Western Civilization Enters The New Year In Crisis

Until there exists a consensus that our very existence is at stake, nothing will happen.

I hope everyone had a great holiday season and enjoyed the New Year. It’s back to business and I’m sorry to say, not one day into the New Year, we’ve already been reminded of how our society is in crisis.

We’ve got lots to cover, so let’s dive right in.

All Is (Not) Quiet On New Year’s Day

Little over three hours into 2025, we have the first terrorist attack of the year, at least on American soil. A 42-year-old man named Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar drove a pick-up truck into crowded Bourbon Street, eventually coming to a halt, and proceeding to exchange gunfire with police before being killed. As of now, the death toll is 15, with over 35 injured, including two of the police officers who exchanged gunfire with Jabbar.

The incident is being investigated as an act of terrorism; the driver had an Islamic State (ISIS) flag in the truck (pictured above), along with live pipe bombs. He was a convert to Islam and was said to have displayed warning signs in the time leading up to the attack.

From The New York Times:

The violence appeared to explode out of nowhere to those who had known Mr. Jabbar as a smart, caring brother and a quiet, helpful neighbor. But there were also signs of growing instability in his life.

Mr. Jabbar divorced his first wife, Nakedra Charrlle Marsh in 2012, then struggled with adjusting to civilian life after leaving active-duty military service about a decade ago. He separated from his second wife.

There’s a lot more to Jabbar’s history, including a minor criminal record. However, there’s nothing that would suggest he was on the verge of carrying out a terrorist attack, and his personal history is likely not all that different from that of millions of other Americans.

Except for the role Islam seems to have played in his life:

Dwayne Marsh, who is married to Mr. Jabbar’s ex-wife, said Mr. Jabbar had been acting erratically in recent months, “being all crazy, cutting his hair” after converting to Islam. Mr. Marsh said he and his wife stopped allowing the two daughters she shared with Mr. Jabbar, ages 15 and 20, to spend time with him.

In retrospect, there were warning signs as far back as almost a decade ago:

Chris Pousson, 42, a retired Air Force veteran who also lives in Beaumont, said he attended middle school and high school with “Sham,” as he was known then, and described him as “quiet, reserved, and really, really smart.”

“He wasn’t a troublemaker at all,” Mr. Pousson said. “He made good grades and was always well-dressed in button-ups and polo shirts.”

They reconnected on Facebook after Mr. Jabbar got out of active-duty military service in 2015, at which point Mr. Pousson noticed that Mr. Jabbar had become deeply involved in his Muslim faith.

“Before, if he was into it, he wasn’t open or verbal about it,” Mr. Pousson said. But at that point, he said, Mr. Jabbar was making lots of posts about religion on Facebook. “It was never Muslim extremist stuff, and he was never threatening any violence, but you could see that he had gotten really passionate.”

Still, the attack came as a shock to him. “This is a complete 180 from the quiet, reserved person I knew,” he said.

Being passionate about one’s faith isn’t a warning sign, not in it of itself. Faith is worth being passionate about. However, this is Islam we’re discussing. As Gad Saad also pointed out recently, people may disdain Seventh-day Adventists, but nobody’s genuinely worried for their safety because of them, either. Still, there was no definitive sign he’d become a terrorist until he posted videos to Facebook just hours before commencing his attack on New Years’ revelers in New Orleans.

Most significantly, Jabbar wasn’t only an American, he was also an Army veteran. On top of that, he was said to have held a six-figure job in the information technology industry and was even once a property manager. He was, by all measure, a middle-to-upper-class American man who nonetheless became radicalized. At the time of the attack, he was apparently living in a trailer park whose residents were almost entirely Muslim immigrants. It was within walking distance of a mosque who released a statement that was tepid regarding the New Orleans attack and urged its congregation to not cooperate with authorities. I’m sure there’s nothing going on there.

There was speculation early on that Jabbar wasn’t acting alone, but those suspicions have long since been ruled out. Jabbar was also seen planting explosive devices; not much else to report on that front. The reality is, we’re still very much in the early days of this story. It’s going to be some time before a clearer picture of the situation emerges. What’s clear at the moment is that this was a terrorist attack and who the perpetrator was, along with the tremendous amount of bloodshed as a result.

