r/Futurology • u/erg99 • 18d ago
Society Is the USA in the Midst of Its Own Cultural Revolution? Or is this just what the decline of an empire looks like?
During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), China purged its intellectuals. Universities were gutted. Professors were publicly humiliated. Research was shut down. Expertise was replaced with ideological loyalty.
Now, the same patterns are emerging in the U.S.
- Universities are being defunded, and research grants are disappearing.
- Professors are being targeted for their political beliefs.
- Words like diversity, equity, and climate change are being erased from curriculums.
- Entire academic fields are under attack for being "woke."
- Its department of education is likely to be axed.
Meanwhile, China is doing the opposite.
It is investing billions into AI, biotech, and scientific research and attracting the world's top minds—including from the U.S.
This isn't about whether America is left-wing or right-wing. It's about whether a country that turns against its own intellectuals can remain competitive.
Is the U.S. undergoing its own version of a Cultural Revolution? Or is this just what the decline of an empire looks like? How will the developments this month shape the USA's future?
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u/hubrisanity 18d ago
I think this slide has been happening for a long time now unfortunately...
- "Anti-Intellectualism in America" by Richard Hofstadter was in 1963, speaks volumes now days, very interesting read.
- "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" by Chris Hedges in 2007, ties into the Anti-Intellectualism and the current Christian Fascists that is happening currently.
- "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History" by Kurt Andersen in 2017, reinforces everything from the previous books really well into the fanciful bizarre discourse happening right now.
Solid reads for those interested in trying to see the "slide", there's many more books but those provided good insight on how things came to be for quite well.
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u/hubrisanity 18d ago
For those who want to really get a good scope of how the world operates, should pick up Mary Midgley books, she speaks on "Materialism, Reductionism, Scientism and Consumerism" on how all those forces that make up the fabric and framework of how society thinks and views itself.
The stripping of human context, experience and culture, reducing the masses thinking into shallow, hollow and losing all depth...
Real Philosophy and Ethics are getting replaced with something else, sadly...
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u/HumbleWillow7916 18d ago
thank you for this. came to this thread for some education and ive found it (:
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u/RepositoryOfAsh 18d ago
To add to the list, I HIGHLY recommend "The Death of Expertise" by Thomas Nichols. It's an extraordinarily well researched and presented book on anti-intellectualism, especially in the US.
Fair warning, it will ruin your week.
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u/Obeisance8 18d ago
As an Australian with an interest in history, I feel like I'm watching the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in my own lifetime.
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u/shunted22 18d ago
The US has had a lot of really huge problems in the past. Civil war, depression, unrest in the 60s. Time will tell if things bounce back or not.
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u/Hot_Mud_7106 18d ago
I would say the Fall of the Roman Republic is more accurate. You have strongmen and demagogues building cults of personality. These guys are still using the existing systems to execute their will and achieve their goals, but with increasing disregard for said systems. In fact, the campaigning to avoid jail, using pardons to protect their cronies, and using the system to enrich themselves and their benefactors is very reminiscent of the fall of the Roman Republic.
The Fall of the Roman Empire does have some similarities, such as massive migrations that destabilize things. But the difference between the völkerwanderung of the 4th century and the Latin American migrations in the 21st century are very very different.
The fall of the empire led to civilizational collapse and realignment into dozens of petty kingdoms, where as the fall of the republic led to governmental change.
If I had to really pick a date, I would say we are pre-Sulla and Marius, as no one has marched an army into the capital yet, and for all the US’s internal issues, it’s still an economic and military juggernaut.
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u/TheHatedMilkMachine 18d ago edited 18d ago
A country that turns against its own intellectuals cannot remain competitive in an information economy. How could it, possibly?
The only hope for America now is for Trump's approval rating to dip so low that Republicans begin abandoning him to save their jobs, and this purge is stopped.
EDIT: If you know as I do that Trump / MAGA are ruining America - GET INVOLVED! Google your city / town / region and 'Indivisible' or 'Shift Left' and connect with your local group.
I've never been politically involved before - shame on me - but now I am. It doesn't take much! A few hours here and there. Just give whatever time you can afford.
Historical statistical analysis has shown that it only takes 3.5% of the population engaging in non-violent protest to ensure serious political change. Google 'April 5th protest' and join up.
(I'm more of a 'push your representative & Senator' guy than a 'holding a sign outside a Tesla dealership' guy, but we can all contribute.)
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u/FreeNumber49 18d ago
They will never abandon him. Every political analyst who has made that prediction since 2015 has been wrong. It’s a cult. The endpoint is always Kool-Aid.
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u/ResplendentShade 18d ago
All the "well he's gone too far now" times for me turned out to be nothing burgers.
When he was insulting McCain on the grounds that he was a prisoner of war... "I like soldiers who weren't captured", thereby shitting on all the POW/MIA soldiers in our history, I thought he was done-zo. The party of "respect our soldiers" will not stand for this, I thought.
