The End Game

A popular topic on the Right for a long time has been the looming economic trouble that everyone agrees is inevitable, due to the spiraling debt. The political parties lost interest in the debt during the Obama years, but the problem remains. The Federal government adds another trillion or so every year and we’re just at the start of the great Baby Boomer retirement, which promises to bankrupt Social Security and Medicare. All of the things Reagan warned about, and did nothing about, are still there and getting worse every day.

Now, as I mentioned in the podcast last week, one reason no one cares about this stuff anymore is nothing every happens. The politicians never do anything to address the problem and the warnings about the disaster never come true. The 2008 mortgage meltdown can probably be blamed for the public’s indifference to these issues now, and maybe the politicians too, because the disaster was averted. That problem was worse than the predictions, but the consequences were nothing like predicated.

For the Right and increasingly for the Left, the hand-wringing over the looming financial troubles has always been a proxy for the general angst about democracy. After all, the primary driver for the debt trouble is the public’s insatiable desire for free stuff and the politicians need to give it to them. The creative ways in which the U.S. government finances its spending is driven by the need to feed the beast that is democracy. They say necessity is the mother of invention and we see that in our fiscal situation.

The thing is though, a financial crash, even a debilitating one, is never enough to bring down a nation. For example, the Long Depression lasted in the United States from 1873 to 1896, with the most severe portion being the first decade. The Great Depression lasted for over a decade and was followed by world war. There was never a fear of revolution in these economic disasters because the public trusted itself and the institutions of the nation to work through the problems. People just kept working the problem until it got better.

Revolts come when people no longer trust their rulers. The king bungles a series of issues and the people decide they need a new king. The ruling class gets reckless and lazy and they find themselves on the run. Revolutions come when the system itself is no longer trusted. The economic crisis that triggers it is just an excuse for doing what people have been thinking about doing for a long time. The radicals were able to overthrow the French monarchy because no one could think of a reason to not overthrow the system.

That’s the dangerous waters we seem to be in today. Now, elites love to confuse the institutions with the people occupying them. Despite being replaceable and often replaced, they see themselves as indispensable. That’s just their arrogance, not a sign the public has lost faith in the system. After all, no one trusts Congress, but the voters can replace all of the congressmen with more trustworthy people in a series of elections. Is that a loss of faith in the institution or just the normal process of democracy?

Still, there is a growing distrust of the system and it is something you see in the Progressive coalition, Trump voters and the Dissident Right. The reasons are different, but all around, people are losing faith in the system itself. Team Brown wants to begin the great replacement today and they see the system as a hindrance to their efforts. The MAGA-pedes see the system as an impediment to Trump’s reform efforts. The Dissident Right sees the system as part of the cancer that is destroying white society.

Cultural discontent is not a new thing, so it is temping to think that we are reliving the period from the 1970’s into the 1980’s. Smart people in the Nixon years thought the country was headed for civil war. By the middle of the 1980’s everyone was happy again due to the robust economy. Trump’s approval rating is his highest as the economy is finally showing that old dynamism again, but people are even more angry now than before the election. Maybe this time is different and a good economy is not enough.

Of course, the troubles half a century ago were different than today, despite the similarities. The culture war of the 60’s and 70’s was between white people in a country that was 90% white. The fight today is between whites and non-whites in a country rapidly moving to majority-minority. Then we have the brown waves of migrants washing up on the southern border, that serve as a daily reminder of what the future holds for white people. This is a very different crisis than we saw in the 60’s.

History buffs like to look at the French Revolution for clues as to how the American experiment ends. The alt-right thinks the interwar period in Germany is a good model for what comes next. Of course, the Roman Empire is always a handy example. All of that is probably wrong. In fact, the alt-right is laughably wrong about what comes next. The better example may be the Holy Roman Empire. The slow disintegration of that political construction is a less glamorous story, but it may be a more relevant one for us

After all, America has always been a multi-cultural empire. It was just confined to this continent and composed of white people. Even today, the cultural difference between the people of New England and those of the Midwest are obvious. The whites of the west coast are wildly different in temperament than the whites of New York. When someone from the Northeast visits Texas for the first time, they almost always say that they feel like they are in a different country. That’s because Texas is a different country.

Since Gettysburg, American has been a collection of cultural regions held together by the Yankee hegemony. The rest of America has functioned like Puerto Rico to the winners of the Civil War. That is, they retained some local autonomy, but were never allowed to have a say in the big issues. A fun way to see this is to to examine the list of President before the Civil War and after the Civil War. Heck, the GOP is a party based in the South and Southwest, yet the President is the quintessential New Yorker.