As if that wasn’t enough, there was also the explosion at the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, caused by a Tesla Cybertruck, killing one and injuring seven at 7:30 am local time. Though less devastating, there are a number of troubling factors regarding this incident.

First, the lone fatality was the driver of the truck. He was an Army Special Forces soldier - a “Green Beret” - on leave from his post in Germany. According to family, he showed no sign of being troubled or having any animus towards President-elect Donald Trump or Elon Musk, ruling out any political motivation, for now.

From The Independent:

The active-duty Green Beret who was driving a Tesla Cybertruck that blew up outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas on New Year’s Day “was a 100 percent patriot,” his bewildered uncle said Thursday.

Matthew Livelsberger, 37, was “like a Rambo-type, for lack of a better word,” Dean Livelsberger told The Independent.

Dean, whose older brother is Livelsberger’s father, Roger, himself an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam, said his nephew “loved the Army.”

If the explosives in the rear of the Cybertruck were indeed made by Liveslberger, it wasn’t what you’d expect from a professional soldier:

“Matt was a very skilled warrior, and he would be able to make — if it was him, and if he did this — he would’ve been able to make a more sophisticated explosive than using propane tanks and camping fuel. He was what you might call a ‘supersoldier.’ If you ever read about the things he was awarded, and the experience he had, some of it doesn’t make sense, when he had the skills and ability to make something more, let’s say, ‘efficient.’ His skills were enormous from what he had been taught in the military.”

With Livelsberger’s skills, his uncle suggested, his nephew “could have fashioned a bomb that would have obliterated half of that hotel if he seriously wanted to hurt others.”

“Think of Oklahoma City,” he said. “McVeigh was just a normal soldier. Not a Tier 1 operator like Matt.”

Most puzzling is that the now-deceased Green Beret appears to have taken his own life prior to the truck exploding:

At a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the coroner’s office found that Livelsberger “had sustained a gunshot wound to the head prior to the detonation of the vehicle.” And while the investigation is still ongoing, he believed Livelsberger’s actions indicated “a suicide with a bombing that occurred immediately thereafter,” rather than a “suicide mission.”

It’s always worth waiting a few days before commenting on a fast-breaking story, because it now appears we have a motive for the suicide:

From New York Post:

The 37-year-old Army soldier’s wife broke up with him on Dec. 26 after she discovered he was cheating on her, sources told The Post Thursday.

Livelsberger left the couple’s Colorado Springs home following a post-Christmas argument where his wife reportedly told him that she knew he had been cheating, the sources said.

After leaving the home, Livelsberger used the Turo app to rent the Cybertruck before driving to Las Vegas.

He parked the explosives-filled vehicle in the valet area of the Trump Hotel where he fatally shot himself in the head.

Livelsberger was the only person killed in the incident and his body was burned beyond recognition. Authorities identified him from his passport and Army ID found inside the truck.

Occam’s razor says: The simplest explanation is most likely. Max’s Razor says: The most probable explanation is most likely. Certainly, the simplest explanation is that this was indeed a suicide with a bombing, but is it the most probable explanation?

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I prefer not to allow my imagination to fill in the gaps, so I won’t speculate on what’s really happening here. I still can’t help but find this bizarre. If this were merely a suicide, why fly all the way to America, drive to the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, put a bullet in your head, then set your vehicle to explode? In a Tesla Cybertruck, designed by Trump ally Elon Musk, no less? Livelsberger is intelligent enough to know that any bomb going off has the potential to hurt or kill others. Nobody sets off an explosive device without being cognizant of this fact. It doesn’t rule out Livelsberger also being suicidal, but it certainly raises questions concerning his overall motive.

And yes, I’m aware of the “manifesto” Livelsberger apparently send to The Shawn Ryan Show. It’s hard to draw any conclusions from it, not at the moment. If you want to read the message, take a look:

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I don’t know what to make of this, honestly. Those are some serious claims he’s making. Unless we have corroboration, it comes down to a matter of whether you believe it or not. There may be more to come of this, there may be not. We’ve seen many prior instances of the latter. Either way, this doesn’t rule out the possibility of suicide. Livelsberger did suffer from PTSD and was said to have suffered from traumatic brain damage from his combat exposure. These ailments take a number on people.

