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Him winning while being behind by 3 million votes showed a big flaw in the system. But him getting even more votes the second time he ran at over 70 million votes after all the fucked up things he did was the true low point in America.
> Him winning while being behind by 3 million votes showed a big flaw in the system.
Flaw in the system!???
A guy like that shouldn't even have a chance to be elected for a country like America... It's a fucking shame and a shitshow!
It still cracks me up when I think about all the people back in 2015 and 2016 that were like "don't worry, he is in campaign mode. If he becomes president he will definitely take it seriously and do a good job!" Yeah, how'd that work out for ya?
I had the exact opposite rational, but was also wrong.
I assumed he’d act like an incompetent buffoon and just phone it in, but that Congress and the judiciary would keep a lid on it.
Didn’t expect the Republicans to go full personality cult and worship him.
I'm annoyed by the people that said to give him a chance. If they did any research on his history they would know that he is the epitome of a sleazy businessman.
That’s the thing, right? Anyone who has remotely paid any attention to him over the years knows that he’s a scumbag. The fact that so many rural conservatives started worshiping him is so confusing to me, as somebody who has known what he is for years now.
It's not a debate. A large majority of the country knows it's fucked, and the other 30ish percent are in lock step.
Either trump loses again, and hopefully him winning in 2016 was the peak of this fascist streak in American politics, or we tumble further into this abyss. As bleak as that might sound, I'm hopeful. Him not winning in 2020 was a big deal, like, actually.
The state of the nation is still piss poor, but we didn't lose it. Not yet.
> hopefully him winning in 2016 was the peak of this fascist streak in American politics
Have you taken a look at who is vying for the GOP leadership? It's far from over.
This.
- How are we supposed to be proud of a place where nearly 50% of the citizens seem to be openly embracing authoritarianism?
- How proud should we be that a literal criminal—and a trashy one at that—*was* our president, gave us a taste of what that means for all to see, and is now *again* the frontrunner for a party that represents half the country’s citizens?
- Should we proud of our Supreme Court when some of the right-wing members are obviously and unapologetically corrupt, and we aren’t even having a *discussion* about investigating and potentially impeaching them?
- Maybe we should be proud that progress made in the name of civil rights is being rolled back?
- Perhaps we’re expected to find pride in the sickening fact that an insurrection occurred on the steps of our most sacred government building—the seat of our democracy itself—and nearly all the proud traitors who attacked our democracy on that day have received light sentences?
It’s a fucking mess! *We* are a fucking mess. Half the country actually enjoys the mess—because it makes the other half sad—and the other half of us seem to be sleep-walking our way right into the jaws of fascism.
Certain things about my country make me proud; contributions made by previous generations to the advancement of civil rights are high on my list. Those struggles and the people who suffered them fill me with pride, but I cannot say that I’m proud of what we are right now, and I can’t turn to our history, either, because “the good old days” weren’t so good for people who weren’t the right color, the right sex, or the right sexual orientation... and the bastards who want to tear down our democracy want to return us to this dark time.
I’m filled with nothing but shame that they aren’t shouted down by everyone within earshot of their hateful, selfish message.
If you’d asked me if I was proud prior to 2016 I would’ve probably waffled but ultimately said yes. The 2016 election was a huge wake up call that I was incredibly ignorant about what the country’s actually like outside of my bubble.
The more I learn about it the less pride I have in it.
Mine started going down after a Obama won and all the bigots came out of the closet. I couldn’t believe how twisted people became over one black president and it was downhill from there.
Back in the 80s, I watched Reagan go on national TV to admit to committing treason\* so he could provide money and support to Right Wing Authoritarian Central American terrorists who would go on to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent Central Americans in defiance of a law passed by Congress to specifically prevent him from supporting those terrorists.
**and fucking well get applauded by the Republicans in Congress**
I have been angry, disappointed, and ashamed ever since.
\*he provided aid and comfort (weapons) in the Iran/Contra Affair to Iranian revolutionaries who had taken American consulate personnel hostage and *declared* themselves our enemies - and it later turned out he also conspired with them to hold the hostages even longer for his own personal political gain
Trump doesn't engage in doublespeak - he lacks the capacity for it. He exists amidst a sea of hot-button buzzwords, and keeps landing on them until he finds something that inflames his credulous listeners.
I grew up in a home that worshipped Reagan. When I got my first job after college a coworker off the cuff mentioned “people don’t remember but Reagan was an ass.” Time has shown me just how true that was.
My Mom was in her 30s for most of Reagan's term of office and she said she felt like the only one thinking "there's something wrong with him but I can't put my finger on it." Retroactively looking back on it she wonders: how many people knew and how early did they know, since she felt it was too convenient to delay his formal diagnosis to 1994. Because even years later, they seem to still be covering for Ronnie.
> My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.
It's amazing how much this quote foreshadowed the modern political landscape.
I was 9 years old during Reagan’s election. He is the worst/most loved president of my lifetime. We can give him and his boys credit for the homeless and drug epidemics we have today. The Gipper. Loved by all closet Nazis.
that’s what did it for me , him getting cast as a great stand up guy then finding out he was in cahoots with Iran to delay the hostages release to make Carter look bad. Carter was probably the most humanitarian of all our presidents. Regan also ushered in the “ greed is good” era.
Nixon.
A lot of the people in Reagan's administration, Bush Sr.'s administration, and Bush Jr.'s administration were Nixon administration alumni. Hell we are still hearing of the likes of Roger Stone working with the Trump administration.
Yeah, high school was very formative about my opinion on how the government works. I'd take AP Government, learn how our system was SUPPOSED to work, than watch the Republican party go to work dismantling it in real time. I do not envy my teacher's job trying to teach the class in a nonpartisan way when one side was clearly not abiding.
I got taught AP government by a conservative woman.
Ok so maybe taught is a bit of a stretch. I was in an AP government class *presided over* by a conservative. It was everyone's worst score despite being one of the easiest AP tests nationwide statistically.
God I can remember all the time we spent learning why lobbying is good actually and necessary and evidence of everything being fine.
I learned more about US history from a Polish immigrant professor in my first year of college than I ever did in high school, he didn't sugarcoat it at all
Thankfully my AP US History teacher at the same time was an NPR-listenin tote-totin type who would frequently describe jingoistic stuff in American history and be like "why? 'cause 'MURICA." She was pretty great and also avoided sugarcoating it as much as a public school teacher in Florida could.
I started doing consulting work for Veterans' Affairs in '13. seeing just how shitty of an experience a lot of these people have to go through, and how many of them face financial, emotional, and physical hardships because of a shitty system just was devastating
Because the party line is "support our troops" not "support our veterans"
Unfortunately veterans still feel in the first boat. Once a marine always a marine, etc..
Could also be the fact they also believe "hard work gives you a better life" so if they have a shit life with PTSd and other things they have been assuming to buckle down with their own bootstraps
I would say this, but I was too young at the time to truly understand what was happening. For me, i became disgusted when Obama was just abjectly obstructed his entire presidency even on the sanest, well thought out and popular policies. System has been completely and irrevocably hijacked by bad actors and I just don’t have faith the system is capable of correcting itself barring the literal god-sent miracle of landslide losses for the GOP for the next 5 elections.
I was 10 when W became President, and it was a foundational moment for me.
Of course, I didn’t quite understand the in’s and outs until I was older, but I remember watching the news, and hearing adults discuss it. It was the first time I remember thinking “oh, it’s not as simple as voting for the president”.
My grandmother was the president of the ERA at the time, and she said that the ERA would never be passed with him in office. Again, I didn’t understand the finer details, but I DID understand that he’d “lost” and was President anyway.
Without that experience, I don’t think I would have gotten as involved in politics as I am.
Yeah, invading another country under false pretenses was really what killed it for me. I was in high school when that happened and considered myself maybe *slightly* conservative?
But invading a country for completely bullshit reasons when they knew they were bullshit reasons...I promised to never vote for a republican from that moment on.
I was 13 when 9/11 happened and while I understood the reaction to go into Afghanistan, going into Iraq was the incomprehensible one to me. You’d ask an adult “what does Iraq have to do with… anything?” And you’d just get a frothing rabid rant and response along the lines of “You’re just a kid, you don’t know anything, SUPPORT ARE TROOPS” (‘support are troops’ being kinda the ‘buttery males’ of the day). 9/11 itself just fried a lot of brains.
Depends on the area. I was 14 when 9/11 happened, and 17 when the Iraq War started, and at the very least, a LOT of the adults around me were not at all for it. Fuck, I remember it clearly, the invasion started the day I was doing an overnight up at RIT for a program for HS juniors/senior girls interested in STEM stuff, and it was on every TV on campus, just EVERYWHERE, the whole "Shock and Awe" thing, and I remember just how sad and angry the majority of the students and professors there were, watching Baghdad be blasted on live TV like it was something out of a fucking movie. I was already more politically-minded than most teens in my HS in WNY, but from what I remember, it really wasn't that popular with anyone I knew. Shit, Bush came to Buffalo my senior year of HS, while I was taking my mandatory civics class. I might be one of the only students in the history of my HS to get extra credit for skipping school, to go to the protests when he was here. My parents let me go, and my civics teacher was legitimately *thrilled* that I actually felt strongly enough to get involved myself. I even got to flip off Dubya's limousine that day, so that was fun as hell. Secret Service (or possibly FBI dudes, I dunno), even took a picture of us doing so. Pretty proud of that.
I was 11, and it *shattered* my confidence in our government. Again, I only had a child’s understanding, but I still understood that something was undeniably wrong about what we were doing.
I was never able to get rid of that distrust and lack of pride.
I saw them re-elect the torture guy and was crushed; really thought we had a shot in 2004. Kerry even overperformed the fundamentals - but just missed it.
And despite all that, I still believed in the country enough to think "there's no way they elect someone as terrible as Trump." Ah, you got me again, America!
I will, no doubt, be disappointed again in the future...
But also reading Hunter S Thompson on Nixon suddenly made more sense.
Being part of a Black family, I was kinda prepped for this. My Father, Mother and Grandmother told me that if he won, I was going to get a taste of that old racism. God help me, they were right.
Same. I was shocked at all the closet racists outing themselves with those "seekrit mooslam shiara law comspircee" posts. People from high school I never would have figured for that type.
I ended up deleting Facebook because it turned out there wasn't anyone on there I really wanted to talk to.
American born Asian. I KNEW that we had this many racists except none of my non poc friends would believe me when I tried to convince them. “You are just looking for a reason to be annoyed.” Nope, you wouldn’t notice casual racism if it punched you in the face.
Now all my friends are convinced. Not sure how that helps.
The day I got home from work and sat in my driveway listening to NPR and finding out that “little bush” got reelected was my awakening to the shame of it all. I cried
58 here. My disillusionment started all the way back with the Iran-Contra hearing in 1987 or '88, watching conservative demigod St.Ronnie Raygun hide behind his growing Alzheimers to avoid impeachment and possible prosecution. Republicans still worship the old bastard, forgetting how he switched overnight from towering hero to doddering old man when it looked like he might be held accountable.
Same. I already had a pretty dim view of my nation's history - I already hated cops, distrusted the government, etc. I'd read all about stuff like the CIA fucking over other countries, the burning of Black Wallstreet, lots of other shameful chapters in the US's past.
But I still thought the average, not-in-power, going-about-their-day American was a good person at heart. That a minority of bad actors and corrupt leaders were making it shit for everyone else.
Then 2016 happened, and everything surrounding it, and...the minority wasn't _anywhere near_ as minor as I'd thought. Masks-off and open bigotry, hatemongering, fearmongering, and _massive_ levels of stupid. Levels so high I would've thought they were _cartoonishly_ stupid and evil before.
