Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Well, we don't know what will happen. But I think we do know our "reason to exist" as the constitutional nation state we are. It isn't and never was to stave off a foreign "existential enemy", rather to prevent one from arising from within, just what faces us now as nearly half the country is under the spell of a would be dictator.
Not exactly, but we can make educated predictions.
Example; if one child drops out of HS to work at a gas station and other continues to and graduates from college; all data suggests that the college-bound person will be more successful in the long run. Sure, the college grad may end up in prison as a coke-addicted hedge fund manager and the dropout owning the gas station he's worked at for 20 years, but the odds are against it.
Disagreed on your statement about our "reason to exist"(as a nation) since it's clearly spelled out in the Preamble to the Constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
"Common defense", as in Federal oaths of office, means "against all enemies, foreign and domestic".