I make my own way but I do it without needing to be abusive or insulting. Insults speak volumes about the insulter. If you had a counter-argument, you would have presented it instead of resorting to rhetoric. Typical pseudo-conservative, the truth is no one deserves a free ride like the entitled upper class enjoys and at our expense. Remember, it's all the people just like you that ar 'busy' letting them ride for free.

If people are going to troll, they really should learn to be better at it.

work ethic, what about pay ethic, we can't expect decent people to work for slave wages

i put the blame where it lies, the rich and powerful bear full responsibility, not the poor and powerless

now, if this was an effective democracy instead of a corrupt classist one ...

We will soon see the collapse of the Russian economy, just as soon as the war ends. Putin's incompetent and his efforts have destroyed what's left of the old soviet empire. He's typical of a late stage despot.

The “American empire” today is better understood as the operational face of a global elite class system whose reach has been planetary. Like Rome’s senatorial oligarchy, these elites have extracted far more than they have maintained, producing a brittle, unequal, and ecologically overdrawn order. Because the empire is now globalized, its decline will not be contained — political, economic, and environmental systems are tightly linked, so collapse in one will accelerate collapse in the others. The endgame is not just a change of hegemon but the probable breakdown of global industrial civilization itself, leading to a fragmented, post-collapse world where rebuilding will occur under far harsher material and ecological limits than any empire has faced before.

so how about Abraham Lincoln?

“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense Let those materials be molded into general intelligence, sound morality, and a reverence for the Constitution and laws.”

Clearly, Lincoln would be a critic and an opponent of the current administration.

the cycles of rise and decline never really stop, nations do not pull back from the abyss of classism

Let's look at this through Thomas Jefferson's perspective, shall we?

“Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”

“In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was and never will be.”

I'd say Jefferson would agree with me that America is in decline, and Trump is an example of this, wouldn't you?

Collapse begins with the decay of individual virtue, when leaders stop acting from a sense of duty and public service (“O mores!”). Virtue produces lasting good; vice leaves indelible harm, a leader’s choices have enduring consequences (De Officiis). The rule of law must serve the people, if it doesn’t, the legal order, and thus the state unravels. (De Legibus).

Clearly the American Empire is in decline and the unethical behavior of the upper class is the cause.

“If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away, but the good remains. If you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away, but the evil remains.” ~ Cicero

Both Chinese and Indian societies have collapsed many times. Their modern society has little to do with their past which is the same as our situation. The problem is scale. At this scale, power is absolute and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All our governments are way too large and way too corrupt. There's little or no connection between the rulers and we the people.

many civilizations have come and gone, ours is just the next in line but they all died for the same reasons, they became corrupt, decedent and irresponsible

In a mud fight everyone gets dirty. Too bad all our upper class 'leaders' live in the moral muck. This is the inevitable result of classism which produces corruption which breeds incompetence.

I forgot to mention the classist paywall. Just saying.

This is the inevitable result of classism and the resulting corruption. Civilization as we know it is about to collapse once again because of the moral rot from within. Is civilization doomed by the unethical actions of the upper class? Not inevitably, but quite possibly, unless those actions are curtailed and the systems enabling them are transformed.

The danger is real, and we’re in a critical window. The upper class, due to their influence, bears disproportionate responsibility. But doom is not a foregone conclusion. Civilization’s fate depends on what we collectively choose to do in the coming years, and whether we can build enough pressure from below, within, and between institutions to force course correction.

Ethics matter most.

The publishers and their owners already lost me and many like me but the sad fact of the matter is most of the content is so slanted, it's not worth reading. There's no investigative journalism going on anymore as the upper class now owns the media and they simply refuse to allow classism and corruption to be exposed. All the Big Media content is either advertising or manipulation or both. This is basically bread and circus time for this empire. Just saying.

hydrogen is an economic non-starter being promoted by Big Oil; sure the engines can be developed but the infrastructure is unsustainably expensive. it's not going to happen