Make America Great!
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Welcome to conservatism!
Yeah OP is delusional. "Oh well I turned {{age}}, guess I'll just stop caring about anything."
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Before the colonists arrived.
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As I got older and I reflected on all the grumpy old men waving at the clouds and complaining constantly about this-or-that being better in their days when I was a kid, I realized why.
Now I'm the old man and I avoid becoming bitter my reminding myself of the following truth:
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When you're a kid, the world belongs to the grown-ups - your parents, adults of authority around you.
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When you reach teenage years, the world starts being yours: you've developed tastes for things people your age do and create. As you go through puberty, your identity is reinforced with things of your time, and other young people your age with which you do the same things. You all have a bright future in front of you.
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When you get out of puberty, hopefully you get our of school and start working: the world is fully yours. The trendy things in the world are things you find trendy too. Other people speak like you. You're not a powerless kid and you're not weaker old guy/gall yet. You're fully part of it and it suits you. You may not like the world, but it's yours. It shares your values and your values are what makes the world go round at that point in time . Your personality, your cultural identity and the cultural norms you respect, and your value system are fully developed, and a pure product of their time.
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And then they stay that way. But the world keeps evolving. Slowly but surely, the things you learned become deprecated. The things you like become old. The way you speak becomes strange to younger ears. The values you believe in no longer apply. The world slowly shifts beneath your feet, but it's happening very slowly, year after year, until...
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You reach an age at which you're very visibly and obviously out of sync with the world. Even you notice it at this point.
And here lies the trap: you can either reflect on how the world has changed and acknowledge that it's not your world anymore, but it's younger people's now. People who are now the age you once were: it's their turn to have a go at owning the world. You're just in it for the ride.
Or you can take refuge in your old values, wallow in the old things you've liked for decades, and bitch and moan about the world going to shit. It's not going to shit, but it feels that way to you. It's easier to reject the world around you than admit it's just not how you like it anymore, but it's poisonous: it turns you into a bitter person everybody hates.
I choose to ignore the things I dislike - which, at this point, constitute a lot more of the world than the things I like from the past, from my youth. But I also choose to not pass judgment on them because they're not from my world: they're from today's youth's world, and I have no say in it.
If you're old and angry, think about this. You might find some comfort in letting go.
The corollary of all this is: there is no better America in the past: the past simply seems rosier to older eyes. America has always been as great or as shit as you find it to be today.
This is drivel. Previous generations did have it easier than some recent ones.
Also, America sucks and always will.
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This is drivel. Previous generations did have it easier than some recent ones.
Also, America sucks and always will.
I can say with certainty that I had it way easier than my son.
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Before the colonists arrived.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner!
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Now those Americans who wanted Russia out, are sucking Putin cock, and we’re still being rounded up like cattle!
Well, of course. America is nothing if not a country built on segregation. And there's nothing more cemented in the modern civilized man's consciousness than national borders. You can do anything to a person on the wrong side of a border - beat them, shoot them, enslave them - and its never a crime.
The modern Russians aren't running around Latin America villainously implying that native peoples are owed civil rights or that the laboring class has some kind of collective right to their surplus. So of course we're cool with them again (and have been since Yeltsin's coup in Moscow back in 1993). Meanwhile, y'all keep thinking you are entitled to basic standards of living just because you've been ludicrously profitable for the domestic economy. Yuge problem!
These past few years have been wild as even the amaerican leftists have turned racist. I’ve called out a few young people on their anti colonial hypocrisy and anti war stance but only on some wars, etc. Not even against their views, just trying to point out their own colonial past, and I’ll get called all sort of slurs.
The problem with the internet is that you're going to have communities that are labeled "The Left" and "The Right" and "The Center". But when its on a platform like Reddit or Facebook, it's largely the same moderators pushing the same neoliberal socio-economic views with some partisan pastiche sprinkled over the top.
People come out of these communities thinking that they're Woke because they don't want to see every gay couple arrested. Or Based because they want industrial era standards of living. Or Radically Centrist because they enjoyed going to college. In the end, they're all a bunch of liberals who mostly hate each other because the TV told them the other two groups were eating babies.
As soon as you come in with an actual outsider viewpoint, all that partisanship falls away to reveal the hard angry nut of American Nationalism.
Incidentally, this is why you've got a lot of Reddit expats on .world and its affiliates who really fucking hate the folks posting on the Unmentionable Fediverse sites. Anyone who doesn't think the United States is the shinning beacon of righteousness and liberty is an evil foreigner who wants to run Americans over with a tank.
Meanwhile the US is fueling up their tanks getting ready to run you and everyone you know over for funsies.
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Exactly, only dumb America hicks think America was ever some great nation. They're just the biggest bully on the block and they can't stop patting themselves on the back about it.
We are great! At killing the environment, brown people, and women's rights.
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1930s-1980s. So when the superrich were supertaxed. Remember 91% income tax in early 1960s?
The wealthy game the system. This was always recognized, hence the high taxation.
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Spicy take incoming: it's pretty great right now. We're a continental country rich in natural resources. We're very friendly with our only two major neighbors, Canada and Mexico, so tits hard to imagine us being attacked over a land border. We have tropical beaches and snow sports 365 days a year, and they all speak English and take dollars. Our universities are some of the best in the world and graduate Nobel Prize winners in arts, sciences, and mathematics. Yes the current American experience sucks but for a lot of people it always has and has even sucked worse. We've experienced massive civil rights expansions over the past three generations.
If you think America sucks you're right, and always were, and always will be, but if you can't think of anything nice to say about it then you're just not paying attention.