It could very well be all so simple and I refuse to go down strange rabbit holes just because the simple explanation doesn’t make sense. However, two things are for certain: the Islamist terror threat remains ever-present almost a quarter-century after 9/11 and at a time when the War On Terror has long since faded into the background, and that a disproportionate number of these sorts of incidents involve veterans. I’m not prepared to declare we have a problem on that second point - millions of Americans have served and all types of people have worn the uniform - but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on. Veterans becoming a problematic element in society is something we do see often throughout history.

January 1, 2025 sure felt like an episode of 24, didn’t it?

A Society Demoralized

Americans are still coming to grips with the horrific burning murder of the poor woman on a New York City Subway by an illegal immigrant. I think Merisa Hansen speaks for many of us, myself included:

Cops walked by her on fire. People watched and refused to intervene. Of all the things I have witnessed in my life, this is by far one of the most horrifying things I have seen.

Not because it was graphic, but because it was “no big deal” to everyone watching and filming it.

There’s no doubt that Americans have become disturbingly desensitized to violence. At the same time, Americans are still deeply troubled by the thought of it. They like the idea of hurting people they don’t like, but they don’t like the idea that you need to use violence to deal with bad people. The pathology behind this is worth a discussion all its own; for now, it’s enough to say this is how Americans are. Put another way, we enjoy the fantasy of violence, but are completely paralyzed by real-world violence.

Just days after the burning incident, this happened:

A woman who was stabbed by a maniac at Grand Central Terminal on Christmas Eve said he came up from behind and punched her — and that no one around her came to her aid after he plunged the knife into her throat.

Imani-Ciara Pizarro, 26, had just gotten off the 4 train around 10 p.m. and was heading to her administrative night job at the Roosevelt Hotel, which has been converted into a migrant shelter, when she was attacked.

She was Facetiming with her neighbor when she spotted blood spattered on the floor near the turnstiles. Seconds later, Pizarro “blacked out” when the assailant “sucker punched” her in the back of the head “as hard as he could,” forcing her to the ground.

And:

Witnesses to the stabbing, many of whom appeared to be tourists “just froze.” Police were nowhere in sight, she said.

I can understand the apprehension tourists may have towards intervening in a dangerous situation in a foreign land. But surely not all of them were tourists? It’s one thing to ask someone to take on a knife-man. It’s something else entirely when Americans can’t even be bothered to help someone who’s injured, even when it might involve an act as simple as dialing 911.

Once again, the “Daniel Penny effect” cannot be overstated. No, he’s not the sole reason why New Yorkers are afraid of coming to the aid of others. This was a problem before the Penny case. However, it absolutely sent a message from the very top: don’t intervene, we’ll prosecute you if it goes sideways. Humans are creatures of incentive; how many of you would be willing to risk coming to the aid of others under such conditions? Some would say that we should always be willing to assist a person in distress when it doesn’t involve confronting an attacker, but it’s really not that simple. Asking anyone to put skin in the game is always a tough ask.

In places like Singapore, where the state exercises a total monopoly on violence, they exercise full authority to maintain order, meaning the government fulfills its end of the social contract. In places like New York, the government insists on a total monopoly on violence, but they don’t even try to utilize their full authority to maintain order. Everyone should by now know the name for this: anarcho-tyranny.

The victim in the stabbing said something interesting when interviewed [bold mine]:

“It’s not fair. We’re getting hurt everyday. And there’s nothing I can do. I can’t protect myself. I’ve almost been assaulted two other times in the last two months by mentally ill people. I try to ignore them but they don’t like being ignored either,” Pizarro said.

In the wake of Penny’s exoneration, angry progressives came up with a litany of alternatives to dealing with crazy, violent people in public transit. These ideas ranged from “ignore them” to “buy them food.” These aren’t serious suggestions, not by any stretch. The incidents which have occurred since Penny’s case concluded prove that you can only ignore these people until you can’t. If you don’t take their threats seriously, then burnings, stabbings, and getting shoved in front of a train are what follow. It’s risky to take on a threatening individual, but the trade-off to ignoring them or trying to negotiate with them is that when they do get physical, it might be too late.

