Two new initialisms to consider: ASS and ASSS.

The American constitutional order is made up of the several states, united, and a limited federal government, consisting of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.

But that’s the paper order.

The real order of the United States is a military-industrial complex conservatorship, with the federal government not serving the states but itself, first snd foremost, and buying off the populace with bennies, secondarily. This Nation State is made up of two post-constitutional elements, primarily:

1. The American Security State [ASS], consisting of the Pentagon and what we call the Deep State, and

2. The American Social Security System [ASSS], consisting of the biggest “domestic” budgets, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — and closely allied programs.

Between ASS and ASSS, Americans are put into subject status, serviles to a bureaucratic and military order. 

Both would have to be demolished for Americans to be free.

twv

Winnie the Pooh is a (fictional) female bear. “Winnie,” after all, is a feminine name.

Humpty Dumpty is not an egg in the original (satirical) verse.

The United States is not a nation. They constitute a political union, and even the Constitution makes this quite clear. Of course, nationalists — like George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln — pushed ”national” union, but their pushes are wishes, not truth. These United States contain many nations, and those nations are becoming increasingly froward and prone to disunion.

It is quite possible to make associations that belie original intention and even reality. Most people think of Winnie the Pooh as a silly boy bear, Humpty Dumpty as a broken shell of an eggman, and the U.S. as a nation. Most people are wrong.

But in the realm of myth, error’s easy.

twv

America’s decline is, as Anoop Verma says, probably irreversible:

Due to the excessive projection of American military power, many nations (including those in Europe) could not build their own military might — they became dependent on America and could not develop a regional balance of power. As the American economy and culture continue to decline (a process that I believe is irreversible), America will be forced to cut down its military expenses. The disappearance of American military power will create in several parts of the world a geopolitical vacuum, which other powers will rush in to fill. This could lead to a series of new conflicts which could go on for decades.

But a precarious, dying empire’s last graspings at power and security can be very dangerous.

A note of caution: the extent of American military predominance also includes secret/top-secret installations — of technology such as the fabled 20-foot-long/one-foot-diameter tungsten rods from outer space, much talked about in the military journals. This Project Thor toolkit is devastating in its firepower, rivaling and even beating thermonuclear devices. I suspect (and the military-watchers concur, as far as I can tell) that this technology is now in place, skirting with technicalities the existing space treaties preventing the militarization of space. No warheads. Just shrapnel, so to speak. Ha-ha! But traveling many times the speed of sound, and going deeper than surface-exploding nukes can go.

I bring this up not to contradict Mr. Verma, but to put a wrinkle on his overview of the present situation. The U.S. Deep State likely possesses far more strength than the legitimate forces of the U.S. It has a number of reasons — quite a number, actually: not small at all — to keep its most advanced weaponry secret. There is even some reason to believe that some of the secret weapons have been used for defensive and offensive purposes and kept hushed up. (For example, the real antagonism between the U.S. and North Korea may be almost nothing like what reaches the papers. Shots may have already been fired and counter-measures taken.)

So, this Deep State military overlordship is likely a huge part of America’s actual complexion of military relations. How much does it make actual diplomacy a mere show? I don’t know. But the stronger and more secretive Deep State arsenals and technology are, the less likely the U.S. is to fall from dominance, though when the dollar goes, the American Deep State could just possibly do something marvelous and awesome and disturbing: completely break away. But would Americans and the world know when that happens? If we refuse to recognize the extent of Deep State operations, the development of a new form of international power could occur almost entirely in the background.

As anyone who has read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress knows, command of orbital space is a huge political advantage, the ultimate sheer-force-based hegemony. If the Deep State already has a huge military advantage in orbit, then this puts the world order in a somewhat new light. The reason for secrecy is obvious. . . . But, as reasonable as skepticism is about all this, the evidence for secret tech within the Deep State is not insignificant. Indeed, the whole bizarre UFO story may somehow be tied up with this. It could be one not-necessarily “alien” explanation for observed anomalies.

