What Lies Ahead In 2023 And Beyond
In the next few years, I see three major issues of concern: the economy, low-intensity conflict, and political crisis.
Now that this blog is well over a year old, it’s interesting to look back at my early posts and see how both the content and my tone have evolved over the months. I have to admit, I can’t help but cringe when I look at some of the earlier posts. Yet this is the nature of the game - writing is an art and art involves trial-and-error. It takes time before you figure out your “hook” and what your identity as a commentator is going to become.
From October 2021, when I started We’re Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here, to now, my content has shifted somewhat from talking about where events are headed in this country to trying to give more practical advice, though I still talk about current events and what I think is coming up the road. Likewise, my tone has shifted from being more pessimistic to a more measured one. What accounts for this shift? I suppose my thinking has changed. When I started this blog, I was heavily influenced by those who tended to be very pessimistic about the future of this country. Though I didn’t agree with everything they said, I regarded them in good faith, if only because they studied the topic for longer than I have.
Now that I’ve been writing and researching for over a year, I’ve come up with my own ideas and discovered that I no longer find my initial influences as convincing as when I was first introduced to them. The dark truth is that there’s a certain seductiveness to “doomerism” and claims of a terrible fate awaiting this country. Many of us, myself included, are susceptible to getting sucked down that rabbit hole. But over the past year, I’ve come to realize it’s not so much that things aren’t really that bad - they kind of are - but that things being bad are never enough on their own to trigger catastrophe. The more research you do, the more you realize, throughout history, there’s been no shortage of people who’ve claimed, even during better days, everything’s on the verge of collapse
It’s always been my intent, both on this blog and in my writing elsewhere, to help readers understand events as they unfold, rather than predict the future. A lot of people were predicting an economic collapse in 2021. When it didn’t happen, they deferred that same prediction to 2022, adding a major food and supply-chain crisis that’d bring our economy to a screeching halt to the mix. 2022 wasn’t a joy-ride - far from it - but the economy didn’t collapse. The country’s still standing. For my part, I predicted we’d see $10/gallon gas by the end of 2022, but that hasn’t happened, either. I readily admit that I was wrong and that I suck at predicting the future.
However, others, including my influences, simply cannot admit they got it wrong. To do so would wound their pride or diminish their credibility, something they can ill-afford as some of them make a living through such predictions. Try telling any of these people they got it wrong and you’ll see they regard it as an existential threat. Some will go as far as to block you on social media from interacting with them. It’s petty, but you’ve got to protect your brand, I guess.
I need to stress that I don’t regret anything and stand by everything I’ve written. I made a decision a long time ago that I’d not walk back anything I’ve said and if I felt like I might need to at some point, I’d rather not write it down. Again, my thinking has certainly evolved, but everything I’ve written, I wrote because that’s what I felt at the time. Early on, I believed people weren’t sufficiently alert to the fragility of civilization, nor the myriad of crises this country faced in the years to come. I still feel the same way, but one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned since starting on this journey is that I cannot convince anyone to pay attention. Until it happens for real, it’s just someone’s fever dream, as far as everyone else is concerned. We may not like that, but it’s a fact we need to live with.
It’s for this reason I’ve chosen to give more practical advice because, while I cannot convince someone to care about this issue or that issue, I can still contribute something of value people can use. As I’ve stressed previously, this advice is practical because it’s useful in both the good and bad times. There will always be some crime, driving will always be dangerous, and extreme weather and natural disasters will always occur. The best advice you can give someone is the kind which helps them deal with problems in their daily lives or the emergencies which are most likely to occur and for which exist a well-defined playbook for dealing with them.
