The beast needs to die first. In the US there is no national culture, no binding force. I wouldn't trust anyone who was able to rise to power under the current regime, nor do I think the people of the US have the character or virtue to identify and support the kind of person who could maintain an effective, spiritually healthy government. My point is that I don't see regime change (where the territorial US remains an intact political entity) coming from the top down, or from the bottom up any time soon. Political balkanization followed by a de facto dissolution of the union in some way, might clear the way for accountable power structures and pre requisite levels of social trust to emerge.
The United States is quite a diverse nation when it comes to hereditary composition, but I would take issue with the claim (one which is quite often repeated) that a consistent culture is somehow absent within the country. If I may say so (not intending to single you out for criticism) it is a bit like asking "Why are Americans the only people who speak English without an accent?" We have difficulty feeling our own culture because our minds have been saturated with the elements of such, as opposed to the United States being a miraculous exception to the way in which human societies usually operate. Having devoted some time to studying this particular question in the past, I can easily provide some examples of beliefs and customs which undergird the lives of nearly all Americans, while being hard to come across outside of the United States, excepting those instances where Americans specifically went abroad in order to spread such elements. (1) The United States has a very distinctively designed secondary-school (middle and high school) system, whose foundational tenets are based upon the Pragmatist and Experientialist philosophical schools (as developed by such philosophers as Emerson, Peirce, Holmes, and Dewey). (2) The country also has a distinctive corporate/managerial culture which competes against (among others) the German and Japanese schools of thought regarding workplace-management and -communication. Much of this American system was an outgrowth of the 1970s Self Actualization movement, which was itself a quasi-philosophical expression of the American mindset and lifestyle. (3) There is a very deep admiration of professional spectator-sports which is shared across the breadth of the entire country, and associated with this industry is a massive assortment of customs, social clubs, local heroes, and so forth. As if that weren't enough, there is a second, redundant industry in the form of NCAA. Then there is an entire set of traditions and reverences related to high-school athletics. All across the United States you can find random high-schools possessing multi-million USD sports-facilities which rival the professional facilities of other countries. (4) There are a number of philosophical beliefs originally incubated within the Presbyterian, Methodist, or Baptist religious denominations which have since been infused into the mainstream conscience, such as: the belief that complaining about evil is itself an act of evil; that children are more evil, not less, than adults, and in particular, that they are Narcissists and little monsters; that children need to undergo shock and stimulation in order to develop and mature; that it is exceedingly shameful for men (even boys) to shed tears, even at funerals, but not women; that a man is best understood not by himself, but by his friends. (5) Even the belief in the existence of so-called Psychopaths, Sociopaths, and Narcissists (and the constant referencing of such concepts when discussing social matters) is an Americanism. As little as fifty years ago, the average American did not know the meaning of these words, and even today, most people outside of the Anglosphere (excepting, of course, those who came to America for university) do not know about these concepts. This comment is not meant to be a statement of anti-Americanism (this being neither the time nor place), merely a list of some factual considerations for people who might be interested in further studying the national issues at hand, above all those which our talented author Mr Yarvin has continually striven to resolve.
I have thought a little bit about what you said and I agree with most of its parts. I suppose my modified position would be that we do have a national culture to some extent, just not one that is sufficient to create the high levels of social trust necessary to have a functional government, nevermind a monarchical form of it. When I think about the things that form high levels of social trust, my mind goes towards ethnic/religious/racial homogeneity with a shared historical narrative. The Han Chinese and the French have this, we do not. These are just my feelz though, I hope you're right to be honest.
But Curtis, we are inflating people out of USD denominated poverty by the millions every year! If Weimar Germany was so bad, how come everyone in it was a millionaire? Did you know that 3rd world workers who earned 1 USD per day in the 1960s are earning 5 USD per day today! That is a nominal increase of 5 times! Explain to me how a system that can generate results like THAT is "hiding losses". I can wait while you rewrite your post to correct glaring your error.
It's telling that every single country on earth has a currency that it controls, or that some other government controls. It's not enough to read Mises, you got to read Fisher, Friedman, and yes even S*mner. If a country loses the ability to modify the value of its currency (monetary policy), then it's going to have abrupt, deep recessions. Its enimies will be able to put it into recession, by hoarding it's monetary base (the way France helped cause the Great Depression, accidentally, by hoarding gold). Until someone develops a way to solve the problem of nominal rigidities, we're stuck with fiat currency as the national medium of account, at a minimum.
Extremely sad to read this. Who cares about the nice plan when there was nether a monarchy worth imitating. For sure not in the cruel and suffocating modern Russia or China. The horrible revolutions happened in Russia and France for a reason (never mind that what replaced them was worse). CY favorite explanation of a company governed by a CEO is only good on paper, there are 100s dysfunctional companies for each one that might lend itself as an monarchical example. Everyone knows that working for Jobs was a horror. Monarchs are human too, they don't have a ten point plan on serving people, they always and forever serve themselves.
Such sadly is the state of all human affairs. We are fallen creatures. So thus you would not even try? The founders recognized men weren't angels long ago, and we clearly see the horrible abuses of unchecked authority that exist in any system (especially communism). Our current scenario is a result of our flight from monarchy, and it certainly hasn't turned out *that* much better.
Absolutely! In my ideal monarchal system authority would be contingent on delivering on a set of metrics agreed upon at the population level, with some sort of process to boot the monarch if they weren't delivering. Couple that with a hereditary passage of House but not automatically authority and you *might* have something with more legs than straight up "lolz we go back to the Hapsburgs"
I am not sure, many, including CY, imagine this as a sort of algorithm with predictable outcomes, I see it as am uncontrollable human drive with unpredictable, volatile results.
Even if you believe that modern democracy works, you must accept that all historical democracies failed. It is indisputable that in 1775, there was nether a democracy worth imitating. So you must then accept that it proved possible to improve the shit-tier, empirically disastrous form of government called “democracy” through careful political engineering. Yet, you believe it is impossible to improve this form called “monarchy” through engineering. Why?
Habsburg Austria. It's not a coincidence that Vienna, Prague and Budapest are the most beautiful cities in the world. (Even after the 20th century did a number on them).
Habsburg Austria, definitely had it's moment, during fin de siècle it was on top of the world. But then during the life of Stefan Zweig it was falling apart faster than USA today. So how is this an alternative? It has to last or a moot point.