Maybe instead of a dramatic collapse or a great revolution, maybe the future for this empire is to just stagger along from one crisis to the next, losing a little bit of influence here, a little bit of land over there. A long, episodic process where the American Empire slowly disintegrates, returning to its natural parts. A generation from now, America will be out of Asia. Another generation and Europe is free. All the while the role of the central government recedes domestically as the local cultural regions re-assert their authority.

98 thoughts on “The End Game

  1. Z-Man, you said something very interesting: “Revolutions come when the system itself is no longer trusted. The economic crisis that triggers it is just an excuse for doing what people have been thinking about doing for a long time.”

    And the Left (mostly) has been working very hard to undermine societal trust – turning is from a functioning “high trust” society into a sniping “low trust” one. And it’s been deliberate. It’s just one axis of their multi-prong attack on America specifically, and the West generally:

    http://redpilljew.blogspot.com/2018/04/socialisms-gateway-drug.html

  2. Fact is nobody has any idea what’s going on. The US has at least 21 Trillion Dollars unaccounted for, either 21 Trillion Dollars is being funnelled into a parallel civilization or (more likely) the accounting is so bad nobody knows what happened to 21 Trillion Dollars. The European Union has never managed to get its accounts signed off, nobody knows where the money really goes.
    In these circumstances all the prognostications about the economy are simply made up stuff. There are no hard facts to work from. It could go on this way forever it it could implode tomorrow but nobody has any way of knowing because it’s impossible for anybody to know. It is impossible for anybody to know.

  3. Nah, this is biblical any way you look at it. Things move so much faster than in years past. A slow decline is impossible.

    • Are things really accelerating? Think about it. 50 years ago in 1968 I was in junior high school. Bombs were going off everywhere, blacks were rioting and burning down LA, Detroit, etc. Over 55,000 young men were dying in a useless war. Major political figures were being asassinated, while NYC police were as corrupt as in Mexico City. Gas was soon to be rationed while a new President was clearly going to be impeached and removed from office. Yet we manged to calm down, endure 18% interest rates, elect Jimmy Carter and peacefully go about or decline.

  4. The past is not prologue. We get it. But don’t think for a moment you really got a handle on what’s going to happen.

    That said, the economy(FIRE industry in particular) is rigged and has been for decades. It’s the only way to keep the welfare/warfare superstate from blowing up and tearing itself apart. You really can’t bet on a game that is so rigged as to not be a game and win. This is why it’s made a lot of very smart people look bad.

    Now it almost blew up on it’s own thanks to the crooks on Wall Street who got to greedy. It was only saved by a multi-trillion dollar “gimme dat” to a bunch of sick banks like BofA and Wells Fargo to keep from blowing up.

    When it blows up again, it’s doubtful they print enough paper and digital currency to make the super rich whole again without seriously f**king up the economy. It’s so much bigger today than it was in 2008.

    As a omen of things to come some banks in Florida are already giving workshops to illegals and blacks on how to apply for NINJA zero down home financing.

    Lastly, things will get very bad for our side. Los Angeles just charged two member of RAM with inciting a riot at a local demonstration where they punched some Leftist punks. The DA is trying to put them away for 10 years. That’s more than your typical drunk driver who runs some one over and runs away or what gang members get for drive killings.

    RAM is just white man’s fight club.

    The Feds and local law enforcement are going to make examples of whites who don’t accept their fate as cattle waiting to be butchered. To them we are the new militia that has to be crushed like they did to the militias that formed during the 80’s.

  5. I think the zman has it nailed as to our future. Real revolution is a quaint thought for armchair warriors. The reality is that almost no one in this nation wants to gun down their neighbors or live in the woods for more than a long 3 day weekend. We have incredible natural resources on this continent and no one will starve or miss a tank of gas. Slow demise over time seams inevitable.

  6. “A long, episodic process where the American Empire slowly disintegrates, returning to its natural parts” I hope you’re right. But its natural parts and local cultural regions will be under constant pressure from Vandaleros and Gothicos, who are themselves running from the Hundurans, crossing the Danube as it were.

    When Texas becomes even more of another country, we remaining Texas Romans will head north with our women and wagons and weapons. And since property was cheap down here, we won’t show up with a million in equity to get us settled, like the Californians do. The remaining natural parts and cultural regions such as the northern high plains and mountain states and the research triangle probably won’t be that happy to see us coming over the horizon. I shall feed my hogs on Yankee flesh grown fat with leisure.

  7. The elites are a known quantity. The only question is how long until it’s not safe to be white in your country and what will you do when Israel is the first ally of China?

