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RvBOMally — The Fourth Turning
Published: 2023-09-13 03:24:23 +0000 UTC; Views: 38146; Favourites: 129; Downloads: 56
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This is my “cover” of the predictions put forth in the famous book, The Fourth Turning, which presented the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. My original plan for this was to just take the predictions in the book verbatim, but as it turns out, Strauss and Howe were very wishy-washy on solid predictions and instead spoke of trends and possibilities. Understandable, but it made making a true projection of their predictions very difficult. Instead, I approached this cover with the mindset of how I’d think they’d answer specific questions about a post-Fourth Turning world at the time. In practice, this meant injecting 1990s Clancy-tier future history memes into the work. It’s also a very Americentric book, and so consequently this cover is also Americentric.
The Fourth Turning did provide a more specific list of possibilities for the crisis that ends the post-WWII order, and while the authors claim that it’s unlikely for all of them to happen, in this scenario, they all did. What can I say, I don’t hold back on the grimdark, and having all of the events happen would be incredibly dark. They’re listed below, and once you see the contents of the list, you can see why having all of the happen in the same time isn’t that farfetched. In fact, the list reads like a first draft of actual events that occurred since the book’s publication. The following is verbatim from the book (which you can read here , courtesy of archive.org):
Beset by a fiscal crisis, a state lays claim to its residents' federal tax monies. Declaring this an act of secession, the president obtains a federal injunction. The governor refuses to back down. Federal marshals enforce the court order. Similar tax rebellions spring up in other states. Treasury bill auctions are suspended. Militia violence breaks out. Cyberterrorists destroy IRS databases. U.S. special forces are put on alert. Demands issue for a new Constitutional Convention.
A global terrorist group blows up an aircraft and announces it possesses portable nuclear weapons. The United States and its allies launch a preemptive strike. The terrorists threaten to retaliate against an American city. Congress declares war and authorizes unlimited house-to-house searches. Opponents charge that the president concocted the emergency for political purposes. A nationwide strike is declared. Foreign capital flees the U.S.
An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The president and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a near- total government shutdown. The president declares emergency powers. Congress rescinds his authority. Dollar and bond prices plummet. The president threatens to stop Social Security checks. Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announce the spread of a new communicable virus. The disease reaches densely populated areas, killing some. Congress enacts mandatory quarantine measures. The president orders the National Guard to throw prophylactic cordons around unsafe neighborhoods. Mayors resist. Urban gangs battle suburban militias. Calls mount for the president to declare martial law.
Growing anarchy throughout the former Soviet republics prompts Russia to conduct training exercises around its borders. Lithuania erupts in civil war. Negotiations break down. U.S. diplomats are captured and publicly taunted. The president airlifts troops to rescue them and orders ships into the Black Sea. Iran declares its alliance with Russia. Gold and oil prices soar. Congress debates restoring the draft.
They also provide the following list of “ingredients” for the Crisis:
Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
Cultural distress, with the media plunging into a dizzying decay, and a decency backlash in favor of state censorship
Technological distress, with cryptoanarchy, high-tech oligarchy, and biogenetic chaos
Ecological distress, with atmospheric damage, energy or water shortages, and new diseases
Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one- party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction
I also ensured that a major American war happened at the end of the crisis; while Strauss and Howe claim that a war isn’t necessarily going to happen, all of the previous saeculums they provide do end in major wars, so I’m keeping the pattern. I had a choice between a world war and a civil war, and I chose the latter. While SACWs are overdone, since the authors claim that any war will be a total one and use every weapon imaginable, a world war will be a nuclear one, and I don’t like making post-nuclear maps.[1]
Overall, The Fourth Turning focuses more on intergenerational and cultural trends than geopolitics. Again, this meant I had to fill in many gaps. The authors didn’t really foresee just how massive the Internet would be as a social force, so I reflected that in the cover as a sort of retro-90s “the Internet is for hackers and nerds” future. I also found the general predictions about the future to be optimistic in spite of the Crisis, and you know me, I just don’t roll like that. So I took their prediction about the Millennial generation being very collectivist and authoritarian by nature[2] and took it to a much darker extreme. And while it would be easy to hand the victory to an ersatz-New Left or ersatz-New Right, I went with a…third option. While the optimism is there, the book does provide:
With or without war, American society will be transformed into something different. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers' visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.
I chose something unspeakably worse.
