The incredibly low threshold for a minimum moral-standard of living in the 21st Century: if there’s smoke bellowing out of a building, you are kind of obligated to phone 911 or at least to tell someone. If our neighbor is drawing blood from their kids, we have to say something. The scene of a deadly car accident has us turn back even if we’re late for work. The cult down the road which is amassing an arsenal still becomes our business despite the fact that we believe in separation of church and state. The world spends itself into disastrous insolvency yet we’ve always been frugal. Of course we’re worried. If North Korea sets off an underground nuclear explosion or Iran threatens to nuke one of its ideological enemies, we regard the intervention of the USA as a necessary evil. The new global warriors might be zealous and fearless, but we understand the difference between a terrorist and to bravely serve as a soldier for a just cause like national or international defense.
So much goodness exists in the world and yet the stone age lurches a moment away. Global warming is a threat which seems at our doorstep, or at least the glaciers and icecaps are melting before our very eyes. It’s not alarmist to say that the world has too many people with too many machines; over eight billion souls and billions of motorized vehicles. Science and technology can rescue us from some of our difficulties. Philosophy can sometimes direct us, yet even this is not an overconfident guide. Or we can pray. What is at stake here is our collective way of life throughout the whole world. Primarily our global interconnectedness (seven billion cell users) leaves us dependant on some military entity like X, if X is the USA and is policing the world. However X could be NATO, or some other combination of international forces from Russia, China, India, Japan, the EU to the USA. Wealthy law-abiding countries (?) like Canada, Australia, Chili, Turkey and others would have to be involved in the outcome. The professional soldiers could take a vow to serve humanity as I have (i.e., Universal Nato {US} or another global organization) and leave their national interest to their fellow citizens.
Modern technology shows us that we need a global military power to police the world or we’ll go down in a blaze of inglorious stupidity. Rogue states can now fight international wars and destroy whole nations with a flick-of-the-switch from a handheld suitcase. Irrational impulses binds the herd, and in times of crises, the communal psyche is needed like liquor at a wedding to hold it all together. We are now truly one. The ideological battle to destroy the UN, WTO and other global economic organizations will be a pyrrhic victory for the radical Left. Also, the attempt of the Right at world hegemony can have nothing to do with cultural values. The expectation at the very most can be only a minimum of global law & order and common market rules. Anything else would appear colonial. Jurisprudence and a relatively open market is the extent of what can be expected and even this might prove to be impossible.
The USA cannot liquidate its debt and continue as a world police force in this deepening economic crises, as of 2022, their accumulated debt was over 30 trillion dollars. An army is pricey and if it is spread over the globe like the American one then there will be retraction. The American taxpayer will not tolerate the whole-blown empire in the coming depression. A middle-class tax revolt will put an end to it. This sudden reversal will create a dangerous power vacuum in the world. But it can be prevented.
Why should it be?
The genesis it would evoke following into the next decades would be devastating to the West. Any Bart Simpson or Stewie Griffin out there gloating at the oncoming demise of our culture should wake up and closely examine the possible results, unless they want to live in the hands of a Taliban type fascist state. A revolutionary cycle is at hand, and either the values of the West will triumph, or what we face ahead is dissolution, balkanization and the end of the atomic age. Everlasting debt has a cost. Economic liability is the mismanagement of global affairs. Governments cannot be insolvent and strong at the same time. Any indebted nation transfers its strength to others to the degree of its debt. This is true for individuals as well.
Good fortune could come of The Financial Crisis and covid pandemic, if we discover transparency through all the fog, though, as I will speculate in a minute; but let’s explain why America must cease its sole military domination of the world, and of necessity, (if it has enough wisdom), to withdraw from its empire, and partner up in its obligations with Japan, Russia, China, India, the EU and other.
Two choices exist for USA to liquidate its debt: by watering down its currency or withdrawing swiftly from its global military conglomerate. The latter allows it to pay its debt honestly. If it chooses the former, it will lose its prestigious economic place in the world to the East, especially China and Japan, and to a lesser extent, the EU. Western Civilization will slowly recede. The wars in Aghan and the Ukraine have been a disaster (as all war is).
Why does this matter?
