The US is Collapsing Like The USSR. So What Comes Next?

A clarifying suggestion of how we can locate the Trump regime’s actions within the ‘adaptive cycle model’, which seeks to understand the trajectory of living systems. “Trumpocracy 2.0” can be seen as “the fulcrum of the movement of industrial civilisation through the “release” stage – a period of breakdown in which entrenched structures and institutions unravel under their own rigidity and contradictions”. This is the third of four system stages – 1. Growth and accumulation, 2. Conservation/stability, 3. Release, 4. Reorganisation – and “manifests as a collapse dynamic: old paradigms and power structures begin to break apart, opening up a new, if turbulent, possibility space for transformation.” Though identifying “seven sources of rot”, including how “in a failing system, ruling powers double down on military expansion and authoritarian control to stave off crises,” we can plan to navigate this ‘Release’ stage by making critical shifts, including developing ‘energy commons’, ‘decentralised and participatory organisational structures’ and a ‘cultural shift towards regenerative values’.