Failure

It is of course rather sad and disheartening to acknowledge this, but I believe it's time to state the truth the truth clearly and unambiguously—and so I'm doing it.

America is a failed country.

I don't know when it was, precisely, that I realized that we had failed. But it's clear that we have.

Not going to fail, not likely to fail, not going to fail unless we changed something.

No, failed. As in past tense. As in already failed.

This doesn't mean that failure is the country's final fate. It's possible that the country can recover, can perhaps become a successful country.

But the odds are low. 

It is not the case that a few things have failed or gone wrong. Many things have gone wrong, terribly so, catastrophically so. It is extremely unlikely that enough of them can be fixed in time to make a difference.

Chaos and social collapse is much more likely.

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I do remember when it was that America tipped into the path that led to failure. I thought it at the time, and I've thought it in the intervening 20 years.

It was actually a one-year windows containing two pivotal events. Which one was the actual pivot is hard to say. 

The first possible date was November 7, 2000. That was day of the presidential election in which George Bush and Al Gore were essentially tied. The election was decided by a Republican Supreme Court, based on the testimony and major input from the Republican County Clerk in a Republican-voting county in a Republican-controlled state in which the governor was the Republican candidate's brother. 

The second date was the following September, the 11th. As America reeled from the shock of hijacked planes destroying the Twin Towers in New York and killing some 3000 people. Osama bin Laden and the hijackers succeeded in doing what they intended: they brought down America. The damage they inflicted was actually rather small. But America's reaction showed "what we are made of." We started two wars, essentially destroyed the Middle East, created ISIS, displaced 37 to 59 million people (Business Insider, 8 Sept 2020), created world-wide refugee problems, killed over 800,000 people, and spent six point four trilion dollars--and accomplished basically nothing positive. Our "war on terror" was, is and will continue to be pointless. America's spirit of revenge, and "we'll show you" and "all problems have a solution involving guns and explosives" did us in.