Why the Vance (Thiel) transition will only be the beginning. And how the Secret Weapon of the oligarchs may backfire.

While I never believed that Trump had died, I'll certainly join a well-intentioned betting pool over whether he will shuffle off by natural causes before end-of-term. Or even before the 2026 mid-terms. Which makes it important - even now - for us to contemplate potential transitions... or end games.

Whether the proximate cause of departure is physical or mental or scandal-driven or juridicial -- all of them plausible -- folks are already talking about how President J.D. Vance would be a puppet of Peter Thiel and (even worse) the Moldbug neo-monarchist cultists who now roam the White House, providing Peter et. al. with justifying, masturbatory incantations to continue attacking every institution and method of the vastly successful Enlightenment Experiment. The unique endeavor in a flat-fair society and competitive markets that enabled theie comfortable lives and every success of ingrate oligarchs. 

So, will that be it? A smooth transition to the Vance (Thiel) potentate? A simple monarchist coup, establishing CEO-kingship, while finally ending the impudent bourgeoise rebellion of 1776? 

Certainly there would be one silver lining. Ingrate-prepper oligarchs would cease their current efforts to trigger "The Event"... a collapse of civilization, allowing them to emerge later from their plush bunkers as lords among the flies. Why bother, when that power is already theirs, grace-a-Caesar Peter.

Of course only a fool would expect it to last. Not when the planet's quarter of a billion nerds - the ones who know cyber, nano, bio, nuclear and the rest - get fully roused and angry. (You won't like us, when we're mad.) So, even if the neo-monarchist putsch seems smooth at first, it would only set the fuse for Peter the 1st to learn - eventually - the lessons of Charles the first, Louis XVI and Nicholas II. 

But perhaps I am deluded. Scan 6000 years of human history. Were we Americans a fleeting anomaly, in our impudently democratic egalitarianism? Like the brief brilliance of Periclean Athens or daVinci's Florence? The ghost of Machiavelli - Moldbug's supposed role model - can be heard murmuring "So it goes."

Except that I don't think it will be anywhere near that simple. 

           == The wing of the prophet strikes! ==

Because waiting in the wings are the religious zealots typified by House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson. Remember that Johnson would -- upon Trump's passage from the stage -- thereupon be next in line for the Oval Office. At least until the Senate approves President Vance's appointment of a new VP....

During which interval, Thiel and Vance would be wise to check every meal that they are served. Or the religious affiliations of the bodyguards standing behind them. (Look up Indira Gandhi.)

Or else -- more likely -- one scandal revelation could send Vance tumbling out of the way, in much the same manner as Spiro Agnew vanished from Nixon's line of succession. 

(And yes, the long, long litany of corrupt Republicans goes that far back. Always remember Mike Johnson's 1990s predecessor as Speaker, Dennis Hastert! Similarly chosen by his GOP colleagues to be one heartbeat away from the Oval Office and even then a well-known obscenity of a perv-predator monster. Look him up!)

So. Might a cult religio-caudillo step up to oust Thiel and Vance, replacing CEO-monarchy with theocracy? Robert Heinlein described this scenario in detail, eerily forecasting this mortal hazard to our enlightened, scientific and progress-oriented civilization, with the potential dawning of Nehemia Scudder. (Look up that name, as well!)

Others out there are likening our situation to the late Roman Republic toppling into imperial rule... or the late empire falling to barbarians... or else Idiocracy. I deem those comparisons to be historically simpleminded! Though pushed vigorously by dopes like Chris Hedges or else brilliantly-manipulative scoundrels like Orson Scott Card. Certainly dyspeptic jeremiads do us no good. They only serve the fanatics' End Times fixations.  

       == So. Will it come to all that? ==

Will things come to all that? It shouldn't, as a growing majority of Americans now clearly wish it not to! For one thing, all it would take is a couple of Republican senators to prevent Prez Vance picking a new VP.  And those two need not be 'liberal Republicans.' They might even be radicals on the other side -- looking eagerly toward a Johnson-Scudder supremacy! And the Night of the Long Knives among GOP factions thus begins. Hand me the popcorn.

Or else -- a much finer scenario -- even before the 2026 mid-terms can change the political landscape, five decent Republicans in the House -- (just five!) -- could make Hakeem Jeffries speaker -- or else some compromise person who is a trustworthy adult. An eventuality that could save the life of JD Vance! As the cult's varied factions unite around him, re-joined by necessity... by their common cause of avoiding prison.

And now I know what some of you (all of you?) are muttering. 

"Where are you gonna find that couple of residually-decent, patriotic Republican senators? Or five residually-decent GOP House members, willing to face the right's ire, in order to help save the nation that gave them everything?"

          == The crux-question: what is holding them together? ==

For 20 years I marveled at the spectacularly obedient uniformity of the recent Republican Party. Aside from a few brave dissidents like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, they march in lockstep, almost all of them yattering - by nightfall - each day's meme/talking-point issued that morning on Fox. (Many of those memes having originated the day before from a KGB-Kremlin basement.) 

