The Moral Decay of the American State The numbers are stark and undeniable — a damning indictment of the moral and institutional rot at the heart of the American political system. In 1958, a full 73% of Americans expressed trust in their government to “do what’s right”. Today, that figure has plummeted to a mere 20%
People say this but then they swallow government propaganda about the rest of the world like it's sugar coated. I think we people say they "don't like the guberment" they just mean they don't like paying taxes and find news reporting around campaign season annoying.
This shit is just so funny to me, like you ask them about domestic amerikkkan issues and they're like "Oooh the fucking government and the news LIES all the time!!!!" and then you ask them why the same news would tell the truth about foreign countries and suddenly the government is infallible and the media is faultless.
They just make the assumption that if our system sucks, but ours is the 'best in the world' then every other system must suck more.
They forget that there is actually administrative churn in countries that have to respond to crisis.
They don't like paying taxes because they don't (usually) see direct material benefits from doing so. Well, beyond shit that's already baseline and also still sucks shit such as highways, public schools, various bureaucratic agencies you must interact with in life that suck. Of course these all suck pretty much by design.
Public schools are purposely underfunded, taxes not fairly extracted and distributed because rich whites cried about it (and still cry). Teachers get the shaft, so no one except those with some personal drive to teach kids (or... miseducate them in some cases...) will consider doing it if they can do literally anything else.
Roads are overfunded but the results look underfunded... bunch of graft and shit going on with that between public/private contracting relationships. Also roads I suppose sort of have to exist to some exist, but also we don't need 6 lane fucking highways and this shit. So my feelings on shit roads are mixed, but ultimately people pay taxes and see those roads and understandably the state of the situation should piss off anyone.
And the DMV, social security, IRS, etc. all suck. They all have the information to share on file or can easily access it, but they don't. The workers are underpaid and overworked, like every sector basically, and dealing with shitheads all day who are pissed and it's a circle of agony that only really benefits those who wish to destroy government altogether who then continue to underfund, continue to force these agencies to be inefficient.
IRS is an obvious and easy target, but it goes for almost all of them. Why we don't have national driver's licenses is a topic that illicits instant reactionary sentiments, but it's a great question. We already kind of do have it but only in the form of CDLs (commercial driver's licenses) which are regulated by DoT (another annoying bureaucracy and underfunded/run by a dunce currently) so states must adhere to certain standards to license professional drivers. This could easily be adopted at the non-professional (normal driver) level, and in many ways already has been done. But each state sort of resists it for 1) dipshit boomer-style reactionary sentimentalisms (BUT I LUV ARR EE ZONER ITS MUH STATE WHAT THE FUCK COMMIE I AINT NO COMMIEFORNIAN I DUN WUNT THEIR SHIT) 2) additional revenue sucking source (which disproportionately harms poorer people, btw. Charging $50 for a license or state ID and just jacking that price up every year for the extra income because god forbid commercial property taxes go up! Holy fuck no, not that!) and 3) I don't think there is a 3. There's no actual reason we didn't have this 10, 20 years ago.
People don't want to hear about politicians who will lie to them (or promise to only ever do the evil shit... and actually they do it). There's no "hope" or whatever. Everyone knows or learns if they don't that the electoral system is dogshit, it's all rigged in a way to never have any significant change, people have been broken into a permanent state of apathy and at this point politicians have a desire to ensure absolutely nothing good ever happens because it might actually cause people to demand more good stuff. Can't have that!
Super long digression. I was gonna add this in to the other stuff, but realized it was just a giant rant. Now you will all hear my rantings (or not. I warned you):
I used to work for a soul sucking agency, state DoT, and I can absolutely promise anyone who doubts that they can do a national license have no doubts, they absolutely can. Every state already shares all your shit in an old-ass 1980s DOS looking shit interstate OS (I don't think it's actually DOS, but it's very similar. The OS is dogshit but somehow considered secure. I doubt that!). All your tickets, all your whatever the fucks, every state has access. The police have the same system I used to use, but they have more or different access (to my understanding, anyway. We were only concerned with traffic related stuff). And everyone knows if you have a warrant in Kanas and get picked up in New York, they're gonna know about it instantly. Using the cops is probably a shitty negative example, but my point is every state keeps this old, shitty 50 different licenses (actually more with PR, DC, and Canadian are all directly transferrable to US) system. It could be less painful, it could be more efficient, but why? Fuck you. Why do you deserve nice things? Hey, you should just advocate to abolish all of this stuff!
