"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" - Wokeness
The notification I received immediately prior to reading this article concerned ongoing efforts to write transgender ideology into State mandated 5th grade educational standards.
Woke hasn't died, hasn't even significantly retreated on every front, it simply shifted more from the highly visible "shouting in the streets" phase of activism to the "quietly implementing policy through governing institutions" phase. I get it, that's a lot less interesting for news coverage than pictures of purple-haired protesters screaming and waving signs, but then again the protesters already got much of what they said they wanted. Those gains haven't been consistently rolled back, they've more been consolidated and formalized into a "new normal" where DEI, Critical Race Theory, Transgender Ideology, etc are written directly into institutional standards. You could probably get away with saying that woke "peaked" in 2020, but a more accurate statement would be that it hit a plateau. We've yet to see culture or policy return anywhere remotely close to the baseline prior to the Great Awokening. Really, it's not like there was much room left to get MORE extreme than it already was. 'It stopped getting worse' should not be confused for 'It stopped'.
My wife and I are biomedical researchers, and the unremitting (though not overpowering) "woke" pressure in our professional environments can be dispiriting. From required DEI statements for funding, to a presumptive NewSpeak vocabulary when discussing what used to be "mothers" and can still safely be described as "XX parents," the institutional expectations are pervasive, though it's perhaps becoming a formality that nobody cares very much about.
I was woke in 1968 when wokeness was only 5 years old. BLM, not Kendi and DiAngelo, was the main driver of wokeness in 2020. And who was the "mother" of BLM? Their Assata Shakur chant opened and closed every meeting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNayoOysBLY&t=4s
She was a leader of the Black Liberation Army, part of the Black Panther underground, a gang of police assassins, hence BLM's full focus on dismantling the police.
Wokeness has dropped its gun-toting component, but its essence is still the same. And its penetration of our institutions is literally 1000 times greater than in 1968. But it thrived and grew with no social media aside from radio.
It's gone through many ups and downs in popularity, and each time comes back stronger.
The chance that it has plateaued with Trump back in office is nil. Both extremes feed off of the other extreme. Wokeness will be well fed for the next four years.
Yes, but the "quietly implementing policy through governing institutions" phase has been outed. Progressive totalitarianism has been developing, flying under the radar for decades. It is largely due to social media that most Americans are now aware and informed in this regard, regardless of what side they take.
The MSM have been selling one-sided propganda for, well, for as long as there's been printing presses. But they can no longer control the narrative. I won't try to predict how any of this ends, but now that we can all be heard individually, propaganda just doesn't work. Well, it does work. It works against the propagandists.
I thought I'd share a paragraph from my recent Substack post
"I’d like to finish with a point that is perhaps controversial and unoriginal but needs to be hammered home; it should now be crystal clear that Democrats are steadily alienating male voters – mostly white ones, but increasingly many who are nonwhite. This is dismissed as “misogyny” by many Democrats and there is certainly plenty of that. But when one gender and one race is singled out as the source of all that is evil and nothing that is good in a nation that they themselves were instrumental in building (to say the least), members of that group can become disheartened. No one wants to be a member of a party that considers him the enemy. I must say that I share this feeling (I have never oppressed anyone). For me, no amount of frustration with Democrats would ever make me vote for human beings as despicable as Donald Trump and his brownshirts. But clearly, tens of millions of men -- white, black and brown – overcame whatever distaste for Trump they might have had and did just that." https://charles72f.substack.com/p/why-kamela-lost-in-nine-simple-charts
It just seems strange to say that wokeness has matured into its policymaking phase when progressive politicians are losing elections, companies are rolling back DEI stuff, and the voters have directly or indirectly made both congressional bodies, the presidency, and the Supreme Court more conservative. Who would be supporting this ‘policymaking era’?
Wokeness got influence in institutions because the left imposed penalties for institutions not supporting them, and that started to reverse when those institutions started facing penalties from the right for being too progressive. I fail to see by what mechanism wokeness would become instilled via more formal means when the voters just swung right; and to state the obvious the voters are who make up the institutions that you allege will become more focused in their implementation of wokeness.
Tell me, did the Teacher's Unions swing right? Did the deep state desk jockeys in DC?
Did the Associated Press?
Did the American Psychological Association?
Did Hollywood?
Did any Ivy League Uni install a conservative President?
How many of the policies that progressive politicians passed have actually been repealed so far? Last I checked they still have a ruling grip on roughly half the country.
How many of the companies that have finally backed off on woke PR and DEI offices have actually changed their DEI-driven HR policies? Not nearly so many as you think.
You fundamentally misunderstand how they took over the institutions in the first place. It wasn't by external pressure from voters. They used Gramsci's "Long March through the Institutions": getting hired, then taking over from within by using bias against the non-woke in hiring and promotions to expand their influence until they de facto ran the Institutions no matter who is nominally at the top, especially all the educational and credentialing pipelines. This is how "The Resistance" in executive agencies were able to so successfully stall, subvert, and sabotage Trump's policy initiatives under his previous administration.
