Wither Capitalism

 

The Disrupted is a thought provoking film now being streamed at The Siskel Film Center (siskelfilmcenter.org).  The film follows three individuals – a Kansas farmer, a 3M factory worker (and former felon) and an Uber driver (formerly in the mortgage industry) whose lives have been thrown into disarray because of the vicissitudes of our economy.  The film is engaging because all three are sympathetic individuals that have been derailed and put under severe stress through no fault of their own.  All three are trying very hard.  The fifth generation farmer is being crushed by commodity prices and debt.  The Uber driver was tossed aside during the mortgage crisis.   And perhaps the most sympathetic is the 3M worker that suffered through a plant closing after putting his life back together following a prison record—doing all the things you would want him to do—work, stay married, and raise a child.  Each of them is earnestly toiling away at earning a living but has been rolled over by market forces.

The film illustrates a number of r imbalances in the U.S. capitalist system that have caused me to revisit some of the conventional wisdom that has been purveyed by economics departments.  My free trade/free market orientation was influenced by The University of Chicago and Milton Friedman, George Stigler and the like.   While  I still have a strong free market inclinations, I question whether some adjustments are necessary and appropriate.  I believe that much of the social discord and turmoil we are now feeling result from unresolved issues that resulted in the ’08 crash and ensuing Great Recession.  These  issues were glossed over and are now coming back with a vengeance.  Today, I am just going to spin out some of these issues, and in the coming months, I will be having discussions with knowledgeable individuals, and some economists when I can to discuss these issues in some detail.

-The worker.  While a certain amount of churn is necessary, expected and even desired in a free market economy, a great swath of the middle class has been pancaked by the modern economy, and many don’t really recover beyond a mere subsistence level.  The hollowing out of the middle class has been copiously written about.   But it really gained speed during the ’08 crisis when home equity was wiped out at the same time much of Wall Street was protected by the Fed.  With technology accelerating worker churn and displacement, is revisiting worker protections, guaranteed income and protections for health care warranted?

-Big Tech and Trust Busting.  The conventional position is that market will solve it.  Google, Twitter and Facebook now occupy such dominant positions and have no real competitors.  The social media giants are actively engaged in censorship and manipulation.  Twitter recently froze out Richard Grenell and suppressed certain viewpoints on COVID19.   Just as I write this, Facebook and Twitter have frozen accounts that are posting the New York Post story concerning Hunter Biden’s emails that implicate Joe Biden. The laissez-fare position would say that the market will eventually sort it out.  But in the meantime, Big Tech is doing things government cannot and it calls into question whether Big Tech should  be regulated more heavily and/or broken up. 

-Risk/Reward.  Steve Kaplan, professor at The Booth School at The University of Chicago continuously justifies the mega salaries for public company CEO’s.  And he is correct in some respects.  They are like free agent baseball stars. There is a limited supply of people capable of running large corporations.  But the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay is at an all time high.  And  when CEO’s run things into the ground and still get humongous severance packages, it raises eyebrows.  After the crashes of the 737 Max, Boeing’s Dennis Mullenberg walked away with a $60 million package even though 346 of his customers didn’t walk away from crashes.   WeWork’s Adam Neumann received a massive buyout (since reneged upon) while the company was laying off thousands when the company’s IPO sputtered.  Kaplan has a point but the unseemly pay packages…especially when a company fails deserve discussion.  They give ammunition to the burgeoning socialist movement.

-Purpose of the firm/Virtue signaling The Milton Friedman view of the primary purpose of a corporation is to increase profits for its shareholders is being re-examined.   I won’t go into much detail here, but there have been some lively discussion and panels on that topic, and as to whether the corporation owes duties to a wider constituency—workers, suppliers, society as a whole. 