The biggest problem I see with the doomsayers isn’t just their fixation with the worst-case scenarios, it’s that their advice, to the extent they offer any, isn’t practical. Buying and carrying guns, for example, isn’t a responsibility most of us are ready to shoulder, nor is living completely off the grid. Most of the time, they don’t give any advice, period, which makes their “warnings” rather meaningless. If anything, they amount to a form of cheap entertainment.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
The Twitter account is owned by Malcolm Kyeyune, whose thoughts were the subject of one of my most recent posts. Kyeyune has some interesting things to say, sure, but stuff like that doesn’t offer much, nor does it make any sense. If we don’t know whether we’re in a collapse or not, what’s the point of obsessing over it? What are you trying to influence people to do? Yes, things are beginning to fail a lot more frequently and discontent is steadily rising. You’re going to find very few moments in history where significant percentages of Americans didn’t feel like the country was headed in the right direction, however. Nor is dysfunction necessarily something new to America. If you think the country looks bad today, imagine how people felt during the years immediately following the Vietnam War and the tumult of the 1960s. You really think our parents and grandparents thought everything was going to turn out just fine?
But this is no history lesson. Civil war and collapse makes for interesting conversation, but until it happens for real, you’re not going to get much mileage out of constantly telling people the world is ending. As I said, people desire normalcy. You may not like it, but there’s no point in living in a civilization if there’s going to be chaos. There’s no value to commentary that does nothing besides frighten or indulge in the fever dreams of those who want to see the world burn, aside from generating clicks and selling useless products and subscriptions. We read about what’s going on in the world and prepare accordingly to ensure civilization can continue in some fashion, not to destroy it.
Since the beginning, I’ve resolved to not resort to what they call “cheap heat” in professional wrestling; i.e., telling you all we’re in a collapse or that we’re going to fight a bloody civil war. This is because I don’t believe either will come to pass, not in any meaningful time-frame, but also, as I’ve hopefully explained clearly, there’s no real use in fixating on these worst-case scenarios. It’s like talking about falling off a cliff: how do you plan on surviving that? You can’t. It’s simply not worth the time talking about scenarios that’d inevitably result in the end of everything we know, with no clue what comes next.
But I’ll never quit noticing when something’s wrong, nor will I allow myself to be silenced into accepting things as they are. One thing that hasn’t changed is my belief the United States is approaching dire straits, if it’s not there already. We may not be on the verge of civil war or collapse, but America will be stressed and strained to a degree it hasn’t been in generations. It may break this country, it may not. But make no mistake: our lives will become harder, more dangerous, more expensive, and overall more chaotic.
Like I said before, I cannot predict to you what will happen in 2023, not to any confident degree. I can, however, talk about the issues that’ll affect us in the next three or so years. In baseball, it’s easier to predict if a player will hit a home run in the next five games than it is to predict if he’ll hit one in tonight’s game. What happens in a single calendar year matters, but not quite as much as what happens over the course of several years. We remember moments, but it’s the trends that lead to them.
In the next few years, I see three major issues of concern: the economy, low-intensity conflict, and political crisis. These are the three big issues I’ve focused on during my time on Substack and will likely continue to take up most of my bandwidth this year, alongside giving practical prepping advice. I’m going to provide an overview of each of these issues.
Economy
America, the whole world, is overdue for a recession. Inconvenient as it is, recessions are part of the economic cycle, as the pie cannot grow indefinitely. The reality is that a recession would’ve likely happened by now, if not for the COVID pandemic in 2020. The economic shutdown of that year was an induced recession; the re-opening restarted the cycle once more and kicked the bigger recession down the road.
However, it cannot be kicked down the road much further due to a number of factors, including inflation. Inflation was one of the biggest stories of 2022, topping out at 9.1% in June (though unofficial measures were higher). Since then, the inflation rate has declined to its current level of 7.1% and current expectations are that it’ll continue to fall throughout the first half of 2023. Good news, right?
The short answer is “yes,” but just as it matters why prices are going up, it also matters why prices are leveling off. There are many reasons, but, arguably, a major contributing factor is the raising of interest rates to their highest levels since 2007. Rates were increased to make it more expensive to borrow money, which inevitably puts a cap on economic activity, thereby cooling off inflation by stifling demand. At the risk of oversimplification, the winning streak needs to come to an end at some point, otherwise, the gains are overwhelmed by higher costs (law of diminishing returns). Keep in mind; recessions correlate with deflation, so while we all want cheaper prices, this can actually be a bad sign for the economy. Nobody likes runaway inflation, but a little bit of inflation (around 2%) is a healthy sign for the economy, especially since 0% is virtually impossible to achieve.
