Your Catholic Conservative is the manifestation of the GOP, and your description of their inability to claim power is certainly right. However, power requires energy as you say, and the Right's energy lies elsewhere.
The Trump administration has seen the birth of a young, hot-blooded right wing movement with utter contempt for the cathedral and utter certainty their place is at the top. Where most want demaaaauucwasy they want caesar. The movement is young and unfocused, for sure, but four more years of optimism and space under Trump would surely see it gestate into maturity.
Where the left's only product is smugness, theirs are aesthetics, discipline, growth, determination, and most importantly vigour. Which of those wins, do you think?
You yourself mention posting physique - so I think you know who I mean.
You and BAP agree on at least one point - that this is now purely a battle of will. He who does not fight for power will not win power, for he will not take the necessary means to sieze it. This is why they - and I - will support Trump with all our energy until the end. Because conceding must not be in our playbook.
This does not mean Biden's victory would be final, far from it. Inevitably, the truth will out, and Chad will have dominion over Jim. What I am saying is they grow as big and strong under Trump's leadership - real or imagined - as they do on raw eggs and grass-fed beef.
You talk about the young right wing movement gestating into maturity under Trump and your not wrong, I see the up side. But I also see the down side, I would hate to see that energy on the right transmuted into little more than Turning Point USA 2.0 led by Don Jr. I want our raw egg boys noble of heart not soiled by the stink of kakistocracy.
I agree it is a battle of wills, but for the long run I hope the youngins lose. So that they realise, the true nature of this regime and the next they plan to take power, they do it by any means necesary and keep it by any means necessary
I think, as pointed out, the long-term power projection is a battle of will, but also the direction of that will. BAP does seem to agree on a battle of will, but, like our catholic friend, does not posit a positive reality- the whole identity of the 'right' is to oppose the left. BAP is more successful in this as he tends not to oppose but IGNORE them. Neither Yarvin nor BAP offer that positive direction, perhaps it is not time to yet.
Its all well and good having will, its like explosives: free explosives may produce some quite cool visual effects, will be over in ~0.5 s without changing anything. We can make explosives useful; engineer a rocket, a fuse, a stick of TNT...it must be a controlled release, with an aim to have a real effect. Trumps energy, while a fine display, is directionless - and even if it has direction...is it even aimed at the right people? My fear is we could give the same energy to a potato and have the same effect.
If frog-twitter had power, they'd certainly exercise it vigorously (likely violating the second law in the process). The problem, as always, is getting from point A to point B.
"Inevitably the truth will out". In reality this isn't true. It isn't written in the stars that the truth be revealed. Lies can achieve dominance and become state sanctioned 'truth' and the actual truth effectively written out of history. This can be successful. Look at the last century. As the years go on and past events mean less, there is even LESS incentive to correct the 'official story' than before.
Trump Jr. posted about declassifying everything on Twitter just about an hour ago. I just want to say to any Cathedral-associated entities that everything posted here is satire. In fact everything I've ever done is satire unless explicitly stated otherwise.
The problem with this is that it requires the deep state to willingly go along with the declassification order which they will surely oppose until they no longer have to.
Dear Sir: As you know the Left will of course take your advice and debride us.
However it's always important to focus on enemy capabilities, not intentions.
The Left would inflict the Holodomor on America if it could, it cannot.
It will instead continue to practice a sort of sadistic, pornographic Jesuitism and minor tyrannies such as the face mask, etc, etc...
Your analysis in particular of the Right is absolutely correct.
I wonder if you understand that is a true reflection of their voters.
We are not only missing map and General, we are missing a nation.
Those of us who are sworn to the parchment are the inverse of Pakistan; Pakistan is an army that has a country. We are an army that has no country. I mean army in the spiritual sense of sworn to the parchment and being so retrogressive as to actually mean it. Our problem and I admit my problem is we cannot free a nation that is half Vichy Milice, the other half bovine.
You are also correct as regards the Carnival Barker. America needs a junkyard dog and thought we'd elected one but he's a barker not a biter. He'll pay for his squeamishness for the rest of his life as will anyone foolish enough to have worked for him in any capacity at all.
"A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss."
Moldybutt is a gentle Dom that works the linguistic whip of power to the utmost satisfaction of his paypigs. With every slow and controlled whip on the paypig's back, they squeal with excitement. Waiting for the next essay to drop.
Well there's nothing we desire as much as that which is difficult to get. Next time he'll wait two months and we'll be hot pink with desire. Seduction is a great game, for both sides.
"Therefore, it is simply impossible for the progressive movement to generate anything like the energy it generated in the ’60s. The whole Obama experience, in particular, is a major downer.
...
It is just not exciting to be a mainstream left-wing activist. The lifestyle is grim and boring."