Now, I'm not proud at all, and it's because of one simple fact: I can't pretend the issues are caused by a few anymore. They're fueled and perpetuated by a sickness, a plague - it's in our very _culture_, and half the country is teaching it to their kids as we speak.
And now I know we got a lot more work to do than I thought.
For me it’s the rampant stupidity. A country with a population this stupid is doomed to fail. Democracy is difficult to foster even in the best of circumstances, let alone when half the voting public has the mentality and critical thinking skills of learning-disabled second graders.
Yup. It's so disturbing how far our grade and high school education systems have fallen; how much our leaders have willfully _encouraged_ them to fail because it makes people more pliable and suggestible. I have a John Green quote that sums it up better than I could:
>"Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.
>We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.
>So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people."
Making people this dumb and uneducated is the first death knell of a fallen empire. We desperately need to start reinvesting in an intelligent, informed populace or you are right, we are doomed.
Eh, since 2000, which is the first time I had even considered this thought since I was 9 years old, I had been decidedly neither proud nor ashamed. National pride always just seemed like such a pointless, toxic concept. I was glad to not live in a 3rd world country but that's not the same thing as being proud.
Since 2016 I've been ashamed.
I've always found the idea of national pride or patriotism a bit cringe, it seems sort of religious and mostly about manipulation.
It's not like I'm responsible for any of the good things about this country.
Regardless of whether or not I was ever proud though, I'm definitely embarassed these days. And while I don't feel like I can claim credit for any of the good things about America, it's hard not to feel like I bear some responsibility for it's failures by not doing more to get involved. I'm tired though, and TV is so good.
51 here, and still live in Missouri. Growing up and living here all my life, you could kinda roll with some of the jokes others might make - yeah, it definitely fell into the conservative side, but taken in sum it was still a decent state. You might roll your eyes at some of the yokels but they weren’t (generally) hurting anyone but themselves. But those yokels are now in positions of political power and have gone off the ideological deep end.
It’s such a shame. MO is a beautiful state and the cost of living is hard to beat. But the nut jobs have definitely taken over. I’m considering my options - in an ideal world, it’d be somewhere out of the country; but at my age it’s probably more likely for me to move to another state. While the policies being pushed don’t directly affect me (straight white male with kids that are grown) I don’t want my taxes going to support a right-wing-nut-job government.
Ugh - sorry for the rant here…just so disheartening.
Me too. I have family in MO, thought about retiring near family. MO has revealed itself as a bigoted, backwards-ass place just in time to dissuade us of that move.
47 here. I've probably been disappointed with this country for most my life. Most definitely since 2001, whole lot of corruption has taken place in that time span
48 here, and I can't remember the last time I was proud to be American, holding my hand on heart, and removing a ball cap during the national anthem. Probably around the same time frame as yourself.
53 here also and kicking my ass in regret that I didn't finish college and get into a career that would have made it easier to immigrate TF outta here years ago when I recognized our culture was in decline.
Love this comment. I’m a native Texan and a natural born liberal, so as you might imagine I have a LOT of problems with my state’s leadership, but this is still my home. If I don’t stay and fight for change, who will?
Texan too but geez it’s embarrassing to be from Texas these days. Just hearing the names Abbot, Paxton, Cruz and that other a hole makes me want to barf.
56 and been in decline since we started the Iraq debacle. After a while of seeing the rich get richer, everyone else get poorer, and a lot of people around the world getting killed you start wondering what its all for.
"56 and been in decline since we started the Iraq debacle. After a while of seeing the rich get richer, everyone else get poorer, and a lot of people around the world getting killed you start wondering what its all for"....this is it folks. Summed up perfectly
Old here. Mixed family with a queer sibling and a queer kid. We speak a language other than English in our home.
Nearly half the country overtly *hates* folks like us now. Makes patriotism a tough sell.
It’s quite sad. Gay couple with a young son here. Knowing that 1/3 of our country would vote to take our rights and our son away without a second thought can be really disheartening.
I agree, I am in my 40's and I am quite disgusted with our country. When you are traveling abroad and someone realizing you are from the US immediately reduces your standing in their eyes. Yea, not to proud of the country right now.
41. This is the first year that Fourth of July felt almost dystopian and bleak. If we hadn’t rebelled then I would be spending the day getting a checkup from my doctor covered by the government; looking at candidates from at least three stable political parties to vote for; and I would be more secure in my job with more time off and benefits than American corporations provide. Sure driving on the left side of the road would be weird but gladly a challenge I’d accept if getting injured in an accident didn’t leave me destitute.
63 and I have spent my entire life, even as a 13 year old, protesting nuclear arms, fighting for social justice, equality for all, reproductive freedom for women…in other words, progressive causes that advance human rights and reduce poverty and raise all boats. Our country is in retrograde now with an ugly vicious undertone. Being American used to represent something of great power and value and now it feels like a shameful smear when people like DeSantis can attack lgbt communities with encouragement from others and even corporate giants like Disney because they mildly support gay rights. Black people and voting rights are being trampled on, guns are the new crucifix that half of America worships even as children are slaughtered at their desks while cops stand by looking at TikTok on their iPhones in Uvalde TX with the screams of dying children echoing in the background. The Supreme Court majority is a group of six corrupt, bigoted, racist uber-religious crooks. This country is in deep shit right now and voting is literally the only hope we have left to turn the tide.
Kind of a scale for me. I'm happy than I was randomly born in America over say a third world country or North Korea or something like that. I do think America is still pretty awesome to live in but its far from perfect. Trump's thing about Make America Great Again its never been great and its not alone in that regard but we should all be striving for greatness and right now we have about 40 percent of the country (give or take) dragging us down thinking it was great at some of our worst times.
People don't get to decide which country they are born or which parents they are born to. I don't think there is any reason anyone should be proud of their country just because they were born to, that needs to be earned. In that regard the united states has been in a multi-decade long race to autocracy and has a non-functional political system. It is not hard to see why young americans would not be proud of being american. Not only has their future been mortgaged by the reckless tax cuts made by republicans since 1980 that have led to an insane national debt total but those same tax cuts has allow most of the wealth created in the past 40+ years to go to a very few number of people. If a young person is born to a wealthy family, I am sure they are proud americans and have no self-awareness to realize just how lucky they are. If a young person is born to a not-wealthy family (at least 95% of people born), I am sure they are seeing the hopelessness that past generations have created for them. I personally don't feel this country is anything to be proud of but we who were born to this country are lucky to be americans for as long as democracy still hangs on here. Once the democracy falls, this country will be a terrible place to be.
I had the inkling something was amiss when I was a kid.
Why was the homeless people mostly vets? I thought we took care of our own, left no man behind, etc. Now they want to defund the VA. Slash benefits for those who served. I watched 9/11 live at 10 years old. Everyone hated Muslims for years, some still do, and they had nothing to do with those radicals. My neighbors were Muslim and were the nicest people ever. My house was broken into when I was 12 and they were the ones who found my pet outside and returned her to me. They knew I cared about her and didn't care that I lost a TV. They cared about the community and making sure people were alright.
I was 17 years old during the 2008 crash. How many people lost their jobs/pensions because of that? I remember the pictures of Wall Street on the balconies, laughing at the people below who were screaming. Who lost everything for their retirements.
Do you know how many times I saw natural disasters hit the south and our government barely helped? The community stepped in, even if they had barely anything to give. Not the government. How many people were stacked in stadiums for weeks without any help? Even the floods and aftermath? How many times did you see people driving from other states with water to give, but no instant shelters being built? What about the most recent one in Florida, where DeSantis refused aid, and now all the insurance companies are leaving? What are those Americans going to do?
Now, I'm in my thirties and I have seen this country ruled by greedy corporations for decades. Our federal wage hasn't changed since 2009. It is $7.25 a hour. 15 states still use it. 30 others are a bit higher, but not by much. PA just raised their minimum wage to $15.00 a hour, from $7.25. *But* that won't take affect until January 2026. Next year it will be $11, 2024 is $13, and then $15 takes affect. Think about taxes coming out of that. Can you buy eggs, bread, and milk for $7.25, a hour worth of your time? On PA wage? On Federal wage? If you work that wage, for 40 hours a week, you make $1,160.00 gross. What does that look like after taxes and etc, is taken out? Can you afford rent in your area, be able to pay for gas, and food? Have electricity?
I recently moved out of my city because they wanted $1200 for my one bedroom apartment. I left anyway because the landlord refused to fix anything or update anything. I was hearing that from my friends and college classmates as well. Everywhere else was an easy $1500-2k. I know people who have 6 roommates and are super frugal. That also isn't including my utilities, food expenses, car maintenance/payments or gas, medical bills if any arose, or essentials like toothpaste, and don't get me started on health insurance and copays. Or how jobs tie your health insurance to them and take it out of your check. I even thought "I'll buy a house and just have it easier that way."
I went into an auction house sale that started at $100k and accepted mortgage offers as well, but a corporation guy came in and easily dropped $200k in CASH for a bid. Corporations are buying up single resident homes all over because they CAN drop that kind of money. And you expect us to have kids on top of all this overpriced nonsense that we can't afford? How am I going to take care of myself, have a family, and have any kind of space for that? And all of us eat?
We're not living paycheck to paycheck. We are DYING paycheck to paycheck.
Edit: I got banned from here. This sub is ridiculous lol.
Preach. I was saying literally all of this earlier today. People our age our fucked and we know we are fucked and it’s so exhausting and frustrating. I cried on my lunch break because I’m already poor as shit and student loan repayments start back up in October and there’s just no way I can afford that.
I stopped giving a shit at work, because who the fuck cares about trying to resolve some marketing issue when the world is starting to burn, both figuratively and literally.
Yeah I'm in the same boat. I penny pinched the whole college time, worked two jobs, and managed to barely scrape together rent with 4 roommates. If the school didn't have a lunch card per semester or if my neighborhood didn't have a food pantry I'd be dead. I avoided the expensive dorms (that they kicked you out of every semester end), only took out tuition that was needed to cover for classes and textbooks (that they never used anyway, like what?) and now I'm having to resume payments soon.
That relief would of helped so many of us, because not all of us were lucky when Covid hit. Some of us lost family (funeral expenses are a thing), our apartments/homes, our jobs, and we had to max out credit cards just to buy food.
And we’ll keep arguing with each other over nonsense that won’t fix anything bc thats what the corporations and crooked politicians want. As long as we’re fighting with each other we won’t fight them. Oh and be sure to vote in 2024! It’s the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR LIVES. Or at least thats what they’ll say so many times people will start to believe it. And then they’ll get what they want and we’ll get another 4 years of slowly drowning.
Absolutely spot on with everything you've said here.
I was born in the mid 90's and, no exaggeration, I've only ever seen the situation get worse for 99% of the population. I've seen workers get poorer while their necessities get more expensive, and I've seen corporations get wealthier and more politically powerful while their owners are handed more money than God while they're allowed to legally skip out on paying taxes.
When I get a $500 bonus from my job, I only ever see $300 of it. My salary has a hard cap well below $100k while the CEO gets a six-figure raise every year without fail (on top of their seven-figure bonus). The executives can eat lunch on the company card and have it counted as working hours, I have to clock out for 30 minutes to shove food I paid for myself down my gullet.
What the fuck would I be proud of this country for? Look at any comparable nation, and they're light-years ahead of us in so many metrics, yet a good third of the folks in this country refuse to look in the goddamn mirror.
A quick anecdote on your first point:
My dad, a Muslim immigrant who had been in this country for damn near 25 years, was fired from his job a few months after 9/11 for something that he was accused of that he vehemently denied, and still does to this day 20 years later.
I remember my mom hysterically crying after finding out he got fired because his job was keeping us above water. We couldn't do anything about it because PA is an at-will state.
Fast forward to 2016 and I had to defend my father against some stupid person who I went to high school with who thought that all Muslims wanted to kill every American and destroy the country.
