Amerika

Incompetent people (and by that I mean people who cannot predict the real-world results of their actions, at all) have one thing in common, whether insane, stupid, criminal, oblivious or intoxicated:

It’s not their fault.

Honest.

If you are incompetent in this world, you either work your way toward some basic competence or you start making excuses. In fact, most people are incompetent because owing to congenital stupidity, they have done nothing but make excuses and now have no skills and a legacy of failure.

As the United States and Europe continue their thousand-year experiment with liberal/individualistic thinking, we’re seeing the bad results creep forth as people realize these are dying empires, devoured by those who want to slurp up the corpse, not revitalize it.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF analysis also looked to the true, real-terms picture of the economies using “purchasing power parities.” That compares what people earn and spend in real terms in their domestic economies.

Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to $19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America’s share of the world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China’s would reach 18%, and rising.

Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China’s. – MarketWatch

This might actually make our drones, plebeians, serfs and peasants wake up: our country is collapsing inward.

First economically, as the foreign investors we’ve courted stop wanting our currency.

Then a host of other failures, as the systems in place fail one by one.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 43% of the nation’s voters believe that most members of Congress are corrupt. Only 27% disagree and doubt that most national legislators are that dishonorable. Thirty percent (30%) are not sure. – Rasmussen

If only our problem were something so simple as lack of faith in government, or a bad round of government. Instead, it’s an underlying knotwork of failures waiting to explode in our faces:

“If something doesn’t happen soon, this country will go the same way as every other empire,” said Mackell. Citing the growing income gap between rich and poor, the deterioration of infrastructure, and, most of all, the problems facing the 77 million aging members of the Baby Boom, the financial funds manager called America’s prospects “abysmal.” – Garden State News

How could all of this happen? We started out so well, with our ideology of freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

Somewhere along the way, that changed into a neurotic pursuit of the crowd-pleasing, mainly because what pleases the crowd keeps them buying.

And if it makes them neurotic, so much the better — then they need to buy more!

Most people assume that liberalism is the antidote to commerce. Instead, liberalism is the lapdog of commerce. It destroys existing standards so the only ones that prevail are those related to commerce, e.g. laws about money and obligations that force each individual to spend more money on others or defending themselves from others.

It distracts us from reality into trying to be morally better people than our peers, so that we get some imagined reward from being socially recognized. This keeps us busy with non-issues, ignoring real issues, and pushing down our fellow citizens by competing with them to be the most “in touch” with the dogma:

Last Friday, undefeated Jasper (Ind.) High School was routing Mount Vernon (Ind.) High, 42-21 in the fourth quarter. The scoreline wasn’t a huge surprise. The game had gone nearly according to plan for Jasper, which had even found a way to work in the team’s most beloved player, senior Zach Beckman. Beckman, a student with Down Syndrome who served as the Jasper team manager for three years, was allowed to be a part of the team during his senior season. His work ethic and Jasper’s dominance helped earn Beckman a spot in a handful of plays as a wide receiver on the end of the field away from where a run was headed.

Then, something magical happened. Mount Vernon coach Paul Maier (whose wife is a special education teacher at Mount Vernon) saw Beckman enter the game on the far sideline for a play. Without thinking twice, Maier called over the referees and said he’d make sure that his players didn’t hit Beckman if he received a handoff. The referees relayed the message to Jasper coach Tony Ahrens, who drew up a play which featured Beckman in the backfield. – AP

What an inspiring story! A distracting story! An uplifting and emotional story… and yet, a meaningless one. In some imaginary game, some coach did something imaginarily nice for a player with a mangled Chromosome 21. While this is a nice symbol, like they use in propaganda, it has no bearing on reality. Except to distract, of course.

The result is a baffling pursuit of political correctness while ignoring all sense:

Nevertheless, the real threat to civility and common decency is this: the substitution of codes and committees for responsible adults exercising humanity and judgment.

For example: How much formal ethics training do you need to know that you don’t secretly film someone in a private moment? Do you need a new committee to determine if women are being denied equal education at a school that has a female-majority student body? Instead of taking direction from lawyers, shouldn’t our college authorities decide the right thing to do—and then instruct the lawyers to make that work? – WSJ

How do empires fall?

Dogma becomes more important than reality.

What has happened to us?

Liberal dogma, a way to make other people think you’re “nice,” has replaced all practical sense. And so we are in decline.

Adam presumed that no one shared his “old-timer” conservative viewpoint that eschewed contemporary mass culture. But is he right? Or is Adam underestimating the number of others like him because of what the mainstream institutions push into the public sphere?

I’d say the latter. In essence, there exists two opposing spheres of discourse, one of which leftism dominates and one of which commonsense/conservatism dominates. The first is composed of the mainstream media, academic, government, and corporate conglomerate. The second is composed of the masses outside these institutions, basically just regular people with minds not sullied by leftist doctrine.

The problem for conservatives is that the former group, an assuredly smaller cohort, dictates the behavior of the latter. PC media, academia, and government define what’s acceptable and what we’re allowed to think or say. These institutions oversee, generally through repetition and peer pressure, the dominant social landscape by championing particular cultural memes. These ideas then become embedded in the social consciousness of the populace. – OneSTDV

The interests of the sane were forgotten in a mad rush to show everyone how cool and freedom-y we were by reaching out to those who really had no hope and were more dysfunctional than we.

That is how empires fall.

No one had their hands on the wheel. No one was looking at the road ahead. No one was paying attention to reality — they were too busy figuring out ways to succeed within our human system, our society and our social structure.

But none of that has any bearing on reality.

Watch as this eventiture winds itself down: people are now just about in shock mode; soon they’ll be in denial; then they’ll kill the messengers; finally, they’ll find someone to blame.

Unrealistic people always do.