-Mencius Moldbug, The New Structure, 2009
One suspects there may be something missing in Yarvin's model of how the left responds to nominal power.
I don't think that Yarvin would claim that even Trump was able to generate 60's level energy, and I think he conceded a few times the possibility of some rabble rouser giving them a bit of a boost. 2009 really was different and could lead to some miscalculations.
Not 60's level energy, but the prediction that Obama would dampen the left's enthusiasm proved wrong. He's making the same prediction about Biden, but it's not clear how the model has been corrected.
Arkansas- good point. Sure, the energy level in 2020 wasn’t the same as 1968 or 1917, but it was sure higher than 2009. Clearly, it is very exciting for some people to scream at their fellow Americans who are dining at restaurants or at home with the kids (as in Portland.) These are some primal impulses that are being activated. The urge to Purify the Sin, the urge to Scapegoat the Evil Ones.
If our elites offer a sanctioned avenue for the expression of such power (which they obviously have)—that aint grim and boring for the foot soldiers.
I agree that Yarvin is missing something here.
Sure, we are not nearly as physically violent a people as we were in past ages. But lets not confuse energy level with external expressions of physical violence. And when we examine the Left’s obsession with race, we see a potentially massive hellhole of energy that can be tapped into. I’m trying to think of a culture or society that experienced an exponential increase in Racialized thinking (like ours has in the last 10 years) that led to greater intra-societal harmony and peace.
There is no plan. There are no planners. That's the problem. The energy could be there, the peasants are definitely there, finding a general isn't that hard.
I think "there are no planners" cuts to the core of the issue.
Essentially the question we're asking is "how do you take on a decentralized ideological structure that has total dominance of virtually every institution that exists, from the academy, news media, bureacracy, politics and even the military, and has had so, even since before you were born". It's not a surprise that there's no-one planning anything. You would simultaneously have to solve various immense social and organizational problems just to even begin to have a plan. And even if you have a plan, how do you put it into action?
Our current regime has access to children at an early age to propagandize them with it's talking points. The parents of these children were also propagandized so they encourage the propaganda. It has the TV and the news media reinforcing this propaganda literally 24/7 and in every broadcast. It has control of most of the academy, as well as much of the military. With all of this, it can "manufacture consent". It has the power to destroy anyone who challenges it.
So in order to compete we would essentially have to just seize power of every organ of propaganda, and "manufacture consent" for our own policies. Total dominance of the media, universities and school system, and therefore the ability to decide what is "true". How the hell are we going to do that?
A long march indeed, but in truth not achievable, nothing can arrest this leviathan. As for what will happen, it is simple and ancient, we do what we always do, war, and then out of the ashes we build anew.
Our annual ritual of remembrance “lest we forget “ is ironic because we always forget and in a bigger sense we need the cleansing inferno of war. Come on, you make the point very well, the idealogical structure is 💯 percent insurmountable, nothing will dislodge it, never, ever, no way, no how, it will go wither it will and then inevitably unto destruction.
I read Curtis as a student of power, he is exceptionally insightful into the mechanism of human affairs: I think he is right.
As for a prescription for change, not so much, he describes the mechanism needed but always cautions no catalyst is available of a scale required. There never is such a catalyst, besides war that is.
wondering that myself from a practical perspective to make our lives suck less in the near term, anyway. Especially when "action is essential" yet detachment has always been advocated as the proper course of action for opponents of the Cathedral. Unless action does indeed mean detachment... hell if I know
Action is essential, but action at the wrong time/place is folly. Preparation - spiritual, phyiscal, and mental - is required before action. Unprepared action - unplanned action - is almost always counterproductive, unless you've got better luck than I.
Both are true - we need to take the advice of both Yarvin and BAP here, in that we render unto China Joe's that which is China Joe's, and detach - but detach doesn't mean do nothing, it means stop defining everything in terms of the battleground that we don't control.
Focus on communities - volunteer, go to Church, meet like-minded people, find fellowship and community. Start up 18th century style political salons in our cities as book / discussion groups. Work out, eat healthy, care about our families and friends while finding fellowship.
For those who think this sounds crazy - look how splintered we're already becoming, especially with eg news media - we're already forming two distinct cultures... Let's be the one that's strong, beautiful and True.
Out of this we can hope for more right-wing art, and we win not by squabbling in their arena, but by presenting a more attractive way, there will be beauty in its truth.
We fight for Trump now, sorry Curtis I refuse to give up even if we're looking at low probability chain of events, we can't rollover now not knowing what future looks like. If things don't go our way here in next 4 weeks or so, we follow the above - ie render unto China Joe that which is China Joe's, and build our own way
There will be nothing for Twitter to censor if instead of tweeting we're at our Tuesday night political salon meetup smoking cigars and talking about Ernst Junger..... (thursdays will be debate night)
This might be the smartest political analysis I have ever read. Glad I didn't find until now, because the short term things predicted in the article have actually happened, lending credibility to the whole analysis. Wish I had the type of friends I could sit down with and discuss the many wisdoms in this.
