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Fearless, as Jet Li's Fearless in the United Kingdom and in the United States, is a 2006 Chinese-Hong Kong martial arts film. It is loosely based on the life of Huo Yuanjia, a Chinese martial artist who challenged foreign fighters in highly publicised events, restoring pride and nationalism to China at a time when Western imperialism and Japanese manipulation were eroding the country in the final years of the Qing Dynasty before the birth of the Republic of China.
Lesson One.
This is one of the most important points that Robert Greene has taught us. Once a student, always a student until the day your mentor leaves. For a true master is a great ally, but an even worst foe. Be constantly on guard for your actions, and beware of your environment, least you damage something that has developed to be part of your very being.
LAW 1
NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER
JUDGMENT
Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite—inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW
Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister in the first years of his reign, was a generous man who loved lavish parties, pretty women, and poetry. He also loved money, for he led an extravagant lifestyle.
Fouquet was clever and very much indispensable to the king, so when the prime minister, Jules Mazarin, died, in 1661, the finance minister expected to be named the successor. Instead, the king decided to abolish the position.
This and other signs made Fouquet suspect that he was falling out of favor, and so he decided to ingratiate himself with the king by staging the most spectacular party the world had ever seen. The party’s ostensible purpose would be to commemorate the completion of Fouquet’s château, Vaux-le- Vicomte, but its real function was to pay tribute to the king, the guest of honor.
The most brilliant nobility of Europe and some of the greatest minds of the time—La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Sévigné attended the party. Molière wrote a play for the occasion, in which he himself was to perform at the evening’s conclusion. The party began with a lavish seven- course dinner, featuring foods from the Orient never before tasted in France, as well as new dishes created especially for the night. The meal was accompanied with music commissioned by Fouquet to honor the king.
After dinner there was a promenade through the château’s gardens. The grounds and fountains of Vaux-le-Vicomte were to be the inspiration for Versailles.
Fouquet personally accompanied the young king through the geometrically aligned arrangements of shrubbery and flower beds.
Arriving at the gardens’ canals, they witnessed a fireworks display, which was followed by the performance of Molière’s play.
The party ran well into the night and everyone agreed it was the most amazing affair they had ever attended.
The next day, Fouquet was arrested by the king’s head musketeer, D’Artagnan. Three months later he went on trial for stealing from the country’s treasury. (Actually, most of the stealing he was accused of he had done on the king’s behalf and with the king’s permission.)
Fouquet was found guilty and sent to the most isolated prison in France, high in the Pyrenees Mountains, where he spent the last twenty years of his life in solitary confinement.
Interpretation
Louis XIV, the Sun King, was a proud and arrogant man who wanted to be the center of attention at all times; he could not countenance being outdone in lavishness by anyone, and certainly not his finance minister.
To succeed Fouquet, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a man famous for his parsimony and for giving the dullest parties in Paris. Colbert made sure that any money liberated from the treasury went straight into Louis’s hands.
With the money, Louis built a palace even more magnificent than Fouquet’s —the glorious palace of Versailles. He used the same architects, decorators, and garden designer. And at Versailles, Louis hosted parties even more extravagant than the one that cost Fouquet his freedom.
Let us examine the situation.
The evening of the party, as Fouquet presented spectacle on spectacle to Louis, each more magnificent than the one before, he imagined the affair as demonstrating his loyalty and devotion to the king.
Not only did he think the party would put him back in the king’s favor, he thought it would show his good taste, his connections, and his popularity, making him indispensable to the king and demonstrating that he would make an excellent prime minister.
Instead, however, each new spectacle, each appreciative smile bestowed by the guests on Fouquet, made it seem to Louis that his own friends and subjects were more charmed by the finance minister than by the king himself, and that Fouquet was actually flaunting his wealth and power.
Rather than flattering Louis XIV, Fouquet’s elaborate party offended the king’s vanity.
Louis would not admit this to anyone, of course—instead, he found a convenient excuse to rid himself of a man who had inadvertently made him feel insecure.
Such is the fate, in some form or other, of all those who unbalance the master’s sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his pre- eminence.
When the evening began, Fouquet was at the top of the world.
By the time it had ended, he was at the bottom.
Voltaire, 1694-1778
OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW
In the early 1600s, the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo found himself in a precarious position.
He depended on the generosity of great rulers to support his research, and so, like all Renaissance scientists, he would sometimes make gifts of his inventions and discoveries to the leading patrons of the time.
Once, for instance, he presented a military compass he had invented to the Duke of Gonzaga.
Then he dedicated a book explaining the use of the compass to the Medicis.
Both rulers were grateful, and through them Galileo was able to find more students to teach.
No matter how great the discovery, however, his patrons usually paid him with gifts, not cash.
This made for a life of constant insecurity and dependence. There must be an easier way, he thought.
Galileo hit on a new strategy in 1610, when he discovered the moons of Jupiter. Instead of dividing the discovery among his patrons—giving one the telescope he had used, dedicating a book to another, and so on—as he had done in the past, he decided to focus exclusively on the Medicis.
He chose the Medicis for one reason: Shortly after Cosimo I had established the Medici dynasty, in 1540, he had made Jupiter, the mightiest of the gods, the Medici symbol—a symbol of a power that went beyond politics and banking, one linked to ancient Rome and its divinities.
Galileo turned his discovery of Jupiter’s moons into a cosmic event honoring the Medicis’ greatness.
Shortly after the discovery, he announced that “the bright stars [the moons of Jupiter] offered themselves in the heavens” to his telescope at the same time as Cosimo II’s enthronement.
He said that the number of the moons—four—harmonized with the number of the Medicis (Cosimo II had three brothers) and that the moons orbited Jupiter as these four sons revolved around Cosimo I, the dynasty’s founder.
More than coincidence, this showed that the heavens themselves reflected the ascendancy of the Medici family.
After he dedicated the discovery to the Medicis, Galileo commissioned an emblem representing Jupiter sitting on a cloud with the four stars circling about him, and presented this to Cosimo II as a symbol of his link to the stars.
In 1610 Cosimo II made Galileo his official court philosopher and mathematician, with a full salary. For a scientist this was the coup of a lifetime.
The days of begging for patronage were over.
Interpretation
In one stroke, Galileo gained more with his new strategy than he had in years of begging.
The reason is simple: All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people.
They do not care about science or empirical truth or the latest invention ; they care about their name and their glory.
Galileo gave the Medicis infinitely more glory by linking their name with cosmic forces than he had by making them the patrons of some new scientific gadget or discovery.
Scientists are not spared the vagaries of court life and patronage.
They too must serve masters who hold the purse strings. And their great intellectual powers can make the master feel insecure, as if he were only there to supply the funds—an ugly, ignoble job.
The producer of a great work wants to feel he is more than just the provider of the financing. He wants to appear creative and powerful, and also more important than the work produced in his name.
Instead of insecurity you must give him glory. Galileo did not challenge the intellectual authority of the Medicis with his discovery, or make them feel inferior in any way; by literally aligning them with the stars, he made them shine brilliantly among the courts of Italy.
He did not outshine the master, he made the master outshine all others.
KEYS TO POWER
Everyone has insecurities.
When you show yourself in the world and display your talents, you naturally stir up all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity. This is to be expected.
You cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others.
With those above you, however, you must take a different approach: When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all.
Do not fool yourself into thinking that life has changed much since the days of Louis XIV and the Medicis.
Those who attain high standing in life are like kings and queens: They want to feel secure in their positions, and superior to those around them in intelligence, wit, and charm.
It is a deadly but common misperception to believe that by displaying and vaunting your gifts and talents, you are winning the master’s affection.
He may feign appreciation, but at his first opportunity he will replace you with someone less intelligent, less attractive, less threatening, just as Louis XIV replaced the sparkling Fouquet with the bland Colbert. And as with Louis, he will not admit the truth, but will find an excuse to rid himself of your presence.
This Law involves two rules that you must realize. First, you can inadvertently outshine a master simply by being yourself. There are masters who are more insecure than others, monstrously insecure; you may naturally outshine them by your charm and grace.
No one had more natural talents than Astorre Manfredi, prince of Faenza.
The most handsome of all the young princes of Italy, he captivated his subjects with his generosity and open spirit.
In the year 1500, Cesare Borgia laid siege to Faenza.
When the city surrendered, the citizens expected the worst from the cruel Borgia, who, however, decided to spare the town: He simply occupied its fortress, executed none of its citizens, and allowed Prince Manfredi, eighteen at the time, to remain with his court, in complete freedom.
A few weeks later, though, soldiers hauled Astorre Manfredi away to a Roman prison.
A year after that, his body was fished out of the River Tiber, a stone tied around his neck.
Borgia justified the horrible deed with some sort of trumped-up charge of treason and conspiracy, but the real problem was that he was notoriously vain and insecure.
The young man was outshining him without even trying.
Given Manfredi’s natural talents, the prince’s mere presence made Borgia seem less attractive and charismatic.
The lesson is simple: If you cannot help being charming and superior, you must learn to avoid such monsters of vanity.
Either that, or find a way to mute your good qualities when in the company of a Cesare Borgia.
Second, never imagine that because the master loves you, you can do anything you want.
Entire books could be written about favorites who fell out of favor by taking their status for granted, for daring to outshine.
In late- sixteenth-century Japan, the favorite of Emperor Hideyoshi was a man called Sen no Rikyu.
The premier artist of the tea ceremony, which had become an obsession with the nobility, he was one of Hideyoshi’s most trusted advisers, had his own apartment in the palace, and was honored throughout Japan.
Yet in 1591, Hideyoshi had him arrested and sentenced to death.
Rikyu took his own life, instead.
The cause for his sudden change of fortune was discovered later: It seems that Rikyu, former peasant and later court favorite, had had a wooden statue made of himself wearing sandals (a sign of nobility) and posing loftily. He had had this statue placed in the most important temple inside the palace gates, in clear sight of the royalty who often would pass by.
To Hideyoshi this signified that Rikyu had no sense of limits. Presuming that he had the same rights as those of the highest nobility, he had forgotten that his position depended on the emperor, and had come to believe that he had earned it on his own.
This was an unforgivable miscalculation of his own importance and he paid for it with his life.
Remember the following: Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.
Knowing the dangers of outshining your master, you can turn this Law to your advantage.
First you must flatter and puff up your master.
Overt flattery can be effective but has its limits; it is too direct and obvious, and looks bad to other courtiers.
Discreet flattery is much more powerful. If you are more intelligent than your master, for example, seem the opposite: Make him appear more intelligent than you. Act naive. Make it seem that you need his expertise. Commit harmless mistakes that will not hurt you in the long run but will give you the chance to ask for his help. Masters adore such requests. A master who cannot bestow on you the gifts of his experience may direct rancor and ill will at you instead.
