Caustic Ramblings

I noticed an interesting comment on the Ecosophia monthly Open Post a few weeks back. It touches on a topic that I think very often gets dodged or ignored in the collapse-sphere, perhaps with the exception of Jim Kunstler's blog; he certainly has the stones to bring up topics that make most modern people very uncomfortable. I too might ruffle a few feathers with what I have to say here. Anyway, I procrastinated a bit on writing up something about it, but I figured I'd do so sooner or later. Anyway here's the comment:

FWIW, I think that modern feminism has a limited shelf life for the following reasons:
(1) Much of “womens’ liberation” is an artifact of modernity, and will not survive its passing. The main reason women can use men like wallets and sperm banks, then discard them when they are through with them, is that such women are actually “married” to the State, via modern welfare systems. When modern welfare states go away, so will the above life strategy.
(2) Radical feminist women (and Wokesters in general) are not having children at replacement rates. The only people who are reproducing at or above replacement levels, are more traditional (and usually deeply religious) groups of people. Since “the future belongs to those who show up for it,” I expect that more traditional sex roles will be re-established for that reason alone, if no other.

I strongly agree with this analysis. IMO, it's much more coherent than the usual Mainstream Right's responses to feminism, which usually amounts to pegging feminism as some kind of Marxist conspiracy that cropped up in academia starting in the late 1960s and then spread like a cancer onto the whole society, devouring of the Holy American Dream one savory morsel at a time. In fact, feminism is one among many of the productive of the industrial age. By "feminism" I mean in the most general sense, gynocentric identity politics and its various ideological iterations and activistic incarnations. Since there are in fact many different "feminisms," from this point on I will speak of the general doctrine of "gender equality" rather than continuing to invoke the rather vague label "feminism."

But first, I'd like to point out MG's response to this comment above:

Martin, to my mind it’s a mistake to treat things as this kind of either/or binary. There wasn’t just one set of traditional sex roles — check out the history of women’s legal status sometime, and you’ll find (for example) that the Protestant Reformation saw a dramatic decline in women’s legal status, with women being deprived of legal rights they’d had for centuries. When the welfare state implodes, no question, things will change — but that doesn’t necessarily amount to a lurch straight back to Victorian attitudes, you know.

Now, I don't think any and all criticism of postmodern sexual mores must automatically harken back to Victorian takes on this issue, but yes, I do agree that there is no one monolithic doctrine or practice of traditional sex roles. That indeed is a valid observation to make. Though this is not the first time I've seen "Victorian" used as a Strawman-mascot for traditional sexual mores across all pre-industrial cultures. When used in this manner, I think "Victorian" serves as a quick and convenient deflection from genuine criticism of the so-called "Sexual Revolution" and its aftermath. I believe the points Martin made in his original comment certainly qualify as genuine criticism. In reality, it seems there is a whole wide world between the extremes of severe prudishness / sexual repression and "anything goes" hyper-individualistic licentiousness, and most of that generous terrain I'd say squarely falls within the realm of traditional family arrangements and sexual practices.

I'll explain further. Again, I'll agree that there is no one monolithic doctrine or practice of traditional sex roles among the world's great cultures, BUT there is most certainly a common set of patterns we can easily observe among all cultures that have developed into notable civilizations. (Greece/Rome, China, Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, the Maya, among many others) They all valued marriage and stable family structures. NONE of them extolled the "virtues" of women or men running around and sleeping with a cornucopia of different partners. Few-to-none of them even tolerated the idea of sex before marriage. None of them promoted sterile/childless lifestyles as something positive or desirable for the average person. None of them ever advanced the idea that men and women are the same or that they should all work in the same occupations. NONE of these cultures championed women spending their most fertile years spending all day working outside of the household (maybe unless they were slaves or courtesans/prostitutes). No, those traits are those of our own modern industrial western culture. Some of these are also the sexual traits of a dying civilization (see: the fall of Rome). To defend the current/modern version of those attributes "just because!" is to engage in the sort of apologetics that involves lots of usage of the special pleading fallacy, or even the slippery slope argument like idea that any scaling back of modern gender egalitarianism means backsliding into the fields of that horrific Victorian strawman.

