I am watching the news today, Decemder 5th, and I hear Senator Dick Durban proposing that illegal aliens should be allowed to gain instant citizenship by joining the military. Here come your "foreign occupiers". Bringing in foreign mercenaries to quell the native population is a time-honored strategy of empires. In America, the British brought in Hessians from Germany.
So they demoralize the armed forces leading to a precipitous decline in recruitment, especially among the warrior class here, and now seek to fill in the armed forces with foreigners. Devilish and genius.
This is not new, even for the United States. The Union did the same thing during the Civil War. Poor Irish immigrants were signed up in their thousands. Why? Because many American citizens didn't really want war after the reality of the carnage became clear, and the Republicans were worried that Lincoln might be replaced by a "Peace President" who would come to terms with the Confederacy.
No, they were not citizens and had not gone through the naturalization process, which could take 5 years. However, if they signed up to fight, they were given AUTOMATIC citizenship. This was great for criminals and troublemakers fleeing Ireland, not saying that they all were. However, if you were convicted of a crime, even a minor one, your waiting period could be extended, or your citizenship could be denied along with deportation.
I say a statistic one time that 40% of the Union Army could trace its family to pre-1776 whereas 90% of the Confederate Army could. But take that with a grain of salt. Im pro-Union but yea the northern industrialists/lobbyists still played dirty back then.
Durbin proposed that back in 2014, too. It went nowhere. I doubt it will get anywhere this time, either. The Republicans show no sign of compromising on immigration policy, and I don't think his proposal will sway any of them.
Easing enlistment by immigrants is a standard quick-fix solution by empires and Great Powers. Not evidence of weakness or decline, per se. More like simple expediency, in the interest of militarist geopolitical strategies. The GWB administration loosened the path to citizenship for immigrants via military enlistment in 2002. That was only for legal immigrants, though.
fwiw, such proposals don't provide "instant citizenship." They require completing the enlistment contract with an honorable discharge, along with a successful background check.
I find the premise of the topic article a bit paranoid, actually. In the modern world, colonial nations have a way of eventually getting settled by large populations from the territories that the colonizers originally controlled. That's just how it is. Turkey is dealing with an influx of Arabs. France has Algerians, Moroccans, and West Africans. Italy has Libyans. The UK has South Asians, Caribbean immigrants, and Kenyans. The US conquered half of Mexico 150 years ago, and now we have a lot of Mexicans. We've been meddling in Central America for over 100 years, and now it's come to pass that we have a lot of Central Americans. They didn't make the rules...for example Michoacan used to be a paradise on Earth, before 50 years of All-American Drug War did its predictably mega-corrupt thing and turned the place over to the Devil. The US used to have a lot of part-time migrant workers from rural Mexican states who were happy to work seasonal jobs and return to their homeland in the mountains for the rest of the year, but that situation has largely broken down.
In the book and movie, only active military or veterans could vote or enter into politics. This was based on the system of the ancient Athenian Democracy. If you're not willing to serve your state in times of war, you are not fit to rule. The movie left a lot of things out - especially Robert Heinlein's political views.
The Machine has found that progressive youth are disinclined, too woke and/or too fat/out of shape to serve in the Armed Forces. The Machine still needs protection and thus is willing to allow a "new minority" to serve.
Obviously, the average subscriber to The Upheaval is educated, informed and politically centered to center-right (by today's relative measure).
N.S. Lyons is a gem.
I subscribe to several Substack newsletters. About half of them are center-right leaning in their content. The other half are left of center. There are no real center-left sources. That pollical animal seems to have gone extinct to be replaced with people adopting most, if not all, of what the rest of us clearly identify as radicalism of the most absurd flavor.
I am generally alone commenting on these left-leaning sites. When they go to personal attack claiming I am a brainwashed, Fox News consuming cult of Trump MAGA-head, I point out that I am commenting on their left tribe site and I don't watch any cable news.
But I am very lonely commenting on these sites.
Also, the WSJ which used to have a great center to right leaning comment section, is overrun with lefty trolls. This happened with the WSJ allowed online commenting for their free academic subscriptions.
I know it can hit a budget, but it would be great if more clear-thinking center and right-leaning political brains would subscribe and comment on sites that are cesspools of left groupthink. The reason is that within the existing readership are people that keep getting their screwed up views and ideas validated by kooks that share the same.
In the political rhetorical game, my job is to inject logos into their almost pure pathos... while also challenging their assumed ethos. Those most committed to their ideology are not my target to persuade. They are only opportunities to leverage to show those owning some remaining shreds of open-minds and critical thinking to turn away from the radical absurdism.
My last plea for more help on these left comment sections is to point out the value in reading what other political tribes you disagree with are currently discussing, and helping develop skills for debating them. They are armed to the teeth with rhetorical devices, but just about everything they advocate is a mess of mistakes and wrongness, and thus generally easy to shoot holes into.
I read The Upheaval because it expands on my understanding and vocabulary for what I know to be the truth. However, the topics are often on critical social and political "upheavals" that are bad and dangerous... and I think more of us should be dedicated comment section warriors to fight what is bad and dangerous.
Your commenting strategy, and your pitch for why it is important, makes sense to me. I do a fair amount of this on Facebook, including in a (super-annoying) group called "The Other 98%". Any particular leftist groups where you focus your efforts? I might be able to drop in and provide some backup.
Gawd... the other 98% is a terrible radical left propaganda meme generator.
On substack, Steve Schmidt The Warning. Heather Cox Richardson. The WSJ is expensive unless a student. The comment section used to be great until they opened it up to student subscribers and they hired young woke censoring moderators. I used to hit Robert Reich's substack and Matthew Yglesias until they banned me. Johnathan V. Last banned me. Chris Hedges just banned me. Leftists are thin skinned. Joyce Vance, Parker Malloy, Abraham Washington,
Frank, this is a great comment. Very insightful take on the political/cultural climate. The way I sometimes explain it in the context of US party politics, is that many Republican voters have genuine, deep disagreement with right-leaning politicians on at least one or two issues, and further believe that the liberal/Democratic position on those issues is correct. Whereas with Democrats, it is increasingly impossible (at least in educated circles) to find Democrats who will say "I am a reliable Democratic voter, but on issues A and B, I believe the Democrats are wrong, and the Republicans are right."
This matches my view exactly, only much more brilliantly described.
This paragraph below is fantastic and is being saved in my archives.
"Managerialism, being utterly utopian, technocratic, and universalist in nature (in other words: desiring to manage all things), fears and despises above all else any differentiation, particularism, boundaries, or decentralization. The idea that something, anything, could permanently stand beyond the reach of its homogenizing control is to it a prospect that is completely intolerable. So everything everywhere around the globe must be brought under its imperial control, broken down, flattened, homogenized, and opened up to everything else. It is not just any specific nation that this managerial “empire” seeks to undermine through its colonialism, but the very idea of a nation. It is not just a culture that it is trying to erase, but the very idea of a culture. Not just a people but the very idea of a people."