Let's be clear. The 21st Century Republican Party is by far the most disciplined political entity in U.S. history. No one dares deviate a scintilla from Rupert Murdoch's program, no matter how spectacularly nuts and counterfactual it might be.

Which raises the question of HOW? How is such discipline maintained?

I mean, we're talking almost 300 reps & senators, plus their staffs, plus up to 10,000 GOP state legislators, plus increasing numbers of judges, including the blatantly suborned Supreme Court majority, plus so many others totaling several more tens of thousands in the Republican elite, who must be to some degree in-the-know. And many have to be disgusted, realizing that their entire movement has become a tool of cultists and foreign enemies.

Mind you, in his first term, Trump heeded the old guard Republican establishment and appointed grownups to his cabinet. Largely right wingers, sure, but at least most of them were knowledgeable about their new jobs, wanting to do them well. And what happened? 

FORTY of Trump's 44 cabinet appointments later denounced him to varying degrees! Leading to the Donald's great vow: 

No more grownups!  

And lo, there are none. None whatsoever in the cabinet and appointees of Trump II.

And yet, even after recruiting mostly shills from Rupert's harem of Fox yammerers, that gives Trump no peace of mind! No guarantee of the till-death loyalty that old Two Scoops values, above all other traits. 

This round, Don would want better assurance than just picking docile flatterers from the Fox News herd. In fact, I think I know how a former casino mafioso could accomplish it. And has.

 

           == None of the current explanations work! ==

How are the top 1,000 or so republicans kept disciplined, with only a few dozen or so patriotic defectors, so far? Some of you have responded variously with notions like:

- Theory #1: Fanaticism. Those High GOPpers who aren't already mad ideologues have been forced to act that way, by the threat of being 'primaried' out of office in districts that are gerrymandered with double intent. First, to rob all district Democrats of any meaning to their votes. But also in order to multiply the voting power of local radicals.  (I keep offering a partial solution to this!* One that some of YOU might help to do and spread, on your own!) 

And yes, the suborned justices who empowered this crime should be careful, lest someday King Peter or Prophet Mike invite them over for tea, or the view from an upper-story window. While the ghost of Roger Taney moans at their consciences, rattling their sleep with his chains.

But no, mere ideology is a crappy theory to explain such disciplined uniformity! First, because even ideology can be variable, with hair-splitting like we see among liberals, though not among Republicans...

...but also because a hero who wakens from a trance and recants the madness can find other employment at a hundred NGOs, for example. And likely get a hero's treatment by history. And some might even bet on riding a blue wave, if they switch in time. Anyway, a hundred top tier GOP folks can redefine the ideology! Ideologues do it, all the time. 

No. Fanaticism clearly does play a role. But it cannot provide the guarantee of till-death loyalty that Donald Trump so desperately wants and needs. It cannot explain the tight discipline that we observe.

- Theory #2: Lucre. Money. Bribery. Corruption. Those 1,000+ high Republicans, who are complicit in demolition of the Great Republic, might all be in it for the vigorish! 

And sure, tsunamis of cash have flowed into those pockets, for decades. Aided by 'laws and rules' passed by the crooks in legislatures, and supported by corrupt justices. And especially by Trump's firing of nearly all of the Inspectors General across the federal government! Which should have made huge headlines, but simply washed away in the morass of each day's treasons. The "swamp' of K Street lobbyists never had it so good.

But no, mere corruption does not work either, as a theory to explain such tightly disciplined uniformity. I doubt that many of you have met corrupt officials, who tend to be very cautious about appearances! Some will say: "That's enough for this year. If I take any more bribes to do and say stupid things, I'll look like an idiot. Come back next year."

Such satiability is highly variable from one person to the next. But that's the point! It means that corruption-driven discipline is unreliable. Oh, money undoubtedly is a factor. But it utterly does not explain the uniformity. The discipline.

-  Theory #3:  Cauterized isolation: Under "friend to boys" Dennis Hastert, the 1990s Republican Party banned its members from ever negotiating with the other party without permission from the Speaker and the radical caucus. 200 years of traditional side discussions - cross-party consensus moves which led to civil rights bills and forward looking compromises - were jettisoned by command of the party's new masters. 

Hastert even required that most House GOP reps keep their families in the home district, instead of in DC where their kids might go to school with the children of Democrats, leading to social meetings and (horrors!) even cross party friendships!  (And yes, you are hearing about this here, for the first time. Why?)

This cauterization of contact with the other side empowered radicals to depict Democrats as vile 'demon-rats.' It also had the side benefit of sending House Reps flying "home" every Thursday night, returning to DC late Monday, which left only Tuesday and Wednesday to do the people's business in the Capitol. Leading to GOP-majority Congresses being the LAZIEST and least productive the nation ever saw. Seriously, look it up!

Sure all of the above tactics have clearly contributed to the GOP's stunning, lockstep uniformity in DC - and across the nation - becoming the most tightly disciplined partisan cult in American history. 

Still, those of you who think #1 or #2 or #3 would suffice, shame on you for shrugging off the diversity among your foes! Dismissing them as kneejerk drones who are all the same!  You hate that when they do it to liberals, right?

