Why America and Britain Are Both Self-Destructing

America and Britain Both Collapsing Isn’t a Coincidence. It’s a Lesson in How Societies Fail.

Image Credit: Daniel Lindh. Follow him here. 

Look at the world today, and a striking fact glares out at you. The bellwethers of social collapse are…Britain and America. The world’s two largest English-speaking societies. Old friends. Nations with similar political philosophies, both of whom will tell you they’re among the world’s oldest democracies. And yet? Both are in dire, surreal states of collapse. In America, you can get gunned down for…knocking on someone’s door…going to school…just existing. In Britain, ambulances can take…days to show up…you can’t get a doctor’s appointment…nothing works…and the Home Secretary is openly called racist by more moderate members of her own party, because of her vile comments and policies, which scapegoat innocents for all the above.

How did it come to this? After all, these are two of the world’s richest and most powerful societies. Why are they collapsing? That they are collapsing shouldn’t be in much doubt. Britain’s experiencing the sharpest decline in living standards in recorded history. America has four to five generations in steep downward mobility. In both nations, fanatics and lunatics have seized the reins of power, and are doing their best to deconstruct democracy, render it a shell. Of what kind? What’s really striking is that in both nations, political economy isn’t about democracy at all anymore — expanding, guaranteeing inalienable rights, building institutions and systems to enact them. It’s become about taking rights away.

In America, this situation is acute. It’s painfully obvious to see. The Supreme Court took women’s rights away, just like that — snap. Not just their right to “abortion,” or reproductive healthcare, but…almost every basic right there is. Privacy, expression, movement, association. Want to leave a Red State? Sorry, we need to check why, if you’re a woman. This state is a prison for you now — you’re only allowed out if we let you. How many rights does that violate? Every single one on that list above. Rights are disappearing in America faster than anyone can keep track of or count. Take DeSantis’s plans to turn America into a giant Florida. That’d mean…book bans…bans on history classes..the criminalization of teachers, professors, doctors, nurses…tip lines to inform on neighbors, for not being part of the…

The Project. You see, rolling back rights — think of women’s rights for example — has been a crusade on the right for decades now. But what’s different about this age — in Britain and America — is that the right is getting what they’ve wanted for decades. The furthest, most fanatical, fringe, lunatic, extreme, violent, insane parts of the right. As a European MEP just finally openly said — Europe’s leaders now think of Britain as a far right country. And America’s not far behind.

Brits think that the example above — the Supreme Court taking American womens’ rights away, suddenly, just like that, snap, gone — is extreme, and it is. But they think it doesn’t apply to them, and in that, they’re wrong. Their lunatics and fanatics on the right had Three Big Goals — and the striking thing about now is that each of those goals has been realized, in the span of a decade or so. Tear down the NHS. Eviscerate the BBC. And leave Europe. It’s hard to overstate just how grand — and delusionally foolish — these goals were. Brexit destroyed the economy. The loss of the NHS — which is effectively gone, as in that’s what not being able to get an ambulance or a doctor’s appointment means — is ravaging living standards. And the cutting of the BBC’s throat leaves Brits in a miasma of disinformation and misinformation (Americans, that means that when I watch it, their reporters aren’t even allowed to say the word “Brexit” anymore.)

It’s flatly impossible to overstate just how completely crazy it is that the fanatical right in Britain has got everything it ever dreamed of, in one decade — it’s Three Big Goals accomplished.

Now think back to America. It’s fanatical, lunatic right had a set of just such goals, too. Getting rid of Roe vs Wade. Done. Making it impossible to ever regulate much of anything, from guns to utilities to corporate profits. Done. Making it impossible for Americans to ever have a thing like functioning healthcare or public media. Done.

See how that aligns with Britain? Sure, leave out the guns, which are a uniquely American thing. But just as America’s arch-conservatives didn’t want Americans to have much of anything, so neither did Britain’s. They wanted society to be a kind of Darwinian jungle, where it was every man, woman, and child for themselves. And they got it.

This is what’s striking about Britain and America’s joint collapse. Not just that it’s eerily similar — but that the ideologies behind it are the same.