Am I the only one that feels like our society is crumbling

[darklordoftech]

UK society has been crumbling since 1979, and American society has been crumbling since 1980.

[super6646]

lol people who live in a bubble and never struggled for anything coming in and saying society is crumbling. go buy your $5 latte and $10 toast and opine about the fall of america

People (as in Altus) really need to think before they say things...

Ask my grandparents who lived in Hungary during and after the Second World War and my father during the Iranian revolution how it feels to have society crumble around you.

[Ban my account ffs!]

lol people who live in a bubble and never struggled for anything coming in and saying society is crumbling. go buy your $5 latte and $10 toast and opine about the fall of america

People (as in Altus) really need to think before they say things...

Ask my grandparents who lived in Hungary during and after the Second World War and my father during the Iranian revolution how it feels to have society crumble around you.

Why don't you ask them?  Your response shows a distinct inability to recognize what a crumbling society looks like.  You think you know how to recognize what it looks like in 2018 America?  You think 1940s Hungary or a religious fundamentalist revolution after a post war period far different from anything the U.S. has ever experienced gives you the ability to recognize what it looks like?

Well, then put your money where your mouth is:

What factors and considerations and commonalities between the 1979 Iranian revolution and 1940s Hungary would be absolutely necessary for you to agree that society was unraveling or crumbling in 2018 America?

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

UK society has been crumbling since 1979, and American society has been crumbling since 1980.

I think you meant to say finally became decent.

[Mr. Smith]

UK society has been crumbling since 1979, and American society has been crumbling since 1980.

I think you meant to say finally became decent.

No, he meant crumbling...and the case arguably started with 1968 and 1970 after LBJ and Wilson got toppled.

Carter and Callaghan were only band-aids.

[Orthogonian Society Treasurer]

It clearly is crumbling and that's a good thing (read Strauss and Howe). Every Crisis gives way to a High.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Oh look who suddenly cares about our crumbling moral fabrice

The complaints used to be lodged at poor people who had to make tough choices and often made the 'wrong' choices by middle-class standards Poor people used to be expected to endure their lot with cheerfulness, knowing that their sacrifices created the wealth that might someday trickle down. Their children had high mortality rates from malnutrition, contagious diseases, crime, and accidents (at one time a common cause of child death was getting hit by trolley cars whose  operators were directed to never stop for anything, even a child on the tracks). That attitude changed to one in which white non-WASPs began to see such inexcusable, but black children were out of sight and out of mind. Poor adults would work 70-hour workweeks and live to about 40, being broken down at age 35 -- so their children would be dragooned into work in manufacturing and mining. Child labor used to be a norm among working-class kids. Of course we now think such immoral or amoral.

By the 1960s, the share of the workforce in manufacturing started to shrink due to automation, and a job category that attracted many people with limited talent and education but paid sort-of-OK in return for grueling labor disappeared. Some people doing such work found other jobs, but many ended up permanently unemployable. Many women found themselves with unemployed and unemployable husbands, and for them welfare was a better deal for their children. The women often often made the 'wrong' choice by middle-class standards if they did not go into low-paid clerical, retailing, and restaurant work.  Well, guess what? Holding people up to the standards of people in very different economic realities has always been absurd.

For real crumbling, look to the economic and administrative elites who have set themselves as the only people who can live the American Dream (except for some well-remunerated professionals). As shareholders they have directed executives to squeeze out small-business competition (which means the loss of jobs as a consequence) while the business executives have set themselves as an exclusive elite; an analogue to that elite is the nomenklatura of Commie countries who have set themselves up as a class of administrators who grab huge salaries and other compensation while keeping others in the proletariat to be exploited as under the Marxist stereotype of capitalism. Guess what people that nomenklatura has come to resemble? The aristocratic elites that the Commies exterminated, exiled, or pauperized. America's executive elite in Corporate America has been imitated in government agencies and even in colleges, where university deans (who used to be considered academic 'trash' are establishing themselves as a sort of nomenklatura.  Now what sort of politicians would they support?

Of course -- people who believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as there is a profit to be derived from it. Between the owners and executives, those are the people who get the largesse for funding right-wing pols who got in even  before Donald Trump promised to 'make America great again'. Sure -- great for the Master Class and horrible for everyone else. Add to the elites the operators of right-wing advocacy groups like Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, the National Chamber of Commerce (not to be confused with the local Chambers of Commerce), the National Right-to-Work Committee, and numerous advocates for one industry. The Republican Party is about where the once-maligned John Birch Society used to be... but it now seems as if America follows its lead. 

Above all, America somehow ends up with a President with ties to Organized Crime (organized crime long being something that Big Business and prominent people wanted to have nothing to do with), calls any media criticism of him 'fake news', uses Orwellian Newspeak, surrounds himself with yes-men to the exclusion of all else, and has bragged about grabbing women by their crotches.

