The US empire is dying, and there is nothing that any of us can do to stop it. Fortunately, empires are created, live and die according to certain historical patterns, and for similar motivations, so we can better prepare ourselves for what comes next by understanding these patterns, generalized here for brevity. The current empire follows the same patterns, accelerated in time somewhat in this case, although generally these phases take hundreds of years to consummate.

Empires are created for one simple reason: to allow a small group of self-declared elites to consolidate power over a variety of peoples, or nations. Generally, a seed nation will arise from the muck of history, perhaps through historical, geological, evolutionary or cultural accidents. Because this emergence is an accident, or perhaps even a combination of accident and intent, the seed nation rarely has the vision to fully exploit its ascendance. This is where the influence of an external minority culture, perhaps which has insinuated itself in an advisory or other supporting role in the host culture, seizes the opportunity to exploit the emerging power. The minority culture, of whatever origin, exists to serve its own interests across a variety of nations. We can call the members of this multi-national minority culture globalists, as their survival depends on forging multi-national interdependencies, and discouraging national or ethnic interests in each of its host nations. As a result of this in-born globalism in-being at the time of ascendancy of any nation, the minority culture is perfectly poised to exploit the ascendance of any of its host nations, no matter the time or cause, and to cooperate with its branches in other soon-to-be victim neighbor nations to render them more helpless against the coming onslaught.

During the short-term growth period, the empire’s power thrives based on a combination of force, marketing and economics. Each leg of this triad is essential.

Force is in terms of what cultural scholars like to call “the credible monopoly of force”, meaning that imperial agents can harm or kill with impunity, in any of its subject nations, while the subjects cannot. Control is often maintained in each subject nation through the use of janissaries, or natives of the subject nations, who are imbued with imperial mythology, and then sent out to enforce the imperial edicts over the subjects of their respective native nations.

Marketing takes the form of mythology, an ethos of collective greatness that appeals to individual interests, often a combination of “rights” and “exceptionalism”, promoted by the minority culture’s agents. An important part of this mythology concerns the benevolent necessity of the minority culture itself. The host nation which is the (short-term) beneficiary of the empire often comes to believe that the minority culture is the cause of the ascendancy, rather than being a parasite which inevitably turns the entire system septic once the ascendancy happens.

These are the salad years. Prosperity, the third leg of the triad, seems to abound, the seed nation’s natives appear to thrive and come to perceive themselves as righteous rulers of the (known) earth, and even the victim nations appear to have their quality of life lifted artificially. Globalism appears to be a wide and easy path, and even essential to greatness, and everyone, regardless of origin, can become part of the success story (civic nationalists call this the “magic dirt theory”). But throughout this period, the conditions which made the seed nation ascend are being eaten away, and their culture destroyed.

Now, cracks begin to emerge in the facade, and things begin to decay. Little things at first, which then begin to snowball, although the process generally takes many generations so that each succeeding generation sees things just a little bit worse than those before (our modern life, however, can assimilate and see these changes far faster, perhaps 10x to 50x faster, than was historically possible). Perhaps the mythology, once exposed, begins to fall apart. “Rights”, when tested in crisis, are revealed en-masse to be an illusion. Imperial agents, particularly the secret police and other internal security services are revealed to be more interested in political leverage and blackmail than justice, so the subjects begin to refuse to cooperate with their investigations and machinations. The local janissaries are revealed to be more self-interested (pensions and ego validation) than servants of the people or peace. Racial and tribal tensions, the most fundamental of all cultural forces, held in check by generations of belief in shared benefit, begin to emerge as the shared mythology crumbles in the face of harsh reality. Infrastructure, long a source of corrupt gains by insiders rather than a public good, begins to collapse through neglect. The economy begins to rattle apart and the most capable victims of the parasites no longer buy-in and begin to coalesce into their own interest groups.

On the international front, military power begins to decay. Systems and processes become less effective per unit cost due to corruption and politically protected incompetence and tribal nepotism. The most capable warfighters (contrasted with career-minded process operators) cease buy-in as the mythology collapses. Cohesion and effectiveness is further eroded as racial and tribal tensions have their effect among imperial units. The myth of invincibility, whether man or materiel, is tested and fails in foreign wars, causing wolves to be emboldened in the hinterlands. Nations outside the empire’s grasp, hardened by long-tolerated threats and incursions, grow stronger through the evolutionary forces at play in such situations.

The globalists, seeing their power threatened, begin to desperately try to maintain control. Some globalists, buying their own spin that they were the root cause of greatness rather than its parasites, even have the hubris to believe that they can exploit the growing crisis for their own means, and push it along faster (plandemics, economic disruptions, wars of tribute, fanning of racial tensions). However, these globalists are not their forefathers; the neo-globalists are hardly more than spoiled brats who grew fat on the malevolence of their ancestors and have forgotten their elders’ patient and measured protocols. The quiet and capable, those who fuel the entire economic engine, become targeted for unemployment as their jobs are outsourced in search of profits to hordes of outlanders deemed (falsely) to be less threatening to the globalist agenda. These displaced capable people do what they always do, quietly turn to means for their own survival and abandon the imperial mythology which once motivated them.