Wrong. They didn't give a fuck.
The "grab em by the p****y" bit before the election. Surely, I figured, conservative women wouldn't elect a dude who brags about being a sexual predator.
Wrong. They came out in droves for him.
Fast forward to the end of his first election, January 6th, bunch of rabid MAGA people beating the shit out of cops. Surely, I figured, they will at least have to ostracize THESE individuals, these ones who were beating the cops with weapons while frothing at the mouth to get inside of the capital and start lynching lawmakers they don't like. Surely they'll at least have to draw the line there, and condemn them.
Fucking WRONG! They pardoned these people of their crimes and lionized them as heroes.
There is no bottom. The MAGA movement is fully on course to engage in some insane atrocities.
I wish more people would read The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. It's just nonstop source material, letters, speeches, newsletters, newspaper articles, transcripts, etc, that illuminate in very specific terms that political movement was all about.
The idea being that Trump and the present popular rightwing movement in the US would get more backlash, including from conservatives for clearly copying the homework of history's most hated villains, if only people were familiar with what those villains were specifically into. Their messaging. The topics they fixate on. The types of things they say about their perceived political, ideological, and racial enemies.
But these days I tend to think that most right-wingers who read it would come away from it with different very conclusions. "He wasn't such a bad guy after all!" etc.
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u/JustDesserts29 18d ago
This is something that I think a lot of people don’t understand. Right wing/conservative media does not show their audiences anything that would make Trump look bad. I turn on Fox News/OAN/Newsmax every once in a while to see their take on some crazy shit that Trump did. They simply don’t talk about it. There’s no need to come up with excuses for it if you never tell your audience about it. They just make up some bullshit story that’s usually some straw man argument that they attribute to liberals and they talk about that instead. Any message that liberals/democrats put out there simply never makes it to them. They never hear any of that stuff. They only ever hear the straw man arguments that conservative media feeds them.
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u/Doopapotamus 18d ago edited 17d ago
They're also refusing to just plain look closely at the political situation. They keep feeling it's "overreaction" or that it's a smear or "whatever, I don't want to think about it" or someshit.
It's not even just apathy; it's refusal and fear to acknowledge that day-to-day politics affects them directly now in thousands of daily little, diseased cuts, as opposed to some wooly, distant concept that happens in Washington DC.
The same ignorance of whatever flavors (misplaced hope, outrage, economic talking points, etc.) that led to his second term are America's collective undoing. They don't know what's going on because they feel they don't know enough about it, but won't look at it with a critical eye enough to gain that foundation.
Granted, a lot of this is because many are in a fight-or-flight mentailty for more-immediate basic human necessities (poverty, housing, food security, etc.), but that's part of the strategic cruelty/psychoemotional-siege that reinforces it.
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u/RideRunClimb 18d ago
The same ignorance of whatever flavors (misplaced hope, outrage, economic talking points, etc.) that led to his second term are America's collective undoing. They don't know what's going on because they feel they don't know enough about it, but won't look at it with a critical eye enough to gain that foundation.
The moment I start spitting fact to my conservative leaning parents, they shrug and say "I don't know." These are people that are obsessed with documentaries about America history. I tell them we're living through a period that will create the most insane documentaries ever yet they refuse to look deeply into the present because "they don't feel like they know enough about it" to have an opinion. So they take no stand. I tell them they could know, but they just won't do the research. They'd rather watch WW2 documentaries
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u/SoulsinAshes 17d ago
WW2 docs have such easy good and bad guys - and if they examined the present situation too close, they’d have to grapple with the fact that they’re the new bad guys. Easy to say you’d shelter Anne Frank until you love Hitler and the personae non gratae are immigrants and trans people instead of Jews (although who am I kidding, they’d hate Jews if Trump told them to, too)
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u/adamantiumskillet 18d ago
You must not have Maga family members. Yall, they don't change their minds even when you tell them what Trump actually does and says.
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u/ritaPitaMeterMaid 18d ago
So what do we do? I feel stuck in my own country
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u/ResplendentShade 18d ago
I guess all the same things that we should've already been doing. Take care of ourselves, take care of the people we love, learn, cultivate our minds and capacity for critical assessment, pursue clarity of communication, improve our skills and capabilities, organize with like minded people, minimize vulnerability to fascist violence, etc
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u/Stop_icant 18d ago
Do some light prepping, get to know your neighbors, plant a vegetable garden.
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u/Intelligent_Water_79 18d ago
you mean hide and hope they dont come for you?
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u/all_the_right_moves 18d ago
Arm yourself and hope that others will fight back. I live in the DC area. Last week I went to a Veteran's protest at the capitol.
