2020-07-14

Am I a tin ear?

Or am I a horn by which

Your voice is made great?

The future will be worse, or so we hope

We hope to see it come to pass --

Perhaps it's genuine, perhaps but cope

Coping with what must come at last --

But it is a foolish thing, to any wise

To curse yourself even if in jest

To predict your ruin, your own demise

Is it a thing you know the best?

Surely not, but all we must speak

In half-truths in tyranous times

Enemies all 'round, and we but weak

Lying is added to all our crimes;

But should criminals we become

Because the evil days are here?

Lying to convince? Are we so numb

That we have lost our holy fear?

The future is unwritten yet -

Else I would be the Government

Eke the cycles I know, no fret

As God wills, I'll be content.

I have had hardly the time to write anything recently, my days have been full with ordinary things. Yet, there is a topic I think that needs to be written about and I have short time to write about it, so here it goes. 

A topic most of you are probably familiar with is Game Theory, that is, the mapping of human behavioral patterns to kinds of 'games'. They have rules, they have defined roles, etc. Usually they are descriptions of patterns of behavior that re-contextualize what people are really deciding to do, which gives a picture in general why people are doing things that may seem to us irrational.

While everyone and his uncle knows the Prisoner's Dilemma (and its iterated variant) I think it's a shame that few seem to know about the Rescue Game. I confess I didn't know much about it until recently, and even then I only learned about it by chance. It is however a piece of extraordinarily valuable information concerning public behavior in our current time. 

Here is a link to the original article which I read quite recently, but it has parts to it that are distracting and quite frankly, useless exosemantic signaling. Yet the meat of it is important:

https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/american-narratives-rescue-game.html

If you can skip past the 'song of his people' (aka some sort of hybrid liberalism) you might come to this part:

The accepted mainstream narrative about race in America today can best be described as one of those latter category of wholly dysfunctional games. Fortunately, it’s a game that was explored in quite a bit of detail by transactional analysts in the 1960s and 1970s, so it won’t be particularly difficult to break the taboo and speak about the unspeakable. Its name?  The Rescue Game.

I'll just quote from him to describe it:

Here’s how it works. Each group of players is assigned one of three roles: Victim, Persecutor, or Rescuer. The first two roles are allowed one move each: the Victim’s move is to suffer, and the Persecutor’s move is to make the Victim suffer. The Rescuer is allowed two moves: to sympathize with the Victim and to punish the Persecutor. No other moves are allowed, and no player is allowed to make a move that belongs to a different role. [...] when a group of people is assigned a role, all their actions are redefined as the move or moves allotted to that role.  In the Rescue Game, [...] whatever a Victim does must be interpreted as a cry of pain. Whatever a Persecutor does is treated as something that’s intended to cause pain to a Victim, and whatever a Rescuer does, by definition, either expresses sympathy for a Victim or inflicts well-deserved punishment on a Persecutor. This is true even when the actions performed by the three people in question happen to be identical. In a well-played Rescue Game, quite a bit of ingenuity can go into assigning every action its proper meaning as a move. [...] the roles are collective, not individual. Each Victim is equal to every other Victim, and is expected to feel and resent all the suffering ever inflicted on every other Victim in the same game. Each Persecutor is equal to every other Persecutor, and so is personally to blame for every suffering inflicted by every other Persecutor in the same game. Each Rescuer, in turn, is equal to every other Rescuer, and so may take personal credit for the actions of every other Rescuer in the same game. This allows the range of potential moves to expand to infinity without ever leaving the narrow confines of the game.

There’s one other rule: the game must go on forever. The Victim must continue to suffer, the Persecutor must continue to persecute, and the Rescuer must continue to sympathize and punish. Anything that might end the game—for example, any actual change in the condition of the Victim, or any actual change in the behavior of the Persecutor—is therefore out of bounds. The Rescuer also functions as a referee, and so it’s primarily his or her job to see that nothing gets in the way of the continuation of the game, but all players are expected to help out if that should be necessary.

This is clearly what is going on, and probably also describes the activity of a number of highly ideological groups working out their holiness spirals. It also reminds us of Munchausen's syndrome? It is an interesting beast. We can think of a number of examples, but his two examples are the old Deep South (Whites = victims, Blacks = persecutors, Affluent politicans = rescuers.) The modern state of things just reverses victim and persecutor, but is otherwise untouched. (We can also reflect on the presence of a number of confederate statues in highly Democratic cities as an artifact of this older iteration of the game.)

More detail:

The assignment of roles to different categories of people takes place in the opening phase of the Rescue Game. Like most games, this one has an opening phase, a middle period of play, and an endgame, and the opening phase is called “Pin the Tail on the Persecutor.” In this initial phase, teams of Victims bid for the attention of Rescuers by displaying their suffering and denouncing their Persecutors, and the winners are those who attract enough Rescuers to make up a full team. In today’s America, this phase of the game is ongoing, and a great deal of rivalry tends to spring up between teams of Victims who compete for the attention of the same Rescuers. When that rivalry breaks out into open hostilities, as it often does, the result has been called the Oppression Olympics—the bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred struggle over which group of people gets to have its sufferings privileged over everyone else’s.

