Dear Reader,
It's embarrassing to see that we have subscribers, even if it's only a tiny flock. We regret our silence. We have been struggling to find our way and transition from a life of imperial servitude to working for ourselves, if only for a little while before the empire crumbles into a new Dark Age, probably accompanied by random violence of the original Gothic variety, and medieval serfdom if we're lucky.
This triumvirate is mightily inspired by all the truthtellers out there on social media and Substack. We get bombarded all day long by intriguing and disturbing and amusing email...but we want to spend less time reading email and devote our selves to books and household projects. We have to get our collective heads right, sane, and together.
We are unsure how our voices can contribute anything useful, and we have always been turned off by the arrogance of the Americans, that "you just have to invent your brand and loudly proclaim it"...and "fake it to make it"...We have a stubborn cling to quality. Go slow. Haste makes waste. Maybe it's simple trepidation and cowardice.
(Wasn't "fake it to make it" originally referring to a guy making it with a girl? Isn't that rape now? If one fakes one's resume, credentials, or one's "brand" and gets a job, is that rape?)
This modern desire to “be informed” is starting to seem to be akin to the American chasing after a pain-free existence. ?A homework-free existence? ?A proof-free narrative? Reminds us of the situation where now Americans shoot fentanyl straight into their veins. Fentanyl started out as a chemical snuck into Heroin, meaning that the drug dealer was saving money and cheating his clients by adulterating his product with fentanyl. And people were dying. Now Americans are willingly and knowingly straight lining fentanyl into their veins. And the ones who are "happiest" read the Bozo Post or the Clown World Times, so they have the right opinions. And the constant combat to be the Prettiest Tweety Birds, ye Gods! Shoot that right way to think direct into our brains, Big Tech Daddy!
We all "want to be informed" and we have reduced ourselves into idiots by consuming too much information, and while the information product may have once been pretty good, it was adulterated with soap commercials. During a commercial one could get something else done. One could disregard them easily. (I am talking of an earlier time period, perhaps the 1980s.) But now we don't know where the "corporate money making influence" is. Or where the bias is, or how the writer was influenced or corrupted or handicapped by big money manipulation.
Scene: As in a 1980s Conan movie, when Conan and his archer companion Subotai sample the bazaar of the town, while some news-seller dressed in rags is hawking his wares to them for coin. Reducing the information for money model to it's barest.
The scene should be written ala Monty Python or Firesign Theater, or in that style. If you don't know the Firesign Theater, you should, and all their work is available for free on the toobs. "You fine fellows look like you need to know who the latest enemy is, why we hate them, and why we fight!"
Benedict, our priest, has been firmly in charge, which is unusual for us. He is usually the quietest one of the triumvirate, hardly getting any air time or say in what tasks we take on. We rarely let him have the remote. His place is usually in the corner of the library, with his large tomes, studying the ancient past, searching for an obscure passage that explains how America is falling just like Rome did. At most all we ever allowed him to do for us, while we put our shoulders to the imperial yoke, was to seek little encouraging entertainments to put a smile on our grim visages, or something to make us think a bit, be yet even more stoic. He, our priest, has been more accustomed to wearing the frippery of a clown these past several years. But now he counsels us, he listens to us, he diagnoses us.
Tiberius is listening to old jazz and working on home improvement. He wants us to call him Thelonius now. Now that he's not a centurion he is not sure who he is.He's grieving the loss of his career, especially as events have forced him to question the necessity and value of his service to the Empire.
Tiberius is studying the War Machine as an outsider now, old wars mostly, as Iraq and Afghanistan are still too painful and personal for him. He is reading about Vietnam, except when it makes him throw up. Symptomatic symptoms of malaria as well, or is it Agent Orange? He is also allowed to play some war games, and he's 'studying' the tactics of Lee and Grant and Napoleon and Wellington, the Cavaliers and the Roundheads.
Cato has been trying to meditate and putting his acerbic qualities to good use in decluttering the mansio. Cato is spitting nails mad about everything going bad in the culture and the empire. He has started writing several pieces, but we locked him out of the keyboard, and sent him to get some calm and perspective. Not sure if it’s working. We are all working on our communication skills and understanding of each other and ourselves. Cato is addicted to indignation and rage, and mutters under his breath constantly.
We are coordinating on home improvement projects and getting rid of stuff we don't need. When we take walks, we see that Americans usually have more stuff than they need. Does every American home have a cluttered basement room and/or garage?
Benedict diagnosed us as suffering from severe cognitive dissonance and grief. The denouement was a long time coming. Cognitive dissonance can be bolstered by compartmentalization, and we learned how to do that well, in the Intel Biz. We are trying to read books on anger and depression. This is hard for us. We are usually engaged in learning about something outside of us, or how to do something or how to fix something. Not so clear with one's own despair.
What was that career about? How did any of it help the nation or the world? Was everything we told ourselves that was worthy of pride of service a fraud?
We swallowed a lot of bromides over the decades about patriotism and sacrifice from upper management, those managers that wear stars, those that wear ties and flag pins, those that pretend to be the Dear Leader with whom you want to share a flagon of brew. When the same crowd wrote pretty much the same stale copy as we beat an ignominious retreat from Afghanistan, none of those bromides were effective. They turned our stomachs, in fact.
We know the cognitive dissonance of men who toil at meaningless careers, without any real sense of accomplishment, yet know that they have no recourse but to remain, like dull Clydesdales, in harness, to pull the cart until death or relief. To hope for the green pastures of a small country farm, with a stipend of carrots and oats! These horses must have blinders on, to keep them trudging faithfully. Don't look back and see what you are pulling!
We don't know how long we can maintain that metaphor, but suffice it to say, we were not going to remain in harness for masters that beat us, injected us with poison, and took away all remaining illusion of choice, volition, nobility of purpose...we looked back, we saw the chortling demons riding in the cart, and the dancing imps in the wake.