But back to the main theme of this post. The idea that men and women should be engaged in the same occupations is one that can only find fertile ground when we have machines and energy slaves doing most of our "back-breaking" work. The social classes today which most strongly promote "gender egalitarianism" are those comprised of people who mostly work in climate-controlled offices. We could say that office jobs are androgynous; which means they privilege neither the nature of men or women. If one's work-existence is limited to the office then they might indeed start believing that men and women can easily do all the same kinds of tasks. But take away the machines and their energy slaves and this delusion suddenly collapses like house of sand! Once we find ourselves back to those grueling pre-industrial conditions, then the sexual mores of olde' will be back with a vengeance. Men will be back to doing brawny jobs and women will go back to taking care of the household and other tasks that don't require a ton of muscle or life-threatening actions each day. But in general, men AND women will be working with their hands most of their waking hours. Both will be too busy and tired to be worrying about any sort of decadent or boutique identity politics; nor will there be any social media platforms left as an arena to spend one's waking hours fighting about these soon-to-be inconsequential abstractions. And no aspect of this impending future need involve any Victorian* neuroses. Neither does the future absence of a welfare state to subsidize the collapse of the family mean a return to Victorianism. But it does means that modern gender ideologies will cease to exist as anything the state (what remains of it) can or will enforce on the general populace.

Now, one more response in that threat I found to be interesting; one that ties into some of the points I made above:

It’s interesting when a couple makes a real attempt to live sustainably ‘off the grid’ (to a greater or lesser degree) they tend to go back to what some would term traditional gender roles. As you say, once you take away the safety net, and also machine labour, it is pretty simple that men are better/capable at some things and women are better at others, and thats where things tend to fall. Either sex has authority in their domain, and the other one helps out in ways they can.

What industrial society has done is to denigrate traditional womens ‘work’ and raised mens work to be overly important, so that a woman can only be ‘successful’ if she competes with men in the traditionally masculine fields. This is more to the benefit of the industrial system than individual women (or men).

Historically, mens task were actually less important day to day than womens. Mens tasks are traditionally high impact but only occur/succeed every now and then, like hunting, building the home, or defending the family.

Womens tasks were the care, maintenance and functioning of the family and without them the whole thing collapses.

Of course, these are generalisations and not locked binaries, and everyone has elements of male/female within them to a greater or lesser degree.

It would be interesting to follow up same sex couples living this way to see if the same thing happens depending on personal preference.

It's my view that the effort to confuse men's and women's work goes back to when Corporate America started admitting women into the workplace (and away from their families!!) en masse, and how they immediately framed this as a "women's empowerment" issue. No, in fact companies did this specifically to depress wages across the board. It's the old "scab labor" trick from the Robber Baron era. Only this time around, big business caught onto the idea that they could rebrand their labor-degrading practices as "social justice" causes. Ditto with illegal aliens doing manual labor jobs and any criticism of this practice is suddenly "racism." It's amazing how much the masses have bought into these lies and how easily they are fooled by these gimmicks time and time again. Though fortunately, more and more of us having been waking up to the truth on these matters.

I'll end this with the simple acknowledgement that this issue is super-sensitive and not easy to discuss around casual company. A "psychology of previous investment" (JHK term) has set in and now tens of millions of women (and many men) defend as a sacred cow the idea that the mass of women should spend their most fertile years being a cubicle serf. Supporting one's husband is now a high (cultural) crime, whereas being a slave to a corporate boss who doesn't give two flicks about the female employee in question is somehow ok. To me this attitude reeks as a type of Stockholm Syndrome plus lots of cognitive dissonance. But maybe that's just me.

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*It is in my view, that Victorianism could be seen as a modern-age culture movement. Its "mores" are more a cartoon caricature of the traditional family and its values than an authentic expression of how traditional families manifested in the older agrarian nobility the Victorians fancied themselves as emulating. In a nutshell, Victorianism was cultural movement that came about as a modern industrial merchant-class (middle class) attempt to crudely approximate older aristocratic culture norms from previous eras. In essence, a very upright LARP. We could say this movement was something akin to the Hellenistic-era moralists like the Stoics trying to combat the decaying culture of their own era.