It’s hard to say when this recession will occur, with some saying it’ll happen in the first half of 2023, while others say it’ll happen as late as the end of the year or maybe in the first quarter of 2024. Whenever it happens, recessions are part of the cycle, so while the next one will ultimately end, there’s no telling how long it’ll last nor how much damage will have been incurred by the time it’s over. Prices may go down during the recession, but, post-recession, we’ll see another bout of inflation; if you think prices are high today, just wait a few years. Again, recessions cast a long shadow. Just as it seems like you’ve finally recovered from one, you see another creeping on the horizon.
It seems like ancient history now, but the Great Recession of 2007 - 2009 was a crisis so severe, it would’ve literally collapsed the economy had the federal government not stepped in to save the day. Not only that, but the recovery took several years, proving recessions cast a long shadow. This all took place within the last 10-15 years, so the idea we couldn’t have another crisis on the same scale is something only a fool believes.
On the other hand, I believe the U.S. economy to be far more resilient than given credit for. This doesn’t mean we might not have a recession after all - we most certainly will - but it may take just a while longer for it to kick in, which gives us all more time to prepare. The consequences of bad choices are never immediate and tend to lag, often considerably. I also believe, no matter how bad the recession gets, that an economic collapse is not part of the deal. The federal government possesses a wide array of tools it can employ to avoid it and I have no doubt they’ll pull out all the stops necessary to do so. Nobody wants to be remembered as the people who were in charge when the economy collapsed.
Low-Intensity Conflict
In case you’re a first time reader, a brief primer: “low-intensity conflict,” or LIC, is not the same thing as a “civil war.” Read this if you want a deeper dive into the distinction, but basically, low-intensity conflict is typically an internal conflict where the weaker or upstart belligerent cannot challenge the state’s legitimacy or the stronger power’s supremacy. The Troubles of Northern Ireland, which I’ve spoken about at length, is the quintessential example of an LIC. As such, LICs tend to be characterized by sporadic violence taking place at lower levels (hence, “low-intensity”) and generally don’t threaten state stability. But not only can they be deadly, they can most certainly affect social stability.
I think the next three years will see an intensification of an LIC which began sometime during the Trump administration and intensified in 2020. Trump’s election woke up a beast on both sides, but primarily on the Left, which feels a serious challenge towards its ascendancy as they achieve supremacy in every aspect of our society. Likewise, the Right feels increasingly under siege and squeezed from the top-down. The anger is real, the discontent escalating.
As with recessions, civil unrest is a cyclical phenomenon. The Obama and Trump years can be viewed as one long period of civil unrest which subsided during Biden’s time in office. At some point, the energy required to fuel unrest gets expended and, since people prefer order over chaos, an environment conducive for disorder doesn’t exist. But this can change in an instant.
We have a recession looming on the horizon and, if the last big one was any indication, everyone’s going to be pissed off. Pissed off at Biden, at businesses, at capitalism, at God, at men, at White people, you name it. We didn’t see much in the way of disorder and unrest as a direct result of the Great Recession, but the point is, if you think people can’t get any angrier than they are right now, you’re in for a shock.
Then we have the 2024 election. Again, if the last one was any indication, it’s going to be a hell of a ride. It seems like the country literally dies every time we elect a new president, but the 2024 election, which was destined to be fraught, will be even more so given what happened in 2020 and then on January 6, 2021. I’ll talk more about the ‘24 election in the next section, but my point is that Americans are going to be revved up for a fight next year. While I’m convinced most Americans still aren’t the type to take to the streets over an election, there are many who are, and these people can cause quite a ruckus, as I think they’ve demonstrated time and again. Groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter have proven to be effective at terrorizing the public and causing disruption. I’d be pleasantly surprised if they chose to sit ‘24 out.
