May the Puppy Killer suffer the fate of watching her swollen face deflate and wrinkle in a murky institutional metal mirror bolted to the concrete wall in her prison cell near The Hague.
Along with many historians who write assuming empires make an effort to operate rationally,, I used to wonder how empires fell so hard and so stupidly.
No longer. We live in interesting times, but also illuminating ones! :)
Empires disintegrate just as a human corpse does. Slowly, than all at once. I am still in the dark about exactly how we, as part the decaying body politic, whether we like it or not, survive the death. Maybe I need a new metaphor ?
It's not a bad metaphor! That said, "body politic" decay should be distinguished from that of Empires. Typically empires fall at the point it's too late to save them because the body politic has already been hollowed out for generations. Counter-productive, strategically insane militarism, designed to bolster an imperial narrative, is not atypical. In 2014 I suddenly noticed how military action gradually has become framed to fit narratives, rather than rational political objective. This contravenes the way modern propaganda since 1916 was designed to work, and likewise stands Clausewitz on his head. I suspect that essentially we've spouted ideological propaganda for so long we've started to believe it. Nobody else does! Oddly, though, the military themselves are remarkably resistant to propaganda: I find the most reliable source of counter-narrative information since 1990 is declassified US Army documents (if only because other militaries - UK, Russia, etc - are more reticent). But you have to dig pretty deep, and also ignore everything written by generals (anyone from rank O7 up is a politician by definition).
There are some alternative frameworks available. My current favorite is that of the biologist-turned-big-data historian Peter Turchin, whose most accessible summary work is "End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Paths to Political Disintegration" (iirc 2022), in which he notes how empires can fall in days or even hours rather than years. The collapse can be predicted: the timing cannot. Notably, in 2010 he also forecast at least a decade of political violence in the USA from 2020 on. He also has some society-focused analyses, such as his USA-specific book Ages of Discord, which interestingly is available free from https://sackett.net/turchin_ages-of-discord.pdf.
Another book of his, "War and Peace and War", starts with a comparative analysis of the historical growth of the Russian and American Empires, in which he concludes that the common denominator of success was an ideological unity around which frontier societies can coalesce. In the case of Russia, he argues the unifier was a common religion; with the USA, a common racism. (not yet convinced, "The Cousins' Wars" - another interesting source - argues the Anglo-American empires were built on religion; but either way it interestingly doesn't support a "woke" narrative!)
If the West is to come out of all this reasonably intact, IMV it will have to duplicate what other nations have done when faced by existential crises. For example, we'll have to build industrial economies: perhaps even capitalist ones rather than financialist ones. This will take decades. Ironically the best recent examples are Russia and China! The problem is, the decay is nowhere more deep than in the ruling classes, whose social, personal, and intellectual inability to consider non-ideological narratives is arguably the best indicator of inevitable collapse - as reality slowly but inexorably diverges from ideological narratives, elites simply cannot adapt.
May the Puppy Killer suffer the fate of watching her swollen face deflate and wrinkle in a murky institutional metal mirror bolted to the concrete wall in her prison cell near The Hague.
Along with many historians who write assuming empires make an effort to operate rationally,, I used to wonder how empires fell so hard and so stupidly.
No longer. We live in interesting times, but also illuminating ones! :)
Empires disintegrate just as a human corpse does. Slowly, than all at once. I am still in the dark about exactly how we, as part the decaying body politic, whether we like it or not, survive the death. Maybe I need a new metaphor ?
It's not a bad metaphor! That said, "body politic" decay should be distinguished from that of Empires. Typically empires fall at the point it's too late to save them because the body politic has already been hollowed out for generations. Counter-productive, strategically insane militarism, designed to bolster an imperial narrative, is not atypical. In 2014 I suddenly noticed how military action gradually has become framed to fit narratives, rather than rational political objective. This contravenes the way modern propaganda since 1916 was designed to work, and likewise stands Clausewitz on his head. I suspect that essentially we've spouted ideological propaganda for so long we've started to believe it. Nobody else does! Oddly, though, the military themselves are remarkably resistant to propaganda: I find the most reliable source of counter-narrative information since 1990 is declassified US Army documents (if only because other militaries - UK, Russia, etc - are more reticent). But you have to dig pretty deep, and also ignore everything written by generals (anyone from rank O7 up is a politician by definition).
There are some alternative frameworks available. My current favorite is that of the biologist-turned-big-data historian Peter Turchin, whose most accessible summary work is "End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Paths to Political Disintegration" (iirc 2022), in which he notes how empires can fall in days or even hours rather than years. The collapse can be predicted: the timing cannot. Notably, in 2010 he also forecast at least a decade of political violence in the USA from 2020 on. He also has some society-focused analyses, such as his USA-specific book Ages of Discord, which interestingly is available free from https://sackett.net/turchin_ages-of-discord.pdf.
Another book of his, "War and Peace and War", starts with a comparative analysis of the historical growth of the Russian and American Empires, in which he concludes that the common denominator of success was an ideological unity around which frontier societies can coalesce. In the case of Russia, he argues the unifier was a common religion; with the USA, a common racism. (not yet convinced, "The Cousins' Wars" - another interesting source - argues the Anglo-American empires were built on religion; but either way it interestingly doesn't support a "woke" narrative!)
If the West is to come out of all this reasonably intact, IMV it will have to duplicate what other nations have done when faced by existential crises. For example, we'll have to build industrial economies: perhaps even capitalist ones rather than financialist ones. This will take decades. Ironically the best recent examples are Russia and China! The problem is, the decay is nowhere more deep than in the ruling classes, whose social, personal, and intellectual inability to consider non-ideological narratives is arguably the best indicator of inevitable collapse - as reality slowly but inexorably diverges from ideological narratives, elites simply cannot adapt.
HTH :)
This is beautiful!
Mike - that was not your run-of-the-mill post
once again you show such creative writing
Thank you for the inspiration. I will pass the fire on!
... and I thought my dreams were vivid! Beautiful vision, Mike! Mahalo ...
♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇨🇦
And their truth goes marching on
Evolving toward the essence of truth!
WOW!