Recently I read another great essay by Christopher Cook, in it he makes the following statements:
“With each day, more people are ready to begin building something new.”
“But what?”
One day in the future, I may take a stab at giving an opinion to his question in full . In short, I want a world where consent is a commonly shared value that matters. No qualifiers, no exclusions. It cannot be implied. A world where every human being has inherent God given rights, and if governments are to exist, for them to be legitimate and just, it must at the least match the aforementioned criteria.
Hopefully it will become evident by the end of this essay, the significance of “building something new” is perhaps more important at this moment than “what.”
In addition to answering that question, “but what?”, in order for an author to be something other than being an idealist, they must explain at least an idea as to how we get there from where we are now.
So how do we get there?
Now that is a complicated question on multiple levels. On one hand, any plan of action that moves us from Point O – for Orwell – in the direction of Point L – for Liberty- would need to be well considered regardless of how Point O is perceived. I am not addressing that plan in this essay either.
On the other hand, what if our perception of Point Orwell is not in line with reality? In order for our ideas of transmutation, or divergence, to work, we must understand where we are at presently, or at the least have a solid grip. If not and we press blindly into battle or separation towards the direction of desired change, we can easily be recuperated back towards point Orwell, as the system I am about to discuss is one that has built in self-protecting mechanisms that are very successful at managing dissent.
As Frederic Bastiat famously said:
“The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. “
If we do not anticipate the battlespace, particularly the structure and reach of the leviathan, as well as the modern non-kinetic tactics I have previously discussed, we will not be able to defend our ideas, no matter what they are. The common man throughout history has always found himself several steps behind the strategies of power, blinded by their camouflage. It is no different in the modern world with our technocratic administrative state, perhaps even more so.
So where do we find ourselves here at Point O?
Now that is a really complicated question, as well as being the main topic of this hopefully brief (relatively) essay. I will give you meat, potatoes, and some references. (Edit: it is not so brief but still general. This could be 100k words. )
So where are we?
For those of us outside of wonderland, Is that not the elusive mystery we all chase? What is it really that is going on? Whose head really wears the crown?
Some have gone as far as to put together diagrams:
Show me the man who claims to know for sure and I will show you a fool. This includes this author. To even approach these questions, we must start with more basic ones such as what do we know for sure to be true? What is trustworthy and what is not? Do we believe a thing because it is comfortable or because it is right? I began these questions over a decade ago, and what I have found is that we do not know much. The pictures we can form with what we can gather paints an image of social reality that is far different from the one presented by the dominant narrative. The last line is what I considerer the Least Common Denominator, that is the basement level agreement that all outside of wonderland seem to agree upon. Essentially, our perception is being manipulated constantly with lies and little of what is commonly understood by mass society is true. We have no real power in this system, our consent is implied, things are done to us and on behalf of us that we would reject if given opportunity, most of which we are never aware of. Beyond that, the disagreements begin right away as to what that means and how far it goes. This is paralyzing.
So, when I ask, what exactly is this starting point to a better world that we presently find ourselves?
That depends upon who you ask.
As I will explain, I think the first step of the solution will be the same regardless of what Point O is. We must build something new. If you and I agree on that we are not antagonistic, and that must matter. We need not make enemies with one another if we seek the same horizon. Too often folks who dissent against the system cannibalize each other. I do not seek that here.
I say this because I sit on the minority side of an opinion regarding the current vitality of the state. It seems that most of us who want to build something new believe the state is falling apart, like the collapse of Rome. However, a much smaller number, myself included, believe it is merely undergoing a designed metamorphosis. While this does not change the least common denominator (LCD) nor the fact that we all want to build something new, our belief in the status of its vitality could blind us to its machinations against our designs. Meaning, as Bastiat warned, we will not be able to defend our good cause.
Hopefully the intent of my essay will be viewed as an attempt to protect our flank instead of a volley against talented thinkers and authors whose opinions on this particular subject I disagree with. Of course, I could be wrong.
This past week a conversation I had with Chris in the comments section of his article, “Is Trump Hate Desensitizing People to a Final Solution Against MAGAs?”, that inspired me to write this. In fact, he nudged me a bit, otherwise I may not have taken the time. But I like to write. It organizes my thoughts and is cathartic. And maybe someone can use them.
