There’s a Crown Lying in the Gutter
Will someone reach out with a sword, and pick it up?
I was alone in the gym, save for three high school boys. One of the zoomers was known to me. A year ago I taught him how to deadlift, after I’d set down the bar to the sound of applause. “Your form is perfect,” he said. “Teach me.” So I did. Over the last year I’ve watched him fill out – shoulders broadening, posture improving. Once he showed me stretch marks on his lower back; they were from gaming, he said, too long spent hunched over a console controller, and a common deformity among boys his age. He doesn’t hunch anymore. A few months ago I recommended he add heavy singles, when his bench press progression was stalling out. He proudly told me he’d just benched 245 the week before.
Out of nowhere, the boys started discussing the desirability of performing ballistic neurosurgery on the costumed drama teacher scuttling about Parliament as he scuttles the country.
“My dad says I shouldn’t say things like that,” he laughed ruefully. “Our phones are listening.”
“They are,” I confirmed, “It’s probably fine, but you should still be more careful. Besides, this is a civilized and orderly country. Such things must be done officially, through legal channels. Military tribunals, followed by the gallows. All nice and proper. That is the way we do things here.”
Teenage bravado is nothing new. But I do not remember my high school friends taking any interest in politics when we were that age. To us, politicians were dull and distant non-entities, of no particular consequence to our lives. We ignored them, save to roll our eyes now and then. Girls, music, weed, cars, beer, sports – these were the things that mattered.
The social mood has changed.
I’m sure it isn’t merely the Rainbow Princeling’s simpering Backpfeifengesicht that lit this smouldering fire. It isn’t even the hygienic tyranny he gleefully subjected them to, the years of lockdowns and Zoom school and masks and forced injections ... although all of that no doubt looms large in their minds, the distilled essence of stolen childhoods spent trapped in basements with an Xbox and a Steam account in place of a life. The Princeling is merely the human representation of their oppression. This generation of boys has been relentlessly emotionally abused by the cooing apparat-chicks churned out by the ed schools: they’ve been gaslit that they are not oppressed but oppressors, racists, rapists, and settler-colonialists, while the girls they should have been losing their virginity to were yasslit into becoming tranissary tyrants and tormentors; they were forced whether they wanted to or not to bow to Dildolech and salute the Progress Pride flag; they were drugged to compliance when they failed to sit still and attend to their indoctrinations like well-behaved females. They look ahead and see more of the same, only worse.
They have every reason to be disaffected, and no reason not to be.
These boys strike me as being perfectly ordinary in most ways, and so I wonder – how many similar conversations are happening in zoomer group chats around the country, and everywhere else in the post-Western world? How many of these boys are casually joking about a return to the ground truths of the political? Intuiting that democracy just means counting raised hands instead of severed heads, that underneath the elaborate niceties of the institooshuns is the brute fact that all that really matters is which side has the largest number of violence-capable males? Friend, enemy, and are your friends more dangerous than your enemies.
Whether or not they’re ready to fight, and I do not think we are quite there yet, one thing is beyond dispute: they are not going to fight for Uncle Samantha’s Bud Light Military.
The Bud Light Military
Sing, o muse, of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans ... Thus opens the foundational epic of European civilization. Achilles is angry because his woman, Briseis, has been appropriated by Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks. He expresses this discontent by goin…
The military recruiting crisis is obviously driven by the demonstrable incompetence of political and military elites who so clearly despise those who die in their mismanaged wars on their behalf. It isn’t only an American problem. The already anemic Canadian military is experiencing an insoluble ten percent shortfall. The British military is similarly evaporating, and only managed to annoy zoomers by trying to pander to them with Fortnite and TikTok influencers; meanwhile the Royal Navy is having such a hard time attracting sailors that it is having to decommission frigates for lack of girlpower. Everywhere one looks in the post-West, young men are abandoning the regime.
To no one’s surprise, the recruiting crisis is particularly acute amongst the white male demographic. In fact the recruiting crisis is almost exclusively a result of young white men refusing to enlist, no matter how high the signing bonuses or how generous the benefits. Enlistment amongst blacks and hispanics remains flat as a board; it hasn’t gone down, but the financial inducements haven’t made it go up, either, despite all the diversity pandering.
Traditionally, white men have been the steel from which the spearhead was forged – they are vastly over-represented in the combat arms, and therefore also in casualties. The recruiting crisis therefore almost certainly means that the sharp end of the US war machine is growing rusty and dull, even as the logistical shaft – manned mostly by women and minorities, reliant on an industrial base hollowed out by generations of outsourcing and offshoring – grows worm-eaten and brittle.
