How America ends

by Jay McDonough

This post dovetails nicely with Ron's earlier post.

Nothing is forever.  The notion that America will continue
until the end of time is romanticism run amok, whimsy without any sense
of history or reality.  The great Greek and Roman empires fell.  The
fantastic civilizations of South and Central America were overtaken by
foreign invaders.  More recently, the giant and powerful Soviet Union
collapsed and splintered into a bunch of disparate republics.  To
imagine that our America will somehow be unique is childish naivete. 

Slate magazine is hosting
a series of essays this week on what could happen to America.  The
series will be less concerned with America's economic and military
position in the world, but more about the more fundamental collapse into an entity we wouldn't recognize today.  The first essay asked
four "futurologists" to offer their theories on how America could end
in the next 100 years.  (A note: In the course of this experiment, the
experts agreed an end to America is unlikely in the next century.  What
they offered are four, somewhat more remote theories on what could
cause the America we know to become nonexistent.

The first theory
is a collapse following a series of catastrophes, either natural or man
made, and a government reaction that's exposed as corruption laden. 
These catastrophes and responses, it's theorized, would breed internal
division and an "every man for himself" mentality.

A friendly
breakup is the second scenario.  The nation could break apart on the
basis of religious, geographical or regional schisms.  For the last 20
years we've been inundated with the whole red state/blue state concept
and more recently the governor of Texas has suggested that his state could secede from the Union.

While
it seems terribly unlikely to me, the notion that the U.S. would cede
it's sovereign authority for global good is the third theory.  The
theory is that the major issues, such as climate change and nuclear
proliferation, are becoming global rather than nation state issues, and
will require nations to relinquish sovereignty and initiate global
governance.

And lastly, the theory that the even the
experts believe is improbable, is a scenario where America is conquered
by a foreign force.  

It seems really unlikely to me that this America will cease to exist in a hundred years.  But it does
seem reasonable to assume it will be a very different place.  Given all
the news around us - from a rather large and vocal segment of the
country that is outraged a black guy was elected to be our president,
to an economy that, for the last 60 years, has been supporting both
huge military and social budgets and is now at the breaking point, to a
citizenry that hates and distrusts its government - it just seems very
likely to me America will soon transition from unraveling to breaking. 
And like most things that happen slowly over time, we won't even notice
we've lost what's most important until it's too late.