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[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

These observations about Western leadership in Alastair Crooke's latest article ring very true because they look like what we're seeing (reformatted):

The late American thinker Christopher Lasch, near the end of his life, concluded that the American upper class had essentially seceded from the American nation and emigrated into a separate reality in which they envisaged the disassembly of the existing western Order in the name of justice and retribution.

The contemporary French philosopher, Emmanuel Todd, concurs; suggesting, in La Défaite, that America, is no longer a nation-state, but a nihilist empire, in constant revolt against its own past and with a ruling élite determined to break the preponderant hold of the white, blue collar and middle classes over American society.

More from the blurb about Lasch's book, Revolt of the Elites:

The distinguished historian argues that democracy today is threatened not by the masses, as Jose Ortega y Gasset (The Revolt of the Masses) had said, but by the elites. These elites - mobile and increasingly global in outlook - refuse to accept limits or ties to nation and place.

Lasch contends that, as they isolate themselves in their networks and enclaves, they abandon the middle class, divide the nation, and betray the idea of a democracy for all America's citizens. [And this is equally true across the Collective West]

Crooke links to this February piece from Emanuel Todd, French Best-Seller: U.S. Is a ‘Nihilist Empire’.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

More from Crooke's piece:

One cannot but notice how bad-tempered Americans and Europeans generally have become. Calm, reasoned discussion of issues is gone; Yelling, emotivism and ‘othering’ is commonplace. These are dark omens for the future.

Why has western society been so supine, so unreflectively supportive to the sheering away of its civilisational ethos? It is truly paradoxical that half of western society sees a revolution, yet the other is too distracted, or simply does not notice. There is no simple answer to this paradox.

What might be the lessons here for the BRICS? Firstly, these cumulative ‘transitions’ clearly require mammoth money-printing. This was just about manageable when the project could be financed at zero cost interest rates; but the scheme’s Achilles’ Heel of inflation and spiking interest rates has arrived. The exponential western debt explosion to fund ‘transitions’ now threatens to take the entire ‘revolution’ into financial crisis and collapsing standards of living.

...the flood of fresh money opened the door to new media: Platforms that previous had relied on selling the news were replaced by entities beholden to advertisers that only cared about grabbing people’s attention and selling it to the highest bidder. A new economy of attention arose.

So, thirdly then, words no longer needed to have objective meanings. Everything is about ‘attention’ – however achieved. True or false. That’s what the advertisers wanted. Words could mean what those in power say they mean. The ‘truth’ behind the narrative was irrelevant. They could lie freely.

Fourthly, the West – in willfully propagating and imposing a morally vacuous ideology that has no appeal in most countries and cultures of the world – simply has no clue as to how much of the world rejects the value system of contemporary globalist neoliberalism. It repels, rather than appeals to them. So, the western Nomenklatura doubles-down on enforcement.

The cold reality is the ‘Blue Revolutionaries’ in the U.S. own the wealth, the key institutions in society and the levers of enforcement. Yes, a nascent counter-revolution – mainly in the U.S. (and somewhat in Europe, too) – is building; they are (rightly or wrongly) defiantly unwilling to recant traditionalist moral values, nor are they prepared to assume ‘guilt’ by submitting to the demands for ‘reparations’ for historic injustices.

Today’s western myth of being the inheritor of superior values from Athens – ‘from Plato to NATO’, if you like – has proved a fatal conceit.

Put starkly, the ‘new values’ we are seeing are intended to drive a stake through traditionalism...Much of contemporary western thinking simply ignores the dimensions of our moral consciousness and dismisses it, as either confused, or irrelevant.

...all the BRICS civilisations employ ‘strong evaluation’. That is, they all involve the ability to discriminate between right and wrong; justice and injustice; and of dynamics that uplift, and those drag society down.

Our ability to discriminate on these key issues lies deep within us. But it is precisely here where the BRICS might seek common cause with Europe. They could adopt a moral language that resonates within the vestiges of such moral sentiments that still linger on in the West.

What makes any conjuncture of this nature so subject to fiery passions is simply that anything that was good and true about Western civilization is preserved and thriving in Russia. This is the unspoken insight that so infuriates the western élites. And it is also why, in part, BRICS states so evidently look to Russia for leadership.

[–]automoderator[M] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

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