I have a theory on the downfall of the West - I think the elites are making a very simple mistake of only looking at mathematical measured outcomes instead of the larger picture

[lurk_moar]

I blame the fall of western civilization on the citizenry.

I mean look at all of the single moms and dysfunctional families.

Look at the way most parents are these days, lazy and unresponsive, not teaching their kids a god damn thing.

We as a society glory instant gratification and the easy way out instead of hard work and perseverance.

We are materialistic and hedonistic.

Look at how bad the education system is. They only teach outdated facts and obedience, not life skills, decision-making skills, or critical thinking skills. Just look at my clinical chemistry class unit on vitamins. Teaching the same old, same old myths about vitamins instead of the true facts.

We should be glorying education, not idiocracy.

If western civilization were to survive, we need a well-educated, questioning, able to think for themselves citizenry.

 

[Syaoran Li]

WW1 was only a little over a hundred years ago, which isn't that long a span of time in the grand scheme of human history.

And to some degree what I'm talking about started with WW1, that was the first technological war, the first war where our destructive ability really started to get out of control.

And it's been a slow downward spiral to some degree ever since, WW1 set the stage for WW2 and WW2, although it's taking a long time, set the stage for WW3.

Maybe I'm being a bit melodramatic (who me?) and it won't lead to either human extinction or never ending utopia, but look at the situation in the west (and beyond it too) and tell me that isn't going to lead to another major war.

We had a golden opportunity after WW2 to get something close to a utopia, but we sure pissed that away.

Really, most of the geopolitical situations of the last 100 years can be traced back to World War I.

World War II, the Cold War, the endemic fuckery in the Middle East, and the Great Depression are all directly tied to World War I and its aftermath. Most of the other major situations like China, the War on Terror, the Antifa and BLM coups, the EU, et cetera, are all tied to the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War.

Really, World War I is to historical events what Kevin Bacon is to Hollywood movie stars.

IMO it's a fool's errand to try and predict the future in any long-term sense. Hell, just look at how off-the-mark most of the predictions of what the world would be like today from ten years ago are. The world moves at such a fast pace these days that you can't really reliably predict any more than a few months into the future, and even that's questionable.

People have been predicting the imminent end of civilisation since it began. Just look at the Millerites who predicted the end of the world in 1844, leading to the "Great Disappointment". The Jehovah's Witnesses have held firm that the end is imminent for over a century now. Even Jesus himself said to his apostles that they would live to see the apocalypse (one of the many things he said that theologians either conveniently ignore or perform Morshu beatboxing-esque mental gymnastics to try and explain away).

The only difference is that we now live in a post-religious society, so instead of using religion as the vehicle of the apocalypse we instead say that we'll wipe ourselves out with nuclear war or climate change. Apocalypticism has a two thousand year plus track record of being wrong, and I think as a concept it keeps appearing throughout history because people find it difficult to accept the fact that the world will continue to exist long after they themselves have gone, and in that sense it's quite a childish worldview.

I mean, even better, just take a look at the 2020's prediction threads from 2019 and how wrong most of these calls were.

From where we were in December 2019 and even as late as early February 2020, it looked like Trump would win against Biden while COVID-19 would probably blow over and the Woke Left would die out since a Trump win would've caused the corporations to drop the Woke Left like they did with the Religious Right in the 2000's.

Then the virus went full pandemic and the neverending lockdowns set in, tanking the economy and sparking the George Floyd riots in the summer and eventually Biden being elected under dubious circumstances and the Woke Left along with their corporate masters stronger than ever.

2020 proved a lot can change in the course of a single year and black swan events are a thing.

 

[Haim Arlosoroff]

Look politicians are doing that to escape blame and deep state is organising it this way so they can more easily control international affairs independant of current government. It's a way that politicians can get re-elected more easily.

Yes the centralizing is eroding all our freedoms and the semblance of democracy.

I guess what I'm surprised by is that you somehow think it is blundering or mistakes

I think our disagreement is that you believe there is just a single malicious layer to this sociopolitical mess.

My interpretation that it is a hierarchy of

1. Malice at the top in very small numbers who all know each other
2. Followed by yes-men who follow the models and counting rather than the human element in abject stupidity
3. Career-men who clock in-and-out not caring if their work is anything other than paid for

I am describing the second layer of sincere idiots, not the first layer which I agree exist. I think they party on Little Saint James Island and believe they are gods among men, not subject to common morality. They also know how to blend into the second layer and so the second layer must be refuted as well. So long as the deep state is fought back, I don't care what attack or weapon is used.

Why the fuck do you think your long list are mistakes?

I think they are a pattern of behavior which is sometimes subject to blowback, I only wish more often.

