The boomer map
"I will put a new chip in your brain. You will know kung fu!"
I don’t read about myself but I make exception for a certain kind of hostile effortpost. One recent and admirably short one is Damon Linker’s “The Red-Pill Pusher,” which deserves to be taken seriously—both because Linker used to be the editor of the highly respected First Things, and because at times the man is almost complimentary. But…
On boomers
TLDR: the only problem with Damon Linker is that he is a boomer. Or can I even say this? Is it a slur? The “b-word” certainly has a rather nasty sound.
I was giving a guest lecture at an unnamed college the other day and found myself quoting that brilliant clip of the Bhagwan about democracy. And while paraphrasing his guruness, I found myself saying—“r-word.” This was completely spontaneous and yet it was the best laugh-line of the morning. I want to say “b-word.”
And yet—there is something to it. Linker was born just a few years before me. He is not a boomer—chronologically. But can one be a boomer—spiritually? Some of my best friends are boomers—chronologically—and yet—there is... a boomer mindset?
The boomer mindset is frozen in a pastel pre-1980s caricature of an America which I am still old enough to remember. I remember the Bicentennial! It was awful. I cut my thumb on a chicken-wire float. I was sad and angry and scared when Mondale lost—Reagan was my Trump—I believed in the whole thing. The whole show. NBC and ABC and CBS, plus PBS for the classy people—that was us, of course…
The spiritual boomer may be young or old. He is a man who lives on the boomer map. He lives his life as a character in the boomer story. To free him is not to change his mind—not to move him to a different position on the map, a different role in the story—but to change the channel—close the book—to sweep his mind away to a different map.
Our boomer is the American equivalent of the Russian sovok, the Soviet man, who takes the whole Soviet narrative seriously. When the sovok studies Marx-Lenin thought or goes to a state-approved demonstration, he really feels good about himself—he is genuinely doing the right thing for the workers and peasants. Or whatever. And if he did not go to the demonstration, he would be a bad person, who was mean to the workers and peasants! Millions and millions of people really believed in this.
Ultimately we cannot communicate with the boomer because our ideals and proposals do not make sense in the boomer world—they do not exist on the boomer map. But why remain on the boomer map? The 20th century was a long time ago… we are all less attached to its institutional legacy than anyone is supposed to think. And no one, regardless of birthdate, can be taken for granted or written off as irredeemable.
Linker is trying to think and is almost there. Let us see if we can pull him the rest of the way from his unfortunate century, with some “old blogosphere” style “fisking.”
Origins of the boomer regime
After the inflammatory title (I am not a pusher—I just like to help out my friends), I actually got halfway through “The Red-Pill Pusher” before anything I disagreed with Linker on. He even flatters me a bit. Then, slightly worse, quotes me out of context:
We don’t just live in something vaguely like a Puritan theocracy. We live in an actual, genuine, functioning if hardly healthy, 21st-century Puritan theocracy.
My point, which dude is completely missing, is that the cultural and ideological agenda of late 20th-century progressivism is historically continuous with the religious agenda of mainline Protestantism, which is the same thing as the English Dissenter or “Puritan” tradition going all the way back to Cromwell.
I always point skeptics to a primary source—this 1942 Archeopteryx of the transition. For instance, the foreign-aid establishment of the postwar era is the prewar mainline missionary establishment. New branding, same people, doing the same things.
This is a nitpick. It’s just history, who cares. More seriously, Linker’s understanding of the “Cathedral” concept is almost but not quite there:
Yarvin intends the term “Cathedral” to evoke the centralized unity of the medieval Catholic Church while also ironically highlighting the peculiar fact that our Cathedral operates informally through the unselfconscious collusion of the elites who work in the leading institutions of our world—Harvard, Yale, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, etc. The elites who toil in these organizations don’t perceive themselves to be enforcing an unchallengeable orthodoxy, just as those who consume the information they spew into the world don’t think they’re being brainwashed, but that is nonetheless what’s happening. The Cathedral rewards with praise and power those who affirm and reinforce the orthodoxy, and it punishes those who defy it with public disapprobation and ostracism from positions of privilege and influence in our society.
This is like listening to Lamarck explain the transmutation of species. The cause of the Cathedral’s correlation, is the cause of leftism, is an evolutionary phenomenon. Our problem is that the world is run by a regime with a long-run structurally leftist bias: it evolves leftisms. On Mars, the same regime structure would evolve the same ideas. Oligarchy is inherently leftist, just as monarchy is inherently rightist.
All these elite institutions are highly meritocratic tournament-economy positions in which everyone is very smart and usually even very cool. In our oligarchical system of government, the marketplace of ideas that matters is the marketplace of ideas within the winners of these tournaments. In technical or purportedly technical fields, it is the marketplace of ideas amongst prestigious academics.
