Like there’s just no more talk of “the American dream” anymore. It’s never been real but we all know now exactly how much bullshit that is. It’s like the facade has been fully torn away and we’re all tied to this terrible husk of a machine that doesn’t even have the decency to pretend things will get better anymore
You had Keynesian economics after the Depression, and that was supposed to fix the economy. And it did for a while. A lot of good things happened. Inflation was under control. Wages were high. Unemployment was low. Production was through the roof. Everything was in nice little balance. But then the financial crisis of the 70s kicked in. That shook faith in Keynes enough that the old liberal economics could come back. That's when you got The Chicago School and the rise of neoliberalism. They rejected Keynesian spending and did the trickle down shit instead. This started gutting the quality of life everyone enjoyed and throwing the economy out of whack. You can't actually reduce input from the wealthy and cut government spending and then expect consumers to have enough money to actually be able to consume enough. If consumers can't consume then production gets cut, which goes back to cutting jobs, and the cycle continues. We've been on that slope this whole time regardless of the Clinton years. 2008 was the next big blow. The slide down got a little steeper. Neoliberal economics was supposed to fix the problems with Keynesian theory and prevent crisis' but it obviously didn't. Like it was sold as this new and better way to understand the world. 2008 shattered that completely. Now this shit can't prevent problems and it can't respond well to new problems like COVID. Nobody knows what to do now. It's too late to go back to Keynes. That shit relied on a manufacturing sector that's never coming back. It relied on that post WWII expansion that will never be re-created.
Nobody knows what to do now. It’s too late to go back to Keynes.
Modern Monetary Theory tries to describe what we've been doing. It adapts a lot of Keynesian ideas to a world where we're no longer on the gold standard, i.e., where we have far more control over our monetary supply.
It's a slow burn. I think I suspected it was over when I heard GW tell people to go shopping for Christmas or the terrorists win. That's when I knew the Republicans were a cult.
The Iraq invasion thereafter cemented my suspicions. All those Ds and Rs gleefully going after Saddam knowing full well he had nothing to do with 9-11. Then everyone pretending they were duped.
lol
I had some hope for Obama but he only reaffirmed how broken everything is. And he certainly wasn't in the mood to fix shit, like Flint's water. Drink another glass, Barrack - you sniveling prick.
Anyhow, I've been a legal adult now longer than I wasn't and I can't remember any time as an adult that the mask hasn't been off.
The wheels started to come off after 9/11, if you ask me, but 2008 was the real inflection point
I had an inkling we were fucked in 2001 but that was just the beginning of the peeling of the happy face sticker and I was happy to stay in comfy denial world as long as possible. It was still possible to fix it at the time or at least it looked salvageable. 2008 dawned the realization of this country being a giant open air homeless camp and then corona came along and now it's like a giant classist soft genocide camp. At this rate I wonder when we will hit battle royale. You can see the beginnings of it in people competing for jobs, businesses actively cheating people and maximizing workload on minimum staff, withholding of healthcare and the police going around shooting people at random. Monetizing death.
You would think well this can't last forever but north korea started juche in 1972.
I think that when Trump got elected it shattered the facade, even though a lot of people want to hang onto it. I remember in 2008 a lot of people thought Obama becoming President meant the American dream was still alive and prejudice would become a thing of the past. Besides mainstream libs idk a lot of people who are hanging onto American dream ideals.
You could probably throw a dart at a board with every year since 1944 and pick something out
I think it was a pretty bad sign when the Columbine school shooting happened and the entire country was just like "oh dang... that's bad right? maybe this is marilyn manson's fault" and did nothing and still does nothing.
Columbine was a turning point, but I'll never forget the day I heard about Sandy Hook. I wasn't in school and didn't have kids or any family of school age, but I remember that feeling in the pit of my stomach that just sat there for two days. I still can't really believe that lawmakers and voters and lobbyists all just looked at those parents and said "So What? We're not doing anything"
carter and reagan killed it, but hope remained alive for a couple more decades.
probably somewhere around the time it became apparent to that obama wasn't going to bring about any kind of actual change. and then again when they fucked bernie. and then when they fucked him again it was basically like the rich just saying quite bluntly 'no, fuck you.'
Honestly the bipartisan refusal to stop the Vietnam War despite reason and absurdly large public demand is the beginning of the end. Does this also tie in with the decline of unions? I don't know the exact figures but surely right?
I think it's different for everyone. Sometimes it's a big moment (financial collapse, 9/11) or an ongoing disaster (covid).
I've met a few people where it was very intellectual. One zoomer I know learned about how hereditary wealth is in America and that most people won't be better off than their parents. She gave up on the American dream. In another case, an immigrant mother I know gave up on it while taking a political science course and realizing that black people and women in this country face huge systemic issues still. This led her to learning more and realizing the dream is a myth.
For me, it was definitely the ongoing war in terror punctuated by the '08 economic collapse.
