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.
Everything is Connected, Grasshopper
October 9, 2026
Quotes to Contemplate
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience. - Adam Smith
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one. - Charles McKay
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. — James Madison
We have to understand especially for white educators that these violent hierarchies, these systems, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, economic exploitation, those things have colonized our own minds. - James Talarico
Events can move from the impossible to the inevitable without ever stopping at the probable. - de Tocqueville
Summary of Primary Thoughts To Contemplate In This Issue
It takes a lot of work to bring a great civilization down; almost always it comes from within.
The nutritional value of fruit and vegetables has fallen by up to 50pc since the Sixties because of declining soil quality.
We are probably past peak gender.
The debate has begun - if/when AI becomes conscious, does it have rights?
Everything is Connected, Grasshopper
It takes a lot of work to bring a great civilization down.
Almost always it comes from within.
Almost always, it's a cliche.
Almost always, it's a morality tale.
Almost always, once the lack of discipline takes holds, life becomes too much fun to go back the other way. Discipline is actively ridiculed.
Although endlessly debated, in the end it is not rocket science, at least to me.
Although complicated and multifaceted, if you want just a simplified, one-liner, it is a lack of discipline.
Everywhere.
But not all at once.
It proceeds slowly. My go-to metaphor is women's swimwear. It took decades, but we went from basically total covering to g-strings. For most of that time, women would not even think about g-strings at all. Now, they are common, if not totally accepted.
It took a while to get from the end of the Great Depression when debt became anathema, to $40 trillion in debt.
Among other things, Christianity and the Protestant work ethic were responsible for laying the foundations of this nation, together with the moral character of people like George Washington - flawed, but extraordinary. Today, it is Asian discipline that is dominating as Christianity disappears and Protestantism incorporates political correctness. And we have the moral character of Donald Trump.
You debase the coinage.
You incur inconceivable amounts of debt.
You inflate grades.
You refuse to hold people accountable, including criminals.
You permeate your culture with hedonism and radical individualism.
You destroy your primary institutions, like the family and the church, and secondary institutions, such as the Boy Scouts.
Unusual amounts of grifting permeate all corners of the culture.
Congress refuses to debate serious issues.
Unqualified people are admitted to colleges.
Laws are not enforced.
I have given a great deal of thought and study to all of this. Again, while complicated, it simplifies into the fact that we are dominated by our emotions instead of our intellects.
Sex, drugs and rock and roll win every time.
As, ironically, do our capacities for empathy and sympathy.
No way to run a country.
But the way we must run a country - we are literally made this way.
So how do we fix it?
A lot of self-discipline, sacrifice and pain.
So, it is not going to be fixed.
It will continue until it cannot continue any longer.
And then something else will happen.
This is the simplistic core of my theses.
So, You Say You Want A Revolution?
> Deja vu, and oh, shit. A virus has killed a worker in an anti-plague biolab in Siberia. So far the infection has not been identified, but Russia is trying to quarantine the area. Critical issue - how long was she infectous before symptomatic?
Five hospitals now quarantined.
Russian media claims a second victim has died from 'plague outbreak' at infection zone hospital.
> Trump released a video encouraging Republicans to vote by mail.
> Elon Musk to rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI.
> Pennsylvania’s Department of Health confirmed the state’s fifth measles-related death, as the outbreak—Pennsylvania’s largest in 30 years and the biggest active one in the country—reached 943 cases in 39 of its 67 counties.
> We will rue our rejection of most vaccines - Hochul declares measles emergency in rural New York.
> The nutritional value of fruit and vegetables has fallen by up to 50pc since the Sixties because of declining soil quality, according to a new study.
The report, from researchers at Deep Science Ventures, found that humans needed to consume twice the number of vegetables to get the same level of minerals such as potassium, magnesium or copper as would have been present in their food 60 years ago.
The study found that many crops had lost 20pc to 50pc of several key nutrients.
Will Summers, a senior associate at the firm, said: “For 60 years we’ve measured food security in calories and tonnes per hectare.
“On those measures we’ve done remarkably well. But we’ve been quietly hollowing out what’s inside our food.”
The decrease in nutrient and vitamin value is thought to be down to declining soil quality and crops being selectively bred for their ability to grow quickly, rather than there being any focus on their health benefits.
> We are probably past peak gender - from the Washington Post - Number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in ‘free fall.’
> It used to be that the Democrats had the monopoly on deeming and requiring how words were used. Trump is starting to give them a run for their money, declaring that if you do not use "Super Intelligence," "you are the ENEMY."
Scarily bonkers.
> Nobody actually talks like this outside of university and weird leftwing cells - James Talarico says the violent hierarchies of the heteropatriarchy have colonized white minds.
We are so screwed, because the choice is Ken Paxton.
Meanwhile, Talarico has been missing-in-action for twelve days.
This is a microcosm of our national culture.
> Just my opinion - the public execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter is barbaric.
The Market
Still looking for that retracement.
The Iran War and the Ukraine War
> U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright declares a “crisis” over diesel shortages.
