Happy New Year and welcome to a new decade EC! I would like some of you to make some predictions about what will take place over the next 10 years. It can be anything you want. World, politics, fashion, technology, even something personal if you want.
I actually have two papers full of predictions for 2020 and 2025. Unfortunately I am not allowed to see them until December 2020 and December 2025, respectively. But I'll make some now: US politics: Trump gets re-elected in 2020, an economic recession hits during his second term and a Democrat gets elected in 2024 and 2028 (basically a repeat of 2004-2012). The United States STILL has military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan for another ten years. Worldwide carbon emissions will continue to rise but at a slower rate. Atmospheric CO2 levels will be around 432 ppm. The arctic ice sheet will hit a new record summer-time low, breaking the record currently set in 2012. We will experience two more hottest years on record, according to surface data from NASA and NOAA.
Trump's impeachment goes nowhere, he gets re-elected in 2020 and uses his massive influence to get another Republican elected in 2024. Ruth Bader Ginsberg will pass away, leaving the Supreme Court unbalanced and wide open to fascism. The current Pope will resign, leaving us for the first time in history, with two retired living former Popes. Also, Vatican III might become a thing, but that's just wishful thinking on my part. Disney will continue to greedily buy up other properties, practically monopolizing the market on media, leaving us with a dull, overly saturated market of the same cookie cutter superhero movies. The planned missions to Mars will fall through, Elon Musk will lose his influence and slowly fade into obscurity while NASA's cut funding leaves them with only enough money to make a space kite.
Next ten years? Hmmmmm.... Focussing just on sexuality stuff, and thinking only about the UK, I expect to see: A bit of an attitudinal backlash against PCness, LGBT and Trans/NB folk in particular, which might get quite nasty during the next ten years (I expect a rise in hate crimes and protests and abuse), but which will afterwards settle down into a new more tolerant status quo in the following decade. The LGBT community to start to more fully accept asexuality and some other groups, and the idea of LGBT will slowly start to become basically 'all sexualities and gender identities are cool'. This will involve a lot of infighting, gate keeping, and political nonsense before it starts becoming the new normal at the end of the decade. Possibly see the start of marriage/civil partnerships to include poly relationships and asexual/non-sexual partnerships by the very end of the decade. This will be resisted to start with, but will have a sense of inevitability about it. Those who opposed gay marriage will say they were right about a 'slippery slope'. There will be more attempts to censor, ban or control Internet porn and sex work, and a sort of new prudery in response to this second sexual revolution. Those attempts will fail and a new acceptance, possibly even legalisation of sex work, will be achieved by the end of the decade. Sex dolls and robots, and sex doll brothels, will be particularly castigated and attacked, but will ultimately become normalised in the following decade. In short, ten years of pain but ultimately with an optimistic outlook for the following decade. I think the next ten years will be grim in many ways, but it's the dark before the dawn.
