American Decline and who's Objectively to Blame

Colonel Schulz and Count Ciano visiting a technical and air war academy

Originally posted on March 27, 2018:

In this addition to my post about the situation in the United States, I think that I will get into the reason why the United States is in decline and about what Israel represents.

First of all, what place does capitalism occupy in Western states? Capitalists are the rulers of the West, and what we have in the West is a dictatorship of capital. What this means is that capitalists are above the law and above the state in Western countries. The state and even some other forms of accumulation of surplus are tolerated in Western countries, but capitalists are the real rulers, they make the laws, and they control the thoughts of the masses. In other words, everything in Western countries revolves around capitalists. This is why it's not surprising that the capitalists of different Western countries have close ties and that they even bypass state power when they make agreements. It's a whole system and governments don't play the main role in it.

I have to disagree with the people that call what has been happening in the USA for the last several decades fascism. To me, fascism is industrial capitalism in its post-expansion, imperial form, like what happened in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or, less significantly, in other Western states like Augusto Pinochet's Chile or Francisco Franco's Spain. Under fascism, capitalists, who used to be the rulers of some state, finally give up real power to the instruments of class oppression and imperialist war that they've been funding and supporting. They do this in order to oppress the disgruntled masses and to prevent upheaval. So, the capitalists take a back seat to the new, authoritative people in power. Under fascism, the new military rulers begin massive spending and usually begin attacking other states in the civilization, and even outside of the civilization, in order to alleviate the economic crisis and to create an empire. The massive spending and the loot that comes from wars of aggression result in stability and prosperity, for a time. This is why the German Nazis, for example, had military, social, and scientific successes before they were defeated. This is why many Germans and other Europeans fought to the end for the defense of the Third Reich. The same can't be said about the USA now. In the USA, power is still in the hands of capitalists, like the Rockefellers, the Kochs, the Fords, or those unpleasant members of the Bush family. I think that many people are still under the influence of American propaganda, which states that capitalism equals freedom. No, in the end, capitalism becomes oppressive, just like any other system. South Korea, for example, used to be an oppressive capitalist state before the Korean Miracle was created by the Americans there. South Korea became a less oppressive state because fast economic growth and industrialization began there several decades ago. The reason why capitalism didn't appear to be so oppressive in the USA before is because of the serious economic growth that used to exist. But it's worth pointing out that, since the 1930s, this growth has been coming from the imperialist operations of the USA. Another way of putting this is that, since the 1930s, the USA hasn't been growing from the inside. It's because "expansion" came to an end in 1929 in the USA. The USA has been growing by exploiting the peoples and the resources of the many territories that are outside of the USA. The USA has spread its tentacles all over the world, to the extent that there's no serious opposition to American force and economics anywhere in the world now. But even this tremendous imperialism hasn't been enough to put an end to the decay in the USA. It has only postponed and softened this decay because the vested interests of capitalism have remained in power. These vested interests continue to resist change and progress. Therefore, now that there's little or no economic growth under capitalism, and now that the Soviet Union doesn't exist to keep the capitalists in check, the capitalists are showing the masses in Western countries who their daddy is. So, as Paid Liar Jones (Alex Jones) once said, "Shut up, slave filth" and don't raise your voice or you're gonna get it.

