William Gibson’s Jackpot series is worth reading (the third book, as far as I know, is not yet written, see https://www.goodreads.com/series/270911-jackpot). I also have not watched the Prime series.
I won’t discuss the books, just the Jackpot concept, which is interesting in the context of this election.
A character, who is reluctant to discuss the past, describes the Jackpot as a series of events, all of which we know about, that occurred over decades, and killed 80 percent of the world’s population. The Jackpot is never completely described, but we can see it as:
- Global warming, with floods and hurricanes, and the tropics becoming uninhabitable
- Death of all land animals above microscopic in size
- Ocean acidification, killing off most ocean life
- Causing serious problems with the atmosphere
- A series of pandemics
- AI that works, eliminating most jobs
Governments collapse and, like in Russia at the end of Communism, the new ruling class is the Klept, who steal government resources.
Kleptocracy: government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed è government by thieves
The only remaining jobs at that point are those that serve the Klept: PR rep, butler, food service, physical security, computer security, investment (including art education for purposes of investment), AI manager (especially w/r/t investment)
As all of the animals and fish die off, the rich people finally decide that global warming is real, and they start investing in technologies, which work—not to reverse global warming, but enough to save the atmosphere.
Another chilling concept: nuclear war never happens because even the ultra rich recognize that it would be bad for them.
For the Klept it’s great: every member of the ruling class has all the space they want and as many dead people’s possessions that they could wish for. The Klept won the Jackpot via global warming and the collapse of civilization. The Klept get to use people (see Teenage Twins Say They Were Drugged and Raped by Putin’s Rampaging Private Army https://www.thedailybeast.com/teenage-twins-say-they-were-drugged-and-raped-by-putins-private-army). DeSantis has been recruiting police offers with violent records (see https://people.com/ron-desantis-police-relocation-program-lured-officers-violent-records-report-7503432) but I assume he’s waiting until the election to deploy them.
Of course, in real life, Putin’s Russia appears to believe that global warming will open up Siberia for exploitation (failing to recognize that melting Siberia permafrost could be the source of future pandemics—see this NIH publication, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9958942/, which corrects the perception that “wrongly suggests that … “zombie viruses” [reviving out of permafrost] are not a public health threat. To restore an appreciation closer to reality, we report the preliminary characterizations of 13 new viruses isolated from seven different ancient Siberian permafrost samples”).
Back to the GOP. If Trump starts a “spoils” system where jobs go to the politically connected, then government will lose credibility. The GOP has already destroyed the Supreme Court.
People also, strangely, assume that Trump will obey certain norms. Traditionally every agency has three commissioners from the President’s party, and two from the other party. What’s to stop Trump from appointing five Republicans? A Trump Federal Election Commission could disqualify all Dems from running for President, for example. A Trump Department of Labor could destroy the unions (which, along with the revival of slavery, is a goal of one of his paymasters, Mellon, who recently gave a Trump PAC $50 million).
People are saying that deporting 20 million people would cost a lot of money, but an avowed Nazi could use Nazi methods (here’s a video from Schindler’s List describing real events): no food, no water, no healthcare, no civil rights. Just put people on trains and if half of them die before they reach the border, that’s a feature, not a bug. Who’s going to protect your rights—the Supreme Court?