During our conversation, I had more or less implied that the public disintegration of the state was inevitable, and its controlled demolition essentially has a designed landing spot.
He then asked me what I thought of Anarchonomicon’s article written by Kulak. Particularly the fact she believes civil disobedience might spread in ways they cannot control. Here is the following article which I do suggest reading.
The following is an expanded version of my thoughts that I shared with Chris.
To begin with, I think the author did a good job writing that piece and I feel kinship in the statement of “doom on the extreme near-term horizon… but on the mid-century horizon I am optimistic.” Likewise, I feel mutual understanding of the system when they said liberal democracy is totalitarian fascism even though I use different words for it. For those of us outside of the “narrative” (hyperreality) we do not have a vocabulary to describe what is transpiring. Most of our political terminology is antiquated and does not describe the relationships we currently see. I have discussed this previously as it relates to the national security state, what many generally refer to as the “deep state”. (Although it is usually presented as a significantly watered down version from what I present.) To many the deep state is usually sub-institutional and is either rogue members of an intelligence institution or a particular institution that has become corrupted and has partisan aims and motivations such as tinkering with elections. While I agree they will often tinker with elections both as standard operating procedure in regard to foreign policy as well as domestically in the managed democracy / managed populism scheme, it is much, much more than that. With that being said, I try to remember that and not nitpick another thinker who calls it something different from myself because we do not have universal terminology here. We can give it an official name after we bury it. Hopefully.
Now, to the point of his question about what I think about her concept of the state not being able to control a civil disobedience cascade...
She might be right. I find almost everything she said as being plausible. But I disagree because I think something else is going on here. This is the meat of what I seek to explain in this essay.
Again, I think the author makes a good case and I do agree it is possible. They were spot on with the Roosevelt and Hitler comparisons. Most people are painfully unaware of the march of global progressivism and humanism, especially the fact that it began no later than the mid-19th century in practice and much older in philosophical inception. The scientific management of society, which was a concept reflected in Taylorism, was used to apply these political philosophies systematically onto society, thereby developing what we now call mass society. Many have even called this a religion. This is part of the concept written by Crowley in his “Occult Technology of Power”. Essentially, it scientifically protects upper management, the real elite. The possibilities for such a system to arise in America under the theoretical protection of the Constitution was made possible by judicial review produced by the Supreme Court case Marbury V. Madison in 1803. This helped make actions by power legally malleable by bending the interpretation of the constitution to make them fit. Lysander Spooner was right, the constitution has no authority.
I also give respect to the author for mentioning Hayek. As far as people not knowing how it works.. The technocratic state was designed to scientifically manage society, it truly should be plug and play as long as not too many people, particularly mid-level, go too far outside of protocols. Nobody knows how to build a pencil right… So yes, it could be possible for the system to be run by complete dolts. (To a degree it is and can be) The interesting thing about modern power is that it operates like the manufacturing of a pencil, as does the state. Someone has blueprints; another is drawing them. But I will return to and expand upon this system of weaponized scientific management as I move forward.
The author also believes that such a system could collapse with attacks on the public-school systems (fires), the IRS... or the power grid. I do not disagree on principle, but I disagree on the reasons as to why that is. Particularly, because it is supposed to collapse at the appointed time. Which I will get to.
Years ago, I agreed with the author, thinking the system was a train gone off the rails. At the time I believed the system may be able to be remedied through a Washington like Caesar in the White House or a Convention of States. But those days have long past as my understanding has grown both through study and lived experience. However, it was the book “A brief history of the future” written by Jacques Attali that made me consider another possibility. Of course, that book was just the beginning of the rabbit hole, but it helped me see that nation-states are merely indexing firms for the global elite. To that point...
Some people, like the author, thinks the system is too weak to enforce its own totalitarianism, using the Canadian trucker convoy as an example, stating “the truckers won” because Canada caved. But did they though? This is how the dialectic works, by warming the water up slowly to a boil while we sit unaware. While I hope you get the analogy, it is more of two steps forward one step back. Eventually the system zigs and zags enough in the same direction it gets to where it wants to go, conditioning us bit by bit along the way. We just have to consider it on longer scales than a few years. This is because as I have mentioned in one of my books as well as in an earlier discourse, time and legacy planning are weapons of the upper patrician class, whereas the rest of us plebeians have a hard time comprehending and defending against agendas that play out in time. It isn’t a slippery slope; it is a temporal weapon.
