/lit/ - Literature

The only thing stopping the use of violence in Western politics at this point is lack of imagination.

Like, what if I'm a mayor or a governor and someone is getting in my way. What's to stop me from simply having him killed? Especially at the level of governor. If you rule an entire state there is almost nothing stopping you at this point from using bloodshed to cement your grip on power. Civil restraints have been rolled back. Limits on police power have been rolled back. Manners and customs of democratic nicety are gone.

Why not just respond to someone challenging you by shooting them in the head?

Quaint, kindly old Boomers are the last vestige of civic norms left in this country, and I guarantee that as they start to die, open violence will increasingly be used as a political solution at the local, state, and national level. We may even see the US military deployed against American citizens who are causing problems for the State. In fact, I'd predict that easily.

The reason that we're stuck in stasis, in Fukuyama's "end of history," is that everyone is afraid to move forward after how bloody the 20th Century was. World War I, the Russian Revolution, World War II, the Holocaust, the proxy wars of America and the Soviets, the Chinese ethnic cleansing, the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, the Rwandan genocide. The 20th Century was the bloodiest century in history in terms of number of lives lost.

And I think that one big reason for the "end of history" is that everybody knows, deep in their gut, that to move history forward would require yet more bloodshed. How does history move forward? Through war, revolution, and dynastic overthrow. Through the sweeping aside of an old culture, an old order, and through replacing it with a new culture, a new order. This always, inevitably, involves bloodshed. Involves killing. It's almost never bloodless. Indeed, we may say that, most of the time, the gears of history are lubricated with blood.

But the memory of the 20th Century looms large. So no one wants history to keep moving, because if it keeps moving, there will be more blood spilt. It's inevitable. Hence the stasis, which at least is largely peaceful.

But as World War II and the Cold War recede further into the background, people will get fed up with stasis. They'll want to get things moving again. So history will start up again, and there will be more spilling of blood.

The first person in the modern West who responds to a political dispute by killing their opponent will reap great reward, but also usher in the new dark ages.

I feel like all the modern West has built to this. The removal of Christianity and its restraints. The polarization of society along political lines. The frustration with established political parties. The rise of unconvential politcal figures who flout rules and decorum, from Macron to Boris Johnson to Trump to Duterte. A general feeling of anger and wrath bubbling among the common people.

I really do think we're not far from some mayor or governor or regional leader responding to a serious challenge from a rival by having them and their associates killed. Everyone associates this with barbarism that has no place in the modern West. But how civilized is the West, these days? How civilized are we, really?

I think we are not at all far from a Western politician ordering his opponents to be killed. And that will make him very powerful because it will be a shocking event, something not seen in the Western world since the rise of Hitler. But it will also usher in the new dark age in the West because all vestiges of politeness will be removed and everyone will seek any advantage they can, up to and including simply killing their rivals for power.

>>19595980
Oh, I don't know, Anon. It seems to me that the question is: how much army can you muster? And how much blood are you willing to spill?

It seems to me that if the Third Positionists had a flaw in the past, it is the flaw you identify: they weren't ruthless enough. They weren't bloodthirsty enough.

Perhaps that is a flaw that could be rectified. After all, if the communists and the fascists are willing to do a lot of killing, maybe three could play that game? Seems only fair.

I do think the World War I guy is not wrong to imagine that things can swirl out of control really quickly, especially on a continent the size of North America.

Think about this scenario, I think it's not implausible:

1. President of one party gets elected.
2. States of the other party loudly dislike him.
3. President of the one party sends officials on a delegation to one of the opposing states.
4. Weird radicals in the opposing s tate ambush the delegation and kill them, including killing the representative from the federal government
5. Federal government chimps out, sends in national troops
6. States from surrounding area see a general activation, militia members and armed groups move into area to fight federal government they see as illegitimate
7. Casualties on both sides, conflict escalates, drawing in wider and wider territory, wider and wider swath of the population
8. US military proper begins to get involved

I don't see how this is at all unrealistic. But it's a recipe for complete disaster. It would rapidly make industrial society on the North American continent impossible. Things could really get out of hand fast based on an event that potentially involves just a handful of individuals.