-Trade.  Most of us grew up on the notion that free trade enriched us all and was an unalloyed good.  We celebrated the signing of NAFTA.  World trade increased dramatically.  And free traders pointed to the reduction of worldwide abject poverty from 43% in the 1990s to around 10% today.  But China has triggered a second look at free trade.  Does free trade with a global adversary make sense, especially one that steals your intellectual property, manipulates its currency, shows contempt and disregard for behavioral norms, and shows no inhibitions about inflicting harm on you. 

-Immigration.  As with trade, liberal immigration (or lax enforcement) was seen as an unalloyed good.   But if immigrants are unskilled, illiterate, unemployable, they either end up in the social welfare system or the criminal justice system.  Furthermore, unlike immigrants of a couple of generations ago, the children of immigrants today are thrown into a public education system which (1) the taxpayer must pay for, and (2) now teaches them that the United States is an evil, colonial power.  With the demand for unskilled labor expected to decrease in the future, how much immigration do we really need?

This is meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather are some of the areas that warrant some discussion.  With capitalism under attack like never before, it is important, I think, that we open some of these issues up for discussion.

A Letter to My First Professor

 Below is a letter to my very first college professor in response to the  recent Faculty Statement (July 2020) of the English Department at The University of Chicago (https://english.uchicago.edu), in which the English Department announced that it will only accept applicants in its graduate school for the 2020-21 academic year that seek to do work in Black Studies.  

______

Dear Mr. Chandler:

 You probably do not remember me, but you were my  professor in my very first class at The University of Chicago in 1977.  As a graduate of the Chicago Public School system, I was ill prepared for the rigorous education that awaited me.  The first few papers that you returned to me were a sea of red, as you attempted to shape something worthwhile out of a very raw product. 

Some of it did stick and, in addition to you, I was blessed to have Joe Williams, Frank Kinahan and Robert Streeter attempt to finish what you started. 

 Over the past forty years, my career has taken various turns, focused mostly in law and finance.  The faculty at The University of Chicago provided me with a set of valuable writing skills and a deep and enduring love of literature, particularly American literature—Thoreau, Melville, Poe, and Cooper.  The  anthologies I read during those years still sit on my bookshelf, although my tattered copy of Strunk & White has been replaced.  I blog weekly and have faithfully kept a journal since my college days.  I feel the deepest gratitude to the faculty members in the English Department at Chicago for enriching this aspect of my life.

 It is because of my respect for the Department, that I was shocked and disheartened by the announcement that the graduate English department would only accept students devoted to Black Studies in the 2020-21 academic year.  It saddens me that The University of Chicago would exclude any students that seek a degree to study anything outside the work of Black authors.  I would agree that Black Literature deserves attention as a subfield and as the Faculty Statement noted, the City of Chicago especially has a rich tradition of Black authors that produced works of literary merit.  Nevertheless, the Faculty Statement is diametrically opposed to everything the University purports to stand for. 

 As an initial matter, the statement does not say whether there was unanimity in its adoption.  It uses the word “collective” seven times in a short six paragraph essay—a word that is a clue as to the thinly-veiled Marxism now embedded within the Department.  Most astonishingly, the Faculty Statement condemns its own entire discipline of  for all of the inequities that have been visited upon Black and Indigenous people—an odd assertion that is at once self-indulgent and  self-flagellating.  Who would even want to work in a department that had such a vital role in those heinous things?  If that were true, shutting the Department down would seem to be a more appropriate remedy.  Without any support whatsoever, the statement condemns not only the English discipline, but the entire University as “a site of exclusion and violence for others.”   What violence is the author or authors speaking of, exactly?  Most incredibly, the Department excludes students interested in anything other than pursuing a degree in  Black Studies, purportedly to “build a more inclusive and equitable field for describing, studying, and teaching the relationship between aesthetics, representation, inequality and power.”  In its quest to have a more inclusive department, the English Department excludes students that are interested in much of the  Western canon.  It would be hard to get more Orwellian.

