There’s a lot of chatter about the death of the US, and that in itself is a problem. Many people are stuck due to normalcy bias. They can’t imagine a different world, even as the world is rapidly changing around them. Even more baffling, those who do recognize the peril we’re facing continue to live their day-to-day lives because emotionally and implicitly, the idea of the US collapsing seems alarmist or impossible, but every empire eventually crumbles, and there are historical markers.
So putting aside climate change, which has a high probability of ending the world as we know it on its own, as it has already caused plagues, famine, displacement, and wars over resources, how does the US stack up otherwise?
I’ve never been a nationalistic person, but I’ve always considered myself an American, and remember a time not too long ago when Democrats and Republicans primarily saw themselves as Americans first.
Particularism, or association with a group, religion, race, or ideology that trumps one’s association with their nation, has always been a bad sign unless this change is close to unanimous, which should go without saying, as if everyone identified with the same group or ideology, there would no longer be particularism.
Wanting to go back to a fabled better time–like Making America Great Again–is another bad sign.
Once a nation or even a corporation has progressed to a certain extent, there’s no going back.
Whether you agree with Roe vs. Wade or not (and statistically and logically, you should), once women had their de facto right over their bodies signed into law, the majority of Americans, especially women, are strongly against losing it, just as black people and other minorities would not stand for it if we tried to reinstate segregation to the same degree it existed in the past.
Losing equality doesn’t bode well either, and in the US today, the legal, medical, and educational experiences of the rich are much different than those of the poor.
What makes matters worse is that we’ve become so tribal that depending on who is facing legal consequences, a large portion of the poor will defend the wealthy or guilty. They’re more concerned about their group than equality in the eyes of the law, which is one of the defining principles of this country.
These divisions feed on each other and stoke further divisions.
The more minorities are demonized, the more they self-segregate into their own groups.
Religion is particularly problematic, as it serves as an imaginary comfort, or basically an excuse to do nothing.
Our government recognizes this. This is why the Marines are loyal to the country, the Corps, God, family, seniors, peers, and subordinates, in that order. It isn’t perfect, but country comes first, and by that they mean defending the Constitution, not any particular president or leader.
At their best, conservatives want to preserve all the good that has been accomplished, and progressives insist that we can still do better. They may not agree on exactly how fast to move or in what direction, but the goal is to preserve the republic and serve the people.
Most of us were onboard with that, and many argue that we mainly hear from a small minority of the loudest of extremists, as that’s what drives the news and social media algorithms, which are becoming more indistinguishable.
While this might have been true, it fills the majority with a sense of dread, futility, and desperation, while at the same time, most of us are too exhausted from working harder for less to really care about anything except for whatever we have left, and the less you have to lose, the more afraid you are of losing it.
The death knell is the end of civil dialogue. The ignorant are too ignorant to know it and irrationally oppose our best options because they don’t understand them or even how to quantify them, and it’s easier to follow a politician, billionaire, or ideology than it is to think and learn for yourself.
There are still public libraries just about everywhere, even in the smallest towns in the US, so while people are entitled to their opinions, they also have the option to learn how to defend or change them by learning the difference between valid data analysis (or reasonable assertions) and propaganda, or information that panders to their ill-informed opinions.
Even in progressive cities like NY, the NYPL–arguably the best library system in the world–is constantly battling budget cuts because we aren’t a nation anymore. We’re a fragmented, disillusioned, poorly educated mess, and we’re too wiped out or angry to think for ourselves, so we follow whoever speaks the loudest to our particular frustrations.
So instead of reasoned dialogue, we get angry diatribes and insults, and people mistake arrogance and rudeness for knowledge and power.
We’ve faced crises before that have pulled nations together, but we’ve never faced anything quite like climate change, which should be pulling the entire world together, but instead, our leaders have opted to war over whatever is left while squeezing every last penny out of the rest of us in some selfish fantasy that this will somehow save them.
In other words, we’ve already given up, and this country is already a failed state.
Like the empires that preceded us, we just don’t know it yet.