There were thousands of them, from all demographics, angry and willing. They openly discussed Trump's betrayal of the constitution. They chanted "traitor!" It was intoxicating. There are indeed people around this country, committed to do whatever it takes, even if it's.... Extreme.
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u/Davebr0chill 18d ago
You should organize
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u/cornybloodfarts 18d ago
Like, my folders and stuff?
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u/Fuck_this_place 18d ago
Like, your internal organs. They’re gonna be worth a lot soon.
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u/Magical_Savior 18d ago
I think there'll be so many atrocities that the market'll drop out on organleggers, too.
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u/reelznfeelz 18d ago
Call and write your reps. Donate to things like the ACLU. Go to town halls if they happen. And vote your ass off in 2026. And just hope the democracy survives that long.
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u/jekylphd 18d ago
Hold your nose and actively get involved in politics. Local, state, federal, one or all of them. Get your like-minded family and friends to do it too. If you want the people in power to be different people, you're going to have to be the ones to actually drive that change.
This is what the Tea Party did. They got enough people with the 'right' ideology into the Republican Party to take it over from the inside. Today's situation is the direct outcome of that. If everyone who's on reddit complaining that the Democrats aren't doing anything joined that party, you'd outnumber the people propping up the existing party machine, and you could make their lives truly miserable until you can get rid of them.
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u/DSynergy 18d ago
Absolutely fucking true. The last few months have been a nightmare being an American; I feel disgusted that I am becoming equated with Trump and his betrayal of the western world.
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u/Anti_rabbit_carrot 18d ago
The list is honestly endless. It’s got to catch on eventually, right? Is such a high percentage of our population that dumb? That cruel? A mix? I just don’t get that part of it.
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u/Schattenreich 18d ago
Dumb, cruel, and under the delusion that they will somehow be exempt from punitive legislations.
Expect them to keep winning fair and square when they begin to bring back lobotomy for women. After all, why else would they be fighting to remove their rights and bodily autonomy?
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u/magnumdong500 18d ago
I remember being a naive 16 year old watching trump mock a disabled person on live TV and thinking "wow, there's no way any sane people would actually want to continue supporting him, right?". I truly miss that kid sometimes. I genuinely thought that would be the end of his political career.
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u/slowelevator 17d ago
I mean, for what it’s worth, Arizona did react to the insults of McCain and voted blue for the first time in 25 years in 2020. Short attention spans, sure, but nonetheless a small victory in a sea of shit
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u/thehousewright 18d ago
Flavor Aid.
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u/Mekroval 18d ago
I always felt bad that Kool Aid has been forever associated with that tragedy, when it was clearly a knock off brand that was used.
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u/HybridVigor 18d ago
You feel bad for Kraft-Heinz, a company with a market cap of $36 billion? If anything, more people are aware of the product because of Jonestown and I'd wager that it only increased sales. They would have changed the name otherwise.
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u/Amiableaardvark1 18d ago
How long are we going to continue to pretend that anything but radical action imposed onto the system rather than incremental reform ushered in by way of the system will accomplish anything at all? I’ve been reading this same shit for the last 20 years. “Call your senators, get out in the streets, make them feel the pressure, etc”. It’s all a simulacrum of resistance. Simulated disobedience to appease and distract while special interests organize and impose, through authoritarian force, their will onto us. And any time meaningful opposition does coalesce around the actual root cause of this decline, like the case of the occupy movement, they are effectively forcefully disbanded. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills sometimes. People may not like it but we’re past peaceful protest and emails to senators and if you can’t see that I don’t know what else to say.
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u/Doc_Shaftoe 18d ago
I want to say that Europe closing the door on the US Military Industrial Complex will spur at least some Congressional Republicans out of their pro-Trump stupor, but I'm not hopeful.
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u/TheHatedMilkMachine 18d ago
I doubt it. Congressional Republicans just want to keep their jobs. Europeans don't vote in American elections. As Trump continues pursuing domestically unpopular policies and his approval rating tanks, it will become easier for Congressional Republicans to see that they're actually hitching their wagon to a dying horse.
Look to people like Senator Thom Tillis - I'd bet money that guy HATES Trump and knows he's the worst thing to ever happen to America (or at least the one-man personification of years of core-depth rot, but let's not get technical). As Trump continues to pursue unpopular policies and the people who F****d Around voting for him Find Out, people like Sen. Tillis just may re-discover they are indeed vertebrates.
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u/Doc_Shaftoe 18d ago
Like I said, I'm not hopeful.
There is a shitload of money tied up in the military industrial complex and overseas contracting though. Canceling F-35 orders is going to be a pretty sizeable blow to Military-Industrial Complex mainstays like Lockheed Martin, and their lobbying power is nothing to sneeze at. Again, not hopeful, but it would be nice to see powerful business entities putting the kind of pressure on Congressional Republicans that average voters can't.
