The Brave New Security Apparatus: Predictions for 2116

On Saturday, February 13th, 2016, Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia died; I learned of this shortly after watching the 2015 film Sicario, a crime drama about the fading strength of law and order.

Scalia’s death adds an interesting spin to the current presidential election.  Scalia has been the steward of constitutional freedoms time and time again in 5-4 votes.  With a seat now open, the Democrats can attempt to push another activist judge who will manufacture positive rights out of the negative rights declared by the founding documents; she’ll turn the rules about what government can’t do into rules stating what government must do.  The Republican-controlled congress would stop this, but their resistance would be used to drum up a campaign of fear: They want to overturn Roe V Wade!  They want to take away your birth control!  They want to appoint a racist!  As ridiculous as this might sound given what the actual role and duties of the Supreme Court are, the electorate is stupid enough to fall for it.

The story will go that, if Donald Trump is elected, with a Republican Congress, he will appoint a Supreme Court Judge who will undermine all of the “human evolution” that has been achieved over the past fifty years.  The media machine will be more than happy to pump out their “concerns” over what this judge might do, activating a large swath of the population which would otherwise have stayed home on election day, thus guaranteeing a victory for the Democratic nominee; either Bernie Sanders, a communist who’s lived a life of profligate spending and poverty, or Hillary Clinton, a manipulative power broker who’s laughed over dead security agents, and her ability to free rapists from prison.  Regardless of which one wins, they’d then go on to appoint a radical – there’s even talk of appointing Barrack Obama himself.

Alternatively the Democrats might toss up a moderate for the vacated seat; this will be tempting to the Republican Congress, as it would allow for a Republican presidential victory; but a SCOTUS Judge serves for longer than the President, and arguably has a greater influence on the foundations of the Republic.  The moderate might slow the left-wing destruction of the civil liberties of this great nation, but he would not stop it; no matter how you slice it, this is a lose-lose scenario, and neither loss can be written off as acceptable.  Either way, this will be the death knell for the American Experiment.

The only correct solution is to draw a line in the sand – this far and no further! – and refuse all Obama appointees, and appeal to what little civic virtue remains amongst the voting public.  But that isn’t going to happen – and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter.  There is a sickness in the American people – in all of the West.  An auto-immune disorder which would prevent this last-stand from succeeding in the first place – and which would work to undermine it, even if it were victorious.

We’ll return to what that sickness is shortly.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

Sicario is a film about armed conflicts which ignore borders, transcend nationalism, and completely dispense with the idea of law and order.  This theme is summed up in its last line of dialogue:

You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now.
~Alejandro

The setting is that of the modern security apparatus; chain-link fences, plain concrete structures, isolated bases, and low-rent domiciles in unassuming neighbourhoods.  The soldiers don’t fight for beliefs; the covert operatives don’t seek after justice.  Legitimate government is a laughable concept, a petty conceit, a fairy tale; stability is the only aim; the urge to concentrate power into the hands of the few so that at least it’s predictable.

Medellin refers to a time when one group controls every aspect of the drug trade, providing a measure of order that we can control.  And until somebody finds a way to convince 20% of the population to stop snorting and smoking that shit, order’s the best we can hope for.
~Matt Graver

They operate under the pretense of the law, but hire outside, wet-work consultants when needed.  They resort to Machiavellian manipulations of their allies and subordinates, playing a zero sum game where anyone is expendable.  Their targets are identified by their power and influence, rather than by their criminality.  It is a world where everything and everyone is for sale, and either you play with the wolves – or you sell yourself to somebody who will keep you safe.  Probably.

This is the world people have asked for; one where Presidential Executive Orders are the norm, where polarization and identity politics rule, where people demand security – both physical and emotional – rather than the freedom to make mistakes.  It isn’t just the Left that’s doing this, either; the Right has a latent infection as well.

However, we’re not quite ready to discuss that yet.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

The future is going to belong to the Power Brokers.  CIA, Cartels, Sharia leaders, Corporations, Media Moguls, Lobbyists, African Generals with unlikely names – in many cases they’ll be invisible, known only to one another.  The heroes and villains on the media stream will be nothing but bit players in the larger fight for control.

The safety and security of the wealth-producing citizen won’t be a concern for this security state; those who are useful will be herded on to corporate-owned reservations, surrounded by razor wire and private security.  Outside you’ll find the free and impoverished proletariat; they’ll have no legal recourse when crimes are committed against their property or persons – and those who commit the crimes are as likely to be employed by the security state as they are not.

Within the reservations the corporate serfs will enjoy relative prosperity and comfort.  These communities, outgrowths of the present-day Corporate Campuses and Home Owners Association-run neighbourhoods, will enforce strict guidelines on personal conduct.  The primary – and only – goal of these reservations will be to maintain an obedient workforce.  Anything which threatens productivity will be outlawed; anything that ensures compliance will be tolerated.  The full extent of the familial breakdown is hard to predict – it is unlikely to be the sexually degenerate utopia which the Social Justice movement craves – but our present day world shows how weak the family has already become.

