According to Dmitri Orlov, a nation goes through five stages before it completely collapses. The predicates for collapse are: (1) huge military budgets, (2) ever-increasing budget deficits, (3) an unresponsive political system, and (4) declining oil production.
Born in 1962 in what was then Leningrad, Orlov was actually raised in America, traveling back and forth fairly regularly. It was during one of his trips to Russia when he began to formulate his thesis of societal collapse. Things came to a head during the fall of the Soviet Union, when found himself bartering vodka for basic services.
Along the way, he acquired a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and a master’s in applied linguistics. A sailing enthusiast, he documented his insights in his seminal book, The Five Stages of Collapse.
Orlov believes that all five stages are present in the United States, today. Personally, I have some doubts about one of his premises. I don’t believe in the concept of “peak oil” or that if it exists, we’ve reached it, but it’s interesting that he had the foreknowledge to see what is happening seven years ago when his book was published in 2013.
Orlov’s five stages are as follows . . .
Stage 1: Financial collapse. Lack of belief that “business as usual” will prevail. In this stage, redlining has extended to affluent areas and credit becomes difficult to obtain. Redlining has always been more common in black neighborhoods; however, thanks to the Floyd riots, credit is becoming harder to come by for those living in more affluent areas, as well. Housing prices in the suburbs are plummeting. Instead of creating wealth by manufacturing and/or exploiting natural resources, wealth is “created” by relying on increasingly clever methods of financial manipulation like we saw in the recession.
Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Lack of belief that the free market will provide for material. Black and gray markets are being created as workarounds. Like in the Second World/Iron Curtain countries before the Berlin Wall fell, where cigarettes, dollars and even sexual favors were exchanged for basic necessities.
Stage 3: Political collapse. Lack of belief the government will take care of you. This is exemplified in the demoralization of the police forces and their subsequent impotence. At this stage, corruption replaces government services. We’re seeing this in Minneapolis, where police are being defunded while the political class is hiring armed security guards for themselves. Think of this governing paradigm as the, “sucks to be you” stage. The “Pelosi Paradigm” is the ruling narrative in which the cleavage between the rulers and the ruled becomes stark and unappealing.
Stage 4: Social collapse. Lack of belief that the broader community will take care of you. In the first three stages, society becomes a “low-trust” one, but by the time things get to the fourth stage, society degenerates to a “no-trust” level, where it is no longer possible for there to be an in-gathering or a retribalization. Civil war becomes a real possibility and can be ignited with even the tiniest spark. Demarcation lines, where they once existed, are absent. In states where there were no such lines, civil war will look like a Belfast/Beirut scenario of endless vendettas.
Pretty good movie; not a good societal model though. FYI, it’s based on Xenophon’s Anabasis (The March Up-country).
Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Lack of belief in the basic goodness of humanity. This is the terminal stage where faith in the basic goodness of humanity is lost. Interpersonal relationships are at a no-trust level where nominal allies turn on each other to fight over whatever remains. We can see this on a cultural level where black entertainers and athletes are not called into account when they brazenly spout anti-Semitic tropes. This presents a dilemma for the Democrat Party because as a rule, African-Americans and American Jews have always presented a united front as the vanguard of liberalism. (As well as the fact that both groups are the backbone of the modern Democrat Party.)
Few things proceed along neat little lines. Ukraine, as an example, is probably at Stage 4. The cleaving off of the eastern areas has ameliorated its impending collapse, as did the election of a non-belligerent president who is willing to talk to the Russians. The neo-Nazi goon squads go unchallenged, but remain hugely unpopular. Because it’s a political entity, Ukraine can continue to receive influx of cash to stave off financial collapse (Stage 1). As to whether or not there will be enough investment in Ukraine to prevent further degradation (Stages 2 and 3) remains to be seen.