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u/2008AudiA3 18d ago
The oligarchs are putting their eggs in the AI basket- who needs intellectuals when you have supercomputers?
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u/click_licker 18d ago
yeah there are some pretty big flaws and limits with how AI systems work. They basically are just pattern match algorithm and provide a probability figure. And not even that good.
People who understand how the AI "learns" know this and understand it.
Its why we cant make self driving cars. Its why AI images have too many fingers.
These are hard limitations because AI cannot "think" it can only pattern match.
Musk is not a scientist. Hes not an engineer. And he sure as hell isn't a neuroscientist or psychologist.
But he thinks he is.
This will be his downfall.
He thinks he can use AI to do anything. But no.
It couldn't determine which jobs could be terminated without causing planes to fall from the sky.
It cant do hardly anything except targeted advertising, sex chat bots, pro trump chat bots, and writing fake books.
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u/disdainfulsideeye 18d ago
That won't happen bc Republicans, especially those in Congress, are far to frightened of him. When Trump says jump, they say how high and on one foot or two.
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u/CrazyDaimondDaze 18d ago
The only hope for America now is for Trump's approval rating to dip so low that Republicans begin abandoning him to save their jobs, and this purge is stopped.
Yeah, not gonna happen. Even CNN admits the democratic party is losing approval rating. The Democrats don't know their game anymore and are losing sympathizers... and I mean this respectfully, as a non American, not living in the U.S., nor politically leaning to any of their sides.
If they keep that attitude up, their numbers may drop even more if their own news are admitting it.
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u/click_licker 18d ago
That number does not reflect what you think it reflects. It just means we dems and liberals are pissed that the elected Dems are not doing more. We are in no way turning towards the right.
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u/Alwayssunnyinarizona 18d ago
It's as much disaffected voters as it is losing approval - ie it's not that people are shifting right, we're just pissed how ineffective they've been.
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u/Maxpowr9 18d ago
Schumer's vote in the Senate broke Democrats. The mask came off for the DNC and it's hardly a surprise to see why many on the left tuned out the 2024 election. Until the Democrats actually move to the Left, they're gonna struggle to win nationally again.
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u/TheHatedMilkMachine 18d ago
There were likely many moments we can look back on to say 'This is when the Democrats really lost their way' - but one that still sticks in my mind is when they backstabbed Bernie (the second time). When all the other Dem candidates and major party leaders and Jim Clyburn threw their support behind Biden at the last second before the SC primary to take Sanders out at the knees.
It's not that I think Bernie could've won. I do - but it's not that.
It's how clearly it revealed the absolute cravenness of the Democratic Party leadership - they saw the status quo flash before their eyes and thought 'Won't somebody think of the Corporations?!"
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u/Puzzleheaded-Rub-396 18d ago edited 18d ago
It goes deeper than scientists and research. It is the very identity that is being replaced.
For the last 40 years I've been listening to American music with a sense of hope, great energy and making things possible. Now it has become melancholic weird depressive nostalgic sounds. Listening to the entire music culture of the US from the 1960s-1990s has become an extremely saddening experience, like something is lost forever. Just a few months ago the music was still a healing experience, now it has become poison.
Some people said that the people of the Soviet Union felt the same about their national music when the Soviet Union fell and was dismantled. A crushing sadness about times lost forever. Regardless of how one feels about the cultural identity of a country or an empire, it will hit some very hard when it falls. It just sounds different like tunes have gone monochrome instead of colors.
The fall of an empire has a cultural effect that transcends anything from art to science leaving a void only filled by the sound of a trumpet from the last standing soldier.
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u/huusmuus 18d ago
Now it has become melancholic weird depressive nostalgic sounds.
Ah, finally, it appears I'm not the only one who noticed this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPa7bsKwL-c)!
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u/SylveonFrusciante 18d ago
As a lifelong musician, the way you worded it really hit me. We have such a rich tradition of music and art to protect. Modern popular music was essentially invented by Americans, black Americans to be precise. And we have so many brilliant female and queer musicians in our pantheon. To think that their contributions to our culture could be diminished under this administration is heartbreaking. So many things are already being erased, and it really hurts to watch.
I firmly believe America would be nothing without its music. And we will keep singing, even in the struggle.
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u/MinuteMotor5601 18d ago
As a Turk who remembers the early days of Erdo admin, they voted for Christian AKP. Take a look at whatever is happening in Turkey now, its America's future.
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u/katyasparadise 18d ago
One could see Erdoganists are some sort of "Muslim MAGA". Same cult of personality, different religion. It's all deja vu.
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u/-ChrisBlue- 18d ago edited 18d ago
China didn’t just “publicly humiliate” professors, in many cases they were beaten and killed. And it wasn’t for their “political beliefs”, it was because of their social class / professions.
The drag net caught far more than intellectuals, many civilians with no associations were caught up in it were beaten and or killed. Being ideologically loyal did not save you from being purged. More than 1 million were killed.
