Time For America To Grow Up

Since the founding of America, it’s always been a dumping ground for the rest of the world’s problems and a laboratory where those who come out on top can work their wills without any traditions or custom to hold them back.  Instead of a City on a Hill, it’s been more like that Randian city on the bottom of the sea from Bioshock.

From the beginning, it was a money mill where Whites and Indians were used as slaves until they were replaced by imported Africans.  Since the 1600s, it’s been about importing ever more unskilled labor to undermine the power of normal people who get just comfortable enough to decide they don’t want to be exploited to death.

Over 150 years later Benjamin Franklin was scratching his head wondering why average people defected to the Indians whenever they got the chance and only came back kicking and screaming.  What we call America has always been a game of hucksters and exploiters.
Most of the Founding Fathers were rich smugglers, slave-traders, and slave-owners who were de-facto New World aristocrats.  The American Revolution did not lead to chaos because it was the revolt of one elite against another elite.  There is a lot to be said for that; I favor an enlightened elite.  But their narrow view led to them getting deposed within a couple generations in a pointless and bloody civil war.

The American scheme proved to be sustainable for nearly 400 years because there was an entire continent to expand into.  Now there’s not.  Every easy corner has been settled and then populated to saturation.  If you want to found a colony now, you’ll be homesteader in Montana or Alaska.

Now, the American people have to grow up.  They have nowhere else to shove their problems.  In fact, we are so weak and divided that surrounding states that could never challenge us militarily easily shove their surplus populations through our porous “borders.”  They may be less wealthy and powerful, but they win in the game of genetic mercantilism.

All the rest of the world lives adjacent to groups of comparable power and few have two gigantic oceans to protect them.  Nor did they have whole continents to colonize.  Every other society on earth has had to reach a state of equilibrium within Malthusian limits and develop culture and traditions to limit disaster to manageable levels.  Those that could not were subsumed by more competent groups.

Now America is in the same situation as everyone else and we have to establish a sustainable civilization for the first time and in a very short time.

It is not cause for despair though.  Let us look at Africans in America who always vote 90% for the same party and move in lockstep whenever it matters most.  They are pound-for-pound the most powerful electorate in American politics simply because they can actually work together sometimes in a land where everyone else is out slit the other guy’s throat as soon as he falls asleep.

It has often been pointed out that Americans are not like other Europeans.  We are mutts of a 100,000 different admixtures, descendants of the misfits who couldn’t make it in Europe.  So it has been argued relentlessly we are a cursed people with no name, no nation, no inheritance, no future.

But what about Blacks?  They came from hundreds of different tribes taken from a couple thousand miles of coastline and from the interior of their native continent.  They have a decent level of admixture with European colonists.  None of that has been a barrier to their greater commonality when subjected to outside pressures.

We have already seen that a roughly-related race undergoes a process of ethnogenesis in a new homeland, especially when it becomes a minority beset from every side.
Many dissidents suppose the descendants of Europeans in America becoming a minority would be an apocalyptic end.  No, it would be the beginning of a new ethny who emphatically and viscerally know who they are.  An America that’s 60% European-descended remains in free-market slumber, working their lives away to out-compete the other guy by a few thousand bucks.
An America that’s 30% European is a fanatical tribe that engages in aggressive conquest against its blood enemies.

As pressure makes loose river sediment into hard rock, it can make a population of mutts into a new pure breed that back each other up and screw over outlanders whenever they can.  Americans will become their own European ethnic group alongside Germans or British.  There will be no “nation of immigrants” pablum.  Everyone will know who Americans are.  But first, it is time for America to grow up.

Multi Neuro-Tribal Society

The futuristic elite living within the beltway of Washington and within sight of Starfleet Academy in San Francisco see themselves as the leadership of an Empire of Globalism endowed with Divine Right.

As they wear pristine white jumpsuit uniforms in oblong post-modernistic white penthouses with amorphous furniture that practically glows, they ponder the state of the world in front of pale blue holographic screens they manipulate with deft motions of their gracile hands.

For some reason, Iran furrows their brows to no end while their “own” rural provinces in Pennsylvania and Ohio escape their notice altogether.  Or at least, if these provinces force themselves into their attention, it irritates them to the core of their perfect beings.
*Error! Error!* Chimes the holographic display.  *There is an anomaly from the world of Covington IV in the Cincinnatus system.  The Harmony has been breached by a group of pilgrims sent to the Imperial Homeworld.  Class V discord detected! Warning! Error! Error!*

An agitated hand makes swatting motions now at the display to no avail.  The annoying red messages keep popping up and alarms blare…

In real life, no one truly believes in their gut any more that there is a single nation in the sense of a 19th and 20th century.  There’s a few places within the Pale where most institutions and production are centralized and then there is everywhere else, a flyover land full of barbarians that trade their raw commodities for the crafts of the cities.
Thus the geopolitics of Iran, Syria, or Russia matter far more to important people than the agitations of backwards people in nearby hinterlands.

If we could ever doubt it, let us look at wildly inconsistent immigration policy.  Beltway and Starfleet Academy cherry pick the best talent from the best institutions all over the world, making entry into their midst an exclusive privilege.  Everywhere else. outside of these walled-in green zones, anyone can show up from anywhere in the world and compete with the locals for their daily bread.
Not only are these policies complete opposites, the failure of elites to protect a larger territory belies the idea of citizenship within a nation-state—the idea that people are tied to a piece of land by birth and in return, the rulers give land-members certain claims and privileges over outsiders.
One way or another, the nation-state is over.  Without the protection of the state people both high and low turn to tribalism.  Yet with our new technologies, tribalism does not work the same as before.

Modern tribalism does not align neatly with any nation-state or piece of land.  It aligns with the interests of its members, wherever they may be.  The territory is wherever its people and its interests exist.  The territory of the state is concretely defined by borders drawn across pieces of land.  The territory of neuro-tribes is defined more abstractly, land is controlled only where it furthers their goals and is not too much of a strategic liability.

As the last of the fantastic economic elbow room freed up by the World Wars is taken up and we return to the Malthusian status quo, we are all forced to find groups that have our backs if we have any hope of thriving in this world.  History is not only not over.  History is just back to normal.  Now, with access to everyone online, we find those most like ourselves.

As people find their groups, the groups interact in a greater ecosystem, a multi-neural-tribal society.  These groups, like modern groups will not at all be equal.
We already have a caste system in all but name, but neuro-tribalism will develop and formalize it to a science.  The most effective tribe rises to the top and rules.  The people in this tribe are high intelligence, high agency, high creativity but recognize that most people need guidance and rules to function at all.

So while pursuing their own ways suitable to their kind, the golden-souled master morality rulers back a strict state religion and rigorous code of law that proscribes the lives of those who need it most.
The key problem of secular egalitarianism is it tries to treat everyone the same.  Worse, it tries hold everyone to the standard of the aristocracy of cognition and character.  Every one of us supposedly has the potential to be an intellectually-curious entrepeneur best-selling novelist astronaut.  Looking back, this will be seen as one of the most tragic and disastrous ideas of all time.

The freedoms that high agency people thrive on destroy those who need structure.  The rigid routines and strict punishments that make most normal people feel safe and secure are an unbearable burden for natural cognitive aristocrats who chafe until either they sabotage the social order or are killed off.
Secularism makes the society like a single aquarium with both salt and freshwater fish.
An aristocrat of the soul thrives on freedoms and spiritual challenges.
An ordinary guy turns to TV, drug abuse, and despair if he’s not given something to do at all times.
The obvious solution is to have them in separate societies with the aristocrat managing things, the ordinary guy following their lead.

The aristocrats, of course have to be a responsible elite that creates a social order that allows ordinary people to have families, friends, and healthy amounts of leisure.  When they fail at this, they lose the Mandate of Heaven and with it the ability to exercise their sacred freedoms.  With aristocratic freedom comes the responsibility to rule.  This is the post-secular social contract.

Interview With Rob Stark on Culture and Aesthetics

Our latest podcast:

Rob Stark, Matt Pegas, and I had an in-depth discussion on the importance of aesthetics and culture in determining the trajectory of societies and civilizations.
This is one of the most important subjects to discuss because these are qualities often ignored in favor of charts of markets and economic output.

At one point I reflect how the aesthetics of a society are a dialogue between ruler and ruled, between society and the individual.  Whatever official propaganda might be, some part of us always knows the real score from our surroundings.  If we are told society is equal and yet we see palatial mansions looking down on slums from the hilltops, we know the truth.
If we are told everything is progress and our ancestors lived in darkness, we have only to compare a painting from centuries ago to a nonsensical drip painting.  Written in those drips is the abolition of purpose and meaning, plain for anyone to see.

We also see a ruling class that broadcasts their unwillingness to take up their natural responsibilities by their avoidance of appropriate grandeur.  A nobleman who wears hoodies and skinny jeans like a petulant teenager past age 40 not only fails to assume his rightful role; he purposely counter-signals and deprives his people of leadership.

We especially focus on the interaction of aesthetics and social capital.  We note that modern capitalism has produced impressive architecture and can reproduce charming villages whenever demand is sufficient.
What it has not been able to do is produce a society-wide shared cultural vision.  On one hand there are suburbs and strip malls cranked out for maximum short-term efficiency creating miles of soulless sprawl accessible only by car.  On another extreme are a few gorgeous hotels, villages, and pastel-painted row-house neighborhoods commissioned by the wealthy.

One thing that sets apart our society even from many ancient counterparts is that access to even the simplest sorts of beauty has become a privilege of wealth.
It is a clear signal that most of us are not really a meaningful part of this society.  It is a metaphor for how all real wealth and power is centralized in a few parts of a few cities.  It is also a metaphor for all the young women who flock to the cities for comfortable office jobs, leaving the hinterlands bereft of mate prospects for young men.

If you’re not in on the game, in one of the few places where it’s actually played, you may as well be dead.  A message that’s whispered in the ear of every human being in our cultural zone whether they consciously hear it or not.

We examine what goes right and wrong with modern forms of art.  Why are grand buildings still possible in commercial real-estate while other art forms, even Hollywood movies, are all but dead?
Looking at great art of the past, many works had limited patronage in common.  The artist could work within the parameters set by one or a few men.
Mass market demand for art is far more tyrannical by comparison and selects for the lowest common denominator.
Thus, Hollywood movies have declined precipitously in quality since China and the rest of the world became major markets.  What’s for everyone is for no one.
Meanwhile, a fabulous casino or resort is still the project of just a few who are capable of realizing a single united vision.
The flaws of cultural democracy become readily apparent from this basic examination and the rightful place of responsible elitism becomes clear.

If that catches your interest, please join us.

Also, Rob and I have another talk coming up about neuro-tribalism and its ramifications.

Neuro-Tribalism

The internet allows types of people to find one another and gather wherever they’re from. Always before, people have assorted by families and clans they are born into, by ethnic groups and race.  These groups have always been bound by certain limits of geography.

The information age has revealed there are very finite limits to traditional social organization.  Families always have black sheep who don’t fit in.  Races and ethnic groups are most meaningful in contrast with alien peoples.  The average person of an ethnic group competes at least as much as they cooperate with their own people.

Worse, families, clans, and ethnic groups are complete ecosystems with predators, prey, and parasites.  Even siblings ruthlessly compete for resources and the runt of the litter gets thrown out in the cold.  Modernity could not have been so divisive so quickly if a multitude of people did not wish to escape from the equilibria they were born into the instant they had the hope of a better option.  This is why restoration of an older order is hopeless absent some kind of cataclysmic collapse that takes billions of lives with it.

