World War G
World War G
The Conflict:
Late in June of 2022 the Supreme Court launched the opening salvo of the second American Civil war. The first civil war was fought over whether or not races other than white have agency, and the second civil war is being fought over whether genders other than male have agency—or if the agency of minorities can be taken back.
Once can never predict how hot or long a conflict will rage, but it’s clear that the overturning of Roe V Wade by a now rogue theocratic court has delivered a long simmering cold civil war its Dredd Scott moment—while indicating in the next term “one man one vote” is next and the voting public will not be given the opportunity to rectify their decisions.
Yet this is just a single point in a web of interconnected crises humankind is going thru simultaneously. And they are intimately connected even if not apparent at first glance. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the theocratic MAGA take over of the republican party, and climate change are the primary vectors in these concurrent crises, and they all have the same primary driver: the transition from the industrial revolution era to the information age.
Now the right wing is aware of cyclical concepts and in fact right wing architect Steve Bannon has cited the book “4th Turning” specifically and often which is based on generational theory. I do not buy into generational theory as a primary driver but think that social change behaves similar to markets in that feedback loops develop as different cycles of different players run concurrently and interact with each other.
Finding historical comps is practically a day job in financial markets but the reality is there is a reason they say history rhymes, if you want an accurate portrait one needs to identify the primary players and the needs they had and pressures they faced. But it rhymes because people are people and human behavior is reasonably easy to predict at scale.
While there are very few historical comps from transitioning to different major technological cycles like industrial to information, we have several shorter-term technological advancement cycles within the industrial era that eventually led to the information age breakthrough.
What we can see from several cycles of technological advancement large and small is that the amount of social disruption the cycle causes is tied to how it interacts with the dominant social constructs of the day, which currently is centered around patriarchy.
With this context we can generate an expectation on how disruptive a technological leap with be by asking “how much does this new innovation cycle narrow the gender gap?” and compare it to previous iterations. We can generate this expectation based on the social constructs of the primary players driving the current conflict which starts first with the Christian Nationalist/dominionist movement.
So we’ll look at the previous cycles, the players, the constructs the players are operating within, and how conservatives and evangelicals use strict gender, behavioral, and racial constructs to dominate society and control human evolution.
The Cycles:
The 1st phase of any major technological leap is all major players try to game it first, and the initial impact of the new tech is dependent on how existing international borders and geopolitical alliances of trade partners line up in comparison to the resources needed for the new tech regime. For the industrial revolution this obviously centered around crude oil reserves and minerals—who had them, who needs them and how much of them to be competitive.
This sets the stage for large external conflicts for societies while simultaneously creating an internal conflict that initiates a feedback loop. Because when the external conflict becomes existential warfare, as we are seeing Ukraine current day the fight becomes all hands-on deck no matter your place in the social hierarchy. Survival depends on matrix of gaining new resources vs. maximizing existing resources, and the biggest resource that every society has available to maximize during wartime are people currently excluded/denied agency.
Now we have reached the mechanism that drives the feedback loop in liberalizing rigid patriarchal societies, just how much has this new tech narrowed the gender gap and what kind of gains will women hold post conflict.
World wars I & II saw the rise of mechanized warfare, which radically changed the resources needed for nation states and also saw rise of communism as a rival ideology to the hybrid capitalist/Christian patriarchy system. But the mechanization also saw a reduction in value for brute physical strength, driving a tank or piloting a plane requires different skills than swinging a broadsword.
It also saw the rise of Rosie the riveter and drove another cycle of women’s equality gains, as demonstrated by necessity of wartime women were perfectly capable of factory work and operating machinery. While these equality gains took decades to fully filter thru society, and the heavy metal nature of industry still favors physical strength—the value of raw intelligence as a trait made large gains in everyday society.
Imagine the power shift if it turns out women are statistically better drone operators? Perhaps they’ve got a steadier temperament or some other advantage required in technologically & logistically reliant modern warfare. At that point women become vital to war fighting capabilities, and welcome to the national security gravy train ladies. This agency is a kind that can’t be taken back in the same generation. Gamers seem to intuitively understand this, and it’s the resentment factor behind what Gamer Gate was about (the online male rage Steve Bannon has exploited). The Ukraine war has shown that drone operators and logistics and a host of other skills that are not dependent of physical strength are needed to win in modern warfare, and excluding a majority of your human resources in an existential crisis is not how you survive as a people.