Here is another related perspective I have.
I think the managerial class is of two tribes that make uncomfortable bed fellows. One is the globalist Wall Street and tech titans and those that connect to them for their power money-making schemes. This cohort connects with the elite administrative class for the same reason... the power and money-making opportunities. Because the elite administrative class generally lack productive talents nor the appetite to do the work of productive enterprise... but they have upsized egos and appetites for status. The other tribe are the radical leftists that connect with the the media, education system, government agencies and the non-profit NGO domain... many for the same reason that they are talentless with respect to productive enterprise, but come from upper class backgrounds and need high status.
These two tribes should be like oil and water. In fact, they have been historically. The radical left and the Wall Street-powered corporatists and their administrative lackeys did not find many shared goals in the post Bretton Woods Global Order.
I think why the two tribes have combined is because democracy requires voter demographics to win the political game. And beginning with 9-11 and then the Great Recession and then Brexit and then Trump... the elite globalist managerial class tribe recognized that the old Global Order was failing.... as it was destined to do given the US was funding global peace and economic prosperity with massive debt-spending and mortgaging the economic opportunity of the American working middle class and poor. And they are playing the game of desperation. George Soros saw it first. His fear is that the Global Order is collapsing before his beloved eastern European countries grabbed enough of the pie before it was gone. He is trying to prevent the US turn back to a nationalist agenda.
Do you really think the pandemic was a random (unplanned) event? I don't.
But here is the thing. The Democrats barely won helped by the dirty politics of mass mail in ballots. They had the slimmest majority and yet they went to town on the radical agenda. They still are.
But what would have happened if Trump won and the Senate and House stayed in GOP hands as would have been the likely result without the mass mail-in ballots?
The two tribes supporting the Democrats would have been thrown into conflict with each blaming the other for the mess.
Ending this junk and saving the world in a true democracy really comes down to the election. But once in power the other side needs to get to work retooling the system to neuter the power and control of the tyrants that had been trying to destroy the country for their own power and wealth. They will scream that "democracy is being shredded" and we need to just ignore it and keep vigilant to beat them back down to live the life of the talentless, looting, non-productive life forms that they are.
Augusto Del Noce argued that what he called the "Technocratic Right" latched onto the cultural Left via embrace of the Sexual Revolution and used that cultural energy for its own purposes. He saw this occurring in Europe way back in the late 60's, which led him to say that in Europe Marxism lost politically but won culturally.
In one way or another this has been going on ever since, but with a new visibility in today's "woke capitalism," in which the corporations are largely what we used to describe back in the 90's as "fiscally conservative but socially liberal." In the old days that was a description of certain "moderate" politicians. But today it's the default position of a great many of the elites, whether political or corporate.
I see the "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" position as "have your cake and eat it too". It's not possible to maintain a socialist culture in a capitalist, or even corporatist structure. One or the other must win out, most probably the socialist culture.
The social liberal position is also often rather strange because it comes with a "rules for thee but not for me" component with a twist, e.g.:
Rule A: I can fly in a private jet while you can't travel more than 15 minutes walking distance from your apartment
Rule B: You can have as many kids out of wedlock, take drugs, live on the streets or make any other detrimental life choice - while I'm married, avoid hard drugs, don't go into unproductive debt, have kids only with my partner because them's the rules I live by.
"The right" wants traditional culture but its commitment to corporatism/capitalism subverts that desire. "The left" wants economic solidarity but its commitment to cultural liberation subverts that desire.
"But here is the thing. The Democrats barely won helped by the dirty politics of mass mail in ballots. They had the slimmest majority and yet they went to town on the radical agenda."
This is a brilliant piece that deserves to be widely read. What is perhaps most appealing about it is that widens our perspective [my perspective anyway] from the United States to the entire world, placing the current revolution against the nation state and Western Civilization into a larger perspective. In doing so it helps to identify the malignant forces [the enemies of human freedom] at work in the world today. It is difficult to win a war if you don't know who the enemy is. Once the enemy has been identified it is easier to organize against it.
To this end, Lyons' suggestion that local [national] populist resistance movements recognize one another and band together for support, if only intellectual, is a good idea. Call it a "national-populist international" in contradistinction to the old communist internationals such as the Comintern. Such a movement can recapture the term "diversity," by supporting national and cultural pluralism as in the slogans "France for the French," "Greece for the Greeks," "Italy for the Italians," etc.
It appears that the globalists of Davos are exploiting western guilt to dissolve the concept of nationalism/patriotism, and using massive migrant flows stimulated by idiotic wars, to displace and "colonize" the West. It seems to be an inversion of eighteenth and nineteenth century imperialism in which the colonized now colonize the original colonizers. It all appears to be in the interest of a global oligarchy that cares nothing for the people.
"To this end, Lyons' suggestion that local [national] populist resistance movements recognize one another and band together for support, if only intellectual, is a good idea."
You mention Tibet and East Turkistan as two places that have been sinicized by population transfer, but an even more dramatic example is Inner Mongolia which has been almost entirely resettled by the Han.
Yes, yes, yes. I have been arguing this for some time though not as eloquently as you. As a proponent of the National Divorce, I have come to realize is that what I am really talking about is decolonization. In addition to all the factors you talk about, there is an urban-rural dimension. Both today and in empires throughout history the colonizers and their local and outside collaborators concentrate themselves in the cities and control the peasants mostly by indirect means. In modern terms, this means finance and information but with a dollop of secret police. You can see this clearly in a 2020 county level red-blue map but the same divide is present in other Western nations as well.
In order to decolonize, you must secede from the empire. Pretty much every decolonization movement has involved this, successful or not so I have come to support most secession movements through out history and across the world. You can start with the US War of Independence. This is commonly misnamed as the American Revolution but it wasn't one as the Founders didn't seek to overthrow the government of Britain but simply go their own way. Then look at Ireland, the Latin American republics, Biafra, Bangladesh, Catalonia (which seem to be stirring again), Vietnam, all the African countries except Ethiopia (which escaped colonization), the Middle East, Belgium and on and on. Logically, this leads to chain secession as local populations seek their own polity. Thus, Ukraine secedes from the Soviet Union (CIS technically), and the Donbas secedes from Ukraine and that one still has some time to run. Or the US secedes from Britain, the Confederacy secedes from the US and West Virginia secedes from the Confederacy. India secedes from the British Empire, Pakistan secedes from India and Bangladesh secedes from Pakistan. In so far as the efforts prosper, the empires fragment.