 

[Lemmingwise]

I think our disagreement is that you believe there is just a single malicious layer to this sociopolitical mess

I just think it's not worth the effort to look at the myrmidons with their varied motivations compared to the puppetmasters and leaders.

A good 85% of people will obey whomever is in charge, so they are shock troops for the sitting power, but if deposed, become shock troops for the next one.

I don't see the value in focusing on those you define as the second layer. There is no way to tell whether they truly are idiots or knowing obedient meatpuppets.

The first layer doesn't need to blend in with the second. The second layer learns to blend in with the first, and the better they do, the better they rise.

I am frustrated and don't see the point of taking them at face value. Yes they must be fought, but developing an understanding of the first layer creates a clear picture of how irrelevant the second layer is.

I think they are a pattern of behavior which is sometimes subject to blowback, I only wish more often

Anything worth doing receives blowback. Going to the moon received blowback too.

Yes there should be more blowback. I just still fail to see how these are mistakes, because they have a goal, then they reach their goal. Mission accomplished. Yes they may be evil goals, but if that is their goal anyways, it is not a failure.

 

[Screamer]

Adam Curtis has a new documentary which came out a few days ago. It is depressing as being held down and having shit smeared on your face. Everything that is happening now, is a cycle repeating, yet the counter to that is now aligned. Instead of stupid woke rebellion vs managing dumb masses. Now they want to manage the stupid woke rebellion in transforming society. While keeping themselves on top as the elite.

 

[Haim Arlosoroff]

Adam Curtis has a new documentary which came out a few days ago. It is depressing as being held down and having shit smeared on your face. Everything that is happening now, is a cycle repeating, yet the counter to that is now aligned. Instead of stupid woke rebellion vs managing dumb masses. Now they want to manage the stupid woke rebellion in transforming society. While keeping themselves on top as the elite.

'HyperNormalisation' or 'Can't Get You Out of My Head'?

The ultimate failure of the west is that the power structures are allowed to take successful tactics against our current problems socially, economically, and geopolitically and shelve them if they hurt current wealthy and powerful people. This means that only certain paths to supposed salvation are allowed, and if you, I, or Grandma die under those conditions then they are prepared to make that sacrifice. The lie of democracy, when you have to search for the counter-argument to the widely promoted official narrative, is apparent. It is mere window dressing, and I wish more people woke up to the fact that the professors, press, and politicians act like democracy is a lie and the people have to be managed. They control the dialogue, they worry about us having the freedom to make up our mind, and they are funded to act like this by the very problems facing us.

Of course they are selling the ropes the communists will hang them with, the commodification of the rebellion makes them money in the short term and they think their system is invincible when they successfully captivate us with product. They may even be right.

 

[Drain Todger]

I know a few people who are deep state, or have law degrees and aspirations of becoming deep state. You know what I think? I think these people are in love with the smell of their own farts. I think, every now and then, they lift their leg and let a wet one rip, and then, they can’t help but bend over a bit and sample their own rich bouquet of odors.

The ivory-tower assholes who sit around talking about Nash Equilibria and game theory are a bunch of brainwashed fart-sniffers. You tell them people live in extreme poverty and debt servitude. They don’t care. You tell them our democracies have morphed into oligarchies where the wealthy set policies according to their own whims. They don’t care. You tell them that war is racketeering writ large and the government and the perpetual Security State engage in acts that anyone would rightly call the work of a criminal cartel, that alphabet agencies torture suspected terrorists, violate our privacy, and smuggle drugs and other contraband. They don’t care.

Bureaucrats are literal non-player characters, OP. They don’t have a grip on the common man’s practical concerns. They all attend the same TED talks. They all watch the same PowerPoints. They are a homogenous pack of dullards. Most of them have never done an honest day’s work in their lives, having been raised from birth to believe in the prosperity gospel and neoliberal dogma, which is why they don’t think blue-collar people are even real or have any actual stake in the way we are ruled. They don’t think you deserve any transparency in the matter. In their own inflated heads, you are too simple, too stupid, to even understand what they do and why they do it.

If people knew how we were actually governed, they would demand that all civil servants be placed in stocks so we could hurl cow pies at their faces.

 

[Haim Arlosoroff]

I know a few people who are deep state, or have law degrees and aspirations of becoming deep state. You know what I think? I think these people are in love with the smell of their own farts. I think, every now and then, they lift their leg and let a wet one rip, and then, they can’t help but bend over a bit and sample their own rich bouquet of odors.

The ivory-tower assholes who sit around talking about Nash Equilibria and game theory are a bunch of brainwashed fart-sniffers. You tell them people live in extreme poverty and debt servitude. They don’t care. You tell them our democracies have morphed into oligarchies where the wealthy set policies according to their own whims. They don’t care. You tell them that war is racketeering writ large and the government and the perpetual Security State engage in acts that anyone would rightly call the work of a criminal cartel, that alphabet agencies torture suspected terrorists, violate our privacy, and smuggle drugs and other contraband. They don’t care.