This is probably one of the more depressing TLs I’ve ever written, so be warned. It’s got pandemics, economic collapse, major European wars, and political unrest in the US, and all in one generation’s lifetime. From the early 2000s on, the US just can’t catch a break. Could you imagine living in such a world? If I did, I’d drink myself to death.
N.B. I’m aware that Neil Howe recently published a sequel, claiming that the Fourth Turning is here in his book, The Fourth Turning is Here. I specifically avoided looking at any content from that book to prevent any of his later conclusions from influencing his older ones. I may cover that one as well.
—
The year is 2076[3], fifty years after the end of the Second American Civil War and the foundation of the Republic of America. In the Capital District[4], units of the National Guard[5] crush the week-long protests against America’s continued war in Mexico. These protesters, mostly young students, were out in the streets specifically to protest a recent change to conscription laws, which now no longer exempted college students and women[6] from the draft. The response from the government was swift and brutal. Students of revolution themselves, the New Founders understood the dangers of allowing dissent to fester within a society, and so designed the Capital District with the foreknowledge that mass demonstrations may occur during their rule, just as they had during their own rise to power.[7] All the streets leading up to major government buildings and monuments were designed to be kill boxes. Protesters were allowed by Capital Police and the National Guard to crowd into streets that could easily be blocked off by barricades and armored vehicles. From there, Guard units - pulled from far-off regions of the country - poured lethal and non-lethal fire into a crowd which had no chance of escape. Robotic drones marched alongside flesh and blood troopers clad in power armor, showing no mercy to those wayward youth who would bring back the dark times of the past with their misguided notions of “freedom.” From there, the living were sent off to the work camps in Alaska, the dead quickly cremated, and the blood and viscera washed into the sewers with high-pressure hoses. As all media was under the iron grip of the state, an information blackout was imposed and heavy penalties levied on those who dared to remember what happened. A week later, it was as if the protests had never happened.
The price for Order is high. Even the most callous of the New Founders would admit that. But for the maintenance of Order, no price is too high. Yes, the price is often one of blood. They spilled enough blood during the dark days of the Revolution, and they’d be damned if they let the foolish, naive youth drag them back into the abyss. Never again will the individualism and degeneracy of the 1990s and 2000s consume America. If the New Founders have their way, Order will reign forever, and the oppression of choice will be dead forever.
The twenty-first century, meant to be the End of History and the beginning of an era of never-ending peace, instead began with a series of blows to the American-led order; blows which no system could survive, and ultimately destroyed it. The crisis that ended the old United States of America, and with it the end of the post-1945 world order, began at the very turn of the millennium with the Y2K bug. Although this bug did not do as much damage as it may have had it happened a decade later, it did cause a mild panic in US markets and caused many large institutions to lose millions. Though this would not stop the inevitable march of technological progress, major institutions learned their lesson from the Y2K bug and made plans to maintain non-digital means of doing work.
Things got worse in 2002 with the SARS epidemic. The SARS virus originated in China, but thanks to global travel and trade, quickly spread around the world. The lethal virus led to major federally-imposed lockdowns throughout the country, though some locales resisted. The lockdowns quickly became a political issue, with the Republican Bush administration finding it difficult to get Democratic mayors to abide by the lockdowns, the latter arguing that these lockdowns would destroy their economies. Civil libertarians also objected to the lockdowns, though their objections were ignored and later rendered moot as lockdowns were phased out around 2004.
The pandemic and global response to it had serious effects on the global economy. With manufacturing and trade shut down for two years, the globalized economy began to crumble. Faith in the idea that free trade could solve all supply and demand problems was shattered, as nations needed to provide for themselves. Autarky became a popular economic position on both the left and right, though powerful economic and political interests - which were invested in the old order - pushed back hard against autarkic policies. The economy started to recover in 2004, as lockdowns ended and the global economy started to recover. However, things would only get worse. The 2005 financial crash was caused primarily by the United States government defaulting on its debt, creating a dramatic spike in interest rates on US debt. This created further high interest rates throughout the economy and sparked a recession. American, and then global, markets entered what history would later know as the Second Great Depression. The Second Great Depression gutted the US economy, leaving millions of Millennials unemployed, impossible to hire, and with thousands or tens of thousands in student loan debt. These Millennials would later form the core of the Second American Revolution, as these young people with no future acted as fuel for the fire that would burn down the old United States.
