Here's quite a read, in the Guardian. " America is destroying itself. It's no surprise"

[NewHendoLib]

by Stephen Marche

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/04/us-history-destruction

Scholars will someday wonder how the richest country in history chose to throw it all away. But the crisis has been there since the beginning

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has arrived at a moment of some embarrassment for the Republic. The United States of America, established to overthrow a mad king, has elected, 250 years later, a mad king of its very own. America is setting itself on fire at its birthday party. It always had a dramatic streak.

In 30 or 40 years, scholars of history, if they exist, will want to know how the richest country in history, with the world’s most powerful alliance network, and a scientific and research capacity fuelled by the talent of the world, chose to throw it all away.

I have been closer than most to some kind of answer. For my book The Next Civil War, I interviewed hundreds of experts, trying to fathom the underlying causes and structures of the decline. I met with extremists on the left and right. I argued that the dark dawning was coming. And yet, in some part of me, I didn’t really believe they would do it. The American self-destruction, I can only inform those future historians, is a mystery to us, too.

When did it all go wrong? Most of the researchers into political collapse that I spoke to blamed 2008, the financial crisis that crippled the dream of social mobility, but others brought up 1980, when income inequality first spiked and trust in institutions began to crater, and yet others 1876, the end of reconstruction, and those with even longer memories back to the civil war, or to the War of 1812.

snip

Long read, but very compelling. And yes, depressing.