30 October 2019 — See you in 2020

A supermarket during the 2019 California blackout wave
In his novel The Man in the High Castle, which depicts a Nazi-dominated world, Philip K. Dick describes a dynamic where the Reich, despite holding enormous power, makes itself progressively more volatile and reactive. At one point in the book, a character observes that “most high-placed Nazis are refusing to face facts vis-a-vis their economic plight. By doing so, they accelerate the tendency toward greater tour de force adventures, less predictability, less stability in general. The cycle of manic enthusiasm, then fear, then Partei solutions of a desperate type…all this tends to bring the most irresponsible and reckless aspirants to the top.”