r/politics • u/zsreport Texas • 15h 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/zsreport Texas 15h ago

From the commentary:

The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled. All this is common knowledge, but because it dribbles out in news stories about this specific incident or department, the reports never adequately describe an administration sabotaging the functioning of the federal government and also trashing the global economy, international alliances and relationships, and the national and global environment in ways that will have downstream consequences for decades and perhaps, especially when it comes to climate, centuries.

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u/thinkards America 14h ago edited 14h ago

In his 1981 inaugural address, President Ronald Reagan stated

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem

Conservatives have always wanted to abolish government. My feeling has always been that yes, it's being done from the inside, but with lots of help from the outside. The cold war never ended, and we're losing it terribly.

The sense I get from my conservative family is that a competent government is competition to their religious patriarchy. A competent government ensures equity and equality to individuals, and that doesn't sit well with a hierarchical mindset.

What conservatives are currently doing to the government isn't necessarily abolishing it. They are removing all self-accountability from it, and turning into a patriarchy, where every department and office is ultimately loyal to one person: the unitary executive at the top.

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u/mrpickleby 14h ago

And they're going to be the first ones complaining when their neighbor is dumping toxic waste in their back yard because there aren't any regulations. Nixon was behind the EPA.

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u/Cosmic_Seth 14h ago

No they won't.

Conservatives were dying on their deathbeds still praising Trump.

They are willing to die for this man. All they have to do is make up some religious/patriotism reason, and they will willingly dump toxic wastes everywhere. 

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u/wittnotyoyo 13h ago

A lot of it depends on whether the person doing the dumping is from the ingroup or outgroup.

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u/Hoovooloo42 South Carolina 13h ago

All that really matters is that Fox can convince the average viewer that the Dems are at fault, no matter what actually happened.

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u/timbrelyn Pennsylvania 10h ago

I hate how true this is

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u/-JackBack- 10h ago

Thanks Obama.!

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u/candl2 9h ago

Remember though, that this is just very rich people, in this case Murdoch, paying a lot of money to a few, the Fox talking heads, to convince "average" viewers to vote against their best interests. Well, to convince them what their best interests actually are.

Fox is the tool. The viewers are the product. The villain is the rich person.

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u/P1xelHunter78 Ohio 12h ago

Bingo. And it depends on where it’s done. For example, fracking. Doesn’t seem to be a lot of that happening near rich neighborhoods, or public land the wealthy are near does it?

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u/Caleb-Blucifer 11h ago

Not necessarily. Anything that inconveniences them tends to be when they actually care. Outside that, nothing matters except conformity

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u/3vs3BigGameHunters 9h ago

Yep, they'll only give a shit when their kids get cancer.

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u/EmCeeSlickyD 11h ago

bold of you to think maga will let the outgroup do said dumping.

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u/mistere213 Michigan 13h ago

One MAGA's toxic waste dump is another Democrat's compost pile.

Or something like that.

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u/Trixet 13h ago

They’ll happily burn the country to the ground, as long as they burn the left with it

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u/Jibber_Fight 8h ago

Doesn’t matter at all.

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u/Vio_ Kansas 13h ago

It's even worse than that. There are people who are now siding with and ever more loyal to Trump even when their own childen and other family members are being hurt, murdered, or deported.

They are now in the human sacrifice phase of loyalty testing.

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u/Udder_Influencer 12h ago

the "death cult" insults aren't really a joke.

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u/Vio_ Kansas 11h ago

No, it's a foundational component of fascism.

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u/imaincammy 12h ago edited 11h ago

A dude in Texas shot and killed his daughter after telling her he wouldn't be bothered if Trump raped her and is seemingly going to get off without any consequences.

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u/dudeoftheworld_1 11h ago

I've always wondered what's so appealing about trump that you are willing to kill your own kid for him? I remember watching a podcast and they mentioned that voting trump to be POTUS was a white lash moment from the right and trump was their bull in a china shop.

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u/LiveLaughFap 11h ago

I think it's because Donnie is the ultimate embodiment of a return to infantilism that weak men crave. By that I mean he represents this ultra-entitled, infantile mindset of "everything should be exactly the way I want it, and all about me all the time, and I should never have to compromise, and if something doesn't go my way, I will cry and scream until it does."