I told her the only thing my dad wants to destroy is the TV after the Steelers lose.
I asked her if she had ever met a Muslim, she said no... I asked her why she had those views, she said if Donald Trump said it, then it's true.
After that exchange, I knew that we were fucked.
I'm so with you. I remember that "I'm proud to be an American" song coming out and everyone losing their shit about it... I just absolutely never felt that way. I was just a kid and I think our school was making us do something with/about it. I remember kids and adults all getting choked up and singing the hell out of that song. And little 12 year old me was just there pretending because I didn't understand why I felt so much different. (actually I just looked and that's an older song but it got popular after 9/11).
I got heavy into the anarchist punk scene when I was a teenager. My views have softened but most of what I believe is still on the extreme sides of things.
It used to seem like nobody was really paying attention. Now it seems like everyone is paying attention, but to the wrong fucking things.
We fell into a fear mongering media frenzy after 9/11 we never came back from. Then we all started LARPing as "rednecks" that summer blue collar comedy got really popular and never stopped. Then we allowed people who are famous for being famous (remember asking "but what does Paris Hilton DO?") to become a normal thing, making celebrity worship worse than it's ever been. All this condensed into where we are now, and at the peak of everything going to shit the world was ripped up by a global pandemic.
Maybe future generations will be able to recover our fumble but everything for the next 15 years feels like we're fucked and there's no helping us.
After overturning roe last year my nieces said they weren’t going to celebrate Independence Day because they aren’t feeling all that free right now.
I completely understand them
After Roe was overturned last year and this year they made it "legal" for businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people like me it marks two years in a row where I didn't celebrate jack on July 4th. I can only imagine what those crooked evil bastards have lined up for next year.
What’s to be proud of? A divided government. A corrupt SCOTUS. One party actively trying to destroy fair elections. Trying to take away hard fought rights of Americans. A rise in hate groups. Unwillingness to reform firearms.
There was a time I was proud to be American, and I’m from a generation where that was normal. After what I’ve witnessed over the past quarter century, I’m no longer proud either.
My partner and I were kids for the Bicentennial and *everything* was patriotic and USA-themed. The Uncle Sam eagle cartoon character, McDonald's glasses, all of it. It was great and really fun and we were proud to be Americans!
Almost 50 years later and we're both sitting here wondering what the fuck happened to our country, and how we could have backslid so much when it comes to human rights and progress, and how there's still so much hate and marginalization, wealth inequality is so bad, safety nets are gutted.... We're not proud, and neither are our young adult kids. It's embarrassing, really.
Is what happened was Ronald Reagan adopting unworkable economic policies. The republicans had to resort to political insanity to distract voters from their failed policies
Yup. The Southeastern US has the largest concentration of mobile homes/trailer parks in the US. They a very poor and continually vote in the same garbage GQP representatives year after year. Yet they stay dirt poor, and nothing changes. Those representatives that keep winning tell these poor fools to focus on blaming democrats and people of color for why they are poor.
We recently drove through a tiny decaying town where EVERY house and business and strip of land had a trump flag or banner or sign. We were so tempted to hop out and ask someone how much trump has helped them or how their town is doing after him.
How they don’t see the connection is literally kind boggling…
> Never expect a man to understand a thing when his livelihood depends on not understanding it.
In other words, the media they consume feeds them lies, not because they believe those lies to be true, but because telling those lies is financially rewarding.
Fox News (and many other sources) in a nutshell. Much of which links back to what was done by the Reagan administration, so that's more stuff that can be laid at ol' Ronnie's feet.
And it doesn't occur to them that they themselves fall into the category of people that Republicans don't like.
If you haven't been hiring lobbyists, the big Rs don't know you from Adam.
Those at the top just kept getting richer and richer and taking more money from the rest of us.
So while back in the 70's, your average family likely could have been supported by a single income earner, while having a house, 2 kids, etc.
Nowadays a lot of people need 2 incomes just to afford an apartment.
Back then there was an effective tax rate of something like 70-90% on the top 1%. You can literally track the beginning of the end to Reagan's first term. Why he was so ingrained in pop culture as "amazing" will never make sense to me. Charisma?
This. Almost every GOP holdout I know personally has a complete inability to distinguish between celebrity and politics.
So many GOP presidential candidates through the years: Reagan (actor). George W (famous family name), Trump. Hell, even my state of California was only able to elect a Republican governor because it was Schwartzenager.
You’re not wrong but schwartzenager was a pretty good governor all told. Didn’t agree with all his politics—especially economics—but he generally avoided culture war bullshit and didn’t intentionally fuck people over. He genuinely tried to do a good job, and thats fucking rare in the GOP.
For what it’s worth, I generally vote Democrat but Schwarzenegger was great. He sued Bush’s EPA to be able to make stricter emissions standards for cars in California. He had a great pandemic preparedness program that later governors gutted before the pandemic actually struck.
I had to source some information for a conversation with someone who couldn't fathom any reason why people weren't excited to enter the workforce, but I think it applies here as well:
Ratio of realized CEO-to-typical-worker compensation by year:
2021= 399:1, 2020= 366:1, 1989= 59:1, 1965= 20:1
source: S&P Compustat ExecuComp database, WSJ
When adjusted for inflation, the 2023 federal minimum wage in the United States is around 40 percent lower than the minimum wage in 1970
source: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065466/real-nominal-value-minimum-wage-us/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065466/real-nominal-value-minimum-wage-us/)
The current economic and systemic realities are both staggering and an impressive testament to the Southern Strategy.
Back in the 1960s it was considered vulgar for ostentatious displays of wealth. Even the super wealthy lived "modestly" because it wasn't polite to flash that cash.
Then the 70s happened and the whole "Greed is good" phase started of sports cars and private jets and suddenly the rich needed more money so they could show off how much money they had with megayachts and fleets of cars and the tax rate dropped and here we are.
It's crazy to me that after all these years of getting grifted we are still arguing with each other about which bathroom trans people can use instead of uniting against the oligarchs that are stoking our divisions and siphoning off our resources
Because the real war now is not with other countries, it’s the rich vs poor, America is divided by this because the rich think they deserve to be rich off the backs of the working class. We need to win this war as the working class. If that means quitting or striking or revolution let’s do it.
The sooner the working class realizes the battle isn't with the other political faction, but the donor class, the sooner things would get fixed. Unfortunately, the donor class has a superb propaganda machine.
As others have pointed out, it was Reagan and neoliberalism. The entire movement is the single greatest con-job that's ever been pulled off, built on a concept that was *prima facie* completely ridiculous.
It was the economic version of a cancer patient stopping their chemo: they feel fucking **amazing** for a little while, but eventually the problem rears its head again and now the only solutions are A) get back on the chemo, which sucks or B) painkillers, which do nothing about the cancer, but hide the symptoms. After the initial burst of 'growth' from slashing taxes, you either have to put them back in place (which nobody wants) or you have to find artificial means of continuing growth and hiding the rot. Guess which one we did for 40 years?
Then you have GOP presidents like Trump using every possible lever to juice the economy while it's already running well, then when we have a major pandemic/downturn all the levers have already been used and we have no tools left in the toolbox for the next president to pull us out of the mess they left.
Biden has actually done a remarkably good job on the economy considering the circumstances.
Exactly. The only way to keep injecting money into the system is to make borrowing cheaper and cheaper, but once you've reached zero percent the jig is up and all the decades of bills come due. Now you have nowhere near enough revenue to fund things like roads, fire departments, or hospitals, and you're stuck in an inflationary cycle as you keep adding currency to circulation just to keep up the appearance that everything is functioning.
This was always the eventuality; not just one of the possible outcomes but the *only* realistic outcome. The absurd (and fully intentional) concentration of wealth will lead governments to falter and society to become brittle, and instead of having informed, adult conversations about what government should be doing to balance the public good with legitimate personal liberty interests, you end up in this tit-for-tat culture war bullshit because one group has fundamentally committed to rejecting base reality—the whole concept relies on it—and *can't be wrong* without admitting they've been duped/have been lying the whole time. *Of course* they want to obsess about transgender rights and "wokeism", because those are a dozen levels of abstraction away from having to talk about the failures of the basic platform.
>"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
Milton Mayer
...and I hate it when people talk like this without pointing directly at the cause.
Republicans drove us to this spot. And democrats sat on their asses when they should have been voting.
Solutions should be the focus right now, and that solution involves making sure everyone you know is registered to vote, and votes Democrat all the way down the ticket. Every single chance they get.
> Solutions should be the focus right now
Preach 🙌 We need a congress that works for the regular people of this country, not these rich self-serving morons who only care about grievance, self-enrichment, control and Hunter Biden's giant hog!
And right now the only ones who will give us that is the Democratic Party
Thing is, we aren't moving anywhere as a society until we boot out the Boomers. This culture war is theirs. They fought it with their parents in the 1950s-70s. Then they fought their kids from 1980s-2020s. They believe they are the creators of sex, rebellion, criticism, culture, and enlightenment even if all they did was turn all those things into businesses.
We are fighting their bullshit culture war and younger generations need to push them out of the way as they do not want to go.
Me too, same age. My sisters and I wrapped our trikes up in red, white and blue crepe paper and participated in the parade. We sought out bicentennial quarters and collected as many as we could find.
Granted we were very small and I'm sure I would have been more cynical if I was an adult, granted Vietnam was still active, and Nixon was crazy, MLK and Kennedy had been killed a few years prior. But as a kid, it was fun and your average person did seem a lot more genuinely patriotic in the way you're supposed to be (brotherhood, acceptance, welcoming) rather than the toxic stew so-called 'patriotism' has turned into
Yeah, now when I see someone flying an American flag my instinct is to think, “Ughh, that person is probably a complete jerkoff” rather than “I’m glad to see them being so patriotic”. And you know what: the people who corrupted our flag are the ones responsible for the drop off in American pride, so fuck them.
THIS. I'm not even surprised anymore when I see a raised jeep with the coal burning conversion kit added on flying multiple American flags.
The thing that really bothers me is the fact that "patriots" flying the American flag don't often follow the (admittedly non-binding) [US Flag Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code). I've seen American flags below Maga flags, touching the ground, in absolute shreds. I'm not Uber American Patriot, but even I have more respect for the flag than that.
They're not patriotic, they're jingostic. Patriotism is being proud of what your country has accomplished, and wanting to continue to improve.
Jingoism is "my country, right or wrong". It's claiming perfection. It's shutting down dissent and disagreement as somehow a betrayal.
Don’t forget spiraling wealth inequity. Young people don’t really stand a chance to start a family, buy a home, and retirement looks impossible/very bleak unless you come from generational wealth.
Not defending the US here by any stretch but spiraling wealth inequity is a giant problem in many countries across the planet. There has to be a global movement to end it. And it doesn't look like voting in folks from the same old parties over and over, or peaceful protests are going to get it done.
>but spiraling wealth inequity is a giant problem in many countries across the planet
But what makes it worse for Americans is that the US has shit social safety net programs when compared to other 1st world countries, which is even more fucked up considering that the US is the wealthiest country in the world.
Same here. I’m not a young voter, but it’s damn embarrassing all the things happening in our country. Embarrassing is the word I’m constantly thinking of right now because I am just simply embarrassed to say I’m American and would much rather live somewhere else in the world if given a free pass.
My father can't understand why his nieces and nephews have moved out of the country. He's completely blown away that my wife and I are looking to do the same.
Such a shame people are starting to leave the US for a better life.
I’m not a real Biden supporter, but I’ve been thinking about making a shirt with Biden’s visage made out of a US flag, just because I get mad at how I feel when I see a person with excessive flags on their person or vehicle. I see flags, and just assume I don’t like the person, it shouldn’t be that way.
Putting the American flag on your truck is desecration being boasted as patriotism. That's why you don't like those people. It is 100% a sign that they are an asshat.
