Cargo Cults and Technocracies

Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Ihave a method to figure out how to vote in a national election, if I’m completely lost. I ask my brother whom to vote for, then vote against.

My brother is well intentioned, though not an idiot, so it might seem weird that I apply the Heinlein trick to him. But really, since he gets his information via the mass media of the country and the French mass media, with occasional input from the BBC, what he gets from the US is ILL-intentioned idiots, so what he thinks he knows is the opposite of the truth.

In 2000 he chilled me to the core by telling me that really W or Gore was basically the same thing. I mean he thought Gore was a very intelligent man (Which means he had a hell of a translator, and also that my brother doesn’t keep up on science any more. Or yes) and W was not as articulate but “they’re both ultimately technocrats, so you’ll be all right.”

I ran screaming into the night (metaphorically speaking) and voted for Harry Brown. I still contend that might have been the “first do no harm” option, and yes, I know he was an embezzler. But at least he talked about firing the entire Federal government, which, sure, would have caused chaos, but more or less chaos than we’re facing?

Because, please understand, while rule by real technocrats would be terrifying—for context I want you to understand the idiot who came up with the Great Reset is a mechanical engineer—because most science people are iffy on “people” and don’t get that when it comes to human behavior 2+2 might equal banana, rule by FAUX scientists is far, far worse. And that’s what we actually have. People who are convinced they “Know” and don’t actually know anything, or know a lot of things that ain’t so.

Part of this is the remnant of power by the MSM and the other leftist disinformation organs (including schools) blaring cover up and narrative to cover how spectacular their failure is. For instance like the newneo, I‘m getting sick, and mostly tired of hearing the newly red pilled throw tantrums about how this is all Trump’s fault because his administration was so bad, without paying attention to the fact he was constantly under attack by forces external and internal to it, and by his underlings desire to be seen as “so smart” by betraying him. (Bill Barr, you’re a florid dumb ass, and so are all the other idiots who decided to make Trump look bad and get in “good” with the establishment. That would have been a great move fifty years ago. But we’re not fifty years ago, and you’re all morons.)

And part is the structure in which most of us were taught to see the world. If the whole structure is wrong–

I—and most of you—was born to a world of centralized power, a world of “science” ascendant, where humans supposedly knew how to engineer everything, including themselves.

By the time I was in my teens, though, this “humans can engineer everything” had started eating itself. Yes, sure, it was USSR agit-prop in the west, but it was everywhere: We were running out of oil, we were poisoning the environment, there were too many of us, we should just all die out.

The “science” that had run the west for so long—since WWI, really—had turned on itself, by action of propaganda, and become a doomsday cult.

You have no idea how much effort and what mental fortitude it took for Reagan to stand against that tide. And you can only imagine how pissed off normal people were to elect Reagan. I know. I was here for his campaign. Despite Carter’s magnificently stupid governance, the culmination of an era of “progressive” presidents of both parties (Progressive and technocratic are the same. It’s the bizarre idea that one man trained mostly in shaking hands and kissing ugly babies can lead us to the future with unerring hand, by listening to “scientists.”) everyone knew that Reagan would get us killed, and that anyone who “knew” was voting for Carter.

But Reagan exploded all these shibboleths, like Trump would do later. By being reality-aligned, they managed to perform miracles.

However cults don’t react well to disconfirmation. They usually just double down. Which is precisely what the left did. With the USSR collapsed, their dream in ruins, they re-oriented to the twin deities of the environment and race. Which comes with a whole lot of bizarrely weird things attaching to it, like the obsession with gender (because it’s the only way a white person can claim to be good, when the myth makes them super evil) and the systematic dismantling of science in the name of science (because science and the west and progress caused all the issues for everyone, including tribes in Papua New Guinea, right? Because Gramsci says so.)

Which brings us to where we are today, where true ideological colonialism—the importing of the Wests bizarre obsessions — is ruining small nations, where most of the world locked down, masked and distanced—and ruined economies, agriculture, etc—by following a science fair project of a middle schooler who happened to be friends with W’s family.

As any parent knows science fair projects, by and large aren’t science. They’re wishful thinking, half assed experimentation, and a lot of persuasive writing. (Also trips just before 10 pm to hobby lobby the day before it’s due. But that might be only my kids.)

Which is precisely what technocrats like. Because that’s the science they understand.

Let’s establish some thing right now: I have a lot of friends who are scientists, engineers, and people involved in real life “tech”. The real ones, the good ones, really don’t want to govern anyone or anything. They want to do their research and experiments.

Because money for research is within the government’s gift (And guys, we really need to change that. Like, right now. Yesterday if possible. Because he who pays the piper calls the tune, and if you think money doesn’t corrupt science, I’d like to give you a tour of some swampland in Florida, never you mind the gators) most real researchers have had to learn to politic. They’re very bad at it. I mean, they’re okay within their communities, but they suck in the outside world.

Most of them running for anything, even things they know how to do would make the rest of the world recoil, and possibly want to kill them. At best they come across as snake oil salesmen, because peopling is a late-acquired skill. Mostly they care about the science.

So, who are these “technocrats” in charge of government, everywhere from dog catcher to president, and incidentally infiltrating every possible bureaucracy?

The elected ones are the people who were elected king and queen of the prom, while you were attending science class. The bureaucrats are the people who majored in “Studies” and “business” and “administration.” I.e. the people who were really good at bullshitting their way into things. Remember how sometimes one of them got stuck in your science class and failed so hard it made you wonder how they could walk and chew gum at the same time?

And before you say this could be solved by making sure everyone learns basic science…. we had that. (And a complete ignorance of history.) In the aftermath of WWII, and when science was going to conquer everything, they put such an emphasis on science that…. it corrupted science completely.

