Closing Fast

Interesting take by ZMan over at Taki’s Mag:

One of the remarkable things about the collapse of the Soviet Union is that it just melted away without a struggle.  It was as if everyone could not think of a reason to keep it going.  The reason for that is the trust in the key institutions had drained away.  There was no reason to defend them or participate in them.  The people running the institutions had used up all of the social trust to maintain their positions.  When it was gone, the institutions collapsed.
Something similar is happening in America.

Many years ago, a dystopian novel entitled The HAB Theory  was published, whose premise was that as the ice caps grew larger, the added weight would create an imbalance in the Earth’s rotation — and when the “wobble” became too much to support, the Earth would upend itself, the heavy poles would realign along the equator (and eventually melt), whilst new ice caps would naturally form in the northern and southern latitudes, as before.

While that theory is (rightly) regarded as nonsensical now, what was interesting was that when the tipping point arrived, the collapse was very sudden — anyone who’s ever spun an old-fashioned top with string can attest to that.  Everything’s fine when the top is spinning fast, but as it slows it begins to wobble — and in less than a second, it’s flying all over the floor on its side, still spinning uselessly in its death throes.

I just wonder, given ZMan’s hypothesis, how close we are to that point in the U.S.

 

7 comments

  1. As far as I’m concerned, all of my adult life the gov’t has mostly not existed, except for the parts that I am forced to deal with. Drivers license, license plates, etc. An argument can be made that there are “aspects” of the gov’t that are beneficial to me, but I believe there are work arounds to all of it. In other words, the US gov’t, all of it, could disappear and my life wouldn’t change much at all. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say most of us would be better in it’s absence. The gov’t is a very heavy weight that all responsible adults have gotten used to dragging along, like an albatross. Let it die on the vine, sooner is better.

  2. The US may have to go through what the Soviet Union did.

    Have gold, guns and cash handy, and be ready to move if needed. In three days, tops. ( Seriously. If you don’t have precious metal, at least buy fifty ounces of silver ). Either out of the US, or to a deep red state, at least a half tank of gas away from a blue city.

  3. “How did I go bankrupt?
    Slowly, then Suddenly!”
    Those tipping points can be absolute Hell.

  4. And the collapse of the Soviet Union was mostly non-violent, except in the Caucasus which is always violent. May we be so lucky.

  5. In Belgium as some of you may be aware we had 2 périods in the recent past without a ” proper ” gov ( the old dissolved gov could only do ” affaire courante ” routine
    Those were among the best and most free périods lately.

    1. Have to say, Pierre: that was the first time ever that I was envious of Belgium.

  6. This is the point of Critical Theory. Tear down the Gramsican hegemonies in order to usher in the inevitable Marxist revolutions. Every institution in our society that holds up our culture is under attack from Critical Theory and the other garbage under the Social Justice pantheon.

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