Tag Archives: Western Civilization

The Transition

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Many institutions have no convincing justification for their own existence.

By Robert Gore

Source: Straight Line Logic

Western civilization is characterized by its institutions. Its foundations have been government, organized religion, the military, science, technology, business, academia, media, art, and entertainment. Institutions have been bulwarks of order and have enabled Western civilization to reach unprecedented plateaus of achievement and prosperity. Now, they’re under assault and crumbling, which has been often noted and decried but usually not analyzed or understood as the outcome of an epochal transition.

Institutions have been the victim of their own success. The Industrial and Information Revolutions have put goods, services, wealth, data, and choices in billions of hands in what amounts to an historical blink of an eye, less than two centuries. The average American lives better and longer than royalty did back in monarchy’s heyday and has more personal power. Kings and emperors of yore could order people around and toss them in dungeons, but they couldn’t hop on the Internet and communicate with someone on the other side of the planet or hop on a freeway and journey five hundred miles in a day.

Institutions’ loss has been individuals’ gain, and many of the latter are questioning the necessity of the former. Institutions are staring into an abyss. Many, including governments, do not have convincing justifications for their own existence. They offer little to average people and in many cases they’re a net negative, imposing nothing but burdens. Their leaders are solely devoted to furthering their own prerogatives and power. Now, institutions are fighting a rearguard action to halt or slow a transition that at best will dramatically reduce their power and could mean their extinction.

COVID, climate change, foreign wars, censorship, woke, open borders, surveillance, and digital passports and currencies are Last Gasp efforts to preserve institutional status, wealth, and power. The institutions have responded to their own drum roll with what vigor they can muster, but those causes inspire vapid virtue signaling, not authentic passion. Their only wellspring of true passion is hatred for anyone who believes differently, who challenges their science, propaganda, and mendacity, and, more broadly, their right to dictate and coerce, and to cancel, punish or execute anyone not toeing their line.

Their objective failures—many of which count in their corrupt reckonings as successes—are manifest. The COVID response, particularly vaccines’ deaths and adverse events, completely discredited governments, public health, institutional medicine, the pharmaceutical companies, and social and mainstream media, while inflicting severe collateral damage on official “science,” big business, and central banks. The institutions are regrouping under the banner of climate change, but it’s clear from the pushback they’re already receiving that their agenda can only be implemented through violence and high-tech totalitarianism.

Repeated failures and ever-mounting resistance would seem to be enough to doom their totalitarian designs. Unfortunately, in their desperation and hatred, the willingness of the elite to wage actual, kinetic war on the rest of us shouldn’t be underestimated. While the COVID vaccine death toll numbers in the millions, war still has no rival for murderous effectiveness. However, offensive violence is no solution.

Nuclear weapons changed warfare in a way that’s not generally recognized. The threat that a global nuclear conflagration could eliminate humanity rendered their use a high-risk proposition. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945 remain the only wartime use of nuclear weapons. Under the umbrella created by nuclear weapons’ unemployability, technological advances have fueled the development of a staggering array of armaments that has decisively shifted the military balance from offensive to defensive warfare.

World War II was the last major war in which an offensive, or, more correctly, a counter-offensive, won. The allied powers repelled the axis powers, but at huge cost. Industrial-scale, mechanized warfare’s awesome destructive power left all the major participants except the U.S. in ruins, their populations decimated.

Offensive military power has become enormously expensive relative to the defensive technologies and strategies that can be employed against it. Since World War II, there have been few successful invasions. Both sides were stymied in the Korean War. U.S. invasions have been a string of disasters since Vietnam. Afghan goat herders defeated both the Soviets and the U.S.

On the cusp of victory in Ukraine, the Russian Special Military Operation would seem to belie the trend of offensive failures. However, the Russians have actually won by playing defense. They moved through their major objective, the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, where the majority of the population speak Russian. Many of them want to be part of Russia and hate the Ukrainian government, which has waged war on them since the 2014 coup. Consequently, the Russians were supported by the local population.

This past year featured a Ukrainian counteroffensive that was supposed to drive the Russians back from Donbass and retake the Crimean peninsula. NATO and Ukrainian strategists refused to recognize that their offensive was akin to sending cavalry units against machine-gun and artillery emplacements. They were up against an opponent well-armed with land mines, state-of-the-art field artillery and long-range missiles, air cover, and surveillance and attack drones. The Russian military, which has a long tradition of waging defensive warfare, employed a complex three-layer defense. The Ukrainians rarely progressed through even the first layer, impaling themselves on the tip of the Russian spear and taking massive losses.