Of course, there is always pushback with the empires trying to crush the independence movements and recentralize and thus we get war and repression. The localities often are helped by external forces. France for the US, India for Bangladesh, Russia for the Donbas. The external players always have their own agendas so caution is always appropriate.
Looking at the domestic scene, I grow increasingly disgruntled with conservatives who can't seem to understand this dynamic. Depending on their individual predilections, they think we can vote our way out of the mess (won't work), shoot our way out (probably won't work but will be enormously destructive even if works) or litigate our way out (stupidest idea of all). The common element in all of these solutions is that they see the United States as united which it clearly isn't. It isn't even independent. Leftists are better at understanding the dynamic but use it as a tactic to recentralize under their control.
Three futures. The one that works for me is negotiating for the divorce settlement. The other two are repression and collapse. Those are not good but may open other doors.
Negotiations have 3 stages.
1. The Great Sort which has been underway for some time.
2. Redrawing state boundaries per the constitutional process. Goal is to get states more homogeneous and to get practical experience with the property settlement. The last time this was done was 1863 when government was much simpler.
3. Final negotiations to dissolve the US. Probably America remains a single entity. The People's Republic may be fragmented per their ideology but that would be up to them. Negotiations would include borders, assets and liabilities and some safeguards for minority rights.
Repression and collapse seem likely, simply because like the Union during the Civil War, they are in for all the marbles. The acceptance of "divorce" will only encourage further divorce from any socialist states. To prolong their existence, repressive states need to spread the suffering as broadly as possible. Too many people would vote through moving borders.
Conservatives can't seem to decide whether the left are pussies who can't decide which bathrooms to use or maniacs who will exterminate us all. I am inclined toward the latter but it is also clear that they want to be rid of us as much as we want to be rid of them. So we should exploit that feeling. Of course, that would require a forward strategy to encourage this-something which the Republicans are incapable of.
It is complicated. Life is like that. It may unattainable but I feel obligate to try to avoid the awful consequences of the alternatives. I am aware that it only takes one side to start a war so I am keeping my powder dry.
Ive thought about this a lot. Even as a book concept, it would be good and spark discussion. Congress says “we cant tolerate each other so we set a date to divorce in 20 years, a deadline which we can extend again if things get better”
Then 20 years later polarization is still bad, the deadline comes, then theres a 4 year Great Shuffle time-window where everybody moves to the future country they want to live in, and certain states are divided (like Pennsylvania and OR/WA). Then the peaceful divorce happens.
The result would be essentially a heavily Christian USA as a contiguous landmass from Florida to Upstate NY, and from Eastern WA to Arizona (depending on how much illegal invasion happens by then). There would be a West Coast socialist state and a Northeast socialist state. They would probably have suppression and sclerotic economies with millions of people fleeing into Real America after a few years, but they would replace them with migrants. Lefties would probably move out of Colorado and Minnesota since it would be part of Real America and Alberta and Saskatchewan might also join.
The single most important thing that the USA (middle America) needs to do is have absolutely zero trade with the Leftist states. Not a single kernel of corn or a single pound of chicken sold to them. Not a single drop of oil or a single manufactured good. They must be forced to go it alone, thus hastening their collapse.
Real America could reopen the great plains frontier for new settlements, invest heavily in manufacturing, and most likely the morale boost of a happy free stable country would lead to a baby boom. It would be the most resource abundant and small town/family friendly regime imaginable.
After 20-30 years the coastal states would be so dysfunctional and people so immiserated they would be begging for reintegration (or more likely for conquest by Real America where they would greet us as liberators).
Essentially it would be an entire saeculum spent breaking up as an experiment and then getting back together
I like the 20 year fuse and the Great Shuffle ideas. Not only would it do what you say, it would provide time and incentives to get the "property settlement" figured out. Those who criticize the idea say it will be impossible. I think possible but VERY complicated.
If you look at a county level map of recent elections, it is evident that America is naturally contiguous. There are a few places, like N. Maine, that are cut off but mostly we are in contact. The People's Republic is a bigger challenge as they are scattered, mostly urban, enclaves. With a bit of creative mapmaking though, you can create several reasonably large contiguous zones with access to a border or an ocean. Whether they choose to unite or stay separate from each other is immaterial to me but we need to make some accommodation to get them to agree. I think there needs to be more state splitting than you anticipate. Every red state (even Wyoming) has at least one blue enclave. Sometimes, the enclaves are demographically dominant or close to it. All blue states (even MA) have some red enclaves. This is where the county level stuff and creative map-making come into play. A key factor will wind up being Indian reservations. They certainly "vote" blue but whether they have any real affinity for the cities is questionable. But at any rate, they control a lot of land especially in the West and could provide some needed connectivity. In my neck of the woods, this is a way to connect Las Vegas to CA without screwing over rural San Bernardino county (biggest in the US).
I don't think it is necessary or desirable to ban trade between the two entities. Think about Canada. Socialist place that I wouldn't live on a bet but with a long history of peaceful and beneficial trade with the pre-Socialist US. What is important in the divorced country is to redefine the terms of trade. Fair trade rather than free trade to go all Trumpian. Cities have been stealing our water since the beginning of history. Charging a fair price for that and other commodities and services (e.g. landfills) would reverse the 6000 year long flow of wealth to the cities without the need for horse nomads to sack them. Socialism itself will cause them to collapse without restricting their resources. The Soviet Union had plenty of resources.
Is it possible that you have not read Renaud Camus? This superb piece echoes his analysis in every single particular. I am not accusing you of plagiarism - it is possible to reach these same conclusions by other routes, as indeed some already have to varying degrees. But I am urging you to read him now, especially as a broad selection of his essays is finally available in English translation under the title, Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings of Renaud Camus [full disclosure: I collaborated on the book].
And I quote: "That said, if by some misfortune the only alternative left us is submission or war, we choose war, a hundred times war. And there would be nothing civil about it, despite the numerous traitors and collaborators. It would instead be in keeping with the great tradition of struggles for the right of peoples to determine their own fates, for the liberation of their territory, and for decolonization. We must finally exit the colonial period, about which our colonizers speak so much evil even as they colonize us. Once and for all, and if possible above the Mediterranean, we must stop the mad pendulum of colonization and counter-colonization."
As I read this paragraph, I was struck by how much it reminded me of one written 175 years ago by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the Communist Manifesto. [Reproduced within quotation marks beneath.]
Managerialism, being utterly utopian, technocratic, and universalist in nature (in other words: desiring to manage all things), fears and despises above all else any differentiation, particularism, boundaries, or decentralization. The idea that something, anything, could permanently stand beyond the reach of its homogenizing control is to it a prospect that is completely intolerable. So everything everywhere around the globe must be brought under its imperial control, broken down, flattened, homogenized, and opened up to everything else. It is not just any specific nation that this managerial “empire” seeks to undermine through its colonialism, but the very idea of a nation. It is not just a culture that it is trying to erase, but the very idea of a culture. Not just a people but the very idea of a people.
