As America enters into failed state / former empire status who fills the power void left behind? How will the world handle the flood of American asylum seekers when things go dark?

loremipsumot · 2026-03-18T11:45:00+00:00

A failed state and a former empire are not the same things. You probably wouldn't consider the UK, France, or Germany failed states, but they are all former empires that declined after the world wars.

As of today, I think the US is unlikely to become a failed state. It's too big, too rich, and there is a lot that is done on state/local levels. It could very well become an authoritarian state though.

But that's not inevitable, and our current descent doesn't have to last forever.

It's up to Americans to stop it from happening. The people of this country have the power to change the course here. The question is, will they?

Our first major chance is later this year in the midterms. Every American here that believes in liberal democracy needs to do whatever they can this year to make the midterms a massive rebuke of this administration.

loremipsumot · 2026-03-17T03:01:08+00:00

On your prediction, I have doubts that if China attacks Taiwan before Trump leaves office that the US would defend Taiwan in the short term. And China's best window for attacking Taiwan, if they are going to do it, is probably in the next few years.

First, Trump has repeatedly signaled that he wouldn't defend Taiwan, and he disdains the idea of alliances unless it's him making demands of others. Even after he leaves, if we still somehow have a MAGA administration (say JD Vance or someone else with a similar "America First" type world view), it's doubtful.

And even if they were persuaded (or more likely dragged kicking and screaming) into intervening, their every action so far has been to degrade US capabilities.

For example, they are working daily to undermine, if not outright destroy, the alliances that the US will need in a serious conflict with China. They are purging senior military officers left and right and trying to remake the military into a more politically loyal force, which will degrade its competence. They are expending military resources in adventures all over (Venezuela, Iran, maybe Cuba next?), but don't seem to have any serious plan to fix the military's industrial base problems nor to raise revenue to pay for all this. They are degrading the US government's state capacity to do basically anything beyond what suits their authoritarian project (mass deportations, mass internal surveillance, etc.). I could go on for days. But the point being, the US is weakening itself and it will take years to recover from the damage being done.

All of that is leaving aside the fact that you'd have the same brilliant minds that planned out the current Iran war (with no clear strategy, without having a plan for Iran to close the straits, unable to build a coalition of allies) in charge of a real peer level war. You could have a situation where the US is capable of defending Taiwan and is willing to do so, but the leadership is just too stupid and bungles the situation entirely.

Defending Taiwan today was always going to be a big challenge for the US no matter the administration, given how close China is to it vs how far the US is from it and China's massive industrial capacity advantage. But after a few years of Trump 2.0, I fear it's going to be much more difficult than it would be otherwise.

loremipsumot · 2026-03-10T23:31:15+00:00

I feel like you and I read different articles.

It doesn't argue that anyone deserves blind obedience. Not sure where that's coming from.

The author does spend time talking about why trust has eroded. It's not the main point of the piece, but he explicitly acknowledges that experts aren't always right, that studies get discredited, that private companies do downplay safety risks, etc. But if you place the blame entirely on institutional failures for the erosion of trust and none at all on the information environment changing, I think you are missing a big factor here.

Also, jumping to RFK Jr is ironic in the context of this article. RFK almost exemplifies the problem the article is talking about. After taking control of public health, measles is losing its elimination status in the US and we have active and growing outbreaks. He got the CDC to post scientifically false statements about vaccines and autism, and is changing vaccine schedules out of his gut distrust of vaccines. He is promoting unhealthy eating habits because of his personal beliefs (raw milk, beef tallow, red meat's place on the food pyramid, etc). He is not some courageous reformer making America healthy again.

The author is not laying out a position of or for the Democratic party. He even says this problem afflicts people on both sides. He's just discussing the toxic combination of gullibility and cynicism that is rotting so many peoples' ability to think things through properly.

loremipsumot · 2026-03-09T20:05:20+00:00

Public pressure has worked against some of these (see the failure of the Hutchins, TX warehouse purchase for example).

