UPDATE: It's Time To Contemplate The Unthinkable
No amount of good governance can overcome civilizational suicide.
“It’s Time To Contemplate The Unthinkable” was my most-read essay ever, by a wide margin. None my other essays reached 1,000 views; this one courted over 4,000 views alone. I can’t express my gratitude sufficiently to all my readers, subscribers, and, especially,
. Him sharing my essay led to an explosion of subscribers, one which has yet to subside.Unsurprisingly, it generated lots of discussion in the comments section. I haven’t done an “update” post in months, mostly due to just how much there’s been to talk about, but I did want to do a follow-up to “It’s Time To Contemplate The Unthinkable” due to the sheer amount of traction it gained.
First up is
:Thanks, that was interesting. Broadly agree. I especially liked the Singapore reference. I used to live there, so I can really see the advantages, drawbacks and pitfalls of their approach. Lately, even Tony Blair has been quoting LKY and referring to him as his mentor. This tells me that Labour are going to go Singaporean on British people's arses.
I have long maintained, that if you want the sort of multicultural, multi-ethnic society that Western politicians long for, you can only keep order through draconian means. For instance, Singapore not only has the death penalty, but there is a mandatory death penalty for drug offences. Blasphemy (mostly of Islam) is illegal. There is no freedom of speech, offending another racial or religious group, or criticizing the government, can land you in jail. We can see how Britain is creeping towards that soft totalitarian model. When UK politicians said, that they want to build a Singapore-on-Thames after Brexit, they weren't joking.
I doubt Britain will achieve the results Singapore did. It has no interest in establishing genuine order. Instead, it’s establishing totalitarian rule-by-terror, privileging certain groups over others. The British regime’s aim is to eliminate dissidence entirely. Maybe it’ll succeed, but what it’ll become afterwards will hardly be a prosperous, just, orderly society like Singapore. They’ll find that the groups they privileged over the British aren’t the type to take orders from Westerners.
Next up is
:A radical change occurred for many of us sometime during the Covid madness. We experienced a moment, either overt or subtle, in which we became absolutely certain that a close family member would hand us over to the state. Someone who, "loves" you, and whom you love, has become so propagandized that sending you off to the gulag or the firing squad would be preceded by not a flicker of hesitation or conscience. That was an awful day for me. The world felt permanently changed. The only advice I would add to this piece, which others offer regularly in other forums is: get out of the cities if at all possible, and asap.
I feel the same way. 2020 was illuminating in many ways, revealing a lot about our society that was troubling. I often state that very few of us are true rebels; I’ll go even further and say anyone who talks loudly about being a rebel is, in fact, the biggest of conformists when push comes to shove. Rebellion isn’t a lifestyle, as our society has fashioned. It’s a matter of conviction, most of us simply don’t possess it. Worse, as 2020 revealed, some of us really love the government, because supporting the government gives us a feeling of possessing power we don’t personally have. The rest of us are just downright terrified of the government because we recognize how much power they truly have.
It’s why I disagree with Neil Howe, much as I agree with him on other areas, when he says we can look to 9/11 or even as far back as World War II as a sign that we can come together when needed. I choose to defer to recent history. 2020 was a legitimate stress test and America failed, quite miserably. I’ll leave the door open to the fact that a truly existential threat, like a foreign invasion, could unite us, but it’s not something I’m betting on. A foreign invasion is, as you might imagine, highly undesirable, but a country without a core demographic, a country with such low little patriotic sentiment and has engaged in so much self-hatred over the years simply won’t conjure up the will to resist. That’s what anarcho-tyranny is all about: breaking a people’s will to resist.
The only way for us to find unity ever again is for the two factions to fight, one side prevail, and everyone else brought along for the ride, with those continuing to resist either booted from the country or otherwise removed from society. Nobody wants to hear it, but that’s the only way these things go. Many Americans switched sides more than once during the Revolution based on who controlled their area of residence. Loyalists - those who supported Britain during the conflict - who chose to remain in the United States after the end of the war lived in misery. Remember that many families were split between the two factions.
What do you think would happen to today’s Patriots and Loyalists following the end of our next civil war?
We’ll call on
next:Great article. I appreciate how much you have thought this through. It is definitely time to contemplate the unthinkable.
