We are the world’s leading empire and we’re near the end of our imperial lifespan.
Sixteen months from now (472 days, to be exact), on January 25 2025, the next President of the United States will be sworn into office. In an ordinary year in an ordinary decade in an ordinary nation, the next President would be obvious. It would be Donald Trump.
Consider: In the Republican primary, Trump has a commanding 41-point lead. Every other Republican is just vying to be vice-president.
In the national election, the latest poll by ABC News/The Washington Post, has Trump ahead of Biden by 10 points. Meanwhile, Biden’s approval ratings are some of the worst of our lifetimes, ranging from 8 to 20 points of disapproval!
In an ordinary year in an ordinary decade in an ordinary nation, the likelihood of Trump’s victory would be so high that the opposition would have trouble even raising funds.
But this is not an ordinary year, or an ordinary decade, or an ordinary nation, and so it’s not going to play out like that. We are the world’s leading empire and we’re near the end of our imperial lifespan. In 2025, the United States will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the 249th anniversary of our founding. That puts us simultaneously at the end of both the “short” 80-year Strauss-Howe generational cycle and the “long” 250-year Turchin secular cycle and Glubb imperial cycle.
So how will the future go? I predict an American Eschaton: The end of America as we know it. It will be a Fourth Turning, but it will be a Fourth Turning that goes against us. The exact manner in which our eschaton will occur is much harder to predict. The end of America as we know it doesn’t necessarily mean nuclear apocalypse, government collapse, or secession. It could simply mean a transformation of America into something Unamerican. (The Russian Revolution of 1918 was the end of Russia as the Russian of the time knew it, for instance.) Here are the scenarios I consider likely.
