You are here - Part 2
Neitzsche’s insights, plus climate cycles and their impact on civilizations.
In Part 1 of this series we briefly introduced the predictability of the principal historical cycles each civilization experiences and the paradigm of Oswald Spengler. In this essay the concepts of Neitzsche are a focus. By 1880, Neitzsche had foreseen the wholesale warfare destined for the first half of the 20th Century and the current nihilistic culture that has been forced upon us more recently — producing such absurdities as disparate as Pope Francis or Kamala Harris. Neitzsche was the inspiration for Spengler, who went on to recognize repetitive patterns in the unfolding of each discrete civilization. Spengler can be understood without this introduction to Neitzsche, but the two are better considered as parts of a whole.
Before we get to Nietzsche some brief observations on climate, and its role in allowing civilizations to flourish, are appropriate.
GLOBAL WARMING DRIVES CIVILIZATION
Considerable territory which previously held civilizations and lesser human settlements now lies submerged along the continental shelves, thanks to the 400+ foot rise in sea level over the past 20,000 years since the last glacial maximum. Thanks to global warming, civilizations can now occupy a far greater extent of the earth’s surface than ever before. Take America’s greatest city as an example, New York. As recently as the late 19th Century Long Island Sound and the Hudson River would often freeze solid during winters. Which threw a wrench into New York’s ability to function as a global seaport. Not until the planet warmed sufficiently during the 20th Century was the city able to realize its full potential.
As far as anyone knows, there were no civilizations prior to 15,000 years ago. Before that, large portions of the globe were too cold to permit advanced societies to evolve and the human population was of insufficient density. Thank global warming (which has nothing to do with human interventions) for the blessings of civilization.
Ice ages are recurring phenomena on our planet, for the past two billion or so years. Our species is only 200 or 300 thousand years old, therefore early humans migrating out of Africa into the northern hemisphere would have been unable to populate Britain, Germany, and Poland before the most recent ice sheet began receding 20,000 years ago. Or in the unlikely chance they had managed to do so during the previous interglacial epoch, subsequent glaciation would have erased all evidence. Combined with relatively low human populations as our species began to proliferate, sufficient population densities to produce civilizations are a relatively recent development, confined to only perhaps the past 15,000 years.
For fun, ask a smug climate alarmist to explain how and why sufficient ice melted to raise sea levels over 400 feet in the last 20,000 years. By about 6,000 years ago, almost all of the post-glacial melting had already occurred. Note that the scale of the graph below is in meters.
Yet in spite of the wholesale ice melt of the past 20,000 years, current global temperatures are near the lowest they have been over the past 500 million years. Meanwhile, generations of useful idiots have been indoctrinated into believing there is an imaginary CO2 crisis placing the planet in grave danger. To the point where installations of vast pipelines to transport CO2 are tearing apart the landscape.
The only force sufficiently powerful to accomplish the melting experienced since the most recent glacial maximum (or any of the previous glaciations) is the sun. Almost all of this melting occurred in the millenia prior to the last few. The sun did not change significantly. What did change (and continuously changes) were the parameters of Earth’s orbit around it. The regular cycles of the tilt of our axis to the plane of our orbit around the sun (obliquity of the ecliptic) and the wobble of the axis (precession of the equinoxes). 41,000 and 26,000 year cycles, respectively. The tilt of the axis reached an extreme around 8,700 BP and will reach its minimum around 11,800 A.D., almost 10,000 years into the future. Thanks to the tilt we experience winters and summers. Otherwise, the seasons would remain static throughout the year. But the tilt of the earth’s axis to its plane of rotation about the sun is constantly in flux. The 41,000 year cycle of its increase and decrease is sufficient to cause glaciations to creep forward from the poles and then retreat.
Since the last glacial maximum the increase in global temperature has not been a uniform, steady affair. A massive solar incident over 14,000 BP increased temperatures, while a likely major asteroid or comet impact had the opposite effect thousands of years later and has been hypothesized to be responsible for the Younger Dryas cooling interval. Volcanic eruptions also periodically contribute to cooling. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia cooled the world's oceans for almost a century. The 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia triggered killer frosts in New England and Europe, food price inflation, and famine.
These long-term orbital cycles have been going on for the duration of our planet’s history, and the globe has transitioned in and out of various ice ages. We are still in one, with ice at the two poles. This has not always been the case. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth, a couple of hundred million years ago, all the continents had drifted together into a supercontinent concentrated east and west along the equator. New York was much further south, at a latitude close to where Miami now resides. Yes, the climate has continuously changed throughout our planet’s lifespan, but it once was much warmer. Sometimes much colder. Change is the only constant.
CO2 has zero to do with this process. Elevated CO2 levels are a consequence, not a cause of warming. Much of the global CO2 is dissolved in the oceans. When heated, they release CO2. The same as when a room temperature soda bottle will strongly gas off when opened, as opposed to a cold one.
FRAGILITY OF CULTURAL MEMORY
Once a civilization enters terminal decline its cultural hard drive is wiped as thoroughly as those on a Hillary Clinton server. Within a couple of centuries almost all cultural knowledge is lost. No one is able to read the old inscriptions or understand the intent behind the monumental architecture. The cities are abandoned and what little population remains largely flees to rural areas where it is easier to obtain sustenance. The population disintegrates. Only through modern archaeology and decipherment of ancient scripts has much of the history of past civilizations come to light. Current residents of areas once occupied by great civilizations often know little about their ancestors. Centuries hence, our civilization will experience the same fate. Until then, the broad outlines of our future history are already in place.
PATTERN RECOGNITION
Humans are a strange species. We are narcissistic, parochial, and every society comes to believe their own time is somehow special and unique. Not by a long shot. Little is ever new in the manner in which current events unfold within the long cycles they populate. It’s all been seen before. Humans have been organizing themselves into societies for long enough now that various patterns have emerged and been perceived in the historical record. What follows is an exercise in pattern recognition of historical cycles. If this thesis is true, what lessons can we take away from the study of History to be able to place our time into an accurate perspective, to examine our era to reach the conclusions future historians will arrive at when looking back from their vantage point? Once the historical cycles of past societies are perceived, they can not be unseen.
History, as usually taught at a basic level, is often little more than a listing of battles and rulers. Wars and kings, e.g., MAGA forces defeated the Clintonistas. Which was an event, but lacking elaboration this example lacks any context or ability to derive historical understanding. The media saturate us daily with a stream of seemingly random events. But there is nothing random in how countless minor events congeal into the major movements of History. The patterns are there once you know where to look for them and distill them out from a mass of seemingly random data.
In our collective narcissism we assume there has been a continuous linear societal evolution leading to the present. Greeks, then Romans, Europeans, and finally Americans. And we will live happily ever after. It does not work that way. But history is too often taught from such a perspective. America’s ultimate collapse (centuries into the future) is certain. We can know this because it has happened too many times in too many places. It is not optional. The factors which will bring this about are already in place (which is all too obvious), just as they are in place at every other civilization which has reached the same contemporaneous stage we have arrived at. Most significant among these factors is accelerating depopulation, the result of a rapidly decelerating birth rate. More on this later. Yet, with the exception of Elon Musk, almost no one is focusing on this point. But there is little that can be done to intervene. Nature is the culprit, and all species possess mechanisms to limit population densities once they become too extreme. Our species included. Urban populations are not fertile.
HISTORY UNFOLDS CYCLICALLY WHEN VIEWED ACROSS MULTIPLE CIVILIZATIONS
At advanced levels, philosophies of history are sometimes taught, rather than the simplistic ancient, medieval, modern version normally inflicted upon students. One specific approach will be applied here, which has been tossed around for at least a couple of millennia. The cyclical school of historical interpretation. Our guide through the maze of the past and the future will be German historian Oswald Spengler’s framework for comprehension. Spengler was the dean of cyclical historians, someone who approached his subject from an omniscient perspective regarding all elements of social life (political, economic, artistic, mathematical, architectural, scientific, spiritual, and religious). Spengler wrote a century ago, after his nation’s defeat in WWI and during its transition from a monarchy to a republic.
Will Durant, history’s best-selling historian, described Spengler as “the greatest German thinker of the 20th Century.” Spengler created what can be described as a unified field theory of history. What he concluded, based on the empirical evidence of past civilizations, has proven over the course of the intervening century to be a highly accurate guide to the events leading to the present, and will continue to allow reliable predictions of historical developments over the course of future centuries. He was heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s ideas, and to a lesser extent, Hegel.
NIETZSCHE’S PROFOUND INSIGHTS
Prior to Spengler, Nietzsche had made preliminary strides into fleshing out History’s grand cycles. Writing in 1882, he predicted:
The story I have to tell is the history of the next two centuries. . . . [the 20th Century would experience] wars such as have never happened on earth. [The reason]: Because human beings would no longer have a god to turn to, to absolve them of their guilt; but they would still be racked by guilt, since guilt is an impulse instilled in children when they are very young, before the age of reason. As a result, people would loathe not only one another, but themselves.
Sound familiar? We reside in an era when a minority of self-loathing individuals has come to the forefront. Self-loathing to the point of some despising even their own gender or cultural background. Many such individuals are exploited by those with ulterior motives, in pursuit of money and power. Our nihilistic, crazy era is rapidly drawing to a close, having finally triggered a counter-reaction (the MAGA movement — and its global counterparts) we are now experiencing. Big, positive, changes lie immediately ahead. Potential turbulence along the way would be no surprise. But the larger point is that America’s future is undoubtedly bright.
Nietzsche made several other observations which proved prescient. Especially when predicting a virile phase for Europe, followed by a feminizing one. The Atlantic has posed no barrier to the latter phenomenon, which has infected America, but to a far lesser degree than Europe. His observations on the self-loathing, envious foundation of socialism has particular relevance for our time, an era in which socialists (and their communist cousins) have accumulated considerable political power. Rest assured the dark chapter Nietzsche foresaw a century-and-a-half ago is rapidly concluding. Phenomena we have recently experienced (making abortion into a sacrament for the Left, an epidemic of transgenderism, nihilism, anarchism, socialism, etc.) all have their roots in the longer-term historical movements Nietzsche recognized. But the time for that sort of nonsense is drawing to a close. We are beginning to experience an opposing reaction.
These are not one-way trends. The pendulum swings to one extreme, then reverts. We are living through a pendulum extreme, on the cusp of a reversal toward normal levels. The pendulum reversal does not occur in all areas simultaneously. This is an extended process, proceeding at various rates across various sectors and locales. Some areas turn earlier than others. Attuned to his era, Nietzsche was not opposed to Europe’s growing militarization, something he possessed a clearer grasp of where it would lead than anyone else. Two world wars and a cold war later, the pendulum has swung back away from that extreme and that era will never be seen again in our civilization. WWIII is not in the cards.
Spengler’s debt to Nietzsche was total. He owed “everything” to his predecessor.
Of all the great German intellectuals, Nietzsche was the only born musician. . . . Nietzsche lived, felt, and thought by ear. . . .His prose is not “written,” it is heard — one might even say sung. The vowels and cadences are more important than the similes and metaphors. What he sensed as he surveyed the ages was their melody, their meter. He discovered the musical keys of foreign cultures. Before him, no one knew of the tempo of history. A great many of his concepts . . . are to be understood quite musically. He sensed the rhythm of what is called nobility, ethics, heroism, distinction, and master morality. He was the first to experience as a symphony the image of history that had been created by scholarly research out of data and numbers — the rhythmic sequence of ages, customs, and attitudes. . . . No one writes history any more without seeing things in his light.
