Election cycle in the US is over and as always it is a good time to sit down and reflect about it.
And in all honesty, US and its citizens are lost cause.
From outside perspective and from the European perspective US is going through its own collapse just as Soviet union went through in the 88’-92’. US just managed to hold on longer and therefore claim victory before it’s time to put it to rest.
Just like majority of folks in the world I was growing up with American Dream, American imperialism, America First. Joy and power willy wiggling that happened after 1990 in last years is giving its last hurrah and I think we can all sense it. All good press that US was enjoying for decades is gone. No one treats Americans seriously anymore and everyone is disillusioned about American Dream.
US of course is enjoying strong immigration numbers and for many people in the world, US is still a better place to live than they home countries. The same could be said about post-soviet Russia. Till this day they manage to find immigrants and foreign investment to fill their own gaps. US will be no different. Collapse will be slow as the behemoth is big. But we will see through it all.
Good indicator of what I’m about to write is that immigration from other western countries is at all time low.
Our directions differ more and more. Because US is stuck in the mud and instead of using proven methods of getting out of it, they scream and argue and belittle themselves while certain groups are adding water to the puddle to keep the car struggling and blame folks with planks for trying to help.
Let’s start with politics as fish rotten from its head and this is exactly what is happening in US.
I was saying it during the campaign, and I will repeat it now. trump is not the problem. trump is the symptom of the problem. Trump even with now 8 years in politics is still only somewhat respected by around 12% of the Dutch population. Not because we don’t know trump policies. But because we know trump policies!
Even when we got our own right-wing government and Wilders is wildly regarded as the OG for trump weird hair updo, far right needed 3 more coalition partners to hold a majority in house of representatives and they still don’t have a majority in senate. Over 15 other parties in our small parliament are also keeping the check on right wing ideas and make sure they don’t just plunge our country to the chaos like US politics is experiencing each time someone new takes the steer.
I am talking with my fellow Queers and LGBTQ+ folks, with my POC friends and others. No one but Muslim minority is afraid in here a year after our own “doom elections”. Why? Because we don’t deal with systemic issues that make US problems so vivid and vile. We don’t have systemic racism in this country, we don’t have wild capitalism, we have proper public services, …
Don’t get me wrong, we deal with the spillage from US and some things are not fixed yet from the painful past, but not due to people in power actively stopping it from being fixed. Some communities deal with problems that stem from the past, but they are being fixed and holes are being patched.
Because we care, unlike US citizens.
And I’m tired of pretending they care.
Fish rotten from its head. But you can’t change the head because there are 2 rotten fish heads on top and they just don’t fall off. I’m talking about GOP and DNC leaderships. Both parties for decade fail to address citizens fears and worries, both parties are trying to keep the status quo on the country that was build and meant to always push forward. GOP with recent calls to return to slavery, remove all women emancipation, remove all wins of LGBTQ revolution and go back to 19th century business making.
DNC is no better. They seen right wing turn of GOP and decided that “status quo is good enough”. So, they protect it at all cost. And sure, from their cozy chairs in their villas and penthouses it all looks stellar. Their stock markets investments are booming, their wallets are more and more puffy, rich elites’ life goes on uninterrupted and they failed to see that it’s just them who manages, others are really struggling. But it’s not important. In a true US individualism, they just blame 350 million individuals for supposedly failing in exact same way in exact same time. In the most baffling way DNC leadership truly can’t see that they abandoned their electorate. GOP swings right and they win? Let’s also swing right! Who cares? Not them.
Truth is, 2 party systems are just fundamentally screwed. No 2-party system can be good for long. They all prove one after another that they last only as long until 1 party goes bananas. As soon as one-party gets desperate and chooses weird leadership, they all follow the same pattern where second one just starts scaremongering people with the whacko from the other party and that is suddenly the entire platform they will run on.
It happened in UK, Australia, US, … Also, in de-facto 2 party states like Poland and Hungary (where opposition tried to unite on platform against Orban and just failed miserably for obvious reasons).
It will happen in all 2 party systems sooner or later. And result is always the same. A decade of political turmoil and mess with questionable solution in the end that works more like “we’re too tired to fight over it, let’s shove it under the carpet” kind of way.
Trump in 2015 was a warning sign for all conservative folks in US that their ideology is being repurposed for political tool by a con artist. They ignored all warnings and as a result, conservative folks who praise traditional family model, law and order, modesty and so on, sent to the white house multiple divorcee and “adulterer”, criminal, dude who brags about models and prostitutes, that openly uses bible to wank his ego onto it and not treat it as a holy scripture.
Hypocrisy is baffling and tells you all you need to know about how rotten this society is.
Because left and center is not better.
Fish rotten from its head but the rot will always, eventually, reach other parts of the body. And it did.
Just as Christians and conservatives succumbed to trump and his instant ramen noodles politics approach, left went the other way around. Kind of overcorrecting for what they seen on the right, left side of US society split in 2.
1 part that justly realized that you counter one idea of the future with another. That if trump is offering vision and it works, we also need to have our own vision rather than just “not being trump”.
2nd part decided that just not being trump is good enough. And that part is responsible for this mess they are in right now.
People voted for Joe Biden because he was running on a very progressive platform (as far as US standards go). He was offering student loan cancellations, pandemic relief packages, society open and supporting of one another. He was offering some vision, even if minimal. But that minimal glimpse of hope was enough to gather people by him and propel him to the office.
