The commotion in the United States today is not just one political rainstorm. The 20th century was very much like clouds building on the horizon. Internationally, it was a century of thunderstorms, aka wars; it was a century of floods and earthquakes, aka large industrial changes – automobiles, airplanes, farm equipment and massive manufacturing ability. It was the introduction to television, computers and the Internet. Change in human lifestyle was mandated.

From 1900 to 2025, world population grew by 4 1/2 Billion; given that world population had grown only by less than 200 Million since the time of Jesus, the storms of the 20th century were hurricanes.

It is no wonder that, at the beginning of the 21st century the world was about to pop, needing only a pointed needle-head and a world pandemic to pop it.  There were other signs that the past was rotting: The “Western Alliance’ established by the western victory in World War II is no longer in line politically or economically as the Internet rapidly dismantled old boundary liaisons and began replacing them with corporate-driven trade agreements strong enough to resist government intentions. Asia and the Middle East were able to step into affairs of the world with virtually no meaningful counteraction from the Western Alliance.

Turning to more abstract issues, there are two unbreakable rules for which Mother Nature requires allegiance: “Survival of the Fittest” and “Democracy  works only when there is enough to go around for everybody”. Democracy is a political idea only recently brought into the world of politics. The United States was born into a spanking brand new continent with an abundance of natural resources, so it formed a ‘democratic republic’, meaning that the ground-level public had some authority in running things – which means that there had to be enough to go around.

Since then, US population has increased 130 times from  2 1/2 Million in 1776 to 347 Million in 2025. Slowly, the abundance of the continent disappeared until some serious events in the 20th century: the Great Depression in the 1930’s and the beginning of obvious plutocracy which began in the Reagan administration (1984) and continues to worsen as the 21st century comes into being.

The result today is a society rife with populist arguments. It’s the MAGA versus the WOKE; it’s the nonwhites versus the whites; it’s the plutocrats versus the support of the needy.

The populist era must be resolved with some speed. Mother Nature is losing patience with the oligarchic behavior of the Human species. Further, if it runs too long, the results may be corporatism or anarchy or simply, survival of the fittest.

Ancient Mariner