Comments on: The End Of An Empire in Two Data Sets https://bombthrower.com/the-end-of-an-empire-in-two-data-sets/ Blowing up the Clown World. Sun, 14 Sep 2025 01:17:16 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 By: John Lane https://bombthrower.com/the-end-of-an-empire-in-two-data-sets/#comment-250563 Sun, 14 Sep 2025 01:17:16 +0000 https://bombthrower.com/?p=416#comment-250563 This makes more sense today (09/13/2025)
than it did when you originally wrote it…
(08/13/2018)…it feels now like if the decline of the USA doesn't happen in a rapid fashion, which it likely will not, that instead, the threat looming is looking more and more like WWIII breaking out, which likely will end much rather quickly indeed. People need to distance themselves from overexposure to the endless stream of bad news all politically motivated in presentation no matter where it is found. Break from technology as well, from time to time, when was the last time anyone went a whole week without their phone and looking at it 4 or more waking hours a day? I am like this and it isnt meant to live this life in this manner. No one i know hates their next door neighbors, regardless of their politics, expand that mode of thinking instead of quietly absorbing propaganda it is not healthy, from any direction, in any form. Live long and prosper!!!

]]> By: David Barnett https://bombthrower.com/the-end-of-an-empire-in-two-data-sets/#comment-416 Wed, 15 Aug 2018 10:59:52 +0000 https://bombthrower.com/?p=416#comment-416 In a way, the polarisation chart is a secondary symptom consequential on the deficit chart. People know there is something wrong and look for a simple foe to vanquish to make it right. All politics is like this. People generally vote against what they don’t like rather than for what they want.

This is the reason negative campaigning works and will never be banished.

It is also means that politicians cannot legitimately claim mandates for their platforms. Even if you count all the votes they receive as positive endorsements (highly dubious due to “least evil” voting tactics noted above), usually more people voted against them than for – they merely commanded the largest minority.

I would say that the polarisation trend is reminiscent of the post WW-i Weimar Republic (not a good omen!). People often blame the vindictive Versailles treaty as dooming the Weimar Republic. However, I think its very structure was what doomed it.

Weimar inherited the pre-war German welfare state (an invention of Bismarck) designed to bind all levels of society to the state. All aspects of everyday life were brought into the realm of politics. The government tried to be a benevolent friend to everyone. But a politically derived favour to one group is usually a disfavour to many more. The omni-benovolent state is also an omni-annoying state. That makes it extremely fragile.

What is amazing, in retrospect, is that Weimar survived the great inflation of the early 1920s. Being able to point to the punitive Versailles treaty may actually have helped rally public support. By 1925 the new non-inflating currency was doing its job. But the structural fragility of over-politicization remained.

]]> By: Jim Carroll https://bombthrower.com/the-end-of-an-empire-in-two-data-sets/#comment-412 Tue, 14 Aug 2018 21:13:01 +0000 https://bombthrower.com/?p=416#comment-412 A different take, same them, what I wrote in May 2017. “What Comes Next with the Decline of an Empire”. Minds matter, and minds move. Much of what I predicted is now coming about. https://jimcarroll.com/2017/05/trends-what-comes-next-with-the-decline-of-an-empire/

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