Maybe America needs to collapse…
We had many problems before Covid, before Trump. Maybe the wheel should break into pieces instead of going around again.
Let’s face it, we’ve been practicing for this moment. This cliff-edge 2020 when America is about to fall into the sea. The 2020 election will be tampered, and there will be much violence. Before Trump looked even half likely to win in 2016, all democrats hated all republicans, our ‘woke’ people were already busy hating white people, men, corporations, money, and yes, America. Woke people already hated the police, the church, old people, and they despised billionaires, specially tech ones. Meanwhile, the alt-right was in full swing, attacking democrats, snowflakes, inventing stories about Hillary and pizza-gate, and everyone was learning how to hate everyone else.
We had other problems too. We’ve been overweight, under-educated, growing poorer, and more bitter, for 3 decades at least. I lived in England as a teenager and I observed that hating the rich leads directly to personal unhappiness — I decided that would not be a good path for me. Here I see a growing number of Americans turn away from the hobbled American dream and sharpening their hate of the wealthy. They tell each other stories about how rich people have stolen something and need to give it back.
The backbone of this hate trend is the wealth gap which has been growing since Reagan era and is now so vast that poor people simply cannot fathom the difference in lifestyle and the sheer power wielded by someone with net worth in the several hundred $ million dollars. No wonder they hate the rich. They realized a while ago they are trapped and unless they win the Super Lotto they’re never going to escape the poverty they’re in today. A whole swath of our society has given up on any kind of American dream.
Silicon Valley used to be a ladder to rescue people from middle class into wealth, but it never rescued anyone from poverty — you had to be a winner in school and you might get on a bus to a valuable stock options sale one day. Even that is now a bit broken, as the tech royal families have pulled up the ladders and the tech giants have poisoned our enthusiasm for technology as a thing that makes the world better. Maybe it once did, but it doesn’t anymore.
America is broken. Almost everything that made America great in previous decades is broken today. Progressives wail in anguish if anyone dares to reminisce about life in the 60’s and 70’s because those were our racist past decades and we shouldn’t go backwards. We can’t go backwards because we can’t create an economy where a single earner in the family on a union wage can put three kids through college and retire with benefits in a house that’s paid up. No presidential candidate can promise this and then deliver that because it’s impossible.
I haven’t attempted to inventory all of America’s problems, pre-Trump, pre-Covid. They are numerous, and serious. Perhaps the biggest problem is that we’re so deeply divided that no force for good can captivate the hearts and minds of the nation and motivate us to be one nation again, to work together, to help each other, to develop empathy — almost as people did in world wars — and to believe in one nation under…. something. No chance. The hate runs so deep, it’s comparable to Israelis and Palestinians. The Hatfields and the McCoys.
Maybe we do need to burn it down. So we can build something new from the smoldering ashes of America 2020.
If Biden wins, he will be sabotaged and bitterly attacked from all sides, worse than anything we’ve ever seen. Trumpism will kick into overdrive and there will be roving biker gangs and underground armed militias terrorizing all who dare to suggest Trump is the ousted president. With streets in flames, racist attacks increased exponentially, lone shooters killing large numbers of innocents in schools and malls, and democrat politicians enduring threats and personal attacks, America will not feel like a winning country.
The economy is about to pop. The stock markets are running on fairy dust. Only prayers and legalized marijuana are keeping valuations high, and when they slide, they will slide off a cliff. House prices will collapse together with retail, when most people actually have zero $$ after the stimulus plan fails.
Perhaps our far left friends are right. A French Revolution, American style, in early 2021, may be the only way to smash the gridlock and allow the frustration, the hate and the despair to unleash a trail of destruction that leaves almost nothing standing in its trail. To do this, we should begin to think of progressives in their “No more billionaires” tee shirts as communists, not socialists. Socialism doesn’t strive to destroy wealth, it simply wants to syphon some money from the top and inject it back in at the bottom. It’s less like a tornado, more like a leaky water tank with buckets collecting the outflow. Communism when it takes power, is different. It seeks to demonize the infidel comrades who amassed great wealth, and it must make a show of stripping such infidels of their stolen bounty and a celebration of this bounty landing in the coffers of the people. Of course, it all evaporates before any actual people can benefit.
Maybe though, instead of a bloody, fiery, rubble-creating revolution, we could get close to this point, and stop. Look at each other and ask “Do we really want to burn down America?” and hopefully the answer is “NO!”.
Maybe some catharsis will bring us to realize that most Americans are truly wonderful people, and that this is an amazing country, if we can recreate some kind of ‘oneness’ that unites us just a little more than the forces that divide us. The MAGA hat guy in his monster truck that spews diesel smoke as he pulls away. Is he all evil? He loves his kids and he works hard, spends time with friends, helps neighbors and volunteers as football coach after school. He believes some stuff that you and I know isn’t true. OK. Do we have to hate him with such passion because of that?
The catharsis is happening. Russia has successfully driven a digital wedge into the heart of American society, and broken it into warring, hating factions. This is the event that should have brought us together. To forget our petty differences and to combat an enemy more formidable than any Guatemalan who crossed the border without documents, or MAGA guy who hates Latinos. These are not the enemy. The enemy wants to break America into complete collapse. Mass unemployment, failed corporations, broken public utilities, frozen stock markets, and streets in flames.
When will Americans wake up and realize that those who lean toward the ‘other’ political party are not the enemy, but our neighbors, friends, and our family? As we decry racism, couldn’t we just extend that thought to help extinguish our hatred of our political foes — isn’t that racism too?