Canada pushed what it needed to as far as it was necessary at the time. When it decides, or when it is instructed to do so, it will push it further than before. Also, the next time that happens the system will have learned from its mistakes during the previous push and neuter that type of opposition. (One reason why Trucks are going to be able to be remote disabled) They bend but don’t break us as we are led progressively into open totalitarianism. We already are living the inverted kind. (Sheldon Wolin “Democracy INC”) as well as the covert kind. (Scott Horton “Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Warfare”) Of course, by the time it is open they will have redefined what that means to not only make it digestible, but desirable.
There is a clear divergence between my opinion on this overall situation than most people I read on the stack. (among those who realize the system is not as its rhetoric presents) The thought cascade goes two ways. The first is the person who believes the system is weak and is coming apart such as the author. The author says “... how fragile and functionally impotent the Government security apparatus is even to even secure itself.” They believe what we are witnessing, including the “theatre kid occupied government” and a “welfare state that is on the precipice of insolvency”, is essentially a product of the generations who inherited the post WW2 state that “did not know how it works”. - The second person believes that while all of that might be true, the system is merely molting into something far stronger. This is what I suspect. (albeit much more than a hunch forms my opinion)
Most people in the former category see a system that appears broken and in need of repair OR a system that is broken because people are incompetent. This error I suspect is similar to those who think the public school system is not functioning because children are not really being educated, when in reality it is doing exactly what it was designed to do. (Charlotte Iserbyt “The deliberate dumbing down of America”) The fault lies in the perception of its utility and use, whereas a person views the school system through what they perceive the motives to be, including through the lens of their own ethics/morality, instead of what it is or could be in reality. This camouflage allows it to hide in plain sight.
It took significant competence to build this system. (Carol Quigley – “The Anglo-American Establishment”) It still takes significant competence to operate on a particular level far above us. Yet, mass society needs to perceive it as broken for them to have their consent manufactured for change. To a degree, the system does need to be broken in places, similar to an enemy playing wounded. Think of the VA, DMV, et cetera. (Not to mention some problems only affect certain class of citizens... like immigration or abortion. Useful wedge issues but irrelevant to the power elite.) Also, for us to accept a new system, whatever it is, the current system would need to collapse. Which brings me to...
They want it to. I do not think there was ever any plan to pay back our debt. Kulak presents the notion that welfare states will not survive; I say they were never meant to. America has been used as a sledgehammer and financier by those who own her, the way one would use an unlimited credit card to rack up debt that will get charged off without consequences, as well as being the bully who gets everyone in line, the same bully that eventually gets put away as a scapegoat. In a way, this is what Attali was referring to in his” A brief History of the Future” written in 2006 that I mentioned earlier. America has been used as the driving force for the global liberal democracy and I suspect when it falls the system that rises will say it is beyond such imperial agendas… when in reality it is its newly formed pupa.
When we look at it this way it is easy to see why they would take the power grid down, which would kill tens of millions, or collapse the school system to fires, or attack the IRS. (which I do not advise doing) Civil disobedience does not have to be contained or controlled if the response is to scale. Mass casualty or over time. An example: de-modernizing the east coast by removing electricity would decimate the population, especially since the state captured agriculture during the 19th century when food production and distribution started to become centralized. Most would starve, or die of a lack of clean water. Dysentery would return. Treatable medical conditions such as diabetes would be a death sentence. After turning off the switch, return with a modern Army after ten years, perhaps after only one year, and they would encounter a wasteland… there would not be much left. (While fictional and slightly optimistic, the “One Second After” series by William Forstchen is a good primer to a grid down scenario)
This can only be considered if we do not project our morality and motives onto what we observe. In fact, if we look hard at the motives and plans for a planetary empire (like Attali, Rockefeller, Quigley and many many others have said over the past century) we will understand the old ways must die first and they are not beyond killing you and everyone you love to obtain it. It also must be understood they do not see themselves as a villain, but saviors.
In my article, “It’s a Trap”, I mention the sentient world simulators and human terrain systems that are being used to predict and mold our behavior. To summarize, I think we are witnessing a methodical collapse of the system, perhaps even the nation itself, into pre-determined algorithmic cascades. So, if society is a building, they have weakened the correct supports to bring her down while managing our fall and landing. This isn’t incompetence, it is controlled demolition of the old-world order. Again.
