Now we have another die cast with Ukraine’s “independent” strike against Russia’s strategic nuclear air forces. Who else knew about this? My understanding is that for us (Trump) to have known about this would mean we just violated a nuclear arms treaty with Russia, which is why I believe Trump was just humiliated along with Putin. Nevertheless someone else knew. Who wants WW3?! What will Putin’s response be? There will be one, after all. The world indeed feels like it’s on a knife’s edge and the average citizen of the west seems to be just… apathetic, while their leaders gamble with the very future of the West.
Betz's first article has anti-multiculturalism quotes by Merkel and Cameron from the early 2010's. What happened? Did emotivism conquer them? Did they decide immigration was an economic imperative for the EU? (Based on birthrates, it probably is.) Were they just talking out of their butts?
You mentioned that Betz compares the culture war to a real war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdJtrXYBZs That's Bret Weinstein's ARC talk in which he's explicitly does the same thing. I don't particularly like Weinstein, and he veers outside his lane toward the end and gets really weird, but the first 11 minutes are worth your time.
Betz also suggests that "bread and circuses" are a regime's final tools of legitimacy. Some form of UBI and AI based porn / virtual boyfriends would be the modern form of this. Not surprisingly, the latter is already started and noise about the former is picking up (ironically, the need cited is AI economic displacement.)
Also, I agree about not dismissing Guy Edward Bartkus. What he did is morally reprehensible but utterly logical from a Nietzschean perspective. The origin myths we tell ourselves matter.
I haven't heard from David Cameron in years, but Angela Merkel occassionally rears her ugly head to spout off some nonsense. She was recently criticizing attempts to secure Germany's borders:
Crazy woman. Anyway, if anyone deserves to be banned from politics, it's her, not AfD.
That's his brother, Eric. And I had the same reaction as you did - fascinating at first, bizarre by the end. But he makes a convincing argument. I've said before that everything the Regime does is about forcing us to let down our defenses. It's working.
The problem is that once you start UBI, you cannot shut it off. Same with any welfare program. And the current fiscal environment is the worst imaginable for starting off a new welfare program.
Crazy people aren't a threat until they are. That's why they need to be dealt with, but as the Jordan Neely incident showed, people's compassion has been lethally weaponized. We're going to have to endure many, many acts of terror committed by "crazy" people before we realize just letting them be is a terrible idea.
What's missing in this discussion (and analysis by Betz and other commentators who've been repeating the civil war message for years) is an acknowledgement of the role of social media in formenting bad ideas at a group level and generating anger at the individual level (dopamine loops, screen attention retention, etc).
Instead of civil war, the examples (in the US) are related to civil strife. In Europe, the Nice/Cannes event smelt fishy (false flag psyop etc) and the electric grid malfunction in Spain was just that, a malfunction. Civil war necessitates the emergence and preexistence of groups with a political identity which doesn't find a fit within the political disbursement of deserts (resources). In Europe dissent thus far finds a voice in the right and left political parties. A case can be made that the center left and right is marginalizing and attempting to shut them down, but so far this hasn't succeeded (yes, Romania marked a new extreme). I'm not saying a case can't be made for a resurgence of nationalism, but in Europe the white elephant in the room is the cumulative effects of the EU and it's democratic deficit as the source of angst.
All that being said, I really do think we should start connecting the dots with the disasters created by smartphones, social media, and generally dishonest business models seeking to extract rents and turn individuals into products.
This is the cherry on top of dysfunctional socio-political and economic practices (existing since forever) in terms of privatizing profit and making the public pay the costs. Our monetary systems have been broken since early in the 20th c., and while we've been able to put paper mâche over the cracks of political dysfunction with "infinite growth" (or infinite devaluation/inflation), the can can't be kicked much further down the road.
But my point is the atomization of individuals, coupled with classics like alienation, is a bad ingredient to have in the mix with social media, which incites emotional engagement (esp. Anger). People with nothing to loose do spur of the moment crazy things.
So more than civil war, civil strife might be a better explanation.
Although, if and when a random event lights a fuse, everything could degenerate into civil unrest and then civil war.
I read Dreher and agree that the border patrol have guns for a reason. And the only reasonable explanation I have to all that's happening is that it's been allowed to happen because it's part of the plan. Maybe Betz is part of the plan and signals a shift in the Overton window.
Whatever comes to pass, the state will encounter tremendous difficulty in keeping order. Like I said in the essay, I use the term "civil war" as a placeholder because it's not as easy to use the term "low-intensity conflict," which I think is a more accurate descriptor of what's headed America's way. I think France has been enduring a low-intensity conflict for decades and the U.S. is looking down the barrel of that now.
It's important to remember: there's no real order of events. We could go straight into the civil war, then when that dies down, it transitions into low-intensity conflict. Or it could go the other way. There's really only one reason why I think a civil war isn't going to happen and because of our aging demographics. If America had a surplus of young people, males especially, I'd probably be predicting civil war. Europe, especially Germany, is much older, so I find it hard to believe a true civil war will happen there.
