Globalization

Speaking of YUGE shifts in the zeitgeist.

My awareness of things started from watching Chomsky speak on anti-globalization (as well as a range of other issues), which was big in the early 2000s. He was not the only one, though he was my main influence (there were others on the right, too). Anyone who was a part of that, whether liberal or conservative, I consider a friend and an ally. 

At the time, opponents of the status quo were slandered as kooks, conspiracy theorists, misfits, impractical idealists, and the rest of it. If you brought the idea of 'empire' or 'globalism', it pretty much guaranteed being treated with contempt-- I certainly did, and that's the reception I got. 

However, I think these terms and way of viewing the opposition / zeitgeist no longer really hold and have now become the opposite of what they were back then.

The idea of a conspiracy theorist is more of a relic, a leftover from an era when the elites could still rig things semi-well and where the vast majority of people still believed the propaganda, not really applicable to the current situation.

Conspiracy implied deceit, a deliberate cover-up, an attempt to fool the masses— except for a handful of lone individuals, naturally on the fringes, who could figure things out and sound the alarm. They might not even be believed, might be assassinated by the all-powerful gubmint, might be slandered and ridiculed, but they accepted those risks anyways. This figured into the mocking, where they were attacked as being loons / hicks.

That was then. What we have now is the opposite of a conspiracy: disastrous failures in every area, which are noticed by everyone, and are never fixed or even addressed. This permanently damages the credibility of the government, experts, and society, who have now ironically become the fringe / radicals / misfits on most issues. 

The idea and goal of propaganda has also shifted, in accordance with the general zeitgeist. Propaganda used to mean a deliberately fabricated fairy-tale (the equivalent of fast food, cheap and convenient), created in order to fool one's opponents or destroy their reputation, enhance the reputation of the elites, or draw attention from their bending / breaking the rules. It was active, offensive. Resisting propaganda was also something that indicated being against the grain, unique, and so on— like being a conspiracy theorist.

Now, however, after one neoliberal failure after another, even the propaganda makers and consumers have internalized the fact that nobody else believes them or will believe them ever again, which is why they've given up on convincing people. Propaganda these days is largely for the personal consumption of an incestuous and increasingly isolated in-group— a way of deluding themselves into thinking they're winning, or that their enemies feel as badly about themselves as they do, so they can keep going instead of giving in to depression. It's a numbing agent to insulate the people in charge from self-doubt and looming failure, not a weapon in their arsenal. 

This behavior will further compound the collapse of the system, since it is now led by a group living in a hermetically sealed echo-chamber, where all traces of truth, or criticism, or even feedback from reality, have been systematically removed. They are, like I said in an earlier comment, hurtling to their deaths.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, they seem intent on dragging everyone else with them too. 

Fortunately for the rest of us, and especially for the once outcast / impotent critics of globalization (on both the left and the right) this new situation has a silver lining. It means that those same positions which were once on the fringe are now gaining traction, possibly even becoming mainstream, while the consensus on immigration, wars, trade, becomes more and more irrelevant and hated by the masses with every failure. This is the reality that is staring us in the face: we are now on the way to becoming the majority position, the popular ones, and maybe even one day (too early to dream?) the ones making the decisions. 

The point is, what would have been a pipe dream in the early 2000s is now becoming more and more real.

I'd say the important thing in the short term is to start dropping the 'isolated rejected loner' pose, as well as the 'too hip and too cool for the mainstream' pose. Back when political failure and non-mainstream status was guaranteed, it was a way of saving some dignity / self-esteem. The movement also drew a large chunk of people who would have been on the fringes no matter what and were happy to feel self-righteous about something. Now that it's possible to win big, it's time to start spreading the good word— it'll only be received well-- and to start dropping those anti-normie / haughty aspects. Let the elites turn themselves into an impotent isolated group, there are tons of supporters to scoop up out there in the real world!

Localism

Another short comment, inspired by some of the comments on Nothing ever happens – Rintrah about the interesting future that awaits us:

After decades of failure, people are starting to wonder about alternatives to the status quo, which is clearly beyond fixing. We don't just need repairs here or there, but a whole new set of values and goals, a whole new vision of how to run society, since the current one has proven to be a false promise. This opens up space for competing ideologies, on both the left and the right. The question is: which one can deliver the goods, or at least avoid apocalyptic breakdown?

I think the natural alternative to hyper-extended globalism is localism, rather than white nationalism or green environmentalism (which I see as the competing alternatives).

First, why I don't see the latter solving the problem, and therefore don't align myself ideologically with them, despite agreeing on many basic points:

Both of these left and right versions share a similar awareness of the problem, emphasizing different aspects of it according to their values. Right-wingers point out that the globalized mega-culture has destroyed group identities and national cohesion, in favor of a degenerate rootless form of individualism. Left-wingers don't really mention social cohesion (which has become one of those dangerous spooky fascist words) they instead emphasize the reality of physical limits and material limitations, as opposed to the foolish techno-optimism of today's experts. Today's experts can't see that the world is physical / material, not digital or abstract, and that limits and constraints can't be made to disappear by changing the definition of words or winning debates on social media, they simply exist, and you have to adapt and plan for them. Left-wingers are also more aware of wealth inequality, which right-wingers usually rationalize through Social Darwinism.

