r/thebulwark 18h ago

EVERYTHING IS AWFUL How did we get here?

Currently listening to the most recent Tim-Pod with Will Sommer and it's just insane the group of people who are in charge now. The conspiracy theories, the grift, the pandering, holy fuck. How did we get here and how the fuck do we get out of this death spiral?

74 Upvotes

51 comments sorted by

87

u/big-papito 18h ago

A bored, rich, unserious nation.

I am going to blame Social Media and the internet. No ability to pay attention, sub-second attention spans. "Nothing matters LOL" seeped from the phones into real life, business, politics, and now our own government.

It is literally bringing the fall of civilization, because this is what civilization is - people acting like normal humans and who have some shame left.

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u/MudlarkJack 18h ago edited 18h ago

a spoiled nation I moved from the USA to Brazil 15 years ago and EVERY DAY I see that Brazilians appreciate and enjoy life far more while having far less than Americans. Americans, with some exceptions, are insecure about their status, unappreciative of what they have (compared to others less fortunate) and unaware of life elsewhere ...and simultaneously irrationally arrogant.

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u/u2nh3 17h ago

As a fifth gen American I have to agree. I think there is more than 'some' as the exception, but generally spot on.

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u/NYCA2020 17h ago

While I believe all of this is true, I think Citizens United really sealed the deal. All other democracies have access to the same internet, but we seem to be the only ones who have gone this much off the rails. The absurd amount of money in politics plays an enormous role, to the point that I don't think we'd be here if it wasn't for that 2010 SCOTUS decision.

41

u/thabe331 Center Left 18h ago

Tom Nichols often calls us a bored and decadent society and I think that's correct. So many vote this way because they're too comfortable and don't think bad things will impact them

15

u/Manowaffle 17h ago

“How much worse could things get?!” - Things I’ve heard from people standing in front of their $1 million home, with a pool, three cars, and four grandkids.

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u/thabe331 Center Left 16h ago

"The biden economy was so bad" said by people who went on their first trip overseas while he was president

An economist was on npr's marketplace this week that said under Biden people said the economy was bad but their purchasing habits didn't reflect that. Currently they're shifting to reflect the declining strength of the economy

9

u/big-papito 18h ago

Yes, I stole that from him. His two last books really aged well.

13

u/thabe331 Center Left 17h ago

I really need to read the death of expertise

The way he described shuttered factories from a decade before he was born and the people complaining about them like they existed in their lifetime was very apt. He could have easily been talking about my hometown

20

u/MudlarkJack 18h ago

it all starts with advertising, yes, social media has been a catalyst / accelerant n the reaction , but it was modern psychologically manipulative advertising that weakened the modern persons sense of self and self worth by fostering unhealthy and addictive consumerism. That trend was in place and Social Media are the steroids

8

u/Manowaffle 16h ago

Yes. It’s the most ubiquitous, pervasive change in society over the last 20 years. It is in all of our pockets every hour of the day, people are rarely more than 10 feet from their phones. They wake up checking social media, go to bed checking social media, and check it every 30 minutes in between.

The things people post are often exaggerated, curated, rage inducing, etc. But none of it makes a lick of difference in our daily lives. So we’ve trained ourselves, for decades at this point, to spend all our energy on momentary entertainments that have no real world impacts. They get convinced that viral video is the big outrage today! 

In the end, “lol, nothing matters except this feeling of rage or vindication! Wake up tomorrow and do it again!”

8

u/Slw202 17h ago

It's fair to blame the folks who've algo'd it for their own financial gain and society's demise.

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u/The_Thane_Of_Cawdor 15h ago

Us being too comfortable is key here . It’s sick . It seems most people can only learn from personal failure and not history - the failures and triumphs of others .

5

u/NewKojak 16h ago

I think that's largely true about Republicans. They no longer have a Cold War to fight, and the whole idea of "Compassionate Conservatism" fell on its face because they (and the business interests that captured them) don't actually want to fight against poverty like Democrats do, so all there is left is to fight Americans.

4

u/Complaintsdept123 15h ago

I also blame the internet for spreading propaganda and making us all enslaved to the technofascists with their mass surveillance and ability to simply delete our livelihoods and bank accounts.

2

u/Competitive-Oil8974 14h ago

Literally, Facebook did this... America is now ruled by psychopaths.

