The Future of the United States and How We’ve Arrived Here
Making Sense of the Future
How did we arrive at this point? How has the last four years come to pass? I’ve wondered this myself, and in a moment of cathartic realization, I’ve come to believe that there is only one real explanation.
We’ve spent all of modern history in the United States believing that, despite differing opinions in policy or priorities, our values were the same, based on a few founding documents that we all treat as a guiding light.
However, in recent years, it has become overwhelmingly difficult to make sense of the choices and actions of those within the GOP while also holding this assumption. We on the left side of the aisle have given our onetime sparring partners on the right the benefit of our doubt. We suggested that they were unknowingly manipulated into abandoning our shared values; conversely, we wondered whether they had entered into a Faustian deal, chancing long-term consequences for short-term political gain.
I don’t believe these arguments anymore. Republicans aren’t stupid, they’re not being manipulated, and to them, there was no Faustian deal because they don’t believe that the predicted repercussions are negative at all. The fact is, our longstanding belief — that we all hold the same values — is no longer true.
However long this divide has been opening, now is the time that we must come to understand that our values are no longer shared, and at their core, are no longer compatible. To Trump’s strong supporters, the potentiality of a nepotistic oligarchy is not a looming threat, not because they are unaware of who he is or what he’s doing, but rather, because they fundamentally do not oppose it.
On the contrary, they’re fine with such a form of government — as long as it’s under the leadership they want. It is thus that the experimental politics of the United States of America will reach its catastrophic culmination.
What happens next? When we acknowledge that our core values are not compatible, will the nation hold together? Will the former democrats simply acknowledge the end of their country? Will it just become another Russia-like nation, or perhaps a two-state system? Will the split be peaceful — or violent?
Time alone will tell with certainty how we wish farewell to the United States of America as we have known it. Being a hopeful person, I wish for the best; yet, being a student of history, I don’t expect it.