Not long after I first delved into the magical side of John Michael Greer’s (JMG) work, I began contemplating the idea of getting involved with organized Revival Druidry. Eventually, after about a year of somewhat-steady SOP practice and casual occult study, I joined the Ancient Order of Druids of America (AODA). However, to this day, I have yet to become active there, in terms of starting their curriculum, or getting involved in their online forum and chat group. I joined, thinking they were the last "sane" organization of this type still around. And by sane, I mean not totally overtaken by the woke mind virus that has consumed nearly every alt-spirituality organization. I figured that AODA came to be in its current form largely thanks to the great efforts of JMG in saving the order from near-death and rebuilding it into a robust and active organization. Granted, he rebuilt the order long before the general culture shifted its collective focus to politics away from non-political things. Before this shift (c. 2013), most organized human activities here in the US, be it hobbies, pop-culture fandoms, religious groups, sports clubs, ect. were primarily focused on whatever the actual purpose of their group was. The intrusion of outside politics tended to be minimal. Well, not so today!!

Vibes Do Tell

When I first signed up for AODA, I read over its literature quite meticulously so as to get an overall feel of the organization’s “vibe.” I tend to be very cagey and cautious when it comes to getting involved with any new group. Being already quite familiar with Revival Druidry, what I read in the literature wasn’t all that surprising. But a few things rubbed me the wrong way. I could tell that the overall group culture leaned pretty far to the left. The typical “progressive” and “PC” values were right there, front and center, though not in any kind of aggressive or obnoxious form. There was no obvious “Cultural Marxism” (i.e. “oppressor vs. oppressed” demographic conflict rhetoric) that has become the mainstay of most of the Neopagan scene in recent years. But I saw the seeds of this eventual intrusion lying in wait. It was clear much of the membership base came from the typical middle-class “PMC” university-educated background. People in this cultural bubble are usually dialed into the ubiquitous Neoliberal mass media echo chamber, and thus their political and cultural beliefs on any given day tend to be whatever the mainstream media feeds them; even if last month’s “news” totally contradicts this week’s “news.” Granted, conservatives are dialed into their own media echo chamber, and their own “news” parroting behavior is very little different from that of the left’s. But I don’t have space or patience to further explore the topic of media critique, so I’ll leave that off right here.

Woke Progressivism Consumes All

So even that vibe didn’t deter me from considering to start the curriculum at some point. But life got in the way and various duties and distractions became a barrier to me being able to devote my undivided attention to what would be a very involved grade-advancement process. So that non-active state persisted for many months as I kept weighing the pro’s and con’s of getting involved. And then one day, on one of these Ecosophia-adjacent DW blogs, I read an interesting comment that suggested something I had suspected would eventually happen to AODA. To paraphrase the comment, “AODA is currently imploding from wokeness.” Of course, I must acknowledge that this was an anonymous comment, and taken at face value, is merely a rumor coming from one person who claims to be a member of the group. Since I’m not involved in the group’s discussion spaces, I have no real way of conforming or denying the rumor. But, if there is any truth to the rumor, I have to say I’m not surprised at all. Circling back to the group’s literature, I remember quite clearly being a bit off-put by overall writing style of the contributing authors: the sheer amount of wishy-washy relativism, permissiveness (the seeming urge to be 'inclusive' of everything under the sun that doesn’t oppose progressivism), and general female-orientation to the whole affair. These attributes are quite typical of new age, neopagan, and alt-spirituality groups in this era; all which are cultural offshoots of the 1960’s counterculture. Basically, the Druid Revival in its current form, despite its “Mesopagan” roots, is firmly adjacent to the Neopagan scene; one that happens to be in a state of full-blown collapse right now. Thus I’ve concluded that it's a not good idea to get involved with any of these groups right now, as they've all been infected by the aforementioned woke virus, which itself seems to be merely a symptom of the collapse of the Neoliberal Order, and the Professional-Managerial Class (PMC) which serves as the overseer class of this regime. Because of these monumental cultural forces at play, I’m loathe to blame the leadership of these DR organizations for what’s currently happening. The current Grand Archdruid of AODA seems like a very nice and wise person. But she can’t control the kind of media and other pop-culture influences the broader membership consumes on a daily basis. She can’t control which friends, family, and work colleagues each member fraternizes with. After all, one of the central ethical planks of Revival Druidry is to not employ the methods of mind-control cults!! At the end of the day, people are going to do what they are going to do, and in reality this usually means going along with whatever herdthink prevails among one’s own subculture or social class.