>>19516167
>>19516172
>>19516326
>>19516329
Do you people ever feel ashamed of yourselves? How do you feel, knowing you come to a board and actively lower its quality?

>>19162044
This annoys me so much I'm tempted to try and rewrite it. I have some work to do, if the thread's up in another hour or two I might take a stab at it.

I feel that things are coming unmoored in the West in a way nobody fully appreciates yet. The current ruling subset pulled out every last stop to destroy Trump, but in the process they basically showed all their colors and burned all their trust among the masses. The virus has done whatever the reaction to Trump didn't do. It feels like there is simply no longer a question of legitimacy any more. It's a matter of: can you take power and hold it? That's all that matters. It doesn't matter who has a "right" to anything or not, where politics or even basic law are concerned.

I think this will begin to amplify in the coming years and decades in both North American and Europe. In North America, for example, I think it will be increasingly likely that states and armed militias defy the federal government. We may even see armed groups taking over states. What's to stop someone with a sufficient amount of military hardware from seizing a state capitol and declaring himself governor? There is no longer any expectation of legitimacy, so it's a matter of taking power and holding it. If you can do that, that's all that matters.

In Europe it will be trickier because the population doesn't have as ready access to firearms. But I expect certain members of their militaries to get ambitious. The French military has threatened a coup. The German military is infested with Neo-Nazis. I expect overthrow of at least one civilian government in Europe within the next decade.

All the trust and credibility that the people in power had has been pissed away for the last 12 years, and now I think their status at the top is going to be increasingly threatened. They'll have to deploy outright violence to keep it, but violence is a game their opponents can play, too.

Every serious right-winger is being watched by the FBI or the NSA, because every serious right-winger refuses to disavow violence as a solution to problems.

I mean, fuck, that's the conclusion everyone who reads de Maistre comes to, right? "King, Pope, and Hangman" as the triad which maintains civilization. Every serious right-winger views the spilling of blood as inevitable, and even occasionally preferable. As you might imagine the State gets very ansty about such people. It's all fun and games until the talk turns to guns.

I remain somewhat gobsmacked that this dude is going on about this branding exercise of being a writer despite not actually writing anything. I mean, he's so well-developed. His photos are all good quality. His outfits are chosen very carefully. He clearly hires someone who knows about photography. Yet he has nothing of note to his name as far as writing or poetry. Even his attempt at making himself a brand seems to be falling flat, because I've literally never heard of him before coming to /lit/. He doesn't exactly trend on Twitter, you know? Does anyone actually know who Waldun is, anyone who matters?

I think war with the Chinese is inevitable and it will go immensely badly for China. They will do something stupid like invade Taiwan and it will result in them getting skullfucked.

Japan is about to sign a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. The Chinese have responded to this by declaring they will nuke Japan if it defends Taiwan, which is going to cause the Japanese to double down and support Taiwan that much harder, since they've hated China for their entire existence.

So that, right there, is a locus point. Japan is an ally the US cannot afford to lose. Japan is pledging to defend Taiwan from China. If China invades Taiwan and Japan comes to its aid the US is dragged into a war with China whether it wants it or not.

And what really gets fun is when you consider who the US can count on as allies of convenience. China has made no friends in East Asia from its behavior. In fact, under Xi, it has managed to piss off even the nations that it was trying to cozy up to before. The Philippines are a perfect example of this. Duterte is nominally an ally of China, but China's behavior in the South China Sea has infuriated the Filipino government and driven it back into the arms of the United States, whether Duterte likes it or not. Xi's arrogance and belligerance means the US has its pick of allies of convenience. If there is a war between China and the United States, then the US can count on at least logistical support from: South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines.

Then there's India. India HATES China and would love to see it knocked down a peg. It will be an ally of convenience for the United States overnight in any war. And India can instantly open up a second front for China along the Western and Southwestern border of the country.

Finally, there's Russia. Will Russia help the US defeat China? No. But will Russia actively help the Chinese? I'd bet not. Speaking of allies of convenience, Russia is one for China. Don't forget that China has made motions towards claiming some of Russia's Far East, in Siberia. Putin would probably not mind at all if China were badly wounded, even defeated.

