Collapse. The Post Apocalyptic World. Civil War 2. Boogaloo. Brazilification.

These are all mostly variations on a theme and many seem uniquely American. Young white American men have been drawn to post apocalyptic themes like moths to flame. It’s the ultimate escape. Even contemporary mainstream culture reflects this: Mad Max style LARPing events, videogames like FallOut. There has been a glut of disaster end of the world porn in modern cinema and thinking for a while. (The deep conspiracist in me thinks all these films have laid the ground work for the end of the world cult forming around climate change). It is never enough to bombard people with the science, they need the emotion of films like The Day After Tomorrow or Planet of the Apes. The American Right has also been long predisposed to this thinking. The 2nd Amendment is this magic guarantee of freedom for them. It’s to fight the tyranny of a Government out of control! But more and more it seems it really will be about securing your own security in an increasingly diverse and broken society that muddles along.

Perhaps Collapse is becoming a kind of fulcrum point for many on the Right. Collapse can be seen as an inevitability. It can be seen as something to avoid. It can be seen as something to strive towards. Forms of collapse have already taken place. We live in a society where the following question is asked of Presidential Candidates at a CNN event.

“How can you help lower the cost of puberty blocker medications”

Forms of collapse are well in motion. They aren’t the sexy Hollywood kind of collapse though where you grab your AR and patrol your ‘hood. It’s the horrifying slow and continual collapse of norms. Of neighborhoods full of dogs instead of kids. Of drag queens in libraries. Of homosexual corporate pride events.

How do you deal with this collapse? The Rightist, the small c conservative usually has a vested interest in order and stability. How in a culture that Cthulu pushes ever leftward, amidst the normalization of these horrors do you stand and push back? The greatest fear of many is that there is not going to be an end. That the bugmen will slowly poz us all into submission. Thus the conservative, the rightist arrives at the desire for explosive Collapse. The Dreher types even succumb to this! Sure they frame this as the Benedictine Option, but really what space do you have for your Catholic community as the walls close in and the drag queens circle? Only with true Collapse and armed Catholic men will you achieve that dream.

That big bang moment offers an escape. An end to the dreary routine working at your Woke Capital job where if you look too long at the intern HR fat lady might write you up. Most men are in survival mode half the time whether they realize it or not. It’s only the rare few who break through, rise above, laugh at the clown-world and drive forwards. Yet even these men need to put steak on the table and need health insurance. We do what we must. Stuck in rat dystopia survival mode is crushing us. That Collapse scenario looks appealing, even to the normies. We build walls for our societies to keep the Barbarians out. To protect what is inside – but what is left to protect inside anymore? The land outside the walls suddenly beckons to us. It offers possibility to rebuild walls around things that actually matter. Our society has become so inclusive with everyone on the ‘inside’ that the only purpose the walls have is to thwart the white men who built them. See how our legal system destroys any attempt Trump takes to use the walls as they are meant to be used.

So we arrive. We arrive at this bizarre landscape of the conservative, the Dissident Right man who seeks order, harmony, stability and the Good looking to Collapse for salvation. This seems unreal, and no doubt many do not seek this, but more and more of us do. Hakan urged us to pray to Yellowstone. Together our power can ignite the magma chamber. This is not out of despair. No. This is because men have come to understand out of the ruins new structures and order must be built. Perhaps, we, on the American Right are too captured by the fantasy of Collapse. The rest of the world does not merely stop (bar some true Black Swan like a solar flare EMP style event). America is a hugely valuable landmass. Collapse scenarios, Civil War 2 discussion, always seem slightly devoid of the reality that foreign powers would intervene. That slices of the US are appealing and desirable. Would an earthquake shattered secessionist California welcome an invading Chinese force? Some kind of fantastical break-up will see meddling, will see the entire globe shaken by the death throes of the current super-power. Not everywhere is allowing drag queens to teach children or pushing women into more and more combat roles. As the US continues to weaken itself this is serious food for thought to consider.

This is an article where I’ve asked a lot of questions. Frustratingly there seems no good way to wrap it up. Those questions seem to hang in space. There aren’t easy answers. What I do think is observable is that the more people look to Collapse for salvation the potential for chaos increases. Think of the NYT index for recession except for Collapse. Alongside that, ground may be ceded where it should still be fought for. Collapse may remain an appealing option for many, but it is not what a movement can be built around. Carving out space without a Collapse must be done, the Overton Window opens both ways. As they push their trans-kids on television so we must push back. What needs to happen is a continuation, as our numbers grow, of the need to organize and fight against the slow collapse all around, whilst preparing for the worst. Collapse may never come, and it should not mean the end to the good fight.