Bureaucrats are literal non-player characters, OP. They don’t have a grip on the common man’s practical concerns. They all attend the same TED talks. They all watch the same PowerPoints. They are a homogenous pack of dullards. Most of them have never done an honest day’s work in their lives, having been raised from birth to believe in the prosperity gospel and neoliberal dogma, which is why they don’t think blue-collar people are even real or have any actual stake in the way we are ruled. They don’t think you deserve any transparency in the matter. In their own inflated heads, you are too simple, too stupid, to even understand what they do and why they do it.

If people knew how we were actually governed, they would demand that all civil servants be placed in stocks so we could hurl cow pies at their faces.

This is why I really enjoyed the documentary, it just lays that all out. They believe this NAND corp nonsense that people are psychopaths who need incentives and anyone with any morality is just plain lying. Its really eye opening to just see them say it on camera.

Its so obvious that they are the people who think like that, and anyone with a shred of decency should avoid these people entirely. Their ideas by their government-paid theoretician-without-experience Nash spread by memorization without understanding and are regurgitated by their social-climbers. Their plans will not be allowed to be altered by us, for we are thought too small to contribute and not strong enough to matter defying. They have to be removed and, if necessary, democracy must be willingly sacrificed to do it. They begin coups, assassinations, and wars without hesitation. They are bringing their practices home, and normalizing them for domestic use. They will end democracy anyway, by careful management and control, if we do nothing.

In Santa Monica, California, in 1954, while in his twenties, Nash's sexual issues got him arrested for indecent exposure in a sting operation targeting gay men. Although the charges were dropped, he was stripped of his top-secret security clearance and fired from RAND Corporation, where he had worked as a consultant. Nash's psychological issues crossed into his professional life when he gave an American Mathematical Society lecture at Columbia University in early 1959. Originally intended to present proof of the Riemann hypothesis, the lecture was incomprehensible. Colleagues in the audience immediately realized that something was wrong and he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Like with John Money and transgenderism, the inmates run the asylum. We are their captives and anything we do is said to be the aggression and never their mania.

They act like democracy is their permanent hostage, and threaten us with more surveillance and debanking if we don't give them their ease and excess. They who dream themselves our masters cannot be bargained with, we march over them or they over us. They will never understand us, for they believe they know deeper truths and that we are their playthings. No quarter can be given against people like this, they are the definition of sociopaths and they currently have power over us. There will be no society when they are finished playing.

 

[Large]

This is why I really enjoyed the documentary, it just lays that all out. They believe this NAND corp nonsense that people are psychopaths who need incentives and anyone with any morality is just plain lying. Its really eye opening to just see them say it on camera.

Its so obvious that they are the people who think like that, and anyone with a shred of decency should avoid these people entirely. Their ideas by their government-paid theoretician-without-experience Nash spread by memorization without understanding and are regurgitated by their social-climbers. Their plans will not be allowed to be altered by us, for we are thought too small to contribute and not strong enough to matter defying. They have to be removed and, if necessary, democracy must be willingly sacrificed to do it. They begin coups, assassinations, and wars without hesitation. They are bringing their practices home, and normalizing them for domestic use. They will end democracy anyway, by careful management and control, if we do nothing.

In Santa Monica, California, in 1954, while in his twenties, Nash's sexual issues got him arrested for indecent exposure in a sting operation targeting gay men. Although the charges were dropped, he was stripped of his top-secret security clearance and fired from RAND Corporation, where he had worked as a consultant. Nash's psychological issues crossed into his professional life when he gave an American Mathematical Society lecture at Columbia University in early 1959. Originally intended to present proof of the Riemann hypothesis, the lecture was incomprehensible. Colleagues in the audience immediately realized that something was wrong and he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Like with John Money and transgenderism, the inmates run the asylum. We are their captives and anything we do is said to be the aggression and never their mania.

They act like democracy is their permanent hostage, and threaten us with more surveillance and debanking if we don't give them their ease and excess. They who dream themselves our masters cannot be bargained with, we march over them or they over us. They will never understand us, for they believe they know deeper truths and that we are their playthings. No quarter can be given against people like this, they are the definition of sociopaths and they currently have power over us. There will be no society when they are finished playing.

carbon monoxide

 

[dirtydeanna96]

The fall of the west can be traced to copernicus. He took earth (and mankind) out of its rightful place. Everything has been downhill since 1543.

 

[Lurk McDurk]

Americans are not “the west.”

