Predictions for the New Year

My record for predicting the upcoming year is right up there with the experts—usually wrong. I didn’t even try last year.

But I am feeling more optimistic about the future than I have for a while. I do not say these things will all happen within the next 12 months, but here is what I see:

Russia will decisively lose the war in Ukraine. The fall of great powers, or lesser powers, tends to come in at least two stages—first they lose a big one, then they do something reckless a couple of decades later, determined to regain their stature. This overreach leads to the decisive final collapse. Witness Germany in WWI and WWII; Saddam in Gulf Wars 1 and 2; the three Punic Wars; Napoleon at Leipzig, then at Waterloo.  Russia is in stage two now, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 91.

I regularly predict that the governments of Russia, China, or Iran will fall. It will happen soon; perhaps not this year, but soon. By my calculations, centrally-managed regimes last no more than one lifetime before the rot forces a collapse—about seventy years. That’s how long the USSR lasted—1917-1991, 74 years. The CCP has been in power since 1949, 76 years. They are in the last throes. 

This may provoke them to start a war to forestall collapse. I feel there is a good chance that this year they will try to invade Taiwan. That often happens when a regime is facing the end: a last desperate lunge for more resources and more capital to keep the lights on. 

But if they do, they will fail. Here’s why: the advance in drone technology gives huge advantage to the defense and in particular makes any sea invasion, requiring large massed vessels and war machines, immensely vulnerable. Given that Taiwan is taking lessons from Ukraine, they could easily with their industrial potential and technical skills produce a drone fleet that could sink Chinese hopes, even without US or Japanese intervention.

The US economy is about to boom. Elon Musk, who is in a good position to make such predictions, expects it to start growing at unprecedented levels within the next two years. This seems a safe bet, due to dramatic improvements in productivity from AI, robotics, and self-driving vehicles. At the same time, the US has a pro-business government in place, which will not choke this growth with regulations.

Indeed, just having Trump in there trying new things and shaking things up can be expected to give the US economy a boost of optimism. Studies suggest that if a company does ANYTHING to shake up standard procedures, esprit de corps rises and productivity improves. Optimism is infectious.

This being so, the Republicans should hold the two Houses of Congress in the midterms. Historically, the ruling party almost always loses the midterms, but if strong economic growth becomes clear by then, I think this will make the difference. Especially as evidence of waste and corruption under Democrat regimes is emerging.

I think the government of Cuba will fall. I think Rubio has Cuba in his sights, and this is part of what is going on between the US and Venezuela—Venezuela has been propping Cuba up. Russia is occupied elsewhere, and is in no position to step in. China may be having their own problems. It seems a good opportunity for the US to put the screws in, and it would be quite a feather in Trump’s red MAGA cap if he managed to end the Communist hold on Cuba. Ending the Maduro regime in Venezuela may only be a bonus.

The popular opinion throughout the developed world is turning hard and fast against mass migration. I expect deportation to become the common policy throughout the developed world. Mass immigration was governments’ solution to population collapse. Soon, such fears will look shortsighted, as AI and robotics allow rapid development with fewer workers. Importing low-skilled bodies is just adding liabilities, apart from risks of cultural collapse.

I get the sense we are on the cusp of a major breakthrough against cancer. This too will reduce the supposed need for immigrants, by extending lifespans. I expect to hear more on this in the coming year.

I get the sense we are on the cusp of a major breakthrough in nuclear energy. I expect to hear more on this too in the coming year. Energy could get a lot cheaper.

This will also take the remaining wind out of the turbines of the “climate change” lobby—already back on their heels.  We will stop hearing much about climate change, and there will be no more appetite for draconian measures by governments in the name of reducing carbon emissions.

This will remove from governments their strongest argument for grabbing more power for themselves and suppressing the growing populist movement. Accordingly, I expect more populist regimes to be elected over the coming year, and the popularity of the remaining “progressive” regimes to continue to fall. Where elections are delayed, there will be growing civil unrest. 

Now let’s see if I got any of this right.

The Devil's Century

Leo XIII

It’s time for some good news. Things may look dark, but it is true that often the darkest hour is just before the dawn.

Christian civilization, sometimes called “Western civilization,” seemed to lose its mojo at about the time of the First World War. So for about a hundred years. As it happens, this fits a prediction by a pope—Pope Leo XIII. He had a vision at the altar that Satan was to be given control for a hundred years—the 20th century. Now, perhaps symbolically, we have Pope Leo XIV. We have seen the worst of the dispiritedness of Christendom in the past few years, with declining church attendance, rising suicide, mental illness, and addiction, mass immigration from non-Christian lands, the toppling of statues, anti-“white” discrimination in historically “white” countries, and postmodern denial of reality itself. But there are signs that is turning around. It has not hit the general public yet, but prominent figures are publicly converting to Christianity almost daily. The sense is that the “New Atheists” have lost the argument, and theism is ascendant in the academy. Scientism is losing credibility with scandals like the Covid countermeasures and vaccine, the draconian measures demanded in the name of climate change, and the inability to reproduce results in published papers. 

Meantime, the computer revolution and now the AI revolution are strong evidence that civilization is not moribund, but more likely on the threshold of a new renaissance, with which should come renewed optimism and pride. 

The aggression of Islam has also caused “Westerners” to realize that they are, in the end, fundamentally culturally Christian.

Civilizations can have bad centuries. It is time for Christendom to come thundering back. Reinforced, I might add, by the renewed cultural vitality of East Asia: Japan, Korea, Thailand, China, Vietnam. Cultural exchange is the essential vitamin of culture.

Despite draconian measures by governments, there is an obvious worldwide trend towards so-called “populist” movements. MAGA in the USA; Reform now leading the polls in the UK; France’s RN and Marine LePen; Meloni in Italy; Milei in Argentina; AfD in Germany; Wilders in the Netherlands. There is an obvious tide towards greater equality, greater democratization, greater freedom; a throwing off of elites. It seems the next stage of liberalization, as happened in the Age of Enlightenment. With better communications and access to information, with everyone owning a printing press and a broadcast license, there is greater ability for the general public to communicate and coordinate, and less scope for government repression. It will be increasingly difficult for oppressive governments to keep the lid on. We have seen this in the Arab spring, in the Canadian trucker convoy, in the Gen X protests in Nepal or Mexico. Governments are scared, and this is why they are trying draconian measures. But I think the technology is against them.

