One day the United States, as we know it, will disappear and Washington, D.C. will not be the capital of a great nation. But before history reaches this moment, millions of Americans will experience the greatest economic reversal of all time. Consider the logic of this scenario. If America is destined to disappear, the first warning signs will be on the economic front. And now we see the signs, all around. Those who favor U.S. power should be worried. America’s military advantage exists as an economic corollary, and the economic news is bad. There have been trade imbalances. An enormous amount of debt has been accumulated, and the dollar is falling fast.
The American Republic is neither invincible nor immortal. At present, the Republic is sick. There is much amiss: No great figures appear on the national stage; The populous is distracted and the pundits are blind to the great and ever-present danger of a repetition, on a bigger and more deadly scale, of the madness of 1939-45. An entire generation has grown up without any knowledge of what those years actually signify, or of what the preceding years of 1929-1939 signify. The American people are no longer unified, nor do they think of themselves primarily as Americans; neither do they agree on fundamental principles. In fact, a significant percentage of the population is foreign. Some are resident aliens, while up to 15 to 20 million are illegal aliens. As a “people” Americans are caught up with entertainment and consumption. While citizenship and patriotism still exist, they are significantly attenuated. As a territory, the national border is a joke. The political authorities do not have the will to police the border to the degree required for effective security. As for the government, it is too often the puppet of various special interest groups – environmentalists who seek to destroy key domestic industries, ethnic leaders who divide and conquer by exploiting grievances, lobbyists who represent companies seeking to trade with foreign enemies. The old statesmanship and statecraft is gone.
The United States of America is more fragile today than it was in 1861. It is more fragile than at any time since the adoption of the Constitution. It is fragile because the country’s psychology, ethnic makeup, ideology, intellectual acuity and morality have undergone a revolution for the worse. Technology has changed the way we receive and process information – by removing detail in favor of “the grand sweep” (with moving pictures and sound). Technology has changed the relationship between man and woman. It has changed the relationship between parent and child. Karl Marx once said that religion was the “opium of the people.” And what if “the people” can get their hands on real opium? And so they do – in America. There is a pill for everything. There is a pill if you are fat, a pill if you are sad, and a pill if your child doesn’t behave in class. Such are the epiphenomena of convenience, America’s special highway to Hell.
The inward decline of America is already a “done deal.” The cataclysmic consequences are yet to occur. Be prepared. A time of troubles is coming. Capitalism is about to become a whipping boy once again, together with the unfortunate salutation: “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” Statism is part and parcel of America’s sickness. If we think government is too big now, just wait till the crisis worsens. Consider the following formula: The more government does, the less the economy has. With regard to the present mortgage crisis, or the soon-to-occur banking crisis, the taxpayer is twisting on a hook. Only he doesn’t feel the pain yet. It takes pain a long time – years in fact – to travel from the politician’s beatitude to the taxpayer’s mangled trunk. When the taxpayer cries out there will be new beatitudes, new hooks and more twisting. In this way a crash becomes a slump, a slump becomes a depression, and the taxpayer becomes a pauper. If mortgage lending is falling off, the government cannot rectify the situation. But watch them try, and watch them make a worse mess than you can imagine.
On Saturday the Associated Press ran a story with the headline, “Mortgage Failures Could Create Nightmare,” by Joe Bel Bruno. The story quotes Bill Gross, who runs the world’s largest bond fund: “We haven’t faced a downturn like this since the Depression.” Bruno also quotes Mark Patterson, a hedge-fund specialist: “We’re nowhere close to the end of the collapse.” In this scenario, capitalism would not be the only whipping boy. Uncle Sam and “American Imperialism” would be right up there, in the crosshairs. Even now, the rising socialist dictator in Venezuela wants OPEC to use oil as a weapon to “curb imperialism.” This radical anti-capitalist message hardly appeals to the sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. But one day, the anti-capitalist mentality that prevails in many countries and in many American universities might win a disgruntled majority at the polls.
The main anti-capitalist player on the world stage is the Kremlin (together with its partner, China). Russian planners have been waiting for a U.S. economic crisis for decades. They have long schemed to exploit such a crisis. But exploiting the economic downfall of a great power is dangerous. The great power could lash out. In fact, Soviet military textbooks long ago warned of capitalism’s warmongering circles and the last gasps of imperialism. It is therefore important to be vigilant from the outset. One week ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia’s nuclear forces were ready to “repel any aggressor.” He publicly accused the United States and its allies of a military buildup on Russia’s borders.
What are we to make of this? It is palpably ridiculous. The United States doesn’t want war with Russia, and doesn’t plan any aggression against Russia. Accusing the United States, however, comes directly out of the Soviet playbook. Putin’s game is therefore the same old game – the Great Game.
A Soviet bloc high-level defector named Jan Sejna, >writing in 1982, said the Kremlin’s long-range strategy hung on a future economic crisis in the West. “The Soviet view,” Sejna explained, “was that during Phase Three [of the plan] Capitalism would suffer an economic crisis that would bring Europe to its knees. This crisis would stimulate the influence of ‘progressive’ forces….” In September 1967 Secretary Konstantin Katushev of the Soviet Central Committee explained to the Czech Communist leadership: “If we can impose on the U.S.A. the external restraints proposed in our Plan, and seriously disrupt the American economy, the working and the lower middle classes will suffer the consequences and they will turn on the society that has failed them. They will be ready for revolution.” With remarkable prescience, Katushev told his Czech colleagues that American technology would contribute significantly to future economic destabilization. He correctly predicted that in the future, due to technological advances, unskilled American workers would find it increasingly difficult to make a decent living. “This phenomenon,” said Katushev, “is one I consider the United States cannot deal with.” There was a danger, he admitted, that the United States could “swing violently to the right.” However, the American governing elite, he said, is “fundamentally liberal in their outlook,” so the revolution should be won by the left.
Time will tell.
