New Discourses
Politics • Spirituality/Belief • Writing
National Divorce Is National Suicide
February 01, 2024
Guest contributors: ConceptualJames
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Should the United States split up? The country is more polarized than it ever has been, at least since the Civil War, having divided not so much geographically but culturally and ideologically. The two broad factions in this split are what we might call the “Red Team” (conservatives) and the “Blue Team” (progressives)—the irony in these color designations not being lost on many. Now that things are so divided, might it just be better to go our separate ways as peacefully as possible so we can get on with life? Might it be time for a “National Divorce”? Blue Team can keep the beach house, and Red Team can have the farm, and we can all move on to live happily ever after on our own terms?

No. National Divorce is National Suicide, and we’re only considering it because we’re being driven into the despair necessary to commit it.

Straight away, we can see that National Divorce means the death of the nation in the most banal and uninteresting way. If the United States splits, it won’t be united anymore, and so the nation we have today will have committed suicide. That’s not what I mean, though. If we were to proceed with a National Divorce, it will not be peaceful, and the ultimate result will be a state I refer to as Game Over—global tyranny under exactly the evil force provoking us to this extreme in the first place.

On Terminology

I’m going to use the term “National Divorce” for a catch-all for anything that breaks up the existing United States into more than one piece. This would include some split of states, like we might imagine, the secession of even a single state, or the outbreak of a second civil war. It also includes attempts to balkanize or “regionalize” the existing United States into contiguous geographical areas that declare some kind of sovereignty apart from the federal union we call the United States. Quibbling over the difference between these circumstances is distracting from the point and would require far too much development.

I have already introduced the terminology “Red Team” (conservatives) and “Blue Team” (progressives). These terms refer to the current rough big-tent political factions in the United States that roughly but inexactly correlate with support for the Republican Party, which is coded red, and Democratic Party, which is coded blue. They are meant to describe even people who tend to lean one way or the other in this rough divide and is not meant to indicate support or alignment with the political parties in any way. Perhaps think of it as “likely to vote ‘red’ or ‘blue’ in a national election.” Since it’s a placeholder, don’t take it too seriously.

These will develop into the terminology “Red State” and “Blue State” following the “National Divorce.” I am using those terms to signify the approximate new political entities after a binary division. Further balkanization doesn’t need to be discussed because it only makes matters worse.

“Game Over,” as indicated, represents the state in which the global tyrannical program, which is roughly enough Communist in its approach and structure, is able to move inexorably to a pan-Western or even global government under its control. It means the death of liberty. To put a finer point on it, if we reach Game Over, your children will grow up to be slaves, and most of your remaining years will suck.

The Case for National Divorce

This section will admittedly be cursory because it’s not the point. A National Divorce is a terrible idea, but, if we’re going to show that, it’s worth reviewing what people believe it will accomplish in the most charitable terms possible. In my opinion, these terms are fantastical, and the primary driver of these ambitions is catharsis—the letting go of pent up frustration against the corrupt regime, which seems to admit no outlet. That is, I want people to understand that “National Divorce” is not a serious or wise option but an emotional outlet for people who feel trapped and desperate. The goal of this essay is to discuss the possibility of a National Divorce in real terms in the world we actually inhabit and to urge people to understand we are making enough progress not to need to follow unrealistic but cathartic paths of action.

There are three primary arguments for National Divorce, one of which isn’t even really an argument. These are (1) to escape tyranny and live on our terms in new states; (2) to allow the Red Team to consolidate resources and power with which to fight back against Blue Team more effectively; and (3) it’s inevitable anyway (the non-argument). As you can imagine, I don’t believe in (3) at all and don’t think it’s doing anyone any good to believe in it, and I think (1) and (2) will not be allowed to occur in reality given the nature of what’s happening in the world and why. The bulk of this essay is dedicated to painting a picture of what I think would really happen instead.

Both (1) and (2) depend on the belief that Red Team will be able to create Red State that is no longer subject to the tyrannical overreaches of the current U.S. federal government. (Last reminder: “Red State” might represent more than one actual state, but we’re staying in the binary situation for simplicity.) Freed from the tyrannical overreaches of the current U.S. federal government and even international organizations like the United Nations, Red State could then chart its own course, build its own economy and society unfettered, build its own military, and engage in all the activities of a functional nation—perhaps even a mature Constitutional republic—which is impossible under the current U.S. federal government. The strongest argument in favor of National Divorce in this vein is that the current U.S. government and global environment present a genuine threat not just to our livelihoods and liberties, but to those of our children. For reasons that aren’t hard to imagine, it would even be able to out-compete its new Blue State neighbor and thus become the thriving nation the United States should be today, or at least something like that. Furthermore, freed from tyranny, it could also consolidate the necessary economic and military power to be a significant player on the world stage, if needed, and keep its enemies at bay.

Proponents of National Divorce often argue that such a move is not only beneficial but necessary. Some, on the more extreme end, posit that the U.S. Constitution, thus the United States itself, is already functionally destroyed with no hope of recovery. National Divorce would therefore allow us to reconstitute a new state (“Red State,” here) that enables us to recover the most of what the United States stood for and preserve the American way of life. This despairing sentiment is common, though not always stated so extremely, throughout the movement. Proponents also tend to argue that we don’t know what will happen and that we may well drastically overestimate the power of the national and global Blue Team, if not also their malice.

The justification for the need for such a split is that our differences, Red Team and Blue Team, are so irreconcilable that it isn’t possible to share a single political entity with one another. Each side finds the other side’s way of life, values, and aspirations inadequate to building a society worth living in, if not repugnant or degenerate. Since the rift is so significant and perhaps permanent, it’s time to go our separate ways as peacefully as possible. They tend to insist the essence of the National Divorce—it’s Geist, so to speak—has already occurred, as evidenced by the irreconcilable differences and irreparable rift between “blue” and “red.” They liken the situation to spouses who are legally still married even though their marriage in all meaningful respects has already died. Certain challenges will arise, but through the normal operation of statecraft, diplomacy, economy, and whatever else, the new states can settle into a new political arrangement on the North American continent and ease the pressure of this extreme, maybe deadly polarization.

