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Your post resonates, and yet nostalgia is a powerful force. Was life ever really good? After all, there were issues even during peak post-war Americana from civil rights unrest to Cold War "you could be nuked any day now" anxiety.

OTOH institutions were actually strong, and wealth-inequality not-that-bad prior to the 1980's.... Personally, I think SCOTUS and Citizens United are the root cause of recent decline. Money-in-politics has made inept, corrupt gerontocracy unassailable and safe in their unaccountable malfeasance. A revolution is needed, how sad a fentanyl- and social-media-addled American public picked an even more corrupt old man to fix a corrupt old man problem.

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> Citizens United

I agree.

Include ranked choice or quadratic voting + repeal CU and a lot of things could improve quickly.

Terms limited to 25 years and age 65 at time of election.

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Yeah money in politics is most of it. It will be difficult to persuade the oligarchy that one dollar shouldn't equal one vote, but if we continue on this current trajectory they'll inevitably destroy society and the environment to such an extent that groceries won't be able to make it to their New Zealand luxury bunkers.
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The American Dream is very much alive. US is still trying to fend off massive number of immigrants from pretty much all over the world. People want to be here because it is a place where there is still hope for the future.
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This is my understanding. A big part of the decline of mental health is simply a decline of the state of the things we value in Western society, and people observing the delta.

I mean, yes, there are some explicit attacks on mental health: Social media, gambling, etc. And yes, we are not investing enough in mental health directly. But frankly, the notion that those are what's driving the crisis is just ignoring the obvious, presumably because the obvious problems are intractable unless we have some conversations that are very scary for leaders.

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Kind of hilarious to see the downvotes without comment. Guess you got your nvidia stock early. Everything is fine!
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