Tag: decline and fall
Do Your Part
Everyone can’t afford the Library, which is why we’re working on getting paperback and free ebook editions going. But if we all attempt to preserve human knowledge, just maybe some of it will be saved somehow. Here is how to quickly and easily obtain a current backup of Project Gutenberg. If you want to help preserve the store of human knowledge, you can back up the entirety of the Project Gutenberg collection here. You don’t need to download all the .zim files, just the most recent one in the language you want.
- March 2023 English download (69 GB)
You’ll need to download Kiwix to read the file, which will provide you with the ability to export any epub or text file from it.
The Crisis of Empire
The first line of Col Douglas Macgregor’s excellent article is a bit of a misnomer. America’s national power has already been leashed and broken. What we’re witnessing now is the limits of the imperial USA’s power, which have been constricted by the incompetence and shortsighted mismanagement of the mostly foreign imperial elite.
The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking. Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial “vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy.
American national power is measured as much by American military capability as by economic potential and performance. The growing realization that American and European military-industrial capacity cannot keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment is an ominous signal to send during a proxy war that Washington insists its Ukrainian surrogate is winning.
Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources. While Russia’s implementation of attrition warfare worked brilliantly, Russia mobilized its reserves of men and equipment to field a force that is several magnitudes larger and significantly more lethal than it was a year ago.
Russia’s massive arsenal of artillery systems including rockets, missiles, and drones linked to overhead surveillance platforms converted Ukrainian soldiers fighting to retain the northern edge of the Donbas into pop-up targets. How many Ukrainian soldiers have died is unknown, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while another estimates about 250,000.
Given the glaring weakness of NATO members’ ground, air, and air defense forces, an unwanted war with Russia could easily bring hundreds of thousands of Russian Troops to the Polish border, NATO’s Eastern Frontier. This is not an outcome Washington promised its European allies, but it’s now a real possibility.
In contrast to the Soviet Union’s hamfisted and ideologically driven foreign policymaking and execution, contemporary Russia has skillfully cultivated support for its cause in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The fact that the West’s economic sanctions damaged the U.S. and European economies while turning the Russian ruble into one of the international system’s strongest currencies has hardly enhanced Washington’s global standing.
Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America. The global economic implications for the emerging Russo-Chinese axis and their planned industrial revolution for some 3.9 billion people in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are profound.
In sum, Washington’s military strategy to weaken, isolate, or even destroy Russia is a colossal failure and the failure puts Washington’s proxy war with Russia on a truly dangerous path. To press on, undeterred in the face of Ukraine’s descent into oblivion, ignores three metastasizing threats: 1. Persistently high inflation and rising interest rates that signal economic weakness. (The first American bank failure since 2020 is a reminder of U.S. financial fragility.) 2. The threat to stability and prosperity inside European societies already reeling from several waves of unwanted refugees/migrants. 3. The threat of a wider European war.
America was finally defeated once and for all in 1965. Everything that has happened since was literally a new imperial order, and it is the new imperial order that is jeopardized, not the conquered nation that will likely benefit from the collapse of the empire.
They also know that since 1965 Washington led them into a series of failed military interventions that severely weakened American political, economic, and military power.
Washington. The seat of empire.
Far too many Americans believe they have had no real national leadership since January 21, 2021.
They haven’t had it for a lot longer than that. Since at least 1965, in fact.
This confusion of America with its imperial elite notwithstanding, Macgregor’s piece is an astute one that accurately chronicles the challenges presently overwhelming the empire. And the empire is neither willing nor able to meet those challenges, because the weapons of influence, namely, money and media, are unable to effectively defeat the weapons of power, which are industrial capacity and military might.
Influence can only defeat power if morale is sufficiently lacking. But both the Russians and the Chinese collectively possess a formidable will to survive, which is why they will likely succeed where a complacent and degenerate America failed.
The Problem, Not the Answer
Voting Republican is not going to solve any – and I mean literally zero – of the growing problems facing a USA in deep decline. I described them as one faction of the “bi-factional ruling party” nearly 20 years ago and I see absolutely zero need to alter that description. They are arguably even more responsible for destroying the USA than the Democrats.
Republicans in the Idaho legislature are looking to approve a resolution that would ask President Joe Biden, as well as Congress, to flood the United States labor market with more foreign workers as well as to grant an amnesty that would give green cards to millions of illegal aliens holding American jobs.
