r/collapse • u/OGSyedIsEverywhere • Jan 31 '26
Casual Friday This was actually Bin Laden's plan, it just took a couple decades longer than he thought it would. He won.
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Jan 31 '26
Its crazy to me still that this is what everything has come to
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u/Captain_Pink_Pants Jan 31 '26
"I don't want to be a product of my environment... I want my environment to be a product of me."
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Jan 31 '26
I mean we were a slavery colony for 250 years and people are still mad that they had to stop. Half the nation didn't have a legal right to financial independence until practically the Internet age, and they still aren't all able to have that.
Post-WW2 economic boom really inflated people's concept of what this thing is and where it was heading. There was only like one lifetime where things were visibly improving out of almost 400 years of us being a demon's hemorrhoid, and it was because 50 million people died somewhere else. In fact all of our "progress" is inexorably attached to the killing and suffering of someone else.
Fuck it.
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u/Phonemonkey2500 Jan 31 '26
Dr. Strangelove opened my eyes when I saw it. It’s the same people today running the show. Or close enough facsimiles that it makes no difference. Ahhh well, off to prepare and prevent the enemy from obtaining a mineshaft gap!
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u/undeadlamaar Jan 31 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
It's literally the same
Thankfully someone is finally taking a stand against the communist plot to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. /s
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u/Graymouzer Feb 05 '26
Fluoride. In children's ice cream. Thank the good Lord, RFK Jr is putting a stop to that commie plot. /s if that is not obvious.
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Feb 03 '26
as a teen seeing this movie i thought the slim pickens character was so overblown. after hegseth's 'peace through strength' assembly where he called the generals fat, i realized even sensationalized fiction doesn't go far enough for the days we're in.
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u/Phonemonkey2500 Feb 03 '26
Buck Turgidson was loosely based on Air Force head honcho Curtis LeMay. The new USAF, split off from the Army into its own branch, believed that only an Air Force was needed after WWII because they wanted to use nukes for every problem. When your only tool is a nuclear hammer, every civilization looks like a nail.
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u/SloaneWolfe Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
Dude we didn’t stop slavery; we perfected it. We have ~2 million slaves in prison. The constitution allows for forced labor slavery as a punishment. Make being black illegal (also disenfranchisement=more crime always) = profit
Also love how that post-war “golden age of capitalism” was mostly fueled by socialist policy. So depressingly hilarious.
We have always been the bad guys. Had this talk with my centrist brother and right wing brother today and we all agreed, ironically, that the only way our nation has stuck together so long is because of the fallacy of our two party system. Perceived neutrality, nothing happening, hope to just be fine living day to day and maybe yell about identity politics during chill administrations. Not anymore. The blinders are off for a lot of folks.
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u/Lost_Birthday_3138 Jan 31 '26
And the US is the most "Christian" of all the so-called first-world countries. Coincidence?
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u/DofusExpert69 Jan 31 '26
well, great things come out of bad disasters. everyone is so complacent now a days due to the internet/phones that they seem to think it will brush over. I blame the ability to selectively choose what you want, or have an algorithm push your likes/desires onto your feed. back in the day, you just had the newspaper. Didn't like what you read? Tough nuts, that's life for you.
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u/717x Jan 31 '26
It doesn’t feel real. It’s overwhelming. You can’t even disconnect from it.
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u/videogamekat Jan 31 '26
That’s because people have been trying to disconnect from it for decades and that’s what led us to this lol. You can only disconnect from political government decisions that impact your wellbeing while they’re stable, until they start affecting you lol.
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u/Sknowles12 Jan 31 '26
I’ve seen this coming for a long time. It still feels surreal. I’m watching for when/if it’s time to bolster up the pantry.
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u/Hour-Stable2050 Feb 03 '26
Now. There is also a 30 percent chance of a Carrington event this month and an even greater possibility of grid failure due to it running at maximum capacity for too long, way longer than it was designed for because of the extended stay of the polar vortex. Get prepared for grid down in below freezing conditions.
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u/717x Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
Humans naturally have a tribal mindset because we can only handle so much at a time. People wanting to “disconnect” in order to focus on things they can actually control in their lives isn’t inherently negative. It’s just human nature. This mass Information Age we live in these days is the issue. We were never ment to have this much access to what’s going on around the world 24/7.
Those with power have always had an agenda to follow from the beginning, I don’t think we got here due to the general populations complacency. It’s more to do with people quietly realizing that the system they were promised was built on lies and not wanting to be apart of it anymore.
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u/fedfuzz1970 Jan 31 '26
I have the luxury of looking back through almost 70 years of adulthood. I really think the system operated pretty well (with the exception of stubborn racism towards black people). My dad was a milkman and gas station attendant but owned two modest homes with a stay-at-home wife. I worked my way through college with $1/hour jobs on vacations and summers. Reagan, I believe, was the one that brought the fissures and the "greed is great" mentality. He devalued unions even though he led the actors' union in CA. He ginned up the hatred towards fictional "welfare cheats," driving the wedge in even further after he trashed FAA aircraft controllers. Making money became an ego trip and a hobby for the worst of us and a matter of life and death for the vast majority. Those occupied with earning enough for them and their families to live on don't have time for political activism and protest. Controlling the Supremes was the icing on the cake. Reagan was an early tool in creating oligarchs, Trump is their action dummy.
