> Sometimes a nation needs a “fucking nightmare” before it can fully awaken to long-simmering crises.
> The US had to come to this point. We couldn’t go on as we were, even under Democratic presidents. For 40 years, a narrow economic elite has been siphoning off ever more wealth and power.
> Over the last 40 years, starting with Ronald Reagan, the US went off the rails: deregulation, privatization, free trade, wild gambling by Wall Street, union-busting, monopolization, record levels of inequality, stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics.
> The “fucking nightmare” is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s “leaders”, realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils.
> But the nightmare has awakened much of the US to the truth about what has happened to this country – and what we must do to get it back on the track toward social justice, democracy and widespread prosperity.
mnorthwood13 on
Ngl I appreciate hopium but all I’ve gotten since 2015 is copium
CheekyMuffinss on
Gotta say tho, ain’t just a US thing bro. The whole damn world’s getting a reality check – it’s messy, it’s raw & it’s about damn time. Changes ain’t comfy, but man, we gotta hustle past the denial & see things as they really are. Strap in, y’all, this ain’t gonna be a smooth ride.
JohnWayneSpacy on
I fear that it is too late already
Trump and his cronies have backed up trucks to the US treasury and are trying hard to clear it out
At the same time the Heritage Foundation and the ChristoFascists are actively working to dismantle democracy and install themselves as perpetual overlords of the USA
While all this is going the USA is falling deeper into dept faster than it ever has before
Sensitive-Net-7111 on
[x] for doubt
Unusual-Plantain8104 on
I don’t know about that…
I think the persistence of conservatism is one of the most remarkable phenomenons of my lifetime, and I don’t know if even Trump is enough to shake it off… I hope Robert Reich is correct, but we’ll see…
The remarkable thing about it is conservatism fails upwards. They always manage to convince people (at least just enough of them) that their failures are not really failures. And that next time, the promised conservative utopia will result from their perfect conservative policies. They have armies of paid liars on their side, of course… that helps. But the right has simply been more succesful in telling a compelling story: You work hard You keep the fruit of your labor. That is responsibility. Those sound like solid values.
Maybe it’s because the left is too meek…. not good enough at challenging it…. are you saying poor people don’t work hard? That is ridiculous; they are generally the most hard-working people of all…. but that doesn’t tell the kind of pleasant, neatly pre-parckaged story that conservatism tells. The American dream is ultimately a dream of excess, but people are really attached to it. And fast cars and get rich schemes through crypto, might be stupid, but it gets the adrenaline pumping. The left is seen as the evil scrooge that wants to take it away from them. And it’s not just rich people… poor people will vote conservatives as long as conservatism allows them to dream those dreams…. even if they are about as realistic as the idea of teaching a pigeon chess.
Conservatism is a scam, of course. But it’s an efficiently, tirelessly marketed scam, that reaches deep into people’s sense of identity. They are simply good at creating mythology. Progressives sound meek and boring besides that. I don’t mean to sound defeatist… just looking realistically at the cultural behemoth that we’re up against.
Will one disastrous presidency really finally be enough to defeat that whole mentality? In my experience, it works short term. When they are feeling the pain, right now… but the minute it lifts off, the dreams of excess start taking over again.
Any-Limit-7282 on
Is “waking up” the same as “being woke”? Because if so then this is a really awkward turn of phrase.
morbidmammoth on
I feel like I’ve read this headline 20+ times the last 10 years
pd9 on
I’ve read this exact headline multiple times before
crisisactorsguild on
I am on the streets in a red city protesting at least once a week and fucking with ICE when possible and on balance I agree with the perspective in the article. It is not always dramatic but the tide has turned. Be of good cheer and double down.
cinciNattyLight on
2026 is gonna be a fucking nightmare.
easutherland on
Check out Russell Kirk (no relation to Charlie), who wrote “The Conservative Mind” back in the 50s. The greedy rich think they are special; and if the middle class is over 51% of the population, they are in danger of losing their specialness per Kirk. With Christian Nationalists and back as far as William F Buckley, this dictatorial takeover has been in the works. This is the true deep state. Chris Armitage is a beacon of hope for me. Check out his Substack and “Soft Secession.” States have more autonomy than I realized. The catch will be if the military follows the law or the chain of command (POTUS being the HMFIC). Historically it doesnt look good (think Kent State, 4 dead in Ohio; Mei Lai massacre; Venezuelan fishermen being bombed)
MemeStarNation on
This would make a lot of sense. Most major change (for better and for worse) happens after catastrophe- FDR got his New Deal due to the Depression, and Bush got his military security state after 9/11.
