The “Camp fire” of 2018 spanned an area bigger than all of Silicon Valley.
In San Francisco, people got used to wearing masks very quickly. We hopped on the city’s famous trolleys, went shopping, and carried on as the ashes fell from the 30k acres of forest burning up north. I recall being at a rooftop party where people continued to smoke cigarettes by lifting their masks to do so — which I thought was ironic, and a little stupid.
The planet is beset by a much greater crisis. While most rational people sense the gravity of the situation, some will go to extremes to avoid what is right in front of their noses. They inhale and exhale the noxious fumes of a planet on fire, inequality, a virus, of economic paternalism, and create wild ideas as to their root cause — when in fact, our own apathy and ignorance has created the conditions for our demise.
Speculation abounds as to why the entire global economy has been shut down, where the virus came from, and who is behind it. There is far more complexity in this dilemma than most of us can integrate. I am not alluding to the Q-conspiracies, or to imminent UFO invasion or martial law. Hopefully, these kinds of ideas will recede with the virus.
To those who purport to “know” what is going on — who think the rest of us dull, naive, or of “lower frequency,” we can offer our understanding. When people grasp at the irrational to sort out their own heads — they deserve kindness, not derision. We know from history that anyone who claims certitude about theoretical matters, be they religious or scientific or otherwise is likely uneducated, or merely narrow-minded.
We know that humans are prone to believe anything so long as it suffices to explain everything. That is, of course, the DNA of Judeo-Christianity and monarchy in Western society. We want there to be a big, all-encompassing monolithic reason for all of this. Adopting scatter-brain ideas about the end of the world and economic disaster is more accessible than accepting how little we do know.
Out of fairness, the odds are against the ordinary person. Consumerist culture and globalist propaganda tend to encourage false beliefs about everything under the sun. Problems, like pork dumplings, should be wrapped in plastic. The artifice is real; the Truman Show we live in is an acceptable alternative to reality on its own terms. Who would want to live in such a stark world? The fetish with “human optimization,” supplements, hair replacements, and fad-diets will hopefully die off with the virus as well.
There is rampant speculation as to what is “behind the virus.” Incomplete, dubious, and often completely erroneous information is circulated with great velocity. Manic speculation gives way to paranoia. Our heads spin as we weigh the diverse factors and unexpected developments that come every day. Naturally, we seek to alleviate uncertainty. We wonder if we have the capability to successfully contain and eventually defeat the virus. We are up at all hours of the night, wondering if we have the gumption to create a society in its aftermath that is worth living for.
Building a new, sustainable economy will require people of sound mind and courage. These individuals will arise hopefully in a meritocratic way, not vetted from amidst those who believe in a “hierarchy of higher or lower vibrations and frequencies.” Whoever steps up will likely do so without stepping on the head of someone they disagree with.
Quack science, public hysteria, intellectual apathy, and emotional irresponsibility are the root cause of what appears to be a uniquely American form of paranoid delusion.
Conspiracy theories are almost never erudite. Endless abstractions that do not accord with the rational experience of the world are not helpful either. Both serve to worsen the fears of frightened people. Telling them that if they do not agree with you, they are “zombies” is not exactly enlightened no matter how “high your frequency” is.
More than ever, we must think very deeply about our world, which appears to be coming apart at the seams. It is now, in this age, in this dilemma, that we see how a lack of critical thinking in ordinary persons is the single most dangerous deficit to clarity and progress.
Living through COVID-19 certainly feels like wading through the “fog of war.”
Certainly, this is not the first time that a calamity of immense proportions has happened, engrossing civilization and every individual in it. While we might think there has never been a crisis so convoluted or confusing — many tactics being deployed today have been used before. When the monolithic nature of our institutions is challenged, we might be tempted to think that solutions will arise from one person, sect, or ideology. Yet, the solutions arise from our own understanding.
Only through an appreciation, or for some an education on how asymmetrical history actually is and the competing ideologies that comprise it — will we find the winding path out of the dark wood.
