33 Comments
Oct 23Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

> Hearing a lot of buzz about the impending civil war on the TL, because the Deep State will “stop at nothing” to ensure that Trump does not take office.

It is my gut check that the deep state has in fact changed it's mind, and specifically wants him to win

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Like the OP said, the deep state isn't monolithic, different parts of it take different attitudes towards him.

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True. Sloppy definitions on my part, but when I say "deep state" I mean one of two things:

1) The collective actions of 2 million unelected bureaucrats, mostly following incentives, with the main incentive being "do the least amount of work, collect paycheque, and get home by 5"

2) The handful of people who exercise real, serious influence on our society. Their powers are not limited but they definitely exist. EG the upper echelons of the CIA. If they can regime-change like 80 other countries, there's no reason they wouldn't have similar power here.

In this case, I am mostly working with definition (2)

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He shills for kikes and didn’t leave any lasting impact with his last tenure, it only makes sense for him to win as it perpetuates the slow boil of white dissident Americans, I think we’d actually see some small scale civil conflict and unrest if he lost and not in a gay liberal way like burning stuff or looting.

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Oct 24·edited Oct 24

I would phrase it less inflammatorially, on account of optics matter, but you're not wrong.

Except that I disagree. I don't think you see meaningful unrest if he loses. I think that, for all of their bluster, most MAGA Americans don't have the spine to engage in actual political violence the way that Antifa does. I also think that's probably a good thing. If RED team does political violence at small scale, it just delegitimizes their side in the eyes of normies and gives the government a pretense to crack down on freedoms. If RED team does political violence at large scale, I don't think they win(*)

I'm actually fairly undecided on whether or not I think there will be unrest if he wins. On the one hand, there was last time. On the other hand, I'm pretty convinced that approximately zero of that was organic, and if The Deep State has changed their disposition towards him, they have no reason to instigate riots anew

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(*) My wargaming theory on how a large scale RED team uprising would play out.

There's two main ways I see it playing out: organic asymmetric warfare, or rebel state civil war.

Rebel state civil war looks kind of like Civil War 2.0. Say Texas and Florida finally decide that the federal government has gone too far, and put their foot down. My theorizing on this possible future is speculative and poorly defined, but some random thoughts:

* I don't think any state government has the balls to actually do this

* I think that the federal government would likely attempt to avoid a direct confrontation and instead use things like lawfare and PR to win nonviolently

* I think that the united states' society and economy is so interconnected that such an event would be disastrous in the short term.

* I think that the United States federal government recognizes that political unity on the continent is a necessary precondition to nuclear security, and would therefore be willing to do _whatever it takes_ to quell the uprising. I think they would be both willing and able to bomb every Texas city to rubble, for example, if they thought it was necessary.

* I think that, if this kind of future was going to happen, what would instead happen is my "US Collapse (but nobody thinks it's collapsing)" theory. Essentially: states will start ignoring the parts of the federal government that they don't like, and the federal government will be either unwilling or unable to stop them. Imagine immigration sanctuary cities, but for all kinds of different laws.

I am more confident of my prediction for organic asymmetric warfare (ie. random RED teamers deciding they've had enough, and they're going to start using their guns). I think it ends very, very poorly for the RED team. Why?

* The army might be full of sympathizers but the leadership of the army is solidly with the establishment. It is not reasonable to assume that any meaningful US military would defect to RED team

* BLU team controls most of the legitimizing institutions of society.

So if that were to happen, here's how I think it plays out. Somewhere, some idiot does a violence that causes bad optics. Maybe they kill a kid by accident or something. BLU uses their control of corporate media to spam the entire country 24-7 with stories of RED team committing terrorist atrocities.

Some people will believe this and be radicalized against them. Most people will probably have some sense that it is untrue. But it will spread enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt, to cause a lot of people who would otherwise sympathize, to sit it out.

You'll have millions of conservative Americans watching Fox News and thinking something along the lines of "sure, DC has got to go, but I can't condone killing children. Besides, do I really want to risk my life, and the life of my family, on this cause? It's probably best to keep my head down, stay out of it, cross my fingers, and hope it blows over". Suddenly 80% of the people who otherwise would assist the RED cause, don't.