The President of the United States and all his political appointments and judicial appointments didn't even prevent further leftward drift, much less manage to undo all the Left shift under Obama, in the last Trump administration. I'm hoping he'll manage more this time around since he knows what he's up against now, has more experience, and more allies, but it's an Akroan Stables worth of dung to shovel, made much worse by the fact that "The Resistance" LIKEWISE now know what they're up against, have experience fighting Trump, and have used Biden's absentee Presidency to rewrite regulation, pack the judiciary, and entrench themselves against his return.
Sure, voters swung right a few percentage points... But our trifecta isn't exactly a supermajority. No state governors switched, we actually lost a seat in the House (which we barely now control), and most of our anti-woke initiatives even in Red states are running into judicial roadblocks. We still can't fire most of the bureaucrats who write the regs, progs still control more than enough courts to tie everything we do up in red tape for years, companies facing woke employee revolts have folded more often than they've stood firm and struggle to find enough non-woke talent to be able to replace them because the talent pipelines themselves are controlled by the woke. This is a generational task and the other side still has momentum.
We seem somehow to have elected a new administration composed largely of unqualified ne’er-do-wells, sycophants, authoritarian apologists, misogynists, liars, election deniers, violence inciters, drunks, and assorted nuts; all headed by two billionaire dilettantes whose primary view of the US government is as a shiny toy with which to play without regard to the fact that it is also the most crucial, the riskiest, and the most complex experiment in human government ever attempted. Neither do they seem to understand that their playground includes several hundred million angry, frustrated, confused, saddened, worried, desperate, and deeply diverse and divided citizens, many of whom don’t seem to understand the reasons for or the nature of that experiment in which they are both inheritors and participants, whether they like it or not.
What could possibly go wrong.
I hesitate to make predictions. Or rather I feel a total lack of sufficient wisdom to do so. What I do have, as an amateur anthropologist who once majored in human origins and evolution is a sense of where we’ve come from and what we brought with us across the boundary from mammals to primate to human. That tells me that our essential nature is one of innate parochialism, genetically honed by millions of years of survival in small groups in which every member knew each other intimately and exactly what his or her role was in that game.
In many ways we are still that creature, self-thrust over the past several millenia into a world so different from the one into which we were born as to be beyond imagining. And we haven’t yet learned what to do about that. But evolution also endowed us with a brain with a far greater capacity than we needed. With it we have over time created a complex world of economic, political, social, religious, and technical complexity in which that parochialism is far more a curse than the necessary survival mechanism it once was.
This nation was created in the hope that with the proper governmental structure, we could mitigate the more destructive aspects of that parochialism by finding a way to co-exist with each other as a single polity, under our own combined control, no matter how diverse our experiences and opinions.
But demagogues like Trump and Musk are and always have been skilled in exploiting that parochialism for their own ends. The results have almost always been problematic if not downright disastrous. And after August 6th, 1945, that potential for disaster has grown exponentially.
It remains to be seen if we can remain, in the words of one who understood as well as any American who ever lived both the promise and the peril of our Novus Ordo Seclorum, ’the last best hope of earth’.
At the age of 80, I have to admit to a lack of optimism. I recall John Kennedy’s words following the closest we’ve yet come to succumbing to that parochialism, “...we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
But I don’t know if we can come to understand that in time.
I predict a total meltdown of Trump's presidency by the end of 2025, he'll ignore the populist proposals that got him elected, kowtow to Elon Musk and other corporate interests, while vacillating wildly with no coherent policies. With no margin for error in the house, the Republicans will fail to govern and tariffs will cause inflation to surge again. At the same time, the Democrats will fail to present a viable alternative vision and remain captured in the public eye by a woke minority and thus continue to be unpopular. The result will be chaos politically and socially, an end to the (relatively) strong economy, and increasing social breakdown
You are very likely correct, and between Trump having complete capture of The Republican Party and Dems being completely captured by their old guard of septaguinarians, it is unlikely for us to avoid some period of absolute chaos.
However, unlike so many who see that chaos as the breaking point of the nation, I hold out that it has the potential to be beneficial to us. Americans have become so disconnected from how their system works because the government wanted them to. After the draft was removed, we all fell asleep and embraced our own fantasy worlds. Forest fires lead to jew growth, and I genuinely believe Americans have the potential to gain a new perspective and appreciation for what their government can do, and perhaps gain a new sense of shared responsibility.
But first we have to be shown that the cause of the government problem, ultimately, is us. We demand too much of government, and I am not referring to entitlements. I am referring to the fact that we all seem to operate under the assumption that government is simply our personal cudgel to beat on people we don't like. We are more interested in voting AGAINST someone than voting FOR someone to fix shit, do the hard work of making reforms, and be willing to find common ground.
The Right wants to just remove all the people they don't like, while The Left just wants to ignore them and pretend they don't have to listen. While the former is the greater threat to all of us, the latter laid the conditions to birth the former.
