Prophecy is a difficult profession at the best of times.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I mean, you know certain trends are heading in a direction that leads to a certain end.\u00a0 But with so many moving parts it\u2019s very difficult to know which trend will lead to which catastrophe first.\u00a0 Think about it.\u00a0 Will hyperinflation ignite first or will massive unemployment precede it?\u00a0 Will severe food shortages happen before severe energy shortages?\u00a0 Will civil unrest in the United States reach a crisis level or will a foreign war \u00a0pre-empt it?\u00a0 I think it\u2019s very difficult to claim that all of these factors can be predicted in a particular way and with a particular set of outcomes.\u00a0 Anyway, that\u2019s what seems to be the case to me.<\/p>\n
But what is certain is that the stable system that we lived in for decades is no longer a viable option for the future.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And by system, I mean the underlying myths of how our country worked.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We never thought about how this trust influenced everything around us.\u00a0 We never thought about how our belief in the courts and the federal government allowed us to live our lives without fear or suspicion.\u00a0 We knew that the government would make sure that medicines would be monitored for safety and efficacy.\u00a0 Banks would be regulated to prevent our life-savings from being stolen.\u00a0 The IRS would never weaponize the tax information of a politician based on partisan considerations.\u00a0 The FBI would never collude with partisan judges to set up a gulag for political enemies.\u00a0 The media companies would never partner with the federal government to silence dissenting voices or even blackout a news story that revealed government wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
All these things were unthinkable.\u00a0 And because we couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
So, we all know how that\u2019s turned out.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 The possibility of a population with that level of naivete no longer exists.\u00a0 Our stupidity has been beaten out of us by decades of unmistakable dishonesty and malice aimed directly at the citizens of this country.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And this lack of trust means certain things will not work the same.\u00a0 Can you imagine trusting your eighteen-year-old sons to Joe Biden to fight a war?\u00a0 I hear the recruiting efforts for the military branches have been terrible.\u00a0 The quantity and more importantly the quality of the volunteers has plummeted. \u00a0And the number of people willing to be vaccinated for the COVID virus has also plummeted.\u00a0 Likewise the number of people taking their kids out of the public schools is greatly increasing.\u00a0 Whether home-schooling or going to private or religious schools these parents don\u2019t trust their kids to the state.\u00a0 And the number of people fleeing blue states to find refuge in relatively freer red states is at an all-time high.<\/p>\n
And this will only get worse.\u00a0 As the dysfunction of the federal government worsens people will be looking for other things to trust and depend on.\u00a0 Possibly one or more of the red states will try to fill this gap.\u00a0 But it\u2019s a certainty that the old high trust environment we once knew will not be back.\u00a0 We\u2019ll put our trust in ourselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cFool me once shame on you.\u00a0 Fool me twice shame on me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prophecy is a difficult profession at the best of times.\u00a0 And in the midst of an avalanche of societal dislocations such as we are experiencing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3974,3973],"class_list":["post-22932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-high-trust-society","tag-trust"],"yoast_head":"\n