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Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it.

The frenzy to bury Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. They are working hand in hand with what was considered the cream of the nation's news organizations.

The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.

The largest broadcast networks - CBS, NBC and ABC - and major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.

Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang suffers the daily beating that Trump does. The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.

By torching its remaining credibility in service of Clinton, the mainstream media's reputations will likely never recover, nor will the standards. No future producer, editor, reporter or anchor can be expected to meet a test of fairness when that standard has been trashed in such willful and blatant fashion.

Liberal bias in journalism is often baked into the cake. The traditional ethos of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable leads to demands that government solve every problem. Favoring big government, then, becomes routine among most journalists, especially young ones.

I know because I was one of them. I started at the Times while the Vietnam War and civil rights movement raged, and was full of certainty about right and wrong.

My editors were, too, though in a different way. Our boss of bosses, the legendary Abe Rosenthal, knew his reporters leaned left, so he leaned right to "keep the paper straight."

That meant the Times, except for the opinion pages, was scrubbed free of reporters' political views, an edict that was enforced by giving the opinion and news operations separate editors. The church-and-state structure was one reason the Times was considered the flagship of journalism.

Those days are gone. The Times now is so out of the closet as a Clinton shill that it is giving itself permission to violate any semblance of evenhandedness in its news pages as well as its opinion pages.

A recent article by its media reporter, Jim Rutenberg, whom I know and like, began this way: "If you're a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation's worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?"

Whoa, Nellie. The clear assumption is that many reporters see Trump that way, and it is noteworthy that no similar question is raised about Clinton, whose scandals are deserving only of "scrutiny." Rutenberg approvingly cites a leftist journalist who calls one candidate "normal" and the other "abnormal."

Clinton is hardly "normal" to the 68 percent of Americans who find her dishonest and untrustworthy, though apparently not a single one of those people writes for the Times. Statistically, that makes the Times "abnormal."

Also, you don't need to be a detective to hear echoes in that first paragraph of Clinton speeches and ads, including those featured prominently on the Times' website. In effect, the paper has seamlessly adopted Clinton's view as its own, then tries to justify its coverage.

It's an impossible task, and Rutenberg fails because he must. Any reporter who agrees with Clinton about Trump has no business covering either candidate.

It's pure bias, which the Times fancies itself an expert in detecting in others, but is blissfully tolerant of in itself. And with the top political editor quoted in the story as approving the one-sided coverage as necessary and deserving, the prejudice is now official policy.

It's a historic mistake and a complete break with the paper's own traditions. Instead of dropping its standards, the Times should bend over backwards to enforce them, even while acknowledging that Trump is a rare breed. That's the whole point of standards - they are designed to guide decisions not just in easy cases, but in all cases, to preserve trust.

The Times, of course, is not alone in becoming unhinged over Trump, but that's also the point. It used to be unique because of its adherence to fairness.

Now its only standard is a double standard, one that it proudly confesses. Shame would be more appropriate.

You can't subsidize freedom

A Cato Institute study finds that New York is the least free of the 50 states because of its high tax burden, huge debt and regulatory stranglehold. Another factor is business subsidies, which are almost four times the national average.

At first blush, that one might sound like a good thing. Don't we want businesses to create jobs, and shouldn't the state help by subsidizing employers?

Yes, and no. A current housing example proves the point.

A program called 421-a provided a property tax break to developers in exchange for lower rents on some apartments. It lapsed last January, and a bid to revive it has the state adding another layer of incentives.

The measure reportedly proposes that laborers get at least $50 an hour in wages and benefits, with the state paying 30 percent of it in less ritzy parts of the city.

Here's the catch: Where does the state subsidy money come from? Other taxpayers - that's where.

With the state already projecting a budget deficit, other tax hikes might follow, which would make living here even less affordable.

In essence, then, the state and city already have such high taxes that, to get affordable housing, they must take money from other people to subsidize both developers and workers.

What does any of this have to do with free markets and capitalism? Nothing. Which is why Cato is exactly right that New York has a freedom deficit.

