What do you think comes after impeachment and the imminent breakup of sports, social media, consumer culture and the Republican Party?
These charts come from Peter Turchin’s excellent book Age of Discord.
I would love to see what the data looks like updated to 2020.
I wish I had a time machine so I could go back 220 years and have a very long talk with Thomas Jefferson.
I didn’t need a graph to see this coming. My only surprise is that an uncivil war didn’t break out ten years ago.
Social media has brought physically distant peoples closer together, and after getting to know each other quite well, we’ve realized we despise each other. While we’d be fine to separate and rule ourselves, the other side hates so much they can’t tolerate our existence.
It’s a more ‘organized / funded’ evil that charts can’t predict.
Proverbs 6:12-15 A scoundrel and a villain goes around with crooked speech, winking the eyes, shuffling the feet, pointing the fingers, with perverted mind devising evil, continually sowing DISCORD; on such a one calamity will descend suddenly; in a moment, damage beyond repair.
“What do you think comes after impeachment and the imminent breakup of sports, social media, consumer culture and the Republican Party?”
The country, as demonstrated by this quote, is breaking up – balkanizing, if you will.
Eventually, the entire political basis of the country (The Union) must fall in line with the people, the ever variant laws, and the culture.
That so, what I see next is a dissolution of the United States into numerous confederacies, some of those based on sovereign states, others not.
If you think it could not happen, then let me ask you this – how many do you think would fight for The Union today, as is?
The only constituency I see that is bullish on the current United States are people of 60+ years of age.
How can you preserve a union with just that constituency?
Right, you cannot.
So, the answer is coming – new confederacies.
We are undergoing a very similar process to that which Russia underwent, as The Soviet Union, in the 1980s.
There will be a moment when that Wall tumbles down, and so does the union, at which point sanity will gradually resurface.
Until then, just a like a patient who has a gangrenous leg, yet delays having it amputated, we will continue to be a populace the colour of sickly green.
As there is primarily a rural/urban divide in the US, I see intrastate divisions coming. Whether those divisions become officially sanctioned or not, they’re on the way.
@Boomer…
Yes, Sir – I’ve been thinking about such a thing for perhaps 5 years now.
I see things evolving to where they were before the so-called Nationalist Age in Europe made a few big countries from many small, when there were many small countries and many completely independent city-states.
Thank you for confirming my inner ruminations!
@Boomer…
Where I live I refer to as The Confederate State of ‘Virlina’ – this because it, straddling all the way across the border of North Carolina/Virginia is, an ole-timey Southern State almost entirely out of touch with Raleigh and Richmond.
I remember Gore Vidal wrote of the four American republics. The first was the Revolution leading to the Articles of Confederation, then came the Constitution, This republic lasted until 1861, Then came the second republic, a plutocracy and expansionist, which ended in the Great Depression. The third republic was what FDR built, a welfare state and American empire. Vidal predicted this was coming to and end in the 80’s. what came nest? 9-11 and the national security state/ relentless defender of Israel and corporations. Here we are now.
If you read Tom Chittum’s Civil War Two, he said the second civil war would start in 2020 in Los Angeles, when the Mexican Americans finally say the hell with it and go for Aztlan. Comments?
@Dargasan…
I have maintained for several years that whatever change is coming in this country, it would be precipitated by actions taken in the Coastal Northwest.
Those people are very impatient to get to where they want to go, and, I note, it is a place to which the heartland of this country, including the heartland of the Northwest Pacific States, is not at all keen to go.
All the Mexicans I know in The South, and that is many, are interested in work, family, and peacefulness.
Almost all of them are in exile here, and glad to have a safe place from the madness that has overtaken their home.