Joseph you make very thoughtful points, all really well said., I do think there may in fact be a reckoning in both parties and the country as a whole that neither Trump's lies and insanity or the PC arrogance and snotty lecturing of the woke left offer really solutions to mutual problems. Maybe having tried all these dumb options people will begin to look for more pragmatic solutions. I am short term pessimistic but longer term there's real hope. Happy new year !
It's interesting that Trump wants to get rid of the government borrowing cap. As he showed in his first term, he has no interest in fiscal restraint. I think that there is a real risk he could rekindle inflation and crash the bond market (a.k.a. James Carville)
all the financial wonks like you & I see this, I do realize for many people this is way too esoteric but it's a far greater risk than social issues most people talk about a lot more. If Trump managed to say totally ban Abortion or same sex marriage, well, that can be reversed with a new administration, but if the bond market crashed we could have a true meltdown like 1929, from which it might take years if not decades to recover from
I am an historian (specialized in the Middle Ages...). I think nobody has a clue about this new year: not in politic, not in economy, not in culture, not in wars, not in IA. There are billions of factors intertwined: a death of someone important or a new pandemia can change the game in a couple of days, beyond any prediction. As the Economist said, "an economist is someone that will explain, tomorrow, why the things he predicted for today did not occur". I think it applies to all the areas. Luís Miguel Duarte (Porto, Portugal)
The game of prediction is, as it has long been, mostly an amusement. It's also a fine strategy in good literature to explore the theme of fate. In real life I don't see it as necessarily harmful, and exercises like yours to go back and grade yourself on the accuracy of your prophecies is probably healthy.
But I've been seeing this harmless exercise take over what used to be press coverage. Stories centered on facts -- things that happened, things that are known, and some nod to things that are not -- have edged toward analysis, perspective, and too frequently, sheer guesswork. That's most obvious in an election year like this one where polls have now give rise to an expectation that they should be correct, and if they are not they are not doing their job. Anger at wrong polls filtered into probably half of the election coverage, in my guess.
Keep an eye out for the sheer number of newspaper and television news stories essentially laying out hypotheses about what caused this or that event, speculating about things unknown, and setting the political stage for all the conspiracies that now infect out politics. We're drowning ourselves in the new fad of solving mysteries about events that are much more multifaceted than an Agatha Christie novel. And much more real.
It's easy to write speculation, since all of us speculate, to wonder because we all wonder. But that's not a very good model for news reporting, and I'm not sure it's a good model for a site like Persuasion. There's less here than at most media outlets in the normal course of a year, and I can't blame anyone for indulging in this year-end orgy of looking forward. But as a rule, it's not what I want from serious journalists, and particularly not from analysts. My New Year's wish is to see less of it in 2025.
Catherine Rampell, in her column today in the Washington Post, showed how big an impact GLP-1 drugs are likely to have on health and economy in 2025 and beyond: https://wapo.st/3BSKbXY
It is well worth reading. I would go along with most of her predictions.
I enjoyed the Rampell column, too. My prediction for 2025 is that the FDA declares Wegovy to no longer be in shortage (a la what just happened with Zepbound), there’s a massive public outcry as people who’ve been paying a couple hundred dollars a month for compounded semaglutide suddenly have to pay $1,000+ for the brand drugs, and a fissure opens up in MAGA world. Trump’s instinct will be to try forcing the FDA to reverse course and keep people happy, but as the issue gains salience, red-pilled fat-shamers on social media will decry the weakness of people who rely on these drugs.
I would agree with DaveinNH. The housing issue is far from solved in this country (or elsewhere). NIMBY and environmental regulations are not the only issues to contend with. The high costs of supplies and the shortage and high cost of building labor are two issues that really haven’t been confronted. Both issues could easily get worse with restrictions on immigration and trade. There is also a potential issue in that land rich population absorbing areas like Florida and Texas may be getting closer to saturation points in certain metropolitan areas. Florida in particular has some real challenges to further housing development including insurance costs/availability. There is no shortage of buildable land in the US (unlike Europe). Regional economies may, though, need to adjust to overcrowding in certain areas.
It seems it is always about housing affordability as in can people afford to purchase a home. Home ownership as in ongoing costs of owning a house aren’t discussed very much. Insurance costs and property taxes in many places have risen sharply. Even if you own your home as is the case for many retirees the burden of insurance and property taxes is heavy. Of course landlords pass on these costs on to tenants. Most can’t absorb 30% rise in these expenses.
My prediction is that the most consequential events of 2025 and the next five years will be black swan events, those that virtually no one predicts. A year before they happened, how many predicted the 2008 financial crisis; the Russian invasion of Crimea; the 2016 election of Donald Trump; COVID; the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan; the successful incursion by Hamas into Israel; the sudden fall of Assad in Syria.
These seem to me to be most of the consequential events in the world over recent years and they generally weren't seen coming. So I think some predictions may get some important things right, but I think the most significant things won't be predicted.
Happy New Year to the Persuasion community! Great forum, always.
