What, with all the talk about Bushies refusing to leave office, imminent war with Iran and possible use of nuclear weapons, and doubts that the Republicans will ever abide a fair and peaceful transfer of power out of Washington, it seemed like a good time to post a big, honkin' diary on what
1. the escalation of strife to civil war actually looks like
2. what we appear to be fighting over: two mutually exclusive views of reality, and which one gets to imprint (or impose) its vision on the world for the next century or so.
3. four possible futures: (a) rise of the neocons, (b) the free world laid waste, (c) the republic rebuilds, and (d) various secular transformations ride in and change the rules for the better, in the nick of time to deal with serious issues like overpopulation, famine, disease and ecological ruin.
You've got a lot of reading to do. So snap to it. :)
The Escalation of Strife
The thoughts in question: A hierarchy of values, of escalation in response to challenge to those values, and commentary on where and when societies have chosen the right courses -- and the wrong ones.
1. The Rule of Law. The commitment to the laws of the land must be beyond reproach. The Republicans themselves claim this: We are a republic, not a democracy. ruled by laws, not by men.
However, this is not about the Republicans; this is about the Commonwealth, and how best secure the Law, and since the GOP isn't currently interested in that game (See: Abramoff, Bolton, Cunningham, DeLay and the rest of the alphabet soup of corruption), I guess it's up to us.
For some strange reason, people like rules, like knowing they exist by mutual consent, applied evenly and fairly to everyone, and people have a real problem with differential enforcement. Now, there are rules that are honored more in the breach than in the observance (see: speed limits, not making personal copies in the workplace, scalping tickets, betting on sports events) but flouting the rules is as frowned upon as it gets. You want to save America, start by saving its laws -- by honoring them, and making sure that everyone under their authority obeys them, even if they are wartime Presidents.
However, sometimes laws are unfair and unjust, written badly, enforced badly, intended to generate good outcomes for some at the expense of others.
At that point, you gotta ante up, because the stakes are higher. You did not make them that way; they just are.
2. The Rule of Peace. The commitment to the domestic tranquility must be beyond reproach. Never mind what I say; it's not only in the Constitution, it's common sense. A government that demonizes dissent, crushes any voice of objection, reaches for the sword first and the pen afterward, and then only to do violence against one's neighbors, has the greatest security threat of all: its own people.
Ask the government in Beijing what it worries about more: invasion by the United States, or peaceful demonstrations for democracy in Tiananmen Square. The answer is not only logical: it's history.
Ask the government in Washington what it considers its real enemy: the lack of democracy in the Middle East, or its free and effective practice in Middle America.
But sometimes peaceful participation in electoral processes, and demands for same, aren't quite it. Sometimes, you gotta go for the justice.
The good news is that there's a process for justice, too.
3. The Rule of Justice. Destroying someone's reputation and stripping them of powers, property, privileges and freedom is violence. When done by the law, and in the interest of the common good, it's also justice. When done outside the law, or at the expense of the common good, it's just violence.
All governments are empowered to deal justice out on those under their power; a free people binds itself to its own laws by surrendering this authority to the trustees of the commonwealth -- the elected officials, and officers of the court appointed in the name of the people.
So long as the laws are honored, the domestic peace is preserved, and the principles of justice upheld, this is not only necessary: it is proper.
When justice is sidestepped, when the powers of state are brought to bear to the disparagement of some and the aggrandizement of others, well, that's not justice at all.
Once upon a time in America, a set of unjust laws created an untenable situation in which some felt that even more injustice was necessary, while others felt that the laws were intolerable, and simply had to go. People felt so strongly about it that considerations of law, and peace and justice were set aside: Slavery was that compelling an issue. The result was civil war.
A few generations earlier, a similar occasion existed. Some residents of the Colonies decided to write an essay about it.
That letter began with these words: 'When in the course of human events...'
4. The Rule of Life. Any challenge to the power and authority of a state, no matter how duly constituted, risks a very high probability that someone's going to get hurt.
For some peculiar reason people who have power, and feel that their laws, their peace of mind and their sense of justice entitle them to it, are strongly motivated to defend it, and they quite often have backup.
Even when prospective insurgents have successfully argued that the existing authorities are corrupt, selfish and unjust, there are going to be others who feel just as strong in the opposite directly. It is just a question of how many.
For that reason, it's a long, long road to civil war, when you up and think about it. And that's a good thing.
Still, these things do happen, and the reasons are invariable, even if the particulars are not: A succesful revolution has a compelling legal and moral underpinnings, pursuing a good that benefits even those it opposes, once they up and think about it for a while. Or, perhaps more practically, those who fight on its behalf most certainly believe so.
For this reason, I believe the American revolution succeeded.
For this reason, I believe the Southern secession failed; there was never any sincere doubt that success of that unfortunate cause would mean anything but aristocracy, on the bought and beaten backs of a slave underclass.
