Where Does American Decline End?

[Algernon Moncrieff]

This is a companion piece to Airmids post on Why We're Underestimating American Collapse

Where Does American Decline End? Or, Why History’s Rule is Transgression Becomes Annihilation

There are a few iron laws of history. Stagnating economies cause fascism to rise, inflaming old tribal sentiments. Such a society, if it does not rewrite a broken social contract, enters something like a death spiral — fascism is a way to ration a stagnant economy’s dwindling fruits to those of pure blood, but for precisely this reason, the harvest never grows. So fascism hardens. Society screams with rage and despair. And at the end lie all the atrocities of history — genocide, mass violence. Death laughs at human folly, barbarism stalks the ruins, and neighbour slaughters neighbour.

Now. What would you say the odds of a society — one in the middle stages — of this spiral reaching the final points into genocide, atrocity, and violence are? Are they fair odds? Ah, but why then don’t we believe this about our very own societies? Because myths of exceptionalism and perfection prevent us from thinking — they blind us from truth. But that is besides the point.

Let us examine exactly why, once this death spiral of stagnation and fascism begins, it spins out of control — faster and harder and fiercer than we had ever imagined — and worse still, almost inevitably, almost without exception, ends in ruin, atrocity, mass violence, and unspeakable horror. We are not asking: “will it surely come to be?” We are only asking the question: “is such a scenario beyond the realm of reasonable possibility?”

Fascism operates by transgressing norms. Why? Because in a declining society, that is how one demonstrates absolute strength and power — and flaunts impunity. If one get away with what everyone else cannot, one must be the strongest. And it is safety and security that people look for above all. Thus, by transgressing norms, the strongman demonstrates his potency, which attracts the weak-willed and broken-spirited, the shattered and the forgotten. The strongman can only become the strongest one if he is the exception to all of society’s norms, values, and rules. And in a society with a broken social contract, what are those worth, anyways?

[DavidDvorkin]

1. Where great-power decline always ends: in irrelevance.