Once the roles have been assigned and an adequate team of Rescuers attracted, the game moves into its central phase, which is called “Show Trial.” This has two requirements, which are not always met. The first is an audience willing to applaud the Victims, shout catcalls at the Persecutors, and cheer for the Rescuers on cue. The second is a supply of Persecutors who can be convinced or coerced into showing up to play the game. A Rescue Game in which the Persecutors don’t show quickly enters the endgame, with disadvantages that will be described shortly, and so getting the Persecutors to appear is crucial.

This can be done in several ways. If the game is being played with live ammunition—for example, Stalin’s Russia or the deep South after the Civil War—people who have been assigned the role of Persecutors can simply be rounded up at gunpoint and forced to participate. If the people playing the game have some less drastic form of institutional power—for example, in American universities today—participation in the game can be enforced by incentives such as curriculum requirements. Lacking these options, the usual strategies these days are to invite the Persecutors to a supposedly honest dialogue, on the one hand, and to taunt them until they show up to defend themselves, on the other.

However their presence is arranged, once the Persecutors arrive, the action of the game is [rigidly defined]. The Victims accuse the Persecutors of maltreating them, the Persecutors try to defend themselves, and then the Victims and the Rescuers get to bully the Persecutors into silence, using whatever means are allowed by local law and custom. If the game is being played with live ammunition, each round ends with the messy death of one or more Persecutors; the surviving players take a break of varying length, and then the next Persecutor or group of Persecutors is brought in. In less gory forms of the game, the Persecutors are shouted down rather than shot down, but the emotional tone is much the same.

This phase of the game continues until there are no more Persecutors willing or able to act out their assigned role, or until the audience gets bored and wanders away. At this point the action shifts to the endgame, which is called “Circular Firing Squad.” In this final phase of the game, the need for a steady supply of Persecutors is met by identifying individual Victims or Rescuers as covert Persecutors. Since players thus accused typically try to defend themselves against the accusation, the game can go on as before—the Victims bring their accusations, the newly identified Persecutors defend themselves, and then the Victims and Rescuers get to bully them into silence.

The one difficulty with this phase is that each round of the game diminishes the supply of players and makes continuing the game harder and harder. Toward the end, in order to keep the game going, the players commonly make heroic attempts to convince or coerce more people into joining the game, so that they can be “outed” as Persecutors, and the range of things used to identify covert Persecutors can become impressively baroque.  The difficulty, of course, is that very few people are interested in playing a game in which the only role open to them is being accused of violating a code of rules that becomes steadily more subtle, elaborate, and covert with each round of the game, and getting bullied into silence thereafter. Once word gets out, as a result, the game usually grinds to a halt in short order due to a shortage of players. At that point, it’s back to “Pin the Tail on the Persecutor,” and on we go.

One note he makes is that if something gets in the way of the ongoing game, say, a black football player misquoting Mr. Hortler but with a remark that is nonetheless targeted at Jews, the players will all agree that it distracts from the work of BLM, or rather, from the game being played, and needs to be shelved. (I'm being tongue in cheek because this recently happened verbatim.)

So this is clearly happening. It probably happens a lot. On a somewhat covert level, people can accuse people who are trying to help other people of playing the Rescue Game. A good example I remember is Zizek essentially accusing Christians of playing the rescue game with the poor, because although we provide for their material needs more than anyone, we never 'fix' their condition. So the poor cry out, we bring them bread, and then, we suspect, there are some capitalist mechanations where usurers or bankers have their fingers cut off for loansharking the poor, and the game continues. His reason for thinking this way is that at least according to the theories he ascribes to, the condition of the poor *is* fixable, whereas we as Christians would assert it's not (according to our Lord's words.) 

But why play this game? Well, here is our author's opinion:

It’s only fair to note that each of the three roles gets certain benefits, though these are distributed in a very unequal fashion. The only thing the people who are assigned the role of Persecutor get out of it is plenty of negative attention. Sometimes that’s enough—it’s a curious fact that hating and being hated can function as an intoxicant for some people—but this is rarely enough of an incentive to keep those assigned the Persecutor’s role willing to play the game for long.

The benefits that go to people who are assigned the role of Victim are somewhat more substantial. Victims get to air their grievances in public, which is a rare event for the underprivileged [ed: it's a rare event for even the privileged!], and they also get to engage in socially sanctioned bullying of people they don’t like, which is an equally rare treat. [ed: for anyone!] That’s all they get, though. In particular, despite reams of the usual rhetoric about redressing injustices and the like, the Victims are not supposed to do anything, or to expect the Rescuers to do anything, to change the conditions under which they live. The opportunities to air grievances and bully others are substitutes for substantive change, not—as they’re usually billed—steps toward substantive change.

The vast majority of the benefits of the game, rather, go to the Rescuers. They’re the ones who decide which team of Victims will get enough attention from Rescuers to be able to start a game.  They’re the ones who enforce the rules, and thus see to it that Victims keep on being victimized and Persecutors keep on persecuting.  Nor is it accidental that in every Rescue Game, the people who get the role of Rescuers are considerably higher on the ladder of social privilege than the people who get given the roles of Victims and Persecutors.

This is all well and good. Boo-hoo. Rescue games are happening. Clearly, dysfunctional, etc etc and so on. While this tells us why people are behaving the way they behave, a few things should be noted that the author doesn't cover (or doesn't make terribly clear.)