The successful Russian strategies and tactics will be, or should be, studied by military analysts in the U.S. However, what’s most important is that those tactics implicitly acknowledge a truism central to the transition in progress. High-cost offensive warfare can be stymied and often defeated with relatively low-cost defensive weaponry and asymmetric warfare.

It can be argued that an offensive against the world’s most powerful military was obviously doomed, although nobody in the Western brain trust made that argument before the Ukrainians attacked. What truly signals the dawning of a new age have been the repeated successes since World War II of guerrilla or insurgent warfare against ostensibly much more powerful forces.

The Russians learned their lesson from the Soviet failure in Afghanistan. The U.S. government hasn’t learned anything from its string of failures. In Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. Its unconditional backing of Israel’s attempted elimination of Palestinians in Gaza finds it doubling down on what hasn’t worked.

The Israelis recognize a grim reality of fighting an insurgency on insurgent territory: To win, it’s not enough to kill the guerrillas; the guerrilla-friendly local population must be eliminated as well. The Israelis’ campaign has been merciless: destroying structures, killing Palestinian civilians, and making life intolerable for the survivors. The Israeli aim is to drive the Palestinians from Gaza and Israel for good. This meets international-law definitions of genocide and has been rightly decried around the world.

What will it mean if Israel fails? The Israelis may well reduce Gaza to rubble, but that would not be mission accomplished. Rubble provides excellent cover for guerrilla strikes. Hamas’ extensive tunnels indicate that it has prepared for this war for years. In all probability, it launched the October 7 attack to get things going. Israel’s negligence detecting and responding to that attack may have been intentional, indicating that it, too, wanted the war it now has.

Hamas has a network of allies across the Middle East. Israeli and U.S. forces and maritime commerce are under attack in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean. Yemen’s Houthis have already bottled up the Red Sea. It would be an easy matter for Iran to do the same in the Persian Gulf. Control of maritime commerce at important choke points calls into question a plank as central to the American Empire as it was to the British Empire before it: control of the world’s seas and oceans.

What happens if an American-led flotilla tasked with keeping the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf open comes under a swarming missile and drone attack, plus electronic warfare that disrupts its command and control capabilities, and destroyers or aircraft carriers are sunk? Missiles, drones, and cyber disruption cost a pittance compared to battleships, and it would then be apparent that they make conventional surface naval power a paper shark. The vessels in their watery grave would send the same message as the tanks smoldering on Ukraine’s battlefields.

The power of governments rests on their ability to use violence to control populations. Yawning cost disparities, decentralized technologies, and asymmetric warfare have rendered much of conventional offensive power vulnerable or obsolete, marking an historic, tectonic transition in the relationships between governments and governed. This is no secret, particularly in the non-Western world.

Across the globe, insurgents are taking the measure of governments and finding them wanting. Governments that are not feared cannot govern. As they confront their limitations, they will, being governments, make their situations worse.

The American government has a problem not shared by many others. Its potential insurgents—urban, suburban, and rural—are armed to the teeth. They already control many of the cities (see “Ants at the Picnic, Part Two”). Heavily indebted Washington cannot command the resources necessary to subjugate the population. It gets stretched thinner with each new dollar of debt, each new tax, each new institutionalized corruption, each new illegal migrant, each new substitution of gobbledygook ideology for rationality, and each new foreign intervention. Recognition of Washington’s weakness is behind the talk of secession and some states’ defiance of its dictates.

Washington’s weakness is shared by many Western governments, although most of them don’t have to contend with armed opposition. They do have to contend with increasingly restive populations, which by sheer force of numbers can upend existing political arrangements. It is delusional to think that these beleaguered national governments can be replaced by a confederated or unitary global government that could then exercise effective control.

The imposition of global government would entail an invasion by an outside force of millions of globally dispersed localities. The global force would encounter the same problem Israel faces in Gaza. Overt and covert opposition could number in the billions.

The globalists would have to contend with organized insurrection, guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and terrorism, as well as random riots, criminality, and widespread disorder. They would have to resort to the Israeli “solution” in Gaza—mass extermination. While they are relying on propaganda, subversion, electronic control, and biological warfare, perhaps only nuclear weapons could achieve genocide at the necessary scale. Don’t put it past them. Don’t put it past the insurgents to acquire their own nukes.

