There is no victory

With a few, minor successes fighting back against the people who don't want the rest of us to go about our lives without sticking politics (of any sort) into everything, against the people who find the idea of "live and let live" (to any extent) abhorrent, some (like Milo) on the alt-right are encouraged and feel like now is the chance to defeat the crazy extreme left and that if they are defeated at the height of their power they will never come back.

lol.

I'm not going to try and argue why this sentiment is obviously silly. Instead I'll just muse about what is to be done, given that victory cannot be achieved.

I think the simple procedure of "Become Worthy, Accept Power, Rule" is one of the best things one can do, but for most people the first step is going to be insurmountable. I don't really know whether I personally could surmount that first step and become worthy, but I wouldn't bet on myself. Perhaps if I was more outgoing and had a local group to work with. So this path is a good one if you have any ambition of managing the decline and maybe increasing the chances of a full discontinuous leap back to the top of the staircase. It should certainly help you from getting stuck in the activist methods which are the source of the silly unfounded cheers and celebrations of a non-existent approaching victory.

I don't want to denounce those activists, it's another answer to the question of what to do, I just think they're silly and wasting effort. Milo is great entertainment, trolling is fun, and I'm sure LambdaConf will have some very interesting talks some of which I can watch recordings of later. In the best of worlds these efforts may actually succeed in slowing the enemy down a bit. But there will be no victory. Similarly if Mr. Trump manages to take the White House, we may get 8 glorious years of an executive with executive experience, but the very best-case scenario is we crawl back to a state of affairs similar to how things were in the late 80s. This would be a fine achievement since it would buy us at least another 8 years post-Trump, but it is almost as unrealistic as victory itself. So I'd only recommend going down this path of counter-activism if you have a knack and enjoyment for it. Though you might want to take lessons from the late Lee Kuan Yew about how to actually get things done. Do you even have a Party?

For most of us, I think the question of "what is to be done?" is simply nothing. Or rather, nothing as it relates to this particular fight. Find a purpose in life outside the fight and enjoy yourself. Make plans for being able to continue your life even when things go even further south. If they'd have me I think Singapore would be a great place to live. The Idaho Project is a variant of this in my mind too, though it also has aspects of the first approach when the project is done as a community. As a not very outgoing person, something like the Idaho Project on an individual scale appeals to me, but the reasoning for acting as a community and following a local mini King (who has no true authority once you give a call to the state legislators, media, or police...) doesn't persuade me. Yes, it is probably one of the safest places to survive a nuclear strike on the country. I don't particularly care about surviving such an event as that almost certainly eliminates the Singularity from becoming achievable in my lifetime.

In summary, communists are everywhere. Celebrating and anticipating total victory just because you've temporarily stopped the nearest ones from putting you up against the wall and firing is silly, but the fact you stopped them by tying their shoelaces together so they trip is great entertainment.

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Posted on 2016-04-12 by Jach

Tags: philosophy

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