A resolution, authored by State Sen. Jim Guthrie (R) and cosponsored by State Sens. Treg Bernt (R), Linda Hartgen (R), and Chuck Winder (R), asks the federal government to stem the flow of illegal immigration by requiring E-Verify for employers, among other things, while also expanding the number of foreign workers business can import to take mostly working class, blue-collar jobs.
The goal, the resolution states, ought to be to fill U.S. jobs with a constant stream of foreign workers. Amnesty, which would reward illegal aliens with work permits and green cards, should be part of any such legislation, the Republicans write in the resolution.
Yes, the Democrats are evil and stupid. But the Republicans are stupid and evil. Neither party is even remotely interested in defending the national interest of Americans.
The Folly of Ukraine
Karl Denninger explains how the imperial USA’s interventionist foreign policy is leading up to a Syracuse moment for the US empire:
It was only a matter of time before our so-called foreign policy turned into a serious problem with someone who can punch back.
For decades the United States has arrogated to itself the capacity to tell other nations who they should have as leaders. Who must run said nation, and who may not. The alliances that are to be coddled, and those that are forbidden. This is preposterous, of course, in that national sovereignty is precisely that, yet we have for decades believed we have the “righteous authority” to issue such diktat.
The CIA has toppled some 50 governments over time. Some more-or-less openly, some on the down low. Iran is an infamous one that ultimately blew up in our face. Deciding that the Iranian government was unacceptable because it expropriated the property of a British company, not even a US concern, we interfered, toppled the government and installed the Shah. This ultimately led to the Iranian revolution and the seizure of hostages at our Embassy, never mind a whole bunch of other terrorism.
We are very anti-narcotic and anti-serious drug — except, of course, when the use of the money generated suits us. Then its “oh well” or “oh, that’s sad”, even if the people that die from said drugs are in the United States, and they often are. Oliver North and the cocaine trade that was at the center of Iran-Contra anyone?
The United States was the initiator of events that led to the war in Ukraine. We were fully behind the overthrow of the government there back at the time of Maidan less than a decade ago. Said government was incorrigible, but that’s none of our business, right up until it apparently is and someone gets a wild hair in their backside about where someone’s using the money — or really, really likes the idea of being able to launder some as a US interest. Anything that gets in the way of that is, of course, unacceptable.
But for Maidan there would be no war in Ukraine. But for our continued attempts to do what we did with Turkey and missiles right near Russia there would have been no Cuban missile incident either. Yes, that was a crisis, but it was our making — not the USSR’s. Would you sit back and let some foreign nation put nuclear missiles in Mexico within a few minutes flight time of LA?
Didn’t think so.
Fundamentally the Ukraine problem lies there.
His analysis is correct, although I consider it to be partial and historically incomplete. Here is my not-unrelated perspective: the US empire, like most late-stage empires, is currently run by foreigners who have obtained power and influence through words, money, and the naivete of the native people. Those foreign rulers are now in the process of discovering the massive difference of being a parasite on another people and actually being responsible for all the various challenges of governing a major world power.
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
It should be no surprise that the endeavor is going about as well as it did for the adopted gamma child who is suddenly given responsibility to provide for and protect the entire neighborhood. The challenge is not just beyond his abilities, it is beyond his imagination. And now the people who have never successfully managed a single state the size of Delaware are intentionally seeking direct conflict with the oldest and most successful civilization on Earth as well as with the second-greatest military power in human history.
The odds are not good.
The Cupboard is Bare
Germany’s Defense Minister publicly admits that Germany is totally incapable of defending itself against military attack.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius claimed on Monday that the country’s army isn’t prepared to protect the nation against military aggression. The minister made the remarks during a meeting with fellow members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
“We have no armed forces that are capable of defending [the country], that is, capable of defending [it] against an offensive, brutally waged aggressive war,” Pistorius said.
The minister said the Bundeswehr is understaffed and under-equipped after decades of neglect from the federal government. Pistorius added that Germany would have to invest much more in its military in order to be up to NATO standards.
Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, the commander and highest ranking officer of the German army, told the DPA press agency on Sunday that the €100 billion previously promised by Chancellor Olaf Scholz would not be enough to make the country’s armed forces battle ready. He further added that “the army that I have the duty to lead is more or less bare.”
It appears NATO has succeeded in at least two parts of its mandate, which was keeping the Germans down and the USA in. But while it prevented the Soviets from invading, it clearly failed to keep the Arabs and Africans from doing so.
