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.
Covid, Redux
August 7, 2026
Quotes to Contemplate
Wait, you're telling me that running $2 trillion deficits, introducing new taxes on goods, and starting a fresh war in the Middle East, has not been effective at getting the cost of living down? - Lyn Alden
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(Discussing AI) And by this I mean government backsstop intervention. It'll come with government oversight, you know, and um controls and and and and the like. That's where this is going, right? that the train has left the station. The destination is government intervention, bailout, backs, stop control of the AI industry. You're not going to stop this train. Maybe you can slow it down. I ain't happy about the train, but the train's left the station. - Ben Hunt
Summary of Primary Thoughts To Contemplate In This Issue
Biden set a terrible precedent regarding pardons, which every president in the future will now follow - unconstrained administrations. Character has always mattered and now it is critical.
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I am now being ganged up on wrt the Ukraine War. Take a look at the comments.
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A reminder that amending the Constitution requires a 67% approval in both Houses of Congress and the approval of 38 states. Many of the actions Democrats are promising almost certainly cannot be accomplished.
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Our approach to Covid was an abject failure of the government and institutions.​
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So, You Say You Want A Revolution?
> One of the reasons Trump and many of his minions are behaving the way they are is that they know Trump will pardon them as he walks out the door. Biden set a terrible precedent, which every president in the future will now follow - unconstrained administrations. Character has always mattered and now it is critical.
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> Pirro drops Reflecting Pool case, blaming damage on ‘botched’ installation. Trump furious, since he continues to maintain it was sabotage. (Trump hired the repair firms on a no-bid basis.)
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> I'm getting ganged up on by internet friends. Longtime friend, HW, takes me to task about the Ukraine War. In the interest of equal time, I am including his comments at the bottom of this post. DE fired a third salvo. I have also included some of his references, below.
I respect both DE, who disagreed last week, and HW, but see no reason to change my current opinion, so I respectfully disagree. If I change my opinion, which is definitely possible - I said that the fog of war is dense and that I explicitly do not trust the statements of our government or media - I will bring it up in this space.
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> Trump Media officially launches “Truth API,” giving clients faster access to President Trump’s Truth Social posts for up to $100,000/month. Trump will want them to be happy with their new service. So, expect more frequent market-moving posts. This is not the most egregious thing Trump has done, but you can see it from here. Incredible, blatant, reprehensible rent seeking.
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> One day a drone fired from within the US will hit a target within the US and the world will change.
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> Trump's new ballroom blocked by court.
Well Worth Your Time
The next 10 years by geopolitical strategists here. Many, many things to think about. They don't mention the Fourth Turning, but they do anticipate radical changes over the next ten years.
Your Guide to Elections
There is just a huge amount of garbage being put out there by candidates of both parties. I am going to begin a feature much like my alerting you to the proper use of language - how to frame candidates' claims.
I'm going to begin with Kamala:
Many candidates are going to promise things that, for all practical purposes, won't happen, but are catnip to their constituencies. One of those is getting rid of the Electoral College. Anything that requires a Constitutional amendment requires approval by 38 states, together with a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress, and, at best, that will take a while. Now, individual states can basically do an end-run on the Electoral College by directing their electors to cast their votes in proportion to the popular vote, but that's a different thing.
Packing the Supreme Court is straightforward - majority of both Houses, keeping in mind the filibuster in the Senate, which will probably have to be done away with, and approval of the President. Many people think the number of justices is in the Constitution, but it is not.
Similarly for DC and Puerto Rican statehood. Not sure there is a big constituency for this outside of those jurisdictions. Kind of a strange choice for her top three. My guess is that this is high on her agenda because she thinks both will lean Democrat.
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A lot of what the Democrat Socialists are up to, such as getting rid of the Senate, also requires a Constitutional amendment and therefore is mostly virtue signaling.
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Another area where politicians say they will fix things is inflation.
Price changes, avoiding a definition of inflation, come from supply and demand, exchange rates, technology and monetary policy. Your average Senator or Representative simply has no control over these things, other than making them worse through such things as rent and price control.
But, people hate rising prices (although rising wages which lead to rising prices are ok) and want someone to fix things. Since elections are only peripherally about reality, and because essentially no one understands where increasing prices come from, a candidate will promise to fix things.
They can't.
Except ...
Affordability was high on Trump's list of promises, and then he creates tariffs, bombs Iran, takes away subsidies for ObamaCare and threatens subsidies for Medicare drug programs.