OK, this is Orlov’s theory of societal/national collapse. I more or less accept it as a given. I have my own observations which I’d like to share with you, Dear Readers. But first, a little more international perspective:
Mexico is by my estimation at Stage 4, but because of the absolute fear the cartels instill in people, civil war is not likely. The reason Mexico won’t completely collapse is because there is an uneasy stand-off between the central government and the drug kingpins; the cartels are smart enough to realize that they don’t want to control the capital and deal with the attendant headaches of governance. They pretty much have what they want, so why muck things up by trying to get all socio-political?
Syria on the other hand is somewhere between Stages 4 and 5. The only thing that’s saving it from permanent collapse is Russian intervention.
In the American ghettos, Stage 1 (the loss of accessible capital) certainly exists. However, Stages 2-4 have not progressed to any significant degree. The utilities grid still functions and this ameliorates any type of Calcutta-like existence for its denizens; they have at least nominal police protection.
On the other hand, certain cities, e.g. Chicago and Baltimore, are already at Stage 5. Killings there are largely indiscriminate, purposeless, and intractable. The so-called Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle was a counter-example where a revolutionary force was created to impose its own anarchic order. However, because of the ineptness of the revolutionaries involved, it could not sustain itself.
That being said, we should not be surprised if it turns out that America is at the point of collapse. By stepping back and looking at the big picture, it certainly looks like we could be on our last legs. Historically speaking, no nation has lasted forever. Nations rise and fall for a variety of reasons, hence, it would be Pollyannaish of us to believe we couldn’t possibly go the way of Burgundy, Prussia or Aragon (to say nothing of Babylon, Rome or Macedonia).
So what things should we look for? What factors exist which might indicate we are at the point of national collapse?
- First, our size. We have become a huge nation, the third most populous country on earth.
- Second, immigration. We have taken in many immigrants (both legal and illegal) from third-world nations, and despite the desire of many of these people to better themselves, they could not avoid bringing their attendant pathologies with them. In many American cities, cock-fights, female genital mutilation, polygamy, and honor-killings are not unknown.
- Third, the welfare state has made indolence profitable, sustaining both native, and foreign-born, pathologies.
- Fourth, the American oligarchy has worked overtime to maximize its wealth at the expense of the white working class. They have done so (1) through open-borders policies which socialize the costs of illegal immigration and (2) by outsourcing manufacturing.
No doubt other factors play a part. Things like a debased educational system and a crushing student debt-load, both of which enstupidated the thousands of BLM/SJWs who have laid waste to many of our cities. The so-called 1619 Project, for example, is nothing but agitprop, with little bearing in historical reality. At any rate, the situation as described above is untenable. To add insult to injury, this wanton destruction has been aided and abetted by the Democrat Establishment for electoral reasons. Clearly, we are at a crossroads.
Nevertheless, I cannot subscribe completely to Orlov’s diagnosis of the American polity; I say this mainly because America is a Federal republic. While the depressed state of California’s economy (for example) can act as an anchor on the national gross domestic product, as a whole, in reality it has little personal effect on people who live, say in, Idaho. In fact, the real-estate values of states such as Utah, Idaho and Texas have risen because of the outflow of Californians. Likewise Upstate New York has seen a minor boost to its economy because of sales taxes paid by Big Apple escapees.
We are presently witnessing the cleavage of America into quasi-autonomous regions due to Blue-State mismanagement. As for these particular states, their dwindling economies are not doing their respective establishments any good. As for their political administrations, the outflow of refugees to Red-States means that the remaining political landscape becomes even more malignant. They are in fact, caught in a death-spiral.
The outlook is, therefore, bleak. This phenomenon will only accelerate, regardless of whether the Blue cities bring their rioters to heel. The damage to Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle (among others) is probably irreversible given that capital will not flow there for the foreseeable future. The situation also is complicated. The explosion of the inner cities is viewed by many of its denizens as a collective racial revenge against the urban white millennials who have gentrified the historic black neighborhoods. There is then a type of absurd, economic logic involved in the present mayhem: if nothing else, the riots depress property values, making future rents more affordable. That being said, the rioting has reached the point of destroying the available housing stock, an example (if there was one), of somebody cutting off his nose to spite his face. In other words, it’s a dicey gamble, one that may not work out in certain instances. (Detroit, for example, has never recovered from the riots of the 1960s.)