These changes in technology literally drive human evolution as the kinds of humans required to win wars faces societies with adapt or die choices.
And to find a historical comp where the change in gender dynamics or change in demand of human traits is as great as the transition from industry to information is to go all the way back to the transition from hunter gatherer to the agricultural revolution. Not that there is anything relevant we can draw from that transition to our current era, but it does place a scale on the magnitude of changes underway.
Not only has the information age narrowed the gender gap, it has effectively erased it completely, and possibly inverted it. So we can now look at the external conflicts and internal conflicts driving what is set to be a societal shift that greater than the previous during the late 1800’s thru early 1900’s and identify the era reactionary forces are attempting to re-litigate: the 1600’s and the enlightenment itself.
The Players:
Now we need to examine the primary players in the current conflict, both internal and external, but for the time being they line up rather simply along borders and social groups. The obvious belligerents to date are Putin’s Russia & the Christian nationalist, the European Union and a divided American public while the conflict is in its early stages. The right-wing Christian nationalist driving the internal US conflict will be the primary focus here so we will look at the role of Christianity in the United States, the make up of the Christian group, and the foundational mythology the of fundamentalists driving the internal conflict.
The first thing we need to recognize is that American Christianity is a large and diverse body that carries a mountain of institutional momentum. It is necessary to categorize these groups to understand what is really going on here, and why we seem destined to slow walk ourselves into disaster.
For the purposes here we will look at them in three primary groups: fundamentalists (biblical literalists), believers (fables), and non-practicing network riders, while examining the role of foundational mythology plays in in group/out group social construct generation.
Religions and social movements all have foundational mythology and when you get right to it, the actual story is irrelevant. We have seen enough of these during the modern media era that there is no story too absurd to organize a group around, whether or not a group catches on to develop network effects does not depend on the story but the environment and dynamics around the group to be organized.
Qanon has been organized around allegations of a sex dungeon in the basement of a pizza parlor that had no basement, then moved onto anti-vaccine conspiracies while eventually becoming a catch all of discontent. These were people who quite simply wanted to be organized and network effects kicked in quickly. They are a broad umbrella group loosely organized around Trump’s MAGA movement and has a high degree of overlap with the militias and the Proud Boys street gang.
Mormonism has equally absurd foundational mythology and was founded by a documented scoundrel on a prison break. Its network effects kicked in because of geographic location during westward expansion and the security the social network provided settlers. Granted the security was needed because of the ongoing genocide of Native Americans at the time but it survives to this day as a typical Christian network.
Scientology has perhaps the most absurd foundational mythology of them all but has not achieved network status and its probably because Hollywood was already organized with the Screen actors guild and the demand for a new construct was minimal and the target audience small.
Now with a rough and ready framework of how in group/out group organization and mythology works, and an understanding that the myth itself is of secondary importance, we can look at our three Christian categories and how they are behaving during our current crises. And the role that believers and network riders play in preventing positive outcomes.
The Literalists:
So let’s dig into the fundamentalist’s mythology driving this bus and how said mythology focuses on rigid gender roles and males having domain over all life, and explain the why behind hard-right wing politics. If you’re having difficulty trying to square “pro-life” abortion with pro-gun violence politics this is the tie that binds.
“God created man in his image”. This is the big one that required a lot of unpacking, and not just because woman was created from this man’s rib (sub-human) shortly after. For a biblical literalist this is license for any atrocity in practice because you are defending God’s perfect creation, which just so happens to be you and your circle. There are several implications here, one is evolution cannot be real (and must be prevented at all costs), whiteness must be defended, gender roles must be strictly enforced, “deviant” behaviors that threaten the mythology must be eliminated.
The reason whiteness must be defended, and gender roles must be rigid is that the very first bit of foundational mythology establishes “Sameness” as a prime directive of sorts. If you are a copy of God and your instructions are to “go forth and multiply”, it is your duty to do so in a way that you create a copy of yourself as true to the original as possible and where “race mixing is a sin” originates from. This explicitly means trimming the tail ends of population distributions in practice. If you are inclined to doubt that “race mixing” is in the crosshairs and is long since settled, the GOP’s avatar for future American democracy Viktor Orban has done you the favor of saying the quiet part out loud again.
