EVERY SINGLE SQUARE EXPLAINED: ROW 1: E Pluribus: "Out of Many", Jasper John's Map (1961). The "Unum" or one is dropped. This is the National Divorce Future, or rather, more like a National Marriage where Mommy and Daddy sleep in separate bedroms. Red States and Blue States stop trying to even both governing each other. Abortion, guns, energy, schooling and eventually taxes split along red and blue lines. The United States still technically exists, but moving between states would feel like emigrating. A Republic, If You Can Keep It: Franklin's famous line. Samuel Morse's The House of Representatives (1822). Managed gerontocratic decline. Nothing happens but everything just keeps getting worse. “Nobody’s Century.” The complete embalming of America. Arsenal of Democracy: Diego Riviera's Detroit Murals (1933). A war with China, or just even the credible threat of one, rallies Americans to bind to the flag again. Shipyards reopen, fabs are nationalized in all but name, and the draft comes back, either as soldiers or a literal reserve army of labor. America somehow pulls off 1941 again. Katechon: The "restrainer" of the Anti-Christ from 2 Thessalinians, from Peter Thiel's Antichrist lectures. Luca Signorelli's Sermon and Deeds of the Antichrist (1500). In this case, the Anti-Christ is the left-wing global safety regime, and the Katechon is a Thielite founder network that captures executive power, guts regulators, and creates an Americanist Regime against perceived Wokeness. The Indispensible Man: Constantino Brumidi's The Apotheosis of Washington. An Augustan Presidency. Permanent emergency powers, and a loyal civil service, and a congress happy to act as a rubber stamp. Imagine an FDR-presidency on steroids, but elections just keep happening, but the sovereign never loses power. He never has to give it up. ROW 2: Light Out For The Territory: Huck Finn's ending line. Thomas Cole's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1828). The rich secede. Think gated charter cities, private courts, and private police. The state as it exists is completely hollowed out, and American cities degenerate into complete favelafication. Move Fast And Break Things: George Tooker's The Government Bureau (1956). The Big Tech State. Various platforms absorb the state, one utility at a time. Identity, payments, disputes, speech, benefits—all of it gets completely captured. Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham's line. Daniel Burnham's illustration of the "Burnham Plan" of Chicago. The complete victory of the Abundance Revolution. Urbanists, YIMBYs, pro-growth conservatives, and engineers break America’s veto-state and America builds rails, reactors, and housing again, en masse. The Sinofication of America. What's Good For General Motors: "...is good for the country." Thomas Hart Benton's America Today (1930). This is the Hamiltonian national developmentalism future square. Neo-industrialism against finance capital. Permanent tariffs. American Corporatism. Duty, Honor, Country: The West Point motto. Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii (1784). A future where everybody from now on attempts some kind of Jan 6th and the only institution that anyone really trusts anymore is an apolitical managerial lib military junta. Technically not a military coup. ROW 3: Come and Take It: Henry Arthur McArdle's Dawn at the Alamo (1905). Texas, California, and eventually, everyone secedes. Mostly bloodless. The United States dissolves. 'Tis the Gift to Be Simple: Edward Hicks' The Peaceable Kingdom (1830). "Politics" fails and everybody just builds underneath it. A disunited pastoral America of churches, co-ops, land trusts, homeschools, and mutual aid. A More Perfect Union: Jacques-Louis David's The Tennis Court Oath (1791). The Second American Constitutional Convention. The Senate, the Court, the Electoral College, the Federal System, and all checks and balances are all on the table for debate. Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: Leviticus 25:10. The Liberty Bell Verse on the Jubilee. Jacob Lawrence's Struggle (1954). Complete victory of the DSA-Right. The young and propertyless revolt and win debt cancellation, housing seizure, a tax on boomer real estate. The American Republic still exists, but is greatly amended. Terrible Swift Sword: Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814). The Second American Civil War. ROW 4: Live Free or Die: Frederic Remington's The Fall of the Cowboy (1895). Patchwork America where power and sovereignty trickle down to a county level. Sheriffs determine the law, militias become the state, and life is freer and filled with warlords. This Land Is Your Land: Albert Bierstadt's Among the Sierra Nevada (1868). Complete victory of the DSA-Left. Complete dissolution of the United States. Imagine regional governments, a Cascadia, a Great Lakes commonwealth, a Colorado River compact, and tribal nations with total sovereignty over their land. The end of the settler project. Shall We Gather at the River: John Steuart Curry's Baptism in Kansas (1928). The Fifth Great Awakening. Faith once again flows over this nation. This is the Place: Brigham Young's famous line upon reaching Salt Lake. One of Christensen's Mormon Panoramas. An America of a high-trust religious commonwealth. Church welfare networks, mission-trained administrators, big families, low crime. Deseret America. Onward, Christian Soldiers: Arnold Friberg's The Prayer at Valley Forge (1975). Militant Christian Nationalism. Split between Anglo-Evangelical and Latin-Catholic wings. ROW 5: Machines of Loving Grace: Dario Amodei's Essay on AI Utopia. Maxfield Parrish's Daybreak (1922). AI Abundance forever, the state dissolves, work disappears, everyone drifts into lives of leisure and pleasure. Closest thing to Utopia on this chart. The Strenuous Life: Thomas Eakins' The Swimming Hole (1884). The Vitalist Eugenic Regime. The only explicitly White option. An America of gyms, fraternities, RW health fads, private contractors and online aesthetes. Extremely homosexual. Browns and Foids careened into second-tier citizenship. Go Down, Moses: Jacob Lawrence's The Migration Series (1940). Climate exodus redraws the country. The sunbelt and the south completely empty out. The Great Lakes and Appalachia become the new heartland, absorbing tens of millions of Americans and migrants from the south. Annuit Coeptis: It's the motto over the pyramid eye on the dollar bill. "God Favors Our Undertakings.” René Magritte's The False Mirror (1929). The AGI worst case (barring human extinction) square. AI systems take over governing functions, and we never take it back. America under an Algorithmic Sovereign. An America of Permanent Underclasses. Westward the Course of Empire: From David Foster Wallace's Poem. Emanuel Leutze Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1861). Manifest Destiny 2.0. An America of Greenland, Canada, and Mars. America reborn as a frontier civilization. The last gasp of American Chauvinism.