It is no longer possible to use words like "capitalism" and "socialism" in a derogatory manner - nobody knows what the most precise definition is, and can't be bothered to clear that up anyway. Instead, the word oligarchy is more promising. Even that adjectival noun doesn't do America justice. What we have is plutocracy. Aristotle defined aristocracy as rule by the better few, while oligarchy would simply be rule by the few: the unjust form of aristocracy. If aristocracy (as embodied most of all in the ancien regime in France) fell because of the revolt among the many in the "Folk" or Volk, our republic today is failing because of the revolt of the "many" elites against the remaining healthy "many". The elites are using "majority-minorities" to bludgeon their populist political opponents, who (barely) can still constitute the "Many". If one weighs the NAACP, SPLC, the ACLU and all of the many arms of the liberal elite associations, its very numbers and sophistication amplifies its power to the point of constituting a rival "Many", and gives them control over Media, Education, Government, Entertainment, and (now) most of the main-line Churches.
In other words, the Western world has entered a downward spiral of degeneration in which each group launches revolutions in mores and laws against the more conservative elements in the other groups. There is no longer a "commonwealth". The main issue here is not class or social justice, but Justice. Neither is the issue which class or caste should rule. The issue is whether the American people can secure just rule by any group or person. Monarchy having been excluded from the outset, America had left to choose between the natural aristoi or the body of commoners. This dynamic played itself out (for instance) in the struggle of Jackson against the old parties and entrenched leadership.
However, the disappearance of Christianity as a cultural force has opened up more possibilities. Instead of being ruled by (relatively) sound and sane natural aristocrats or populist leaders at the head of a (relatively) normal movement, we are now confronted with the proletariat, the lumpen-proleteriat, the huddled mobs and masses, and actual dissidents who range from the bizarre and macabre to the suddenly-weirdly-possible (if current population trends continue). These forces exist in any society, but are normally held in check by just and sound rule or statecraft; the fact that they are no longer creeping when out in the open means that they sense their time is nigh.
The new leaders which have emerged to manage these possibilities are either demagogues or plutocrats. Donald Trump is arguably both, while Hillary was certainly both, but in much cleverer disguise. The human mind desperately wants to think in terms of simplistic binaries (eg., Us vs. the 1%), but as the bottom drops out of what was left of once-great America, a multitude of insane options present themselves. John Howard Kunstler argues that America will eventually accept "corn-pone Nazis" if that means it can keep Suburbia. The Left apparently actually believes we are in danger of fascism coming to power, and they are pioneering fascistic methods on our streets in order to prevent Fascism with a capital F (you have to destroy the village in order to save it). This despite the fact that George Orwell already noted long ago that the word has lost any objective meaning. Corn-pone fascism comes in a leftist dipping sauce and spices if that's your poison.
Why is it, that year after year, America's debt goes up and up, living arrangements seem more temporary, life feels more hectic, and the whole nation feels like a moonscape settlement in a dystopian science fiction novel? Because America no longer has any morals or even mores left. Carthage, too, once the world's greatest trading empire, possibly possessing ships that were seaworthy to cross the Atlantic, believed that money alone could defeat and rule the rest of the world, and seemed invincible. The British Empire itself went broke trying to keep its coffers ringing with tribute from around the globe. The love of money is the root of all evil. And America loves money. Not just a lot, but almost the exclusion of everything else. Money is the only language degraded intellects can parse.
In America, the dollar is King - "The business of America is business.". We will not get Russian oligarchs, at least not yet. We will get the "soft" version of a melting-pot mob presided over by gluttonous plutocrats, all squabbling over the enormous carcass of what was once the wealthiest nation on earth. This is because as times worsen, people turn to what they know and understand, something simply, something denominated in binary Ones and Zeros - the Almighty Dollar. If illegal immigration pays for Tyson and the rich and Democratic hereditary legacy-bureaucrats, then illegal immigration we will get. If pollution and drug trafficking generate revenue streams, then we will get mountains of waste dumps, dirty lakes, and plenty of cheap heroin and meth. America has been schooled, almost from infancy, to value the "main chance". Even the Civil Rights Era could not escape this legacy, keeping their "eyes on the prize", which was access to all the power, glitz, and money afforded by inroads made into "white America". North America has become the center of a global banking Empire which wants to wrap tentacles around the entire globe, until the world is flat again, with no walls or borders.