In other words, we’ve got a once in a generation chance to actually systemically change things here. Let’s not waste it on just rebuilding what we had before. Keep that in mind when you cast your vote in the 2028 primaries.
RavenMcG on
Some of us have been fighting this bullshit since Reagan. Too much of the US is uneducated and unwilling to turn off Fox News.
mr_evilweed on
Before everyone gets too excited… Trump ended his previous term with the lowest approval rating ever for a president ending his first term. America still reelected him. The political memories of americans are short.
moutonbleu on
Read the same nonsense after Biden won and started fixing things and then Trump won again.
Ok_Use7 on
>The “fucking nightmare” is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s “leaders”, realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils.
Author admits and agrees with points that people are responding as if he didn’t make them…
ArchitectureNstuff91 on
The damage is done. I will never welcome those who supported the rise of this reich in my circles. Why should I when I’m one of the brown people they voted to have hunted down? I don’t buy this awakening for one millisecond.
edgarecayce on
I like to believe it too Bob, but I fear there’s a lot more pain coming.
Ok-disaster2022 on
No they’re not. Americans will try every other option before doing the right thing. The right thing is finding FDR 2.0 with an LBJ as his VP. Pass a second bill of rights constitutionally including amendments cutting down on government corruption and increasing government accountability at all levels. This means ending corporate and foreign money in political campaigns period
Anything short of this and America is doomed.
rocksoffjagger on
I’ll believe it when I see it. First of all, I expect massive election fraud from a GOP desperate to stay in power, and a bunch of evil tech billionaires who realize that it’s even cheaper to just rig an election than it is to buy one. Then, even if we really do get these shit-heels out of office, this is America, so I fully expect the democrats to ratfuck and ensure that we have the worst possible corporate centrists as our candidates who will just shuffle papers around and do nothing if they take office. Trump should already be rotting in prison, but the Biden administration was too cowardly to apply the fucking law. I see no reason to believe these idiots will do it right this time around, especially when most establishment democrats have learned the exact wrong lesson from 2024 and have taken it as a signal to move farther right. I swear to god, none of them look at the world outside the US, because they’re making the exact same idiot moves the Labour government is making in the UK in real time. If only we had politicians with the guts to do what Brazil has done to their fascist traitors.
Hot-Philosophy-7671 on
The people who voted for Trump will just vote for the next racist fuckhead who says “boogedy boogedy trans.” I see absolutely no one in my own life who would change.
or10n_sharkfin on
America should have “woken up” last year to keep Trump out of fucking office.
miansmith on
When the AI bubble bursts and tech companies require a bailout we all need to make damn sure that we, the people, own the AI tech and make it open source for all.
24 Comments
> Sometimes a nation needs a “fucking nightmare” before it can fully awaken to long-simmering crises.
> The US had to come to this point. We couldn’t go on as we were, even under Democratic presidents. For 40 years, a narrow economic elite has been siphoning off ever more wealth and power.
> Over the last 40 years, starting with Ronald Reagan, the US went off the rails: deregulation, privatization, free trade, wild gambling by Wall Street, union-busting, monopolization, record levels of inequality, stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics.
> The “fucking nightmare” is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s “leaders”, realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils.
> But the nightmare has awakened much of the US to the truth about what has happened to this country – and what we must do to get it back on the track toward social justice, democracy and widespread prosperity.
Ngl I appreciate hopium but all I’ve gotten since 2015 is copium
Gotta say tho, ain’t just a US thing bro. The whole damn world’s getting a reality check – it’s messy, it’s raw & it’s about damn time. Changes ain’t comfy, but man, we gotta hustle past the denial & see things as they really are. Strap in, y’all, this ain’t gonna be a smooth ride.
I fear that it is too late already
Trump and his cronies have backed up trucks to the US treasury and are trying hard to clear it out
At the same time the Heritage Foundation and the ChristoFascists are actively working to dismantle democracy and install themselves as perpetual overlords of the USA
While all this is going the USA is falling deeper into dept faster than it ever has before
[x] for doubt
I don’t know about that…
I think the persistence of conservatism is one of the most remarkable phenomenons of my lifetime, and I don’t know if even Trump is enough to shake it off… I hope Robert Reich is correct, but we’ll see…
The remarkable thing about it is conservatism fails upwards. They always manage to convince people (at least just enough of them) that their failures are not really failures. And that next time, the promised conservative utopia will result from their perfect conservative policies. They have armies of paid liars on their side, of course… that helps. But the right has simply been more succesful in telling a compelling story: You work hard You keep the fruit of your labor. That is responsibility. Those sound like solid values.
