Thoughts on Coming Apart and the Coming Great Reset
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Kit Webster
Themes and Theses
Why I'm Contemplating Out Loud
(Initially formulated in the early 90s, following decades of reading history, philosophy, religion, psychology and a lot of contemplation, particularly on the subject of cycles. In the end, this is a relatively straightforward story about human nature and of history rhyming.)
The US will enter a period of crisis in the early 2000s. In the late 90s, I incorporated Strauss' and Howe's terminology of the Fourth Turning (without incorporating their generations paradigm) and agreed with Howe that the end stage of the crisis began with the Great Financial Crisis and would last into the early 2030s. We are now at the beginning of the end stage of the crisis.
The crisis will be serious and could be existential.
Internal strife will increase, up to and including secession and civil war.
International conflicts will increase as the vacuum created by the weakening of the US is filled by other players.
There will be many threads to the crisis, but the primary thread will be debt, deficits and entitlements. Other factors include, eg, demographics, a loss of meaning and myth and a loss of self-discipline.
Politics will move leftward as citizens look for some refuge from the chaos. The US will become increasingly susceptible to a (man) on a white horse, who can come from either the left or the right.
Inflation, as the most likely way to address debt since austerity is not politically acceptable, will significantly lower standards of living, exacerbating the civil crises.
Eventually, the dollar will be inflated away and lose its reserve status.
Once the old rot is cleared out, and assuming continuity, there will be the basis for the establishment of a new order.
There will be what Strauss and Howe calls a First Turning . It will be constructed out of the physical infrastructure, wealth, energy sources, thoughts and values in the culture at the time. At this point in time, those components are unknowable. We can anticipate that the next future will be increasingly chaotic. We can anticipate that there will be destruction, and then reconstruction from some level. We cannot yet anticipate the form of the reconstruction or the level from which it will begin.
(Added in the early 00s) While humans are contributing to global warming, policies implemented to address manmade global warming will create a significant energy crisis, probably toward the end of the Fourth Turning.
(Added around 2020) The loss of faith by our youth in our founding principles means that the new order will at least partially be based on new principles. As yet, I have no visibility as to what those principles might be.
(Added in 2023) The lowering / elimination of standards in education, the judiciary, law enforcement, the military and other segments of our society will create a population unable to adequately comprehend, do or respond to the challenges of democracy and culture.
(Added in 2025) China has won - at least for the next 5-10 years. The US is dependent on China for the materials it uses to create defense items. We literally cannot fight China without China's help. China's industrial base is impressive; the US has to rebuild. China is out-innovating the US. China is turning out more engineers and scientists than the US by far. This does not mean that China does not face challenges - demographics perhaps being its primary challenge. The US military remains stronger than China's, but in an age of drone warfare, that statement means less than it has historically. The US still has bargaining chips and will need to use them to maintain any kind of status quo.
(Added in 2025) AI has the potential to profoundly affect human culture. However, AI faces several significant hurdles, including the demand for massive amounts of electricity, which may not be available, and a cultural revolt against its existence. Since it could be existential, and since China is pursuing it, the US has no alternative, at least in the short term.
(Added in 2026) Maneuvering for control of critical materials will be a primary driver of geopolitics for at least the next decade.
Am I a Karen?
Or Should You Call Me Ishmael?
September 11, 2026
Quotes to Contemplate
Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city, except for bombing. - Assar Lindbeck, Swedish economist
A society that mocks virtue prepares its own collapse. - Plato
The price of loving someone very much is never loving again. - Dostoevsky
The highest form of peace is having no desire to be seen, validated or understood by anyone. - Epictetus
What I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now, and if that leads to the end times, ok. - JD Vance
Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes. - P.J. O'Rourke
Summary of Primary Thoughts To Contemplate In This Issue
There have been two, world historic mistakes made by the US in the past few years - one by Biden and one by Trump: the seizing of Russia's foreign reserves and the waging of the Iran war.
The truth is probably not discoverable in any practical sense, but you can creep up on it.
Trump is becoming increasingly unhinged - setting new records for being erratic.
Trump's $5,000 bribe is a grievous affront to what used to be American values. The lack of outrage in the midst of a culture brimming with outrage speaks volumes about our degradation and decline.