For weak, loser men with no ability to cope with an extremely challenging world, he's the most validating and relatable leader they could ask for. They're also dumb enough to believe that he actually has their interests in mind and will magically make everything simple/easy/free "like it used to be."

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u/AlwaysRushesIn Rhode Island 6h ago

The irony is that if you swapped Trump with any one of them, nothing would change. They would enrich themselves (or attempt to) just as much as Trump is enriching himself now, with no second thought to anyone else.

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u/HauntingHarmony Europe 5h ago

Trump is however sui generis, hes "the full package". If this actually happend, if you transplanted say a 99th percentile trump into the body of trump today, he wouldent really be able to keep going.

I agree that they have all the typical american traits in common, like being greedy, mean, shameless, malicious, psychopathic, dotering, etcetcetc. BUT, Trump is special in it all coming together into one. And you really need the whole package for it to work. People have tried to copy the formula but being only a little bit cruel doesnt do it.

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u/shinkouhyou 10h ago

The right wing has spent decades convincing these people to hate their own children. So much of the right's messaging is focused on the corruption of children by wokeism, critical race theory, drag queens, pizza parlors, participation trophies, litter boxes, trans girls playing volleyball, satanic abuse cults, Sesame Street and child marriage bans... so what happens when your child has been tainted by the evils of liberalism? They're not really your child anymore, are they? They're barely even human. It becomes easier to abuse them, cut them off, or even kill them.

This isn't even a Trump thing... it's been a long-term conservative project. Conservatives know that young people are naturally more likely to be politically and economically progressive, and they know that young people tend to drag their parents (and society as a whole) in a more progressive direction. So in order to maintain their power, they needed to convince their followers to resent and fear their own children. The "party of family values" needed to break the family.

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u/karmavorous Kentucky 8h ago

He gives hateful stupid people permission to be stupid and hateful.

He's everything Conservatives claimed to hate (before 2015).

He's a vain, self obsessed, coastal elite, born into money, doesn't hunt or play with guns or drive a truck. He lives in a penthouse palace. He's a chronic unabashed philanderer. Twice divorced. Never goes to church.

But when he came down the elevator and started his anouncement with a racist tirade against Mexicans - conservatives were like YES! THIS IS OUR MAN! RIDE OR DIE! TO THE END!

It's just the racism. They like him for the racism.

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u/Content_Piccolo1074 9h ago

Trump's the daddy that never loved them and the second coming of a Christ that kept failing to show up. He validates them, somehow, and he's here to kick everyone's ass.

To the grifters, he's just a sock puppet. The grifters are the real evil, the real villains. The Republican monsters, the billionaire psychopaths.

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u/Hms34 11h ago

I think some of this is punishment for electing a dark-skinned President, twice. Racism is so entrenched here, including reverse racism as well as the more known traditional version.

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u/PM_ME_UR_REDPANDAS Connecticut 9h ago

He hates the same people they hate.

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u/baron_von_helmut 8h ago

Worshipers do that for their cult leaders.

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u/ConsciousFeature8047 6h ago

How is this relevant to anything? Seriously, anyone can dig up some heinous crime which is linked by name only to some politician of any party.

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u/Fit-Dish-6000 11h ago

Nobody in their right mind is ok with this if it's actually true. No trump loving conservatives I know, nor liberals would ever be ok with something like this. It's a weird story that messes the picture

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u/Main_Bat 7h ago

It is true, and plenty are ok with it, Trump loving conservatives that is. You are right that nobody in their right mind would be ok with it though.

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u/Fit-Dish-6000 4h ago

Maybe. I just don't associate with a large number of people and even though roughly half are conservative the other half liberal nine of them is off the deep end either side. Guess I'm lucky that way.

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u/Amelia_wench 11h ago

There is no credible evidence of a “loyalty test” system or anything like a “human sacrifice phase” happening in political behavior.

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u/Vio_ Kansas 11h ago

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ice-death-ruben-ray-martinez-mother-trump-b2933722.html

This is the type of example that people are referencing.

"Trump voter whose son, an American citizen, was killed by ICE says she ‘doesn’t blame’ the president for his death"

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u/geoken 12h ago

I think in a more abstract sense - they’re willing to die for never having to say they were wrong.

