Imagine a city, on a beach. Relatively bustling. Prosperous — more or less. At least, the parties are really fun (for those allowed in). And the art and food is really good (for those who can afford the best food and have the money for art). Sure, sometimes people disappear, never to be heard from again. Sometimes strange ritual chanting rings out at night. But the chanting never hurt anyone — at least, not one of our people. And the disappearances, well, they’re not of anyone important. Or at least, anyone disappeared is no longer important. The city endures. The city thrives.
Then, one day, a tsunami hits. Trees are uprooted. Sand and dirt are blasted away. The city comes together to save itself. Heroes reveal themselves.
But, so, too, does something horrible. In the midst of heartwarming cooperation, the citizens realize a truth. The entire city was built on the site of an old temple to the mad god Bel-Shamharoth. The mayor was a vampire the whole time. Those parties were also recruiting sites of the more refined cults.
There’s a crisis to deal with, sure. But, in the apocalypse, the veil has finally lifted. No one will quite look at each other the same way again.
What foundations have been exposed by the tsunami we are now facing? Now that the dirt and cobblestones of “normal times” are being ripped away, what truths stand stark, bold, and naked?
It might be too early to be certain. But I have some hunches. Keep an eye on these storylines in the times ahead:
- We’re going to learn a lot more about leveraged buyouts and private equity.
- We will learn about other ways of selling assets of healthy businesses that have been “milking the plant”, only done on an even larger scale.
- Monopolies everywhere.
- Intellectual property abuse (or is the whole concept an abuse?)
- Flagrant, straightforward abuse of public trust by some key public officials.
- Contrastingly: the widespread, regularized, “just how it works” corruption embedded in the system.
- Supply lines are too lean and concentrated.
- Bailouts are more common than you think.
- The Republican Party is so cartoonishly bad that you sound like a wild-eyed teenager if you describe it accurately.
I’m also watching some other things:
- China. It’s authoritarian, it’s scary, and it’s exporting its model. We haven’t been taking it seriously enough.
- Fights between the white-supremacy-curious faction of the conservative movement and the “let’s loot the country” faction of the movement.
- We’re going to see a lot more strange bedfellows and left-right alliances between people of different parties.
What stories are you tracking and predicting?