{"id":24175,"date":"2017-06-20T20:14:14","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T01:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24175"},"modified":"2017-06-20T20:14:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T01:14:14","slug":"coming-apart-the-imperial-city-at-the-brink-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=24175","title":{"rendered":"Coming Apart: The Imperial City At The Brink"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Coming Apart: The Imperial City At The Brink<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\nThomas Cole Destruction of Empire<\/b> 1836<\/center>The Conflicts Forum<\/a>, directed by former British diplomat and MI6 \u2018ranking figure\u2019 Alastair Crooke, sent me another unpublished article by Alastair and asked if the Automatic Earth would publish it. But of course. Previous articles by Alastair published here are: \u2018End of Growth\u2019 Sparks Wide Discontent<\/a> in October 2016, Obstacles to Trump\u2019s \u2018Growth\u2019 Plans<\/a> in November 2016 and What is this \u2018Crisis\u2019 of Modernity?<\/a> in January 2017.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Alastair again:<\/p>\n

<\/center>Alastair Crooke: <\/b><\/i>David Stockman routinely refers<\/a> to President Trump as the \u2018Great Disrupter\u2019. But this is not a bad quality, he insists. Rather, it is a necessary one: Stockman argues (my paraphrasing) that Trump represents the outside force, the externality, that tips a \u2018world system\u2019 over the brink: It has to tip over the brink, because systems become too ossified, too far out on their \u2018branch\u2019 to be able to reform themselves. It does not really matter so much, whether the agency of this tipping process (President Trump in this instance), fully comprehends his pivotal role, or plays it out in an intelligent and subtle way, or in a heavy-handed, and unsubtle manner. Either serve the purpose. And that purpose is to disrupt.<\/p>\n

Why should disruption be somehow a \u2018quality\u2019? It is because, during a period when \u2018a system\u2019 is coming apart, (history tells us), one can reach a point at which there is no possibility of revival within the old, but still prevailing, system. An externality of some sort \u2013 maybe war, or some other calamity or a Trump \u2013 is necessary to tip the congealed system \u2018over\u2019: thus, the external intrusion can be the catalyst for (often traumatic) transformational change.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming Apart: The Imperial City At The Brink Thomas Cole Destruction of Empire 1836The Conflicts Forum, directed by former British diplomat and MI6 \u2018ranking figure\u2019 Alastair Crooke, sent me another unpublished article by Alastair and asked if the Automatic Earth would publish it. But of course. Previous articles by Alastair published here are: \u2018End of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[14457,2674,920,1712,15388,4091,259,5326,1024,10522,10864],"class_list":["post-24175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-alastair-crooke","tag-automatic-earth","tag-civil-war","tag-destruction","tag-disrupt","tag-elites","tag-empire","tag-fragility","tag-rome","tag-trump","tag-washington-dc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24176,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24175\/revisions\/24176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}