Much of the current historical tempo is a prisoner of the four-year presidential cycle. As we proceed through the remainder of 2024, it would be an understatement to observe that the pace and magnitude of historically impactful events is accelerating and reaching a crescendo. Every four years the entire world political/economic focus comes to a standstill, fixated on the first Tuesday in November.
TWO CENTURIES OF INTERNAL WARFARE
The era of intermittent warfare which Napoleon initiated at the start of the 19th century would not conclude until 1945, or perhaps not until the ending of the Cold War on Christmas 1991 when the hammer and sickle flag was lowered from the Kremlin. The recent Ukraine conflict is ahistorical - out of phase with the current era, and will soon terminate. The same holds true for ongoing Middle Eastern conflicts.
It was Spengler’s genius that enabled him to recognize that this same period of two centuries of continuous warfare (which he termed the period of contending states) occurs at the same point in every civilization, immediately prior to it assuming its final form.
Once the internal warfare to determine the dominant nation concludes, then attention can be directed to external, imperial problems. Our imperial problems are largely self-inflicted. Under Obama/Biden, hundreds of billions of dollars have funded Iran’s terrorism and its network of proxy terrorist states. China has been allowed to loot America’s economy due to a lack of tariffs, etc. NATO’s Russian aggression is a massive waste of lives and wealth. The Trump Doctrine need not be reviewed here for what it has yielded in terms of peace.
We will dig deeper into Spengler’s concepts in the forthcoming article, but first it is worthwhile to examine some of Nietzsche’s thinking which exerted such a profound influence on Spengler, concepts the latter was able to fully develop into a coherent philosophy of history. What is a philosophy of history? This consists of an examination of the “individual actions, social structures, periods and regions, civilizations, [and] large causal processes” to determine if “history as a whole [has] meaning, structure, or direction, beyond the individual events and actions that make it up.” Which is the entire point of this blog.
WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP IT’S BEEN
In case you failed to notice, we are living in a psychopathocracy, of, by, and for the insane. Not only are they nuts, but they are also evil. As James Kunstler has noted:
Kamala Harris was unable to articulate any coherent notion . . . beyond some empty nostrums about “joy” and “turning the page.” Because the party’s actual purpose, which it hides and lies about, is just to push you around, tell you what to do and what to think, and to punish you if you don’t comply — in other words, to exercise despotic power.
It lacks the competence to manage an economy from the top down, and it certainly won’t allow the countless volitional transactions of people at liberty to produce and sell things of value on their own. It will go to war against anything to steal more money: some pitiful foreign kleptocracy of a country. . . the liberty-minded people of our own country. . . against sound ideas, proven principles, standards of decency, and, not unusually, against reality itself.
The Democratic party grasps at retaining power, unable to provide positive messaging, while the MAGA movement promises a restoration of normalcy. History has seen this scenario many times before. The masses will always choose normalcy over insanity.
The best field guide through these strange times is Nietzsche. No one better understood the dynamics of episodes of societal insanity.
Nietzsche:
My Belief in the virilising of Europe. — We owe it to Napoleon . . . that several warlike centuries, which have not had their like in past history, may now follow one another — in short, that we have entered upon the classical age of war, war at the same time scientific and popular, on the grandest scale (as regards means, talents and discipline), to which all coming millennia will look back with envy and awe as a work of perfection: — for the national movement out of which this martial glory springs, is only the counter-check against Napoleon, and would not have existed without him. To him, consequently, one will one day be able to attribute the fact that man in Europe has again got the upper hand of the merchant and the Philistine; perhaps even of "woman" also, who has become pampered owing to Christianity and the extravagant spirit of the 18th Century, and still more owing to "modern ideas." Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas, and accordingly in civilization, something like a personal enemy . . .
Other observations by Nietzsche also deserve highlighting, especially his recognition of socialism’s toxicity. His prescience for what would transpire in the dozen decades since his death in 1900 is unmatched and bears profound relevance for understanding our current chaotic times.
In 1885 Nietzsche realized socialism and the worship of death are parts of the same whole:
“In the doctrine of socialism there is hidden, rather badly, a ‘will to negate life’; the human beings or races that think up such a doctrine must be bungled. Indeed, I should wish that a few great experiments might prove that in a socialist society life negates itself, cuts off its own roots. The earth is large enough and man still sufficiently unexhausted; hence such a practical instruction and demonstratio ad absurdum would not strike me as undesirable, even if it were gained and paid for with a tremendous expenditure of human lives.”
Abortion, nihilism, self-loathing, envy, transgenderism, etc. are fellow travelers with socialism. Which is unsurprising once we realize socialism (or its big brother communism) represents a system of organized theft, resting upon a foundation of envy. It is a system under which the wealth of certain individuals is forcibly distributed to others. Socialism’s modern shock troops — Antifa, BLM, Hamas protestors — do not represent a productive class. These are immature slackers, filled with angst and covetousness. Their patron saint is Bernie Sanders, a lifelong moocher.
We should ignore Nietzsche’s cheerleading for militarism and instead focus on his preference for masculine values over the feminine. He railed against the “withering feminization” threatening Europe. This feminization has now largely been completed, with the introduction of masses of “Asians” (Muslims) into large sections of Europe and creation of such things as no-go zones in French urban districts or British grooming gangs organized to promote the human trafficking of young Christian girls. Gangs police and politicians do everything possible to avoid acknowledging. Or the epidemic of rapes in Sweden and Denmark. Sweden opened an emergency department for male rape victims in 2015. Germany’s humiliation in two world wars, and exposure as monsters for their genocide (which began far earlier than is now commonly recognized, with their colonial genocide in Namibia in 1904, including the construction of concentration camps and forced marches into deserts), resulted in national emasculation.
