Emmanuel Todd’s book: The Defeat of the West
Emmanuel Todd has a dim view of America. Based on statistics and observations, he believes our country has reached a point of no return.
Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
Excerpts
And America's main problem is the dollar.Emmanuel Todd’s book: The Defeat of the West
The dollar is ruining America
In economics, there is a term "the curse of natural resources", which means a situation when their abundance in the country and export abroad hinder the development of other sectors of the economy. [This is what happened to Holland, which once exported large amounts of gas and oil, but when the deposits dwindled, the country initially had very little industry to fall back on. This economic problem became known as the “Dutch disease.” Holland has recovered since]
Vladlen Chertinov
The Curse of America: Nuland and Blinken Take Revenge on Ukraine for Their Grandfathers
The war in Ukraine is bringing the end of America closer. This is the conclusion made by the French scientist and prophet Emmanuel Todd. He once accurately predicted the collapse of the USSR, the global financial crisis of 2008 and the "Arab Spring", and last year he wrote the book "The Defeat of the West" [La défaite de l’occident], which caused shock in the West. In his research, Todd paints a portrait of the United States as an incurably sick country. Having forgotten how to work and think, suffering from violence and obesity, becoming poorer and going crazy. And it all began in 2015 - when God was abolished in the United States. Since then, America, and along with it, its servants around the world, have been sucked into a "black hole".
Sick Country
Emmanuel Todd is surprised that there are still many people who believe in the power of America. And in its democracy. They believe that in the conflict with Russia, it defends freedom and human rights. Although the facts say otherwise.
Emanuel Todd predicted the collapse of the USSR, and now predicts the defeat of the West.
The United States is a sick country with an increasing infant mortality rate, which in 2020 was 5.4 per 1,000 births (for comparison: in Russia it was 4.4).
The average life expectancy in the United States is also declining: from 78.8 years in 2014 to 77.3 years in 2020 and 76.3 in 2021. While in Russia, "still bearing the biological imprint of its tortured history," it grew by six years from 2002 to 2020 — from 65.1 to 71.3 years.
But the most striking thing is that the rise in mortality in the United States was accompanied by the highest healthcare costs in the world — in 2020, they accounted for 18.8% of the country's GDP. The paradox is explained simply: part of this spending went... to the destruction of the population by pharmaceutical companies. No other country in the world takes so many drugs. With a population of 5% of all the inhabitants of the planet, Americans buy more than 50% of all drugs produced, some of which are the same drugs.
The most rapidly "dying" part of the American population were white people aged 45-54 — residents of the internal "Republican" states. The reasons: alcoholism, suicide and drug addiction. They also became the main victims of the opioid scandal. Todd explains its essence:
Large pharmaceutical companies, through the mediation of highly paid and unscrupulous doctors, provided patients suffering morally for economic and social reasons with dangerous painkillers that are addictive, very often leading to direct death, alcoholism or suicide.
This can be compared to the destruction of excess population, disappointed with their lives, and with the economic and social situation in the country.
In 2016, Congress, led by the pharmaceutical lobby, prohibited health authorities from suspending the use of "medicinal opioids", passing a law allowing the US pharmaceutical industry to continue killing its citizens.
The United States is also the absolute leader in the world in mass shootings of some citizens by others and in the number of prisoners. Todd ironically remarks that in the "freest country", defending democracy from Russian "autocracy", more people are behind bars than anywhere else in the world.
In 2019, the number of prisoners per million inhabitants in the United States was 531 people, compared to 300 in Russia. And I believe that by recruiting mercenaries in prisons, the Wagner Group had to lower this number.
There is also such an indicator as the average duration of effective work. In 1961, it was 40 hours a week in the United States, and in 2003 - only 27.
Todd also draws attention to the fact that America is getting dumber. Studies show a decline in intelligence between 2006 and 2018. This applies to both good and bad students from all ethnic groups.
Between the two world wars, secondary school education was actively developing in America. As a result, by 1945, half of the world's industry was in the United States. After the war, it was the turn of universities, and a boom in higher education began. But after 1965, something went wrong.
The US has a dual SAT system, one part assessing verbal skills, the other math skills. They deteriorated equally from 1965 to 1980. Then, until 2005, there was stabilization. Then the decline resumed. The level of industrial production was also falling. By 2019, it was already 16.8% of the world's. In 2020, only 7.2% of American students received an engineering education. For comparison: in Russia - 23.4%. With half the population (146 versus 330 million), our country [the author is Russian] managed to train significantly more engineers than America.
