Today is Saturday, 23 October 2021. The current president has
been in office since 20 January of this year. In the past 277
days the nation has come to the brink of an the abyss from which
there may be no escape. Every possible threat to the survival of
the Republic - invasion of illegal aliens, inflation (which does not
include rapidly rising food and energy prices, the (in many cases
deliberate) destruction of hundreds of thousands of small
businesses, the descent of most large inner-city areas into
unlivable cesspools with rampant crime, and the chaos caused by
the exploitation of a fabricated health crisis, to name only a few
of the main ones - has been not only countenanced but in most cases
aided and abetted by the current government, leaving the nation a
state of nearly complete disaster. While much of it has been
intentional (attacks on businesses and producing citizens while
strengthening its enemies) the fact that the president is clearly
mentally incompetent and is being controlled by others, who are at
best incompetent.
Not accepting the foregoing obviates the need to continue. Doing
so bespeaks (for a reasonable person at least) the need to consider
what is likely to happen if the situation is not rectified. It
would seem that two or three scenarios are likely:
(1) No corrective action occurs. Given that the current regime
enjoys unbridled power for at least another year and some
months, nothing can or will be done to improve the situation.
Those who can will not and those who would have no ability to do
so. The Supreme Court has no role as it is unwilling to rule as
it should in almost all cases and would in any case be ignored by
the administration. A change in the balance of power (one or both
houses of Congress returning to the opposition) would have minimal
effect, being able to do nothing more that pass more bad laws.
So the deterioration is likely to continue for the remaining three
years. If at that point both the Congress and Presidency were
returned to conservative control, some small improvement would occur
but would immediately be reversed by the next hostile administration,
which would almost certainly follow with in at most eight years.
In this case, the descent into a completely authoritarian
socialist state is almost certain. The former Eastern Bloc
countries, Latin American states such as Cuba and Venezuela,
and Russia (although it may be in some state of transition)
are examples of what to expect. But the goal of those seeking
to 'fundamentally transform' the nation is to be like China.
It will not take long to arrive at that condition.
For an idea of what awaits those under such a regime, 'The Devil's
Advocate', a novel by written by Taylor Caldwell in 1952 gives a
good description. This scenario assumes that most, probably 90% or
more of the population, offers no effective resistance and goes
quietly into the darkness. That is unlikely to happen.
(2) Resistance, on a substantial scale, does occur. In the absence of
a sufficiently effective effort (large, well-organized, and well-
financed) which succeeds in forcing the government to abandon the
transition process and return to constitutional rule but sufficiently
powerful that the government can not crush it, the country would
likely disintegrate into a balkanized region. What form that might
take would depend on the force of the resistance, the aims of the
various factions, and numerous other variables. Historical examples
such as that of the namesake Balkans region, Africa and the Middle
East after British decolonization suggest possible scenarios.
Studies of ethno-religious conflicts are also useful. The case of
Northern Ireland (or the history of Ireland generally) is instructive.
None of the results seem to be desirable. However, in the event the
process cannot be contained (quite probable considering the condition
of the current regime and the likely escalation of that condition)
the United States would cease to exist. In its place smaller states
of varying numbers and sizes would exist, with the resultant chaos
and decline in the quality of life for the inhabitants.
(3) A workable solution that would avoid unnecessary hardship and
destruction is chronicled in 'MacArthur's Freehold', a story about the
interruption of the descent into a dystopian society by an organization
such as that described above, which is able to act before the situation
is no longer remediable. Whether such an organization exists, or could
be built at this stage is open to question. The concept certainly seems
practicable enough. It is not discussed here for several reasons. It
is probably the only plausible prevention of the first two scenarios,
since a socio-political solution, beyond a temporary delays or
retardation of the process, seems to no longer be possible.
A return to the original design of the Republic is probably no longer
possible. The cancer of socialism began in the earliest days of the
nineteenth century, and the intensification of moral decay, declining
intelligence of the population and increasing the population of non-
producers at the expense of the productive has removed that possibility.
The first seems somewhat unlikely because of the enormous number of
citizens who are both armed and unlikely to be sufficiently compliant.
As a political solution (a return to something close to the original
constitutional structure) is now close to impossible, leaving only the
last two scenarios likely.