So with a tiny force of unorganized guerrillas, what can RED do? They can more or less prevent BLU control of rural areas, but, why does BLU care about rural areas? "Have fun eating when we blockade your roads" yeah but most BLU cities are coastal. They can ship food in from other countries. Reality is, rural communities need those cities more than those cities need the rural communities.

The best case scenario is that BLU basically secures the cities and otherwise ignores RED, and RED eventually loses momentum and collapses. The worst case scenario is that heartland America gets napalmed until everyone stops screaming.

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That’s a pretty bleak outlook, are you former or active military ? In my personal experience and time in I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of the more valuable people and assets would end up fighting against the government if the time came to pick between real American people or D.C. Jan 6 and numerous SM violations have shown that the military upper brass is not as compliant and “pro-govt” as you’d be led to believe. I don’t think asym red team would be unsupported btw, Russia, China, Iran and even smaller players like Venezuela would send munitions, supply and fighters as soon as the opportunity would arise. There is also the large and growing NS faction of capable and militarist background, we would see a lot of the vulnerable critical infrastructure get hit by drones and third party fighters. It’ll be a huge mess if the day ever does come, I know that much for certain lol.

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The closest thing to military experience I have is a friend who is a veteran. Unless playing https://zero-k.info counts

The point of my analysis is that the command and control structures of the military are firmly in the hands of BLU team. It doesn't matter how many individual units would join RED team, if none of them have a command structure (or worse, a command structure actively sabotaging them)

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Calm down, Heinrich. Everything is going to work out ok.

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I’m not trying to be a doomer here, I just don’t see Trump making any real change “THIS TIME” is all.

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I think there's lots of evidence that seems to point in that development, but I don't understand why.

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Oct 23·edited Oct 23

The following characterizes my thoughts on the matter. There may be other factors involved, and some of these factors may end up being irrelevant, but four hypotheses I have:

1) Popular support for Trump has grown, and popular support for Harris has shrunk, to the point where they feel they can't plausibly steal the election without a complete loss of all legitimacy.

It's clear to me that Trump's appeal and support has only grown since 2016. Meanwhile, more and more people are finally starting to recognize the media BS and astroturfing for what it is. In 2020 they could steal the election and most people would think "well, we all hate Trump, so it's probably legit, (whisper: and if it's not, it's for the greater good anyway)". But in 2024, seeing things like Biden's debate performance and Harris' interviewing, a lot of people are starting to recognize that nothing is real or trustworthy

2) People have very short memories and, for the most part, lack the ability to understand causality. They simply see correlations. The last four years have involved some very disastrous political decisions, but most political decisions take time to come to fruition. If Trump is in office for the next 4 years, he's going to inherit all of the problems, and be unable to solve them (or, if he can solve them, unable to solve them before his term is up). This allows the deep state to pin all the problems on him and sets the Democrats up for a slam dunk in 2028

3) in 2016, Trump was an outsider. In 2024, I think the deep state (specifically the military-industrial complex side of it) has their hooks in him. Choosing Vance strikes me as indicative of this. At the end of the day, if there is a They, They don't care who's in office as long as the office does what they want.

Perhaps in July, someone pulled Trump aside and said "look, you're going to win this election, and then you're going to give us what we want. And if you don't, we won't miss next time". This is, however, not a necessary element to this bullet point (pun intended), just a possibility.

4) Insofar as anyone can exercise power (really, more like influence) over the slime mold under discussion, I think there are certain groups with certain priorities who are much more influential than others. I think that, for all practical purposes, they always get what they want. I think that they have recognized that Harris is insufficiently supportive of their priorities, and I think they have recognized that some of Harris' constituency poses a threat to their priorities. Meanwhile, I think they have also finally admitted to themselves that Trump is the only president in decades to have taken active steps towards their priorities.

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All of this is speculation on my part. The 'real' explanation could be one of the above. Or parts of all of the above. Or some fifth bullet point I haven't thought of. But I think it's clear that the institutional drive to prevent Trump at all costs is gone now. The media doesn't have any heart in their slander anymore, it feels more like they're just going through the motions, and they're allowing a much more critical disposition towards Harris than they ever did towards Biden.