Recently, there’s been a wave of attacks on power stations across the country. Motives, beyond merely cutting off the power, remain unclear, but it demonstrates how it doesn’t take ISIS to cause damage to critical infrastructure.
The latest such incident took place in Las Vegas last Wednesday:
Across the country, there’s been a series of mysterious incidents plaguing power stations, and around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday another incident took place at a solar power plant in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas Metro Police responded to a call at a solar plant on U.S. 93 north of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
When police arrived, they found a car smoldering in a generator pit, according to media reports from 8News Now in Las Vegas.
Las Vegas Metro Police later identified the suspect as 34-year-old Mohammad Mesmarian.
He is accused of ramming a car through a fence and setting the vehicle on fire, according to police.
It’s worth mentioning that power station attacks aren’t a new phenomenon and more common than you may realize. However, there’s no question 2022 saw the highest number of attacks and there has been a steady rise in them for the last several years. What’s going on here? For the layperson, the important thing to take away is that our power grid is vulnerable and easily-disrupted. That and there are people out there, for whatever reason, are willing to inconvenience and even harm thousands or millions by cutting off the electricity. If you want to see an example of the utter chaos a power outage can unleash, read up on the 1977 New York City blackout.
Finally, there’s crime. I talk about it constantly on this blog because crime is, effectively, a form of social conflict. There exists a political component to crime, as some of our leaders outright sympathize with criminals and provide them legal and rhetorical cover, while making sure we still pay every last dollar of taxes or restrict our ability to use violence to protect ourselves, loved ones, and property. This is called anarcho-tyranny and it’s not going away. Meanwhile, crime is rising, meaning we’re dealing with both incredibly savage predators, while also contending with “creeping” authoritarianism from the state.
For most Americans, crime will be their most likely form of exposure to the burgeoning low-intensity conflict, no matter how bad it becomes overall. This is because crime is already here and the forces driving national disintegration primarily do so through lawlessness and violence, along with occasional bouts of civil unrest. The situation in Mexico not only has the potential for spilling over the border, but just look at how pervasive the presence of the drug cartels is in the U.S. already:
If the U.S. ever decides to take Mexico’s civil war seriously, you can bet your bottom dollar the cartels in the country will unleash some serious bloodletting. So much of crime in this country is connected to drugs in some fashion, from mafias, to gangs, all the way down to the common street thug. This is yet another reason I see crime increasing in the years to come.
Fortunately, America’s size both in terms of land and population means getting away from it all is still an option. It’s just that the number of places you can go to get away from it all are dwindling.
Political Crisis
The other day, Congressman Kevin McCarthy was voted in as Speaker of the House after a marathon 15 votes. This was the first time since 1923 the House of Representatives failed to appoint a speaker on the first ballot. In case you can’t count, that was 100 years ago. I suppose all streaks comes to an end, but the fact we just saw something that not only hasn’t happened in 100 years, but also went the distance - losing the 15th vote would’ve knocked McCarthy out of the running - is evidence of how stable America’s political system has proven to be, for all its faults.
I spoke of the chaos of 2020 and the chaos that’s sure to come in the 2024 election. The 2022 mid-terms were, until the Speaker election, graciously low-key, but again, I don’t expect that quiet to last. Mid-terms generally don’t pique anywhere near the level of interest as presidential elections (even as Americans have become more interested in the mid-terms), every single one of which is deemed the most important. Since the election of Trump in 2016, presidential elections have taken on an existential character and turn-out has increased, meaning more Americans politically tuned in and view the other side with derision and suspicion. I suppose democracy is better-served by higher interest and turnout, but it’s also a statement on how concerned Americans have become about where the country is headed and who’s running it. It’s easy to be apathetic when times are good.