Children were taken out of schools and sent to live on farms. My parents never finished middle school. They were taken out of school and sent by the government to work on a farm. They smuggled a text book and secretly taught themselves at night.
What happened in the cultural revolution is no comparable to whats happening in America today.
My dad’s dad was a professor. He specialized in teaching textile manufacturing. He was beaten to death and his body was hanged.
My mom’s dad was a doctor. He specialized in treating respiratory diseases. He was thrown off the roof of his hospital.
In addition: China is once again swinging towards ideology again since around 2018. Schools and universities that once allowed some free thinking and criticism have now doubled down on xinjingping thought. (Yes I even know of a high school in shanghai that taught what happened what happened at tiananmen square in the early 2010s, it was allowed more leeway because it was for the smartest students, it has now been reigned in)
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u/Allaplgy 18d ago
It starts somewhere and looks a little different every time. And by the time doctors are literally being flung off rooftops, it's too late.
There are absolutely echos of the Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge, Nazis, the Russian Revolution.... It only looks different in hindsight, and like a pandemic, the proper response seems like overreaction, because ideally it is never allowed to become the catastrophe that is threatened.
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u/-ChrisBlue- 18d ago
The cultural revolution was an internal power struggle. One faction within the communist party wanted to remove another faction. It was an excuse by one group of communist to cement their power and to purge a weaker group of communists.
There is no proper response to the cultural revolution but to run. The whole thing was intentionally orchestrated by the government by creating and riling up the red guard, giving them free rein, and intentionally pulling all security forces out of the cities. It was not some organic gradual movement.
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u/idontgethejoke 18d ago
You do see how Trump is doing this, though, right? That was the whole point of Project 2025. To make sure no other party wins an election ever again.
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u/yaddar 18d ago
Here in Mexico we had an uni party for 70 years, tried democracy, didn't work and we are swinging, back to uni party
The republicans have been having a slow decline into a uni party system since gerrymandering was allowed and citizens united was passed.
Project 2025 is just the manifesto and a user's guide for the endgame
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u/BigMax 18d ago
Yeah, that’s what’s happening sadly.
I think the root cause is insecurity.
We’ve been run by smart, serious people for a while. (Whichever side you are on. You may disagree with those people, but the bulk of them were smart and thoughtful.)
That makes a LOT of people feel insecure. Everywhere they look, people are smarter than they are, more successful, seemingly more important. They look, sound, and act smarter and more confident.
Plenty of people hit a breaking point. They elected a man who is just like them - a giant ball of insecurity. Trump is almost exclusively driven by insecurity.
And now the people have someone like them. He doesn’t use big words, or even medium words. He doesn’t understand anything. He just barrels through life. He elevates simple logic and assumptions right up alongside facts, research and knowledge.
Now everyone loves the buffoon in office , and they are cheering on the purge of anyone that makes any of them feel insecure. That’s what this is. The bullies beating up the smart kids, to make themselves feel less dumb. Just on a massive, national scale.
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u/bjran8888 18d ago
As a Chinese, I would like to say that if Americans do not understand, please be careful in using the term ‘Cultural Revolution’.
At best, you are engaging in ‘McCarthyism’ and moving towards Stalin's ‘Great Purge’.
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u/A_Hideous_Beast 18d ago
End of an empire.
It's been on the decline for decades, but only now have the cracks been showing.
It won't collapse overnight, but history repeats and the signs are there.
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u/Mekroval 18d ago
Britain's empire and influence only took about 30 years to seriously decline. I think the US might be ready to break that time, without (hopefully) two world wars to speed things along.
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u/havenoir 18d ago
I would expect serious issues in roughly a year and a half two years.
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u/Mekroval 18d ago
Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but why that specific timeframe? Perhaps fear that the 2026 midterms will be compromised by MAGA-directed election interference? (I honestly fear that possibility)
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u/romacopia 18d ago
He's threatening Canada and Greenland. If he actually tries military action, we're going to see a civil war. He's also ramping up deportations and might create a really heinous humanitarian crisis. Some of the agitators in Trump's orbit have floated the idea of pardoning Derek Chauvin - that with the insurrection act in play is an obvious recipe for disaster. Plus Trump just created the conditions for a global rush for nuclear weapons development and emboldened Putin to continue with Russia's expansionism.
Also his economic plans and performance so far are absolute dogshit. They're firing everyone, tanking the economy, and fucking with people's livelihoods. Easy food and staying busy 9 to 5 are the only things keeping people complacent.
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u/Mekroval 18d ago
Very good analysis, I appreciate your thought out reply. Can't argue with any of your points, especially the last sentence.
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u/bohba13 18d ago
Both.
Tyrany kills nations. It stifles them, subjects them to the whims of one person.
It is poison.
