zazen

Red pill.

Foreign policy will most likely still involve carnage.

Funny how the people who claim to fight authoritarianism always seem to reach for authoritarian tools the moment someone says something they don't like. Time for liberals to plug out of establishment echo chambers.

https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1853903919350427993?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ Kamala staging a fake call to a voter lol. This week is gonna be a long year.

If you can control what thoughts can be expressed but claim your opponents are facists, who is closer to facism? If you are so afraid of authoritarian facists from ever being in power, why not defend the right to bear arms in case of this future tyranny? If cancel culture isn't real, why was JK rowling publicly shamed and boycotted for expressing her opinion on gender? If big tech doesn't serve a political agenda, why do we see a pattern of collusion suppressing conservative content, with twitter files being the most prominent? Historically, facist authoritarianism: - controlled the flow of information and silenced dissent such as the ministry of propoganda in Nazi Germany. - demanded idealogical purity and loyalty to toe the main narrative or suffer social or professional punishment. - took over eduction and culture instilling a narrow worldview through the a specific lens - which today is progressive - aligned with corporate power such as Mussolini's Italy - claims the moral high ground and convinces themselves their the good guys - claimed to care about the will of the people but sideline popular candidates for leadership which today is what happened to Bernie, Tulsi and RFK. The left warns of a hypothetical authoritarian right meanwhile employing tactics similar to past authoritarian regimes. Kamala literally flirted with the idea of mandatory gun buybacks and believes in equity which demands the continuous theft of producers to equalize the playing field. You think a country who's DNA was built on rebellion and being wary of government overreach is going to part ways with their means of protection from government? LOL. Classical liberals wanted protection from the state, and for the state to be in their service. Modern latte chugging liberals want the state to protect them from microagressions. Built different. There needs to be a balance.

Is there validity to why they think that? The above is what they're going off of. As we can see, the elections are super tight which hinge on a few thousands votes in swing states. If immigration is being increased to these states, for them to then be able to vote in the next election and with incentives in place for them to vote Democrat as they will be able to bring along their family more easily and have benefits etc then wouldn't that solidify a blue stronghold. Technically Californicating the entire country into a uniparty. Kamala Harris wasn’t even voted in by her own party, let alone the country. She dropped out of the Democratic primary before a single vote was cast because her support was embarrassingly low. The voters didn’t want her. She was placed on the ticket, appointed, packaged as the “historic” choice, and now we’re supposed to pretend she embodies the democratic will of the people? Democrats bend over backward to rig their own primaries, sidelining anyone who doesn’t fit the establishment mold. They did it to Bernie Sanders - twice. They push out dissenting voices, and use “superdelegates” to make sure the “wrong” candidate doesn’t get too close to power. They’re not interested in democracy within their own party, let alone in the country as a whole. But they’ll preach about it endlessly, pretending the right is the only threat, while they consolidate power through manipulation and procedural games. And they’re the same party that’s allied with big tech and corporate media to control the flow of information, to censor and de-platform anyone who challenges the narrative. They cry about misinformation and “protecting truth,” but what they really mean is controlling the narrative so that only their version of events gets through. If democracy is supposed to mean an informed public freely choosing its leaders, what do you call a system where information is so tightly managed, where dissenting voices are so systematically silenced? That’s not democracy - it’s manipulation dressed up in democratic clothes. People raving about rescuing democracy really mean protecting their parties monopoly on Democracy. Mmmkay.

