I agree with some of the sources you cite that a "Protestant Franco" or "Baptist Pinochet" are unlikely to arise in America, precisely because Protestantism does not share the Catholic/Orthodox affinity for strict hierarchy and autocratic leadership.
It is far more likely that we will see someone similar to Trump: irrelegious or only superficially religious, but supportive of the stabilizing cultural influence of religion in society.
Naturally such a figure would need to be significantly more knowledgeable *about* Christianity, and more managerially and politically competent than Trump himself.
Joe Biden claims to be Catholic. He's a proto-authoritarian president. So there's something there. LOL
I think "Franco" and "Pinochet" will emerge as stabilizing figures. Eventually, we'll return to elections, and maybe then a real competent populist will win.
Newt Gingrich was a WWII historian before being elected. 15 years ago he said the following at a speech in Georgia: "December 7th 1941 to August 14th, 1945 is less than 4 years. In less than 4 years, we defeated Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. Today it takes 23 years to add a 5th runway to the Atlanta airport. We are simply not prepared, today, to be a serious country." (I can't find the speech on YouTube, but I did actually see and hear him say those words.)
As you say often, our regime's biggest failing is its inability to deliver the goods. The Democratic Party is paralyzed by an bizarre alliance between de-growth-environmentalist wackos and labor unions. Their voters are educated urbanites who honestly believe food comes from a grocery store. The GOP is a mess of policy-inept populists and libertarian holdovers like George Will and remains dominated by wealthy plutocrats like Trump and Romney who are even more immune to the real world as the Dem voters. The supply chain shocks of COVID were a warning of what a major Chinese war would do -- few listened. SHTF, those folks will "elect" anyone who can (literally) "deliver the goods". While he likely won't be Buddhist or Hindu, I'm not sure it will matter whether he's Catholic (Patrick Deneen would be thrilled), Protestant, Baptist, or atheist.
Love the Lee Kuan Yew quote. I just put a couple of his books on hold from my library. He sounds like a fascinating man. Thanks.
Rod Dreher has suggested it before, but if you haven't watched the first episode (at least) of the BBC series on the Spanish Civil War, you really should: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5f9hp0IP4 It was made many years ago, long before our current political paralysis, which makes its mirroring of our own time pretty eerie.
I'd always thought of Cromwell as a failed revolutionary, but your idea is that what came back after the Civil War was "overturned" was so markedly different as to constitute a break in the regime? Interesting idea, but I'd need to review the English Civil War in more detail to be sure. My bias is that King Charles traces his lineage to Duke William of Normandy and thus the regime has been intact for 1000 years, but that might just be royal family marketing doing its work on me.
We tend to think of dictators as Hitler or Stalin or Kim, but these are outliers. Most are more like Putin or Franco, and most people aren't that affected by the plutocratic policies. There were many generations that lived fulfilling, meaningful lives on the Italian peninsula between BC51 and 400AD... most Russians lived and died as landless serfs but their lives were full of joy and sorrow and children and family under 300 years of tsars... most British citizens lived quite happily from 1800-1947... despite their empire's slow-speed collapsing around them. (The last one is especially interesting since its the first imperial collapse to be documented with modern data collection techniques: https://www.coppolacomment.com/2014/02/the-long-decline-of-great-british-pound.html )
I believe the same can take place here, since I believe we're closer to BC51 than we are to 476AD. Will my 3 teen daughters have a life as materially blessed as mine? Unquestionably, no. (That sucks, but I can't control it.) Will they have a life of meaning and joy and spiritual richness despite whatever material deprivation they encounter? I sure hope so. And that's something I can help control.
"We tend to think of dictators as Hitler or Stalin or Kim, but these are outliers. Most are more like Putin or Franco, and most people aren't that affected by the plutocratic policies."
This is very true. Totalitarianism is rare, pretty much a 20th century (and, in the case of China and North Korea, a 21st century) phenomenon. I think Rod Dreher's "Pink Police State" is a real concern, but I also think it's something that'll ultimately be short-lived. Far too many people are alert to the prospect of totalitarianism and there's also the question of how do you actually manage and sustain it at scale. Whether it's left-wing totalitarianism or right-wing authoritarianism, I think it'll be something people only really notice when the pitchforks are pointed at them or during times of crisis, similar to now.
America has built-in advantages that'll allow it to continue being better off relative to the rest of the world. Rod's adoptive home of Hungary languished during the post-communist years and still isn't the best place in the world to live, though it certainly has the basics, like order, down. I think your daughters will live in a much more expensive world, yes, but I think the U.S. will maintain a level of prominence similar to what it possessed during the post-Civil War to pre-World War I era.
