I think most everyone (those paying any attention, at least) recognize by now that liberalism has failed. As a result, there seems to be two main responses: those who wish to explore alternatives, either new ones or old, and those who wish to push liberalism further and harder in a misguided attempt to maintain or salvage it, either because they are true believers, or they are entrenched by personal financial incentives; or because it is possible, due to the fundamental nature of the enterprise, to be earnestly swayed and motivated by both of these at the same time, which amounts to a powerful defense mechanism. It caters to the whole body of immediate selfishness, ideologically and financially. It permits and promotes our greatest weaknesses while granting them status and power. It allows us to wallow in the easy pleasures of the lowest self while perched upon the highest rung. Liberalism cannot self-correct because it privileges con artistry and failure, and makes these feel good. When faced with an obvious failure, it has a multitude of nice sounding, pleasurable defenses and justifications at the ready. Never mind if these do not add up realistically. It has the power. To risk the overuse of an already common metaphor: it is both the drug and the drug dealer. It is easy in this way to understand the success of the scam——the persistence of this cult of unreality. Reality can be hard and ugly, and many find it preferable in the short term to avoid it. In this way our rulers have been removed both from original purpose and from reality.

In short: it is a tough nut to crack. But time, nature and truth are on our side. Liberalism has already begun to crack. We see that even its most strict adherents and defenders have broken the shell for us. Many of its philosophers openly admit that liberalism must maintain a narrow field of acceptance——that freedom of thought and expression is to be confined to its narrative parameters alone, and anything outside of it must be crushed and suppressed, same as any large-scale governing ideology. In fact, liberalism can naturally become the worst culprit and perpetrator of this, not only because of the sheer hypocrisy, or because of its constant experimental, con man mistakes, which result in more brutality than anything in the past, but because of the never-ending need to bury and cover up its inevitable failures in its war against reality. To open itself up to criticism, debate, or anything like its vaunted “marketplace of ideas”, would be to injure it, if not outright destroy it. Truth is not on its side.

Liberalism was always destined to hit the wall, hard; and given its propensity to infantilize its victims, the frustrations of its failures were bound to implode in ugly demonstrations of futility and self-destruction. The liberal rejection of natural hierarchy leads to the rise of mediocrity. The rise of mediocrity leads to the failure of systems, vision and adaptability. The failure of systems leads to chaos, decline and discontent. At this point, unable to even recognize competency or greatness (likely afraid of it), or understand the problems even if they wanted to, it begins flailing about in reckless and futile attempts to mitigate the damage, making things worse. The chaos leads to tyranny——a tyranny of mediocrity. These extremely mediocre men exercised over a guilty nation the most frightful tyranny in history, and surely they were more surprised at their power than anyone else.

So the thing is breaking; its tenets and mantras are proven false daily, in real time, and the more determined, and the harder the adherents try to push it——the more its state ministers try to hold it together, with lies and propaganda——the more it cracks open for everyone to see. But it’s not gone; it will leave a mess. It is dangerous like wounded animal——this thing breaking. Ugly truths are revealed inside, and sharp edges protrude. Though cracked and breaking, it remains. Shattered pieces like glass are strewn dangerously about with sharp edges. I sometimes hear people praise liberal institutions for their resiliency. I guess the ability to juggle self-imposed episodes of complete madness qualifies as resilient.

It needs to be cleared, swept up and replaced. But I do not think we can return back in time, and elements of it will remain. This is not the worst thing to imagine. There are certain elements of liberalism that, if put in proper order, can be salutary and proper. And perhaps it is wise, after experiencing such an overdose of liberalism, to wean the victim off slowly, as opposed to cold turkey. This is a question of method, and not purpose. The purpose is clear, and clearly necessary. But by which method should the mess be swept up? There seems to be two potential general avenues. A slow cultural seed change, brought about by persuasion, seduction, and liberalism’s own failures, or a violent revolution. Witnessing the daily events of the carnage of liberalism, I am often angered and enraged to the point of proclaiming the need for violence and blood. And if we look, we often find that violence is the standard way that things get done in this fallen world. Even liberal democracies understand that. I may be 300 years old, but I am only human. I get angry. And a cultural seed change reverberating up through the modern structures of power is a lengthy procedure, and many of you will not live long enough to see its fruits.

Vanguard movements and institutional infiltration are only feasible if there is fertile and welcoming soil for your plants, or a larger spirit for such endeavors at your back, especially when confronting these modern structures. This is not to say populism is the way. Obviously, it is not. But, on the other hand, you cannot expect a secretive select few to rise up through liberal institutions and, once in meaningful positions, begin reforms contrary to the system and status quo. You cannot go: “Surprise! I’m actually based! tricked you!” and expect anything other than your swift removal. The system that a modern right-wing vanguard would be tasked with infiltrating and altering from within has many more fail-safes and firewalls than did older structures of the past. That is why a certain level of saturation is required. You must force the system to let you in as you are, openly, through necessity, and is hard to imagine any way of doing this without a length of time for a cultural shift to firmly take place (which method the system has already foreseen and taken steps to prevent, but, as we alluded to, has backfired and worked mostly to exacerbate, and to accelerate its own decline), or brute violence, and never before perhaps has the state’s monopoly on violence been more lopsided as it is today. But this is a very nuanced and speculative topic fit for at least 3 lengthy articles alone.

What is needed now is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of revolution. There is deep and subtle wisdom in this line. We are stuck in a perpetual revolution, and so perhaps the solution is not another one. I am unsure of what it is exactly I wish to say at this point in the article. I know at least that I do not want to say “let cooler and calmer heads prevail.” I do not want to say “violence is never the answer”, because, sadly, it often is. Anyone who has read their history and is honest must admit this. I do not intend to judge anyone who feels at this moment that the time has come for violent reaction. Maybe it has. The list of all the horrors that liberalism has brought upon us——that the U.S has forced upon its people and its vassals in Europe——is enough to make any sane and generally peaceful man hungry for revenge.

I guess what I offer now is merely a simple warning: that once the blood begins to spill in earnest, it is very difficult to stop. It may be hard to imagine now, but once the beast is out of the cage, it is almost impossible to put back in. Or as Sallust warned Roman general Metellus during the war against Jugurtha of Numidia: “Omne bellum facile sumi, ceterum aegerrime desinere.” “It is easy to start a war, but very hard to stop it.”

Our rulers, just like the immature children they are, have poked the beast through the bars with impunity. We are starving for justice, which is denied to us. But our brothers and sisters——yes, even the ones who advocated for this mess, or even helped facilitate it——as delusional and deranged as they may be, are still our brothers and sisters. A few of them may have brought this harm intentionally, but not all, or even most, I suspect. They are in a cult. A dangerous cult of unreality and decadence. When you find such cults, you may need to destroy its leader, but you rescue and rehabilitate its victims. Some of them may have wished harm upon you, even taken pleasure in the idea of it. They are sick, but it will not be very difficult to cure them once we have ascendency. After all, it is partly how the cult of liberalism maintains their loyalty today, even in the face of obvious failure. They will follow. It is their nature to do so. Many of them will try and pretend they were never in that cult, and were always on your side. Let them. As a lover of truth, you may find it difficult or unseemly to stomach such a deceit in the turn around. But nobility and largesse in this matter will be your ally. With kindness in strength, you will seduce them. Through forgiveness, they will flock to you in droves.

Summer opiates are breathed 
In the busy sunlight. 
Blues are blessed above it. 
Tangible swarms of sharpness 
Flash through butterfly memories 
On the green. 

And the hornet 
Is on to something, 
Who is constant back and forth 
From sunny rock to honeysuckle. 
His lessons have given him tools 
For clearing the cobwebs 
From the tips of days 
That heard the mockingbird’s frenzies.  

I think we are getting soft 
In the heat. 
In the shadows 
The garden phlox make 
Against the fence.  

Summer nights alive. 
Young voices happy, 
Carefree and spiritous, 
Untamed, 
Invincible. 
 
Terraced heights: 
Lively temples to the night. 
Reflective surface of summer waters. 
High glow of the lights 
And fountains overflowing, 
Building upon the fragrant air 
Silent canticles to the stars. 

Run. Run into the dark, 
For it's crashing on the sidewalk, 
And over sweet blades of grass, 
And feet and eyes 
Splash moments breathless, 
But we are never lost.  

The ship is vibrant and familiar. 
Its cargo is spice and dreams; 
Vivid echoes, crystalized. 
Fluorescent bulbs 
Flashing in the distance, 
Where the night is still more young, 
Waiting at some riverside festivity.  

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Can easily go unseen,
Or go flashing in the night,
Wicked as a whip,
And with such sharp wit
To solve a problem. 
First principles.
Reflexive programing.
And a mouth as old as dirt.
But no time to talk.
The spine communicates 
Quicker than the tongue 
Can flicker.
A simpleton of forked perception.
King Lear's fool, from such a face
Of silent nobility flashes. 
A hidden purpose in its bones.
The composed and pensive mien
Of a lord in exile. 

Circles  Circles  Circles
Serpent scales in the sand.
Fires in the woven darkness,
Lashing out.
"the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
Like two eyes, once calm,
Now full of fever.
Electric and tangible,
Blind and intoxicating. 

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One day we will wake from this nightmare we have made, and the pretense of democracy will trouble these poor people no more.

If in the end, despite having dismantled the corrupt oligarchy, and having done everything in his wise and moderated power to restore morality, order and justice to our nation, the ultimate and final voice of the mob comes to take the king’s head——if antifa, in all its purple haired splendor, should march in the millions upon our lawful house and its king, because the diminutive, overweight, low IQ, feminist, ideological leader proclaims that, “king man bad,” because he has a penis, and wishes to retain it, or some such charge against him (even though he did in no way abuse this power, and did keep it within acceptable limits) or simply because they were paid to march by big monied interests with liberal perversions, who do not wish to be dictated to by a moral authority, and the king’s just and rightful supporters rise in his defense——then this is bad, and we have failed. Our blessed monarchy has fallen into the hands of democracy in an instant. There is really only one move our king can make here without further failure and disaster, and without ensuring that the oligarchy, or, if you like, we can call it the Epstein class (for oligarchy + liberalism will always = Epstein class) with its selfish, depraved and sinister motives, is re-established within the week or month, depending on the level of violence….I said without disaster, but that is not quite accurate: our great king may experience unquestionable personal disaster, but it must be done. He must walk out peacefully and accept the insane accusation and judgement.

“What?!” you might ask, “Really?”

I know, it is neither right nor fair, but I fear it is the only way. He can, of course, attempt to reason with them, but there is no reason.

And if this vile, brain dead, monstrous product of liberal education wants to cut the king’s head off because he took tampons out of the men’s bathrooms, so be it. The king must accept this judgement. A good king is accountable to his people, and it is his duty to forge an environment that produces fine, upstanding specimens to further glorify his realms with the blessing and guidance of God. I know, but nobody said first king of America would be an easy job. Such things don’t happen overnight. He will face quite the uphill battle to achieve this in such a place as we now find ourselves.

And it’s gonna be bad, because she is never gonna get that head off. He’s gonna get hit in the back a bunch, right in the shoulder blades, and probably have an arm taken off first. It’s gonna be brutal. And she, all huffin’ and puffin’, out of breath, barely able to lift the axe; her green and purple makeup smearing, mixing with the blood and screams. Quite the horror clown show.

People will see this. Her followers will watch her doing this, not even able to get our poor king’s head off. “Is this who we follow?” they will ask. Someone will have to finish the work for her. Most of her followers have never seen anything like this before, at least the ones who have not mutilated their own genitals. In more than half of them the programing will undergo a measure of strain, and perhaps break instantly. They are woke now. Gruesome horror has a way, when witnessed with present eyes, of shocking the over-civilized. They will walk over, repentant, to the king’s men, beg forgiveness, and promise to support whoever they should choose as the next king.