The engineering problem is that when a marketplace of ideas makes final decisions, the marketplace is polluted with power. When the marketplace is polluted with power, its ideas compete not just on their wisdom, but on their ability to generate power—for example, their power to attract (or reject) funding.
This is why leftism always wins: leftism is what generates more power. Leftism always has more energy and more excitement. This is because its ideas generate power—leftist ideas always involve impact on the world. If science is put in charge of science, science will favor ideas which make science more powerful, which will be or become leftist ideas. Leftism at bottom is just the natural and inevitable human urge to matter.
Everything is science, or at least works like science. If diplomats and foreign-policy experts are put in charge of foreign policy, they will want to take over the world. If they can. If we can. Why wouldn’t they? How can isolationism compete in the market for foreign-policy ideas? Isolationism is to foreign-policy jobs as rat-poison is to rats.
There is no way to fix this problem given our current principles of governance. If the power of final decision is taken away from the idea market—if we no longer “trust the science”—that power must be given to some other person or institution.
This authoritarian figure or cabal then has the power to “override the science.” This is the power that Hitler or Mao or Stalin had. This kind of Hitler energy is not allowed. Therefore, science must remain in charge of science. Also, everything is science—or at least, everything has a professor of itself.
Such is the boomer map. To play on this map is to lose. Do not even shake the dice!
The lie at the heart of the boomer map
Linker gets more egregious when he opines:
For one thing, we can begin by recognizing that however irritating and occasionally moronic the elite echo chamber can be, it’s perfectly possible to dissent from it. In fact, I’m doing it right now in an essay for a mainstream website. No harm will come to me as a result. And that means Yarvin’s account of a unified front of elite political-cultural power that can only be challenged by a totalistic break from the system as a whole is a cartoonish exaggeration.
Really, Damon?
Do you know the name “Steve Sailer?” What about “John Derbyshire?” You even call your Substack “Eyes on the Right,” as though you were some kind of professional informant. Yes, you can dissent. But not too much, Damon! For shame. Probably in the UK these people would already be arrested—and in the long run we’re headed there.
Yes, you dissent. What else would you say, Damon, if only you were allowed to say it? Nothing? Not a thing? Friend, we have all been there. We are all there. I would even say: we are all guilty. But some are less guilty than others, and this is one subject on which I feel you would do well to hold your tongue.
It’s one many on the right find incredibly compelling. Even though the highest-rated cable news channel is right-wing. And it competes for viewers with a series of even more radical alt-right outlets. And the most popular podcast in the country is anti-woke. And right-leaning talk radio remains popular. And right-wing books regularly become bestsellers. And Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, and many others have become rich putting out hard-right content online.
Yes. Unfortunately, these people are all grifters. It is sad but there is always hope for them. All of these grifters know it and they usually justify their work and honor by pointing at other, more grifty, grifters. Indeed there is always a griftier grifter. Did I say “they?” Obviously I meant “we.”
You see, these people are selling power too—only it is fake power. Trump was or is in the same business. He was pretending that if he got elected, he would actually have real power over DC. To win the culture war. Whatever.
He didn’t have a thousandth of that power. He was just selling Trump Steaks. But who else is selling the same Trump Steaks? Why, Damon Linker, that’s who:
And Republicans are nowhere close to being shut out of power. They compete, and they do quite well at all levels of politics—local, state, and federal.
Republicans are nowhere close to being shut out of office. Not since Herbert Hoover have they been anywhere near power. But yes, they are still able to get these jobs.
Yes, to the extent that politicians are still allowed to be in charge of the government, they do have power—but the whole 20th-century system of progressive governance, which is older than anyone living, revolves around insulating governance from politics.
(This is why “democracy” is a good word and “politics” is a bad word. Actually, when you say “democracy” you mean “oligarchy,” and by “politics” you mean “democracy.” This Jedi mind trick lets you believe, correctly, that democracy is bad. It is bad. But oligarchy, which you call “democracy,” is also bad. How unfortunate that there are only two forms of government! I think this is a really beautiful propaganda hack.)
Compare the power of Trump to the power of FDR and you’ll see the difference. Why speak in lies? Just say “in office,” not “in power.” And you won’t be lying. It’s so easy.
What they don’t do is win overwhelming majorities—that is, achieve the kind of electoral victories that would give them a mandate to fundamentally restructure the state in the way that FDR did after he and his party began winning elections by massive margins in 1932.
FDR in 1932—as I would expect any “conservative” to know—did not win a mandate to “fundamentally restructure the state in the way that FDR did.” No, Mr. Linker! He had a mandate to implement the 1932 Democratic platform—which was a mandate to do roughly the opposite of what FDR did.