To the defense of those who don't see civil wars coming; it's easy to understand the 'impact' of a catastrophic event, like a civil war. However, it is really hard to assess the 'likelihood' of a catastrophic event. Just because the situation gets worse, as we see it, it is still hard to assess 'at what point' is the likelihood 'high' (when most people take action). Most people are ill prepared when it comes to managing risk, and only manage the risks they've been told by others to manage (e.g. insurance, medication). But nobody tells people to manage the risk of famine or war.
Prepping is, first and foremost, an exercise in risk management. Civil war is something which falls into the “high consequence, low probability” risk realm. In other words, it’s the hardest type of risk to prepare for. But we all knew that. So I agree that you can’t hold it against those who don’t see civil war coming because even if it is, what are we going to do about it?
My issue is with those who dismiss it as a possibility altogether. There are many out there who believe the system is so stable and our society so unique advantaged that it couldn’t happen, at least not as long as they’re alive. I find this mindset as problematic as constantly screeching that we’re on the cusp of civil war or collapse, as many also do.
When warning signs converge with historical trends, it’s time to be on alert. That said, expect most people to be taken by complete surprise when it does happen. That’s just the way it goes, every time.
Next up is “Belte” (they’ve disabled mentions):
I appreciated your description of the gradual buildup of tensions and the abrupt ending of friendships or casting out of relatives. I think it has gotten much worse because we are arguing now primarily over the invasion of millions of people from other violent countries who are committing truly heinous acts against our people. I don’t think people would come to blows over past arguments over banal topics like tax policy (unless they’re borderline mentally ill). But when someone is supporting the side boasting that they are letting in millions of people who then are murdering and raping innocent citizens, I think it can get really bad really quickly.
I’m old enough to remember how heated the debates over whether we should invade Iraq became in the early 2000s. However, like tax policy, war is a political matter and is meant to be settled politically. Something like whether a country should have open borders is less of a political matter and more of an existential one, a question of whether the country should even exist or not. That’s not something which can be resolved through debates and voting. Really, are you going to rationally debate something like, “Can someone else break into my home, take my stuff, and kill me?”
What the U.S., the West, faces isn’t a political crisis. Not really. It’s a cultural, social, and spiritual crisis. We’ve lost our will to live. No amount of good governance can overcome civilizational suicide.
Belte continues:
It’s at an existential threat level and many people cannot remain coolly rational and talk things out. Also, you mention how there used to be a lot of racial violence a hundred years ago. I would put out that the clearing of the cities during the Great Migration and the “Great Society” was rife with constant often one-sided violence that was racial in nature. Now, with an apparent truce where Whites simply don’t enter “no go zones” or certain urban neighborhoods, there is less racial violence on the books. Yet, as we have seen in the last three decades, it’s always a short video of an arrest gone wrong away from turning into a riot.
We’ve been conditioned to believe division is a bad thing. It’s not, not entirely. All social orders involve some form of stratification, all societies see self-segregation occur. When you have two incompatible individuals butting heads, what’s the best way to deal with the situation? Separate them! Sure, it doesn’t resolve the underlying problem, but it at least it averts conflict. So why can’t the same be true of social groups? Getting any large group of people to live together in peace is a challenge. Getting large groups of culturally different people is even harder. The West has been playing with fire for years and it just might get burned this time if it keeps forcing diversity on everyone and everything.
Let’s hear from
:I am German, grew up with the most horrible stories of the aftermath of a multicultural society (todays Czechia), travelled extensively in Nineties Russia and partly grew up in the US. So here is my prediction about the US:
1. The US is not a country in the usual sense of the word. It is a continent with still lot´s of free space. It afforded the luxury to let her NorthEast go wild again as there was so much more agricultural space further West. (It´s an untold story but look at historical maps of NH, Maine, NYS and todays pattern of settlement)
Even when confined to its own borders, America really is more empire than any other system of governance. The federal government constantly attempts to exercise supreme authority over all its land and people, going as far as to try and dictate our personal lives when possible through speech and, increasingly, thought regulation. Even the idea that anyone, anywhere in the world can show up in America and become just as American as someone whose family has been here for generations is an imperial way of thinking, based on a belief that the state isn’t only the supreme authority in our lives, but that a society is built not around a people, as it usually is, but instead around a state. Put another way, a country is a people with a government, but America is a government with a people, if that makes sense.
Recent events also have convinced that few of us really identify or even want to be American. Many of us just enjoy the benefits of living here and would live elsewhere if those benefits didn’t exist. There’s a reason why empires need to be constantly conquering or warring to survive. Without anything to work or fight for, empires end up having to spend most of its time keeping the peace between the different societies that exist within it.