America, for all practical purposes, has been cleaved into a Blue-State/Red-State divide. To my mind, this allows it to escape any neat categorization along Orlov’s lines. This is a supreme irony: ordinarily the most stable nations are the most homogeneous. The United States, however, is far from homogeneous. Instead, it occupies a vast, continental expanse, hence, the mayhem that we have seen daily in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and others is almost completely absent in the suburban areas of the Blue States, as well as in the Red States, even in those states that have Blue cities. Dallas, Houston and Austin, for example, are peaceful and governable. St Louis, on the other hand, which is in a Red State, is as dystopian as Chicago, but not nearly as bad as East St Louis.
Nor is it a simple black/white, urban/suburban, race war. While Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit are largely African-American in population, Portland and Seattle –the epicenters of the current tumult–are the whitest cities in the nation. And as we are finding out, it is out-of-state, white agitators who are going into the inner cities and fomenting unrest. Blacks are being blamed for the mayhem, but it is young white millennials who have internalized the BLM-good/white-oppressor narrative, completely, and are acting upon it with murderous intent. Because they are not native to the inner cities, they leave the destruction which they have caused and go back to their native cities where they form the backbone of a new, anti-American political, narrative. A narrative, however, which will be confined to their cities, and not those in the Red States.
America, thus, can avoid the dystopian effects that engulf entire nation-states, such as Ukraine, Mexico or Somalia. This is because it is a confederation of fifty semi-sovereign states, each with their own history, culture, sets of laws, and unique demographic makeup. The vast, continental-wide expanse that is America, combined with the political independence of the various states, appears to have an ameliorative effect in this regard. The question at this point is how long can this tenuous set of circumstances last?
In my opinion, for quite awhile. If I had to guess, I’d say that the United States will not collapse into a coast-to-coast North American Somalia, mainly because the present mayhem is having a clarifying effect on the rest of the American polity. Even the Democrat Party operatives have come to the realization that the suburban, white, female demographic is becoming increasingly terrified of the rioting. Gun and ammunition sales have skyrocketed –even among formerly sympathetic liberals. Indeed, the present riots are the final nail in the coffin of gun-control as a political issue. Suburban whites are now doing what the Meso-American, Arab Muslim, and Asians urbanites (think “rooftop Koreans”) have been doing for some time: retrenching, retribalizing, and organizing.
None of this is ideal. It is, however, inevitable. American states will increase their autonomy and entire regions will band together for mutual support. If left to its own devices, these regions will function, for all practical purposes, like autonomous countries. Already, we are seeing this in ways that escape statistical documentation. Truckers from many Red States, for example, are refusing to go to Blue States that have declared their allegiance to BLM and its suicidal Defund the Police narrative. This will accelerate economic collapse of states such as California, which in turn will accelerate the out-migration that has been going on for several years.
That being said, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Left has overplayed its hand and that whatever sympathy for the late George Floyd existed, it has evaporated over the past two months. I, for one, don’t believe that the majority of people in Oregon are pleased with the incessant rioting and destruction that has taken place in their largest city. As such, I can easily envision a scenario in which the majority of people cast their secret ballots for the President’s reelection. Under such a set of circumstances, the ship of state can be righted.
Of course, other things would have to fall into place for a positive outcome to arise: things like the ability to assimilate foreigners, the desire for the reestablishment of sexual norms, and the increased valuation of blue-collar labor. (Ironically, it is a Trumpist Republican Party which is making this happen by bringing back manufacturing.) Even with the reelection of Trump, these are not sure things. If positive outcomes do not arise in an expeditious manner, then all a Trump reelection will have accomplished is buying more time –and throwing yet more monkey-wrenches into the process of Democrat-abetted somalification.
