Thoughts on Coming Apart and the Coming Great Reset
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Kit Webster
Themes and Theses
Why I'm Contemplating Out Loud
(Initially formulated in the early 90s, following decades of reading history, philosophy, religion, psychology and a lot of contemplation, particularly on the subject of cycles. In the end, this is a relatively straightforward story about human nature and of history rhyming.)
The US will enter a period of crisis in the early 2000s. In the late 90s, I incorporated Strauss' and Howe's terminology of the Fourth Turning (without incorporating their generations paradigm) and agreed with Howe that the end stage of the crisis began with the Great Financial Crisis and would last into the early 2030s. We are now at the beginning of the end stage of the crisis.
The crisis will be serious and could be existential.
Internal strife will increase, up to and including secession and civil war.
International conflicts will increase as the vacuum created by the weakening of the US is filled by other players.
There will be many threads to the crisis, but the primary thread will be debt, deficits and entitlements. Other factors include, eg, demographics, a loss of meaning and myth and a loss of self-discipline.
Politics will move leftward as citizens look for some refuge from the chaos. The US will become increasingly susceptible to a (man) on a white horse, who can come from either the left or the right.
Inflation, as the most likely way to address debt since austerity is not politically acceptable, will significantly lower standards of living, exacerbating the civil crises.
Eventually, the dollar will be inflated away and lose its reserve status.
Once the old rot is cleared out, and assuming continuity, there will be the basis for the establishment of a new order.
There will be what Strauss and Howe calls a First Turning . It will be constructed out of the physical infrastructure, wealth, energy sources, thoughts and values in the culture at the time. At this point in time, those components are unknowable. We can anticipate that the next future will be increasingly chaotic. We can anticipate that there will be destruction, and then reconstruction from some level. We cannot yet anticipate the form of the reconstruction or the level from which it will begin.
(Added in the early 00s) While humans are contributing to global warming, policies implemented to address manmade global warming will create a significant energy crisis, probably toward the end of the Fourth Turning.
(Added around 2020) The loss of faith by our youth in our founding principles means that the new order will at least partially be based on new principles. As yet, I have no visibility as to what those principles might be.
(Added in 2023) The lowering / elimination of standards in education, the judiciary, law enforcement, the military and other segments of our society will create a population unable to adequately comprehend, do or respond to the challenges of democracy and culture.
(Added in 2025) China has won - at least for the next 5-10 years. The US is dependent on China for the materials it uses to create defense items. We literally cannot fight China without China's help. China's industrial base is impressive; the US has to rebuild. China is out-innovating the US. China is turning out more engineers and scientists than the US by far. This does not mean that China does not face challenges - demographics perhaps being its primary challenge. The US military remains stronger than China's, but in an age of drone warfare, that statement means less than it has historically. The US still has bargaining chips and will need to use them to maintain any kind of status quo.
(Added in 2025) AI has the potential to profoundly affect human culture. However, AI faces several significant hurdles, including the demand for massive amounts of electricity, which may not be available, and a cultural revolt against its existence. Since it could be existential, and since China is pursuing it, the US has no alternative, at least in the short term.
(Added in 2026) Maneuvering for control of critical materials will be a primary driver of geopolitics for at least the next decade.
Global Warming Redux
April 10, 2026
Quotes to Contemplate
This is DEFCON 5; this is a catastrophe. - the very level-headed, very objective Lyn Alden
​
Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination. - Thomas Sowell
Summary of Primary Thoughts To Contemplate In This Issue
The world continues to change in front of your eyes.
​
​Global warming is real, serious and a massive problem. We are not going to go beyond performative measures, even assuming a Democrat government, so we will inevitably, over the decades, face global warming.
​
Trump continues to be stuck in the tar baby. The ceasefire-that-isn't is a ray of hope that, over time, oil and other products will flow again through the Strait.
​
The threat of the use of nuclear weapons increases as other solutions to the war fail.
​
Gerrymandering is a central feature of our electoral system and one that is continually abused to achieve multiple goals.
​
The disintegration of our country requires the loss of discipline in all parts of our culture - individuals, government and institutions.
Markets
Global Warming Redux
Trump is dismantling green stuff right and left and we just had the warmest month by far on record.
What's going on and how do we put it into perspective?
​
I've written extensively about this subject - everything from hurricanes to ice ages. This article is not about nuance, but about the bottom line.
​
I don't want to bury the lede - climate change is "real" and it could - most likely will - get ugly ... but later - much later.
