Once that happened, the government gave up on the average American, allowed middle class jobs to disappear, and spent more time joining global virtue signaling parties and subsidizing bombs in Yemen than fixing lead pipes in cities.

See, the things we buy wouldn’t be so cheap if we didn’t let some companies in china dump toxic waste for free.

E.g. cheap rare earth minerals from China are only cheap because we are borrowing from the future people who will pay to clean up the mess.

When we more accurately price the real cost of goods by quantifying damage to the worker’s health, global environment, etc. then outsourcing would not look nearly as attractive.

Could you give some examples of these parties and an estimate of how much time was spent on them? I could try to guess what you're referring to, but I don't want to put words into your mouth.

(An uncharitable interpretation of what you said would lead me to believe that you're objecting not to "virtue signaling" but to virtue itself, which is not a helpful assumption for me to make).

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-g... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/how-ame... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/opinion/sunday/vietnam-th...

Government and citizens are not even two super distinct entities, government are citizens and is put in place by citizens.

Once people with that world view actually enter government, they don’t have a lot of desire to use government for what it could be used for in terms of helping citizens instead of consolidating powers as a function of lobbying dollars.

Another part of the complication (fortunately) is that there is also no "real life" external markers that separate us on these issues. You may know where people stand on the Internet about issues, but step outside and it's a sea of ambiguity with every individual you meet. And at that point, people just go about their day treating everyone with respect. (At least in the same amount they have been the last 60 years, which in some cases is not much respect)

This could have easily been written about the late 1960s / early 1970s, though - the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Hoover's FBI and COINTELPRO, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and Watergate.

The top wobbled but righted itself; perhaps it will do so again.

I have a dreadful feeling that the turning point for all of this societal dysfunction will be following the aftermath of a world war.

We're in lockdown so that elite privileges ("Grand Tour", etc.) can be restored, while the "common man" is put in his or her place, with strict regiments governing thought, speech, action, and movement. It is wise to ignore the cultural and political stun and smoke grenades, and pay attention to what is actually happening in real world. As usual, follow the money.

I don't think our elites particularly want a world war either. I think they're perfectly prepared to push us in that direction in an attempt to cling on to their wealth and power though. They will prefer liberalism but they'll support far right populist who protects their property if that fails to garner popular support.

I think a lot of those are good things and things we’ve been taught to over-value, without regard for their dangers and without an appreciation for the attendant responsibilities. The country was founded with a HEAVY skepticism of democracy. It allowed for some democratic influence, but the constitution goes to great lengths to restrain, channel, and temper the will of the people. It was adopted at a time when voting was highly regulated and limited to people who were considered best qualified to handle the responsibility. Even today the Constitution contemplates that presidents should be elected, not by the people directly, but by their state legislators. The whole idea of allowing direct democracy in presidential elections is a cop-out by legislators who’ve found a way to avoid that responsibility.

Same with using the law as a sword... that’s largely how it’s supposed to work. This idea that the FBI should be independent flies in the face of having 3 branches. It’s impractical. They’re humans, they also have axes to grind. The difference is that they’re appointed and not easily removed. Leadership is human and will therefore always enforce the law according to whatever axe they have to grind. The goal of a successful republic should be to accept, channel, and utilize that human nature.

However, I agree that there is an overarching crisis in the form of the internet which is destabilizing entrenched powers the same way the printing press did (leading to the renaissance).

A lot of it also comes from the renaissance itself and traditional media. It remains true that there are people who are responsible and learned enough in maters of government to be able to vote, and others who aren’t. However the old rules of racism and sexism have - for all their terrible faults - also lost their utility in this respect. You government can’t count on “white landowning men of good character” to be a ‘superior’ pool to draw insight from. Since our economy is no longer 99.9% agricultural, being “a landowner” is no longer a guarantee that landowners are among the most prosperous and responsible individuals. Now many of our most informed and influential people own little to no land, and those that own modest acreage may be far less knowledgeable.

Women and non-whites are (rightfully) now allowed to be and actually are very well educated and experienced in having serious responsibilities, etc.

So it’s very hard to effectively discriminate between high-quality and low-quality voters...

Meanwhile everyone is almost socially required to care about politics, to be informed, hold opinions, vote, speak out, etc. when there are frankly a lot of people in the world who have other shit going on in their lives and who don’t have the time and resources to waste worrying about politics. Simply not knowing and not caring is viewed as some sort of sin, by both sides, because they view these people a potential votes they could win. I think this is where a lot of the pandering and vitriol is created, because things have to seem super clear to get people - who don’t want to care - to care. Even if you don’t know the first thing about politics, you know the nazis are the bad guys and the communists are the bad guys... Soo, yes, that’s who the other side is!

Every generation thinks they have it the worst.

It is a democracy after all.

In its simplest form, the civil war wasn't fought because the north thought slavery was bad. It was fought because several states tried to leave the United States.

Hint: Most of the secession declarations include language like this:

> But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

Citation needed.

If such a thing were to happen, the states that ended up on each side would probably end up doubling down on the oppression of those in the other tribe who are still in their state, to encourage them to move to a state that's on their side.

Individual self determination.

If a local majority secedes every time it wants to trample on a minority, or in the case of the civil war, an oppressed majority, two things happen: one, politics devolve into fractured feudalism. Local elites have a mechanism for wresting absolute control. That, not the Constitution or a Bill of Rights or elections, becomes the basic unit of power.

Two, our two-plus century record of peace on the homeland shatters. Every election or court case found unseemly by a contiguous local majority prompts a Twitter and existential crisis. Foreign adversaries hammer the wedge and split the nation into warring vassal states and too-small-to-matter opposing countries.