AskHistorians

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Patnou@lemmy.world

WHARRGARBL@lemmy.world

Can in America or people who study the USA pick the definitive point we went from going up hill to snow boarding down hill and then came to a cliff which we have no clue what the bottom is? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by Patnou@lemmy.world to c/askhistorians@lemmy.world

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[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 1 points 4 weeks ago

I mean, 2016 for "When did it turn into a definite nosedive," but the broader question of what caused the nosedive is... much more complex.

Reagan and Citizens United aren't bad answers, as many here have already offered, if one doesn't wish to get too deep into "If only we had stomped the first evolutionary idiot to try and crawl up onto land, none of this would have happened" level chains-of-causation.

Reagan materially, Citizens United politically-culturally, one might say.

The neoliberal fad of the 80s and 90s was dying by the late 2000s, and material conditions could have returned to a positive trajectory had Citizens United not ultra-fucked our already-fucked political system.

On the other hand, we live in an unprecedented age of technological change. Maybe this was always the fucked route it was going to go, and we just have to figure out how to come out the other side.