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Comment by hans1729 | Hacker News Reader

The US manages to be the reigning empire and a failed state at the same time. Internationally, it's the empire, internally, it's failed beyond repair.

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There's no contradiction there. Voters would not submit to the horrors we perpetrate around the world, were we not subject to constant fear- and hate-mongering from corporate media. The horrors we perpetrate on ourselves are sort of a ricochet, because isolated desperate males are subject to the same media gaslighting as voters are, and they simply cut out the intended side-effect of further enrichment for Raytheon.

Hyperbole much?

Might sound like hyperbole but it isn't entirely untrue depending on what you believe should be the State role in supporting its society. The US is just really weird when looking through the lens of other Western developed countries...

And I say that coming from a society that's completely influenced by the American Way Of Life™ (Brazil), visiting the US multiple times and then moving to Sweden has really opened my eyes on how damn bizarre the US can be. It's more similar to Brazilian society (conservatism, sexism, violence, car-centric, so on and so forth) than to any other peer country to the US.

I immigrated to Germany from Turkey and I witness through the media that sometimes people in some parts of the US behave very similar to the ones in Istanbul, with all the bad and good things associated with it.

I've grown up being exposed to the American culture that's sold everywhere else, but after the weird events in politics I started paying more attention and it's disappointing me.

State failure means loss of control over territory. Not conservatism or violence or car-centricity. It’s completely untrue to say the US is a failed state.

Not necessarily, for example from Wikipedia:

> A failed state is a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.

Depending on the philosophy you believe on what should be the role of the State the US has traces of failing on basic conditions and responsibilities to its citizens.

One of the major parties has candidates actively campaigning on a platform to have state legislatures intervene in elections.

If that’s not a sign of decline, what is?

It’s a sign of a poor understanding of both history and federalism.

Historically states have always controlled the election process. The amendment for direct election of senators, and changes necessitated during Reconstruction and 20th century Civil Rights legislation are the exception not the rule.

States are not administrative districts of the Federal government. They are political entities which in many cases preceded the Federal. government.

That one party has support more broadly across states while the others support is more concentrated explains that one would more vigorously assert federalist tendencies.

Historically states abused all of these powers. The Senate was a national disgrace even more so than by modern standards, fully dominated by machine political power brokers and regressive politics.

When that era was ended, the states systematically abused that power to exclude black and Latino voters. In some places that extended to Catholics and Jewish communities.

The play on nostalgia and ancient precedent is nothing more than a vacuous and flimsy veneer on supporting discrimination and exclusion. Reactionaries are always talking a big game about high and mighty principles, but delivering the same old machine politics in a new skin.

It doesn't look like it from up close because it happens over decades, but if you take a step back it's actually happening frighteningly fast. The decline and fall of the Roman empire took about 250 years. With the way things are going in the US it'll be done in less than a hundred.

Nothing a little duct tape can't fix.

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