Big Yarvin fan here. Although I discovered him only two months ago, I've been voraciously consuming everything I can in my spare time (this blog, the old one, the books, the YouTube interviews). I agree with much of it. But there's one weakness in the middle of it that I'd like to hear justified (or rationalized, as the case may be). His argument for the degeneracy of the current regime often regards (violent) crime as worse now than it was. As he says a few times, 50 times worse than it was in Victorian London. But isn't that false? Haven't Pinker and others shown this to be false? Not just false, in fact, but the opposite of the truth? Isn't it rather that we (in the Western countries anyway) are living in the safest period in recoded history? Sure, there are neighborhoods of my city (Pittsburgh) that I would not want to walk through at night, but (just to take the period I know well) in Augustan Rome you couldn't walk *anywhere* at night safely without arms or, ideally, a bodyguard. And Augustus is sometimes Yarvin's ideal. So what gives? Yarvin is usually good with primary sources, but he seems to have slipped here.
I agree that it's a trickier problem then Curtis lets on. For instance, murders-by-gun are down over the last 40 years. Great, right? Actually, we're just 4x better at treating gunshot wounds, and gang shootings are up, so if we had the same technology as four decades ago, murders-by-gun would be way, way up.
Separately, the US incarceration rate is sky high—highest in the world. Isn't that *violence*? State-sanctioned, but still: *we don't have to live like this.*
Worldwide, testosterone levels have plummeted over the last 50 years, most likely due to endocrine disrupters in our food and water supplies. Testosterone levels and crime are linked, so our current low (vs. the late 70s) isn't exactly something to crow about.
The truth is, Curtis' core argument is that much better governance is possible, but only once we align power and accountability. A monarchy does that very well, our current democracy does it very poorly. This is true even if crime hadn't changed at all.
My problem with the Pinker crowd is that their argument is tautological. The form of the argument is: Neoliberal stuff is good. The neoliberal regime has produced many neoliberal results. Therefore Neoliberalism is good.
So, yes, if you are judging the regime by its own yardsticks, then the regime is successful. But, if you take a moment to measure the regime by any other yard stick, you begin to see that it is a complete failure.
Example: infant mortality is way, way down. Chalk one up for the regime right? But actually you know what else is down? Actual infants. Countries in the neoliberal trade regime, including china, have a demographic disaster on their hands, as Elon Musk put it, worse than the black plague. So, like, the pandas are super healthy! Except they're not mating and they're going extinct. Are the panda's really healthy?
Yarvin once quoted a 19th century English liberal bragging about how the crime rate is only one criminal per 2000 people. Another time he cited an account of English prisons being full of people with long sentences for very minor crimes. And yet there many fewer prisoners per capita. Another example he had an old newspaper with a front page story of a guy convicted of check fraud, like it was newsworthy. Or an ad from an insurance company asking people to not leave their keys in the car, like it used to be a normal thing.
Crime statistics aren't reliable because crimes are reported differently in different places. The US homicide rate has gone down, since the 90s, but its 5 times what it was in 1900. But homicide isn't normal crime.
So after all that, we're to be ruled with an iron rod by a Han-Bugman despotate after all (really, Curtis, IQ Fetishism is beneath you). I suppose it would be a marginally better fate than falling under the sway of sub-Saharan afro-Islam and having that be our malevolent monarch (which is what our current regime desires, a soft and lazy realm, a helpless girl waiting to be ruthlessly conquered). We all Rotherham now.
Really it was a solid piece until the IQ fetishism. And in an article where you yourself say of the Han "by whom you may not want to be conquered").
> But, Porphy, that was jokes! That was MM joshing around! He was just kidding!
I know this. But all his jokes are, well, you know.
MM has this assumption that the office molds the person, and that real power creates real responsibility. With this assumption, it's easy to see how he gets to "yeah, let's just put the smartest guy we can find in there, he'll figure it out, and the job will straighten him out quick."
It's just that this assumption seems... obviously false to me? Don't we all agree there've been good kings and bad kings, good presidents and bad ones, perhaps disagreeing about the particulars, but agreeing that there is some kind of rank and order that can he applied here?
People are not exactly fungible, and they get less and less so near the top. I'm a little surprised someone who ran a company doesn't feel this in their bones.
Fun Fact: As MM himself knows better than anyone, it was people like George W Ball who were being, if anything, more "kingly" in MM's terms, reorganizing the cosmos, rearranging the stars and planets during the New Deal era - they were the king(makers) creating the institutions. FDR was more than a front-man, to be sure (like current Presidents). But he was not the architect. He was not Pharaoh. Guys like Ball were closer to that.
I know he does (see my other post in this thread, which is a story-post). He's had that belief for a long time. There is, like many things, an *element* of truth to it. But only an element - otherwise there would be no bad kings with long reigns.
So, like you, it seems...obviously false. I tried to convince him of the flaws in that reasoning ages ago (did you see his reference to Ian McShane in KINGS? You can find one of his old UR posts that reference the show, not in a positive way. Well I had pointed it to him. But see also exactly the reign of Saul that it is based on).
So you can't just pick the best-and-brightest and hope things will work out (see also FDR, who MM acknowledges as having had a transformative reign, and thus respects him on those grounds. While not exactly being an admirer of the New Deal. Plus, rather notoriously FDR was a executive who was a dilettante about everything except getting elected and re-elected; his "courtiers" shaped policy. He just made sure the distributive-politics element worked in his electoral favor. He was not Basil II).
So, as MM pointed out earlier this very year (a young year) intelligence and wisdom are not synonyms. High IQ Fetishism is a big part of what got us to the now.
Since I am not a monarchist, I am not entirely convinced that a monarchy (even an accountable one) will solve the problems that are underneath. But the way I read Curtis Yarvins ideas, solutions are always debatable. What is nevertheless clear is our agreement that there is an underlying and fundamental problem with democracy, which expresses itself in the institutional failure of American authorities, which has large consequences for societies outside of their own borders. When American institutions fail, European institutions will also disintegrate.
Everything that happens in the USA happens given time nearly everywhere else or at least in happens in all countries with a similar model of governance (i.e. democracies).
Colombia, maybe even Iran could be examples of moderately spiritually competent, but physically incompetent regimes. Of course I'm sure if any of us saw apex spiritual competence, we'd weep.
I thought it was pretty good (i.e., well-written, superficially persuasive, and affecting), even though I'm a Yarvin fan. (I'm a fan more of Yarvin's diagnoses than his prescriptions.) I mean, it's hugely misrepresentative of Yarvin's worldview, and ironically recommends something fairly authoritarian (we know that someone is arguing in bad faith or ignorant merely on the basis of their views; therefore, people who espouse those views shouldn't be allowed to espouse them), but it's well-written, and defends himself well from Yarvin's Sailer-grab.
That said, he comes on stronger about how awful he thinks Scott Alexander is, and basically writes that he thinks that what Cade Metz did was noble, because it protected Alexander's patients from him. The syllogism (the conclusion is enthymetic) was:
1. Alexander thinks that neoreactionary views are worth engaging with;
2. Anyone who thinks that neoreactionary views are worth engaging with is a threat to his patients;
Therefore,
3. It's good if Alexander is forced out of psychiatry via public pressure.
And Wilkinson portrays himself as a Scott Alexander fan! What if he *didn't* like him?
