> only learning from catastrophe.

Worse. 1.1 million people died in a deadly plague and there's no national mourning, just straight back to the culture war and polarization.

But 9/11 Never Forget!

Ironically one of the few wars America objectively and decidedly lost - and on their home turf no less! Terrorism is to enact political change through acts of violence; I think it's pretty inarguable that America is a changed nation with regards to government surveillance, and the powers granted to law enforcement.

America has objectively lost every war since WW2. (Ok maybe not the invasion of Granada)

Can't believe Iraq still occupies Kuwait!

Point taken. Iraq I can be categorized as a win for the US. Iraq II was clearly not.

Suppose they do care. What would that look like? Posting memes to TikToks and Instagram? Would it look protests in all 50 states? Because 50501 did that and got barely any coverage. If you knew to look for them you could and can find coverage, but it didn't dominate the news cycle on all channels for days on end.

We're not united because they've goaded us into to fighting each other over two topics that really aren't, and there's only two teams to pick from. One was bad, and the other one worse.

> The vast majority of Americans simply don't give one iota of care as long as they are currently comfortable.

Can you blame them? They've been toiling hard for decades while getting poorer and poorer, while the privileged class has lived lives of wealth and comfort from milking these government institutions. Did they care about the vast majority being comfortable or not?

Yes.

The repubs lost their battles, and decided they wanted to win at all costs. They had people show up to vote, vote in a bloc, volunteer for lower level positions, join multiple different organizations and basically organized them to dismantle the country.

If people can be driven to do that, then its not much to assume that at least a few more people could have done the same thing.

> They've been toiling hard for decades while getting poorer and poorer

This is, by every metric, completely wrong. We have never been wealthier.

That's just laughable for entire generations of people, like Soviet headlines of how food production is beating all records while the store shelves are empty. People are getting absolutely murdered on rents and real estate inflation. If you're a landlord or can leverage your real estate, then good for you. You have never been wealthier.