As if it could not get worse, the collapse of Pakistan in 1999 [8] reared its ugly head. During the chaos of the Pakistani Civil War, several nuclear warheads owned by the Pakistani military disappeared. They reappeared in 2006, in spectacular fashion, when the terrorist group Al Qaeda detonated nuclear warheads in New York City and Washington D.C., utilizing a hijacked airliner as a makeshift missile in the former instance. Though no high level federal officials were killed, over ten thousand people died in the attacks immediately, with more dying over the years from the aftereffects of radioactive fallout. This began a long war against the terrorist organization in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, all of which were invaded by US forces. In spite of the unpopularity of these wars - particularly Iraq and Syria, which the US wrongfully claimed were harboring Pakistani nuclear weapons - the Americans would not withdraw until 2021, when the Second American Civil War began and troops were needed to fight the rebellion.
While the 2006 nuclear attacks caused momentary political unity, the cost of the war was not just in blood and gold abroad. The threat that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations could continue attacks led to the mass suspension of civil liberties throughout the country, and while this was initially popular, the abuse of power and the deteriorating economic situation quickly led to these policies being seen as tyrannical and used only to prop up the people in charge. Some remembered the SARS lockdowns and did not want a return to those days, particularly measures that were used against a virus were not appropriate for use against a terrorist organization. Discontented, anti-establishment organizations arose and quickly grew in popularity, particularly from the Millennial population. These organizations were broadly labeled under the Tea Party and Days of Rage[10] for the right-wing and left-wing anti-establishment, populist movements. Initially, these organizations were oppositional to one another and considered the other to represent the worst of America, though this would eventually change. Throughout the 2010s, these organizations would frequently engage in street battles against one another and against police. Federal agencies, trying to stem the tide of political unrest through mass arrests, became targets of attacks by both left-wing and right-wing organizations, both legally and, increasingly, through extra-legal means.
Cyber attacks, from abroad and from domestic organizations, further destabilized America. Beginning in the late 2000s, billions of dollars were stolen from major companies and the government, either directly or through ransom. Already reeling from Y2K, major institutions “de-webbed” in reaction, and draconian laws were passed which restricted Internet use. Internet anonymity was made illegal, as all accounts had to be attached to a new national ID system created in the wake of the 2006 terror attacks. Not only were banks and government institutions hacked and stolen from, but elections themselves came into dispute as election machines produced questionable results. Contested elections led to both left and right believing that American democracy was compromised beyond repair, and the American government’s continued pursuit of deeply unpopular policies led to many believing that American democracy was pointless. Both left and right believed that American politicians were more responsive to rich donors, the entrenched bureaucracy and corporate interests, than they were of voters. This left to mass political disillusionment, voter turnouts declining, and the belief that if the ballot does not work, then the only recourse to governance was the bullet.
While America was hit hard by the Second Great Depression, Russia had it worse. Already a basketcase of a country since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Second Great Depression destroyed whatever economy and political trust the Russian Federation’s government had left. Desperate to cling onto power, the Russian government did what it saw the Americans doing - start a foreign war to shore up domestic support. In its case, the Russians supported pro-Russian groups in Lithuania, particularly to prevent it from joining NATO.[9] This led to a disastrous war in 2007 which sucked in all of the Baltic countries and, while NATO itself did not get directly involved in the war against Russia, NATO countries proved crucial to keeping the Baltic countries fighting. This war eventually drained Russia’s economy, crumbled the Russian military, and led to increased support for Russian ultranationalists. The ultranationalists claimed that the incompetent Russian government was corrupted by Western capitalist influence, and this incompetence was responsible for the deteriorating war. This message resonated with many young Russians, particularly veterans of the war, who returned to their country and overthrew the government. This began the Second Russian Civil War, which ended with the Baltics free from Russian influence, but with ultranationalists taking control in Russia; the pro-Russian Belarusian and Ukrainian governments followed. The ultranationalist victory served as a template for American revolutionaries, and a new Soviet Union was created. Though the European Union supported the Russian government they once warred against, they did not want to go to war with the ultranationalists directly. Instead, an accord was reached with the new USSR: the EU would not expand beyond the old Iron Curtain, and the USSR would not admit Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova into its union. The Soviets agreed.
America’s involvement in wars in Europe and the Middle East had a tremendous cost domestically. Americans suffering during the Second Great Depression believed that America’s foreign adventurism led to money being spent abroad, which could be better spent at home to support suffering Americans. Support for American adventurism abroad from both Democratic and Republican administrations led to discontent with both political parties from their supporters. Anti-establishment candidates, mostly Gen Xers, ran under Democratic or Republican tickets, but were consequently opposed by the older establishment in their own parties. This led to the erosion of the old political party lines, and the creation of a pro-establishment/anti-establishment political order.