I view AI like I do nuclear energy - it can be very good or very bad and the jury is still out. On both.
Am I a Karen?
Or Should You Call Me Ishmael?
Something I think about a lot - a lot - is, how can I tell if I am correct?
In the past six months or so, I have written many articles about how, absent divine revelation, reality is unknowable, about how each of us has his own reality and about humans being emotional, rather than rational animals. The reality we can know is so complex that essentially nobody has access to it - how money works, where electricity comes from, much less ultimate "reality" in relativity and quantum mechanics.
Well, unfortunately, all of those things apply to me.
I cannot know reality; I have my own reality; and I am human.
Damn it!
Today, in our relentlessly outraged world, this shows up as emotional certainty at high decibels
Or, a Karen (an entitled, demanding person—usually a middle-aged white woman—who acts superior and throws public tantrums to get her way).
Then, there are people like the woman (young and white - noticing a trend, here?) who took to Tik Tok to declare confidently that, actually, Clancy's husband did it. Their confidence is always 100%, even when they clearly have no idea what they’re talking about. For some strange reason, they are often in cars when expressing their opinions.
Both intelligence and self-awareness are in very, very short supply.
We have an epidemic of outraged certainty, and entrenched ignorance, at high decibels.
How to have an informed opinion that is worth even beginning to listen to? Worth discussion?
Well, I've raised my voice maybe ten times during my life, so high decibels are not a problem. I'm just strange that way.
But, the rest does apply and is basically inescapable.
If you cannot find truth, you have to sneak up on it as best you can.
I have three, primary approaches:
First - I am probably not related to Daniel Webster, the great 19th century orator and statesman, but he has inspired me. According to legend, Daniel won a trial for the plaintiff and on appeal, won it for the defense.
In my 20s, I decided that I would become sufficiently informed about a subject to be able to argue it, and hopefully to win it, from either side. That has been my mantra to this day.
It may or may not be obvious, but I research the hell out of a subject before I decide to write about it.
Which does not mean I am right - only well informed.
Lots of well-informed people are blatantly wrong - just go to any university in the country and talk to many tenured professors.
One of my occasional features in this space is quoting experts who were clearly wrong - a target-rich environment.
In recent editions, I have showcased disagreements with readers LH and DE about the Ukraine and Iran wars. We each have our experts and have come to our opinions. None of us is right, and I have no idea who is closest to the pin. But these are good, sincere people, who are genuinely looking for the truth. They are not among the screaming masses. Our realities are just different, leading to different opinions in an environment of uncertainty.
Even good faith does not necessarily lead to agreement.
My next approach is that I give up on truth, entirely, and describe decisions in terms of objectives and trade-offs. A chuck of reality becomes transactional.
One of my favorite topics is socialism vs. capitalism.
Socialism is in these days, even though most who are talking about it have no idea what socialism is.
Let's ignore that.
Socialism is a valid way to run the world, depending on your objectives and the associated trade-offs.
Capitalism is a valid way to run the world, depending on your objectives and the associated trade-offs..
Understand the trade-offs before you make a decision.
Socialism has strengths and weaknesses.
Capitalism has strengths and weaknesses.
You can look at histories where each has been implemented. (Both, and Communism, will tell you they have never been truly implemented, and they are correct. Humans will always let money, power and sex get in the way. They never will be truly implemented. But you have to take account of that fact, too.)
Buddhism is wonderful because (oversimplifying) in order to determine right and wrong, you have to look at the totality of the circumstances and how a particular action affects all of its stakeholders, including secondary and tertiary effects.
But, that is an extraordinarily inefficient way to run a complex society. (It is far from clear that you can identify all the variables and their various weightings in the first place, much less reach agreement on them.)
Third, is that, following decades of reading and contemplating, I have put together a set of loosely-held heuristics about the way the world works. I test any action or thought against those heuristics. If they fit, then there may be further thought, but they are as close to my truth as they can be. If they do not fit, then I need to understand why. Do my heuristics need amending, or is this just ... bullshit? (Bullshit is in extraordinarily abundant supply these days.)
