Yves here. With the dial turned to 11 with Trump related commentary, this headline might be seen as hyperbole, or alternatively, yelling into the wind of the Trump counter-revolution. But this piece is not about Trump, but about the collapse of the rule of law in the US, as seen from one journalist on the front lines and confirmed by lawyers and investigators around the US. In other word, this is a bottoms-up as opposed to top-down view of the erosion of systems and once-seen-as-fundamental protections.
By Bradley Blankenship, an American investigative journalist, columnist, and researcher who has lived and reported across Central Europe, South America, Asia, and the United States. He has worked with international media outlets and conducted in-depth reporting on democratic backsliding, public corruption, and civil resistance movements. He is the founder of the Northern Kentucky Truth & Accountability Project, a grassroots initiative documenting systemic failure and official misconduct in the American heartland. Originally published at Common Dreams
I’ve seen the aftermath of collapsed nations—now I see it happening here.
As a journalist and analyst, I’ve spent the last several years living and reporting in regions that have undergone massive political transformations. I lived for years in the Czech Republic, where I met many people with direct ties to the Velvet Revolution. I walked the streets of Prague with those who once occupied them in protest. I studied the Russian language, traveled extensively through the former Eastern Bloc, and listened closely to the survivors of failed regimes—those who remember the slow unraveling of authority, trust, and truth.
I’ve also spent significant time in South America, where I witnessed a very different kind of collapse—and rebirth. In Bolivia, I spoke with officials and journalists who lived through the 2019 coup and saw their country fight its way back to democracy. I’ve walked with communities who understand, firsthand, how empires and juntas collapse—and how people organize in the rubble.
Now I believe this country is collapsing.
Not in the dramatic, Hollywood fashion we tend to imagine—there are no tanks in the streets, no blackout zones or food lines. But what I am witnessing now in Northern Kentucky, through my work with the Northern Kentucky Truth & Accountability Project (NKTAP), is unmistakable: a slow-motion institutional implosion. And it mirrors what I have seen in failed or failing states around the world.
In Northern Kentucky, I’ve uncovered a network of corruption that spans law enforcement, prosecutorial offices, courts, and local media. I’ve documented how whistleblowers are silenced, public records denied, and criminal cases manipulated to protect the powerful.
Police ignore credible murder leads. Prosecutors bury evidence. Courts issue orders without hearings. And journalists—some out of fear, others out of complicity—refuse to report the truth. In my own case, I’ve faced obstruction, threats, targeted harassment, and retaliatory smears simply for investigating what any decent system should have investigated itself.
The structures of governance still stand. The buildings are still open. But the rule of law has collapsed in all but name. What remains is theater—a simulation of justice that functions to preserve power, not serve the public.
This isn’t just about Northern Kentucky. It’s a microcosm. I’m in touch with colleagues around the country—investigators, reporters, former civil servants—and I hear the same story again and again:
- Entire state agencies captured by private interests;
- Local governments ignoring open records laws;
- Whistleblowers retaliated against without recourse;
- Judges ruling from sealed dockets with no oversight;
- Public health policy shaped by ideology, not science; and
- Independent journalism gutted, bought, or blacklisted.
We are in a moment of mass epistemic failure, where truth itself is destabilized and power no longer answers to reason, law, or fact.
It doesn’t come with a bang. It comes with:
- The quiet refusal to investigate credible crimes;
- The steady normalization of lawlessness;
- The dissolution of public trust; and
- The emergence of parallel systems of truth-telling and justice.
This is what I’ve seen before. In Prague. In La Paz. In the fractured republics of the former USSR. It begins when the official channels of accountability no longer function—and the people must build their own.
That’s what I’m doing with the Northern Kentucky Truth & Accountability Project. We’re documenting. Archiving. Speaking to victims. Exposing public records that local officials tried to bury. We’re creating a people’s archive—a living record of a regime in decline.
Because when institutions stop telling the truth, the only way forward is to tell it ourselves.
