Thursday
By the turn of the century it had become obvious that the outcome of the bizarre experiment in multiculturalism was going to be a world where civilized cultures were, once again, forced into civil wars. Ethnic-cleansing has a bad name, and rightfully so, but what alternative remains when incompatible cultures are forced together?
Hopefully, the collapsing economies of the West will encourage many immigrants to return to their homelands before it gets to that point.
The Europeans are slow to anger but, once so roused, are unsurpassed in battlefield slaughter. The Muslim and black African migrants in Europe and the Anglo countries are about to find that out – again. The truly sad part is that not all of them are enemies, but a lack of appropriate vetting means that all will be tarred with the same brush.
It was predictable to anyone with even a modest knowledge of history, but that does not make the proximity of such a denouement any the less horrible.
The precipitating factor was always going to be the decline of the economies of the West leading to 1/ no money for welfare, and 2/ resentment at ‘foreigners taking our jobs’. That the antagonism between incompatible cultures has not previously boiled over is because debt-based prosperity bred a smug complacency. In the end, and unexpectedly (to me), the point that sent the situation over the edge was the political hysteria brought on by Covid with the forced closure of businesses and the consequent destruction of supply lines. Businesses failed; many shops, cafes and factories remain empty almost five years later. Government revenue collapsed, to be replaced by even more borrowings. Now banks will collapse – along with the national debts and the currencies which are merely representational tokens of said debt.
No such self-destruction of a mighty civilization has occurred since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476A.D.
That was also because of the reckless expenditure of a political class who believed themselves immune to error. Their solution was and is, always, to degrade the money. The lower the I.Q., the greater the illusion of invincibility.
World debt at US$315T is now more than three times world G.D.P. at US$101T.
We face challenging times, even for those who have made some preparations.
I recall a comment from Professor Antal E Fekete over a bottle of red wine in Hungary. It was 2008 and I was edgy – nervous that we might be on the edge of the precipice. The Professor assured me that the Fed had plenty of tricks in its basket still – “It could go on until about 2018”. That seemed implausibly optimistic to me, but here we are six years beyond that. Still the façade hasn’t totally crumbled and still the penny hasn’t dropped for most.
But it sure does feel close now.
People build civilizations; governments destroy them.
That is the simplicity of our history.