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As Engels and Lenin predicted, free trade corrupts, but we can add: absolute free trade corrupts absolutely... Neither Engels nor Lenin could have imagined that the Western proletariat could be completely transformed into commoners, living mainly on the labor of the Chinese and other peoples of the world. The transfer of many manufacturing plants abroad contributed to the increasing exhaustion of our provinces and suburbs, turning the productive citizen into a parasitic plebeian, who hardly wants to return to the right path in his heart.
The life of a parasitic plebeian is tragic. Todd writes that American workers, realizing their declining social usefulness, turn to alcoholism and drugs, commit suicide, or vote for Trump. And American youth are becoming less and less willing to work and study.
Jews are declining along with America
The share of white Americans in higher education in the United States is declining. They are underrepresented even at the most prestigious universities that allow one to join the elite. Todd uses Harvard, Yale and Princeton as examples. While whites make up 61% of the population in the US, they make up only 46% at these three universities. Also less than it could be, based on the composition of the population, blacks and Hispanics.
Asians demonstrate the greatest thirst for knowledge. With a total of 6% of the US population, they make up 28% at these three universities! Todd explains this by the fact that the children of immigrants from Japan, Korea, China and Vietnam were protected from the general American "shipwreck" for one or two generations by the still-existing family values and Confucian tradition, for which education was almost sacred.
Even Jews are drowning in the American quagmire. Among Harvard students, their number has decreased from 25% to less than 10%. And in the eight most prestigious universities (the so-called Ivy League), Jews make up only 7% - less than the quota that was once introduced for them. [US universities once had a legal quota for Jews]
Todd cites an article from 2023 in the book, whose author, analyzing the "catastrophic" state of Jewry in the United States, notes:
In academic circles in Hollywood, Washington, and even New York, wherever American Jews have managed to establish themselves, their influence has sharply weakened.
For example, with a total share of Jews of 1.7% of the entire US population, they used to make up 20% of federal judges, but now only 7%. Among scientists born between 1944 and 1967, their share was 21%, but among current scientists under 30 - only 4%.
If this were to happen in Russia, our government would have long been accused of state anti-Semitism! In the US, of course, there can be no talk of any persecution of Jews: in 2010, according to the Forbes rating, they made up 30% of the top hundred richest people in the country - that same oligarchic elite. Jews are simply deteriorating along with America.
But Emmanuel Todd, by the way, emphasizing his own Jewish roots, draws attention to an interesting nuance. Despite the fact that in the US the number of Jews is greatly declining in all their traditional spheres of activity, there are a lot of them in the Biden administration, especially among those involved in foreign policy.
For example, on the Board of Directors of the most prestigious foreign policy think tank - the Council on Foreign Relations: almost a third of its 34 members are Jews... In the current ruling group, and especially in the faction engaged in war, Americans of Jewish origin are still overrepresented, says Todd. Moreover, these are not just Jews, but people whose ancestors came from Tsarist Russia and its outskirts. The scientist points to the two most influential figures who, in his words, "run" Ukraine - Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.
It turns out that Blinken's paternal grandfather was born in Kyiv. In Victoria Nuland's paternal house, we see a combination of Moldovan and Ukrainian Jews... The fact that so many people in the top geopolitical establishment have family ties to the western part of the former Tsarist empire cannot but worry, Todd concludes. [Western Ukraine has always been a hotbed of Neonazism, and, ironically, Jews were and are heavily represented among this end of the political spectrum. For example, Zelensky is Jewish but seems not to care the Ukrainian folk hero Stepan Bandera once killed about 100,000 Jews in Lvov. Bandera’s birthday is an official celebration in Ukraine]
It is clear that the goal of this [US State Department] establishment is the demographic exhaustion of Russia. But it is also clear that the price for this exhaustion will be the destruction of Ukraine. Todd believes that American Jews of Ukrainian descent have no attachment to Ukraine - a country where their ancestors were subjected to anti-Semitic persecution. And he comes close to the question: are the descendants of the once persecuted Ukrainian Jews, "together with the Kyiv government managing this slaughter," taking revenge in such a sophisticated way on the country "that caused so much suffering to their ancestors"?
[In this context, let me recommend the article: How Jewish is the war on Russia?]
If so, then this is some kind of Old Testament vengefulness.
