It will be awhile before that happens, bruh.
The Romans collapsed when their armies became thoroughly BARBARIANIZED. The US, on the other hand, needs IMMIGRANTS with their drive, ambition, focus, and HUNGER after the American Dream. Look at the typical tech startup and you're bound to find a few immigrant or second generation people in the guts of such startup.
The US has never been around GENETIC LINES or even CULTURE. It's always been about an IDEA. The idea is that SOMEWHERE in this planet, a country has to be built where people can come to REINVENT THEMSELVES and get a SECOND or THIRD CHANCE. A land that doesn't care who your parents were. A country that values people only based on the RESULTS they are able to bring to the table.
This may seem like a cruel joke description for the US based on the reality of its sad history with Slavery, sexism, heterosexism, antisemitism, and other nasty 'ism you can throw its way but it is precisely WHY it is such a powerful BEACON of hope and dreams. Immigrants FUEL its rise because they are FOOLISH enough to believe its promises and MAKE IT A REALITY. Just as Jews in the 1900s and beyond gave life to the promises of fundamental rights extension to the states and how atheists and Christian scientists expanded the separation of church and state, the American experiment survives precisely because NEW PEOPLE hold it accountable to its promises and thereby make those promises a REALITY.
That's what America means to me at least. My parents came to the US in 1972 to flee the Philippines' Marcos dictatorship. They had nothing. Even though they had to work 3 jobs each, they were able to send me and my younger brother to school. I got a degree at UC Berkeley. My brother is a registered nurse.
The American dream still works. It doesn't matter whether you come from the inner city, Appalachia or the other side of the planet. America is still a concept that is very much alive! YOU just have to make it work. You have to BELIEVE in it to make it work. Doesn't work for everybody but with the right amount of FAITH and yes, willfull blindness, it still delivers.
As long as it still delivers, the American Empire won't go the way of the Roman Empire.
/sorry for the overshare