So, HYPOTHETICALLY, if say 65% of AODA's membership goes woke and starts demanding the leadership make woke ideology the organization’s main stated purpose for existing, there’s nothing the leadership can do except, (a) capitulate to the mob’s demands and make the organization officially woke, which is what happened to ADF, (b) resign and walk away, leaving the organization in the hands of a new woke leadership, or (c) immediately purge all the wokesters and brace for impact; (d) quietly disband the organization and wait for all the culture war insanity to die down before re-forming the group. Unless the leadership has an iron cohones, super thick skin (not afraid of hurting people’s feelings), and knack for decisiveness, (c) ain’t going to happen, and probably not (d) either. Option (c) seems rather un-Druidly anyway, since the leader would have to become a Grand Inquisitor and devote their time and energy to engaging in counter-witchhunts. A weak or negligent leader will often go with (a), naively thinking they can appease the mob and comply their way out of mass hysteria. It’s perhaps (b) which would be the most foolish choice of all, as it will result in wokesters taking over and essentially destroying the organization and its brand/symbolism, and possibly contaminating the group’s egregore to the point of no return. Overall, it seems like anything but (d) is the makings of a lose-lose situation.

Without Groves, What's the Point?

On a more personal note, even if AODA wasn't compromised (which may be the case still, as I'm going on just a rumor), I still think that participating probably wouldn't give me much more than I'd get from self-study and self-initiation. The organization itself is rather small and as a result there's very few local groves that actually exist. One of the big advantages I'd see from joining a Druid Order would be the opportunity to be part of a local grove. But, fearing the aforementioned rumor is likely true to some extent, getting involved with a local grove probably wouldn't be all the helpful or desirable for me given the sort of left-progressive culture that permeates these groups. No, I most certainly don't want to be a part of any human activity where I have to constantly walk on eggshells around the other participants, out of fear of saying something "offensive" to whatever The Current Thing deems offensive this week. And if I'm really looking for peer support in this work, I honestly think at this point the Ecosophia/MM commentariat is more than sufficient.

Going Along to Get Along vs. Going Against the Grain

To reiterate something I was getting at above, I think even the best and well-meaning organizations within the Neopagan/Alt-Spirituality fold are essentially defenseless against the woke onslaught. It's not so much these groups get "infiltrated" by wokesters; rather it's the membership base that has been in these groups all along is constantly downloading mental "software updates" via their preferred media echo chamber, and what typically happens is that next week the The Current Thing updates to some new cause-du-jour, and the rank and file start making demands on the leadership to "take a stand" against whatever The Current Thing is raging at the moment. If the leadership is evasive or does nothing, an even bigger stink is made until they capitulate; if still nothing is done, some kind of split or schism with the group happens and the "old faction" which refuses to get with the times is quickly denounced as being complicit or sympathetic with whatever the mob happens to be shrieking about, thus the “brace for impact” quip above. I think in most cases, otherwise-well-meaning leadership is weak or simply afraid of negative publicity or people being offended, thus they fold. And thus another one bites the dust.

Sadly, I believe the Druid Revival (as a group activity) will not survive the cultural collapse we’re going through right now. If it’s to re-form some time in the future after the dust finally settles, it must rise from the ashes in a new form; a form that is as distant as possible from anything reeking of Neopagan, New Age, Boomerism, or Neoliberal “Progressive” aesthetics and values.

I was reminded again today during a "debate" on some other platform, that the so-called "Alt Right" is just as bad as the Woke Left. The only thing that makes them less annoying than Woke Progressives, is the fact the Alt Right currently enjoys zero institutional power/influence. So arguing with them is harmless, in that whenever they lose arguments (their ideas are complete garbage, so they always lose to anyone who can slap together a coherent string of statements) they have no sympathetic internet hall monitors to cry to in order to get your account blacklisted or banned from whatever social platform you might be interacting with them on. But hypothetically, if these people were to be in a position of real power, they would probably be just as terrible and authoritarian as the Woke Left is right now when it comes to the exercise of that power.