Appalled reading Wilkinson, "what a phenomenal publication the New York Times is!" He comes across and duplicitous man with a way with words, a nose for power and a hired pen in defense of the totalitarian diktat, pretty much what CY said.
I hadn't, thanks for the link. What I like most about Wilkinson is that he hasn't had an original thought in his life. But agreed, he writes well enough.
I actually knew Willy a tiny bit when I was in university in Washington DC and he was in his libertarian/objectivist mode at the time (so was I) - never made an impression on me beyond he came across as very aloof and cooler than thou...not the worst crime in your early 20s - its been interesting to check in from time to time on his journey from afar...
wilkinson affirms the lie of universal competence practically wholesale and yet calls our host satanic
otoh CY demands (or expresses a strong preference for) an earthly king - presumably his children have been trained to run faster than a chariot - indicating a possible slouching toward redemption
Curtis is indeed 'killing it' in 2021 - hands down not even a question - however I read Curtis for a) fantastic writing b) systems analysis - a look at the present state of things from a transgressive, informed and altogether different POV than just about anyone out there - how we get to monarchy or what our 10 rules should be only interests me in as much as it shows what we currently lack and what we as a societies and subcultures in the west have a major blindspot on...
#10 is amusing. CY has ret-conned an airy spiritual justification for a preferred economic policy (in this case, protectionism) after it has become clear that it will make us materially poorer, even though it was originally supposed to do the opposite. This is precisely what the socialists did in the 20th century. Am I really paying good money to read basic bitch mercantilism?
CY is a neoREACTIONARY. Did you expect basic bitch neoliberalism? And do you have a better way to nurture the long term well-being of the people? Would you prefer material wealth in a society with an ever growing underclass, wards of the state or beggars, men with no pride, no skill, and no mission? Do you have an alternative proposal which can ensure the political stability of a regime which harbors so many of so little worth? Soma much? Two bottles of wine for the price of one!
My apologies friend. I didn't intend to antagonize you. Gray Mirror chapter 5 would be a good place to start if you want to familiarize yourself with CY's argument as to why this tradeoff exists. Cheers!
Have you not read "Sam Altman is not a blithering idiot"? It is free.
Anyway you got it backwards. It is mercantalists that retcon nonsense economic justifications for protectionism. Yarvin never made any claim that it would increase the GDP. There are other things to care about than the GDP.
Yarvin takes Mises seriously, including his framework's assumptions. Curating labor demand is not a task to maximize production and consumption. One is necessarily trading it off for some other good. Protectionists indeed try to retrofit this to cater to current GDP maximization dogma.
Can we even do ‘spiritual competence’ without a more explicit religion? Sure as Gray Mirror groupies we may like your 10 principals, we may like the ‘truth’ as the ultimate value. But unless Curtis is going to declare himself Moses or the Messiah (which I am not necessarily saying is a bad idea, but I think he has a day job) how are the Amerikaners going to accept these 10 Commandments as the correct ‘theory of the good’? Vermeule is going to come waving his Lady of Guadelupe at us - and maybe he will win? I guess I am saying - don’t we need throne AND altar?
We do absolutely need an altar; something our host as an Atheist will be less keen on admitting. The moar religious among us Mirrorites already I'm sure have their preferred interpretation of their own faith in mind. As for Western Throwback, pre-1900s Christianity (still extant in several conservative denominations to a degree) isn't a bad option. I can hear the replies of "That crap was the foundation of Wokism!" now lol. For my contribution, writing as one who identifies closely with the Westminster tradition, post-1900s (or late 1800s whatever you want to call it, the Modernists or whomever you want to call them) did away with most fundamental convictions of the Christian faith while keeping the belief that a moral body politic is possible and enforceable. Thus their only guide for morality has and continues to be their own ego and fancy, not any sort of Law. The worst wort of Areligion (to throw a UR phrase).
Whatever the popular nostrums are, I doubt I'll ever believe in them. However, it has become clear to me that there will always be a popular faith even if God is not involved. Best that it be eugenic, beautiful, and promote the reproduction, well-being, and happiness of its people. The progressive god fails each of these tests. We need a divine upgrade.
Society will deteriorate until there are enough people who want improvement more than they want to believe bullshit; at that point people in society will look towards those who appear to be flourishing for guidance.
I'm not going to quibble. It's easy to quibble. I'll just say this much: the main goal of the government is the well-being of its people. That's the basic principle of Yarvinism. Very consequentialist, that, but whatevs. The main question is this, then: imagine that a bunch of black people in America aren't doing comparatively well, and they point to a legacy of slavery and discrimination to explain why. And you tell them: no collective resentment. How's that going to work? Aren't they just going to resent you more?
OK, then, allow them to have their collective resentment. Then that pisses off a lot of white people who never did anything wrong to a black person. So *they'll* be collectively resentful.
Unless I'm misstating things, we have a dilemma: two options, both immoral. Why take the first horn? Because there are more whites than nonwhites? Not the worst reason in the world, but is that it?
I don't think one group being collectively resentful automatically leads to the group they're resentful against also becoming resentful. As a white person I would have never given the remotest fuck about any resentment the ethnic groups I don't belong to have against me if it wasn't institutionalized to the degree that it is now.
"imagine that a bunch of black people in America aren't doing comparatively well, and they point to a legacy of slavery and discrimination to explain why. And you tell them: no collective resentment. How's that going to work? Aren't they just going to resent you more?"
First: your argument implies that the grievance is real and that the resentment is a natural consequence of that real grievance. We should imagine that there are at least some reasonable doubts about it. The Kendis, Coates and Hannah-Jones have no real grievances, they use grievances of others to improve their own careers. And a "white supremacy" which rewards all of them with Pulitzer Prices, book contracts and large funding for their own grievance study program is a strange kind of oppressive force.
Second: There are very substantial reasons to argue that the grievances about "not doing comparatively well" are a product of political decisions. But it is sufficient to say, that here is nothing natural about it and the grievances can be addressed by different (and hopefully better) political decisions. It is obvious that the decisions that led to the current state have been made long ago and are hard to overcome, but at least they can be uncovered, researched and analysed.
Third: The grievance and the resentment will not go away, no matter what kind of political environment is in charge. The current state is just one, which encourages and incentivize grievance and resentment for groups and individuals to grow, instead of taking personal responsibility. In every society there will be winners and losers, but not every society has to ignore the losers or exclude them from the social contract.
I would speculate that the answer to this, would that be that our present oligarchy with a democratic facade actually helps create this feedback loop of collective resentment, which in turn helps bolster the system.