"The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image."
Marx was certainly right about the globalizing tendencies of what we now refer to as "multinational corporations." It's just that in the nineteenth century they were national corporations and their owners were loyal to their home state. Now, they have no national loyalties. They are "citizens of the world," loyal only to the destruction of nationalism and the success of their global project.
Kingsnorth and Soldo are presently two of my favorites.
I'm going to briefly raise a couple of theoretical issues somewhat linked to their respective perspectives as well as your own analysis of managerialism, in the hopes of eventually strengthening what I consider to be an extremely credible (quite accurate) emerging theoretical framework.
At bottom, Kingsnorth seems to argue that the origins of the machine apparatus can be found within ourselves (in our attempt to become like Gods). It is human nature (however defined) which continually puts us in this mess and Kingsnorth then launches a persuasive cultural critique built around the importance of re-asserting a sacred center which creates a sense of moral limits as well as the importance of a particular people in a particular place (a home).
Your discussion of the conscious construction of a global managerial apparatus attempting to rule over the present international system raises questions/issues in my mind about the origins of this dynamic. To what extent is this process a consequence of our present anarchic international structure (that seems to initiate an inevitable nation- state struggle for survival and more power in the absence of higher authority and to what extent is this also a consequence of human nature. We seem to possibly need a more carefully thought-out and more in-depth analysis/debate on potential causal mechanisms.
I would propose a counter-argument. I do not think that managerialism is an attempt to become like gods, although I do believe that it can become the end result. Rather managerialism is rooted in our deep-seated fears of the unknown. I have dealt with plenty of OCD control freaks. They tend to be insecure, and that insecurity is somehow alleviated by acts of control, whether it be local control or global control. These people need certainty. They shy away from risk taking, although sometimes they will take risks in one area but exert extreme control in another.
Excellent thesis. I wonder if the behavior by the management class is emergent or deliberate. I only ask because they don't seem to be very good at the management bit.
Damn! I was just getting ready to launch my own Substack on exactly this topic, NS cuts my legs out! There is no way I could express this as well as NS, but it's real and its happening, we are colonizing ourselves and the colonial vanguard are the ideological fanatics of the academy and the educational complex who are sucking in the intersectional drones. Good work NS, most colonized people did not recognize what was happening until it was over, at least we have some warning if we are wise enough to listen.
Off the top of my head (not studied this!), successful take-backs seem to require that the colonizers first suffer dilution their own will to rule and/or significant loss to their power. The post WW2 decolonizations and more recent Russian empire beak-up being classic examples of both conditions. Are there truly cases where restless natives could generate the countervailing power to defeat an ascendent colonizer? Superior technology has frequently been the prime source of colonizer power advantage. As Lyons has written in previous posts, the progressive left's mastery of digitalization is at the core of enabling its ascendence toward the level of control that colonization requires. Consider this the guns / steel equivalent of the 16th-19th century Europeans. The traditionalist "native" populations are conflicted and potentially at an inherent disadvantage on this kind of power, hence are likely to struggle in wielding or countering it.
" Are there truly cases where restless natives could generate the countervailing power to defeat an ascendent colonizer? Superior technology has frequently been the prime source of colonizer power advantage"
This is a very new idea for me so I’m far from convinced. Complex theses tend to be wrong even if they’re rhetorically strong. But my experience growing up in Berkeley favors this narrative over the dominant one... by a lot.
"Complex theses tend to be wrong even if they’re rhetorically strong"
They're only considered wrong because they're often judged as if they were supposed to be absolute mathematical theorems.
Whereas they should just be judged by their relative explanatory and predictive power and utility (which is not very different to how Physics theories are judged, by the way).
For this theory in particular: what would be proven wrong? Can this be proven wrong?
"Oikophobic ruling elites that openly and regularly express their fear, loathing, and contempt for the majority of their native countrymen, whom they view as deplorably backwards, uncouth, uncivilized, and really little better than savages. A concerted campaign by these elites to beat their people until they understand that they ought to feel utterly ashamed of and ready to atone for their past, their ancestors, their traditional culture, values, and ways of life, and even their inherited ethnicity. Widespread, deliberate destruction of any public markers honoring unique cultural touchstones, and the pervasive rewriting of national histories to scrub them of any potential signs or sources of national distinctiveness, unity, or pride. Attempts to indoctrinate new generations into an entirely new, universalized set of more “progressive” (i.e. civilized) values, and to induct them into a wholly artificial “culture” of cosmopolitan multi-culturalism, divorced from any coherent national geography, inherited identity, or memory. Concerted efforts to elevate all sovereign decision-making from the level of democratic nations to distant supranational (read: imperial) bodies"
No, it's just observable reality. One might value it differently, that's all ("it happens, but it's a good thing").
So what would be proven wrong? That all this is a kind of "inwards colonization" process? Well, that's not something to prove wrong or right, it's just a term to summarily describe the above phenomena. It's meant as a useful analogy, not to say the US (or Germany or the UK etc) are colonies in the exact same sense that Indochina was a colony of France, regognized by the UN as such, etc.
"They're only considered wrong because they're often judged as if they were supposed to be absolute mathematical theorems."
Although this is a good point, I think that it's more a matter of interpretation. Yes, you are simply listing events and quoting facts, but many can only interpret those facts though "motivations". Are these elites "enlightening" us or "oppressing" us? Are they operating out of love or loathing? This has always been the dialectic of imperial conquest - the conquerors claim to bring enlightenment to the savages, while the resisting natives claim destruction of their autonomy and way of life. However, the fact that this dialectic is now so common, as evidenced from our observations, is proof that an imperial occupation is underway.
I am watching the news today, Decemder 5th, and I hear Senator Dick Durban proposing that illegal aliens should be allowed to gain instant citizenship by joining the military. Here come your "foreign occupiers". Bringing in foreign mercenaries to quell the native population is a time-honored strategy of empires. In America, the British brought in Hessians from Germany.
So they demoralize the armed forces leading to a precipitous decline in recruitment, especially among the warrior class here, and now seek to fill in the armed forces with foreigners. Devilish and genius.
This is not new, even for the United States. The Union did the same thing during the Civil War. Poor Irish immigrants were signed up in their thousands. Why? Because many American citizens didn't really want war after the reality of the carnage became clear, and the Republicans were worried that Lincoln might be replaced by a "Peace President" who would come to terms with the Confederacy.
Legal aliens is the point.
But at least the Irish were citizens?
