"The combination of socialism for financiers, collapsing prospects for the bottom 50%, and the surrender of our minds to Big Tech’s cloud capital gave birth to a Brave New West, whose overweening elites have little use for the last century’s value system. Free trade, anti-trust rules, net zero, democracy, openness to migration, diversity, human rights, and the International Court of Justice were treated with the same contempt with which the US treated friendly dictators – its “own bastards” – after their usefulness ended.
With Europe rendered impotent by its inability to federate political power after it had federated its money, and the developing world more in debt than ever, only China is left standing in the West’s way. The irony, however, is that China does not want to be a hegemon. It just wants to sell its wares unimpeded.
But the West is now convinced that China poses a lethal threat. Like Oedipus’s father, who died at his son’s hand because he believed the prophecy that his son would kill him, so the West is working tirelessly to push China to take the plunge and seriously challenge Western power, such as by turning the BRICS into a renminbi-based Bretton-Woods-like system.
In 2024, the West continued to grow stronger. But, with its value system in the gutter, so did its penchant for engineering its decline."
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