Gradually, Then Suddenly

     When Ernest Hemingway was asked “how does a country go bankrupt?” he famously replied, “Gradually, then suddenly.” Hemingway had glimpsed an important truth about the onset of financial calamities. Yet that insight actually applies to a wide range of disasters.

     There will be some who can see the clouds of crisis forming when they’re still a long way off. That few will note what they see in relatively calm voices, and will make recommendations for how it might be averted. A few more – the more alert who have paid attention to the previous group and assessed the evidence rationally – become alarmed as the crisis approaches. When they join their voices to the few, those in power typically become alarmed, for the preventative required of them would endanger their power and status. When it’s near enough to be seen without field glasses and a majority takes notice, the power elite, alarmed that they’ll be held accountable for their inaction, look to their lifeboats and their foreign bank accounts…and a general panic ensues that, tragically, accelerates the onset of the disaster.

     Don’t imagine that this pattern applies solely to financial crises. It applies to the breakdown of law and order just as well.

     Just in case you haven’t been following the news from Europe, Germany is in serious trouble. Over a million Middle Eastern Muslims have invaded the country with the passive cooperation of the German federal government. Those Middle Eastern Muslims have brought with them all their usual accoutrements: rape, murder, demands for special privileges, and the general disruption of civil peace. The legendary order of German society is critically endangered. Incredibly, the target of the German power elite is not the Middle Eastern horde destroying the nation, but the political party that formed in response to this invasion: the Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD. The ruling Green / CDU alliance is struggling to ban that steadily rising populist movement.

     Just as is the case here in the Land of the Formerly Free, the political Establishment of Germany is attempting to paint the AfD as “a threat to democracy.” They may yet muster a sufficient force to have the AfD outlawed. The Establishment’s attention appears wholly consumed by the AfD. It has no time or energy left to deal with the swelling crime and violence attendant to the aforementioned Muslim horde.

     Recently, as left-wing apologists for keeping Germany’s borders open strain for ever more tortured rationales, this item resurfaced:

     Do you think that declaration will somehow gentle the Muslim hordes currently raping German women and girls at an unprecedented rate, Gentle Reader?

     The breakdown of law and order is another of the catastrophes that comes upon a nation gradually, then suddenly. Watch Germany; it appears to be a textbook case. Then watch the streets of our nation, for we travel a similar path.

     People who foresee and foretell calamities are seldom popular with the Establishment. Nor do they become more popular with those mandarins when it turns out that they’re right. The object of the powerful is to remain in power; they view any and all developments that threaten the status quo as threats to them first and foremost. If there’s a mantra that applies to Establishments of all places and times, it would be Don’t rock the boat.

     There are cases that diverge from that pattern, of course. Now and then an Establishment will embrace a vision of disaster. The subject must be something the powerful can use to increase or solidify their power: e.g., “global warming / climate change” and the COVID-19 pandemic. But such cases are exceptions that follow a pattern of their own: rather than addressing the (usually fictitious) crisis, the elite use it as a rationale for increasing their power over private citizens.

     Here in the United States, the tranquility and order of daily life has taken a succession of blows. The “George Floyd riots” of the Teens and early Twenties were among the earliest signs that things were becoming unsettled. The powerful who commanded forces capable of quelling those riots did essentially nothing. In the usual case, the forces of order were explicitly told to stand down. The kindest explanation I can muster – i.e., that the Establishment hoped that the riots would burn out without the need to recur to massive exertions of counter-violence – is also the least plausible.

     Anyone with three functioning brain cells could see what would follow. When savage mobs are told, sotto voce, that their looting and pilfering will go unpunished, is it at all reasonable to think they will simply stop? Would they be doing it at all if it weren’t something they’ve wanted to do – something that will get them something they want?

     The states and cities worst beset by this plague are now helpless before it. Increasing numbers of people who were deterred by the fear of punishment have become aware that punishment is not in the offing. Police forces are ever less able to act against the rampant lawlessness. If you thought the “knockout game” was fun, you’ve got a lot to look forward to.

     America has already lost its “high trust society.” Present trends continuing, we’re going to lose a lot more…and there’s no indication that those trends will do anything but continue.

     There is no Last Graf. As matters stand, even a Certified Galactic Intellect couldn’t come up with a means to stop the juggernaut bearing down upon us. But I can tell you this: in the near term, the trends will accelerate gradually. People in peaceable districts will show an increasing preference for staying in their homes. People in districts turning unruly will show an increasing mobility, even at great cost. The demographic dynamics, like the disorder, will increase gradually…then suddenly, as the norms are abandoned by all and sundry.

     No, you don’t have enough stored food, water, medicines, guns, or ammo. And while you’re improving your supplies of those things, buy a few gallons of ammonia, a whole lot of iodine, lots of paper coffee filters, and a couple dozen cheap ceramic mugs. Time’s a-wasting, so get cracking.

     “The fall of Trantor,” said Seldon, “cannot be stopped by any conceivable effort. It can be hastened easily, however. The tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the Galaxy. Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds. Have me killed and Trantor will fall not within three centuries but within fifty years and you, yourself, within a single year.” [Isaac Asimov, Foundation, emphasis added.]