Little surprise, since the Democrats were still the historical conservative party. FDR was elected by an alliance of the progressive Atlantic upper crust with the Solid South and the Catholic inner city. Both of which thought they were choosing wisely in this alliance—imagine if they could have seen the world in, say, 1976. This Machiavellian maneuver by said upper crust—by “NPR America”—must be seen as an electoral hack. The old-school Democrats thought they were using the progressives; the progressives were using them. A person could stand to learn from this.
Overwhelming majorities
I have read the Constitution a few times and, except in the corner case of overriding the veto, it says nothing of “overwhelming majorities.” It speaks only of majorities.
In 2017 and 2018, the Republicans had a majority in all three branches of the Federal Government. There was no legal power that could restrain this triumphant elephant. Collectively, the GOP possessed the authority of Louis XIV, the notorious Sun King, and could have simply ruled by decree. (Maybe an executive transition office in the White House would just draft court orders for the Supreme Court to rubber-stamp.)
What did the Republicans do with this power? Overthrow the Deep State? Drain the Swamp? Repeal the New Deal? Rescind the Administrative Procedure Act? Lol. With discipline and organization and purpose, the Republicans could have done anything.
Instead they did nothing. This is because if my aunt had balls, she would be my uncle. And if the post-Wendell Willkie Republican Party were not a grift, it would not be the Grand Old Party. We must concede that Linker has a point in dissociating himself from this grand grift. Maybe I am a leftist too.
On the management of public opinion
Linker concludes his essay in what I have to say is a weird direction:
That’s why Yarvin’s Red Pill politics is best understood as an expression of desperation. He and his admirers want to make sweeping changes to the country, but they can’t seem to win the popular support required to make those changes happen.
Which is an odd way to end a text that started us off with
I first heard of Curtis Yarvin at some point late in Barack Obama’s second term. He was just radical enough to grab my attention but just absurd enough to lose it within five minutes. Less than a decade later, things look very different. Numerous ideas that once resided on the rightward fringe have since migrated into the political mainstream, and Yarvin’s have traveled further than most.
I mean idk maybe give it another decade? Gosh, people these days are so demanding—
I think it’s more accurate to say that the country simply isn’t as right-wing as Yarvin and his acolytes would like it to be.
I think it’s more accurate to say that the country misunderstands what it means to be right-wing. And overwhelmingly, they do not want to be the thing that it is not.
But on the boomer map, it is the thing it is not. The only solution is to educate the country to a new map which matches the territory, on which everything is the thing that it is. Some seek to further this education and others seek to frustrate it—this is the gnostic Matrix battle that has Linker’s panties in a knot. I will put a new chip in your brain. You will know kung fu!
But rather than accepting this reality, seeking to move public opinion in their direction through the ordinary process of democratic persuasion, and accepting that the outcome of that effort is uncertain, they prefer justifying the seizure of power and the imposition of their views on the rest of us by force.
Wait, where did I say that? I mean, every regime is illegitimate in the eyes of the last. Nothing in the Articles of Confederation authorized the Constitution, and we have already seen the hack by which FDR took power in 1933. Obviously his opponents thought it was illegitimate. And likewise, every regime imposes its views, and every regime has a monopoly of force.
But to be perfectly clear, winning elections remains by far the easiest path to regime change in the United States. What is not the easiest path—not even a possible path—is Linker’s “seeking to move public opinion in their direction through the ordinary process of democratic persuasion.” Ie, through subscribing to Persuasion, or the National Review, or whatever cuckazine is dropping dimes in Linker’s pocket today—give me Dan Bongino any day. Here is indeed the quintessence of the boomer map.
Managing public opinion
Of course every regime, and every regime change, depends on public opinion. Off the boomer map, on the real map which is the map of history, here is how any reasonable regime must approach the challenge of managing public opinion.
Even when the battle for the minds of men was fought by hacking their brains with swords, government depended on mass consent—the consent of anyone with a sword. Even armies can function only by consent; and the vote of the legions, which chose so many Caesars, was still a vote.
But the path to mass consent is different in every time and place. There are two parts of this problem: obtaining mass consent, and keeping it.
On keeping power
Keeping mass consent is the easy part. A new regime must be a strong regime; if it is not strong enough to make itself popular, something is wrong. As a general rule, real power creates its own popularity—even if it is not installed by popularity. Was the government of Germany in 1946 installed by popularity?
The easiest way for a regime to keep itself popular is to get undeniably awesome results. The Chinese regime has a popularity above 80%. It earned this by turning China from a run-down backwater into the industrial heart of the global economy. The Salvadoran regime has a popularity above 80%. It earned this by bringing the murder rate down by more than an order of magnitude.
Go back to FDR. While FDR never put up these kinds of dictator-for-life numbers, he did do awesome stuff—like conquering the world. But also, he used the power of the state to create an awesome number of individual and institutional clients of the new fat Washington tit. That FDR’s rule made America a better place, in the short or long run, may be argued or rebutted. He certainly knew how to use power to make power.
