When will the USA dissolve?

[Taverner]

I'm not saying any time soon, but all states fall, or morph into other states

How long does the USA have? 100 years? 1000 years? 10000 years?

[zappaman]

1. July 8th, 20014 !0:14 PST

bank on it

[Taverner]

3. Ya sure? 20012 is going to be one hell of a year

Asteroid destroys Bakersfield, the great Winemucca Quake and the Lake Ontario Tsunami...

[zappaman]

8. "Asteroid destroys Bakersfield"

As someone who spent a few months there, how will we be able to tell?

[cliffordu]

16. Lack of people who have a head like a potato??

[zappaman]

24. Ahhhh...I see you've been there too! n/t

[Le Taz Hot]

25. Bakersfield "jokes."

How original.

[zappaman]

28. Ever been?

If so, you will see why it's called "The Taint of California."

[Le Taz Hot]

31. As a matter of fact I have

and have met and known some wonderful people who live there. 'Course they were all brown so that might be the problem right there.

[zappaman]

33. I wonder if that sign I saw in the mid-90s is still on the bridge to Oildale?

The one that said "If you're black, go back!"

Lovely place.

And why do you have a problem with brown people?

[Le Taz Hot]

34. There were plenty of

"no wetbacks allowed" signs in Southern California and "no Chinese allowed" in the Bay Area so as much as you'd like to, literally, whitewash that history, racism wasn't confined to the San Joaquin Valley.

Racism is an inherent part of the denigration of the San Joaquin Valley whether you want to recognize that fact or not.

Maybe you're enlightened enough to learn a lesson here or maybe you're not but people don't appreciate the denigration of the area of the country in which they CHOOSE to live.

[zappaman]

35. Mid 90's.

Only sign I have ever seen in my life like that.
"racism wasn't confined to the San Joaquin Valley."
No one said it was, but again, this was the mid-90's...and I wonder if it is still there.

I like this song.

[cliffordu]

37. San Berdino:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x71409_frank-zappa-san-ber-dino-live_music#.UWSwuL-fMQI

[Taverner]

48. I Keed! I keed! I only pick on Bakersfield because it's the home of FR

And any friend of FR is not a friend of mine

[cliffordu]

40. Well....

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x71409_frank-zappa-san-ber-dino-live_music#.UWSwuL-fMQI

[zappaman]

41. Great song! n/t

[Vincardog]

2. This planet will no longer support Human life in 75 years. I say the USA lasts less than that

[LiberalLoner]

5. Ding ding ding + a gazillion

[Logical]

17. You know how long people have predicted this? n-t

[greytdemocrat]

21. That's so cute!!! n/t

[RZM]

43. Whatta buncha shit

Unless you have inside knowledge of an impending asteroid impact, you're probably wrong.

[quinnox]

4. It is interesting

to wonder about. I don't know. It would be neat to have a time machine and go into the future to find out. I think it could be a long time, maybe 500 years? Or maybe we will get someone really stupid as president in office and have a nuclear war, and that could mean it falls a lot sooner.

[cherokeeprogressive]

47. So I have this Time Machine in my garage. You can use it but there's one rule...

If you choose to a point in the future which is past the time the world has ended you have to stay where you end up.

[PETRUS]

6. I'm going to write a number down...

Just kidding, but have you read this:

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-one-hubris.html

Five part short story about the end of the USA.

[onehandle]

7. You would have to define 'USA.'

Gun nuts will will break off into 'Whitetopia' long before the end of the century.

[baldguy]

9. When the major multinational corporations can profit from it.

[PATRICK]

10. A few factors

If the people somehow develop a different political leadership, more derived from things like Facebook than any corporate media- which seems unlikely even if people naturally would.

Monumental planetary catastrophe to throw everything into chaos. Good or bad for residual nationalism?

What big non-nationalist money decides is the most likely and they can break up the USA according to profitability and ability to do it without losing too much and provoking the wrong reaction.

All the rest are tools in the toolbox and so far only the top scum of the earth is entitled to use them.

[Warpy]

11. Probably until the next world war.

We've racked up enough resentment across the planet that the next one will likely be fought here. What is left over after it ends will be carved up into administrative areas, very possibly under foreign control, and those will eventually morph into separate countries as foreign states lose their appetite for empire.

That's one scenario, at any rate.

Another would happen a little more peacefully if a global financial collapse causes the complete abandonment of the infrastructure needed to keep us connected--everything from electricity to highway bridges. That would also force areas to become self governing in order to preserve what they had left.

