Modern World Crisis Unfurls in USA

The Modern World is the epitome of Western Civilization in history and sociology, centered on the idea that modern global standards—technological, political, and economic—originated from Western Europe and its extensions. USA is the "epitome of modern world / civilization". This write up is an opinion based upon an article published on x.com and being shared for wider audience.

أَعُوذُ بِاللّٰهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Modern World Crisis Unfurls in USA

The Modern World is the epitome of Western Civilization; and this assertion is a widely discussed perspective in history and sociology, centered on the idea that modern global standards—technological, political, and economic—originated from Western Europe and its extensions. Many scholars view globalization as the global expansion of institutions and ideas that originated in the West. This includes scientific advancements, capitalistic economies, and technology (e.g., transportation, communication, and digital technology).

Western political, social, and legal systems often set the standard for international norms, including ideas of democracy, individual rights, and the rule of law. Many elements of Western culture—fashion, formal education structures, and urban architectural styles (skyscrapers)—are now adopted worldwide, from Asia to South America. The Industrial Revolution, which created the material foundations of modern life, originated in Western Europe, fundamentally altering global production and daily existence.

USA is the "epitome of modern world / civilization" and this assertion is a perspective with strong arguments regarding its influence, while also facing significant criticism regarding its social and moral standing. Following WWII, the U.S. shaped modern global infrastructure, economic systems, and technology, with platforms like Google and Facebook democratizing information worldwide. The US is a major hub for innovation, with top universities and significant contributions to medicine, vaccines, and technology. The U.S. is built on foundational principles of democracy, freedom of speech, and the rule of law.

Ultimately, the USA is widely considered a leading, if not dominant, force in material and technological modern civilization, but whether it is the pinnacle of moral or social civilization is a subject of intense global debate. The U.S. is often viewed as a dominant empire whose military actions, such as the 2003 Iraq invasion, have rewritten international norms. Critics raise concerns about the long-term sustainability of American society, drawing parallels to the eventual collapse of past great civilizations.

USA, and the rest of the Western modern states, may not always go on developing in the same direction, but may some day reach a point where it will stop, or even be plunged in its entirety into some cataclysm. One may see clearly where the danger lies— the fantastic or puerile fears; sometimes expressed, being proof enough that the mind still harbor many errors. René Guénon (1886-1951) was a French author and intellectual who remains an influential figure in the domain of sacred science, traditional studies, symbolism and initiation. He wrote a book titled "The Crisis of the Modern World" which has clearly warned about a simmering crisis of the western civilization and the modern world.

"The Crisis of the Modern World" By Rene Guenon: First published in 1927, René Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World is a seminal metaphysical critique of Western civilization, arguing that modernity is characterized by a "reign of quantity" and a complete loss of traditional spiritual knowledge. Guénon posits that the West has deviated from universal truths into materialism, individualism, and intellectual confusion, leading to profound systemic crisis.

"The Crisis of the Modern World" By Rene Guenon argues that modern society has severed ties with "Tradition"—the timeless, sacred, and metaphysical truths of humanity. Modernity has replaced quality and spirit with quantity and matter, prioritizing industrial production and material comfort over intellectual and spiritual contemplation. The abandonment of traditional authority has led to rampant individualism, which is inherently dispersive and results in social chaos.

"The Crisis of the Modern World" By Rene Guenon indicates "Dark Age" (Kali Yuga); and identifies the current epoch as a period of profound spiritual darkness that marks the end of a cycle, suggesting the need for a return to traditional wisdom. The book rejects the concept that technological and economic growth constitutes true "progress," viewing it instead as a "Western deviation". Unlike many critiques that focus on political or moral failure, Guénon identifies the core problem as a "degradation of knowledge," or a perversion of the intellect. He argues for the formation of an intellectual elite that can restore traditional metaphysical principles, ideally through a return to the Catholic Church's deepest roots, or by drawing on Eastern traditions to preserve the "seeds" of Truth.

“Trump is not an anomaly, but a grotesque visage of collapsed democracy”.

The above statement argues that Donald Trump's political rise and behavior are not unique aberrations, but rather the logical culmination of long-standing structural, cultural, and political trends in the United States, such as rising inequality, racial resentment, authoritarian tendencies, and a polarized media landscape. One US citizen remarked on X.com "Our suicidal march began long before Donald Trump and his bizarre court of buffoons, sycophants, grifters and Christian fascists took power. It began when the ruling class, especially under the Reagan and Clinton administrations, set out to harvest the country and empire for personal profit."

He continued to say "The march started in Europe with the Renaissance - America just took it across the ocean and walked faster - faster in technological development, faster in secularization. The American Dream, its idea of progress, its focus on material success, and its intersection with your untamed Wild West traditions left the US the least equipped to solve the crisis of modernity. If you think that the rot began under Reagan and Clinton, you are not likely to find a solution any time soon." In the following let's read an opinion expressed on x.com.

America’s Suicide Pact

Civilizations, as the historian Arnold J. Toynbee famously argued, “die from suicide, not by murder.” They collapse from within. They fall prey to moral, social and spiritual decay. They are seized by a parasitic ruling class. Democratic institutions seize up. The citizenry is immiserated, wealth is funneled upwards to the ruling class and coercion is the principle form of control.

Our suicidal march began long before Donald Trump and his bizarre court of buffoons, sycophants, grifters and Christian fascists took power. It began when the ruling class, especially under the Reagan and Clinton administrations, set out to harvest the country and empire for personal profit.