There is suddenly a lot of chatter about antivirals like ivermectin and fenbendazole as possible cancer cures. They are also cheap—out of patent. They are non-intrusive, with apparently few side effects. They may work on other viruses as well—the flu, the common cold. Imagine a world without these diseases. 

Once upon a time, we did not know any effective treatment for bacterial infections; and many died of tuberculosis, or gangrene. Then we discovered antibiotics. It was surely only a matter of time before we discovered the equivalent for viruses. Perhaps we have. 

Many are worried about job losses due to AI; that is surely one common cause for alarm. The job cuts seem to be already beginning. It is hard to conceive of a white-collar job that cannot be done soon and cheaper by AI. But this is looking only at the downside. This also means that the very expensive products of white-collar work will soon be cheaper. Going to law, drafting contracts, accounting, medical care, and the like, could soon be almost free. For consumers, this should mean a time of great abundance—and we ae all consumers.

Elon Musk has an unbeatable track record for seeing what is coming. And he sees a world in which there is “universal high income” without work. Everyone will be “far wealthier than the wealthiest person today.” He sees this within ten or twenty years. We will work if we feel like it.

That does not sound so bad.

We will need more power for all this; and many have long been alarmed about global warming. But improved nuclear power generation, including fusion, seems to be coming onstream now; not to mention much improved batteries, better solar power collectors, and geothermal options. Energy, a major bottleneck, may soon become cheap, non-polluting, and abundant.

This might all be wrecked by war. But the lesson of the current war in Ukraine may be that war is no longer worth the cost. And if it is fought, it will probably in future be fought by drones and automated vehicles attacking infrastructure. This, at worst, seems to mean fewer deaths.

Are we on the dawn of a golden age?

What Rough Beast?

 

It seems clear to me that our contemporary fear of “judgementalism” comes from the secular culture, and owes nothing to Church teaching, or the Bible, or traditional Judeo-Christian morality. It traces back to the “do your own thing” popular culture of the 1960s; before that to such figures as Marcuse, Freud, and before them Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx. 

Jesus himself had no problems with judging the moneychangers, 

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

or the scribes and Pharisees, 

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”

or those who mislead or miseducate children. 

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

He judges the living and the dead, and divides humanity into sheep and goats.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’”

Is this peculiar to him? Is it only he who is competent to judge, being God incarnate? No; John the Baptist, “the greatest born of women,” also has no trouble condemning the Sadducees and Pharisees, 

“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?’”

or judging the acts of Herod Antipas. 

“For Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because John had been telling him, ‘It is not lawful for you to have her.’”

And in this, he is doing the same divine work as all the prophets of the Old Testament: issuing a warning to those who are on the wrong path.

“Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.’”

If we lose this, we lose the ethical essence of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

I see our contemporary refusal to make moral judgments leading to the destruction of a growing number of souls; and in the end the destruction of society at large. As W.B. Yeats put it, we are living in a time in which, increasingly,

"The best lack all conviction,

While the worst are full of passionate intensity."

This is what happens when we refuse the call to "put on the full armour of God." This is what comes whne we refuse Jonah's commission.

Bastille Day

 

Xerxes, famed anonymous left-wing columnist, appears to believe democracy is doomed. He foresees only two possibilities: either sudden collapse, or slow decline. His evidence is the January 6 trespass in the US Capitol, and the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa last February.

I think instead the arc of history favours the growth of democracy. It has to do with the advance of communications technology. Before the invention of movable type, and in general poverty, the scarcity of information demanded government by the few who were educated and therefore in a position to understand the issues and options. There were small democracies long ago, in Greece, Mesopotamia, and the Nordic countries, but these tended to depend on the institution of slavery. Free voting men were an elite minority of the overall population.

With printing, information became more plentiful, and representative democracy become more plausible. The common man was now informed enough at least to be capable of selecting his preferred more learned experts. This took centuries to develop, because it took the printing press centuries to spread and generate a large enough corpus of cheap information. And printing technology improved; benefitting like other tasks from the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Industrial Revolution also, in increasing wealth, gave more people the leisure to read. So things really took off then.

With the Internet, in principle, information is now again becoming exponentially more available. This time it will not take centuries; only years.

The inevitable upshot will be something closer to direct democracy. Experts will be largely replaced by expert systems, available to everyone.

We are commonly told that automation will make the lower classes unemployable. But the opposite is more likely to happen, and is happening. It is making the ruling classes redundant.

Brexit, the election of Trump, the Ottawa Freedom convoy, the January 6th trespass in the US Capitol building, and the current Dutch farmer protests, are, I think, early eruptions of this new and probably unstoppable trend to direct popular government. The emperor is being revealed in his nakedness, and the peasants are gathering their pitchforks. 

It is not as peaceful as it should be, because of the resistance of the privileged to losing their power. The natural reaction is to double down. We saw the same after the invention of printing. First, the aristocrats countered with a new ideology of the “divine right of kings,” and grew more, not less, autocratic. Kings tried to strip powers from the nobles, once the nobles were proven useless, rather than passing it to the people. But over time this was unsustainable in competition with those nations that bent early to the winds of democracy.

We are similarly seeing many governments around the world suddenly become more autocratic; sadly including Canada. But this will be similarly unsustainable.

We live in interesting times.

Is the New World Order Rising? Is It the One They Expected?

 

Not long ago I was lamenting how there were no trustworthy voices any longer. You could no longer trust the academics, who were supposed to be a check on the nonsense of the politicians and the crowd. You could not trust the president of the United States, even to the extent you once could, to be in broad terms on the side of freedom and right. You could not trust the opposition parties. You could not trust the press, another traditional check against a self-aggrandizing elite. You could not trust the scientists; you could not trust the artists; you could not trust the professions. You could not trust the church or the Pope. Everyone had sold out.

But such troubling times raise up new leaders. We are seeing that now, and in sudden strength.

Johnny Depp deserves much credit. He is standing against a social consensus, which has already defeated him several times, that women are always right. He is exposing the reality of spousal abuse against men, and the bias of the legal system in favour of women. He is exposing the reality of narcissism, which is to say, human evil, which is generally these days denied. Everyone not deliberately turning their faces away is seeing now just what it looks like and how destructive it can be to anyone who comes in contact with the narcissist. Much good may come of this, for uncounted many sufferers and for justice in society as a whole.