Similar events of both these scenarios have happened before.

[Comrade Grumpy]

12. Not soon enough. I'm ready for an independent West Coast state.

It's a different world out here. If everything east of the Sierra Nevada fell into the sea, we would carry on.

[bluedigger]

23. You understand the exact opposite scenario is more likely, right?

[RantinRavin]

39. Actually

So is the rest of the country.

[villager]

13. mid-centuryish, as climate change makes maintaining empire impossible

n/t

[Loge23]

14. <100

The government is already shot - an obvious kleptocracy.
The government (verb) of the country is proving to be untenable.

Deep divides in culture, with the right an obvious but desperate minority, will result in domestic uprising.
Just today, they arrested some nut in a otherwise quiet community near me for road rage, including racial slurs (the vic was an African-American with little kids in his car). They found a fully loaded AK47 in his car - ready to fire. He had a US Navy plate on his car. They're out there folks and they will go off eventually. This guy is driving around the same streets as you and me. Factor in the smaller safety net - coming soon to a mailbox near you - and you have issues.

The catalyst will probably be from outside the country - either and Act of War or a sustained terrorist attack. The banks will close, money stops, and the proverbial shit hits the fan. There's little "loyalty" anymore to anyone in government since they quit working for us. I don't see a happy ending here. I only wonder what role the military will play when the music stops.

[tralala]

15. probably whenever the oil runs out n/t

[mnhtnbb]

18. Mid century. I hope it lasts the rest of my life--I'm 62.

[Warren DeMontague]

19. sooner if you stir it a little

[RZM]

44. That's funny

Not sure why. But it is.

[MineralMan]

20. Next week.

Run for your life.

[HereSince1628]

22. Well, first the CEO's MUST raid all the cash accounts and sell off the assets

then the empty hull will be sold off piecemeal as scrap.

I thought we all learned Bain Capital's business model during the campaign last year.

[hrmjustin]

26. I don't know when but when it does we can avoid a war by just agreeing to a few points and have a

loose friendship.

[orpupilofnature57]

27. Fizzzzz

SCOTUS 2011 .

[babylonsister]

29. When will Taverner post a happy post?

Respond here when you do!

[Taverner]

49. Um, I was able to poop without pharmaceutical aids this morning?

[randome]

58. Inquiring minds do NOT want to know that!

[riverbendviewgal]

30. The USA will fade in power

the next powers are China, India and Brazil.....

England is still around....It wasn't so long ago when the Sun never set on the Great English Empire.

The USA will be around and it might be like the Philippines are today....Watch the HBO new series VICE....The Philippines love their guns like Americans.

[WillyT]

32. Take Your Pick...

Citizens United

Bush v. Gore

To name just a couple...



& Rec !!!

[mick063]

36. There is only one thing you can absolutely count on.

Change.

[Agnosticsherbet]

38. I've been waiting for something to grow from its rotting corpse since 2001...

From what I have seen it went into a coma With President Reagan, from which it never recovered. The election of Bush saw it go from a persistent vegetative state to fertilizer for whatever came next.

Still waiting for something to grow.

Hope its good.

But I'm expecting weeds.

[treestar]

42. It won't

In fact it will combine with Mexico and Canada and the money will be called the Amero. Freeper gnashing of teeth for centuries.

[Buffalo Bull]

52. the ultimate free trade zone

Requiring the USA to adopt Mexican wages working and environmental standards.
To play football on a 110x55 yard field. all is not lost...
We will be required to drink Canadian beer

[treestar]

55. I prefer to think we will take over and make Mexico up to our standards

The freepers would then die due to fear of the Spanish language.

[Buffalo Bull]

61. I heard that joke when they debated NAFTA

To be honest for at least a while the Canadian beer will still the peasants

[RZM]

45. Probably a pretty long time

Nothing lasts forever. But I'd guess we're not yet halfway done. So at least a few more centuries.

I see no compelling reason for a breakup. Even if something like that did happen it wouldn't be very soon. And some sort of rump state retaining the name would probably survive even if that did happen.

[jimlup]

46. I think it has already happened actually...

I don't think that the primary power rests with the "nation states" anymore so in that sense the USA is dysfunctional already. I believe the facade that is the USA will remain in place as long as it serves the "masters of mankind" which may be quite a long time - at least a century or more. But rest assured that the real power lies with the multinational bankers and the "energy" companies like EXXON and BP and the "owners of life" like Monsanto. They prefer the facade of a "functional" democracy to cover the truth of their power. And they are in fact VERY powerful. Far more than most here are aware of or willing to believe.