The second bit is the mythology establishes strict gender roles, as the woman is literally made from Adam’s rib, after which she falls to temptation of the forbidden fruit and gets man evicted from paradise. Here we re-enforce man’s perfection and establish that woman is a sub-variant of man, women are frivolous and require supervision. Genesis is essentially a foundational license for male violence to the literalist.
Now that group Sameness & male supremacy while growing the group has been established as the primary motivation of the literalists their political agenda centered around segregation, guns, abortion, sexuality, gender, and evolution are easy to decipher. It was in fact the end of segregation and the civil rights movement that drove Evangelicals to abortion in the first place as it was previously a Catholic issue—but it drove white supremacists into the movement and the literalist camp. The whiteness itself however is not static and changes over time and place.
I have for purposes of streamlining lumped several different groups into the Christian Nationalist group, such as Christian Dominionists, Catholic fascists (wildly over-represented on the supreme court) commonly referred to as TradCaths. The TradCaths have their own agenda, like the Russian Eastern Orthodox has its own agenda and while these all have individual characteristics and details, they are largely irrelevant for the current conflict while they are operating in what is can be best described as a Venn diagram of loose and tight coalitions. If the coalition is successful, the coalition will split and then engage in conflict with each other because this is how theocratic organizations operate when in power: constant conflict.
Believers & Network riders:
Inside the Believers group itself, we need to make a distinction between two types: good faith and bad faith operators. There are good faith and bad faith operators within the network riders as well, however the bad faith network riders are insignificant here. Its impossible to know if a somebody is genuinely a believer or not so all we can do is take them at their word, we can however easily determine if they are operating in good faith or bad faith. The bad faith operators engage in a form of weaponized pedantry and projection which I refer to as Christian Chekism. The arguments are convoluted and self-serving and the only logical consistency to be found is that the arguments serve the interests of the group. To visualize who qualifies as a bad faith operator, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect example than Ted Cruz, a man who stands for nothing besides personal gain—not even his own family. Social media and right-wing media are full of these types and it’s a very deliberate strategy to “flood the zone with bullshit” bad faith arguments by these people.
Now, the good faith believers also happen to be the current institutionalists unable to bring themselves to take action against the in-group radicals and are quite likely unable to see the conflict as it truly is. Good faith believers used to be split between both major parties, however they reside primarily on the democratic side today. And they are the institutionalists clinging to an impossible dream that their fellow Christian brethren will snap out of it. Joe Biden probably personifies this more than any other at the current time, who continually goes back to a dry well.
The fact that Biden was willing to cut deals with republicans that involve nominating even more anti-abortion judges to the bench is as clear an example there is of why the good faith believers cannot bring themselves to mount anything that resembles a competent defense of liberalism. They have dual belief systems where they believe in both liberalism and Christian mythology that has been a sort of American hybrid system post WW2. They are in group members of the same construct and the Christian white elite this system produced do not face the consequences as the out groups if their weak defense fails.
Network riders are by far the largest group of the three, and probably the largest group in American politics. This group is made up of multiple ethnicities, can be non-practicing or church going on major holidays only all the way to agnostic or even identify as “none”. People that grew up in Christian households, and for whom the idea of Christian mythology is absurd, but the overall sales pitch sounds pretty good. I myself belong to this group.
Christian Chekism:
It is very common to see the “no true Scotsman” argument employed when bad faith assertions are put forward by believers, especially when it comes to “what would Jesus do” in comparison to the right-wing agenda. It is important to understand that the Christian chekists twist scripture the exact same way they do with constitutional originalism, they in fact work the two against each other to justify the unjustifiable.
What the right has been very successful in doing is conflating the gains of the American liberal operating system as their own, that the gains were delivered by Christians and the US is a Christian nation, these gains were delivered by Christian Sameness system. And while believers were split between parties operating within a liberal system this was an easy claim to make. The right is very good with messaging, maintains messaging discipline across multiple platforms, all the while the messages themselves are typically fabrications. Accusations are admissions and sales pitches are opposite day and nowhere is that more evident that “freedom” branding which is decidedly not free. Well for the out-group people at least.
Nowhere has this tactic been more successful that implementing Originalism. The idea that the that the founding fathers immediately amended the constitution, the founding charter of the radically liberal government they just formed to grant the right to overthrow said government being founded is prima facie absurd. The whole concept of Originalism is simply founding father fan fiction manipulated into service of authoritarian theocrats—but it is exemplary of their pedantry & projection tactics: we will change the course of American society over what the word regulated means.
