A Polemic on Collapse, Civility, and the Myth of Meritocracy
Thesis
This essay does not glorify political violence—it recognizes its inevitability. When the institutions of the State become abusive and totalitarian, it must be expected that individuals will be motivated to strike back. In a society that has long been agnostic—if not outright antagonistic—toward government authority, this reaction is not anomalous. The United States glorifies bearing arms as a safeguard against tyranny, and we are now witnessing individuals act on that very mythology.
The excesses of the Trump regime have intensified this rupture, exposing the fragility of civic trust and the consequences of institutional betrayal.
Collapse is a Systemic Outcome, not an Aberration
Political violence is often framed as a rupture—an aberration in an otherwise stable civic order. But this framing is false. Collapse is not a moment; it is a process. It begins with institutional erosion, accelerates through civic disillusionment, and culminates in acts that reflect not madness, but logic. The logic of despair. The logic of betrayal. The logic of a society that has ceased to believe in its own architecture.
We are told to mourn the erosion of civility. To condemn unrest. To cling to the idea that violence is always unjustified. But what if civility has become complicity? What if the institutions that once upheld trust now manufacture despair?
This is not a call to arms. It is a call to conscience.
A reckoning with the conditions that make violence imaginable.
A polemic against denial.
A meditation on duty in the shadow of collapse.
Economic Mythology and the Tide of Inequality
The dominant macroeconomic paradigm in the United States—neoclassical libertarianism—does not merely ignore inequality. It moralizes it. Poverty, in this framework, is not a structural outcome but a personal failure. The rich are virtuous, the poor are deficient, and the market is the final arbiter of worth.
This is not just bad economics. It’s a theology of cruelty.
It traps the working poor in a cycle of false hope and self-blame. They are told that hard work and ethics will yield success. When that promise fails, they do not question the system—they search for traitors. Immigrants. Intellectuals. The woke. The Left. Their fellow citizens.
This mythology is not incidental—it is essential. It underpins the erosion of trust, the collapse of civility, and the rise of scapegoating. It is the tide against which governments paddle, exhausting themselves just to stay still.
And it is a tide we’ve seen before.
Humanity has run the experiment of the regalian state many times. Every time, it ends the same way: princes and paupers, warlords and frightened subjects, aristocrats and serfs. Each cycle concludes in collapse—through political violence or natural catastrophe.
Even billionaire entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has warned his fellow plutocrats that the pitchforks are coming. In his podcast Pitchfork Economics, Hanauer and leading economists dismantle the myths of trickle-down orthodoxy and forecast a reckoning: any society that allows itself to become radically unequal eventually collapses into an uprising or a police state—or both.
We should have been suspicious of any theory that promised utopia from a model that has only ever produced failed states.
The Myth That Kills: Meritocracy as Moral Weapon
Neoclassical economics teaches that individuals succeed through effort and rational choice. But this mythology collapses under scrutiny. In reality, structural inequality, inherited advantage, institutional bias and hairy-ass luck shape outcomes far more than personal virtue. When citizens are told they are failing because they are lazy—while watching fortunate elites profit from accidents of birth leveraged through corruption and spectacle—the result is not apathy. It is rage.
Meritocracy is the most seductive lie of late-stage capitalism. It promises that success is earned, that failure is deserved, and that the market is a moral judge. But in practice, it functions as a tool of containment—trapping the working poor in a cycle of hope, shame, and blame.
They are told:
- Work hard.
- Be ethical.
- Stay resilient.
And you will succeed.
But when the promised reward never arrives, they do not question the system. They question themselves. Or worse—they search for enemies.
- Immigrants “stealing jobs.”
- Intellectuals “corrupting youth.”
- The Left “destroying tradition.”
- The woke “erasing identity.”
- Their fellow citizens “failing the nation.”
This is how civility dies—not in chaos, but in orchestrated blame.
The myth of meritocracy does not just justify inequality—it demands scapegoats to explain it.
It replaces solidarity with suspicion. Empathy with resentment. Truth with spectacle.
Figures like Charlie Kirk did not invent this mythology—they performed it. They offered identity while denying agency. They ostensibly fought for the working class while defending the system that impoverished them. They were not anomalies. They were accelerants.
Naming the Cheerleaders of Collapse: Trump, Kirk, and the Australian Echo
Donald Trump is not a deviation from democratic norms—he is their undoing, performed with populist flair and oligarchic intent. His blueprint is clear: dismantle civil institutions, delegitimize dissent, and recast cruelty as patriotism. The fact that he was elected does not absolve the damage—it whitewashes its illegitimacy.