The American government’s budget, already running low because of the Second Great Depression, was worsened by states starting to seize their residents’ federal tax money. This began in 2020 in Texas, whose anti-establishment Republican administration claimed that the Democratic administration was not doing enough to protect the US border, and so seized federal money to pay for its own border security force. Other states followed suit, but used different rationales: California, New York and Illinois seized money to pay for their own unemployment benefit programs, while Arizona and New Mexico followed Texas’ lead. The federal response was to send US marshals to arrest state officials enforcing these laws, leading to standoffs and, eventually, shootouts. Although only Texas outright seceded from the Union, the fires of rebellion quickly spread through the country.
The Second American Civil War began in 2021, as a federal attempt to arrest the Texas state government, leading to fighting between federal forces and an aligned force of Texas state forces and political militias. The rebellion was followed by martial law being declared around the country, a move which backfired as this was seen as a sign of impending tyranny by anti-establishment organizations. Shockingly large numbers of federal troops deserted at the beginning of the war, either to protect their families or to fight alongside the rebels.
Perhaps what made the Revolution possible was the apathy of its enforcers. By the 2020s, few believed in the old American ideals, and can only see evidence of their failure. This led to mass defections when it became clear the American government could no longer pay its employees - or its soldiers. Even the leaders of the federal government themselves gradually realized that their time was over, and many fled to Europe or Asia.
The ideological genesis of the Second American Revolution emerged from the Baby Boomer generation.[11] It was Boomers who initially questioned the post-WWII world order, and created the ideological acids that eventually wore away at that order until it collapsed from its own weight. It was also their idealistic political movement which blamed the problems of the unraveling American, and global, social fabric on atomized, materialistic societies. Religious, ethnic and ideological alignments were important for a small minority of Boomers, who became ideological gurus for millions of Millennials. These ideals formed the nucleus of revolutionary organizations across the political spectrum, opposed to the decaying United States government and its institutions.
However, while the Boomers started the groups that would make the Revolution, it was Gen X that would lead it. Having no loyalty to the old ways, this new generation took advantage of the growing discontent with the old order. Their own nihilism also allowed disparate revolutionary groups, sometimes with diametrically oppositional ideals, to unite out of expedience. Though the Millennials that formed the youthful core of these groups were true believers, the initial leaders of the Revolution simply desired power, and were willing to do anything to get it. The original New Founders were Gen X, though their Millennial successors would have America forget it. And forget they did: their names are now excised from the history books, their existence now a myth to the younger generations. The initial leaders of the Revolution were purged by their younger successors for being insufficiently committed to the ideals of Order, and were thus cast away.
The different groups which fought in the Revolution initially had differing goals. Ethnonationalists opposed rule by one another; state separatists aligned with either conservative or liberal factions on a national level wished ill on one another; the far left and far right fought street battles throughout America in the 2010s. However, as the crisis reached its zenith in the 2020s , these groups all came to one realization: they had quite a lot in common. All of them opposed the chaos and nihilism of the current zeitgeist. All of them wished for an America which knew how to cooperate, even if it came at the cost of individual choice. All of their differences could be set aside if they agreed on a common goal. And, as it turns out, they had two: end the chaos, and remove the powers that created them.
The Revolutionary credo was to create order from chaos. Though rebels, the Revolutionary factions were all committed to the idea of creating a more orderly society, free of the sins of the past. These sins were those born of individualism and chaos, and once-oppositional groups all had a reason to join. The left was attracted by opposition to the freewheeling international capitalism which gutted wages and left many jobless. The right was attracted by opposition to a “do what thou wilt” amorality that destroyed the familial and social fabrics on a fundamental level. Ethnonationalists, though still assured of their own superiority, came to realize that they had a shared goal in living in their own communities apart from one another; they learned that a separatist alliance is a natural thing. These once-strategic alliances then fomented a cohesive ideology: Order.
Born from the fires of the early 21st century and rising from the ashes of the post-WWII order, the Millennial order - particularly in America - can be described in one phrase: freedom from freedom. Order was initially a response to the perceived use of rivalries between anti-system organizations to prevent them from unifying against the system. This ideology considered the competing value systems tearing America apart, and proposed a simple solution: people of like mind should live together in communities built for them, and forbid any deviation from their communities’ rules. A conservative Christian community would enforce their values on their own community, but these same Christians would not be allowed to preach a single verse in a secular community. Discussion on the merits or pitfalls of another community’s ways was to be forbidden, as that only created discord between communities and bring back the dark days of America’s collapse. Those who disagreed with their community’s ways were encouraged to move to a community which thought otherwise.