Short of nuclear conflagration, the world will continue to devolve towards institutional failure, popular disillusionment, mounting rage, and chaotic fragmentation and balkanization. Today’s dinosaur governments are unable to exercise control, and many of them are slated for extinction. They will not be replaced by an even larger and more unwieldy dinosaur—global government—which is only the last, desperate hope of the fading regime. Instead, the vacuum created by failed governments will be filled by those proficient in decentralized violence. Those who have relied on centralized authority for their livelihoods, power, and status will find their worlds turned upside down. Many will not survive the transition.

Assume crash positions.

Western ‘Civilization’ Is Doomed to Aggressive Collapse, and by its Own Hand

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By Gary D. Barnett

Source: GaryDBarnett.com

“Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet.”

~ Terence McKenna

The word civilization from Latin is civis, which means citizen, and civitas, which means city-state. It is seen as ‘enlightened culture’ instead of barbarism. A more modern take on the Latin root of this word would be a society which has developed a writing system, government, production of surplus food, division of labor, and ‘urbanization.’ The two trouble spots here are the false belief in the necessity of government and of urbanization. Both indicate collectivism instead of the individual and independent rule, in what should properly be a voluntary society. Regardless, a so-called ‘civil society’ today is what would be thought of as a mature, progressive, and non-barbarous state of ‘superiority.’ The ancient Greeks clarified this as far back as the fifth century BCE, and felt themselves above others who were not as worthy in their minds. As time passed, a citizen was not just a resident of a particular area, but in reality, became the property of the State, or more accurately, a lifetime indentured servant.

A common truth that should be recognized, is that in order to be a citizen in the modern world, one must be considered of secondary importance to the State or nation, and therefore a pawn or slave of that State or nation. After all, initially, ‘citizenship’ is decided simply by state of birth, or by parent’s state of birth. Each individual has no say in their original and usually lifetime citizenship, and this classification, as in herd animals, is a label decided by the ruling political class. This is not any indication of freedom, as should be quite obvious, but is a pronouncement of inferiority to rule, which negates from birth the individual in favor of the State. There is no need to get further into the particulars of this type of human ownership in this discussion, but sufficed to say, how can one be considered to be free when born a slave?

The subject here is the fate of what is considered Western Civilization, and why it is doomed to not only failure, but complete collapse as a political and ruling force. In fairness, all civilizations eventually fail, and in my opinion, this is mainly due to the false belief that a system of top-down rule, restrictive laws, and completely concentrated co-existence, is necessary for sustained survival. While the division of labor is extremely useful in many if not most aspects of modern life, total concentration of populations is not  mandatory for civilization to survive and prosper. But it is the desired outcome by those who rule, (consider ‘smart cities’) because it allows for easier control over the masses of common people, who always far outnumber the ruling class, and are therefore considered a continuous threat to their power.

The ‘West’ has claimed to be the most superior, most benevolent, most enlightened, and most powerful group of nation-states for centuries, but it is coming apart at the seams so quickly that its influence and grip on the rest of the world could end in short order. But is that the designed plan, or is it due to outrageous arrogance, criminal excess at every level of existence, devastation of the monetary and economic systems, widespread brutal aggression, or all the above?

Western civilization is certainly on the brink of extinction, and the sought after replacement is that of a technocratic world governing system run by the very few. It seems the further man supposedly advances, the more backward is his pretend progress. Certainly, and positively in the U.S, intelligence levels and the ability to think critically have all but disappeared; this in a time when western society is ‘claimed’ to be the most ‘educated.’ In fact, the exact opposite is the case, as schooling in this country has caused mass ignorance and stupidity over generations, all by design. In order to control the people, the West decided long ago to purposely dumb down the common population, and indoctrinate them to such an extent, as to make impotent the idea of individual legitimate thought, and any ability to question authority. This tactic by the State was successful in its mission, but also successful in creating its own demise. This is quite the irony, but then that is the way of the madness of humanity.