Not to mince words, Amber Heard is purely, consciously evil. This is what evil looks like. Evil thrives so long as nobody calls it out. Depp is calling it out.

This cannot have been easy for Johnny Depp. He is emotionally battered and fragile. He deserves to be remembered and honoured for this, as for his acting talent. What he is doing is heroic.

And there are other heroes emerging. Elon Musk might be one, although his bona fides still remains to be demonstrated. He too has recently stood up against the elite mob, oxymoron as that is, and its vast network of intimidation.

Others acting bravely are Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Rogan, Jimmy Dore, the crew at Daily Wire. In Canada, Tamara Lich, Alexa Lavoie, Maxime Bernier. Ezra Levant, the man who stood up to and largely ended the “Hate Speech” star chambers. He is a second Joseph Howe. Brian Peckford seems to have risen to the challenge of the times.

A lot of statues have been torn down these days. Very well; let’s replace them with more modern heroes. It would be only too fitting to see a statue of Tamara Lich on Parliament Hill. Let’s rename Ryerson, with its tradition of journalism, Levant University. Let’s rename Dundas Peckford Street.

Maybe we should start a GiveSendGo account and a Change.org petition.

A Vision

 

Once Ukraine has won the war, what happens next?

To begin with, Ukraine will have immense cultural prestige.

This reminds me of a vision I had long ago, in the late Sixties. It was that Russia would become the world’s cultural leader; not the Soviet Russia that existed at that time, but a new spiritual Russia based on the virtue of honour.

Ukraine—almost Russia—may be acting that out right now.

There seems to me a decent chance that, as a result of this war, the current regime in Russia will collapse. It might be replaced by a more democratic, outward-looking regime. This has happened elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, almost as though it is inevitable given time. And surely, those nations that have embraced the West, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, and the rest, have profited as a result.

If this happens, I predict that Central and Eastern Europe will become the new centre and cutting edge of world civilization. Fostering a revival of the principles of honour and ethics.

Unless, that is, the regime in Beijing also falls. Then it might be East Asia.

We have been needing one.

Democracy is Coming ... to the USA

 

It seems to me we are seeing a general collapse of all social systems. We can no longer rely on any institutions. 

The parliamentary system, of reasoned debate, used to keep our legislatures functioning reasonably well. Now that civil discourse seems to have completely broken down. It is just a matter of massing votes.

But now, in America, nobody trusts the voting system, either.

The church used to stand as a voice of moral authority against excesses in the secular world. This seems no longer true. For mainstream Protestantism, it has not been true for generations. The last bastion of this, the Vatican, has now been stormed and fallen under Pope Francis.

The court system used to stand as an independent adjudicator to whom we could appeal, based on reason and precedent. Now the courts have become more political than the legislatures. Reason and precedent are largely ignored, and whims are “read into” the law.

The universities used to be semi-monastic in their separation from practical affairs, and able to reflect objectively on them. Now they have become more political than anywhere.

The press used to pride themselves on their independence and lack of respect for any authority. Now they are an arm of the professional establishment. Journalistic standards have been abandoned, and news reports are not reliable.

We used to think science was objective and incorruptible. We could trust the science. That was probably always false, but the COVID crisis has revealed multiple examples of this not being true. “The science” too has become political.

We used to suppose private enterprise was a check against government. That was probably always false; but it is increasingly clear that large corporations and governments work hand in glove. 

We used to trust in a professional civil service. The trustworthiness of the government seems cast in dramatically greater doubt by revelations off the “deep state.” They now seem to be lunging for greater power. An example is Merrick Garland’s Justice Department declaring dissatisfied voters at school board meetings “domestic terrorists.”

I and many like me used to think that Silicon Valley and high-tech was a force for freedom; some of us are old enough to remember Apple’s “1984” commercial. Now they have been revealed as Big Brother.

Nothing in the system seems to work any longer as it is supposed to; everything has been subverted by people interested only in power.

I blame postmodernism.

But all of these institutions are also in decline, notably due to technology. Perhaps the rapid loss of power and relevance has provoked a panic reaction, and fear has led to overreach.

If we are seeing the fall of the American Empire, I see no obvious replacement in the wings.

Back in the 90’s, Leonard Cohen recorded his album “The Future.” It offered two competing visions: the title song, which saw chaos coming; and this has proven accurate; and “Democracy is Coming to the USA,” which saw instead an American revival, and a new birth of freedom. 

Perhaps he accurately foresaw both. 

Perhaps we are witnessing a case of creative destruction. Perhaps as old systems are dying, new systems are about to emerge. And perhaps Cohen is right, that it is still America where the new is most likely to appear.

It's coming to America first,

the cradle of the best and of the worst.

It's here they got the range

and the machinery for change

and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.

I see hope in groups like the Daily Wire, Steven Crowder, and Tim Poole trying to build independent cultural engines. I see hope in Andrew Yang's new political party, proposing a new form of voting. I think we may be on the brink of a new moment of immense creativity.

Reasons for Optimism

 

Great plagues follow the sound of the trumpet.

As civilization itself seems to crash and burn all around us, I look for hopeful signs.

1. As recently as thirty years ago, things looked much better. The Soviet Bloc dissolved; the personal computer had begun its revolution, starting in garages. This was sudden and unforeseen; especially after the dispirited Seventies. People spoke of “the end of history”; the bad guys had lost. Perhaps something like this could happen again, and in any given year.

2. The early or eventual dominance of the Chinese Communists seems to me far from inevitable. Their very actions suggest they feel themselves extremely vulnerable. It seems likely their economy is largely a Potemkin village.

3. With the fall of Afghanistan, there is naturally concern that Islamist terror will return with a vengeance. I think much of that Islamist terror was funded by oil revenues. With the decline in oil revenues in the Middle East, I suspect that may not be the case.

4. Energy from oil is becoming cheaper. We may also be on the cusp of producing cheap and clean power from nuclear fusion. Should that happen, it could be a boost to the world economy comparable to the computer revolution. No more worrying about climate change, no more worrying about running out of oil, energy almost free.

5. We may also be on the cusp of a revolution in medicine. Accelerated by the COVID crisis, we may soon have vaccines for viral diseases of all kinds—including HIV, the common cold, and cancer. With the recent breakthroughs in genetic sequencing, we may be close to a cure for genetic diseases, and even for old age. This could reverse our fears of demographic decline.

