"President-elect Donald Trump says he has “always been in favor” of the H-1B visa program that imports hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, primarily from India, to take white-collar American jobs.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump told the New York Post of the H-1B visa program. “That’s why we have them.”
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B,” Trump continued. “I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”"
I don't trust that quote, since it's sourced to a single NYP reporter and apparently identical to an old (6 months ago) quote on the campaign trail. Trump cucking to the Tech oligarchs is still a live possibility, but with Vance there to hopefully keep Musk in check, I am not yet despairing. Good grief, the man hasn't even been sworn in yet!
I'm not sure why so many on the Right think Trump winning is some kind of major victory. The top people in his administration are Democrats, including himself. So in 2025 we'll have 2010 Democrats in office: yay! winning!
This is especially puzzling since it should be obvious that the big winners in 2024 weren't conservatives, but the techbros. 2028 will either see a techbro as president or a marxist shitlib, depending on who can manufacture the most votes. So either we get more turd world trash immigration, or sub-continental trash immigration. I'm not sure how either is something to cheer for.
Trump is nothing more than a short respite, which we should use to gain local resiliency and build up our networks. America is not going to be reformed, and it's (probably) not going to conveniently collapse into Mad Max.
Yah. One of the many lies that mass media sold us is that if things get bad enough there will be a reset to basics. We were promised Tina Turner in Bartertown; instead we get Nancy Pelosi in Swamptown.
Right. I had a brief flicker of hope when he nominated Matt Gaetx because that is a swamp clearing act. But he pulled back from that and has mostly nominated swamp creatures. So we should expect more of the same.
Kind of difficult when you need the Swamp to confirm your choices for cabinet positions. I wouldn't be surprised of Matt Gaetz shows up again a little later.
Right. It’s conventionally dated to the invasion of Poland but not at all clear why the Spanish Civil War and Japanese invasion of China are ignored and so on.
So perhaps we can describe World Wars as "processes" rather than specific "events". There are always signs that observant people recognize before these wars occur. They don't happen in a vacuum.
Was it the Rhineland, Sudatenland, Poland, Norway, or France? Up until France it was still reversible, though unikely. Had the German attack through the Ardennes had failed, the Germans might have been forced to negotiate.
The Germans made several peace offers to Britain when they were still on top after they crushed France and humiliated the Brits. There were enough chances to deescalate, Churchill decided to bomb German cities. Sad.
It's been all downhill since the botched Constitutional Convention of 1787, the fruits of which unsatisfactory compromises have been bitter tasting ever since.
I never felt that way until I wrote my "Fortress America" piece and realized the Anti-Federalists were right all along. What a brutal wake-up call that was. :(
Probably twenty-plus years ago, on some forgotten forum I ran into a guy who was vehemently anti-federalist. After conversing with him, I came to the same conclusion. The textus receptus history narrative is too ingrained in the masses for a peaceful change.
There is no reason that a World War needs to be a short, high-intensity war. With today's technology and demographics, we could have a widespread low-intensity war in a multitude of theaters that continue for decades, which flare up to high intensity on occation. The global military powers are spread too thin for a high-stakes, global conflaguration.
An excellent point. Some might say that's just a "Second Cold War" of course. I'm not sure if it would be or not. Part of the problem is that we don't know exactly how "high intensity" the Russo-Ukraine War is. If the "worst case" casualty rates I've read are real then it's a high-intensity war on a scale we haven't seen since the Korean War. If the Cold War had been punctuated by constant warfare at that scale, would it have been a cold war?
Interesting post, and good to hold yourself accountable!
I know I personally think the wheels are going to come off this administration in 6-12 months. There's just too much against them. They're under a lot of stress both domestic and foreign.
The -only- possible way I could see it pulling through is if they pushed the regional power angle, and aggressively. The cannibalization of Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Panama, etc. Find ways to make it work. But, on the domestic side, you'd have to deal with the kind of push back they're seeing from the H1B's and other similar things. The coming inflation that's going to roar back to life. The fact that SS, Medicare, and Medicaid are bankrupting us. Usurious loans on the young work force.
All these, with imperial projects underway, will give rise to a brittle populous. I don't think it will hold, and would expect it to revolt in 1-2 years. We already see healthcare CEO's gunned down. How long until Techbros? How long until the populous President, if he loses the narrative, has people getting attacked?