If you can control what thoughts can be expressed but claim your opponents are facists,who is closer to facism? The left have a blindspot to authoritarianism because of such flowery nice sounding language and rhetoric. The right does't have the institutional clout to impose anything close to authoritarianism whilst the left does, so the priority is reigning in the side that does. It's a counterbalance, not a call for the right to be authoritarian themselves. It's a subtle, insidious form of soft totalitarianism. They want diversity of colour but not of thought. It's like warning about a guy with a butter knife whilst another guy has a knife at your throat ready to cancel you for wrong speak or a microagression. We need to prioritise the danger. The establishment wants us to think right wing talking points are the danger, which have been institutionally and politically exiled until Trump came on board and Elon bought Twitter. The danger is in leftist ideology through the backing of institutionally captured levers, which have already set up a luxury penthouse in your brain from which to enact their regime. Modern totalitarianism is invisible. The left believes that because they dress their actions in the language of inclusion and progress, they're immune to becoming the thing they claim to fight. We've seen this before: 20th century regimes draped in red flags also promised liberation and equality, but delivered the opposite. That was the conclusion, to insisting on inclusion for the greater good. Gramsci is a key figure in mainstreaming leftism and Marxist thought in Europe and America. This is why lots of Dems have left the party. Perhaps they’re aware enough to see the actions of their own party, contradict exactly what their ideals supposedly stand for.

Gallup: Listen from 5:55

Just now:

Crazy this Tulsi podcast has over 8 million views. The first 10 minutes timestamp “ Who actually runs the government “ is interesting. Shocking to see how many Democrats are flipping faster than Trump flipped McDonald burgers.

US politics is wild

Insanely tight.

Smaller nations, much like smaller boats, are easy to navigate and more nimble. Larger nations and empires are massive cruisers bloated and slowed down by the sheer scale of their own ambitions. Scandinavia, whilst a admirable Viking boat, isn't comparable to the US which is a battleship cruiser. Smaller, more homogenous, socially cohesive high trust societies that organise well like in Scandinavia, with natural wealth (ie Norwegian oil) and elements of capitalism to ensure productivity and efficiency - produce a higher quality of life and happiness. This doesn't vindicate leftist politics and policies at scale, with many diverse interest groups competing with each other. Especially with a cultural DNA that is rebellious and suspicious or wary of centralised government such as that in America. The reason China is able to pull off a larger state apparatus is due to its cultural DNA that goes back thousands of years. Their conception of state authority is as a benevolent patriarch daddy, the gatekeeper of the mandate of heaven. Where as Americans view state enlargement and overreach like an abusive unrelated step dad. Their faith in a just government comes from their Confucian roots which emphasises civic duty and the collective, rather than the individual. This allows them to harmonise and not have such friction, especially around a more homogenous identity. A cultural foundation has to be there for such things to grow from more organically - otherwise their seen as an imposition, and the power of such state machinery is abused if there isn't much social cohesion to begin with. Because why would a bureaucrat care as much if they use the power of the state to torment their fellow citizens - if they don’t view them as kin (related in some way - we are naturally kinder to kin). Of course we’d say we should be, but tribalism is a hard ass instinct to rid ourselves of. Sweden has one of the highest gun crime death rates in Europe now and the right wing are gaining traction. Reality asserts itself eventually.

