It appears the plan is to fill the time between now and when Donald Trump regains the White House with stories about starting a nuclear war with Russia. First, we got the NATO missiles strikes on Russia, then it was the Russian use of a mystery weapon that should terrify everyone. Instead, the response from NATO is a series of stories about doing even dumber things than the missile strikes. It is as if Western leaders are in a contest to see who can think of the dumbest idea possible.
So far this week we have stories leaking out from Europe that the Brits and French are talking about sending an “expeditionary force” to Ukraine. That was followed by comments from the head of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, suggesting NATO launch preemptive strikes on Russia. All of this is taking place in the looming shadow of a second Trump administration. The Europeans are carrying on as if Godzilla is approaching the continent.
Of course, all these ideas are being floated by people who would urinate themselves if faced with a physical confrontation. Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are ridiculous people who have landed in these positions due to the collapse of their respective political classes. The rest of the European political class is equally silly, but most lack the vanity of these two. Most are like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who seems to cherish being a middling mediocrity.
The question that is never asked is how did it come to this? Surely Britain has better men than Keir Starmer. The UK has a lot of problems, but it still has some of the best human capital on the planet. The same is true of France. This is a country that defined diplomacy in the West. There must be a deep well of talent in the country, despite generations of bad policy making. How in the world did these two feckless nitwits end up ruling these two once great nations?
Obviously, these two men did not arrive on the scene by chance. They were selected and groomed by the political system that rules their countries. They made the right friends, followed the right advice and most importantly, never asked the wrong questions about the current narrative. In many respects, these two men were selected purely on narrative grounds. They filled a role in the story better than the alternatives, so they got the job and here we are on the verge of war.
It is the machine that generates the narratives that makes it possible for so many mediocrities to bubble up to the surface of the system. For example, the crackpot idea of an expeditionary force was not dreamed up by Starmer or Macron. This has been floated by the best thinks tanks in the West. Here is a post from the Center for Strategic and International Studies talking up the expeditionary force. It was written by what the system calls an expert on the topic.
This idea is part of a larger narrative that assumes, like all managerial class narratives, that the world can be set right if the managerial elite simply has the will. That is the themes of this post in The Guardian by one of the UK’s top experts on the war in Ukraine and Russia in general. It is a completely insane post that has no bearing on objective reality, but that is not important. What is important is it tells guys like Starmer that the good guys have the will to make the narrative real.
That post is not written by the typical kook that fills the pages of The Guardian, but by a fellow calling himself James Nixey. He leads the Russia-Eurasia program at Chatham House, which is a prestigious think tank in the UK. In other words, he is a guy people like Starmer will call for advice on Russia. Note that Mr. Nixey is barely qualified to offer tour advice on Russia. His entire life has been about sitting in a room somewhere imagining what life is like outside that room.
This is a recurring theme in Western politics. From top to bottom it is people who are very good at playing along inside imagination land and even better at avoiding anything that resembles real life experience. Generations ago, the Prime Minister would have served in the military and maybe even seen war. Even the more effete politicians could rely on a class of men who understood how the world actually worked. Today such men are treated as skunks at a picnic.
In the fullness of time, the defining characteristic of managerialism will be its boiling off of the capable, independent men in favor or complaint mediocrities. Lacking genuine men of action, the compliant mediocrities search for consensus, which becomes their authority figure and their moral authority. It is why everything that comes from the think tanks and media reinforces the agreed upon positions. The most terrifying thing for a mediocre man is to stand alone against the consensus.
The narratives we keep seeing serve to make manifest the consensus and cast those within the consensus as the white hat in the drama. Much of what seems to drive these mediocre men of late-stage managerialism is moral affirmation. It is why they have all herded themselves off the Ukraine cliff. They care only for being seen at the sincerest believer in the prevailing narrative. For the political class, it means public policy is always a public act of piety.