On taking power
Obtaining mass consent—especially for crazy ideas like mine—is much harder. On the boomer map, by “the ordinary process of democratic persuasion,” it cannot be done at all. But the boomer is Horatio and there are many things under heaven and earth that are not in his philosophy.
Usually they are in history; but the boomer has not the humility to learn from history, unless it be boomer history. Nothing will save him but losing his map—but everything in present and past is trying to show him the reality. All he has to do is open his eyes. Sadly, for most boomers this will be impossible. They will pass away still firmly within their two-dimensional comic-book narrative. Sad!
The process of switching maps, though rational in theory, is not rational in practice. In a way it is a fundamentally magical process. It really is a mind trick. At the heart of this mind trick is a sense of irony that is almost frivolous. In the fall of Communism, in places like Czechoslovakia or the Baltic states, it felt like regime change was almost a joke. The “Velvet Revolution” was a fundamentally joyous and ludic and ironic affair. What it was was—a piece of the 21st century that accidentally fell into the 20th.
The 21st-century population is well-adapted to a “politics of reset” because it may be the most ironic population that has ever existed in human history. It is certainly one of the most frivolous, apathetic, and above all nonviolent populations. Expecting its young males to behave like the minutemen of the 1770s or the stormtroopers of the 1930s is… “r-word.” Politics is the art of the possible. Violence is not possible; irony is.
Furthermore, one of the false implications of the false boomer map is the implication that the proper target of any right-wing psychological-warfare campaign is the lower middle class, the Dan Bongino audience, the Fox News viewers. This seems logical, since this is (a) where the votes are; (b) where the money is. Why not do good, by doing well? Many of my dear conservative fiends have made this clearly sensible choice.
Actually the equation of right-wing with lower-class, and left-wing with upper class and underclass, is entirely contingent. There is every reason for a politics of reset to target all classes and all parties—yes, even the underclass. A sectarian reset cannot succeed, at least not in a country incapable of violence. If the support of a new regime must be sectarian, so be it—but in power it must rapidly capture universal loyalty.
But if a new strategy has to target only one class, it should target the upper class—the natural ruling class. Elites have been right-wing before, after all!
This “dark elf” strategy takes advantage of the fact that fashion flows down. Ignoring the lower-class hobbits, without either alienating them or pandering to their enemies, but also without pandering to them, is the natural strategy for leading them. Instead, the normal strategy today is not to lead them but to follow them. Even when following the voter gets you votes, it never gets you power. They’re supposed to be following you.
Everyone who shops at Safeway knows what Whole Foods is. They know it is better, but more expensive. The lower class wants an upper class it can genuinely look up to. The feeling that Harvard has gone insane is like realizing that Mom and Dad are both on heroin. Attacking Harvard is not the way to calm this anxiety; taking over Harvard, or replacing Harvard, are the only paths to true leadership.
When conservatives try to appeal to liberals, they always do it the wrong way. They bend the knee. They submit. They inform—writing blogs like “Eyes on the Right.” Even to a cop, there is no scum lower than an informer. It is a total loss of dignity—about as sexy as a kitchen sponge. Attacking liberals, “owning the libs” in the Dan Bongino style, is a useless, counterproductive grift—it is not as bad as submitting.
The right way to “own the libs” is actually to own them—to make them ours—not to submit to them, not to assault them, but to seduce them. The libs need to be into us, the way Patty Hearst was into Donald DeFreeze—“General Field Marshal Cinque.” Libs cannot get their rocks off without some kind of a cult. It must be a cult of power.
Elites are attracted to power. And in the moribund bureaucratic hulk of the Deep State which long ago was FDR’s bold young dynamic monarchical regime, power is hard to come by. Tracy Flick has a long, penurious path ahead of her as an unpaid intern and shit-tier Hill staffer before she gets to matter at all. It will take a lot of ass-kissing, or worse, and also a lot of luck. Even for young Hillary it was way easier.
When a new regime, which does not exist, but could, is postulated—it has not actual, but potential, power. While the possibility still seems distant—it seems to be getting less distant. And the quantity of power this event would liberate would be—absolute. These numbers, multiplied, define the attraction of potential power.
History shows that elites are very much attracted to potential power. This, not the suffering of the workers and peasants or whatever pretextual nonsense, was the driving force in every leftist revolution from the 18th century to the 20th.
In the 21st century, leftism, having conquered, has very little potential power—it has very little left to conquer. Any incremental power will be divided among a very large number of mouths—there are a very large number of professional leftists. Rightism, however, has a small number of early amateur enthusiasts—dividing up a gigantic potential pie of absolute power. Mayb u subscribe?