To live in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
— The Warhammer 40,000 Epigraph, Imperium Maledictum Edition
It has been a full 25 years since the event that defined our modern era. I do not need to waste time describing what happened on September 11, 2001; everyone reading this, can recall, with near perfect clarity, exactly what he was doing at 9am EST on that fateful day. In my case, I walked down the staircase of our house at the time, saw my family sitting glued to the TV in the living room, and noticed something on the screen that looked like some sort of crazy action film. Even seeing the logo, “CNN”, in the corner, did not change my initial thought that I must be looking at some kind of strange movie.
It was only when my father told me that New York City had been attacked, that I realised the full enormity of the event – and that I was watching real people die.
The next day was one of shock, horror, and grief at school. Nobody could quite figure out what to do in class. We didn’t even really have an English lesson. Our teacher very wisely chose to simply let us all talk through what we were feeling – and not in the gay modern therapy way, but in the sense of just letting us express our disorientation and misery.
In the years subsequent to that one, we saw the United States invade Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, and overthrow the Taliban in record time. Drunk with success, and insisting that Iraq somehow had a live and ongoing WMD programme, the US then attacked and destroyed Iraq. What followed was two decades of gruelling “high intensity police actions” that drained the US of TRILLIONS of dollars that should have been spent on domestic purposes; the worst financial crisis since 1929; and a protracted, painful, very uneven recovery that still, to this day, has not fully dealt with the root causes of the crisis that brought about the crash.
Then, in 2020, we saw the Coof, and we witnessed how governments around the world overreacted to what was essentially a very bad flu and shut us all into our homes. We saw the colossal overreach of state power, and the economic consequences that unleashed severe inflation on us all, as financial markets teetered close to collapse again in late 2019, with Convid serving as a useful pretext to allow those markets to stabilise.
In 2022, we saw Russia, pushed to the brink, commit to an economy-of-force mission in Ukraine that very nearly succeeded in bringing real peace to the region – and then, we saw the West intervene, to support Ukraine in that war, with the explicit and avowed goal of inflicting a decisive defeat on Russia.
And in 2025 and then again in 2026, we saw President Trump betray the very people who voted him into office, and attack Iran – for absolutely no good reason whatsoever, other than to serve the will of the elites who financed his rise.
It is not an exaggeration to say that, if someone wrote out fictionalised versions of these events for the Games Workshops Warhammer 40,000 novel series, they would be immediate hits and bestsellers. After all, this is not far away from the kind of thing described in books like Horus Rising and The Lost and the Damned – good books, well worth reading.
Now, in the WH40K universe, the entire tagline and ethos of the whole setting boils down to the catchphrase that GW uses: “in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war”. Well, we do not need to wait until the far future. We are in it right now.
Twenty-five years was an eternity when I was young. Looking back, I am shocked to think about how quickly it went by. That timespan is but an eyeblink in the age of our race. An entire generation has grown up knowing nothing of the world that existed before 9/11. I did know what it was like, and I do remember how good things were before then. The current generation will never know the kinds of freedoms that we all once enjoyed, before governments presumed to take them away from us – without reason, justification, or purpose, other than the simple and blunt exercise of raw, naked force against a supine and fearful population.
The events of the past 25 years have proved to my mind, beyond a doubt, that you can convince billions of people to believe the most ridiculous lies possible. You will still find most Americans absolutely convinced that the Twin Towers fell entirely due to being hit by two airliners, piloted by Saudi Arabians who somehow managed to get past every possible security red flag and their own lack of training, and at least one of whose passports somehow miraculously survived temperatures that burned human bones into ash and melted steel into liquid. Many still think that WTC 7 fell into its own footprint, perfectly neatly, due to damage suffered from the original Twin Tower collapses.
Most refuse to believe that “America’s best friend”, Israel, had anything whatsoever to do with it – or that the very suspicious financial trades that happened in the days and weeks before the event, were anything other than a massive coincidence.
It is quite enough to make you despair for the future of the human race. And perhaps we should. The world that followed from 9/11 proved, slowly, inexorably, and without any hope of a do-over, that the American government was absolutely dedicated to the total destruction of the American people.
The last 25 years have seen America transform itself into a true globe-spanning empire – and has seen the fall of that empire with breathtaking speed. America has now lost every single major war it has fought since WWII, with ONE exception – and that too against a third-rate Iraqi military that was completely overwhelmed and outmatched in 1991, in a special case that has no relevance to modern warfare. The US has now been conclusively defeated by a third-rate power in the Persian Gulf, and by a fifth-rate one in the Red Sea.
