Counter-Currents
Nobody’s Minding the Shop: The Failure of 21st-Century American Domestic & Foreign Policy
Morris van de Camp
1,257 words
Andrei Martyanov
Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse
Atlanta: Clarity Press, Inc., 2021
Recently, I had to drive through my Rust Belt homeland to pick up some antique oak furniture that was part of an inheritance. My relatives who still lived in the area had spent the last COVID-19 infected year volunteering at a drive-in food pantry. Desperate people with rotten teeth would wait in line for a considerable amount of time to get free food.
Food insecurity is now part of the American norm, but instead of a thin population, people are both obese and malnourished. Healthy food is expensive while fattening food — mostly based around some form of sugar — is cheap.
Part of the reason for this unusual circumstance is an underemployed population. On my way home to my McMansion in the Anywhere part of the country from my Somewhere homeland, I drove through many small towns with abandoned factories and rusting machines. Not too long ago, this land was flowing with milk and honey. Today, it has the marks of wanton poverty.
The problems seen by me on a routine cross-country drive highlight some troubling indicators in American society pointed out by Andrei Martyanov, a blogger and scholar of Russian and American affairs. Martyanov has his own blog and has written for the Unz Review.
Martyanov argues that the United States is headed for collapse. He starts his book off by pointing out a major problem: the moral and intellectual failures of America’s political elite. A perfect example was when America’s “intelligence community” claimed President Trump was tolerating a Russian policy of paying Taliban fighters to kill Americans deployed to Afghanistan. The story was fake news. It also demonstrated the “intelligence community” and media was partisan, deceptive, and inept. Not only did they fail to understand the Russian desire for Americans to remain bogged down in Afghanistan, but underemployed Americans from the heartland were also able to see through the lies.
Marks of Collapse
In addition to the opioid crisis, Americans now have a drinking problem. Since the COVID-19 plague started, alcohol use has increased 300%. American’s aren’t just consuming too much booze, they are consuming too much in general. Debt is up and savings are down. Americans buy groceries with their credit cards.
According to Martyanov, the problem started when the Clinton administration doubled down on his predecessor’s “free trade” policies. NAFTA and WTO enabled China to destroy American industry. Deindustrialization has negative after-effects. One manufacturing job creates more than three non-manufacturing jobs while the opposite is not the case.
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There is a sense that the wounds are self-inflicted. South Korea has captured the shipbuilding market while American infantrymen defend that nation year after year from what has become a phantom threat.
America’s economy is also overvalued. There is puff and fluff on accountants’ books across the land. Additionally, America’s military edge is fading fast. Russian Bear bombers can launch cruise missiles from over the Caspian Sea that can hit ships in the Gulf of Oman as well as American bases in Qatar.
Russian technological prowess is considerable outside of military affairs. Russian rockets resupply the International Space Station. Russian aircraft threaten to capture the global market for passenger aircraft. Russian cyberwarfare specialists are at the top of their game.
Russia has also cleverly outmaneuvered the United States in the oil-selling game. To make a long story short, they’ve undercut prices enough that American oil companies can’t compete. The oil boom is over.
Regarding oil and pipelines, events have moved quickly beyond what Martyanov describes in his book. German environmentalist laws have made energy prices there so high that the nation is at risk of deindustrializing. The Russians have constructed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will help German industry stay competitive and allow Russia to gain petro-revenues.
This pipeline alters the geostrategic balance of power in Europe. Eastern European nations are more vulnerable to Russia while Germany is dependent upon Russia for its energy. Several American administrations have used sanctions to keep the pipeline from finalization, but after the 2021 Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, the Biden administration yielded and Nord Stream 2 is set to become operational.
It is impossible to predict how this will impact American, Russian, and European relationships, but the situation in Europe has changed and American reindustrialization is made more difficult by competitive German industry.
American Pseudo-Intellectualism
The most serious problem within America’s political elite is a pseudo-intellectualism in the highest reaches of academia and government. This pseudo-intellectualism puts forward the concepts that created the Iraq War, BLM terrorism, and involvement in Syria. It is also infantile. Political debate in America is childlike. American elites also cannot envision the likely results of their ideas. For example, liberal politicians who recently defunded their police departments have become victims of crime.
Martyanov argues that part of the reason for this infantilism is deindustrialization. If the factories are closed and there is no point to using one’s intellect for production, then intellect will be turned into unproductive things like Critical Race Theory. There is also a racial angle to it. Many of America’s political elite are Jews who are making decisions based on ethnic animosity.
Martyanov’s most disturbing observations are related to the American Deep State. The Pentagon, FBI, and State Department have become independent actors. Senior Pentagon officials even went so far as lie about how many troops were in Syria to President Trump. Since there are no vital American interests in Syria, and the “moderate Syrian” rebels Americans have supported have been cruel and evil, this deception cannot be explained away as for the greater good. It is a mixture of evil and stupidity.