Nietzsche only superficially connected immaturity with the feminine aspect, but this also needs to be considered. Consider a Greta Thunberg, held up by the global Left as a leader. Immaturity is not necessarily age dependent. A Jane Fonda can be as immature and histrionic at 80 as a Greta Thunberg at 16. Such individuals need therapy. Or social isolation to protect the rest of us. Any society looking to them as role models is diseased. Perpetually turbulent individuals, constantly in search of one cause or another to hysterically (in both the emotional and comedic sense) protest, are symptomatic of an era punctuated by a shift toward nihilism. An era fortunately now on the cusp of coming to a close. Code Pink, Pussy Riot, French topless feminists, are entertaining sideshows, about to vanish from public life as the masculine reasserts itself over the feminine. Half the Hamas protesters participate only to make fashion statements with their keffiyehs. Hollywood and celebrity culture is suffused with the feminine worship of cultural icons, no matter how debased they might be. Vogue and Elle magazines (the latter employed the nut case infinitely entertaining E. Jean Carroll as an advice columnist for 25 years), alongside similar celebrity/gossip outlets, swoon before the famous and powerful, staffed and read by Monica Lewinsky wannabes.
In the legend of the Pied Piper, he enticed children away from their homes with his magic flute. Thunberg represented a luring of adults away from their senses by a child they willingly followed. The U.N. and various global elites swooned over this angry child. A cultural inversion, a stampede toward the feminine and the immature. Only a collective of nihilists in search of prophets could have found the child’s rants enticing. The Pied Piper of Hamelin was hired by the town to use his flute to lure away the local rat population. When he was stiffed on payment, the piper retaliated by luring away the children. Thunberg successfully lured the rats inhabiting the global climate change industry. The difference is the story of the piper was fiction.
The antithesis of feminization is exemplified by a Trump, or even in the female gender by strong, willful leaders such as Thatcher, Harriet Hageman, or Kari Lake. By feminization we mean not necessarily a gender-based definition, but the antithesis of the sort of shrill, hysterical, manic, cowardly displays associated with the Left. Think Tim Walz. The 2014 image below depicts five NATO defense ministers. The date when America finally pulls the plug on NATO can not come too soon.
It is essential to realize the American pendulum reversion we are now experiencing represents, among other things, a retreat from the feminine toward the masculine. With the feminine representing emotion; the masculine representing logic. Nietzsche placed socialism among the feminine attributes. Trump’s masculinity is obvious and accounts in large part for his political success. A decade or more earlier, and his masculinity would have been a liability, out of sync with the era represented by Obama. The pendulum had to swing too far toward the feminine before sufficient political momentum developed to reverse that tendency. The Harris/Walz ticket never stood a chance.
A CULTURE OF FEAR
Something is now going on, in Europe and too many progressive American cities. Nietzsche identified the issue — it is based on fear. An effeminate, paralyzing timidity.
There is a point in the history of society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining “punishment” and “being supposed to punish” hurts it, arouses fear in it. “Is it not enough to render him undangerous? Why still punish? Punishing itself is terrible.” With this question, herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its ultimate consequence. Whosoever examines the conscience of the European today will have to pull the same imperative out of a thousand moral folds and hideouts [i.e., it is ubiquitous] — the imperative of herd timidity: “we want that some day there should be nothing any more to be afraid of!” Some day throughout Europe, the will and way to this day is now called “progress.”
These words were written 139 years ago, long before Kamala Harris opposed prosecuting criminals. Europe was already afflicted with a disease only recently infectious in America. Europe has both feet on the banana peel of permanent decline, a fate centuries into America’s future. For now, we are safe. Americans have a low tolerance for this insanity. Does Nietzsche’s outline not describe the timidity of, for example, British police, politicians, and media in the face of widespread grooming and human trafficking of young Christian girls by Muslim immigrant gangs? Does this not explain why British Muslims can not be identified as such, but must be alluded to as “Asians”? Does this not explain why police reflexively blame the victims?
Soros funded, progressive prosecutors (e.g, George Gascon in Los Angeles, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, Kim Foxx in Chicago, or Alvin Bragg in New York) possess a different morality than the rest of us. Their empathy is with the criminals, who terrify them. When a strong figure, such as a Trump appears, they feel the need to target him, out of fear of him harming those they identify with, victims in their eyes. This same sort of passion is exhibited by women who fall in love with violent imprisoned criminals, who correspond with and hope to marry them. It has been known for at least 50 years that the liberal fantasy of every violent criminal being amenable to rehabilitation is bogus. Of these Soros prosecutors listed above , Boudin was forced out in a recall election after 18 months, Foxx has chosen not to run for reelection, and voters will discard Gascon on November 5.
A Bragg will not hesitate to prosecute a Trump because the latter represents a strong, masculine posture found threatening by progressives. On his first day in office, Bragg made clear to his subordinates that a new sheriff was in town and bail would only be for the very most violent of criminals, while theft was no biggy. The antithesis of the highly successful broken windows strategy adopted by Guiliani 30 years ago. Read all seven pages of this crap here. A snippet is below.
Day One Policies & Procedures
January 3, 2022
There is a presumption of pre-trial non-incarceration for every case except those with charges of homicide or the death of a victim, a class B violent felony in which a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument causes serious physical injury, sex offenses in Article 130 of the Penal Law, domestic violence felonies or charges of PL § 215.50, public corruption, rackets, or major economic crimes, including any attempt to commit any such offense under Article 110 of the Penal Law. For any charge of attempt to cause serious physical injury with a dangerous instrument, ADAs must obtain the approval of an ECAB supervisor to seek pretrial detention.
a) Exceptions will be granted in extraordinary circumstances, based on a holistic analysis of the facts presented, criminal history (particularly any recent history of not returning to court without sufficient cause or explanation), and any other information available.
Whenever liberal prosecutors resort to holistic analyses, it's time to stock up on ammo. There is no point in attempting to comprehend this non-sense. The objective is obviously not to reduce crime, but to empathize with criminals.