 As pernicious as its aims, the Faculty Statement’s writing wouldn’t pass muster in your freshman humanities class.   I have distinct memories of your fair and accurate comments that much of my initial writing was unacceptable because it was “full of jargon and cliches.”  Yet, the Department website published this paragraph:

 English as a discipline has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction, and anti-Blackness. Our discipline is responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why.   And while inroads have been made in terms of acknowledging the centrality of both individual literary works and collective histories of racialized and colonized people, there is still much to do as a discipline and as a department to build a more inclusive and equitable field for describing, studying, and teaching the relationship between aesthetics, representation, inequality, and power.

 I am  confident that if I would have submitted a writing like the above as a student in your class, you would have rightfully skewered me.  The real “collective” is the collective groans being emitted by the spirits of Joe Williams and Frank Kinahan after reading this mishmash.

 This severe restriction by the English Department of the subject matter of graduate studies and the writing used to justify its action are alarming.   I mourn the collapse of liberal education generally and, specifically, the wholesale adoption of Critical Race Theory by a once great department.   The Faculty Statement leads me to conclude that Marxist ideology now has it in its clutches—a department that feels compelled to reject Western Civilization and to hold its own discipline responsible for the historical sins and excesses of colonialism.  The University should consider changing its motto from Crescat Scientia; Vita Excolatur (Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched)   to  Nos enim sumus sicut et ceteri (We are the same as everyone else).

 Out with the beauty of Coleridge, Dickens and Shakespeare.  In with the questionable wisdom and insights of Ta-Nehisi Coates.

 

Regretfully,

 

RBG

 Social media lit up on Friday with the news of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, throwing gasoline on an already blazing fire.   Ginsburg, the second woman on the Supreme Court, was a trailblazing icon of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court.  The films RBG and On the Basis of Sex paid tribute to her, and she fought a courageous battle against cancer for years.

While her view of the Constitution did not align with mine (I am more in the Scalia camp), I admired her sharp mind, her tenacity and her devotion to her work.  Photographs can be very telling about a person and I found two of her that I liked a lot.  One of them shows her side by side in opera wigs with the late Antonin Scalia (taken from a social media post entitled “Together Again”).  Their friendship was legendary and I hope someone pens a book about it and them.  Intellectual adversaries that were great friends and enjoyed each other very much.  The other photograph was taken when she was a young woman.   This photo seemed to capture her best and it is posted here.  Her eyes reveal a deeply intelligent and soulful individual and there is an unmistakable softness in her look as if she were gazing upon a newborn child.  I would guess that the people that know her best would say that this photo captures her best.  Her achievements, the quality of the life she lived cannot be denied.   I find it incredibly sad and distressing that the celebration of the life and work of this singularly accomplished woman will quickly be consumed by the conflagration over her successor that will run smack into an election that is almost certain to be close and contested.

What brought us to this point?   In my view, it is mostly the unvarnished and raw lust for power on the Left that has attempted to crush all boundaries, all institutional brakes and willingness to accommodate to get what it wants.  The Kavanaugh hearing gave us a good look at what the Left is willing to do.  They dragged up an obviously troubled woman to make uncorroborated decades old allegations (and several others that were shown to make false allegations) to smear this otherwise exemplary individual.  It occurred to me during these hearings that none of the people screaming and howling in the streets and pounding on the Supreme Court doors actually read any of Kavanaugh’s opinions and could not make an informed statement of why they opposed him.

Unbounded by any limits, the radical Left will undoubtedly ratchet things up again, and this time they have shown no inhibitions about using political violence and threats of violence to achieve their aims. 

The family of RBG (and initially reported by NPR) claims that on her deathbed she said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”  I have serious doubts about the veracity of this claim.  First, NPR now has been captured by the radical Left (they recently publicized the book justifying looting).  Second, RBG was smart and precise in her language.  It would be out of character for her to suggest that a new president is “installed.”  Finally, she knew that Supreme Court vacancies are not passed down like property under a will.  This is most likely a concocted and false statement.  We would do well to recall that Richard Cordray tried to bequeath the chairmanship of the CFPB to his successor before Trump was required to go to court and deny him.  Attempting to create  permanently occupied positions that can be passed down  is now a standard practice of the radical Left.

