Snowflake despair over ... court rulings? Sack-up! The fight will be elsewhere.

I planned to do a weekend post about how the insatiable (and thus insane) top oligarchs are sparking a world wide revival of the moribund works of Karl Marx. (Alas.) And thusly they seem determined to reserve their rides on Uber Tumbrels. 

But that will have to await another time. After I issue the next update of my book on AI... AILIEN MINDS.

Meanwhile, I have to address an even more dire phenomenon that's pervading across the liberal-o-sphere. Something so silly and unjustified that it plays into the very hands of those seeking to wreck Enlightenment Civilization.

Despair.

     == The Role of the Courts ==

This essay (not one of mine) makes a strong argument that the Roberts Supreme Court has been betraying the American Republic in many ways, but above all… Two Supreme Court Decisions and the Dismembering of Madison’s Republic, by Earl R. Smith II, PhD. 

Though I think cynicism toward Democrats like Nancy Pelosi is not supported by their activities in 2021 and 2022, when - collaborating with Sanders/Warren/AOC etc. - they accomplished so much more than the left will ever credit. Just one matter -- full funding of the IRS after 40 years of starvation - would seem to challenge the notion of DNC Dems enslaved to corporate interests. Since IRS funding was funneled into 'paid in advance' funds, those would have to be repealed by an act of Congress... 

...and they were, alas! By a Republican Party that is now the most tightly disciplined partisan machine in the history of the republic.

Still, I won't deny that the American Republic -- indeed the entire Enlightenment Experiment that let us escape 6000 years of dreary feudalism -- is in deadly danger! Hence I have tried hard to fulfill my own task in all of this. To imagine possible ways to make things better.

Seriously, If you want to see 35 pragmatic and quickly actionable measures to repair the damage, see my full list of proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms. And pass them on to folks who might act on them!

    

     == In despair? Go to a mirror and... ==

On this blog's comment thread, some are expressing despair. Especially now that the Roberts Supreme Court has stopped pretending to be anything other than a Confederate/Kremlin shill, led by our generation's Roger Taney. And sure, 1859 looked pretty dire, too. As did 1776, when the American Revolution was saved from the pit of despond by Thomas Paine, whose pamphlets - Common Sense and The American Crisis - girded the resolve of brave, shivering patriots to keep fighting for a dimly-perceived better world.

How can I reject despair? Especially when few of you - certainly not even one of the sanctimonious despair wallowers - will actually go and read the epochally stirring words that Paine wrote? As if speaking specifically to you?

Perhaps it is a matter of personality. Wherein I deem despair to be grotesque and somewhat inhuman. But also a kind of pathetically ingrate laziness. So unjustified, when we are typing or narrating into miraculous devices, in comfort with nearby snacks, breathing air that (in urban areas) is vastly better than it had been, when I was young, with a self-repairing Ozone layer and yearly INCREASES in the number of trees on Earth...

... and (for now at least) freedom to research anything, and speak as we wish. For now, at least.

And sure, I read Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE about past civilization fails, more-often-then-not due to environmental negligence, and I know what's at stake. Criminy, do YOU know anyone who has fought this fight harder and longer than I have? From EARTH to The Transparent Society and so on? (Maybe Kim Stanley Robinson.) So,I got some cred.

When solar/wind/tidal+batteries are plunging in price and rocketing in emplacement, it would seem the only thing saving carbon-based electricity is the dam data centers. Which I discuss in Ailien Minds, by the way.

The news is dire, yes. and so is the blatant desperation of the Putinist/Foxites, who can see that a vast majority of citizens are growing aware and angry, as in 1859, and no amount of gerrymandered cheating will save the Kremlin shills from an approaching political comeuppance . 

.

== What the traitors will attempt ==

And so it is their villainous desperation that I fear! Because the Project 2025 SOBs will certainly - by now - have concocted a plan for some dire event - perhaps on a 9/11 scale or bigger - to 'justify' an emergency declaration of martial law. Why else would they have already - via Trump - fired or distracted a majority of counter-terror officials, agents and officers and JAGs?

The coming 'event' will only be prevented if they KNOW that we are ready and wary. That we will all hit the streets shouting "Reichstag Fire!"

... and "Appomattox!" And then do much more, to prove the stupidity of proto-feudalists who wage war on all the folks who know law and cyber... along with bio, chem, nuclear and every other potential recourse. And who know where every single prepper bunker lies, and how to crack them open. (Yes, we know, boys.)