If your Catholic Conservative was Rod Dreher, he doesn't have the chops to plan.
Tho oddly enough, it was he and not Alasdair MacIntyre who was 100% right about the economic development of Monasteries in their Benedict Option debate.
MacIntyre (because like all doomers, he hates it when anyone proposes a solution) incorrectly asserted that monasteries only developed as economic power houses because they were located in towns. Which is crazy fake history.
The monasteries came first. The towns developed around them.
Is Michael Anton Catholic? My money is on him or one of his friends over at the Clairmont Institute. Bugman used to write for the American Mind before coming to substack.
Who set up the Federalist Society? That took time and has started paying off. I know its kind of small ball for nrx but its something. Yarvin is the only one who can think out loud about this stuff and still make any sense. But he is more of a Marx than a Lenin.
Are you kidding me? Do you mean the Federalist Society which literally take no position on anything and is merely yet another platform where "true liberals" can debate? Do you know how many members of the Federalist Society signed onto the Make Gay Marriage a Constitutional Right Project?
Trump Federalist Society alumni judges won't overturn Roe...will protect Big Tech from anti-trust enforcement.
Look they may not be interested in returning the Stewarts to power, but it an institution that is at lease interested in pre FDR forms of American government. More importantly we are talking about planning. Every law school in this country worth getting a degree from has a federalist society chapter. Not everyone in the federalist society is reactionary but all the reactionaries at law schools are in the federalist society.
Given the hegemony of the cathedral these sorts of parasitic organizations may be the most effective that be constructed at the moment. Certainty in my life with my skill set this is the sort of level of political activity I can engage in that might do some good.
We are not going to retake the entire elite over night with a trump train, there is work to be done and getting the ear of a handful of elites is better than having access to none.
See, I believe that the reason that Republicans don't seek power is because we don't believe that political power is the answer to "the meaning of life, the universe and everything."
But our Democratic friends know that with just a little more political power they can finally bend the arc of history towards justice.
Back in the day if you invaded the land next door you could loot it, kill the men and sell the women into slavery. Yay! But now food-growing land doesn't matter. And looting the chap next door doesn't really make you richer. What you need is for him to work and trade with you.
In my view, the Age of Revolution was over 150 years ago, and the Bolsheviks proved it a century ago.
In my view the Age of Politics is over too, because power is over. One proof is climate change. If we have to give our rulers power to save us from frying a century from now, then I gotta bridge to sell you. Another proof is women-in-politics. Women have a Culture of Complaint, and wearing white dresses at the SOTU. So if politics is reduced to complaining and a fashion show, it must really be past its sell-by date.
I think it was The Last Psychiatrist who observed that when institutions of power accrue women in significant numbers, it's a great indication that they aren't powerful anymore. This isn't causal in that women make an institution less powerful, it's simply an observation that men flock to power and women flock to me, where they can. So that explains our Congress.
I'm trying to apply this theory to the branches of the Cathedral. It certainly seems like the State Department and bureaucracy at the upper levels remains dominated by men, as of course does the military. But what about journalism and academia? Are these nodes simply too wide to have cohesive upper classes dominated by any one sex?
I have a related ongoing question- if the Brain and the Voice are as powerful in the hierarchy as they are claimed to be (and I'm not arguing that they aren't)
then why is their pay and relative job security so low?
The best answer I can come up with is basically what you also came up with--that below the very top stratum of these loose structures, there are just a shitload of people who have the ambition to want to enter these tiers, and the brains cutoff is relatively low (1-2 standard deviations above the mean). Think of all the Ivy League grads with liberal arts degrees getting cranked out every year who would kill to work at NYT or the Atlantic or New Yorker. Thus, the Cathedral functionally treats them as replaceable and expendable.
This also gives an interesting perspective to the recent internecine wars at the NYT between the debt-wracked millenials and the older Gen X and Boomer employees who still believe in some of the principles from the myth of Liberalism.
Is Yarvin serious? This is like sitting in March 1917 and reading "Nothing will speed up. All the gas in the Bolshevik tank was coming from the tsar. Now that Kerensky is in, no one has anything to fear or hate. No threat could ever be as exciting as an autocratic ruler."
It's not the Bolshevik regime that's ending today; what's ending is the old regime that held off the Bolsheviks. Like Nicholas II, Trump is isolated, hated by the elites, not firmly in command of the government apparatus, and distracted by foreign policy while the Bolsheviks get ever more powerful domestically.
Not convinced? Consider this.