Even though the actual basic functioning of government changes very little as the democratic or republican party hold office, what DOES happen is in the realm of symbolic actions that feed the thymos of one side at the expense of the other- in short, it allows red team to flex on blue team for a few years or vice versa for a little dopamine hit
The argument is that a stable and secure monarchical regime under wise leadership would interrupt this feedback loop by adequately providing secure, stable government that provides equal protection under the law to both red and blue tribe, which, over time, would make all the petty 'culture war' stuff and flexing seem rather trivial
Control the mores, and you control the men. In Rwanda it is socially unacceptable to bring up the Hutus and Tutsis. With a good propaganda department, and perhaps some covert operations, it should be relatively straightforward to de-legitimize claims to collective justice.
Eh, I'm not so confident in the efficacy of our government. But I suppose if you take the non-right-wing press to be part of the government, they're pretty efficient in their being on the same page. I wonder how you'd get them to all change on a dime. Just become a monarch and make them?
It depends on whether we are discussing requests for the current power structure or guidelines for a hypothetical future administration.
In the first case of the current regime, it would be enough for them to stop actively stoking collective identity conflict for political gain, but that's definitely not going to happen.
In the hypothetical scenario there are two stages: consolidating influence, and maintaining cultural hegemony.
To consolidate, Stop listening to their policy "suggestions". Stop leaking to them, break up their means of coordination. Amplify ideas which divide them. Vilify ideas which bring them together. Ridicule them (rather make your "unaffiliated" agents ridicule them) when they step falsely. Amplify their hypocrisy, making stereotypes out of them. Destroy their institutions, or hollow them out. Do all this so as not to be noticed and do not provoke them directly.
To maintain: simply ignore them. If they have no real power, their opposition will make you stronger. It provides you legitimacy. They serve to remind the public what it was like when Chaos ruled the land.
"The main question is this, then: imagine that a bunch of black people in America aren't doing comparatively well, and they point to a legacy of slavery and discrimination to explain why. And you tell them: no collective resentment. How's that going to work? Aren't they just going to resent you more?"
yes, of course. if people think the government is mismanaging the country, and an ethnic group says "yes, look at us and how we have been treated" and you say "oh we didn't mean you people" then they probably will see you as part of the problem.
the solution here would be to handle their claim on its merits.
I agree! But now we've departed from one of Yarvin's ten desiderata.
I mean, any discussion of how to handle the claim on its merits is going to go through the meat grinder of public discourse, with all its strategic claims-making, virtue-signaling, vice-signaling, people working themselves into a shoot*, etc., and I'm not sure that people as a whole will be satisfied with the outcome no matter what. In other words, I'm agreeing with Yarvin that adjudicating, rather than just squelching, public resentments is a recipe for disaster, but the cat is out of the bag at this point.
"I agree! But now we've departed from one of Yarvin's ten desiderata."
I'm not seeing how.
" any discussion of how to handle the claim on its merits is going to go through the meat grinder of public discourse, with all its strategic claims-making, virtue-signaling, vice-signaling, people working themselves into a shoot*,"
do you think that there is some path to a sustainable future that is not forced to reckon with these things in any case?
"I'm not sure that people as a whole will be satisfied with the outcome no matter what."
There is no outcome until people on both sides are satisfied.
"I'm agreeing with Yarvin that adjudicating, rather than just squelching, public resentments is a recipe for disaster, but the cat is out of the bag at this point."
Read Yarvin again: "Now, the settlement of every collective grievance is just that: a settlement. It is by no means the case that all collective grievances—essentially a class-action suit, but on a political scale—are invalid. Do the Jews not have a valid collective grievance against the Germans? Not every settlement is zero."
However anyone who thinks that you can settle the issue of historical chattel slavery in the Americas without offering some consideration of real value is living in a dream world. As a consequence, their opinion can be safely ignored.
Yes, exactly. You build a national cult of racial/ethnic harmony. Like Singapore. Racial harmony is a good, because it contains a potentially volatile brew. Hell, you can even have extra punishment for inflaming racial tension, so long as it is applied roughly evenly.
People of color are dramatically more sensitive to race in our ultraprogressive era. With a policy of not feeding into it, there would be less sensitivity.
My Dear Sir: w/ regard to our lower classes being hopeless: Our commons are civilized, too civilized, our elites are Barbarians. >>This is of course in response to your strange snobbery towards the 'lowers', strange when combined with your loathing of the Upper.
Our elites are no upper, their the degenerate end of their lines, and what an end it is...
"America's decadent elite is a plundering barbarian horde, leaving social and material destruction in its wake." ... "Likewise today, barbarians are predatory, destructive, and nomadic: they consume and exploit, but don’t produce. There is no need for a Journal of Barbarian Studies. Just look around: their realm is the entirety of the public culture."
In short they are not an Upper Class, nor we a lower one.
And we don't need them, no one needs them, anywhere.
One should mention by the way that if you have a motivated middle the tops heads can come off, and the 'lower' classes can rise, or at least live in peace. Frankly reading this self loathing yet snobbish tripe from you is becoming wearying. Your appeal to our barbarians effete overlords trembling behind the wire is peak ...something...I'm at a loss for words. Why would you appeal to coward sociopaths who've run out their string?
As for the 10 demands, sure we can have all that....after we get busy with Dr. Guillotine's patented cure all. The very air will be sweeter for the passing of the swine to whom you claim should restore order...and no order is possible while they draw air.
The beast needs to die first. In the US there is no national culture, no binding force. I wouldn't trust anyone who was able to rise to power under the current regime, nor do I think the people of the US have the character or virtue to identify and support the kind of person who could maintain an effective, spiritually healthy government. My point is that I don't see regime change (where the territorial US remains an intact political entity) coming from the top down, or from the bottom up any time soon. Political balkanization followed by a de facto dissolution of the union in some way, might clear the way for accountable power structures and pre requisite levels of social trust to emerge.
