History interpreted as left singularities

History is one damn thing after another, and any attempt to make sense of it necessarily leads to leaving out lots of important stuff.  Thus making sense of it by looking at it in one way does not necessarily falsify making sense of it by looking at it in another way.

The trend from around fourteen hundred AD to the present has been for states to become ever stronger.  On the other hand, was not the trend from four hundred AD to one thousand AD. Of course, it might be a bad idea to bet against a trend that has been running strong for well over six hundred years, but here is why I am betting against it:

That trend, from 1400 AD to the present, has in large part been driven by what I call left singularities.  Leftism enforces ever greater leftism, so society moves leftwards ever faster, until things blow up.

Leftism is Phariseeism.  A leftist is supposedly holier than you are, and so you should obey him.  Leftists then compete each to be holier than the other, so Leftism’s religious roots are swiftly left behind, as leftism becomes ever more extreme.

The first leftist movement began as the false popes of Avignon, which became French leftism, which became revolutionary leftism, the red terror, and the war in the Vendee, which became Bonapartism,

Although the French Revolution was supposedly purely political without obvious religious elements, the war in the Vendee, and Napoleon’s war in Spain were openly religious wars.  The objective was to force the people at gunpoint to attend churches with priests appointed by one side, and murder those that attended churches with priests appointed by the other side, a goal that rapidly became as genocidal as the thirty years war between protestants and Roman Catholics, and was accompanied  by similar religious rhetoric.  You might have thought the false popes were still in Avignon.

Bonapartism self destructed, and was conquered by anglosphere leftism, thus the French wound up with government modeled on the mother of parliaments imposed on them.  Ever since then, the French regime has been a pallid echo of anglosphere leftism, but the final step following their left singularity was a major step rightwards, since anglosphere leftism of that time was well to the right of French Revolutionary leftism.

Similarly, leftist Czars succumbed to a left wing movement of their own creation that led to their own overthrow and execution, eventually resulting in Stalin, who halted the ever leftwards movement, announced that utopia had arrived, and there would be no further movement leftwards or rightwards.

If Stalin had not put a stop to it, Russia probably would have gone all the way to Pol Pot style socialism under Trotsky.

Stalin placed Russia in political stasis, which eventually cracked.  Russia was initially conquered by anglosphere leftism, attempting a rerun of what was done to France, but today’s leftists are less virile than the Duke of Wellington, and Russia may well be rejecting the foreign imposition.  Still, today’s Russia is in form and rhetoric anglosphere leftist.  The political differences between today’s America and today’s Russia are roughly comparable to the difference between anglosphere leftism at date X plus ten or twenty years, and anglosphere leftism at date X, an utterly trivial difference when one considers that anglosphere leftism has been moving left for over two hundred years.

Anglosphere leftism originated from the Puritans, and was heading into a left wing singularity with the civil war, the commonwealth, and the execution of Charles the first.  Oliver Cromwell took fright at the sight of the levelers and, like Stalin, froze things, heading off the looming chaos.  After Cromwell’s death, General Monck reversed the left wards movement, creating a theocratic monarchy based on latitudinarian (tolerant) Anglicanism.

Some Puritans were purged from government, academy, and the Church, and the rest saw which side their bread was buttered on, and quietly decided that they were not only latitudinarian Anglicans, but always had been latitudinarian Anglicans,

Similarly, I expect that if we get a reactionary restoration in the US today, 99% percent of the gender studies movement will cheerfully agree that organizations generally function better with male leadership. (After one percent of them have been fired)

Under this excellent system (theocratic monarchical latitudinarian anglicanism) British colonialists, pirates, merchants, slavers, and adventurers conquered most of the world, and Britain created the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution.

Then in the late Georgian or early Victorian period, the ever leftwards slide resumed, perhaps starting with the inability of George the Fourth to penalize queen Caroline for not submitting, failure to perform her marital duties, and flagrant adultery.  (Whatever happened to that stick no thicker than a woman’s thumb?)