The answer to modernity is neuro-tribalism.  The black sheep and the runts of every litter of similar breeds find one another and form associations.  People come in a range of neurotypes and certain people are simply on the same wavelength.  They think in a certain rhythm, see the world in a certain way.  It’s almost like an extended mind that for many even an extended family has never offered in this atomized society.

Even on perfectly anonymous internet forums, one cannot fake their personality for long.  Any woman who goes into the manosphere lasts maybe a few posts before everyone knows she’s a woman, even though they’ve never seen her.  Patterns of writing and thought betray sex, race, and class as readily as a picture of one’s face.

An aethereum of written words alone can lead to face-to-face meetings and these meetings further distill new identities of compatible types of people.

While the internet is new, game-breaking revolutions in communication are not.  The printing press and mass literacy doomed the old order of hereditary aristocracy and the entrenched clergy.  The telegraph, railroad, radio, telephone, and finally the television made larger nation-states and larger wars possible and doomed the last trappings of the old world.  The internet makes our present aristocracy obsolete, a reality that is in the process of making itself felt.  Banning and censorship were tried during previous information revolutions with much more vigor than now, but it never quite worked.  There were always at least a few elites willing to defect for the chance to screw all the other elites.
Hence, we had noblemen who were willing to shield Martin Luther (a result of a critical mass being able to read the bible for themselves) to further their own geopolitical interests.

The secular state religion is much weaker than Christianity ever was and will shed followers at the slightest sign of weakness.  It seems indomitable now but is in danger of falling apart forever in a few short years after just a few decades of predominance.  Those who revile Nazis as the devil in their religion will no more have a thousand year rule than the Nazis did.

My Response to Ginsburg’s Fall

The High Priestess was slumped over in a high tower of the palace after she had fallen the day before and broken three of her ribs. Soon the word of it was all about the City.
For decades she had been an unquestioned bastion of the Revolution of Light and Togetherness clad in shining robes as she expelled the intolerant and the enemies of Humanity.
But now, an Evil Emperor had usurped the throne and with every day tried to summon more demons to aid him.
The High Priestess’ very life force kept away the demons of the rift and no matter how stooped her frame she lived on to protect her people against the forces of sin and destruction.

As the sun sank beneath the horizon tonight, a sense of trepidation settled over the City. In the splendid cathedral, the faithful clad all in white assembled in tight rows murmuring their prayers. Priests strode down the aisles swinging censers of incense, perfuming the entire sanctuary wrought in ponderous marble domes with purifying resinous fronds of smoke.

One woman with a long, severe face, tight white bonnet and resplendent robe came forward, spread her arms and closed her eyes. Her lips were stretched tight in anticipation of holy delivery. A priest took a heavy steel mallet and with a single sharp blow struck her in the ribs. She crumpled to the ground, squealing in pain as much as fractured bones next to her lungs would allow her. Her friends and family stepped forth to carry her away.

As the night wore on, the rituals grew more solemn. Finally a woman came forth saying she had volunteered her ribs for the High Priestess. The crowd hushed altogether and only the sputtering of braziers could be heard as she stepped forward, even purer than the rest with a perfect rectangle of fabric cut away along her torso.

She lay back on the altar and somehow stayed still as a priest began to saw through her flesh. Her lungs were exposed and everyone could see them pumping like a bellows. She was abruptly carried away from the blood-spattered altar before the congregation could fully grasp the horror of it.
Her rib bones were burned in a pyre of incadescent heat that burned pure white in offering to the Priestess.

Finally, a woman volunteered every part of her body for the preservation of the High Priestess, but as the knife was about to descend, she screamed, wailed, and struggled away from danger.

Now everyone rose in a clamor, shouting at the unfaithful woman who had promised everything and delivered nothing. She tried to argue back, shout, and insult, kicking out indignantly with her white high heels as they tried to grab her.

They had only to make it through the long night to defeat the Evil Emperor and establish the faith of Eternal Progress forever.
It was five minutes until daybreak when the death bells began to toll and the ceremonial candles all sputtered out at once. The high priestess was dead. With a concerted wail the mass pummeled the unfaithful woman with every solid object at hand until she was reduced to a spasmodically twitching pulp.

She had died just in time not to hear the laughter of the chaos lords as the rift ripped open and legions of demons poured through. The sun would now never come and the lights of the stars went out one-by-one as they fell from the sky in despairing showers.

In complete darkness, the faithful felt mercilessly sharp claws tear into them as glowing eyes drew near, a mercy as the world already descended in the eternal chill of deep space.

The Changing of Power

Not that long ago, President Eisenhower presided over the construction of the interstate highway system and the formation of suburbia as we know it. Lyndon Johnson created social security, medicare, and medicaid as we know it. Nixon took the dollar off of the gold standard, making it the currency we know today and opened trade with China. A little further back, Woodrow Wilson gave women the vote. Modern political discourse is just discussing incidental details of the state of affairs put together before Watergate forced Nixon to resign in 1974.

The magnitude of decisive policy changes these previous leaders regularly participated in dwarfs anything that has been possible for decades.
As we bicker for years over the trivial funds needed for a border wall, keeping roads repaired, keeping consumerism chugging by keeping interest rates eternally low, or cooking up convoluted subsidies to health insurers as the next social safety net, we are but children playing among the ruins built by giants who came before us.

Since the last powerful presidents, power has become increasingly informal and has been diffused across the vassal states we often call the “international community” through state and non-state entities.
A warning sign of the trend of de-formalization was declarations of war becoming obsolete since World War 2. It is now taken for granted that a basic diplomatic procedure even Empires observed is simply ignored as less obvious forces guide the direction of hostilities towards causes and places that neither pose a direct threat to the state nor offer prospects of profitable(to the nation) conquest.

Bill Clinton squeezed off some decent-sized legislation. George W. Bush got a little bit more through before he was completely a lame duck, mostly to lower the standards of the already-crippled education system. The creation of Homeland Security might have been the last long-term significant legislation ever supported by a US president.
Barack Obama heralded the post-formal age of US politics. He forced through one last piece of pork barrel for health insurance companies as arterial plaque sealed up the last wiggle room. Even that very modest action cost him dearly in political capital and cost his party hundreds of seats. He never recovered.

Obama resorted to the executive powers of his office to get anything done. The formal power that remained was exercised ever more through appointed officials and bureaucrats while circumventing elected assemblies as much as possible.

Trump is a far-diminished version of Obama when it comes to the exercise of power. Obama had a friendly bureaucracy and his “thousand statesmen” who worshiped him. Trump is despised by these same unelected officials and they do everything they can to impede even the exclusive powers of the executive. Collaboration with elected officials is almost out of the question.

Trump has spent the last two years making appointments and promotions that will allow him to become capable of things Obama could do on a whim during breakfast. Obama could have had some soldiers build a border wall with no trouble.

The trouble with the extreme constriction of power is it either becomes formally ceremonial at some point, meaning people look somewhere else for the real power.
Or else, like a faucet plugged by a thumb, it goes spraying everywhere out of control as that pent-up pressure surges through. Trump is on the verge of assembling his first batch of loyal statesmen, perhaps ten or twenty instead of a thousand, but it will enable him immensely to further erode the opposition that faces him from un-elected and non-state sources in the very limited time he has left. Blog.jim is fond of pointing out that Trump must understand he, his kids, and grandkids will not be simply left alone if he leaves his position of power with the present elite intact. Now that is a powerful incentive. If power must turn inward on itself, perhaps at some point, the elected assemblies simply get left out.

There’s No Real Freedom Without Authority

The people always want to be free but they are their own worst jailors. If everyone can do what they want in their own best interest, a ruthless race to the bottom is assured. If we know others face no restraint we won’t exercise restraint ourselves in the lifelong competition for food, shelter, money, mates, and prestige.

The information age has outstripped the ability of traditional social technologies to limit individual choice in ways that yield a net benefit to everyone. It is now too easy for individuals to circumvent the customs and soothing myths that create an illusion of harmony. They can get very accurate real-time information to optimize their self-interest whether in the job market or the dating market.

When everyone has access to networks, no one wants to be the 5 that settles for a 5 in life and so all the rest is a game to outmaneuver and sabotage one’s way to a better spot in the great game of musical chairs as society falls apart. Instead of getting things done, most energies are devoted to finding out who has to jump on the grenade and take one for the team. Then arises even more social strife when the despised loser nominated as grenade jumper refuses to jump.

It is impossible to reinstate rules that no one really wants to practice in real life. Nor does acting as if older customs still existed do anything to resurrect them. These systems existed by being airtight constructs that very few could successfully defect from. With that seal broken, they are imaginary fancies.

So the question lies in how to adapt to the problems of modernity in an efficient and realistic manner.
Policy in most other areas of public life suggests we need to arrest the relentless race to the bottom at strategic points.

Without safety nets like EBT cards, soup kitchens, shelters, and minimum wage there would be bread riots and people working for less than a dollar an hour to be able to afford just enough white flour and rice to keep them alive. Desperate people with nothing to lose would force anyone with surplus wealth to live in compounds guarded by private armies.(aka the 3rd world)

Without solid rules, there would be no 40 hour work week with a cushy weekend for those lucky enough to have jobs. There would be no holidays, paid vacation, or benefits. Many would be simply be worked to death. The marketplace would have no use for useless old people sticking around.

Without free association and strict controls on real estate, bidding wars impoverish even the highest paid workers, ensuring they never have kids and their high IQ breed goes extinct.

Without land forcibly set aside for parks, every urban area would be an unbroken sea of grey and all old buildings would be demolished to make way for cookie cutter tenements.

Without force itself, there would be no taxes, nor any polity at all.

The best kind of rules aren’t heavy-handed, stupid rules no one wants like forcing all American women to wear hijabs or banning plastic straws.
The rules that work best are those that force people to do what they’d like to do anyway by using the authority of the state to make sure everyone else has to do it.

No one could afford to pay taxes if the IRS didn’t maintain an airtight seal with extreme aggression and precision. Otherwise any sucker who paid up would live at a disadvantage to everyone else.

The state is truly legitimate when it becomes not just a parasitic occupying army but a broker that relieves the tensions in the endless struggles between humans. Without such an intervention, the natural state of man is Malthusian squalor. Hobbes was right.

We can see that the legitimacy of our present system really went into steep decline right as it broke the back of the old labor left that Bernie Sanders tried and failed to resurrect. The negotiation between labor and the state ended, and with it their role as a broker sustaining balance for the average worker.
Ever since, there has been a wasteland of open borders, free trade, corporate welfare, and parasitic wars to enrich the military industrial complex.
I am critical of corrupt unions and of the borderline communists who did their part to bring a hostile reaction down on them, but the “cure,” I think, has proven far worse than the disease. When the duty of easing tensions is not fulfilled, a swelling volcano cone rises up under the ruler’s feet.

The result of these modern pressures is both sides of the political spectrum now demand a return to authoritarianism. Most people, whatever their politics, understand intuitively that their freedom and empowerment have enslaved them to one another more than ever, the great game board a terrible gridlock of collective checkmate further than the eye can see. It has become self-evident that any kind of modern society requires the intervention of a strong state at carefully chosen points.

When everyone has excellent information and mobility they are forced to beg for a legitimate ruler to mediate between the people on earth and the powers of heaven.

Seattle Airplane Suicide Is A Barometer of Culture

In a society where most people have lost hope in a worthwhile future, the creep of nihilism gains ground in human hearts.
A mild-mannered airport worker with an affably broey affect commandeered a huge prop plane in a daring last act on earth rather than eke out another four to five decades as a wage slave in a drab and pointless neo-liberal society.

