SNAFU! looks at the increased targeting and attacks of police by criminals and wonders if this is a sign or symptom of a slow motion collapse.
Western civilization began to collapse over a century ago. Europe committed suicide in WWI; WWII was just the funeral. The United States has since been serving as Atlas, carrying the whole thing on our shoulders. We (speaking of the United States) passed from culture to civilization (per Spengler) in 1913. Our apex was in 1973. But as median wages demonstrate, it has been a long slow decline ever afterward. Sure, we've had a few spurts of economic growth since then, but I would say that by 1973 we had most definitely reached a point of diminishing marginal returns. The stimulus after the 2008 financial crash indicates that, by that time, we had reached a point of negative marginal return (how else do you explain spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for each job allegedly "saved" or "created"). We are in a serious depression, and the only reason we don't see it is because, instead of lines at soup kitchens, we have people unobtrusively using EBT cards. Under a different president or administration (that the American people would voluntarily select a crook like Obama over a decent man like Romney--whether or not you agreed with Romney's politics on all issues--was itself significant), we might have seen investors using their money for capital investment and hiring. Instead, the money is either parked idle in foreign accounts (e.g., Apple), or chasing other money around on the stock market and other financial markets in order to find some sort of return. We don't have a manufacturing economy, or even a knowledge/service economy. We have a ghost economy, unhinged from the real world.
There is a saying I've seen several times, the gist of which is that you first go bankrupt gradually, and then suddenly. I suspect that a real collapse will be the same way. Gradual and then suddenly. We've been on the slow part for a while, and perhaps things are beginning to speed up.
Maybe the real single event that started the decline of the US was Lyndon B. Johnson's ascension to the office of President. LBJ's "Great Society" legislation fundamentally changed the US. Under these laws, entitlement spending exploded, the flood of unskilled third-worlder immigration began, and Affirmative Action - an outgrowth of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - replaced meritocracy with "diversity," poisoning every institution it touched.
ReplyDeleteFast-forward to 2015, and we see Dear Leader attacking every stabilizing institution in the US. As you observe, he is attacking local police departments using bogus charges of "racism" using his politicized DOJ. He shows naked contempt for the US Constitution. On immigration, we see a politician whose priority is importing unskilled unassimilable third-worlders who have contempt for the US and US law. (A few days ago, there were reports about increasing delays for those seeking to immigrate legally because resources were being diverted to process illegals.) He and his surrogates are waging a jihad on Christians and Christian values. He has forced out established military leaders, replacing them with political hacks, and otherwise imposing edicts that demoralize remaining personnel. He is actively ginning up blacks to riot in many cities.
Internationally, Dear Leader is sowing chaos everywhere - destroying the international reputation of the US, alienating or out-right subverting long-time allies, and by both acts and omissions encouraging bloody pogroms.
I could go on. Dear Leader is either the most incompetent President we have ever had, or the perfect Manchurian President for destroying the US.
There are several key inflection points. LBJ's war on poverty was one because it marked the beginning of when government's primary purpose for existing was to buy votes.
DeleteMy reference to 1913 was because that is when the Constitutional Amendments allowing the income tax and the popular election of Senators was passed, and the Federal Reserve System was created. After that point, America was no longer a nation composed of united States, but one where power was concentrated in a handful of cities, and the Federal Government finally and conclusively eclipsed the States in power.