I agree with you, the Democrats aren’t going to reform anything, even if they wanted to (and they don’t).

A financial collapse seems inevitable at this point, Balkanization may be a very good thing. There’s no need for a civil war, we’re nicely divided already and have functioning state governments that will quickly replace the Federals. That’s best case scenario.

Worst case scenario? Civil War II, but really, “The South” has even less of a chance of winning now. This seems unlikely. Best to just cut them off and stop propping up their miserable states, within a generation or two they will learn that they need us (coastal cities) far more than we need them.

Jesus isn’t going to come save the day, no matter what The Christian Broadcasting Network says.

I would vote for a candidate that begins the process of devolving the Union so we can eventually divorce into separate countries. I think we are doomed for civil war either way. As a Californian, when they’re doing stuff like systematically disenfranchising us, withholding our Medicaid dollars and attacking our public universities despite us contributing more to the treasury than we take back, it’s hard to feel like an American. I’d prefer to be a citizen of California than share a country with these freaks. Winning elections won’t make me feel any better after seeing how they despise and want to destroy us.

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

I think you’re right

This is related to why I’m so nervous about teaching social studies next year. Can anyone help me think about how to teach US history without shoving a bunch of propaganda down middle school throats?

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.

There won’t be real reforms from Democrats because they’re complicit and invested in the system staying exactly as it is. Just “nicer.”

Revolution is necessary, because the bourgeois state cannot be dismantled and a proletarian state put in place via peaceful means.

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.

The US has to go through the process of fascism only to be conquered or overthrown by socialists, something that didn’t happen during the Interbellum or world war II.
Last time they went social democratic to preserve capitalism as US socialists were already drawing their pitchforks.
This time around however, the capitalists want to hold onto power even as their capitalist society is on the brink of collapsing. This time, like last time in Nazi Germany, the US merchants refuse to take any concessions during a crisis, so fascism it has already chosen.
This means the US is already going through a painful transition as fascism is known to be a unstable and (self-)destructive form of governance.

But what is fascism? I have my own take on it and on socialism by the way…

Here you see a table I made that lists all the standard socio-economic forms of governance.
All standard have three sets of people called estates.
The First estate sets the rules, second estate sets the direction of society and the third estate keeps the gears of society running.
This differs I think from the usual socialist picture (correct if I’m wrong) where Marx had in mind that all estates would become one.
It also differs I think from what capitalists think of themselves, because merchants are not mentioned anywhere in the constitution, are not in the government or anywhere in the trias politica and yet they get first row seats in inaugerations and VIP invitations during delegations.

To me, fascism is capitalism, but with a ruling class so powerful that the legitimizer (if that’s a word, I make up words) class has become insignificant and with the first estate gone, the ruling class reigns with impunity.

It will collapse and when it does, we will enter a world with a majority of socialist states very soon.
If not, the world will go straight to communism.

The Democrats so rarely have full control of the executive and legislative branches, and when they do it is by such slim margins that the most right-leaning Democrat has the whole thing by the balls.

Looks at Obama’s Presidency: Democrats had a single vote margin in the House for only 41 days. That single vote was an Independent (Joe Lieberman). We would have had single payer health care if not for him. What we got disappointing but it was a lot better than nothing. Outside of those 41 days everything had to be a compromise with the Republicans.

I think we need to stop the “both sides are the same” stuff until we’ve actually given the Democrats a big margin in both houses for an extended period so that we give the left leaning members an opportunity to get some things moving.

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.

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…

Democrats have no intention of changing anything meaningful. We learned that when Obama had a supermajority and became a black Dubya, despite his extravagant progressive promises.

Our only power is local now, and they know this, which is why they swift-boated Mamdani and ran a Democratic partisan against him.

Yes, it will take a major disruption to necessitate any meaningful change at the national level.