Now, I do have to say that I used to lurk on some forums and other spaces where Alt Right people would hang out, particularly the "Chan" boards. But this was during the 2014-2017 era, back when the memes originating from the Chans were pretty funny and edgy, and largely spread around the internet in an ironic manner as a pushback against the initial emergence of Woke ideology into the cultural mainstream. After around 2017, with Trump firmly in office, Alt Right memes became stale and played out. By this time, anyone remaining too far to the Right openly found themselves banned from mainstream social media platforms and thus shunted into their own little echo-chambers. And like with any small echo-chamber, an atmosphere of shrill insularity is what results. I find such places to be utterly boring and obnoxious.

Identity Politics vs. the Intellect

Both the far Left and Right ideological camps are each built on shaky foundation of identity politics (idpol). For the Wokesters, it's class-based (PMC) idpol masquerading as various "civil rights" causes which ostensibly exist for the benefit of whatever grab-bag of "underprivileged" demographic groups are currently en-sympathy-vogue among the PMC-Left. And for one particular noisy corner of the Alt Right, the "White Identitarians," it's race-based, and focused on a collectivized "Whiteness" not too dissimilar from what Wokesters today like to focus their rage-energies on. This mentality assumes anyone living in the US who is of primarily European ancestry, must have the same political interests and cultural preferences (this is obviously not the case). Proponents of this particular idpol flavor seem to express the idea that within this homogenous "White" identity, there are no important class or cultural differences (also completely wrong). But I don't have enough space in this brief essay to go into the ins-and-outs of these bad beliefs. I want to instead focus on the main theme one might quickly come across when interacts with these people.

Besides the usual gratuitous racist rhetoric, the main expressive theme is Antisemitism. It's a totally unavoidable stink in those corners of the internet. Spend just five minutes in an Alt Right online space and you'll soon see the Jews being blamed for everything and anything wrong with the world; particularly things involving the downfall of Western Civilization. Of course, never mentioned are any problems with the Western culture itself, nor any acknowledgment of the natural rise/fall cycles every single civilization and culture is subject to, nor the acknowledgment that European Jews are in fact a subculture within the fold of Western civilization. Many of these Alt Righters seem to believe that "Jews" collectively lord over them like a privileged aristocracy. Taken further, "the Jews" are said to engage in all sorts of illicit and debased activities that of course go totally unacknowledged and unpunished. I won't get into the gory details, but I will simply say that many of these accusations are quite reminiscent of the "blood libel" hysteria so common in Medieval Europe. As someone of partial Jewish ancestry, this rhetoric of course rubs me the wrong way, to put it lightly.

Original Sin was always a Stupid Idea

I see the "Blame the Jews" rhetoric as being the mother of all "ancestral guilt" narratives. I see ANY narrative of this type as being a combination of wrong, evil, and stupid. But of course the proponents of these narratives always employ some permutation of the Special Pleading Fallacy to convey the idea that their own brand of hateful garbage is uniquely correct! The Woke Left today has taken the Ancestral Guilt Narrative and turned it onto different set of collective abstractions: "White people" and "whiteness." Though of course the American Woke Left is mostly White, and by that, they don't include themselves as being "White People" in this context. Well, I think this is because it's not actually racial hatred toward Whites as a whole that's at play here, but rather it's class hatred, despite what the more naïve elements of the Right might believe. When Wokesters screech about "White People" what they really mean is White People from the less privileged classes of society, i.e. non-PMC white people. You know, the Deplorables, the Rednecks, the inhabitants of the country's interior "flyover" states who consistently vote the wrong way, ect. But I digress much.

Finally, the racist/antisemitic corner of the Dissident Right so easy volunteer themselves, like the clueless dupes they are, as a ready-made boogeyman/strawman; one that gives the Neoliberal establishment and its corporate media bullhorn an easy villain for its PMC flock to fear as some sort of imminent and credible threat (which of course they are not). The Alt Right volunteer themselves as the the prefect rallying cry to bring unity to what's otherwise a morally-bankrupt and increasingly-degenerate cultural aristocracy. The emerging Populist movement has woken up to the fact that the PMCs hates their guts, though they tend to lack the precise language of class analysis to make crystal clear sense of what's actually going on (i.e. they think it's "Libtards" who are out to get them). Thankfully, most of the Populists are too good-natured to sink to the low of responding in kind to the PMCs with counter-bigotry. No, it's mostly just the Alt Right (who are rebel PMCs for the most part) who do that.