The trouble was that they were too latitudinarian.  Leftists, once in power, did not make the same mistake.

Because the anglosphere left singularity lagged behind the others, having been paused for a century and a half by the restoration, it tended to occupy the rubble when other left singularities collapsed.  The movement to ever stronger states has in large part been a movement ever left, and to ever greater anglosphere domination.

The ever leftwards movement eventually killed off science shortly after World War II, replacing it with state sponsored religion dressed in lab coats. Peer review and consensus means that instead of the experimenter telling the scientific community what he sees, the scientific community tells the experimenter what he sees.  As with Wikipedia, believing one’s own eyes constitutes original research, and we should supposedly leave original research to the trained professionals.

Technology continued to advance, but after 1972, in ever fewer areas.  In one area after another, the advance in technology has come to a stop.  Last man on the moon, 1972, tallest buildings in the west, 1972.  Coolest muscle cars around then.  Progress continues in some areas, most strikingly in computers and telecommunications, but in one are after another, progress stops.   DNA reading continues to progress.  DNA writing, maybe not.  In the outposts of fallen empire technology has continued to advance in some areas abandoned by the west.  Cool tall buildings continue to be built in Shanghai, Singapore, and Dubai, but in the center of anglosphere, when the two towers fell, they could not be rebuilt, and London looks ever poorer, ever shabbier, ever more early twentieth century.  Stockholm is in a timewarp from the pre war period.

The anglosphere left is moving ever further leftwards ever faster.  Trees do not grow to the sky.  At some point, I hope short of Pol Pot leftism, it has to collapse.

With good luck, a reactionary regime might be reconstructed, as general Monck did.  With moderate luck, a Stalin might freeze the system for a while. With bad luck, we will probably be conquered by a Caliphate or China, or just overrun by bandits, pirates, and adventurers like the Roman empire in the West.  I think that Europe will mostly go Caliphate, parts of the US will create reactionary regimes, and the rest of the US will resemble Latin America.  If we are lucky, parts of the US will resemble the wild west.

In the collapse scenario much of the world will become protectorates of the new Chinese empire, as is already happening in Africa.  The rest will be patchwork of monarchies, aristocracies, good anarchy, bad anarchy, and general chaos.  Russia will chart its own path.  At present, Russia is not a favorable environment for high technology despite the abilities of many Russians, and it has a rather long history of not being a favorable environment for high technology.

This is a dark age scenario, or mostly dark age scenario. One way to avoid it would be a reactionary restoration, similar to that which General Monck brought to England.

As a non believer, I cannot see anything wrong with restoration Anglicanism, Anglicanism from the restoration to the early Victorian period. A fine prosocial religion, which supported order, private property, the family, the rule of law, the pursuit of truth, and the authority of the father. Under the rule of restoration Anglicanism, we had the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution, and British colonialists conquered most of the world. That was period of greatness on par with Golden Age of Classic Greece. What is not to like?

It taught the ten commandments, in particular:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbours.

It also taught that all men were created unequal:

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

In other words, since (before Darwin) the natural world was obviously the product of divine design, social inequality was also the product of divine design.

And women also unequal to men

then shall the Curate say unto the Man.

. Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sicknes and in health and forsakeing all other, keep thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live ?

Then shall the Priest say unto the woman.

. Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him, in sickness, and in health, and forsakeing all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live ?

Alas, Christianity is likely dead beyond possibility of revival.

Today Ed School serves the function of the theocratic church. To teach children, one needs to be credentialed, and the credential is primarily certification of political correctness. My libertarian inclination is Separation of Church and State: that we should shut down Ed school, indeed burn them to the ground, salt the earth where they stood, and make possession of such a credential a horrid secret resembling former membership in the Hitler Youth or the Waffen SS.