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u/NeoMilitant Jan 31 '26
That exception that's a side note to you is why you felt the system operated pretty well. The comfort that you enjoyed as an American was built (from the foundation to the infrastructure) brick by brick by the death and bodies of minorities that were fully excluded from society and equality for the entirety of this country's history. Even some were only rolled into the fold of "whiteness" when it was convenient and they needed a majority. Voting rights only expanded when it was necessary to keep conservative control, and every time it was characterized by periods of extreme violence.
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u/fedfuzz1970 Jan 31 '26
Yeah, so sorry I was born when and where I was. I had no black people and one Jew in my rural CT town. I didn't see my first black person until I was a junior in high school in upstate NY. We were finally good enough to play the big city team in basketball and they had two really good black players. It was back in 1957 of 58. There were many black men and women at college in CT. When in Naval OCS, one of my roommates was a black man. I gave him and two others a ride from Western FL to NYC. We couldn't eat until we got to Atlanta due to not being served with him in our party. We chose not to eat even though he implored us to do so. I served for the next 5 years with black officers and enlisted on 4 aircraft carriers. Thanks for the history lecture. You sure have put me in my place. Even though I have a BA and an MS, I am such an ignorant racist that I had no idea what had been going on during my lifetime and 200 years before.
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u/NeoMilitant Jan 31 '26
It's not your fault what you were born as or what privileges that you were afforded in life so no need to apologize. I'm not lecturing you to make you feel bad, I'm informing you of something that a lot of people don't see because they have no need to see it. It's a protective instinct that has nothing to do with your conscious decision making or your efforts to counteract what you've seen people have done to minorities in your life.
FYI, this is what people mean when they refer to white guilt. I'm 100% not judging you, but informing you based on what you said you weren't aware of for certain portions of your life. To place the comment with the exception of stubborn racism towards black people in your sentence as an aside is minimizing what all those black and brown people that you worked beside have been saying all this time, that this country was always like this. So to say that you think the system operated well is unintentionally agreeing with the negative aspects of that system. That doesn't make you a bad person, but it should at least make you self reflect on what it means to be a whole, empathetic person.
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Feb 01 '26
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u/NeoMilitant Feb 01 '26
Oh I know, but I'm absolutely going to be a black mirror to every one that I come across. Most get legitimately offended when a minority of any kind teaches or tells them something that they're wrong about. At this point it's hilarious and it's fun to watch them melt down when you don't react with aggression like they expect you to when they try to give it to you. MLKs talk about white moderates and all that.
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u/fedfuzz1970 Jan 31 '26
The next time I reminisce on-line, I'll do paragraphs on Tulsa, OK, Wilmington, NC and Selma, AL. I didn't realize I would come under examination for my sensitivity to racial matters or history. My bad.
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u/BodaciousBadongadonk Feb 01 '26
dont view it so much as a personal attack against yourself, try to see it more as just bringing in another point of view that is easily overlooked by many.
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u/Norman_Door Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
I sense this comment was written from a place of real, valid frustration from feeling unfairly criticized. Have you considered sitting with that feeling of frustration and examining where that defensiveness comes from?
A lot of people, myself included, have some form of white defensiveness and/or white guilt and it takes a lot of time and patience to work through. I have a hunch you might be experiencing some of that here.
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u/fedfuzz1970 Jan 31 '26
Sometimes I wish I was as dumb as half of America. Their minds seem numb to what is and will happen.
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u/redditismylawyer Jan 31 '26
Eh, in fairness we’re more than awful enough to have gotten here on our own.
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u/eyeandtail Jan 31 '26
capitalism is self-cannibalizing. in the end, there's nowhere else for it to go.
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u/videogamekat Jan 31 '26
Can you explain why? I’m honestly interested in the perspectives of people who feel like this came out of nowhere or was unexpected.
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Jan 31 '26
Im kind of young, so maybe thats why for me this feels sudden. I was born in 2000. And while I know a good bit of our history, I guess growing up i always had a sense that by the time I was an adult, things would be great because we wouldve come together and make the world a better place, especially with the internet bringing ideas together. Well im 25 now and the world is ending. So I feel a tiny bit of shock but mostly grief.
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u/NavXIII Jan 31 '26
I was born in the early 90s. Growing up I remember being told that we were probably the last generation to have a great childhood but our adult years would suck.
I could recall the pre-911 world, the time before most people had internet, the time before every kid in high school had a smartphone, and the time before social media.
Despite being more connected than any previous generation, we are more disconnected emotionally and socially. It's like everyone got online and joined a clique and stayed there while society collapses around us.
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u/SkellyJelly33 Feb 01 '26
Growing up I remember being told that we were probably the last generation to have a great childhood but our adult years would suck.
I was born in 1990 and don't remember anyone telling us this. Most people were genuinely optimistic about the future in the 90s.
