As western society continues to collapse over the next decade, it will become increasingly difficult for its greatest cheerleaders - nationalists, the far-right, conservatives - to avoid responsibility, since its collapse is entirely their fault.

They will respond with violence.

Western society "worked" - in the biggest air-quotes imaginable - for as long as it did mostly because it had leaders who invested in the practicalities of maintaining it, while knowing the mythos was largely nonsense. You saw this in people like Clinton, Obama, Blair.

I think that there are a couple of leaders we could consider "transitional" - David Cameron in the UK, and George W. Bush in the US - who began to sacrifice the practicalities of maintaining society for the myth without being fully deluded by it.

David Cameron perhaps didn't buy into the myth entirely, but he was ignorant enough to believe that the English people would vote in their best interests because he had perhaps started to believe the great British myth: that there's anything special or good about English people.

For all that we ragged on Bush the Younger, he was at least competent enough to follow the forms and procedures of the presidency. While disagreeing that "presidential" is a good or noble quality, I will definitely admit George W. Bush was presidential. He was very presidential.

But the transitional leaders like Bush and Cameron both oversaw periods of dramatic shift in the media accessible to the public. People saw leaders who followed the forms and procedures as weak, compromising, insufficiently "strong." They were becoming cultists to the mythology.

In Britain, the Conservatives very bravely tried to hold on for a couple more years with Theresa May. She still made a valiant attempt to follow the forms and procedures of the prime ministerial office. But at that point the strongest resistance actually came from her own party.

Now we have Johnson and Trump, who represent the exact same strain of laziness, incompetence, vanity and pure delusion. They were never meant to be leadership - they, after all, actually believe the tripe the elite feed to the masses! It would never do! And yet it was done.

When Johnson and Trump bloviate about western society, this is perhaps the only thing they aren't lying about, at least not completely. They genuinely believe at least a little bit of what they're saying, and are probably a little confused by society's continual decline.

Right-wingers made the mistake of electing people who genuinely believe the same things they do.

And the thing is, that sort of right-winger can't run a society that even SEEMS functional. They don't have enough patience to follow procedures or maintain charades.

The ultranationalists, the white supremacists, the religious conservatives, they finally got their men in the highest office.

And the countries they run are wastelands. Wrecks. Utter disaster areas. By no measure could it be said that Trump "Made America Great Again."

The United States is in the grip of a full-blown plague that their leader is not only incapable of competently reacting to, but he refuses to even try. He's just given up.

On top of that, collapsing infrastructure, catastrophic inequality, widespread civil unrest, no healthcare.

The United Kingdom is faring little better. We've just experienced a catastrophic economic downturn and are facing something immeasurably worse in January. Our response to COVID-19 isn't much better than the States'. Billionaires are waiting to cut up our public services.

Boris Johnson isn't just running out of things to say that aren't meaningless platitudes, HE'S RUNNING OUT OF MEANINGLESS PLATITUDES.

Listen to his rambling, and all you hear are the same vague pro-British drivel he said last week. Boris literally has no other ideas.

We are now all seeing that not only was the idea of "western civilization" a complete lie, it was a lie that can only be properly maintained by people who didn't even believe in it.

When you put true advocates for "western civilization" in power, they rapidly disassemble it.

When you believe something is inherently virtuous or superior, you have less reason to bother caring for it or maintaining it.

After all, if white people are stronger, prettier and more intelligent than all those other chumps, they'll surely succeed on their own, right?

To believe that the United Kingdom is a great place even for white people, you have to actively ignore the number of schoolchildren whose only good meal every day is a school lunch. You have to ignore that empty homes outnumber homeless people. You have to shut your eyes and hum.

But the issue with intentional ignorance is that problems just build up until there's no way they can be ignored anymore, and then there's a lot of angry people wondering why they were told things were great when they weren't.

And politicians are suddenly in a dangerous spot.

Either they have to admit that they fucked up - and not only lose all of their accumulated power, prestige and influence but risk terrible punishment at the hands of those they lied to - or they have to find someone else to blame.

The issue with scapegoats is that eventually they die or run away.

And then, because they weren't responsible for the problems you caused, you have to find another scapegoat.

And you have to keep doing this every time the mob tears apart your last scapegoat.

Forever.

Right-wingers say that leftists, socialists, anarchists, communists, etc. have no loyalty to western society, and from a certain point of view... they're right.

The cruel irony is, though, we're the people upon whom the responsibility of maintaining it usually falls.

We don't believe in the cult of western supremacy. We don't have a loyalty to the mythos.

We care about the PEOPLE who live in western society, and so feel compelled to keep it working. Since we don't believe they'll be fine on their own, we work to create structures that help.

Right-wingers seem to think I should have some kind of inherent loyalty to "my" country simply because I happened to be born here.

This is nonsense. I want to improve my surroundings not because I think the UK is great (it's wretched), but because people don't deserve to suffer.

Ancaps and capital-L Libertarians want to talk about "enlightened self-interest."

My enlightened self-interest lies in surrounding myself with a functional society that does not abuse, torture or deprive the people in it, in which basic survival is not charged a rent.