The lack of boundaries and understanding of consequences directly led to our present state.  Harry Reid killed the filibuster and it apparently never occurred to him that roles may be reversed someday. Whatever your views of the filibuster, it helped to ensure that you take the opposing party’s views into account.   But now things can be done with pure power, brushing the opposition aside.  RBG herself had a role in this mess.  She could have retired under Obama and let Obama pick her successor.  If her real fervent wish was to not have Donald Trump name the successor to the seat vacated by her, it was actually within her power to make sure that happened.

I am bracing myself for the circus that is likely to ensue and perhaps even the violence that may follow.  Although I am more in the Scalia camp of judicial leanings, it saddens me greatly to see that the media spent such a short period of time honoring this singularly accomplished woman and immediately pivoted to the blood sport politics over the appointment of her successor.

The Great Reset

One of my favorite anecdotes in Nassim Taleb’s fascinating book Antifragile is Taleb’s recounting of his bellyaching to his father about events in Beirut that led him to flee to the United States.  Taleb bemoaned the fact that they had a nice middle class life in Lebanon when war broke out in 1982 and they had to give all that up and they were forced to leave the country.  Taleb’s father said to Nassim, “You were on the road to becoming a beach bum in Beirut.  You have become a noted author and speaker in the United States.  Sometimes lives need to be shaken up.”

Now, it probably would have been better if our lives had not all been shaken up at the same time, but here we are.  All of us are in the midst of a seismic shift.  It is uncomfortable, but not all of it is bad.  It should be clear to most people by now that there we will not be going back to normal, and in certain respects, that is a good thing.

The Hard Stop.  

In mid-March, we were all told to “shelter in place,” to hunker down in our homes and work remotely to “flatten the curve.”   While we cannot dispute the disruption that this caused in our daily lives, there was a hidden benefit.   First of all, for those of us that live and work near urban environments, it was a gift of 8-10 hours of time a week that we didn’t have to spend commuting to our offices.  Most of us, especially families with two people working and children, live pretty frantic lives attempting to juggle all the demands modern life places on us.  The extra time gave us some time to read, to think, to reflect and think hard about priorities, time we are rarely permitted to have in our day to day lives. 

Professional Sports.   

Professional sports has been at the center of American culture for the last 50-60 years or so.  So much so, that we have afforded it generous tax subsidies and, in the case of the NFL and NBA, minor leagues that are free to the league and themselves tax subsidized (NCAA).  And by allowing the teams to bargain as one with an exemption from anti-trust laws, money poured into the leagues.  Most athletes that played in to 60’s and 70’s had to get real jobs when they retired.  They became ordinary working people when their playing days were done.   But over the past 35 years or so, things have gotten out of hand.  Their incomes and lifestyles bear no relation to the average working person’s.

Over this period, we have become conditioned to become spectators, rather than doers.  School systems have become structured not around the mental and physical health of all students but around the elite athlete.  As more of us turn away from viewing pro sports (opening night NFL viewership was down 16%), we will hopefully be substituting activities that require us to DO physical things—golf, tennis, hiking, gardening, hunting and such, rather than watch someone else DO things  It was one thing when pro sports involved manufactured rivalries- Yankees vs. Red Sox or Bears vs. Packers.  But it is trying to drag in real ones now.  When the underlying message is cops versus criminals, blacks versus whites, or worse, them versus the United States, it’s time to close the door, put down the remote and go outside into the great outdoors. 

Reshuffled relationships.