  8. Trying not to comment, but this is laugh out loud funny.

    Breathless radio news on the Progress station:
    “The mail bombs all had a return address, and each bore the SAME return address!!”

    They’re just rubbing your face in the shit now, daring you to say something. FFS.

  9. Just a couple of comments on first read:

    Some would say the 2008 Mortgage fiasco was not a “disaster averted,” but a giant can of gelignite kicked down the road a bit, and was, is and remains an inevitable disaster.

    Yes, there is a great attraction for folk to over-dramatize the end game, putting all in terms of polar conflicts that are easy to imagine, play out, and administer imagined justice to. But that is not the way things ever go down, since reality is complex, and we play monday morning quaterback after action to piece together what apparently has occurred. I’ll go with the long goodbye as well. Like Britain’s post-colonialism, but written larger.

  10. What’s coming is the decline of safety and security. When women get scared the feminists will first throw tantrums, then shut up real fast when they realize white men can’t ‘fix it’ and no longer wish to try.

    On a racial level, I predict balkanization. I am not certain of the granularity though.

    There are a lot of big dominoes that can fall. Some of them will. It could be a slow decline or a very rapid collapse. It wouldn’t surprise me if a major war is kicked off just to distract the populations from domestic issues.

  11. In the 20th century Russia proved, with tens of millions of lives, that Communism doesn’t work. “Dodged a bullet there, glad I’m not Russian” I said.

    But I’ve got a bad feeling that America is going to prove, in the 21st century, that multiculturalism doesn’t work, with similar losses. Maybe don’t dodge the bullet this time.

    • Fear not, a lot of smart people have been analyzing and planning for various civil unrest and rise-of-tyranny contingencies for a long time now. The present is changing so fast that the future of civil war will not likely resemble anything from the past. At the root, our human species is rapidly degrading due to an unprecedented technological environment that is in many ways the antithesis of the natural environment of our evolutionary past. Natural selection evolution purged unfit traits whereas technology and memetic evolution maximize the retention of detrimental traits. Any solution has to address that problem.

      • A “preppers” cable TV channel, covering all aspects of getting ready, would be a ratings juggernaut. You heard it here first.

  12. Gosh, the way things are going, would it really take another generation or so before America is out of Asia and Europe? We are bombarded with crises and crazy things happening in our country on nearly a daily basis so it’s hard to imagine it will take anywhere that long. As I write, a flurry of packages supposedly containing explosives or IED’s or explosive powder were received by a number a people, a who’s who of uber-swampy neoliberal globalists: George Soros, the Obamas, the Clintons, CNN attn John Brenan [sic], Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Holder. Who else might get a package? It’s hard not to think this is a leftist false flag unleashed to garner support for Democrats and generate fear of violent right-wingers/pro-Trumpers as we approach the mid-term elections just 2 weeks away. I’m sure they’ll try to indicate a right-winger behind these mailings but so far the political violence I’ve seen is virtually entirely coming from the left, so it’s difficult to believe this came from the right wing. But maybe it’s the first?

  13. Nothing last forever neither will we. We are well beyond the tipping point for restoration of control over the federal government’s continued growth, spending and power.

    The trick now is to enjoy our current standard of living while it last, enjoy our families and friends, a good cigar, steak, bourbon and a beautiful country sunset. Put some preps aside so if the collapse happens in our life or our children’s lives we have some preparations to make their lives easier and sustainable.

    The world will roll on until the sun burns out.

    • I read Heilein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a teen, and it has informed my world view ever since. Basically, you can rail against life’s inequities, or you can accept things as they are, work the existing system to your benefit as best you can, and be happy.

  14. It seems possible to me that the future GOP geographical area of dominance will be a “white triangle” running from Western NY state to northern Alabama/ Mississippi and then northwest to the “American Redoubt.” The GOP of the future will not be centered on sunbelt boom towns, says me.

  15. A debt crash will essentially be a repeat of Germany in 1923 or what Argentina experiences about every 20 years, most notably in 2001. About a decade ago I expected the debt crash to occur in the early 30’s, similar to Vox Day’s timeline. However, since that time I’ve become aware of several things that mitigate it.

    First is the fracking revolution that has essentially turned us into “Saudi America”. Second is the fact that the Federal government has between $40-60 Trillion in assets. mostly in the form of land ownership in the Western states and Alaska. Third is that the estimated market value of the off-shore oil and gas leases (both east and west coasts) is around $120 Trillion. Lastly, in tandem with the fracking revolution is the manufacturing revolution of automation, robotics, and 3D printing (additive manufacturing) that will makes us both an Asian export manufacturing economy along with being “Saudi America”.

    All of these together will kick the debt can down the road another 20 years, at least. So, the debt crash might not come until the 2050’s or 2060’s.