Fuck you fascist. JD, please do you magic.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher
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Before the human species arrived 4 sure.
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As recently as 3 years ago I was inspired by huge investments in renewable energy and climate change, starting to work on a huge backlog of infrastructure work, there was hope for high speed rail, incentives to bring manufacturing back to the us, support for unions, we had an ethical fact-based government, the rule of law and primacy of the constitution, respected all people and were working on quality of life improvements ……
Remind me again why we voted to tear all that down?
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As recently as 3 years ago I was inspired by huge investments in renewable energy and climate change, starting to work on a huge backlog of infrastructure work, there was hope for high speed rail, incentives to bring manufacturing back to the us, support for unions, we had an ethical fact-based government, the rule of law and primacy of the constitution, respected all people and were working on quality of life improvements ……
Remind me again why we voted to tear all that down?
Pretty sure the way we as the American people chose to receive this beating was that at one of the billionaire orgies between 2023 and 2024 Musk, absolutely trashed, turns to Soros and says "you think you're so good for getting Obama elected in '08, well hold my beer and watch this!" The rest is redacted history that will make an excellent documentary in about 10-20 years
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The president is the leader of one branch of our three branch system. Cooperation between Mexico and the USA and Canada and the USA is generational and extends across various diverse dimensions like scientific cooperation, infrastructure protection, border security and law enforcement, fire protection and prevention, trade, and food safety, among others. It would take much much more than one presidential administration much longer than four years to make meaningful progress toward the goal of destroying all these cooperative agreements at all levels of government that took generations to build.
Donald Trump sucks but he isn't America, nor should we be judging any country by the actions of its corrupt billionaire leadership.
Brother, I dont think you can call anyone that you attempt to intimidate your friend... and our relationship with those two countries mat well be generational, but they will never forget what we have done to them because while it may just be Trump making the mistakes, its America that has shown what we are willing to put up with even if it was only a plurality that got this asswipe elected. America, as it stands, is untrustworthy.
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It wasn't too bad before all those illegal immigrants showed up in the big sailing boats, I hear...
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Before the colonists arrived.
Native Americans are still people, and it's a universal truth that people (as a whole) suck. I'm not excusing the horrors that came with colonization: but wars, slavery, murder, etc were still common things in America prior to colonization -- just at a much smaller scale.
All the horrible things people do to each other are just easier when you're not stuck using stone-age technology.
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People didn’t have propaganda when they slaughtered 95% of men and subjugated women after discovering agriculture.
Happened pretty much everywhere, too.
What do you call religion?
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Native Americans are still people, and it's a universal truth that people (as a whole) suck. I'm not excusing the horrors that came with colonization: but wars, slavery, murder, etc were still common things in America prior to colonization -- just at a much smaller scale.
All the horrible things people do to each other are just easier when you're not stuck using stone-age technology.
So i think i can post this without getting banned for anti-white racism here, lets see: readsettlers.org
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As recently as 3 years ago I was inspired by huge investments in renewable energy and climate change, starting to work on a huge backlog of infrastructure work, there was hope for high speed rail, incentives to bring manufacturing back to the us, support for unions, we had an ethical fact-based government, the rule of law and primacy of the constitution, respected all people and were working on quality of life improvements ……
Remind me again why we voted to tear all that down?
When has the United States government ever been ethical? The older I get the more I realize that I live in the Death Star.
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When has the United States government ever been ethical? The older I get the more I realize that I live in the Death Star.
Historically separation of powers worked. We’ve never had such a naked power grab by the executive branch, so many illegal orders, ignoring the courts, a sycophant congress. Agency leaders were generally competent and tried to fulfill agency missions. There’s never been such blatant bribery, spite based action, conflict of interest, profiteering off government roles, insider trading. Previous administrations mostly followed the constitution.
Sure we have our share of unethical actions by the government but they generally stayed within the legal structure of the government and were somewhat accountable.
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Historically separation of powers worked. We’ve never had such a naked power grab by the executive branch, so many illegal orders, ignoring the courts, a sycophant congress. Agency leaders were generally competent and tried to fulfill agency missions. There’s never been such blatant bribery, spite based action, conflict of interest, profiteering off government roles, insider trading. Previous administrations mostly followed the constitution.
Sure we have our share of unethical actions by the government but they generally stayed within the legal structure of the government and were somewhat accountable.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yes, the decline of our institutions is more blatant now. But it's a difference of degree, not of kind.
- Congresspersons, on the left and right, have been insider trading for decades.
- The SCOTUS ruled that corporations are people that have unlimited "free speech" with their money.
- Bush started targeting terrorists with drones and now the U.S. president can order drone strikes. (Some have called Obama a war criminal due to excessive civilian casualties resulting from drone strikes. But Americans don't really care about this.)
- Biden bombed Yemen without congressional approval and now Trump has bombed Iran.
- Bush sent "enemy combatants" to Guantanamo Bay without due process. Now Trump sends "illegal aliens" to detention camps without due process.
- The CIA has brazenly declassified many covert operations to stop the spread of communism. Including installing brutal dictators and interfering with democratic elections. (They admit to doing this but, again, Americans do not care.)
- Bush and Obama both bailed out corporations that are "too big to fail".
- Questionable wars in Asia and the Middle East that fed the military industrial complex and made a well-positioned few unimaginably wealthy.
You likely disagree with some of these examples. But my point is only this: Trump is the symptom of a disease that we have ignored for far too long. We all pledged allegiance to the flag in school. We all learned that America stands for liberty, justice, equality, etc. for all. But this country has never lived up to those professed ideals.
