What Can Possibly Go Wrong?

"What can possibly go wrong?" is the question asked by anyone from either side of the political divide in the U.S. today, days before the presidential election, and is  filled with trepidation and unprecedented concern. It will still remain a nagging question past November 5th.  In fact, it will raise more questions. Those who rooted for the winning candidate will still be asking, what can possibly go wrong with meeting the promises made, what roadblocks ahead will derail their agenda, what possible challenges not anticipated that can harm the new administration, etc. On the other hand, supporters of the losing candidate will lay out every scenario they feared the most about what  can and will go wrong. It can be most debilitating for some, for others it will be a huge collective shrug towards, "wait till the next election".

Meanwhile, there will be those who will be asking, "What if..?" Far from just being hypothetical, a "What if" question always summons either hopeful or dire consequences.  Hopeful and dire scenarios can be real or imagined, depending on who is making the assessment.  Let's keep in mind though that scenarios we imagine, even if hopeful, can have dire situations on the flip side. Give me a minute to explain.  

Seven years ago I mused about, "What If".  Questions preceded by "What if" are almost always interesting and intriguing. 

For example, one of the "what if" scenarios I proposed then seven years ago is shown below.  You can tell it was a while back because I talked about world population being just 7 billion; it is now well past that, closer to 8 billion, actually.  Also, I mentioned the 2017 Tesla Model S. 

Anyway, what I proposed then still works today.  Please read, then we'll go from there.

What if suddenly this morning we (all of 7 billion people around the world) woke up and each household or every single unmarried able-bodied adult has a net worth of over a million dollars?  Don’t ask how? What would the world be like?  I think it will be worse than yesterday. Imagine Elon Musk – I’m picking on him – took out his top of the line 2017 Tesla Model S to drive to a nearby Starbucks for his favorite latte. He won’t get one because the barista who served him yesterday (and all baristas, in fact) is no longer working there. Would you, if you had a million dollars in the bank? Elon Musk will soon find out there is no one to collect his garbage, deliver his mail, and there is no one working at the Tesla plant or the SpaceX headquarters. He will not be alone in that predicament.  

Try imagining every scenario anywhere and you’ll know it is not going to be pretty. The Maasai cattle herder in Tanzania, previously subsisting on a daily food intake of 1400 calories or less daily, who can now afford to increase his herd of cattle, will find out that there are no cattle available for sale because every Maasai around the region will want to do the same. There is much celebration across the country and alas, every cattle was butchered for the big party.

Around the world home prices will skyrocket when every homeowner, including those living in cardboard boxes from everywhere poverty was the norm yesterday, will want a nice home today.  Mathematicians, sociologists and political scientists will not want to answer this “what if” scenario.  Economists – let us not forget them - will for the first time agree on something: the world economy will collapse into a sudden implosion. There will be no one to sell anything to anyone; besides who will be working anywhere to produce the goods or provide the services of any kind. Who will keep the peace on the streets, and so on and on? You get the picture. Suffice it to say, it is going to be a maddeningly chaotic world!

What seemed like a positively well thought out fantasy to best address the biggest drawback of a capitalist economic system will after all become a destructive engine.  I think I have written enough in the past about equity not to be confused with equality.  We will not digress to that discussion. 

What can possibly go wrong, sometimes will. Even in the best of circumstances something unanticipated can upset even the best laid plan. This might seem like a very pessimistic view but realities after elections, any election, local or national, have ways of turning away from the pages that promises were written on. An optimistic view is that the new or an incumbent administration continuing on can and will keep most of its promises or is able to successfully maneuver the country into the right track despite all the unanticipated roadblocks or detours from the agenda.  The administration's ability to succeed hinges on how far away it can separate itself from doing the wrong thing over and over again.

Elections have come and gone for nearly a quarter of a millennium now in this country.  A handful of elections were more pivotal than others, some can be described as ineffectually successful as artificial sugar - deceptively sweet but lacking in calories when a nation needed the energy to move forward.

This year's election could be one of those pivotal turning points in the nation's history. For one, in an evenly divided country, the greatest need is for a nation to be as close to three quarters of its population united in purpose and direction.  If it remains at 50-50, it will be like a spinning top that can easily topple over at the slightest gust of political winds or when it loses its energy to stoke the people's will or support.

The biggest thing that can go wrong is when the people lose their faith in the system that is supposed to work for them. We know that is about as ill defined as wind blown pages of history left unlearned or simply because time has a way of eroding the granite-hard foundations that used to define what was right that is now wrong or only half-right, or what used to be wrong is now right or partially justifiable.  Morality, as we have come to realize now, is not the etched-in-stone prescriptions that the elders in the early stages of this country used to believe in. And there were good reasons for re-evaluating the prescriptions when what ails the nation is changing by the decades. 

New morality, for lack of a better phrase, can be an agent of virulence or simply sugared water. Either one can be brought on via one or two election cycles.  Before we can wake up to the realization,  we are a changed nation.  A nation that will be led to the same path as nations not unlike the ones that had gone past their historical shelf life, like those of every empire - no matter what power it achieved - that came and went in the last six thousand years or so.

Whatever your inclination is, whatever political persuasion you adopted, please vote on or before November 5th. To remain uncommitted does not excuse you from what will happen or for what can go wrong past that day. Not voting is a choice.  Worse is that it is a choice to not care.  

So, please vote.  What can go wrong that definitely will go wrong is when you ignore to cast your vote.

P. S.  This has been sort of a tradition on my part prior to the last three elections to muse about the subject.

November 13, 2015, a year before the 2016 election I wrote, "When Rattlesnakes Don't Rattle Anymore" 

January 21, 2019, a year before the 2020 election I wrote, "The Silencing of the Lambs"