As to U.S. political governance, until literally in the past few months, I believed in what I reckon to be a typical regression to the mean. However right or left presidential candidates pontificate on their social and economic beliefs, upon which they will bring change once empowered upon their ascendancy to office, they are very likely to govern close to the middle. Essentially mere standard deviations from that. I opine that free market forces, the engine that drives everything in the U.S., and historical values, even mores of the populous amalgam, prevail.

Then …

First, George Floyd died.

Then, China demonstrated their impertinence of power, and likely soon-to-be world supremacy,  with rightfully-for-now perceived impunity. We can hope and pray that repeating and persistent economic near-crises in China —they are entering a severe cycle now— will resolve in major crisis can stifle that some. And do so without causing China to expand its power abroad. Indiscriminately.

Otherwise, the best shot at curbing the fabled Chinese long-game might be another Trumpian president. Over five million people worldwide, more apropos to this writing, seven hundred thousand Americans, died without China spending eight cents on one bullet, much less millions on missiles and such.

Finally, the purely visceral hatred of the man, Trump. Read more about Trump in my book Pimps Whores and Patrons of Virtue, piece titled If You Have Your Head Stuck Up Your Rectum That Your World Is Seen Entirely Through Your Navel…

All that engendered an incapable, hapless, corrupt, disingenuous, intellectually and morally bankrupt governing regime that is vertiginously moving into totalitarianism. And, at this point, frightened of what they have launched and are unable to control. Witness that is the absence of civil discourse and frightening government sanctioned violence – on both public and government side.

Of course, the “crumbling” of our society, and all its wonderful as well as absurd institutions, began with Lyndon Johnson’s theoretically fantastic great new society. Regrettably, however predictable that might have been, the most consequential component of that, education, collapsed entirely for all generations since. From grade schools to most astoundingly, universities. The latter are no longer institutions of higher learning, thriving on free and “real” progressive thought and speech. Rather, they are unabashed indoctrination centers.

And have by-and-large abandoned the core support beam of advanced thought: meritocracy.

The façade of our civilization is indeed very significantly cracked.

All of the aforewritten makes the case for a highly fertilized ground for the social, political and economic tsunami we are living in now.

Granted: politics, market and world circumstances do cause pendulum swings in acceptable governance. However, the aforelisted facts or be they both facts and circumstances, have brought about a cataclysmic swing to totalitarian leftism, even astoundingly stupid pseudo Marxism, making the U.S. unrecognizable in just a few months!

Ignoring my theory of regression to the mean, it is reasonable to expect a likely radical swing in the opposite direction, à la Newton’s third law of motion. Trust that is not just the most basic of physics. Human nature mirrors that entirely! If that were not the case, societies would simply self-destruct, perish in the flames generated by the heat of their passions.

There is now an enormous amount of such passions in our population. Much of it – gratefully for now – reasonably pent up.

My fear is the possibility of our Archduke Ferdinand Sarajevo moment. Can a small event, not worthy beyond one news cycle, however, fueled by the unbridled power of hate in social media, and even just tangential in context to where the pendulum is relentlessly banging against real limits of its then swing, cause the fragile societal dam to crumble. And launch an unprecedented wave of human behavior to brutally bounce the pendulum back, consequences be damned. Imagine THAT with tens of millions of armed and angry Americans behind it.

©2021. Steven J. Manning. All rights reserved worldwide. Any reproduction, in part or whole, in any medium whatsoever, is strictly prohibited.