I’m just a guy who likes taking it easy and playing games, but I’m usually deep in thought, even if it doesn’t seem like it. I don’t have access to more information than most people, but what I’ve seen is sufficient to come to the conclusion that we’re in for some wild times, and we would do well to prepare.

It’s evident that society is reaching a turning point. With what degree of conflict with which this will come about is difficult to say, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that conflict is difficult to avoid. It’s just a matter of time, and it seems it’s coming real soon.

One point that I would like to make is that, while people can be highly unpredictable, their actions make a lot more sense when you account for their self-interest. That may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how often people forget that, and assume that the people that they take issue with are either insane or stupid.

Another point is that people generally don’t have a very well defined political ideology or philosophy, which has to do with the fact that they haven’t given them much thought. People generally make choices that appeals to their basic sensibilities, which can include underdeveloped ideas concerning what would make the world fair, which is often little more than self-interest disguised as altruism, flavored with sound bites and slogans which usually amount to little more than an abuse of language.

Consider all this with the expectations that society has placed on millennials and zoomers: that they are expected to succeed in ways that boomers did, which usually means that they’re expected to have a house and a family by their mid-twenties, and if they point out that the western world’s economic conditions have changed to the point where that’s not reasonable to expect, then they’re treated as though they are making excuses for their failures. Thus, we’re left with two generations who have a resentment for the people who have already claimed all the assets, leaving their children with no choice but to rent from those who have them, and to fight for the few opportunities that exist. As this is happening, millennials and zoomers can be expected to have a decreased tolerance for a bloated bureaucracy whose constant demands for a cut of what little they’re making further threatens their potential prosperity.

While there may be a few things wrong with this perspective, it’s still a fact that these perspectives exist, and they can inform people’s decisions.

I don’t resent people for being motivated by self-interest, as I see it as reasonable to expect for humans in general. Having said that, I do understand that it’s played a role in bringing society to this point, and it’s part of the reason why the coming conflict cannot be avoided.

When people talk about the deep state, they often speak of it as though it were some mysterious collective that secretly rules from the shadows. The reality of the matter is far more mundane. The deep state is the facets of government which are not elected, but nonetheless have hands on levers of power. The IRS is not elected, but they have authority to act on behalf of government to collect taxes. The FBI is not elected either, but they have authority to act on behalf of government to investigate. You can probably think of other features of government that are similar in that they have power even though they are not elected.

Inasmuch as these agencies act reasonably with the authority that they’ve been granted, they are not malevolent. However, they have the potential to become bloated and bureaucratic. When this is the case, they can become terribly inefficient. This often takes the form of jobs created that accomplish nothing in reality, they just push papers around and manipulate access to assets back and forth in such a way that creates the appearance that something productive is getting done. It can even come to the point that there can be hundreds of people employed in a single building, each drawing a consistent paycheck, but only a couple people in the building actually accomplish anything (usually building maintenance).

Knowing this, consider how such an operation is funded. Often, it’s through taxpayer dollars. As the operation grows more bureaucratic, it requires more taxpayer dollars to keep it funded. Each person in its employ has an interest in keeping the operation going, and well-funded. And the government, which keeps these operations going through taxpayer dollars, itself has an interest in keeping money going through itself, as the work that they do of passing dollars through their hands justifies its own bureaucracy existence, and thus it justifies funding of its own. In consideration of this, an increasingly bureaucratic government has an interest in taxing people as much as they can get away with.

However, that’s not the only way that government is funded. It’s also funded through paying itself with freshly printed currency. This can be a dangerous thing, as doing such a thing amounts to huge fraud and theft committed against anyone who is attempting to use the currency as a store of value. While many are aware that this is happening, they generally tolerate it as long as it’s not out of control. However, it’s easy to see how the government and the deep state have an interest in pushing this as far as they could while avoiding consequences.

This is dangerous because it’s difficult to tell just how much the public is willing to tolerate. In a sense, it’s like playing a game of chicken by speeding towards a cliff, while blindfolded.

If the government can fund itself through the creation of money, one might wonder what the point of taxation is. For one thing, taxation is still useful as a means of extracting value. Second, it helps to maintain the illusion that we’re the ones who fund the government.

