“Time is a flat circle. Everything we’ve ever done, or will do, we’re gonna do over and over and over again.” – Rust Cohle, True Detective
According to a recent article from CNBC, Jeff Bezos has sold off 3 billion dollars worth of Amazon shares and I believe where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The American financial elite class I suspect is abandoning ship for greener pastures such as New Zealand, Canada, China, Germany, and perhaps post-Brexit United Kingdom, when they need some foreign investment to bump their economy back after their own troubles plus the COVID-19 pandemic.
So why write about this? Well, because this is potentially the start of a new era for the rest of the world and we here at the Subcultural Research Lab (SRL) no longer feel that we can remain silent in unindexed underwater basketweaving forums, so consider this an introduction from Your’s Truly. In this speculative new era, America’s status as a superpower is beginning to sunset and so begins a return to isolationism, for better or for worse. As well, this is a much needed shift in the global state of affairs, as since the days of Gorbachev, America has pretty much been the financial epicenter of the world and general economic top dog. In recent years that has been slipping and if Bezos is selling off billions of dollars worth of shares, I would take that as a pretty good sign that there’s trouble afoot in America. Bezos is also not the only one with signs of leaving. More and more of the wealthy have began leaving the cities for the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic and even President Donald Trump has made comments suggesting he’s considering leaving the country should he lose the presidency.
A significant portion, but not all of the financial class leaving America stands to be a redistribution of wealthy elites that will stand to make new political friends, allies, and rivals abroad and bring their opportunity-rich wallets with them. That will have it’s own set of struggles and consequences, but the coming years will bring about a great shift in global politics not seen since the end of the Cold War. We will be returning to a stage where global powers are more level in their power and influence, and all of the struggles that brings with it. I would not expect this to bring more stability to places like developing nations in fact I suspect they will get even more competitive, but the nations America’s disenfranchised elites go to can certainly expect some good to come from this.
So why might these fleeing elites choose the nations listed above? According to a VICE report, the wealthy are already installing their emergency bunkers in New Zealand, so it sounds to me like they’ve been thinking about this for a while. New Zealand also has a good quality of life, beautiful scenery, and is in the Pacific, which is where quite a bit of money and capital is pouring out of so it’s also close to work and their business partners. Canada has a similar story. It has Pacific access, natural beauty, clean air, and is attempting to increase it’s global presence and influence within the UN. It’s very much an up-and-comer among the would-be nations that will fill the America-shaped hole. Canada and New Zealand will not fill that hole themselves though. It will almost certainly be a coalition of developed nations.
China is the home of global production now and we are already seeing the beginnings of American companies choosing to cater to a growing Chinese consumer population. The Chinese have the fastest growing middle class in the world, lead by a hopeful and zealous socialist up-and-comer, Xi Jingping, who is preaching his own doctrine of a “Chinese dream” backed up by Mao and Marx. Germany is a large industrial and labor power in Europe, but has a bit of a fuel problem causing them to reach out to the global pariah that is Russia to keep the lights on, so green investors and inventors are going to make the difference there.
Finally we come to the dark horse, The United Kingdom. It’s handling the pandemic the worst of the aforementioned nations, however they can probably bounce back to some amount of competency if they can work through the Brexit troubles. Britain stands to become a regional power in Europe without the heavy-handed regulations of the EU bearing down on it which could be an economic advantage of it’s very own and they’re also already a well known financial hub.
All of these nations, with the exception of the UK are also handling the pandemic much better than America (at this time of writing) and the wealthy are not immune to sensationalism and totalitarian lockdown measures (although I’m sure they could be if they chose). How the nations of the world are choosing to respond to the global pandemic I think is an under-appreciated factor that these wealthy elites think about when they are considering how they will adapt to the coming “New Normal”.
So now that we know where these fleeing elites are going, or at least what they’re considering, let us now ask why might they do this? Because of the pandemic? Financial forecasting beyond the comprehension of mere mortals? It is because the United States is approaching isolationism and a subsequent “dark age”, at least comparatively to it’s hayday pre-WWI.
If you’ve been following the election coverage this week at all, you may see America, leader of the “free” world and the world’s most well known democracy is having some domestic troubles with counting votes and accusations of fraud. While we are not writing today to discuss the finer details of those accusations, we are writing to discuss the consequences of this instability, how it happened, how it may play out, and what all that means in a globalized economy.