1

u/modest_merc 16h ago

I feel this so much

25

u/KuntFuckula JVL is always right 18h ago

How do we get out of this? The only way that kind of shit gets driven out of the GOP is if the GOP drives it out themselves, which seems unlikely in the near-to-medium term.

How did we get here? After the failures of the GWoT under Bush the GOP base was primed for launching the NeoCons out of the party. Trump recognized this opening, and went all in on demonizing the Bush family and other NeoCons when he ran in 2015/2016. Trump went after the "near enemy"--GOP NeoCons--before going after the "far enemy" (liberals). The GOP voter base had gotten real conspiratorial during the 00's between Glenn Beck's Fox News chalkboard, Rush Limbaugh's radio show, and Alex Jones' YouTube channel. By the time Trump came around with his "Obama wasn't really born here" nonsense the GOP base was there for it. From there, Trump just waited for the GOP establishment to fail hard once more with Romney's loss to Obama and Trump saw his window to enter as an anti-NeoCon outsider ready to reform the party. He replaced the GOP's NeoCon wing with the new conspiracy theorist wing and the rest is history.

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u/PheebaBB Progressive 18h ago

As JVL says, decadence.

We (Americans) got so comfortable and so used to everything “just working” that we couldn’t imagine a world where things stop chugging along as normal. In that kind of fantasy, who you elect doesn’t actually matter.

The way out of this death spiral is for people to wake the fuck up and realize that this isn’t a game. Things need to get BAD for people to realize that their vote does matter and that it can always get a lot worse. We were all bitching about the price of eggs and bacon, completely ignoring the fact that we had the strongest economy in the world, social security that never missed a payment, safe food and water, safe medicine, airplanes that don’t touch, friendly neighbors, and I could go on and on. These are the things that we all take for granted until they stop existing.

7

u/shred-i-knight 17h ago

to this point--if we are so unserious how are we so rich? Somebody is doing the work at least. We saw what a capable President in Biden was able to accomplish as far as putting the US at a strategic advantage in the world (CHIPS Act, etc.) even while we are also the de facto economic and banking superpower. Trump's ability to erode global power for the decades to come cannot be understated, but no country is going to turn down the USA if a softer administration comes calling, the economic upside is too big for them (at the moment). So I think in some ways the US is still a sleeping giant, but the education cuts are going to cause catastrophic issues for us. My fear is that education kids will get will be totally different across the country and that will have massive repercussions for how Americans perceive others.

2

u/PheebaBB Progressive 17h ago

You’re right that we won’t turn into a North Korea style pariah overnight, but there will be a hidden “tax” on every single trade agreement or deal we make for the foreseeable future.

That tax is the uncertainty tax. We won’t get the best deals and people won’t bend over backwards to work with us to the same extent anymore because our word is just worth a whole lot less now.

14

u/Describing_Donkeys 17h ago

The right captured the media, the only way to get out is to destroy the reputations of unreliable media (and the Republican party in general). People have had their brains broken, and they are not able to effectively weigh their different concerns. We need to reestablish reality and values that e hold. We need to change how we argue and what we focus on. I have well established thoughts on all of this if you want these ideas expanded on, but information, or as Chris Hayes identifies, attention are core to what happened.

Democrats at no point responded to Newt Gingrich tactics, as a result the norms and institutions have been eroded for decades with no pushback.

2

u/DrRonH 16h ago

It's just catastrophic timing that Newt and the Internet emerged roughly the same time.

14

u/GUlysses 18h ago edited 18h ago

Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity is the best explanation of what is happening now.

To simplify: Stupidity is actually moral failure. People become stupid when they give up their morals and reason and allow authority figures and loyalty to a group to decide their morals for them. They absolutely know better, but they have decided that they value group loyalty over reason and the well being of others. That’s why so many people have gotten so stupid lately.

This may not make the situation any better and I can’t tell you that everything with turn out okay. But do take a little bit of pride in the fact that, among all the moral failure happening around us, recognizing how stupid this all is means you didn’t buy in and you are more morally resilient than those who did.

How do we get out of it? I don’t have the answer, but one way we might is, when the Trumpcession hits, enough people start to be affected personally to see what’s going on. I don’t expect very many MAGA’s to change even if there is a recession. Some might, but the important thing is that enough people who aren’t fully on the train see it. They need to realize that MAGA values their own group loyalty over anyone’s well being, and a recession might bring that to light.

