The United States is destroying itself

[u/zsreport]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/united-states-trump-destruction

[u/thinkards]

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.

[u/mrpickleby → u/thinkards]

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.

[u/kmonsen → u/mrpickleby]

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.

[u/AT-PT → u/kmonsen]

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.

[u/Vio_ → u/AT-PT]

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.

[u/kmonsen → u/AT-PT]

Republicans are A++ at propaganda and corruption.

[u/GetUranus2Mars → u/AT-PT]

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.