Hot Type: Complying in Advance to the Fall of America

American political columnist Heidi Siegmund Cuda reflects on the tragedy of a country that willingly relinquished to its own cultural destruction

Three decades ago in America, we were richer, safer, more powerful, better defended, better fed, more entertained than any civilization had ever been in the history of the world. And we were willing to burn it all down so we could be mean to people again.

Instead of protecting our sacred achievements and keeping up our efforts at dealing with the sins of our past, we marched ourselves into our own cultural death.

White Grievance Media took over the airwaves. The debut of Fox News on Putin’s birthday in 1996 aligned with the thriving cruelty of Rush Limbaugh on the radio.

A significant portion of Americans became infected with a mean-spirited bloodlust.

So by the time the Russians began directing a constant flow of active measures our way, we were already ripe for destruction.

The willingness of people to walk into something that was utterly preventable — the destruction of a once thriving democracy — occurred because too few took a moment to really study the battlefield.

MAGA marched all of us off to our own destruction, rather than listen to Hillary Clinton when she warned a decade ago that a vote for Trump was a vote to overturn women’s health care rights; a vote for Trump was to vote for a judicial coup; a vote for Trump meant we were going to lose our glorious public parks, which they will mine for every last resource.

Now, millions who voted for the right to be mean to people can look forward to poverty in their old age, as safety nets are severed.