As an intelligence analyst, it is only natural to think about our adversarial capability and intent during the crisis. We do this to reduce the fog of war, not to uncover more arcane notions of what might be going on in an alternative universe.
Over one hundred years ago, Antoine-Henri Jomini argued that war or crisis could not be quantified or reduced to logistics alone. Maps, statistics, and graphs can only provide so much context. The comparison to the dilemma we presently face should be obvious — in that the pandemic’s overall effect on globalism cannot be easily reduced to a dashboard or set of numbers touted by one expert or another. Nor can it be explained away by quasi-apocalyptic notions or “end-time” mythologies.
We are indeed at war, caught in the deep fog that obscures just who we are at war with and why. With even the briefest of introspections, we realize that we are at war with ourselves.
The reader is likely familiar with the famous moral dictum — “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” Clausewitz was contemporaries with Jomini. From history, we know that war is ever-present in one form or another. Politics for Clausewitz is not the absence of war — it is its continuation. At the base of any political reshuffling of power are ages-old struggles between two preeminent ideologies.
Global competition between sovereign governments abetted by wealthy elites and their corporate entities is a continuance of a perpetual political battle for ideological supremacy. On one side, you have revolutionary, statist central control and on the other — sovereign, democratic freedom. The “invisible war” between these two camps is coming to a crescendo, and it is We, the People, who are in the middle of it all.
“Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts, and spirits cannot be found out by obtuse calculations. It must be obtained from the people who know the conditions of the enemy.”
Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
Of course, there are factions who will use the crisis to forward their agendas. Neither is wholly “good” or “bad.” However — the path of freedom for all human beings, the sacred law that bestows individual and equal rights to sovereignty and protects personal agency cannot, and should not be discarded so easily. As we emerge from quarantine over the course of the next few weeks and months, we will find ourselves in a new world — one very different than the one we thought we inhabited.
Like every single instance of tyranny before, chaos will be the murderer of reason, and midwife to totalitarianism.
Politics and power will undergo an important and massive transformation. Indeed, the Statist neo-liberal camp wants us to believe that globalism is without flaw, and the world order can be achieved — and should be urgent. While the Right wants us to think that our doom and loss of liberty is imminent, and being orchestrated by those self-same globalist technocrats. Do not think for a moment that the cacophony of conspiracy theories is unintentional. The strategy is to leave everyone but those “in the know” confused and on their back foot. Similar to the self-absorbed lover that keeps her mark off balance all the time to retain power — narcissism is identical in politics.
Given free reign, a new techno-paternalism will institute a wholly undemocratic surveillance culture of vaccines and digital health certificates and RFID chips. They will take every bit of advantage available to them just as they have with our private data.
People are, of course, up in arms about both possibilities. Rightfully so.
Most of us do not understand the history and are generally irrational. When one does not know the value of something — they either massively overestimate the price of it or give it away. Simply put, it would not require much for tech companies to put the collar around our necks. Consumers are already the unwitting pawns set on a chessboard, the size of which no one knows. Who the Queen, King, or major players are is a matter of incessant speculation.
The analogy is an accurate one. In the absence of a parochial framework of a monarchy — people are lost and stupefied. This, too, is only natural, because the bestowal of liberty is not a one-sided ticket. The price of liberty is a profound appreciation for it and a desire to protect it — at all costs.
The victims of this war will be working-class human beings. Consumers who unwittingly bet the war against themselves by consuming all manner of media, mayhem, and material.
The connection between American leftists, technocrats, and China is not tenuous. This is exactly why the right-wing is weary of the U.S. left flirtation with socialism, political correctness, and the tech supremacy that erodes private freedoms. China has a patent for this kind of societal paradigm. It’s called the social credit system.
Tech entrepreneurs tend to be very liberal — among some of the most left-leaning Democrats you can find. Yet, tech entrepreneurs deviate from Democratic orthodoxy and are closer to most Republicans. They are suspicious of the government’s efforts to regulate business, especially when it comes to their labor pools. They say that it was too difficult for companies to fire people and that the government should make it easier to do so. However, they are overwhelmingly in favor of economic policies that stink of socialism — the redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, and lots of social services for the poor, including universal health care and income.