In the Alastor tales of Jack Vance, peace through overwhelming strength is obtained by the galactic leader called “the Connatic.” His overwhelming force is a military organization called, aptly, “the Whelm.” The Connatic does, in these stories, what neocons and Pentagon folks seem to be playing at today, but not to the pathetic effect of today’s military, but to an imagined perfection of a science fiction writer. If I am right about hidden, secret reserves of military power within the American Deep State, these assets are “in play” mainly behind the scenes as negotiating points, if at all. The problem is that the people who run them only can manage these resources because they are unknown. Once brought to the light of day, their huge advantage becomes subject to sabotage and espionage and even — in a possible future revolution — by the torches and pitchforks of an angry mob.

America’s Whelm is hampered by the secrecy, but that secrecy (if I am right about it) is also the source of its stability. Once the Secret Whelm becomes public — incorporated into the new Space Force, for example — then things become more turbulent. For instance, it would have to go under congressional control.

And that is the last thing the secret government would want. There is no way a truly effective Whelm could be controlled democratically.

twv

Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadows about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

P.J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991).

The late P.J. O’Rourke got this a bit wrong, I think. In a democracy, every citizen becomes both whore and whoremonger, hooker and john. Politicians are the procurers whom we hire. Politics is the art of trying to negotiate terms in which one plays the part of the client to be served more often than clients’ servicer — and since, historically, the number of transactions tends to increase in which one or the other is going to happen, and since the brothel house procurers take a cut each transaction, it is quite evident who, at net and in the end, gets . . .

Well, you complete the sentence.

twv

Oops, We Did It Again: Slavery

I was never much a fan of Britney Spears’ pop music. As the Nineties ended and the Aughts began, her music seemed to be everywhere. So I certainly heard a lot of it. That was a long time ago, and my memory for such things being so bad, I could be wrong to think that her popular image went from bubblegum/cheerleader type to slut/whore. She is nowhere near as popular as she once was, but she still regularly performs and, we are told, makes a lot of money. But one thing she does not have is her freedom. After a bout of recklessness and rebellion, she was placed under a conservatorship, and has been living as a slave to her family and managers.

This I gather from Tucker Carlson’s odd segment with Rose McGowan on Fox News, and the ramblings of Glenn Beck, who called Ms. Spear’s form of servitude “conservatoryship” and “conservativeship,” which was mighty peculiar.

But the whole story is mighty peculiar. This is a famous woman who is not allowed to marry, remove her implanted birth control device, or make her own business decisions. Her conservators run her life.

And here we thought slavery was not allowed in America, 13th Amendment and all.

Yet, we who love liberty know that slavery comes in several forms. Chattel slavery is not the only form. A conservatorship can be modified to serve in place of a whip and a deed of title.

Now we know one can be super-rich and a slave.

The modern form of slavery is indeed the conservatorship. We still walk around as adults, making decisions, working, etc. But we must pay exorbitant taxes, and our political and personal decisions — including about our health — are so circumscribed as to irrelevant. The native populations of most first world countries have settled into “negative growth,” and that is the result, perhaps, of the design of the system.

For some time now I have been saying that we do not live in a democracy or a republic, but under a military conservatorship. The American people know very little about what the Pentagon does, and the Pentagon and HUD have so cooked the books that spending and revenue into these two outfits of the United States Government are unknown — the amount of money that cannot be accounted for is about the same as the explicit federal debt. And then there is the bizarre aspect of our conservatorship: UFOs. The government has been lying to us about UFOs for years, and has engaged in an astounding degree of the control over our news media to mould public opinion to dutifully accept lies.

Indeed, I now suspect that one reason we now get these insane ideologies rolled out through our institutions, redefining how we think about slavery in terms of bizarre theories of race and power, is to distract us. From our current form of servitude. Why the witless 1619 Project? Critical Race Theory? All that buncombe? To control us all, to have us fight it out with each other. So that we do not notice how our lives and government are being run by the Deep State.

Sure, that is a conspiracy charge. A “theory.” A conjecture. I do not know it to be true. But we do know how corrupt and secrecy-based our government institutions are. Well, we have an inkling. As Jeremy Bentham said, secrecy is the tool of tyrants. Americans accept it because they have been moulded into serviles.

Slaves.

We should all sympathize with Britney Spears. For we are not unlike her.

We even elected a president — well, we are punished when we deny that we elected Biden, so let’s just say Biden was elected — who himself appears to be “managed” as if himself under a conservatorship.

It’s conservators all the way down.

And up.

twv