That is the libertarian solution, separation of Church and State, but Restoration Anglican theocracy was overthown because it was excessive tolerant of its enemies. The reactionary solution is to reverse the politics enforced by the ed credential: all previously issued credentials authorizing people to teach children would be invalidated, and credential holders invited to take a “refresher” course. I expect most of them would get the same high marks on the refresher course as they got on the original course, piously declaring that slavers and pirates brought civilization and Christianity to the heathen backward peoples with the same confident certainty as they previously piously declared that today’s capitalism rested on the ill gotten gains stolen from non whites by those pirates and slavers. Indeed, most of them would scarcely notice the change in the curriculum. They could recycle their previous essays using a word processor macro that replaces “Four legs good, two legs bad” with “Four legs need supervision by two legs”.

We would also teach those seeking educational certification “Economics in One Lesson”, microeconomics, which they would probably find a good deal harder. Microeconomics tells us that the rich, other than those on the revolving door between regulators and regulated, and cronys of politicians, actually earned their money. Now that we can no longer argue divine design, have to teach microeconomics.

But really, such an outcome seems unrealistic to me.  General Monck’s program rested on an influential class of well armed and respected gentlemen with extensive family connections.  By and large, today, family, the fundamental building block of society, has collapsed. We should perhaps think about ways of establishing order from the bottom up, following a total collapse during which the overclass/underclass alliance manifests as both blacks and police looting anyone sinful enough to look after himself and his family, as after the Katrina disaster, rather than Moldbuggian fantasies of restoring order from the top down.  There is no  ring of Fnargl.  Order is hard to build from the top down, for the top has nothing to stand upon.

After the Katrina disaster blacks, government employees, and the underclass, mostly blacks and government employees, predated upon the middle class.  Imagine that the disaster is that the government has no money to pay its underclass and employees, or far too much entirely worthless money, and there is no General Monck on a white horse.  Start with heads of households who have land, gold, guns, and food, and are unenthusiastic about involuntary sharing.   Starting from that, build a society in which political power is in the hands of solvent heads of households.

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49 Responses to “History interpreted as left singularities”

  1. […] and Leftism is a fascinating marvel that goes far back ever. Jim’s blog has a decent post depicting history since 1400 A.D as a progression of radical […]

  2. […] Prophets 1:35:46 Scofield Bible 1:39:04 Gnosticism 1:40:35 Dear Rabbi 1:41:00 Evange-cucks 1:42:39 Phariseeïsm 1:44:48 Mrs. Jellyby 1:45:32 The Pauls 1:47:00 Lead By Serving 1:48:50 Gun Laws 1:50:21 Sincerity […]

  3. lalit says:

    Not that it means anything to you, but you are quite popular among Hindu reactionary Bloggers. You are being extensively referenced among the Hindu Right wingers. They may not like you very much, but they certainly respect you.

    You and Moldbug.

  4. […] is an interesting phenomenon that goes a long way back in history. Jim’s blog has a nice post describing history since 1400 A.D as a series of leftist […]

  5. […] is an interesting phenomenon that goes a long way back in history. Jim’s blog has a nice post describing history since 1400 A.D as a series of leftist […]

  6. […] Prophets 1:35:46 Scofield Bible 1:39:04 Gnosticism 1:40:35 Dear Rabbi 1:41:00 Evange-cucks 1:42:39 Phariseeïsm 1:44:48 Mrs. Jellyby 1:45:32 The Pauls 1:47:00 Lead By Serving 1:48:50 Gun Laws 1:50:21 Sincerity […]

  7. […] fourth explanation is also related to his thinking. It relies on the model of leftism as Phariseeism. He uses the word Pharisee to mean a person who […]

  8. […] James Donald defines Dark Enlightenment and contemplates a restoration. […]

  9. Si says:

    General Monck, who? A minor figure in the restoration. The Stuarts were not allowed to be absolutists as Parliament had the balance of power. And anyhow they got the boot a few years later as James II believed all this stuff about the divine right of monarchs. Hope your grasp of political history is better than your grasp of English history.