I certainly hope to be wrong, but I can’t help but think 2024 will be the most chaotic election of our times. The rhetoric will be nuclear-hot, the hatred of the other side palpable, and each candidate’s supporters will hit the streets in droves to encourage - and discourage - voting. Turnout in November that year will likely be the highest it’s ever been, accusations of voter fraud and suppression will fly from both sides, there will be lots of arguing and screaming, friendships will end, etc. It’s not going to be pretty.
Then comes the post-election. Now that challenging election results is no longer taboo for either side, expect the eventual loser to refuse to concede and, worse, members of the losing party to refuse to certify the election results, as a few Republican politicians attempted to do after the last presidential election. Now, as a matter of principle, I don’t have a problem with anyone protesting election results or even refusing to certify them. It wouldn’t be very democratic otherwise, but any decision to do so much be done with an awareness of the consequences. It’s very possible the Democratic Party could be in the position of shouting “Stop the Steal!” next time, should a Republican win the White House. Though I’m confident whoever loses will refuse to concede, I’m not necessarily predicting that the results will fail to be certified. But we cannot rule it out either because of how existential these elections have become and how slim the margin of victory is likely to be. We are past the days of landslide victories, winning now coming down to one or two swing states, often by several thousand votes.
Did I mention nobody trusts elections anymore? There are serious issues with the way the U.S. conducts elections, such as the fact the results are too often in question for far too long after all the votes have been cast. At the same time, we could have the world’s best elections and I don’t think the results would change all that dramatically. Donald Trump was never winning in 2020, nor was there ever going to be a “Red Wave” in 2022, voter fraud or not. Voter fraud has, unfortunately, become a way for both sides to ignore serious problems with their political platforms and the politicians they cultivate. I expect the losing side in 2024 to fully indulge in voter fraud/suppression narratives, using them as excuses to double-down and engage in ever more extreme, radical politics that draw an ever more darkening line between Us and Them.
What would happen if, hypothetically, the vote failed to be certified? This is where the significance of the House Speaker election comes to light. Being third in the line of succession, Kevin McCarthy would be sworn in as Acting President should Congress fail to certify the vote by January 20, 2025. It’s very possible we could go an extended period of time with Acting President McCarthy in the Oval Office as Congress figures out how to resolve the impasse. The good news is we have procedures in place to ensure a president in the White House at all times, but the bad news is that this would undeniably be the most serious political crisis for America since the South seceded.
Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but the totality of circumstances paints a concerning picture - hyper-partisanship, low faith in elections, a refusal to lose at any cost, and lots and lots of anger. If the stakes were high on Election Day 2024, imagine how much higher they’d be if they decided to hold another election.
Whatever happens, expect a lot of hard feelings when it’s all said and done.
Don’t Worry - Be Happy
I’ve covered a lot here and each one of these issues could be talked about for hours on end. Fortunately for both myself and my audience, that’s what future posts are for. There’s nothing unique about these issues and all countries deal with them in one form or another. I still think Americans have difficulty accepting the fact our country’s greatness doesn’t make us immune to these problems and that our stability was, in part, a product of good fortune which doesn’t come around often. In many respects, our best days are behind us and the road only gets rougher from here on out.
This was never meant to be an exhaustive list, but I still maintain that our superpower status is in serious jeopardy in the 2020s. If it doesn’t seem to be the case now, I believe it will be in a few years. A lot of this is tied to the collapse of globalization overall and though I believe the U.S. is best-equipped to weather this particular storm, that’s not to say life won’t become more tumultuous at home. Given globalization has underpinned much of our daily realities for the last 70 years and still today, there’s no way us move away from this system without paying some kind of price for it. Again, America, the entire world, has lived through arguably the best time in human history to date, but departures from the norm don’t last long.
As we revert back to the historical mean and our lives become less pleasant, it’s easy to become angry and demoralized. I’m telling you, don’t. Remember that as we Americans have had it good for so long, there are still millions of people around the world who’ll never be blessed with what we had. You readers who’ve followed me for a while know I have no patience for gaslighters and others, mostly leftist elites, who admonish us for daring to notice obvious issues with our economy, government, and society, but perspective still matters when thinking about how these issues relate to your personal lives.