It's not easy nowadays to make sense of what's going on in the Western world and with its dominant state, which is the USA. But one thing that's clear to me is that the USA and other Western states are now demonstrating incompetence such as they haven't demonstrated before. This is happening because Western civilization is in a crisis. And this crisis didn't begin in 2008. It began in the second half of the 19th century, first in core states like England and France. This is why the British Empire and the French Empire collapsed some decades later and why they no longer exist (though England and France still act as imperialist powers). This crisis reached peripheral Western states like Germany and the USA in the first half of the 20th century. The reason why this crisis appeared is because capitalism (more precisely, industrial capitalism) is no longer functioning as an expansive system in the West. In the West, industrial capitalism has turned into a structure of vested interests called monopoly capitalism. This means, as Carroll Quigley explained in his books, that Western civilization has been in the Age of Conflict, the third in Western history, for about a century already. When a civilization enters the Age of Conflict, this doesn't mean that progress and growth come to an end. Progress and growth begin to slow down. The USA, for example, definitively entered the Age of Conflict in 1929, several decades after England did so, because it's a peripheral Western state. Therefore, the USA has been demonstrating incompetence since 1929, and this incompetence has only been growing since then. For example, some American nationalists say that if there had been more determination in the USA, and if the politicians in Washington hadn't been so afraid and so hesitant, the USA would have won the Vietnam War (1955 - 1975). And, sure, there's a possibility that the USA would have won the Vietnam War, but only if the Vietnam War had taken place decades earlier, when the USA was in the Age of Expansion. Since the Vietnam War took place after 1929, and since the Americans were fighting against a strong-willed enemy (an enemy that also had the backing of the Soviet Union), the Americans had to give up and leave Vietnam. And the war itself may have been started simply to boost the profits of the American military-industrial complex. It has even been admitted that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a false flag. In other words, there's a reason for the American loss in Vietnam. This reason is the fact that the USA has been losing strength and morale since 1929. This has been happening because industrial capitalism has become a structure of vested interests called monopoly capitalism in the USA. But American nationalists and right-wing radicals, who are brainwashed and who are still obsessed with a fictional communist enemy, just can't accept that capitalism is the root of their problems. Therefore, they say that they would have cut through the Viet Cong like butter, and that the USA would have bombed Vietnam back to the stone age, if only the politicians in Washington hadn't been so weak. So, instead of looking for faults in the capitalist system, they imagine that some "other" is responsible for the problems. This "other" takes on the shape of something that they already don't like. For example, in the case of the American right (who are often irrational, poorly educated liars), the "other" is usually communism (though communism doesn't exist), or the Jews, or some conspiracy of bankers, or "cultural Marxism", or some other country like Russia, or certain left-wing politicians. What's interesting is that some people in the ruling class try to take advantage of this irrationality and shortage of knowledge by supporting them. Through their agents in the media and in culture, some monopoly capitalists support claims about a communist conspiracy or about a banker conspiracy because this shifts attention away from the real root of the problems, which is the uninvested surplus of the capitalist ruling class. This is especially the case when conservative leaders (like Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan) are in power in the USA or in the UK. They bring out people such as Joseph McCarthy, Anthony Sutton, or Yuri Bezmenov on television in order to make the dupes believe that the evil commies are out to get them or that there's a conspiracy of the left. Because, you know, it's not the all-powerful capitalists who are at fault but those non-existent or few-in-numbers commies. Carroll Quigley called these people, and the oligarchical faction to which they belong, the "lunatic radical right" in his book 'Tragedy and Hope' (1966). If I remember correctly, Quigley also wrote that Douglas MacArthur was close to this oligarchical faction, and this is why he disobeyed Harry S. Truman during the Korean War. Economic growth and population growth in the USA have been slowing down, and all kinds of social problems have been appearing, because the vested interests of capitalism no longer invest their surplus. I'm not saying that conspiracies (like a conspiracy of some bankers) don't exist. I'm saying is that, even if some of them do exist, they're not the root of the problems. By the way, what has been happening in the USA since 1929 is what happened in Russia from 1900 to 1917. There's a reason why a revolution took place in Russia. The Russian state, which was the "instrument of expansion" of Russian civilization, became a structure of vested interests in 1900, during the rule of Nicholas II of Russia. Therefore, problems began to appear in the Russian Empire after 1900 and "expansion" began to slow down. Like the Americans, the Russians began to demonstrate incompetence, they began to lose wars, and it took only 17 years for order to collapse in Russia. In the USA, on the other hand, this has been going on for almost a century already because the USA doesn't have the problems and the issues that Russia had.