Even amongst the terminally TDS people I know, their opinions are shifting. I was somewhat shocked at their reaction to the assassination attempt, which was unanimously: "look, I think he's a bad leader, but it's fucked up that his supporters can't be safe at their own rallies. We don't settle scores with violence in this country.". That's a far cry from "by ANY means necessary" of 8 years ago. That's a far cry from "fiery but mostly peaceful" of 4 years ago.

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Excellent post. You’ve clearly articulated some rather random thoughts I had knocking around in my brain

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Oct 23·edited Oct 23

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I don't think my position is quite the same as theirs but it is most certainly informed by it. You should check it out!

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Thanks for your thoughts on this matter. It's tiring thinking all the time about this and this is one area where I just haven't put in the work to make sense of it. So I really appreciate your list here.

My initial consideration is that bullet point 2 makes the most sense to me. Not just the financial crisis that is building, but probably a war that we can't avoid getting involved in. This should mean the deep state is able not just do a rearguard action, but set itself up nicely for the next big advance.

Hopefully, Trump will use this opportunity to clean house in a way that doesn't seem possible yet, but I'm not optimistic.

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Oct 23·edited Oct 23

> Thanks for your thoughts on this matter. It's tiring thinking all the time about this and this is one area where I just haven't put in the work to make sense of it. So I really appreciate your list here.

I have a job I dislike and a lot of time I need to waste. I wish I had better things to focus on 😅

Ultimately this is all Kremlinology. Whatever the reality is, we will never know, and all we can do is speculate. The only practical application of such speculation is to inform predictions about the future, and so in this case, my prediction: Trump will formally win the election with a very large margin. And then I am going to go around and mock all of the liberals around me mercilessly, not because they lost, but because they were so deluded that they didn't believe they could lose.

> Hopefully, Trump will use this opportunity to clean house in a way that doesn't seem possible yet, but I'm not optimistic.

My mental model suggests that he is now (either willingly or unwillingly) part of the house, and will not clean it.

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As an alternative mental model, one I assign considerably _less_ confidence to: Trump 2024 represents an actual attempt by 'outside' forces (outside the DC swamp anyway) to meaningfully wrest power away from the government and accomplish meaningful change. If Trump was doing this on his own, I'd say this is ridiculous (which I did in fact say in 2016 and feel that I was proven right). But Trump has the backing of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. I don't think Musk is a meaningful political actor in his own right, but Thiel is both willing and able to enact long term plans for substantial cultural change, and 'drain the swamp' would be broadly consistent with what I would expect from him.

I do not want to pin my hopes on such a long shot, but Trump 2024 might represent the good, old-guard culture of Silicon Valley rising up against east coast managerialism and seizing the reins of power. We'll find out, one way or another, in two weeks.

Ironically, having spent 15 years in this industry, when I consider the thesis "FAANG is taking over the USG", this mostly just causes me to fear FAANG more.

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There are three competing perspectives about the nature of globohomo: (1) it's fully controlled from the top, (2) it's not controlled at all, it is a blind fungus or swarm (as in this post), or (3) it's a combination.

I see it as #3. The primary way globohomo exerts control is through propaganda (both in the media and in education and entertainment), but ultimately through control of the money supply. The Federal Reserve is privately owned, has never had an audit, and loans money printed out of thin air at interest to the government. The Bank of England, despite being nationalized, is also not fully publicly owned. The central banks of the world are, imo, owned by the same parties that own these two central banks. This is why we saw total coordination from almost every nation of the world during fraudvirus, including from purported enemy countries such as Russia and Iran, which did the same lockdowns and vaccines as every other country. They backed off of vaccine passports, ultimately, because compliance rates were not high enough; something like 80% of adult retards in the U.S. got the first death jab, but compliance rates on the booster were only 50%.

Seeing the world as centralized above the level of the nation state has much greater predictive accuracy, imo, than just seeing globohomo as a headless entropic swarm: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-global-world-order-is-centralized

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Oct 23Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

My goodness that was good. I fancy myself a good judge. In my judgement this author is correct, accurate and has displayed impeccable judgment.

In a sea of shit and nonsense what a pleasure that was, congratulations.

