Five Inexorable Trends

 

There seems to be a debate going on as to whether there will be a “new normal” or whether we will ever “get back to normal.”  Many conservatives reject the notion of a “new normal” but the reality is that the COVID19 pandemic revealed fissures in our society and widened them as ice does to cracks in the sidewalk in the winter.  This post will enumerate some of those trends and, while I will not go into them in depth (those will be for later posts),  I will lay out what I think will be front and center issues over the next decade or so. 

1.      De-urbanization.  Many big U.S. cities were struggling with financial issues at the start of this, but the riots and looting in places like Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Seattle and, especially Portland severed the basic social contract—individuals give up a little bit of freedom in exchange for protection from the State.  The governments of these cities demonstrated that they were no longer interested in protecting citizens from criminals that would damage and steal their property and present a physical threat to them.  Pandemic also taught us how to work remotely and get reasonably efficient at it.  As populations shrink, left wing mayors will go to their default tactic of raising taxes, which will hasten the decline.    I see a massive population shift not just to the suburbs and exurbs but to rural areas over the next decade or two.

2.      Decoupling from China.  U.S. businesses and consumers got hooked on cheap Chinese goods and the Chinese labor market.  Hundreds of private equity firms boasted double digit returns over the years by buying U.S. companies, leveraging them and then outsourcing the manufacturing to China.  The “experts’ said that a wealthy middle class would emerge in China and eventually demand more freedoms.   The reverse actually happened.  China now has a president for life, runs concentration camps for the Uyghurs unspeakably violating human rights, has bulldozed over Hong Kong’s autonomy, exchanged fire with India, and is threatening Taiwan.  Our universities are infested with Chinese spies.  Yes, we got cheap consumer goods for awhile.  But we had our industrial base gutted, our intellectual property stolen and its lies and coverup in Wuhan has cost the world economy trillions.  We woke up to find 80% of our drugs manufactured in a country whose regime would show no hesitation to use that leverage to hold our population hostage.    To his credit, Donald Trump saw the Chinese threat early and began to push back on it.  It will take some time, but COVID19 will be seen as the precipitating event that began the Great Unwind between the U.S. and China.

3.      Political violence.   The normalization of political violence in America is, unfortunately, not something that is going to go away soon.  In fact, I see it accelerating.  In a couple of decades, we have gone from a society that would not tolerate “broken windows” to one that has been tolerating broken bones and broken bodies.   I am in the minority view on this, but I assert that the results of the election of 2020 are largely irrelevant now.  Here’s why.  We have elections to settle political differences.  But that is wholly dependent on the losing side accepting the outcome.   The radical left in the US never accepted the results of the 2016 election and, if Trump prevails won’t accept it now.  Outgoing president Barack Obama failed to condemn Antifa led violence following the 2016 election and  Democrats have not condemned the current wave violence and, instead, continue to refer to mob activity as “peaceful protests.”   The failure to condemn is to give it tacit approval.  As a result, gun and ammunition sales continue to skyrocket.  Political violence is here to stay and may eventually erupt into civil war.

4.      De-globalization.  In his lengthy article in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Present at the Disruption, Richard Haass spends most of it bellyaching about Trump’s disruption of international institutions, and is horrified at the notion of a second Trump term: “Countless norms, alliances, treaties and institutions would weaken or wither.  The world would become more Hobbesian, a struggle of all against all.” 

      Haass’s carping glides right over a number of unpleasant realities.   The post-WWII “order” and alignment did not adjust to facts on the ground.  Germany chose to purchase energy from its NATO adversary, Russia, and also elected to shortchange its skimpy NATO contribution.  Turkey elected to become an adversary and become the next troublemaking Islamist state.  China used its membership in the WTO to enrich itself, then abrogated its deal with Hong Kong, covered up its handling of COVID19 and established concentration camps for Uyghurs, in addition to its persistent IP theft.  The TPP was not going to fix these sins.  Like its membership in NATO, the Europeans paid great lip service to the Paris Accord, and then did not meet its goals (of course, exempting China from obligations for years).  The JCPOA provided Iran with a much needed lifeline of cash (in unmarked bills) while ensuring that the mullahs would have a bomb in a decade.  I can’t even begin to comment on the bloated, corrupt, ossified, anti-Western U.N.

       It is true enough that Trump has not gone far enough to replace some of these norms, alliances, treaties and institutions.  But many of them need to wither and die and some, like the JPCOA and Paris Accord should never have existed in the first place—at least not in their original form.

5.      Sports.  Pro sports is part of the fabric of American life and culture, but its grip on our attention has loosened lately.  Beginning with Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling at the national anthem, many longtime N.F.L. fans started to stay away.  The solidarity with the BLM movement that the N.F.L., N.B.A. and MLB showed has also soured fans on those sports.  Pandemic delivered a body blow as distancing rules have prevented fans from attending games, but I predict these sports will not fully recover after COVID19 goes away.  People use sports to escape from social tensions and stresses, and bringing politics into it kills the ardor for many fans.   It is very difficult for a working guy to hear multimillionaire athletes lecture him about his white privilege.  I believe that the place of sports in our society has been permanently altered by this.

These are the 5 big trends that will occupy our attention over the next decade or two--- or at least 4; I threw sports into the mix because it has been such a large part of our culture.    So while there will not be a “new normal,” 2020 will be seen as an inflection point on these fronts.  But the cracks were already there.  COVID19 just brought them into relief.