    Of course, all of this presupposes that the left (democrats) do not fuck these things up over the next 20 years.

    There is another factor that I have become aware of only in the last month. This is senolytic therapies that offer the potential of cheap anti-aging that could radically reduce health care costs in the next 5-10 years. I started my first self-experiment with Fisetin last week and finished this week. I am doing another 3 month experiment with a Quercetin/Tocotrienols, which I also started last week. I will also do another 3 month experiment with Centrophenozine for Lipofuscin removal starting next January (once IO completed my second senolytic experiment). All of these are cheap and, if they work (and I will know by spring of next year) offer RADICAL potential for improved health and, by extension, our nation’s finances.

  16. ” There was never a fear of revolution in these economic disasters because the public trusted itself and the institutions of the nation to work through the problems.”

    Please revise. There was the Big Red Scare of the 1930’s that at least spooked the Repubs.

    • Very true. This was what drove the CCC and other jobs programs for the millions of unemployed men.

      You did not want millions of starving and destitute men doing nothing because they are prime revolutionary material under the right charismatic leader. Say like Huey Long who scared the f**k out of the D.C. mandarins.

      Zman underestimates, that Communism was very popular among the educated people at the time, many even went to Russia to help Stalin. Hell even Nazism was popular. Both were seen as solutions during the GD to our shuttered economy.

  17. We are in the beginning stages of a migration age. African hordes will soon join the Hispanic horde as a massive driver of unrest.

    All of this is happening while America is forced to retreat from the world. A lot of shit will hit the fan in the 2030s. Americas debt problem will hit hard in 2033. Texas turns blue in 2032. Hell, internationally Turkey will become de facto Kurdistan in 2038. China will become the largest economy sometime in the 2030s.

    Past historical events provide little insight as every region of the world is having problems within a decade.

  18. the primary driver for the debt trouble is the public’s insatiable desire for free stuff and the politicians need to give it to them.

    Hmmm I don’t recall having an insatiable desire to send my tax dollars to Honduras, or Israel, or any of the other hundred countries we send foreign aid to. Nor did I have a desire to keep US troops stationed in Europe so the Western European powers can spend their tax dollars on education and medical care for their citizens, instead of spending on their own defense.

    If we told all the countries that whine about us to piss off and take care of your own problems, maybe our budget would be smaller.

  19. That’s why we call it “decline and fall”. It wouldn’t be a “decline” if it immediately fell apart. I’ve tried often on other media to explain that “financial collapse” doesn’t mean that every single U.S. resident suddenly can’t afford anything, Venezuela-style, it just means lean times, an extended Great Depression.

    Revolutions always move society farther left, so if America had another revolution it would probably look exactly like Mao’s cultural revolution, because there’s no longer anything in between. The balkanization model is the most optimistic outcome, but rival empires – namely China and Russia – will try to exploit the chaos if that happens. Air power, and the internet, make this collapse potentially a lot more dangerous than historical ones.

    • The Left is trying for a Cultural Revolution. The difference is that too many Americans are armed. Why they hate ours guns so much.

    • Another factor, making this collapse potentially a lot more dangerous, is the unprecedentedly-complex JIT system of delivering necessities (incl. spare parts for key equipment).
      If memory serves, the Brit gov’t recently caved to striking truckers very fast, as meager warehouses/ stockpiles were almost empty.

  20. Well, in defense of the inter-war Europe as a model, what you describe as America sounds a lot like the Austro-Hungarian empire. And we know how that turned out.

    • Somewhere I have a long post on the topic. Comparing this age to interwar Germany falls apart quickly. The alt-right likes the fascist aesthetic and what they view as the masculine nature of fascist politics, but that says more about the emasculation of males today, than anything else. Millennial males have grown up being bossed around by women, so they embrace, at least aesthetically, that which offers relief from their matriarchal oppression.

      I suppose you could argue that the alt-right, like fascism, is a reaction to radicalism, but employing the same tactics as the radicals. The Bolshevik use of street violence was met with fascist street violence. Feminist street theater and cry-bullying is met with meme wars and demands for free speech. It’s a bit a stretch, but maybe.

      • The fact we can’t have a public gathering without Lefty goons being bused in to beat the shit out of a bunch of aspie whites sort of puts a kibosh on your ‘ notion.

        Hell even the wimpy “Proud Boys” elicit this response.

        And if the Dems win in 2020, they’re gonna being looking for serious payback.

