I can envision a lot of scenarios that are worse than now.
Looking back at history, it's not surprising. Every big empire goes down the same way, by destabilizing and tearing itself up.
The Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Byzantines, the Ottamans, everyone went down the same route. Now of-course with the nukes in question the USA might not just break itself up into pieces, but it definitely might exist only as a shadow of itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions
I love this part specifically: "Reasons cited for sanctions includes Venezuela's poor human rights record", pretty much for all of them.
And then let's look at US's involvements in Latin America:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
Funnily enough, the CIA overthrew Iran's democratically elected government in 1953, only to sanction them when they are not willing to be US's pawns anymore.
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthr...