The Unexpected Savior

How Putin may become the unlikely savior of Western civilization

There is a new world order coming.
The question is: what will it look like?
Will Vladimir Vladimirovich show the way?

I could easily start this post with the first sentence of my last one: “Gloom is all around us” then continue with a quote from the end: “We are living in a collapsing civilization without much of a clue on how to save it.”

The point of understanding the present is the need to plan for the future. The way to understand the present and any element of it is through the understanding the history that led to it.

This is a short post with a long introduction.
Just bear with me, Putin will show up at the end.

As I started writing this post, I found myself in yet another rabbit hole. Several articles and conversation voicing views that are pointing to different aspects of the problems I keep talking about. There are plenty of explanations, but nobody has THE answer. Everybody has AN answer. The ‘experts’ are like a pack of horses with blinders, unable to see outside the tunnel vision of their field of expertise.

They are also bound by the reigning paradigm of their field and a strong motivation to suggest a fix that will solve the problems by bringing them back into alignment with said paradigm without due consideration for the confounders outside of their field of expertise.
Historians and economists will not talk about ideology, social psychology and mass formation or the corruption and machinations of the deep state – and vice versa.

Let’s look at some of the problematic aspects of Western civilization.

Geopolitics

Farid Zakariah, George Friedman, Peter Ziehan, and even pathetic globalist jokes like Thomas Friedman and Yuval Noah Harari are offering their tunnel vision of the future. We could also add Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington to the list.

Each of them are missing most of the story. They do not discuss the stock market, the angst of traumatized generations or the dangers of deficit spending and the welfare society. Fukyama missed even the most obvious problem, the monster of communism hiding within social democracy itself.

History

There is no shortage of authors sharing their grand visions of history. There are dozens of historians either making analogies with the fall of Rome; or bemoaning the loss of the virtuous spirit of the American revolution. Completely disregarding how the world changed since.

The rugged individualism of the frontier spirit that won the West cannot be sold to New York soy-boys and San Francisco drug addicts.
There is no way to go back. John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other"
“The West” (is there a pun here?) do not have those people any more.

The great migration

We are living through one of the great migrations of history. At this point, it is from the rest of the world to the West. It is totally out of control. It only serves momentary political interests without any consideration for the medium to long term consequences. It is an element of civilizational decline and the loss of national/cultural identities. 

Politics

… is so deeply corrupt that it is making any meaningful change impossible. The war on free speech, lawfare and cancel culture making any course correction or any truly bi-partisan change impossible.

Just consider one element of this corruption: Alexander Dugin is one of, if not ‘the’ most prominent intellectual in Russia today. Whatever you think of him, this is a fact. At least ten of his books have been translated to English. None of them can be found on Amazon.
This goes far beyond the question of free speech.
You should know how your enemies think. You can buy Mein Kampf on Amazon, but not one book from Dugin. You can only buy books about (and criticizing) him. How many of you think that Blinken have read The Fourth Political Theory? Shouldn’t it be part of his job description? Let me know in the comments!

Political ideology

Political ideologies are playing a crucial role in the directions of Western democracies. A scary number of people want outright communism. Most want freedom from responsibility. The discourse between the political left and right could be best described as two groups shouting obscenities at the wall between them.

The zeitgeist of fake problems

Climate change, over-population, resource depletion, gender politics, racism, sexism, classism, whateverism, and any kind of fobia-isms; the fear of pandemics, terrorism, nuclear energy, and artificial intelligence are all fake problems designed to create fear and division. They successfully demoralized and traumatized several generations by now. While the problems are fake, the angst they create are very real and they play an essential role in the creation of the other problems discussed here. Some could say that this is not accidental. The proposed solution to all of the fake problems is always more government intervention.

Social psychology, the culture war and the replacement of morality with virtue signaling are all part of the zeitgeist we cannot ignore.

Demographics

Consider this:
“….in 2017, the Canadian Medical Association Journal estimated that assisted suicide could save the government $136.8 million per year in healthcare costs.” (source)
The grossly overextended welfare state has a strong financial motivation to ‘fix’ its problems by programs of euthanasia. How can we possible solve our civilizational problems without addressing this one?
What is the point in talking about housing bubbles and peak resources when we are already living in a murderous, dystopian world? A world where we are importing young immigrants to be exploited for tax revenue while killing the sick and the elderly because they are a liability? All of this to maintain the illusion of the caring welfare state. Tinkering with the stock market will not solve the impending population collapse. Empty planet is a problem. The Birth Gap is a problem. Men Without Work is a problem. The only problem for the state is how to keep the Ponzi scheme alive.
….and how to get away with bloody murder, of course.

Conspiracy

The past few years came with some fascinating revelations. We learned the JFK was killed by the CIA; that the corona virus escaped from US financed bio-weapon laboratory; that Dr Fauci has a long and bloody history; that Jeffrey Epstein was far more than just a pervert and that the worst health hazard is being a friend of the Clintons. Several books have been written on the subjects, the best two are Whitney Webb’s One Nation Under Blackmail and RFK Jr.’s The real Anthony Fauci
What is called conspiracy theory today, used to be called investigative journalism. Let me give you just two excellent examples:
Why the Globalists Engineered the Ukraine War - by

Lily

NAVALNY Was a CIA Asset - by

Helena Glass

Economics and the markets

Just about every serious analyst agree by now that the monetary and fiscal policies of both the US and the EU are leading us toward a major economic downturn.
In The Entire Euro System Faces Failure Alisdaire Macleod shows in great detail how the euro project is doomed to fail.
Jim Rickards, Ray Dalio and Peter Schiff are painting a devastating picture of the US economy.
There is no question, that the system is bankrupt. Even winning the wars against Russia, Iran and China would only give a short reprieve before we would have to face reality.