By emulating Pol Pot and rejecting intellectuals and their work, Trump is kneecapping us. He is robbing people of their futures, and killing the institutions that allowed us to become what we are.
We needed to change, but this is a step backwards. Not forwards.
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u/SilentRunning 18d ago
This is what the Decline of the American Empire looks like.
Difference with China is that the communist replaced the Established government with their revolution then did all this. Here in the states the establishment (Banks, Wall St., Corporations, Billionaires) are still in control behind the scenes. This is their grab for ultimate power and to destroy the democratic system put in place to serve it's people.
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u/wonkalicious808 18d ago
This isn't about whether America is left-wing or right-wing. It's about whether a country that turns against its own intellectuals can remain competitive.
Then it is about whether America is leftwing or rightwing. The American right has been deeply anti-educated people for a long time. And they don't want America to be competitive; they want America to not compete at all, but also somehow win. This was the American right wing long before Trump was delighting them with his birther conspiracy.
American prosperity and greatness are not bipartisan goals, or apolitical. Only the left wants to work for them. The right wants to feel good by indulging their fantasies.
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u/philo_fortuna 18d ago
But America doesn't really have a left; at most, it has a center-progressive stance. A true left-wing party is impossible in the U.S., as it goes against the current system. An actual left wing (with Bernie being a moderate left) could propose changes in politics, education, infrastructure, and healthcare, just enough to balance the mess that the U.S. has been for the last 40 years, and MAYBE, in 20 years, see a renaissance of the country.
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u/Sityl 18d ago
The Democratic party is actively complicit in the fascism. Just look at what Schumer did this week. There's maybe 5-10 of them that are to the left of fascism at this point.
"Liberal," at this point, means to the right of George W Bush. Harris ran on the most lethal military and building a wall, something Dems called horrific just 4 years earlier. She also never once spoke up in defense of trans people. She abandoned her pledge for Medicare for All. She hugged Liz Cheney and refused to even speak out against a genocide.
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u/saintjimmy43 18d ago
There are pockets of this country that will never accept the culture this administration wants to normalize. In that sense, no we are not in a cultural revolution.
Anti-intellectualism has been an increasing trend in america since the internet really took off. Truth is now whatever truth you choose to surround yourself with.This administration has shown that they are willing and able to arbitrate the truth and persecute those who speak or write the wrong truth. In that sense, yes we are in a cultural revolution that is seeking to erase progress in the name of nationalism and "traditional values".
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u/FreeNumber49 18d ago
The relevant analogy is Italy under Mussolini but we rarely see this comparison made.
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u/tltltltltltltl 18d ago
Can you elaborate?
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u/chromegreen 18d ago
Mussolini was a relentless attention seeker who had no core ideology. He would lean into whatever gave him more power and popularity. He originally thought the path to more popularity was through joining socialists. When that didn't work he started working his way towards fascism.
The king, politicians and industrialists did not take him seriously. They thought they could control him and used him to crush organized labor. King Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini Prime Minister and the king and people like Antonio Salandra thought they could still influence him behind the scenes. Except he was a relentlessly chaotic force with the vague goal of Making Italy Great Again to become a new roman empire.
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u/Asurapath9 18d ago
Didn't he get murked by an angry mob in the end?
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u/mingy 18d ago
Yeah but the Italians had a strong left who had been persecuted by the Fascists and had fought the Germans. And they were pissed.
The US doesn't have a left and, despite being armed to teeth purportedly to fight the government, have no stomach for a fight.
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u/throwthiscloud 18d ago
Whether this country destroys itself now or not, it’s become clear that it will collapse eventually. The Supreme Court has ruled that a president is completely above the law, and we see this being tested in real time with Donald trump defying federal judge orders with zero repercussions. If something like this can happen then we are fucked. It’s absurd how far this country and declined since Obama left office.
Whatever. Fuck the Supreme Court for its absurd rulings. Fuck the American people for being so easily swayed by dogshit consistently. Democracies are shit because people are shit. And you want to know the worst part? When this is all said and done, there will be zero consequences. Non. Trump escaped all justice for everything he did in his first term, and because of the Supreme Court ruling, he will never face anything after his second term. Never in a million years would a democrat even dare do 1% of what trump has done, and the Republican base still votes for them. People forgot what happened in trumps first term, which is why they voted for him again. This country is a joke. There is no hope for this future.
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u/Ginor2000 18d ago
Maybe just the early stages of a big recession.
The UK had a new conservative government who got obsessed with cutting costs and austerity.
They triggered a ten year slump in the economy which is still lingering.
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u/HighTideLowpH 18d ago
But these moves by Doge aren't really spending cuts.
Not touching military spending or big government subsidies to corporations. Just anti-intellectual malice, own the liberals and drink up liberal tears. Cutting like 0.1% of the actual budget (will lie and say higher, no fact checking matters to them). All the while kneecapping the IRS and cutting taxes on the rich.
