Ultimately the ‘entitlement class’ can only exist until the rest of society stops agreeing to keep paying the bills. The domination of society by an entitlement class will always only last for a finite period, after which the earners will quit funding them. In the USSR this happened because the productive members of society just quit being productive. Once that happened it was only a matter of when the end of the USSR would come, not if. The other way this can happen is if the earners just refuse to pay into the treasury. That's very extreme, but so is government confiscation and redistribution of the fruit's of one’s labors. Hopefully sanity will prevail and we will get back to the roots of what has always made the US exceptional.
That took 70 years and it is moot because the nomenkultura just morphed into the crony capitalistic oligarchy. Russia then took near militaristic steps to leverage their oil and gas into a stranglehold on Europe, starting with their own former captive Soviet Socialist Republics.
When the producers go on strike, the elitists simply confiscate their means of production and can do so under the color of *law*....once they change the laws.
The USSR did not vanish, it simply altered its identity.
Largely agree, and your thinking gets to some root causes and issues.
I think it is key that our nominee be someone who can discuss the basic principles involved, their history and importance to us today, and in the future. Someone who can explain and connect underlying (conservative) principles for the well-being and future character of our nation.
If our failure comes as the world’s leading nation, it will come because we have ceased to be a moral (and I say, unabashedly, Judeo/Christian), informed, and self-reliant people.
We need leaders and candidates who can explain that, make it understandable, real, and personal to the population at large.