6. The incompetence and aggression we see in the clerisy just now may mean the opposite of what it appears to. It may be a result of that computer revolution. It has removed their justification and revealed their relative incompetence and mendacity, like Toto pulling the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. So they are acting out of desperation, even out of hysteria. The long-term trend may therefore be the opposite of the short-term trend: towards greater democracy and individual autonomy. This seems the inevitable logic of any greater and less restricted flow of information, and this is what the new ICT provides. Just as the invention of printing led to challenges and the ultimate decline of “priestcraft” and hereditary ruling classes in its day.

7. Christianity is vital and spreading in Africa. There are signs that, if and when the government lid comes off, it could spread rapidly in China. We could be looking at a world Christian revival. If America and Europe have lost vitality, China and Africa may be ready to take over—not as barbarian powers, like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, but as new centres of world civilization as we have known it.

8. Islamism may burn itself out, if it has not already. Leave aside the issue of funding from oil. Islamism looks a lot like a nativist movement formed in reaction to culture shock from growing global interaction. I note that the actual bombers are almost always Westernized, middle class, and Western-educated. We saw a similar phenomenon in Nazi Germany, reacting against foreigners, foreign elements, and “cosmopolitanism.” Perhaps too in China under Mao, or Russia under Stalin. If so, history suggests this lasts for a generation or so, then subsides as the new influences become assimilated and the alienated culture joins the emerging world culture.

9. The US is obviously in dire need of a religious revival, a recommitment to its cultural underpinnings. But it has historically gone through such periodic revivals. If this is some built-in feature of American culture, we are overdue for another one. That might blow America back onto an even keel. 

10. Multiple considerations seem to be converging on the creation of a CANZUK trade area and alliance. While the actual cultures of the CANZUK nations are in the chaos of postmodernism and self-doubt, this reconstituted Commonwealth at least brings one thing back to where it rationally ought to be, and where it was before Europe began to decline in the nineteen-teens.  Britain used to be a bastion of common sense, against the rationalist excesses of the Continent and the mass enthusiasms of America. The new union might restore the self-confidence needed to draw apart from the European and, currently, American cultural suicide. There can be new life in old empires. The ancient Hellenic world yielded to Rome, then revived as the Byzantine Empire, and carried the torch of civilization for another thousand years.

11. The papacy has failed us; but the pope is old, and has been ill. People worry that, since he has been able to choose the electors, the next papacy is likely to be as bad. But by that logic, how did we get Francis? John Paul II and Benedict must have chosen all the electors, yet Francis’s approach is very unlike theirs. Received wisdom has it that the cardinals choose the next pope in reaction to perceived flaws in the previous papacy. That argues that the net pope may be different from Francis.

12. It is at least possible that, in rapid succession over the next few weeks, Gavin Newsom will be replaced by Larry Elder, and Trudeau by Erin O’Toole. We may be talking soon of a gathering right-wing tide. Once a tide turns, it continues to rise.

And hey, if the world really is coming to an end, that's good news for the good guys, isn't it? There are worse things than the New Jerusalem, and heaven on earth.

The Future

 

The surest evidence that an election was stolen is if, immediately after the election, it is forbidden to suggest that the election was stolen.

I had thought that the tech execs were only interested in making money, and that their censorship was a temporary bug, forced on them by advertisers and users. I was misled by economic theory. I should have been thinking psychology.

Now it occurs to me that if you are the type of restless spirit that sets about acquiring vast wealth, and you succeed, and a few billion more or less no longer seems to matter, and you inevitably find you are still not satisfied, you are naturally going to turn to other possible sources of satisfaction. Why not, say, try for power, if the opportunity is there? 

The internet looked at first like something that would decentralize power, as the invention of printing did. That seemed inherent in its architecture. Now everyone would have a printing press and a video camera. I overlooked the fact that those more open channels for communication went both ways: also allowing increased surveillance of everyone.

At this moment, I am almost prepared to indulge that luxury of the old, despair over the future. I think we have lost both democracy and free speech. That means the only way to resist oppression is with violence, and violence is both appalling in itself and leads to purely random results.

2021 Predictions

 

I seem to have missed making my usual annual predictions last year. Just as well; they would all have been wrong. My predictions, like everyone’s, are always wrong, and this past year was utterly implausible. 

It was as though the world was one big roulette wheel given a reckless spin, and the ball is still bouncing.

I might as well go nuts with my wildest predictions. Now anything is as likely as anything else.

I predict COVID will fade from consciousness in Canada, the US, and Europe by about April. If the vaccinations are done intelligently and efficiently, starting with the most vulnerable, the actual death rate by that time will have dropped enough that the coronavirus will no longer feel frightening. I also hope that rapid testing and therapeutics will be making a significant difference by then: ivormectin, monoclonal antibodies, sniffing dogs. And spring will bring a natural reduction as well.

I predict that Operation Warp Speed and the novel vaccine techniques it encouraged will soon bring unexpected benefits in treating other disease. Perhaps the common cold, perhaps cancer.

I predict that Trump will remain in office for the next four years. I know this is crazy, that the odds against this look astronomical. I am going with a gut instinct. I am convinced from what I have heard that the election really was stolen; and that Biden has been bought by China. So far, people in authority have been going along with the fixed election results for fear of civil unrest and upsetting apple carts; if the risk of unrest becomes greater with Biden than with Trump, their support may flip suddenly. I sense movement in that direction.

Not only may Trump retain power: the Democratic Party as it now exists may be generally discredited. It may then be taken over by the “progressive” left, by AOC and her fans.

I think China, even before the virus, was close to hitting an economic wall. It is in effect a Nazi regime, a Ponzi economy, and probably unsustainable over the long term. Before the virus, they probably seized Hong Kong because they needed to loot it to stay afloat. The virus and its aftereffects, and the strange weather, may be a larger strain than the system can bear. I imagine the Chinese leadership trying to recoup and rally the population with some military adventure; and they may be driven as well by the need to plunder.

This suggests a coming war; most probably an attempt on Taiwan. I expect the other side to win, probably with muscular US involvement. China can count on no allies. The government of China will fall as a result.

In the meantime, the war with China may unite the US, which otherwise looked headed towards civil war. The mad left will not be pleased with Trump staying in office. On the other hand, the riots are not going to get going until the weather is warmer. By that time, they may be preempted by the war. If they do start, the war will rob them of popular support and give cause to suppress them.

