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.
Magnetricity 