I spend time thinking about the empire from like a strategic viewpoint "if I were interested in continuing the status quo or strengthening it and had power to influence things what would I do?" as a way of trying to understand the last few years, the last 20 years and the last 80ish years since WWII.

And I always kinda come back to the same conclusions. Is this happening because the leaders along the way were all bumbling morons? Partly, yes. The biggest failure though, and one so fundamental to the empire that its rot was practically destined to destroy it, is drinking the koolaid of private property ownership and, in a word, capitalism. Treating capitalism not as a way of generally viewing the economy and generally like how you'd like things to operate but as a religion has absolutely charted a course that can't be avoided unless that thinking is broken across the board and the religion proven false for everyone to see... probably in a spectacular collapse of "the west."

You can't run an empire, which by definition has to have a core, a centralized power base, in a decentralized fashion. Well, maybe you could, but it would have to be much more self-aware and outward about the project. The US empire has always presented as "what empire?" It doesn't officially exist. No president is gonna be at the podium talking about US imperialism. And that's the "problem" (as well as a strength to an extent, I can't deny that. Pretending to NOT be the one behind all the evil shit definitely helps keep people from doing something).

The same theory which says like "all these corporations will compete to produce the best product! How beautiful!" end up being the same corporations all bribing the government to take some portion of control over it to get what they want. So instead of having the ability to say like "yes Raytheon will make billions if we do a proxy war, but that will harm our ability to coerce other states so we won't be doing that... suck it up, guys" you just have politicians and broadly speaking middle and upper income Americans all going along with it. "If stonk number go up, it good!"

You see similar destabilization in all sectors due to rampant "free market" ideology with no buffers. Housing is permanently fucked because the fix would "harm" homeowners, landlords, and ideologically it would be "socialist" to seize land and build high quality free homes. Can't do that! Similar for college. Going back to no tuition or at least heavily discounted for people in low and middle income brackets would "harm" those capitalists who have now invested into universities as a means to profit for themselves. So, can't do it! Nothing can ever go towards less "free market" and it certainly can never harm investors of any sort at any time for any reason. If that means no homes? Too bad. Etc.

It's just this never-ending spiral to hell and it can't be controlled because, well, who the fuck would be able to? The US government is basically designed perfectly in a dogshit way to NEVER have any sort of effective democratic control (real democracy. Populism). The military can't get contractors to actually build working airplanes (lol). Infrastructure can't be rebuilt because someone has to profit but it's legitimately so expensive to do it that it's only feasible for a government entity to just handle the whole build process... but we can't do that because socialism! Just around and around and around the drain spinning faster, sucking in and killing anyone who was unlucky enough to be closer to the hole and the vortex of the spinning destroying the entire globe as it spins faster. But that suction sound is starting to become undeniable, the water level is low, and we're all seeing the drain hole very clearly now and we don't know wtf happens if we all just get sucked in. All we know is plugging that hole would require the power of government and that sounds like socialism. Maybe our Deities like Bezos and Elon will come save us... we will all them a great, basically non-repayable, debt!

Anyway, I obviously think capitalism is the problem. And more specifically the American religion (because it is just that) of unwavering adherence to "free market" neoliberal capitalism. Just the same as a Christian can't question if Jesus was the son of God, no American patriot ™️ can ever question the philosophy of less government, higher profit, means testing for everything until it's totally useless.

Turns out the centrists were the fringe accelerationalists after all.

Indeed, it was pure hubris and this monumental mistake on the part of the west. Prior to the conflict, few questioned the power of NATO, but now it is clear that this alliance lacks the resilience necessary for a serious war effort and that the west's economy is not as self-sufficient or pivotal as once thought. The economic front of this conflict has created an entirely separate economy outside of western influence, further highlighting the importance of Russian resources. This realization is particularly unsettling from a Western perspective because European countries are now forced to purchase these resources at inflated prices through third parties rather than directly from Russia. As such, there's no turning back from this point and it will undoubtedly be remembered as a significant catalyst for the decline of the western empire in history books.

The decline runs so much deeper than that

They could've accepted Russia into NATO and the empire would've lasted indefinitely lol