What do
a few warehouse fires
have to do with the decline of nation states?
The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel
its warmth, as the proverb goes. The alphabet boys call this Domestic
Violent Extremism (DVE), with its own pointless acronym. When a
significant portion of the population sides with the so-called
"terrorists", whether they are Palestinians, arsonists, tax evaders,
draft dodgers, the authorities face a legitimacy problem.
If you listen to
Bane's speech
in the Dark Knight Rises, he talks about giving power back to the
people, the corrupt city of Gotham (no coincidence that this is also
the name of a Palantir program), ripping the powerful from their
decadent nests and cast out into the cold world. This is nothing but
false catharsis, as any good villain has righteous motivations which
the audience can sympathize with, or even take their side against the
protagonist. Lulling the audience into feeling that justice is being
served in the real world with some hints of moral ambiguity.
Illegitimacy of Faceless Bureaucrats
The corruption of institutions runs deeper than most people think,
every institution is operating as an exit scam. There's little point in arguing over the laws or justice, what
remains is the law of the jungle, as we're ruled by criminals. Before
the collapse, there will be countless immoral laws, mass incarceration
on an unprecedented scale, and legal killings enabled by the judicial
system. People will be killed by policy made by unseen, faraway
bureaucrats, often supranational in nature.
The living standards of the average American have been declining, and
life expectancies are lowering. People are poorer, dumber, humiliated,
and satiated by the modern day bread and circuses (processed and
artificial foods, social media, video games, pornography). Fewer
people are marrying, having children, or even having sex. Trust in
institutions is declining, it is more surprising that there are still
believers in the system, more like there are still beneficiaries.
When people are deprived of material security because of systems
beyond their control, rebellion is inevitable. A few billionaires have
their private bunkers, the government has their nuclear silos and
underground military bases. If we collectively cared at all about
liberty, there would have already been bloodshed, but people in a
demoralized society are more like livestock waiting for slaughter.
People tend to fantasize, "if only everyone would stop paying taxes"
or "if everyone would just resist the state", it is incredibly rare
for people to coordinate against the state even when they were being
massacred, and peasant rebellions have had abysmal success rates.
Crushing the Resistance
I don't think
we'll all be called terrorists, actually. If we get to a point where the average normie is a terrorist, the
authorities would have conceded all legitimacy already. They'll keep
shifting the overton window so that anyone who expects liberty and
privacy is labeled insane. The "terrorist" label will mostly be
applied to people who express discontent against the system, but there
will still be beneficiaries. The majority of those will be the
boomers, whose loyalty to the system is based on how much benefits
they derive from it, and the brainwashed who think that they can use
the state to punish their perceived enemies. Most of those who will be
purged by political conflict, will be and always have been, civilians.
The goal of the authorities is to eliminate any would-be resistance,
leaving only tax cattle, and the various underclasses to terrorize the
tax cattle in their anarchotyranny.
It's easy to hate the American government, but do you have the
courage to hate the American people?
Over a long period of time, the people become complicit in the crimes
of the state. The notion of separating a people from its government,
is too generous to the people, who are retarded. There are genuinely
people who still believe that the government works for them, and to an
extent, that may be true if the state is punishing their perceived
enemies. Here's how I think that dissidents will disappear:
-
Ex-post facto laws. Whatever was legal years ago,
will be illegal in the future, and they will dig up whatever
evidence to get you prosecuted.
-
Total surveillance. Anything you do or say
anywhere, can and will be used against you. Parallel construction
renders privacy law impotent.
-
Secret police. Combined with secret courts, black
sites, and obscure victimless legal codes, they will be able to
kidnap anyone with low visibility with little to no retaliation.
-
Entrapment. Any sort of organized resistance will
have been infiltrated with federal agents and informants and
rendered ineffective at their stated goals. They will mostly manage
to entrap ideologically motivated idiots, however.
I don't think that any would-be revolutionaries are really so selfless
or idealistic for a better world that they would become willing
martyrs, the state would just unalive them if they were truly a
threat. Ted K. explains the
power process phenomenon in Industrial Society and its
Future, in which surrogate activities such as protesting and
performative grandstanding fulfill an emotional need for goal
attainment. The powers that be funnel them into pointless "No Kings"
protests and almost comical ideologies if they weren't so serious.
The Post-Centralized World
I would expect there to be a rise in voluntaryism and autarky in a
future human era beyond my own lifetime. A world predicated on
voluntary trust where people can actually opt-out of abusive
institutions. Now is the time of monsters. I fully expect to witness
the collapse of the US federal government and the balkanization of its
states, given that I live a natural lifespan. My retirement plan is
basically the destruction of the society I live in.
Optimistically, the United Nations and their various international
courts which have no legitimacy to be the arbiters of justice over
humanity will dissolve too. The most likely way that these
institutions will collapse is when the Western hegemons are on the
losing side of international relations, as they set up these systems
to benefit themselves. Realistically, I don't think that most of the
faceless bureaucrats who have caused so much destruction in the world
will face justice in their lifetimes, they certainly won't be
prosecuted in the courts they control.
The future may be harsh, depopulated, like any post-apocalyptic
fictional scenario may suggest, but I'd rather live in that world than
the current one. A free world with all its dangers and downsides,
would be a utopia compared to living in golden chains.
Haha, just kidding! The government is looking out for
my best interests, cops would never lie to me, my fiat currency is
worth something, technology has human interests at heart,
supranational organizations benefit us global citizens, they care
about protecting our children, and the law doesn't just serve powerful
interests. I live in the most prosperous time in human history and
life is wonderful! Anyone who threatens my benevolent rulers is a
terrorist!