After the USA

Published July 15, 2025
by Mark P. Line, Cassandra Institute (mark@cassandra-institute.org)

In this little essay full of not yet widely-accepted opinions, I'm going to be making a number of specific claims about what I think could happen after the Musk/Miller regime falls and about what I think are the constraints on what should happen after that event. I'll try to point to the reasons why I believe these claims are true when it seems less than obvious, but I'm going to avoid beating any dead horses. I'm not going to try to drag anyone away from Truth Social. My intended audience consists of good-faith antifascists who may be asking themselves where we might go from here. I hope to provide some possible answers.

It's a Fascist Regime

The so-called Trump (47) Administration is actually the fascist Musk/Miller regime. Trump himself is at best a useful idiot, lacking any cognitive or emotional wherewithal to be in charge of anything, least of all a brutally effective fascist regime. Because Elon Musk and Stephen Miller (and Russel Vought, Peter Thiel, and generally the Heritage Foundation behind the scenes still) were visibly in charge of policy from day one, and still are, they are the ones who own this fascist regime and who will ultimately need to be held accountable for its destructive actions.

The Musk/Miller Regime Will Fall

The fall of the Musk/Miller regime is inevitable, though the likely timeframe is difficult to predict. Primary factors driving the regime fall will be economic collapse, vocal and very visible popular resistance, global pressure, and self-induced fracturing of the elite ruling class.

Economic collapse will be brought about as a presumably unintended consequence of chaotic and extreme tariff policies, loss of consumer confidence, loss of equity investor confidence, recalcitrant inflation, and loss of deported immigrant workers.

Popular resistance, in the form of mass protests, continues to ramp up all across the country. One local maximum in the expansion of this movement is the nationwide No Kings protest on June 14, 2025, scheduled to coincide with Trump's 79th birthday celebration in Washington DC with a Soviet-style military display — tanks rolling through the streets of Washington, fighter jets overhead, banners, speeches, the whole spiel — all under the guise of the US Army's 250th anniversary.

Elite fracturing is made likely by internal contradictions within the regime itself. Ruptures can be seen in

• the falling out between Musk and Trump and between Musk and Miller,

• criticism of some regime policies by some GOP members of Congress,

• quiet and not-so-quiet resistance to orders by members of the military,

• noncompliant leaks from within DOJ and DHS, and

• tech sector leaders beginning to distance themselves from the regime due to their global exposure.

Even in the less personality-cultish parts of the regime's base, tension is apparent among the various inevitably incompatible factions, including christofascists, Randian libertarians, and old-school neoliberal "moderates".

The US will Collapse After the Regime Falls

After the fascist Musk/Miller regime does finally fall, whatever the scenario, the US as a sovereign nation will inevitably collapse. To the extent that economic collapse contributes to the fall of the regime, that same failure will bring about the collapse of the US as a functioning entity.

Other contributing factors will be global pressure from NATO countries, the EU and its member states, China, and Japan in the form of economic isolation in terms of both trade and investment as well as diplomatic condemnation — all of which has already started to happen.

Our NATO allies (or rather former allies, as the regime now supports Russia instead of NATO) will inevitably respond with a near-complete withdrawal of cooperation covered by a diplomatic fig leaf if the alliance cannot be dissolved outright.

Actual international sanctions may come before and during the fall. Starting with the EU member states and the UK, countries will begin to dismiss the regime as illegitimate (given massive human rights violations and the expected federal intervention in the 2026 midterms), thus exacerbating the economic and diplomatic fallout and suggesting a need for sanctions. China can be expected to act geopolitically in whatever way it deems most self-preserving, almost certainly focused on trade. Japan can be expected to do whatever the EU does.

Americans Will Have a Choice Post-Collapse

With a failed economy, no viable federal government, and the resulting loss of practically all federal institutions, the nation will have to be brought back to some form of livable sovereignty. This means that Americans will have a choice: Return to the status quo that brought us to the failed fascist state in the first place, or create something new.

This proposition will rankle, and I understand that. There has always been a mythos about "American democracy", but that mythos is false. It has been fatally counterproductive historically, and it would be counterproductive post-collapse. Viewed objectively, the US has only ever been a severely flawed democracy at best. The US Constitution was designed to limit democracy and to guarantee a system of elite rule. Slavery was embraced. Anti-democracy institutions such as the Electoral College and the US Senate were created. Universal suffrage was an unimaginable fantasy — only white, male landowners were allowed to vote until the Constitution was amended to allow universal suffrage in theory if not in practice.

Despite these objective facts, Americans have been systematically brainwashed in the belief that the old status quo was "democratic". It was not: it was structurally fascist. The end of slavery led to Jim Crow and later the mass incarceration of people of color. And now we're seeing a militarization of the southern border and even the announced militarization of Democrat-run cities all across the country.

So if Americans have a choice post-collapse, returning to the old cryptofascist status quo should not be considered as a viable option. Such a regression would invite cyclical repetition of our current descent into full-on fascism — the opposite of progress as a society.

Democracy With Teeth

Americans will have an opportunity to create a new, human-rights-based, democratic system — under a new Constitution — if we want to take it. Fundamental human rights include not only the often-cited rights specifically protected under international law, but also the economic guarantees that must underlie those fundamental rights. Those economic guarantees in particular have been largely unknown in the US since its founding, and the protection of the fundamental human rights themselves remains, shall we say, a work in progress.

Economic guarantees include the protection of

• the right to work (including the right to freely choose that work),

• the right to fair remuneration for work,

• the right to safe and healthy working conditions,

• the right to fair advancement in the workplace, and

• the right to rest and leisure that limits working hours.

