More or less, though the US civil religion doesn't infer diety or an afterlife. But there is a solemnity about Abraham Lincoln and the speeches that he gave during the process of freeing the slaves, that from that point on the US aspired to be a country in which the notion that all men are created equal would be ever inclusive.

The reality is far more debatable, even today. Especially today in which a small group of reactionaries have seized power and are seeking to enforce hierarchy and even reverse some of the steps towards inclusion. But that doesn't stop faith in the United States, that it aspires to equality and plurality and will at some point include an even greater part of the population into the fold of the mainstream.

Does this kind of crudity, cage-matches and motorcycle stunts on the closest thing a secular state has to sacred ground, actually work for anyone?

I mean I get it. The US is under the thrall of a cult and an oligarchy, and so this caters to an audience of one. But is there someone else in the US that actually enjoys this?

The far-rich tends to be far-right. The ones that are smarter or have a conscience want to improve the lives of the working-class to fulfill the social contract so they don't revolt, but they still are only interested in a system in which their wealth and power are preserved.

Considering how much the far-right culture-war propaganda machine dominates social media and mainstream television, I'm terrified that it works too well, and enough of the lumpenproletariat will suffer misery blindly so long as alleged enemies are made to suffer more.

I hope we're better than that, or can crack the code (or young people who grow up with it are more immune -- that is the case with general advertising). Otherwise it speaks to a horrible future for humanity.

Or, you know, Google could go back to its link-ranking system for now until it figures out how to keep AI from hallucinating.

AI is still premature. Experimental. It should be regarded as such, like an early-access game.

I can't tell right now if it's too little too late, but some Democratic candidates are catching on, refusing to take corporate donations, AIPAC, etc.

After Hoover, it was impossible to get Republicans into the presidency until after the war (and then it was Eisenhower). Democrats got us the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.

From Nixon forward, the only reason that Republicans have been able to get into power is due to hatred of blacks, opposition to abortion-access and a fuckton of voter suppression, gerrymandering, the electoral college and when those fail, election tampering. When elections are free and fair, we do in fact get Democrats, and while some of them are almost as corrupt as Republicans, they still sometimes push forward progress.

This time, I must admit, the MAGA movement has us in a wringer, especially since SCOTUS is loaded with antebellum extremists who are controlled by the ownership class. Since in the current system, they have the capacity to veto anyone else, the US may be screwed.

But then again, Trump, the Project 2025 coalition and SCOTUS are moving at breakneck speed bringing the nation to ruin, and making circumstances unlivable for huge portions of the population. Unlike the ten years of Nacht und Nebel that slowly wearied the German people as the German Reich seized power, the proverbial frog is being dropped right into boiling water.

Hence the visibility protests have been bigger than any ever seen in the US. Labor unions are forming, growing, and coordinating towards an effort of recurring general strikes. So I don't know how this ends.

Especially since, you know, that might happen at any time, either naturally or unnaturally, and dear leader has arranged time and again the humiliation of his would be successors. When it does happen, the whole MAGA movement goes down as well, and the Republican party will be a worse trainwreck than it was before Trump went down his escalator.

The 39 Trillion in debt (the rising of which just keeps accelerating) raises a too-big-to-fail question. If the US just collapses, then all those bonds become worthless, so there are an awful lot of creditors who should be invested in keeping the US afloat. And some of those creditors are smart, or at least have smart people to advise them that letting the US collapse would be really bad.

You appear to be really worried about China, when the federal government in the US is eating the nation alive.

Musk's Tesla factories are so subsidized by the US that it raises questions whether those factories are actually doing favors for the US workforce. We'd lose jobs, but have a not small amount of gain for -- what did Musk call them -- entitlements. But you're right. Maybe we should nationalized Tesla, but keep it running, and offer a public option EV. We might even be able to make some better decisions, such as removing or fixing Autopilot so that fewer Teslas are responsible for deadly collisions. Heck, considering the successes of the US when it invested in big science and big engineering, we might be able to improve them so they're competitive with China's EVs on the global market, and require Ford, GM and Chrysler to offer something other than bloated Non-Passenger Work Vehicles SUVs. But that's all blue sky fantasy.

Trump has already handed the superpower baton over to China. Trump already took the knee to Xi Jinping the way he once did to Putin, and has already declared China a superpower, and a peer to the United States.

China doesn't deserve the superpower title yet, but Trump is also sabotaging the US' ability to force project, which is the key ingredient to staying a superpower, and China is dominating the renewable energy industries while Trump is subsidizing fossil fuels and even coal. So the US is clearly in decline while under the thumb of its aristocratic class. The US' political class may be more corrupt than China's already, and that deters businesses from wanting to invest in the US. They're investing big into China.

Yes, China teems with humanitarian problems, but then the US is building more concentration camps every day, so we're catching up if we haven't caught up already.

Right now, Musk has a phenomenal amount of power, enough to purchase the entire US federal government if he liked, or at least hire another 100,000 lobbyists (including retired elected officials) and continue to assert massive control of the US government. Frankly, that is a greater danger to the US right now then liquidating a few factories.

Not all revolutions are violent, but the ownership class will sooner hire armies to defend their wealth and power than submit to a general strike, or the laws of a liberal nation.

Then there's the matter of the climate crisis, exacerbated by data centers and the US' cling to fossil fuels.

The mess will absolutely come to your neighborhood whether you want it to or not.

That is incredibly disappointing.