Tag Archives: Political Violence

A Winning Conservative Strategy

I had a couple Twitter conversations on how the GOP can significantly cripple the Democratics and gain some actual permanent wins. One single PAC spent $142 million on Romney and received nothing to show for it in the end. With that much money I could signficantly cripple the Dems and win the next decade or two for the Republicans.

Being a reactionary monarchist, I generally avoid partisan politics here, but I thought this would be an enjoyable intellectual exercise.

Since I’m in a generous mood, I’ve decided to share the basic strategy for the GOP to steal and use (or more likely ignore) however they want, but first a little groundwork.

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The most interesting fact about American politics is how the Republicans totally dominate all levels of violence, yet are always in a perpetual state of losing. The military is primarily Republican, the police are more split but, at least in terms of front-line workers, are generally Republican, and the NRA, while officially non-partisan, is primarily composed of Republicans. The vast majority of people who own and can use a gun are conservative, yet, in the long run, conservatives always lose to their weaker, unarmed brethren.

It is baffling until you realize it is because conservatives refuse to play by the rules the progressives have set. Democrats can steal bags of votes, implement gang-run politics, destroy crimethinker’s careers, and stage shit-ins (among many other things) with impunity and the Republicans refuse to respond with anything worse than requiring ID to vote (and then getting called evil when doing so).

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First, some theory. In “To Win a Nuclear War” Michio Kaku outlined the concept of ‘escalation dominance’.

Escalation dominance essentially means the actor controlling the highest level of violence (in the book’s case, nuclear weapons) can control all lower levels of violence by threatening to escalate the conflict to a higher level of violence. By controlling the tempo and threat of escalation, this actor can steer a conflict in such ways as to win lower level conflicts even in areas where he may be weaker.

As I stated above, the military, the police, and the NRA are conservative institutions. Conservatives, and thereby the Republican party, control the highest level of violence in American political disputes.

Using this, the Republicans should be able to control the escalation and tempo of lower-violence political conflicts.

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Note: This does not mean Republicans should start shooting Democrats. The primary point of escalation dominance is to control the lower levels of violence so you don’t have to escalate.

The primary reason for controlling nuclear weapons is not to use nuclear weapons. Controlling lower levels of violence without having to resort to using nuclear weapons through the implied threat of nuclear escalation is the purpose of nuclear weapons.

Controlling the highest level of violence in American politics means that Conservative can control the tempo of lower-violence political conflicts (voting, law-making, regulation enforcement, etc.) and control the escalation of political violence (ie: voting to voter fraud; debate to ideological firings) through the implied threat of further escalation (you witch hunt me and take my job, I witch hunt you and take your job and reputation; you escalate to assault, I escalate to shooting).

I repeat: I am not advocating shooting liberals or doing anything illegal. My strategy does not include physical violence or criminality. I am simply explaining a concept that will under-gird the strategy.

Also, for the purposes of this post any political act, whether it’s voting, protesting, debate, law-making, etc., will be considered a form of violence.

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Conservatives already have implied a willingness to escalate. “Cold dead hands” is pretty clear, the occasional fringe rant by people like Alex Jones shows that conservatives can be pushed too far, and liberals still bring up McVeigh and the abortion shootings from the 90’s.

So, the base has created a climate where the implication of escalation is clear. Republicans need to use this implied threat to control lower levels of violence so violence does not escalate, but they don’t.

Despite controlling the highest level of violence, Republicans are allowing the Democrats to set the tempo of escalation. In fact, Republicans are allowing the Democrats to escalate while never responding in kind.

This is why they lose. This is why they always lose.

If they want to win they need to match the Democrats escalation, then control the further tempo of escalation.

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Enough groundwork, now we get to the real stuff. Let’s say I had the $142-million Restore Our Future wasted on Romney or the $54-million American Crossroads used opposing Democrats. $142M over four years is $35.5M each year. Here’s how I’d spend $35M.

Create an information network. $3M*

Instead of wasting money on ads, support the dissemination over the internet. You can reach more people through FB than through some network cable slot. Create a network of cross-linking quasi-official aggregators of content and a quasi-official Republican news source.There are tons of young ideologues willing to do the Republicans propaganda grunt work for them for peanuts. Create a small fund to pay some of the best of them, say $25k each, to do it full-time. Create a small emergency fund for unpaid amateurs (your computer busted and you need a new one, here’s $1000, that kind of thing.) This could all be done for less than $1M. Easy enough.