The only reason anyone continues to believe the fiction of American dominance and empire, is because China does not yet feel the need to inflict a decisive and undeniable naval defeat on an overstretched, poorly manned, and logistically creaky US Navy.
We are living through the grimdark age that followed on from 9/11. There is little that we can do to change it – this must be endured before the final and absolute collapse of the American Empire finally comes. We can only hope and pray that whatever comes afterwards, will be a little fairer, a little more transparent – and a little less amenable to (((Small Hat))) manipulation.
Indeed, those same (((Small Hats))) really ought to start planning their escape routes. Once people finally realise just how deep in blood the (((Tribe))) really is by this point, they will realise that the Spaniards, the English, and the Russians, were absolutely right to expel their native populations of the same peoples.
I will close as I opened, on a personal note. I ended up working not far away from the site of the WTC. I had multiple opportunities to visit the reflecting pool and memorial site in the area, once the One WTC complex finally opened up – in fact, I walked through that entire construction site for years on my way to work. I literally worked on Wall Street at the time, and I saw with my own two eyes how that whole area was transformed over the course of six years.
And I can say, from first-hand experience, that America learned nothing from the excesses and failures of 9/11.
The country made the same mistakes, over and over again, that led to the intensifying series of crises we now all face. It will continue to make those mistakes until its final collapse comes – and that appears to me to be not very far off. The Empire has suffered multiple and decisive defeats. Once the failure of Project Ukraine becomes truly and undeniably apparent, and the grift finally stops, there will be nowhere left to hide and run – and then, we shall see the results of nearly 30 years of failure and collapse come to fruition.
5 Comments
Repeating this tweet from Fugitive Caesar because it’s relevant:
“The GWOT was a combination of money laundering scheme by the military-industrial complex, and a feminist international liberal Gay Race Communist moral crusade. It was a complete waste and betrayal. America could’ve done a small military response, with a couple thousand Green Berets and Special Forces troops. America could’ve done a big military response, dropping nuclear bombs and flattening the entire region. America could’ve treated the Middle East like the Wild West, allowing young men to move out into a colonial frontier where the natives were deported and young men took all the land for themselves.
What instead happened was a swift and brutally effective military campaign, followed by a feminist welfare society and pretend democracy Soviet Potemkin village and a permanent American military garrison, babysitting Third World savages like a law enforcement operation.
The whole war was pointless, a waste, a betrayal of American men who bled and died for a completely stupid and unachievable program of religious evangelism, trying to spread feminism and homosexuality to the Third World.”
https://x.com/thombrady5/status/2098481904072765604?s=61
Didact
Most refuse to believe that “America’s best friend”, Israel, had anything whatsoever to do with it – or that the very suspicious financial trades that happened in the days and weeks before the event, were anything other than a massive coincidence.
most are oblivious to the fact of those trades, just as they are oblivious to the elevated fatality rate amongst those receiving “flu vaccines” vs the unvaccinated, a problem which was first reported on back in the middle 2000s.
Didact
America has now lost every single major war it has fought since WWII, with ONE exception – and that too against a third-rate Iraqi military
eh, our record isn’t “good” but there’s no reason to exaggerate. we thrashed Iraq TWICE and we saved South Korea from the ChiCom army regulars. and there are numerous little “police actions”, Panama, Grenada, Venezuela, etc in which we have managed to not totally humiliate ourselves, although i concur that these certainly do not rise to the level of “major”.
Didact
Once the failure of Project Ukraine becomes truly and undeniably apparent, and the grift finally stops, there will be nowhere left to hide and run – and then, we shall see the results of nearly 30 years of failure and collapse come to fruition.
i consider Iran / Hormuz to be the actual flashpoint, for multiple reasons. certainly, the P-Ukie thing drained US stockpiles before Israel started jerking Donnie’s leash about Iran.
but that has only brought the salient moment forward in time. the actual problem is that the US is being demonstrated wholly incapable of maintaining the manufacturing tempo necessary to sustain anti-missile/drone operations in even a relatively constrained theater such as Hormuz.
we have been demonstrated to be conclusively incapable of defending our own military bases ( Naval Support Activity Bahrain cannot even be safely accessed to recover personal effects ), much less our allies whether Jewish or Sunni.
we have demonstrated that our entire political class has been suborned by foreign nationals, which eagerly does their will not just in regard to the detriment of the US but to the detriment of the whole world.
supposedly KSA is almost completely shut down with regards to petro exports. while “good” for the rest of the oil exporting nations, and while Iran and the Houthis have promised to allow Russia/China axis ships to pass unhindered what is this going to do to the rest of east Asia, which imports +75% of their fuel oils? going into the northern hemisphere harvest season, no less? how are South Korea and Japan going to bring their crops in? doesn’t really matter how much you grew this summer if you can’t get the crops out of the field.