First, is that this Game cannot be Spoken Of, because in general once 'Persecuters' figure out 'who' they are, they quit. So in order to gin up those donations and build that network effect, potential persecutors have to be carefully groomed, even letting it slip slightly that, for example, 'racist' is code for 'white' (and 'racist' is probably the only genuine slur for white people--) can clue reams of potential Persecutors in on the Game and get substantial numbers of them to simply opt out. 

Second, because there were previous iterations of this game, players from previous iterations might be angry that their privileges were stripped from them (particularly if they were swapped from being Victims to Persecutors) and may rile up - perhaps accidentally - potential Persecutors thinking that complaining has some sort of real power to it, and cause themselves and others more grief than necessary.

Third, the privileges granted in this game should be considered real in the same sense that Romans had public honors that were granted to them. So when the author talks about 'underprivileged' people, he is speaking his own language (not ours--) in which it's somehow possible to say in a generic fashion that the Victim class has less privileges than it ought to. Those getting those privileges stripped (Poor whites in the case of the switch to 'bioleninism') are justly angry, they were playing by the rules and got reneged on.

Fourth, is that it also appears that Victims do not always know the game is being played. I think how this happens is rather queer, since Victims at least in the description seem to be the ones setting it up (more on that a moment) - so how could they be unaware of the game? Two possibilities exist: The first set of Victims knows the game and sets it up. But as the game progresses, and provided 'who' the Victims are doesn't change for some time, as players get swapped in for new players (generationally, even) new players may not know the 'game' and rather take it for granted that they have the social honor of complaining and being heard, and bullying and being acknowledged. The other possibility, which is more in line with my understanding of power, is that Victims as a bloc never know the Game is being played. It's likely that certain more socially powerful Victims who really do the coordination with the Rescuers do, but general Victims don't know, so the coordination is really among Rescuers, who decide - roughly - which set of Victims (through their contacts who either are of the same class or get that it's a game) are most lucrative for them to give a hearing to.

Lastly, and most importantly, is to try to get a handle on why this game is played at all. It's not enough to say that it is beneficial to some; there are plenty of beneficial things that could be done but aren't. Rather, I suspect that it could be regarded as an aspect of insecure power, and an artifact of certain social conditions.

When I mentioned above Zizek's criticism of charity, we got a glimpse of a key element in what gives us at least the appearance of this game - its structure. That is, the incurable problem. 

However, the poor in most circumstances (and in Christian countries) weren't really a problem; certainly they always existed (and will) but in many places they weren't very noticeable simply because ways were found to take care of them. It is primarily in places that are themselves impoverished as a whole that the condition of the poor becomes so notably vicious, and to Zizek's point, simply giving a person in those conditions a loaf of bread doesn't go anywhere to really helping them. The solution is clearly that in addition to continuing charity, that society needs to become less poor itself; how that could be done is not part of my consideration here.

But mostly people who are helping poor people in India, for example, are not getting much out of the Rescue Game, to the extent that it goes on (it certainly does to some extent with some charities who 'fight' against the evil persecutors like Monsanto - I've been to the presentations. I've seen people give money. With the right Audience, it's a lucrative business. [Cleft chin was one thing he brought up, as well, which is a more difficult problem in general and probably genetic.])

So a lot of charity may be ineffective materially, at least in its individual acts, but it doesn't itself constitute a Rescue Game unless we have a Persecutor to crush and Rescuers to - let's face it - get paid to do basically nothing for victims. If you look at how much the average American charity actually gives out, for example, you can tell the Rescuers are fat, fat cats indeed. Often there is no Persecutor, in which case it's just normal grifting; the Rescue Game is sort of an extraordinary circumstance. So what triggers it?

I'm of the opinion that you need an incurable (or perceived to be incurable) problem whose character is essentially that of a conflict; in such a case, because this conflict is real with or without the Game, it presents a certain danger to the society. Unnecessary diversity and inclusiveness often invite these conflicts, but I'm of the opinion both of those ideas don't predate the rescue game they are attached to, but are artifacts of arranging actual set-to's. 

The problem also has to be at least difficult to solve, or put more bluntly, the conflict must be difficult to resolve. This could be for several reasons, but the most obvious one is that the powerful are not incentivized to solve social problems but rather are in the position where they act primarily as referees whose positions depend on them being able to take advantage of social changes. (In other words, insecure power.)

It is also possible that the conflict is simply perceived as insoluable, and that the Rescue Game can be annihilated by common knowledge of a solution. Whether that is possible or not depends on how cynical the players are, as if the Rescuers are cynical enough, they can ignore the solution even if all the Victims demand it, and perhaps this is the point at which the signal is thrown to reshuffle the deck and look for a whole new sort of Victims.

It then starts when the Rescuers (who are really just some more powerful people within society) decide that the best way to deal with this simmering conflict is to let it happen in a contained way, perhaps initially thinking that the victims will be sated if they get a chance to humiliate or strike at their opponents, these Persecutors. Indeed, a basic understanding of anger suggests that anger will run its course, but since the conflict is of a hard nature, this only makes the Persecutors angry that they are being humiliated. If the ineffectiveness of this is clear enough, non-cynical Rescuers can easily see that this course of action is wrong, but cynical Rescuers see an opportunity. After all, the worst thing to do when you are angry is to make someone else angry; that is how a feud is started. And what better than refereeing and selling tickets to a contained feud to make bank?

