patrick.net

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-end-of-ordinary-politics.html

John Michael Greer:

In his magisterial twelve-volume A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee explored in unforgiving detail the processes by which societies fail. Some civilizations, he notes, are overwhelmed by forces outside their control, but this isn't the usual cause of death marked on history's obituaries. Far more often than not, rather, societies that go skidding down the well-worn route marked “Decline and Fall” still have plenty of resources available to meet the crises that overwhelm them and plenty of options that could have saved the day—but those resources aren't put to constructive use and those options never get considered.

This happens, in turn, because the political elites of those failed societies lose the ability to notice that the policies they want to follow don't happen to work. The leadership of a rising civilization pays close attention to the outcomes of its policies and discards those that don't work. The leadership of a falling civilization prefers to redefine “success” as “following the approved policies” rather than “yielding the preferred outcomes,” and concentrates on insulating itself from the consequences of its mistakes rather than recognizing the mistakes and dealing with their consequences. The lessons of failure are never learned, and so the costs of failure mount up until they can no longer be ignored.

...

That's what lies behind the crisis of legitimacy that occurs so often in the twilight years of a society in decline—and that, in turn, is the deeper phenomenon that lies behind the meteoric rise of Donald Trump. If a society's officially sanctioned leaders can't lead, won't follow, and aren't willing to get out of the way, sooner or later people are going to start looking for a way to shove them through history's exit turnstile , by whatever means turn out to be necessary.