this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025

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So, is the USA screwed? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by tigerjerusalem@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

You know, DOGE, fascist president and corporations dictating what people can do, institutions being ruined, laws being ignored. Is there any way out of that or is it over? Is the USA done?

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[–] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the short term: Yes. Unless the US military decides to remove a sitting president but that is extremely unlikely.

In the long term: Yes, but also no. Fascism is extremely inefficient and expensive and the US is destroying its own economy and pushing away all of its allies and former trade partners. Things will get very rough but it will not last forever. There will be a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done.

Unfortunately this has been a long time coming. The United States has never really been united and it was only a matter of time before another possible civil war loomed on the horizon.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would say it's been coming since BEFORE the civil war.

People always take my words out of context when I say that life in general would have been better for everyone long term if the south won.

People take that to mean that I'm pro-slavery. I'm not. If the south won, slavery would have died out naturally by the early 1900s (assuming confederate america lasted that long)

But if the south had won, and been able to leave the union? I feel like they'd have made the worst possible choices for their country on a repeated basis. I feel like their country would have crumbled and disolved into multiple smaller countries. The united states would have continued expanding out west. Texas is probably the only former state that wouldn't have crumbled.

The rest of the confederate states? They'd be struggling to survive, last in the world in education, terrible healthcare, basically a bunch of 3rd world countries. But the rest of the USA? SO MUCH HEALTHIER FOR IT!!! All these cancers trying to tear down OUR country today, wouldn't be part of our country. They can go fuck up the country of Alabama. Go nuts.

The pure amount of butterfly effect policies that would be different is mind blowing.

To me, the south winning isn't about slavery. It's about taking this large lump sum of the worst people in the country, and cutting them free like you cut away a tumor to get rid of cancer.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is complete hogwash speculation. You have no idea what would have happened to the North if the split had been permanent.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How exactly would slavery have died out “naturally” in a union made up entirely of slave states who’d just fought and won a war to defend it? I get your point about letting the south stand in its own so it could fall, but you are too casually sweeping aside the issue of slavery. “Yeah yeah - that would pass naturally - now let me tell you my MAIN point….”

[–] tan00k@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Northerners weren't simply more high minded than southerners concerning slavery - industrialization lessened their dependence on slaves to the point where they could abandon slavery without the economy crumbling.

Presumably this would happen in the south as they industrialized as well.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agriculture still has not eliminated manual labor, son.

[–] tan00k@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh OK

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Yep the South was invested in agriculture, to this day a labor-intensive sector, largely due to advantages in climate and geography which were basically fixed. So how again would slavery have spontaneously ended in the South again? It’s a question - please answer it.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're on the way down. The Right in this country (well, really, everywhere, but it's more maniacal here) are growing more unhinged. The Dems keep pulling to the right as a result (since at least the 80s). The overtone window keeps shifting. We're absolutely fucked.

William F Buckley was a major source of inspiration for the Right for decades. I recently watched his debate with James Baldwin at Cambridge in 1965. He argued racist points about Black single moms, but he tried to sound compassionate and denounced racism. He hid his racism in plain sight but sounded educated. There's nothing like that now. "They're eating the dogs."

[–] LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kamala Harris and Biden before her ran on the most liberal platform in history

[–] Skyrmir@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bernie was more liberal, FDR ran and won 3 times on a more liberal platform.

[–] LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How did FDR feel about gay rights? Economically he was to the left but socially he was way to the right. Sanders, sure, but I meant in a general election.

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

How did FDR feel about gay rights?

More. Gay. Drone. Pilots!

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The silver lining here is that with now 8 years of abolishing civil/workers rights, technology and social development being suppressed and Americans falling so objectively behind in most measurable fields, hopefully Americans can get over their blatantly false sense of exceptionalism and become comfortable just being another part of the world.

[–] VerifiedSource@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

technology (…) being suppressed

What technology or technology development is being suppressed?

The USA are still leading in most technological fields and have a dominant position.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The US does not have a dominant position in:

microchips.

batteries.

solar.

material science.

fusion.

energy.

computer science.

automotive.

displays.

The list goes on.

If you still think the USA is leading in tech, you are sorely misinformed about the state of the technological world(to be fair, it Is startling how rapidly the US has fallen out of grace in many of these technological fields).

The US is either barely clinging to previous legacies of prowess in tech fields to match other countries or falling behind rapidly, and without innovative latitude, federal grants or funding for research, they're falling behind even further.

the US does not have the technological edge it once did; scientists, officials from the department of defense, everybody in the know agrees and have been making public statements about how quickly the US is falling behind in critical scientific and technological fields.

[–] VerifiedSource@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The US is still leading in aerospace and defense. Boeing is in a slump, but military planes are top notch. SpaceX is a decade ahead of the global competition at least.

computer science

All the biggest and leading companies in that area are still based in the US. American companies dominate the market for software and internet services. The possibly most disruptive technology AI is also firmly in the hands of the USA.

You're also missing biotechnology as another key sector, where the US is doing very well.

the US does not have the technological edge it once did;

That much is clear. It's still doing very good though.

The amount of money spent on R&D is still huge in the USA and it attracts top minds from across the globe.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

aoaoe

[–] VerifiedSource@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

a private company innovated aerospace technology despite the US government’s reluctance to invest in aerospace technology.

Huh? The US government paying SpaceX made it possible to succeed in the first place. That's literally the US investing in aerospace tech.

US dod officials have been very clearly saying for Over a decade that the US might already be behind China in key areas of defense

China is catching up, but still behind in defense and aerospace technology. The one area they are ahead is industrial capacity to build, especially ships. China builds a huge number of civilian and military ships.

despite spending 4 to 10 times as much on their defense budget

Wages, manufacturing, etc. are all far more expensive in the US. It's also much easier and cheaper to copy someone else's design than to discover and build for the first time.

they cannot even compete with a free operating system

Microsoft has good support for Linux nowadays with Windows services for Linux and Azure Linux for example. On the desktop Microsoft Windows is still leading in market share and Microsoft Office is dominating as well.

Where are the biggest Linux companies located?

Apple? they haven’t been innovative in 15 years, depend on slave labor

Apple's AR/VR is innovative, if not particularly successful in the market. Their M-series chips are among the best chip available. Very fast with low power use.

Apple makes their products in same factories (Foxconn etc) as other companies. So the labor conditions aren't unique to Apple at all.

it’s not leading in manufacturing, it’s not leading in most sciences, and it has one of the most awful education systems in the world, not to mention the living affordability crisis going on.

I mostly agree. The quality of the US education system is similar to the health care system. The US has some of the best education and health care in the world. However, it's neither cheap nor affordable for the majority of the population.

you can’t do science without funding and support, and dumps has taken that funding away, and importantly does not believe in science or the benefits of research and development.

I agree mostly. Regarding funding under Trump, we will see. Elon Musk certainly know about R&D costs and benefits and is influential.

meanwhile, other countries are investing record amounts and setting technological records in innovative technologies like solar that the US has no hope of catching up to in the near future.

Yes, other countries are catching up steadily overall and are ahead in some areas, especially China.

[–] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

aaoao