Which means that the Rescue Game is a really foolish version of Professional Wrestling, in which there is no kayfabe and playing heel doesn't pay. Sad!

If it did, I'd gladly play heel in any of these games. It does put in perspective the ineffectiveness of a lot what the alt-right was doing and the wisdom of Moldbug's Command: "Do not complain, build." Many whites, rather than desiring a solution to a certain racial conflict (and if you believe in genetic differences at all, you can't deny it's an ancient one, though no 'sin') simply want a return to the previous arrangement in the Rescue Game where white people get to complain and in general make asses of themselves in public, and get to push around any sort of black person they want for any reason. 

Yet, the conflict would remain.

2020-07-10

A serpent tread down

Perhaps, as God said, but this

Dragon? Let it be.

 The Nile Crocodile; 

  known for his smile

 He is not a handsome mess

 When he boats 

  he boats in style 

 His clients all confess;

 A V-I-P

  From sea to sea 

 Just watch the party move

 Works for free,

  Spontaneity,

 Is always in the groove;

 As he promotes,

  Those in boats

 Know his taste is fine:

 Everyone screams

  And sinks or floats--

 He loves to wine and dine.

 

I chose a crocodile for this sketch simply because I read from some heraldic writer or other that the original heraldic dragons were something like a crocodile with the wings of a bat. It was thought that the artists used something they had seen -- likely a Nile Crocodile - as the basis for that winged serpent. And when we look at the crocodile, he certainly is a reptile in the classic sense, 'repto' - I crawl on the ground. More than this, his scaly body is quite serpentine... without a doubt, there is a real sense in which crocodiles (and their cousin the Alligator) are river dragons. 

We continue with the process of acquiring a birth certificate - nothing threatening so far, but 100% of the bureaucrats have been women as well. It may simply be that the slowness of the bureaucracy here prevents it from being excessively inhuman; at the college I went to, while their parking enforcement was as capricious and draconian (to students, though not so to scofflaws) as any parking enforcement ever is, yet their appeals process was so slow that you could get an almost endless reprieve from paying by re-appealing your ticket. 

We taught the second daughter to ride the bike today, which means that all three of the older children can ride, and thus we can go biking together. In practice all of the bikes are different sizes and the littlest one gets tired more quickly, but it's a start. I found a method that is rather easy to teach someone to ride, so long as they are willing (mainly, they're not afraid.) 

I've quit drinking coffee. Once upon a time, I did this because I was learning piano performance in college, and the stress of performance combined with caffeine caused jitters that made it impossible to play with accuracy. So, I quit for a year or so. In this case, the stress of recent events has proved too much for me to sleep even many hours later, having drunk coffee. Some people find caffeine calming; usually it's not much of a problem for me-- I have no objection to coffee on principle. Yet, to each thing its time and season.

2020-07-09

A time of trial

We must all see through the mist

To the morning sun

This entry will be the first which comes across as I originally intended. I realized that it is very possible that the way of life of Americans will vanish away, and perhaps soon. This acts as a sort of odd record of these final hours. I am not sure if it will continue even after various terrible things befall myself or my family; I certainly hope that won't be necessary. 

Americans - by which I mean those who are citizens of the United States of America - are living in fear. I think this condition extends to all Americans, for various particular reasons. However, the general reason remains that our governing authorities have signaled that they will not protect us. 

We have been living in a state of mild to severe depression for quite some time - and of course, as we live, as it seems to us now, in a prison, the only thing we can do is work on ourselves because "depression is the opposite of action." The only other way to be free of this is to simply tune out entirely from the world's events. 

I spend my time procrastinating, by in large. There is not much that can be done, that would have any effect; one gets a very strong sense of one's powerlessness in these days. So all things tend to be put off until tomorrow, hoping perhaps that something will happen that will change the atmosphere, for someone to give the signal that it is worth investing in anything.

This, sadly, is not at all equivalent to a Christian sense of detachment. We do not divest because we are investing in things which are eternal; we are not having a view to the human condition's changeability. Rather, we are like people in the inner cities who are concerned that anything which is not bolted down will be broken or stolen.

People would like to insult us because we do not 'rise up', yet what would the result be? I suppose that some do not understand the mystery given to Christians, "The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth", it remains a hard teaching and it was never given to the masses. Yet, something will give. But as with all things, it must start with those who have authority showing courage. Even our enemies do not dare stick up their neck unless called for.

It is a terrible failure, almost unspeakable to us -- I know that I bear it every day. Perhaps some will say I am over-reacting; yet I must say that in our time we needed more than ever for those to whom we gave leadership over us to exercise that, and either defend us, or give us the means to defend ourselves. They have done neither. We are left to our own resources, which after 50+ years of plundering, are very little. We may as well be peasants.

Today we are trying to get a birth certificate for my second son. It seems like it will be difficult, as we're not able to provide the type of documentation to which the Vital Records department is most amenable. Yet, it might end up being trivial - having never dealt with such a situation before I do not know what to expect. I do however worry that, based on the behavior of bureaucracies in our nation, it will be used as a pretext to deprive us of our son. 

I do not pretend to know how they will deal with us - but I expect, as it is, to be treated like a complete stranger by the government of a country my family has been in for over three centuries. My wife said to me, "why should we want to be citizens of such a country?" I don't have an answer.