On most of these issues, I'd say both are correct.

However, neither of the ideologies offer any way out of the problem. The right-wingers ultimately seem to want to petition the oligarchs and mega-corporations to produce a new version of globalism, just with right-wing values and propaganda instead of degenerate leftist ones.  The core aspects— corporate greed, monopolization, rent-seeking, elitism— remain untouched, but they will be accompanied with based right-wing memes instead of degeneracy at worst or boring corporate sludge at best. They can't understand that those Darwinian values and practices in the economic domain are perfectly compatible with the sleaziness and individualism in the personal / social domain, which is why entire approach fails so pathetically at solving those problems and always will. Left-wingers don't worship billionaires, but they also can't offer anything. For them, it's austerity at worst (you'll own nothing, and you'll be happy), something we already have under neoliberalism, or at best unlimited and deregulated access to drugs and porn, maybe with some supplemental income thrown in, so you can crawl into an opium-den and drown out the extinction of your entire culture and way of life through cheap addictions. Obviously, nobody will ever accept a deal like that, which is why their movement also goes nowhere. 

In many ways, both ideologies have devolved into online impotence, crawling back to the same establishment that never loved them / abused them. It's become 'how I learned to love neo conservativism, as long as I get to own working class chuds' and 'how I learned to love neoliberalism, as long as I get to laugh at leftists'. Sad!

In order to reverse these awful trends, while solving the problem effectively, I think we need to bring back the pre-neolib idea of autonomous regions, ie localism and local cultures, effectively breaking up the doomed mega-system into much smaller independent chunks.

We shouldn't even be aiming for America 1st, let alone creating some giant mega-race (like the white race, the Aryan race, what have you) but rather much smaller semi-autonomous regions. Nor should we stoop to peddling lies and delusions about going back to the golden age, the wonderful years that lie ahead, and all the rest of it. Instead, we should simply say that there will be hard times ahead (the truth, which everyone is aware of by now) but that if we do things right, we can attain stability and survival and continuity, rather than an apocalyptic breakdown. 

Social cohesion and wholesomeness under localism would be organic, ie coming from below, not imposed by mega corporations or propaganda campaigns, let alone based memes and owning leftoids on Twitter. Most modern degeneracy is fundamentally the result of people trying to adapt their brains to an unnatural, unsatisfying, way of life, where there are no material prospects and at the same time no thriving communities, not the result of having bought into "incorrect views". So, they can only really be fixed by returning to a more normal, humble, life. Satisfaction, not perpetual addiction and endless treadmills. 

Regionalism or localism would also solve the problem of over-consumption, but without blowing the whole thing up like the leftists want (again, nobody is settling for austerity). We should aim for the different regions (Southwest / West, New England, Midwest, Deep South, and so on) to produce their own things, for themselves, not depend on massive over-extended supply chains. Of course, some stuff is going to be made better in particular places, some resources are only found in certain countries or grow under certain conditions, which is what trade is for, but the goal still should be for 70-80% autonomy for the things that fall outside that category, reducing the demands that the current system makes on finite resources.

Both of these require shrinking the system. Some natural consequences / policies as a result of implementing this vision are: 

Bringing back factories, which have all been moved to the 3rd world. Related to that, we would have to refocus on building lasting appliances, rather than endless plastic crap, useless gadgets, and made-to-break everything. We need stuff to last as long as it can, in a world with finite resources and hard limits, and the current arrangement is somehow the WORST and least efficient, a total disaster that will leave lasting damage.

Ending immigration, even deporting immigrants. Not for high-minded abstract racial reasons, but in order to rebalance a system that is too large. We need a smaller population. The silver lining will be a higher standard of living, once we're no longer trying to max everything out.

Breaking up the massive cartels that have formed within the elite class, another source of the current breakdown. Same reason as immigration: too many rent-seekers, just in the upper classes, and not enough room for them all. They have to go, in the interests of the whole nation.

All of this stuff requires hard work, none of it will be fun or easy, but it simply has to be done if we want some kind of future. The more time passes, and the less is done to solve these issues, the more ruthless we will have to be. 

Anyways, (for now) that's the basic idea. Maybe not so much of a short comment, LOL, which is why it's going up here. 

Radicals

Another comment, recapitulating on a few I wrote in response to one of Rintrah's posts--

What binds together internet radicals of various stripes (commie, wignat, radical environmentalist, historical LARPers) is not their stated goals and ideologies, but a sense of rejection from the mainstream of their country and from their actual selves. Notice how none of them call themselves 'an American' or 'a Californian' or whatever-- it's always a FAR more extreme position and stance than is found in 99% of the population or claiming a connection to a place that is far removed from the present. It's a mistake to be fooled by the words, though, and take their beliefs seriously. They have no actual intention of implementing them, nor do they really care about them that much (see how often they'll go through different ideologies, or LARP as being characters from a number of historical eras), it's more of a way of making themselves feel hip and interesting, rather than lame and boring, and to create a place where they can interact with other self-hating individuals. The only thing all of these radicals and their sub-cultures have in common is their disdain for 'the normies' / 'the sheep' / 'the low status' / 'carnists'-- one way or another, the majority of the population, just with a different name depending on which angle is emphasized by their LARPing. 