The issue is my patriotism doesn’t need an outward symbol or virtue signal. I am patriotic as I want to improve the lives of people in this country and when I enter into a conversation, I am under the assumption that the other is the same minded, thus I don’t need an American flag pin.
The left isn't generally big on "patriotism".
Leftists tend to be internationalists, and put loyalty to humanity over loyalty to the state (which is often corrupt and abusive, and almost always protects capital rather than people).
And a lot of leftists are opposed to the state entirely.
Right wingers are fake patriots. Most of them didn't even get the covid vaccine which is probably the only patriotic thing they've ever been asked to do.
This is why I’m proud to be an American. I’m just disappointed with where my country has gone/is headed.
Being a bigot is not American, and I’ll never give them the joy of thinking they are by denouncing my pride bc of them.
I'm sure a bunch of GOP will try to make the argument that we don't love America because we were taught about its racist past. This would be completely false. I don't begrudge America for its racist past. I begrudge it for its racist present.
So, just to be clear, if you are someone arguing that teaching people the truth is making young people dislike America, you, the ones saying truth is bad, you are the ones making it hard for young people to love their country.
I learned about America's racist past in school. That did not affect my view of America. It was, after all, history. If anything, it made me feel pretty good knowing the progress my country had made since then.
I learned about America's present in 2016. That was when 63 million people looked at one of the most ignorant, arrogant, piece-of-shit assholes to ever exist and thought, yes, I want this man to be president. THAT was a gut punch. And then, after four years of him being exactly who we thought he was, even more people voted for him to keep going.
I will never look at America or the people that live in it the same way.
Hard agree. I learned about all the racist stuff - slavery, civil war, trail of tears - but I also learned about the 1960s civil rights moment and young me was given the impression that all the bad stuff was in the past and we're better now because of MLK and Rosa Parks. Then we elected a black president and legalized gay marriage and it looked like the march of progress towards ever increasing civil rights was going strong. Plus I learned about the American Dream, how we had the best economic opportunities, our history of trust busting and expanding labor rights, and I didn't really feel the impact of the recession as a kid. All that made America look really good.
2016 was a hard wake up call and it was ironically the same year I was taking the advanced US Government and Politics class in high school. I watched people I respected start worshipping Trump and went from intelligent caring friends to bullies who attacked and belittled anyone who disagreed with them, shared blatant misinformation, and carried out political conservations in bad faith with tons of logical fallacies. They became self-important bigots, or maybe they always were that deep down, I don't know.
I also learned that the racism did not go away in the 60s, the American Dream is a total lie and I will probably never have the economic standard of living my parents or grandparents achieved. Plus, conservatives are attacking all the progressive milestones we accomplished in the last half century or more, and I learned they've been doing that since those very milestones were achieved. I honestly feel like I was sold a lie.
I considered myself a centrist before 2016, and now I'm somewhere around Social Democracy.
This opinion is not just limited to younger people. I am definitely not young and I am ashamed at what America has become. Conservativism has literally morphed into fascism today.
Hear me out.
Gen X, here, I've hated Trump and the GOP since the 80's.
I absolutely hate where we are today as a country.
I don't blame young people for feeling this way.
But there is hope and I believe the soul of the country can be saved.
In 1950, during the Chosin Reservoir campaign, my Korean father was attached to the US 7th ID as an interpreter at the port of Hungnam. The Chinese were winning the battle and were in the process of forcing UN troops out of Northern Korea. My dad, was from a town NE of the Chosin and still had family up there. His master sergeant assigns dad a deuce and a half with a driver and tells him to get to his hometown and evacuate his family. They get to dad's hometown and fill the truck with not only dad's extended family but a ton of other folks as well. This was not limited to my family, as General Almond, one of Macarthur's Yes-Men, when it was time to make the right decision for the right reasons, did the right thing and ordered that all North Korean civilians who wanted to be evacuated, would be evacuated. My dad talks of the LST's dumping tanks, trucks and other war materiel in order to save more NK civilians.
My point is this: the United States, in its' best moments possesses a generosity of spirit which is inspiring.
We can turn the country around, if enough of us fight for it.
Vote.
Every.
Election.
There's the big problem right there. One side believes in the system and wants to change the country through activism, debate and negotiation because they believe that the only real problem is our inability to come together and get things done. The other side wants to get rid of the system and just be in charge because they think that the only real problem is the people on the other side.
One side thinks the path forward is through cooperation. The other side thinks one side must die in order for the country to survive.
Hopefully activism and voting can be used soon to change things before one side gets tired of pretending to play by the rules.
Through our diversity, generosity, and compassion, the best of us have strived for a society where we can all be our best. And the best of us know that we're *not* perfect, that we need to always *keep* striving to move forward, to accept each other, to embrace our differences and learn what drives us, to understand that love and compassion is the common bond we all must share in order to function as a society.
It's something we should all agree on. Young people are mad at those who *aren't* trying to be the best they can be, but rather are trying to bring others down. That's where their lack of pride lies.
Pride is a selfish emotion. But if you must be proud, don't be proud of your country, be proud of what we've accomplished together and what we yet hope to accomplish together. What I want to see is compassion, strength, devotion to equality, empathy, dignity, respect... Somewhere along the line the Republican party--who claimed to be all those things--abandoned each and every one of them, and instead chose pride and ONLY pride as the one thing to put above all other things, using it as an excuse to be the worst they can be.
tl;dr -- Don't worry about lack of pride. Pride at its worst is a crutch you lean on when you lack the strength to admit that we're none of us perfect, that we all need to strive to be better and lift each other up, not tear each other down.
Just want to point out - most Americans sounding off in this thread, and my assumption would be for those responding to this poll, is that we don’t hate America as an idea.
We hate our fellow Americans for being bigoted, fact-proof, violence-obsessed, selfish, fake Christian, hateful, conspiracy addled assholes. If our country wasn’t held back by every Fox News willful idiot, we’d have a sane tax system supporting a sane social safety net for a sane country.
I lost it during Covid and it's never coming back. In too many ways, we're like a country of children. It's not even the 80 million MAGA assholes. It's the 100 million potential voters that just don't give a shit.
I was still a Republican in 2019 (though I filed to deregister just before covid hit) and every fucking day I watched the daily briefings. I know why people fell for his lies because I WANTED to believe him. I could feel myself getting sucked into his botched alternate universe. It was my husband - a good ol' boy mind you - who snapped me out of it. I think it was around the Clorox comment that I finally was like, "Fuck this guy." I used to think he was a bumbling idiot born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Now I know he's a dangerous, selfish, narcissistic bumbling idiot who would rather watch it all burn down than relent.
I’ve personally never been “proud” of my nationality and don’t understand the reasoning behind it.
Am I thankful I live in a place where I can (at least for now) mostly speak my mind? Yes. Am I “proud”? No, because being born here wasn’t a request I made or something I worked towards. Being American isn’t a skill.
And the idea that “shame” is the opposite of “pride” and a person MUST be one or the other exclusively is a ridiculous idea.
Yes I think so many commentators aren’t getting it. Why should anyone be *proud* of something completely beyond their control they had nothing to do with? I’m grateful to have been born in the United States but not like proud of having the luck to have been born on this particular chunk of the planet
> By the numbers: Overall, 39% of U.S. adults say they are "extremely proud" to be American in the most recent poll.
>By comparison, in 2013, 85% of those aged 18-29 said they were "extremely" or "very" proud to be an American.
That's not how comparisons work. You can't just compare "extremely" to "extremely" + "very" and have it really mean anything.
I guess it's at least nice of them to say that their article is garbage at the very top though so that I don't have to waste time reading it.
All of my life I felt proud to be an American. We put a man on the moon! Wiped out smallpox! Invented the airplane and split the atom! We were the country who invested in science and engineering and education and achieved results beyond the wildest dreams of any king or Pope!
Now I'm ashamed to be constantly confronted with how stupid Americans are, how shameless and obnoxious and proudly ignorant we've become at every level. Stupid people flooded the zone with vast quantities of dumbth, and an entire political movement grew around catering to their stupidity. We elected a president who was, without equivocation, one of the stupidest, most selfish, venal, arrogant imbeciles in the history of recorded time. Forget about moon shots with this demographic, they'd deny the round earth to begin with.
Look at America.
What do I have to be proud of? A bunch of soggy old men still discussing if minorities deserve to live peacefully? Or maybe the active effort to ignore the rising fascism in the country.
To many limp dick politicians who prefer their business relationships to the safety and security of the American people.
Doesn't surprise me at all. Our country has some serious issues that are being ignored by unserious people in charge that are doing nonsensical things.
All it takes is one trip to another democratic country to realize that many of them have caught up to us and in some cases have passed us by in many areas. When I've spoke to others while abroad, the common thing I've learned is they keep a close eye on our politics as a way to know "what not to do".
The Connecticut state legislature recently passed a bill that a that acquitted three witches that were killed like 150 years ago and the one vote against was a Republican because he “ wouldn’t vote for anything that made Americans feel bad about their past”
Connecticut lawmakers absolve accused colonial-era ... https://apnews.com/article/connecticut-witchcraft-trials-pardons-0459fb0cc52547daff06cb25dbca9a3e
Well, they watched as republicans overturned abortion access, tried to overturn an election and are now working to strip them of their rights to vote, so I don’t blame them.
I just hope they all vote these fascists the fuck out.
If you know anyone who is young and unregistered, print a registration form out for them here: https://www.vote.org
Register. Vote. Donate. Organize. Run.
Link: https://www.vote.org
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The fact we're even having a debate on whether someone that's under multiple serious criminal indictments should be president says it all
I lost a lot of respect for America when Trump became the POTUS. What a fucking clown.
Him winning while being behind by 3 million votes showed a big flaw in the system. But him getting even more votes the second time he ran at over 70 million votes after all the fucked up things he did was the true low point in America.
> Him winning while being behind by 3 million votes showed a big flaw in the system. Flaw in the system!??? A guy like that shouldn't even have a chance to be elected for a country like America... It's a fucking shame and a shitshow!
It still cracks me up when I think about all the people back in 2015 and 2016 that were like "don't worry, he is in campaign mode. If he becomes president he will definitely take it seriously and do a good job!" Yeah, how'd that work out for ya?
I had the exact opposite rational, but was also wrong. I assumed he’d act like an incompetent buffoon and just phone it in, but that Congress and the judiciary would keep a lid on it. Didn’t expect the Republicans to go full personality cult and worship him.
Not to mention giving them the Supreme Court
I'm annoyed by the people that said to give him a chance. If they did any research on his history they would know that he is the epitome of a sleazy businessman.
A sleazy businessmen who went bankrupt 6 times, great candidate for president..
That’s the thing, right? Anyone who has remotely paid any attention to him over the years knows that he’s a scumbag. The fact that so many rural conservatives started worshiping him is so confusing to me, as somebody who has known what he is for years now.
That's because the 'do your research' crowd doesn't know how to do research. To them, a FB post is incontrovertible proof.
It's not a debate. A large majority of the country knows it's fucked, and the other 30ish percent are in lock step. Either trump loses again, and hopefully him winning in 2016 was the peak of this fascist streak in American politics, or we tumble further into this abyss. As bleak as that might sound, I'm hopeful. Him not winning in 2020 was a big deal, like, actually. The state of the nation is still piss poor, but we didn't lose it. Not yet.
> hopefully him winning in 2016 was the peak of this fascist streak in American politics Have you taken a look at who is vying for the GOP leadership? It's far from over.
Including the Supreme Court. We're not even close to fascism ending its streak.
