In the Age of Trump...

[Person Man]

Currently, the national mood is pretty poor. Only 40% like the president and what is going on in this country. You would think that we are in the middle of an economic soft patch or dealing with a minor foreign policy confidence crisis at this point based on these numbers. But UE is under 4%. We don't have dozens, if not hundreds of soldiers dead a month like we had during Bush's second term. Sure there are hotspots around the world and there are soldiers who still see combat and the economy hasn't really improved for most people though most people (though maybe people are doing and having more things they like because people are now able and do live off of loans again) never were directly affected by the crash itself and is the case with just about any downturn.

My question is-

When people can't pay back their loans they are currently living off of or when we have another major terrorist attack, what happens then? Heck. What if there is a major natural disaster like a pandemic?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Trump's base won't leave him even then. People who pay attention to politics at the margins (or not at all) will notice things are getting too tough to ignore politics. Trump supporters will blame Democrats and immigrants, Democrats will blame Trump and corporations; both sides will duke it out to win over this new pool of energized and uninformed voters. Things will get ugly.

[Person Man]

Trump's base won't leave him even then. People who pay attention to politics at the margins (or not at all) will notice things are getting too tough to ignore politics. Trump supporters will blame Democrats and immigrants, Democrats will blame Trump and corporations; both sides will duke it out to win over this new pool of energized and uninformed voters. Things will get ugly.

That's all pretty sound. But will we actually be able to deal with these problems? At this point, I can see a new recession causing unemployment to go and stay over 8-10% for like 10 years. If there was a pandemic, I can see it only ending once its ran its course and only natural selection of both the plague and the host preventing more death (like what happened in the 14th century). I can see a major FP debacle or large-scale terror attack quickly escalating into a major war. 

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

We're on a slow path to becoming Russia-of-the-West. Chunks of the US are already at third-world standards. A disaster (natural or human) that we cannot really address will just hasten the process.

[Person Man]

We're on a slow path to becoming Russia-of-the-West. Chunks of the US are already at third-world standards. A disaster (natural or human) that we cannot really address will just hasten the process.

Kind of like Rome in the last few decades it was more or less territorially intact...or the USSR in the 1980s.

[pbrower2a]

We're on a slow path to becoming Russia-of-the-West. Chunks of the US are already at third-world standards. A disaster (natural or human) that we cannot really address will just hasten the process.

Kind of like Rome in the last few decades it was more or less territorially intact...or the USSR in the 1980s.

The one thing that decrepit empires can do is move their armies from one hot-spot to the next.

[Koharu]

I'm really concerned about the next economic downturn. The country feels like it is barely holding together (infrastructure-wise) and the government is racking up debt at a record pace at a time that it should be knocking down that debt a bit. If there's a disaster or the next downturn is similar to the previous one, I feel like things will get very rough very quickly.

[Person Man]

I'm really concerned about the next economic downturn. The country feels like it is barely holding together (infrastructure-wise) and the government is racking up debt at a record pace at a time that it should be knocking down that debt a bit. If there's a disaster or the next downturn is similar to the previous one, I feel like things will get very rough very quickly.

Pretty much. Between the debt, corruption, poor infrastructure, and poor management, the next major disaster will be difficult if not impossible to fully recover from under any metric.