Rome, Rome, Rome... Ahhh, Rome, the Eternal City. Except it's not and was not, Eternal. She was the centre of a flourishing empire. Then gone. Not immediately, not quickly, but... ineluctably. Slowly, then all at once.
Is today's collapse of the West ineluctable? Feels like it sometimes, when I'm in a pessimistic mood. Then, in my optimistic mood, I think we'll wake up to the threat of bad actors who want to destroy “the West”, the most liberal, the most tolerant, the most consequential, the most inventive, the most impactful civilisation the world has seen.
Who are those "bad actors". Who are trying to take down the West? Well, there's the Islamic World as a whole. The 57 members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, who openly and repeatedly say that the West must be destroyed; that it must bow the knee to Allah and the "Religion of Peace".
Then there's the Global South: the "BRICS" plus. That's Brazil (though not so much), Russia (very much), India (kinda), China (definitely, in its present configuration), South Africa (just generally a bad actor, though weakening).
The video above is a summary of a talk the Triggernometry lads had with the scholar Barry Strauss. There's so much of what he says that sounds eerily similar to what's happening today.