Sometimes politicians can subsidize or tax things, appearing to lower the price by spreading it around the tax base or increasing the price by taking away a subsidy or taxing the thing.
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I'm beginning to see a trend - Pete Buttigieg calls for abolishing the Electoral College & expanding the Supreme Court.
The Market
> McDonald's misses U.S. sales estimates as lower-income consumers continue to pull back on restaurant spending.
The Iran War
> Another week, another TACO. Another, Trump backing off because of "big news on the negotiating front." In this case, the official line is that the US's Middle East allies asked him to back off.
Speaking of the fog of war, I have no idea, but I continue to suspect we are running out of missiles and anti-missiles.
Trump is going to have to come up with new ideas. He ran up the flagpole the idea of a multination blockade of all trade with Iran along its entire border. Did not see the response, which may have been the response.
If he attacks Iran's energy infrastructure, he risks Armageddon in the Middle East as Iran takes out desalination plants.
Covid, Redux
Watching Fauci take the fifth brings back fond memories of those blissful days in the early 2020s ...
We have some distance now, although not enough, to begin taking stock of what happened.
The first principle, as always, is that people are fucking nuts. They believe the damnedest things and create the damnedest stories. Cacophony and chaos rule.
But, we will ignore all of that, even though some of it continues in the wilds of Reddit and X.
The truth is out there, but we have only part of it, so the following is only my opinion - probably a pretty informed opinion, but just my opinion.
Origin - probably from a lab leak in China with the lab receiving funding from the US to research gain-of-function. The irony is strong with this one.
Impact - not fun at all, with 7 million dying, but on the pandemic severity scale of 1-10, maybe a 4 or 5.
Institutions - failure across the board - FDA, NIH, CDC ... The government lied continually - Trump and Biden.
Context - we were unprepared and making it up as we went along. Experimentation and wrong decisions were to be expected. Only, we outdid ourselves.
Optimum strategy - My suggestion at the time, which I still think is right - given the characteristics of the virus, have all the old people stay home or wander around at their peril, and let the rest of the country go on with their lives.
Masks - N95 masks covering the nose and mouth are useful, not a cure-all, useful, not the least in reducing the wearer's spreading.
Distancing - right idea. Trade off between safety (infinite separation) and interacting to keep the economy moving. Six feet was a guestimate but probably as good as any other number. Closer is worse; farther is better.
Ivermectin - a mountain out of a mole hill. Poster child for pandemic stupidity in a crowded field. Current evidence indicates that it is not effective against Covid.
Fauci - a very flawed spokesperson who parroted the very flawed company line and got caught up in his importance.
Real villains - teachers' unions, particularly Randy Weingarten. Health institutions. Governments - Trump and Biden - misleading as a control and management strategy.
Heroes - can't think of any. Props to Trump for implementing Operation Warp Speed.
Experts and influencers - celebrities and politicians took up the company line because they did not know any better and trusted the government. Famously, Bill Gates, who is no dummy, told the world that people had “no choice” avoiding the COVID shot, claiming the unvaxxed would “endanger their grandparents” and the vaxxed were 100% protected.
Congress - useless then; useless now. The Fauci hearings, even if he had testified, were kabuki.
Vaccine - well, it's not a vaccine. It is a symptoms suppressor/mitigator, I guess. Since it is not a vaccine, the hysteria around it was more unhinged than usual. All medicines have side effects and the Covid "vaccine" did, too, including some heart-related issues. In the grand scheme of things, fairly minor. And we were lucky, since it was untested at the time. I am reserving judgement about longer-term effects because there is no longer-term, yet. I said at the time that since I was old and had preconditions, I was going to take it, but it was a bad idea. But, it did contribute positively to slowing down the pandemic. Current modeling, which I am not ready to take at face value but which is probably directionally correct, indicates that the vaccines saved some 2.5 million lives, worldwide.
The next pandemic - and there will be a next pandemic - I'm not sure we learned any lessons from Covid and if we did, they were probably the wrong ones. Even in the context of facing an unknown foe and having to make it up as we went along, it was a masterpiece of incompetence. Of course, it depends on what we are up against in the future. Masks, distancing, isolation and closures are all weapons to be deployed, but we will have no idea until reality arrives. I will predict that, whenever that happens, we will not be prepared.
I will leave you with a true story. George W Bush read a book about the "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1919. When he looked around, he found we were unprepared to fight the next pandemic. He organized personnel and supplies to be ready.
John Bolton in Trump's first administration dismantled that program two years before Covid struck.
It's what we do.
