this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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While the US has always had oligarchic tendencies, from my experience living there for several years, the current wholistic debasement of governance and liberal democratic values is mostly self-inflicted by the population. It's a choice.
A significant portion of the population are supportive of crime and corruption, another group simply don't care and another group might understand that things are not going well, but they are too well off (on a relative global basis) to risk rocking the boat until it's too late.
It's not like the US is suffering from immense poverty with +50% of the country being illiterate (e.g. South Sudan) or has to deal with centuries of constant imperial attacks by a much larger neighbour or a multitude of truly challenging factors with respect to implementing good governance.
You mention the notion of productive outcomes. One can argue that by wholly ignoring the role of the public in the US becoming a full on chauvinistic oligarchy, one is moving away from productive outcomes. If an issue is related to the behaviour of the public, you won't solve it by pretending the public had no role to play.
Happy to elaborate if you are interested. I know my reply was very high-level.
I've lived here my whole 40 years and can verify that while a significant chunk of our voting class (Because it very much is a class thing) are sheltered enough from consequence that they are either still satisfied with status quo or their disaffection leads them only to encourage debasement, the class living a tenuous and effectively disenfranchised existence is much larger. Did you know that despite our last presidential election having the largest turnout in US history, less than half of citizens and barely more than half of eligible voted participated? Whether disenfranchisement or apathy, neither of those reasons generate from nothing.
But my point above was not that it's incorrect to point the blame squarely at US voted for their government's decline (Even though I would probably argue, in a separate debate, that it is), my point is that it's entirely the wrong tree to be barking up when trying to figure out how to put America back on "The right track". Thinking that we can just yell at Americans until they vote progressive is to deeply misunderstand the nature of power. Asking why Americans are so disaffected, apathetic, or disenfranchised that they don't participate in politics is perhaps a good first question, instead.