  21. There will be a financial crisis (largely driven by the unfunded pension liabilities more so than the national governmental debt), but it will just ratchet down standard of living and the productive element of society will complain, work harder, and learn to live on less. It will be the human parasites (addicted to government gravy) that will feel the existential threat and rally for violent action to keep their welfare fix coming. These poor souls no longer possess the ability to support themselves and nature has historically purged them from the gene pool. Chaos will concentrate in the large cities and civilization will largely retreat to rural areas.

    • The crisis will emerge in the 2020s, possibly started by turmoil in one or two of the BRICS. A recession is overdue, and almost certain by 2022. The real question is whether the entitlements collapse before enough wealth from automation is produced to paper them over.

      On another perspective, the alleged Malachi prophecy says we are on the last Pope, and Issac Newton predicted the apocalypse by 2060.

  22. So is Trump the current version of the 1970’s Nixon or the 1980’s Reagan? The Left burnt the house down over Nixon, but mostly stood back and allowed Reagan to do his thing. My take is that Trump could bring us 5% economic growth, an elimination of the budget deficit, and world peace, and the Left would still be burning down the house, maybe with even greater intensity. The Left will never give anyone on the other side the room it gave Reagan to do his work, as they can’t risk our having any success there.

    I think the basic philosophy of the Left is that of the shiftless future heir, who has no compunction over helping himself to his elderly parents’ assets, because “they have more than they need, and they won’t need it much longer anyway”.

    • There are other differences. The cultural revolution of the 60’s and 70’s was all on the Left. The New Left revolted against the New Deal consensus. Just as the neocons bolted the Left over Bolshevism, the Buckleyites bolted the New Deal coalition over the culture war. What’s happening today is a Progressive reaction to the populist revolt. There are some of the same features today that were present fifty years ago, but below the water line the difference are significant. Race being the most obvious example.

      Sometimes, there is no useful historical analogy. Was Nixon like some previous figure? Was Reagan? I think Trump is much more of a student of history than he gets credit. He knows the Left, for example, is trying to do to him what they did to Nixon. He also is an admirer of Reagan, which is why Trump focuses on practical issues so much. He knows the booming economy inoculated Reagan from the Left. But, Trump is in a different country from Nixon and Reagan.

      • “What’s happening today is a Progressive reaction to the populist revolt.”
        This differs greatly from the Nixon or Reagan years, when,
        for the most part, the Right sat back and let the leader do his thing, trusting that he would protect *them* from the most dangerous Lefty excesses.
        And, these excesses were mostly less personally dangerous to the typical Righty, than are the current waves of PC pushes for “always believe women”, etc.
        .
        Now, it’s clear that Trump was, from the start, too besieged to be able to do much to quickly help the typical Righty.
        Moreover, we now see him confronted with (the first of who-knows how-many) Caravan Invasions.
        My sense of things is, that the grass-roots Right is much more personally aroused, than they were for Nixon etc.

        • Another major diff:
          In Nixon’s day, Far Left power was mostly limited to a few places, e.g. campuses and ghettos.
          Nowadays, their power extends to so many major institutions, esp. workplaces, where Trump can’t just step in and clean house (e.g. by sending troops).

          • Indeed, the Far Left’s power in the Dem party was far less in the 70s, than today.
            Nowadays, a “Bible-thumping” J. Carter would come nowhere near the Presidential nomination, much less be able to rally the party, to help put him in the White House.

        • Yet another key diff:
          Nixon’s 1968 victory was no surprise at all (only coming close to going Dem in the last few weeks).
          What “Resistance” there was, involved continuation of an already ongoing war, (and the whole Establishment) far more than Nixon personally.

          Whereas, Trump’s win over HRC was the Mother of All Upsets, and, to Lefties, screamed out for scapegoats, akin to “who lost China” in 1949, or “who stabbed Germany in the back, esp. at Versailles” in 1918-19.
          And, to the Left, Nixon didn’t *personify* the whole Establishment (more so than, say, LBJ), to anything like the degree to which Trump personifies the Deplorables.

      • I am specifically addressing the statement “By the middle of the 1980’s everyone was happy again due to the robust economy”. (Don’t you love it when people jump all over a minor point in a great essay?). Not everyone was happy. The Left was (IMO) truly surprised that Reagan’s strategy on so many things actually worked. They had been sitting back, waiting for things to continue to fall apart, and they didn’t. Reagan’s successes were inconceivable in their Lefty world view bubble. This time around, the Left is taking no chances. They still believe Trump’s strategies won’t work (Obama in 2016, on the economy—“What are you going to do, wave a magic wand?”), but they are taking no chances this time around.

  23. I think this is best case for our side. Like Jared Taylor says, if we can just carve off a piece that is all we need.

