It's at the very least bold to open your article with an argument that your (I assume) people have historically exhibited a certain delusion, but this time feels different. This time, for sure… Even better to cite Huntington anticipating my own rejoinder:
declinist waves come in cycles, there have been no less than five of them since the 1950s, and contrary to popular belief they are actually useful. They play “an indispensable role in preventing what they are predicting.”7 Funny enough, he switched over to the hard declinist camp just a few years later.
– only to proceed in the same direction, inventing a rather dubious narrative about the failure of the new paranoia to take root, because now the decline is already known as true.
As an aside: wasn't Hofstadter himself a yet another Communist sympathizer who sought to pathologize and thus dampen American immune response to a very real infiltration, rather than do unbiased scholarship? (see also: Blacklisted by History, In Denial).
Influenced by his wife, Hofstadter was a member of the Young Communist League in college, and in April 1938 he joined the Communist Party of the USA; he quit in 1939 [45]. Hofstadter had been reluctant to join, knowing the orthodoxy it imposed on intellectuals, telling them what to believe and what to write. He was disillusioned by the spectacle of the Moscow Show Trials, but wrote: "I join without enthusiasm but with a sense of obligation.... [M]y fundamental reason for joining is that I don't like capitalism and want to get rid of it."[46]. He remained anti-capitalist, writing, "I hate capitalism and everything that goes with it," but was similarly disillusioned with Stalinism finding the Soviet Union "essentially undemocratic" and the Communist Party rigid and doctrinaire.
Huh. Communism in 1939. One could scarcely hope to find a purer type of an intellectual who cries only when his little incestuous network is getting Gulag'd, the type Sergei Novikov urges us to not shed any tears for.
Anyway. There certainly exists the dynamic he (and the Substack author) describes – pushed top-down. I'd contend that organic American culture is entirely non-paranoid. It's psyopped; thus the deluge of hare-brained conspiracy theories, at once a manipulated distraction and an outlet for suspicion. As I see them, Americans – at least the type that has built the country and still keeps it running – are trusting, sometimes to the point of gullibility, optimistic, a bit small-minded yet ambitious, mercantile, big believers in win-win and not very big on titanic sacrifice for the common goal decreed by powers that be. They are pretty neoliberal by nature. In short, they can only be hegemonic power material in this paranoid mode imposed on them by misinformation. This stuff is common for all nationalisms, of course, but American case is different on account of how well it works. Maybe it's just the matter of human capital and geography – maybe they just can afford this bullshit, secure in the knowledge that everyone important understands the kayfabe and won't really switch sides out of self-interest.
Exactly like Huntington argues, these spells of declinism and exaggerations of some geopolitical threat are adaptive. @Dean has once stated that American military is one of the few militaries in the world that is willing to test itself to failure; thus, losing to Iraq in wargames, under the condition of an implausible handicap, only to wipe the floor with Iraq in live combat. I'd extend the principle to the whole stack of society: Americans, under the management of their elites, are among the very few who are capable of gaslighting themselves into taking seriously, fearing viscerally, risks that are merely conceivable and far in the future – and acting accordingly. (It's different from e.g. Russian paranoia about NATO-Ukraine, because taking the threat of NATO seriously… would not result in this). On the level of eggheaded analysis, «our models go not yield more than 90% probability that the Chinese regime will collapse on its own before 2050» might be enough of a call for action – expressed as some cheesy Asia'2049 strategy or whatever, but also diplomacy, sanctions, military procurement, using a talking head like Zeihan to tacitly announce your intentions for investors, accelerating the capital flight, and so on. For normies, all this looks like pointless expense. So you've gotta dumb it down: «we are already in decline! THEIR power is growing! They are united and strong, ruthless, rational, ready to do anything to hurt you and your family! It's a matter of time, to arms, to arms! There is a GAP! might attack our allies! Their fleet is oooh, their AI research is aaah, muh IQ, Chinese eugenic superbabies, Chinese hypersonics, we're underdogs here, but we must give our last desperate fight for all that is good and proper! Know, Gook Chink, that you will find a gun behind every blade of grass when you come!»
Of course it's the same now as it was in the 20's century. I hear something something GDP, mumble mumble growing navy, sometimes muh IQ and AI. What's the concrete threat model? China becomes able to chase CSGs out of South China Sea? Attacks Taiwan, threatens Japan, Korea, Australia (lol)? I suppose that could be technically possible, but on every level of looking into the specifics, you see less and less of a realistic possibility. GDP is empty residential high-rises, debt manipulation, and trade with countries which have demonstrated willingness to forgo profits in the name of a better political deal with the US, or are itching to drop China for their own reasons, or are near-failed states. Navy is obsolete before launch – this is a glimpse of the navy of the future, and by the time China approaches the US (forget the entire alliance) in conventional vessels, more advanced versions of such things will have become mainstream. IQ? Chinese IQ writes American papers. Tech? Well, where's their tech? They've been successfully cut off from strategically relevant semiconductors, and that's all she wrote. And, most importantly, that's ignoring their severe internal failings, both cultural and structural, failings which could perhaps be non-fatal – but only on a less competitive planet.
If feels different because it always has to feel real. It's the Sputnik Moment and the Missile Gap all over again. But Americans will only discover this after the fact, having tried hard to prevent an already contrived future. Same as with Japan, and with the Soviet union. No point to discussion.