    Entertaingly nuts blog though!

    • jim says:

      General Monck fought a civil war. If he had lost, no restoration. He won. His praetorians “guarded” parliament – because parliament’s troops were defeated. Parliament voted for new elections, then the restoration, under the “guard” of General Monck.

      And to this day, they still guard parliament and Buckingham palace.

  10. […] James Donald defines Dark Enlightenment (and contemplates a restoration). […]

  11. […] claims to have seen the light, no matter how openly self-serving her motives. Add in the coming left singularity and feminists are really […]

  12. […] claim the Anglosphere leftward drift is rapidly accelerating and that we are in the grips a Leftist Singularity is correct. In the context of 21st century technology it would be a major source of existential […]

  13. Jack Bolling says:

    Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (1852):

    “In the first French Revolution the rule of the Constitutionalists is followed by the rule of the Girondists and the rule of the Girondists by the rule of the Jacobins. Each of these parties relies on the more progressive party for support. As soon as it has brought the revolution far enough to be unable to follow it further, still less to go ahead of it, it is thrust aside by the bolder ally that stands behind it and sent to the guillotine. The revolution thus moves along an ascending line.”

    • jim says:

      So, I am far from the first to notice this process, but we have seen a more repeats of it, and ever more extreme repeats, since the time of Marx.

      Moldbug was the first to trace this process all the way back to its overtly religious roots. Marx was reluctant to see the religious roots of the French Revolutionary left, (since that ran contrary to scientific socialism) although it was glaringly on display in the War in the Vendée , and in Napoleon’s war on Spain.

      Moldbug, being of Jewish background, though recognizing the deep religious roots of leftism, failed to recognize them as Christian Phariseeism. (“I am holier than thou, therefore I should rule over thee”) which ancient and obnoxious heresy was as much a problem for Paul as it was for Jesus.)

  14. ingresomatico…

    […]History interpreted as left singularities « Jim’s Blog[…]…

  15. typical anti-racist leftoid. says:

    26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
    27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
    28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
    29 And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

    • jim says:

      This refers to the next world, not this one. The wonderful equality in the next world is the consolation prize for divinely ordained, and church endorsed, inequality in this one.

      Progressives transliterated Christian beliefs from the next world to this one.

      According to the New Testament, people’s souls are of equal value in God’s eyes, but in this world, God ordained some to be slaves and some to be masters, as should be obvious from the reference to bond and free

    • jim says:

      Ephesians 5
      21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
      22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
      23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
      24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
      25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

      Ephesians 6
      1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.
      2 Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;)
      3 That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
      4 And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
      5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;
      6 Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;
      7 With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:
      8 Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.
      9 And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

      Corinthians 1: 14
      34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.
      35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

  16. […] – History as left singularity. […]

  17. RS says:

    Ever get a load of the non-academic social psychologist Eric Hoffer? Fairly interesting.

  18. Meh says:

    It’s unfortunate that Aaron Diaz is a typical anti-racist leftoid. His comics are good.

  19. […] History interpreted as left singularities « Jim’s Blog […]

  20. Johnny Caustic says:

    Jim, I just want to let you know that I particularly like this line: They could recycle their previous essays using a word processor macro that replaces “Four legs good, two legs bad” with “Four legs need supervision by two legs”.

    I wonder if you’re right. Are the PC rank and file so thoughtless that if PC pointed in the opposite direction tomorrow, most of them would fall right into line after a few moments of confusion? I suppose it might be true.

    • Thales says:

      The same techniques used to make the masses believe P can be used to make them believe ~P.

      If, OTOH, one’s believe in ~P is a result of autodidacticism (“o hai, react-o-sphere…”), those same techniques obviously would not work. If you’ve reasoned your way into a conclusion, non-reason won’t shake your belief — but don’t forget that most people haven’t reasoned themselves to where they are, they’ve just “gone along to get along.”

