Contemplating Out Loud | Contemplating

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.

The Exceptional Country

July 3, 2026

Quotes to Contemplate

Rent control has been about as disgraced as any economic policy in the tool kit. - Jason Furman, who chaired President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers

It's one thing to speak in platitudes during a campaign. It's a whole other thing to actually deliver for people. - Josh Shapiro

In an era of fiscal dominance, one of the few things that otherwise highly polarized political groups tend to agree on is that the state should take a bigger role. - Lyn Alden

Everything is simple when you don’t know a f—ing thing about it - Kevin Williamson’s First Law

I grew up in South Africa, but my morality was informed by America… It seemed like America cared about being the good guys, about doing the right thing and that's actually pretty unusual. - Elon Musk

Summary of Primary Thoughts To Contemplate In This Issue

(The US was) spectacular. We were exceptional. And, if you are like me and were able to share in it at its peak - and even now - you are literally among the most fortunate people to have ever lived.

So, here we are. We achieved one level of stupid with Trump. There is always a reaction and it is another level of stupid with democratic socialism. No sign of sanity anywhere.

Welcome to the Fourth Turning.

Pretty well sums it up - President Trump earned more than $1.4 billion from his family's crypto-related ventures alone last year, including from his meme coin business and his family's cryptocurrency firm, according to a financial disclosure released Tuesday.

Growth is imperative for an economy and financial system based on debt.

So, You Say You Want A Revolution?

> My long-time take on the Ukrainian War has been that Russia will win because of a vastly larger population. My definition of win is that they "permanently" gain some territory. In reality, the war has been pretty much of a stalemate, militarily, with both sides incurring horrific casualties, but Russian casualties off the charts. Ukraine cities have been relentlessly pounded. Then Ukraine got into the drone business and now arguably has the most sophisticated drone offence and defense in the world. They are bombing Moscow and even St. Petersburg and are crippling Crimea. The natives in Russia are getting restless.

Putin can't lose - he has too much personally invested in the war.

Ukraine will continue to bomb Moscow on more or less a daily basis.

Recently, the military conflict has turned mildly in Ukraine's favor, but not significantly enough to matter.

There are a lot of parallels between Ukraine and Iran.

Putin thought he would march in and just take over; Trump thought he would march in and just take over.
The Ukrainians decided to fight to the death; the Iranians decided to fight to the death.
Ukraine infrastructure has been devastated; Iranian infrastructure has been devastated.
Russia is fighting a proxy war against Nato; the US is fighting a proxy war against China and Russia.
Drone warfare changed the dynamics of both wars.
In desperation, Russia might use a tactical nuclear weapon; in desperation, the US might use a tactical nuclear weapon.

Departing from the theme, I still think the odds favor Russia, but the other odds favor Iran. A "win" for Iran is to remain independent of the US.

Russia is in a battle with its neighbor; Trump has created a new world order, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

There will be twists and turns, including internal political upheaval in Moscow, but I still think Russia "wins" and Iran "wins" by my definition of the terms.

There is talk about Russia attacking Europe both to gain more territory and to create a diversion. I don't know how seriously to take it, but I do know that parts of Europe are taking it seriously.

Let's watch.

(I'm going to plagiarize Luke Gromen's "let's watch" because it just fits so well.)

> Hoo, boy! The Supreme Court does not deserve most of the criticism it is getting. Headlines don't tell the story. For example, Roe v. Wade was a bad law. The Supreme Court said nothing about abortion, one way or the other. It just killed a sacred cow.

Most of the time I have an opinion - sometimes I win; sometimes I lose. But this ruling that the President can fire members of independent agencies. I get it. It may even be the right legal interpretation. But I hate it, and there will be hell to pay.

> I'm against birthright citizenship. But the Supreme Court and I agree with the reading of the Constitution that says birthright citizenship is a thing.

> The White House awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million for the construction of a new East Wing ballroom, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by the Washington Post.

> President Trump earned more than $1.4 billion from his family's crypto-related ventures alone last year, including from his meme coin business and his family's cryptocurrency firm, according to a financial disclosure released Tuesday.