The article in which officaldom admitted the awkward reality of white abandonment was written by a Pentagon knob-polisher who twisted himself into pretzels trying to insist that the crisis couldn’t possibly be a result of feckless command decisions throughout the Middle Eastern forever wars, or the vicious contempt the very modern major-generals have shown for their soldiers, whether with their vaxx mandates, their extremism stand-downs, their destruction of training standards to accommodate the sainted diversity (Ranger School: So easy a woman can do it!), or their prioritization of women and minorities for promotion at the expense of white men who can actually get the job done. No, the problem is ... right-wing media talking about these things, politicizing matters that have been declared apolitical, and thereby making the military look bad. Xitter wasn’t buying it; the author hadn’t taken fire like that since he was guarding opium fields in Afghanistan. He had a twitchy finger on the block button that day. Regime functionaries are having a rough time of it lately.
Reportedly one of the major factors driving the recruiting crisis is that families with long traditions of military service are now telling their sons not to enlist. Reactions on Xitter back this up. I lost count of the replies from vets saying that they’d served, their fathers had served, their grandfathers had served ... but that none of their sons, nephews, or cousins would serve.
This should be sending chills down the spines of the Beltway’s denizens.
Multigenerational military families are lineages that have been bred for war. Their ancestors passed through the abattoirs of Gettysburg, the Somme, the Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa, Chosin, Hamburger Hill, and Fallujah. Again and again they have thrown their bodies into the meatgrinder of industrial warfare, and again and again only those tough, mean, and lucky enough to emerge scarred in body and soul but still standing from the hails of bullets, storms of shrapnel, desperate bayonet charges, and shock waves sired the next generation of sons.
The scions of these battle-hardened bloodlines have silently withdrawn their support for the regime.
Do you really think that they are merely going to sit on the sidelines? That the problem for the regime is only that these young men will not offer up their flesh to Russia’s loitering munitions? These young men, that have had icy rivers of bloody-minded mayhem injected into their veins by the unnatural selection of six generations of mechanized warfare? Who are now sitting at home, bored, brooding, and angry?
Do you suppose that it is an accident that the Democrats tabled a bill to prohibit ‘paramilitary activity’? With the definition so deliberately vague that everything from a target-shooting club at the local range to going on hikes with your friends could fall under its remit?
Perhaps that bill is coincidence.
Perhaps, when these young men respond to the desperate appeals of the regime’s recruiters with cold silence and contemptuous indifference, this does not portend the return of the old, dark gods of the political.
Perhaps. But my mind goes back to the casual fedposting of those very ordinary zoomers in the gym, boys who I am quite sure do not come from multigenerational military families, who were not raised on war stories by hard men with thousand-yard stares, who did not learn the rudiments of marksmanship before they could read. If those boys are talking like that, what are their counterparts from the warrior class discussing?
Will Pixel Valhalla be the spiritual Alcatraz the regime needs it to be?
We will see.
But history is not kind to regimes that lose the mandate of heaven.
And, boy. Have they lost it.
Consider this recent survey1 of one-percenters, which drives home how much they hate us. It focused on those with postgraduate degrees and incomes in excess of $150,000, with a particular emphasis on DIEvy League graduates, and asked them their opinions on various economic and social policy issues.
Over 3/4 of the cloud people want to make it illegal for you to eat meat, to drive, to fly, to cook, or to light, heat, or cool your home, without first obtaining their permission to do so. In other words, they do not want you to be able to buy these things; they want to ration them. Mother Climate is angry, you see. The numbers in favour of carbon rationing go up to almost 90% when only the alumni of the rancid DIEvies are considered. A similar fraction thinks that meddling parents should have no say in the indoctrination of their children. Almost half hold that Americans have too much freedom – this at a time when the surveilled, micromanaged, overregulated, and heavily taxed Amerikaner2 has never been less free. It goes almost without saying that over 80% of them think that “Joe Biden” is a first-rate president; surprising no one, 3/4 of them think the economy is in great shape, because their personal finances have only been improving. Lucky them.
The poser elite knows full well that they are not elite in any intrinsic sense. They are not more intelligent or more virtuous than those outside the fat little cyst on the body politic that they inhabit. They got into the ‘best’ schools because they are legacy admits, or because they are women, or because they are diverse, but most of all because they are unprincipled sociopaths happy to agree with whatever honeyed lies they have to voice in order to squirm their way to the top. They were selected for their ideological compliance, not for their intellect, and they understand this better than anyone. Lying is, after all, the only thing that they are good at; they don’t tell the truth about that, either.
The only thing that makes them ‘elite’ is their position on the top, and they know that they do not merit those positions.
They know that they cannot competently manage the systems they’ve been placed in charge of.