I used to believe that America was “different”—that our legal tradition, constitutional system, and civic institutions would inoculate us from the kinds of collapse I saw abroad. I no longer believe that.
The US is not collapsing because it is uniquely broken. It is collapsing because it is a state like any other, vulnerable to the same corruption, elite decay, and loss of legitimacy that have brought down countless systems before.
The question is not whether collapse is happening. It is. The question is what we do after we accept that reality.
We can pretend this is just “polarization.” We can tell ourselves that if we just wait for the next election, the pendulum will swing back. Or we can admit the truth: Our institutions are no longer capable of self-correction. That means the burden of accountability, truth telling, and justice now falls on us—on journalists, organizers, whistleblowers, and ordinary people with the courage to say: enough.
I’ve seen what happens when people organize. I’ve also seen what happens when they don’t.
And I’m telling you: Now is the time to choose.
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So far our pithy efforts at effecting change have been of the ‘see me-dig me’ variety with a cutely worded sign (not that I’m ever guilty of that online) or clever artwork held aloft.
We haven’t really seriously protested since the 70’s, er 1770’s that is, and are a little rusty. I feel confident we’ll come around once the fuse gets lit, even though there’s really little to bind us all another as the politicians have excelled in only dividing us-not bringing us together.
If you asked 1,000 random American adults:
‘What does America stand for?’
…wonder what they’d say?
‘What does America stand for?’
Pretty hard for it to stand for anything at the moment. All institutions rotting away for various reasons (as the article points out) and nothing on the horizon to replace them. From my perch in Canada and as a reader of American history (old and new), I fear it is headed for the ultimate polarization, that is, the attempted or successful secession of some, most, or all of the blue states. And in all likelihood that scenario ain’t gonna be pretty.
Can’t resist leaving this humorous line I read recently: All that is going on today is enough to make a mime shriek.
Unfortunately the Canadian state is undergoing the same processes. We’re just behind by a few years.
For example, Canada now has a significant illegal immigration problem. There are over 600,000 people in Canada’s workforce who have no legal right to work or reside in this country, and the number is growing rapidly. The federal government is ignoring the issue, because rich people like cheap labour, and only care about laws when the violations hurt them personally. A decade ago, we didn’t have this problem. Trudeau and Carney lost control of immigration so quickly and so badly that it is hard to believe that the outcome was not desired. The word: corruption.
Another similarity to many jurisdictions in the US is that in parts of Canada there is no longer even a token effort made to prosecute petty theft or vandalism. When I recently called police to report a group of people trying to break into cars in my neighbourhood, the 911 operator blandly told me that police would respond only if lives were in danger. Eyewitness reports crime-in-progress, nothing done, despite the fact that my small BC city has never had so many police as it does today, with lots of new fancy equipment. The phrase: institutional rot.
Or how about medical care, Canada’s special pride? Well, unless you’re already a regular user of the system, good luck! Myself, I enjoyed good health, and didn’t need to see a doctor for 20 years. Now I’m getting old, and my body is starting to malfunction, despite my best efforts. But I didn’t understand that I needed to get “grandfathered,” to make sure I had access to the system. So now I’m on an indefinite waiting list to get to make an appointment to see a doctor (“don’t call us, we’ll call you.”) Alternative: 10-12 hours in the ER waiting room. COVID is the price of impatience, or of over-patience. The bright side: euthanasia keeps getting easier!
This isn’t a partisan matter. Of course, Trudeau and Carney are most to blame, since they’ve occupied responsible positions. However, what would get better with Poilievre? As for the NDP, they’re the ones who have enabled Trudeau and Carney to remain in charge, so that tells you what they’re about.
It is not hard to foresee that, like in the USA, an exasperated public will cast about for a maverick politician in a forlorn effort to obtain relief–and one can already hear the establishment caterwauling about the chipped rims on their rice bowls.
Canada IS an illegal immigration problem. The real and ongoing problem is the ‘Canadians’ and the whole abomination needs to go into the historical dumpster along with America. I suppose it will, because Canada has always just been an appendage of whoever the top colonizer was, and not a real country.