If any group is complicit and partially responsible for the globalist battle for the human soul, it is technocrats, particularly those with a neo-liberal agenda.
We needn’t guess at how both groups may use COVID-19 to shift the geopolitical balance in their favor. Just as the Chinese have clearly used the virus as the ultimate weapon of opportunity, so too has the global elite seized the moment to institute what could amount to a war on individual rights and human agency.
These two factions are a clear and present danger to the individual and her rights.
I recently asked several colleagues to consider for a moment the connection between the Belt and Road initiative and the spread of the virus. China has long been buying up ports in Greece and Italy. Italy is a weakened country gutted by corrupt bankers and desperate for investment. Iran is a great place to stoke anti-American sentiment and find allies interested in undermining western values.
Here’s what I discussed with my colleagues:
It seems to me that China, by the din of long perfected soft power tactics and regardless of its horrendous civil liberties record, will ascend to power in the next five to ten years. They will do this through a mix of technology, synthetic leverage, and by gaining massive infrastructural acquisitions when debtor countries default on loans. They will achieve this status through the repossession of distressed assets sold across Europe and Africa, a mix of supply-chain economic moves supported by the Belt & Road initiative, and the rise of its own tech class increasing the spending power and size of its small middle class. Keep in mind, a Chinese middle-class doesn’t have to look like ours, and the Chinese people will put up with a lot more for handbags, shoes, and luxury goods.
Of my colleagues, one is in the topmost bracket of global banking, managing some 5B in funds, another is a former NSA official who was situated as the go-to guy on open source intelligence during Iraq. For good measure, I included a filmmaker from noted and very wealthy European family who have been in capital markets for a very long time.
Before I share those insights, it is important not to apply a “western lens” to the Chinese. The Chinese are reticent to outside control, and their insularity is well known.
The CIA notoriously failed to infiltrate China in the 40s and 50s. China repeatedly jailed, tortured, and assassinated our operatives since then. According to an investigation by the New York Times, the government of the PRC was able to either kill or imprison 18 to 20 C.I.A sources from 2010 to 2012; an article in Foreign Policy cited a higher number, putting the number of sources killed at least 30.
“The general use of the military is that it is better to keep a nation intact, and defeat it by subterfuge and guile than it is to destroy it and lose its value.”
The Wei Liaozi
“Practicing martial arts, access your opponents, cause them to lose spirit and direction so that even if the opposing enemy’s army is intact, it is useless.”
Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
Chinese ascension doesn’t have to look like the triumph of Capitalism, in fact, why would it?
A Chinese superpower will demonstrate the superiority of state control, suppression of civil liberty, and mixed market frameworks. I call this the “Walmart effect,” whereby it is nearly impossible to achieve leverage against them. If one doesn’t do business with them, then one loses access to global markets. Keep in mind, it may prove ineffective for China to retain this kind of leverage in the long haul. Global power requires complicity. Some analysts believe that China and the U.S. have “agreed” to be complicit in one another’s foreign affairs, which conforms both to Chinese “soft power” and its long-standing attitude of containment.
A former NSA official who for obvious reasons, prefers to remain anonymous said:
I think that China is a threat to people, but as a sovereign nation often is. I do not single them out or see them as any more deadly to U.S. citizens than the U.S. is deadly to U.S. citizens. China has been the next country to infiltrate Africa for exploitation. China has instrumented its technology to spy for them. The U.S. did each of these things before China, the U.S. taught them. This is not about China, but about the lack of control citizens have over the actions of their sovereign governments, generally.
My opinion is that vibrant middle classes make superpowers. Even with all of its military might, the Russians decline as a superpower tracked with the decline of its middle class.
Or, another way, there is a band of income inequality that a superpower can live within. China is below that band and moving into it, hence China Superpower 2032. Russia moved below the band 2 decades ago. The U.S. has chosen to move above the band and hence is also declining as a superpower. So, a nuclear power with a vibrant middle class (low-income inequality ratio) = superpower. The ability to project global power in a stable manner (economically and politically) = superpower. I think it backtests well and explains our current state reasonably well.
