The first ‘great experiment’ was secession from Britain. Yeah, some on the on the ‘NRx-sphere’ argue this was ‘bad’, but the data shows that secession succeeded, with the US economy not only surpassing Britain but becoming the biggest in the world, as well as a global military superpower.
Fast forward a couple hundred years, the second ‘great experiment’ is if America can survive liberalism, particularly post-WW2 social liberalism, and not ‘blow it’. To break it down, economically, although the debt is high and entitlement spending is growing too quickly, economic collapse is not in sight as measured by data such as profits & earnings and consumer spending. However, Germany, UK, Spain, Italy, Norway, and France are just as infested with liberalism as America is, possibly even more so, although East Europe seems to be spared:
Brazil, Japan, Australia, and Russia are all worse-off economically than America, with high inflation or deflation, falling currencies, weak real GDP growth, and fragile economies dependent commodity exports. If America topples, it will be the last domino to fall, not the first as many are wrongly predicting. China will be the penultimate. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial problem, the US economy and stock market recovered the quickest among all major economies:
That’s why from an investing standpoint, I recommend going ‘long’ the S&P 500 while shorting Europe and other foreign regions.
Some are predicting ‘civil war:’
Topher Hallquist points out that although America has historically been among the most stable developed countries, this is likely due to sheer luck rather than some kind of systemic factor.
Political polarization is increasing. If these factors are systemic, it may continue increasing until some kind of “correctional event”. (Forecast the trend.)
America has an unfortunate executive structure that does not cope with political polarization as well as a parliament does. My sense is this leaves us with a lot of “latent partisan energy” that is not getting defused properly.
The internet’s rising preeminence as a communication platform, and the collapse of traditional media revenue streams, is shoving us in to unexplored cultural territory and increasing the chance of black swan events.
Good tweet: “Shockingly few public figures and elites are defending the norms of public debate and restraint from violence that Trump is bulldozing.” I only assign Trump partial responsibility–I see his tactics as a response to Alinsky tactics used by the media and the left. (Scott Adams commenter’s alternate perspective: ‘The media attributing the violence to Trump is like an abusive boyfriend punching the girl on the face and screaming “see what you make me do!”‘) The point is that few are calling for civil discourse (or if they are, they aren’t being heard–moderate tweets are ignored, partisan tweets are retweeted).
This is absurd. ‘Violence’ at Trump rallies is no more predictive of civil war than occasionally violent Vietnam war protests of the 60’s. Donald Trump losing will likely leave his supporters disappointed, but it wont escalate into war or anything remotely like that. Also, the belligerents at Trump rallies bring it upon themselves by interfering and heckling. Trump is trying to give a speech and here you have these idiots creating a nuisance. This ‘violence’ is not unprovoked, as the media would have you believe. They (these protesters) are knowingly creating an interference, and then crying to the media or taking pictures when they get ‘assaulted’ to make Trump look bad.
Time will tell.