No, they were not citizens and had not gone through the naturalization process, which could take 5 years. However, if they signed up to fight, they were given AUTOMATIC citizenship. This was great for criminals and troublemakers fleeing Ireland, not saying that they all were. However, if you were convicted of a crime, even a minor one, your waiting period could be extended, or your citizenship could be denied along with deportation.
That’s insane. I’m sure Durbin will use that for justification and complain any opposition is just racist.
I say a statistic one time that 40% of the Union Army could trace its family to pre-1776 whereas 90% of the Confederate Army could. But take that with a grain of salt. Im pro-Union but yea the northern industrialists/lobbyists still played dirty back then.
Isn’t that what the Roman Empire did, as it headed towards decline?
Why yes, yes it did. And boy did that come back to bite them in the ass.
Durbin proposed that back in 2014, too. It went nowhere. I doubt it will get anywhere this time, either. The Republicans show no sign of compromising on immigration policy, and I don't think his proposal will sway any of them.
Easing enlistment by immigrants is a standard quick-fix solution by empires and Great Powers. Not evidence of weakness or decline, per se. More like simple expediency, in the interest of militarist geopolitical strategies. The GWB administration loosened the path to citizenship for immigrants via military enlistment in 2002. That was only for legal immigrants, though.
fwiw, such proposals don't provide "instant citizenship." They require completing the enlistment contract with an honorable discharge, along with a successful background check.
I find the premise of the topic article a bit paranoid, actually. In the modern world, colonial nations have a way of eventually getting settled by large populations from the territories that the colonizers originally controlled. That's just how it is. Turkey is dealing with an influx of Arabs. France has Algerians, Moroccans, and West Africans. Italy has Libyans. The UK has South Asians, Caribbean immigrants, and Kenyans. The US conquered half of Mexico 150 years ago, and now we have a lot of Mexicans. We've been meddling in Central America for over 100 years, and now it's come to pass that we have a lot of Central Americans. They didn't make the rules...for example Michoacan used to be a paradise on Earth, before 50 years of All-American Drug War did its predictably mega-corrupt thing and turned the place over to the Devil. The US used to have a lot of part-time migrant workers from rural Mexican states who were happy to work seasonal jobs and return to their homeland in the mountains for the rest of the year, but that situation has largely broken down.
Durban must have seen “Starship Troopers”.
Starship Troopers was a great book, but I don't see the connection.
In the movie, you became a citizen, when you served in the military.
In the book and movie, only active military or veterans could vote or enter into politics. This was based on the system of the ancient Athenian Democracy. If you're not willing to serve your state in times of war, you are not fit to rule. The movie left a lot of things out - especially Robert Heinlein's political views.
The Machine has found that progressive youth are disinclined, too woke and/or too fat/out of shape to serve in the Armed Forces. The Machine still needs protection and thus is willing to allow a "new minority" to serve.
Obviously, the average subscriber to The Upheaval is educated, informed and politically centered to center-right (by today's relative measure).
N.S. Lyons is a gem.
I subscribe to several Substack newsletters. About half of them are center-right leaning in their content. The other half are left of center. There are no real center-left sources. That pollical animal seems to have gone extinct to be replaced with people adopting most, if not all, of what the rest of us clearly identify as radicalism of the most absurd flavor.
I am generally alone commenting on these left-leaning sites. When they go to personal attack claiming I am a brainwashed, Fox News consuming cult of Trump MAGA-head, I point out that I am commenting on their left tribe site and I don't watch any cable news.
But I am very lonely commenting on these sites.
Also, the WSJ which used to have a great center to right leaning comment section, is overrun with lefty trolls. This happened with the WSJ allowed online commenting for their free academic subscriptions.
I know it can hit a budget, but it would be great if more clear-thinking center and right-leaning political brains would subscribe and comment on sites that are cesspools of left groupthink. The reason is that within the existing readership are people that keep getting their screwed up views and ideas validated by kooks that share the same.
In the political rhetorical game, my job is to inject logos into their almost pure pathos... while also challenging their assumed ethos. Those most committed to their ideology are not my target to persuade. They are only opportunities to leverage to show those owning some remaining shreds of open-minds and critical thinking to turn away from the radical absurdism.
My last plea for more help on these left comment sections is to point out the value in reading what other political tribes you disagree with are currently discussing, and helping develop skills for debating them. They are armed to the teeth with rhetorical devices, but just about everything they advocate is a mess of mistakes and wrongness, and thus generally easy to shoot holes into.
I read The Upheaval because it expands on my understanding and vocabulary for what I know to be the truth. However, the topics are often on critical social and political "upheavals" that are bad and dangerous... and I think more of us should be dedicated comment section warriors to fight what is bad and dangerous.
The Upheaval better arms me for that task!
Your commenting strategy, and your pitch for why it is important, makes sense to me. I do a fair amount of this on Facebook, including in a (super-annoying) group called "The Other 98%". Any particular leftist groups where you focus your efforts? I might be able to drop in and provide some backup.
Gawd... the other 98% is a terrible radical left propaganda meme generator.
On substack, Steve Schmidt The Warning. Heather Cox Richardson. The WSJ is expensive unless a student. The comment section used to be great until they opened it up to student subscribers and they hired young woke censoring moderators. I used to hit Robert Reich's substack and Matthew Yglesias until they banned me. Johnathan V. Last banned me. Chris Hedges just banned me. Leftists are thin skinned. Joyce Vance, Parker Malloy, Abraham Washington,
The other good place is The Dispatch.
Frank, this is a great comment. Very insightful take on the political/cultural climate. The way I sometimes explain it in the context of US party politics, is that many Republican voters have genuine, deep disagreement with right-leaning politicians on at least one or two issues, and further believe that the liberal/Democratic position on those issues is correct. Whereas with Democrats, it is increasingly impossible (at least in educated circles) to find Democrats who will say "I am a reliable Democratic voter, but on issues A and B, I believe the Democrats are wrong, and the Republicans are right."
This matches my view exactly, only much more brilliantly described.
This paragraph below is fantastic and is being saved in my archives.
"Managerialism, being utterly utopian, technocratic, and universalist in nature (in other words: desiring to manage all things), fears and despises above all else any differentiation, particularism, boundaries, or decentralization. The idea that something, anything, could permanently stand beyond the reach of its homogenizing control is to it a prospect that is completely intolerable. So everything everywhere around the globe must be brought under its imperial control, broken down, flattened, homogenized, and opened up to everything else. It is not just any specific nation that this managerial “empire” seeks to undermine through its colonialism, but the very idea of a nation. It is not just a culture that it is trying to erase, but the very idea of a culture. Not just a people but the very idea of a people."
Here is another related perspective I have.
