We are now halfway through the “teens” of the 21st century.

If we want to think and talk about where the country is going – and we should no matter how difficult or uncertain – it is better to use a decade rather than each new year.

So, halfway through this decade, where are we headed?

Our new century began with high hopes.

The ‘90s were good to us politically and economically. But then the decade of the Aughts was a disaster.

We should now look at how well we absorbed the shocks of that previous decade: the 9/11 attacks on Wall Street and the Pentagon, a war on terror, the invasion of Iraq and a Great Recession/Financial Crisis.

What will historians and the media name the years from Obama’s first inauguration through 2020?

What are we doing right, or wrong, where the consequences will dominate the decade.

I tried to find the trends that existed in the first half and I thought would continue.

All things considered, I think our economy will continue to be corporate capitalism and it will be guided by the same Constitution.

Aside from that, I found precious little to put together a picture of any likelihood much less certainty.

Our politics and economics, our military and foreign affairs are all chaotic, a time and place where chance is supreme.

War is humanity’s most uncertain enterprise. The radicalism that attack us and with whom we are now engaged in an undeclared war does not obey the rules of war.

The unknown unknowns that Rumsfeld talked about pervade our military posture and can only befuddle our war planners.

We have a four- or five-way war going on in Syria and Iraq. Pakistan remains an extremely dangerous nuclear power.

Russia is seizing territory and reasserting its traditional place in Eastern Europe. But Putin is also sending attack aircraft into the Middle East.

The United States is establishing enduring bases across the whole of Africa without, mind you, any kind of discussion with the American people.

China is not playing the inscrutable Oriental. They are using manmade islands to seize the South China Sea.

Japan has set up an army that violates its pacifist constitution.

And all of this is subject to the uncertainties of developing cyber and drone warfare.

No one is obeying the rules. Accident or chance govern in war, politics and economics.

The presidential election campaign replicates the casino atmosphere of flash and showmanship that define Donald Trump.

In that world only the house wins. Similarly, our economy is bogged down in casino capitalism where fortunes depend on chance not the production of goods and services.

In the most recent get rich quick scheme, tax inversion, corporations are moving their headquarters and tax liability abroad but keeping their employees here.

The presence of two dynasties in the present election could suggest a meaningful continuity but that is deceptive.

Jeb Bush is running away from his brother and his father’s record and Hillary Clinton must establish an identity separate from her husband’s.

The ongoing campaign will determine if, in either case, that was possible.

All is uncertainty. There is no more risk against which to measure potential return. It is an analyst’s nightmare.

All of the old rules are gone and nothing is taking their place. What really scares me is the glib, arrogant certainty voiced by those would-be presidents in the debates.

Someday, in 20 or 30 years, someone will identify and name these years after a person, an event or more likely some trend that is initiated in or spans the decade.

They will have the gift of hindsight; we do not.

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Editor’s note: Paul A. Heise, Ph.D., is emeritus professor of economics at Lebanon Valley College. He can be reached at paul.heise@gmail.com.