Clinton and Bratton's political play

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton emerged from a meeting with Hillary Clinton gushing about her "ideas" and "experience," as dutifully noted by numerous news organizations. But most failed to note that Bratton is leaving the NYPD for a job with Teneo, a corporate cousin of Clinton Inc.

It's probably also just a coincidence that Bratton is cozy with the candidate whom his current boss, the mayor, has endorsed.

Imagine the howling if a police commissioner showered praise on someone the mayor opposed.

Good reasons why active law enforcement should butt out of politics.

Tokin' gesture

Headline: "Obama rips daughter Malia for smoking pot"

So even the president is subject to the parent trap: Do as I say, not as I did.

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American journalism is collapsing before our eyes

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Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it.

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Anyone spending this election season in the Eternal City, as I am doing, is bound sooner or later to think about the Colosseum. After all, we Americans have one candidate running for Empress and another running for Gladiator. Can't we feed them both to the lions? That's what many voters wish.

Just as in the ancient arena so today the line between entertainment and politics has disappeared and both have become blood sports. Somewhere between the orgy of attention to sex and corruption and the spectacle of the debates a sinking feeling has set in: America is Rome 2.0, in decline and headed for a fall.

Just think about what Rome had and what we have. Morals out of a bacchanalia? Check. Abuse of public office for private purposes? Check. Bread (welfare) and circuses (reality TV) for the masses? Check. Oh the times, oh the customs! Where is Cicero when we need him?

And yet a little perspective is in order. Ever since the founding of the Republic Americans have compared themselves to Rome. But it was often to an idealized version of Rome, all marble statues and high-flown rhetoric, never mind the tenements or the slaves. It came as close to the ancient reality as frozen pizza does to the hot and passionate platter from the wood-burning ovens of Naples (Italy, that is, not Florida).

The barbarians are not at the gate. Whoever wins the election, the country will go on to debate its differences peacefully and politically. The loser will get a TV show or a foundation and the winner is likely to face a Congress reawakened to the exercise of its powers.

America is America. We intellectuals worry too much. Besides, we can't be Rome because in Rome women, not men, had big hair and office-seekers burned incriminating letters before others could read them.

But seriously, just because we have two flawed candidates running for president it doesn't mean that we've reached the end of the line.

Unlike the Roman Republic, we are not faced with a choice between Pompey and Caesar. Those two towering egotists - well, alright, we do have that in common with Rome - squared off in the middle of the first century B.C. to hijack the republic for themselves. Their bitter conflict caused a civil war that destroyed them both.

Then came another clash of titans, this time Mark Antony versus Octavian. Octavian won and restored peace to Rome, but only at the price of turning the republic into an empire. He became the first emperor and changed his name to Augustus.

We are nowhere near that point. The barbarians are not at the gate. Whoever wins the election, the country will go on to debate its differences peacefully and politically. The loser will get a TV show or a foundation and the winner is likely to face a Congress reawakened to the exercise of its powers. And before you know it, we'll be handicapping the midterm elections of 2018.

There is, however, one way in which the United States is like Rome and that is, we are a country in translation. Immigration has changed who Americans are. Digitalization has changed how we communicate. Robots will soon change how we work. In short we are living through a series of revolutions that will transform America no less thoroughly than Greek intellectuals and German warriors transformed ancient Rome.

We cannot stop these changes any more than the Romans could stop the changes in their world. We can and will disagree about how to respond to them. Indeed, debating that response is the Number One task facing our society.

One thing is for sure, though, and it's that we need to do more than simply cling to the past. We need to learn from it and then make our own future.

So, relax, America. We're having a bad election and we're making a spectacle of ourselves before the world. The world is a lot less than puritanical than we are anyhow.

Romans hated losing their empire but, you know what? La dolce vita is a nice consolation prize.

Barry Strauss, professor of history at Cornell, is the author of " The Death of Julius Caesar: The Story of History's Most Famous Assassination" (Simon & Schuster, March 2015). Follow him on Twitter @barrystrauss.

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Is America collapsing like the Roman Empire?