Fathers do nothing to protect the virtue of their daughters, instead they send them to college campuses where debauchery is the norm, along with a prescription for birth control pills which they received at the age of fourteen.  Primary schools have begun introducing sexually provocative material to prepubescent children, and while parents might occasionally protest, the situation is largely ignored.  Transsexualism is celebrated in the media, pushed on children, and speaking out against it runs the risk of being fired from one’s job.  The medical and psychological dangers of homosexuality are white washed, and any attempt at public morality is declared as oppressive.

On the one hand, hyper-sexualization is useful, as it distracts the public at large with hedonistic pleasures while undermining commitment and emotional bonds.  On the other, it results in expensive diseases and reduces the high-IQ population.  The reservations will likely achieve some sort of balance; policing tone and undermining family formation, while ensuring a steady supply of children through corporate-provided daycare and education.  Those who live on these reservations will be expected to maintain a certain standard of health, productivity, and ‘niceness’, and for this they will be kept in relative safety because they are owned.

Outside of the reservations, the proles will continue to degrade, providing warm bodies to fill servant positions, and cold bodies to prove that the security apparatus is accomplishing something.  In reality, there will be no law governing the proles; the laws will merely be used to trip up individuals, as a leveraging force to create informants, to expose petty crime rings so that a show of force can be justified.  The police officers who patrol these neighbourhoods won’t be corrupt in the traditional sense of bribery, but in power-seeking.  They will become a great threat to anyone trying to build successful lifestyles outside of the reservations; ranch owners, entrepreneurs, these will be the sorts of people who threaten the officers’ egos.

Poverty will be rampant, exacerbated and enabled by socialism in the form of corporate charity; advanced technology will allow enough wealth to keep the masses on subsistence.  Churches will continue to decline, becoming the domain of feel-good theologians and community organizers, while true religion remains latent in the background.

Meanwhile in the halls of power, lawlessness and assassinations will become the norm.  Soldiers will become cynics and mercenaries; the days of the Band of Brothers will be part of a mythological past.  Popular entertainment will continue to distract and degrade, with an ever-better skinner box, while intellectuals engage in navel-gazing and solipsism.  The Orcs will multiply, and any remaining decent men will learn how to defend themselves while avoiding the attention of the powers that be.

The majority will try to go along to get along.  They will talk up how wonderful they have it, before snorting some substance to forestall the tears.

Technology will continue to advance, albeit at a slower pace, but it will seldom be used for anything useful.  Rolling blackouts will be the norm due to copper-wire theft.  Corporations will be run by the manipulative and amoral, not by businessmen or visionaries.  Books will become rare and valuable commodities.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

None of this needs to occur, but it will occur, because of that memetic sickness that’s running rampant: the philosophy of Individualism.

The great irony of Individualist philosophy is how similar all of its adherents appear.  Each one is decked out in ironic t-shirts, they have neon-coloured hair, they yell out their opinions in a desperate plea for attention – and yet each special snowflake is the same.

The Social Justice Warriors shout out the ideology which they were taught in school; questioning every authority except the one that told them what to think.  They reject rigid conformity, but through doing so they become exactly like every other individual, adrift in a culture of solipsism and immediate gratification.  The same substrate is apparent in the political right, where individuals prove how individualistic they are by reacting to the the slogans of the left, and becoming the manufactured opponent the Social Justice Warriors so desperately crave.  Both sides are virtue signalling – shouting over one another as to whether the cows should roam free, or if the barn door ought to be locked, both equally oblivious to the fact that the cows escaped long ago and their debate is fruitless.

Serving in an army requires regimentation, uniformity, and humbleness; these are an anathema to the individual.  Zhe demands no constraints on their behaviour – whether they’re a Leftist engaging in depraved sexual act, or a member of the Right abusing the Right of Free Speech by using it irresponsibly.  They both demand freedom without consequence – the freedom to pretend to be something they’re not.

All that we need to do to return to the Republic is to show some solidarity, but that isn’t going to happen.  The elites have decided that we’re nothing but a group of profligate fools, children who need to be controlled, an unfortunate side effect of our parents’ irresponsible lust.

And in many ways they’re right.

ͼ-Ѻ-ͽ

The question for you, gentle reader, is what you’re going to do with all of this.  The times are dark but not hopeless.  There are paths through the storms ahead which involve neither cowardice nor certain doom, but these paths are not glorious, and they come at a cost.

Civilization will right itself one day.  Do you want the glory of being part of the present fall?  Or do you want to build something that will last until that far off day?

Your level of involvement is up to you.