The Bolsheviks got much less bloodthirsty from Lenin's time to Khrushchev. For instance: under Lenin, they invaded monasteries and bayoneted the monks without a second thought. But Khrushchev's regime ordered the closure of the Pskov Caves Monastery, which survived the Revolution by being on Estonian territory, and the abbot declared that they would have to kill him. The regime backed down.
Now ask yourself: are our present-day Bolsheviks getting less bloodthirsty? Or more?
Moldbug's said many times that this regime could last a century or it could end tomorrow. What differentiates it is that it is rapidly shedding the shroud of customs and pretenses it has used to hide itself from the masses. While this doesn't represent a change in the Cathedral's ability to exercise power, it's a weakness because of how much its power derives from claiming victim status and presenting itself as an invisible, omnipresent force that supplants history (as Progress) rather than one sustained by several institutions.
He also draws contrast between the vast difference in violent potential between all groups in 1917 and in 2020. This has worked for the Cathedral in the past because very little (though not none) of its power is derived from brute force-- the more it can hide this, the stronger it becomes. So while it might get uglier in the short term, that's actually a blow against it. But the question is whether we have the strength and ideas necessary to "repeal and replace" it now, or if we let it totter along in its weakened state until it collapses at an unknown point.
That may be the case, but that was a pretty good case against the argument that "boring toadies dissapate movements". For other parallels , see Hindenberg, , Ataturk's friends, even Mugabe wasn't a bad leader at first.
You could very well be right. But then again, does antagonizing them help? Or does it just speed up the process? I'm also skeptical of this kind of angle because Americans tend to catastrophize the results of their elections.
yes that's a whole other question, antagonizing probably isn't great. but in terms of "how bad are things", Yarvin might be a bit happy go lucky. if we hadn't elected Trump in the first place we may have been less likely to get a president Harris, we'd have president Merrick Garland or something
Do you know this is the best prescriptions you've ever given. The shortest as well.
I hope you know all these things will come to pass, almost certainly under Harris/Google/Biden.
My own analysis is the Dems now have a canine by the tail. If the canine remains the bitch cur it's been in the past and never more than this year...they have wagered correctly.
"The President has exactly one unilateral power which is dangerous to the regime: the power to declassify"
Does he now? Just as he is the 'Commander in Chief', and thus has the 'power' to throw a dart at a map of the middle east and order all the troops stationed there to drop everything and board the next flight of C-130s bound for CONUS? As well as the right to prosecute any General who even looks like he's going to defy a perfectly lawful order under UCMJ?
Haven't we learned enough yet from our 4-year long crash-course in 'applied Executive power'?
"Once as the Trump administration is over, no one has anything to fear or hate. No threat could ever be as exciting as the racist rapist in the White House. No Malibu hausfrau will ever again feel like she is in the French Resistance. After Prohibition, breweries could still sell nonalcoholic beer. This is journalism after Trump."
But first the ruling elites and their acolytes among us will feed off of the Trumpites for a little while, as evidenced by the media and Democrats' reaction to the rabble who dared to breach the Capitol the other day. They are "insurrectionists" who attempted a "coup", according to Jake Tapper & Co. They will substitute for Trump himself as the focus of the rulers' outrage for the foreseeable future.
That may all eventually turn out to be quite pathetic and disappointing to the rulers and their henchpersons (Trumpites, of course, are not nearly as dangerous and threatening as the ruling class likes to portray them--those people were thrilled to take selfies at Nancy Pelosi's desk, which is a far cry from trying to hijack the gov't), but I can see them spending the next four years demonizing those people 24/7 if they see that even an ounce or two of that juice will keep their power supply going for just a little longer.
“As for the so-called “power of the purse,” it doesn’t mean much against the power of the Fed. Since the Federal Reserve is part of the executive branch, who needs a Congressional appropriation? Lol owned.“
Your Catholic Conservative is the manifestation of the GOP, and your description of their inability to claim power is certainly right. However, power requires energy as you say, and the Right's energy lies elsewhere.
The Trump administration has seen the birth of a young, hot-blooded right wing movement with utter contempt for the cathedral and utter certainty their place is at the top. Where most want demaaaauucwasy they want caesar. The movement is young and unfocused, for sure, but four more years of optimism and space under Trump would surely see it gestate into maturity.
Where the left's only product is smugness, theirs are aesthetics, discipline, growth, determination, and most importantly vigour. Which of those wins, do you think?
You yourself mention posting physique - so I think you know who I mean.
You and BAP agree on at least one point - that this is now purely a battle of will. He who does not fight for power will not win power, for he will not take the necessary means to sieze it. This is why they - and I - will support Trump with all our energy until the end. Because conceding must not be in our playbook.
This does not mean Biden's victory would be final, far from it. Inevitably, the truth will out, and Chad will have dominion over Jim. What I am saying is they grow as big and strong under Trump's leadership - real or imagined - as they do on raw eggs and grass-fed beef.