As to predictions for 2025, it is a fool's errand, of course, as Yogi Berra has taught us all. That said as a disclaimer, I will make a few bold predictions - and let me first say that I am a centrist Never Trumper who was a staunch Obama Democrat, and now I am politically homeless as the party has left me...
(1) Trump will surprise us in style
Yes, there will be the usual craziness and incompetence which all of us have come to expect from DJT. And yes, our usual media outlets will jump on this and have the usual fits. But I predict that DJT, psychologically vindicated by a historic election win, will turn out to be far more "normal" and gracious than most of us NeverTrumpers assumed. His reaction to Jimmy Carter's death was an early example of this new DJT...
(2) Trump will not surprise us domestically - and be wildly popular for it
DJT will be relentless in terms of migration and his roll-back of many progressive initiatives. And while the left will scream, the country will give him high marks for it. This is one of the permanent changes compared to 4 and 8 years ago: The country has moved to the right decisively.
(3) Trump will surprise us in Ukraine
Maybe this is wishful thinking here, but I predict that the next government will be far less "pro-Russia" than we foreign policy NeverTrumpers predicted (Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Bulwark folks - I think you got this one wrong): Sure, DJT will push for an unfavorable peace treaty - but at this point, after self-deterrent Biden and Scholz bled Ukraine to death, this may not be the worst interim solution. See Iran below...I think Putin will not be in love with Trump for long...
(4) Trump will be relentless in the Middle East
I believe we will see a truly disinhibited Middle East policy - which I welcome. Bibi and DJT will attack Iran within the next 12 months - and overthrow the mullahs. The outcome of this is tough to predict: It could be a stunning success, with a peaceful transition in Tehran, an overthrow of the Houthis and then the long-awaited peace treaty with SA - who will be the other big winner in this game. Or it could be a mess in Iran, with the powerful minority of Islamists, well-armed and trained, throwing the country into sustained turmoil. But the nuclear program will be bombed into oblivion, at long last. Thank God!
(5) Near and dear to my heart: Germany
Friedrich Merz will win the election, and a Scholz-liberated, Pistorius-run SPD will be a junior partner. Merz will get along with Trump surprisingly well - both deeply dislike Merkel, as a starting point. Merz will rejuvenate the democratic center-right all across Europe (something Macron failed to do): It will be a much more hawkish, anti-migration, post-woke coalition from Scandinavia via Poland (Tusk) and Austria to Italy (Meloni). Merz will see fierce resistance from the "holiday-from-history" left, but he will govern with a solid majority and rising popularity.
OK - lots of predictions which could go horribly wrong :))
Article 4 will be triggered. This will split NATO into different factions. America will mostly redirect its attention and resources towards the Pacific and Southern border. Ukraine's most important allies will become an alliance led by Poland, UK and the Scandinavian and Baltic countries. The infra structure of these countries will continue to suffer attacks from Russia and China, and they will officially be at war with Russia by mid-2026.
Netanyahu will be ousted by the Israeli electorate around mid-2025. This will lead to a temporary ceasefire. However, the failure of Syria to form a stable government will impact the entire region and mean that the risk of terror attacks directed at Israel continues to be high.
Musk will be ousted from the Trump coalition, which will be dominated by its isolationist faction. The number of US voters and politicians identifying as independents will continue to rise. Trump will fail to negotiate any peace deals.
The Danish prime minister will still be in office but expand her government with the socialist people's party (SF).
Because Americans seem unable to “imagine bad,” they must experience it before they react. Trump and his oligarchic cronies will start plundering the U.S. Treasury by privatizing whatever institutions, departments and functions they can get their hands on, (like the U.S. Postal service, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security), siphon public money to their own private interests, eliminate taxes on the wealthy, and overall, initiate the greatest transfer of public wealth to private control in U.S. history. By the end of 2025, after experiencing the disastrous effects of a government incapable of reacting to any crisis or emergency, enough Americans will start to mobilize a credible opposition to the U.S. being turned into a full-fledged kleptocracy.
This is my hope. There is no point in embracing despair, here, unless you simply plan to commit suicide or are seeking justification to bury yourself further into your own fantasies. No more endless Netflix binges, or frittering away your day with online gaming. Time to be a responsible citizen and stand up to be counted.
Major overhaul of public university general education requirements in the age of AI. Oh wait, this might not happen until 2027, given how slow higher ed has been to grasp the power of AI.
Please help increase the likelihood of success in using the 14th Amendment to deny Trump the presidency based on his CURRENT DISQUALIFICATION...See Jessica Denson and now march.org. January 3, 4, and 5. Make every congressperson stand up and either uphold or fail to protect Americans from threats foreign and domestic...Force each one to violate or uphold their oath in public....so we know where they stand!
The use of the 14th amendment to the Constitution to disqualify Trump from the presidency will not happen since the House will not impeach and the Senate will not convict in the unlikelihood that the House does impeach.
The section on housing costs doesn't address the significant rise in the real cost of rent, which has seen far more than a "comparatively modest increase."
"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" - Wokeness
The notification I received immediately prior to reading this article concerned ongoing efforts to write transgender ideology into State mandated 5th grade educational standards.