The people are waking to the fact we have pirates all around us. And they're understanding that the solution to pirates is that pirates get hung.
I mostly agree. I would add (pessimistically) that Americans don't agree who the pirates are. Spend some time on "black twitter" and you'll see many folks who think that whitey is the ultimate pirate, for instance.
I whole heartedly predict an expansion of the designation of who is a pirate in the next four years. The whole H1B debate actually kickstarted my timeline. I thought we'd have 6-12 months before we got to people turning on Trump. He might get it in 1-2 with this move.
Most of the issues discussed in the text are pretty much inconsequential as regards the 'American Eschaton'.
The underlying issue that underpins the demise of America, and, by extension, the rest of the world that has succumbed to American influence, is the decay of its culture. The Western culture has become anything from decadent to non-existent, existing only thanks to the life support given to icons from its heyday 50+ years ago. There is no cultural substance anymore, only a widespread shit-brown nothingness. People have become automaton-like motherfuckers, devoid of spiritual, cultural substance, slaving away for a corrupted version of the American Dream, consuming shit, both figuratively and literally, along the way, unable to see that they're chasing a mirage.
Some Trump can do absolutely nothing about that, nobody can. The current status quo would have to disappear for some new reality, new impetus, new raison d'etre to emerge. Trump and the vast majority of people understand absolute shit about any of this; they're basically technocratic idiots who believe that things can be engineered to work.
The danger is that the cretins will start lobbing nukes and destroy the whole circus. I can't imagine that any European country would go to war, simply because there are no soldiers. Even if they conscripted the faggots, they wouldn't last very long. There might be some cannon fodder in the US, recruited from the poor castes who have no other viable option than the army. By and large, the West is entitled and spoiled, totally unable to fight a war. They would have to destroy the economy to a much greater extent, to make people really miserable, and it would take generations. By then, who knows what will happen. The only option is proxy wars using cannon fodder recruited from more willing and more capable nations, Ukraine being a case in point.
Long-term overall, the West is fucked and will likely enter the post-industrial age, which is coming as hydrocarbon energy and minerals will become more difficult to obtain until they're exhausted, in a worse position vis-a-vis the East. The way things are shaping up is that Westerners will be at the mercy of the global Southeast, not too good a prospect, considering that we've exploited the shit out of these poor bastards and they might wanna give us a taste of our own fucking medicine.
I agree with much of your overall assessment and have written about it many times on this blog. But it just isn't what I'm talking about when I talk about the American Eschaton. I'm talking about an acute illness that causes change rapidly, not the long chronic disease that grips us. Since I made up the obnoxious phrase American Eschaton I get to say what it's about. You have to make up your own obnoxious phrase for your ideas, like American Slowpocalypse or something!
Right now Americans on all ends of the political system are longing for a Strongman to make things better. If Trump fails to Make America Great Again and the Democrats can field a candidate with charisma -- not even a JFK, a Clinton or Obama would do it -- we could see that new president get away with things that a Biden or Harris could never pull off.
Of course, if Trump actually lives up to his Literally Orange Hitler reputation and starts jailing his political opponents, he could win back a lot of the love he's lost over the Great Pajeet Crisis. He's likely to take a much harder tack this go-round, because he realizes that he is in a Smash or Be Smashed situation.
My prediction: if Trump fails to become a strongman in 2025, we'll see a Democratic strongman in 2029.
Mr. Woe, you are a more hardworking man than me - I've let myself slip into the habit of waiting a week or two after the New Year to post my predictions. Hopefully it is one I will break this time around, though. But first some thoughts on what you've written.
You can read the post if you want the complete argument, but the gist of it is that, in addition to nuclear weapons making the Great Powers much more cautious about direct wars than they used to be, a number of other factors make our situation way different than it was in 1914 or 1939, namely (1) Great Powers are much further apart, separated by buffer states, oceans, or sparsely populated regions like Siberia and the Himalayas, so it's much harder for one Great Power to quickly brings its forces to bear in a conflict involving another Great Power (thus the US and Britain have gotten involved in the Ukraine War but only indirectly by supplying weapons; Iran's attempts to come to Hamas and Hezbollah's aid by launching missiles at Israel failed, if Chinese invades Taiwan the US is unlikely to be able to get a lot of men and materials over there quickly enough to act decisively, if the US even tries to stop it at all which is a big if. And so forth.) Then you have reason (2), which is that the top three Great Powers (US, Russia, and China) all have low fertility rates and thus a lot less young men who can be mobilized for battle in the first place, and reason (3) which is that weapons technologies have evolved to heavily favor the defender - just think of Israel shooting down all those Iranian missiles at minimal cost, or Ukraine and Russia developing a new mode of trench warfare with FPV drones used as kamikaze weapons and artillery spotters in which the front line might move only a few miles in a whole year. (And this defense-heavy warfare makes it easy for Russia's rivals to sit on the sidelines and support Ukraine indirectly, instead of saying "Oh no, if we don't get involved quick then Ukraine will fall and the Russian tanks will roll into Poland next!")