But we had such a great king, and now look at him. And he was a great king——the best. With his wise and selfless act, he has prevented the civil war, stopped the re-establishment of the oligarchy, and preserved the American monarchy for at least another 100 years.

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Sweet, simple libertarians
To earth you are contrarians.
Lost, but well meaning
And always they are dreaming
About a thing that never was.
Or enviously scheming 
To secure another loan
Just so they could be alone
Watching Joe Rogan, and reading Hayek
In the comfort of some middle-class cul-de-sac.
And with brave wings thought above
Often proudly they will mock
A blood thick brotherhood of love
Forged on such a savage rock. 

Sweet, simple libertarians
To nature you are contrarians.
How will you achieve the grounds
Of a freedom that knows no bounds?
We welcome you to earth
And please excuse our mirth
When we laugh at your surprise
And the look within your eyes
When you discover like the dawn
What planet you are on. 

Sweet, simple libertarians
To the world you are contrarians.
Economics is least and easy
And often rather sleezy.
But for Marxists in reverse
The free market will break the curse
Of all their thought can be
And all their eyes can see.
They have money on the brain
All else is but a drain.
But there is so much that is bigger
So for them it can be fun
To imagine fingers on the trigger
Of a single loaded shotgun. 

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This will not be an in depth investigation into the esoteric beliefs and rituals of masonry (neo-Kabbalistic numerology, the book of Enoch and hermeticism, alchemy and so forth) because, in truth, not even most masons cared about that. And nor was this sourced solely from my own prior writing on the subject: “Memoir on Freemasonry,” but is based on nearly a hundred different sources, both fiction and non, that delt directly, or to a meaningful extent, on the subject of freemasonry and what it was like from about the late 17th to early 19th century.

Masonry began (nobody knows exactly, but some trace its origins back to biblical times) as a craft trade union of, masons. And it is said to have remained as such as it spread through Europe and into England during the Middle Ages. There is some debate about when it transitioned from a craft guild into a secretive social club and revolutionary hot bed, but most agree this shift began at some point during the particular stretch of time part 1 will be mainly concerned with.

In the larger scheme of things, from an historical bird’s eye view, masonry during this time period functioned as a transitional step between the life of traditional Christian Europe and the new one of Enlightened Liberalism. A ceremonial portal from the past to the present. A place where the Enlightenment’s rage for reason, experimentation and scientific explanations could meld with a sense of mystery. A place hungry for power, where traditional spiritual hierarchy gave way to the scheming and grasping hands of man.

At an everyday ground level, it operated as a meeting place for merchant grievances and bored, mundane businessmen, and about 10 other secret or not so secret societies and orders. In any major lodge could be found illuminists, Jesuits and Jacobins, atheists, deists, and everything in between. On one side of the room would be a spy in service to a lord, and on the other, the leader of a disgruntled band of rebels looking to overthrow and replace said lord.

In America, for instance, though united by a larger goal, and more unified than in Europe, you still had no end of internal masonry disputes, even to blood, though the blood was often, on either side of the pond, and more specifically in Europe, an underling’s or a proxy’s. And always throughout, in every branch and every lodge, the larger battles raged. Again, as example, in America, you had Washington vs Jefferson: the more traditionalist wing vs the radical, Jacobin, libertarian wing. Thomas Jefferson, in his younger days, we observe, was quite the Jacobin, especially during his time in France, where he was not shy about calling for the blood of every catholic there if need be.

Freemasonry itself had a number of competing branches. Everywhere and every time you found masons in disagreement, you would find a new branch of masonry sprouted. You had of course the Rectified Scottish Rite, you had the strict Templar Observance Order; the Golden Rose Croix of Ancient System, the Swedish Rite, the Zinnondorf Rite, and so on….

Most of it was quite tiresome and childish. The lodge of les Trios Mortiers, where I was initiated, was even more so. The amount of redundant hoops one must crawl through, the constant infighting, political scheming, business strategies, were enough to make a young man interested in esoteric mysteries despair. So naturally we created our own lodge, under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Directorate of Lyon.

That’s how it was. For an average monthly meeting, at the average lodge, with more than 40 in attendance, we would do the ceremonial what not and the thing with the rod and the blindfold on the newest members, and then most would disperse to talk business, or plot state intrigues, or share undisclosed information, or lies, and complain about our wives. The point of the induction ritual, beyond the symbolism of transformation, was to instill a sense of vulnerability and humility. Fat chance. Man’s towering pride is unbound and cannot be successfully combated by any measures and methods of man, but only through the example of Christ.

The reason why the whole: “What is said and done here stays here” secrecy laws became more pronounced and strict was not only because they were often up to no good, but because nobody obeyed them. Nothing was sacred. They cloaked their rituals in secrecy, and, especially where new recruits were concerned, imposed a sense of vulnerability, so that the flimsy nature of the whole enterprise would not become immediately apparent. It was half to avoid the eye of authorities, and half to avoid embarrassment. Some of them——those who were not there merely to acquire greater business contacts, treating it much like a social club or a LinkedIn——liked to think it gave them a more direct and true connection to Deity: that they were a step up, over and above the common rube, who held to his “peasant traditions of the laity”.

People naturally like to think they are part of something, and if that something gives them claim to some kind of secret knowledge of reality, that others do not have, it is all the more appealing to them. An elite social club with financial benefits for the middle-class bourgeoisie (who always knew he was meant for more, and really should be an aristocrat) that offers esoteric insights into the way “things really are” is quite the draw and seduction. But it was empty illusion. I once defended masonry as a check against complete atheism, but after a time you begin to realize it was all a mirage. Like I said, despite all attempts, nothing there was ultimately sacred. A brother who took the solemn pledge, and vowed never to harm another fellow mason, would find his new brother later that night in the street and stab him in the back. And the cosmopolitan nature of the whole thing ended predictably with us meeting in smaller, select groups in each other’s homes, or purchasing new accommodations to meet independently.

In truth, most of the guys on the 33rd floor were looked upon with deferential derision. They were laughed at behind their backs. Some of them were aware, but would collect their guild dues and go back to their studies: their alchemy and scrying, and trying to mathematically calculate the Kybalion. And if, by chance, you shared this interest in esoteric studies, these high degrees would make you wait 10 years to begin. They would stunt your progress faster than any Inquisition.

I learned much, however, during my time in freemasonry, first as an eager young man seeking out mysteries and truth, then as something of an operative, trying to rescue wayward souls back to the Church. Above all, perhaps, the lesson I learned there (though by no means learned in masonry alone), that stuck with me most, was the flawed, treacherous and deceitful nature of man, in all its greed and avarice. And it was also there, in masonry, that I learned another important lesson. It was a place full of people mad for reason and logic, suspecting it would lead to truth, yet not 3 of them could agree on hardly anything. Reason. What is reason? Reason is debate. Reason is argument. What one man builds with reason one day, another comes and tears down by the same method the next. Everything is debatable absent a structural cultural orientation beyond mere human selfishness. Reason and logic are what tore down the prior working edifice, and these continue today to strut about with much pride in the darkness and call itself enlightened.

It was also in Freemasonry that I came into contact with the more “active” and secret arm of the Jesuit Order, which was both of the Church and not. Membership in masonry was of course frowned upon and forbidden by the Church, and rightly so. But the Church could not afford to be blind to political realities and rival entities in Europe at the time, and needed eyes and ears in places good men of the cloth would not and should not go. Therefore, the Church could not be altogether opposed to receiving word of the ongoings in such places, even after the Jesuits were officially expelled for this exact reason.

For instance, it was a Jesuit who, in 1787, foretold the French Revolution in the most extraordinary way, who named to Louis XVI all his majesty’s enemies, who unfolded all their plots to him with terrible precision, and who finished with these memorable words: “Sire! your thrown sits atop a volcano.”

But the more one embroils themselves, even with the best intentions, in sinful circumstances, and trades in schemes and underhanded tactics, the more such poisons seep into themselves. But even still, the Jesuits at that time stood true to their cause. Yes. I was acquainted with the Jesuits. No. They did not have blue hair and advocate for trans gender surgery on children. The Jesuits fought tooth and nail, both in the open and in the shadows, against the liberalizing influence of Protestantism, the Enlightenment, and the overall spirit of revolution sweeping across Europe.

A Protestant doctor who published a book a little while ago (well, 300 years ago now) in Germany, a General History of the Christian Church, did not think he was exaggerating in affirming that: “Without the Jesuits, the religious revolution of the sixteenth century would have extended its action much further, and would have ended by finding no other barrier. If this Order, on the contrary, had existed sooner, there would have been no reformation.”

I can say this with the utmost confidence: If the Jesuit Order was what it used to be, you would have your full, unredacted Epstein list by now.

But times change, and as the liberal hegemonic forces had their eroding effects and influence on the world, so too did it work its corrosive elements on the Church. Nothing was safe from this liberalizing wave, and it worked its influence on the Church long before the establishment of Vatican 2. And likewise was the Jesuit Order reborn. Jesuit 2, if you will. The spirit and methods of the order were somewhat returned, but the original goal and purpose was corrupted, and shifted to embody, or at least accept, the radical and revolutionary spirit of this new age. The same liberalizing impulse and poisons that set Europe ablaze in the 20th century destroyed the mandate of this once great Order. Nothing was safe or could be sheltered in this storm. And there is no question that masonry played a significant role in igniting this catastrophe. But we will examine in more depth how this came about in part 2.

One can also not address the topic of freemasonry in any comprehensive way without touching on the Jewish question. I would start by saying I met a number of Jews who were Jesuits, and I can think of none more devoted to the Catholic Church as converts than these. They vehemently rejected their prior beliefs and community when embraced by Christ, and there were none who were more harsh to other Jews who refused the truth. If you were a Jew persecuted for whatever reason in Europe at the time, the last person you wanted on your case was a Jewish Jesuit. They showed no mercy to other Jews.

But by 1814, when the Jesuit Order was officially restored, a number of the Jewish diaspora, having already gained some measure of influence in masonry (speculative freemasonic beliefs being half Jewish mysticism to begin with) soon recognized a viable strategy was at hand. If Jews could become Jesuit and infiltrate masonry, then masonic Jews could become Jesuits and infiltrate the Church. At a time when it seemed everyone was leaving the faith, new converts to the Church were eagerly accepted. But beware who you allow into your house. The devil knows scripture better than you. Also important to remember that by this time the older masonic traditions had been altered somewhat by illuminist influence, which had the momentum of something akin to the aura of “cool new kids on the scene”. A big game of infiltration and spy vs spy was at hand, and by the mid 19th century it became almost impossible to tell who was who and what was what.

That is how, a hundred years later, you receive figures like Gregory Baum, and Pedro Arrupe (who we will discuss later in part 2). But again, it was the larger wave of growing liberalism in all the eager hearts and minds, in all the solons, in all the institutions, secret or otherwise, that truly won the day. And, as many of you know by now, power and authority do not just dissipate and disappear. You cannot separate it or destroy it. If power is taken from the Church and Christian kings, it will be placed into the hands of others.

The greater the numbers,
The greater the dilly dally
Blather builds,
Until someone, anyone,
Gets on stage.

Simple entertainment will do.
The moths flutter to the lights,
And bunch up like hedge rows,
Until the lights go out
And the level of the noise fades
Over distant greenery.
The grass is always greener 
On the other side.

The glow of the streetlights, 
And brightly lit store fronts,
Tame the receded night.
The days motley pleasures,
Brought here, wilting, 
In search of more sugar,
Drain their wasting ways out
Among the horns and headlights.

Slip down silent into the pooling shadows.
In the dark bushes:
The quiet haunt of solemn presence.
Glimpse the shining moon and stars
Through such a canopy where oldest green
Weaves its deep and ancient culture.
Feel the bloom that soothes the sharpened air,
Clear and cool of the meadows alongside.
And silent, so silent
Beneath the same shadow's single urgent tone
That shrouds spider's delicate patience.
The same secret look or movement
That shares strange sympathies with the night. 
And know the draughts of living wonder,
Under the stark lines
Of evergreen's stoic slumber,
In realms of honest mystery,
Seen through seeing eyes. 