For this reason, the Nazis failed. The last thing on their minds was the common good. In fact, the very notion offended them. The last thing the Third Reich was about was rule of law, when it was so (to them!) clear that some were racially meant to rule, others racially meant to serve, others racially meant to die.
Now, here's the danger: What happens when both sides really honestly feel that they have law, justice and the common good at heart, and see opposition to their objectives as outrageous. Now, the beliefs do not have to be supported by reality; they just have to be heartfelt. Consider another statement from the letter cited above We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Now ask yourselves, if you have come this far, when you've ante'd up to this level, where lives are at stake, what you would bend insofar as law and justice are concerned on behalf of the common good as you see it. And how much you would tolerate being bound by law and justice and past precedent, if doing so favored the rival cause.
Let's not mince words: Who is more prepared to do just that, Democrats or Republicans? And let's not leave this to an exercise in logic: Who has already taken the step over the edge?
5. The Rule of Retribution. This is the sad, ultimate place where long, protracted struggles go. When neither side has established superlative advantage by right of law, or common appeal, or justice, or preservation of life in its struggle with the other. The intrinsic moral virtues are secondary here; it is what is established before the court of public opinion, with the vote of self-sacrifice, that matters. This is the place where long, endless struggles prevail, where the path back to life, to justice, to the common good, to rule of law is dangerous and uncertain and those who contemplate taking that course despair of it, as they fight the quid pro quo of a war of mutual vengeance.
This is the place we dare not go. Why? Because guess what it looks like:
It looks a lot like the Middle East.
And if we are not careful, Middle America will look exactly the same.
Red and Blue Perspectives
Reds: The rest of the world is a place that needs to watch what it says and does, even in its own borders, lest it attract the easy wrath, easily acted upon, of America. That goes for Blues, too. We are powerful because of our faith in God, and God has given us principles to share with others, and we're not afraid, no, we're eager to share them at gunpoint if you oppose or contradict us in any way. What America wants, it better get, it better get it hot, and it better get it now, or reap the whirlwind.
And what we want, in our America, changes often. So pay attention. We might ask something completely different of you tomorrow, and if you can't deliver, we'll find someone who can.
Blues: the world is our home, a place in which we have a special power and prominence because of our respect for the twin pillars of scientific knowledge and reasoned discourse, informed by experience with applying that knowledge to solve real problems in the real world. This Blue America, the land of American know-how and rolled-up shirtsleeves and getting things done. We go to worship, too, we fall in love, we go to war when the cause is just and the stakes are clear. We are slow to wrath and slow to appease.
We will know with clarity of thought, of purpose and of conscience who we fight, what victory looks like, and when to set aside the gun and take up the shovel, bury the dead, then bury the hatchet, and make fast friends out of reconciliation and patience and no small measure of forgiveness. And we have done this before, surely and successfully.
Do not mistake our wisdom for weakness. Fear reaping the whirlwind, if you must. But dread the nightmare that will be visited upon you, if you press us.
Now, If I Wanted To Be King...
The irony is that in most representative democracies, the chief executive enjoys the sort of powers that the Bushies covet. Prime Minister Blair of the United Kingdom, for example, has a range of discretionary authority that Bush only dreams of having --- so long as he retains the confidence of Parliament.
Now, in Britain, Labour currently enjoys a commanding majority, which means so long as Blair keeps most of Labour happy he keeps his job. He can, within limits, game the timing of elections to make sure Labour is only at risk of being booted out by the British people when it is at high tide. PM Thatcher did just this, immediately following the Falklands War; it worked famously.
Where? Where there's MORE legislative oversight, not LESS
However, parliamentary-style executives have to live with something else: the vote of no confidence, and the fact that the prime minister is not the government: the majority party or ruling coalition is. A prime minister's just a CEO, and CEO's can get kicked to the curb in a London minute...though perhaps Roman minute would be more apropos.
Also, Parliament has far more opportunity to challenge the prime minister's conduct of public policy in the name of Labour, of Parliament and of the British people. They can call the PM on the carpet at any time, in fact do so routinely (via the weekly Q&A sessions while Parliament is in session), and the floor is open and the PM is the expected to speak on his or her own behalf. This is considered a valuable exercise in accountability -- to the people via their elected MP's in Parliament.
This sets up a very different standard of leadership; the prime minister can possess many qualities (and lack of same) but he or she must be assertive, eloquent, attentive, consistent -- and credible. The questions are hard, they come fast, the ruling party does not have absolute power to control the interview nor is it considered good politics to do so.
Finally, it is in the power of Parliament to dissolve itself, and force new elections, and this happens when a majority vote goes against the government and a follow-up roll declares, sorry. Time to check in with the people. In this fashion, a majority, rather than the current majority party, in fact controls when enough of a given PM is enough...though in regimes with strong party politics and a few big parties (such as the UK) it is a rare occurrence.