When the Chinese government falls, I foresee a period of chaos. China has a tendency to fall apart, and the CCP has deliberately suppressed any possible alternative social organizations who might be able to step in and preserve order. Ordinary Chinese will flock to the Christian churches and to Falun Gong; one or the other or both will become the kernel of a new order, but it will take time. And perhaps a civil war or two.

In the meantime, to escape this, Hong Kong will attempt to shear away and to restore ties with the UK. This, together with the UK’s departure from the EU, will give an added impetus to a preliminary CANZUK agreement: a loose military, free trade, and free movement association among Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and now also Hong Kong. Singapore may express interest in joining as well, fearing to be eclipsed as a banking and trading centre by Hong Kong. 

Everyone expects a Canadian election this year, once the pandemic abates. I do not. The Liberals would be foolhardy to call one so soon into their term, and the NDP would probably suffer if they provoked an election without some good reason. If it comes, I expect the NDP to suffer badly, because they have been propping up the Liberals despite scandal, and because they have not distinguished themselves from the Liberals in policy terms.

I would venture that the Conservatives would win that election. If China attacks Taiwan, or is otherwise in the news, the close ties and friendship of the Liberals to the CCP may become the main issue, and sink them. If they want to run on how well they handled the pandemic, much depends on how well the inoculations go. It does not look promising so far. Canada lags the US and the UK, and that is how Canadians will evaluate the matter.

I expect there will have to be a rash of retail bankruptcies in Canada, the US, and everywhere else as a result of the pandemic, hastening a move to online shopping that was already underway. Similarly, a lot of universities and colleges in the US are going to start declaring bankruptcy. This may be the beginning of a general shift to learning online, now that everybody is familiar with the tools. The economics are hard to beat.

We should see a definite demographic movement now away from the big cities. There is no longer any reason to live in a big city for shopping; many of us have learned to work remotely, so it is less important to be there for work. Rental and real estate prices have become unsupportable. With the internet, there is far less reason to be there for either entertainment or education. The riots have demonstrated that they are dangerous due to crime, and the virus has demonstrated that they are dangerous because of disease. The flight from the cities should be a major theme in the new year.

Legacy media have been kept alive on ventilators by anti-Trump rhetoric and the systematic censorship and deplatforming of alternative sources online. But the systematic censorship, at worst, is self-limiting. It forces the creation of new competing platforms to serve the demand. I expect the rise of new social media platforms in the upcoming year, and the decline of established players like Facebook, YouTube, Patreon, PayPal, AirBnB, and Twitter, who have become politically partisan, against their business interests. We are already beginning to see this.

I do not expect Muslim terrorism to be much in the news. Remember Muslim terrorism? With the collapse in the price of oil, their revenue sources in the Middle East have dried up. Just as when the IRA lost its funding from the Soviet Union, and then from Libya, peace is breaking out all over, and this will spread. As with China, the virus’s effects are likely, on top of the decline in oil prices, to topple the Iranian regime. When it falls, a large proportion of the Iranian population will publicly apostasize, in reaction to the regime having so closely identified itself with Islam. This will produce a ripple effect throughout the Muslim world: it may become less fashionable to be aggressively Muslim.

The reaction will probably be to want to Westernize and to secularize, as this was the tone under the Shah.

We will see, in a year, how close I am to seeing the shape of things to come.

Shapes of Things to Come

It is interesting and informative that all of the charges the Democrats level against Trump are true of the Democrats, and untrue of Trump.

They accuse Trump of habitually lying. In fact, the foundation of Trump’s popularity is that he is a straight talker who does what he says he will do. In the meantime, Biden’s entire campaign, by his own account, is based on a blatant lie: that Trump called neo-Nazis “fine people.”

They accuse Trump of racism. Yet what he has garnered record-high support for any Republican among both black and Hispanic voters.

They accuse him of antisemitism. Yet he has moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and brokered two Arab-Israeli peace deals that involve no new concessions to the Palestinians. In the meantime, the left has grown increasingly antisemitic. Orthodox Jewish meetings are being harassed in NYC, for example.

They accuse Trump of not caring about the poor, and only governing for the rich. Yet Trump was voted into office by the working class, who understand him as their champion. By contrast, the rich technocrats of Silicon Valley are trying to suppress all Republican messaging. Bloomberg is trying to buy votes in Florida. Biden is pulling in record-high campaign funding. The wealthy elite is clearly desperately opposed to Trump. One must ask why. In the meantime, the Democrats are insistent on keeping the economy shut down. The rich can weather this, and are apparently even becoming richer during the shutdown. The poor need to work, or they cannot eat or pay the rent.

As Nancy Pelosi shows off her well-stocked wall-sized home freezers on video.

They accuse Trump of profiteering off of the presidency. Yet Trump’s net worth has gone down as a result of being president. Biden’s net worth, during his years of public service, mysteriously rose to multimillionaire level. Go figure.

They accuse Trump of colluding with Russia to swing the 2016 election. That charge suspiciously came up, as I recall, on the night Trump won. We now know, through the Durham investigation, that the Clinton campaign was colluding with Russia at the time. In the meantime, after exhaustive investigation, there is no evidence of collusion from Trump or his campaign. I, for one, suspect the Clinton involvement with Russia was far greater than we yet know—why was she failing to secure her emails? Mere incompetence does not seem like a sufficient explanation. Why was she storing her emails in a server in the Ukraine, of all places?

And why a large payment to Joe Biden’s son from the wife of the mayor of Moscow?

They impeached Trump over supposedly trying to influence the government of the Ukraine for his own benefit. For a routine-sounding phone call, for which the transcript was released immediately. We now know, from the newly released Hunter Biden emails, assuming they are legitimate, that the Bidens were involved deeply in influence peddling in the Ukraine, and in influencing Ukraine government policy for their own benefit.

They are rioting in the streets, night after night, and blaming Trump for the rioting in the streets.

All this illustrates an important point about human evil. When one commits to evil, one spontaneously begins to say the opposite of the truth, because it feels safest to stay as far away from the truth as possible. At the same time, it becomes urgent to scapegoat someone else for the very thing you are guilty of. Ideally, you want to scapegoat the one person least guilty of it. That absolves you most completely, after all. If a sinless man were to appear, your instinct would be to crucify him as the worst sort of criminal.

Every value is turned upside down.