This also has a side advantage of fucking over poor people more harshly and anyone ever convicted of traffic crimes like DUI. If you get a DUI in my state and aren't decently wealthy, holy fucking shit. The jail time and license suspension isn't the punishment. The 100 trips to your DMV to yell at some poor asshole like I used to be, who may yell back depending on their temperament, and paying to some private company for a breathilizer (sp) and all this bullshit- now that's the punishment. Should people drive drunk? Obviously not. That's not the point. The punishment is supposed to be fines, jail time, and suspension of driving privileges. But all this other bullshit, due to purposeful bureaucracies and terrible contracts with terrible private companies, is what ends up being the worst part of it. And I'm not exaggerating. People ended up paying 100s of dollars more, maybe over $1000, for additional fees while dealing with the state AND a private company. Often these are poor people. Sometimes they weren't and guess what? The non-poor people could basically hire a specialized lawyer who would know all the specifics and get everything done in a couple days or whatever and the person is restored to a normal life. Meanwhile a poor person does their suspension time, pays their fines, and is stuck in this infinite loop they can't escape because they're poor AND continue to have a suspended license or at best a special license which requires the breathilizer equipment which they're paying for... I mean, holy fuck.
No idea how I got off ranting about DMVs, but I think it actually makes my point. All this shit is 100% on purpose (all I can say is I had my head inside the asshole of the beast, and have seen its true heart). Anyone who wants to fix anything is ignored. People in high positions actively refuse to expedite things or help in any capacity at all. I had supervisors in other departments email my supervisor (who luckily was pretty cool) to say I needed to be told to stop sending so many emails to the departments that could clear stuff like the above mentioned DUI things and get people their licenses back (who had served their suspension times, btw, not like I was helping anyone cut any lines or anything). She just looked at me and was like "I dunno... I'll talk to my supervisor about it. In the meantime, just send any emails to me to route to them." Which meant no more emails were going out... any small chance I had at an individual level of spotting errors and fixing them (asking for them to be fixed, since I couldn't "legally" edit certain things in a record) was nullified nearly immediately upon me acting on that power. It was almost amazing how fast the system squashed any resistance to its lack action.
Every state already shares all your shit in an old-ass 1980s DOS looking shit interstate OS (I don't think it's actually DOS, but it's very similar. The OS is dogshit but somehow considered secure. I doubt that!).
Is there a name for that OS?
Some nerd there knew it's actual generic name or whatever but I don't remember. It basically just looks like old school DOS and was run on modern PCs inside of a shell or emulator of some sort. I remember the default keybinds were crazy and took time to get used to. Like shift or ctrl I don't remember which one would bring you forward a screen to the next input screen or whatever. The entire OS and the program itself which I also don't remember (been a while) was super basic and clearly not meant for modern use. You had to specify things like birthdays in the 1900s or it would get fucked up and make people old and stuff. It couldn't handle hyphens in certain places. Couldn't handle accents. Just odd stuff we had to constantly work around. You just spend all day rattling away on the keyboard because most of the work was done inside that system.
lol, nifty. Some quick googling (couldn't find the program name) but I'm assuming this data is all shared under the Drivers License Compact?
Damn man, you're gonna make me more educated. I just googled it too, and yeah that's probably what allows for the sharing. I just know the sharing exists at this point. Like if you lose your license in any state and try to just move and get a license elsewhere (using your actual real identity I suppose...) it's not gonna happen. The system I worked in quite literally just had like capital red letters with an error and just says STOP and all we could do was print out the reason which was usually like "call X state DOT for more information" with a phone number. That was one of the things I couldn't "fix" even if I wanted. Like a lot of shit I could, in theory, just fuck around with. I could make people a fully qualified class A CDL in the system (violating probably enough laws to go to prison for 20 years at the same time of course), but I had zero access to that interstate system beyond reading it. I assume police had access and probably each state has DOT liaisons of some sort that offer communication to drivers on what the issue is (usually unpaid tickets). That was off in a different department from mine though. I was more in the, uh, getting yelled at everyday by a person fresh out of jail who still had a suspended license department... you could say. Most of the people were pretty normal about things, but one lady did kinda imply she was gonna beat my ass and my insistence that doing so wouldn't help her get her license back didn't help... that job was everything from sad, to depressing, to enraging, and sometimes felt rewarding, but it was pretty crazy every day going in and working with the public like that. Usually the people who were getting fucked over somehow too. Really just left me disillusioned in the end seeing people that just wanted to get on with their lives being stomped down by this system that I was part of. I got the fuck out as soon as I could. That shit will absolutely turn you into a jaded person sending emails instructing others to not send emails if you work there too long...
Bit idea: Tell people "I think China is a paradise, because I don't trust the government". When they say anything questioning that, say "And who told you that, the government? Sure, the government can TOTALLY be believed, they've NEVER lied before."
You can also use "the media" as well.
Good point. It sounds more like the moral maturation of the American people
it's the deterioration of material conditions and the cancelation of the future
People have become a lot more aware of what their government is doing, rather than blindly assuming all is good based on things going well for them personally.
Seems like it's part this, and part the maturation of conservative anti-government rhetoric. A bunch of these folks don't trust the government because they think public school teachers are agents of Xi Jinping.
You also probably have plenty of libs who don't trust the government due to beliefs like "if the government can do it, it can be outsourced to a startup."
Hardly. "I don't trust the government to do what I want" is far more reflective of the general hysteria and nihilism that's come out of perennial mass media panics.
We're not mature, we're just terrified.