What is most telling about this event is not the actions of a single man, but the overwhelmingly positive public reaction I’ve seen so far on social media. Some are even calling him “Sky King.”
People often identify with the motives of mass shooters more than they admit but selfishly taking the lives of others dampens any sympathy they may feel. Even in the darkest and angriest periods of my life I was disgusted by the thought of petulantly lashing out against people I didn’t even know.
Sky King Russell sets a new precedent by going out in a stoic and affable manner while harming no one.

This may be a natural reaction to incentives as mass shootings are now so common that like car crashes, they cease to be of much note. It now takes some more flair and creativity to get the mass society’s attention and hold it for a news cycle or two as one’s final legacy to the ages. A fleeting reward but still better for a few than to labor a whole lifetime away, appreciated by no one.

In this time of constricting internet censorship, this suicide is an important indicator of the culture. The more the system takes away from people, the less they have to lose. Isolated suicidal people and nutjobs are harmless on their own, but the crowds regard the Sky King as almost a Robin Hood kind of figure. He hurt no one else, showing millions a glimpse of real freedom, while putting a dent in some impersonal corporation’s bottom line. When crowds begin to support this kind of behavior, the real trouble for elites is just beginning. It is a sign that under certain circumstances, certain targets are seen as legitimate by most people.

Very tellingly, Russell was a European-American, especially when most airport workers I see running around are minorities. Suicidal behavior, especially that requiring real initiative and planning is endemic to higher-agency Euros and Asians. The Africans and Indios of this world may groan from time to time under the lash of their overlords but they resign themselves to the grimmest slog of daily life and always manage to push out progeny just the same. I honestly cannot completely blame the world elite for wanting to replace a troublesome population with more pliant and domesticable strains. If that task were completed, there would be no more airplane thefts and no more flamboyant aerobatic maneuvers born from heightened existential consciousness.

Attack on Titan and Modernity

I watched the first two seasons of the anime, Attack on Titan and was quite impressed. It was the darkest and creepiest concept I’d seen since Berserk. The Japanese have an amazing eye for visual details in the natural world I never tire of whether it’s falling rain or cherry blossoms. That comes across strongly here too conveying visually both the sweetness and impermanence of our brief lives.

The basic premise is a great walled medieval city has been under siege by shambling giants for hundreds of years, as long as even ancestral legends can remember. Life has gone on normally inside the walls while only a handful of scouts have to deal with the harshness of the outside world. Then one day, a giant even taller than the walls peeks over at the terrified people below and everything goes to hell from there, complete with a breach in the wall.

We soon see these giants attacking the city itself, forcing the locals to retreat behind one inner wall after another as they are forced back.
The titans themselves are the most unsettling creatures I’ve seen since the titular Aliens with their chestburster larvae.
The Alien Xenomorphs are designed to appear as foreign as possible. The titans are possibly even more terrifying because of their familiarity. They look like very large, naked people at first but something is missing. They have vacuous facial expressions and their eyes are totally innocent like those of a baby. Even as they approach with mouths eagerly open and hands outstretched their pupils are dilated as though they may be friendly.

The human foolish enough to fall for this ploy is scooped up with a firm hand and promptly chopped in two by a great set of teeth, the hulking beast oblivious to their desperate pleading as they go in. If their whole body somehow goes down the Titan’s gullet without immediately debilitating blood loss, they get to perish in the steaming heat of the Titan’s stomach amidst a clutter of twisted corpses they are soon to join.
What’s more horrifying still is for all the titans’ hunger for humankind they don’t need the nourishment and periodically cough up “hairballs” of undigested human body parts. To add insult to injury the butchery to which they are single-mindedly devoted serves no apparent natural purpose.

I see this new Japanese Titan myth as a natural descendant of the African zombi myth that later became popular in the West.
Zombis were originally an allegory among African peoples for humans torn away from all family and identity by the slave trade, the living dead. In the modern West, zombies live on as atomized individuals in a post-Western atomized society where nobody cares about anyone else because all others are just adversarial competitors in the market economy whose main contribution to one another is to drive down each others’ wages.

The Japanese have one of the last, best societies on earth that is high trust and homogenous with low crime and world class health care and education. They have refused to have third world immigration on anywhere near the scale of other modernized societies preserving their ethnic domain and culture. The fertility rate is among the lowest in the world with a large and dysfunctional culture of incel outcast males but the Japanese have weathered population contractions before when hitting the very limited natural carrying capacity of their mostly mountainous, resource-poor island chain.

The variables that are different this time are those introduced by the modern neo-liberal capitalist economic system that pits all humans against one another in a fight to the death in a single grand arena.

The adversarial nature of man vs. man is the very core thesis of Attack on Titan. The overt adversaries resemble humans, but like zombies lack empathy or any trace of human spirit. Man vs. man is a strong direct theme in the series. As the humans are forced back by the Titans, there is less food and resources to go around, meaning much of the population becomes unsupportable surplus. At one point, the unimportant, the useless, and the old pretty much draw straws to go on a mass suicide offensive against the Titans so the rest don’t starve.
Furthermore, it is strongly hinted throughout that the central government of the great city is highly corrupt. To everyone’s astonishment, the most promising Titan fighters from boot camp are funneled away from the front lines to the government enforcers and secret police instead. Amidst an existential crisis of the entire species, scheming politicians are still up to no good. As if that were not enough, a religion of evangelical fanatics also vies for power and influence in the dying embers of the human world.

Even in the most dire circumstances, humans still engage in relentless zero sum games against a heavy backdrop of nihilism.
What is most shocking is this narrative comes from one of the best-off societies on the planet. Yet they too are consumed by the malaise and despair and decline that besets everywhere else.

History tells us there are sweeping trends that affect everywhere. A Japanese mercantile elite overthrew landed warrior aristocrats just like in the West when exposed to the same technology and pressures. They pursued a flavor of nationalism very similar to that in Europe and America at the time. The outcome was inevitable and so it is now.

Even if all the foreigners were instantly expelled from the United States, the intractable questions remain as we can see from the example of Japan. If these questions were answered, foreigners would be little threat and kept as powerless guest workers or expelled at will rather than function as a civilization-destroying political wedge.

Japan shows us that modernity poses a spiritual and cultural challenge that every 1st world country must deal with as roughly the same historical forces are in play from one end of the globe to another as it has been before.
Caught in a vice between attacking swarms of Titans and the backstabbing tendencies of our own treacherous kind, we seek a way towards a worthwhile future where people can cooperate again against common threats.

The society that figures it out first seizes the unclaimed prize. Or perhaps we all sink back into a great Dark Age.

Human “Stupidity” Comes From Conflict of Interest

Humans are remarkably good at coordinating when everyone’s interests align. Every day there is heavy traffic on the roads because no one gains from crashing. Tens of thousands die every year but in that same time hundreds of millions drive trillions of times. Thus, the incentives for driving to work year after year are correctly aligned.

Markets find a price to a fraction of a cent because an equilibrium between competing interests is arrived at.

But government, politics, sexual and status competition involve a zero sum battle between interests that never ends. This disputed territory is the slice of life that most human energy is devoted to.

When I go on message boards, the most common comment I see is some variety of “OMG people are stupid.” People are not so much directly stupid as they are personally self-interested. The core difference between high and low IQ countries is whether the average person can ask themselves. “What if everyone did it?”
IQ as far as I can tell is a way to get a rough idea of someone’s ability to handle abstraction, and that, as it turns out, is decisive.

Let’s imagine for a moment we’re typically corrupt third world traffic cops. We’re just using a position of power to maximize our leverage in a cutthroat society where a few winners take all. If you don’t take as many bribes as you can, someone else gets ahead of you.
Even if you have 150 IQ in an 85 average IQ society, it doesn’t matter much, because you know that even if you choose not to take bribes, no one around you will follow suit. So even though there are some very intelligent outliers, they are drowned out in the larger culture and its institutions. Some of the smart ones may rise to the top, but they are smart enough to understand minimally abstract crowds require immediate threat of force to keep them in line. Given more than just enough to eat, they breed without abandon until the whole society collapses. So if you are one of the smartest guys in power in a benighted African “republic” why not be a ruthless kleptocrat?
When everyone is maximally self-interested, a single dollar beyond subsistence in another man’s pocket is just a weapon he will one day use against you. If all these countries end up with kleptocrat strongmen, regardless of the nominal form of government, then we must conclude it’s no accident and that’s what the incentives select for.

Third world people are highly effective and rational when it comes to survival. But when everyone is like that, it’s like a Chinese finger trap. The harder you pull away in the direction of societal-level defection and competition the tighter and more inescapable it becomes. Until you have enough people of sufficient intelligence, no one figures out that if you forgo total competition, humans can reach a negotiated truce that allows for higher trust and a superior standard of living for everyone.

Those who cooperate by paying for goods, get more and better stores to choose from. Those who defect by stealing whenever they can are rewarded with “food deserts.” What few stores remain in these districts lock up anything that’s small enough to conceal and worth more than $10.
Whenever I go to the liquor store, single malt scotch is out in the open up to about $100 a bottle. Meanwhile, even lower shelf brandy, especially the Hennessy gets kept behind the cash register where sticky fingers can’t reach it. It is easy to tell which community prefers which.

It plays out the same way in every aspect of life that lies in that disputed sector. For populations of smart people, the contested area is just a bit smaller and that makes a huge difference.

Because lower IQ people are more or less rational. It is easy to have casual conversations with them and not think them especially lacking. This is why people who disparage their capabilities in any way seem like “racists” and why “oppression” seems at first like the best explanation for their consistently poor fortunes. Their deficiency manifests most greatly not on an individual but a group level. The scions of the Enlightenment ultimately abolished the group and therefore regard the study of the interaction of collectives in aggregate as a mortal sin. This neglected and most important of the social sciences, which all advertising and electoral politics are steeped in, is an open opportunity for dissidents of all stripes.

There’s No Power Without “Downward Distribution”

“Downward distribution” or worse, “socialism,” gets muttered in tones of dread from vanilla conservatives to hard core dissidents. This is a sign they are deeply confused since distribution of resources is what makes a ruler to begin with. In primitive societies, there are big men who work hard to throw the biggest feast and win followers. In early cities, the civic life and religion revolves around distributing grain from the temple granary. It is only in mega-societies of millions where flows of wealth are less transparent that anyone could forget the ruler rules by largesse.
As it is, the roads, the parks, libraries, schools, the military and police, the utilities, the courts, public entertainment, are all forms of downward distribution that establish the legitimacy of a ruling class. If the rulers did not redistribute in ways that provided a net benefit against any alternative, no one would suffer them to rule if they could possibly help it. Even if a local gang is the strongest power, it taxes for protection and its godfather may grant a favor in return for your loyalty on his daughter’s wedding day.

When I see rants about downward distribution on message boards, I understand they are really concerned about the wrong kind of redistribution. Yet these critics are almost unanimously unable to make this critical distinction because they buy into an idea of a mythical independent man who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps. This attitude may not have been wholly delusional in an immature frontier society but in the US the frontier started to close off in the 1890s, helping to trigger a wave of populism then as the pressure release valves suddenly stopped working as well. Now, the frontiers are long gone and there are 330 million mouths to feed in an ungovernable omni-ethnic empire.

Until those with that conservative impulse examine themselves, they are doomed to abject failure. They idolize the lone wolf stronger than all the rest or the elite cadre but all social animals decide affairs by politics, or in other words, alliances rather than individual prowess. This is why an alliance of women and gays can effortlessly push aside the protests of individual men. Even an alpha chimpanzee has to be careful about making too many enemies. Thus we need not dwell on theories of Biological Leninism. If one philosophy encourages individual competition and another encourages collective action, an alliance of children throwing dirt clods triumphs just as easily.

