by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The Roman Empire had its Crisis of The Third Century and it appears as though the Anglophone world has it’s own political crisis in the 21 Century. Three of the five major English speaking democracies currently have very fucked up political systems. Two out of the five — the United States and Great Britain — definitely seem to be careening towards some sot of potential breakup.
If I was smarter — and, maybe, wrote for Vox or Foreign Affairs — I could give you a lengthy explanation of why this is the case. But I’m just some hayseed rube in the rural part of a flyover state, so lulz, I don’t know. I have no idea what is wrong with Australia, but I do have some sense of what’s wrong with the UK and especially the US.
The UK’s problem seems just as existential as the problems the United States faces. The UK is pretty much the lone multi-ethnic state in Europe and it current has a very late Austro-Hungarian Empire vibe to it. It’s very easy to imagine the country breaking up into its constituent states and that will be that.
The US, meanwhile, is a bit more complicated. The US has the choice of autocracy or civil war before it and we just haven’t gotten to the point in that particular process where I can game out which one is going to happen. I have the general sense that the US is going to drift peacefully into some sort of “lite touch” autocracy until we elect an autocrat who is a bit too power hungry for their own good and then we either have a popular revolt or things get really, really dark.
Anyway, the point is — outside of New Zealand and Canada, the entire Anglophone world is in far more turmoil than one might think. The English speaking world is in a simmering, long-term political crisis with no ready solution.
The US and the UK, specifically, are in serious trouble. All I can say is the next few years may be far, far more dramatic on a geopolitical level than we could possibly imagine.