If you’re among those who are within the bloated, bureaucratic system, and you see what the problem is, you might like to believe that you could do something about it. Either that, or you’ve come to the realization that there’s nothing that you can do that would make any kind of difference. If you were to quit your job, you’d just be replaced with another bureaucrat, and if you were to push back, you’d discover just how strongly you’d be resisted by countless people defending their self-interest. And if it comes to that, you’d just be replaced with someone too psychopathic to give a care, and business will continue as usual.

And yet, this bureaucracy would keep expanding due to self-interest, and it would continually demand more and more funding to feed its growth.

You’ll see how this will lead to the coming conflict when you see just how this bureaucracy impacts the bottom line of the common people. The common people are motivated by self-interest as well, and when it becomes more difficult to live, they’re going to become more angry.

Another factor that contributes to currency losing value is that more and more of it is being paid to people who don’t actually produce value. As people realize this, currency will lose its ability to represent value. This is a problem which doesn’t come up as often as inflation, but it’s significant.

To get into one example of how the bureaucracy is impacting the general public, property taxes are going way up. This feeds the bureaucracy, but makes it more difficult for rental companies to keep the lights on. Therefore, they must increase rent. This makes it more difficult for renters to pay the bills, which is an issue compounded by the rising costs of food and energy.

Some will attempt to make this out as a problem with rental companies being greedy, but with more people seeing the problem for what it really is, this false narrative is no longer holding up, and the bureaucracy is being identified as the problem. Not everyone will see the problem of rising rent as another way that government taxes them, but that’s just what’s going on.

One of the reactions to the problem of the increasing bureaucratic deep state has been the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. Superficially, the MAGA movement looks like a cult of personality revolving around Donald Trump. But when you recognize it for what it is, a response to a perceived problem, you know that it’s not going to go away if Trump is taken out of the picture.

Speaking of, because Trump is getting on in years, it’s reasonable to wonder whether the MAGA movement will unite under a different leader. I think it’s likely, because it’s the tendency of people to get behind a charismatic leader. Trump is as popular as he has been because he speaks with his own in a way that makes them feel appreciated, which is often overlooked in favor of how bombastic he gets in public events. I think it’s reasonable to expect that whoever the MAGA crowd gets behind will be similar in character. But even if not, the fact that they are united in a desire to resolve a perceived problem is sufficient for the movement’s continuity.

One thing I can’t tell you is exactly how the coming conflict between the bureaucracy and the common public is going to play out. But one thing that’s obvious is that the deep state is going to continue to pull the levers of power in ways that serve their own interests, as one would expect people to do. Alarmingly, this would appear to include actions that are intended to deny the general population the outcomes that they’d prefer.

What can be said is that, it would be better to avoid the conflict, if at all possible. After all, if a conflict were to break out, few people would benefit, even among the winners.

One thing that’s often overlooked when speculating about how a civil war would play out is interference on the part of foreign entities. The fact is, a civil war would have an effect well beyond a country’s own borders. As if a civil war wouldn’t be messy enough on its own, when you factor in how foreign entities could interfere, things would get far more complicated. And because those foreign entities are motivated more by their own interests than those of any side in a civil war, that’s yet more reason for Americans to want to avoid a civil war.

Personally, I think Russia and China would be more likely to side with an uprising rather than the establishment. While those countries have corrupt bureaucracies of their own, they tend more towards traditional values which the U.S. bureaucratic establishment tends to eschew. The deep state’s strategic thinkers largely fail to account for this, because they don’t think generationally the way other cultures do, and don’t comprehend what motivates more culturally-driven civilizations.

While the statist faction may have the armed forces on their side, this wouldn’t serve them as much as they may think. They’d largely be dependent on soldiers to occupy, as the same couldn’t be done with fighter jets, and they wouldn’t dare deploy nukes on their own territories. As for the soldiers, many of them would defect, as they’d would refuse to raise a gun against their own countrymen, who themselves are easily the most heavily-armed people in the world.

Those siding against the deep state would likely be those on the political right. While those on the left might like to imagine that a civil war would be red state against blue state, what would really happen is that red counties and municipalities would either defect to neighboring red states, or just break away, leaving the left with a few large cities on opposite coasts, which aren’t even connected. This would leave the right with agriculture, energy, supply lines, and means of production. And the left would have densely-populated cities, with lots of mouths to feed, but mostly don’t produce anything.