They know that everything they touch turns to shit.
They know that they cannot generate wealth, only loot it...
... and destroy it.
They know that you know that they do not deserve to have the power and wealth that they enjoy.
That makes them feel small and afraid.
That is why they hate you.
That is why they want to punish you.
That is why they want sumptuary laws, which is what rationing meat, energy, and transportation is all about.
They need external displays of wealth to drive home how important they are. Since they cannot earn the loyalty of the people by enriching society, they will push the people down, impoverishing them in the ostensible name of Mother Climate. They will take away everything you have, all the technological fruits of mankind’s genius, either by making it too expensive for you to afford, or by restricting its use to members in good standing of the Inner Party. The ease and comfort of industrial technology for them; the squalor of Babylonian peasants for you. Thus, little poors, they will make sure you understand at the most visceral level the gulf that separates you from your betters. You will walk; they will fly. You will subsist on bugs; they will dine on filet mignon. You will freeze in the dark in a tiny pod; they will luxuriate in spacious mansions with heated pools.
It is not the most inspiring message, and indeed, the people have never been less inspired.
So.
There is currently a standoff on America’s southern border. The entity calling itself America’s federal government is refusing to enforce the border; as a result, millions of migrants have poured across, not only from Mexico or even from Latin America, but from all over the world – China, Africa, the Middle East. Many of them are young, male, and fit. Some suggest they’re just cheap labour. Some say that the plan is to pack the voting rolls and help fortify the upcoming election. Others, with an eye on the recruiting crisis, hold that the regime plans to offer them citizenship in exchange for service, sending them to die abroad in World War III while also using them to bring the hammer down on the despised Amerikaner at home. It would not be the first time Washington made use of foreigners to murder Americans other Americans did not want to murder: during the Civil War the North made extensive use of European immigrants, making up for a manpower shortage resulting from the reluctance of the homegrown population to fight in Lincoln’s unpopular war.
Whatever the purpose of the migrants, Texas finally had enough, and sent its National Guard to secure the border. They erected razorwire barriers, and even went so far as to evict federal personnel, who were being ordered to tear down those barriers as fast as Texans could put them up.
Inevitably, it went to the courts. As I write this, the Supreme Court has returned a 5/4 decision in the White House’s favour, ordering Texas to stand down.
Constitutionally, that was probably technically correct: the border, after all, is federal jurisdiction.
Politically, it was extremely foolish.
The objective reality of the Supreme Court is that it is just nine people sitting on a bench: four old and unreliably based white men, one of whom is gay, one old and very based black man, one ‘based’ (lol) evangelical AWFL with adopted black children, one Jewish lady, and two affirmative action hires, one a semi-literate Latina and the other a black woman whose profound stupidity is exceeded only by her preternatural ugliness. The Jewish lady, the Latina, the black woman, the AWFL, and the gay man banded together to discover that the unwritten penumbras emanating from the Constitution mean that America doesn’t get to have a border if it makes Washington sad. The first three voted exactly as one would expect them to vote: not being Americans, they are hostile to America. The AWFL, on paper, is a conservative, but voted with her ovaries when she saw the poor niños drowning in the river. The gay man is also technically conservative, but he is also gay.
The authority of these nine people rests on popular agreement that they have authority, that their opinions matter, that their decisions carry weight. It will be interesting to see what effect this decision has on popular respect for the court; it is worth remembering that the response of the universities to the Supreme Court telling them that they must cease and desist from affirmative action was to snicker and immediately and openly declare their intention to continue. If the enemy refuses to respect the court when its decisions don’t go their way, well... Sure enough, as soon as the decision was announced, social media lit up with calls for Governor Abbott to take the Jacksonian stance: “The court has made its decision; now let it enforce it.” After all, how many divisions do the Jewish lady, the Latina, the black woman, the AWFL’s ovaries, and the gay man command?
In principle, of course, the answer is: everything FedGov has at its disposal. Which, in principle, is a lot.
If Abbott refuses to back down, will the Feds give the order to open fire?
If they give that order, will it be followed?
We may find out shortly.
Who knows where things might go from there.
I sure don’t.
I’m just asking questions here.
Maybe nothing will happen. We’ve seen the tide rise before, and at the crucial moment, we saw the orange man lose his nerve.
But then again ... the social mood has changed.
We’re at the critical point of the Turchin cycle. Elite overproduction has run its usual course, and that overproduced elite has had the wealth pump roaring at full capacity for over 50 years. They’ve sucked out the marrow of the economy, and they intend to continue sucking until the host dies. Whether in America, or Canada, or Britain, or Ireland, or France, or Holland, or in Germany, they don’t bother hiding their contempt for the populations they rule. They make no secret of their intentions. They offer only dispossession, poverty, immiseration, and ignorance, and they are open about this.
