It’s been said (roughly) that dimwits talk about people, midwits about events, and bigwits talk about ideas. I’m really writing this to speak about the last of that trio, but I’d like to start at the ground floor here and work ourselves up level by intellectual level.
The recent event both needs a deeper look to be truly understood and tells a lot about our current times.
Hold on; we’re about to cover a lot of ground, and I won’t promise any happy endings!
Ground floor: The 45th President
I’ve been extremely reluctant to really type my opinions about (now ex-)president Donald Trump. Because, unlike either of the camps, I’ve neither loved nor hated the politician, I’ve just found him pretty bad, and much like on the anglophone web, where you trend to fall into either of the two positions, in Swedish everyday life only the first camp is a valid one. There’s not much room for “pretty bad”.
To provide some manner of proof, I’d like to offer my own “what I would’ve voted if I was American”-record (this may sound strange to US readers, but people abroad actually make opinions about this, in particular if you’re into politics). In 2016, I rooted for Rand Paul, until he dropped out. Then I rooted for Gary Johnson, until I realized my reaction to the guy on screen was “please don’t make a fool of yourself and your party”. So I would’ve ended up not voting at all. In 2020, I kind of rooted for Tulsi Gabbard, until she dropped out, and then decided to stick with Jo Jorgensen and not look too hard.
So while I was never much of a sympathizer, I’ve never liked the “anti”-crowd either. Where Trump was brash, the anti crowd were sanctimonious. Where Trump was a narcissist, the anti crowd were inquisatorial. And where Trump always pandered to his base, the anti crowd always found whatever he did or said wrong somehow, being out of context or outright false if it had to be
Some would claim he’s been the worst president. I would claim that’s Woodrow Wilson. The former was the first PotUS in decades to not start any new wars – he even ended a few. The latter threw the US into WW1 on pretty shaky grounds, getting hundreds of thousands dead (not even counting the Spanish flu!) and let the British and French punish Germany so hard in Verseille they birthed a monster (read: “Hitler was borne in Verseille”).
Some would claim he’s been the most divisive president. I would say that’s Abraham Lincoln, if you judge them by their time. Recall that the US civil war started right after the latter’s election, and his whole presidency turned out to be about fighting that war, which he did while violating many core pillars the US was founded upon, and essentially shaping a nation state out of the independent, but united, states the US was founded as.
I could go on, but you get the point. He’s been bad, just he’s not been that bad…
… until he lost the election. Let’s move up to the first floor.
Floor 1: Storming of the Capitol of 2021
As I type this, not a week has passed since the instantly historic day. Time will very likely sort out the details of what happened, but common knowledge right now is: Trump had gathered supporters for a rally in DC on the same day as Congress had gathered to count votes. This resulted in a large amount of unauthorized people storming into the Capitol building, forcing the Senare and House to stop their ritual and evacuate. A mob then wandered around in the Capitol for a few hours until the national guard regained control of the building and the counting could resume.
There are many questions surrounding this. How was security so lax? What were the people storming congress hoping to achieve? What was Trump thinking would happen? NATO allied professional “believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup“.
But the fact yet remains that he, if so, did not attempt the coup using the military or police, but by using civilian (many of them veterans) activists. Many of whom had gathered in a display of genuinly civil protest. This shows there is (or was, this Wednesday) still public support for the man.
Perhaps a look at the popular vote exemplifies this better: Assuming Biden gained a total of 74 478 345 votes, to Donald Trump’s 70 329 970, it gives Biden 51.4% of the vote, which is just a slighter margin than Brexit’s victory (52%) in 2016. Each of those voters acted knowing what Trump had done so far, and still found him the lesser evil of the two. And in case you’ve forgotten, Brexit became a four-year controversy starting on election day, much like Trump has been over his whole presidency.
Assuming the underlying causes that got him there goes away with him is nice, but likely naïve. To quote the anarcho-capitalist Michael Malice: “They thought Trump was the river, but he was the dam”.
The most immediate consequences of that dam bursting is already on display: Trump himself is banned from most social media platforms, anyone associated with Trump is banned for good measure, some democratic Congressmen have likened their republican counterparts nazis (which could be interpreted as a call for violence, given recent slogans like “punch a nazi” and supposedly worse), and the “anti”-crowd of before are acting as if they just won a war.
However, it’s time we went upstairs to dig into how we got here.
Floor 2: Covid
I don’t think anyone has missed the Covid pandemic of 2020 (if you have, I’d love to trade places with you!), or the lockdowns following around the world in it’s wake. Generally speaking, epidemics and pandemics are bound to destabilize any society, even fictional ones.
In his 6-hour long podcast episode Pandemic: Rendering a Hue and Cry, Alexander von Sternberg describes how the Spanish flu left life-long scars in those who lived through it, and while I readily admit to giving up after roughly four of those hours, by then he had given a detailed account of how the pandemic hit Imperial Germany at the most critical of times during WW1, causing rebellion and revolution throughout the nation, and setting the violent presendence that came to define the Weimar Republic.
