Without peaceful breakup plan, U.S. faces violent, angry collapse

The United States is a speeding train filled with people who hate each other. Some groups try to take over the engine and force everybody to go their way. Many other people are just trying to travel on the train and ignore the hate-filled people fighting to take over the engine. They just want to live their lives and be left alone.

But as the train speeds faster and faster through the dark night of a rotting culture, almost all of the people on board ignore what’s obvious. This train is speeding toward the edge of a cliff — and those who don’t get off are about to be in a terrible, violent crash into a deadly abyss.

A society in denial about the obvious looming disaster makes me question my own perceptions of reality. Either I’m crazy — which is possible — or else the collective public is suffering mass delusion which blinds them to the cliff ahead.

This country is simmering with group anger and resentment — and those of each group have a narrative which paints them as the real victims.

Ignore the issue of which groups you believe might have legitimate gripes, because that is irrelevant to the risk analysis. All that matters is that you have groups of people who believe circumstances have left them oppressed in one way or another.

Ignoring the way each of these groups feel will only make things worse. Choosing good guys and bad guys won’t help, either.

The only thing that can possibly help is to get serious about finding a peaceful solution that will allow these fractured groups to live apart from one another if they choose to do so. Continuing to pretend that everybody is magically going to get along in one big, happy family is pure denial.

This simmering “melting pot” is going to explode soon.

If you could go back into history to live just a few years before the collapse of any major empire or dynasty, you would find people living their normal lives and believing that things would continue much as they had always been. Some people have always been better at seeing what’s coming, but most people assume that life will go on just as they’ve always known it.

People today believe the same thing, but they are wrong — just as people throughout history have been. And when people have had their lives turned upside down by economic collapse, civil wars, revolutions and invasions, they have paid a high price, even though they didn’t create the problems that destroyed their society.

The same is true here. We are heading for the cliff — as the anger and divisions become more pronounced — but most people assume things will continue to be safe and stable. And when the inevitable collapse happens, everything will change.

I’m disgusted by the personal hatred that people on both sides of the political mainstream have for one another — and how expressions of that hate are wildly popular on social media among people who I would have thought were better people than to join in. Political hate has become a sport.

You cannot complain about one group of people hating another group when you routinely stereotype groups you don’t understand and then attack them with vitriol. Hatred is ugly, even when it’s couched in humor. You are making things worse.

But as much as I lament this increasing hatred in the public sphere, I see it as something which points to where we’re going. Although I wish I could convince people to love instead of hate, the cold, hard truth is that they have no interest in ceasing their hatred.

So every group will continue to hate those they don’t understand. Every group will have a narrative of its own oppression. And then there will come a time — maybe five years, maybe 20 years, maybe longer — when the divisions and the long-term debt bomb will all come together and send this train off the cliff into destruction.

When that happens, your money will be gone. When these changes start happening, all of the experts will cry, “How could we possibly have seen this coming?!”

And some of us will say, “Hasn’t it been obvious for years?!”

If the leaders of these groups were rational, they would be planning for this by developing an orderly plan by which different groups can go their own way if they choose. That would reduce the carnage that’s coming. It would save a lot of wealth. It would make the transition far easier for all of us.

But that’s not going to happen.

Every politician and every group wants its own way. Every group believes that it has the right to force everyone to obey its plans. Almost nobody is proposing the peaceful breakup that could stop this. And they’re not going to do that.

Since there will be no peaceful breakup plan — and because there will be little or no warning — those who can should get out while they still can. There will be places to send money. There will be places to start new lives. There will be paths to saving your family and your assets. But almost nobody will pay attention until it’s too late.

Those who refuse to see it coming — or don’t have the money to leave — will be at the mercy of forces they cannot control.

I don’t know when we will hit the cliff, but I’m absolutely certain that’s where we’re heading. To continue ignoring the cliff ahead is to play the ultimate game of chicken. It will eventually be too late to get off this doomed train.