The Civil War Simulation

It has been slouching toward Bethlehem for the last eight years. The gyre has been widening, the falcon turning and turning, the center losing hold, and so on. Its hour has not quite come round yet, but something is definitely rising out of Spiritus Mundi. No, not the beast from The Second Coming, but something perhaps just as rough and pitiless.

I’ve been calling it “The Rise of the New Normal Reich.” Others have been describing it with other names. No one can say exactly what it is, but at this point everyone can feel it coming.

Something resembling a new form of totalitarianism … or something resembling civil war.

One thing often leads to the other.

Every new totalitarian system is preceded by some sort of civil war. You can’t just implement totalitarianism out of nowhere. In order to impose totalitarianism on society, you need to tear society apart, pit the masses against each other, foment fanaticism, mass hysteria, and hatred. Above all you need to foment fear. Once you have torn society apart and whipped the masses into a mindless paroxysm of fear and hate and murderous rage, you can implement your new form of totalitarianism fairly easily, as people will be desperate for the restoration of “order.”

One of the best ways to tear society apart and whip the masses into a mindless frenzy of fear and homicidal rage and hatred until they literally cannot think anymore and are reduced to a robotic state of cognition in which they shut down entirely or are transformed into shrieking fanatical zealots is to (a) terrorize them with fake existential threats, like the return of Hitler, or an apocalyptic virus, or whatever, (b) demonize everyone who refuses to play along with the fake existential threats as yet another existential threat, and then (c) terrorize the masses all over again.

If you do that long enough, what will eventually happen is, the people you demonized as an existential threat because they wouldn’t play along with the fake existential threats you were terrorizing the masses with will rise up against you, and attempt to remove you from power.

At that point, you will be on the brink of civil war, which is exactly what you were trying to achieve. Because, once you’re on the brink of civil war, you can justify the implementation of your new form of totalitarianism without too much trouble.

Basically, what you’re looking to do — assuming you’re the dominant power in this equation — is provoke whatever resistance to your dominance (or your rise to power) exists into forming something resembling a plausible oppositional (i.e., militant) force that you need to suspend constitutional rights and the rule of law in order to contend with.

This civil war that you have instigated, or that you’ve brought a country, or the world, to the brink of, in order to implement your new form of totalitarianism is a simulation, but it is not fake. It is the actual civil war — or the actual imminent civil war — that conceals the fact that there is no civil war, because what is actually occurring is a “clear-and-hold” op.

What is actually happening is, a dominant power — a globally hegemonic dominant power in our case — is eliminating internal resistance throughout the territory it occupies, which in our case happens to be the whole planet. Any and all forms of internal resistance. The character of the resistance makes no difference … Islamic fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, neo-nationalism, “populism,” socialism, whatever. Any form of resistance that interferes with the consolidation of its global hegemony and commodification of virtually everything.

In other words, the coming civil war (or the threat of civil war) is absolutely real, and is also a simulation concealing the fact that there is no coming civil war.

Yes, I know this is difficult to grasp. And I realize people are all worked up at the moment, but bear with me if you possibly can. I am going to quote a French philosopher. Please don’t freak out. I’ll explain in a moment.

“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none.” – Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard is not saying that there is no truth. He is explaining how simulations work, or one way that simulations work. The fake thing (i.e., the simulacrum) exists to make the real thing seem “real.” If you can copy something, then that thing must exist. The copied thing must be real, right?

Wrong. That’s how this magic trick works.

How it works is, it generates a false dichotomy. It conjures an opposition into existence out of the ether. It summons up a simplistic binary equation (i.e., real/fake, true/false, left/right, us/them) and traps our minds within that equation. Either Disneyland is real or Los Angeles is real. Either you support Donald Trump or you support Joe Biden. Either the Palestinians or the State of Israel. MSNBC or X. And so on.

Or … OK, here’s a simple analogy.

Imagine, if the authorities in charge of a prison instigated a war between two prison gangs, who were actually fighting for dominance in the prison. The gangs are real. The war is real. When it is over, one of the gangs will be dominant among the prison population. However, everyone will still be in prison, probably under a state of lockdown, which is what happens after a prison riot.

Does any of that sound familiar? I hope so.

Again, I realize emotions are high, what with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and the ongoing liquidation of Gaza, and the ongoing left/right culture wars, and the rise of the Cult of Elon Musk, and the aftermath of the “Apocalyptic Plague of 2020-2022,” and the “January 6th Insurrection,” and so on … but maybe try, just for a few minutes, to step back from all the false dichotomies and all the thought-terminating clichés and the hatred and fear that we are being systematically inundated with, and reflect on where all this excitement is leading us, and how our passions are being instrumentalized … and by whom and for what purpose they are being instrumentalized.

If you think this all ends with America Made Great Again, or Palestine Free, or with Elon Musk marching into the White House with a bathroom sink, or some other “revolutionary” fantasy, well, it doesn’t. It ends up where it ended up in January 2021, with soldiers in the streets of DC. It ends up with Gaza obliterated. It ends up with the prisoners back in their cells. It ends with “the restoration of order.”

I do not know how to stop what is coming … what is “slouching toward us to be born.” I do not believe it can be stopped at this point. I will, however, be observing closely, and trying to make sense of events as they happen. I will probably be paying a fair amount of attention to whoever foments all that fear and hatred and murderous rage I mentioned above, and preys on people’s emotions, and tries to trap people’s minds within those false dichotomies, so that they wind up utterly unable to think, and just shuffle around like robotic zealots logging who is “with them” and “against them.” I hope you won’t find that too “divisive.”

And, if you do, well, I wouldn’t worry too much. My columns are getting less and less traction these days. I alienated the “10/7 Truthers” recently, and I’m severely visibility-filtered on X, which, as you know, is the only real free-speech platform, and “a crucial historical force,” and “the voice of the people,” or “the new generation,” or whatever.