Friends have also been reshuffled.  It began with the 2016 campaign and election.  I belonged to a regular golf foursome of never-Trumpers, Trump haters that would spend the entire round carping about Trump, calling him a fascist, a Nazi, a racist and otherwise maligning him.  I respectfully asked them to divert the conversation to other topics, “I play to get away from work and other stresses and to enjoy your company.  We can talk about anything you want--- film, sports, books, even boobs- men always like to talk about boobs.  Just not Trump.”   They couldn’t do it and I eventually left the group.  Others have had similar experiences.  Long term friendships have ruptured.  Parents have disowned children.  Potential marriages have been scuttled.

But other friendships have formed or reformed, both in real life and on line.   While some relationships have been shattered, pandemic and the social discord has caused people have reconnected with old friends, classmates and relatives.  Several people have told me about this phenomena and it has happened to me.  I came to the conclusion that people that would criticize or label me or turn their backs on me because of politics were probably not worth having around anyway.  And the new and renewed relationships have proven to be very worthwhile. 

The people with whom I have spoken about the reshuffling of relationships have told me that this has taken them by surprise.  But we need to keep in mind that we have largely been insulated from this for a couple of generations.  Many of our grandparents and great grand parents left Europe, severed relationships to start a new life here.  Some had a difficult time adjusting (as the character Mr. Shimerda in Willa Cather’s My Antonia, who commits suicide because he cannot adjust to life away from his home in Czechoslovakia), but others embraced forming new friendships and relationships. 

If there is one nonfiction book I urge you to read in this disruptive time, it’s Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile.  While it will not relieve the discomfort and disorientation we are all feeling right now, it will help you think about how to regain some equilibrium and indeed find some positive aspects of The Great Reset, and turn them to your advantage.  If you look closely, you will find that some of the changes that you are being forced to make were changes that needed to be made.

A Tale of Two Visits

 

In the famous words of Woody Allen, 80% of success is showing up.

And both of the presidential candidates showed up to Kenosha this week, and the contrast couldn’t be more clear.

President Trump showed up to survey the damage done by the rioters and to pledge aid for police protection for this middle American community.  Of course, he was excoriated by the press for political opportunism, and asked by Governor Evers not to come, which made Trump even more determined to pay an in person visit.   The images were surreal and frightening.  Trump strolled around streets that looked more like 1945 Berlin than 2020 Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Trump did exactly as he should have done-met with the citizens to provide support and pledge financial assistance.   Former governor Scott Walker attributes the calming of Kenosha after three days of rampaging to Trump’s pledge of support for the city (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/3/donald-trump-saved-kenosha-period/).

Now, after criticizing Trump for his visit to Kenosha, Democrat Joe Biden immediately seized on the opportunity and followed Trump into Wisconsin, a state which Democrats have apparently developed an inexplicable allergy to.   In contrast to Trump, who focused on the devastation to the community, Biden’s focus was on the Blake family.  He met with members of Blake’s family, spoke with Blake’s father and instead of making comments against the background of the rubble, he chose the incongruous backdrop of a church.

In the interim, we learned that Blake, Sr. had previously posted hateful and anti-semitic messages on social media, and that Blake, Jr. has a long and sordid history of crime and abuse of his girlfriend.  Indeed the warrant that was issued for his arrest was for sexual assault and he had committed despicable acts with this woman.  His girlfriend also claimed that Jacob would get drunk, show up and beat her a couple of times a year. 

Let’s be clear.  There were multiple victims in Kenosha.  There were the innocent business owners whose businesses were ravaged by the mayhem.   These are the people that Trump pledged to support, and, Trump was entirely justified in visiting Kenosha for that purpose; it is a primary function of government to support and protect these people from people that would destroy their property and livelihoods.

