Well, the year’s winding down, which means it’s time to polish the old crystal ball and see what’s on the other side. As Yogi Berra said, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future, but we try every year, nonetheless.
We made a few predictions for 2021 that came true: Trump became a noisy back-bencher, logistics defined the economy, conspiracy culture grew, as did the innovation curve, and the economy boomed. But I’m not gonna lie to you, we did have a few duds. Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci did not win the Nobel Prize for developing a Covid vaccine, there was no rapprochement with Big Tech (far from it) and we most certainly did not find our way back to the political center. All in all, I scored our prediction rate at about .400; not exactly in the black, but on the other hand a .400 batting average will put you in the Hall of Fame. See the complete list of predictions here.
So here goes 2022. We’ll check back next December and see how we did.
The Year of the Endemic
Prediction: Covid will dial down and we’ll return to something resembling “normal” life.
Context: We’re never going to get rid of Covid altogether, but Year Three will bring some kind of equilibrium. We’re likely to see another variant, which would be named Pi if we keep going through the Greek alphabet. But like Omicron, it’ll probably be less severe. Through a combination of higher vaccination rates, natural immunity, and continued good hygiene, we will thankfully see this damn thing fade from the foreground to the background. Like VE (Victory in Europe) Day and VJ (Victory Over Japan) Day in 1945, maybe we should hold a national VC (Victory Over Covid) Day and party like it’s 2018. On the other hand, probably better not to jinx it. Let’s just move on, healthier and stronger.
The Atomization of America
Prediction: We’ll become even less unified as a country in 2022 than we were this year.
Context: What happened? We used to be two Americas — old and young, liberal and conservative, white or minority, industrious or lazy, native or immigrant — but in the end, we all identified as Americans. We’ve gone so far beyond that. Now, we are Black, brown, yellow, white, gay, bi-, trans, cis, questioning, queer, differently abled, privileged, oppressed, patriarchal, urban, rural, socialist, capitalist — the list of personal and political identities isn’t endless, but definitely growing. We used to think of our differences as a mosaic or tapestry; now they are free-floating planets, often crashing into each other. It’s one thing to acknowledge diverse belief systems; it’s quite another to impose them. Critical Race Theory was the apotheosis of this kind of imposition (I’m not singling out CRT, just using it as an example). Instead of bringing us together, it drove us apart. In fact, few people knew exactly what CRT is, but that didn’t stop us from arguing about it. Covid was supposed to bring us together — unity in the face of an existential threat and all that — but it just created more polarization over masking and vaxing. Expect more of the same in 2022. Our society has become a Rubik’s Cube that no one can seem to get realigned.
Political Pugilism
Prediction: Politics will get more partisan and ugly.
Context: Politics were pretty brutal in 2021 and are likely to get even more so in 2022. There are several reasons for this. One, the rise of political flamethrowers like Marjorie Taylor-Green, Paul Gosar, Elizabeth Warren and Ilhan Omar. Two, the general collapse of civility, such as this tweet from Bette Midler.
Three — and this is the biggest driver of our pugilistic political culture — the rise of the Media-Political Complex, successor to the Military-Industrial Complex as the largest threat to the stability of American society. Media and politics are locked in a toxic partnership of conflict and brinksmanship. In fact, conflict has become the lingua franca of the Media-Political Complex. Want to get drunk real fast? Play this drinking game — watch a news show, any news show, and take a shot every time someone says “fight,” as in “I will never stop fighting until we have secured a future for the American people” or “We must take the fight right to them, every day in every venue” or “Only a relentless fight right here and now will save our planet.” There’s a scene in the fourth season of “Yellowstone” where John Dutton tells Rip to put Lloyd and Walker in a corral and have them “fight it out until there’s no more fight left.” Maybe that’s what we need to do in Congress. It’s so exhausting. I fear the days of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neal slamming a couple back after hours are long gone.
Crypto Crash
Prediction: There will be some sort of reckoning in crypto markets.
I don’t know much about crypto or Defi, or whatever you want to call it, but I can smell a bubble as well as the next guy. Crypto has great promise and will eventually create a sustainable space, but right now it looks like a solution in search of a problem. Doge dogs, NFTs and Bored Apes are not solutions, they’re hobbies. As it turns out, tulips weren’t a sustainable market in 17th century Holland either. By the way, I’m not making this a headline, but the odds are extremely long that the S&P or other major market indices will post the same kind of returns that they did in 2020 and 2021. It’s risk on.
ET Calling
Prediction: The Webb Space Telescope will discover signs of life on a distant exoplanet.
Context: The James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Telescope, launched on Christmas Day, headed to a point called Lagrange some 1 million miles from Earth. Lagrange is a perfect balance of gravity and orbital mechanics, so that the telescope will stay in a fixed position relative to the Earth and Sun with a minimal amount of energy needed for course correction. From there it will be able to see back to the origins of the universe. (Its optical capabilities are so robust that it could theoretically detect the infrared light emitted by a bumblebee located on the Moon.) Webb’s primary mission will be to understand the true age of the universe, as well as to gain a better idea about what existed before the Big Bang. It will also scan exoplanets, which rotate outside of our solar system, and determine if life exists there. We predict that they will. “We are, without a doubt, going to see surprises... the likes of which we can only dream of right now,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA.