Those who like to call themselves right-wing typically exclude more than they include. Joining their group is supposed to be a hard and selective process. This is the fundamental mistake they make in politics. The right fails to distinguish the ethics of the close-knit tribe from the process of making alliances, even with people and groups they may not like.

The right also lacks any introspection about what kind of group it is. Conservatism, for instance, only really appeals to the white upper working class to the middle of middle class outside of major city centers plus some well-to-do country club types. Nothing they do can broaden that appeal. Neither “natural conservatives” nor Prester John will ride out of nowhere to save the day. Conservatives are the classic case of a static tribe that thinks it is an alliance. Since 2016, reality has caught up with them no matter how they might weep and gnash their teeth. They are but one part of a coalition now, unable to decide elections even on their home ground.

The right wing desires power but it always floats outside their grasp and it will always do so until they recognize that that downward distribution is a tool for sealing alliances that help get them what they want. For decades, their reaction has been to thrash and flail like a drowning man, giving anyone who tries to rescue them a sharp elbow to the face in their panic and paranoia. It is a mathematical law that the party of the 48% loses every election by at least 4%.

First, the faction that wishes to assume power must assess who they want to include and who to exclude from a hierarchical alliance while maintaining strict standards for their core tribe which they intend to occupy the top rung. So the problem lies not in whether or not to redistribute, but in how and how much to redistribute to each included faction. Then, when that is decided, it remains to figure out which enemy factions the alliance should attack first and most intensely.

Lately, the term “incel” has entered into the popular consciousness after possibly a decade of it being common parlance in the manosphere. Incels are men who have nothing to lose in the present system, many of them skilled and educated. They are the very stuff from which a re-alignment in power is made. The cost of their loyalty is very little as a plant kept in the dark loves dearly a single hour in the sunlight. Yet right wingers want only Christian married men with solid careers and successful businesses who can spit tight game when needed. They just don’t get it. The people they want most are those least likely to rock the boat.
The raw material is already abundant. Someone astute just needs to throw a few bones in the right directions.

The core thesis of an alt-center is the golden mean where the interests of a neo-tribal aspiring upper caste and its supporting alliance intersect. Instead of shaming the man who doesn’t get laid, offer him virgins if he’s willing to take big risks against the common enemy.

The Dance of Cooperation and Defection

It’s good to cooperate when everyone is defecting and good to defect when everyone cooperates.  Kind of like it’s you vs. the crowd when you try to buy a stock low and sell it high.
In a high trust society, it pays to be the first to break trust and plunder the commons knowing that the full satisfaction of your greed won’t even make a dent.
Once too many people join in the plunder, the payoff plummets as everyone’s defenses go up.  Worse, once that downward spiral of mass defection starts, it’s hard to break out of it.  We’ve yet to ever see a society recover from decadence and avoid collapse.
Yet the first group that can somehow break out of that negative spiral cleans up and founds the new order.  This seems to be what happened with early Christianity.  All they had to do was be a group of people who actually cared about each other and backed each other up.  Once they got sufficiently established an atomized late-stage popular culture nobody cared to defend was easily swept aside.

Conversely when everyone goes along with the system it pays to be the guy who exploits the herd.  In the US Civil War, there were professional enlistment dodgers once large sign-up bonuses became necessary to recruit more troops.  While the guy who followed instructions and popular sentiment naively marched into the line of fire expecting glory,  the guy who stayed out of the early craze could get paid just to show up and then change identities to do it again.  While raking in all that cash, I can only imagine the successful dodger was quite the catch for all the lonely young ladies and found himself living in luxury, getting laid like tile while the other poor schlub was getting his gangrenous leg sawed off.  Winners and losers: those who can adjust their survival strategies to changing circumstances and those who get outmaneuvered.

Our own society suffers from far too many defectors and as a result social capital has collapsed.  We’re bowling alone and doting on animals to feel some kind of connection in the midst of this economic war of all against all.  The unclaimed prize goes to the first organization, whatever it is, that establishes high-trust, reliable social capital for even average people who get trashcanned for falling a few steps behind the pack.  This is the service that early Christianity provided and it exploded because the pent up demand for cooperation was immense.   Those who got in the faith during its rise and avoided getting martyred got to reap the benefits of family and community while everyone else was still fighting to the death over a dwindling trail of crumbs.

I felt the dots in my head connecting as I read about Darwin’s finches a few years ago.  Female preference is elastic because they just select whichever males seem well-fed and prosperous at a given time.  Whenever the environment changes, different kinds of males meet with more success and become the most attractive.  The present social order heaps money and status on the most flagrant defectors, getting them the best mates as decay nears rock-bottom.  Being the best defector is increasingly difficult though because everyone is trying to do it.  At some point it’s smarter to look for the early Christians wherever they may be found and sit tight while the cycle winds down.  This is pretty much what formerly nihilistic PUAs are doing as they’ve changed their rhetoric almost unanimously to family, nation, and traditional marriage over the last few years.

The story of the finches also made me think of the decline of the middle class.  During good times, it pays to be a generalist who can benefit from many different food sources.  During bad times, the best survivors are specialists that can access niches others can’t reach.  Right now is a boom time for the highly skilled upper middle class as it is for the highly fecund underclasses.  Those of merely above average intelligence and disposition have neither the brains or patience to be electrical engineers nor the raw guile and viciousness needed to rule the streets.  Now that there’s a drought, they find themselves starving while specialists thrive.  The prevailing question is, from what direction do the next rains arrive?

Unlike finches, humans have some ability to shift their strategies and pivot with the times.  The human brain arose from nature not to invent science but to participate in a cerebral arms race between humans locked with each other in a collective prisoner’s dilemma with constantly shifting payoffs and losses.  The finches have different kinds of beaks for different foods, lions have teeth and claws to kill prey, humans try to win at the great game of musical chairs.

Suburban Populism Beats Rural Traditionalism In Mass Identity Politics

Race is indeed a major dividing line between human beings and their collective interests but class and culture is often at least as important.  The dissident right’s model of reality falls short when it focuses on race while ignoring class.  

Barack Obama, for example, is anathema to working class Whites as Trump is to upper middle class Whites.  People across the political spectrum seem to focus on Obama’s Blackness even though he is only half-Black and talks and acts White much of the time.  Race is a huge factor, but at least as significant is how Obama oozes a smarmy SWPL vibe.  When you combine race and class in one man, you end up with anti-red-state personified.  When Obama said “clinging to guns and religion” that was roughly equivalent to Trump saying “not sending their best” or “grab them by the pussy.”   

The upset defeat of Roy Moore is a good example of the importance of class and culture.  The focus on bibles and cowboy hats may have appealed to the rural working classes but alienated the suburban middle classes.  This leaves Reagan era conservatism and the religious right utterly discredited as decisive political forces.  Even a lame GOP candidate should have won easily in Alabama, by far too much for ballot stuffing in the cities to make a difference.
To be successful in politics, populists and racial identitarians must be able to reach across the huge class and culture barrier or at least, not be overtly threatening to the other side.

On right wing blogs and on gab I see endless discussion about everything from being “trad” to restoring the Christianity of the crusades(Deus Vult!).  Also pretty popular is posturing about getting married to virgins somewhere in rural Montana or putting sodomites back in the closet.  These are kind of cool-sounding concepts that establish an aesthetic and a “feel.”  They’re great for memes and trolling too. The problem with all these things is some people start to forget that this stuff is fantasy.

In the real world, most of America lives in the suburban orbit of the cities and not only does a minority live in the more traditional countryside, lots of them are old people.  The city and its hinterlands is where most the action is at.  The country has the advantage of providing safer territory for right wing populists to operate in, but in any kind of electoral politics, suburbanites both middle and working class have to be the main focus.  Even people in the country can use facebook and tinder now.  Going “trad” is a recipe for failure at this point.  Nobody really can go back or even really wants to.  The real question is what replaces obsolete, dead social structures.

That’s a problem that can’t really be dealt with until more urgent matters are settled first.  What most Euro-Americans can agree on now across class lines are the principles of alt-centrist tribal populism.  Everyone younger than boomers intuitively gets that the pie is either static or shrinking for most people no matter how headlines boast about unemployment or the stock market.  Thus the fundamental question all politics must address is how to increase the security and access to resources of a given group.  First, constituents need solid proposals of how they will materially benefit. 

Talking about “heritage” is a good start to set the tone, but the looming reality is we have jobs we have to show up at, bills to pay—and that’s what informs most of our actual actions.  European roots are just an abstraction for the typical suburban White American.  The way forward is to remind them how they are living in exile and can be forced to run away again at any time, how affirmative action turns their jobs into nightmares, how immigration legal or illegal crushes their wages, how the law fails to protect them from colored criminals and punishes them more severely, how their taxes fund the very parasites they struggle to fend off…

The mistake of speaking to principles and responsibility is no one actually wants those things.  Being principled and responsible is tough and in the modern workplace these behaviors are not rewarded, or even crushed and punished instead.  Nobody cares.  Successful politics offers people something they want.  The common complaint about the left’s successes is they give out “free stuff.”  Well, that’s exactly what a successful faction is supposed to do for its people.  If you don’t get a share of the plunder, why bother?  A political movement that spouts empty platitudes about individual responsibility while leaving its ordinary backers with empty pockets has already lost.

Heritage, tradition, cohesiveness, self-improvement, and responsibility are the legitimate language of nascent neo-tribes and cells of activists for whom loyalty and cooperation matters most—but it has no place in mass politics. 
Dissident activist groups already form a sort of cultural aristocracy, a tiny handful who make international headlines every time they appear in public.  As a vanguard they have a powerful ability to nudge the ship in the direction they want it to go, but they can’t forget—they are not the ship.
Most of us are still stuck on the 20th century idea that every successful idea must become a mass movement.  In the 21st century, there is a strategy for the cultural aristocracy and a lowest-common denominator approach for people who are just worried about paying the bills.

Both the counter-cultural aristocracy and regular people alike must understand how race, class, and culture intersect.  If there is excessive focus on race, the upper classes win by simply dividing the races against each other and making them fight over the crumbs.  It blinds identitarians to important institutional divides.

A video came out recently showing a white man abjectly begging police for his life as they scream contradictory instructions at him and make him play a life-and-death game of Simon says until they have an “excuse” to pull the trigger.  The guys who shot Daniel Shaver after treating him worse than an animal were White themselves.  But anyone with common sense knows the real color of a cop’s skin is Blue.

I have wanted to vomit in my mouth a bit every time I’ve seen right-wingers heaping praise on police and the military.  I’ve been perplexed at their sense of shock every time the institutions have turned on them.  Had they understood other factors than race, they would have known the enforcers of the system are their most natural enemies.
This is in fact an area where the alt-right and black lives matter share common ground.  These groups are also natural enemies but perhaps both could set aside their differences where the police are concerned.

Successfully pursuing identitarian interests will require just this kind of diplomatic nuance.  A group with an incorrect or incomplete model of reality can easily be triggered into counter-productive and self-destructive actions.  By indulging in delusion, the establishment left has been caught in a downward spiral since Trump came down the golden escalator.  Now their energies are consumed by feminist witch hunts, race-politics in sports, and obsession with fever dreams of impeachment.  Entrapment in that blinding haze of rage, panic, and pain is a fate any faction would wish to avoid. 

Sexual Harassment Hysteria Seriously Undermines the Establishment

Since the beginning, feminism has been a sort of alliance between women and powerful men against the average Joe.  Even in first wave feminism, the leaders were the wives of upper and upper middle class men who supported their political activity.  Since the second wave sexual revolution that began in the 60s, this alliance has secured powerful men soft harems while giving the average woman maximum personal freedom to compete for exclusive spots in those harems.