As mentioned, a series of “Lockdowns” has consequentially been put in place by democratic and despotic governments alike. For understanding current events and it’s historical context, it’s not really relevant if it’s an effective counter-measure or not: What is relevant is that it’s accelerated the pace of change that was bound to happen, and put every citizen of these nations in a pressure-boiler.
In short, a people already distrusting their politicians and media are forced to stay home and connect on the Internet, they’re driven into fear of an epidemic, denied grieving for their loved ones, and many have lost their jobs or careers, even businesses, which in turn means losing their economic security, sense of purpose and a sense of place in society.
So what’s to do on the Internet? Let’s head further up!
Floor 3: The mutual retribution cycle
In Dan Carlin’s podcast Common Sense, multiple episodes have tackled the topic of the amplifying tit-for-tat retribution cycle that’s been going on, which he traces back to the dawn of talk radio and “heat seeking” and provocative hooks keeping audiences over the commercial breaks (or “click bait”, as we call it on the web). I’d especially like to refer to the two latest episodes here – A Recipie for Ceasar and Steering Into the Iceberg – where he details how radio and television debates, very intentionally and for decades, were designed to generate as much animosity as possible between the debaters, stoking up enough anger to get people glued at their televisions.
This natuarally developed with blogs, and in turn with social media. Being neuanced takes much more thought (to not speak of many more words) than simple and exagerrated statements, preaching to your own crowd takes less effort – and brings more rewards in terms of clicks, likes or retweets – than civil discussion with your neighbour. The social media algorithms – and… let’s call it “smart web searches” – made little effort to break this feedback loop, their job was to just find what you were looking for, which is likely something which was already at the top of your mind.
The effects of which were visible as early as 2008, with the Occupy Wallstreet mo(ve)ment. It could be noted 2014 with the GamerGate controversy. It should have been noted at or anytime since the presidential primaries 2016 with politically motivated riots and street brawls. And it was completely obvious during 2020, with both “anti-lockdown” (or “pro-liberty”, if you will) demonstrations in the spring as well as the Black Lives Matter phenomenon in the fall.
And with the Storming of the Capitol on the 6th day of 2021, it is impossible to not see.
This is all unprecedented, right? Let’s head further still up.
Floor 3: The late Roman Republic
Some nations are so strong no external threat can topple them. This is true of the US today, but the same can be said for the Republic of Rome… until it became an Empire and then rotted from within over four centuries. While it’s true the eastern half lived on, and in the history books became known as the Byzantine Empire, they were always just that – eastern half of the Roman Empire.
More relevant to this discussion is the mid-to-late Republican era, however. After conquering the Hellenic world, The North-western African coast and the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, the Republic entered an era of a similiar amplifying tit-for-tat retribution cycle. I mentioned this down on Floor 2, if you recall.
The podcast The History of Rome summarized the development in Episode 28: Taking Stock (podcast, 13m). With no external threat, few things kept the aristocrat’s pride and greed in check. With a long-established system of patrons and clients, they were able to buy loyalty in the periphery to themselves personally, rather than to the Senate. And once the legions came back from their campaign with “hundreds of thousands” of slaves – i.e. cities worth of labourers free of charge – the previously low-paid workers were maneuvered out of the economy, and in time found themselves becoming mercaneries for generals able to pay for their gear and recover booty for their pay.
Three major crisis stands out – the crisis of the populist politician Tiberius Graccus, who desired a redistribution of land from the consolidated nauvau riches and refused to collaborate with the establishment, Marius and Sulla’s civil war, the latter being cause for two and managing to become dictator for life – which in Roman times was a temporary office someone distinguished held in crisis with a promise to never hold any office again afterwards – before stepping down, and of course Julius Ceasar, whose conquest of Gaul (modern day France, Rhineland and Belgium) and Britannia (southern England) gave him four Triumphs – and also dictator for life – before his assassination, and the succeeding civil war between Octavian and Mark Anthony.
It’s well worth noting that by the time Octavian becomes the de facto sole ruler of Rome, as Ceasar Augustus, he did not crown himself king: Rome was founded on a firm and entrenched belief that there should never be a king of Rome. Instead he went with “Principiales” – roughly “the first among peers”, which later evolved into “prince” – and it was the family name, Ceasar, that became the root word for Emperor in later European languages (“Kaisar” in German, “Kejsare” in Swedish, “Tsar” in Russian).
Of course, from the end of the Third Punic War to Augustus inauguration took 119 years to unfold.
Floor 4: A confluence of revolutions
A lot can be said of revolutions, political or otherwise. Common for them all is a rapid change by historical standards due to some connected factors.
During the Renaissance, Gutenberg’s book printer was a revolution, making books and the knowledge within radically affordable. Together with Martin Luther’s 94 thesis and translation of the Bible from Latin to local languages like German and French, it democratized access to the teachings on a scale to that point unhead of. Naturally, the gate keepers of the times foud this to be a threat, and the situation spiralled out into conflict, culminating with the 30 Years War in 1618-1648. By its end, Central Europe had been laid to waste, and the modern nation state was agreed upon, as well as an early version of freedom of religion.
By that time, the Enlightenment had begun to spir. Although not a revolution in it’s own right, the rapid change of foundational values played into the French revolution, the Reign of Terror, and then spread in Europe over the Napoleonic Wars.
