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.

2020-06-30

All man's providers

Good God and the garden bean

Lowly, evergreen

The child complains till it gets its way

A very common thing for us to see today

A peaceful protest isn't something that exists

A protest is something that violently persists

Until adults take action, and put it all away

Some involved will not again see the light of day;

Everyone wants to think he will live like a king

No scrubby grass, for each hand a diamond ring

Palaces for everyone, no spot of weathered paint

Clothes breathing perfectly, never make you faint

They saw a photograph, it was probably touched-up

In an advertisement, they're paid to drink the cup

But everything they touch is discolored like the pox

Not uncommon for the human coming right out of the box--

If it falls to dust, someone will have to take the blame

Except when no one's left, and these places have a name

A sovereignty is where you step up and you pay,

But the child complains until it gets its way.

Democracy is the Problem

I've written this before, and I'll write it again. Democracy is the problem. While there are a number of ways to explain the problem of democracy, and obviously at this point reams have been writtten on the topic, it's worth getting a quick and fresh perspective, so some context can be had for understanding what comes next. 

If you can't read what follows for some reason, I can encapsulate it into a simple idea: it only matters who rules you, governance structures matter inasmuch as they determine who rules you. Democracy means the majority cannot be ruled in their own interest, but in the interest of those who have the power to manipulate them.

Some of this has been covered in Popular Government, but when we look at democracy as a system for selecting who rules you (which is what it is--) we find that rather than people choosing in their own interest, their interests conflict on most issues and they are not of one mind about the common good. Any household can experience this, and there is almost no rule that guarantees agreement; people of the same class will not agree with one another (Sorry Marx) people of the same race (Sorry Adolf) and even people who vote for the same party will not. 

Therefore, we have to conclude that the choices being made by most voting bodies, especially those of a certain size, are not at all determined by a collective will bending towards a common good. They are in fact determined by other things, and most of these things involve the action of more powerful people within the society manipulating public opinion, or as a general rule, manipulating procedural outcomes.

This accords with experience, in that most of us understand that even as voting cannot establish the truth, voting among a small group of like-minded people does have a certain force and a common expression of will, but beyond a certain number (20 they say is the limit at which the will of the council becomes invisible, essentially) voting acts more as a rubber stamp for more powerful wills within the whole.

These wills can be concealed, and their concealment depends on the belief in the common will, because it is this belief permits one to think that these powerful wills are accidental, rather than essential, to a larger voting body.

As such, because of the difference in class developed by difference in social power and role, so the wills manipulating the crowd will have different interests. They therefore guarantee that the 'who' in the 'who rules whom' equation will be hostile; the reason has two parts to it. The first is the difference in interests, which although distinct within the same nation must still by nature be connected, and the second is the irresponsible nature of manipulating a crowd; it is by nature an escape from responsibility towards the crowd, and therefore it cannot be, by its nature, made responsible for their well-being.

If the crowd were a formal army, there would be a chain of command and the crowd would know who its leaders were and could make demands directly of them; indeed, there would be some relationship between the two and pressure would exist for the leaders to be responsible to the crowd and consider its interests. The 'wire puller' however, has no unique relationship to any crowd in particular; to him they are mercenaries that he does not have to pay. They are interchangeable warm bodies.

Yet because he, or those who manipulate him, controls the crowd and therefore controls the selection of leadership, a contrary result occurs. Now, those who manipulate the crowd must additionally become afraid that the crowd, not being complete marks, will discover they are being sold a bill of goods and vote for some outsider who will throw their unstable and informal system of domination into mayhem. This isn't a common occurrence, but it is fatal. 

From this, they must find a way to restructure government so that not only does the crowd believe they still have power, but they in fact, in voting, have as little power as possible. By moving decision-making from elected officials, whether formally or informally through social pressure and money, to permanent government ministers, they can effect this. 

While this would seem at first glance a positive development, and certainly anyone who wished to effect it would need broad popular support, it continues the fundamental manipulative antagonism between the people and the 'wire pullers', while also removing the possible safety valve in the case of ruling-class insanity that an occasional up-and-down plebiscite affords.

In short, democracy, as a structure or theory of government, produces rulers who are antagonistic. It is its nature to produce irresponsibility, and often 'more' democracy produces even more wire-pulling and more antagonism. In fact, in much democratic thinking, the idea that those who rule are even rulers is unthinkable. It therefore in addition produces an antagonism between the ruled and the ruler as well; this problem not only includes the rightful disdain towards manipulators, but also a misdirected lack of gravity towards elected officials.