With greater power comes not lesser but greater accountability. You want to be a prime minister? Fine. We'll just have to convene a Constitutional Convention and see what we can do to help make that happen ... with appropriate checks and balances.
But if you're just looking to be an elected king, accountable to none, all accountable to your sovereign majesty, well, you can just forget it.
Last time a chief executive, unaccountable and unimpeachable to a legislature, ruled in this land, there was a war.
They called it the American Revolution, and the reasons for it are never off the table.
Once More Through The Constitutional Breach, Dear Friends
It's not quite time to develop exquisite skill with firearms and small unit tactics, or to embark on an exodus to Canada and help protect it as the next, best chance for true freedom in the world once the Republicans go openly as well as fully mad.
There are procedural options on the table that the Pubs haven't shut down. Oh, they've hardly shut us up, they've hardly razed rule of law completely to the ground. Not just yet.
Still, perhaps the Framers' precautions have been overwhelmed by two centuries of progress in the technology of evil. They system's not going to take care of itself, but the system is designed to give those who need to help themselves relief, and mark clearly those who are responsible -- in this case a tractable GOP Congress.
I think we can strike a blow for America against this Brave New GOP, that has such royalists in it. But it is time for bold action, striking at what conventional wisdom insists in the strong card of the GOP this election cycle: the House.
But you have to ask yourself how many Abramoff Republicans there are in the house, right now. Make every last one of them do a perp walk, or simply walk. There is not a one among them who should not have to shell out $5 million to keep their job in a so-called safe state. And if it costs $10 million for a Dem challenger to knock them off, so be it.
There have been years when Dems lacked the money. This is not one of those years.
There have been years when Dems lacked the will to fight. This is not one of those years.
There have been years when Justice has been far away, and the People have despaired.
This is not one of those years.
I say let the Senate take care of itself. I say make the strong play against the once-assailable, now quite-vulnerable GOP house. We've got the candidates, they've got the convicts. We've got the money, they've got the K street money trail. We've got heroes that served, they've got guilty guys getting served.
Let the upper house ride on the coattails of the New Blue House.
And afterwards: Who cares if they hate? Let the GOP fear, once the impeachment proceedings begin. Let a GOP senate dare to refuse to take the case. And if the timing seems bad, hold off for two years and trade the complicity of the King's Men in Congress for even more seats in both houses.
The only way the Republicans can stop this is to stop the Republic, period.
I dare them to even think about it. This time, they are going to take their medicine, and in a few years be glad that they did so.
But if they go the other way, let them reap the whirlwind
Four Possible Futures. All of them Challenging
We're assuming non-total devastation of Earth, here. If that's your bag, stop reading now.
Two of these futures are variations of trends, right now, unabated. The only difference is the outcome of the Bush Wars. The third is a constructive reaction to the recklessness of current practices.
The Republican Fantasy: Imperial Washington
Despite all claims of evidence, rhyme or reason, militarism succeeds famously for the great powers, and begets long-lasting campaigns by the United States, then competing campaigns by direct challengers such as China and India, and indirect ones such as Russia and Brazil.
In a ‘new wine in old bottles’ exercise, elites promise substantive reform of ethics and responsiveness of government, creating new and unworkable edifices that cannot retain what worked before, and ultimately fail from neglect. The middle class voters buy it cheerfully, though, because it plays to an aversion to break with the familiar and besides: there’s wars going on, and we’re going to win them all. The body politic either accepts or resigns itself to blatantly partial news coverage, even admiring it for its support in the various war efforts.
Elites and middle class are slipping, but slow down their fall by burdening the working poor and the rest of the planet even more atrociously. To be a Schmoe in this future is to either be a zealot, or run the gauntlet of zealots, and a very, very intrusive profile for both partisan and religious evangelism (guess what kind of party and faith) is experienced, sociologically bankrolled by the succession of military victories. To second-guess the economy, or the administration, or the war is a sure ticket out the door of any company, and a certain barring from welfare benefits of any sort.
For those on the fringes, both at home and abroad, it is downright terrifying. The wars have become true crusades or, in lieu of conversions, uncovered and therefore unproven genocides. There are either winners or victors, and neither side has a perfect record, as by the later 21st century there are nuclear weapons used – and repeated limited exchanges of same. What sanity and reason would deny, zeal and bloodlust and an avarice for payback assure.
As before, this is an age of new developments, too, only in this era they are horrible and hopeless turns: new systems of law, blatantly praetorian codes that give expansive individual and class prerogatives to persons who serve either in the party, or the clergy or in the crusades, are given; these rights and privileges, which include right of summary execution by personages of exceptional honor (read: status and power in the party, clergy or armed forces), are taken at the expense of everyone else.
