Two of the best commentators and analysts working right now discuss collapse and Caesarism. Great insights and relevant speculation, tho a lot to question as well. I have the utmost respect for these two, in fact I’d put them in the top five or top ten commentators working today, but they said a few things that made me scratch my head.

MacIntyre said Yarvins “Dark Elves” essay reveals he’s getting cold feet about his program seemingly coming to pass or at least making serious strides. MacIntyre says something like “he’s backing off” even tho he initially called for this sort of thing - Caesarism and takeover or replacement of the regime. I too once thought he was backing off, basically I thought that because the right is so rife with anti-semitism - even the Maga populace seems to believe the globalist agenda vaguely involves the Jews and Zionism - that he was dialing back his “right wing” stance, and that led to his support of Joe Biden and his overall rejection of Trump. Even perhaps this was behind his diminishment of Canadian truckers and other movements like anti-CRT.

But I think if you look at what Yarvins been doing this year it’s pretty clear to me that he’s going full steam ahead and isn’t backing off on anything! He’s all over the podcast world, appearing on Alex Jones, Tucker, Tim Dillon, Red Scare, and even humble shows like mine!! He showed up at a dimes square event and other New York parties, made several public appearances in the UK…the guy isn’t backing off on anything, he campaigning HARD for his agenda. And in many ways it looks like as his agenda is picking up steam, so is he.

Haywood makes many excellent points, here and on his blog. But he has the general position, which he brings up a lot, that the regime is “weak.” That it’s about to fall/fail, and we’re going to see something different take it’s place. Much of this video is speculation on what that might be. But what in gods name gives him the impression the regime is currently “weak?” I think I know: they’re filling their ranks with sycophantic woke ideologues who don’t know how to do anything, which is true, but I think this is a false argument for the regimes weakness or immanent failure. That is merely a veneer of ideological purity and virtue signaling to their base. The gay immigrant press secretary is irrelevant. Biden’s cabinet is a cavalcade of minority representation, sure, but look who the Secretary of State and of the treasury are. The department of transportation, EPA, housing and urban development, etc, are wholly inefficient and broken, yes, but they have been a long time. This I would argue lends only to the breakdown of institutions, capture of tax revenue by bureaucracy, and lowering quality of living standards, which has been going on for decades. Besides, these folks are only figureheads. You can put an affirmative-action surgeon at the head of a surgery department, but they never have to actually do any surgery, which is what really makes the department money. Buttigieg never even needs to look at a road to be the poster boy for the regime.

But none of this means the regime itself is getting weaker. In fact it appears to me that as institutions are stagnating, power has been concentrating progressively in the center, in what I guess I’ll call the “deep state.” The deep state is a real thing that exists that THEY identified. In fact most conspiracy theories start out as people noticing the regime has really nefarious plans for the rest of us to be subjected to. The “great reset” is THEIR term! We didn’t come up with the “great replacement” until AFTER they started telling us we were going to be replaced by offshore manufacturing and imported immigrant “talent” and labor.

So while Haywood says the government is weak right now, I immediately think to myself “then who just instituted a nationwide lockdown?” “Who just deployed a mandatory vaccine accross the entire nation?” “Whose in control of the economy via interest rate manipulation , false credit rating, and repeated stimulus ‘money?’ Who just stole the election? Who just coordinated a counter offensive in Ukraine that involved the assassination attempt of a world-famous ideologue, the precision bombing of two underwater pipelines, an attack on a strategically important bridge, and a frontal assault that pushed the Russians back and forced them into conscription? Fucking Zelensky? A Saturday night live-tier comedian?!”

Lastly, who forced ALL major tech companies to clamp down on dissident speech and perpetrated a total media blackout on a sitting President?

You’re telling me a “weak” regime did that? It tells me the deep state is really strong, and gaining in power.

Hopefully Hayward comes on my podcast soon and we can discuss this. To be clear this is a friendly line of questioning and he’s a person I follow closely, and I wouldn’t presume to “debate” him, bc I’d lose, these are simply the questions I’m left with after reading his blog and watching this video.

I also don’t exactly buy the “fracturing” of America thesis tho I think if it DID fracture it would probably be along the lines he speculates on. But fracturing is a contingency of communication and transportation breakdown, of infrastructure breakdown in those two sectors. While we are seeing ineptitude in the administration of our institutions, we are NOT seeing breakdown in their products in any meaningful sense: shipping lanes, ports, highways, roads, and the internet.

All this talk of crumbling infrastructure has *nothing* to do with international/state highways that get products out and around the country or the global markets, the breakdown happens at the local level on roads and bridges that normal people have to deal with. The government doesn’t give a shit about that. The bridge collapse in Pittsburgh didn’t effect anything coming from China or Mexico, did it?

