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Trump is insignificant. To focus on him is only to give a doddering old blowhard more credit and power than he deserves.

All he did was say what most people believe (and what most of our indicators show strongly), that the world is worse today than it used to be in the recent past(2004 felt way better than 2024, for example). That's objectively true. Millennials have it worse than boomers did, and zoomers have it worse than millennials did. They're poorer in terms of money, but also many critical life events just aren't happening. Many are more educated than any other generation before them but they don't have productive careers. They don't have homes. They aren't dating. They aren't getting married. They aren't having kids. People are lonely and lack community. Not to mention socially everyone was a lot more chill -- a lot of stuff made in the 2000s they say "of course that could never be made today since it's so offensive" -- everyone is getting exhausted from having to constantly apologize for existing, and it drives people apart because nobody wants to be attacked for being themselves even if "themselves" isn't a perfectly polished marble floor. Nobody's perfect and people need to feel like it's acceptable to be imperfect or they'll check out -- and they have. That may be part of the appeal of many unpolished, often crass populist politicians who say things that aren't acceptable to say by normal standards.

The zoomers and gen alpha will be Atlas holding up the world for a long while -- supporting an overwhelming population of retiring boomers and eventually millennials while also suffering the slings and arrows of those old fogeys legacy projects which both huge generations are demanding so they can feel like they're doing something. Meanwhile, those younger generations will be the ones stuck actually paying the consequences.

It's a great time if you're wealthy. You've got way more dollars than you did last year, and if you got in on stocks like the magnificent seven then maybe you've become overwhelmingly wealthier. The people in charge say "the economy has been doing great why are the rabble complaining?" But the rabble don't have stocks, they earn wages, and they can barely keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies (while the people in charge tell them things are so great). A lot of them aren't keeping food in their bellies or a roof over their heads, leading to record use of food banks, record numbers of homeless encampments.

Moments in history like can be quite dangerous. In the 1700s, discontent in France led to the horrifying reign of terror. In the 1800s, the Taiping rebellion elevated a really nasty character whom claimed to be spreading Christianity but in reality was just spreading misery and death. In the 1930s, Germany made lots of money for American companies like IBM, but the suffering of the common man led to the rise of a horrific racist dictator. But even in these cases, to focus on the Jacobins or Hong Xiuquan or Adolf Hitler is to miss the forest for a tree that happens to be growing in the middle. These people don't just rise, they are made to arise from the circumstances. People look at Putin's Russia with envy not because Donald Trump tells them to, but because it looks like the land of the dictator doesn't have the same problems we do (whether that's true or not doesn't matter, grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence)

Europe and America learned the lessons of the past in the postwar period and instead of punishing the whole people who obviously did horrible things, they punished the leaders and worked to make the lives of the common German and Japanese better, leading to an era of relative peace.

The move that would cripple Donald Trump and people like him immediately would be to take actions that make people's lives materially better. Acting to make housing and food and transportation affordable for everyone. Doing what's necessary to help return meaningful work to the common man. Help people feel like they can make progress towards typical life goals. Instead, as the meme says, the elites want to move the goalposts and tell us we should be happy and proud to "live in the pod, eat the bugs" and live inhuman lives consuming while making the ridiculously rich catastrophically rich. Instead of saying "we have plans so people who work hard can own a home", the famous article says "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" (nevermind that oligarchs will magically still own plenty). In spending money to create opportunities, it would be important not to just spend it creating more opportunities for elites, who already have plenty. We don't need to build homes to hedge funds or to create more jobs as political analysts. We need boots on the ground work, and lots of it alongside a lower cost of living. Besides that, a one income family is ideal. If everyone is always working, nobody is able to do the required work of building local community. There's more to life than money and if all people are allowed to care about is money that's a huge problem. It's also important not to single out any one group as particularly marginalized, opportunities should exist for anyone who needs them and if there aren't enough then there needs to be more, not implementing systemic bigotry painted in smiley faces -- hunger doesn't care about the color of your skin or who you fall in love with.

I noticed that the overall discussion ended up as "stupid Americans are stupid", but many of the issues facing Americans are not unique at all to the US. Canada is facing even worse declines in standard of living, and Europe is as well. We can see similar reactions in many European nations with unthinkable wins for Meloni in Italy, Wilders in the Netherlands, and an upcoming change in electoral fortune for AfD in Germany that has the establishment desperately trying any lawfare it can to prevent. The conservatives in Canada under the bombastic Pierre Poilievre are on track for a majority government, and south america has seen upsets such as Milei in Argentina. Even China with its authoritarian government faces problems of this kind, with China's kids engaging in the lay flat and let it rot movements, protests against a perception that they won't be improving like their parents did.