If what follows seems scary to you on Christmas Eve, well, down at-bottom I’ll reiterate one final Redemption Daydream. One thing that one good man might do, to help us all.
Alas, he is surrounded by morons. So he won’t. But speaking of morons...
== Moldbug 2024:
What this Wormtongue tells us about our insipid New Lords ==
Well, well. Instead of Elon, is this the “guy I know in highest places”? Oy.
Only now – via his acolytes Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance – this monster’ll be strolling the White House, crooning gleefully that “Decadent democracy is over! Onward to absolute monarchy and feudalism!”
Do I exaggerate? I’ve dissected this nasty, ingrate “endarkenment” fetish before. Its roots and branches and openly-touted plans for us. And I tell you that Elon Musk is saintly and harmless, by comparison to this horror.
They know that the vast, educated middle class has access to powerful technologies that -- should we become enraged -- could make the guillotine seem like louffah. Hence, the very concepts of science and democracy and meritocracy as great equalizers must be undermined and then destroyed.
Lately, in his role as ‘Thiel-Whisperer‘ and ‘Speaker-to-Gullibles,’ this lobotomizer-to-oligarchs – Moldbug, also known as Curtis Yarvin -- prompted me to ponder an outrageously cartoony fantasy character --
-- the bewitcher-of-Thèoden, Tolkien’s Grima Wormtongue.
And I made that connection long before I took a closer look.
== Supposed smart guys – clutching desperate chants ==
Once again, I challenge these incredible ingrates to a fact-off!
I assert that I can easily disprove every aspect of your justification incantations! Even most of the baseline/underlying ‘facts’ that you deem foundational.
Moreover – whether or not I am right about that – such a challenge, issued by a person of my stature, ought to elicit CURIOSITY, at least in minds that are as free and sagacious as you guys claim that yours are.
Inability to utter the sacred catechism of science -- (“I might be wrong, so let’s find out!”) -- is prima facie evidence of a cult. And – given that Moldbug’s followers are either rich harem-seekers or else incel wannabes – it’s a highly masturbatory cult.
What I do know from past encounters is that Moldbug/Yarvin dreams of becoming Top Dog – or lackey-vizier to one – in the coming restored feudalism. (He never liked it when I predicted his future role to be ‘kibble.’)
== The gauntlet, the gage, the glove is thrown! Pick it up, feudalists? ==
But hey, Brin, aren’t you taking a big risk, insulting them, this way?
Well, yes. But I have five capsule answers to that.
1. Delusionals, who surround themselves with flatterers, imagine that they can quell or repress the 100 million nerdy top fact-users on this planet, plus their half a billion co-workers. Folks who know cyber, chem, nuclear, nano, bio and so on. Plus medicine and the law. They think the boffins will settle down to their place, if smacked a little.
But, in the words of Bruce Banner, you won’t like us when we finally get mad.
2. I’m loyal to the first civilization that ever at least somewhat instituted fairplay. And hence the only one that produced not only justice, but also Adam Smith’s prescription of flat-fair-creative competition -- the c-word that no ‘conservative’ ever utters anymore...
… in their rush to ally with “ex” commie-kremlin-commissars, plus murder sheiks, hedge parasites, carbon lords, cable impresarios and inheritance brats, all in order to resume 6000 years of feudal darkness...
… even though Adam Smith’s c-word (‘competition’) is what made this the most creative (another c-word) of all eras.
But you dopes would quash it, just like every insipidly stoopid king or lord of the last 6000 years. (Shall we tally the exceptions and wager over the few kings who were measurably wise? Were there even ten, across all continents and 60 centuries?)
3. Oh, then there are the prepper-bunkers that you guys keep building – fantasizing that you’ll emerge after the dust and poisons settle, to be worshipped as demigods by ragged survivors. Only, this aftermath won’t resemble either Mad Max or A Canticle For Liebowitz, pals. The survivors won’t go burning books and lynching nerds… but they'll wait eagerly to greet you, when you emerge, blinking like cicadas in the sunlight.
And yes, we nerds have the schematics and locales of every deep or mountaintop ‘prepper’ compound. (Want proof?) And those hidey-holes will not have the desired outcomes. Especially after you do what I’ve heard some of you (like J.D. Vance) openly say… that you expect to deliberately trigger “The Event.”