E. SPECIAL PROCEDURES FOR CASES INVOLVING NONCITIZENS
The Office will seek dispositions that avoid immigration consequences for all misdemeanors, and all felonies for which non-carceral outcomes are the presumptive outcome. The procedures for seeking a disposition that carries immigration consequences in any such case are the same as the procedures for seeking a carceral disposition for cases in which non-incarceration is the presumption.
Nietzshe’s insights on socialism could function as a preface to Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago:
"Socialism ― or the tyranny of the meanest and the dumbest, ―that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the mummers [pajama and soy boys], brought to its zenith, ―is, as a matter of fact, the logical conclusion of “modern ideas” and their latent anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming resolutions or even for coming to an end at all, is paralyzed. Men follow ― but no longer their reason. That is why socialism is on the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces of present-day socialists ― and what wretched and nonsensical feelings does not their style reveal to us! ― and the childish lamblike happiness of their hopes and desires.
Nevertheless, in many places in Europe, there may be violent hand-to-hand struggles and irruptions on their account: the coming century is likely to be convulsed in more than one spot, and the Paris Commune, which finds defenders and advocates even in Germany, will seem to have but a slight indigestion compared with what is to come. Be this as it may, there will always be too many people of property for socialism ever to signify anything more than an attack of illness: and these people of property are like one man with one faith, “one must possess something in order to be someone.” This, however, is the oldest and most wholesome of all instincts; I should add: “one must desire more than one has in order to become more.” For this is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of Development. To have and to wish to have more, in a word, Growth―that is life itself. In the teaching of socialism “a will to the denial of life” is but poorly concealed: botched men and races they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort. In fact, I even wish a few experiments might be made to show that in socialistic society life denies itself, and itself cuts away its own roots. The earth is big enough and man is still unexhausted enough for a practical lesson of this sort and demonstratio ad absurdum ― even if it were accomplished only by a vast expenditure of lives ― to seem worthwhile to me. Still, Socialism, like a restless mole beneath the foundations of a society wallowing in stupidity, will be able to achieve something useful and salutary: it delays “Peace on Earth” and the whole process of character-softening of the democratic herding animal; it forces the European to have an extra supply of intellect, ― it also saves Europe a while from the marasmus femininus [literally: extreme starvation resulting from feminine influences] which is threatening it."
The key Nietzschean phrase above is “logical conclusion.” Political trends must extend their full length until the rubber band snaps back. A society must come to the point where it is staring into an existential abyss until sufficient patriots step forward to reverse the decline and set it back upon the path to success. We reside at such a point.
Nietzsche:
I am opposed to:
1. Socialism, because it dreams quite naively of “the good, true, and beautiful” and of “equal rights.” Anarchism also desires the same ideal, but in a more brutal fashion;
2. Parliamentary government and the press, because these are the means by which the herd animal becomes master.
Amen. If the COVID lockdown regimes illustrated anything, it was that a host of wannabe tyrants (Nietzshe’s “herd animals” above), when given the opportunity, will rain down tyrannies on the rest of us. With willing and enthusiastic accomplices in the press.
Modern socialism wants to create the secular counterpart to Jesuitism: everyone is a perfect instrument. But the purpose, the reason, has not yet been ascertained.
Socialism is merely a means of agitation employed against individualism: it grasps that, to attain anything, one must organize oneself to a collective action, to a “power.” But what it desires is not a social order as the goal of the individual but a social order as a means for making possible many individuals: this is the instinct of socialists about which they frequently deceive themselves —apart from the fact that, in order to prevail, they frequently have to deceive themselves. The preaching of altruistic morality in the service of individual egoism [insert your favorite Cuomo brother here] is one of the most common lies of the 19th Century. [and the 21st Century]
Anarchism [e.g., Antifa or BLM] , too, is merely a means of agitation employed by socialism; by means of it, socialism arouses fear, by means of fear it begins to fascinate and to terrorize. Above all — it draws the courageous, the daring to its side, even in the most spiritual matters.
All this notwithstanding: individualism is the most modest stage of the will to power.
Nietzsche’s “will to power” was his antithesis to liberal insanity. His highest ideal. He meant one’s self-actualizing and impact on his environment to reach his maximum potential. This includes a primordial will to live, the most fundamental urge of all creatures. He elevated individualism above the collective, the essence of what makes the American system distinct from all others, past or present. In a historical first, the uniqueness and genius of the Bill of Rights elevated the rights of one individual above that of the mob. It is better that 10 criminals go free than that one innocent man should rot in jail.
Nietzsche lumped together socialists, anarchists, and nihilists as always seeking somebody to blame, harboring an “instinct of revenge and resentment.” Is this not the core platform of modern Democrats? Liberalism is too often the religion of the bitter, resentful elements of society. Those pandering to these self-destructive impulses (Pocahontas Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Kamala, etc.) are the bottom feeders of the political class.
Anarchism is merely a means of agitation employed by socialism; by means of it, socialism arouses fear, by means of fear it begins to fascinate and to terrorize: above all — it draws the courageous, the daring to its side.
Antifa’s shock troops are nothin new. Spengler further developed this concept to conclude communism/socialism and its accompanying anarchists are utilized by the oligarchs to serve their purposes:
The working-class movement is what Its leaders make of it, and hatred of the owner has long enlisted itself in the service of the bourse [financial markets]. Practical communism with its class war — today a long obsolete and adulterated phrase — is nothing but the trusty henchman of big Capital, which knows perfectly well how to make use of it.
Spengler observed the above over a century ago, but today’s leftists have yet to get the memo: communism is “long obsolete.” This becomes increasingly true with each passing year. There is a reason Russia outlawed the Communist Party after 70 years, or that, for all practical purposes, the Chinese have abandoned communism, but not yet dismantled the tyrannical regime it spawned. The CCP is living on borrowed time and will not endure more than another decade to two, at most.
