Did anyone here predict this time last year that the US would be in its current state? Because I sure didn't. Everything seems to be going downhill really fast. The decay seems exponential rather than linear. So with that being said, do you think the collapse could come soon? 2 years? next year? Maybe even before the end of this year? It would honestly be shocking if the US went from business as usual to civil war in the space of a few years.
Everything will be fine until it isn’t. Don’t wait for some signal to tell you it’s time to prepare.
The left has divided itself so much with identity politics and other bullshit like the divides between all the Marxist ideologies
I think decades of the FBI putting lead into any semi-prominent leftist leaders probably did way more to weaken the left than any ideological spat
The past 40 years are the result of the repression of the 70s. The left was making huge gains and the Black Panther Party and the Rainbow Coalition were probably the most significant American revolutionary organisations to come out of the latter half of the 20th century. I dunno, I just don't get the appeal of such an idealist reading of the weakening of the American left when it was decades of ops like COINTELPRO that put us here and we are picking up the pieces. I say this because I don't want people to think we did this to ourselves, our movement is righteous and it has been strong in the past and can be made strong again. The capitalist class had to pull out all the stops to put it down. Ideology is important, but that division is more a symptom of our lack of organisation than its direct cause.
look at all the splits and problems they faced in the 70s without the FBI’s help.
The FBI very much helped with those splits, for example Eldridge Cleaver's split was based on a lot of inflamed tensions and bad information from COINTELPRO while he was in Algeria.
That's why I said latter half of the 20th century, I know the labour movement was larger before then but again, it was the red scares, Palmer Raids, HUAC purges in CPUSA, deindustrialisation putting labour on the defensive, and other more concrete stuff that caused the decline. I do think you're speaking to how it would be an incomplete story if something wasn't said about liberal hegemony and the complete takover of the universities by capital, but I still think this is part of a wider, concerted effort to undermine the left and not so much of the left thwarting itself. Not to say it doesn't happen, but I think people tend to blame the left for a lot of stuff which is the state's fault.
What leftist groups are there big enough for the FBI to really put down in the past 40 years?
The FBI infiltrated community relief organizations that cropped up in the aftermath of Katrina. You don't need to be established, or big, or have a prominent leader to be a target.
a lot of those groups were reactionary and did stupid shit which landed them on the FBI’s radar
You have the order of these backwards. Cointelpro started in the mid 50s, targeting the Communist party and the civil rights movement. From there, they expanded to target any left group that was remotely effective, over the next decades. By the time the Weather Underground even formed, the left of the era was beginning its decline.
And the FBI is continuing to operate against BLM, and I'd be shocked if it didn't extend to every left group significant enough to have a Wikipedia page.
What about the election though? We already know that Trump and his supporters will refuse to accept a loss. And it is very possible they will lose. When that happens do you not think that they will try to prevent Trump from being removed from office? Especially by using armed militias?
Every time someone posts this question the collapse is delayed another year, current prediction is 3034 and counting
There was a post the other week about how it took three hundred years for Rome to collapse, like 500 for the Byzantines, several hundred for the Ottoman...
Ours may not be a quick collapse, just a general eroding of the luxuries (materially and politically) we once enjoyed until the America we recognized disappears
70 for the Soviet Union, 50ish for Yugoslavia, less than 20 years for Weimar Germany, even shorter for Syria, etc. Stuff happens faster now than in the past, due to the accelerated rate of communication and production.
America has only existed for around 250 years, and it only reached its current terrorial extent around 140ish years ago. America is a very very new country and so because the systems are not as ingrained I dont think it will take ages to collapse.
It's also easier for a modern economy and infrastructure to collapse compared to, say, the economy and infrastructure of the Roman Empire. Maintaining our current living standards is harder, and a far greater percentage of our population would be able to feed themselves if the supermarket closes.
Even with collapse the US would still be a massive threat to the world, in the way that Russia still is after the collapse of the SU. The nukes, the submarines, the carriers, the jets, they aren't going to disappear. In my opinion the decline of the US will bring the next large scale war as they try to keep China from becoming the top of the world. Nuked people will just be an acceptable collateral to the ghouls.
Another fun thing to think about is that a balkanized US could actually massively increase the instability of the world funnyly enough. The SU dissolved in peace times essentialy by the parliamentary decree. Russia did a deal with like every SR to give the soviet nukes to Russia and Russia said they will guarantee their sovereignity and there were probably trade deals, payments and crap stuffed there too. But after the soviet block collapsed there was only one country left with the nukes, submarines with ICBMs and other fun toys to play around with- Russia.
Now if the balkanization and collapse happens during a civil war, you suddenly have essentialy new countries with carriers, nukes and submarines, and at this point the civil war could still be ongoing, so these new countries could even use these weapons to resolve the conflict. Even after the conflict one of the new countries could be more eager to go to the war with Russia or China then the current USA.
