Look people I'm about to leave this world which I have inhabited for these last 67 years, and I'm here to tell you that shit is going off the rails, I am really deeply concerned.
There is a terrible reckoning dead ahead and it won't be any kind of replay of a known historical event - no cattle cars, no guillotines, no napalm. This is insidious and more global; lockdowns, financial larceny, pandemics, mass migrations and extinctions; Infrastructure and support systems overload, civil liberties extinction in the midst of civil rights rising.
I don't know what exactly collapse/implosion looks like but it's coming, and much faster than I ever expected. Systems are on the brink. I expect no return to 'normal'.
This ain't no disco, this ain't no party, this ain't no foolin' around
It’s pretty bad, but USA and western civilization survived WWII. It will survive this.
WWII was an external threat. The problems we're facing now are internal. When empires fall it's usually because internal upheaval weakened them to the point of being unable to deal with external aggressors.
External to the US, very much internal to western civilization.
I mean if you count communism and fascism as internal to western civilization, then sure. But at that point we're not really talking about something identifiable as a particular category of civilization anymore.
They're both internal reactions to the problems with capitalism, and that's been an ever greater part of the core of the western world since the 1700's.