He Predicted America's Crisis Sixteen Years Ago, to the Year. His Database Says It Ends Three Ways.

[Dem_in_Nebr.]

I found this on Substack. it's a bit of a long read but its worth it. Turchin used mathematical models developed for animal populations and applied it to 10,000 years of human civilizations. His results mimic what we are facing today,

You probably watched the fireworks. Two hundred and fifty years of the American experiment deserves fireworks, and for a few hours over the holiday weekend the sky looked the way it is supposed to look. But you saw the other pictures too, because everyone did. Roughly four hundred men in khakis and white masks marched through Washington to a drumbeat on the nation’s birthday, carrying flags most Americans thought belonged to museums. The next morning in Memphis, National Guard troops on domestic deployment killed a man in the early hours. And in the days before the holiday, the fight over voting rules froze the House of Representatives so completely that the Speaker gave up and sent everyone home early.

If you are like most people I hear from, you carry a question now that you don’t say out loud at dinner, because saying it feels like betraying something. The question is: how does this end?

I want to introduce you to a man who answered that question in writing, in one of the world’s most respected scientific journals, sixteen years ago. Not with opinion. With mathematics. And I want you to hear both halves of his answer, because the second half is the reason I’m writing this at all.

Peter Turchin was born in 1957 in a closed Soviet science city, the son of a dissident computer scientist. He was twenty years old and studying biology at Moscow State University when the government exiled his family from the Soviet Union for his father’s activism. He rebuilt his life in America, took a doctorate in zoology, and spent two decades doing something that had nothing to do with politics: building mathematical models of animal populations. Beetle outbreaks. Lemming crashes. The booms and busts of living systems, captured in equations that actually worked.

https://stbadhon.substack.com/p/a-scientist-fed-10000-years-of-history

[ms liberty]

1. Read the whole piece, y'all. K&R

[Dem_in_Nebr.]

2. You just gave me my first K&R!

:-D

[erronis]

9. K&R again!

[GPV]

3. Dayum!

[gay texan]

4. Damn thats a good read. N/t

[Unwind Your Mind]

5. Kick for later

Thank you

[La Coliniere]

6. Highly Recommended

Brilliant analysis and clarion call. Please take the time to read this piece.

[ColoringFool]

7. I KNEW My Allusions to 1789 Were More Truth Than....

Humor!

I'll need to change my name to "Madame Defarge"! 🧶 🧣

[BaronChocula]

37. You can just use pen and paper this time

Unless you really like knitting.

[ColoringFool]

62. Ha! I very much dislike knitting! Clickety-click, clickety-click.......!

Digression: I am an Agatha Christie-phile. A major plot-point in my absolute favorite of her novels is also an allusion to Mme Defarge!

[KS Toronado]

8. Turchin's article needs to be read by everyone.

[dlk]

10. Excellent analysis

However events play out in America, the current status quo is unsustainable, and we are rapidly approaching critical mass.

We need another FDR

[CoopersDad]

11. Bookmarked and Recommended

It's not a long read, thanks very much!

[angrychair]

12. Unfortunately

The catch, and the database is unsentimental about this, is that elites have never chosen the exit out of virtue. They chose it when organized ordinary people made reform cheaper than repression: when movements, strikes, elections, and relentless civic pressure changed the price of continuing to pump. The exit door opens from the outside.

This is the key part that is required and will be not happen.
The very people that are required to exist for this to happen are progressives, the very people that many, on both sides of Congress, are trying to destroy.

The greatest enemy of the United States, as far as both sides of Congress are concerned, is progressives.

Why is that?

[LymphocyteLover]

16. "The greatest enemy of the United States, as far as both sides of Congress are concerned, is progressives."

Not true. There is a only small minority of Dems in Congress who think that, but this division is pushed on purpose to divide us.

[angrychair]

20. Congress has become a path to unlimited wealth

It's literally the only job in America where insider trading is legal.

It's the only job in the country were you can legally take unlimited money from undisclosed sources.

It's the only job in country in which 80+ year old elected officials make decisions impacting hundreds of millions of people based almost entirely on who gives them the most money.

Progressives want to end that.

They will do anything to stop them.

[relogic]

24. Not true

Clearly, If progressives were the base and philosophy of the DNC the campaign and election landscape would reflect a resistant, oppositional force we have not seen. Where is all this overt, progressive backlash we need rather than the villainizing we see from within the party portraying progressives as too extreme, far-left and untenable?

[DemocracyForever]

28. Well said!

[Klondike Kat]

13. The article is very interesting

Seems like Peter Turchin is our own Harry Seldon - at least in some respects.

[dweller]

14. Ok then

“ If you are over sixty, you were born inside the third ending. It is not a theory. It is your childhood. “





we were so spoiled

✌🏻

[Alice B.]

