Notes from the edge of civilization: March 8, 2026
Here comes the Technate; would you win a round of 'Is it War?'; science based on 'alternative facts'; Americans see each other as morally bad; and upcoming live chats you can participate in.
A rather fatigued-sounding Donald Trump hosted a “Shield of the Americas” summit this weekend, telling regional leaders that Latin America’s enormous potential will remain trapped as long as drug cartels and criminal gangs are not swiftly dealt with by, what else… military force.
Trump said defeating cartels would require “unleashing the power of our militaries” and signaled the US would support partner governments with whatever tools were necessary — even precision missile strikes.
In a moment that quickly caught online attention, he mimicked the sound of a missile strike — “peww, right into the living room” — to illustrate how targeted attacks could eliminate cartel leaders, adding that the United States would “do whatever you need” to defeat them. For a brief second the geopolitics of the Western Hemisphere sounded less like diplomacy and more like a Looney Tunes soundtrack.
What’s most striking about the summit, however, is the framework it has begun to build. The meeting positioned the Western Hemisphere as a single security zone, under the banner of fighting cartels and terrorism, in which the United States could deploy its military capabilities at the request of regional partners. In practical terms, that begins to look a lot like the North American Technate, an idea first sketched out by technocratic planners in the 1930s, who believed the continent should function as one giant engineered system.
The concept is to create a tightly integrated North American zone linking Greenland, the United States, Canada, and parts of Central and South America through energy grids, supply chains, migration controls, and security cooperation. The drug cartel threat becomes the perfect political cover for the installation of a better cartel — the ‘technical expert’ cartel.
Nothing accelerates technocracy more than a good security emergency. Remember, never let a good crisis go to waste!
This week, ReasonTV renewed our hope that satire is not completely dead. Their latest video — a game show called Is it War? — is comedy gold at a time when we could all use a good laugh. The joke is simple: in an age where institutions obsess over controlling language, even war can be made to disappear if you just rename or rebrand it. Orwell would recognize the trick instantly.
Tip of the hat to our friend and loyal reader, Nancy Hyslin, for pointing out this next story, which is pretty horrifying when seen through the lens of evaporating institutional trust.
Over the past 25 years, the journal Paediatrics & Child Health published 138 clinical case reports written exactly like real medical cases, with detailed symptoms, treatment decisions, and teaching points for physicians. Only recently did the journal issue corrections clarifying that every single one of those cases was fictional. All of them made up.
The cases were meant as teaching tools connected to the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program, but the articles themselves never told readers the stories were invented. They were peer-reviewed, assigned ID numbers, and circulated through academic databases like normal scientific literature. Along the way, dozens of them were cited by other researchers more than 200 times.
The issue only surfaced after a New Yorker investigation revisited a widely cited case about an infant allegedly poisoned by opioid exposure through breast milk — a story that helped shape years of warnings about codeine use in breastfeeding. Subsequent analysis suggested the pharmacology never made sense.
In other words, for a quarter century, fictional clinical narratives moved through the medical literature under the guise of real evidence. This raises an awkward question in an era when medical institutions frequently lecture the public about the risks of sharing so-called misinformation and disinformation, even calling for people to be censored or deplatformed over it.
Apparently, the rules about fabricated stories in the information ecosystem depend a lot on who writes the stories.
A new Pew Research study indicates we may have moved past mere political polarization into something deeper: a breakdown of moral trust inside American society itself.
In nearly all countries surveyed, more people say that others in their country have somewhat or very good morals than say their compatriots display somewhat or very bad levels of morality.
The United States is the only place we surveyed where more adults (ages 18 and older) describe the morality and ethics of others living in the country as bad (53%) than as good (47%).
When large portions of the population begin to see their fellow citizens not just as wrong but as immoral, politics gives way to moral crusading. Compromise becomes impossible, institutional trust disappears, and people retreat into ideological bubbles where the supposedly “good people” are. Violence starts to feel justified because, after all, those are “bad people” we’re dealing with.
Historians tend to watch for this kind of moral delegitimization because it often shows up shortly before periods of serious instability. What makes the Pew finding especially notable is that the perception is increasingly mutual across both ends of the political spectrum.
Once a country loses the assumption that its citizens share a basic moral framework, it stops behaving like a nation and starts behaving like a collection of rival factions. History suggests those arrangements rarely produce calm, boring decades.
UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS
Sunday book chat, 1:30pm ET/10:30am PT
Discussing ‘The Fourth Turning Is Here’ by Neil Howe
Later today we’re kicking off our next Collapse Life/Courageous Conversations book chat, this time with the opening chapters of Neil Howe’s The Fourth Turning Is Here.
Susan Harley and Zahra Sethna will be discussing the early framework of Howe’s argument — that history moves in generational cycles, and we are now entering a period of upheaval that will reshape institutions, power structures, and social norms.
If that sounds familiar, it should. Much of what we talk about here at Collapse Life sits right in that territory.
We’ll unpack the logic behind the idea of historical cycles and why periods of awakening lead to unraveling and then crisis, forcing societies to periodically rebuild their systems from the ground up.
What do you think: are we actually living through the Fourth Turning right now?
Join us later today and bring your thoughts.
Then, mark your calendars for Thursday, at 2pm ET/11am PT. You’re invited to participate in a joint live chat for paid subscribers of Collapse Life and the Geopolitics & Empire community to talk about the big question hanging over everything right now: what does collapse actually look like, and how do people navigate it without losing their footing.
The conversation will be informal and open — a chance to compare notes, ask questions, and talk honestly about the economic, political, and social shifts unfolding around us. In other words, the sort of conversation that’s hard to have in polite company these days. There’s something powerful about connecting with people who see the world clearly, especially at a moment when so much of the public conversation feels scripted or surreal.
The session is for paid subscribers only, so if you’d like to join us, now is a good time to upgrade. The Zoom link will go out to all paid subscribers 24 hours in advance.
GOT A TIP? We appreciate readers like Nancy Hyslin, Blewn0se Hermitage, and others who email us leads, interesting insights and interview guest suggestions. We don’t use all of them, but we deeply appreciate the sleuthing and interest and, when possible, we do include these suggestions in our work. Email us anytime with your thoughts or comments.