Opinion: The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare
www.theglobeandmail.comThe U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then?
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you say “openly discussed in newspapers” as though there’s some kind of authority or respectability needed to be on the opinion page.
not that i disagree, the US is obviously on the knife’s edge of collapse, but i’m not going to lose sleep thinking “heavens, it was on the opinion page, what are we gonna do?”
It’s an indication of how far the collapse has progressed that it’s something discussed in the mainstream media now. This is not an article that could’ve been published in a major newspaper even a few years ago.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/05/31/yes-a-trump-presidency-would-bring-fascism-to-america/ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/world/europe/rise-of-donald-trump-tracks-growing-debate-over-global-fascism.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/02/is-donald-trump-a-fascist-an-expert-on-fascism-weighs-in.html
pretty sure i could draw more comparisons over the past few decades but whatever
All those links simply focus on Trump. The globe and mail article focuses on deeper underlying problems in US that gave rise to Trump and socioeconomic problems driving the collapse. Those are rarely discussed in mainstream media.
do you have a tl;dr?
It’s by a conflict researcher who identifies different red flags leading him to believe that US is on a brink of serious civil unrest and a potential civil war. He identifies several factors such as economic decline, and rise of right wing extremism being cultivated by republican media.
I was actually surprised to see such a lucid analysis in a conservative paper:
He also notes polarization across the party lines where both sides simply blame the other party for all the problems. This polarization coupled with 400 million firearms is basically a powder keg.
This is a good insight as well
Once a significant percentage of the population stops believing in the social contract then the system collapses.
He expects that the system could collapse by 2025 causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.
I really doubt that it will still be a single, unified country by 2030. It will probably split into at least half a dozen of states once the central government collapses.
The Divided States of America.
That’s the best case scenario in my opinion. What’s concerning is that the states appear to be fairly split internally, and once federal government collapses things could get violent fast.
I find that doubtful. The US has gone through much worse just in the 20th century without a split. The one time when it came truly close to disintegrating was just 85 years from its founding and when regional identities were much stronger than they are now.
“What should Canada do ?” Also, what should the rest of the world do ?
All countries should be trying to wean themselves from their dependence on US at this point. However, I don’t really see that happening in the western world. When US crashes, it’s likely going to be a shock for most of its allies.
I agree, but Canada should build a Wall anyway.
Clickbait.
do elaborate
Pointless assertions of a doomed future, nothing more than an attempt by media to maintain viewership by hitting your adrenal glands.
I don’t see how these assertions are pointless. It’s a fairly solid analysis of what’s actually happening in US right now, and it correctly identifies many of the tangible factors driving the collapse.
The assertions in the article are the same baseless assertions of an inevitable collapse that have been cited time and time again both before and after Trump’s presidency. They weren’t right about the predictions then, and aren’t right about the predictions now. It’s the same as any doomsday prophet pushing the year back once again. This expert will be analyzing our red flags 20 years from now. Once 2025 hits, the new right-wing coup alarm will sound in 2030. Then 2035. Then 2040. So on.
The USA is tribalistic, has high wealth inequality and poor labor conditions. Like throughout our entire history. We are in a state of stagflation as we have been in the past. We are not in a civil war. I’ll take speculation about a right-wing coup or an economic meltdown seriously when we hit that point.
Technically, doomsday speculation has to be right if you do it long enough.
There is nothing baseless about these assertions. In fact these assertions even provide references to research they’re based on. For example, it’s pretty absurd to claim that this is somehow baseless
Arguing that something isn’t going to happened because it hasn’t happened yet is a logical fallacy. It’s like saying that you must be immortal because you haven’t died yet.
You’re literally living through an economic meltdown as we speak. 20% of all dollars were printed during the pandemic. US inflation is going through the roof right now.
As somebody who lived through a collapse, I can definitively tell you that you’re living through one right now. Whether you choose to accept reality or not is your choice. However, I guarantee you that reality will come barging in sooner than later.
Out of curiosity and if you don’t mind me asking, what collapse did you live through?
I was born in 1979 and caught the tail end of USSR. Once the collapse started it was pretty subtle, small things started getting worse, you’d see shortages of stuff, public services not working as well, and so on. And this process goes on for a while where life seems normal for the most part, but things are just getting shittier all the time. And then things start getting worse very rapidly.
One of my memories is of food shortages. And getting food was like going to a black friday sale. Everyone would gather and wait for the store to open, and then they’d just wheel out a cart with whatever food they had that day. And people would just rush to grab what they could. Me being a small kid, I was able to squeeze between people easily. Looking back at it though, I was basically risking getting trampled just to get bread and milk for the day. And we go to that point from everything seeming mostly normal in under a year.
Which region are you from? (if it is safe and reasonable for you to answer)
I grew up in Moscow, and from what I’ve heard things never got that bad there relative to many other places. So I can only imagine what things were like for people in smaller towns.
That’s pretty stupid. It’s obvious that ignorant conversation like that is done to increase subscription rates and engagement with the audience.
You should try this classic “Foundation” book from I. Asimov : people at the center of the collapse don’t see it at all … I guess you are in the US ?
I am in the U.S. I don’t need to read an 80 year old fictional story to know the current state of affairs. My employer has a $3.5 billion back load of orders to fill. Too many people are vested in the success of America. Even if it were to collapse in <cough> 500 years, all of us will be dead and gone. Why would I be worried about that when there are thousand of unexpected ways for mayhem and destruction to plague the planet without the U.S. even being affected.
I think there is a far bigger risk of the U.S. exploding rather than collapsing. We sit on top of the world’s largest super volcano. Canadians would likely die from that too if it happened. My point is that there are far bigger things to be concerned about.
I was reading a social media site one day and a new blurb popped up about someone driving off the road in North Carolina and dying. The person wasn’t anyone noteworthy. It was just one sad event. One isolated loss of life. I went to the internet and looked up statistics on how many people die on any given day. I quickly did the math and realized that reading about every random death that happens in the day is an EXTREMELY poor use of my time. I would have no time to do anything actually constructive. I felt that the site was wasting my time with news that is inconsequential to my choices in life. It was needlessly depressing. It was completely useless news. Debating on whether the U.S. will collapse is an equal waste of my time. Even if inevitable mechanisms are in place, we will all be dead before it happens.
My occupation gives me a sense of self-respect. I know that our (i.e. my employer’s) products have been pro-actively attempting to make the world a better place. We donated $2 million & medical equipment to New York City after 9/11. We provided equipment to desalinate water for Israel. We built Guinness World record breaking mining equipment for Belarus. Wind farms. Solar power generation. Hybrid buses. Covid detection kits. If I retire today, I know that my individual contribution to the world will have positively affected millions of people.
For that reason, I’m taking my time to tell you, there are more important issues to discuss. This little pea soup of fear in which your brain is locked into is not a constructive use of anyone’s time. Too many people in the world are reactive rather than being proactive. Don’t be the flag flapping in the wind. The world is what we make it, and it is not just us waiting for some news story to react to. The best decision making in life is not done from the perspective of fear. That’s why Donald Trump was an idiot. He promoted fear. He made stupid choices out of fear. Be constructive.
i am getting quite old & struggle to contribute anything at the level at which many (&you) contribute here on Lemmy.
For anyone else who would want to read that book series (Foundation), it was visionary at the time and i believe it is still so 😌