Discourse 8: The Dialectic's Golden Egg
As I start to dive more into current events the political theatre becomes unavoidable, particularly now that we have entered an election year. Society has now left the liminal space between “the most important election of our lives” to prepare for the next “most important election of our lives.” This period of time, this gap between cycles, mass society hibernates in a state of political coma, only to be awoken in time for the carnival to begin again, informing the slumbering minds as to what they should care about this time. This discourse will be sharp like a knife and pointed for brevity.
All throughout the psychosphere are discussions about this phenomenon, including many here on Substack. It has captivated societies attention like the Ludi, and its spectacle serves plebians bite sized pieces of the Lotus fruit.
The two teams are assembled, the narrative, the playbooks are set, the coin toss is underway. Soon an epic battle on the gridiron of the ballot will unfold, fans will cheer and jeer, entertained and enthralled by their chosen gladiator who provides an ersatz hope for a better future, or a return to better days. When the votes are cast and the game is over, one will hold the trophy high. The victor’s hardware will be placed in the trophy case next to all of the others, the same display case used by the opposing team. See, this is a champions franchise and upper management operates a perpetual dynasty.
My political journey began 25 years ago, a path that went through two state capitals as well as DC. From lobbying and negotiating votes to drafting legislation on behalf of a think tank. From cutting checks for a PAC to working directly with a presidential campaign. All of this with four political parties, including “independent” since it is considered one. While my understanding was evolving along the way, eventually these experiences led me to engage in significant reflection and deliberate study of how I viewed this technocratic system. My understanding now is that our political system is a carnival of lies and illusions, a performance I have in my life spent too much effort participating in and way too much time believing in.
Everyone has their political opinions; I am not seeking to change yours. However, not all opinions are the same.
“The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”
-Marcus Aurelius
To be clear, I am not claiming to be correct without uncertainty, this is my opinion, and it is certainly flawed to a degree. You may very well have a differing yet informed perspective, that I can respect. However, I am not fazed by the jeers of the crowd who are most often hibernating between political cycles only to awaken as temporary political experts, only to return to slumber shortly after inauguration. It reminds me of the overnight doctors during the early days of Covid who balked at me, a healthcare professional, for saying that the physics of fluids does not support the positions taken on masks nor should a new, untested by previous standards, transgenic medical intervention, be mandated on society by calling it a vaccine. While my positions are not nearly fringe anymore, they were just as true when I originally said them even though they were not accepted by the crowd. The biggest difference from four years ago to present, I no longer care to convince people of things. I have earned my stripes.
However, with that being said, since I will not often discuss election politics, I feel compelled to establish what I highly suspect, and to a point, know, about the political reality of our modern world.
Some of this I have touched on previously and, in some places, great detail, but I feel it necessary to say clearly what I consider axiomatic.
Your vote does not matter.
To be clear, it is still possible to make changes on the local level to a degree. However, on the state and federal level, the only issues impacted by voting are those that affect the plebian class such as taxes, immigration, and abortion. (among others) All of which conveniently double as useful wedge issues for campaign season. While these issues do have real consequences for people, they are not symptomatic for the power elite and are turned off and on in the public consciousness at will.
This schismogenesis is necessary for the designed political dialectic to work, as it serves to frame the discourse of mass society, while obfuscating the agendas that truly impact the power structure, thereby protecting it from any serious challenge.
This is not conspiracy; it is not the illuminati, the freemasons, the lizard people or moon nazi’s. These are mere conspiritainment rabbit holes to wonderland. Any previous utility of “secret societies” were wrapped into state intelligence apparatuses during the 19th century, but the lingering mythology keeps people looking in dark corners for symbols they do not understand for what is often happening right in from of their faces. Essentially, it is a mass scale invisible gorilla study fostered by entities like Tavistock and the Stanford Research Institute, among many others. All of which is aided by the weaponization of words and their meanings and a legal system that deploys stealth authoritarianism.
What has transpired has been clearly and publicly laid out since the middle of the 19th century, in some cases longer, by both European aristocrats and American gentry. We are over a century into a global civilization building project that was first projected onto mass society with the World’s Fairs. The collectivization and structuring of society began to take form with the assistance of various scientific disciplines which sought to hack the human psyche, making it more predictable and efficient for the emerging mass scale capitalism. While the scientific management of society had humble roots, it is now omnipresent due to the exponential advancements of the computer age, as society can now be nudged or steered with just a small change to the algorithm. Some say we are to a degree clinically domesticated, a concept I find myself agreeing with.
