I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There.

[Beebo Brink]

I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There.

Living in Sri Lanka during the end of the civil war, I saw how life goes on, surrounded by death

medium.com

If you’re trying to carry on while people around you die, your society is not collapsing. It’s already fallen down.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

‘I Feel Sorry for Americans’: A Baffled World Watches the U.S. (Published 2020)

From Myanmar to Canada, people are asking: How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? And why won’t the president commit to a peaceful transition of power?

www.nytimes.com

“I feel sorry for Americans,” said U Myint Oo, a member of parliament in Myanmar. “But we can’t help the U.S. because we are a very small country.”

The same sentiment prevails in Canada, one of the most developed countries. Two out of three Canadians live within about 60 miles of the American border.

“Personally, it’s like watching the decline of the Roman Empire,” said Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, an industrial city on the border with Michigan, where locals used to venture for lunch.

Evernote link because paywall

 

[EmpressOfCommunism]

My Bosnian in-laws spent a couple weeks stuck indoors due to the neighborhood and their property bring bombed to shit in 92. They spent most of this time arguing over leather luggage and slip covers and trying to get west euro alt rock stations recieving on their radio(quietly, or with headphones- no need to alert the armed men roaming the streets to their presence) The bad news is that America might stop functioning like Yugoslavia did, the good news is that the sheer randomness and banality of life will go on in-between the riots, bombs and shortages.

 

[Govi]

"Everything Trump Touches Dies"

 

[Rose Karuna]

Homelessness was already bad before COVID-19, but now, US homelessness could rise 45% in 2020

Not to mention police brutality, which with the protests has only gotten worse, this is how the rest of the world is seeing America: Exclusive: Amnesty maps out US police violence at #BlackLivesMatter protests.

Add too that: The U.S. COVID-19 toll equals a death every 1.5 minutes, 8 plane crashes a day, or 67 9/11 attacks

The number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 67 days," The Associated Press notes. "It is roughly equal to the population of Salt Lake City or Huntsville, Alabama," being wiped out in seven months. "The tally means a U.S. death has happened every 1.5 minutes, on average, since the first official fatality in late February," Richards adds. "It means we have lost 1,450 plane loads full of people."

Oh and climate change, lets not forget climate change: Record Wildfires on the West Coast Are Capping a Disastrous Decade

And this: Atlantic Hurricane in 2020: Are We in Store for Another Record-Breaking Year? | RMS

Last but not least, 36 million Americans are out of work and cannot put food on their table: How Feeding America Is Fighting the 'Perfect Storm' of Food Shortages During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Those of us who can actually afford food are seeing shortages of some supplies.

If one half our our government has their way the Affordable Care Act will be repealed and leave 23 million people without healthcare during a pandemic. The Health Care Repeal Lawsuit Could Strip Coverage from 23 Million Americans - Center for American Progress

Things are so fucked up we aren't even talking about this anymore: America's infrastructure is crumbling and these people are suffering because of it

But it's there, looming, waiting for a bridge to collapse or a water supply to become contaminated.

And to top it all off, our country is being run by an Authoritarian Psychopath who is deliberately undermining the confidence of the American people in the voting system and attempting to start a civil war.

Yeah, President Trump, you've REALLY made America Fucking Great Again, you greedy, murderous, psychopathic, bombastic, hedonistic, braggadocio, SOB.

And yeah, I can see the collapse, I'm just wondering why so many others can't?

And yes, I am sadder and angrier than I have ever been in my life at what I see going on around me.

 

[Beebo Brink]

In this same vein, as historians try to remind us, Rome didn't fall in a day. There wasn't a big crash and all was gone, instead it was a slow, patchwork erosion. The U.S. has jumped the shark, but the series continues.

 

[Free]

The U.S. has jumped the shark, but the series continues.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

But it's there, looming, waiting for a bridge to collapse or a water supply to become contaminated.

Flint MI...
fracking shattering substrate layers then pushing in 'unknown chemicals' to push gas out, which is leaking into aquifers...
growing levels of mercury and acidification of the oceans...
who knows what happened to all that BP Horizon spill oil...
Bottled water investors likely lobbying efforts that neglect tap water potability to increase their profits...
rollback of EPA protections and regulatory authority like never before under DumbOld Rumpus....

