Let us consider the current political dichotomy. One side has strict hierarchy in which a small, unaccountable elite of technical experts and secular priests rule over numerous client groups whom they keep locked out of their gated communities. The client groups vote for them in numbers that would embarrass even the right-wing dictators of the twentieth century as their social superiors check their shareholdings and make them promises like ‘you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.’ Everyone on this side of things is acutely aware of their social status and exercises a kind of spartan discipline and self-denial to ensure that they fall in line. They openly disdain the ‘democratic will of the people’ and see unregulated free markets as childish and outmoded. Instead, they argue that they know better and must steer the ship in the name of good governance. These people are committed to a view of the world that sees race and that selects for ethnic differences. Counter-intuitively, although most of them are white, they ostensibly say that they are for selecting against whites, even as they openly keep client groups out of their 98% white neighbourhoods while comparing their political enemies to mid-Century Germans.
What a difference 6 years makes. I went from a long, looong time libertarian to a Trump guy to a reactionary. As a libertarian, my understanding of the "uniparty" was merely that both offered more government in different forms, but it didn't occur to me at the time that they worked towards the same ends. I didn't trust Trump and abstained from the 2016 election but quickly jumped on his side when I saw the entirety of the media apparatus and every institution attack him. I was distrustful of all these things, and I figured they must be attacking him for a reason. Also, the SJW insanity picked up pace at breakneck speed, and even though I considered myself a "libertarian", the plummet into sheer degeneracy shook me.
During COVID I became aware of the JQ and just how deep the rabbit hole went, accompanied by an absolute disgust at the insane amount of credulity displayed by people in my life I actually respected. During the Summer of Floyd I finally admitted to myself that race realism is real.
Trump appealed to me at first because he'd say things that would have been normal in 1996 (when I was a teenager, and so remember), but are well past the Overton window now. It was a case of "Return to Fresh Prince" for me. I just wanted the America of the 90s back. Sure there were riots but it was still possible for a working class family to find a place to live which wasn't overrun with nonwhites, was safe and was prosperous. The economy was doing well, crime was going down, culture wasn't entirely garbage.
I think there were many Trump supporters like me out there. Not "elite", but not uneducated rednecks. We went to university and gritted our teeth at the nonsense that pervades every campus.
We read up on the Constitution and Locke and Hobbes and were adherents to the enlightenment and deeply proud of the country which, up to that point, was pretty damn good to us.
What I learned now is that it was lost long ago, and it was also apparent to me there were NO academics, pundits or political philosophers that would DARE challenge the enlightenment directly. Sure, there were a few large-nosed no-bullshit USSR fans in the universities, but among the "right" /libertarian side? Absolutely not.
And so after the past 3 years or so of lamenting the now-obvious destruction of any illusion that the United States was free, I find a group of TRULY right-wing academics and writers who have apparently been holed up in the UK and scattered about Europe.
It was not easy to find people like AA because the reach simply isn't there (by design, of course), but when it occurred to me that any political commenter that got "big" inevitably started spewing bullshit convenient to the establishment, I looked for the "smaller" channels with more "radical" things to say. Damn I am glad to have found them. For so long it looked like my only political choices were Mitt Romney-types, boomer con Trump types, or absolutely feckless and useless libertarian types. It's nice to have my eyes opened for a third way, and although I spat out the anti-enlightenment canards like a toddler trying out brussels sprouts at first, I have come to accept that the now-obvious truth that this ideal that I have held for decades is just not workable. Or maybe it was but it cannot be now. That's a real eye opener, and it allowed me to at least be able to advocate for something rather than mourn the death of something that can never return.
I remember hearing about Q and immediately thinking it was stupid, but so many MAGA types ate it up. If you are given a plate of bullshit, and then still eat it, that’s bad of course. But if you are trying to get other people to eat up bullshit? That’s hardly different from woke propaganda but by a different method and via different ends.
Beware of the naïve and gullible, they aren’t useful or productive.
