Homer-Dixon: US could be governed by right-winged dictatorship by 2030

Complexity researcher Thomas Homer-Dixon, director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads and author of Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril warns, in a new opinion piece published in The Globe and Mail, that “a terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared” for a possible “collapse of American democracy.”

Here’s some of what he had to say:

"By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship."

Homer-Dixon argues that "what seems to have pushed the United States to the brink of losing its democracy today is a multiplication effect between its underlying flaws and recent shifts in the society's 'material' characteristics. These shifts include stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity, and rising inequality as the country's economy — transformed by technological change and globalization — has transitioned from muscle power, heavy industry, and manufacturing as the main sources of its wealth to idea power, information technology, symbolic production, and finance. America's economic, racial and social gaps have helped cause ideological polarization between the political right and left, and the worsening polarization has paralyzed government while aggravating the gaps.”

Read the articles in The Guardian (1) , The Guardian (2), Salon, Yahoo! News, MSN Indy 100 and RawStory. Read the full opinion piece in The Globe and Mail (article is behind paywall).