Lately, there has been a fervent moral hysteria with mass sexual harassment accusations of powerful men.  For decades, ordinary men have had to live in deadly fear of post-feminist accusations while powerful men have been secure in their ability to ignore those rules to some considerable degree.

The larger significance of this development is that it represents a critical rupture in the alliance that has created and sustained feminism as a cultural force since the late 19th century.  Women have grown so accustomed to the easy exercise of power in society that they have forgotten that they are helpless without the backing of powerful male sponsors.

Feminism has freed women from the clutches of drab provider males for a few generations now and so the memory of where they came from has faded.  They now think when the bill comes due, they can free themselves from their more undesirable sponsors as well and perhaps even seize control themselves.  Alas, they will discover to their dismay that is not how the world works.

If women do not make it worth the while of the men with money and who tell the men with guns what to do, their inflated status begins to mysteriously erode even as they shriek and flail in helpless rage.

Meanwhile, this furor is incredibly damaging to the legitimacy of the Gods of culture.  When a star and senator like Al Franken is punished like a common office worker for presuming to enjoy the natural rewards of his station, his prestige and the prestige of all those on his tier of societal heaven suffers immensely.

People participate in a society and its hierarchy because they can look up to those at the top.  When we look up to the stars we feel a sense of awe precisely because they are so far removed from us.  That sense of awe legitimizes a social hierarchy and when it is violated the power of the culture to inspire and command obedience and unity is greatly diminished.

When a hierarchy loses its prestige people cease to dream of rising in it themselves.  This implicitly opens the way for the growth of parallel, competing hierarchies, or even for Hell to triumph over Heaven.  Now that the social contract has been soured for men at every level of society, the incentive to rise, strive, and back the status quo for all men has been damaged more than we can realize now.

I have been immensely pleased to watch the growing conflagration as the secular state religion overreacts time after time since the accession of Trump to Heaven.  When they use the word “normalize” they refer to their terror that Satan could become the new God people look up to.  This craze of accusations and rapid firings has only been the latest delight, and possibly the most significant we’ve seen so far.

The 21st Century Leans Toward Aristocracy

It has now been nearly 20 years since George W. Bush, the son of a president, inherited the grandest ship of state in history and splendidly wrecked it.  He could have passed into history as just one bad president but as the people desperately cried out for the ship to steer, it stayed the course no matter who the pilot was.  What little remaining illusion that the masses can meaningfully participate in the exercise of power peels quickly away.  Even Trump, the avatar of American popular discontent, finds himself powerless to bring decisive change and is only half-ironically called an emperor, as if in hopes he might somehow take up a more authoritarian mantle.

Counter-intuitively in this time of populism, we see conditions arranging themselves in favor of aristocracy and the ebb of the 20th century high tide of the masses.  The official state politics playing out before us is just one area where a few become increasingly dominant over the many.

Mass politics ascended toward its peak when firearms combined with industrialized logistics.  We may not appreciate now how revolutionary it was to have an army of hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers in the field at once in the Napoleonic Wars for prolonged periods, millions by the mid 19th century, and tens of millions in the 20th century.  Mass production, pasteurization, railroads, the telegraph made possible a condition of total war that was new to agrarian peoples.

Political power is ultimately backed by the potential for violence and since the inception of settled agriculture, only a few people could have the equipment and leisure to be skilled soldiers on the backs of massed peasant labor.  Among settled peoples war had always been aristocratic by nature.  Though there have always been levies, mercenaries, and conscripts, they were support for a backbone of warrior elite whose investment in the system gave strong incentive for loyalty and whose training gave them tight discipline in combat.

Even Roman legions that made heavy use of commoners promoted soldiers on retirement to citizen status for them and their posterity.  In our time, any warm body under a state is a “citizen” but for most of history that distinction has meant entry into the petty aristocracy.
Warriors not only need to fight well against others, they also need good reason not to overthrow the government and install one of their own.  So it follows warriors are by definition invested in politics.  Anyone who is relied on to fight for the state, gets a share in state power sooner or later.  Even if kept as slaves, the warriors just make themselves into kings, as the Mamluks did in Egypt.

As more of the population was potentially needed for state violence in the 19th century, suffrage became universal to every male and there the bloat exploded out of control to its conclusion with everyone but children and teenagers allowed to vote.  This craze has left us with an enormous political power bubble.  If elected leaders simply ignore a bunch of powerless peasants, what do they do about it?  “Oh yeah? How are you gonna make me?” applies to state power as much as it does on the grade school playground.  If there is no solid backing to claims of power, the illusion fades and reality begins to re-assert itself.  Just as the Mamluk warrior slaves could not be shut out of power, the helpless cannot long hold onto it.

Some suppose a coalition of single women, gays, and impoverished races holds the key to political power in the future because their helplessness makes them dependent and therefore fanatically loyal.  Yet once reality inevitably returns, a furious trans-genderist in a dress can shriek at the top of his lungs all he likes only to be sent tumbling into the mud with a saber slash to the face from a smug, mounted noble wearing a powdered wig.  A coalition of the weakest is by nature opportunistic and requires the support of the strong to hold power at all.  At best, they are tools who are ultimately discarded the moment they cease to be sufficiently useful as a legitimizing priesthood.  That moment always comes sooner than ascended undesirables think because a successful religion helps pacify the masses, save the ruler energy, and keeps the army inspired and loyal—a church of obnoxious political commisars inflames and sabotages things instead.

It was the possibility of mass conscription that ensured the common man the vote but since the atomic bomb wars of mass conscription have gradually all but disappeared and with it, the impetus for mass political power.  The battlefield has returned to being a realm only a small minority participate in directly and consistently.  Modern technology and the precise nature of objectives in 21st century war make it so that unskilled, inexperienced, unmotivated conscripts just get in the way and cause trouble. 
The US military has relied on volunteers for decades now and over time an increasingly small number of those are relevant to combat.  Now, even the tiny front-line military shares even this diminished role with mercenaries who answer directly to factions of elites.

Public opinion no longer supports the reckless wars of a discredited elite, but simultaneously, rulers that no longer rely so strongly on a loyal public to fight wars does not need their consent so much as before.  They do not need to fear their subversion either so long as most people are prosperous enough to stay in an apolitical torpor.

In the culture we see the same principle of a warrior elite applies.  In an emerging neo-tribal age ISIS forces that may have numbered a mere 10,000 men fought multiple national armies to a standstill for years.  Similarly the altright and antifa each likely have no more than 10,000 operatives active in the field.  Yet when 300 alt-rightists have an event, their signal is amplified across the world by behaving strategically as a culturally disruptive vanguard.  Those 300 have more impact than the next 30 million who cast ballots from time to time and look on in disappointment as nothing happens.  In the mercantile modern world, tight group loyalties are far scarcer than money, enabling even a handful who can actually work together to run roughshod over millions of atomized serfs who just want that next paycheck.

In Silicon Valley a handful of people at a few companies hold a few billion consumers in the palm of their hands.   A few small cadres at national banks can influence the trajectory of all the wealth in the world.  A few incestuous social circles in a few big cities tell everyone what to think, tell all their stories for them, and make all their music and dance.  Even those active in the emerging counter-cultures are vanishingly small as a percentage of the population yet their impact is wildly disproportionate.

Meanwhile, the average worker scurrying to and fro from a job has almost no impact or influence on the culture, the politics, on finance, or anything that matters, even if they are among the dwindling number who live comfortably above subsistence.  Actually, comfort makes them that much more inert, their only attribute of significance an implacable dead weight for forces of change to push aside. 

It becomes increasingly explicit that nobody cares what ordinary people living their lives on facebook and netflix think.  Almost every meaningful interaction we see is propelled by just a few and when this is the reality, it is only a matter of time until there is aristocracy.

Scarcity of Social Capital Sustains Institutions

For almost twenty years it has been pointed out countless times how all the knowledge we get from universities is online for free.  Time after time people have predicted the collapse of universities or that for-profit colleges will take over.  Not only has the institution of the University not collapsed, tuitions are higher than ever and the for-profit colleges are the ones that have seen their business model collapse. At first, this seems counter-intuitive as the corrosion of the establishment’s credibility accelerates.

Though colleges are no longer sacrosanct as they once were they can keep hiking tuition to the pace of loans because there are no viable alternatives.  Red-pill dissidents have spent years bashing the college degree as a “piece of paper” while missing the point.

College offers access to reliable high-status social capital in a modern society where any sort of non-adversarial, high-trust social interaction is extremely scarce.  For most people entering adult life with even slightly above average IQ, campus is the funnel they must squeeze through to avoid the wasteland of service jobs where they’ll live without prospects surrounded for the rest of their lives by people they cannot really connect with. 

Also, there are far more people scrambling to take respectable white collar “real jobs” that require degrees than there are slots available.  This pressure means those who make it have to know someone on the inside.  To establish rapport with someone on the inside they need to have experienced the unique culture of life on campus.  People reach out and help those they feel are like them and with whom they have shared culture and experiences.  To get that gen X manager to reminisce about college days over lunch while you’re there as an unpaid intern can easily be the difference between having a career and being a barista. 

For those who do not go to university the military is one of the last sure reservoirs of reliable social capital.  The most cynical blue collar people you’ll ever meet will curse about the polticians, the government, the country but still glow with almost religious reverence if you mention the military and thank you profusely “for your service” if you were ever in it.  For average people who did not grow up with deep, high quality roots to see them through life, that’s pretty much the last social ladder available to them.

Then there is of course the public education system.   The crowning genius of the 19th century-style nation-state may well be the ability of compulsory mass education to standardize culture.  People instinctively understand that even if someone learns better through home-schooling, they are at a disadvantage by not having the standard life experiences in the standard environment installed in their meatware.  Someone who strays away from the insitutional status ladder finds themselves standing just outside the tribal circle as they interview for jobs, vie for promotions, try to make friends, and go out on dates.

The backbone of a society is not jobs, an economy, or even armed men.  The central structures of society are ladders and funnels leading to high quality social capital like lifelong friends, stable social roles, family, marriage, or even just the bare minimum status to be seen as eligible in one’s dating pool.  In a hunter gatherer band or a traditional agrarian village there are rites of initiation to test for eligibility and connect cooperators with the social capital they need to flourish.
The nation-state institutionalized these networks on a mass scale of millions.  The industrial revolution did not just lead to the mass production of goods, but also of culture and social status.

This assembly line of souls is still very crude compared to the simple organization of a village.  With such a large system, a glitch can send 10 million souls tumbling into the abyss where they have no role and no one cares if they live or die.  Overwhelming numbers made these casualties sustainable.

When everyone has been to the same sort of schools since they could walk, then go to the same boot camps, you can crank out 100 divisions of soldiers who can all understand each other and work together.  The 21st century however has heralded the shift away from mass culture and the return to inequality, caste, tribe, and natural aristocracy.

Neo-tribal groups are sprouting through the drab concrete slabs of the establishment but they will only be able to displace institutions when they can bust the monopoly of social capital and offer better prospects of meaningful belonging.

The Class Divide in the Alt Right

As the alt-right matures it can now be divided into working class and middle class wings.  Most of the arguments about strategy, methods, and optics since Charlottesville have at their root been different parts of society talking past each other.  The alt-right likes to talk about race, but too many of them seem to neglect class, which in some circumstances is even more important than race in a highly stratified America.  

The pre-existing White Nationalism 1.0 was a working class movement by its nature.  They were notorious for being abrasive purity-spirallers who don’t work well with others but those who made the transition to 2.0 have brought with them established organizational structures and are willing to show up in the real world.
At this point, when people are taking huge risks just stepping out into public, just showing up is the decisive factor, not wardrobe choice.  As a mercantile culture, we are still grappling with the new reality that action, revealed preference, and loyalty means more than words, presentation, or “brands.” 