National Divorce Lite: The Big Sort

Before moving into National Divorce properly, we need to discuss its precondition, which is known as “The Big Sort.” The reasons we need to discuss it are two: first, it ends in National Divorce, and, second, it’s being encouraged now, especially by elements on Team Red. (Arguably, Team Blue is doing the opposite and trying to infiltrate currently “Red” areas as heavily as it can afford to.) The general idea is that people should move to areas that match their politics, so conservatives should move to “red” areas and states and progressives to “blue” ones. Further, at least in “red” areas, the increased concentration in political power should be leveraged to make those areas more “red.” Everyone generally agrees that “blue” areas will do this kind of consolidation of power by default, though it will be accelerated by increasing their proportions in areas conservatives abandon. Many who encourage National Divorce consider this to be unstoppable anyway, so conservatives might as well circle their wagons in “red” areas, though they would never characterize it as running away. This Big Sort is a terrible idea.

Naturally, there’s already a “Big Sort” in the United States, but it’s not drawn very neatly on state lines except in presidential electoral maps. The divide is much more accurately urban versus rural, and all fifty states at present contain both urban and rural areas that tip either “red” or “blue.” It has been identified for at least fifteen years as a major problem and driver of destabilizing political polarization in the United States. A national Big Sort would amplify that dynamic tremendously and at scale, with the same dialectical conflict playing out in the urban/rural divide within each state, particularly the “red” ones. What this suggests is that a deliberate state-level Big Sort, or even increasing the urban/rural Big Sort (“get out of cities!”) will push us into more polarization, not less, and increase the chances of a National Divorce, which I argue ends in Game Over.

“The Big Sort” is therefore best thought of as “National Divorce Lite.” The term “The Big Sort” actually comes from a book from 2009 by Bill Bishop titled The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart. The primary point of the book is to argue that people were already moving to more like-minded areas, though he focused primarily on the urban/rural and urban/suburban divides, and that this dynamic was creating conditions that accelerate political polarization. Bishop was offering a diagnosis for American political polarization, to be clear, not prescribing some globalist plan, and his diagnosis wasn't good. The urban/rural “Big Sort” he identified was characterized as “tearing us apart,” he argued, threatening national unity going forward.

The idea of a “Big Sort” wasn’t limited to a book that only a relative few are aware of. At least as recently as 2022, for example, state propaganda outlet NPR was publishing articles about The Big Sort, by that name, which it insisted was being accelerated at the state-to-state level by Covid-19 policies. “America is growing more geographically polarized—red ZIP codes are getting redder and blue ZIP codes are becoming bluer. People appear to be sorting.” Their conclusion generally agrees with Bishop’s: “‘The Big Sort’ may be making Americans more politically extreme.”

That’s not how the article ends, however. It ends somewhere more encouraging of The Big Sort: “Moving to areas with people you agree with has advantages.” It’s worth reading the final portion of the article in its entirety for how instructive it is about the dynamic:

What a difference a new city makes. Twelve-year-old Mya Wooten is taking a social justice class at her private school in downtown Austin, an opportunity they would not have found in Greenfield. 

Mya says a recent assignment was to pick an issue to protest. “It was ocean pollution, women’s rights, or LGBTQ rights,” she says. “So my topic was women’s rights, and I made a poster of an open woman's mouth and it said, ‘I have the right to be heard.’” 

By moving to Austin, the Wootens joined The Big Sort. They made Greenfield a tad less purple, and Austin a smidgeon bluer. Tiffany sometimes wonders if they've done the right thing. 

“I’m not sure that it’s super healthy for us to be completely putting ourselves in a box and saying, ‘I’m gonna be with the blue people because they think exactly like me.’ We need to be able to communicate with each other even if we do not fully agree with each other.” 

The Wootens miss having their ideas challenged and engaging with the other side. On the other hand, she says, “We feel among our people in Austin.”

NPR, in other words, seemed to be encouraging The Big Sort in 2022, even while acknowledging that it increases the political polarization of local, state, and national politics. From this fact, we might conclude that The Big Sort is advantageous to the political objectives pushed by NPR.

Why would that be the case? You might be thrilled to find out there’s a proposed solution to The Big Sort, and it even has a name you’ll likely recognize now. The proposed solution to The Big Sort is called “The Great Reset.” 

As it turns out, The (Ze) Great Reset is not just some big evil plan by the executive chairmain of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, means to be initiated and accelerated by Covid-19 after being officially inaugurated by now-King Charles (then Prince). It started out as an innovative new idea in urban planning that could solve The Big Sort, as detailed in a 2009 book by Richard Florida titled The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity. The premise of the book is that “history teaches us that periods of ‘creative destruction,’ like the Great Depression of the 1930s, also present opportunities to remake our economy and society and to generate whole new eras of economic growth and prosperity.” The Big Sort is characterized as part of such an “opportunity,” although the book’s primary focus is the Great Recession of 2008.

“We’ve reached the limits of what George W. Bush used to call the ‘ownership society,’” Florida warns in the earliest pages, after discussing how Karl Marx analyzed the upheavals and “resets” characterizing the birth of that period. Economic polarization between urban centers and suburbs, as well as between cities and rural areas, overlaps with ethnic and sociopolitical polarization under the economic Big Sort. His solution is a “Great Resettle” into the urban centers of what he calls economic “megaregions,” which appear to operate effectively like an early draft of what we would today call SMART 15-Minute Cities.

Of some note, on the cover of the newest edition of The Great Reset, Florida’s 2019 book The Rise of the Creative Class is mentioned and promoted. Of course, “the creative class” is exactly what the World Economic Forum today says will be the upper, or ruling, class of the new world, as opposed to the “useless” class of dispossessed laborers who have all their labor performed by machines and artificial intelligence. Taken as a whole, these points raise some serious red flags about the willful political separation of the United States, however frustrating it is to live nearby complete idiots who hate your way of life.

The Israeli Disengagement Experiment

Big withdrawals of a more extreme kind may also provide some clues as to the wisdom of encouraging The Big Sort. For example, in 2005, Israel formally disengaged from Gaza under a plan proposed by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Israelis dismantled twenty-one settlements in the Gaza Strip as part of the “Disengagement Plan Implementation Law,” compensating Israelis living in Gaza to relocate into Israel as residential areas were fully demolished.  The rationale was straightforward. Lacking any possibility for a possible peace with the Arabs calling themselves “Palestinians,” who were largely represented by the radical Palestinian Liberation Organization and the terrorist group Hamas, Sharon decided to disengage to strengthen its control in the State of Israel. In other words, this is the same logic as is driving conservatives in the United States toward a National Divorce plan.

