- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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From Reddit to the New York Times and TMZ, there’s an ongoing effort to squash the wave of popular anger at for-profit healthcare that Luigi Mangione represents.
From Reddit to the New York Times and TMZ, there’s an ongoing effort to squash the wave of popular anger at for-profit healthcare that Luigi Mangione represents.
This is the primary reason that I say the United States is terminally ill - that the only possible future is collapse.
When faced with popular discontent, the leaders of a nation have exactly two choices - to attempt to deal with the issues that cause the discontent, or to refuse to deal with the issues and instead just try to squash or distract from the discontent.
A nation that has chosen the latter is living on borrowed time, since the discontent is still there, lurking below the surface, will always be there as long as the cause remains unaddressed, and will, sooner or later, burst into the open again, even more toxic and violent than it was the last time.
Much though the ruling class might wish to believe otherwise there is no third alternative. There’s no magic wand they can wave to make the discontent vanish. They can either work to eliminate it by eliminating its cause(s), or they can watch while it weakens and eventually destroys the nation.
And the US has clearly chosen that latter path. In fact, it could broadly be said that that’s the exact purpose of the Trump presidency - a concerted and organized effort by elements of the ruling class to establish a government specifically dedicated to refusing to address the causes of discontent and to instead merelybtry to distract from it or squash it.
And it will ultimately fail. It can’t do otherwise.
A problem I see with these collapse predictions is that they see the US as existing in a vacuum. There are external forces interested in the united states future.
From these Europe and Japan & South Korea are interested in keeping the American state stable enough as a counterbalance to the other 2. Russia is interested in Trumps and his likes stay viewing his effect on NATO, China likes Trump not as much, as the tariffs hurt the worlds biggest export nation the most.
I would go as far as saying Russia needs the Trumpian united states as a counterbalance to China as well. As Chinas economic scale and population still dwarf the Russian one.
East Asia and India in general will depend on the US as a Petrol state in the future, supplying vital fossil fuel imports for plastic- and chemical industries.
These external power centers are the deciding factors should the US become unstable.
The US has a number of institutional failures that need to be addressed if it’s to have any hope of surviving and the Trump presidency is not only not going to address them, but has for all intents and purposes taken it as its mandate to specifically focus on exacerbating them.
It’s dealing with wealth inequality by increasing it. It’s dealing with political corruption by institutionalizing it. It’s dealing with fragile and ineffective public health, public education and social service systems by breaking them. It’s dealing with rapacious corporations by eliminating constraints on them. It’s dealing with climate change by encouraging it. It’s dealing with diminished international stature by alienating literally everyone. It’s dealing with the threat of economic collapse by destroying international markets. It’s dealing with the threat of social unrest by fanning the flames of bigotry and hatred. And on and on.
It’s essentially the equivalent of a cancer patient taking up smoking. In a house lined with asbestos and uranium.
And at that point, it really doesn’t matter who wants to save them or how much they want it.
Dude, come on. We’ve had children working in mines, the great depression, proxy wars from hell, Jim Crow laws, this is not our first rodeo at being shitty humans. Saying the collapse is about to happen is an extremely unuseful take, even if it’s true. There are solutions, what are they?
The country has collapsed several times, because of those things. The Civil War was the US collapsing over the rich landowners refusing to move away from slavery. The great depression was also a collapse of the old order, and ushered in the current MIC-based order.
The solution to the Civil War and slavery was Reconstruction, which was so successful that the rich rallied a counterrevolution to resuppress people. The solution to the great depression was the war economy and global looting that kicked off after WW2. Looting the planet with petrodollars has kept Americans complacent and happy enough til now but the rich have run out of places to loot other than home.
So now we’re back in crisis, perched on the edge of a new collapse. After several million or billion people are killed by disasters and genocide, things usually settle back into a prosperous mode for the survivors for a while until the stupid rich take over and collapse the system out of greed. Again.
Do you feel like WWII, the Korean War or Vietnam collapsed us? Do you think the end of the Jim Crow laws collapsed us? What about women voting or Covid? There are other options besides complete collapse.
Yeah it’s called moving away from capitalism and into socialism.
Who said anything about “being shitty humans?”
I’m talking about a very specific dynamic - a civilization in which there is widespread citizen discontent and whether the government acts to alleviate that discontent legitimately or merely acts to divert or stifle it.
The former allows for solutions so allows for recovery. The latter leaves the problems to rot and fester, and is a death sentence.
So you saw all the private linked sources doing that. And concluded government?
I would’ve likely been better off with a broader term - something like “the wealthy and empowered few” - particularly since the subject at hand concerns the United States, in which the line between private wealth and power and political power grows more vague and hazy day by day.
But yes - ultimately I conclude government, since government is the entity that has established the legal fiction of corporations, that has acted to protect the private wealth by which the political influence to establish things like a predatory health insurance system can exist and has utterly failed to do one of the few things that is a mandate for a government from the start - to protect citizens from harm brought by others and/or to punish those who bring it.
Or to be more precise, if the government had done its job of protecting Americans from a destructive and predatory health insurance system (as opposed to literally mandating it), Luigi’s vigilantism likely wouldn’t have occurred in the first place, and certainly wouldn’t have had so much support if it had.
But since they didn’t do their job, it happened, and if they continue to not do their job (as it appears they’re determined), then it will happen again, and worse.
Have you looked around outside recently?
Rebuilding after a collapse tends to be rather constructive.
I see what you did there.
It’s both a joke and serious!
Just like a strong onion, it has layers and brings painful tears to your eyes just by existing and being true!
TBH I think most luigi worshippers are just accelerationists who think he will be useful as a martyr.
Luigi is the modern day John Brown