“Liberal democracies” have all been converted to National Security Administrative states. Some call this a form of state capitalism or liberal fascism, a “public-private partnership” apparatus that is kept safe by the protection racked known as national security. James Burnham discusses this process in his book “The Managerial Revolution” which was published in 1941. Naturally, such an apparatus had to manage the “democracies”, and this can be examined through Sheldon Wolin’s “Democracy Incorporated” which was published in 2008. Nothing is left to chance, especially who is permitted to “lead” a “free society.”
This process has turned state executives, in all “liberal democracies”, including the US President, into glorified public notaries. Rubber stampers for the agenda of the elite. (This is why it is possible for a sitting president to be senile, and a Secretary of Defense can disappear for a few days without consequences. They aren’t the ones making consequential decisions, it is plug and play) The layout of this managerial process that is indeed controlled by a relatively few, was described by C. Wright Mills in his 1956 book “The Power Elite.”
Considering all of this, it seems to me that the last legitimate political resistance to this technocratic administrative state died during the Goldwater era. M. Stanton Evans in his book “The Liberal Establishment” (1965) describes what appears to be the final consolidation of effective, true, anti-establishment political power. It was during this time the last of the anti-new deal republicans disappeared, and coincidently the libertarian party was formed. Naturally, the system has managed through electioneering to neuter the libertarian party into irrelevance, but they were a last-ditch effort to circumvent a political system that was captured 50 years ago. While they still fight, they are excluded from Chomsky’s spectrum of acceptable debate. On occasion, the word libertarian is uttered by establishment politicians, starting with Reagan, seeking to recuperate the illusion of the ideas back into the leviathan, at least rhetorically. Ron Paul may be the one true exception in the mainstream arena.
The solidification of control over the two political parties created a controllable medium for the maintenance of the security state’s agenda as well as serving as a facilitator for Guy Debord’s concept of recuperation. Dissent is managed and either rolled back into the frame of the ludi (Think Tea Party movement) or neutered into irrelevance. (Think Libertarian Party) For at least 50 years, American presidents have been fundamentally in lock step with one another as the uni-party and its associated think tanks produce the platforms they run on as well as the agendas they are to actually operate. This also applies to state governors. All of this couples with a multitude of supranational organizations and NGO’s that strive for large scale social, economic, and political global integration.
Unfolding simultaneously during the capture, or better said, formation, of the establishment, was a growing social engineering apparatus, one that manifests the idea of complete narrative control. Sometimes they say the quiet part out loud.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
William Casey, CIA Director (1981)
The control mechanisms of this apparatus are in a state of perpetual evolution, just like how warfare evolves with technology, now metamorphizing its forms into tactics beyond fifth generation warfare and into the realm of cortex communism.
The challenge for managers used to be to just reach their intended audience through an advertisement, manipulation in the style of Edward Bernays. However, those strategies still exist and serve as a bit of foundation, an ambient presence, but the psychosphere has expanded to keep pace with both new technologies and a society of lotus eaters who exponentially demand more fruit.
Society now needs to be constantly stimulated and this is partially achieved with information overload and manipulative uncertainty. However, over the past twenty years the trope of the politician has also needed to evolve to keep attention, and support, to be focused on the ludi. The stiff smooth-talking front man politician was no longer working, recuperation was growing less effective after the McCain and Romney campaigns. The necessity and rise of a figure like Trump became predictable, the stage was being set. His entire public persona could have come from an Esalen spell book.
He rose out of the middle elite, a trusted friend of the establishment stooges and middlemen like the Clintons’, Bushs’, and the Epstein’s of the world. Perfectly embodying the pseudo-revolutionary spirit, recuperating dissent back into the field with colorful rhetoric that produced a sense of hope for change. Arrogant enough to play the part of the villain, hero, and anti-hero all in one. Strong enough to handle the perceived attacks. Rich enough to handle financial damages. Trusted enough to maintain the leviathan’s agenda. He is in effect, both the perfect controlled opposition and the ultimate limited hangout all rolled into one character, getting 24/7 365-day coverage from all legacy media outlets. We are undoubtedly in a time of a shifting Overton window, but that shift is also being managed. Donald Trump is the dialectic’s golden egg, a facilitator of the most recent and unfolding “great reset.”
Remember, the revolution will not be televised. This means if they are on your TV, they are not revolutionary. Donald Trump isn’t it. That isn’t how this works. He is just another golden egg for the power elite, and by the signs of his increasing levels of support from mass society, it is clear that our goose is cooked.