If your ideas are more creative than your master’s, ascribe them to him, in as public a manner as possible.
Make it clear that your advice is merely an echo of his advice.
If you surpass your master in wit, it is okay to play the role of the court jester, but do not make him appear cold and surly by comparison.
Tone down your humor if necessary, and find ways to make him seem the dispenser of amusement and good cheer.
If you are naturally more sociable and generous than your master, be careful not to be the cloud that blocks his radiance from others.
He must appear as the sun around which everyone revolves, radiating power and brilliance, the center of attention.
If you are thrust into the position of entertaining him, a display of your limited means may win you his sympathy. Any attempt to impress him with your grace and generosity can prove fatal: Learn from Fouquet or pay the price.
In all of these cases it is not a weakness to disguise your strengths if in the end they lead to power.
By letting others outshine you, you remain in control, instead of being a victim of their insecurity.
This will all come in handy the day you decide to rise above your inferior status.
If, like Galileo, you can make your master shine even more in the eyes of others, then you are a godsend and you will be instantly promoted.
Image:
The Stars in the Sky. There can be only one sun at a time. Never obscure the sunlight, or rival the sun’s brilliance; rather, fade into the sky and find ways to heighten the master star’s intensity.
Authority:
Avoid outshining the master. All superiority is odious, but the superiority of a subject over his prince is not only stupid, it is fatal. This is a lesson that the stars in the sky teach us—they may be related to the sun, and just as brilliant, but they never appear in her company.
(Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)
REVERSAL
You cannot worry about upsetting every person you come across, but you must be selectively cruel.
If your superior is a falling star, there is nothing to fear from outshining him.
Do not be merciful—your master had no such scruples in his own cold-blooded climb to the top.
Gauge his strength.
If he is weak, discreetly hasten his downfall: Outdo, outcharm, outsmart him at key moments.
If he is very weak and ready to fall, let nature take its course.
Do not risk outshining a feeble superior—it might appear cruel or spiteful. But if your master is firm in his position, yet you know yourself to be the more capable, bide your time and be patient.
It is the natural course of things that power eventually fades and weakens. Your master will fall someday, and if you play it right, you will outlive and someday outshine him.
Conclusion
We are often nothing if we act alone, but we can achieve greatness if we form a bond with a group of people.
Within those people are those of great skill, knowledge, experience and ability. You can use their talents for the greater good of the group. You can also learn from them and then in tern become proficient as they.
However, when you are in a group, you must never outshine anyone. You must fit within the group and all praises o to the group, not to the individual stars. Once a group of hard-working individuals are ignored by a singular member, the negative emotions of human greet, envy, lust and others start to corrupt the group. It can harm everyone.
Be careful of what you do, and be humble in your assigned position in life.
Do you want more?
I have more posts in my “48 Laws of Power” Index here…
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We are witnessing the end of the United States military Empire. As well as the rise of a unified Asia.
There are all sorts of articles on this subject. Most out of the United States are pretty limited in scope. No one is looking at the big picture, and instead what they see is evil or frightening. But it need not be.
First, lets look at history…
All credit to the author. And note that it was formatted to fit within this venue. The article is titled “The Last Days of Rome: How A Great Empire Fell With Barely a Whimper“, and it makes some very interesting points.
…
Unlike the valiant last stand by Constantine XI in Constantinople which marked the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the Roman Empire in the West did not fall after a notable battle. Indeed, it is perhaps ironic that one of the greatest empires in history surrendered rather meekly without much of a struggle. Although the end of the empire is said to have occurred when Odoacer marched into Rome and deposed Emperor Romulus Augustus on September 4, 476, the end was nigh for quite some time.
A Fragmented Empire
Although Diocletian managed to bring the disastrous Third Century Crisis to an end by taking control in 284, the Empire was fundamentally weakened. Aside from widespread economic strife throughout the Empire in the fourth century, the tribes of Germany significantly increased their populations and became more of a threat.
By 376, an enormous influx of barbarians from across the Danube threatened the Eastern part of the Empire, and the Romans suffered a disastrous defeat at Adrianople in 378 when Emperor Valens died with most of his army. By the end of the fourth century, Emperor Theodosius was reliant on barbarian warlords who lacked discipline and loyalty. It was the equivalent of allowing wolves into the chicken coop.
To make matters worse, Theodosius had to contend with the usurper Magnus Maximus who declared himself Emperor of the West in 383. Theodosius finally defeated his enemy in 388 but with heavy losses on both sides that only served to weaken the Empire. When he died in 395, his sons Honorius and Arcadius became emperors. Both were incompetent and little more than puppet rulers.
Sack of Rome
Much like the Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 was the beginning of the end for the Byzantine Empire, the Sack of Rome in 410 can be seen as the start of the Western Empire’s last days. The King of the Visigoths, Alaric, first attempted to invade Italy in 401 but was repelled by Stilicho at Pollentia the following year. When Emperor Honorius ordered a massacre of Goths serving in the Roman military, some 30,000 of them defected to Alaric in 408.
He laid siege to Rome that year and forced its citizens to pay a sizeable tribute to prevent them from starving to death. Alaric did not want to destroy the Empire; he just wanted a recognized position within its borders. After another siege in 409, he tried to negotiate with Honorius the following year. The influence of an enemy Goth during negotiations angered Alaric, so he laid siege to Rome once again. This time, he succeeded in breaking through and sacked the city.
Oddly enough, there was relatively little destruction during the three-day sacking of Rome. Alaric invited barbarian slaves to join his army, and a large proportion was happy to do so. He had no intention of remaining in Rome and decided to sail to Africa. However, his ships were battered by storms, and he died of fever. Although Alaric did not remain in Rome to conquer it, the sacking of the city was an indication of just how weak the Empire in the West was. The countdown to its demise began in earnest.
A Continued Collapse
The Empire disintegrated further throughout the fifth century. It lost Carthage to the Vandals in 439 and was at the mercy of Attila the Hun during the 440s and early 450s. After successful campaigns against the Eastern Empire, he turned his attention to the West, and while he suffered defeat at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451, he invaded Italy. Attila accepted a favorable peace treaty but planned to invade Italy once again before his death in 453.
After a brief resurgence under the rule of Emperor Majorian (457-461), the Empire once more plunged into chaos. A Germanic general called Ricimer entered Rome in 472, but he died just six weeks later. Over the next four years, the Western Empire had a succession of Emperors who were little more than puppets for barbarian warlords.
A Sad End
In 475, a man named Orestes drove the Emperor Julius Nepos out of the capital Ravenna and declared his 16-year-old son as Emperor Romulus Augustus. The teenager was never recognized as the ruler outside Italia, and when his father refused to grant federated status to the Heruli, its leader Odoacer launched an invasion. He chased Orestes to Pavia and then Piacenza where the Emperor’s father was executed on August 28, 476.
On September 4, 476, the Senate compelled Romulus Augustus to abdicate, and it is typically on this day that the Western Roman Empire is said to have officially fallen. The unfortunate boy remained in Ravenna, but instead of executing him, Odoacer showed mercy by sending him to live in Campania. The fate of the last Emperor of the West is unknown because he disappears from the historical record.
Although 476 is used as a convenient date to mark the end of the Empire, it is a little more complicated. The deposed Julius Nepos continued to claim that he was the Emperor of the West until he was murdered in 480. In the meantime, Odoacer began negotiations with Zeno, the Emperor of the East. Although Zeno accepted Odoacer as viceroy of Italia, he insisted that the barbarian continue to recognize Julius Nepos as the Emperor in the West.
Odoacer invaded Dalmatia when he learned of Nepos’ murder while in 488, Zeno authorized the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great’s invasion of Italia. After five years of indecisive fighting, Odoacer and Theodoric agreed to rule jointly, but the Ostrogoth betrayed his new ‘ally.’ At a banquet celebrating their new arrangement in 493, Theodoric’s men slaughtered Odoacer’s troops, and he cut his rival in half.
And so one of the greatest Empire’s in history ended not with a fearsome battle, but with a sorry capitulation. Its hold on the East lasted for almost 1,000 years after that, and while the Byzantine Empire also fell apart meekly, the final battle at Constantinople was at least more befitting of a regime’s downfall than the slow, painful demise of Rome.
Likewise, we can expect America to die with a whimper.
Indeed, unless [1] World War III occurs, or [2] the United States government starts acting and behaving like people who care for America, the nation is destined the long slow crawl towards the gutter. It will be just like Rome. With insignificant minor events as defined by technology rather than structure.
Let’s consider China. Indeed, let’s understand what contemporaneous Chinese think of America through the lens of their own history.
The Rise and Fall of the Han Dynasty
Although the brief Qin dynasty managed to unite the Warring States of China, the Han dynasty is considered to be the second great Chinese imperial dynasty after almost 800 years of Zhou control. The Han had such a profound impact on its nation’s culture that the word ‘Han’ ultimately referred to a person who was ethnically Chinese.
The short-lived Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) began with the unification of six warring states. Led by a man who proclaimed himself the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the empire unified China for a brief period before Qin died in 210 BC. The result was a vicious civil war which was won by Liu Bang who defeated Xiang Yu. Liu led the Han since 206 BC and after four years of fighting, finally got the better of Xiang after surrounding him at the Yangzi River where his rival committed suicide. From 202 BC until his death seven years later, Liu was known as Emperor Gaozu of Han, the first leader of the dynasty.
He decided to pick Chang’an as the empire’s new capital as all major roads converged there; it was also the eastern end of the legendary Silk Road. Within 200 years, the population of the city grew to approximately 250,000 as it was the economic, cultural and military center of the nation.
When the emperor died in 195 BC, his wife Lu Zhi tried to take the empire for her family. She murdered all of her husband’s sons born to concubines and mutilated his favorite mistress. The Empress embraced nepotism by installing relatives in positions of power, replacing those who had been loyal to the emperor. Emperor Gaozu’s heir apparent was his teenage son, Liu Yang who became Emperor Hui of Han. Once he found out what his mother was doing, the frightened emperor took great care not to disobey her.
Rise & Fall of the Lu Clan
Emperor Hui did not have any children so when he died in 188 BC; his mother showed that she was the real powerbroker in the Han dynasty by placing one ruler on the throne before removing him for someone else. During the reigns of her handpicked emperors, Lu Zhi issued imperial edicts and picked family members as kings, military officers and officials.
