I'm a tad older than Omoxiedot and I moved to the United States by choice in 1984 (hah!) and left in 2016.

Let me be blunt - while America had never gone mask off in such a big way as now, the evilness was never a mystery to compassionate people.

It was listening to the Clash's monumental, astonishingly eclectic triple album Sandinista! that first clued me in to the fact that something was badly wrong with the state of The States, and that had happened some years before already.

The Vietnam War was only a few years in the past. Two million people died because of Kissinger's delusional Domino Theory. (And yet this.)

But America was keeping it together - until 2001.

Bush's response to 9/11 was to deliberately shoot America in the foot, twice, by starting two pointless wars that allowed Bin Laden to escape, but also allowed Cheney and other Republicans to profiteer to the tune of tens or even hundreds of billions. Then he chopped off a toe by allowing the destruction of New Orleans, and finally he severed an artery by accident with the Global Financial Crisis.

Then Obama came in, gave a trillion to Wall Street and absolved them of the literally thousands of felonies they had pled guilty to, as well as allowing the war criminals in the Bush administration to walk clean without even an investigation.

The ACA was a bandaid on a sucking chest wound which fell apart the moment it was stressed. Even at its best before the pandemic, US healthcare was still most expensive in the developed world with some of the worst outcomes.

A trillion in new nuclear weapons. Drones. Targeted assassinations of US citizens and even US minors. A tremendous push towards fracking that left the US the largest exporter of oil in the world by the time Obama left office.

He ignored Flint entire - he had almost three years. DAP, ignored entirely - he had almost a year and as a lame duck too, when you can do as you please. Police brutality against African-Americans? He had eight years. It was not on his radar at any point except some heartfelt reactions to individual incidents.

Eight years squandered on mic drops and photo-ops and carrying water for Wall Street and the military-industrial complex - Obama's legacy.

And now, Trump. Words fail me.

Where did this start? Richard Nixon. The same group of criminals that appeared in that administration lead to all the other criminal Republican administrations since.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals

There's a lesson there. Allowing the Nixon and Reagan and Bush criminals to walk free inevitably led to Trump.

Thanks for reading!