Sportsball worked for us for a while, it was a good distraction and a way to have something safe to talk about at the office. Until it all got politicized. What's worse, a gladiator who pretends to care about social causes, because it makes him more denarii, or the gladiator that really believes in fighting for social justice on the sands of the arena?
We have concluded (by force) that we have devoted our selves to serving in waste. Wasted time, energy, effort, sweat, blood and tears. We regret our service. Not only...
Not only is the current situation of state tyranny of the bureaucrats and technocrats deplorable, but we realized that we worked for corrupt institutions, some long time ago, and yet we hoped meekly and merely for meager pensions, to be able to retire at some point and perhaps have a second career in teaching history, or writing, or something honorable like sucking cock on a street corner for chimichangas or digital currency.
The goals of the institutions were foolish, the agencies are corrupt, and there was no solid intent behind them to actually see national goals to fruition. We worked at cross purposes.
Now we know that our role was truly to serve as middlemen in the Compliance for Cash game. So others could enrich themselves in a corrupt roulette game, a crap game of fat USA government contracts. Did you know that contractors sold the Union Army (of President Lincoln's time) backpacks made of painted cardboard that dissolved on the march from Washington, D.C.? The lacquer paint cover of today is a lot more sophisticated, but we see no benefit to actual American people, unless you count the contractors themselves.
Compartmentalization makes it easy to think intel work is important and useful. It was certainly complicated and engaging enough (almost) on it's own, to keep one occupied. There was always something to learn about technology, new methods to glean information from the internet, new countries, cultures, and dialects to study. As long as one never thinks in terms of overall foreign policy solutions, it's a nerd's Nirvana.
But if all the work forwards zero positive change in the nation one serves, or the world at large, then what use?
A great deal of intel work done by the War Machine, in all of it's history, but especially since 2001, is to "protect the troops," AKA "force protection." Uh, if the troops were not deployed to some foreign land, accomplishing nothing that improves the lives of regular Americans, then they would not need protection. But the contracting firms love it, and the workers of the War Machine love it, because it feels like real accomplishment, keeping Billy Badass safe in Krazbakistan, and they can score promotions and bonuses too!
Summa cum loudly; we are healing, we are sorting things out, we are learning to adapt to the new realities, we are drafting several pieces. If you have questions about the Intel Biz, please ask in your comments. We will say what we can, without hastening our trip to the Gulag.
Great article. I've been reading a ton of books on Rome lately and the comparisons to where we are now is truly astonishing. Rome fell due to a combination of an overextended military, ruinous taxation of the middle class, and beyond corrupt governance, along with an upper class that fell to extreme levels of moral degradation. How is this any different than what those of us in the American empire are experiencing? We have military bases around the globe but can't seem to beat anyone in war anymore, like when Emperor Valentine tried taking on the King of Kings in the late 4th century and ended up as the only emperor to have been captured by the enemy during a campaign. Due to endless military buildups, bailing out corrupt corporations, and a bloated bureaucracy the citizens of the American Empire are taxed more and more, or have the worth of their money devalued thanks to inflation. This is reminiscent of Roman emperors deciding to add less and less gold/silver to the coins they minted thus causing rampant inflation along with eroding the trust of Roman citizens.
I've come to realize that those in power view us as nothing but the common rabble, toss us some free bread and air some reality tv and that will appease the masses. Prior to Julius Caesar's update of the calendar Roman citizens viewed time as something that was cyclical so it was expected that history/events would repeat themselves, think that we are witnesses to the verification of this ancient belief.
"or something honorable like sucking cock on a street corner for chimichangas" I LOL'd
Your main problem is the right hemisphere of your brain seems to have taken control before you hit retirement. That ability to get lost down little technical rabbit holes unconcerned about the big picture? Classic left hemisphere brain dominance. That is relentlessly selected for at all levels entering into the professional/credentialed/managerial class.
You're focusing on the fact that your career didn't accomplish anything in the way that you had told yourself, or let yourself believe. That will make you depressed AF, don't do that. With government spending taking an ever increasing share of the pie and regulations and nudge units funded and supported by government picking winners and losers in the market (generally shifting high paying jobs and opportunities towards large, multinational corporations, especially for those who have sunk cost into obtaining credentials and relevant work experience), a huge proportion of Americans is in exactly the same boat. What you can focus on instead, is the fact that you have developed real skills and a deep understanding of the perils/intractable problems associated with bureaucracy. That experience and credibility as an insider was hard won, and it will be incredibly useful going forward if you still care to help America slip the rapidly tightening noose of tyranny.
Set a posting schedule and stick to it. You might not think you have anything insightful to say, I assure you that this is merely a product of cognitive bias. Sharing your perspective on things given what you have been through and the skills you have developed will be of interest to many, and yours will be an important voice towards finding a political path back to a socially cohesive and principled America.
Don't focus on trying to outline TTPs in a way that will keep you out of trouble, that will be incredibly stressful, and at the end of the day, I don't think it matters that much. The fact is they're doing it, that is the problem, and knowing how they do it specifically probably won't be as helpful as you turning your focus towards finding a way ahead. Lots of writers on substack are trying to figure this out and working towards this goal. My favorite framings of the issue come from my boy John Carter https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-great-convergence-i-pennywise
Just get into the conversation and the way ahead will become ever clearer. You don't have to bear this burden alone, there are many thousands of us that recognize all the same things and have the same regrets. If there is to be a silver lining to all that perhaps misdirected effort it will require purposeful action on your part now. You'll get feedback and discussion and you will quickly internalize that you are not alone (which I'm sure you realize is one of the reasons censorship is so effective, it produces this sensation of isolation).