Please, enlighten me as too countries are “Real”.
Those created by the native population, and not from overseas. World is full of not-real countries and arbitrary borders (sometimes even drawn with a ruler, by foreigners).
Archaeology and anthropology are pretty clear on the topic – homo sapiens is not indigenous to the American continents. Therefore everybody here is “from overseas.”
So, then the question is “well, how long does someone/somegroup have to ‘be here’ in order to be ‘native.'”
Not sure you’re going to have a more reasonable/realistic answer than “born here, you’re native.”
Archaeology and anthropology are pretty clear on the topic – your attempt at mental gymnastics has nothing to do with it.
You know very well what I’m talking about, but you don’t like it because it makes you the baddie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
I don’t know, Wuk. It seems like an awfully loaded question. Do we stand for anything? I like Jeff Daniels’ answer from Newsroom:
https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk
Maybe cut it off around 3 minutes and 15 seconds. I’m too cynical for the rest.
3 minutes and 15 seconds reminds me of the George Carlin routine circa 1991. The American Dream. 3 minutes and around 15 seconds of brilliant cold hard truth, delivered in the way only Carlin could.
TL;DR
I can only imagine what he would say today – so much more material. RIP George.
USA stands for:
“The rich (MIC, AI based surveillance state,…) get richer, and the poor get watched”.
Certainly will be enough excess labor to enforce,….
This is underway in UK as well its the dismantling of government , agency by agency , department by department , the aim is to end the link between government spending and taxation , all your money is issued by your government all the money you have in cash or in the bank is government debt read what it says on your dollar or pound.
All government spending is government debt its brand new money issued by government out of thin air its not peoples savings or taxes theyve paid its brand new money printed by government.
All taxes are simply treated repayments of that aforementioned government debt .
Its done with double entry bookkeeping red entry when government spends and then a black entry as tax is collected and clears what was previously spent.
Obviously there is always ongoing red entries , the black entries come later and whilst its red its called government debt.
The USA and UK are being controlled by the ultra wealthy who want to end tax and end government spending they wish to replace it with everything being privately run including police , courts , judges , army navy etc etc total privatisation zero taxes nobody gets taxed no businesses get taxed sounds great but you then have to rely on whoever owns the private businesses to do everything currently done by government and they wont , they will only do whats profitable.
Government wont exist it wont tax it wont spend it wont issue money , the new cryptocurrencies will take over they will be like it used to be a hundred years ago where banks were privately owned like in the very famous movie its a wonderful life.
Land of the corrupt, home of the depraved.
What do we want?
Incremental change!
When do we want it?
Eventually!
We’ll, genocide comes to mind.
‘What does America stand for?’
WHICH America?
What we stand for can be a bit of old and new concepts on a pyramid of thought. Such as liberty, merit and accountability as concepts.
Below those concepts in the pyramid are issues. Each concept branches out into basic issues practicing the concept. Then at the bottom of the pyramid, the base are details.
Different folks have talents. Here at Naked Capital, conceptual level thinkers may understand all three levels of the pyramid. Call them adults.
A movement of people must be led at the issues level, started at local levels. That takes either power and money to partner with.
The issue people are adolescent and also understand details and can execute. This does not mean an IQ test, it either where a person has developed or is naturally gifted for doing management on the ground and interfacing. There are a lot of
of detail people, good at focusing on particular tasks.
Such may be infants in thinking at the conceptual level regularly but most can develop.
I wish there was more concrete, “operational” detail to anchor the soaring rhetoric of this brief essay. I personally am inclined to believe the thesis, but there is risk of misunderstanding or misapplication in letting readers fill in the details from their own perspective and experience. In a time of partisan polarization and ideological fragmentation, when people are contending over alternate versions of reality, the risk is particularly acute.
That was my reaction as well.