Create an investigation network. $5M

Create a small fund (say $500k) that the aforementioned bloggers (or just regular Joes) can apply to have expenses paid for doing investigative work on a potential anti-leftist/Democrat lead.

Next, hire a couple dozen ideologically conservative reporters at $50k a piece (plus investigative expenses)  and have their sole job to dig up and publish dirt on Democrats, Democrat supproters, liberals, liberal organizations, and the like. Have them work in concert with aforementioned information network.

Next hire a few dozen private investigators. Dedicate them to uncovering the personal information and secrets of leftists. Everybody has secrets they don’t want others to know; find it if possible. Do they cheat on their spouses or their taxes, do they look at weird or illegal pornography, any “emberassing” photographs or incidents in their past, any criminal actions in the past, etc. Have them find it.

Create a quasi-official Enemies List $200k

Create and maintain a database site that’s a catalogue of the the personal information of every remotely public Democrat, liberal, or anti-Republican person or organization. Keep it inside the realms legality of privacy laws, but absolutely no more than that. If it would give more latitude make it a private operation with no official ties to the party. It would include pictures, phone numbers, addresses, family, any wrongdoing or humiliating things from their past, etc.

Publish all the personal/organizational information gained from the investigation network on this list.

Create a legal war team. $20M

The leftists are engaging in lawfare, hit back but harder and more organized. Create two Republican legal firms (make them legally independent if need be).

Have one whose sole responsibility is defending any conservative/Republican who’s in trouble due to their politics (such as any troubles that may happen while enacting this plan). Make this firm small but top quality. Defend your own with the best.

Have a second firm that’s large, sacrifice on quality. Have this team find and bring to court any actionable lawsuits against Democrats, leftists, left-wing organizations, leftists’ businesses, etc. The purpose here is not to win, it is to use the courts as methods of persecution and to drag court cases out. Remember, in lawfare the trial is the punishment and you are looking to punish these people/organizations for being leftists. These cases can be anything; any kind of civil suit that can be concocted to be actionable.

Also, create a fund for paying the legal fees for cases that are lost and avoid cases that would get summarily thrown out.

Create a street team. $2M

As Kate always says, failing to show up for a riot is a failed conservative policy. Hire a bunch of young conservative/Republicans (at low wages) as organizers. Anytime leftists protest, the hired organizers would create a counter-protest. They would then organize their own protests. Do what leftists have learned; don’t protest in public streets, target. Is there a particular individual, protest in front of his house/place of employment for a week; is there an organization, protest outside the organization during the day, outside the home of the CEO/Director/Manager during the evenings. Remember, the leftists made the personal political.

Make sure to give clear instructions to avoid illegal actions and avoid stepping frmo “free speech” into “”harassment”.

Create a phone/e-mail team. $2M

Hire a few coordinators for different ideological areas to create a lists of volunteers. Every time it becomes necessary, have the coordinators coordinate a phone team. Have the each volunteer phone a leftist being targeted once a week (make the call polite: “Hi, sir, I would like to respectfully disagree with you or your organization’s policy on), but have enough volunteers that the person is getting a phone call every hour for the entire week. Keep this up for a few weeks. You are not phoning the PR people, you are not phoning secretaries, you are phoning these people directly. Get their numbers from above. Then have the volunteers phone their boss, the organization they volunteer with, etc. to register their displeasure.

Also, if there’s a leftist being targeted, have everybody e-mail bomb them and where they work registering displeasure.

Create an employment network. $300k

Spend a few hundred thousand to hire a few guys whose sole job is to help Republicans/conservatives who lose their jobs due to their ideology find new ones. One advantage the left has is that a leftist who does something leftist and stupid can always find employment with some leftist organization. Many conservatives don’t have that, so they are forced to curtail their political activities or hide behind screennames. All these guys have to do is find some Republican employers to participate, then link cosnervatives in need to them.

Hire a coordination office. $1M

Hire a coordinator to coordinator, and if necessary some office staff, to coordinate all these different teams.