Originalism itself is a good example of the duality in the conflict, the revanchist forces deftly waging information warfare, in the attempt to create a high-tech authoritarian sameness system modelled after China’s. Right wing media and social media is a force multiplier in the Chekist style warfare the Christian Nationalists are waging. Its quite simply the way they launder unpopular ideas and policy into reality.
Bill Bennett is on TV saying we should use exorcists to stop the mass shootings that they’ve introduced by policy actuaries. Tucker Carlson blames shootings on complaints of toxic masculinity. However, randomized violence carried out by radicalized police forces or militias or gunmen have always the desired outcome, to prevent regular citizens from organizing, living in a constant state of disorientation. They present false solutions to a problem that they are actively exacerbating.
Non-hetero sexuality branded as “grooming” children by a group organized obsessed with sexuality and subjugating women as breeding vehicles, while protecting rampant sexual abuse of both women and children within its ranks.
An examination of the abortion debate can show all of these dynamics in action. The Christian argument is that it is “pro-life”, even though empirical evidence shows that it quite literally brings higher mortality rates across all demographics. But is an illuminating exercise in showing the right’s obsession with property rights and hierarchy because this weaves the law and scripture into twisted depravity and demonstrates their moral reasoning. The first thing that must be understood is that they are operating within a hierarchy where women do not have agency, and the property rights of those who do have agency supersede the human rights of those who don’t. This is a fundamental principle that must be internalized to accurately conceptualize our moment in time—it was the justification for slavery, why exceptions for rape & incest are opposed, and is also how sexual and other abuse is justified within the group. People who do not have agency are either somebody’s property and if they are not, their rights are subject to the will of a man who does have it.
So we are now working the edges around what is adultery in the same bad faith as what is “well regulated”. If the woman is another man’s wife, that is adultery. If the woman is unwed, well then it can be overlooked because boys will be boys. And if it is a child, who’s property is the child? Once one has come to understand the debate in property terms their twisted web of arguments make sense. The man’s property rights trump the woman’s right to not carry the child. In the event the mother’s life is at risk, the father may value the child’s life more than the mother’s and this is his choice. The unborn child might be male and have a higher value than the mother’s, and if the mother is property and the unborn is a girl then its only logical that the new model has more value than the rapidly depreciating asset on the operating table.
In these terms “domestic infant supply” comments make perfect sense. And they do not care for adoptive families either, Marjorie Taylor Greene has again said the quiet part out loud by calling adoptive parents “fake mom and fake dad” setting up what appears to be desired a return to Church run orphanages and an easily exploitable crop of children. This is a return to pre-enlightenment social organization and white male patriarchy without restraint.
Sameness Regimes and Tails:
First thing to be aware of with Sameness regimes is that they all implode. Whether they are fascist/authoritarian movements, theocracies, communist regimes, genetic isolation of endangered species, the destination is the same place—the bin. What has kept the Christian sameness regime from collapsing is that it has operated as a sub-system within a Liberal operating framework.
The Liberal structure and the Literalists have reached irreconcilable differences over gender to the point the Literalists have concluded they must destroy the Liberal structure and re-impose a Sameness regime based on Christian foundational mythology. Judicial originalism was the vehicle they chose to achieve this by, and the means they “trim the tails” by imposing their hierarchy and approved social identities via judicial fiat legislatively.
The hierarchies themselves are rather straight forward, man over woman, whites over non-whites and in that order for the most part. Within the hierarchy the men then impose “normalcy” by attempting to force normal variations from the mean back into what I call “Normie Boxes”. The normal variations I am referring to here are the tails of standard distributions and where they are important to Christian Nationalists (CNs) sameness regimes is: gender, sexuality, neural a-typicals (NATs).
And this is why the right wing has declared total war on Trans people.
Ben Shapiro (who is not Christian but a patriarchal authoritarian) has claimed “gender ideology violates the laws of biology and logic as well as physics”, leaving aside whatever gender ideology is, the attempt here is to pass off bad science as fact and portray folksy wisdom like “there’s only 2 genders silly” as self-evident truth. It is one of their tried-and-true go-to misinformation tactics. But let’s take a look.
Now this graph is not entirely accurate because male births to female births skew 105-100 to the male side, but for our purpose here its close enough to see the empirical 68-95-99.7 rule on a split pole distribution of two dominant genders. And straight forward way to visualize what I have meant by eliminating the tails and normie boxes (shaded area).