The Second American Civil War ended in 2026, and it heralded the beginning of the new United States, renamed the Republic of America. The Revolutionary Committee, a group of disparate rebel factions that formed a united front during the war, proclaimed a new Constitutional Convention. Though these groups had different visions, many believed that no compromise could be reached. In fact, fighting between rival rebel groups began during and after the war; many feared that the united front would collapse and the war would resume. However, over the years of the war, Order ideology was dominant throughout the leading members of the Revolutionary Committee. Once-bitter rivals now agreed to set aside their differences and used Order as a means of ensuring peace. Those who opposed the ideology were purged and denounced as “extremists” who wanted to continue the war; this way, pro-Order revolutionaries were able to gain the support of the American people, who wanted peace at all costs.
The new Constitutional Convention finally created a new Constitution in 2027. The document was truly revolutionary, as it was intended to reverse the first American Revolution’s mistake: putting freedom above all else. The Constitution of 2027 put Order above all else. With the sole exception of Texas, which was narrowly convinced to rejoin the Union as a state, [12] all states were abolished as distinct political units; it was for this reason that the country was renamed, as it was no longer a union of states. Old state borders remained for the purposes of organization, but no state had any distinct rights or powers from the federal government. Several states in the South were reformed into the New Africa Autonomous Zone, a de jure “independent” entity under the control of black separatist organizations that proved triumphant in the area. Elections, which were already in doubt prior to the war, were abolished as a means of political choice. The prevailing idea during the Constitutional Convention was that elections encouraged politicians to stoke the fires of chaos and instability in order to win, and so they therefore had to be abolished. Instead, a system of appointment and patronage was codified, with the Revolutionary Committee creating the initial government.
Over the years, Order evolved from an ideology of political neutrality at all costs, into an ideology itself. America’s continuing underlying ideological diversity was seen as a problem. It was only a matter of time before the political detente between different communities would break down, and America would be plunged into civil war without end. To this end, the American government gradually rolled out plans to create a new, unified American culture. Religious differences were seen as inherently discordant, and so religious institutions were increasingly muzzled until they were all but banned. Concern over chaos led to decency laws, which resembled the religiously-motivated censorship of the past, but was totally secular in nature. Anything deemed to cause “emotional instability” was censored for the purpose that causing emotional distress led to chaos. [13] This led to strict regulations on depictions of sex and violence, and even language which was deemed overly sexualizing or demeaning was regulated and, later, outright banned.[14] Even modesty dress codes were implemented, not unlike those seen in Iran and Arabia. Ethnic diversity was seen as a powder keg, so entire families were “encouraged” to move to or from the New Africa Autonomous Zone on the basis of their ancestry.[15] Free market economics were seen as a means for businesses to prey on their communities and foment class warfare, and so the state had control of most industries - either directly or through a system of “regulations” which amounted to the same thing.
The New Africa Autonomous Zone, initially governed under totally separate lines from the rest of the country, was gradually subsumed into the greater American system. Economic necessity, particularly the impoverishment of the South and its historic dependence on the rest of the country, led to New Africa’s leaders trading autonomy in exchange for money. The Order regime required the imposition of its edicts in New Africa, and conditioned both direct economic support and the availability of its markets, with New Africa’s acquiescence and enforcement. New African leaders, mostly believers in Order themselves, were more than happy to accept the terms. The same could be said of Texas, whose leaders quickly sold out its state autonomy and is now governed much like any other Order territory.
The Millennial generation, in control of all of America’s political institutions as they reached maturity in the 2030s, embraced these changes. They believed that freedom was a mistake, and Order would bring America to newfound heights of wealth and power. Adding to this belief was the fact that America did restore its economy after the war. After the war, Americans were forced to rebuild their infrastructure, and under the auspices of the Order regime, ensured that many once-unemployed people could find jobs in reconstruction industries.
The Order regime has imposed very strong restrictions on technology, believing that rampant technological development causes environmental and societal damage. The Millennial generation grew up in a time when high technology was poised to change the world forever, but events such as the Y2K bug and the 2006 terrorist attacks conspired to halt the massive changes that the Internet would bring in later decades. Even before the Revolution, regulations relating to the Y2K bug and countering cybercrime kept computers large and Internet bandwidth slow. Mass surveillance and censorship of online activity also made the Internet unappealing to Millennials, particularly as activists were arrested for trying to organize protests online.[16] While these measures were intended to keep the political pressure cooker at a manageable level, all it did was redirect Millennial energies to real life activism and activity.[17] While Internet access and technology would advance in the rest of the world post-Revolution, the Order regime ensured that the American Republic would maintain a policy of strict technological regulation.