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Oct 25Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

Read "The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World?" It explains quite a lot of the gaps you're looking to explore.

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Oct 24Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

@eugyppius wrote something similar about conspiracies back in late 2021. You should check it out. https://www.eugyppius.com/p/there-isnt-one-plan-there-are-fifty

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Oct 24Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

Spot-on! This is exactly how I have been thinking about "the blob" (and the political left) for at least a few years.

Organizations do not behave like individual human beings. The classic example in business is the concept of "disruption", where lower cost alternatives mature into products that can overtake existing markets. If businesses behaved like rational people, they would pursue those lower cost alternatives before they cannibalize their core business, but instead mature, established businesses go up market, chasing more niche features and higher margins until the scrappy lower cost competitors take their customers.

It's also why I never bought into the "the NWO is trying to kill us all with the vax" thing from the fringes of the right (who, in their defense, have been correct more often than not).

There is a human tendency to anthropomorphize things that don't fit under such a paradigm. We do it to animals, we do it to organizations, more primitive people do it for things like the weather (or people we prefer to think of as primitive anyway), but it's more of a human impulse than an analysis.

This article, however, is an analysis. And a damn good one.

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Oct 23Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

Zombies have always just been PC stand-ins for commies.

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Oct 26Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

Fantastic article!

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Oct 26Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

The way I see it we are going to be met, sooner or later, with the DoD Directive 5240.01 ( https://tinyurl.com/esdwhsmil524001p ) which was reissued/revised on 09/27/2024. There is no way this was a random update in some random year. The fact that it has happened so close to such a decisive election is telling at best and foreshadowing of the worst. Beware of big cities where BLM and Antifa will be installed to incite the rioting…

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Oct 26Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

Nice analysis, reminds me of the excellent book "The Unaccountability Machine" by Dan Davies

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Oct 25Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

Isn't this just Yarvin's Cathedral?

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Oct 24Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

Fascinating analysis. I have been thinking about this for a while trying to dissect the blob and figure out if it is rogue actors on a small scale or larger orchestration. One thing I do know is if you want to propagate an agenda through an organization in a surreptitious manner, you dont disclose the larger agenda, but instead privately try to motivate them for a different agenda that produces a similar outcome, so they take the action you want but they dont really know the bigger picture. The military like to say the lie is different at each level. So there could be an agenda at the top but the individual actions. So it will appear like individual actors acting in their own individual incentives within their narrow bureaucratic fiefs, but it was carefully cloaked that way, or its just as it seems, self interest.

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Oct 24Liked by Bennett's Phylactery

I agree for the most part but I am not as dismissive of the possibility of civil conflict. A fracturing bureaucracy like ours is historically dangerous. It is likely to overestimate its strength, underestimate a reaction, or bumble into doing something really stupid. However, I will point out that I think there is a greater possibility of becoming a failed state (at least for a little while) with governmental power fracturing before it ever gets to that point. I know that is usually associated with the Third World but it can happen.

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Few would argue that the progressive machine is intelligent. But they are unprincipled and ruthless.

How intelligent was Hillter or Mao? But look at the damage they did. Most of their adversaries were more intelligent than them, but they lost (initially) to the ruthlessness. After all, principled people operate within the law. Unprincipled people don't. Consider how that plays out.

We have a huge problem, right in front of our faces. Inside of one administration, the USA was turned into a banana republic, and half the population cheered. And those cheers mostly came from college campuses.

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This is a thought-provoking counter analysis to those who think everything is planned and orchestrated by a cabal of disciples of Machiavelli.

I think the author’s bottom-line - “The most likely outcome is Trump wins, and they just stonewall him like last time (and try to leave him holding the bag on the impending fiscal collapse.") - could turn out to be true.

While I agree with most points made by the author, I do disagree with the view the Deep State doesn’t “anticipate” threats ... but just “adapts” to them. IMO the Censorship Industrial Complex was CREATED to anticipate all possible threats to their continued control … and has clearly worked to neutralize these threats.

... I just cross-posted this article because I thought it was a good companion piece - with some persuasive alternative takes - to my recent essay, "The Fix is In."

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/logic-tells-me-the-fix-is-in

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White pill.

Counterargument though: Ephesians 6:12

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