From what I have seen, the most aggressively anti-social purity spirallers are already getting pushed out.  Over time I am seeing progressively fewer Nazi costumes.  As far as I can tell from pictures of Shelbyville, a few last people wearing nazi helmets are all that remains to be dealt with.  Counter-intuitively, complaints from the middle class wing of the alt-right actually grew louder after this event.  They were just as upset by a procession of people who looked like bikers and hunters dressed in black.  The reality is that working class groups won’t look nice and fuzzy, especially since the people who will actually show up tend to be the most angry and disaffected.  People who look determined and intimidating are not necessarily a bad thing.

The white polo shirt strategy has proven to be a stroke of genius that has created an image of the alt-right in the public consciousness.  More specifically, this has become the uniform of the middle class and SWPL alt-rightists.  They are trying to reach an audience where it pays best to be approachable, clean-cut, and well spoken.  While the black-clad bikers are gathering in rural white America, the polo preppy alt-right are targeting universities and urban areas.  

Rather than one conquering the other, these factions will end up pursuing their strategies in parallel.

I have seen a lot of criticism over the people showing up being “defective” but I think a lot of the armchair generals forget these are bands of dissidents.  The people who are comfortable and happy with their lives stay home, have other stuff to do, and have way too much to lose.  

The critics expect that the leaders of these groups can micromanage everyone like they are playing a real time strategy game and freak out about every negative thing the press seizes on.  In real life, these leaders are pirate captains elected into their roles by a motley crew of mutineers.

It takes a lot of guts and a disagreeable nature for anyone to actively go against what the rest of society is telling them to do, to reject false received wisdom, and seek out truth.  When you get a bunch of people like this in a room, you can’t expect any organization they form to run like a corporate department.  It’s only natural that it’s a bumpy ride and knees will get scraped. 

There has been a lot of public arguments between the leaders of these groups as they jockey for position and influence.  These are not crises but part of the natural process through which every organization is formed.  The clash of personalities has been a positive thing as the most able rise to the top and the worst narcissists, anti-social types, and the outright insane get weeded out.  

Every time there is a setback, loyalty gets tested and those who counter-signal too hard in the wrong way or against the wrong people fall by the wayside.  In these struggles, the class divide has been especially obvious. 

One leader screams at another about being a nazi larper only to be derided as an effete metrosexual in return.  One thing I have noticed though is over time certain rules of engagement have solidified and there are lines the leaders left standing no longer cross.  Now, even when disagreeing on tactics, there is almost always a disclaimer, of “I am glad this guy’s on our side but…”  

With pirate brawls now staying within this etiquette, the hierarchy steadily figures itself out.  Since the alt-right is the executive wing of the dissident sphere, those who come out on top will be those who can most effectively lead people to accomplish strategic goals in the field.

One of the biggest misunderstandings I see about the alt-right is from those who want it to become a mainstream political movement.  For some time yet, the niche of the alt-right is to be a minority of radicals who push the envelope and goad their enemies into over-extending.  By challenging the boundaries a few hundred alt-rightists can clear cultural space for millions more to drift slightly further towards them.

The alt-right is succeeding not by persuading everyone at once to their views but by changing the collective mood enough that alt-lite marketers are being forced to adapt or perish. 

Barely a year ago, a group with mostly gay men and women rose to become the alt-lite because their diversity points helped them get away with pushing ideas that no white straight guy could have presented to a large audience.  Someone like Milo was necessary and even his presence was enough to trigger a riot at Berkeley that was a huge turning point in exposing the establishment’s willingness to shut down free speech with violent thugs.

This excess lead directly to Antifa defeats at the battles of Huntington Beach and Berkeley forcing them to change their tactics ever since.  Few seem to reflect on the strategic significance of the fact that antifa has never again been able to attack independently, relying completely on sympathetic authorities to take their side. 

Now, it’s no longer necessary to be flamingly gay to popularize edgy political ideas.  Alt-lite figures like Milo are failing to make the transition and ex campus conservative types like James Allsup and Nick Fuentes are taking their place with far more discussion of ideas and less mindless sensationalism.  As the alt-right continues to keep on the pressure, it will change the culture—and the conventional politics lies downstream of culture.  

The Scarcity of Social Capital in Western Societies

In most of the world and through most of history, social capital has been far more important for most people than money won by participation in the market.  The 1st world has become a dramatic reversal in how human society works with jobs rendering people’s wellbeing far more than friends, family, or community.  The beginning of our lives we spend with parents or caretakers is now a passing larval stage, our adulthood spent fluttering aloft on market forces.

The strange inversion of commerce and social life means there are millions of strangers paying monthly bills with few connections between them all.  The irony of a mass commercial society is its scarcity of social capital on all levels of human relations.
After we leave school, we spend most our time at work and that’s where we tend to form our social circles.  But these are circles of convenience, the tacit understanding that these associations are temporary and subordinate to paycheck or promotion.  We watch what we say with friends at work, never knowing if we could be talking to our future supervisor or if we could be turned in by informants for our irreverent gossip.

In the hours of the day we have left, we go to bars and meetup events but there everyone has their guard up because the baseline of social trust and commonality is far too low in a milling stew of millions.
Even mating is stymied by a multitude of social and sexual harassment tripwires.  Meeting the future wife at the company christmas party becomes a quaint artifact of 80s romantic comedies.  So now, when someone finds a rare non-adversarial scene to interact with the opposite sex, it’s a secret to be closely held like that sweet spot for fishing or mushroom hunting.

In this anonymous mass, filters of pre-selection are essential.  This is in fact how humans have always been, but modernity forces us to struggle to create from scratch the kind of communal structures that were already well-established for our ancestors.

Any kind of social filter is useful as long as it is hard to fake or at least sufficiently uncomfortable.  There must be sacrifice.  In Islam, we have to give up alcohol, fast for a whole month, kneel like fools on prayer rugs.  In Mormonism we have to say we believe in disappearing golden tablets, give up all drugs, and pay up 10% of our income.  The humiliation and monotony if kept up is rewarded with a social network and a family.

Even these traditional networks are not as useful as they used to be in an open society.  It is far more difficult to insure against defection when one can periodically disappear into the the crowd and do whatever they want.  The modern 1st world society naturally sees the decline of traditional doctrines wherever it is not held together by other factors such as ethnicity or relative isolation in the countryside.  For most, different sorts of networks are required.

The most basic and common social filter in a commercial society is money.  Have an auction whether for houses or groceries to price out as many people as possible and when you get down to a manageable number, try to interact sincerely with whoever is left standing.  The result is a society of snobbery where the worthiness of others is synonymous with the accumulation of capital.  This influence shapes the entire world view of those who can afford their McMansion and 2 new cars in a nice neighborhood.  It allows them to cocoon there in willful ignorance and contempt even as the society as a whole starts to fall apart and revolt against them.

We are all infused with the habits and attitudes of the class we were born into.  People assort based on these affinities even though many cannot even understand what they do.  We simply associate with those who we simply like on a gut level.  If we doubt the strength of these subtle signs, we need only look at the visceral revulsion the polite middle classes feel towards Trump with his crass working class mannerisms made infinitely more egregious in their eyes by his high station.

Finally, as 1st world affluence becomes concentrated into a smaller number of hands and the youth culture becomes ever more relatively impoverished we see the emergence of more primitive types of sacrifice signalling.  Many dissidents have commented on the enormous popularity of tattoos and stretched ear-lobe holes from mid-millennials onward.  Without money, status, or meaning, people revert to ritual disfigurement, a signal of group allegiance that comes naturally to hunter-gatherers.

An easy tribal initiation is to ask someone to have their face scarred up with a knife.  It’s a simple, effective ritual popular from the Amazon to Papua New Guinea.  It has a universal appeal because it’s an all-in-one package that requires someone to voluntarily undergo significant pain, adopt a signal of allegiance that can’t be taken back, and is impossible to fake. A tattoo on a hipster or bro-ey pothead comes from that same impulse.  When allegiance and affinity are scarce, its most ostentatious advertisements proliferate.

But what if one has no affinity for religious abasement, has little money or care for wealth signals, and has no connection with the outgoing people with tattoos?  There are plenty that fall between these cracks who struggle to find a place in the milling horde of humanity.  This is especially true of outliers of any kind.

Under these pressures we can easily understand the appeal of the dissident right, antifas, or hard-core SJWs.  People who are unusual in some way in the general population try to find ways congregate where their essential nature is distilled.  This is the impetus behind the formation of the first neo-tribes.

Like someone covered in tattoos, the multi-colored hair, pasty acne speckled skin inflicted by vegan diets, and ugly attire of SJWs penalizes them in the normal society while simultaneously giving them a status boost in their community.  Likewise young men who wear crisp white polo shirts to openly protest against Jews are risking everything in the normal society for a spot in a new society where membership actually means something.

The more we are expected to exist as atomized individuals the more powerfully we grasp for compatible chemical bonds that by their sealing, release enormous energy.  The group that best masters these forces becomes the new dominant tribe.

See Also: How the Middle Class Used to Be Affordable

Catalonia and Sovereignty

I have been aware of separatist movements in Europe for some years and I saw them as a weathervane indicating the general direction of politics and culture.  Brexit made me hold back on this thesis for awhile, but the tepid progress towards actually leaving the EU and now the resurgent talk of Catalonian independence confirms my initial intuitions.

Nations are made up of regions that in a perfect peaceful world would each be independent, their governments fully representing the wills of the locals.  As the aftermath of the Versailles treaty demonstrated, regions must combine into a tolerable nation for the sake of common security.
Once combined, the central government cannot easily allow regions to secede or it loses its legitimacy and a precedent is set for its complete disassembly.  Thus I understand the position of Lincoln in 1861 or of the Spanish government now.

However, the overall trend is nation-states are becoming far less relevant in the 21st century as most of the world is organized into interlinked economic zones.  The nations are still there with their armies, territories, legal systems and leaders but the reality is power is no longer neatly circumscribed by the borders of discrete sovereign entities drawn on maps in different colors.

For the purposes of international commerce separate political units are a nuisance.  We can imagine what it would be like going through customs every few miles or paying a fee to change currency to be able to buy anything.  There is little incentive for globalist rulers anymore to pay much attention to borders, except as it inconveniences the stupid local serfs who are still tied to the land.

To understand Catalonian “independence” we must understand they are not trying to gain sovereignty but only to change patrons.  With no threat of invasion, they are a relatively rich region with no need for a national government that funnels away their taxes into poorer regions.  They have every interest to signal they’d rather have direct allegiance to Brussels rather than Madrid.  They are like a toddler running to Daddy for protection, only to have him back up Mommy’s verdict.

The European movements for regional separation are mostly an attempt of regions to align with the larger economic zone instead of outdated nations whose protection is no longer needed.  None of these movements are succeeding though.  The regionalists are blocked by an intractable problem of modernity.  No region is really regional anymore.  For some time people from all over Spain and the world have congregated in Catalonia until the core going back centuries can no longer unite as a political whole.  Furthermore, a Spaniard in Barcelona probably has more in common with a resident of any worldwide city than an inhabitant of the Catalonian countryside.

As the experiment of regionalism falls flat as a political movement, people will begin to realize the key to modernity is a sort of techno-tribalism that unites by IQ, class, neurotype, and relatedness rather than some dumb flag people pretend to care about with tremendous heart-slapping sentimentality.  One of the most common sentiments I see online: “I have more in common with this alt-right guy far away from me than these assholes who live right next to me with their loud music.”  This is the future.