Think I am exaggerating? Get Douglas Rushkoffs book (cited below) about this circle-jerk of sick jerks who chant semi-erotic fantasies to each other: justifications to accelerate a civilizational collapse that never had to happen. And here's a further article about the very real accelarationism cult.
Except we’ll know and remember whose doing it was. As in this song, the survivors will remember.
An aside: how do I know these guys? Criminy, Ted Kaczynski sent me his book The Anti-Tech Revolution from prison, hoping for a blurb! Yarvin would deny any overlap with TK, but their pretensions and incantations and psychologies have far more in common, than not!
Moreover, both Doug Rushkoff and I have been asked – directly by lordly ‘preppers’ -- how to solve their biggest worries, like “How do I keep my security staff loyal, when money isn’t good anymore?”
Indeed, I know that Isaac Asimov felt daunted, that those who were inspired by his ‘psychohistory’ speculations included not just brilliant fellows like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman, but also Osama bin Laden and Shoko Asahara. So, sure. Sci-fi fertilizes a billion flowers. Some stink and others may save the future. Hey, don’t blame the bee.
Back to directly addressing the stinkiest flowers…
== Okay, guys, almost done with my howl of defiance =
4. Let’s suppose that – as now seems plausible – your revanchist oligarchy does succeed at crushing this latest Periclean renaissance and restoring default feudalism -- (#1 on my list of Fermi Paradox theories, BTW.) In that case, are you so sure that you will be the final beneficiaries? The final kings and lords?
As I show in Existence, it’d take a clade of trillionaires much smarter than you.
Key point. Many of you got rich by being predatory Second Adopters. Or third, plundering first innovators, as happened in every industry, from railroads to radio to the WWW to e-cars and palantirs. (Bezos/Amazon appear to be a very rare exception.)
And hence, will others (currently biding their time, less flamboyant and noisy and noisome than you) simply take from you the august thrones that you have painstakingly erected, through your betrayals?
For one thing, those second-wavers will have millions of vengefully angry nerd-allies on their side! Will you?
And hence… will those second wavers even want to keep around yattering ‘advisors’ like rabid-frothing moldbugs?
Not if they’re smart enough to take everything that the takers took.
Perhaps instead they’ll surround themselves with those who fought against the mess you dopes are making. Advisors who thereupon are capable of offering advice that’s not masturbatory-lame flattery?
It’s what Machiavelli did – who fought like hell for the Florentine Republic – till he finally realized that dream had fallen into shadow. At which point Niccolò (I knew him well) switched with agility to advising the Dukes, so that their undemocratic rule would at least be laced with some actual sapience. As the central locus of Enlightenment migrated, along with nerdy refugees, north to Holland and England, and then onward...
And if you don’t instantly perceive where I went with that – if you are incapable of understanding it on a first read -- then maybe that’s meaningful. Might it testify that you would-be Medicis aren’t as synaptically well-endowed as your flatterers tell you that you are?
Flattery that’s all part of their beneficial advantage – those simpering advisors – but not yours.
== What I’m leaving out ==
Oh, did I say there were five reasons? Actually, there are seven… and I’m not telling the rest of them! Not today. Because telling might help some of these ingrate traitors to succeed. And also because… well… like Niccolò, I’m not giving out free advice.
Not till I see you are definitely winning. But it’s still way too early to count out Adam Smith and Franklin and MLK and Marshall, et. al. All of whom were geniuses. Unlike you.
Or to count out the members of every profession that studies and investigates facts.
Or women, who know what you harem-builder misogynists plan for them.
Or vast numbers of normal, keenly-aware human citizens, who know that an open-transparent and self-critical civilization remains a better bet for them than any or all kings ever were, for any or all of our ancestors.
But especially… I sure as heck won’t talk about #5 through #7 till I see your offer. What you’re willing to pay. Just out of curiosity, of course.
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== And finally, as my last December Daydream, I'll reiterate a tactic for Old Joe – How he could torpedo the noxious pirate ship of traitors and fools ==
Speaking of powerful men who are surrounded by shortsighted fools...
Hey Joe Biden, there is one last, super bold thing you could do that might tip over the clown car that’s bearing down upon us all.
It would defy Putin’s putsch of the USA...
... and defy the mafioso heading to sit in your chair…
... and it’d defy the incompetents in your own party, who put us in this position.
Do this and be remembered for it, forever.
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