Ad Hoc. $2M

A small fund for the coordinator to take advantage of any unforeseen opportunities that may present themselves.

With more, simply do all this, but bigger.

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With everything in place, have the coordinator run ruthless personal campaign after ruthless personal campaign.

Find a leftist and destroy him/her on a personal level. Targets can include actual elected officials, bureaucrats abusing their positions for partisan reasons (ie. the IRS), leftist bloggers, leftist media figures, leftist academics, leftist activists, leftist businesses, leftists NGO’s and non-profits.

The investigation network will find out everything they can about it, they will pass it to the information network who will distribute it, and it will be logged in the enemies list. If the pesron has done anything actionable, the legal war team will pounce on it. The street and phone team will protest in their own manners.

You could have dozens of these campaigns running at once.

For an example of how it could look, let’s go back to John Cook, who published the names of every gun owner in New York and let’s pretend this network is in place.

The investigation network would find his address, his personal phone number, pictures of his home and kids, his porn habits, his marriage therapy sessions, whatever they legally could find. The information network would distribute this widely. A dossier of him and his family would be written up on the enemies list. So, now everything about him is freely available on the internet.

The legal war team would find whatever arcane law or “injured” they could to make a civil action of this. They’d bring John to court personally and tie him up in months of legal battles. Every hour of every day for weeks, both him and his wife would receive a polite phone call from a different person expressing polite disapproval; their personal inboxes would load with polite e-mail expressing disapproval. His boss at Gawker would be receiving continual calls and e-mails to fire him.

A small group of (non-harassing) protesters would show up on the sidewalk outside his house in the morning as his children are leaving for school and in the evening as they are getting home from school, having dinner, going to bed. They’d be in front of his place of work during the day.

After a month of that peaceful, legal attack, do you think anybody would be stupid enough to try to publish gun owners name’s again. Even after the rather weak, uncoordinated response to John the alst time no one has since published another gun owners list. Now repeat that for every offending leftist, every offending organization, and the occasional random leftist, how long until the public action of the leftists can’t sustain itself anymore.

Without the constant leftist campaigns and organizations, the electoral support of leftists begins to whither over time. A few elections down the road, Republicans are consistently winning and getting their agenda through because most leftists are too cowed to fight back.

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Now, if you find this distasteful, remember, leftists are already doing this. They already fully agree that this is kind of personal action is acceptable practice. They’ve done it many times, and will continue to do it. The recent dust-up at Mozilla makes that clear. So, it is either respond in kind or lose.

Right now, the leftists have escalated to a higher level of political violence than the Republicans; the Republicans need to match it and escalate a step further.

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The obvious question then becomes, why won’t the leftists/Democrats organize, then escalate further?

They will, to which the Republicans respond by escalating again.

This is where we get to escalation dominance.

At some point of escalation, the left will be to afraid to escalate further, because the right controls the highest level of violence.

While the reaction to the Gawker story wasn’t enough to do more than irritate John Cook, a similar reaction to a similar piece in for a newspaper, resulted in the paper hiring armed guards.

Once the escalation has been pushed high enough, the left will blink at the implied threat of physical violence and then perhaps deescalation can occur.

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That’s the basic outline for a long-term win for the GOP.

If any higher placed GOP flak with the funds would like to win, win hard, and win permanently rather than throw massive amounts of money down the RINO-hole, I am willing to sell my services. I will gladly be hired to write up a detailed plan and I would be happy to be hired to implement it (for appropriate compensation of course). I might not believe in democracy, but Democrat tears are their own reward.

Also, my offer of selling my services applies to other country’s conservative parties. I do live in Canada after all.

Think about it GOP operative or rich conservative donor reading this. You can hire me for peanuts (relatively speaking) and win, or you can continue to throw millions upon millions at candidates that always seem to let the country continue left.

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For this strategy, I’ve stayed within the realm of legality.

Now the Democrats have already escalated into illegality through ballot-stuffing, voter fraud, voter intimidation, and gang politics. If certain GOP operatives were willing to escalate into the realm of illegality the possibilities would be near endless.

I am not going to give any advice on illegality and will not condone or encourage illegal actions, but I would note I do love intellectual challenges and might be willing to engage in hypotheticals for a hefty payment.

