According to many people, the Fifty States, and the American Empire, are washed up. Breathing our last, slipping down ever faster on the downward spiral to cataclysm and destruction. Dozens of reasons are given for this fear – based on the political positions and fears and phobias of the person(s) and institutions screaming about it.

Not everyone sees collapse, but many see major damage and chaos. Agora (Laissez Faire) recently discussed their take on “war games” by a collection of deep-staters (and therefore Anti-Trumpers). Four scenarios were played out – two ending in deadlock and all in a constitutional crisis and a “no one’s really in charge” situation. But Agora agreed with all of them: election disruptions, violence in the streets, widespread allegations of fraud and cheating, and more.

So many people agree that collapse – at least short term – IS a strong possibility. A few fear it might be final and “total” – as far as the FedGov and the Fifty States overall.

As a lover of liberty, a follower of Christ Jesus, a Westerner, a lover (and writer) of science fiction, and as a father and grandfather, I think I need to try and understand this. So as to prepare for it, and know the best way to respond to it. If it happens.

But as soon as I do that, it opens up a dozen cans of worms. Questions which must be asked and answered to see if this is both a legitimate concern and what it really means to collapse.

Many years ago, I wrote a series of short stories set in a world in which there was a so-called “Final Collapse” of Western Civilization, and of particular the Union of fifty States which had only existed (as Fifty States, at least) for a decade or so. It took me literally years of research and analysis to come up with a “reasonably” logical scenario that could be used for the “future universe” of my stories. One in which the former United States underwent a series of internal struggles (including civil wars, wars of secession, rebellions, and natural or manmade disasters resulting in major crises). Resulting in a North America not just fragmented into states and provinces – independent or allied but no longer holding allegiance to one of the current three federal governments or their successors. A North America made up of a mixture of largely independent cities, counties, rump nations (including a few surviving state governments), and a lot of “dead zones” – areas of chaos with few civilized people left. Existing in the midst of the ruins and damage of a failed, collapsed civilization.

That is only possible if the rest of the world is in a similar state of affairs. Not that Africa is far from that – no matter WHAT the maps say, those “nations” in Africa are a hodgepodge of that sort of thing. Lowkey, admittedly, but still, you cannot compare the power of the governments of 40+ African States to those of say, any Canadian province or member State of the EU. Otherwise, SOMEone intervenes in North America: some way, some how: China, Europe, Russia, India, some coalition under the UN or NATO or ASEAN. I didn’t want that scale. So I threw away the rest of the planet with plagues and nuclear and semi-nuclear wars and massive collapse of their own. And that was a long time before I realized just how vulnerable Eurasia and Pacifica and Africa and South America were geopolitically. And how blessed North America – especially the Fifty States – was and were.

I set up this nasty, vicious and brutal world to write certain stories about a centuries-long struggle for liberty in various places I know well, right in the center of North America. But it leads to the first major point of this study.

The Fifty States do NOT exist in a vacuum. As Peter Zeihan and others have pointed out, the Fifty States sit in the best geopolitical situation in the world and in world history. We have the geography, the climate, the resources – and perhaps critically, the largest free-market region and population in planetary history. If we Americans, whether united or unified or not, cannot control our own turf, our own resources, we will no longer have ANY of those things. This continent can be Balkanized and remain with its geopolitical advantages ONLY if (1) outsiders are kept from gaining any significant control, and (2) most areas in the continent continue to have free trade with one another.

Think about that. If there is any significant intervention during a constitutional crisis, or wars of secession or civil wars, it is game over for the best opportunities this race (the HUMAN RACE) has ever had. That this planet has ever had – at least since Noah’s Flood.

Oh, there is a chance of avoiding that – we did it once back in the 1780s, when the Kingdom of France intervened on behalf of the Continental Congress. French internal problems and the relative power of the British Empire even without the Thirteen Colonies kept them from moving in, even as France did decades later in Mexico (an attempt which failed but scarred Mexico deeply). And we avoided it once again in 1861-65, in part by playing off the Russian Czar against the British Parliament and French Emperor.

Will we be so lucky this time? Time will tell, of course, but we must pray that we are. If we Americans are left to our own devices, at least part of these Fifty States WILL be able to accomplish a cataclysmic revival. Perhaps even all fifty states – and a few more. But that is a subject for another commentary.

Please share your thoughts with me.