If the crew of a ship all die at once, the ship does not immediately capsize. It will float around until it runs aground or succumbs to a big wave. On rare occasions it makes its way to land in one piece. That is the West right now. It is a ship bobbing around, crewed by mediocre men who are terrified at the thought of being in charge. Instead, they huddle together inside a consensus and ruthlessly enforce it. To continue the metaphor, they are below decks debating the need for a captain.
If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!
Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.
Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb. Just email them directly to book at
sa***@mi*********************.com
.
isn’t the manifest unfitness of the ruling class going to bring their rule to an end? and probably within the next 10 years? especially since the chinese and russians don’t seem likewise afflicted…
Certainly. It cannot continue to exist based upon its self contradictory nature. It’s not if, it’s when—and when, then what comes after. We fear the great unknown and rightfully so. There really are no prior examples that can be extended into a modern societal situation as we have today.
One lesson is that, if you ever start a country that is noting but a Roman Republic LARP, at least make sure you have some provision for a dictator, like they did.
Madison and Hamilton should have their bones dug up and thrown in the Potomac.
The problem with Rome’s concept of a “dictator”—one that they knew and feared at the time—was who that dictator would be. In the first use (that I’m aware of) they found Lucious Quinctius Cincinnatus. He of course was a man of honor and principle and when he no longer needed the power of absolute dictator, returned to his life as a gentleman farmer. In times not long past, our early Republic recognized such men of integrity and celebrated such as an example to the people.
Today, not so much…sigh.
the Brits and French are talking about sending an “expeditionary force” to Ukraine. Let them gather a force of vibrants from the streets of London and Paris, put them on dirt bikes and reenact the Charge of the Light Brigade. I predict victory
it is fun to imagine the Brits and the French dispatching their best cross dressers to the front, but in reality it would be their best units, which are all white men of high character. They would be obliterated in a month.
The sending troops talk shows a concerning level of fantasy in these people.
Yes, believing that long-range missiles will cause the Russians to collapse or Putin to get overthrow is stupid, but, at least, there are actual missiles being launched. The troops quite literally can’t be sent. They have almost no ability to even get them to the front, much less supply them, much less replace their loses.
It’s one thing to fantasize about the outcomes of an action that actually happened; it’s another to fantasize about the outcomes of action that itself is a fantasy.
If they were sent to Kursk, unlikely they would last two weeks, as the Russians have been ordered to take out the trash before Jan.20…but of course, there’s not the slightest chance of that happening…
A drone or precision missile doesn’t care how many times you ran up or down some mountain in Wales or Corsica, or in Western North Carolina for that matter
I hate to be Debbie Downer here, but I don’t think a far better class of men could do much. Not at this late date. Look at the run-up to WWI. For all the blame we can legitimately assign to the Tsar and the Kaiser, the nuts and bolts of it fell on men who might’ve been mediocre in their day, but they’d be titans in ours. The problems were all structural: The Tsar needed to be pan-Slavic to shore up his authority at home after defeat in the Russo-Japanese war and the subsequent revolution. France was still smarting from… Read more »
Yeah, my fear is the train left the station thirty years ago. It is as if the managerial elite feels it needs to be punished and what better punishment than to be incinerated in a nuclear flash? My hope is the punishment is a carrier with a big hole in it from a missile strike. Such an image might be enough to terrify the economic elite into purging the system. or maybe the system merely collapses. Not great, but better than nuclear war.
They do not believe a world governed by anyone but themselves deserves to exist.
