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September 02, 2018

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I think Donald Trump is on the verge of destroying the Republican party. They may go the way of the Whigs. The Democrats are ascendent, much as they were in 1932. They have demographics on their side, big time. Latinos and millennials are flocking to the Democratic party. The midwestern states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are going to be reliably blue once again. The big change will come when Texas turns blue, which many are predicting could happen in a few years. Republicans, or whatever they are called then, will be a minor party in the deep south and in a few states in the West. I look forward to it!

The thing that frightens me is that our lengthy era of incorporating newcomers and making them “Americans” (basically, making despised ethnic groups into “whites” after a period of probation in eastern cities) all occurred in eras of resource abundance and, as a result, growth. It’s just flat easier to divide a growing pie, even with growing pressure from more people for slices of that pie.

What remains to be seen is how America deals with declining absolute abundance — we’ve already become quite stressed just in dealing with declining per-capita wealth (even as absolute national wealth continues upward).

I just sent an email to a friend I correspond with who asked whether America (USA) would hold together — my reply:

I am conflicted. I think we (USAians) are likely to come apart and that it will seem to be for the damnedest reason, and it will only in retrospect be obvious that it was a miracle that we hung together as a nation as long as we did -- given that we never resolved or dealt with our race problems honestly or justly. You never hate anyone as much as those you have mistreated, and we hate and fear LOTS of people as a result.

We white USAians are basically are racist as hell and so I think we’re likely going back to Reconstruction Era levels of violence (think Serbia-Croatia-Bosnia) only with modern weaponry in abundance, which is going to make for interesting times. Instead of drinking our life expectancy into decline as the Russians did, we’ll use bullets and opioids.

If we are lucky, we get JM Greer’s “slow collapse” scenario instead.

If not, we have the speed of the USSR’s collapse plus the violence of Yugoslavia’s.

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