So what about religion? Nothing about this fits the teachings of any prophet from Moses, Confucius, Zoroaster, or the Buddha in antiquity to Joseph Smith or Elijah Muhammad in more recent times. But given a choice between personal indulgence that runs afoul of religious doctrine and personal practice, many choose to follow their appetites and push religious obedience upon the proles. So it is soft standards for the elites and a demand for rigid compliance by the masses, hypocrisy at its most sordid.

We are approaching a breaking point for the survival either of economic mastery or the  heritage of liberal democracy. One is likely to break because the two are incompatible. Maybe it is not so ominous as the divide that Abraham Lincoln saw between a nation half-free and half-slave... but it is still a divide between a Master Class responsible to none but itself and everyone else who must suffer for that Master Class with unbroken obedience and no sign of discontent. The Master Class could not keep its secrets forever. (This goes for 'Harvey Swinestein' for his casting couch, too, as he was part of the cultural elite). 

Elites have been able to cover up their abusive and destructive behavior, especially sexual harassment, until recently.

Very interesting, and many valid points here.

I will say this about morality:  The poor suffer from immorality more than the rich not because it is enforced more on the poor, but because the rich can better afford it.  Mega-movie stars can pay oodles of child support, pay hush money to mistresses, can buy lawyers to make legal issues go away, can prosper despite criminal records (even felony records).  An out-of-wedlock birth, a criminal arrest, an untimely divorce or separation; these things can devastate a poor person, or a poor family, because it ECONOMICALLY destroys them. 

[OSR stands with Israel]

UK society has been crumbling since 1979, and American society has been crumbling since 1980.

you mean became better

[Statilius the Epicurean]

You guys need to have a civil war before I'm too old to join the International Brigades.

[Ban my account ffs!]

My grand theory one time when

You guys need to have a civil war before I'm too old to join the International Brigades.

My grand theory one time when stoned and thinking about Strauss and Howe was that we're not necessarily on an 80 year cycle... but on a 160 year cycle... that in a way the depression and 2nd world war were the end of a global order and the beginning of a new one, like the revolutionary war 160 years prior.  But we're on the 1860 cycle again.  And this time we solve our problems by turning inward.

But that would mean the Millennials are not a "civic" generation, but, in fact, they were skipped and we're another idealist generation just like our parents.. which leads to a civil war.  We are similar... but different.

Keep in mind I was stoned and the weed was really good.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I don't feel like it is crumbling? Life seems to get better with each passing day. We are building gorgeous structures fit for the current year and beautifying everything that used to be an eyesore. I don't think things could be much better from an American urbanite's perspective. Even church attendance has been booming the past few months.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I don't feel like it is crumbling? Life seems to get better with each passing day. We are building gorgeous structures fit for the current year and beautifying everything that used to be an eyesore. I don't think things could be much better from an American urbanite's perspective. Even church attendance has been booming the past few months.

Few, but stunning buildings were built in the 1930s as society fell apart.  Desperation sometimes unlocks the last best parts of us.  It's why our greatest sky scrapers are often finished after the collapse.. the empire state building in 1931/32, the Twin Towers and the Sears Tower in 1973, the Burj Khalifa in 2008...

The tower of Babel no doubt was conceived in a golden age, and reached its apex in a crisis.

It's like Doctor Who said:  Look for a crisis to begin when summer has made its way into autumn much too conveniently... summer just doesn't seem to want to end.

[hunter gatherer]

Everything just seems wrong and dysfunctional. American culture was always flawed, and I wouldn't want to go back, but it seems like something is sick in our modern society.

no things are getting worse, if you think things are bad now wait until we actually have a 2 trillion dollar deficit as a result of the trump tax cuts. then sh**t is really going to hit the fan.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

UK society has been crumbling since 1979, and American society has been crumbling since 1980.

I think you meant to say finally became decent.

No, he meant crumbling...and the case arguably started with 1968 and 1970 after LBJ and Wilson got toppled.

Carter and Callaghan were only band-aids.

How so? America is more affluent, populous, developed, diverse, socially progressive, and  economically competitive than before. Quality of life is better than ever and life is more interesting than ever. Before the 80s, America was a whitewashed nation of bland ranch-house dwellers with one job for life. Now America is open minded, cosmopolitan, and people can climb much further and experience much more.

Society has never been better.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I don't feel like it is crumbling? Life seems to get better with each passing day. We are building gorgeous structures fit for the current year and beautifying everything that used to be an eyesore. I don't think things could be much better from an American urbanite's perspective.

I agree. Pre-80s, our urban centers were decimated and now they're spectacular.

[YE]

UK society has been crumbling since 1979, and American society has been crumbling since 1980.

