2026: The Year the US Self-Destructs — Or Gets Resurrected

Remember when everyone thought that 2020 was “the worst year ever”? Little did we know that 2020 was just the beginning, and would usher in the worst decade in living memory. And this is particularly true in the USA, the former “shining city on the hill” and “land of the free.”

These days, the US would more accurately be labeled “the land of the free to be oppressed, gaslighted, and bullied.” We Americans are now “free” to be misled, lied to, distracted, bought off, canceled, or even “disappeared.”

Fear and confusion rule. On every side, former “citizens” are knuckling under to tyranny. Many individuals, families, and even entire states, huge corporations, and major law firms have acquiesced to effective dictatorship and let themselves be bullied into submission.

Even worse, many so-called “citizens” and most red states have willfully chosen to embrace tyranny and authoritarianism (yet they still call it “freedom,” of course). One way or another, many millions of Americans have surrendered their autonomy and abandoned real democracy. Instead, they are meekly — or sometimes proudly — “kissing the ring” of our Resident Maniac-Dictator, Donald Trump.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This is not how the vaunted “American experiment” was supposed to turn out. The American Revolution was fought to ensure that “we the people” could govern ourselves and would never again be ruled by an unaccountable king or tyrant.

Yet, here we are — back in the same awful trap we supposedly escaped 250 years ago.

We blew it, people. Badly.

A sad, familiar story

What the hell happened? How did we screw up so badly? If the US still exists, in some form, by the 2030s, historians and sociologists will furiously pursue these questions and rush to provide semi-comfortable “answers.”

But that is not what I’m doing or attempting, here and now. That will come later. I simply want to chronicle what we are losing — and what we are settling for in return. It’s a sad, familiar story: we’ve surrendered our birthright and potential greatness for “a mess of pottage.” We’ve let the lowest, greediest, and most despicable among us win.

Nowhere was this clearer than in the recent tumult and aftermath of the World Economic Forum at Davos. There, Dictator Trump reveled in trashing and insulting our allies. He arrogantly bullied them, insisting “It’s MY way or the highway.” There was no sense of cooperation or effective diplomacy. It was the stuff of pure, ruthless autocracy.

Our long-term European and Canadian allies were not pleased. Rather, they were disgusted and furious — but even more, they were (and are) disappointed and apprehensive. They are worried sick over what the US is doing to the world order and the “rule of law.”

Goodbye, rules-based international order

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said it best, expressing out loud what everyone there was thinking and fearing. He said (edited),

“It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry — that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must. And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along, get along to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

Well, it won’t…. For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient…. [yet] American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes….

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited….

But let’s be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.”

I highly recommend reading the full speech. It is that good, and that significant.

It might as well have been titled “Requiem for the Rules-Based World Order.”

Betrayal, chaos, and destruction

How is his speech relevant to the decline and fall of the US? It’s simple: his entire speech revolved around the collapse of the “rules-based order” in the US and the Western world, and all the ways the US has both bullied and betrayed our former allies.

Yes, under Dictator Trump, we have actively and deliberately betrayed our friends and allies, attacked NATO, and undermined the post-WW II order that the US was instrumental in creating! Starkly put, the US has done a major “about face” and pulled the rug out from under the international order (along with warmongering Russia and Israel). And imperfect as it was, the rules-based international order was far better than the alternative the US is embracing — namely, national dominance through bullying, coercive pressure, and brute force.

Weirdly, incredibly, the US — at least, the arrogant right-wingers now holding total power in Washington — has adopted the same devious modus operandi that Trump has long employed to get his way. (Watch the film “The Apprentice” to get a clear, horrifying picture of how his MO always ensures him ‘winning.’) His utterly amoral “rules to live by” boil down to: Always claim victory. Never admit problems or wrongdoing. Deny everything. Delay any accountability. Do anything necessary to win. And always: “attack, attack, attack!”

Trump has fully embodied this MO, decade after decade. Due to his and MAGA’s malign influence, however, the US government, the GOP, and US society have increasingly succumbed and also adopted these amoral ‘rules.’

And that marks a true, mounting disaster for both the US and the Western world. The intensifying disaster now facing the West has been propelled primarily by the US — which was the exact impetus for Carney’s powerful, unprecedented speech.

The US is now an international agent of chaos and destruction.

Losing civilization, losing hope

When the US abandons the rules-based order, what are we losing? It’s far too facile to just shrug and try to ‘move on.’ This shift is a big, big deal. It signifies that the essential qualities we used to call “civilized” are no longer held in high esteem. Positive human qualities like empathy, compassion, cooperation, and sharing are now seen as “weak,” impractical, or foolish, while brute strength, bullying, and overt coercion are lauded and supported.

We’ve all witnessed this foul pattern, over and over again, during Trump’s ascent and cultural “reign” in the US over the past decade. And many red-state governors and politicians are busy mimicking him. Now, we’re at the point where masked goons are roaming Democrat-led cities, terrorizing and “disappearing” people, and even murdering American citizens.

The horrors and dangers we’re unleashing, though, are barely recognized — still!— by most Americans. However, our allies see them clearly and are scared to death.

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Here’s what they see: a formerly great and (somewhat) civilized nation spiraling down into dark chaos, corruption, and collapse. They see a divided, angry nation full of frustrated, angry people, collectively sliding fast down a slippery, destructive slope toward mass violence and dark UN-civilization.

So, what are we losing in the US? We’re losing any sense of stability … or cooperation … or fairness … or racial integration … or openness … or religious tolerance … or trust in science … or honesty … or even a shared, factual “reality.” Greedy individualism and pitiless competition/domination hold total sway, while community, cooperation, and democracy are being crushed — utterly decimated.

America’s last chance at redemption and resurrection

Here’s my grim prediction for the US: if we Americans don’t manage to turn this dark devolution, our accelerating downward spiral, around — and fast — the US is headed straight for a rapid and massive fall. If things keep going as they are, we are simply dooming ourselves to mass chaos, pain, and destruction.

There’s no doubt in my (or Europe’s, or Canada’s) mind anymore: this year, 2026, marks America’s last chance at redemption and resurrection. This is our make-or-break year.

It’s totally up to us, people. Will 2026 be the year Americans finally “wake up” and take back our country — or will it be the year that the US goes down in flames, taking much of the Western world down with it?

Will 2026 become a proud-yet-humble 250th anniversary, filled with resurgent hope and democracy-honoring cooperation — or will it mark the final collapse of the US and the fulfillment of Trump’s and MAGA’s dark dreams of conquest and tyranny?

So far, it looks like their “dark dreams of conquest and tyranny” are winning out, big time — while the US loses bigly and faces the ultimate loss: civilizational collapse.

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** NO KINGS! ** rallies happen again on March 28 — and these protest gatherings will be immense. The largest ever. Be there if you want to help create a better, saner, more compassionate nation!

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This post was previously published on Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs.

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