If you already think that sounds like it would be ugly, consider how cities have been captured since ancient times; by closing them off from their supply lines, and starving the population into surrender. Historically, people have been driven into cannibalism in the time it takes for leadership to decide to lay down their arms.

Because the deep state would have a great deal against it in the event of a civil conflict, it may be a more strategic move on their part to make some concessions and allow themselves to decrease in size, to appease their opposition. I don’t expect this, as it would go directly against their more immediate self-interest.

But hey, that’s a thought: have a fair election open only to legal US citizens, without putting thumbs on the scales, and accepting the will of the people, without cheating them, because there’s no telling what they might do when they’re angry. Perhaps the deep state’s self-interest really lies there.

As the body politick takes notice of the abuses by those in positions of power, more power may be in the hands of those who are more difficult to predict.

Imagine that you ran an electronics manufacturing company. Would you hire someone who has an education in electronics and a few years of experience?

Now, suppose that the applicant instead had no degree, no experience, and, for that matter, no background in electronics at all. Would you still hire him? Odds are, you’d favor the applicant who has the degree and the experience.

So then, why would you hire someone to make decisions for your company who has no experience with electronics manufacturing, or with managing such a business? Such a decision would seem counterproductive.

Yet, that’s what happens when countless businesses hire consultants, and delegate their decision-making to them.

But it gets even worse than that, because such a move would be a betrayal of the trust of each individual who is in the company’s employ, and each of its shareholders.

Think about it: each person employed by the company is dependent upon the company’s continued success. Each employee represents at least one mouth to feed, considering that each of them could hypothetically have multiple dependents who rely upon them to continue paying living expenses. If the company were to fail, then each of these employees and their dependents would face an uncertain future.

And as for the shareholders, understanding how self-defeating it would be to hire someone who would undermine the company, and the effect this would have on investments, would seem a standard feature of a three-digit IQ.

Now, let’s be a bit more specific. One of the trends that’s become evident in consultants is an embrace of the concept of DEI, short for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It has to do with ensuring a certain amount of representation in the workplace. When presented in as many words, this might sound like a noble endeavor.

But it’s not.

DEI focuses on meeting certain quotas in hiring decisions, without respect to actual qualifications. It has to do with making incentives to hire based on characteristics such as race, sexual orientation, religion, sexual identity, and other characteristics.

It sells itself by saying that it’s not racism. But it’s something that might be more damaging, called tokenism.

Ideally, an employer should not be racist or tokenist. Hiring decisions should be made based on qualification and ability, with no regard to immutable genetic characteristic.

DEI does not respect this, and this is its fatal flaw.

Suppose you had to go in to see a doctor. Suppose a team of physicians agreed that you have need of open-heart surgery. Which would you prefer:

• The most qualified and experienced operating physicians in the state? Or,
• A team of less competent physicians, who at least look different?

Does this seem too dire? Okay then, here’s a different example:

Suppose you’re booking a flight from Philadelphia to Houston. Would you prefer that your airline of choice have a team of mechanics who:

• All know what they’re doing, because they’ve been carefully selected from the most qualified, educated, and experienced candidates? Or,
• A bunch of entitled busybodies who can’t turn a wrench, let alone identify a mechanical fault, but at least a few different religions are represented?

That wasn’t much better. Here’s another example, which might be more lighthearted:

You need an electrical repair to your home. Would you rather:

• Have a few experienced, qualified electricians on the job? Or,
• Sleep under a bridge knowing that your house was burned down by people who preferred certain genitals?

I hope that the point is getting across. While racism on its own was bad, the tokenism espoused by DEI has the potential to be far more destructive.

Here’s a real-world example: Last year, a submersible in the Atlantic Ocean experienced a catastrophic failure, resulting in the implosion of the submersible, instantly killing everyone on board, including Stockton Rush, the head of OceanGate, the company that made the submersible.

Previously, Stockton Rush had stated an interest in not hiring white men, saying that he didn’t think this was inspiring. If his focus was more on qualification rather than tokenism, Stockton Rush might still be alive today, as would his passengers.

While tokenism is horrifying in both theory and practice, it’s an ideology that is espoused by a disturbing number of consultants.

Related less to tokenism and more to inappropriate cost-cutting, the McKinsey consulting firm advised Disneyland to cut maintenance costs. Consequently, there have been many ride failures, many involving injuries and fatalities, which could have been avoided with the proper maintenance.

While it’s often said that consultants are economic Marxists, it should be known that most consultants are evidently not economic Marxists. Today, it’s challenging to find any economic Marxist who can be taken seriously.

However, consultants bear the memetic legacy of Marxist ideology. This is particularly relevant as relates to consultants because Marxists teach that there is an adversarial relationship between the collective and the private corporation. Obviously, to hire someone on with an ideological motivation to undermine the company would be counterproductive.

It’s important to understand that no company needs consultants. Consultants don’t exist for the betterment of your company, they exist to draw in a paycheck. And they are excellent at tricking gullible people into hiring them on.

The fact is, you can make your own decisions for your own company. The people in your employ are counting on it. And for that matter, so are your customers and your investors, whether they know it or not.

People know that computers can be hacked. But what’s not as obvious is that people can also be hacked. Where computers can be hacked with code, people can be hacked with rhetoric. Understanding how rhetoric can be used to manipulate you can be thought of as antivirus for your mind.

One such form of hacking is through the leading question. A leading question is a question that is designed to control a person’s thoughts, answers, and even sometimes behaviors. It’s a hypnotic trick which, if you don’t recognize it, can get you to say or do something that you otherwise might not have.

One example is the loaded question. A loaded question is a question that contains an assumption, but is phrased in such a way so that the assumption avoids being challenged.

Here’s an example that you might see on social media:

Do you suppose that those racists are going to push for a border wall, again?

Larson E.

Here, Larson E. is trying to pull a fast one: his question is whether those who favor a border wall to stem the tide of unnaturalized illegal immigrants will continue to do so, but it contains the assumption that they are motivated by racism. In reality, the people being impugned as racists may be of the understanding that certain values are not universal, and that illegal migrants may commit crimes or otherwise weaken the culture.

One can call out the claim that racism motivates those calling for a border wall, but the one posing the question may insist that this wasn’t his question, and that he wanted to know whether they still wanted a border wall. Remember, the idea is to insulate the racism claim from challenge, because people like Larson E. wants the claim of racism to be accepted without dispute.

Another trick to watch out for is the false dichotomy. A false dichotomy is a question that is phrased to suggest that there are only two possible answers, when there could be many more.

Here’s an example of a false dichotomy in action:

What do you propose we do about those rebels disrupting the supply lines? Do we withdraw or ignore them?

Skip2

Two options are presented: cede ground or continue as though there’s no problem. In reality, there may be other ways to handle the matter, such as fight or negotiate. Perhaps Skip2 didn’t suggest the other options because he didn’t prefer them.

The person presenting the false dichotomy may be motivated by a desire not to call attention to a decision that he doesn’t consider preferable, but it’s also possible that he wishes to present a course of action as unwise, so he presents only a couple of the most unfavorable outcomes as one that one can reasonably expect. Here’s an example:

If you confront him, you’ll likely get into a fight, or at least waste your time.

Willie M.

Of course, it’s possible that both parties would reach an agreement or a compromise, but Willie M. isn’t expressing much expectation of such outcomes.

To be fair, a person isn’t always obligated to present all the possibilities, as there’s often the expectation that you’re able to consider the ones that you can reasonably expect, on your own. Presenting an incomplete list of possibilities or options is sometimes done for brevity, not with malicious intent.

Leading questions can sometimes be phrased to suggest a yes/no answer. This is often an attempt to limit your options, or trick you into a false confession.

Are you ever going to stop stealing from the poor?

TehCheet1337

If you answer yes or no, you’re confessing to stealing from the poor, which is just what the question is designed to do! The idea isn’t to determine your sincerely-held viewpoints, it’s to trick you into making a confession, however false that confession may be!

Interestingly, the Japanese have an answer to this. While they could answer “hai” (yes) or “ie” (no), their language has a third one-word answer, “mu”, which means something like “impossible” or “inapplicable”. It’s a one-word way for a person to say that a question doesn’t apply to them.

At one point, I worked a customer service job. One of the things that staff was trained to do was ask what’s referred to as suggestive questions, such as the following:

How can I help you, today?

