If Leviathan needs a mascot, here‘s the guy.

A couple of remarks on the recent unpleasantness which have every chance of becoming thoroughly mainstream. First, a reminder from Mickey Kaus:

… there’s a good argument that “welfare benefits + ethnic antagonism” is the universal recipe for an underclass with an angry, oppositional culture. The social logic is simple: Ethnic differences make it easy for those outside of, for example, French Arab neighborhoods to discriminate against those inside, and easy for those inside to resent the mainstream culture around them. Meanwhile, relatively generous welfare benefits enable those in the ethnic ghetto to stay there, stay unemployed, and seethe. Without government subsidies, they would have to overcome the prejudice against them and integrate into the mainstream working culture. Work, in this sense, is anti-terrorist medicine. (And if you work all day, there’s less time to dream up ways and reasons to kill infidels.)

Secondly, from Richard Fernandez:

The Washington Post sets out five charts to explain Sweden’s “youth riots.” “The violent youth riots that spread across Stockholm’s suburbs this week seem at odds with the public perception of Sweden as one of the world’s most liberal and tolerant countries.” We are told the “youth riots” are due to the relative underprivilege of the “foreign born.” But does the Post mean Chinese immigrants then? No they don’t. The Washington Post knows what it means and we are supposed to know what it means, but we are not supposed to admit that we know what it means.

ADDED: Foseti ties things together, beginning with this exquisitely ominous sentence: “In Sweden, only dark explanations can explain the burning cars.”

ADDED: Considerably less likely to become ‘thoroughly mainstream’ any time soon.

Doug Casey interviewed at The Daily Bell:

Things have seemed to have gotten better in the world over the last few years since they’ve had massive quantitative easing – which is to say currency printing. Sure, if you create trillions of dollars of currency units it makes people feel richer than they really are and it encourages them to continue living above their means. It just guarantees an even worse depression. What’s coming up is going to be the biggest thing in modern history. It’s not just going to be financial and economic. It’s going to be a political, social, and military earthquake, as well.

And:

The 19th century was the most peaceful and prosperous time in the world’s history. And the rate of growth was far higher, and sounder, than it is today, as well. That was largely because the state was a relatively minor influence in society. Inflation didn’t exist because gold was money – gold was the international currency – taxes were extremely low, regulations were low. The answer is to go back to something that actually worked, which was the economic system we used in the 19th century. It wasn’t laissez-faire capitalism, but it was far closer to it than what we have today, which is to say nothing but variations of socialism and fascism.

Who could have imagined that Obama’s second term would prove so bullish for popcorn sales? There’s a moment of pressure-cooker catastrophe beyond which the very idea of ‘keeping a lid on things’ becomes hysterically comical. The lid isn’t even in the kitchen, it’s blasted through three stories of apartment ceilings and compromised the structural integrity of an entire housing block. The media has no choice but to join the feeding-frenzy — under scandal-max conditions that would look ridiculous — and besides, they’ve been scandalized.

Unlike euphoric conservatives, still less ecstatic Republicans, neoreactionaries are motivated to stay calm and focused. Runaway scandal meltdown only furthers Dark Enlightenment when it overspills party-political point-scoring to corrode the foundations of the regime.

When government is understood realistically, as a complex ideologically-saturated institution distinct from the superficial vicissitudes of electoral politics, it is revealed as an essentially deep-partisan project (the Cathedral). The government is not commanded by progressives, it is progressive. It’s not ‘us’, it’s ‘who, whom’. Once this is exposed in detail, and lucidly comprehended, the neoreactionary case has been made in its entirety.

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Zero Hedge hosts a minor masterpiece by ‘Eric A.’ (submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith), orbiting the basic insight that calamity can’t be rushed: ‘A Brief History Of Cycles And Time’ (Part I, Part II). Economic rhythms set their own pace, within which even panic and euphoria are controlled. Why hasn’t the worst yet happened? “It isn’t time.”

So here we are, like those before us, warning of our own Great Depression, of our own World War, or of even larger cycles like the fall of the English, Spanish, or Roman empires. And so far as we can tell, few listen and nothing changes. Why?

Because it isn’t time.

The most remarkable fact — supported by a modest yet buoyant raft of data — is how much lucid anticipation has preceded the ‘shocking’ disasters of the past. It was quite clear what was coming, but that changed nothing, because it wasn’t (yet) time. The trend momentum of the aggregate — the ‘molar’ — is what decides. Beneath the waves are tides.

The conclusion (“make your own lifeboat”) strikes me as weaker than the analysis deserves. That is hardly surprising, since it comes packaged in the genre of financial consultancy rather than metaphysical exploration. It says a great deal about the structure of modernity that our most insightful Cassandras should appear before us as neatly-dressed gentlemen discussing the structure of our pension plans.

Heartiste (via Jim):

Stick a fork in the West, she’s done.

Power is an Idea. It is exactly what it is thought to be.

Even among pre-civilized social animals, where the temptation to confuse power with force is strongest, the need to demonstrate force is only sporadic, and wherever force is not continuously demonstrated, power has arisen.

That is how dominance distinguishes itself from predation. On occasions, no doubt, a predator dominates its prey, convincing a struggling herbivore that resistance is futile, and its passage into nourishment is already, virtually, over. Even in these cases, however, a predator does not seek to install an enduring dominion. It matters not at all that its command of irresistible force be recognized beyond the moment of destruction. There is no social relationship to establish.

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Daily Bell: Is the world headed toward a further depression?

Total world debt relative to world GNP (here I have to resort to a term – GNP – that is a fallacious concept of present-day economics) is so great that it cannot be sustained. The whole apparatus is coming down. There is no alternative to collapse. Collapse is not comparable to depression. From a depression, if humans are allowed to act, the mistakes can be written off and human effort will restore prosperity. Collapse involves social collapse, and with social collapse you get social fragmentation and revolution. Dark days ahead!

Kaplan goes full Moldbug:

Unless some force can, against considerable odds, reinstitute hierarchy … we will have more fluidity, more equality and therefore more anarchy to look forward to. This is profoundly disturbing, because civilization abjures anarchy. … without order — without hierarchy — there is nothing.

Perhaps, in the field of international relations, Kaplan is more Moldbug than Moldbug, presenting an uncompromisingly hardline reactionary model of world order, completely undisturbed by domestic considerations or even the slightest hint of libertarian descent. If sovereignty is conserved globally, as well as nationally, a worldwide Patchwork order looks as improbable as a stable constitutional republic, and exit options evaporate. Scale-free Moldbuggian analysis could prove more than a little blood-chilling.

Joseph Chamie has a bridge to global harmony to sell you:

… with US immigration increased to 10 million per year, the enhanced America with a population of 1.6 billion by century’s close would mean a more secure and flourishing world. As the world’s most populous nation by 2100, America would strengthen its capacity to continue promoting democracy, freedom and development, thereby ensuring peace, stability and prosperity for every region of the world.

What could possibly go wrong?

ADDED: How (oh how) could this happen? Sailer’s genius on full-burn: “It’s funny how the refugee system works. It’s almost as if foreigners who are really good at getting their neighbors to hate them seem to wind up as refugees in America more than foreigners who are good at getting along with their neighbors.”