I think the managerial class is of two tribes that make uncomfortable bed fellows. One is the globalist Wall Street and tech titans and those that connect to them for their power money-making schemes. This cohort connects with the elite administrative class for the same reason... the power and money-making opportunities. Because the elite administrative class generally lack productive talents nor the appetite to do the work of productive enterprise... but they have upsized egos and appetites for status. The other tribe are the radical leftists that connect with the the media, education system, government agencies and the non-profit NGO domain... many for the same reason that they are talentless with respect to productive enterprise, but come from upper class backgrounds and need high status.
These two tribes should be like oil and water. In fact, they have been historically. The radical left and the Wall Street-powered corporatists and their administrative lackeys did not find many shared goals in the post Bretton Woods Global Order.
I think why the two tribes have combined is because democracy requires voter demographics to win the political game. And beginning with 9-11 and then the Great Recession and then Brexit and then Trump... the elite globalist managerial class tribe recognized that the old Global Order was failing.... as it was destined to do given the US was funding global peace and economic prosperity with massive debt-spending and mortgaging the economic opportunity of the American working middle class and poor. And they are playing the game of desperation. George Soros saw it first. His fear is that the Global Order is collapsing before his beloved eastern European countries grabbed enough of the pie before it was gone. He is trying to prevent the US turn back to a nationalist agenda.
Do you really think the pandemic was a random (unplanned) event? I don't.
But here is the thing. The Democrats barely won helped by the dirty politics of mass mail in ballots. They had the slimmest majority and yet they went to town on the radical agenda. They still are.
But what would have happened if Trump won and the Senate and House stayed in GOP hands as would have been the likely result without the mass mail-in ballots?
The two tribes supporting the Democrats would have been thrown into conflict with each blaming the other for the mess.
Ending this junk and saving the world in a true democracy really comes down to the election. But once in power the other side needs to get to work retooling the system to neuter the power and control of the tyrants that had been trying to destroy the country for their own power and wealth. They will scream that "democracy is being shredded" and we need to just ignore it and keep vigilant to beat them back down to live the life of the talentless, looting, non-productive life forms that they are.
Augusto Del Noce argued that what he called the "Technocratic Right" latched onto the cultural Left via embrace of the Sexual Revolution and used that cultural energy for its own purposes. He saw this occurring in Europe way back in the late 60's, which led him to say that in Europe Marxism lost politically but won culturally.
In one way or another this has been going on ever since, but with a new visibility in today's "woke capitalism," in which the corporations are largely what we used to describe back in the 90's as "fiscally conservative but socially liberal." In the old days that was a description of certain "moderate" politicians. But today it's the default position of a great many of the elites, whether political or corporate.
I see the "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" position as "have your cake and eat it too". It's not possible to maintain a socialist culture in a capitalist, or even corporatist structure. One or the other must win out, most probably the socialist culture.
The social liberal position is also often rather strange because it comes with a "rules for thee but not for me" component with a twist, e.g.:
Rule A: I can fly in a private jet while you can't travel more than 15 minutes walking distance from your apartment
Rule B: You can have as many kids out of wedlock, take drugs, live on the streets or make any other detrimental life choice - while I'm married, avoid hard drugs, don't go into unproductive debt, have kids only with my partner because them's the rules I live by.
Yes, it's maddening. A is power without accountability, B is rights without responsibility.
"The right" wants traditional culture but its commitment to corporatism/capitalism subverts that desire. "The left" wants economic solidarity but its commitment to cultural liberation subverts that desire.
"But here is the thing. The Democrats barely won helped by the dirty politics of mass mail in ballots. They had the slimmest majority and yet they went to town on the radical agenda."
Might explain Biden's insane border policy?
This is a brilliant piece that deserves to be widely read. What is perhaps most appealing about it is that widens our perspective [my perspective anyway] from the United States to the entire world, placing the current revolution against the nation state and Western Civilization into a larger perspective. In doing so it helps to identify the malignant forces [the enemies of human freedom] at work in the world today. It is difficult to win a war if you don't know who the enemy is. Once the enemy has been identified it is easier to organize against it.
To this end, Lyons' suggestion that local [national] populist resistance movements recognize one another and band together for support, if only intellectual, is a good idea. Call it a "national-populist international" in contradistinction to the old communist internationals such as the Comintern. Such a movement can recapture the term "diversity," by supporting national and cultural pluralism as in the slogans "France for the French," "Greece for the Greeks," "Italy for the Italians," etc.
It appears that the globalists of Davos are exploiting western guilt to dissolve the concept of nationalism/patriotism, and using massive migrant flows stimulated by idiotic wars, to displace and "colonize" the West. It seems to be an inversion of eighteenth and nineteenth century imperialism in which the colonized now colonize the original colonizers. It all appears to be in the interest of a global oligarchy that cares nothing for the people.
And those "X for the Y" rule doesn't have to be enforced by ancestry, you just have to be willing to assimilate.
"To this end, Lyons' suggestion that local [national] populist resistance movements recognize one another and band together for support, if only intellectual, is a good idea."
You might like: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
You mention Tibet and East Turkistan as two places that have been sinicized by population transfer, but an even more dramatic example is Inner Mongolia which has been almost entirely resettled by the Han.
Yes, yes, yes. I have been arguing this for some time though not as eloquently as you. As a proponent of the National Divorce, I have come to realize is that what I am really talking about is decolonization. In addition to all the factors you talk about, there is an urban-rural dimension. Both today and in empires throughout history the colonizers and their local and outside collaborators concentrate themselves in the cities and control the peasants mostly by indirect means. In modern terms, this means finance and information but with a dollop of secret police. You can see this clearly in a 2020 county level red-blue map but the same divide is present in other Western nations as well.
In order to decolonize, you must secede from the empire. Pretty much every decolonization movement has involved this, successful or not so I have come to support most secession movements through out history and across the world. You can start with the US War of Independence. This is commonly misnamed as the American Revolution but it wasn't one as the Founders didn't seek to overthrow the government of Britain but simply go their own way. Then look at Ireland, the Latin American republics, Biafra, Bangladesh, Catalonia (which seem to be stirring again), Vietnam, all the African countries except Ethiopia (which escaped colonization), the Middle East, Belgium and on and on. Logically, this leads to chain secession as local populations seek their own polity. Thus, Ukraine secedes from the Soviet Union (CIS technically), and the Donbas secedes from Ukraine and that one still has some time to run. Or the US secedes from Britain, the Confederacy secedes from the US and West Virginia secedes from the Confederacy. India secedes from the British Empire, Pakistan secedes from India and Bangladesh secedes from Pakistan. In so far as the efforts prosper, the empires fragment.
Of course, there is always pushback with the empires trying to crush the independence movements and recentralize and thus we get war and repression. The localities often are helped by external forces. France for the US, India for Bangladesh, Russia for the Donbas. The external players always have their own agendas so caution is always appropriate.