As the next centuries past historians will look back at the "nation-state" as a failed experiment in democracy. Perhaps they will be lucky and we will actually achieve real democracy but we will have to find a way to wrestle power from the masters who would prefer that we remain ignorant and distracted.

Look, I know it is obvious that Bush and his clowns serve these interests but realize that Obama has just proved that he does too. It isn't rocket science and yes, we've deluded ourselves into believing this is a clique fantasy but that is our psychology and not the objective reality which is rather cruel and unforgiving. Particularly if we ignore it.

Sure the Obama/centrist democrat version of the social contract is a "kinder, gentler" version but make no mistake about who that social contract serves and why.

[HappyMe]

50. By my expert calculations,

June 10th at 3:36pm.

[Newest Reality]

51. What's a "USA"?

I keep thinking of it as Incorprea, land of the conglomerates.

Seriously though, in answer to the OP: tomorrow at Noon, or when you forget to think about it, which ever comes first.

[patrice]

53. When you assume something will happen that can add to the probability that it will happen.

Because all of the billions of little choices one makes that might add up to a change in direction are pre-determined by one's assumptions about them. Options are not perceived. Creativity does not happen. Solutions are not discovered.

Ask yourself are you validly perceiving what is likely to happen (without your assumptions about it) or are you perceiving what is likely to happen BECAUSE of your assumptions about it.

Personally, I consider the likely difference between those two general sets of conditions to be, for the most part, a matter of will/motive/desire.

If one cannot entertain options one is not free. Fundamentally, what frees one to discover options is the WILL to do so.

Your assumptions/biases about the future of the USA are, thus, fundamentally the product of your will/motives/desires.

This is why I am very quickly falling out of love with what calls itself "the Left". It's no freer than anyone else is. Like other oppressors it refuses to accept that freedom is necessary to live a real life and freedom is not limited to rebellion/negation/no; it also an EQUAL ability to unite/affirm/yes. This is also what keeps what calls itself "the Left" on the outside, where it bitches about its own choices in all matters as proof of why it is oppressed. It's a circular culture of victim-hood and learned helplessness, pretty much like the one it claims to be resisting. Nothing NEW going on here.

Will figures much more essentially in that thing that makes that EQUALITY between yes and no possible than what calls itself "the Left" wants people to believe. Will holds one at the crossroads between the known and the un-known. The REASON that fact is important is because that place is where our future generations NEED to be in order to discover REAL lives that solve THEIR own problems instead of being just another iteration of all of the sacrifices that make new generations "prove" to previous generations that we are right about our own BIASES/self-fulfilling-prophecies and that includes those about the dissolution of the USA into competing states/regions or its continued development as one common wealth with justice for ALL.

[randome]

57. Nicely put!

[datasuspect]

54. it's already gone

it died in 2000 through judicial and corporate coup.

we're now a banana republic, except we don't have a proper strongman warlord.

we got stuck with a milquetoast little lord fauntleroy minus the compassion.

[TeamPooka]

56. IMHO this thread topic belongs at sites like Free Republic not DU.

Over there you can all talk about buying gold and guns for the zombie apocalypse with like minded zombies.

[Taverner]

60. Au contraire!

Dissolution might be the best thing to happen to the US, economically

Places like New York and California would boom and become beacons of technology and industry

Of course it might not either....

We could Balkanize and devolve into state on state wars

OR...it could be as easy as being absorbed by a greater unit...

That One World Government that actually wouldn't be a bad idea (but the Conservatives fear for no reason)

[Rex]

59. Impossible to say with our sudden leaps in technology.

nt.

[theKed]

62. How do you define the USA?

The same body of land, under the same name, with the same governance system? Not a long time, in the grand scheme of things. Maybe as soon as mid-century. I think the name United States of America will linger long after what it is now has ceased to be.

[Taverner]

64. True - the Byzantines, and European Monarchys called themsevles "Romans"

Long after Rome fell

[cemaphonic]

65. OTOH, the Byzantine empire lasted 1000 years.

Even their decline (from Manzikert to the fall of Constantinople) lasted 400 years.

[theKed]

66. Hell...Nations

claimed ownership of the Roman legacy, even, into the 20th century (though that's a bit of a different can of worms)

[TimberValley]

63. I'd be surprised if the United States lasted another 50 years.

I look at the United States today and I see very little that gives me any cause for optimism.

[smirkymonkey]

67. I agree with you.

I don't think we have a lot of time left as the dominant power in the world.