As the domestic condition rots, warfighters begin to desert the imperial forces and start to identify more with their respective tribes and nations, opting to band together as militias to protect their people rather than serve the overflowing coffers of the parasites (who raid the imperial treasuries as the collapse accelerates). Seeing the local militias begin to gain more power and support among the populace, the imperial janissaries also begin to defect. Now untrusted by the populace, the janissaries are increasingly required to perform public oaths and acts of loyalty and solidarity by both the empire and the locals. The globalists now begin to throw off the mask of benevolence and employ violent street gangs, often composed of actual criminals, to terrorize the populace, perhaps under the banner of easing racial tensions or some other thinly veiled social good which no one actually believes but is too frightened to challenge on an individual basis.

However, this sponsored street gang tactic always backfires, as the officially-sanctioned street gang terror tactic undercuts all three legs of the imperial domestic triad at once. First, the credible monopoly of force vanishes as the street gangs appear immune to justice while the janissaries hide for their own survival or are under orders to stand down. Further, the mythology of greatness has been irreversibly destroyed as no sane empire would tolerate such behavior, much less promote it. And finally, economic prosperity becomes impossible in the face of unchecked street violence.

Worse still, emboldened by the officially-sanctioned street gangs, copycat gangs begin to act out, with the official organs not sure which uprisings to crush versus shield from the wrath of the people. In this phase, it becomes clear that only the popular protective militias are singled-out for enforcement, further driving wedges between the subjects and the imperial forces. This abusive tactic of prosecutorial discretion removes forever the myth that justice can be obtained from the empire, and highlighting the duplicity of the remaining janissaries who are unaware that no one believes their “protect and serve” spin anymore.

Once the empire’s decay has reached this point, with more civil unrest cropping up than the globalists’ minions could put down even if they wanted to, there will never be enough glue to put the imperial Humpty Dumpty back together. The slide then begins to accelerate in multiple directions at once as the populace increasingly turns to their own resources for justice, protection and survival.

The former warfighters, far more capable and deadly than the terror gangs, and now already banded together as militias, decide that if the monopoly of force doesn’t exist, they may as well take a piece of it for their own people. The concept of ethnostates, the original source nations of empire, returns to the public consciousness as racial tensions, artificial or not, cause people to begin to value primal tribalism as their refuge against the increasingly chaotic and confusing world in which they find themselves. The prospect of an ethnostate run by the original seed nation’s descendants terrifies the globalists, seeing their own malevolence reflected in a mirror back at them. Fearful of revenge, the globalists promote competing ethnostates in their dying mythology, not understanding the terrible and self-defeating error they have just made. The locals begin to form their own self-sufficient economies out of reach of the imperial agents, and those agents which do venture forth to enforce imperial edicts and prohibitions against such activity meet increasingly lethal resistance. Imperial control has now collapsed at the fringes, and the empire must now negotiate with local leaders, rather than dictate to them. Long memories of resentment against the empire’s agents now find a voice and action.

The surviving loyal janissairies have now become completely ineffective, and the globalists, loyal only to themselves, abandon them to their fate at the hands of the locals. Instead, the globalists commission the most savage of the street gang leaders to command units of outlander mercenaries imported to attempt to maintain or regain imperial order (depending on the proximity to the imperial power center). The militia leaders, previously held in check by the prospect of going to war against “their own” in the janissary days, find themselves now with full public support to wage unlimited war upon outlander units and those now perceived to be tribal traitors, or collaborators, for actions and attitudes expressed during the collapse. The empire, now retreating from the international stage as defeat after defeat begins to mount, both internationally and domestically, has no choice but to abandon its imperial ambitions on every front, and struggles for some sense of survival as a shadow of its former self, consolidating power as best it can around some core imperial stronghold or resources.

Ethnostates emerge in the hinterland, and the empire has now officially died, although remnants of it carry on for a time with a self-delusion, until finally put to rest at last by one or more of its spawned ethnostates, or absorbed into one. The more successful ethnostates will forge alliances with the dying empire’s former enemies, as mutual protection against the death throes of the wounded beast.

I leave as an exercise for the reader to validate this sequence of events against actual past imperial collapses, as well as to determine at what point the US empire is in this pattern. And whether it has reached the Humpty Dumpty point. Lacking a crystal ball, I believe it is possible that the US empire is just short of the Humpty Dumpty point, but retreat from this outcome will require a self-awareness and humility that globalists in this stage have never demonstrated at any point in history. Instead, I believe that they will continue to vigorously sow and nurture the seeds of their own destruction.

In the next article, we will discuss one pattern by which the ethnostates may emerge during the remaining collapse, starting with the globalists’ pet ethnostate Aztlan, and how their backing of this ethnostate is creating the conditions for the emergence of all the rest.

Until then, my friends and brothers, stay safe in the chaos.