Bottom line - distressing failure of government and institutions. Predation by teachers' unions. We muddled through, probably losing several hundred thousand more people in the US than we "should" have. The primary lasting tragedies are the loss of those several hundred thousand lives, the loss of education for a cohort of children and a loss of formative job years for a cohort of college graduates and others coming into the job market at that time.
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Of course, other people have other opinions - MSNOW's Nayyera Haq awarded Fauci the "MVP of the Week" award this week for "standing up for science" and "standing up to bullies" by refusing to testify before Congress.
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From Fauci's diary - a smoking gun -
The Odyssey
We went to see The Odyssey in IMAX.
It was magnificent and spectacular. Very glad I went.
But, how faithful was it to Homer's poem and does that matter?
The movie follows a long tradition of presenting material originally on other media as "based on," so that some of the original is maintained and the screenwriter changes, adds and omits things at will.
The poem is about a trickster hero and how his fate is determined by the gods and by his character.
The movie includes gods, but they are more bit players, instead of integral to every major scene.
The black Helen thing. We are used to quotas and diversity and DEI by now so we are going to see blacks pop up everywhere and gays turn up fairly regularly. Historical accuracy will be sacrificed. I have no idea what Nolan would have done without constraints, but it turns out that to be considered for Best Movie at the Academy Awards, you have to follow a series of do's and don't's, including having minorities as primary characters. I'm very much for historical accuracy, but "based on" films sacrifice that regularly, without a black in sight and before the changes in Best Movie criteria - see Braveheart. So, that's the way it has been and the way it's going to be.
In particular, the whole Calypso sequence is just plain wrong. Odysseus was not kept there by the power of the lotus. He was there voluntarily, and it was one of the key conflicts in the poem - a man determined to get home to his beloved wife, staying for a long time in order to have a relationship with another woman. However, perhaps the central piece of the poem is when Odysseus turns down Calypso's offer to make him immortal and ageless to stay with her. He turns down godhood to go back to a mortal wife on a rocky island. Nolan decided not to include that part - or even that Calypso was a goddess.
The "Law of Zeus" thing that holds the plot together is totally fabricated. There was no such thing and no such thing in the poem.
Hermes gives Odysseus a herb that saves him from Circe's poison, and as part of Hermes' directions of the process to save his men, Odysseus has to accept Circe's invitation to bed. (In later poems by other authors, the child from this union comes back to attack Odysseus.)
The whole Telemachus story is made up. In the poem, Telemachus fights the suitors by his father's side and that is the point. He was guided by Athena, trained in Sparta and became a man worthy of kingship in spite of not having a father around. No "blood on his hands" stuff. That's what kings do.
​The ending is also fabricated. Odysseus in the poem is proud of his Trojan Horse. He is from a time when laying waste to cities is just what you did. All of this guilt stuff was made for a modern, Western audience, I guess. In the end, Athena holds back the dawn so Odysseus' and Penelope's first night together can be extended. In the poem, Tiresias tells Odysseus that he must eventually leave again, carrying an oar inland until he reaches people so ignorant of the sea that they mistake it for a winnowing fan. There he plants the oar, sacrifices to Poseidon, returns home, and dies gently in prosperous old age. No exile.
So, what I saw was a masterful film of "The Odyssey" by Christopher Nolan. Not The Odyssey by Homer. Most of the essence of Homer that preserved the poem for millennia was not included. Kind of like Hamlet without the angst and insanity - but the murder and the suicide were spectacular, as were the scenes of the castle and the Danish countryside. Ophelia could be black; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern could be gay.
This unwillingness to see the past on its own terms seriously plagues our culture today and is probably the reason Nolan changes the story at various points.
We insist on not understanding.
Very few care.
Great movie.
Short Takes
> I just passed a "Guardrail Damage Ahead" sign. Very thankful because I had planned to go off the road, but decided not to if there was no challenge.​​
Kind of like the "Drive Safely" sign. My reaction is, "Well, I was not going to, but since you asked nicely, I will."
Then I ran into one I have no idea what to do with - "Slow down - school begins soon."
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> Australia is moving north about 3 inches a year. It is the fastest-moving continental landmass in the world.
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> You are warned - Woke astronomer warns lunar colonizers that moon is part of “indigenous sky country.”
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> Permanent Daylight Savings Time passed the House but is DOA in the Senate because Southern states want more afternoon light but Northern states don't want kids to go to school in the dark.
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> New Progressive Bible Features Perforated Pages For Easy Removal Of Parts You Don’t Like - The Bee.