i guess governments across the face of the globe are going to writing Corona style checks again in futile attempts to keep the wheels of commerce grinding forward.
more seriously, there will likely be many kings kneeling before Iran and begging for access to the Persian Gulf and the oil terminals therein. regardless of their erstwhile vassalage to the United States of Israel Supremacy or “International Law” principle that shipping routes should be unimpeded.
if you remember a while back Kratman and i had a bit of a kerfluffle about whether or not it was feasible for a 2nd or 3rd tier power to overwhelm the layered defenses of a Carrier Strike Group. i think that we have received as conclusive of an answer as we can get to that debate without actually losing a Carrier.
i was postulating that all that was necessary was a sufficiently numerous cloud of missile attackers and eventually the command/control systems would be overwhelmed or the weapons stocks would be exhausted. Iran has added air/sea drones to the equation as well as maneuvering hypersonics. carriers ARE powered by nuclear reactors and so can mount laser / plasma type weapons, moderating the ammo stock issues. but everything else is still in play.
we haven’t lost a carrier yet because Iran likely judges that such an event would trigger a nuclear response. but that’s the only reason why they still float. it’s certainly not because we have any effective capability to defend them. we can’t even keep them in good supply.
Fugitive Caesar
trying to spread feminism and homosexuality to the Third World.
to be fair, homosexuality and bestiality are already pretty rife in that particular part of the 3rd world. buggering 5 year old bacha bazis doesn’t make it “not gay”.
The first time was against a fifth-rate Iraqi army, which was still using 1970s-era technology and weapons, and only after six solid months of intensive preparations, where Iraq had zero capacity for deep strikes against the allied logistical rear. The second time was against a tenth-rate Iraqi army after years of debilitating sanctions, under major air cover. And, keep in mind, y’all were fighting ARABS, who are generally useless in war.
Neither instance was a good example for modern times. Gen. Klokotov of the Russian General Staff said as much, and he was right.
Yes, but that resulted in a grinding stalemate, against a Red Army that had no near-peer capabilities at the time.
The point I am making is that the US has not fought a serious near-peer competitor since WWII, and both Russia and Iran have shown very clearly the limits of American doctrine, logistics, and weaponry. The US is seriously deficient in all three areas, and more.
Yes I think I remember that one. And you are correct. The Iranians have forced multiple CVBGs to back off, and the Houthis very nearly hit a supercarrier. Both instances have shown that the American Empire cannot protect global trade routes – which makes the empire itself obsolete and indefensible.
Didact
The point I am making is that the US has not fought a serious near-peer competitor since WWII,
this may have been your intended point, it’s not what you said. what you said was that we had 1 win and all other outcomes had been losses, regardless of the level of opponent.
it’s also
…
i’m forgetting the term for stating the obvious as though it had import. of course we haven’t face a near-peer competitor in the field. for most of the post WW2 era, such a thing hasn’t existed. no one else has ( claimed to have ) put boots on the Moon. until the rise of China, no one else rivaled our manufacturing capability. until the Clintons sold US missile tech to China, no one approached our expertise in lift to orbit capacity or ability. we were world leaders across almost all aspects of technology and development and deployment.
the Soviets thought it would be impossible to supply Berlin if they shut down truck access, we ran the Berlin Air Lift and demonstrated that the impossible was a mere engineering and logistics technicality. we could and did have the manufacturing capability to build all the transports needed for this, the service/maintainence facilities to keep these planes in the air, the manpower and expertise needed to run all this AND the surplus production capacity necessary to have something for the aircraft to transport.
you might not want to consider it so, but the US / UK / West conclusively crushed the Soviet blockade of Berlin.
the Soviets were our only near-peer for most of the post-WW2 era, and even they could only make pretenses of approaching some of our military and technical abilities. as i remember it, the Soviet Air Force wasn’t particularly successful against us in Korea, with most of our aircraft losses being due to ground based AA missiles and guns.
of course, we are long past the inflection point at which China exceeded our production capacity. and between the Russian and Chinese technical capability as well as the Clintons selling our existing tech lead to China so that the ChiComs could further distribute OUR tech to their various allies as they saw fit, as well as US research universities being chock full of Chinese Nationals it seems doubtful that we have any sort of technical edge at all any more.
another data point;
the USN is so bad off, they are literally recruiting for COOKS to join the Navy. Youtube is specifically serving ads extolling the virtues of being a Navy chef.
what in the ever loving hell is going on?