As for the current year's prediction - well, I just don't think that either side in America's domestic politics is as clever as you're giving them credit for. I don't think that Trump was deliberately "allowed" to win anything - the Dems just got really overconfident, tried to hide Biden's cognitive decline for too long, and didn't realize how unpopular their DEI message was with black and Hispanic men who just identify as "Americans" and want the same race neutral, tough-on-crime policies that Trump's white supporters want. (This is a topic I dealt with at length in my article "Identity Politics Blows Up in the Democrats' Face": https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/identity-politics-blows-up-in-the)
And then, as for Trump being able to revitalize America... while he is certainly better than Harris would be, there are just too many existential problems (Entitlement spending eating the budget, for one, or low marriage and fertility rates, or the fact that America's manufacturing sector has largely been regulated out of existence and, sans radical congressional action, Trump just doesn't have the power to snap his fingers and bring it back). But again I don't want to go on too long here; I wrote a post right after the election where I explain in more detail what I think Trump can and cannot realistically accomplish: https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/move-over-grover-cleveland
So, in conclusion, I'd describe myself as somewhat more optimistic than you in the short term (since I'm not worried about a global war) and more pessimistic in the long term (since I think that "Aenean Civilization" is a fantasy and that what we're getting for the next three to five centuries is going to be the "deindustrial dark age" that people like John Michael Greer and Ahnaf ibn Qais are predicting. But still, I will keep reading your stack as long as you keep writing it... it is a waste of time to only read things that one agrees with, and I would never have gotten to writing as well as I do without reading people whom I agree with only half to two thirds of the time!
"well, I just don't think that either side in America's domestic politics is as clever as you're giving them credit for"
I'm not sure there are two sides within the ruling class. Have you read Quigley's assessment of how our democracy works? There is one set of accepted policy, with two factions pursuing it in basically compatible ways, with some sideshow issues to let the proletariat think they have a say, and some competition to keep the leadership class at least a bit competent. There are some factions within this polity that differ in various ways but all the dissent is within a very narrow band. The open question, to me, is whether Trump presented an actual alternative to this, or whether he was part of the farce. I intuit that in 2016 he was a genuine threat to the system. I hope that remains true but it seems increasingly likely he's been coopted, knowingly or unknowingly.
"I think that "Aenean Civilization" is a fantasy and that what we're getting for the next three to five centuries is going to be the "deindustrial dark age"
I find it entirely plausible to believe we'll enter a dark age and have written about it elsewhere repeatedly.
Remember the whole point of Aenean civilization is that it arises because Troy has burned to the ground. It's a choice to go forth boldly to rebuild something greater, rather than live in the dark age squalor of the collapsed civilization. If someone thinks that's a pointless choice to make, fine; I'm not going to argue with them. The point is that it's a choice to struggle rather than settle. If Aeneas and crew had all died on the sea en route to Italy, I think they'd still have been better men for trying instead of just being sheep farmers in the ruins of Ilium, which is what JMG would have advised. ("This expedition to Italy is a fantasy! Troy was simply at the bottom of its historical cycle of civilization because it depleted the timber and soil, causing population loss that resulted in declining....")
JMG is an environmental determinist who think we have no choice and no chance and who welcomes human extinction as natural and inevitable. I'm not a historical determinist and think we owe it to our species and posterity to not go extinct. Historians are still arguing about the cause of collapse with regard to Rome (1,500 years ago) and the Bronze Age Collapse (4,500 years ago) so I don't think we're going to settle the cause of our future collapse, if it occurs, for another few centuries, and I've had this argument so many times that I'm tired of having it, so I won't go into it further.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. For what it's worth, I don't agree with everything that Greer, Ahnaf, etc. are saying (for instance I fully admit that a great deal of Greer's economic thought is mathematically illiterate, and that America's decline is mainly caused by non-environmental factors.) I simply happen to agree with him about the cycle of dark ages - and the fact that some survivors of Troy escaped to build something new didn't prevent them from having to live through the dark age like everyone else! (I think I said somewhere else on you're blog that - contra Greer - I think our descendents will be fully capable of improving on our achievements in things like space exploration).
