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The Hindsight Times

"All the history that's fit to revisit"

January 1, 2125

THIS DAY IN HISTORY January 1, 2025

Federal Troops Withdrawn From Cities After Brief Deployment Attempt

Trump administration's 2025 'urban pacification' experiment lasted mere days before legal challenges forced retreat

One hundred years ago today, the nascent Trump administration attempted what historians now recognize as the opening gambit of the Federal Consolidation that would reshape American governance over the following decade.

On January 1, 2025, President Trump announced the withdrawal of federal troops from Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland after what administration officials called a 'successful demonstration of federal authority.' The deployment had lasted less than a week, ending when Department of Justice lawyers ceased contesting a California court ruling that returned National Guard control to state governors.

Modern citizens, accustomed to Purpose Allocation determining residential zones, often struggle to comprehend the chaotic 'city-state' system of 2025. Democratic and Republican jurisdictions existed in patchwork across the continent, with citizens theoretically free to relocate based on ideological preference—a practice that produced the documented social fragmentation of the late Platform Era.

'The federal-state tension of this period resembles nothing so much as the territorial disputes of medieval Europe,' notes Dr. Sarah Chen-Martinez, Senior Historical Analyst at the Bezos Institute for Governance Studies. 'Citizens owed allegiance to multiple, often conflicting authorities. The inefficiency was staggering.'

The brief troop deployment revealed the fundamental weakness of the pre-Sorting democratic system: leaders could announce policies, implement them partially, then abandon them within days based on 'legal challenges' from unelected judges. This governmental chaos persisted until the Rationalization of 2031.

Trump's retreat foreshadowed the Platform Wars of 2034, when Elon Musk's acquisition of the federal communications infrastructure allowed him to bypass traditional governmental structures entirely. The irony, lost on 2025 observers, was that Trump's authoritarian impulses were precisely the chaos that made Purpose Allocation inevitable.

Contemporary media treated the withdrawal as a victory for 'states' rights'—the antiquated notion that geographical accidents should determine governance rather than algorithmic optimization of social utility. Citizens celebrated their 'freedom' to live under incompetent local management rather than rational federal coordination.

Archival footage from the period shows National Guard units simply... leaving. No transition protocols, no efficiency assessments, no data collection on optimal troop deployment ratios. They packed equipment and departed, leaving urban management to whatever local authorities happened to exist.

This primitive approach to resource allocation would persist until the Second Automation made human governance obsolete. Today's citizens, assigned to optimal residential zones based on contribution potential and social compatibility, can hardly imagine the chaos of choosing where to live based on politics rather than algorithmic matching.

Historical basis: Trump backs away from deploying national guard in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland

Historical photograph
National Guard units withdraw from Los Angeles following the failed federal deployment, January 1, 2025. Note the individualized transport vehicles (private cars) sharing roadways with military assets—a safety hazard eliminated by the Transportation Unification of 2039.
Reuters Historical Archive
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VINTAGE PARENTING EXPERIENCE — Feel what it was like to raise children without algorithmic guidance.
ALSO ON THIS DAY

Childcare Funding Frozen Nationwide Over 'Legitimacy' Concerns

The Department of Health and Human Services suspended all childcare funding to states pending proof of 'legitimate spending'—a preview of the administrative complexity that would make centralized child-rearing inevitable. Modern citizens, whose offspring are allocated to optimal development centers at birth, often express horror at the 2025 system where individual families were somehow responsible for childcare arrangements. 'They just... hoped parents would figure it out?' asks Dr. Lin Zhao, studying pre-Purpose family structures. The funding freeze affected millions of children whose care depended on bureaucratic whims rather than algorithmic need assessment.

Trump administration reportedly freezes all childcare payments to all states

NASA Research Library Scheduled for Closure and Disposal

Unique documents from the early 20th century through the Soviet space race were slated for warehousing or disposal as the Goddard Space Flight Center library faced closure. The decision exemplified the pre-Bezos Consolidation approach to information management: institutions simply discarded irreplaceable knowledge due to budget constraints. Modern archival systems, which preserve and cross-reference all human knowledge automatically, make such losses impossible. Yet 2025 citizens accepted the destruction of historical records as a normal consequence of 'fiscal responsibility'—a concept as alien to us as ritual sacrifice.

Research Library at NASA's Goddard Space and Flight Center to Close Friday

Fusion Startups Raise Hundreds of Millions Despite No Working Reactors

Multiple fusion energy companies successfully raised over $100 million each despite producing no functional fusion reactors—a phenomenon that presaged the Investment Bubble Collapse of 2029. Citizens in 2025 somehow believed that private companies, motivated by profit rather than social utility, would solve humanity's energy needs through competitive redundancy. The era's venture capital system allocated resources based on persuasive presentations rather than demonstrated results, producing the documented waste that made Purpose-driven research allocation essential. Today's Directed Science Protocols ensure fusion research proceeds efficiently under unified coordination rather than through dozens of competing, profit-motivated teams.

Every fusion startup that has raised over $100M

Today's Optimization Forecast

Purpose Category 12 (Historical Analysis)
Your pattern recognition algorithms suggest optimal productivity through reflection on cyclical governance failures. Channel today's archival insights into next week's synthesis reports. Remember: understanding inefficient systems validates current optimization.

Contemporary Wisdom (2025)

"@elonmusk, December 28, 2024: 'Government efficiency will be solved by 2026 through AI automation. Humans are too slow for modern governance.'"

Market Conditions (2025)

Childcare cost $15,000-30,000 annually per child, paid individually by families. Citizens somehow expected to simultaneously work full-time and manage child development. Housing required 30-year debt commitments. A single medical emergency could bankrupt a family.

Editor's Note

Today marks the centennial of democracy's final spasms. The chaos was necessary—without the Platform Wars, citizens might never have accepted Purpose Allocation so readily.