15. Ditto!

[progressoid]

17. Sooo...like Asimov's Psychohistory

[rampartd]

32. are there any fictional characters more relevant to 2026 usa

than asimov's "mule"

[Wounded Bear]

39. The Mule was sterile, unfortunately our mule is/was not...

We'll have trumps to worry about for another generation or two.

[rampartd]

52. another asimov concept is the laws of robotics

manufactufring ai without programming for 3 laws should be considered illegal.

[JT45242]

50. Yes --- Monkey D Luffy Captain of the Straw Hat Pirates in One Piece

The attack on the uber wealthy who move the world behind the scenes. The myth of the empty throne because no one king exists. Slavery theoretically outlawed but never prosecuted against the world's elite.

May the Will of D rise up and topple the Musk, Thiel, Koch, Bezos and the rest of the Epstein class and their protectors.

[rampartd]

51. i'll have to find that one.

[Silver Gaia]

18. Well worth everyone's time to read...

Do it now.

[GiqueCee]

19. Brilliant!

There's not much more that I can say, except choose door number 3.

[FakeNoose]

21. He's talking about Roosevelt's New Deal ... that's the third ending

No one-per-center (besides FDR) ever chose that ending, it was forced on them by Americans who spent their lives being exploited and used by the ultra-wealthy. If Europe had had a New Deal leader like FDR there probably never would have been a Hitler or World War II. But that's beside the point.

I've read a couple of Peter Turchin's books and they are quite inspiring. There's more to this than computer modelling, it's a synthesis of history, economics and cultural influences. It's worth the time to track down Turchin's books.

[democrank]

22. Highly recommended

[Bobstandard]

23. Here's an important paragraph

Among the societies in Turchin’s crisis database, the ones that reached the condition America is in now, the outcomes read like a coroner’s ledger. Forty percent saw their rulers assassinated. Twenty percent endured civil wars that lasted a century. Three quarters ended in revolution or civil war or both. And sixty percent of them ceased to exist entirely, dissolved from within or conquered from without. Turchin’s current description of the United States, in his clinical vocabulary, is a society in a “revolutionary situation.”

The article emphasizes that there are alternative endings. Read the whole thing.

[ybbor]

25. Kick

I’ll read it later. Thanks!

[Snackshack]

26. I have always loved reading history.

If one does read the history of our species a pattern quickly emerges.

Catastrophic event happens, the ppl alive that experienced the catastrophic event swear 'never again!'... and then 3-4 generations later it happens all over again.

IMO- Ppl seem to think that the advancement of our civilization through technology & standard of living also included an upgrade in human behavior... it did not.

We still suffer from the same set of emotions as Romans, Greeks and Sumerians suffered from.

[Talitha]

27. A must-read article.

Thanks for posting this!

[DemocracyForever]

29. Bush vs Gore started this nightmare

I knew the night of December 12, 2000 when the GOP controlled SCOTUS stopped the legal Florida vote count and installed W against the will of the people that our country had been put on the path to dictatorship. Here we now are.

[hamsterjill]

54. I could not agree more.

[BComplex]

64. Exactly! And then, within no time at all, came the Homeland Security Bill...

pushed through by almost the entire legislative branch, due to 9/11 fears....which actually ushered in a path to authoritarian rule, as evidenced by the entire ICE mess we have today.

[highplainsdem]

30. There's a wild card this time, and that's generative AI and the surveillance AND DISTRACTIONS it offers.

The AI bros who are busy gathering every bit of data they can find about you, with plans to use it to manipulate you and/or sell or give to others who want to manipulate you, want you both distracted by and dependent on generative AI tools. That's the baited trap.

Steer clear of generative AI as much as possible. Even if you think it's just a tool you're using, it's dumbing you down, making you dependent, and influencing you much more than you realize. There have already been plenty of studies to confirm that.

[keep_left]

31. The writer and historian Morris Berman...

…has been mentioned around these parts on several occasions; his book The Twilight of American Culture (2000) foresaw much of the decline that has become obvious in the last few years. Twilight is one of the works in Berman’s “America trilogy”, which I would recommend to all DUers interested in how we got here.

[jmbar2]

33. Great article

Three gauges, all climbing into the red.

1. Popular immiseration- wage growth stagnation since the '70s
2. Wealth pump
3. Elite overproduction - "society produces far more ambitious, credentialed people than it has powerful positions to give them".

History’s revolutions, his data shows, are not led by the hungry. They are led by frustrated would-be elites who harness the anger of the hungry. The men in masks on July 4th were not peasants. Neither were the leaders of any uprising in his database.

Among the societies in Turchin’s crisis database, the ones that reached the condition America is in now, the outcomes read like a coroner’s ledger. Forty percent saw their rulers assassinated. Twenty percent endured civil wars that lasted a century. Three quarters ended in revolution or civil war or both. And sixty percent of them ceased to exist entirely, dissolved from within or conquered from without. Turchin’s current description of the United States, in his clinical vocabulary, is a society in a “revolutionary situation.”

