Your Mayor Matters More Than Your President

Ten predictions about the next five years that I hope I'm wrong about

My fourteen-year-old granddaughter showed me a video last week. A politician saying something outrageous. She asked, “Can you tell, Grandpa? Is it real?”

I couldn’t tell.

I have been watching politicians lie for forty years.

She just shrugged. “Probably fake.” Then she went back to scrolling. This is what we talk about when we talk about the future: a child who has never known a world where seeing could be believing, who navigates by trust instead of truth, who has already learned what her grandfather is only now discovering,that the center cannot hold, that things fall apart, that we are left with the people we choose to believe and nothing else.

That should terrify you.

It terrifies me.

Listen. I am sixty-six years old. I predicted the internet was a fad. I tried to convince my father that journalism was a stable career. I bought a timeshare in the Black Hills in 1987, which tells you everything you need to know about my judgment. I have raised seven children and I am watching fourteen grandchildren navigate a world that shifts faster than I can pour my evening Jameson, which is to say: very fast.

I sit on my porch here in western Nebraska with a cigar,a Padron, if you are keeping track, and my youngest daughter definitely is because she has started a betting pool on how many paragraphs I can go before mentioning the whiskey. The current over/under is 2.5.

I just lost you all money.

This is what you do out here. You watch. My wife reads these pieces I write,not all of them, she stops when I get what she calls “too maudlin,” which is her word for when I compare everything to the weather,and she said after the last one, “You know what your problem is? You think you’re the only person who’s noticed things are changing.”

She is right. She is right about most things. This is annoying but also the reason we are still married after thirty years.

So let me be clear: I am not the only one who sees it. But I may be one of the few dumb enough to write it all down.

So here’s what I see coming in the next five years. Not what I hope for. Not what I fear most. What I actually think is going to happen.

The wind comes hard across these plains. You can see weather coming from thirty miles out here. This is not a metaphor. This is geography. The way the light changes. The way the cottonwoods start to move. The way the cattle bunch up in the corner of the pasture, knowing what is coming before we do. When the wind is right, you can smell the sugar factory in Scottsbluff,that sweet rot of beets being processed, harvest starting up. The wind carries everything here. Dust and distance and the smell of what is coming.

I learned to read weather from my father, who learned it from his. Not the forecast on TV,that is for people who do not have to make decisions based on whether it will actually rain. Out here you watch. The color of the sky at dawn. The way the air feels three hours before a storm. My youngest grandson is starting to learn it. Last week he told me it was going to rain. I asked how he knew. He said the air felt heavy.

He was right.

This is the kind of knowing that does not come from an app. It comes from paying attention. From watching patterns. From understanding that what is coming announces itself if you know how to look.

So here’s what I’ve been watching.

First: We’re going to stop believing our eyes.

In five years, every campaign video will have authentication markers. Verified media will be as normal as nutrition labels. Campaigns will spend more money proving their candidates are real than trying to get you to vote for them.

More money on “yes, this actually happened” than on “here’s why you should care.”

Think about that.

We used to believe what we saw. This is over now. It died quietly, and most of us did not notice. My granddaughter never got to have that innocence. She was born into a world where seeing is not believing, where every image might be a lie, where the only question is whether you choose to believe it anyway.

She navigates this better than I do. This should tell us something.

In five years, authentication will be everywhere. Background forensic analysis running on every video like antivirus software. Verification services you subscribe to like Netflix. Campaigns will employ authentication teams bigger than their messaging staff,specialists maintaining chains of custody, lawyers ready to litigate every pixel, metadata experts who can tell you whether that video was shot on an iPhone or generated by an algorithm.

And it will not matter.

Because your opponent will flood the zone with fakes. Dozens of them. Hundreds. By the time you debunk one, three more have dropped and half the electorate has already seen them and formed an opinion. The truth will come out eventually,it always does,but by then the election is over, the policy is passed, the damage is done.

So people will stop trying to distinguish real from fake. They will pick their sources,the newsletter writer they trust, the podcaster who sounds reasonable, the neighbor who has never steered them wrong,and they will believe what those people tell them to believe. Everything else becomes noise.

This is not stupidity. This is exhaustion. This is what happens when the cost of verification exceeds the value of truth.

I wonder sometimes if I am just old. If every generation thinks the next one is losing something essential. My father thought credit cards were a scam. Perhaps my granddaughter’s approach is just adaptation. Perhaps this is simply what it means to be young now.

