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.
Hotel California
May 15, 2026
Quotes to Contemplate
When somebody’s nice to me, I love that person. Even if they’re bad people, I couldn’t care less. I’ll fight to the end for them. - Trump
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People have beautiful things to say about you, but you must die first. — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Summary of Primary Thoughts To Contemplate In This Issue
The world continues to grind down.
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The meetings between Xi and Trump were unusually positive but publicly achieved very little. I think Xi is following Napoleon's diktat - "Never interfere when your enemy is making a mistake."
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No political party should have control of any city, state or nation for a prolonged period - the result is political excess. California is a poster child for this process.
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Reading scores for students in grades 3 through 8 have fallen in 47 of 50 states since 2015.
Markets
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Charts not updated.
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Not much to say until the war is over. I'm actually bullish on the stock market and bearish on gold and the dollar. We'll see.
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Hotel California
"You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave."
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I liked the classic 70s song by the Eagles, particularly the intro, but it was never one of my favorites. It wasn't until a year or two ago that I learned that it was about heroin.
I'm pretty naive, I guess.
California is paradise - at least parts of it are.
California is a mess - pretty much all of it.
Democrats have ruled forever, and, since humans take all trends to their extremes, Democrats have taken Democrat things to their extreme.
They have screwed up paradise.
So, deficits, homelessness, open drug use, release of repeat offenders, greenness - you know the list.
People have been leaving California on net for years; this year's threat of a wealth tax is sending the wealthy elsewhere.
California is in an election cycle. Since Democrats are going to win, candidates are not going to attack or clean up current policies. Uniformly, they are campaigning on the promise of MORE.
Politics, like most things, needs competition in order to stay healthy. Without competition, they either double down on bad ideas or take good ideas to their bad extreme.
One example is gasoline.
In the name of greenness, California requires a special blend of gasoline. Right now, it and California's gasoline taxes are adding about $2 per gallon to the price of gas.
In the name of greenness, California is shutting down refineries.
California has one refinery left, and it wants to close down.
California imports gasoline in order to make up the difference.
If the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, there is the possibility that California will have to ration gasoline.
Another example is the high-speed rail from LA to San Francisco.
Trains are greener than air travel.
Lots of people go between LA to San Francisco.
Let's build a high-speed train link.
In 2008, voters approved the 800-mile project to be completed in 2020.
Today, the original $10 billion is almost gone, no legs have been completed, the original budget of about $33 billion for the entire 800-mile system is now inadequate to build just one route (Bakersfield to Merced), whose cost pencils out to $207 million per mile.
Democrats just keep doubling down.
In case you think this is a partisan thing, look to my home state of Texas, although California and Illinois are in a category all by themselves.
Republicans take Republican things too far - abortion, Ten Commandments in schools - you know the list.
Republicans in Texas actually have some competition, ironically because Californians are coming to Texas and bringing their Californian values with them.
James Talarico, a Democrat and strange dude, actually has a shot at a Senate seat. Fundamentalist Christian Democrat. Who knew they came in that flavor?
Anyway, the poster child for over-the-top Texas politics is Ken Paxton, currently Attorney General and running for Senate. He may be the most morally despicable politician I am aware of, and yet he handily survived impeachment. Too many Republicans owed him too much. Not enough competition.
Texas is not anywhere near the mess California is, but it is heading in the wrong direction for the same reasons.
California is voting on a wealth tax and the wealthy are getting out of Dodge before the vote. The next step will be an exit tax to trap the wealthy, making it futile to go elsewhere.
"We are all just prisoners here, of our own device."
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Footnote - today Newsome announced a balanced budget due to unexpected gains from the stock market and the AI boom.
So, You Say You Want A Revolution?
> (Wednesday) Trump greeted very warmly in China. However, Xi was not there in person.