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*All numbers are very quick and rough estimates. I’d need to be paid more than nothing for greater accuracy.

The Collapse

XSplat asked, “what, EXACTLY, they mean by “society collapses”? (H/T: SAG)

Yesterday, I noted that government takeover and the collapse of the family from the “long march through culture” led to what you see in black America: high dependence on government, high violence, social problems, etc.

In response to a similar answer, he added:

“I want to know what happens to WHITE society. Show me a WHITE example.”

The trite answer is watch the riots in Greece and see what occurs to them over the next 5 years. There are already riots and they will likely get worse before they get better. The American collapse will be worse though, because there is no EU to bail the US out.

The not-quite-so-trite answer is Rome and the Dark Ages. Rome collapsed over centuries and Western civilization stagnated for centuries more. Collapse for the US will be different, because the US is separated by water from everybody but Mexico and Canada, and so has less of a problem of barbarians sacking them. But still, it’s one possibility.

The even-less-so-but-still-trite answer is that whites and non-whites are inter-mixed in most Western countries, so his point’s fairly irrelevant. If one group in society completely collapses, it negatively effects the other groups in society.

An almost-not-trite answer would be the Weimer Republic. Good times were had by all. The Soviet Union, it’s collapse, and Russia’s collapse into a corrupt oligarchy are another. Yob culture in Britain is another, and is not that far from the American ghetto.

I will come back to this and outline the likely scenarios for an answer that’s not trite, but first we will deal with other parts of his post.

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Someone else provides him with an answer, which I think is partially correct, which he then follows up with:

“But what these future predictions miss is technology. Where we are today is the result of technology. Future technological changes will change what options we have for our future. How far off do you think biotech is from altering society? What will happen when making designer babies is cheap and readily available? When electronic implants can affect our emotions?”

I’m going to start with this, just to get the objection out of the way, so I can concentrate on the collapse.

Essentially what he is talking about is either post-scarcity and/or the singularity. I’ve written of post-scarcity before, and I believe it to be nearly inevitable; eventually we will pass the threshold of scarcity to where we do not need to “work”. The other concept is the singularity, the point where we reach superintelligence through either AI, the mind/machine interface, or biotechnology. We already have very primitive M/MA, AI, and biotech, just as we have primitive 3D printers, but the endpoint of the three is the singularity.

There’s a good chance we will reach the singularity. The most optimistic predictions I’ve seen is about 2045. Many experts have put it between 2050 and 2100. Others only say the distant future. Many, such as Steven Pinker, an intellectual I respect, doubt it will ever occur. I lean towards the more optimistic side, I’d take a wild guess at before 2100 simply because technology has generally tended to advance faster than most experts think, but I think there’s some wishful thinking in the earlier dates. Of course, the wild guess of some random guy on the internet is not exactly gospel.

I think post-scarcity will come well before the singularity simply because the mechanical is easier for man to master than the genetic, biological, electronic, and quantam. Post-scarcity is less discussed than the singularity, so the only projected date I’ve seen is 2050-75, but thbe post-scarcity from that prediction is a bit different from the post-scarcity I posited.

But anyway, let’s, for the sake of argument, say that post-scarcity will occur by 2050 and the singularity by 2080 (70 years from now, a common prediction).

The question then becomes, when is “the collapse”?

This is more difficult. The collapse, which is probably more accurately referred to as the end of the world as we know it, is a political belief of those on the alt-right, that is not accepted by most of the mainstream, so it’s less looked at by what we would term futurists. Despite this, there’s been some predictions. Patrick Buchanan, probably the best known of those predicting the Death of the West, posits it will occur by 2050, but has since wondered if it could occur by 2025. Mark Steyn’s After America didn’t give a date, but it’s obvious he expects it in the next few decades if there are no changes. If you ask anybody on the alt-right, they’ll probably have a prediction of some sort.

Outside the alt-right, Niall Ferguson has posited the beginning of the collapse of the American Empire within the next five years and Alternet posits it by 2025, but the collapse of empire is somewhat different from societal collapse, even if both are related.

The most important point is nobody really knows when the collapse will come, only that there is a good possibility of it. Just like nobody knows when post-scarcity or the singularity will come. Predicting the future accurately is extremely difficult, we can only look at current trends, extrapolate, prepare, and then take whatever chaotic occurrences come upon us.