2020-07-06

When it calls, answer

A voice of thunder and brass

Sitting in his palm

Death is a place; it is a time

A time that always ends, a rhyme

That always falls without answer

Not because the dead may prefer

Speech without any verse

But that the curse --

That is death, may be perfected

I hope else we had not expected

As in death there's no space

It is that sort of place;

The dead may hope we pray

Though naught they can say

Not in rhyme, nor in prose

Their year has met its close

And opens no more, no spring

Awaits or any other thing

But to dwell and be forgot

In forgetfulness of aught

Else-- and we must remember all

And in remembering a fall

In a garden, and a tree

And another tree, you, I, we--

Cannot afford to forget anyone

History cannot ever be undone

By us, we bear everything

This was our Christening;

And if to be remembered we strive

By other than God, while alive

We err, for in time I've thought

Ev'ry grave must at last go unsought.

Diagnosing the Patient

The sickness of the United States is profound. There are many ways to look at the patient- the Sick Man- and many reasons to do so. We can think of innumerable ways in which she is sick. Yet, it stands to reason that as the patient has gotten sicker, like the woman with the issue of blood, none of the physicians she sought to treat her had, or perhaps have, either the correct diagnosis, the correct medicine, or both.

There are very many opinions about this. I cannot overstate this fact -- the number of different perspectives is simply staggering. Yet, if we wanted to understand what happened, why she became sick, why perhaps (if I suppose rightly) she died, how would we do it? Or where would we start? 

Often in medicine we treat symptoms, not because medicine as a science or art believes that the symptoms are the disease, but because symptoms are often complications that prevent healing, and so in some sense, though being effects, are also causes of what they are effects of. For the reader, yes, I have described a feedback loop.

Swelling for example is often a symptom of some malady, but the role of swelling in healing is questionable beyond a certain degree and swelling itself, especially in muscular injury, often perpetuates the injury rather than helping in its healing. We can definitely look at America and say she is swollen. 

It is rarely necessary to treat root causes. This is the truth, and it should be accepted as such. It is rarely necessary to treat root causes. The body of man has survived countless generations because it is fundamentally robust; and there was never a time when people could consistently treat root causes. 

We might even go so far as to speculate that attempting to identify and treat root causes is maladaptive in many cases, because these causes are often hidden, whereas symptoms are objects of the senses. If one is to misidentify the root cause, or one is to treat a disease invasively to get to a deep root cause, one may easily do more harm than good.

It is also possible that in a very sick Man, such as America is, the idea of a root cause is a myth. Causes and effects cascade into each other and while tracing backward might give us a sense of where some of the effects originated from in time, these older causes, perhaps even root causes, are themselves gone now and even if we had an effective treatment for them, it would be without merit to employ it.

Yet, we do see a sick Man, who is being treated in a way that is only making her sicker. She is perhaps already dead; it is hard to tell. Perhaps it is her sister who has died - who can tell with these types -- they all look the same. If they had been twins, were they playing games of identity with us? 

There can therefore fundamentally be only two approaches to this. The first is to start as far back as we can go reasonably, (we try not to go back to, "And in the Beginning...") and start by tracing the roots of current problems as they appeared in earlier forms in history to the current day. 

The second approach is to start in our current time, and trace backwards the symptoms to their apparent origins. Both approaches have their merits, both have their demerits.

An approach I don't recommend is attempting to identify a syndrome or disease. For example, an Objectivist might tell you that America is suffering from Collectivism or Statism, and then list off various symptoms that match. That is well and good for Objectivists, who have, we expect, solutions tailor-made for those problems.

The reason why I don't recommend this approach is simple: if societies are organisms, and organisms which acquire pathologies, they are far fewer than human individuals. To think that we have a reasonable catalogue of individual human maladies is somewhat of a stretch despite the incredible count of cases; to suspect that the small population of human societies has exhausted its possible pathologies in 'white supremacy', 'liberalism', 'fascism', 'elitism' and so on, is laughable.

Yet, it is probably true enough that what is wrong with America (or her sister, at least) is that she has caught a nasty case of communism. However, the known cures for communism don't at all look like cures -- and it's not at all true that our communism looks like the others, exactly. After all, if it did, it would have been diagnosed much quicker than it was.

If indeed, America has caught a novel communism, it might be that it infects the blood instead of the lungs - viruses are very adaptable things and based on adaptations might be able to infect almost any cell. One might get a different communism based on the origin of the infection, and so on. The worst part is that even if we had a vaccine, an anti-virus, or some other kind of cure, it isn't even certain we'd be able to administer it from the inside.

Worst of all, all of the immune system seems to have been compromised, for the most part, to the production of more of this virus, and even the uninfected parts seem unable to clean out infected areas. 

So we resort to one of our methods above; we will look at symptoms, their origins, and treatments. Communism is largely a self-reinforcing and mutating pathogen; treatment for the 1917 variety isn't going to work on the 2020 variety. Thus we're at square one.

We know where we are though, and that is how to begin.

2020-07-04

Silent country now

Will these stones not cry out still

If it remain so?

We must think our time has come

But you and I do not exist 

Persons neither, anyone

Who matters now could just have missed

Places overlooked because

They exist without a cause

Censored yes, and here's the twist--

without a name, bereft of laws;

Censors used to keep the roll

of citizens, and so you know

Motivation, and the goal

Is to erase us all, although

We are now invisible--

What we are, illegible;

'See no evil', must we show

What lies behind the curtain-pull?