Charlie Kirk was not merely a commentator. He was a priest of economic mythology, preaching meritocracy while defending systems that punished the ethical and rewarded the ruthless. His rhetoric sanctified inequality, redirected rage, and corroded civic trust.
Figures like Kirk did not misread the moment—they exploited it.
They did not protect the working class—they weaponized its despair.
They were not architects of collapse. They were its cheerleaders.
And Australia is not immune.
The March for Australia rallies, held across the country in August 2025, echoed the same myth-driven unrest. Protesters called for an end to “mass immigration,” a return to “traditional values,” and the reclamation of a mythical national identity. Counter-protesters met them with flags of inclusion and chants of resistance.
The slogans were familiar:
“Take our country back.”
“Stop the invasion.”
“Defend our culture.”
These are not policy positions.
They are symptoms. They reflect economic despair misdiagnosed as cultural erosion. They dramatize the collapse of civility under the weight of myth.
The enemy is not immigration. It is decades of policy failure, investor capture, and economic theology. And the cheerleaders of collapse—whether in Washington or Wagga Wagga—were not fringe actors. They were the loudest voices in a system that rewarded spectacle over substance, grievance over governance.
Case Studies: When Violence Becomes Language
Political violence is not born in a vacuum. It emerges when institutions fail, when rhetoric collapses, and when despair finds no other outlet. These cases are not endorsements—they are warnings.
Luigi Mangione and the Health Insurance Executives
In December 2024, Luigi Mangione shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel. Mangione’s diary revealed a manifesto condemning the health insurance industry as “parasitic,” profiting from human suffering. He was Ivy League-educated, socially engaged, and morally disillusioned. His act was not random—it was a symptom of a system that had exhausted his faith in reform.
Mangione pulled a literal trigger. But millions live under the slow violence of denied claims, unaffordable care, and economic abandonment. The trolley dilemma is no longer theoretical—it’s playing out in real time.
Tyler Robinson and the Assassination of Charlie Kirk
On September 10, 2025, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University. The suspect, Tyler Robinson, is now in custody. His motives remain under investigation, but the act has ignited fierce debate about political violence, ideological extremism, and the collapse of civic discourse.
Kirk was not a fringe figure—he was an unwitting cheerleader of collapse, amplifying the myth of meritocracy while redirecting economic despair into cultural grievance. His death is not just a tragedy—it is a signal that rhetorical containment has failed.
The March for Australia and the Mythical Enemy
In August 2025, the March for Australia rallies swept across the country, echoing the rhetoric of collapse: “Take our country back,” “Stop the invasion,” “Defend our culture.” Counter-protesters met them with flags of inclusion and chants of resistance.
These were not policy debates. They were performances of despair. They dramatized the collapse of civility under the weight of economic mythology. They showed how violence—whether rhetorical or literal—becomes the language of a system that no longer speaks truth.
The rally was not just a spectacle—it was a symptom. A theatre of collapse, yes, but one born of civic disorientation and the erosion of institutional trust. Citizens gathered not to demand reform, but to act out their disillusionment. The flags, the chants, the slogans—they were not calls to action. They were rituals of despair misdirected at scapegoats.
The Rhetoric of “Never” and the Ethics of Resistance
“There is never a place for political violence.”
This phrase is repeated like scripture—by politicians, pundits, and those who benefit from the status quo. But history disagrees.
- Was there no place for violence in resisting fascism?
- No place for revolt in the face of apartheid?
- No place for uprising when civil institutions sanctioned cruelty?
To declare violence always unjust is to erase the conditions that make it inevitable.
Imagine a time traveller standing at the junction of history.
On one track: Adolf Hitler, still unknown, still stoppable.
On the other: the Holocaust, the firebombing of cities, the deaths of 70 million people.
Do they pull the metaphorical lever in this hypothetical Trolley Dilemma machine?
Now shift the frame.
What if the time traveller stands in 2025?
On one track: Donald Trump and his sycophants—an authoritarian takeover plan being enacted, a mythology that sanctifies inequality, a blueprint in hand for dismantling civil institutions (Project 2025).
On the other: the slow death of American democracy, the erosion of civil society, the normalization of cruelty. Millions of civilians to be deported to foreign gulags, yet more condemned to die from preventable diseases with unaffordable cures, and who knows what consequence of the further militarisation of American cities.
This is not a call to violence.
It is a refusal to pretend that violence is never justified. That peace and civility is never worth fighting for.
It is a demand to confront the moral cost of inaction.
As dramatized in The Last Supper (1995), the question is not whether violence is good—it’s whether, in the face of systemic harm, silence is worse.
Those who see clearly are not afforded the luxury of neutrality.
They are witnesses.
