How many more years do you give to the USA before it collapses?

If Trump wins the next election, the entire thing will collapse within 5 years.

First sane lemmy.world comment.

However I would not say that the US will collapse. I do not say this lightly, but if trump wins the next election, the US has a straight one way fast pass to becoming a full blown Nazi state. Full religious nationalist theocracy mixed with fascistic privatization of all aspects of the country, combined with an insatiable arms buildup and war preparation.

They will 100% come around to mass executing the LGBT, minorities, any immigrants, non-Christians, Jewish people, the mentally ill and so on.
- In my view, becoming a Nazi state would mean that the US was no more.

It’s not going to collapse until we make it collapse

It could collapse tomorrow or decades, if not centuries from now. Let's hope for the former. The collapse of the USA will undoubtedly make the world a better place.

Think I’d prefer the US hegemony to the Chinese hegemony…
- Multipolarity is the future, but if there had to be anything, Chinese hegemony would be far superior
- Why?

What counts as the end of the US? Did Rome end when the city proper was sacked, or when Constantiople fell?

If the US balkanizes would that be the end? Or maybe when DC falls to a foreign power or collapses and loses influence over the states and territories?

I suspect we'll have something that calls itself the United States for a long time to come in any case

Disclaimer: I'm just a bored guy who makes drawings for a living. I live in the US, and this is based on direct observation of local events. I don't actually know what I'm talking about.

I think next year's election will speed or slow the collapse. But ignoring that, and assuming the corporate dickheads who are actually running things keep going like they are, here's my guess:

1-2 years - Theft from large businesses becomes normalized. Police will respond less and less to shoplifting calls, because there are too many calls to respond to.

3-5 years - Riots over food and water start to take place. More people start to immigrate (legally or otherwise) into the US to try and avoid growing heat in central and South America. Attacks on electrical infrastructure rise. In the news: talk about border control, stories about increasing penalties for retail theft and armed guards in every large store. Very serious talk about gun control.

6-10 years - Organized resistance against law enforcement. It will start with people calling 911 and ambushing cops, or cops simply being shot when they pull someone over. (A cop was killed a couple of years ago during a traffic stop in the metro area I live near. Since then, there has been a large and obvious decrease in the amount of traffic stops.) Police can no longer park their cars at home for safety reasons. A billionaire or state/federal offcial is assassinated. Gun control measures start to pass in congress and ate signed into law, because now the "wrong" people have guns.

10-20 years - Repeated attacks on substations, watet treatment facilities, and pumping stations. Due to a lack of funding in maintainence on these systems has people questioning if the failures are from attacks, or breakdowns. Middle class life completely vanishes. Actual civil war is going on, no matter what the news tries to say.

20-30 years - Driving across the country is nearly impossible due to lack of road funding, people are stuck in their local areas. Even making a phone call is questionable. Food, water, and materials drop in quality, due to lack of regulation or lack of regulation enforcement. Outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, and other Shakespearian ailments sweep across what's left of the country. Elites who hid in bunkers in previous decades are killed when their staff gets tired of them.

As for the end result? I don't know. There isn't a nice obvious dividing line between one side and the other. There would likely be tens or maybe hundreds of groups of different sizes in conflict or uneasy alliances.

I'm just a bored guy who makes drawings for a living.

How in the world did you do this? I ask this because that unironically sounds awesome (though it is possible it is not from your perspective).
- There's a terrible secret: I'm not making art, I am making drawings. I'm a draftsman.
  
  And even among drafters my job is a bit strange. I work for a place that refurbishes large parts for places like refineries, power plants, water treatment plants, and even rocket launch facilities all over the world. We rebuild parts for plants that cannot shut down, or can't shut down for long. I'm sort of an emergency draftsman. My job consists of waiting for someone to drop either a scralwed drawing (sometimes literally drawn on a torn off piece of cardboard) or a broken piece of something, at which point I leap into action, and create a 3d model and a 2D drawing of whatever it is, so a replacement can be made in the machine shop.
  
  This specific job sort of fell in my lap when I was laid off from another drafting job in january. I'm largely self-taught, and I have a couple decades experience as a machinist, fabricator, and mechanic, it helps if the guy making the prints knows how to make the parts himself.

I don't know but think in 20 years. Hope Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam and Mariana islands will secede before that.

Honestly I'm surprised it lasted this long. I figure that is T***p gets elected in 2024 it'll so the legs, otherwise the cancer will take years. After that who knows. Maybe America 2.0, maybe some new hell. I doubt it'll balkanize, there's too much interdependency, but that's just my opinion with no facts to back it up. Whatever happens though it (or part of it) will still be called the United States. Rebranding wouldn't be a popular choice.

Not too much longer, hopefully.

There seems to be a simultaneous development of incredible animosity towards the state AND fascist appeal (at least around me) so it could go either way.

As other commenters have pointed out, the full takeover of fascists (going mask-off, I mean. We already are fascist obviously) does not mean the end of the USA. I do think, though, that the victory of Trump assuming it happens will speed up the reaction/revolt to the fascistic state in some accelerationist way. Can't imagine USian society wouldn't react to that in some way moreso than a Joe Biden flavor of fascism.

Hard to put a date on it. Could be next year's election, could be 10 years, could be 20. All depends on how hard we shake the tree to make the apple fall.

I, for one, am going to dedicate a huge portion of my life to bringing this shit down, so I have hope. I'm only one person, though. Could be totally wrong and misplaced.

we have a five year plan

jk

Might be too pessimistic/optimistic, but I feel like they can't last 5 more years as they are. But I think it's gonna be really ugly given how entrenched fascism already is in their systems.

Hopefully they don't nuke the whole world, but Yankees are gonna go through interesting times once this imperial decline passes the collapse threshold.

It's been collapsing for decades, it's just now becoming more obvious. It's basically already at a collapsed state. I mean, what do we call a society where people regularly can't afford food, water, shelter, or medical attention? Collapse isn't "everything sucks for everyone." It's "everything sucks for most while some still manage to hold on." If you think it hasn't collapsed yet you just aren't yet a victim of it.