Alas, did I mention "stupid"? As they surround themselves with flatterers who croon them into believing they will be immortal lords? That they can terrorize and terrify us into submission. Or coax the masses to blame all the fact professions, as in A Canticle for Leibowitz, instead of the delusional oligarchs who are doing all this?

So no, I am not a Pollyanna. I am shouting warnings!

But those who despair over some despicably partisan, election-cheat court rulings are staring at epiphenomena, not at the real danger.

No, those who despair are historical ignoramuses, too lazy to look at how past Hero Generations girded themselves for a fight that's worth grit and courage and pain, to win. Tom Paine, especially. But also Lincoln, FDR. The soaring words of Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt... getting us on a path that might lead to the stars.

If I could, I would slap you glowering gloom-addicts silly! Till you get up off the couch and shout:

"Okay! Okay! I'll FIGHT instead of wallowing in desolate grumpiness! Now stop that or I'll slap you back! Let's go."

NeoReactionaries Redux... oh my!

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.

Truly among the most repulsive characters I ever met, this ‘Mencius Moldbug’ has been gaining godawful influence over some of the very-richest, brattiest and most dangerously powerful humans on the planet, preaching death to the very Enlightenment that gave him and his fellow ingrates everything they ever had. 

This headline from The Guardian: "He's anti-democracy and pro-Trump: the obscure 'dark enlightenment blogger influencing the next US administration."

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. 

So, are we expected to come up with a Gandalf to break this spell?* 

How about we get the Saru-aliens to stop aiming their stoopid ray at our aristocrats?

== 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.

Indeed, in hilarious self-flattery, here’s Moldbug/Grima styling himself as you-know-who. 

Oh... my....

== 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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If you'd like a more detailed and less-livid dissection of the goals and rationalizations of these 'neo-reactionaries'... here it is. With multiple predictive points, BTW.

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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.

=============================================

PS: um… regarding that parallel with Wormtongue… seriously? Use some of your conspiracy yarn to connect that thought with RFK Jr.  and it all gets kinda… well… weird. Who writes this stuf??

Threats to democracy: oligarchy, feudalism, dictatorship

Fascinating and important to consider, since it is probably one of the reasons why the world aristocracy is pulling its all-out putsch right now… “Trillions will be inherited over the coming decades, further widening the wealth gap,” reports the Los Angeles Times.  The beneficiaries aren’t all that young themselves. From 1989 to 2016, U.S. households inherited more than $8.5 trillion. Over that time, the average age of recipients rose by a decade to 51. More than a quarter of bequests now go to adults 61 or older.

Fascinating and more evidence that stupidity is inherited. Because the rich should be the first to advocate FDR methods to prevent revolution, which the smartest aristos of the 1930s, like Joe Kennedy, all knew to be in their own interest. Instead, today's oligarchs appear to be doing everything in their power to bring tumbrels rolling. (And imagining that their hideaways in Patagonia, Siberia, New Zealand and under the sea will somehow provide safety from that inevitable rage.)

Matt Stoller explains how the fight against the recurring human curse of feudal oligarchy was fought in the 1930s, just in time for America to lead in resolving the crises of the 40s & 50s. (See “The Man in The High Castle” for where we were headed, without Greatest Generation heroes like FDR.) This seriously good video is highly informative and shows that other generations solved their own oligarchic putsches. We can solve ours.

I've seen one of the latest alt-right bullshittisms going around. They know they lose every wager based on facts and they now know everyone sapient can see climate disasters rising all around, directly caused by their cult. So one meme is "it was never gonna last, anyway!" Either fundie revelationism or else good old playground cynicism. "Soon all that will be left is jellyfish, so what matters?"

As you might guess I have an unusual answer. Do you know the Fermi Paradox? The question of why we see none of the great works out there among the stars, that we hope our own descendants may build?

Among my top five Fermi Paradox theories is one that I've seen no one else mention... feudalism as an attractor state that extinguishes curiosity and exploration and inventiveness, even if a sapient species survives. The fact that rule by inheritance-lord bullies and theocrats took hold in 99% of human societies says a lot. And while most historic versions of feudalism may be specifically human, the darwinistic reproductive advantage of lords/kings/priests grabbing harems is seen all across the animal kingdom. Hence its driving force likely transcends species, genus and planetary system.