The results are, in fact, that Israel was able to consolidate its power, which was already considerable due to U.S. and U.K. support, within the State of Israel, and it was pressured into a permanent defensive posture by allowing a permanent antagonistic terrorist quasi-state to develop on its borders with the chartered intention of destroying Israel completely. As it turns out, the bad guys were able to consolidate power in the unchecked environment too.

There are many parallels to draw from this experiment for an American Big Sort or National Divorce. By fleeing your “blue” state as a conservative—perhaps because Conservative Influencers, some of whom have a financial stake in it—told you to, that “blue” state loses some of the remaining capacity to check the power growing within it. That power is broadly Communist, so it can be expected to operate in a permanently antagonistic and even terroristic way because it hates everything that isn’t Communist, including you. It will be able to do so not just in “blue” states but also from within “blue” cells located inside your “red” state, located heavily in every “blue” city. 

Far from weakening the Blue Team, in exchange for some temporary reprieve in your conditions (and, of serious note, safety for your children), this action enables a great consolidation of Communist power in regions under their control and thus weakens and eventually ends any capacity to drive those agendas and develop outward-facing political force. Since free people do not willingly move to Communist regions very often, this migration is effectively one-way, replicating some of the conditions of the Israeli Disengagement Experiment.

In return, you’ll be able to consolidate “Red Team” power in your “red” states, though, right? No. You will not successfully consolidate “Red Team” power anywhere, really. People who aren’t Communists—unless they are Fascists—don’t act like Communists, so they don’t readily consolidate power. Furthermore, the “red” states will remain fully infiltrated since their cities are already “purple” or “blue,” complicating the situation. This leaves “red” states with a constant internal and external pressure dynamic to turn “blue” or to go all bad by embracing Fascism. Supposing those regions want to stay “red,” they eventually therefore have to abandon the Constitution and turn increasingly Fascistic, which, among other things, leads to undermining and throwing out the Constitution and its protections on individual liberty, which just so happens to coincide with the Communist goal on the ever-concentrating Blue Team.

Eventually, in other words, this path results in rupture, which can look like secession of one state or several together or in serial, (civil) war, or National Divorce, which I'm using as a catch-all term for these phenomena. The point is, The Big Sort is a precondition for the Leftist agenda because it ends here, as both the polarizing logic of The Big Sort and the evidence of the Israeli Disengagement Experiment indicate.

National Divorce

What would happen, realistically, if the United States fractured because of Blue Team (Communist) provocation from the federal government, intolerable conditions in “blue” states, foreign interference, and an escape campaign from the Red Team that definition isn’t nice to call “running away from their responsibilities to their own backyards”? Nothing good. First of all, the United States wouldn't exist anymore, and both remnants—Red State and Blue State—would be weaker. This end of the United States is the banal end of the United States mentioned near the start of this discussion, which is not the same as Game Over. The Constitution, however, would be dead, and both Red State and Blue State would have to decide on how to re-constitute themselves.

It isn’t hard to imagine what would happen in the Blue State in that regard. It would immediately modify the Constitution to look rather like Canada or California, in order to “fix” it. Whatever its political construction, which would likely include a drastic increase in executive power, it would almost certainly limit free expression (First Amendment), eliminate the right to bear firearms (Second Amendment), and encode “equity” into the fundamental “rights” of its citizens (Fourteenth Amendment). In other words, it would trend softly Communist immediately. It would also ally itself with the rest of the “civilized” world, including the European Union, the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and very likely China.

For its part, the Red State would likely attempt to maintain something very much like the present Constitution, at least at first, though there would immediately be huge internal strife over whether any liberties should be curtailed in order to prevent turning “blue” or to handle “blue” infiltration, which is already significantly present, entrenched, and incorporated institutionally within its borders. These debates would be furious and polarizing. The Red State would likely be declared a rogue state, and it will find allyship with other nations to be difficult, if not impossible, in the present global environment, which will likely be primed to turn against it, despite economic possibilities. This will suit the isolationists but will not be strongly to the advantage of the Red State in a global political context.

Meanwhile, we can also bet that the rest of the world will not be idle during this turmoil. Lacking the stabilizing presence of the united United States military on the global stage, we can presume nations like China, Iran, and Russia, at the least, will make some significant territorial and other moves to maximize their own advantage during RIP-America’s turn into political chaos and reorganization. Israel may or may not survive. Taiwan almost certainly wouldn’t. South Korea is an open question.

Neglecting the world stage (for the most part), two paths run from here, and both are terrible. Nobody wins this. This “divorce” includes a Communist (narcissistic abuser) side who will not live and let live, so bad stuff is coming. I don't know which of the following two paths is more likely, however, for one specific reason: nuclear weapons exist.

National Divorce Scenario 1, The Fast Option

After divorce, the Red State will find itself in the aforementioned turmoil, with issues internal and external. Getting organized will not necessarily be a smooth process, and elements on at least two factions of the Red Team and at least two locations (internal and external) of the Blue Team will be working against its unity. This circumstance will, at least temporarily, severely cripple Red State, which is not to its advantage.

Another consequential fact also bears here: former U.S. military and nuclear arsenal installations are still on Red State lands. Blue State won't just give them up. In fact, they’ll go to great lengths over them. Conflict rapidly escalates in this scenario, and Blue State will immediately call upon its global allies and the United Nations, at the very least to secure the nukes. Simultaneously, those military bases become a real problem. For context, Fort Sumner in Charleston Harbor played inside this story in 1861, and that specific conflict started the Civil War. Should that happen over a military installation in a National Divorce situation today, we rapidly progress to Game Over for the reasons that will be made clear below, just put on a more urgent timeline.

Because of the nuclear arsenal and the likely standoff over Blue State ("U.S.") military installations inside Red State, the instability of a National Divorce would immediately trigger a global emergency, demanding every possible sanction and pressure on Red State to prevent it from being a nuclear-armed rogue state. The more aggressively Red State works to take over a military base or, worse, secure a nuclear installation, the more urgent and powerful the global response will be against it. At best, the resulting war will be terrible. In reality, Red State has few realistic prospects in such a conflict, even without the massive internal turmoil weakening its chances.