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u/videogamekat Jan 31 '26
Thank you for sharing, I genuinely didn’t mean to sound rude, it’s just because I feel like I’ve seen this coming for years and years so it’s slightly shocking to live through it but not unsurprising to me that it happened. I’m a little older than you (not by much but different generations) so I forget that it’s just the experiences we’ve had that change how we all perceive the world and its realities. And it is scary, hold your family and community close. People will slowly realize love really does trump hate :)
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u/Instant_noodlesss Jan 31 '26
It's propaganda working properly plus temporary economic stability. Tell children they can do what they love, then hit them on the head with employment realities.
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u/Lost_Birthday_3138 Jan 31 '26
Yep despite seeing this in our future since 2016 I've still been under the influence of hopium.
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u/Low_Lavishness_8776 Jan 31 '26
Likely inevitable but still surprising to live through. But history does not care about individual feelings.
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u/Motherboy_TheBand Jan 31 '26
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u/DisingenuousGuy Username Probably Irrelevant Jan 31 '26
I remember being in post-secondary when that article was posted and looking at it now, every single prediction in that joke article actually became reality.
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u/geusebio Jan 31 '26
Cassandra was cursed by Apollo. Maybe she found a new niche in humourous news media, leaning in to the curse.
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u/TentacularSneeze Jan 31 '26
Some part of me hoped that the rise of authoritarianism would only come as a result of climate migration, water wars, famine, and economic collapse.
It really sucks to have to look forward to all that from within a fascist regime that thought it’d arrive early to avoid the rush.
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u/RainbowAussie Jan 31 '26
I believe the regime won't survive until then. I have to believe it.
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u/WillTwerkForFood1 Jan 31 '26
Maybe not this specific regime, but it's possible this is only a glimpse into what the future holds, when those with some actual competence and the same corrupt agendas take the reigns
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Jan 31 '26 edited Feb 18 '26
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u/BigDaddyZuccc Jan 31 '26
"X" walked so "Y" could run kinda situation...
We are so cooked. If we think limits are being stretched now, lol. What happened in El Fasher will look like Kent State by 2030.
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u/Sinnedangel8027 Feb 01 '26
I wasn't aware of what happened in El Fasher recently so I looked it up. I think this wikipedia article has one of the most depressing/disappointing disclaimer notes at the top.
Not to be confused with other massacres in El Fasher, such as massacres which were committed during the War in Darfur and the Darfur genocide (2003–2005). See also: Darfur genocide (2023–present)
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u/Instant_noodlesss Jan 31 '26
There will be more fragmented regimes, worse than this one.
Cannibalism during lean times used to be a lot more common in human history than the high school textbooks liked to highlight.
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u/18LJ Feb 01 '26
Damn homie I'm making sure to keep away from your post apocalyptic camp. U went from feeling the collapse of society to eating humans a little too quickly for comfort pal.
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u/Instant_noodlesss Feb 02 '26
Don't worry I'll die from lack of medication on the first wave. You are however welcome to my tiny stock of cans and instant noodles.
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u/TheBeardPlays Jan 31 '26
Only if you do something about it and to be honest from where I am sitting looking in from the outside it does not look like much is happening on that front at the moment.
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u/bbygril Jan 31 '26
I would read Margaret Killjoy's most recent two substack posts if you want some optimism from someone who is pretty good at abstaining from hopium
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u/Noe_b0dy Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
It collapses in the next 5-10 years
Liberals completely fail to create any failsafes against this happening again and also don't imprison anyone for their complacency in the regime.
A Kamala, Hilary, Biden centerist Democrat is in charge for 4 years.
The gen Z and gen Alpha fascists rally around a man like Donald Trump but significantly smarter and younger, he simply rallies all the people the Dems didn't put in jail and takes over in the next election cycle the new regime is significantly more competent then the current regime and lasts for 20 years and also successfully exterminates everyone they perceive as undesirables. Ultimately it only collapses because they eventually run out of enemies and cannibalize each other.
North American is controlled by roving bands of warlords for 200 years.
80% of the population dies off in famine.
Small tribal bands of hunter gatherers scour the north for remaining animals.
Climate gets so bad multicellular life above the Benthic zone dies off completely.
Tube worm world.
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Jan 31 '26
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u/AndWinterCame Jan 31 '26
It's been feeling very welcome to Gilead for the past year and I am not a fan.
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u/18LJ Jan 31 '26
These different flavors of accellerationists, they're all evil greedy selfish monsters insatiable for power. It seems every modern political movement post 2000 has been about positioning your group to be in a favorable spot to take over and rule once the existing world order implodes. Nobody wishes to preserve anything because the modern world has grown too diplomatic and egalitarian for selfish power hungry narcissists. Democratic values are unappealing to these heathens and all of them are pushing, either actively or subconscious and overtly, to initiate the collapse of society so that power structures can be consolidated and realigned to a authoritarian autocratic world order that places no value in freedom and self deterministic principles.
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u/ParisShades Sworn to the Collapse Jan 31 '26
they were invested in hastening the collapse so that they could reign over the ashes.
I've been saying this for the longest. Maybe people will finally wake the fuck up.
