Our future as two sides of the coin

By William S. Lind

William Lind describes 2 visions of America’s future 

Summary: What will America look like in in 2025, after another decade of our long war? In the second of this series William Lind describes two scenarios, failed and successful responses to risks regarded as likely among paleoconservatives. Seeing visions of the future like this can help you decide how to vote in November 2016. Perhaps the fears of each group are what most clearly distinguishes Left and Right in America.

Our future as two sides of the coin

The first toss of the coin: a dark vision

America’s “long war” continues to prove Sun Tzu correct: no nation ever benefits from a long war. From Afghanistan through Iraq to war with Iran (following Congress’s rejection of President Obama’s deal with Iran, which led to Iran building an atomic bomb, which led to an American attack), in Syria, and now in Saudi Arabia, America has failed to attain closure while spending itself into ruin. As I write in this year of 2025, the Federal debt is six times the GNP, revenues cover only 23% of federal expenditures, and it takes 25,000 dollars to buy one yuan {currency of China, now worth $0.16}. Almost half of the federal budget goes to paying interest on the debt. It is rumored the Estates General will soon be called, in the form of a Constitutional Convention.

In Washington, since the explosion of a suitcase nuke in Seattle on 25 December 2024, both political parties agree we must continue to fight. Although al Qaeda claimed credit for the Seattle bombing, American intelligence traced the origin of the plot to Saudi Arabia. This was no surprise; everyone had known for decades that most Sunni extremism had its roots in Saudi money. Previously, the United States had to pretend otherwise because of its dependence on Saudi oil. Now, with imported oil unaffordable, that was irrelevant.

The Saudi war is following the usual course. The initial American invasion, with three divisions, quickly captured Riyadh and destroyed the Saudi state. Fourth Generation war goes on in all the populated parts of Saudi Arabia — even the Shiites are fighting us, at the same time they fight the Sunnis — and jihadi volunteers pour in to defend Mecca and Medina, both of which U.S. troops occupied at the demand of our military commanders, who said they were being used as safe havens.

American air, drone and missile strikes hit daily throughout the Islamic Middle East and Southwest Asia. None of what we do appears to make any difference. Washington’s policy remains one of serial failure: when what we do fails in one venue, we go on to do the same thing somewhere else. Only complete financial ruin, which is rapidly approaching, appears likely to change anything.

The second toss of the coin: a successful America

America’s “long war” proved Sun Tzu correct; no nation ever benefits from a long war. Fortunately, in this year of 2025, America’s long war is a memory. President Obama’s deal with Iran proved a turning point. It brought neither peace nor stability to the region; nothing could do that. What it successfully did was allow a re-invigorated Iran to focus its efforts on the Shiite-Sunni civil war, which now engulfs the Middle East and results in the deaths of millions of Islamics annually, most of them young men. Peace be upon them.

To America and Europe, that war and the region it envelops are someone else’s problem. In Europe, the exploding refugee crisis brought genuinely conservative governments to power: the National Front in France, UK Independence Party in Great Britain, and the Neues Kaiserreich Partei in Germany {a fictional “New Empire Party”}. Those parties in turn quickly solved the refugee problem. Asylum was no longer offered to non-Europeans, and all refugees were immediately sent home. It was easy enough to put them on ships, have European Marines make amphibious landings on African shores, and deposit the refugees. The flow to Europe quickly diminished to nothing, since no one had any chance of staying. 

In America, the election in 2016 of President Rand Paul and the emergence in Congress of a left-right anti-war coalition led to a gradual American withdrawal from other people’s quarrels around the globe. With the President’s father, Ron Paul, serving as Secretary of the Treasury, Congress and the nation turned to confront its true national security threats: a looming debt crisis and the emergence of a “National Security State” where the federal government controlled more and more of everyone’s life. Thankfully, the federal budget is now in surplus, the national debt is being paid down, and the Department of Homeland Security has been replaced by a Department of Homeland Satiation, whose main activity is holding pie-eating contests around the country.

In Washington, where Congress is now controlled by the new America First Party, the response to the suitcase nuke that went off in Seattle on 25 December 2024 was the “Hama Model”. As soon as Saudi Arabia was identified as the source of the attack, the country was vaporized by an American nuclear response. Mecca was spared, with the President making it clear it would not be spared if there was a next time. That city is now back under its legitimate protector, the Hashemite king of Jordan.

America’s nuclear response demonstrated its new policy of replying to attacks — now wholly gratuitous since America is no longer meddling in other parts of the world — not with invasions to bring “democracy” and “human rights” to flea-bag, fly-blown hellholes but with punitive raids.

Proposal for the Great Wall of America.

Our response did not end there. We finally resolved the immigration issue correctly: all immigration was forbidden unless someone came with at least ten million dollars (sound dollars, now). A replica of the old East-West German border was built between the U.S. and Mexico. Anyone attempting to cross a border illegally – here and in Europe — gets shot. That’s what a border means.

And early this summer, before Congress took its usual recess, it passed in both Houses and sent to the states a Constitutional Amendment. The new Amendment forbids the profession, practice or preaching of the Islamic religion on American soil, on pain of exile. Its prospects for rapid ratification by the states appear excellent.

The Saudis would of course object. But there aren’t any. And Americans are happy to travel, far more comfortably, by train.

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Other posts in this series 

“How much longer for the long war? Who will win?” by Chet Richards. 

“Our future as two sides of the coin” by William Lind. 

Coming: “We don’t need a New Army to in 4GWs. We need a smart Army” by Gary Anderson. 

Update: another conservative’s vision of the future

“Operation Iranian Freedom. It is 2026 & the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran has failed.” by Phil Water at Medium. Do their visions as always ending in war?

This describes the US replacing much of Russia’s exports to Europe (unlikley: the US is a net importer of natural gas; transport of natural gas by ship is much more expensive than by pipeline). Predicts that Iran will tries to build nukes, despite the Right’s many false predictions of this since 1984.