Imagine what such a scenario would look like. The Vertically Integrated Messaging Apparatus all around the rest of the globe will immediately insist that this is the New Confederacy but with nukes, and it will be the focus of the entire world's resources to break it immediately, even in its new-nation disarray. The military in those bases will be divided, and with the Constitution undermined, their loyalties will be confused. The former United States, which is now Blue State, will insist these are theirs. They also control the necessary operational codes for the nuclear installations. Attempts to seize a nuclear installation will be met with ungodly force with all the urgency that nuclear deterrence demands.

You might be cowboy enough to think Red State could fight its way through that, but that's not likely and would leave a wrecked world. You might die on your feet, but you and your kids still die, and it's not remotely desperate enough a situation in the currently existing United States to justify that risk yet. In fact, however, Red State will almost certainly not be organized or cowboy enough to secure operable nuclear weapons for itself in this scenario. Even tampering with them would demand a global response, including a nuclear response. Red State isn't the US; it's a rogue state, so it would be globally justified. Almost all of the world would declare itself Red State’s enemy with nuclear urgency.

You can imagine it easily. Blue State is allied with the UN, China, and the other Five Eyes nations. The entire West Coast, New England and several Atlantic states, and all of Canada immediately open themselves as water and land routes for a full-scale invasion to secure America’s teetering nuclear arsenal and control Red State as a rogue actor. Supply lines will largely be cut to Red State from the rest of the globe, crippling its nascent economy, supposing it even has a military to equip. The operation would be quick, brutal, and total. Red State would cease to exist with many of its intrepid citizens dead.

This is the “Fast Option” because Red State would likely last only a few months before collapsing under global pressure or all-out war. Then it's over. This is Game Over. Anything in the process that triggers civil war, with a National Divorce formal or not, triggers this outcome, and it will be quick. Nothing is left to stop the Left Globalists, who therefore win. Everyone who survives is a global slave (“global citizen”) and the resistance is destroyed. We all arrive at Game Over.

National Divorce, scenario 2: The Slow Option

There is a more insidious path that is also more typical of the evil we’re dealing with in the world today. A National Divorce leading us onto this path would, as just outlined above, depend upon a more-or-less peaceful full nuclear disarmament of Red State plus the sacrifice of most of its potential military capacity, which it might not make. Supposing it makes the necessary concessions to Blue State and the world to avoid the Fast Option to Game Over, however, it enters onto the Slow Option to Game Over.

In the Slow Option, the states separate somehow or another more or less peacefully into Red and Blue, the Red is forced to let Blue take back most of the former U.S. military and all of the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a minimal price of entry to a peaceful divorce. There’s little doubt about that. Otherwise, it will be the fast option to Game Over.

The next two years or so of the Slow Option are going to be awesome for most former U.S. citizens in the two usual ways. Blue State, after rapidly completing its soft Communist revolution will leave the revolutionary phase and enter the phase of “building socialism.” That means it will rapidly clean itself up like San Francisco did and dedicate itself to rapidly building an economy in the model of China. It will likely receive major global help. Things will be much cleaner and efficient. Their alliance with China, the UN, and the rest will be tight. Life will become very good in Blue State. Business will thrive, people will make money, stuff will work again. Blue State residents just have to deal with the Woke “Sustainable and Inclusive” program, but not to the extent that it disrupts business or energy production. Those will be deemed necessary to Build Back Better, given the circumstances.

People from Red State will also have it relatively good, at least psychologically. They will be free from Woke “Sustainability and Inclusion” and able to start growing as a new, freer nation (unless they go Fascist). There will be some internal turmoil, and life will be relatively hard but exciting and largely free again. Of course, Red State residents will be propagandized to the fullest extent Blue State powers can reach to encourage them to move to the seemingly utopian Blue State, which abandoned the worst of its destructive ways. They will be allowed to move to Blue State whenever, but only through thoroughly renouncing their “red” values, and this demand will be reinforced by law, social credit, and a new Constitution that “fixes” the old one. This will be the minimum precondition to enter into the Built Back Better Blue State world. More than a few will leave, but few will come the other way, to Red State.

That’s because for all its potential, Red State will find it difficult to make friends on the world stage and, by demand of the “global community,” will in many ways be sanctioned by the rest of the world. Having lost much of its coastline, it will be limited in trade and national defense. Still, there will be all kinds of building up, Red State style! Homesteading, “making it happen,” developing a new economy, growing up a homegrown militia as the new Red State military—these will all occur more or less unhindered except by the limitations of the global environment. Access to supply lines will be limited, prices will be high, but there won’t be heavy restrictions.

Of course, former Blue Team residents of Red State will be a constant problem, at least those who stay—and many will, as spies, subverters, and infiltrators. Blue State and foreign entities will almost certainly encourage this, and Red State will find it difficult to maintain freedom against this constant internal problem. It may find itself having to jettison many of the Constitutional freedoms it separated specifically to try to preserve, and this will be encouraged by its radical contingent within. It’s likely Red State will become a version of exactly what it sought to escape, just with different priorities, in the need to deal with these issues and under the pressure of its own “redder” radicals.

Nevertheless, Red State will have access to just enough to be able to struggle forward, but life will actually improve. It must be allowed to gain strength, but Blue State will be a far nicer place. This will cause brain drain, population issues, talent issues, etc., for Red State. Again, at the same time, Red State is likely to drift or even lurch at times further “red,” which is to say toward Fascism. The Constitutional protections of the United States that Red State presumably sought to preserve somewhere will mostly be lost by necessity. All of this will be amplified by the global community’s Vertically Integrated Messaging Apparatus into relentless propaganda against Red State, which it will destroy your social credit to question or challenge.

Red State must be allowed to consolidate and grow in strength, maybe even with a Fascist-style government that has no use for “lib’rals” and throws them out, strengthening Blue State, which would already be beyond tolerating useless radicals—but that would fund them to be exactly that while they remain in Red State. Constitutional protections will be jettisoned to prevent re-subversion, and this will keep conflict high inside, and the “global community” will be forced to become more and more wary of Red State and its trajectory. Sanctions and other international issues would likely mount for Red State, adding to its challenges.

