America is Toast: Tim Barrus, New York Times
Americans are not living through a social crisis. America is dying – not living – through the demystification that has always been smokescreen for what America is actually all about, and always has been.
A violent, unequal, class system that denies class even exists. The only evidence that suggests class does not exist is overwhelmingly anecdotal. The mask has been ripped off.
The bloody infrastructure beneath the mask reveals a culture reeling from institutional failures — income inequality being the issue most in the country’s face — where confidence was once sacred but is now in no way connected to reality. We are far more like the rest of the world that has embraced authoritarian paradigms, but beneath the surface, we have always had them.
The great divide reached the tipping point some time ago. Climate change is seen through the lens of a hope that is fundamentally unreal. What American culture actually is remains perceived through the hope that we can change it.
The tipping points have tipped and fallen down the chasm of the divide to the extent that another Civil War is no longer the terrain of the marginal. It is discussed with the horror it deserves through the wringing of the hands on the part of Americans who have been touched in one way or the other by the sheer hatred Americans are not just careening toward, but are driven by a culture whose definition of truth – or what is real – is utterly up for grabs.
There is no hope for America. It’s over.