"How The West Was Lost"
Tracing the "Faustian Civilization's" long fall from grace...
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "Between today and next week, anything can happen. Stock prices can turn on a dime. But big trends have momentum. …the Primary Trend must run ‘all the way’ to the end. If the Primary Trend is now down – for stocks and bonds – there’s more bad news coming. And what about the bigger picture…the future of America…and of Western Civilization? Is it like a huge ship, headed to the dock and going much too fast?
On our drive down to below the Loire River, we pass a sign: ‘Battle of Poitiers, 732.” It is on a rural road, between Tours and Chauvigny…the middle of nowhere. No one visits. Because there is nothing to visit. It is along the banks of the Vienne River, rolling slowly down….past where David Ogilvy had his famous chateau (now for sale). No one knows for sure if the battle took place there…or elsewhere. It might not have taken place at all, but instead might have been nothing more than skirmish with a scouting party…reaching the limit of its incursion into what is now France.
The native Poitevins were the Palestinians then! The Saracens – mostly Berbers from North Africa – had conquered all of the Iberian Peninsula. By 730, they were seeing how deeply they could go before getting turned back. Poitiers was it. There, a force led by Charles Martel (the Hammer) stopped them. And thus did the tide turn, almost 1,300 years ago…against the Islamic world of Arabs, Turks, Persians, Berbers and dozens of other nationalities that had converted to Islam…in favor of Christian Europe.
False Prophets: The drive to push the Muslims out of Iberia took another 700 years. It was then, when Granada fell to the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella, that the Reconquista was completed. Then, it was the Muslims and Jews who were Palestinians…they had to flee, convert or become slaves. (Later, after they had converted, they were often accused of being ‘false Christians’…and burnt at the stake. In Mexico, even Lutherans were killed, as heretics.)
Even before Muslims were swept out of Spain, Europeans were on the move. Crusaders established their own fiefs on the coast of what is today Israel. They conquered Jerusalem…and took Sicily from the Saracens. Little later, they were sending out explorers…and then colonizers…all over the world. North America, South America, Australia, Asia, Africa – Judeo-Christian European civilization was triumphant…almost everywhere.
“The West” won. Its capitalism…its democracy…its fossil fuels and internal combustion engines…nation states…the rule of law…rational inquiry…bombs…science – those are the things that put western civilization on top of the heap. For more than a millennium, European civilization ruled the world.
But what’s this? Forbes: "The West Has Lost Its Dominant Global Position." Veteran diplomat and philosophical provocateur Kishore Mahbubani in his new book asks a question that has crossed many minds of late: “Has the West lost it?”
If “it” is the dominant position of Europeans and North Americans in the world, then yes. The rest of the world has caught up and are overtaking the West because they received and applied the gift of Western wisdom – i.e., scientific reason and an approach to governance where the rulers are accountable to their people, not the other way around. In this sense, the West is the victim of the success of its own ideas.
A Party of Losers: Talk about a Primary Trend! What Oswald Spengler called the “Faustian Civilization” – now called “the West” – is on the skids. A thousand years of history… always on the up-swing…always up-staging the competition…always with the upper hand against its enemies…and now ‘the West’ is slip-sliding into second-fiddle status.
Just look at the virtuoso of ‘The West’ – the US. Its elections reveal the rot at its core of the whole system. In the Republican candidates’ debate, Vivek Ramaswamy says his own party is a ‘party of losers.’ He accuses the president’s family of taking a bribe from the Ukrainians. He says the media is “corrupt.” And that the firepower industry has “spent trillions, killed millions, and made billions” for themselves. He – an upstart, an outsider with his own money – is the only one who makes any sense at all. Naturally, the commentators named him the ‘biggest loser’ in the debate.
Most likely, the election will be headlined by the same two worn-out husks the nation has suffered for the last 7 years – Biden and Trump. The former should simply retire and save his family further embarrassment. The latter should never have been allowed into public life in the first place.
Meanwhile, Congress – distracted by ‘culture wars’ – shirks its duty to avoid real ones…and can’t even put together a budget, much less balance it. As near as we can tell, the latest flop on the imperial frontier is in the Ukraine. The US promised to stand by Zelensky until he had driven the Russians out of the Eastern (Russian speaking) provinces. Now, after spending more than $100 billion, US policymakers are looking for other alternatives.
Ask No Questions: Another big flop is shaping up in Israel, where the whole world watches as the Israelis, backed by the US, conduct a ferocious killing campaign that won’t soon be forgotten. Whatever else may come of it, the US will never again be able to claim the moral high ground without triggering laughter and derision.
America’s financial situation is in trouble too. It is presided over by a privately-owned bank cartel – the Fed – whose mis-guidance added $27 trillion to the national debt so far this century (with more coming!). And it still pretends to be able to manage the US economy.
And the voters themselves are much too busy trying to make ends meet to look beneath the headlines. They are victims of a self-serving media establishment. The mainstream press no longer speaks ‘truth to power.’ It merely recites the latest propaganda talking points...and asks no questions.
In short, the whole foundation of ‘the West’s’ supremacy is falling apart – democracy, Congress, the dollar, firepower. Our most basic institutions are failing. And where does it lead? Can you still protect your wealth by buying leading US stocks and taking ‘the long view?’ Stay tuned..."
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