Energy Innovation
Prediction: We will see at least one major breakthrough in new clean energy technology.
Context: More than a half-trillion dollars were invested globally in clean (i.e. non-carbon) energy in 2021. Already, researchers at Lawrence Livermore Labs have catalyzed a nuclear fusion process (one that produces more energy than it receives and can effectively run on its own; in other words, a near-infinite supply of clean electricity). In Austin, researchers have created a high-efficiency sodium-sulfur battery as an alternative to higher-priced, environmentally risky lithium-ion batteries. There’s been so much front-end loading into energy R&D over the past few years; we’ll start to see magnitudinal returns in 2022.
The Stakeholder Economy
Prediction: Large global brands will step in where government fails.
Context: The Dialogue Project, Edelman and the Forrester Group have all done surveys recently which found that consumers trust companies more than governments — and they increasingly expect brands to use their platforms to lead the change on issues impacting greater society. In the past couple of years, this has primarily been performative virtue-signaling. In 2022, we’ll start to see a shift toward concrete and consequential actions on the part of business to address social issues. The areas most likely to attract corporate attention are education, immigration and voting rights.
Inching Toward Incrementalism
Prediction: The White House and Congress will focus more on singles and doubles than grand slams.
Context: In 2021, big government worked, and then it didn’t. Congress passed a $2 trillion Covid relief bill and then a $2 trillion infrastructure bill. Democrats tried to float another $2 trillion with the Build Back Better bill, but it was a bridge too far. The recriminations following that legislative failure will make it even more difficult to get a bipartisan consensus on any major legislation in 2022. Congress has become exhausted playing the long ball; they’ll focus on smaller scale solutions — or none at all — and then assess where we are after the mid-terms.
The Roaches Will Scatter
Prediction: Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s aide-de-camp, will get convicted and in return for some forbearance in her sentencing, will name names.
Context: If you’re a member of the British aristocracy, the U.S. political aristocracy, or corporate aristocracy, you should be nervous. Ghislaine’s got the little black book in her head and she’s coming for you.
Taylor Swift Will Release a New Album
Prediction: Taylor’s next remake will be “Reputation.”
Context: Taylor is indefatigable. She’ll continue plowing through her songbook, re-recording her body of work to regain legal control of the publishing. In other musical predictions, Britney will go on a “Liberation” tour; Obama will join Springsteen on tour; Phish will play in space; the Beatles will play a reunion concert in the metaverse; somebody will break Ed Sheeran’s record for most-streamed song in history (3 billion for “Shape of You”); the Stones will announce their retirement, and this time it will be true.
Lightning Round
Republicans will pick up seats in the House and Senate in the mid-terms; Elon Musk tweets will land him in hot water with the SEC; Joe Biden will have some kind of mental faux pas during a presser that finally can’t be ignored; “The Power of the Dog” will win Best Picture at the Oscars; Tiger Woods will not win a PGA Tour event; the college football national championship will be declared by default; an NBA team will move; Major League Baseball won’t start the season until May; the Titans will win the Super Bowl; people will realize Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is really just Second Life in 3D, collapsing the company’s stock; there will be a big merger of two U.S. oil companies; Portland will dissolve its police department and replace it with a Community Care Corps; several large cities, including Portland, will experience industrial-scale smash-and-grabs, with thousands of people fanning out in highly coordinated shoplifting sprees; Matthew McConaughey, after passing on the Texas governor’s race, will announce he’s running for President; and Phish will announce plans to play a New Year’s Eve run on the moon in 2030.
Final Bonus Prediction: The “Why Not?” Response
Sometimes popular culture sends up little flares that point to what the future might look like. There were two flares pointing in the same direction this year. In “Succession,” elder son and political striver Connor is obsessed with getting married to Willa, his much younger girlfriend-for-hire. He thinks it will help set him up for his presidential run. Willa knows he’s a loser and plays coy and noncommittal until they’re waiting for a car at a family wedding in Italy. Connor’s frustrated about everything and Willa senses it. “Fuck it,” she says. “Fuck it, let’s do it. How bad can it be?” Not very romantic, but Connor got the answer he wanted. In “Don’t Look Up,” Jennifer Lawrence, a doctoral candidate who’s discovered a comet the size of Mt. Everest headed straight toward Earth but is unable to convince anyone that it’s real, is adrift in spirit and emotion. Finally, when there’s only a few weeks to live, she goes home to her parents and gets a job in a liquor warehouse and ends up partying in an alley one night with some 20-something slackers. One of them tries to make out and she’s repelled. But a second later she says, “Fuck it, we’re all gonna die,” and they lock lips.
I think a lot of us are prepared to say “why not?” in 2022. It’s been a rough couple of years. We’ve hunkered down and minimized risk-taking to a fault. In 2022, we’re coming out of our shells. It’s risk-on, but we’re getting used to it. The default response in 2020 and 2021 was “no.” In 2022, it will be more of a “why not?” or Willa’s more profane, but also more poetic response. I think we’re all ready to move forward, even if imperfectly. See you on the other side.
(These predictions were crowd-sourced from a wide circle of advisors, including Jessie and Breton Birkhofer, Don and Pam Yarrow, John and Jack McIver, Josh Haynes, Rob Debuce and Boyd Pearson. Thanks to all.)