Probably longer than you want to imagine. I’ll explain.

One of the many poignant parts of Robert Taber’s The War of the Flea is the false argument of “Things will kick off when conditions get worse.” That’s a pervasive phrase we hear, but it’s untrue. People adapt to harsh conditions. If the “will to revolt” were as simple as “this economy is shit and I don’t like the guys in charge” then revolution would be more frequent than it is. But it’s infrequent because this isn’t how revolutions work.

The Big Stink™ won’t happen until there’s an opportunity, and that most likely means the formation of a counter-elite who decide the pain of economic/financial destruction required to create something hopefully better is more desirable than the pain of continuing on under the existing ruling class. Until that inversion, we’re stuck with what we got. When will that happen? Idk. Could be decades, honestly.

Otherwise, The Big Stink™ will remain worsening South Africa-style anarcho-tyranny (as many others have said repeatedly). Even if he wins in November, what comes after Trump? Not some MAGA Renaissance or utopic 1950s America.

Something far worse than what we have today: mass amnesty and then one-party rule, enabled by the loss of conservative Boomers. Maybe — MAYBE — “things get bad enough” and a formidable counter-elite, by now locked out of power, attempts to start something new (i.e., Balkanize into a crypto-enclave, a la The Sovereign Individual) but I suspect that this decrepit old leviathan will creep along for a lot longer than even the Doomers think. Anarcho-tyranny indefinitely, or a decade of pain and suffering on the potentially unmet promise of something better tomorrow.

The Big Stink™ is coming either way.

Hermit’s Additional Reading List:

Invisible Armies

The Savage Wars of Peace

Out of the Mountains – The Coming Age of the Urban Guerilla