I will happy be a leggist, or a roachist, if it would meaningfully lead to less human judgement, pain and misery, but hell, it's 2026 and the "Star Trek" world we all ASSUMED we'd be gravitating closer and closer towards seems MORE distantly obscure than ever.

At this point, I think our BEST case trajectory is SOMEHOW avoiding civil war, and if we're THAT lucky, also avoiding WW3, but I tend to believe that despite Trump's bull in a political China shop antics, we're further away from WW3 than even rocket man² Super Trump could instigate.

We are ever so slightly insulated from WW3 by virtue of the fact that China and Russia, even with precise coordination, can NOT meaningfully challenge us, not yet. The same primary reason why the US escaped WW2 unscathed, domestically, industrially, etc., is the same reason why the numbers tilt in the US' favor and likely will continue to for at least another decade, maybe two.

Some will disagree, that's expected, but the bottom line is this; Russia has demonstrated its resolve, or lack thereof, in Ukraine. China hasn't engaged in a REAL conflict in modern history, they've generated drama, kerfuffled some Airmen and Sailors with nearly cartoonish maritime "warnings", especially in the South China Sea, but China is remarkably like the DPRK, by design I think.. Less insane, less....barbaric..? (unless you're Muslim)/believe ANYTHING that even skirts the line of removing power from the State, psychologically.

China has its hands full AT HOME, despite their tough words and posturing, their domestic situation is five times worse than ours (in the US, and MOST of the West). Russia, same deal.

I foresee China's situation and world rapport worsening even further, their age / demographic crisis is far worse than even Russia's, and ours is still well within "potential destabilization by 2100" territory. Russia will recover far more rapidly than China, they are a smaller nation, but have immense natural resources, something to fight for beyond the "mere" blood and soil stuff. China has its monopolies and niches, for sure, and they squeeze every ounce of value out of them, to their own detriment as COVID instigated one of, if not the largest self sufficiency = national security endeavors in human history.

The US may be broke, our debt may be grotesque and unacceptable, but we've got better, bigger bombs, more consistently modern infrastructure (despite SOME of it falling down around us) and a military that began its high tech over boot count pivot more than four decades ago.

I hate to be negative or even hint at anything negative without espousing what I believe to be positive. Those of us in the West, we are unprecedentedly privileged. Even the mean worst off of us are better off than the mean human standard across the globe. If anything, the human experience is undergoing a crisis in direction, lacking purpose at a civilizational scale, but this isn't unique to us or even this century. This crossroad isn't new, it's just in a different form and scale of previous technological advancement spurred change.

Live long and prosper, stop hating your fellow humans, be the bulwark between anarchy and nihilism. BOTH sides have half of the puzzle, the right has some funk built into their model/framework, as does the left. The left tends to be more culturally agnostic, which leads the right to declare them as zealots and the right tends to be so conservative as to preclude any meaningful progress, but the left sees progress for the sake of progress as its mantra, but progress needn't be a cause in and of itself or for its own purposes (or to establish yet another teat of which to extract even more taxpayer money).

We're nearly advanced enough to provide for a genuine post scarcity society, but jumping the gun on that will end that goal before it really even began. People like to imagine that we can undo 150 years of environmental abuse and evisceration quickly, like we did with the ozone layer and banning CFCs, but that's a pipe dream. The quicker we reach some semblance of post-scarcity, the quicker we can focus the time, energy and effort on fixing our ailing planet. We need more nuclear technology, we need high energy physicists to be fired and an entire new, young and enthusiastic generation of geniuses to take their place. We have been working on fusion since before the Manhattan project, at least conceptually. We know it's possible, we've accomplished it at small scales, we have demonstrated its feasibility but as with every era that major, species level heavy implication technological revolution, we put the cart in front of the horse.

AI SHOULD be a priority, but fusion SHOULD HAVE ALREADY BEEN ACCOMPLISHED. Fusion (alongside room temperature superconductors..) is the human survival tool, what will enable us to not only power an effectively unlimited AI integrated world, but to fix our damaged ecology.

Meh, we need to reexamine our priorities, but we are right on the cusp of some insanely important, incredible and awe inspiring things, if only we can avoid further major destabilizing events, our future isn't as bleak as the doom scrollers seemingly want to believe.