> One of the cultural issues associated with Islam is the call to prayer 5 times a day, the first being before daybreak. The call to prayer originates from the Hadith. In Muslim countries, this call is typically over a loudspeaker broadcast usually from a Mosque. In Western countries where Muslims are generally in a minority, this becomes a hassle for non-believers, but Western countries struggle between the majority's right to peace and the minority's religious belief. Denmark’s government, led by the center-left Social Democrats, has once again announced plans to pursue a nationwide ban on the public broadcast of the Islamic call to prayer via loudspeakers. This will be the third time; the proposition having failed the previous two times.

> So, here we are. We achieved one level of stupid with Trump. There is always a reaction and it is another level of stupid with democratic socialism. No sign of sanity anywhere.

Welcome to the Fourth Turning.

> The price of gasoline is falling less than the price of oil. These things are complicated, but the primary reason is the destruction of refining capacity in the Middle East during the war and the ongoing destruction of refining capacity in Russia.

> 3D chess - from The Telegraph - "Is Nato about to face its ultimate test? Today The Telegraph and Polish news outlet Onet (both owned by Axel Springer and part of the Global Reporters Network) reveal that Russia is planning an armed provocation on Polish soil. The goal? Russia wants to finally know for sure how Nato would respond – would it fight back ferociously, as it so often claims, or would its response be hamstrung by Donald Trump?"

> Turns out that it’s not just the United States, European countries, and South Africa that are ramping up deportation efforts. It’s India, too. The country has been expelling migrants – predominantly Muslims of Bengali heritage – across the 2,500-mile-long border with Bangladesh, sometimes in the middle of the night. The deportations, dubbed “push-ins,” have been going on for over a year, but have ramped up since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party won local elections in West Bengal, which borders Bangladesh, in May. The state’s new chief minister said in June that they had deported 10,000 illegal Bangladeshi migrants. - GZero Daily

> Pippa Malmgren - Few seem to understand the new “Capital-to-Cognition Pipeline”. AI scaling laws highly correlate compute power with capability, so capital is now directly transmutable into intelligence. If a company or a nation throws $10 billion or $100 billion at a server farm, it isn’t just buying infrastructure. They are literally manufacturing higher-tier cognition. Just like we turned electricity into something you can pull out of a wall for pennies, we are turning intelligence into a utility. You API-call it, you use it, you pay by the token.

> We may be reaching a world record for the number of bad ideas one man can have, particularly consequential bad ideas. We need to re-shore industrial production and we cannot begin to do it on our own. Viewing "us" as North America gives us the ability to more broadly increase industrial production - The Trump administration said the U.S. will not renew the current version of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), one of the landmark achievements of the president’s first term.

Hopefully, this is just another Trump negotiating thing.

The Exceptional Country

America Is Not Exceptional — Its Idea Is

The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence!

(Actually, it's a little confusing. Independence was declared on July 2. The Continental Congress took the 3rd to edit the draft of the Declaration. The resulting draft was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776; most of the actual signing occurred on August 2. )

Big deal!

Countries are continually in turmoil and we are turmoil-ier than during most of our history. However, we can never forget we had the 60s with actual bombings on a regular basis, and also once had an actual civil war.

Let's pop up to 30,000 feet and take stock.

America has bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus - sweeping all before it. The wealthiest, the mightiest in all of history. A magnet for the world's best and brightest. An innovation generator par exultance. An empire that will be mentioned in the annals of history next to those of Rome and Great Britain.

It has been exceptional in its performance.

Only, you would have expected it to have worked out that way in the same way you would have expected Muhammed Ali to have won his matches.

We were endowed with great advantages and we made the most of them:

Greco-Roman heritage;
Judeo-Christian heritage;
Embracing of the Enlightenment;
Legal and rights foundation of Great Britain;
Initially populated by risk takers and rebels;
Defended by oceans and (mostly) friendly neighbors;
Natural resources almost without limit;
Being the last man standing after World War II.

