Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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American prophets of 1923 did not fare so well, according to a Dec. 30 story by Mark Lane in the Akron Beacon Journal. Trusted leaders predicted alcoholic beverages “will be utterly unknown” among the educated classes because alcohol would be exposed as “a habit-forming narcotic poison;” the average life span would extend to 100 years; “people will not work more than four hours a day;” and every city will be “spotless” with no garbage in the street or smoke in the sky.
In 1923, Franklin Roosevelt’s future Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote, “The principles of democracy being eternal, they will necessarily exist 100 years from now.” We have learned a more realistic truth — that Trump-style autocratic despotism is just as eternal.
Here is a sounder slate of predictions. This will be another year of slip-sliding into autocracy in the White House, oligarchy in the Supreme Court, and paralysis in Congress. There will be backsliding in citizen participation and retrograde fundamentalism in religion, a widening wealth gap, increasing crime and insurrection, decreasing literacy, and endless partying as the nation burns like Rome in her declining days. There will be vapid TV programming, ghastly worship of celebrities, one climate crisis after another, cancel culture run wild, and a vacuum of leadership in corporations, government, education, the judiciary and the military.
The American dream and the successful way of life of our ancestors will continue to collapse as the 1% class rides off into the sunset with more billions in their wallets.