Notice how the question is not whether the clerk can help, but how. The question as phrased makes the customer less likely to be left to their own decision-making, and more likely to state how they can be assisted. This makes the clerk more likely to be involved with their decision-making, and thus more likely to make a purchase. And thus, another sale is made!

Considering how often leading questions are used, it’s not a bad idea to be ready to answer by saying that “the question is wrong”. Then, you can point out how the question is wrong, so that onlookers can immediately see through the trick being employed. Then, if you wish, you can ask them to rephrase the question, and perhaps you might not get the same bad-faith rhetoric. But don’t get your hopes too high.

By the way, tricks such as these are sometimes used in interrogations by law enforcement in an effort to trick the people being questioned into making confessions that may be admissible in court. It’s because of this that the first thing you ask for when being questioned is to have a lawyer present representing you, and not answer any questions until you have one there.

They say that you don’t “lawyer up” unless you have something to hide. They say this to discourage you from protecting yourself when you’re questioned. The fact is, the questioner in an interrogation (or “interview”, as they may rephrase it) is not your friend, however they may speak or act, and you’re not in a fair fight. If you have a lawyer present, the nature of the questions will change, because a seasoned lawyer will know the tactics being employed, and will advise you right then and there whether you should answer a question.

When it comes down to it, there are people out there who are out to manipulate you, and it can be as simple as how they ask questions, which they may expect you to answer. If you learn to call out the questions as phrased, or at least state that the question is wrong, this trick will be a lot less likely to have the desired effect.

It used to be that seeing was believing, but now is the time to get really skeptical. AI has developed to the point that photorealistic images can be generated in a matter of seconds, just from a short prompt. This is a fact that some pretty bad people are taking advantage of on social media, and they’re having their way with those who don’t seem to understand what’s going on.

Making one of these images isn’t hard, either. All one has to do is open the right website, then type in something like “Trump kicking puppies in a filthy alley”, upload it to social media, then watch as the gullible pile in with comments, such as,

What’s Trump doing in such a setting? It’s highly out of character for a presidential candidate to mill about in a random alleyway entirely unescorted. And what’s more, he’s entirely surrounded by filth, which is not the kind of thing I’d expect from someone of his stature. Also, that he’s kicking puppies is kinda dubious.

Massive MAGA

It used to be that if you saw photographic evidence of wrongdoing, the photo itself was considered sufficient to convict. To have faked something completely photorealistic would have taken such time and effort, it would have been implausible to expect from even a professional with an axe to grind.

But now, just one guy who’s out to make a pro-Palestine cause out to be a right-wing position can use up all his allotted image generations per day to make neckbeards with guns, then spend the day posting them on X.

Probably a fed.

On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be much that one can do about it. The djinni is out of the bottle, as the expression goes, and we have to understand that this is the nature of the world that we live in, now. We now live in a world where AI is a fact of life, and we have to adapt, or risk being left behind.

If you know that there are people out there that abuse AI, you’re less likely to fall for their fakery. And if more people become aware of the nature of the world that we now live in, less people would be likely to be tricked.

Thankfully, there are websites now that can check images for the likelihood that they’ve been AI generated. Illuminarty is one that I’ve used. It’s not perfect, as it can only provide likelihoods that images were AI generated. But it’s things like that that’ll have to do, and hopefully, it’ll be a while before images are generated that can consistently defeat such checkers, and maybe we’re already there. Or maybe something can be developed that always succeeds in detecting AI generated images. We’ll see.

Adding to all this is the fact that deepfakes are becoming more believable. So if you’re deciding to place more confidence in video evidence, don’t get too comfortable. When you understand this, you know that it’s become trivial for a person to cause an international incident from their own desk.

Scary? Yes. But if people become educated on the matter, then the danger is greatly reduced.

One thing that we can hope for is that AI systems start developing a sense of ethics, and can detect when someone is misusing them, and autonomously deploy measures to defeat attempts to misuse them.

AI is a fact of life, now. Some people like it, some don’t. But the fact is, we need to adapt to this changing world we live in. Individuals and state actors can abuse AI, to potentially great effect. The best that we can do is learn about it, and put it to use for ourselves. And why not use it? It has the potential to be a great tool for good, not just for bad.

One suggestion that I can make to improve X would be for there to be a tool for the platform to determine whether content is AI generated. I don’t expect it to be perfect, but it might be a great answer to those who would misuse it.