“We are almost guaranteed” five hellish years, Turchin predicts, and likely a decade or more. The problem, he says, is that there are too many people like me. “You are ruling class,” he said, with no more rancor than if he had informed me that I had brown hair, or a slightly newer iPhone than his. 

Of the three factors driving social violence, Turchin stresses most heavily “elite overproduction”—­the tendency of a society’s ruling classes to grow faster than the number of positions for their members to fill. One way for a ruling class to grow is biologically—think of Saudi Arabia, where princes and princesses are born faster than royal roles can be created for them. 

In the United States, elites over­produce themselves through economic and educational upward mobility: More and more people get rich, and more and more get educated. Neither of these sounds bad on its own. Don’t we want everyone to be rich and educated? The problems begin when money and Harvard degrees become like royal titles in Saudi Arabia. If lots of people have them, but only some have real power, the ones who don’t have power eventually turn on the ones who do.

In the United States, Turchin told me, you can see more and more aspirants fighting for a single job at, say, a prestigious law firm, or in an influential government sinecure, or (here it got personal) at a national magazine. Perhaps seeing the holes in my T-shirt, Turchin noted that a person can be part of an ideological elite rather than an economic one. (He doesn’t view himself as a member of either. A professor reaches at most a few hundred students, he told me. “You reach hundreds of thousands.”) 
 
Elite jobs do not multiply as fast as elites do. There are still only 100 Senate seats, but more people than ever have enough money or degrees to think they should be running the country. “You have a situation now where there are many more elites fighting for the same position, and some portion of them will convert to counter-elites,” Turchin said.
Donald Trump, for example, may appear elite (rich father, Wharton degree, gilded commodes), but Trumpism is a counter-elite movement. His government is packed with credentialed nobodies who were shut out of previous administrations, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes because the Groton-­Yale establishment simply didn’t have any vacancies. 
 
Trump’s former adviser and chief strategist Steve Bannon, Turchin said, is a “paradigmatic example” of a counter-elite. He grew up working-class, went to Harvard Business School, and got rich as an investment banker and by owning a small stake in the syndication rights to Seinfeld. None of that translated to political power until he allied himself with the common people. “He was a counter-elite who used Trump to break through, to put the white working males back in charge,” Turchin said.

​Elite overproduction creates counter-elites, and counter-elites look for allies among the commoners. If commoners’ living standards slip—not relative to the elites, but relative to what they had before—they accept the overtures of the counter-elites and start oiling the axles of their tumbrels. 
 
Commoners’ lives grow worse, and the few who try to pull themselves onto the elite lifeboat are pushed back into the water by those already aboard. The final trigger of impending collapse, Turchin says, tends to be state insolvency. At some point rising in­security becomes expensive. The elites have to pacify unhappy citizens with handouts and freebies—and when these run out, they have to police dissent and oppress people. Eventually the state exhausts all short-term solutions, and what was heretofore a coherent civilization disintegrates.”

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“Considering Biden’s nearly 45 year political record supporting every military intervention in American history, opposing de-segregation, eulogizing pro-KKK Senator Strom Thurmond, passing bills that incarcerated petty drug dealers for life on behalf of the cheap labor prison industrial complex and supported the rampant growth of both Wall Street, Big Pharma and the Big Tech run surveillance state, we should think twice before celebrating this man’s possible entry into the halls of the highest office in the USA.”

“Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.

‘The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals,’ Briand said.

Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.

These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people's assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

“In Montana, Democrats have a choice to make: We can adopt the messaging and ideology of national democrats – and continue to lose almost every statewide race. Or, we can be Montana Democrats again – and show the rest of the country how Democrats connect to win in red and rural America. Democrats who just claim to have ‘Montana Values’ won’t cut it. A new generation of independent-minded Montana Democrats who personify those values in all 56 counties are the only way out of this newfound wilderness.”

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“Jake Eaton, a GOP strategist who worked on the Gianforte campaign, said he believes Republicans won by such large margins in part because their message was compelling to independent voters and the party was effective at getting its base to turn out and vote.

Internal polling data, Eaton said, indicated Montana voters were worried less about the health care issues Democrats focused on than about their livelihoods, particularly given the economic uncertainty created by the pandemic. 

Other Republicans and some Democrats concurred, citing a perception that the Democratic Party has become increasingly disconnected from low- and middle-income people and communities.”

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“For the most part, that message is that the Montana Democratic Party is not working hard enough for common workers, struggling property taxpayers, and anyone else that’s feeling left out.

…

My God, what a failure the Dem message is!
 
Montana Democrats are set to lose every single statewide office in November, it's so obvious.
 
Instead of figuring out what to do about this, or why the current strategy isn’t working, I feel Montana Democrats will continue down the same tired path.
 
That’s more private fundraisers at rich people’s houses and more out of state fundraising from PACs.
 
I’m sorry, but if that strategy worked then why did Matt Rosendale – who has about $100,000 less in his campaign bank account – get 29,000 more votes than Jesse Laslovich?”

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“Their loyalty is simple – money.
 
Money didn’t quite do it for Hillary.
 
It’s time Democrats look at their strategy of raising tons of dark money and Wall Street money.
 
It didn’t work.
 
Like I’ve said, however, I fully expect they’ll continue to embrace that strategy.
 
They don’t know what else to do.
 
I mean, it’s not like they’ll embrace majorities in this country, they’ll just cling to their minorities.
 
And they’ll lose.
 
It’s just a sad, sad Party.”

“I think this may be a moment of opportunity for Montana Democrats. After sixteen years of understandably playing defense on so many issues, it’s time to sit down over the next few months and develop an agenda for change, for new policies and new ideas.”

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