I thought I’d pick a nice, light, simple topic for today.
Oops, sorry about dripping sarcasm on your shoes. I hear laughter takes it right out!
They say history doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme. The problem is that history is created by people. People who assume they’re smarter than their ancestors because enlightenment, science, technology, the passage of time, et cetera. Pick your poison, we all do this. We assume that the big questions can easily be answered by ‘why don’t they just’ when we never seem to apply that same question to our too big for our britches selves.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
The lyrics and melody may change but the beat keeps right on pounding. History is too boring to learn or we only bother to learn the lessons we like. Just exactly like every single generation before us.
BUT somehow, we keep muddling through. We make mistakes, do stupid stuff, do REALLY stupid stuff, have to fix our messes, have to admit our mistakes, try to tell the young ‘uns where we went wrong and yet, somehow, it all works out better than we had any right to expect.
That’s the God part – we sure as heck didn’t do it!
Life would be so much easier without us. It’d also be way too boring. The birds would all commit suicide. Well, at least the birds don’t have to worry about their depression levels yet. We’re here to stay a bit longer anyway.
Now if we can just convince people to quit running around like their hair was on fire.
According to the polls and the Internet the US is extremely polarized. It only takes a few minutes looking at international news to conclude the whole world has gone completely bonkers.
It’s not. The world was always this bonkers. Oh, having the attention span of the average gnat doesn’t help but the reality is we’ve always been just this side of the loony bin. All that history that was too boring to read about and that you skip when browsing the videos? Yeah, that stuff looks just like this stuff. Fussing, fighting, feuding and there’s always at least one jerk messing up everything when things are kinda okay.
Each generation messes up some stuff and improves other stuff. Great, we can visit the Moon and blow up the planet but we can’t sit down and talk to each other. Well, there’s no one on the Moon so we’re just gonna have to hash it out down here.
It’s not a pretty process. Stop looking away when they make politics or sausage – this is where the important stuff happens. It’d be nice if we could just sit down at the UN and work everything out but people don’t all agree on anything. Good people can have big disagreements. Bad people can take advantage of good will.
Sometimes, good and bad come to blows. If we’re lucky it settles quickly. If not it gets nasty. Sometimes the long but quiet gives people a chance to find better ways. Sometimes it just makes things worse.
Okay, okay, enough waxing philosophical. Let’s get to making some sausage.
The US is not in decline. Compared to the 1930’s or even the 1960’s, this is a speedbump. That doesn’t mean the US doesn’t have issues – heck, issues are what we do! I’ve been saying for a couple years that we’re looking at a party system shift. That’s when the major parties collapse and two new ones take their place. We’ve survived it at least five, arguably six, times before. This will just be a messier than usual version.
Which is easy for Russia and China to misread as ‘decline’. The anti-religion / anti-Christianity thing has about run its course. The more oppressive political movements are showing ever more signs of desperation as they lose ground politically. American politics are growing increasingly loud, with social media amplifying that, but not abnormally so – for us.
We’re no where near a civil war or even an actual succession. We are growing more conservative – this is a normal shift in American politics. Times they are a’changing. We will change with them. But decline? Nope, not in the immediate cards.
Russia is in decline. That’s part of why it is so increasingly belligerent. Russia is NOT a republic. It’s certainly not a democracy. It’s an old school empire minus an emperor in name. It’s losing population, influence, clout, friends, its military and a war it started. Yeah, a stalemate is a loss for Russia unless Ukraine can be forced to the negotiating table.
Dumbest thing ever. Same guys that four generations ago were willing to use the Nazis to fight the Russians and turned on the Nazis when they didn’t meet expectations and who also could have poked up Russian flags and waved hi as they were invaded but chose to make Molotov cocktails instead are NOT giving up no matter what the US does. Russia has completely misread this one.
Russia only survives if the US gives up. That’s not in the cards, no matter how isolationist some Republicans get. Oh, it’ll be messy – messy is what we humans do best – but Russia as an empire is at the very least looking at an internal restructuring but more likely, a major dissolution. Even if it survives, Russia will not be an empire again for several generations at the very least.
Remember, Rome took its own sweet time ‘declining’. This stuff is rarely fast.
China is self destructing. It’s kinda hard to pinpoint what is right with China at this point. Pretty much everything is wrong and getting worse. China has no diplomatic institutional knowledge to draw on. Deng Xiaoping had started the rebuilding of China’s diplomatic corps but that seems DOA now. Minus a functional diplomatic corps, China can’t smooth over the many feathers it has ruffled worldwide. China believes, with some reason, that it is being isolated. In reality, they’ve just kicked sand into one too many kid’s eyes and no one wants to play with them anymore.
Could they fix it? Sure, but not with the CCP in power. The CCP simply won’t – like all authoritarians, it can’t appear weak without risking its power. The Chinese aren’t like Americans and have a browbeaten tolerance for oppression the US just doesn’t. But any dog can be kicked one time too many. The CCP has no idea if it should kick harder or feed the poor thing.
In appearing strong and in control, the CCP is losing control on so many fronts it’s unbelievable. If they can’t get their economy back on track yesterday – and they can’t – this gets much uglier before they figure out whether or not this tunnel even has an end, let alone a light.
The CCP is a big dog in a little kennel. It only knows fighting. This is what a totalitarian government in decline looks like and the picture doesn’t get better. The CCP will try belligerence – that’s the Wolf Warrior thing – and it will try beneficence – that’s the Belt and Road Initiative. When both fail, that’s when the CCP becomes dangerous to the only people it can hurt – its own.
I’m suspicious that they may already be very close to that one kick too many already. We’ll be the last to know.
The EU is in transition. I have some hope for these guys but they are not gonna have a good time. Europe wants to be a something. Confederation, federation, empire, union, democratic city state – they aren’t really sure what. They are pretty sure they don’t want to call it the United States of Europe but that’s functionally what they are after. They want to regain a sense of greatness but there is no going back and they know it. Trouble is, they are very badly infected with Leftism (old school definition) so what they want doesn’t have any chance of existing.
To be like the US they have to value freedom over democracy. Democracy (democratic republicanism) is only a means to that end. But Europe was born and bred in tyranny. American style freedom is SCARY. So they edge ever closer, then yank back when the flames of freedom seem too hot.
Hey, even Americans get spooked by just how wild freedom can be. Taming the Steed of State ain’t easy!
The EU as it stands now is a lost cause and Europe knows it but doesn’t wanna admit it. It’s just too tyrannical and no nation state is gonna give over sovereignty to it, including France which is the nation state that most wants European sovereignty of some sort.
I think – I am NOT sure – Europe may be having a type of party system shift. More like an ideological shift but same basic idea. European parties decentralize power by spreading out the political spectrum. The US’s spectrum has a great big bump in the middle; Europe has a gently sloping hill. In trying to give more power to smaller groups they end up captive to some very strange groups. But those parties all lie along the spectrum and I suspect that little hill is moving rightward.
That’s gonna be scary for Europe. They think all things left are ‘progressive’. They’ve just about ‘progressed’ themselves out of relevance. Europe needs to get away from that cliff but that leftist cliff is secure and warm. It’s what they know.
But it’s probably too late. Europe has spent too much time around America. As Europeans learn the hard way that they don’t have the same security in their rights that Americans enjoy, well, the young ‘uns at the very least aren’t gonna settle for soft tyranny. And in this case, those young ‘uns are from forty-five down.
There’ll be a big mess and a EU 2.0 and we’ll see what happens from there. Probably not a United States of Europe anytime soon but maybe a Confederate States of Europe in the next decade or so.
They have GOT to work on a name, though!