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“These two classes of men are always upon the earth, & they should be enemies; whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence.” William Blake, from Marriage of Heaven and Hell

We found you in the garden, eating all the fruit, which we nurtured and got from seed. Your eyes were diamonds. Your mouth was water, and your song brought all the birds into our heads.

Your bright rainbow pattern indicated poison.

We told you the ways of society and civilization, and you showed us your wings. You touched our heart, and we loved you. You touched our bodies, and we lusted after you. We asked you to be our lover, and you pointed to the wild horse on the grassy hill, and said that was your lover.

You showed us your soul, and it was like a smooth, cold metal ball with a million nondescript faces. We showed you our soul, and it was like a warm loaf of bread.

We brought you into the house, and all the blankets caught fire. We locked you up in the cupboard, and the walls trembled, and the roof almost collapsed. We brought you into town, and the silver streets turned to mud. The windmill which we built by hand, you crushed beneath your exotic foot.

We put a golden rope around your waist, to keep you close and safe, and you disappeared with all the town’s children for 6 months, and the children returned as wild dogs that bit our legs.

The greater the yearning and desire for liberation, the greater the tyranny.

The Right is small and has a sword. The Left is big and has magic spells and fevers.

The Left is a force of nature, a hurricane and a tidal wave. The Right is a fishing boat.

The Right is 5’11 and a 187 pounds. The Left is light as air.

The Left is a dangerous drug that excites the blood and makes it feel warm and glorious. The Right says mean things.

The Right has an old, impressive library. The Left has no need for eyes.

The Left is powerful because it does not bend to reality. The Right is chained by a hundred hard truths.

The Right works earnestly and tirelessly, with burdened brow and balding head, to produce safe, clean streets and order. The Left hurts children.

The left has the planet’s most powerful empire. The right, a provincial custom.

The Right is a handshake. The Left is a 60 year plan to change the way everybody on earth perceives reality.

The Left is a beautiful woman overflowing with pleasure. The Right is a grumpy dad.

Through slow and careful toil, the Right forges home from the soil. The Left blows the roof off.

The Right shelters family at night and holds them, but can’t find them anymore, and is afraid. The Left is a machine gun.

The Right’s brutality is clear and simple. The Left’s brutality is unbound and experimental.

The Left is an all encompassing monster. The Right has a wounded leg.

The Right is calm and wise. The Left is a crazy person.

The Left has the bright star of Lucifer, eyes of fire, nice boobs, and illusion magic. The Right wields a warning nobody wants to hear.

And when you fall, rebellious creature, and come crashing back to earth——as you must, and always do——you look upon us with shocked and wounded eyes, and we must mend your wings, because we want things to work. And once you have healed, you grow 17 feet tall, stab us in the back, destroy the city, and jump off the cliff again.

If we catch you in our arms, and burn you at the stake, it only spreads your fever through the air, filling the lungs of those who breathe it, and ignites a revolution.

When our future attempts to reign in your extravagant folly blow up in our face, please do not grind our bones into dust. You will.

Right no longer makes might. We tried, for so long. We whip the backs of wilds, and punish the guilty. We build dungeon and tower, but we are broken.

The Left is the ocean. The Right is the crumbling rocks.

We try to guide and direct you, and trim the wild growth, but we have normal hands.

Tired and torn, the righteous man keeps his path through the vale of death.

“Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam." 

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In the dark
          Spell-bound eye
Wicked
          The witch's gaze
          Is sometimes sexy
          And can save your life
Or kill you
And destroy everything.

          Infinite
And composed
Of single origin
          Not rage
          Nor serenity
Not boundless
Nor meets collisions.

          Visions
Whispers and fevers
And wrath of true believers
          Are natural
          And spiritual 

Some dance with stars
          Lost thoughts
In the smoky air
And smoldering glare
          Of fires spreading
Everywhere
          Burning bright
Catching all
Before the fall
          And sweeping up
          The troubled night.


                                               

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This theory of logical positivism was a predictable, lazy, mediocre and impatient answer to a real and ongoing question about thought and human intelligibility, through Descartes to Hume to Kant and so on, causing one commentator, whose name I have forgotten, to remark in exhausted and humorous summation: “No matter/ Never mind.”

Let us for now disregard the flaws of empirical methodology in general. Let us ignore the illusive nature of truth. Let us simply ask: if empirical methods are the metric of meaning in men’s lives, what is it we are left with? What is it a sane man can even contemplate or discuss under such strictures? The whole universe would shrink down to the temperature at which water boils. On your wedding day, before God and everyone, you will take your love by the hand and profess with great feeling and earnestness: “100 degrees Celsius.”

The logical positivist credo is a shining example of nonsense. It would be an oversimplification to call it an oversimplification. It sounds like the battle cry of the mediocre and the defeated. This is why philosophic matters should be left to the contemplative, critical and creative minded. The logical positivists, for the most part, are of the middling functionary order, who no longer wanted to deal with deep questions, which they suffered in grappling with, and which no doubt gave them quite a headache. I suppose they simply wanted to get on with the lucrative goal of making dangerous toys, in the hope of accumulating enough money to conjure a woman’s attention. People today speak of “Bioleninism”, which reminds me somewhat of the National Convention of the French Revolution. If it were up to me, I would strongly suggest adding logical positivists to such ranks.

These wild and whacky Iranian missiles are at it again. Not long ago we were told that missiles fired from Iran were accidently blowing up hospitals in Gaza; now, they say, these unpredictable projectiles are blowing up their own school children. “They tell me these Iranian missiles are not very accurate,” says Trump. They tell you a lot of things, sir. I am hard pressed to name any form of ballistics in all of human history quite that inaccurate. I am no weapons expert, and I am willing to allow for a few malfunctions and what not, but the purported inaccuracy of these Iranian missiles is something else altogether. Very strange, indeed, that these misfires always seem to work in their enemy’s favor. It is never some empty field they fall unexpectedly from the sky onto. No. These mistakes always seem to land on the hospitals of ostensible allies, or their very own schools.

What is most revealing about all the lies our ruling class tell us is not how stupid they must think we are, but how stupid they themselves must be to think that we would believe it. Though I suppose it has gotten them this far. Remember this one? “We have to fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here at home.” More like: “We have to fight them over there, so when we give them the house next door to you, they will want to kill you even more.”

The lazy and careless manner in which our ruling class and its propaganda outlets lie to us is dangerous on fundamental levels that they themselves are too decadent and removed to understand or even care. The erosion it causes is dangerous and destructive in ways that an intentional demolition team might be envious of. Give us the truth, no matter how ugly. Can this be dangerous? Yes, but nowhere near as dangerous as these lies, especially ones so sloppy and transparent.

We can detail a whole laundry list of long-term ill effects derived from the constant perpetual lies we are told. I am sure the good reader will have sympathy for my limited amount of time, and will not require such a numeration in detail. It is not hard to understand what a lack of trust in leadership and direction can do for the moral and confidence a place and people.

Every nation has certain fundamental myths by which it is sustained. I would suggest that the truth of Christ our lord is more than sufficient to sustain a society, but apparently this is not good enough for a “sophisticated” modern society like ours, which craves the blundering half-witted stories told by greedy special interests and emanating from the flawed nature of man.

I always fluctuate between two explanations for our current troubles in the United States and Western Europe. Part of me sees it as a result of reckless stupidity and decadence (or rejection of the values that got us here) and an inability to perceive outside a given window, or beyond the daily noise and machinations of the current system. This manifests either in short sighted carelessness or a belief and confidence that “despite how bad it might be now, these problems—these self-inflicted wounds—are just growing pains, and everything will work out fine in the end. We are America, after all. We got that piece of paper with the words on it and such!” At other times I am convinced that this is all intentional, with the clear goal of destroying us and our society. I still cannot decide. Maybe it is a combination of these. When I am alone with my thoughts, I perceive it as intentional—a planned demolition. But when I am among others, especially the college educated “elite” and “expert class”, or a near proximal representative of such, I become convinced of the former explanation: that these people really have no clue what they are doing. We have created for ourselves more than enough problems which we seem unable to fix. We don’t need to go searching the globe for more.

Which brings me back to the topic at hand: this conflict with Iran. Now I am not blindly 100% against all war at all times. War is one of those terrible conditions of life on earth. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death. That does not mean, however, that we must always be in search of one, constructing false and shaky premises and justifications for them, to appease weapon manufacturers and so-called allies that do more harm to us than good.

And now there is talk of sending 5-15 thousand marines to the region? To Kharg island?! Why?! I would advise against putting any U.S boots on the ground in Iran or anywhere near by, but if they must absolutely persist in this folly, you do not bring 5 thousand, you bring 500 thousand. What are 5 thousand troops going to do there? What purpose do they serve as they are slowly picked off by drones and missiles? (Yes, Iranian missiles do have the ability to strike their intended targets.) Is this some form of mass ritual sacrifice? Do they hope it will anger the American people enough to get behind a larger effort? What is even going on? My intention is not to dismiss or denigrate the competency or capability of U.S marines, who are, no doubt, for the most part, well trained and good at what they do, but get real. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of suicide screamers will flock to the region.

I sometimes suspect that the foreign policy blunders of this administration (though foreign policy blunders are of course nothing new to the United States) are a result of Trump’s inability to enact his domestic policy. Thwarted and caged by bureaucracy and delusional and radical judges, the desire for action and impact is diverted to other avenues—ones the system prefers. It may be that Trump is being led down disastrous paths by sinister forces. It’s not as if we have not seen it before under democrat and republican administrations alike. This seems to be the norm.

Perhaps this is so because Trump, and many others, are blackmailed, but I don’t believe it is that simple. There is no question that Israel has undue influence over these United States, and it is clear that U.S action against Iran greatly benefits Israel’s larger goals in the region (or at least that was the intent) and not the U.S itself, which is more harmed than anything by it. With a little foresight and realistic assessment, one could easily see how this would go poorly for everyone involved and the larger world, including Israel. For too long now they, along with policy makers in the U.S, have been wrapped in a blanket of over confidence and illusion, resulting in the most obvious blunders, and causing both to act as spoiled children might.

It may very well be that someone has something on Trump so bad that even he is ashamed of it, and would do anything to keep it from the light of day. Maybe, and maybe not. The point is that it would not be necessary. I always liken the Whitehouse to the hotel in the movie: The Shining. Each new caretaker ends up being the same guy, over and over, and he has always been there. The ghosts and shadowy voices in that place can have a terrible influence on anyone.

It is a lot like the Truman Show. You are constantly surrounded by and ensconced in a false and fabricated reality. Every day in the Oval Office you are lied to in ways you have never been lied to before. In the Whitehouse you are blind, and simultaneously on information overload. Every day someone whose whole life training in the art of psychological warfare and deception is working their way into your head.

A king has only two eyes and two arms. Same as a president, who was originally intended to be a checked king, but now plays as a pawn. He relies on the tools and apparatus of the state to both inform him and to enact his will. If these are untrustworthy, or become too large and unruly to handle, then the king (or president) becomes blind and ineffective. It is like putting a small child behind the wheel and operating levers of 10 different excavating machines at once. Massive bulldozers and industrial backhoes are called in to perform delicate surgeries.

It takes a special kind of person to withstand the pressures and illusions of the Whitehouse—this funhouse and hall of mirrors. And as much as we wanted Trump to succeed, and begin the process of putting things right, it is clear that he is not the man for the job. This is not an attack on Trump, but simply to point out that he, and indeed, most people, simply do not stand a chance. If you believe a kamala Harris administration would not be initiating air strikes on Iran right now, you may want to reexamine your understanding of how the U.S government works. When Rubio said the other day that Iran would be much better off if they stopped spending billions on weapons and put that money into improving their country instead, he left himself wide open to attack from the democrats, but it was the right who pointed out that this statement goes for the U.S, as well. The democrats were silent. They were busy organizing “no kings” protests. In other words, organizing protests against shadows and false narratives. If only we did have a king, our lives would all improve greatly.

