My dad ranted about the coming end of American Civilization, complete with mobs attacking houses looking for stored food and general lawlessness, for as long as I knew him. I was worried about it to begin with, but by the mid 1960s I had lost the faith - certainly by the time I was ten. After that, I’d nod and try not to look bored.
OP may take some solace in the Iceball Theory, which says: Five billion years from now, when the sun has burned out and the Earth is a frozen solid ball of ice, none of this will matter.
(As proposed by Robert Ringer, IIRC in his book Looking Out For #1, although I don’t know if he was the first to suggest it.)
This seems to describe a nascent majority that will by virtue of democracy legitimately be positioned to rewrite the law into the rules they want. So…
Nitpick: My understanding is that before the sun goes cold it will expand to the point that the orbit of the earth is quite close to its surface and of the oceans boil away into space. So the final status when the sun goes out will be more a cold cinder than an Iceball. But your main point still stands.
Yeah, fortunately or not you don’t really know anything. You just have convinced yourself you do. As thorny_locust noted people have been predicting an impending catastrophic collapse for a long, long time. From Christian millenialists, to Malthusian catastrophists, to American declinists (pretty much around since the founding of the country).
Nothing wrong with being concerned, even seriously worried about the state of the world and country. I am. But full-on wallowing in pessimism and nihilism based on imperfect knowledge is a genuine waste of time. You have no idea what’s actually going to happen and warning your nonexistent children that the future is all futility and despair would honestly be immoral. You don’t have to be a happy idiot spouting optimistic homilies, but Mr. Bleak isn’t much better. Some sane balance is called for. You know - for the sake of your nonexistent kids 
.
If they’re already here, I wouldn’t smother them. But there’s nothing wrong with not having them in the first place to spare them ::gestures:: all this.
I think the most distressing part of the OP is the possibility of Mike Lindell selling even one more My Pillow.
My thought reading the OP is that I’ve seen most episodes of All In the Family which suggests that many Americans have been lamenting that this is a terrible world, one on the edge of destruction, to bring children into for at least 6 years longer than I’ve been alive…
People have been feeling joy and happiness in all sorts of conditions for thousands of years.
One might accurately anticipate personal suffering or sadness from the transition of one state of equilibrium to the next, but that doesn’t mean that ones descendants (or even others currently alive) will necessarily have the same response to what from this perspective looks like a dismal future.
Meantime, party!
And don’t forget to send me your good stuff.
Further nitpick, the sun is warming up, and within the next five hundred million to billion years, the oceans will boil away. By the time the sun expands, the Earth will have already been long a desolate wasteland.
Depends on how existential things are. I have to agree that I don’t see our country trucking on the way it has been for much longer. Either there are going to be drastic changes, or there are going to be very drastic changes.
The only question is whether we make the changes ourselves to form the society we want to be going into the future, or if those changes are forced upon us by circumstances that we could have prevented.
I don’t think that humanity is going extinct for a good long while. But we may very well have a pretty unpleasant future for those who survive.
I don’t know about the world, but the overwhelming majority of the people I’ve experienced in my brief tenure here are definitely screwed.
And here’s why:
Intelligent people are more aware of a situation’s complexities and so are more likely to worry and/or be pessimistic. As Charles Darwin wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” In short, ignorance is bliss.
I think most of us would agree.
A friend once raised the aphorism, “If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.” I offered that the inverse seems equally true: if you aren’t paying attention, you’re not outraged.
Like many of you, I’m neither wired for blind faith nor for volitional ignorance – a couple weeks at a Buddhist Monastery and a grueling Vipassana retreat notwithstanding.
So … I suffer 
But the Buddhists taught me that – when the suffering leads to compassion – it becomes noble.
So I’ve got that goin’ for me.
So, Tatooine?
AIUI, your scenario is the accurate one.
Well, the heat death of the universe seems inevitable. Why should anyone do anything?
In the shorter term either the future is malleable or it isn’t. If it is, why not live your life according to your values and take comfort in the knowledge you did what one human can do? If it isn’t, what you choose to do is an illusion.