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Anyone spending this election season in the Eternal City, as I am doing, is bound sooner or later to think about the Colosseum. After all, we Americans have one candidate running for Empress and another running for Gladiator. Can't we feed them both to the lions? That's what many voters wish.

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The current French ambassador to the United States has tweeted that the "world is collapsing before our eyes" as Donald Trump looks set to become US President.

Gerard Araud, who is the serving ambassador, tweeting his remarks as forecasters predict the Republican billionaire will defeat Hillary Clinton.

The 63-year-old said: "After Brexit and this election, everything is now possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes. Dizziness."

The experienced diplomat would need to work with Trump and his team if the Republican becomes President, making his remarks all the more astonishing. He later deleted the tweet.

Forecasters in the US are now predicting that Trump will defeat Clinton to become the next US President.

Global financial markets have gone into freefall. The US dollar sank and stock markets slammed into reverse as investors faced the real possibility of a shock win by the Republican candidate that could upend the global political order.

Every new exit poll in the U.S. presidential election showed the race to be a nail-biter, sending investors stampeding to safe-haven assets.

Observers say the Dow Futures in the US is lower now than it was the day after 9/11.

Contests in key battleground states were too close to call throughout the night, severely denting Clinton's hopes of becoming the first female president in US history.

In a message which appeared to betray the nervousness in the Clinton camp, the Democratic nominee thanked her supporters "whatever happens tonight".

Ohio was won by Barack Obama for the Democrats in 2012, but Republican nominee Mr Trump's campaign has targeted the bellwether state, which has voted for the eventual occupant of the White House in every election since 1960.

Florida voted Democrat in 2012 and Mrs Clinton's hopes may hinge on a high turnout among Latino voters opposed to Mr Trump, who has courted controversy in the campaign with outspoken attacks on Mexican immigrants.

The dollar tumbled and Asian shares shed early gains as Mr Trump powered ahead with some impressive early results.

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French ambassador to the US tweets astonishing remark as Trump looks set to win

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The current French ambassador to the United States has tweeted that the "world is collapsing before our eyes" as Donald Trump looks set to become US President. Gerard Araud, who is the serving ambassador, tweeting his remarks as forecasters predict the Republican billionaire will defeat Hillary Clinton.

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Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the United States of America? All great nations eventually fall, and the United States is not going to be any exception.
Many of those that write about the decline of our once great country tend to focus on external threats, and there are certainly many that could be talked about. But perhaps even more ominous is the internal societal meltdown that we see happening all around us. According to Real Clear Politics, recent surveys show that 67 percent of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track, and only 26 percent of Americans believe that it is headed in the right direction. So even though we are tremendously divided as to what the solutions are, the vast majority of us can see that something is deeply, deeply wrong with America.

Personally, I spend a lot of time writing about our economic problems. We have piled up the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, last year the middle class became a minority for the first time in our history, and 47 percent of all Americans couldn't even pay an unexpected $400 emergency room bill without borrowing the money or selling something. But I don't want to focus on economics in this article.

Neither do I plan to focus on our political problems. The fact that somewhere around half the country plans to vote for Hillary Clinton in November shows just how far gone we are as a nation. And the Republican Party is essentially just a watered-down version of the Democrats at this point. On average, Congress has just a 14.5 percent approval rating, and yet we keep sending the same corrupt politicians back to Washington D.C. time after time.

What in the world is wrong with us?

Physically we are a giant mess too. According to USA Today, the obesity rate in the United States has more than doubled over the past 25 years, and the OECD has found that the U.S. has the most overweight population in the entire industrialized world by a wide margin.

But our physical problems are not going to be the focus of this article either.

Instead, I want to focus on what is going on inside our heads and inside our hearts. I want to focus on our mental, emotional and spiritual problems.

Alvin Conway of The Extinction Protocol has been chronicling global disasters for years, and he has just posted an insightful piece in which he comments on the growing social decay that we see all around us...