Woke hasn't died, hasn't even significantly retreated on every front, it simply shifted more from the highly visible "shouting in the streets" phase of activism to the "quietly implementing policy through governing institutions" phase. I get it, that's a lot less interesting for news coverage than pictures of purple-haired protesters screaming and waving signs, but then again the protesters already got much of what they said they wanted. Those gains haven't been consistently rolled back, they've more been consolidated and formalized into a "new normal" where DEI, Critical Race Theory, Transgender Ideology, etc are written directly into institutional standards. You could probably get away with saying that woke "peaked" in 2020, but a more accurate statement would be that it hit a plateau. We've yet to see culture or policy return anywhere remotely close to the baseline prior to the Great Awokening. Really, it's not like there was much room left to get MORE extreme than it already was. 'It stopped getting worse' should not be confused for 'It stopped'.
My wife and I are biomedical researchers, and the unremitting (though not overpowering) "woke" pressure in our professional environments can be dispiriting. From required DEI statements for funding, to a presumptive NewSpeak vocabulary when discussing what used to be "mothers" and can still safely be described as "XX parents," the institutional expectations are pervasive, though it's perhaps becoming a formality that nobody cares very much about.
I was woke in 1968 when wokeness was only 5 years old. BLM, not Kendi and DiAngelo, was the main driver of wokeness in 2020. And who was the "mother" of BLM? Their Assata Shakur chant opened and closed every meeting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNayoOysBLY&t=4s
She was a leader of the Black Liberation Army, part of the Black Panther underground, a gang of police assassins, hence BLM's full focus on dismantling the police.
Wokeness has dropped its gun-toting component, but its essence is still the same. And its penetration of our institutions is literally 1000 times greater than in 1968. But it thrived and grew with no social media aside from radio.
It's gone through many ups and downs in popularity, and each time comes back stronger.
The chance that it has plateaued with Trump back in office is nil. Both extremes feed off of the other extreme. Wokeness will be well fed for the next four years.
Yes, but the "quietly implementing policy through governing institutions" phase has been outed. Progressive totalitarianism has been developing, flying under the radar for decades. It is largely due to social media that most Americans are now aware and informed in this regard, regardless of what side they take.
The MSM have been selling one-sided propganda for, well, for as long as there's been printing presses. But they can no longer control the narrative. I won't try to predict how any of this ends, but now that we can all be heard individually, propaganda just doesn't work. Well, it does work. It works against the propagandists.
I thought I'd share a paragraph from my recent Substack post
"I’d like to finish with a point that is perhaps controversial and unoriginal but needs to be hammered home; it should now be crystal clear that Democrats are steadily alienating male voters – mostly white ones, but increasingly many who are nonwhite. This is dismissed as “misogyny” by many Democrats and there is certainly plenty of that. But when one gender and one race is singled out as the source of all that is evil and nothing that is good in a nation that they themselves were instrumental in building (to say the least), members of that group can become disheartened. No one wants to be a member of a party that considers him the enemy. I must say that I share this feeling (I have never oppressed anyone). For me, no amount of frustration with Democrats would ever make me vote for human beings as despicable as Donald Trump and his brownshirts. But clearly, tens of millions of men -- white, black and brown – overcame whatever distaste for Trump they might have had and did just that." https://charles72f.substack.com/p/why-kamela-lost-in-nine-simple-charts
It just seems strange to say that wokeness has matured into its policymaking phase when progressive politicians are losing elections, companies are rolling back DEI stuff, and the voters have directly or indirectly made both congressional bodies, the presidency, and the Supreme Court more conservative. Who would be supporting this ‘policymaking era’?
Wokeness got influence in institutions because the left imposed penalties for institutions not supporting them, and that started to reverse when those institutions started facing penalties from the right for being too progressive. I fail to see by what mechanism wokeness would become instilled via more formal means when the voters just swung right; and to state the obvious the voters are who make up the institutions that you allege will become more focused in their implementation of wokeness.
Tell me, did the Teacher's Unions swing right? Did the deep state desk jockeys in DC?
Did the Associated Press?
Did the American Psychological Association?
Did Hollywood?
Did any Ivy League Uni install a conservative President?
How many of the policies that progressive politicians passed have actually been repealed so far? Last I checked they still have a ruling grip on roughly half the country.
How many of the companies that have finally backed off on woke PR and DEI offices have actually changed their DEI-driven HR policies? Not nearly so many as you think.
You fundamentally misunderstand how they took over the institutions in the first place. It wasn't by external pressure from voters. They used Gramsci's "Long March through the Institutions": getting hired, then taking over from within by using bias against the non-woke in hiring and promotions to expand their influence until they de facto ran the Institutions no matter who is nominally at the top, especially all the educational and credentialing pipelines. This is how "The Resistance" in executive agencies were able to so successfully stall, subvert, and sabotage Trump's policy initiatives under his previous administration.
