Miss Havisham is a character in Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations. A wealthy woman, she was jilted and swindled on her wedding day. From that day on she has allowed nothing to change. The wedding feast sits there, liquids evaporated, silverware corroded, cakes and food rotted; overrun with vermin and spider webs. She wears still her wedding dress, filthy and torn. The Day preserved, decayed and monstrous. Time and events move on around her but her past is her present and her pitiless future.
Will this be the West in fifty years? Surrounded by decay and filth but still clinging its past? Shouting about its ever-so-valuable values, ranting on about the Rules-Based International Order, boasting it’s the best at this and the most at that, issuing judgments on the bad behavior of the others, sanctioning non-believers, bathed in its media feedback loop. Still the highest GDP in USD! (Now Big Mac Cricketburgers are $1000 a pop, there are lots of dollars in every pocket!)
But nobody in the rest of the world cares. They’ve moved on. No tourist visits the moldering house and its unhinged inhabitants. They prefer cruising the high speed railroad from Cape Town to Beijing with a side trip to Baikal. Who wants to be robbed in the shoot-up galleries of Amsterdam, the tent cities of New York, the machete gangs of London? If it’s Tuesday and riots, it must be Paris. Young Harvard graduates pass out in their slums and dream of becoming a toilet cleaner in Omsk Airport – full benefits, you know. Plus dental. And you can afford a small apartment on your pay.
Is this where the West is heading? It gave away its manufacturing, its economies are financial prestidigitation and rent-seeking. It scores at the bottom of the Edelman Trust Index. (How can an electoral democracy function when people doubt the integrity of elections and believe that their politicians and judges are bought? Without trust, what is left?) Will the West decay into a future that’s all past and no future? A putrefying wedding cake?
After the failed wars, the rest don’t fear the West, they don’t respect it – if they ever did – and they don’t trust it. Who knew that Niger would lead the way and call the bluff? There are other more attractive and – most importantly – more successful examples to follow. Who cares about Miss Havisham and her mausoleum of the past?
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Of course this is just one possible future out of many – the Havisham future is not inevitable. Nothing is determined, the West can change. It still has plenty of resources and talent. Down can become up. But I don’t see much around me to suggest that the trend will be reversed. It’s too big a job for one leader or group of leaders. Falling down is always easier than getting up again. But, unless the failing West brings the whole thing down, I think the Miss Havisham future is the one to bet on.
Suggestion for further reading; Lenocracy.
Minor correction. Miss Havisham is a character from Dickens’ novel Great Expectations.
Thanks. Corrected on behalf of Helmholz.
I hope this is not our outcome and especially for my children but fear there is no way to turn this around now. There are no real leaders with real answers to any of problems but more war and more money printing. I know there are many articles saying the dollar is irreplaceable and it will likely never drop but I have to believe that would only be the case if we managed it properly which we are not. I only hope we don’t take everyone down in our flailing attempt at world domination.
The problem, IMO, isn’t that our leaders make mistakes. They’re people after all and that’s what people do.
The problem is they won’t admit error and change course. The result is a rigid, ossified power structure that can’t be reformed, uncomfortably similar to the last days of the Soviet Union.
Mistakes? Mistakes…? What mistakes?
Before the USA goes full Miss Havisham it will break apart. Ironically, it will be Russia, the country the United States wanted to tear apart, that will remain united.
it will break apart and go full Miss H.
and it won’t take 50 years. you’ll be lucky if it is 10
“Will this be the West in fifty years? Surrounded by decay and filth but still clinging its past? Shouting about its ever-so-valuable values, ranting on about the Rules-Based International Order, boasting it’s the best at this and the most at that, issuing judgments on the bad behavior of the others, sanctioning non-believers, bathed in its media feedback loop.”
You are much too optimistic. It is that way today. Recently completed a trip that took me to once-upon-a-time great cities such SF, LA, Seattle and large areas of these formerly great cities are dystopian scumholes that would shame and scare denizens of any fetid, corrupt opium infested hellhole of the 19th Century UK Asian colonial regime.
The rot seems to be growing as the former middle class is sucked into the abyss. Top-down control expands over increasing sectors of everyday life.
And the “band plays on” while the population is quietly being genocided.
The link, better termed ‘pimp-ocracy’ like it’s direct translation into english, should be required reading.
The psyop and cultural destruction has been so pervasive that even Gramsci could never have imagined, and the drugged-up population still eagerly grasps at the Koolaid.
And the moron class of executioners/extractors/functionaries serving the deepstate/blob/PTB has nukes to play with!
Think the globe has 50 years left?
Left NYC out:
patriotpost.us/articles/105873-face-punching-the-shame-of-the-left-2024-04-11
USA – RIP
Well, the Havisham future is not inevitable if the collective “we” decide to accept reality and then act in a way to move to a better future. Therein lies the rub. Our complacency and general lack of desire to be responsible citizens and vote properly got us in this mess, and more of the same won’t get us out of it. We are the problem, and until we accept that, there is no future.
As any parent knows, you get what you put up with. Our only possible hope is in the (I think Luongo?) notion we are “comfortable wolves” meaning when the gravy train stops, we’ll get pissed enough to actually do something, but that also means the potential for total breakdown as it will be anything but organized. We’ll see.
