The Impending Death of America.

America has been eating itself from inside out now for decades. Political divisiveness, misplaced exceptionalism, and the destruction of its own system of values has hastened the end. The final nail has now been hammered into place. The election of Donald Trump for a second term is likely to be the end of America as a world power.

Image from NYT by Kevin Mohatt at Reuters.

‘If we are wise enough to preserve the Union we may for ages enjoy an advantage similar to that of an insulated situation.’

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist no.8 November 20, 1787.

RIP USA

The degradation of what might be called ‘American values,’ personified at home by Americans commitment to their many different ideas of what their democracy should look like, and abroad by attachment to a vague, indefinable entity called the ‘rules based international order (RBO)’ has been gathering pace since the end of the Cold War. Values that were being undermined and pulled asunder from within even as they were under construction in the years after the end of WWII, and throughout the entirety of the Cold War itself, have now disintegrated and scattered.