A nation whose aviation shoots down a «hobbyist radio ballon», where idle commoners cobble together devices which can be mistaken for a superpower's spycraft, is not in decline. It is, perhaps, a slightly unwell nation. In Russian, this mentality is called бесится с жиру – essentially, «going rabid from fat». Very apt, in my opinion.
A nation whose aviation shoots down a «hobbyist radio ballon», where idle commoners cobble together devices which can be mistaken for a superpower's spycraft, is not in decline.
...
Any random piece of aerostatic junk gives a radar return, and the only reason it was shot down was the US was incompetent or uninterested at actually taking a close look at what was floating up there.
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Notes -
It's at the very least bold to open your article with an argument that your (I assume) people have historically exhibited a certain delusion, but this time feels different. This time, for sure… Even better to cite Huntington anticipating my own rejoinder:
– only to proceed in the same direction, inventing a rather dubious narrative about the failure of the new paranoia to take root, because now the decline is already known as true.
As an aside: wasn't Hofstadter himself a yet another Communist sympathizer who sought to pathologize and thus dampen American immune response to a very real infiltration, rather than do unbiased scholarship? (see also: Blacklisted by History, In Denial).
Huh. Communism in 1939. One could scarcely hope to find a purer type of an intellectual who cries only when his little incestuous network is getting Gulag'd, the type Sergei Novikov urges us to not shed any tears for.
Anyway. There certainly exists the dynamic he (and the Substack author) describes – pushed top-down. I'd contend that organic American culture is entirely non-paranoid. It's psyopped; thus the deluge of hare-brained conspiracy theories, at once a manipulated distraction and an outlet for suspicion. As I see them, Americans – at least the type that has built the country and still keeps it running – are trusting, sometimes to the point of gullibility, optimistic, a bit small-minded yet ambitious, mercantile, big believers in win-win and not very big on titanic sacrifice for the common goal decreed by powers that be. They are pretty neoliberal by nature. In short, they can only be hegemonic power material in this paranoid mode imposed on them by misinformation. This stuff is common for all nationalisms, of course, but American case is different on account of how well it works. Maybe it's just the matter of human capital and geography – maybe they just can afford this bullshit, secure in the knowledge that everyone important understands the kayfabe and won't really switch sides out of self-interest.
Exactly like Huntington argues, these spells of declinism and exaggerations of some geopolitical threat are adaptive. @Dean has once stated that American military is one of the few militaries in the world that is willing to test itself to failure; thus, losing to Iraq in wargames, under the condition of an implausible handicap, only to wipe the floor with Iraq in live combat. I'd extend the principle to the whole stack of society: Americans, under the management of their elites, are among the very few who are capable of gaslighting themselves into taking seriously, fearing viscerally, risks that are merely conceivable and far in the future – and acting accordingly. (It's different from e.g. Russian paranoia about NATO-Ukraine, because taking the threat of NATO seriously… would not result in this). On the level of eggheaded analysis, «our models go not yield more than 90% probability that the Chinese regime will collapse on its own before 2050» might be enough of a call for action – expressed as some cheesy Asia'2049 strategy or whatever, but also diplomacy, sanctions, military procurement, using a talking head like Zeihan to tacitly announce your intentions for investors, accelerating the capital flight, and so on. For normies, all this looks like pointless expense. So you've gotta dumb it down: «we are already in decline! THEIR power is growing! They are united and strong, ruthless, rational, ready to do anything to hurt you and your family! It's a matter of time, to arms, to arms! There is a GAP! might attack our allies! Their fleet is oooh, their AI research is aaah, muh IQ, Chinese eugenic superbabies, Chinese hypersonics, we're underdogs here, but we must give our last desperate fight for all that is good and proper! Know,
GookChink, that you will find a gun behind every blade of grass when you come!»Of course it's the same now as it was in the 20's century. I hear something something GDP, mumble mumble growing navy, sometimes muh IQ and AI. What's the concrete threat model? China becomes able to chase CSGs out of South China Sea? Attacks Taiwan, threatens Japan, Korea, Australia (lol)? I suppose that could be technically possible, but on every level of looking into the specifics, you see less and less of a realistic possibility. GDP is empty residential high-rises, debt manipulation, and trade with countries which have demonstrated willingness to forgo profits in the name of a better political deal with the US, or are itching to drop China for their own reasons, or are near-failed states. Navy is obsolete before launch – this is a glimpse of the navy of the future, and by the time China approaches the US (forget the entire alliance) in conventional vessels, more advanced versions of such things will have become mainstream. IQ? Chinese IQ writes American papers. Tech? Well, where's their tech? They've been successfully cut off from strategically relevant semiconductors, and that's all she wrote. And, most importantly, that's ignoring their severe internal failings, both cultural and structural, failings which could perhaps be non-fatal – but only on a less competitive planet.
If feels different because it always has to feel real. It's the Sputnik Moment and the Missile Gap all over again. But Americans will only discover this after the fact, having tried hard to prevent an already contrived future. Same as with Japan, and with the Soviet union. No point to discussion.
A nation whose aviation shoots down a «hobbyist radio ballon», where idle commoners cobble together devices which can be mistaken for a superpower's spycraft, is not in decline. It is, perhaps, a slightly unwell nation. In Russian, this mentality is called бесится с жиру – essentially, «going rabid from fat». Very apt, in my opinion.
...
Any random piece of aerostatic junk gives a radar return, and the only reason it was shot down was the US was incompetent or uninterested at actually taking a close look at what was floating up there.
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