And, as it turned out, neither was necessary.
The winning strategy was to weaponize people who are already defective.
The British, you see, didn't maintain their empire through pure force. That would be impossible. A small island nation of white people, however equipped with superior technology and naval power, cannot forcibly suppress the hordes of the third world forever.
Sure, they could use their superior tech, organization, and logistics to take any primitive society on the planet.
But to hold such a society, they had to use their wits.
And what they did was leverage two important insights.
No one can rule by force alone.
You need someone to impose that force. And those people cannot be forced to obey, because what would you force them with?
Every neighborhood has a few neighbors that hate each other.
In my neighborhood, it's the family across the way with their Gadsden flag and their Stars and Bars, versus the lesbian couple next door with their pride flag and stupid yap dogs.
But in any of the primitive kingdoms the British rolled into and conquered, it was usually an ethnic minority, virtually indistinguishable from the ethnic majority to any outsider, who were despised and picked on to various degrees.
It was from these that they drew their native police, soldiers, and low-level clerks and bureaucrats. The obvious, ostensible reason was that they were more willing to side with the Brits, and manage the native population, but they was another factor in play.
Payback.
These dudes had typically been getting the short end of the stick for hundreds if not thousands of years, and they wanted some payback.
So, beatings, robbery, graft, rapes, the occasional killing, all under the color of authority.
And the British would turn a blind eye... for a while.
Then, suddenly, they would be shocked. Shocked, I say. Dashed ungentlemanly behaviour. Decidedly not cricket.
And then they would pick another ethnic group. Maybe the ones who were being picked on before.
And after a couple of cycles of this, the natives would be begging the Great White Father to step in and take charge directly, to save them from each other.
Divide and conquer.
You see, what the British realized is that if you purchase someone's loyalty, you can lose that loyalty. Every Roman assassination began by bribing the Praetorian Guard.
But, if you can find someone who hates the target you wish to destroy, you can weaponize them without ever needing their loyalty at all.
Empower the disruptive elements. Divide and conquer.
Modern America, however, could not be directly conquered and ruled by those who learned from the British method. There was no military force on Earth that could achieve the initial conquest, so the weaponized elements could not simply be installed.
Another attack surface was needed... democracy. Coupled with a single realization.
Every free capitalist society has losers who hate the whole system.
Of course it does. When a system exists that allows people to rise or fall on achievement alone, those without talent, skill, or agency will hate it, not only because they are the losers, but because it will point out to them, every day, that they do not have what it takes.
This will make them want to overthrow the system, despite the fact that it is far better, materially, to be a loser in a capitalist free society than a comrade in a dictatorship.
Because comrades are universally poor, universally oppressed, universally sick and afraid. And when the misery is universal, it isn't personal.
It doesn't point out to those losers that they are losers.
That is why they hate the most successful wealth and technology creation engine the known universe has ever seen. Because it gives them no excuse for their own failed lives.
Power brokers, who had learned from the lesson of the British, realized something.
These losers can be weaponized.
Tell them what they most want to hear... that their misery is not their fault, that it has been inflicted on them by others, either on purpose or by neglect.
Give them a focus for their hate and envy, and a salve for their wounded self-esteem.
Find intelligent losers to rally them, former child prodigy kids who were told in government schools that they were going to be rich and famous on account of their talents, but never ever told that the success they were promised also required agency, risk taking, consistent hard work, patience, and persistence in the face of failure.
Tell them that the difference between success and failure isn't hard work, capability, and good choices, or even luck, it's initial position.
Skin color.
Sex.
Parental wealth.
Height.
Beauty.
Tell them the game was rigged against them.
Now you have a pack of weaponized losers to fight your fight, and, best of all, they can't betray you, like the Praetorian guard, because they don't even know they work for you.
And you don't have to put them in power. They'll put themselves in power. All you have to do is organize them, give them single direction to march in, and they'll vote themselves right into power, infiltrate every institution that it took their betters generations to build.
That's democracy for you. The easiest to rule are easiest to unite, and easiest to command the votes of.
Western civilization doesn't have a Big Brother problem, or a Hedonic Trap problem. You can see signs of both, but they are merely symptoms.
We have a Weaponized Loser problem.
