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posted ago by cringerepublic ago by cringerepublic +23 / -0

We've been experiencing some political trends that I see carrying over into actual reform in the near future.

First, I think the House will eventually be abolished. The House of Representatives has been one of the least popular institutions in this country for decades and it's approval rating today is abysmal. It's just as bad under both parties and pretty much everyone agrees the House sucks. I think the Senate will pull through but with many powers revoked and transferred to the executive branch.

Speaking of the executive branch, I don't think elections will be held the way they are today forever. I can imagine the electoral college shrinking back to what it was first imagined as thus eliminating the concept of a popular election all together. The two sides are so far apart, I believe one will win and establish a regime with continuity. Every succeeding president will be in agreement when it comes to the key principles, and that might be guaranteed by the electors.

Despite this, I actually do see the federal government shrinking in the future. I think the 20th century experiment of massive federal projects is slowly falling out of favor. We might see states broken into smaller districts (about 9,000 square miles) ruled by some kind of provincial leader who may be elected or appointed. That guy would be in charge of taking care of his community more so than the federal government. I think as supply chains begin to fall apart, politics will get more local and the federal gov might become less important domestically.

I think the era of "nonpartisan" aka deep-state officials are coming to an end. They're under way too much scrutiny from both sides at the moment and I think any administration is going to want to guarantee the political loyalty of all who serve in it. We'll probably see wannabe office holders becoming more prevalent in the very near future. Every grifter or kid on Twitter is going to be expecting an office after their side takes power. With so many new roles to fill, they might be likely to get it.

I think the mainstream media has been dying for a while and will probably cease to be a force in the very near future. The average TV news watcher is like 70 and young people aren't becoming interested. I think politics will shift from being a popular spectacle into something more niche and esoteric. People will have very eclectic political opinions and there won't be much of an agreed upon "mainstream" to compare it to. Political ideas will differ greatly by region and within different circles. We might see states ruled by political cliques and mini dictatorships within the federal framework.

It's hard to predict what happens to the military, but I can see that shrinking too as America retreats from a much more crowded world stage. We might become reliant on state and local militias which could have some sort of official government recognition. The militias would be an all-in-one unit that does the job of a local police force, disaster relief crew, and probably in some areas tax collection.

The trends I see in abstract are: simplicity. Coherence in the federal government, diversity across the local governments. An America that's more practical and less idealistic than the America of the 20th century.