New York is just one place in a very large country. But as America’s premier city, it’s a trend-setter, especially at a time when cosmopolitan values still triumph over conventional values. It’s just one person’s opinion, but when New Yorkers begin to openly call for harder-line measures to maintain order, it’s a sign so should the rest of the country:

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Part of the problem is that Civil Rights law makes any kind of crackdown difficult to implement. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the government actually has its hands tied when it comes to being able to take people off the street. To be able to take someone into custody, a significant amount of preparatory work needs to be done ahead of time. If the government wants to take someone out of general population, they’ll put in the work. If they don’t care to, then they won’t.

Even liberals are coming to realize the state doesn’t care enough to crack down on problematic individuals, but they make a critical error in a key assumption:

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The critical error? Thinking that the Constitution is the law of the land. It’s not. Civil Rights law is. The two effectively comprise parallel legal tracks, but when they cross one another, Civil Rights takes precedence. As long as Civil Rights legislation functions as a “Second Constitution,” there can be no order. Criminals must be allowed to continue committing crimes until they commit a capital crime like murder.

I hate to say it, but I did predict that things would get worse in the wake of Daniel Penny’s exoneration. It looks like I was right, unfortunately. Grateful as we ought to be that Penny is a free man, his prosecution was the point, whether he was convicted or not. Not one person is going to step forward to confront the violent, let alone defend themselves, if prosecution is what they can look forward to. In turn, criminals now can expect no opposition aside from being caught by police, which doesn’t happen frequently enough.

Whatever the case may be, there is a serious problem in New York and it’s not getting better. Things are trending in a very bad direction:

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Millions of riders take the subway and make it too and from safely, without any problems. Unfortunately, the risk of running into danger isn’t remote, either. When danger does find them, it’s something really bad:

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There are problems you see in America’s cities you don’t see in a lot of other cities of the developed or even developing world, especially on public transit:

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What actually happened is that a dead body was discovered on the train tracks, but still. One begins to get the sense the New York City Subway isn’t designed for human occupancy.

Things are getting worse and the people have been reminded of their place on the food chain: at the bottom of it. Above them are the criminals, with the government at the top. Currently, disorder is the main problem, but soon, crime rates may become a problem again as well. It’s pretty clear Americans are being conditioned into becoming willing victims in the meantime. I once argued that the purpose of anarcho-tyranny is to demoralize a populace into submission. At least in New York, it seems to have done the job.

We’re Not At The End Of Europe, But You Can See It From Here

10 years ago today, on January 7, 2015, two Algerian Muslims shot up the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in Paris, France, murdering 12. It was a shocking incident, but only the first of what was to be several terrorist attacks that year in France perpetrated by Muslims.

In retrospect, that was the moment France specifically, but perhaps Europe as a whole, crossed the point of no return with respect to demographic change. 2015 was also the year the continent opened its doors to millions of migrants from across the Middle East, in large part due to the Syrian Civil War (which has now reached a conclusion, it seems). The long-anticipated French civil war has yet to materialize, nor any other civil conflict elsewhere in Europe, but the signs of instability are ever-present. The continent is nowhere near as peaceful as it was 20 years ago; that much is fact.

John Michael Greer offered his prognosis on Europe’s future:

As things stand, given demographic, political, and military realities, western Europe will be overrun by immigrants/invaders from the Middle East and Africa within the next century or so, putting a full stop to the history of Europe’s current cultures and nations. (History is full of comparable examples.)

What’s he getting at? Take a look at this map:

Global population growth is driven by a belt going around the world located roughly along the equator. This is the Third World: Sub-Saharan Africa features most prominently, but you also have India, with over 17 percent of the world’s population, still reproducing at above replacement clip. In the Western Hemisphere, population growth is driven by its poorer, less stable countries, most notably Venezuela. Meanwhile, birth rates throughout most of the world are below replacement, including in the U.S.

What does this mean? Well, it means exactly what John Michael Greer said. You have an aging, not to mention feminist, society in Europe, currently receiving and set to receive ever more numbers of Africans and Middle Easterners as living conditions in their native lands continue to be sub-optimal. Unfortunately, Europe is in terminal decline at this point. It cannot defend itself because it’s old, and it won’t because it’s culture has become so feminized.