The United States is quite a diverse nation when it comes to hereditary composition, but I would take issue with the claim (one which is quite often repeated) that a consistent culture is somehow absent within the country. If I may say so (not intending to single you out for criticism) it is a bit like asking "Why are Americans the only people who speak English without an accent?" We have difficulty feeling our own culture because our minds have been saturated with the elements of such, as opposed to the United States being a miraculous exception to the way in which human societies usually operate. Having devoted some time to studying this particular question in the past, I can easily provide some examples of beliefs and customs which undergird the lives of nearly all Americans, while being hard to come across outside of the United States, excepting those instances where Americans specifically went abroad in order to spread such elements. (1) The United States has a very distinctively designed secondary-school (middle and high school) system, whose foundational tenets are based upon the Pragmatist and Experientialist philosophical schools (as developed by such philosophers as Emerson, Peirce, Holmes, and Dewey). (2) The country also has a distinctive corporate/managerial culture which competes against (among others) the German and Japanese schools of thought regarding workplace-management and -communication. Much of this American system was an outgrowth of the 1970s Self Actualization movement, which was itself a quasi-philosophical expression of the American mindset and lifestyle. (3) There is a very deep admiration of professional spectator-sports which is shared across the breadth of the entire country, and associated with this industry is a massive assortment of customs, social clubs, local heroes, and so forth. As if that weren't enough, there is a second, redundant industry in the form of NCAA. Then there is an entire set of traditions and reverences related to high-school athletics. All across the United States you can find random high-schools possessing multi-million USD sports-facilities which rival the professional facilities of other countries. (4) There are a number of philosophical beliefs originally incubated within the Presbyterian, Methodist, or Baptist religious denominations which have since been infused into the mainstream conscience, such as: the belief that complaining about evil is itself an act of evil; that children are more evil, not less, than adults, and in particular, that they are Narcissists and little monsters; that children need to undergo shock and stimulation in order to develop and mature; that it is exceedingly shameful for men (even boys) to shed tears, even at funerals, but not women; that a man is best understood not by himself, but by his friends. (5) Even the belief in the existence of so-called Psychopaths, Sociopaths, and Narcissists (and the constant referencing of such concepts when discussing social matters) is an Americanism. As little as fifty years ago, the average American did not know the meaning of these words, and even today, most people outside of the Anglosphere (excepting, of course, those who came to America for university) do not know about these concepts. This comment is not meant to be a statement of anti-Americanism (this being neither the time nor place), merely a list of some factual considerations for people who might be interested in further studying the national issues at hand, above all those which our talented author Mr Yarvin has continually striven to resolve.
I have thought a little bit about what you said and I agree with most of its parts. I suppose my modified position would be that we do have a national culture to some extent, just not one that is sufficient to create the high levels of social trust necessary to have a functional government, nevermind a monarchical form of it. When I think about the things that form high levels of social trust, my mind goes towards ethnic/religious/racial homogeneity with a shared historical narrative. The Han Chinese and the French have this, we do not. These are just my feelz though, I hope you're right to be honest.
But Curtis, we are inflating people out of USD denominated poverty by the millions every year! If Weimar Germany was so bad, how come everyone in it was a millionaire? Did you know that 3rd world workers who earned 1 USD per day in the 1960s are earning 5 USD per day today! That is a nominal increase of 5 times! Explain to me how a system that can generate results like THAT is "hiding losses". I can wait while you rewrite your post to correct glaring your error.
It's telling that every single country on earth has a currency that it controls, or that some other government controls. It's not enough to read Mises, you got to read Fisher, Friedman, and yes even S*mner. If a country loses the ability to modify the value of its currency (monetary policy), then it's going to have abrupt, deep recessions. Its enimies will be able to put it into recession, by hoarding it's monetary base (the way France helped cause the Great Depression, accidentally, by hoarding gold). Until someone develops a way to solve the problem of nominal rigidities, we're stuck with fiat currency as the national medium of account, at a minimum.
US
It kills me that it must be said,
So obvious and forgotten instead.
Forgotten connotes an artifact,
Which left to crumble betrays the fact
That a better description might be "chased out",
Your right to yourself: your right to your rout.
Imagine that you have been split into halves,
One forges wonders, Two melts down calves.
Steam soot and blast obscure all in that place.
You see another but squint for the face.
Recognize someone you long ago knew!
Go to yourself, you will find me there too.
Where is this from?
I wrote it the other night :)
Extremely sad to read this. Who cares about the nice plan when there was nether a monarchy worth imitating. For sure not in the cruel and suffocating modern Russia or China. The horrible revolutions happened in Russia and France for a reason (never mind that what replaced them was worse). CY favorite explanation of a company governed by a CEO is only good on paper, there are 100s dysfunctional companies for each one that might lend itself as an monarchical example. Everyone knows that working for Jobs was a horror. Monarchs are human too, they don't have a ten point plan on serving people, they always and forever serve themselves.
Such sadly is the state of all human affairs. We are fallen creatures. So thus you would not even try? The founders recognized men weren't angels long ago, and we clearly see the horrible abuses of unchecked authority that exist in any system (especially communism). Our current scenario is a result of our flight from monarchy, and it certainly hasn't turned out *that* much better.
We entered a new phase, that is rather remote from the founding circumstance and ideas.
Absolutely! In my ideal monarchal system authority would be contingent on delivering on a set of metrics agreed upon at the population level, with some sort of process to boot the monarch if they weren't delivering. Couple that with a hereditary passage of House but not automatically authority and you *might* have something with more legs than straight up "lolz we go back to the Hapsburgs"
I am not sure, many, including CY, imagine this as a sort of algorithm with predictable outcomes, I see it as am uncontrollable human drive with unpredictable, volatile results.
Even if you believe that modern democracy works, you must accept that all historical democracies failed. It is indisputable that in 1775, there was nether a democracy worth imitating. So you must then accept that it proved possible to improve the shit-tier, empirically disastrous form of government called “democracy” through careful political engineering. Yet, you believe it is impossible to improve this form called “monarchy” through engineering. Why?
I believe nothing works and I don't see a particular reason to conclude that monarchy works better. Not looking at history that is.
Learn more history, then.
Teach me please of a multi generational monarchy that could serve as an example?
Habsburg Austria. It's not a coincidence that Vienna, Prague and Budapest are the most beautiful cities in the world. (Even after the 20th century did a number on them).
Habsburg Austria, definitely had it's moment, during fin de siècle it was on top of the world. But then during the life of Stefan Zweig it was falling apart faster than USA today. So how is this an alternative? It has to last or a moot point.
If the state is spiritually healthy than the Monarch serves God, which means serving his fellow brothers as well.
Big Yarvin fan here. Although I discovered him only two months ago, I've been voraciously consuming everything I can in my spare time (this blog, the old one, the books, the YouTube interviews). I agree with much of it. But there's one weakness in the middle of it that I'd like to hear justified (or rationalized, as the case may be). His argument for the degeneracy of the current regime often regards (violent) crime as worse now than it was. As he says a few times, 50 times worse than it was in Victorian London. But isn't that false? Haven't Pinker and others shown this to be false? Not just false, in fact, but the opposite of the truth? Isn't it rather that we (in the Western countries anyway) are living in the safest period in recoded history? Sure, there are neighborhoods of my city (Pittsburgh) that I would not want to walk through at night, but (just to take the period I know well) in Augustan Rome you couldn't walk *anywhere* at night safely without arms or, ideally, a bodyguard. And Augustus is sometimes Yarvin's ideal. So what gives? Yarvin is usually good with primary sources, but he seems to have slipped here.
> But isn't that false?