Fourth Generation Sovereignty

Why doesn’t the US take over Canada?  It doesn’t need to.  Both are seamlessly plugged into the same mass economy and international Western political and cultural system.  On maps, there is an independent, internationally recognized nation known as Canada but taking that too seriously is to misunderstand how the system works.

Before the Western powers twice committed mass suicide, power relationships were more explicit and required more direct maintenance.  Canada was little different back then except it was aligned with Britain instead of the US.  Instead of pretending to be a truly independent entity it openly called itself an affiliate of the British Empire.  Back then, as now, they sent their young men on command to fight pointless wars for their hegemon.  To suppose such a political unit is really sovereign when it does not even have its own foreign policy is, of course, a joke.

Most non-Western political units in the world were explicit territories of colonial overlords run at least at the topmost levels by imperial administrators.
Then, after WW2, we are told, all these subservient satrapies suddenly found their independence and the world lived happily ever after.

The former colonies established their own political systems but the new empire was founded on economics rather than politics.  The colonial administrators went home because they were no longer necessary.

The major powers needed only to entice the new local leaders into loan agreements with puppet strings attached.  If the new nominal countries had strategic resources, they often had no local infrastructure to exploit them.  Then they became dependent on international corporations to do the drilling and mining in hope of getting some crumbs.  The local leaders then owed their power to the resource extractors with their expensive equipment and engineers more than to their own people.

The old colonialism collapsed because it had become a bulky ideological affair and a big money loser.  Keeping colonies became an ostentatious display of national prestige instead of a profitable venture like it used to be.  The depletion of wealth after the World Wars and a worldwide depression in between them finally made this arrangement untenable.  Minimizing overhead, and maximizing profit was in again.  Allowing subject peoples nominal independence imposed all the costs and dangers of keeping order onto the local figureheads while they got to passively reap the benefits as absentee owners.

 Since the end of WW2 the state of affairs has more in common with the heyday of the British and Dutch East India Companies or the United Fruit Company with foreign affairs carried out primarily by economic actors working in conjunction with great powers.
In the earlier eras of economic imperialism the great powers supporting international extractive commerce were obviously sovereign entities acting with their own benefit in mind.

What makes our own age different is that the great powers are no longer clearly connected to anything we would consider a nation-state or even a well-defined empire with concrete borders.  The whole planet is fair game.  It is appropriate that those affiliated with this system of power are now often referred to as “globalists.”

I have stated before the thesis that in our age of fracture, political organization is both smaller and larger than the centralized bureaucratic nation-states we’ve taken for granted since the 1860s.  On the large scale we have vast economic zones that swallow up mere nations.  On the smaller scale we see actual sovereignty re-emerging in the form of tribes.  I call them “tribes” to contrast with 18th to 19th century ideas of ethnic groups or cultural groups monolithically united within the borders of one nation-state’s territory.

So far I’ve seen the term “fourth generation” used to refer to decentralized, non-state warfare.  I think this concept will apply to everything, not just warfare.  I see ISIS trying to found an Islamic state, a bunch of Kurdish enclaves across several different countries declaring themselves Kurdistan, growing separatist movements within the European Union, or now the emergence of the alt-right as signs of where we’re heading.

In the 21st century, having a nation-state is a strategic liability and an easy target.  A nation intrinsically defined by an unchanging territory and population can be isolated, blockaded, bombarded, or invaded.  A bunch of soldiers who put on official uniforms can’t act without making their permanent territorial unit a target for retaliation.  Even when they attack much smaller and weaker groups, they open the whole of their much larger group to counter-attack.  Soon there are many small, cohesive organizations that begin to overwhelm a mega nation that fewer care to be associated with anymore until it finally only exists on paper. 

If 1 US soldier charges across the Russian border screaming with bayonet fixed and randomly spraying on full auto, Russia technically could reasonably contemplate attacking New York City as a legitimate reaction. That soldier, if acting on orders, is a representative of all 330 million Americans.  In stark contrast, if one jihadi suicide bomber blows up some US soldiers there may be no clear idea of who to counter-attack or how to find them.

ISIS could set up in Nebraska and call it the Islamic State.  The Kurds could have Kurdistan in Oklahoma if they wanted to.  The Federation of Occupy could just have some moving tent towns.  Any of these polities would have far more real control over their affairs than Canada does.

The emerging neo-tribal, techno-tribal state exists firstly as its people, not as a territory its people are tied to.  They can choose to conceal their presence, influence the politics or not, stand and fight or try to set up elsewhere, they can be urban or rural as they please, gather all together or distribute far and wide across national borders and economic zones alike and still be united. 

The new tribes even if their members few in number and poor have a wealth of strategic options nation-states simply do not have access to.  They trade brute strength for maneuverability and flexibility, advantages that have been super-augmented by the information age.  Making this tradeoff is a winning strategy when nuclear weapons make massed brute force much less decisive than it used to be. 

It should have been immediately clear the old ways were over when US forces could not reconquer all of Korea after they decisively defeated the Chinese in combat or why the US could not simply crush North Vietnam or even shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply lines that crossed international boundaries without serious political consequences.

Since then, organizations that have adapted to the post-nuclear, post-agriculturalist, post-colonial rules have met with astonishing success despite their relatively small sizes and limited resources.  Meanwhile, the nation-states have grown ever more sclerotic and impotent even as they dump infinite wealth into weapons systems that just sit there as their roads, hospitals, and power grids crumble.

The old nations are now easily outmaneuvered by both the globalists who manage the economic zones and by the techno-tribalists.  It is now a question of who ends up with the upper hand in a 4th generation age.  The new tribes began their rise as a counter to nation-states hobbled by the threat of nuclear weapons.  Now their fluid nature makes them suited to challenge an economic colonialism that is also nebulous by design.

The Problems of Secession and Dissolution

Frustrated dissidents often speak in favor of some kind of secession.  Sometimes they wish California seceded, other times they wish there was a new Southern Confederacy or just some kind of “White ethnostate” carved off from the rest of the country.  They also like to call for a dissolution of the United States.  They are tired of being stuck in a cosmopolitan declining empire.  Escape starts to seem like the best, easiest, most equitable solution.  The truth is there’s no easy way out.

Firstly, allowing the secession of California would be idiotic and disastrous.  The nation would be letting go of its best seaports, best farmland, best tourism, best economic productivity, its greatest cultural output and for what in return?
The peoples who took over California would be lavishly rewarded for their subterfuge and treason.  Such an easy victory for them would not mean peace in our time.  It would only embolden their advances into a crumbling empire that has signaled a pathetic unwillingness to defend itself.  If people think the US border is bad now, imagine if the whole length and width of California were added to it.

Independent California would be a hostile enemy nation constantly conspiring against the USA.  If we cynically suggest that’s no different than now, let’s consider this Californian state would be free to make its own foreign policy.  They would be natural allies of China.

Even if we imagine only limited city states ended up seceding instead of the entire state, they’d all have Chinese military bases on them in no time to guarantee their security.  And in a little time more, they’d magically end up with nukes so they could be North Koreas in America extorting the rest of the country for electricity and water.  The USA would never again have a whole continent to itself unchallenged by any other major power.  Any sort of Californian independence would go down as one of the greatest geo-political blunders in history.

The idea of secession from the USA is little better.  Cynics like to say we are oppressed and abused by the government now.  Imagine what level of abuse becomes possible if the dissidents are all in a new country the US doesn’t even have to pretend to rule.  They could impose sanctions, foment regime changes, send drone strikes while chuckling to themselves at how their opponents were kind enough to be easy targets in a perfect kill-zone.  Volunteering to be a smaller, weaker, nation right by a greater and more powerful one is dumb and disastrous.  

The secessionists would be deluded if they thought they’d be part of the legitimate world order just like Canada.  They’d be shocked how quick there would be UN resolutions declaring their new country a “rogue state.”  Aid from the “international community” would not be forthcoming.  Perhaps other “rogue states” around the world would send money and weapons but the result would just be a prolonged, bloody, pointless guerilla conflict for an increasingly isolated and impoverished territory.

Some might propose the peaceful separation of the United States into its consituent parts.  They’d be foolish though to think this arrangement would stay peaceful.  We can look at the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a good example.  Some parts of the old empire are bound to be more powerful than others if they are not divided up with the balance of power in mind.  Then the greatest remaining state constantly conspires against the weaker states surrounding it. 

We must also consider how alliances would fall into place.  Perhaps a New Confederacy and Midwest Republic would get along but would find themselves trapped in the pincer of hostile coastal states where more wealth is concentrated.  Canada would align with the remnants of the establishment powers while Mexico and the Narco-States would be opportunistic.

Of course, powers from other continents would have their proxy machinations in the divided states of America.  They would more likely support the Coastal Nations since so many of their investments are located in the major cities and because many are already members of the globalist empire.  Futhermore, just as in the US Civil War, the establishment alliance would likely end up with most of the naval power and be able to deny the Red America alliance access to its own international allies. 

The Red federation might even be allowed to exist so long as it dutifully sent its raw commodities to the coasts but it would never be allowed to grow too high or have the wrong sorts of leaders without being deftly pruned back.  In the end, flyover country would still be flyover country and the coastal cosmopolites wouldn’t even have to waste any time governing it anymore.  It would be like a very large Panama.

Thus even the dissolution of America would be another failed attempt to keep postponing problems that must be confronted and solved.  One empire and way of life must achieve total victory.  If the power of the Imperial Capital were completely broken, its international empire would unravel soon after.  If only weakened, the combined weight of the world’s liberal democratic, blank slatist regimes would reinforce it and slowly strangle all opposition once and for all.

One of the most common things right wing people say is “We just want to be left alone.”  There’s no such thing as being left alone.  A polity either has enough power to defend itself or it is subjugated by a stronger power.  Only on a North American continent where opposition was relatively weak after the early 19th century could such a notion be seriously thought of. Just imagine how expecting to be left alone would sound to Polish or Ukrainians?
The trucon cuckservative fantasy of noble retreat into wilderness fallout shelters must be tossed in the trash once and for all.  It is a pathetic, self-pitying, cowardly, failed idea.  Any successful group must completely focus on objectives that lead to decisive victory.

For the dissidents this lies in adopting the 4th generation mentality in every way.  The 19th century nation-state is a strategic liability in the 21st.  Worse, it is an obsolete political unit outside of a few major centers of power.  The US does not invade Canada, for example, because it has no need to.  Canada is already an integrated department of the economic empire.  It is better to forget about the hollow formality of lines on a map and instead operate within established cultural, legal, and political structures—and as in jiu jitsu—use the opponent’s own limbs and leverage against him while offering no easy way to hit back. 

The default ultimate goal should be to retain the entire territory of the US. Entertaining the idea of secession or dissolution is the reverse of how we should be thinking.

It should be incumbent on hostile and invasive groups to leave if they are displeased, not us.  Those allowed to stay would understand they live here at the good will of their generous hosts with no ability to participate in politics, finance, or any part of the state.  They would from then on be 2nd in line after core tribal members.

Worshiping White Women Is A Losing Strategy For the Dissident Right

One of the most frequent topics I see in the manosphere and alt-right is paeans to the superior desirability White women.  Alongside the writing are those same pictures of Baltic women in ethnic costumes no one wears for real anymore.  Then in the same breath I see rants about how these same women have terrible princess attitudes and are totally unsuitable for long term relationships or motherhood.  Then the next article on x site is always outrage that Blacks or Muslims are abusing White women.  What are they trying to accomplish by this?  Do they think their precious White women are going to come rushing back into their patriarchal arms in response to this rhetoric?  Do they think this will inspire other men?