According to Covenant Eyes, an internet search group, 1 out of 5 mobile searches on the internet involves pornography. Illegal drugs continue to be both manufactured and transported into the U.S. with no apparent way of halting or stopping the flow. In the US alone, more than 15 million people abuse prescription drugs, more than the combined number of people who reportedly abuse cocaine, hallucinogens, inhalants and heroin. If the war against drugs can't be won, what luck will we ever have winning the war on terror? Does anyone remember who won Lyndon B. Johnson's famed war on poverty? Regardless, let's throw some more taxpayers' money at an issues that money along can't fix.

Later in his article, Conway goes on to link this social decay with the spiritual decline of our nation...

According to Pew Forum, the number of people who claim to be religious in America is declining as the country becomes more and more secular. "Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated - describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" - has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%." The U.S. is beginning to look more and more like ancient Rome before it collapsed.

I agree with Conway. America is starting to look more and more like the Roman Empire just before it collapsed.

A nation is only as strong as its population, and right now we are quite a disaster. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the suicide rate in the United States has spiked to the highest level in almost 30 years. The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post article entitled " U.S. suicide rate has risen sharply in the 21st century "...

The U.S. suicide rate has increased sharply since the turn of the century, led by an even greater rise among middle-aged white people, particularly women, according to federal data released Friday.

Last decade's severe recession, more drug addiction, "gray divorce," increased social isolation, and even the rise of the Internet and social media may have contributed to the growth in suicide, according to a variety of people who study the issue.

That same article goes on to say that the suicide rate in this country increased by a whopping 24 percent from 1999 to 2014.

Is that a sign of a healthy nation?

At this point things have gotten so bad that even 70 percent of our pastors are battling depression. The following was authored by respected journalist Jennifer LeClaire ...

There is no lack of statistics about pastors and depression, burnout, health, low pay, spirituality, relationships and longevity-and none of them are good. According to the Schaeffer Institute, 70 percent of pastors constantly fight depression, and 71 percent are burned out. Meanwhile, 72 percent of pastors say they only study the Bible when they are preparing for sermons; 80 percent believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families; and 70 percent say they don't have a close friend.

The Schaeffer Institute also reports that 80 percent of seminary and Bible school graduates will leave the ministry within five years.

We are a deeply, deeply unhappy nation, and we have been trained to turn to pills as the solution.

According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 59 percent of all U.S. adults are on at least one prescription drug at this point, and 15 percent of all U.S. adults are on at least five prescription drugs.

Those are absolutely astounding numbers to me. We are the most drugged up nation on the face of the planet, and yet we just keep on getting less happy.

Here are some more selected numbers from a previous article that back up that claim...

-Back in 1987, 61.1 percent of all Americans reported being happy at work. Today, 52.3 percent of all Americans say that they are unhappy at work.

-A different survey found that 70 percent of all Americans do not "feel engaged or inspired at their jobs".

-One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were "very happy".

-The number of Americans diagnosed with depression increases by about 20 percent each year.

-According to the New York Times, more than 30 million Americans take antidepressants.

-Doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.

-The rate of antidepressant use among middle aged women is far higher than for the population as a whole. It is hard to believe, but right now one out of every four women in their 40s and 50s is taking an antidepressant medication.

-Compared to children in Europe, children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants.

-In America today, there are 60 million people that abuse alcohol and there are 22 million people that use illegal drugs.

-America has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.

-America has the highest divorce rate in the world by a wide margin.

-America has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.

-100 years ago, 4.52 people were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.

We are more isolated, more lonely and more miserable than we have ever been before.

But does that mean that we are on the verge of collapsing as a nation?

Just like during the days of the Roman Empire, most Americans cannot even conceive of a time when America will be no more. And yet we can all see that the foundations are being constantly chipped away at.

Will we be able to survive once our foundations are totally gone?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...