And witnessing creates obligation.
The Memory of a Better Machine
There was a time when civic architecture was built to last. When public institutions were designed not for profit, but for resilience. That memory still lingers—in libraries, in parks, in the quiet dignity of old courthouses. But memory is not enough. Without renewal, it becomes myth. And myth, in the absence of structure, becomes fuel for collapse.
We have run the experiment before. Not in theory—in history. The post-war era, often dismissed as anomaly, was the only sustained attempt to align capitalism with conscience.
- Top marginal tax rates reached 95%.
- Government acted as consumer of last resort, recycler of surplus wealth, and guarantor of pluralism.
- Technological progress was the fastest on record.
- The arts flourished.
- Immigrants were welcomed.
- Civil rights were codified.
- International peace was pursued.
It was not perfect. But it was proof of a kind. Proof that big government, when morally anchored and economically literate, can stabilize demand, protect the working class, and foster civic trust. Proof that redistribution is not theft—it is a necessary countermeasure to emergent free market forces of consolidation and secular stagnation. Proof that civility, when backed by justice, can survive.
This was as far as it’s possible to get from the regalian state advocated by libertarians within the Trump Regime—that skeletal sovereign that guards borders and polices bodies but refuses to nourish its citizens.
It was something bolder – the grand society. A moral machine for creating and distributing wealth. It worked.
Today, we could refine the model still further:
- We understand ecological limits.
- We’ve seen the cost of externalized destruction.
- We’ve learned how fragile democracy becomes when inequality is sanctified.
We do not need a fantasy. We need a memory. A precedent. A blueprint.
It deserves another try in the form of a Green New Deal, but what is the path to that proven model in the face of plutocratic capture and economic mythology?
For a searing cultural reminder of what that era achieved, watch The Newsroom Response: Part 1 – America’s Monologue, where Jeff Daniels’ character lists the great accomplishments of post-war America with brutal clarity. It’s echoed in The Newsroom – Jeff Daniels Answers “Why Is America The…” and The Newsroom S01E01 – “We Just Decided To”, each dramatizing the contrast between myth and memory.
Conclusion: Collapse Intensifies Duty
Political violence is not a virtue. It is a symptom—an indictment of institutional failure. When the State abandons its civic compact and governs through coercion, exclusion, and spectacle, it should not be surprised when citizens respond in kind. This is not to glorify such acts, but to recognize their inevitability.
In the United States, the mythology of armed resistance is woven into the national fabric. The right to bear arms was framed as a safeguard against tyranny, and now, in the wake of the Trump regime’s excesses, that mythology is being acted upon. The irony is brutal: the very logic once endorsed by the State is now turned against it.
We must not confuse inevitability with endorsement. To understand is not to excuse. But to ignore the conditions that produce rupture is to invite more of it. Collapse is not a moment—it is a process. And if the US is to arrest it, it must begin by confronting the truths it is most afraid to name.
Collapse of empire does not erase moral obligation.
It clarifies it.
When civil institutions are dismantled under the banner of legitimacy, when economic despair is redirected into cultural warfare, and when civility is weaponized to suppress dissent, neutrality becomes complicity.
Those who see clearly—who recognize the myth of meritocracy, the tide of inequality, and the cheerleaders of collapse—are not afforded the luxury of silence.
They are witnesses.
And witnessing demands response.
Ideally, logically, morally, that response should come in the form of use of democratic institutions. But Trump and his cronies are in the act of destroying those institutions right now. It now not hyperbole to suggest that the next US election may not be an open fair contest between competing platforms.
This is not a call to arms.
It is a call to conscience.
Unfortunately, the plutocratic capture of the U.S. electoral system makes democratic renewal increasingly implausible. The very mechanisms meant to protect civil society have been hollowed out, repurposed to serve oligarchic drift.
America has long mythologized its Second Amendment as a safeguard against tyranny. With Trump openly enacting an authoritarian regime, one must ask: have Tyler Robinson and Luigi Mangione fired the first shots in a long-anticipated civil resistance movement? Not righteous. Not clean. But perhaps, in their minds, necessary.
Or have all of those gun deaths over the years been in vein – as in the face of that forewarned tyrannical government those who could resist instead placate themselves with “violence is never justified”.
If civility is to mean anything again, it must be rooted in truth.
If democracy is to survive, it must be disentangled from economic mythology.
If violence is to be avoided, it must first be understood.
We do not need a fantasy.
We need a precedent.
We tried it once—the grand society. Big government.
It worked.
Let’s give it another try.
Let’s hope the US votes for freedom, and for maintaining democratic norms next time, because the alternative is predictable and unthinkable.