Decline? Yes. Collapse? No. Collapse would mean CIA spooks scribbling op-eds on Substack and hawking $10-a-month subscriptions like two-bit grifters at a carnival sideshow. The agency boys in their ill-fitting suits, slumped in coffee shops from Langley to Lincoln, churning out think pieces titled “The Death of American Empire: A Personal Journey” or “How I Lost My Clearance and Found Myself.” Picture it: operatives reduced to grinding out conspiracy-laden screeds for an audience of doom-scrolling paranoids, trading cryptic tips on counter-espionage for thumbs-up emojis.

This isn’t a collapse. It’s a slow, shambling descent into mediocrity—less Rome burning and more Rome outsourcing its fire brigade to a Silicon Valley startup promising AI-enhanced water buckets. The spooks wouldn’t vanish into the ether, oh no. They’d pivot. A little less covert action, a little more hustle culture. “Learn how to stage a coup and build your personal brand!” The kind of moral rot that isn’t dramatic, but banal. Bureaucratic.

And that’s how the empire falls—not with a bang, but with a LinkedIn post: “Former clandestine operative seeking new opportunities. Skills include psychological warfare, asset recruitment, and SEO optimization.”

Decline? Yes. Collapse? No. Collapse would mean Goldman Sachs executives ditching their bespoke suits for hoodies and baseball caps, launching NFT collections called Bond Ape Yacht Club and hyping memecoins like GoldenBoiCoin on Twitter Spaces at 3 a.m. It would mean the masters of the universe pivoting to online casinos, hawking sketchy roulette apps with slogans like “Double or Nothing, Baby!” and adopting bizarre Keke Palmer-inspired influencer personas to stay relevant.

Picture it: Lloyd Blankfein rebranded as “CryptoDaddy420,” hosting live streams where he explains fractional reserve banking while doing TikTok dances. Or David Solomon, no longer DJ-ing for private equity parties, but spinning tracks for a metaverse nightclub called Liquidity Trap, offering free “SolomonCoins” with every overpriced cocktail.

Collapse is when Goldman Sachs stops building empires and starts building virtual slot machines, where every spin is a bet against their old dignity. It’s the high-finance sharks rebranding themselves as meme lords, desperately slapping doge faces on dollar signs and posting thirst traps on Instagram to pump the latest Ponzi. Collapse is when the titans of Wall Street get stuck hustling to pay off their own margin calls, swiping right on venture capitalists and pitching “decentralized financial synergy platforms” to crowds of indifferent day traders.

Decline, though? Decline is where we’re at now—Goldman still has its hands on the levers, still squeezing the juice out of the system, but you can see the cracks forming. Collapse is when the juice runs out, and they’re left hawking virtual blackjack in some dystopian e-casino, chanting “to the moon” like the rest of the rubes.

Decline? Yes. Collapse? No.

Collapse is when Hollywood’s not just phoning it in anymore, it’s mainlining pure, uncut digital sewage straight into the veins of the American consciousness. It’s become a goddamn content farm, a festering pustule of spin-offs and reality TV simulacra churning out mountains of digital excrement that’s no longer art, no longer entertainment, no longer even remotely recognizable as storytelling. It’s the Ouroboros on a bad acid trip, devouring its own tail for profit until there’s nothing left but a greasy stain on the digital carpet.

Decline? That’s some half-assed Transformers sequel. Collapse? That’s Hollywood turning into a goddamn NFT vending machine, it’s movies nothing more than flickering delivery systems for monetized absurdity. Imagine Star Wars: Ewok Influencers. Christ on a crutch, what a nightmare. A show designed solely to sell digital skins and loot boxes in some Fortnite-style digital shooting gallery. It’s not entertainment, it’s a goddamn transaction. A digital fleecing.

And then there’s the final, ignominious surrender: the abandonment of film itself. Hollywood shuffles off into the digital void, embracing virtual reality and interactive gaming, ditching those “old-fashioned” movies because they’re too damn difficult to monetize effectively. The focus shifts entirely to endless monetization schemes—pay-to-win models, microtransactions embedded in the goddamn content itself. You don’t watch The Avengers: Cash Grab Chronicles; you pay five bucks every time Iron Man wants to throw a goddamn punch. It’s a digital bloodletting.

Even the projects greenlit for nostalgia or marketability become self-aware cash grabs, openly mocking the audience’s pathetic willingness to consume this digital garbage. Jurassic Park 12: Dinosaurs on Mars. No plot. Just dinosaurs, explosions, and random celebrity cameos, marketed as “The ultimate cinematic experience for our ADHD era!” It’s a goddamn insult. A digital middle finger to the remnants of taste.