No, it doesn't work. Not even ALL of those methods, combined, would be adequate to explain what we have seen!

 What's needed, in order to explain Republican uniformity and obedient discipline is something that's coercive enough to overcome all diversity! 

People react differently to bribes or to ideology, but everyone knows what it is like to be afraid.

== The application of coercive pressure ==

The most obvious method of coercion is:

- Theory #4: Threats of violence. Yeah yeah. That can work. But threats of violence can lose effectiveness in sudden ways, abruptly becoming counter-productive, as when the threatened person gets really angry and turns to honest cops. It actually happens quite a lot, in cities that suffer intermittently from protection rackets. And those brave storefront shopkeepers are much, much more vulnerable than some multi-millionaire Congressman who can move anywhere. With renown as a hero.

Okay, sure. Heroes need to be... heroic. But are you saying those 1,000+ high GOPpers -- more like 10,000 overall -- include none with any guts, at all? Especially since there are many places in America - and beyond - that would protect them and their families?

Might you coerce a dozen or even a hundred this way? Maybe. But threaten too many and it collapses. Especially if -- as Ghislaine Maxwell clearly has done -- the threatened person can counter-threaten.

 "If I die, the squeal caches that I've hidden in a dozen places will all come out!"

A former casino mob boss would know all about that.

Anyway, there is a form of coercive pressure that can work without any of those disadvantages. And yes, I am talking - and have talked for years - about...

 Theory #5: blackmail.

== The ancient method that keeps on working ==

Blackmail methods have been refined for centuries. Russian secret services have used honey-pot lures to entrap high westerners since the time of the czars. Look up the 1980s scandal of the U.S. Moscow embassy Marine guards. Once ensnared for even a minor infraction, the victim can be nose-pulled through an escalating series of 'favors' until all is lost and they are firmly in the blackmailer's grasp.

Blatant recent examples include a Russian agent who used sex to essentially take over the top leadership of the National Rifle Association! And you actually thought it would stop there?

Now throw in the fact that - just in recent years - THREE Republican Congressmen have spoken of how leading figures in their party regularly throw 'orgies!'

As I discuss elsewhere, the thing about blackmail is that it is self-reinforcing. The victim feels isolated, helpless and all alone. And when it is supplemented by other factors... perhaps orgies, or bribery, or ideological suasion, or all three... the method is pretty much secure from heroism. I mean, who is gonna step up and reveal it all, when the immediate result will be revelation of your own dark secret? And thereupon demolition of everything you've built in your life? Moreover, there's no place on Earth that will be safe for you. Unless...

...unless, well, you do the hero thing just right. And I will shortly post a chapter from a novel in progress that illustrates exactly how it might be done!

== Oh, Lindsey... oh, Lisa & Susan... ==

I've found it stunning how many of the brightest folks I know, who share my worries about the suicide of a great nation in the EIGHTH PHASE of America's recurring civil war - simply shrug off this blatantly obvious method by which the anti-western cabal -- Putin's KGB plus Confederate MAGAs plus would-be feudal lord inheritance brats -- might enforce disciplined uniformity upon their most valuable tool: today's U.S. Republican Party. 

Down the line, nearly everyone shrugs off even the possibility of rampant blackmail, preferring to dismiss the GOP's collapse into treason as a combination of graft and ideological troglodytism.

Though most will avow to some obvious exceptions! For example, even skeptics nod when the name Lindsey Graham comes up, murmuring: "Okay, I'll give you that one." 

But let's spell i out: When a US senator gets re-elected, he or she then has six years  before being called again to the bar of voter judgement. That might as well be a century. For at least the first couple of years, threats of being primaried should have little coercive dominance, with all that remaining time to win back the hearts of offended constituents. Likewise, after many years in office, you should be able to pick and choose among the bribe offers. Such a senator, at least, should feel free to stand up. 

Lindsey has tried!  Count the number of times he came forth, declaring: "Enough!  This latest travesty of Trump's was the limit. I am done with Trump!"  

Only then what happened? The very next day, he groveled, hurrying to kneel and kiss the ring and gush His Majesty's praises. 

And it never occurred to you to ask how? HOW they curbed Graham's repeated attempts to break-away? Especially when he had six more years in office guaranteed? Come on! Either they have a bomb implanted next to his carotid artery... or else... well, most of you already know where I am going with this.

Then there's Susan Collins, who has spent a decade expressing "sadness" and "disappointment" with the "disturbing" behaviors and "unfortunate" hurts to every American value or decency being wrought by the New GOP. And yet, does she ever effectively VOTE against any of it? Or demand investigations? Or denounce any of the vileness and treason in ways that will matter? 

 Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has voted against Trump, especially in the 2nd impeachment trial, when there was never any chance of reaching the 2/3 needed for actual removal. In 2021, when asked whether she would remain a Republican, Murkowski replied, "if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me." And yet, just like Collins being 'disturbed,' it's all just ineffective sighs atop an endless mountain of effective complicity.

 Hey Brin. Okay, they might - and likely do - have all sorts of kinky or incriminating stuff on Graham. But are you seriously suggesting that Collins or Murkowski are being blackmailed?"