As for the two parties presenting a very narrow set of options to the American voter amd exaggerating how much power the rest of us have - I agree there as well (and of course I've read Moldbug - he is a very important thinker in this regards, even if he's too pessimistic re democracy in general rather than our particular rotted-out specimen of it.) At the same time, I don't think most people involved in this are consciously collaborating to put on a farce show - many of them really believe in the system, or at least are willing to suspend their disbelief for long enough to make a personal profit.
It's certainly possible. I think it'd be difficult to pull off the buffer states and regional powers at this late stage of the Empire.... But part of me wonders if the talk about Canada, Greenland, etc is part of building up the US as a new regional Empire - outrightly so. And to see if the other major powers do the same. It's not so much a prediction, as more an intriguing thought experiment.
I think Trump's Canada and Greenland statements were a warning. Trudeau has been getting chummy with the Chinese and I've heard (unverified) that they've conductucted joint military exercises in the Arctic. Not sure about Greenland, but I wouldn't be surprised if the spineless Danes have discussed or given mining concessions to the Chinese.
Possibly. Hard to say for us plebs. When I see the media wing spin up and start issuing propaganda about how it would actually be good for everyone (which I've seen some of) it raises my eyebrows and makes me wonder what's going on behind the scenes.
By "buffer states" I don't mean something that's been intentionally set up. Just the fact that between the Great Powers there are lots of weak countries (i.e. to get from 🇷🇺 to 🇫🇷, the next serious country over, you have to go through 🇺🇦, 🇵🇱, and 🇩🇪) and while the collective West was obviously upset about 🇷🇺 invading 🇺🇦, they clearly ended up not caring as much about the issue as 🇷🇺. I expect similar dynamics to play out in an Asian war involving
🇨🇳 and 🇰🇵 against 🇯🇵, 🇹🇼 and 🇰🇷. I think that if push comes to shove, it will be (1) hard for 🇺🇸 to get enough men and material over there to matter and (2) easy for 🇺🇸 to decide the whole thing isn't central to its interests, after all.
It's obvious that it is happening on the Chinese and Russian side of things. I'm not sure if it is on the US. I'm unsure if we can build a successful coalition with Mexico, or if Canada will simply collapse into a failed state (assuming we're unable to successfully intervene and claim it as our own - either explicitly or implicitly).
Otherwise I agree completely. My only thing was discussing ability.
Hah! It certainly seems to be a stance that avoids admitting major war by insisting it has to be a 20th century war. *robots kill everyone* "no infantry were used so it wasn't world war III"
Possible eschaton: Trump becomes president and cucks bigly.
The Elon Musk H-1B hatefest is indicative.
That seems more and more probable.
Looks like a certainty to me.
"President-elect Donald Trump says he has “always been in favor” of the H-1B visa program that imports hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, primarily from India, to take white-collar American jobs.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump told the New York Post of the H-1B visa program. “That’s why we have them.”
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B,” Trump continued. “I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”"
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/12/28/president-elect-donald-trump-i-have-always-been-in-favor-of-h-1b-visas/
I don't trust that quote, since it's sourced to a single NYP reporter and apparently identical to an old (6 months ago) quote on the campaign trail. Trump cucking to the Tech oligarchs is still a live possibility, but with Vance there to hopefully keep Musk in check, I am not yet despairing. Good grief, the man hasn't even been sworn in yet!
Vance is a minion of tech oligarch Peter Thiel... he isn't keeping Musk in line, they are on the same side.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/07/16/jd-vance-and-peter-thiel-what-to-know-about-the-relationship-between-trumps-vp-pick-and-the-billionaire/
I'm not sure why so many on the Right think Trump winning is some kind of major victory. The top people in his administration are Democrats, including himself. So in 2025 we'll have 2010 Democrats in office: yay! winning!