I have studied and written about global warming (in the Trump era is "climate change" still politically correct?) extensively. Read tons of books; tons of scientific papers; listened to Rush Limbaugh and Al Gore. I've seen it all.
There are four, fundamental problems -
1. It's going to happen slowly - much of the really bad stuff happens decades from now.
2. Our models are not accurate enough to predict future climate with any certainty. (The scientific community has been highjacked by political correctness so that honest research is rare.)
3. If we are serious about fighting climate change, and we are not, even without considering Trump, one result will be a dramatic decrease in living standards.
4. Nothing you can do will make a difference. You change something and nothing happens. You are working on a problem that has a lag time measured in at least decades.
The very difficult, point is that if the US were wiped off the face of the Earth tomorrow, global warming would continue. Nothing you do actually matters. The problem is simply massive.
That's worth repeating. Slow down, take a deep breath and let it in.
The very difficult, point is that if the US were wiped off the face of the Earth tomorrow, global warming would continue. Nothing you do actually matters. The problem is simply massive.
But there are a lot of things you can do to feel better about yourself, so by all means, keep doing them. Spitting in the ocean probably has some effect.
Or not. The whole, politically correct approach to global warming is often doing much more harm than good as mases of people want to feel better about themselves while entertaining a mostly-false narrative.
The steps taken in California and Germany are mind-bogglingly stupid and destructive.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And nothing has fundamentally changed about global warming in decades. We keep raising the same issues, debate silliness, and remain at cross purposes. Literally the only new news is that everything - atmospheric temperature, concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, ocean temperature - is going the wrong way.
Let's consider the facts.
The world is not coming to an end - at least any time soon - due to global warming. Some humans may die, but more likely we will just have to adapt. The discussion that you do not hear is that one logical conclusion of fighting global warming is that, at the end of the fight, there will not be sufficient economy to sustain billions of people - lots of people would die - a discussion for another day.
By far the most important thing to understand about global warming -
​
THIS IS ABOUT CHANGING THE STAUS QUO.
​
Yes, over decades and centuries, sea levels will rise.
Yes, some places will become more habitable and some less habitable.
Yes, weather will change in different ways in different places.
Yes, there are potentially (low probability) catastrophic outcomes.
But the primary outcome is change. We have built cities and may have to move them. We grow crops in a particular place that may no longer be hospitable, but another place may become hospitable. Water availability in any particular area may change.
We don't know.
No politician and no news commentator knows.
Period.
Stop listening.
Just stop listening.
Most scientists have sold their souls. If you want to listen to a scientist for whom I have a great deal of respect, sign up for Roger Pielke's Honest Broker Substack.
Here's the deal. In order to achieve "net zero," no net new emissions of greenhouse gasses, the condition necessary to stop global warming, essentially every human on Earth will need to reduce their carbon footprint by maybe 70%. Americans 90%. (Ethiopians can actually increase theirs a little.)
Absent a catastrophe, that ain't gonna happen.
That's why I have not changed my initial conclusion - humans will not react to a contentious assertion about the future by taking serious, costly, impactful steps today.
That conclusion is mirrored in a recent poll that said that something like 80% of Americans were concerned about global warming and the maximum they would pay each month to fix it is $25 per person.
Let me show you the problem -
Can you see the impact of any of the climate summits, of Al Gore's book or of the green energy revolution?
Me, neither.
(That recent blip is Covid.)
Should we be doing something?
Absolutely.
The metaphor I use is that we are in a car heading toward a wall at high speed. We are past the point of being able to stop the car before it hits the wall, and now we need to do whatever we can do to minimize the damage when we inevitably hit the wall. Only, we still have our foot on the accelerator. Everything seems fine because we cannot see the wall and do not believe it is there. We have to put on the brakes today as hard as we can to minimize the damage from hitting a wall in the future. Every moment we wait means there will be a greater impact.
My thesis is that we are, unavoidably, absent a global catastrophe, going to hit the wall.
At high speed.
Not for decades, yet, which means we are not going to do much beyond taking politically correct steps to make us all feel better.
Ok, you say, quit being so cynical. What should we be doing?
I've already answered that question.
You and 8 billion of your closest friends need to reduce your carbon footprints by at least 70% - today. Clothes, food, travel, AI, internet, military, factories, aluminum, cement ... We need to go back to some time in the 1800s in terms of standards of living.
You are not going to do that.
Therefore, this is a real, serious, unavoidable, unsolvable problem.