And yet, despite all this, China is gearing up to invade Taiwan anyway. Because they're proud, and stupid, and impatient, under Xi.

War is coming and it's not one China wins. It's one they lose, badly.

I used to write a ton of fanfiction and I still do write the occasional short fanfic. One thing I have gradually learned is that nothing attracts high-level autists like fanfiction. You think this or that work of original fiction, this or that book or cartoon or film, attracts autistic fans? You don't know the half of it. No, the true autists are the ones who congregate into fandoms of the FANFICS about those original stories. That is the true face of weapons-grade autism. I have encountered more weirdos, freaks, retards, degenerates, and insane people related to fanfiction than I ever have to anything else. No original story attracts these people like fanfiction does.

I can't help but feel as though the modern world is on the precipice of great violence and great killing. Maybe what China is doing with the Uighurs is merely the start. It feels like there is this simmering, terrible, ugly hate that brews beneath North America, South America, and Europe right now, and maybe Africa too. I feel like, I have a premonition, that some one thing, some one event, is going to happen, and it is going to cause a great killing and immense death. Civil war, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, all that stuff. I feel like it's really close, and something is going to happen that triggers an orgy of it in the developed and developing world. I can't help but feel there is great bloodshed and deliberate death in our future.

>democracy is not far from tyranny

No, Plato is not wrong at all, and he accurately predicts what happens in any genuine democracy.

If you are going to hold up the United States as a counterexample, the United States has only been a real, true democracy for about 60 or 70 years. For most of its history, the United States was a species of government that is probably best described as "aristocratic republic." That is, there were elements of the common people having a say in government, but the inherited elite had a large amount of checks on the level of control the masses could assert. This took various forms in the United States: there was the caucus system, which limited and specialized participation in politics at the local level. There were restrictions on voting rights, limiting the franchise. There was the fact that the Senate for a long time was not voted on by the people. There was the Electoral College for the presidency.

Many of these restrictions on the participation of the people have been stripped away in the last 60 or 70 years. So the United States is much more of a democracy than it was at its founding. And what has happened to us as a result? Well, you can see for yourself.

You DO know how big your penis is, right, /lit/? Have you measured it? Have you bothered to measure it at its full size, for those of you who are growers rather than showers?

The crucial element of feudalism is a sense of binding obligations. Peasants are bound to their knights, knights are bound to their dukes and barons, dukes and barons are bound to their king. And these bonds can't be broken, they must be honored.

I'm not sure you could have a system like that these days, based on obligation to render aid with the force of law.

All of the stupid performative bullshit, all of the social media nonsense, all of the woke bullshit, all of the grifting by shitty right-wing celebrities, all of the podcasts, all of the nonsense... it's all going to end when people start getting killed.

There is going to be great and ugly killing in the United States. It's going to be partly racial, partly class-based. It's going to be mostly grounded on left-wing versus right-wing, but there will still be some fluidity among the sides. But what is absolutely certain is that there is going to be a huge amount of just butchery in the United States. People are going to start killing each other in major cities, and even in small cities and small towns. This is what a lot of people are not prepared for and it will horrify them and disturb them. Everybody lost their shit with the sack of the Capitol this past January but it is nothing compared to the butchery that is coming.

And it will shake everyone to their cores, it will terrify the Zoomers, the Millennials, the Gen Xers, the Boomers. No one will believe that it is happening, everyone will initially do a lot of social media posting, like what was happening before the killing. Everyone will be in a state of shock, thinking, no way this is real, right? But then their own friends and neighbors will start getting attacked and killed by right-wing or left-wing death squads, and they will become terrified, and frightened. All the Zoomers who posted political memes on TikTok will see people their own age shot to death and rotting and bleeding, with oozing bloody organs, in the streets, and something inside all of them will break that will not be repaired.

And there will be a great upheaval, and America will probably have its government overthrown in the process, and the entire global order of things will change. And Fukuyama will finally be proven the liar at last, as history moves again.

All of this will happen and we will all be alive to see it. The gears of history are lubricated with blood. Mars stands for WAR.