Turbulent Seas

There's never a shortage of contemporary Cassandras who forecast America's doom based on a collection of trends and statistical indicators.  I'm sure every powerful nation-state going back to ancient Babylon has had its share of them.  But sooner or later, one of them ends up getting something right.  Like this one.  Here's an excerpt from Ed Luce's 2012 book, Time to Start Thinking:

Fast-forward six years, and Luce's analysis turned out to be dead-on.  It's not difficult to understand why voters feel disconnected from the two major parties. Consider the major events and trends of the past ten to fifteen years.  The 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Wall Street bailout. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.  The outsourcing/automation of manufacturing jobs and stagnant wages.  Government shut-downs and political brinkmanship.  The "Retail Apocalypse." Two quagmire wars.  It doesn't take an expert social scientist to understand that a whole lot of people are increasingly uncertain about their futures, and that they view Washington and Wall Street elites as unhelpful and indifferent.  It's a simple equation: economic distress + frustration with current system = openness to demagoguery.  Just to make things interesting, add a healthy amount of simmering racial resentment.

And so, enter Donald Trump.  If you wonder why I rail against him so vocally, it's because he ascended to the presidency at a really bad time.  And I'm not just talking about the portion of the population worried about their futures. The day he took office, the NSA was engaging in bulk data collection of Americans' communications, dozens of police forces across the country were utilizing military-grade equipment, the precedent of launching drone strikes against American citizens without due process had been established, and our civil liberties were being eroded in the name of fighting terrorism.   It was a farfetched, extreme worst-case scenario, but taken together those things would provide an aspiring autocrat all the tools they needed.  So when Trump said things like he'd only acknowledge the election results "if he won," I got a bit nervous. 

I'm sure there are many, many servicemembers, police officers, intelligence analysts, and other government workers who refuse to carry out unconstitutional, and potentially, authoritarian-type orders - like spying on citizens because of their political views or anti-Trump activism.  There are many public servants who understand the Constitution, who know their history, and who recognize the potential of these programs being used toward undemocratic ends.  However, there would still be a significant number who would carry out those orders, and one only needs to look at the past fifty or so years of US history to find examples.  Look at Abu Ghraib, COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, the Chicago PD "black sites," and several other incidents, to see how easy it is for things to go off the rails.

Meanwhile, nothing is being done to fix any of this.  Now maybe there's no easy solution for the economic anxiety stuff, but I'm sure there are ways to alleviate the distress: job retraining programs, government investment in developing industries like nanotechnology and solar energy, etc. But the government could be doing a much better job of cleaning its own house: terminating the bulk collection program, making police forces get rid of the military hardware, strengthening Constitutional protections and curbing Executive power.  Yet to nobody's surprise, it's not. 

I'm a natural pessimist, but I don't see this ending well unless the political and business classes start acting to make Americans' lives better.  The path is wide open for a genuine autocrat to show up, and that person probably won't be as incompetent as Trump has been.