Note: See below about rulers harassing the Nat Con event in Brussels. Added after I wrote the post.
IM-1776 ran a debate between Curtis “Moldbug” Yarvin and Chris Rufo. It might be entitled Winning Is Losing.
As always, Yarvin never uses one word when he can squeeze in seven. He also boldly wanders off into Theory more than is desirable or seemly. He is brash, sarcastic, hectoring (suggesting a history between him and Rufo). Plus, I’m still disappointed in Yarvin over his girlish “Plan A” squealing during the covid panic. So much for his plans for winning.
Moldbug’s early successes in focusing rightward thought, I assume you all know. Of late, Rufo has been besting him in practical politics, turning in real successes. Which Yarvin belittles. Yarvin contents himself by waving his superior historical knowledge around and in being aggressively negative and praising losing.
Nevertheless, even with all that, Yarvin wins on the one main point. Which Rufo picked up on:
Let’s begin by clearing up some misconceptions. First, we have different objectives. Your goal seems to be accelerating the cycle of regimes from democracy to monarchy. My goal is to halt and reverse political decomposition and return to the beginnings of the republic — counter-revolution.
Yarvin also said, and it is true, “America has no manifest destiny. Her constitution was not divinely inspired. No special providence was involved in her founding, nor has she discovered any unique principle of human governance.”
In any case, Thomas Wolfe said you cannot go home again. He was right. There is no way we will ever return to the beginnings of our enumerated-only-powers Constitutional government, let alone the Articles of Confederation, all of which were, as Yarvin said, nothing new under the sun. It is not possible to go back. That which is not possible which not be pursued, for that is the Path of Madness.
The Republic died in Lincoln’s War, its corpse shaken into bones during, as Yarin says, “the informal personal monarchy of Franklin Roosevelt, [and] changed by his death into a permanent and unaccountable oligarchy”. Which is where we now stand. He nails all three key words permanent (-ish), unaccountable, and oligarchy.
Can voting save us?
The people in the States are no longer the same since before Roosevelt, since even before 1980. The number of foreign born, legal and illegal, has been growing a long time. Yes, President Eisenhower had his Operation Wetback, which deported some million people. But that was when the country was 85% white and most of the rest black—meaning the same stocks, the same Peoples. Now the suicidal left boasts “The US White Majority Will Soon Disappear Forever“. Note the word forever. In that same article they estimate there were 43 million foreign-born in the States in 2015. The number is at least millions higher now. The total is likely 15%, maybe more. Eisenhower deported some 0.5%. There will be no political will to deport even 1% (3.3 million) now. It’s doubtful it would even reach 3,000.
The point is that even if voting were wholly scrupulous and unfortified, the current and growing constituencies of different peoples guarantee a tumultuous time ahead.
Beyond that, can you—can you—imagine Congress voting to remove the Expertocracy and restore Federalism?
Can you imagine a return to this? Link
Voting will not save us.
Rufo’s goal is impossible. Yet it is fun watching the occasional woke flame out because of his efforts. It is somewhat less pleasurable watching the woke skirt court and bureaucratic rulings (that Rufo had a hand in creating) that make DIEing technically illegal. Florida may be the least woke state, and here Rufo also helped, but students at Florida State are still hosting a “pro-abortion” “Paint Your Orgasm event”. About the state of the rest of the country, well, you already know.
It’s rational to suppose Rufo’s victories will be fleeting, and minor. Yet maybe we are too cynical, and Rufo is right. Anyway, his efforts don’t seem to cause harm, do they? As I suggested in the Path of Decadence (blog, Substack), the insanity of the left routinely engenders mini-reactions, small upward swings towards Sanity when the left goes too far too fast. But these swings are embedded in the Slippery Slope of Doom. Paradoxically, “slight improvements cause things to grow…worse.” Because the right relaxes after it wins anything, while the left, which is everywhere in power, can never tolerate any defeat for long. Their invariable counter-reaction makes things worse. The left feeds on having enemies.
The reason for this is not far to seek. It is because all of us, conservative and woke, are Enlightened. This includes a good number of the men who founded America. But not all, as Yarvin reminds us.
