Tag: strongman

Dream Big

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Another long day and another late-night post.  I didn’t see anything on the news-side worth discussing.  The pundits are milking the 50/50 presidential race for all it’s worth.  Trump, Harris!  Nobody knows how it will turn out!  Oh, woe is me!

Well, I’ll be busy right through 11/6 so I can wait for the result or the lack of a result on Election Day.

But what I’m waiting to see is who will step forward and provide real-life solutions for thriving in the post-freedom, post-affluence America.

And maybe I’m looking for something that can’t possibly exist.  But it seems to me that there are shards of the glory that was America strewn across the landscape of this country and if some visionary gathers them up and recombines them into something new but based on the old pattern, then he could assemble a foundation for a resurgent American identity.

Maybe one of the southern states can act as the incubator for some kind of resurgence.  DeSantis has Florida showing signs of taking the lead on questions of freedom and cultural sanity.  And economically it is showing strength.  Or maybe Texas will take the lead.

But that is what needs to happen.  We can no longer expect the United States as a whole to move in the right direction.  Powerful forces have decided to destroy the middle class in support of the looting of the stored-up wealth of this country by the elites.  We have to band together under the leadership of some clear-thinking individual who has a plan for saving the middle class and restoring this country to health.  Who knows?  If he is defeated in November maybe Donald Trump will attempt to fill that role.  That is assuming he isn’t tossed in jail by his enemies.  Or maybe it’ll be a group headed up by Elon Musk and others.  There have already been hints at something like this happening.

I’ll admit I have no proof for this idea.  Maybe nothing will happen and we’ll just drift down the wind toward a larger version of the post-WWII Britain where drab socialist ideas were allowed to turn Britain into a shadow of its former self.

But I think there is still an enormous amount of entrepreneurial dynamism diffused in the people who live here and with the right catalyst very great things could still be achieved.  And so, regardless of whether Trump or Harris is declared the winner in Tuesday’s little passion play, I think the next big development in our society will not be authored by the political establishment but rather targeted against that establishment.

Some will say I’m looking for a strongman; a Caesar.  And in a sense, I am.  But not in the way that Caesar ruled.  Rather I am looking for a man to declare war against the oligarchy that seeks to destroy the middle class.  I’m looking for someone who is plotting an American renaissance.  Someone who can harness the energy that still exists in this country and direct it and concentrate it on the problems that we are currently facing.

That’s a big question mark.  But I like to dream big.

As I Pondered Weak and Weary

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It’s getting close to midnight and I just got home a little while ago.  So, I’ll cudgel my brains for a few minutes and come up with an idea.  Napoleon Bonaparte is the author of the quote of the day (in fact I’ve got a solid month of them together).  And if we look at his era there are some things to think about.  Napoleon came into prominence because a great nation was reduced to chaos by a popular rebellion.  The existing regime foundered and the revolutionary conquerors were totally inept and allowed their movement to spin completely out of control and turn to anarchy.

Well, that’s not where we are now.  But there is a regime running our country that seems to be either unaware of or unconcerned by the impoverishing of the American middle class.  And so far, this regime has suffered essentially no ill effects from this policy.  Our elites and their lackeys are doing great.  Their material condition has never been better.  But I think they underestimate the changes that will occur if the Unted States become Brazil.  I think they assume that things like a stable currency and the personal safety of wealthy people can exist under the conditions they are fostering.  I think if they allow the devolution of the country to continue the way it is currently going that many of the advantages of the American system will quite simply disappear.

I was thinking about Friday’s quote of the day, “Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power.”  They are encouraging anarchy.  But they don’t have a way to insulate themselves from the results of anarchy, not in the last resort.  If we continue to slide toward lawlessness, places like Malibu and Martha’s Vineyard will just be places for organized gangs to swoop down on and pillage.  And what happens when the Mexican kidnapping gangs start snatching the children of millionaires and billionaires?  What if they snatch the grandchildren of George Soros?  Will his defund the police prosecutors turn around and beg the cops to go back to doing their jobs?  Well, even if they wanted to, once things slide too far, it would take draconian methods to fix things again.