Unlike America, certain parts of Europe (France, Britain, etc.) are busy doubling down on their demise, a reality recently underscored by the recent victory of socialists/communists in the French election. Nietzsche, a fan of masculine action, including violence when appropriate, thought that anything, including socialists’ willingness to resort to violence, was an improvement over the feminine imperative sweeping over Europe in his day. Of course once the National Socialists gained power in Germany, it predictably proved the nation’s undoing. Germany’s loss during the war, and the genocidal horrors which were revealed, permanently wounded the national psyche. But, as Nietzsche predicted, it did “save Europe for a while” from the feminine rot which now eats away at it. Ironically, the excesses of Nazism led to the forced feminization of Germany, first by American occupying troops, then self-inflicted. Germany’s defeat in two world wars has feminized that nation to the point of being beyond retrieval.
[NOTE: Again, as used here, “feminine” does not apply to the gender, but to behavior patterns of timidity, irrationality, and weakness. Terms such as “liberal” or “progressive” could be substituted.]
Is it not true, as Nietzsche maintained, that “in the genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming re-solutions or even for coming to an end at all, is paralyzed?” Even the simplest, most obvious solutions to major problems go unresolved. Take New York, largest of America’s cities. Headed by a corrupt mayor (a given in most major cities), the “solutions” to a migrant invasion include commandeering hotels — displacing the homeless from shelters and school children from classrooms — and passing out debit cards to illegals. (And of course registering them to vote). The unknown is whether the FBI investigation of Mayor Adams is designed to actually root out corruption or merely to elicit blackmail an equally corrupt federal administration can use against him to ensure compliance with their reckless immigration policies. Is not Congress equally paralyzed by blackmail? As Chuck Schumer helpfully underscored, the intelligence community stands ready to destroy any politician breaking ranks.
Socialism is the undercurrent in America's great cities, all wallowing in the stupidity of progressive administrations. Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, take your pick.
Future generations will find it impossible to understand how ours allowed wholesale insanties to flourish. When the FBI is tasked with surveilling parents participating in school board meetings or participating in the false prosecution of a physician who exposed the horrors of genital mutilation surgeries for transgender minors, Nietzsche’s forecasts have been fulfilled, just as they were during the world wars and the Holocaust. When societies descend into madness, the longing for sanity becomes overwhelming. Today we can not comprehend the passions which produced the carnage of the Civil War. Yet we possess our own incomprehensible realities, although they too are about to subside as our society reverts toward sanity.
POLITICS FOR FUN & PROFIT
Nietzsche was born into an early political era. In contrast, we are nearing the closing of the political era. What does that mean, a political era? Politics — debates and conflicts between opposing factions in pursuit of power — is not a constant across all types of societies. It is primarily a phenomenon associated with democracies. Feudalism, monarchy, dictatorships, etc. represent systems in which politics plays an essentially insignificant, even nonexistent, role. Under feudalism and monarchy, society is subdivided into the three estates of the realm: clergy, nobility, and commoners/serfs. Kings stood outside any estate. A bourgeois class eventually evolves from the commoners. The system differed somewhat across the various European countries. The estates system came crashing down in France with the Revolution, followed by democracy and wars.
The eventual chaos produced by democracy gives way to a universal longing for the stability provided by an empowered leader. Abuses will always occur, whether power is diffused or concentrated. Benevolent, competent rulers are interspersed with tyrants, lunatics, or crooks — or some combination of these traits. For now, as the Democratic party lies in shambles and Trump is forcing the GOP to rid itself of its corrupt elements, the certainty is that the regime in place in recent years was unsustainable and populated with those who either longed for America’s destruction [Clintons, Obama] or were too busy lining their pockets to care [Biden, Pelosi].
Nietzsche was born in Germany in 1844 and lived until 1900. The German states began uniting in 1850 and thereafter. During his lifetime the nation experienced a rapid urbanization and maturation into an industrial and scientific powerhouse (the largest in Europe), not altogether different from the development America later experienced. At his birth Germany was largely rural. By his death it had transitioned to an urban society, Europe’s industrial powerhouse. It simultaneously underwent the transition from monarchy to democracy. His lifetime witnessed a dynamic era marked by great changes, military tensions, and shifting alliances across Europe, beginning with the Napoleonic wars. He was prescient regarding the political age which would appear immediately ahead, an era now concluding:
The concept "politics" then becomes elevated entirely to the sphere of spiritual warfare. All the mighty realms of the ancient order of society are blown into space — for they are all based on falsehood: there will be wars, the like of which have never been seen on earth before. Only from my time and after me will politics on a large scale exist on earth.
Like all things, politics has a beginning and an ending. Just as by the close of the 20th Century the West was exhausted from two centuries of continuous warfare, the “spiritual warfare” of politics now rapidly also draws to a close. The MAGA movement serves to unite disparate constituencies, in contrast to Democrats’ opposing strategy of attempting to be all things to all people and pandering to every minor interest group, while splintering society into factions. MAGA panders to but one group: those not part of the oligarchic class. While Democrats are actively attempting to divide the nation, Trump is recruiting ever greater numbers into the MAGA camp. Its recruits are anxious to put aside their differences and seek only stability and a functional economy. The overarching demand is for competent administration. In recent months, this has manifested in numbers of the oligarchic class (particularly in its most dynamic sector — high tech) joining — deserting to — the MAGA forces. We are tired of political strife and willing to sacrifice strong positions in exchange for compromise in order to restore order. Trump is willing to welcome a RFK Jr. to deal with health issues, but warns that he must be kept far away from energy matters. An age of political battles is concluding; an era of accommodation is beginning.
America’s Vietnam war, with its half million American troops, represented the high water mark in American militarism. A continuous decline in foreign aggression has followed. The antiwar movement which arose in response was comprised of members of Trump’s generation. The 9/11 attack provided an excuse to again send American troops abroad, but the political counter reaction (manifesting in the MAGA movement) prohibits anything other than proxy wars, which are now about to fade into history.