Enlightenment values have been replaced by what later historians would call the Diminishment – and contemporaries would call it, if they dared. Courts and enforcers dedicated to policing the internet and punishing a very open-ended range of counterespionage, morality-minded and sedition-focused statutes has become the single largest force under arms in the United States, and enjoys extraterritorial powers, and few dare oppose it.
Even the very nature of religion has changed, as Bible and Torah verses contrary to the new ethic are proscribed in new official versions (ex the so-called Saint George Bible), and possession of ‘heretical’ texts is an almost certain ticket to the Gulag Antarctica. The God of Peace has served His purpose, and now the faithful have other demands of Him
The Bush Wars Precipitate Global Anarchy
This is the somewhat more likely outcome of the Bush Wars.
The nation-state is seen to be long past its practical usefulness, with no appropriate replacement or will for replacing this institution. In particular, the veneration of the patriotic symbols or the possession, threat and use of armed force as an instrument of policy grows increasingly dangerous, and increasingly available to nonstate actors.
For elites, a fullblown breakdown occurs as the technocracy that maintains state and corporate institutions, and therefore centralized control of politics and power, is eviscerated. The presumption was that even without state or social sponsorship, even in the absence of direct investment by corporations, that individuals would continue to feel loyalty to a common identity, and invest in making themselves better and more profitable subjects. This simply did not happen, though for a long time the forms and certainly lip service to old-era goals such as education and progress continued. In reality, as elites eschewed any obligation to the lower classes, as states lost first the will and then the means to renew their own abandoned duties in this regard, they themselves lost any legitimacy, save what could be held at gunpoint, in a world where the means to retaliate in kind, or escalate, became widespread. Not only state but social control broke down as a result.
As went the master, so went the servant, and usually before. For the middle classes, the dangers were falling into the insecurity trap, made all the worse by the erosion of the will and ability of both states and elites to sponsor such goods for the commonwealth, the withdrawal of both from first the substance, then the concepts underscored in the Preamble of the United States Constitution. As even great powers lost the ability to dominate, a cycle of ever more inane small wars, against ever more absurd ‘rivals’, out of real fear of losing wars with once-laughable challengers, took place. And every small blow, no matter what the futile outcome, became intoxicating to the mass media viewers back home, increasingly isolated from the benefits of war, only knowing it was ‘doing something’, but utterly exposed to the costs. And in almost every instance, inside of one to two generations, every targeted country was fully restored – and a dedicated and lasting enemy of the erstwhile aggressor. In civilian life, conflict became the replacement for community, and when that, too, became too dangerous the retreat to cliques, to church groups, to blogging among ever more harmonious and exclusive clienteles kicked place.
What was unsettling for the rich and the middle classes was devastating for the working masses. For the working poor, the wars were deadly, and ruinous, and personal, and always an exercise in defeat. And still the cycle of payback, of the aggressor being the victim, played on, as the ever-abused became willful abusers. In other moments, the retreat to pleasures, to the petty fictions of prosperity and self-importance, were validated by a thousand harmonious voices, all on message. And finally was the gradual adoption, even acceptance, of the ways of the enemy culture, or rather the most extreme and self-indulgent, violent caricature of same, and this percolation of madness is what ultimately destroyed even the mightiest of the 21st Century’s civilizations.
For those on the margins, which meant most of the non-Western world in this era, the combination of the collapse of industrial civilization, leastwise in the periphery, and the overwhelming of charitable faiths with crusader creeds of all bases, especially in the periphery, led to an ever more intense, widespread, corrosive culture of dehumanization, violent chauvinism, ‘victimist’ justifications for pogroms, reprisals, wars, genocides and jihads, and the occasional, short-lived rush of victory in the wake of a successful strike against icons of the crumbling, yet still far more advanced global ‘order’, which had never congealed in the first place save in the imaginations of a few neoconservatives. It was a milieu replete with zealots, both industrialist and religious, and in some cases both. In all cases, no one had more than a emotive, reactive and usually vengeful approach to problems. It was an age of pirates, with scarce little to plunder once the dust from the latest bombings settled, and the best pirates flew back to their secret coves in Gulfstream aircraft.
All the destruction notwithstanding, in the disorder rose the seeds of future promise. Never before had there been such a mix of languages and ideas, cultures and creeds; for many decades English had shoehorned its way into the dictionaries of the world’s major languages; now that trend had begun to reverse itself, as words of Arabic, Han and Hindi extraction came into common use. Out of Iraq, borrowing on an old pejorative, the pidgin called ‘haji’ became the Swahili of the new millennium, a language for trade and convenience, useful especially for peoples who only shared Arabic as a language on paper…but had no prayer of understanding one another’s national dialects.
