>>410935>>410945I don't think the U.S. will collapse like the USSR or Yugoslavia because the country's history and development is different. There are no "national republics" like Croatia or Ukraine within the United States other than Hawaii and Puerto Rico. That question was mostly settled during the Civil War. But one thing that's worth thinking about is how one of the contradictions on the right is the fact they staged a little rebellion for their president (the executive) against the legislature. They wanted to centralize the political system even more around an executive strongman. That's not separatism. It's the opposite of that. The other catch is that the presidency is decided by the electoral college, not the popular vote, and if we decided the presidency by popular vote that would be a different story because the Republicans have only won the popular vote once in the past 30 years (2004).
We can talk about right-wing populists being against the establishment, but there's the other side of the coin, which is that a lot of people feel that the system privileges the right because of the electoral college, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, and the "founding fathers" openly wrote about their contempt for democracy because it would lead to "wicked projects" like the redistribution of property. Then Trump gets elected against the establishment, but lost the popular vote (twice), and he's a billionaire whose populism was not actually against "the rich." His populism was more tribal – the tribal loyalties of a particular (mostly white) tribe against an "establishment" defined in terms of "culture" and "values" but which are also racial.
Because, historically, the U.S. has been ruled by a dominant white majority in terms of the economy, politics, culture, etc. etc. etc. The system has been unfair and cruel to minorities, but it has been stable for the most of the history, if we compare the U.S. to many other countries anyways. A lot of third-world anti-colonial revolutions were also waged by majorities against puppet rulers comprised of minorities (Catholics in South Vietnam).
The American ideology is also the American Dream, which says that if you work hard and buy into the ideology, then things will improve for you, and your kids will grow up happy and better off than you as well. The American ideology is an ideology of personal gain. It's not really like a nationalist ideology where you "work for the country." Working for your own gain is working for the country in this sense, which is how a scammy businessman like Trump who celebrates personal enrichment can be elected as a "nationalist" and that doesn't seem paradoxical at all to his supporters. But the United States is relatively new as a country in historical terms. Even saying "the American nation" sounds a little strange. How do you define it? The right defines it in terms of the historically dominant white majority but coupled with the American Dream ideology.
But if the American Dream is no longer true, that creates a crisis. I think the reason is because the global empire built around the U.S. is falling apart. This ideology worked as long as the empire could expand and (theoretically) benefit everyone.
Other countries are resisting and pushing back, so there's no way for America to move forward, only retreat.
People don't necessarily want to disbelieve in the American Dream, though, so they accuse other things or groups as being responsible (immigrants, "the establishment," Chynah, Russia, "deplorables," etc.). Americans have a hard time reckoning with a structural problem like this. You have to change the whole system and ideology. The white Trump supporters also would like a centralized president to rule the country, and they believe they were cheated out of it, but it feels more like they're flipping to the opposite, where a dominant white majority with relatively uniform values is becoming a minority – they fear that anyways – compared to everyone else who are grouped up, and this white group tries to dominate the political system by openly criminal methods.
The U.S. system has become more centralized in some ways though. The internal security system like DHS and post-9/11 act gave more powers to the federal government. The president is more powerful than ever to decide matters of war. But the national government has a hard time dealing with big internal problems. The state's capacity to handle problems is just eroding. Maybe in the future there will be an American socialism that frees the American nation from the empire and the monopoly capitalists who rule it, but it won't be what the white Trump supporters have in mind either. It won't be a "white" regime or a regime advancing the interests of a particular tribe.