At lunch the other day, someone asked me, “What is our country coming to? What's in the future?”

A smart guy would have answered, “Who knows?” — which is pretty much what I said.

One can make predictions based on the past, which can be fairly accurate, or postulate present trends, so long as one avoids GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). A computer is only as good as its programming, which is why computer weathercasts are usually bombs. As a rule, the future's not ours to see.

To make my point, let's go back and look at learned opinion about the growth, power and prosperity of the nations of about 1900.

Very few people recognized the already-in-being industrial capacity of the United States. We, together with Japan, had just been accepted as “great powers” because both of us had won wars — the U.S. against Spain; Japan against Russia — establishing colonial empires. The acknowledged great powers were Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Italy.

Britain was the greatest trading nation, and the pound outshone the dollar; a large part of the world map was colored British red.

Russia was considered to have the greatest prospects, with its huge size, rapid industrialization and untapped natural resources. A table printed in a recent Economist magazine shows that the Russia stock market out-performed Wall Street from 1865 through 1914.

Another “hot” country was Argentina, also large and resource-packed. Investment poured into both nations' businesses, securities and bonds.

China also was not forgotten. It was in chaos and foreign-dominated, but all those people had to count for something.

Mexico was another attractive place, then modernizing under so-called “technocrats.”

If you had invested in all those hot prospects, your return in 2000 would have been, roughly, zero.

All of them engaged in ruinous wars or self-destructive politics.

Of course, we all know the U.S. became the dominant economy and military power (a position that no nation holds forever), and this points up a historical fact: Nations and people that cannot keep their houses in order do not succeed either economically, socially or militarily.

Nations do not succeed if they engage in ruinous wars or social revolutions; both require enormous healing time. So far, the U.S. has escaped ruinous conflicts and destructive politics. Our future largely depends on the continuation of this.

The world wars destroyed the European empires, and in some cases, their societies. (America, uniquely, profited from them.)

However, wars and economic crises are part of a bigger problem: A people or nation mortgages its future if it elects or tolerates idiot governments. (“Idiot” in the original Greek means someone who doesn't give a damn).

If you study World War I — the seminal catastrophe of the 20th century — the elites sent millions of people to death and nations to destruction for no intelligent reason. Rivalry and mutual fear are not expressions of intelligence. Around the world today, most of humanity's problems stem from our inability to rule ourselves.

Pick up any mag or rag, view any newscast. It's all about wars and revolutions that cloud forecasts. I suspect one thing is true: As in 1900, the future will not be what we think.

T.R. Fehrenbach is an author and historian.