Ask Lemmy

I would say that people losing rights hand over fist would be the breaking point, but 50% of the population doesn't care about that apparently.

In reality my guess is cost of living as everyone has to buy groceries or deal with health insurance, and it's something that everyone can agree on that it sucks.

That, or death by a thousand cuts.

Unfortunately for all the accelerationists here that are salivating over the idea, America is not even close to a breaking point.

Nope. Most people in the country still live comfortably.

Until that is not the case, nothing will happen.

Historically, in the US at least, violent movements are a precursor to peaceful social change. People protest and protest peaceful for decades, and little to nothing actually changes.

I mean think about it, do you think for example that an insurance company that is run by people freely willing to kill tens of thousands of people have any problem just ignoring any number of protesters? No one ever got any rights by asking nicely. Every social change we've experienced has had both peaceful and violent components.

This doesn't morally justify violence, but it does show that violence doesn't just keep escalating until we go full on civil war. Whenever inequality or injustice gets to critical levels, some desperate people decide that nonviolence doesn't work and that more extreme actions are needed. Suffragettes were involved in many arson campaigns. Slavery didn't end until the Union army forced it to end. Unions got their rights to organize through armed battles and by torching factories with their bosses locked inside. The black civil rights movement required both non-violent resistance, but also violent groups like the Black Panthers waiting in the wings, offering a more violent solution if a peaceful one wasn't found. Stonewall was a riot.

America tends to go through periods of increasing wealth and social inequality. Things build up until some people feel so pressured, either by personal circumstance or ideology, that they believe violence is the only option. This doesn't make this violence right or just, but it is simply part of human nature. It happens again and again and again. When the elite push the masses far enough, eventually they start killing elites and setting their property on fire. And there's not a whole lot that can be done to prevent it, as these tend to be random crimes by detached individuals acting on their own. The elites will always overreach and respond with harsher criminal penalties. But when someone is willing to throw their life away for something, there's really no penalties that will make a difference.

And ultimately, that kind of violence, or threat of it, is usually what breaks the dam that previously prevented peaceful social change. Elites rarely give a single iota about the common man. In order to acquire that level of wealth and power, you pretty much have to be a sociopath in some form or another. That is as true now as it was in the age of hereditary nobility. But eventually the elite learn that something they actually care about - their own wealth or their own lives, are at risk. And even if the elite can hide themselves behind private armies, they inevitably find that their vast holdings of property aren't so easily protected. Arson has historically played a huge role in these types of social inflection points.

So pressure will continue to build, but society isn't going to break. Rather, crimes against life and, especially property, will continue. I sadly expect to see a lot of arson carried out by incendiary drones in the near future. And these acts of violence will continue to grow ever more common until the sociopaths at the top realize, "wait, it's actually costing me more money NOT to improve things for the common man, let's throw the people some bones."

That's pretty much how every right or liberty you enjoy today was achieved. Rarely does outright revolution completely overthrow the old order and bring out the literal guillotines. The French Revolution was the exception, not the rule. What we are seeing now is just the normal and inevitable course of history, that has happened time and time again. The people get pushed and exploited past a critical level, and the more unhinged among the population start taking violent action. This violence builds and builds, and eventually the elite realize it's more profitable to accept some of those quite reasonable reforms that the non-violent folks have been politely asking for for decades.

Take heart. This has all happened before. It is happening now. And in the future, it will happen again.

You never know what it will actually be. In fact, it's likely that it'll be too late before people realize it.

I feel like a Elon Musk backed Trump administration might do it.

Musk has already stepped in a lot of shit saying that Americans don't want to work any more as a reason for increasing H1B visas. Trump has also said that inflation isn't going to be something his administration is going to fix; a lot of his policies will make it worse.

Combine that with conservative media having a hard time demonizing Luigi is beginning to create a crack between the Republican leadership and its MAGA base.

Nope, it's always a surprise! It'll probably be some damned foolish thing in the Balkans though.

I doubt it will be climate change specifically. I think it will be the increasing political divisiveness. It'll be a whole bunch of different issues, climate change included, that neither political party can agree on the reality of, much less how to address them that will continue to escalate tensions between the two major political parties until we reach the point of a second civil war.

I think America is less than 50 years away from that point. The path we're on ends in war. Who knows if our country will survive.

The answer is ‘whatever you feel concerned about’ and multiply that by 300 million. Charles Bukowski said (paraphrasing) that it’s not the big things that will break a man, its the little things that drive men mad - like a broken shoelace.

It’s not just going to be one big issue but an aggregation of all little issues. And boy, do we have issues.

No, it will need to get incredibly worse for anything like a revolution to occur. The only historical events I can think of to parallel would be the collapse of the Czar in Russia during WW1 and the end of the Soviet Union. The common theme is that it took huge stacks of dead people to actually motivate people to do something about their leadership.

Until the state of things leads to basically all citizens knowing one or more of their own immediate family members dieing of being severely injured from something most people will carry on. Maybe a lot of starving people? Idk, I was surprised how suddenly the feds had money for people during the pandemic. I think they were a little scared their for a second. And of course they made hay of that being the reason for all the problems. Not PPP handouts or anything.

TLDR, no. We need millions of dead before we are even close.

I mean, the fundamental breakdown of civility is going to be the answer, because widespread politically-motivated violence cannot happen without it. How long it will take for the country that keeps threatening to devolve into a civil war to actually do so is anyone's guess.

No. We will find out afterwards.

Not climate change.

There's a reason there's American companies buying up fresh water and aquifers all over the world. When it comes to pushing and shoving, the US would have the upper hand.

What do you expect would happen?

Civil War v2? No, I don't think so.

Civil Rights Movement v2? Very likely.

H5N1 with 50% mortality. Collapse of the economy. Food shortages. Fuel shortages. Power outages.

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My prediction: There will be riots and looting, which will be squashed by police and/or military. The riots will increase until martial law is declared.

The US will become an effective dictatorship, but no-one there will call it that and that word will be conspicuously absent from other English media elsewhere in the world, despite that being precisely the right word.

Eventually, the leadership's grip will weaken as the old guard dies off and people with marginally less extreme views take up positions of power. In time, things will loosen up and regular, genuine elections might start happening. First at a local level and then eventually spreading country-wide.

This will, of course, take the rest of the 21st century to play out.

Just in time for the next pandemic, and the next round of riots because the biosphere's wrecked.

Yay, humanity!

(I'd like to be wrong about this, but it's been seen enough times before.)

I only have one goal in life: outlive america

No

Nope. We are in the wheel of a machine driven by corporate interests protected by a government with an unmatchable military complex financed by American tax dollars being paid by a society who follows whatever carrot network media decides to hold infront of our nose. The current state of America's governing powers is assuming the formn.01% has always dreamed of. A world where the poor get poorer while the market and it's investing parties get richer. All governing bodies dream of a constant state of too poor to change but not poor enough to risk life or threaten the controlling body's prosperity. America will remain at this state until people realize the fight isn't against an opposing political belief. The fight is between the American people and the American government. For as long as this political polarity goes on, there will never be a unilaterally directed body sting enough to foce change.

Political breaking point or physical breaking point?

Politically, I'd say the whole national debt thing is going to take a toll and we're going to see internationally backed revolutions in the US, in every part that wasn't one of the thirteen colonies.

Physically though? If anything, it would be something like damage to the ecosystem.