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> OutKick founder Clay Travis tells Fox News Digital why he wants to bring a WNBA expansion team to Nashville amid the league's ongoing debate about transgender athletes. There's a male ex-NBA player who has applied to the WNBA. Another guy has put up $10 million if the WNBA champions can beat a boy's high school state championship team. The WNBA is getting a lot of press.
Gallery
Miscellaneous
HW on Ukraine
Kit, I agree with your friend DE that you've fallen prey to the propaganda.
Russin KIAs are around 150,000 and maybe a few 10's of thousands higher at this point since that figure is a couple months old..The Ukrainians are losing at least an average of 1,000 KIAs PER DAY - the figures are often 1200 or 1300. These are just combat fatalities on the battlefront. All the troops killed in bombing attacks behind the front lines are not count4ed in those figures. Conservative estimates are well over 1 million Ukrainian KIAs. That number is so old ( a year or year and a half ago) that I would tend to believe the current number is close to 2 million in total. Their cemetaries all over the country are overflowing and masively expanding. The exchanges of deceased soldiers' bodies always feature 1000 dead Ukrainians for 40 or 50 Russians. The narrative is that this metric is unfair because the Russians are advancing so strongly and rapidly that the Ukrainians don't have the opportunity to pick up their own dead. OK, so are they advancing or not? Which is it? The Ukrainians are complaining about manpower shortages in all channels now, with forced mobilisation becomming more and more hardcore. Many of the mobilised desert or surrender at the first opportunity. They are lucky if they get two weeks of training before being sent to the front. So the casualties are enormous.
Your take on the Russian population is dead wrong. Think of how the Iranians have stiffened their national unity instead of turning into weepy whimps when confronted with material hardships. They know it's the sanctions and military actions imposed by the west that is doing it - they are not so stupid as to be manipulated into thinking gosh, it's all their governmant's fault
In Russia, Putin is regarded as a dove. There is frustration with him, but you don't understand why. The people want to escalate the conflict with Ukraine and are frustrated that they aren't hitting them harder, even at the cost of substantially more KIAs - that's ok with them. This is not the mentality that the West projects on them with all the useless sanctions packages, as if they will give up and quit if they run out of the cushy brand of toilet paper. If Putin is relaced it is highly, highly likely his successor will turn to using nukes on the West. We shouldn't be wanting that. The challenge to Putin is from the right, not the liberal left. The Russians have their own Neocons.
The situation has already passed the pivot point this past week. Putin had the Duma yelling a resounding "Yes" in unison when he directly asked them if he should be more aggressive in a speech to them. There is a clip of it floating around on the net, and he looked very pleased with the result. So the issue has been settled now.
The Daniel Davis Deep Dive youtube channel can offer more details on this. His most recent Intel briefing gives a broad overview. His interviews with Colnel Macgregor are also well-informed. Same with Ritter. Davis is from Texas, he was about to be appointed as second-in-command to Tulsi at the DIA when his lack of obiedence to the Gaza narrative torpedoed it. My point is that he is not a Russian propagandist. He tries to be objective and impartial, but he sees things through a lens that has an inbuilt bias which makes it necessary to exercise some critical thinking. I don't believe though that he's being deliberately deceptive.
DE on Ukraine
Today's update by Russia:
I rarely go to these types of places, but do see analysis of daily data (your 'propaganda'!) from well respected other organizations and analyst.
From the horses mouth.
Military operation in Ukraine, 02 August, 04:32.
"The Ministry of Defense reported the destruction of 1158 drones in the zone of military operation, The Ministry of Defense reported the defeat of logistics centers used by the APU. ... ."
https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/6a6f0a799a794722d7b5fe6e
( over 2 - 3 days?)
AND if you really want direct info, there's Russia's TASS, straight from the Ministry of Defense:
Military operation in Ukraine, 2 Aug
https://tass.com/defense/2168187
https://tass.com/defense/2168163
Military operation in Ukraine, 1 Aug
https://tass.com/politics/2168067
Military operation in Ukraine, 2 Aug,
https://tass.com/defense/2168123
I know you will skewer me for saying it, but the daily reports by the Russia Ministry of Defense is a very good information source. It is not political. Go to it everyday and learn and learn how the media reports or does not, report events.
If you truly want good daily info go to "Military Summary": https://www.youtube.com/@militarysummary
He's Ukrainian but tries to be mostly objective. But can be a bit pro Ukraine.
I think he's now on vacation so no daily reports. Click on 7/30/26 for the last report. Very short. Does not go into ground action here which he usually spends about 1/2 the report.