So the USA is turning into a fascist military dictatorship because of capitalism and misinformation campaigns swaying voters etc. etc. How do you (as a USian or not) view what is going to happen in the immediate-to-near future regarding civil liberties & disobedience, especially the current secret police and/or ICE (just getting a big, beautiful budget increase to unbeforeseen heights); and also thinking civil war and outside intervention?
For me, the current situation seems hopeless for the state. The bipartisan system is in its core a laughable excuse for an actual functioning democracy (then again are there any real democracies in the capitalist world?), as both parties are controlled by the same organizations and lobbyists, with governmental administration occasionally changing hands from one to the other only to unmake what little “progress” the currently “progressives” had made last time they were in the administration, forming but a pittance of what the people actually want. But the current administration seems to be too much akin to the Italian fascists or the German NSDAP of yore, and its attempts to control all media too see-through for some, who mostly seem to be in the bluer (richer and thus more better off) states. I think this stark divide between the population will be the force that rips the nation apart, as most people in the bluer more progressive states probably aren’t as big on the secret police appearing unmarked and unannounced and armed, ready to take people away to concentration camps in undisclosed places in foreign nations in unmarked vans as the people of the redder and more conservative states seem to be.
So the question becomes how will the people react? Civil disobedience probably sounds nice right up until they start gunning those disobeying down, and deploying the National Guard and Marines against them (which I think might be unconstitutional there? not sure though because it happened already). The US Armed Forces apparently have 1.3 million active members (without a draft mind you) and even though there are people in this group who aren’t as morally bankrupt as the administration is atm, I think they’d still have enough members positioned around the world in enough places that there isn’t a single force in the world to oppose it willingly and easily. I bring this up because if (or when) push comes to shove and the civil disobedience in the blue states becomes too much for DJ Dump and his christofascist capitalism buddies, and they start driving their military might against their own people with increasing force, who will be there to come in to save the (non-militant minded) people? I think the US administration would consider this a declaration of war, and respond to it as such. So as I see it the US is on a surefire highway to the danger zone to Civil War part II: Electric Boogaloo, and in the end will either rip itself apart or pull the entirety of the western (NATO) countries to war with it. So thank god my country just got in! Wouldn’t wanna miss this one, boys!
Anyway post your prophecies on the manifesting destiny of the US below, we’ll eventually see who got it right.
Yes, capitalism can only serve the capitalists, and maintain a (highly relative) peaceful environment (not counting the subjugated peoples and areas in the global south atm) in only the most auspicious of times. And even then the system will inevitably shit itself and die every few years or so and must be resurrected by national intervention using said nation’s taxpayers’ (=working class) money. So the system is fundamentally flawed, which has never and will never “work” insofar as the working class is regarded.
Indeed the US is in quite dire straits, having replaced its national industrial capacity for outsourcing to countries with cheap labor, and also positioning the US dollar as the world currency, thus having the leverage to force dissenting nations to either go bankrupt or accept its imperialism. Now there is no industrial capacity in the US and its populace (completely understandably) not wanting to do two or three full-time jobs just to afford housing and groceries, neverminding everything else you need to live in there (like health insurance, so you best hope you don’t get sick ever), just to bring the industrial capacity back at minimum wage. And now the administration is driving out the only ones willing to do the manual labor at minimum wage, the immigrants; while being willfully ignorant to the fact that the entire nation’s history is that of immigrants, as most of the natives died on the Trail of Tears or were otherwise killed off and cordoned to reservations.
It seems that there are only bad tidings afoot for the USian worker, having also been brainwashed since birth into the impossibility of communism. Doom and gloom.
I don’t actually agree with the theory of brainwashing, it’s closer that imperialism and settler-colonialism contributed to a largely reactionary working class. However, now that conditions are deteriorating, the working class is still becoming more radicalized.
you mentioned this earlier (and dose of optimism of warranted here); what evidence are you seeing for this?
Among other things, comrades in PSL reporting record growth, Mamdani winning ovet Cuomo, and a shift from a ~14 point favor to “Israel” among democrat voters in 2017 to ~57 point favor to Palestine in 2025. The rate of growth is high, even if the numbers aren’t yet.
People generally getting pretty excited about someone executing a healthcare CEO on the streets for vengeance is not a bad sign either.
Yep, that too!