The Necessity of Power
Force without violence will win us a glorious future
This essay is for my American readers, but I hope the principles can be helpful for everyone who loves freedom around the world.
There is a principle in many martial arts, especially Judo, Jujitsu, and Aikido, of using the opponent's weight in your favor. The greater their weight and momentum, the greater potential energy there is to use against them. That's how we'll win. Keep that in mind as you read on...
If you agree America is heading towards disaster, and just want an idea on what to do, skip down halfway to the question “What is Power?” Or read the whole thing, it’s pretty good.
America is at a crossroads. We all know it, we all feel it. The current iteration of America, formed by Woodrow Wilson and FDR, and baked in permanently with the nuclear fire of WWII, is fragile unto shattering. Those who have had power for the last century have wrung nearly all the wealth from the people. Nearly all. Much more can be taken but the means to take it must become more extreme. Peaceful extraction is nearly at an end. It will take violence henceforth. So the Powerful are ready for the next iteration of America.1
On the other side, if the roiling chaos of the Right can be called a side, we're also ready for a new iteration. This America isn't working for us. It's too hard to make money and keep money, and we have very little power. Oh yes, we can vote, and in an operational democratic system, each vote has the power to change. But as we've seen, that power is now mostly meaningless, in that our votes don't result in meaningful change.
The economic situation isn't much better. The system is rigged against us. The corrupt can steal in one moment more than many of us will make in a lifetime of working. Inflation keeps us scrambling, always scrambling, to just break even. Those who take from the economy now outnumber those who give. And they want more. So the Right is also ready for the next iteration of America.
Question is, who will rule this next iteration?
The parasitic and deeply evil masters of the current iteration of America would very much like to rule the next. They're using the power they have now to make sure they'll have power later. They're making sure we have no power now and would like us to have even less power later. For most of us this iteration of USA has been a disaster, but though discriminated against, stolen from, propagandized, and hated, we survived it. The next iteration? Those with power now have made it very clear we'll be dead.2
And this next iteration isn't coming thirty years hence, or twenty - It could come any moment. Like a woman in labor, the baby could come in one hour, or forty hours, but it's coming, and it's coming soon. We see all the signs, and the enemy is pushing hard. If you're reading this right now, you will probably live to see the coming of the next iteration.
COVID let us behold the dream of the Powerful. Having read extensively on totalitarian regimes, I thought I understood them to some degree, but it wasn't until I felt one that I truly understood it. I refused the Mask. It wasn't until I stood alone as The Other with others, maskless in the store, the subject of angry glares and furtive glances, feeling that crushing psychological weight of non-conformance, that I understood the power of mass-formation totalitarianism.
It truly felt as if the Beast had arrived. I could not buy or sell. In one store I was denied checkout unless I wore a mask. I was asked by my customers if I had been vaccinated, a rude and invasive question in any other time, and lost business because I wasn't. Those who resisted were being debanked, deplatformed, and silenced. The language was brutalized right before our eyes, as long understood words like "vaccine" were twisted to meet the need of Pfizer's bottom line.
COVID was the shocking reveal, the tiny peak behind the curtain, of what they intend for us, of what they want to inflict on our children. The world they intend for our children to live in, ideally without us in it anymore to help them, will be hellish. It will be a pharmaceutical and technological prison. A totalitarian State that will pervade to the molecular level. Those that aren't dead will wish they were, if a wish could yet be made by their terrified and oppressed minds.
There are many that argue COVID was the last gasp of a dying regime. It wasn't a gasp but a grab, and it went great for them. So it will happen again, and again, and again. The Totalitarian State is a series of crises, each coming sooner on the heels of the last, until it is the permanent State. 9/11, then the Recession, then COVID, then faster, and sooner, until we can nary get a breath. With each wave their power grows, and our power wanes, until we have no power, and then we die.
How do we stop this? How do we make sure we survive, and perhaps even thrive, in the next iteration?
The first answer is to work within the established system for making changes. Vote! But events of the last few years have shown that voting avails little. The Right's attempts to win a rigged game are tragically consistent. We have decades of history to look back on now, and it's always the same story: We vote, we win, nothing changes. To keep expending such enormous energy in an ultimately fruitless endeavor is foolish.
This is of course excepting state and local elections, which is where power deserves to be, and thus deserves our utmost attention.
At the Federal level though, even if voting worked, we will never get a majority of people to do anything noble or good. Roughly half the population is either literally a bureaucrat, or effectively a bureaucrat, or a beneficiary of bureaucrats. This bureau-bloc will never vote for themselves to have less wealth or power. Never. Any actual threat to that wealth, for example a politician like Ron Paul, will never win the vote.