Nor can it be forgotten that the Executive branch is not impotent. It can stave off massive waves of violence, if and when it chooses. With Trump’s Executive Orders, he has essentially bypassed a hostile Congress. (It was through one such Executive action that he federalized the local police force in Portland, a stratagem which allows them to take the rioters straight to the Federal judiciary and immediate imprisonment.) That being said, the bypassing of the Congress is most unfortunate from a constitutional perspective, but nothing else is possible under the present circumstances. A Carteresque style of leadership, on the other hand, would hasten the destruction of our nation as it is. Trump is many things; being accused of being another Jimmy Carter is not one of them. Therefore, there is hope. A positive outcome is foreseeable but so is a negative one. Neither is inevitable at this point.
Orlov is not so sanguine. As noted earlier, as far as he is concerned, all of the above Stages are present in the United States. The only thing missing is a “humiliating military defeat” to push it over the edge into permanent collapse. Trump may have prevented this by not rising to the Pentagon’s bait. (Of course the Deep State always lies in wait, planning more military misadventures, for which the Corporate Media will provide the required cheerleading.)
As to why this is, permit me to go on a tangent:
Orlov states that “The function of the U.S. military at present is to intimidate other countries into letting the U.S. buy whatever it wants by printing U.S. dollars, as needed. Once their inability to intimidate the world into submission is gone…all that remain[s]…is a pile of worthless paper.”
In this, I have to agree. The present world economic system is based not on the dollar (strictly speaking) but the petrodollar. This system was set up by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger back in 1972, when they persuaded King Faisal ibn-Saud to accept all payments for his oil in U.S. dollars and to force the other OPEC countries to do so, as well. Soon, all international financial transactions for whatever commodity (not just oil) were transacted in dollars. Whenever some upstart like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi stepped out of line by asking for gold for their oil, they were quickly taken out.
This would explain the present Trump-induced panic in America by Pentagon types such as James Mattis and John Kelly. It would also explain the insubordination of Mark Esper, Trump’s secretary of defense and General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States, according to this Military-Industrial/Corporatist mindset, can not afford to not go to war. A failure to do so (for whatever reason) will cause Stage 1 to go immediately into play, which in turn would cause an irreversible cascade through the remaining four Stages. The reasons for war are immaterial: it can be a “war against terror” one day or “democracy in Ukraine” the next. The Wilsonian religion of the American Establishment still remains on its intellectual pedestal (even if his statues are not). The Military-Industrial Complex will see to that.
What we have begun to see under Trump is the decoupling of this phenomenon in at least two respects: that is his slow degradation of NATO and his evident unwillingness to engage in any further foreign military adventures. To my mind, all official opinion that is negative to the President, derives from these premises. This is what must be kept in mind when the Corporate Media carps incessantly about his “mismanagement” of foreign policy.
The Democrats, once the party of peace, have thrown their weight in the opposite direction. The initial Obamaite skepticism of foreign intervention has been cast aside –even by Obama himself. A Biden victory therefore would ensure continued American meddling abroad. (Indeed, America would revert to being a vassal-state of China.) That this would exacerbate the continued degradation of the American polity as described by Orlov is immaterial to the elites. Perhaps it is unimaginable to them. In any event, a national collapse could not be avoided no matter how much we believe that “it can’t happen here”.
A Trump victory, on the other hand, would validate his America-first worldview and we could thus hope for a cultural recovery or at the very least an economic one. Having said that, some states will not be able to avoid their inexorable collapse, which is already evidenced in the downgrading of the credit ratings of some of these states. Under such a circumstance –robust interior states/decrepit coastal ones–we could see increasing independence of the states and a strengthening of the Tenth Amendment.
None of this is ideal, but all-in-all, not a bad set of circumstances. If anything, a confederation of stronger states would not only devolve more power from Washington but make America less able to engage in foreign interventionism.
Again, not ideal but it may be the only way to stave off total national collapse.
Methinks it will all blow over when the Republicans take the House. My guess is that that will be checkmate.