Ave Imperator!
You talk about the young right wing movement gestating into maturity under Trump and your not wrong, I see the up side. But I also see the down side, I would hate to see that energy on the right transmuted into little more than Turning Point USA 2.0 led by Don Jr. I want our raw egg boys noble of heart not soiled by the stink of kakistocracy.
Ignatius, I like your last sentence.
right? I often think that a Newsom presidency would truly galvanize the movement. Of course, it could bring about worse things as well.
I agree it is a battle of wills, but for the long run I hope the youngins lose. So that they realise, the true nature of this regime and the next they plan to take power, they do it by any means necesary and keep it by any means necessary
I think, as pointed out, the long-term power projection is a battle of will, but also the direction of that will. BAP does seem to agree on a battle of will, but, like our catholic friend, does not posit a positive reality- the whole identity of the 'right' is to oppose the left. BAP is more successful in this as he tends not to oppose but IGNORE them. Neither Yarvin nor BAP offer that positive direction, perhaps it is not time to yet.
Its all well and good having will, its like explosives: free explosives may produce some quite cool visual effects, will be over in ~0.5 s without changing anything. We can make explosives useful; engineer a rocket, a fuse, a stick of TNT...it must be a controlled release, with an aim to have a real effect. Trumps energy, while a fine display, is directionless - and even if it has direction...is it even aimed at the right people? My fear is we could give the same energy to a potato and have the same effect.
If frog-twitter had power, they'd certainly exercise it vigorously (likely violating the second law in the process). The problem, as always, is getting from point A to point B.
"Inevitably the truth will out". In reality this isn't true. It isn't written in the stars that the truth be revealed. Lies can achieve dominance and become state sanctioned 'truth' and the actual truth effectively written out of history. This can be successful. Look at the last century. As the years go on and past events mean less, there is even LESS incentive to correct the 'official story' than before.
Trump Jr. posted about declassifying everything on Twitter just about an hour ago. I just want to say to any Cathedral-associated entities that everything posted here is satire. In fact everything I've ever done is satire unless explicitly stated otherwise.
The problem with this is that it requires the deep state to willingly go along with the declassification order which they will surely oppose until they no longer have to.
Dear Sir: As you know the Left will of course take your advice and debride us.
However it's always important to focus on enemy capabilities, not intentions.
The Left would inflict the Holodomor on America if it could, it cannot.
It will instead continue to practice a sort of sadistic, pornographic Jesuitism and minor tyrannies such as the face mask, etc, etc...
Your analysis in particular of the Right is absolutely correct.
I wonder if you understand that is a true reflection of their voters.
We are not only missing map and General, we are missing a nation.
Those of us who are sworn to the parchment are the inverse of Pakistan; Pakistan is an army that has a country. We are an army that has no country. I mean army in the spiritual sense of sworn to the parchment and being so retrogressive as to actually mean it. Our problem and I admit my problem is we cannot free a nation that is half Vichy Milice, the other half bovine.
You are also correct as regards the Carnival Barker. America needs a junkyard dog and thought we'd elected one but he's a barker not a biter. He'll pay for his squeamishness for the rest of his life as will anyone foolish enough to have worked for him in any capacity at all.
"A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss."
Moldybutt is a gentle Dom that works the linguistic whip of power to the utmost satisfaction of his paypigs. With every slow and controlled whip on the paypig's back, they squeal with excitement. Waiting for the next essay to drop.
Thanks folks, I'll be here next week.
You gotta lay off the porn and get a job man
I don't watch porn and I have a good job.
Then you need a new PR strategy.
Nobody asked you, chink -.-
Well there's nothing we desire as much as that which is difficult to get. Next time he'll wait two months and we'll be hot pink with desire. Seduction is a great game, for both sides.
Maybe you will...
Next week is a long time...
We’re on a new clock now 😉
"Therefore, it is simply impossible for the progressive movement to generate anything like the energy it generated in the ’60s. The whole Obama experience, in particular, is a major downer.
...
It is just not exciting to be a mainstream left-wing activist. The lifestyle is grim and boring."
-Mencius Moldbug, The New Structure, 2009
One suspects there may be something missing in Yarvin's model of how the left responds to nominal power.
I don't think that Yarvin would claim that even Trump was able to generate 60's level energy, and I think he conceded a few times the possibility of some rabble rouser giving them a bit of a boost. 2009 really was different and could lead to some miscalculations.
Not 60's level energy, but the prediction that Obama would dampen the left's enthusiasm proved wrong. He's making the same prediction about Biden, but it's not clear how the model has been corrected.