Given all of those advantages, the United States almost had no choice other than to be extraordinary in its achievements.

That's exceptionalism of a sort. Being the strongest or fastest or smartest.

That's not what I or others mean by American exceptionalism.

As individual humans, Americans are much like any other group of people. We are good, bad, smart, dumb, strong, weak, fast, slow - all described by normal distribution curves. As people, we are no better or no worse than any other people. Many of "our" achievements have been by immigrants, from Einstein to members of the men's national soccer team to the Indian leaders of some of our great technology companies.

Our government shares characteristics of many governments - laser focus on self-interest and power.

And, yet -

George Washington refused to be king on principle.

When we were the last man standing after World War II, we rebuilt the world instead of occupying it.

We have spent billions on foreign aid and sent out members of the Peace Corps.

Every now and then, principles do matter.

We are a nation defined by assent to propositions rather than by blood, soil, or shared ancestry, which are the ways most countries do it. Lincoln's "dedicated to a proposition," Chesterton's line that America is the one nation founded on a creed, Myrdal's "American Creed." The exceptional thing isn't that Americans are a special kind of human, it's that belonging is based on ideas - natural rights, consent of the governed, equality before the law - rather than on being a particular people.

That's very rare.

That's truly exceptional.

We have not, and probably cannot, live up to such a set of ideals. They are the goal. They are what we are pursuing. They are not attainable.

As the cliche goes, this is a journey and not a destination.

Precisely because we are ordinary humans, we will come up short. And we have come up short.

Which can lead to charges of hypocrisy, and also to doubt, despair, disappointment and disillusionment.

But we have led the world with our ideals, which, in various forms, have been adopted throughout the world.

Here's the problem.

If you are, say, Spain, you love your country, you love your culture, but there is no ideal.

If you are American, you can become disillusioned and disappointed. That's a deeper cut.

And in times of extraordinary division, both sides of the political spectrum begin tearing down the institutions and myths that made the country great. Mostly because humans, generally, are pretty short-sighted and self-involved.

We have taken our eyes off the ball.

Lancelot, the force for good, and Mordred, the force for evil, are both destroying Camelot.

We are being defeated from within instead of by a foreign enemy.

America has too much going for it - it will remake itself as it did after the Civil War and after the Great Depression and after the '60s.

What is not clear is what the ideas and ideals of that country will be - if any.

But, we were spectacular. We were exceptional. And, if you are like me and were able to share in it at its peak - and even now - you are literally among the most fortunate people to have ever lived.

The Market

That downward move in the stock markets I have been discussing probably has one more high in it before getting under way. More pain to come for gold, oil and bitcoin.

One of these days, depleted strategic petroleum reserves will need to be refilled - but probably not any time soon. That will support the price of oil.

The Iran War

> From the Iranian perspective, I think this is the correct take - "Iranian state media says it has now "no choice but to obtain the atomic bomb" to remove "the military option for the occupation and partitioning of Iran" from the table, arguing Iran must "absolutely reach nuclear deterrence" before current negotiations can be conducted 'from a correct position.'"

> The Telegraph - With the US seen as an increasingly unreliable partner in the region, Gulf states are taking matters into their own hands by holding parallel negotiations with Iran at the same time as the US-Iran talks. Analysts tell Sophia Yan it wouldn’t be surprising if Gulf states cut their own deal with Tehran to ensure regional co-existence once dust from the war settles.

Short Takes

> AOC is calling for Congress to break up Apple after the company announced price increases.

> San Francisco reportedly issued more new dog licenses than birth certificates in 2025.

> Rhode Island passes law restricting number of self-checkout lanes allowed in stores.

> Take a look at this incredible drone show.

> It's just strange to see random foreign countries singing "Country Roads" at every World Cup soccer game.

> I think this is right -

> Germany's President - "We are abolishing sick leave by telephone and introducing the requirement to submit a medical certificate from the very first day of illness.

We know this is a tough decision. But we can no longer afford this competitive disadvantage caused by prolonged absences from work."

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