| ▲ | lopsotronic 16 hours ago | |
If the rest of the world stayed still, that's a hard "maybe". Since the rest of the world isn't, what we're actually watching is the "Western Flavor" of the Soviet collapse. The fact that these destructive policies are being repeatedly selected - over and over and over again - means that the collapse is systemic; indeed, this could even be seen as a part of a larger "End of the West" which kicked off with World War 1 and then the utter self-immolation of the secular colonial period in WW2. Future historians, with the benefit of hindsight, will probably date the beginnings of the collapse[1] to 9/11, with the actual ceasing of the functional economic system somewhere around the 2008 econopalypse. COVID was something like our Chernobyl. I think Trump is, quite honestly, our version of Yeltsin: the buffoon who ends everyone's faith in "the system". Americans should mentally prepare for an equivalent collapse in, well, everything, from public health to aviation safety. Of course, by the numbers, "you're already soaking in it". [1] The American side of it, anyway. The larger end of the West, World War 1 is a logical place to draw the line, but honestly it started when Europe ran out of profitable/exploitive space on the map. | ||