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by Louis T. March

Hard to believe we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century. How time flies! How civilisation endures! But for how much longer?

Donald Trump has been inaugurated as president of the United States for the second time. Trump is many things to many people: hero, villain, saviour, criminal, the plain-speaking brash, rude so-called blue-collar billionaire and much more. For better or worse, he is one of America’s great characters.

There is talk of momentous change with Trump as president once again. There should be changes in domestic and foreign policy. Republicans have majorities in both houses of Congress along with the White House. They’ve had such power before and squandered it. America’s bipartisan duopoly constitutes two horns of the same bull. The political class enjoys the status quo and thus is not eager to do away with it.

While there may be surface political change and new political dynamics, what about the state of civilisation?

As we enter the New Year, and with a new American president, humanity is not in a good place. If the accelerating birth dearth continues, homo sapiens is on the path to dying out. Standards of living are falling, aka inflation. If governments focused on the latter, would that help the former? Don’t know. We’re in uncharted territory. Baby bonuses and other schemes have mixed results.

Arnold Toynbee said, “Civilisations die from suicide, not from murder.” History bears this out. People living through civilisational collapse may know there are problems, but may not understand that demographic collapse, fraying families, disrespect for life, moral relativism and rampant fiscal profligacy bring social dissolution.

Folks who call out civilisational decline are often dismissed as “nattering nabobs of negativism”. Should that not suffice, there is additional shaming terminology, including “conspiracy theory”, “gloom-and-doom”, “racist dog whistle”, “homophobia”, misogyny or other smears. These labels are devices of deflection, meant to control us by policing public discourse to tamp down dissent. They still work, but the public is finally catching on. A guy maligned with all of them has been elected president.

Beyond Politics

So, Donald Trump is returning to the White House. Historic. Will it make any difference? Better governance for sure. Hard to see how it could get worse, as the last four years have been disastrous. Securing our borders, improving law enforcement and ending perpetual war would help.

But civilisational decline? Neither the first Trump administration, nor any preceding or successive one, has managed to reverse something that transcends politics. Fertility continues to fall, and rising social maladies (addiction, crime, etc.) are seemingly unstoppable. As Pat Buchanan told us, “Politics cannot pull the West out of its crisis, for it is not a crisis of material things, but a crisis of the soul.” Does President Trump understand that? Does any politician?

If ever there was a realist (gloom-and-doomer) among us, it is Christian author Michael Snyder. He posts regularly on civilisational decline. His writing can be sensational and we don’t agree on everything. However, his scholarship and intellectual honesty are rock solid.

His recent essay “Civilizations Die from Suicide”: Here are 16 Signs that Our Society is Doing Just That” nails it:

“We have turned our backs on the values of our forefathers, and we are literally destroying everything that they worked so hard to give us. “

Here’s a summary of Snyder’s indicators of decline:

• Record high suicide rates
• Record low birth rates
• Rejection of the family unit, anti-natalism
• Record number of abortions; foetal tissue harvesting
• Lack of border enforcement; immigration invasion
• Rising juvenile crime and prosecutorial lenience
• Domination of humans by technology
• Rampant sexual immorality
• Diminished role of religious faith

Bleak Horizons

Facts back him up. Psychiatric Times reports that “the suicide rate in the United States recently reached its highest peak since 1941. The provisional number of suicides in 2022 was 3% higher than the final total number of suicides in 2021.”

And here’s what CNN has to say: “There were 55 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age in 2023, CDC data shows, fewer than any other year on record… The US fertility rate has been trending down for decades, with particularly steep dips after the Great Recession of 2008.”

A higher percentage of the US population is single and childless than is married with children. America’s fertility rate is almost 1.7, 20 percent below replacement level.

Also, “The share of US 30-year-olds who are actually living an adult life has collapsed over the last four decades.” Check out this chart – the rates of marriage, home ownership and living with children have collapsed since the 1980s:

The share of US 30-year olds who are actually living an adult life has collapsed over the last 4 decades. pic.twitter.com/1dq3jU2wCU

— Alf (@MacroAlf) January 2, 2025

And here’s the grim story on abortion from Yahoo News: “Abortions are becoming slightly more common now than before Dobbs. There have been slightly more monthly abortions across the country recently than there were in the months leading up to the June 2022 ruling, even as the number in states with bans dropped to near zero.”

Illegal immigration has made the US a magnet for criminals. The notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is now active in 18 states. Crime is a mechanism of social revolution and has changed the way millions go about their daily lives. Could the public one day come to embrace a police state to restore law and order?

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World scenario is upon us. Canadian film-maker Denis Villeneuve offered some insight in a recent interview:

We behave like AI circuits. The ways we see the world are narrow-minded binaries. We’re disconnecting from each other, and society is crumbling in some ways. It’s frightening.

There’s something addictive about the fact that you can access any information, any song, any book. It’s compulsive. It’s like a drug. I’m very tempted to disconnect myself. It would be fresh air.

And as for sexual morality: “More than 795,000 people were listed on state sex offender registries as of August 2024. Since 2019, the number of registered sex offenders in the U.S. has risen by nearly 43,000, or around six percent.”

To complete the list of civilisational threats, secularism is making great strides:

Young Americans ages 18-29 have dominated the growth in the religiously unaffiliated category over the past four decades, but the percentage of those in this age group who are unaffiliated has remained stable around 34–38% since 2016.

However, as the cohorts age, the growth in religiously unaffiliated Americans has started to show up more in the 30-49 age category, which is up to 32% unaffiliated from 26% in 2016. The 50-64 group has seen a smaller bump, with the religiously unaffiliated going from 18% in 2016 to 20% in 2022, while the 65-and-older age group has jumped from 12% unaffiliated in 2016 to 17% in 2022.

We hear much about dysfunctional families. What about a dysfunctional society? American trends and behaviours are exported worldwide. Were they uplifting, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, they are not. Mr Snyder:

If we stay on the road that we are currently on, our society will die.

But if we reverse course and start doing what is right with all our hearts, anything is possible.

We were once a light to the entire world, and we can be that light again.

But at this moment our society is racing into the darkness, and it won’t be too long before our self-destructive behaviour catches up with us in a major way.

Self-destructive behaviours are the product of values (or lack thereof) that govern our thinking. Absent social cohesion, societies become unmoored, demoralised and subject to desperation, cults, crime and polarisation. “Management” of social pathologies becomes a growth industry. Healthy civilisations have a reigning ethos, zeitgeist, or common understanding. In America we can’t even agree on what is a man or woman.

Population Decline

Don’t get worked up about Mr Trump. Presidents come and go.

But how about survival of the species? Until recently, those predicting population collapse were dismissed. Isn’t population increasing? Yes, but not for long. Global population will begin falling between 2060 and 2080 or earlier.

Folks saying pro-natalists want to overcrowd the planet don’t understand. Once peak population occurs, there will be a precipitous decline with no end in sight. Social upheaval is inevitable. East Asia is acutely aware: Japan, China, and South Korea are already losing people. That is also the case in Eastern Europe, though out-migration is a significant factor.

Thanks to folks like Elon Musk, Malcolm and Simone Collins and even Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., there is rising concern among elites. Maybe Mercator posting about it will help in some small way. Always remember: “Forewarned is forearmed.”

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Republished with thanks to Mercator. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.