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> Claude's summary of the Trump/Xi meetings:
The Trump-Xi summit produced exactly the outcome the analytical community had been predicting: stabilization, not breakthrough. The two leaders agreed to develop a "constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability," with Xi framing this as the guiding framework for the next three years and beyond. Both sides characterized preparatory trade discussions led by Bessent and He Lifeng in Seoul as "candid, in-depth and constructive". Trump and Xi agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to restore energy flows. Xi reiterated Beijing's opposition to the "militarization" of the energy artery and "any effort to charge a toll for its use." China also expressed interest in purchasing more U.S. oil to wean off its reliance on Middle Eastern crude. Both countries agreed that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. The Iran agreement language matters institutionally — China formally subscribing to "Iran can never have a nuclear weapon" is a meaningful diplomatic alignment regardless of what specific pressure Beijing applies. But it falls well short of any commitment that translates into operational leverage on Tehran in the next two weeks.
The bargaining geometry was unfavorable to the U.S. throughout. Xi reserved his sharpest language for Taiwan, calling it "the most important issue in U.S.-China relations." The Chinese readout stressed Xi told Trump the Taiwan question "could lead to clashes and even conflict if not handled properly". Rubio later tried to downplay the Taiwan warning: "US policy on the issue of Taiwan is unchanged as of today. The Chinese always raise it...we always make clear our position and we move on". The Heritage Foundation's pre-summit framing captured the analytical fear that materialized: Xi pressed for U.S. movement on Taiwan in exchange for Iran cooperation that may not be operational. The substantive deliverables were modest. "The US president's comment was vintage Trump: Xi 'is going to order 200 jets...200 big ones.' A large Boeing order was one of many business deals expected to come out of the closely watched talks. Yet by the time Trump left China on Friday, it was the only major deal that was announced... no signs of a breakthrough on selling Nvidia chips to China, despite CEO Jensen Huang's dramatic last-minute addition to the trip". Helmut Brandstätter, a Member of the European Parliament well-connected with Chinese diplomats, captured the consensus European read: "You don't get the sense that much has been accomplished. Trump hasn't achieved anything economically for himself, nor has he done anything for the rest of the world".
The deeper structural read from CSIS captures the asymmetry directly: "China feels confident enough to be able to stand up to Trump on many key issues, including sanctions, technology controls, critical minerals, and Iran. However, the PRC's eagerness to hold a summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping signals that it is much less confident than many observers believe, and the recent Beijing visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi shows China positioning itself as having already weighed in with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz". The institutional implication is that China is performing the role of mediator without committing to delivering specific outcomes — which is the kind of strategic ambiguity that confers maximum leverage at minimum cost. CFR's pre-summit analysis predicted exactly this: "Xi's objective will not be confrontation but control — allowing Beijing to maintain a managed equilibrium that advances its domestic priorities. Chief among these priorities is accelerating semiconductor self-sufficiency and further insulating China from Western technological dependencies under its dual circulation strategy". The summit confirms the trajectory: the U.S.-China relationship continues operating in the absorbed-but-unresolved regime that defines the broader institutional architecture of mid-2026."
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> Headline from ZeroHedge - "My President Went to Beijing And All I Got Was This Crummy TShirt."
Ian Bremmer thinks that is a good thing. He was afraid that Trump was sufficiently desperate for a deal that he would have made concessions he shouldn't have.
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> I think Xi is following Napoleon's diktat - "Never interfere when your enemy is making a mistake."
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> Louis-Vincent Gave talking about the EU, but it applies as well to the US -
"Now that China is producing superior goods (cars, batteries, solar panels, telecom switches, nuclear power plants, high speed rail, industrial robots…) countries will have one of three choices.
Option 1: refuse Chinese goods and condemn their consumers AND businesses to sub standard products. Essentially this is what Brazil did in the 1970s and 1980. End result is loss of competitiveness and stagflation. Option
2: Accept Chinese goods Option
3: Tell Chinese companies that they need to produce their goods here. This is what US did with Japan in 1990s and what Hungary, Spain etc… are now doing with China Given the EU’s free trade DNA, I think option 1 doesn’t work. Instead, we seem to be moving fast towards option 3?"
> Kier Starmer, Prime Minister of Great Britain from its Labour Party, has been a disaster. He was the very leftist author of the movement arresting people for saying "hurtful" things on the internet. His party just lost an election (it's complicated - things don't work the same there as they do here) so he is expected to step down. He is not stepping down and has just upped the ante by nationalizing British Steel in homage to Britain's disastrous 70s. Britain is a mess. We are too, but they are a mess in a much different way. They badly need another Thatcher, from whichever party "she" might arise.