Once Lu Zhi died in 180 BC, the King of Qi (grandson of the first emperor) raised an army to fight the Lus but before they could engage, the Lu Clan was destroyed by a coup. The King of Qi did not become the new ruler; instead, the King of Dai, Liu Heng, became Emperor Wen and ruled until 157 BC.
Stability & Prosperity
Wen was succeeded by Emperor Jing who ruled until 141 BC. The near 40-year period of combined rule by these two men was an era of stability and prosperity for the Han dynasty. While the Qin dynasty was known for its cruelty, the Han tried to show a different face of power by issues multiple amnesties, reducing tax on agricultural goods and abolishing mutilation as a legal form of punishment.
However, kingdoms that rebelled against the Han were ruthlessly dealt with as their territories were reduced and in some cases, kingdoms were abolished altogether. The result was an increase in the number of kingdoms and commanderies.
Emperor Wu was one of the longest reigning Han rulers; he became the leader in 141 BC and ruled until his death in 87 BC. Although he had to contend with the Xiongnu and fought a lengthy war with this enemy, literature, poetry and philosophy flourished under Wu. The ‘Shiji’ was written by Sima Qian, and this Historical Records text set the standard for later histories sponsored by the government. The Shiji recorded information about ‘barbarians’ that lived on the borders of the empire among other things.
Emperor Wu also established Confucianism as the kingdom’s basis for proper conduct and education.
China regained a number of territories under his rule with new commanderies formed in Korea. In 101 BC, the Han conquered Ferghana and several neighboring regions which enabled them to steal a large quantity of horses. At this stage, China had control of important trade routes around the Taklamakan Desert. The nation traded its coveted silk and gold for items such as grapes, wine, broad beans, and alfalfa.
Fall of the Western Han
The death of Emperor Wu resulted in a variety of social and political conflicts that eventually led to the downfall of the Western Han dynasty. The Empress Wang Zhengjun oversaw the succession of emperors and ensured her male relatives took the throne one after another.
In 8 BC, her nephew, Wang Mang, became General-in-Chief but was removed from office less than a year later. Pressure from his supporters ensured he returned to the capital in 2 BC.
The following year, Emperor Ai died, and as he had no son, Wang Mang assumed the title of regent over Emperor Ping.
When Ping died in 6 AD, Empress Wang confirmed Wang Mang as the acting emperor. Although he promised to relinquish power when the child Liu Ying came of age, he clearly decided that he enjoyed being emperor.
Wang Mang started a propaganda campaign, announced the end of the Han dynasty and proclaimed himself the leader of the new Xin dynasty in 9 AD.
Rise & Fall of the Eastern Han
To Wang Mang’s credit, he tried to change the unfair land ownership situation but failed. In 23 AD, a rebellion led by a group called the Red Eyebrows sacked the capital city of Chang’an and beheaded the unfortunate Wang Mang.
The court of the Eastern Han dynasty was laden with scheming and intrigue during the first century AD as there was no real line of succession.
Most of the emperors died relatively young with no heirs, so a close relative usually became the next ruler. Towards the end of the second century AD, eunuchs had far too much power in the royal court, and the people ultimately grew tired of government corruption.
The Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184 AD threatened the capital city (Which was Luoyang since 25 AD), and six years later, a warlord called Dong Zhou captured the city and placed a child named Liu Xie on the throne.
Although the young boy was a member of the Han, Zhou was the real leader, and he proceeded to murder all the eunuchs and burn the city to the ground.
A succession of battles significantly weakened the empire, and in 220 AD, Liu Xie agreed to abdicate and allowed Cao Pi, King of Wei, to take over. This marked the end of the Han dynasty and the formation of the Cao Wei state which was a major player during the period of the Three Kingdoms.
Confusing?
In China the nation was ruled by the elite. Much like America is ruled by the elite in Washington DC. And this rule involved all kinds of “back stabbing”, “power plays”, “alignments”, and subterfuge. And that is what we see here. The entire dynasty was broght down by the very people who were supposed to make it last, and work; the leadership.
But they were far too preoccupied with petty squabbles, wealth and power, and politics that they let the empire dissolve around them. Sure, there had capable people, and technologies at their disposal, but their interest wasn’t in the good of the nation.
It was themselves.
Let’s look at America today…
The best articles are the ones that come with a historical perspective. They are the best. And here is one right here. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have. What is surprising is that it comes right out of America. Imagine that someone stuck their head out of the echo-chamber bubble to throw this one together.
Of course, all credit to the original author. Note that it was reformatted to fit this venue, but the content stays the same. You can read the original article HERE.
How Empires End
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson
Histories are generally written by academics.
They, quite naturally, tend to focus on the main events: the wars and the struggles between leaders and their opponents (both external and internal). Whilst these are interesting stories to read, academics, by their very nature, often overlook the underlying causes for an empire’s decline, – reports the Internationalman website.
Today, as in any era, most people are primarily interested in the “news”—the daily information regarding the world’s political leaders and their struggles with one another to obtain, retain, and expand their power. When the history is written about the era we are passing through, it will reflect, in large measure, a rehash of the news. As the media of the day tend to overlook the fact that present events are merely symptoms of an overall decline, so historians tend to focus on major events, rather than the “slow operations” that have been the underlying causes.
The Persian Empire
When, as a boy, I was “educated” about the decline and fall of the Persian Empire, I learned of the final takeover by Alexander the Great but was never told that, in its decline, Persian taxes became heavier and more oppressive, leading to economic depression and revolts, which, in turn led to even heavier taxes and increased repression. Increasingly, kings hoarded gold and silver, keeping it out of circulation from the community. This hamstrung the market, as monetary circulation was insufficient to conduct business. By the time Alexander came along, Persia, weakened by warfare and internal economic strife, was a shell of an empire and was relatively easy to defeat.
The Tang Dynasty
Back then, I also learned that the Tang Dynasty ended as a result of the increased power amongst the eunuchs, battles with fanzhen separatists, and finally, peasants’ revolts. True enough, but I was not taught that the dynasty’s expansion-based warfare demanded increases in taxation, which led to the revolts. Continued warfare necessitated increasing monetary and land extortion by the eunuchs, resulting in an abrupt decrease in food output and further taxes. Finally, as economic deterioration and oppression of the citizenry worsened, citizens left the area entirely for more promise elsewhere.
Is there a pattern here? Let’s have a more detailed look—at another empire.
The Spanish Empire
In 1556, Philip II of Spain inherited what was regarded as Europe’s most wealthy nation, with no apparent economic problems. Yet, by 1598, Spain was bankrupt. How was this possible?
Spain was doing well but sought to become a major power. To achieve this, Philip needed more tax dollars. Beginning in 1561, the existing servicio tax was regularised, and the crusada tax, the excusado tax, and the millones tax were all added by 1590.
Over a period of 39 years (between 1559 and 1598) taxes increased by 430%. Although the elite of the day were exempt from taxation (the elite of today are not officially exempt), the average citizen was taxed to the point that both business expansion and public purchasing diminished dramatically. Wages did not keep pace with the resultant inflation. The price of goods rose 400%, causing a price revolution and a tax revolution.
Although Spain enjoyed a flood of gold and silver from the Americas at this time, the increased wealth went straight into Philip’s war efforts. However, the 100,000 troops were soon failing to return sufficient spoils to Philip to pay for their forays abroad.
In a final effort to float the doomed empire, Philip issued government bonds, which provided immediate cash but created tremendous debt that, presumably, would need to be repaid one day. (The debt grew to 8.8 times GDP.)
Spain declared bankruptcy. Trade slipped to other countries. The military, fighting on three fronts, went unpaid, and military aspirations collapsed.
It is important to note that, even as the empire was collapsing, Philip did not suspend warfare. He did not back off on taxation. Like leaders before and since, he instead stubbornly increased his autocracy as the empire slid into collapse.
Present-Day Empires
Again, the events above are not taught to schoolchildren as being of key importance in the decline of empires, even though they are remarkably consistent with the decline of other empires and what we are seeing today. The very same events occur, falling like dominoes, more or less in order, in any empire, in any age:
The reach of government leaders habitually exceeds their grasp.
Dramatic expansion (generally through warfare) is undertaken without a clear plan as to how that expansion is to be financed.
The population is overtaxed as the bills for expansion become due, without consideration as to whether the population can afford increased taxation.
Heavy taxation causes investment by the private sector to diminish, and the economy begins to decline.
Costs of goods rise, without wages keeping pace.
Tax revenue declines as the economy declines (due to excessive taxation). Taxes are increased again, in order to top up government revenues.
In spite of all the above, government leaders personally hoard as much as they can, further limiting the circulation of wealth in the business community.
Governments issue bonds and otherwise borrow to continue expansion, with no plan as to repayment.
Dramatic authoritarian control is instituted to assure that the public continues to comply with demands, even if those demands cannot be met by the public.
Economic and social collapse occurs, often marked by unrest and riots, the collapse of the economy, and the exit of those who are productive.
In this final period, the empire turns on itself, treating its people as the enemy.
The above review suggests that if our schoolbooks stressed the underlying causes of empire collapse, rather than the names of famous generals and the dates of famous battles, we might be better educated and be less likely to repeat the same mistakes.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely. Chances are, future leaders will be just as uninterested in learning from history as past leaders. They will create empires, then destroy them.
Even the most informative histories of empire decline, such as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, will not be of interest to the leaders of empires. They will believe that they are above history and that they, uniquely, will succeed.
If there is any value in learning from the above, it is the understanding that leaders will not be dissuaded from their aspirations. They will continue to charge ahead, both literally and figuratively, regardless of objections and revolts from the citizenry.
Once an empire has reached stage eight above, it never reverses. It is a “dead empire walking” and only awaits the painful playing-out of the final three stages.
At that point, it is foolhardy in the extreme to remain and “wait it out” in the hope that the decline will somehow reverse. At that point, the wiser choice might be to follow the cue of the Chinese, the Romans, and others, who instead chose to quietly exit for greener pastures elsewhere.
Editor’s Note:The US government is overextending itself by interfering in every corner of the globe. It’s all financed by massive amounts of money printing. However, the next financial crisis could end the whole charade soon.
The truth is, we’re on the cusp of a global economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve ever seen before.
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Things are maturing and advancing steadily on plan. And like I have repeatedly stated, the events will not be reported. Or, if they are, they will not be well reported, or reported in context. Well, here at MM you are going to get a real situation report, a “Sit Rep”. No need to panic. Just be aware.
“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood.
Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate.
Political and economic trust will implode.
Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire.
The very survival of the nation will feel at stake.
Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.”
– Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
The Fourth Turning
I read The Fourth Turning a while ago. I was astounded in their uncannily accurate assessment of American history based upon generational configurations which recur on eighty-year cycles, a long human life.