I previously said this system could be plug and play, but there is another level. The thing about the technological security state, they are the actual administrators, not the people we generally see in public. The people that are plug n play... have as much agency as anyone else who operates within a protocological system. This includes the sitting president. Everything is scaled up. Voters are provided false choice architecture between controlled parties, presidents are provided managed choice architecture by the NatSec state, which likewise operates the think tanks and relevant NGO’s. What controls the top of the NatSec state is a topic in itself. So, it is entirely possible all plug and plays could be dolts. They do not do much anyways. Unless a person really believes that Biden, or even Trump, are making these decisions on their own. (they have minor agency) Of course, this is foolish, and it isn’t new. The same can be said about Trudeau, Macron, Sunak et cetera, it is the same system. It seems to me that sometime post WW2 around the time M. Stanton Evans wrote “The Liberal Establishment” in 1965, the real remaining resistance in the American political system was flushed along with any anti-new deal republicans such as Goldwater. Perhaps Kennedy was the last president who sat above all security clearances, but the ones that followed had appendages of the administrative security state above their station. While I suspect this was true long before Kennedy, it was certainly true afterwards.
The operation of the administrative state could not be subject to too much disturbance every four years due to political whims, so while electoral management was already present by the nature of the system of scientific management, it became much more organized beginning in the 1960’s after the political parties and the regulatory system they exist in was captured and entrance to them became exclusionary.
Continuing, the foundational process of modern managed populism involved the capturing of the two main political parties through regulatory capture, including the deployment of stealth authoritarianism ( Stealth Authoritarianism ) , lawfare, as well as the capture of the plethora of tools that can restrict ballot and media access, which render other political parties as either impotent, irrelevant or as electioneering weapons that benefit the two primary wings of the uniparty either through consensus building or for recuperation. (Guy Debord “The Society of the Spectacle”)
The scaffolding of the system that holds the two parties is what provides the protocols of their available actions. So, members, chairs and politicians must more or less conform to those standards or get pushed out. The parties are not political philosophies after all, just mere rotating platforms that are in a perpetual state of change as needed. (This is why a 90s democrat looks much like a 2010’s republican. The change happens slowly, and people are conditioned to change with it while the who system staggers in the same direction) While there is some agency within the parties, it only affects things that serve as political wedge issues for members of mass society. The rest is theatrical, with varying degrees of awareness. (Some representatives are just useful conditioned idiots playing a role within a protocol, others know what they do.) Things involving the Federal Reserve, international banking, foreign policy, international relations, wall street, technology et cetera… are never really up for discussion and any “public debate” is created to help manufacture consent and/or build regulatory capture and/or protectionism mechanisms.
Part of this process can be observed by watching the white papers and policy positions coming from think tanks and NGO’s whose agendas show up years before they get put into action by the presently selected (elected) political placeholders. A brief history of the future indeed. (Think homeland security, Iraq invasion, Covid19… and many more)
This should not be looked at as though this is an anomaly. This is how the system was designed to receive input for legislative and policy purposes by those higher than, and outside of, our public facing government apparatus. A general understanding of this process can be gleaned from the book “The Managerial Revolution” written by James Burnham in 1941.
Hold the following thoughts and examples in your mind from the next few paragraphs as we move forward. In our technological society of scientific management (“The Technological Society “by Jacques Ellul in 1954 - he also wrote “Propaganda” which is worthwhile) the jargon for academic subjects is highly specific where particular words are only used by those in the know, acting essentially as a gatekeeper. One example of gatekeeping jargon from my formally trained profession is the word Pharmacokinetics. Many of “us” will assume you do not understand Pharmacology if you are unfamiliar with the word. While this is not necessarily true to a degree, it informs the audience of your knowledge or lack thereof in ways that you may or may not realize without being trained in the jargon.
So, as our human knowledge base grows, new words are formed to create those partitions. This is a constantly moving process, where what is cutting edge is only available to be communicated by a few. In time that filters down to where it is found in textbooks, which are always behind the leading edge. Naturally, this process is inflationary to our base vocabulary.
Consider when this managerial technique is applied to a system such as government. This system will be forever partitioned into smaller managerial elements. Just like with growing specific jargon, this naturally makes the process inflationary which allows the government’s administrative system to grow indefinitely by design. With each new partition, those that are in the “know”, or those at the top of the pyramid, keep themselves separated from the lower rungs. After all, plebeians cannot be talking about Pharmacology. Hopefully you get the point.