The "Titanic" can no longer turn back
The war in Ukraine has exposed the weaknesses of the United States. Todd notes, by the way, that the nature of the military actions is absolutely consistent with American parasitic globalism:
We forced workers in low-wage countries to produce what we needed; we forced Ukraine, a country where the human body is cheap, to wage the war we needed.
But America was unable to even wage such a parasitic war. It turned out that the United States is not capable of producing the weapons that Ukraine needs.
The strengths of the American economy are information technology and oil and gas: Silicon Valley and Texas. And the rest of the industry is in decline. The war revealed the inability of the United States to produce the required number of shells, missiles and other weapons. In 2022, Russia's GDP was only 8.8% of the US GDP. How, despite this imbalance in their favor, did the United States get to the point where they can no longer produce enough shells for Ukraine? - Todd asks. And so he answers:
The U.S. gross domestic product is overwhelmingly made up of services to people whose effectiveness or even usefulness is not always discernible: doctors (sometimes murderers, as we saw with opioids), overrated lawyers, predatory financiers, prison guards, drug enforcement agents, intelligence agencies. In 2020, the GDP even included as value-added the labor of the country's 15,140 economists - the "high priests of lies" with an average annual salary of $121,000. What is U.S. GDP worth if you separate it from the activities of this parasitic mass?
Todd compares U.S. GDP to the Nobel Prize in economics - a rattle given to comedians. He argues that American GDP - $76,000 per capita in 2022 - is only 20% consistent with the "physical" sectors: industry, construction, transport, agriculture (by the way, grain production in the US fell from 65 million tons in 1980 to 47 million in 2022 and is teetering on the brink of deficit, while in Russia it grew from 37 million in 2012 to 104 million in 2023). That 20% of $76,000 translates into $15,200, or slightly more than Russia’s GDP ($10,420 in 2024).
The drama of the American oligarchy is that it rules a decaying and largely fictitious economy, Todd believes.
In the 1980s, the U.S. defense industry employed 3.2 million people; today, it employs only 1.1 million. Modern warfare is technological; most officers in the military should essentially be engineers. But there is an acute shortage of them.
The brain drain to law and business schools threatens U.S. military might. Todd writes that war cannot be won by sending injunctions to the enemy or blocking his accounts. But that is exactly what America does. Imposing sanctions, freezing the assets of the Bank of Russia, seizing the property of Russians, refusing to insure ships— Emmanuel Todd has the feeling that the American side is waging war with lawyers, and Ukraine is short of ammunition.
The scientist believes that the American ship can no longer be turned around. The Titanic is doomed to sail toward its iceberg. The point of no return was America's rejection of God. However, Todd, as a scientist, does not operate with this concept. He discusses the rejection of Christianity and even specifically Protestantism, on the principles of which America was founded. Its strengths were the cultivation of hard work and a desire for education in people.
America and Emptiness
From 1945 to 1965, America was ruled by a homogeneous, united elite that preserved the best qualities of Protestantism. It, like the rest of the population, obeyed the general morality, and conducted a responsible foreign policy aimed at protecting freedom. But then there was a breakdown in morality - the Anglo-American sexual revolution and the French May of 1968.
[May 68 (French : Mai 68) refers to a period of civil unrest that occurred throughout France from May to June 1968. Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, and the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events the economy of France came to a halt. – Wikipedia]
Since then, Protestantism, which for centuries had been the engine of America's economic power, has been slowly dying. [Evangelicalism, based on a peculiar doctrine that deviates from Jesus’ peace and love teachings, has also taken a Zionist turn that is supporting Netanyahu’s genocide]
Religious decay has led to the disappearance of social morality and sense of belonging to society. The ruling elite of the world's largest power no longer determines its actions and decisions in accordance with higher values. Today, it is nothing more than a gathering of people completely devoid of common moral principles. The very principle of keeping commitments has become something outdated and negative. Betrayal has become the norm. The complete disappearance of the Christian substrate explains the disintegration of the ruling classes of America.
This ultimately led to global upheavals in the world. Emmanuel Todd characterizes the 2000s as the period of the actual end of Christianity in the West. He calls 2015 the year of zero religion, when same-sex marriages were legalized at the federal level in the United States.
The scientist calls this an irreversible cultural shift, because homosexuality is condemned by all world religions. But the state of zero religion is not the end. Having crossed zero, America went into the minus and is going further and further along the path of denying reality. The road of lies.
