Prophecy is a difficult profession at the best of times. And in the midst of an avalanche of societal dislocations such as we are experiencing currently it becomes impossible to realistically predict what will happen next. I mean, you know certain trends are heading in a direction that leads to a certain end. But with so many moving parts it’s very difficult to know which trend will lead to which catastrophe first. Think about it. Will hyperinflation ignite first or will massive unemployment precede it? Will severe food shortages happen before severe energy shortages? Will civil unrest in the United States reach a crisis level or will a foreign war pre-empt it? I think it’s very difficult to claim that all of these factors can be predicted in a particular way and with a particular set of outcomes. Anyway, that’s what seems to be the case to me.
But what is certain is that the stable system that we lived in for decades is no longer a viable option for the future. Going back to what I said a few days ago, an important, but invisible part of the American way of life was the trust of the people in the system. And by system, I mean the underlying myths of how our country worked. We believed that the courts were fair and that the law was administered equally for all and that the rights that we were told we had under the constitution were inviolable. We never thought about how this trust influenced everything around us. We never thought about how our belief in the courts and the federal government allowed us to live our lives without fear or suspicion. We knew that the government would make sure that medicines would be monitored for safety and efficacy. Banks would be regulated to prevent our life-savings from being stolen. The IRS would never weaponize the tax information of a politician based on partisan considerations. The FBI would never collude with partisan judges to set up a gulag for political enemies. The media companies would never partner with the federal government to silence dissenting voices or even blackout a news story that revealed government wrongdoing.
All these things were unthinkable. And because we couldn’t imagine such things happening in the freest country on Earth we lived contentedly and allowed our elected and appointed officials enormous power and free reign over our society.
So, we all know how that’s turned out.
My point is that, even in the face of the myriad of unknown factors and interactions that will determine the future, the one future that will not happen is returning to what was here before. The possibility of a population with that level of naivete no longer exists. Our stupidity has been beaten out of us by decades of unmistakable dishonesty and malice aimed directly at the citizens of this country. Trusting the bureaucrats, politicians, business leaders, law enforcement agencies, judges and generals who have lied to us and victimized us at every turn is an impossibility.
And this lack of trust means certain things will not work the same. Can you imagine trusting your eighteen-year-old sons to Joe Biden to fight a war? I hear the recruiting efforts for the military branches have been terrible. The quantity and more importantly the quality of the volunteers has plummeted. And the number of people willing to be vaccinated for the COVID virus has also plummeted. Likewise the number of people taking their kids out of the public schools is greatly increasing. Whether home-schooling or going to private or religious schools these parents don’t trust their kids to the state. And the number of people fleeing blue states to find refuge in relatively freer red states is at an all-time high.
And this will only get worse. As the dysfunction of the federal government worsens people will be looking for other things to trust and depend on. Possibly one or more of the red states will try to fill this gap. But it’s a certainty that the old high trust environment we once knew will not be back. We’ll put our trust in ourselves.
“Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.”