The same tendency, within a family, is what produces mental illness in family members—within the family, every value is turned upside down, and a sensitive child will be aware of the loss of equilibrium, whether or not he or she becomes the designated scapegoat. As is almost certain to be the case.

When it happens in the body politic, the entire country can go mad. It happened in Weimar Germany, or in China before and during the Cultural Revolution.

It seems an urgent matter that Trump win re-election in a few weeks. As looks unlikely to happen, based on the polls. If he does not, things are liable to get very unpleasant in the US, and perhaps for the world.

The Words of the Prophet

Leonard Cohen was a true prophet, and foresaw the current social collapse in the US back in 1992. He sang about it in “The Future.”

“Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order.”
Over every living soul And lie beside me, baby That's an order.”

Here, he is speaking from the Nazi/postmodern viewpoint. Seen already in the Weimar Republic's sexual license

“Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture.”

It sounds like a plea for ecological awareness, right? Wrong. He seems to be saying instead that a preoccupation with trees shows a deficit in the culture. The environmental movement, the glorification of the “natural,” has dangerous moral implications. It suggests we ought to act on pure impulse, like animals. Animals kill and eat one another. The Nazis were great environmentalists.

“Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder”

Why would he want the Berlin Wall? The point is the clear distinction between good and evil, Stalin and St. Paul, the free world and the evil empire. It is an image of choosing sides. It is vital to preserve the distinction between right and wrong, or murder breaks loose.

Cohen betrays on which side of the Berlin Wall he stands, with Stalin or with St. Paul, with the phrase “I’ve seen the future.” It was famously applied to the early Soviet Union, by Lincoln Steffens in 1919: “I’ve seen the future, and it works.” Cohen clearly differs: it is murder.

"Won’t be nothing… you can measure any more.
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul"

This is the essence of the problem: the order of the soul has been overturned. The blizzard is an image of disorder. There is nothing we can measure any more, when we dispense with truth or right and wrong. These are the measures of all things.

You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bibl

Getting explicit, surely; we have lost touch with the Bible and our Judeo-Christian roots.

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing

Isn't this a remarkably clear image of what is happening now? Nothing in your past is private any longer; anything can be dug up with a Google search. And has been, on anyone targeted for political reasons. We see news photos of "white" people kneeling before "blacks." We see black-clad phantoms setting fires in the streets.


Was this visionary, or was it all so predictable?

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
It is murder

This is not the only or the first time Cohen has sung against abortion. He seemed to see it, as I do, as a key issue.

When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant

And this, improbable and difficult as it seems, is the only solution: repentance. Cohen repeats the chorus relentlessly.

Cohen did; but can we hope for this for the world as a whole?

I've Seen the Future, Brother. It is Murder

The Spirit of the Age?

A troubling thing; a poetic friend has sent me a really fine poem he wrote. But it is a fantasy about raping some woman. Perhaps also killing her.

Recently George Elliott Clarke was forced to pull out of a Regina reading because he had planned to read poetry by Stephen Brown. Clarke has edited some of his work, and obviously considers him a good poet. Brown was convicted of murdering a local girl.

What is going on here?

It is hard enough that we cannot trust government, or the clergy. Now it seems we cannot trust poets either.

Even though they, to the extent that they are good poets, have a direct line to the spiritual world—“inspiration.”

Leonard Cohen seems to have seen this coming. In “The Future,” he refers to

“All the lousy little poets coming round,
Trying to sound like Charlie Manson.”

It is all a reminder, in the first place, that, if poets channel spirits, not all spirits are good spirits. There are demonic forces.

Sensitive souls are connecting, it seems, to some deep rage. And it seems to be a rage against women. Perhaps aroused by feminism, perhaps by the “sexual revolution.”

Cohen also may have seen that. The lines just before those quoted above are:

“You’ll see your woman hanging upside down
Her features hidden by her fallen gown.”

We are in a post-Christian phase, as a culture, and perhaps the pagan rules again apply.

Perhaps we are hearing from the Erinyes.

Whom the Gods Would Destroy

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad)

YouTubers Andrew Klavan and Tim Pool are both saying, as I have recently, that the contemporary left looks as though it is going mad. It actually no longer seems possible to have a rational conversation. The latest evidence is the bizarre way the BBC and others are going after Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad), as candidate for UKIP in the upcoming Euro elections. All they will talk about is how he is endorsing rape by having joked that he would not rape someone. His YouTube channel has just been “demonetized,” taking away his livelihood. On the same day, the NDP is making a public outcry because Jordan Peterson, internationally bestselling author and public intellectual, has been invited to appear before a Canadian Commons committee to express his views. In the US, YouTuber Gavin MacInnis reports that he must now stay up nights with a gun in his home, because of death threats. 

Yet these people are only making entirely reasonable—often humorous—comments on current politics. If it matters, if it justifies refusing to allow them to speak, there is not a whiff of racism or hate towards any identifiable group in anything they have said publicly. Unlike many other commentators on YouTube. But of course, refusing to allow them to speak ensures that nobody learns that what they are saying is reasonable. The approach, if it is not deeply dishonest, is insane.

The BBC seems to be getting aggressively more partisan. This almost looks suicidal in a public broadcaster committed to being non-partisan, and entirely reliant on tax dollars. See the recent shenanigans with Nigel Farage. Imagine a state broadcaster publicly dismissing a political candidate as an extremist just as he seems poised to win a nation-wide election. They are in open rebellion, it seems, against their viewership. They seem to be actually forcing their own demise.

CNN in the USA seems to have been behaving similarly. Facing stiffer competition every ratings period from Fox News and now MSNBC, in addition to the new media, they are getting less reliable on the news. They are doing this just as consumers can quickly double-check for themselves and see when they are lying. Chris Cuomo, for example, supposedly the neutral reporter, recently tried to shout down his guest Rick Santorum with the charge that he lied about something easily proved by anyone with access to YouTube. Again, this seems suicidal.

The same might be said of the mainstream press, the NY Times or Wapost. They are becoming less reliable on the news, more reckless about traditional journalistic ethics, and more overtly partisan, just as their audiences are shrinking through online competition, as they are losing ad revenue to online agents, and as their accuracy can be double-checked online with increasing ease. It looks like a death wish.