I get that there's been downsizing pains, the U.S. simply can't sustain the level of infrastructure and massive middle class that it used to during its post-WWII industrial and information 'Golden Ages'. There's too much economic friction and not enough churn to stave off the return of massive income inequality.

Throughout human history, the one constant seems to be 'the rich get richer' on the backs of the poor, it takes radical change to flip the script, but it always comes back.

Question is, what's this place going to look like in 20-30 years? Where's the best place to shelter during a plunge through this Orwellian nightmare of 'Fake News' and cult-ocractic insanity?

 

[Fionalein]

"Everything Trump Touches Dies"

With a title like this I'd like to hear Stormy Daniel's view...

 

[Monica Dream]

In this same vein, as historians try to remind us, Rome didn't fall in a day. There wasn't a big crash and all was gone, instead it was a slow, patchwork erosion. The U.S. has jumped the shark, but the series continues.

I read about that period of time, though not academically/in-depth.

The thing is; Rome wasn't torn down per se. In at least one case (and doubtlessly more than one) the people who were sacking Rome considered themselves Roman citizens -not outsiders. And probably for at least a century after the last Ceasar people considered themselves part of the Roman empire.

So it was far from obvious.

I wish I could read what historians write about the U.S. in 500 years or so. I'm willing to bet that most of them will cite either 9/11 or Trump's presidency as the end of this republic.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

I read about that period of time, though not academically/in-depth.

The thing is; Rome wasn't torn down per se. In at least one case (and doubtlessly more than one) the people who were sacking Rome considered themselves Roman citizens -not outsiders. And probably for at least a century after the last Ceasar people considered themselves part of the Roman empire.

So it was far from obvious.

I wish I could read what historians write about the U.S. in 500 years or so. I'm willing to bet that most of them will cite either 9/11 or Trump's presidency as the end of this republic.

I'd put it with Nixon, but.... eh

 

[Cristalle]

I read about that period of time, though not academically/in-depth.

The thing is; Rome wasn't torn down per se. In at least one case (and doubtlessly more than one) the people who were sacking Rome considered themselves Roman citizens -not outsiders. And probably for at least a century after the last Ceasar people considered themselves part of the Roman empire.

So it was far from obvious.

I wish I could read what historians write about the U.S. in 500 years or so. I'm willing to bet that most of them will cite either 9/11 or Trump's presidency as the end of this republic.

The real end of the Republic comes with the ascent of corporate power and rampant deregulation. The end of America begins with Ronald Reagan.

 

[Sid]

Maybe 1492, when Columbus sailed ...... ?

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I'd put it with Nixon, but.... eh

Goldwater. Tho Eisenhower had a wingnut faction to deal with of his own.

Could even have a look at the Monroe Doctrine.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

1619?

 

[WolfEyes]

Maybe 1492, when Columbus sailed ...... ?

Maybe 987?

Like many things in human history, the Vikings’ first visits to the North American continent were by accident. The first sighting of the New World by a European probably occurred around 987, when a Viking named Bjarni Herjolfsson sailed from Iceland to hook up with his dad and missed Greenland. Herjolfsson wasn’t impressed by what he saw from the ship, and he never actually set foot on land before heading back to Greenland.

Herjolfsson was followed about 15 years later by the son of Eric the Red. His name was Leif Ericsson, also known as Leif the Lucky. Leif landed in what’s now Labrador, a part of Newfoundland, Canada. Mistaking seasonal berries for grapes, Leif called the area Vinland.

He spent the winter in the new land and then left to take over the family business, which was running colonies in Greenland that his dad had founded.

His brother Thorvald visited Vinland the next year. Thorvald got into a fight with the local inhabitants, and he thus gained the distinction of being the first European to be killed by the natives in North America. (Vikings called the natives skraelings, a contemptuous term meaning “dwarves.”) After his death, Thorvald’s crew went back to Greenland.

The next Viking visit was meant to be permanent. Led by a brother-in-law of Leif’s named Thorfinn Karlsefni, an expedition of three ships, some cattle, and about 160 people — including some women — created a settlement.

The Vikings in America - dummies