Is America’s collapse inevitable?

By Andrea Widburg, AM THINKER

Usually, I write to bring news to your attention or to analyze a specific issue. It’s relatively rare for me to write a post telling you to read someone else’s post. However, Harold Robertson’s post about the “competence crisis” is so important that I want to encourage as many people as possible to read it. (Hat tip: William Duncan.)

The full title of Robertson’s article, which is published at Palladium (Governance Futurism), is “Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis.” The first few paragraphs spell out the scope of this problem:

At a casual glance, the recent cascades of American disasters might seem unrelated. In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths. A year later, powerlines owned by PG&E started a wildfire that killed 85 people. The pipeline carrying almost half of the East Coast’s gasoline shut down due to a ransomware attack. Almost half a million intermodal containers sat on cargo ships unable to dock at Los Angeles ports. A train carrying thousands of tons of hazardous and flammable chemicals derailed near East Palestine, Ohio. Air Traffic Control cleared a FedEx plane to land on a runway occupied by a Southwest plane preparing to take off. Eye drops contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria killed four and blinded fourteen.

While disasters like these are often front-page news, the broader connection between the disasters barely elicits any mention. America must be understood as a system of interwoven systems; the healthcare system sends a bill to a patient using the postal system, and that patient uses the mobile phone system to pay the bill with a credit card issued by the banking system. All these systems must be assumed to work for anyone to make even simple decisions. But the failure of one system has cascading consequences for all of the adjacent systems. As a consequence of escalating rates of failure, America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.

The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society.

As you can see, the thesis becomes blindingly obvious merely by being stated. However, Robertson gives it heft and dimension by discussing how America began to shift from a meritocracy to a diversity system in the 1960s, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. He then explains how it became embedded in American employment culture.

Of course, moving away from a system that discriminated against people based on race is a good thing. The problem is that, thanks to how “diversity” has been interpreted, we’ve embraced a whole new style of discrimination. Now, the most important characteristic a person can bring to a job is skin color, sex, and sexual orientation or “identity.” This metric, when applied across American culture, especially within the government, but with increased aggression in education and the workplace, practically ensures that the people responsible for America’s public and private systems won’t be the “best”; they’ll just be the most “diverse.”

The fallout from all of this, as Robertson bluntly states, is that “competency is declining from the core outwards.” Again, he has a raft of data to support that contention, showing that this core affects every American. If a department store starts hiring incompetent salespeople, the employees and shareholders suffer. When the military and all government contractors are abandoning meritocracy, the fallout is cataclysmic. It turns out that it’s a surprisingly short step to South Africa’s collapse.

CONTINUE

June 6, 2023 | 7 Comments »

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  1. The last book in the Christian Bible, the Revelation, Chapter 13 describes two beasts similar to the beasts described in Daniel 7, (verse 12 is especially interesting), Revelation 13 describes the three beasts of Daniel 7, all depicted as one.
    So the first beast of Revelation 13 is Catholic Europe, the second beast is Protestant America.
    In Revelation 13:13, this second beast causes fire to come down from heaven so all are afraid to make war with it. Likely the star wars initiative is actually a reality however has not been used yet.
    Immorality in the world, led by America seems to be at an all time low and is unlikely to improve before Messiah comes to straighten this mess out, and He alone can do it. (Psalm 2::9- Revelation 2:27.

  2. Frank, I like your “Top Cocks” and “The Second Eleven” comments. You have, without doubt, done a lot of study of history. Just to indulge in the hobby myself, I’ll list your “Historical Six”:

    1. (Habsburg) Spain
    2. The Dutch (Republic, then Nassau-Orange Dynasty)
    3. (Bourbon) France
    4. (Hanoverian/Stuart, then Windsor) Britain
    5. Poland under Sobieski
    6. The Habsburg-Lorraine Dynasty of Austria, etc.

    All the above had their origins in the Holy Roman Empire, as did

    7. The Portugese House of Braganza
    8. The Savoyard Kingdom of Italy
    9. Hohenzollern Prussia
    10. The Oldenburg kingdoms of Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Russia and, agnatically, the current King of England, etc.

    The “eleventh” seems to be the US.

    I count these as the “Ten Horns” of prophecy.

    EvRe1, I think the USA has already been overthrown by a New World Order coup; but things seem currently in flux.

  3. The article is not about fringe groups or about “minorities who are best left to themselves.”

    The article is about the loss of our meritocracy.

    The loss of meritocracy means we are now a country dedicated to reverse racism, all while those on the racist left are blaming “white supremacists” for “structural racism.”

    We cannot be a healthy society if merit, what a person works hard to develop in themselves, is ignored, and the color of their skin or whatever sexual deviance du jour a person wants to identify with is the basis for hiring or being admitted to a university. The latter is a perversion of justice and fairness.

    The country has been taken over by Marxists and globalists who want complete control, and who do not care what happens to Americans or America, just as long as they are in control. This is something to be very concerned about.

    The collapse of America is a very real concern when those in government have no interest in making sure America survives. Those in government who want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, or who fight a war in Ukraine with no real efforts being made to actually win the war, or those in government who made sure to fund and deploy a biochemical weapon on Americans and others around the world: these people make our government something we should definitely start to panic about.

  4. Stop panicking because of fringe groups noisiness about minorities who are best left to themselves; remember that in its first century the US got along well enough in a World where it was NOT top dog then read some European history. Several former cocks of the rock in Europe are still about and doing quite well even if now in the second eleven: Spain of the 16th century (1500’s); the Dutch in the 17th century(1600’s); France in the 18th century (1700’s) and Britian in the 19th century (1800’s) and Poland and Habsburgs Austria had a good innings too in their time. Finally disregard all that Church blarney about the decline of Rome having anything to do with their intimate lives. Internal coherence has far more to do with the honesty and professionalism of public officials and honest bookeeping than fads about sexuality.

  5. Stop panicking because of fringe groups noisiness; remember that in its first century the US got along well enough in a World where it was NOT top dog then read some European history. Several former cocks of the rock in Europe are still about and doing quite well even if now in the second eleven: Spain of the 16th century (1500’s); the Dutch in the 17th century(1600’s); France in the 18th century (1700’s) and Britian in the 19th century (1800’s) and Poland and Habsburgs Austria had a good innings too in their time. Finally disregard all that Church blarney about the declineof Rome having anything to do with their intimate lives. Internal coherence has far more to do with the honesty and professionalism of public officials and honest bookeeping than fads about sexuality.