Before I write my first speculative essays that will talk about late 2023 and beyond, I want to mention that non-political changes have happened in recent years that most Americans have not noticed because political change has dominated our attention since 2016.
There was a widely-read book called Megatrends published in 1982 that did a good job focusing attention on new trends back then.
Globalism, and the switch from smokestack industry to high tech, were some of the things John Naisbitt discussed in that book.
After that book, these other megatrends also happened:
The collapse of the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War, about 1989.
The Internet beginning in the mid 1990s.
The rise of China economically beginning in September, 2000 when they were given most favored nation status.
Smart (internet) cell phones became widespread by 2012.
Covid (since 2020).
Climate change is now happening, not just forecast.
But there are a few other trends that have begun just in the last few years, that most of us haven’t noticed yet, because political change has dominated our attention. There is a new book that just came out in June, that details them, in the spirit of Megatrends forty years ago:
The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan.
Here is Zeihan’s web page:
The new, un-noticed changes that Zeihan’s book is about are these:
Globalism has ended.
China is collapsing. All the factories there are going to return to the US or disappear.
Russia and China are both about to become hermit dictatorships like North Korea but MUCH larger, scary because they have nukes, but incompetent militarily because they are so closed off and so cannot advance technologically.
Demographic collapse, caused by low birth rates, is happening everywhere. The only reason it is not happening in the US is because we had a Gen Z which is partially replacing the baby boomers.
The inflation that began in 2021 is here to stay because of the global demographic collapse just mentioned. It is going to be MUCH worse everywhere else than the US. Also, the Federal Reserve can fight it, because we still have a consumer economy to raise interest rates in, because we are not having demographic collapse. But this will strengthen the dollar, causing money to flow into the US economy, further hurting the rest of the world.
The US is the only place in the world that is not facing societal collapse in the coming years -because of the US dollar just mentioned, because we are not collapsing demographically, because we are isolated by the two oceans from attack, because we have Mexico and other nearby places like Columbia for labor beyond our borders for technological development, and because we have lots of agricultural land and lots of energy resources.
There are other trends too besides these main ones. I highly recommend Zeihan’s book and his YouTube videos.
…So…
My coming speculative essays on New Harmony about political breakup will be against this backdrop.
These trends underscore how terrible it will be if the US becomes a full-blown right-wing dictatorship beginning in 2023 or 2024, right when the other countries in the world will need us because they will be collapsing but we will not. What a monstrous irony!
If, to avoid this horror, we need to let the approximately 85 million geographically concentrated citizens taking us toward dictatorship become their own independent country, and start the formation of our own countries by the other 245 million of us, where democracy will be stronger once the deep red states are gone, now, more than ever, we must!