There is a word for these people. Traitors.

These traitors, ensconced in the leadership of the two ruling parties, stripped us of assets and power slowly. They used subterfuge, lies and legalized bribery. They pretended to honor electoral politics, checks and balances, a free press and the rule of law while subverting all of these democratic pillars. That old system, however flawed, was hollowed out. It was turned over to the amoral and the idiotic — look at the Supreme Court or Congress — those willing to do the bidding of the billionaire class.

Armed with billions by the mortal enemy of the demos — the oligarchs and corporations — the political elites, Republicans and Democrats, destroyed the careers of those politicians who resisted. They crushed labor unions. They blacklisted honest journalists and consolidated the press into the hands of a handful of corporations and oligarchs. They slashed regulations that constrained unfettered greed and protected the population from predatory corporations and environmental toxins. They passed legislation that created a de facto tax boycott for the rich — Trump famously paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years prior to his presidency — while stripping the country of its industry and throwing some 30 million people out of work. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public.

These parasites cut or abolished social programs, militarized the police, built the largest prison system in the world and pumped funds into a bloated and out-of-control war industry. German socialist and politician Karl Liebknecht, on the eve of the suicidal folly of World War I, called German imperialists “the enemy at home.” Our rulers, our enemies at home, mounted a series of futile wars that degraded the empire’s global hegemony and poured trillions of dollars of taxpayer money into their bank accounts. Iran is the most recent example.

Trump is not an outlier. He is the naked, stripped-down expression of this suicidal pact. He does not pretend the system he inherited works. He lies with less finesse. He crassly enriches himself and his family. He speaks in crude vulgarities. He dismantles any government agency dedicated to the common good, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service. But he embodies what came before him, albeit without the liberal façade.

“Trump is not an anomaly,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour”

He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels. The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family — which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality — are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism.

The Epstein files, a window into the degeneracy of our ruling class, included not only Trump, but former U.S. president Bill Clinton — who allegedly took a trip to Thailand with Epstein — Prince Andrew, Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, former secretary of the treasury and former president of Harvard University Larry Summers, cognitive psychologist and author Stephen Pinker, Epstein’s lawyer and arch Zionist Alan Dershowitz, billionaire and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, the former Barclays banker Jes Staley, former Israel prime minister Ehud Barak, magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, former CIA director William Burns, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell and disgraced Hollywood producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein. They all orbited Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia.

Anand Giridharadas, who wrote “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” notes that the circle of powerful men, and a handful of women who surrounded Epstein, are emblematic of a privileged caste that lack empathy in the suffering and abuse of others, whether that is sexual abuse, including that of children, financial meltdowns they orchestrate, wars they back, addictions and overdose they enable, the monopolies they defend, the inequality they turbocharge, the housing crisis they milk and the intrusive technologies they refuse to protect people against:

People are right to sense that as the emails lay bare, there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media, that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good. They are right to resent that there are infinite second chances for members of this group even as so many Americans are deprived of first chances. They are right that their pleas often go unheard, whether they are being evicted, gouged, foreclosed on, A.I.-obsolesced — or, yes, raped.

“The Epstein emails, in my view,” Giridharadas writes, “together sketch a devastating epistolary portrait of how our social order functions, and for whom. Saying that isn’t extreme. The way this elite operates is.”

“If this neoliberal-era power elite remains poorly understood,” he continues, “it may be because it is not just a financial elite or an educated elite, a noblesse-oblige elite, a political elite or a narrative-making elite; it straddles all of these, lucratively and persuaded of its own good intentions.”

“These people are,” Giridharadas reminds us, “on the same team. On air, they might clash. They promote opposite policies. Some in the network profess anguish over what others in the network are doing. But the emails depict a group whose highest commitment is to their own permanence in the class that decides things. When principles conflict with staying in the network, the network wins.”

You can see my interview with Giridharadas here.

The entire system is rotten. It will not reform itself.

The Democratic Party has hit on the novel campaign issue of reducing taxes to win this year’s midterm elections. It will, no doubt, anoint another vapid, issue-less and genocide-supporting presidential nominee. Democratic donors pumped a staggering $1.5 billion into Kamala Harris’s abridged 15-week celebrity-fueled presidential campaign. She became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote in two decades and be defeated in every battleground state.

The Democratic Party is not a functioning political party. It is a corporate mirage. Its members can, at best, select preapproved candidates and act as props in choreographed conventions and rallies. Party members have zero influence on party politics.

The more the diminishing power of the empire becomes apparent, evidenced in Trump’s debacle with Iran, the more a confused population retreats into a fantasy world, a world where hard and unpleasant facts do not intrude.

In the final days of a civilization, a population wallows in self-delusional hubris and trumpets false virtues. It looks for scapegoats to explain its failures — Muslims, undocumented workers, Mexicans, African-Americans, feminists, intellectuals, artists and dissidents.

Magical thinking and the myth of American exceptionalism dominate public discourse and are taught in schools. Art and culture are degraded to nationalist kitsch. Science is dismissed, even in the midst of the environmental crisis. Cultural and intellectual disciplines that allow us to see the world from the perspective of the other, that foster empathy, understanding and compassion, are replaced by a grotesque and cruel hypermasculinity and hyper-militarism.

Trump is perfectly tailored for these death throes. He is not a freak or an anomaly. He is the naked visage of our pathological sickness.