And there we are.
​
Because we will not act sufficiently, I think we will turn to geoengineering - using technology to address the problem. One such solution is to put chemicals in the upper atmosphere to partially block the sun. If that sounds really scary; really risky, that's because it is. But, at some point, several decades from now as the wall comes into view, we may have no choice. Everyone will believe, but it will be too late.
Iran
> Nothing has happened this past week to alter my view that hubris has led to what will likely be world-changing in ways Trump did not anticipate. It is an ill wind that blows no (man) good, but this is a pretty ill wind.
​
> It is clear, to me, that the Israelis are going their own way in Iran.
> I cannot fundamentally grasp Trump's threats to wipe out Iranian civilization. I am reasonably, although not totally, sure that this is Trump bluster dialed up to 11, but just the threat, just the wording are ... Adjectives fail me. Fundamentally, totally unacceptable will have to do.
​> Trump Taco'd and we keep going for another two weeks.
Maybe, just maybe, some progress was made in the negotiations.
The really big deal is that oil and other products might get flowing from the Gulf again.
Under the two-week ceasefire framework, all vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz will be subject to a $2 million fee under a "controlled transit" system coordinated with the Iranian armed forces.
Ian Bremmer's take:
-
"It’s a unilateral US climbdown dressed as victory. Since this was Trump’s war – he chose to start it, he set the war aims, he ordered the escalation – he alone can declare it over. Never mind that Iran hasn't moved on any of its core demands. The ceasefire is welcome and may well be real, but it’s not a negotiated outcome.
-
The Strait is unresolved, and that's the whole ballgame. Iran still controls which ships pass through and on what terms. Trump can call it a “joint venture” but if the Iranians are charging tolls, they’ll retain structural leverage. Washington and its allies will think twice the next time they want to strike Iran.
-
The ceasefire is fragile in ways Trump can't fully control. Israel is conducting its heaviest strikes on Lebanon yet, the Emirates may have hit Iranian energy infrastructure, and the Iranian regime may not have unitary control over all its local units and proxies. There are plenty of ways this could still unravel."
So far, the ceasefire has had little effect. No traffic is moving in the Straight.​
Many "experts," however, are calling the "ceasefire" the beginning of the end of the conflict.
​
> Oops - The UAE Air Force has conducted a large-scale operation targeting Iran’s oil and petrochemical plants in the Persian Gulf region. They have bombed refineries on the islands of Siri and Lavan and targeted multiple other petrochemical facilities using not only Wing Loong 2 armed drones, but also Mirage 2000-9 EAD fighter jets. Operations are ongoing, with reports that Emirati aircraft have also flown over southern Iran.
Iran retaliates.
​
> Why "nuclear" is becoming the answer to every future war-related question - According to Bloomberg, the US military is committing nearly its entire stockpile of JASSM-ER cruise missiles to the war with Iran. The stealth weapons are being pulled from bases across the US and Pacific. Of the roughly 2,300 prewar stockpile, just 425 will remain available for use outside the Iran conflict.
​
> Back to the future.
There was a time when essentially every river was tolled by whomever had control of the river. Countless stops along the Rhine to pay tolls. If Hormuz is tolled, a bad precedent may be established.
Some Voters Are More Equal Than Others
Interesting juxtaposition - I am listening to The Rest Is History podcast's series on the Ku Klux Klan and just read a Guardian article on black voting rights that asserts Trump is implementing Jim Crow 2.0.
It is clear that Reconstruction was a terrible period and that the many of the acts of the Ku Klux Klan were an abomination. We live with the echoes of slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow today. It seems that most thoughts and decisions these days are filtered through the lenses of history and of racism.
But, there is an interesting discussion about voting rights to be had.
Gerrymandering has a long history of manipulating boundaries to affect voting results, including diluting the effects of minority clusters, such as blacks.
The question coming to the Supreme Court, again, is can you Gerrymander to ensure that blacks can elect someone?
Does history or whatever justify creating special enclaves of voters, effectively giving them special status?
Trump's actions aside, is it Jim Crow 2.0 when you remove making exceptions?
13% of the US is black; Hispanics, whatever that means, make up around 20%; Asians, again, whatever that means, make up 7%; homosexuals, say 7%.
So, why just blacks? If it's not, one (man), one vote, and it's, voting should be proportional to some measurement of group size, then who are the groups that can be carved out and according to what measurement? Is it just blacks?