Lastly, I do realize there are other corners and factions of the Dissident Right, and ones that have more interested and nuanced ideas from that of the popular conception of the Alt Right. Maybe I'll get into those groups another time. Though, despite a few observational insights or worth to be found within, I find their ideas to also be intellectually-bankrupt, for the most part.

Historically, pre-Christian polytheistic religions of Europe were all about the tribe, the clan, the family, and the land. There was no such thing as social atomization or abstract notions of individualism back in those days. The people around back then would have seen atomized living arrangement as being totally alien to their own way of life and probably an abomination. Most of the attempts of our atomized contemporaries to practice the the Old Ways (in which connection to the land has long been severed from the everyday reality of the ordinary person) is just a recipe for the "religion" being little more than some petty intellectual or aesthetic indulgence, or some weekend diversion for bored, affluent people.

If we're to rekindle the "real deal" today, it seems like we must form new “tribes” and “clans” based on the practical and spiritual needs of today; as opposed to looking only to the past to get a sense of tribal identity. In Europe, clans ceased to exist as tribalism gave way to feudalism and the ideological hegemony of the Roman Church. Yes, there were a few mostly-Celtic nooks and crannies where clan societies held on for quite awhile, but this was the exception, not the rule once Christianity spread and took over everything in its path. Christendom became the great tribe, and the church parish and the fiefdom/lordship became the replacement for the clan. Nobility Peerages became the class-tribes of landed aristocrats.

Guilds, Fellowships, and Fraternities

As Europe urbanized and became affluent, the trade guild functioned as the de-facto clan organization for artisans and merchants. The industrial revolution eventually rendered those associations obsolete, as machine-driven mass production replaced handcraft as the primary means of producing goods. In 19th century America, a great variety of Fraternal Orders and Mutual Aid societies sprung up to fulfill the needs of the people. These fellowships and brotherhoods did a remarkable job of instilling clan-like community bonds in the hearts, souls, and hands of Americans. These organizations operated in tandem with the countless church denominations that altogether formed the basic foundation of American social life. Eventually those associations mostly disappeared thanks to the runaway growth of centralized government and the many social "services" this behemoth now doles out to people who are financially destitute or between gigs and without much in the way of family support. Because of the metastatic growth of impersonal bureaucratic institutions, people have had less and less of a practical need for intimate social networks.

From a psychological and spiritual perspective, such a development has most certainly been not a good one! We could say that humans are wired to thrive in small trust networks consisting of people whom one has established face-to-face relationships with. The face connection usually ensured some sort of system of natural accountability is in place. We can use the Old English word Frith to describe this type of relationship.

Peace is a product of Reciprocal Relationships

Frith is often mistranslated as “peace.” Peace is certainly an aspect of Frith, but it’s nothing approaching the whole concept. Frith is a state of social stability and general wellbeing that results from mutually-beneficial (i.e. reciprocal) relationships between people belonging to a community. Because we lack no concise term for this concept in Modern English, trying to elaborate on Frith without a singular term becomes quite the mouthful of abstractions. Frith was in essence the social contract of our ancestral societies. Under this arrangement, things like rights and liberties have corresponding duties and obligations. One must give to receive, and vice versa. Outside the protection of the community, lofty abstractions like “rights” and “the law” simply didn’t exist. The English word “outlaw” used to literally mean a person outside of the law. In other words, without the benefits of belonging to the community, the only law for the outlaw was the law of the jungle.

Regarding all of the wanton 'woke' craziness and apparent mass-psychosis that's painfully apparent right now to anyone even barely paying attention to unfolding events, it does really seem like the whole Progressive Liberal ideology is on its loud and abrupt way out. When any dogmatic belief system is on its last legs, the inner core of its true believers tend to behave crazier and crazier until the craziness of their whole mode of thinking is impossible for outside observers to ignore.