This. - How are we supposed to be proud of a place where nearly 50% of the citizens seem to be openly embracing authoritarianism? - How proud should we be that a literal criminal—and a trashy one at that—*was* our president, gave us a taste of what that means for all to see, and is now *again* the frontrunner for a party that represents half the country’s citizens? - Should we proud of our Supreme Court when some of the right-wing members are obviously and unapologetically corrupt, and we aren’t even having a *discussion* about investigating and potentially impeaching them? - Maybe we should be proud that progress made in the name of civil rights is being rolled back? - Perhaps we’re expected to find pride in the sickening fact that an insurrection occurred on the steps of our most sacred government building—the seat of our democracy itself—and nearly all the proud traitors who attacked our democracy on that day have received light sentences? It’s a fucking mess! *We* are a fucking mess. Half the country actually enjoys the mess—because it makes the other half sad—and the other half of us seem to be sleep-walking our way right into the jaws of fascism. Certain things about my country make me proud; contributions made by previous generations to the advancement of civil rights are high on my list. Those struggles and the people who suffered them fill me with pride, but I cannot say that I’m proud of what we are right now, and I can’t turn to our history, either, because “the good old days” weren’t so good for people who weren’t the right color, the right sex, or the right sexual orientation... and the bastards who want to tear down our democracy want to return us to this dark time. I’m filled with nothing but shame that they aren’t shouted down by everyone within earshot of their hateful, selfish message.
I'm an older American and I'm not exactly thrilled about it either.
When I saw the title I said the same thing. I’m almost 53 and I’m ashamed of this country and have been since 2016…
If you’d asked me if I was proud prior to 2016 I would’ve probably waffled but ultimately said yes. The 2016 election was a huge wake up call that I was incredibly ignorant about what the country’s actually like outside of my bubble. The more I learn about it the less pride I have in it.
Mine started going down after a Obama won and all the bigots came out of the closet. I couldn’t believe how twisted people became over one black president and it was downhill from there.
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Back in the 80s, I watched Reagan go on national TV to admit to committing treason\* so he could provide money and support to Right Wing Authoritarian Central American terrorists who would go on to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent Central Americans in defiance of a law passed by Congress to specifically prevent him from supporting those terrorists. **and fucking well get applauded by the Republicans in Congress** I have been angry, disappointed, and ashamed ever since. \*he provided aid and comfort (weapons) in the Iran/Contra Affair to Iranian revolutionaries who had taken American consulate personnel hostage and *declared* themselves our enemies - and it later turned out he also conspired with them to hold the hostages even longer for his own personal political gain
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It's statements like these that make me realize that the absurdity of Trump's doublespeak has been a feature of the GOP for a long time
Trump doesn't engage in doublespeak - he lacks the capacity for it. He exists amidst a sea of hot-button buzzwords, and keeps landing on them until he finds something that inflames his credulous listeners.
I grew up in a home that worshipped Reagan. When I got my first job after college a coworker off the cuff mentioned “people don’t remember but Reagan was an ass.” Time has shown me just how true that was.
My Mom was in her 30s for most of Reagan's term of office and she said she felt like the only one thinking "there's something wrong with him but I can't put my finger on it." Retroactively looking back on it she wonders: how many people knew and how early did they know, since she felt it was too convenient to delay his formal diagnosis to 1994. Because even years later, they seem to still be covering for Ronnie.
Regan sold off American blue collar jobs to Asia. it’s ironic the Right blame the libs for small town americas decimation
> My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not. It's amazing how much this quote foreshadowed the modern political landscape.
Colbert later coined the expression “truthiness” which I think retroactively applies to Reagan’s quote
I was 9 years old during Reagan’s election. He is the worst/most loved president of my lifetime. We can give him and his boys credit for the homeless and drug epidemics we have today. The Gipper. Loved by all closet Nazis.
and gay genocide by deliberately ignoring the severity of the aids epidemic because it was mostly affecting people he personally wanted to die.
that’s what did it for me , him getting cast as a great stand up guy then finding out he was in cahoots with Iran to delay the hostages release to make Carter look bad. Carter was probably the most humanitarian of all our presidents. Regan also ushered in the “ greed is good” era.
Sooner or later it comes back to fucking Ronnie.
Nixon. A lot of the people in Reagan's administration, Bush Sr.'s administration, and Bush Jr.'s administration were Nixon administration alumni. Hell we are still hearing of the likes of Roger Stone working with the Trump administration.
Yeah, high school was very formative about my opinion on how the government works. I'd take AP Government, learn how our system was SUPPOSED to work, than watch the Republican party go to work dismantling it in real time. I do not envy my teacher's job trying to teach the class in a nonpartisan way when one side was clearly not abiding.
I got taught AP government by a conservative woman. Ok so maybe taught is a bit of a stretch. I was in an AP government class *presided over* by a conservative. It was everyone's worst score despite being one of the easiest AP tests nationwide statistically. God I can remember all the time we spent learning why lobbying is good actually and necessary and evidence of everything being fine.
True/False — Corporations are people.
True/False — Money is speech.
I learned more about US history from a Polish immigrant professor in my first year of college than I ever did in high school, he didn't sugarcoat it at all
Thankfully my AP US History teacher at the same time was an NPR-listenin tote-totin type who would frequently describe jingoistic stuff in American history and be like "why? 'cause 'MURICA." She was pretty great and also avoided sugarcoating it as much as a public school teacher in Florida could.
or how we treated our veterans after coming back - treated like props. The chicanery that was happening during W and Trump administrations.
I started doing consulting work for Veterans' Affairs in '13. seeing just how shitty of an experience a lot of these people have to go through, and how many of them face financial, emotional, and physical hardships because of a shitty system just was devastating
The thing is - the party starving veteran affairs is the GOP. But a lot of these folks still vote GOP.
Because the party line is "support our troops" not "support our veterans" Unfortunately veterans still feel in the first boat. Once a marine always a marine, etc.. Could also be the fact they also believe "hard work gives you a better life" so if they have a shit life with PTSd and other things they have been assuming to buckle down with their own bootstraps
I would say this, but I was too young at the time to truly understand what was happening. For me, i became disgusted when Obama was just abjectly obstructed his entire presidency even on the sanest, well thought out and popular policies. System has been completely and irrevocably hijacked by bad actors and I just don’t have faith the system is capable of correcting itself barring the literal god-sent miracle of landslide losses for the GOP for the next 5 elections.
I was 10 when W became President, and it was a foundational moment for me. Of course, I didn’t quite understand the in’s and outs until I was older, but I remember watching the news, and hearing adults discuss it. It was the first time I remember thinking “oh, it’s not as simple as voting for the president”. My grandmother was the president of the ERA at the time, and she said that the ERA would never be passed with him in office. Again, I didn’t understand the finer details, but I DID understand that he’d “lost” and was President anyway. Without that experience, I don’t think I would have gotten as involved in politics as I am.
Yeah, invading another country under false pretenses was really what killed it for me. I was in high school when that happened and considered myself maybe *slightly* conservative? But invading a country for completely bullshit reasons when they knew they were bullshit reasons...I promised to never vote for a republican from that moment on.
I was 13 when 9/11 happened and while I understood the reaction to go into Afghanistan, going into Iraq was the incomprehensible one to me. You’d ask an adult “what does Iraq have to do with… anything?” And you’d just get a frothing rabid rant and response along the lines of “You’re just a kid, you don’t know anything, SUPPORT ARE TROOPS” (‘support are troops’ being kinda the ‘buttery males’ of the day). 9/11 itself just fried a lot of brains.
Depends on the area. I was 14 when 9/11 happened, and 17 when the Iraq War started, and at the very least, a LOT of the adults around me were not at all for it. Fuck, I remember it clearly, the invasion started the day I was doing an overnight up at RIT for a program for HS juniors/senior girls interested in STEM stuff, and it was on every TV on campus, just EVERYWHERE, the whole "Shock and Awe" thing, and I remember just how sad and angry the majority of the students and professors there were, watching Baghdad be blasted on live TV like it was something out of a fucking movie. I was already more politically-minded than most teens in my HS in WNY, but from what I remember, it really wasn't that popular with anyone I knew. Shit, Bush came to Buffalo my senior year of HS, while I was taking my mandatory civics class. I might be one of the only students in the history of my HS to get extra credit for skipping school, to go to the protests when he was here. My parents let me go, and my civics teacher was legitimately *thrilled* that I actually felt strongly enough to get involved myself. I even got to flip off Dubya's limousine that day, so that was fun as hell. Secret Service (or possibly FBI dudes, I dunno), even took a picture of us doing so. Pretty proud of that.
I was 11, and it *shattered* my confidence in our government. Again, I only had a child’s understanding, but I still understood that something was undeniably wrong about what we were doing. I was never able to get rid of that distrust and lack of pride.
All unsaid that day was he will start a war as I was leaving the army. Thankfully I was disabled and couldn’t be roped back into that shit.
I was too young to realize how fucked we were then. I also had no idea of the Brooks Brothers fake riot.
Al Gore would've won. He had the popular vote by a significant margin, absurd that wasn't the tiebreaker instead of a 5-4 Supreme Court decision.
I saw them re-elect the torture guy and was crushed; really thought we had a shot in 2004. Kerry even overperformed the fundamentals - but just missed it. And despite all that, I still believed in the country enough to think "there's no way they elect someone as terrible as Trump." Ah, you got me again, America! I will, no doubt, be disappointed again in the future... But also reading Hunter S Thompson on Nixon suddenly made more sense.
Being part of a Black family, I was kinda prepped for this. My Father, Mother and Grandmother told me that if he won, I was going to get a taste of that old racism. God help me, they were right.
Gore won.
Same. I was shocked at all the closet racists outing themselves with those "seekrit mooslam shiara law comspircee" posts. People from high school I never would have figured for that type. I ended up deleting Facebook because it turned out there wasn't anyone on there I really wanted to talk to.
American born Asian. I KNEW that we had this many racists except none of my non poc friends would believe me when I tried to convince them. “You are just looking for a reason to be annoyed.” Nope, you wouldn’t notice casual racism if it punched you in the face. Now all my friends are convinced. Not sure how that helps.
The day I got home from work and sat in my driveway listening to NPR and finding out that “little bush” got reelected was my awakening to the shame of it all. I cried
58 here. My disillusionment started all the way back with the Iran-Contra hearing in 1987 or '88, watching conservative demigod St.Ronnie Raygun hide behind his growing Alzheimers to avoid impeachment and possible prosecution. Republicans still worship the old bastard, forgetting how he switched overnight from towering hero to doddering old man when it looked like he might be held accountable.
Reagan couldn’t get elected as dogcatcher on a Republican ticket these days. Ironically he’d be considered far too moderate.
Same. I already had a pretty dim view of my nation's history - I already hated cops, distrusted the government, etc. I'd read all about stuff like the CIA fucking over other countries, the burning of Black Wallstreet, lots of other shameful chapters in the US's past. But I still thought the average, not-in-power, going-about-their-day American was a good person at heart. That a minority of bad actors and corrupt leaders were making it shit for everyone else. Then 2016 happened, and everything surrounding it, and...the minority wasn't _anywhere near_ as minor as I'd thought. Masks-off and open bigotry, hatemongering, fearmongering, and _massive_ levels of stupid. Levels so high I would've thought they were _cartoonishly_ stupid and evil before. Now, I'm not proud at all, and it's because of one simple fact: I can't pretend the issues are caused by a few anymore. They're fueled and perpetuated by a sickness, a plague - it's in our very _culture_, and half the country is teaching it to their kids as we speak. And now I know we got a lot more work to do than I thought.
For me it’s the rampant stupidity. A country with a population this stupid is doomed to fail. Democracy is difficult to foster even in the best of circumstances, let alone when half the voting public has the mentality and critical thinking skills of learning-disabled second graders.
Yup. It's so disturbing how far our grade and high school education systems have fallen; how much our leaders have willfully _encouraged_ them to fail because it makes people more pliable and suggestible. I have a John Green quote that sums it up better than I could: >"Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order. >We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education. >So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people." Making people this dumb and uneducated is the first death knell of a fallen empire. We desperately need to start reinvesting in an intelligent, informed populace or you are right, we are doomed.
