The failure of American democracy is scientifically predictable. 

There’s only one thing that we know for sure, and that is that there’s absolutely nothing that we can be sure about.

Well, that’s not exactly true, because there are some exceptions—like the stoic wisdom in Benjamin Franklin’s oft-quoted quip from his 1789 letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy: “'Nothing is certain except death and taxes.”

Actually, Franklin’s popular adage was framed in the acknowledgement, that the then-new Constitution had been established and ratified and appeared to have a promise of permanency.

Although the U.S. did not have taxes at the time, and while the concept of death was something universal, Franklin’s wisdom seems to have exceeded his knack for prophecy.

Like all the Founding Fathers, he had a wonderful dream, anticipating that the new country, founded on enduring principles, would stand forever. But unfortunately, great dreams don’t always work out.

Despite the outstretched arms of Lady Liberty, we’re now finding that our Constitution may not be so durable after all, that the most basic foundations of our democracy can be torn asunder by bad leadership—coupled with legislative complicity—and that the law of entropy may well apply to the American democratic experiment.

Unfamiliar with the word “Entropy?” The concept of entropy provides deep insight into the direction of spontaneous change for many everyday phenomena. The principle was first proposed by the German physicist Rudolph Clausius in 1850 and became a highlight of the 19th century study of physics.

Rather than reducing it down to a complex mathematical equation, the law of entropy can be described in more colloquial terms: Any system will have a tendency to move from organization to disorganization, from order to disorder, from functionality to chaos.

Applied to America’s present situation, entropy describes how—in the total absence of any intelligent, competent, rational, organizational leadership—our country may be destined to devolve into a catastrophic mess.

As Americans become more angry and disenfranchised by the actions of a government that was once established to protect their rights, it seems to be our turn to face the very same kind of futility that brought so many millions of the “tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to America’s shores.

But witnessing and experiencing are two different matters. Many of us are not those who are at risk of suffering the most. After all, it’s not the successful, well-heeled and comfortable Americans who are feeling the impact of our disintegrating system.

It’s the children, left without healthcare. It’s the forgotten derelicts of the big city gutters. It’s the workers, struggling against the reality that their time-clock-punching minimum wages are simply inadequate to feed themselves and their kids. It’s the people who worked all their lives, understanding that their contributions to Social Security would provide them with a reliable retirement income. It’s the hardworking immigrants who came to this country seeking relief from the futility of their “shithole country” lives. It’s the small business owner, seeing his/her company threatened by the imposition of unnecessary and destructively selective tariffs—unlike the mega-businesses that have received the bulk of the favorable, massive tax cuts. It’s the congenitally challenged, impaired or disabled Americans whose lifelines to a better life are being cut. They’re the ones who are going to suffer.

Americans and their world neighbors are seeing a wholesale disintegration of the quality of order that has held our nation together through its impressively long history. What once seemed impossible is happening.

The Grim Reaper of civilizations is knocking at America’s door. Those things that we once took for granted, with the belief and reassurance that our nation was founded on certain inalienable rights, are now proven to be fleeting.

Oh yes, we’ve come close, during some periods of our history, to achieving something that could have endured the test of time. But without a renewed commitment to solving problems—rather than taking a torch to so many of America’s most valuable institutions—we really are on the verge of becoming just another failed system.

I hate to be pessimistic, my friends, but things aren’t getting any better. The United States is well on its way to becoming just like all the other failed societies in history.

One has to wonder—how did the democratic dream fizzle into an unachievable quest? There have certainly been times in the past when our country’s ideals shone brightly and America was considered a torchbearer for humanity.

That has come to a grinding halt, as a small handful of misguided zealots and their puppet leader have decided that they are the only ones who count, and that the rest of America should accept a new concept for democracy—an idiocracy in which the minority rules, inept idiots and the criminally-inclined are given positions of great power and influence, and everyone else is supposed to just lie down and accept the concept of rape.

Were all hoping that this “terminal agitation” and the beginnings of a death rattle won’t be followed by America’s funeral. Write to your legislators; participate in peaceful demonstrations; respect the laws—those same ones that leadership seems to have forgotten—and never give up hope.