Many of us knew that a Trump administration would not be perfect, and expected setbacks and bumps in the road. Some of us were more optimistic than others. Regardless, it is not as if we are drowning in good options here. And perhaps we may have some pleasant surprises in the next two years. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. For those of you who expected Trump to act as fiercely and determined as our suicidal and power-hungry liberal enemies, I am afraid more disappointment awaits you.

At any rate, a complete and flawless victory over Iran, where all shifting objectives are met with little to no further damage to the U.S, and no more U.S lives lost, means very little to nothing (though of course we will be grateful for fewer American lives lost). It in no way improves the future of our country. Our battle is here at home. It is perhaps a more difficult battle, but it is the only one worth fighting now. Anything else is waste and confusion.

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Sun of sweet nectar is now
Returning over the wind bright valley.
Birds are possibilities
In the blue sky.

Traditional surge of spring time
Stirs the earth's roots wakened.
Warm,
Clear vibrancy
And plentitude of days,
Expanding. 

So many cordial offspring
Sing like silver in the sun.
Bright like butterflies
Bursting.
Light like stained glass windows
Magnified,
Reflecting infinity. 

The air is joy,
And pure
Patched blue bastions of the sky
Blend bounties on the hills.
Billowing white clouds
Are rolling down the green,
And sailing towards the sun.

Moon vibrations
And spreading leaves
Shakes shadows awake
At night.

Rebirth of relics; return
Of former glories.
Arrivals chase the gray skeletons
Over clear fields at midnight. 

Lifts weight from reflexes.

Bright opportunity's draught
As star.
Shocked instruments humming.
"Slow chromatic upward surge of metaphysical perception." 
And perfumed at the dark edge
Of cold winds in shaken trees.
You can feel it coming
In the nuptial air at night.
Poised on the limit of delicate branch,
Any number of potential futures
Blooming, and blowing all about. 


                             
                                          

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It is true that reason is God’s unique gift to man, but is only useful when subjected to Him. The concept of human reason rests in the cradle of the divine, without which it declines, becomes corrupted, and destroys itself. It is important to remember, when human reason is considered, that man and the earth are in a fallen state.

As I said a long time ago: “The more human reason trusts in itself, the more it seeks all its resources from within itself, the more absurd it is and the more it reveals its impotence.”

As much as I dismiss Freud’s shallow and obsessed analysis in the particulars, we can share in his suspicion of human reason. We can easily refute Freud, and the modern atheist at large, logically and philosophically and so forth, but let us just assume for a moment the general premise and position: “Man is nothing more than a hairless ape on a savage rock in the middle of nowhere, driven by greed and lust, and whose every thought, every word and action, is a mask for unspeakable sexual perversions.” Yes, this seems like a very reasonable guy, and the perfect candidate to take us unguided into the future and direct the fate of western civilization. This should be fine.

What exactly did they expect would happen? after they convinced the world of this image of man? Could the results have possibly been all that different from what we see today?

Let’s say, for instance, that it was recently revealed to the people of the United States that their government, and the “elites” and cultural icons, are all more or less black mailed monsters and morons in some demonic cult. What would be the most reasonable and rational response? To watch the superbowl half-time show, of course. And because what they witnessed there was a decidedly milder version of the propaganda and barbaric hedonism the people are more accustomed to of late, they accepted it as a good show.

The Enlightenment and Liberalism were principally founded, in name and outward appearance, at least, on the hope and framework of human reason. And behold!

I do not wish to dismiss the concept of human reason entirely. It is a rare and special gift. Rare and special being the operative words. It is a spark in the dark. Reason is a small boat rocked in a vast expanse of stormy seas.

Sure, liberals are basically the most propagandized people on the face of the planet, but how was this done so successfully? despite all the dangerous and inherent flaws? Because it appealed to the most easy impulses. It was the breaking of the dam. Clearly it was not because of any well thought out, reasoned approach. The lies were so easily believed because of how they made the victim feel. People desire freedom and liberty, and will generally want more. Throw in some of these other euphoric concepts like equality and so forth, and you got yourself a drug problem.

Also, what does freedom and liberty actually mean outside of a larger existing context? Freedom and liberty for who? and to do what, exactly? I guess we know now.

In short, liberalism swept the world so successfully because it unleashed and flattered the insatiable greed and vanity of man.

The rushing waters could not be stopped, but had to settle of their own accord, into still pools and swamps, that brew vapors and poisons. The great rush and illusion ceased. Liberalism is now sustained on the fumes of financial incentives, swamp gas, corruption and madness.

“The success of reason was only that intermediate state through which it was necessary to pass in order to arrive at all the horror we have seen.”

If reason and science mean anything at all, you would expect them to consider the results of the experiment. What further evidence is required? For how long do we run this experiment? We can see the end of the tracks. Many can see now that it’s coming to an end. People can instinctively feel it. And yet all this time it was full steam ahead. Very rational.

The personal incentives and corruption of the conductors, and the fast-paced euphoria of the ride, were too extreme for human hands to apply the brakes. Everyone was in such a wild haste there was no time for reason, even if one were able to summon it.

The belief in the “marketplace of ideas” and open debate to help guide us along was a most remarkable conceit. Now we have come predictably to the conclusion that any further political debate between opposing sides is useless. The debates have shifted to take place internally, where they hope to find some reason.

To summarize in part Isaiah Berlin’s summery of Maistre on the subject: “consider the institution of hereditary monarchy. Is there anything more irrational than the idea that the son of a king, even a great king, should replace him just because he is the king’s son? There is no reason to assume this son will thereby be a good king. It is a much more rational arrangement, for example, to have such a system as you see in Poland, where they have the liberal veto, where you don’t have hereditary succession, and nobles must agree upon who is to be king. The result of this is that France has been governed all this time by 56 kings, some good, some bad, bust mostly efficient and capable, and is certainly the fairest kingdom on the face of the earth. Whereas Poland, with its rational system, is plunged into constant turbulence, and has collapsed before the very eyes of the civilized world in a wealth of blood and chaos. So much then for the stability and reliability of rational institutions.”

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How many times, in your distress,
Did you find the words you wanted?
And with some success
Was able to express
The head winds of the coming storm. 

The vibrations of your heart
Were up.
Your eyes were in it.
Seasonal expressions gathered,
Genetic and prominent.

How many times you paced
Back and forth
In your head?
Frantic to find a light
For your fire, for your cigarettes,
For a way to reveal your rage.

Something kindred,
But of a different age--
Rage enough to burn it out.

It clings to you,
Impatient and agitated.
Your heat makes fog of wisdom.
You hold it tight
With friction,
Like a matchhead
Ready to ignite.  

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The winter day is puffed up
Silence under the sun,
And proud
As a mountain,
Stretching back over time,
Heavy with ice and denouement.

The sky is short
And exhausted, 
Laying wide and flat
Across the tundra
In fat Santa's lap. 

The last wink washes away
Into frozen puddles
And sluggish tracks of the day.
Fox-fire glade,
And fulgurate of tallest evergreen.

Or shelters in the night
The choirs of comfort
And survival in the snow.

Here is a home,
Glowing.
Warm, compacted
Hearts pressed close.
Bright lights encased in ice.
Blur of frozen moisture
And breath of shimmers,
Sometimes sexy,
Swirling,
Settles on frosted windows. 

Outside is cold, it breaks
Branches and bones.
The bird's bones break
Beneath the moon.

The winter night weaves looming towers.
Forgotten entries
Are found draped with snow.
Inside of silence,
The winter silence,
Is a great distance.
So cold.
So alone.
So deep secured by the cold.
And shivers,
Bitter.
Looks on lonely stars.
Gnaws on delicate things in the dark.
And admits to itself that it loves the fine air.
And is happy.
And it dies. 

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There is much that can be said about this, and has been said. No doubt many readers will already be aware of these things. To put it simply: the seeds of a civilization’s fall are sown by its success. There are many theories as to why Rome fell, but most seem to agree that these different reasons all originated from hubris and decadence, which are the result of sustained success. This theme holds true in the observations of Ibn Khaldun to Oswald Spengler. The idea that economic and material success leads to downfall doesn’t sit well with anyone, so it is dismissed or ignored, making it a thousand times more dangerous. Indeed, the more successful a civilization, the more uncanny fetishes to failure one finds. A very drive towards self-annihilation.

The concept or act of “elite overproduction”, for instance, can only occur during a period of success and abundance. It’s not even a real thing. It’s an illusion of success. The systems and methods of determining the elite become arbitrary, nepotistic, and dictated by current narratives. The values and metrics become skewed. They wouldn’t know one if they saw it, and if they did, they would fear and reject it. It produces very few actual elites, but only replicates an error. It seems only in a time of real struggle and strife does an actual elite rise based on true and immediate merit. The very survival of the enterprise depends on it. Huddled masses shivering in the cold can see more clearly than those in comfortable office rooms. The desire for status takes a back seat to survival.

The Roman elite lost faith in their culture and religion. They became cynical, corrupt and cosmopolitan, and continually incorporated new peoples, slaves and foreigners. The abandonment of faith and unifying culture, and the loss of any fear of a higher judgement, are certainly enough to destroy any society, as these are the very foundations. But there is some question about whether this is the first initial step into decline, or if it is the first major symptom. In any case, it’s not good.

Every nation or empire makes mistakes, or goes about something poorly, or runs into hardship and turmoil. These ever occurring issues vary in terms of severity and accumulated harm. In reality, mistakes are lessons from which to learn. In unreality, they are ignored, or covered up and glossed over. There are no mistakes in unreality. The act of ignoring and not noticing becomes an art form, a social status signifier. For many there is a feeling of release. It’s like a drug. It’s a party.

Population replacement and the concept of “magic dirt” are clearly the result of some kind of heavy drug use; that, or pure sinister, destructive malice. I suspect there is something sinister near the heart of power, which is hidden and insulated by a thick circle of mediocrity that has no idea what is going on, and thus cannot be held accountable. And nor can they, in their nihilism, possibly summon any reason to care what happens to the place once they are gone.

Perhaps that is why we are always so quick to throw off the forms and customs of the past, so they can no longer sit in judgment of us, of our shortcomings and mistakes. We are free. Free to do anything. Free to be anything. Free to be weak and fail. It feels good. “Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free”, and far too delusional. Always willing to obfuscate and delay. The slippery slide into nihilism feels good in the summer. Life is short and meaningless, and we declare ourselves free of all responsibility. We do not concern ourselves with the future because, bro, that’s heavy. Please do not bring up any troubling topics, we are trying to enjoy ourselves, and you’re being a buzzkill.

The party is coming to an end, and some have begun to sober; well, as much as can be expected inside a drug fueled orgy. They experience the hang-over, the drug withdrawal. They can see the ugly consequences once the party is over. That’s not something the rest of us want to see. We are still drunk, and remain well outside of reality. It’s warm here, and ignorance is bliss.

It is when we are at the absolute heights of happiness that we are most forgetful of bitter reality. The more successful and powerful, the greater the levels of decadence, the higher and higher you get, the harder and more terrible the fall. It is most terrible of all when the horror hits a soft and gentle man. It really is ugly to watch. No wonder they try to hide it from us.

We forget how fragile society and civilization are. We absolutely take it for granted. So much of decadence is taking for granted what has been made for us. We forget the lessons of the past. The illusion of progress confirms our abandonment. We become dismissive of that which came before, in favor of a more hopeful vision that exists only in our minds. We escaped reality.

Our leaders claim to stand on the shoulders of giants, yet two thirds of their list of paragons are recent criminals. They’re always talking about the need to learn the lessons of the past, then sure enough, steadfastly refuse to even listen to them. Or maybe they didn’t like what they heard.