We are also in desperate need of a "Thatcher" from either party. On current trends, Democrats will out-Trump Trump for sheer madness in 2028. There is still time, but little indication that we will break this profoundly abusive cycle.
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> Virginia has passed a law that its electors in a presidential race must cast their votes in the Electoral College for the candidate receiving the most national popular votes, effectively taking Virginial preferences out of the equation. The compact goes into effect when states cumulatively possessing a majority of the electoral votes have joined the compact.
This basically begins a movement to erase or cancel the Electoral College.
I guess I need to whip up a primer on why the Electoral College was established in the first place. Civics and history are unexplored territory these days.
See "Chesterton's Fence" and "Electoral College," below..
States were fundamentally important in the Constitution. Today, imo contrary to the Constitution, but water way over the dam, the federal government has taken over much of the functions of the individual states as contemplated in the Constitution.
> Vladimir Putin, under domestic pressure, said the war with Ukraine “is coming to a close.” But he gave no indication that he might give up on his demands. At the same time, Ukraine is stepping up the number of drones it is sending into Russia and the depth they travel. Economist headline - "Putin losing his grip on Russia." Since this headline pops up somewhere about once a month, I would not give it much weight. However, it does seem that the vibes are turning.
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> I was listening to an interview with Paul McCartney - he was discussing his recent album which contained some songs about growing up in Liverpool. He talked about how people were positive and even joyous amidst the privation and the bombing. He contrasted that with people today who are "so easily damaged by the smallest thing."
That contrast is profound. It is both driving and being driven by the Fourth Turning.​​
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> Fox News has reported that President Donald Trump is now reportedly seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st state of the United States.
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> Mamdani balanced NY City's budget by the usual sleight of hand, increasing taxes on second homes and a bailout from the state. Notably, he did not increase property taxes because of the pushback his proposal received.​
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> Canada court blocks Alberta separatists’ bid to force an independence vote over failure to consult Indigenous people.​
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> Business schools are slashing MBA tuition by as much as 50% due to falling demand.
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> In what I consider a parable of our times, Princeton is dismantling its honor system and will now have monitors during test-taking.
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> (Sigh) I'm afraid that the Democrats will continue the Trump tradition of chaos. Kamala Harris calls on Democrats to discuss abolishing the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court, & making Puerto Rico & D.C. states.
But Trump has broken boundaries to give them permission.
Chesterton's Fence
(In my version) Chesterton, an English writer and philosopher, discussed people approaching a fence that was built a long time ago, the reason for which is lost to memory. The fence is old and seems to have no purpose. Most people's instincts are just to tear it down. Chesterton discussed the necessity to understand the circumstances under which the fence was built before tearing it down.
With our current lack of knowledge of civics and history, we are randomly tearing down a lot of fences.
The Electoral College was implemented for a reason. We are not taking that into account before dismantling it. It's just an old fence in the middle of a field.
Electoral College
The key issue today is balancing the interests of small states and large states. Without the electoral college, as an overstatement, no state matters other than Texas, California, and one or two others, because the most populous states have an outsized influence in the popular vote. Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii, etc. would essentially have no voice.
However, here is Claude to give you the full historical context:
"The Electoral College emerged from a set of overlapping concerns at the 1787 Convention rather than a single guiding theory.
The Framers rejected direct popular election largely on practical and political grounds: communication across a sprawling agrarian republic was slow, voters would lack reliable information about candidates outside their own state, and large states would dominate. They equally rejected congressional selection, which Madison and others feared would make the executive dependent on the legislature and destroy separation of powers.
The compromise served several purposes simultaneously. It mirrored the Connecticut Compromise by weighting each state's influence as the sum of its House and Senate delegations, preserving the federal character of the union and giving smaller states a proportionally larger voice. It accommodated the slaveholding South by incorporating the three-fifths clause into each state's electoral count — a point Madison acknowledged openly in Convention debate. It also let each state legislature decide how its electors would be chosen, respecting state sovereignty.
There was a deliberative rationale as well. Hamilton argued in Federalist 68 that electors would be a small body of informed men capable of judging character and resisting "cabal, intrigue, and corruption," particularly foreign influence — a filter against demagoguery and popular passion. In practice this deliberative function eroded almost immediately with the rise of partisan slates, but it was central to how the Framers defended the design.