Some decades after this, the Spinning Jenny was invented, some decades still later creating the Industrial Revolution. Which in turn created the tools and wealth for European Powers to quite literally conquer the world… and turn those world-spanning Empires on each other in the World Wars.
I think you get the picture. Revolutionary inventions has led to instability, and oftentimes to conflict, causing unprecedented destruction in their wake, but which we in hindsight can also see has brought increadible benefit in the long run (even though you could argue that’s because the victors wrote the story).
Our current age is fantastic in many ways – I’d be dead before adulthood had I been born in any previous age – but given this foreshadowing it also lays the groundwork for an age far more dangerous, because we’re seeing one of each of these revolutions play out at the same time:
– Information- and Communication Technology has begun an Information Revolution far more far-reaching and rapid than Gutenberg could imagine,
– the progressive and woke waves are changing the fundamental values of western societies, and
– automation and robotics combined introduces massive computing and mechanical labour almost free-of-charge. Also,
– the argument can be made cryptocurrencies provide a revolution in economic technologies on par with coins, bank notes and credit cards.
Okey, that’s a tonne of history. What’s next?
Floor 5: Disunited Nations, Disuniting States
In his book Disunited Nations, geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan describes how “The Order” we now take so much for granted most of us never even see it came to be, but the emphasis of the book is what’s happening next, when the Atlas carrying the this world order is shurging it off it’s shoulders.
To summarize, “The Order” is the network of nation states presently engaging in (mostly) free trade, (mostly) free travel, collaboration and multilateral agreements. Unlike any age before it, where various nations have risen to build empires in order to secure it’s own trade, every nation within the Order have let the United States secure all of their trade. And the Unites States happily did so, as it wanted the partners to stand between them and the Soviet Union.
But as we all know, the Soviet Union is gone, and the United States’ interest has waned since. Those born at the end of the Cold War are now 31 years old, and thus a full generation of citizens won’t take Cold War considerations into account when they discuss politics, or when they vote. Add to this the discovery of Shale oil in the US, and it’s in the enviable position to not really need the Order. In other words, to the post-Cold War citizen, the Order cost them a lot without giving anything in return.
Zeihan use this to spell ravaging rublings around the world. China and Japan both require food and fuel imports to sustain their population – not to mention industry – and so must ensure the South Chinese Sea is open for their imports. Europe’s cracking at the seams, as their economy depend on exports will will now dry. Russia’s fighting and consuming population is about to be halved (as they age into a productive and saving phase of their lives), spelling trouble for both their economy and defending their lenghty and porous borders. This age-problem is something China and most of Europe share, but the United States does not, strangely enough thanks to the mellenial generation.
It’s very likely the Zeihan’s measures makes that the only conclusion, but looking at it from the outside – and as a mellenial myself, nota bene – it sounds more like a mistake in selecting what to measure. It’s generally faulty to linearly extend the current tangent, but given the amplification of retribution, and it’s acceleration by Covid, all I see is that we’re inching ever closer to a precipice.
Pentry Floor: Conclusions
Hey, we made it all the way up together! That was really gloom-and-doom, good job making it this far!
I hope by this point, the occurences the other day don’t seem like such a surprising one-off, but see where it came from and what may come if history is to teach us anything.
I also hope that you, in the case you still find only one party to blame, which is not your party, find it in yourself to look in the mirror and see your own contributions. As you may have noted, the mellenials carry the US on their shoulders now, as the US carry the world, and right now the mellenials are standing at the threshold, staring down into the abyss.
I see only three ways to go from there:
The Jesus Option / Appeasement
See your mirror imagine in the abyss, turn to your worst opponent, and walk away together. This is the hardest one in the short term, because it requires you to face the worst parts in you, to associate with those you may have demonized, and tolerate the views you’ve found intolerable. But it’s the only good way in the long run.
The Cancel Option / Divorce
Ignore your mirror imagine in the abyss, turn to your worst opponent, and walk separate ways. Separation is hard, and like Brexit demonstrated it can get messy as your relationship must be renegotiated, but it’s slightly easier than the first option, and holds better outcomes than the third option. In a sense, we’re collectively already on this path, with cancellation culture, and abandoning friends over disagreements, and in that way it’s the easiest – you just have to carry on.
The Hell Option / Ruin, Blood and Tears
Take the plunge into the abyss, in a race to the bottom with your worst opponent. This is where we’re headed if the tit-for-tat retribution cycle keeps amplifying. At its worst, it’s the path to Rwanda in 1994, or to Europe during the Thirty Years War. Hitting this rock bottom would spell ruin for the US and – because the US is the Western center of industry, culture and military matters – it would likely drag the whole western world into the same mess. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
More “Reading”
I would have liked to insert some of these as references, but I never found a way for them to fit. I can recommend each of them if you wish to dive deeper into this.
The Dangerous History Podcast, “A Civil-Religious Civil War?” (podcast)
WhatIfAltHist, “Why is the World Crazy Now?” and “Why is America Crazy Now?” (youtube)
Upper Echelon Games, “The Fall of a Society” (youtube)