That’s far too optimistic. There’s no way all 50 states, at varying levels of economic development and military might, and with no history of being independent and lots of history of being one nation, respect each other’s sovereignty.
If the US ever breaks up, you can expect centuries of revanchist wars and attempts to establish the Second (and Third and Fourth and so on) Union.
Obviously, the 50 states will come into conflict, probably immediately. But that’s not my point. My point is that barring open warfare, there will never be a moment in time when there is no government. If the federal government stops exerting influence, the state governments will immediately pick up the slack, or at least will try to pick up each others’ slack. Nature abhors a power vacuum.
I believe our beautiful democracy is slowly coming to an end, but I don’t believe the nation as a whole will “collapse”. I’m not a political or financial expert by any means, but I just don’t see it.
Its not so much the government collapsing as it is the American way of life changing into an unrecognizable perverted folly of its former self.
No more liberty and justice for all. No more fair play for the little people. You get what the ruling party gives you keep your mouth shut if you don’t like it. Its been headed that way for a while, now it’s here.
The mask has been taken off, it’s ok to be openenly hateful now. No shame in abusing the people on the fringes.
Don’t sugar coat it stranger. I just hope you’re wrong. If better people right this sinking ship; it will be at least a generation before a lot of the damage can be undone. Certainly not in my lifetime, and perhaps not my children’s.
I am not in favor of a collapse. I do not want things to continue as they are either because that imo will speed our fall. My grandkids and everyone else’s deserve better.
Are you looking for responses from Americans who hope/fear for societal collapse, or foreign actors who have always hated America and what it stands for, regarded the Soviet Union as morally equivalent or preferable, and now see reasons to justify their hatred?
Your’s is probably closest.
We’ll have what Russia had shortly before they invaded Ukraine. They have elections, they have parties, but the strong man really runs the show. The combination of corrupt government, strong police, and concentrated commercial wealth (but still dancing to the arbitrary strongman’s rules) ensures there’s just enough air in the room that the ordinary folks don’t revolt.
It’s a sullen life of toil and drink, but if you stay quiet you’re very likely to not get beaten or disappeared.
Unless you’re a member of the hated them-du-jour. Those folks are in for a scary, often violent, and somewhat shortened existence. Which in a country as diverse as 2025 USA amounts to about 50% of the populace being on one or another hate-list.
This is what I foresee, too. Using extreme gerrymandering when possible and outright voter suppression when not, MAGA leverages its plurality into complete control. Demoralized liberals aren’t strong enough to stop it and will receive no help from the large numbers of those who simply can’t be bothered to give a fuck.
If Democrats can neither win the House in ‘26 nor stop Trump or his ensuing toady in ‘28, then there won’t be any way out. We’ll be a Russian-style autocracy/kleptocracy. Canada and Mexico beware.
I don’t disagree, except that I don’t think it’s Republican leadership per se, it’s more of the extreme right-wing types like Project 2025 and Christian nationalists who are quietly doing their things, and using Trump to enact some, while using him as cover while they do others.
I think you’re right that at some point, one of two things will happen - either they’ll turn on him (Epstein files?) because his utility is finished, or they’ll ride out the next three years, silently thwart his third term ambitions, and let him live out his life at Mar-a-Lago as some kind of figure to be revered, a-la Reagan. I actually think the latter is more likely.
I also think they’re taking a much longer view; I think that actively rigging the game is maybe a bit unrealistic considering how distributed and decentralized Federal elections are, and instead are aiming to gut and render many (most?) Federal agencies impotent (DOGE) and install their people throughout the rest to slow-walk and thwart policies that run counter to their plans.
Because that’s hyperbolic stupidity that doesn’t contribute to actual rational discussion.
What those people are looking for is for all those other people to be in their proper place. They don’t particularly care if black people exist and are citizens, but they absolutely do care that they have equal rights, citizenship, and in some areas are elected officials. Same thing with Hispanics- they’re fine and dandy, so long as they’re elsewhere, or if they must be here, they need to be quiet and understand where their place in the order of things is. LGBTQ people… I think they view it as something that shouldn’t see the light of day and should be punished when ti does.
At the risk of making light of it, it’s “all about the children.” These people want to engineer a society where everything is just-so, and their kids aren’t exposed to anything that’s not how things should be by their lights, and their kids aren’t competing with minorities, immigrants, or having question their sexuality, because those things aren’t part of public life. In a sense, they want to transform the country into a 1950s TV suburb, in that everything looks good on the surface, there’s no overt crime, minorities, or anything out of place. The streets would be clean, the picket fences would be freshly painted, and so forth.
No, it’s not. They’ve been hungering for a “Day of the Rope” for decades, when they can kill everyone who isn’t them.
It’s no more “hyperbolic stupidity“ than it is to point out the historical fact that their idol Adolf Hitler killed millions of people for being the “wrong” ethnic group, sexuality or religion.
I’m kind of torn on this.