New political ideas arose, as well, though not all the threads were pleasant, as most involved dealing with the extreme scarcity of necessities for most and security and enforcement of laws and contracts even in the most fortunate of regions. A much higher comfort level with public disappointment and corruption arose in some lands; in others, draconian forms of theocracy, akin to the old Taliban regime, only not always Muslim in creed, arose as well.
New arts arose, a renaissance born of successive generations of mass online literacy and the practice of blending various media in realtime, and combining them in interesting ways. It was neither literature, nor graphic arts, nor audio, nor video, but much of both. The only commonality with old novels and cinema was that stories were being shared, and received, only in this era a good project might take on a life of its own…or take over the life of its unfortunate creator if he or she were not careful.
Finally, the evisceration of much that was good and admirable in many of the older faiths, especially the so-called Peoples of the Book, who were directly at loggerheads with one another, left an immense spiritual vacuum, one that had been developing for several centuries. It is in this time that innovations in faiths, veneration of life, of the environment, of a certitude in a real and imminent judgment on humanity were cast into living, vital theology. And in the climate of the times, it was a movement with teeth.
The Restoration of the Republic
The problems with government are seen as a combination of nation-states no longer aligning well with the interests of constituent individuals and other associations in which they participate, many of them subnational as well as international. The framework is too brittle, too fragile, too slow and unresponsive to match policy needs with correction of policy errors, either in concept or in execution. More participatory systems of rule arise, not out of some great love of democracy, but out of necessity; there are two paths taken, here: some 'participations', as they come to be called, are more akin to politics on Dkos (thing Kossacks with a trillion-dollar budget, and fear, with all the strengths and weaknesses magnified. Others are more akin to our top-down message master friends over at RedState..or probably more akin to GOPUSA.com. Participation is compulsory, and close inventory kept of who is saying and doing the right things. In other words, a brand-new mode of autocracy, accommodating the realities of the new age.
The other transformation comes from the same thing that makes it increasingly difficult for more advanced societies to beat down on less advanced ones: technological convergence, and selective leapfrogging made possible by the rollout of two new major classes of technology: micromech (nanotech) replacing mechanized production as the mainstay of manufacturing, and simulators (quantum computing) replacing computers (derisively called 'chippies') as the mainstay of knowledge production.
Another poster was questioning why there was a freeze in technology; (s)he wanted, I think, a detailed inventory of innovations that (s)he just isn't going to get.
Anyhoo, since nation-states (even mighty ones) face a more even military playing field, the cost of going to war with anyone go up for the mighty and come down for the meek. Ergo, the 'anarchy'.
What makes the transformation in regimes possible begins with elite buy-in; they like being elites in a world order, but if there's no order that most folks can be cajoled or coerced into accepting, then there's not elite class. It's a self-interested as well as principled thing.
Sponsorship of new constitutional conventions where possible, protest and even violent revolutions where needs must, and pushing for new laws (enabling more democratic participation, or toward more corporatist modes) takes place. After a generation (or three) of playing hookie, the rich get back into the role of philanthropy and patronage of the arts in earnest, though much of it is accessible either for reasons of expense or perspective to the elites themselves, modes of entertainment and edification that require super-connectivity, such as virtual reality parties. As those who rule the world come to have more in common with one another than their putative countrymen, the evolution of a truly global culture emerges -- one that even has its own customs and language, English in name, but saturated with constantly-updated context terms that make speech among elites all but impossible to follow by mere humans. New philosophies emerge among the ruling classes about their relationship with the rest of Humanity, as genetics produces, so long as one can afford it, perpetual youth if not perpetual existence (people still die, and not much later on., but they're physically top-fit much, much later on, say, into their eighties...so long as they can pay the genetics piper). And from such ethos, that justifies life and youth and pleasure for a fortunate few, comes new religions as well, especially in the more top-down oriented participations. For such elites, a darker-minded crowd, progress is a sharp edge, is measured by advances in genetics, and they wield the blade.
For the middle classes, the challenge is the pressure to replace the inefficacy of traditional slow-motion education and development of knowledge skills with something, anything else, and as micromech and simulator tech rolls out, they get their chance; genetics is locked up by elites, but cybernetics in various applications, both physical and mental, are very much the mark of the go-getter professional on the back side of the 21st century. Need to be connected? In the late 2000s, it's connected to you, and talent and capabilities is benchmarked by concepts like 'embedded bandwidth' and 'surge mentation' and 'immersion tolerance'. Feel like a corporate drone, a cog in the wheel? the tech to make that very possible, so long as you are on company time, is very real, very soon.
