Will the United States collapse into total disorder, a la Brazil? Originally the country was held together by a degree of cultural uniformity and belief in a common goal, a Manifest Destiny to subdue the North American continent. By the end of the 19th century, this cultural uniformity had waned somewhat, but the United States had started to become fabulously wealthy, surpassing Britain as the world leader in GDP in the 1880s. People who are fat and happy are not particularly inclined to foment rebellion or agitate against the established order; after all, it works for them, right? But after the 1970s, when the country started to hemorrhage manufacturing capacity, the economy has been caught up in one bubble after another; savings and loan banks in the 1980s, the Dotcom bubble in the 1990s, real estate in the 2000s, and a new tech bubble, easy car loans, and unsustainable growth of both health care and higher education in the 2010s. The quality of life of Americans not part of the coastal elite has already started to edge down.
Once people are no longer distracted from dissent by riches, there is only one remaining way to preserve domestic stability, overwhelming military force wheedled by the central government. If, in a few years, it should come to that, the class and race tensions that have made themselves apparent recently in the form of populism in both parties and the attacks on policemen will come to a head and the nation will be plunged into civil war. A civil war will take place against a backdrop of rapidly depleting resources, the emergence of the last batch of industrial world powers that will exist before industrial society is lost forever, and the final exhaustion of what is left of Western culture, as foretold by Spengler.
Quite frankly, I have no idea if I'm going to be able to live to 60.
Calm down. Things were a lot worse in the beginning of the 20th century as evidenced by bread riots and unionizing drives that involved using the National Guard against starving families.
Yes, the capacity to heave the status quo aside may create instability but it probably won't destroy humanity. Besides, this isn't news
Americans are too stupid to be saved.
it was pol tier