Dissolution and post-democracy

It is always difficult for those who live through transitional periods in history to recognize that they are taking place.

While we distinguish between the Roman Republic and the Roman empire, and mark the birth of the Byzantine empire with the establishment of its capital at Constantinople, it is unlikely that the average person living under Roman rule understood, much less cared, that he was a citizen of the Roman Republic, the Eastern Roman Empire or the Western Roman Empire. Indeed, although we call them Greeks and Byzantines, the men of the Eastern Roman Empire still called themselves Romans and believed they, and not the barbarian-infested ruins of the city on the seven hills, were the true heirs to Romulus and Caesar Augustus, even though they no longer lived in Italy nor spoke Latin.

In like manner, most Americans still think of themselves as a democratic nation, although their government is no longer even remotely democratic, the population ceased to be culturally and ethnically coherent more than 100 years ago, and the patriotic ideology that was supposed to provide a practical substitute for the absence of nationalism has been largely abandoned. Cherished illusions are powerful; thus, it is possible for Americans to believe they are still governed by the free voice of the people, even though that voice is now trumped every single time it conflicts with the will of the ruling elite. No matter what the subject is, be it homogamy in California, the military occupation of Afghanistan, the bailout of the Wall Street banks, illegal immigrants in Arizona or abortion on demand, democracy in the United States is repeatedly proven to be entirely impotent, even when the democratic forms are superficially followed.

As Hieronymus Fabricius taught William Harvey: "Let all reasoning be silent when experience gainsays its conclusion."

Like the decaying remnants of the Western Empire that preceded it, Western civilization has permitted itself to be invaded en masse by tribal barbarians who have little more use for civilization than they possess the ability to maintain it. The progressive, multicultural ideology, which replaced what America's Founding Fathers once described as "the rights of Englishmen," was based on the idea that civilization is the product of individual exposure and physical location; it was assumed that the transformation of a 130 IQ Ashkenazi Jew or an 80 IQ Mgbo tribesman into an 110 IQ American of Anglo-Saxon descent was a simple matter of time and education.

But since the political and intellectual traditions of the Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution and the Revolutionary War of 1776 clearly meant very little to the millions of German, Irish, Scandinavian and Italian immigrants and their descendants, it should have been obvious that America's founding traditions would be similarly ignored by the even larger wave of immigrants who began to arrive in the latter half of the 20th century. The melting pot concept was always nine-tenths myth, and the historical pattern clearly shows that distinct groups of immigrants generally do not assimilate over several generations, but rather form tribal factions that work to further the interests of the group at the expense of other tribal factions in the state. And the unity of these factions readily trumps that of the various alternatives that have been proposed, whether they are based on economic stratification as per Marx, sexual division as per the feminists, or even sexual orientation.

There have been many observations about the Trayvon Martin case, but perhaps the most illuminating is the way in which it demonstrates that even after 150 years, despite the intentional destruction of their languages, religions and tribal identities that they suffered at the hands of those who enslaved them, African-Americans have still not collectively assimilated into the greater American culture. While many blacks and whites alike would prefer to believe this is solely the result of white racism, racism has only been one factor contributing to the development that the historical pattern clearly indicates; over the course of seven or eight generations, African-Americans have managed to create, largely ex nihilo, their own distinct cultural identity in preference to the adoption of the European civilization that forcibly imported their ancestors.

In addition to their misplaced faith in the transformative power of education and geography, another mistaken assumption on the part of the American aristocracy is that people value civilization. They don't. They may value its fruits, but few have any interest in accepting all of the behavioral limitations that building civilization and maintaining it requires, and even fewer have either the perspective or the capacity for understanding the link between the two. Civilization is a fragile construction, and it takes centuries, not years or decades, to transform a barbarian people into a civilized one. Consider that it took 1,270 years for the British people to go from painting their bottoms blue and practicing human sacrifice to Westminster Abbey and the Magna Carta, despite the civilizing influence of Rome. It took even longer for the barbarian tribes of Germany to go from naked savagery to the Christian culture that produced Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.

And so the dramatic transformation of places like Detroit and Los Angeles should not be surprising, but rather, expected to continue and expand as the various tribal identities become more powerful and the natural human instinct to live among one's own kind, according to the way one's culture dictates, becomes more viable. What will mark the end of the American empire is not the withdrawal of U.S. troops from places like Germany, Japan and Afghanistan, but rather, the dissolution of the United States of America along its tribal fault lines, and the attempts of the elite to forestall the fracture by scattering various immigrant groups around the country will only exacerbate matters. The end is unlikely to be imminent, but the long-term instability of the situation is as obvious to the educated observer as the untenability of maintaining his imperial capital on the Italian peninsula was to Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus.