We are floating through quite a fascinating confluence of time and space:
After the intelligence community failed in their coup attempt against former President Trump, the political rival of said “Orange Man” is prosecuting him for “crimes” that have seemingly been committed by every modern President.
Residents of Jackson, Mississippi – the most populous city in the state – went months without clean drinking water in late 2022, and many suffer ongoing water-quality and availability issues in 2024.
The modern world’s most prolific (known) pedophile died under police guard while his right-hand-(wo)man went to a posh prison for trafficking kids to absolutely no one.
The current President is both openly corrupt and senile.
For several years, nations united under the cause of coercing their subjects to take experimental gene therapies that resulted in widespread harm. Now that the ineffectiveness and danger of those treatments is obvious to many, these same nations are changing the numbers, burning the books, and generally lying their asses off in a desperate show of damage control.
American politicians boast about the ROI of facilitating the dismemberment and death of Ukrainians by the Ruskies.
A bunch of Jewish folks are re-imagining the holocaust in an exciting new way.
The American government continues its efforts to censor inconvenient narratives and facts. Despite immense resources and laundering censorship efforts through third parties, these flaccid thrusts have failed to meaningfully “stop the spread” of the wrong think STD.
The nebulous Institution of Science™ falters, broken by avalanches of retractions, regime-sponsored propaganda, and a stubborn reproducibility crisis.
That’s just a small sampling of the fascinating happenings we’ve witnessed over the past few years. These events are the product of long-term trends which are unlikely to be resolved with ease and expediency. The next decade+ will feature a continuation of this unraveling conjoined with violent conflict as the unwashed masses challenge their corrupt and inept leaders on a global scale.
Strap in and grab a puke bucket cuz it’s gonna get wild!
A White Horse, A Pale Horse
The interwebz are filled with articles, podcasts, and videos featuring some grifter peddling their nearsighted “solution” to the problems at hand. But I know the glibertariat has a more perverse refined palate. So, instead of those Persian rug sellers, you get me. But am I the grifter you deserve?
Aside: I Had an Afghan (Afghani is money, Afghan is the people) Dari teacher who referred to one of his colleagues as a Persian rug seller at every opportunity. A few weeks into his employment, he was fired for threatening to kill the alleged merchant of carpets. For some reason I found that very funny. As much as I despise coerced governance, my hatred does not come close to an Afghan’s loathing of a Persian.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time obsessing pondering over and collecting strategies for how to navigate social, economic, and government upheaval. Yes, I have strange hobbies, but it’s also quite difficult to have a productive investigation of strategic choices when the available choices are not clearly defined. What follows is my attempt at such.
In this attempt, I strengthen the case for each choice as much as my feeble brain allows. This should not be viewed as my endorsement of a given strategy.
While I have demarcated the strategies into these eight categories, this does not imply mutual exclusivity. Some of these strategies can be pursued simultaneously. Some strategies can act as a contingency should the primary strategic pursuit fail.
Finally, there is no discussion presented herein on the effectiveness of any strategy against the open-ended shit storm we find ourselves in. I leave that to you.
1. Submit to Authority
Bend over and take it!
What choice is there?
Those who resist the tyrants will be killed or imprisoned in whatever incarnation of gulag a Mckinsey consultant can dream up. It is better to survive and wait for fair days ahead. Besides, each of us is an ant in a hurricane. Our impact is futile against the might of the state. It is a waste of effort and a waste of life to try to challenge its might and fury.
Beyond that, it is selfish. You endanger your friends and your family by challenging the government. How can you be so entitled, so narcissistic and self-absorbed to bring the regime’s wrath to bear on everyone around you because you wanted to cause trouble?
This strategy can manifest in two distinct ways. The first is a person expresses robust support for the authority in question. The second – and probably more common – is apathy, indecision, and guilt, steering a person to inaction whereby they default into this strategic choice.
The second way has several robust cognitive rationalizations: “I was just doing what I was told.” “I have to do it, otherwise my family will starve.” “How can I make that decision when they will come after my family and friends?” “It’s not my decision to make.” “What could I possibly do to change anything!?”
2. Fight Within the System
If you want change, manifest it!
We have a system that is designed for change. If you want something different, something better, get your bed sore-ridden ass out there and do something about it! Go vote. Go volunteer on a campaign. Write new legislation. Run for office.
If no one ever tries to change it, the corrupt and entrenched powerbrokers will continue to dominate governance structures. If you want change, you must get your hands dirty and do something. Otherwise, you have no excuse, zero room for complaint!
This strategy has a strong cognitive defense against failure. Any failure to enact the desired change within the system can be blamed on other people failing to get involved or to do enough. “I got out and knocked on doors. I donated money, but so many just bitched on Twitter and did nothing to make real change.”
3. Remove the Authority
It’s time for guillotines… and woodchippers.
Whether by populist revolution, a military coup, or a combination of both, the ruling elite must be removed from power and brought to justice with force. We can work within the system when it is sufficient and defy the system when necessary. We will take power away from the corrupt tyrants and place it in the hands of the people.
We’ve tried voting, negotiating, and compromise, but the opposition has taken any olive branch extended as an opportunity to exploit for their personal and political gain.
No more!
Once the top-level leaders are removed from power, the low and mid-level members of the deep state must atone for their sins. Some will go to prison. Others must swear allegiance to the people’s new leaders.
After that work is done, we must crack down on seditious intent and the means of resistance to prevent the remnants of the deep state and their sympathizers from subverting the will of the people.
As entrenched regimes lose influence over their citizen-subjects, they typically resort to more extreme control measures. These measures fuel the desire in some citizen-subjects for retribution against their leaders. Thus, support for the third general strategy can manifest quickly and seemingly spontaneously; in the final days of a dying regime.
4. Eject
Get out while you still can.
Fighting a corrupt regime, or waiting it out, are ruinous strategies. The USSR took seven decades to fall apart. In that time millions were killed deliberately by the regime, and millions more died in the famines and failures brought about by government policy.
You have one life to live. Don’t spend it starving and trapped under the brutal fist of a crumbling totalitarian enterprise.
You also have a duty to your family. How can you put your family through such horrors? If you see this possibility coming, you have a responsibility to change course and at least attempt to get off the ship before it hits the iceberg.
Those who eject or leave a country in times of turmoil will face hostility if they attempt to return after a populist revolution. The populist faction who comes to power will not look kindly on those who ran from the fight as soon as things got difficult. Adding further fuel to the fire, those who escape a crumbling regime typically have above-average means. This fuels class-driven resentment as many will believe (right or wrong) they lacked the resources to do the same.
5. Marginalize and Build
The system is illegitimate so let’s drop the veil.
Marginalize the corrupt institutions and treat them with the contempt they deserve. Build communities in areas that are resistant to authoritarians. Develop alternative infrastructure. Disentangle yourself from the tentacles of the government and its “private business” partners: At least as much as practicable. Grow in power and influence. Recruit others who value freedom. Out-compete the government.
Balkanization is critical here. A divided nation is harder to control and is a more permissive landscape to carve out little Galt’s gulches. Let the people who want to be ruled over, be ruled, and let the people who want to be free, be free. This can only happen if the nation breaks into pieces.
This strategy is mostly in line with Amish and Agorist sensibilities and will be more attractive to people with high long-term oriented individual responsibility.
People who follow the marginalize and build strategy will tend to be white-pilled, as they believe their long-term investments will eventually pay off after the breakdown of the current, corrupt institutions. Many will recognize, or at least believe, that the collapse of institutions is coming and their ultimate failure will leave a power vacuum that can be filled with new technology, small business, legitimate expertise, and community. However, the acceptance of these new institutions will not be universal, necessitating strong, independent communities of like-minded people.
6. Hide and Subvert
Keep your head down and work from the shadows.
The enemy is everywhere and everyone. Co-workers, neighbors, friends, family; they are all working as agents of the state. One step out of line and you’ll be disappeared… or worse. Patience and persistence are your most valuable weapons in this world.
By day blend in. Learn how to give proper reverence for the state. Know every demented pronouncement and praise every sadistic edict.
By night, fight!
Use the cover of darkness to fight back against the cold fist of authoritarian rule. From small acts of rebellion to ambitious operations to disrupt the grinding machine of the malevolent power-brokers, every action spirits resources away from the regime’s demonic ambitions.
People who are attracted to this strategy may feel stuck under the thumb of a totalitarian regime with no escape. Alternatively, they see a difficult fight ahead and refuse to cede ground and reposition to a more favorable location where they can mount a more robust and overt defense.
The hide and subvert strategy provides practitioners a way to exercise their morality while publicly supplicating themselves before the ruling regime. This avoids conflicts with family and friends and provides some insulation in the event a subversive is exposed.
7. Accelerate
The regime is burning. Time to add gasoline.
Authoritarianism will always fail, but in that failure, it can enact severe harms on those foolish or unfortunate enough to live within its grasp. Those harms can be limited by speeding along the decline of the current regime.
Don’t fight the authoritarian’s plans, accelerate them! While the useful idiots promote drag time story hours, we shall organize trans strip shows for kids. “Which of you kids wants to see a cock turned inside out?”
Push every initiative to its logical and demented conclusion and watch the regime break down from a combination of internal strife and mass outrage.
This strategy will generally be attractive to the black-pilled. “If the future is to be horrifying, let’s speed through it at least.” This justification may lack logical consistency but is expressed, nonetheless. When addressing the lack of logical consistency, an accelerationist might respond, “I just want to get it over with.”
8. Human Continuity
Every man for himself.
Do whatever it takes to survive. Burrow into the ground to evade hostiles. Lick the dew from the grass to satiate thirst. Carve up the dead to stave off starvation.
Humanity must continue forward.
This is an emergency strategy if all else fails.
This is also a default strategy of most people when in a panic. This point is especially important to note as failing regimes may induce widespread fear and panic as a pretext for crackdowns or other aggressive actions.
Those who suffer from normalcy bias will tend to exaggerate the desperation of a bad situation. When reality finally shakes someone from the belief that the future will proceed on a largely peaceful and prosperous path as the recent past did, they will panic at this shattering of the illusion and cling to strategy eight. The implications are, in times of hardship, those who suffer normalcy bias can become unstable and dangerous, as they have failed to consider a gray-area future where quality-of-life is poor, but not apocalyptically bad. Further, their strong normalcy bias blinds them to the existence of alternative strategies that are proportionate to the threat at hand.
The power of one.
The power of once.
The poowwweeeerrrrr of First.
Communist space lesbionic bewitchery. Interesting.
Someone has been watching The Critical Drinker.
‘A bunch of Jewish folks are re-imagining the holocaust in an exciting new way.’
They just need some living space. 😉
I genuinely don’t know what this means. Is this a Gaza war reference?
I assumed so. Unless I’m way off the mark. I was just taking the piss (lebensraum=living space)
I figured out your joke. I’m still puzzled by what FightingAmish is thinking of.
The Israelis who claim no price is too high to pay for the return of the hostages want to be ethnically cleansed?
After all, I don’t think any Israeli Jew would seriously think of accepting total capitulation and the loss of the pre-1967 state as an acceptable price to pay for the return of the hostages.
Very nice. I might have added Irish democracy to this list, although its kind of an amalgam of some of the others.
I was nodding along, except for when I hit this one.
“A bunch of Jewish folks are re-imagining the holocaust in an exciting new way.”
I had an issue with that one as well. ISR is taking care of hostile civilian populations to a much greater extent than the US thought prudent in our two recent dustups. HAMAS wants civilian deaths because it is part of their strategy. The UN is dragging out distribution of humanitarian aid. I contend that since most of their employees in the area are Gazan they are refusing to deliver aid, for “safety” as they claim. The catch being they fear HAMMAS more than they fear the IDF.
Is ISR doing a version of 7? I think it is likely.
You are being charitable to the UN. From what I have read, the aid deliveries go to Hamas. Hamas then takes what it wants and sells the rest to desperate Gazans.
You are incorrect Chafed. But in addition to that UNRWA and WFP have refused to deliver food because of “safety concerns.” Commercial vehicles are delivering to Gazan markets. The UN is working with HAMMAS to increase the suffering of the Gazans.
You are NOT incorrect Chafed………..
The UN has deliberately been keeping Palestinans as refugees for 75+ years, so that their suffering will put pressure on Israel to capitulate.
Nobody would suggest the Sudeten Germans have a legitimate right of return
Prussia for the Prussians!
Free Danzig?
Yeah, most of his witty comments appealed, but this one rang completely wrong with me. Maybe I don’t get the humor. Maybe it’s just that I am not antisemitic.
Eject is not an option
Marginalize and Build is probably where I am at.
We looked at eject (Panama kept showing up at the top of the list, with Uruguay in second), but (1) man, the alternatives are not that great as far as long term stability, etc., go and (b) when the leviathan falls everybody is going to get whacked, including countries that may not have a lot of social and economic capital.
The energy just went out of that option for us.
Iowa is not as isolated as going to the Dakotas, but it is mostly isolated from the big blue clusters that are causing all the problems.
