Looking back to 2005, I wonder what I would have predicted for the political trends of 2015. Of course it is tempting to inflate my success score (I did sort of predict 9/11 a couple of years before it happened, so at least I have that,) but here’s my attempt to be honest:
1. A variety of issues like abortion and the Middle East will remain prominent. Check.
2. Gay marriage is guaranteed, sooner or later. Check.
3. Transgender issues will never break into the mainstream, because there just aren’t that many trans people. Nope. Transgender issues have become oddly prominent.
4. Increased concern for the environment/global warming/alternative energy/peak oil. Nope.
5. Democrats focus on poverty/labor issues of the Occupy Wall Street variety. Nope. That’s been abandoned for anti-racism.
6. Internet feminism will be a growing political force. I give this a sort-of check, because internet feminism actually got much bigger than I expected, and then slid into anti-racism, which I didn’t expect. I should have, though. People were talking about it.
7. I was concerned at the time with over-criminalization/over-regulation destroying the country, but wouldn’t have predicted that anyone but me would care about these things. I’ve since discovered that I can always bond with my Republican relatives by complaining about over-regulation of small businesses, and the Black Lives Matter movement has at least noticed some aspects of the over-criminalization.
8. I did not predict the demise of libertarianism due to the rise of SJWs pushing anti-racism on the left and the the alt-right / neoreaction response.
9. I did not see ISIS coming.
So I got to thinking, what do I predict for the future? Can I do better? I’m going to write down my predictions for 2025 now, so I can check back in a decade:
1. The government attempts to cut prison population by, say, 25%, between now and then. This is not to say that they will succeed, but that this will be their goal. The easiest methods will be paroling/releasing inmates, cutting sentences, and legalizing drugs, but there will also be some push to just arrest fewer people.
2. In a related move, schools will attempt to equalize punishments by race. It won’t work.
3. Large numbers of African-Americans moved out of slums in places like Detroit and into suburban neighborhoods in places like Seattle. This will result in lower crime in Detroit and higher crime in Seattle, triggering more white flight.
3. By 2025, government will have begun reversing its imprisonment policy to deal with a 1980s-style crime wave.
4. California’s budget will eventually collapse, though probably not within ten years. A large % of people in the state will be working (and living) “under the table”, so to speak, both to protect their wages from taxation and because complying with tax laws and other regulations is a huge pain in the butt. Those who can’t work under the table will increasingly move out, driving up land prices/rents in nearby states. Without taxes, there will be no money for pensions, police, schools, infrastructure, etc. Collapse will end with the Feds moving in to take over the place and sort out the mess.
5. More generally, over-regulation and taxation will continue placing an enormous burden on businesses, especially small businesses, continuing the ossification trend that will make America an increasingly unattractive place to do business.
6. Sometime in the next decade, a 2008-style economic downturn and aftermath; pensions collapse generally.
Looking further out:
7. Increased violence in “El Norte” as Latin American drug and gang violence becomes rooted in the area.
8. The % of whites with IQs over 140 continues to decline; black IQ appears to be declining faster. High-IQ Americans will increasingly come from immigrant backgrounds.
9. Abortion, the Middle East, etc., will continue being issues just like they are now.
10. The Left fractures as Muslim groups grow powerful enough to insist on toleration for cousin marriage, polygamy, and Sharia law, and no longer support leftist ideological things like female empowerment, abortion, or gay marriage. The necessary compromises will make no one happy.
11. The current SJW-style racial narrative will move on to other topics as the growing Hispanic population starts throwing its weight around. Hispanics aren’t big on voting, but when they do vote, they’ll make a pretty solid ethnic block, and they won’t really care about black issues. Blacks will have trouble competing with Hispanics on the labor market and will get displaced from Hispanic neighborhoods. Hispanics will not have the same fear of looking racist in their dealings with blacks as whites have, and will be pretty open about this.
12. NRx as we know it will probably also be gone, as prominent bloggers get bored and move on to other projects.
ETA: I meant to ask: What are your predictions?