More:
2. The "tribes" aren´t strong enough for a real civil war. There are exceptions - the Appalachians come to mind - but for the most part there is not enough cohesion for different groups to go to war effectively
I agree, but I don’t see a “real” civil war happening in America, anyway. The civil war I see happening is basically a general breakdown of law and order. Organized warfare will be rare, at most limited to certain areas of the country. Regardless of why it starts, the civil war will be defined by widespread violence, with Americans turning on each other over political differences, or maybe any difference in general. Anything and everything will be potential for a clash.
Continued:
3. Nothing is more terrible than chaos. I´ve seen it in the Nineties in Russia where there were gunshots every night in the very center of Moscow. In the end people will accept anything as long as there is physical security.
I don’t know how Russia managed to restore order, given its size and population. I’d wager a guess that it’d be a taller task in the U.S., due to demographic differences and due to the amount of guns out there. That said, if the next civil war is indeed a widespread breakdown in law and order, there will come a point at least half the country will demand order be restored by any means necessary.
This doesn’t necessarily mean a dictatorship. But it does mean, at the very least, governments at all levels need to be willing to use all the tools in its toolbox to restore order and, more important, an end to anarcho-tyranny, two-tiered law enforcement, and the culture of seeing criminality as little different from bad weather. As Neil Howe explained, Americans will absolutely see the necessity of order and will craft a new culture based on following the rules.
Finally:
4. The US military and security establishment has lot´s of experience propping up military regimes in South America. In the end that will happen in the US as well. Naked violence condoned by a citizenry that prefers anything to chaos. Sadly that is the lot of multicultural societies. Chalmers Johnson has foreseen the end of the American republic and foretold it. Look up his books which he wrote 20 years ago.
Aristotle, Max Weber, Oswald Spengler, and Chalmers Johnson all agree: mass democracy leads to tyranny. Always. Why should America be any different? Whether it’s a successful dictatorship or not isn’t the point. The point instead is that we’re going to try. There’s just no other alternative at this point. Democracy isn’t going to be pared down. If you’re going to strip anyone of voting rights, people will rather just burn the system down and allow a dictator, theirs specifically, to run the show. That’s how things happen in the real world.
That being said, dictatorship by the Left and Right will differ. The Left will be totalitarian, seeking to control every aspect of our lives, social interactions, even our thoughts. The Right will be more order-oriented, but they’ll also be more concerned with weakening the federal government. Both sides will restrict our liberties as we know it today, we won’t be able to get away with as much as we do today, but the difference is the level of public order and the level of influence the central state has on our lives.
Last one, from reader
:One saving grace for the U.S. may be its federalized structure. The original idea of the framers was a confederation of (originally 13, now 50) largely independent republics with a relatively weak federal government handling only overarching concerns like foreign diplomacy and national defense, with each state being a “laboratory of democracy” in which different ideas could be tried as determined by the citizens of that state and the best/most functional ideas could then be adopted in other states. Rather than outright civil war you could have a “great sorting” where people move to states that comport with their personal political and social views and don’t have to interact much with (or be ordered around by) people who feel very differently. This would require a substantial weakening of the federal government (in my view a good thing, no idea why people think that things that work in New York should also necessarily be forced on people in Alaska) but would allow for different views to coexist at the national level while maintaining harmony at the local level. At this point it is hard to imagine the federal government to allow itself to be weakened to the point that the founders intended but if things get hot, perhaps people will take another look at how things were originally intended to work in this country.
Those in power never relinquish power. The federal government is never going to weaken itself, especially under leftist control, as it’s the faction which most favors centralization of authority. Yet weakening the federal government is really the only thing that can avert catastrophe. Of course, the federal government won’t go down without a fight, either. The Left depends on it being the supreme authority in our lives.
The only way the federal government can be weakened with as little bloodshed as possible is for someone already on the inside to gain power and use it to weaken it. It cannot be weakened from the outside nor by an outsider. Basically, a Caesar-like figure is the only way to de-fang Washington most peacefully and allow order to be restored. But that’s a talk for another time.