We have to look very clearly and not get lost in personalities and popcorn politics that each sides fringes inflame. It's about which mental framework (of each party) is more conducive to a productive society, and which stifles it. Trump printed a lot of money in his term, and made plenty of mistakes - this time around I believe he has wiser minds around him who want to change a status quo that simply isn't working for enough people who are betting on change, even if it means they invite a chance of some chaos. The two key issues are economic and security (border and domestic) - socio cultural issues are also important, but economics and security take priority. This is the problem of the left, prioritization. It's not that identity and inclusion don't matter - it's that they can't matter more than a society's foundations weakening, a societies bones becoming arthritic because its overweight from bureaucratic bloat weighing down its functionality and to which leftist politics generally adds to via expansion of the state. You can have the most inclusive team on the Titanic, but if no ones watching out for icebergs, everyone drowns equally. You can have ''soft on crime'' progressive policies, but what does this misplaced compassion matter if it renders the citizens incapable of walking safely at night, or the viability of a business staying open. For example - California reclassified non-violent offenses such as theft of property valued under 950 dollars to be a misdemeanor. This is the symptom of late stage empires in decline. When empires grow in dominance, power and abundance, this brings decadence. Decadence leads to delusions and the luxury of being able to play with immutable laws of nature (economic, behavioral, and in today's case biological). Decadence allows the denial of these laws, which leads to decline. It's where feelings matter more than functionality, comfort over capability, and equality of outcome matter over merit and quality. Resources not going to foundational issues but that instead go to managing microaggressions, DEI and the pronoun police - is decadent. Forget deficit spending, we are decadent spending, and the bills coming due - just ask Boeing who dismantled their DEI team a few days ago. Decadence allows us to ignore reality, but not its consequences - and the con in consequence, is that it's sequenced into nature, and asserts itself eventually. When the pie shrinks, it deranges politics and society. So the question is: what ideological framing underpinning each party helps grow that pie better. A society can't print its way out of debt. It needs to grow out of it. You can't print prosperity, it needs to be built. You can't legislate your way to abundance. Production, discipline and unity isn't just policy - it's survival programming written in the blood of every fallen civilization. It's the immune system fighting off the virus of decadence. Strength isn't optional and reality isn't democratic. Conservatism isn't a return to the past (although a faction do want to regress) its a turn to the past to see where we deviated and to remember what made a nation rise. The so called progressives ironically wouldn't have the luxury of dabbling in progressive policy if it wasn't for a more conservative past. But now we must revisit the principles that made a nation strong, and integrate them. It's about taking two steps back from the cliff of decadence and decline, so we can progress down the line. Any politics or frameworks that abides by the principles of what is productive yet humane, is the better one imo. If progressive policies work so well, why are countless businesses and people leaving California? Going to Texas and Florida. Why should those policies and the ideological framework underpinning them be scaled nation wide? Progressives believe in state enlargement , because their framework requires it - they enable a bureaucratic priesthood that regulates a nation into just being regular. That's what Kamala stands for - Keep America Mediocre And Lacking Ambition. Dems would rather have a department for the pronoun police whilst Republicans will have a department of government efficiency. A nation doesn't always lose its greatness by having barbarians at the gates, it loses it one regulation, one permit, one decadent policy policing human nature - at a time. America calls itself the land of the free- yet it's the country with the most laws. This is how the managerial / administrative / permanent state kills a nation. First, it creates agencies to regulate everything. Then it staffs them with bureaucrats who's job depends on them saying no rather than yes to things. Then they require constant expansion to justify their existence. Instead of governing, they end up suffocating and stifling. Businesses can't thrive in a maze of regulatory quick sand only corporations can afford to navigate. And the backbone and health of a nation is its middle class. A nation so obsessed with controlling outcomes regulates itself into paralysis. Americans need to remember who they are - citizens, not subjects, subject to a higher authority. The state is supposed to serve the citizens, not suffocate them. Across the pond in UK, we are subjects under the monarchy. Though rarely exercised, the King has the power to decline the formation of a new government during the tradition called ''kissing of hands'' where permission to govern is sought. Though only ceremonial today, it has a odd affect on the psyche of a nation. Trumps politics isn't a blueprint for the long term, he's more of a antibiotic to the current swinging of America into a state of unhealthiness. He can't be the lifestyle, neither can the extremist MAGA supporters be the base for the longevity of America. But imo, its a much needed correction to get back on course - the danger is in over-correction. If the Democrats could auto-correct themselves, things would have been fine, but the ideological capture of leftism prevents that - and it has seeped into the institutions which require deep work. This is the enemy within. The juicy part on modern day leftism starts at 33min, before that is the origin story.

Interesting:

