2016 was indeed a crucial year on a world scale; and the first such since 1967. 1967 was when the New Left agenda began to dominate, and when the sixties cultural revolution began to shed its positive and optimistic possibilities; to turn towards corruption, top-down manipulation and bureaucracy.
But for some years following, the issue stood in balance; and there were some hopeful counter-developments - such as the 'distributist' self-sufficiency movement - with its yearning for a smaller scale, folkish and crafts-based, more human society.
2016 was the beginning of another, but lesser, period of possibility. In that year there emerged an increased clarity of vision, so that some people began to see what has happened to the Western societies, and what was intended for them. There was a chance to say No; and to take another path.
The nature of that alternative path was unclear even in outline. My understanding was (and is) that it was a path initially of spiritual awakening, specifically Christian awakening - and more specifically of Romantic Christianity.
Through the second part of 2016 I had (uncharacteristically!) intermittent intuitions of 'ridiculous optimism'; because it seemed that quite a mass of people, perhaps a majority, had reached the point of recognising the malign intention of the ruling elites towards them and their nations.
But following on; there was a strong, swiftly growing, backlash and counter-attack from the Establishment and its organs of government, education, law and the mass media; but at first this 'anti-populist' onslaught brought the repression out into the open and made it less easily deniable. There was a chance, it seemed, that the backlash might feed the movement it is intended to crush.
2017 and on was therefore a period of moral testing for The West. Pressure was increasing, so the period was limited.
There was (I believe) a chance to escape certain doom and take another path. But the different path would entail accepting - upfront - a considerable personal sacrifice in terms of material goods, comfort, convenience, etc.
The moral test was whether people were prepared to pay the necessary costs now, for the chance of a better future. The failure of this test would be when - by clinging to their addictions and distractions, by privileging the short-term - the masses would tacitly embrace the down-slide into despair, self-hatred and chosen damnation.
I concluded: "If we fail the test, as a culture, then we will (as a population) have no serious cause for complaint about what happens after."
Well, The West failed 'the test of 2017' and onwards, and seems - indeed - to have made little complaint about what has happened since... I mean the international totalitarian takeover, the near-universal curfew, state prohibition of most human activities, regulation of the permitted behaviours, and abolition of nearly all human contact, etc. Indeed, many of the masses insistently demand more of the same treatment.
So, it looks like people did reach a point of decision after 2016; and decided then that the Global Establishment was, after all, the preferred option; decided that The System was a benign force, working for human good; and that They should be trusted to do what was necessary and best for the mass of people.
And that is how the events of the past few months have been interpreted. People have rejected spirituality and Christianity; and are now getting what they then chose.
You want it? You got it!
