Yesterday’s video link is from Useful Idiots, and their very next show was called

‘How Both Parties Work for ‘Tyranny, Inc.’

This one includes a detailed explanation, from the POV of a conservative populist, about exactly why DeSantis is far, far worse than Trump could dream of being, for the average person. So you might like it for that.

I got pretty interested in what the author of Tyranny Inc. had to say. I went looking for more and found this:

Tyranny, Inc. | A Conversation with Sohrab Ahmari

Mr. Ahmari is a convert to both Catholicism and conservatism, so he is not someone I would normally find myself allied with.

But his critique of the culture is both smart and compassionate.

In essence–my words not his–this is an oligarchic fascist state. The people at the top of it have all the money, and maybe just as importantly, they have most all the jobs, too. They own the think tanks. They own the Congress creatures and the Oval Office and therefore they own the sham of democracy. They own your mortgage, and if your life deviates from how they want it to be, and what they want you to do with it, then in all likelihood you will starve, or have to sleep under a bridge, or buckle and start conforming again.

(I’m wondering idly here just how much addiction is nothing more than a running and hiding from these awkward, ugly, and incontrovertible facts.)

They put plenty of resources into convincing people that hard work (working for them of course) and abiding by the laws (which they wrote) are the basis of being a good person, and a success in life. This message sticks, because they own all the media, and by various mechanisms own the education system too.

And thereby, nine times out of ten, they own your kids.

Or … they will, someday, after college … and they can afford to wait.

Maybe you believe that abolition happened.

But Malcolm was right when he said that slavery was only refined and extended to include all the colors and flavors of humanity inside the Empire, and beyond its borders to the best they can manage it.

If you remain loyal to the Master, you’ll never know want.

Unless we define want not in material, but spiritual terms.

***

The traditional radical remedy for all this, out beyond picket lines and bread lines, is to seize control of the means of production.

It mighta sorta worked in Russia in 1917. But as we know, the Seizers just slowly evolve into the new Caesars. Communism is not the enemy of the People, but it is not, over the long haul, their friend either. It’s just a capitalism and authoritarianism with slightly better credentials.

Some time ago I quoted a long thing about it.

Similar though Marx and Thoreau may be in their accounts of the consequences of living in a society defined by money, their suggestions for how to respond to it are poles apart. Forget the Party. Forget the revolution. Forget the general strike. Forget the proletariat as an abstract class of human interest. Thoreau’s revolution begins not with discovering comrades to be yoked together in solidarity but with the embrace of solitude. For Thoreau, Marx’s first and fatal error was the creation of the aggregate identity of the proletariat. Error was substituted for error. The anonymity and futility of the worker were replaced by the anonymity and futility of the revolutionary. A revolution conducted by people who have only a group identity can only replace one monolith of power with another, one misery with another, perpetuating the cycle of domination and oppression. In solitude, the individual becomes most human, which is to say most spiritual.

–Curtis White, “The spirit of disobedience: An invitation to resistance

So … solitude and Thoreau then, right?

When I first was reading Walden at fourteen or fifteen, my dumb-ass father sniffed that Thoreau could afford that shit because he had rich friends.

He was ugly and stupid and violent, but he was right, about that much.

I have myself a couple of rich friends, but not that rich. I call them my Patrons and I value them highly, but none of them are gonna give me a house in the woods out of the goodness of their hearts, or put the fish on my table.

I’d be embarrassed for them if they did, in fact, and even more embarrassed for myself.

Anyway, cozying up to friends that pay your way is a piss-poor infrastructure for solitude, and actually getting the hell out of the way.

When they invite you to dinner in the big house, you’re not really free to say no, I need my time and my own space, ennit?

Tragically messy.

***

It might seem at first like this whole years-long line of inquiry is a hollow dead end.

But do not despair utterly, my children.

The sage still has a plan for getting out of the ubiquitous deadness.

It surely will involve … obtaining some little sliver of the means of production. Not through seizure, which is stealing just like any property is (ask the Sioux), but through leveraging the scraps of assets left to me, and some intelligence and sweat equity invested besides, to try on a very small scale to beat the masters at their own fucked-up evil game.

There’s a lot of moral risk in that.

I’m not sure what else to try, though.

Wish me luck, the speed of the gods, and all the other things that don’t exist. Pray for me to go on walking in integrity, which does.

Let me tell you about these magic beans I have for sale.

***

Coda: Just some generic and fun history related to themes of slavery, hunter-gathering, etc.

Slavery – Crash Course US History #13
Age of Jackson: Crash Course US History #14
19th Century Reforms: Crash Course US History #15

The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1
Indus Valley Civilization: Crash Course World History #2