I agree that it's a trickier problem then Curtis lets on. For instance, murders-by-gun are down over the last 40 years. Great, right? Actually, we're just 4x better at treating gunshot wounds, and gang shootings are up, so if we had the same technology as four decades ago, murders-by-gun would be way, way up.
Separately, the US incarceration rate is sky high—highest in the world. Isn't that *violence*? State-sanctioned, but still: *we don't have to live like this.*
Worldwide, testosterone levels have plummeted over the last 50 years, most likely due to endocrine disrupters in our food and water supplies. Testosterone levels and crime are linked, so our current low (vs. the late 70s) isn't exactly something to crow about.
The truth is, Curtis' core argument is that much better governance is possible, but only once we align power and accountability. A monarchy does that very well, our current democracy does it very poorly. This is true even if crime hadn't changed at all.
My problem with the Pinker crowd is that their argument is tautological. The form of the argument is: Neoliberal stuff is good. The neoliberal regime has produced many neoliberal results. Therefore Neoliberalism is good.
So, yes, if you are judging the regime by its own yardsticks, then the regime is successful. But, if you take a moment to measure the regime by any other yard stick, you begin to see that it is a complete failure.
Example: infant mortality is way, way down. Chalk one up for the regime right? But actually you know what else is down? Actual infants. Countries in the neoliberal trade regime, including china, have a demographic disaster on their hands, as Elon Musk put it, worse than the black plague. So, like, the pandas are super healthy! Except they're not mating and they're going extinct. Are the panda's really healthy?
Yarvin once quoted a 19th century English liberal bragging about how the crime rate is only one criminal per 2000 people. Another time he cited an account of English prisons being full of people with long sentences for very minor crimes. And yet there many fewer prisoners per capita. Another example he had an old newspaper with a front page story of a guy convicted of check fraud, like it was newsworthy. Or an ad from an insurance company asking people to not leave their keys in the car, like it used to be a normal thing.
Crime statistics aren't reliable because crimes are reported differently in different places. The US homicide rate has gone down, since the 90s, but its 5 times what it was in 1900. But homicide isn't normal crime.
I'm in.
So after all that, we're to be ruled with an iron rod by a Han-Bugman despotate after all (really, Curtis, IQ Fetishism is beneath you). I suppose it would be a marginally better fate than falling under the sway of sub-Saharan afro-Islam and having that be our malevolent monarch (which is what our current regime desires, a soft and lazy realm, a helpless girl waiting to be ruthlessly conquered). We all Rotherham now.
Really it was a solid piece until the IQ fetishism. And in an article where you yourself say of the Han "by whom you may not want to be conquered").
> But, Porphy, that was jokes! That was MM joshing around! He was just kidding!
I know this. But all his jokes are, well, you know.
It's not just the IQ fetishism.
MM has this assumption that the office molds the person, and that real power creates real responsibility. With this assumption, it's easy to see how he gets to "yeah, let's just put the smartest guy we can find in there, he'll figure it out, and the job will straighten him out quick."
It's just that this assumption seems... obviously false to me? Don't we all agree there've been good kings and bad kings, good presidents and bad ones, perhaps disagreeing about the particulars, but agreeing that there is some kind of rank and order that can he applied here?
People are not exactly fungible, and they get less and less so near the top. I'm a little surprised someone who ran a company doesn't feel this in their bones.
Fun Fact: As MM himself knows better than anyone, it was people like George W Ball who were being, if anything, more "kingly" in MM's terms, reorganizing the cosmos, rearranging the stars and planets during the New Deal era - they were the king(makers) creating the institutions. FDR was more than a front-man, to be sure (like current Presidents). But he was not the architect. He was not Pharaoh. Guys like Ball were closer to that.
I know he does (see my other post in this thread, which is a story-post). He's had that belief for a long time. There is, like many things, an *element* of truth to it. But only an element - otherwise there would be no bad kings with long reigns.
So, like you, it seems...obviously false. I tried to convince him of the flaws in that reasoning ages ago (did you see his reference to Ian McShane in KINGS? You can find one of his old UR posts that reference the show, not in a positive way. Well I had pointed it to him. But see also exactly the reign of Saul that it is based on).
So you can't just pick the best-and-brightest and hope things will work out (see also FDR, who MM acknowledges as having had a transformative reign, and thus respects him on those grounds. While not exactly being an admirer of the New Deal. Plus, rather notoriously FDR was a executive who was a dilettante about everything except getting elected and re-elected; his "courtiers" shaped policy. He just made sure the distributive-politics element worked in his electoral favor. He was not Basil II).
So, as MM pointed out earlier this very year (a young year) intelligence and wisdom are not synonyms. High IQ Fetishism is a big part of what got us to the now.
Anyhow we both agree on this point.
Since I am not a monarchist, I am not entirely convinced that a monarchy (even an accountable one) will solve the problems that are underneath. But the way I read Curtis Yarvins ideas, solutions are always debatable. What is nevertheless clear is our agreement that there is an underlying and fundamental problem with democracy, which expresses itself in the institutional failure of American authorities, which has large consequences for societies outside of their own borders. When American institutions fail, European institutions will also disintegrate.
Everything that happens in the USA happens given time nearly everywhere else or at least in happens in all countries with a similar model of governance (i.e. democracies).
Colombia, maybe even Iran could be examples of moderately spiritually competent, but physically incompetent regimes. Of course I'm sure if any of us saw apex spiritual competence, we'd weep.
Iran is not spiritually competent. Islam never had an enlightenment. Thus it's Morales reside in a primitive medieval era.
The crowdspeak levels here are off the charts.
lawl
Yes, we should stop doing that. Wait ...
This is a great post! Is it me, or is Curtis just killing it in 2021?
I wrote my thoughts on it here: https://hyperculture.substack.com/p/a-reply-to-curtis-yarvins-we-dont
have you seen Wilkinson's latest response to Yarvin?
https://modelcitizen.substack.com/p/climbing-the-bell-curve-to-the-cathedral
I thought it was pretty good (i.e., well-written, superficially persuasive, and affecting), even though I'm a Yarvin fan. (I'm a fan more of Yarvin's diagnoses than his prescriptions.) I mean, it's hugely misrepresentative of Yarvin's worldview, and ironically recommends something fairly authoritarian (we know that someone is arguing in bad faith or ignorant merely on the basis of their views; therefore, people who espouse those views shouldn't be allowed to espouse them), but it's well-written, and defends himself well from Yarvin's Sailer-grab.
That said, he comes on stronger about how awful he thinks Scott Alexander is, and basically writes that he thinks that what Cade Metz did was noble, because it protected Alexander's patients from him. The syllogism (the conclusion is enthymetic) was:
1. Alexander thinks that neoreactionary views are worth engaging with;
2. Anyone who thinks that neoreactionary views are worth engaging with is a threat to his patients;
Therefore,
3. It's good if Alexander is forced out of psychiatry via public pressure.
And Wilkinson portrays himself as a Scott Alexander fan! What if he *didn't* like him?