Now this is the important element this I seek to convey to you as a reader. Along the way of expanding, the system re-creates its own protocols. Program A no longer answers to just B, rather it also answers to newly developed Program C. Program B also answers to C.
Later D is created to manage C.
Later F is created to manage D.
Or a field of D’s.
Eventually A becomes obsolete while F is on the cutting edge, of either jargon… or security clearances.
As it moves forward, B may become obsolete. Later C. It is a process that is about scale and speed.
Where it exactly started is up for debate, but it has long transcended national boundaries, as governments are mere indexing firms for the global managerial elite. (“Giants – The Global Power Elite” by Peter Phillips) In such systems, things become obsolete as the technique moves far enough past them. We live in an all-things Global world that both deploys scientific management and syncretism which seeks to synthesize uniformity through assimilation. National sovereignty is like a word that no longer really matters and is too general to fully inform, like program A. It is akin to pointing at a Eastern Luber and calling it a grasshopper thinking you have the best description of it. The system re-sets its protocols as it expands forever upward while those below are often unaware.
To me, ALL Presidents are glorified public notaries, middle managers operating within their protocols, produced by the dialectic of managed populism. Eventually as the system expands previous partitions become obsolete, even expendable. Companies to countries (minimal differences) eventually including the United States itself. While the USA may not go away entirely, eventually it will come to be openly spoken of as part of a larger federation, a global community, even more so than now.
I am not doom saying or black pilling. This is just the logical progression of the managerial revolution. It was, it is, a brilliant globalization strategy. Albeit evil.
How far along we are now is a difficult question because we cannot see the leading edge, we can only see slightly behind our middlemen presidents and the discarded remnants in the past. However, we might very well be close to a rather large fork in the road where something becomes obsolete.
Going obsolete can be very painful.
Where some people see the system as being weak and collapsing, I perceive it as purging an old shell.
With all of that being said, and I could say much more, I could be in error to a degree. Although I know It well enough to not be describing it as a mere grasshopper, as per a previous analogy. However, I am not uncertain that the system is not weak, I simply think people do not really understand the reach and scope of the system in which we live. Having worked in state capitals and DC, people think what they see on CNN and FOX is indicative of the actual power structure. It isn’t. Many mention the deep state, but they perceive it as merely something that acts under the surface to elect one president over another. I think this is small thinking. Politics is their bread and circus. They understand the technology of culture and have applied the same managerial techniques to it as well. Social and cultural engineering is ambient. Our social realities are mere collages of engineered mythologies, created by the diaspora of global corporate, entertainment, and media hegemony.
Most modern culture is but mere performance, if not bland and corporatized, inauthentic, and unnatural creations. From Edward Bernays (Propaganda) and selling us lifestyles, through the 60’s cultural revolutions (“Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon” by David McGowan) , the national security state has conquered the technology of culture by developing the ability to create and mold it. This is REAL POWER. They do not have to censor what you say when they design how you think, what you value, what you respect and what you shame. Although there is significant utility in making mass society believe you are trying to censor them, going as far as doing so to be convincing. This of course removes the reality of being totally immersed in a protocological life from birth to death, conditioning our thought architecture much in the way Chomsky spoke of controlling the range of acceptable public debate. It is easier for people to imagine what they see instead of what they cannot, which means it is useful to also manufacture their imagination including that which they can dissent against. What this all essentially means is that the deep state IS the state. Albeit, what little we see is just the lowest tendrils of its own supranational managerial cascade.
To that end, it must be understood that the system creates and/or manages crisis, so what we are seeing now with “social and economic collapse” is the system pushing out the old and obsolete, from economics to values, changing into whatever it is going to be… and whatever the molting presents... it was designed and is part of the managerial revolution. This is one reason why I think it is possible they want a civil war. At least the theatrics of one.
While all of what I mentioned in the last paragraph remains true, consider the fact there is a built-in problem or “bug” (perhaps a desired one) to be managed in this system that the architects are well aware of, which will lead to public friction. Making things obsolete is just part of the managerial formula and this mechanism causes real problems here on the ground level where people who have to pay bills and play by the rules live. As it expands, it eventually micromanages the personal environment into absurdity, which will produce a certain ambient discohesion in communities. Property rights become platitudes and are irrelevant as people can weaponize their local government to enforce petty grievances. Cut your grass. Paint your fence. Stop playing baseball on the baseball field.
