The lesson of China’s Cultural Revolution in my view is that once the lid blows off, everything that was linear (predictable) goes non-linear (unpredictable, fragmented, contingent, emergent, prone to extremes, uncontrollable). If America experiences a Cultural Revolution, the outcome won’t lend itself to tidiness or predictability.
To use an analogy from previous blog posts, if the pendulum is pushed to an extreme, when it’s released, it will reach an equivalent extreme (minus a bit of friction) at the opposite end. That could be an unexpected but entirely foreseeable Cultural Revolution.
Those who claim that can’t happen in America are safely outside the pressure cooker, protected by a delusional confidence that since I’m doing great, everyone is doing great. Since real political agency is no longer allowed, then the pressure will find release outside the political system. It’s just Wetware 1.0 running defaults few recognize.
Charles Hugh Smith
April 9, 2021
Is a Cultural Revolution Brewing in America?
[Interesting hypothesis.—Joe]
So what is a cultural revolution?
“Cultural revolutions are an expression of disappointment and frustration with corruption and the lack of progress in improving everyday life, frustrations that have no outlet in a regime of self-serving elites who view dissent as treason and/or blasphemy.”
Ah… So the question is how are people going to react when they find out that they cannot buy what they need and life is not better despite the implementation of a basic income, a new green deal, certificates and grades eliminated, offices of Equity and Environment Justice established, guns outlawed, white supremacy suppressed, history rewritten using the 1619 narrative and they are in charge?
And the answer is obviously a cultural revolution is needed.
Yes, it’s needed. But a revolution in what culture, when we’ve had 50+ years of “multiculturalism”? I came across a quote on Gab that sums up part of that problem nicely:
Every people has different capabilities and those capabilities plus their environment lead to a specific culture. And each culture has a certain tolerance for what is allowed, and crafts a legal system to correct those who fall outside that band of tolerance.
When you then put two different cultures into the same polity, laws must be more explicit and numerous, because the concomitant bands of tolerable behavior are smaller than either one individually.
Ergo the band of tolerable behavior is necessarily smaller. Ergo the legal system must change to punish the each culture, but especially the culture with the greater amount of tolerance.
The more cultures that are added, the more stringent the legal code. Eventually the formerly-dominant system is blended out of existence. In our case, that’s assumption of innocence, reason, logic, evidence, rhetorical battle, and so forth. That was white person’s law. It’s gone.
Diversity killed it. No one had to affirmatively kill it; it is a downstream effect of diversity.
So…. what will exit the cauldron of tribulation headed our way on a rocket-sled?
Tribalism and survival of the fittest? Although as Adam Smith observed there is a lot of ruin in a civilization and it is that excess capability that enables diversity to exist along with ideas like MMT.
After the Chinese cult-rev. There was hardly anyone left that knew how to make steel. And if Nixon wouldn’t have gone to China and saved them. They would still be a starving third world shit-hole today.
But this is how grateful communists are. They take your kindness and use it to destroy you.
After the American cult-rev.. There won’t be anyone coming to help us back up.
But just as sure as WW I& II had the eugenic satanic benefit of removing anyone with any fight in them from the European gene pool. America has been a magnet for anyone with any gumption for the last 200 years.
Cult-rev Americana will breed super-savages. Tribal Americans will be smart, fast, and hard people.
Were going to be the worlds no-go zone for the next 100 years. It’s either that or they thermo-baric us off the planet and set up a Chinese agricultural/nature theme park.
Like Riddick said; So you say the whole thing is circling the drain? Well it could last forever.
♫We didn’t start the fire♩It was always burning since the earth’s been turning♫
–Billy Joel
I have a different view and lesson from the cultural revolution in China than does Mr. Smith. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was actually implemented by the CCP with the express purpose of rooting out any remaining resistance to the Communist take over of China. The majority of the fatalities were people that were reluctant accept or too slow to embrace communism. To be sure, there were collateral damage fatalities but that is simply something expected and accepted by every communist leadership that has existed. It is only the state that matters; well, that and those who have been able to claw their way to the top of that leadership cadre.
The cultural revolution that is brewing in the US, at least the one intended by our elite cadre, has the same intent. The actual revolution that appears more likely to come, however, is of the French Revolution style. There are too many independent thinkers in this land and unless the blindered elites are willing to wait another 100 years for the education system to finish off the notions of independence and liberty, it will not end well for them and unfortunately not for a lot of others as well. Given the extreme actions of the Democrat Party after the last election, it does not seem like they have any desire to wait. That hubris may exact a severe toll on everyone in this country.
I’m not too worried about the possibility that the instigators of the US cultural revolution may end up sharing the fate of Robertpierre. What does worry me is a repeat of the outcome; the French ended up with one of the first imperialist dictators, Napoleon Bonaparte.
I think the fault lines are going to be more cultural (race, religion, urbanization) than economic though they do overlap. Economic privation will ensue but only after the wheels come off. In that way we are different than China. But I find little to disagree with about the process in which things spin out of control.