The specific matters cited are not new, and there are numerous historic examples of institutional rot at higher and lower bureaucratic levels. What feels different to this reader now v. earlier eras, besides the noted pervasiveness, is the MSM is entirely “in sync” with the TPTB and, unless a story involves Trump’s (many) nefarious actions, has no interest in pursuing corruption. It does not help that SCOTUS has largely legalized political corruption unless a politician provides a notarized statement acknowledging the receipt of funds in exchange for votes or other favors.
The “bottom up” preface is interesting since ~ fifteen years ago I read a book about Afghanistan and it noted that much corruption is from lower-level officials buying influence or favors from higher-level officials, as opposed to higher officials demanding bribes from their subordinates. This low-level corruption is dangerous as it can become a societal norm that is difficult to eradicate once established (but I have heard that Russia has much less petty corruption now than twenty years ago).
Yes, that’s exactly what makes me depressed when faced with articles like this. For many, possibly even most people, the problems are clear, and while disparate, many of htem also think the solution is also clear: get rid of the “bad people.” But getting rid of Biden/Trump/immigrants/homeless/whoever doesn’t work. Indeed, nothing “simple” will do any good. Whatever happens, you need dedicated people who are actually able and are entrusted to do things, possibly going beyond the usual “limits.” Or, in other words, we need trusted institutions–the very thing whose overreach and abuse of power got us into this mess and the very kind of public figures who have gone exitinct–at least far as large swaths of the public goes.
Without some sort of “institutional-cultural-social” framework, I don’t see this happen. A few generations ago, it might have happened, but the ultimate triumph of Enlightenment Liberalism (what Aurelien writes about time after time) has ensured that whatever sociocultural fabric that existed, that could allow the society to rebound from the formal institutional rot, have fallen away and can’t be put back together. What we need is a Prophet, a Mua’dib, maybe? But that didn’t exactly work either, did it?
Yeah, there are a few sentences at the end but they’re hardly actionable.
This would have been really helpful to elaborate. What has the author seen that’s worked? What hasn’t worked? What meaningful choices or actions are available at this time? I don’t see anything like this.
This essay was not one of soaring rhetoric. And you are either blind and in denial over fact and reality, or some sort of troll trying to spin the destruction of US democracy into partisan politics as usual.
I agree. I think the accusation of being “soaring rhetoric” is totally disingenuous.
The tools are there (were there?) to change things. We’re not using them. SCOTUS walking away from the Google case shows that those in power are determined to remove what avenues we have. Palantir underscores it. Laws are only for the little people. Relying on Big Tech for the creativity and innovation needed to save humanity and our planet is a pipe dream. When’s the last time a Big Tech firm came up with anything that helps rather than preys on society. They suck at it. That big search company wouldn’t know how to monetize Behavioral Surplus without the Brady Bunch. That other big tech company (should have been called ButtBook ‘cuz it was about rating hotties) wouldn’t exist without the Winkelvoss twins. The dumbing down of America insures that 75% of the public is not educated enough to know what salvaging this planet requires. How many people even know what Overshoot is. 95% of the American public doesn’t realize that the rule makers (breakers?) consist of companies that own each other. They’re not going to commit financial suicide even it if equates to self-immolation.
People brought together with common goals are one of the most powerful forces on earth. It only takes 3.5% of a population to start a movement. People on sites like this banding together are the path to saving our species and our planet. The intelligence is there. Unfortunately, it seems most people just want to bitch. It’s easier than doing the hard work required to change things. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a platform that helps us solve problems collectively?
Sites like this are great for real understanding of our predicament, but real change can only start on the ground, in our towns and cities.
However here is where I’ve been learning the talking points for our City Council meeting about more surveillance cameras in Berkeley. They are going to approve the contract for Flock cameras tonight. Our Sanctuary City actually believes they will “never” be abused for targeting by ICE for “terrorists” or non believers of the Party line. So solving problems can only happen in real life, not online.
We will be shouting at the sky tonight. Send us persuading words.
This guy is just noticing all this now? Better late than never I suppose.
