Imperial disintegration update, as Year of the Five Emperors continues

The all-out coordinated assault by the media sector against Biden remaining the nominee, in the wake of his abysmal debate performance, finally resolves the open question I had about why the 2024 polling and reporting was so different, compared to 2016 and '20.

Because everyone on Twitter and the rest of the media are take junkies, they cannot remember what happened five seconds ago, let alone five years ago. Not having my brain constantly plugged into the dIsCouRsE vortex, I retain my ability to see things clearly, including developments over time -- where there are clear trends or reversals, whereas the take junkies only experience a chaotic swirling flux of factoids.

In a thread from December of last year, I asked what no one else was asking -- why is the 2024 polling so uniformly pro-Trump and anti-Biden? In 2016 and '20, the propaganda said Trump was destined to lose with voters, when he won with voters both times (first time catching the DNC flat-footed and able to waltz into the White House, second time having it stolen by a very well prepared DNC). Suddenly there's an about-face -- the propaganda keeps saying how badly Trump is going to schlong Biden.

At first I speculated that the Democrats were going to let Trump have the White House rather than steal it again, since the past 3-4 years have gone so horribly for the Biden admin -- better to let Trump be the fall guy for the current stage of imperial disintegration.

But then in a comment from February of this year, I added that maybe they were only going to try to kick out Biden specifically, and then steal the election on behalf of Biden's replacement. The clue was that they kept harping on Biden's weakness, Biden's this, Biden's that -- and not the Democrats as a whole. Sounded like they just wanted to steal the election again, but on behalf of Anybody But Biden.

The same media sector that has been pumping out all of this polling propaganda has now called for Biden to step aside, in the interest of defeating Trump. So that settles it -- they plan to steal it again in November, only with someone else on the D ticket. They are still committed to taking the blame for the current stage of imperial disintegration, as long as they get to occupy the office -- nothing like jumping onto a sinking ship. But that's how overweening ambition corrupts people's minds.

They are no longer getting stinking rich off of occupying the White House, since our wealth levels continue to plummet (Central Bank money-printing shut off, interest rates jacked up, contracting rather than expanding the funny-money supply), our trade deficit soars off the charts, and our lucrative partnerships and patron-client relationships with wealthy foreigners go up in flames one month after the next. Not to mention that the purchasing power of the money they get from occupying the White House has eroded like crazy, with inflation off the charts, and global de-dollarization accelerating.

At this point, they are simply in it for the status and prestige of being on top of the pyramid, no matter how toothless its enforcement mechanisms are (couldn't get the country to wear masks or get vaxxed), and no matter how puny the material benefits are for parasitizing the White House. It's just about winning and coming out on top, rather than losing. Student government strivers on steroids.

Hyper-competitiveness is now driving the entire society right off of the cliff -- a process that has been going since the Reagan / yuppie revolution of the 1980s, and even incubating during the Me Decade of the Silent and Boomer generations during the '70s.

So my initial analysis of the post-2020 system is still correct -- we're at the Year of the Five Emperors stage of Roman disintegration, 193 AD. I first made this remark shortly after the Great Ballot Count Stoppage on election night of 2020, and followed up in a little more detail in this full post from July of '21.

The Roman Empire reached its stagnation stage under the Antonine dynasty in the mid-2nd century, much as the American Empire did under the Reagan era of 1980-2020. The chaos of the Year of the Five Emperors is spread out into maybe 4 or 5 years in our timeline, but is qualitatively the same transition to a new stage, of imperial collapse rather than mere stagnation.

There's no point in coping about the pace of collapse -- slowly, then rapidly. That's like saying when you throw a body out of an airplane, it only falls slowly at first, so there's still hope, it's not in free-fall or collapse yet. Yes it is -- it will accelerate as it plummets, and fall *really* fast later on, before crashing into the ground to its death. But it's already over the moment it's tossed out of the airplane without a parachute.

That is true for Roman decline, which began in 193, and hit the rapid free-fall sub-stage in the 230s, when one "barracks emperor" after another was assassinated and replaced from within the military.

I don't know what sector the American counterparts to the barracks emperors will be drawn from -- perhaps from the military again, one general after another replaced or assassinated. Maybe it will be finance or tech bros, who will shove each other aside in rapid succession and in a climate of leaderless chaos. The C-suite emperors. But something qualitatively like that will follow the initial stage of collapse that we have already entered as of 2020-'21.

Likewise in the American case, it doesn't matter that our collapse begins slowly and picks up speed over time -- it's a single indivisible stage, qualitatively different from the previous stage of stagnation (which itself was qualitatively different from the previous stage of expansion), and will be qualitatively different from the "recovery from rock bottom" stage that will follow it.

In the Roman case, that was the Tetrarchy under Diocletian in the late 3rd century. Who knows what individual will usher that in for America? But it will be qualitatively the same -- an impotent figure within the context of the former expanding / stagnant empire, but who has restored stability within the rump-state left after the hangover / free-fall collapse.

Diocletian not only had to rule with a junior partner, he had to concede the eastern half of the empire to the proto-Byzantines. That's a long, plunging fall from the powers and status of Marcus Aurelius of the mid-2nd century (stagnant stage) -- but a bump up from the abyss of the barracks emperors chaos of the mid-3rd century.

Just as there was no Roman renaissance with Diocletian, or any of his followers, for at least 1000 years later, there will be no American renaissance when we inevitably bounce back to a stable rump-state, after the current and coming collapse. Anyone peddling these hopes, on either side of the partisan aisle, and whether in government or outside it, and whether from an elite or wannabe position, is just another hyper-competitive opportunist trying to wring a few extra bucks out of the imperial treasury during its implosion, to pad their own personal crash-landing.

The only interesting open questions are events that don't necessarily happen during every imperial collapse -- like will one of our future leaders be slain on the battlefield during one of many hopeless and pointless attempts to shore up the contracting boundaries of its influence, a la Julian the Apostate trying to defeat the Persian empire in the Middle East and biting the big one near Baghdad.

Given how wicked and traitorous our elite class has become and promises to remain for the foreseeable future -- one can only hope so.

Read the rest of those extensive comment threads and posts for a broader survey of distractions to avoid, like any hope that we're in the French or Russian Revolution (those were pre-collapse), or Japanese sengoku (the Tokugawa shogun that followed it was *more* powerful, not less, than the shoguns that preceded sengoku), or any stage of Roman history before 193 -- like will there be an American Caesar, etc?

We already had a Caesar -- Abraham Lincoln, trailblazing leader and unifier and assassinated during the integrative civil war. Hoping for a second American Caesar in the 21st century or later, is just as hopeless as hoping for one in Rome during the Crisis of the Third Century and after.

The only worthwhile tasks now are preserving what our empire has already created, not hopelessly attempting another renaissance, and softening our landing / speeding the recovery into a minimized and relatively powerless rump-state, not hopelessly trying to cling to the plateau level that we reached in the 20th century.

Everything else is emotion-inflaming fan-fiction, and doomed overweening ambition.