Strauss and Howe wrote the book in 1997 and used their generational theory to predict the Crisis that would begin in the mid-2000’s and come to an indeterminate climax in the mid-2020’s.
Strauss & Howe identified the core elements of this Crisis as debt, civic decay, and global disorder. No one can argue the severe distress engulfing the nation and the world traces its origins to these core elements, with the catalyst for this Crisis being the 2008 central banker manufactured financial collapse.
Nothing has been normal since 2008.
And 2008’s epic implosion was driven by the disastrous financial, political and military decisions implemented by the puppets of the Deep State from 2000 onward, with the Federal Reserve obligingly creating bubble after bubble as the “solution” to the previous bubble.
And now we are here again, in the midst of the greatest bubble in the history of mankind.
A bubble of willful ignorance.
The obliviousness of most Americans to the danger awaiting them is akin to the day before Fort Sumpter was bombed…
… the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked…
… or the dinosaurs unaware of a giant meteor rushing towards the planet and about to transform their future in a challenging way.
Real hardship has beset the land.
With the notable exception of the 0.1% who rule…
…or Deep State lackeys and toadies who are being rewarded for propagating mistruths, outright lies, fear, and propaganda on behalf of their oligarch benefactors.
These apparatchiks mainly consist of corrupt politicians, central bank lackeys, mainstream media hacks, neocon warmongers, surveillance state traitors, and big pharma captured health “experts”.
All of whom are driving the world towards the “great reset”.
The severe distress does involve class, race, nation and empire, but most of the distress has been artificially created by those pulling the strings – Bernays’ invisible government manipulating the masses.
The four years of the Trump administration set the stage for the rumblings that we hear today.
All over the world, the death shudders of a dying empire can be heard.
It advances towards us, like that of a deadly avalanche crashing down a mountainside towards an unsuspecting village below.
America is in deep trouble
Harvard professor Laurence Kotlikoff has been a lone voice telling the truth about the true level of unfunded promises hidden in the CBO numbers.
The unfunded social welfare liabilities in excess of $200 trillion for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare are nothing but a massive future tax increase on younger and unborn generations. Kotlikoff explains what would be required to pay these obligations:
“To honor these obligations we could (a) raise all federal taxes, immediately and permanently, by 57%, (b) cut all federal spending, apart from interest on the debt, by 37%, immediately and permanently, or (c) do some combination of (a) and (b).”
Zero spending on health and social services?
Zero spending on the military?
It’s simply not going to happen.
The level of taxation and/or Federal Reserve created inflation necessary to honor these politician promises is too large to be considered feasible.
Therefore, these promises, made to get corrupt political hacks elected to public office, will be defaulted upon.
It’s all not going to happen.
Every legitimate valuation method used to assess stock market valuations for the last 100 years confirm the stock market being at least 100% overvalued.
There could not be a worse time for margin debt to also reach all-time highs.
The previous peaks in 2000 and 2007 preceded 50% collapses in stocks.
Consumer credit outstanding, despite the false media story-line of austerity, stands at $14.27 trillion in Q2 of 2020.1. I don’t know what it is today, one year later and after three “stimulus packages”, but it’s just got to be awful.
Feb 05, 2021 · Average consumer debt per capita is approximately $12,596 (total consumer debt as of September 2020/total US population as of September 30, 2020).
-2021 ConsumerDebtStatistics | LexingtonLaw
Indeed, it’s at an all-time high, as the Federal government took monopoly control of the student loan market in 2009.
(And proceeded to issue $600 billion of subprime loans to University of Phoenix wannabe graduates seeking degrees in Gender Studies.)
The Feds also used their five year control of Ally Financial (after their taxpayer bailout) to rejuvenate the subprime auto loan market…
…by doling out $35,000 seven year car loans to unemployed SNAP recipients.
After all everyone deserves to drive a brand new Cadillac Escalade.
The $250 billion increase in auto loan debt since 2009 has “created” the auto recovery. Loan delinquencies approaching 2009 levels will surely not cause a problem.
Right?
The level of local and state pension and healthcare unfunded liabilities to government workers exceeds $4 trillion.
State and local politicians would have to double real estate, sales, and income taxes in order to fund the gold plated benefits for state and local workers.
As government workers in Stockton, San Bernardino, Jefferson County and Detroit have experienced, these promises will be not be honored.
(Sigh.)
It’s all going down the drain
If you don’t feel the very survival of the nation hangs in the balance, then you are either delusional, willfully ignorant, or unwilling to recognize your own cognitive dissonance.
The next five to ten years will alter the course of history in a profound way.
Whether or not the outcome will be positive for average American citizens is very much in doubt.
At all levels, domestic and international, America is flailing about and it’s tremors, spasms and vomiting are noticed by all but the intentionally and willful blind.
I wish it were not so, but most human beings seem incapable of critical thought regarding how history follows a cyclical path due to human nature retaining its flaws, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and fortes throughout history.
We believe we have advanced because our inventions, discoveries, and technology, but the desire for wealth, power and control over others still consumes a sociopathic portion of mankind who tend to rise to the top through any means necessary.
As Huxley lamented in the 1950’s, technological progress has actually propelled mankind backwards in terms of its humanity and relationship with nature and other human beings.
The very technology we glorify as an example of our advancement is now being used by the totalitarians to imprison us Americans.
We're just victims of the telephone.
-Tin Lead Hat lyrics
And if that’s not bad enough…
…they demand the rest of the world to accept the chains and shackles that they have enslaved Americans with.
Accept or die!
This is unacceptable to the rest of the world
A "rule based" agreement is one that no longer follows the UN, and recognizes independence of nations with inherent sovereignty. No. Instead it demands that the United States is the leader of the world and that all other regions must bow to it in subservience.
It has happened slowly and methodically over decades as generation after generation have entered the government indoctrination centers (public schools) to be taught ignorance and obedience to the state.
This indoctrination has been reinforced by ceaseless propaganda injected into their brains by media conglomerates doing the bidding of the state.
The dystopian use of disinformation, false narratives, blatant lies and propaganda by the totalitarians constituting the Deep State, has aggravated the crisis situation that America finds itself in today.
An honest truth-seeking press with unbiased journalists would have uncovered this conspiracy and revealed the truthful facts to a concerned public.
Instead, a completely captured corporate media has turned a blind eye to the truth as they have acted as accomplices of the coup culprits.
Just as evil is the suppression of truth through censorship and keeping silent regarding the truth.
Huxley understood how totalitarian propagandists operated decades before the current batch of Silicon Valley authoritarians initiated their national truth repression scheme.
I’m amazed by the extreme level of ignorance exhibited by a vast swath of our population, as they glory in believing comforting mistruths which confirm their preordained belief structure.
They don’t know because they don’t want to know.
They are intoxicated by the endless stream of idiocy emanating from their iGadgets, as they willfully choose [1] ignorance over awareness, [2] servitude over freedom, and [3] captivity over liberty.
As Huxley predicted, the controlling oligarchy has used technology to convince people to love their servitude.
Meanwhile, the sheeple unthinkingly believe what they are told by their government and media mouthpieces.
5G causes cancer.
China is evil.
GMO’s are good.
The SPA killer was not a racist.
Trump is going to build a wall.
Hillary is going to jail.
Jeff Sessions is playing 54D chess.
Elections are not rigged.
Taxes are good for the economy.
Peeing in a cup to get a job is modern and useful.
Everyone must pay taxes, and American taxes are the lowest in the world.
Meanwhile, the sheeple blind to their manipulation , go on doing the bidding of the government and oligarchs who control the government.
The goal of the ruling class is to keep people from thinking,.
And therefore most Americans willingly oblige because thinking is hard and the uncomfortable truths are too much to bear for the satiated masses.
But there is a minority who want the truth and are willing and able to deal with the consequences. They realize facts don’t cease to exist because we ignore them. Facts don’t care about your beliefs or feelings.
Facts lead you to the truth.
And the immense coverup of facts boggles the mind of every critical thinking person on the planet.
So let’s look at the “facts” and the truths regarding the Fourth Turning.
“The Grey Champion”
Based on the Fourth Turning generational theory, there is no doubt Donald Trump was the prophet-generation Grey-Champion.
The term Grey Champion does not mean they are a great, noble, humane person. Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were not nice guys. They did whatever they thought necessary to achieve their means during our previous three Fourth Turnings. Millions of Americans hated Lincoln and Roosevelt, just as tens of millions hate Trump.
The Grey Champion’s appearance marks the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” as the violent turmoil climax of the Fourth Turning approaches.
Trump and Pence are from the Prophet (Boomer) Generation, while Biden is from the Silent Generation and Harris is Generation X.
Trump is the lightning rod for a clash that must take place to sweep away the existing corrupted social order and replace it with something new.
And he was swept away…
Every four years we hear the same pablum about this being the most important election of our lifetime. It didn’t matter who won the election, the Deep State, Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street controlled Federal Reserve, Big Business, Big Pharma, Big Media, Silicon Valley Titans, and Billionaires like Soros, Bloomberg and Gates are still running the show.
One man has extraordinarily little chance of confronting these wealthy power-hungry sociopaths and winning.
And thus we see Biden and his cronies follow Trump and his cronies road-map for America.
Sorry to say.
The PTB has successfully convinced a willfully ignorant populace to love their servitude and acquiesce to allowing them unfettered control over their lives.
However, the tyrannical lockdowns, martial law like mandates from bureaucrats, compulsory masking as a requirement to be accepted in society, and the dehumanizing of our daily lives has created a Resistance, peaceful thus far, who are enraged by what is happening.
Domestic turmoil and dangerous International actions
If you read the Alt-Right or the Alt-Left there is little mention about the international chaos that America has created. It’s mostly a regurgitation of the anti-China, or anti-Russia, or anti-Iran narratives.
It’s not a balanced and accurate appraisal of the shit-storm that America has created.
Here’s a typical example from an Alt-Right website. Obviously the author has never visited China. Because his statements are simple regurgitation of the PTB narratives about China and so outlandish that real Chinese expats do more than shake our heads in disbelief, we actually laugh at him!
Check out this nonsense…
China, which has been the driving world economic force for the last decade, is in a precarious position.
They have been the slave labor manufacturer to the world as the worldwide debt fueled consumption orgy reached its 2008 climax.
Their level of Keynesian mal-investment since 2008 makes Obama, Bernanke, and Yellen look like pikers.
The level of corruption, deception, wealth inequality, pollution, censorship and phony economic data has been done on a majestic scale.
It is now unraveling in a slow motion crash as the global recession has crushed their industrial output and is rapidly deflating their real estate bubble. The 52 million unoccupied housing units in China may not turn out to be great investments after all.