Last minute addition: What seems to have been rather an ordinary event, well scheduled ahead of time, the National Conservatism conference in Brussels was harassed by police yesterday. People like Nigel Farage, Eric Zemmor (scheduled, but he missed), Vicktor Orban and even Rod Dreher (!) speaking. Not exactly dangerous sounding. Yet this practical victory panicked rulers, and they counter-reacted. But stopped short of extra-over-reaction. One of the speakers, Monika Gabriela Bartoszewicz, told me “We’re unofficially told that this is the case [that they’ll continue tomorrow]. Also, the police officers are entirely on our side. They implied this as much as they could.” I imagine Yarvin is shaking his head, and Rufo thinking “Imagine if…”
Transcendence has been drained. We are all in thrall to the three axioms of the Enlightenment: secularism, utilitarianism, and egalitarianism (blog, Substack). The woke are more honest than “conservatives” is seeing the logical deductions from these premises.
This is why “conservatives” always lag behind “progressives”: they all believe in the same thing, but the “conservatives” just want things to go slowly. This is also why Rufo’s victories are only delaying actions, though perhaps being useful in an accelerationist sense, and why voting won’t help.
Yarvin: “I am saying that fighting for fighting’s sake is retarded. The only reason to fight is to win. Don’t compare your victories to nothing, Chris! That’s the grifter way. Compare them to winning.”
Of course, Rufo thinks he is winning. And he does have a smattering of tactical victories. These are more like guerrilla hit-and-run skirmishes. He does not have enough men to win the way. Yarvin also fails to understand that men like Rufo will fight, and that there is no talking them out of fighting.
Yarvin instead says that his “picture of winning is very clear.” It isn’t, except for some mumbling about corporations or Presidents as Kings (not in this debate, but elsewhere).
Anyway, it’s all academic. You won’t get a king—a real one or Yarvin’s—by voting. Or by debating. We may get an increasingly imperialistic President, like China, which rules with iron and blood over the Expertocracy. Yarvin thinks such a President can be elected! He says this even after seeing what happened to Trump, who at his best is only a shadow of his imagined Strong Man.
Democracies always end badly, a truth known for thousands of years, but one which we pretend not to remember. We, embedded in an “our democracy”, are ending badly, too.
Since, as the old saying goes, that which cannot continue won’t, “our democracy” will stop, and something will come after. What? A full-on Expertocracy? It wouldn’t last. Too many Experts in service to too many thieving oligarchs, who would eventually war among themselves. The usual end of democracies, after all, is Emergency and a Man who cleans up the mess.
Parkinson summarizes the typical ending, coming after a point at which the State
acquire[s] such an accumulation of centralised power — political, economic, religious and cultural — that some of the former upper class would be goaded into revolt. Supposing the conspiracy or rising should attract any measure of support, in the name of freedom, the strongest personality in the government would make himself dictator during the emergency: thereafter, the rising crushed, he would remain dictator as a precaution against any future threat of the same kind.
Some have hopes Elon Musk will be one of these in the upper class who revolts. Maybe so. But Musk as dictator? It cannot be believed. It has to be, and will be, a man who understands and will use violence. In any case, all of this seems far off. Things have to get much worse before enough feel there is a real crisis.
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The harsh reality is that the quality of government a society can expect is to a very large extent constrained by the moral, ethical and spiritual center of mass of the members of that society. Where is our moral center of gravity when it’s not moral table-stakes that profit-motivated poisoning and mutilating children at all, much less without even a nod to their parents, is abhorrent? That should be universal, but it’s not.
Government has become an industry — an undertaking of profit and power and careers. And politicians and bureaucrats are just as ruthless in their selfish ambition as corporate ladder-climbers (I will stipulate that this doesn’t apply to all politicians and bureaucrats, but to enough that the residual is of little consequence). The entire system selects for those pursuing self interest, and the “-ism” or platform on which any particular one runs is, by and large, a fig leaf for their naked ambition and lust for power. And this, of course, eventually leads to collapse, which, whether you’re prepared to admit it or not, is upon us.
Now, don’t think I am saying that there is no room for men and women of principle — quite the contrary. They are desperately needed now to start those nascent movements that will, in due course, form the nucleus of what comes after the collapse. We need to support them now, not in the belief that they are going to save what we have, for that is lost, but rather for them to gain experience and knowledge for their post-collapse efforts to begin to begin to build a worthy successor (or successors) to the failed republic.
"One of the speakers, Monika Gabriela Bartoszewicz, told me ...' the police officers are entirely on our side.'"
That's only reassuring if a Strong Man comes along soon. And real soon, since the leftists are purging the police and military since the Summer of George/Covid. Still, it points to cowardice among the police, since they continue to implement the designs of the regime even though they know them to be illegitimate. Gotta keep those eyes on the pensions, right?