By Will Bellaimey:
Will Bellaimey finishes with Part 5 of our series
Historically Speaking with a look to the future.
Watch the video or read the transcript!
Edited transcript:
Hi, I'm Will Bellaimey, and this is the latest in our series, Historically Speaking, connecting what's happening right now to what's happened in the past.
So what will the world look like a year from now?
I certainly don't think I can predict the future. And if we learned anything over the last three or four years, it's that you never really know what to expect. But in a political perspective, I think we're gonna see many of these trends continuing, and they'll be played out in dramatic fashion as we have another season of elections this November, which all political science models would suggest should lead to a Republican surge, which will probably take over both the House and the Senate. There'll be a lot of news stories about that and trying to analyze whether the Democrats failed in this strategy or that strategy, but historically speaking, that's just what happens two years into a presidency, especially a presidency after a pretty divided presidential election.
I think we should also expect even before the '22 elections take place the beginnings of another presidential election cycle. And that will probably mean the return of Donald Trump to the focus of a lot of headlines. And I don't really know [how] America will react to that. It's pretty predictable who will like him and who will not like him. This period of this last year, despite all of the ups and downs and, you know, momentary crises in the big picture has been a fairly peaceful bubble in terms of the news cycle of the last six years or so. And I would predict that we're gonna see the beginnings of that being shaken as we head towards what will probably be a pretty significant crisis in trying to see if the Biden administration continues. And, as always, I would suggest that everybody think about their media consumption as a choice. And it's great to think about politics, but it's also important to remember that the people who are trying to sell you narratives are not thinking about big trends or historical parallels but just want your clicks and your attention, and that involves your emotions. So this might be a great year to follow sports or recipes or just spend some more time out in the garden.
Will Bellaimey teaches U.S. Government and Politics at Flintridge Prep School outside Los Angeles where he is also the director of the Los Angeles Museum of Geography, which is staffed entirely by seventh graders. His podcast, All the Presidents, Man, is available here.