The Order regime does adopt new technologies from other countries, but only after reverse engineering examples and studying the technology’s effects on foreign societies. Though new technologies, such as electric vehicles, were enthusiastically adopted, others were not. Most notably, the Internet - in its infancy during the lead up to the Revolution - has been restricted. These restrictions, ironically, were not dissimilar to those utilized by the old United States during its final years. E-commerce sites, whose development was aborted because of pandemic-related restrictions and, later, counterterrorist laws, remain banned in America to protect brick and mortar businesses. By contrast, drone-based delivery systems have become dominant in Europe and East Asia. Internet use itself, already in the decline in the 2000s, never took back off in America. Smartphones and social media were seen as a social cancer, given their effects on youth in Europe and Asia; as a result, they have been banned. The old online ID system was maintained by the Order regime, which monitors all Internet content and restricts what can remain online in American servers, and what American computers can see online. Online video games, popular in the rest of the world, are still banned. Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, the American Republic has imposed strict limitations on automation and bans on artificial intelligence. These policies were implemented to protect jobs and to prevent the societal chaos that could be caused by allowing intelligent machines to run rampant in a society. In effect, the American Republic has been in a state of technological stasis, keeping America in the early 2000s.
To protect national industries that were ravaged by globalization prior to the Revolution, the American Republic has adopted a longstanding policy of autarky. The core principle of American economics is to keep the country independent of trade outside of its hegemony in the Americas. As a result, compared to its pre-Revolutionary state, in absolute terms the American Republic exports very little, and imports even less, and most of this trade is within the Western Hemisphere. Like the restrictions on automation, while this has ensured that legacy industries survive, it has also led to America falling behind economically and technologically.
Of course, the Order regime is more liberal when it comes to the technology they use themselves. Although bans on artificial intelligence are strictly enforced for civilian use, the American military utilizes the latest in automated defense technology. Though American drones are intended to look “dumb,” and may even have false antennae to give the illusion of remote control, they are in truth deadly, autonomous units that can operate without human supervision. These tactics work, as the American public is largely ignorant of how advanced technology looks and operates.
Strict controls on American culture have frozen American culture in the Millennial, with the notable removal of divisive political narratives that led up to the Revolution. The Order regime believes that rampant cultural change is a prime destabilizer, and so all mass media in the American Republic is strictly censored and reviewed before release. The predominant films in theaters remain remakes or sequels of established franchises, often based on fantasy, science fiction, or superhero properties. These movies are non-controversial in every aspect and are more or less interchangeable with one another. The same can be said of television, and even written literature. The themes of American media are all the same: disparate protagonists setting aside their differences to work together against a common enemy, with all of them learning from one another. [18] Unlike with the rest of the world, streaming services and online content creation is nonexistent in America, which does not have the technological infrastructure for it.
Order became the panacea to all problems in the world, particularly in the chaotic Western Hemisphere. The Second American Civil War did not destroy the US Navy, which was largely uninvolved in the fighting; most crews, disillusioned with the US government, simply pledged their allegiance to the new regime. Though the Order regime believed that it was a mistake for America to involve itself in matters outside of the Western Hemisphere, it believed that all countries in the Western Hemisphere were rightly in America’s sphere of influence. While America had the natural resources to provide for itself, particularly as it turned post-revolutionary Canada and Quebec into satellite states, it saw the political stability of the Americas as critical to its own national security. The Order regime supported Latin American regimes which it believed would maintain stability, regardless of its ideological bent. However, if the Capital District believed that a government was going to imminently fall, it supported its internal opponents. The Order regime intervened directly twice, and in both cases the governments fell entirely and civil war began: in Venezuela in 2053, and Mexico in 2064. The latter war, started to end the drug epidemic in America by destroying drug cartels in Mexico itself, has become a decade-long quagmire that the Order regime has refused to believe has failed. Violence from the Second Mexican War has spilled over the border, and anti-American criminal and terrorist organizations have begun a new wave of violence in the American Republic itself.
