Just When is the US Going to Collapse?

Spread the Word

by Claudiu Secara, published November 15, 2020

The question of the collapse of the US economy, and in general a US societal collapse, is becoming a topic of discussion in polite society, and even more so on the street. The signs are everywhere, from the accelerating debt accumulation and the disintegration of the productive base to the breakdown of the social consensus and even of social discourse, the loss of any moral compass, sexual promiscuity, and never-ending militaristic hubris.

But the US still operates as one country; it’s still feared by other countries; it’s still able to hold elections without military rule. Its financial markets still appear to be functioning in an orderly fashion and Washington still presents a unified front on all major issues. What, then, holds together the nation and what is that central element under which its state structure coalesces and prevails against the centrifugal forces driving toward disintegration?

If we look at its top leadership, one thing is striking. Its top political figures, the public faces that make the public policy, are almost to the last individual of a certain generation and of a certain group. Whether Republican or Democrat, the leadership of the country has continued uninterrupted since about the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course, they are all part of (or are assimilated into) the WASP constituency, even if a number of late comers are associated with very specific groups, such as Irish or Italian Catholics and Jewish groups, even some Hispanics and token Asians. The top figures all serve the same ideology and adhere to the same cultural paradigm since the Second World War. At the presidential level we see Trump (age 74) and Biden (78), with Sanders still out there (79); Pelosi (80) still controls the Democratic House and McConnell (78) controls the Republican Senate.

Above all, there are the men behind the scenes, making the real decisions. In high finance, we find Soros (90), and in international relations the consummate politician Kissinger (97), on behalf of the ultimate decision-maker Jacob Rothschild (84), and the cabal.

Does such a collection of oldies at the top of the political pyramid have any significance, and do these individuals really hold any influence over the fate of the US and the Western alliance?

Is there a precedent in history that can help us understand the present situation?

If we go back to classical European philosophy of history, we can read what Hegel or Kant had to say about the underlying forces that shape history, whether it’s called the Absolute Spirit or historical determinism. From their perspective, individuals are just fleeting agents of the grand forces at play. Marx described history in terms of hundreds-of-years cycles, such as the progression from the primitive commune to slavery, to feudalism, capitalism and eventually socialism, cycles in which the history of the human species is shaped by its forces of production. Nowhere is there an individual or group in sight. Individuals are shaped by grand movements of mass proportions, and if one mortal individual did not fulfill what was historically determined, another mortal individual would. Men do not make history; rather, history makes the men of their time – this is the overall picture.

In contrast to philosophers of history, actual historians look at discrete events, specific moments in history, such as the French Revolution of 1789, the Fall of Constantinople (1453), the Boer War (1899), etc. They see human individuals, generals and spies, heroes, political rabble-rousers, femmes fatales, traitors and soldiers. They follow battles that changed the course of history when one general won because he had a better battle plan. Or one country became stronger and prevailed over its neighbors because an elite group of oligarchs rallied around a leader, acting in unison against their neighbors.

This is the old dilemma, the old dichotomy between determinism in history versus the heroic individual.

One can question, indeed, what would have become of Soviet Russia had it not been for Stalin, indisputably an all-powerful individual who took on the entire Jewish conspiracy to take over Russia through its Western-financed Bolshevik revolution. We would have had today a totally different course of history. If not for Abraham Lincoln, who ruthlessly butchered the centrifugal masses of individuals within the Union, in the South and even in the North, there wouldn’t have been any more United States. And how about Alexander the Great, or Napoleon, who single-handedly shaped the realities on the ground of vast numbers of peoples and territories?

How, then, to understand today’s course of events? Are we doomed to be subjects of some inevitable, inexorable laws of fate, laws of history; or is it all we can hope for that some hero, some savior will appear, a leader who can get us out of this swamp?

I would propose to look at where are we on the curve of history and the role of our geriatric leadership. Is the United State on an ascending trajectory, a young nation, motivated and energetic, eagerly taking on new challenges? Or is the historical confluence of favorable conditions that accelerated the development of its forces of production no longer an asset? The answer is complex but unequivocal.

Its vast untapped agricultural territory is no longer an opportunity to explode with record harvests, but rather its soil is overused and depleted. Is its labor force young and vibrant? No, the native labor force is older, bloated. Is it still being refreshed through immigration? No, immigration today produces oversaturation with unskilled, most often unmotivated, welfare-seeking, unwilling to integrate, separatist enclaves. Is its technological leadership unmatched by competition from rival countries? Not at all. Rather, it is peddling legacy technologies, still producing dividends and rents but no longer a leader of the pack.

So then, how is that the US still carries the day and is still standing up, if all its constitutive elements, its economy, its financials, its military, its technology, its social cohesion, are crumbling all around? The obvious answer is, indeed, its undivided geriatric leadership, the geriatrics at the top who steadfastly circle the wagons.

They, the 70s and 80s and 90s crop of oligarchs, still hold the country together. They still aren’t letting it go, as long as they are in charge, as long as they are alive.

And then, after that? Alexander the Great’s empire ended upon his death, as his generals could not come together as an unifying leadership again. The Roman Empire of Caesar Augustus was at its peak as long as its august dynasty lasted, followed by internecine civil wars and internal disintegration, year after year thereafter. Vladimir’s Kievan Rus’ disintegrated among his 11 offspring. Genghis Khan’s vast empire fell apart soon after his death, and not even his powerful son, Tamerlane, could hold half of it together for more than a few years. The great civilizations of the Americas — the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Incas, disappeared through self-destruction of their leadership in civil wars (helped by the Spaniards). The British Empire of the Round Table (Rhodes clique) would be a remote and backward island today, if not for the US supporting its dying dynasty for a few more generations.

The Soviet Union collapsed once the last men standing of the late Bolsheviks, the triumvirate Brezhnev-Chernenko-Andropov, came to their natural death. The same will happen here. That moment cannot be far off. Once the geriatric present leadership goes out feet first, the deep fault lines dividing America will shake the nation to its foundations