25 Years From Now — The United States We Refused to Save
It’s the year 2050. America is no longer the bright, messy experiment it once was. It is something far darker, a case study in how a nation can ignore every flashing warning light on the dashboard until the engine gives out in the middle of the highway. Let’s take a look around.
Democracy, Hollowed Out
Voting is technically still possible, but only in the way it was technically possible in the Soviet Union. Candidates arrive pre-approved, ballot boxes are monitored by facial recognition, and “turnout celebrations” are mandatory. The Supreme Court is no longer a court—it is a political enforcement arm that rubber-stamps executive decrees. Our Constitution is displayed in a museum, yellowed and brittle, the glass case conveniently placed next to the gift shop where you can buy mugs that read Freedom™.
The Economy of Desperation
The middle class is extinct. What used to be the economic backbone of the nation has been dissolved into two camps: those who scrape by working three gig jobs for mega-corporations, and those who own those corporations. Wages are irrelevant when rent costs more than your entire monthly income. Bartering has quietly returned: a gallon of gas for a sack of groceries, a home repair in exchange for childcare. The dollar still circulates, but it’s as trustworthy as a casino chip in a casino you’ll never be allowed to enter.
Meanwhile, billionaires live offshore on private floating cities, their children educated by AI tutors while their investments harvest profits from a nation they no longer have to set foot in.
Climate as Punishment
By 2050, Florida is underwater, California is unlivable, and the Midwest is scorched earth punctuated by tornado alleys that stretch for hundreds of miles. The term “natural disaster” has been replaced with “climate event,” as if renaming the monster makes it bite less hard. Mass migrations of Americans—yes, Americans—beg for asylum in Canada, Scandinavia, and any nation that can still grow wheat. We are the refugees now.
The rivers that once nourished us are dry riverbeds. The great Colorado is a cracked canyon where people mine sand for construction. Forget “amber waves of grain.” Forget “purple mountain majesties.” We traded those for pipelines and coal.
Technology: Our Warden, Not Our Savior
In 2025 we thought AI was cute. By 2050, it’s not cute—it’s law. Your every purchase, your every sentence, your every glance is recorded, scored, and judged. “Predictive policing” isn’t science fiction anymore. Your neighbor didn’t even commit a crime, but his data profile suggested he might, so his family now lives in a government resettlement center outside Tulsa.
Social media isn’t a place for baby pictures. It’s a citizenship report card. Post the wrong thing, lose a star. Lose too many stars, lose your job, your apartment, your right to travel. The line between Facebook and the FBI blurred so long ago that no one remembers they were ever separate.
The Culture of Numbness
Perhaps the darkest part isn’t the loss of democracy, prosperity, or even livable land. It’s that people no longer care. Apathy has become survival. The television still plays sitcom reruns. Football still kicks off every Sunday. But the spark—the idea that we could change things—was extinguished somewhere along the way.
The motto on our currency was always In God We Trust. By 2050, it reads In Distraction We Survive.
A Final Word
This is not prophecy—it’s a warning. Twenty-five years from now doesn’t have to look like this. We can still act: to protect our institutions, to invest in sustainability, to resist authoritarian drift, to value truth over propaganda. The darkness is not inevitable.
But if we shrug, if we look away, if we trade courage for convenience, then this newsletter will not have been a warning at all. It will have been a preview.
Julie Bolejack, MBA