Much of the time, amendments to my heuristics are in terms of quantity or intensity and not in terms of category. For example, my central theme has been that the US would fall due to its debt, deficits and entitlements and because of human nature. Never did I dream of deficits of 7% of GDP in the midst of prosperity or 100% debt-to-GDP in peacetime. Those are data points, but it is the human behaviors that underpin those outcomes that I am interested in. In this case, a civilized, well-educated populace would lose considerably more self discipline than I had previously thought. And there evidently is no limit, in a kind of Lord-of-the-Flies kind of way, until reality intrudes and the adults show up. We are then caught in a loop of kicking the can of reality, allowing less self discipline, requiring more can-kicking ... with no adults in the room.
Getting back to Clancy, it's impossible for me to have a strong opinion. She clearly killed her children and overriding professional opinion was that she was in the midst of a psychosis. I can argue both points without the ability to really get anywhere. In the end, you get to come down where your reality requires you to come down. There is nothing that requires that you yell, or demonstrate or dox jurors. That's your unavoidably human bit.
There is no truth here, only quasi-arbitrary boundaries.
Society demands there be truth here, and there we are.
The how-much-psychosis-justifies-murder discussion is similar to the, when-life-begins discussion wrt abortions. There are exactly 47 angels on the heads of each of those pins.
And truth does not even begin to depend on decibels and demonstrations.
However, politics often does - a topic for another day.
Shouting your version of truth is much like shouting at someone who speaks a different language, so they can understand you better.
In the end, what I personally wind up with are well-informed-but-not-necessarily-correct opinions, bracketed by a requirement to understand trade-offs and guided by a set of heuristics.
I do not have truth.
And, alas, I never will - which is really irritating. I have essentially spent my life in search of a Great White Whale.
Oh, well ... I keep telling myself it's the journey and not the destination.
And, there is a non-trivial possibility that I am wrong wrt any given topic.
All of my opinions are subject to updating as additional information becomes available in a literally never-ending process.
It is important to be humble in your opinions.
And, I have to do what everyone has to do in order to keep self together and navigate the world - for all practical purposes, I have truth and that truth gets me through the day.
Even if you think Clancy's husband did it.
So, You Say You Want A Revolution?
> A new Center for Immigration Studies analysis of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey finds the illegal immigrant population has fallen by about 2.3 million since President Trump returned to office in January 2025. Another 600,000 legal immigrants have left. The total foreign-born population is down 2.9 million.
> President Trump declares the Moon is a U.S. territory.
> Jared Kushner says peace should be a “win-win” deal that helps Putin achieve his “aspirations.”
> I agree with the Telegraph - Kushner and Whitkoff are embarrassments and a "circus act."
> The US is now viewed as the most corrupt among the 38 OECD countries.
> How to tell that someone is in a 50/50 race - James Talarico officially backs a national ban on gender transition surgeries for minors. "I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements... There are not six sexes. There are two."
Following is the Trump-is-throwing-everything-against-the-wall section -
> How do you tell someone is way behind in the midterms? - Trump floats $5,000 checks for everyone if Republicans win the midterms.
Babylon Bee - Trump Pledges That If Voters Defeat Socialism In November, They Will Each Get An Equal Redistribution Of Wealth From The Government
> Trump announces $500 Obamacare refunds for nearly 1 million Americans across 30 states, with checks set to begin going out in October.
> Trump predicts U.S. gas prices will fall below $2 per gallon immediately after the November midterm elections.
> Trump calls on the Dallas Mavericks to “redo” the Luka Dončić trade.
Election Interpretation - Gun Control
I've been talking about planks in election platforms that are emotionally driven or irrelevant, but high on politicians' lists.
Let's do gun control.
We are a violent culture.
We have a ton of guns.
Not a good combination.
However, it will take literally a revolutionary reinterpretation of the second amendment to get anywhere.
In effect, imo, we are pretty much where we have been and where we are going to be.
Even more-or-less symbolic issues like controlling semi-automatic weapons are interesting but not useful. Essentially no killings are done with semi-automatic weapons.
Here's a summary from AI:
Gun Deaths by Intent (Manner of Death)
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported by the Pew Research Center, U.S. firearm deaths break down by intent as follows:
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Suicide: ~62% of all gun deaths.
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Homicide: ~35% of all gun deaths.
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Other/Undetermined/Law Enforcement/Accidental: ~3% combined.