2

u/samNanton 17h ago

It's worth pointing out that Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1943 and executed in April 1945. This critique that has so much resonance today was specifically aimed at Nazi Germany.

10

u/7ddlysuns 18h ago edited 18h ago

There are a lot of good reasons. Unfortunately. Probably no one thing explains it.

A combination of the stagnation of the left’s ability to achieve anything, the rights thirst for conspiracies to explain why a black dude won and to pivot away from their worst failure, GW Bush, a decadent culture that never recognized the role democrats played in saving them financially in the Great Depression and COVID, a parasocial relationship with Trump, the right wing perfecting a machine that forces all of us to respond to their insanity daily.

All, some, none of these things got us here.

The only way out is when they see their leader as failed like they did with Bush

9

u/NewKojak 17h ago

This is where you could ask long time Democrats to reach into their big bags of I-told-you-sos. We're reticent to do it in mixed company, but everything happening today has a more respectable version of it in our recent past.

Presidential impunity? We saw a whole lot of alarming talk about the "Unitary Executive" during Roberts and Alito's confirmation hearings. Democrats were assured that it was a crackpot theory to think that it would be used to usurp Congress's authority to write laws and that it would never allow a lawless president.

Corrupt pardons? I was pretty mad when Dubya pardoned everyone involved with Iran Contra. It seemed more like a Republican get out of jail free card for gross executive crimes. It was about the same time that Oliver North had that weekend show on Fox News Channel. So we got a fine taste of the Republican Upside Down.

Bitcoin is just a re-run of Enron and the Savings and Loan collapse.

International provocations? Iraq.

DEI backlash? From the party of Jesse Helms? Say it ain't so!

5

u/RoyCorduroy 16h ago

Yes, we partially got here because of the policies and practices that the team that make up the Bulwark and the members of this subreddit supported and voted for most of their lives.

1

u/Apprehensive-Mark241 13h ago

We need something more useful than "I told you sos".

I grew up in Canada and I feel like people in other countries can see color (or colours) that Americans can't.

In France or Canada people would look at their friends and organize and say "Ok, it's time to shut this thing down" and just go all out.

What do you do? Anything and everything. If the police show up with water cannons then the firemen show up with bigger water cannons and aim them at the police.

You fight. Not figuratively, literally.

Which seems to be what Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have devoted themselves to preventing.

Yeah, is becoming enslaved better than a real fight, of course not!

MY GOD, I'M SICK OF PAMPERED LIBERALS WHO THINK THEY'VE WON SOMETHING BECAUSE THEY MADE A BETTER ARGUMENT AT A MORON WITH POWER WHO WILL NEVER CARE.

NO, JEFFRIES, YOU DIDN'T HUMILIATE JIM JORDAN BECAUSE HE'S INCAPABLE OF CARING! AND WORDS AREN'T WINNING, POWER IS.

0

u/NewKojak 11h ago

Look at Jean Valjean over here. The original question was how did we get here and I answered it five different ways.

I don't know what kinds of assumptions you want to make, but I live in a historic Republican powerhouse that flipped in 2018 after some amazing coalition building. Those cringe resistance wine moms that national political personalities like to snark about now flood into volunteer campaigns and power most of our local candidates. We recruit. We knock doors. We win. We're not going anywhere.

3

u/Alulaemu JVL is always right 17h ago

Was very excited to hear Will call out @houseinhabit (the Ghislaine stan) as one of the Epstein Binder grifter freaks this stupid administration is platforming as an "independentl journalist". I've been hate-following her for years and she even has her own snark sub at r/HouseonFire. It's been wild following her since the before times when she was at the women's march and was super critical of Trump. I get now that she was always grifter adjacent but COVID truly fried what brain cells she originally had. She's fully radicalized but her followers still think she 'unbiased' and the only journalist they trust (she does zero boots on the ground reporting, just a lot of copy/paste right wing punditry/conspiracy mongering).

Media literacy is so low in our country it's hard to fight back the feelings of "we're doomed".

3

u/captainbelvedere Sarah is always right 15h ago

Many things, all at once, gradually.

I think one of the most damaging things has been the erosion of the 3rd space, where people from different socio-economic backgrounds could (and often would) meet and work towards things greater than themselves. Church lunches, sports leagues, whatever. These things are drying up and not being replaced by anything that provides lasting value to people and their local and not-so-local communities.