But I do not think so.

I think something real got lost when we stopped being able to trust our own eyes. My great-grandfather’s world had liars,many liars,but you could see them lie. Face to face. Person to person. Now you cannot even trust that the face is real.

Here’s what this means for you: In five years, you will not know if that video of your mayor taking a bribe is real. You will not know if that recording of your child’s teacher actually happened. You will not know if that photo of protesters blocking the highway was from yesterday or five years ago, from your city or from another country entirely.

You will have to choose: believe nothing, or believe only what you want to believe.

Most people will choose the second.

This is when things get dangerous.

Second: We’re going to stop pretending we’re one country.

When people cannot agree on what is real, they stop trying to live under the same rules.

States will function like semi-independent blocs. Red and blue states will have sharply different rules for voting, climate policy, policing, healthcare, guns, immigration. It will feel like living in adjacent countries that share a currency and an anthem we can no longer agree on.

I have one child in Idaho, the rest here in Nebraska. We talk every week. Increasingly it feels like talking to someone in a different country. Different laws. Different assumptions. Different futures. Two different Americas being raised in my grandchildren, and no way to know which will look like wisdom in 2030.

In five years, moving states will feel like emigrating. You will research laws like you are crossing a border.

At Thanksgiving we will not talk about it. We talk about the grandkids, the weather, whether the Huskers will ever be good again. We have learned what is safe. This is what family dinners look like now: the careful avoidance of everything that matters.

I remember when we used to talk about “the country” like it was one thing. I do not know when that stopped being true. Perhaps it never was true and we just pretended better.

We do not even pretend now.

What this means for you: Your rights will depend on your zip code. The healthcare available to you, the air you breathe, the education your children receive, whether your vote counts,all of it will vary wildly based on where you live.

We will still call it America.

But it will not mean the same thing anymore.

Third: Washington is going to become irrelevant.

When the country fractures, federal power hollows out.

The people who used to know how things worked? Gone. Retired. Burned out. The institutional knowledge is walking out with every election cycle, replaced by nothing,or worse, by political appointees who don’t understand the systems.

Every time I talk to someone still working federal, I hear the same exhaustion. They’re not angry anymore. They’re done.

States and counties and nonprofits will patch together services that used to be federal guarantees. In five years, the federal government will be a shell. Still there. Still spending. Still issuing press releases.

But the actual work will happen closer to the ground. If it happens at all.

From here in western Nebraska, where we’ve never trusted Washington much, this feels less like loss and more like confirmation.

You can’t rely on distant power.

What this means: When the next crisis hits,pandemic, financial collapse, infrastructure failure,don’t wait for Washington to help. They won’t be coming. Not because they don’t want to. Because they can’t anymore.

Plan accordingly.

Fourth: Your mayor is going to matter more than your president.

When federal power collapses, local power is all that’s left.

County commissioners decide whether roads get maintained, whether water rights get allocated, whether ranches survive. School boards decide what gets taught, which schools stay open. City council decides whether the hospital stays funded.

These aren’t sexy decisions. But they’re the decisions that shape actual lives. Whether your water is safe. Whether your road gets plowed.

In five years, these local stages will be the only ones that matter. Congress will be deadlocked. The presidency will swing wildly. The Supreme Court will make sweeping decisions that can’t fix your neighborhood.

The person who matters most won’t be in Washington. They’ll be down the street.

There’s a guy on the county commission I can’t stand. We’ve gotten into it at public meetings. He thinks I’m a bleeding heart. I think he’s an asshole who’d rather save fifty dollars than maintain a road.

But I see him at the hardware store. He knows my name.

When the Platte river flooded last spring and we needed volunteers, we worked together fine.

That’s what I mean about local power. It’s not romantic. But it’s real in a way national politics stopped being.

What this means: Pay attention to local elections. Know who’s on your school board. Know who your county commissioners are. Go to the meetings.

Those people will shape your life more than whoever’s in the White House.

And if you don’t like them, you can actually do something about it.

Fifth: We’re going to pretend the heat is normal.

When institutions fail, we normalize catastrophe.

Even here in Nebraska, where we think we’re protected, I see changes. Droughts lasting longer. Heat coming harder. The Ogallala aquifer dropping eighteen inches a year in places, everyone pretending we’ll figure out how to farm without it.

We won’t. But we’ll keep pretending until the water’s gone.