Maybe it’s because the left is too meek…. not good enough at challenging it…. are you saying poor people don’t work hard? That is ridiculous; they are generally the most hard-working people of all…. but that doesn’t tell the kind of pleasant, neatly pre-parckaged story that conservatism tells. The American dream is ultimately a dream of excess, but people are really attached to it. And fast cars and get rich schemes through crypto, might be stupid, but it gets the adrenaline pumping. The left is seen as the evil scrooge that wants to take it away from them. And it’s not just rich people… poor people will vote conservatives as long as conservatism allows them to dream those dreams…. even if they are about as realistic as the idea of teaching a pigeon chess.
Conservatism is a scam, of course. But it’s an efficiently, tirelessly marketed scam, that reaches deep into people’s sense of identity. They are simply good at creating mythology. Progressives sound meek and boring besides that. I don’t mean to sound defeatist… just looking realistically at the cultural behemoth that we’re up against.
Will one disastrous presidency really finally be enough to defeat that whole mentality? In my experience, it works short term. When they are feeling the pain, right now… but the minute it lifts off, the dreams of excess start taking over again.
Is “waking up” the same as “being woke”? Because if so then this is a really awkward turn of phrase.
I feel like I’ve read this headline 20+ times the last 10 years
I’ve read this exact headline multiple times before
I am on the streets in a red city protesting at least once a week and fucking with ICE when possible and on balance I agree with the perspective in the article. It is not always dramatic but the tide has turned. Be of good cheer and double down.
2026 is gonna be a fucking nightmare.
Check out Russell Kirk (no relation to Charlie), who wrote “The Conservative Mind” back in the 50s. The greedy rich think they are special; and if the middle class is over 51% of the population, they are in danger of losing their specialness per Kirk. With Christian Nationalists and back as far as William F Buckley, this dictatorial takeover has been in the works. This is the true deep state. Chris Armitage is a beacon of hope for me. Check out his Substack and “Soft Secession.” States have more autonomy than I realized. The catch will be if the military follows the law or the chain of command (POTUS being the HMFIC). Historically it doesnt look good (think Kent State, 4 dead in Ohio; Mei Lai massacre; Venezuelan fishermen being bombed)
This would make a lot of sense. Most major change (for better and for worse) happens after catastrophe- FDR got his New Deal due to the Depression, and Bush got his military security state after 9/11.
In other words, we’ve got a once in a generation chance to actually systemically change things here. Let’s not waste it on just rebuilding what we had before. Keep that in mind when you cast your vote in the 2028 primaries.
Some of us have been fighting this bullshit since Reagan. Too much of the US is uneducated and unwilling to turn off Fox News.
Before everyone gets too excited… Trump ended his previous term with the lowest approval rating ever for a president ending his first term. America still reelected him. The political memories of americans are short.
Read the same nonsense after Biden won and started fixing things and then Trump won again.
>The “fucking nightmare” is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s “leaders”, realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils.
Author admits and agrees with points that people are responding as if he didn’t make them…
The damage is done. I will never welcome those who supported the rise of this reich in my circles. Why should I when I’m one of the brown people they voted to have hunted down? I don’t buy this awakening for one millisecond.
I like to believe it too Bob, but I fear there’s a lot more pain coming.
No they’re not. Americans will try every other option before doing the right thing. The right thing is finding FDR 2.0 with an LBJ as his VP. Pass a second bill of rights constitutionally including amendments cutting down on government corruption and increasing government accountability at all levels. This means ending corporate and foreign money in political campaigns period
Anything short of this and America is doomed.
I’ll believe it when I see it. First of all, I expect massive election fraud from a GOP desperate to stay in power, and a bunch of evil tech billionaires who realize that it’s even cheaper to just rig an election than it is to buy one. Then, even if we really do get these shit-heels out of office, this is America, so I fully expect the democrats to ratfuck and ensure that we have the worst possible corporate centrists as our candidates who will just shuffle papers around and do nothing if they take office. Trump should already be rotting in prison, but the Biden administration was too cowardly to apply the fucking law. I see no reason to believe these idiots will do it right this time around, especially when most establishment democrats have learned the exact wrong lesson from 2024 and have taken it as a signal to move farther right. I swear to god, none of them look at the world outside the US, because they’re making the exact same idiot moves the Labour government is making in the UK in real time. If only we had politicians with the guts to do what Brazil has done to their fascist traitors.
The people who voted for Trump will just vote for the next racist fuckhead who says “boogedy boogedy trans.” I see absolutely no one in my own life who would change.
America should have “woken up” last year to keep Trump out of fucking office.
When the AI bubble bursts and tech companies require a bailout we all need to make damn sure that we, the people, own the AI tech and make it open source for all.