This is especially puzzling since it should be obvious that the big winners in 2024 weren't conservatives, but the techbros. 2028 will either see a techbro as president or a marxist shitlib, depending on who can manufacture the most votes. So either we get more turd world trash immigration, or sub-continental trash immigration. I'm not sure how either is something to cheer for.
Trump is nothing more than a short respite, which we should use to gain local resiliency and build up our networks. America is not going to be reformed, and it's (probably) not going to conveniently collapse into Mad Max.
But I have a black V8 muscle car with a supercharger. I'm ready to rule the Wasteland. Instead I'm just going to get $18 hamburgers. Sucks.
Yah. One of the many lies that mass media sold us is that if things get bad enough there will be a reset to basics. We were promised Tina Turner in Bartertown; instead we get Nancy Pelosi in Swamptown.
Right. I had a brief flicker of hope when he nominated Matt Gaetx because that is a swamp clearing act. But he pulled back from that and has mostly nominated swamp creatures. So we should expect more of the same.
Kind of difficult when you need the Swamp to confirm your choices for cabinet positions. I wouldn't be surprised of Matt Gaetz shows up again a little later.
About the question of whether WWIII started, notice that it's not entirely clear even in retrospect precisely when WWII started.
Right. It’s conventionally dated to the invasion of Poland but not at all clear why the Spanish Civil War and Japanese invasion of China are ignored and so on.
So perhaps we can describe World Wars as "processes" rather than specific "events". There are always signs that observant people recognize before these wars occur. They don't happen in a vacuum.
Was it the Rhineland, Sudatenland, Poland, Norway, or France? Up until France it was still reversible, though unikely. Had the German attack through the Ardennes had failed, the Germans might have been forced to negotiate.
The Germans made several peace offers to Britain when they were still on top after they crushed France and humiliated the Brits. There were enough chances to deescalate, Churchill decided to bomb German cities. Sad.
America as I knew it ended in the 1960s
The America as I knew it never existed.
And never will.
It's been all downhill since the botched Constitutional Convention of 1787, the fruits of which unsatisfactory compromises have been bitter tasting ever since.
I never felt that way until I wrote my "Fortress America" piece and realized the Anti-Federalists were right all along. What a brutal wake-up call that was. :(
Probably twenty-plus years ago, on some forgotten forum I ran into a guy who was vehemently anti-federalist. After conversing with him, I came to the same conclusion. The textus receptus history narrative is too ingrained in the masses for a peaceful change.
You got there decades ahead of me, then! Much respect.
You are doing a lot more good than I ever did.
Since I've now joined the Substack community and have enjoyed your piece today, I'm including a reference to it in my post. Keep up the great writing!
Thank you!
There is no reason that a World War needs to be a short, high-intensity war. With today's technology and demographics, we could have a widespread low-intensity war in a multitude of theaters that continue for decades, which flare up to high intensity on occation. The global military powers are spread too thin for a high-stakes, global conflaguration.
An excellent point. Some might say that's just a "Second Cold War" of course. I'm not sure if it would be or not. Part of the problem is that we don't know exactly how "high intensity" the Russo-Ukraine War is. If the "worst case" casualty rates I've read are real then it's a high-intensity war on a scale we haven't seen since the Korean War. If the Cold War had been punctuated by constant warfare at that scale, would it have been a cold war?
So by Mosiach logic, October 7th happened as the trigger to the Eschaton since Ukraine wasn't working.
Interesting post, and good to hold yourself accountable!
I know I personally think the wheels are going to come off this administration in 6-12 months. There's just too much against them. They're under a lot of stress both domestic and foreign.
The -only- possible way I could see it pulling through is if they pushed the regional power angle, and aggressively. The cannibalization of Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Panama, etc. Find ways to make it work. But, on the domestic side, you'd have to deal with the kind of push back they're seeing from the H1B's and other similar things. The coming inflation that's going to roar back to life. The fact that SS, Medicare, and Medicaid are bankrupting us. Usurious loans on the young work force.
All these, with imperial projects underway, will give rise to a brittle populous. I don't think it will hold, and would expect it to revolt in 1-2 years. We already see healthcare CEO's gunned down. How long until Techbros? How long until the populous President, if he loses the narrative, has people getting attacked?
The people are waking to the fact we have pirates all around us. And they're understanding that the solution to pirates is that pirates get hung.
