How To Think Clearly When Power and Institutions Become Unpredictable
Decision-making when politics crumble and certainty is harder to come by
Right now in this world, people are trying to figure out what still holds.
Not in an abstract sense. In a practical one.
They’re looking at what’s happening around them—politically, economically, institutionally—and asking versions of the same question:
What do I do now?
It’s not a new question. But the context has dramatically changed.
The assumption that there are shared guarantees—that your country will have your back, that institutions will function predictably, that rules apply evenly—has weakened. For Americans, it’s close to gone.
This didn’t happen overnight. The last few decades in the United States laid the groundwork for what we’re living through now, both at home and abroad. Norms that once created a baseline of trust have eroded, replaced by spectacle, grievance, and a level of institutional unseriousness that can make long-term planning feel naïve.
As you go about making decisions about your life, you can no longer assume that the systems around you will act competently—or even neutrally—on your behalf.
Think about it—
I don’t want to go back to the United States until I absolutely have to. Not because I’m afraid in some abstract way, but because I’m genuinely concerned that if—at passport control—they look me up and read something I’ve written, I could have a real problem on my hands.
I’ve caught myself wondering how I’d be treated if I walked into a U.S. embassy abroad and needed help. That thought would have sounded paranoid to me not that long ago. Now it feels disturbingly reasonable.
I never imagined I’d be in a position to think—or feel—this way.
Against this backdrop, decision-making doesn’t just get harder and noisier. Uncertainty causes each choice to carry more emotional gravity. Amid a heightened sense of risk and less confidence that there’s a stable floor guaranteeing it, reaction can feel safer than restraint. Beneath all of this, there’s a deeper destabilization: a loss of identity when you feel like you should act, but you’re unsure exactly where you should go.
This is where I go deeper—past reaction, past surface explanations, and into the decisions people actually struggle with.
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