"The Art of the (Re)build"
“Extinctions happen. Evolution is a bitch.”
-Nick Land
I deliberately avoided writing anything until the post-election high had completely worn off. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s win, hope was bound to spring eternal, fueled by adrenaline and emotion. But as the weeks have passed, the initial excitement has settled, and the hyperbolic, hopeful rhetoric is starting to fade, giving way to a more sobering reality.
Trump can’t save us.
It’s not because he doesn’t want to; it’s just that he can’t. He is a boomer, and he carries all the blind spots endemic to boomerism. He believes in democracy and equality, and he is socially liberal. As has been said thousands of times, “Trump is a 90’s Democrat.” The best Trump can do on his own is return us to the Fresh Prince era.
Luckily, Trump is not on his own. He has learned (at least somewhat) from his past mistakes. He has surrounded himself with individuals who exist on the fringes of the mainstream. They are not complete outsiders, but they are not neocons either. In many cases, they are willing—even eager—to flirt with our ideas, and that is a win.
Trump’s reelection is a net positive for us; it’s just not the win many want it to be. Whether Trump was allowed to win or not is irrelevant. Either way, it signals a weakness in the Cathedral. The powers that be want only one thing: to remain in power. If they allowed Trump to win, it is a clear sign they are losing ground and see him as a means to regroup and consolidate public support. This could be achieved by using Trump’s platform to restore faith in the system or allowing the system to fail via war or economic collapse, then swooping in to "save the day." On the other hand, if Trump won despite their efforts to engineer a repeat of 2020, it indicates their weakness and a lack of solidarity among elites. Regardless of whether Trump’s victory was a function or failure of the system, all signs point to weakness—because only a necrotic system would display such symptoms.
As Nick Land points out,
“[I suspect] …The Cathedral has become an object of animosity, as a consequence of its morbidity. After all it’s a mind-control apparatus. If it’s no longer universally accepted and in certain problematic patches actively loathed, dysfunction is clearly indicated. Contestation if its story is not supposed to be a part of the story.”1
Whether you side with
or , Trump’s victory signals weakness within the Cathedral. However, this weakness does not mean we are on the verge of reanimating the corpse of pre-1965 America. Only God can raise the dead—and what has America done to deserve the Lazarus treatment?And if God won’t restore America, why can’t we? We turn to Land once more:
“Because the Cathedral cannot be fundamentally modified, but only exacerbated, or terminated, there is sadly no strategic option available to its enemies that is not based upon extinguishing it without residue. Extinctions happen. Evolution is a bitch.”2
As the Cathedral expands, its adaptation to reality progressively attenuates. The result is that every effective discovery process- whether economic, scientific, or of any other kind— is subjected to ever-more radical subversion by political influences whose only "reality principle" is internal: based on closed-circuit social manipulation.3
Democracy is thus, strictly speaking, a production of collective insanity, or dissociation from reality. […] Since it is already evident that democratic mechanisms, rather than providing such feedback, reliably deepen dissociation, the reality signal has to come from elsewhere. To return to an adaptive condition, governance has to simultaneously disconnect from popular opinion (voice) and reconnect to a registry of actual — rather than ideologically spun —performance. [...] The great difficulty that then emerge is the requirement for an undiscovered or technocratic leap, from an environment of progressively decaying discovery or selection pressure, into one in which discovery can once again take place…. Handle is no less right when he insists that the "conservative" option of accommodation to the democratic social process in motion is profoundly untenable, because discovery deterioration is essential to the democratic trend. Maladaptation to reality ceases to be correctable under Cathedral governance, and recognition of this malign condition is the defining neoreactionary insight.4
“To lead a decent and productive life in a place worthy of it is the highest political good. Insofar as Exit mechanisms obtain, the tacit choices in such a life reinforce what merits reinforcement, while disinvesting that which requires the lash of dis-investment. Angry antagonism has no useful place. On the largest scale, evil is best punished by abandonment. 5
This is not to criticize secessionist tendencies in rotting societies-which are rather to be enthusiastically applauded —but it is to suggest that the deep dynamics levering the collapsed world apart are more likely to begin from strategic neglect than oppositional rage. It is not that one first fights in order later to escape. Rather, one escapes from the beginning, to hasten the enemy's collapse. (Those most adamant about the righteousness of their confrontation with the Great Foe are the same who in very concrete terms-are most likely to be resourcing it.) You think it is feeding on your blood, to spawn its horrors: Then stop donating your blood. It is not difficult, at least in principle.”6
To Land’s point secessionist tendencies while understandable will simply lead to a rebirth of the system they are trying to escape. The truth path forward is one of exit and creation. To actively fight against the system is ineffective. The Cathedral will either commodify the opposition and if that fails it will destroy it.
However, the Cathedral’s weakness stems from two factors: the loss of informational control and rising maintenance costs. It is the latter that concerns us most. As John Michael Greer theorizes in How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse: How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse…
“Civilizations face the risk of gradual disintegration due to the compounding effects of resource depletion, diminishing returns on investments, and societal complexities. In essence it is the gradual degradation of a civilization due to rising maintenance cost.”7
Even under enemy control, the system struggles to summon enough power to enforce its edicts. It relies on the illusion of strength. Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s challenge to federal immigration policy highlights this inability. Although Abbott’s challenge yielded no substantial changes, the federal government’s failure to act decisively speaks volumes. Thirty years ago, they burned Waco to the ground; today, they allow challenges to their authority to go largely unopposed.
Herein lies the true white pill of Trump’s reelection. If exit and the creation of something new is the only way out, Trump in office provides the necessary cover. The diminished but still dangerous eye of Sauron will focus on the quasi-Marxist coalition of the left, leaving us free to build.
We now have four years to organize, network, and lay the foundations for the future. This time is critical because our enemies are equally capable of seizing opportunities. Look no further than The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which now boasts 90,000 dues-paying members. For all intents and purposes, the DSA is America’s communist party, and they make no effort to hide it. You can read their neo-Bolshevik plans here.
Trump’s victory is neither the endgame nor the ultimate solution. It is merely a reprieve—an invaluable opportunity to organize and build in the shadows while the Cathedral turns its attention elsewhere. The next four years will be pivotal: a chance to escape, create, and lay the foundation for something new.
The Cathedral is weak, and our enemies know it. History shows that moments like these are inflection points that end with Franco or Lenin rising from the ashes of chaos. What happens next depends on whether we seize this moment or squander it. Complacency is not an option. The real work begins now.
-TJS
Land, Nick. Xenosystems: The Infrastructure of Escape. Passage Press, 2023, 17, 30–31.
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Greer, John Michael. "How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse." The Archdruid Report, 2005. https://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.htm.
Well said. As Churchill once remarked, this is just the end of the beginning. It is time for the instinctuals to take our country back from the institutionalized: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/americas-counter-cultural-revolution-institutional-instinctual
Some lessons have to be relearned from time to time and that some lessons in a democracy have to be unlearned: ie, about fooling all the people......all of the time.