And that’s where I was going with this discussion.  Basically, if the elites let things go too far, then the result will probably be a strong man.  He probably won’t be as brilliant a general as Napoleon.  But he will have to be quite ruthless.  How something like that ends up is usually not good.  When a democracy or a republic turns into a despotism it doesn’t typically go back again.  How all of that would go for us is not clear to me.  At this point I’m not particularly optimistic to say the least.  The rapid deterioration over the last twenty years has been so bad that I wouldn’t be surprised that a Harris presidency might be the catalyst that initiates the collapse.

Well, that’s a cheery thought here in the depths of the night.  But this is what happens when I have to work too late.  It encourages black moods.  Tomorrow will be better.  I have this whole weekend off before the two weeks of enslavement finally engulfs me on Monday.  Well, good night.

The Trouble with Being a Pundit

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I follow Curtis Yarvin’s blog posts on his substack called graymirror@substack.com.  Yarvin is a neo-reactionary.  What that means is he believes democracy will be replaced by some kind of monarchy.  But the monarchy he imagines is more like a corporate state where the king is like a CEO.

Yarvin’s posts are enormously long and convoluted.  But he started his latest post with a short discussion of what he says are the three kinds of dissidents.

“There are three kinds of dissidents: (a) anons, (b) pundits who still care what people think, and (c) outsiders who DGAF. All these groups are great; real greatness can be achieved in any of them; and good friends I have in each. But each has its problems.

The problem with (c) is that it’s too hard. It takes a lot of luck to get there and stay there. It’s quite inconsistent with doing anything else with your life—and this under conditions of very mild repression, historically speaking. And the more you succeed, the more dangerous your position becomes. I would recommend the outside way to only one kind of young person: le trustafarian. And it has to really be your calling.

The problem with (a) is that it’s too easy—nothing binds you to reality. The dissident anons create the best art, yet never without some slight sense of playing tennis without the net. Yet this complete, even excessive, artistic freedom is balanced by challenges in opsec that compare only to general aviation. If you are not meticulous enough to fly a Cessna, you are not meticulous enough to shitpost.

The problem with (b) is that you are always policing yourself. Not only do your readers never really know what you really believe—you never really know yourself. In practice, it is much easier to police your own thoughts than your own words. When choosing between two ideas, the temptation to prefer the safer one is almost irresistible. This is a source of cognitive distortion which the anons and outsiders do not experience. (Though anons do suffer something of the opposite, a reflex to provoke.)”

I found this discussion of the problems with the various types of dissidents very helpful.  And it goes a long way to explaining why mainstream pundits are so careful.  There is so much fear of being canceled that they’d rather stand a hundred yards away from the edge of the Overton Window than risk being called a racist.  Surprisingly Tucker Carlson has been an exception.  He comes remarkably close to sounding like someone from the Dissident Right.

What this brings out is the fact that the pundits are aware of these lies.  They know the truth but are afraid to say it out loud.  Which is why as soon as the Overton Window shifts, as it did when Donald Trump spoke out against illegal immigration, these pundits will eventually move forward to somewhere slightly behind the edge.  And that is a cause for hope.  When a time comes when a man who is not afraid to speak the truth gets a platform that the Left can’t dynamite, we will see if the American people are ready to be led in a new direction.

Another interesting thing that Yarvin discusses is what it would take to beat the Deep State at its own game.  Being a monarchist Yarvin sees the solution as the appearance of a strongman.  He hedges a little about what that would look like.  But the names he mentions as historical examples are Cromwell, Caesar and Charlemagne.  Well, none of those names were peaceful characters who worked within the system and made small changes around the edges.  So, he’s talking revolution.  That’s bold talk.  But he says anything less will fail because the Left isn’t kidding around.  That’s something to think about.  His proof is what happened to Donald Trump.  Trump had popular support.  So, the Deep State worked around that support and used a combination of fraud and propaganda to retake the government.  It does show that it will take more than popular support to eliminate the Deep State.  It will take force.  To purge the intelligence agency will take force.  To purge the armed forces will take force.  Not violence but power politics.  You will have to buy off powerful people and then get rid of those powerful people next.  Machiavelli will be the rule book for an operation like this and plenty of people will end up in prison even if things go well.

So, do I think it will take a strongman?  Yeah, I guess I do.  Do I think it would require the end of the republic?  Currently I’m not sure.  I hope not, but I’m not sure.  If a leader arises to displace the Left, would he feel safe only leading for eight years?   Wouldn’t he fear revenge once he left office.  Is it too late for republicanism?  That’s the question.