Looking at the domestic scene, I grow increasingly disgruntled with conservatives who can't seem to understand this dynamic. Depending on their individual predilections, they think we can vote our way out of the mess (won't work), shoot our way out (probably won't work but will be enormously destructive even if works) or litigate our way out (stupidest idea of all). The common element in all of these solutions is that they see the United States as united which it clearly isn't. It isn't even independent. Leftists are better at understanding the dynamic but use it as a tactic to recentralize under their control.
Please help me understand your summation of “resistance”: Voting won’t work. Violence won’t work. Litigation won’t work.
What will work?
Gin and prayer?
Perhaps, but in what proportion?
Three futures. The one that works for me is negotiating for the divorce settlement. The other two are repression and collapse. Those are not good but may open other doors.
Negotiations have 3 stages.
1. The Great Sort which has been underway for some time.
2. Redrawing state boundaries per the constitutional process. Goal is to get states more homogeneous and to get practical experience with the property settlement. The last time this was done was 1863 when government was much simpler.
3. Final negotiations to dissolve the US. Probably America remains a single entity. The People's Republic may be fragmented per their ideology but that would be up to them. Negotiations would include borders, assets and liabilities and some safeguards for minority rights.
Repression and collapse seem likely, simply because like the Union during the Civil War, they are in for all the marbles. The acceptance of "divorce" will only encourage further divorce from any socialist states. To prolong their existence, repressive states need to spread the suffering as broadly as possible. Too many people would vote through moving borders.
Conservatives can't seem to decide whether the left are pussies who can't decide which bathrooms to use or maniacs who will exterminate us all. I am inclined toward the latter but it is also clear that they want to be rid of us as much as we want to be rid of them. So we should exploit that feeling. Of course, that would require a forward strategy to encourage this-something which the Republicans are incapable of.
This seems extremely complicated and unattainable. Prayer can't hurt, but keep your powder dry.
It is complicated. Life is like that. It may unattainable but I feel obligate to try to avoid the awful consequences of the alternatives. I am aware that it only takes one side to start a war so I am keeping my powder dry.
Ive thought about this a lot. Even as a book concept, it would be good and spark discussion. Congress says “we cant tolerate each other so we set a date to divorce in 20 years, a deadline which we can extend again if things get better”
Then 20 years later polarization is still bad, the deadline comes, then theres a 4 year Great Shuffle time-window where everybody moves to the future country they want to live in, and certain states are divided (like Pennsylvania and OR/WA). Then the peaceful divorce happens.
The result would be essentially a heavily Christian USA as a contiguous landmass from Florida to Upstate NY, and from Eastern WA to Arizona (depending on how much illegal invasion happens by then). There would be a West Coast socialist state and a Northeast socialist state. They would probably have suppression and sclerotic economies with millions of people fleeing into Real America after a few years, but they would replace them with migrants. Lefties would probably move out of Colorado and Minnesota since it would be part of Real America and Alberta and Saskatchewan might also join.
The single most important thing that the USA (middle America) needs to do is have absolutely zero trade with the Leftist states. Not a single kernel of corn or a single pound of chicken sold to them. Not a single drop of oil or a single manufactured good. They must be forced to go it alone, thus hastening their collapse.
Real America could reopen the great plains frontier for new settlements, invest heavily in manufacturing, and most likely the morale boost of a happy free stable country would lead to a baby boom. It would be the most resource abundant and small town/family friendly regime imaginable.
After 20-30 years the coastal states would be so dysfunctional and people so immiserated they would be begging for reintegration (or more likely for conquest by Real America where they would greet us as liberators).
Essentially it would be an entire saeculum spent breaking up as an experiment and then getting back together
I like the 20 year fuse and the Great Shuffle ideas. Not only would it do what you say, it would provide time and incentives to get the "property settlement" figured out. Those who criticize the idea say it will be impossible. I think possible but VERY complicated.
If you look at a county level map of recent elections, it is evident that America is naturally contiguous. There are a few places, like N. Maine, that are cut off but mostly we are in contact. The People's Republic is a bigger challenge as they are scattered, mostly urban, enclaves. With a bit of creative mapmaking though, you can create several reasonably large contiguous zones with access to a border or an ocean. Whether they choose to unite or stay separate from each other is immaterial to me but we need to make some accommodation to get them to agree. I think there needs to be more state splitting than you anticipate. Every red state (even Wyoming) has at least one blue enclave. Sometimes, the enclaves are demographically dominant or close to it. All blue states (even MA) have some red enclaves. This is where the county level stuff and creative map-making come into play. A key factor will wind up being Indian reservations. They certainly "vote" blue but whether they have any real affinity for the cities is questionable. But at any rate, they control a lot of land especially in the West and could provide some needed connectivity. In my neck of the woods, this is a way to connect Las Vegas to CA without screwing over rural San Bernardino county (biggest in the US).
I don't think it is necessary or desirable to ban trade between the two entities. Think about Canada. Socialist place that I wouldn't live on a bet but with a long history of peaceful and beneficial trade with the pre-Socialist US. What is important in the divorced country is to redefine the terms of trade. Fair trade rather than free trade to go all Trumpian. Cities have been stealing our water since the beginning of history. Charging a fair price for that and other commodities and services (e.g. landfills) would reverse the 6000 year long flow of wealth to the cities without the need for horse nomads to sack them. Socialism itself will cause them to collapse without restricting their resources. The Soviet Union had plenty of resources.
If you do write your book, I will buy it.
Thank you and great points. I especially had never thought about “charging cities for water”.
"In addition to all the factors you talk about, there is an urban-rural dimension."
You might like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Is it possible that you have not read Renaud Camus? This superb piece echoes his analysis in every single particular. I am not accusing you of plagiarism - it is possible to reach these same conclusions by other routes, as indeed some already have to varying degrees. But I am urging you to read him now, especially as a broad selection of his essays is finally available in English translation under the title, Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings of Renaud Camus [full disclosure: I collaborated on the book].
You'll find the Amazon listing here: https://www.amazon.com/Enemy-Disaster-Selected-Political-Writings/dp/B0CGZ38LBM/
And I quote: "That said, if by some misfortune the only alternative left us is submission or war, we choose war, a hundred times war. And there would be nothing civil about it, despite the numerous traitors and collaborators. It would instead be in keeping with the great tradition of struggles for the right of peoples to determine their own fates, for the liberation of their territory, and for decolonization. We must finally exit the colonial period, about which our colonizers speak so much evil even as they colonize us. Once and for all, and if possible above the Mediterranean, we must stop the mad pendulum of colonization and counter-colonization."
As I read this paragraph, I was struck by how much it reminded me of one written 175 years ago by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the Communist Manifesto. [Reproduced within quotation marks beneath.]
