What will America be like in 50 years?

[pbrower2a]

Possibilities:

1. A "Christian and Corporate State', a right-wing mirror image of the Soviet Union that celebrates inequality and has control of satellite states that follow much the same ideology. It is a repressive and militaristic society generally recognized as an Evil Empire. Humanity exists to serve the elites and gets little more than promises of Pie in the Sky When You Die. There might be a rich technological life, with basic science , mathematics, and engineering doing well.  It's the sort of political entity that people want to leave but can do so only at great personal cost -- if at all. The world has an uneasy peace with a political order that occasionally picks up a 

2. The surviving hegemon in the smoking ruins of World War III, maybe recovered some. The Man in the High Castle describes the scenario well -- except that America is something like Nazi Germany and imposes its will in places where such is tolerated out of fear.

3. The smoking ruins of World War III, depending on the severity and recency of the war. People might be picking up the pieces and starting to make progress into the '70s.  The 1870s in technology and the 1370s in living conditions, that is.

4. Civil War. America polarizes along ethnic, religious, and regional lines. All bets are off.

5. A nation occupied and partitioned by the victors of a war of conquest that American leadership started and lost. Political and cultural reality is whatever the local victor tolerates. As one of the more striking, but benign changes, just think or the impressive Carnival that might be introduced in such a city as Atlanta. Many Americans might learn the practical benefits of using a Japanese-based pidgin (yes, it is written in a Latin alphabet) for dealing with the Japanese.

War criminals have been disgraced and likely executed -- and they are shown as examples of what not to be. Political groups seen culpable in the Bad Old Days are disgraced and outlawed. I can imagine the politics of some sections being reshaped to fit the models existing in the occupying powers.

Democratic (small D) institutions may have made a return, and this may facilitate the restoration of most of the USA. But the cost in lives and capital to get to that point will have been monstrous.

6. America rejects Donald Trump and starts modifying its institutions to ensure that there will be no replay. Probably the healthiest situation. Conservatism redefines itself as a fallback in  case liberal or socialist ideas go too far by offering rationality, enterprise, community, self-reliance, restraint (including thrift), and viable traditions. 

 

[pbrower2a]

Based on the theories of Howe and Strauss...

2067 should have a public mood analogous to that of roughly 1987 or 1907, with a jaded culture in which people have given up on religious awakening and political ferment. Americans or their successors will be going materialistic and hedonistic, celebrating indulgent freedom at the expense of community that they consider trivial and social equity that they neglect. Culture will lionize the athlete and the pop star at the expense of the scholar and reformer. The elderly will be what are now Millennial young adults; people in midlife will be the children of our time; the young adults will be much like Boomers (smug and selfish) of such times; children growing up will believe in little but survival (especially material). It will be much like America under Taft or Reagan.