by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
A number of macro events have happened in the last few decades that made the political clusterfuck we are experiencing in the United States now inevitable. NAFTA is a big one. But the real issue, the issue that is the source of all it, is the decline in white babies being born.
That’s the ur issue that has led to MAGA. I can remember reading a bit of The Birth Dearth in the 1980s (90s?) that talked about the impact of such things. The whole concern about white babies being born is fucking racist, but it’s because of whites feeling insecure about their social status that we get fucking Trump and his ilk.
That particular issue isn’t going anywhere.
In fact, if anything, it’s going to get worse as Baby Boomers start to drop dead and there just aren’t enough of those sweet, sweet little white babies to make up the difference. I, for one, welcome our “brown” future — as long as I get to live in a traditional liberal democracy — but, lulz, the fucking fascists of MAGA are so freaking the fuck out that we’re kind of doomed.
The thing about Trump is he is probably the most important political figure of the last 50 or more years because he has a unique talent for accelerating trends that were inevitable. What might have, under the best of possibilities, taken a gradual 20 years if, say, Hillary had won in 2016 or Biden won in 2016….is now happening in a few years.
We’re fucked. We’re totally, completely fucked. There’s no going back. America is in decline and I don’t have any ready answer for you as to what happens next. The only unknown at the moment is the Singularity.
The Singularity — which, for me, means the rise of ASI — could throw everything for a loop. We might find ourselves thinking not about the decline and fall of the American Empire but rather how we’re going to deal with “aliens” of our own creation that make demands of us in ways none of us can in any way expect.