“The function of agencies is to reduce your agency. That’s the link between something as seemingly trivial as killing an innocent squirrel and the unraveling of civilization itself. One might appear minor, the other apocalyptic, but both are driven by the same impulse: the impulse to regulate. Agencies are designed to regulate; the term itself means, at its root, “to make regular.” Having a squirrel as a pet? That’s not considered regular. And make no mistake—that’s what this is all about. Of course, the statists will insist on quibbling over legalities, debating who did or didn’t or should have had the proper license to keep wildlife. A license, after all, is just another permission slip from the government, a formality they expect you to obtain before doing anything outside the “regular” sphere. But that’s beside the point. The real reason we have these endless agencies, laws, and layers of bureaucracy is that if governments limited themselves to essential tasks, they’d quickly run out of things to do. And when that happens, people might start asking some uncomfortable questions, like where exactly that hefty cut of every paycheck is going. So here we are, with agencies grasping for purpose, justifying their budgets by meddling in people’s lives. They’re driven by a bias toward action—after all, inaction doesn’t give them power or money. And they lean toward NO, because YES doesn’t give them power or money, either. Can I launch a rocket? NO, it might disrupt a seal or endanger a shark. Can I paint my house purple? NO, it might affect property values. Can I create a bank account under a pseudonym? NO, it might help you evade taxes. Can I care for an abandoned baby squirrel? NO, it might carry rabies. The reasons they give are little more than a thin veneer of excuse, masking an underlying desire for control. When government agencies regulate everything, you’re left only with what’s regular. What everyone else does. It’s insufferable—and frankly, Patrick Henry would be up in arms by now, as we all should be. But it doesn’t stop there. This isn’t just high-handed or dystopian, or even simply tyrannical. It’s worse. It’s civilization-destroying. Why? Because civilization and progress are rare and delicate achievements, requiring a unique set of conditions. History shows that most societies have stagnated, spending generation after generation toiling in the same ways, struggling to subsist. Civilizational progress, that rare jewel achieved by only a few societies, requires an environment where trying new things is easy and free of friction. It demands novelty, innovation, the pursuit of the untested. Things that aren’t normal. Things that aren’t regular. And when everything is made regular, innovation dies. It’s not regular to keep a pet squirrel, just as it wasn’t regular to shine high-frequency radiation through people for imaging, or to channel lightning into experiments, or to treat infections with mold, or to attach wings to a bicycle and try to fly. Every innovation that has separated us from famine, poverty, and disease started as an abnormal behavior that made others uncomfortable. Liberty gives rise to technology, wealth, civilization, and quality of life—everything worth having. And bureaucracy takes it all away. In this case, that bureaucracy led to the death of a small, innocent, loving creature. Not just death, but murder—done with premeditation and malice. Peanut was happy, never having known anything from humans but love. Peanut, without a hint of malice, couldn’t understand why he was being taken from the only home he knew, to a place of execution. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He died confused, alone, and terrified—all so a few petty, spiteful officials could justify their jobs and feel important. The harm they caused may seem small in the universe, but it was not small in Peanut’s universe, and it can never be undone.“

Yeah definitely. I think the fringe fundamentalists of any group tend to dominate the conversation. Like most people aren't really opposed to religion but to fundamentalists, just like most aren't that opposed to liberals as they are to fundamentalist far leftists. Literalism and fundamentalism is a mind virus that can capture any group or idealogical framework, secular or religious. Moderate people, because their moderate, lose control of their narratives and ideas because the fundamentalists in their respective groups are so active and intolerant of moderation. That's why a lot of liberals distance themselves from modern day liberalism and identify with old classical liberalism. A saying that captures the difference: ''Old liberals wanted protection from the state, modern liberals want protection by the state.'' The problem we have today is bureaucratic bloat of a late stage empire. ''The bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the ever expanding bureaucracy.'' When it becomes more profitable to manage the problem rather than solve it, and theirs a whole web of interests who become dependent on the problem persisting for their own financial needs or wants - this kills a civilisation.

We can all unburden ourselves from the greatest burden Jordan Peterson says we should burden ourselves with

There are enough checks and balances to prevent them from doing anything crazy, which is why I'm not panicking in the first place. What people should panic about is the larger cycle of history we are in which no candidate or party can do anything to stop. The national security state and corporate dominance is a prevailing factor no party has much say in affecting change in, yet these two have much say in the lives of many, and not usually in their favour. Getting thrown a bone or two here and there and being able to make slight socio-cultural shifts is one thing, but affecting change in the state apparatus's war machine and corporate dominance is a whole other. This is why they always talk a big game about being able to make changes and being anti-war or helping the vast majority, but there are stubborn and stiff gears in the state machinery which prevents them from ever acting on that rhetoric. Any economist or business owner would shrivel up at hearing Kamala's economic takes. Unrealized gains tax and equity as equality of outcome will only have corrosive outcomes for the economy. They penalize success before its even realised, and disincentivize it to begin with.

