If you are impatient for things to get worse, you don't have to wait for 2012, which so many have written about, commented on, or seemingly believe in. A Russian professor contends that the U.S. will come unglued during the year ahead. The civil war could start by early summer, he says.
His article is actually from a year ago, but I would say that from the prospective of today, January 2010, it looks just about as likely as in November 2008, when it was published.
(The map reminds me of some of the suggestions about splitting Iraq into separately governed regions, which didn't happen, but might not be a bad idea).
I feel pretty confident in saying that this is not, repeat not, going to happen here in the coming year. Just because the Soviet Union fell apart doesn't mean that the U.S. will.
But I do think that we are in for continued bad times, even though I am very much hoping the opposite. True, the stock market did extremely well after March 2009, but that isn't the measure of all things, certainly not for people who need a wage or salary, rather than just clip coupons. The domestic scene is dire, and the international scene is, at the very least, pretty darn bad. The environmental situation is closing in fast on dire.
Generally, we have a situation in which there are serious problems that no one, no one, knows for sure how to solve; where the Democrats are at least trying but disagreeing among themselves, and the conservatives are hoping and praying as hard as they can that the situation will get worse, preferably very much worse--more people being unemployed, health care reform not passing, that there will be more terrorist attacks, and key members of Congress will die--so that they can generate some "throw the bums out" spirit for the elections this coming November. Possibly short-memory voters will forget that the Bush-league party has most of the bums that caused most of the troubles in the first place.
Anyhow, it won't happen the way the Russian professor says. But I am not too happy with his alignments of states. Why isn't Idaho in with Wyoming, Utah, and Montana? There seems to me a big difference between South Carolina and Vermont. Texas and Florida seem to me really not the same at all, although both do have big Hispanic populations.
My wife and I have driven over practically the entire country, and are certainly hoping to do so more. I can't say we have observed it closely, let alone studied it. But I do know where the motels are that have Fox News on in the lobby, and where those are that tune in to CNN or (best of all) the Weather Channel. We've driven through, eaten in the local diners, looked at the closed stores, and read the "for sale" posters in real estate office windows. We do have a sense of the country. I know there are places where there are Subarus with environment-friendly bumper stickers and others with big rocks painted with lettering declaring Obama to be a Socialist. (Oh my god, a socialist? Like in northern Europe?)
I know where you can find alligators, and I know that the glaciers in "Glacier" national park have shrunken greatly. I've seen the Badlands, and I have seen the dead small towns and the hugely uniform and long suburban strip malls that have become nearly universal. I've seen the hurricane damage, and I've seen the effects of major droughts. Anyhow--I haven't seen it all, but I have seen enough, and I am quite sure that the U.S. won't divide into four (or six) big pieces during the coming 12 months.
But a lot will happen though, most of it impossible to predict right now; and some of it will be good (probably chiefly at a small scale, like a neighbor helping you find your lost dog) but quite a bit of it will be pretty darn bad.
All we can hope for, I keep thinking, is a softer landing. Not a true recovery, America isn't going to "come back," our opportunities have been wasted following the Carter Administration but just not hitting the bottom terribly terribly hard. That is I think what is happening right now; I hope it doesn't get worse, and possibly a little bit better.
Comments