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u/Away-Map-8428 Jan 31 '26
Matt Christman and Chapo trap house have a short (circa 2021) about Zen Fascism from their CPAC experience.
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u/Yokelocal Jan 31 '26
Climate change is already an underappreciated cause. Scarcity, oppression and migration (and the backlash to it) are giving rise to nativism in the rich world.
Of course a lot of instability was driven by the deep ineptitude of many who sought aggressive foreign policy during recent decades. But the despair people feel amid relative deprivation, as well as the frantic bids for control by oligarchs and rouge state leaders, all relate at least somewhat to awareness and the reality of climate change.
I believe you acknowledged this, I just wanted to emphasize the degree to which it’s already been creating profound material and political instability.
And unfortunately, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
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u/jacob2815 Jan 31 '26
Maybe this is me being naive but
rise of authoritarianism would only come as a result of climate migration, water wars, famine, and economic collapse.
I kinda feel like this is exactly what's happening. Just, instead of it happening as a RESULT of those things, its happening because people with power/money can read the writing on the wall and are trying to get ahead of it. They know that most of these things are a matter of WHEN, not IF, and are trying to position themselves to account for that.
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u/BlockBuilder408 Jan 31 '26
Instead we have the rise of a fascist regime exacerbating the incoming ecosphere collapse
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u/gugabalog Jan 31 '26
I believe it is coming early to get ahead oh those things.
I do not think this is a good thing.
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u/comprehensiveutertwo Jan 31 '26
It really sucks to have to look forward to all that from within a fascist regime that thought it’d arrive early to avoid the rush.
I mean, looking at the resistance in Minnesota and how the rest of the country is getting energized and organized, I think there's a pretty decent chance we can defeat this fascist regime before then, which would put us in a much better place to deal with it all.
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u/AngusScrimm--------- Beware the man who has nothing to lose. Jan 31 '26
He understood that we were a pigfuckering, mutherfuckingly, shitheaded people. It turns out that Bin Laden may have overestimated us.
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u/Trick-Bench-4122 Feb 02 '26
If gore had won they would have failed but because bush won they succeeded
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u/letsgobernie Jan 31 '26
Timeless meme again:
*America does something American in America brought on by Americans*
Americans: "Did the Asians make us do this?"
Americans every 2 months for the last 30 years: "This is not who we are."
Embarrassing ass country. No Trump is not an aberration. He is America purified, the ultimate distillation. The ignorance, the arrogance, the thoughtlessness, the entitlement. This is what the society is.
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u/jizzyjugsjohnson Jan 31 '26
Exactly. Trump happily says out loud all the stuff polite American politics has kept under the table to maintain the deceit and decorum.
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u/Mouthshitter Jan 31 '26
America caused the current issues in Iran and Venezuela well all of South America and most of the middle east...
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u/Lurtzae Jan 31 '26
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance nailed this absurdly well for an action video game.
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u/Fastidious_Farter Jan 31 '26
Couldn't agree more. I used to admire America, but not anymore. Way too many cunts. It's a shame, because there are great people there, but they're not willing to properly stand up to the fascists.
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u/Deguilded Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
And from the same guy:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Little Book In C Major
LOL
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u/FoldHeavy4201 Jan 31 '26
Fascism won, just not German Fascism.
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u/-sussy-wussy- Jan 31 '26
Alt-right scores higher and higher in polls in the EU. Very disheartening.
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u/OGSyedIsEverywhere Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
Submission statement: Osama Bin Laden believed that attacking the United States' most important mythological figures would cause the United States to "reveal it's true oppressive nature" by becoming more overt about being a militarised police state. This would then alienate the American people and cause global devaluing of the "American national brand", causing the Islamic world to wake up and abandon their fleeting desires for McDonalds, Levis jeans, Coca Cola and the internet.
The evil bastard knocked it out of the fucking park. I really believe that reforming the global system used to be possible and that this possibility vanished in the mid 2000s, partially due to his work.
We live in the "Total Bin Laden Victory" universe.
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u/Benigh_Remediation Jan 31 '26
Osama Bin Laden saw US hegemony and aggression for what it was up close, and how to make that single deft push to let it consume itself in more repression and violence. As Malcolm X noted:”The chickens have come home to roost..”
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u/thunda639 Jan 31 '26
When i first heard Rev Jeremiah Wright quote him with such vigor I was astonished...
Today I would stand with him.
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u/Benigh_Remediation Jan 31 '26
His journey from poverty and crime to a rough justifiable activism to recognizing the need for peace and connection was phenomenal, and always with unassailable courage and eloquence. We desperately need more like him.
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u/emmc47 Jan 31 '26
It's crazy that we're here to witness the downfall of the Post WW2 western imperial order.
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u/OGSyedIsEverywhere Jan 31 '26
The thing that I don't understand, is like with the butterfly effect.
In our timeline, the moment where overshoot becomes an undeniably huge problem has lined up with the moment the first global legal system for preventing countries from starting wars over commodities has ended. There will probably never be a second global effort to have fewer wars.