So, it’s not an eject but it is at least some kind of partial withdrawal from the problems.
Anywhere marginally attractive to an American will be especially hard hit if the US goes crazy. And, you won’t even necessarily be safe there.
M and B is where I’m at on the list, and keep your head down, powder dry
9. Reject the Black pill.
Get up every morning, Stretch (this is very important), have a cup of coffee or tea, do the crossword. Go to work, stop at the corner store for one more coffee and to ineffectually flirt with the Betty behind the counter. After working steadily (not too hard, but don’t dog it either) for 6 or 7 hours, hit the local. Have 4 or 5 beers with the regulars, stir/shoot/bull-shit, ineffectually flirt with the barmaids. Get home by 5, spend the evening with the family, or read a book (nothing too heavy, but no Stephen King), eat a sensible dinner, top the night off with a cocktail or two and go to bed. Rinse and repeat. Oh, and I can’t stress this enough never, ever watch the news, listen to talk radio, or read political websites.
This. Just live your life.
But, if you are looking for some plan of getting through, read Ernst Jungers The Forest Passage (HA! Got yer book right here!)
https://archive.org/details/the-forest-passage/mode/2up?view=theater
I had only heard of him for his horrifying WWI memoir, Storm of Steel.
This has been on my Amazon wish list for far too long.
I regard this as a variant of Human Continuity, where “Human” has values other than “propagate the gene pool”.
Apathy and disengagement is so much better than a black pill, you fucking cunt.
So seven drinks a day? Better cap off the day with a trip to an internist to get your liver enzymes checked.
Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own
Spanish Pipe Dream by John Prine
How are the chickens and garden doing?
27 hens laying 12 – 14 eggs a day
Garden is growing awesome thistles.
eggsellent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BofvfVPFbiM
What does the topless dancer have hidden up her sleeve?
That’s a bit heavy on the booze for me but otherwise I like it.
How is that different than 1?
What’s giving me horripilation is that completely unexpected picture of Rico ‘Froot Sooshi’ Suave with such messy hair. He is not using the bare minimum of hair product.
It’s time for guillotines… and woodchippers.
I like rope and a lamp post. But there are many fine traditions that should be considered.
7. Accelerate
The regime is burning. Time to add gasoline.
Fuck it. I may want to subscribe to this newsletter. Raise the minimum wage to $1000/hr. Raise taxes to 90% for everyone earning more than $2 million per year (at my new minimum wage, this will be all full time workers.) Declare it illegal for any company to have a greater than 0.5% annual profit margin, because profits are evil. Ban fossil fuels and nuclear power, mandate EVs, solar and wind power, but ban mining for rare earth metals.
Some people like to watch the world burn…I am one of them.
no
That reminds me of this https://youtu.be/ZsTWe_s1tug?si=YsL18XBClJ8Q4bUl
I’m holding a royal sampling:
I don’t get upset by news, I tend to keep my head down, but I also enjoy a good old point-and-laugh.
I remain equally contemptuous of stupid commie bastards with the bullshit they buy into
and reactionary socon statist bastards with the bullshit they buy into
Wait a minute. Are you telling me I can’t believe Jacobin and Candace Owens?
Although I feel the pull of the restorationists, I can’t get past that what they want to restore is exactly what got us here.
Once we opened the door to the barbarians we were fucked, we can’t stand up an army, we spent all the kids money,
burn it down
Mornin!
😜☕🌞
Y’all are a bit weird. Just saying.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oCLek4aSpbo
🎶🎶
Go back to bed, you early morning weirdo!
(And then have a nice day)
😁
Good morning, Sean, hayek, Roat, TAFKALack, and (somewhere upthread) Ted’S.!
🙂
Don’t use your fingerprint to unlock your phone. It can be used without your consent.
No shit.
Plus there’s no way all the biometric data isn’t being stored somewhere and sent to the FBI for a small fee.
I don’t do any banking on my phone.
Top loading clothes washers are the tools of the devil.
They beguile with promises of relieving labor, and then they eat your clothes.
Front load or GTFO.
/first world problems
Front loaders are for short(er) people. I don’t do squats, regardless of what Warty says.
Huh. My experience has been the opposite.
Hooray for choices/alternatives!
Beau! My oldest sister, an MSU grad, has just made me aware of the existence of what may be the perfect food – chocolate cheese! Have you experienced this bit of alchemy? They’re two great tastes – do they taste great together?