The absurdity of Chinese economic reports makes the BLS look highly accurate and upstanding.
Their reported GDP of 7.4% was their slowest in 24 years, but the real figure is closer to 4%.
The proof of the dramatic slowing in Chinese growth is the collapse in oil prices, copper prices, iron ore prices, and the Baltic Dry Index.
The index measures world trade and has crashed to its lowest level ever. The potential for social unrest when their mal-investment debt bubbles implode will be great.
-Conspiracy Analysist
Like I said, it’s a regurgitation of the American PTB narrative.
And all FALSE.
And all LIES.
And sheeple believe it, because it makes their pathetic lives seem better.
They aren’t.
And you know Americans believe this, and since they believe everything the PTB tells them to believe, they will also go along with this John Bolton statement…
“A by-no-means-comprehensive list of Beijing’s transgressions that require U.S. attention would include: meddling, blatant and subtle, with U.S. public opinion;
Sure…
We can just tell how successful that interference has been right? How many Americans believe that China is doing better than the United States, eh?
Or check out this line that sheeple can repeat in their sleep…
"...and genocide against Uyghurs"
Gosh, the Chinese must be so fucking incompetent. After all the Uyghur population has grown by a factor of ten times plus over the last few years. Pretty hard to have a genocide where the population increases…
All the Chinese just can’t do anything right!
</sarcasm>
Just sheeple repeating what they have read. Not what they have experienced first hand. Just what they have read about fourth-hand.
Remember boys and girls, the definition of what a sheeple is.
Sheeple is a person who is very emotional about something they read about, not by something that they have personally experienced first-hand, up front, and personal.
Yuppur. Any day now… China is going to collapse. It’s just like the USA only far, far worse…
Sure….
I read all about it on FOX, Rush Limbaugh, the NYPost, CNN, and Alex Jones. So it must be the truth!
Look at China crumble before our very eyes!
Just Look!
According to the American media, China is going to collapse any day now. Communism will show it’s ugly face, and the Chinese people will rise up and yearn for “democracy” and the superior “American way of life!”. Do not hold your breath.
Sure…
It’s falling apart. People are starving, and they are rising up demanding “democracy” and Pepe the frog! And singing the Star Bangled Banner and American flags. They so desperately yearn for the American way of life!
Look at them!
According to the American media, China is going to collapse any day now. Communism will show it’s ugly face, and the Chinese people will rise up and yearn for “democracy” and the superior “American way of life!”. Do not hold your breath.
Sure…
Look at all those impoverished and miserable people!
According to the American media, China is going to collapse any day now. Communism will show it’s ugly face, and the Chinese people will rise up and yearn for “democracy” and the superior “American way of life!”. Do not hold your breath.
Sure…
China is terribly polluted, dirty, grimy, full of disease and germs. Terrible, terrible germs! Only a moron would want to live in that shit-hole!
According to the American media, China is going to collapse any day now. Communism will show it’s ugly face, and the Chinese people will rise up and yearn for “democracy” and the superior “American way of life!”. Do not hold your breath.
Sure…
America needs to put some “boots on the ground” and liberate the poor misguided and brainwashed Chinese. The government must be destroyed because after all, America loves the Chinese, it’s the government that it hates!
Right?
According to the American media, China is going to collapse any day now. Communism will show it’s ugly face, and the Chinese people will rise up and yearn for “democracy” and the superior “American way of life!”. Do not hold your breath.
Sure…
</sarcasm>
Ugh!
This is true in what ever form that the PTB controlled government is pushing at the moment. Whether it is COVID, or 5G, or Huawei, or Tiktok, it’s all a echo of what the government wants the sheeple to repeat.
And the sheeple does repeat it, with the worst offenders being those who read the alt-right outlets.
But it doesn’t really matter.
What we do know is Fourth Turnings always accelerate and intensify towards a bloody finale, with clear winners and losers.
There will be clear winners.
There will be clear losers.
Unconditional surrender will be demanded by those maintaining the upper hand. As was clearly articulated in the March 2021 Alaska meeting between the USA and China.
Whether this coming conflict remains domestic or spreads internationally, the “advancements” in the technology of destruction will endanger every human being on the planet.
You cannot escape the impact of Fourth Turnings, only survive and/or do your part in helping achieve a positive outcome.
There is no predetermined ending.
“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule.
If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war.
Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.”
– Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
When pondering the possible outcomes of this Fourth Turning, we tend to be drawn towards the negative, because a positive outcome seems so unlikely given the current animosity roiling the country.
If you step back and realize all the hate and conflict is being engineered and coordinated by a ruling class of powerful rich men, then average Americans could organize a new paradigm that honors the original intent of the U.S. Constitution, allowing citizens the liberty and freedom to create voluntary associations based upon common interests at a local level.
The ruling oligarchs find this unacceptable, so this freedom must be wrested away from them by any means necessary.
There is a civil war already underway, but only one side is fighting…
… the billionaire class who not only don’t want to relinquish some power, but want total control over every aspect of our lives. It appears that this action will turn this one-sided silent war into a hot war on both the domestic and international fronts.
The Enemy.
Everyone is fighting
The American Empire is clearly in rapid decline and may not survive the trials and tribulations over the coming decade.
The Fourth Turning is not a prophecy, but should be taken as a warning and call to action. Sitting this out and hoping for the best will not help achieve a positive outcome.
Tragedy or triumph – the choices we make will matter.
The climax of this Fourth Turning may be a few years off, but the battle for the soul of America has already engaged.
“History offers no guarantees.
Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship.
We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin.
Losing in the next Fourth Turning could mean something incomparably worse.
It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – perhaps even our nation – might never recover.”
– Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
Internationally speaking…
We have yet to see how long it will be before the Biden administration realizes its few victories will be unaffordably Pyrrhic.
Indeed, as simple as merely not responding to American provocation the Chinese/Russian partnership will emerge as the victors.
America is truly fucked.
Halford Mackinder’s century-old vision of a Eurasian superstate, based between the Volga and the Yangtse, is becoming reality.
Deal with it.
Embrace it.
Commentators usually fail to understand why; it is not due to military superiority, but down to simple economics.
While the US economy suffers a post-lockdown inflationary outcome and an existential crisis for the dollar, China’s economy will boom on the back of increasing domestic consumption.
This is an official Chinese government objective.
Meanwhile it is increasing exports, the consequence of America’s stimulation of consumer demand and a soaring budget deficit.
For America, it’s a lose – lose.
The Chinese-Russian partnership already dominates or controls Mackinder’s World Island, defined as Eurasia and all Africa.
South-east Asian nations notionally in the US’s sphere of influence are firmly tied to the partnership’s economy.
And the overland and sea silk roads similarly bind the EU and the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans’ states respectively.
Combined, it amounts to over half the world’s population no longer sharing the economic and currency interests of 328 million Americans.
Imagine that!
We are now equipped to ask an important question: the US status quo, with its dollar hegemony is seen by the new Biden administration as an unchallengeable right, and its position as the world’s hegemon is vital for… .
…what?
What it is “vital” for?
The benefit of the world, or the benefit of the US at the world’s expense?
Hum?
To answer this, we must consider it from the point of view of the US military and intelligence complex.
The problem facing us is that the Pentagon became fully institutionalised in managing America’s external security following the second world war.
When the Soviets extended their sphere of influence into the three great undeveloped continents, Asia, Africa and South America, there was a case for defending capitalism and freedom — or at least freedom in an American sense by keeping minor nations on side.
This was done by fair means and often foul for expediency’s sake.
But the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of Mao Zedong made the American military and intelligence functions largely superfluous, other than matters more directly related to national defense.
But it is in the nature of government departments and their private sector contractors to do everything in their power to retain both influence and budgets, and the argument that new threats will arise is always hard for politicians to resist….
…especially for a military empire.
And what do the statists in a government department do when they have secured their survival?
Their retention of power without real purpose descends into alternative military objectives. And from the first Bush president, they were all firmly on-message.
As we see today with the American military empire.
President Trump was the first president for some time not to start military engagements abroad. His attempts to wind down foreign operations were strongly resisted by defense and intelligence services.
And his efforts to obtain a détente with North Korea were met with disdain — even horror at Langley.
But war-monger he did.
And he left a legacy of the most comprehensive non-hot-war attacks in history.
From the hybrid-wars, to carpet bombing livestock to produce famines inside of China, he was relentless.
And while no one WANTS to talk about the sorry truth, COVID-19 is an American bio-weapons attack upon China.
No.
Not the “inoculation strain” COVID-19A that all the “news” is hyping about. But the strain that was unleashed on China, Iran, North Korea and Russia; the lethal strain, the COVID-19B.
Whatever the truth in these matters, it is highly unlikely that the power conferred by the ability to initiate unchallengeable cover-ups, information management, subversion of foreign states and secret intelligence operations is not abused.
They are.
That’s a fact jack.
And we can see this through the proliferation and traction of “conspiracy theories”. Now, mostly and falsely attributed in their origin to Russian cyber-attacks and disinformation.
It’s all a consequence of one’s own government continually bending the truth to the point where large sections of the population begin to believe it is its own government’s propaganda.
We call them “sheeple.”
And no one is immune. Event the most vehement Alt-Right or alt-left media, who believes that they are independent thinkers, regurgitate the narratives pumped out for them to consume.
This brings us to the change in administration.
As a senator, Biden had interests in foreign affairs dating back to the late 1970s and was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1997 and subsequently became its chairman.
As such a long-standing politician in this field it is almost certain that the Pentagon establishment regards Biden as a safe pair of hands; in other words, a president who is likely to support Langley’s role in setting geopolitical and defence priorities.
Surely, for them this is a welcome change from the off-message President Trump.
Policies to contain the Russian threat
Despite the Navalny affair, Putin is still unchallengeable as Russian leader, having emerged from the post-Soviet turmoil where chaos and organized crime were the order of the day.
No western leader has had such a tough political background and Putin is a survivor, a strongman firmly in control.
Vladimir Putin
This matters for America and NATO with respect to policies in Ukraine, the Caucasus, Syria, Iran and Turkey.
Any attempt by America to complete unfinished business in Ukraine (a triparty scrap involving Russia, Germany/EU and the US over the Nord Stream pipelines depriving Ukraine of transition revenues is already brewing) is likely to lead to confrontations with Russia on the ground.
And Russia signed a military cooperation pact with Iran in 2015.
Like a cat with a mouse, Putin is playing with Turkey, interested in laying pipelines to southern Europe, and getting it to drift out of NATO. Russia’s interest in Syria is to keep it out of America’s sphere of influence, which with Turkey’s help it has managed to do.
