Outsideness

... Only question for me is whether it's once-in-a-century scale, or bigger (perhaps a lot bigger).

@adissidentright. Seems like a "Fourth Turning"

name one time in history when we (for whatever value of "we") were NOT at a crossroad

This is like nothing I've ever seen before, and I'm no spring chicken.

What exactly are you referring to?

That's so perfect it leaves me a little breathless. ...

... Following tradition, suicidal civilizations are buried at the cross-roads of history.

Are there really any comparable examples, though? Decadence, ok, but...willful self-sacrifice?

Me. Reagan, Thatcher, Haider, Orban...shifts to the right happen all the time. only new thing is soc media edginess

this is neither the first nor the most severe blow to cathedralic hegemony - I count at least 4 with German involvement alone

Is that list twitterable?

well there's the birth of german nationalism in resisting the already diminished universalism of Napoleon

which is also the birth of romantic ethnic nationalism in the modern sense

then you have the sublation of what's left of german liberalism in Prussian imperialism

then the ultimate unsurpassed blow to internationalism, WWI

and who could forget forcing virtually all of Europe under an ethno-nationalist regime in an apocalyptic war