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Commentary vs Plans

anon_jamw said in #3161 4w ago:

Most discussions on the right are still largely bogged down by targeting what the left does wrong instead of formulating actual plans. Commentary vs Plans.

I think Commentary is attractive because the things to critique about the left are bottomless and you can make a living by dunking on twitter and posting on substack. The hard pill to swallow is that plans of *any variety* will always win out if your opponents have no plans, no matter how articulate the takedowns are. The bar is low. Yes the woke stuff should be pulled out of schools, but what should it be replaced with? Yes much USAID money is being allocated improperly, but where should it be redirected? The regime is choosing to yank things out or end programs instead of redirecting those faucets to other Plans.

It's also worth noting that Good Plans can come in all shapes and sizes. If you could direct the energies of just 10 competent motivated men, what would you do? Some years ago Bannon was trying to build out a gladiator school in a defunct medieval monastery in Italy. This is an exciting and concrete plan even if the end goal is unclear. Nat Friedman put up his own money for young people to read ancient scrolls. This is an exciting plan.

So, are there any Good Plans right now?

referenced by: >>3169

Most discussions on

anon_wyty said in #3164 4w ago:

Basically the only good plans that are available to "guys like us" are what have been said for the past 7 years or so. That is to infiltrate and capture. No marches, no tradlarping, and no "moobments". BAP and Patrick Casey talk about this on the Casey's podcast recently. We are not in the "dark ages" where people can do decentralized activities like that (hence why Bannon's plan got ruined). You *can* however take control of already-existing institutions and attempt to influence them.

Jonathan Bowden's thoughts on the Right Wing also come to mind:

>And The Right will only defeat The Left and The Center if it's more creative, more energetic, more radical, more intelligent, more sassy or cooler! That's the only way it will win. The trouble with Right-wing people on the whole is they're sort of pessimistic and slightly unimaginative. And they're deeply conservative people, decent people, but deeply conservative people. You've got to be more radical than that."

referenced by: >>3173 >>3215

Basically the only g

anon_mucu said in #3169 3w ago:

>>3161
>the right
Let focus on the more granular level of ideas, institutions, and strategic postures, not just the first principle component of political spectacle, IMO. But yeah, commentary is bunk. Plans are where it's at, even small ones. Make it concrete and practical. I've made and executed Plans before, some good some bad. Let's start by establishing the historical transition we are coming through:

In the 20th century our whole civilization got backed into a stifling corner of self-hatred and suppression of true vital energy and drive for elevation. BAP describes this as the longhouse. Scientism calls it liberalism. Some people name 1973, or 1965, or 1945, or 1933. What happened isn't that important here. The important part is it imposed a bunch of absolutely crippling taboos and legal/political/sociological blocks on the continued development of our civilization. But it is now dying of its own corruption, and on the internet for the past 15 years and increasingly in person in the last couple years and months, those taboos are loosening up.

But we are still stuck without much serious thinking on the other side of that event horizon that could actually start to establish a new political-ideological consensus. So the highest impact plausible plan IMO is to go "zero to one" on that. Build just one institution or circle of intellectuals and political operators that really takes itself seriously and can be taken seriously that operates in ideological territory that is currently way out beyond the overton window, establishing that it's possible to be a world class intellectual operation "out there". We must break the false equation that dissent=chud, and that serious institutions all buy into the fake post-war consensus.

BAP is an extremely irreverent one-man version of this. I think a less obnoxious but equally radical 10-man version of that at his level of intellectual rigor would blow the doors off the fake system and put us in a new era. That's crazy ambitious for various reasons as we don't seem to have more than a handful of such men nor more than a few willing to fund their activities, and it's near impossible to get them to coordinate, but we aren't that far off. This remains my big picture "give me a lever and 10 competent gentlemen and I'll move the world" plan.

Somewhat less ambitiously: run a similar 10-man plan in your city for a less radical agenda. Figure out the basic normal good governance agenda your city needs but that might be possible but is a bit outside the current overton window for dumb corrupt reasons, and start rallying the best people you can find around it for private parties, dinners, civic campaigns, etc. Then get those people involved in various positions and institutions, map the whole place out and network with everybody. Build political capital. A friend of mine just got elected senator in his state doing something like this. I've been thinking of doing it in my city. The key for this, short of the big picture victory, is messaging discipline and being rigorously normal. No activist antics, no chudding out, no pronouns, just normie civics with clear vision and lots of youthful energy.

referenced by: >>3173

Let focus on the mor

anon_coki said in #3173 3w ago:

>>3164
>take control of already-existing institutions
I completely agree, but I think we need to undo a false dichotomy that idiots like Bannon and other chuds have created: it is possible to create new institutions that are not complete larp or mere money funnels. It is, as >>3169 says, a question of discipline and intelligence: having concrete goals, clear leadership, an intelligent purpose, and an attractive presentation that attracts prestigious capital, etc.
Not everything is infiltration, and there is a limit to what can be done in certain institutions through infiltration.

I completely agree,

anon_kezo said in #3192 3w ago:

You don't need a plan. Just pursue personal political power. There are lots of books written about people who have done this successfully. Read a few of them and then do it.

The map of power is extremely straightfoward. All of your esoteric political philosophy is worth less than one high school civics class. Run for office. Eventually you want to be a congressman or a senator.

The type of person who is cut out for that tends to not have very much overlap with the type of person who enjoys discussing ideas and ideology and plans on message boards. Make a decision about whether you want to be in the arena or not. There's not much you can do from outside the arena except vote and donate.

referenced by: >>3197 >>3204 >>3215

You don't need a pla

anon_nuny said in #3194 3w ago:

> The map of power is extremely straightfoward.
> Run for office. Eventually you want to be a congressman or a senator.
> There's not much you can do from outside the arena except vote and donate.