And here is the finding I need you to hold onto: the clearest case of the peaceful exit in Turchin’s entire dataset is the United States of America. The Gilded Age ran the wealth pump exactly as it runs today, complete with private armies, street bombings, and contempt between the classes. And then, across the Progressive Era and the New Deal, the pump was deliberately throttled: taxation of great fortunes, the breakup of monopolies, the legalization of unions, the great expansion of education that gave surplus elites somewhere to go. What followed was the only period in the database where inequality reversed peacefully: the postwar decades of shared prosperity. If you are over sixty, you were born inside the third ending. It is not a theory. It is your childhood.

This analysis is exactly the same as my favorite economist, Gary Stevenson. His analysis covers both the US and Britain.

[NNadir]

34. Thank you. This is consistent with a book I've been meaning to read, but is still far back in my schedule...

...The Great Leveler.

Subtitle:

Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century

What I think may be different than past examples of societal collapse - which is clearly underway and is responsible for the placement of the corrupt orange pedophile in the White House, a symptom, not a cause - is the decline in resources, one of which is the very air we breathe.

Thanks again. A wonderful read.

[c-rational]

35. Thank you for this post Dem_in_Nebr., and the link to Substack. I also subscibed.

[yellow dahlia]

36. Bookmarking to read later. Thank you for sharing this - looks interesting.

[Buckeyeblue]

38. The one difference is technology and the world economy

Technology has made the world smaller and faster...and created more dependencies. It would be interesting to know how the model compensates for that. I would also say nuclear proliferation also has to be factored in.

[Exp]

40. Wow, read the entire link. I see the bottom line as the powerful's continued use of the "Divide And Conquer" method.

Those in power blaming the less fortunates' struggles on another group of less fortunates.

When Turchin writes of too many educated elites not getting their fare share I think of the reason why the GOP doesn't want an expanded educated class who can think, be smart and practise critical thinking.

[NJCher]

47. who do you think is doing the organizing?

why the GOP doesn't want an expanded educated class who can think, be smart and practise critical thinking.

Most of the time, it's the overproduced elites. They apply their thinking ability, smarts, and critical thinking skills to organizing the revolution.

[Exp]

48. I agree with you::

Divide and conquer has not caused any revolution due to misplaced blame, but this:

"Most of the time, it's the overproduced elites. They apply their thinking ability, smarts, and critical thinking skills to organizing the revolution. "

could.

[Wild blueberry]

41. Excellent article

Whole piece well worth reading. Thank you.

[Another Jackalope]

42. Way worth reading.

It's just too bad he didn't factor in the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Maximum Power Principle that act together to shape the structure and behaviour of large groups of organisms over hundreds of millions of years. Think of that as the final Hope Extinguisher for growth-driven societies.

Physics wins all arguments.
Estamos tan jodidos!

[mwmisses4289]

43. Hhmm...wonder if the writer meant 1860, not 1870.

A little thing called the Civil War?

[31j20b3]

44. As a person who did computer modelling of animals while in myPhD program

I am pretty sure that any model considering this would be awash in unconfirmed and probably anthropologically biased guesses

When building a model about how Moose move about their home range we made many wags, which for the uniformed means wild ass guesses

I am pretty sure that mathematical skill wouldn't and couldn't correct for any BAD assumption that went into the building of the computer code.

I suspect, but never looked at the model, that what it most likely does is produce projections built around common sensical guesses.

Analytical models have few variable, lack reality, but can be solved by applying calculus. I can't imagine this problem with a handful of variables which whould make the calculus tractable.

Numerical models are often plush in variables, for which there is little data to characterize mathematical relationships with other variables. I can imagine a group of modellers thinking they were including all the variables THEY felt were important.

[4dog]

65. Cliodynamics has done better while I wasn't watching

Check out Turchin on Substack or Cliodynamica. I just read a long discussion of how you try to assess cause and effect from historical data using effective and noneffective models.

[JCMach1]

45. There is no scientific database that can predict history

Caveat emptor on this pseudoscience nonsense.

Sorry, but Hari Seldon is still very much a fiction.

[Deminpenn]

46. Generations by Strauss and Howe

Is also a good read.

[NJCher]

49. I've been collecting these cyclical interpreters. Have a whole file of them.

The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny Strauss, Howe.

This one was published way back in 2011: Jeremy Rifkin, discussing how technological evolution has a repeating impact on society: The Third Industrial Revolution

I have a few more if anyone is interested.

I learned the value of it when I worked in marketing.

[LR3]

57. Agreed, this fits very closely with "The Fourth Turning"

To be clear, these models do not "predict history" as some are trying to say above to refute them, they are taking reams of historical data and plotting out the cycles that appear with rather astonishing regularity.