Successive generations have experienced an incessant period of Nietzsche’s “spiritual warfare” of politics. It is essential to grasp that the MAGA movement represents a counter-reaction to political strife. We are weary from decades of political discord. MAGA is the bookend to the Vietnam antiwar movement. But from the Right, not the Left.
The ending of politics as we know it will result in a wholesale makeover of legislatures (municipal, state, and federal). A great replacement of legislators is in its early stages. Hyperdeflation will be the principal driver of this phenomenon. As the debt crisis implodes in coming years, the money legislatures can allocate will dry up. A generation of legislative budget cutters will ensue. Serious people, mature adults, will replace the armies of hacks currently predominating in our legislatures. Legislators accustomed to accumulating debts they have no intention of ever honoring will be replaced (or change their spots) by those intent on slashing budgets.
There are around 7,500 state legislators, about one for every 45,000 citizens. Under federalism, these are essentially the elected owners of the Constitution. Combined with the 535 members of Congress, these advocates for geographically narrow interests will soon be confronted with making tough choices and compromises in coming years as over a century of debt accumulated since the founding of the Federal Reserve comes due. There will be no place for nonsense. A Liz Cheney being replaced by a Harriet Hageman is only among the earliest manifestations of what will soon turn into a stampede. Sitting atop all this will be a new generation of mayors, governors, and presidents, many of whom will be granted enhanced powers (e.g., line-item veto authority) to make the tough choices benefiting the majority. Choices democratically elected legislatures jealously avoid at all costs. Only a single, empowered individual, with a political mandate to advocate for the interests of the whole, not special interests, can function effectively in deflationary intervals. Legislatures are practically paralyzed in such scenarios.
It is almost a given that at some point the Constitution's 7,500 owners will assemble a Constitutional Convention to consider needed reforms, especially in two realms: economic and ethical. Balanced budgets, line-item vetos, etc. are among obvious solutions. The endemic, open corruption enjoyed by too many legislators, lobbyists, police, and judges must be addressed. Term limits are potentially among the solutions. Qualified immunity for law enforcement (including police, prosecutors, and judges) must be addressed. The lawfare directed against Trump, his attorneys, aides, and supporters has shone a bright light on the rot within too many corners of our law enforcement/judicial system. When the FBI is now the perpetrator of the largest armed robbery in American (world?) history, action is long overdue.
The aftermath of the Civil War saw enactment of three constitutional amendments in response: the 13th, 14th, and 15th. Now that another form of civil war is concluding, it is essential that additional amendments be enacted to prevent the abuses which led us to this juncture.
America has witnessed several post-Revolution emancipations. First Blacks (1865), then women (1920), and finally Native Americans (1924) . Affirmative action and DEI represent (alongside the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) the Democratic party taking this to its ultimate (i.e., insane) conclusion — to the point where Whites and Christians were systematically repressed, in an effort to recruit additional special interest groups to toil on the Democratic plantation after the Civil War ruined Democrats’ slavery racket. MAGAism represents a restoration of equality to all segments of American society. A re-emancipation.
The greatest instruments of repression against Americans today are our governments — federal, state, and local. Onerous tax burdens — far beyond what ancient conquerors imposed on defeated peoples — are at the top of the list of grievances. Julius Caesar imposed a 1% sales tax across the empire, later increased to 4% by Augustus. You are probably saying: big deal. When you add the property, sales, estate, alcohol, gasoline, tobacco, marijuana, and income taxes imposed across various U.S. jurisdictions, not only are we a nation of debt slaves, but tax slaves as well. We have lost all comprehension of how out of whack our current taxation regime is with historical norms. The 1776 rebellion was over exceptionally modest taxation. Yet we have tolerated absurd taxation levels when imposed upon us by our supposed representatives. They represent tyranny, not us.
The notion of a tithe of 10% is ancient. Any time taxation exceeds around that percentage of income it becomes counterproductive, yielding less revenue to the government than the income it produces. High taxes are a disincentive to productivity. Leftists, with a philosophical foundation in envy, incessantly call for taxing the rich. In doing so, they ensure dragging down the masses. If we went to a 10% flat rate income tax tomorrow, economic activity would soar and revenues would rise in response. Russia, which knows a few things about the downsides of communism, has a 13% flat income tax rate for most, which goes to 15% for the wealthy. Californian’s top rate of 12.3% kicks in at $721,315. An additional 1% is tacked on to those earning over $1 million. Factor in the top federal rate of 37%, and that’s a powerful disincentive to produce income.
One thing the great populist leaders (e.g., Caesar, Jefferson, JFK, Reagan, Trump) share is that they cut taxes. As Machiavelli instructed the prince, the sole policy which pleases everyone is cutting taxes. Reagan reduced the top rate from 70% to 50% and the lowest from 14% to 11%. It was considered revolutionary at the time, but from a historical perspective such extortionate rates remaining after his cuts are still a joke. But such rates were nothing new. They peaked at a marginal rate of 91% in 1963 and had been at 73% in 1921. What sane nation even considers such absurdities? We have lost all perspective on how our taxation regime is choking economic activity.
Democracies inevitably come under oligarchic control. Or as Spenger put it: “The coming of Caesarism breaks the dictatorship of money and its political weapon democracy.” “The dictatorship of money” refers to oligarchic dominion over the levers of power. Under democracies, the masses are steered to do the oligarchs’ bidding through manipulation, including via the press and popular culture. Propaganda is as old as our species and long precedes civilizations. Democracies eventually conclude through an excess of tyranny, leading to a popular awakening. Once the water in the pot approaches boiling, the frogs jump out. Slowly at first, then en masse.