Once the tap was opened downward for managerial expansion by Marbury v. Madison turning the Constitution malleable, the technique became open to local governments as well. It was obvious people would weaponize the system against their neighbors. Naturally, over time it boxes everything into a paralytic state. This is where we are now. We commit three felonies a day, probably many more. (“Three Felonies A Day” by Harvey Silverglate) Couple that with a society whose population is managed by having one political party running the Mein Kampf against the other while it does the same in turn, creates a disjointed us vs. them tribal mindset… and now as the speed of the news cycles have accelerated due to the development of faster communication technologies, much like a dopamine hit, we have become desensitized to routine, so what was once radical is mundane, meaning it takes a greater degree of vitriol to stimulate a response from the apathetic last man.
This is why Trump was inevitable, as candidates like Romney and McCain were not satisfying the dissident right, the only part of the incorrect manufactured political spectrum used that has any legitimate dissent against the empire. (although it is a small percentage) So the rhetoric had to be turned up, it needed the shock factor. Social engineers at Stanford Research Institute and a plethora of think tanks knew by the late 90’s that such a figure would be necessary by the 2010’s. Seems like cultural engineering is like steering a boat, turning it involves a slight delay. Although, as mentioned we are accelerating the news cycles, and as memory spans appear to get shorter the turnaround time becomes smaller. (Many Florida residents now believe our State was never locked down during Covid19 even though they lived through it.) Some people have theories on this memory issue:
Regardless of cause, which could just be a form of digital information overload, this process of desensitization and issues with memory retention is indeed accelerating at a quickening pace. The “current thing” is now coming and going faster, rewriting history along with it. So, what is the motive? I suspect it is making us pliable to change in a “the medium is the message” kind of way. Something new is coming and part of It surfaced in 2016.
I suspect one purpose of Trump’s technique is to sweep up the dissent into identifiable boxes to manage where they can be cascaded into January 6th type events, so they can use the legalese techniques to turn legitimate dissent into extremism. The irony of course is that Trump is a pied piper. He says some of the right words, but he is perfect for the system.
Most in the right will not accept that though, this is because even an ersatz hope can make one feel better for a time and it is often preferred to acknowledging the reality that they are making a mockery of us. He is a middle manager operating within protocol. The social, cultural, and political schismogenesis is both deliberate and automatic, and it is the real reason why we cannot breathe. (Both as things go obsolete as well as how micromanaging constricts the human causing unnatural stress in populations. See “Darwinian Psychiatry” by Mcguire & Troisi) The state has its hands around our neck and that is just by its presence alone. As I said in “It’s A Trap”, this is their game, and we have no dice. If it wants it can close its hand, with us standing in the palm.
Along that point, Kulak says the welfare state won’t survive. As I said previously, it wasn’t ever supposed to. It was a steppingstone to be used and discarded. Once technological advancements exceeded the need for human mass production, mass society becomes largely irrelevant. It the next iteration of mass society that arises from the 4th industrial revolution ( “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” by Klaus Schwab) , things like UBI will most likely be the norm, creating a new form of welfare state. Managing society is like managing a company, there are layoffs and re-structuring as business management needs change. The administrative state has known for a long time the debt was going to be a problem, at least since the 70’s when the gold standard disappeared. Of course, this is why there was no serious discussion outside of Ron Paul for years. (“End The Fed” – Ron Paul). The point is you can bet the scaffolding of the next financial system is there waiting. When managing society, layoffs, becoming obsolete, looks different. There are many tools for these layoffs, including population control and even deliberate reduction. I will leave the last point to your imagination.
This administrative technique coupled with the process of managing and creating crises to mold and prune society can be used to protect secrets, knowledge and hence, power. Elite group created within a group over and over is a strategy of information security that has been used by secret societies dating deep into antiquity all the way up to the point where they became the intelligence agencies protected by the monopoly of force today. It is the same system, and some people claim it is some of the same networks of people. Either way, it sustains the ability by hiding and not sitting still, power moves constantly and it lies. (“The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli)
By its nature and necessity of the system, the vanguard of a national security state would be small and not on the public books. As it is at the tip of the spear, like that location in all managerial systems, it is inherently small. Which is one of the many reasons, perhaps the most important one, as to why we must build something new. That type of high-level administrative control can recuperate and transmute any attempt at reforming the system it controls and those below it would be blind to its attack or subversion.