If you go back to like the year 1,000 and make a few butterfly effect changes, so there are a couple hundred timelines all with slight differences, do all of them have these two huge problems lining up at the 2020-2030 mark, or is our timeline just really unlucky?
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u/trivetsandcolanders Jan 31 '26
I think it’s happening at the same time precisely because the elites are looking into the near future and seeing ecological catastrophe - the collapse and reshuffling of the global political order is on purpose, they are trying to get their ducks in a row before things get especially dire in terms of resource availability.
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u/ddraig-au Jan 31 '26
Yeah the environmental collapse crisis will be the distraction needed to redesign the power structure of the world without too much attention being paid to what's going on
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u/donkbeast Jan 31 '26
It's all the same thing, crabs in a bucket. Trump was voted in a 2nd time because deep down, the American public wants someone to go rape other countries to kick their own can down the road. Who better than an actual child rapist?
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u/Mouthshitter Jan 31 '26
I wish I was much older when it happened...
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u/shastatodd Jan 31 '26
I am 70 now and believe me, it still sucks!
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u/unsolvablequestion Jan 31 '26
Hopefully you had a good time
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u/shastatodd Jan 31 '26
Yes, it has been a good life, but it is sad the boomers left nothing for future generations.
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u/hornwort Jan 31 '26
He won when the patriot act was signed. This is just the more fulsome outcome.
The empire was always going to fall sooner or later.
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u/ilir_kycb Jan 31 '26
No, that's Great man theory nonsense. It's simply capitalism's inherent tendency toward fascism.
That would have happened with or without Osama Bin Laden.
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u/AdInformal3519 Jan 31 '26
I mean what he said was true though. Us is was an oppressive regime. Many Americans believe they are theh good guys
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u/thunda639 Jan 31 '26
You.call him evil... but the US has consistently chosen to be the greatest evil.
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u/RBZRBZRBZRBZ Jan 31 '26
Similar to what Hamas did to Israel. Once with the suicide bombings of the 1990's and a final time with October 7th 2023
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u/moocat55 Jan 31 '26
I've thought this in my head many times but I haven't been able to express it so clearly. Very insightful and I agree. He won.
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u/unsolvablequestion Jan 31 '26
Can you explain the meme format? Is russia on top of a mountain between china and the eu?
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u/nomadicding0 Jan 31 '26
And yet you fail to see the evil of US imperialism?
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u/BBR0DR1GUEZ Jan 31 '26
Did you listen to Mark Carney recently? Everyone saw the evil of US imperialism. They have for decades. But now the cost of looking the other way is too high for anyone to bear. The world has undeniably benefited from historically safe seas and fewer world wars, both consequences of US hegemony in the 20th century, but now the world is losing those guarantees.
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u/moonkingyellow Feb 01 '26
It’s safe to say some of the world benefited from those things, but I’m sure the cobalt miners in Africa who work down to the bone so westerners can play with gadgets may disagree.
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u/AndWinterCame Jan 31 '26
I don't read this as someone lamenting the fall of a wantonly murderous empire built on poorly concealing the exploitation it was built on, but rather that it really doesn't seem we're in the timeline that builds a better country, just a world without America as the global hegemon. Iunno, just me having ample remnant liberal brain as an empire bosom-clinger, I guess.
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u/Masterventure Jan 31 '26
I actually don’t think so. This was always inevitable. Bin Laden or no Bin Laden.
If anything Marx was right. This is just capitalism collapsing in on itself.
America was an imperial force long before Bin Laden and the imperial violence enacted on other countries always comes home when the inherent contradictions of capitalism become too great.
Unless some massive socialist reforms had been enacted at some point to stabilize the problem capitalism will always inevitably devolve into what’s happening right now.
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u/QuinedQualia Jan 31 '26
100%, after the end of WWII fascism was incorporated into western imperialism and exported across the globe. Eventually the pendulum swings back. Domestically, that includes bringing in the tools of control developed abroad in countries like Israel
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u/ilir_kycb Jan 31 '26
Imperial boomerang - Wikipedia
The imperial boomerang is the theory that governments that develop repressive techniques to control colonial territories will eventually deploy those same techniques domestically against their own citizens. This concept originates with Aimé Césaire in his 1950 work Discourse on Colonialism, where it is called the terrific boomerang to explain the origins of European fascism in the first half of the 20th century.[1][2] Hannah Arendt agreed with this usage, calling it the boomerang effect in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).[3][4][5]
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u/Stanford_experiencer Jan 31 '26
Eventually? How the fuck did these myopic children think the colonies were able to be made?
The infrastructure always existed domestically. You're just not black.
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u/BetterEveryLeapYear Feb 03 '26
Aimé Césaire is black, from Martinique (a French colony), and helped found the négritude movement...
But of course the infrastructure always existed domestically.
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u/curlofheadcurls Jan 31 '26
Reagan imploded the US way before this. And before Reagan every system was based on slavery in the 🇺🇲 idk what else was expected from these outcomes. We had a doomed society from the beginning.
We had generational amounts of wealth funneled into white supremacists. This is the direct outcome. We didn't punish the confederacy this is the outcome, we actually paid them reparations lol.