These guys are prostrating themselves for the privilege of defending women who are not theirs.  They are trying to raise the status of women who are already looking down their noses from a mile-high pedestal.  This kind of foolishness played a significant role in making White Nationalism 1.0 a laughingstock.  There are millions of White men out there who have been frivorced, pounded down by the HR ladies at work, or just want a nice girlfriend.  Trying to talk to them about protecting the poor beautiful White wimminz is astonishingly tone deaf.  What the dissidents should be talking about is how they will help raise the artificially low status of ordinary White men.

On a primal level, any movement is successful because enough people are convinced they will get higher status.
The alt-right has been successful so far because it is the first group in decades to dare promote a positive self-image for Euro-Americans.  A people who have lived all their lives in a prison of collective guilt are amazed when sunlight they forgot even existed starts pouring in through a crack in the cold, damp rock walls.  It is a mistake though, to think heaping yet more praise on the women is part of the process of revival.

Women by their very natures are not truly members of any people.  They are heavily selected by nature to smoothly transition from one tribe to another whether by marriage or warfare.  White knighting is such a destructive force for nations because women have no nation.  They do not care where the high status men come from and they happily absorb the language and customs of wherever they happen to end up.   That blond-haired, blue eyed goddess who can do no wrong orgasms just as hard with the swarthy Mongol who burnt her village and slew all her Darwininan loser brothers.

The cuckish impulse to perpetually build up and defend feral White women

-Raises their value even higher, ensuring their fertility plummets even lower.
-Pushes away millions of White men who would otherwise be receptive.  Any idea that proposes sexual limitations on men who already have collective blue-balls and no hope of marriage or family is stone cold dead on arrival.
-Fosters a “one drop rule” that helps push even 3/4 white people into the coalition of the fringes, where they become a natural leadership class—making minority organizations far more dangerous than they otherwise would be.

Worship and protectiveness towards White women not only fails to win them back, this beta orbiter behavior only earns their contempt.  If the dissidents offer status to the men and engage in the conquest of hostile tribes, the woman problem solves itself.  In turn, men who sense they will get more sex and power are willing to pursue victory to the ends of the earth.

In this process, the bizarre Anglo-Saxon imposition of feminine race chastity onto men has to be discarded.  As long as humans have existed, the conquerers mate with the defeated people’s women.  Successful tribes want to control their pool of women but also let their Y chromosomes drift far and wide like dandelion seeds, if for no other reason as a pressure valve for internal tensions.  Then the mixed people who result all but beg to be janissaries and spies for the ruling tribe rather than defacto retainers of sacred minorities.  Then, over time, every generation is less “ethnic” than the last as the highest status group biologically wins each round.

In any case, we will know the alt-right has won when White male cuck porn is a popular genre and everyone tries to identify as Euro-American if they are 1/4 Euro and the Euros have stopped boasting about being 1/32nd Indian.

Podcast with Rob Stark: Status Mechanics and Alt-Right Aesthetics

Robert Stark talks to Giovanni Dannato about the Mechanisms of Social Status

Rob Stark deserves substantial credit in recent series of posts I have written on the sexual market and status as key forces in societies.  He likes to make suggestions and we’ll bounce some ideas off each other.  The result has often been ideas I deem worth developing in a post and which Rob sees sufficiently of interest for the next podcast.  I was actually reluctant at first to write on the sexual market again since that is a subject that has been well-covered in the dissident sphere many times over by people far better qualified to comment than I am.  But I came to realize discussing the matter with Rob that almost all treatments of the subject takes place on the individual level, rather than the macro-societal level.  Or, rather if the larger scale is mentioned, it’s to suggest how the individual could do better(i.e. expating to Eastern Europe.)  So then I agreed with him it was an area worth working on.
With the status and high school article, Rob shared useful sources on the subject such as Vincent Law’s article criticizing Chad Nationalism(linked to in high school article).  High school hadn’t been the first example of status systems on my mind so I credit both Rob Stark and Ulric Kerensky in helping to inspire that focus.  The subject kept coming up with them and around the web until I realized something about it was at the very heart of American culture.
Writing is a solitary endeavor requiring hours alone and self-motivation but I have found in recent months that discussion and collaboration are enjoyable parts of the creative process.

Sexual Markets:
The Macro-Sexenomics of Female Beauty
Macro-Sexenomics: Female Beauty Dysgenics in Modern Society

Status:
The Mechanics of Status
High School and Status in America

Aesthetics:
The Social Cosmology
The Alt-Sphere Should Embrace Culture and Aesthetics

All Focus on 2018 Midterms

There will be periodic excitement and panic but that should not distract from the next strategic bottleneck: the 2018 midterms.  Pretty much everything going on in politics should be seen in the context of the upcoming elections.  Last year, I predicted the next major step after Trump’s victory would be to somehow bring populist candidates into congress against establishment resistance.  To my relief, we are already seeing the first challengers step up and so far the support they need seems to be there.

It is tempting to fixate on the president, but he has been mostly neutralized until he has more support from within the system.  I will assume for now he’s not going to commit obvious political suicide by signing an illegal immigrant amnesty and what we’re seeing is more showmanship to get people angry and energized.  This posturing is hurting him, but with no good moves available, he may be gambling it will hurt congress more and keep things in turmoil for everyone.

Since Trump has little actual power in the government, the most meaningful litmus test is whether he acts to increase his power.  We will know he is still serious if he fully backs GOP challengers leading up to midterms.  Failing that, we can conclude with a high degree of confidence that he has resigned himself to spending his retirement as a ceremonial figurehead.

So far, it is promising that he has steadily distanced himself from Ryan, McConnell, and the GOPe since they humiliated him on the senate floor by getting his hopes up and then immediately sinking the healthcare debate.  I have also noticed Trump has spent far less time in a White House controlled by the permanent bureaucracy and the pentagon.  It is encouraging that the frequency of leaks has dwindled ever since he started shifting his base of operations.  Now, in the coming months, he needs to endorse candidates like Kid Rock.

As the mood gets doomier and gloomier I hear more people say “we can’t vote our way out of this.”  They are right that the underlying problems are systemic but if we are persistent we will find the political process is still useful enough.  In any case, there is no reason to allow the establishment free control over any battlefield.

People tend to forget what everybody accepted as common sense just a few months ago.  This human cognitive weakness makes it easy for us to forget the strategic value of gaining every political advantage only to have nothing happen.  In less than a year, the public attitude toward government has shifted from cautious, fading reverence to outright cynicism and disgust.  Even “normies” are starting to discuss whether this democracy is still viable.  The importance of this shift should not be underestimated.  From the perspective of a dissident, discrediting the edifice of hostile rulers is nearly as good as taking over the system.

So if we are patient and can ignore distractions and drama, we keep pressing until either the populists finally gain political traction or the entire system is shown to be a sham.  Either of those outcomes is a big loss for the ruling establishment.

Update 9/17/17: I hardly wrote about Trump needing to help friendly populist candidates only to discover he’s actually attacking them by campaigning for Luther Strange in Alabama!  If this nonsense persists, it will sink him as surely as an amnesty deal.
Acting directly against his own self-interest means that Trump is, for now, effectively a puppet.
Update: 9/26/17: Trump’s backing of Strange came across as rather half-hearted and he also said good things about Moore.  It looks like Trump is powerless for now but thankfully his cooperation in this seems by no wish of his own.  Bereft of any ability to affect the politics, he is now attacking the culture, which is upstream of politics, with devastating effect.  The NFL will never be the same after this.

Alt-Lite and the Weakening of the Merchant Caste

Since Charlottesville, most of the alt-lite has fallen into line and is back to to selling merchandise and maxing out their follower counts.  Nevertheless, a significant segment still seem to be flailing about in fury and confusion.  As I noted in my article about dissident factions, those making money from the spread of ideas tend to be unhappy when the fault lines shift.  The alt-lite’s business lies in being just edgy enough so whenever the edge moves they have to pick up and move their market stalls.  It’s especially annoying when they’ve written a book or a blog only to find it’s suddenly irrelevant.

I knew they would be indignant and that a great deal of this indignation comes from their self-image as the leaders.  But there has been more of a reaction than I was expecting, because like the establishment, they misunderstand their position in a changing ecosystem.  Furious that the core alt-right has asserted control over the rules of engagement there has actually been a foolhardy attempt at a takeover.  Needless to say, this attempt and its aftermath has been one of the most hilarious things I’ve seen on the internet in some time.

A faction best known for selling e-books, t-shirts, and supplement pills actually thought they had the social and political capital to co-opt a movement from those who have real organizations, go out in the streets, and take physical risks.  How is this?  This depth of childish miscalculation just doesn’t make sense until we examine on a cultural level.

Such delusional thinking is more understandable when we realize the mercantile caste of society has been ascendant since at least the French Revolution.  The obsession with equality that we take for granted is connected to the bourgeois attitude that the customer is always right and two men with the same amount of money in their outstretched palms are effectively the same, to be treated the same.  This attitude informs the obsession of the modern world with being popular and inoffensive above all else.  This attitude is so ingrained we run even our personal relationships like businesses.

Concepts like honor and loyalty seem like anachronistic ideas from old stories of knights and samurais, or even the creed of alien species like Klingons.  It has been so long since any other world view held sway, we have have forgotten any other way is possible.

We see a great example when alt-lite personalities discuss the alt-right as a “brand.”  They cannot yet understand anything other than the mass market.  Why would they?  The business of America is business.  The attitudes of the marketplace have dominated the culture of the USA and the entire West for centuries.
When we realize they are going by the rules that have worked for generations which we are all taught our whole lives, it is easier to understand why they are unable to adjust to a changing reality.

The enlightenment itself was a new value system for a rising merchant caste.  It is no coincidence that secularism’s original and eternal enemies are the aristocracy and the priesthood who stood in the way of advancement.  With widespread literacy and the dawn of an industrial revolution the old order of landed nobles backed by priests was obsolete.  Wherever the forces of modernity came into play, the merchants became the new ruling class.  Even Japan which was far away, culturally distant, and not exposed to modernity until much later went through the same developments as everywhere else.
A nobility and bureaucracy dominated by a hereditary warrior caste steadily fell from grace as wealth and influence went to the new captains of industry and commerce.

History has its longer cycles that are greater than the parochial span of a human life.  We reach a point where all the easy gains from colonies and industry have been taken.  In a mature, saturated world, the winnings go to the strongest.  In this kind of a world, warriors and barbarians bound by clans and honor re-emerge with a vengeance.

In our present transactional utopia we think money is the source of power.  The truth is money is a manifestation of power as light and heat comes from the sun.  The light is soon extinguished without its source.  The established merchant princes thought money alone could defeat an unusual challenger in the 2016 election and to their complete astonishment they failed miserably.  Likewise, a faction of the alt-lite thought wealth and popularity alone would be enough to take over an organically-formed group with ardent devotion to a clear mission.  These foolish modern magnates are not unusual in the course of history.
If you read Spandrell’s brilliant series of essays on the Song dynasty, you will learn how a mere 1,000 horse archers was enough to conquer the wealthiest nation on earth—a huge empire of millions.  We can also consider the Italian city states, which relied heavily on mercenary armies.  They were able to fight each other to a draw but when faced with real armies from real countries they never stood a chance.

The fundamental limitation of money is that all the money in the world is worthless to a dead man.  The currency of successful organizational violence is men who are willing to risk their lives.  This is a law of the universe so primal and obvious that the wealthy and the educated are bound to forget it.  As cultures of honor and prestige again take root, the cosmopolitan bourgeois will have to accept that they are no longer the natural ruling class of society just as the lords and the samurai once had to make way for them.  Like their predecessors, they can either accept their proper place in the hierarchy from where they can contribute, or they can go down fighting against the universe itself and maybe leave behind some tragic legends if they’re lucky.