California fires symbolise fall of the West

TO describe the scene as armageddon is no hyperbole.

- NIALL MCCRAE

Fires driven by seasonal Santa Ana winds have incinerated swathes of Los Angeles, such as the Pacific Palisades. Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has imposed socially and economically costly woke policies and Net Zero puritanism, but the LA blaze has struck many of the privileged people who supported him.

Arguments rage on whether the authorities could have prevented the carnage. The USA has had a litany of disasters recently: the East Palestine chemical freight derailment, the Baltimore bridge collapse and the North Carolina floods. These events expose failing infrastructure and political incompetence, but do they symbolise something much bigger?

For Doug Casey, author of Crisis Investing, Western civilisation is collapsing. In an interview on his International Man website, he explains that 'it's unique among the world's civilisations in putting the individual as opposed to the collective in a central position'. Rational thinking was enshrined over mysticism, enabling the rise of science, technology and principled governance.

I wrote on the demise of individualism back in 2019, before the contrived pandemic, when the greater good was enforced with draconian lockdown and coercive vaccination programmes. The Long March Of Individualism Comes To A Juddering Halt - my essay on Human Events website - argued that while much of the developing world is on a liberalising trajectory, the West is reversing towards collectivism. Younger generations are being raised as pawns of the state, while lured by the convenience and comfort of the digital matrix.