I doubt we’re on the verge of some economic collapse. The economy has proved quite resilient to the Covid lockdowns. The riots will give Trump a serious edge in November. They’re planning on partying right up to election day. God bless em, they have no clue.
Much as I’d like to see it, I do not believe we will have a change in the form of our constitutional government. Too many Americans venerate the Constitution to allow for the possibility of replacing it under these circumstances. I just can’t see it selling and there would be widespread conservative revolt. So Trump’s probably not going to seize power.
But he should have all the room he needs with a Republican Congress. I think he’s simply going to turn them out of office and then consolidate power in the Republican Party. He’s packed the courts so the Dems will have no voice but the MSM.
With a Republican Congress, Trump can remodel America in his second term. I expect they will be very proactive throughout the four years. All the problems have been fleshed out and flushed out in this term. They will know how to eradicate the leftist virus. The Democratic Party just has the feel of a firm going out of business. Constant overreach and failed schemes plague them. Evidently they have no presentable bench and that’s how we got Sleepy Joe. They’re flaming out.
https://youtu.be/3cQNkIrg-Tk
Hopefully, the states will retain/regain the power that keeps our republic from crumbling into mob rule.
I agree with you that our states rights truly makes us unique. Without those rights, I believe democracy would have been just another failed experiment 100 years ago.
I will tip my hat to the better instincts of our Founders. The Electoral College and federalism in general have saved our bacon more than once, most notably in 2016. Only people who were paying close attention to the rhetoric coming out of the Obama Administration (Biden in particular) vis a vis “Russian election interference” appreciate how close to a real shooting war with Russia we came. Biden threatened nuclear war in an appearance shortly before the election, remarking with fake meekness that he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I’ve tried to find it several times and can’t locate it, I assume it’s been scrubbed. Obama is probably smarter than that, but Hillary is a trigger puller if ever there were one. You can see it in her eyes and you know it from the vindictively surreal push she has led since 2016 to resist and delegitimize Trump.
The Electoral College is doing precisely what it was intended to do. Hillary lost in 2016 because she lost the Rust Belt due to her globalism. The flyover states have interests at odds with the Northeast and Left Coast on the issues of trade and outsourcing jobs. The Electoral College simply made sure that Flyoverstan has a veto.
Something like that is going to play out again under the surface this year, but the wave is going to come from the riots and lockdowns. Americans know that this is not America and they are crystal clear that the Threat is emanating from the Left. That’s all they need to know.
Misha, I couldn’t have said it better myself. I well remember that interview with then-VP Biden and I thought to myself “WTF!?!?!?!? are we going to war? These guys don’t know what they’re saying!”
Is this it, Misha? https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/did-the-white-house-declare-war-on-russia/
This link describes a cyber-attack response to the hacks, not nuclear war.
The title of the article is “Vice President Biden announces a forthcoming covert strike against Russian president Putin and Moscow calls it a “declaration of war.”
What technology do you think we would use if we went to war with Russia, Michael? Bows and arrows?
Anyhow, that wasn’t the point of Misha’s piece. He was pointing out how Biden went from 0 to 60 with another super power over absolutely nothing.
Agreed. Any war with Russia will escalate to nuclear.
This video summarizes – in their own words – what the globalists intend regarding their ongoing American coup: https://2020electioncenter.com/watch?id=5f57eef9af4ce8069e6c6e46
Wow!
What you are witnessing is the slow realization on the part of the Democratic powers that be that they may be looking at a genuine Republican landslide. Their little theory to explain a front loaded Republican pseudo victory is probably mostly rationalization. It’s also why they’re projecting about Trump possibly not wanting to leave. They’re trying to create their own reality through the prophecy of words, exerting magical control over the future. It’s all quite pathological.
They want to soften the impact on election night and still preserve some room to maneuver in the aftermath. Yet the public will likely see an electoral tsunami for Trump and the Democrats will be left with saying, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”
You’re talking about a limited number of states that are actually in play where this will work itself out. Republicans will press for high standards to qualify legitimate ballots and Dems will press for the opposite. It may end up in the courts in more than one state.