With regard to blacks, voting has historically been a significant basis for discrimination - poll taxes, literacy tests, and just plain intimidation. Therefore it remains a valid, sensitive topic today.
Political parties fight tooth and nail over voter qualifications today, and since blacks basically vote Democrat, restrictions on black voting become complicated - perhaps part racial, but also tactical.
Some see the current effort to implement voter id as racially motivated, because that's the lens we look through. Since essentially the entire rest of the democratic world requires voter ID, we wind up with another complicated discussion.
It seems to me that there are several trends at play:
-
There is real discrimination.
-
The Gerrymandering process is a major source of election manipulation in the US.
-
The racial-industrial complex is pouncing.
-
Some voters are still more equal than others.
To me, this is both "wrong" and perhaps necessary in our current culture.
And, there we are.
So, You Say You Want A Revolution?
(I will explicitly note any use of AI throughout this newsletter. If there is no AI-note, you can assume it is either my writing or a quote from a news source.)
​
> Must listen. Lyn Alden on oil and the debt crisis here.
> TACO and now TOFU - Trump Often Fucks Up.
​
> The massive-fraud-discovery movement, originating in Minnesota, has moved to California.
​
> Alberta group has collected enough signatures from citizens to trigger a referendum on the province separating from Canada.
​
> You can't make this stuff up - Barack Obama’s Chicago Presidential Center now requires proof of U.S. citizenship or lawful permanent residency just to enter a ticket giveaway for its grand opening ceremony on June 18, 2026.
​
> I was talking with my son the other day. He was asking where the regulators were. How are all these people getting away with everything?
My answer was that the world was coming apart. What that necessarily means is that all parts of the world are contributing to the breakdown. It's the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, Trump's corruption, Epstein, OpenAI's circular financing deals, open drug use in San Francisco, DAs letting repeat offenders off ... You can't bring down an entire culture without the willing participation of all of its constituents. Everyone wants the party to continue, so they will ignore boundaries and constraints and norms and institutions.
Simplistically, it is a culture-wide breakdown in discipline.
Sex, drugs and rock and roll.
He then asked how it all ends.
I told him I had no idea.
Everything has to rationalize, which means there will be a lot of pain. Honesty will generally come back into vogue, as will frugality and all of the boring traits that provided the foundation we built this whole thing on.
We will all be a lot poorer. Maybe more religious. In politically-incorrect terms, the Protestant work ethic. Pronouns and petty grievances will vanish - they are a luxury for idle people who will now be concerned about much larger issues.
Serious grievances will harden and multiply.
Holding on to what you have will become more important than looking for more.
All of this, to me, is relatively straightforward. The bit I don't have a handle on is that there likely will not be enough to go around. I'm not sure how that rationalizes.
But, rationalize it will.
​
Good article on individuals' contribution to this falling apart at the bottom of this newsletter.
​
> This sounds like a good start -
OpenAI has released a sweeping policy blueprint outlining how governments should prepare for AI-driven economic disruption, including proposals for a public wealth fund, taxes on automated labor, and incentives for employers to pilot 32-hour workweeks with no loss in pay.
🔓 Key Points
-
The 13-page document argues that superintelligence (AI systems capable of outperforming the smartest humans) is on the horizon, and recommends a new social contract to manage the transition, comparing it to the Industrial Revolution.
-
OpenAI proposes a public wealth fund that would invest in long-term assets tied to the AI economy, with returns distributed directly to citizens regardless of their current financial market holdings.
-
The company also recommends shifting the tax base away from labor income and payroll taxes toward corporate profits and capital gains, including new taxes specifically tied to automated labor as AI reduces traditional employment.
​​
> Harbinger? - Indianapolis Councilman Ron Gibson home struck by 13 gunshots while he and his family were asleep. This comes days after he voted for a data center. A handwritten note reading “No data centers” was found under the doormat after the shooting.
​
> Anthropic claims its new A.I. model, Claude Mythos Preview, is too powerful to be released to the public. Reality or PR? Or both?
​
> Arguably the ultimate corruption -
President Trump has repeatedly promised his top administration officials pardons before he leaves office, according to people who have heard his comments.
“I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval,” Trump said in a recent meeting to laughs, according to people with knowledge of the comments. That radius appears to be expanding as the president repeats the line. Another person who met with Trump earlier this year said the president quipped about pardoning anyone who had come within 10 feet.
In one conversation with advisers in the dining room next to the Oval Office last year, Trump said he would host a news conference and announce mass pardons before he left office, some of the people said. The people said they weren’t aware of specific pardons being offered to specific people for specific acts.