Consider our current reality for a moment, and then consider the outcome of this political experiment. This nation, although never totally free, was one of wonder for a good portion of its history. 170 years ago, nearly 100% literacy was common, classical education was brilliant, and children were intelligent, driven, responsible, and grown up by the time they were in their mid-teens or before. Most all were entrepreneurs and understood moral principles, self-responsibility, and the importance of family. They based their lives on logic and reason, and due to these attitudes, were incredibly valuable to the building of independent, honest, virtuous, and vital societies. If one is to compare that to today’s population, an awakening should immediately occur.

Currently, this country is in the midst of a complete and total mental breakdown of the masses, in that they are not, generally speaking, responsible for themselves, and are dependent on an evil and heinous government. The intellectual capabilities of the general population have descended into the realm of effective illiteracy of the majority, regardless of age. Hate is the new norm accepted by the proletariat, sexual perversion is in full view of all, and promoted by the State. Theft, looting, property destruction, and violence at every turn, are openly ignored, while being sanctioned by government and its complicit mouthpieces in the rotten media. Constant war is tolerated, the murdering military is lauded as heroes, while truthtellers are shamed, threatened, and ostracized, and in some cases eliminated. ‘Reverse’ racism is rampant and applauded, while society has become married to victimization as a way of life. Self-esteem, confidence, responsible behavior, empathy, and the drive to succeed have disappeared from view. Total government control, destruction of wealth of all but the super-rich, blanket surveillance, lockdowns, ludicrous and immoral mandates, mass bio-weapon tyranny, tremendous property theft, and purposeful murder of innocents is routine, and mostly ignored. Entire towns and cities are being intentionally destroyed, thousands burned to death with microwave or directed energy weapons, or by other atrocious means, while those affected clamor for more government assistance, instead of eliminating the criminal and murderous State that is at the heart of all this barbarous madness.

The governing systems of Western societies have no intention, and never have, to free or protect the people, as the only goal sought by these evil ruling monsters, is power and control of all by brute force, lies, propaganda, and murder. Western civilization will be purposely relegated to the dustbin of history; the result being the swift and merciless destruction of life and all societal cohesion. Without mass dissent and non-compliance, bogus ‘climate change,’ currency destruction, digitization of all aspects of life, concentration of populations, famine, property theft, war, and transhumanism, will lead to even more perverse behavior, idiocy, and mass indifference of the majority.

This will signal the end of an era, and the beginning of a permanent hell on earth. This was caused by the masses of collective hordes ignoring their responsibility to themselves, in favor of the expectation of total dependence instead of individual excellence. No one can hide from reality forever, as it will eventually catch up and swallow you whole.

The State cannot rule successfully unless the people voluntarily allow it, and choose to surrender to obedience and a life of slavery. Only people who will accept and be convinced of truth, and have the courage to act on that truth, can be of use to freedom. All others, those who do not want to know the truth, those who continue to cling to the State’s false narratives, and who seek a master, should be absolutely avoided, as they will never help or improve themselves, and therefore will be of no value to those who seek real freedom.

“Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it.”

 ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila, 1913-1994, Columbian writer

It’s really very simple

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By Dmitry Orlov

Source: Club Orlov

There are times when a loud cry of “The emperor has no clothes!” can be most copacetic. And so, let me point out something quite simple, yet very important.

The old world order, to which we became accustomed over the course of the 1990s and the 2000s, its crises and its problems detailed in numerous authoritative publications on both sides of the Atlantic—it is no more. It is not out sick and it is not on vacation. It is deceased. It has passed on, gone to meet its maker, bought the farm, kicked the bucket and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-world order.

If we rewind back to the early 1980s, we can easily remember how the USSR was still running half of Europe and exerting major influence on a sizable chunk of the world. World socialist revolution was still sputtering along, with pro-Soviet regimes coming in to power here and there in different parts of the globe, the chorus of their leaders’ official pronouncements sounding more or less in unison. The leaders made their pilgrimages to Moscow as if it were Mecca, and they sent their promising young people there to learn how to do things the Soviet way. Soviet technology continued to make impressive advances: in the mid-1980s the Soviets launched into orbit a miracle of technology—the space station Mir, while Vega space probes were being dispatched to study Venus.

But alongside all of this business-as-usual the rules and principles according which the “red” half of the globe operated were already in an advanced state of decay, and a completely different system was starting to emerge both at the center and along the periphery. Seven years later the USSR collapsed and the world order was transformed, but many people simply couldn’t believe in the reality of this change. In the early 1990s many political scientists were self-assuredly claiming that what is happening is the realization of a clever Kremlin plan to modernize the Soviet system and that, after a quick rebranding, it will again start taking over the world. People like to talk about what they think they can understand, never mind whether it still exists.

