The United States of America is not in trouble because of a hidden plan, a dominant ideology, or a small set of unusually powerful individuals. What is unfolding is a systemic condition in which behaviour is selected by how well it propagates, not by how well it understands. The field is loud, unstable, and visibly unhinged, yet the logic driving it is banal. Signals that move fast are rewarded. Signals that stabilise meaning are too slow. Over time, this reverses the relationship between action and comprehension. Institutions continue to act, but no longer know what their actions are doing. Roles persist while their functions hollow out. Authority circulates as visibility rather than constraint. What looks like chaos is not absence of order, but the dominance of an order that no longer references truth, consequence, or repair.
Acceleration in this context means that feedback loops tighten while the system’s ability to integrate their effects collapses. Information multiplies as understanding thins. Language inflates and devalues, no longer binding shared reality but exciting reaction. Money behaves the same way, detaching from production and circulating through leverage, signalling, and position, creating the illusion of intelligence without insight. Highly visible figures mistake reach for understanding and influence for foresight, amplifying dynamics they do not grasp while insisting on their own importance. Responsibility still applies, because impact precedes intent in complex systems. A system like this does not slow because no internal mechanism is rewarded for doing so. It continues to burn coherence to sustain motion until it can no longer absorb its own outputs, at which point it does not recover or rewind. It simplifies, hardens, and externalises cost, mistaking persistence for intelligence until something smaller and cruder, more bitterly fragile and uncomprehending, is all that remains.
Daedelus Kite 