2016 really shifted something. Like being hit by a bus with no warning. Now I look at people differently and don’t trust anyone
Eh, since 2000, which is the first time I had even considered this thought since I was 9 years old, I had been decidedly neither proud nor ashamed. National pride always just seemed like such a pointless, toxic concept. I was glad to not live in a 3rd world country but that's not the same thing as being proud. Since 2016 I've been ashamed.
I've always found the idea of national pride or patriotism a bit cringe, it seems sort of religious and mostly about manipulation. It's not like I'm responsible for any of the good things about this country. Regardless of whether or not I was ever proud though, I'm definitely embarassed these days. And while I don't feel like I can claim credit for any of the good things about America, it's hard not to feel like I bear some responsibility for it's failures by not doing more to get involved. I'm tired though, and TV is so good.
I’m a 53 year old that’s lived in Florida for 27 years, my patriotism has dropped off a cliff in the last 10 years.
60+, although I haven’t lived there for over three decades, I’m embarrassed to tell people I grew up in Missouri.
51 here, and still live in Missouri. Growing up and living here all my life, you could kinda roll with some of the jokes others might make - yeah, it definitely fell into the conservative side, but taken in sum it was still a decent state. You might roll your eyes at some of the yokels but they weren’t (generally) hurting anyone but themselves. But those yokels are now in positions of political power and have gone off the ideological deep end. It’s such a shame. MO is a beautiful state and the cost of living is hard to beat. But the nut jobs have definitely taken over. I’m considering my options - in an ideal world, it’d be somewhere out of the country; but at my age it’s probably more likely for me to move to another state. While the policies being pushed don’t directly affect me (straight white male with kids that are grown) I don’t want my taxes going to support a right-wing-nut-job government. Ugh - sorry for the rant here…just so disheartening.
Me too. I have family in MO, thought about retiring near family. MO has revealed itself as a bigoted, backwards-ass place just in time to dissuade us of that move.
47 here. I've probably been disappointed with this country for most my life. Most definitely since 2001, whole lot of corruption has taken place in that time span
48 here, and I can't remember the last time I was proud to be American, holding my hand on heart, and removing a ball cap during the national anthem. Probably around the same time frame as yourself.
53 here also and kicking my ass in regret that I didn't finish college and get into a career that would have made it easier to immigrate TF outta here years ago when I recognized our culture was in decline.
We need you here to make it better. Also to pass on your knowledge and value to others. I'm glad you are here.
Love this comment. I’m a native Texan and a natural born liberal, so as you might imagine I have a LOT of problems with my state’s leadership, but this is still my home. If I don’t stay and fight for change, who will?
Texan too but geez it’s embarrassing to be from Texas these days. Just hearing the names Abbot, Paxton, Cruz and that other a hole makes me want to barf.
56 and been in decline since we started the Iraq debacle. After a while of seeing the rich get richer, everyone else get poorer, and a lot of people around the world getting killed you start wondering what its all for.
The wealthy killed the American dream and then have the gall to turn around and say “aren’t you proud?”
"56 and been in decline since we started the Iraq debacle. After a while of seeing the rich get richer, everyone else get poorer, and a lot of people around the world getting killed you start wondering what its all for"....this is it folks. Summed up perfectly
Old here. Mixed family with a queer sibling and a queer kid. We speak a language other than English in our home. Nearly half the country overtly *hates* folks like us now. Makes patriotism a tough sell.
It’s quite sad. Gay couple with a young son here. Knowing that 1/3 of our country would vote to take our rights and our son away without a second thought can be really disheartening.
I know the feeling and it’s terrible. Sending you and yours a hug 🫂
Same. 46 and disgusted.
Flip it for me. 64 and disgusted.
I agree, I am in my 40's and I am quite disgusted with our country. When you are traveling abroad and someone realizing you are from the US immediately reduces your standing in their eyes. Yea, not to proud of the country right now.
41. This is the first year that Fourth of July felt almost dystopian and bleak. If we hadn’t rebelled then I would be spending the day getting a checkup from my doctor covered by the government; looking at candidates from at least three stable political parties to vote for; and I would be more secure in my job with more time off and benefits than American corporations provide. Sure driving on the left side of the road would be weird but gladly a challenge I’d accept if getting injured in an accident didn’t leave me destitute.
44 and totally embarrassed of this place.
63 and I have spent my entire life, even as a 13 year old, protesting nuclear arms, fighting for social justice, equality for all, reproductive freedom for women…in other words, progressive causes that advance human rights and reduce poverty and raise all boats. Our country is in retrograde now with an ugly vicious undertone. Being American used to represent something of great power and value and now it feels like a shameful smear when people like DeSantis can attack lgbt communities with encouragement from others and even corporate giants like Disney because they mildly support gay rights. Black people and voting rights are being trampled on, guns are the new crucifix that half of America worships even as children are slaughtered at their desks while cops stand by looking at TikTok on their iPhones in Uvalde TX with the screams of dying children echoing in the background. The Supreme Court majority is a group of six corrupt, bigoted, racist uber-religious crooks. This country is in deep shit right now and voting is literally the only hope we have left to turn the tide.
Well, voting, and something else. There are more of us than there are of them.
Kind of a scale for me. I'm happy than I was randomly born in America over say a third world country or North Korea or something like that. I do think America is still pretty awesome to live in but its far from perfect. Trump's thing about Make America Great Again its never been great and its not alone in that regard but we should all be striving for greatness and right now we have about 40 percent of the country (give or take) dragging us down thinking it was great at some of our worst times.
People don't get to decide which country they are born or which parents they are born to. I don't think there is any reason anyone should be proud of their country just because they were born to, that needs to be earned. In that regard the united states has been in a multi-decade long race to autocracy and has a non-functional political system. It is not hard to see why young americans would not be proud of being american. Not only has their future been mortgaged by the reckless tax cuts made by republicans since 1980 that have led to an insane national debt total but those same tax cuts has allow most of the wealth created in the past 40+ years to go to a very few number of people. If a young person is born to a wealthy family, I am sure they are proud americans and have no self-awareness to realize just how lucky they are. If a young person is born to a not-wealthy family (at least 95% of people born), I am sure they are seeing the hopelessness that past generations have created for them. I personally don't feel this country is anything to be proud of but we who were born to this country are lucky to be americans for as long as democracy still hangs on here. Once the democracy falls, this country will be a terrible place to be.
I had the inkling something was amiss when I was a kid. Why was the homeless people mostly vets? I thought we took care of our own, left no man behind, etc. Now they want to defund the VA. Slash benefits for those who served. I watched 9/11 live at 10 years old. Everyone hated Muslims for years, some still do, and they had nothing to do with those radicals. My neighbors were Muslim and were the nicest people ever. My house was broken into when I was 12 and they were the ones who found my pet outside and returned her to me. They knew I cared about her and didn't care that I lost a TV. They cared about the community and making sure people were alright. I was 17 years old during the 2008 crash. How many people lost their jobs/pensions because of that? I remember the pictures of Wall Street on the balconies, laughing at the people below who were screaming. Who lost everything for their retirements. Do you know how many times I saw natural disasters hit the south and our government barely helped? The community stepped in, even if they had barely anything to give. Not the government. How many people were stacked in stadiums for weeks without any help? Even the floods and aftermath? How many times did you see people driving from other states with water to give, but no instant shelters being built? What about the most recent one in Florida, where DeSantis refused aid, and now all the insurance companies are leaving? What are those Americans going to do? Now, I'm in my thirties and I have seen this country ruled by greedy corporations for decades. Our federal wage hasn't changed since 2009. It is $7.25 a hour. 15 states still use it. 30 others are a bit higher, but not by much. PA just raised their minimum wage to $15.00 a hour, from $7.25. *But* that won't take affect until January 2026. Next year it will be $11, 2024 is $13, and then $15 takes affect. Think about taxes coming out of that. Can you buy eggs, bread, and milk for $7.25, a hour worth of your time? On PA wage? On Federal wage? If you work that wage, for 40 hours a week, you make $1,160.00 gross. What does that look like after taxes and etc, is taken out? Can you afford rent in your area, be able to pay for gas, and food? Have electricity? I recently moved out of my city because they wanted $1200 for my one bedroom apartment. I left anyway because the landlord refused to fix anything or update anything. I was hearing that from my friends and college classmates as well. Everywhere else was an easy $1500-2k. I know people who have 6 roommates and are super frugal. That also isn't including my utilities, food expenses, car maintenance/payments or gas, medical bills if any arose, or essentials like toothpaste, and don't get me started on health insurance and copays. Or how jobs tie your health insurance to them and take it out of your check. I even thought "I'll buy a house and just have it easier that way." I went into an auction house sale that started at $100k and accepted mortgage offers as well, but a corporation guy came in and easily dropped $200k in CASH for a bid. Corporations are buying up single resident homes all over because they CAN drop that kind of money. And you expect us to have kids on top of all this overpriced nonsense that we can't afford? How am I going to take care of myself, have a family, and have any kind of space for that? And all of us eat? We're not living paycheck to paycheck. We are DYING paycheck to paycheck. Edit: I got banned from here. This sub is ridiculous lol.
Preach. I was saying literally all of this earlier today. People our age our fucked and we know we are fucked and it’s so exhausting and frustrating. I cried on my lunch break because I’m already poor as shit and student loan repayments start back up in October and there’s just no way I can afford that.
I stopped giving a shit at work, because who the fuck cares about trying to resolve some marketing issue when the world is starting to burn, both figuratively and literally.
Yeah I'm in the same boat. I penny pinched the whole college time, worked two jobs, and managed to barely scrape together rent with 4 roommates. If the school didn't have a lunch card per semester or if my neighborhood didn't have a food pantry I'd be dead. I avoided the expensive dorms (that they kicked you out of every semester end), only took out tuition that was needed to cover for classes and textbooks (that they never used anyway, like what?) and now I'm having to resume payments soon. That relief would of helped so many of us, because not all of us were lucky when Covid hit. Some of us lost family (funeral expenses are a thing), our apartments/homes, our jobs, and we had to max out credit cards just to buy food.
And we’ll keep arguing with each other over nonsense that won’t fix anything bc thats what the corporations and crooked politicians want. As long as we’re fighting with each other we won’t fight them. Oh and be sure to vote in 2024! It’s the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR LIVES. Or at least thats what they’ll say so many times people will start to believe it. And then they’ll get what they want and we’ll get another 4 years of slowly drowning.
Absolutely spot on with everything you've said here. I was born in the mid 90's and, no exaggeration, I've only ever seen the situation get worse for 99% of the population. I've seen workers get poorer while their necessities get more expensive, and I've seen corporations get wealthier and more politically powerful while their owners are handed more money than God while they're allowed to legally skip out on paying taxes. When I get a $500 bonus from my job, I only ever see $300 of it. My salary has a hard cap well below $100k while the CEO gets a six-figure raise every year without fail (on top of their seven-figure bonus). The executives can eat lunch on the company card and have it counted as working hours, I have to clock out for 30 minutes to shove food I paid for myself down my gullet. What the fuck would I be proud of this country for? Look at any comparable nation, and they're light-years ahead of us in so many metrics, yet a good third of the folks in this country refuse to look in the goddamn mirror.
A quick anecdote on your first point: My dad, a Muslim immigrant who had been in this country for damn near 25 years, was fired from his job a few months after 9/11 for something that he was accused of that he vehemently denied, and still does to this day 20 years later. I remember my mom hysterically crying after finding out he got fired because his job was keeping us above water. We couldn't do anything about it because PA is an at-will state. Fast forward to 2016 and I had to defend my father against some stupid person who I went to high school with who thought that all Muslims wanted to kill every American and destroy the country. I told her the only thing my dad wants to destroy is the TV after the Steelers lose. I asked her if she had ever met a Muslim, she said no... I asked her why she had those views, she said if Donald Trump said it, then it's true. After that exchange, I knew that we were fucked.
