Asklemmy

I've always believed that we were living through the collapse of the American Hegemony, but I could never describe the system until I read about the Imperial Boomerang and the Five Phase Lifecycle which captures the US' expansionist policies post WW2. Except we never needed war, we had the petrodollar.

The problem when you have a system that centralized, you have one major factor, and then the inability to grow leads to the empire turning within with its expansionist policies towards its people. Its the perfect system to have an incompetent boob turn cruel. And once that happens, everyone senses something wicked on the horizon. Soft power with allies completely vanishes. New allegiances are forged. A new hyperpower emerges. And the most defensive behavior is to protect your own interests -- which accelerate the inevitable collapse.

The US is a very big country, and any future shape will have it more like a confederation -- either officially in its successor states, or more likely by Balkanization. Whether or not its the New America we want, well, I'm not that clairvoyant.

I hope this makes sense, I'm not a political expert. All I am certain of, in my gut, is that Trump is the final manifestation of the decline phase, and this is the final act. The Roman empire went through many drastic 'collapses' in its span, this doesn't mark the end of America, but of the current post-WW2 hegemony? The one driven by the GI Bill and Technological progress? We aren't coming back from this.

I think you're right

What does "fix it" mean?

Capitalism--a semblance of the status quo--continuing to function?

Nothing will change until the pedophile class lives in fear. We need a revolution

Watch this.

EDIT: But now I'm finally going to get around to asking this: do any of you, living in the US, vote?

Would you ever consider voting DSA/Socially democratic, even if your views are to the left of them and you are anti-capitalist? What if voting for the PSL is not an option where you are? Would you ever vote for someone like Trump just to make things intentionally worse in the hopes of sparking off a revolution? Not sure if I will ever vote again at this point...

You aren't the only one, this has been the rhetoric from the far right for over a decade now. The "Boogaloo Boys" were named for what they forsaw as "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo". They gained notoriety during Trump's first term, and later rebranded/forked into the Proud Boys. Now you don't hear about any of them as much because they're all hired as ICE agents, military, or working for Hegseth at the Pentagon.

The thing to recognize is, while we're all flirting with the idea that maybe, if we're not careful, we might see a civil war in the US' future, the Trump administration is talking and behaving like we're already in phase 1: determining allegiances and positioning forces.

The trump administration has a lot of factions involved with a lot of different long-term goals, but right now their common goal is to dismantle the US, and they are currently on track. If at some point one or more states decide the only way to put a stop to unconstitutional federal action is through force, they'll use the military to "keep the peace". But that will be the tipping point, and they've been preparing for a while...

Well, it depends on what you mean by "fixing it". Could things be reformed to meet a status quo similar to pre-1970 without violence? Sure. Reform like that would be difficult, it would take decades, and it would take a lot of political will. Reform like that would be akin to a house of cards, all it would take is a single Republican majority for a single term to knock it back down. I also think reforms like that are completely inadequate to resolving the underlying problem that has put us in these times: capitalism. Assuming reform is successful, we'll be right back in the same spot about 80 years later. For things to be truly fixed, we need to overthrow capitalism. This will be violent and tumultuous.

Is reforms from Democrats enough?

Lol. Lmao. Definitely not. Democrats have no solutions.

Last time US suffered the pains of war in their land was late 1860's. I believe American politics are stuck in that era.

It's not a matter of 'fixing it'. The USA is transforming itself from a liberal democracy to a christian theocracy. Evangelical leaders have been working on this since the 1980's. They want to change the constitution to remove the separation of church and state. This is what Project 2025 is all about. They are about 60% there. The first act of the new Christian Nationalism will be the American Genocide of trans, gays and lesbians. This is what ICE is being groomed for. They must be willing and able to execute women and children in the camps they are setting up. Renee Good was the test case. Get ready, the program has been copied from Nazi Germany, look it up.

I think the United States as we knew it is dying. I feel no kinship with the MAGA nor the Epstein Class, my desire to be kind and fair towards that lot has long since evaporated. Odds are, many folks in Tennessee and Minneapolis feel the same.

I hope there is. War is never the answer but these two parties are really pushing everyone to extremes

I'm afraid the rot has spread much farther than that. Yes, without a violent upheaval of some sort, the U.S. is fucked but the problem had long since broken containment...

In the Borderlands in-game universe, there's references to historical "corporate wars", when the corporations seized political power and promptly began to duke it out to see who was going to be on top of the pile. At least that's how I imagine it in my head. But fuck if it doesn't look like that's the most likely future coming our way.

It'll take a few more ~~assassinations~~ Luigi-like incidents before any oligarchs start taking us serfs seriously.