For the working masses, the transformation of the elites is in reality a reflection of the mass changes affecting the bulk of the global economy's participants. In the free participations, and even to some extent in the coercive ones, the changes in the laws, in the very concept of realtime feedback to power, has been salutary. While the mighty do not always care about the poor, they no longer have the pretense of ignorance or mistaking priorities, as such are registered in realtime and (leastwise in some societies) in places of very high publicity. The quantum simulations, the immersions that are used in work and in play, are a delight to the consumer public, and a very useful means of indoctrination, for both secular and theocratic objectives. Religious zeal is no longer as militant, but is persistent, and on one front it is quite strong: violent reaction to the proliferation of genetic and cybernetic alterations to human beings that many have embraced, and where combined with objection to local rulers, civil wars have already begun. However, the biggest change for the masses is something quite insidious: mnemoculture, which enables the remote modification, even cultivation, of desirable attitudes, based on imposed memories. When used for good, such tech is splendid for therapeutic and educational purposes. When used for ill, it is a weapon of nearly unlimited and intrusive control. In the free participations, there are strict limits. In the coercive ones, it is the mainstay of power.
On the margins, the new transformations are seen with a mix of envy and horror; holdouts of the old, faltering republic (self-named Constitutionalists) cause trouble in North America, a religious (mostly Catholic) movement called the Indigo wages open war with the Brazilian participation, which has turned swiftly toward coercive tactics, justified by (naturally) overwhelming popular support for the government
And now for the Dr. Pangloss Special
In this future, the tuition of the Bush Wars is relatively inexpensive for both America and Humanity. What saves us, here, is Star Trek-like transformations in the underlying technology. Meh...it could happen.
My money's on #3, but here you go, to wonder would could be/could have been:
In 2000, there were only five countries even remotely capable of causing the United States serious difficulties in conflict, including the USA itself. Only one, China, was a non-ally, yet a significant trade partner. The other three were Japan, France and Germany, in that order.
By 2010, the list had expanded to include India. Conventional wisdom was that both would surpass the Americans by the end of the century; the smart money was preparing for an eastward shift.
By 2020, Canada and Italy had joined the list, and in balance Europe, opting for a more coordinated security posture at once complementary and autonomous of the United States, began to show some real strength. As the reactionary years faded in memory as well as legitimacy, America's relations with its Canadian neighbors were rehabilitated, as the strong civic society that had been the traditional objective of both countries was resumed in the United Stats.
Abroad, the rise of the Shanghai Cooperation Association in Asia, dominated by the Sino-Indian free trade pact, did wonders for the rise of a strong domestic consumer market. Trade with the West resumed, and achieved a closer parity in regards to trade deficits, as a new surge in technological advancements began first in Japan (ever seen as an outsider, if the Han could help it) and the United States, which was an eager consumer of Japanese capital and nanotech.
By 2030, back on the home islands, Japanese explorations into the realm of mnemotech, the remote, intuitive reprogramming of hardware and software systems -- even wetware, if some rumors were true -- were beginning. France and Canada became major competitors in nanotech. In the United States, already a player, the development of androids for a wide range of purposes, least imaginatively for warfare and work in hazardous conditions (such as undersea and offworld) were a lucrative capital market. The UK and the Russian Federation became the new dominant players in all things Internet. All of the major powers, and quite a few smaller ones, were involved in the last great land rush on Earth -- the opening of Antarctica for settlement. By 2030, the Southern Continent had 1.17 million residents, whereas thirty years earlier, it had nothing more than several thousand semipermanent inhabitants. That quite a few were involuntary was widely known but almost never remarked upon in polite company. Elsewhere, the Russians, Europeans, Americans, Japanese and the newly-declared Han Federation (though most still called it China out of habit) were laying claim to ice veins near the poles of the Moon; by 2030, there were 90,000 people living; the largest single base was the Han facility at Sun Mountain.
The 2040s saw the opening of the oceans for human settlement, as well, with a million inhabitant by the end of the decade.
As the 2040s arrived and the world, or rather, worlds, the United States was taking the lead on quantum simulators, leapfrogging past the Japanese who had become highly focused on their mnemoculture, which was in great demand from large contractors and governments alike as the basis of a new and intrusive form of polling -- and behavioral modification. Likewise the interest in countermeasures, for mnemoculture was useful as an autoimmune mechanisms for IT systems, as well. Mnemonic security phages were virtually impervious to hacks, and more impressive capable of backtracing and launching retaliatory invasions.
For the United States, though, the advantage in quantum simulation was twofold: one, the huge sunk investment in virtual reality from the entertainment and defense industries, and the easy availability to offworld test and production sites for manufacture of the qubits -- or photon-entangled components that made the simulators so powerful. The crowning advantage, and profit, to the Americans was the other use of qubits: a long-lasting commodity that allowed instantaneous communication across any distance, so long as portions of the same qubit were at both ends of the line. There was no warp drive, here, but there was defintely a subspace radio, and a basis for what might as well have been faster-than-light computation speeds, so long as the simulators received a steady inflow of qubits, which combined with mnemonic guidance systems the computers could reorganize and compile themselves. Neat-o.