Clown World is going to crash so hard that it’s hard to even try to formulate an opinion about what is going to come next. There is absolutely no point in history that decadent and unarmed nations have ever fared well against the barbarians who decide to take their land, their women, and their gold.
If, by this point, you haven’t figured out that all of the ideologies of Clown World, both left and right, are intrinsically destructive, you simply aren’t paying attention. The cult of freedom and capitalism is every bit as satanic and self-contradictory as the coven of feminism and centralized control.
The Premier Fake Science Journal
The “science” published in this journal doesn’t even rise to the coin-flip level of professional peer-reviewed scientific publications:
Research scientists and doctors are always looking for grants. Not only so they have a job for themselves, but often can get funding for a place to live and transportation and if you string enough of them together from some very high end donors, you can live really well. The thing is those big donors all have pet causes, so you have to be able to match yourself with one of their causes and then make sure the big donor sees it. The donor wants to see that you have done the work. You also need to make sure your research fits what the donor wants to see to write the big check. Many times, the donor can be a big business who would like another business to be put out of business. If it can be done with some splashy research, that is scientifically backed and looks plausible, all the better. Then, the one big business can send out press releases talking about why some product is awful and then come in a week later with another press release about where consumers should go to spend their money.
The scientists and doctors need a publication that is willing to publish some really shaky science so the doctors can go to the donors and say look at this. We are published in this magazine that even you know. So, give us a bunch of money. The magazine has been around forever. It started as a magazine that just talked about general easy to digest science stuff for the general public and was sold on newsstands. Over the years, it has become more tailored to the scientific crowd. Most of you know the name of the magazine, especially if you were around when it came out and was sold everywhere. Now, it just takes huge amounts of money from businesses and scientists to publish poorly done research papers that most of the time are inherently flawed, but they make ten times what they ever did when it was just for sale as a regular magazine.
The magazine appears to be Scientific American, which rather like the old chestnut about the Holy Roman Empire, is neither scientific nor American these days. But it could just as easily be describing Popular Science, which is now equally devoid of genuine science. UPDATE: Or Nature, which also appears to be a candidate.
The New Atheists always failed to understand the relationship between religion and science. Not only is there no inherent conflict between religion and science, but increasingly, Christianity is proving to be an absolute requirement for science that can be successfully replicated.
Rare and Expensive
The US federal government is spending more than $250,000 apiece to create fake white supremacists:
They eventually offered me three options. One, I get to stay in the Marines, but I have to work for them wherever I get stationed as a confidential informant. They were prepared to offer me a quarter of a million dollars as a sign-on bonus. To be a rat,” he explained. “They said that if I chose to stay in the Marines, they would want me looking for and joining ‘terror cells’ within the corps.”
“The second option was I get kicked out of the Marines, but I get on their payroll to work for them wherever I go in the civilian world. They said they wanted me to join groups. As many as I could. They mentioned Patriot Front, active clubs, and even something called Atomwaffen by name. They wanted me to look for evidence of violence and extremism. The third option was nothing. I get kicked out and that was it.”
When the Justice Report asked Kaltenbach what his response was to an offer of $250,000 dollars, the Marine private replied, “I told them to get f—ed. I felt like I was trapped in the room and couldn’t leave, so I just started to shut down.” But despite his refusal, the FBI, according to Kaltenbach, kept trying to coerce him.
“Be on team America, be on our side, and help us. Right now, you’re probably 50% team America, but we need you to come over the edge and be 100% team America,” said Kaltenbach, explaining the way federal agents attempted to use Kaltenbach’s innate sense of patriotism to adopt a new life as a domestic spy.
What they now call “Team America” clearly has absolutely nothing to do with the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution anymore. The inversion is now complete.
The Paper Americans
By their own tongues they condemn themselves:
At my wife’s citizenship ceremony and all of our new Americans can’t stop talking about their homelands.
They may be US citizens, but they will never be sons or daughters of the American Revolution and they will never be the Posterity whose rights the Constitution was written to acknowledge, anymore than they will be Apache, Cherokee, or Navaho.
Nation literally derives from one’s birth. Not where one was born, but to whom.
The United States is in the process of collapsing because its people bought into the lie of civic nationalism. But a civic nation is no more a nation than social justice is justice.
No Reason to Vote Republican
But nothing for the American community. Or other communities of European descent. There is no reason for the Republican Party to exist anymore, as postponing the now-inevitable collapse serves no positive purpose. It’s counterintuitive, but the sooner the USA collapses, the better it will be for Americans.