I am. Because they both have male relatives and husbands who might be honey-potted. Though that is just a malign imputation, so let me be clear that I have ZERO evidence for such! 

No. What matters is the pattern of behavior. Which is only explicable by theory #5.

== The ultimate outcome? ==

Okay, Brin. Even supposing you are right. What is to be done? With the FBI caving in to Trumpist pressures like a sugar-cube house that's doused in boiling lard, is there any way out?

Well, I will very soon post that novel chapter showing what a single blackmailed hero might do.

Further, late in the term of former President Biden, I issued a public call for him to offer pardons to any high victims of coercive blackmail who might step up, in the manner I describe. Republican or Democrat, if they help to destroy a major blackmail ring, then they should get some clemency for whatever kompromat the blackmailers hold. (Alas, Old Joe never answered.)

Still, some zillionaire might  even now accomplish much the same thing!  Offer whistle-blower rewards that include full coverage* of legal fees for anyone who steps forward in ways that collapse this travesty. And just the offer, by itself, would draw huge attention to the possibility!  (* And maybe a villa in some non-extradition country?)

Attention is what blackmailers dread most. Even more than their victims fear it. For the victims, there may be some pity, even forgiveness and redemption for whatever got them snared. For blackmailers, there may be a much-feared tsunami of revenge.

== There is so much more ==

We should recall that decades ago homosexuals were banned from government service because of the possibility they might be blackmailed with threats of being outed. And while that scenario certainly still applies to some - e.g. likely two of the individuals alluded to here - it has mostly gone away by the simple measure of ending major persecution of - and normalization of - gays.

Still, there are countless things that remain blackmailable, many of them deservedly so! As Dennis Hastert and so many mostly republican pervs-in-high-office have been outed for pedophilia-predation, over the years.

Which brings us to my final scenario. And this one will make most of you howl in derision! 

"Okay Brin, save such nonsense for a novel! A John Grisham paranoia plot-scheme!  There's no way that in real life... there's no way... there's... wait a minute..."

Are you ready? Well, you'll recall the dilemma faced by the ex-casino mafioso who values till-death loyalty above all other traits? Even after recruiting all of his new appointees - not one of them a qualified grownup - from his favorite yammer-jibber 'news' network, he can never be sure that one or two -- or most -- of them won't turn on him later, when it suits them. So what's he to do?

Please squint and put yourself in his shoes!  As I must do all the time, when imagining the motives, means and opportunities of fictional villains, asking myself "What would I do, if I were such a skullduggerous mob boss, who values absolute loyalty far more than competence, from my henchmen? Especially if I have access to all the skills and experience and technologies of the Kremlin and the slightly relabeled KGB?

The answer is simple:

"If you want an appointment to a cabinet position, you must give me leverage over you. To punish you, if you ever denounce me or publish a tell-all book about me."

For one of the semi-adults who served in the first Trump cabinet - say Tillerson or Barr, Mnuchin, Pompeo or Chao - that demand likely would not work. They all had other options. 

But look at the faces in the coterie of half-wit nothings in the cabinet of Trump v.2! Name one who would not plausibly rush to earn their slot by giving old Two Scoops the desired kompromat! And it could all be arranged neatly in an hour, in a back casita at a certain golf resort, with camera crews standing by. Along with (perhaps) a donkey.

All right. It's a Grisham plot. But if you were Two Scoops, with motive, means and opportunity to guarantee till-death loyalty in this way, what would you do?

 == And finally... Re-Register Republican! ==

I'll offer that chapter from my blackmail novel soon. It's already circulating.

But let me finish with the plea I have repeated for years.

You need to check your voter registration now! Many red states and counties are purging their voting rolls of Democrats or independents. But there is one likely way to safeguard your registration (and tell your friends.)

Re-register as Republican. I did ages ago, back when California was GOP gerrymandered, to vote in the only election that mattered in my district, the Republican primary. In many districts across America, that's the only election that matters. So arrange to vote in it!

1. You won't get purged.

2. You'll have a chance to vote against some monster and for a local Republican who seems like the older-fashioned kind. Maybe conservative, but ,aybe one with a decent heart. 

3. If enough folks do this, boy will it screw up the calculations of the oligarchs behind the current madness.

Spread this method. Grit your teeth and do it. You'll get back at least a little bit of the voting power that was robbed from you! Give it a sigh and take up the "R"! Think of Lincoln and Teddy and Ike, and just do it.

== Finally... and for real finally, this time... ==

Order yours now. 

For years I've shown clearly that we live in a time that's totally equivalent (in shocking ways) to the 1850s. If you want to prevent things from going full 1860s, we need to show our neighbors that we won't be any less than the heroes who stood up and stepped up to save America and freedom and all hope for an enlightened era.

And hence I've long urged folks to make a Union blue kepi their Halloween-season headgear. (This baseball cap version may more suit your style.) 

Only for more than Halloween, this time. The next fourteen months are crucial. The next TWO months, in California, Virginia, New Jersey and Florida!

So. Order yours now. 