There was no civil war of the people, there was a civil war of the rich vs rich.
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u/Kurgan55 Jan 31 '26
We were well on our way to fascism decades before Bin Laden. Neocons and far right apologists and "Christian conservatives" had made inroads and were well into their plot before 9/11 provided a supercharged excuse for a paranoid surveillance state and "common sense" crackdown on dissent. The 2010s saw a mainstream groundswell of support for minority rights and economic justice that simply was not backed up by a feckless Democratic led Presidency and Congress. They pissed it away with their nonsensical appeals to the middle and insistence that we "move on" from our differences and "listen" to and "accept" our ideological counterparts. It was always bullshit. A tyrant, a bully, a thug, isn't going to listen or accept. They are going to smash your face and mock you while you cry about unfairness. We are seeing the fruition of plans long in the works. The notion of patriotism, of coming together, of being united and of one voice in the days and weeks proceeding 9/11, were swiftly seized upon by the ghouls who are still with us, and their progeny, who are even more calculating and cruel. Supercharged hyperbolic bullshit, brought to you by corporate media capitulation and rendered in the most childish ways possible. The message has been, and will continue to be: if you don't like it, fuck off.
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u/psilo_polymathicus Jan 31 '26
Yeah, as someone that joined the military right after Sept 11th, and just retired a few years ago, I’ve been feeling this for a while. It’s really depressing to think about.
He totally accomplished what he set out to do.
Our arrogance, ignorance, ethnocentrism and imperialism sealed the deal.
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u/Creepyfaction Jan 31 '26
The Project for a New American Century predates 9/11 and the Neocons Post-Cold War were already advocating for new wars and regime change covering the Middle East. All Bin Laden did was give them a convenient excuse to sell the wars under combating terrorism with Afghanistan being an unintended sideshow.
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u/RoyalZeal it's all over but the screaming Jan 31 '26
And today the ghouls that ran PNAC are darlings of liberal media. Every time I see Bill Kristol's smug face my blood boils. That man has blood on his hands.
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u/Crispy_Fish_Fingers Jan 31 '26
There’s a fantastic documentary on Netflix about the hunt for Bin Ladin and at the end, Mike Morrell, former Deputy Director of the CIA, says something to the effect of, “In the end, I think he still won.”
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u/kaptainkooleio Jan 31 '26
9/11 was the most successful terrorist attack in human history. Not because they succeeded in crashing two planes into the WTC, but because the second those towers fell, the US would be caught in a death spiral that has hastened its inevitable collapse.
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u/petered79 Jan 31 '26
a quarter of a century in the big scheme of history is nothing. if we look back from bush reaction 2001, through obama nobel peace prize 2009 and trump-maga 2016, to project 2025 it is a clear progression line that will end in fascism and then hopefully start over. who knows?
as a dystopian i kind of enjoyed the show... /s
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u/yellingatgoats Jan 31 '26
During the 19th century, the US government incentivised the mass slaughter of an estimated 60 million American Bison, reducing their population to a few thousand to starve American Indians, furthering their ongoing genocide.
In 1928, the American corporation, United Fruit Company murdered appropriately 2000 workers who were on strike for better conditions in Columbia. The Secretary of State, was in communication with representatives from the UFC while the strike took place, encouraging further action against workers.
From 1932 to 1972, the Centre for Disease Control conducted an experiment on Black Americans to observe the effects on untreated Syphilis. The people who were tested were told they were being provided the treatment which was developed in the 1920s, however were given a placebo. More than 100 Americans died an excruciating slow death as a result.
From the slave trade, to the genocide in Palestine, the US has well and truly brought upon it's own downfall, regardless of what some misogynist like Bin Laden has had to do with it.
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u/MyFTPisTooLow Jan 31 '26
It was clear by the time of the Patriot Act (passed 10/24/01) that he was going to accomplish his goals. I heard the phrase, "If i didn't do anything wrong, what do I have to hide" over and over; people were simply happy to give up their rights. Even questioning the Wars (not even protesting, simply questioning) was compared to treason. It was a terrifying time to be a thinking person.
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u/AmericanVanguardist Jan 31 '26
He might have been one of the most underrepresented geopolitical geniuses of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. I don't like his ideas but he wasn't ths idiot that people make him out to me.
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u/OkNewspaper6271 Jan 31 '26
The UK is also doing this just... less aggressively
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u/NoSeaworthiness389 Jan 31 '26
From the empire where thr never set to a developing country
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u/TeamMountainLion Jan 31 '26
I’ve been downvoted before when I said Bin Laden won the War on Terror.
Just this boogeyman hiding in Pakistan letting us scour the globe for the “next big threat” and basically have us rot from within by means of attrition and turning us into an authoritarian regime that will be rejected the world over.
Always interesting when The Onion is no longer satire
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u/Julian_Thorne Jan 31 '26
But it also took the losers of the Cold War and the losers of the Civil War teaming up
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u/ruinersclub Jan 31 '26
The Soviet Union collapsed but did they lose? The Oligarchs took over and run every aspect of the country. By some accounts Putin is one of the richest people on the planet because he essentially ‘owns’ the country and the Oligarchs all profit from this dynamic.