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Unhappy America: Will The United States Collapse Due To An Internal Societal Meltdown?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the United States of America? All great nations eventually fall, and the United States is not going to be any exception. Many of those that write about the decline of our once great country tend to focus on external threats, and there are certainly many that could be talked about.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the United States of America? All great nations eventually fall, and the United States is not going to be any exception.
Many of those that write about the decline of our once great country tend to focus on external threats, and there are certainly many that could be talked about. But perhaps even more ominous is the internal societal meltdown that we see happening all around us. According to Real Clear Politics, recent surveys show that 67 percent of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track, and only 26 percent of Americans believe that it is headed in the right direction. So even though we are tremendously divided as to what the solutions are, the vast majority of us can see that something is deeply, deeply wrong with America.

Personally, I spend a lot of time writing about our economic problems. We have piled up the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, last year the middle class became a minority for the first time in our history, and 47 percent of all Americans couldn't even pay an unexpected $400 emergency room bill without borrowing the money or selling something. But I don't want to focus on economics in this article.

Neither do I plan to focus on our political problems. The fact that somewhere around half the country plans to vote for Hillary Clinton in November shows just how far gone we are as a nation. And the Republican Party is essentially just a watered-down version of the Democrats at this point. On average, Congress has just a 14.5 percent approval rating, and yet we keep sending the same corrupt politicians back to Washington D.C. time after time.

What in the world is wrong with us?

Physically we are a giant mess too. According to USA Today, the obesity rate in the United States has more than doubled over the past 25 years, and the OECD has found that the U.S. has the most overweight population in the entire industrialized world by a wide margin.

But our physical problems are not going to be the focus of this article either.

Instead, I want to focus on what is going on inside our heads and inside our hearts. I want to focus on our mental, emotional and spiritual problems.

Alvin Conway of The Extinction Protocol has been chronicling global disasters for years, and he has just posted an insightful piece in which he comments on the growing social decay that we see all around us...

According to Covenant Eyes, an internet search group, 1 out of 5 mobile searches on the internet involves pornography. Illegal drugs continue to be both manufactured and transported into the U.S. with no apparent way of halting or stopping the flow. In the US alone, more than 15 million people abuse prescription drugs, more than the combined number of people who reportedly abuse cocaine, hallucinogens, inhalants and heroin. If the war against drugs can't be won, what luck will we ever have winning the war on terror? Does anyone remember who won Lyndon B. Johnson's famed war on poverty? Regardless, let's throw some more taxpayers' money at an issues that money along can't fix.

Later in his article, Conway goes on to link this social decay with the spiritual decline of our nation...

According to Pew Forum, the number of people who claim to be religious in America is declining as the country becomes more and more secular. "Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated - describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" - has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%." The U.S. is beginning to look more and more like ancient Rome before it collapsed.

I agree with Conway. America is starting to look more and more like the Roman Empire just before it collapsed.

A nation is only as strong as its population, and right now we are quite a disaster. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the suicide rate in the United States has spiked to the highest level in almost 30 years. The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post article entitled " U.S. suicide rate has risen sharply in the 21st century "...

The U.S. suicide rate has increased sharply since the turn of the century, led by an even greater rise among middle-aged white people, particularly women, according to federal data released Friday.

Last decade's severe recession, more drug addiction, "gray divorce," increased social isolation, and even the rise of the Internet and social media may have contributed to the growth in suicide, according to a variety of people who study the issue.

That same article goes on to say that the suicide rate in this country increased by a whopping 24 percent from 1999 to 2014.

Is that a sign of a healthy nation?

At this point things have gotten so bad that even 70 percent of our pastors are battling depression. The following was authored by respected journalist Jennifer LeClaire ...

There is no lack of statistics about pastors and depression, burnout, health, low pay, spirituality, relationships and longevity-and none of them are good. According to the Schaeffer Institute, 70 percent of pastors constantly fight depression, and 71 percent are burned out. Meanwhile, 72 percent of pastors say they only study the Bible when they are preparing for sermons; 80 percent believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families; and 70 percent say they don't have a close friend.

The Schaeffer Institute also reports that 80 percent of seminary and Bible school graduates will leave the ministry within five years.

We are a deeply, deeply unhappy nation, and we have been trained to turn to pills as the solution.