      • jim says:

        Over the past decade, and indeed over the past two centuries, there has been rapid and radical change in the views held by the masses.

        Obviously this has not been on the basis of evidence.

    • jim says:

      In debating the politically correct, I frequently sense insincerity.

  21. Koanic says:

    You’re skipping the internet, which is like skipping the printing press.

    • jim says:

      Yes, you are right. The internet is a huge step in technological progress. Technological progress continues in some areas, but other areas are, one at a time, shutting down.

      • Koanic says:

        More importantly, the internet is an x factor in predicting the leftist trend. I wish you would attempt to grapple with this.

        • jim says:

          I don’t see this. The leftist trend has been accelerating, displaying the hyperexponential growth that was predicted for technology.

          I thought the internet would change things. I expected an economy where businesses are run by vpns through offshore hosts, and that is in fact what is happening, but the beneficiaries of this trend are largely the overseas Chinese. It is not having the revolutionary effects I expected. A small number of people are getting very rich, but that changes little.

          • Koanic says:

            You’re better than a simple linear extrapolation. What the internet changes is that elite machinations and leftist drift are covered in real time. We are already seeing the beginnings of collapse of Cathedral institutions – education and media. The internet effect has not become strong enough to counteract the inertia of leftist governance in a meaningful yet, but that does not mean this will not occur.

            • jim says:

              The government has elected a new people. The internet will not enable us to win democratically. In what sense do you expect Cathedral institutions to collapse, short of running out of money, civil war, military coup, or societal collapse?

          • Koanic says:

            The loss of the propaganda monopoly has already begun to hamper this government. Look at e.g. marijuana legalization and increasing expatriation. I don’t expect a collapse to be averted. But at the formation of the next government, propaganda will be crucial again, and the internet will play a major role.

          • Francis the talking mule says:

            Does the cathedral really mind if marijuana is legalized at this point? Enforcing those laws is draining resources from more important projects. And giving white people access to marijuana will give them something to do to keep them pacified as conditions deteriorate.

            In fact, they probably want to legalize it at this point. Why wouldn’t they?

          • Red says:

            “The loss of the propaganda monopoly has already begun to hamper this government.”

            Not really. The hampering has more to do with no longer working anywhere near the bounds of reality and state propagandists pretty much just phoning it in.

            To have good counter propaganda you need good counter propagandists. As far as I can tell anyone even reasonably good at propaganda is plugged into the system. Now the internet has a reasonable chance of bringing back mob actions, as we’ve seen with black flash mobs. It’s useless for counter propaganda until the cathedral weakens enough to get the propagandists switch sides.

          • Koanic says:

            “I expected an economy where businesses are run by vpns through offshore hosts, ”

            In other words, you bought into cyberpunk geektopia, forgetting that it’s all about software, not hardware.

            Internet revolution: Game destroying feminism, returning us to the belief that women are feral animals. A shift that has outpaced all previous standards of generational change by the viral power of giving men a way to get laid, plus fast technical iteration. 2013 is the year it breaks into the MSM.

            • jim says:

              Game is personal. The personal is political, and game inclines people to reactionary views, but this is largely due to the influence of Roissy. An implication of game is that laws relating to sex and reproduction are hostile to men, irrational, incoherent, and obstruct males from getting married and having children. Thus, people think to themselves that they would like a society more favorable to husbands and fathers, a society that restrains fatherlessness and behavior that renders children fatherless, which is necessarily a profoundly reactionary society.

              Game necessitates awareness of fundamental and important differences between women and men, such that they can never be equal. If men and women not equal, one is inclined to doubt that all men are created equal either. Logical implication: Roll back the enlightenment.

          • Baduin says:

            I think you believe our rulers too much. But true rulers in modern system must be hidden. All meritocrats – bureaucrats, academicians – are by definition underlings. Politicians are obvious puppets.