The managerial elite has absolutely no clue it can die or be killed. The dumber it is the more convinced it is of its immortality, to the degree it even realizes death is certain. The economic elite has late in the day noticed the psychosis, and as you write the question is whether it will move to purge the system. I am not convinced it will. I like Sev’s analogy to WWI but the presence of nukes makes this infinitely worse, and, yes, it is possible to be worse. In a better day, a semi-competent military would engineer a coup,… Read more »
I think a major difference is “mediocre men” in 1913 joined the civil service and military, and today they go into other industries like tech or finance. This leaves the govt staffed with mostly retards or conformists. The hope is that the various Western govts are just theater, while the real Men of Action in the West can either roll their eyes or put a stop to it with a phone call. We can make fun of Macron and Starmer and Biden, but I can’t believe they’re doing anything but LARPing as “statesmen” while global finance and non-Western leaders put… Read more »
There is reason to believe this is true. Sorry I can’t find link, it may have been in The Guardian, it was some publication on that level, in which Boris Johnson was quoted, talking about his actions during the plandemic (this was part of the piling on after he resigned), referring to otherwise inexplicable action he’d taken he said “I had to. They made me.” Without saying who “they” were.
Yes.
“All we have to do is re-shore manufacturing”
“All we have to do is build 100 nuclear reactors for cheap power”
“All we have to do is repatriate 30 million families back to their home countries and enforce immigration laws”
“All we have to do is tighten spending and address the national debt.”
These are all pipe dreams. With what $$, expertise, or leaders?
It can now be plainly seen by everyone that giving Paris back was Germany’s fatal mistake
The Russians are dismantling what was the largest and most experienced army in Europe.
Sending an Euro expeditionary force to Ukraine at this time would be like Longshanks sending Prince Edward to negotiate with William Wallace.
Somebody is going to have to explain to me why the set-up of the post-Yeltsin era was so bad for everyone. The Russians exported cheap gas and pretty girls, the Euro elite and Ukrainian politicians took their cut, the Russians reinvested the proceeds in London real estate and football clubs, and German industry hummed along. 20 years later, everything is screwed and we’re talking about something as farcical as the “JEF” while we’re on the brink of WW3. I want to speak with the Manager………….
I once thought that this was oversimplified but it has proved most certainly not to be: check the Early Life of the principal agitators for war with Russia. It is almost uniform.
I dunno, scanning the MSM it’s mostly Trump-Trump-Trump. I have not seen much hand-wringing over Russia. It’s very likely the only people who genuinely care about Ukraine-Russia are managerial retards and neocons. I wonder if Europe and not Washington is driving all this? You know the old line about politics is downstream from culture. Europe for some time time has been downstream from America. When we let something go, Europe is still holding onto it. Like jean jackets. It may take some time before they realize America doesn’t care, so they won’t care. This pertains to all the fads of… Read more »
That’s confirmed by the polling…A vast majority of Americans want to cut off the Ukraine entirely and tend to our business at home…..
Okay, the figurehead leaders chosen by the managerial class are as fantastical as the managerial class itself, but someone or some groups prop up the managerial class. Ironically, the managerial class couldn’t manage a lemonade stand, but here they are.
Someone pays for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Someone back Starmer and Macron. This is the problem with democracy. We have no idea who is really in charge but someone is and it’s not Starmer or Macron or, even as powerful as they are, the Kagen cult.
The fear and likely reality is that the oligarchs who select the managers also are of infinitely lower caliber than in the past. I’m certain some of the elite realize how deranged and dangerous this all is, but how many and who? We probably would not like the answer.
“Generations ago, the Prime Minister would have served in the military and maybe even seen war.”
Mediocrities indeed. Reminds one of a great bit of writing.
From C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man:
“And all the time… In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
His entire life has been about sitting in a room somewhere imagining what life is like outside that room. Original? Regardless, awesome. Politicians and the unironically dubbed “thought leaders” always have been the dutiful puppets of oligarchs. With the collapse of oligarchical intelligence we have gotten the likes of Macron, Starmer, and the even dumber diversity version like Harris and Lammy. Common people may not get the governments they deserve but the oligarchs certainly do. And as an aside, while I hope beyond reason nothing of the sort happens, it almost–almost–would be a joy to see the look on Starmer’s… Read more »
“they are below decks debating the need for a captain.”
I may have heard it here first IDK but I always think they’re below decks having meetings that make sure nobody can be held accountable
How does this not end in the actual end of history?