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Most people know very little about history, geography, economics, or even what time they've arranged to see their dentist.
For this reason they assume that America is the only Superpower because it's the greatest country in the World, and that it's the greatest country in the World because its people are the greatest people in the World. Hollywood propaganda comes along and does the rest.
The fact is America’s present prominence and power comes from having particularly good feng shu, something it acquired by a sheer accident of fortune.
Feng shui, for those who don't know, is a form of Chinese geomancy, wrapped up in a bit of mumbo-jumbo, which essentially boils down to not building your house in the wrong place—like in front of a river prone to flood or under a mountain liable to landslides or rockfalls. But while it is designed to aid civic and private planning, it can also be applied to the analysis of the siting of nation states and political entities.
The key point about America's geopolitical feng shui is that it shielded the country from the worst excesses of global historical forces, allowing it to pick up the benefits while avoiding most of the costs.
In 1992 Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man, coining the phrase "the end of history." Fukuyama wanted to say that history had ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent triumph of Neo-liberalism at the end of the Cold War. This later proved to be a somewhat premature statement regarding global history. But in the case of America, a very strong case can be put that American history essentially ended in 1865 at the end of the Civil War.
This is because a split into North and South—and possibly other entities—was the only real opportunity that North America had to develop actual history, by which I mean the Hegelian clash of historical forces embodied in potent nation states.
While the continent of Europe had six, seven, or even eight potent political entities, all competing with each other, the vast North American continent had essentially one potent nation state competing with...erm...itself.
By "competing" I mean occasionally tearing huge chunks out of each other, forcing each other to bear the burden of keeping vast numbers of their respective male populations under arms, and crushing each other's economies with competitive taxation designed to ensure enough funds to buy the requisite number of pickelhauben and jackboots for armies numbering into the millions.
There was also a political cost, with European states needing to be less liberal as a matter of national survival.
America meanwhile got the excess population and much of the excess capital of these nations, while presenting itself as a land of freedom and opportunity. This ensured that there was plenty of the two most vital ingredients of economic growth—labour and capital. I could also mention the fact that America was a net importer of innovations, ideas, and technologies until at least the era of Thomas Edison, when things started to even out more.
The fact is that America was the most privileged—in the purely objective sense of that word—of all the great states in world history.
Compare and contrast: A great European state like Germany had to start off initially divided, and then gradually work up to reunification through brutal wars, in which its many powerful neighbours interfered. Then once united or partially united, it had to face fierce neighbours like Napoleonic France, Tsarist Russia, and later Soviet Russia, among others.
America meanwhile had its neighbourhood cleared of enemies by the British Army, was then aided in its quest for independence by the much of the rest of Europe—as a way of getting back at the British—and was then granted effective naval defence against the great states of Europe by the Royal Navy's maritime supremacy.
This left it with only an extremely under-powered British colony (Canada) and the low-functioning mestizo state of Mexico to contend with on its vast continent.
Real history doesn't happen with single states, and, by its position, America was effectively a single state isolated from the harsh winds of world history by benign oceans combined with the fortuitous by-product of Britain's own geopolitical interests. Only a breakaway by the Confederacy could have changed this anti-historical picture, but even that, when it came, was a long shot.
So America always had it easy. While the rest of the world did the hard work off pushing itself down, America was left relatively alone to float to the top, from where its inhabitants came to the understandable but mistaken conclusion they were simply the best or the most blessed, neglecting to consider the dubious logic of both these positions.
But you can only get so far on geopolitical feng shui.
While most great States earn their greatness through severe sacrifice and discipline that then takes years to be worn down by the inevitable decadence that follows, America got its greatness cheaply. This means that its defences against decadence are also so much weaker. Already we see signs of this everywhere. The Hollywood elite are not a patch on the Prussian junker class.
While real great states are capable of fighting real wars, America's military, as correctly surmised by Mao Zedong, is a paper tiger. Everything America does in the wider world screams out this fact. Every time a drone or proxy army is used, America is simply admitting it is terrified of another Black Hawk Down situation or another Beirut Barracks bombing. Its army in Afghanistan bears a remarkable similarity to its prison population back home—locked up in secure installations, except its prison population probably has better control of the respective hinterland.
None of this has been lost on America's more perceptive rivals.
The best way to read Trump's exaggerated political machismo is as a late stage of the manifestation of American military weakness.
But it's not just the defanging of America abroad that is on the cards. The rot goes much deeper than that. Americans, in general, are soft, flabby, selfish, overweight, and unable to endure much suffering, discipline or pain. Where they rise above the atomised, bug man level, they form identities that despise and hate each other with unbelievable loathing. The country is deeply split. People either flinch from its supposed identity, or else embrace it in an exaggerated, tryhard way that fails to convince—"Murica!"—as they meanwhile look furtively around for something else to pour their identity into.
The only thing that stops the nation splitting right now is the enormous leeway given to localism and nomadism. This is why you have a sanctuary city in one place, and then an hour or two away counties committed to ignoring state or federal gun laws. This is also why you have large segments of the population fleeing from other large segments of the population, creating an increasingly nomadic Suburbia.
Eventually these centripetal forces will find more potent outlets, and we will then see America slip back into the stream of history, from which it has been dry so long.
Back in the century of America's foundation the French naturalist the Comte de Buffon speculated that the new world was inferior to the old because its creatures were smaller, weaker, and less fierce and its people less virile.
He put this down to the marshy odours from the dense virgin forests of the American continent. The reality was that 18th century America's unimpressiveness stemmed from it lack of history.
In the intervening period between then and now, the rest of the world had perhaps too much history, while America's lack of history turned out to be its perverse strength. But in the long run such a lack of history can only ever become a weakness, as the future of America is sure to prove.
Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Affirmative Right and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here. He is also featured in Arktos's A Fair Hearing: The Alt-Right in the Words of Its Members and Leaders and, without his permission, Counter-Currents' The Alternative Right
Become a Patron!
For this reason they assume that America is the only Superpower because it's the greatest country in the World, and that it's the greatest country in the World because its people are the greatest people in the World. Hollywood propaganda comes along and does the rest.
The fact is America’s present prominence and power comes from having particularly good feng shu, something it acquired by a sheer accident of fortune.
Feng shui, for those who don't know, is a form of Chinese geomancy, wrapped up in a bit of mumbo-jumbo, which essentially boils down to not building your house in the wrong place—like in front of a river prone to flood or under a mountain liable to landslides or rockfalls. But while it is designed to aid civic and private planning, it can also be applied to the analysis of the siting of nation states and political entities.
The key point about America's geopolitical feng shui is that it shielded the country from the worst excesses of global historical forces, allowing it to pick up the benefits while avoiding most of the costs.
In 1992 Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man, coining the phrase "the end of history." Fukuyama wanted to say that history had ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the apparent triumph of Neo-liberalism at the end of the Cold War. This later proved to be a somewhat premature statement regarding global history. But in the case of America, a very strong case can be put that American history essentially ended in 1865 at the end of the Civil War.
This is because a split into North and South—and possibly other entities—was the only real opportunity that North America had to develop actual history, by which I mean the Hegelian clash of historical forces embodied in potent nation states.
 |
| History attempting to break out in North America. |
By "competing" I mean occasionally tearing huge chunks out of each other, forcing each other to bear the burden of keeping vast numbers of their respective male populations under arms, and crushing each other's economies with competitive taxation designed to ensure enough funds to buy the requisite number of pickelhauben and jackboots for armies numbering into the millions.
There was also a political cost, with European states needing to be less liberal as a matter of national survival.
America meanwhile got the excess population and much of the excess capital of these nations, while presenting itself as a land of freedom and opportunity. This ensured that there was plenty of the two most vital ingredients of economic growth—labour and capital. I could also mention the fact that America was a net importer of innovations, ideas, and technologies until at least the era of Thomas Edison, when things started to even out more.
The fact is that America was the most privileged—in the purely objective sense of that word—of all the great states in world history.
Compare and contrast: A great European state like Germany had to start off initially divided, and then gradually work up to reunification through brutal wars, in which its many powerful neighbours interfered. Then once united or partially united, it had to face fierce neighbours like Napoleonic France, Tsarist Russia, and later Soviet Russia, among others.
America meanwhile had its neighbourhood cleared of enemies by the British Army, was then aided in its quest for independence by the much of the rest of Europe—as a way of getting back at the British—and was then granted effective naval defence against the great states of Europe by the Royal Navy's maritime supremacy.
This left it with only an extremely under-powered British colony (Canada) and the low-functioning mestizo state of Mexico to contend with on its vast continent.
Real history doesn't happen with single states, and, by its position, America was effectively a single state isolated from the harsh winds of world history by benign oceans combined with the fortuitous by-product of Britain's own geopolitical interests. Only a breakaway by the Confederacy could have changed this anti-historical picture, but even that, when it came, was a long shot.
So America always had it easy. While the rest of the world did the hard work off pushing itself down, America was left relatively alone to float to the top, from where its inhabitants came to the understandable but mistaken conclusion they were simply the best or the most blessed, neglecting to consider the dubious logic of both these positions.
But you can only get so far on geopolitical feng shui.
While most great States earn their greatness through severe sacrifice and discipline that then takes years to be worn down by the inevitable decadence that follows, America got its greatness cheaply. This means that its defences against decadence are also so much weaker. Already we see signs of this everywhere. The Hollywood elite are not a patch on the Prussian junker class.
 |
| Black Hawk Down: The fetishisation of minor casualties. |
None of this has been lost on America's more perceptive rivals.
The best way to read Trump's exaggerated political machismo is as a late stage of the manifestation of American military weakness.
But it's not just the defanging of America abroad that is on the cards. The rot goes much deeper than that. Americans, in general, are soft, flabby, selfish, overweight, and unable to endure much suffering, discipline or pain. Where they rise above the atomised, bug man level, they form identities that despise and hate each other with unbelievable loathing. The country is deeply split. People either flinch from its supposed identity, or else embrace it in an exaggerated, tryhard way that fails to convince—"Murica!"—as they meanwhile look furtively around for something else to pour their identity into.
The only thing that stops the nation splitting right now is the enormous leeway given to localism and nomadism. This is why you have a sanctuary city in one place, and then an hour or two away counties committed to ignoring state or federal gun laws. This is also why you have large segments of the population fleeing from other large segments of the population, creating an increasingly nomadic Suburbia.
Eventually these centripetal forces will find more potent outlets, and we will then see America slip back into the stream of history, from which it has been dry so long.
Back in the century of America's foundation the French naturalist the Comte de Buffon speculated that the new world was inferior to the old because its creatures were smaller, weaker, and less fierce and its people less virile.
He put this down to the marshy odours from the dense virgin forests of the American continent. The reality was that 18th century America's unimpressiveness stemmed from it lack of history.
In the intervening period between then and now, the rest of the world had perhaps too much history, while America's lack of history turned out to be its perverse strength. But in the long run such a lack of history can only ever become a weakness, as the future of America is sure to prove.
______________________________________
Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Affirmative Right and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here. He is also featured in Arktos's A Fair Hearing: The Alt-Right in the Words of Its Members and Leaders and, without his permission, Counter-Currents' The Alternative Right
Become a Patron!
