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It seems to me that people who have adopted what you label "revenge narratives" generally no longer believe that there is such a thing as "our country" or "our citizens". Certainly I do not.
Forming, equipping, and paying a police force is "stupid, inefficient, counter-productive, and prone to corruption" in a number of ways. It's just that it's less stupid, inefficient, counter-productive, and prone to corruption than not having police, given the situation we find ourselves in. If the situation were different, police might not be worth it. But it isn't, so they are.
Leaving aside the questionable existence or identity of "the country", sure, everyone wants "good and effective policy". What are their goals, though? What's the situation? What's the problem that needs solving? Different answers to those questions lead to very different answers to which policies are "good and effective".
Let's take a concrete example. I used to be very concerned about government spending and the national debt. I thought that it was very important that we get this spending under control, and bring the debt down. This was part of the basis for my voting for George W Bush in 2000. But Bush then blew the budget out funding the war on terror, and then Obama (who I also voted for) blew the budget out even worse (to my recollection, corrections welcome) with his various domestic and foreign policies. Voting for fiscal responsibility did not actually secure fiscal responsibility.
Moreover, it's concretely evident that government spending domestically has positive first-order, short term effects for the places and people receiving the money, and thus purchases votes/political power. Even if the long-term effects are postulated to be net-harmful, there is no mechanism available to prove it sufficiently persuasively to offset the votes/political power gain it offers. Partisans are therefore incentivized to spend public money when they are in power, receiving concrete benefits for themselves and their allies in exchange for costs that are diffuse, delayed, and socialized to everyone. And in fact, the entire history of government spending shows exactly what one would expect if one formed their priors off this model. Given that this history is varied and quite long, there is no reason to expect it to change to any significant degree without heroic sacrifice or terrible disaster.
Now, you might say "but if you believe this, then Heroic Sacrifice is the right thing to do!" ...And if such a sacrifice would actually fix the problem, that would be a solid argument. But if party A commits this great sacrifice, they will be less popular, because people won't be getting paid government money any more, and will be mad about it. Then party B is free to promise to resume or even increase spending, win the election, do so, and then win the next election too, and now the problem is the same or even worse. Nor would it matter how many times A repeated the heroic sacrifice; B is strongly incentivized to defect. And if this is even an approximately accurate model of our situation, then it is obvious that there is no benefit to being the "party of fiscal responsibility", when your opposition can simply squander whatever you have saved when it's their turn in power.
I observe that previous governments, Democrat and Republican, have chronically failed to exercise fiscal responsibility. I observe that attempting fiscal responsibility now will cost significant votes and political power, which will naturally flow to the fiscally-irresponsible. Therefore, I conclude that while I would strongly prefer fiscal responsibility, there is no way to get there from here, and so I abandon this as a political goal because it does not appear to be practically achievable. Therefore, I no longer care about fiscal responsibility or the debt, and I apportion my political priorities and values to areas where victory seems more probable.
Now, my guess is that the above doesn't make sense to you. But you're free to give it a think and tell me where you think I've gone wrong, specifically.
As you may be aware, prior to the outbreak of World War II, politicians from a number of countries mutually recognized that arms races between the various political powers were a stupid waste of everyone's resources, and attempted to prevent such contests through diplomacy. The Washington Naval Treaty was a product of this thinking. And yet, war broke out anyway, and once war broke out, all sides abandoned the limitations of the treaty and began building warships as big and as quickly as they possibly could, accelerating the arms race as never before.
Now, hadn't we all agreed that naval arms races were stupid and counter-productive, and what we actually wanted was not to build warships, but to give our citizens medicine and education and good roads and electricity? Obviously so! We (as you say) wrote a treaty and signed it! Weren't the Americans and the British upset that Germany and Japan were building bigger ships than the treaty allowed? Absolutely! They were extremely upset about this, and said so very loudly and at considerable length!
