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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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What's going to be the big apocalyptic struggle this election?

I wrote a piece over at my blog about how at this time in 2020 we were already in "2 Weeks to slow the spread", were about 1 month out from the first anti-lockdown protests, and 2 months out from the Summer of Floyd.

It seems obvious to me that all the chaos in the wider American empire concentrates around election years and seems to have the oxygen sucked out of it on off years.. 2020 is obvious, 2016 was only slightly less history changing, and even the 2008 financial crisis was an election year event.

There's a lot of really obvious candidates: Ukraine could go south really catastrophically really quick; the middle-east is speculated to kick-off with a potential Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and going shearly off the numbers the US southern border is one of the largest population transfers in human history with few precedents since WW2 or the even the 4th and 5th century.

But I don't know, maybe it's my mind trying to fit things too neatly to the 2020 framework... it feels like the election hasn't started yet, it feels like there's some shoe to drop or issue I'm missing, something as far from public consciousness as Immunology in Jan 2020, or racial politics in March 2020...

I can feel this massive issue just behind my peripheral vision that's about to draw all my attention and require its own Motte containment thread, and that will devour the media and twitter, for months on end.

I feel like there's this huge world shattering issue that's about to explode and within the next few months I'll be lamenting that I only have 24 hours in the day to read enough about it, convinced that it DEMANDS every second of my attention.... And I have no idea what it is?

-Is Trump going to die?
-Will a Nuke Launch?
-Is China about to take Taiwan?
-Are all those Chinese and foreign nationals on the southern border about to start targeting power infrastructure?
-Is there about to be a financial crisis?
-An "Internet Lockdown"?
-Hot ethnic cleansing in Europe?
-Global food chain collapse? .

Give me your best guess.

What will be the major containment thread at the Motte between now and election day?

My previous hypothesis was that Trump would be literally in jail by election day, but that's looking increasingly unlikely given the delays he has been able to secure.

If you're expecting some external event to suddenly become the new "current thing" well, the smart money has to be on AI right? That's probably too soon for Doom™, but what if the October surprise is 40% of the workforce becoming obsolete?