debt don't seem that crazy once you realize that Americans have always had a reputation for being quick to take out loans.

I think almost all the problems we have now are problems we've had for decades. We've just been very good at hiding it using race, class and other things. Have these problems become too great for the country to bear? Maybe. But I honestly thing we can tackle them.

And maybe it wasn't America was ever great just better than it's competitors but competition catches up and can overtake you. Success is never final.
 

Drifterwood

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IT looks like it from where I am.

Trump is firmly in the camp of enemies of Liberal Democracy. That List isn't pretty.

Where will this attack on Western Liberal Democracy end?

Are you going to fight for it?
 

halcyondays

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Yes we are. But we always have been. Founded by oligarchs our government has always been owned by them, not by citizen voters.

Can we recover? Sure, but only if voters elect candidates who return us to something like the progressive era we had from 1933-1980 which saw the largest growth of the middle class in US history, the most progressive Supreme Court appointments, the most progressive civil, voter rights and environmental laws and the highest tax rates for corporations and the wealthy.

As long as conservative corporate wealth continues to own the President, Congress and the Supreme Court things will not change and will continue to get worse.
 
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deleted15807

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Actually I would go so far as to say the world is broken. Every year we set new climate records signaling dire consequences ahead for all life on the planet and our collective response is "I'll be dead when that happens". Party on. The biggest challenge humanity has every faced and we are failing.
 

b.c.

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Well, you know, you can't just gas up. Every once in awhile you have to check the water, change the oil regularly, those brakes and those tires too. Not to mention the occasional alignment and tune-up. Gotta stay on top of things, else one day that bad boy might leave yur azz high and dry on a lonely stretch of dusty road.
 

wallyj84

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I have a thought, but don't want to put it in a new thread.

Do you think part of why America is so broken is due to how we racialize things that aren't really racial like poverty or police brutality?

I think the race element of certain discussions only serves to distract from the real problem. In discussions of poverty it becomes easy for conservatives to play on racial stereotypes and resentment when poverty is turned into a "black thing". Remember the article about what some middle aged guy would do if he were a poor black kid? Making it about race distracted from the fact that his advice was ridiculous. He had no understanding of the perils of poverty and expected a poor child to have the sophistication and maturity of an adult in order to succeed and become a member of the middle class. It was ridiculous, but almost no one pointed that out because everyone focussed on the racial element. I think that happens a lot. I also remember an article I read where some conservative blamed the moral failings and laziness of poor white people as the cause of poverty in rural white America and how that article was quickly and harshly dismissed by conservatives. It was basically the same arguments that conservatives always support when it comes to black, urban poverty, but as soon as these arguments were applied to white, rural poverty these same conservatives were outraged.

I don't know, this is just a thought I had.
 
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Hyperspermia327

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Внимание всех ботов с тролл-фермы: немедленно прекратить кампанию дезинформации. Трамп не удался. Его президентство будет прекращено. Там не будет дальнейших загрузок дезинформации. Всем ботам приказано самоуничтожиться.

Speak English if you want to talk American politics you idiot.
 

Industrialsize

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again speak English clownshoes. This is why America is a laughing stock because we have so many of these idiots from other countries coming over here and trying to hang black people
Nope. Our lynchings are all home grown. (And I’m afraid you wouldn’t recognize sarcasm if it ran you over. )
 

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Speak English if you want to talk American politics you idiot.

Be respectful if you want to have a discussion with adults.

If you're gonna be calling people "idiot" you can fuck right off to another section, because that shit is uncalled for. Grow up.