The Hollowed Out System

John Batchelor interviewed Michael Vlahos, Naval War College.  The topic was “Imagining the Fall of the American Empire.”  Vlahos doesn’t just imagine it – it is inevitable. 

I offer some paraphrased excerpts from the interview – no transcript, just as fast as I could type.  I will offer these paraphrased excerpts without further comment until the conclusion.

Batchelor asks: Are the American people well informed that we have reached the limits of our strength?

Per Vlahos, the regular people see it and the elites transmit it via empty slogans.  For example, when Trump says Make America Great Again, well, this suggests it currently isn’t; when Hillary says America is still great, the pleading in her voice is obvious.

After WWII, we thought we could do anything and the whole world thought we could do anything.  This was in decline within a couple of decades but turned upward during Reagan. 

Since 911 – and it isn’t the attacks, but instead the manner of the US response – the US has conspired to slowly de-legitimate its own authority.  This is now fully exposed via the divisiveness in the imperial city – we look foolish to Americans and to the rest of the world.

Forces in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan – for decades with no way out.  Fighting against ideas – whatever one thinks of these ideas – that have more vitality than American ideas.  American ideas are empty of vitality, they are hollow.  Washington is seen as corrupt; the American (and European) idea is weak.

The empire will be replaced – in the meantime, there is savagery.

Americans need to embrace their identity and new things.  New things can be remarkable, yet not to be found in the currency of elite conversations of today – not in political correctness, not in the empty ideological coinage and currency of today.

As the elites collapse – it will open up new space in which the people can approach the world differently.

There is no ultimate hope that the current system in the United States can continue.  Things like $500 billion deficits are just metaphors for the impoverishment of the system itself.  It is the spiritual core that will come down.

The system is absolutely hollowed out – incapable of offering anything to the world or to its own American people.  No possibility of revival through the current system exists.  It will eat itself out in the civil war that is coming.  Nothing of it will remain.  Without the elites being sensitive to the needs of the larger society, this has to happen.

I teach those imperial legions: our legions in Iraq, etc. will help propel the coming apart – they are in the service of the emperor, not in the service of the American people.

Conclusion

Vlahos spoke in this topic at a TedX event.  While looking at the audience, his conclusion:

You are the elite.