They laugh about it.
They’re hated as few regimes in history have been hated. Their power is a mile wide but their support a millimetre deep; they are a tissue paper tiger.
As always at this point in the Turchin cycle, a rival elite is emerging. In this case it seems to consist of tech bros impatient with the inefficiencies forced upon them by the DIE cult, together with the large contingent of capable, competent Westmen that have been forced out of the institutions their grandfathers built to make way for the diversity hires their mothers imported. The former have money and some degree of institutional power. The latter provide the intellectual infrastructure, ideological framework, and propaganda. Their ultimate aims are not necessarily in perfect alignment, but both parties only stand to benefit from the removal of the parasite pathocracy, both are angry and hungry, and both smell blood in the water.
Aside from a few hedge funds and social media companies, and a vast proliferation of livestreams, podcasts, and blogs, the rival elite has almost nothing going for it to match against the vast resources of the regime – which has the military, the courts, the police, the academy, the legacy media, the NGOs, the global governance bodies, and most of the financial and corporate sectors.
Well, there’s one more thing. Unlike the fake and GAE imposter elite, whose status is entirely conferred by the authority of others, and who therefore fear competence, strength, and vitality in others, the rival elite has cultivated virtue. They have made themselves strong in body, mind, and spirit. They have spent years consciously swimming upstream against cultural currents that seek to drown their spirits. Unlike the weak, the strong do not fear strength; they seek to make those beneath them stronger, to lift them up that they themselves might be elevated further still. And so, their message is very different from the one offered up by the globaloid goblins of Davos:
You will find love; you will have many children; you will live in a house, with a nuclear reactor in the basement and two flying cars in the garage; you will eat the steak; you will build amazing and beautiful things; you will own your own life; you will be happy; and your grandchildren will go to the stars.
There’s a general staff and an officer cadre ready to go. What’s needed is an army.
It’s obvious where to look: those legions of disaffected zoomer boys, those kids with absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain from dismantling a system that promises them nothing but tfw no gf; young men with nothing to look forward to but getting shunted aside in school, work, and their very homelands in favour of the holy melanated Other; boys who grew up sniggering over the Tate TikToks they shared in their group chats as they ignored the ladyteacher’s shrill voice informing them about the latest update to the gender spectrum; kids who despite every attempt to crush their spirits managed to cultivate enough thumos to troll their teachers by singing Erika.
It’s just a matter of assembling the components.
There’s a crown lying in the gutter, just waiting for someone with the courage to reach out with their sword, and pick it up.
Thank you for coming to my FEDtalk.
My apologies for having been rather quiet for the last couple weeks; I’ve been working hard, I promise, on an absolute beast of an essay. It has been very painful, like passing a kidney stone, but it should be ready soon.
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With N of a respectable thousand.
To say nothing of the Amerikaner’s cousins in the other Anglospheric states, all of whom have it much worse.
I can tell you, as a lifelong Texan, that shit is getting weird down by the border.
I used to go down to Nuevo Laredo quite a bit for business, but it’s become way too dangerous in the last decade+. however, I still have friends who live in Laredo and McAllen. they all say the same shit: a constant stream of generic buses, migrants with pre paid visa cards, languages other than Spanish, non-profits and NGO’s occupying abandoned strip malls for 3-4 weeks to process new migrants etc.
the point is that this isn’t the border scene from even 5-6 years ago. the rumors going on now are that there is coordination between the cartels and the ngos/USgov. for what purpose, who knows?
I mean, the Texas border has always been a bizzaro liminal space, but now it’s evolving into something that’s closer to dystopian sci-fi. imagine the film Sicario where both the Cartels and the USgov are trafficking people instead of drugs. there is a crucial piece of this puzzle that remains in the dark. stay tuned…
When I read your stuff I get a kind of simultaneously sick and giddy feeling. I feel both less crazy and more furious; it's like you take everything I see, read, intuit, and hope, and make it visually tangible. And oddly, I can't thank you enough for doing so. In other news from crazytown aka academia, I actually had a straight white male student parse the term Nazi today, after I showed them that the swastika was actually an ancient Indian symbol and that in Sanskrit it translated to "to be good." He said, "Yeah, well people get everything wrong with their dumb Natzee talk. It meant National Socialist and they were trying to make Germany better." This was in a course on the History of Modern Art in a room full of dangerhairs! Whoa. It seemed to embolden the others. Later in the class another student said the work of Marcel Duchamp was "stupid and ugly" and "beauty has a purpose." The social mood has changed indeed.