Outside of the Americas, the world has reoriented itself after American hegemony ended in the 2020s. NATO, already shaky after many Europeans believed America was not doing enough to support the Baltic countries, collapsed completely with the Second American Civil War, as no NATO member save Canada intervened on behalf of the US government and the post-Revolutionary government withdrew from the alliance. Instead, the European Union took its place, becoming a political, military, and economic bloc that eventually became a true federation.[19] Europe has been defined as a conflict between the dipoles of a European Union governed by a left-wing, bureaucratic technocracy which has rendered elections in its member states irrelevant, and the ultranationalist, pseudo-national bolshevik regime in Moscow. Although both claim that the other are authoritarians who crush their political opposition, in truth this claim can be truthfully made about both of them. Both sides are heavily reliant on automation to keep their aging populations provided for, though not to the same extent as East Asia.
East Asia has been relatively peaceful throughout the 21st century, though the SARS pandemic gave the region a rocky start. In the wake of American retreat, China and Japan have emerged as competing economic and military powerhouses, despite the former having a historically poor economy and the latter having a nonexistent military. In many ways, the dynamic between China and Japan mirror that of Russia and Europe, respectively, though both sides have considerably more conservative societies. The CCP has shed all pretense of governing as communists, instead adopting much of the rhetoric of the Order regime in America. China managed to fill the gap filled by America economically, and used that to survive the rough 2020s and continue its economic dominance through the use of automation. Likewise, Japan was a pioneer in automation and used it to get out of the economic slump of the lost decades, and filled the diplomatic and military power vacuum left by America’s retreat. Japan and its allies have come under the de facto political control of megacorporations, who maintain elections as a means of keeping up the illusion of political choice; it is arguable whether this is still necessary, as most Japanese know that political participation is pointless and simply accept the status quo, so long as it provides economically.
America’s adventures in the Middle East and South Asia destabilized the region, and after its retreat, regional powers filled the vacuum. Iran, which was on America’s list of targets for the 2020s for its continued anti-American activities, survived thanks to the Second American Civil War, and it quickly filled the power vacuum left by the retreating Americans. The Saudis maneuvered from the post-oil age by becoming a mass exporter of solar energy and a conservative Sunni bulwark against Shia Iran. They have even cozied up to Israel, which has embraced automation with gusto - particularly the IDF, which fields one of the largest automated militaries on the planet.
India - an American partner in trying to piece together Pakistan - took full control of the situation after America’s retreat and still governs the post-Pakistan states. Former Pakistan has long been India’s version of Mexico, and has long taxed the Indian Republic’s resources. Though direct occupation has ended, the specter of nuclear terrorism still haunts the region. Otherwise, India has a booming economy, powered by its relatively youthful population and its ability to fill the economic gaps left by China as Chinese labor becomes more expensive.
Africa has coalesced into several competing blocs, with broad allegiance to other powers in the Old World. Libya, still under Gaddafi’s dynasty and led by his vision, is a North African powerhouse and a counterbalance to French influence in the Mediterranean and West Africa, and the growing power that is democratic Nigeria. Although once believed to be the future of manufacturing, automation has kept manufacturing in Europe and Asia, and so Africa is predominantly valuable for its natural resources. To that end, foreign powers fight over the rare earth minerals of Central Africa, fighting which has led to three Congo wars that have completely collapsed former Zaire. In eastern Africa, both Ethiopia and Somalia have collapsed into competing warlord states, the Sudanese are propped up solely by Libyan guns and keeping Egyptian water hostage, and Egypt is on the brink of total collapse from population and water issues. China is investing heavily Kenya and Tanzania, each being routes into rare earth minerals in the Congo. South Africa has mostly kept to itself, its post-apartheid government still teetering on the brink of economic collapse as its anti-automation government is passed by the growing tech powerhouse of Botswana.
The Millennial order in America is reaching its twilight. The American economy is failing, as its old Millennial population is taxing the resources of the youth, and refusal to automate has made this burden much larger than it has to be. Its outdated economic policies have rendered it non-competitive with automated, mass produced goods from the Old World. More and more of the countries in its sphere are starting to trade with the Old World, and smuggling Old World products into America has become a major source of black market revenue. Drugs continue to be a problem among the younger generations, who feel like they have no opportunities, and are willing to risk imprisonment or death by simply possessing contraband. There are increasing calls in the Capital District to maintain a cordon in the Americas blocking all trans-oceanic trade, though this would require the Americans to start seizing foreign-flagged vessels and threatens a global war. Some in the Capital District know this, and welcome the possibility. They know that the Old World has never accepted their government, and they will sooner or later make their move to overthrow the Order regime. They also understand that the great powers across the oceans have their own rivalries and, should one triumph over the other, they may seek global domination. Better to strike now, before America totally slides into irrelevance.
