[spinglespingle]

the US has successfully become a 3rd world country.

power in the hands of a few: check corruption at the highest possible level: check a gradually more authoritarian "leader": check a people who support such a leader: check military might used against political opponents: check enormous amounts of poverty cleverly ignored: check

the list goes on. i suppose there is a time for every powerful nation to go into a deep decline that it will never recover from, and such decline usually starts when people ignore what's going on right in front of them. had russia done to assange what the us is doing now all of them EU, US and other hypocrites would be jumping like their arse was burned: but human rights. but torture. but freedom of the press. but this and that. well, enjoy your dystopia.

[westmeal]

I mean, and this is just my opinion, this decline has been happening for a loooong time. Reagan just made things even worse by the war on drugs. Consolidation is just making things worse. I mean seriously look at the effective tax rate in the US for corporations over time [0]. The US is just making legislation to benefit corporations instead of individuals.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/US_Effec...

[smoyer]

I think we're more like a first-world banana-republic.

[partomniscient]

No, it just has the really high levels of corruption like a 3rd world country.

They still have rather large amounts of both weapons and economic leverage.

[anonsivalley652]

Yep. This is because of the vicious circle of money capturing power through greater wealth, greater corruption, and greater power. As Chris Hedges calls it: inverted totalitarianism. Autocratic plutocracy by force by other means. It's like how many Americans are chained to their jobs by healthcare and other benefits, but let's not call it slavery or indentured servitude (student loans) because anarcho-capitalism with "no government, no regulations and more greed will solve everything! It will just work itself out magically!"

[dzonga]

the US has been a rich 3rd world country, since Reagan.

[linuxftw]

As if any of this is recent. People keep voting for the same crooks, generation after generation. Another election cycle, nobody is talking about the wars, just what benefits the government should pay for.

[glennvtx]

Nailed it. Just vote harder, amirite? This has come so far from the individual freedom that the bill of rights was envisioned to protect. Now the question is "what is right thing to do for me" rather than "what is the right thing to do."

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money. - anon

[linuxftw]

It's crazy. I always speak out about the wars, that's the single most important issue of our day. The government is literally killing people overseas, spending literal trillions of dollars. You would think it's something we can all agree on, but people treat you like a literal crackpot.

[kyleee]

Keep spouting off, it's better than being silent about it all