The Gathering Storm

The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Charles Hugh Smith

There is no single cause of the gathering storm; in complex systems, dynamics feed back into one another, and the sum of destabilizing disorder is greater than the sum of its parts.

Causal factors can be broken into two categories: systemic and social/economic. Smith discusses the S-curve of rapid expansion, and the ratchet effect.

Social crises, constitutional crises, financial crises: All of these are to some degree manifestations of the failure of centralized systems that arose to benefit from conditions that no longer exist.

America’s centralized institutions and systems are failing, and shuffling the management and tweaking the parameters cannot stave off collapse.

Nobody admits that the system is failing, however, and this is the source of populism and other manifestations of social disorder.

The many are politically powerless and divested of capital. America’s centralized system concentrates wealth and power into the apex of the wealth-power pyramid. In this apex, wealth, power, and control of media and surveillance all mix easily.

Rather than admit the failure of the socioeconomic system, those benefiting from its gross imbalances are pursuing a multi-pronged strategy of control.

Smith discusses propaganda and bribery.