(How) American Collapse is Becoming American Implosion

The Next Phase of Decline, and Why It’s Going to be (Much) Worse Than You Think

Over the last several days, you’ve probably watched in numb, icy horror as kids are put in cages in camps where they’re not allowed to hug each other.

It’s funny. Over the last few years, I’ve written about American collapse — and many of you yourselves have said: “Don’t be so hyperbolic, man! Everything will be OK!” and yet, suddenly, it seems like an understatement to call what’s happening “collapse” now, doesn’t it?

Collapse is what we know. The grim facts of American life over the last decade or so. Americans with less then $500 in savings, who’ll never retire, with falling life expectancies, crippled by debt, working to prop the very inequality that is sapping their lives away. Collapse is an economy turning predatory, a polity that is paralyzed, and society whose bonds have imploded. Collapse is an opioid epidemic, shool shootings, and Fox News.

But this? This is very, very different. Camps. Kids. Hitler-esque communiqué. The wise men of the land suddenly heatedly arguing if Americans are really Nazis, in thought and habit now, or just Nazis in an action here and there. Mass protests being planned. A rising sense that this is not normal, not “who we are”, a sense of shock that “it” is happening here. And it’s all happening so fast, so quickly, one unbelievable event after the other, that there’s no time to think about it, process it, reflect on it.

And so there is an atmosphere of panic and despair, of confusion and bewilderment suddenly, isn’t there? It’s as if an invisible thread snapped, that was holding the country together, suddenly. And now nobody understand how we got here, what it means, or where we are going.

My friends, America is in a very different phase of decline, now. Implosion. American collapse has become American implosion. And like the word implies, “implosion” is a very different stage of decline than “collapse.

That is why everything feels different now. Collapse is a house of cards falling in slow motion, jacks and spades on the wind. It is almost luxurious. There is time to think, to ponder, to consider. But implosion is…