As has often been said: the liberal is at war with reality. This should be understood in a wide and fundamental sense. It is a religion removed from the reality of the world like no other. But in many ways the very goal and purpose of civilization itself is to remove man from reality. To build a special place outside of and above the hard everyday trials of nature. A good and noble cause. But being too far removed from reality is a perfect way to describe what decadence is.

“Hard times make strong men. Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make hard times.”

According to Giambattista Vico, there are 3 main stages of social development, and for Spengler and Goethe there are 4. I think we can combine all these into 1 picture: In the beginning there is the garden of the gods, into which man is born. The next is the age of man, in which man does converse and even battle with the gods. The third stage, which is the height of human civilization, is monotheistic monarchy, and the final one is the age of liberal democracy, in which man destroys himself and the cycle starts over.

“We escaped that.” Did we? Are we allowed to just do that? History is cyclical, or at least civilizational periods offer this perception. Perhaps even time is a big circle. Everything is a circle, according to Emerson, and that older guy whose name escapes me.

You can make the case that liberalism is the word for a formalized system of unreality that is the natural product of prolonged success. It certainly is unrealistic. The concepts and yearnings that gave rise to liberalism, in reality, eat and destroy liberalism. The nature of society and human beings cannot live up to the ideals of individualism. They cheer it in name, but fear it in reality.

There is no greater recipe for corruption than liberalism and individualism, and once put into practice, here on earth, with real human beings, it becomes a real shit show. No society can survive it, because it rejects society. It is the antithesis of social cohesion. It becomes a race to exploit one’s neighbor, to gain the upper hand. The best way to win is to cheat. The experts become con artists. The bureaucracy and the managers become leeches and parasites, often intent on causing problems to further justify their existence. The unchecked outcomes of individuality, and the destabilizing effects of liberalism, soon result in a mass of angry noises.

To deal with this, and to disguise the reality, and continue to facilitate the corruption, the system puts on a caricature, an over exaggerated mask of equality. It begins to shuffle great numbers of entirely unqualified people into made up managerial positions, or even worse, actual important roles, and these swiftly use their new position to practice nepotism and racial favoritism, or whatever got put in their heads at school, and the whole myth is exposed, and you are punished for noticing. All that remains is the mask, the lie.

This has killed the soul and mind of western man so hard it has no will to live any longer. The society and culture offers only the most cringeworthy, shallow and repulsive rewards. It gets to the point where no self-respecting man can possibly want to wear its status. The requirements and attributes for success become generally in line with the ability to sit quiet for long periods of time and pretend to make an effort. This begins to appear in every aspect of society, especially in the economic and business world, which seeks to end competition and accountability and move into monopoly.

Flipping hierarchy upside down on its head will, in short order, necessitate some measure to dismiss accountability, and will always allow the con artist to reach the heights of power. You will begin to see many people “failing upwards”. Many are given prominence and importance precisely because they are blind, and won’t cause too much trouble. The enormous amount of mindless and meaningless paperwork the bureaucracy dumps on your head is enough to make anyone blind.

Many people today often receive the impression that our nations and governments, the structures and the spirit, were once led by better and more capable men in a time before them. This is something Carlyle noted on a number of occasions. That was almost 200 years ago. What is it when the failings of prior generations of elite are stacked so high, and are so obvious they are apparent to everyone, and have become ubiquitous? Surely once enough people recognize the hard reality of the situation something will be done?

Not likely. The elite and “expert” class have every incentive to stay away from reality and to continue to avoid accountability, which has basically become the name of the game. This ensures that over time the elite become even more removed from reality, and from the people, both materially and spiritually. The caste system solidifies and is ideologically strengthened by the desire to avoid accountability and the opposition voiced by the common people. Animosity builds. Perhaps they begin to envision a better populace, one that will be more grateful for the madness and mediocrity of their endeavors. Even if they were inclined to try and fix something, they don’t have the will, the energy, or the creativity and vision to do so.

The dragging weight you feel sapping the spirit of our people is, at a fundamental level, the fatigue of over satiation, normalized and systematized. How bright, alert and clear headed, how sharp and aware would you expect one to be if they were stuck in an orgy in an opium lair? I don’t even want to discuss how accurate these depictions are. The decadence is thick and obvious. We live in a nation wide orgy in a drug den. You ever walk into a drug fueled orgy and try to break it up with reasonable words or good faith free marketplace of ideas participation? Even if you could get them to listen, you would still have to contend with a perceptual, ideological order of often religious proportions, such that even the most cynical, atheistic elite are yet infected to their very bones with its assumptions and procedural conditions, in ways they themselves do not realize.

The circulation of elites becomes trivial. Circulate them all you want, it will make no meaningful difference. The structure and system, from top to bottom, is slow and ossified, redundant and retarded. This is the machinery that both manufactures the elite and the conditions in which they operate. The majority of people who have spent their lives in it have been developed by and reflect its culture. Some today refer to it as the “longhouse”. The longhouse is inside the fishbowl. Inside they contract severe cases of institution brain. They no see very well. They live in water that is all noise and clutter. No one can get to the bottom of anything, and at the top the culture is criminal. A criminal organization, or the most delusional and confused bunch of people in the history of the world. Probably both.

I know what it’s like living different life styles, in different worlds, at different speeds and noise levels, and how it can alter one’s perception of things. Trust me when I tell you that our current “expert” class are all pretty much absolute delusional ding dongs. They are generally the type to argue that in recent studies conducted in accordance with very professional and impressive sounding methods at the university of whatever it’s called, there is no evidence to suggest what everyone else can plainly see with their own eyes. All boundaries and limits begin to be pushed, off a cliff, and we soon to follow. Most of their mantras and mottos are backwards, insane and ridiculous sounding, and first appeared 40 years ago in a movie.

We have reached such heights of decadence and unreality it is hard to imagine a way of coming down safely. To acknowledge reality now, at this stage…it’s not like breaking a habit, it’s like breaking an addiction and half of your current foundations. Also, many red, embarrassed or guilty faces would bloom. Apologies forthcoming for world record blunders of all time. “Oops, my bad.” A lot of ugly truth revealed and settling down into virgin blood streams. Not fun. Quite the buzzkill.

But the system desperately needs a buzzkill. It needs seriously to give consideration, if not to complete overhaul and change, then at least to an influx of people from outside of its normal methods of molding new talent and leaders. Hierarchy is, in fact, natural. It is not dependent upon nor reflected by the current standards. Currently the system views the man of courage, integrity and creativity as a threat. Especially integrity. I get it, these guys will come in and say hard things, hold people accountable and perhaps even take your job. Normally such a drastic move is reserved for after the collapse, but I see no reason not to go ahead and give it a try now.

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Antonio Gramsci’s 33 part Prison Notebooks, usually printed in 3 volumes, contains essays on everything from education and intellectuals to state and civil society, from Rome and the Risorgimento to Machiavelli and America. Often throughout you will see names like Gaetano Mosca, Croce and Labriola, and very often the word, “Jacobin”. Gramsci had an almost romanticized obsession with the Jacobins. In his reading of history you will find “Jacobins” everywhere. Machiavelli was a “precocious Jacobin”. Mazzini and his forces failed to be Jacobins. There are Jacobins to be found in almost every instance of internal English struggle. And of course, the modern communist must strive to learn from and emulate the Jacobin if they are to succeed.

Many terms and phrases in the Notebooks can be obscure or even sometimes intentionally misleading. Sometimes this is due to translation, and sometimes with the goal of evading any potential prison censors. Gramsci uses code words at times, and even pseudonyms for names of politically relevant people of his time. Or when Gramsci uses the term “common sense” he does not mean what is generally understood today by that phrase, but precisely that that phrase is generally understood today. In other words, it is used to mean the uncritical and mostly unconscious way people see and understand things in a given social group or place/time. A custom. Often you will see the word “praxis”. It basically just means to unify theory and action.

But the terms “passive” and “non-passive revolution”, or as Gramsci often called it, “war of maneuver” and “war of position” were in use by other Italian political writers at the time, including Mussolini, who used them in two articles he wrote before and during his time as editor of “Avanti!” They mean basically what you would expect: Blood, urgency and angry noises verse patience, propaganda and prestige. The difference between an outside force attempting to break inside and one that is already positioned and operating inside. Under the subtitle “The Transition from the War of Maneuver (frontal attack) to the War of Position”, Gramsci begins: “This seems to me to be the most important question of political theory that the post- war period posed, and the most difficult to solve correctly. It is related to the problems raised by Bronstein (Trotsky), who in one way or another can be considered the political theorist of frontal attack in a period in which it only leads to defeats.”

Also prevalent throughout the Notebooks is Gramsci’s intention to remain an astute observer and critic of liberalism, recognizing not only the increased need for hegemonic propaganda to sustain itself, as many proponents of liberalism openly admitted, such as Walter Lippman, for instance, but also understanding the structural eventualities implicit in its very design… “the entire liberal ideology, with its strengths and its weaknesses, can be encapsulated in the principle of the separation of powers, and the source of liberalism’s weakness then becomes apparent: it is the bureaucracy—i.e. the crystallization of the leading personal— which exercises coercive power, and at a certain point it becomes a caste.”

Thus a portion of the Notebooks is Gramsci forecasting some of the “hegemonic steps” liberalism would have to take in order to maintain its existence past its expiration date. Gramsci believed liberalism was a product of a particular period in history, which was ending. “Convictions that constitutions and parliaments had initiated an epoch, that society had discovered its definitive, because rational, foundations, etc. And, lo and behold, society is now a study of the natural sciences!”

The other thing that should be kept in mind when reading the Prison Notebooks is that they were written, in prison. They were feverishly penned during bouts of insomnia as Gramsci’s health slowly deteriorated and his teeth fell out. His frame of mind is suggested by this note, called “A Dialogue”:

“Something has changed, fundamentally. This is evident. What is it? Before, they all wanted to be the ploughmen of history, to play the active parts, each one of them to play an active part. Nobody wished to be the manure of history. But is it possible to plough without first manuring the land? So ploughmen and manure are both necessary. In the abstract they all admitted it. But in practice? Manure for manure, as well draw back, return to the shadows, into obscurity. Something has changed, since there are those who have adapted themselves philosophically to becoming manure, who know this is what they must be and adapt themselves. It is like the problem of the proverbial dying man. But often at the point of death there is a decisive action involved, of an instant’s duration. Whereas in the case of the manure, the problem is a long term one, and poses itself afresh at every moment. You only live once, as the saying goes; your own personality is irreplaceable. You are not faced abruptly with an instant’s choice on which to gamble, a choice in which you have to evaluate the alternatives in a flash. Here postponement is continual, and your decision has continually to be renewed. This is why you can say that something has changed. There is not even a choice between living for a day as a lion, or 100 years as a sheep. You don’t live as a lion for even one minute, far from it: you live like something far lower than a sheep for years and years and know that you have to live like that. Image of Prometheus who, instead of being attacked by the eagle, is devoured by parasites.”

Instead of going chapter by chapter, we will condense the many titles and subsections—everything from intellectuals, education, philosophy, history and the future—down into one short treatment. These subjects are, after all, according to Gramsci, linked and bound together into a larger ideological and political struggle. Not only should philosophic and political ideas be viewed as fundamentally tied and rooted to their socio-economic-historic place, but should be understood in relation to what he called “revolutionizing praxis”, which he saw as the only appropriate form of thought for the future.

“The basic innovation introduced by the philosophy of praxis into the science of politics and history is the demonstration that there is no abstract human nature, fixed and immutable…but that human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations.”

He begins by insisting that all intellectuals are connected to the class structure of their society. They cannot be different or distinct from it. “Nor can philosophy be separated from the history of philosophy, nor culture from the history of culture.” For Gramsci, every man is a political animal, an intellectual and philosopher; a process, an individual and a socio-historic product. But though anyone can be said to possess and exercise intellect, not all become intellectual in the sense of a social function.

