Future Political Trends: A Study

Future Political Trends: A Study

For roughly the past six months, I have been repeatedly mentioning, in my posts on this blog, my intention to write up something about current and future political trends. I have not done so for a number of reasons, including (in no particular order) disinterest, boredom, anger, disgust, Lent, Easter, the death of Pope Francis, the election of Pope Leo, my desire to write short stories, a school field trip, my birthday, and the onset of spring. Central to my delays, however, has been the fundamental grimness of the topic itself.

Another thing that happened in the interval, however, was Easter; which is, properly considered, the only thing that has ever really happened. It struck me, on Easter night, that Easter is, perhaps, the best standpoint from which to consider present political realities. It is certainly the best standpoint from which to consider the sweep of human history and human life as a whole. 

In any case, I firmly believe that eternal novelties like Easter are a much better means of understanding than the faded abstractions of political and economic ideology that dominate so much of discourse. 

As Chesterton said in the Daily Herald, quite rightly, political ideologies and analyses nearly always lag at least a half-century behind actual political systems. In the 1910s, he pointed out how profoundly unsuited the 18th and 19th century categories of Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, and the like were for the era of syndicalism and great strikes and great states and secret societies and global warfare. In a similar vein, but even more so, the categories that we use for unraveling the tangled events of our time are practically all hoary 20th century abstractions such as Fascism, Naziism, Communism, Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, and the like--when they are not the same, even more faded 19th century abstractions such as Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, Liberalism, and so forth. 

I would suggest that one of the greatest threats to our political life today, a threat that has again and again allowed evils to burgeon and flourish undetected, is simply the enormous gap between reality and our ability to analyze it. This may seem a rather distant and abstract threat, but is in reality among the most practical causes of the practical evils of our time. The year 2025 does not lack for crimes and tyrants--but it does profoundly, I am tempted to say unprecedentedly, lack for both practical recognition of these evils and practical efforts to counter them. And a foremost reason for this lack, I increasingly think, is simply that people cannot understand these evils, cannot recognize them, frequently do not even seem to notice them, because they happen to fall into gaps in their abstract, categorical understanding of such things. 

For some bizarre reason, the real estate developer, media mogul, and brand icon Donald Trump continues to be analyzed, again and again and at ever greater length and with ever greater portentous seriousness by ever more prestigious intellectuals, entirely by comparison with a mid-20th century Italian movement of ex-socialist, WW1-veteran-populated paramilitary squads turned revanchist dictatorship. Like any historical comparison, there are certainly truths to be drawn from this one--but the gap between reality and analytical abstraction is, nevertheless, so vast that nearly the whole of Trump's actual ideology and program and even legitimate crimes can be, and have been, and continue to be buried within. 

Nevertheless, in carrying out an analysis of present trends, and their likely future results, I would like to be absolutely clear about what I am doing, and why. I am not a historicist, let alone a historical fatalist: I do not believe in memetics, or Hegelian dialectics, or progress. When I speak of trends, I am speaking ultimately of either ideas or habits residing in the actual intellects and wills of actual people: ideas and habits which exercise great power over those people's actions, but never fully determine them. 

People can and do reject ideas they have held, especially when they are ideas that they have never consciously understood, but only passively absorbed from their environments. People can and do change their habits, including habits that have become deeply engrained in their minds and hearts and wills over many years. 

On the most abstract level, I consider history to be first and foremost the study of human actions and the motivations behind them; so that the fundamental historical question is not merely the positivistic query of "What happened?," but the much more intrusive demands "What did they do?" and "Why did they do it?"

What is true for historical actions writ large is even more true for the subset of human actions that make up political systems past and present. Governing, particularly in the modern world, is a highly complex and technical set of actions attempting to shape and respond to constantly shifting conditions. Still, it always depends first and foremost on conscious, considered human action; and conscious, considered human action depends first and foremost on rational ideas and goals. 

Yet people are not always, or perhaps even often, aware of the ideas and goals underlying their own actions, let alone the broader social conditions and trends to which they are responding. It is for this reason, above all, that this kind of analysis is useful. As anyone knows who has ever tried to change a deeply-engrained idea or habit, one of the most important steps is often merely recognizing the actual ideas one unconsciously holds, and the actual habits that one unconsciously possesses. Only then, as a rule, can one then set out to change them.

Hence, while I am engaged in this essay in modestly claiming to understand contemporary trends and their likely future impacts, I am not engaged in actually trying to predict the future. To do so would be to fall under the curse of Chesterton's game of Cheat the Prophet: the game whereby smart people predict the future by extending current trends indefinitely, and the human race thwarts them by the simple expedient of going and doing something else. In this post, I am quite self-consciously teeing up to play a round of this game with the human race, providing them with a helpful listing of the trends they will need to know about in order to defy them. In this, I heartily encourage the human race to cheat me: nay, I demand it. That is, in fact, the entire point of this exercise. If all my predictions are vindicated, I will be deeply, profoundly disappointed in you all.

Of course, the trends I discuss below are not uniformly positive or negative. Some are in my judgment evil, some few are good, some are, in themselves, merely neutral. Nonetheless, my modest claim is merely that if we wish to exercise some control over our collective destinies, it is helpful to know what is happening: only then can we choose to aid what is good, to resist what is evil, and, hopefully and above all, to repent and seek the good. This is my exhortation.

Pope Francis (1936-2025)

Pope Francis (1936-2025)

Of all the tasks a writer may attempt, evaluating a Pope is perhaps the hardest. The Papacy, as I have tried to emphasize elsewhere, is above all a personal and historical institution: it incarnates the messy, human side of the Faith. It is not a thing suited to pristine abstractions, even doctrinal abstractions. 

