Anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers illustrate that significant segments of the population in US no longer believe that the government has their best interest at heart. This is a measure of how far the collapse of US empire has progressed.
The underlying cause for this mistrust is the decline of material conditions over the past several decades. This trend accelerated in particular with the fall of USSR as detailed in this excellent essay by Michael Parenti. However, most people in US lack the political or economic education to understand what’s happening leading to public lashing out in random and irrational ways. People understand that they’re being hurt, but they don’t understand who is responsible or why it’s happening.
I would argue that US is now locked into an irreversible decline. The mainstream is split across political lines, and there is no introspection happening which precludes necessary action from being taken to halt or reverse the current trends.
Instead, both democrats and republicans simply blame the other tribe for all the ills in the country. This leads to a political climate that’s ripe for opportunists like Trump and Biden to game leading to further deterioration of living conditions. The country ends up in a worse state after each successive election cycle, and the sectarian tensions continue to become more prominent. Violent outbreaks are starting to happen already, and I expect these will only get worse going forward. In fact, a model US themselves produced is predicting collapse and a likely civil war in the near future.
Furthermore, the effects of the collapse are not evenly distributed. While many working class people experience significant effects personally, nothing has really changed for the policy makers. This creates a lag between problems occurring and the leadership becoming aware of them. Thus things have to degrade quite significantly before people in power become aware of the severity of the problem. US leaders are akin to people who live in a penthouse of a building that’s on fire who think that the smoke detectors blaring are just a false alarm.
On top of that there the problem of climate breakdown. A river in Colorado that around 40 million people rely on is drying up while California is running out of fresh water as well. Heatwaves resulted in massive crop loss this year. Then there were megafires, hurricanes, and other extreme weather events like Texas cold snap. All of this is putting stress on the failing infrastructure and straining supply chains to the breaking point. As a result there are already shortages of essential goods.
We’ll see more extreme weather events and of greater intensity each and every year going forward, and it’s clear that US lacks the capacity to react to these problems in a coordinated fashion. All it will take is a single extreme weather event, such as a heat dome that lasts a few weeks, to cause a famine. And historically that tends to be the breaking point. People can put up with a lot, but there’s really nothing left to lose when you’re literally starving to death.
Praying for a swift end to US’ sufferings 🙏
Beware of what comes next after the empire collapses. Socialism or barbarism starts now, not in 5, 10 or 20 years. It will be a humanitarian crisis even if the empire is reactionary.
I suspect when the empire dies, one point of confusion will be to know when exactly it died, like they did the USSR. First estimates will put it on the date of the proclamation, then as time goes on we will move back the date, as we find more evidence that point to the inevitable collapse. Things that don’t make much sense now will suddenly fit into place when we realise what exactly has happened.
I think the premises were first felt when neoliberalism found its way to the USA, and it was cemented after 2001, though I’m picking 9/11 as kind of an arbitrary point.
edit: one thing you might consider adding to your analysis is the United States’ standing in foreign affairs. An empire has far-reaching roots to sustain itself. Where is the might of the USA today? They lost in Afghanistan after 20 years, and handed the country to the Taliban, while they purportedly wanted to prevent exactly that. They are losing Iraq and are being sent away. Their foreign presence is mostly in Asia (through their controlled states in Korea and of Japan), which is declining now that China is becoming a much more interesting trading partner. Even in Japan, most of their bases are in Okinawa which has a very tumultuous past with “mainland” Japan (read: imperial Japan pretty much massacred their Okinawan population), and the central government requires approval from the Okinawa prefecture to keep the bases there.
They also have bases around the world as seen here:
But their influence is dwindling and has been on the decline for some time now. Again Africa turns towards China, and soon enough they will have no need for American bases on their soil, if they do not get anything out of it in return.
In Europe, bases are mostly in defeated countries of WW2, yet we are not in the 1940s any more. Not for almost 100 years now – in 20 years time only! Europe still has ties to the US empire for many reasons (Europe is as complicit in imperialism today as the USA is), but we saw just last year how well Pompeo was received by the European Union. He pleaded for them to give the 5G deal to the USA, and right after the call disconnected they voted to give it to a Chinese firm.
Yeah, these are excellent points. I would actually argue that the start of US collapse coincides with USSR collapsing and liberal ideology declaring the end of history. Liberalization planted the seeds for further decline of material conditions.
Geopolitical power is definitely a factor as well. US is an extractive empire and it relies on occupation and subjugation to maintain itself. Rapid loss of territory they control and influence will directly translate into economic woes domestically.
I think Latin America is another important region where US is losing influence right now. The whole Pink Tide movement is rooting out pro US forces across the region.
EU is already doing more trade with China than US, and the whole AUKUS thing will drive US and EU further apart. It looks like EU also has ambitions to be an independent power at this point as opposed to being a US vassal.
So, US might end up having most influence on Canada, UK, and Australia. None of these countries are major players globally, and they can’t provide much support for US ambitions.
The biggest danger I see is that US will decide to go out in a blaze of glory. It’s got a huge military and an absurd nuclear stock pile coupled with unstable leadership.
I think that this article (warning slurs) makes a good point that the empire collapsed on 8 January 2020. Thats the day Iran made a precision missile strike on a US base in Iraq (as retaliation for the murder of general Soleimani), and the US didnt retaliate at all.
I like that idea. Another random one Paul Cockshott brought up in his recent video on #AUKUS, was if China does some aircraft flyovers of Taiwan as a probe, and there’s no retaliation by the US. That could be another superpower standoff moment like the bay of pigs, and this time the US would likely blink / retreat.
If the US interferes militarily in Taiwan, they risk having an aircraft carrier destroyed by hypersonic missiles. They definitely wont risk that. At most they might send some of their attack dogs like Australia, Japan or UK.
Yeah, there’s a huge risk for US engaging China in terms of optics. If they’re repelled that would tell the whole world that they no longer have military superiority. This already happened in Syria to some extent when Russia prevented US from flying bombing runs over it.
Seeing almost everything in this article come true:
wtf you’re not lying at all
edit: legit shook, all of this is mostly right.
oh that’s a good read
Yay
That article on the colorado river was excellent. I lived in arizona for a few years, and my comrades that were from the region’s doomer / mad max scenarios were mostly about water wars over the colorado river. If water to phoenix arizona was shut off for even a single day, chaos would ensue.
Millions of people in several states live in cities that are dependent on it for water, and most of it goes to cattle ranchers and food growers (mostly in california), and not to cities. The politics of who controls the water and its infrastructure makes for some scary possibilities as population increases (as it has been steadily), while the river itself dries up.
Yeah, I get the impression that most people don’t really appreciate the scope of the problem around water shortages in the near future.
And here’s a recent poll showing just how deep partisan split is now
