>>10795393This feeling that the end is near is particularly strong in America. I remember reading 'America: the Farewell Tour" by Chris Hedges. He tells an anecdote about people in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They walk around in the abandoned husk of their city, very subdued, docile and quiet. But the citizens all feel the tension in the air. They all know something is coming. Quietly, they keep hoarding firearms.
The hubris of the people and the government is to ignore the decline, which allows it to take its full course. People always act as if the government is in full control, and it certainly seems that way, with their tentacles spreading into every aspect of life with surveillance and propaganda and complete control of the minds of the citizens. But this control is always an illusion. As soon as things begin to fall apart, it evaporates before everyone's eyes.
IT happened in Eastern Europe in the late 1980's. The people the government thought they had fully demoralised began to wake up. The security apparatus that they thought was invincible began to fall apart. The military hegemony they thought they didn't even have to worry about began to unravel. When a society thinks it is too big and too powerful to fail, that's when it inevitably does. And America is the biggest and most powerful society in history.