Arkansas- good point. Sure, the energy level in 2020 wasn’t the same as 1968 or 1917, but it was sure higher than 2009. Clearly, it is very exciting for some people to scream at their fellow Americans who are dining at restaurants or at home with the kids (as in Portland.) These are some primal impulses that are being activated. The urge to Purify the Sin, the urge to Scapegoat the Evil Ones.
If our elites offer a sanctioned avenue for the expression of such power (which they obviously have)—that aint grim and boring for the foot soldiers.
I agree that Yarvin is missing something here.
Sure, we are not nearly as physically violent a people as we were in past ages. But lets not confuse energy level with external expressions of physical violence. And when we examine the Left’s obsession with race, we see a potentially massive hellhole of energy that can be tapped into. I’m trying to think of a culture or society that experienced an exponential increase in Racialized thinking (like ours has in the last 10 years) that led to greater intra-societal harmony and peace.
Sober analysis. Any thoughts about what the peasants should actually do with their ambition and energy?
Wait. The energy is not yet enough and the plan is not yet complete and the antiversity is not yet up and running.
There is no plan. There are no planners. That's the problem. The energy could be there, the peasants are definitely there, finding a general isn't that hard.
But then what? The plan! The plan! The plan!
I think "there are no planners" cuts to the core of the issue.
Essentially the question we're asking is "how do you take on a decentralized ideological structure that has total dominance of virtually every institution that exists, from the academy, news media, bureacracy, politics and even the military, and has had so, even since before you were born". It's not a surprise that there's no-one planning anything. You would simultaneously have to solve various immense social and organizational problems just to even begin to have a plan. And even if you have a plan, how do you put it into action?
Our current regime has access to children at an early age to propagandize them with it's talking points. The parents of these children were also propagandized so they encourage the propaganda. It has the TV and the news media reinforcing this propaganda literally 24/7 and in every broadcast. It has control of most of the academy, as well as much of the military. With all of this, it can "manufacture consent". It has the power to destroy anyone who challenges it.
So in order to compete we would essentially have to just seize power of every organ of propaganda, and "manufacture consent" for our own policies. Total dominance of the media, universities and school system, and therefore the ability to decide what is "true". How the hell are we going to do that?
A long march indeed, but in truth not achievable, nothing can arrest this leviathan. As for what will happen, it is simple and ancient, we do what we always do, war, and then out of the ashes we build anew.
Our annual ritual of remembrance “lest we forget “ is ironic because we always forget and in a bigger sense we need the cleansing inferno of war. Come on, you make the point very well, the idealogical structure is 💯 percent insurmountable, nothing will dislodge it, never, ever, no way, no how, it will go wither it will and then inevitably unto destruction.
I read Curtis as a student of power, he is exceptionally insightful into the mechanism of human affairs: I think he is right.
As for a prescription for change, not so much, he describes the mechanism needed but always cautions no catalyst is available of a scale required. There never is such a catalyst, besides war that is.
Stop freakin out man
wondering that myself from a practical perspective to make our lives suck less in the near term, anyway. Especially when "action is essential" yet detachment has always been advocated as the proper course of action for opponents of the Cathedral. Unless action does indeed mean detachment... hell if I know
Action is essential, but action at the wrong time/place is folly. Preparation - spiritual, phyiscal, and mental - is required before action. Unprepared action - unplanned action - is almost always counterproductive, unless you've got better luck than I.
Of course! Action should always be planned!
Although legally that’s conspiracy<
Just kidding 🤣🤣
About plans I mean.
When the American Elites overthrow the legitimate state we know what happens.
See Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Ukraine, Libya...I can go on.
In fact I could add Ferguson and Baltimore, for that matter Portland, Minneapolis...
This is good news for some, or will be when it happens for about 5 mins.
Its better news if you have the experience of such places, and are a happy warrior. You might define Happy Warrior as DGAF.
In a DGAF happy sense that is even less funny in person than reading.
The DS plan BTW is to execute a Color Revolution and hope for the best. It never cost them before ~ because they didn’t live there.
Why at this moment Victoria Nuland is no doubt on the phone saying “ F-ck ~ “ this or that.
Which is when we (or rather ye the masses) get the worst news of all;
How shallow as people the Deep Staters are.
🤣🤣🤣
Both are true - we need to take the advice of both Yarvin and BAP here, in that we render unto China Joe's that which is China Joe's, and detach - but detach doesn't mean do nothing, it means stop defining everything in terms of the battleground that we don't control.
Focus on communities - volunteer, go to Church, meet like-minded people, find fellowship and community. Start up 18th century style political salons in our cities as book / discussion groups. Work out, eat healthy, care about our families and friends while finding fellowship.
For those who think this sounds crazy - look how splintered we're already becoming, especially with eg news media - we're already forming two distinct cultures... Let's be the one that's strong, beautiful and True.
Out of this we can hope for more right-wing art, and we win not by squabbling in their arena, but by presenting a more attractive way, there will be beauty in its truth.