And then the supreme court slashed abortion rights and Biden did nothing,
And then he abandoned all promises given to US citizens about their debts and other stupid obligations they had for a broken systems. He and his people never fixed any of the problems that people had, hoping that status quo will be good enough for honest, working-class people.
But it was never enough, and it was never about to be enough.
People are not stupid, and they see that they work harder and more efficient than previous generations, generate more product/service for their employers and get nothing in return.
People see managers doing shit nothing and cashing in a fat checks while John Doe at the production line, cash register, in between shelfs is doing all the job and relying on food-stamps and other aid to survive despite working more hours weekly than his counterparts in other parts of developed world.
People see that in other countries people will maybe wait a bit in line to go to the doctor for preventive care, but they don’t need to budget for it and apart from individual anxiety, they can take care of their health, and it doesn’t risk them bankrupting from being unable to work for a while.
People see that in other countries woman can take a maternity leave and let her body get back to the baseline after a strenuous exercise of giving a birth and in many western countries father has the same opportunity to be with the mother and the child as well. And people question why this is suddenly impossible in the richest country in the world?
People see that in other countries car infrastructure is often nicer and on top of that they get public transport options. Even if the school is far away, they can safely send their 9y.o. alone to the school. Something unthinkable in the US right now.
The list is endless. And people see it and realize it.
But there is no rescue for them.
GOP wants to cosplay 1933 Germany; DNC want to cosplay 1939 France and pretend that nothing will ever happen.
And general public is dumb enough to let them do both.
Let’s be real for a second. Despite all shit systems in US, there is no protests. Black people are killed by racist cop and all that’s happening in there is a week of riot and back to normal. People despite being so proud of their democracy have no democratic bone in their spine!
Everyone just takes it day by day and seems to never bother about having any vision of how they want their life to look like in a decade or two.
No one is checking the direction their country is going and doing anything to prevent that. There is no widespread campaigns to change electoral system, there is no widespread campaigns to fix systemic issues in their country. Everyone just waits till someone invents a new TikTok dance to do to get likes and cash in on affiliate programs and move on.
Everyone pretends that this game will make them billionaires in the end and all they get is a golden leaf to hold in their casket.
Ever since its foundation, US was not meant to be a country for all. It was always meant to be a refuge for the biggest whackos of European colonial powers where they could dump all fanatics that kept igniting religious wars on the continent but still extract profit from their works. with a whole ocean between us, tired European majority in 16th century finally could have some chill while evangelists saw a promised land in a new continent and new heathens they discovered. Fighting other Calvinists, Protestants and Catholics in Europe was hard, they all had similar technology, religion was also similar. Igniting hate was not as easy and approachable as it was to ignite hate to people from other continents who worship a vastly different gods than we did. Fight Christian brother with cannons? Or bully native North American population that pray to the Sun and other nature forces and then claim religious superiority? Choice for far-right was always super easy.
And this legacy of bullying, of hatred, of pure exploitation was born and continued for every single decade since. As soon as they grew past slavery and internal conflicts, they needed a new enemy, economy was shit 100 years ago especially for that reason. They colonized their continent and had nothing to fuel their machine anymore. Internal ails quickly became apparent. Americans simply don’t know how to make a living without an enemy. But then 2 world wars came, and it was a nice ideological shift for them. Suddenly they were not a messy nation in America, but they became The America. Their miniscule contribution to wars in Europe gave them feeling of superiority over their ancestors and they got high on it. Later Cold War came (and never left you idiots!) They went on full superiority spree, and we got all those coups, wars and assassinations during cold war era that kept fueling their machine forward.
I mean during cold war, capitalism and individualism of the west had a real opposition in the world. They needed to make sure that their system is actually the better one or they were risking a revolution.
But in the end, they won, and when they won that desire to keep workers happy was no longer present. Everyone could do whatever and nothing would happen to them. Because what was the alternative? Nothing. And they made sure that US citizens will have no other alternative in the last 30 years.
Effects? All that I wrote.
Honest, hard-working people are poor as fuck, rich fucks are richer, everyone feels trapped and they are.
They all want better life but are scared shitless and too distracted with being systemically overworked or (if lucky) cozy in this system enough to not want a new one.
But new one will come.
Not one system lasted in this world beyond it’s best before date. Even divine mandate of heaven for kings and queens fell apart eventually.
All dictatorships and all hardships are temporary.
Everything is temporary.
Don’t wait for solutions from others, be a solution.
We all would prefer to live in a calm times where all of this is not necessary. But reality is what it is. We can sit down and be sad about it or organize and do something about it.
I have no illusion that Americans will do anything. Not in a generation at least.
Not with a current left-wing generation that is absolutely clueless in its attempts to fix the issue and still focus on hating the most, the ones that agree with them in 80% instead of those with 0% compatibility.
Not with a current DNC leadership that wants status quo
Not with a bunch of liberals who think status quo will fix itself.
For Americans may be too late or maybe they will make through the last call.
We in Europe need to be different, we need to realize our own strength and potential and go for it. Sure, we don’t have natural resources and fossil fuels, but we have still 450mio people, almost 100 million more than US and similar size of economy. We can and should stand with our own union and do our own thing.
We simply can’t afford to wait for US to sort itself out. We need to realize that this marriage is done and that we may still be friends, but we will not be married anymore.
If we realize this soon enough, we will save our continent. Or we will plunge to the darkness with US as our toxic bride. Ball is now in our court. I hope I will not be writing “Europeans are lost cause” anytime soon.
I will do my part.
Will you do yours?