In your opinion why has America become worse?

Question

WhiteSteve · Accepted Answer

Most of our living generations of adults are by and large extremely selfish, ignorant, uninformed, misinformed, tribal, intellectually lazy, fake, hyper-materialistic, judgmental, uncharitable, un-empathetic, frankly STUPID, often bigoted people who only give a shit about their bank account, their toys, their outward image, their own personal well-being, stuffing their face with food, and being constantly entertained every free moment of the day.

There’s even more to it, how the right wing media and the politicians they’re pushing for mischaracterize, mislead, and sometimes outright lie about current events and the state of affairs, and our people are stupid as fuck, they just pop up from watching NFL football or Netflix or The Real Housewives Of Wherever The Fuck a few weeks before an election, and develop a strong opinion based on “vibes” or whatever seems cool to say locally where they live. They know a few bumper sticker slogans and catchphrases, but they immediately fall apart if you ask follow-up questions, and don’t know about details or involved people when asked about them, yet they don’t budge off their original position, no matter what information to the contrary that you give them.

”Fake news” is a HUGE problem. The aforementioned lazy thinkers, etc have been given this permission slip of “fake news” to immediately dismiss anything they don’t like or that’s damaging to their cause. They’ve also now been conditioned to not only distrust experts in whatever field, which is crazy enough, but to INSTEAD choose to trust some random idiot because he was granted a non-adversarial interview and the interviewer just goes “huh, wow, that’s interesting”, regardless of what crazy shit they’re saying.

The very fact that we base our political decisions on the opinions of podcast hosts and comedians…. that is absolute dumbfuckery.

I don’t know, I could go forever but I’m trying not to. But all of our political problems are just symptomatic of the unfortunate reality of who so many Americans are, character-wise. Bad people elect bad leaders. And Americans just made a WWE heel turn like I’ve never seen.

I think a lot were fooled though. Through all of the stuff I mentioned before, the greatest lies told and sold in recent memory are that A) the U. S. economy was bad and recovering poorly post-Covid, and B) it was Biden and the Democrats’ fault. “A” is demonstrably untrue, and therefore “B” cannot be true, by logical rule. By most metrics, America was doing better than any other country in the G-7 or G-20 post-Covid, and trending positively. (If you have to ask about or had to look up what those are, you already shouldn’t be at the table for big boy economics discussions.)

“My gas costs too much!” or “My groceries are too expensive!” is a whole other thing. It’s a piece of the overall economic picture, and something to be studied and addressed, but it’s not a reliable indicator of overall economic health. That’s just you getting fucked by corporations. Joe Biden didn’t make that happen to you (Reagan probably did, lmao), and Trump can’t save you from it.

That’s a broken feature of the stage of capitalism we’re in nowadays. It would require some heavy governmental regulation to quell that and get your prices down, which Republicans aren’t gonna do, quite the opposite in fact. “cOmMuNiSt, AnTi-FrEe MaRkEt pRiCe CoNtRoLs” would be needed, or a mass conversion of CEOs and boards of directors into being decent, non-money-hoarding people with decent souls. They’re lying about how it’s just because gas is expensive because Biden wouldn’t drill (he did🤦‍♂️), lmfao.

So, the overall economy was good from standpoint of GDP, inflation, unemployment, stock market performance, etc…very important metrics. Really, it’s just that paycheck-to-paycheck people are struggling with cost of living (while probably still overspending on dumb shit, but I still get it), but the President and Congress didn’t do any of that.

Post-Covid inflation came down to very reasonable levels…. do you remember your grocery bill coming back down, though, or any un-shrinkflation re-sizing of your products? My buddy runs a big food company, he’s just like “LOL…prices only go up.” Not even due to corporate greed, but the workers, probably paycheck to paycheck, come looking for a raise every year, because they’re buying the same groceries as everyone else and are struggling.

But it perpetuates the cycle, everyone needs more money, and the product has to increase in price to accommodate for that, because stockholders don’t want to hear that their dividends are going down.

Anyway, I’m gonna cut myself short here, but the point is that we have shitty people with shitty goals, yet no fundamental understanding of how government or economics work, so they fall for political rhetoric blaming incumbents for problems they can’t control, they’re willfully ignorant a whole lot of the time so they don’t think about it beyond “grocery bill’s up…I’m poor…I’m mad…. blame politicians.” They tie in culture war bullshit so any questions of the economic program are quieted by the appeal of shared bigotry, and people will vote against their own interests while deluding themselves that they aren’t.

Sad state of affairs, I don’t know how we get out of this, other than this goes terribly, and our people are weirdly-hopefully more greedy than they are bigoted, and this second Trump term was just a hot stove they needed to touch because verbal warnings didn’t register with them, and they’ll be even poorer, and they’ll change with the breeze and champion a Democrat next time, or a less crazy traditional Republican, and act like MAGA never happened.

Humans are fucking clowns, in a sentence🤦‍♂️

OneViewpoint · Accepted Answer

Why has the USA gone to shit? Unfettered Capitalism. Billionaires bought the legislature and the courts to create legal bribery with unlimited dark money to be used in politics. The votes of the people no longer matter. Oligarchs control all the candidates. That ushered in fascism which got us the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, the Federalist Society and a corrupt Supreme Court, and tRump, the useful buffoon in the Oval Office. They are now steadily working to undo 100 years of social progress that started with the New Deal in the 1930's and created the world's largest middle class so they can return this economy to the era of the Robber Barons in the late 19th and early 20th century.

andreasderjuengere · Answer

Other: It began around the 1990's when the promoted ''bad enemy'' in the east unexpectedly crumbled away.

Having focused too long on the cold-war-idea, the U. S. were left unprepared for a new outside challenge - and now they had to face themselves, and internally.

That is kind of a cultural shock (if we assume a culture here).

The Yuppie generation carried on as before, the later born were lobotomized by internet and later on: handphones.

So - as the latest arising challenges for adaptation had not been addressed continuously, the train had left the station with the majority of Americanesians stranded in a station that's not longer yesterday, but still is not tomorrow.

mattthefatbat · Answer

Multiple factors but by far its because of people listening to misinformation.

Imagine america is like a elderly person, she tends to listen to people like scam callers, promising her good things with no plan instead of her really friends and family members telling her to not talk to the scam caller.

BonzoInBitburg · Answer

Because decent people don't seek public office anymore. You can't tell me that the last 2 presidential candidates were the best choices in a country of 340 million people.

seeyounexttuesday · Answer

Because we let the insane left peddle their nonsense.

NicholasRedone · Answer

I'm not America. Yet as the age-old saying "it's always the budget cuts" lol - the cut-backs I voted for in your poll lol 😆

lightbulb27 · Answer

failure to heed the debt, they should be conservative for once so rates come down. failure to fix that, we are screwed.

ibodi · Answer

That would not be surprised in marx's theory. but it is time to appear a great leader to solve problems instead of a wrong person.

exitseven · Answer

Many years of democrat policies starting with Obama. It really went downhill when we had the autopen president.

Pohjolan · Answer

Become? The major effect of Trumps policies will come later. Worst predictions have a 20% unemployment rate before the end of his second term.

Filthy_Immigrant · Answer

you forgot to add because of Biden and the democrats as an option

David318578 · Answer

Democrats have lost their minds and are actually insane now.

msc545 · Answer

Trtump, MAGA, failure to enforce antitrust laws.

FunkyMonkee · Answer

Joe Biden and democrats in general!!

DrPepper12 · Answer

AOTA since Nixon & a whole lot more...

LazerBean · Answer

None of the above

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