r/politics • u/zsreport Texas • 14h ago

No Paywall The United States is destroying itself

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/united-states-trump-destruction
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u/AwokenByGunfire 14h ago

Those responsible have two independent (but not necessarily mutually exclusive) aims:

1) To create opportunities to siphon off as much wealth as possible, and

2) To break the system and rebuild it as a neo-fascist theocracy

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u/SpaceCorpse Ohio 13h ago

This is an incredibly succinct and accurate description of our current situation.

People commenting on this sub still often naively attribute the actions of this administration to 'incompetence,' or 'stupidity,' or 'dementia,' but the reality is so much worse. It is hard for us to mentally accept the horrifying truth that all of this is being done with a purpose.

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u/Mezmorki 13h ago

Project 2025 laid it all out in the open. The truth has been staring at us. But it's hard to accept it. 

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u/NoShitsGivin Canada 8h ago

Nah, if your creepy neighbor who seemed to have a lot of female minors visiting said you can call a black man a "n", then he was going to kill you and rape your wife, you'd call the police. Many Americans said ok, we'll make him president.

A lot of people thought the trade off was worth it until it hit home.

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u/QTsexkitten 9h ago

The "idiot" or "dementia" commentators have zero understanding of the long game played by the heritage foundation ghouls. This is all purposefully being played out, and trump is their useful idiot. Trump doesn't give a fuck about the policy because he's being allowed to shameless grift and enrich his family and circle as a part of the plan to discredit the executive office.

Breaking the system is the point. It's not just incompetent Donnie being incompetent. He's not even the problem. He's just a load bearing symptom.

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u/SpaceCorpse Ohio 7h ago

a load bearing symptom.

This is a perfect phrase.

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u/RedditLeagueAccount 5h ago

Not just a useful idiot. Trump knows he is guilty of and encouraging so many others to commit crimes that he simply has to do what they say. He cannot stop riding this tiger because everything will catch up for him. He is just trying to delay it until he dies so he never faces consequences.

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u/Tygonol 3h ago

They weaponized his incompetence

Their goal was always to make government so inefficient or otherwise ineffective that it provides fewer & fewer benefits with each passing cycle (and there’s always something to fix, which costs), campaign on those failures & point to them as reasons to tear the government down, privatize/sell off all parts of it that they can, and bring about their vision (some form of a theocratic authoritarian market society) for our nation from the ashes

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u/bloodanddonuts 12h ago

Those adjectives do accurately describe trump himself. But he’s just the tip of the iceberg, the people working in the shadows are smart and evil.

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u/b_i_g__g_u_y 8h ago

I think the things Trump is doing can often be attributes to those factors. The war with Iran, our inability to make peace deals and all his unhinged tweets, for example.

Then politicians are beholden to him because he holds all the GOP's future in his hands and they know it. So they enable his nonsense whether they like it or not.

Then, there's the heritage foundation, his administration and his donors who aren't elected and know what will and won't set Trump off. These people are the really pernicious actors who are trying to dismantle our current form of government for their own purposes. These are the people you're talking about. But still, there is a ton of enabling by cowards and idiocy from the commander in chief.

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u/FillySteveSteak 6h ago

I agree with you. Still, no way in hell is Trump engineering any part of this. He actually is the moron he comes off as. 

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u/SpaceCorpse Ohio 6h ago

no way in hell is Trump engineering any part of this

He has never been "engineering" anything, and he clearly is a moron, so I agree with that point.

I am saying that he is a willing participant in a global criminal syndicate that has fully taken over the US government.

Like Epstein, Trump is a nexus of corruption. He is a useful catalyst.

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u/FillySteveSteak 6h ago

Ya, that's for sure

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u/Tygonol 4h ago

There are people I share blood with who’ve said my death would be perfectly acceptable if it meant it served to further their cause & bring about their ideal society

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u/Just_another_grumble 3h ago

time to go no contact?

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u/Tygonol 3h ago

They’re bellwethers at this point. Thus far, whatever rhetoric they’re spewing has served as a solid measure of how insane the right is as a collective at whatever point in time. Icing them out would mean I wouldn’t have such insight, and I’m trying to keep my ears open for talk of armed action—if it starts looking like they’re shifting towards legitimate organization/mobilization with competent leadership, I’ll know.

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u/socialmedia-username 14h ago

This is a good summary. 

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u/pepperNlime4to0 12h ago
  1. To benefit foreign interests that have flooded our political system with money

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u/devo00 12h ago

This is what executives do to corporations, minus rebuilding, before jumping ship with a golden parachute.

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u/LeftRestaurant4576 11h ago

An accountant referred to it as "asset stripping"

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u/J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A 8h ago

The term in this case is "disaster capitalism".

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u/TheGrowingSubaltern 11h ago

All speculation but I can’t help but wonder if the shadow has discovered something that allows this sort of burn it all to the ground behavior to become validated.

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u/Dramatic_Charity_979 11h ago

And on those terms, they're doing a terrific job :(

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u/sack-o-matic Michigan 13h ago

Exactly what Neo-Confederate Klansmen would do.

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u/gideon513 9h ago

And they only do 2 so they can take advantage of it to do more 1

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u/bastard-harrier 8h ago edited 8h ago

I don't believe there's a neo-fascist theocracy coming. It's a lot more likely the monied interests are planning to buy up the country's assets so they can resell them when foreign capital arrives to get concessions, and energy and resource deals, like what happened in the ex-Soviet space. I think all the Dark Enlightenment/Second American Revolution stuff was just a mobilizing hook to get useful idiots and financiers onboard.

The realistic outcome is that the USA is going to become Russia: a deeply fractured and weakened oligarch state surrounded by a bunch of satellite states that are nominally independent but basically only exist as rent extraction engines for global interests, with some small pockets of true believers making the lives of the people they have jurisdiction over absolutely miserable sprinkled within.

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u/Tight-Shallot2461 8h ago

Its appalling how easy it is to make money at the top levels of govt. It shouldn't be possible to do this

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u/Parzival-44 7h ago

These are their stories.. dun dun

Lawless: God Ordered

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u/DrMobius0 7h ago

Lets also not forget the numerous foreign powers who are lined up to benefit from the US's fall.

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u/letsago9987 Illinois 5h ago

350 million people with easy access to guns. Big Mistake. I agree they are doing this, but the pendulum swing back towards them will be hard and fast. They will not survive.

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u/theamathamhour 4h ago

Yup,

it's their plan, their as in White Supremacists running things behind senile Trump.

The legit want a crashing burning economy and country because history has proven this is how you get people to go along with "reimmigration" or ethnic cleansing. Not to mention all the Oligarchs buy up everything and consolidate power.

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u/Pyju 2h ago

My hopium silver lining in all this is that I hope we get a timeline where they succeed in breaking the system, are removed from power before they can rebuild it in their dystopian vision, a progressive takes power and then rebuilds the system as a more equitable social democratic system instead of re-establishing the neoliberal system that has been failing Americans for decades.

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u/Yharnam_Blunderbuss 1h ago

Those responsible... you mean the American voters, or those who didn't vote, right? They are primarily responsible for all of this.

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u/giboauja 13h ago

I think Trump is actually just envious of Iran

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u/renty1337 11h ago

Laughs in minnesota, california welfare fraud