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Who Wants to be the Global Hegemon?
I reckon that the US started on its way to become the global hegemon in the late 19th century with the Spanish-American War, courtesy President McKinley, when the US sent the cruiser USS Maine in 1998 to Havana “to provide protection for U.S. citizens.” And then somehow the Maine got blown up.
Then the US got into World War I in 1917, courtesy President Wilson. It emerged as clear global hegemon, supplying financial aid to Europe after the war, especially including Britain and Germany.
The US got into World War II on December 7, 1941, a day which will live, in infamy, courtesy of President Roosevelt. It emerged as the global hegemon of the ages, supplying huge amounts of military supplies to the Soviets and to Britain, and shoveling billions of aid to western Europe after the war.
The US got into the Cold War in 1948, after the western occupation zones in Germany unified into the Bundesrepublik Deutschland on June 20, 1948 and the Soviets began a blockade of the western zones in Berlin four days later. All through the Cold War the US was undisputed global hegemon.
Today, a month after attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran, experts agree that the US is a declining hegemon, including Niall Ferguson and Andrew Sullivan.
Meanwhile China has been rising in the hegemon stakes since Deng Xiaoping dumped Maoist socialism with “Reform and Opening Up” and brought China from economic ruin to an economic miracle. Will China develop into a global hegemon or regain its place as the Middle Kingdom at the center of the world surrounded by tributary states?
Then there is Islam. You could say that the Ottoman Empire became status quo after being repulsed at the Gates of Vienna in 1683. And then got chopped up by Sykes-Picot after World War I. Obviously Islam is on the march, in its Iranian version to conquer the world religiously and politically, and its Sunni version to leverage western economic ideas and technology in world partnership. Will Islam rise to global hegemony?
Europe used to be the global hegemon, starting in 1492 with Spain and Portugal trying to figure out how to get to the Indies and its spices using the new technology of ocean-going sailing ships. The result was that various European nations became global hegemons, developing trading empires, colonizing the Americas, and humiliating China. It all came to an end when France, Britain, and Russia ganged up on Germany in 1914.
So what happens now? Has the US blown Iran to smithereens and ended its bid for, at least, Mideast hegemony? Has it empowered Iran to manage the Strait of Hormuz as the key to oil hegemony? Has the US created a non-Shiite hegemony to unit Sunnis Muslims with the Abraham Accords? Has Europe descended into irrelevance with its energy dependence on Mideast Oil and useless wind and solar?
Or are we at the very beginning of a global tech-bro hegemony, as tech bros all across the world combine to create a worldwide AI venture-capital empire to replace the current educated-class secular hegemony in all the formerly Christian political entities?
And then there is India, truly a “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
It’s all very confusing.
| Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:30:15 GMT |
The Tech Bros are Not That Interested in Politics
Because I follow Curtis Yarvin on X I got his link to a piece complaining about the tech bros.
See, their response to the proposed wealth tax in California is to up stakes and move to Texas. Why, asks Bennett’s Phylactery?
For what they’ll spend on relocation costs alone, the tech exiles could have bought the entire California political system in perpetuity.
Why not? Well, says BP, it’s because they prefer to exercise power with money.
Elon is the best example, but it’s true of all of them: he is very comfortable (and skilled) at exercising power in the form of money.
Er, no. The reason is that the tech bros are not interested in power. Or money.
What are they interested in? They are interested in amazing the world by doing something that nobody thought was possible. And they want their new idea to be a blazing success. Money? OK, that’s really nice, but the important thing to be the guy that invented the Apple iPhone. Or the first reusable rocket. Or the first car with Full Self Driving. Yeah, the money is cool, although a tech bro’s fortune in mainly in the valuation of his successful startup, and that is the present value of the expected profits from the venture.
Is Elon interested in money? He is, if it helps him build a spaceship that can get to Mars. For instance, as far as I can see, he is building out Starlink in part to make money to fund Starship. And also to smuggle Starlink receivers into Iran. And remember, he paid way over market price for Twitter so he could disassemble its regime censorship protocols.
I suspect that if the tech bros think about politics at all, it is merely defensive: figuring out how to stay out of the way of the politicians and the activists and just get on with the current project.
But Bennett’s Phylactery is different. He thinks that power is the center of the universe.
Politics can, in fact, be understood as “the set of human questions that cannot be settled via voluntary reciprocal transactions between individuals in a free market”.
Not exactly. Politics is providing the means to use force against people that don’t play by your rules.
Problem is that if you are in politics you are usually out looking for people that don’t play by the rules you like. Maybe it’s billionaires. Maybe it’s price gougers. Maybe it’s racists. Maybe homophobes.
Curtis Yarvin: “there is no politics without an enemy.”
If everyone is just going to work and buying the groceries at Kroger’s and picking the kids up after school, where’s the meaning in life for people in politics? Gotta have an enemy!
So, if you are in politics you have a particular interest in increasing “the set of human questions that cannot be settled via voluntary reciprocal transactions” and that need the assistance of politicians and force. Otherwise, what’s the point?
On the other hand, it seems that many of our politicians are interested in reducing “the set of human questions that cannot be settled via voluntary reciprocal transactions” when it comes to imprisoning convicted criminals to make it difficult for them to kill twenty-something women in light rail cars and prevent anyone from getting the homeless off the streets.
Go figure.
| Thu, 02 Apr 2026 22:36:42 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Taleb: Never virtue-signal; never rent-seek; you must start a business. Chantrill: We are all virtue-signallers; we are all rent-seekers; we never quite got to start our own business.
If you defund the police you will get vigilantes and gangs.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Rene Girard and the Scapegoat