So, what happens if such a society lasts millennia? The lie that "lords are superior" would become true by simple breeding and you'll wind up with castes, as in Brave New World, or in bees and ants. And when that happens - when we become specialists like ants - that's it for curiosity or outward endeavor.

Some of you know the Heinlein quote about specialization. As we'll see below, he was a man of the American enlightenment, and would have despised the putsch.

== The alternative? ==

Indeed, it may be especially human and rare that we found an alternative to stupid-ass, predictable and self-destructive feudalism. An alternative that - in the rare few times and places it's been tried - proved so vastly more creative and productive of every human good that we are using a few of the benefits right now, to converse across space and time... and AI minds may already be reading this, pondering which system got around to engendering them. (Hint: it wasn't the 99% of nations and centuries when and where feudalism reigned.)

If it's true that we stumbled into a rare, viable alternative, it means far more than our own miserable species and planet may be at stake. We may be the Milky Way's one chance to go out and save others from the Trap, bringing light.

And now the capper. I have watched these guys since they were a small band of cranks orbiting D&D and SCA. Among them are the top "incel" misogynist ravers (involuntarily celibate? Try acting like a mensch!) and neo-monarchists who no longer pretend that the "right" stands for for competition, or enterprise, or markets, certainly not democracy, equality, accountability or rights. They are unabashed admirers of Putin and the New Czars, and when shown that it's all just a bunch of "ex" commies and commissars-turned mafia bosses, they just grin and shrug.

Not long ago I cited Robert Heinlein’s incredibly prescient passages predicting that the US right would (alas) ally itself with religious fundamentalism who together: ““–promise a material heaven here on earth, add a dash of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Negroism, and a good large dose of anti-‘furriners’ in general and anti-intellectuals here at home…”

What one of you pointed out was that in Heinlein’s prescriptive utopia novel… the generously good-natured, socialist-libertarian Beyond This Horizon… the villains and would-be tyrants turn out to be male loser-types jibbering about white power and putting women back in their place. Reading those passages, you realize Heinlein was also predicting today’s pathetic-though-dangerously-insane incels.

They jack off to fantasies of being "top dogs" when they are, at all levels, kibble. Still, they might prove to be a lethal fifth-column, helping pull us all down with them and making humanity... typical.

== Reclaim Adam Smith! as a weapon against oligarchy! ==

It seemed at least a decade that I felt alone, demanding that liberals rediscover Adam Smith as the founder of their movement and a core leader in the Revolution against privileged aristocracy, the toxic poison that ruined 99% of nations, across 6000 years. (The enemy fought by the American Founders and the real Tea Party.) Gradually, folks have rediscovered how graciously balanced and ‘liberal’ Smith was, and how dedicated to equality, which is the true engine of flat-fair-creative competition.

Of late, this cause has been taken up by the best critical economics site, “Evonomics” featuring cogent rediscoveries of a radical notion… that creative markets must maximize the number of skilled, confident, knowing competitors! You start by raising up all children. But above all we must also prevent cheating from the top. In Evonomics, Lindsey McGoey makes this point recently, as she put it:

“The establishment of perfect justice, of perfect liberty, and of perfect equality,” Adam Smith writes in Wealth of Nations, “is the very simple secret which most effectively secures the highest degree of prosperity to all the three classes.”

She goes on: “But with 1% of the world’s population now owning half its wealth, that belief is being forcefully called into question. There are growing calls to abolish billionaires and their privileges, including preferential tax treatment, handouts to corporations, and grossly inflated executive salaries that are often subsidized by taxpayers. If he was alive today, what would Adam Smith make of Jeff Bezos’s lobbying for ever-more government subsidies, or about government bailouts in the Great Recession that saved America’s rich while millions lost their homes, or about one top mogul's admission that “Monopolists lie to protect themselves”? I think Smith would say: I told you so.

“Smith was scathingly critical of the wealthy’s disproportionate power over government policymaking. He complained about the tendency of the rich to shirk tax obligations, unfairly passing tax burdens on to poor workers. He heaped scorn on government bailouts of the East India Company. He thought dirty money in politics was akin to bribery, and that it undermined the duty to govern impartiality. He wasn’t alone.”

And yes, I speak of all this... about shoes and ships and Adam Smith, and oligarchs and memes.... In a book that perhaps someone, someday, might review. Or better yet, actually use one of the 100+ ideas.