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Could American social progressivism be (in part) an intelligence operation to create “defense-in-depth” against America’s weak points, akin to the cybersecurity or military strategy?
In cybersecurity, valuable assets are hyper-protected with multiple layers of security, so that if any layer fails the others may still hold. The idea being that the assets are so important to defend and attacks could come at any time (and with novel stratagem), so it is reasonable to over-defend it in many different ways. In the military usage, layers of physical defense are established so that one may retreat into another defense upon an assault, ensuring reduced losses and longer periods of defending. Another somewhat ancillary idea is “fencing the Torah” in Judaism. It is so important not to violate a Torah prohibition that “fences” are established to make even the chance violation impossible. Eg, the the rule to not even pick up a tool lest you accidentally use it which would violate the sabbath prohibition.
America’s weak point is clearly potential civic disunity which could result in balkanization along racial, religious, or cultural lines. In order to hyper-defend from that risk, you implement a social operation involving defense-in-depth where the majority constituents must necessarily deny their own identity and engage in ritual ”sacrifices” upon the altar of plurality (from Trayvon to George Floyd). This explains even the whitification of Asians: once they become significant enough to possibly lead to Balkan problems, you enforce the same depotentiation. Notably, it is not enough of a social defense to merely pledge allegiance to plurality, as that hardly changes someone’s psychology. You must actually make it a social ideal so that it is promoted and normalized especially among the young potential rebels, and that is in fact what we see — those most at risk for any potential rebellion are coerced into a Kaczynskian “system’s neatest trick” procedure where their very rebellion helps to solidify state security. Why allow “Antifa” their own zone in Portland? Because when they are doing that they are doing nothing serious. Along the same lines, see how valuable transgenders have been as a layer of defense: millions of conservatives hours are spent arguing against something that has a surprising level of state support, and millions of progressive hours are spent defending something that is historically and intuitively off-putting. Those are hours that are not spent on something actually valuable; transgender stuff is simply the most outer layer of defense against a possible Balkan threat, and if conservatives win there’s nothing valuable lost from a state security perspective.
As outlandish as it seems, I think this is possible. It would be par for the course for how intel agencies behaved historically — well before they had enormous databases of information and AI to help them decide state hyper-protection. We could imagine the team of hundreds of some thousands employed toward this objective at some intel agency: “how do we protect against the most cataclysmic threat for America?” They look at the cost and benefit with history in mind, with WWII’s staggering death toll and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in mind.
So the idea is that the powers behind the throne use woke discourse to provide circuses to prevent an actual threat to their dominance of American life?
All reports are that the intel agencies aren't insulated from woke discourse and the culture war, so it doesn't particularly work that they float it to protect themselves from attack.
Not to prevent a threat to the agency but to prevent a threat to American security and territorial integrity.
If so, it's their biggest failure ever; there's a serious possibility of civil war, and even if unrealised that threat is contributing to other threats such as a potential WWIII over Taiwan.
America has shockingly little threat of civil unrest for a 333 million strong country that is globally hegemonic. It’s our endless catastrophizing against potential unrest (an example of hyper-defense) which leads to our civic equanimity. When some people made vague gestures toward the possibility of legitimate civil unrest on January 6th, which was never actually a threat, their punishments and social shame were maximal simply as a way to deter even future gesturing.
It would take a fairly-major spark, yes. Here are some possible sparks big enough:
None of these is remotely a sure thing, but it's hard to rule any of them out either. Hence, serious possibility.
(And there's at least one other I know of.)
Frankly the USA lacks a clean racial/cultural split across demarcated geographies to let a proper civil war play out. Gretchen Whitmer isn't rallying Dutch-German Americans in the Midwest to take up arms against the New Englanders of Hochul. There are too few concentrated natural resources or geographies worth fighting over in the USA because it is so large. The most likely failure point will be race based riots collapsing a major metropolitan area totally combined with a refusal by a governor to send in the national guard or said national guard rebelling. Think full riots of BLM and Rodney King with 0 law enforcement for a few weeks. A spontaneous violent mob horizontally coordinated along racial lines for ease of identification just to wreck shit. Less armed factions battling street by street Stalingrad style, more Harlem Riots with more destruction.
Civil wars really require geographically consolidated factions free of any local element capable of resistance. This is especially easy when the state institutions are token rebrandings of existing tribal or ethnic power structures. When the state falls, the militias simply swap out their patches and return to their old ways.
I think that describes the Rwandan genocide pretty well, too- if perhaps a very extreme example.
Of course, the problem here (for the belligerents) is that defense against even a consolidated faction is really one-sided. 3 foot soldiers dead on national TV was enough to end BLM; how much worse for turbo-BLM in a free-fire zone? Unless the National Guard is defending them, but "government organization decked out in military gear shooting civilians" is the definition of civil war anyway.
BLM ended because the godzilla threshold for sending in the troops to quash rioters was breached. The riots could definitely have descended into haiti-level extortion rackets if the police never came in.
I don't doubt that cowardly looters would scatter at the first few dead, and reprisal raids conducted by amateurs are easily defended as you state. However defense of territory is never easy with multiple entry vectors, and territory can never be held in anarchic situations. A regression to defensible strongpoints with the rest being grey zones is the likely path for any conflict state with insufficient bodies and weapons to wage permanent war.
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