But if we look at the predictions, 2025-2050 is earlier than 2050-2100. So, the majority opinion seems to be that the collapse comes first.

If the singularity or post-scarcity occurs, there will be no collapse. If the economy grows rapidly enough that it covers over any other problems we might have, there will be no collapse. If the collapse comes first, there will be some bad years before post-scarcity and it might delay or prevent post-scarcity.

The question is not will technology prevent the coming collapse, the question is which will hit first?

It is a race between science and economic progress on one hand and societal collapse on the other.

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Wait, X-Splat’s talking of collapse due to family, you’re talking about collapse of empire, collapse due to debt, and economic collapse.

There’s no difference. It’s all related.

The collapse of family, the collapse of empire, the debt bomb, the growth of government, the housing bust, etc. are all the same collapse due to the same reason: they are all symptoms of the collapse of civil society and civic virtue. Civil society is what keeps a free society together and stops it from collapsing on itself. (A tyranny can keep society together through fear and violence, but only until someone else overthrows the tyrant). Civil society is the bonds that hold a community together and civic virtue are the values that keep society from ripping itself apart.

When civil society dies, charity dries up, family collapses, social capital disappears, churches and other traditional institutions die off, business become corrupt, society becomes corrupt, and self-organization withers. When civic virtue dies, people become corrupt, they vote themselves money at others’ expense, refuse to contribute to society, abandon family, stop volunteering, refuse public service in the military, take on huge unrepayable debt, become irresponsible, pursue decadence and hedonism, etc.

No society can survive the collapse of civic virtue and civil society and remain free.

The banging of sluts and the collapse of family are just one aspect of the greater collapse of civic virtue and civil society.

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So what happens in the collapse?

The answer: that depends. There are simply to many variables to make any conclusive answers. I will give what I think are some of the likelier potentials.

(Note: I am going to focus on North American collapse, to reduce the scope. For the rest of the Western world, the answers are similar on the broad strokes, but many details might be different.)

1) Great Depression Part 2: The Great Recession turns into a Great Depression. The US sinks into a long economic malaise but still has enough civic virtue and civil society to get through it as a free nation. There are rough spots, poverty increases, there’s some minor violence and riots, and it’s tough on everybody, especially seniors for whom SS and Medicare have been drastically reduced, but the US continues to be a more-or-less free and functioning society. Eventually either pulls through or reaches economic scarcity.

This is the best of the collapse scenarios. There is no radical change to American life, just some very tough belt tightening and the occasional spot of violence. This is what blue-pill fiscal conservatives like Paul Ryan are trying to do and are failing at.

2) Brave New World: This is less a collapse than a drawn out decline. Big Brother slowly takes over and America loses its freedom. I don’t think America will slip into outright dictatorship, but democracy will become increasingly a formality rather than a reality, life will become increasingly less free, and the state will slowly replace civil society. The courts will gradually hand more power over to government and government will progressively control more of American life. Americans will essentially live in a gilded cage. Consumer goods and pop entertainment will keep most American’s sated. There will be some illusion of freedom; you will still be able to choose which brand of government approved video games you desire. You will still be free to read most books (except some of those that are “hateful” or “obscene”). You will be able to use the internet for pornography and whatnot, but some sites will be blocked.  Most people will be sated with their illusion of freedom and their consumer goods. Those that aren’t will either be jailed/put on probation for technical regulatory violations or will be given little outlets apart from society as a whole where they can be somewhat free of societal constraints (within reason) without impacting society as a whole (ex. the army). This is essentially the Bonobo Masturbation Society.

I think this is the most likely scenario. This is the Gramscian long march I talked of yesterday. The end game will eventually resemble something like Brave New World. It won’t be hellish; it will actually be somewhat pleasurable, but there will always be that thought in the back of your mind: “isn’t there something more?” and there will always be that edge of emptiness in your life, but, thankfully, the pills and VR will make it barely noticeable.