The geriatric Millennial generation, which has been in power since the end of the Revolutions of the 2020s, is still gripping onto power, making it clear to the younger generations that they can have power when they pry it from their cold, dead hands. The youth, in their calls for liberty and individual choice, do not understand the consequences of their wishes. They did not grow up in a time when “liberty” and “freedom” burned down the very foundations of society and forced the Millennials to create a new order from the ashes. They do not understand that true liberty is liberation from the oppression of choice.
In spite of America’s ban on artificial intelligence, the Order regime has made one notable exception. Deep in the Capital District, a supercomputer has been programmed with an advanced artificial intelligence, wholly dedicated to the maintenance of Order. This machine will assume total control of the country once the last member of the Revolutionary Committee dies, or so the plan goes. There are those in the government who are aware of this plan and, knowing that it will lock them out of power forever, have ideas on how to stop it.
[1] Not out of squeamishness from the concept, given the sort of material I deal with on a regular basis. I just don’t like making random blobs representing every irradiated leather-clad mob in the wilderness.
[2] Keep in mind, this book was written when we Millennials were toddlers or not even born.
[3] It just works.
[4] Renamed after the Second American Revolution, to wash the legacy of Washington from memory. Washington, after all, was a hypocrite of the highest order: he claimed to fight for liberty, yet owned people as property. But more importantly, he brought chaos to America, and that simply cannot stand.
[5] This is not the National Guard of pre-Revolution America, which were glorified state militias. Guard units, as with the rest of the United States military, fought on both sides of the Second American Civil War, but many more Guard units joined the rebels. After the war, the military had to be reorganized, as did the rest of the government. The New Founders understood that they had to prevent further rebellion after their Final Revolution, and so state militias, and the National Guard of old, were abolished. The new National Guard is a nationally controlled gendarme, also taking the role of the various alphabet soup agencies (FBI, NSA, etc.) that the old regime used to police its own people.
[6] The inclusion of women in the draft was long desired by the military and the more orthodox members of the government, who claimed that squeamishness about keeping women out of the service were motivated either by outdated notions of chivalry or outdated notions of feminism.
[7] Washington D.C. was heavily damaged after the Al Qaeda nuclear attacks, and further damaged during the fighting in the Second American Civil War.
[8] Musharraf’s coup was botched and led to a full-blown Pakistani civil war.
[9] None of the Baltic countries joined NATO in the early 2000s.
[10] TTL’s name for Occupy Wall Street, and a more obvious Boomer-ism, to reflect the fact that these are Boomer-founded organizations ITTL. The Tea Party kept its name because that is a Boomer-ism
[11] One of the more interesting predictions from The Fourth Turning was the idea that Millennials would follow Boomers as spiritual elders. This is amusing when you compare it to how Millennials actually view Boomers.
[12] Texas was more or less threatened with continued war, and by 2026, Texas could no longer continue the fight. As the genesis point of the SACW, Texas was the most heavily damaged of the US states, and many Texans would have accepted total Order rule. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Texas accepted its offered subordinate status.
[13] The Fourth Turning claims that Millennials would be very decency-minded, which we do kinda see in different forms on the left and right. Order decides to agree with both.
[14] Order combined both left-wing political correctness doctrine and right-wing moral majority censorship. They censor everything.
[15] I did consider Order trying to eliminate all racial and ethnic division by forbidding anyone from acknowledging it, but I decided against that approach because The Fourth Turning does list ethnonationalism as one of the Millennial ethoses.
[16] The Fourth Turning missed the massive changes the Internet would bring, so I kept it out of the hands of Americans.
[17] TTL’s Millennials are not terminally online. This also has a notable difference of keeping politics grounded in the 20th century and in real life; esoteric ideologies and weird online drama never happened.
[18] The Fourth Turning points to Power Rangers as an example of quintessentially Millennial media. It fits nicely with Order’s ethos. The culture segment is, admittedly, inspired more by actual Millennials than their Fourth Turning counterparts, but I thought that stale, overly stodgy media matches the ethos.
[19] In an agreement with the ultranationalist government of the USSR, the European Union has agreed not to include any former Warsaw Pact countries as full members. However, in recent years there are signs that this will change, as the USSR rebuilds its strength and the Poles and Baltics grow more concerned of a renewed war.
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