I think what you’re seeing in Europe currently is the bargaining phase: as a collective, Western Europe, specifically, has accepted the fact that demographic change is irreversible at this point, so it’s now negotiating the terms of its surrender. This is what old people and women have done throughout history in the face of conquerors. Since they lack the capacity to resist, they instead beg for mercy. Europeans would probably resist such a characterization, but in practice, this is what they’re doing. “Since we’re going to lose in the end, let’s at least enjoy our last years in peace” is the thinking.

The problem is, history shows that societies rarely endure a graceful exit. They might, for a while. But once invaders smell blood, they often go for the kill. Why wouldn’t they? Why keep waiting around for the conquered to finally die off, when you can just finish them off and have the land and women all to yourself, enslaving the children in the process? Then there’s the possibility of acceleration: events which occur that speed up demise. We’re talking conflict; anything that produces large numbers of death.

Peter Boghossian seems to share my view:

Given population trends, the explicitly stated objective of the Islamists, illegal human trafficking, and the role of foreign influence, the situation is not merely unsustainable. It is destined to end in blood. I would like to offer an inevitable, pragmatic solution: Surrender.

Western Europe, in its current form, is over. It lacks the political will to even stop the flow of illegal immigrants. Significant immigration reform has not proven to be politically viable (based upon voting decisions). Education, job training, and interfaith dialogue have shown meager returns. The populace and the elites will not tolerate mass deportations. Nor will continental Europeans acquiesce to breaking up the EU and reverting to individual custom zones to make migration more difficult. However, a negotiated early surrender now can limit bloodshed, save Jewish and other lives, and yield more favorable conditions after the surrender.

Boghossian is being satirical in his suggestion that Europe surrender, if you can’t tell. He’s blackpilled, as I am, about Europe’s future. The reality is that the trends are running too hard against Europe that even if it had the will to do anything about it, it wouldn’t matter.

More:

Europe’s problem is that even if demographic trends stall over the next decade, in a very short period (estimates range wildly, from 2030 to 2050), almost all Europe will be dealing with double digit Muslim populations. Once that happens, any of the other alternatives like mass deportations, or exiting TFEU and the New Pact on Migration and Asylum and EU Migration and Asylum Pact, will be off the table. Europe will be facing mass riots, and even if citizens had the political will they would lack the police and military power to handle a widescale, violent uprising. (Think about the recent riots in France. A fraction of France’s ~9% Muslim population rioted, and were joined by many non-Muslims. Now imagine the difficulty of controlling those riots with 5% of young Muslims participating along with a percentage of leftists, the disaffected, and the unemployed.)

He predicts what lies ahead for Europe, given present trends:

If European nations do not surrender, here’s what I predict in the short term: Slowly increasing civil discontent, mass riots, radically increased spending on anti-terrorism measures, the rise of the (actual) far-right and ethnonationalism, increasingly strained safety nets and social services (health care, police, prisons), alienation of large swaths of the host populace, increasing housing shortages which will further alienate young people and the middle and lower classes, more terrorism, further erosion in the trust of public institutions, the murder of Jews, a “hands-off” policy re. Israel, to name a few. In the long term, I predict civil war and bloodshed.

It’s not a long essay; read it all when you can. What makes Boghossian’s “surrender” suggestion satirical is that everything he describes above is already happening. Everything except the civil war, of course. But civil wars are often the result, not the cause, of societal collapse.

In the long term, as Boghossian says, civil war and bloodshed will occur. In our lifetimes? Maybe. In the next five to ten years, where it really counts? It’s much harder to say. What I’m quite certain of is that things won’t get better. It’ll never get so bad in the next five to ten years to the point European minds will shift rightward enough to where people call for drastic action, like mass deportation and remigration, to be taken, either, but this hardly portends a peaceful future. Quite the opposite, really.

French writer Renaud Camus, who coined the term “Great Replacement”, once perfectly described what’s been happening as of late and what will continue to happen for the foreseeable future:

“There have indeed been no rivers of blood but there have been many bloody attacks perpetrated by the occupier, hostages executed, in short, and above all, above all, there have been countless little streams, murders, rapes, forced confinements, kidnappings, and all this nocence, as I like to say, this relentless determination to harm, to trouble, to ruin life.”