So where are we?

Not in a good place. Western civilization, liberal democracies, the US hegemonic world order, international institutions, The Golden Billion, Western led globalism are all in decline. An ever-increasing number of people see no way to avoid a crash and they have good arguments to support their views.

Let me offer you a few pointers to articles with a LOT more detail:
Is There a Road Map for What's Ahead?

Charles Hugh Smith

makes a solid case for a negative answer. There is no road map. The world is largely clueless.

Can John C. Calhoun Save America?
In this wonderful essay, Thomas DiLorenzo gives a history lesson to show the Founders foresaw the problems we are facing today

America's empire is bankrupt  - and - We are the authors of our decline
In these two articles, John Michael Greer of Unherd is making a solid argument for the points in their titles.

End of the Globalists w/ Jay Dyer (Live)
This is an interesting conversation on the Duran with a lot of background information and a bit of a conspiratorial bend.

The point of this long list was to show that we do not have “a” problem. We have many, and they are all interconnected. Tinkering with some of the parts will not solve the overall problems.

What did Putin do?

After this long introduction you must be wondering where does Putin fit into this picture.

He just made us face our reality. Putin is the wall Western civilization ran into. Just like the French empire of Napoleon ran into Kutuzov. For the longest time, Putin tried to be part of the West and only this war made him finally realize that the West is not interested in any kind of partnership, only subjugation.

The West helped the awakening of Russia. The sanctions resulted in the opposite of their intended effects, instead of weakening, they strengthened both its internal economy and its international trade.

The proxy war in Ukraine weakened NATO and strengthened Russia.
Worldwide, Russia’s and Putin’s popularity is at an all time high.

Recently, the BRICS gathered in Johannesburg for the 15th BRICS Summit, where they announced the accession of 6 new members from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A further 22 countries have formally requested to join the bloc, which has now been renamed BRICS+. Additionally, more than 40 countries have expressed informal interest in participating.

Following the latest round of expansion, the BRICS now represent close to half of the world’s population and make up 36% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product – more than that of the G7. The power of the Global South can surely no longer be denied on the big stage of world politics.
(From BRICS: The Global South Challenging the Status Quo)

Putin refers to the collective West as the “Golden Billion”.
The rest of the world is fed-up with the West and their exploitative institutions.

I do not think that he was looking for it, but Putin became the figurehead of a movement that is far bigger than him, or Russia. There is a world-wide rebellion against the corrupt, oppressive and aggressive, Western-liberal US hegemonic arrogance.
Living in the West, it pains me to say it, but we do not have a chance.

One could ask WHY? I answered that question in my post A question of sanity:

When I look at the war in Ukraine, I see a classic tragedy. An unresolvable conflict where each party is a victim of its own predicament; where nobody can change course without making a self-destructive sacrifice.

None of the problems I mentioned in this post can be fixed without destroying the very thing that needs to be fixed. But I do not think that the news is all bad.

What will happen?

The only things that – short of a nuclear war – I would be willing to bet on, are:

• The end of the Petro-dollar

• A major economic crisis

• The end of the US lead hegemonic international order

• The slow dissolution of the European project

• The erosion of the economic dominance of the ‘golden billion’ and

• The rise of the rest led by the expanding BRICS

There will be hardship, but it will not be the end of the world. The USA will not go anywhere, and neither will France, Poland or Lichtenstein. I don’t think that the world-map will change in any noticeable manner.

If this will cause much pain, how can I call Putin a savior?
Because he is the fulcrum of the changes that we badly need.
Had the West been victorious in this conflict and the next, they would have been able to create a global technocratic dystopia, slowly dragging the whole of humanity into the abyss. The West needs change and the coming hardship may turn into the start of it.
The multipolar world order with competing international organizations represents a return to distributed decision making. We don’t know how it will turn out, but I am kind of looking forward to it.
Milton Friedman said that:

Then he continued:

“When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

Please help me in my attempt to make sure that we have the right ideas laying around, starting with the sharing of this post. Make it go viral, send it to those who may like it and to those you want to piss off. Our future depends on the right ideas getting around.

Every problem I mentioned in this post would deserve a book on its own and I will return to them in the future.

References

Vladimir Putin | Biography, KGB, Political Career, & Facts | Britannica
An only moderately biased account of Putin’s career

Is There a Road Map for What's Ahead? Great post.

Can John C. Calhoun Save America?
In this wonderful essay, Thomas DiLorenzo gives a history lesson to show the Founders foresaw the problems we are facing today.

America's empire is bankrupt  - and - We are the authors of our decline
In these two articles, John Michael Greer of Unherd makes excellent arguments for the points in their titles.

End of the Globalists w/ Jay Dyer (Live) A conversation on The Duran
… and another one on The Duran: Forever wars w/ Aaron Maté

"What's Coming Is WORSE Than A Recession" — Jim Rickards' Last WARNING
Ray Dalio: The Collapse That Will Change A Generation...

https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1785066534995714067
The Carlson - Dugin interview on X/Twitter