The irrigation pivots turn in summer heat, pulling up fossil water that took ten thousand years to accumulate. Everyone knows the math doesn’t work.

Nobody stops.

In five years, we’ll stop calling these disasters. They’ll be conditions. Some cities will have cooling centers like libraries,places you go when it’s too hot to survive at home. Some regions will have fire-season protocols as routine as school schedules. Some coastlines will be abandoned because insurance companies did the math.

Private insurance is already withdrawing. In five years, the government programs picking up the pieces will be broken too.

I sit on my porch on a mild evening,seventy-two degrees in late November. This used to be normal. Now it feels like borrowed time.

The wind never stops here. It carries the smell of fields and distance and that sweet burn from the sugar factory. You can see everything coming on these plains. No surprises. Just the slow inevitability of weather and time.

Except now the weather is changing and nobody wants to admit what that means.

The irrigation pivots turn in summer heat, pulling up fossil water that took ten thousand years to accumulate, using it to grow corn we turn into ethanol. The math does not work. Everyone knows this. Everyone knows the Ogallala Aquifer is dropping eighteen inches a year in places. Everyone knows we are pretending we will figure out how to farm without it.

We will not.

But we will keep pretending until the water is gone. This is what we do now. We pretend.

What this means: If you are planning where to live for the next twenty years, factor in water, heat, and insurance. The places that look affordable now may be affordable because they are going to be unlivable.

The government is not going to bail you out.

We are past that now.

Sixth: The news is going to come from people like me.

When trust in institutions collapses, people turn to individuals.

I don’t watch cable news anymore. Haven’t for years. Instead I read Substack writers covering politics, agriculture, water. I listen to podcasts by people who live here.

I’m part of this. Me, writing about what I see. Not because an editor assigned me. Because I’ve lived sixty-six years and I know when the wind’s changing.

A few thousand people read it. Mostly from places like this. They argue with me in the comments. Someone last week said I was full of shit about rights.

Good. At least they’re paying attention.

In five years, this will be normal. National networks will still exist but be increasingly irrelevant. Why watch someone try to explain rural America when you can hear from someone who lives here?

Sometimes I’m at the grocery store and someone stops me. Half the time they tell me I’m wrong.

That’s fine. At least we’re talking about it.

What this means: You’ll get your news from people with names and biases you can see. The downside: echo chambers, misinformation, no shared facts.

The upside: at least you know who’s talking.

Maybe that’s the best we can hope for now. Knowing who to trust. Knowing why you trust them.

And being honest about what you don’t know.

Seventh: The robots are coming for the jobs.

When the economy restructures, some people adapt and some don’t.

One of my kids is studying nursing. Smart. You can’t automate someone who has to touch people, read what machines miss.

But retail? Fast food? Any job that’s repeatable tasks?

Gone. Steadily. Inevitably.

In five years, the divide will be clear. People who do what machines can’t,plumbers, welders, nurses, caregivers,will work. Everyone else will struggle.

Out of that struggle, unions will grow. Not old industrial unions. New ones. Tech workers. Logistics. Healthcare. People banding together because individually they have no power.

What this means: If your job can be reduced to a flowchart, start planning your next move now. Learn a trade. Learn to fix things, build things, care for people.

Or get very good at working with the machines.

The middle ground is disappearing.

Eighth: We’re going to need each other.

When systems fail, people fall back on proximity.

I’ve seen this here. People argue about politics until they’re red, and then when the blizzard comes, they show up. They don’t ask who you voted for. They ask what you need.

Last summer a tree knocked out power for three days.My neighbor,we disagree about everything,came over with his generator. Kept my food from spoiling.

Nobody made speeches about it. It’s just what you do.

Not because we’re better people. We’ve got the same prejudices as everywhere. But we understand: you survive by taking care of your own.

In five years, more communities will be forced into this. Because institutions will be broken. Because climate disasters will come more frequently. Because safety nets will have holes big enough to fall through.

The person with the generator might vote differently. The person with medical training might go to a different church. The person who fixes the water system might have yard signs you hate.

Doesn’t matter. When crisis comes, you need each other.

I used to think community was about liking each other. Shared values. Shared beliefs.

Now I think community is just: these are the people who are here.

What this means: Get to know your neighbors. Not online. The ones on your street. Figure out who has skills. Who has resources. Who you can call when things go wrong.

Because things are going to go wrong. And no one’s coming to help.

Ninth: Medical care is going to become radically local, or disappear.