A few years down the road, notably after Red State develops a functional semblance of its own military, the world together with Blue State will simply provoke a war with Red State. The pretext might be the increasingly Fascistic turn Red State was forced to take. It might be that Red State feels a bit of its new strength and decides it’s time to take action to remedy the unfairness of its global standing. In any case, it will come about in the typical Blue Team way: through a provocation that sets Red State up to be the first militant actor. Now the world has to act and it must act decisively to “preserve democracy” on “the global stage,” or some such rhetoric. 

This event, which immediately becomes an urgent global emergency against the rogue Red State launches the world back onto the Fast Option pathway to Game Over. Maybe Red State can put up more of a fight in the short term, but it will be the entire world against Red State, which hasn’t had a chance to organize sufficiently to deal with such an onslaught. The world will be led to believe through the by-then-very-sophisticated Vertically Integrated Messaging Apparatus that Red State is the aggressor it was always painted out to be. The Slow Option therefore also ends at Game Over and gets there at full velocity.

National Divorce Is National Suicide

National Divorce, which starts with The Big Sort and through pushing desperation into foolish action even before such a sort could be accomplished, results in Regime Change (Game Over) ultimately, and the Red Team has no realistic pathways to coming out on top. We might feel great for a little while, but it’s a short road to Game Over.

To divide the United States and break the reach of its Constitution and Bill of Rights will create a scenario in which all the power tips to the Global Enemy. You, no matter where you find yourself in that world, will not have a future unless you brainwash yourself and join the Global Collective. Your children will not have a future unless they are part of the Global Collective. This is not a peaceful path to restoring anyone’s way of life. This isn’t 1776. These aren’t the British. We are dealing with Global Communists who have already entrenched themselves in massive arrays of power and are making a legitimate bid for global control.

You might believe, like mentioned near the beginning of this discussion, that what is described above is inevitable, so we might as well “rip the Band-Aid off.” That’s not true. A National Divorce is not inevitable. In fact, it's completely avoidable, allowing us to assert the power of the Constitution of the United States to secure the rights of our people and then to be a beacon of freedom and life to the world again, the world’s “last best hope.” We’re already making incredible strides in that direction, and rather than directing our enmity at our complicit countrymen as new challenges arise, we can continue to channel that into justification to expose and ultimately dismantle the revolution banging against our doors. Every evil move they make can be turned into discrediting them with a far broader audience. The rats orchestrating the revolution will jump ship if the deal looks like it’s going bad, and then they can be incentivized to talk. When they talk, the Enemy—not the country—goes into a downward spiral. The Constitution can prevail, and American can be made great again, with the rest of the free world behind it.

We are already making progress, even in hard states like California. The Courts are siding with us more and more. People are awakening. DEI and ESG are damaged badly. We know how they play their games and do their tricks. We realize how much bait they put in front of us. Their scams and schemes are backfiring. Inconvenient truths for their continued power surface week by week. The tide is turning.

The way out begins with faith in our nation, its Constitution, and most of all its good people. Faith in God, including the sacrifices you need to make and courage you need to show to prove that faith, is also warranted. Winning, though, also means taking the difficult road of sticking up for the place you live.

If you live in a “blue” place, and being as much sand in the gears against the Communists as you can. By organizing—which is impossible if you leave—you can consolidate local-level and eventually greater power that can keep the Communists from taking another inch. Look at Take Back Alberta in Canada, which is a country worse off than the U.S. Look at Garry Tan and his stand for San Francisco. Look to the millions of Americans waking up to the fact that they have to win back control over their back yards by standing and fighting, not retreating to some desperate last stand for them and their kids. Groups like Moms for Liberty are activating parents in almost every state and making progress, taking the fights to the local and state levels first so that we can keep all fifty stars on our Star-Spangled Banner. These examples are the real stuff. Be careful with what ideas you get from influencers. Edge sells but loses. Not all of them are even honest. Communists infiltrate and then rise up from within, leading patriots into traps.

Keep faith and fight for the integrity of the US and its Constitution! A National Divorce is National Suicide. Suicides are deaths of despair. The Communists are provoking us to despair so we’ll, as a nation, take our own life. They want us thinking this is Cowboys versus Communists so they can get us to make the very mistakes outlined in this discussion. It’s not. It’s those who have faith in the integrity and strength in this nation and its founding ideals against those who do not, and we’re showing up far too successfully to throw it all away with delusional fantasies of a “National Divorce.”

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January 08, 2026

Should we recognize woke libertarians as a third group of wokists besides woke left and woke right?

Schmittian (Carl Schmitt)

A new term for our woke encyclopedia 'Translations from the Wokish' was just released! In this entry James Lindsay explains the philosophy of Carl Schmitt and its use by the Woke Right. Check it out!
https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-schmittian/

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January 07, 2026

shoots messenger
pockets message
dons messenger uniform
"Hey guys, don't shoot the messenger."
https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=x4x3DmT0M-A

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The Third Rail and the Fifth Column
by James Lindsay

During the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, Nationalist Generalissimo Francisco Franco advanced on Madrid with the intention of taking it with four columns of soldiers. In the midst of the advance, another Nationalist general, Emilio Mola, was asked on a radio broadcast which of the columns would succeed in taking over the city and finalizing the Nationalist coup. Mola replied that it would be the hidden “fifth column” of supporters and sympathizers within Madrid who would prove decisive by rising up and sabotaging the Republican defense from within.

Ultimately, General Mola was wrong. No “fifth column” arose from within the city, and the Republicans held Madrid. Nevertheless, the phrase immediately caught on. A fifth column to this day refers to a group of people who undermine a larger group, institution, movement, or nation from within.

The Woke Right is a Woke fifth column working internally against America, MAGA, the (American) Republican Party, and the American conservative movement, which is the last anchor tethering our country to the Constitution, common sense, and reality. Whatever might be its primary sources of intention and energy—be those foreign influence, “Deep State,” Democrat, or an organic and opportunistic paleoconservative revolt, or some combination—being a fifth column in the Woke assault against American and the West is the role it certainly plays.

The question is how it has been so successful at recruiting and gaining momentum, given that many of its views are wildly out of step with American values and the traditional perspectives of conservatives in America. Their nativism, isolationism, (genuine) racism, hostility toward Jews and Israel, racial minorities, women, sexual minorities, and legal immigrants, and undeniable antisemitism, not to mention their skepticism of free-market economies, the Constitution, religious liberty, conservatism itself, and a minimalistic state, do not reflect the values of generations of American conservatives or America overall.