To the point about who rules you mattering more than systems or principles of rule, if you are honest with yourself, you will find most people's objections to certain policies or actions are rooted more in who is doing them, than what is being done. Sometimes this isn't obvious, because a shared set of expectations are involved, but when we see armed protestors, we assume they will be violent, whereas when we see armed homeowners, we assume they will be peaceful unless provoked. We have reasoning for this, but much of it is rationalization; we instinctively know that protestors are not our friends, and so them being armed is a threat to us, whereas homeowners, even if not our friends, are not our enemies, and so their being armed is not. In both cases, the same basic rights are in play - to bear arms. We know however that one we can trust with a gun, the other we cannot. 

Therefore the core of the political for the common person is this: does he who rules me have my best interests in mind? To the thinker, this adds one layer, and that is, does the structure of government aid or harm in the process of ensuring rulers have our best interests in mind? 

And this is just the tip of the iceberg as to why Democracy ensures none of those things.

2020-06-29

All-time favorite

Bullet-proof under pressure

Nice for the summer

Quatrains

I was not born for revolution;

My fathers of fathers were lords

Of a genteel country, no solution

To their sort regicide affords;

But I was not born under a king

Increasingly, beyond my will

I have become fixed upon a thing

And I am bent upon it still;

I who do not vote, have come to see

It is not fashionable, I have said

Yet, easy it does not come to me 

That I must take a new path instead;

I was here before you, knowing well

The futility of the ballot-box alone

Rejecting its enchanting spell

I became like a standing-stone;

A fool I was, and so still remain

Praying in an open field, did God

Come and put this idea in my brain--

I who stand upright in the sod?

I must swear, while my arm is strong

I must understand my conclusion--

I am the future, this is its song;

I was not born for revolution.

"Karen", and Other Memes

A common meme these days is 'Karen'. What is a Karen? I've heard the allegations; the Karen is a social climber, she calls the manager to gain power over the organization. Karen is always serious; she does not get jokes. She talks over you while she claims she is speechless. The only thing Karen has a sense for is power.

I have also heard people trying to connect Karen with Mrs. Grundy. Sadly, this connection is spurious. (I even saw some go so far as to connect her with Hera or Juno - sad ignorance!) First of all, Mrs. Grundy is clearly uncool; she is very unfashionable, unattractive, a nag, and by her name lacks the social power she tries to exert 'for other peoples' good'. A grumbler, unattractive, moralizing... if Mrs. Grundy was Karen, she might be effective, rather than the butt of jokes for over a century.

For a good idea of what Karen "means", in the poetic sense, one should listen to (and read the lyrics for) Cake's song "Short Skirt/Long Jacket". Unliky "Grundy" which sounds like a combination of "Grungy" and "Grumble" and a number of other deprecating words, Karen is an objectively attractive name. Now, I'll grant you I'd never have married a woman named Karen - I will be honest with you! - but the name holds an attractiveness to both men and women. Like its maladroit companion "Kevin", it is a strong word, simple, and communicates a certain power.

The Left, and particularly those self-disapproved agitators love this term to attack white women who are trying to get the system to help them against threats of personal violence -- and this alone should give us pause. If we look at the list of 'approved' slurs for "white people" by some of these same people, we find that there is but one single commonality in all of their memetic ideas: they are bad.

Like the attempt to 'hurt' some people by calling them "Chad" and "Stacy", Karen is likely to end up being an ironic compliment, and certainly calling a woman Karen doesn't make her seem weak, foolish, or any of the other things that effective memes do. What we get from the idea is that Karen talks too much. And if we look at all of the "Karens" we find that really, we're dealing with a gal who just has an overactive mouth: honestly, in the right circumstance, Karen could be very useful. 

Of course Juno (or Hera) is not Karen, either. "A Juno" is the term given by Romans for the closest thing to Genius there could be in a woman. Juno as a negative picture is more about the needlessly warlike tendency of powerful women (borne out clearly by the tendency of Queens in history to start more wars in the same amount of time compared to their male counterparts.) Juno is *definitely* closer to a Karen than to a Mrs. Grundy -- but Karen, unlke Juno, is not a queen. She is trying to grasp power for herself, she is kind of a shadow of Eve, of whom it said, "and he will rule over you." Karens vanish like smoke before a breeze because other than speech, which "alone is flaring thing", they possess no power at all. 

A Karen! Imagine relying on such a meme. 

[sketch note: not bad for a first try!]