We tend to focus on the actions of superpowers, not the structural elements of their existence. — I made this argument in school and was given a C. :-)
Think about Rome. Able to project power globally as long as their middle class was thriving. North Korea today, with or without a nuclear weapon, to unstable politically to project power — inequality too high. The U.S. has just as many nuclear weapons as it did before I.Q. 45 took office.
Yet, we are declining as a superpower. Too much income inequality and political instability. Thriving middle classes mitigate that instability.
The insularity and synthetic leverage are why it can “manufacture” a middle class so quickly. Currency manipulation sure helps. Controlling the information flow to the citizenry sure helps. Russia tried the same thing without supporting the middle class, they created an economic oligarchy so Putin could retain control — as in fail.
Can you be an global superpower without a constant influx of investment money from other nations?
You can’t get that investment with political and economic instability — hence need for a thriving middle class. China is ruthless, not dumb. Our current government is ruthless and dumb — a very bad combination.
Economies and governments can distribute pain or wellbeing. I’m not certain a one-world government would be inclined to distribute wellbeing.
My banker friend, whom lived and worked in China for nearly fifteen years — had this to say.
We have been talking about 2032 China for 5 years. You just start listening or penny just dropped?( The part you left out is ) America’s role in its own destruction — once we crossed the rubicon of 56–58% of people who take money from govt either as a salary or food stamps etc. This flirtation with communistic ideas is not only fool-hardy but plays right into their hands. Meanwhile, the (American) bureaucracy has to feed itself and will never knowingly kill itself- so keeps voting in higher taxes until people literally walk away much as they did in Rome in 330AD. Once we lose faith in our government and our Fed ( which is starting to happen as we write), that is the beginning of the end — — but we got time, cause the E.U. is going to blow up first and prove to everyone that they better get ready.
Another colleague suggests that China and the U.S. have been colluding behind the scenes for the last century, that the Chinese have simply capitalized on their unique economic status, first as a developing nation and second as an emerging superpower taking advantage of the Nixon and seven succeeding administrations lavished aid, trade, investment, civilian and military technology, intellectual property, economic and military advice, and access to international institutions to help China re-create itself. The West would also gain access to the huge Chinese market.
Notably, my friends in Intelligence and banking were both keen to note that the American middle class has been diminished and bears a great deal of responsibility. Many of my old friends from Silicon Valley believe that the U.S. private sector will prevail and that the Chinese will never ascend to superpower status.
The truth is that we do not know.
The erosion of rights and the continued decimation of the middle class here in the U.S. is of prime concern because, in their absence, new paternity must be found. The U.S. divorce from monarchy two centuries ago is not irrelevant. Traditionally, the security of the person was secured by a monarch whose sole function was to represent and uphold the law of liberty. This paternalism endured for nearly ten centuries across Europe. Christian theocracy has always been a counterpoint to communism because of the contrast between binary and dualist Judeo-Christian values and those of a non-dualist, “asymmetrical East.”
Those in power might loathe to admit it, but masonic reality, couched in the rituals of ancient and bizarre arcana in which the human being and body were seen as a divine receptacle of logic, has been replaced. Pragmatic techno-monarchists and the Chinese state see the human being as essentially a Duracell battery with a biographic history easily entranced by globalist propaganda.
The question before us is this. How can western corporates and globalist elites facilitate middle-market growth and curb existential threats to personal sovereignty and human rights withoutimposing proto religious tech-paternalism on the People?
I return to that autumn day in San Francisco, skies blotted by smoke, catching the trolley to ride to a party.
How much can we get used to?
What is becoming ever more apparent is that there will be no going back to “normal.”
Ever.
When asked, “Why bother to help the ignorant of the world?” by Mara, the tempter, the Buddha answered — “There are a few people for whom the ash on their eyelids is not so thick as to have shut their eyes entirely.”
Let’s hope he was right.
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