Read: It would theoretically be salvageable, but under Trump/the Republicans and Biden/the Dems, it won't be.
We had one shot to do it right like China did (Who have been pretty much actually back to normal for months now), but our government on both a federal and state level have just absolutely, royally fucked it all up. Mainly because they were/are too much of greedy, stingy, capitalist assholes to give people the aid they need so that their lives aren't completely destroyed.
After 8 months of annoying-ass variable on/off lockdowns (Instead of doing 1 sustained national lockdown at the beginning), the public will to continue has overall been destroyed, and it ain't comin' back.
Idk, we seem pretty uniform in our responses to mass uprisings. I think the police state can probably loosely hold together the federal system through force for quite a while.
If argue that with the uprising response, yeah it's decentralized but everyone is also reading from the same tactical playbook, so the response is pretty similar around the country. Whereas with stuff like covid the top of our organizational structure just says "idk, you figure it out" and you can really see the effects of decentralization
Sure but to me that's simply the result of a decades-long campaign to strip away all the welfare functions in the various levels of government. I can definitely buy a future where that project has completed and states are left to fend for themselves in the management of environmental and social issues, but I have doubts about "balkanization" to the point where states are raising their own fighting forces and are effectively nations in their own right. Well, doubts about that happening any time in, say, the next two decades.