If you haven't read Peter Zeihan's The End of the World is Just the Beginning. I don't really like Zeihan that much and the book is essentially a domino theory on steroids, but he does a great job of pointing out the same thing you do: America is geographically well positioned to survive any global economic cataclysm.
I read the audiobook version of it earlier this year. Count me as a Zeihan-ite, though once he started straying out of his lane, he sounds far less credible. When it comes to demography, economics, and finance, however, I think few people do it better.
He's a protege of George Friedman. You should read "The Next 100 Years." Both Friedman and Zeihan see the late '30s as the window for when this current cycle comes to an end and the '40s into the '50s being an American renaissance. This is a big reason why I constantly point to 2040 being the year we make the comeback and why I think the 2030s is actually the decade everyone thinks the '20s are (though I'd say '25 - '35 is going to be when the SHTF really happens).
If your timing is right, Turchin will be very unhappy. :-) Thanks for the reference -- I put Friedman on library hold. I did try him at one point briefly, but I had a lot of other stuff to read and probably didn't give him a fair shot.
I just started a book called The Last Unknowns by John Brockman that's probably going to give me at least 30 new books to read. So perhaps I should make sure to get to Friedman before I start requesting those. Brockman's book is weird (only questions, no answers, but that's part of the point) but the people who submitted the questions are brilliant, so even the questions alone are worth reading.
"Yes, but America is an Anglo-Protestant country and I won’t entertain any arguments to the contrary."
Curtis Yarvin, Paul Gottfried and more recently, anti-woke IDW types have proposed that Americans are at the core PSYCHOLOGICALLY Puritan even if they are not THEOLOGICALLY Christian, complete with sainted martyrs (George Floyd), original sin (white guilt), a path to redemption (open borders), gnostic scripture (Critical Race Theory) and a priesthood (Kendi X, DiAngelo, Crenshaw).
Unfortunately, Wokeism and DEI do have roots in both cultural Marxism and Anglo-Protestantism. I think this is why the Anglosphere has both been a place where Wokeism and DEI not only emerged, but have become so entrenched.
I agree with some of the sources you cite that a "Protestant Franco" or "Baptist Pinochet" are unlikely to arise in America, precisely because Protestantism does not share the Catholic/Orthodox affinity for strict hierarchy and autocratic leadership.
It is far more likely that we will see someone similar to Trump: irrelegious or only superficially religious, but supportive of the stabilizing cultural influence of religion in society.
Naturally such a figure would need to be significantly more knowledgeable *about* Christianity, and more managerially and politically competent than Trump himself.
Joe Biden claims to be Catholic. He's a proto-authoritarian president. So there's something there. LOL
I think "Franco" and "Pinochet" will emerge as stabilizing figures. Eventually, we'll return to elections, and maybe then a real competent populist will win.
Newt Gingrich was a WWII historian before being elected. 15 years ago he said the following at a speech in Georgia: "December 7th 1941 to August 14th, 1945 is less than 4 years. In less than 4 years, we defeated Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. Today it takes 23 years to add a 5th runway to the Atlanta airport. We are simply not prepared, today, to be a serious country." (I can't find the speech on YouTube, but I did actually see and hear him say those words.)
As you say often, our regime's biggest failing is its inability to deliver the goods. The Democratic Party is paralyzed by an bizarre alliance between de-growth-environmentalist wackos and labor unions. Their voters are educated urbanites who honestly believe food comes from a grocery store. The GOP is a mess of policy-inept populists and libertarian holdovers like George Will and remains dominated by wealthy plutocrats like Trump and Romney who are even more immune to the real world as the Dem voters. The supply chain shocks of COVID were a warning of what a major Chinese war would do -- few listened. SHTF, those folks will "elect" anyone who can (literally) "deliver the goods". While he likely won't be Buddhist or Hindu, I'm not sure it will matter whether he's Catholic (Patrick Deneen would be thrilled), Protestant, Baptist, or atheist.
Love the Lee Kuan Yew quote. I just put a couple of his books on hold from my library. He sounds like a fascinating man. Thanks.
Rod Dreher has suggested it before, but if you haven't watched the first episode (at least) of the BBC series on the Spanish Civil War, you really should: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5f9hp0IP4 It was made many years ago, long before our current political paralysis, which makes its mirroring of our own time pretty eerie.