            I see no reason to think that they believe their own propaganda. For one thing, the key thinkers that are taught in modern schools, such as Heidegger, openly taught that the progressivism must be destroyed from within, by encouraging its own destructive tendencies.

            They order their underlings to say very stupid things – eg by now it is a crime-think to believe that women are weaker than men – but the mechanism they use to enforce obedience to those rules is not stupid at all.

            They are continuously improving systems of indirect control of society. The Internet and cell phones are key parts of that system.

            The basic idea is to destroy natural social associations and replace them by artificial associations, mediated and controlled by technical means, which can be covertly manipulated.

            Eg Bitcoin and Silk Road. An unknown person or group proposes an interesting technical system to create an alternative monetary system. It includes a built-in system of tracking all transactions.

            American intelligence creates a system for anonymizing internet connections – TOR. Somebody uses is to create a drug – trading website, in which drug traders and clients can self-register.

            Everyone assumes that it is all a great victory against state. But whose victory – nobody. There is a complicated system coordinating it, but people are taught to avoid noticing it. The system self-evolved. Nobody rules. It happens by itself. Everyone does what he wants, and the system which allows it happened by itself and is controlled by nobody.

            At the same time, everyone is obeying orders – and denying it. This is the ultimate control – when those controlled control each other, and deny that anyone is controlling them.

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_%28novel%29

            An indistinct image emerges of doublers’ Orwellian information-controlled civilization that is almost self-regulating, with a special kind of system of government—one that officially does not exist and is thus impossible to destroy. The society is controlled through a fictitious advanced branch of information science Lem dubs procrustics, based on the control and stratification of information flows within the society. It is used for molding groups within a society and ultimately a society as a whole to behave as designed by secret hidden rulers. One example described in the novel is the above mentioned settlement, kind of a “concentration camp” without any guards, designed so that the prisoners stay inside apparently of their own “free” will.

          • Baduin says:

            Cathedral is stupid. They are specially selected for being intelligent, but not too intelligent, being hard-working (not necessary, but useful) and most of all for doing what they are told, for not being curious.

            However, they are being selected – and there are people who control that selection.

            http://www.culturewars.com/2012/Michel.htm
            (NB – use this author only for criticism; his positive solutions are clueless).

            Cathedral is being set up to fail – that is obvious. Together with the whole apparatus of state: the financial system, the army – everything is going to collapse.

            Stupid men and wishful thinking women can believe that women are mentally equal to men. No man and no woman can believe that women are physically equal to men. However, this belief is required and everybody who is important is repeating it. And acting as it were true.

            This means they do not care at all what they are saying, or what will happen with the organisations they are supposed to command. They are pure destroyers, without any conscience – but with a very well operating system of self-deception, which allows them to believe that being destroyer is good, and those whom they are destroying are evil.

            They will do everything they are required to do, they will obey any order.
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Parsons_%28businessman%29
            http://www.alternet.org/story/155519/the_super_%22connected%22_1_ceo%3A_the_incredible_tale_of_billions_of_dollars_of_failure
            http://mindweaponsinragnarok.com/2012/05/22/fascinating-story-of-dick-parsons-rockefeller-house-african-american/

            ” Whereas before, when Parsons didn’t study he failed out, now, after meeting Nelson Rockefeller, by some magical twist of fate, he was the law school’s valedictorian. Sandy Stevenson, a fellow law school classmate of Parsons’ who became a professor at Albany Law,recalled: “He didn’t study hard. He played a lot of bridge. He was so smart he didn’t have to study, and he was in the cafeteria playing bridge a lot.”

            Parsons took the New York state bar exam, and scored the highest in the state, beating out all the high-achieving Ivy Leaguers that year. It may have been a complete coincidence, but Nelson Rockefeller’s right-hand man, Harry Albright, was in charge of both the law school internship program with the governor, and in charge of scoring the New York state bar exams.”

