Between External Confrontation and Internal Fracture: America on the Brink of a Systemic Crisis

Global geopolitical tensions are unfolding in parallel with a deepening domestic crisis in the United States, where structural socio-economic shifts are intensifying social instability and political polarization.

All the while, there is a growing sense among many Americans that the system is no longer broken but functioning exactly as designed: wealth concentrating at the top, political choice narrowing, and public trust collapsing. We need to look at the nexus between geopolitical conflict, media narratives, and domestic instability, suggesting that foreign crises may serve as convenient smoke screens while structural economic and political changes reshape society at home and may be leading to a showdown between Washington and Americans themselves.

However, the situation in the US is perhaps the most dismal of all, with people losing faith in the system, their prospects for prosperity, and if they are going to be able to provide a normal life for their children and themselves, not to mention the Epstein files and the ICE meltdown. At least now, with budget debates, ICE is having to work for free, as essential workers, and is not subject to furloughs due to budget impasses over their enforcement practices and the killing of American citizens.

High Time for Distraction

Call what is transpiring in war zones around the world what you want, but Americans of all people should understand that when a government, whether democratic or not, does not live up to the people’s expectations, they will try to remove it. Call it Civil War or whatever you want, but the reality is closer than the Official Trailer.

As always, those charged with resolving these domestic problems are making the situation worse. Donald Trump may be remembered not for MAGA but for having polarized America into “us” and “them” … and for so many different reasons, which seem more in your face than not to be intentional. In the US, we are seeing nothing short of an alleged conspiracy by domestic actors and blatant subterfuge over the Epstein files and the state of the economy. It is becoming clear how native-born Americans are moving closer to wanting to totally change or topple a government and attempt to change the status quo.

But what drives them, and is there any middle ground left – especially in a midterm election year, and considering all the “smoke and mirrors,” and to understand what is really going wrong in the USA?

Consolidated Power and Ownership

There are no longer easier choices, and even with an election year, voters no longer have an easy choice, nor does the working class. There is no longer a middle ground. I understand my father better now. As he was getting older, he did not want to even think about what was going on, as he knew only too well that it would not end well.

Banks are buying up all the houses and apartment buildings, then jacking up the prices so sky-high they’re unaffordable. They are literally bringing back slavery. But kicking out the Hispanics who were able to do the jobs. Nonetheless, they will still utilize the labor force of the Hispanics, but as cheap wage slaves. Or as workers in company towns, their wage will not be just enough to keep a roof over their heads, like in West Virginia coal mining company towns.

They want to destroy the whole country and rebuild it as a dystopia. The “Great America” is for the top wealthy, with everyone else being their slaves. 2026 is the setting for a remake of the Fritz Lang 1927 film, “Metropolis.” The skyscraper cities, however, have been moved to China.

The housing crisis, corporate consolidation, and precarious labor conditions are framed not as isolated problems but as components of a broader transformation. The comparison to Metropolis is central: a society where technological progress and efficiency coexist with deep class stratification, and where workers are interchangeable parts in a system they no longer control.

The film literally shows people working at an Amazon warehouse. As my children and friends have shared, having done the jobs where you stood at a workstation and chased lights. This movie, based on the novel by Thea von Harbou, is worth a watch.

It shows how they work 10 hours per day. If you watch the Metropolis film, you will see workers doing weird jobs. It looks exactly like jobs at the Amazon warehouse, as if they could see 90 years into the future.

Amazon Fulfillment Engine

There was a place called AFE, Amazon Fulfillment Engine. They just called it AFE, where a tote (yellow plastic boxes that run on the conveyors, where you put the product) comes down a chute with a product, you take the product, turn around, and put it in the bin with the light.

When you’ve put a bunch of products in the bins with the blinking lights and have 10 spare seconds, then you have to run to all the blinking lights and press buttons to turn them off. The scene in Metropolis looks exactly like that. I include it with the other dystopian stories: Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, etc.

It is an understatement to claim that the U.S., especially working folk, faces serious political and economic challenges. The situation did not appear overnight. This moment towards centralized authoritarian rule is the predictable result of a trajectory they have been on for more than 250 years. Nonetheless, what we’re witnessing, both domestically and globally, is the visible absence of compassion, and humanity, especially in positions of power and the distribution of wealth.

Depiction of mechanized, dehumanizing labour

The parallel drawn to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis—with its depiction of mechanized, dehumanizing labor—resonates strongly with contemporary accounts of warehouse environments, where relentless productivity demands mirror the film’s dystopian vision of class division and worker alienation. Such conditions, combined with allegations of elite conspiracies, suppressed information, and eroding middle-ground political options, foster widespread disillusionment.

In a midterm US election year, these factors amplify polarization, raising concerns about the stability of democratic institutions and the potential for unrest or radical change. The traditional political and elite classes should be the last who would be willing to resort to extrajudicial action, as they need to defend the system that is enriching them.

But their system has created two underprivileged classes, even worse now with social benefits and food assistance curtailed for many under budget priorities directed to never-ending wars. The minorities and poor have never had much of a stake in strife, and the ever more dispossessed mainstream, many of the MAGA supporters, now find themselves sliding into the same position and siding with the same ones they blame for their plight.

Too many have been conned by the American Dream – work hard, study, keep your nose clean, don’t fuck up, and you will be successful. This mindset enabled those who believed it to feel superior to their poorer neighbors, as if the poor were morally deviant. But now it is a paycheck-to-paycheck existence for many families, and cottage industries are geared to preying on the poor by offering payday loans and doomed-to-default mortgages.

The United States stands at a critical juncture

The United States faces a critical juncture where economic hardship, deepening political polarization, and eroded trust in institutions create conditions conducive to severe disruption—potentially civil conflict or authoritarian consolidation.

Without concerted efforts to restore equity, transparency, and accountable governance, the current trajectory risks becoming unsustainable. All sides may ultimately perceive no recourse but violence, as already reflected by too many incidents of violence and provoked confrontations between the central government and the citizens of individual states.

In such a scenario, the political and economic elite are likely to prevail regardless of the outcome, leaving marginalized groups—particularly those aligned with the Trump camp —feeling compelled to resort to armed resistance to defend perceived gains against blamed outsiders and perceived domestic terrorists. For any faction to secure lasting dominance requires the permanent subjugation of opponents, achievable only through sustained violence, whether judicial or armed.

Absent a fundamental reorientation of priorities, reciprocal violence appears the probable endpoint. It boils down to a matter of priorities, choice. With two enemies to contend with, they will be able to choose which one is most vulnerable, or dangerous to them and attack accordingly. We now come to the end of the story. Trump’s only way of securing a legacy is if the “us” establish permanent control of the “them.”

If dystopian fiction once warned us about what might happen, what if it is now describing what already is?

Jeffrey K. Silverman is a freelance journalist and international development specialist, BSc, MSc, based for 30 years in Georgia and the former Soviet

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