And what do we see today? The realm that self-identifies itself as “The West” is still claiming to be leading economically, technologically, and to be dominant militarily, but it has suffered a moral defeat, and, strictly as a consequence of this moral defeat, a profound ideological defeat as well.

It’s simple.

1. How can they talk of the inviolability of private property while confiscating the savings of depositors in Cypriot banks?

2. How can they talk of safeguarding the territorial integrity of countries while destroying, in turn, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine?

3. How can they talk of free enterprise and then sign contracts to build ships but refuse to deliver them because of pressure from Washington, as happened with Mistral ships which Russia ordered from France?

4. How can they talk of democracy and then use naked threats against the premier of Greece—the birthplace of European democracy—forcing him to ignore the unprofitable results of the Greek national referendum?

5. How can they talk about fighting racism while in the US they are constantly shooting mass quantities of unarmed Negros, all the while forbidding people to call them Negros.

6. How can they accuse the Serbs of genocide while refusing to acknowledge what they did to supposedly “independent” Kosovo, which has been turned into a European criminal enclave specializing in the production and distribution of narcotics?

7. How can they claim to oppose extremism and terrorism while training, arming and financing ISIS and the Ukrainian Neo-nazis?

8. How can they talk about justice while the US maintains the largest prison population in the history of the world and has executed many people subsequently discovered to have been innocent?

9. How can they talk about freedom of religion after the US federal government exterminated the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and then imprisoned the survivors, even though the government’s allegations against the sect have subsequently been proven to be false?

10. How can they accuse others of corruption after the colossal financial embarrassment of 2008, in the run-up to which obvious financial bubbles that were ready to bust were assigned the highest ratings?

What has happened is the worst thing that could have possibly happened: in full view of the entire world, “Western values” have been demonstrated to be null and void.

If you think that these are just some specific examples of difficulties or mistakes that could potentially be overcome in some dim and foggy future, then you are wrong: this is all of the “Western values” worth mentioning, and they have all been invalidated by observation. Note the past tense: they already have been invalidated. Are there any “Western values” left intact? Oh yes, just one: the rights of sexual minorities. But it is not possible to maintain Western civilization on the strength of gay marriage alone.

Is it any wonder then that the rest of the world is trying to put as much distance between itself and the morally bankrupt “West” as it possibly can, as quickly as it can? China is working on developing its own model, Russia is striving for self-sufficiency and independence from Western imports and finance, and even Latin America, once considered the backyard of the US, is increasingly going its own separate way.

The ranks of the fools who are still buying the West’s story are shrinking, while the ranks of the rebels are growing. There is the truth-teller Edward Snowden, who was forced to flee to Moscow to avoid persecution back home. There are European parliamentarians who recently broke ranks and visited Crimea. There are French and German military men who are volunteering to defend Eastern Ukraine against Western attack. There are the many European businessmen who came to the Economics Forum in St. Petersburg to sign trade deals with Russia, never mind what their politicians think of that.

On the other side, the rapidly emerging new world order was recently on display in Ufa, capital of the majority-Moslem Republic of Bashkortostan in Southern Urals, Russian Federation. Leaders of more than half the world’s population came there to sign deals, integrate their economies, and coordinate security arrangements. India and Pakistan set their differences aside and walked in through the door at the same time; Iran is next. “The West” was not represented there.

Now that all Western values (other than the rights of sexual minorities) have been shown to be cynical exercises in hypocrisy, there is no path back. You see, it is a matter of reputation, and a reputation is something that one can lose exactly once. There is a path forward, but it is very frightening. There is the loss of control: Western institutions can no longer control the situation throughout much of the world, including, in due course, on their own territory. There is the abandonment of the Western narrative: Western pontificators, pundits and “thought leaders” will find that their talking points have been snatched away and will be reduced to either babbling apologetically or lapsing into embarrassed silence. Finally, there is the loss of identity: it is not possible, for the non-delusional, to identify with something (“The West”) that no longer exists.

But the most frightening thing of all is this: behind a morally bankrupt civilization there are morally bankrupt people—lots and lots of them. Their own children, who will be forced to make their way in the world—however it turns out to be—will be as disrespectful of them as they were of their own vaunted civilizational values.