Amerika

As we enter another election season of doubt and confusion, the desperation ringing out over the land intensifies. No matter which candidate wins, half of the country will be miserable; one candidate promises more of the same, which is miserable, and the second promises conflict against an entrenched bureaucracy.

In the meantime, as everyone can see, the vote now gets determined by a number of ethnic special interests. The candidate who carries the Black, Hispanic, Jewish, female, and working class votes will win, but these groups are partially if not wholly at odds with each other.

Even more, whichever candidate wins inherits a massive bureaucracy, a huge backlog of laws, possibly a hostile Congress, and a country divided by race, ethnicity, religion, culture, and class. Democracy has as usual gone in pursuit of emotional ideals while ignoring structural issues.

Generally, human societies die this way: as soon as people no longer interact directly with nature, they start to blame each other, lose a sense of purpose, and start rationalizing what they want as “good” instead of having an idea of “good,” which is a semi-arbitrary intangible purpose like “excellence” that can never be fully defined or attained.

Where we stand now, democracy is locked into a path of suicide. We cannot afford the entitlements state; however, thanks to the outrage that repealing it would generate, no one is going to say that out loud. We cannot handle diversity since it kills every civilization it touches. We need to remove two centuries of legal and bureaucratic cruft.

Supposing that the Establishment candidate wins, she will have nowhere to maneuver. Everything her ideology calls for short of full Communism has already been established; all she can do is hand out more money that we do not have, accelerating the permanent malaise that is munching up prosperity just like socialism always does.

While the chattering classes who own stocks and have jobs guaranteed by government are doing just fine, especially the Boomers with their retirement funds, the average citizen faces a Soviet economic quagmire:

Houston is quickly becoming the home of rising prices. In a recent study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Houston had the fastest rate of grocery store price inflation in the country. On average, Houstonians are spending $302.65 a week at the grocery store—and prices are likely to increase.

Every time government gives out money, the money gets less valuable and businesses raise prices to fill in the damage done by affirmative action quotas, regulations, and high taxes. Prices keep going up the more free stuff goes out the door, but the voters do not connect the dots.

Your average voter has no idea that three-quarters of the budget goes to entitlements. Nor does he realize that affirmative action quotas are tacking on another third or more to prices. Nor does he recognize that unions drove labor offshore and it is not coming back.

There is nowhere to move. The system has taken over and settled in, and now change is impossible. Despite the boat heading toward the waterfall, no one will steer it because those who mention real issues lose elections and jobs. We are on a path to suicide but talking about that is unpopular and no one will hear it.

Committees and other human groups follow the path of civilization death. Like individuals, they avoid the things they fear, and so they focus on emotional and symbolic acts. This produces massive cruft. The cruft then outlaws any mention of the really important things, and society becomes paralytic.

The theory of Crowdism tells us that the problem is not one party, Satan, foreign powers, or anything but the tendency of groups to avoid what makes them feel bad and pursue instead what makes them feel good. This makes them hellbent on denying reality and making lots of little complicated rules that hinder growth instead.

Democracies only last a couple centuries because it takes that long for them to render themselves impotent and landlocked. With nowhere to maneuver, their activities become entirely symbolic, and nothing that needs to change can be changed. There is nothing left to do but turn up the television and wait for the end.

Tags: collapse, crowdism, decline, democracy