My guess is, though, that there will be a canary in the mine which will enable us to see if it actually was close. If we see some reliably blue states flip red in inarguable proportions, ones that Trump wasn’t counting on or expecting, that will be the toll of the bell.
If you don’t think a landslide is possible, consider the view from thirty thousand feet. President with excellent record on the economy gets hit by the Covid plague and manages it with minimal grief, though much inconvenience. He’s on the side of getting back to normal and reopening the schools. Economy is rebounding aggressively. Lie after lie emanates from the left. Leftists riot for over a hundred days in a dozen major cities – hard leftists, “trained Marxists”. The Dems and the media refuse not only to condemn them but even acknowledge the fact of the rioting until after Labor Day. Who will forget scenes of burning buildings in the background with reporters insisting that the protests are “mostly peaceful”?
Basically all Dems have to offer is endless disease and rioting.
The Democrats could not do any worse if they were consciously and aggressively trying to lose this election. All that’s left is for Biden to get lost and be the subject of an “amber alert”.
Gail,
If I recall correctly, it was a one on one interview, looked like something you would see on late night/very early morning but it was during the day when I saw it. To be specific, the specter of nuclear war was raised. From what I recall, what he was saying in so many words was, “Hopefully we can avoid a First Strike scenario.” in a nutshell. It was at the tail end of the interview. Even raising the prospect seemed out of place.
I thought it was off the chain at the time. Russians take that kind of thing seriously. But I knew it was Joe Biden and that he “says things”. I just filed it in memory. Upon later reflection, it was damn reckless. As it turns out, the Obama Administration knew that, aside from some FB adverts, etc., low level stuff, “Russian interference” was all bs.
How much gall does it take to openly threaten another nuclear power with a possible First Strike in reaction to a non-existent provocation concocted for domestic consumption? I assume the Russians knew that it was just being played out for domestic politics. The tone of the interview was strange, almost upbeat or playful – faux child like sincerity. Maybe they were telegraphing not to take it seriously.
All very rational but let us remember one thing to remember is that trauma tends to live on in people regardless of outside reality. Like Gail said Trump lives rent free in these people’s heads but in a twisted caricature of reality that is self reinforcing.
W. B. Yeats. The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I live in the St Louis area. What you said isn’t untrue, but the big difference is geography. St Louis the city is only 66 square miles, which is really small. Then you have St Louis county, which is about the size of most counties. Broadly speaking, the southern and western parts are more white and the northern parts are black.
So yes, there’s lots of ghetto, but it doesn’t extend very far. You don’t have endless miles of ghetto like in Detroit and Chicago.
But then again, in the city itself, you’re never really safe, and a ghetto lite is always a few blocks from a wealthy area.
Someone once told me that everyone who lives in Atlanta is either black, gay or a snob. St Louis city is the same way. The working class is gone. It used to be a great place to get a blue collar job and raise your family. Their was a flourishing of arts, education and athletics.
The arts, education and athletics are mostly still here, but the rest of it is gone (though the cost of living is relatively cheap, at least compared to the Southern states where I’m from). St Louis city is where you move to when you’re young and want to party. There are perhaps a few neighborhoods that are exceptions, but overall you wouldn’t want to raise five kids here. I’ve also noticed that restaurants tend to be more like taverns.
So what’s the future of St Louis? They aren’t reproducing. It’s a transient population. How do you maintain a city when people move in and out? And what identity does the city have? It’s very different than the rest of Missouri. The unions are still strong, but the jobs are gone. The infrastructure is a crumbling pile of bricks. What does St Louis in 2020 have in common with St Louis in 1904 when they hosted the World’s Fair and the Olympics? Or St Louis in 1860 when it was the largest city in the Midwest?
It will have a similar future as other major American cities, except that its time as a major city has long passes. It used to be the fourth largest city in the country and had a big rivalry with Chicago, but now it’s largely forgotten. All people know it for is the stupid arch.