On the one hand, in hindsight it seems that the Constitution is a highly non-ideal document that was intended to balance the rights of slave-owners against everyone else, and it left too much room for interpretation. It was a sort of a poison pill that guaranteed dissolution as soon as we stopped agreeing to exploit nonwhites for the benefit of whites.
To elaborate further, I don’t think the whole “states’ rights” thing would’ve had the fanatical support that it did except for the fact that certain states wanted the right to impose slavery, to run their states as close to a monarchy as they could get away with. Because the Constitution permits a good deal of latitude in this area, we’re always going to be playing whack-a-mole with tyranny among the states.
There was a time when it seemed like more liberal voices would be able to use the state monopoly on violence to achieve progressively greater social justice over time. But at this point, it really just seems that liberalism built a powerful weapon of government interventionism, and instead of using it, just mostly left it lying around for someone else to pick up. And it’s been picked up with a vengeance.
I think what comes next is a maximally weakened, rump federal government that can no longer carry out most of what we expect it to do, even basic things like maintaining roads. This is potentially survivable given that most states now have enough industry to look to their own welfare.
But it’s frightening to consider the loss of the most basic functions of national security and national finance. If we lose the dominance of the US dollar and the US military, both the US and the world are in for a period of uncertainty and instability that’s not been seen since WW2, and may end up being worse.
That’s not an outcome that I hope for, but it’s one that I feel is increasingly likely. I don’t think the US could dissolve entirely, but I do think we’re headed for a reconstitution period, where we end up with a truly minimal federal government that offers financial and military security, and not much else, entering an era of isolationism punctuated by horrific wars that fill the power vacuum.
They’ll need Trump to be the “bad guy” so they can look like the “good guys” for fighting him.
Once the Republicans have control of the government, including the election system, they won’t need the evangelicals or the racists anymore. When you can declare the outcome of elections as you wish, you don’t need to worry about whether or not people are voting for you.
If it gets down to your grandchildren’s generation, the US as we know it will never come back. By then, the kids will grow up in whatever system exists post-democracy, and they’ll think it’s normal, just like kids always do. They might not like it, but they’ll have no real attachment to the USA-That-Was.
You’ll be like Rome after it became the Empire. You’ll spend a few centuries having emperors who occasionally talk about restoring The Good Old Days, but they’ll never quite get there.
You’ll “save”* the US in the next ten years, or not at all.
*“Saving” is only ever temporary, you’ll go through this shit again someday, once everyone has forgotten the current shit-show, but such is life. When you’re the big kid on the block, there’s always someone daydreaming about taking you down.
If they’d done this back in the days of the Tea Party Era, this might have worked. But, more and more, the “Republicans” who are being elected, and appointed to positions within the party itself, are the evangelicals and/or the racists. All the other types of Republicans are being driven out of the party. Every time you see Senator X or Representative Y retire from politics while simultaneously denouncing Trump and MAGA, that’s one more step in the metamorphosis.
I feel that the real power in the Republican party are the businessmen. They’re not the ones running for office. As far as they’re concerned, people who run for office are just their employees.
Look at the long term pattern of what the Republicans are actually doing rather than what they are saying. The biggest Republican program for the last forty years has been making sure the rich get richer. The other stuff is just slogans they’ve used to get votes, along with an occasion taste of red meat.
The only change of plans in the last few years has been the realization, as demonstrated by Trump in his first term, that you can get away with breaking a lot more laws than people realized.
Again, even ten years ago, that was true. And yes, they’re still giving tax breaks to the rich, so it’s still somewhat true.
But, more and more, the “red meat slogans” are becoming actual policies, not just slogans. Would the rich and corporations really have sent ICE out to round up all the low-paid immigrant workers who underlie so much of their prosperity? Would they have supported isolationist policies that are leaving former allies to hang in the wind, thus reducing global stability? Would they have supported ridiculous tariffs that are strangling the US economy? Would they have actually done anything about any of the transgender conspiracy theories? Would they have cut off FEMA funds for disaster relief? All of those policies are costing them money and opportunities, to no benefit to them that I can see.
I thought I was a pessimist, but some of the forecasts here are very dystopian.
The entire world would be facing several severe challenges even without the Trump Lunacy. The “Age of Information” has been a disappointment with social media and AI both facilitating propaganda. Climate change, water scarcity, wars, the rise of fascism are some other problems; and don’t overlook the threat of financial crises due to debt bubbles. Geopolitics is not a zero-sum game: A political or financial crisis in the USA will cause crises all around the world. The mystery is not whether civilization will suffer a setback, but how that setback will play out.
It is against thread rules to post unless I see a “silver lining”? How’s this?: The sooner catastrophe hits, the sooner a difficult recovery can begin.
If part of the plan is to set up Trump and the magas as the fall guys so the Republicans can step in and “save” the country from them, they need to let Trump be Trump and establish himself as a credible bad guy.
I think the “Trump is the real problem, so when he goes the problem fades away” solution is just laziness. It is used when people want a solution they themselves won’t have to actively participate in, actively work for and possibly get hurt (or worse) to bring about.