> the idea that it's close to collapse is no better than any other online propaganda opinion

Not just that: how do you even define "the collapse of American society"?

What, exactly, do people think that would look like?

The Purge?

Complete anarchy? Riots in the streets?

The classic image of a burning metal garbage can in the street?

To the extent that a modern society like that of the US can "collapse", it's going to be a very, very slow and uneven thing. Most likely what it would look like is a Balkanization of the country—either de-facto, or full legal (or illegal) secession of groups of states, over the course of a number of years.

Oh sure. The war isn't happening as long as you don't look at it. In fact, it's not technically a war so we shouldn't care about it.

You are correct in that we must be better about selecting our news sources. But the answer is not about drowning yourself in pleasant fiction on Amazon Prime or ignoring current events.

The answer is to pick non-clickbait / non-doomscrolling news sources that provide more actionable news and stronger analysis. I've picked The Atlantic for this, once a week magazine is fast enough and gives enough time for the writers to provide deep and through analysis on current events.

The fast moving clickbait media of Twitter and Facebook is trash. It's often incorrect, it's full of propaganda, and the people drawn into it seem like idiots (and arguing with them pulls your intelligence down). Find better media, find better people and leave the trash behind.

---------

Pick your news sources. Otherwise, the news sources will pick you. That's always been true since the early days of Yellow Journalism. The media landscape is harder to figure out today, but there continues to be well written independent media today, if only you went out to support them and reach out.

We are nowhere near fine. The country is being run by incompetent sycophants in thrall to a criminal who is musing about committing crimes against humanity on social media. He's using his own private paramilitary to terrorize anyone he dislikes all while gutting any institutions that may constrain him, working to subvert voting, destroying the economy for anyone that isn't already obscenely rich, destroying the climate at an accelerated rate, gutting international relations, destroying alliances. Congress enables him instead of checking him, as does the Supreme Court.

I think this is normalising the situation a bit too much. You might 'get of the internet' and stop caring about politics, but the politics still cares about you and does in fact affect the real world.

> We're fine, the trick is to remember to GET OFF THE INTERNET and remember that reality isn't the same as the Internet.

That works fine, except in the cases where the bad news reflects reality, or understates how bad the reality is. In that case it's like saying cancer isn't the problem, the problem is that you visited the doctor and listened as he told you bad news.

>We're fine, the trick is to remember to GET OFF THE INTERNET and remember that reality isn't the same as the Internet.

I can understand how somebody could hold onto this comfort: it used to be (mostly) true. Political "scandals" were usually either truly bad but localized (e.g. a politician caught and kicked out for bribery) or performative furor (e.g. a lapel pin).

It's different now. Those times were our "pro wrestling" era: earnest professionals who put in the work but also put on a show to keep the fans. No matter how dirty the script got, everyone made sure the lights stayed on. Now we're in the "teenage street gang" era. The "show" is actually how they see the world, participants literally delight in physical pain, and citizens on the sidelines are only terrorized.

How anyone could think things would be fine after what the childhood vaccine panel tried to do is beyond me. Or Noem withholding relief funds. Or blanket tariffs without any further plan for improving our industries. Those acts have huge negative effects across the population. The vast majority of citizens have been needlessly harmed by those choices.

Mate, you are far from fine

This might be possible outside the US, but in the US the internet has become reality. Trump tweets and it effects financial markets. People post on X, go viral, get hired by OpenAI. Filtering out news about institutional instability doesn't make institutions more stable, it just makes you less informed about it. And maybe one day you'll find yourself actually facing the consequences of that without knowing how you could have prevented it.

> We're fine, the trick is to remember to GET OFF THE INTERNET and remember that reality isn't the same as the Internet.

"reality isn't the same as the internet" was already starting to be a dangerously out-of-touch delusion when Boomers and Silents were saying it in the 1990s.

There's a stark difference between being Extremely Online and sticking your head in the sand. The US is not fine. The US is waging an illegal war of aggression abroad, committing war crimes and threatening more. The US has invaded its own cities, mine included, with untrained goons who have shot and killed multiple US citizens.

If you're not aware of what's happening, how will that impact your political views? Your spending? Your habits? Your vote?

Edit - A few more:

- The war in Iran is triggering an energy and economic crisis globally. Fuel prices are skyrocketing globally as a result, with some countries mandating that people cannot work (thus, cannot get paid) more than a few days a week to preserve fuel. This is pushing up prices on groceries, materials and other goods that will disproportionately impact the global poor. Many will not be able to survive.

- The US has been intentionally and illegally embargoing oil and gas shipments to Cuba plunging the country into blackouts and instability, also against international law. People can't work, or cook, or refrigerate food, or turn on their lights.

You sure we're fine?

Edit 2: Downvotes already! Amazing. Good to see the right wing slant in Silicon Valley is alive and well. Looking forward to the day the market crashes and all of your RSUs and stock holdings are worth fuck all. You can't eat stocks, but you can eat the rich.

Enough voters thinking like this how we got to where we are now. Nothing much matters, might as well vote for the troll candidate for the lulz.

Keeping your head in the sand isn't much better. The Hyperreality ceeated by the lies on the internet affect American real lives.

This kind of opinion seems logical only if you don't look at history. I'm struggling to think of a government which is effective today but didn't have some horrible actions in the near past. At best I think you'll get functionally "minor" states like Switzerland or Denmark that weren't really in the powerful position the US was/is in.

And so it's much better to compare the US government's record with the record of other states, and in that comparison I think the US comes out reasonably well. Not the best, but certainly not the worst.

> The good news is that the Trump regime is unpopular, and doing crazy things is making them more unpopular.

Actually, that's bad news too. It's the cope that's convincing Democrats to stick their head in the sand and avoid dealing with their problems, which are what created the opening for Trump. They're more concerned with their own orthodoxies than actually becoming a popular party that could win a real majority and end this nonsense.

So our present course is: Democrats remain unpopular and eek out a win in the midterms in 2026, probably do some nutty things of their own, and then in 2028 we'll likely get new MAGA nutjobs.

The collapse is actually bipartisan, with different dysfunctions in each major party.

Technically Jim Crow was mostly state laws.