As for the left more generally, their recent priorities, supporting Islam and transgenderism, seem to be similarly self-destructive. It is not just that transgenderism literally requires the denial of external reality—the physical and biological differences between male and female. They also seem to demand that leftists take the reverse of stands they were expected to embrace only recently. It was the left, scant years ago, that was anti-Muslim, against the hijab, against supposed patriarchy, and against female genital mutilation. It was the left that, scant years ago, defended homosexuality with the slogan “born this way.” Transgenderism denies the validity of that premise directly, almost as though it were calculated to do so. It is as though being sane disqualifies you from the club.

Cognitive dissonance, illustrated.

At the same time, these two new causes, Islam and transgenderism, look like a direct assault on the left’s prior largest constituencies. Most obviously, and largest, women. Not to mention Jews—the left is now often openly anti-Semitic—and Catholics, who used to be loyally leftist, now openly treated with contempt. It is as though the left is daring their supporters to abandon them.

Why are they acting so irrationally? With transgenderism, for example, we are at the point at which the left is in full denial of obvious reality. That’s insanity by definition. It looks a lot like what used to be called hysteria.

We see it again on the abortion  issue. Just as soon as Trump successfully appointed Kavanaugh, giving the Supreme Court a possible majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, the pro-abortionist lobby doubled down by pushing legislation in New York and Virginia declaring a right to unrestricted abortion up to the moment of birth. It is as though they were daring someone to call them on it.

The image that comes to mind is that of a spoiled child. Called out, caught doing something naughty, as the MSM and the left are increasingly now by new media and newly heard conservative voices, instead of accepting their fault and striving to do better, they throw a tantrum. They start breaking anything in reach. Often their own toys.

But why does a spoiled child act like this?

It is, I think, the voice of conscience. A healthy conscience would accept fault, amend, and be better for the experience. Because a spoiled child has developed such a huge sense of privilege, they cannot find it in themselves to do this. They are perfect. To admit the slightest fault is unthinkable. It is reality that is being unfair. As a result, their conscience drives them to self-destruction. Their thought is no doubt to destroy the world, for not doing as they wish, but the practical effect is going to be self-destruction. And at some level they seem aware of this. It is like the serial killer who left the message in lipstick at the scene of one rape-murder, “For God’s sake, stop me before I kill again!”

We are watching an irresponsible, privileged elite in emotional meltdown. They are thrashing about madly, and the collateral damage may be awful.

Images of supposed hysterics

By watching for the signs of such hysteria, we can perhaps predict which current institution will be next to circle down the drain. They will start to act loony as they see the first signs of trouble appear. And then they will insist on dying.

We are now seeing such obvious insanity in the academy. They know they are doomed. With new technology, the traditional model of the academy is unsustainable. So they are all partying like there is no tomorrow on their arbitrary power, because there is no tomorrow. The Dean of the Harvard Law School was just fired by his university for doing his professional duty as a lawyer and defending the unpopular Harvey Weinstein. Lindsay Shepherd was censured by her department for showing her class a clip from public TV--without comment.

It ten or twenty years, it will all be gone. Now we know. Prepare accordingly.

We are seeing it too in the public schools. The now-abandoned new Ontario sex ed curriculum was an example. They know the el-hi model is also no longer justifiable. It can all be done better online by Khan Academy and the like. So it is time to pull out all the stops, riot, and smash windows on the way out.

Who’s next?

Does the most recent madness emerging from Silicon Valley, the fit of arbitrary deplatforming, mean they know something we don't know? Are corporate critters like Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, PayPal, and Google also seeking dazzling lights in the tunnel heading towards them? It may well be--they are in the best position to know first what new technologies are imminent, and the life cycle of a high-tech company can be especially short as new technology appears. I'd sell.

Cohen on the Future

What did he see?

I think Leonard Cohen got it right when he said that the modern world is in the middle of a spiritual catastrophe.

I think he was right to say that the essence of that catastrophe is a lack or a failure of love.

And I think he believed, and I think he was right, that the most troubling and evident example of that absence of love is abortion.

“Destroy another foetus now

We don’t like children anyhow.”

In this regard, things are rapidly getting worse. We are everywhere dissolving into warring factions, with few or no bonds of common morality or common civility left.

Perhaps Cohen was ready to die when he did die, as he said he was, because he did not want to see what was coming. Many, including his son, thought it was significant that he died on the very eve of Trump’s election as US President. (This does not mean that the problem is Trump; it could as well mean Trump is a symptom and result of the problem. Indeed, it must, since Cohen clearly believed the problem long preceded Trump. And it might be the inevitable reaction to his election, as much as or more than the election itself, that was his concern.)

“I’ve seen the future, brother.

It is murder.”

Glenn Beck recently publicly said he instinctively or intuitively expects some great general war within the next few years.

Some say Beck is inclined to be alarmist. Kind of like spiritual click-bait. That may be so.

I have been inclined to be more optimistic, to feel that the forces of hate had by now become so blatant and blatantly wrong that there would be a natural and general pulling back to morality. That their very virulence suggested they were becoming desperate.

But then, I’ve thought that since the early Seventies. So far, I have been wrong.

Perhaps Beck and Cohen are right. Desperate hate may well take down everyone and everything possible before allowing its own defeat. It will go, but it may well not go quietly.

The Recent Prophecies of Eliezer ben Nisan ha'Cohen

According to his son Adam, speaking at the Junos, Leonard Cohen confidently predicted that Donald Trump would win the recent US election and become president.

Cohen died the day before the election.

Publicly, at least, Cohen always stayed strictly politically neutral as a wise artist does. As he sang in “The Future,” “I’m neither left nor right.” And he’s not American; he had no dog in the race. But Cohen was a true prophet. Not that he literally saw the future, any more than any prophet can, but he saw beneath the surface of things, and so was able to draw the proper conclusions about what would happen next. It is a matter of reading the human soul. Perhaps also the will of God.

This is the job, actually, of any true artist. To the extent that they are true artists, they are inspired by God; they are prophets. And they tell us what is happening in the world of the spirit. But Cohen was especially aware of this.

Cohen’s prediction is that much more impressive because he made it while living among the entertainment industry, and intellectuals, in Southern California. A place and a milieu that was solidly for Clinton. California gave Clinton her plurality in the popular vote.

Yet Cohen was sensing what was going on in the wider culture, in the rest of the country—in the rust belt. It was not something he was picking up from the people around him, who, according to Adam, all thought Clinton would win.

So Cohen was a true prophet. We ought to listen to him.

As it happens, he did an album called “The Future.”

