All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
There is perhaps nothing more interesting than to listen to a superior man talk of what he does not know. He advances slowly, and scarcely puts his foot down without knowing if the ground is solid; he looks for plausible analogies; he tries to attach his ideas to higher and incontestable principles; he always has the tone of looking, never that of teaching; and it often happens that, even if he is mistaken, he leaves a great enough idea of his mental honesty.
Joseph de Maistre
How’s that for optimism!
Well anyway, there’s no snow on the ground and I have a good supply of Christmas cookies thanks to Camera Girl’s indomitable kitchen work ethic.
Regardless of the disorienting weirdness engulfing the world around us we must try to enjoy the holiday season. And I will. So I think I’ll extend myself this morning and try to check off something from my to-do list. Where is that list anyway?
Here’s an image from an earlier part of 2023 that I like.
This is pretty funny but too close to reality.
Scene 1 – White House Residence / 3 a.m.
Biden – What a horrible dream. All those filthy murderous bums kicking me and spitting on me and other things. And after all I’ve done for them. Making it easy for them to get fentanyl. They should be thanking me! Well, this is the last ghost. This should be easy. I’ll just tell him I’ve seen the light and I’ll get another chance. I’ll use the old shmooze.
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – Hello Joe.
Biden – Why aren’t you dressed up as Death? Where’s your hooded cloak?
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – We’ve moved ahead with the times. The “Yet to Come” function is now handled by a clinical team. If you’ll step this way, we’ll begin your appointment with a scan. Lay down on the table and we’ll crank up the power.
Biden – Will it hurt?
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – Well let’s say you’ll notice a tingling.
Biden – Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tingling?
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – Well, maybe a strong tingling. But it’s done.
Biden – What did you find out?
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – We were able to see your future. You serve out a second term and after your death you are buried in a grand mausoleum close to the Jefferson Memorial.
Biden – Hey that sounds pretty good.
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – But two years later all of the green energy infrastructure begins to fail and millions of people freeze to death during an extremely cold winter. A million-man march descends on Washington and tears your monument down and drags your body down to the Capitol and uses it like a pinata until there isn’t much left.
Biden – Well, that’s not so good. Are you sure about that?
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – Yeah, the video was very clear. Would you like to review it?
Biden – No. I’ll take your word. Look, this sounds really bad. Maybe I can mend my ways. Can’t I try to fix things?
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – Normally we’d try to come up with a remediation plan. And help you to stick by it. But we did a search for your soul. And it’s the darnedest thing, but it’s not there. Over the course of decades, it’s completely evaporated. So really there’s no point.
Biden – But how can I have no soul? I’m human. I’m alive. I must have a soul.
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – As best we can figure, you’re working strictly by reflexes. It’s pretty remarkable. For instance, your ability to make up lies is unprecedented for someone who’s not even really there anymore. But in terms of redemption, without a soul the concept has no meaning.
Biden – But what’s going to happen to me after death.
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – There have been cases like this in the past. After your body dies, your soul will recondense and quickly end up in its appropriate home.
Biden – Do you know where that will be?
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – You’re kidding right?
Biden – Well, you never know. Accidents happen right?
Ghost of Biden Yet to Come – I’d pack for warm weather if I were you. Bye Joe.
Exit
The first among the sciences is that of statesmanship. That cannot be learnt in academies. No great minister, from Suger to Richelieu, ever occupied himself with physics or mathematics. The genius of the natural sciences makes impossible that other kind of genius, which is a talent unto itself.
Joseph de Maistre
This feeling of late-stage Pax Americana can best be summed up with Heinlein’s thoughts on Democracy. The Polus is so stratified at this point that we are all going in different directions. A nation, as a group, cannot continue unified like this.
“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
This seems to track what’s going on with the Colorado disqualification of Trump’s presidential run. It’s a good read. But of course depressing.
My favorite neo-corpora-monarchist provides one of his maximalist essays on why technology isn’t going to save mankind and in fact may do the opposite.
“Johannesburg and Kinshasa have the same technology level as Palo Alto and Berkeley.
…
The implicit premise of techno-optimism is that technology drives civilization. To fix any and all of the problems of society, just get out of the way of technology.
Across history, do we find this premise to be true?
…
It seems clear that the Third World is, in the medium term at least, humanity’s future. The barriers that separate the First and Third Worlds are geographical accidents or legacies of the 20th or even 19th century. Everywhere they are visibly crumbling.
In even the medium term, the problem of curing the Third World becomes equivalent to the problem of preserving the First World from whatever is ailing the Third World. Indeed it is not hard to find recognizable patches of Third World inside the First. If this does not strike you as the most important historical problem of our period, more travel may be indicated—or at least, just read a Paul Theroux book.”
And then it goes down hill from there:
“Historically, civilizations of last men tend to fall when they are overrun by barbarians. Technology can artificially forestall this fate—but as Hannah Arendt put it, every new generation is its own barbarian invasion. Barbarians may not even be needed. In the end, Walter Benjamin prophesied, the last man will simply put himself to death:
Humanity’s self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.
Indeed, if present trends continue, “voluntary human extinction” seems likely to become a live political issue within our children’s lifetimes. You laugh.”
Merry Christmas from Curtis Yarvin? Interesting but pessimistic and long read.
When confronted with the fresh plagiarism accusation the besieged Harvard president was heard to plaintively ask, “Did I do that?”