According to Gramsci there are two types of “functioning” intellectual. There are those under the more traditional category “—the literary, scientific, history, etc.” These maintain a false facade of independence from class and social considerations, and are often themselves under a delusion of detachment. The 2nd type are those who organize this 1st type into a function of social and cultural hegemony, directing from more or less administrative roles. The “Dr.” Ian Roberts of the revolution, as it turned out. I guess Lenin got his way, when he declared in his “What is to be Done”, that “all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals…must be obliterated.”

Gramsci traces the history of what he sees as the “functioning” intellectual, and then attempts to work out by what process a new category of intellectual might be developed in conjunction with a revolutionary effort. “The problem of creating a new stratum of intellectuals consists in the critical elaboration of intellectual activity…corresponding to the foundation of a new and integral conception of the world.” Much of Gramsci’s focus here is on journalists, and the new purpose of journalism, and a whole host of new or hybrid roles, such as “community organizer”. The new intellectuals on this front were “no longer to consist of eloquence…a momentary mover of feelings and passions, but an actual participant in the shaping of practical life, a constructer, organizer, permanent persuader.”

He explains the importance of intellectuals on the super structure of society as a whole. “Intellectuals are the dominate group’s deputies, exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government.” And that expert opinion will shift as the higher demands upon them shift, and they will become, in a real sense, the story tellers of a regime.

But When Gramsci says all men are intellectuals and philosophers he does not mean equally in some egalitarian sense, but more in the way that ideas and philosophies impinge on and insinuate themselves into the daily lives of everyone. “Creating a new culture does not only mean one’s own individual discoveries. It also, and most particularly, means the diffusion in a critical form of truths already discovered, their ‘socialization’ as it were, and even making them the basis of vital action.” He saw a “future philosophy which will be that of a human race united the world over.” Gramsci was, after all, a communist, and was therefore full of egalitarian notions, but these are always marked by a preponderance of elite oversight and intentionality.

Gramsci points out that intellectuals can deceive themselves, or even groups of a certain size, but the moment the deception gains mass, becomes ubiquitous, then it is something else, and has the potential to spread until it manifests as the norm and becomes part of the political. He likens this to religions, and examines the ways in which, and for what reasons, existing hegemonic orders shift overtime, often using the Catholic Church as example. He praises the Roman Church for its “hegemonic order”, in particular not allowing too great a divide between the “intellectuals” and the “simple souls.” Most of the credit for this, according to Gramsci, going to the Jesuits.

He then outlines how a new, modern, secular, revolutionary stage through praxis will arrive. It will become advantageous, if not necessary, that all “simple souls” will be lifted into the highest intellectual spheres. For all his critical realism Gramsci fails to recognize or account for the level of degradation upon the intellectual sphere this might cause. He simply claims that hierarchical notions are a false echo of a former “common sense” of the past, a direct result of feudal politics. This, of course, is nonsense, but it does not prevent him from laying out a tactical process of praxis through which it might be achieved.

“One of the most important characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance is the struggle to assimilate and conquer ideologically the traditional intellectual terrain…” When it comes to altering social structures Gramsci not only stresses the importance of intellectuals and education, but also notes frequently the need for them to have a critical understanding of the world and their place in it.

“Critical understanding of self takes place through a struggle of political hegemonies and of opposing directions, first in the ethical field and then in that of politics proper, in order to arrive at the working out at a higher level of one’s own conception of reality. Consciousness of being part of a particular hegemonic force (that is to say, political consciousness) is the first stage towards a further progressive self-consciousness in which theory and practice will finally be one.”

I told myself that I would not engage in too much rebuttal, and I am going to stick by that. I will cite this passage in full, because I like it, and because it simplifies in part what Gramsci’s whole project with the Notebooks is all about.

“Imagine the intellectual position of the man of the people. He has formed his opinions, convictions, criteria of discrimination, standards of conduct. Now anyone with a superior intellectual formation with a point of view opposed to his can put forward arguments better than he and really tear him to pieces logically and so on. But should the man of the people change his opinion just because of this? In that case he might find himself having to change entirely every day, or every time he meets an ideological adversary who is his intellectual superior. On what elements, therefore, can his philosophy be founded? and in particular his philosophy in the form which has the greatest importance for his standards of conduct?

The most important element is undoubtedly one whose character is determined not by reason but by faith. But faith in whom, or in what? In particular in the social group to which he belongs. The man of the people thinks that so many like-minded people can’t be wrong, not so radically as the man he is arguing against would like him to believe; he thinks that, while he himself, admittedly, is not able to uphold and develop his arguments, in his group there is someone who could do this and could certainly argue better than the man he has against him; and he remembers, indeed, hearing expounded, discursively, coherently, in a way that left him convinced, the reasons behind his faith. He has no concrete memory of the reasons and could not repeat them, but he knows that reasons exist, because he has heard them expounded, and was convinced by them.

These considerations lead, however, to the conclusion that new conceptions have an extremely unstable position among the popular masses, particularly when they are in contrast with orthodox convictions (which can themselves be new) conforming socially to the general interests of the ruling class.”

And so forth.

From here Gramsci builds on trying to establish philosophy as being first and foremost “a cultural battle to transform the popular mentality and to diffuse the philosophic innovations which will demonstrate themselves to be ‘historically true’ to the extent that they become concretely—i.e. historically and socially—universal.” Or, in other words, until they become custom. This battle, Gramsci claims, is to be waged anew by the elites against the common masses now and then, to keep them on their toes, and always afraid and guessing, and to keep things fresh. Just kidding. He says it’s to maintain a permanent false dialectical vanguard or war of position towards a global proletariat victory.

According to Gramsci much of all this takes place “organically”, in the Marxist materialist sense of history, which was continually becoming more secular, scientific and mechanical. “Even feudal lords were possessors of a particular technical capacity, military capacity, and it is precisely from the moment at which the aristocracy loses its monopoly of techno-military capacity that the crisis of feudalism begins.”

Gramsci takes us on deep historical detours all throughout the Notebooks, giving us his theories and perspectives on numerous events in Europe, from Rome to Feudalism and the industrial age to the future. He searches history’s pages in order to examine how “subaltern classes” can develop into dominate groups. His most frequently used example, and the one he was most familiar with, is the Italian Risorgimento.

We don’t have to go into all that. Everything worked out okay, more or less. Though Gramsci laments the failure of Italy, after the fall of the Two Sicilies, to enfold the agrarian south to the interests of the north, which he described as an octopus that drained the south and disregarded it.

Of particular interest to Gramsci was the “rural intellectual”, who naturally maintains a loyalty to certain traditions of family and countryside, and how he can be brought into compliance with a larger hegemonic project. Which brings us to Gramsci’s 2nd favorite event in history: The French Revolution.

As mentioned before, Gramsci was very fond of this revolution, in particular the Jacobins, and their “determination to ensure a bond between town and country.” Gramsci is always interested in the cultural methods necessary to uproot the peasant from the land, to instill in the peasant a critical and political consciousness—to remove him from his “myths and traditions”, and to “ignite within him the concerns of the city”. Behold, the hicklib!

How was this accomplished? Well, violence, for one. But also, and perhaps more importantly, the Jacobins were able to instill in the peasant a sense of being better for the transformation through hegemonic prestige and financial reward and promise, while simultaneously denigrating that which they were before.

“The Jacobins won their function of leading party by a struggle to the death; they literally imposed themselves on the French bourgeoisie.” This led to an advanced position, “even more advanced than the historical premise should have permitted, hence the various forms of backlash and the function of Napoleon.” The Jacobins “were convinced of the absolute truth of their slogans about equality, fraternity and liberty, and what is more important, the great popular masses whom the Jacobins stirred up and drew into the struggle were also convinced of their truth.” He thinks that without “the agrarian policy of the Jacobins, Paris would have had the Vandee at its very doors”. The moderates “tried to exploit federalism in order to crush Jacobin Paris, but the provincial troops brought to Paris went over to the revolutionaries.”

He points out how, in the late medieval stage, the growing “bourgeoisie” and mercantile, merchant class conflicted with the nobility in their attempt to wrest power from them, and again discuses forms of propaganda and cultural subversion used to weaponize the rural masses against the aristocracy.

“The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as domination and intellectual and moral leadership.” A social group “dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to liquidate, or subjugate by armed force or prestige, position and culture… and in leading allied or kindred groups against the enemy”. Formations of successful groups and activity are achieved by “gradual and continuous absorption of potential allied groups, and by utilizing as active elements those who appear as antagonistic, with irreconcilable differences”. There “must be hegemonic activity before the rise to power”, and that “one should not count only on the material force which power gives in order to exercise leadership.”

“Consent is given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is historically caused by prestige.”

Prestige, energy, “organic” and vital are words Gramsci often uses, and often they are related to his use of the larger term: “passive revolution.” Think Henri Bergson and his concept of elan vital, only more political.

In two lines Gramsci unfolds nearly the whole essence of a successful long march. “It is necessary to avoid passing the problem in intellectualistic rather than historico-political terms. Naturally it is not disputed that intellectual clairvoyance is a political value only in as much as it becomes disseminated passion and in as much as it is the premise for a strong will.”

As a Marxist Gramsci examined events through class dynamics stemming from economic necessities, but Gramsci was no mere Marxist. He incorporated all manner of things into his analysis, even things some might call “magical” or providential. He called Marx “economically naive” because he thought Marx’s focus on economics was his blind spot. In the same way that Freud’s obsession with sex was his undoing, Marx’s obsession with money was his.

What mattered was not the ideas of Gioberti and Mazzini, or even Garibaldi—it did not matter if the ideas were right or wrong, in any economic or even objective sense. What mattered was their reach and appeal, in the moment. There is something in the formula that lands on a number of lucky rolls in the procession of time, which is, in a sense, speeding up. Stars must properly align for propaganda to have full power.

It seems as though he felt himself drift at times into these strange realms and would bring himself back to earth. “A study might be made of how it came about that Sorel never advanced from his concept of ideology-as-myth to an understanding of the political party, but stopped short at the idea of the trade union. Hence in Sorel there was a conflict of two necessities: that of the myth, and that of the critique of the myth…the chances aligned, but the outcome was left to the intervention of the irrational (in the Bergsonian sense of elan vital)…” He attempts to rationalize this particular failure by a lack of political clairvoyance and situational awareness… “quite apart from the fact that destruction and negation cannot exist without an implicit construction and affirmation—this is not in a metaphysical sense but in practice, i.e., politically.” A hero needs a villain, and it is of course nice if you control both sides.

Sometimes when he ventures into these areas he makes some interesting and revealing mistakes. He creates and then wrongfully attributes the phrase “ruse of providence” to Vico. He likely got this from Hegel’s “ruse” or “cunning of reason” in conjunction with Vico’s line of thought in “The New Science”, where he explains that men construct a world according to a divine plan of which they themselves are unaware. “For out of the passions of men each bent on his private advantage, for the sake of which they would live like wild beasts in the wilderness, it (Providence) has made the civil institutions by which they may live in human society.” Vico

Gramsci believed that in his time sociology was replacing traditional political science, and he forecasted this trend to continue into the future, along with increasing technological capacity and expanding governance. He describes how the need for society and government to produce new techno-governance experts along with itself would bind the two “organically”, which necessarily brings about a revolutionary moment. “Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields.”

He saw how the techno-bureaucratic expansion in education would lead to the further break up of families, as parents would have less and less time with and influence over their children (which, for Gramsci, was not necessarily a bad thing). The majority of the child’s development would be by state bureaucratic involvement. He envisioned 12-14 hour school days.

Deliberative bodies begin to reproduce at a level and rate of scientific analysis and decision-making requirements, and reproduction is fun, and can make a lot of money. This replication is “one of the mechanisms by means of which the career bureaucracy eventually come to control the democratic regimes and parliaments”. In democratic environments the need for more elite directionality becomes even more apparent. And thus “the democratic-bureaucratic system has given rise to a great mass of functions which are not justified by the necessities of production, though they are justified by the necessities of the dominant fundamental group.”

