30 July 2018

The View From Olympus: Paradigm Shifts


The Establishment’s hysterical reaction to President Trump’s successful summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin is driven not by outrage but by fear. The Establishment knows how to succeed in obtaining what it cares about, power and money, within the current paradigms. Those paradigms include America as the only real world power, before which all other nations must bow; an endless supply of money; Wilsonianism, i.e. forcing “democracy” down all other countries’ throats; and cultural Marxism, which seeks to put women over men, blacks over whites, and gays over straights (where they conflict, cultural Marxism takes precedence over democracy). But those paradigms are all beginning to shift. President Trump represents, at least in part, new paradigms which leave today’s Establishment irrelevant, isolated, and powerless. In response, the Establishment howls in fear and in hatred, especially hatred of a President who represents the heartland instead of the coastal elites.


If we look at each of the above paradigms, we can see the shifts occurring. Not only does America lack the military power, money, and moral credit to dictate to every other country, all countries now face the challenge of Fourth Generation war, war waged by entities other than states. This challenge renders competition between states obsolete, something President Trump seems instinctively to grasp, at least in part. He knows a post-Communism Russian-American rivalry makes no strategic sense; he correctly thinks NATO is obsolete; and he may sense that states everywhere face crises of legitimacy, although of widely varying intensity. The Establishment howls because one of its major components, the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex must have “peer competitors”, other states it can inflate as threats, in order to justify the trillion dollars a year we spend on national security. F-35s, Ford-class aircraft carriers, and opposed amphibious landings have little relevance to 4GW. This paradigm shift promises to reduce the swill in the M-I-C’s trough and the pigs don’t like it.

Meanwhile, the money is running out. The U.S., and most of the rest of the world, is heading for a colossal debt crisis. When it hits, we may not be able to afford $100 billion a year in defense, much less a trillion.

This points to a third paradigm shift: the end of Wilsonianism. Our “defense” budget is really an offense budget. It supports a military that is supposed to force “democratic capitalism”, which is really oligarchic rent-seeking, down the throats of every people on earth — along with cultural Marxism and its definitions of “human rights”. Even if the money were not about to run out, Wilsonianism would be doomed from the start. Russell Kirk wrote, “There is no surer way to make a man your enemy than telling him you are going to remake him in your image for his own good.” Even Robespierre, too late, said that missionaries with bayonets are seldom welcome.

President Trump grasps that attempts to turn places such as Afghanistan into Switzerland are foolish nonsense. Yet at the same time, he chose a neo-con, one of the people who tried to turn Iraq into a peaceful, secular democracy by invading it and destroying the state, as his national security advisor. So he still has a ways to go to ride this paradigm shift.

The last shift he not only grasps but rode into the White House on: the revolt of America’s heartland against political correctness, e.i., cultural Marxism. The Establishment either believes in cultural Marxism (most democrats) or is too cowardly to challenge it (most Republicans). Heartland voters are fed up with it, its advocates, and its sacred “victims” groups, most of whom distinguish themselves by their bad behavior. In a political battle between the coastal elites and their clients on the one hand and the heartland on the other, the heartland will win. Look at the percentage of whites among people who actually vote in all the swing states. The collapse of white acquiescence in cultural Marxism, both here and in Europe, may be the biggest paradigm shift of them all.

And so, faced with irrelevance, the Establishment howls, froths at the mouth and chews the carpet, raging at President Trump. Like a madman whose derangement is killing him, it screams meaningless words, most ending in “ism”, as it dies. I’m sure the President will give it a grand funeral.

Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.

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