Americans are being forced to accept the fact that their post ww2 boom was a very specific era with very specific circumstances that cannot be repeated, no matter how many war murals you paint or how many football game fighter jet flyovers you watch on tv.

Now what?

 

[Never Scored]

Read 1984. It's explained perfectly. The upper class gets to comfortable and loses its will to lead. The middle class exploits the working class to overtake the upper class, promising the lower class a better life, then once they're in power they do not give the lower class a better life. Then the cycle resets. A university educated middle class, people like AOC, that have sprung up over the last 50 years is pushing to displace the previous upper class by promising the lower class, primarily African Americans and immigrants a better life. The current upper class is either ancient and about to die(Biden, Pelosi, Schumer) or they're the kids of those people who are so pampered they don't know how to wipe their own ass and are not mentally capable of leveraging their position for power. Once AOC & company have power they will forget all about giving the lower class a better life, some other change to the paradigm will lead to the creation of a new middle class, a new technology, a big war, a the economy tanking, whatever, and eventually in 50 years time they will oust AOCs generation.

 

[Shovel Mech Pilot]

The USA is seeing the fate of all democracies. Eventually, politics in a democracy becomes nothing more than voters saying "which party will use their armed thugs to steal more money for me?" The design of the republic was supposed to avoid this but, of course, we threw all that out the window piecemeal until we are at where we are today.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

Really, most of the geopolitical situations of the last 100 years can be traced back to World War I.

So true. WW1 doesn't get talked about enough on Joe Rogan's experience.

Woke Left would die out since a Trump win would've caused the corporations to drop the Woke Left like they did with the Religious Right in the 2000's.

lmao no. Democracy has been going in one direction ever since its foundation. It always move left. You talk about the pendulum when in reality there's a name for it: reaction. A swing in the pendulum doesn't matter (and doesn't exist) unless there's a large change in public opinion leading to politicians with the public's views getting elected. A reaction is when the establishment fights back against public opinion. rn there's no one in the establishment who opposes the radical left agenda and moreover the new generation is even more left wing than before. Well, they're not entirely left wing, there's a large amount of polarization. This was covered by Joe Rogan, but we know that people are becoming more radical

 

[Syaoran Li]

So true. WW1 doesn't get talked about enough on Joe Rogan's experience.

lmao no. Democracy has been going in one direction ever since its foundation. It always move left. You talk about the pendulum when in reality there's a name for it: reaction. A swing in the pendulum doesn't matter (and doesn't exist) unless there's a large change in public opinion leading to politicians with the public's views getting elected. A reaction is when the establishment fights back against public opinion. rn there's no one in the establishment who opposes the radical left agenda and moreover the new generation is even more left wing than before. Well, they're not entirely left wing, there's a large amount of polarization. This was covered by Joe Rogan, but we know that people are becoming more radical

Contrary to what traditionalist neo-reactionary retards think, the pendulum does in fact exist (or at least did) in the United States.

And unlike you, I don't watch Joe Rogan and don't care for him so I don't pay any attention to what his opinions are on WWI or the pendulum effect.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

Contrary to what traditionalist neo-reactionary retards think, the pendulum does in fact exist (or at least did) in the United States.

And unlike you, I don't watch Joe Rogan and don't care for him so I don't pay any attention to what his opinions are on WWI or the pendulum effect.

when's the last time there has been a major shift in public opinion to the right?

 

[Syaoran Li]

when's the last time there has been a major shift in public opinion to the right?

The 1980's and early 1990's with Reagan and the Religious Right, even if that ultimately boomeranged on the right in the long run and led to the neocons.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

The 1980's and early 1990's with Reagan and the Religious Right, even if that ultimately boomeranged on the right in the long run and led to the neocons.

Reagan was libertarian free market bullshit. not true conservative. and neocons are not conservative either, they're libertarian.

And looking at this chart there was no religious resurgence in the 80s and 90s

 

[RussianParasite]

And looking at this chart there was no religious resurgence in the 80s and 90s

Hard to have a “resurgence” when you are 95% of the population or more, lol. For real, were you not around to see the sway the religious right had up through the mid 2000s?

Also, in what world are the hawkish, military -loving, drug-war making neocons libertarians?

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

Hard to have a “resurgence” when you are 95% of the population or more, lol. For real, were you not around to see the sway the religious right had up through the mid 2000s?

and maybe they did have power. that doesn't factor into whether there was a swing in pendulum. If mao zedong had ultimate power over the US that wouldn't mean popular opinion changes

Also, in what world are the hawkish, military -loving

being pro or anti military has nothing to do with being right wing. was Joseph Stalin right wing because he spending lots of money on his military?

drug-war

the drug war was justified on morals but was done for profit. And everyone today knows that it's for profit not for "the good of society." I don't disagree