24: The End of America

Barbarianforever.com @barbarianforever IGTV Today is the 4th of july, independence day and My wife mentioned something interesting to me. She has 2 instagram accounts, one for her work and regular life and another for her more secret life doing witchy things. As the witches say, shes still in the broom closet. Her feeds were not similar today, however, in fact they were quite different. On her regular instagram, she saw a stream of celebratory posts about america peppered with her usual things relating to her line of work. However, her witchy instagram, was nothing but condemnation for america, stories about how people shouldn't celebrate this holiday because it is a holiday f oppression, colonialism, racism, sexism etc. It got me wondering about America and where it is as a country. Should modern pagans care about this institution? Should anybody? Maybe the insta-witches are right and The country is rife with problems of racism, sexism, and oppression. What concerns me more is thinking about the divide. Some people in America still believe in the idea of America, Others don't. To some America is the greatest country in the world. To others it's a White supremacist dystopia. I'm not here to really argue either point. The reason being, is I don't think either is true. I don't think America is the Greatest nation ever but I also don't think its the 4th reich What is clear to me is that the west and America being an extension of the western tradition is at the tail end of collapse. in 1976 General Sir John Glubb wrote the fate of empires after studying the rise and collapse of great empires. He found startling similarities between them all and even took note that most last about 250 years, or 10 generations. He also outlined the 6 ages of their rise and eventual demise. Every new empire begins with the age of the pioneers, courageous individuals with passion and vision who conquer new territories, perhaps taking over the remnants of an earlier collapsed civilization. The new empire then enters an age of commerce. Great wealth is created through enterprise and trade, making use of the best cultural traits and technological achievements of the vanquished empire. Next comes the age of affluence, a critical juncture in the life cycle of an empire and the time when things begin to go wrong. In the age of affluence, Glubb says, "there does not appear to be any doubt that money is the agent which causes the decline of this strong, brave and self-confident people." Decline occurs slowly, however, for next comes the age of intellect when affluence is sufficient to allow some people to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of knowledge. Glubb argues that an excessive focus on intellect indicates an empire already in serious trouble. This may feel counter-intuitive, but evidence suggests that our own age of intellect has done little to prevent a headlong descent into the final age: the age of decadence. In the age of decadence, many people choose to behave in ways that are unsustainable, apparently unaware of the consequences. They indulge in excessive, often conspicuous, consumption. An absurdly wealthy elite emerges, but instead of repelling the masses it is admired and celebrated. Those outside the elite aspire to similar levels of consumption and are encouraged by the availability of cheap credit. People become convinced that increased consumption is the key to happiness, but in its pursuit, they become measurably less happy. As David Morgan says, "you can never get enough of what you don't need." Like Glubb mentioned, Empires last about 250 years. America Was founded in 1776, The 250-year mark for america is 2026. It's not suprise that we are nearing what looks like the end of the American Empire. It's unraveling like clockwork to the same structural problems as other empires. One other interesting observation is from Camile Paglia. Camile is a writer and academic on sex and culture. She has written books on the subject such as sexual personae which analyzes sex in the context of western culture. Listen to what she has to say about the new gender fluid - transphillic trend sweeping the western world Instert clip. Commentary - Now if that were't enough, let's dive into the economic. The debasement of currency is one of the telltale signs of collapsing empires. Almost all have done this toward the end. The romans for example literally put base metals into their silver coinage to the point that by the end of the empire, the coin was just silver plated copper. Today the international banking system has done this on a worldwide scale. There is not a single world traded currency that is backed by real precious metals. Instead, the world uses fiat currency. The currency is fiat because it is backed up by virtually nothing. I explained in one of my previous podcasts how US dollars are loosely backed by oil but really the dollar is about as valuable as a piece of paper at this point. Archeologist Arthur Demarest has also studied collapsing societies, particularly in south America and another sign of impending collapse is hyper-coherence. Hyper-coherence is how interconnected societal systems are. Hyper-coherence is a problem in late societies because they often creat complex systems in their early ages of affluence, however, as the society breaks apart, these same complex systems create single points of failure. Jordan Peterson has pointed this out quite well: Insert clip. Now it's a holiday. A day that Americans are supposed to relish their identity and reaffirm this western tradition. But like I mentioned we are split as a country. America is country that has lost faith in itself. it doesn't believe its own myths and stories anymore. It's reasons like this that don't see politics as an answer. We are arguing over who gets to hold the wheel while the boat sinks. There is an upside, however, and that is that cultures collapse all the time. and just like in the Norse myths, death brings creation. Yes, we are nearing the end of the globalist American empire but there is now an opening for a new paradigm. That is partly why politics is heating up for some. They smell blood and they want to use this moment to take power. Some are drifting to communism, some to fascism, some are just clutching the corpse of the west. There is no reason to wait for one of these to take shape in America. the important thing is to take the time to prepare for the worst and start building things that matter.

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24: The End of America is an episode from Barbarian Radio by Barbarian Radio.

This episode is 28:24 long.

This episode was published on Jul 4, 2018.

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