“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”
- John Adams
The winning strategy was to weaponize people who are already defective.
The British, you see, didn't maintain their empire through pure force. That would be impossible. A small island nation of white people, however equipped with superior technology and naval power, cannot forcibly suppress the hordes of the third world forever.
Sure, they could use their superior tech, organization, and logistics to take any primitive society on the planet.
But to hold such a society, they had to use their wits.
And what they did was leverage two important insights.
No one can rule by force alone.
You need someone to impose that force. And those people cannot be forced to obey, because what would you force them with?
Every neighborhood has a few neighbors that hate each other.
In my neighborhood, it's the family across the way with their Gadsden flag and their Stars and Bars, versus the lesbian couple next door with their pride flag and stupid yap dogs.
But in any of the primitive kingdoms the British rolled into and conquered, it was usually an ethnic minority, virtually indistinguishable from the ethnic majority to any outsider, who were despised and picked on to various degrees.
It was from these that they drew their native police, soldiers, and low-level clerks and bureaucrats. The obvious, ostensible reason was that they were more willing to side with the Brits, and manage the native population, but they was another factor in play.
Payback.
These dudes had typically been getting the short end of the stick for hundreds if not thousands of years, and they wanted some payback.
So, beatings, robbery, graft, rapes, the occasional killing, all under the color of authority.
And the British would turn a blind eye... for a while.
Then, suddenly, they would be shocked. Shocked, I say. Dashed ungentlemanly behaviour. Decidedly not cricket.
And then they would pick another ethnic group. Maybe the ones who were being picked on before.
And after a couple of cycles of this, the natives would be begging the Great White Father to step in and take charge directly, to save them from each other.
Divide and conquer.
You see, what the British realized is that if you purchase someone's loyalty, you can lose that loyalty. Every Roman assassination began by bribing the Praetorian Guard.
But, if you can find someone who hates the target you wish to destroy, you can weaponize them without ever needing their loyalty at all.
Empower the disruptive elements. Divide and conquer.
Modern America, however, could not be directly conquered and ruled by those who learned from the British method. There was no military force on Earth that could achieve the initial conquest, so the weaponized elements could not simply be installed.
Another attack surface was needed... democracy. Coupled with a single realization.
Every free capitalist society has losers who hate the whole system.
Of course it does. When a system exists that allows people to rise or fall on achievement alone, those without talent, skill, or agency will hate it, not only because they are the losers, but because it will point out to them, every day, that they do not have what it takes.
This will make them want to overthrow the system, despite the fact that it is far better, materially, to be a loser in a capitalist free society than a comrade in a dictatorship.
Because comrades are universally poor, universally oppressed, universally sick and afraid. And when the misery is universal, it isn't personal.
It doesn't point out to those losers that they are losers.
That is why they hate the most successful wealth and technology creation engine the known universe has ever seen. Because it gives them no excuse for their own failed lives.
Power brokers, who had learned from the lesson of the British, realized something.
These losers can be weaponized.
Tell them what they most want to hear... that their misery is not their fault, that it has been inflicted on them by others, either on purpose or by neglect.
Give them a focus for their hate and envy, and a salve for their wounded self-esteem.
Find intelligent losers to rally them, former child prodigy kids who were told in government schools that they were going to be rich and famous on account of their talents, but never ever told that the success they were promised also required agency, risk taking, consistent hard work, patience, and persistence in the face of failure.
Tell them that the difference between success and failure isn't hard work, capability, and good choices, or even luck, it's initial position.
Skin color.
Sex.
Parental wealth.
Height.
Beauty.
Tell them the game was rigged against them.
Now you have a pack of weaponized losers to fight your fight, and, best of all, they can't betray you, like the Praetorian guard, because they don't even know they work for you.
And you don't have to put them in power. They'll put themselves in power. All you have to do is organize them, give them single direction to march in, and they'll vote themselves right into power, infiltrate every institution that it took their betters generations to build.
That's democracy for you. The easiest to rule are easiest to unite, and easiest to command the votes of.
Western civilization doesn't have a Big Brother problem, or a Hedonic Trap problem. You can see signs of both, but they are merely symptoms.
We have a Weaponized Loser problem.
“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”
- John Adams
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