I'd always thought of Cromwell as a failed revolutionary, but your idea is that what came back after the Civil War was "overturned" was so markedly different as to constitute a break in the regime? Interesting idea, but I'd need to review the English Civil War in more detail to be sure. My bias is that King Charles traces his lineage to Duke William of Normandy and thus the regime has been intact for 1000 years, but that might just be royal family marketing doing its work on me.
We tend to think of dictators as Hitler or Stalin or Kim, but these are outliers. Most are more like Putin or Franco, and most people aren't that affected by the plutocratic policies. There were many generations that lived fulfilling, meaningful lives on the Italian peninsula between BC51 and 400AD... most Russians lived and died as landless serfs but their lives were full of joy and sorrow and children and family under 300 years of tsars... most British citizens lived quite happily from 1800-1947... despite their empire's slow-speed collapsing around them. (The last one is especially interesting since its the first imperial collapse to be documented with modern data collection techniques: https://www.coppolacomment.com/2014/02/the-long-decline-of-great-british-pound.html )
I believe the same can take place here, since I believe we're closer to BC51 than we are to 476AD. Will my 3 teen daughters have a life as materially blessed as mine? Unquestionably, no. (That sucks, but I can't control it.) Will they have a life of meaning and joy and spiritual richness despite whatever material deprivation they encounter? I sure hope so. And that's something I can help control.
"We tend to think of dictators as Hitler or Stalin or Kim, but these are outliers. Most are more like Putin or Franco, and most people aren't that affected by the plutocratic policies."
This is very true. Totalitarianism is rare, pretty much a 20th century (and, in the case of China and North Korea, a 21st century) phenomenon. I think Rod Dreher's "Pink Police State" is a real concern, but I also think it's something that'll ultimately be short-lived. Far too many people are alert to the prospect of totalitarianism and there's also the question of how do you actually manage and sustain it at scale. Whether it's left-wing totalitarianism or right-wing authoritarianism, I think it'll be something people only really notice when the pitchforks are pointed at them or during times of crisis, similar to now.
America has built-in advantages that'll allow it to continue being better off relative to the rest of the world. Rod's adoptive home of Hungary languished during the post-communist years and still isn't the best place in the world to live, though it certainly has the basics, like order, down. I think your daughters will live in a much more expensive world, yes, but I think the U.S. will maintain a level of prominence similar to what it possessed during the post-Civil War to pre-World War I era.
If you haven't read Peter Zeihan's The End of the World is Just the Beginning. I don't really like Zeihan that much and the book is essentially a domino theory on steroids, but he does a great job of pointing out the same thing you do: America is geographically well positioned to survive any global economic cataclysm.
I read the audiobook version of it earlier this year. Count me as a Zeihan-ite, though once he started straying out of his lane, he sounds far less credible. When it comes to demography, economics, and finance, however, I think few people do it better.
He's a protege of George Friedman. You should read "The Next 100 Years." Both Friedman and Zeihan see the late '30s as the window for when this current cycle comes to an end and the '40s into the '50s being an American renaissance. This is a big reason why I constantly point to 2040 being the year we make the comeback and why I think the 2030s is actually the decade everyone thinks the '20s are (though I'd say '25 - '35 is going to be when the SHTF really happens).
If your timing is right, Turchin will be very unhappy. :-) Thanks for the reference -- I put Friedman on library hold. I did try him at one point briefly, but I had a lot of other stuff to read and probably didn't give him a fair shot.
I just started a book called The Last Unknowns by John Brockman that's probably going to give me at least 30 new books to read. So perhaps I should make sure to get to Friedman before I start requesting those. Brockman's book is weird (only questions, no answers, but that's part of the point) but the people who submitted the questions are brilliant, so even the questions alone are worth reading.
Sounds like you're predicting the American Sulla
"Yes, but America is an Anglo-Protestant country and I won’t entertain any arguments to the contrary."
Curtis Yarvin, Paul Gottfried and more recently, anti-woke IDW types have proposed that Americans are at the core PSYCHOLOGICALLY Puritan even if they are not THEOLOGICALLY Christian, complete with sainted martyrs (George Floyd), original sin (white guilt), a path to redemption (open borders), gnostic scripture (Critical Race Theory) and a priesthood (Kendi X, DiAngelo, Crenshaw).
Unfortunately, Wokeism and DEI do have roots in both cultural Marxism and Anglo-Protestantism. I think this is why the Anglosphere has both been a place where Wokeism and DEI not only emerged, but have become so entrenched.