I see an America that will behave much like the Marxist caricature of early capitalism with workers sweated with no security even of food on behalf of plutocrats of unrestrained indulgence and unlimited capacity for brutality. The Master Class gets crushing power on January 20, and within a few years, 95% of the people will suffer for 2% of the people in an economic order as exploitative and reactionary as the Jim Crow South. I can see a New Serfdom if America comes under the permanent rule of people who believe that no human suffering is in excess so long as the ruling elite gets whatever it wants.
You may believe that economic power and political power can be separated, but I cannot be so sure. Economic power buys political power (lobbyists really control the Federal and most state legislatures, so we no longer have a representative democracy) and political power leads to the accretion of economic power among the well-connected. Our system now fosters sociopathic behavior among the political and administrative elites.
I see America taking the role of the Evil Empire that the rest of the world dreads -- the Soviet Union except with real economic power that can buy any weapons system, kill any American dissident, and can corrupt any election, in which a hypocritical version of Christianity (really transmuted into the plutolatry of Ayn Rand) 'informs' the culture. The only hope that I have is that people will resist it here and abroad. Otherwise the USA becomes the "Universal State" that is the penultimate and dooming stage of a civilization through its dominant empire. Innovation vanishes; enterprise degrades to cronyism; top leadership ossifies and relies upon yes-men for advice; elites become irresponsible and rapacious. As a saying in the Byzantine Empire (one of Toynbee's examples of the Universal State) went, "to innovate is to injure".
The West has had its offers of the Universal State -- the Hapsburg monarchy of Spain and Austria, Napoleon's continental system, Wilhelmine Germany, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. All have failed. America has much more economic power (and can get more if it turns workplaces into sweatshops) and military power. America has succeeded to now because it can attract the Best and Brightest. That could be over soon.
The educational system, however inadequate it may be in elevating the talents of the poor, is even less competent in fostering humane values among the potential leaders. Youth enter college believing in little more than sex, intoxicants, mass low culture, material gain and indulgence, vocational success, and bureaucratic power and graduate believing much the same. That is much of the problem.
You may believe that economic power and political power can be separated, but I cannot be so sure. Economic power buys political power (lobbyists really control the Federal and most state legislatures, so we no longer have a representative democracy) and political power leads to the accretion of economic power among the well-connected. Our system now fosters sociopathic behavior among the political and administrative elites.
I see America taking the role of the Evil Empire that the rest of the world dreads -- the Soviet Union except with real economic power that can buy any weapons system, kill any American dissident, and can corrupt any election, in which a hypocritical version of Christianity (really transmuted into the plutolatry of Ayn Rand) 'informs' the culture. The only hope that I have is that people will resist it here and abroad. Otherwise the USA becomes the "Universal State" that is the penultimate and dooming stage of a civilization through its dominant empire. Innovation vanishes; enterprise degrades to cronyism; top leadership ossifies and relies upon yes-men for advice; elites become irresponsible and rapacious. As a saying in the Byzantine Empire (one of Toynbee's examples of the Universal State) went, "to innovate is to injure".
The West has had its offers of the Universal State -- the Hapsburg monarchy of Spain and Austria, Napoleon's continental system, Wilhelmine Germany, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. All have failed. America has much more economic power (and can get more if it turns workplaces into sweatshops) and military power. America has succeeded to now because it can attract the Best and Brightest. That could be over soon.
The educational system, however inadequate it may be in elevating the talents of the poor, is even less competent in fostering humane values among the potential leaders. Youth enter college believing in little more than sex, intoxicants, mass low culture, material gain and indulgence, vocational success, and bureaucratic power and graduate believing much the same. That is much of the problem.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.