Disagree with this. Many men have achieved impact from appointed office without ever winning an election, often exceeding that of the people who put them there (not to mention outlasting them). Robert Moses is a famous example. And the Chris Rufos of the world achieve political impact without holding any office at all.

"When there's a crisis, the actions taken depend on the ideas lying around at the time"

This is not an excuse to be just an esoteric online thinkboy, the impact of which is limited. But pragmatic applied ideas do matter. Pursuing a single goal relentlessly for years matters. Books matter. Electeds are generally not the ones actually developing policy or writing laws. There are effective ways to build & exercise political power without becoming a politician.

referenced by: >>3198

Disagree with this.

anon_coki said in #3197 3w ago:

>>3192
This can be done and it’s very useful for some people.

But, again, let’s avoid false dichotomies. Yes, there are many plan-addicted wordcels, always talking about their grandiose schemes and doing nothing… But there are also very effective planners who are able to gather wills and guide them towards concrete aims. There have always been and have always been crucial.

This can be done and

anon_sodu said in #3198 3w ago:

>>3194
> the Chris Rufos of the world achieve political impact without holding any office at all.

Chris Rufo is an good test case of focused activism integrating online and IRL work. Quite apart from the content of his activism (let's not get distracted by the object-level details of his work), what do we think about the form of his activism?

referenced by: >>3215

Chris Rufo is an goo

anon_mucu said in #3204 3w ago:

>>3192
This anon is right that civics education is hugely underrated in online political philosophy, but wrong that philosophy is pointless and its all just personal political power. Where do politicians get their ideas? What coordinates the activists? Who persuades the voters? Someone has to actually come up with the visions of the future and paint them well. The thinkers need to be fluent in real political mechanism, and socially in touch with it, but they do have a very important role to play defining priorities.

The classic formula is that a serious party has a mix of intellectuals, politicians, and on-the-ground activists. If you only have one or two of these you get wrecked.

referenced by: >>3215

This anon is right t

anon_jamw said in #3215 3w ago:

>>3164
Infiltrate and capture and then do what with the power? The hard truth is that most people using that line have no plan for what to actually do with power if they actually got it. We're seeing that with MAGA now – they are taking massively powerful levers like USAID and just collapsing them instead of redirecting them. A Plan involves directing the power towards your projects, whatever they may be, and opting not to use the levers is just an admission that there was no plan to begin with. Also as much as I love BAP we need to take him at his word, he's an entertainer and not providing anything to take action on. Yarvin is similar, he is brilliant and can explain in detail the locusts of power but then ends the conversation at the describing step when the interesting things only come after that. The thing to say next is "wow, enough power exists out there to do [bad leftist woke projects], maybe if we captured even a sliver of that existing energy we could [send people to Mars, build more monuments, improve manufacturing capacity]."

>>3192
Political power is not the only power that exists.

>>3198
I don't mean to blackpill but for the sake of this conversation he is unfortunately closer to Commentary than Planning. He's pointing out what the left is doing that's Bad and never points to what Should Be Done Instead. But even with that, he's a point on a positive line.

>>3204
Agreed civics education is important but having a plan for what you would do with the power is what's upstream of everything.

My sense is that there's a sort of "magic soil" phenomenon going on when approaching power from this side, where if you specialize in getting power, everything else will fall into place. What all of the Commentary should teach us is that the people who win are simply the ones who have a plan and there's boundless power available to commandeer and steer towards Your Plan.

Silicon Valley is plagued by a similar magic soil perspective. They believe that creating "moar technology" will somehow get everyone to a vaguely "better world". Increasing energy capacity via nuclear is a topic right now, but have these people ever verbalized what they want the energy to be used for? The reality is that they have no preference. They want to make these things available and will sell to/ work with anyone who wants to use them (the people who have a plan for how to use the energy). This is why SV is spiritually a labor cohort instead of a political cohort. If they really felt strongly about being a political cohort, they would group up and say specifically what outcomes they want and then produce tech exclusively for those outcomes instead of the current situation where they make things with no objective at which point the people with Plans step in to steer them.

referenced by: >>3217

Infiltrate and captu

anon_vufa said in #3217 3w ago:

>>3215
> We're seeing that with MAGA now – they are taking massively powerful levers like USAID and just collapsing them instead of redirecting them

As much as I am relieved that we got this instead of the Harris admin it still doesn't bode well for the future. MAGA is a revolutionary movement, and revolutions tend to move fast and break shit. Actual building is much harder and few people want to do this nor have a concrete plan. Beyond that, its still to early to say but if the courts strike down most of Trump's EOs what has MAGA really been accomplishing ?

As much as I am reli

anon_nuny said in #3218 3w ago:

> We're seeing that with MAGA now – they are taking massively powerful levers like USAID and just collapsing them

Some organizations should be reformed, others deleted. The macro trend is metastasizing bureaucracy---we simply have *more* of everything to the point of sclerosis. Cities with 100s of committees, insolvent states, uncountable federal agencies. If we have alternating political factions that only try to redirect this morass towards their own ends and occasionally grow it further, we lose.

Reform is also hard. What do you do with a 10,000-employee organization composed of half camera-off retirement-benefit-farmers and half zealous wokes? Reforming that to useful ends may not work.

--

> Silicon Valley is plagued by a similar magic soil perspective

Very true.

The best writing I've seen on that topic:
https://www.palladiummag.com/2020/04/30/its-time-to-build-for-good/

Some organizations s

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