Here in the United States, many suspect the integrity of our elections, and make no mistake, many people will be ready to take to the streets, as in the summer of 2020, if this fall’s election outcome is not to their liking.

What, you may ask, is the worst thing that could happen? Where is our nation, our republic, and our culture headed? For recovery, or over a cliff?

A couple of years back, national treasure Dr. Victor Davis Hanson had some things to say about that.

Civilization is fragile. It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.

To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad and safe at home — only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.

Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.

It’s important to note that we are losing all of these finer aspects of culture. Scientific research is being largely replaced by agenda-fulfilling, grant-chasing, and crowd-pleasing. And our civilization is as fragile as it ever has been. And don't get me started on what passes for the "arts" these days.

So the great achievement of Western civilization — consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit — was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.

But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.

And now, today, this month, and this year, we must worry about the fruits of civilization more than ever.

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As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded — as civilization went headlong in reverse.

We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.

I'm reminded of a quote from the 2000 Ridley Scott film "Gladiator," when Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius said:

There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish... it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter.

Are we approaching such a fragile place now, here, in our republic that was modeled in part on the Roman Republic? May we now only whisper the modern dream, the dream that was America? Will the coming winter erase it, or will it survive to another spring? 

Dr. Hanson wasn’t wrong when he wrote these words – he was just a couple of years ahead of time. So, as we find ourselves so often asking these days, what would happen if that crisis explodes? Being the son and grandson of farmers, one thing comes immediately to mind: food. Forget the rest; think for a moment about just eating; think about that foundation of the hierarchy of needs: Above all else, we must eat.

Here in the United States, we are fortunate to have some of the world’s best agricultural land and lots of it. Even here in Alaska, there are a lot of very productive truck farms (potatoes, onions, carrots, and so forth) and dairy farms, mostly around Palmer in the Matanuska Valley.

But the land is just one link in the chain. To feed a population of 330 million people, we need modern chemical fertilizers, modern agricultural equipment, and extensive and fast transportation chains. All of those things are reliant on one thing: petrochemicals. And plenty of them.

You know about petrochemicals – they are that stuff that Kamala Harris wants to do away with, and should she be elected president, she most assuredly will do her damndest to hamstring fossil-fuel exploration and extraction to the greatest extent that she can. In fact, it is Kamala Harris herself who gives us some room for hope, but we cannot presume that, in future elections, the Democrats will not run a candidate who is this hapless, this abrasive, this unlikable, and this incompetent.

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But the food problem, should the various anti-drilling nutbars get their way, could dramatically accelerate the issue. It will take a gradual demographic crisis and make it a for-real emergency, involving not just a declining birthrate but the actual deaths of millions, perhaps billions, by starvation and disease. A serious reduction in petrochemical production could put agriculture back to the level of 1850 – at which point we’d be able to sustain an 1850-level population. 23 million, not 330 million. Remember, there’s more to this issue than just fueling tractors and combines; petroleum is the source for fertilizers, various lubricants, components of repair parts, and a million other things that cannot be easily replaced, for not only agriculture but also the entire supply chain.

Civilizational collapses always start somewhere. Much of the developed world is facing a demographic crisis; people in places like Japan, Germany, Russia, and the UK just aren’t having babies. The future, as the saying goes, belongs to those who show up for it, and much of the developed world has opted out. And there we have another problem. While modern agriculture has dramatically reduced the percentage of the population involved in food production, the loss of modern techniques will take us back to the 1850s in that regard (as well as many others) and will end not only the modern production of foodstuffs but also the distribution of those foods.

So, 23 million instead of 330 million. What happens to that excess population? Well, I’m pretty sure you can work that out.

Even so, I still have some faith in America. The United States has seen and been through a lot — a civil war that nearly tore the country in two, two world wars, depressions and recessions, great leaders and bad ones. With some luck, and a few more good leaders, these hard times will bring forth the strong people who will, once again, bring good times — and another morning in America.