When the Left talks about “Nazis” and “Nazi Lives Don’t Matter” (see woman’s tshirt), they mean any random white person they encounter, even elderly people quietly eating dinner.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/09/fck-white-people-blm-biden-supporters-scream-elderly-couple-dining-outdoors-pittsburgh-steal-drinks-off-table-video/
Orthodox bishops wanting to sport such trendy attire while at their next BLM “protest” and/or Democratic Party speaking engagement can find it here:
https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/Nazi-Lives-Don-t-Matter-by-TheyServe/27654411.FB110
There’s also “By Any Means Necessary,” with sterotypical burglar mask, to signal your support for “mostly peaceful” solutions such as “Looting As Reparations” and “Loot It All Back.”
https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/By-Any-Means-Necessary-by-yahia001/55382640.NL9AC
Well, the left has misinformed people most terror acts are committed by street gangs not white supremacist. At the most, the left data shows only 800 acts of terrorist by either left and right. The left says the right is mainly to blame for these acts of terror, but in liberal cities like Seattle or Portland when a cop or another group is punch until they end up in the hospital these acts are not considered terrorism, but ordinary crimes. I’m saying that the right can get into trouble for just reading grafini in front of an abortion clini. Yes, this is considered terrorism by the data that the left uses. In fact lefist admit that the right wing racist groups have only killed 384 people since 1994 while gangs have killed 50,000.
As you noted, George, the federal nature of the US, however imperfect it now is, combined with the vast size, would classify us historically as an empire. The Western Roman Empire was overrun and destroyed while the East was flourishing. Empires fall progressively, and their constituent parts can hang on long after the overarching whole is gone.
We do have aspects of a strong unitary state however. The FBI certainly being the most powerful, such that even our presidents can’t touch it without getting JFK’d.
But while the fault lines are regional, they also run deeply through even small towns. Conflict will come eventually, and I would just say that for their own safety, everyone should live in a place where they are part of the majority.
So we don’t fit neatly into any category. It’s hard to know what will happen, but in every contemporary struggle in nation’s collapsing, it is the globalist interest being served. It’s wickedness.
I do expect the Floyd stuff to vanish after the election. This has been a test by the globalist interests to see where the population is at, as well as an attempt to take Trump down.
But while this is all happening, they’re still bringing in trannies to read to kids and brainwash the population with every vile thing. There is much to be on guard about.
The real problem is censorship by the tech firms. Little old me has had two accounts disabled by facebook. The BLm protests added to Facebook or Twitter censoring accounts more. Back in the good old George Bush days their was little censorship. I didn’t even talk about race issues but was critical or both left and right at times.
Tanya, Myst, Austin, Michael, Misha, et al:
Truly great insights! Thank you.
One of the best points was the overall strength of the economy. It’s amazing how it’s bounced back after months of lockdown and imposed austerity. I think of the Biblical story of Joseph who hoarded the wealth of Egypt during the seven fat years so that they could survive the seven lean years. Trump’s first three years were the vast “hoarding” of such wealth that it softened the blow of the Coronapocalype.
Truth be told, our national debt is horrendous as are the unfunded liabilities but for some reason, I find myself not worrying about them. I can easily see a regime in which the national debt will be repudiated and our being returned to a metallic-based constitutional system.
Yes, any president who does so can be “JFK’d” (BTW, JFK wanted to pay down the debt) but it’s all a matter of timing and context. From all the riot-induced hysteria I see, it looks to me that the Deep State is not as confident as they were in 1963. Then they could ride out the assassinations (JFK, RFK, MLK, George Wallace) and the riots because the US still had a large cushion of land in which the white majority could repatriate too and the nation still bought into the Vietnam causus belli but all those things are gone now.
The riots, reforms, alphabet-soup agencies, big-government, etc could be wrapped around the American flag but the anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-European monsters which liberalism has unleashed (they control all the commanding heights of our culture) has wiped out a broad, liberal, pro-American consensus. The curse of identity politics has now infected the white majority and so balkanization is almost inevitable.