    Vox Day talks about cataclysmic event with casualties is the 100s of millions. I just don’t see that. I think you look to the old Yugoslavia, some conflict, a bit of ugliness and then separation.

    It is a big continent and we are a resourceful people. I think once the Federal government gets sufficiently weak there will be opportunities for relatively peaceful secession.

    But that is just a hope.

  24. The preferred and possibly inevitable solution is geographic separation within the present US. The Mississippi River is made to order. Who wants to spend the next 20 to 50 years constantly arguing with an increasing population of morons and illiterates?

    But more practical and constructive, would be for US progressives and leftists to simply emigrate to Western Europe. Western European nations aren’t repopulating. Their leaders tell their people they need to welcome culturally and racially foreign peoples from Africa and the Middle East to keep the Ponzi scheme of social benefits running. Why do that and settle for low IQ people and increased crime rates? We have at least 160 million unhappy socialist wannabes in the US. Many are highly educated and creative people, and most are at least minimally Western in culture. Also, practically all are fluent in English and/or Spanish. Let the Western European nations drop their current migrant importation plan, and instead open their countries up to US emigration. Europe’s population death spiral would be halted and our leftists could walk into their ready-made socialist utopias. Many of us would be happy to help subsidize the relocation costs for our less fortunate leftists. Then the rest of us left behind can get back to living in a free country.

    Honestly, it’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

    • Well, jeez, that would be great, but…

      Perhaps a more realistic plan is state referendums on independence. There’s already institutional machinery in place, and of course the states reflect historical and cultural entities.

      Also, we can see that while the leftists scheme for totalitarianism every moment of every day, rightists (1) often have “normal” lives and (2) are somewhat demoralized and lazy in political matters. Note that the big things recently, Trump and Brexit, were both achieved simply by … Dirt People voting. Maybe that’s all they/we can do. Hence, referendums.

      (But note, both Trump and Brexit may be nullified by the entrenched establishment.)

      If states can become independent, then sorting can take place, as the more left-wing states become welfare and pozz magnets. Ultimately some of the states could try to “pull a Hungary.”

      Just thinking out loud.

      • At this point, it’d likely have to be county by county — “The American Free Counties Movement”. Unfortunately, most states have isolated, but controlling population strongpoints …. most all Democratic sumps (except in OK, and maybe WV).

  25. You’ve pretty much described the long, slow process of economic dislocation, military disintegration, political disengagement, and burgeoning regional authority which marked the last 100 years of Roman rule in the West.

    • Epamonidas: I am reading Gibbon now, and yes, we mirror the Roman Empire. On the bright side, centuries from now, Washington, DC should be a wonderful tourist attraction.

      • I’ve been reading Gibbon too, and it really brings home how the Empire was culturally and economically hollowed out, and subject to ambitions of aggressive “leaders.” We are going in that direction.

  26. The problem with the “glass half full” slow decline prediction, is that the US military is glue holding this whole world order together. And young, white males from the South and Appalachia are what holds our military together. Things in the Continental USA might slowly disintegrate, but when the world realizes our true weakness, the global order will change in a rush.

      • My good friend is a Command Master Sergeant for a 1-Star Brigade in the middle west, and he says that 90% are redpilled for Team Freedom. I asked about the other 10%, and his response was “Those cheese-eaters, politicos and hob-nobbers will all be ‘taken care of’ should the time come.”

  27. There are a large number of people that make their living off the government and or make their living due to government regulations that do not realize that they are government employees. The entire medical industry, easily 90% of the engineers, “researchers”, “technology”, most of the housing industry, our entire financial industry, and on and on and on. These people are in for a surprise.
    It’s simple 1+1 math and there is no way the current system escapes the debt bomb. That which can’t be paid, won’t be paid. Unlike you, I see technology (not google/facebook/twitter) creating real world deflation, but not without social (racial) stability. So, war, then tech, then stability (If we survive).

    • Well, I’m sympathetic to the argument that the system has become hopelessly complex and that some small change could set off a dangerous reaction. I’ve written about this. As systems grow in complexity, they become less predictable. That makes system administrator more cautious and less open to reform. That makes the system more brittle.

      All empires are built on a growth model. They keep growing until the cost of growth exceeds the benefit. They collapse when the cost of maintaining the empire exceeds the benefit. The collapse does not have to be sudden. The Ottoman and Holy Roman Empires slowly dissolved. Even the British Empire retreated in fits and starts.