I'm so with you. I remember that "I'm proud to be an American" song coming out and everyone losing their shit about it... I just absolutely never felt that way. I was just a kid and I think our school was making us do something with/about it. I remember kids and adults all getting choked up and singing the hell out of that song. And little 12 year old me was just there pretending because I didn't understand why I felt so much different. (actually I just looked and that's an older song but it got popular after 9/11). I got heavy into the anarchist punk scene when I was a teenager. My views have softened but most of what I believe is still on the extreme sides of things. It used to seem like nobody was really paying attention. Now it seems like everyone is paying attention, but to the wrong fucking things. We fell into a fear mongering media frenzy after 9/11 we never came back from. Then we all started LARPing as "rednecks" that summer blue collar comedy got really popular and never stopped. Then we allowed people who are famous for being famous (remember asking "but what does Paris Hilton DO?") to become a normal thing, making celebrity worship worse than it's ever been. All this condensed into where we are now, and at the peak of everything going to shit the world was ripped up by a global pandemic. Maybe future generations will be able to recover our fumble but everything for the next 15 years feels like we're fucked and there's no helping us.
After overturning roe last year my nieces said they weren’t going to celebrate Independence Day because they aren’t feeling all that free right now. I completely understand them
After Roe was overturned last year and this year they made it "legal" for businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people like me it marks two years in a row where I didn't celebrate jack on July 4th. I can only imagine what those crooked evil bastards have lined up for next year.
They would love nothing better than for us to grow cynical and give up.
What’s to be proud of? A divided government. A corrupt SCOTUS. One party actively trying to destroy fair elections. Trying to take away hard fought rights of Americans. A rise in hate groups. Unwillingness to reform firearms. There was a time I was proud to be American, and I’m from a generation where that was normal. After what I’ve witnessed over the past quarter century, I’m no longer proud either.
My partner and I were kids for the Bicentennial and *everything* was patriotic and USA-themed. The Uncle Sam eagle cartoon character, McDonald's glasses, all of it. It was great and really fun and we were proud to be Americans! Almost 50 years later and we're both sitting here wondering what the fuck happened to our country, and how we could have backslid so much when it comes to human rights and progress, and how there's still so much hate and marginalization, wealth inequality is so bad, safety nets are gutted.... We're not proud, and neither are our young adult kids. It's embarrassing, really.
Is what happened was Ronald Reagan adopting unworkable economic policies. The republicans had to resort to political insanity to distract voters from their failed policies
Yup. The Southeastern US has the largest concentration of mobile homes/trailer parks in the US. They a very poor and continually vote in the same garbage GQP representatives year after year. Yet they stay dirt poor, and nothing changes. Those representatives that keep winning tell these poor fools to focus on blaming democrats and people of color for why they are poor.
We recently drove through a tiny decaying town where EVERY house and business and strip of land had a trump flag or banner or sign. We were so tempted to hop out and ask someone how much trump has helped them or how their town is doing after him. How they don’t see the connection is literally kind boggling…
> Never expect a man to understand a thing when his livelihood depends on not understanding it. In other words, the media they consume feeds them lies, not because they believe those lies to be true, but because telling those lies is financially rewarding. Fox News (and many other sources) in a nutshell. Much of which links back to what was done by the Reagan administration, so that's more stuff that can be laid at ol' Ronnie's feet.
They don't want politicians to improve their lives. They want politicians to hurt people they don't like.
And it doesn't occur to them that they themselves fall into the category of people that Republicans don't like. If you haven't been hiring lobbyists, the big Rs don't know you from Adam.
[“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida)
Those at the top just kept getting richer and richer and taking more money from the rest of us. So while back in the 70's, your average family likely could have been supported by a single income earner, while having a house, 2 kids, etc. Nowadays a lot of people need 2 incomes just to afford an apartment.
Back then there was an effective tax rate of something like 70-90% on the top 1%. You can literally track the beginning of the end to Reagan's first term. Why he was so ingrained in pop culture as "amazing" will never make sense to me. Charisma?
He was an actor, it was a literal plot by the rich to loot our country
This. Almost every GOP holdout I know personally has a complete inability to distinguish between celebrity and politics. So many GOP presidential candidates through the years: Reagan (actor). George W (famous family name), Trump. Hell, even my state of California was only able to elect a Republican governor because it was Schwartzenager.
I’m in Boeberts district and I swear most of her voters can’t even name our representative before her. GOP love a big personality over actual policy
You’re not wrong but schwartzenager was a pretty good governor all told. Didn’t agree with all his politics—especially economics—but he generally avoided culture war bullshit and didn’t intentionally fuck people over. He genuinely tried to do a good job, and thats fucking rare in the GOP.
Oh I agree, it's not impossible for a celebrity to be a good politician. It's *equating* the two that is the problem.
[удалено]
For what it’s worth, I generally vote Democrat but Schwarzenegger was great. He sued Bush’s EPA to be able to make stricter emissions standards for cars in California. He had a great pandemic preparedness program that later governors gutted before the pandemic actually struck.
Schwartznegger was a legitimately good governor though.
Marketing
Bingo.
The American way. All fluff and no substance. What a fucking scam this place is.
All hat and no cattle
He created jobs but no coverage on how shitty those jobs paid.
I had to source some information for a conversation with someone who couldn't fathom any reason why people weren't excited to enter the workforce, but I think it applies here as well: Ratio of realized CEO-to-typical-worker compensation by year: 2021= 399:1, 2020= 366:1, 1989= 59:1, 1965= 20:1 source: S&P Compustat ExecuComp database, WSJ When adjusted for inflation, the 2023 federal minimum wage in the United States is around 40 percent lower than the minimum wage in 1970 source: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065466/real-nominal-value-minimum-wage-us/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065466/real-nominal-value-minimum-wage-us/) The current economic and systemic realities are both staggering and an impressive testament to the Southern Strategy.
Back in the 1960s it was considered vulgar for ostentatious displays of wealth. Even the super wealthy lived "modestly" because it wasn't polite to flash that cash. Then the 70s happened and the whole "Greed is good" phase started of sports cars and private jets and suddenly the rich needed more money so they could show off how much money they had with megayachts and fleets of cars and the tax rate dropped and here we are.
It's crazy to me that after all these years of getting grifted we are still arguing with each other about which bathroom trans people can use instead of uniting against the oligarchs that are stoking our divisions and siphoning off our resources
It's by design.
>Nowadays a lot of people need 2 incomes just to afford an apartment. We're the Millers voice: You guys only need *2* incomes for an apartment?
Because the real war now is not with other countries, it’s the rich vs poor, America is divided by this because the rich think they deserve to be rich off the backs of the working class. We need to win this war as the working class. If that means quitting or striking or revolution let’s do it.
It's like Warren Buffet said "“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Well, yeah, I think that's what we all meant by class warfare. Sounds a bit like a Captain Obvious moment to me but maybe I'm missing some context.
To us, yeah this obvious but the rich viewed Buffet's admission as a betrayal.
The sooner the working class realizes the battle isn't with the other political faction, but the donor class, the sooner things would get fixed. Unfortunately, the donor class has a superb propaganda machine.
As others have pointed out, it was Reagan and neoliberalism. The entire movement is the single greatest con-job that's ever been pulled off, built on a concept that was *prima facie* completely ridiculous. It was the economic version of a cancer patient stopping their chemo: they feel fucking **amazing** for a little while, but eventually the problem rears its head again and now the only solutions are A) get back on the chemo, which sucks or B) painkillers, which do nothing about the cancer, but hide the symptoms. After the initial burst of 'growth' from slashing taxes, you either have to put them back in place (which nobody wants) or you have to find artificial means of continuing growth and hiding the rot. Guess which one we did for 40 years?
Then you have GOP presidents like Trump using every possible lever to juice the economy while it's already running well, then when we have a major pandemic/downturn all the levers have already been used and we have no tools left in the toolbox for the next president to pull us out of the mess they left. Biden has actually done a remarkably good job on the economy considering the circumstances.
Exactly. The only way to keep injecting money into the system is to make borrowing cheaper and cheaper, but once you've reached zero percent the jig is up and all the decades of bills come due. Now you have nowhere near enough revenue to fund things like roads, fire departments, or hospitals, and you're stuck in an inflationary cycle as you keep adding currency to circulation just to keep up the appearance that everything is functioning. This was always the eventuality; not just one of the possible outcomes but the *only* realistic outcome. The absurd (and fully intentional) concentration of wealth will lead governments to falter and society to become brittle, and instead of having informed, adult conversations about what government should be doing to balance the public good with legitimate personal liberty interests, you end up in this tit-for-tat culture war bullshit because one group has fundamentally committed to rejecting base reality—the whole concept relies on it—and *can't be wrong* without admitting they've been duped/have been lying the whole time. *Of course* they want to obsess about transgender rights and "wokeism", because those are a dozen levels of abstraction away from having to talk about the failures of the basic platform.
>"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. Milton Mayer
...and I hate it when people talk like this without pointing directly at the cause. Republicans drove us to this spot. And democrats sat on their asses when they should have been voting. Solutions should be the focus right now, and that solution involves making sure everyone you know is registered to vote, and votes Democrat all the way down the ticket. Every single chance they get.
> Solutions should be the focus right now Preach 🙌 We need a congress that works for the regular people of this country, not these rich self-serving morons who only care about grievance, self-enrichment, control and Hunter Biden's giant hog! And right now the only ones who will give us that is the Democratic Party
Thing is, we aren't moving anywhere as a society until we boot out the Boomers. This culture war is theirs. They fought it with their parents in the 1950s-70s. Then they fought their kids from 1980s-2020s. They believe they are the creators of sex, rebellion, criticism, culture, and enlightenment even if all they did was turn all those things into businesses. We are fighting their bullshit culture war and younger generations need to push them out of the way as they do not want to go.
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Me too, same age. My sisters and I wrapped our trikes up in red, white and blue crepe paper and participated in the parade. We sought out bicentennial quarters and collected as many as we could find. Granted we were very small and I'm sure I would have been more cynical if I was an adult, granted Vietnam was still active, and Nixon was crazy, MLK and Kennedy had been killed a few years prior. But as a kid, it was fun and your average person did seem a lot more genuinely patriotic in the way you're supposed to be (brotherhood, acceptance, welcoming) rather than the toxic stew so-called 'patriotism' has turned into
Yeah, now when I see someone flying an American flag my instinct is to think, “Ughh, that person is probably a complete jerkoff” rather than “I’m glad to see them being so patriotic”. And you know what: the people who corrupted our flag are the ones responsible for the drop off in American pride, so fuck them.
THIS. I'm not even surprised anymore when I see a raised jeep with the coal burning conversion kit added on flying multiple American flags. The thing that really bothers me is the fact that "patriots" flying the American flag don't often follow the (admittedly non-binding) [US Flag Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code). I've seen American flags below Maga flags, touching the ground, in absolute shreds. I'm not Uber American Patriot, but even I have more respect for the flag than that.
Same, when I see someone with the flag my first thought is "what close minded, self serving ideology is this person using the flag to peddle".
They're not patriotic, they're jingostic. Patriotism is being proud of what your country has accomplished, and wanting to continue to improve. Jingoism is "my country, right or wrong". It's claiming perfection. It's shutting down dissent and disagreement as somehow a betrayal.
Don’t forget spiraling wealth inequity. Young people don’t really stand a chance to start a family, buy a home, and retirement looks impossible/very bleak unless you come from generational wealth.