And while it LOOKED like there was chaos in our ports and supply chain disruption during the pandemic, I contend this was not a result of moronic bumbling, but a purposeful action executed to put pressure on the American economy to help shift dependency onto the government, not in the form of breadlines but as stimulus. Meanwhile, the independent business person, farmer, what have you, is squeezed harder and harder and the average Americans ability to be financial independent is lessened that much more, which is the ultimate goal. Ships were actively told not to unload their cargo over “vaccine” paperwork, either the people on board didn’t have the right papers or didn’t have the vaccine, and they were kept idling at sea or in port, which caused some of them to turn around. This was done ON PURPOSE, by the SAME PEOPLE who disrupted American livelihood over the vaccine, closing schools and businesses and sending everyone to work from home.

I don’t think ANY of this is a “weakening” of the regime, rather it seems they’re flexing their muscle. I am like Haywood in that while my assessment sounds like doom and gloom, it gives me reason for optimism, actually. Let’s not forget that their discussion is ultimately about Caesarism, and while Haywood claims there is no counter to the current regime-enfranchised elite, I disagree completely. The very people Yarvin is working with over the last decade are that counter-elite, and they have a lot of promising connections. Think for example of Urbit, where did the money come from so Yarvin could start Urbit? Peter Thiel and Marc Andreeesen. While these guys don’t exactly have an open political coalition, they are clearly aligned and have similar, if not the same, goals, and whatever those goals or political ideals are, they are clearly in opposition to the regime. And today, Thiel is backing Blake Masters and JD Vance in politics, both of whom are closely aligned with Trump, who himself rode a wave into office. A wave of populist support, sure, but also a wave of libertarian tech billionaire money from Robert Mercer. So there absolutely is alignment amongst these people and it looks pretty clear that that involves taking over or at least taking part in American politics. Look at what Andreesen tweeted just the other day. If these guys aren’t “elite,” and if they aren’t directly opposed to the regime, then no one is. Read this whole thread: does this look like the reading list of someone disinterested in politics, happy or unconcerned with the current direction of the American regime?

Marc Andreessen @pmarca

1. The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges -- the single best book I have found on who we are and how we got here.

So as I was saying, and in conclusion, there are two ways this can go. This counter elite, who comes from outside politics (and maybe this is what Haywood meant, there’s no counter-elite faction *in* government - that’s why we call it “the regime”), can take power in one of two ways, and they seem to be going for both. They can insinuate themselves into power by way of people like Masters and Trump, but this takes a lot of time and is fraught with pitfalls, as evidenced by Trump seemingly caught completely off guard in 2020 with the pandemic, the election, and the twitter banning. If these people really want political control - which is debatable - this path is the hard one and they can probably only expect marginal, limited success.

The other path is Caesarism. That discussion is for another time, and I hope I can have it with Haywood himself, but for now suffice it to say I’ve discussed it with Auron MacIntyre and Darryl Cooper on my pod - two of the smartest guys in podcasting. For now what I will say is that the reason the regimes strength is actually a cause for optimism is that if it’s able to be captured by a Caesar, it can be put to great use, and usher in an imperial period of flourishing unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

In Rome, the most important institution was the military, and it was at the height of its power when Caesar took over, in large part because of the reforms instituted by Marius. Just like Alexander did with Philips reform of the Phalanx, Julius and then Augustus Caesar used this new tool as a way to take power and build the empire. Our power equivalent to the Roman military is the internet - communication technology that allows politicians to spread their influence far and wide and accommodates for much more far-flung trade. What a powerful figure would do is reform this tool and either carry it across the rubicon, or make it ready for someone else to. Trump used twitter effectively to gain power, and while he had a lot of money and political ambition, he ended up being taken out by the regime wielding the same tool he did. Today, very few people are in a position like Trump was, but Elon Musk is arguably in an even *better* position right now. While Trump used the twitter that was lying around, and then had it turned on him, Musk is poised to take complete control. He has the potential, and apparently the desire, to reformulate it into an even more effective political weapon that *can’t* be turned on him. Once Marius reformed the military, using it to take control of the state seemed only the logical next step. I can’t look at buying twitter in any other light than this.

It would probably be too contentious for him to actually take power himself, too far outside the bounds of what’s legal or traditional in American politics. If our system was completely broken he could simply buy his way in, like Bloomberg tried to do. As it stands now, what he’d probably have to do is throw his influence and - if the twitter deal goes through - tools behind an American born candidate, like Trump or Blake Masters or someone else. This would elicit a massive backlash and counter by the regime, and my reason for optimism here is that as time goes on and the right/libertarian tech contingent gains power and influence, the regimes opposition will probably have to get more extreme, which is to say more flagrantly and openly illegal. A lot rides on this twitter deal, and I predict that if Musk ends up with it in his hands, the regime will enact a very heavy-handed and probably illegal attempt to shut down the deal or hog-tie twitters influence in some drastic way. What that looks like I don’t know, but if it doesn’t happen, if they try to put fetters on Musk and twitter in some way, the debate on whether or not the regime is weak will be settled by either their inaction or success or failure.

ADDENDUM: wish I had thought of linking this to begin with. Here is a well thought out and well argued essay by Haywood, “On the Future Ascent of a Caesar” ,that I find interesting. Much of what I’m responding to in the above essay comes from this, its a much more elaborate explanation of the things he says in his interview with Auron MacIntyre.

Astral Flight Simulation

Is the “Regime” weak?