Greatest rings of power grant

The power we have won for free

Us! To whom the babbled cant

Must move like waves upon the sea!

Walking free beneath the sun

Just before the battle-drum--

Yes, indeed-- and can it be

that we must think our time has come?

How America Balkanized

by Albert Warwick

I have often been asked to give an account for the "balkanization" of the United States of America. Needless to say, there was an essay written, now lost, which was very infamous and drew a great deal of unwanted attention to me. In it, I had carefully sourced both historical texts and current events to try to give a precise account of those fatal decades. It was too early! I regret now that I published it, being naive as I was in those days, because the ensuing complications deprived me of much of my prior work, being seized by the authorities of the WSU, which included both the work in question and my notes.

But for the sake of my readers, and at the behest of Mr. Salazar, I have endeavored to recreate as much of the substance of the argument as possible here. If not for your gracious donations and his organization, there might not have been Yet Another Warwick Essay ever again! 

The United States counts its founding day as July 4th, 1776. Although at the time the founders of the former nation considered themselves burdened by an oppressive king, they were in fact, as some contrasting accounts show more factually, burdened by a neglectful and capricious Parliament. That British Parliament would be responsible for, in its capricious disdain for commitment, the loss of nearly all of Britain's colonies, despite the best efforts of its kings. 

While the principle of federalism, itself a very English idea, was in theory deeply ensconced in this nation's Constitution, it is arguable that it is this very principle that was its undoing. J. Rosenberg did some interesting work, which I once had access to, about the origins of Federalism in the history of the English Speaking Peoples. In his work, "The Seed Which Spread Itself", he argued rather conclusively that English history was marked by an inability to retain centralization, simply because the respect for 'the particular' always prevented any traditionally minded, typically 'authoritarian' figure from behaving in a centralizing fashion.

His notes on the rise of certain occult movements at particular times aside (I think the historical patterns suggest these are epiphenomena rather than causes, as he seems determined to prove) it's very clear that almost every unification of English speakers or their protectorates (sometimes only marginally speakers of English) is invoked on the principle of protecting "Ancient Liberties", these liberties themselves inscribing notions of what later became 'federalism'.

At various times, this idea took different casts, sometimes it was the Common Law, other times it was the 'rights' in the Domesday Book, and we are given to believe even in English pre-history it has its exemplars. 

As a law therefore, the more Authority a figure attained within the English speaking milieu, the more they were compelled into a contradictory relationship with the very power that Authority entailed. At first this always expressed itself as a deference to present governing authorities, which were a multiciplity but none of which had for themselves the Right that they arrogated. 

Later however, as those authorities themselves, being of an illegitimate and underhanded sort (we can see this pattern also in the Parliament re-making the royal seal on its own when the King removed it) became unable to successfully retain unification. The figure that follows their indecision typically stands in resistance to them, but is unable to, because of the contradiction aforementioned, do anything but be the cause of the shattering of the prior union.

This process has several phases, and one of them often sets itself in contradistinction as a phase of intense unification. The second is like it, but elite in nature rather than popular, and sets the stage for the collection of the illegitmate 'unifying' authorities that the final figure comes to fight against. 

Because there are always several visions of unity, especially with the concept of "federalism", there come to be two distinct parties both of which have a different idea of unity. It turns out that, however, even in their victory, the unifying party always causes the failure of the Union.

The reason is simple: the authorities that they have to break to win are what are holding the Union together, and by defeating them, they necessarily release their essentially social bond with the protectorates. The battles that follow are only half-hearted, because the state has had to remove half of its heart.

In the history of the United States the process was rather similar. It is said that the average life expectancy (being about 70 years consistently throughout its history) combined with political cycles (2 and 6 years for various congressional positions, 4 years for Presidents) created a 75 year 'turn' in US government. This 'turn' cannot be overstated; each turn created a new government, it was a revolution. In the history of English 'Glorious Revolutions', they were sometimes mostly bloodless. 

As would happen, the United States was due for its next turn around 2007 Anno Domini (37 UE) but this turn failed to happen. This does not mean that the old government would last forever, since the decay of old governments was rather regular and was the central 'cause' of turns. 

This is where things get interesting, and in all likelihood, the following claims were what got me in the most trouble with the Western States Union authority. Naturally, revealing what became quickly and retroactively regarded as state secrets while still residing in said state was a foolish oversight on my part.

Nevertheless, it really started in or about mid-July in 2020

2020-07-02

Face without a name 

Pull us down, try to forget

History repeats

On the same Theme

Though they have tried to forget you

 Pulling down your image in spite

  The reprieve they get to forget 

   Must only last a night;

   

Indeed, they call you a bitter name

 And it rises on their sour breath

  Another curse, all the worse

   And suffered after death;

   

Yet it is the living who must pay

 It is they who bear the debt

  If indeed, they seem to need

   Your memory to forget;

 

God remembers all, his lessons

 A forgetful one still meets

  As none is free from memory

   History repeats.