Oh those idiotic "cycles of history,' yet again!

 A 'rightward shift'? Only if our confidence is destroyed!  Which both MAGA and Hollywood seem bent on achieving.

I quote below a passage from interesting book -- The Aftermath: The last days of the baby boom and the future of power in America, by Philip Bump. Indeed, as far as it goes (see below) the passage and the article/book make some supportable assertions. Certainly my own kids mutter “boomers!” pretty often, sometimes without a smile!

And yet, this obsession is also misleading. For one thing, U.S. boomers aren't French. They like to work and have politically allowed the retirement age to keep incrementing upward, in order to maintain Social Security solvency as lifespans rise. (A further increment is on the table, refused by Republicans, who dread an end to one of their top complaints.)

So far, Boomers are still paying their way.

Are there many of the generational problems that Mr. Bump cites? Sure. For one thing, a substantial minority of boomers are Trumpers, resentful toward America's ongoing, 200 year project of ever-expanding inclusiveness. That large minority of boomers is also biliously hate-drenched toward all of the fact and knowledge castes - those nerds & professionals who seem to understand a world that MAGAs find bewildering. 

(Name an exception to this near-uniform resentment, from science, teaching, journalism, law and medicine to the FBI/Intel/military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror, all now MAGA-hated. That resentment of achievers is far stronger than their racism or sexism.)

On the other hand, a larger segment of that boomer generation are members of - or associates with - the fact and knowledge castes! The greatest and most creative such clade of humans the world ever saw, leading to heaps of very good news seldom mentioned in exploitive media.

 Moreover, those fact-and-progress-oriented boomers are (for the most part) eager mentors and enablers of their coming replacements. And there's another fact that’s seldom mentioned - that boomers will leave to their heirs the greatest tsunami of middle class wealth the world ever saw. Though – as described below – it could have even even bigger.

No, all this 'boomer' talk is - to some extent - deliberate distraction! Generation-fixation is a cult, especially among rightist intelligencia, desperate to divert attention from the real story - the real divide - which is (as both Adam Smith and Karl Marx told us) about CLASS…

… especially after 40 years of 'supply-side' scams transferred at least $10 trillions from the U.S. middle class into the open maws of a top 0.001% that never, ever invested any substantial amount of it into the promised productive uses. A lordly aristocracy whose bloated wealth disparities are now surpassing French Revolution levels! 

Fully aware that those chickens may come to roost, the rightist mystical-obsession is with CYCLICAL HISTORY. Raving notions of fore-ordained generational cycles like those clutched by Nazis, Confederates and other romantics... 

...and that now propel a desperate fantasy called prepper-ism, as many of the uber-rich build luxury bunker-redoubts and mountain refuges to ride out a coming "Event," or fall of civilization. As if we spurned survivors - especially the nerds who know cyber, bio, nano, and nuclear stuff - won't trivially know where to find those who betrayed and abandoned us.

== A Quasi-Religious Cult to Justify Neo-Feudalism ==

Among the core scriptures of this cyclic-history mysticism that obsesses conservatives, there is a tome called The Fourth Turning, a pile of jibbering hogwash by authors Strauss & Howe, whose apophenia/pareidolia incantations are so easily disproved that obsessives can only double down, obsessively - and religiously - averting their gaze from any doubts.  (I know plenty of these guys - and not one will wager over the testable falsifiability of these cult 'historical cycle' cult assertions.)

That is the undercurrent, beneath all this 'generational shift' blather. A desperate drive to distract from real problems and divides. Or how foolish the sycophancy-lobotomized oligarchy truly is, for rejecting the great benefits they gained from the New Deal and the Great Society. Or their plunge back down the path that old Karl ordained. Dreaming of harems and consigning themselves to tumbrels.

But fine. Now here's that promised quotation from The Aftermath. Read it both for how right it is... and how there are other, unmentioned layers. 

"The Baby Boomers... were a cohort of historically unprecedented size, whose basic need to be clothed, fed, housed and educated was a decades-long jobs creator and economy stimulator. And they were a cohort whose massive size and timing — not just in the immediate aftermath of World War II, but decades into a postindustrial era of growth, government investment and a strong middle class — meant cultural and economic dominance for much of their lives. As teenagers, boomers saw their desires met by marketers who had only just discovered that teenagers with few obligations and a little disposable cash were a huge potential consumer group. Now, as older adults and retirees with waning obligations and a lot of disposable cash, boomers continue to hold a significant chunk of American wealth and the consumer power that goes with it — and in turn, products and services for boomers have proliferated, a trend that will no doubt continue as they enter their sunset years. The government adjusted, too, smoothing boomers’ entrance into the world with significant investments in infrastructure and education, and now smoothing their exit with significant entitlement expenditures."

Statements and assertions that are true – in themselves – can also add up to distraction and bullshit.

== "Caesarism" - the latest treason ==

Let's go past all the headlines and spume. The Mad Right’s neo-feudalism fetish is its only priority. All supposed “policies’ boil down to it, leading at last to this inevitable end state: “For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic” (With Peter Thiel among the major subsidizers of dismally microcephalic propagandizers, pushing the same cult incantations under a different name: “neo-monarchy.”) Yeah, sure, guys. 