According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 59 percent of all U.S. adults are on at least one prescription drug at this point, and 15 percent of all U.S. adults are on at least five prescription drugs.

Those are absolutely astounding numbers to me. We are the most drugged up nation on the face of the planet, and yet we just keep on getting less happy.

Here are some more selected numbers from a previous article that back up that claim...

-Back in 1987, 61.1 percent of all Americans reported being happy at work. Today, 52.3 percent of all Americans say that they are unhappy at work.

-A different survey found that 70 percent of all Americans do not "feel engaged or inspired at their jobs".

-One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were "very happy".

-The number of Americans diagnosed with depression increases by about 20 percent each year.

-According to the New York Times, more than 30 million Americans take antidepressants.

-Doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.

-The rate of antidepressant use among middle aged women is far higher than for the population as a whole. It is hard to believe, but right now one out of every four women in their 40s and 50s is taking an antidepressant medication.

-Compared to children in Europe, children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants.

-In America today, there are 60 million people that abuse alcohol and there are 22 million people that use illegal drugs.

-America has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.

-America has the highest divorce rate in the world by a wide margin.

-America has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.

-100 years ago, 4.52 people were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people.

We are more isolated, more lonely and more miserable than we have ever been before.

But does that mean that we are on the verge of collapsing as a nation?

Just like during the days of the Roman Empire, most Americans cannot even conceive of a time when America will be no more. And yet we can all see that the foundations are being constantly chipped away at.

Will we be able to survive once our foundations are totally gone?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Unhappy America: Will The United States Collapse Due To An Internal Societal Meltdown?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the United States of America? All great nations eventually fall, and the United States is not going to be any exception. Many of those that write about the decline of our once great country tend to focus on external threats, and there are certainly many that could be talked about.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A sociologist credited with predicting the fall of the Soviet Union has warned that US global power is in a phase of accelerated decline under the leadership of Donald Trump - and will collapse while the property mogul is the White House.

Norwegian professor Johan Galtung is known as the "founding father" of peace studies as a scientific subject and is recognised for correctly predicting numerous historical events, among them the Tiananmen Square uprising in China and the September 11 attacks.

He attracted controversy in 2000 when he predicted US global power would collapse by 2025.

But under the Bush administration he revised his forecast for the collapse to 2020. Now, he says that reality that is materialising following election of the bombastic billionaire.

Mr Trump's election on an anti-immigrant platform coincides with one of the final phases of the decline predicted in the social scientist's 2009 book The Fall of the American Empire-and then What? where he forecast the rise of facism before the country's power receded.

The President-elect has vowed to deport three million illegal immigrants as soon as he enters office and build a wall along the American border with Mexico.

He told Motherboard the election of Mr Trump "speeds up the decline", although he qualified the statement, saying: "Of course, what he does as a President remains to be seen."

Dr Galtung added that the President-elect's critical attitude to Nato also indicated the US would cease to be a superpower.

The Republican has previously indicated the US might not come to the aid of those in the alliance if they failed to meet the designated defence spending.

"The collapse has two faces," Dr Galtung told the tech news site, "Other countries refuse to be good allies and the USA has to do the killing themselves, by bombing from high altitudes, drones steered by computer from an office, special forces killing all over the place.

"Both are happening today, except for Northern Europe, which supports these wars, for now. That will probably not continue beyond 2020, so I stand by that deadline."

Yet Xenia Wickett, head of the US and Americas programme at think-tank Chatham House told The Independent it was "totally unrealistic" to believe the US would stop being a global power by 2020.

"The US is a global power for many reasons. It has the strongest military in the world, it has the most robust soft power in terms of its universities, [...] in terms of its companies and in terms of the reach of its media. It also remains the biggest economy in the world. The idea that any of these things are going to change in the next four years is unrealistic."

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Nobel prize nominee who predicted 9/11 and the fall of the Berlin wall has a terrifying message about Trump

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A sociologist credited with predicting the fall of the Soviet Union has warned that US global power is in a phase of accelerated decline under the leadership of Donald Trump - and will collapse while the property mogul is the White House.