It has nothing to do with moral decay and everything to do with people's lives getting shittier and the prospects for the future being nothing but suffering and death
It’s weird reading this as a Black person. Neither me nor any Black person I know, from greatest generation to gen alpha, has ever trusted our government lol. White people must’ve had it REAL good until recently lol.
The best deal capitalism has ever or will ever give labor aristocrats. White boomer families, on one working class salary, moved out from cities to brand new suburban houses and raised 2.3 kids.
The sad part is their descendants would be just as pro-government if it still shared profits made off the exploitation and brutalization of non-white workers. Alas, all that juicy mass incarceration and slave labor money is going straight to the billionaire mayos. Hate to see it.
What I have found most effective in arguing with American libs about China is to point to the polls about how more people in China feel they live in a democracy than the US, and A LOT more have trust in their government than Americans do.
You can argue with them all day about free political expression, democratic centralism, de jure one party versus de facto one party, etc. But at the end of the day, if more people believe their system is democratic, they like it more and have more trust in the government… that should really be all that matters.
And it backs libs into a corner of either saying they think Chinese people are too afraid to answer honestly (strains credulity) or that Chinese people are brainwashed (racist).
It might be because libs aren't used to seeing real inter-party conflict. After seeing Bernie crushed, twice, and the entire DNC coalescing the corporate candidates into Biden so fast, I get the fear of "one party" having control.
I assume in the PRC Xi can't call up a few friends and end the elections like Obama did in 2020 or the Dem party did in many states this year.
But my point is, what does it even matter? Like, let’s just say the CPC is as “authoritarian” as American libs think they are. If the people of China overwhelmingly believe in their democracy and trust in their government, what does not having western liberal “democracy” even matter?
Because they're idealists: the point of the system, on their view, is to embody the Best Ideas, not to actually help people or do things. The American system is good even if everyone is poor and miserable because liberal democracy is a Good Idea, and that Chinese system is bad even if people are happy and comfortable because Communism is a Bad Idea. Material analysis never even gets considered: Western system good, other systems bad.
Yeah they literally will all just say something like “of course they say that, if you speak against the government in China they murder you”. Just totally made up shit but they all seem to believe it
Then you point out how the US government murders more than 500x the people of the Chinese government per year, and how we’re finding mass graves around the US outside prisons like in Mississippi. And then they’ll just turn their brains off and revert to their regularly scheduled programming and you sigh.
when's a lib ever had a problem with straining credulity or being racist? they're libs, that's what they do
Death to America
To me this reads as "American propaganda was more powerful in the fifties than it is today."
Which actually gives me a little hope. I wonder if the international nature of modern life has helped fight the American brainwashing giant that is the US propaganda machine?
It's probably that, and constant "invading other countries and committing war crimes" thing the US has been doing since WW2.
I think it's mostly just the rapidly eroding quality of life where most people no longer believe their children will do better than them while corporations are allowed to pillage the coffers for everyone to see. Most Americans still don't really give a shit about anything beyond their borders.
Certainly that, but also in the 50s “the machine” was humming along well. By “the machine”, I’m specifically talking about the process of capital buying off the white working and middle classes with houses, cars, and consumer goods; and allowing them to feel the privilege of being settlers i.e. getting to feel superior to non-white people. Both parties operated on keeping this white supremacist process going. The 50s were amazing if you were white. Neoliberalism and the Civil Rights Act (one bad, one good) brought an end to “the machine” and now white people are sad they don’t get as much settled privilege as they used to.
and now white people are sad they don’t get as much settled privilege as they used to.
And it’s never coming back. That was a monopoly capital/imperial moment that’s impossible to repeat.
Not to mention that the rate of profit reached it's height during that time, and it's not reaching that again (unless ww3 comes around)
yep.
hard to hide the truth when their war crimes are posted live on twitter
I would argue it isn't that media has become less effective, but that the role of media has changed from placating an agitated public to agitating a complacent one.
To me this reads as "American propaganda was more powerful in the fifties than it is today."
Honestly, it is more powerful today. Most of these people who think the government can't be trusted just want their kind of liberal government in power. They believe in American exceptionalism and that everywhere is worse, especially the evil gommulism countries.
And yet of those 80% who don't trust their government to do what's right, probably like 95% of them will use every single breath they have to defend that government and say "but it's the best thing we've got! We can't possibly do anything else! We just have to trust the system even if the government within that system is failing!"
"It's not a democracy it's a republic" all while seeing things go to shit and being powerless to stop it so you smugly cite "the rulebook" to explain why nothing can be better.
I fucking hate this country.
Americans are correct. BBC, 2014: Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.
So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.
This is not news, you say.
Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
Yeah but their mistrust isn't because of collapsing ecosystems, capitalism, or the ruling class.
Is because woke or whatever the 10 o clock news tells them
Makes sense, The last altruistic thing the US did was supporting Egypt in the suez crisis, that was 1956
seems like government institutions abused that trust so hard that Americans woke up from the American dream.
democracy is when the government does stuff that people hate, and the more they hate what the government does, the more democratic it is
Considering that many consider bombing children and hospitals to be the right thing to do I'm not sure I really care lmao.
