"Life is much better in 2026. We live healthier, richer, and longer lives, with better medicine and more self-determination." - I can't speak for 1926, but compared to 1980s or 1960s, this is so patently not true. The US population is much sicker and more obese, as one example. People are not starving, but at the cost of eating "manufactured" foods that will make them sick in 20 - 40 yrs. And so on. I don't see a lot of happy faces on the streets of America.
That being said, this video from Three Arrows (aka Dan Arrows) “America coming Weimar moment” has interesting things to say on that specific comparison: https://youtu.be/CFDDf48nj9g
It required me watching, experiencing how things I had considered settled and humanity was over them started to turn back: the rise of fascistic tendencies in different societies, anti-intellectualism, etc. things that as a teenager/young adult I never considered could become societal issues again.
The relevant sections for these comments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
Basically we've been in a "4th Turning" for about two decades, and the 4th turning typically ends in some sort of crisis (hence the name for it, "Crisis"): Great Depression/WWII in the previous one, the US Civil War before that, the "Age of Revolution" before that, etc.
The idea behind it is lessons learned last until the people who lived through the previous one die. So the 4 "turnings" repeat every 80-100 years, and some sort of major crisis is expected around now - hence talk of another Great Depression or WWIII.
I don't see what GP means by "hijacked", GGP is pretty much a direct reference to exactly what it talks about.
Aside, this meme is based on this theory: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hard-times-create-strong-men - "hard times" represents the 4th Turning, though it's oversimplified, which makes it not really a great match.
As for WW3, well, there's a diaper-wearing senile old man, with an inferiority complex to boot, in charge of a nuclear arsenal and major conventional forces.
Things are getting spicy.
The only thing that hasn't really happened is a full economic mobilization. And Russia... may be close to that.
How naive one must be to consider this NPC as the biggest threat to human kind since the dawn of man.
It's not that single person who threatens the world, it's the complete American elite and the whole American society who push for wars and more wars, and the current NPC of the day in the office is just their tool.
The question is: is he enabling them, or are they enabling him? I suppose it could be working in both directions. That said: while the "elite" were problematic before his second rise to power, they were also more constrained.
I also have some question as to who the elite are? Certain individuals are more prominent these days, while others have faded in the background. While it may feel good to apply a singular label to the wealthy (or any other group we disagree with), they are not a single ideological entity. It's probably more beneficial to align ourselves with those who agree with us, rather than alienating them based upon a metric that is only tangentially related to their values.
I agree that Americans themselves are the root cause. Americans as a society are deeply, pathologically unwell and Trump is entirely their fault. I have no sympathy for any of them.
But only one person is the commander in chief of the US military, and the checks and balances that are supposed to keep him in control are not functioning.
or a President extracting billions from his own government for a plane, golf, inexplicable illegal destruction and renovations to national sites
the government was also not purposely imploding academia, science and medicine
there are also now over a THOUSAND billionaires "silo-ing" their wealth, barely paying any taxes and trying to eliminate the cost of employing anybody
we cannot recover this decade, maybe not even next century, and that assumes this horror show doesn't have a "part 2"
https://americanbusinesshistory.org/superwealth-a-historical...
except we have more homeless than ever so they don't even have that
with taxes slashed for billionaires and safety-nets for food and healthcare being destroyed, we are actually headed back to 1926 on purpose
Louis L'Amour writes on this a bit in his wonderful book:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/828165.Education_of_a...
Keep in mind that "more homeless than ever" (and I would prefer "more people experiencing homelessness than ever") may be technically true, but per capita we've seen a post-covid bump that's likely already back to 2007 levels. Without understanding the trends I wouldn't predict what happens next.
I've done some research to try to help you understand more - can I ask you to think about your frame and beliefs and consider changing them?
In the spirit of all models are wroong but some models are useful and that generational politics is overly reductive (which it is), I still see the Millenials as the new Lost Generation. The original Lost Generation were born 1883 to 1900. They came of age in the devastation of WW1 and the Spanish flu. What happened after 2008 was that all the entry-level jobs disappeared. Millenials had taken and continued to take on massive student debt and otherwise "do the right thing" yet found there were limited opportunities at the end of that pipeline. Baby boomers still had a stranglehold on academic and they both refused to quit or die (something which is still true). This is where the trope of the college educated millenial barista came from.
Obama's presidency was a massive lost opportunity to correct some of this. It directly led to Trump being elected (over Hilary "more of the same" Clinton). Trump, for all his many, many faults, talked to the rising anger in young people at the lack of opportunity, the possibility that they'd never own a house or have a good-paying job or they'd have a family. The disillusionment and anger has only grown.
So, as a leftist, the irony is that I get shit on constantly for essentially trying to preserve the current system by those people who like the current system but are contributing towards us bouldering towards war and revolution. Because those are the ultimate form of wealth redistribution [1] and become increasingly inevitable as material conditions worsen.
Even more ironic, many of those same people fetishize the 1950s where the top marginal tax rate was 91%, the CEO-to-median-wage ratio was a fraction of what it is now and the corporate tax rate was 40-50%. But then came along the likes of McKinsey who justified greed witht he patina of executives being "underpaid" [2] and then the social destruction of Nixon, Reagan and Clinton.
It took FDR in the 1930s to repair the damage of 1920s pro-business slavishness of Coolidge and Mellon. And let's not forget there was an attempted coup in 1933 [3]. But you see the same messages (as the author notes) in the 1920s of lower taxes, destroying unions and being pro-big business. Sound familiar?
[1]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2017/01/stanford-historian...
[2]: https://observer.com/2013/08/the-godfather-of-ceo-megapay-mc...
This should be the absolutely only thing that Democrats talk about. Every single day, with a big graph and call in number, so people can call in to say if this was fixed for them or not. And if it's not fixed, they should outline steps on how it gets fixed that day. It's insane they aren't using this opportunity.
Instead they're taking the opportunity to be insane. But the faithful are not allowed to admit that.
The millennials are the recipients of the great dumbing down. They get the inherit the wealth of their parents and grandparents, just in time for it to be inflated away to nothing.
Tasty drinkable water from the tap in nearly the entire country. Being able to flush toilet paper. Free toilets almost everywhere.
Being a country for 250 years is also quite an achievement.
I’m European and have witnessed many wars on my continent in my lifetime. A childhood friend was shot down with a Russian surface to air missile.
Due to the age of many places in Europe there is also still a lot of copper pipe used for tap water. Not deadly but also not very healthy. In Amsterdam over 20 percent of homes have copper pipes.
The money is largely a side effect of these two things.
Coastal California is probably one of the nicest places on earth but generally US is quite harsh.
Freedom to do, to create a business with far fewer roadblocks than in, say, Europe.
Freedom to go, to travel anywhere in a really large country, with no borders or restrictions.
Yeah, you can quote me all the caveats. They're there; I don't deny them. But: Freedom to say, freedom to do, and freedom to go. Those are really big deals.