Interesting Times

Icon of the Second Coming.

Thesis: every thirty years or so, the world changes in a sudden, dramatic way.

1930. Stock market crash, 1929. Hitler rises to power, 1932. FDR rises to power, 1932. The Great Depression, “New Deal” big government “liberalism,” and the struggle with Nazism.

1960. Kennedy elected, 1960; assassinated 1963. Beatles record “Love Me Do,” 1962. The Vietnam War. The Sixties.

1990. Berlin Wall falls, 1989. World Wide Web starts, 1991. Soviet Union dissolved, 1991. The end of the Cold War and the bipolar world order.

2020. I have a growing feeling that something like this is happening now.

The Wuhan coronavirus seems like the perfect storm: starting in Wuhan, the ideal point for it to spread throughout China. Starting just before the New Year’s Holiday, the ideal time for it to spread throughout China. The doctor who first raised the alarm censured by the government for “spreading false rumours”; and now he has died of the virus, creating a symbol and a martyr.

All this coming after a year of mass protests in Hong Kong.

If God really does intervene in history, if there really is such a thing as the Mandate of Heaven, it looks like the government of China is in trouble.

The cruise ship Westerdam is now wandering the East Asian Seas, denied anchorage in Japan because there are virus victims on board. This is the sort of detail that later becomes legendary.

In the meantime, Brexit happened last week. That already seems long ago. This may be remembered as the day the EU died. Boris Johnson won a crushing victory on the issue that seems to realign British politics, and throws the future of the Labour Party into doubt.

In the US, James Carville asks publicly whether the Democratic Party has lost its mind. The Iowa caucuses looked rigged, and at best grossly incompetent. The Dems look destined for a split now no matter who gets the nomination. If it is not Sanders now, his supporters will be outraged. But if it is Sanders, a declared socialist, it will amount to a takeover of the party by an insurgent force.

In the meantime, Trump was quickly and easily acquitted, making the long march to impeachment look like an irresponsible use of power and a waste of public time and money. Trump’s SOTU address was strong enough to perhaps be remembered as historic, and Nancy Pelosi’s stunt of ripping it up at the end looked deranged. Taken together, it looks as though the Democratic Party is imploding.

Canada is innately conservative, and so we never see such sudden drama. But things have been going weird lately here too: the implausible revelation of the PM’s blackface, the turmoil in the Tory Party, everyone backing away from the leadership as though it were radioactive. It feels as though nobody is in charge.

Let's hope God is.