I mostly agree. I would add (pessimistically) that Americans don't agree who the pirates are. Spend some time on "black twitter" and you'll see many folks who think that whitey is the ultimate pirate, for instance.
Oh, I agree.
I whole heartedly predict an expansion of the designation of who is a pirate in the next four years. The whole H1B debate actually kickstarted my timeline. I thought we'd have 6-12 months before we got to people turning on Trump. He might get it in 1-2 with this move.
Same, honestly. I'm quite taken aback. I might have written a more positive article had this not all gone down.
Most of the issues discussed in the text are pretty much inconsequential as regards the 'American Eschaton'.
The underlying issue that underpins the demise of America, and, by extension, the rest of the world that has succumbed to American influence, is the decay of its culture. The Western culture has become anything from decadent to non-existent, existing only thanks to the life support given to icons from its heyday 50+ years ago. There is no cultural substance anymore, only a widespread shit-brown nothingness. People have become automaton-like motherfuckers, devoid of spiritual, cultural substance, slaving away for a corrupted version of the American Dream, consuming shit, both figuratively and literally, along the way, unable to see that they're chasing a mirage.
Some Trump can do absolutely nothing about that, nobody can. The current status quo would have to disappear for some new reality, new impetus, new raison d'etre to emerge. Trump and the vast majority of people understand absolute shit about any of this; they're basically technocratic idiots who believe that things can be engineered to work.
The danger is that the cretins will start lobbing nukes and destroy the whole circus. I can't imagine that any European country would go to war, simply because there are no soldiers. Even if they conscripted the faggots, they wouldn't last very long. There might be some cannon fodder in the US, recruited from the poor castes who have no other viable option than the army. By and large, the West is entitled and spoiled, totally unable to fight a war. They would have to destroy the economy to a much greater extent, to make people really miserable, and it would take generations. By then, who knows what will happen. The only option is proxy wars using cannon fodder recruited from more willing and more capable nations, Ukraine being a case in point.
Long-term overall, the West is fucked and will likely enter the post-industrial age, which is coming as hydrocarbon energy and minerals will become more difficult to obtain until they're exhausted, in a worse position vis-a-vis the East. The way things are shaping up is that Westerners will be at the mercy of the global Southeast, not too good a prospect, considering that we've exploited the shit out of these poor bastards and they might wanna give us a taste of our own fucking medicine.
I agree with much of your overall assessment and have written about it many times on this blog. But it just isn't what I'm talking about when I talk about the American Eschaton. I'm talking about an acute illness that causes change rapidly, not the long chronic disease that grips us. Since I made up the obnoxious phrase American Eschaton I get to say what it's about. You have to make up your own obnoxious phrase for your ideas, like American Slowpocalypse or something!
Pater’s Romantic + Optimistic Year end Review is out! Enjoy, Dear Readers & Listeners! 😊🥰
I PREDICTED WAR AND DOOM YOU CAN'T CALL ME OPTIMISTIC
Pater, you forgot to include this 💎… so your excellent piece remains too optimistic for your Conan-themed Woe-Tree 😊🥰
https://youtu.be/aSIF7WvrxTo
I think I just don't have a deep enough voice to pull it off :(
Your voice is great Pater! 😊 I believe in you! You can do it if you try! 😉 😘
Right now Americans on all ends of the political system are longing for a Strongman to make things better. If Trump fails to Make America Great Again and the Democrats can field a candidate with charisma -- not even a JFK, a Clinton or Obama would do it -- we could see that new president get away with things that a Biden or Harris could never pull off.
Of course, if Trump actually lives up to his Literally Orange Hitler reputation and starts jailing his political opponents, he could win back a lot of the love he's lost over the Great Pajeet Crisis. He's likely to take a much harder tack this go-round, because he realizes that he is in a Smash or Be Smashed situation.
My prediction: if Trump fails to become a strongman in 2025, we'll see a Democratic strongman in 2029.
Very strong prediction. Very plausible. "Great Pajeet Crisis" is hilarious.
Mr. Woe, you are a more hardworking man than me - I've let myself slip into the habit of waiting a week or two after the New Year to post my predictions. Hopefully it is one I will break this time around, though. But first some thoughts on what you've written.
First, I've consistently been predicting 'no world war' on my own (decline-themed) Substack, for reasons that I laid out in this post earlier this year - https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/why-im-still-not-worried-about-world.