Plus, a significant portion of the population has been so propagandized and glowjobbed they are unable to choose anything but slavery. Slave within, slave without. So while working within the system is certainly commendable, it won't ultimately result in the radical change we need.
If then the established system for change is corrupted and useless, what can be done?
For many, especially those of a bourgeois mindset (Which I was born with and resist the less noble aspects of), the first instinct is to put our head down and work. Dismiss all the black-pill nonsense. Just work. Produce wealth and hope that wealth will win the day. But all that is in vain if all we make they can simply take. We're just fattening ourselves up.
Most of us in the Dissident Right want to do something, anything, to make this world a better place for our children. Substack is a cornucopia of excellent strategies. For some the solution is building a parallel society that will survive the ruin of the old moldering edifice. Others are dedicated to making beautiful art that shines a light on the hideous darkness all around us. The E/ACC crowd and Bitcoin Bros are advancing technology in ways that will make so much of what makes the modern State powerful irrelevant.
These ideas aren't mutually exclusive. The different means of resistance are like the different parts of a warrior's physique and armament - His body, the nourishing second society; his shield, the escape bunkers, guns, and gardens that provide resilience; his mind, the art and legacy of the West that guides him; his shoes, the technology we use to go further and faster than our enemies. All together make him formidable.
Yet for all this he can't fight. He has everything but a weapon; a means of projecting and concentrating force. And so he's no warrior at all. An army consisting of soldiers only carrying shields is no threat whatsoever. It's only hope is die less fast. It can never win.
This is why all our theorizing is watched with bemused indifference by those with power. A farm can, and will, be seized. Art can be burned. Books can be banned. A ghetto can quickly become a prison. Our online information war is conducted entirely on a field of the enemy's choosing, and thus can presage only defeat. None of it is a threat, because none of it includes the most crucial part of making sure the next iteration is favorable to us: Power. A means of bending the enemy to our will.
Power is the warrior's spear. It completes his armament and makes him formidable.
What is power?
Power, simply put, is the ability to make others do your will.
This does not mean that power is necessarily cruel. The force used to gain power over another dictates how good or evil that power is. Force makes power, and power makes men move. One can force another without coercion, or against his will. With an honest man, a sound argument can force a change of mind. With a moral man, an accusation of sin or hypocrisy can bring repentance and new conduct. But not all are learned or moral. Most of our enemies are ignorant (Though not stupid) and venal - Bestial. We argue and argue, and they ignore. So we must use force that leverages against his wants, not his mind or morality. A mighty horse can be led by a child with a handful of grain. That's force. That's power.
Of course force through violence is also a classic choice. A gun to the head makes a man do what you want. A boot to the neck turns his gaze. Kill the courageous, rule the meek.
As a Christian though, I cannot condone violence. Our power must come from another means, and that means is non-violent force.3
So exactly what force leverages against our enemy's wants, and bends him to our will without violence?
COVID showed us.
For as bad as COVID was, there was one silver lining. Having felt that terror, we know now how imperative it is to stop the enemy. COVID was perhaps a totalitarianism inoculation; we received a tiny dose which might, if we act, ensure our cure.
Moreover, the enemy in their lust and confidence made a mistake - They showed us their weakness. The great beast reared up to display dominance, and we saw the hole in the dragon's scales. One single chink which makes all the rest of the armor useless. They implemented two weeks to flatten the curve, the entire American economy nearly collapsed, the recovery from which took several years, and in so doing they showed us how much they need our work.
They showed us that if even a small number of us stop working for a very short amount of time, the entire system will collapse.
This is where the enemy's weight is used against him. You see, the Regime has been bulking up. He's a Big Boi now. He's been adding bureaucrats, and NGOs, and dependents, and megacorps, and overseas puppet regimes; he's built a massive 5GW control network to lobotomize and weaken the working populace, so there's precious few left with the imagination needed to handle difficult problems.4 He's huge, such that to resist him head on is suicide. But his totalitarian momentum is the means of his demise. By so rendering such a large chunk of the workforce unproductive, the enemy has increased the leverage of the productive minority.
The enemy wants the fruits of our labor. To control him, we cease to give it. Not through tax evasion. We simply stop working. A strike. A Secessio plebis.5 A Solidarity. We won't work for them until the system works for us.
It won't take very many of us and it won't take very long.
There are 330 Million people (officially) in the USA. Of those, 132 Million are working. Of that 132 Million, 10% work for non-profits/NGOs, which are essentially an extension of the Federal government. 80% of nonprofit revenue comes from government grants or contracts - They are de facto Federal employees (There are some in public/non-profit jobs doing the Lord’s work, and I commend them). All variety of bureaucrats make up another 22 million of that 132 Million. So of 330 million people, only about 97 million (30%) are working in jobs that create something.
