I think most people assume that the world tomorrow or next week, next month or next year will be pretty much the same as yesterday, last week, last month, last year. But it might not. Change may appear incremental, even glacial, but sometimes there can be inflection points, a rupture that transforms the world we think we know out of all recognition. I suppose (since I haven't read the book :( ) that's what Malcolm Gladwell was writing about in "The Tipping Point".
Here are some indicators and some worrying currents. First, Donald Trump. As a human wrecking ball, he is, intentionally or not, demolishing institutions, structures and the trust that supports them, things we have considered relatively stable and enduring. NATO, the international rule-based order, international relations with allies, and through the Supreme Court, years of what was widely considered settled law; all have been eroded or eviscerated in a fraction of the time it took to create them and the trust on which their efficacy depends. And his break with precedent, clearly signaled in his first term but now operationalised at scale, is the blatant "pay for play". Money comes into the Trump family enterprise and, miraculously, government positions and policies change.
The second is generative artificial intelligence. The speed at which it is developing is seemingly unprecedented, and the implications in terms of job replacement and the consequent societal disruption are terrifying. What happens when half the white-collar jobs disappear in fewer than ten years?
My next example is Mexico, where apparently drug cartels have become so wealthy that they are building their own arms and weapons factories. What struck me here is that I had always assumed that the state was ultimately sufficiently powerful to dominate criminal enterprises. Of course, the state can be subject to regime change, but even when one set of state institutions is superseded by another, the state is recognizably still in charge. The new regime is still at least overtly working on behalf of "the people" (even if they take a few moments to enrich themselves in the process). But when a criminal enterprise amasses more money and more weapons than the state, all bets are off.
Finally, thanks to reporting by 60 Minutes, I am struck by the similarity in tactics between some fast-growing far-right hate groups and Hamas and Hezbollah. Both these Islamic terrorist organizations understood that they could exercise power as long as they did "good deeds" for at least some of their people. While relatively new white supremacist groups like Active Club are still only using disaster tourism to generate publicity as they grow in number, will it be long before they become a state within a state, providing "protection" for their kind (whites) and driving out "the other" (people of color, Jews, gays, all those who hold more tolerant, more inclusive views, whom they label their enemies)?
I was also struck by the video footage of what I imagine were newly recruited ICE agents; their "dress code," if you can call it that, camo, sneakers, balaclavas and bandannas covering their faces, carrying semi-automatic rifles, seemed strikingly similar to the way far-right militias dress. That got me wondering if indeed that's where they had been recruited from. There is additional evidence, albeit circumstantial, that the current administration is deliberately courting far-right constituencies. ICE recruiting materials frame the mission in terms that closely mirror far-right ideology: immigrants are cast as "undesirables," the enemy within, to be purged. Couple that with the Pentagon's recent promotional content around military action, which intersperses real bombing footage with AI-generated imagery and presents it in a cartoonish, almost video-game aesthetic. This seems to be a deliberate communication choice, and the audience it is designed for is one that finds violence entertaining and its victims less than human. These are not isolated aberrations. They represent the state itself beginning to speak the language of what were once considered right-wing "fringe" elements, small enough to be considered relatively harmless. Their views and language, considered reprehensible by the vast majority of thinking Americans, were tolerated thanks to their First Amendment rights to free speech. But they may no longer remain just a small, crazy fringe group; when their actions are legitimized by the government, societal inhibitors to their growth are stripped away.
So how do these seemingly disparate elements converge? First, AI is going to create high rates of unemployment. That leads to poverty and increasing disillusion with the ability of the state to provide for everyone. When the poor are a small minority, the government can ignore their needs; when government continues to do so as they grow to a significantly sized minority, things become unstable. Enter the far-right hate groups. Such conditions of disillusion and hardship create fertile recruiting ground for right-wing extremists. As these groups grow in number and membership they may well make common cause, coming together as a loosely coupled single movement. They will use tactics similar to Hezbollah and Hamas to win support from "their people" (whites), providing services they claim (possibly with some justification) that the government cannot. As they grow they will need funding, and then we may well see the imposition of "taxes," much as the mafia did (or does?). With money comes the ability to acquire weapons and, as in the Mexico example, acquire sufficient lethal power to overwhelm legitimate law enforcement; the balance of power shifts from the state to the militias. And while they may initially be a loosely coupled alliance, that is likely to fade, leading to literal turf wars and a complete breakdown of law and order. In other words, America becomes a failed state.
Inflection points in society generally come about when people are aware of trends but fail to see the implications of their confluence, or are too invested in their particular ideologies or interest groups to act for the greater good. That's where we are now. I am not trying to predict any particular outcome. Rather, I am suggesting that we are approaching a point at which the future becomes highly unpredictable, and the signs suggest that when the rupture comes, violence is likely to follow fast on its heels.
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