And yet, America and England turned right around and began building their own warships, also bigger than the treaty allowed! Didn't they understand that Germany and Japan were wasting money on these stupid ships, and the best thing to do would be to hold to their principles and not waste their own money on stupid ships the same way? Why do you suppose that America and England fell for this "revenge narrative", reversed course, and did exactly the thing they'd previously promised in writing not to do? Is this as confusing to you as the questions you pose above? If not, why not?
"the best policy" is drastically underspecified.
The best policy if I were the immortal God King, whose very word is law?
The best policy that I can get the nation to vote for on the election next Tuesday?
The best policy I can convince one of the two major parties to support?
The best policy, even if it has modulo-zero chance of being implemented or succeeding?
The best policy, even if it harms you and helps your enemies?
These are all different policies.
Others have asked you why the ACLU failed, and it seems to me that your replies have been flippant. You claim that over a century, any organization will change as people come and go. But the ACLU did not change over a century. It had a very solid reputation for a specific set of principles as recently as 2010, and by 2016 that reputation was utterly demolished. If you believe that principled groups can stay principled easily, you need to explain how the ACLU maintained its principles for many decades in a row, and then lost them completely in less than one.
And yet, the evidence has shown that they cannot prevent endemic free speech violations, nor even significantly impede them. When it mattered, they could not protect my speech in any meaningful sense, nor will they be able to do so in the future. Their impact is, to a first approximation, theoretical. The model they operate off, where only government speech controls impinge on the first amendment, is a suicide pact that I respectfully decline to involve myself in.
I value free speech because I wish to be able to speak as freely as possible. FIRE has not and very likely will not made any appreciable progress toward securing that goal. Supporting Trump has done far, far more, so I will continue to support Trump.
Perhaps you are correct, and this is how the narrative really does sound to a thoughtful, well-informed neutral party. Alternatively, perhaps it only sounds this way to people like those you present yourself as: young, naïve and lacking both crucial historical perspective and formative life experience, dismissive of both contrary evidence and contrary perspectives, certain that they alone hold the answers to all life's questions. Many of us were that way, once, but I find that persuading such people is both difficult and generally unproductive. If you are as you claim to be, you'll understand in time.
Well if you're no longer loyal to the nation that's up to you. But America is still my home and I want what's best for us and the citizenship.
Ok so having a police force isn't stupid, inefficient and counterproductive then. If you truly believe that the shifts on conservative policy are the same, then why not explain them on the merit?
Instead of "government has to own businesses because libs", you could explain how government owning businesses and directing corporate policy across the nation now improves the health of the economy after decades of conservatives saying big government and socialist control are bad the same way you can explain how police are good.
Not pursuing something you find untenable as a policy goal is understandable. But do you now believe that ever growing debt is a good thing? Do you now believe our growing borrowing is a smart long term fiscal decision?
If you don't think you can convince other Americans to care at all it makes sense to give up, but it wouldn't make sense to change your mind just because of that.
You're right, random civil rights organizations can not do much in the face of a population that keeps voting for and pushing for anti free speech politicians. In this same way they will have meaningful wins here and there against Trump, but ultimately unless we can get the population on board with traditional civil liberty and the first amendment, government suppression of speech will continue to grow.
That's how the founding fathers set up our system, were they suicidal? No, they were forward looking revolutionary heroes. Their primary concern is government, and even today governments across the world are the most serious form of censorship. If you don't believe that, you can go look at other countries and you'll find it's government suppression of speech in Russia, in China, in North Korea, in pretty much every single dictatorship. Even in the freer nations, crackdowns on speech like the recent UK bill are government done.
The government is neither owning intel, nor directing policy there. The government is owning ten percent of intel’s stock and voting with the board of directors.
That’s perfectly reasonable as a condition of government grants(which were already going). This way the government at least gets dividend revenue.
What do you think stock is? It's literally part ownership.
And Intel's SEC filings even acknowledge the problems with it https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000050863/000005086325000129/intc-20250822.htm
It dilutes shares of existing stockholders, limit their ability to pursue future transactions that benefit the other shareholders, hurt their ability to operate internationally as a (now) government owned corporation.
And in the obvious issues that successful competitors like NVIDIA and AMD will have a tougher time dealing with a government that has direct financial stake into Intel.
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