I don’t see the energy for Trump on a mainstream level out here in Utah. People almost seem ashamed and black pilled by the last election. Many are turning to God and turning their back on politics at a federal level. It’s a shame to see. But seeing what has happened to my home country of the UK in my lifetime, it’s really no surprise to see such deflated masses.
The only vestige of optimism I can find is that we cease to think of ourselves as Western. Is it as simple as starting to envision ourselves as something separate and distinct from the WEF egalitarians, and MAGA populists in favour of something at the start of a cycle?
When I listen to Woes on the year 2100, or the provincialist tribalism widespread across the DR, it is speaking to something entirely divorced from the "socialism" (Spenglerian definition) or the technological theology envisioned by Schmitt. These grand megalopolitan ideas don't track with what stage of a cycle our thought is at. Our ideas, in terms of Spengler's thesis, seem to belong to the spring. Quality over quantity, community/tribal emphasis over national body, moral particularism over universalism. We have even started thinking in terms of good and evil. In our efforts to consider how to "save the west" we seem to do everything possible to subvert the Faustian spirit that defines it.
We seem to be our own culture onto ourselves. As a younger man, it is difficult for me or my contemporaries to identify anything that ever resonated within "western" culture. I don't have a defined concept- or even a word- to embody this culture but the difference is palpable.
In terms of what my "people" are, in a historical context of the west, the only word applicable seems to be Barbarian.
All reasonable until the ending sentiment. Even if MAGA is worse, to stand in the way of cyclical history, to embrace "a better class of managers" for fear of the cycle, is as disgraceful as the political nature of a typical boomercon.
Our purpose, it seems to me, is to ensure the next age, at a minimum, is not dominated by our enemies. To that end I am all ears, but as things stand I see no "better class of managers" that would do anything but make that future more difficult to achieve. It seems to me embracing Tony Blair or the like only promises to make the present a little better, at the cost of the future. The same deal the boomers took, out of the cowardice and inability to shape their own destiny.
You misunderstand America entirely — we are not a democracy, by design, and so much of this modern manifestation of populism exists in the uniquely American idea of negative liberty — “leave me alone, government.”
What’s happening now is the Dostoyevsky phase — “They won’t let me be good.” — followed by a backlash that I want to be no where near.
This is similar to when Spengler says we are all socialists now whether we like it or not, and when Ortega Y Gasset sees the revolt of the masses as equally infecting the elites.
What a difference 6 years makes. I went from a long, looong time libertarian to a Trump guy to a reactionary. As a libertarian, my understanding of the "uniparty" was merely that both offered more government in different forms, but it didn't occur to me at the time that they worked towards the same ends. I didn't trust Trump and abstained from the 2016 election but quickly jumped on his side when I saw the entirety of the media apparatus and every institution attack him. I was distrustful of all these things, and I figured they must be attacking him for a reason. Also, the SJW insanity picked up pace at breakneck speed, and even though I considered myself a "libertarian", the plummet into sheer degeneracy shook me.
During COVID I became aware of the JQ and just how deep the rabbit hole went, accompanied by an absolute disgust at the insane amount of credulity displayed by people in my life I actually respected. During the Summer of Floyd I finally admitted to myself that race realism is real.
Trump appealed to me at first because he'd say things that would have been normal in 1996 (when I was a teenager, and so remember), but are well past the Overton window now. It was a case of "Return to Fresh Prince" for me. I just wanted the America of the 90s back. Sure there were riots but it was still possible for a working class family to find a place to live which wasn't overrun with nonwhites, was safe and was prosperous. The economy was doing well, crime was going down, culture wasn't entirely garbage.
I think there were many Trump supporters like me out there. Not "elite", but not uneducated rednecks. We went to university and gritted our teeth at the nonsense that pervades every campus.
We read up on the Constitution and Locke and Hobbes and were adherents to the enlightenment and deeply proud of the country which, up to that point, was pretty damn good to us.
What I learned now is that it was lost long ago, and it was also apparent to me there were NO academics, pundits or political philosophers that would DARE challenge the enlightenment directly. Sure, there were a few large-nosed no-bullshit USSR fans in the universities, but among the "right" /libertarian side? Absolutely not.