The President of the United States and all his political appointments and judicial appointments didn't even prevent further leftward drift, much less manage to undo all the Left shift under Obama, in the last Trump administration. I'm hoping he'll manage more this time around since he knows what he's up against now, has more experience, and more allies, but it's an Akroan Stables worth of dung to shovel, made much worse by the fact that "The Resistance" LIKEWISE now know what they're up against, have experience fighting Trump, and have used Biden's absentee Presidency to rewrite regulation, pack the judiciary, and entrench themselves against his return.
Sure, voters swung right a few percentage points... But our trifecta isn't exactly a supermajority. No state governors switched, we actually lost a seat in the House (which we barely now control), and most of our anti-woke initiatives even in Red states are running into judicial roadblocks. We still can't fire most of the bureaucrats who write the regs, progs still control more than enough courts to tie everything we do up in red tape for years, companies facing woke employee revolts have folded more often than they've stood firm and struggle to find enough non-woke talent to be able to replace them because the talent pipelines themselves are controlled by the woke. This is a generational task and the other side still has momentum.
One hardly knows where to begin.
We seem somehow to have elected a new administration composed largely of unqualified ne’er-do-wells, sycophants, authoritarian apologists, misogynists, liars, election deniers, violence inciters, drunks, and assorted nuts; all headed by two billionaire dilettantes whose primary view of the US government is as a shiny toy with which to play without regard to the fact that it is also the most crucial, the riskiest, and the most complex experiment in human government ever attempted. Neither do they seem to understand that their playground includes several hundred million angry, frustrated, confused, saddened, worried, desperate, and deeply diverse and divided citizens, many of whom don’t seem to understand the reasons for or the nature of that experiment in which they are both inheritors and participants, whether they like it or not.
What could possibly go wrong.
I hesitate to make predictions. Or rather I feel a total lack of sufficient wisdom to do so. What I do have, as an amateur anthropologist who once majored in human origins and evolution is a sense of where we’ve come from and what we brought with us across the boundary from mammals to primate to human. That tells me that our essential nature is one of innate parochialism, genetically honed by millions of years of survival in small groups in which every member knew each other intimately and exactly what his or her role was in that game.
In many ways we are still that creature, self-thrust over the past several millenia into a world so different from the one into which we were born as to be beyond imagining. And we haven’t yet learned what to do about that. But evolution also endowed us with a brain with a far greater capacity than we needed. With it we have over time created a complex world of economic, political, social, religious, and technical complexity in which that parochialism is far more a curse than the necessary survival mechanism it once was.
This nation was created in the hope that with the proper governmental structure, we could mitigate the more destructive aspects of that parochialism by finding a way to co-exist with each other as a single polity, under our own combined control, no matter how diverse our experiences and opinions.
But demagogues like Trump and Musk are and always have been skilled in exploiting that parochialism for their own ends. The results have almost always been problematic if not downright disastrous. And after August 6th, 1945, that potential for disaster has grown exponentially.
It remains to be seen if we can remain, in the words of one who understood as well as any American who ever lived both the promise and the peril of our Novus Ordo Seclorum, ’the last best hope of earth’.
At the age of 80, I have to admit to a lack of optimism. I recall John Kennedy’s words following the closest we’ve yet come to succumbing to that parochialism, “...we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
But I don’t know if we can come to understand that in time.
I predict a total meltdown of Trump's presidency by the end of 2025, he'll ignore the populist proposals that got him elected, kowtow to Elon Musk and other corporate interests, while vacillating wildly with no coherent policies. With no margin for error in the house, the Republicans will fail to govern and tariffs will cause inflation to surge again. At the same time, the Democrats will fail to present a viable alternative vision and remain captured in the public eye by a woke minority and thus continue to be unpopular. The result will be chaos politically and socially, an end to the (relatively) strong economy, and increasing social breakdown
You are very likely correct, and between Trump having complete capture of The Republican Party and Dems being completely captured by their old guard of septaguinarians, it is unlikely for us to avoid some period of absolute chaos.
However, unlike so many who see that chaos as the breaking point of the nation, I hold out that it has the potential to be beneficial to us. Americans have become so disconnected from how their system works because the government wanted them to. After the draft was removed, we all fell asleep and embraced our own fantasy worlds. Forest fires lead to jew growth, and I genuinely believe Americans have the potential to gain a new perspective and appreciation for what their government can do, and perhaps gain a new sense of shared responsibility.
But first we have to be shown that the cause of the government problem, ultimately, is us. We demand too much of government, and I am not referring to entitlements. I am referring to the fact that we all seem to operate under the assumption that government is simply our personal cudgel to beat on people we don't like. We are more interested in voting AGAINST someone than voting FOR someone to fix shit, do the hard work of making reforms, and be willing to find common ground.
The Right wants to just remove all the people they don't like, while The Left just wants to ignore them and pretend they don't have to listen. While the former is the greater threat to all of us, the latter laid the conditions to birth the former.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Joseph you make very thoughtful points, all really well said., I do think there may in fact be a reckoning in both parties and the country as a whole that neither Trump's lies and insanity or the PC arrogance and snotty lecturing of the woke left offer really solutions to mutual problems. Maybe having tried all these dumb options people will begin to look for more pragmatic solutions. I am short term pessimistic but longer term there's real hope. Happy new year !
