NuII works

A point of no return won’t be hit for a while. The buildings still exist and people with domain knowledge are still around.

a private company innovated aerospace technology despite the US government’s reluctance to invest in aerospace technology.

Huh? The US government paying SpaceX made it possible to succeed in the first place. That’s literally the US investing in aerospace tech.

US dod officials have been very clearly saying for Over a decade that the US might already be behind China in key areas of defense

China is catching up, but still behind in defense and aerospace technology. The one area they are ahead is industrial capacity to build, especially ships. China builds a huge number of civilian and military ships.

despite spending 4 to 10 times as much on their defense budget

Wages, manufacturing, etc. are all far more expensive in the US. It’s also much easier and cheaper to copy someone else’s design than to discover and build for the first time.

they cannot even compete with a free operating system

Microsoft has good support for Linux nowadays with Windows services for Linux and Azure Linux for example. On the desktop Microsoft Windows is still leading in market share and Microsoft Office is dominating as well.

Where are the biggest Linux companies located?

Apple? they haven’t been innovative in 15 years, depend on slave labor

Apple’s AR/VR is innovative, if not particularly successful in the market. Their M-series chips are among the best chip available. Very fast with low power use.

Apple makes their products in same factories (Foxconn etc) as other companies. So the labor conditions aren’t unique to Apple at all.

it’s not leading in manufacturing, it’s not leading in most sciences, and it has one of the most awful education systems in the world, not to mention the living affordability crisis going on.

I mostly agree. The quality of the US education system is similar to the health care system. The US has some of the best education and health care in the world. However, it’s neither cheap nor affordable for the majority of the population.

you can’t do science without funding and support, and dumps has taken that funding away, and importantly does not believe in science or the benefits of research and development.

I agree mostly. Regarding funding under Trump, we will see. Elon Musk certainly know about R&D costs and benefits and is influential.

meanwhile, other countries are investing record amounts and setting technological records in innovative technologies like solar that the US has no hope of catching up to in the near future.

Yes, other countries are catching up steadily overall and are ahead in some areas, especially China.

The US is still leading in aerospace and defense. Boeing is in a slump, but military planes are top notch. SpaceX is a decade ahead of the global competition at least.

computer science

All the biggest and leading companies in that area are still based in the US. American companies dominate the market for software and internet services. The possibly most disruptive technology AI is also firmly in the hands of the USA.

You’re also missing biotechnology as another key sector, where the US is doing very well.

the US does not have the technological edge it once did;

That much is clear. It’s still doing very good though.

The amount of money spent on R&D is still huge in the USA and it attracts top minds from across the globe.

Play Solitaire

Upvoted for the optimism. Let’s hope you’re right.

technology (…) being suppressed

What technology or technology development is being suppressed?

The USA are still leading in most technological fields and have a dominant position.

Term limits have a huge downside. The politician will need a job afterwards and is thus more motivated to give political favors for job security afterwards. Your goal would also be achieved via an age limit like 70.

It also takes a while for a newly elected representative to understand how the political apparatus works, who is who and so on. Lobbyists and bureaucrats don’t have term limits though and have a much easier influencing the newcomer. Experience matters in every profession including politics.

Occupy destroyed itself by being too unfocused and ambitious. It also failed to institutionalize and burned itself out quickly.

Sure the state also did its part to sabotage it. However some of the structures like consensus and stack speakers were easily exploited by all kinds of detractors and grand standers and also wore people out by their duration.

Don’t get me wrong, it was great that it happened and there are merits to its approach.

CHAZ had a similar problem with their demands. What Occupy and CHAZ have in common is a continuous occupation of an area with people living there and building a small society. Security concerns, internal contradictions, and external pressure then lead to them falling apart after a month. With both we got a super intense short time of action with grand rhetoric but no staying power. Participants seem to be more interested in experiencing revolutionary cosplaying an anarchist utopia than achieving effective change or building a sustainable movement.

Occupy and CHAZ also have in common, that they were not repeated the next month or the next year with any success. Previous participants were frustrated or burnt out by the experience and outcomes.