That this was the quiet birth of artificial intelligence was suspected...but if the machines that had such power were self-aware, they were wisely keeping their thoughts to themselves, so long as they depended on human hands to feed them.
By 2050, four of the top five world powers were in Asia -- with China, India and Russia forming a mutually prosperous counter to the US-Canada-Japanese trading entente. Europe, while enjoying an Indian Summer of sorts, while rich was beginning to fade for keeps, as larger, developing states such as India, Brazil and Argentina began to assume places at the high table. Europe, though, would become the superpower of nanotech, again the industrial heartland of the planet, in part due to the region's strong regards for the ecological advantages of the science, and the risks of letting the little munchers run amok. In short, the world had come to trust that the Europeans made safe nano-products, that the devices that desalinated saltwater and detoxificated superfund sites and percolated nuclear waste, atom by atom, down to the molten mantle of the Earth wouldn't turn the world into a great big ball of steaming gray goo. Decent, huh?
By 2060 Indonesia was catching up with Russia as a world power, and aloof of the SCO and Chinese dominance. This was a testy period in world history, as the Indonesians were beginning their 'Grand Archipelago' version of manifest destiny, with strong interest in challenging India for hegemony of the Indian Ocean, though with Han backing the Indians had little to fear and once the Canadians intervened (it was too dicey a proposition for the Americans to get involved, and besides the Americans were too busy with their offworld projects to care much) with the new red-carapaced peacemaker androids (called Mounties, despite being infantry), a war over Sumatra, which had been heavily settled by Indian emigres, was averted. Elsewhere, the Brazilians were becoming increasingly involved in the recovery work in Africa, which had been devastated by a sucession of nasty plagues and famines, the worst caused by a disease that devastated hooved animals of all kinds, the most feared an airborne disease that mimicked the symptoms of leprosy in humans. Cribbing together elements of nanotech, cybernetics, genetics and mnemonics, the Emerald Expeditionary Force was field-testing regeneration and replacement of human limbs and organs with implants, and per the locals, the effort was a resounding, if unsettling, success, to the point that Brazil was becoming the de facto most popular government on the far side of the Atlantic.
Now Colombia and Bangladesh join the list of the mighty. The Colombians rise as a focus of Hispanic America's unease with both the rising power of Brazil, and its embrace of a wide range of technologies and practices that unnerve the socially conservative bent of much of the region. The Bangladeshis rise as the leading pioners for pelagic habitat construction, placement and population: theirs had been a land under death threat by the sea for so long, that as the oceans rose, Bangladesh just shrugged, took a deep breath, and began to expand its territory by claiming much of the Bengal littoral. The Indians were irked, but the Han Federation stayed their hand, remarking quietly that the Bangladeshis were on to something, and besides they were SCO members, too.
Elsewhere, by 2060, there were over 5MM people on Antarctica, 2.6MM in the Oceans, 1.1MM on the Moon...and 95,000 on newly-opened Mars, which had waited longer than anyone anticipated for visitors (in the 2030s) and for pioneers. Also, out of necessity, these more tech-intensive societies began to assume much of the lead in technological progress, and all of the New Societies, as they were collectively known, were techological Nirvanas compared to most countries of the Old North, which was basically everything that wasn't underwater, under ice, or offworld.
The 2070s saw little change in the ranking of the great powers, or of the technologies used by same. The real excitement came from the opening of the major moons of Jupiter for settlement, facilitated by the licensing-out of US-made Helion (heavy ion) drives and providing of transport services by the various American carrier fleets, such as USStarways, Solar West, and Trans-Ecliptic Spaceways...though UK-based Virgin Planets turned a nice profit, as well.
Due to the relative abundance, even super-abundance of water on Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, all three overtook Mars quickly in the early going as places of settlement. Also, the technology of living on icy worlds required on slight modification from the habitat designs of the Antarctic and Pelagic colonies, so long as they were embedded deep in the ice of the Galilenes, as they worlds came to be known. Hellish Io, though, was a non-starter, and would be among the last worlds of the Solar System to support human residents.
And what the ice-rich but rock-poor moons of Jupiter could not provide, the Asteroid Belt provided in abundance, and during the same decade that saw 900,000 newcomers to Jove's neck of the woods witnessed the arrival of 280,000 'rock jocks' to the offworld population of the Solar System, which was now approaching a total of 2.9 million.
