Work Reform

Thank you for sharing.

Yeah everyone was about as advanced at a time. The world is a competition and the west had an edge during a very pivotal moment of rapid technological and scientific advancement. Honestly China had quite an edge for a long time but fumbled it at the wrong moment but caught up pretty quick once they stopped killing everyone. International interference is a given. China messes with US who messes with Russia and China and so on. No one is anyone's friend here, it's partnerships of convenance at best. As someone who has lived in undeveloped countries it's not just that causing the problems, there's a lot of internal and regional nonsense as well. The potential for development is crazy but everyone is just out for themselves. Politicians from local areas all the way up to the president couldn't give two shits about their country, they just want to get their money and get a house in Europe.

At this point, the federal government is divesting itself of its responsibilities to the states. The Trump regime is actively seeking to not provide services and support to those parts of the nation that didn't vote for him, but in doing so is actually hitting red states (and red counties in blue states) harder than he is the blue ones.

But the message is clear: Some of us no longer count as Americans, according to MAGA or the White House. The individual states are responding accordingly, either challenging these denials of support legally, or creating state-level alternatives. But some places are being left in a state of disaster. Puerto Rico is rationing water (to the people while corporate interests retain water access) and Gary, Indiana has been without electrical service for two weeks now. Then there's the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Here in California, we're fighting wildfires without FEMA support, but that's been the case since early 2025. And there are a few other natural disaster hot zones to which FEMA has been unresponsive.

So, the US is behaving like a failing state. That's not a strict boolean. The decline and fall of a nation a long, slow, non-linear process. We don't know if it'll devolve into civil war or toward the fracturing of the US into separate allied clusters of states. It's up to the individual historian (say a century from now) to decide exactly at what point the US actually failed. Rome, for instance, fell across centuries.

Right now, the federal government has pretty much abdicated its duties to the states, and only serving corporations who pledged fealty to the Trump regime early on. (Again, some government action is taking place due to court orders, but the administration isn't always obedient to them.) The states are on their own for anything they don't fight for.

I suppose there could be more severe symptoms that might indicate the failure of the federal government. Civil war between states, anarchy in municipalities, or the rise of martial law in some counties, whether by the National Guard, by local police departments, or by regime paramilitaries such as ICE.

For me, I'm still a Californian, but the Trump Department of Justice and Department of State would not consider me American anymore, for being a leftist and disabled, and in fact might regard me as a terrorist. I am, after all, the chief regional officer of Antifa.

There's a propagandized version of a "nation" as "a country with functional and supportive social systems," which I think most people subscribe to. Whether or not their country every really qualified as a "nation" by that metric is debatable.

Oh, its Sanitation again, I didn't notice that.

I understand and appreciate your point. But as long as they're abiding by the rules of the sub, I'm going to let the community upvotes & downvotes be greater determinants of the worthiness of their posts. And as long as they're not being a bad actor, I won't ban this or any other user.

I'm just glad to see posts that are mostly-applicable to the topic rather than those spammy fake jobs or that one guy obsessed with the end of the world.