Managerialism, being utterly utopian, technocratic, and universalist in nature (in other words: desiring to manage all things), fears and despises above all else any differentiation, particularism, boundaries, or decentralization. The idea that something, anything, could permanently stand beyond the reach of its homogenizing control is to it a prospect that is completely intolerable. So everything everywhere around the globe must be brought under its imperial control, broken down, flattened, homogenized, and opened up to everything else. It is not just any specific nation that this managerial “empire” seeks to undermine through its colonialism, but the very idea of a nation. It is not just a culture that it is trying to erase, but the very idea of a culture. Not just a people but the very idea of a people.
"The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image."
Marx was certainly right about the globalizing tendencies of what we now refer to as "multinational corporations." It's just that in the nineteenth century they were national corporations and their owners were loyal to their home state. Now, they have no national loyalties. They are "citizens of the world," loyal only to the destruction of nationalism and the success of their global project.
Kingsnorth and Soldo are presently two of my favorites.
I'm going to briefly raise a couple of theoretical issues somewhat linked to their respective perspectives as well as your own analysis of managerialism, in the hopes of eventually strengthening what I consider to be an extremely credible (quite accurate) emerging theoretical framework.
At bottom, Kingsnorth seems to argue that the origins of the machine apparatus can be found within ourselves (in our attempt to become like Gods). It is human nature (however defined) which continually puts us in this mess and Kingsnorth then launches a persuasive cultural critique built around the importance of re-asserting a sacred center which creates a sense of moral limits as well as the importance of a particular people in a particular place (a home).
Your discussion of the conscious construction of a global managerial apparatus attempting to rule over the present international system raises questions/issues in my mind about the origins of this dynamic. To what extent is this process a consequence of our present anarchic international structure (that seems to initiate an inevitable nation- state struggle for survival and more power in the absence of higher authority and to what extent is this also a consequence of human nature. We seem to possibly need a more carefully thought-out and more in-depth analysis/debate on potential causal mechanisms.
I would propose a counter-argument. I do not think that managerialism is an attempt to become like gods, although I do believe that it can become the end result. Rather managerialism is rooted in our deep-seated fears of the unknown. I have dealt with plenty of OCD control freaks. They tend to be insecure, and that insecurity is somehow alleviated by acts of control, whether it be local control or global control. These people need certainty. They shy away from risk taking, although sometimes they will take risks in one area but exert extreme control in another.
You know, it's probably as prosaic as they don't want to be sued.
Dare I say it - Nationalism is good, or like so many other things, can be, In the hands of a good, free people.
Lyons-Soldo 2024. Now More Than Ever.
Excellent thesis. I wonder if the behavior by the management class is emergent or deliberate. I only ask because they don't seem to be very good at the management bit.
Damn! I was just getting ready to launch my own Substack on exactly this topic, NS cuts my legs out! There is no way I could express this as well as NS, but it's real and its happening, we are colonizing ourselves and the colonial vanguard are the ideological fanatics of the academy and the educational complex who are sucking in the intersectional drones. Good work NS, most colonized people did not recognize what was happening until it was over, at least we have some warning if we are wise enough to listen.
Off the top of my head (not studied this!), successful take-backs seem to require that the colonizers first suffer dilution their own will to rule and/or significant loss to their power. The post WW2 decolonizations and more recent Russian empire beak-up being classic examples of both conditions. Are there truly cases where restless natives could generate the countervailing power to defeat an ascendent colonizer? Superior technology has frequently been the prime source of colonizer power advantage. As Lyons has written in previous posts, the progressive left's mastery of digitalization is at the core of enabling its ascendence toward the level of control that colonization requires. Consider this the guns / steel equivalent of the 16th-19th century Europeans. The traditionalist "native" populations are conflicted and potentially at an inherent disadvantage on this kind of power, hence are likely to struggle in wielding or countering it.
The Irish fought every two generations or so. Eventually they escaped the British but now they will have to escape the world empire.
" Are there truly cases where restless natives could generate the countervailing power to defeat an ascendent colonizer? Superior technology has frequently been the prime source of colonizer power advantage"
Here is one possibility: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
A mistake to think that technology is only on their side.
This is a very new idea for me so I’m far from convinced. Complex theses tend to be wrong even if they’re rhetorically strong. But my experience growing up in Berkeley favors this narrative over the dominant one... by a lot.
"Complex theses tend to be wrong even if they’re rhetorically strong"
They're only considered wrong because they're often judged as if they were supposed to be absolute mathematical theorems.
Whereas they should just be judged by their relative explanatory and predictive power and utility (which is not very different to how Physics theories are judged, by the way).
For this theory in particular: what would be proven wrong? Can this be proven wrong?
"Oikophobic ruling elites that openly and regularly express their fear, loathing, and contempt for the majority of their native countrymen, whom they view as deplorably backwards, uncouth, uncivilized, and really little better than savages. A concerted campaign by these elites to beat their people until they understand that they ought to feel utterly ashamed of and ready to atone for their past, their ancestors, their traditional culture, values, and ways of life, and even their inherited ethnicity. Widespread, deliberate destruction of any public markers honoring unique cultural touchstones, and the pervasive rewriting of national histories to scrub them of any potential signs or sources of national distinctiveness, unity, or pride. Attempts to indoctrinate new generations into an entirely new, universalized set of more “progressive” (i.e. civilized) values, and to induct them into a wholly artificial “culture” of cosmopolitan multi-culturalism, divorced from any coherent national geography, inherited identity, or memory. Concerted efforts to elevate all sovereign decision-making from the level of democratic nations to distant supranational (read: imperial) bodies"
No, it's just observable reality. One might value it differently, that's all ("it happens, but it's a good thing").
So what would be proven wrong? That all this is a kind of "inwards colonization" process? Well, that's not something to prove wrong or right, it's just a term to summarily describe the above phenomena. It's meant as a useful analogy, not to say the US (or Germany or the UK etc) are colonies in the exact same sense that Indochina was a colony of France, regognized by the UN as such, etc.
"They're only considered wrong because they're often judged as if they were supposed to be absolute mathematical theorems."
Although this is a good point, I think that it's more a matter of interpretation. Yes, you are simply listing events and quoting facts, but many can only interpret those facts though "motivations". Are these elites "enlightening" us or "oppressing" us? Are they operating out of love or loathing? This has always been the dialectic of imperial conquest - the conquerors claim to bring enlightenment to the savages, while the resisting natives claim destruction of their autonomy and way of life. However, the fact that this dialectic is now so common, as evidenced from our observations, is proof that an imperial occupation is underway.
I’m surprised there are no comments (yet). But then, nothing more needs to be said. But what is to be done?