US News

The Us finds itself in an incredibly volatile situation because significant segments of the population in US no longer believe that the government has their best interest at heart, and that's a measure of how far the collapse has progressed. The underlying cause for this mistrust is the decline of material conditions over the past several decades. However, most people in US lack the political or economic education to understand what's happening leading to public lashing out in random and irrational ways. People understand that they're being hurt, but they don't understand who is responsible or why it's happening.

The mainstream is now split between democrats and republicans, with each camp having a different vision for the country, and blaming other for all the ills in the country. This creates a political climate that's ripe for opportunists to game leading to further deterioration of living conditions. The country ends up in a worse state after each successive election cycle, and the sectarian tensions continue to become more prominent. Violent outbreaks are starting to happen, and I expect these will only get worse going forward.

Furthermore, the effects of the collapse are not evenly distributed. While many working class people experience significant effects personally, nothing has really changed for the policy makers. This creates a lag between problems occurring and the leadership becoming aware of them. Thus things have to degrade quite significantly before people in power become aware of the severity of the problem.