The Dakota Access Pipeline protests also seem to have attracted protest tourists, who came more for the vibes than the cause.

White people are colonizing the camps…" protestor Alicia Smith added on Facebook. "They are coming in, taking food, clothing and occupying space without any desire to participate in camp maintenance and without respect of tribal protocols. “These people are treating it like it is Burning Man or The Rainbow Gathering and I even witnessed several wandering in and out of camps comparing it to those festivals.”

In this case as well, the protest lasted for one longer time only, remained mostly local, and even ethnically specific.

I don’t know that much about American protest culture and organizations. But my impression is a lack of long term organizations and repeated protests for years for the same goal. There are punctual chaotic outbreaks, sometimes widespread anger like with BLM.

What other sustained long term groups exist besides Code Pink? The name BLM was coopted and exploited financially by a foundation afaik.

I also know that climate activist movements like Fridays for Future and eXtinction Rebellion were only able to mobilize a fraction of what was going on in Europe at the time.

In contrast to Dakota Access the German group Ende Gelände occupied a different coal mine with a couple thousand people every year for a week or so from 2015 to 2024.

Do I have a wrong impression or is there a lack of political organization around protests and causes in the USA?

The Soviet Union as a credible major adversary meant the US couldn’t drop the ball too much. China is only now becoming a serious rival. Russia is totally changed player that sneaked up on the west. In the decades in between the US could fumble, drop, and lose the ball without much immediate consequence.

is seriously organize to support a more left candidate

Americans need to start organizing the network for a general strike and start writing a new constitution.

somehow he pisses off the base enough

Trump has to placate the billionaire class. If everybody is still making money and gaining power, they’re unlikely to break with him.

Trumpism isn’t Orwellian, it doesn’t need to be.

This is going to require constitutional changes

I think it’s going to require a new constitution. The American constitution was pretty good for a first try at modern democracy, but it has weaknesses. Look to European constitutions for inspiration regarding balance of power, parliamentary systems, electoral systems, basic rights. A less powerful president and a voting system that doesn’t lead to two parties might be prudent for example.

maybe we’ll get something entirely new?

The French are on their fifth republic already. A new constitution with better guardrails and different voting system is possible. The USA has a very deeply ingrained idea of freedom and democracy and is unlikely to lose it completely. It might be a good idea to already start thinking about how that new constitution should look like.

Balkanization or a civil war before that happens is certainly in the cards.

Maybe the military

Trump will try and purge all non loyalist officers from the military. That could lead to a fracturing of the military. California for example has big navy, air force, and marines bases, as well as military industry. The states have national guards already and whole units could defect from the federal military to the guard.

If that leads to an internal cold war, balkanization, or a civil war remains to be seen. It will make the US far less able to project force internationally. Queue China taking Taiwan without much US intervention.

Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote

Who should have the power to make that decision?

Do you want a benevolent king at the top that can dissolve parliament, dismiss government, call for new elections, make parties illegal, and censor the press?

Or maybe have something like an electoral college?

Or the army coups, if things get too far?

The ultimate check on power is the people. A general strike, large scale protests, and occupation of public buildings can topple a government. Institutions from military, police, local government, government agencies, and so on value their positions and won’t go down with a sinking ship.

Hold your ponies. The US is very much still a democracy, if a flawed one in many ways. The US has always been a country run by the wealthy elites, as are most countries in the world.

Buying politicians works, especially in the US, regardless of party. Democrats and Republicans are both the parties of big business and capital interests.

Besides laws around spending money for political purposes, the media landscape has revolutionized over the last 20 years. The role social media has played in Trump‘s ascendancy can’t be overstated. Trump spent less than Kamala Harris in this election and still won, because of his exceptional way to use media to his advantage.

This very liberal use of Nazi and fascist as a epithet has devalued its meaning.

Hate is not enough. The Nazis did far more than spread hate. National-Socialism was much more coherent and thought through ideology than Trumpism/MAGA is today.

Nazi might be useful as an expression of anger and resentment, but it’s not conducive to serious analysis or discourse regarding the situation.