When healthcare economics fail, rural areas fail first.

We almost lost our hospital once. Got it back as a critical access facility barely keeping the lights on. Next time it goes, it’s not coming back.

Everyone knows it. Nobody says it.

In five years, the nearest ER might be an hour away. Two hours. The nearest specialist might be in another state.

What replaces it is patchwork. Telemedicine that works until you need someone to actually touch you. Nurse practitioners in storefront clinics. Paramedics who become de facto doctors because they’re the only ones within fifty miles.

People learning to handle more themselves. Stitching wounds. Setting bones. Making calls about whether something’s bad enough to justify the drive.

People with money will be fine. They’ll drive to Denver. Everyone else learns to make do.

My oldest daughter called me last month. Her youngest had a fever. 103. Middle of the night.

She was trying to decide: drive to Scottsbluff now, or wait and see if it breaks?

This is a decision no parent should have to make. But this is what it is now. Drive two hours in the middle of the night with a sick child, or wait and hope. Calculate the risk. Make the call. Live with it.

The fever broke. The child was fine.

But my daughter lay awake the rest of the night thinking: what if it had not been fine? What if waiting had been the wrong call? What if this is what it means to raise children here now,to make these calculations, to weigh these risks, to know that help is not coming quickly enough?

We used to have a hospital twenty minutes away.

We used to not have to make these calls.

What this means: If you live rural, learn basic medical skills now. First aid. CPR. How to recognize when something is actually an emergency.

Find out who in your area has medical training. Make those connections before you need them.

Because when you need them, there won’t be time.

Tenth: Nine people in robes are going to decide everything that’s left.

When Congress can’t legislate and the president can’t build consensus, the Court becomes everything.

The Supreme Court was never meant to be this powerful. The founders imagined it as the weakest branch.

But in five years, it will be the only branch that matters.

Every June we’ll brace for impact. What will they decide this year? What precedent will they overturn? Abortion, voting, regulatory power, tech, healthcare, privacy,nothing will feel settled.

I wrote about my daughter driving to Colorado for medical care. That is what I mean. Nine people decided, and my daughter drove four hours for healthcare that used to be twenty minutes away.

This is not theoretical.

This is my daughter. In her car. Driving across state lines because nine people in Washington reshaped the map of what is possible in Nebraska.

From here, the Court feels both distant and too close. Distant because those justices have never driven Highway 26, never watched a town empty out, never sat in a hospital waiting room at 2 AM trying to decide if their child is sick enough to justify the drive.

Too close because their decisions reach into every corner of this state. Into every family. Into every calculation we make about what is possible and what is not.

What this means: The Court will matter more than elections. More than legislation. More than anything.

And you can’t vote them out.

So that is what I see coming.

Ten things in the way the light changes, the way the wind smells, the way my grandchildren navigate a world I do not fully understand.

We are going to stop believing our eyes. We are going to stop pretending we are one country. Washington is going to become irrelevant. Your mayor is going to matter more than your president. We are going to pretend the heat is normal. The news will come from people like me. The robots are coming for the jobs. We will need each other. Medical care will become local or disappear. And nine people in robes will decide everything that is left.

I am not saying I like it.

I am saying I see it coming the way you see weather across these plains. The way the air changes before a storm. The way your bones tell you something is on its way.

My wife says I am too dark. Perhaps. But I have raised seven children and I am watching fourteen grandchildren grow up, and I want them ready.

Not afraid.

Ready.

You can argue with me in the comments. Tell me I am wrong. You probably should,I probably am.

But at least you are paying attention.

The wind picks up. Sun’s almost gone. My wife is inside making enchiladas.

In a bit I will go in, and she will ask what I was writing about, and I will say the usual, and she will say I worry too much, and I will say probably. And we will eat dinner and watch something on TV and go to bed.

Tomorrow I will get up and do it again.

This is life. The big thoughts and the small routines. Both things true at the same time. The anxiety and the dinner. The predictions and the porch. The sense that everything is changing and the knowledge that some things,the wind, the cottonwoods, the smell of sugar beets processing in Scottsbluff,remain exactly as they have always been.

The wind is picking up harder now. I can smell winter coming. And something else too. Something I do not have a name for yet.

My grandson will need to learn to read this weather. All of it. The old patterns and the new ones. The things that remain and the things that are breaking.

Because the forecast is not going to help anymore.

The forecast never really did.

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