Cohen has said often that the world is undergoing a spiritual catastrophe.

On the album, he makes two prophecies that seem contradictory. One, “The Future,” is of disaster. The other, “Democracy is Coming,” is optimistic.

But Cohen has said that the former is far more likely.

Here it is:

Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my secret life
It's lonely here
There's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul

When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
But love's the only engine
Of survival

Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold
It's over, it ain't going any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future: It is murder

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms, there'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing
You'll see your woman hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets coming round
Trying to sound like Charlie Manson
Yeah the white man dancing

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby: It is murder

Cohen, as a true artist, has said, quite properly, that his poems and songs don’t mean anything, any more than a diamond means anything. There are just beautiful. He is right; it is blasphemy to “interpret” art. If you could say the same thing in an essay, you would write an essay, which is after all easier to do.

Still, it is unsettling how very wrong so many interpretations of Cohen tend to be. We do exegesis on the prophets; even Jesus did explain some parables. So I claim the liberty to clarify.

It's lonely here
There's no one left to torture

Cohen is not calling for sadism; I think we can take that as given. By making the statement, he is alerting us that he is speaking ironically. What he is saying is, give me back a moral code, in which such things, if done, are secret. The standard modern notion is that morality is simply torture—so he using the term ironically.

He argues it is better, and more moral, to have a moral code you can break than to have no moral code. So it is better to sin than to never sin, in this sense, by denying there is anything sinful. The danger is moral relativism. And Cohen further says that the result of moral relativism is loneliness.

Keep that in mind.

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left

I think I need to comment here, because many will think Cohen is endorsing sodomy and environmentalism here.

In later performances, Cohen removed the words “anal sex”; I guess he regretted them. I think he changed it to “risky sex.” What he is saying is that he wants risks, rather than either crack or sex specifically. While some might think he wants anal sex, does anyone really think he means to endorse crack cocaine? Which is to say, I think, he is calling again for morality. If there is no risk of doing moral wrong, then there is no opportunity to be moral. That is the risk evoked here: these are examples of doing wrong. This is confirmed by the reference to “Stalin and St. Paul.” Stalin and Saint Paul are evil opposed to good. The Berlin Wall is the clear delineation between the two.

It does sound as if he is referring to environmentalism as a possible new morality: “Take the only tree that’s left”; but I think not. It does not sound entirely reverent to suggest you stick your last tree up your … anal sex? And it sounds parodic to suggest that a tree can fix a hole in a culture. He is saying that environmentalism, the worship of nature, is a pathetic substitute for culture.

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul

Here is a clear statement of the problem. The world—the physical, nature—has overcome and obliterated the soul, the spiritual. Which is order—Aristotle called it “form.” Christians call it “logos.” Moral order is a part of that, along with logic, which is to say truth. And beauty is a third form of order: the good, the true, the beautiful.

That, then, is the catastrophe. We have abandoned the good, the true, and the beautiful, for chaos.

And here is the solution, put as gently as possible: repent! The important, the vital, the essential first step, is to accept and admit that we are wrong.

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol―that our lives had become unmanageable.

I’m the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible

Here Cohen makes clear that he speaks in the person of a prophet. And he calls for love as the only solution.

Here a lot of people will eagerly jump in and say, “Aha! Cohen is calling for free love! Go for it, baby boomers!”

Just the opposite. The confusion of sex with love is at the core of the problem he has just diagnosed.

What does sex have to do with repentance?

If you know your catechism, you should know how love fits in here. We honestly repent of our sins in the confessional, when we do so, not out of fear of punishment, but out of a full realization that we have offended God, “who is worthy of all love.”

Repentance comes from love; it is its first natural expression.

And, as Jesus says, love is primarily love of God; if we do not love God, we do not love our fellow man either. Jesus says, love God with all your heart. Then love your neighbour as yourself. You cannot do the second without the first. You might do nice things for your neighbour, but you cannot love him.

As AA recognizes.

Step 2: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Love does not mean romantic love, specifically, here, let alone sex. This should be obvious from the scope he gives: the rise and fall of civilizations, human survival.

I think he is right, too, that civilizations rise and fall, succeed and fail, based on the amount of love for one another and for God among their citizens. Armies fight and win because of love: your love for the next guy in the trench, and for the folks you defend at home. Nations rise if and when those who happen to be in charge do what they do for love of others, instead of for self-interest.

Cohen clearly sees that we in the West are losing that, or have lost that, and this will be our downfall.

We have turned away from God, and the spirit, and so we have turned away from each other.

As W. B. Yeats similarly put it:

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code

What could be clearer than “the breaking of the ancient western code”? This is the code that Moses brought down from Sinai. The devil is in the saddle. He is now in charge.

The image of the woman hanging upside down is a kind of inverted crucifix. Cohen perfects the inversion by making the figure a woman, and having the hanging expose her genitals. So this is an image of our inversion of our traditional values. Now it is all about sex, and nobody sees anyone’s face, anyone’s humanity, any more.

Art, beauty has disintegrated because it has lost its moral purpose. Poets want to sound like Charlie Manson. I have read some suggesting that Cohen’s concern here is to condemn bad poetry. It is, in a sense, but do not miss that he is telling you what makes bad poetry bad. Immorality is ugliness, and ugliness is immorality. You cannot have the good without the true, or the true without the beautiful, or the beautiful without the good.

Cohen puts double emphasis on the line “the white man dancing.” The usual claim is that this would be a good thing. “White men can’t dance” is intended as a criticism. It is because they are “uptight,” that is, too self-controlled. But self-control means morality. The image also suggests a second sense of “dancing,” as you see in old Westerns: the idea of being forced to dance as a humiliation. White men are being humiliated.

You begin to see here what he was seeing in the Trump phenomenon, perhaps. It was the white men standing up for the ancient Western code. In popular leftist terms, Cohen is a “white supremacist.” Not that that term really means what the words say it means.

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby: It is murder

Like me, it seems, Cohen sees abortion as key to the whole problem. He puts that reference here at the end, making it a sort of punch line—a secondary punch line, because this verse is followed by the repeated chorus “Repent! Repent!”

Abortion is indeed murder. It is the present holocaust. It is the ultimate proof of our lack of love for our fellow man. Abortion is the ultimate litmus test: are you a sheep, or a goat? Are you with God, or for yourself?

That is Cohen’s Jeremiad.