The East will reduce reason to its regular historical standing as was the case with the rise of the platonic religion of Christianity, 300 to 1300 AD before the Age of Enlightenment. Western principles of law and order will take a diminished priority. An unreliable standard of contractual law will develop. Science will devolve into the technology of war. Islam, a religion of resentment like Christianity, but with a standing against democracy, (such as where Christendom was before the Renaissance), will rise in prominence, maybe literally warring with Hinduism and Buddhism (the religions of resignation), for supremacy. These two are the largest religions of resignation and fatalism on the planet. Like Islam and Christianity, they’re also antithetical to the spirit of the West. War and crime will increase. Democracy will pass from the major political philosophy of the world to an irredentist phenomena of insurgency existing only in pockets. The middle-class around the world will shrink. Over time, all major democracies will become liberal fascist regimes. It is already happening. The Age of the Irrational is upon us.
How to prevent this?
It's not easy, and its ultimate solution includes two major undemocratic nations, Russia and China. It has a strong motive to join with the West to fight the upswing of fundamentalist religion and cults throughout the world. These would move in for the kill if the USA and Western Civilization ebbs.
Unless the USA liquidates its entire public and private debt by instigating the hardship of significant savings and cheaper labor, it will be displaced in the world; sorry I'm an optimist, but debt in the global economy is a time bomb. America needs to transform and revolutionize its market so that it leads world commerce to a rigorous and full recovery. This coming global depression in the years ahead will get out of hand. President Obama boosted optimism in the aftermath, but the bounce does not change the fundamental dynamic, and since Trump and Biden, it has snowballed. The West is insolvent. It’s in crisis. Even though there are two choices, there is really only one. America must close its military bases from around the world, see The State of Nature. If done in coordinated action with Japan, Russia, China, India and the EU, the world can remain safe while America rehabilitates itself from a consumer nation into a producing one.
How to make this happen?
The short of it? The solution is to transform NATO from USA and EU’s hands into a broad-based coalition including China, the EU, Russia, India, Japan and the USA to become the worldwide military power to police the world. Remember. The threat of force is often as good as the use of force. America can equalize the share-costs and set the standards. It can’t demand democratic rule for all, but it can negotiate “very basic” universal human rights. It can’t make the organization conform to all free market demands, but it can make its policing function against the rogue nations of the world and keep the allegorical 'roads' safe for trade, as it were. The long-term goal is human rights protection, economic stability and a democratic state of affairs for every person on the planet. Remember defeating Saddam Hussein seemed a good idea at the time, but after all, it really wasn't. It was an illegal and immoral agression by American with manufacture evidence.
Why would these nations join the commonwealth of Universal NATO?
In an expression? To save the West. Or looked at in another light, to save the idea of world cooperation in the global economy. Consider what happened when the Roman Empire declined? All civilized societies eventually fell with it. A thousand years of declension occurred while the West was in the hands of the Catholic Taliban. It’s the exact same situation right now, only with Islam ready to take the spiritual helm with unabashed violence. Both religions reject materialism for the other world, but Islam has not been tamed by democracy and human rights. It’s quite willing to kill ten million infidels in New York City or wherever it suited their purposes.
You could call this regular doom & gloom from a fiscal conservative, but no prediction of the sky falling is actually being forecast. It may not even turn dark in the immediate future. Changes in the evolving events of the world occur in such a way that you might not see what will be obvious in your grandchildren’s lifetime. If you’re in debt, burrowing and spending more money may not ensure your impending insolvency – though it should – but it sure warrants your children more poverty.
Why?
It’s a conundrum. We are blind-sighted by the bright light. When men are young, their pride stands up like a sailor. When the girls smile, it’s like a catalyst for digging deep; four hundred million sperm trying to escape to a land where time forgot. The perpetuation likens itself to colonies of ants – almost eight billion human souls on the planet now. This engenders exceeding shortsightedness. Our machines make us burrowers and furrowers in the dangerous underground labyrinth of tunnels that describe our being.
Don’t be alarmed.
If we can just double-bag our sexual indiscretions, produce a little less of a beautiful thing, and plan well for any child who is brought forth, we can stand tall with wisdom and knowledge. We can do a little management with a neonate amount of reasoning. Hope sings like spring, rain kisses the wet ground and our better natures sprout through. Violent? Absolutely. Separate? Left to our own devices, we are all islands. Hate? You can’t hardly imagine your own hemlock. Yet, there is love, comradeship, and most importantly, a chance we can leave the vast irrational tract of our minds to sleep-time, and awake anew each day, a more reasonable person than the previous dawn. This last four years (2019-2023) we worked globally to sort out what could have been a medical disaster; it wasn't pretty but it was an attempt at working together for our collective survival. The West is the home to reason. We mustn’t let it fail or it will soon be the end of open societies. East might be East, but the West is North and South, and even the East is now West. Only that, or our social devolution.