A Call to Action
The book is well written — every phrase is quotable. Ultimately, I felt the book was a call to action rather than a prophecy of doom. This book can help focus the efforts of white advocates moving forward.
Think of it as Trumpism without Trump.
The best way to move forward is for our people to re-capture the critical advisor positions and other billets in the US Government. White advocates need to be in the Department of Justice. White advocates need to be judges. Anglo-Europeans from the Ohio River Valley need to be the next Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Next, Americans must focus economic policy on manufacturing again. We shouldn’t get too wrapped up in brands, either. A Ford made in China isn’t an American car, but a Honda hammered together in Ohio is. Deindustrialization is an enormous crisis. To re-industrialize means that Americans will need to cut through a thorny thicket of environmental regulations, finances, tariffs, and labor and education policies. Americans need to carry out their deep cultural impulse of seeing work as a noble calling unto itself.
There probably will be industries that will be outsourced no matter what. Should that occur, Americans should direct outsourcing to Central America. It will keep down immigrant flows and direct prosperity to the Western Hemisphere.
Ultimately, this book should be widely read and acted upon.
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10 comments
Great article. Morris is one of my consistently favorite cc writers. I don’t know how badly Americans are suffering. All the people I live and work around seem to be doing well, and as for those who aren’t, the situation is of their own choosing, ie overgrown children who refuse to work. No one is in the literally malnourished category. I do agree that something unsustainable is building in the form of national debt and welfare, but what form the apocalypse will take is a mystery to me.
A lot of these Russian writers who predict the collapse of the USA are caught in Cold War ideology. They can’t get over that the Soviet Union fell apart and the US “won” the Cold War, so they console themselves by predicting the collapse of the US, though of course they are correct about many things. Listen to your enemies for honest critique!
But who has won in terms of racial integrity? Slavic nations remain ethnically homogenous while West European states are replacing their people with the third world. I read Sweden now has the second highest crime rate in Europe. Strange, all the Swedes I’ve met have been really nice…
“Russian aircraft threaten to capture the global market for passenger aircraft.”
The Russians don’t have a single competitive design. The Chinese are developing a couple of models that may become competitive particularly given their built-in domestic demand.
All the planes I have flown on here are either Boeing or Airbus models. One Embrauer once because it was a smaller plane. I don’t see why we continue to purchase items made in China. Why do Ford and GM insist on sending jobs to Mexico and Canada? Are American workers that difficult to deal with that they choose to build elsewhere? I am in flyover country and it is far more industrialized than California is at this point. Cali was industrial after the wars, but it has become so hamstrung with regulations and unskilled labor that it can’t produce much anymore. They are fortunate to still have the silicon valley hqs there and food processing. Otherwise they don’t offer much as far as jobs. It is a testament to the Midwest that manufacturers are still here. Of course even our R governor is beginning to go soft and tilt more to the left despite being re-elected last fall. I can feel the disease of blm and antifa starting to spread into our suburbs. Whatever our problems they still don’t make me want to be in Russia.
Since the Oil Age began, and the Information Age followed, there has been a worldwide declining per-capita demand for human labor. Simply put, more people than jobs.
For generations, the Western Left has fed and vaccinated the brown masses, creating this problem.
Also for generations, Western automation, computers, robots, have reduced the global need for labor. A global demographic disaster is now upon us, expressing itself in many ways.
To put their people to work, China and North Korea have built entire cities with no population to fill them. State make-work. How long can that continue?
When there are more people than jobs, unemployment, lowering wages and poverty happen. Supply and demand.
But when there are more jobs than people, full employment and rising wages happen. The only viable economic condition.
How can the world get to “more jobs than people”?
Not make-work. Only economies create real , durable jobs, at living wage.
The solution is global demographic regulation, to bring human density into equilibrium with economic demand.
The solution is globally-applied eugenics, but the world cannot apply it because the Left is in charge.
I call it the Slow Burn Collapse.
The usual scenario for the anticipated Fall of Western Civilization involves some catastrophic event leading to the disintegration of the homefront, with the barbarians de jour then pouring over the frontiers. At this point various survivalists, militia and other cadres rise up to restore the republic. Like in the movie Red Dawn. Well, maybe…
But what we have been seeing for the last several decades in the West is a series of trends, none of which by themselves are decisive but in their totality are a slide to that Fall: the slowly spreading rustbelts, the inability to control the borders, the collapse of law & order, the trashing of cities by gangbangers and “homeless,” the dumbing down of education in the name of equity, the expanding system of anarcho-tyranny…
Might make a comparison with the events of the Western Roman Empire, from Alaric’s AD 410 pillaging of Rome to the deposing of Romulus Augustulus in 476. There was no real decisive turning point in that era, but rather a gradual imperial loss of control of the provinces culminating in the replacement of the government by a hostile elite. Sorta like today.
