Despite the best efforts of back-page astrologers and tarot enthusiasts, the future is decidedly and irrevocably unwritten. Sure, there are trend lines and well-informed prognostications to give us a vague sense of what might be headed our way sometime down the line, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, the question of “what’s next?” is wholly unanswerable until that “next” becomes “now.”
Nevertheless, prognostication is hardwired into our DNA; we simply cannot help but speculate about what the future may or may not hold, no matter how disquieting the predictions are. And according to a newly released poll, many of those predictions — at least in regard to the United States — are pretty damn disquieting indeed.
