The United States is destroying itself. -Rebecca Solnit

[CousinIT]

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

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.

Across the branches of government, the services that are supposed to protect us – nuclear stockpile monitoring, cybersecurity, counter-terrorism – are being undermined, understaffed or trashed. A different kind of protection that consists of public health, vaccination programs, food safety, clean air and water, social services, civil rights and the rule of law is also under attack. The federal government that serves us is being starved while the federal government that serves the Trump agenda and the oligarchy is glutting itself on taxpayer money, including the grotesque sums dumped on the Department of Homeland Security and the US military now being warped into Pete Hegseth’s twisted vision of a ruthless mercenary force. Hegseth has reportedly stood in the way of promotions for more than a dozen Black and female officers.

It is striking that the Trump team’s constant refrain is that we cannot afford to protect the vulnerable or provide for the people, which is why the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, atop Doge, destroyed USAID last year, which has already resulted in tens of thousands of deaths from starvation and preventable disease. The Iran war is creating a fertilizer crisis in Europe, Africa and Asia that may also result in widespread famine. Meanwhile, the former head of homeland security Kristi Noem spent more than $200m on an ad campaign starring herself before she was fired.

Although there are far worse things about the utterly gratuitous and literally unjustified war on Iran, the fact that it burns through billions a day is striking, given that huge cuts are being made to environmental protection and national parks, and the forest service is being effectively sabotaged, while public lands are being offered up to fossil fuel companies and mining interests. The forest service headquarters are being moved across the country, which will probably cause many resignations, like the similar move of the Bureau of Land Management in Trump’s first term. More than 50 forest service research stations are being cut, meaning more loss of irreplaceable ongoing research, data, facilities and staff.

. . .

It’s the antidemocratic weaknesses in our system that created the vulnerabilities that let this happen – the electoral college and voter suppression that gave Trump a minority victory in 2016, the gerrymandering that has given a minority party majority power in Congress and statehouses, a grotesquely corrupted and unaccountable supreme court and the corrosive influence of the ultra-wealthy in a system that gives them power on a scale that is a direct assault on democracy. We need to imagine a more democratic, more egalitarian, more generous country, one that operates in recognition of an abundance of wealth that should serve all of us – and nature and future generations too – rather than is driven by the moral poverty of billionaires.

[dalton99a]

1. The traitor and his party took advantage of an antiquated, ossified document that never got updated.

[Blue_Adept]

2. Decades of effort got us to this point. A slow poisoning of the target.

[dalton99a]

3. +1. We're probably at the apex of the evolution of the modern Republican Party

[ColoringFool]

4. Examples? Not Remotely At The Levels Of What Trump Has Done.

[Nittersing]

6. Oh there was a LOT of groundwork set down for drumph

The most important, an obliging Supreme Court. And of course Citizens United which transferred control of our country to corporations. And then there's the decades of right wing "news" to feed the uneducated.

Oh he had a LOT of help.

[usonian]

5. A job WELL DONE by Trump and company

VERY well done.

[misanthrope]

7. Loved this quote:

"Trump at some level knows he’s failing politically, cognitively and physically and wants to take it all down with him, the way that ancient rulers were buried with their slaughtered horses and servants."

[RockRaven]

8. One can decry the antidemocratic nature of the EC and various voting laws and gerrymandering,

but if even a modest fraction of the 90 MILLION eligible Americans who didn't bother to vote had made not destroying the country and their own future a priority then we wouldn't be where we are right now. Those structural deficiencies can be overwhelmed, but they were not despite the stakes.

An absolute majority of American citizens (80M + 90M = 170M) chose to destroy the country. Obsessing over the small cohort actually enacting the destruction is not sufficient. We have to grapple with this rotten foundation.

[yellow dahlia]

9. And it has been devastating to watch.

I carry with me a visceral sense of pain and loss - for this country and its citizens...and for the world.

[Martin Eden]

10. Much easier to destroy than to rebuild

Democrats will have to reverse all tax cuts for the rich and corporations to pay for it.

[SocialDemocrat61]

11. Has been since the late 70s

with the advent of right wing media and the corruption of the corporate media.

To quote a historian, ‘All great empire’s are never brought down by external forces, they are destroyed from within’.