My generation needs to go and what I mean by "go" is die off. I was born in 1965 and all I've seen in my lifetime is America's decline since the 1980's
I arguably look at the eighties as America's peak for the following reasons. While there weren't increased opportunities for every American to improve their lives, I would say the number of opportunities for improved lives was highest in the eighties. More people earned enough money to comfortably afford an apartment or a house than in the past or today. More people earned enough money to feed, clothe, educate and save, not only for themselves but for their children. Racism still existed but fewer people were openly exposed to it. People could discuss politics without being demonized for their views, because they were more informed than voters are today. People could trust news sources to uncover corruption amongst their elected officials. Crimes was in the decline before Reagan began his war on drugs which saved the dying PRIVATE prison industry.
Then, in the mid-eighties came the same leaders we have today, at least those we must suffer through on nightly main stream media sources. The most vocal and overexposed leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Diane Feinstein and more have been in office since the eighties and nineties. America was better in the eighties. And, while not as prosperous for as many Americans as were the nineties, I would even argue that the U.S. was better for more than today.
The problem is that those things leading to America's decline were apparent in the nineties and only became more apparent as time passes. The increasing wealth that so few experienced was praised by so many. While less than one percent of one percent (maybe it's just one, one percent, but still ...) of the population saw the gains in their own personal wealth, the rest of us fought for lower taxes for the rich. As unlikely as it was for the majority of us to become millionaires, we listened and bought into the arguments of leaders who said we needed to give rich people even more money. We called them Job Creators which I debunk with the following petitio, so will therefore not discuss here. https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/end-the-job-creator-lie
In the Democratic party the original unspoken slogan was "vote the lesser of two evils". For republicans, the basic sentiment was that the rich make and do everything so they deserve to earn more, have more power and control more lives. The last point is an indirect result of allowing the rich to have more money and own more businesses that control more people's lives for at least eight hours of the day, but it was implied in the Republican messaging. And, my generation swallowed this rationale, hook lie... I mean line and sinker.
Americans believed what these leaders told them no matter what their eyes and ears told them. The rich got richer while inflation whittled away so many citizen's right to self-governnance, independence and the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. The latter being a tenant upon which America was founded was being eroded and Americans of my generation watched it happen without the meagerest of push back.
The complacency that grew so prevalent across the United States has become a ubiquitous faith for even more. The American electorate is now dominated and controlled by drones who have forfeit their critical thinking skills in favor of soaking up whatever nonsense multimillion-dollar media news corporations spew. CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, CB S and even PBS (funded by the likes of the Koch foundation) all report on how good America is for the world and it's own citizens and the world. And, they all do this while, homelessness or as the R.A.D. dictionary defines homeless homelessness or double homelessness doubles ever year or two. "The economy is great " while a majority of Americans would be financially ruined by a $1,000 dollar emergency. Fifty percent of bankruptcies in America are due to unexpected medical emergencies, but America remains the only first world country without some form of universal healthcare while the healthcare it doe ahave is the World's most expensive.
American voters (let's call them "the faithful") have behaved more like hardcore religious zealots than the cynics they should have been because they have uncritically reelected the same failures to office for decades. If Nancy Pelosi (in the U.S. House since 1987) wins the next reelection bid for which she just announced, she will have been in the U.S. Congress for over 35 years. For Mitch McConnell (in the U.S. Senate since 1985) who seems to have a stroke every couple weeks, it will be over 37 years in which he's ruined the country for more people than he's improved it. And no matter which party the faithful vote for, those leaders have been responsible for millions of deaths around the planet against countries that, for the most part, have never attacked America.
Americans of my generation have allowed the sacrifice of veterans from WWII, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, both wars in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan to benefit corporations that feed us processed foods and drinks that makes us obese, pharmaceutical companies that create opioid epidrmucs and force us to take unproven, experimental vaccines and a woman's right to taint her future with platforms like Onlyfans. And, whike all of these terrible things destroy our Society, the Believers think you must vote red til your dead or blue no matter who when the former only leads to death and the latter only leads to being blue.
Believers... Keep believing the people who've brought your country down for decades are going to somehow turn it around when they're in the eighties. To me, the American electorate epitomizes the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again and expected a different outcome... but, by all means, keep blaming your neighbor, who has no power for the economy, the wars, the plight of so many around the planet.
