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How do some third graders in Alabama deserve this? How do my 22-year-old waiter friends in rural Texas deserve this?

What exactly did they do to deserve this?

Be precise: the quote does not say "individual people deserve...", it's talking about the country as a whole. And even then, you don't necessarily have to agree with it.

It's easy to hide a lot of objectionable stuff in metonymy.

It feels reasonable to me to think of a "country" as the people who live there; doubly so when discussing a putative democracy.

But sure, I will entertain the idea that you mean something different that literally every other person I've encountered who has uttered that similar sentiment:

if the claim is that the owning-class of the US are seeing the results of their 400-year-long racist, genocidal campaign to enslave the world and exploit every crevice of the planet come home to roost in the form of a decaying ability to present themselves as ethically okay...

sure I can agree to that.

But honestly, I don't think that's what you're trying to say.

Those third graders didn't vote hard enough.

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