With all of that being said from the very top, Is a better world possible? Consider this article by Chris (another Top Shelf- which is why I pay for them and you should too if you can) which was posted a few days after our conversation about Kulak’s piece:
In it he states:
“But here is something to remember: As part of his groundbreaking work, Friedrich Hayek identified a basic, inescapable fact; centrally planned economies cannot work properly because central planners suffer from what he called the “knowledge problem”. They simply cannot know enough to plan an economy. The aggregate sum-total of all individuals knowledge is far beyond anything they can muster in any legislative chamber or smoky back room.”
He also says:
“The first step in liberation is to stop believing they are omnipotent.”
He is correct in this. We must believe we can defeat it, even if it takes generations. Essentially, we must believe and persist in the notion that free will is real and that humans inherently deserve independent agency as a first principle. This is because the system presses us in the opposite direction, reducing our value to a form of capital to be used or discarded at will to create their brave new world, like Huxley’s “Island” or some other technocratic transhumanist fakelore. (The application of the managerial technique applied to the human being also helps produce the structure for some of the transhumanist applications)
While I agree with Chris’s first step, it also must be accompanied by tactics that understand that while the leviathan is not omnipotent, a role reserved only for God (although many technocrats truly believe they, or we, are), it is omnipresent. It is ambient. It just is. The mechanisms of the managerial administrative state provide the entire scaffolding of our modern reality. It was built from the ground up, economics to culture, politics to education, perception management to myth building, finance to entertainment, media to sentiments, all with the intent of circumventing Hayek’s problem.
From the public school system (previously mentioned “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” by Iserbyt), to the Federal Reserve ( “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by Edward Griffin) from the military (“War is a Racket” by Smedley Butler) to the war on words, (“The Tyranny of Words” by Stuart Chase) the power elite (“The Power Elite” by C. Wright Mills) have created the ligaments of society and how we speak and think of them, as well as having added decentralized power structures (“The Starfish and the Spider” by Brafman & Beckstrom) throughout the managerial state to protect itself. It captured the media long ago even before Ben Bagdikian wrote “The Media Monopoly”, which frames people’s opinions, and perception of the world. The system uses many manipulating tools such as Tavistock to engineer society into compliance (“Tavistock Institute” by Estulin) by engineering entire personality types , as well as a legion of others. (“Manipulating the Masses” by John Hamilton is a good read about the early days of perception management during WW1)
But the cherry on top of all of that is that oddly obscure fact that the entire market is controlled, for both an employer and an employee. As an employee, practically every job you can have in this system requires some sort of certification, training or formal degree followed up by licensing tests. All of these things require state oversight and are managed and controlled by associations and regulatory agencies that are most often not accountable to anyone other than top-down pressure as well as being subjected to regulatory capture. (If they were not already designed that way) This is how the managerial state makes it a requirement to play their game, it is the entrance fee, or a gatekeeping mechanism to their market. It is not much of a secret that occupational licensing was weaponized against freed slaves during the 19th century, such mechanisms I consider part of the economic scaffolding where every employment opportunity has a third-party gatekeeper that benefits from the control. Try hiring an unlicensed contractor… makes no difference if they are more talented than the licensed ones. The system will eventually root your hire out and punish you and your hired help. Not only does this provide complete employment control, it drives up prices at a growing pace, as is the nature of the expanding administrative state. Today your job is reviewed by 3 regulatory agencies, next year it is 5. It is all inflationary. Most importantly, at the end of the day this racket is protected by violence.
From an employer or business owner side, almost every aspect of every business type is regulated often for ostensible reasons. This scales up the larger your business. One example from here in my county, in order to sell cars, there is not just one permit that grants permission, but depending upon the size of your lot the cost increases eventually to the point where you cannot obtain one unless you have other credentials… like being a very large corporation. This was put into place to allow private individuals to have car lots as long as they did not exceed a certain size. (It is 10 cars here) The transportation industry is the same, you can only grow so large with your private fleet of trucks until you run up against a wall.
