By Peter Pavarini
Every generation asks whether theirs represents the end of the world . For millennia human societies have perpetually changed, so it’s easy to see why people compare their relatively short lifespans with what they know about the past and hope for the future. And yet, certain periods of history stand out – especially those with revolutionary consequences. I believe we are in such a time now.
I’ve frequently heard people say “America is no different than other great societies; someday it will fall and be replaced by another superpower.” Generally, those predictions were made by malcontents and globalists. After all, no nation has ever enjoyed such prosperity, governmental stability and international dominance as the United States. For more than 100 years, our preeminence has been unquestioned.
That’s why the past 18 months have been so difficult to understand.
Cycles of History Revealed
Intellectuals have long argued that cycles of growth and decay apply to every civilization just as they do to every living organism. Lately, the obscure work of Alexander Tytler has become popular due to a link on Wikipedia. The 18th century Scottish historian claimed all democratic societies passed through an evolutionary cycle of eight developmental stages: bondage, spiritual faith, courage, liberty, abundance, selfishness, complacency, apathy, dependence, then a return to bondage.[i]
Tytler believed that democracies were incapable of being a permanent form of government. After 200 years or so, they always collapsed and were followed by a dictatorship. By this measure, the United States is on borrowed time.
In the 20th century, other deep thinkers weighed in on this mystery. In 1918, in the midst of a pandemic and a world war, Oswald Spengler published his book The Decline of the West in which he hypothesized that every culture blossoms from the soil of a definable landscape and dies when it has exhausted all of its possibilities. Then, in the 1934 multi-volume text, A Study of History, British historian Arnold Toynbee identified four specific stages of civilization: genesis, growth, breakdown and disintegration.[ii]
In 1957, Pitirim Sorokin, a cultural anthropologist, came out with Social and Cultural Dynamics which focused on three cultural mentalities: ideational (spiritual needs and goals), sensate (wine, women and song), and idealistic (balancing of needs and ends) which characterize all cultures. He posited that Western Civilization has been stuck in the sensate stage for the past 500 years and was now reaching its limit. It would eventually pass to the next idealistic stage he called a “universal civilization”. Sounds like globalism to me.
The Fourth Turning: Rocket Fuel for the Progressives
Numerous other theorists have tackled this issue as well,[iii] but suffice to say none anticipated an especially rosy future for our nation. The Left’s obsession with Donald Trump propelled one theory, in particular, to the top of the charts. William Strauss and Neil Howe’s The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny[iv] was written during the relative peace and prosperity of Bill Clinton’s second term. The authors predicted that, beginning around 2005, a sudden spark would put the country into “crisis mode”. Remnants of the old social order would disintegrate, political and economic trust would implode, and issues of class, race, and nation would beset the land. Americans would come to regret their past mistakes, but out of that contrition would emerge a new consensus about what to do to fix the country. Then, sometime before 2025, America would pass through a “great gate in history” commensurate with the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II. As I suggested, these predictions were rocket fuel for the Progressive agenda. Remember, Barak Obama was elected president in 2008 with the promise of fundamentally transforming the USA.
Not willing to leave such musings to historians and anthropologists, academics from a wide range of disciplines[v] soon vied to become the Nostradamus of the 21st Century. Peter Turchin, a pine beetle expert on the faculty of the University of Connecticut thought he could apply his mathematical models to the impending collapse of American society. In War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, Plume (2007), Turchin predicted an “age of discord” worse than anything America had ever experienced. In 2010, he said the unrest would become extreme in 2020 and wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends were reversed. He didn’t rule out the possibility of civil war. When asked why he thought we would face such problems, he offered a trio of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around for the oversupply of college graduates; declining living standards for the general, non-college educated population; and a government that could no longer finance its promises to the public. More alarmingly, Professor Turchin said our problems were deep and structural – not the type that could be fixed in time to forestall mayhem.
The Elites, the Counter-Elites and the Deplorables
In Turchin’s opinion, the overproduction of elites in America has given rise to counter-elites like Donald Trump willing to align with commoners. As the living standards of the commoners slip, relative to what they had before (not in comparison to the elites), they would accept the overtures of the counter-elites and start oiling the axles of their tumbrels.[vi] The final straw is governmental insolvency, first the states, then the federal government. Is it any wonder why the Democrats are so intent upon pushing through mammoth “infrastructure” spending when we are already $30 trillion in debt?
In a recent interview with the Atlantic Magazine[vii], Turchin said the elites will try to pacify unhappy citizens with handouts and freebies, but when they run out (which they will), then the government will resort to suppressing dissent and oppressing disfavored groups. Once all short-term solutions fail, civilization disintegrates.
The End of America as We’ve Known It
Which brings me to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban this week. No matter what spin the Biden administration, the corporate media and the DNC give this absolute disaster, the picture painted by our withdrawal from Afghanistan will be forever etched in the historical record as the end of America’s world dominance. That’s precisely what the Left and their globalist allies wanted. In their view, the era of a “universal civilization” controlled by a multi-national elite of tech tycoons, celebrities, and Progressive leaders can begin in earnest. The other 99% of us are expected to suck it up, bury our dead, and wait patiently for our Universal Basic Income payment.
[i] John Eberhard, “The Tytler Cycle Revisited”, www.commonsensegovernment.com (June 16, 2015).
[ii][ii] New edition, Oxford University Press (1987).
[iii] E.g., Carroll Quigley, The Evolution of Civilizations, Liberty Fund (1961); Matthew Melko, The Nature of Civilizations, Extending Horizons Press (1969).
[iv] Crown (1997)
[v] Apparently left out of the climate change boondoggle.
[vi] A tumbrel was an open cart used to convey condemned prisoners to the guillotine during the French Revolution.
[vii] Graeme Wood, “The Next Decade Could Even Be Worse”, Atlantic Magazine, November 12, 2020.
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