death, lots of it. wars. famine. disease outbreaks,etc.. usaid being dismantled alone will do that. economic depressions, mass unemployment and civil wars and civil unrest,etc... mid 20th century but x10.
Decline is not inevitable. others like China can rise, there could be multiple successful and wealthy countries. heck, even in a decline, america can become like germany instead of like venezuela. the decline you're thinking of is a lot nicer than what I'm thinking of I think.
Preventing a decline requires established institutions to function as designed. America is not declining because it's like the roman empire, it is declining because the corporate ruling class are strangling the nation for short term profits. It isn't "we the corporations of america" it is "we the people". They've assaulted the foundation of the wealthiest most powerful empire in history and it is collapsing as a result.
I feel like I'm not communicating my point well and you're misunderstanding. Decline is inevitable. Not universal decline though. I believe we'll move forward as a species, but that overall progression is made up of lots of groups constantly declining and improving at different paces and times.
I think you don't understand what I'm saying because you said e.g. "others like China can rise" - my point is China has already risen, and fallen, and risen and will continue to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ages_of_China. Just like the US will. And the troughs will be tragic compared to the peaks.
This is what long term empires do. They rise and fall and rise and fall, and that rises and falls include wars, famine, disease outbreak, advances in war, science, tech, health etc.
I feel civilised societies have said exactly what you've said since the dawn of man "we're civilized, we've moved beyond incivility now" when in reality, they were just in one of the many times where their society just so happened to be leading the way.
Sorry, because I know you don't believe this, and you want to believe "we the people" can stop change this natural cycling, but it's a feature of relativity. Ultimately, you're saying the same thing optimists have been saying for millenia, and here we are, war, hunger, famine is all still happening. Same stuff we've been doing for millenia, just with fancier tech.
What you're describing is human behavior and you're predicting the future based on past patterns. I get that.
What I'm saying is while you're right in that the pattern is likely to repeat with America, it doesn't have to. We are humans, we are capable of learning from history. Not only that, the amount of technology progression and destructive capability of humans has changed drastically within the past century. Lots of things are happening right now that break from historical patterns. Also consider the number of people like you that hold that opinion, your preemptive surrender is equivalent to a confirmation bias. In other words, your prophecy is self-fulfilling because of the number of people that believe in it.
If so many people like you understand history and the variables involved, is it impossible to change course? If you knew lightning will strike you tomorrow, would you not attempt to stay indoors?
Look at the US, we're all calling our country an empire but what empire in history has behaved like the US? the soft-power approach of the US is what I mean as well as using a real-time-connected global commerce/financial market where everyone relies on the US.
Rome fell, but no one depended on Rome when it failed. China has fallen many times but the world didn't depend on Chinese currency or military like it does with the US.
What is more constant than empires falling is people at a macro level acting in their best interest. Even China would prefer the US to have a healthy consumer market until it has it's own regional consumer market that can displace the US. China doesn't want to replace the US navy's fleet in policing the seas and it won't get Europe's trust like the US when it comes to the RMB to displace the dollar.
It's not that i don't want to believe (although I don't) the US will fall, it's just that those prediction have too many assumptions. When China,Rome and other empires were falling, there was no internet or wide spread mass education. Or even things like widespread democracy (a democratic empire?? lol).
Decline is not inevitable. others like China can rise, there could be multiple successful and wealthy countries. heck, even in a decline, america can become like germany instead of like venezuela. the decline you're thinking of is a lot nicer than what I'm thinking of I think.
Preventing a decline requires established institutions to function as designed. America is not declining because it's like the roman empire, it is declining because the corporate ruling class are strangling the nation for short term profits. It isn't "we the corporations of america" it is "we the people". They've assaulted the foundation of the wealthiest most powerful empire in history and it is collapsing as a result.