Contemplating the Myths of a New Dark Age

Kenaz Filan

Jun 27, 2024

The American bureaucratic class continues honking toward oblivion in clown cars while we wait for the (literal) bomb to drop. Our 2024 foreign service officials rattle sabers like they’re backed by the 1964 military-industrial complex. If ideas had a graveyard, DC would be the place where they crawled to die.

If we are to plan for the crash, we must understand that our leaders have no idea what the hell they are doing. They have been shielded until now from the consequences we’ve born for their actions. If they follow the path of previous late stage officials, they will follow their habits and their ideologies all the way to the guillotine.

The Global American Empire born in 1991 has reached its pull date. Its servants serve only as threats and obstacles in the world we are in and the world that will come soon enough. The Empire is dying and the only question that remains is what we will build out of its ruins. And the answer to that will be limited only by our imaginations.

I talk a lot about DOOM here and on our podcast. Understanding the gravity of your situation is very helpful. Falling into apathetic nihilism is not. We all know things are bad. What better worlds can we imagine?

This is more than just daydreaming. We are a people dying for stories. Our opponents can only offer propaganda to an increasingly disinterested audience. Those who can provide them with Myths will find no shortage of followers. The tales those skalds and artists weave will shape our future. And the man brave enough to live that Myth may very well find himself a King.

To begin our Quest, let’s start with a brief meditation on what forms those post-American Myths might take. Our post-American Myth, like every Myth, will begin with the death of the old one.

So how might America die?

In July 1914 Tsar Nicholas II declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. By the spring of 1915 5.5 million Russian soldiers were dead, wounded, or prisoners of war, with millions of Russians left homeless in the wake of the Russian retreat. This debacle made the always-unpopular Nicholas and Alexandra more loathed than ever. By July 1918 the Romanov dynasty was dead and a new Myth transformed peasants into comrades and town councils (soviets) into a Soviet Union.

We are heading toward an equally unpopular war in the Middle East in a last gasp effort to prop up our Empire. If we can not defend our vassals from invasion, there is no longer any reason for them to serve us. We will be facing a humiliating defeat followed by a significant decline in our post-petrodollar standard of living. Our sunken ships will be our Trafalgar and the battlefields where our soldiers die will be our Waterloo.

Between 1989 and 1998 Russia’s GDP dropped 45%. Lacking ready access to the goods and services from the former SSRs, the country’s living standard plummeted. As we lose our ability to project power outside our sphere, we can expect a similar decline. So we can expect that many of our new Myths will be shaped by poverty and desperation.

We call our homeless encampments tent cities. Brazilians call them favelas. The children of our favelas will have their own Myths. The most ambitious will use those Myths to build their own kingdoms. In time those kingdoms will grow to empires. Those erstwhile favela urchins will become oligarchs and their Myths will become poses to be emulated.

This will also spell the end of the Postwar American Dream. From the 80s onward the manufacturing jobs that brought so many Americans from poverty to the suburbs have steadily declined. The college degree that once meant a chance for advancement became a mandatory six-figure loan. America’s streets will no longer be paved with gold and we will become a much less desirable destination for political or economic immigrants.

Like any predator, a mortally wounded Empire is dangerous. Americans have already seen a significant increase in the use of hard power vs soft power. We will certainly see increased repression against antiwar and anti-government protestors, possibly even a Kent State massacre. But hard power is expensive, and it tends to galvanize your opposition as much as intimidate it. (Israel is learning this hard lesson right now).

When you are a Superpower (or you have a Superpower’s backing) you can get away with a lot of hard power. Lose that status or ally and you’ll soon find yourself targeted by everything from Change.org petitions to international war crime tribunals. A crumbling America might lash out at its citizens or neighbors, but that will only speed the process of disintegration. (And, if our leaders lash out at our southern neighbor, we could end up losing a sizable chunk of Mexico Norte).

Most post-Americans will dream the dreams of peasants. They will have little reason to suppose the universe is a rational place, and so they will live in an enchanted world. 100 years from now there will be stories of a Golden Age when men walked on the moon and stories hard-eyed old men will never tell anybody.

So what might the stories of post-American peasants look like?

Let’s take a look at the myths that arose from another crumbling Empire.

In 383 Magnus Maximus earned himself a promotion to Caesar of the West by assassinating the previous holder, Gratian. Setting up headquarters in Gaul, Maximus brought most of his troops to his new headquarters in Trier. Roman Britain had already been facing incursions from northern bandits and marauding criminals. With the most of the Roman soldiers gone, things soon went from bad to worse.

