The subject of this lecture is the eye of the storm and that is where we see the world at present. This lecture is going to be an overview of issues that we have discussed before and a formulation of political themes in terms of the present and the future.
WHEN REALITY MIRRORS SCIENCE FICTION
When we look back over the last series of years of world history and American history, it looks more and more like a deranged science fiction movie. In 2016 a mentally disturbed racist lunatic was elected president of the United States of America. Then in 2020 we had the Covid disaster, then in 2021 Mr. Trump not only refused to agree to the results of an election he lost by 7 million votes but he sent a mob to storm the United States Capitol building. Again this is like something out of a deranged sc fi movie.
OUR CURRENT SYSTEM IS NOT A BENEVOLENT SYSTEM
Now it's important not to see these events in isolation because what these events are are the self-destruction and the failure of the American political and economic systems. It's very important not to see these things as some sort of good system that had some problems. It is not. Particularly since today the Democrats within an eight-month period have figured out a way to remind everybody why they got thrown out of power in 2016. That's a whole other matter but the purpose of this lecture is to sound the alarm about the mega series of crises that are to come.
THE SHALLOW ROOTS OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
As we've said before, in order to understand the current system, you have to go back to 1945 where a lot of these deranged delusions about an American century, America ruling the world and everybody being an American and America was going to show the Europeans how to have a democracy, now they've got a democracy isn't that wonderful and so on. So these are really deranged delusions of a failed system. It's very important to understand that the American system was not a viable system and was not a good system from the start. This is a system that is based on both genocide, and far more important in many ways, eco-side, the destruction of the biological foundations of life. This has been combined with the huge level of deceit, talk about human rights so on. Some sociologists have never been able to figure out whether America is a democracy or a plutocracy. We’re not going to resolve this issue but it certainly is an open question.
THE SELF DESTRUCTIVE NATURE OF DEMOCRACY
What we do know is that democracy in its previous two major incarnations in history, in Greece and in Rome self-destructed. Totalitarianism… Dictatorship...these are the norms of history. Democracy is not a norm. It is an aberration. These are the facts, and facts matter.
OUR CURRENT SYSTEM'S INCOMPATABILITY WITH THE LAWS OF NATURE
Now history is governed by being compatible with nature, and after 1945, after the total mismanagement of the war by America, and after the lunatic decision to start a new war, the Cold War, with with Russia, in order to build the so-called American dream, an all out war was launched against the environment, against the biological foundations of life and what we have is a giant environmental debt bubble. Make no mistake about it. There is no serious desire to fix that. So this is going to fix itself. There is no serious desire among the political leaders to fix climate change.
TODAY'S DEBT PYRAMID
Now as things have gone downhill in America and in the West, what this has been combined with is an absolutely unbelievable buildup of financial debt so that the American economy today is a giant upside down pyramid of junk debt. It really runs on fumes. It loses money every year in world trade and it is set up for a collapse regardless of what the idiots on Wall Street who profit from this say. Meanwhile, the American economy as we have discussed in numerous lectures has severely deteriorated in terms of its strength as to what it used to be.
THE COMING CONSOLIDATION OF POWER
So what is up ahead? People sometimes think these lectures are too gloomy. So what is the hope? The hope is the consolidation of power. The hope is ultimately dictators who are going to solve this whole thing. We would prefer that the democracies solve the problems themselves but in our view it can be pretty well called out today that the likelihood of happening before some tremendous crash of the system is zero because the system is so dysfunctional.
TO UNDERSTAND THE FUTURE, ONE MUST UNDERSTAND THE PAST
So this is why we go back to our studies in history. We go back to the studies of the collapse of ancient Greece and Rome. We go back to the theories of Plato. We go back to the theories of the Arthashastra and India. We go back to the theories of legalism in ancient China. There's also an interesting aspect of Islam of the study of the caliphate and the institutional structure of Islam and how that played into the greatest religious revolution in history.
THE WILL TO LIVE. THE NEED FOR HOPE
Now in light of the grim results, we have to see how people deal with this. Within everybody is a will to live. We also need to look at the major religions as to how they provide a framework for dealing with tragedy. The concept of the Shaheed in Islam the martyr, the concept of reincarnation in Hinduism, and certain aspects of Buddhism. Christian aspects of heaven and hell are relevant. Now we will say that with Christianity we do take a rather harsh view of Christianity because Christianity was deeply involved in creating the disaster of the current situation. Christianity is the de facto religion of America and within Evangelical Christianity, the main part of Christianity in America are incredibly destructive ideas about the environment and other matters. So we are not against Christianity per se but there is a need for frank talk about the problems of Christianity. We wanted to make that clear. On the other hand, there many good Christians in the world and there are many aspects of Christianity that could be used in creating a positive future.
ANCIENT POLITICAL MODELS
But something we would say is fasten your seatbelt, put your tray table in the upright position, brace for impact. Yes that's what's coming and we need as an organization to go back to a lot of our studies of the ancient world, the concept of the Pharaoh in ancient Egypt, the concept of older political ideas from the monstrous system here in America that has created such a mess.That is relevant. We're not going to sort out all these different religions, we're certainly not setting up a rating service among religions and it depends on different people in different countries and what they feel is relevant for them.
RESTORING THE BALANCE TO NATURE'S LAWS
What is not negotiable is the restoration of balance, the restoration of nature's laws. These laws are not negotiable. They are not negotiable and they are going to be enforced. So that is the template. That is the lens by which we should evaluate what is happening. There are also basic issues of social justice. You can't have one percent of the people having a party while everybody else goes down the drain. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. You have the greatest inequality of wealth in the world today. We are not opposed to inequality of wealth per se, but you can certainly say of the moneybags, the plutocrats today, these people are certainly some of the biggest and most malevolent incompetents the world has ever produced and these people need to be removed from power. They are unfit to rule by just about every criteria. However, this is not likely to be peaceful. There's likely to be a huge amount of violence and turmoil. So we are going to really accelerate our historical studies and you should go to our website and learn more about the full scope of history, the full scope of political ideologies in history, because the past is coming to the future. Laws of history remain the same. Yesterday, today and tomorrow they remain the same. Today's politicians may have the clocks but nature controls the time and they are just pawns on the scale. They are just pawns on the scale of a macro set of laws, laws that exist to control the universe and they will be imposed whether the politicians want it or not not. That's the end of this lecture.