You can read the post if you want the complete argument, but the gist of it is that, in addition to nuclear weapons making the Great Powers much more cautious about direct wars than they used to be, a number of other factors make our situation way different than it was in 1914 or 1939, namely (1) Great Powers are much further apart, separated by buffer states, oceans, or sparsely populated regions like Siberia and the Himalayas, so it's much harder for one Great Power to quickly brings its forces to bear in a conflict involving another Great Power (thus the US and Britain have gotten involved in the Ukraine War but only indirectly by supplying weapons; Iran's attempts to come to Hamas and Hezbollah's aid by launching missiles at Israel failed, if Chinese invades Taiwan the US is unlikely to be able to get a lot of men and materials over there quickly enough to act decisively, if the US even tries to stop it at all which is a big if. And so forth.) Then you have reason (2), which is that the top three Great Powers (US, Russia, and China) all have low fertility rates and thus a lot less young men who can be mobilized for battle in the first place, and reason (3) which is that weapons technologies have evolved to heavily favor the defender - just think of Israel shooting down all those Iranian missiles at minimal cost, or Ukraine and Russia developing a new mode of trench warfare with FPV drones used as kamikaze weapons and artillery spotters in which the front line might move only a few miles in a whole year. (And this defense-heavy warfare makes it easy for Russia's rivals to sit on the sidelines and support Ukraine indirectly, instead of saying "Oh no, if we don't get involved quick then Ukraine will fall and the Russian tanks will roll into Poland next!")
As for the current year's prediction - well, I just don't think that either side in America's domestic politics is as clever as you're giving them credit for. I don't think that Trump was deliberately "allowed" to win anything - the Dems just got really overconfident, tried to hide Biden's cognitive decline for too long, and didn't realize how unpopular their DEI message was with black and Hispanic men who just identify as "Americans" and want the same race neutral, tough-on-crime policies that Trump's white supporters want. (This is a topic I dealt with at length in my article "Identity Politics Blows Up in the Democrats' Face": https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/identity-politics-blows-up-in-the)
And then, as for Trump being able to revitalize America... while he is certainly better than Harris would be, there are just too many existential problems (Entitlement spending eating the budget, for one, or low marriage and fertility rates, or the fact that America's manufacturing sector has largely been regulated out of existence and, sans radical congressional action, Trump just doesn't have the power to snap his fingers and bring it back). But again I don't want to go on too long here; I wrote a post right after the election where I explain in more detail what I think Trump can and cannot realistically accomplish: https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/move-over-grover-cleveland
So, in conclusion, I'd describe myself as somewhat more optimistic than you in the short term (since I'm not worried about a global war) and more pessimistic in the long term (since I think that "Aenean Civilization" is a fantasy and that what we're getting for the next three to five centuries is going to be the "deindustrial dark age" that people like John Michael Greer and Ahnaf ibn Qais are predicting. But still, I will keep reading your stack as long as you keep writing it... it is a waste of time to only read things that one agrees with, and I would never have gotten to writing as well as I do without reading people whom I agree with only half to two thirds of the time!
"well, I just don't think that either side in America's domestic politics is as clever as you're giving them credit for"
I'm not sure there are two sides within the ruling class. Have you read Quigley's assessment of how our democracy works? There is one set of accepted policy, with two factions pursuing it in basically compatible ways, with some sideshow issues to let the proletariat think they have a say, and some competition to keep the leadership class at least a bit competent. There are some factions within this polity that differ in various ways but all the dissent is within a very narrow band. The open question, to me, is whether Trump presented an actual alternative to this, or whether he was part of the farce. I intuit that in 2016 he was a genuine threat to the system. I hope that remains true but it seems increasingly likely he's been coopted, knowingly or unknowingly.
"I think that "Aenean Civilization" is a fantasy and that what we're getting for the next three to five centuries is going to be the "deindustrial dark age"
I find it entirely plausible to believe we'll enter a dark age and have written about it elsewhere repeatedly.
Remember the whole point of Aenean civilization is that it arises because Troy has burned to the ground. It's a choice to go forth boldly to rebuild something greater, rather than live in the dark age squalor of the collapsed civilization. If someone thinks that's a pointless choice to make, fine; I'm not going to argue with them. The point is that it's a choice to struggle rather than settle. If Aeneas and crew had all died on the sea en route to Italy, I think they'd still have been better men for trying instead of just being sheep farmers in the ruins of Ilium, which is what JMG would have advised. ("This expedition to Italy is a fantasy! Troy was simply at the bottom of its historical cycle of civilization because it depleted the timber and soil, causing population loss that resulted in declining....")