“Our complacency and general lack of desire to be responsible citizens and vote properly”
What, pray tell, is the “proper” way to vote?
And what possible difference will it make when vote counts were magically changed right on teevee in front of our eyes? And people are still in jail for daring to protest the blatant, in your face, documented live for all to see, cheating?
let’s assume you are a brilliant father, dedicated, patient who gives your son the best possible chance to grow up to a happy, helpful, responsible and successful adult.
let’s assume that your wife or ex wife does everything in her power to undermine you, spoil the kid rotten, etc etc etc. the odds that the kid will come out as he would with you are now something like 30 %
So you end up getting what she puts up with. Same with society.
Even if they get pissed, they are too stupid to respond in a smart organized way. You would have to have a critical mass of people with the brains and patience of the Russian leadership that babystep by babystep sets the system check mate.
A small thing: Miss Havisham is a character in Dickens novel “Great Expectations”, not “David Copperfield.”
I lived the the Middle East for many years and China too and never locked my door or heard of anyone getting their vehicle stolen. My $20,000 truck was stolen a few nights again, probably headed to Vancouver of Montreal ports inside a truck.Organized crime controls the ports. Can’t afford to own anything nice anymore. Last few years enormous increase in cars stolen and then leaving the country. I still have a house on the beach in China and will retire there later. Also want to spend some time in Russia and see what makes them happy. Thx for update
Let’s imagine, Don Larry, a world divided into plots, a feudal globalism with immense fields of power. Our civilization has emerged from two thought options from many centuries ago, realism and subjectivism…the power of yesterday and today chose subjectivism that denies any intelligence in creation but the will, Spinoza left us that everything is one “monism “, from there the devil wrote the rest. Subjectivism and its daughter called naturalism is today’s atheistic religion.
Niger did call Uncle Sam’s bluff but hes not moving. He’s flipping the bird to Niger telling it, “If you want me to leave, try and make me!”
Read the article, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/niger-us-troops-junta/
cut off water, electricity, sewage, etc., deny permission to enter Nigerian airspace, deny visas to Americans, arrest personnel who attempt to procure fresh supplies, etc., and they will leave (too expensive to airlift in everything). If not, threaten to cancel a contract with Chevron for a few billion and give it to China, and they will leave.
Stand outside the base and use Strelas to shoot down anything that lands or takes off.
We are sure to pay a steep price for ignoring the advice of Adams and Washington to avoid interfering in the affairs of other countries.
Perhaps the US simply got too big and powerful.
Perhaps we (or rather our forebears) should never have ratified the Constitution, but stuck with the Articles of Confederation… (I do like the Bill of Rights.)
Is that what Franklin meant when he quiped “A republic, if you can keep it.”?
“Nothing is determined, the West can change”.
Unlikely and in any case, this is no longer the decisive factor.
Eurasia has the resources, now the wherewithal and paramountly the confidence to take on and take down The Washington Consensus, rebadged as The Rules-Based International Order.
The Decline of The West . . . https://les7eb.substack.com
Only the eastern-most part of Europe. So mostly Asia with a tiny European appendix
Ms Haversham reminds me of Hillary Clinton
Hillary would have move on lol!
difference is that Miss H has been jilted
HC has been on the other end
Back when Saturday Night Live was still funny, Ackroid did a Jimmy Carter skit; “Inflation is your friend” a few years early, but our future
I have to confess to being an optimist. I for one think the future will be grand, only after a lot of pain, suffering and a good healthy purge. Inducing vomiting is not fun but you normally feel much better after.
The US has a 68 square mile sized leech attached to the national ass. It sucks all our blood and gives nothing useful in return. Sooner or later a parasite will either kills the host and itself with it or the host will become too weak to feed it. I think the latter is where we are today. The leech will eventually weaken and we can eliminate it or it might just die on its own.
We can have nice things, peace and prosperity free from the klepto-pedocrats that we inexplicably allow to rule over us. That is coming. We owe it to our grandchildren.
Unless we place billionaires and bankers under the rule of law, rather than allowing them ownership of the political parties and politicians who make those laws, no change will occur.
For over thirty years I advocated placing a “None of the Above” choice on the ballot in each election for Representative, Senator and President.
For restricting campaign contributions to a small amount (i.e. $50-100 per contributor), which could only be made by citizens registered to vote in that election and race (i.e. no money contributed from outside a political district)…
And I’ve been shouted down and censored for my trouble, all the while watching the “lesser of two evils” elected in these one-sided contests push us, the citizens of this country, ever closer to… privation, despair and destruction.