As Ommar Fabian over at The Organic Prepper reassures us:
It will be hard. And you’ll be okay.
Don’t tell me it sucks to deal with uncertainty, rising crime, violence, inflation, loss of freedoms, and widespread injustice. I’ve lived my whole life around all that, and I know. I’m still here to tell you, yes, it’s hard, but you’ll be OK.
If my theory about Thirdworldization is correct, the world isn’t going to end, but things will be unstable and volatile everywhere for some time. The end of an era is always turbulent, and that turbulence can last for decades.
Life won’t be the same without the consumption or long-term planning typical of the last twenty-something years. But so what. It can still be happy and enjoyable all the same.
I’m grateful for still being able to go to work, purchase food at the grocery store, visit friends and family, and hit the wilderness every once in a while. I’ll keep doing all that and more while it’s possible. And if it doesn’t, well, then I’ll see about it.
Fabian’s no fool. He gets it, because he lived it. As he’s telling us our problems aren’t all in our heads, he’s also telling us not to despair. The good times are ending, but not the world. We don’t talk about our problems because we’ve given up on ourselves, we talk about them so we can figure out how we can keep on living. Millions of people throughout history, including your ancestors and mine, have seen their respective worlds end throughout their lifetimes, often more than once, yet they chose to keep on living. None of us would be here today if they decided to walk off the proverbial cliff because they couldn’t deal with the change. Remember that the next time you think someone’s a poor dumb sucker because they won’t join the chorus chanting “Collapse! Collapse!” or “War! War!”
If that’s not good enough and you still need to believe it’s all going to end in fire and fury, here’s a little more perspective for you:
Very few, if anyone, alive today can relate with what’s described there. Again, the point isn’t that everything’s fine, never been better, and complaining makes you a dumb American who must’ve voted for Donald Trump! I’m repeating myself because I want there to be no excuse for misunderstanding. The point is that we talk about our problems not so we can feel sorry for ourselves, but so we can make the necessary adjustments and carry on with life. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it many times as needed - there are people who can’t deal with the fact our country isn’t going to devolve into bloodshed and separate into multiple independent republics like the Soviet Union. They need to believe terrible things will happen, because it’s just about all that’d give meaning to what remains of their existence.
Don’t become like those people. If you’re already there, there’s still time to come back to the light.
I know this has been a long post, but I felt I owed it to you all to spend a bit more time at the beginning of the year to collect my thoughts and share them with you. Allow me to close with something I wrote on Fourth of July last year:
That’s how I feel about this country. No matter what happens to it, whether we manage to recover from this tailspin, or whether we succumb to the morass and become some totalitarian dictatorship, or transform into some other, unrecognizable country, this is home. Sure, it’s a nice place to live, but it’s a nice place to live in large part because so many of those who came before us staked their claim and fought and worked to make it a home. This land, like so many other lands people call home the world over, was built through blood, sweat, tears, guts, and an untold number of sacrifices made throughout the generations going back to our founding.
When I think of all those who died and suffered to form this nation, I feel a sense of responsibility to them. To look at the ground beneath my feet and to know their blood is in that soil, it humbles me in a way few things do. We Americans stand on the shoulders of giants. You cannot call yourself a citizen of this country and disavow and disconnect yourself from those who came before us, their culture, and the vision they had for America. They are us. Their hopes and dreams are ours. We inherited it from them. We must strive to make ourselves worthy of it and pass it on to the next generation, even if we ultimately fail in doing so.
Nobody knows how much time America’s got left. What I do know is that I’m in it until the end and beyond. So play out all the fantasies you’d like about going somewhere else and starting over new. This land is home. Come what may, I’m never leaving it.
And neither will you.
Wishing you all a wonderful 2023, come what may. And I look forward to continue sharing my thoughts with all of you and, hopefully, hearing from you.
Max Remington is a defense, military, and foreign policy writer. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentLoyalist.
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