Is America Going To Collapse?..... Part I

Today, with the advent of an assertive democrat president implementing policies harmful to the country, many people fear that there could be a “collapse.” Between an excessive debt ratio, an overly dependent society, monetary manipulation, cultural and class wars, opening the borders to all comers and forays into authoritarianism, the future looks bleak. Uncertainty and worry rules the day.

Here is one example from a reputable source - The Heritage Foundation: “The United States has reached the point at which it must reverse the direction of both trends or eventually face economic and social collapse.” 
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/11/the-2013-index-of-dependence-on-government

Let's look at what it says on Wikipedia about collapse:

"Societal collapse is the fall or disintegration of human societies. Societal collapse broadly includes quite abrupt societal failures typified by collapses such as that of the Mayan Civilization, as well as more extended gradual declines like the fall of the Western Roman Empire. 

"What distinguishes the more dramatic failures of human societies, seeming to deserve the term "collapse", from less dramatic long term decline is not widely agreed on. The subject may include any other long term decline of a culture, its civil institutions or other major characteristics of it as a society or a civilization."

I personally do not like it when people use this term because it can be taken in different ways, as you can see from the above Wiki excerpt. When people talk about the "collapse" of America, one has to wonder what to make of it. Should they quit their jobs, sell their investments, move to some remote location and set up as a prepper? If you don't, are you likely to be stuck in a population center where consumer goods disappear from the stores and civilization unfolds into total anarchy? Or will life continue pretty much as normal, with the occasional crisis like we had in 2008?

I have written this article to figure out what, exactly, it might mean for our country to “collapse,” and whether it is something we truly need to worry about. After all, collapse sounds real bad, like the roof of a building that suddenly imploded, killing people inside. 

The pertinent question here is: would it be a dramatic change that happens over a short period of time, or would it be incremental change that occurs over many years, like the Roman empire? Forgetting about the slaves, the people of Rome lived pretty good lives compared to the subsistence life. But as the empire shrank, life arguably became worse for them. This diminishment, however, took several decades or more; it is not something that happened overnight. I have to wonder if  the average Roman even knew it was happening, other than to say: "Where the hell are all these barbarians coming from? They took  our jobs!"

And if a "collapsing" civilization happens over such a long period of time, can you really call it a collapse?  Given the time span between its peak and nadir, the process was really more akin to decay or erosion (with the exception of the occasional sacking and pillaging). So why say the Roman civilization “collapsed,” when you can just say it declined, as in: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” It describes it more precisely. 

And why should it be any different in America? If we are being "managed" to the left by the powers that be over many decades (and arguably well over 100 years), and we eventually end up like France, where is the "collapse?" You might refer to the previous century when Americans certainly had more freedoms, but in your daily life you hardly notice the change. If you were even aware of it, you only knew it at a conceptual level. 

You can't say that "yesterday” the country was thriving, and today the country no longer exists. Or even that today the people are starving in the streets. No, what is happening is much smaller than that, and does not impact a person's life nearly as much. You can say: Yesterday I could choose my doctor, today I can't. Or: This year my healthcare premiums increased 45%. Or: Yesterday I could start a business without permission, but today I need to get a license. Or: Three years ago I lost my job because of that a-hole in the White House, but at least he’s still giving me unemployment benefits so I don’t have to work anymore. 

Such changes affect some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people at once. And, in fact, these examples are not much different than changes which can occur in a free market naturally, and which does not result in millions of people starving in the streets. So, even though the a-hole (and his minions) might have caused these events to occur, they are not wide-ranging nor significant in themselves. They are incremental, and indicative of slow decline, not "collapse."

What kind of things might happen that would cause a sudden, catastrophic diminishment of our well-being? Maybe an all-out nuclear attack or an EMP taking out our electrical grid. An asteroid hitting Earth is possible, though not probable. A virus that wipes out our ability to trade freely, or worse, killing a large percentage of the population would definitely do it. 

But what about the policies of our government today? This is what worries the people the most, and makes them think we are on the verge of collapse. Indeed, high on that list is a currency collapse. It happened in Argentina, and other currencies have been devalued by significant amounts on short notice. What about a coup, and dictatorship? 

This is why the stock market nose-dived in 2007-08, why gold climbed so precipitously for awhile there, and partially why the sale of guns skyrocketed in 2009. And as for a coup, a whole bunch of racists thought it was really happening to our country, and the survivalist-types proliferated. 

What people worry about is that we will be sucked into a Nazi Germany kind of morass, and that there will either be a regimented fascist control over every aspect of life, or some manner of chaos, with the attendant decrease in the quality of life. But in any case, they worry that it will happen fairly quickly, and that they will feel the pain in the short term. 

My opinion of the situation, however, is that a real "collapse" is unlikely, short of a nuclear incident. The old adage of big boat, hard to turn, comes to mind, and America is the biggest boat of all. With our economy, accumulated wealth, entrenched interests (including every citizen), and the way the system is set up, this is a magnitude of big that most people cannot comprehend. 

Just fly over any large city and look at all the houses and businesses. Nobody, not even Obama himself is going to suddenly dislodge all those people from their properties and cause them to starve. They would flip him the bird if he tried, and continue on with their lives. There might be some disruptions in our daily life, but it otherwise would continue as before, more or less. 

Not Obama nor Harry Reid nor all of them together could collapse our system. It is obvious he wanted to “fundamentally transform” America into a statist/socialist nation, and he has done much to implement his view of how our country should be structured, but in accordance with the desires of the progressives, it is and will be incremental. It only seems like it is happening fast because of his anti-American perspective, his bullying attitude and his excessive speechifying. 

But with the system the way it is, he could only do so much. He got his precious Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank. He has run up the debt to unimaginable levels, and he has stymied the economy. The changes that have been wrought by this administration have not been insignificant, but they were not enough to make a big difference in the short term. This was no equivalent to an EMP. We must keep these things in perspective if we want to be able to make rational decisions for our lives. 

To summarize, what is happening is that America is slowly decaying, like Rome. The economy has slowed and some people are out of work. Wealth is subsiding, but the country is otherwise carrying on pretty much like normal. There are changes to our country that are causing this decay, political, financial and cultural; but there always have been. Indeed, we have been on the progressive boat for over 100 years. The changes accumulate and slowly steer our course towards what is arguably a less wealthy and a less civilized society. 

But even if we continue on this course and never reverse our slow decay, it will take many decades for the left to complete their task. Changing a culture is not something that can happen overnight, and, though we are aware of it and talking about it, it is not something that we have to worry about very much today. What we do is to worry about what America will be like for our children, and their children. 

And it remains to be seen just how far left they will take us. There is no reason to believe that America will ever dissolve, as the Western Roman Empire did. There are no barbarians at our gate (unless you are worried about a mass Muslim immigration). America will carry on in some form, and maybe it will be like France, more or less. We lament the loss of the freest country the world has ever known, but at this point there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot we can do about it. 

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