When triumphalism becomes insanity

"Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad"

Jul 16, 2025

We must reference history to find who we are, what we are, and where we are going.

“Pack mentality, also known as herd or mob mentality, refers to the tendency of individuals within a group to think and act alike, often without critical thought or independent judgment. This can manifest in various ways—from social behaviors to decision-making—and can be driven by factors like fear, anxiety, or the desire to belong. While not always negative, pack mentality can lead to harmful outcomes, especially when it involves conformity, aggression, or the suppression of individual opinions.” (Google)

As a spectator of sports, the arts, and everything else, one of my most cherished moments was watching Canada’s Donovan Bailey at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics win gold in the sprint in a world record time of 9.84 seconds. I had a special appreciation for his victory because, in high school, my track coach—also a distinguished athlete—suggested I take up the shot put or discus. It was his polite way of saying my body wasn’t made for running.

In running the race, Bailey was raw speed and power—poetry in motion. Like all great champions, he converted years of practice into a golden moment where he made it look easy, cracking the finish line with a wonderful smile on his face. Bailey also anchored Canada’s gold medal relay team. This was his moment of triumphalism, and he moved on to a career as coach, sportscaster, consultant, and mentor to younger athletes.

Bailey’s triumph was an individual golden moment—one to be celebrated by all and an inspiration to many. He converted his moment of triumphalism into a career that benefited others.

Triumphalism can inspire and be exemplary—but it can also have a very dark side. In politics, it can foster unity, pride, and progress, but it also carries the risk of unleashing unforeseen harms—like Pandora’s box opening new evils.

When the USSR collapsed in1989, the arrogant triumphalists were quick to claim the world as their booty, their manifest destiny, their superiority and exceptionalism.

Charles Krauthammer, American journalist and author, coined the term “unipolar moment” to describe the brief era immediately after the Soviet collapse when the U.S. stood alone as the sole superpower. This view held that America not only could but must “lay down the rules of world order” and enforce them through its unmatched military strength.

It’s audacious logic—that the collapse of one empire automatically grants another the right to rule the world—especially so when collapse is what empires have done throughout history. Five in the last hundred years alone. They are inherently unstable structures, much like building sandcastles on tidal shorelines.

Similarly, in 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously argued that with communism’s collapse, “history,” in the ideological sense, had ended: liberal democracy was the final form of human government. That thesis became a hallmark of late–Cold War optimism and underpinned policies that presumed Western values would naturally triumph everywhere.

So do we believe Fukuyama, or American historian Chalmers Johnson, who claimed the American empire was collapsing for many of the same reasons the USSR collapsed? Central to Johnson’s argument was that America was in a chronic state of overreach, and he wrote a trilogy explaining why.

In 1992 Paul Wolfowitz, as an under secretary of state, condemned the world to perpetual war as he concocted the Wolfowitz Doctrine. It mandated that no other country or power would be allowed to challenge America’s global supremacy, and preemptive wars would be fought as necessary. This was not a passive policy as the US actively subverted foreign governments and systematically demolished countries like Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Currently it is waging war in Ukraine against Russia, and against Iran. All leading to a war against China which it cannot win.

Triumphalism in the aftermath of WWII denotes the conviction that liberal democracy and capitalist economies had decisively prevailed over fascism and communism. It cast the United States as the unassailable leader of a “free world” whose values were both universal and destined to spread globally. With the collapse of the USSR, communism suffered a fatal blow—but fascism was far from uprooted. It moved westward, and empires, by definition, are fascistic.

Noted journalist and author at The New York Times, Thomas Friedman argued that globalization—synonymous with Americanization—required a “hidden fist,” i.e., U.S. military backing, to keep markets open and safe for Silicon Valley’s innovations.

It is also tiresome logic that the spread of American film, music, and consumer brands is regarded as proof of cultural superiority—a rather superficial temporal standard on which to establish a global monoculture.

Especially now, thirty years later, when the U.S. has so thoroughly burned its bridges in the world community. “Might makes right,” endless brinkmanship, and “divide and conquer” constitute a crude, barbaric foreign policy—especially when genocide and false flag conspiracies are thrown in as side dishes.

Crossing the Rubicon, the folly of empires is a one-way street—eventually both very dead and very ended, as was the Roman empire and so many others. Europe suffers a full slate of former globe-trotting imperialists, now existing as troubled colonies—hostages to yet another dying empire.

Unchecked triumphalism leads to interventionism with unforeseen costs, and ultimately, moral and fiscal exhaustion.

It fosters resentment among colonized populations who see their cultures exploited and erased according to the greed and expediencies of empire. The tenuous equilibrium of their societies is determined callously and externally.

Now, 25 years into the 21st century, it’s obvious that the arrogant hubris of empire has degenerated into lawlessness—where government and morality are in full collapse.

Empires can be seen as accumulations of endless corruptions and unintended consequences that eventually explode in our faces. As everything that rises must converge, we are sucked into an unmanageable vortex of decline—its momentum accelerated by overwhelmed and under qualified despots who are victims of their own machinations. The societies they preside over are mirror images of their failure… failures that retreat into insanity and demagoguery.

There is a massive retreat into a pack mentality, where mobsters rule the mob. Social paralysis prevails, demagogues rule, and triumphalism becomes the insanity of our times. Leadership simply cannot accept the immensity of its failure, nor grasp the transcendental forces and cycles that govern us all. Unable to accept their own mortality in a temporal world, they instead indulge in consummate immorality.

“Triumphalism is a desire for victory hardened into a mindset. It is the conviction that we are unerringly superior, fundamentally different from others. And when it takes deep root it leads to a fatal loss of moral perspective.”
— Fred Schmidt, Theologian

If we wonder why the collapse we are living through now is so catastrophic and threatening, it is because the values of empire and triumphalism have become so deeply embedded in our society over many decades. They are seen as immutable by déclassé politicians, and populations, in turn, remain hostage to their intransigence.

There must be a turning point — a pivot toward renewal and revivification, and it must come sooner rather than later.

Western leadership is suffering the white rage of defeat, and we must restore a viable and progressive equilibrium. We are not even at the starting line. If we are to transcend the insanity of triumphalism, war and empire must be repudiated as first steps forward—not just politically, but morally and spiritually.

When triumphalism becomes insanity

"Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad"

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