It's interesting that Trump wants to get rid of the government borrowing cap. As he showed in his first term, he has no interest in fiscal restraint. I think that there is a real risk he could rekindle inflation and crash the bond market (a.k.a. James Carville)
That's my prediction. Give it 18 months. Keep an eagle eye out for a failed Treasury auction.
all the financial wonks like you & I see this, I do realize for many people this is way too esoteric but it's a far greater risk than social issues most people talk about a lot more. If Trump managed to say totally ban Abortion or same sex marriage, well, that can be reversed with a new administration, but if the bond market crashed we could have a true meltdown like 1929, from which it might take years if not decades to recover from
I am an historian (specialized in the Middle Ages...). I think nobody has a clue about this new year: not in politic, not in economy, not in culture, not in wars, not in IA. There are billions of factors intertwined: a death of someone important or a new pandemia can change the game in a couple of days, beyond any prediction. As the Economist said, "an economist is someone that will explain, tomorrow, why the things he predicted for today did not occur". I think it applies to all the areas. Luís Miguel Duarte (Porto, Portugal)
The game of prediction is, as it has long been, mostly an amusement. It's also a fine strategy in good literature to explore the theme of fate. In real life I don't see it as necessarily harmful, and exercises like yours to go back and grade yourself on the accuracy of your prophecies is probably healthy.
But I've been seeing this harmless exercise take over what used to be press coverage. Stories centered on facts -- things that happened, things that are known, and some nod to things that are not -- have edged toward analysis, perspective, and too frequently, sheer guesswork. That's most obvious in an election year like this one where polls have now give rise to an expectation that they should be correct, and if they are not they are not doing their job. Anger at wrong polls filtered into probably half of the election coverage, in my guess.
Keep an eye out for the sheer number of newspaper and television news stories essentially laying out hypotheses about what caused this or that event, speculating about things unknown, and setting the political stage for all the conspiracies that now infect out politics. We're drowning ourselves in the new fad of solving mysteries about events that are much more multifaceted than an Agatha Christie novel. And much more real.
It's easy to write speculation, since all of us speculate, to wonder because we all wonder. But that's not a very good model for news reporting, and I'm not sure it's a good model for a site like Persuasion. There's less here than at most media outlets in the normal course of a year, and I can't blame anyone for indulging in this year-end orgy of looking forward. But as a rule, it's not what I want from serious journalists, and particularly not from analysts. My New Year's wish is to see less of it in 2025.
Jarts (lawn darts) will make a huge comeback.
You'll put your eye out.
About time
Catherine Rampell, in her column today in the Washington Post, showed how big an impact GLP-1 drugs are likely to have on health and economy in 2025 and beyond: https://wapo.st/3BSKbXY
It is well worth reading. I would go along with most of her predictions.
I enjoyed the Rampell column, too. My prediction for 2025 is that the FDA declares Wegovy to no longer be in shortage (a la what just happened with Zepbound), there’s a massive public outcry as people who’ve been paying a couple hundred dollars a month for compounded semaglutide suddenly have to pay $1,000+ for the brand drugs, and a fissure opens up in MAGA world. Trump’s instinct will be to try forcing the FDA to reverse course and keep people happy, but as the issue gains salience, red-pilled fat-shamers on social media will decry the weakness of people who rely on these drugs.
Iran’s government will be overthrown
Who will do that?
I would agree with DaveinNH. The housing issue is far from solved in this country (or elsewhere). NIMBY and environmental regulations are not the only issues to contend with. The high costs of supplies and the shortage and high cost of building labor are two issues that really haven’t been confronted. Both issues could easily get worse with restrictions on immigration and trade. There is also a potential issue in that land rich population absorbing areas like Florida and Texas may be getting closer to saturation points in certain metropolitan areas. Florida in particular has some real challenges to further housing development including insurance costs/availability. There is no shortage of buildable land in the US (unlike Europe). Regional economies may, though, need to adjust to overcrowding in certain areas.
It seems it is always about housing affordability as in can people afford to purchase a home. Home ownership as in ongoing costs of owning a house aren’t discussed very much. Insurance costs and property taxes in many places have risen sharply. Even if you own your home as is the case for many retirees the burden of insurance and property taxes is heavy. Of course landlords pass on these costs on to tenants. Most can’t absorb 30% rise in these expenses.
My prediction is that the most consequential events of 2025 and the next five years will be black swan events, those that virtually no one predicts. A year before they happened, how many predicted the 2008 financial crisis; the Russian invasion of Crimea; the 2016 election of Donald Trump; COVID; the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan; the successful incursion by Hamas into Israel; the sudden fall of Assad in Syria.
These seem to me to be most of the consequential events in the world over recent years and they generally weren't seen coming. So I think some predictions may get some important things right, but I think the most significant things won't be predicted.
Happy New Year to the Persuasion community! Great forum, always.