Right away we have hard evidence of who is violating the laws of biology and no surprise its right-wing projection trying to “more normalize” an already normal distribution by forcing intersex people into social roles that do not fit them. Because we know intersex people exist, and statistically we have an expectation of how many at the same time. What the right is pushing here is purely eliminationist.
Before Trans was the issue du-jour, it was homosexuality, and before that was interracial marriage, and their war on neural a-typicals has been ongoing since before Galileo because NATs are big drivers of innovation (a separate, concurrent subject). The court has already signaled gays will be going back in the box in their next term.
Understanding now that we should expect roughly: 5% of the population will share some male & female traits while less than 1% should be physically intersex, 5% of the population will be gay, and 5% of the population will be NATs.
The actual numbers are impossible to track but we have a rough idea based on surveys and other available data. Approximately 4.5% of population identifies as gay (while polls showed straight people believed >20% of population is gay, driving moral panic), and 1% as Trans so these numbers are in line. NATs are a wider range of outcomes where up to 30% of population may be neuro-diverse but on the tails we see around 8% ADHD and 1% Autistic. So regarding sexuality, gender, and neural atypicals these numbers also fall roughly in line with statistical projections.
That is a lot of humans to force-fit into Sameness regimes and doing so frequently creates psychotic outcomes (there are however a large number of NATs in the CNs in group, many of whom have been radicalized online for the revolutionary cause who will be discarded later).
While there is some overlap between these groups, if you say 15% of the population is naturally outside the normie boxes and then add the all the women and adjust it you get roughly 55% of the population that are excluded in a CN literalist patriarchal system. And then you have to account for the resources required to maintain the exclusions and it becomes quite obvious why rigid Sameness models collapse. It is why the middle east is stuck in perpetual collapse cycles since their fundamentalist revolutions and would be America’s future under CNs (one Mississippi, two Mississippi, 50 Mississippis) if their policies didn’t also make a climate collapse imminent.
There are two primary vectors the CNs have for forcing people into normie boxes, that is legislatively erasing them, and street violence either from the police or their now well armed & entirely unregulated militias of angry white men. Since the CNs infiltration of the Supreme Court, the Police are accountable on paper only, the country has been flooded with weapons, and women have lost agency over their bodies. Legislatively, the CNs have laid the groundwork to facilitate a quick and violent reactionary reshaping of society--allegedly in God’s image, which is suspiciously similar to CNs.
If all of this sounds like a eugenics or breeding program, the likes of which the right typically projects on to liberal policies as “social engineering”, well I’m not going to try and pursued you it isn’t. And because stripped down to its basest that’s what Christian Nationalism functions as its easy to understand why white supremacists have flocked to it. Down to the studs, CN is an attempt to freeze evolution in place by either eliminating the outliers or forcing them back in the box. Which is itself playing god, because if god does exist the one iron law of creation is ~5% variation per batch. Rural folk know this too, having bred animals for generations. It’s just more standard fare projection.
The External conflict:
Russia’s second phase of the Ukraine invasion has begun in earnest the hot war in Europe’s east, and while the West has shown a surprising unity it is still a very shaky and hesitant unity. The Germans are reluctant and giving halfhearted support, withholding promised weapons and refusing to release financial aid and sleepwalking themselves into greater crisis.
This may be from reliance on Russian gas, but is likely a combination of factors stemming from East Germany being a former Soviet territory, but it is also because the dominant party of the last decades is the Christian Democratic Union which Merkel belonged to. They are at minimum somewhere between network riders and true believers and while the idea of liberal society and the enlightenment is firmly rooted in Germany (vs. USA for example) there are many Germans who are completely fine with patriarchy and Christian gender roles and letting Russia retake Ukraine. But the thing is the stakes do not allow for such an outcome because that is not the game being played, nor does it account for the ambitions and needs of the players.
A thorough examination of Russian foundational mythology could fill a series of books itself, and the reason being is that its fluid and whatever it needs to be for any given era. We’ll focus on the last 50 years’ worth here and how it ties into the current war and a loose alliance with the American Christian Nationalists that is likely to cement itself if the American CNs take power.
If you are having trouble squaring the American right wing’s embrace of Putin’s Russia while traditional Republicans have been solidly against Russia it is from a change in mythology on Russia’s part combined with the fact current Russian model is cousins with the old Confederate model: rigid racial hierarchy tied to agricultural and resource extraction economies. The conscripts being sent to Ukraine to fight on Russia’s behalf largely hail from lands of imperial conquest and are sourced from impovershed territories and last remnants of the Golden Horde.
