The End of Empire
Some will cheer hearing that America is about to crumble. I am not one of them. Not because I am an American, but because anytime there is a great shift in global dynamics, which is happening at fairly breakneck pace, instability occurs. Depending upon the severity of that instability, the more damage is done to people all around the world. From wars to famine to any number of terrible things, instability is not a good thing for the average person anywhere in the world.
Donald Trump is so repugnant, unpredictable, and foolish about how he goes about world negotiations that much of the world has realized they don't need us. Sure, we buy more than any other country, but Trump is doing everything he can to make sure that changes because of his insistence upon tariffs that create new taxes for the average person. With everything costing more, we the people are forced to buy only what we need.
The best point to show how little the world is looking to us now is the response to the "liberation day" tariffs. Trump raised tariffs on the vast majority of countries around the world (but somehow skipped Russia), and we were told that we would quickly see 100's of new trade deals in 90 days. It's been 90 days, and technically only four countries have signed anything with us, and those signings were basically just stating that we would work something out. Nothing concrete has been signed with any nation. The two most promising of the four are Vietnam, our largest Asian trading partner outside of China, and South Korea that is trying to stay on Trump's good side in case their northern neighbor finally starts the war he's been threatening for the last decade. But no deal is anything more than a basic framework.
Europe, which has long wanted to end their American dependency on many things is taking this opportunity and running with it. Sure, we make the most cars, but European countries do too. So does India, China, and Japan, and their electric vehicles are cheaper and sometimes better than what we can get here. Don't get me wrong, many of these countries understand they have to rely on us for a few things, but only for a little while. Once they make enough trade deals without us or build their own factories for some things, we quickly lose all importance.
The moment we start to lose that importance in trade, we lose the dollar as the world currency. That causes our currency to collapse, which it is doing now. Anyone ever see the pictures of Germans in the 1920's with wheelbarrow's full of worthless money so they could pay for things? We may not be using wheelbarrows, but we will have even less ability to buy even what we need.
The only people in this country who really aren't as worried about how these things are going to affect us, are those who have more than enough wealth to either get away from here or will use their vast wealth to start buying up everything when all these small companies go belly up and people start losing their houses. They don't have to worry about the costs of things like you or I do. Well, to a point.
Instability causes unrest. We are a nation of fat, lazy, comfortable people. That doesn't mean that we are incapable of action, it just means that we haven't needed to do so. When everything starts to change, people are going to be shocked, and eventually they will take actions to change their situation. I would prefer we as a people group together now non-violently to force things to change before violence becomes our only obvious option.
However, even that isn't guaranteed to change anything. Trump and his self-flagellating republican boot lickers have just given the American Gestapo (ICE) a 170 billion dollar budget. That is more money that the US Marines or the entire military budgets of 95% of countries around the world. The only reason to give that kind of money to a civilian police force is because you think you are going to need military force inside your own country, and you may not fully trust the military. After all, lots of people in the military understand that the defense "I was only following orders" isn't valid when you are charged with atrocities.
America is now only a democracy in name. Every day our rights are violated. The future looks bleak, and our government which was authorized to protect and defend us is our adversary. No one is coming to save us. In the end it is up to us to do what we can to prevent the worst.