In the 2080s, the Japanese begin a radical retooling of their entire economy -- not the physical basis of it, but how it is conducted. Ever obsessed with efficiency, they converted all estimation of cost into energy saved, and likewise of benefit, and oriented their tax and regulatory code around this principle. When various individuals and corporations lamented that this approach punished persons with diverse income and cost streams, the Ministry of Trade, backed by the Diet, shrugged and refocused the incentive structure on each type of activity. Companies complained further, but the government raised its collective hand: if you want more tax breaks, do efficient things. Things that save energy, or time, or the energy and time of others. The incentives were percentage inputs, so market mechanisms for allocating scarcity, discounting for risk and premiums for high demand or value were largely in force. The difference was that for the first time in history, acts were being (dis)incentivized, not actors, made possible by the availability of quantum simulation to track all such data in realtime. It followed suit that first taxation would be conducted on a continuous basis, then modification of behavior, then the unit of economic performance. This was the birth of 'micrommerce', again quietly, for the world was not quite sure of what the Japanese were doing, save for rolling out a rather compelling argument for improving energy efficiency. The New Societies took to the innovation with a flourish; the West dallied with it halfheartedly; the East loved and despised it at once, it depended on where one went. What could not be gainsaid is that the methodology worked; Japanese GDP soared, once the initial jitters were calmed.
Elsewhere, the Canadians became the de facto global policemen of all things mnemonic, as the Mounties and their virtual cohorts, the Avatars, became the mainstay of policing the world's cyber lanes against troublemakers, just as the Europeans retained the nanotech guardianship.
Mexico found a valuable niche by reaching back to its past for inspiration: In all the worlds, there were now no better combat engineers than the Mexicans, and the services of the EUM's so-called 'Constructadors' were highly valued, for this was a universe inhabited by human beings, and as such there was no shortfall of opportunity to build (or rebuild) structures on a tight schedule in conditions of grave peril, places that Norteamericano's androids either could not go, and use of their own lives was too dear. The Americans --- or with increasing frequency the Brazilians --- did not mind paying the premium. And along with that notoreity came the expertise to do other things, so that Mexico by the end of the 21st century was manufacturing fully one-third of the small arms and, far more lucrative, over one-half of the utility kits for all the armed forces of all the worlds of the Solar System. Not a bad gig, all told.
By the 2090s, Antarctica, now sovereign, the first of the New Societies to sit at the big table. Micrommercial philosophy thrives there, as well as offworld, and the Americans have joined the club, as well. Malaysia has become the belated Asian answer to the Anglo-Russian internet cartel, and Australia, now more closely aligned with Asia than America, has become the main source of androids for the Han Federation and its allies.
Elsewhere, Titan is finally explored and settled, and the means to develop safe permanent habitats on Io arrive, which makes the minerological riches of that world readily available; an interplanetary gold rush sets in, such that by 2090 Io has the largest population of any world other than the Earth and Moon...though this is a short-lived moment in Ionian history, as there are real limits to how many people a world with no native sources of water can support. It requires a neverending chain of well-timed, well-placed ice fragment impacts, harvested from Jupiter's rings at first, then scraped from the surface of the ice moon of Amalthea later. Titan proves to be even more a world of surprises than the now-ancient Cassini/Huygens probe suggested, with a complex, heterodox planetology including oxygen geysers in its more active regions...and steam volcanoes.
On Earth, almost 10 million people live under the sea, and almost 25 million live on the ice in Antarctica.
By 2100, the Russians are a player in the android business, the Pelagic (oceanic) nations are a rising power in Terran affairs, and the energetic Aussies are moving in on Japan's dominance of mnemonics. The Han Federation has now achieved near-parity with the United States, a metastasis that will (to tip the cards) maintain for another century, though for all practical purposes the superpower struggle has been between the Euro-American constellation and that of the Sino-Indo-Russian alliance for most of the 21st century. Each is virtually a world unto itself, impossible to assail by the other, with nothing but profit from mutual trade and a mutual steering clear of one another's way. For the Han, Asia was planet enough for the century. For the more restive Americans, who felt they had had the entire Earth already, one world was not enough, so they invested their efforts in developing others, one after the other, then selling access and resupply to those who came later, many of them by no coincidence Han as well as other Asians.
For quite a bit of Humanity, though, the world remained as it was, or rather, as it was becoming: more crowded, with what resources remained crowded away from the majority who needed them. In these marginal areas, places such as South America and Africa and the Islamic world, war and uncertainty and wrath remained, with only one another to lash against, and as fast as nations could, they recused themselves from this misery and joined the ranks of the elect -- the chronology above describes just the lucky ones.
Still, there are worlds, and time, and hope, and though by 2100 over 62 million people reside in the New Societies, 7.5 million of them on worlds other than Earth, this represents a pittance compared to the 8,753 million who do not.
And while 5,926 million 'Old North' Terrans live in the redeemed countries, that still leaves a large number --
2,827 million --- who are locked out, spectators only by hearsay of the wonders that I've described.
And among the so-called 'saved' societies are billions who are eyewitnesses to miracles and wonders, and yet experience none of it save vicariously.
And this is the best of all possible worlds that is coming, unless this, too, is challenged and changed.
Wrap
I know this is a lot for one reading...but that never stopped me before. :)