The shift from a marginally functional nation-state in manageable decline to a hollow state often comes suddenly..."Onward to a Hollow State"
The western-style democratic nation-state is in deep decline. As I've been warning for nearly a decade, the nation-state as we've known it is rapidly hollowing out. Simply, this century's spike in globalization, financialization, and technological change is gutting it and there's nothing that can be done about it. Further, this decline isn't a secret anymore. It's real and tangible and visible -- it's playing out in US politics right now.
Recently, we hit a new milestone in this decline. The forces hollowing us out have enabled the development of a unified ruling class. A class united by global outlook, education, financial success, status, and technological adoption.
This milestone became crystal clear after Super Tuesday, when everyone in the establishment, from the Democratic and Republican party regulars to the media elites to academic policy wonks to senior government employees to the heads of large corporations and financial firms, banded together to denounce Trump.
In that moment, connected as they were on social networks to confront their existential enemy, America's technorati was born.
The technorati, a group held together by social networking and unified by common values. A group that strongly senses it has more in common with the technorati of different countries than it does with the other people living in this country. A group that now understands their common interests are far more important than the petty political issues, party loyalties, and policy nuances that divide them.
Of course, the only problem facing the technorati is that it is a very small slice of the population. A small segment of the population that isn't growing. Globalization, financialization, and rapid technological change is not delivering the improvements it promised -- at least, not to anyone but the technorati. The rest of America is being left behind.
The left behinds are the supermajority of Americans getting creamed by the hollowing out of America.
Americans who lose more good good jobs, benefits, and status with each passing year. Americans who went deep into debt for college (in order to ascend to a slot in the technorati) but are perpetually underemployed. Americans who work all day but can only make enough to buy food with the money they earn. Americans now adrift in an America so culturally unmoored, it makes the “people of walmart” not only possible, but common.
The problem for the technorati is that the left behinds are starting to realize they've been conned.
They are starting to find their political voice, and their candidates want big changes. A demand that will only grow more intense as the hollowing out of America continues.