The poor don't know any better, and generally can be halfway forgiven for not being able to overcome their cupidity and ignorance, but their number is swelling by the day, and in a "Democracy", numbers matter. They are also engaging in inexcusable violence and shameful displays of hatred and stupidity. And "poor" is a relative term - financially, they still enjoy enviable slices of the Imperial Pie, compared to global counterparts. Their greatest poverty is primarily in cultural capital, like mores and traditions, and they give away what little they have to embrace anyone who is willing to lie to them.
I am not sure what excuse the rich would use for their short-sighted idiocy in allowing this trend to gain ground, or even adding accelerants to the mixture in the form of Third World immigration, but they will live to regret it. The middle class is shrinking from both sides, either selling out as middle managers for the bozos who are masterminding one of Dante's circles in hell, or else falling abjectly into the seething mass below them. The ones that are left are woefully short more on brains than actual virile manpower, and that is not good either. The middle class still thinks America Can Be Made Great Again, if we just return to 1950s nationalism, or something close to it. My sympathies, but not loyalties, are with them. At least they still remember a time in which ordinary Americans had more in common with each other than not. Their instincts are good and right, but they are hopelessly outclassed by the enormitude of the problems confronting this country, which are not primarily of their design, and will not submit to their belated objections in the form of The Donald. The Donald cannot fix America, even if he knew how.
Everyone in America wants to get rich quick, even the lumpen-proleteriat, who faithfully and religiously purchase lottery tickets each week or sue their local Walmart because the floors were too slick for their flip-flops. Minorities can barely wait to have their own local power structures, replete with Byzantine levels of corruption and greed. The Italians and Irish gave us our first really gigantic big city political machines, and other minority groups will continue this time-hallowed conservative tradition of money and power being marks of God's divine election in the promised land of the kingdom of God. But maybe this was there from the start, implicit in industrial civilization, as pioneered by the Puritans. Certainly the Abolitionist movement can be viewed as a very effective version of a political machine, if judged by the attainment of goals and aims. Even the Allies during WW2 engaged in effective juggernaut propaganda, all in the name of Freedom, Justice, and (above all) the Dollar.
It's hard to tell where it all started anymore, but start it did. Western Civilization is (today) for the most part concerned with making money.This means that, in the end, money is all we will have left, and that in name only, because money is not the same as economic wealth or resilience, let alone culture or civilization. We will have to buy everything, including loyalty and the air we breath, and we burn worthless derivative bundles in our potbelly stoves to keep warm during the winters. American resourcefulness, hard work, and tech-savvy go a long way, especially when the world is awash in cheap oil. But macro and micro-economics are not enough to prevent the human tragedy we see unfolding. Man doesn't wish to, and indeed cannot even if he did, live in a world in which he is just another brick in the wall.
Our global elites have tried to create this world, imagined in countless fantasies, of one unified mankind living in the peace and harmony of an economic paradise. But they tried to build it with manipulation, lies, and promises printed on paper. America is being run like a gigantic corporation, which wishes to take over, or at least control, all the other little corporations it created in its own image in the name of Democracy. Instead of a light on a shining hill, we would be the capital city of a New World Order. God may intend something like this to happen, but it will be built by the Spirit, with the wisdom and power of God, and not according to the dictates of a secular humanism run rampant on cheap (and now declining) fossil fuels.
God's plan involves re-integrating Time (including Past-Present-Future) in one narrative, and dividing (and thus stabilizing) Space into many diversities which are united in the deeper love of the Spirit, the "shields of the earth". Our rulers want to fragment time (by splitting everything into nanoseconds and re-inventing natural law as if the past could be ignored and the future averted), and crushing space into one uniform order. This way lies the cindery plains of hell. The very people who are most self-righteously pushing for the will of a God they no longer believe in, are doing the most to ruin any chance that this generation can ever begin to glimpse something of the beauty and majesty of God. This is the definition of hypocrisy, Phariseeism, and tyrannically unjust social orders.
But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.This is the legacy of 1789. It is time to go backwards, in order to go forward again. For those who wish to, here is a great place to start, at Gornahoor. Failing that, or even in addition, you might need to start planting a Victory Garden.
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