Hold on to your seat. But, please, don’t take any of this so literally that you bank on it or sell all of your possessions and move to the top of a mountain to wait in vain for some finale.
Truth is, I am not Nostradamus and I have no crystal ball. I did, however, get paid big bucks heading up consulting at Wharton Econometrics, where I was asked to “invent the future” for corporate strategy clients.
So, I thought I would conjure up a special set of predictions for American Greatness readers about what might be coming in 2023. You won’t get this from the three-letter government agencies who are so one-sided nowadays, or from any of our proliferating enemies or frenemies, for that matter.
These predictions are based on analysis and perspective guided by trends. The context is late-stage secularism and decadent crony capitalism, where wokeism is the default ideology.
The year ahead will provide plenty of intrigue, controversy, volatility, and danger. The pundits are all focused on the fall of Trump—which won’t exactly happen—but there are lots of other traps and challenges galore.
Here then, from my strategist-scholar-diplomat perch, is a list of the things that I predict for the year ahead. Some are commonsensical and others . . . well, quite out of this world.
13) Sadly, Hunter Biden will not be locked up. The Big Guy should be impeached on a raft of charges, but it won’t happen because of the complicity of the conspiracists. Big Tech, the press, the uniparty, and the deep state don’t want this result, as is all too apparent now. They will do everything to thwart justice and to both keep it out of the news and unprosecuted. Daddy would pardon him anyway, since he is “the smartest person he knows,” and that’s how he pays all his bills. Bring on all the investigations and congressional hearings—to no avail.
12) Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX Ponzi scheme will be exposed for what it is. A Democrat racket to win the election and maintain their power. Sure, a million people lost their shirts but that’s small potatoes in the grand scheme of power. SBF will be locked up after making bail and crashing at his unprecedented home arrest, and will be made the stupid fall guy (kid) for a totally corrupt system. They say he will go to Epstein’s cell on Rikers Island, and we all know what happened there. He deserves it. But really . . . crime pays if you want to rig an election, get momentarily rich, or fleece lots of people.
11) Both U.S. political parties will see contested leadership races. We already see this in Harmeet Dhillon’s legitimate challenge to the incumbent RINOs at the Republican National Committee. The Democrats are no longer a liberal bastion. They are split between democratic socialists and communists. The presidential primaries on both sides are going to be a blood fest. Biden will run based on his fake bio and he will have a half-dozen challengers, all trying to unseat him, as senile and inept. In the end, he will fold, and the Cackler, Kamala Harris, will be crowned queen as a happy compromise. Obama backs her, remember?
On the Republican side, Trump is fading faster than Santa after Christmas. The base may still, wink, wink, “support” him. But they have had enough, NFT trading cards and all. There are probably just short of a dozen challengers gearing up to take him on this year—some of whom were his lieutenants. Ron DeSantis will win the primaries and be the Republican nominee in 2024.
10) Aliens will invade us. Well, they already have at the southern border. But with fully open borders and no Title 42 or “remain in Mexico” policy, the Texas and Arizona border— especially along the Rio Grande—will allow 10 million more illegal aliens into the country, swelling cities and harming infrastructure, costing billions, while enriching the Mexican drug cartels and human traffickers. America will be a changed place demographically, as is Biden’s intent. The UFO thing will also get a buzz, and the in-crowd will also object to referring to them as “aliens.”
9) The culture will become more debased, evil, and plain pornographic. Just watch the HBO series “White Lotus” if you want to peer at where we are. It is all on display, and we shrug it off, saying, “so what?” Nearing the stage of Rome in its final days, we watch as the foundations of civilization are burned to the ground, desecrated, and Nero, or in this case his distant relative, Biden, fiddles. There is no such thing as truth. Beauty is a figment of subjective imagination. And goodness, rooted in reason, is relative. As Gollum, in Lord of the Rings insightfully reminded us, “They cursed us. Murderer they called us. They cursed us and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone.”
8) We will see the continuation of innovations and developments in transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), cloud computing, blockchain, and super-fast network protocols, like 5G. According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, the AI industry is predicted to reach $7.8 billion, rising at a compound annual growth rate of 20.2 percent. By the end of 2025, the AI software category will have dominated the market, growing at a CAGR of 18.1 percent from $2.8 billion in just 2020. AI will be integrated all over—from marketing to branding and from voting to censorship and healthcare. Get your implant in 2023! It will be even better than the mRNA vaccines!
