Vacuousa a la Roma

The ethical decline of selfish “elites,” and the spiritual vacuousness of the West in general, and the US in particular, are demonstrated in how many non-elites are willing to join anything with a sense of surety, even if that surety comes with a violent and regressive nature, as with the Islamic State group.  If that surety is also trying to overthrow the often corrupt and often self-serving Western and Western-supported order, it finds even more attraction.  Those willing to join have morphed from Middle-Eastern related people to people of all kinds.  Will this cause the West, and especially the US, to look at itself?  Unlikely.  What is more likely is that the West will merely escape into more diversion, denial, and blind reaction.  A foundational crisis—already in motion from environmental and other factors—could be in the offing, and failing to meet that crisis would signal the decline and fall, however slowly or quickly, of Western civilization.  Ironically, just as much of the world wants so many elements of that civilization. 

Rather like Rome less than 2000 years ago.