Many reasons can be given for their meteoric and bewildering sudden rise. Among them, broad distrust in established institutions and favoring “trusted voices” within the movement who appear to be leading them astray is perhaps at the front. Frustration with the difficulty in pushing back against the Woke Left and its infiltration into our institutions is surely another significant component. Multiplying and tapping the alienation of our young men is definitely another. The outright force of money and the apparently sudden shift of so many voices all at once just in the last year, taking the movement by sudden surprise, must also contribute.

Both within and beyond these reasons, however there is a motivating factor that demands our attention: recruitment upon the “third rail.” The third rail, unlike the fifth column, is a metaphor. It literally refers to the electrified “third” rail subway trains use to power themselves. The idea is that if you were to fall down into the tracks, touching either of the first or second rails, where the wheels of the trains run, would result in nothing particular, but stepping on the electrified third rail would result in your electrocution and destruction.

The “third rail” metaphor therefore describes locations in political discourse that, if touched, will blow up your (professional) life. To the politically naive, these opinions appear to be benign, perhaps even statements of fact, but they work like a political tripwire, causing a huge reaction when they’re aired. A classic American example is attempting to explain the cultural significance of Confederate symbols to many (especially Southern) Americans. No matter how accurate, nuanced, or careful the speaker might be, it will likely be taken as a defense of slavery and sedition, and damage someone’s reputation or career (especially a political career).

Here’s the problem. A population can be pushed to the point where it will regard as bogus and evil the destruction an honest person can expect to receive for stepping on a third rail. For example, someone who earnestly defends the meaning he and many others hold for Confederate symbols might get blown up for “defending slavery,” even though he didn’t. If that happens enough, in unfair enough ways, for long enough, the public might revolt against the injustice of the political third rail.

That’s where we find ourselves with many issues all at once now as the lies of the extended Woke Left collapse around us, and the Woke Right fifth column is recruiting precisely by taking advantage of that situation.

There are two particular dynamics that have played a crucial role with regard to what we might call the Politics of the Third Rail that has enabled the rise of the Woke Right as a fifth column.

First, there’s the uncomfortable fact that many points that reside on the third rail are at least partially true but remain completely politically incorrect. This mismatch is a political powder keg; a bomb waiting to go off. When people aren’t allowed to say true things for undeniably political reasoning, the taboo is regarded not as politeness but censorship of potentially important or meaningful views. A reaction that embraces these views is more or less eventual in such a circumstance, and chances are, it won’t be nuanced when it arrives.

In fact, it usually will not be nuanced at all. The nuanced, careful, accurate voices will already have been shouted down, punished, or destroyed by the time the backlash arrives. The only voices left will not only be less careful by definition but will also be angry enough to assert more than the full truth of the issue. With regard to the issue of the Confederacy, they will not stop at the idea of revering a “heritage” of sovereignty and not being told what to do by a meddling federal government or outside power. They may start explaining why, in their view, slaves were better off than black freemen later, up to and including today.

Because these brash voices look brave and honest compared to the effete political correctness they’re shattering, they’re attractive. They will recruit followings. These followings will, by their intrinsic dynamics, go too far. Worse, by then, even if more reasonable voices step into the fraught space, they’ll sound timid, rather than brave, for their measured approach to the controversial issues, and they’ll fail to stem the tide as it flows toward radicalism and insanity

Second, there’s the fact that the “politically correct” Woke Left has created more, and more obviously bogus, political third rail space than any polite society ever could dream of—or that one will tolerate indefinitely. Undeniably true things like that it is perfectly acceptable to mention the completely banned “n-word” without using it—say by quoting Huckleberry Finn, or explaining the historical use of the term itself, or quoting a popular hip-hop song that says it every second line, or explaining that certain words in Mandarin and Korean sound similar but aren’t it and saying those—are rendered completely verboten, and seemingly arbitrarily. One will notice, for example, that “black people are allowed to say it,” and that many do, enthusiastically, casually, and even viciously, but that a racial double-standard has to be maintained for what appears to be “Woke” reasoning.

The result of this Wokification of discourse is that there’s an incredible and intolerable amount of patently ridiculous discursive and political “third rail” space that makes a great deal of honest discourse and real, necessary problem-solving impossible. As problems mount, the maintenance of the political third-rail space rightly begins to be identified as a big part of the festering problems, and it will be rebelled against. As this political and discursive pendulum swings back, as described above, it will not do so gently.

This isn’t a matter of mere perception, petulance, or, especially, latent bigotry, as the Woke Left and too many in polite society might assert. It is actually the case that the Woke Left has over the last two or three decades succeeded in turning an incredible number of legitimate political and cultural concerns into third-rail space that can hamper communication, prevent finding solutions to genuine problems, chill speech, and unjustly ruin lives. It is as though the Woke Left turned the first and second rails into electrified rails, preventing the train from being able to run and making its very carriages pose a real danger of electrocution.

It is both in and upon this greatly expanded third-rail space in political discourse that the fifth-column Woke Right has succeeded in doing most of its recruiting. Both in the name of and by “boldly” stepping onto the first and second rails, which are unjustifiably electrified, they have occupied both bogus and real third-rail political space and stand inside it as defiant rebels, unafraid of the shocks and calling people to join them. What it represents is freedom, fun, and liberation from an oppressive political, professional, and discursive regime that took advantage of the fundamentals of polite political taboos in order to steal and abuse power. It is therefore a successful recruiting methodology for a radical reactionary movement that rejects not only the bogus political correctness of Woke Left cultural mores but also the genuine guardrails of polite society in favor of a new form of liberation.

The fifth columnists in the Woke Right are using this dynamic to recruit and to drive wedges that undermine their political targets, particularly the United States itself and its conservative movement and institutions therein.

When we see commentators like Tucker Carlson “just asking questions,” what he is doing is stepping into third-rail space and recruiting, including many people who know better but are also now too pissed-off to care. When we see agitators like Nick Fuentes transgressively violating taboo after taboo (with what amounts to Right-wing Queer Theory), what he is doing is standing directly on the third rail and laughing as he redirects the bolts back at his enemies. When we see hordes of “Dark MAGA” influencers follow suit, they’re leading an army of mostly disaffected young men to fill the vacuum created by altogether too much third-rail space in contemporary cultural and political discourse, much—but importantly not all—of it artificial, odious, and purposefully malicious in the first place.

