The End Of Empire

Part II

To help understand our present turmoil, I’ve been promoting the book The Calm Before the Storm. But I’ve also discovered another book along similar lines, published more than 25 years ago. Here’s a quote, predicting events in our era, wherein the authors speak of a “Crisis era populism,” in which “a charismatic anti-intellectual demagogue … with a winner-take-all ethos that believes in action for action’s sake, exalts strength, elevates impulse, and holds weakness and compassion in contempt. Add class desperation, anti-rationalism, and perceptions of national decline. The product, at its most extreme, could be a new American fascism.” (The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe.)

In a previous piece, to be found in the March Ojo, I spoke of Empire circling the globe from east to west in a 2500-year cycle since the last Change of Ages (from Aries to Pisces). So now what happens in the “dawning of the Age of Aquarius?” Do we ride around for another cycle? Is Empire declining in the US and headed back to Asia, perhaps specifically to China?

Well not of course according to the new US President Donald J. Trump, who assures us that ONLY HE can drag the US backward in time to a position of global predominance. He will use petroleum (maybe, if necessary, coal) to dominate world markets. Who knows, maybe he can persuade Tesla to take us back to the 1950’s in 12 miles per gallon gas-guzzling Lincoln Continentals. No solar. No wind. (Unless it’s one of his speeches.) But first he must win this competition for chips and batteries with pesky China.

Ah-ha. China controls its own population through info-gathering apps like Tik-Tok! No way we’re gonna allow China to snoop on loyal Americans! Sell Tik-Tok or get out!

Um, well, just a minute here. Trump did say. And then he didn’t. It became, let’s wait a while, because I think – I CAN MAKE A DEAL!

And what kind of deal would that be, Donald? Something where China pays the American government (and you, Donald)? Hmm, how many millions/billions could that bring in? Or a deal where Tik-Tok shares its info on Americans with D? Or, even better, shares its info on Americans and Chinese (and Europeans and, well, anybody), plus a payoff. The Perfect Trifecta of Patriotism (corruption)! Make money, acquire power, subvert opponents.

So, Trump needs a little time to decide whether his source of power is Americanism (get out, China!). Or his source of power is the billionaires that Tik-Tok might add.

Granted, I’m being more than a little caustic and cynical here, but here’s the point: The US IS a declining empire. It’s in crisis. (But so is the rest of the world.) The relevant questions are: how severe will that decline be, how long will it take, and what will replace it? Will China replace it? Sure, they’ve got some advantages. A much bigger population. An energized population willing to work harder for less. And a big lead in critical industries, primarily electric vehicles. But they have problems too. A declining population, partially a result of the “one-child” program. A real estate crisis. And a major economic split between the new middle class of the coastal cities and poverty of the interior. As well, China lacks the cushion provided by oceans which insulates the Americas, while facing competition from regional antagonists or partial antagonists such as Japan, South Korea and India.

But there’s another difference between China and the Empires which have preceded it. Something that few people seem to notice. Namely that China has never had a tradition of anthropomorphic deity. No Jesus. No Yahveh. No Allah. No Krishna. No Mithras. No Macho Big Guy in the Sky telling them that they’re his favorites and everything belongs to them. The closest they came was the concept of Heaven, which perhaps suggests something like the idea of “Holy Spirit.” Under Confucianism, which we might call “the rule of correct behavior,” “Heaven” could be used to control the under-classes in their relation to the rulers and so be made an instrument of repression. Which in some eras it was. But Confucianism could as well be interpreted as polite, respectful, and even equalitarian behavior among all peoples.

China through the millennia had two other powerful spiritual traditions: Buddhism, and Taoism. Buddhists, who could always retreat inside to nirvana, made for a docile population in times of peace, but did not make for good soldiers, or imperialists. Taoism, a more dynamic doctrine with an implicit equality between Female (Yin) and Male (Yang), encouraged people to align with nature, both inner and outer, and while willing to defend the self, did not seek to impose it on others. China’s final contributor to the alchemical makeup of its soul was Marxism-Leninism, which has enabled China to ground itself in the material world.

In sum, one might hope that the Chinese character is not prone to either imposing or accepting the control of deities. A concept of course which remains to be tested post Xi-Jinping. I recently heard a prominent Chinese economist argue that while China presently has a politically autocratic system, it has a diffused independent economic system, which rewards innovation.

What I am proposing is the idea that the shift of empire back to Asia, with China as host rather than imperator, might be the closure of the Age of Empire, (again, the last 2500 years) in favor of what we could indeed call a “New Age” of global planetary multi-culturalism. A recent news item encouraged me in this direction. A small Chinese tech firm called DeepSeek (think about the name) recently announced a breakthrough in advanced chip design for AI, with lower cost and energy requirements than any of the big Western tech firms. Many were shocked or even horrified by this display of Chinese ingenuity. Ironically, however, DeepSeek was able to do what they did by building onto an intellectual frame released by the American firm Meta, which had released its own research through Open Source, rather than retaining it to boost its own stock and companies. A very un-Trumpian position to take. In other words, Meta basically said, “the more of us there are working on this, the better off we all will be.” And the Chinese engineers responded, “here’s back at ya,” and released their breakthrough tech back to Open Source! As if to say, “Yeah, we’re in it together!”

There’s hope. Trump is the wild card precipitating the crisis. His programs won’t work, but they will force us into a confrontation requiring major re-adjustments in our socio-economic realities just as George Friedman predicted in The Storm before the Calm. Just as Strauss and Howe predicted in their book The Fourth Turning, written some 30 years ago. Title perhaps taken from the Byrd’s song “Turn, Turn, Turn,” in turn from the Book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: “For everything there is a season.”