   

Don't Believe Internet Just-So Stories

Just so stories are well known by some, they are the stories that supposedly demonstrate some behavior or fact but are not themselves factual; they are 'just so'. Now, Kipling wrote some of these, but they are clearly myths, and so don't really count. Men understand the world through stories, and the role of myth so-called is produce a story-structured concept for things for which there may be no story. 

Just-so stories fit well into the modern 'photographic' and 'realistic' and indeed 'hyperfactual' mindset because there can be no category for the mythical (except skepticism about supposed superstitions) or traditional; there is only 'what has happened in history'. I'm not a fool; to demonstrate something in history is a hundred times more powerful than producing a myth or remembering a half-lost narrative about it. If this were not so, what need would there have been for God to enter History as the Christ?

Just-so stories are in fact myths, but they are myths for the 'educated'. The ignorant often beleive myths as though they are fact, mostly because the ignorant don't have a strong grasp of the hard difference between a fable and an account. For this reason, we might emphasize, hyperstition works well on them.

Just so stories allow cunning people to treat the educated again as ignorant; and if you think you're free from this, perhaps you believe that at one time man existed as a series of unaffiliated individuals, 'nature red in tooth and claw', or perhaps the not totally disimilar ideas of Locke's. Chesterton, being a good storyteller, understood completely the difference between what we know, and what we presume based on what we know. About 'cave-men', he said:

"This secret chamber of rock, when illuminated after its long night of unnumbered ages, revealed on its walls large and sprawling outlines diversified with coloured earths; and when they followed the lines of them they recognised, across that vast and void of ages, the movement and the gesture of a man's hand. They were drawings or paintings of animals; and they were drawn or painted not only by a man but by an artist [...] Now it is needless to note, except in passing, that there is nothing whatever in the atmosphere of that cave to suggest the bleak and pessimistic atmosphere of that journalistic cave of the winds, that blows and bellows about us with countless echoes concerning the cave-man. So far as any human character can be hinted at by such traces of the past, that human character is quite human and even humane. It is certainly not the ideal of an inhuman character, like the abstraction invoked in popular science. When novelists and educationists and psychologists of all sorts talk about the cave-man, they never conceive him in connection with anything that is really in the cave."

Many people have read what are called 'greentext' stories on the internet from the imageboards; there are subreddits devoted to people 'asking' for advice which follows upon an alleged account, and there are the more famous claims of people that their eight-year old child had a political awakening.

Believe none of it. You may say, "it is proof that things are much worse than people believe! It's a clown world!" It is doubtless that these accounts are at least based on real events, but people tend to forget that spreading false stories on the internet for various reasons (because you are anonymous) is a grand tradition, and more than this, besides the sordid profession of fan-fiction, there is pornography.

The internet seems to be full of all kinds of pornography, and Reddit, since Tumblr was shut down because of course if you allow any pornography, you allow those who truck in and those seek for a certain kind of truly awful and illegal sort, it all ends up on Reddit. Reddit, for those reading later, was a site that replaced another site called "Digg", which was more or less used to share just-so stories on the internet (as well as memes.) Like all such sites it eventually got taken over by the most rabid people who proceeded to outlaw pranks and jokes from people they didn't like, and ensure that not a single one of their just-so stories ever got published. Needless to say, this is no way to run a non-niche website.

The question one should seriously ask about any of these stories (and greentext stories are more tongue-in-cheek) is, "is this really a kind of pornographic fiction?" Having said this, one also cannot dismiss the possibility that, in the grand tradition of copypasta (stories copied verbatim usually to induce terror) these stories are simply lifted and slightly altered to gain attention. Perhaps they are part of a prank; everyone has pranked 'noobs' (new players) by telling them something like, "yes, Alt-F4 will solve your speed issues while playing" and find that other experienced players repeat the story, 'verifying' it to the detriment of the new player, who of course quickly discovers the prank. At least it was funny.

In a sense, when a story is presented 'as though fact' our ability to analyze it as a narrative, and pay attention to the motives of the author are greatly diminished. In some cases, they seem to vanish entirely, as they often do when a person views a staged photograph. 

We of course pat ourselves on the back because we don't believe a liberal's child had a political awakening at eight years old. No one believes that but liberals. Yet, when we see a just-so story that confirms what we already believe, we don't question it. 

Why not question it? Certainly, publicly, if it's politically advantageous, people won't speak against a questionable narrative, because indeed this is the Nash equillibrium; neither side goes out of its way to check the factuality of narratives that benefit it. Yet even privately, we must admit we believe these 'just so' stories more often than not.

I'm not suggesting that people on 'our' side should be 'publicly vigorous about factuality of reported accounts' - this cannot happen in a democracy! The least you can do is understand that almost every one of these stories is false, and at best are based off of something sort of like that which the writer may have overheard.

See! Now you know, for I have told it to you.

2020-07-01

A seat is a seat

Kings come and go, it remains

Lacks but a footstool

Write again for me music

 That my soul desires to hear;

Will you lift your pen

 Will you sing again?

Inspiration is silent

 as though in great and dreadful fear

Dares not utter verse

 Blessing, no, nor curse;

Write again, if you hear me

 And together count the cost

Of what must be done

 Why remain ye mum?

All must hear of your thund'ring

 What remains shall soon be lost

Since your voice is dead

 I shall sound instead.