[Deminpenn]

63. The Fourth Turning is actually by at least one of "Generations" authors

IIRC from "Generations" we are at the fourth turning, that is when we baby boomers were born, we were the newest and youngest generation. Now, with the silent and greatest generations rapidly dying out, baby boomers are the oldest generation. What has stuck with me over the years is that this configuration of cohorts where an "idealist" generation like us baby boomers is the oldest generation, is the best configuration for progressive accomplishments.

If you read the histories of the 1920s and 30s, you can see the similarities and parallels to the present.

[B.See]

53. A great read revealing math based confirmation

of what I (and no doubt, many others) have long felt was coming... one way or the other.

[OC375]

55. "May you live in interesting times." is all the heads up I needed.

[modrepub]

56. We Missed An Off Ramp in 2008

Instead of breaking up monopolies in the banking and investment system we bailed them out.

If there are no consequences for bad decisions and you don’t remove the people who did them then they’re just going to hang around and do it again.

Contrast what was done after the 2008 facial crisis (systemic bail outs) vs what was done after the S&L crash in the early 1980s (prosecution with jail time along with liquidation of bad financial institutions and loans).

IMHO another financial problem is brewing with AI. The $1M question is do we bail out the tech bros and folks who sold us this crappy bill of goods or do we send them to gulag where the belong?

[GoodRaisin]

58. Bookmarked for later read.

[malaise]

59. Read, kick, Rec

and Soread

[renordgren]

60. K&R. Excellent article...

[calimary]

61. Sheesh! FINALLY got to this.

I GREATLY appreciate insight like this, and insights spelled out like this! Most informative and clarifying.

Read the whole thing, nodding throughout. (NODDING. NOT nodding OFF.).

[Kid Berwyn]

66. I did, too, 21 years ago and I posted it on DU.

The elite created a planet full of Hitlers

And while many in the 1-percent and even a few of the 0.01-percent certainly try to make life better for others, they seem to think they’ll survive the fascism and associated societal collapse.

A Planet Full of Hitlers

The world's billionaires, led by the Bush "madministration," are acting like a planet of full of Hitlers. They are willing to invade whatever region in the world has what the world needs most -- oil.

Black gold. Texas tea. Petrodollars.

They figure they have all the money. And basically, apart from a Soros here and a Gates there, they do.

And thus, the world’s billionaires and their hounds of the BFEE want to spend it all before they die. And they have the plan and cash on hand to do so.

Consider the Bush agenda: All War. All the Time. Government spending for the MI-Complex, transferring trillions to the wealthy corporate owners, war and all.

These are the likes of the “industrialists” Mussolini, Franco and Hitler so loved.

And like the fascist trifecta, the American fascists of the BFEE have bought all the political power. Don't just think Tom Roach Motel DeLay and Mr. Friskie Frist. Remember Prescott Bush and Averell Harriman and Allen Dulles and Rheinhard Gehlen and Igor Orlov.

What can we do about it? They’ve bought all the legal power, built law schools for Federalist Society AND Opus Dei judges. Think Bill Eagle Eye Rehnquist and Antonin Fat Tony Scalia.

These turds of the BFEE have worked all the tax breaks and bankrupty laws for the rich. Uncle Sam reverse-Robin Hoods wealth to the top 1-percent of country.

And what do these rich turds who prop up Bush use their tax savings on? They certainly haven't invested it in making America a better place to work or live; they've invested in "off-shoring."

Lots of the tax money goes to buy more vacation homes, yachts and jet planes. Most goes offshore to the Caymans and Switzerland.

And of course they want more without having to pay for the damage to the environment. Farmland depletion in the USA. Rain forest depletion around the globe. Oceans getting acidic. Fish stock depletion. Global air pollution and water shortages.

Well. OK. Maybe a case can be made it’s the rich folk’s money. They can do what they want. But they should pay their fair share of taxes! After all, the rest of society helps keep them in their position. And its our brothers and sisters in the armed forces who are giving their lives to keep their oil and power and privilege.

Budget red ink means no money for middle class. No money for schools. No money for cities and suburbs and farms. No money for roads. No money for science and R and D. No money for the future.

And the media? What media? What Fairness Doctrine?

They cover up their materialism and venality with all the talk about Faith-based this and Conservative-values that. But the reality is these are sinister wolves and satanic bed-wetting bastards in sheep's clothing we are dealing with.

Wasn’t that what Bush really meant when he told Bob Woodward “History? Who cares about history? In a hundred years we’ll all be dead.”

Just like Hitler. And just like Hitler, Bush (today Trump, Musk and those with escape collapse redoubts) wants to take us all with him.

-- Octafish

2005 DU OP: https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3648867

Like the OP suggests: And still we try.

[Clouds Passing]

67. We need the return of the FDR era