The Mayan Apocalypse and the end of the world . . . as we know it
According to the much sneered at, and much feared, Mayan Apocalypse, tomorrow marks the end of the world. I’m inclined to believe this is true. I don’t, however, expect the earth to explode into a giant ball of cosmic dust or some plague rivaling the Black Death. What I do see, however, is change on a massive scale, greater even than that which occurred when the Soviet Union collapsed.
The changes we’ll see began four years ago and will now accelerate. They relate directly to Barack Obama and the three defining characteristics of his presidency: fiscal irresponsibility, weak world leadership, and a realignment of American interests in Europe and the Middle East.
On the economic front, what we can expect in the future is continued American decline, with Americans expecting and accepting a constantly lower standard of living. The Progressives have us on the road to regression: little houses; little, unsafe cars; empty store fronts; increased homelessness; product shortages; and, of course, the social unrest the inevitably follows upon economic instability or decline. In other words, the end of the American world as we know it.
Around the world, Russia, although declining in population and plagued internally by corruption and want, will do what it always does when things are bad: attack. It will continue to flex its muscles by making mischief. It doesn’t care if it goes down, provided that America’s might precedes it.
China, for all its woes (unbalanced population growth, corruption, killer pollution, etc.) will continue its quest to be the world military power. The world should fear this. America used its dominant military power to spread individual freedom as much as possible; China’s power will be more imperialist in nature.
The EU, which was touted just a decade ago as the wave of the future, will collapse. European states will begin feuding with each other over resources. While that might feel like “same old, same old,” since Europeans have feuded for thousands of years, this go round will be different: each state will have within it a Fifth Column that unites to bring all of Europe down and re-shape it into a new model.
And now, a brief, but important digression:
One of the things Marx believed was that the great worker’s revolution he foresaw would transcend national borders. Remember the slogan “Workers of the world, unite”? Marx was certain that, within the industrialized nations, the workers would abandon national fealty and join with each other against their capitalist overlords.
Had Marx been correct, World War I would have been the worker’s moment. Even as the great powers declared war against each other, the workers ought to have laid down their arms and embraced each other across the battle field. This didn’t happen. German, English, and French workers put nationalism ahead of everything.
The workers’ revolution Marx expected to sweep the industrial world happened instead in backwards, agrarian Russia. Stalin then had to retrofit the supposedly “inevitable” industrial revolution by starving his independent peasant class to death, but that’s another story….
And now, back to the point of this post:
While Marx was wrong about the 19th and early-20th century workers’ allegiance to their nation versus their allegiance, he was correct to envision a group that has loyalty to its unique identity separate from the nations in which its members reside. This group, of course, is Muslims.
Over the past few decades, all of the European nations have invited tens of thousands of Muslims into their borders. These Muslims have refused to integrate, living, instead, in segregated enclaves that have often become laws unto themselves. Within these enclosed communities, the Imam’s preach jihad: the violent overthrow of all world governments, followed by a Sharia world.
When the European pact disintegrates, the powers that be will discover that, even as Germany feuds with France over resources, the Muslims within both those nations form an allegiance that sees them turn against their host countries. The result will be ugly and there won’t be a strong America to stop it.
And then there are Barack Obama’s profound alignment shifts. Both by inclination and calculation, Obama has decided that the old world order, the one that’s been in place pretty much since the end of WWII, isn’t correct. America shouldn’t be palling around with Western nations, which he believes are responsible for Third World oppression. Instead, Obama looks to the Muslim world as the wave of the future. He cultivates increasingly Islamist Turkey; encourages the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise in Egypt; is assiduously neutral towards Iran, to the point of cooperation with its nuclear aspirations; and has cold-shouldered and isolated westernized, democratic Israel.
This is a volte face of staggering proportions and implications. America has now become a prop for the worst kind of dictatorships. Moreover, these are the dictatorships that will fund the Muslim Fifth Column in Europe. Now that Obama has more flexibility, he will accelerate this trend.
Obama’s desire to nominate Chuck Hagel as the Secretary of Defense, although that seems to have stalled for now, perfectly reflects Obama’s New World Order, one that sees a weak America mistreating Israel and cozying up to Muslim dictatorships.
All of which leads me to say that the Mayan Apocalypse is on our doorstep. We just didn’t have the wit or foresight to imagine what it would look like.