When I say things like “I’m afraid a falling population will leave us bereft of people who can run the tech” I mean it. I don’t know which percentage of the population can do science and tech. I know it’s relatively small.

I’m one of the people on the edge, and if I had figured out I was digit dyslexic, not stupid, I might have beat my brain into place for engineering (Supposing mom let me take it, which she didn’t, because she was sure the only reason I wanted to take engineering was the hot guys. Which just shows you mom didn’t know many engineers despite being married to one.) I might have done it, anyway, except for mom’s hangups.

But it would take effort, and re-engineering my own brain. And in the end I’d be an expert in a small area of engineering, not “all of science.”

Because that’s the way these things work, see?

It’s sort of like I can write anything, but what I can write, in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and even romance is a small slice of possible stories. It is a common error of young writers to come up with stories they couldn’t possibly write. So they can’t finish them, and they think if they had enough persistence. It takes years to be able to say “I can read that type of story, but it’s not mine to write.” For instance, I love Prince Roger, but if I wrote its like (okay, I am, but long story) it would be with a diplomat, or a geek in the main role, (it is) because I can’t write a military structure convincingly. I get the culture, it’s the ranks and habits that confuse heck out of my mind. (I’m rank dyslexic. I mean, I grew up reading military biographies, but I scramble ranks like a pro. And don’t get me started on procedure.) I have a military fantasy underway (waves at #1 ducttape son) but I need a collaborator, or I simply can’t.

Exact same thing with science.

Heck, husband has worked at the narrow edge of math and computers for his entire professional life, but the other day I had the bizarre experience of watching younger son explain some new technology to his father.

Because our knowledge has grown so complex and confusing that we can’t possibly keep up with everything even in our own field.

And minds only bend a certain way.

There is nothing wrong with having the sort of mind that doesn’t bend to science. We do need people trained in languages, and history, in philosophy and diplomacy.

What we shouldn’t be doing is telling these people that what they’re doing is based on “science” nor should we be giving power to bureaucrats with either a pseudo scientific background, or a decades out of date scientific knowledge. (Fauci—have they found him, or is he still hiding?—is a bit of both. Medical training isn’t exactly science, though please I implore you not to call your physician a “well educated witch doctor”.—they tend to get upset—Ask me how I know. It’s half peopleing and some “this worked with this person so it might work with this other. And a whole lot of irreproducible studies.)

And we shouldn’t be electing people who think they know what “science” tells them to do.

Because the policies they implement are always the same and they have nothing to do with science, but more with the appeasing of the gods of “the environment” and “Race” which somehow always leads to making energy ridiculously expensive and freeing predators to commit crimes. (Most of those predators are white, because white people are still the majority, but yes, the left thinks this is race or economics related. Remember they think crime is a response to poverty and that poverty is mostly race based.)

And then they run to the media and their spokespeople to paper it over, so they can do it once again.

Except every time they get to try their idiocy it becomes more obvious it doesn’t work, and it was always nonsense.

We might be at the end-point of that cycle. They had to cheat their way in, and they’re worse than anything else that’s been done to this country. Or the world, to be fair.

Which brings us to something I heard from someone who kind of maybe has insight into Putin’s circle. Putin is just spinning his own reality. He thinks by yelling and commanding he can make reality whatever he says he is. And he gets rid of anyone who contradicts him.

Our left is attempting the same thing through a combination of yelling and cancelling people.

Neither of them is having any marked success. Rather this is the failure mode of concentrated power.

Look, in the beginning of the twentieth century, it was already too late for mega states run by super-concentrated power. There might have been a time for it—I don’t know because history has been corrupted—but by the 20th century knowlege and industry were already too complex for it. Fortunately—ah—they had the media to paper over their failures and pass them on to education with bullshit like FDR saving us from the failures of capitalism, aka the Great Depression (which he caused.)

Now? There is more knowledge, it is more highly specialized, and trust me, no man can really govern even a small country, much less something like the US. And most of the experts they can call on—heaven knows Trump tried—are either corrupt, or themselves unable to know their area as well as they think they do.

For a long time, leftists were obsessed with the idea of the US breaking up, mostly because Russia wanted us to.

I always said that’s not likely, and it’s not. Look, just like the EU, no matter how they try, will never be a polity, because there’s some really old divisions of land and blood, the US can’t be separate states or even regions, because we are one polity. We all move around, intermarry, have kids everywhere.

What we can do, what we need to do, and what will happen, either fast or slow, either explosively or incrementally, is a return to what the US is meant to be: with governance devolving to the lowest possible level: the state, the city, the family, the individual.

Abominations that put all the power of “science” or “education” or “environmental protection” in the hand of a federal agency need to be done away with. Because, no, there is no science whatsoever behind most of it. It’s fads all the way down. And all of these things have failed, over and over and over again. Only there’s an information problem, and the failures are swept away as meaning nothing, and the same nonsense is doubled down on.

Until a critical amount of damage accumulates. (And boy, has it.) And then it all blows up.

Which is where we are.

What’s coming—and each day makes it less likely that it will be incremental—will blow away our institutions. Blowing away the thinking that these things SHOULD be centralized, or that there is scientific justification for a lot of the nonsense will take longer. It can’t take too long, though, or there will be no civilization left.

So, first change your mind, then change the minds closest to you. Expounding on the catastrophic failures of the technocratic mind set will help.

It will also scare people, so they’ll try to stop you. Eh. It’s the price you pay.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark. And be not afraid.

There is only one way out of this and it’s through. Let’s roll.

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for March 11, 2022