But his conclusion is somewhat encouraging in that he doesn’t simply expect a new election to bring a return to “normalcy”. The “polarization” of our society is a deliberate attempt by the elites to divide us against each other precisely so we do not get organized. Better that we fight amongst ourselves than against those trying to put the boot to our necks.
@lyman a b — “attempt” ? I would say “our elites” achieved a slam-dunk that has lasted, albeit with a few kerfuffles, since at least the 1930’s.
Thanks Carla – you are of course correct. That Bernays guy was on to something, unfortunately….
I found quite interesting the point of view of the author. One that i don’t have. Not at least to the same extent as Blankenship because I don’t have such an ample experience on institutional collapse/malfunctioning in several other countries as the author claims to have. Perspective is possibly more valuable than being the fastest in town.
The state of affairs he describes has been in evidence in different places in the US for over a century. But it gets better and worse, in the sense that smaller or bigger percentages of the population come face to face with it. For the comfortably prosperous it’s usually unseen in day to day life. For the poor it’s more the norm. I imagine the essayist is saying that even for the comfortable the corruption and unequal application of law are getting too blatant to ignore, that we’re transitioning (are well on the way, really) to the kind of “low trust” society that is a sign of slow collapse (compared to what life was like before). The huge decline in civility, glorification of violence as a solution to just about every complaint, normalization of massive lying by government and all the supposed authoritative news channels, and use of courts and law enforcement to bludgeon dissenters have all been intensifying for well over 50 years. If TPTB can’t keep Americans divided with their concocted culture wars, the public at some point will massively stop cooperating, stop obeying the law, and stop paying attention to so-called leaders no matter their party label. That’s pretty much a collapse.
The whimper not a bang version of the collapse. More plausible IMO. Although we do have the national guard and ICE and some police forces seemingly ready to help TPTB rather than us mopes.
I recently read the novel The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks Dalton. The author very nicely captures this quiet collapse. It is set in Florida. The government has been haphazardly evacuating citizens permanently as the sea creeps and floods in, taking over the land. One of the characters works for a fictional municipality fixing and maintaining hydro lines. Municipal services and workers slowly disappear and one day the linesman’s pay isn’t deposited and when he goes to the office to find out what happened and the office has been permanently closed, one lowly bureaucrat packing a few things up on his way out. And things go in from there as a huge hurricane comes in. As I read it seemed more a prediction of things to come rather than fiction.
PS – while not the best book I’ve ever read, I appreciated the author’s imagining of things to come but think the lack of violence she depicts is probably not the way things will go down.
Jack Reacher would certainly get this matter sorted in just a few days, and with the requisite violence the situation most assuredly calls for. I am currently 11 books into the 30 book series, and while not to be considered high literature, it holds it’s own in the Elmore Leonard genre. Once, he only killed 2 people in the entire book! Personally, I thought he left some money on the table, but who am I to say?(shrugs)
My Dad liked the Reacher series a lot. He absolutely hated the casting of Tom Cruise for the movie because Cruise is so short and in the novels Reacher is a big guy.
The 3 seasons of Reacher with Alan Ritchson on Amazon is the real deal. 6’5″, 250 pounds and looks like a Greek God with his shirt off. Tom Cruise cast in the movie was just terrible. Made about as much sense as casting him as “The Last Samurai.”
re disasters and violence. At least 10 years ago I had a chance to talk with a person got to ride with the utility trucks that were sent to another state to help repair a hurricane’s aftermath. The trucks were accompanied by armed men (can’t recall if state police or military of some sort). She was startled by the expectation of violence in what she envisioned as normal neighborhoods (suburbs, small cities).
In The Light Pirate, the characters live on their own for years in the mostly abandoned and flooded Florida of the novel and only suffer violence once and eventually manage to cobble together a peaceful, low-tech community. It is nice to think that people who can be self sufficient and take care of themselves could live peacefully in the world after current society’s collapse, but I think, certainly in the US with its proliferation of guns, that anyone with food and shelter will be spending much time defending themselves. I guess I see Mad Max as the more realistic version of our future.
