For some interesing history on how Congress pissing off the Public is hardly new see:

The Continental congress at Princeton, by Varnum Lansing Collins(accessible at Google Books)

It recounts the cicumstances surrounding the 1783 Mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line and the resultant flight of the Continental Congress to Princton.

Such helped cement the notion of our country as a Great Republic, not a Demcracy subject to the vagueries of "mob rule".

We have the means for peaceful revolution in our hands every 2-4 years. We must simply execute it, or we get the representives we deserve.

Of course that does not mean that I would feel sorry for the current Congreff Affembled if history were to repeat itself...

I also hardly think the collapse of civilaization as we know it is nigh. The nightmare scenarios require that in effect the result of the world agrees to fiddle while we burn and see their own financial ruin. The US would not collapse without taking the rest of the world down with it. In the era of Globalism, we are "too big to fail".