True. The fear is overblown on both sides. There are enough checks and balances to hinder anything ridiculous getting through. This too shall pass. There are macro cycles we are part of that no candidate or party can change the course of, except maybe tweak what shoes are worn during the cycle.

Me critiquing the excesses of the left, and observing how this plays into a reactionary right who have their own excesses - isn’t me endorsing the right or overlooking their crassness either. I’m simply pointing out the rise of populism that is based upon economics as the gut punch, with cultural dislocation layered on top as the slap in the face. The whole left isn’t some caricature of “wokism” and neither are the whole right a caricature of some “ATV riding hillbilly” excited to show off his rifle. The institutional sway is clearly progressive. One side clearly controls the cultural narrative that is adopted by academia, media and corporations. Progressivism basically has an ideological monopoly over institutions that have an outsized, disproportionate influence. This makes conservatives feel uneasy and want to rebel. That’s why they celebrate Musk buying Twitter or The Daily wire being what it is - they’re building parallel networks because they feel the existing ones deviated too far from their core values. We are seeing a phenomenon we see in every empire that reaches a stage of peak prosperity of dominance and decadence. At the end of an empire’s cycle, we see moral experimentation, a loosening of boundaries and an indulgence in individual freedoms that can feel to some like chaos or “moral decay.” Societies at this stage of the cycle often spiral into divisiveness and moral fluidity. The difference is that while past forms of decadence indulged in an excess of the senses ie feasts and orgies in Rome - US/Western decadence is redefining foundational claims about our senses, about reality, about the reality of identity and biology. Another difference is that past decadence was an elite past time confined to aristocrats, today it’s mainstream because of media and institutional buy in which then disseminates this decadence. Promoting decadence is speed running a society into decline - I”m not a doomer nor a moral bible thumper, this is simply observational and has a causal chain that would make this post to lengthy to go into. The right’s resistance to progressive issues isn’t solely about hatred or bigotry either, although that exists in its extreme factions. It’s often about a fear of losing any sense of order or stability in a world that seems to be reimagining the very foundations of reality. That’s not an excuse for prejudice, but it’s a piece of the larger picture. When you push people’s norms to the breaking point, there’s going to be pushback. When you force one version of progress without a balanced dialogue, people dig their heels in. The paradox of progressive values - compassion, universal human dignity, equality - is that they have roots in the ethical teachings of Christianity itself. Christianity introduced these values to the Western world as a counterpoint to the more individualistic, honor-based morality of Europe’s pagan past. It’s as if the cultural left has inherited Christianity’s ethical framework but stripped it of its religious context, advocating for what are essentially Christian values without acknowledging their origin. They’re promoting an ethic of kindness, inclusivity, and justice, which were revolutionary ideas introduced by early Christianity into the hierarchical and often brutal societies of Europe. These values have secularized and embedded themselves in Western culture to the point where they’re seen as simply “human” values rather than specifically religious ones. Meanwhile on the other side, we see a similar irony among many on the religious right, particularly evangelical neocons. Although they claim to defend Christianity and see themselves as champions of “Christian values,” their focus often leans toward nationalism, militarism, and capitalist individualism - ideals that align more closely with a pre-Christian, pagan ethos of dominance and power. They embody the warrior ethic or “master morality” that Nietzsche described as characteristic of Europe’s pagan past, even as they claim the mantle of Christianity. In essence, it’s almost like a role reversal or a change in costume. The progressives have adopted Christianity’s ethical core but shed the religious shell, while many conservatives have held onto the religious identity of Christianity but seem to have embraced an ethos that often contradicts its teachings on compassion and humility. This contradiction is a fundamental part of Western identity: it’s a civilization at war with itself, torn between the humility and compassion it claims to cherish and the conquest driven, imperial instincts it can’t seem to shake. Western politics is a battleground between these two impulses, with the secular left pushing for the communal values rooted in the East, and the conservative right clinging to an identity it often doesn’t understand, mistaking power and dominance for faith. In the end, the West is haunted by the very ethos it borrowed and transformed. It’s a civilization that took on Christianity, tried to bend it to its old pagan ideals, and now finds itself forever in conflict between these two. And as long as the West clings to its myth of moral superiority while hiding its imperial intentions under noble rhetoric, it will remain a culture divided - struggling, as it always has, with its own reflection.