While it was cold comfort given the circumstances, things weren’t all that sunny for Maximus either. After a hostile takeover by a new Caesar in 388, our erstwhile general found himself minus an empire and a head. The prosperous Briton townsfolk and villagers remained burdened with rising prices, import shortages, and constant incursions from warlords.

In 410 the Emperor Honorius received a letter from the Britons begging for assistance. Britannia was besieged by the Saxons from the East, the Caledonians from the North, and the Hibernians from the West. Honorius reportedly replied that the Empire had no soldiers to spare and that going forward Britannia could handle their own defense matters.

There are no extant copies of this “Rescript of Honorius,” and there is some controversy as to whether or not there ever was an official request to Rome. But we know that Rome’s hold on the West was crumbling and Britannia had always been on the imperial fringe. We also have firsthand accounts from Patricius, a young Romano-British Christian enslaved by Irish pirates.

Writing over a century later, St. Gildas described these events in his De Excidio Britanniae (On The Ruin of Britain). While Gildas’ Latin is notoriously bad and his discussion frequently punctuated by lengthy rambling, he provides a colorful portrait of life in post-Roman Britain.

According to St. Gildas Britannia’s woes continued until finally the Bretons:

The Venerable Bede tells us that the Saxons first landed, at the invitation of Vortigern, in 449. That would put the date of the Battle of Bath, and Gildas’ birthdate, in 491. Three hundred years later, the chronicler of the Annals Cambriae would provide different dates and names.

After serving his 25 years, a retired legionary received a sizable lump sum that had been withheld from earlier wages. That package could buy a decent tract of land and a fine home in Britannia. Soldiers who had been stationed there for decades often had families and children off base. With retirement, these battered old soldiers could live quite comfortably as minor nobility among their neighbors.

Their new life involved defending the area from brigands and bandits, but they were well-schooled in that. In time their children and grandchildren rose to defend their homes, and after many defeats they finally and for a brief time, they triumphed. But the civil unrest continued. The Bretons remained subjects to foreign leaders, and remain so to this day. From any realistic perspective, the Battle at Badon Hill did little to stem the invading tides. But Myth rarely concerns itself with realism.

Many Bretons (including St. Gildas) moved to Brittany, where there were still sizable communities who spoke mutually intelligible (with practice) Celtic dialects. Today their ancestors still speak Brezhoneg. Wandering Breton minstrels spread their stories and songs throughout Europe.

Arthur and his doughty warriors squared off against gods and heroes from pre-Christian legends with assistance from a mad Welsh prophet whose title was rendered by English tongues as Merlin. As these tales spread, other artists wove Provencal and Occitan tales into the King Arthur Universe. Today King Arthur and his crew continue to inspire entertainers and philosophers alike.

Who will be our St. Gildas, our Geoffrey of Monmouth, our Sir Thomas Malory?

And who will draw the Sword from the Stone?

As my friend and sometime cohost Uncouth Barbarian wisely notes, we are entering an era that will create not only new borders but also new ethnicities. The tales of our Arthur and his ragtag crew of fighters will be told by new voices. Other heroes will arise not through promotional campaigns by with blood. In time they will all become part of a post-American heroic cycle.

When our Arthur’s first great triumph comes, the naysayers will note that it accomplished nothing. His opponents will minimize his accomplishments and scandalize his history. Many will repudiate him with long speeches about how violence never solves anything. With each subsequent triumph they will speculate about how he is an agent of some higher power, how he’s only committed to himself, how he will soon be forgotten.

Like the marauders who sacked Rome, many today see heroes only as something to be torn down. They are content to watch everything burn and threatened by anything that might halt the slow decay. And when our Arthur dies tragically, those new marauders will see his defeat as proof that he was no better than they are.

The wise have always known that the human condition is inherently tragic. To bring a soul into this material plane is to condemn it to death. But the greatest of souls can transcend death and earn a place among the Gods by their deeds. For those who matter, our post-American Arthur will be a hero in both the American and Ancient Greek senses of the word.

There will be times in the days to come when our Arthurian heroes will appear unfashionable. But just as they appear outdated, they will spring forth again. Their stories will shape our descendants the way the Grail and the Round Table shaped ours. They will emulate our triumphs and lament our failures and use our stories as springboards for new tales of their own.