I regret I couldn’t highlight more comments. I’m blessed with such intelligent readers and every bit of engagement my pieces receive is worthwhile. Thank you for reading and participating in the discourse.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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America , and by extension most of the western world, is Rome sometime around Caracalla’s day. Due to multiculturalism (notice how it ends in “ism,” therefore marking it as an ideology), the advantages of American citizenship have steadily diminished to where it is becoming a burden, and not a privilege, to be an American citizen. This is especially true if you are a white Christian male. Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to everyone, thereby negating any real value in it. There was no incentive to pick up a sword and fight to protect Rome, and therefore become a citizen, because it had already been given to you.
In America, things are obviously a little different, but since the privileges of American citizenship have been extended to all, there is no incentive to strengthen the system, as you don’t need to in order to still retain the privileges it grants. There’s no give something to get something, and people can be easily influenced to adopt various positions that work against cohesion of the system. DEI is the prime example, and it allows short circuiting of the usual routes of gaining privileged access to our systems of wealth creation.
That said, wealth creation is running out of steam. America was not blessed by God, but was blessed with a continent occupied by militarily inept natives and a massive amount of untapped natural resources. Our economic thinking, and thinking in general, reflects this. The American psyche developed with the idea in mind that limits don’t exist. It’s been a blessing and a curse, but now it becomes a fatal weakness as we do not see the need to alter systems that have become broken. We assume there will always be a way out of a crisis.
The role of centralized authority is greatly diminished as well. For all the talk of the “surveillance state” and “federal takeovers,” it is very much an illusion. While it can be a drag these days to be tied to the American economy and government structure, the central government lacks effective means of guiding anything in the nation these days. Political authority is gone and the nation is too large and too fragmented to have enforcement of authority on any kind of national scale. Sure, the federal government can still make your life miserable on an individual level, but it has lost the ability to guide events. The out of control debt and political candidates openly espousing communist principles shows this to be true.
But the end to largesse in the form of residual wealth from economic activity in the previous century is coming to an end. The reason in part that prices are going out of sight is because there is no more “more” left. The idiotic covid relief sure didn’t help anything, but we were going in that direction anyway. It just sped things up. Of course, younger people who will not have a chance to benefit from what their parents and grandparents could will have to face the reality that it is all gone. Where do you go from there? At a minimum, they are going to care far less about trying to preserve any sort of social fabric.
Our civil war, which seems more and more likely (even though any sane person would never want to see that happen) is going to be one born of frustration. It will be the George Floyd riots on a national scale, war lacking a positive (in the sense of fighting towards a goal) ideology. It will instead be civil war for its own sake, somewhat like Yugoslavia. Ethnic fragmentation will partly drive it, too. When a system just runs out of steam, it gets ugly.
It would be really nice if we were not going in the direction of political chaos, but I’m not sure anyone could put a stop to it. When Kamala steps into the Oval Office as president (Trump will never be allowed to be president again), it might be the last time a person will be president over a united America. She sure as hell has no idea how to grapple with the slow motion train wreck we have going on now.
"a country with such so much self-hatred simply won’t conjure up the will to resist. That’s what anarcho-tyranny is all about: breaking a people’s will to resist."
My difficulty with this, Max, is that in the event of an actual invasion, the ruling class will get creamed. Let's say the Chinese decided to enforce their sphere of influence in Asia and take Taiwan. They destroy 2 Pacific fleet carrier groups, destroy Okinawa conventionally, nuke Guam, Long Beach, and S.F. and invade California. (No, I don't think it's wholly realistic, but it's an invasion example.) Governor Newsome will lose his hair gel, his assets, and likely his head. Our elites are historically and ideologically foolish but not stupid where their own interests are concerned. So what gives? Why promote a system that so obviously weakens the very social fabric you depend on for your continued uber-prosperity? I honestly don't get it. Or are they also blinded by "it can't happen here"?
Belte's comment is key to understanding the problem: "I don’t think people would come to blows over past arguments over banal topics like tax policy" I spend so much time talking about this with people who just won't get it.
It's the difference between means and ends. Tax policy is a question of means: we all agree that both inequality and inefficiency are bad, so how to we balance economic justice and productivity? However, what if someone comes along who says, "you know, I actually think inequality is a good thing and I want there to be lots more dirt poor people." Now you have a question of ends, a theological question: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/all-human-conflict-is-ultimately-theological/ Enlightenment, Lockean democracy, premised as it is on procedural justice and value-neutrality, is VERY ill-suited to theological (value-laden) questions. We're banging on a screw with a hammer, and if you do that long enough and hard enough, you will dent or break the hammer. That's what postliberalism is about: people trying to find a better tool than a hammer.