The US is obviously on the decline and in some ways it has already collapsed, but I'm talking about the timeline for the end of the collapse, not the beginning. It's tempting to believe itll happen in my lifetime, but i fear that might just be cope on my part. I hope I'll be alive to witness the death of the thing I hate most in the world, but it feels a bit like millenarianism to confidently state "hell yeah, the final collapse is gonna happen during my lifetime," so I'm hesitant to hold out hope for it. Every time I've hoped for anything, it hasn't happened.

Do you think the US can resist balkanization and/or another form of the collapse of state power for 20 more years? 50? 100? What do you think will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and why? How do you think power will reorganize in the aftermath? Sound off in the comments below, and don't forget to like and subscribe.

  • Straight_Depth [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    All discussion of US balkanization must be preceded by the following questions: which politician would be willing to personally put their skin on the line to harm the national integrity of the US? What benefit could they not already gain from simply playing the game of the corporate oligarchy and reaping millions in personal benefits and limitless access to state power?

    Dems and Reps alike are totally insulated from damaging policies either party can implement. There is no benefit for any of them to be declared a traitor and commit suicide by five gunshots to the back of the head while tied up inside a briefcase.

    • MathVelazquez [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      US Balkanization won't happen with each state declaring independence, it will be de facto nations that all claim to the be the US and mutually disavow eachother.

      My bold prediction is that there's some big incident caused by fascists on the border. Like a volunteer force of Chuds executing climate refugees with machine guns by the hundreds. Half the country will of course support them, but the coastal states will disavow it. The Texas government will see the writing on the wall and refuse any judgements on "VOLUNTEER HEROS" from the WASHINGTON ELITE.

      This will have to be at a time when the federal government repeatedly fails to provide disaster relief during a climate crisis. Rolling blackouts, hospitals not functioning, runaway inflation. Hell maybe we fail to invade Iran first and after that humiliation CHUDs accuse the democrats of turning our soldiers gay.

      • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Like a volunteer force of Chuds executing climate refugees with machine guns by the hundreds

        That might survive two weeks in the news cycle

      • Straight_Depth [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Again, as long as there is a "fed gov" in DC run by some ghoul or another, no-one, not one goddamn lib politician will give a floppy wet fuck about migrants being killed at the border; they're doing that right fucking now under a lib government. It's not some future hypothetical, this is happening right as we speak. Gavin fucking Newsom's equally lib future replacement is not going to secede because Texan chuds murder people, that's never gonna happen, he has nothing to gain from it, and even if Californians rose up, he'd sooner call the billion-dollar-funded California police and national guard to just murder protestors until they give up while handwringing on tv about how awful it is that those poor people are dying at the border, but this is a country of law and order and protests must be done through the proper channels or whatever. We've seen last summer's BLM shit, with Whitmer, Newsom, Cuomo, DeBlasio and all these other "progressive" monsters condemn police violence with one hand while calling for protesters to be shot and plowed through by ravaging police cruisers with the other.

        They don't give a fuck. They are safe and insulated.

    • Utter_Karate [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Well, the US as it is now will never be dissolved. First the material conditions need to change (get much much worse) enough that whatever is eventually dissolved will bear very little resemblance to the - by comparison - paragon of efficient and functional statecraft that is the US today.

    • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Balkanization would happen after a legitimacy crisis such that the feds don't really exist anymore, losing capacity to do anything except war. Each initial group would claim to be Real America.

      • Straight_Depth [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        At that point, what could be known as de-facto USA would cease to exist, and I dunno about you, but the fed blob exists solely to further and justify its own existence, America will sooner be ravaged by civil war before the fed itelf ceases to function, or, more accurately, even in the midst of a civil war, the CIA/NSA/FBI etc will continue doing their usual work undeterred and unabated as if there's nothing else going on, and indeed may present themselves as a government unto itself, promising a continuation of law, order, and capitalism.

          • Straight_Depth [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Eh, it can happen in many ways, but I really do not see any form of secession, formal or de facto without being de jure, happening. Maybe, just maybe, if some other political force outside of the usual class dynamics took control of a state at the state and local level in its near totality, could I see some formal withdrawal, and that would kick off some kind of civil war, not the other way around.

            • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              The thing that would drive this would be material interests, of course. Like a large-scale internal refugee crisis that pits states' ruling class interests against one another.