We live in a time of terrible tension, Antonio Gramsci's time of monsters. What Nino actually said is that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Gramsci lived (and died) in a time of monsters during World War II, and now—in the midst of World War III—the beast is slouching towards Bethlehem to be finally dispensed with (inshallah, please). Gramsci unfortunately did not live through World War II, he died suffering in fascist prison, of morbid symptoms. Capitalism (née Imperialism) unfortunately survived World War II largely unscathed, as America merged with Nazi Germany into NATO (just look up its early leadership). The survival of colonial empire played out as that colonial imperialist Winston Churchill said in his beaches speech, “then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

After World War II, England and Europe became America's bitch, and it also established bitcheads in Japan, South Korea, but notably not Vietnam across the Pacific. America took over British imperial bases (and French imperialism) with Hitler's General Staff under NATO. America, with all its power and might, stepped forth to the subjugation of everyone else under the slaving American flag, itself a crude copy of the British East India's.

Today America (née Britain, it's all one White Empire) is unfortunately well positioned. The genocided continent of North America has gigantic ocean moats and established bitcheads across both the Atlantic and Pacific. As many wars at America loses abroad, it can only lose at home, which no one can get to. They have genocided their continent quite thoroughly, with only meek gentlemen génocidaires to the north in Canada and Greenland, and weak, already genocided people to the south. No can hit America at home (except some weird BDSM terrorism they're actually into), especially with nukes pointed at our collective domes.

Fortunately, America is on a terrible path. Victory is a vector, a direction not a destination. As Andre 3000 “Said, Baby boy, you only funky as your last cut, You focus on the past, your ass'll be a has-what.” America went for broke when they went off the gold standard in 1971, actually went broke by the 1980s but coked their way through it, visibly broke in 2008 but stimulused themselves out of it, and died of the plague in COVID-19 but somehow kept going as a zombie. America has been broken for decades but it's lumbered on, a hegemon by fiat. But this leads to contradictions. As Nino said in the expanded quote from above,

That aspect of the modern crisis which is bemoaned as a "wave of materialism" is related to what is called the "crisis of authority". If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer "leading" but only "dominant", exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously, etc. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

I will depart from Gramsci here because I honestly don't understand most of his fragmented Prison Notebooks. What I read in the entrails of my own ignorance is that things fall apart, the center cannot hold (to paraphrase Yeats). What we experience as ‘morbid’ symptoms across the body politic are, in fact, death and destruction in the imperial extremities. From White Empire's perspective, infection by liberation movements and painful amputation of its reach. The beachheads encircling Asia are falling one by one, Ukraine this year, 'Israel' this decade, and Taiwan is a non-starter. As Empire reels backwards, it has to make overt claims to Canada and Greenland, statements that were hitherto unnecessary. These are not signs of a rising empire but rather claws going down a cliff's edge as Hemingway described. Gradually, then suddenly.

This is the paradox of Empire. It's both too big to ever fail and too big to sail forever. As long as it keeps growing, people ignore the fundamental impossibility of it all, but the minute it stops, it's the emperor's new clothes. What has been unremarkably naked for a while suddenly becomes naked all along. Power is a mummer's trick and the moment the magician gets tired, it's curtains. All things which claim existence must lose it, this is the conditional nature of existence, be they nations or humans. Life is a disease which is 100% fatal and impermanence (annica) is one of the three symptoms (check behind your own eyelids).

With all that said, what is to be done, as Lenin said. It is all well to say that all Empires die in the end, but they have to be killed also. This the paradox of free will, which is better understood by the Indic concept of dharma. Yes, your actions are largely determined by long-woven karmic cycles, they may be distasteful or personally disastrous, but you have to do them anyways, as Lord Krishna told Arjuna. Indeed, for centuries people have been resisting White Empire against impossible odds. But because of their resistance and the Empire's own intransigence, the odds are now in their favor. White Empire has been in a long retreat since at least Vietnam, and its long genocide of Muslims just means it's going down in rank ignominy.

The tragicomedy is that no one is even trying to overthrow White Empire. Certainly, no one is even trying to attack America directly. All the Resistance groups are just trying to live on their own land, in peace. China would happily trade with America, Iran would happily sell them oil, Russia wants to sell them gas, everybody would rather get along. Blood for oil is not necessary, people would happily take dollars. It's like robbing a bank, that would happily extend you credit.

Americans, however, are an isolated, ahistorical people who have only ever shoplifted and have no concept of normal shopping, ie give and take. They took their land, they took their empire, and they don't give a fuck. Genocide and theft are not an anomaly for America, they are a normalcy. America itself is genocide, America itself is stolen, in a very deep sense, smash and grab is its true constitution. Since its preening Declaration of Independence, America has been projecting its own sins onto “the merciless Indian Savages” which is just all colored people cause they don't know what an Indian is. And so they go out the way they came in, with colonial ultra-violence.

And so history repeats, first as tragedy, then as farce, as Marx said. Whereas America came in with highfalutin talk of independence and rights and freedom, they're going out with Donald Trump saying, “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it. All pretences are gone, the vanities are burning. As Nino said, “exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously.” The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born, now is the time of morons.