Maybe one day, it’ll all come crashing down in heap of anger and ashes, but for now, what Camus describes is what the West’s decline will look like. It’s bad enough as it is. I’m not sure what’s worse: a civilization collapsing in dramatic fashion, with all the fire and fury that comes with it, or a civilization declining, with at least half the population completely oblivious, indifferent, or outright

YouTuber Tyler Oliveira went to Germany late last year to get a sense of what the person on the ground thinks of the country’s issues with immigration. I don’t know to what extent it represents public opinion, but the people Oliveira interviewed generally seem supportive of immigration, even sounding as though they blame themselves for immigrants failing to assimilate.

Watch, listen, and decide for yourself:

In Stockholm, Sweden, bombings have become commonplace thanks to the prevalence of Third World migrants who go on to participate in criminal activity:

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According to one count, Sweden saw 149 bombings last year, up to 351 total if failed attempts are considered. Is this really Sweden? Or is this Syria? American cities may have lots of shootings, but they have no bombings. Stockholm used to be one of the safest cities in the world, especially for women, a fact Swedes took great pride in. No matter what anyone says, bombings weren’t a feature of the landscape until the country greatly increased the proportion of foreigners in their country. The problem has gotten so bad, the Swedish government is attempt remigrate their immigrants in an attempt to make them leave the country.

Tyler Oliveira went to Sweden as well to find out what’s going on:

Apparently, Swedes couldn’t be bothered by any of this. Bombings are a price worth paying for greater diversity and anti-racism, it seems. You can’t help people like this, unfortunately, and it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort to do so.

I don’t want to get too deep into the story I’m about to speak on, because it honestly makes me ill and angry. Seething with anger, in fact. But the Rotherham child rape scandal is a perfect example of how not only has a country, in this case Britain, has been conquered by foreigners, but the state was entirely complicit in the affair.

If you want to know what’s going on, this X thread provides a detailed overview of it. Few cases highlight just how much trouble the West is really in than the Rotherham scandal. You see stories like this in every European country

X account “Dan” lays out the stakes here:

What’s required is everyone involved needs to die, and I mean this seriously. Every politician who signed off on the immigration policy, every lawyer that defended it, every judge who ignored it or let them go. Every cop who (can’t even believe it’s real) stopped parents from rescuing their children and arrested the parents. Every media executive who covered it up, even the royal family will need to be punished for covering this up. Everyone involved who is British needs to die. Not jail, executions.

That’s what’s required to reset the culture to where people will respect the institutions again. Anything less, and nobody will believe you are serious. Because that's the actual punishment required for mass abuse of children.

With the perpetrators, they need to be painfully executed. Not jailed, not deported, reciprocal violence needs to be doled out.

Not just them, their families and their communities. This is how third world culture is. It’s tribal not individual.

You wanted it imported, that's the rules. Can’t handle it? Not my issue.

Remigration must occur. Perhaps for those not involved, but for those involved blood must be extracted.

People inherently know this, and that’s why it’s so sensitive. Because people understand what’s actually at stake, and what's actually going to be required.

Nobody wants to say it, or do it. So they ignore it and sacrifice the young girls of their country, out of cowardice.

You might consider his remarks extreme and I wouldn’t put it the way he did. But he does have a point. Some crimes by the state are too far beyond the pale to handle through standard measures. Something like the Rotherdam scandal cannot be addressed through conventional means because the state itself didn’t address the problem with the authority vested in it. This means there exists a much deeper problem, one which cannot be resolved politically. Or peacefully. I’m choosing my words carefully, but for order to be restored again, dramatic action must be taken.

Unfortunately, dramatic action is likely not coming. Even if the authorities were to treat the case seriously, we have an example from the past of how we can expect and Anglo state to deal with it:

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But:

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Even when the system deals with the problem, the punishment seldom suffices. These are effectively war crimes being committed by invaders; war crimes often merit lifetime imprisonment or execution. I strongly doubt the British government would go that far, especially under Labour Party control and Keir Starmer as prime minister. Starmer seems barely bothered by the Rotherdam scandal, considering “Islamophobia” to be the bigger problem afflicting the country. Listening to him, Britain’s official religion now appears to be Islam. Doesn’t it sound that way to you?

