I was thinking about preparations one might make for the current political situation going seriously sideways; and I realized that what you really need to have is a threat model (or a couple of threat models) for what might actually happen. If your threat model envisions one outcome, you might need to make serious preparations for moving to Europe, or Canada, or preparing to ride out some choppy waters at home.

I realized that it might be helpful to quantify, even if imprecisely, the probability of certain long-term outcomes for American politics, as a way of getting my arms around the possible outcomes and how likely I think they are. These aren’t terribly accurate point estimates of various outcomes, but they’re a way of thinking through different possible outcomes. The time horizon I’m talking about is probably the next 5-15 years.

  • p(current trends continuing)
    • The US continues on its current trend: there’s an increasing amount of stark Republican illiberalism, a more or less feckless Democratic party, but some effective resistance by institutions and civil society. The US and the international order manages to avoid worse outcomes, by the skin of its teeth.
    • p(current trends continuing): .4
    • Comments:
      • Trump places a lot of value on the appearance of normalcy, and things progressing on their current trajectory feels normal to a lot of people, even though American institutions are dramatically less effective than they were 20 or 30 years ago. It’s possible that things continue along these lines– as they mostly did during the first Trump administration.
  • p(substantial improvement)
    • The current dark period of American politics leads to an earnest period of political and social revitalization that is able to make substantial institutional reforms, along the lines of the progressive and populist eras.
    • p(substantial improvement): .2
    • Comments:
      • The current Republican party (mostly elected officials and primary voters, but to some extent the Republican general election base) seems to be locked into a one-way, ratcheting progression of interlocking illiberalism, misinformation, and extreme political tactics. The Democratic party would like to have earnest interlocutors with which to strike deals and forge compromises, but that seems unlikely in the foreseeable future. It may be the case that there’s some catalyst for revival waiting in the wings, but it’s hard to see it.
  • p(significant worsening)
    • Things get significantly worse in the US and/or internationally. American institutions are degraded to the point of competitive authoritarianism (or worse); America’s small-L liberal traditions (free speech, free assembly, freedom of the press) dramatically worsen; the American economy crumbles in some dramatic way; the US’s national debt becomes a more problematic asset and the US gets into trouble with its creditors; international instability and/or climate change leads to massive numbers of migrants, which leads to additional extremism and political degradation internationally; China invades Taiwan, the US intervenes and things go badly. Etc.
    • p(significant worsening): .25
      • Comments:
        • The chance of this happening has gone significantly up with Trump’s reelection. He has filled his administration with incompetent sycophants who are highly unlikely to be able to carry out important functions in a crisis. We probably don’t even have our arms around what the next crisis will be, but it seems unlikely that a bunch of amateurs will be able to respond appropriately.
        • On the other side, the established leadership of the Democratic party seems totally overmatched by the moment; the current moment requires strategic clarity, effective communication, and a certain amount of ruthlessness and cunning. There are some great, young progressives, but they are going to have to grow up fast, shed some of their inhibitions, and take power where they need to.
        • Also: I suspect the likeliest form of significant worsening is dramatic illiberalism stemming from the Republican party, but it’s not impossible that there’s some sort of left/leftist authoritarianism that rises in the wake of Trump, with some of the same features but on the opposite side of the aisle.
  • p(catastrophe)
    • Things get significantly worse, but with the addition of some major catastrophe: there’s some sort of nuclear exchange, a hot war with China and/or Russia, the international economic order and/or major financial markets collapse, malevolent AGI, etc. etc.
    • p(catastrophe): .05
    • Comments:
      • It’s hard to predict a catastrophe in any nuanced way, but it’s safe to say that American institutions are probably not in a great position to respond to it. This probability is probably greater than the .01 or less it was at in calmer times, but it’s hard to know what the actual value is at this point: .05? .1? .03?

The thing I’m only starting to think through is that the various outcomes here suggest different kinds of political engagement. If you think that the most likely outcome is current trends continuing, you might push for small ball institutional reform (anti-gerrymandering efforts, e.g.). If you think that things might get significantly better in some dramatic shift, you might think it most important to engage with utopian or speculative thought about what the future might look like. What’s the plan for the p(significant worsening) scenario? That one, I don’t have a great answer for.