As to predictions for 2025, it is a fool's errand, of course, as Yogi Berra has taught us all. That said as a disclaimer, I will make a few bold predictions - and let me first say that I am a centrist Never Trumper who was a staunch Obama Democrat, and now I am politically homeless as the party has left me...
(1) Trump will surprise us in style
Yes, there will be the usual craziness and incompetence which all of us have come to expect from DJT. And yes, our usual media outlets will jump on this and have the usual fits. But I predict that DJT, psychologically vindicated by a historic election win, will turn out to be far more "normal" and gracious than most of us NeverTrumpers assumed. His reaction to Jimmy Carter's death was an early example of this new DJT...
(2) Trump will not surprise us domestically - and be wildly popular for it
DJT will be relentless in terms of migration and his roll-back of many progressive initiatives. And while the left will scream, the country will give him high marks for it. This is one of the permanent changes compared to 4 and 8 years ago: The country has moved to the right decisively.
(3) Trump will surprise us in Ukraine
Maybe this is wishful thinking here, but I predict that the next government will be far less "pro-Russia" than we foreign policy NeverTrumpers predicted (Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Bulwark folks - I think you got this one wrong): Sure, DJT will push for an unfavorable peace treaty - but at this point, after self-deterrent Biden and Scholz bled Ukraine to death, this may not be the worst interim solution. See Iran below...I think Putin will not be in love with Trump for long...
(4) Trump will be relentless in the Middle East
I believe we will see a truly disinhibited Middle East policy - which I welcome. Bibi and DJT will attack Iran within the next 12 months - and overthrow the mullahs. The outcome of this is tough to predict: It could be a stunning success, with a peaceful transition in Tehran, an overthrow of the Houthis and then the long-awaited peace treaty with SA - who will be the other big winner in this game. Or it could be a mess in Iran, with the powerful minority of Islamists, well-armed and trained, throwing the country into sustained turmoil. But the nuclear program will be bombed into oblivion, at long last. Thank God!
(5) Near and dear to my heart: Germany
Friedrich Merz will win the election, and a Scholz-liberated, Pistorius-run SPD will be a junior partner. Merz will get along with Trump surprisingly well - both deeply dislike Merkel, as a starting point. Merz will rejuvenate the democratic center-right all across Europe (something Macron failed to do): It will be a much more hawkish, anti-migration, post-woke coalition from Scandinavia via Poland (Tusk) and Austria to Italy (Meloni). Merz will see fierce resistance from the "holiday-from-history" left, but he will govern with a solid majority and rising popularity.
OK - lots of predictions which could go horribly wrong :))
Article 4 will be triggered. This will split NATO into different factions. America will mostly redirect its attention and resources towards the Pacific and Southern border. Ukraine's most important allies will become an alliance led by Poland, UK and the Scandinavian and Baltic countries. The infra structure of these countries will continue to suffer attacks from Russia and China, and they will officially be at war with Russia by mid-2026.
Netanyahu will be ousted by the Israeli electorate around mid-2025. This will lead to a temporary ceasefire. However, the failure of Syria to form a stable government will impact the entire region and mean that the risk of terror attacks directed at Israel continues to be high.
Musk will be ousted from the Trump coalition, which will be dominated by its isolationist faction. The number of US voters and politicians identifying as independents will continue to rise. Trump will fail to negotiate any peace deals.
The Danish prime minister will still be in office but expand her government with the socialist people's party (SF).
Because Americans seem unable to “imagine bad,” they must experience it before they react. Trump and his oligarchic cronies will start plundering the U.S. Treasury by privatizing whatever institutions, departments and functions they can get their hands on, (like the U.S. Postal service, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security), siphon public money to their own private interests, eliminate taxes on the wealthy, and overall, initiate the greatest transfer of public wealth to private control in U.S. history. By the end of 2025, after experiencing the disastrous effects of a government incapable of reacting to any crisis or emergency, enough Americans will start to mobilize a credible opposition to the U.S. being turned into a full-fledged kleptocracy.
This is my hope. There is no point in embracing despair, here, unless you simply plan to commit suicide or are seeking justification to bury yourself further into your own fantasies. No more endless Netflix binges, or frittering away your day with online gaming. Time to be a responsible citizen and stand up to be counted.
Major overhaul of public university general education requirements in the age of AI. Oh wait, this might not happen until 2027, given how slow higher ed has been to grasp the power of AI.
Please help increase the likelihood of success in using the 14th Amendment to deny Trump the presidency based on his CURRENT DISQUALIFICATION...See Jessica Denson and now march.org. January 3, 4, and 5. Make every congressperson stand up and either uphold or fail to protect Americans from threats foreign and domestic...Force each one to violate or uphold their oath in public....so we know where they stand!
The use of the 14th amendment to the Constitution to disqualify Trump from the presidency will not happen since the House will not impeach and the Senate will not convict in the unlikelihood that the House does impeach.
The section on housing costs doesn't address the significant rise in the real cost of rent, which has seen far more than a "comparatively modest increase."