I used to wonder what the collapse of the Soviet Union really meant for America.  I remember having a discussion at the time with a friend who thought it was a great victory for the US, and perhaps it was.  But I couldn’t help but wonder where we go from here.  The modern, post-War II America was more or less defined, for better and worse, by the Cold War.  What would happen with that gone?  I remember worrying about corruption, without an existential enemy to pull us together and keep a lid on our worst impulses.  Today it looks like we are traveling a similar road to the post-Soviet USSR, with our oligarchs and inequality and our divorce from much of reality.  From the New Yorker.

Why America Feels Like a Post-Soviet State