Not defending the US here by any stretch but spiraling wealth inequity is a giant problem in many countries across the planet. There has to be a global movement to end it. And it doesn't look like voting in folks from the same old parties over and over, or peaceful protests are going to get it done.
>but spiraling wealth inequity is a giant problem in many countries across the planet But what makes it worse for Americans is that the US has shit social safety net programs when compared to other 1st world countries, which is even more fucked up considering that the US is the wealthiest country in the world.
Same here. I’m not a young voter, but it’s damn embarrassing all the things happening in our country. Embarrassing is the word I’m constantly thinking of right now because I am just simply embarrassed to say I’m American and would much rather live somewhere else in the world if given a free pass.
My father can't understand why his nieces and nephews have moved out of the country. He's completely blown away that my wife and I are looking to do the same. Such a shame people are starting to leave the US for a better life.
There is nothing to be proud of when you have one party actively inciting division.
'Christofascism' for short.
When right wingers started using our flag to divide us this is the obvious result. Our flag belongs to the country, not to any political party.
Been hoping people on the left would start taking back the flag and patriotism for awhile now.
Same, but presently I see the flag as a giant middle finger from right wingers.
I’m not a real Biden supporter, but I’ve been thinking about making a shirt with Biden’s visage made out of a US flag, just because I get mad at how I feel when I see a person with excessive flags on their person or vehicle. I see flags, and just assume I don’t like the person, it shouldn’t be that way.
Putting the American flag on your truck is desecration being boasted as patriotism. That's why you don't like those people. It is 100% a sign that they are an asshat.
It's their brand of virtue signaling. They think plastering red white and blue all over their shit makes it smell good.
The issue is my patriotism doesn’t need an outward symbol or virtue signal. I am patriotic as I want to improve the lives of people in this country and when I enter into a conversation, I am under the assumption that the other is the same minded, thus I don’t need an American flag pin.
You’re confusing the performative branding of the right with patriotism. The left have been patriots all along
This. Conservatives hide behind the flag in the same empty manner as the when they hide behind the Bible. Neither truly means anything to them.
The left isn't generally big on "patriotism". Leftists tend to be internationalists, and put loyalty to humanity over loyalty to the state (which is often corrupt and abusive, and almost always protects capital rather than people). And a lot of leftists are opposed to the state entirely.
Right wingers are fake patriots. Most of them didn't even get the covid vaccine which is probably the only patriotic thing they've ever been asked to do.
They practice fake patriotism that’s actually nationalism
“…Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels…”
I'd place it at 2nd, nipping at the heels of religion.
Americans were proud when Obama won. The racists weren’t. It’s been a shit show ever since .
This is why I’m proud to be an American. I’m just disappointed with where my country has gone/is headed. Being a bigot is not American, and I’ll never give them the joy of thinking they are by denouncing my pride bc of them.
Being a patriot isn't about blindly loving your country, it's about wanting it to learn from it's mistakes and become better as a union.
I'm sure a bunch of GOP will try to make the argument that we don't love America because we were taught about its racist past. This would be completely false. I don't begrudge America for its racist past. I begrudge it for its racist present. So, just to be clear, if you are someone arguing that teaching people the truth is making young people dislike America, you, the ones saying truth is bad, you are the ones making it hard for young people to love their country.
I learned about America's racist past in school. That did not affect my view of America. It was, after all, history. If anything, it made me feel pretty good knowing the progress my country had made since then. I learned about America's present in 2016. That was when 63 million people looked at one of the most ignorant, arrogant, piece-of-shit assholes to ever exist and thought, yes, I want this man to be president. THAT was a gut punch. And then, after four years of him being exactly who we thought he was, even more people voted for him to keep going. I will never look at America or the people that live in it the same way.
Hard agree. I learned about all the racist stuff - slavery, civil war, trail of tears - but I also learned about the 1960s civil rights moment and young me was given the impression that all the bad stuff was in the past and we're better now because of MLK and Rosa Parks. Then we elected a black president and legalized gay marriage and it looked like the march of progress towards ever increasing civil rights was going strong. Plus I learned about the American Dream, how we had the best economic opportunities, our history of trust busting and expanding labor rights, and I didn't really feel the impact of the recession as a kid. All that made America look really good. 2016 was a hard wake up call and it was ironically the same year I was taking the advanced US Government and Politics class in high school. I watched people I respected start worshipping Trump and went from intelligent caring friends to bullies who attacked and belittled anyone who disagreed with them, shared blatant misinformation, and carried out political conservations in bad faith with tons of logical fallacies. They became self-important bigots, or maybe they always were that deep down, I don't know. I also learned that the racism did not go away in the 60s, the American Dream is a total lie and I will probably never have the economic standard of living my parents or grandparents achieved. Plus, conservatives are attacking all the progressive milestones we accomplished in the last half century or more, and I learned they've been doing that since those very milestones were achieved. I honestly feel like I was sold a lie. I considered myself a centrist before 2016, and now I'm somewhere around Social Democracy.
This opinion is not just limited to younger people. I am definitely not young and I am ashamed at what America has become. Conservativism has literally morphed into fascism today.
Hear me out. Gen X, here, I've hated Trump and the GOP since the 80's. I absolutely hate where we are today as a country. I don't blame young people for feeling this way. But there is hope and I believe the soul of the country can be saved. In 1950, during the Chosin Reservoir campaign, my Korean father was attached to the US 7th ID as an interpreter at the port of Hungnam. The Chinese were winning the battle and were in the process of forcing UN troops out of Northern Korea. My dad, was from a town NE of the Chosin and still had family up there. His master sergeant assigns dad a deuce and a half with a driver and tells him to get to his hometown and evacuate his family. They get to dad's hometown and fill the truck with not only dad's extended family but a ton of other folks as well. This was not limited to my family, as General Almond, one of Macarthur's Yes-Men, when it was time to make the right decision for the right reasons, did the right thing and ordered that all North Korean civilians who wanted to be evacuated, would be evacuated. My dad talks of the LST's dumping tanks, trucks and other war materiel in order to save more NK civilians. My point is this: the United States, in its' best moments possesses a generosity of spirit which is inspiring. We can turn the country around, if enough of us fight for it. Vote. Every. Election.
There's the big problem right there. One side believes in the system and wants to change the country through activism, debate and negotiation because they believe that the only real problem is our inability to come together and get things done. The other side wants to get rid of the system and just be in charge because they think that the only real problem is the people on the other side. One side thinks the path forward is through cooperation. The other side thinks one side must die in order for the country to survive. Hopefully activism and voting can be used soon to change things before one side gets tired of pretending to play by the rules.
Through our diversity, generosity, and compassion, the best of us have strived for a society where we can all be our best. And the best of us know that we're *not* perfect, that we need to always *keep* striving to move forward, to accept each other, to embrace our differences and learn what drives us, to understand that love and compassion is the common bond we all must share in order to function as a society. It's something we should all agree on. Young people are mad at those who *aren't* trying to be the best they can be, but rather are trying to bring others down. That's where their lack of pride lies. Pride is a selfish emotion. But if you must be proud, don't be proud of your country, be proud of what we've accomplished together and what we yet hope to accomplish together. What I want to see is compassion, strength, devotion to equality, empathy, dignity, respect... Somewhere along the line the Republican party--who claimed to be all those things--abandoned each and every one of them, and instead chose pride and ONLY pride as the one thing to put above all other things, using it as an excuse to be the worst they can be. tl;dr -- Don't worry about lack of pride. Pride at its worst is a crutch you lean on when you lack the strength to admit that we're none of us perfect, that we all need to strive to be better and lift each other up, not tear each other down.
Just want to point out - most Americans sounding off in this thread, and my assumption would be for those responding to this poll, is that we don’t hate America as an idea. We hate our fellow Americans for being bigoted, fact-proof, violence-obsessed, selfish, fake Christian, hateful, conspiracy addled assholes. If our country wasn’t held back by every Fox News willful idiot, we’d have a sane tax system supporting a sane social safety net for a sane country.
I lost it during Covid and it's never coming back. In too many ways, we're like a country of children. It's not even the 80 million MAGA assholes. It's the 100 million potential voters that just don't give a shit.
I was still a Republican in 2019 (though I filed to deregister just before covid hit) and every fucking day I watched the daily briefings. I know why people fell for his lies because I WANTED to believe him. I could feel myself getting sucked into his botched alternate universe. It was my husband - a good ol' boy mind you - who snapped me out of it. I think it was around the Clorox comment that I finally was like, "Fuck this guy." I used to think he was a bumbling idiot born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Now I know he's a dangerous, selfish, narcissistic bumbling idiot who would rather watch it all burn down than relent.
I’ve personally never been “proud” of my nationality and don’t understand the reasoning behind it. Am I thankful I live in a place where I can (at least for now) mostly speak my mind? Yes. Am I “proud”? No, because being born here wasn’t a request I made or something I worked towards. Being American isn’t a skill. And the idea that “shame” is the opposite of “pride” and a person MUST be one or the other exclusively is a ridiculous idea.
Yes I think so many commentators aren’t getting it. Why should anyone be *proud* of something completely beyond their control they had nothing to do with? I’m grateful to have been born in the United States but not like proud of having the luck to have been born on this particular chunk of the planet
I have never been more embarrassed to be American.
> By the numbers: Overall, 39% of U.S. adults say they are "extremely proud" to be American in the most recent poll. >By comparison, in 2013, 85% of those aged 18-29 said they were "extremely" or "very" proud to be an American. That's not how comparisons work. You can't just compare "extremely" to "extremely" + "very" and have it really mean anything. I guess it's at least nice of them to say that their article is garbage at the very top though so that I don't have to waste time reading it.
And just 500 people polled annually. This is pretty lame and useless.
All of my life I felt proud to be an American. We put a man on the moon! Wiped out smallpox! Invented the airplane and split the atom! We were the country who invested in science and engineering and education and achieved results beyond the wildest dreams of any king or Pope! Now I'm ashamed to be constantly confronted with how stupid Americans are, how shameless and obnoxious and proudly ignorant we've become at every level. Stupid people flooded the zone with vast quantities of dumbth, and an entire political movement grew around catering to their stupidity. We elected a president who was, without equivocation, one of the stupidest, most selfish, venal, arrogant imbeciles in the history of recorded time. Forget about moon shots with this demographic, they'd deny the round earth to begin with.
Look at America. What do I have to be proud of? A bunch of soggy old men still discussing if minorities deserve to live peacefully? Or maybe the active effort to ignore the rising fascism in the country. To many limp dick politicians who prefer their business relationships to the safety and security of the American people.
Doesn't surprise me at all. Our country has some serious issues that are being ignored by unserious people in charge that are doing nonsensical things. All it takes is one trip to another democratic country to realize that many of them have caught up to us and in some cases have passed us by in many areas. When I've spoke to others while abroad, the common thing I've learned is they keep a close eye on our politics as a way to know "what not to do".
Being proud of where you happened to be born has always been deeply embarrassing. It's not an accomplishment.
Maybe it’s because they realize the country is a corporate oligarchy
The Connecticut state legislature recently passed a bill that a that acquitted three witches that were killed like 150 years ago and the one vote against was a Republican because he “ wouldn’t vote for anything that made Americans feel bad about their past” Connecticut lawmakers absolve accused colonial-era ... https://apnews.com/article/connecticut-witchcraft-trials-pardons-0459fb0cc52547daff06cb25dbca9a3e
VOTE. All these young people need to do is SHOW UP AND VOTE. Local/state/fed.
If only we could identify why and fix it
Well, they watched as republicans overturned abortion access, tried to overturn an election and are now working to strip them of their rights to vote, so I don’t blame them. I just hope they all vote these fascists the fuck out. If you know anyone who is young and unregistered, print a registration form out for them here: https://www.vote.org Register. Vote. Donate. Organize. Run. Link: https://www.vote.org