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u/Ghiren 18d ago
I was thinking Germany in February or March of 1933. Hitler had been named chancellor of Germany, and was in the process of consolidating power and driving out people who would oppose him.
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u/doubleohbond 18d ago
Hitler still needed to win over the hearts and minds of the people, and it took about a year to do that. Trump & co don’t have the capability of doing that, they are not builders. Almost immediately his poll numbers have gone down and still remain the worst numbers of any president, except for his first term ironically.
Germany 1933 was also very different than US 2025. I’m not saying it can’t happen - I mean I never thought we’d be so stupid to elect Trump in the first place - but playing into the inevitability of authoritarianism ironically only helps it come true.
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u/Helpful-Special-7111 18d ago
The USA is headed toward a techno monarchy. Just read project 2025. Not sure why y’ll aren’t grasping what going on yet. The whole world has read it and we are all watching from the outside. You’re being taken over by oligarchs and no one is stopping them.
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u/environmentalbeto 18d ago
Where may I read it? I’ve become so weary of what I search for online and its validity
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u/yobowl 18d ago
I can’t find the original pdf link from the Heritage foundation so maybe the got smart and took it down.
But here is a copy hosted on IA
https://archive.org/details/project-2025-mandate-for-leadership-full_202309-manifesto
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u/disdkatster 18d ago
For everyone thinking that everything goes back to normal when Trump dies, you are as wrong as wrong can be. He is a figure head. He helped open the door but he is not the machine driving what is happening. 2025 was written and developed by the right wing in this country and they will continue to exist no matter how many of their leaders die. This is America. Until people start voting in the Primaried and give the Democrats a Super Majority in both houses and the Presidency, nothing changes.
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u/SlowCrates 18d ago
Well, the United States has a few things going for it that ensure their domination isn't soon to disappear. By far the most lethal military, land that is next to impossible to invade, substantial agricultural and other trade assets, etc.
This culture issue we're seeing is due to ignorance being galvanized by misinformation, a product of the powers that be taking advantage of social media and whipping the most impressionable minds into a frothing, seething, insane mob. Luckily, the mascot for all this is fat and elderly, and a huge chunk of his supports are as well.
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u/throwawaygoawaynz 18d ago
By far the most lethal military: Not “by far” anymore. The DoD is going through a bit of a crisis at the moment due to deferred spending due to the WoT. China is probably near peer to the US around the South China Sea, and potentially outmatches the US in that area.
Meanwhile the military as a whole is unable to fund its modernisation needs, and we may even see the US lose domination in certain areas for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
Substantial agricultural and trade assets - like what? The vast majority of the US economy is fuelled by consumer spending, like 70%. This relies on cheap imports because America cannot manufacture stuff as cheap as other places. This also means export nations want to hold onto a lot of US dollars so they can buy USD so their own currency can stay lower.
If there’s a rebalancing of the global economy away from the US, then this consumer economy advantage will collapse, along with the need for US dollars. And this will be a rather serious event for the US. It’ll definitely move the country from dominant to a regional power, but nothing like it is today.
The US will not recover from this without the help of other countries willing to export back into US, but after all the nonsense from the current government, no one is going to be keen on doing that for some time.
Basically the US economy has been majorly benefitting from global security and cheap imports, and once that’s undone it’s going to take a generation or longer of damage that needs to be repaired.
You need to understand that apart from geography, the country isn’t “exceptional”, especially with education being put in reverse, and the economy going back to an 1800’s mentality. The superpower the US had was its network of allies and globally backed economy. But that super power is being ripped apart from within.
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u/Assignment_General 18d ago
Ironic isn’t it; the MAGA movement has no concept of what truly made America great.
I suppose that’s what happens when your educational comes from TicTok.
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u/DarkeyeMat 18d ago
This is an assassination, the country is being killed by a foreign operative which piggybacked a dishonest party which had been tampering with democracy for decades to elect a KGB asset into the presidency.
There were so many voters suppressed those who are on the other side of this outnumber the revolutionists so we will probably wind up in another civil war rather than a purge imho.
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u/Beer-Milkshakes 18d ago
USA is having an identity crisis. Most European nations had one between 1000 and 2000AD. The results were usually massive peasant revolt or invasion.
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u/stonedbadger1718 18d ago
Trump kicks the bucket, his followers and regime will dissipate. His copies won’t have the charisma he has, his base will not be able to sustain itself. Once a cult leader is gone, the cult is gone.
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u/Helsafabel 18d ago
What is occuring now is a drive towards empowering the executive more and more, together with a naive drive towards privatization. So many reasons for it, but few utilitarian ones.