            “Anyone familiar with Dick Parsons’ past could have told you his term as Citigroup’s chairman would end like this: Shareholder lawsuits, executive pay scandals, and corporate failure on a colossal scale. It’s the Dick Parsons Management Style. In each of the three companies Parsons was appointed to lead, they all failed spectacularly, and somehow Parsons and a handful of top executives always walked away from the yellow-tape crime scenes unscathed.

            This past April, for his final act as Citigroup’s chairman, Dick Parsons made sure that Citi’s top executives were handsomely rewarded for their failures. He arranged a pay package for CEO Vikram Pandit amounting to $53 million despite the fact that Citi’s stock plummeted 44% last year, and has woefully underperformed other bank stocks even by their low standards. Citigroup, as you might recall, got the largest bailout of any banking institution, larger than BofA’s– $50 billion in direct funds, and over $300 billion more in “stopgap” federal guarantees on the worthless garbage in Citi’s “assets” portfolio. Those are just the most obvious bailouts Citi received—this doesn’t take into account the flood of free cash, the murky mortgage-backed securities buyback programs, the accounting rules changes that allowed banks like Citi to decide how much their assets “should be worth” as opposed to what they’re really worth on their beloved free-market, and so on…

            So just as Dick Parsons stepped down as Citigroup chairman last month, shareholders finally rebelled, suing Parsons, CEO Pandit and a handful of executives for corporate plunder”.

            Again, with Parsons, it’s the same story every time: Three executive jobs, three disasters, each worse than the previous one.

            Before Citigroup, Parsons headed AOL Time Warner, where he helped pull off what is widely considered the single worst business deal in corporate American history: a fraud-rife merger that wiped out $200 billion in shareholder value, ruined employees, retirees and investors, sparked numerous criminal investigations and dozens of lawsuits, and yet somehow managed to enrich a tiny handful of executives—including Dick Parsons—to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

            Why would the government agree to name the AOL Time Warner failure Dick Parsons, Chairman of Citigroup in January 2009, just as the world’s largest banking institution was taking the biggest bailout packages, and just as its legal ownership was taken over by the American public?

            It’s a basic question that goes to the heart of Dick Parsons’ rise to the top. It’s a question that should have been put to AOL Time Warner when he was thrust to the top of that firm, considering the giant S&L failure Parsons oversaw before moving over to AOL Time Warner.

            From the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, Parsons served as a top executive and then chairman of Dime Savings, the Northeast’s poster child for savings & loan criminal fraud. Dime was Parsons’ first executive job—and Dime turned out to be the New England region’s closest equivalent to Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings, a giant criminal fraud mill with victims ranging from gullible low-income home buyers to entire regional economies laid waste to fraud-pumped housing bubble.

            At least in the S&L crisis of the late 80s and early 90s, some people went to jail—and Dime’s affiliates in the New England states sent scores of fraudsters to prison. Those investigations led to Dime’s New York headquarters where Dick Parsons was, but for some strange reason, even with a federal judge openly demanding criminal charges for Dime’s senior executives, in the end, Parsons and the others got away with it.”

            So much for the puppets. As for the Masters themselves – they do not need to be overly intelligent. The basic system has been invented long ago.

            I am reading various books from the first half of the XX century, and they contain the most important problems – and the solutions to them. You do not have to be overly intelligent, if you can learn useful things and avoids mountains of idiocy which are being shovelled to your inferiors.

            And what is the program endorsed by the Masters?

            The program of Right wing and Left wing is the same – destruction of the State. They are not hiding it – they are proud of it, and their voters support them. “Starving the beast” and “Cloward–Piven strategy” are exactly the same. Both sides say that their program is overthrowing the current system, and both do exactly what they promise to do. I see no reason not to believe them.

            However, they do have a program what to do after that. The system of internet and cellphone based social control is being tested. “Color revolutions” were first field test of the system. It worked quite well, doing what it was designed to do – revolution.

