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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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What's going to be the big apocalyptic struggle this election?

I wrote a piece over at my blog about how at this time in 2020 we were already in "2 Weeks to slow the spread", were about 1 month out from the first anti-lockdown protests, and 2 months out from the Summer of Floyd.

It seems obvious to me that all the chaos in the wider American empire concentrates around election years and seems to have the oxygen sucked out of it on off years.. 2020 is obvious, 2016 was only slightly less history changing, and even the 2008 financial crisis was an election year event.

There's a lot of really obvious candidates: Ukraine could go south really catastrophically really quick; the middle-east is speculated to kick-off with a potential Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and going shearly off the numbers the US southern border is one of the largest population transfers in human history with few precedents since WW2 or the even the 4th and 5th century.

But I don't know, maybe it's my mind trying to fit things too neatly to the 2020 framework... it feels like the election hasn't started yet, it feels like there's some shoe to drop or issue I'm missing, something as far from public consciousness as Immunology in Jan 2020, or racial politics in March 2020...

I can feel this massive issue just behind my peripheral vision that's about to draw all my attention and require its own Motte containment thread, and that will devour the media and twitter, for months on end.

I feel like there's this huge world shattering issue that's about to explode and within the next few months I'll be lamenting that I only have 24 hours in the day to read enough about it, convinced that it DEMANDS every second of my attention.... And I have no idea what it is?

-Is Trump going to die?
-Will a Nuke Launch?
-Is China about to take Taiwan?
-Are all those Chinese and foreign nationals on the southern border about to start targeting power infrastructure?
-Is there about to be a financial crisis?
-An "Internet Lockdown"?
-Hot ethnic cleansing in Europe?
-Global food chain collapse? .

Give me your best guess.

What will be the major containment thread at the Motte between now and election day?

I sincerely doubt anything is going to happen in 2024. The powers that be (TPTB — the PMC elites) simply don’t want anything to disrupt Biden’s chances of winning a comfy re-election. So nothing will happen. “It’s the economy, stupid” all the way down. Don’t be surprised to see the DOW approach 45000 and the S&P 500 approach 6000 this year. As long as Number Go Up, the typical voter will allow any demented meat puppet (Biden) to remain in office.

You point out 2008 and 2020. Those were the last two election years involving a Republican presidential incumbent. TPTB wanted to change to a PMC Democrat, as part of the long-term, Davos-approved plan for managed decline in the West. So, lo and behold, we got the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 (talk about a September/October surprise!) and we got COVID Floyd in 2020. TPTB overestimated its chances against Trump (as well as Brexit) in 2016, and 2012 was a rare election when TPTB would have been satisfied with Romney as much as Obama.

The idea that "TPTB" can control literally everything, including wars, social unrest, pandemics, the stock market, and inflation, in order to ensure that the person they want gets elected, is an Illuminati theory. And somehow the same people who also believe that TPTB are incompetent idiots mismanaging literally everything manage to believe both these things.

everything, including wars, social unrest, pandemics, the stock market, and inflation

That's not everything. The last 2 are the same thing (the economy). All of these things can be (crudely) controlled.

And somehow the same people who also believe that TPTB are incompetent idiots mismanaging literally everything manage to believe both these things.

It's kind of the paradox. Not that mind-boggling of a belief tho. There are very smart people out there who think that a computer program answering cues can 'become intelligent' and take over the world as well.

Why would not-very-competent people who have a lot of power not use the technology of the day that actually works decently at modelling complicated phenomena to push for certain outcomes?

Do you genuinely believe the covid psy-op was organic? That the blm reversal 'actually you can go outside for police brutality protests' was genuine? That the pivot to Ukraine when the covid thing became too embarrassing was pure coincidence? That the pivot to Israel was also pure coincidence?

Or do you wonder why all these powerful people lied so much? With lies growing larger as time goes?

I don't know what it is to be honest. Were they trying to take out Trump because he really was threatening their system despite their mostly-successful blocking of his policies? Was it a way to cover up the last 30-50 years of failed foreign policy in the Middle-East, or just some kind of test, to see if people were ready to accept 'government says you can't enter this building at this time, thank you for your obedience'?

There is a paradox of competency. Clearly letting in millions of Central and South-Americans is not going to improve the general competency of the country. Planes are gonna start falling off the sky, bridges collapsing, trains derailing, towers getting smashed into...

Who could have predicted that sending gender studies majors to teach Afghans not to be sexist would not work? To be fair, with a few billion dollars and another couple decades I think it would have worked. In the mean time that's a nice way to secure employment for party-loyalists.

That the pivot to Ukraine when the covid thing became too embarrassing was pure coincidence? That the pivot to Israel was also pure coincidence?

Since those "pivots" had their timing fixed by Putin's invasion date and Hamas' massacre date, and since I'm very confident the US Deep State or whoever isn't collaborating with them, I'm going to have to go with OF COURSE. Putin's "de-Nazification" excuses were a cover for "I want conquest", not "I want to do Biden a solid".

Good luck to you. I'm as big a Deus Ex fan as the next guy, but actual paranoid theorizing about how the world is controlled by a giant conspiracy against you is a really hard epistemic failure to break out of. Meds can help, but of course that's what They would want you to do...

I'm very confident the US Deep State or whoever isn't collaborating with them

I would cautiously agree with you on that, contradicting evidence may come forward in the next few decades. I wouldn't say that about the previous conflicts with ISIS or Al-Qaida. What TPTB control is the media coverage, the foreign policy...

The previous EU and US response to conflicts on Russia's borders was not as dramatic.

actual paranoid theorizing about how the world is controlled by a giant conspiracy against you is a really hard epistemic failure to break out of.

It actually gives you some decent heuristics.

Meds can help, but of course that's what They would want you to do...

Is it? Was there like a multi-year media blitz to have people take meds or something? Schizos would have you believe that governments can just shut down borders and make you stay home and make you lose your job if you don't take the meds, but we all know it's impossible to ever close borders, and nobody would ever be able to coordinate such things.