A major difference is that during the last century of the Empire, there were Roman elites like Stilicho and Majorian who did recognize the threat, and who mobilized to attempt to restore the Empire. Compare that with today’s sorry situation where Western elites are mostly hostile and mostly on board with the Great Replacement.
It just may be that today’s hostile elites believe they can manage the transition from national to globalist rule. Or they may be blinded by their own hubris and are setting themselves up for a disaster, one which is dragging us all down with them. It may just take one crisis, like blundering their way into a war with a foreign power which can actually fight back, or provoking traditional Americans into a for real insurrection…and the system collapses. Regardless, the current regime is based on multiple delusions.
The critical thing is for nationalists to maintain a grip on the reality that we are living in an era of decline. And then act accordingly to pick up the pieces.
Technically there were a couple of major turning points during The Fall of the Roman Empire. One big event was the death of Julian (the restorer/ aka The Apostate) in 363. This was followed by the catastrophic annihilation of the Roman Defensive Legions at the battle of Hadrianopolis in 378 AD. This allowed the barbarian victors to permanently settle in Roman lands: kinda like what is happening in the US today.
There was an abortive attempt to recapture Northern Africa and Egypt from the Hunnic or Gothic invaders around 440 AD. The Roman recapturing fleet was discovered at the embarkation ports and destroyed, I think with further losses of troops. Once that happened Rome no longer had the power to recapture important territories from the invaders.
Also, recent scholarship debates whether the Fall happened during the reign of Romulus Augustus in 476 AD or Julius Nepos: deposed? in 475 but returned to ruling part of the Roman Empire until his assassination in 480 AD. I bring this up primarily as I have a tremissis of Julius Nepos (but no coin of Romulus) which I like to show off.
True.
One feels these decadent days that we are living in an accelerated version of the years AD 378 to 476/480. But as I like to point out, the difference is that the Roman elites understood the Empire was in a crisis and made some military moves to restore the world (which ultimately failed, at least in the West). Today’s elites are helbent for leather working to dismantle the Western world.
Here’s a thought: what if tomorrow, the various oligarchs and IT overlords woke up and said, “Hey, let’s defund all those leftist NGOs and media we are now financing, and instead dump our resources into patriotic and nationalist movements?”
A discussion elsewhere led me to recently re-read HA C’s “The Brigade”. Immediately after finishing that at Barnes & Noble I saw a book: Our War, Craig DiLouie. The is a novel about an upcoming US Civil War, written from a Progressive viewpoint. I have never seen such a thing before so read a bit of it.
While I pride myself on being open to opposing viewpoints, I really could not stomach more than a couple pages of this book. Maybe it’s because I’ve become so polarized that I really can’t relate to another point of view? Maybe that book really is that bad? An excerpt (p.29):
“We beat that man [presumeably a white facist] until he could barely walk and dumped him out on the street,” Abigail said. “You could say the Free Women started that very moment, in a collective act of self-defense.”
“Oh,” … “You couldn’t just talk to him?”
“You ever have an imaginary friend, Hannah?” …
“Well the fascists out there, they grew up having imaginary enemies, boogeymen under the bed they never outgrew. Immigrants, Muslims, gays, you name it, even women. They’re scared of everything and want to control it by hurting us. If they win, we’ll lose everything. No, we couldn’t have just talked to him.”
“We built the Free Women. We fought back. We stopped the fascists at Pleasant Run. We’re holding our ground. And more, we built a community. A community based on equality, empowerment, and protection.”
The main character: Hannah is a young Black female who apparently grows up to become some sort of warrior par excellence. It’s interesting to note that a Progressive is writing about a coming Civil War in the US. Does this mean they no longer believe that “Diversity is Our Greatest Strength”?
Of course, the book is replete with a long list of wonderous acclamations from all the mainline publishers. If anybody here can actually get thru it, please tell me: is it just my inability to read it or is it really that bad? Also coming right after The Brigade, made it especially poignant to me.
‘Diversity Is Our Stength’ just means ‘Kill Whitey’.
I’m not even going to try to read some rando lefty’s racial revenge fantasy.
They want civil war for the same reason we do: They think they can win.
I don’t think becoming judges or State Department apparatchiks is the answer. First of all, these are well-defended domains of our enemies. It is where they are strongest and there’s no chance of them letting their racial enemies have power. This is the same reason why national politics is a waste of White effort. Second of all, what we want is a White ethnostate, not ‘representation’ is a multi-racial Judeocratic hell-hole (which is what the US has become). Having power over an outhouse is not worth the effort to acquire (even if the effort were minimal, which it is not).
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