Not sure what you mean by Betz being part of the plan. Certainly, the Great Replacement is real, but if you're suggesting Betz is a Regime plant or something, then that means someone on the inside knows they screwed up and are now desperately trying to warn people without having to come out and say it themselves.
In terms of Betz, having studied civil war back in '07, there's a lot of [academic] literature on the subject. So maybe he's just the latest academic going viral (it happens). Or maybe it's an establishment attempt to get ahead of the narrative arc, to shape the discourse (like the Prof. 500k UK pandemic deaths modeling, by Prof. Ferguson). Or maybe, throwing the Great Replacement into the mix, the "plan" so to speak, might not be so linear and could include triggering social strife or "low intensity conflict", etc. This could usher in demands for greater policing and social control (like all crisis's).
Betz is honestly the first academic I've seen who predicts civil war in the West, at least in this level of detail. The only other academic who came close was Neil Howe and he was never as specific as Betz. Everyone else predicting civil war in the West tended to be from the prepper/survivalist community or a far-right ideologue.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist so I don't see Betz as being any part of any concerted attempt at triggering social strife or low-intensity conflict. The Regime actually wouldn't benefit from it. Though more plausible, I don't think Betz is part of some high-level narrative-shaping effort, either. However, like I was saying a few essays ago, I find it highly unlikely that *nobody* in the Regime is aware that the risk of civil war is increasing in the West. Also, given Betz is part of one of the world's preeminent academic institutions and in London, I find it highly unlikely nobody in a position of prominence has heard what he has to say.
But but but. It's curious, in the sense, Betz's emergence makes it alright to talk about this topic now, on MSM and polite society, as opposed to only within smaller silos (as you said and I agree). Ideas need to be seeded to get action (or reaction or the ball rolling). The narrative of the risk posed by the far right, nationalists, christian revivalists, those opposing the replacement, etc, exists, regardless of the actual reality of it (the whole riots in the UK during the summer of '24).
Personally I don't believe in "the regime", just factions vying for dominance. And there's behind the scenes coordination by way of ngo networks, lobbying, money, etc.
TikTok was never about data privacy. It was (and is) about psychological warfare in the form of mimetic persuasion - and it’s effects are deadly. I don’t understand how/why nobody in the new administration’s orbit has been unable to make this clear to the public.
The administration has no credibility because it's not aligned with our keystone institutions. People talk about how people are losing trust in the institutions, but the fact is, most people still reflexively look to the institutions for wisdom. It's why I keep saying that David Betz is the best person possible to warn the West of civil war.
Now we have another die cast with Ukraine’s “independent” strike against Russia’s strategic nuclear air forces. Who else knew about this? My understanding is that for us (Trump) to have known about this would mean we just violated a nuclear arms treaty with Russia, which is why I believe Trump was just humiliated along with Putin. Nevertheless someone else knew. Who wants WW3?! What will Putin’s response be? There will be one, after all. The world indeed feels like it’s on a knife’s edge and the average citizen of the west seems to be just… apathetic, while their leaders gamble with the very future of the West.
Betz's first article has anti-multiculturalism quotes by Merkel and Cameron from the early 2010's. What happened? Did emotivism conquer them? Did they decide immigration was an economic imperative for the EU? (Based on birthrates, it probably is.) Were they just talking out of their butts?
You mentioned that Betz compares the culture war to a real war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbdJtrXYBZs That's Bret Weinstein's ARC talk in which he's explicitly does the same thing. I don't particularly like Weinstein, and he veers outside his lane toward the end and gets really weird, but the first 11 minutes are worth your time.
Betz also suggests that "bread and circuses" are a regime's final tools of legitimacy. Some form of UBI and AI based porn / virtual boyfriends would be the modern form of this. Not surprisingly, the latter is already started and noise about the former is picking up (ironically, the need cited is AI economic displacement.)
Also, I agree about not dismissing Guy Edward Bartkus. What he did is morally reprehensible but utterly logical from a Nietzschean perspective. The origin myths we tell ourselves matter.
I haven't heard from David Cameron in years, but Angela Merkel occassionally rears her ugly head to spout off some nonsense. She was recently criticizing attempts to secure Germany's borders:
https://rmx.news/article/merkel-urges-new-german-government-against-border-controls-warning-they-will-destroy-european-unity/
Crazy woman. Anyway, if anyone deserves to be banned from politics, it's her, not AfD.
That's his brother, Eric. And I had the same reaction as you did - fascinating at first, bizarre by the end. But he makes a convincing argument. I've said before that everything the Regime does is about forcing us to let down our defenses. It's working.
The problem is that once you start UBI, you cannot shut it off. Same with any welfare program. And the current fiscal environment is the worst imaginable for starting off a new welfare program.
Crazy people aren't a threat until they are. That's why they need to be dealt with, but as the Jordan Neely incident showed, people's compassion has been lethally weaponized. We're going to have to endure many, many acts of terror committed by "crazy" people before we realize just letting them be is a terrible idea.
What's missing in this discussion (and analysis by Betz and other commentators who've been repeating the civil war message for years) is an acknowledgement of the role of social media in formenting bad ideas at a group level and generating anger at the individual level (dopamine loops, screen attention retention, etc).