Appalled reading Wilkinson, "what a phenomenal publication the New York Times is!" He comes across and duplicitous man with a way with words, a nose for power and a hired pen in defense of the totalitarian diktat, pretty much what CY said.
wilkinson reduced himself to an unserious person in the first paragraph. read the rest to to verify that there wasn't some initial stylistic defect
I hadn't, thanks for the link. What I like most about Wilkinson is that he hasn't had an original thought in his life. But agreed, he writes well enough.
I actually knew Willy a tiny bit when I was in university in Washington DC and he was in his libertarian/objectivist mode at the time (so was I) - never made an impression on me beyond he came across as very aloof and cooler than thou...not the worst crime in your early 20s - its been interesting to check in from time to time on his journey from afar...
now i gone and read some more wilkinson
wilkinson affirms the lie of universal competence practically wholesale and yet calls our host satanic
otoh CY demands (or expresses a strong preference for) an earthly king - presumably his children have been trained to run faster than a chariot - indicating a possible slouching toward redemption
[backgroud lead: Nergal]
Curtis is indeed 'killing it' in 2021 - hands down not even a question - however I read Curtis for a) fantastic writing b) systems analysis - a look at the present state of things from a transgressive, informed and altogether different POV than just about anyone out there - how we get to monarchy or what our 10 rules should be only interests me in as much as it shows what we currently lack and what we as a societies and subcultures in the west have a major blindspot on...
#10 is amusing. CY has ret-conned an airy spiritual justification for a preferred economic policy (in this case, protectionism) after it has become clear that it will make us materially poorer, even though it was originally supposed to do the opposite. This is precisely what the socialists did in the 20th century. Am I really paying good money to read basic bitch mercantilism?
CY is a neoREACTIONARY. Did you expect basic bitch neoliberalism? And do you have a better way to nurture the long term well-being of the people? Would you prefer material wealth in a society with an ever growing underclass, wards of the state or beggars, men with no pride, no skill, and no mission? Do you have an alternative proposal which can ensure the political stability of a regime which harbors so many of so little worth? Soma much? Two bottles of wine for the price of one!
Two for one wine??? Salud, populi! Suprema lux!
This is a false choice, and you don't even seem to be aware of the need to explain why you think this trade-off exists.
My apologies friend. I didn't intend to antagonize you. Gray Mirror chapter 5 would be a good place to start if you want to familiarize yourself with CY's argument as to why this tradeoff exists. Cheers!
Have you not read "Sam Altman is not a blithering idiot"? It is free.
Anyway you got it backwards. It is mercantalists that retcon nonsense economic justifications for protectionism. Yarvin never made any claim that it would increase the GDP. There are other things to care about than the GDP.
THIS.
Yarvin takes Mises seriously, including his framework's assumptions. Curating labor demand is not a task to maximize production and consumption. One is necessarily trading it off for some other good. Protectionists indeed try to retrofit this to cater to current GDP maximization dogma.
Can we even do ‘spiritual competence’ without a more explicit religion? Sure as Gray Mirror groupies we may like your 10 principals, we may like the ‘truth’ as the ultimate value. But unless Curtis is going to declare himself Moses or the Messiah (which I am not necessarily saying is a bad idea, but I think he has a day job) how are the Amerikaners going to accept these 10 Commandments as the correct ‘theory of the good’? Vermeule is going to come waving his Lady of Guadelupe at us - and maybe he will win? I guess I am saying - don’t we need throne AND altar?
We do absolutely need an altar; something our host as an Atheist will be less keen on admitting. The moar religious among us Mirrorites already I'm sure have their preferred interpretation of their own faith in mind. As for Western Throwback, pre-1900s Christianity (still extant in several conservative denominations to a degree) isn't a bad option. I can hear the replies of "That crap was the foundation of Wokism!" now lol. For my contribution, writing as one who identifies closely with the Westminster tradition, post-1900s (or late 1800s whatever you want to call it, the Modernists or whomever you want to call them) did away with most fundamental convictions of the Christian faith while keeping the belief that a moral body politic is possible and enforceable. Thus their only guide for morality has and continues to be their own ego and fancy, not any sort of Law. The worst wort of Areligion (to throw a UR phrase).
Whatever the popular nostrums are, I doubt I'll ever believe in them. However, it has become clear to me that there will always be a popular faith even if God is not involved. Best that it be eugenic, beautiful, and promote the reproduction, well-being, and happiness of its people. The progressive god fails each of these tests. We need a divine upgrade.
Society will deteriorate until there are enough people who want improvement more than they want to believe bullshit; at that point people in society will look towards those who appear to be flourishing for guidance.
if it cannot be understood the dispossessing tribe have no need of the blender of heaven.
more so since we're already gray and all...
I'm not going to quibble. It's easy to quibble. I'll just say this much: the main goal of the government is the well-being of its people. That's the basic principle of Yarvinism. Very consequentialist, that, but whatevs. The main question is this, then: imagine that a bunch of black people in America aren't doing comparatively well, and they point to a legacy of slavery and discrimination to explain why. And you tell them: no collective resentment. How's that going to work? Aren't they just going to resent you more?
OK, then, allow them to have their collective resentment. Then that pisses off a lot of white people who never did anything wrong to a black person. So *they'll* be collectively resentful.
Unless I'm misstating things, we have a dilemma: two options, both immoral. Why take the first horn? Because there are more whites than nonwhites? Not the worst reason in the world, but is that it?
I don't think one group being collectively resentful automatically leads to the group they're resentful against also becoming resentful. As a white person I would have never given the remotest fuck about any resentment the ethnic groups I don't belong to have against me if it wasn't institutionalized to the degree that it is now.
"imagine that a bunch of black people in America aren't doing comparatively well, and they point to a legacy of slavery and discrimination to explain why. And you tell them: no collective resentment. How's that going to work? Aren't they just going to resent you more?"
First: your argument implies that the grievance is real and that the resentment is a natural consequence of that real grievance. We should imagine that there are at least some reasonable doubts about it. The Kendis, Coates and Hannah-Jones have no real grievances, they use grievances of others to improve their own careers. And a "white supremacy" which rewards all of them with Pulitzer Prices, book contracts and large funding for their own grievance study program is a strange kind of oppressive force.
Second: There are very substantial reasons to argue that the grievances about "not doing comparatively well" are a product of political decisions. But it is sufficient to say, that here is nothing natural about it and the grievances can be addressed by different (and hopefully better) political decisions. It is obvious that the decisions that led to the current state have been made long ago and are hard to overcome, but at least they can be uncovered, researched and analysed.