The Light Pirate was one of the better books for the year that it was published in (2022). Usually literary takes on post-apocalyptic life are a little thin on plot and character as they tend to instead go overboard on pretty language and symbolism and Important Themes. It managed to avoid those pitfalls.
An institutional framework can hardly survive a near-total lack of faith and trust in said institutions; and if social relations have degraded enough, a civil war might well ensue. The Ancien Régime had perished in all but name a while before the French Revolution guillotined its most notable representatives. The question is, what comes afterward? I’ve been seeing rumblings of something akin to balkanization from localized blocs states have been forming (the Northwest bloc for firefighting being a sort of prototypical form of what I’m thinking). I would disagree that organizing can impede or reverse the process; it seems to be an inevitable byproduct of the end of the American empire which is bound to be painful, as are all imperial collapses.
The author lists these as indications of being within a collapsed state:
… but all of these have been in evidence for generations in the poor and black and native communities. This is just the class war moving up the chain so it is now visible to the formerly middle class. I’m all for designating vast swathes of the US as imperial sacrifice zones as it will make it clear to those who think we’re still in 1996 that the tide of history has indeed moved on. But shocking transgressions against legal precedent, like militarizing and funding ICE and turning them loose to do mass racial profiling and illegal detention and deportation on wrong-voting blue cities at the direction of a federal government with historically low approval ratings, seems more of an indication of state collapse to me than ‘quiet refusal to investigate credible crimes’. Just one woman on the street’s opinion!
It’s a common saying that “a dystopia is when you take what happens institutionally to the underprivileged and applied it to the privileged”.
Transparency would lead to wholesale revolution.
Politicians are the accepted liars.
Doctors, among other formerly very respectables, got dragged along by, uh, institutional forces. See which PE, Wall Street, lobbyists, teachers, many others.
When all people see the lies, deceit and misrepresentation manifest in their daily lives, and learn that everyone else sees those, too, is it any surprise that societal glue is dissolving?
More people are choosing to believe their lyin’ eyes than anything in media or public life. Hard to blame them.
That’s also what some people call “justice,” or doing away witb “privileges.”
The cynicism of the chosen few, who have been elevated from below, has something (not all certainly) to do with the lost “faith” of the centrist “left” that fronts the Democratic Party.
The centrist “right” needs to be retired.
The problems are pervasive, as all levels of government — federal, state and local — and all branches of government — executive, legislative and judicial — have been corrupted. This pervasive corruption manifests itself in ways big and small. The systems of checks and balances have been all but destroyed by neoliberalism. Globalization, deregulation (especially financial deregulation), the elimination of campaign finance restrictions, the destruction of collective bargaining, and the privatization of government functions all played a role in catastrophically weakening the power of government. What’s happening here has happened to every country that adopted neoliberalism economic policies. There are no exceptions. China figured this out, which is why they didn’t adopt the neoliberalism recommended by the Washington consensus, and this explains why they are on the rise while the US is backsliding.
It’s not “government” that needs to work. Some sort of sociocultural institutions outside government, something trusted and capable of bringing people together to do what needs to happen voluntarily as a group, a “community” bound together by somethong they “believe in” that’s bigger than themselves. But we don’t really have something like that nowadays in most places, do we?
I don’t know, you can have innumerable generations of widespread corruption endured without pushback. Look at India. Bribery is just a way of doing business there.
Baksheesh to the Future!
Yes, a repeat of the dark ages is possible. Which is why we need to move into action to stop the insanity as soon as possible. The oligarchs will not stop by themselves.
If trust in institutions and the institution of law is gone, can trust in the dollar be far behind?
That has been one thing I never understood about our greedy elite. They are willing to do anything and everything to steal the dollars, even at the expense of destroying the nations capital wealth and societal fabric. What do they think happens to those trillions of dollars if the US goes the way of some imploding empire. As Warren Mosler often says, they are just numbers on a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet can be deleted.
That is one collapse story that was written up by the Arch Druid himself I believe. Literally, the US goes in against China on a proxy battle, the US loses, the dollar collapses, and events lead to the US dissolving.