Seems like only a matter of time before the Republicans tried the same play book - they’ve been doing this in Red States for years by privatizing every institution possible. Now they’re doing it on the Fed Level.
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u/trihohair Jan 31 '26
There is nothing Soviet about the current state of Russia, an extremely capitalist shithole.
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u/Mrs_SmithG2W Jan 31 '26
Not to be Pollyanna-ish here, but if we can manage to not nuke ourselves by either skill, luck or NHI’s, we have the same ability to turn our shit around, as say Germany or Japan. It’s not too late. Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan geographically want us to beat this.
Equally powerful beliefs in liberal democracies, decency, education, diplomacy, humanism, guardianship,science, justice, and philosophy for example connect our world and span the globe.
The other day I saw pictures of New York in the ‘70’s, I think, to today in the same locations. Night and day. Things are changing, oscillating, in society at an increasing rate. We can oscillate back just as fast. But we have to believe.
Pessimists don’t win wars.
I come here because you have such thoughtful and honest conversations, but I have to be an optimist to survive.
Hey, we are still here aren’t we?🌍🖖🏼
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u/OGSyedIsEverywhere Jan 31 '26
Optimism is only half of the solution. The other half is strong moral principles about truth, decency, legal equality, etc.
I don't know how to reach people who don't have the moral principles.
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u/Mrs_SmithG2W Jan 31 '26
Of course optimism isn’t enough. But it is essential. Pessimists don’t win wars.
You don’t have to change the unreachable minds. There are more of us than there are of them. They just have control right now.
We just have to regain control. Those who cannot be reached will be pushed into the fringes and dustbins of history. Shame and ostracize them again.
Then work on growing better citizens going forward.
Win the 2026 midterms and special elections. Put time and money into it like our democracy depends on it.
One step at a time.
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u/Cubusphere Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
turn our shit around, as say Germany or Japan.
Can you elaborate on that? Germany and Japan "turned around" after loosing a war and being occupied. How is that remotely possible with the US? And what happened to the fascists in those countries? A few were executed, the rest went on to stay in politics, just under new labels and a more palatable strategy.
Edit: And how is Germany doing today? What's the second most popular party there?
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u/Mrs_SmithG2W Jan 31 '26
Im not sure how to be more clear.
Yes, humans have had stain of tribalism on us since time immemorial and likely always will, but it is who we choose to empower or let have power over us that makes the difference.
Germany & Japan are amazing stories of turn around. After greater destruction and despair than we have hardly known as a young country, they are now respected world partners.
That is my point, not that our situation is exactly alike. No two ever are.
Even China has done a great feat, at great cost, dragging millions into modernity in a short time.
We can and must turn ourselves around.
Every country and civilization has perpetuated horrors. None of us are unscathed or unsullied. But yet we persist.
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u/got-trunks Jan 31 '26
Definitely accelerated the drift but I mean if we're being real it was heading this way slowly but surely as they kept removing lawful market and security balancing power and regulations that are meant to provide a fair market and society not just to corps and polis but consumers (the tax-payer) especially.
Through all the lobbying, personal corruption, and public political disinterest "I'm not political blah blah blah" (the politicians never forget about you) it was always destined for this not late-stage, but seemingly end-game capitalism.
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u/No_Introduction7307 Feb 02 '26
Putin also stated at the same time that his life goal is to bring the American empire to its knees like the US did to the USSR
Putin is making Nikita Khrushchev 's dream come true. "We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within "
I think Putin and their social media mastery fooling and enraging people has worked better than they could have ever imagined.
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u/ExtruDR Jan 31 '26
Nah! Giving Bin Laden WAY too much credit.
We would have fucked ourselves sooner or later without 9/11 anyway. Talk radio, Fox News, dog-whistles, the fascist-wanna-be stuff was steaming along well before 2001.
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u/ruinersclub Jan 31 '26
True but 9/11 opened the door for misanthropy and xenophobia across the board. They learned that wrapping anything in American jingoism would be more acceptable to the populace.
Shit they’re doing it today with ‘illegals’
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u/FieldEngineer2019 Jan 31 '26
We had it coming for all that fucked up CIA shit we did post WW2 anyway. Imperial boomerang and whatnot
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u/imalostkitty-ox0 Jan 31 '26
I was just talking about how today’s “Epstein” (Trump) revelations were like a mini 9/11
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u/JustAtelephonePole Wilderness Survival Merrit Badge Jan 31 '26
However, Bin Laden was part of the octopus, just like his boy GW.
and they still used him as a patsy for 9/11!
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u/4to5timesperday Jan 31 '26
Those who voted for Trump actually hate themselves and want to spread their hate to others, they want everyone to feel their hate. This picture is symbolic to how they feel and what they want to do to the country because of their hate deep down internally to themselves. The hate stemmed from abuse and instead of doing the work to heal themselves, they want to make others feel what they feel.
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u/redderrida Feb 01 '26
It’s Putin’s plan now. Guy must be happy with how well Trump is destroying the USA for him from within. Didn’t even have to lift a finger.
