Item — HN Reader

9/11 eroded American democracy in ways that wouldn’t be considered possible. What we observe now is just one more chapter of a long fall that has started in the mid 1980s. Increasing income inequality, breeding dissatisfaction to the point a former reality show character gets elected president.

This all was done by many hands - Putin being an obvious one also destabilising the European Union and NATO, and China acquiring the manufacturing prowess the US decided wasn’t worth the effort anymore, and so on. Add to that what seems to be the last straw, a unified payment system that doesn’t uses the dollar as its currency, and you have the perfect storm.

Was it Stalin who said the capitalist will gladly sell you the rope you’ll use to hang them?

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"What fool will sell us his secrets?" is what Stalin is said to have replied when Khrunichev (aviation minister) and Yakovlev proposed buying British engines in 1946 for their Mig design, which (with British Nene engines) would become the best-in-theatre Mig-15. As with most Stalin quotes the attribution is pretty weak, but we do have multiple sources.

The rope line is Lenin's, supposedly. The earliest verified appearance is October 31, 1955, in The Commonwealth, journal of the Commonwealth Club of California, where Major George Racey Jordan attributed to Lenin:

    "When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.

Now, Lenin died in 1924. So the closest match near as anyone can tell is a note in Annenkov's memoir, published in Novyi Zhurnal 1961: capitalists would supply credits and technical equipment that would restore Soviet military industry for future attacks on those same suppliers

    "they will work on the preparation of their own suicide."

What is happening with 21st century America is also extension of the larger narrative of the end of the european era, which, if you put that exact phrase in Title Case, was the actual verbatim title of my main intro European history textbook, as a freshman undergrad . . in the 1990s. So that's a thing.

Today we are in the middle of history, no doubt about that: the transition of global hegemon[0] for the first time in the nuclear age. That's a ticklish proposition at the best of times, and it would have been lovely if the leadership class had stepped up. Unfortunately, well . . . where we are now, it's going to often be China's leadership steering humanity around the thermonuclear bonfire[1].

Let's call the whole thing the end of the western era, a phrase which makes me sound like a Nazi, but apparently if there is one thing everything can agree on it's that the age of the west is ending.

Now, the difference between me and a Nazi is that I interpret "Age of the West", as, "humanity has been `the west` and then there are other guys", and that the end means that age is over. If I were a Nazi, I interpret "End of the West" as literally existential, which would make me - surprise! - escalate my actions and rhetoric. A huge part of the art of reactionary and revolutionary movements across history is removing any idea of an alternative, of a compromise benefitting all. And in the current era, it is so dangerously easy to add and remove ideas from the populace.

[0] Which, I want to state openly, was not written in the stars. As late as 9/11, America could have made the 21st century the American century, but, well, we decided to go play in the sandbox instead. Now, why we did that, that will become an area of future study for centuries.

[1] A fact that they are quite aware of, as they watch the American situation. "Why don't they crush Taiwan like a ripe fruit?" - because PRC don't have confidence that American leadership won't jump right to the top of the escalation ladder if a CVBG is mission killed. So they wait.