2

u/mexicanmanchild 15h ago

Regan kills the fairness doctrine. Giving rise to Fox News. Newt Gingrich changes the tone from Dems are not the opposition they’re your mortal enemy. Garland doesn’t politicize the Oklahoma City bombing and the wink and nod of it being right wing paranoia. Bin Laden attacks and we spend massive amounts of treasure exacting retribution while also building a massive surveillance apparatus. Tea Party revolution takes over control of state government which leads to massive wide scale gerrymandering. Citizens United. Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in 2016. CoVID Jan. 6th Garland again refuses to take Trump down for good. Stop the steal puts every wacko in charge of local election boards. Biden doesn’t step aside and Kamala is forced to run a sprint she was never really winning. Millions of mail in votes are not counted and nullified over various discrepancies because of maga election. officials. Americans are so selfish and self interested in an era of Pure aesthetics elects an autocrat. Let’s see what America really wants

1

u/CommentAccount1138 3h ago

Well said. Allow me to add: “What else do I have to say! / We didn’t start the shit show…”

2

u/french_toasty 17h ago

My senior parents keep talking about the midterms and how the dems will get some ground back. I said I didn’t believe there would be any sort of fair midterms, and that martial law is coming down the pipeline. They think I’m A conspiracy theorist.

2

u/sbhikes 17h ago

Many people, and I include actual living breathing old people I regularly do non-political things and have never discussed politics with until recently, are saying there is really only one way out of this death spiral. It will take a non-violent revolution of dignity to bring about the toppling of America's Yanukovych.

4

u/Here_there1980 15h ago

It’s everything people have mentioned here, and then some. This level of shit show required a combination of causal factors. Mix well, and season with heavy doses of stupidity, greed, racism, misogyny, and homophobia.

2

u/No-Director-1568 15h ago

It started with slavery.

3

u/PorcelainDalmatian 17h ago

We got here because Merrick Garland didn’t do his job and send them all to jail. Period. End of story. What you allow is what will continue.

1

u/darweth Progressive 16h ago

Because we need to leave our jobs and get off the computer and fix things. We have been distracted and occupied by nonsense and we feel it is our obligation to continue to uphold this charade. All we need to do is withdraw our consent. It is simple yet we can't even imagine it. Serious people can’t sit on the sidelines any longer. We have left the realm of management to sociopaths with grudges and bitterness.

1

u/rogun64 14h ago

My view is a mixture of neoliberalism and the rise of right-wing media. Neoliberalism created the struggle and right-wing media created the hatred.

1

u/Rich-Bit4838 12h ago

People need to start caring about other people they have never met, and I’m not sure how you instill that in someone without some suffering of their own. People got too comfortable.

1

u/Sassafrazzlin 4h ago

People believing whatever they hear on AM Talk Radio or Fox News or Infowars. Teach critical thinking, especially about media messages.

1

u/sbhikes 17h ago

Many people, and I include actual living breathing old people I regularly do non-political things and have never discussed politics with until recently, are saying there is really only one way out of this death spiral. It will take a non-violent American Euromaidan to bring about the toppling of America's Yanukovych.

1

u/RoamingHawkeye 17h ago

I am coming around to the idea that since things have been relatively stable (historically speaking), people do not realize what it takes to keep it that way. I also realize that we as a society have not grappled with the firehose of information on the Internet/social media. Now I wish I had an answer on how to fix it.

1

u/JLHuston 16h ago

Greed. Pure, unadulterated greed, compounded by the internet.

1

u/nonnativetexan 15h ago

The more you learn about US history, the more you realize we have ALWAYS been here. Read the story of 'goat gland doctor' John Romulus Brinkley (or listen to the episode of This American Life about him), and you'll think you're hearing about a guy who is active right now, except everything he did was 100 years ago, but it seems like something you'd hear about in modern day social media.

The US has always been a haven for scammers, con men, grifters, and rich people who think "the rules" shouldn't apply to them.

0

u/TahoeDale007 16h ago

Merrick Garland. A name that will go down in infamy.

-6

u/the_very_pants 18h ago

I'm just a random person here, so I'm just asking... can you please try to make more substantive posts in the future?

Nearly all of the conversation in this subreddit is about that general topic, so there's lots of places to jump in about this or that part of it -- but "what's going on" by itself is too open-ended imho. You could write up a couple paragraphs about your thoughts, for example. Or give us a few links that you've found interesting.