16
The American republic is crumbling before us – and Democrats must share the blame
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
16 points (100.0% liked)
Socialism
2846 readers
85 users here now
Beehaw's community for socialists, communists, anarchists, and non-authoritarian leftists (this means anti-capitalists) of all stripes. A place for all leftist and labor news and discussion, as long as you're nice about it.
Non-socialists are welcome to come to learn, though it's hard to get to in-depth discussions if the community is constantly fighting over the basics. We ask that non-socialists please be respectful and try not to turn this into a "left vs right" debate forum by asking leading questions or by trying to draw others into a fight.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
The country is a gerontocracy led by ailing leaders and with a crisis of confidence in its dominant ideology; it is a flailing superpower suffering foreign humiliation (not least in Afghanistan); and its economic system struggles to meet the needs of many of its people.The US is a democracy, albeit one severely compromised by wealthy vested interests and concerted rightwing efforts to weaken voting rights, and it is a racially diverse union of states, rather than an unstable federation of nations.
The US was drunk on its recent cold war triumph, and the political and economic order it extolled was described as the final stage of human development by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History?
The image of an at-ease, amiable US was projected to the world in cultural exports ranging from Friends to The West Wing, or as humanity’s benign protector in Independence Day.
Yet nine decades after the publication of It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian novel about a fictional fascist dictator seizing power in the US, the scenario it imagines seems less far-fetched than at any other point in the 250-year existence of the American republic.
The foreign military ventures of Democratic elites such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden – principally in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Libya – were also characterised by bloody turmoil and international humiliation.
Saved 80% of original text.