We have seen the subversion of all of culture. The visual arts are gone. Modern architecture looks absolutely horrible. Classical music was brought down. Even popular music has turned to shit. Nobody cares about novels anymore, and the last time movies made a serious splash was over 20 years ago. Similarly, the value of education is dropping off a cliff. Academic research more often than not gets laughed at, and trust in our political system is at an all-time low. It’s quite funny how all of this turned out, and I do not think that this is quite how it was intended.

The reason why certain groups tried to weasel their way into culture, education, or politics was so that they can benefit from reputation, and everything that comes with it, such as power and easy money. Someone may get green with envy when listening to Beethoven, so the march through the institutions begins and at its end you break a centuries’ old chain of masters training the next batch of hopefuls. No longer is there a genuine master in front of you, but a guy like Arnold Schoenberg, whose music was described as “degenerate” by some of his contemporaries. Yet, Schoenberg enjoyed the support from academia and journalism, so the unwashed masses were told that they only had to get used to atonal music and eventually even the postman would whistle those compositions. This did not happen, just as we did not end up finding modern architecture beautiful. People still listen to Beethoven, though.

The original idea was to simply wear the old institutions like some kind of skin suit. Put a some corrupt politician in power, and the gravitas of his position was supposed to dignify him. Yet, a crook remains a crook, even if you make him president. Joe Brandon and his son Hunter are perfect examples. I think it is quite obvious that our institutions, which can only properly function in a high-trust society, do not have the resilience to withstand a concerted effort of infiltration. Once an institution has been taken over, it will inevitably fall down. In that way, you could argue that there is a corrective force in institutional credibility. There may be a time-delay but sooner or later, perception will catch up to reality, and we are currently right in the middle of this.

I wonder if one could even come up with some kind of law of institutional corruption. I would have to look much more into this, but I have a hunch that no institution can survive corruption for more than two generations. After half a generation, people already start to catch on, but after two generation there is some critical mass, and in the third generation, the pendulum may start to swing back. Now this sounds almost like the “fourth turning”, but there is probably something to it. On a more positive note, and this is also in line with the fourth-turning theory, there is the chance for rebirth after collapse. Yet, this rebirth may happen elsewhere, or in a different form. The way I see it, the United States are on a rapid decline with regards to “soft power”. Hollywood is downright insignificant nowadays. The Oscar awards, for instance, used to be big event. Today, they are a joke. Hollywood, lead the way!