> My daily brief for today from Claude on Iran -
The deal died at Camp David — and oil found $104. The sequencing negotiation that looked days from closure collapsed over the week. The proximate cause, per Fox's reporting from the weekend's Camp David deliberations: Iran talking peace but refusing to bend on US nuclear demands — Washington re-attached denuclearization to a Hormuz deal Tehran designed as strait-for-assets. By Wednesday Trump declared he "no longer wants a deal," NBC reported his team discussing resumption of large-scale operations within weeks, and Axios's Ravid reported the Pentagon directed CENTCOM days ago to complete preparations for resuming major combat — with Israeli participation likely and reported options including a plan for three days of intense strikes. The Atlantic's report that the White House asked for options to strike before the November 3 midterms sent Brent above $104 Thursday. Then the whipsaw: Trump stated publicly Thursday afternoon that the US "will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections" — oil pared, and the war's timing is now explicitly, officially synchronized to the American electoral calendar. Iran's military answered with threats of preemptive strikes on US positions.
The periphery deteriorated faster: Houthi attacks on two Saudi airports — Riyadh's and Abha's — killed three and wounded 36, the first strikes on the kingdom's civilian aviation. The accounting arrived too: the Congressional Research Service estimates at least 81 US aircraft lost or damaged (up to $3.3B), the USS Lincoln came home after a record 265 uninterrupted days at sea with a Presidential Unit Citation, and Trump's approval sits at a record low on gasoline and diesel costs. The countercurrents worth logging: Iraqi Airways landed in Tehran under a limited US sanctions waiver — the first foreign airline into Iran since February, an odd carrot amid strike prep — new shadow-fleet sanctions landed, and Putin, meeting Pezeshkian in Turkmenistan, pledged Russia will "do everything" to help end the war, keeping his uranium-removal offer alive. Watch: whether strike-prep-plus-public-disavowal is coercive theater to reopen Doha on US nuclear terms, or the actual pre-positioning for a post-election campaign. Both readings fit the evidence.
> My daily brief for today by Claude on Ukraine -
The deadliest week in months — and the war's first strike on an AI data center. Russia delivered its most lethal 48 hours against civilians in months: a glide bomb hit passenger buses in Kramatorsk killing at least 30, a cruise missile destroyed a Pryluky apartment block killing 22 including five children, and strikes hit a Kyiv store, a school, and a kindergarten. The winter campaign escalated in parallel — Kyiv was plunged into near-total darkness Wednesday night, with power, metro, and water service disrupted and DTEK running emergency shutdowns across four districts. Diplomatically, both Washington and Moscow confirmed Trump's latest peace push is falling apart, with the Kremlin stating it has no plans to resume talks — though two threads survive: US-Ukraine talks on new proposals convene in Miami today, and Türkiye awaits both sides' answers on its Black Sea ceasefire proposal.
Ukraine's response broke new ground: drones struck Yandex's largest data center — the first major attack on a Russian data hub of the war — causing a massive internet outage across Russia, alongside a strike on Russia's largest refinery. Kyiv also announced mass production of the Mara drone (1,000-km range). The Yandex strike is a genuine precedent with implications far beyond this war: compute infrastructure just became a legitimate military target in state conflict, the day after Russia's grid campaign darkened Kyiv — both sides now treating the other's digital and electrical nervous systems as the decisive terrain. One alliance-management rupture: South Korea recalled its ambassador to Kyiv over Ukraine's disclosure that it repatriated North Korean POWs to Seoul.
Short Takes
> The Rest is History is my favorite podcast. Currently, they are covering the Terror of the French Revolution.
If I were to pick only one non-US history course for high school seniors, I would make it about the period from the end of the rein of Louis XIV to the second coronation of Louis XVIII - through the Revolution and Napoleon. This whole-year course would tell you everything you need to know about human nature and politics.
> Rep. Jasmine Crockett declines to endorse James Talarico in the Texas Senate race.
> News you can use - Elon's worth is now back over $1 trillion.
> The share of children who died before they were 5 years old in 1950 and 75 years later.
Africa: 33% 6%
Asia: 25% 2.5%
Oceania: 9.3% 2%
Latin America: 21% 1.5%
Northern America: 3.8% 0.6%
Europe: 10.5% 0.4%
Globally: 23% 3.5%
> Give me an example of irony - A published field study found temperatures over a large solar installation averaged ~2.4°C (4.3°F) warmer than nearby natural terrain, with nighttime differences reaching ~3–4°C.
> So, if AI can become conscious, does it have rights? These debates are popping up everywhere. As a first step, Anthropic has updated its usage policy to prohibit "sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior" toward its Claude AI models.
> Wyoming bans Bingo.
Gallery
Irony, plus Presidential medal winners -
Miscellaneous
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.
Insider stock trading by Congress and the President - common knowledge corruption; voters do not like it. Any useful bill is unlikely to be passed. But candidates can virtue signal at will.
Term limits and gerrymandering are on the laundry list of pro forma-but-required virtue signals that will go nowhere.
Data centers - hysteria everywhere. Real, knotty problems will likely be addressed after the elections.