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I'm exactly where you are, assessments included.
I was never an accelerationist and thought at one time it was the laziest of ideals, but now I'm seeing my whole nation dissolve into the investment portfolios of a small handful of people and wondering exactly what kind of consequences my countrymen actually need to experience before they realize how incredibly important it is to take part in, and be aware of, how motherfucking democracy ~~works~~ worked. Our people here have the memory of goldfish, and either didn't remember the last time they got screwed by republicans broadly, or were so distressed by the contention and gravitas of the election cycle that they tuned out and stayed home... with the rest of the 45% of eligible, registered voters who stayed home.
To say nothing of the weakest, flimsiest excuses people gave for being lazy about taking part in democracy. You saw tons of it right here on Lemmy. "I cannot in good conscious vote for anyone who won't take a stand against Israel." Uh huh, sure buddy, your post history is entirely video games, I am having a hard time believing you're regularly out there on the Gaza strip handing out aid and food.
Our country really needs a hard slap across the face, and sadly I don't even think this current situation is doing the trick. The slap that will be hard enough to get people out of their couches will be a real bad one that I don't wish on anyone, but I feel like it's inevitable either way. One way is boiling to death slowly, the other is jumping into the fire. I can't decide which is worse, but the outcome will be the same.
Yeah, too many people in the US are still fat and comfortable with their lot in life, not even dreaming of what could be but stuck in the daily grind.
And I mean I made the same argument many times re:Israel - my standard for whether or not I can vote for someone has been reduced to a binary 'supports the Israeli genocide in Palestine, yes/no'; it's an extremely low bar, but both major candidates still managed to ooze under it somehow - but I did at least vote for not-fascism (for what good it did me living in a deep red state) which is more than I can say for most of those folks.
But yeah, we need something to wake people up, and my estimation of what that will take grows increasingly dire as the country goes to shit around us and still people are like 'No this is fine, we can fix this by voting!' Nah, the days of voting fixing a damned thing have been over for 20 years at least. And yeah, while the outcome will be the same, one of those is unfortunately going to hurt a lot more than the other, so I'm still reluctant..
I just keep repeating to myself and others, "Nobody is coming." Even if people made better choices last November, it would have only been delaying the inevitable consumption of the nation that we're seeing in full mouthful right now.
Even if we got the biggest, boldest grass-roots movement started, it would immediately be swallowed by the existing political Machine & Spectacle, which would either digest it (Remembering that time Tim Waltz was forbidden from calling Republicans "weird" anymore) or they would destroy it with the same old "amplify both sides to the point which reasonable followers tune out" tactic that the KGB pioneered.
Somehow all arrows point to a future where the constitution has become a nifty relic somewhere, everything is privatized, climate change is in full-swing and people are really feeling the shift, while America is suffering through a catastrophic but slow, steady decline to the point that President/CEO Baron has to install a firewall around the US so the citizens don't see news from Europe or China and how their quality of life is. This could be in 10 - 15 years.
Put away gold I guess, I dunno man, I'm tired.
Yeah. It's sad to finally give up the last shred of hope that maybe this will all sort itself and somehow get back on track, but the track is now a smoking crater and there's nowhere to even build new track 'til we fill that back in.
The US has been doing this for the entirety of my life at the very least, and I'm in my 50s. They did it with the USSR, Cuba, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Venezuela, etc (not saying all of those places had great quality of life tho.) That was the whole thing with Domino Theory and containment - not just containing the spread, but containing the ideas behind propaganda and sanctions so thick that Americans couldn't even access the truth of the matter, that way they wouldn't get any bright ideas about eating the rich and nationalizing industries over here.
It's definitely exhausting.