The end is never nigh. Sure, the rise and fall of civilizations is a function of history. We get that. But we never think it’s going to happen to us. Content to wrap ourselves in blankets woven from self-satisfaction and dinner party spittle we point towards past failings, snicker at the doom-mongers, and deride the invectives of futurists. According to the Mayan calendar, an asteroid called Nibiru should have flattened us in 2012, we snort.
Rasputin claimed a monster storm would engulf the planet in 2013. ‘Spoiler alert,’ we warn with egregious use of air commas. It didn’t.
Hillary of Poitier’s ‘bad feeling’ about 365 AD; Pope Sylvester II first millennial wobble; Martin Luther’s insistence that the world was so fucked up that God was guaranteed to run out of patience with it in 1600. They all came to naught.
Spirits Of The Dead Wrong
Not that we should be surprised. Predictions based on the soothsaying of entrail-readers is a suboptimal system of precognition. It’s akin to expecting a tea leaf to possess a thorough understanding of how the Agricultural Revolution led inexorably to it being rehydrated in boiling water and then consumed with total disregard for its feelings on the matter by someone who is almost certainly ‘probably British.’
In truth, when the world ends it will be something of a shock to most of us. Oh sure, we’ll swap prophesies of doom around on social media like giggling schoolgirls passing notes to one another in class but only those of us who have happily traded subreddits for reality will take them seriously.
Only the swivel-eyed complacency of #pizzagate zealots will start building backyard bunkers.
Rookie mistake really.
The Tell-Tale Fart
We don’t live in an age of miracles and wonder by accident. The scientific method allows us to make some delightfully solid predictions. We know for example, that the sun will explode in around 4 billion years time. We know that Malibu beachfront properties are going to need some serious damp-proofing thanks to climate change.
And yeah, we know to clasp hands in front of our pussies in demure ladylike fashion whenever President-elect Donald Trump comes to town.
So we can be reasonably confident in our ability to make bold predictions about the immediate future as it creeps up on us with all the restrained elegance of a constipated tortoise propelled along by the force of its own jacksie gas. As long as we are paying attention, we should see these things coming.
Nobody can miss a farting turtle cresting a hill.
Yet so many of us do.
The Fall Of The House Of Russia
In 1920, an Austrian economist by the name of Ludwig von Mises argued that economic calculation is only possible by information provided through market prices. This ‘economic calculation problem,’ as it came to be known, was something of a problem for the Soviet Union. Where capitalists were free to allow the laws of supply and demand to dictate the value of goods, the planned economy of the USSR was forced to assign technocrats to crunch the numbers in real time.
They couldn’t do it. The sums were too big.
And yet, when the Soviet Union collapsed some 70 or so years after Mises’ famous observation, it took everyone by surprise.
Almost everyone, that is.
Dissent Into The Maelstrom
Professor Johan Galtung — the Norwegian-born founding father of peace studies — has an annoying habit of being correct about things that have yet to happen. He anticipated the 1978 Iranian revolution, Tiananmen Square, the death spasms of the Soviet empire in 1989, and the economic crises of 1987, 2008, and 2001.
Oh, and 9/11.
So when a man like Galtung predicts the end of the USA, you kind of have to take notice. In 2000, he argued that U.S. global power was in its last quarter century then moved the timetable forward to 2020 shortly after the election of George W Bush.
He now thinks the collapse will come even sooner.
In his 2009 book, The Fall of the US Empire – And Then What?, he set out the 15 synchronizing and mutually reinforcing contradictions that would lead to the end of U.S. global power. As the decline reached its final stages he claimed that fascism would take hold of the political reigns of power.
Sound familiar?
Quoth The Craven “Nevermore”
That he thinks Trump will ‘speed up the decline’ probably comes as a surprise to nobody. In Galtung’s view, the origin point of American fascism stems from a number of clearly identifiable sources. Its capacity for global violence. Its belief that it is the fittest nation. A belief in a coming final war between good and evil; a cult of the strong state leading the fight of good against evil,
And of course, the cult of the strong leader who can do no wrong in his people’s eyes.
All of these aspects surfaced during the Bush era but have found purer expression in Trumpism. Trump is a symptom of the decline— a lashing out in disbelief at the loss of power.
It was all there to see, really. The criteria Galtung uses fits the execrable state of U.S. politics like a glove; all one needs to do is take a look at the list.
Economic contradictions, rising tensions between the U.S. NATO, and its military allies; tensions between US Judeo-Christianity, Islam, and other minorities. It’s almost like Trump is deliberately running things from Galtung’s playbook of how to completely fuck up America.
All that is left, all that stands in the way, is the Electoral College; the founding father’s last line of defense against demagoguery. If they fail to do what’s right, the consequences will be dire.
Because America’s going to end up sounding like something dragged from Edgar Allen Poe’s subconscious. Led by a man more brutish than George III ever was, America will fall. And hit the ground hard.
Watch Galtung making uncanny predictions back in 2010:
Featured Image by Phil Renaud via Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