What better way is there to maintain domination over the populace than through taxation? The greater the taxation, the larger the bureaucracy which can be supported. And an ever larger chunk of that democracy will be devoted to tax collection. It was no anomaly that at the end of the democracy movie, Biden would call for hiring 87,000 more IRS agents. If each of those agents devoted a full workday to focusing on an individual taxpayer, in a year they could pour over the records of 10% of the population of taxpayers.
The COVID lockdown regime established the tyrannical inclinations of many apparatchiks.
With the withering of democracy, the massive bureaucracy accompanying it is ripe for dismantling. The debt accumulated under democracy leaves no other choice. Market forces, including bondholders, are poised to drive events. It is not at all inappropriate to use an analogy to corporate
raiders when considering Trump’s historical mandate. The U.S. government is a distressed asset. Or an analogy from orchardry. A pruned tree will yield more and better fruit than one left to grow toward the sky. The more years a tree has been left unpruned, the more extensive the cutbacks required to bring it back to peak productivity.
The demise of the mainstream (i.e., oligarchic controlled) press commensurate with democracy’s terminal phase is no coincidence. Propaganda was the means of controlling the masses. Trump astutely attacked not only his political opponents, but his media foes as well. Actual journalist Glenn Greenwald had the honor of delivering the eulogy for the corporate press.
Absurd taxation, a purchased press, bloated bureaucracy, mountains of debt, a nation of debt and tax serfs, and oligarchic dominion were predictable outcomes of democracy taken to its logical conclusion. These will be shed as America transitions into its imperial phase.
COMMUNISM
Nietzsche referred to socialism and did not live long enough to foresee the horrors perpetrated by its big brother, communism. He would not have been surprised by the mass slaughters, famines and gulags wrought by communism. Through the work of stalwart researchers such as Diana West and Trevor Loudon, we know the historical and current extent of the infiltration of communists into the American political system. This is not the time to delve into this extensive subject, other than to offer several observations.
The maximum extent of domestic communist infiltration is now. The Clintons, Obama, Harris, and Hakeem Jeffries are all communist sympathizers. Bernie Sanders can also be included. Twinkle Toes Timmy Walz is an old-fashioned Maoist. Downstream, at congressional, state and urban levels, these leaders have plenty of fellow travelers in positions of power. There are far more than most realize. In 2012 Congressman Alan West pointed out the communist affinities of the approximately 80 members of the congressional Progressive Caucus. Today its membership stands at 101, almost a quarter of the House of Representatives, plus one senator: Sanders. Kamala Harris can be added to the list. Decades of concerted effort have transformed many of our universities into indoctrination camps.
Our internal enemies (e.g., Antifa, BLM, Hamasnicks, etc.) display an affinity towards communism, just as their big brothers in Iran, Russia, and the CCP do. Nietzsche perfectly understood the affinity we now see between socialists/communists, Islamic terrorists, and anarchists in general. Their mutual enemy is Western/American civilization.
For far too many decades, America has increasingly traveled down the path laid out in 1848 by Marx and Engels in the 10 planks of their manifesto. These are reproduced below with little comment. Marx and Engels candidly stated that “the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” Mao followed up with: “Political power grows out of the barrel of the gun.” Both confirmed precisely the points made by Nietzsche regarding the true nature and intent behind socialism.
Our two most stridently anticommunist presidents were Reagan and Trump. While it has not gained the attention it deserves, in 2019 the Trump Supreme Court overturned decades of precedents in their little-noticed (or more likely, suppressed by the liberal media) decision in Knick v. the Township of Scott. The Court decreed that the 5th Amendment’s Taking Clause, protecting private property, was on an equal footing with the other enumerated rights of the Bill of Rights. Now aggrieved property owners, deprived of the partial or full value of their property by state or municipal actors, have recourse to federal civil rights actions directly targeting those individuals who trample their rights. No longer would aggrieved parties be forced to battle it out for compensation in state courts over inverse condemnation actions. They can now go directly into federal court and receive just compensation, punitive damages, and legal fees.
Knick was a de facto assault on, essentially overturning, the Court’s disastrous 2005 decision in Kelo v. New London in which the Takings Clause was arbitrarily reinterpreted to allow the government to seize anyone’s property if increased tax revenues could supposedly result. The Kelo decision was a step into communism’s dark hallway. This triggered a national revolt. Within a couple of years over 80% of the states enacted legislation to protect their citizens from the ruling. This was a forerunner to the 2009 Tea Party, and the subsequent 2015 MAGA, movements.
10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto:
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purpose.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labor. establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
Largely accomplished objectives are in bold font above. Those partially accomplished, and/or de facto along the way toward accomplishment, are italicized. #10 bears a close relationship to the rot in our universities. What the marxists sought was to have the government usurp these various free market functions and rights. What Americans got was a government/media/military/industrial/pharmaceutical/intelligence complex under oligarchic control, accomplishing much of the same objectives as the those of the communists. For victims of this scheme, it did not make much difference who held the positions of power. When actual communists (Clintons, Obama) appeared on the political scene they had no problem integrating into the oligarchic framework of repression. Both camps sought to control the masses while accumulating wealth and power. They found common cause.
WHY NIETZSCHE?
What does this excursion into Nietzsche’s observations on socialism/communism have to do with understanding our current political situation? Everything. Whether it was Obama’s bitter clingers to guns and religion, Hillary’s basket of deplorables, or Biden’s garbage, the message from the Left has been entirely negative and divisive. This includes misogyny. Forcing females to compete against males in sports and share locker rooms is no way to win political converts. Trump’s parents raised him in Rev. Norman Vincent Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church, the fountain of positivity. His platform features restoring American greatness. For decades, Democrats spoke only of division and nihilism. And killing babies. It was never a question of which vision would prevail, only when this would eventually occur.
In Part 3 of this series, we will begin with a brief look at the rural/urban divide the communists focus on erasing, followed by delving into the broad outlines of Spengler’s paradigm for understanding History’s grand cycles and our location along the timeline of America’s civilization.
To be continued . . .