            The system for retaining power is being tested in USA. “Micro-agressions” are ridiculous, but they are a test version of a system of peer control – everyone is controlled by their neighbours. Facebook is the same.

            The various versions of the new financial system are being designed.

            As for army, you yourself said what will happen. All “fighting” parts of the army will be replaced with mercenaries.

            And what will be the ideology of the new system? Of course, some “improved” version of the Dark Enlightement. Read Moldbug – it is pure honey for the masters.

            Exactly the same happened with Communism. The system failed, and was replaced with another system – but it was controlled by the same old elite. Of course, not everybody made it through. At such critical points, there is always intense internal competition. The most efficient make it through to the top, the unsuccessful majority of elite suffers from frustration in their gilded villas, some unlucky failures commit suicide with multiple shots to the belly.

            As for the politicians, Cathedral, bureaucrats, armed forces, police, intelligence – mostly, they will be found to be useful servants to the new regime. Some will rebel and be destroyed, some will make mistakes or simply will be unlucky and will be made redundant. As a mass, they are necessary. Individually, they are unimportant.

            If necessary, the most clueless will make fine scapegoats. I see a fine career for Republicans in that role. And Blacks. We are nearing “Peak Negro”.

            I am a poor prophet – and it is difficult to prophesy when you have to outguess people who are very much interested in keeping their plans – and most of all their timing – hidden. They are fine with people knowing that everything is going to fail. But how and when – those things are top secret.

            However, my guess is that Obama pushes through some form of amnesty. After Obama, Republicans win and start some form of Tea Party austerity. After some time, the crisis starts – being blamed on Republicans.

            When the things seem very bad, and situation seems hopeless, the new hope is revealed. But the problems persist; after some time, some additional sacrifices will be required, and so on.

          • Francis the talking mule says:

            Interesting post Baduin.

            What do you think that they would do once their plan succeeds, the state collapses and they take power?

            You said that they would base their new system on the dark enlightenment. At first glance, that would kind of be a good thing. After all, autocratic rule based on the dark enlightenment is supposed to be a good ending.

            But maybe not. If you are a super-rich international elite with no real moral compass and you find yourself in charge of a collapsed America where the middle class has become a glorified lumpenproletariot and most people are either completely unsuited to work or only suited for make work cubicle jobs… maybe you want mass die off to get rid of a lot of useless eaters and save resources for the future.

            I mean, by the time the state collapses, what exactly is the average American going to be useful for? They’re systematically destroying the human capital of this country and it will be a while yet before any sort of collapse.

      • Johnny Caustic says:

        Computer science and math are the last areas where there is still some progress. (Math and some related topics in CS will always thrive simply because genius asocial loner freaks will always be able to find a home there and make advances despite having no funding or encouragement.) The Internet has made some genuinely wonderful changes to society, but it also helps foster the illusion that technology is still advancing breezily.

        • Thales says:

          The math part is undeniably true — mathematics today is advanced incrementally by young male prodigies who are, for all intents a purposes, born knowing whatever it is they will add to that body of knowledge. It’s also pretty cheap (and politically non-threatening) to run a math department at an elite school.

  22. Samson J. says:

    Similarly, I expect that if we get a reactionary restoration in the US today, 99% percent of the gender studies movement will cheerfully agree that organizations generally function better with male leadership.

    I expect this too. The seeming rapidity of recent social changes indicates to me that a) the changes can be reversed just as quickly, and b) that the changes are not as pervasive as they appear. This is one reason I think, contrary to what you keep arguing, that Christianity could quite easily make a generalized comeback if we got rulers in place that would exert even a fairly mild social stigma against unbelief.

    • Red says:

      The restoration worked in England because the church was centralized. American churches are beyond fragmented. They’re completely smashed and can not be fixed quickly. A new national church would have be formed to replace the current system of churches and that takes time.

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