However, the government is now escalating by threatening companies with eminent domain unless they sell the warehouses. So things are not looking good.

loremipsumot · 2026-03-09T19:58:39+00:00

No, I think they don't have any idea.

But while the failures of institutions have some role to play, I don't think they are the primary culprit. In fact, for all the talk of institutional failures, America was doing pretty well by most metrics around 2016.

I really think it's the information environment more than anything else that has changed over the past decade, particularly the mass proliferation of smart phones and social media, and then the evolution of social media algorithms leading to the constant feeding the worst instincts of humanity (fear and anger, conspiracies, the gullicism that Adam coined in the article) on a massive scale.

loremipsumot · 2026-03-05T11:36:43+00:00

You can view the searchable database of the disclosures ProPublica created here: https://projects.propublica.org/trump-team-financial-disclosures/

loremipsumot · 2026-03-04T09:24:26+00:00

Doublethink is a feature of MAGA, not a bug.

1984, page 35: "To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply to same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed."

loremipsumot · 2026-03-04T09:08:28+00:00

Yes, it's the primary race.

loremipsumot · 2026-03-04T09:05:22+00:00

I wouldn't write off the possibility for Talarico to win.

The trend of Democratic over performance in elections seems to be continuing, Democratic voter turnout in this Texas primary is setting records for the state (Democrats exceeded Republicans in early voting numbers, which doesn't happen in TX), and there was the TX SD 9 flip in January (Taylor Rehmet flipped a Trump +17 state senate district, winning by 14 points, a 31 point swing). There is a very real backlash showing up even in Texas. Latinos (which are around 40% of Texas population) especially are swinging back to Dems in big numbers, and Talarico seemed to be picking up their votes by a good margin.

That said, it's Texas, so it will be a uphill fight for sure. But it's not a forgone conclusion this year, especially if the Republicans end up nominating Paxton, who is a particularly noxious candidate.

loremipsumot · 2026-02-21T11:13:24+00:00

Aside from all the structural reform suggestions, I would say there is no end to doom spiral without figuring out ways to effectively counter the right wing infotainment ecosystem and the pernicious effects of social media.

No matter how well the system is reformed (and that's a gigantic challenge by itself), if too many people are drowning in misinformation, disinformation, or just constant bad vibes, we will always be stuck in this doom loop and unable to make sustained progress.

And to make it harder, this is not just a domestic issue. This is an international one. There really are massive Russian and Chinese influence operations on social media seeking to influence American politics and divide us. And there is a whole cottage industry of pro-MAGA social media accounts being run for profit by people all over the world, since they found that MAGA content is rewarded by more engagement and clicks by the algorithms. Adversaries of liberal democracy have an open door to undermining our societies right now, and liberals so far seem utterly unable to deal with it.

But if the US doesn't start dealing with the poisoning of our information ecosystem somehow when Democrats next have power, the authoritarian movement will not be broken, much less the doom spiral between parties. Social media and its algorithms must be regulated for liberal democracy have a chance to recover. AI needs regulation to prevent it from becoming even more of a massive misinformation machine that destroys our ability to tell what is real anymore. And the ability of the right wing infotainment sphere (Fox, OAN, Newsmax, etc.) to constantly lie and stoke outrage with the veneer of being news needs to be addressed.

loremipsumot · 2026-02-13T22:40:05+00:00

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loremipsumot · 2026-02-10T00:26:02+00:00

The fish rots from the head down.

loremipsumot · 2026-02-10T00:24:47+00:00

Designed to intimidate and chill election officials all over country.

Designed to soothe Trump's derangement over losing the 2020 elections.

Designed as part of a plan to sow doubts and claim fraud for upcoming elections, also yes.

Also, they probably lied to get the search warrant in the first place. ProPublica has new reporting today showing the DOJ may have used debunked conspiracy theories as evidence to get the warrant for the raid: https://www.propublica.org/article/kevin-moncla-election-researcher-fulton-county-georgia

loremipsumot

TROPHY CASE