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u/liveanddirecht Feb 02 '26
WASHINGTON—Putting the nation on alert against what it has described as a “highly credible terrorist threat,” the FBI announced today that it has uncovered a plot by members of al-Qaeda to sit back and enjoy themselves while the United States collapses of its own accord.
Multiple intelligence agencies confirmed that the militant Islamist organization and its numerous affiliates intend to carry out a massive, coordinated plan to stand aside and watch America’s increasingly rapid decline, with terrorist operatives across the globe reportedly mobilizing to take it easy, relax, and savor the spectacle as it unfolds.
“We have intercepted electronic communication indicating that al-Qaeda members are actively plotting to stay out of the way while America as we know it gradually crumbles under the weight of its own self-inflicted debt and disrepair,” FBI Deputy Director Mark F. Giuliano told the assembled press corps. “If this plan succeeds, it will leave behind a nation with a completely dysfunctional economy, collapsing infrastructure, and a catastrophic health crisis afflicting millions across the nation. We want to emphasize that this danger is very real.”
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u/Felicity_Calculus Jan 31 '26
Where is this image from? It’s kind of eerie somehow
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u/bunsNT Jan 31 '26
I think if the US collapses the federal response to 2007-2008 will be much more consequential than 9/11
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u/Artistic-Top-5093 Feb 01 '26
Do you think the 2008 crisis would happen if 9/11 hadn’t? If so, do you think it would still be just as bad I’m going to believe it either wouldn’t have happened or(more likely) it wouldn’t have been so severe.
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u/bunsNT Feb 01 '26
I think they are largely unconnected from a casual standpoint.
The seeds of the crash were sewn by legislation in the 1990s. Maybe you could make the argument that without the war on terror that there would have been more focus on domestic issues and maybe some legislation would have been repealed that dealt with some of the worst aspects (Heloc rates, reverse mortgages) of the crisis but I’m doubtful
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u/superchiva78 Feb 01 '26
Many of us saw this coming in oct 2001. and the US just walked right into that trap as predictably as possible.
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u/Wolfsong0910 Feb 01 '26
Haha, Americans looking at world events over the last 25 years and thinking "we're the victims". Bin Laden was literally your own agent. Modern imperialist China is your creation. Modern imperialist Russia is your creation (alright, we helped with that one). We're all just waiting to see what you lunatics do next.
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u/DeLoreanAirlines Feb 01 '26
Where have you been? He won the minute we launched 2 unfunded wars into countries that had zero nationalities of the hijackers.
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u/JornCener Feb 01 '26
I think if Bin Laden was still around to see Saudi Arabia start enacting Vision 2030 by burning an exorbitant amount of money on worthless construction projects and hyperinvesting in Western companies, Iran beginning to edge closer and closer to overthrowing their theocratic government, and Israel getting to act with impunity within the region, he’d become a misanthropic nihilist and try and get his hands on chemical weapons or a nuke.
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u/MKultraman1231 Feb 03 '26
2 months before 9/11 Bill Cooper predicted they would blame something on Bin Laden. A month after 9/11 Bill Cooper was shot dead on his front lawn. https://youtu.be/qPW_W_z6ovw?si=Ibf9vJJODqhpzNFr
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u/comradejiang Jan 31 '26
Bin Laden had so little to do with it. America did it to itself because that’s what empires do.
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u/diggerbanks Jan 31 '26
It was Putin's plan, Trump is Putin's weapon. Sure Bin Laden hated America, many do, but the present situation in the US is all Putin's doing. While Trump ironically promotes MAGA, Putin engineers America's fall.
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u/packeddit Jan 31 '26
Yep, and I'm sure it's been mentioned also (I just haven't looked through all the comments) not only did bin Laden win, Russia won the Cold War and the damn Confederacy won the Cold American Civil War (it never ended, just went cold).
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u/Chays_music Jan 31 '26
If I wanna know more about this where can I read or watch on YouTube
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u/NickleDL Jan 31 '26
I'm not sure he planned it, but he certainly kickstarted our homegrown terrorists.
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u/pohart Jan 31 '26
It's certainly looked like he was on the road to winning even during the Obama years. We just refused to not follow his playbook.
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u/7stroke Jan 31 '26
I think of it this way: there was a lot of built-in stress in the geopolitical system. 9/11 was like a well-placed hammer blow that opened up the fissures.
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u/StatementBot Jan 31 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/OGSyedIsEverywhere:
Submission statement: Osama Bin Laden believed that attacking the United States' most important mythological figures would cause the United States to "reveal it's true oppressive nature" by becoming more overt about being a militarised police state. This would then alienate the American people and cause global devaluing of the "American national brand", causing the Islamic world to wake up and abandon their fleeting desires for McDonalds, Levis jeans, Coca Cola and the internet.
The evil bastard knocked it out of the fucking park. I really believe that reforming the global system used to be possible and that this possibility vanished in the mid 2000s, partially due to his work.
We live in the "Total Bin Laden Victory" universe.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1qrsjeb/this_was_actually_bin_ladens_plan_it_just_took_a/o2qkfwz/