 

No One Believes in Freedom of Speech (anymore)

One illusion conservatives labor under is that they are the party which respects freedom of speech. Of course, let us be clear: the left also labors under this illusion, special pleading nonwithstanding. As always, both sides appear to themselves to be the champions of what is fashionable, whether or not this accords to reality.

Let me preface this: I am perhaps one of the most open-minded people you will ever meet. That is not to say I am fashionably open minded; as Chesterton put it, the point of an open mind, like an open mouth, is to close it on something solid. There is what is called the 'big five' psychological exam, and I always score very high on 'openness', which if you knew the stridency with which I hold my opinions, would seem unusual to say the least.

The fact of the matter is this: when you have really investigated (or so you think) and have concluded such and such (or so you think) yourself, you tend to be that much more unyielding in whatever opinion was this way formed. Liberals often show surprise that a person who 'reads books' has any sort of opinion that differs from what they consider 'open minded' (fashionable) thought. One should not! There are many different ways of looking at the world, and thus many different ways to explain the facts of history, even respecting them as they are, and these ways are often contradictory!

Openness to new ideas is essential for a thinker, but it doesn't mean one is necessarily open to the ideas that one thinks one ought to be. It is rather hidebound to think of all ideas as being on a kind of level playing field, or all perspectives as being equal - there is hardly a more conservative style of opinion, even if in some eras this opinion does not appear among conservatives.

This is because this thought - equality among opinions - is really equality among accepted opinions, which lo and behold is 'the status quo'. Very liberal conservative of you, conservative liberals!

Among people who read there are generally three kinds: those who are reading for some tangible goal, such as a class or a project; those who are reading fashionably and read or want to appear to have read fashionable books, and those who want to read to know things. The last class alone are people who are in any real sense 'open minded', but it is usually the second class which bother with the title.

Thinking for yourself is dangerous, if for no other reason than it is easy to become very opinionated about things whose opinions would be very detrimental to your life at present, irrespective of whether these opinions reflect a true understanding of reality or not. Merely being open and reading in pursuit of knowledge itself poses a danger!

To test this for yourself, take an opinion you hold very strongly and try to convince someone for whom that opinion might be a threat. For best effect, it should not involve physical violence, since such opinions easily earn one approbation anyway. You may find that defenders of free speech or open minded people are not! 

I've probably been banned from more conservative spaces than liberal ones; this is because I always make the mistake of thinking I can convince conservatives of things, being more from that background, than liberals. I would never assume I could convince an abortion-believing, democrat-voting liberal of anything, and don't try -- I assume as soon as I open my mouth I will be banned for hate speech. (This probably isn't true, but on this assumption I've never been banned from Twitter.)

In this I find that both spaces lack openness, there is very little in the way, in any such spaces, of discussion. This is not a new problem, by the way, but has certainly grown worse over time. The internet has if nothing become good at passive-aggressive suppression of speech; Reddit innovated in the shadow-ban, where people literally do not know that others cannot hear them. More recently it has become more active in shutting down things it does not like to hear; it especially does not like to hear this!

People who believe in freedom of speech do until the point at which I open my mouth and tell them, for example, that democracy is a sham. "Well," they might say, "did you think they might be right in considering that beyond the pale?" I used to think so, too! Yet, I have only proceeded in understanding by carefully considering new ideas, and attempting to synthesize them. Many fail the test, and I must admit you eventually do get a sense for which ideas hang together, and why, which gives people the impression you are close-minded.

It shouldn't be thought that an open-minded person is simply open and fair with every opinion; and again, no one really considers open-minded-ness a virtue. What I like to offer at least is an attempt to explain to a reasonable person why I believe they are wrong. Rather than coming off as 'open minded', the force of my opinion comes across as close-minded. Yet as I explained above, the close-minded person is least likely to engage in a debate, for to them either an idea is already among acceptable (but toothless) opinions, or it is to be silenced without discussion. 

People believe in freedom of speech up until the point at which they encounter a truly novel opinion (to them;) forcefully presented. The entryist's art is to never forcefully preent their opinions until they have the power to do so. Though honesty is worth nothing today, one could at least say I am honest. I am, however, a very poor entryist. 

Why would anyone, though, believe that all opinions deserve an equal hearing? Lèse-majesté shall be the whole of the law, or at least it persists at all levels of discourse. If only many thinkers understood this concept, they would understand why freedom of speech is impossible. When people say that some certain speech is 'violence', they are referencing the real concept that speech could threaten what they regard as something vulnerable which in their view should not be attacked. 

One reason why I attack democracy, such as attacking the concept of voting, is because in addition to being true, it can be used as an object lesson in Lèse-majesté. If one were to successfully invalidate voting in the public eye, such that the futility of an individual voting in the former USA's national system became common knowledge, the whole system would be thrown into crisis, wounded perhaps mortally. I expect to be silenced, and this is further a demonstration that Lèse-majesté has not been done away with, with the concept of the republic or of democracy. 

The biggest failure in our system was to not more clearly, honestly, and openly define what 'freedom of speech' means for a republican or democratic system. At the current time it appears to mean prostitution but not a defense of itself as a concept; yet how is one to have expected, at all, that the political class could publicly discuss (and only the discussions of the political class in a republican context are at all 'public') issues so as to inform voting, without explicitly outlining that this was the purpose of said freedom of speech? 

Yet of course, who, having attained power in a democratic system, would brook speech being used to threaten their power? 

And so it goes.