      • Late last night I was watching the local antenna PBS station (don’t judge sometimes I crave a good period drama). They had a program covering Kentucky’s pension problems. It was written and directed from the viewpoint of the poor poor teachers, firemen, and police. The claim, not completely unfounded, was that the evil finance industry stole their retirement. The truth is that their retirement was never fiscally possible even without the crash of 2000 and 2008 or the theft. The governor told them, look, there’s no money, there’s not going to be any money, it’s either eliminate virtually everything else in government and pay your pensions, or new hires will have to be put in the 401k system. The unhinged screaming, screeching, and “protesting” was, I’d like to say surprising, but I can’t, insane. These people are willing to burn everything down to get something that simple math says they aren’t going to get anyway. When things get scarce humans revert to tribe, and tribes go to war.

      • The risk we have is a new one, and that is the financialization of everything. We got a taste of the violent deflationary aspect of it in home values in 2008. With the ability to “mark to market” of every last thing, and then ascribing the market value to the “last trade of the day”, you set yourselves up for a violent deflationary episode. Think of how home values are now followed on Zillow. Pixels on a screen, calculated from an algorithm. That is how your home is “valued”. This comes out of financial instruments trading minute-to-minute for their own relative value, not for any real world need. The real world need sets up some sort of intinsic underlying value to the instrument (what it actually costs to purchase land and build a house, for example), but financial trading for its own sake has none. Dollar bills started out as convertible proxies for silver and gold, but now stand for nothing but themselves, again, pixels on a screen. When people want out of financial instruments and want to convert them to “real” things like shelter, food, and water, then the financial instruments disappear, along with a big chunk of our “economy”. Then you get barter and a huge drop in economic well being. The turn is called the Minsky Moment, and it is the flip side of the good that credit can bring over time. It is what we are set up for, and we are now being trained, as a culture, to gouge each other’s eyes out for what we want and what we need. It will not end well, especially as most people have no idea what is going on and why they think and act as they do. Like fish unaware of water.

      • The US empire is based on dollar hegemony. A rising dollar is going to bankrupt much of Central America and South America (again…) as they struggle to repay dollar-denominated loans. I expect many of these countries to adopt the dollar as their official currency, which will satisfy the growth requirement for the dollar. Adopting the dollar has worked well for Ecuador and Zimbabwe.

        This empire still has some legs…

  28. In the MENA countries Millions of people living on the thinnest of margins, one bad grain harvest from convulsing into anarchy and starvation.
    A guaranteed failed state on the US southern border.
    Last time Mexico had a revolution, they lost a tenth of their population.

    There will be no good options going forward.

    • It has been speculated that the divorce is fraudulent, designed to remove her from liability in the event that Spencer loses the civil trial in Charlottesville. It also allows her to go back to Russia where she can’t be extradited. Spencer went into a real life version of “Burn After Reading”.

    • Wait. Wife beating is wrong now? Somebody needs to release a PSA or something. What will I do with all these white t-shirts?

    • These people who chime in like this always seem to be like cartoon characters … two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. “… the party of racism and wife beating ….”. What was that acronym — NPC??

    • Blacks are in a class alone for wife/gf beating and domestic violence of all kinds, so much so that this is considered normal in the black culture, because it is. Black Republicans–all several of them–excepted. .

    • Racist! (because white people doing what every other ethnic group doing – Promote their group’s wealth and power)

      Sexist! (because white men are not doing much for white women, Let’s forget about Foreign culture consider women as property )

      xenophobia! (That’s right, Chinese and many foreign countries have no border and love “out-group”)

      yelled an ethnic slur at other is not an argument

  29. Agree with the model of imperial retraction and regionalism. Part of the engine behind international retraction will be the interbreeding and assimilation of the ruling elite, with a resultant loss of impetus for imperial ambitions.

  30. Your last paragraph is actually kind of optimistic. I don’t think it will happen this way because the left has gone bonkers and seems perfectly willing to fight those of us who don’t believe their crazy notions.

    • The crucial question is whether the saner Democrats (there are a few) can rein in their crazies. If the crazies cost the Dems the House in the next election (as is looking increasingly likely
      https://www.foxnews.com/politics/early-voting-tallies-point-to-strong-gop-enthusiasm-dulling-dems-hopes-of-blue-wave)
      this might happen, and the US might stagger along for a few more years. If not, a semi-peaceful split or a civil war becores the most likely outcome.

      • We shouldn’t want “the saner Democrats reining in their crazies”. We should the hope the Dems get crazier and crazier the next two weeks. Then maybe more normies will see how screwy the Dems are, and vote responsibly.

    • Some crucial diffs between now and the ’60s:
      1) back then, politicians didn’t let the passions among the masses poison their personal interactions.
      JFK and Goldwater (and even McGovern) had served in WWII, and had a fairly-close friendship, lasting until JFK died.
      Goldwater had (so I understand) far more hostility toward Nixon, than toward any Dem.