And might this signal the twilight and gradual decline of materialist-liberalism as a whole? (which of course has been established long before the shrill-moralistic and 'woke' variants escaped from the lab). Perhaps. This could really be the beginning of the end for the liberal project which has been going on for the past four centuries in the Western world. In practice, Liberalism served as the secular replacement of the medieval Christian worldview. At its very core, any liberalism unaccompanied by adherence to an established religion, constitutes a worldview devoid of metaphysical coherence. And thus Secular Liberalism had to adopt other 'gods' once the Christian concept of divinity was wholly jettisoned into the void. The main 'gods' of this pseudo-religion are Progress, Materialism, and the Hedonistic-Utilitarian view on what exactly constitutes happiness and 'good.'

Liberal-Progressivism worships these principles, but it's not the only version of liberalism which does. There are other sects of the so-called 'Church of Progress.' And I believe that all of them will be making their exit-stage-left-and-right right after Woke Progressivism finishes imploding. These other sects will probably each take their respective leave with a ton less fanfare though.

One in particular has been on my radar for quite some time: the mostly-apolitical ideology I call "Consumerist Americanism." Which is, the idea that if you as an honest and hard-working American do your part in being a dutiful wage slave or cubicle serf and worship every new consumer trend and techno-gizmo that hits the market, then the 'American Dream' of our collective mythology just might land in your lap. Before American popular culture started shifting to 'culture war' politics around 2014-2015, it was this Consumerist Americanism that was the default mode of being across most sectors of America.

We see now especially on the new Populist Right (and maybe among some principled left-leaning people too), people turning against many facets of Consumerist Americanism: Hollyweird celebrity culture, cynical 'woke' corporate PR, Corporate Karen busybodies who populate the HR departments of the largest corporations, the mainstream media as a whole, a monstrously-bloated and irredeemably corrupted academia, and especially the Silicon Valley tech giants and the soy-fed 'woke' technocrats who run them. Sure, there are some aspects of Trumpist Populism that echo some of the old Consumer-Jingoist sentiments, but as a whole there seems to be a real shift away from that underway.

Among the new populists there seems to be the realization that further advances in tech just means more surveillance and more censorship, and the erosion of freedoms that results from such 'advances.' Basically, tech = big brother and the enslavement of humanity to ghastly machine-things. Maybe within 5-10 years, no one except the most ardent holdout believers in techno-progress will still have an 'Alexa' listening/spy device sitting in their living room? I would wager that as the Boomer generation continued to die off, some kind of sane middle-ground between Tech-worship and Ludditism will become more mainstream.

IMO, the biggest hypocritical feature of this fading, largely-astroturfed Consumerist Americanism is the pseudo-libertarianism of its adherents; the silly notion that one is living a life of "freedom" by spending 9 hours a day doing some form of mindless and/or humiliating bureaucratic paper-pushing, all to enjoy the 'freedom' of living in a poorly-built McHouse in some pre-fab suburban subdivision completely bereft of anything resembling real community; a place an inhabitant will be promtply ejected from after missing just a couple mortgage payments, without many of the neighbors seeming to notice or care.

Hopefully whatever American civic culture or ideology comes to replace the fading one will actually value real freedom and less reliance on faceless bureaucratic entities. My one prediction is that working with one's hands is indeed a fine and honorable way of existing, and living a simpler life with less stuff, will become cherished values.

One of the greatest cliches out there in the land of political discourse is the idea that something called "the people" is a meaningful representation of anything that actually operates in the real world.

Let's try a little thought experiment and entertain the idea that there is in fact no such thing as "the people"....that perhaps such an utterance is silly, near-meaningless abstraction; and more often that not, this utterance that is little more than a emotional slogan; one that has for a long time been a favorite of agitation propagandists and rabble-rousers.

On the contrary, We could say that in actuality (empirically), people and peoples are sorted into factions, tribes, ethnic groups, religious sects, priesthoods, socio-economic classes, cultures, subcultures, ideological cults, professional societies, oligarch cliques, ect. Each of these groupings has their own collective interests and that "real politics" when shorn of all its bloviating, moralistic pretensions, is the process of negotiating and mediating the often-conflicting interests of these groups.

And by this, "the state" is nothing the enforcement arm of whatever coalition of the above type of groups happen to exert the most control over it at any given time. "The state" itself is just an administrative abstraction.