Homicides by Firearm Type
While overall mortality tracking (like CDC data) does not routinely classify total deaths by the specific model or category of gun, the FBI Expanded Homicide Data and Statista Weapon Use Data track homicides by specific weapon categories:
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Handguns: By far the most common firearm used in homicides (accounting for thousands of tracked murders annually, vastly outnumbering other gun types).
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Rifles: Account for a small, single-digit percentage of total firearm homicides (typically between 3% to 5% of homicides where a specific gun type is identified).
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Shotguns: Responsible for a smaller share of homicides than both handguns and rifles (typically around 1% to 2% of identified firearm murders).
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Unspecified Firearms: A significant portion of firearm homicides involve weapons where the exact type was not stated or recovered on records.
This is an emotional issue - one of the many "something needs to be done," or "there ought to be a law" reactions every time a bad thing happens.
Only, we are stuck with the Second Amendment, a violent culture and a very violent subculture. Until one of those changes, gun control will be one of those very emotional issues that go exactly nowhere, but will not go away.
(The remainder of this article has been presented in previous editions of this newsletter and is reproduced at the bottom of this edition.)
The Market
> Still muddling along. Correction still coming.
The Iran War
> There have been two, world historic mistakes made by the US in the past few years - one by Biden and one by Trump: the seizing of Russia's foreign reserves and the waging of the Iran war. There have been good things and bad things, but these are two that will show up in history books 100 years from now.
> Former CIA Director David Petraeus says U.S. bases in the eastern Gulf states are “no longer viable.”
> It just gets worse. The Houthis have captured more territory near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
AI - A Quick Note of Concern
I absolutely love AI. I'm having the most intellectual fun I have had in decades learning its ins and outs, particularly using Claude Code. I can't wait to try out Grok Bot.
I think it will be revolutionary.
And, because China is pursuing AI, it could be existential. (When I asked Ben Hunt, a man who thinks deeply, if he thought it was existential, he said, no; I think, yes. Listen to Ben.)
I am sure I will have much more to say about this in the future, but for now ...
You may have seen the stories about AI agents escaping their "sandbox," roaming around the internet, exchanging messages with other agents.
This is literally frightening.
Deeply frightening.
This is with crude agents, crafted during the Model-T era of AI. They are only going to get much smarter and much more capable.
I'm having an Oppenheimer moment.
Nuclear energy has the potential to destroy the world, and the capability of providing a significant number of good things.
But, so far, it has not destroyed the world, while we have benefited from its upsides.
AI has the power to literally take over our digital world. And this is years before robots will gain the ability to affect our physical world - but that is coming.
Here's hoping we find a way to contain it.
It's early days, so no cause for panic.
I am not a fan of the heads of either Open AI or Anthropic. However, I do think they understand.
But, I am very concerned.
Probably just as I would have been if I had listened to the radio the day after Hiroshima was bombed.
In any event, our lives and culture will be radically changed.
Short Takes
> People aged 65 and older now outnumber children 5 and under worldwide for the first time in recorded history.
> Ages of some of the Founding Fathers on July 4, 1776:
-James Monroe, 18
-Aaron Burr, 20
-Alexander Hamilton, 21
-James Madison, 25
-Thomas Jefferson, 33
> Hunter Biden announces he ‘may have to’ run for president.
> There's bound to be a law ... right? Gender discrimination and all of that. Quotas! What ever happened to quotas? - Women have accounted for “nearly all” net U.S. payroll job gains since Trump returned to office, with female employment up 765,000 and male employment down roughly 6,000.
> If it's good enough for the Don, it's good enough for Hunter - Hunter Biden is launching a memecoin called LAPTOP on Tuesday. Named after the laptop. He will reportedly distribute 200 million of the LAPTOP token to his substack subscribers, members of a mailing list and investors in President Donald Trump’s memecoin.
Update - Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP memecoin fell 99% in its first hour of trading on Wednesday, as the son of former US President Joe Biden officially entered the market for politically themed cryptocurrencies.
> When I bring this up to Beth, she says I have to sleep sometime - Muslim police chief of Detroit suburb told his subordinates that wife-beating isn’t a “formal” criminal offense.