And so after the past 3 years or so of lamenting the now-obvious destruction of any illusion that the United States was free, I find a group of TRULY right-wing academics and writers who have apparently been holed up in the UK and scattered about Europe.
It was not easy to find people like AA because the reach simply isn't there (by design, of course), but when it occurred to me that any political commenter that got "big" inevitably started spewing bullshit convenient to the establishment, I looked for the "smaller" channels with more "radical" things to say. Damn I am glad to have found them. For so long it looked like my only political choices were Mitt Romney-types, boomer con Trump types, or absolutely feckless and useless libertarian types. It's nice to have my eyes opened for a third way, and although I spat out the anti-enlightenment canards like a toddler trying out brussels sprouts at first, I have come to accept that the now-obvious truth that this ideal that I have held for decades is just not workable. Or maybe it was but it cannot be now. That's a real eye opener, and it allowed me to at least be able to advocate for something rather than mourn the death of something that can never return.
I remember hearing about Q and immediately thinking it was stupid, but so many MAGA types ate it up. If you are given a plate of bullshit, and then still eat it, that’s bad of course. But if you are trying to get other people to eat up bullshit? That’s hardly different from woke propaganda but by a different method and via different ends.
Beware of the naïve and gullible, they aren’t useful or productive.
Wow, its almost like the Americans are the inheritors of the American Delusion--who would've seen that coming?
Form the the vanguard. The organised minority shall prevail.
I don’t see the energy for Trump on a mainstream level out here in Utah. People almost seem ashamed and black pilled by the last election. Many are turning to God and turning their back on politics at a federal level. It’s a shame to see. But seeing what has happened to my home country of the UK in my lifetime, it’s really no surprise to see such deflated masses.
Sensible take
The only vestige of optimism I can find is that we cease to think of ourselves as Western. Is it as simple as starting to envision ourselves as something separate and distinct from the WEF egalitarians, and MAGA populists in favour of something at the start of a cycle?
When I listen to Woes on the year 2100, or the provincialist tribalism widespread across the DR, it is speaking to something entirely divorced from the "socialism" (Spenglerian definition) or the technological theology envisioned by Schmitt. These grand megalopolitan ideas don't track with what stage of a cycle our thought is at. Our ideas, in terms of Spengler's thesis, seem to belong to the spring. Quality over quantity, community/tribal emphasis over national body, moral particularism over universalism. We have even started thinking in terms of good and evil. In our efforts to consider how to "save the west" we seem to do everything possible to subvert the Faustian spirit that defines it.
We seem to be our own culture onto ourselves. As a younger man, it is difficult for me or my contemporaries to identify anything that ever resonated within "western" culture. I don't have a defined concept- or even a word- to embody this culture but the difference is palpable.
In terms of what my "people" are, in a historical context of the west, the only word applicable seems to be Barbarian.
All reasonable until the ending sentiment. Even if MAGA is worse, to stand in the way of cyclical history, to embrace "a better class of managers" for fear of the cycle, is as disgraceful as the political nature of a typical boomercon.
Our purpose, it seems to me, is to ensure the next age, at a minimum, is not dominated by our enemies. To that end I am all ears, but as things stand I see no "better class of managers" that would do anything but make that future more difficult to achieve. It seems to me embracing Tony Blair or the like only promises to make the present a little better, at the cost of the future. The same deal the boomers took, out of the cowardice and inability to shape their own destiny.
You misunderstand America entirely — we are not a democracy, by design, and so much of this modern manifestation of populism exists in the uniquely American idea of negative liberty — “leave me alone, government.”
What’s happening now is the Dostoyevsky phase — “They won’t let me be good.” — followed by a backlash that I want to be no where near.
We have been in a race to the bottom for decades
Perhaps a 13 Vendémiaire is not possible until after a 9 Thermidor.
This is similar to when Spengler says we are all socialists now whether we like it or not, and when Ortega Y Gasset sees the revolt of the masses as equally infecting the elites.