So, when it comes to the election of Donald Trump and to what's been happening since then, I don't really agree that the American authorities are engaged in some effective deception with Trump. The American authorities are simply demonstrating incompetence and desperation, and there's a possible struggle in the American ruling class. When it comes to me, I don't really pay much attention to this struggle, even if it exists. Well, firstly, I'm not American. Secondly, I need proof that there is a struggle. I can't just rely on maybes and assumptions. I've come across information that seriously puts in doubt this "left vs. right" nonsense. Thirdly, even if there is a struggle between oligarchs, there's really no difference for the average person because the oligarchs are all monopoly capitalists anyway. They may disagree on minor issues, but they agree on major issues. I'm still surprised sometimes when I see people running after the next big thing. They still haven't learned, after all these years, that it's not important who they vote for. Sure, I kind of supported Trump in 2016. I did this only because of his anti-war rhetoric. But even then I knew that he won't change anything. I'm a little wiser and older now, and I think that I shouldn't have thrown my weight behind any of the presidential candidates in the USA. Still, it was interesting to observe what happened because the majority of the Anglo-American establishment didn't want Trump in the White House. Even Morgan Freeman, the "Voice of God", was brought out for a funny propaganda stunt. I also can't forget the 2016 film Independence Day: Resurgence, which was released just before the election. In this film, which I kind of like by the way, the president of the USA is a woman. This was a clear suggestion that the next president should be a woman (Clinton), and it's just one example of the backing that Hillary Clinton received. Still, even all of the support from the media and from Hollywood didn't get Clinton to the coronation hall. I mean, don't get me wrong. This support got her very far, but it wasn't quite enough to beat Trump because Clinton was just so hated. When I was dining at a restaurant once, in 2016, I overheard two young women talking not far from me about what was happening in the USA. One of them called Clinton an old bag. Later, I found even more useful information and opinions on Scott Creighton's (American Everyman) website. I basically knew what was happening, but his observations about why Clinton lost the election were so good that I began donating some money to him every month for his work. Creighton is an American, and, therefore, he follows what's going on in the USA. He's also old, which means that he knows things. This also means that he grew up at a time when Americans were provided with a somewhat better education. He's not like the 20 year-old or 30 year-old airheads who ramble on the internet these days. It's somewhat refreshing to listen to a knowledgeable person like him because there are just so many middle class reactionaries and pro-fascists on the internet these days. These middle class people have the time and the money to ramble on the internet. They're wealthy enough to afford a computer and other accessories. They generally believe that they benefit from the system and from the existing order. Consequently, they have an aversion to change. But they're also angry and insecure because they've been brought down by the economic crisis, thus losing some of their prospects and expectations. Since they believe that leftist ideas are alien to them, and since they can't sympathize with the working class, they generally support conservatives and reactionaries. Hence, many of these people voted for Trump because most of Trump's rhetoric is reactionary.

When it comes to Israel, I also have a few thoughts. Well, first of all, I think that the most important thing is that Israel seems to be a Western state because it was founded mainly by Western Jews. Moreover, Israel is the youngest Western state because it was created in 1948 on the territory of the dying Islamic civilization. Since Israel has existed for only several decades, we can deduce that it hasn't been institutionalized yet, like England, France, Germany, or even the USA have been institutionalized. This is why Israel, which is a capitalist state and which has a population of about 8 million, seems to be functioning more effectively than even the USA. In other words, the process of decline that has reached other Western states hasn't yet reached, or is now reaching, Israel. Therefore, I don't buy into the mythology that Israelis, or Jews in general, are supermen. Israelis aren't as incompetent as the Americans or as other Western peoples simply because Israel isn't yet in serious decline. Obviously, Israeli capitalists have ties to other Western capitalists, like American capitalists (or a faction of American capitalists). So, the fact that Israel has influence and friends in the USA isn't at all surprising to me. Israel is a very important strategic ally for the USA. What's also worth mentioning is that since Israel hasn't yet been institutionalized, and since it has been growing so far, Israel has been taking land from its neighbors and settling the land with Israelis. This is the same process that, for example, happened in the USA more than a century ago, when the Americans drove away the Native Americans, took their land, and then settled it with Anglo-Saxons and other Americans of European descent.