I think you meant to say finally became decent.

No, he meant crumbling...and the case arguably started with 1968 and 1970 after LBJ and Wilson got toppled.

Carter and Callaghan were only band-aids.

How so? America is more affluent, populous, developed, diverse, socially progressive, and  economically competitive than before. Quality of life is better than ever and life is more interesting than ever. Before the 80s, America was a whitewashed nation of bland ranch-house dwellers with one job for life. Now America is open minded, cosmopolitan, and people can climb much further and experience much more.

Society has never been better.

Because income inequality is at the highest since the Gilded Age and people are working for longer hours for lower wages? Because millennials are on track to have a lower standard of living than their parents? If quality of life was better now than the 1980's, Trump would not have been elected.

[Ban my account ffs!]

UK society has been crumbling since 1979, and American society has been crumbling since 1980.

I think you meant to say finally became decent.

No, he meant crumbling...and the case arguably started with 1968 and 1970 after LBJ and Wilson got toppled.

Carter and Callaghan were only band-aids.

How so? America is more affluent, populous, developed, diverse, socially progressive, and  economically competitive than before. Quality of life is better than ever and life is more interesting than ever. Before the 80s, America was a whitewashed nation of bland ranch-house dwellers with one job for life. Now America is open minded, cosmopolitan, and people can climb much further and experience much more.

Society has never been better.

What he means is we were more sure of ourselves.  We exuded more confidence, direction.  People knew there were inequalities but they knew we were all going in the same direction:  Up.

That isn't the case anymore.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

UK society has been crumbling since 1979, and American society has been crumbling since 1980.

I think you meant to say finally became decent.

No, he meant crumbling...and the case arguably started with 1968 and 1970 after LBJ and Wilson got toppled.

Carter and Callaghan were only band-aids.

How so? America is more affluent, populous, developed, diverse, socially progressive, and  economically competitive than before. Quality of life is better than ever and life is more interesting than ever. Before the 80s, America was a whitewashed nation of bland ranch-house dwellers with one job for life. Now America is open minded, cosmopolitan, and people can climb much further and experience much more.

Society has never been better.

Because income inequality is at the highest since the Gilded Age and people are working for longer hours for lower wages? Because millennials are on track to have a lower standard of living than their parents? If quality of life was better now than the 1980's, Trump would not have been elected.

We can purchase so much more with those wages, however. Quality of life has objectively increased. Opportunity has increades (and anyway, I'd pick a life of opportunity over a life of bland security any day.)

[Person Man]

I don't feel like it is crumbling? Life seems to get better with each passing day. We are building gorgeous structures fit for the current year and beautifying everything that used to be an eyesore. I don't think things could be much better from an American urbanite's perspective. Even church attendance has been booming the past few months.

This feels a little too North Korean to me.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I don't feel like it is crumbling? Life seems to get better with each passing day. We are building gorgeous structures fit for the current year and beautifying everything that used to be an eyesore. I don't think things could be much better from an American urbanite's perspective. Even church attendance has been booming the past few months.

This feels a little too North Korean to me.

pro-tip: Sprouts is a low-effort troll who you should never take seriously and probably belongs on your ignore list

[Dr. Arch]

It's gotten to the point where I pretty much consider teaching in the US in the K12 system a hazardous job without the compensatory pay.

[darklordoftech]

https://searchengineland.com/google-getty-images-enter-multi-year-global-licensing-partnership-291831

[Karpatsky]

lol people who live in a bubble and never struggled for anything coming in and saying society is crumbling. go buy your $5 latte and $10 toast and opine about the fall of america

and they say American liberals are the arrogant ones

Better than buying cigarettes, but go ahead and shame people for living in high cost of living areas.

[Ye We Can]

We are seeing the signs of entering the stage of decadence and political stagnation that comes with being the top dog, as well as the inevitable social erosion that comes with the flourishing of technology and artistic expression outside of regular norms.  I'd also throw in the lack of assimilation and naturalization of both traditional citizens and immigrants which is designed to be more inclusive but imo has the opposite effect, along with very real social and economic inequality and a self serving, careerist elite running the country. I feel like we are living in Austria-Hungary sometimes.

American ingenuity: we will crumble like Rome way before they ever could and did.  

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I don't feel like it is crumbling? Life seems to get better with each passing day. We are building gorgeous structures fit for the current year and beautifying everything that used to be an eyesore. I don't think things could be much better from an American urbanite's perspective. Even church attendance has been booming the past few months.

This feels a little too North Korean to me.

pro-tip: Sprouts is a low-effort troll who you should never take seriously and probably belongs on your ignore list

Sprouts is one of our best posters, and you should all try to sound more like him. What sounds North Korean is, of course, Bloomberg’s post.