Rather than see this has a point of despair, which conservatives tend to do, we should see the power inherent in that 30%. Think of it this way - A canoe has ten people in it. Of those ten, only three are paddling. The rest can't paddle, or are defending the canoe, or managing the canoe, or are calling the three that do paddle racist. This canoe is upstream of Niagra Falls.
If all three stopped paddling, it’d be a disaster in short order. But we don't need all three to stop paddling. Just one has to stop. Just one stops and the inexorable drift of modern civilization, so technical, so concentrated, so inter-dependent, pulls us towards the fall. In the ensuing panic, that one can demand whatever he wishes in exchange for his resumption of work. The power in his back is how he'll get back in power.
If one third of your employees or co-workers didn't show up, could business continue? Probably not. Would we need one third, or 30 Million people, to stop working? I don’t think so. It’s not impossible, the Republican Party is 35 Million, but that's a big organization.
But what if it was just a few critical people? If every IT guy in America (4 million) stopped working, the whole system would collapse within a couple weeks. The same goes for many of the professions. As we learned with COVID, there are no "non-essential" workers. No job is lowly, all work is noble, we all have power.
A focus on the maintenance and operations professions will yield the greatest results. A homebuilder is important, but if he stops working it will take some time for the impact be felt. The HVAC technicians though... if they all stopped working in August our enemies would be begging to give us what we want. All are welcome though as each increases the multiplicative effect.
Rather than call this a strike, which has financial implications, I suggest we call it a workwithhold. We workwithhold until they work with us. Calling it a Secession, as the early Romans did, is an option, but that word has negative connotations in the US for many, and is associated with state-level separation due to the Civil War. Strike’s have become so commonplace, and often so petty, that much of the populace is annoyed by the activity. We need a new word for a new action the USA has yet to see.6
The timing for this workwithhold is perfect. We will never have more leverage than NOW. We will never need fewer people than NOW.
Why? Three reasons. First, technological development has increased specialization and concentrated power. In technical sectors the jack-of-all-trades is disappearing. Most organizations try to cross train, but in reality there is one person that can do the job. The technological tendency to specialize knowledge makes certain key persons absolutely necessary. The more intellectually demanding the job, the greater the necessity.
This also applies to physically demanding jobs. You can't just replace a roughneck with a former Daily Beast blue-hair, or with a third-world migrant.
Each of the systems that make modern America function are inter-dependent, meaning if one system stops, they all stop. The wheels of your car are just one part of your vehicle, but if they stop, the 100% operation of all other parts is irrelevant. If the one guy that understands the supply warehouse application doesn't show up for work, then no parts get shipped, which means customer operations dependent on those parts get delayed, which delays others, and so on. Once again, we saw this with COVID - It is quite easy to start a cascade leading to systemic collapse.
Secondly, the demographic timing is perfect. The Boomers are leaving the workforce, and there is a lot of them. The people we have to replace the Boomers are less experienced, work less hours, and there's straight up less of them. This increases both the leverage of the Boomers left in the workforce, and those that are able to replace them. Also, after years of doomscroll mental retardification, the number able to perform the creative problem solving so necessary for unknown and unforeseen problems (Those problems where a checklist is of no use) is vanishingly small.
We all see this. No one can find good help. Wages are sky-rocketing. Our work is desperately needed, and by "our" I mean anyone that shows up and can still think two thoughts in a row. If those critical people didn't show up, natural entropy would quickly collapse the system.
The third reason is that the Feds are all tapped out, and the fight hasn't even started. The Beast is big, he's heavy, but he's breathing hard and ready to blow. A movement like this might have been difficult to build and execute during the heyday of Federal power, but now? The Regime has essentially no significant enemies at home or abroad, but even so it's burning through cash. It's major domestic and foreign actions of the last two decades have been colossally expensive failures. The currency is constantly debased. Loyalty to the Regime is non-existent; the only power they have is the power of the coin, with which to buy the mercenary services of megacorps and the bureau-bloc. As soon as that money is gone, or worthless, will any serve the Regime out of love? No.
So there's good reasons to get started now. But there's also peril if we don't. The window of opportunity will close.
The enemy knows our work is their weakness, which is why they're importing foreign, and compliant, workers by the million each year. Not just for menial labor jobs. The Indians are coming in droves using green cards and work visas to do technical work, and they aren't leaving. Those that love freedom are crucial now, but we may not be ten years hence.