I think thats exactly the appeal of Trump - he isn't sterilised and scripted like Kamala but is more raw and authentic, even if that means people see him as an authentic buffoon. For the more logical minded who still vote Trump, perhaps they aren't voting for him as much as they are the team and party - they're betting on and hoping that Trump won't get in the way of the team doing some good work. Both sides are viewing this as existential, as the last vote for their party ever. MAGA - because Democrats will let masses of migrants in to legalise and vote for blue, solidifying the party for decades to come. Democrats - because they think Trump will go scorched earth and install some Christian Nationalist theocracy. There are extreme fringes on both sides, that both parties don't want to deal with and cater too, in order to secure election victories. But then those idiots galvanize the opposite side to go against them even harder and here we are in a polarized situation. The middle of both sides needs to get their houses in order. Aren't there enough checks and balances in the system to prevent what we’re all fearing the worst of anyway? America survived 4 years already.

What have the Dems become. From champagne liberals to campaign Cheney. Kamala - a prosecutor with a passion for putting people behind bars, cozying up with neocons who treats entire nations like cases to prosecute. Democrats have aligned themselves with the very malignant forces that wield power against people at home and abroad. Big tech, big pharma, big war criminals (usually bipartisan anyway) They use lawfare to silence dissent within their ranks. RFK, Bernie, Tulsi. No wonder people are jumping ship, including jumping states as Texas becomes popular. Californian cities have become a case study of haphazard progressive policies gone wrong. Their “Soft on crime” approach is negligence dresses up as compassion. Just a woke crusade, progress parade - but as deadly as a Cheney backed campaign. PS Trump is just as bad in his own way, including the fringe crazies of his support base. The only hope is his team. It’s X-men vs Ex Men - that’s what Dems believe right? That women can become men or that men can give birth 🫃🏻 The final time stamp on “the realignment” is interesting. RFK said that Trump admitted he doesn’t know what he’s doing or how to run shit and that he needs him on board to help.

