Where Will We Be In Ten Years?

We need to make the future now.

In the middle of the current horrific fascist attack on the constitution, on our neighbors, and on ourselves, it’s difficult to step back and imagine how this ends, or what comes next. Most of us are struggling to assimilate what’s happening, to hold some minimal ground, or to survive. Fascism is meant to be totalizing and terrifying, and part of that total terror is an erasure of tomorrow. Eternity is the same orange face vomiting fetid shit and death across the world, forever.

And yet, we know from the past that fascist regimes, like all other regimes, end. The thousand year reich is never a thousand years. Dictators die; coalitions fracture. The south thought slavery would last forever; the Soviet Union thought they could dominate their neighbors indefinitely; and on and on. A better world is always possible, and even inevitable—not least because people continue to hope for, and to imagine, a better world.

So, I thought it would be worth taking a moment and thinking about where we might be, not tomorrow, and not in the far future, but in the medium term. What will life in the United States look like in, say, ten years? Who will we be then—and who do we want to be?

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The worst case

The worst case is that a decade from now Trump, or his successor, has fully consolidated power and crushed most opposition, establishing an authoritarian regime along the lines of Putin’s Russia, Orban’s Hungary or (closer to home) the Jim Crow South.

To get to that point, Trump has successfully cowed or murdered his way through much of the opposition. His oligarchic cronies have seized control of mainstream media; open criticism of the president from the largest outlets is no longer possible. Independent news sources can still operate, but face crippling lawsuits, arrest, or even assassination if they manage to break through enough to come to the regime’s notice. The House has been gerrymandered to such an extent that Democrats effectively can’t win a majority. Democratic politicians who seem like they might challenge the regime are arrested or disappeared. So are judges; the Supreme Court is completely complicit. Trump essentially rules by executive order with little pushback.

Without democratic check, Trump keeps escalating. Regime forces fire openly on protestors, and there are multiple massacres before most civil disobedience goes underground. Universities that don’t knuckle under to the regime are permanently defunded; professors who challenge the regime are fired or worse. Concentration camps are established for all non citizens, which essentially includes all non white people, all LGBT people, and all people who oppose the regime. The prisons often shade over into death camps. Abortions are illegal nationwide; so is trans health care.

Even in this worst case, I think it’s important to emphasize that there will continue to be resistance, as there is resistance in every authoritarian regime. It will be difficult for Trump to entirely control blue states, even with a permanent military presence. Given the GOP’s general incompetence, even control of the media is not likely to make the government popular. The US is an international pariah; it’s economy will shrink precipitously. There is likely to be some efforts by blue states to leave the union.

A Trump regime victory over 10 years doesn’t mean a Trump regime victory for all time. If the current fascist GOP is still in power in a decade, that would be horrific. But it would not mean that they would be in power forever. A fascist US of a decades standing would not be a stable US—for better and worse.

The middling case

Perhaps the most likely outcome is that Trump does not win, but nonetheless leaves the US long term altered in ugly ways.

In this scenario, Democrats win the midterms, and perhaps the election in 2028. But (following the advice of the Ezra Kleins and Matt Yglesiases), Ds refuse to hold Trump or fascism accountable, choosing instead to embrace a range of fashy policies in an effort to steal Trump’s thunder. Everyone doubles down on harsh immigration policies; trans rights are largely abandoned. Since there’s no effort to reform the Supreme Court, Democratic governance is kneecapped even if the party controls the presidency and Congress.

The GOP steps back from the full-on radicalism of Trump after brutal electoral losses, but doesn’t really change its goals. That means that the US seems set on a longterm erosion of rights, the environment, and economic standing, even if federal forces are no longer attacking blue states, tariffs are no longer destroying the economy, and cancer research isn’t being arbitrarily defunded.

This is a pretty bleak outlook still. But again, it’s not a permanent one. People would still, in this scenario, be able to criticize the government, to vote for better candidates, to try to push the Democratic party left, and to push for more rights and more resistance especially at the state level. It’s a grim scenario, but perhaps less grim than the one which confronted Black people following the end of Reconstruction. People fought Jim Crow and eventually, after a century, (partially, provisionally, but still) won. There would still be hope, there would still be a fight. Things in this future would be better than they are now, in many respects, which means that there would be good reason to believe they could be better still.

The best case

I am not especially optimistic by nature (see the name of this newsletter), but I think there is a real, if small, possibility that the US comes out of Trumpism a more just and more equal place.

Trump and the GOP are very, very bad at politics and governing. They seem already on their way to thoroughly discrediting themselves as the economy sheds jobs and inflation ramps up. The demand for more fight from Democrats is pushing that party left too. It’s possible to imagine a scenario in which Democrats win in 2026 and 2028, gain control of Congress and the presidency, and under a president AOC or Pritzker make a real effort to hold fascists accountable and to change the playing field—expanding the Supreme Court, enfranchising DC, prosecuting collaborators at the state level and in Congress.

ICE in this scenario is so hated there is actual momentum to abolish it and radically liberalize immigration law. The filibuster is torched; Democrats pass abortion rights and shore up voting rights. The memory of Trump is so toxic, and so thoroughgoing, it provides a mandate for breaking up media oligopolies which supported him, and traction to fight for labor rights, for trans rights, for universal healthcare. There’s a successful push to embrace renewables and shift decisively away from coal and gas We get, in short, something like the New Deal, but for the 21^st century.

This would be a hugely inspirational and exciting outcome. But it too would not be the end. There would be backlash, both in the Democratic party and from the GOP’s fascist coalition. Institutionalizing and buttressing changes would be difficult; enforcing new freedoms in red states would be a struggle. Climate change would cause more disasters and more refugees. Democrats themselves would be strongly tempted to backslide. Institutions—universities, unions, hospitals—would need to be defashed and rebuilt. Even if we win, there’s still going to be a lot to do to make that victory ongoing.

Nothing ever ends

For me, then, I think the takeaway is that, no matter where we are in ten years, in a chaotic fascist dystopia or a potential new birth of freedom and justice, it will still be up to us to keep fighting for, and to keep imagining, something better.

It’s easy to despair right now; there’s lots to despair about. Trump right now is torturing and murdering people; our rights and our dreams are being taken from us. But now is not forever. Ten years from now, many of us will still be here. We need to work towards a future, and imagine a future, where we are still working for a better world.