It's also likely the Regime has a war cooking up, either with Russia, China, a minor respiratory disease, the climate, or all of the above. This will be used as the imperative to move to the next iteration. The hammer will come down, and if we haven't made efforts to organize before that happens, it may be too late.
This is why all our efforts to build a parallel society and become more resilient must be accompanied by real power. The early Christians had a couple hundred years to build their parallel society and slowly transform Rome, because the means of control and destruction hadn't advanced as they have now. The modern totalitarian State can control and/or kill more people in less time. The USA accidentally (Or intentionally) deployed a new superweapon in 2020 and killed several million people. We don't have a couple hundred years. The Regime, either out of incompetence, or malice, or both, will have killed us all long before then.
So how exactly could such a workwithhold be organized?
We form an association of professional working men capable of executing a nation-wide workwithhold.
Our plan would be executed in three distinct steps:
Step 1 - Organize an association of men with the ability to withhold crucial work.
Step 2 - Should circumstances require it (And they probably will), withhold work in unison until those with power bend to our will.
Step 3 - Require whatever legal government that exists to implement our demands.
What would be our demands? I’m not sure of all of them, but the basics would be: First, we want a currency we control, or even better, that no one can control. Second, a radical reduction in the power and pervasiveness of the Federal government.
However, past that I rely on more intelligent and better educated minds than mine. That's not a humbleflex. This movement needs a Lycurgus, and it isn't me. We need a John Adams, and I'm more of the Sam Adams disposition. I'm a businessman and a brawler, we need a statesman and a scholar. If we're going to do this, we're going all-in on a pivotal moment in American history. Let's make it count. We need cunning changes that inexorably shift the balance of power. We need all of this to be done in such a way that the Regime can accept it without facing immediate ruin. We need a set of coherent, practicable demands that can be passed by Congress and signed by the President into law. That will take a degree of wisdom probably not present in one person alone.
We'll need expertise to execute each step. Technical and organizational expertise in Step 1; public relations and financial expertise in Step 2; scholarly and political expertise in Step 3.
Organizing and executing these steps will be complicated, yes, but not nearly as complicated as unraveling the Gordian Knot of legalized fraud and dishonesty that makes up our current system. Not in a thousand lifetimes could the evil they've done be undone. This plan is easier, but it is also more dangerous. You can vote in safety. You can complain and shout into your chosen echo chamber without end. No harm will come to you. But this? This is action. This is doing something quite outside the norm.
It is is dangerous, yes, but Americans love a rebel with a cause. We have a good cause, a just cause, to fight for. A fight we can win without bloodshed. Non-violent force for a truer, better society has an irresistible moral rightness to it. No matter how much they might stomp us down, we’d gain strength with every beating. The righteous are as bold as lions, the innocent as beautiful as doves.
America has never been more ready for change. We must let go of the nihilism that poisons our strength. America isn't doomed to be a totalitarian nightmare State. We haven't reached the time of our perpetual decline. That's hogwash. Rome was two hundred years old when her common people did just what I propose - They stopped working until the system worked for them. That was the beginning of another four centuries of unprecedented success. Perhaps these first two hundred years of American history are only us getting started, and the best is yet to come.
There is a feeling that something new and amazing is held within this old husk the Regime imposes on us. We see so much potential around us - In the tech, in the art, and especially, our fellow Americans. Like new wine in old wine skins, or rags over a beautiful woman, what is old constrains the possible new. We will break those constraints. A liberated America will burst forth, the shining city of freedom, true freedom, for the world to see. We will be an engine of industry and invention. As all the rest of the world descends into darkness, we will reach with joy for the light of the stars.
I’ll be following this essay soon with specifics on forming this group. I’d love to work with you.
If you have expertise that can help in any of the Steps, or are Lycurgus, please message me. If you have ideas not mentioned here, or specific recommendations for demands, or books to read on the subject, please email me or comment below. Any, or all, of these plans can and will change as our collective wisdom builds the organization. We need your help! We need your leadership.
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See Moldbug's Iron Polygon for an overview of the stages of the American Republic. I’ve simplified greatly, but I agree with him we’re at Stage 4 America. It’s terminal.
See the Tree of Woe's excellent essay on the future they intend for us. They want us all dead is no exaggeration.
There are many that argue a Christian cannot ever use power, no matter by what means, and though those arguments are sound, I reject them. That argument deserves an entire essay.
For an excellent overview of Secessio plebis, a crucial moment in world history, see here. This fascinating subject deserves an entire essay.
If you have a better word than workwithhold, please do comment.
> "If every IT guy in America (4 million) stopped working, the whole system would collapse within a couple weeks."
As an IT Guy who has also been a truck driver, I'd say to focus on the truck drivers. They're *way* more important than the IT guys.