I mentioned in another reply that I've got a stack of "decline and fall" books to go through now. So this is clearly a zeitgeist right now. I'm also at a moment of personal transition, so it may just be projection. But I admit it does seem like we're witnessing a failing societal model these days.
"seem like?" secret police are disappearing citizens our capitol is occupied by the military the federal gov't is mid-purge All you really need as examples are the Roman empire and the French monarchy as collapse models. And 1930s Germany. You're not projecting.
Marx forecast revolutions as proletarian patience snapped as capitalism concentrated money/power in an oligarch class. He couldn’t foresee that technological advances would create so much wealth that living conditions would improve and stave off the explosion. Maybe we’re reaching the limit…
It’s not just projection, we’re absolutely seeing a government committed to diminishing state capacity. Meanwhile, they’re also putting us on a medium term path to economic ruin, which will only exacerbate the decay of state services.
Have you thought of the abolitionists? I added an abolitionist pile next to my decline and fall pile. John Brown- and what Thoreau and Emerson wrote about him.