Instead of civil war, the examples (in the US) are related to civil strife. In Europe, the Nice/Cannes event smelt fishy (false flag psyop etc) and the electric grid malfunction in Spain was just that, a malfunction. Civil war necessitates the emergence and preexistence of groups with a political identity which doesn't find a fit within the political disbursement of deserts (resources). In Europe dissent thus far finds a voice in the right and left political parties. A case can be made that the center left and right is marginalizing and attempting to shut them down, but so far this hasn't succeeded (yes, Romania marked a new extreme). I'm not saying a case can't be made for a resurgence of nationalism, but in Europe the white elephant in the room is the cumulative effects of the EU and it's democratic deficit as the source of angst.
All that being said, I really do think we should start connecting the dots with the disasters created by smartphones, social media, and generally dishonest business models seeking to extract rents and turn individuals into products.
This is the cherry on top of dysfunctional socio-political and economic practices (existing since forever) in terms of privatizing profit and making the public pay the costs. Our monetary systems have been broken since early in the 20th c., and while we've been able to put paper mâche over the cracks of political dysfunction with "infinite growth" (or infinite devaluation/inflation), the can can't be kicked much further down the road.
But my point is the atomization of individuals, coupled with classics like alienation, is a bad ingredient to have in the mix with social media, which incites emotional engagement (esp. Anger). People with nothing to loose do spur of the moment crazy things.
So more than civil war, civil strife might be a better explanation.
Although, if and when a random event lights a fuse, everything could degenerate into civil unrest and then civil war.
I read Dreher and agree that the border patrol have guns for a reason. And the only reasonable explanation I have to all that's happening is that it's been allowed to happen because it's part of the plan. Maybe Betz is part of the plan and signals a shift in the Overton window.
Whatever comes to pass, the state will encounter tremendous difficulty in keeping order. Like I said in the essay, I use the term "civil war" as a placeholder because it's not as easy to use the term "low-intensity conflict," which I think is a more accurate descriptor of what's headed America's way. I think France has been enduring a low-intensity conflict for decades and the U.S. is looking down the barrel of that now.
It's important to remember: there's no real order of events. We could go straight into the civil war, then when that dies down, it transitions into low-intensity conflict. Or it could go the other way. There's really only one reason why I think a civil war isn't going to happen and because of our aging demographics. If America had a surplus of young people, males especially, I'd probably be predicting civil war. Europe, especially Germany, is much older, so I find it hard to believe a true civil war will happen there.
Not sure what you mean by Betz being part of the plan. Certainly, the Great Replacement is real, but if you're suggesting Betz is a Regime plant or something, then that means someone on the inside knows they screwed up and are now desperately trying to warn people without having to come out and say it themselves.
Agree.
In terms of Betz, having studied civil war back in '07, there's a lot of [academic] literature on the subject. So maybe he's just the latest academic going viral (it happens). Or maybe it's an establishment attempt to get ahead of the narrative arc, to shape the discourse (like the Prof. 500k UK pandemic deaths modeling, by Prof. Ferguson). Or maybe, throwing the Great Replacement into the mix, the "plan" so to speak, might not be so linear and could include triggering social strife or "low intensity conflict", etc. This could usher in demands for greater policing and social control (like all crisis's).
Betz is honestly the first academic I've seen who predicts civil war in the West, at least in this level of detail. The only other academic who came close was Neil Howe and he was never as specific as Betz. Everyone else predicting civil war in the West tended to be from the prepper/survivalist community or a far-right ideologue.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist so I don't see Betz as being any part of any concerted attempt at triggering social strife or low-intensity conflict. The Regime actually wouldn't benefit from it. Though more plausible, I don't think Betz is part of some high-level narrative-shaping effort, either. However, like I was saying a few essays ago, I find it highly unlikely that *nobody* in the Regime is aware that the risk of civil war is increasing in the West. Also, given Betz is part of one of the world's preeminent academic institutions and in London, I find it highly unlikely nobody in a position of prominence has heard what he has to say.
Fair enough.
But but but. It's curious, in the sense, Betz's emergence makes it alright to talk about this topic now, on MSM and polite society, as opposed to only within smaller silos (as you said and I agree). Ideas need to be seeded to get action (or reaction or the ball rolling). The narrative of the risk posed by the far right, nationalists, christian revivalists, those opposing the replacement, etc, exists, regardless of the actual reality of it (the whole riots in the UK during the summer of '24).
Personally I don't believe in "the regime", just factions vying for dominance. And there's behind the scenes coordination by way of ngo networks, lobbying, money, etc.
TikTok was never about data privacy. It was (and is) about psychological warfare in the form of mimetic persuasion - and it’s effects are deadly. I don’t understand how/why nobody in the new administration’s orbit has been unable to make this clear to the public.
The administration has no credibility because it's not aligned with our keystone institutions. People talk about how people are losing trust in the institutions, but the fact is, most people still reflexively look to the institutions for wisdom. It's why I keep saying that David Betz is the best person possible to warn the West of civil war.