For some time, military analysts have been telling us that we are now in a cyber war with Russia, accusing it of interfering in elections and promoting conspiracy theories …
… with the US presidential election last November being the most recent assertion.
As with all these allegations there is no proof offered, just statements from government sources which have a track record of being economical with the truth.
Erp. They lie.
Whatever the truth may be, cyber wars are closely intertwined with propaganda.
Attacks on Russia since the millennium have been by disrupting dollar payments, and less importantly, by sanctioning individuals close to Putin.
The monetary threat was originally justified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, leading to the collapse of the rouble and a hike in interest rates.
The new cold war had taken a financial turn. Russia’s response was to reduce the economy’s dependence on dollars as much as possible, with the central bank selling dollar reserves and adding gold in their place.
It also set up a new payments system to reduce its dependence on the SWIFT interbank payments system.
Russia has survived all financial attacks and is now better insulated against them for the future.
One-zero for the Russians.
But the cost has been hidden, with western investment restricted to being mainly from the EU (particularly directed at the oil and gas industries).
For these and other reasons being pushed by the United States, Russia has turned to China as both a partner and an economic protector. In return, Russia is resource-rich, an energy provider, and therefore of great value to China.
Not to mention militarily, as the demands made by the United States in Alaska clearly pointed to.
The Russian and Chinese geopolitical partnership
One of the first persons to identify the geopolitical importance of Russia’s resources was Halford Mackinder in a paper for the Royal Geographical Society in 1904. He later developed it into his Heartland theory.
Mackinder argued that control of the Heartland, which stretched from the Volga to the Yangtze, would control the “World-Island”, which was his term for all Europe, Asia and Africa. Over a century later, Mackinder’s theory resonates with the two leading nations behind the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation, the creation of which was announced on 15 June 2001 in Shanghai (China) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and theRepublic of Uzbekistan.
-About SCO | SCO
The underlying point is that North and South America, Britain, Japan and Australasia in the final analysis are peripheral and less important than Mackinder’s World-Island.
And he was correct.
There was a time when British and then American primacy outweighed its importance, but this may no longer be true.
If Mackinder’s vision is valid about the overriding importance of undeveloped resources, Russia is positioned to become with China the most powerful national partnership on earth.
It has happened.
And the BRI is facilitating this.
Which is why there is such a stink about the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. Which is the gateway to the Belt and Road Initiative.
The SCO is the greatest challenge yet mounted to American economic power and technological supremacy.
And Russia and China are clearly determined to ditch the dollar. We don’t yet know what will replace it – officially. Though, the e-yuan has been implemented throughout China, and is taking over Asia as we speak.
However, the fact that the Russian central bank and nearly all the other central banks and governments in the SCO have been increasing their gold reserves for some time could be an important clue as to how the representatives of three billion Euro-Asians — almost half the world’s population — see the future of trans-Asian money.
In terms of GDP per capita the United States is a long way ahead of the field.
But…
GDP is an artificial measure of national wealth. When there becomes a stratification of society, and the riches 0.001% of the population have a stratospheric control of the finances, they skew the measurement beyond useful utility.
As well as the United States is also the most indebted at the national level.
The difference with the SCO is at the purchasing power parity level, making market prices of secondary importance.
While prices regionally vary considerably the costs of goods in the SCO are as an average considerably less than in the US and EU, so that on a PPP basis the SCO’s GDP is significantly greater than that of the US or the EU.
The inclusion of the EU is a post-Brexit nod to the fact that the EU can no longer be automatically regarded as being within the US sphere of influence.And certainly the United States leadership does not like this one bit.
The commercial ties to the SCO, with both energy reliance from Russia and silk road (BRI) rail terminals in various EU states are clearly the trade future for the EU.
The EU is advanced in its plans to bring national forces under its combined flag, which by giving them an EU identity can only loosen NATO ties with America.
While not an active threat to America’s power, one can envisage the EU sitting on the fence in an intensifying cold war.
The SCO started life in 2001 as a security partnership between Russia and China, incorporating the ‘stans to the east of the Caspian Sea. Born out an earlier organization, the Shanghai Five Group, it was set up to combat terrorism, separatism and extremism.
It is still a platform for joint military exercises, but none have taken place since 2007 and it has morphed into a loose economic partnership instead.
Since the founding Shanghai Five, the SCO now includes India and Pakistan.
Observer status includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia. These nations can attend SCO conferences, but their participation is very limited.
Dialogue partners include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey. These nations can participate actively in SCO conferences, and this status is seen as a preliminary to full membership.
Egypt and Syria have applied for observer status and Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have applied to be dialog partners.
Apart from South East Asian nations, which are dominated by a Chinese diaspora anyway, SCO members and their influence covers almost all of Halford Mackinder’s World Island, with the exception of the European Union.
This is the reality that faces American hegemony; there are twenty-one nations across Asia in a non-American alliance, or on the cusp of joining it.
All the other European and Asian nations are within the SCO’s sphere of influence through trade, even if not politically affiliated.
It is getting more difficult to define the nations definitely in the US pocket, other than its five-eyes partners (Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand). This simple fact places severe limitations on US action against China, and to a lesser extent Russia.
…
Bet you didn’t know that.
It is an exaggeration to suggest that an attack on one member state is an attack on them all. Their cooperation is fundamentally economic rather than military; except…
… as stated above, the SCO’s original function remains to eliminate terrorism, separatism and extremism.
Indeed, India and Pakistan are at loggerheads over Kashmir, and China and India have border disputes in the Himalayas.
But attempts, by, say, the US to prize India away from the SCO is bound to generate wider issues, and perhaps a response, from the other members.
Who do you go with?
Other Nations around the world have a choice.
Broadly, it is to go with America, to go with China/Russia, or sit on the fence.
We have already concluded that the EU’s economic interests in the wake of Brexit are turning it into being a fence-sitter instead of continuing to be in the US sphere of influence. American cannot count on the WU to join in any partnership that opposes the unified Russian-Chinese-Iranian nexus.
Other nations all seem to have a seemingly insatiable demand for commodities and energy and infrastructure building. America is unable to provide this. Which means that local politicians have been bought through local prosperity and will stay bought. But if America offers more money in bales like in the past, these nations’ politicians will undoubtedly take it. As they have always done in the past.
But that is unlikely to lead to their political allegiance changing from being with China.
This form of American diplomacy was at its height in the fifties and sixties, and the US was able to outgun the Soviets and Chinese in providing “aid”, much of which was trousered by politicians.
This was particularly true of the oil money recycled by American banks into loans to South American governments in the late seventies.
The Chinese are not so careless with money: when they build a bridge on a Caribbean island, they are firmly hands-on providing money, management and some of the labor and local politicians are only rewarded with electoral kudos.
There are, therefore, fundamental differences between attempts to keep a country within a particular sphere of influence sixty years ago and today.
And there can be no doubt that the Chinese are winning the game.
America has no skills, no resources, and no abilities any longer. All America has are buckets of paper money that is rapidly losing value, and an enormous military war machine. It’s guns and money. Guns and money. Guns and money.
Guns and money.
Overland, across the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, the silk roads and associated projects are having a substantial impact on emerging nations in a way not seen before.
China has advanced Mackinder’s World Island concept by embracing most of Africa into its sphere of influence.
As well as the SCO’s control over Asia from Vladivostok to the Mediterranean, as the largest oil consumer China’s influence over the Middle East — which supplies little or no oil to the US — binds nations in that region into the SCO.
The contrast with America’s foreign policy under Trump could not have been greater.
America became autarkic, determined to repatriate production from abroad.
AutarkyAutarky is the characteristic of self-sufficiency, usually applied to societies, communities, states and their economic systems.
Autarky as an ideal or method has been embraced by a wide range of political ideologies and movements, especially left-wing ideologies like African socialism, mutualism, war communism, council communism, Communalism, Swadeshi, syndicalism and leftist populism, generally in an effort to build alternative economic structures or to control resources against structures a particular movement views as hostile.
Conservative, centrist and nationalist movements have also adopted autarky in an attempt to preserve part of an existing social order or to develop a particular industry.
Some fascist and far-right movements occasionally espoused autarky as a goal.-Wikipedia
It lacked a strategy to counter China’s rapidly growing spheres of influence.
Even the EU integrated major elements of its economy with China and Russia, and now that the US’s only five-eyes representative in the EU has left it, we can expect this integration to increase more rapidly.
Instead, Trump concentrated on attacking China, its technology and Hong Kong.
China faced tariffs, prompting her to respond partly in kind.
Meng Wanzhou, finance officer for Huawei, was detained in Vancouver on a US extradition request, on the pretext of payments involving Iran.
Her arrest was the start of a US campaign to exclude Huawei from G5 mobile contracts in the west, pressure that eventually led the UK to downgrade Huawei’s contracts.
It ended up uniting the five-eyes security partnership against China’s technology on a reds-under-the-bed argument: “Chinese technology embedded in western communications systems gives them the ability to spy on us.”
The UK’s GCHQ changed its position from there being no evidence of embedded spyware in Huawei equipment to it being vulnerable to being used for spying by the Chinese government.
Hong Kong
The build-up of riots against Hong Kong’s proposed extradition treaty with the Mainland started in 2019, supported and driven by anti-Chinese propaganda.
America finally emerged as China’s adversary, no longer just a trading partner worried by the trade imbalances.
And Hong Kong was the pressure point.
This had happened before, in 2014.
The Chinese leadership was certain the riots in Hong Kong at that time reflected the work of American intelligence agencies.
The following is an extract translated from a speech by Major-General Qiao Liang, a leading strategist for the Peoples’ Liberation Army, addressing the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee in 2015:
“Since the Diaoyu Islands conflict and the Huang-yan Island conflict, incidents have kept popping up around China, including the confrontation over China’s 981 oil rigs with Vietnam and Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” event.
"Can they still be viewed as simply accidental?“I accompanied General Liu Yazhou, the Political Commissar of the National Defence University, to visit Hong Kong in May 2014. At that time, we heard that the “Occupy Central” movement was being planned and could take place by end of the month. However, it didn’t happen in May, June, July, or August.“What happened? What were they waiting for?“Let’s look at another timetable: the U.S. Federal Reserve’s exit from the Quantitative Easing (QE) policy. The U.S. said it would stop QE at the beginning of 2014. But it stayed with the QE policy in April, May, June, July, and August. As long as it was in QE, it kept overprinting dollars, and the dollar‘s price couldn’t go up. Thus, Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” should not happen either.“At the end of September, the Federal Reserve announced the U.S. would exit from QE. The dollar started going up. Then Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” broke out in early October.“Actually, the Diaoyu Islands, Huang-yan Island, the 981 rigs, and Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” movement were all bombs. The successful explosion of any one of them would lead to a regional crisis or a worsened investment environment around China. That would force the withdrawal of a large amount of investment from this region, which would then return to the U.S.”
