Welcome to the age of the Peripheral Man (and Woman)
Dear Americans —
Welcome to the age of the Peripheral Man.
The people you mocked for being primitive and savage, the barbarians from the edges of your empire, the ones to be conquered and ordered around, fit only to grow your bananas, to mine your minerals, to pump your oil, to work your sweatshops, to watch your films and consume your culture. As far as you can remember, you thought the Peripheral Man had nothing to offer you. You thought you were smarter, stronger, and wiser just because you were the ones on top. But something is changing inside you. You don’t want to admit it, but be honest…you’ve had this feeling for a while now. You’ve sensed that something was amiss, that there was something you’ve been keeping from yourself, a profound truth that you had locked up in the deepest recesses of your mind. In this time of American decline, these restraints are no longer working as they should, and you can feel those half-formed fears floating up from the deep, demanding to be heard. And you recoil, scared to confront the truth. And it is this: the Peripheral Man is better, smarter, and stronger than you. Those backwards men and primitive women, the one’s you’ve looked down on for so long…they’re everything that you are not.
They are hard where you are soft. They are wise while you are shallow. They are used to waiting, while you’re entitled and want everything now. They are resourceful, while you’re wasteful. They know their own culture and language and your culture and language, while you barely know your own. They underestimate themselves and overdeliver, while you overestimate yourself and underperform. They have felt defeat and humiliation, while you’ve always been on top. You are atomized, while they are communal. Their chaotic societies have made them sophisticated and versatile, while your well-oiled social machinery has made you simple and rigid. Stability has made you weak, while chaos has made them strong. You have been cruel in your carelessness, while they have always paid the price — not just for their actions, but yours. You have forgotten, they remember.
We know that these are frightening and uncertain times for you, dear Americans. But there is hope. Listen to the Peripheral Man. Your own kind doesn’t have the answers. Your own kind doesn’t even know what questions to ask. Your own kind doesn’t even know what questions to ask. But the Peripheral Man does. The Peripheral Man is wise. We know. We are him. We are her.
—The Peripheral Man and Woman
I think you’re being too optimistic. The collapse of the U.S. isn’t like the implosion of the USSR or the decline of the British Empire. What appears to be happening is that American elites are just discarding the “U.S. A” like a suit of old clothes. Capital has outgrown nation states. Capital now has at its disposal cryptocurrency, private security forces, spyware, and AI. They don’t need foreign services, state treasuries or pension plans. And the world’s oligarchs have decided they won’t pay for any of those things any more. The United States may be falling apart but Blackstone is doing fine. Largest landlord in Madrid. Netflix and YouTube are spoon feeding culture to the masses from Tokyo to Lima to Nairobi. When you get down to fundamentals Putin, MBS, Trump, Musk, and Ackman all have a lot more in common with each other than they do with ordinary Russians, Saudis or Americans. We are all the peripheral people, living in a world run by billionaires.
Peripheral Men are, justifiably, laughing at the decline and/or downfall of America, or what this American born Sri Lankan author refers to as "The White Empire."
https://indi.ca/america-is-crashing-like-sri-lanka-did-hopefully-worse/
Your short article also reminded me of something else, since I guess Hitler has been on the mind lately.
As Aimé Césaire said in his Discourse On Colonialism:
“At bottom, what [white men] cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself … it is the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the n — of Africa.”
IOW, Hitler tried to colonize other white people [treat them like Peripheral Men], using all the tricks in the colonialist playbook, and that was his only real sin.