Whenever these so-called hip and radical types are confronted with something actually radical-- populism-- they show themselves to be profoundly hostile and averse to it, not just indifferent or ignorant. They're seething defenders of the status quo, dressed up (through their endless words) as outsiders, which they may be socially but not politically. They have a profoundly elitist and contemptuous mindset, so doing something that would benefit the majority is anathema to them. 

It's interesting to note that it's also this group that's consumed with revenge fantasies, school shooter syndrome, and a general heightened sense of being some kind of punisher / avenger of some sort. 

Wealth inequality comment

A comment I wrote recently:

Another YUGE problem, that isn't mentioned often enough, is that our current wealth inequality is the result of the soaring cancerous growth of the professional-managerial class, which has expanded massively over the last 40-50 years at the expense of the working class. Most critics of the system tend to gloss over this, while blaming capitalism as a whole or the rich in particular.

This is Peter Turchin's concept of overproduction of elites. There are only a handful of owners and wealthy families, but there are tons of managerial positions, fake BS jobs, and the like for non-workers and non-producers who just want a nice paycheck without doing or risking anything. As the amount of those people soars through the roof, it becomes impossible for the system to accommodate their greed and competitiveness against each other, eventually resulting in a bloody civil war and/or a breakdown of the whole thing.

As the entire society becomes infected, its sectors become reverse-engineered to support this unsustainable state of affairs. As long as it creates more money for the overproduced elites, it doesn't matter how awful the outcomes are or how badly it destroys everyone else's lives.

Finance has become casino speculation, not productive investment. Manufacturing is now a race to the bottom-- who can create the cheapest crap with the lowest paid serfs. Higher ed doesn't provide an education, and healthcare doesn't provide health (the more it grows, the sicker everyone gets), but they control billions of dollars and tons of land and have more and more influence over society, allowing for their bloated HR / managerial departments to give themselves higher salaries. The military charges 40K for a trash can, but can't win wars anymore-- doesn't matter, since all that waste will be funded by the public. Entire government public sectors (like those created to fight homelessness) seem only to make the problem worse. It goes on and on in every sector. 

This is why trying to fix the ideas or firing an individual and replacing them with a smarter individual, will have no effect. As long as this cancerous mass is there, all of these useless managers and professionals will continue to subvert the outcome, at the expense of the nation as a whole. Unless they're fired en masse, America / the West will continue to get sicker and sicker. 

The AI Situation

The whole AI discourse honestly makes me very sad. I think, though maybe I'm hallucinating, that adults in the West used to have a real sense of taste, as well as a healthy respect for craftsmanship and quality.

Now it feels like more and more of our population are novelty junkies, doomscrollers, and, in many cases, literal junkies. They don't produce anything, nor do they consume anything well-made or artisanal or interesting / intellectual. Nothing that would challenge them or expand their horizons. It's just an endless addiction, an eternal search for novelty. Garbage in, garbage out.

As people have turned towards endless addictions, poor quality has become normalized across the board. Nobody makes food at home, they eat out or heat pre-made "food" in the microwave. Nobody reads or writes or has a dairy, but they do subscribe to various feeds on social media. Corporations refuse to make working products, they specialize in making things WORSE on purpose, while charging higher and higher prices. Politicians promise the future, while the infrastructure collapses. It goes on and on. 

All kinds of professions that required real expertise and know-how have disappeared from everyday life. The only thing we really have these days are generic "experts", in which case the title is more of an appeal to authority than an actual sign of competence, education, special training, etc. 

AI becoming the standard in some field or another will be the natural outcome of this collapse in standards, not some kind of new move into the future. In academia, for example, they are so used to pumping out slop that it could all be generated by a machine-- nobody reads it, so who cares if it means anything? I assume the same logic will hold in other areas. 

War with Iran

Just a quick note now that this is looking likely. 

The delusional establishment is desperately trying to pretend that it's still 2006. Almost all social media, political propaganda, debate / discussion, is really trying to LARP back to the days when global trade was new, failure in the M-E wasn't guaranteed, and the big hot topics were abortion, climate change, and the personal behavior of whoever the candidate was. 

It's not that they're out-of-touch, though a lot of them are, it's that they actively use propaganda to insulate themselves from the real world. Contact with reality would be a dreadful reminder of how inadequate and pathetic they are, what failures they are, and how disastrously their plans are going-- so they just ignore it and go back to their BS echo-chambers.

Anyone that isn't on that sinking ship knows that this war is 100% doomed, guaranteed to be another failure, just like all the others have been. In fact, potentially even more catastrophic, since this could collapse the global economy, something that didn't happen during the previous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.  

The only silver lining will be the end of the forever wars, and possibly the whole neolib / neocon political order.