You’re Watching the Old Order Collapse…
and the People Who Built It Would Rather Burn America Down Than Lose Power
"Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way." — General George S. Patton, Jr.
www.kunstler.com
9 Mar 2026 ~~ By John Howard Kunstler
Don’t lose the plot. Embrace the suck. This is the world’s hard time, for now. The birth of anything can be a bloody horror. It can even look like death. Don’t be too afraid to see what comes on the other side of this awful spectacle.
So many Americans are rooting and wishing for the Iran war to turn out badly for Western Civ. And why? Because Trump. And why? Because at the same time he is ending Iran’s long-running nuclear blackmail game, he is terminating the rackets of the Democratic Party. The incipient changes in operational order create new categories of winners and losers.
Now you know why Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists run on the same track as America’s Woke-Jacobin-Marxists, including the pitifully deluded wine ladies of posh West LA, Grosse Point, Beacon Hill, Fairfax County, et cetera, whose brains have been hijacked by the cable news demon factory (and their sponsors). Chaos does everything possible to avoid meeting order.
And this is why passing the SAVE Act is as consequential as ridding the Middle East of its chief chaos agent. Do you realize how perfectly insane our country’s election procedure has become? The fraud is titanic and right in your face, and the remedy is so plain and simple. What possible excuse is there to thwart it? Non-citizens have no right to vote. Mail-in ballots are patently subject to chicanery. Vote tabulation machines are demonstrably hackable. 80-percent of Americans know this is the truth. How is there controversy over this?
How? Because among all the broken institutions in our country, Congress is the worst. The Congress of our time is demonstrating that we might not be worthy of governing ourselves. We are at a cycle-low for public rectitude. Anything goes and nothing matters as long as the campaign contributions keep rolling in. You see how this has been going.
~Snip~
So, Mr. Trump, for all his flaws, attempts to bring order out of chaos at home and in global relations, and the agents of chaos mightily resent the shut-down of their precious chaos. With Iran, it has come to fighting fire with fire. It’s unlikely that most of the people in that country seek to become martyrs. The cult of martyrdom is strictly the business of the maniacs who seized power there in 1979, a reign of terror, extended by proxy around the whole Middle East and beyond.
Entwined with Iran’s oil business, and the energy security of many nations, the mullahs inflect the trade of this primary resource with their chaos. The world cannot cope with chaos in the oil trade. The collapsing regime of the mullahs wants to go out turning the entire world into a martyr. Just like the Democratic Party wants to martyr the founding principles of the USA to preserve its matrix of moneygrubbing and power-seeking. These are two forces that require the most severe discipline and Mr. Trump is acting to impose exactly that. It’s painful to witness, but it must happen if we want to continue the human project as a reality-based enterprise.
So, heed what is at stake in the events unspooling. This is a dark moment in a journey back to daylight. Have faith. As the old American hymn goes:
Farther along we’ll know more about it; farther along we’ll understand why.
Commentary:
John Kunstler's thesis reflects a common sentiment found in modern political commentary regarding the "old order" or "establishment." The idea suggests that entrenched leaders would rather see institutions fail than relinquish control.
Even posts on this board many of the discussions often center on whether the "death of American capitalism" or the dismantling of agencies like
USAID represents a shift toward "oligarchic nihilism," where the ruling class prioritizes its own power over the survival of the system.
Certainly we've been warned by our forefathers and those that came after by people like T
homas Jefferson and
Abraham Lincoln who warned of the internal collapse of democracy if the 'Rights Of The People' were secondary to the interests of those in power.
Today's political landscape in the U.S. is marked by significant turmoil. Many believe that those in power are prioritizing their interests over the well-being of the nation. This has led to widespread discontent among the populace.
We saw that beginning in 2020 with the "Summer of Love" and the Stolen election followed by a pseudo presidency supposed led by an Alzheimer's riddled septuagenarian that began work at 12:00 PM and closed shop at 3:00 PM.
Indeed, many Americans wondered then who was really running the country.
Yet, today the same political leaders tell us the president elected to lead this country is tearing America apart.