But lost in this entire twisted episode is the first victim--- the woman Blake accosted and assaulted.  Democrats routinely stake themselves out as the party of women, but when it came right down to it, when a vulnerable woman was brutally assaulted by a savage and inhuman punk, the leading Democratic candidate for president sided with the punk.  He spoke with both the perpetrator and his father, who reared this little beast.   He had no time for the woman Blake victimized.  So much for women’s empowerment.   Blake has a GoFundMe account set up for him and last I saw, it amounted to a couple million bucks.  The funds for Blake’s victim and the business owners? Hmmm. 

The only legitimate reason for a government official to speak to Blake Sr. would have been to ask him how he feels about raising such a sociopathic feral creature.  Perhaps Biden felt a special bond with Blake, Sr., having raised a no-account, misogynist, scofflaw himself.

But this is not today’s Democratic party.  Today’s Democrats  now unashamedly embrace Louis Farrakhan and people of his ilk—hateful, resentful, anti-semitic, anti-white, black separatist.  It could care less about victimized women (except, of course, if they make up stories to attempt to derail a Supreme Court justice).   It was shocking to see Bill Clinton appear on the same stage with Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin’s funeral two years ago.  But now we know that the fringe elements like Farrakhan  and Linda Sarsour have moved solidly to the base of the Democratic party.

In a few days, the two presidential candidates defined their constituents.  Trump stood with the citizens and Biden with the perpetrators.

 

A Warning

 The RNC this week brought us a number of good speakers and speeches (and a few mediocre ones). Alice Johnson, who was pardoned by Trump, was very good.  She came across as warm and genuine and I really connected with her.  Tom Cotton, who I generally cotton to (sorry for the bad pun), was stiff and robotic and was not as persuasive as some of the high school debaters I sometimes judge.  Ann Dorn was the most compelling.  Her presentation on the murder of her husband during the riots, and the kind of person he was, choked me up.  Poor Ben Carson followed and I couldn’t even focus on what he was saying because my emotions were still raw from Ann Dorn’s speech.

But probably the most poignant was Maximo Alvarez, the Cuban immigrant warning about the dangers of Communism. 

As we watch Antifa/BLM burn, loot, tear apart our cities and threaten people, roll out a guillotine and pelt police officers with bricks, frozen water bottles and other things, it is apparent that a majority of these people are young white suburban kids in their 20’s.   This begs the question of who parented these beasts and who educated them.

Alvarez offered a first hand account of what the horrors of Communism are all about, the false promises that quickly give way to repression and shortages, followed by beatings, torture, murder and death. 

The reason we have the Marxist Antifa/BLM rearing its ugly head is that there aren’t many guys like Alvarez around anymore.   It is the first hand accounts of the terrors of Communism that have kept it at bay, but as those voices age and die off, the reality of it fades into history.

I saw it first hand with a close friend of mine, who is Ukrainian.   His parents fled Stalin’s starving Ukraine.  His father fought against the Communists and was part of the resistance after his best friend was shot in the head in front of him.  He hid in sewers and ditches as the Communists hunted him like an animal.  He eventually made it over to the U.S. (later requested to be buried with his fellow freedom fighters in New York).  I attended the funeral of my friend’s mother a couple of years ago and was shocked to learn that each and every one of the grandchildren were Bernie Sanders supporters.  Two generations after their grandfather was hunted, his own grandchildren are now comfortable with socialism.

I strongly suspect that this is being played out all over the country.   We are 30 years removed from the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The people that actually experienced the terrors of Communism are fading away and the first hand accounts are now too far removed.  The people in their 20’s didn’t get to hear grandpa’s and grandma’s messages about the beatings, the disappearances, the killings.  So they are once again seduced by the siren song of  Communism and the demonization of “the rich.” 

Mr. Alvarez’s speech is a warning that needs to be heeded.

Likewise, I received this message from a young friend of mine in Venezuela last spring when I told him that there was a Socialist movement brewing in America:

“Incredible.  Someone like Maduro? A socialist? I hope the majority of the American population knows the catastrophe of socialism.”

I’m not sure we do anymore.  I am hoping that people like Mr. Alvarez will wake us up.

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.