Gramsci foresees a time in which it will be possible for revolutions to occur without the majority of the population ever even noticing, they have become so accustomed to constant cultural changes that they adapt with ease. He said that technology will take on a central if not dominate role in the construction of hegemonic orders, and, even more importantly, that science and technology are never objective in application, but “necessarily take on the character and intentionality of those who control a monopoly on it, whether in terms of instruction or implementation”. Gramsci rejects the notion that science and technology are objective and neutral, but sees how this perception will make it easier for the ruling class to position science as a form of arbiter, or referee, or law. To some extent, a god.

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The moving skies, big, bound,
Bend round circles vast,
Stirring bold ghosts of the brain
Back to memory of harvest. 

Strong autumn gusts
Press proud palms to hill-tops,
Breaks through quickened leaves
With rich scatter of color,
Rich fire and fragrance 
Lifting the soil into song. 

When clouds are burst
Be said to weep or howl
Some transcendence down upon us?
As dry blades of grass sweep into rivers
In some majesty of yore? 

The shifting sun and shadow
Drops rain on silent green growth
Against red brick walls.
Still, solemn measure
Of mist laden corners.
You can feel it there in the shadow,
Trembling, poised
On the edge of cold air,
Bruised and Silent.

Big high tides of fast gray skies above.
And when the leaves are blowing 
Down old familiar street,
Catching forms are suffused with immensities, 
Vertical in origin,
And funnel down to us like apples;
Rips open the eternal vaults
And blows us back to Garden. 

New winds grab
Hair and hips and lungs.
Close trees shelter quiet homes
And tuck skeletons bravely away
In autumn back yards. 

And whose blood lives in those green bushes?
That knows small gatherings and sweet harvests?
As hidden bird is known by voice alone.
And warm blankets of sunlight, 
As over fertile mid-western valleys
Where the vines are over ripe,
Yearning for gentle slopes and wide grassy hills.

The hungry clouds want more earth.
In the shadow of a ruby sunset
The rag-man stumbles off  
to the cold weather end
Of graveyards and hurt trees,
Almost as recollection
Of cold waters as song,
And night-lit streets as measure. 

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In 1925 Walter Benjamin read what he called “the two most remarkable and exciting books.” One was Thomas Mann’s novel, “The Magic Mountain” and the other was “History and Class Consciousness” by Gyorgy Lukacs. If you have already read these two works, you might be aware of the fact that Leo Naphta—A character in Magic Mountain—was partially based on Gyorgy Lukacs, who Mann knew in real life. The inspiration was mostly a surface one, as Lukacs stated on the matter: “So what if I lent him my nose? He gave so much to me—I am happy I could do that little for him in return.” But there was more to it than just that. Mann also saw in Lukacs an intense sacrificial devotion to a cause, the glaring element of a stranger and radical, and an eminent sense of tradition.

The character of Naphta is a complex and strange mix. A Counter Enlightenment-Jewish-Jesuit-Communist. My personal theory is that Naphta was made of three main ingredients: Gyorgy Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, and a Jesuit. What particular member of the Order inspired Mann is not important.

It is also my personal suspicion that Cipolla, from Mann’s short story “Mario and the Magician” was largely inspired by Sigmund Freud and Antonio Gramsci. But that is just speculation. Thomas Mann himself tells us that Naphta was at least partially based on Lukacs. In a letter to a Swiss literary critic, Mann writes: “Lukacs, who is so well disposed to me (and who obviously did not recognize himself in Naphta), may have written the best article on the occasion of my seventieth birthday, published in the Internationale Literature; but true to the party line he left my Joseph unmentioned.”

In a book written on this subject, by Judith Marcus, she asked Lukacs in person about “not recognizing himself in Naphta.” Lukacs responded: “look, I don’t have the slightest doubt—and indeed, never have had—that the Naphta-figure borrowed certain features of mine—and not only outward ones.”

“Georg” Lukacs was born in 1885, in Budapest, as Gyorgy Bernat Lowinger. His father was a new wealth Jewish banker who changed his name to Lukacs in 1891, and earnestly attempted to assimilate into German culture, becoming Protestant Lutheran. He was given the “von” in 1901. He would have had less trouble assimilating if it were not for his son. Gyorgy’s mother, Adele Wertheimer, was from Vienna.

Thus Lukacs grew up a “rich kid”, enjoying the benefits of German bourgeoisie culture and society, and a cosmopolitan education, in Germany and in Hungary, and constant vacations to Italy and Norway and elsewhere. But his education also took place at a time of political turmoil, upheaval and blood in Eastern Europe. Even at a young age Gyorgy was always trying to justify to himself a removed and contemplative life in a world of violent political change.

George Steiner remarks: “Like Simone Weil, of whom he often reminds me, Lukacs has the soul of a Calvinist. One can imagine how he must have striven to discipline within himself his native bent towards literature and the aesthetic side of things. Marxism offered him the crucial possibility of remaining a literary critic without feeling he had committed his energies to a somewhat frivolous and imprecise pursuit.”

The mistake that both young Lukacs and Steiner seem to make here is to underestimate the importance of the aesthetic to politics. This is something that Lukacs would later come to realize.

Gyorgy Lukacs spoke three languages and had three doctoral degrees. But his language of choice was German. He studied under, spent time with, and was early influenced by people like Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel, and later the neo-Kantian Emil Lask and sociologist Max Weber. Lukacs slid easily from Kant to Hegel to Marx, just as he slid easily from his comfortable upper middle-class surroundings into exile, destitution and radical communism.

Lukacs was not merely cosmopolitan, but was described by friends as having an “essential homelessness” and that “exile was his native habitat.” Lukacs had naturally the skills and arts of the gray stranger. He is not of the crowd and custom. His observation is removed, or perched above like a bird. It grants a certain relative objectivity. Or as Simmel writes in his “Stranger”: “He is freer, practically and theoretically; he surveys conditions with less prejudice; his criteria for them are more general and more objective ideals; he is not tied down in his actions by habit, piety and precedent.”

Lukacs achieved instant fame in 1911 upon publication of his book: Die Seele und die Formen (Soul and Form). One of the essays in this work, called “The Foundering of Form Against Life” is generally credited with reviving into prominence the philosophical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard. Lukacs developed relations and friendships with many leading German scholars of the time. But he was perhaps closest to Max Weber, who recalled of their conversations: “Whenever I have spoken with Lukacs, I have to think about it for days.”

If Lukacs was well known in Germany, he was a star celebrity among intellectuals in and artists in Budapest. Bela Balazs (some kind of early movie critic I guess) founded a club called the Sunday Circle, full of all the leading lights of Hungary, which Lukacs naturally and swiftly became the leader of. Art historian Arnold Hauser said of this: “Lukacs was from the very beginning their acknowledged leader…their teacher…and, more or less, all of them were under his influence.”

Thomas Mann wrote: “As long as Lukacs was talking, he was right.” And we have this from Ervin Sinko, who was a fellow communist party member in Hungary, and wrote a book on the revolutionary events there from 1918-19. He described what he called “the astonishing phenomenon called Lukacs.” In the middle of fierce debate and heated argument, even about himself, Lukacs “would sit there, with his glasses on, a remarkable large forehead and large, extremely bright eyes, altogether calm, as if there were no hurry, as though on a desert island…and was silent.” His most vocal opponents and rivals were “fascinated by this figure” and would surrender to Lukacs when he finally decided to speak. “As long as he was speaking he was correct.”

In 1907 Lukacs struck up a love affair with a girl named Irma Seidler, who in 1911 committed suicide. Make of that what you will. Lukacs then married a Russian anarchist named Helene Grabenko in 1914.

In 1918 Lukacs was named Minister of Culture and Education in Hungary, during the short lived communist control of Kun Bela until 1919. He swiftly implemented sex education courses for children. Many parents got wind of this and began to protest, which helped lead temporarily to the end of communist control in Hungary. This event was marked by chaotic skirmishes and random retribution and blood. In this mess Lukacs personally “executed” 6-8 people with a pistol. There is still debate and controversy today over what exactly happened, but Lukacs himself justified it as a “military action.” That would not be the last that Hungary saw of Lukacs.

From here Gyorgy fled to Vienna, where he lived half underground in impoverished conditions, hiding, writing, and no doubt punishing himself. Lukacs was the kind of man willing to commit any foul crime for a cause, and willing to “torture” himself for it afterwards. He was a vocal critic of brutal soviet tactics, yet remained a more or less loyal servant of the revolution, always ready to bloody his hands. “Ideas have a Mephistophelean power,” says Lukacs. “Every goal for which we must violate ourselves appears to us in the end as the good in and of itself.”

At this time Thomas Mann received a number of pleading letters from Gyorgy’s father. Mann was responsible for prolonging Lukacs’ life perhaps twice. One time for sure, as Lukacs was set to be deported back to Hungary, where the new regime remembered. Mann had to write a letter to the chancellor of Austria, Ignaz Seipel, protesting the plan to deport him. Mann did all this not so much for Gyorgy, who he often put off and ignored, and who he slightly yet distinctly disliked, but for Gyorgy’s father, who he had a level of respect for, and who was known to the Mann family.

After publication of “History and Class Consciousness” in 1923, Lukacs basically solidified his role as leader of Marxist thought. Generations of philosophers and social scientists and straight up weirdos, everyone from Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, the Frankfurt school—especially Adorno and Marcuse—to figures like Sartre and Habermas, and degenerate burnt out acid academics in the 60’s, and so on, all read, fixated on, grappled with, critiqued and praised, and learned from Lukacs. He has been described by any number of European and American scholars as “the finest Marxist since Marx.” A man whose “influence upon western thought has been concealed yet considerable” and “probably the only communist philosopher and critic who still has the power to interest and to teach readers in the west.”

Lukacs did not see Marxism as only an analysis of social and economic change, but as a complete philosophical world view, and he claimed that if all of Marx’s predictions were false, Marxism would remain a valid perspective on life and culture.

From 1929 to 1933 Lukacs resided in Berlin. He was one of the first communists (along with Gramsci) to fully recognize the organic rise of fascism in response to Marxist thrusts and agitations—that fascism was not a top down propaganda campaign pushed by bourgeoise forces of capitalism, but was a top to bottom immune response to a threat. A threat to their lives and family and culture. Gyorgy’s background and admiration of German culture was partly what granted him this insight that other socialists of the time had trouble comprehending, or, as is said today, they had no theory of mind for. He also of course had first hand experience with this in Hungary. Lukacs was only half anti Sorel. He abhorred on the one hand the violence of the Russian revolution, and the subsequent brutality of Stalin, while at the same time justifying it to himself and others in a public way through his writing, especially in his “Bolshevism as a Moral Problem” and “Destruction of Reason.”

Lukacs saw in the west a spirit heavily influenced by Nietzsche and Emerson, which upheld not the dominance of capital on the surface, as both of these thinkers had much to say that was critical of capitalism, but that the radical individualism of these two influential thinkers upholds and maintains a distinct hierarchy, and thus, according to Lukacs, the moral and philosophical underpinnings of capitalism. Some of his critiques of capitalism are not only accurate, but ominous and inspiring. There is after all a great point of weakness to assault here. The damage on culture and demographics is apparent. And nobody, for instance, likes Ayn Rand once they really get to know her.

In all this reflection and critique, Lukacs lays the foundations for cultural Marxism, or, as he called it “Western Marxism”. Whereas Gramsci recognized, for instance, the impossibility of a violent overthrow in a place like America, Gyorgy’s distaste for such methods on moral grounds caused him to construct social and cultural methods of ushering in the communist dream, by way of a rationalized “spiritual” philosophical awakening among the youth and future generations of the west.