Prior to Russia’s current model they were in direct conflict with what in 1980 an American right wing that had just taken power and shut down the equal rights amendment movement and society fully dominated by True Believers in both parties. The expression “Godless Commies” was quite popular, and nothing really communicates clearer what the underlying conflict was about. The Russian communist system and the Christian Nationalist system are in practice very similar sameness society models, but the Russians dispensed of the mythology altogether and replaced it with nothing. This is where the idea of “worshiping the state” came from, and Christians truly saw it as a threat to their worldview, that God could be abandoned and replaced with the state and function just the same.
So it had to be engaged in conflict. Now post conflict the Christians of course believe it was God’s will and not the fact that the Christians were operating concurrently in a liberal society, and that sameness societies are weak and collapse on their own regardless. The CN’s here like to present it as capitalism winning over socialism or communism and in turn use that against liberalism internally, however market economies can operate within liberal or illiberal societies—its just that in illiberal ones they monopolize and ossify.
Which brings us to Russia’s current model which portrays itself as the Third Holy Roman Empire and defender of Christianity against liberalism. It is a recycled mythology from the 1600’s that Putin has either delusionally talked himself into or strategically chose to entice western chauvinists. This is of course the sales pitch which is an absolute fabrication hiding underneath is the same rigid hierarchies of their previous model except this time it is run by the Mafia.
So while this might sit just fine with MAGA Trump supporters and the Christian Nationalists it is unlikely many Germans or other Europeans are looking forward to it. If the Christian Nationalists take power, they will form an alliance with the Russians and it will be the end of Europe as we know it and the Russians will be sipping champagne in Paris as they have promised. If this seems farfetched, its not and Christian Nationalists like Marjorie Taylor Greene are already explicitly calling for it and Jordan Peterson has launched a new campaign against “degeneracy” and says we should be supporting Russia against Ukraine.
The only “degeneracy” of Europe is an inclusive society with LGBTQ and it is only degeneracy according to mythology. In fact the views of LGBTQ within Ukraine has swung positive since the conflict began, and its not because of pro-LGBTQ propaganda, its because they suited up like everybody else to defend their country when Russian invaders arrived and put their people’s existence at risk.
So the real conclusions to draw here is that German and broader European reluctance is self-defeating and naïve, we see the liberalizing mechanism already functioning in Ukraine, and that the Russian’s foundational mythology is a reflection of the fact they are historically dishonest and incompetent and operating under the same dishonesty today.
Potential outcomes:
We’ve established that the current conflict is a combination of the information age from industrial age transition all the while the carbon era is the cause of cataclysmic climate change, with the stake holders of the carbon age dead set on dragging outdated systems forward. And that they have chosen the 1600’s as the era to re-litigate. Its not the 1970s or 50’s or even 1860’s even though some issues considered settled from those times are at stake. It’s the enlightenment itself that is under attack and a return to theocratic imperialism. The 1600’s saw the birth of liberalism and that is precisely what the Russians and the Republicans are attempting to reverse. So the Russian’s choice of reverting to 3rd Rome mythology while the Christian Nationalists attempt to “restore” the constitution of the United States to a completely fabricated (and contrary) version its original intent. Climate is a wild card here and factors to some geo-political positioning but will only be tangentially focused on here.
First, the internal USA conflict is the decisive factor, Russia cannot win on its own without the help of American Christian Nationalists. Russia will be defeated decisively and lose its imperial territories in the face of a Liberal victory. Where climate is playing a large geopolitical role is what China decides to do, because in the event of a Russian collapse the Eastern Russian/Siberian territories will be of great interest to China given the desertification of the High China plains they are currently attempting to geo-engineer their way out of. The Taiwan issue therefor remains a conflict best kept in their pocket while a much larger and more important prize is on the table for standing by and doing nothing. There always remains the potential for them to get dragged in and while the assassination of former Japanese PM Abe has a bit of Franz Ferdinand X Asian theater feel to it, it remains in China’s best interest to let Russia collapse.
