A Few Bad Things I Think Could Happen Very Soon

Some baseless predictions that nevertheless seem pretty plausible.

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One of my favorite things to do these days has been to sit and wallow in that acute mix of depression and anxiety that seems to be the dominant mood in the zeitgeist. I’ll readily admit that this isn’t a particularly healthy way to spend our descent into a full-blown authoritarian police state, but it lets me engage in one of my other favorite hobbies: wild and often baseless speculation.

While there are a lot of unanswered — and probably unanswerable — questions about where we’re headed as a country and whether we’ll be able to pull ourselves out of this fascist tailspin before it’s too late, there are nevertheless some things on our potential horizon that seem, if not predictable, then at least plausible. To be clear, I’m not saying I know what will happen (lord knows the world doesn’t need another shitty prognosticator when we’ve already got Thomas Friedman publishing his chitchats with random DC cabdrivers like they’re the Oracle of Delphi). Instead, here are a few discrete scenarios that seem feasible to the point that, if they do happen, we’ll probably all look back and think “well, duh, of course they did.” And if that day does actually come, well, I wouldn’t dream of saying “I told you so” but… you’ll know. You’ll know.