Collapse: Long, Slow, and Permanent

Most writers in the alt-right/reactionary/androsphere seem to be city dwellers.  Certainly Apocalypse Cometh and Wimminz write from the urban perspective, and I suspect this is part of the reason they (as well as myself) tend to have such dire predictions about how bad the Decline is going to be.  In the cities, the cracks are starting to show.

Forget about the violent crime rates – for those of us living in or near the Downtowns, it’s the subtle problems that stand out.  The debased standard of living amongst the lowest class, drinking cheap liquor in public parks, ever reliant on their welfare check; the neighbourhoods you don’t go to at night, the low-level criminality of vandalism and grafiti, the hostility between people in the middle class, and the stark divide between the non-productive elites, and the rest of us.  It’s a fragile structure and it’s beginning to fray.  When it finally tears – along who knows at what seam? – blood is going to run.

But then again, cities have always been fragile structures, haven’t they?  By necessity their foot print is far bigger than their municipal borders.

The problem with us City Folk and our predictions of doom is that – paradoxically – our high level of material wealth (measured in such things as easy access to mass transit, readily available goods, and nicely paved and ornamented structures – not our individual incomes) requires a constant investment to maintain.  Interrupt the flow of water/power/food for a single day and the whole edifice starts to collapse.  It’s comforting, in a way, a singular event: a brief and exciting Zombie Apocalypse.

In our fantasy world, the rebuilding would start one week after the Shit Hits The Fan.

But in touring about the Northern Parts of this province, it’s evident that the Life of the City Folk is far from Universal.  There’s a lot of wealth out there in the country… and it worries me.

The oil towns are the perfect example.

When you hear the words ‘working class prole’ your immediate thoughts turn to blue collar alcoholics, living in World War 2 housing.  The reality is nowhere close to this, of course – in most cases they’re out-earning their University Educated Brethren – but stereotypes exist for a reason.  In the cities the working class may spend Big Bucks impressing women at the Night Club with a  bottle of Krystal, but they’re not engaged in political life, nor do they buy many of the finer things.

Not until you get to the oil towns, anyway.  Everybody here is Blue Collar, and everybody is rich.  Their houses are big, and their trucks are new.  The economy could go tits up, and these folk would be doing just fine – unlike the Prius owners, they know how to do an engine swap, and they could trade for any household carpentry they required.

So what’s the problem, then?  These towns will survive, while New York and LA drift off into their respective oceans, right?  It almost sounds like a Reactionary’s Wet Dream

The problem is culture.  The collapse isn’t just about a failing dollar and an outsourced economy; it’s the sickness wherein voting yourself other people’s money is more than just morally acceptable – it’s moral law.

The sickness which infects the Downtown Slut & Stud Culture is present here as well.  Last night I got serenaded by a couple screaming at each other in the street.  The cities collapse… and then what?  Will the Hicks and Bravos of the countryside come to our rescue, and rebuild a True Western Civilization?

Or will they turn to the same Political Cannibalism that destroyed the cities?

Here’s the thing about populist dictators – Hitler, Stalin, Mao – they glorify the countryside, while relying upon the lowest common denominators to put them into power.  The results are never pretty.  When the intelligentsia vote in a pseudo-dictator, you get Obama – and while he might be a nasty piece of work, his Evil is in destroying the future, rather than destroying the present.  The true dictators eat their own subjects.

The collapse will start in the cities – they’re the most fragile – and for a while it will go fast.  But by the time it gets to the country it will slow down again.  There’s so much wealth out here that the rot won’t be noticeable at first.  Just as the Intelligentsia in the cities gradually transformed prosperous neighbourhoods into ghettos with their Progressivism, the Country Folk will degenerate their economy through Populism.

Ironically, it’s the Intelligentsia in the cities who force the country to remain economically viable.

The collapse could be very long and excruciating, not so much a Depression as an intermittent decline.  The Apocalyptic Scenarios us City Folk imagine would only be the first act of a dismal tragedy.

Of course, the collapse must happen.  Death and Rebirth and all that other Druidic Goodness.  The system’s too gouty and arthritic for us to ever vote it back into normality.  But there will be a very brief window – if there’s a window at all – where it might be guided into a renewed flowering.  And if we miss that window..?

Hitlers rely upon the short-sighted, and the non-productive.  Might it be possible to form an aristocratic alliance amongst the productive and well read?

I wonder what Nietzsche would say about the matter?