A Pope is first and foremost a human person; which is to say, an individual substance of a rational nature; which is to say, an entity defined and constituted by numerous relations, personal and familial and social and cultural. A Pope, though, is a person whose relations have been radically extended in a way that is, in a genuine sense, supernatural; who relates to others throughout the world in ways that go beyond the ordinarily human into the realm of the sacramental and the eternal. A Pope's relations encompass the whole world, and enter into practically every realm of human life and interaction, from the familial to the cultural to the political to the diplomatic to the economic to the mass-media and back again. 

Because of this, there is almost an infinity of ways one can analyze an individual Pope and pontificate. There are, at the very least, as many modes of analysis as there are people in the world. Historical analyses are no more valid, in themselves, than the simplest personal anecdote; and this, in turn, does not take away from the most inchoate sense a person may have of the state of the Church, the world, or a life, and the impact of the Pope on that. Popes cannot be understood solely in ideological and political terms: but for all that, they are legitimately political figures who may well have much to do with the triumph or defeat, success or failure, of particular ideologies and political parties and movements. They are international diplomats, with a unique ability to intercede between nations; and they are judges, presiding over the world's largest non-state justice system, and administrators, presiding over the world's largest non-state charitable organization and the world's oldest continuous bureaucracy. And then, of course, they are Fathers, and Shepherds, and intercessors before God, and the rulers of the rulers of this age, and poor sinners who will one day stand with us all before the judgment seat of God. 

Popes can be evaluated legitimately based on any of these things; and in all of them, their records are likely to show normal human inconsistencies, as well as the influence of their own personalities, historical events and conflicts, their advisors and subordinates, and the bureaucratic, political, and religious systems in which they participate. 

There are, to be frank, a lot of terrible takes on Pope Francis, takes that are ignorant or mendacious or malicious or outright stupid. Most of them fail, like most journalistic writing today, simply by imposing a simplistic, highly-colored narrative, based primarily on mass-media symbols, partisan conflicts, bullshit pseudo-intellectualism, and/or private emotion, onto this vast network of relationships and acts. All such takes, without exception, are false. Pope Francis was not the Progressive Pope; he was not the Dictator Pope; he did not preside over the Catholic Church's irreversible decline; he was not a plotter dedicated to power at all costs; he was not a Trumpian revolutionary; he was not a frustrated liberal; he was not the last humane figure in a world gone mad; he was not the death blow of the Imperial Papacy, or Vatican 2, or progressive Catholicism, or the End of History, or anything else. As they have since the very beginning of his pontificate, the soi-disant intellectuals of our frankly pathetic intellectual-cum-journalistic culture continue to lie. 

I don't want to add to these takes; I wish, in fact to denounce them, and will by the end of this essay. 

There are also, of course, any number of encomia, religious and secular, appropriate to the passing of such a significant figure, reflecting on his accomplishments, his character, and the positive personal impact on all of the above on many persons. The present essay also does not belong to this genre. As will become clear, a significant portion of this essay consists of reflections on Francis' weaknesses and limitations as a Pontiff, and the conflicts by which his Papacy was marked. I loved Francis very much, and tried my best to make others love him; but as Chesterton pointed out long ago, it is always dangerous merely to whitewash the weaknesses of any person, since it is often on such weaknesses that a proper understanding of their strengths depends. 

For my own small part, then, I will be proceeding primarily from an abstract, historical perspective, supplementing such analysis with thoughts on Francis as a person and his importance for the Catholic Church of the 21st century. Though I will make a number of comments and preliminary conclusions, the principle intended utility of this essay is to provide various frameworks and contexts through which, I think, Francis can be fruitfully considered: and in which he should be considered, at greater length, by others. I will not attempt a true theological evaluation of Francis, let alone attempt to conclude what his narrative meaning is for all of history for all time.

This is, then, by no means a "definitive take" on Francis; it is not intended to, nor could it, detract from any genuine perspective on the Pope. 

Column 10/21/2023: Pope Francis and the Third World War

Pope Francis and the Third World War

In the far-off year 2014, the sun shone, Barack Obama was President of the United States, The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies was released, and the top-selling song of the year was named "Happy." And the Pope of the Catholic Church announced the beginning of the Third World War. 

Amid the ever-repeated excitement of such scintillating mass-media events that year, few people in America noted or marked the centenary of World War I. While in Britain and France, this war is still clearly remembered--if nothing else for its devastating toll on the population and landscape--in America it has always been a forgotten war, a mere footnote on the path to World War II and global dominance. Still, events were held, here and there, most in Europe and a few in America, and to one of them the recently-elected Pope Francis came. While a South American by birth, he is also the descendant of Italian immigrants, who no doubt passed on some of the legacy and legend of the Great War to him. And so, in September, he visited a cemetery where soldiers from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that great rival of united Italy, were buried, and mourned the dead, and prayed for them, and said a few words in reflection on the conflict in which they died, as Popes have done for many decades now in regular succession.

In doing so, however, Francis, as he so often does, went off script, and began reflecting on contemporary events. "Perhaps," he mused, "one can speak of a third world war, one fought piecemeal."

This is, so far as can be told, the first time Francis mentioned the concept, only a little over a year after his election. He has since used the phrase and concept of "a third world war fought piecemeal" over and over again, dozens if not hundreds of times, mentioning it with greater and greater frequency as time has gone on and the world has grown more unstable.

Many things could be said about Pope Francis, for good and for ill, in many different dimensions. I hope to eventually write more about him and his significance.

The point of this essay, however, is to say that about this, at least, he is right, and has been since 2014. Something fundamental has changed, and the world has begun to look back to and recapitulate the horrors of the 20th century. And this must be understood, and stopped, while there is still time.