So the short version: a compromise mechanism balancing federalism, sectional interests (including slavery), separation of powers, and a Hamiltonian theory of filtered judgment — none of which fully describes it alone."
The Iran War
> The world continues to grind down - and at the same time there are feverous efforts around the world to cope and compensate. For better and for worse, we will be a much different world when this is over.
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> Another effect of the war is that during negotiations with Xi, Trump had to ask for Xi's help with Iran. That is a negotiating point for which Xi will ask concessions.
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> Very big - China has called the US sanctions bluff and has instructed all of its companies to no longer obey sanctions. Chinese ships are transiting the Strait without American interference.
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> I wanted to clarify that my 20% probability of using nuclear weapons is not the probability of nuclear war, although it could lead to that, but the use of tactical nuclear weapons. To reiterate, one scenario is that Iran goes full frontal on the US and its allies. Significant damage and loss of life. The US has limited defensive and offensive weapons remaining. Its choices will be to leave the field - in effect, surrender - and use nuclear weapons. I can see a strategy of a nuclear weapon taking out some underground facility or the other and then the US pausing and asking whether Iran wants more of that, echoing the Hiroshima strategy but with smaller yield weapons.
We live in a strange world where violations of the ceasefire neither destroy the ceasefire nor end negotiations. Both sides seem to really want this to end and the meeting between Xi and Trump went well. For these reasons, I am lowering my probability to 10%.
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> Chicago Board of Trade wheat and K.C. wheat futures climbed by their daily trading limits on Tuesday after the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected the nation's harvest will drop to the lowest level since 1972.
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> Toyota and Exxon confirm to suppliers that lubricant oil shortage is beginning. Shelves will be empty soon.​
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> Thursday's negotiations - Iranian negotiating team included five conditions that must be met before entering into talks on the nuclear file: 1.Ending the war on all fronts 2.Lifting all sanctions 3.Releasing frozen assets 4.Compensating for war damages and losses 5.Recognition of Iran’s sovereign right over the Strait of Hormuz.
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> Friday - Bloomberg - "The US and Iran have put talks about Tehran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium on the backburner in an effort to end their war."
Since this is what the war was about, this is the US giving in.
Short Takes
> The movie, ACME vs. Coyote is coming out this summer. You can see the trailer here. The nostalgia will be almost overwhelming - all of the Loony Tunes characters have cameos, including Foghorn Leghorn. For me, it will be irrelevant whether the movie is actually any good.
> Florida to ban sloth imports.
Damn. They were the only things I could catch.
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> If a supernova were to occur at a distance from us equal to that of Proxima Centauri (about 4.3 light years) it wouldn’t just kill all life on Earth, it would obliterate the planet’s surface. Our atmosphere and oceans would probably be blown into space when the blast wave hit us.
The energy output of even a type 1a supernova is about 10^44 joules. If an explosion that large were to occur 4 light years from us, the energy of the blast hitting the Earth would still be about 5 billion joules per square meter of Earth’s surface or a total of about 500 sextillion (5*10^23) joules. The Earth would resemble the moon after that happened.
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> Reading scores for students in grades 3 through 8 have fallen in 47 of 50 states since 2015.
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> Researchers have suggested that the world’s most “typical” face would belong to a 28-year-old right-handed Han Chinese man, based on global population demographics and statistical averages.
Gallery
I take a daily, 2-mile walk in suburbia and greet everyone along the way. Since I am compulsive, I keep track of the categories - gender, race, ethnicity, age - of those who greet back and those who don't. Of those who don't, it's almost all either white women Millennials or Indian women. However, there are essentially no Gen Z out and around when I am walking. Sample population is largely white and Indian of at least the two main genders with some blacks and Middle Easterners thrown in (fascinating that in Texas there are few Hispanics wandering around my neighborhood). 60/40 women. Maybe 60/40 white and other. People who want to engage beyond hi (which I am ambivalent about, so they initiate the engagement), except for close neighbors, are almost all GenX and Boomer white women. (I don't agree with Beth, but Beth says the Boomer white women are flirting, "Your legs work and you have a great head of hair."
Totally statistically useless, but maybe anecdotally interesting.
Miscellaneous
Nothing this week.