Another economic guarantee is the right to form and join trade unions and related protections such as the right to strike.

Taken together, these economic guarantees are intended to provide every person with the financial wherewithal to enjoy all the specific rights to food, water, shelter, health, education, and all the rest. It's important to note, however, that these international conventions, treaties and laws were formed in the almost-global capitalist framework that takes the division between owners and labor as a given without further reflection.

The political economy of the US has been one of absentee capitalism since the nation's founding — literally baked into the US Constitution. The Founders were, after all, wealthy landowners and merchants for the most part. That is, any noise about "freedom" or "democracy" notwithstanding, the separation of increasingly absentee owners from workers has been institutionalized and enforced from the very beginning. This systematic consolidation and enforcement of elite power has occurred in many well-known instances. For example in the Constitution alone:

• Enslaved labor was protected as property (3/5 rule, fugitive slave clause), a paradigmatic case of absentee ownership

• Property ownership requirements for voting

• Complete disregard of any concept of a "working class" or labor in general, apart from slavery

Concurrently and subsequently, we had a steady string of efforts to consolidate and enforce elite power, leading right up to the present day. To wit:

• Philosophically and politically, the Enlightenment-era liberalism in the US was a celebration of property as the foundation of all other rights and freedoms

• State-issued corporate charters benefited investors; there were no similar opportunities for labor organizations

• Chisholm v Georgia (1793) protected creditors, not debtors

• Factories in northern non-slavery states quickly adopted absentee models, separating owners from wage laborers

Taken together, we can see that these measures served not to implement the will of the people, but to institutionalize elite power.

When we go about creating a new system of government, a new economy, and a more enlightened and inclusive society, we should recognize that there are alternatives to absentee capitalism. A new, democratic system should avoid one-sided institutional support for absentee capitalism over its alternatives, allowing an ecosystem of competing systems (think: employee-owned companies, co-ops, credit unions and mutual insurance groups as well as absentee capitalist corporations) to exist on a level playing field.

The successor state to the US should be designed intentionally by a broad consensus of informed, good-faith, anti-fascist Americans — excluding the oligarchs, christofascists, and corporate-funded politicians who thrived under the old system.

Without this kind of intentional effort, authoritarian systems tend to reassert themselves in the chaos of collapse, as would this one. Look at how the chaos in post-1917 Russia led to Stalinist fascism. Look at how the chaos after the so-called Arab Spring in Egypt led to Sisi's brand of fascism. Even the fascist tendencies of the modern Israeli state under Likud could be seen as the birth of fascism out of war-induced chaos.

Although there are many conceivable approaches, a constitutional convention for a post-collapse successor state to the US could draw inspiration from Tunisia's transition (2011–2014). Rather than using the existing gerrymandered congressional map or replicating elite-preserving structures like the Senate and Electoral College, a transitional unicameral parliament could be elected on the basis of counties as electoral districts. With over 3,000 counties in the US, though, the constitutional convention would need to operate digitally — not a bad thing when considering the additional advantages such an arrangement would bring in terms of local accessibility and transparency. This transitional body would have a single purpose: draft a new, democratic, rights-based Constitution, oversee its ratification by referendum, then dissolve itself in deference to the newly constituted government. The legitimacy of this new government would derive not from legacy institutions, but from popular participation and civil society oversight.

There is a worse-case (but certainly not worst-case) scenario to be mindful of, though, even if we're successful in creating a democratic successor state: There could conceivably be more than one successor state to the US. If no consensus can be reached across the entire extent of the former US, then two or more successor nations might be the result. If the current ruling class cannot be made to relinquish control completely, then they might be excluded from the new democratic state — possibly to create a fascist exclave that is more to their liking.

You're Probably Not Ready For This

Unfortunately, few Americans are prepared for actual democratic self-governance (real democracy, not the fake cryptofascism underlying centuries of political brainwashing). This means that civic literacy education is an exceedingly urgent need right now, before the rubber hits the road (or at least as the rubber hits the road). This essay, and others to follow, are intended as small early steps in such a civic literacy program, but a large-scale movement is what is required.

The reason for civic literacy efforts, of course, is widespread civic illiteracy, for which there are countless examples across all major demographics in the US on a daily basis.

• Believing that due process is conditional (“criminals don’t deserve rights”)

• Calling universal healthcare or free education “socialist” and therefore un-American

• Assuming that freedom of religion equates to Christian privilege

• Believing that democracy means raw majority rule without protections for minorities

• Treating presidential speech as inherently truthful or binding ("he said it, so it must be true" — this being distinct from any cult-like phenomena around a particular president)

Examples of civic literacy can be found, but they're few and far between in most circles:

• Understanding that due process is universal — a right that is guaranteed, not earned, and never lost

• Knowing that education and healthcare as human rights are part of international democratic consensus — even under capitalist systems

• Recognizing that freedom of religion includes both freedom to practice non-Christian religions as well as the freedom from religion

• Seeing that loyalty to a person in power should play no role in democratic institutions

To sum up, civic illiteracy is not simple ignorance: it’s a failure to understand what democracy even entails. The beliefs of a civic illiterate are not simply wrong, they’re incompatible with democracy. If democracy is the goal, then civic literacy is not optional. Without it, neither a constitutional convention nor any amount of nation-building is likely to save us from the elite-power-preserving fascist cycle.

If the current regime can be brought to an end, then it's our chance to begin again with clear-eyed, democratic intent.

© 2025 Mark P. Line
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Please cite appropriately and do not republish without clear attribution.