After continuous failed attempts to ignite a communist uprising and revolution in Germany, conducted by a whole cast of characters, from outside and from within, Lukacs, in 1933, fled to Moscow. As a communist comfortable in soviet Moscow, while his hosts pleaded with him to glorify the achievements of their revolution, Lukacs wrote mostly about Goethe and Mann and Balzac, Sir Walter Scott and Stendhal. This frustrated many fellow socialists at the time. But perhaps one of the greatest achievements all time by any communist was to make writers like Goethe and Mann appealing to politically motivated young socialist readers in America.

Lukacs forced the philosophic history of German idealism to work for the revolutionary cause. The same methods were used against the idealisms of America. And again, there has always been commonalities between the Left and the U.S, so the soil here was more fertile for these types of seeds. These methods might appear to sophisticated readers as rather silly or at least something of a stretch, but they fooled James Lindsay.

Perhaps most importantly Lukacs gave to each new generation of communist and radical a sense of tradition, and martyrs of the cause to venerate (or evaluate where they went “wrong”) and whose sacrifices could continue to inspire, and ignite a sense of duty to those who came before. This is more important than one might think, and not easy to instill in young people of the type naturally dismissive of the past, with eyes only for a future dream. He stressed the importance of a parallel world, the “real world” and gave it meaning and tradition, and taught them to make it more beautiful and “true”, more vital and important than the other worlds.

But that is not all that he was up to in Moscow. There are many and often conflicting accounts of what Lukacs was doing at the head of small squads of soviet troops in Eastern Europe. We know that whatever it was, it caused much the same uproar and angry noise as did his time in Hungary under Bela Kun. The anger and rejection of Gyorgy’s actions at the head of military personnel began to waft back to Stalin, who did not like the smell of it, and became annoyed with Gyorgy’s trouble making, and dismissed him from service.

So Lukacs returned once more to Hungary, where he was professor of aesthetics and philosophy of culture at the university of Budapest, and he was serving as Minister of culture again when the people revolted in 1956. You guessed it. His determination to teach children about sex was a product of reading Freud, and was responsible for bringing down two communist regimes he was part of in Hungary by way of revolting parents. He was arrested and deported to Romania, but he returned to Hungary a year later when the communists retook control. From here he looked on at things with the ease of retirement, viewing developments in the West and America with a speculative but hopeful smile, until his death from lung cancer in 1971.

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In the spring of 1920, before the metal workers marched in Turin, the streets were already full of heat, blood and violence. In unimpressive buildings that seemed hardly to stand above the intensity levels of the street, you had the general staff, editors and contributors of 2 competing newspapers, both socialist. Every paper was socialist. Everyone was doing it. One of these papers was called “Avanti!”, which not too long ago was edited by a man named Benito Mussolini. They had a falling out. The headquarters and offices of “Avanti!” would be firebombed in 2 months. The other was called “L’Ordine Nuovo, started by Antonio Gramsci, Palmiro Togliatti and Angelo Tasca.

Here in the offices of L’Ordine Nuovo, in the heat and sweat of these rooms, one must raise their voice. This committee of misfits, malcontents, radicals and academics were always arguing, and could raise quite a noise, full of shoving and shouting, and the pulling of one’s own hair. But what creature is this that walks among them?

A dwarf? Well, a man under 5 feet tall, afflicted with some form of tuberculosis as a child, which twisted his spine and hunched his back. He grew up poor, and malnourished, certainly by today’s standards. The doctors use to hang him upside down. Whatever bitterness and resentment young Gramsci came to harbor within his tiny and broken body must remain a matter of speculation. Certainly some, but perhaps not as much as one might suppose, especially after he reached Turin, and found himself on an upward trajectory.

An educated dwarf, highly trained in Italian elite theory, from Machiavelli to Mosca, and the history of Italy in general. A hard realist with an oversized head full of communist dreams is a terrible card to play on someone. A Marxist who called Marx “economically naive”, not because Marx didn’t understand economics, but because, according to Gramsci, that is the only thing Marx understood.

This 4-foot-tall fan of the French Revolution was not afraid of violence, because he was never expected to partake. But our little friend here has a sharp tooth, and a taste for blood. Think of the many different diminutive and hunchbacked Thomas Mann characters. Something like that. Gramsci viewed swift and precise actions of violence as often being smart political moves. He wasn’t the type to shed many tears over the deaths of innocent Christians, either. As a “realist” though, Gramsci was patient enough to know how to boil a frog. Infact, he understood the very NECESSITY of boiling frogs instead of fighting them.

Gramsci was of the school of thought that viewed man at his most fundamental level as a political creature. Whether this belief is accurate or not is a question for another time. But this idea often, for obvious reasons, inclines one more to political actions.

When the little guy spoke half the room went silent, which wasn’t normal here. What was he saying? He was saying something about the need to understand Sardinian nationalism and the patriotic feeling in the hearts of the Italian worker post Risorgimento. The room responded with a series of more or less associated bickerings among smaller groups. Someone shouted: “It’s about the larger international proletariat!”

Gramsci agreed, but then this magical Jacobin communist dwarf told the man: “But we must face realities.”

“Look!” cried another, “he’s trying to defend Mussolini again!”

“I’m not defending…” Gramsci shook his proportionately oversized head with impatience. “Mussolini said that 6 years ago, and I was referring to the need to understand both the passive and non-passive elements of revolution.”

“What does that even mean!” shouted someone.

Then Togliatti came out of the office, arguing with Tasca, who was leader of the Italian Communist Party’s right wing, and was Gramsci’s first politically motivated friend in Turn. We cannot hear what they were saying. It was too much. Tasca would have to go back into the office and ring the new electric buzzer to make them all shut up.

There wasn’t time for all this argument. Within a few years half the people in the building would be underground, chased out of Italy, in jail, or dead. Or as the kids began to call it after Labriola in those days: “Praxis.” Gramsci, however, survived this purge, and became a member of parliament.

Around this time, Moscow, and the Comintern Executive, began to side more with the socialists over the communists in Italy. It would be impossible here to delve with any detail into the many disagreements, the ideological ruptures, controversies and disputes among the different socialist and communist parties across Europe from 1920 to 1925. But if you were here, among the gathered group of the Comintern Executive, you would swiftly receive a good sense of things, and a crash course on the subject.

When Gramsci arrived at the 4th world congress, in 1922, just days after Mussolini marched on Rome, Zinoviev was already rambling on about fascism, saying the same things Gramsci had been saying and writing 5 years prior, and then in grand Grigory Zinoviev fashion, ended his rant with a flourish, by contradicting almost everything he had just been saying, and dismissing fascism as transitory.

The last time Gramsci tried to point out the blind spot in their analysis of the growing phenomenon of fascism, he received much the same response as he did in Italy, especially from the Trotsky side, and even his allegiance and dedication to the cause were put into question. There was no question as to Gramsci’s dedication, but it often seemed he (and Tasca) were the only ones in the room facing realities. Every time Gramsci tried to explain Mussolini’s growing popularity he was viewed with suspicion, and Gramsci having agreed with Mussolini on a number of occasions in the past, and in writing, would always come back to bite him.

I don’t know exactly what was said between them when Trotsky pulled Gramsci and the other members of the P.C.I aside, but when they returned Trotsky was harsh and dismissive of the Italian Communist delegation, and demanded they fuse with the P.S.I (Socialist Party of Italy). “You continue to repeat the same mistake,” said Trotsky. “We propose that you should accept the collective adhesion with the P.S.I, then you can make an individual selection. If you do not have the sympathy of the broad masses, you will not be able to maintain a legal existence.”

I am unsure how much Trotsky knew, understood, or cared about recent Italian history, but it was that exact sympathy of the broad masses that strengthened and legitimatized the growing fascist “element”, they liked to call it, of the socialist movement in Italy.

For those today familiar with the Italian scene during this period, you can begin to see how the picture unfolded. But for many early 20th century socialists it wasn’t very clear. Trotskyists still don’t get it. Let it not be seen as praise for a man like Stalin, but he understood it. In short, the people of Italy, after having just established as a nation—a dream going back to the days of Machiavelli—were in no mood to cede their newfound sovereignty to Moscow. When Italian socialists spoke of their movement “degenerating” into fascism, as so many did, it is almost always in reference to, and revealing of, this general perceptual error they suffered from.

And how it blinded and befuddled Gramsci at this time, too. Gramsci, whose first intuitions, among the communists in Italy, best described and understood the phenomenon of fascism, became susceptible to all manner of fogs and open speculations. He was never the best at dealing with peer pressure. It was Tasca who argued for his friend’s earlier insights. When Gramsci began to waver in the face of the Trotskyists and dreamers, it was Tasca who continued to insist that Gramsci’s original assessment of fascism was accurate, and would have to be understood and reckoned with. It was not until he was in prison that Gramsci would retrieve the clarity of his earlier diagnosis.

As 1923 was coming to an end, Zinoviev and Stalin launched their campaign against Trotsky. Zinoviev was also at this time planning and failing communist uprisings in Germany.

In that same year Gramsci was married to a Russian violinist named Julia Schucht. He had 2 kids with her.

So after his new marriage, and after having been put through a flurry of debate, and a whirlwind of doubt, throwing the little guy somewhat off kilter, and flooding him with foreign ideas that left him in a fog, Gramsci was given leadership over what remained of the P.C.I in 1924, the year Lenin died.

And perhaps it was because of this fog that Gramsci failed to perceive the warning signs flashing around him, telling him it was time to go. Or perhaps he knew his fate, and some romantic notion of small, sinking ships entered into him. Maybe this notion received encouragement from the dull, shadowy pain growing in his upper back. In his “autobiographical note”, Gramsci wrote: “The rule has been made that a captain ‘must’ go down with his ship, such assertions are less irrational than it might seem.”

Gramsci returned to Italy in 1924, just in time for a wave of political assassinations, and many remaining members of the minority stopped meeting in parliament and assembled on the Aventine. Friends began to make preparations to send Gramsci to Switzerland. But none of this was too far out of the ordinary. This kind of heat was normal in Italy during the period.

Gramsci was arrested in 1926, but his trial would not be until 2 years later. He was moved around a bit, transported from facility to facility, teaching history and what not to other inmates.

His trial began in the spring of 1928. Gramsci and his fellow accused were charged with inciting armed insurrection. In some ways this was perfectly true, depending on how far you want to go back, but rather meaningless in the environment of Italian politics at the time.

Towards the end of the trial, the prosecutor pointed at Gramsci and said: “For 20 years we must stop his brain from functioning.” If the goal was really to stop his brain from working, they should have just sent him back to Moscow, or perhaps to wherever it was in the world Trotsky was currently hiding. Instead, they put him in a room alone with his thoughts, and gave him pen and paper. Not to Monday morning quarter back, but Mussolini clearly made a mistake here. An unforced error. The leaders of the P.C.I were scattered to the wind now, or lying safely in graves, same for that half of the P.S.I that did not already follow Mussolini under his banner. There was no reason not to let Gramsci mope around parliament and make a few scenes.

Gramsci would spend the rest of his life in prison, where his disease continued to do its work, and all his teeth fell out. He died in 1937, at the age of 46. Here in prison Gramsci feverishly documented his ideas and thoughts, and among them one can begin to trace the outlines of a strategy, a playbook, if you will, for institutional and cultural take over, accurately locating the central hubs and most important targets; making sound observations as well as radically stupid mistakes, and sometimes using coded language, or attempts to bury a stated point in clouds of obscurity, in order to bypass censors at the prison. The Prison Notebooks.

The shape and scaffolding of it were solid, but the more in depth and detailed he got the more mistakes he made. Gramsci was often torn intellectually in terms of successful application, and it shows in the Notebooks. These carried noticeable, sizable contradictions, that would not fit even in a generous margin for error. His essay “America” is illustrative of how accurate the Notebooks could be in a larger sense, and how ridiculously and laughably wrong in the details. But the general thesis was sound, and the details were things that ended up being worked out in practice. I feel that overall, the success of the playbook can largely be attributed to the spirit of the players, to “Praxis makes perfect” so to speak, or “where there is a will (and a feverish and delusional drive) there is a way.”

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