Ordered to do so, a soldier charges through a hail of bullets toward his objective.  Instinctively a soldier falls on a live grenade and his life is snuffed out.  Folks at home honor these soldiers, as they should.  Why?  What is going on here?  The answer is found in one word: trust. 

The soldier trusts that the order is meant to prevent a greater harm.  He trusts the system.  He is willing to bet his life on this trust.  The hero who sacrifices his life to save his buddies has infinite trust that this is necessary.  Those who honor this bravery and self-sacrifice do so in gratitude for the trust those soldiers have given them when they sent them into battle.

All societies are based on trust.  It doesn’t matter how the society is organized. It could be a democracy, king and country, or even a totalitarian dictatorship.  What matters is that the people of that society have trust in their system and in their leadership.  Without that trust there is chaos.

The imbecilic way we withdrew from Afghanistan has created a monumental crisis, not just domestically, but for the entire world.  Everywhere now, within and without, trust in United States has been irretrievably lost.  We are now at a pivot in time around which all of history is in rotation.  As a result of the stupendous incompetence of the Biden administration the world will never be the same. 

The American order following the Second World War has been permanently demolished.  What will replace it we don’t know.  Will the world be more dangerous?  Again, we don’t know.  Perhaps it may even become safer.  What we do know is that it will be very different.

The chaos the world now faces is the consequence of a philosophical disease that has long been gnawing at our constitutional democracy, as well as at the foundations of other nations.  In America we call this disease progressivism.  This disease has taken many forms.  Here it is technocracy – governance by experts, by the elite.  Other lands have tried even more pathological varieties of progressivism.  Communism, fascism and Nazism are all mutations of the same Marxist progressive disease.  In all cases, whether technocracy or otherwise, the few boss (i.e. enslave) the many.

Progressivism is rooted in social reform.  Progressives everywhere always have good intentions – they are optimistic.  Unfortunately, these people fervently believe they have all the answers.  They don’t, of course.  They may not have any workable answers.  It doesn’t matter to them.  Because of their indomitable certainty, progressives claim the privilege of telling everyone what to do.  But then they make a mess of everything.  What we are dealing with is hubris.  And Hubris summons Nemesis.  Progressivism is the kiss of death.  It destroys all it touches. 

Why is this so?  Progressives ignore the human reality that we are all fallible creatures – including themselves.  And, some people are real monsters.  We are subject to what theologians call “Original Sin.”  Our founders recognized this which is why they constructed our Constitution in such a way as to dampen the occasional enthusiasms of Utopian ideologies such as progressivism.  Our founders realized that it is better for each individual to work out his own salvation than to be forced to conform to someone else’s notions of good and evil.

I will leave it to historians to figure out how progressive ideology successfully infiltrated and captured so many of our institutions – both public and private.  Historians also need to explain the recent peculiar perversion of progressivism into the enthusiastic insanities of wokeness, sexual dysphoria, and Critical Race Theory. 

However we got here the result of progressive dominance is the breakdown of trust in too many of our institutions: In our political leadership, in our system of justice, in our educational institutions, in Big Science, in our mainstream media, and in our business sector, particularly Big Tech. 

Most importantly, we have lost trust in the vote.  There is plenty of evidence that the result of the last presidential election may not be valid.  Liberals covertly admit this when they adamantly oppose any audit of the vote.  Fortunately, a corrective process is underway as voting rules are being tightened.

Integrity of the vote is vital.  It is only when we can again trust the democratic process that we can begin to clean up the mess in our institutions.  It may take many years for our democracy to heal itself and when it does our political environment is likely to be very different from what has prevailed over the last few decades.

Unfortunately, what started as a domestic problem has now engulfed the entire world.  America can no longer be relied upon as steadfast.  America is no longer a reliable shelter.  Trust is busted.  What all now recognize is that occasionally the democratic process will throw an idiot into the Oval Office.  That is the fallibility of democracy.  If it happens once it can happen again.  All international commitments are subject to being nullified on a whim.  Now, each nation must look to its own future, to its own security.

For the next three years all our friends and allies will be wondering if.  Will our treaty commitments and protective promises still hold?  Probably they will.  Domestic politics will likely keep Biden’s feet to the fire.  Still, without trust, there is that if.

Three years from now we are almost certain to elect a strong, honorable, president.  For the duration of his term of office our foreign commitments will be assured.  But still, other nations will forever be wondering if.  Just how fickle is the American electorate and how secure is the vote?  Nations will take measures accordingly.

For many years to come the Pacific region will be the center of attention.  China has already greatly expanded its nuclear missile arsenal and is undergoing further expansion.  Why are they doing it and what will be the local response? 

Taiwan, reacting to China’s conventional military buildup has just announced a dramatic expansion of its forces.  The substantial increase in their military budget will be devoted not to conventional arms, as one might expect, but to missile defense and long range ballistic missiles.  Is Taiwan sending a message?  What use are long range ballistic missiles without nuclear warheads?  What use is missile defense except against nuclear weapons?

Both Japan and South Korea have long had the capacity to quickly produce nuclear weapons.  Japan is believed to be able to produce nuclear weapons in less than a year.  It is constrained by an easily changed law.  South Korea is only inhibited from going nuclear by its current leadership.  The people there are overwhelmingly in favor of having nuclear weapons.

Australia lags behind because it has not developed a nuclear power industry.  So it would probably take some years to develop nuclear weapons capability.  But remember, the U.S. did it from scratch in three years.

Without the sure guarantee of the American nuclear umbrella, the West Pacific Region will likely become nuclear armed to the teeth.

Then there is the Middle East.  As a result of Biden’s blunder, Iran no longer is inhibited from producing nuclear weapons.  They will come soon enough.  Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in the area will likely purchase such weapons in response – pending developing their own production capability.  All it takes is money. Nuclear weapons are expensive to make or purchase, and the Arabs are rich.

Joe Biden, and his people, are great fools.  By destroying trust they have smashed nearly a century of stability with the consequent possibility that the entire world will now go nuclear.  Will this be a better world?  After all nuclear weapons are expensive as well as dangerous.  And being costly is itself a deterrent to their use.  The expense and deterrent value of nuclear weapons have kept the greater peace for the best part of a century.  Let us hope that Biden’s blunder may actually increase stability as a result of nuclear proliferation.  Otherwise, hold on to your hat! 

Image: Screen shot from video by CNBS via YouTube

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