We fight for Trump now, sorry Curtis I refuse to give up even if we're looking at low probability chain of events, we can't rollover now not knowing what future looks like. If things don't go our way here in next 4 weeks or so, we follow the above - ie render unto China Joe that which is China Joe's, and build our own way
There will be nothing for Twitter to censor if instead of tweeting we're at our Tuesday night political salon meetup smoking cigars and talking about Ernst Junger..... (thursdays will be debate night)
This might be the smartest political analysis I have ever read. Glad I didn't find until now, because the short term things predicted in the article have actually happened, lending credibility to the whole analysis. Wish I had the type of friends I could sit down with and discuss the many wisdoms in this.
If your Catholic Conservative was Rod Dreher, he doesn't have the chops to plan.
Tho oddly enough, it was he and not Alasdair MacIntyre who was 100% right about the economic development of Monasteries in their Benedict Option debate.
MacIntyre (because like all doomers, he hates it when anyone proposes a solution) incorrectly asserted that monasteries only developed as economic power houses because they were located in towns. Which is crazy fake history.
The monasteries came first. The towns developed around them.
Is Michael Anton Catholic? My money is on him or one of his friends over at the Clairmont Institute. Bugman used to write for the American Mind before coming to substack.
Anton also is not a planner. I can't think of anyone on the Right who is.
Who set up the Federalist Society? That took time and has started paying off. I know its kind of small ball for nrx but its something. Yarvin is the only one who can think out loud about this stuff and still make any sense. But he is more of a Marx than a Lenin.
Are you kidding me? Do you mean the Federalist Society which literally take no position on anything and is merely yet another platform where "true liberals" can debate? Do you know how many members of the Federalist Society signed onto the Make Gay Marriage a Constitutional Right Project?
Trump Federalist Society alumni judges won't overturn Roe...will protect Big Tech from anti-trust enforcement.
My God, the Federalist Society he said. Ha!
Look they may not be interested in returning the Stewarts to power, but it an institution that is at lease interested in pre FDR forms of American government. More importantly we are talking about planning. Every law school in this country worth getting a degree from has a federalist society chapter. Not everyone in the federalist society is reactionary but all the reactionaries at law schools are in the federalist society.
Given the hegemony of the cathedral these sorts of parasitic organizations may be the most effective that be constructed at the moment. Certainty in my life with my skill set this is the sort of level of political activity I can engage in that might do some good.
We are not going to retake the entire elite over night with a trump train, there is work to be done and getting the ear of a handful of elites is better than having access to none.
See, I believe that the reason that Republicans don't seek power is because we don't believe that political power is the answer to "the meaning of life, the universe and everything."
But our Democratic friends know that with just a little more political power they can finally bend the arc of history towards justice.
Back in the day if you invaded the land next door you could loot it, kill the men and sell the women into slavery. Yay! But now food-growing land doesn't matter. And looting the chap next door doesn't really make you richer. What you need is for him to work and trade with you.
In my view, the Age of Revolution was over 150 years ago, and the Bolsheviks proved it a century ago.
In my view the Age of Politics is over too, because power is over. One proof is climate change. If we have to give our rulers power to save us from frying a century from now, then I gotta bridge to sell you. Another proof is women-in-politics. Women have a Culture of Complaint, and wearing white dresses at the SOTU. So if politics is reduced to complaining and a fashion show, it must really be past its sell-by date.
I think it was The Last Psychiatrist who observed that when institutions of power accrue women in significant numbers, it's a great indication that they aren't powerful anymore. This isn't causal in that women make an institution less powerful, it's simply an observation that men flock to power and women flock to me, where they can. So that explains our Congress.
I'm trying to apply this theory to the branches of the Cathedral. It certainly seems like the State Department and bureaucracy at the upper levels remains dominated by men, as of course does the military. But what about journalism and academia? Are these nodes simply too wide to have cohesive upper classes dominated by any one sex?
flock to men*, not me. I wish!
I have a related ongoing question- if the Brain and the Voice are as powerful in the hierarchy as they are claimed to be (and I'm not arguing that they aren't)
then why is their pay and relative job security so low?
The best answer I can come up with is basically what you also came up with--that below the very top stratum of these loose structures, there are just a shitload of people who have the ambition to want to enter these tiers, and the brains cutoff is relatively low (1-2 standard deviations above the mean). Think of all the Ivy League grads with liberal arts degrees getting cranked out every year who would kill to work at NYT or the Atlantic or New Yorker. Thus, the Cathedral functionally treats them as replaceable and expendable.
This also gives an interesting perspective to the recent internecine wars at the NYT between the debt-wracked millenials and the older Gen X and Boomer employees who still believe in some of the principles from the myth of Liberalism.
