"We Live in the Age of Delusions" - Peter Hitchens
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Do we live in an age of delusion and how does that shape politics?
Don't you think part of the issue with our culture and our society as it is, and the politics as a result of that, is we live in the age of delusion?
Yes. And people have been encouraged to be deluded. The problem that Andrew Berman faces is that he's trying to do things which will fail because they're fundamentally unworkable. The most likely thing has got to be the currency, which is losing value hand over fist as we speak through the great... fear that I have that the money which we use simply ceases to exist. I don't know how a country in our current state will cope with that. The country is obviously finished. It's just a question of how and when this will become evident to everybody.
I sort of laughed when you said the country is finished because of the way you said it. But actually, I'm afraid both Francis and I over time come around to the idea that Peter Hitchens was right. This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College. Right after this episode, go check out their incredible online courses, which are absolutely free at hillsdale.edu slash trigger. Peter, it's always a pleasure to have you back on the show. I always look forward to it immensely. When you're looking at the UK at the moment, what is your diagnosis? Where are we? How far do we have to go till your predictions come true?
Oh, predictions are very easy to make, but it's not so easy to say exactly when they're going to happen. The country is obviously finished. It's just a question of how and when this will become evident to everybody. The most likely thing has got to be the currency, which is losing value hand over fist as we speak, but at a sort of normal rate. But if it actually gets into a really serious inflationary spiral, then that will make it evident. Because everything we do at the moment is based upon an overestimate of how rich we are. And if the currency shrinks to the point where you can't make that pretense anymore, then everything, all the things that people don't dare reform, particularly the enormous amount of government spending,
will shrivel away and will be blown away in a wind of inflation. And I think it's quite possible that that will be the end of it, but there might be other things. There's a great determination in our elite to get us embroiled in a European war. And some people still want us, I think, to get embroiled in a war with Iran. So these also could tip us off the tracks. So there's a film, a very interesting film, which was made by the former CIA, the OSS, during the later years of the Second World War, showing how to derail a train, which is something they were then interested in doing rather than stopping. And it's quite difficult. It's much harder than you think. I won't give you any hints. But as Alan Smith said, a country has a lot of ruin in it.
So it can take quite a while. But definitely the direction is downwards at an accelerating pace.
What makes you say that? So there's the currency element of it. There's the economic element of it.
First simple fact, this is a country which is where the government is borrowing money to pay the interest on its debts. If you knew somebody who was doing that, you'd expect trouble. Secondly, it's a country which has very little power of recovery because we destroyed largely in the Thatcher era, but other times as well, our industrial capacity. So the ability to rebuild is very, very limited. Then we have trashed our education system. So the talent pool and the proper use of the talents of the country is almost impossible. We haven't got the people who are trained either to do things or at the elite level to think rationally. So there's an awful lot of irrationality and ignorance. Then we have a criminal justice system, a police force, which might as well have been abducted by aliens and may well have been.
I don't know when did he last see one. And a criminal justice system, which is obviously unable to cope. The length of time people wait for trials and the quality of the trials when they get them is atrocious.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Do we live in an age of delusion and how does that shape politics?
0:02–6:23
2
What is Peter Hitchens’ diagnosis of Britain’s current economic and institutional decline?
6:23–15:52
3
Could a currency or inflation crisis expose unsustainable government spending?
15:52–27:43
4
How did social changes—family breakdown and women entering the workforce—affect Britain’s capacity to recover?
27:43–55:50
5
What historical parallels (Soviet collapse, Great Depression) warn about potential catastrophes?
55:50–1:08:25
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from TRIGGERnometry
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