That America organized discontent anew in Hong Kong is still China’s view today.
It’s hard to dispute, as all of Hong Kong is wired with 5G and video. And the videos of American diplomats, and UK NGOS’ training the rioters, and supervising the destruction, and making agreements with the key leaders have been well publicized throughout Asia.
Not in America.
Of course.
Clearly, the Chinese believe America covertly managed “Occupy Central” and therefore were at it again.
Apart from what their spies told them, the protests were too well organized and planned to be spontaneous. This time, the attack appeared to have a better chance of success. The plan was coordinated with American pressure on Hong Kong’s dollar peg in an attempt to destabilize it, principally through the threat to extend tariffs against China to Hong Kong.
This second attempt to collapse Hong Kong was therefore more serious.
Hong Kong is critical, because it is the channel for foreign investment portfolio flows into China.
This was important to the Americans, because the US Treasury could not afford to see global portfolio flows attracted into China at a time when they were needed to invest in increasing quantities of US Treasury stock.
Understand that, and you will have grasped a large part of the urgency behind America’s attempt to destabilize Hong Kong.
Qiao Liang makes this point elsewhere in his aforementioned speech, claiming American tactics are the consequence of the ending of Bretton Woods:
“Without the restriction of gold, the US can print dollars at will.
If they keep a large amount of dollars inside the US, it will certainly create inflation.
If they export dollars to the world, the whole world is helping the US deal with its inflation.
That’s why inflation is not high in the US.”
While one can take some minor issues with his simplistic analysis, that is not the point.
What matters is what the Chinese believe.
It was after that second attempt by America to destabilize Hong Kong that the Chinese concluded they must take direct control of the region, isolate and remove the NGO’s and CIA agents involved in this effort, and secure the region to prevent any future disruptions.
China makes mistakes too
China’s strategy in dealing with America has generally been to be slow to respond, and never to provoke. This accords with Sun Tzu’s The Art of War on tactical dispositions:
“To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
Generally, China’s strategy has been to refuse to be provoked.
A possible exception has been Hong Kong, where it was decided it was more important to secure the island against further attack, overriding the terms of the treaty with the UK.
But its greatest mistake was in imposing trade tariffs in a tit-for-tat response to US tariffs.
Economic factors
Before the pandemic and with America targeting Chinese exports, China’s leadership introduced policies to encourage domestic consumption.
For this to work required a drop in the savings rate.
In fact, it has been falling since 2010, when according to the World Bank it peaked at 51% of GDP, to just under 44% in 2019.
It was the difference between Chinese and American savings rates which was the driving factor behind their mutual trade imbalance.
China recognizes that it must move on from an export-driven economic model.
But while the American and other welfare-driven economies are running mounting budget deficits, China will continue to have a growing trade surplus.
While this will continue to be a problem for the Americans, without imported goods from China product shortages would simply fuel higher prices on top of unprecedented monetary expansion.
This is the reality behind the cold war for the next few years.
Unfortunately, being highly Keynesian the new Biden administration is unlikely to accept the twin deficits argument and will think that it can still call the shots on trade without cutting its own spending. But the above showed US government debt to GDP is already over $28 trillion and on Biden’s infrastructure and greening plans alone will likely rise significantly further by this fiscal year.
The combination of increasing consumer demand while exports to America boom gives China a window of economic expansion only enjoyed by its Asian neighbors.
The contrast between China’s prospects can hardly be greater than those for America.
The economics alone militate strongly against the US pursuing a geopolitical objective other than quietly backing off.
But senior US personnel are still acting as if the Chinese should kowtow to America, as evidenced in the proceedings in Alaska in March 2021.
The Chinese were robust and will have calculated their position as strong.
Sun Tzu again:
“Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him”.
What we are facing
The Biden presidency faces significant challenges in the ongoing cold war and America is unlikely to retain its hegemonic status.
During Trump’s presidency, attempts to curtail China’s trade and technological development did not succeed.
Instead it has brought China, Russia and Iran together, as well as emboldened both China and Russia to stand firm and as much as possible to do without America and its dollar.
The American senior advisors are, or should be, acutely aware of the debt and inflation traps facing the US and also the EU.
Following the Fed’s policies of accelerated monetary expansion announced last March, China increased her purchases of commodities and raw materials, in effect signalling she prefers them to dollar liquidity.
As a policy, it is likely to be extended further, given China’s existing stockpile of dollars and dollar-denominated debt.
Her dilemma is not just the fragile state of the US economy, but that of the EU which on any dispassionate analysis is a state failing economically and politically as well.
China will not want to be blamed for triggering a series of events which will get everyone reaching out for their forgotten copy of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is a true classic on political philosophy. Anyone keen on this field and in the practice of policy will be remiss to by-pass this magnum opus.Hayek is characteristically brilliant in his rendition of an Idea: he can easily walk you through the intricacies of logical and theoretical argument for a case yet combine it masterfully with practical examples in economics and history. He is balanced, impartial and frank.For classical liberals, this is a timeless jewel worthy of Locke, Acton, Tocqueville et al.Simply a masterpiece.
-Amazon
As events take their course, the risk of a dollar collapse and a matching crisis in the euro, though for different reasons, increases.
For Mackinder’s heartland theory to be proved and for the Russian and Chinese partnership to be in control of it, a mega-crisis facing the profligate money-printers must happen.
All history and a priori economic theory confirm it will happen.
The SCO’s Plan B will be a continuance of Plan A, hatched out of the Shanghai Five Group, making the World Island a self-contained unit not dependent on the peripherals — principally, the five eyes.
The Five EyesThe Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and theUnited States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.
-Wikipedia
For money, China, Russia and the rest of Asia must give up western ways with unbacked state currencies.
Between them they have enough state-owned declared and undeclared gold to back the yuan, and the rouble.
Give these two currencies free convertibility into gold, and they will be accepted everywhere, so their old cold war enemies can trade their way back to prosperity.
The US has, or says it has, enough gold to put a failing dollar back on a gold standard, but for it to be credible it must [1] radically cut spending, [2] cut back its geopolitical ambitions, and [3] return its budget into balance.
All highly unlikely.
With luck, that is how the new cold war ends.
But don’t hold your breath.
America, and the rest of the nations that it is dragging along with it, are barrelling down towards a great and grand catastrophe.
Situation Report
The election of 2020 did nothing to change the leadership in Washington DC. They are just puppets for their handlers the oligarchy. While Biden is calmer and has swave, compared to Donald Trump, he is continuing all the polices that his predecessor implemented.
The election made no functional difference in anything.
You can read what ever you want in this realization, but I read it as exactly what it is. “Democracy” is dead. Voting whether actual, or corrupted, makes absolutely no difference in how the nation is run, governed or managed.
This knowledge, by itself is significant. It is one of those check boxes that you have on a sheet of paper when you get ready for a big event, gala or preparation for disaster.
I could go down the long list of alarm bells, flashing lights, elements of growing discontent all of which every single American is viewing in real time. These clamorous alarms have been banging away for decades, but their loudness has become so commonplace that most Americans just accept them as the “new reality”, and assume that things will just worsen in a gradual series of stages…
…not a big thunderous crash.
I beg to differ.
For there are things that most Americans have zero understanding of. And is the state of affairs outside the shores of the Untied States. And what passes for “American news” is anything but actual intel. Americans haven’t a clue as to what is going on “outside”.
Things are building up.
America, the large thrashing out of control elephant, is rampaging about and the rest of the world has armed themselves with tranquilizer guns, large nets, and heavy cages.
Russia, China and Iran are one solid block. They are now a close national entity. Surrounding these nations are allied nations. All working in their best interests, but will align with their large neighbors the sino-block.
Europe wants to sit on the fence, but the USA (through the five eyes) wants them to be pulled into the “us vs. them” USA against the world “rules based order”. They are not budging. Just trying to be as neutral as possible.
What is apparently happening is the isolation of the United States from the rest of the globe internationally.
USA/Canada plus the islands of UK, Australia, and NZ.
What we are watching (on the international scene) is the Asian block… the Sino-block … are holding off as long as possible in putting the thrashing elephant down. But they realize that doing so is a last resort. They do not want to do so, as there will be a backlash on the world.
America, the thrashing elephant has no idea how little it knows, is capable of, and what danger it is in. It is delusional.
…
I could get into the specific details like the strange blockage of all shipping in the Suez Canal, the Beirut explosion, the propaganda narratives, the Coronavirus, etc, etc…
These are just elements of a large game of chess that America is playing…
The timeline that they set up is still in play, though the attacks on China (that were planned) did not happen.
No starvation via bio-weapon carpet bombing of livestock.
No suppression of trade via propaganda and sanctions.
No incited revolutions in Hong Kong.
No unrest in Tibet, Xingjiang.
No “incident” in the South China Sea
None of that happened, and the attempt at war in the 2019 – 2020 time frame failed.
But we knew that that was would would happen.
Firstly, because China is not what the American (and Western media) thinks it is, and secondly because the date fro the crisis event has not yet hit.
If you can believe this; we are just building up to the event. There is still a couple of years to go yet.
The danger period is approaching; 2023 through 2026, centered around 2025.
Hold on to your britches boys and girls. Dicy times are a coming.
Taking note of “The Fourth Turning” and the Strauss and Howe generational theory of predictive behavior in America, we note that they predicted a Crisis Catalyst in 2005 and a Climax in 2020.
If the Crisis catalyst comes on schedule, around the year 2005, then the climax will be due around 2020, the resolution around 2026. What will America be like as it exits the Fourth Turning? History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong—the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Since Vietnam, many Americans suppose they know what it means to lose a war. Losing in the next Fourth Turning, however, could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence—and perhaps even our nation—might never recover. As many Americans know from their own ancestral backgrounds, history provides numerous examples of societies that have been wiped off the map, ground into submission, or beaten so badly they revert to barbarism.
Indeed, the dates are close but seem to be off by a few years.
In our case, it appears that the “Crisis catalyst” did not occur in 2005 as predicted. It occurred in 2008 with the Wall Street “too big to fail” debacle.
That is three years later.
What does Mr. Howe say?
Below is a brief essay originally published on 3/11/19 by Neil Howe discussing the typical progression of each “Turning”. It remains more relevant than ever amidst our current zeitgeist. It was written nearly a year before 2020 showed it’s ugly, ugly face.
NH: We live in a tumultuous time in American history.