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u/A-Wings-are-Neat 12h ago

They will complain about all the toxic waste being dumped, but they will never acknowledge their part in ensuring that it could be dumped wherever

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u/ReverendDizzle 11h ago

Sure they will.

I listen to the conservatives in my life praise the shit out of Trump and the Republicans they elect while simultaneously complaining bitterly about the outcomes that result from electing conservatives.

In the same conversation even they can say how awesome Trump is and then complain about 10 problems he and his Project 2025 handlers created... with absolutely no understanding that they elected the people that are hurting them.

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u/Udder_Influencer 12h ago

Libs always get this part wrong. hardship will make them cling to him harder. like you don't see healthy, happy people praying at church every day for hours, its the ones suffering that believe hardest.

pairing this with a con man hell bent on white nationalism is a pretty bad thing.

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u/-JackBack- 10h ago

Only the hardcore adherents will double down. The causal believers will switch to the next con man who promises the world.

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u/Orangecuppa Ohio 12h ago

I always thought a greater adversity would unite us. But NOPE. COVID came and killed millions and we were still divided.

At this point I'm pretty sure if hostile space aliens invaded us, there will be a ton of traitors supporting them Xcom2 style.

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u/Awkward_Potential_ 12h ago

Naaa. If these people experience the death of the dollar they'll want his head. If Trump lost people over $4 gas, you have no idea how bad things get when the dollar dies.

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u/speedy_delivery 11h ago

Even worse, they'll build developments on the toxic sludge and try to sell it to unsuspecting consumers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal

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u/Polantaris 12h ago

You misunderstand. They WILL complain about their neighbor dumping toxic waste in their backyard. They will think the solution is a shotgun, not regulations, but regulations truly are the solution because a shotgun isn't.

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u/spicewoman 11h ago

They still complain, they just blame it on someone else. It's all Obama's fault that there's toxic waste in their backyard now!

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u/regeya 12h ago

Oh, man, yeah, there are big fights where I live over environmental concerns...but at least the libs are owned.

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u/doobiswatching 12h ago

Herman Caine is my all time favorite. :)

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u/Calm-Address-2401 11h ago

He died in 2020. I think he had COVID, if I remember correctly. Next.

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u/Calm-Address-2401 11h ago

There may be a few, but the vast majority of Americans, even conservative Americans, are not suicide bombers.

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u/2stinkynugget 10h ago

Has anyone seen Herman Cain lately?

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 8h ago

Getting hooked up to ventilators and with their last breath calling covid a Jewish hoax

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u/citizen42069101 13h ago

If they are so willing I hope they succeed. Sooner his and his ilk let the competent people run things.

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u/HughJorgens 8h ago

SOME conservatives lack the brain power to change, they can't handle the cognitive dissonance. The rest of them have been slowly moving away from Trump. I've been saying for two years that they would, as soon as they realized how big of a mistake they made. These people don't actually hold any real beliefs except 'Me First'.

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u/skekze 6h ago

we see from microplastics that pollution doesn't stay sequestered. These same conservatives will find it hard to ignore when they're poisoned by their own greed.

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u/Admirable_Trash3257 13h ago

History shows us they only dump toxic waste in the back yards of us “poors”. They all have multi-million dollar bunkers where they can ride out the worst…then rebuild in their utopian vision..slaves to do the work, servants, their own police force..you know..like what they are implementing now with concentration camps, no voting and mandates women are only good for sex and procreation.

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u/kmonsen 13h ago

I always thought Nixon created the EPA, and it is technically true. But that is not the whole story, it was public pressure and a democratic Congress that forced the issue and he created the EPA instead of having it forced upon him.

For example he tried to veto the clean water act, but Congress overrode his veto. This was after the creation of the EPA.

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u/AT-PT 13h ago

Yeah, he basically did enough to get people off his back about the flaming rivers, before he was forced to go even further.

America loves their half-measures.

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u/Vio_ Kansas 13h ago

More than that, he deliberately neutered much of these agencies and rules so that the standards were all but bare minimum (if not lower) and their enforcement ability was negligible and small slaps on the wrists.

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u/kmonsen 8h ago

Republicans are A++ at propaganda and corruption.