The United States, together with England, was the driving force behind a whole chain of revolutions - liberal, sexual, and then "gender", which, having begun with the fight for gender equality, ended with the fight for the freedom of transgender people.
Genetics tells us that it is impossible to turn a man (XY chromosomes) into a woman (XX chromosomes) and vice versa. To pretend that this is not so means to state a lie, says Todd.
Denial of reality and the fight against it has become central to America. In everything - from transgender people to the economy and the conflict with Russia. For the upper classes of the USA, the need to affirm the false, to worship it and to impose it as truth on society has become predominant. They lie like they breathe.
Todd writes that a cult of lies has begun to be established in America. He does not operate with the concept of "the devil". But if we call things by their proper names, then what is happening is pure Satanism. According to the definition of Jesus Christ, the devil is the "father of lies". Having betrayed God, Americans inevitably began to serve Satan.
The greatest illusion of these upheavals was the belief that the individual will become greater when freed from the collective. The opposite is true. A person can be great only in and through the community. Alone, he is doomed by his nature to shrink. Now that we are freeing ourselves en masse from metaphysical beliefs, we experience emptiness and shrink in size; this is how Todd described the mechanism of the crisis of the West.
The end of the union of madmen
The USA is the world champion not only in the number of prisoners in prisons, but also in the number of obese people. From 2000 to 2020, the number of overweight residents there increased from 30.5% to 41.9% of the total population. Excess weight is a risk factor for many diseases, such as COVID. But obesity, according to Todd, is not only a medical problem, but also an indicator of the mental state of society.
In a society where, despite inequality, it is not difficult to feed oneself, obesity indicates a lack of self-control (especially among the rich who can afford quality food) and a violation of the superego on a societal scale.
In other words, the obesity of Americans is one of the signs of America's inadequacy. And from inadequacy it is not far to mental disorders.
70% of all Americans are on prescription drugs (including 15% of high school students who abuse them), and someone in America dies from an accidental overdose every 19 minutes. 30 million, or almost 10% of the population, regularly take antidepressants, among them every fourth is a woman aged 40 to 60. Antidepressants are one of the causes of suicide and the increasing number of mass shootings.
The superego is broken in all of America. Its separation from reality has gone too far. One of the key moments of this separation was the US victory in the Cold War. But Russia became the bone on which America slipped.
At first, after the collapse of the USSR, the US did not know what to do with us. Todd writes that in the minds of Americans, Russia ceased to exist as an autonomous player, became a subordinate partner whose fate had yet to be determined. But Russia fell very quickly and in 1994-1998 it hit rock bottom. It lost the First Chechen War. After the default of 1998, its GDP reached a minimum. And this weakness, according to Todd, led America to the decision to deliver the final knockout blow. Since 1999, the United States has entered a state of arrogance. For the first time in its history, it no longer had an enemy. Overwhelmed by this emptiness, it lost its mind. This year, NATO began to expand eastward. That year, NATO bombed Serbia. That year, the American military budget began to increase again after the end of the Cold War. And the United States was close to taking control of Russia's mineral wealth through oligarchs like Khodorkovsky under its control.
But in 1999, what Emmanuel Todd calls the irony of history happened: Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia. The country began to recover, and the rise was as fast as the fall. So fast that the United States, blinded by its own arrogance, did not immediately react to it. Moreover, as Todd writes, they considered themselves so invincible that they made another strategic mistake: in December 2001, they forced China to join the WTO, which would undermine their economy.
Meanwhile, the Second Chechen War showed that Russia was not going to disintegrate, and Putin’s removal of the oligarchs from power and the arrest of Khodorkovsky [by Russia] in 2003, who was associated with Exxon Mobil, meant the failure of the United States’ attempt to get its hands on our oil and gas industry.
In 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, Putin finally broke free - he gave a speech in which he declared that Russia would not accept the American unipolar world. In response, in early 2008, Georgia and Ukraine were invited to join NATO, in full accordance with the precepts of the Russophobe Brzezinski, who believed that the only way to finish off Russia was to amputate Ukraine. Todd calls this the apogee of American arrogance. And then, according to him, the Gods blinded America:
[Putin's 2007 Munich speech. You will understand why he was never invited back]
The United States began to dig a trap from which they will no longer be able to escape... There is no Russian factor destabilizing the world balance. There is an incurable crisis of the West, the peripheral waves of which have crashed onto the breakwater of resistance - Russia.