Thus, a fifth column that seeks to destroy America through its conservative movement has been able to recruit an angry army that has become shameless in the process of shedding false causes for shame. The are the fifth column standing on the third rail, and they threaten to undermine our shining city on the hill from within as our enemies advance upon us from without.

How can they be dealt with? One way only exists to us. We must steal their thunder (pun intended

We have to be honest. We have to occupy third-rail space ourselves with honesty, integrity, and nuance. We must be unafraid to tackle well these touchy issues that the Woke Right fifth-columners are tackling badly, and we must create a new civic norm of championing, not attacking, those who enter those spaces honestly and in good faith in order to deal earnestly with what partial—or sometimes full—truths reside there.

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Reciprocal Tolerance
by James Lindsay

In a footnote in his famous (or infamous) The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper relates a famous (and famously misunderstood) idea called the Paradox of Tolerance. It is, as it turns out, one of the most important concepts that any free society much reckon with—and solve.

Popper only devotes a single paragraph to this fundamental paradox of freedom, which can be summarized as “being tolerant of intolerance eventually results in an intolerant society, but being intolerant of intolerance is already a feature of an intolerant society.” In that paragraph, he outlines a solution, though he’s thin on the details. Here’s how he phrases it, in full:

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Radicals on both the Left and the Right have run with this famous paradox of free societies in various ways. For example, it is popular on the Left to present only Popper’s conclusion about claiming the right to suppress intolerance without expressing his rather strict criteria for that suppression. On the (radical) Right, on the other hand, this formulation has been criticized (e.g., by R.R. Reno in Return of the Strong Gods) as planting a dialectical seed that turns tolerance into totalitarian intolerance over time

In these analyses, the Left is dishonest, and the Right is simply wrong, as is their wont in each case. The Left desires, like their Nazi pseudo-nemesis Carl Schmitt, to have the power to declare the intolerant enemy and have him destroyed without acknowledging how seriously Popper takes the conditions of such action. The Right simply fails to recognize that the devil is in the details for working with such a situation in reality. Of course, by way of its error, the Right also desires, like their Nazi semi-hero Carl Schmitt, to have the power to declare the enemy and have him destroyed.

Though Popper doesn’t develop the idea further, and though the devil will remain in the details, he does lay out criteria by which intolerance of the intolerant might be acted on wisely, as opposed to unwisely, to borrow from his own phrasing. This is where the rubber meets the road for the Paradox of Tolerance, to quote the relevant section again

…for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

What Popper is proposing here, though thin on the details, is a theory of tolerance in free society. He is saying we must retain the right to suppress intolerance that might answer our tolerance with a combination of irrationalism, intolerance, and violence. He clearly states we should regard such militant and subversive intolerance as a kind of incitement and refuse to protect it as free expression.

In practice, this is trickier than can be contained in a footnote. It is not sufficient to invoke legal intolerance against views that are merely irrational, anti-rational, that denounce argument, or that forbid followers from listening to rational arguments because they are allegedly deceptive. The law already has some mechanisms for dealing with intolerance that looks to answer arguments with fists and pistols, imperfect as those might be. Further, these are not the central part of the problem of overreaching tolerance.

Popper seems to miss the most essential characteristic for finding a strong solution to his paradox. This essential characteristic is located in the fact of the paradox itself: the intolerant will not reciprocate tolerance, given the opportunity. In essence, what he is looking for, but does not find, is a Golden Rule for the issue of tolerance.

We might call such a strong solution Reciprocal Tolerance. In short, Reciprocal Tolerance would be a doctrine like: we, the people of a free society, should extend tolerance only to any who, given power over us, would also extend tolerance to us in return. That is, we will treat others as we can reasonably expect they would treat us, as determined from their own words, deeds, charters, relationships, and organizational principles.

This principle of Reciprocal Tolerance is not reversible like through some postmodernist trick or psychopathic “DARVO” because it is applied from a free society. In full generality, it is that free societies are perfectly free to be intolerant of any politically intolerant political organization.

This principle is also not a principle regarding speech. People are free to say whatever intolerant, hateful, or bigoted thing they want, even in their group settings. It would apply to any political group and its members or leadership that organize a faction with the expressed intention of acquiring political power at least in part in order to revoke tolerance from others who, absent the case of such intolerance, would not revoke tolerance from them.

Free societies live or eventually die based on their solution to the Paradox of Tolerance. Tolerance cannot be unlimited or it will be exploited and taken advantage of, but it also must be broad enough to keep society free

The solution is toleration in the bounds of good-faith, Reciprocal Tolerance. We are under no obligation socially to tolerate subversives who operate in bad faith, nor are we under any obligation legally to tolerate any demand for tolerance that would not be reciprocated if the people making the demand themselves got their hands on the levers of power. While the first of these may only be a social convention unless people are illegally deceived and defrauded, the latter certainly falls within the range of legally actionable responses to intolerance we could enforce well within the boundaries of the Constitution, which we are seeking to protect and preserve.

Once either of these fouls against a free society is detected and verified, some generally acceptable and legally narrow mechanism of intolerance against them must be able to be employed. Practically speaking, at a minimum, there is no reason to extend tax-exempt status to nonprofit organizations that explicitly espouse agendas to amass power to abolish the existing tolerant political order in favor of intolerant ones that would, if successful, revoke tolerance of those who allowed their growth. Further, entities that espouse or articulate such beliefs that receive funding from foreign sources should not be tolerated.

A principle of Reciprocal Tolerance could therefore serve as a solid basis for both social norms and legal activity to better navigate the Paradox of Tolerance that lies at the heart of every society that wants to be free. Organized intolerance ought not to be tolerated for precisely the reason that it would withdraw tolerance from those it seeks to rule.

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What George Washington’s Death Can Teach Us About Woke
by James Lindsay

President George Washington died at his home on December 14, 1799, at the age of 67. He died, as it turns out, of a particularly bad and sudden upper respiratory infection, most likely strep throat, that the doctors of his day (the best available) did not know how to treat. (Penicillin as a treatment wasn’t discovered until 1928.)