I think it’s also safe to say Europe is nowhere close to seeing mass deportations or remigration. Not only is public sentiment more favorable than not towards immigration, Europe is just too feminized and old to do anything about it. “Vibes” cannot overcome demographic realities and social weakness. Polls may show opposition to mass immigration, but it’s not an issue they want to throw everything into the kitchen sink over, not to mention their overall attitude towards immigration in general must change. Maybe Europe, at some point, will put up a fight in a last-ditch attempt to save itself from being conquered, but that day seems far off.

Europe is toast, if you ask me.

Can Anything Save the West?

I don’t have the answers to the world’s problems. I have some answers for problems in your personal lives. But saving Western Civilization from itself? That’s not something within any one person’s capacity. Collective problems require collective effort. Until there exists a consensus that our very existence is at stake, nothing will happen. According to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, which I buy into, that consensus will be reached sometime during the next 10 years. It’s proving to be quite the slog in getting there, however.

Still, history provides enough evidence of what it might take to save a civilization. Unfortunately, it also happens to be something that could accelerate its demise. Want to guess what that is?

War.

I think this goes doubly true for a society like the U.S. All societies are forged and held together (or undone) by conflict. However, the U.S., without any meaningful binding ties beyond sharing the same plot of land, needs conflict, a sense of being under threat, to a much higher degree than most. The same way the two world wars forged a greater sense of national identity among Americans, we need another major war of some kind for Americans to feel connected to each other once again.

Unfortunately, it may not have the intended effect this time. A war cannot fix a society that’s irreparably broken; it can only deal the final knockout blow. We can disagree on whether it’s truly the case our society is broken beyond repair, but we can absolutely agree that there’s no guarantee Americans will come together again like we did 80 years ago to take collective action against an outside threat. It’ll be a risky gamble, either way.

The war could also come from the inside. Everyone reading this blog knows I consider the likelihood of internal conflict in the U.S. to be high in the next 10 years. What form that conflict will take, nobody knows for sure and this isn’t the time to speculate (read this for a deep dive). The point is that just as we may be forced to mobilize against some outside threat, it’s possible we’ll need to mobilize against an internal threat instead. Can a more unified country emerge in the wake of that? It happened following our last civil war, sure. But history also shows that civil wars tend to destroy states and societies more than they forge them.

War alone isn’t enough. Even if one were to manage to forge unity, that unity can be undone quickly if it’s not immediately directed elsewhere in short order. Following the end of the American Civil War, the country focused on westward expansion and industrialization. After the end of World War II, the U.S. refocused the giant economic machine they’d built towards internal development, the military towards blunting the spread of communism, thereby creating the greatest superpower to ever exist in history.

In short, in order to survive into the 22nd century, let alone mid-century, America needs an enemy and a destiny. Even that may not be enough. What would we do this time, after the current Fourth Turning ends?

Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Most people still wouldn’t believe it if you told them we were in the same situation as during the run-up to the Civil War or World War II. But it’s also not too early to start thinking about what comes next. The 2030s will be here before you know it. By then, a clearer picture will have emerged, but anyone who says we can’t project events into the future is an intellectually dishonest person. Trends are sticky things. The more things change, the more things stay the same. One thing which certainly hasn’t changed is how societies stay together - or fall apart.

Happy New Year, Western Civilization!

As we close this entry out, there is a good thread from anonymous X account explaining why we should treat Matthew Livelsberger’s letter to The Shawn Ryan show with great skepticism. If you have any interest in the case, I suggest you read the thread. As always, don’t get sucked down rabbit holes. Learn to live with being able to say, “I don’t know” and getting on with your life.

What are your thoughts on what we’ve discussed here? What are your takeaways from the busy day that was January 1, 2025? What do you make of events in New York? What do you think Europe’s fate in the 21st century will be? Where do you think it’ll end up five to ten years from now? What’s it going to take to save America from itself, if not all of Western Civilization.

Share your thoughts in the comments section!

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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