I agree entirely.

Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.

Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.

Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.

> by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins

If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?

GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years? Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies? Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies? Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)? Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days? Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually?

I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.

I’d argue we’re already there with all the social fragmentation but I reckon we’ll see a measurable decline in scientific output / discovery.

Patents? Journal articles published?

Funding is already falling ie NSF disbursements so I’d expect the h-index to fall off significantly. So sure patents will fall, journal pubs will fall, enrollment will fall, staff count will fall, total experiment count will fall, grant count will fall.