Clearly the only right answer would be to mandate bottom-loading washers and dryers!
It doesn’t matter that no such thing exists, we just made it mandatory!
No, I’ve never tried it. I’m a chocolate purist 😉 Don’t even like Reese’s, let alone the other bizarre (to me) combos out there.
I’m tall, bending over to pull wet clothes out of a front loader sucks. We’ve had good luck with a top-loader with no central agitator.
Another option not quite fully expressed. This is the course I’ve decided to follow:
https://orthochristian.com/47643.html
The “get your ass to church” option.
Is going to church the same as believing in god?
No, but the two compliment each other pretty well.
A lot of churches are filled with atheists.
When a church becomes a Good Person’s Club then it becomes an excellent place to spend time, presuming you can find one that shares your idea of what a Good Person is.
Advertizing your purported virtue is pride and vanity, and an unseemly disgrace. If you have to say “Look at what a good person I am” then you clearly are not.
Many such cases. For me the point stands though. There is no way out from the predicament we’re in as long as the ‘cult of self’ remains the driving force behind our culture. It’s how we got here, and nothing else changes the trajectory. I know there are plenty of people hear who may heartily disagree.
Unciv- sorry but that seems a little unfair. In saying I’ve decided to dive into my faith and trust in deity for our way out of this mess, am I really just preening my virtue? That seems like an extrapolation that says a lot more about you than it does me.
There’s a distinction and a nuance not elaborated in a grumpy early morning comment.
I am trying to draw a distinction between virtue and performative virtue. I suppose the easiest distillation would be a distinction between appearing good and being good. I’m sure it would not take long to think of examples of that kind of hypocricy, especially in this day and age.
Matthew 6:1-6
1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
5 ¶ And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Agreed. And to your and Not Adans Point, sure, there are plenty of hypocrites in church, the same as there are plenty of hypocrites in progressive circles, and libertarian circles for that matter. There are plenty of vain, pompous people in the world. I’m one of them. From my perspective it has a lot more to do with being human than it does Christian though, and Solhzhenitsyn’s point, and the point I intended, was that the start of our problems were and are spiritual rather than structural, as is the solution.
Cavalier: I’m a little dense; what’s your point. Those verses in context mean you shouldn’t perform good acts for the glory or pray for the sake of onlookers rather than direct supplication to God. If the logic goes I’m a hypocrite for even brining up the subject that Christianity should have been dead after the first century.
Rom 10:14
I don’t mean hypocrites. I mean literally people for whom theology is a nullity and virtue means respectability, correct politics. Obviously the UU fits here, as does Reform Judaism, and the United Church of Canada, but now also major wings of the Mainline Protestant denominations in the US.
PCUSA just recently averted declaring being anti-sodomy the only attitude “incompatible” with ministry.
*then
Not Adahn- yes, plenty of woke has infiltrated almost all the denominations. Gresham Machen’s “Christianity and Liberalism” is probably the best book on the subject of parsing our true faith from the feel good-be good Christianity that came about in the last century.
Even if you aren’t particularly pious, a church can be a good place to kick start your “community” of people with similar values outside of church. Of course, this depends very heavily on the church in question.
Grumm’s comment was my point in less inflammatory language. I’m a bit feisty this morning.
As is everyone this morning I guess. For as much as people ring their hands about the fact that this site is slowly dying, maybe ‘knives out’ when a lurker decides to chime in isn’t the best strategy.
None of the remarks read as attacks or having “knives out”
Morning, Glibs.
Today got off to a terrible start when I woke up and saw that it was a half hour after I normally left the house.
I got to my parking spot one minute before work was supposed to start and was seven minutes late when I logged in.
😠
Sorry your day started with a rush. It’ll get better from here. (At my job, hourly employees’ times are rounded to the nearest quarter hour!)
I don’t punch a timeclock, but our timecards will only record time in multiples of 15 minutes.
Since I start most days before my official start I expect the seven minutes to be a wash, but I don’t like being behind schedule, and I hate being late.
UnCiv, same here. The insanity for us comes from our maintenance logs, which are legal documents are to be accurate to the minute…but our timecards are to 15 mins. Square that governmental circle.
Well it was too good to last. My first off-hours adaptation is tomorrow. I have been enjoying for nearly a year of not having to come in early morning to do these, but we need to coordinate with some other facilities so 1am tomorrow morning. But first, once weather rolls out, change out two motors, a gearbox and figure out why the antenna no spinny.