Still a good read after all these years – The Twilight’s Last Gleaming. Relies on a narrative of U.S. institutional decay.
I still love that the US prez is named Jameson Weed in the book. Jimson weed is a plant that can produce unpleasant delirium. The story is set in 2025, incidentally. Some other situations in common too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight's_Last_Gleaming_(novel)
Of course they made it into a movie too.
Correction: the movie was made before this novel and has nothing to do with this book.
The institutional corruption is society wide in the US.
The wars, genocides, bribery and raw corruption everywhere you look, will continue till a full collapse occurs.
The US has been gutted and looted. The OLIGARCHY has destroyed the US.
We are owned by the apex predators. The next elections will not change a thing.
I have been arguing to anyone that would listen that the corruption is institutional in the US, and no one cares. Until people are starving and homeless they won’t do a thing.
Except when you are starving and homeless, you’d be happy just to curl up in a warmish kennel with a bit of dog food for dinner.
The time to act is when you have the resources to do so, not when you have lost these.
>Until people are starving and homeless they won’t do a thing.
S’far as I can see, people are homeless and they’re not doing a thing. So, maybe starving will
do the trick. But that might be dangerous for “them”. For instance, bad crops in 1788 went some way to triggering the French Revolution a year later. Turned out to be not so good for “them”.
Fifteen years ago, during the GFC, I predicted on another website that America would soon become a nation of renters as large corporations availed themselves of low-interest money from the Fed and snapped up all available houses and condo-ized all available rental properties. Voila! Houses have now become virtually unaffordable and condos are not far behind.
As for that predicted and swelling nation of renters, well, life for them is a little more difficult than even I could have foretold. I underestimated the rapacity of corporate America. Rents for some (most?) people now amount to half their monthly income. Lax tax rules, lax regulations, and low interest rates for the past fifteen years have allowed corporations to feast on them. And, in pursuit of greater and greater profits, they have.
There was a solution. The problem could have been prevented. Seeing the speculation in real-estate, the government could have imposed an excess-profits tax on all real-estate transactions. That would have been a deterrent. It chose not to. Predictably.
And so, here we are. The unfortunate sleeping in doorways, under bridges, and in parks. The less unfortunate living in RVs or campers. And the really lucky, giving half their paychecks to a corporate landlord. And the corporate landlord saying, “Only half?”
>We are owned by the apex predators.
The United States, since its inception, has been a hyper-materialistic country. Just ask Charles Dickens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Notes
Just ask Alexis de Tocqueville: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America
Americans perhaps will strenuously disagree with these two. They’ll say, “Oh, those snobbish, elitist Europeans, they don’t like America, they don’t understand us.” Okay then, let’s say we can’t trust their observations. So let’s ask the descendants of the genocide of America’s indigenous peoples. And they of course will agree with them and say it was all done in the name of money. Period.
Two centuries of materialism which have arrived at their natural endpoint. Financial predation.
The issue has been well studied:
Corruption in America. From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United
by
Zephyr Teachout
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674659988
My wake-up was back in 2001: I worked for the mob as an enforcer. Seriously.
My bosses boss was Ron Matriciano, a “family friend” of Harry Aleman. Yeah, Harry was an interesting guy.
When I was first told who or what I was actually working for, I just figured that it was racial, stereotypic bullshit– but it wasn’t. You see, back then I still believed that there was some oversight, some “higher authority” who wouldn’t let the shit we were seeing and living happen– or at least go unpunished. Yeah, I was wrong, I learned.
The F___BeeEye ain’t nothing more than political police, attack poodles who are sicced on potential political problems for political people– they’re Public Relations, camera friendly and armed to the teeth. You go up against them, your problems are very real, as they got more guns and resources available than you can ever come up with– believe me– and it’s definately intimidating, even awe-inspiring, when you find yourself the target of their flex.
They aren’t there for public safety, and their job ain’t crime prevention. They are perfectly fine with child prostitution and murder, so long as it’s nobodies who are the victims. Corruption? Please, as long as it don’t make headlines.
