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115 points perihelions | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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atoav ◴[] No.44452285[source]
Which explains why the administration has acted the way it did.

What has the US become? I am not surprised by the fact that Trump is a fascist, this is a thing I knew in 2016. What surprised me is how little popular resistance he has gotten and with which ease the US population gave away its rights.

I remember a time where americans scolded me online for my countries laws preventing certain types of speech (related to nazi insignia and Hitler), you guys do realize that if your government can just make up bullshit about you and send you to a torture camp abroad without due process, that free speech is no longer free?

Back then you people were adamant that your second amendment was there to protect free speech. But my suspicion back then was that this was mostly a thing guys who grew up in the comfort of a first world civilization would say to come across as tough and manly. And guess what.

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CursedSilicon ◴[] No.44452632[source]
I think this will be a veeeery unpopular opinion on this site. But I think the simple reality is this is the natural end state of unchecked capitalism.

The entire model the US has been on since Reagan has been a rapid, uncontrollable concentration of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer. The reality of that is of course, wealth translates (roughly) to power

On the reverse, in an authoritarian state you need to concentrate power in the hands of as absolutely few as possible. The loyal ones who keep the empire running

Of course you also need to convince the working class to "play along" with your game as you fleece the blind. So you enter the role of the fourth estate, particularly after Nixon. You just have to convince enough percentage of the population that you're "fighting for them"

So you create enemies. "The Gays" "The Trans" "The Browns" and all other cornucopia of manufactured enemies. Anything to divide and conquer and prevent the proles from rising up and obliterating your empire

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JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.44452671[source]
Decent hypothesis, but fails when we compare America to other capitalist countries. (Or non-capitalist countries, extant and historically, with extreme wealth inequality.)

This has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. The police state we built internally, lack of trust we engendered externally, economic straitjacket trillions of useless spending caused to our livelihoods and then resulting collapse of the party of Reagan into the vindictive mess it is today, all of these trace from the Iraq War.

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CursedSilicon ◴[] No.44452845[source]
>Decent hypothesis, but fails when we compare America to other capitalist countries. (Or non-capitalist countries, extant and historically, with extreme wealth inequality.)

What countries other than the US have the sheer extreme wealth inequality the US does?

Really the only other comparison is China. Which went from an existing authoritarian state to an authoritarian state using its working class as effective slave labor for western capital. It's "state capitalism"

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1. JumpCrisscross ◴[] No.44453838[source]
> What countries other than the US have the sheer extreme wealth inequality the US does?

All of South America, Southern Africa and Southeast Asia [1]. Also every single pre-industrial society.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_...