[antocv]

Havent you noticed that people who see dark future post and tell it more often the past 30 years, than people who think "it will all be just fine"?

I remember the late 90s doom and "oh no millenium 2000" gloom predictions, and 2012 nostradamus end of the world maya calendar the end is near. I read about the 80s cold war "will go hot nuclear any time" and can be seen in movies like Terminator.

US will not collapse, no nuclear war will happen, climate change is not even the biggest fuckup we are doing (cutting down the amazon is, biodiversity loss overall), but we post-pone the imminent danger from a scheduled Ice Age.

[lisper]

I was pretty optimistic in 1990, but since then there is new data. Donald Trump was elected president and led a violent insurrection against the government based on a transparent lie with, so far, no negative consequences. If he runs in 2024 he will win the Republican nomination. Unless the Democrats suspend the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, he will almost certainly be elected president again (because measures are being put in place at the state level to insure that the election is not "stolen" from him again). And I've seen the effects of climate change with my own eyes. The changes are happening with breathtaking speed. The climate where I live is already dramatically different today than it was when I moved here a mere 11 years ago. All of the data from the last 30 years is dramatically worse than the worst-case projections of 1990. Absent some really dramatic technological or political breakthrough, it is a question of when, not if, climate change destroys civilization. It might be longer than 30 years out (I certainly hope so), but it's not 100 years out, not any more.

[basementcat]

To me this may imply a sort of built-in "failsafe" against political and economic hegemonies that is a part of human nature. This may be useful to ensure that political systems do not last forever so at least some part of humanity is able to explore alternate ways to construct and operate societies.

[lisper]

Well, that's a cheerful way of looking at it I guess. Personally, I'm a fan of civilization, but maybe that's just a reflection of my rich-white-male privilege.

[antocv]

> Donald Trump was elected president

Oh no, the end of the world is upon us, how could the people chose _that_ kind of guy as president. The people where meant to chouse _our_ woman it was _her_ turn.

Ironic really, you are scared of democracy ending yet as main reason why, because democracy worked.

[lisper]

You left out the important part: Trump incited a violent insurrection against the government based on a transparent lie with, so far, no negative consequences.

Trump's election was not a failure of democracy, merely a failure of common sense among the electorate. The failure of democracy began when Trump tried to get the secretary of state of Georgia to "find 11,000 votes". It continues now that he is successfully promulgating the Big Lie. It will be complete when he is "re-elected" in 2024.

[aa-jv]

Why was Trump your indicator that US democracy was failing, and not Bush Jr? IMHO, the latter did far more to destroy American democratic society than Trump - but the wealth and riches he provided through his war crimes seems to occlude this fact from most American's point of view.

Trump is just the latest in a long line of failures one could point at as examples of the destruction of American democracy, and he wasn't even the most effective at altering America's sociopolitical landscape, as Bush and Obama were ..

[lisper]

Yes, the decay certainly goes back further than Trump. Before Trump there was Bush and before Bush there was Nixon. You could probably trace it back as far as the JFK and RFK assassinations, maybe further. Some see what is happening now as an extension of the Civil War.

But Trump is unique in that he:

1. Has never accepted his 2020 election defeat

2. Wields enough control over the rank and file of his party to have the power to terminate the career of any Republican who crosses him in any way, and has demonstrated the willingness to use that power without reservation

3. Demanded that election officials to commit election fraud (and was impeached for it, but not removed from office)

4. Incited a violent insurrection against the government and has suffered no negative consequences for it

It is his ability and willingness to use his power to promulgate the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen that makes him a much bigger threat to democracy than anything the U.S. has seen since the Civil War.

[aa-jv]

If only Al Gore had been a bit more ballsy about having the election stolen from him by Bush .. we probably wouldn't be dealing with the failure of democracy that is manifest in America's wanton destruction of so many other sovereign states and the murder of literally millions of people around the world .. the point is, Americans aren't the only ones who suffer when their democracy is corrupted for military purposes.

[kbelder]

I think I've mentioned this before on HN, but I remember a teacher in my highschool class in 1984, asking if we thought there would be a nuclear war with the USSR in our lifetime. I was the only kid out of 30 that didn't think there would be.

Doomsayers are sometimes correct, but usually not, and they are ever-present. And, for some reason, very appealing to many.