Want accountability? That’s all on you. Do you want to see justice? That too is up to you. Are things like open governmental corruption getting worse, or is it that these truths are getting plainer and easier to see? It seems that our “leaders” no longer bother or care even to go through the motions. The law? “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
― Frank Zappa
Amen.
For me the most shocking evidence of the coming collapse was seeing our Congress give repeated standing ovations to the genocidal war criminal, B.Netanyahu.
I love the author’s Truth and Accountability Project. Would that we could do something similar regarding the ongoing crimes against humanity of our national politicians:
“We’re documenting. Archiving. Speaking to victims. Exposing public records that local officials tried to bury. We’re creating a people’s archive—a living record of a regime in decline.”
Perhaps collapse is too strong a word. The US will continue, it will be a country that kinda sorta works, it just won’t be particularly interesting nor the source of innovation, creativity, or excitement as in the past.
Brazil is a country that works, too. We might become more like Brazil. But being the first to put men on the moon, creating the computer, internet, atomic bombs, and of course inventing rock and roll will be part of the past. Just don’t expect too much in the future because healthcare and worker salaries will still suck, and our elites will be rich but dull and lack imagination.
In the future US, croissants will be hard as rocks, trees wilted, transportation by horse driven canal boats, dog prostitution, everybody depressed, and nobody will know where Times Square is, stuff like that.
“The US is not collapsing because it is uniquely broken. It is collapsing because it is a state like any other, vulnerable to the same corruption, elite decay, and loss of legitimacy that have brought down countless systems before.”
Somehow, that seems to nail it for me by putting a pin in the bubble of exceptionalism.
We have had our zenith in the mid-20th century, but things have been winding down since the New Deal euphoria, and now we are in the midst of the neoliberal hangover that followed. Perhaps it could be best thought of as the New Deal was a unique moment in American history, and nothing like it will ever happen again, and now things have been returning to “normal” ever since.
We are in the post-empire malaise that happens with all empires in history, and I do not think that this stage can be reversed as our political system is so dysfunctional as is our infrastructure/economic structure, that trying to fix it would be like putting a fresh coat of paint on a completely rusted-out 1957 Chevy Bel-Air on blocks in somebody’s front yard.
In a way, where the US is now could be compared to the waning days of the Qing dynasty in imperial China. Internal problems with ineffectual leadership and corruption had rendered the Qing administration completely ineffectual, while China at the time was being crippled by trade deficits and was trying to make up for it by wanton military spending, much like how the US is heavily-dependent on China for both raw resources and finished goods and our economy is now based on military Keynesianism.
Our country will probably last for many years, but we will have long ago ceased to be a first-world nation and will continue on as a poverty-stricken, post-empire, kleptostate.
“The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom.”
Lord Macartney, British diplomat, after his visit to China, ca 1800.
America today has more competition from Asia while in the early to late 20 century it was mostly Europe and Japan. Today the Indians , Vietnamese , Koreans and many others can build similar products that US could in the past, And on top of this we have the elephant in the room- the military Industrial complex that sucks a share of GDP out with no questions asked. America, in my view, is under going a text book self inflicted fall( if not outright collapse) and the diagnosis is easy but the remedy is hard. Candidates like Trump are also well predicted and the Nationalistic policies are only going to exacerbate the internal divisions that exist without solving the big problems. America built China’s manufactruring know-how at the peak of it’s own prosperity( thinking “less value added manufacturing can be exported) but this is now hurting the middle class as the jobs that remain in America are on the extreme ends of the skill spectrum. America is a victim of it’s own success- and this to me is textbook.
In Arizona, Runbeck works hand in hand with government offices to print and tally the votes. What could go wrong? There are investigations underway but this link is to the process. You can vote anywhere in your county and get printed on demand ballots which have had many issues. Anyone can vote by mail and hard to know how clean the voter list is. https://www.votebeat.org/arizona/2024/04/22/runbeck-election-services-scans-maricopa-county-arizona-ballots/