*Important side note. – “economic security” has long been rolled into and defined as being vital to “national security”. Once any business gets large enough, or was created to be, it finds itself under very different rules (or privileges) including forms of protectionism and being too big to fail. Businesses important for infrastructure (an ever-growing term) also fall into this category such as telecommunications and energy. Just trying to create an alternative to one of these will get one thrown in jail. In most businesses, even with the approved credentials the cost to join the market is prohibitive. 15 years ago, I looked into opening my own pharmacy. Before buying inventory or paying rent on the building, it was going to cost upwards of 500K just to get through the permitting process. Naturally, such hoops are put into place to protect larger business much in the way that owners of fleets of trucks must be a certain size before they can engage in business across state lines. There are many examples of such obstacles, all of which I consider to be economic scaffolding of the managerial state, the skeleton in which we all must operate. It is within this system that corporations can exist as they require such a managerial framework and the courts have given them human rights…
In a limited Constitutional republic with a free market (while it lasts) , all of this would be spontaneous and voluntary, where people can come up with their own ways of discerning who they hire and who they do business with and where they can do that business. This is not what we have, neither a republic or a free market. It is very centrally planned, not by the state, but by the process.
While the evolution of this managerial system was long in the works, this racket was cemented by the Rockefeller public school system apparatus (which they called occupational daycares) that helped foster the environment of “workforce training”, which of course extends into the university systems…. Making education a profitable venture as well as a nice control mechanism. Everything is planned out, birth to retirement all according to the system they have built. While there are entrepreneurs in our current system who blaze trails that did so on their own, most of the big “entrepreneurs” of the past century were actually fabrications of the system itself, created for and by it through public -private partnerships. (Essentially the model Butler Presented in his book “War is a Racket” was applied to non-defense related private enterprise) This goes beyond regulatory capture and ties back into the national security state, which controls the entire market with hard ceilings. I do not think it was possible, as brilliant as Hayek was, for him to understand what was being built. The real power behind the apparatus long transcended legislative chambers or smoky back rooms and no market in this system is organic outside of your local farmer’s market. Central planning no longer means that the state attempts to supply the needs of the market as determined by the consumer, rather the consumer is convinced of and conditioned to what the market is providing. The green movement is a modern example, but the system has been manufacturing needs and lifestyles for well over a century that sustain its life force. It bends you to its will by default.
The system itself, truly within itself, is nearly omnipotent, self-healing like Roman concrete. But outside of itself it is powerless.
What I mean, and I keep reiterating this, it can only be defeated by building something new and not from within. It is reform proof, but it is not truly omnipotent, just currently omnipresent, architect of and embedded within the ligaments and tendons of all modern reality.
A better world is possible, but it will be hard. We do not have a society of men with chests (“Abolition of Man” – C.S. Lewis) , or men who can relate to the moral sense of Shaftsbury. (Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, times, etc.) We have a society of infantilized adults who prefer porn and video games, selfies and Botox, hedonism and self-gratification, over the duty and joy of adulthood, being builders and living purposefully in the real world. We do not have the numbers capable of a real revolutionary spirit, but we do have enough to ignite a renaissance.
We must recognize that in order for us to overcome our adversary and build a new horizon away from Point O and towards Point L, we have to prevent the system from managing us all into compliance, beginning with the school systems, where the revolutionary spirit becomes neutered (and some boys) as well as our ability through properly trained sentiments to have the courage to take a principled stand. This is why I said we need to flip some tables and abandon the public school system.
The problem with the welfare state is not that people need charity.
God knows we all need it at times.
The problem is that as part of the managerial formula it creates weak minds. Weak men. Weak demoralized men and women. Domesticated. Dependent. Deliberately dumbed down.
We need strong men. We need strong women. We need hope. We need awareness of our obstacles. We need the courage to build something new. Of course, Faith and a bit of grace as well.
The mystery of what that new world is, lies beyond what I presented in this much longer than anticipated, yet not nearly long enough article. Perhaps, I will discuss my ideas on that another day.
Although I do not claim to have the correct answers about the journey to Point L, I hope the reader considers my thoughts on the reality of Point O, uses them, or discards them, to inform their own ideas, perhaps manifesting a real solution in the process.
On this I sincerely wish you the best of luck if we have the same agenda.
In the meantime, I will ask the Lord to watch our steps and to temper our hearts, to lamplight our path forward to better days.
Thank you for reading. Peace be with you all.