Of course many eggs are being broken (people unlawfully deported, government agencies defunded, history being erased out of childlike frustration.) There are some parrallels with the Cultural Revolution but I am more tempted to compare to 30's Germany. Not saying war is the inevitable result, but for example, burning books by, say, Muslim , or trans, authors in this case seems to be quite possible. As do concentration camps. Again, I'm not instantly thinking of death camps. Just.. places to put the scapegoats that fuel the anger of your base.
The most laughable libertarian and conservative paradoxes are exposed over time too. Freedom without a functioning state is a pipe dream. Of course, the ossification of the opposition is also a part of the whole story. The Democratic party is beyond pathetic mostly.
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u/New_Rub1843 18d ago
Failed expensive prolonged invasions (Iraq, Afghanistan), increasing domestic failures due to gushing-up-to-a-few capitalism, going from tech leader to having to fend off China, and finally the cherry on top, having bozo Trump for a leader who alienates allies. Yea the (slow) decline has been going on for 2 decades now. Think America peaked in the 2000s.
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u/whydoibelieveyou 18d ago
US Citizen here. I think Stephen West’s podcast Philosophize This! Episode 206 “Capitalism is dead. This is Technofeudalism” is the best explanation broadly of what has happened. The New York Times Opinion article “This May Not Be Brainwashing, but It’s Not Democracy, Either” is also a must for anyone wondering what the hell is going on right now.
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u/ReportMuch7754 18d ago
The thing that bothers me is that it feels like American corporate owners are trying to reset the system with outdated methods. They're trying to recreate scarcity so that they can "reinvent" the industrial era, and try to convince the American public that we still need them so they can go right back to being greedy, and keep us starved and homeless. Wash, rinse, repeat. They aren't reinventing the wheel, or making modern adaptations. They're taking advantage of the overworked, underpaid, and unaware. Fortunately, enough of the population has become aware to wake others up. It's time for change.
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u/rleon19 14d ago
It is what happens when there is no external enemy. We have to look inward and when you have a country as diverse as the US people will disagree on many things. It will keep getting extreme until we have another external enemy or something big happens that shocks us to stop for a while then start all over again.
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u/Wilegar 18d ago
You had me until saying China is "attracting the world's top minds—including from the U.S." If anything, the opposite is happening. China is experiencing a brain drain, they're just going to Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia rather than the US. Something similar may happen to us, the way things are going.
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u/Chemical_Refuse_1030 18d ago
The funny thing is that the US decided to destroy itself when it was allegedly at its own economic peak and when there was no external threat to them. It will probably be studied for ages how wealth inequality let to the situation where ultrarich and the poor made an alliance to destroy the system.
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u/MsStormyTrump 18d ago
Comparison with the Cultural Revolution is a little big ouch. Let's not forget that its hallmark was violence on an unprecedented scale.
I'm not American, I'm just married to one, we live in Europe and he's really not that emotionally invested. I will say two things, though: destabilization and disarray don't happen overnight and by one single man. What we see is a result of years and years and years of arrogance, bad planning and systemic lack of insight by many.
And, I also believe in the beauty of the human spirit. So, I'll put it to you that it is also possible that American institutions will adapt and find ways to protect academic freedom and support research. As to the people, counter movements may arise, and public opinion could shift. So, here's for better times!
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u/weary_dreamer 18d ago
“years and years and years of arrogance, bad planning and systemic lack of insight by many.”
Im not sure this is the distinction you were looking for, but I admire and appreciate your optimism. I hope you are correct
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u/MTBisLIFE 18d ago
America's institutions are completely corporate-captured and incapable of self-correcting. The reality is that years of Red Scare McCarthyism has deleted any effectual leftist movements in the US while simultaneously dismantling socialist governments across the globe at the behest of private interests and US hegemony. The revolution will come from the periphery of the empire, all the reaches of the globe the US has dominated for decades or even centuries at this point. The job of the American people,those that are awake to what is happening, is to disrupt the war machine as much as possible so the rest of the globe can self-sustain and resist American imperialism. The US's lack of a unified left means there will be no meaningful recovery from the death spiral the country is currently in as climate collapse exponentially increases year after year for the next 2 - 3 decades.
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u/havenoir 18d ago
Man, that’s nice for you guys. I see so much anti-American sentiment now that we’re down. Honestly, in the next two years, you’re going to see incredible violence in the United States. On the scale that people haven’t seen in a very, very long time.
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u/SkotchKrispie 18d ago
Reagan and then Fox News did the majority of the damage. Fox News is incredibly powerful. It should have been banned decades ago.
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u/UnderpaidModerator 18d ago
Is this satire? This has to be satire.
You actually kind of had me going until "Meanwhile, China is doing the opposite." LMAO
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u/ONLY_SAYS_ONLY 18d ago edited 18d ago
Look to Hungary (and, to a lesser extent, Russia), not China, to understand what is happening to the US right now.
That is to say, it is sliding into an electoral autocracy:
Specifically:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_autocracy