The New Dark Age

The beginning of the end of any mafia boss is when his made men start to question his power, and when he starts to distrust and lash out against those made men. He thinks that he is disciplining those made men and keeping them in line, but he has crossed a line into insulting them and making them question his temperament and decision making. That’s when the made men start looking to make alternative arrangements, while they carefully back away from the mafia boss. One day he finds that he has a lot less made men on his side than he thought he had.

The US in its relative decline had a number of paths to take (i) retrenchment and national renewal (ii) retrenchment and controlled decline (iii) extract value from the vassals to try to renew the imperial heartland (iv) attempt to undermine the development of China and defeat Russia (v) some version of WW3.

1. The profiteering, rentier and extractive US oligarchy that is the product of five decades of neoliberalism utterly blocks a national renewal that would require them to give up so much of their power and profit. The same with a general retrenchment.
2. Retrenchment would negatively affect both the security state and the ability of the US oligarchy to profiteer and exploit across the world. It would also directly clash with the US oligarchy+courtier class view of themselves as the elite of a civilizational-supremacist project; as would a consciously controlled decline.
3. This is the path chosen by the Trump administration
4. This was the previous path chosen by the US oligarchy and it has failed spectacularly. Russia is stronger after three years of war, and has already taken over half of the vast resources of Ukraine to add to its own vast resources. It will take much more. China is overtaking the West across the technological board, and is only accelerating away with its vastly superior political-economic development model. The allied combination of Russia and China is greater than the sum of their parts. ASEAN, India etc. refuse to take sides and are happy to enjoy the growth and development that trade with Russia and China brings. Iran and North Korea find themselves more and more aligned with Russia and China.
5. With nuclear weapons wars will only ever be of a limited nature and through the use of third parties, unless an utter mad man inhabits the White House.

It is hard at the best of times to trigger a truly nationalistic response within the Canadian populace, but what I observe as Trump tariffs and insults Canada is a wave of nationalism across this nation. This wave may also very well destroy the political hopes of Canada’s Trump, Pierre Polievre, as the Liberals jettison the past-his-sell-by-date Trudeau and quite possibly select the central banker Carney. The same nationalist wave is certainly also evident within the Mexican leadership. There will be no quick rollover as with Colombia and Panama, and the relationship between the US and its two neighbouring nations is being damaged for good. And Europe stands by knowing that they are next. Trump has even attacked a UK that runs a trade deficit with the US, but facts do not seem to be a major input to Trump’s decision making nor his ridiculous public statements.

To add to the foreign picture of the US as descending into banana-republic levels of oligarchic dominance, corruption and incompetence we have the lunatic Musk and his little band of helpers causing utter chaos within the core of the US state apparatus. We may celebrate the neutering of the regime-change agent USAID, but this is just a drive-by impact of chaos within the US state apparatus. This is utter music to the ears of the Russian and Chinese leadership, as the rest of the world comes to grips with a US that has become an utterly abusive narcissist both through its policies and the actual personage of the US President. To simply appear as sane, reasonable and agreement-capable is to shine like a bright light against the darkness, corruption and sheer unpredictability of US foreign policy. With a US soft power that was already deeply undermined by the unconditional support of the Zionist genocide now being thoroughly torn asunder. Any manager of US brands abroad can only be in anguish as the US President destroys what is left of brand USA. Tesla already had a huge target on its back after the Musk Nazi Brand Suicide, and Musk’s close alignment with the new bully Trump can only further turn the Tesla brand into a negative.

The Imperial Mafia Boss is now displaying its weakness to the made men, and to the members of the other gangs who can see the internal chaos within the Westerns. The other gangs will be watching for those Westerns gang members who are looking to hedge their bets and will be welcoming to their approaches. The Decline of the West has moved into a new stage, where the imperial core starts to trigger the collapse of its empire through its own selfish and short-sighted actions. But that is all it can do when it is now fully dominated by a profiteering, rentier, short-sighted, delusional and ever-greedy oligarchy.

With his delay of the Mexican sanctions for a month in response to a purely public affairs response by Mexico, Trump has shown even greater unpredictability and weakness. His use of the “nuclear-option” of tariffs for such a small gain shows a very bad card player. Now what can he do with a Canada that is in no way a major source of fentanyl or illegal immigrants, and has been a very loyal vassal for years? And what about even his domestic credibility? Flailing around needlessly is not an effective imperial management strategy.