America’s Auto-immune Attack

Ever since German historian Oswald Spengler published his Decline of the West in 1918, writing a book predicting the downfall of American and Western power has been a route to riches — even as the West continued to dominate global affairs.

But like a broken clock being right twice a day, prophets of doom can also be on the mark sometimes. And searching for a unifying, global theme for 5781 — a year of plague, political earthquakes, social disorder, and natural disasters — it’s hard to escape two conclusions.

One is that a high-decibel Heavenly alarm is being sounded.

The second is that America is in the grip of something like an auto-immune disease. Like Covid triggering a cytokine storm, in which immune cells overwhelm the body, America has turned on itself. It’s losing its global vision, cultural confidence, and even grip on reality. Over the past year, that malaise — social, elite, and geopolitical — has been the country’s dominant export across the Western world. At long last, the declinist gloom merchants may be onto something.