This is history with a broad brush:
America enjoyed immense economic prosperity after World War 2 and there came to exist a genuine “standing army” or “military industrial complex.” The men and families of these men who made this military, as well as the millions of others who were ready to enlist in it, had to be cut in to a greater share of the nation’s wealth. This population had been content with much less before the two world wars. And after the wars the government of the USA had to bring many private non-military interests to heel, making them pay more into the public coffers for the well-being of the lower middle class because it was bearing such great burdens militarily.
After the Cold War, two things happened: the private interests that had been providing more than they wished to provide for this middle-military-class—the people who were providing blue collar work a middle class life—were able to export jobs overseas and utilize labor that was as cheap or cheaper than slave labor. And a flowering of the Boomer spirit occurred, where a generation of Americans did not have to bear the military burdens of their fathers and at the same time received the political respect that their fathers had earned.
While there were fewer and fewer blue-collar jobs there were also fewer and fewer blue collar workers. Added to this was the growth of the entitlement and welfare systems. It would be a couple decades before this trend lost steam and turned ruinous.
On top of it all, the non-military interests that had chafed under the older system—the industries that had to pay higher taxes and wages, got out from under the wages and flourished.
Succinctly: because America found slave-grade labor overseas, there was a pseudo-golden age for the Boomer generation where the American citizen bore few political or military burdens while at the same time receiving the benefits of a class of people who traditionally bore those burdens.
But slave revolts happen. The slave revolts against American world hegemony began in the Middle East. But these direct revolts were catastrophic for the slaves. The Iraq nation was not truly a nation, not truly a free or independent state, and when it briefly pretended to be the USA crushed it. The slave-populations continued to revolt in the form of terrorism but the results of this were not so great either.
The real trick came from a more clear-sighted assessment of the situation. The USA refuses to acknowledge that slavery is a component of its economic system. It claims that all the workers feeding it are all as equal, as good, as whatever, as the workers within its borders. A new slave revolt could simply be made up of cashing in on that delusion, by importing the slaves into master nation. So, while Americans had benefited from the super cheap labor of China and the third world, from the oil of the Middle East, the idea became “dilution of ruling class” rather than “direct revolt against ruling class.” After all: why should you revolt against a ruling class if the ruling class actually possesses no will to keep you from formally joining it?
It is true: formal equality is not the same thing as genuine equality. Joining the master class as a “formal equal” isn’t the same as killing the masters and taking their things or even obtaining genuine independence from them. When the Bangladeshi moves to Ohio he is a “formal equal” but he is not a genuine social equal in Ohio society. But with formal equality much can be accomplished.
Once a “formal equality” is achieved, a process of legal revolution already in place in the United States on behalf of its original and genuine slave population (the Civil Rights “legal tradition”) can easily be used to arm the newly arrived “formal equals,” so that the Guatemalans in Los Angeles and Somalis in Minneapolis can effectively utilize legal norms against the (genuine) citizens.
And it is in this way that America’s lies come home to roost.