      The last gasp of that tradition, even in the historically collegial Senate, was probably Hatch and Ted Kennedy, and the obit for that tradition came from Graham in the Kav-Ford hearing, when he ripped into the bunch of the Dems, and declared “God, I hate to say it, because these have been my friends”.

      2) The culture war of the 60’s could be, and WAS, hugely diffused, by Nixon’s ending the draft and (almost all of) the Vietnam War, and (as a bonus) going to China.
      Nowadays, there’s no obvious comparable moves that the establishment can make, which could have any hope of diffusing the current culture war, as effectively as was achieved by the Nixon policies just listed.

      3) Small-unit guerrilla warfare strikes are much easier now.
      Social media now enable Smart Mobs to ransack “enemy” outposts (incl. dept. stores), and heed lookouts’ texts about approaching cops, before the cops arrive to arrest the perps.

    • I’m skeptical about the predictions for the coming election. All the normal metrics say it should be a status quo midterm. Sure, the Left is angry, but they are always angry about soemthing. The issue is always about how much support the GOP has from its voters. In 2006, GOP voters abandoned Bush. In 2010, GOP voters came back with a vengeance. Trump is wildly popular with GOP voters. Just look at the rallies.

      That said, there are a lot of bad GOP reps and many retirements, so maybe there are enough local issues to tilt the House to the Democrats. It just feels like wishful thinking by the Progressive media machine. That’s another reason for my skepticism.

      • “the Left is angry, but they are always angry about soemthing”

        True. But this seems qualitatively different in that the leftist positions on how to dispose of the right are much more extreme, and more importantly, these positions are held by more “mainstream” leftists among the public and pols.

        • It certainly feels that way, but I’m not sure that works for them. In the summer before the last election, they got their blacks angried up and we had a dozen or more cops shot by BLM people. That probably handed Trump the election. It’s looking like the female hysterics we saw in the Kavanaugh hearings has swung a few senate seats to the GOP. That’s what has me thinking the brown wave stuff is a hoax. I can’t find an election in which one party gained seats in the Senate and the other party gained seats in the House. Maybe it has happened and maybe it could happen, but it seems strange.

          • Interesting. There are a lot of good comparisons between Nixon and Trump. Mostly in how the Washington elite reacted to both winning the White House. That was the start of the great realignment that moved the South into the GOP column and the Northeast and upper Midwest firmly into the Democrat column.

            The difference though is the Democrats controlled Congress and controlled most state houses. They owned the redistricting system that allowed them to carve out new districts they could win. Today, the GOP has been in charge of most state houses and has been the one carving out districts for themselves.

            Even though it has not happened in half a century, it could happen again, but I remain skeptical. It seems like a three cushion shot like a brokered convention or a tie in the Electoral College.

      • I’m optimistic for 2018. Polling data suggests five (AZ, FL, IN, MO, NV) of the six RCP “toss up” races for the Senate are going R. There’s not much recent data on MT, but Tester voted against Kavanaugh, which was an unforced error in a state like MT. Barring some unforeseen event, the Senate should be 55-56R, 44-45D.

        RCP has 31 House races listed as toss ups–29R, 2D. Democrats have to win 13 of the 31 races to take control of the House. It’s possible, but not likely. I’m still going with 225R-210D, plus or minus 3.

        That caravan is going to keep growing. It’s entirely possible that over 20,000 people will be massed on the Southern border by election day. Republicans want to keep them out. Democrats want to let them in. Independents are going to break R this cycle.

    • Have been back re-reading “Eichmann in Jerusalem” after last reading portions back in college. I know Arendt took a lot of heat for it, but what still fascinates me is the endless attention the Nazis paid to means of semi-legally extracting the Jews wealth. Well before Wansee. And the disappointments at the relative poverty of some of the southeastern European Jews–to the point of charging the local governments for the cost of transport to the death camps. The difference this time over the 60s/70s is we’ve imported (and continue to import) and alien element who thinks expropriation and then some is just fine and dandy. Plus a decent sized cohort of white people that are perfectly happy to commit suicide to signal their virtue.

      • The difference? I’d call it an exact parallel.

        Next week: “Trump Bombs Supporters At Rally With Sarin Gas”

      • Would that it were true! But I think that when the rhetoric and approval of violence by the Cloud people reach these levels, we are likely to be moving toward some very bad times….Also, there is a limit to the accumulation of debt at the Federal, State, and local levels which is going to be reached in less than a generation, and will be followed by defaults all over the place….When the EBT cards don’t work, or can’t buy anything if they do work, we won’t be in Kansas anymore….Math does rule the world.

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