 

Dig it. After 6000 years of wretchedly stupid misrule by inheritance-brat kings and lords, we broke from that feudal Divine Right romantic twaddle. And in so doing, we have accomplished vastly more - in every conceivable category - during the last 250 years of gradually improving constitutionalism – and especially during the post- Rooseveltean era – than all other human cultures… combined. And I include the neolithic. 

 

Yes, I mean combined. Put up wager stakes. Anything that is consensus Good and factually verifiable. Like the percentage of human beings who have been able to raise healthy children in conditions of light and peace. Or science. Or production, economics or entrepreneurship. Or far-sighted literature. Or a burgeoning ecological movement that just might save our children's world... 

... or the thing that Adam Smith promoted, but that these hypocrites now openly hate -- flat-fair-creative competition.

 

Faced with a looming demographic collapse of U.S. conservatism (the mad Bush/Trumpian version) -– and the fact that all fact-using professions have turned against them --  these bozos surround themselves with lobotomizing flatterers who only prove my case! They have replaced politics - the high art of negotiating positive sum solutions to a wide variety of problems, ambitions and interests - with a tiresome litany of rationalizations toward one goal. A goal that is pathetically predictable, rooted in male reproduction reflexes…

 

…that of restored feudal rule by inheritance brats, yearning to restore the practice of kingly harems.  

 

Oh, it’s an insane-masturbatory goal. One chased by incel yammerers. But sure, you guys will try, and if 2024 elections aren’t going your way, you will unleash on us waves of McVeighs. 

 

(Prediction: the caesarites won’t let the ’24 election be about Donald Trump. Especially if he's either self-torching or going full brownshirt. Desperate, the oligarchs will find some way to push their beloved asset aside, either gently or (preferably) in some "Howard Beale Option" designed to incite the base. Think not? Then give me odds? 1:3 it’ll be Nikki Haley or one of her clones. And God bless the US Secret Service.)

 

== A Canticle for Rich Idiots ==

And so, let's explore the logical path they have chosen. 

Hey, feudalist cultists, have you considered what-if - just maybe - we (especially all the nerds you despise) are far more ready than you think? Exactly how do you believe this is gonna go, when you are waging war vs. all fact-using professions? From science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror?  

Open war against the nerds who know cyber, bio, nuclear, chemistry and all the rest? Those who have the exact location and every feature of every single Prepper compound?

 

I know some of the suckers falling for this prepper/aristocracy stuff. They used to be science fiction fans. Today, they think any "Event" will follow a course portrayed in one of the classics - Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Alas, they put too much masturbatory faith in ego-pleasing sci fi. 

Oh, it’s a great novel, written in a bygone age. But is it an accurate model of some post-Event future, when survivors will throw themselves at the feet of prepper lords, emerging from sanctums and bunkers? When the inevitable blame backlash gets turned against all nerds? 

Are you guys really so sure the blame won't fall upon those 'lords,' whose active or passive sabotage undermined our institutions of resilience?

 

Want a model for what'll actually happen, if those would-be caesars do trigger an "Event?"

Paris, 1789. 

== They know no history. And hence no future ==

 

Okay, just one more thing.

 

Yeah, bad – tho sometimes well-written – science fiction has played a role in forming caesarism. Foremost among those pushing this rejection of the American Experiment? Take Orson Scott Card – a writer of unquestionable persuasive genius and psychological manipulativeness. Scott spent his entire career relentlessly inveighing that democracy is futile and no institution can be trusted. Certainly, the very notion of self-rule via negotiated, positive-sum politics, thrashed out openly by several hundred million citizens, is ridiculed and dismissed at every turn.

 

Instead, we all should throw ourselves at the feet of some super-uber-demigod-Caesar, hoping (in fact praying) that he’ll be as nice as Ender Wiggin. Only he should also have an all-chastising whip – and maybe cattle cars and smokestacks – to back up his unquestioned (unquestionable) wisdom.  

While this lesson is pushed in all Card tales, including the dangerously misunderstood Ender's Game, the anti-democracy propaganda gets explicit in Card’s EMPIRE, the author's wish fantasy novel that is clutched and extolled as a keystone document of this Caesarist/neo-monarchist ‘movement’ that bodes for the rest of us…

... nothing but pain. I promise though. If that happens, you fellows will share in it.

 

Those who would be kings - Part 1. 'Neo-Monarchists’ and others who demand we drop what works, in favor or what always failed

This is not a polite essay - a two-parter offering new (and some older) insights into a world oligarchic putsch that endangers us all... and no-less the self-deceiving oligarchs, themselves. But we'll start with some of the lunatic shills they have subsidized or hired to push obsolete, dangerous notions.

Wiser heads advise that I just ignore a particular cabal of erudite fools, spewing ingrate insanity like frothy scum across a polluted beach. Alas, the ‘neo-monarchists’ are back! Now attracting real support from would-be kings. And since few others appear to be confronting them head-on, it's up to me, alack.