The rich got what they paid for… What price will we have to pay their monoplies? If you want to change this political system now, you’d better get ready to fight…
Further, and I may be wrong, but Trump now looks to be compromised. Perhaps he always was, but I didn’t think so at the time, even though his first-term appointments indicated otherwise. Now he has Jamie Dimon vouching for him… one of the biggest and most powerful crooks on Wall Street. FWIW
unless you tax income over a million in any way, shape or form at 120 %, unless you have a wealth tax for everything over 5 million of 5% and going up, unless you outlaw non-profits, unless you make it a crime punishable with life in prison without parole to give or receive a political “donation”, unless you make it a crime punishable by death for anyone with more than x million wealth to engage in politics, you will have to kill billionaires and rogue bankers and their families, because otherwise the disease will always pop up again. I’d prefer the former but I am not hopeful. A proper criminal has to lay low, so the damage he can do is little. these people are just as criminal but they ride high with unspeakable damage to society. Nothing against honestly made wealth. Unfortunately most is anything but.
What we are both railing against is… human nature.
We are apex predators, after all.
Paul Craig Roberts recent posts fits in well. ‘Once you realize that they are out to kill you everything starts to make sense’ – R. Graves.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/04/11/the-great-dispossession/
“Will this be the West in fifty years? Surrounded by decay and filth but still clinging to its past? Shouting about its ever-so-valuable values, ranting on about the Rules-Based International Order, boasting it’s the best at this and the most at that, issuing judgments on the bad behavior of the others, sanctioning non-believers, bathed in its media feedback loop.”
Dude, I’m pretty sure this is the West right now.
Miss Havisham is the most apt and jarring analogy possible, I can see this catching on, especially in respect to the British establishment that seems to have regressed to the mid 19th century and become trapped in it,
Just because losing their Empire broke their hearts doesn’t mean they have the right to torture their population, the only people they have control over now,
David Lean’s 1946 film adaption of Great Expectations starring John Mills is a masterpiece of British cinema, Dickens was a master at observing the British,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjadQG-soNo
some coincidence.
the 1946 version of Great Expectations was on tv (uk) today.
have watched it many times, over the years.
even though have never really even particularly liked it.
must be because charles dickens was a master storyteller.
I’m on a road trip throughout the flyover country. What a shame it is seeing all the closed down businesses in beautiful downtowns throughout America. If our corrupt government actually invested in AMERICA instead of forever foreign interventionism, maybe things could’ve been better for the next generation. Something HAS to change.
You can start a company there and hire lots of people. Do your patriotic duty.
“If our corrupt government actually invested in AMERICA instead of forever foreign interventionism, maybe things could’ve been better for the next generation.”
“The [below] is factual: Esquire reported that a Brown University investigation found the U.S. has spent an ineffable $14T on wars since 9/11:
And yes, the current U.S. debt is a massive $34T. That means quite literally almost half of the entire current U.S. debt was blown on endless, mindless, genocidal wars in the Middle East.
The U.S. has wasted its entire blood and treasure on war. Imagine what the U.S. could have built with $14 trillion dollars? Where the U.S. could have been in relation to China for that amount? As someone else noted, the U.S. could have very well built its own “one belt and road” project for that money, connecting the world and reaping untold benefits.”
Article from:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/yellen-dispatched-to-beg-china-for
It’s CRIMINAL what the government does. I read the Simplicius article earlier and seeing those numbers can make one go insane… and the other day our “esteemed” treasury secretary said China is operating at “overcapacity.” Another dumb term like “transitory.” So glad the (geriatric) adults are in the White House.
It’s CRIMINAL what the government does. — peteREpete
That’s the natural outcome when criminals own both political parties and all the politicians. You either hold their feet to the fire and subject them to the rule of law, or they’ll roast you… then eat you alive.
Grotty. That is what we have become, led by the weak and stupid and their seething resentment of the ‘strong’.
We can only sit on our dung heap unchallenged when every one else is even weaker and more stupid than us.
That’s going well.
[…] Zdroj […]
Look at the birth rates of the West. Europe will be islamic.
Good day Larry , You are on the mark . I have said repeatedly that ‘ the rabid dogs bark ,snarl and snap , yet the caravan moves on . Best wishes and appreciation for your sterling expose’s .
Niger ?
How funny.
A corrupt general who was about to be fired, made a coup and became the new Fidel Castro.
Like Zelinsky was the new Churchill.
When anti colonialist propaganda is as bad aS Ukrainian one.
Lol.
If not Miss Havisham then Margret Thatcher: TINA.
Miss Havisham had money. She could have used it to turn things around. We don’t have money, we just have debt. There is no way we can turn things around unless cold fusion or zero point energy can be made to work.
God is an engineer and designer. He could do it.
This is a splendid analogy. Happy to pass it on.
Very colorful analogy and yes, that is where we in the U.S. are going to end up. Even today, Russia and China are building bridges and investing in infrastructure while we squander what is left of our wealth.
I think debt is fine if you use it to build infrastructure like the Hoover dam but we are using debt to finance ongoing cost of operations. The only thing our debt does is inflate our fake GDP number.
Well done, H. Smith. I have never read the book, and did not know of that character. The comparison seems, how should I put this… terribly perfect. Terribly, tragically, perfect.
What I would say about the supposition at the end is that it’s already here. It’s only a matter of the degree of delusion and decay. You can look around and compile whole lists of examples and details. For just a couple: any idiot “news” and political chatter about how the economy is so great; another, anyone babbling about the President of the United States being “the leader of the Free World”.
Et cetera.
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