This electoral instability is the launch of a new era for Americans, and by extension, the world. One where we can probably expect similar behaviors in America now that they’ve let this out of Pandora’s Box, regardless of legality or legitimacy. They can never put it back and lack of public trust with the media, government, and private companies has tanked and they may never get it back until there is a regime change or a massive culture change, which is inevitable and we’ll cover that later on. Neither political party seems very in-tune with the demands of the public in regards to policy, but they’re very in-tune with the demands of identitarians. Progressive, urban, “wokeist” neo-puritans that demand political correctness above all else, lest the graph-based GDP spirits be cross with all of us, lie on one end and on the other lies ruralite, “redneck” “working class” people that are trapped in the interior. There are comparisons to the Civil War to be made between an industrialized section of America and a rural one which is fair in it’s own right, but I think a more appropriate comparison is the decline of Western Rome and the foundation of Christianity in the days of Rome, which Washington himself based the establishment of America on.
The wokeist urbanites greatly resemble the early days of Christian establishment in the Roman Empire and the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris presidency stands to be their proverbial Constantine and stand to make some amount of “official conversion” so to speak. While the government itself will not be committing whatever acts are brought about, it will be the organizations, individuals, and institutions that go on crusade on their behalf. It will not be called terrorism, it will be zealous ADL-inspired crusaders bringing the light of civilization, tolerance, and progress to the hateful pagans in the “uncivilized” interior of America. Groups like Antifa and BLM immediately come to mind. These institutions tend to be urbanite based and they’re willing to walk the proverbial Roads to Damascus just like the Christians did. They spread their gospel online and bus themselves to defend the faith wherever there’s outrage to be found. Their apostles and biblical figures are men like George Floyd, who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and fell into martyrdom and the public conscious. Shaun King is a cardinal in his own right. I don’t care to slander these people, but their ideological importance to the wokeist movement is undeniable.
When Rome turned to Christianity, they had lost faith in their old Gods. The system blessed by Jupiter was no longer working for them. The Senate backed by Jupiter did not care for the people, and neither had the Julio-Claudian emperors after Augustus. Romulus and Remus were no longer relevant and the people sought a new community, a new identity. One that would truly care for the people. They could no longer be Romans, and became Christians instead, for better or for worse.
Let’s take a look at America now. Their politics are incredibly class heavy with blatant favoritism to institutions and wealthy individuals that mismanage resources, allow people to suffer during a global pandemic, engage in cronyism putting the locals out of work in favor of what is effectively slavery abroad, permit systematic violence with no police standardization and on top of this, receive bailout after bailout for their failures by printing piles and piles of money backed with no worth beyond “trust me bro”. “Socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor” so the saying goes in America. It has gotten so bad that some no longer call it a democracy, but a regime of anarcho-tyranny where nobody can be held accountable because by the time the damage is done, they have left office and have various legal and physical protections. So it’s no wonder American democracy looks so unhealthy. In fact they look an awful lot like the Romans who’ve lost Jupiter.
Who is America’s Jupiter then? Well I’m sorry to say, that it’s Christian God. He is the embodiment of the old, foundational religion that can no longer sustain the American people. Rates of Christian faith have been falling for decades and modern Christians in America are perceived as ruralite, uneducated and downright barbaric “pagans” by the progressive urbanite wokeists. But what is a pagan? In the original Latin, pagan was synonymous with something like “redneck”. Strangely enough and perhaps a turn of irony, Christians in America find themselves in the position of the Roman Pagan. Rural people clinging to Old Gods and ways of life that are now “outdated” or “barbaric” as evidenced by wokeist slogans such as “It’s not the 1950’s anymore”.
Americans have been looking for their new Jupiter, their new God for a while now and it began in the days of free love, which turned into the days of the satanic panic, which turned into the days of modern progressive wokeism. These wokeists were considered a joke to be laughed at in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, as evidenced by sketch comedy TV shows such as HBO’s Mr. Show and Kids in the Hall, but now it is no longer a laughing matter and the Wokeist faith is now present in the workplace, social media, and HR departments and is extending it’s neo-puritan hand into media. Not to say that these progressives are satanic, but the moral relativism and irrationalism certainly helped things along, which they have since abandoned in favor of their own, new, moral universalism.
There are those that theorized that America may die or even Balkanize as a result of whatever future speculative collapse, however I am inclined to disagree. In the days of the ancient Roman superpower, Rome took 500 years to collapse in the west, and another 500 to collapse in the money-rich east. Even still today, Rome stands, they’re just a lot smaller than they used to be. America will likely meet a similar fate. The story of Rome should serve as a cautionary tale for Americans and other nations in The West facing similar issues, if they cannot change course. Superpowers never die, they only fade away. Anyone remember the Soviet Union?
But hey. What do we know? We can only work with the information we are given and speculate based on the stage actors that American politicians play. Not every prediction made will be right, but it is the act of predicting and forecasting that can help us prepare for whatever reality may spit out at us. Regardless, the events of this election and by extension this entire year, with the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed powerful actors to unexpected places. We predict that regardless, a shakeup will bring new opportunity, should they be seized.
Your’s Truly,
Subcultural Research Lab.
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