 Most recently I raged at them back in November of 2013 and again in February of 2022. 

== Know-Nothings get away with spewing nonsense ==

It should surprise no one that modern conservatism has migrated away from the ‘c-word’ that used to be one of their icons… competition… giving lip service to Adam Smith... 

... resuming instead the movement's older fealty to inherited privilege – drifting from Smith back to Edmund Burke, extolling 6000 years of rule by kings. 

Even the name of Friedrich Hayek is seldom spoken aloud anymore, by today’s 'conservative’ writers and pundits, since Hayek called for competition that is flat, fair, open, transparent, creative and maximally inviting to the widest range of potential participants. And we can't have any of that now, can we? 

Alas, no liberal pundit or politician ever points out this hypocrisy, or that the U.S. Founders and the original Tea Party rebelled primarily against cheater oligarchy. Moreover, anyone who actually reads Adam Smith knows that - were he alive today – Smith would be a flaming Democrat.

That hypocrisy spans the entirety of today’s conservatism, with one exception, that I’m about to describe. Members of this extremum are no longer hypocrites! 

That's because neo-monarchists openly despise Adam Smith. They espouse completing the antipodal migration of conservatism, from once-upon-a-time extolling competition, all the way to openly justifying its utter suppression. 

From Smith, past Burke all the way to Louis XIV.

(Note that there are many (perhaps 1%) on the left who rage against 'The Enlightenment' and every concept that led to their own knowledge, comforts and freedoms. But I do not deem them anywhere near as smart or as dangerous as the traitors on the other side. And hence... another time.)

== It’s baaaack!   Sycophancy for feudalism ==

I recall when ‘neo-monarchist’ jibberers like “Mencius Moldbug” – the nom-de-spume of a Mr. Curtis Yarvin – only flitted along the extreme right ankle of science fiction fandom, as mutated Ayn-Randian nuisances, bugging me and other sci fi authors on Internet fora. 

Now, subsidized by the likes of Peter Thiel, they are subjects of big-time profiles, like this one on Tablet, that feigns faux ‘balance’ while implying that Moldbug offers some bona fide, red-pill style Truths. But don’t be fooled by any semblance of an evenhanded tone. This article, by Tablet essayist Jacob Siegel, pushes the incredible, oligarchy-subsidized notion of taking Moldbug and his ilk seriously. 

“Whether you like it or not, Yarvin is the philosopher of, at the very least, our near future.”

Oh, what malarkey! In their denunciations of democracy, Moldbug/Yarvin and ilk rave assertions about human nature and history that are blatantly and diametrically opposite to fact. For example that:

 “…all organizations, big or small, public or private, military or civilian, are managed best when managed by a single executive….” 

…a stunningly counterfactual claim over which I have long offered wager stakes. An assertion-incantation that only breathes air because so many of our contemporary fellow citizens (e.g. Mr. Siegel) know next-to nothing about human history. (Tell it to the single-executive idiots who trashed Sears, Xerox and Kodak by enforcing their whims.) 

Indeed, when confronted by how spectacularly more-successful America and the West have been, by any range of metrics, across the last 200 years - especially the last 80 - than all other human times and societies combined – success that transpired and accelerated in direct proportion to how much more democratic, inclusive and transparently accountable we became – Yarvin and cohorts are reduced to chanting: 

“Yeah? Well, it won’t last. It can’t!”

And it may not. I’ve always held that the rare enlightenment experiments – less than a dozen across all human annals – always had steep odds stacked against them. Vastly more common, spanning all continents and 6,000+ years, were societies that - soon after achieving agriculture - became narrow pyramids of inherited privilege and raw male power. 

(We’re all descended from the harems of such kings, lords and priests. Indeed, incel, harem-envy is revealed, the moment you scrape any of these neo-feudalists.) 

Still, despite those harsh odds, a few oases of light have glimmered across the darkness. Periclean Athens, for example, was so vastly more creative, resilient, dynamic and fun – even in its crude, brutish form – that it terrified all surrounding kingdoms and oligarchies - (especially crude/vile/overrated Sparta) - who dropped all their bickering to join forces against the First Democracy, pouncing finally upon mistakes that we now know to have been inevitable.  

Similar oligarch-swarms crushed da Vinci’s brilliant Florentine Republic and came within a hair’s breadth of doing so, again, to renaissance Amsterdam, the seed that survived, then blossomed into all we know. Still, plagues of harem-seeking parasites have tried to destabilize our 300 year experiment every generation, ever since.

As if conceding a valid point, Mr. Siegel slyly grants Yarvin/Moldbug credence he never earned: 

“Philosophers and politicians like Alexis de Tocqueville, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, to name only three among countless figures, including many on the left, have been outspoken in their warnings about democracy’s perils.” 

Sure, a factually correct sentence. Except that Mr. Siegel portrays as a bug what’s actually a feature! All of those thinkers… plus Franklin and Thomas Paine and Lincoln and FDR and Marshall and many others, criticized democracy’s faults in order to keep doing it better! In the same fashion that, should the American Experiment survive today’s insane treason of Murdochian Trumpism, we may enact transparency reforms that stymie similar failure modes, in future. (Forcing reflexive oligarchy cabals to innovate new attacks, of course.)