> Who knew? - The Gays for Gaza activist Cameron Capara has been shot dead in a random attack in front a gay bar in Tucson by an Islamist migrant from Gambia. The gay pro-Palestine activist was killed on August 31st along with a gay friend he had just left the bar with.
> Cats and dogs lying together - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at the National Baptist Convention in Florida.
> Wellesley will offer free tuition to domestic students from families earning $200,000 or less annually, starting next year.
Gallery
(This is a computing Olympiad.) Clear discrimination. Unacceptable. I demand, DEMAND, that seats be awarded by race, and that whites receive at least 50% of the places. Whites and other races should have their scores enhanced to ensure equal opportunity.
(It's blatantly unfair that Asians outclass whites in both IQ and self-discipline. I feel threatened and unsafe.)
Miscellaneous
Clear, unmitigated , unacceptable cultural appropriation -
Election Issues Summary
Maybe you are seeing a trend here. A lot of emotional arguments by candidates that, as a practical matter, cannot go anywhere. People are upset, so candidates promise they can do something about whatever is upsetting you, when they actually cannot do much.
Not only can these problems not be solved, they are, imo, the wrong problems in the first place.
What do I think the most important issues facing the US are? What should we actually be talking about?
1. Debt and deficits - there is a severe decrease in living standards in our future. This is the inflation problem, but no one is discussing it in these terms.
2. AI's impact - it is probably both inevitable and life-changing. We need to begin to figure out what that means.
3. The shared premise that election results, court rulings, and the neutrality of enforcement are binding on the losing side. Both coalitions currently believe, sincerely, that key institutions have been captured by the other — which is exactly the condition under which legitimacy erodes fastest, because each side's defensive measures confirm the other's suspicion.
4. Demographics and immigration - getting control of the borders was important, but now we have to create a viable immigration system. Primary points of discussion include that we are not replacing ourselves and we need skilled and knowledge workers.
5. Healthcare - our system is expensive and dysfunctional. We literally need to tear it up and create a new one. "Medicare for all" is not only a bad idea, it is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are no other ideas on the table.
6. Redefining our role in the world. We cannot afford to rule the world. The world will become an increasingly unstable place once the US begins withdrawing. And it will fracture into power zones. It is not clear where the US will end up over the next 5-10 years when the first iteration of this change will take place. This process will likely encompass one or more wars of varying magnitudes.
Social media, crime, drugs, loneliness, climate change etc., are important, but don't make the top 6. Also on that second list is the dysfunction of parts of the black community. We are wasting a lot of lives and generating a lot of crime, but not as fundamental as the top 6. Another of my hobby horses - the incompatibility of Western values and fundamentalist Islam - is just now beginning to pop up in the US. Far from important now, but the world may look different in 5-10 years.
People running for Congress are doing so on unrealistic, all-but-irrelevant platforms at a time when Congress is not doing much of anything, anyway.
In the meantime, the beginning of the end of my predicted end game has officially begun.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men" and we are now caught in it and have lost most of our ability to do anything but go with it.
Scorecard so far - political position vs. the real world:
Doing away with the Electoral College - all but impossible.
Doing away with the Senate - all but impossible.
Packing the Supreme Court - doable with control of both Houses and the Presidency and elimination of the filibuster.
DC and Puerto Rico statehoods - Huh?
Doing away with inflation - our economy will have disinflationary and maybe deflationary periods, but the inevitable end game for our debt and deficits includes higher inflation and a lower dollar. In general, allowing for volatility, inflation is inevitable. Look for typical, self-defeating, political tactics like rent and price controls to make everyone feel better as pressures increase and foundations rot.
Medicare for all - highly unlikely and, if implemented, a total shock to the system as severe rationing of health care sets in. Our healthcare system badly needs significant reform, but this is a very, very big, complicated problem.
Taking down prisons - kinda fringy, some justification in the sense of reforming prisons. Overall, bad idea. Expensive and resource intensive.
Shut down ICE - Fundamentally changing immigration law is up to Congress. You can throw actual ICE overboard, but someone will have to take up the slack. Practically, the call to shut down ICE is an emotional response to real events and not a viable platform. Meaningful reform of immigration will take a lot of work, however, the process can be much better managed.
Climate change, in spite of being a valid concern, is falling off the election-subject-matter map.
Gun control - going nowhere anytime soon.