Bret Weinstein (swung from Dem to Rep) was asked if he fears Trumps team will implode due to Trump being difficult to work with: Bret: That’s the fear that I have, believe me. I have all kinds of fears. I also have a good deal of hope based on a number of people who I now know, who know the man personally, and do not have this experience. So I’m hopeful that he is wiser than he was and that he sees that he has a historic opportunity. I fear what might unfold, but I think we have this incredibly powerful force in the unity movement that simply needs to figure out what happens post-election and exert the right kind of pressure. If Trump is moving in the direction of rescuing us from the peril that we find ourselves in, then the unity movement is an incredible tool that he should be able to utilize to do that well, because no president understands all of the issues that are downstream of their decision-making. So seeding the right people is obviously the way a great president is going to function. On the other hand, if he dispenses with, you know, Elon and Bobby and Tulsi and the rest of us, then this force is the most useful check you’re going to have, because frankly, we retain our ability to speak on behalf of, frankly, not just the American people, but the world has such a stake in our election. And most people do not have the privilege of being able to signal their consent or lack thereof, so the world is really depending on us to reign in the out-of-control forces that have taken over our ferociously powerful system. And I really see the unity movement as well-positioned either way. Tom: What do you make of the way that the political parties have flipped? Is there a game being played? Is this just sort of a natural ebb and flow? Because seeing Trump in a McDonald’s is just… for somebody that was, you know, growing up in the 1980s, like, that was not the vision of the Republic. Republicans were Gordon Gekko, and the Democrats would have been in McDonald’s. So what has happened? Yeah, I actually did a pretty good job, I think, on the last DarkHorse podcast of describing the dynamics that led us here. So I’ll do a quick version. What I think happened is the Republicans were the corrupt corporate party. They effectively represented management, and in the world that you and I grew up in, the Democratic Party represented labor, which was not without its corruption. Labor was a corrupt force too, but roughly speaking, the red team was management, the blue team was labor. The blue team was powerful because labor always outnumbers management by a huge margin, but management has a power advantage based on the concentration of wealth, and these two things were battling in our political landscape. Clinton, whatever it is that he may have been thinking, changed the Democratic Party. He effectively cut labor loose and made the Democratic Party into a second corrupt corporate party, which was superficially coherent because the way that some corporations want the body politic corrupted is in conflict with the way other corporate entities might want it corrupted, right? Do you want a workforce that you are entitled to make sick with bad drugs, or do you want a workforce that you’re entitled to exploit by virtue of their ability to generate wealth and be frozen out of the product of it? Those are two competing corruptions, so we had two corrupt parties. Labor was completely cut adrift. Anybody who wanted to get out of the corruption racket could have embraced the now-politically homeless labor force, but it never happened, and it was prevented from happening through the wielding of the idea of what I call the Lesser Evil Paradox. Anybody who tries to walk into this too-corrupt corporate party system with a party that just simply addresses the needs of average people is accused of electing the greater evil, and so nobody survives that accusation. Okay, so you’ve got two corrupt corporate parties, labor is unable to find a representative because the first-past-the-post voting in our system creates a two-party system, and if they’ve both embraced corporate greed, there’s nobody to speak for the people. And then you get a hugely unusual creature like Donald Trump, and what Donald Trump did was he effectively collected a large fraction of this now politically homeless labor movement and brought them over to the Republican party. So he was not a traditional Republican in any way, and he’s not an obvious working-class hero, but because he’s politically adept, he was able to capture this energy that existed in these now-betrayed laborers and to create MAGA and to bring them over to the Republican party. The Republican party now had a choice, which was to accept this and become a powerful political force at a substantial cost to their corrupt owners. Now that, of course, played out, and what’s happening now is that as this, as the Republican party now becomes a home for this homeless force of labor, it is driving all of the concentrated corruption, which is no longer just corporate. This now involves the Deep State and the neocons, and these are not inherently corporate corruptions; these are other kinds of corruptions, but it’s driving all of those things onto the one team. You now have Dick Cheney embracing the Democrats, signaling that this is really a pole flip in the political landscape. And now the question is, will the Republicans embrace their new role as a populist party and jettison the last of their corporate corruptors, which would make the transition complete? I would also point out, though, the final thing here is that originally, when MAGA was captured and named and brought over to the Republican Party by Donald Trump, it was largely a white movement. It is now, because of various forces, increasingly picking up a wide diversity of people, and it’s welcoming to them. What I’m really describing is that there are game-theoretic dynamics in our system which will actually, through relatively natural processes including corruption, cause this inversion of the parties. And it’s not the first time we’ve seen it; I mean, don’t forget the Republican party was born under Abraham Lincoln in a fight against slavery, right? So the party that fought slavery was dragging its heels during the Civil Rights Movement. Party inversions happen, and we’re watching it happen in real time by a mechanism that I think is surprising but relatively straightforward. Tom: All right, great explanation, knowing that we’re about to go through this adaptive valley. What is your pithiest appeal for people to vote in a way that will see us through this adaptive valley? Well, I think they’ve done us a favor by making this simple choice. It’s Nature’s way of telling us that that’s not the Democratic Party we remember and the diversity in every meaningful way of what’s taking place under the red banner does not tell us that the Republican party is going to become something honorable, but at least it opens the possibility of our moving forward in a way that is consistent with our open embrace of people across all sorts of demographic lines. So the concentrated evil on the one side makes the uncertainties on the other side unimportant. We should move forward in the one direction that can be defended, and then we should do everything in our power to make sure that it behaves as well as it can. We should be realistic; we can’t hold it to standards that it can’t meet, but we should offer our help, and we should pressure it to move in a direction that actually matches the values that all reasonable people actually share. This was really part of the message of “rescue the Republic.” When you get right down to it, we’re told we can’t get along with each other, but the amount that we agree on so completely dwarfs the part we disagree on that it makes things simpler than we are allowed to understand.