Civil war in a country like US in the 21st century is basically uncharted territory and could easily escalate into nuclear war.
And the last fun thing to ponder: how secure are the nukes in the world actually? Could any guy you take from the street actually launch one? Now in the movies you see passwords, security protocols and other crap, but I would hazard a guess it's all massive lies. You just need to think about the reality of MAD. You have your radar operator in Russia, US or China and he sees a mass of ICBMs flying at you. Now your own nuclear arsenal is basically enemy's priority numero uno. If they can destroy that crap, they basically won the nuclear war without triggering MAD (now of course there are submarines with nukes and other countermeasures, but as far as I know majority of the arsenal is in silos). So what you need to do at this point is to launch that shit as soon as possible. This is basically the last moment you want to fumble with passwords and keys and other crap, you need those rockets in the air and flying. You basically need any guy you take from the street to be able to launch that stuff as quickly as possible.
how secure are the nukes in the world actually?
https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/468806/34-icbm-launch-officers-implicated-in-cheating-probe/
So do you think they have to actually prove the Riemann hypothesis in the couple minutes before the silo gets nuked to launch? What do you think the procedure is?
Now if the balkanization and collapse happens during a civil war, you suddenly have essentialy new countries with carriers, nukes and submarines, and at this point the civil war could still be ongoing, so these new countries could even use these weapons to resolve the conflict. Even after the conflict one of the new countries could be more eager to go to the war with Russia or China then the current USA.
I think a lot of that complex equipment would fairly quickly remove itself from the equation.
The US Military-Industrial Complex is spread out across the country so that each major project is pork for a large number of senators. That's why something like the F-35 might have the airframe built in one state, the radar in another, and the avionics in another still.
Depending on how the states break up, manufacturing facilities could end up in different jurisdictions, which makes obtaining parts extremely difficult. Without adequate parts, planes start falling out of the sky (well, more so than the F-35 already does).
There was a slow steady decline for Britain because Britain just handed the crown of Great Satan to US and Britain and relegated itself as a floating US air craft carrier off the end of europe
The Us does not have that fortune
The US empire has overstretched itself both economically and militarily.
When the PetroDollar collapses it will be a cascade of events: the US will be pushed out of its 900 bases further reducing its power and the crumbs of imperialism (which are already drying up for the US working class) will be nothing
The US will be dealing with riots on 10x the scale of this year (probably a civil war or low level insurgency) at the same time the dollar collapses and US imperialism is routed
For the US it will be a collapse
Who will push it off those bases? America's client states need America as much as America needs them. The elite in those countries desperately want and need American bases to help them with the inte and logistics of putting down domestic uprisings and to serve as a deterrent against foreign invasion. Can you imagine Saudi Arabia or Kuwait ever telling the Americans to get out?
America’s client states need America as much as America needs them.
That's basically the point. When the dollar crashes (US is currently at $27 trillion debt) the US will not be able to bribe and corrupt its client states.
The right wing are everywhere in the world because the US has corrupted the entire world in an image after itself. When the dollar isn't worth anything there's going to be a lot of right wingers thrown out and a whole new era of revolution will begin
Most countries dont want US bases. Japan/Okinawa/Korea routinely protest against US occupation
The entire world is a right wing hell because the US is able to corrupt its client states
In Jan this year Duterte told the US to get out of Phillipines but reversed this decision in June showing the local bourgeois of a US puppet state is now umming and arring about US capability.
Korea is another one that is basically set in stone since DPRK developed ICBMs - the US will eventually be forced out just like it was esssentially forced to meet Kim Jong Un because of political forces represented by Mon Jae In in the occupied South who want reunification
Can you imagine Saudi Arabia
The original founder of Saudi Arabia (note the Saudi....they renamed an entire country after a family) said soemthing along the lines of "My grandfather rode camels, my dad drove a landrover, I drive a lamborghini, my son will drive a BMW but his son will ride a camel"
Literally who cares
This economy sucks
Even middle class Americans are getting squeezed whilst the rest of the world has been turned into either
A)utter ruins from imperialist wars
or
B) giant slave child labour camps to send their goods chocolate/clothes/coffee/fruit/minerals for high technology
for the first time in my life i have a small nest egg (had to slave 60 hr weeks during initial covid time as a 'front line' person). i'm not sure if i should just dump it into useful things like food and ammo.
There's not enough revolutionary energy in the working class yet. A good majority will have to subscribe to some form of leftist ideology before shit kicks off. A long way to go, 'rads. Educate, agitate, organise.
Alfred McCoy gave us until 2030, but it's foolish to believe in a set date.