I think you answered your question very well. To use an analogy:
If the illegal drug trade is so lucrative, why are most drug dealers so poor?
Is Yarvin serious? This is like sitting in March 1917 and reading "Nothing will speed up. All the gas in the Bolshevik tank was coming from the tsar. Now that Kerensky is in, no one has anything to fear or hate. No threat could ever be as exciting as an autocratic ruler."
The Bolsheviks are already in power though. We're far from the beginning of this regime, we're at least on Khrushchev.
It's not the Bolshevik regime that's ending today; what's ending is the old regime that held off the Bolsheviks. Like Nicholas II, Trump is isolated, hated by the elites, not firmly in command of the government apparatus, and distracted by foreign policy while the Bolsheviks get ever more powerful domestically.
Not convinced? Consider this.
The Bolsheviks got much less bloodthirsty from Lenin's time to Khrushchev. For instance: under Lenin, they invaded monasteries and bayoneted the monks without a second thought. But Khrushchev's regime ordered the closure of the Pskov Caves Monastery, which survived the Revolution by being on Estonian territory, and the abbot declared that they would have to kill him. The regime backed down.
Now ask yourself: are our present-day Bolsheviks getting less bloodthirsty? Or more?
It's not 1956 in America. It's 1917.
Moldbug's said many times that this regime could last a century or it could end tomorrow. What differentiates it is that it is rapidly shedding the shroud of customs and pretenses it has used to hide itself from the masses. While this doesn't represent a change in the Cathedral's ability to exercise power, it's a weakness because of how much its power derives from claiming victim status and presenting itself as an invisible, omnipresent force that supplants history (as Progress) rather than one sustained by several institutions.
He also draws contrast between the vast difference in violent potential between all groups in 1917 and in 2020. This has worked for the Cathedral in the past because very little (though not none) of its power is derived from brute force-- the more it can hide this, the stronger it becomes. So while it might get uglier in the short term, that's actually a blow against it. But the question is whether we have the strength and ideas necessary to "repeal and replace" it now, or if we let it totter along in its weakened state until it collapses at an unknown point.
Excellent post: totter and collapse, it can’t be arrested it must fall.
That may be the case, but that was a pretty good case against the argument that "boring toadies dissapate movements". For other parallels , see Hindenberg, , Ataturk's friends, even Mugabe wasn't a bad leader at first.
You could very well be right. But then again, does antagonizing them help? Or does it just speed up the process? I'm also skeptical of this kind of angle because Americans tend to catastrophize the results of their elections.
yes that's a whole other question, antagonizing probably isn't great. but in terms of "how bad are things", Yarvin might be a bit happy go lucky. if we hadn't elected Trump in the first place we may have been less likely to get a president Harris, we'd have president Merrick Garland or something
Do you know this is the best prescriptions you've ever given. The shortest as well.
I hope you know all these things will come to pass, almost certainly under Harris/Google/Biden.
My own analysis is the Dems now have a canine by the tail. If the canine remains the bitch cur it's been in the past and never more than this year...they have wagered correctly.
If the canine turns Wolf....
"The President has exactly one unilateral power which is dangerous to the regime: the power to declassify"
Does he now? Just as he is the 'Commander in Chief', and thus has the 'power' to throw a dart at a map of the middle east and order all the troops stationed there to drop everything and board the next flight of C-130s bound for CONUS? As well as the right to prosecute any General who even looks like he's going to defy a perfectly lawful order under UCMJ?
Haven't we learned enough yet from our 4-year long crash-course in 'applied Executive power'?
"Once as the Trump administration is over, no one has anything to fear or hate. No threat could ever be as exciting as the racist rapist in the White House. No Malibu hausfrau will ever again feel like she is in the French Resistance. After Prohibition, breweries could still sell nonalcoholic beer. This is journalism after Trump."
But first the ruling elites and their acolytes among us will feed off of the Trumpites for a little while, as evidenced by the media and Democrats' reaction to the rabble who dared to breach the Capitol the other day. They are "insurrectionists" who attempted a "coup", according to Jake Tapper & Co. They will substitute for Trump himself as the focus of the rulers' outrage for the foreseeable future.
That may all eventually turn out to be quite pathetic and disappointing to the rulers and their henchpersons (Trumpites, of course, are not nearly as dangerous and threatening as the ruling class likes to portray them--those people were thrilled to take selfies at Nancy Pelosi's desk, which is a far cry from trying to hijack the gov't), but I can see them spending the next four years demonizing those people 24/7 if they see that even an ounce or two of that juice will keep their power supply going for just a little longer.
I am chastised. I will defer to your expertise here.
“As for the so-called “power of the purse,” it doesn’t mean much against the power of the Fed. Since the Federal Reserve is part of the executive branch, who needs a Congressional appropriation? Lol owned.“
Love this stuff