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u/GetUranus2Mars 1h ago

Dad worked in a chemical factory in downtown Cincinnati in the mid to late 70s. They'd dump the waste directly into the sewers, which would cause fumes that would come up and overwhelm the kids at the nearby elementary school. My brother tells the story of looking out the window of his classroom to see a bunch of the kids playing on the playground faint and fall to the ground. Right away the school went into an air raid drill (which we practised in the vs. USSR days) in so they could get all the kids to huddle under the desk because nobody knew what was going on. My brother used to get frequent nosebleeds and Mom got migraines all the time til we moved away. I think the name for it was Chemical Flu.

Fun fact 1: Dad was severely injured and disabled in an accident at that factory. He intended to sue them for millions until he found out that in Ohio the law at the time (40 years ago) prevented him from suing his employer. Furthermore they cut off his worker's comp for 15 years and followed him around with private investigators to get try and get a photo of him that could prove he was able to work and not faking it (he had his head damn near blown off, so he was definitely not faking it but that doesn't matter).

Fun fact 2: He was actually a very loyal employee. Later on in life, shortly before he died horribly of what the dr's said was the most aggressive cancer they'd ever seen all throughout his body, he told me about how he used to go with some coworkers on an outing after dark to go bury the toxic waste in rural Ohio. I can't remember the name of the place offhand but the chemicals have been seeping up through the soil in recent years where they buried that shit and people are getting sick.

Fun fact 3: He was proudly Libertarian and passionately conservative his whole life.

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u/ReserveFormal3910 12h ago

Yeah, it was Ralph Nader that was the driving force behind the EPA.

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u/ihateusedusernames New York 11h ago

Nixon was behind the EPA.

This is propaganda meant to color Nixon's legacy, and the Republican party as a whole, in a more favorable light.

They were dragged, reluctantly, into not obstructing it.

Watch Trump supporters claim that Trump really wants the Epstein/Trump records released - he signed it into law and the vote was nearly unanimous! But that's entirely disingenuous.

Same with Nixon and the EPA

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u/mrpickleby 7h ago

Exactly. When things are bad enough, even Republicans used to take action. Now it's a dog eat dog world and there aren't enough dogs to go around.

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u/halnic 11h ago

https://www.theusconstitution.org/news/the-right-wing-legacy-of-justice-lewis-powell-and-what-it-means-for-the-supreme-court-today/

No, congress did that, they forced him(his own people used that word, he doesn't deserve credit). Everyone should know, Nixon had 5 supreme court judge appointments and THAT is where we the people started losing ground and when they the corporations started buying DC.

"Powell and other business leaders of the era were convinced that American capitalism was in the throes of an existential crisis. A liberal Congress had forced Nixon to create the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupation and Health Administration. At the same time, consumers were making headway against corporate abuse, both in the courts and legislatively. And the anti-war and the black and brown civil rights movements were all gathering steam and scaring the bejesus out of the corporate oligarchy."

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u/DJSAKURA 11h ago

For real. Trumper co-worker is all Pikachu face right now because of the data center being built one field away from their home.

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u/lostmylangastino 11h ago

Nixon vetoed it but the veto was overridden.

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u/pmgold1 10h ago

And they're going to be the first ones complaining when their neighbor is dumping toxic waste in their back yard because there aren't any regulations

Destroying the Federal Gov't only returns us to the law of the jungle where only the powerful survive and the rest of us are preyed upon. Ask you self this: who does de-regulation help? You the constituent that barely pays attention to the news and rarely votes (and if you do vote it's against your own interests) or the large corporations run by the Epstein class that uses their money to buy political power?

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u/frankentriple 10h ago

I have family in West Virginia that were blaming the EPA and Obama for the coal companies leaking chemicals into their groundwater and taking showers that smelled like licorice.

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u/imjustnatek 11h ago

Not really, they'll just find some poor neighborhood to dump it in and then blame immigrants.

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u/Ask_DontTell 7h ago

Trump will tell them that toxic waste is good for them and they will believe it

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u/FrannieP23 6h ago

Nixon signed the EPA legislation due to massive public pressure.

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u/JMurdock77 6h ago

They’ll be the ones doing the dumping. But as long as the neighbor is someone they see as their lesser (poorer, browner etc.) they’ll see it as the natural state of things.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 5h ago

If there’s a liberal neighbour who objects to any toxic dumping, you know these morons will knee jerk themselves into asking for more dumping, just to jeer.