Oh, this cult is predictable and has historical odds in its favor, as well as Darwinian drivers like male reproductive drives and fantasies. But if you truly want to wallow in justifications for betraying our renaissance and democracy, you can do much better than these fools. The case for rulership by inherently superior demigods is made far more entertainingly and unctuously in the sly, slow-poison dramas penned by a bona fide genius (and traitor to everything that was ever good to him) named Orson Scott Card. But Scott's treacherously brilliant, anti-democracy propaganda is not today’s topic. 

So yes, do give Mr. Siegel’s article a look, if only to see how far fellows like Peter Thiel are now willing to go, subsidizing this lunacy in order to sabotage the great Enlightenment Experiment that made them, and resume instead history’s dismally unsapient calamity called feudalism. 

While there, have a look at the art-illustration, portraying Yarvin/Moldbug as Machiavelli! Like depicting the denizen of a padded cell as actual Napoleon. Uh huh. You wish.

When you’re done, come back here for a very simple and devastating refutation. Go on. I’ll wait.

While you’re at it, see also a fawning profile of Thiel’s eagerly dyspeptic (and trivially refuted) incantations that ‘liberalism has failed,’ while wallowing in its protection and myriad benefits. I so hope the author of this piece misinterprets almost everything, in almost every paragraph because… wow, the mighty sure can fall a long way. There are meme-poisons that burn away IQ.

Oh, and here's a late note that I'll come back to, another time: see this actual Swiss company that exemplifies and self-satirizes the desperate denialism of human males with unaccountable power and way too much money -- offering palatially opulent underground bunker systems for the uber-oligarch sociopaths in the aristo-prepper movement! Would-be lords who - rather than help the civilization that was good to them - are flocking to masturbatory fantasies about world domination after everything crashes down in "The Event." 

(Never pondering that the 100 million nerds on this globe - against whom they wage open war - are the very folks who know cyber, bio, nano, nuclear stuff... and thousands know the exact location and schematics of every bunker.)

I've consulted - along with Douglas Rushkoff - with a few of these folks and oh! Their smug delusions aren't even bad sci fi. But more on that in Part 2.

== The core and absolutely devastating reason oligarchy sucks ==

Back already? Well, okay. Where were we? Oh yes. 

Normally, when refuting vile lies, you’d build a series of increasingly cogent points, arriving at the best and most decisive one last. In this case, I lack time or interest in spending more’n an hour on morons. Anyway, I’ve dissected neo-monarchism before, here… and here. 

Hence, I’ll both start and finish with just one most-devastating rebuttal, based on the core essential fact about human nature.

We are all inherently delusional.

The more intensely you believe something, the more willingly you should check it out, now and then. Hence we know the only truly effective antidote to delusion that has ever been discovered is... 

The criticism of others. 

Criticism even—especially— by your enemies.

Oh, that’s not to say you’re doomed always to be wrong! For one thing, science has provided many self-check tools that reduce rates and levels of delusion, applying experimental and experiential honesty to enhance the central catechism that made science so successful. A pair of simple sentences spoken not just by scientists, but by any person with an ounce of decency or maturity.

“I might be wrong. Let’s find out.”

That wisdom was excruciatingly hard to come by! Especially since human beings hate criticism. In fact, your reflex, when criticized, is likely the very same as your enemy’s. You’ll try to shut your critic down. Evasion, distraction, shouting, logical fallacies, backstabbing gossip… all the way to threats and lawsuits…. To varying degrees, we’ve all wriggled and squirmed to evade searing reproach of our illusions.

Only now imagine you are a king. One with the power to order death to critics, at a whim?

Look at what I just did. I explained nearly all of human history! That horrible, wretched litany of delusions and mistakes spanning nearly all continents and at least a sixty centuries, during which every king, autocrat, high priest, paramount chief, baron, or lord could declare his favorite delusions to be Truth. Law. Policy. Many of them insane notions, or dumb, or calamitous… 

…or even good ideas that might have been muchly improved, if poked-at by discomforting critical commentary.

The nearly universal result? Wretched generations of calamity-stricken human beings paid the price of kingly hallucination and critic-suppression. Until, at last, something better came along…

…the constitutional/democratic equivalent of “anybody might be wrong.” 

Freedom of speech. 

Freedom for the many – in autonomy and confidence – to criticize the mistakes of even the mighty… though at a price!

The price of being criticized, yourself.

And that’s it. That is the foremost answer (among many) to these jabbering neo-monarchists. Not only are the rare, underdog enlightenments vastly more successful by every metric of human accomplishment, compared to all other societies combined. 

They achieve all that by unleashing competitive reciprocal accountability, which is the very opposite of rule-by-single-executive.

Inarguably better results, achieved by an unassailably better (much less lobotomized) method. A method that only works under conditions of general transparency. When light flows, even upon those at the top.

 Especially upon them.

Alas, there is a price. Only, it is not the one they jabber about.

... and I'll get to it in Part 2.