Thursday, August 21, 2014

Impending End of Civilization?

Our only hope?
Politically and cultural conservative people uneasily predict the looming end of the long decayed Western order that emerged slowly from the ashes of the Roman Empire. The vetus ordo is quite dead and, despite what Republican candidates tell their frustrated base, it will never return as it once was. Some pinpoint 1517 as the beginning of the end, others 1789, some 1914, and many anticipate a day to come. Fr. Chadwick wonders if we are on the cusp of a totalitarian emergence. The Rad Trad tends more for an "I don't know, but the stuff is going to hit the fan in two generations" view.

The current period is transitional, the deep breath before the leap into cold water. New short term alliances grow out of the empty chasm where the old ones fell. China's economy remains an anomaly. Did they really grow at 8% annually? Possibly, but economists also estimate their inflation to be something around 10% and their banking system is under duress to make high risk loans at cheap rates. Their naval expansion reflects their ambition to become the regional hegemon in Asia at the cost of Japan and Taiwan. Communism is dead. The nominally Communist CCP operates a fascist regime (which is not the same as Nazism) based on federal subsidization of manufacturing enterprises. They own a considerable amount of American debt, but are far from the primary holder. Their massive "awakening" only took place in one quarter of the country and an even smaller sliver of Chinese will ever have the opportunity to access that wealth. China is an ambitious, unstable country underneath its tiger veneer.

America and Europe dally in remarkable culture, political, and economic decadence masked by America's military and GDP. The debt, the unstable demographic shifts, the extraordinary polarization of ethnic groups, and other factors make the United States susceptible to a moment of shock, the sort of thing that causes riots or public frenzies. The two fold danger is that a serious American problem both plunges the global hegemon into chaos and removes the largest power player in international affairs from its position, allowing the other aggressive players to re-align. America stood at the edge of empire after World War II and then stepped back to allow her own cultural tergiversations to chew and swallow her slowly. That same process happened in Europe a century earlier and ended in the general suicide of World War I. The "West" died decades ago. No one has gotten around to signing the certificate of death yet.

And Russia is as pesky as ever. The Soviet Union never really collapsed, it jut retracted. The last two decades in Russia could be summed up in "new name, same friendly service." Putin has re-vitalized masculinity in Russia and used the still-unattended Orthodox church as a point of cultural centralization. Russia's population decline and lack of resources prohibits Russia from becoming a self-sustaining global power, but she will always be a global player. Why was anyone surprised to learn that Ukraine, Russia's latest target, was during the communist days the engineering and manufacturing center of the Soviet Union?

America is dying. Europe is dead. China may or may not be a serious long term player. And Russia will always lurk in the background. What will emerge in the impending void? A charismatic figure who can solve all the world's problems? Such traits are found in the most potent and wicked of dictators, themselves so often types of the greatest and most charismatic despot of them all, the one who rules in misery because he did not wish to serve in splendor.

Do not worry! We are faced with decline and tremendous uncertainty over a vast period of time. Many other events will shape our future between now and the time a new order takes root. Such a malleable period may well be an opportunity for the Church, once she gets through her own collapse, to evangelize and re-structure herself for the age to come.

Regardless, these matters are hardly worth losing one's sleep over. It may not all be so bleak. Events need not unfold according to the worst interpretation, although recent events hardly suggest anything better. Yet these factors do not necessarily elicit a certain outcome. A dear neo-conservative (politically) friend said "I've given up. I'm rooting for either Skynet or God at this point." We should always root for God. Skynet can wait.

10 comments:

  1. "A charismatic figure who can solve all the world's problems?"

    Spot on, Mr. Soloviev.

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    1. The same friend I mentioned above once wondered whether or not the current President could be the Anti-Christ. I replied, "The Anti-Christ is supposed to be a genius who can solve unfixable problems to the point people wonder if he is God." He responded, "So what you're saying is Obama's setting us up for the Anti-Christ?"

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  2. It is always darkest before the storm, is how my Uncle Jerry used to put it.

    ABS found the point about Russia lacking resources (natural?) surprising.

    As to the Anti-Christ and these united states - we won't produce him. There is too much Traditional teaching abut who he will be and what he will do and what conditions must exist prior to his appearance for it to even be a remote possibility the Anti-Christ will be the POTUS (Yeah, Hilary included).

    ABS hopes the US continue to implode and then split apart with regional alliances forming afterwards; say, a southwestern regional alliance of states; i.e. Get Washington out of Florida.

    Let the libs have what hey already have - the northeast and the far west...

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    1. "Let the libs have what hey already have - the northeast and the far west"

      And Detroit. The bank does not seem to want it back....

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  3. "The Anti-Christ is supposed to be a genius..."

    Well, that disqualifies him being any current Western politician.

    I don't think about the end of the world. I don't want to. I've heard too many sermons on it from the Tradosphere and the topic merely bores me to tears.

    It doesn't matter anyway. We won't know when it is upon us because it will come "like a thief in the night".

    As for the US, that it will break apart to survive like Rome did is inevitable.

    I forsee:

    The Peoples Republic of the Pacific (a communist welfare state)
    The Rocky Mountain Commonwealth (a quasi-libertarian decentralized commonwealth where everyone has a gun)
    Mexico annexes New Mexico
    The Republic of Tejas
    The Southeastern Alliance
    The Federation of the Northeast
    The Great Midwestern Wasteland

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    1. So Spain won't be the only nation dissapearing in the near future...

      Do you think the Mormons will have some day their own independent nation?

      Kyrie eleison

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    2. I could definitely see them running Utah and Nevada and serving as a buffer zone between the Commonwealth and the Peoples Republic. Utah would be where they live while Nevada (i.e. Las Vegas) would be their primary source of income.

      What's happening to Spain? Is it going to just... vanish due to low birthrates?

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    3. Well, it is likely probable that before the next year finishes Catalonia has become an independent state (despite it has never been a nation), and the Basque "country" will follow quite soon. And there are also the Morocco's ambitions over Ceuta & Melilla (not protected by the NATO, while Gibraltar is) and Canary Islands; the islamophilia of a wide range of our society; the vanishing of national identity; the rise of a communist party; and yes, the low birthrates, extremely high abortion rates, destruction of familiar structures, and immigrant (=Moorish, many of them extremists) high birthrates. Let apart the general lost of faith, and of the traditional cultures of Spanish kingdoms...

      It seems pretty paranoid... but the truth is that Spain's soul is dead.

      Kyrie eleison

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    4. I take it you also hear that the Moorish period was a great golden age of peaceful coexistence in the peninsula?

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