The 2008 financial crisis and all its hardships, was the catalyst that tipped us into this age of uncertainty. It marked the start of a generation-long era of secular upheaval that will continue to run its course over the next decade or so. This is the generational theory I laid out in “The Fourth Turning,” a book I co-authored with William Strauss in 1997.
The Fourth Turning explains the rise of a figure like President Trump. In Trump’s Inauguration Day speech, he painted a bleak picture of “American carnage,” of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation” with “mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities.”
Looking abroad, it’s unclear whether America will turn inward and fall prey to nativism or maintain it’s nearly seventy year role as leader of the Free World. Other countries are becoming similarly insular. Britain voted to exit the European Union and we’ve heard anti-E.U. rumblings echoed throughout Europe from France to the Netherlands.
Other nations and peoples around the world are looking to either fill the vacuum in global leadership or exploit it to advance their own ambitions. We’ve seen the thunderous rise of Chinese economic clout, the calculating geopolitical maneuvering of a resurgent Russia, and the barbarous chaos wrought by the so-called Islamic State.
In many ways, this era of uncertainty follows the natural order of things. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern. Over the past five centuries, Anglo-American society has entered a new era – a new turning – every two decades or so.
At the start of each turning, people change how they feel about themselves, the culture, the nation, and the future. Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, or a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum.
The First Turning is called a High.
This is an era when institutions are strong and individualism is weak. Society is confident about where it wants to go collectively, even if those outside the majoritarian center feel stifled by the conformity.
America’s most recent First Turning was the post-World War II American High, beginning in 1946 and ending with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, a key lifecycle marker for today’s older Americans.
The Second Turningis an Awakening.
This is an era when institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Just when society is reaching its high tide of public progress, people suddenly tire of social discipline and want to recapture a sense of personal authenticity. Young activists and spiritualists look back at the previous High as an era of cultural poverty.
America’s most recent Awakening was the “Consciousness Revolution,” which spanned from the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to the tax revolts of the early ‘80s.
The Third Turning is an Unravelling.
The mood of this era is in many ways the opposite of a High. Institutions are weak and distrusted, while individualism is strong and flourishing. Highs follow Crises, which teach the lesson that society must coalesce and build. Unravelings follow Awakenings, which teach the lesson that society must atomize and enjoy.
America’s most recent Unraveling was the Long Boom and Culture Wars, beginning in the early 1980s and probably ending in 2008. The era opened with triumphant “Morning in America” individualism and drifted toward a pervasive distrust of institutions and leaders, an edgy popular culture, and the splitting of national consensus into competing “values” camps.
And finally we enter the Fourth Turning, which is a Crisis.
This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group.
In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. Currently, this period began in 2008, with the Global Financial Crisis and the deepening of the War on Terror, and will extend to around 2030.
If the past is any prelude to what is to come, as we contend, consider the prior Fourth Turning which was kicked off by the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II.
Just as a Second Turning reshapes our inner world (of values, culture and religion), a Fourth Turning reshapes our outer world (of politics, economy and empire).
To be clear, the road ahead for America will be rough. But I take comfort in the idea that history cycles back and that the past offers us a guide to what we can expect in the future. Like Nature’s four seasons, the cycles of history follow a natural rhythm or pattern.
Make no mistake. Winter is coming. How mild or harsh it will be is anyone’s guess but the basic progression is as natural as counting down the days, weeks and months until Spring.
Exerpts from the book The Fourth Turning
In 1860-1861 southern states took the Lincoln victory as a de-facto proof that the North would increasingly seek to impose its will upon the south (they were right, but losing the war actually made it happen faster and more completely).
What people generally forget is that all states had large militias that were beholden ONLY to the states, and people had much more belief and legal adherence to the individual states, than now.
Terrorist actions do not start a war, because you cannot really go to war conventionally against terrorism. What happened in the 1860's is that state governments formed a new nation in rebellion.
Personally I don't think the Left or the Right, as a whole, have the balls to do this today. But I guess we'll see. Eventually the threats become real enough that it's hard to ignore them and just hope everything goes back to normal.
-Aerindel, SoJ_51 and Observer
This is straight from the book …
“Something happened to America at that time,” recalled U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye on V-J Day in 1995, the last of the 50-year commemoratives of World War II. “I’m not wise enough to know what it was. But it was the strange, strange power that our founding fathers experienced in those early, uncertain days. Let’s call it the spirit of America, a spirit that united and galvanized our people.” Inouye went on to reflect wistfully on an era when the nation considered no obstacle too big, no challenge too great, no goal too distant, no sacrifice too deep. A half-century later, that old spirit had long since dissipated, and nobody under age 70 remembered what it felt like. When Joe Dawson reenacted his D-Day parachute drop over Normandy, he said he did it “to show our country that there was a time when our nation moved forward as one unit.”
The Eternal Return
On the earthen floors of their rounded hogans, Navajo artists sift colored sand to depict the four seasons of life and time. Their ancestors have been doing this for centuries. They draw these sand circles in a counter-clockwise progression, one quadrant at a time, with decorative icons for the challenges of each age and season. When they near the end of the fourth season, they stop the circle, leaving a small gap just to the right of its top. This signifies the moment of death and rebirth, what the Hellenics called ekpyrosis. By Navajo custom, this moment can be provided (and the circle closed) only by God, never by mortal man. All the artist can do is rub out the painting, in reverse seasonal order, after which a new circle can be begun. Thus, in the Navajo tradition, does seasonal time stage its eternal return.
Like most traditional peoples, the Navaho accept not just the circularity of life, but also its perpetuity. Each generation knows its ancestors have drawn similar circles in the sand—and each expects its heirs to keep drawing them. The Navaho ritually reenact the past while anticipating the future. Thus do they transcend time.
Modern societies too often reject circles for straight lines between starts and finishes. Believers in linear progress, we feel the need to keep moving forward. The more we endeavor to defeat nature, the more profoundly we land at the mercy of its deeper rhythms. Unlike the Navajo, we cannot withstand the temptation to try closing the circle ourselves and in the manner of our own liking. Yet we cannot avoid history’s last quadrant. We cannot avoid the Fourth Turning, nor its ekpyrosis. Whether we welcome him or not, the Gray Champion will command our duty and sacrifice at a moment of Crisis. Whether we prepare wisely or not, we will complete the Millennial Saeculum. The epoch that began with V.J.-Day will reach a natural climax—and come to an end.
An end of what?
The next Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. But this end, while possible, is not likely. Human life is not so easily extinguishable. One conceit of linear thinking is the confidence that we possess such godlike power that—at the mere push of a button—we can obliterate nature, destroy our own seed, and make ourselves the final generations of our species. Civilized (post-Neolithic) man has endured some 500 generations, prehistoric (fire-using) man perhaps 5,000 generations, Homo Erectus ten times that. For the next Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection, and bad luck. Only the worst pessimist can imagine that.
The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rhythm—which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance—could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. The “Western Civilization” of Toynbee and the “Faustian Culture” of Spengler would come to the inexorable close their prophesiers foresaw. A new dark ages would settle in, until some new civilization could be cobbled together from the ruins. The cycle of generations would also end, replaced by an ancient cycle of tradition (and fixed social roles for each phase of life) that would not allow progress. As with an omnicide, such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.
The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. This nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, Etruria ten, the Soviet Union (perhaps) only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a threat in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most horrible war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.
Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.
The new saeculum could find America a worse place. As Paul Kennedy has warned, it might no longer be a “great power.” Its global stature might be eclipsed by foreign rivals. Its geography might be smaller, its culture less dominant, its military less effective, its government less democratic, its Constitution less inspiring. Emerging from its millennial chrysalis, it might evoke nothing like the hope and respect of its “American Century” forbear. Abroad, people of goodwill and civilized taste might perceive this society as a newly dangerous place. Or they might see it as decayed, antiquated, an Old New World less central to human progress than we now are. All this is plausible, and possible, in the natural turning of saecular time.
Alternatively, the new saeculum could find America, and the world, a much better place. Like England in the Reformation Saeculum, the Superpower America of the Millennial Saeculum might merely be a prelude to a higher plane of civilization. Its new civic life might more nearly resemble that “shining city on a hill” to which its colonial ancestors aspired. Its ecology might be freshly repaired and newly sustainable, its economy rejuvenated, its politics functional and fair, its media elevated in tone, its culture creative and uplifting, its gender and race relations improved, its commonalities embraced and differences accepted, its institutions free of the corruptions that today seem entrenched beyond correction. People might enjoy new realms of personal, family, community, and national fulfillment. America’s borders might be redrawn around an altered but more cogent geography of public community. Its influence on world peace could be more potent, on world culture more uplifting. All this is achievable as well.
Conclusion
2020 was not the Climax; the Crisis of the Forth Turning in America. That still lies ahead of us.
I hope it never comes to this. In lieu, I can see the Balkinization of the country take place, sides would move to designated areas and set up permanent camp. There may be 2, 3 or more countries within the US before the dust settles.
-Survivalist Boards
A climax is a major event. It is typically marked by full-scale discord and absolute totality of full-scale war. That did not occur in 2020. That is not occurring now. 2020 was marked by a “pandemic”. Most Americans (through their media) believe that either [1] it is a hoax, or [2] it is a new strain of flu that is sweeping the globe. It is neither. It is a bio-weapon attack on China by the neocon Trump administration gone terribly wrong.
Xi Peng and Putin do not get their intel from Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and CNN. They get it from their Intel divisions. And both nations have a full picture of what is going on, has gone on and will go on further.
Both nations (China and Russia) filed a formal complaint against the United States for launching this bio-weapon (and all the others that it launched in late 2020). And while Americans ignored this complaint, pretending that it is meaningless, it did do something. It marked the start of Russia and China teaming up militarily against the United States.
…
United States. (With the UK, Canada, Israel, and Australia.) Today there is isolated America. Confused. Arrogant. Thrashing and moaning. Demanding all sorts of things.
The Rest of the World. And the rest of the world, lead by Russia, and China, that are very carefully and very precisely planning to stop all this nonsense once and for all.
Adjusting the dates
“It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system.”
-The Burning Platform
Adjusting the Strauss and Howe dates to account for the delay in the catalyst, messes things up a bit. They predicted…
There is a nice graphic that I composed for your purposes of planning out the next few years. I hope that it is helpful. Adding three years, gives us…
“Crisis catalyst” in 2008.
Climax in 2023.
Resolution in 2029.
.
Of course, you could argue the 2020 was the “climax” simply because it was one Hell of a shitty year. But you all know, it was a shitty year for everyone on the globe. Not just Americans. I argue that it was just foreplay for bigger stuff to come.
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