7) Nuclear war will be averted—but just barely. Putin will continue his threats and the provocation of military setbacks and Patriot missile systems will take him to the limit. As an erstwhile Soviet, he will, in the end, act rationally and stop short of using theater or tactical nukes and thereby avert an intercontinental exchange—i.e., armageddon. About this time in December, we will finally see a peace accord between Russia and Ukraine. With much more death and destruction, the stalemate will be too painful. Russia will go back to control of Russian language parts of the east, and Ukraine, while in line to join the EU, will agree not to join NATO. People will ask: was this civil war all worth it?
6) Europe will be in near collapse. With economies in free fall, the Euro will be almost worthless, as the fake currency it always was. The operative word for the whole European landmass writ large is decline. The European Union—scandals galore, a malevolent organization if ever there was one—is coming apart at the seams. More countries will exit. The depopulation continues with low birth rates, aging populations, and a shortage of fuel and medicines. Europe will become unlivable as a new dark age descends.
5) Trust is at an all-time low and will sink yet further. No one trusts anyone or any institution. The Trust Barometer shows that no profession is immune to this trend. Politicians, in fact, earned the least amount of trust, barely above zero percent. 2023 will be a cascade of investigations, Twitter file dumps, and polls, demonstrating just how bad things actually are. From FBI interference to election fraud, including the judicial system, life is rotten and not just in Denmark. To be fair to them, Belgium was actually measured as the least happy place on earth. Religion, marriage, and teaching in schools, you name it, trust is shot. It takes decades to build trust and a nano-second to lose. Reputation capital is falling fast, and polarization, cynicism, and fraudulent behavior are all on the rise.
4) Worldwide, people will have a more pessimistic view of what the year will bring. Much of this negativity surrounds the sour economic situation, but it extends beyond the economy to encompass climate and natural related disasters, the use of nuclear weapons, and even asteroid impacts and visits from outer space. Overall, there is much more economic pessimism than in previous years. Few people believe that the global economy will be stronger in 2023.
The reasons for this pessimism are clear. Large majorities expect the cost of living and prices to rise, 75 percent expect to see a higher inflation rate, higher levels of unemployment (68 percent), and higher interest rates (74 percent). Even more worryingly, nearly half (46 percent) think it likely that their country will need to be bailed out with emergency funding from the International Monetary Fund, with those in South Africa (78 percent) and Argentina (70 percent) particularly worried about this possibility. Sorry, 2023 will be very gloomy.
3) This coming year is, of course, the Year of the Rabbit in China. Such a year is supposed to be characterized by calm, friendship, and peace. As China sits back collecting itself, it is posturing, stalking its prey, for the near future, when it will invade and take Taiwan. The long term perspective for the Red Kingdom has not changed an iota. Authoritarian communism, with one-party rule, led by a powerful dictator for life, using some capitalist manipulations and head fakes to sucker the West is working well, so why would they change? With Joe in the U.S. drivers’ seat all bought and paid for, the next year will be smooth sailing as China advances on every front.
2) The economy will retract further and fall into deeper recession. Under the dead weight of the Euro, the never ending Special Mission in the Ukraine, and with increased tensions everywhere, the world and stability generally will suffer. Prosperity will be put on hold as the poor get poorer and the richest, much richer. There won’t be much economic growth to speak of but the Davos “Great Reset” will kick into high gear. The U.S. growth rate will be negative for all four quarters. The inflation rate will hit just shy of 10 percent and bottom out. The stock market-Dow Jones will close 2023 short of where it started but there won’t be a monumental crash. The Fed will keep tightening and it will hurt. America may be a safe haven and the dollar strong but only just, as the Biden reality sinks to its lowest levels. With $31 trillion in debt the United States at some point later in 2023 will realize it has to go on a diet and better balance its budgets, both public and private. Thrift may even see a resurrection.
1) The end times debate will heat up with more cult groups—Left, Right, and satanic—removing themselves and their followers from this immanent, worldly set of crazed realities. More Kool-Aid sold, and more Kool-Aid drunk; more acid and fentanyl dropped, and more demented Jonestown-like activities and leaders will proliferate. Since there are zero norms any longer, nothing to define “normal,” woman are men, men are women, and as the last book of the Bible predicts, there will be an increasing temptation of deceit by false teachers. Devastation, disaster, and tribulations are part of our suffering on this earth but these pale in the face and reality of an eternal God.
Unfortunately, I don’t see any Great Awakening in 2023, even if it is sorely needed. 2023 will be a lot like Hell or one of the lower levels on Dante’s ladder.
President Richard Nixon once asked Russell Kirk if “we have any hope”? Kirk replied, “It is all a matter of belief. If most intelligent and energetic people come to believe the prophets of despair, then indeed ruin falls upon the state, for many withdraw to hide-holes, there to conceal themselves from the coming wrath.”
Try to have a Happy New Year, realizing, as Victor Hugo reminded us over a century ago in Les Misérables: “The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.”