JMG is an environmental determinist who think we have no choice and no chance and who welcomes human extinction as natural and inevitable. I'm not a historical determinist and think we owe it to our species and posterity to not go extinct. Historians are still arguing about the cause of collapse with regard to Rome (1,500 years ago) and the Bronze Age Collapse (4,500 years ago) so I don't think we're going to settle the cause of our future collapse, if it occurs, for another few centuries, and I've had this argument so many times that I'm tired of having it, so I won't go into it further.
Mr. Woe,
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. For what it's worth, I don't agree with everything that Greer, Ahnaf, etc. are saying (for instance I fully admit that a great deal of Greer's economic thought is mathematically illiterate, and that America's decline is mainly caused by non-environmental factors.) I simply happen to agree with him about the cycle of dark ages - and the fact that some survivors of Troy escaped to build something new didn't prevent them from having to live through the dark age like everyone else! (I think I said somewhere else on you're blog that - contra Greer - I think our descendents will be fully capable of improving on our achievements in things like space exploration).
As for the two parties presenting a very narrow set of options to the American voter amd exaggerating how much power the rest of us have - I agree there as well (and of course I've read Moldbug - he is a very important thinker in this regards, even if he's too pessimistic re democracy in general rather than our particular rotted-out specimen of it.) At the same time, I don't think most people involved in this are consciously collaborating to put on a farce show - many of them really believe in the system, or at least are willing to suspend their disbelief for long enough to make a personal profit.
It's certainly possible. I think it'd be difficult to pull off the buffer states and regional powers at this late stage of the Empire.... But part of me wonders if the talk about Canada, Greenland, etc is part of building up the US as a new regional Empire - outrightly so. And to see if the other major powers do the same. It's not so much a prediction, as more an intriguing thought experiment.
I think Trump's Canada and Greenland statements were a warning. Trudeau has been getting chummy with the Chinese and I've heard (unverified) that they've conductucted joint military exercises in the Arctic. Not sure about Greenland, but I wouldn't be surprised if the spineless Danes have discussed or given mining concessions to the Chinese.
Possibly. Hard to say for us plebs. When I see the media wing spin up and start issuing propaganda about how it would actually be good for everyone (which I've seen some of) it raises my eyebrows and makes me wonder what's going on behind the scenes.
That's all.
By "buffer states" I don't mean something that's been intentionally set up. Just the fact that between the Great Powers there are lots of weak countries (i.e. to get from 🇷🇺 to 🇫🇷, the next serious country over, you have to go through 🇺🇦, 🇵🇱, and 🇩🇪) and while the collective West was obviously upset about 🇷🇺 invading 🇺🇦, they clearly ended up not caring as much about the issue as 🇷🇺. I expect similar dynamics to play out in an Asian war involving
🇨🇳 and 🇰🇵 against 🇯🇵, 🇹🇼 and 🇰🇷. I think that if push comes to shove, it will be (1) hard for 🇺🇸 to get enough men and material over there to matter and (2) easy for 🇺🇸 to decide the whole thing isn't central to its interests, after all.
I think I wasn't clear.
It's obvious that it is happening on the Chinese and Russian side of things. I'm not sure if it is on the US. I'm unsure if we can build a successful coalition with Mexico, or if Canada will simply collapse into a failed state (assuming we're unable to successfully intervene and claim it as our own - either explicitly or implicitly).
Otherwise I agree completely. My only thing was discussing ability.
She just sits there smiling
With a whiskey in each hand
Got to think of something
Don't know how much I can stand
That whiskey drinkin' woman
She's makin' a poor man outta me
(Nazareth, "Whiskey Drinking Woman", Hair of the Dog)
One of my favorite songs.
Walter Dorn has positioned himself as a moron. Prove me wrong!
Hah! It certainly seems to be a stance that avoids admitting major war by insisting it has to be a 20th century war. *robots kill everyone* "no infantry were used so it wasn't world war III"
You read my mind (;
You had me at ... hot Chinese mistress.
Reminded me of Thomas Massie's, "There are 3 places we end up"
https://files.catbox.moe/8z38rr.png