Third: The grievance and the resentment will not go away, no matter what kind of political environment is in charge. The current state is just one, which encourages and incentivize grievance and resentment for groups and individuals to grow, instead of taking personal responsibility. In every society there will be winners and losers, but not every society has to ignore the losers or exclude them from the social contract.
I would speculate that the answer to this, would that be that our present oligarchy with a democratic facade actually helps create this feedback loop of collective resentment, which in turn helps bolster the system.
Even though the actual basic functioning of government changes very little as the democratic or republican party hold office, what DOES happen is in the realm of symbolic actions that feed the thymos of one side at the expense of the other- in short, it allows red team to flex on blue team for a few years or vice versa for a little dopamine hit
The argument is that a stable and secure monarchical regime under wise leadership would interrupt this feedback loop by adequately providing secure, stable government that provides equal protection under the law to both red and blue tribe, which, over time, would make all the petty 'culture war' stuff and flexing seem rather trivial
Control the mores, and you control the men. In Rwanda it is socially unacceptable to bring up the Hutus and Tutsis. With a good propaganda department, and perhaps some covert operations, it should be relatively straightforward to de-legitimize claims to collective justice.
Eh, I'm not so confident in the efficacy of our government. But I suppose if you take the non-right-wing press to be part of the government, they're pretty efficient in their being on the same page. I wonder how you'd get them to all change on a dime. Just become a monarch and make them?
You need a "West Germany" for East Germany to merge into it.
And there is no West Germany.
It depends on whether we are discussing requests for the current power structure or guidelines for a hypothetical future administration.
In the first case of the current regime, it would be enough for them to stop actively stoking collective identity conflict for political gain, but that's definitely not going to happen.
In the hypothetical scenario there are two stages: consolidating influence, and maintaining cultural hegemony.
To consolidate, Stop listening to their policy "suggestions". Stop leaking to them, break up their means of coordination. Amplify ideas which divide them. Vilify ideas which bring them together. Ridicule them (rather make your "unaffiliated" agents ridicule them) when they step falsely. Amplify their hypocrisy, making stereotypes out of them. Destroy their institutions, or hollow them out. Do all this so as not to be noticed and do not provoke them directly.
To maintain: simply ignore them. If they have no real power, their opposition will make you stronger. It provides you legitimacy. They serve to remind the public what it was like when Chaos ruled the land.
I wouldn't be so anxious to bring up Rwanda if I were you, seeing as how they had a hideous genocide not even thirty years ago.
Ah the Gospel of Jean Baptiste resurfaces from hell
"The main question is this, then: imagine that a bunch of black people in America aren't doing comparatively well, and they point to a legacy of slavery and discrimination to explain why. And you tell them: no collective resentment. How's that going to work? Aren't they just going to resent you more?"
yes, of course. if people think the government is mismanaging the country, and an ethnic group says "yes, look at us and how we have been treated" and you say "oh we didn't mean you people" then they probably will see you as part of the problem.
the solution here would be to handle their claim on its merits.
I agree! But now we've departed from one of Yarvin's ten desiderata.
I mean, any discussion of how to handle the claim on its merits is going to go through the meat grinder of public discourse, with all its strategic claims-making, virtue-signaling, vice-signaling, people working themselves into a shoot*, etc., and I'm not sure that people as a whole will be satisfied with the outcome no matter what. In other words, I'm agreeing with Yarvin that adjudicating, rather than just squelching, public resentments is a recipe for disaster, but the cat is out of the bag at this point.
*--https://religion.ua.edu/blog/2019/09/24/working-yourself-into-a-shoot-when-is-a-performance-a-performance/
"I agree! But now we've departed from one of Yarvin's ten desiderata."
I'm not seeing how.
" any discussion of how to handle the claim on its merits is going to go through the meat grinder of public discourse, with all its strategic claims-making, virtue-signaling, vice-signaling, people working themselves into a shoot*,"
do you think that there is some path to a sustainable future that is not forced to reckon with these things in any case?
"I'm not sure that people as a whole will be satisfied with the outcome no matter what."
There is no outcome until people on both sides are satisfied.
"I'm agreeing with Yarvin that adjudicating, rather than just squelching, public resentments is a recipe for disaster, but the cat is out of the bag at this point."
Read Yarvin again: "Now, the settlement of every collective grievance is just that: a settlement. It is by no means the case that all collective grievances—essentially a class-action suit, but on a political scale—are invalid. Do the Jews not have a valid collective grievance against the Germans? Not every settlement is zero."
> Not every settlement is zero.
and not every settlement is a check:
http://www.scragged.com/articles/reparations-for-slavery-two-beers-a-conversation-and-thats-it
However anyone who thinks that you can settle the issue of historical chattel slavery in the Americas without offering some consideration of real value is living in a dream world. As a consequence, their opinion can be safely ignored.
> There is no outcome until people on both sides are satisfied.
[...]
> As a consequence, their opinion can be safely ignored.
I'm starting to think West Cost Photographer has a point.
Yes, exactly. You build a national cult of racial/ethnic harmony. Like Singapore. Racial harmony is a good, because it contains a potentially volatile brew. Hell, you can even have extra punishment for inflaming racial tension, so long as it is applied roughly evenly.
People of color are dramatically more sensitive to race in our ultraprogressive era. With a policy of not feeding into it, there would be less sensitivity.
My Dear Sir: w/ regard to our lower classes being hopeless: Our commons are civilized, too civilized, our elites are Barbarians. >>This is of course in response to your strange snobbery towards the 'lowers', strange when combined with your loathing of the Upper.
Our elites are no upper, their the degenerate end of their lines, and what an end it is...
Here our our elites: Cowardly yet Barbarian.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-privileged-vs-the-people/
"America's decadent elite is a plundering barbarian horde, leaving social and material destruction in its wake." ... "Likewise today, barbarians are predatory, destructive, and nomadic: they consume and exploit, but don’t produce. There is no need for a Journal of Barbarian Studies. Just look around: their realm is the entirety of the public culture."
In short they are not an Upper Class, nor we a lower one.
And we don't need them, no one needs them, anywhere.
One should mention by the way that if you have a motivated middle the tops heads can come off, and the 'lower' classes can rise, or at least live in peace. Frankly reading this self loathing yet snobbish tripe from you is becoming wearying. Your appeal to our barbarians effete overlords trembling behind the wire is peak ...something...I'm at a loss for words. Why would you appeal to coward sociopaths who've run out their string?
As for the 10 demands, sure we can have all that....after we get busy with Dr. Guillotine's patented cure all. The very air will be sweeter for the passing of the swine to whom you claim should restore order...and no order is possible while they draw air.
Do you not understand what happened to France?