What I’m talking about here is the massive social, political and economic trends of the life-cycle of an Empire.
So keep on Zooming Back your perspective.
Here is an historic graphic of Social Mobility in the US.
Here is the Gini Coeficient that measures inequality (the higher the more unequal), which actually understates the reality because it’s not that great at reflecting internal inequality in the top quintile (i.e. things like how the top 1% are now way much richer than the top 10% than before).
So all the way back in the 1970s, America started changing from the “Land Of Opportunity” were “everybody has a chance” as shown by it’s massive social mobility back then to the equivalent of a feudal system - a zero-merit environment where the rich are rich because their parents were rich and those born into poverty are unable to rise up from poverty - AND on top of that the richer were getting richer and the rest were getting poorer.
For most of the population that meant more povert and less opportunity hence less hope. From that you get more discontent.
So, how do the elites pillaging a society deal with such increase in discontent due to the activities of said elites?
Deceive the masses (for example: more and more lying in Politics, Press capture and subversion into a Propaganda machine and in present day psychological manipulation via Social Media), increase oppression (for example: ever more murderous policing, criminalization of “no victim” activities and harsher punishements) and in the case of a Democracy subvert the systems by which the citizens chose who will manage the nation (for example: political corruption, Gerrymandering, taking the vote away from felons - which typically hail from the poor - and, specifically in the barelly-Democratic US system, internal capture of the two parties in the duopoly of power that rules the country as illustrated by how the DNC gave the nomination to Hillary Clinton some years ago).
So the entire system was pillaged by local elites and then when the discontent caused by that pillaging grew, it was corrupted by those very same elites to redirect or suppress the consequences for those elites.
Foreign interference in present day America, is like maggots in a zombie - they’re not what made it a zombie and there would be no maggots in it if had not already been turned into a zombie.
What I’m talking about here is the massive social, political and economic trends of the life-cycle of an Empire.
So keep on Zooming Back your perspective.
Here is an historic graphic of Social Mobility in the US.
Here is the Gini Coeficient that measures inequality (the higher the more unequal), which actually understates the reality because it’s not that great at reflecting internal inequality in the top quintile (i.e. things like how the top 1% are now way much richer than the top 10% than before).
So all the way back in the 1970s, America started changing from the “Land Of Opportunity” were “everybody has a chance” as shown by it’s massive social mobility back then to the equivalent of a feudal system - a zero-merit environment where the rich are rich because their parents were rich and those born into poverty are unable to rise up from poverty - AND on top of that the richer were getting richer and the rest were getting poorer.
For most of the population that meant more povert and less opportunity hence less hope. From that you get more discontent.
So, how do the elites pillaging a society deal with such increase in discontent due to the activities of said elites?
Deceive the masses (for example: more and more lying in Politics, Press capture and subversion into a Propaganda machine and in present day psychological manipulation via Social Media), increase oppression (for example: ever more murderous policing, criminalization of “no victim” activities and harsher punishements) and in the case of a Democracy subvert the systems by which the citizens chose who will manage the nation (for example: political corruption, Gerrymandering, taking the vote away from felons - which typically hail from the poor - and, specifically in the barelly-Democratic US system, internal capture of the two parties in the duopoly of power that rules the country as illustrated by how the DNC gave the nomination to Hillary Clinton some years ago).
So the entire system was pillaged by local elites and then when the discontent caused by that pillaging grew, it was corrupted by those very same elites to redirect or suppress the consequences for those elites.
Foreign interference in present day America, is like maggots in a zombie - they’re not what made it a zombie and there would be no maggots in it if had not already been turned into a zombie.