The truly ironic thing is that the only way to avoid this fate would have required limiting certain freedoms, such as not allowing the outsourcing of any jobs to other countries. Nationalism as an ideology is the only way a nation survives in the modern world. People wanted the "freedom" to take advantage of having businesses in the U.S. while economically stabbing the U.S. in the back, a bunch of bloated parasites exponentially draining the blood from their host. Of course the aftermath is not enough meaningful jobs to go around. Of course the host economy is eventually going to die.