3) Demographic Violence: As the US economy worsens and people lose their government benefits as it can no longer afford to pay them, various groups will begin to engage in protest and violence. The well-off will separate themselves from it geographically, but the lower and middle classes will be engaged. This violence will take one of three forms: ideological, racial, or generational. Essentially, there will be a long, drawn-out series of riots and low-level violence.  If it’s ideological,it will occur primarily between conservatives and liberals and between fringe groups; it lead to further ideological segregation in society. Racial violence would occur between blacks, latinos, and whites, with Asians caught in the crossfire. Generational violence will occur as seniors protest the death of the social security and medicare they paid for their whole life and the younger victimize the elderly as blame for causing the collapse. Most likely it will be some combination of the three.

There will be violence either way, the question is what level of violence. In this scenario, society still functions, but violence, like the Rodney King Riots, Brehivik, or the English Riots will become much more common. Political protests become more common and often degrade into violence and rioting. This kind of violence will likely accompany any of the other scenarios to varying degrees. Eventually, this sorts itself out politically and economically with reforms or it degrades into revolution or civil war.

4) Revolution: A group revolts and takes control of the government. This could follow demographic violence, replace it, or be a part of it. What kind of society follows will depend on who does the coup.

I think this is highly unlikely. The US is too well-armed and ideologically, ethnically, and regionally divided for any single group to simply have a coup. If a coup occurs, it will most likely result in dissolution and/or civil war.

5) Balkanization and/or Civil War: Due either to demographic violence, revolution, or the reaching of some political or economic tipping point. The US dissolves itself; various states and/or regions balkanize, declare independence, and assert their own governance. This could be peaceful or violent. If done peacefully, it will not be too bad. People will move to whichever region they prefer and there will be some temporary economic and political disruption, but no real long-run problems. If done violently, it could tip into civil war. This could be relatively light war, such as in the books State of Disobedience or Empire, or it could be a major war to rival or surpass the American Civil War.

I think there’s a decent chance of dissolution. Most likely, if it does occur, it will come with some light violence. There will be some riots, a few massacres, and some firefights not really on the level of battles, that will cause the the states agree to dissolve more or less peacefully.

6) A Renewing War: A war in Europe occurs due to similar economic and political collapse. Or a war in Asia due to population imbalances, resource disputes, and ancient grudges. Or a war in the Middle East, because it’s the Middle East. Or a war against Mexico because as the drug war troubles slip out of control into full on civil war, which spills over into the US. Whatever the war, the US becomes involved, and unlike the limited wars of Iraq or Afghanistan, it reaches the level of (near) total war.  The masculine virtues reassert themselves. Unemployment disappears as the war gobbles up all available industry and manpower. Civic virtue and civil society are renewed as people handle the sacrifices of war. Men die en masse and become rarer; society realigns back towards patriarchy as female competition for men increases. Society is forged in the flame and returns renewed and invigorated.

This seems possible. It would also probably follow either #1 or #3 and would be the way past them. (Note: War could occur in other scenarios, but in those scenarios they would not have a renewing effect, it would simply be an adjunct to the rest).

Personally, I think #1 and #2 are the most likely collapse scenarios, with low-levels of scenario three involved in either of them, but none of the others are implausible. What happens depends on the circumstances of the collapse which I can not predict.

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Any of scenarios #1-5 will result in the end of American hegemony. The US will simply not be able to continue to act as the world police, destabilizing the rest of the world.

Europe will no longer be able to rely on the US’ protection and if the EU dissolves, might become unstable. China will no longer have a check to it’s power in Southeast Asia, while Japan will have to restart it’s own military. India and Pakistan will lose the US’ calming influence. The Middle East will become even more unstable without the US supporting Israel and keeping tabs on the Arab countries. Who knows what will Russia will do.

The UN and NATO will lose their hard power, so international emergency response and nation-building will collapse. The international aid system will collapse without US hegemony protecting it. Africa will become even more unstable than it already is.

The collapse of Pax Americana will have massive repercussions throughout the world and will lead to a large increase in instability and violence.

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If there are no changes to society as it stands and we continue on our current trajectory, the collapse will occur. What form it may take is an unanswerable question, but a free society not simply survive the combination of massive debt levels, mass dependence on the state, and the dissolution of civic virtue and civil society that is becoming the norm in the West.

But collapse is not inevitable. There’s numerous ways for it to be avoided and the Futurist has outlined a likely path out. All we need is to change the trajectory just enough to delay the collapse long enough for post-scarcity to occur.