For the Liberals to prevail in the US internal conflict a lot needs to go right, and it will need to be in spite of the democrats with Americans organizing on their own. The democrats will not be able to achieve what is required without more senate seats to break the filibuster. Too many democratic senators are hopelessly corrupt or simply asleep at the wheel, intoxicated on status or true believers themselves. If the democrats lose the midterms and the supreme court rules in favor of allowing state houses to choose their own voters and winners there are only two likely paths: hot civil war or a decade plus wait for Christian Nationalism to collapse in a world of run-away global warming. This would be sub-optimal obviously.
The other wild card is the January 6 Committee and if they can bring the outright criminality to light. This can potentially alter the midterms as well as put several of the bad acting organizers of the CN movement in prison. The J6 Committee has been waging an inspiring defense of liberalism and re-focusing the importance of truth. The Committee has the chance to break away a critical mass of the network riders and some true believers away from the radicalized.
These scenarios leave door open for another option: decisive defeat of Russia in the near-term window before a GOP congress can change the game and install a theocratic president. Destroying the Red Army in Eastern Ukraine therefore is the best case short term course of action to eliminate the potential of the USA turning on Europe and joining the Russian assault on liberalism. This would require Europe to wake up and perhaps they will as the midterms approach and the insanity of the GOP becomes clearer or reaches terminal velocity. France, Germany, and the Netherlands must lead this along with Poland and flood Ukraine with modern high-tech weapons, the best inventory they’ve got and not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow Russia will be on your doorstep, today you can eliminate them. Scholtz does not appear to up for this but Macron appears to be more pragmatic and this is the logical course because it would keep the US conflict as internal as possible in the event American liberals lose.
Plan for victory:
This is a genuine “we the people” moment, facing concurrent existential crises: a chauvinistic, revanchist right wing militant threat while climate change enters the hockey stick exponential phase. The first threat aims to destroy and dis-empower the very people needed to defeat the second threat. The Democrats cannot be relied upon to meet the challenge, however the Democrats are the only vehicle available to wage this fight.
The Democrats must find a way to thread the needle and disembowel the court. The easiest way to do this is to increase the senate majority by two or more and then increase the court to 13 which is a reasonable number to keep pace with districts and lower courts. Losing the midterms guarantees a more difficult path but it is still doable provided its backed by a clear social movement ready to force Biden and the democrats into taking on the concept of judicial supremacy. The court has granted itself a position of power not explicitly given over the other two branches of government and this can be litigated via the Bully Pulpit & people in the streets, general strikes and a host of other protest measures.
Politically, at their core there are really only two kinds of parties: builders and destroyers. In the US this has fluctuated between the Democrats and the Republicans—both have historically been builders but both have been co-opted by Southern Confederates that has taken them down the destroy paths that Republicans are currently on. There simply is no other choice than to align with Democrats and mount a vigorous defense of liberalism while hopefully dragging the true believers and free riders of patriarchy along into the right side of the fight.
Republicans have managed over the years to turn liberal into a word with strong negative implications even though we operate in a liberal system that allows for unlimited social constructs within itself. The liberal order worked for true believers in a pre-information age world where they were able to use it as a vehicle to engage in conflict with Communism and other foundational mythos unaligned with Christianity.
Liberalism itself must be re-branded. Frank Luntz has done a great disservice to the American experiment by essentially weaponizing pedantry to a point where “it’s a republic not a democracy” becomes a repeated ad naseum even though a republic is a form of democracy. The debate of the most critical issues of our time are being decided on trivial designations like “clip vs. magazine” while the distinctions themselves are utterly meaningless. “More freedom is good, don’t you agree” has been boilerplate libertarian non-sense for decades, all designed to create strong emotional responses and all very childish.
Liberalism is a commitment that all lives are created equal, and while all circumstances are not equal each life has equal protection under the law and that law is based on facts and not mythology. Its not a complicated philosophy nor is it objectionable and the reason Chekist tactics are required to oppose it. In part two I will outline ideas for a future inclusive liberal movement/builder’s party (that may or may not be the Democratic party) and an agenda for the future with realistic and perhaps some fantastic things to build for a future in a over heating world. And despite our Christian friends’ fear of backlash and ever present persecution complex, inclusive means they’re included as well. It’s all hands-on deck for the future of life on earth.
Update #1:
and they’re saying it outloud again. This is how fascists come to “assume” power, they fake it till they make it and people just accept it as is. The rot inside the gop is metastasizing. These people continuously tell you what they believe and what they are going to do, believe them.
Interesting and a lot of truth in this. I came here from the update.
Thank you for writing this.