The West is self-destructing, and its defeat is certain for Todd. The original values that made America strong - Christianity, morality, work ethic and a sense of responsibility - have evaporated. And this is irreversible. The economic decline seems to be irreversible too.
America produces almost nothing anymore. It has destroyed its own working class. But it has also lost its ruling class. Todd believes America no longer knows where it is going, it makes decisions in a distorted consciousness based on a distorted vision.
These decisions have ceased to be rational and moral. The war in Ukraine is the result of the merger of two madnesses - American and Ukrainian. As a result, the Ukrainian people will die a martyr's death, and the Americans will see the fall of their empire.
The defeat for the United States will be the de-dollarization of the world, the cessation of imports and great poverty. The loss of control over its external resources will lead to a decline in the standard of living of the population, which is already low.
Already today, many Americans cannot afford to rent housing. Working full time and receiving a salary, they live on the street - in their cars or in tents. And it will be even worse.
Emmanuel Todd believes that if there are still real Protestants left in the United States, then, observing what is happening to their country, they will probably often repeat the words of Jesus Christ "fall from grace." They mean that one who stood on the righteous path but strayed from it cannot be saved.
**
Our thanks to AN for this:
"He [Starmer] shows more interest and concern for Ukraine than for the people of his country, especially our armed forces." Don't forget too that he said he would rather be at the World Economic Forum in Davos than in Westminster.
https://news-pravda.com/world/2025/01/12/971851.html
https://news-pravda.com/world/2025/01/12/971858.html
**
Here’s your air strike update for Jan 12, 2025
Search phrases for those who want to do their own research:
EN phrase for translation: Jan 12, 2025, russian missiles, drones, bombs hit Ukraine
Translated into RU: 12 января, 2025, российские ракеты, беспилотники, бомбы поражают Украину
Google translate:
https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&op=translate
To optimize results, searches must be done in Yandex search
Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
11:45, 13 December 2024
Russia launched a massive strike with Iskanders and Kinzhals on Ukraine. Among the targets is a military airfield in Kyiv
[Both the Iskander and the Kinzhal are hypersonic]
Rogov reported a massive missile strike by the Russian Armed Forces on Ukraine
Alina Goncharova
Alina Goncharova (editor of the operational information department)
This morning, the Russian Armed Forces launched massive strikes on military facilities and energy infrastructure in Ukraine. The start of the strike was announced by the chairman of the commission of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation on sovereignty issues, co-chairman of the coordinating council for the integration of new regions Vladimir Rogov.
The strike has been carried out since five in the morning. According to Mash, a total of 120 missiles have been launched. According to available data, the Russian army used Iskanders, Gerans and Kinzhals. Explosions were heard in Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkov, Odessa, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy and other regions of Ukraine. In Kyiv and other regions, emergency power outages began amid missile strikes. Energy Minister German Galushchenko said that the energy system of the entire Ukraine is under threat, three stages of power outages have been introduced, and there may be no power for up to 12 hours. The head of the Lviv regional military administration, Maksym Kozitsky, also reported on strikes on energy facilities in the region.
Among the targets is a military airfield in Kyiv
The Russian Armed Forces have preliminarily launched strikes in the direction of an airfield in Kyiv, where F-16 fighter pilots are trained. Explosions were also heard in the area of a drone manufacturing and helicopter repair plant in the suburbs of Boryspil. There was also a report of a possible strike on an airfield in Chuguev, Kharkiv region.
Among other things, the coordinator of the pro-Russian Mykolaiv resistance, Sergei Lebedev, said that the strike was likely carried out on the port in Odessa. The city's mayor, Gennady Trukhanov, reported explosions amid an air raid alert. The Russian army also struck a military airfield in Starokostiantyniv in the Khmelnytsky region, presumably hitting an underground warehouse. Lebedev, citing resistance from Starokostiantyniv, said that "the explosion felt very powerful, it was felt in houses on the other side of the city." Despite regular strikes on the airfield, the Ukrainian military continues to use it. One of the targets could also be a military unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Nikolaev region. "It looks like a military unit on Bugskikh, but the Martynovsky airfield also looks like it," the underground reported.
Also Triffin dilemma/paradox might come into play which is the conflict between a nation's need to maintain the stability of its currency by limiting the money supply, and its desire to increase the supply of the same currency to serve as a global reserve currency.
Australia is suffering from 'Dutch Disease'. See also The Collapse of Complex Societies.....Joseph A. Tainter. From a technical complexity perspective.