After going out on a cold and wet evening on December 12 to inspect his fields, President Washington returned to Mount Vernon to rest with a tickle in his throat. On December 13, he continued to work outside in the cold, wet conditions, and by evening realized he had a problem. By morning on December 14, he had a full-blown, emergency infection and got Martha to summon help. Doctors were on the scene and went to work that morning.

Not knowing how to treat President Washington’s sudden illness, his doctors made his predicament worse by using the best of 18th century “medicine” on him, starting with extensive blood-letting. In fact, they drained nearly half of the great man's blood from his body hoping to cure him. It made things worse, at the very least weakening him greatly while he was otherwise afflicted.

They also had him drink and gargle a number of potions that would have blistered his throat and increased the inflammation while doing nothing to combat the infection. Some of these included Spanish fly, potions made out of infusions of beetles, and a solution of butter, molasses, and vinegar. They also gave him a completely unhelpful enema.

Washington, certainly partially as a result of his “medical care,” succumbed to this now-trivial disease in under 24 hours, said goodbye to his family as the end drew undeniably near, closed his eyes one last time, and died, allegedly with the words “‘Tis well” being the last words from his lips before he went. That night, America lost a giant, perhaps in an untimely fashion.

Now imagine for a moment that among his doctors one had a stroke of divine inspiration (or connecting the dots between other observations he had made in similar circumstances) that led him to conclude before any treatment began that, in fact, The President was suffering from a simple bacterial infection of the upper airways and trachea. Imagine further that he was able to convince his fellows of this stroke of accurate and correct insight.

Would acquiring this accurate diagnosis have cured President Washington? No, not on its own.

Would President Washington still have succumbed and died of this simple but aggressive infection? Probably, but that cannot be known.

Even if he would have still died, would that diminish the value of the accurate diagnosis? Not at all, and that’s the point.

The accurate diagnosis alone could not have saved President Washington’s life, but one thing we might guess is that understanding that his illness was caused by an invading pathogen growing in his throat that had nothing to do with “bad blood” or “evil humours,” he may well have avoided the blood-letting in his treatment, saving much of his strength for fighting the severe but routine infection.

Furthermore, the potions and concoctions he was given to gargle and drink might have been better purposed to deal with a direct infection, per long experience with animals or other people, and perhaps would have been chosen in a way that was more beneficial or benign, especially if some understanding of the role of inflammation was part of the blessed miraculous insight of our hypothesis. Maybe they would have been chosen only for his comfort and to keep his airways clearer.

It’s very unlikely that his doctors would have realized that a certain strain of mold properly prepared and administered would have surely cured him, but they might have realized their primary focus should have been on keeping him breathing as well as possible while his body fought the infection, potentially preventing many of the other, harmful things they did.

One young doctor did propose such a solution, in fact, recommending a radical new surgical technique at the time called a tracheotomy, which was not performed. Whether or not he understood the situation (likely not), he did understand that the emphasis was to keep Washington breathing until he could recover under his own power (which would have been increased had he not been drained of half his blood and given to drink various potions, some of which were surely unhealthy). Had that surgical intervention been performed cleanly and correctly, many today think, Washington likely would have survived.

In other words, a correct diagnosis might or might not have saved President Washington in that last dark month of the eighteenth century, but it would have certainly achieved at least three effects:

1) It would have ruled out dangerous false “solutions” like blood-letting and perhaps some of the concoctions he was given;

2) It would have focused energy and attention on doing more productive, even if insufficient, things than were done, which combined may actually have saved The President's life; and

3) It still would have been correct and therefore a robust foundation for pursuing and achieving real, reliable solutions to the same problem in future circumstances, independent of Washington’s fate.

That is, getting an accurate diagnosis matters even when the diagnosis itself is not sufficient to solve the problem at hand. The likelihood of finding a viable solution to a problem goes up dramatically with an accurate diagnosis, and the likelihood of avoiding bad false “solutions” in the process also goes up dramatically in this case.

Now let’s turn our attention to Woke, a societal infection if ever there was one.

Woke, which is ultimately a group-based victimhood complex channeled through social philosophy, is always an incorrect understanding of the phenomena of society. It therefore cannot lead to correct solutions, only to ridiculous things like blood-letting (criticism, in metaphor).

It does not matter if we are talking about left-wing Woke, right-wing Woke, postmodern Woke, modern Woke, or premodern Woke. Woke is a petulant misunderstanding of the circumstances, therefore it cannot provide a correct diagnosis. Therefore, again, it cannot, except by a combination of luck and failure, produce a meaningful solution.

To wit, Marx did not have good criticisms of society, capitalism, free markets, free trade, liberalism, feudalism, slavery, or anything else he criticized—as is often asserted—because all of his criticisms relied upon his own modern-era Woke theory of social alienation and conflict that is fundamentally not correct. (It is sociognostic and just as heretical as any other Gnostic heresy, as such.) The solutions he applied are wrong not merely on their own but also because his diagnostic framework is wrong.

Keeping the diagnostic framework while recommending different solutions (right-wing Woke, or Woke Right) will not fix the fundamental problem because the diagnostic framework is still wrong. Therefore, the prescribed solutions will also be wrong. Right-wing Woke, maybe like Washington’s enema, is not an answer to left-wing Woke.

Getting accurate diagnoses about bad social theory—not by using it—is not on its own a solution any more than one of President Washington’s doctors realizing he has a strep infection would have been a cure. It is, however, the foundation for finding a cure, or at least for favoring minimal and palliative care dedicated toward the right objectives (keeping him breathing and full of his own blood while his body fought the infection) rather than taking detrimental wrong turns.

Similarly, Woke theories and obsessions with power, victimhood, and group identity, but for “right-wing” causes, is an easily avoidable wrong turn that can be avoided by understanding that Woke theory and its obsession with power, victimhood, and group identity are the disease itself. Or, more deeply, that both are aspects of the same dialectic that is making our society sick.

I hope Western Civilization can survive, even if we are unaware of the cure. Like the body of President Washington in December 1799, it already has many of the resources (like the Constitution) needed to fight the Woke infection it is currently suffering from—as long as we keep it breathing and don’t unnecessarily weaken it with false “solutions” like more Woke, more criticism, more victimhood, more identity politics, and more obsession with power, even if they’re pointing in the “other” direction.

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