Short Takes
> When you are desperate for news - Artemis II astronaut Jeremy Hansen officially becomes the first Canadian to see the dark side of the moon. (Was Pink Floyd there?)
​
> Swiss cheesemakers have started adding “perforation powder” to Emmental because modern milk is too clean to produce holes naturally. So even the holes in Swiss cheese are fake now.
​
Gallery
An actual, modern-day saint.
Following on to a recent editorial about dumbing down.
Miscellaneous
Nothing this week.
Why so many Americans now sympathize with the villain
Comments:12
by Jonathan Alpert, opinion contributor - 04/07/26 7:30 AM ET
Link copied
Curtis Means /Pool Photo via AP
Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court for an evidence hearing, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, in New York.
Hollywood’s biggest prize this year went to “One Battle After Another,” a film that asks audiences to sympathize with terrorists. In New York, an upcoming production, “Luigi: The Musical,” places a criminal at the center of the story just blocks from the crime that inspired it.
Neither work created this reaction. They’re tapping into a broader cultural willingness to identify with people we once clearly condemned. Across culture and public life, we are becoming more willing to reinterpret wrongdoing through the language of grievance, alienation and institutional distrust. The transgression itself hasn’t changed. What has is our growing tendency to emotionally identify with the anger behind it.
As a practicing psychotherapist in New York and Washington, I see a version of this shift up close. People are increasingly inclined to explain behavior in ways that soften it, contextualize it and make it easier to accept. We are no longer just trying to understand wrongdoing. We are rehearsing sympathy for it. Over time, that sympathy starts to crowd out judgment.
Part of this shift is rooted in declining trust. When people lose faith in institutions, they don’t stop making moral judgments — they relocate them. If the system feels rigged, defiance starts to look less like misconduct and more like courage.
Psychology helps explain why this resonates so deeply. When systems feel too large or unaccountable, frustration looks for a face. Most people cannot confront a bureaucracy or overhaul an economic system, but they can point to a CEO. They can condemn a billionaire. They can turn a criminal into a symbol. What begins as understanding can become a way of avoiding responsibility.
I hear this reframing in my own practice. A patient frustrated by medical bills tells me he “kind of gets” someone like Luigi. He quickly adds that he does not condone violence, but he understands the anger. Another patient, struggling with rising costs, shrugs and says, “It’s all rigged,” before talking about billionaires with open contempt. In both cases, the target stops being a person and becomes a symbol. The system is abstract, but the villain is concrete.
This is where the civic danger begins. Once people are reduced to symbols of everything that feels broken, moral boundaries begin to loosen. This shows up across the political spectrum. When opponents are treated as beyond redemption, restraint erodes. If someone is defined as evil, almost any response can begin to feel justified.
We have already seen flashes of this in public life, from people celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk to others expressing disappointment that attempts on President Trump’s life failed. In both cases, the reaction reveals the same erosion of moral restraint, Once a public figure is reduced to a symbol of everything people hate, violence can start to feel emotionally satisfying. That is a sign that moral boundaries are truly shifting.
Social media accelerates the process. Nuance doesn’t spread, but moral certainty does. Complex individuals are reduced to symbols: hero or villain, rebel or tyrant. Once that happens, judgment narrows and outrage becomes its own kind of social glue.
Cultural institutions play a role as well. Universities, entertainment and parts of the intellectual class increasingly frame wrongdoing through the language of explanation rather than responsibility. Trauma, inequality and alienation become the dominant lens. Those factors can matter. But when explanation consistently replaces judgment, the line between understanding behavior and excusing it begins to blur.
There is also a psychological payoff. Shared outrage creates clarity and belonging. A common enemy can make people feel morally certain in a culture that otherwise feels unstable. But that clarity comes at a cost. It becomes easier to divide the world into good and evil than to tolerate complexity, ambiguity or restraint.
A musical about a criminal doesn’t create this appetite — rather, it reflects a broader shift in how Americans process anger, distrust and blame. Authority starts to feel hollow. Transgression starts to feel authentic. We once feared villains because they represented moral breakdown. Now we increasingly use them to organize our grievances.
The danger isn’t that we fail to recognize wrongdoing, but that we become so comfortable explaining it, contextualizing it and identifying with it that we eventually start excusing it. And when that happens, civic restraint begins to erode right along with it.
Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist practicing in New York City and Washington and author of the forthcoming book “Therapy Nation.”