So what’s a Deep State to do? The upper reaches of that hierarchy are going to double-down. They know that Trump will probably win a huge electoral college majority but they are waiting for the mail-in ballots to whittle that down. That’s one scenario.
Other, more patriotic elements within the Deep State are (and have been) quietly sabotaging the anti-Trump/nationalist agenda of their overlords. The military just signaled that they would not get involved in any electoral outcomes. This was a slap in the face to the Deep State operatives like Nancy Antoinette who have confidently stated that Trump will be lead out of the Oval Office in shackles.
That also explains the latest Atlantic story about Trump supposedly dissing the military. That doesn’t mean that the eight years of the Obamanation didn’t corrupt our military which is now all SJW-ey: feminized, homofied, and trannified. Long-term, I have little confidence that this horrible rot can be rectified.
That being said, the Oligarchy still needs a strong and encouraged military. It’s possible that they have seen that Obama’s “reforms” have done irreparable damage to it and they have Trump’s back.
Time will tell.
Well, its like the left going on and on about White Supremacy. The white supremist this year were lucky to have killed 25 people compared to street gangs of 5,000. The biggest threat is street gangs not white supremist.Also, the left refuse to say that about 3 of the killings in the protest were related to Antifa/black lives matter. The two in Seattle and the one in Portland. Also, Blacks and Latinos are killed 10 times more by gangs than cops. Why, you can support some reform of cops. The biggest problem is still street gangs.
P.S. thanks to all who took the time to read this piece. Rather long but sometimes, things just come out that way.
And Gail and I truly appreciate your insights and readership!
Prediction of the future is a risky business. Psychohistory is fiction and Toynbee had it nailed. The fate of civilizations is found in the process of challenge and response. Every civilization will face challenges unique to its society and geography, but the response will never be predictable because it is based on the solutions that individuals will create , the efficacy of those solutions, and the willingness of the civilization to adopt them. This is beyond any diagnosis of stages of collapse. I will not risk making any predictions but I will note that Trump was not predictable. I will also not that the “West”, despite some modern claims, is a civilization that began around the twin cores of Egypt and Sumeria and has a long pattern of the collapse of the core and the rise of the periphery. Looking at that long term pattern, it could be that it is now Russia’s turn.
I recommend Anthony Esolen’s book Up From the Ashes as a counter to way of the sheep that Orlav describes. As a exercise think of what the word polis means in Greek. We no longer have politics we have barbarian rule, the rule by rent seekers who steal our humanity from us and put us in a blender labeled ‘diversity’. From that blender they pour out Orwellian slaves. The anger and rage that is the by product of such processing is also packaged into pawns who become the shock troops to destroy and create fear.
“Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Lack of belief in the basic goodness of humanity. This is the terminal stage where faith in the basic goodness of humanity is lost. Interpersonal relationships are at a no-trust level where nominal allies turn on each other to fight over whatever remains. We can see this on a cultural level where black entertainers and athletes are not called into account when they brazenly spout anti-Semitic tropes.”
Yes, the first thing that comes to mind concerning BLM’s erosion of our belief in the basic goodness of humanity is some Bantu candor about Jews.
Stockholm syndrome is everywhere.
All is going as I have foreseen:
https://www.outkick.com/chiefs-fans-smart-to-boo-texans-and-dolphins-smart-to-disavow-empty-blm-gestures/
I imagine that within 5 years, most of these pampered prima-donnas will be standing in soup lines, cursing the day that they didn’t take Colin Kaepernick out back and give him a “talking to”.
Oh well.
Two of the highest paid people in the world: DeSauan Watson and Patrick Mahomes are “persecuted”. I wonder how Eldridge Cleaver feels about that?
It seems that I’ve entered into some bizarre hell-world in which Bill Ayers (an unrepentant Communist) and I (an unrepentant Patriot) agree:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/09/11/weather-underground-terrorist-bill-ayers-suggests-the-civil-war-has-already-begun-n917703
Oy vey ist mir!