Toward Ecosophy

Dear JMG,

Just one correction, the Alt-Right wasn't supporting Trump in 2020 or the GOP. You might have seen Richard Spenser made a big deal that he was voting Biden and an all Dem ticket. Trump actually lost 5% of the white male vote (part of that would be AR). He hasn't done anything for white males, pandered to non-whites, and the situation has actually got worse for white males working class under Trump. They'll start to support him again if they election looks rigged and was stolen, but they didn't help him this election.

Magic being involved would certainly explain my situation; the whole election left me unbelievably shaken and entranced, like there was some sort of malicious miasma around the whole thing. I've never particularly cared about which gerontocrat controls America, but this time I found myself wildly oscillating between bizarre fantasies about what Trump or Biden would do, and how horrible it would be.

Either way, this is probably a disaster for the average American. No unity or stability, and a continuing virus hysteria. The social instability triggered by that will worsen the political circus like a chemical feedback loop.

Would you agree that this may boil down to magical arrogance as well as mishandled magic?

I purchased the magical battle of britain and it has proved to be a great distraction at this time, as well as a guide for how to preform effective magic in times such as these.

Actually the 'psychic' on Karlyn Borysenko's video show "Absolutely Nothing Controversial' nailed it, including that Trump will win after months of difficulty. It remains to be seen if Trump wins, but it seems spooky how right on he is so far. And I thought he was a dweeb, almost didn't watch his prediction. I think my prediction, Trump winning the same number of EC votes as last time, but with a more comfortable margin per state, was right on, minus the fraud, which I had kinda sorta forgot about. Now it all makes sense in hindsight. Your red wave prediction was not going to happen, it depended on a high information environment that does not exist. As for positive magic, it was there, I could feel it in the rallies, many of them spontaneous. Trump even had a risen up from the dead moment, the most potent magical display I have ever seen. I just hope we can keep that, keep it positive, and spread it around. If it goes negative without diminishment there will be blood like we have not seen since the first civil war, and a break up of the states might end up being better than the likely alternative, a brutal victory by the right, reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War. I am still hopeful we can stay positive regardless of the election which is a little overblown anyway. DC will stay gridlocked anyway regardless.

Out of chaos comes order..... eventually

This is exactly why whenever I pray, I finish up with the phrase, "Harming none, Respecting free will, and being for the good of all, So Mote It Be." :-)

Several months ago when the riots/protests blew up I said I was going to pray for my friends that were caught up in it. JMG said it was a good idea, and TSW...it made me a lot calmer, and seemed to help others! I worked on finding more specific intent for prayer prior to election day, but did not work as hard as I should have, and was not training the will as suggested. This sloppiness contributed to a blow up with my wife yesterday, which will take time to repair.

But let's look on the bright side, or take the white pill as M. Malice says. As a result of this contested election:

1. More people than ever will notice that our media and thought leaders are incompetent when they aren't malign. Perhaps fewer will listen to the soothing voice saying the world should be as you wish, not as it is. Better voices will have room to be heard. And the media and universities are one step closer to the crisis that causes collapse and reform.

2. No blue or red wave. No extreme can enact as much mischief as they might like to. And some of the popular, positive things will continue...no new wars, drawdown from the inevitable ones, and striking while the iron is hot to broker more peace deals--easy if Trump wins, Biden would have an easier job because he wouldn't be obstructed.

3. The voter analysis indicates the GOP picked up more minority votes that any other candidate since 1960. The attempted ethnic balkanization of our country has been dealt a blow, and the appeal of wokeness for the Dems reduced. Too soon to say if this continues, but it's a start. It will encourage more to stand against it.

4. Because neither side will be satisfied, there will be less incentive to build in the cheat for future elections. With the internet and awareness, it's harder to get away with.

5. Unsatisfying politics makes for more interesting real connections. We may have a push to return to the little platoons. I'm even thinking of learning more about a Masonic Lodge, so long as I can keep up with other hobbies that expose me to different people. Also, more people may realize the etheric matters a lot in their life than they thought.

6. If it comes to litigation re: the result, maybe front loading it will make whichever side loses find it more legitimate than 2016. It worked for Gore v. Bush.

I suspect there are many more potential upsides and I encourage y'all to suggest more! Sadly, trying to suggest these to my wife (even after I voted for Kanye in a safe state for the Dems) caused the blow up. I was trying to explain that litigation would be better for her team and would build more legitimacy. She blew up and I blew up, in a way I had been trying to overcome. But I hadn't prayed and focused my intent before, so I have to say that's kind of my fault. You go to the mental gym before you need it.

One last point...maybe this is the third act. There is opportunity for grace by many, if they grasp it.

For example: Either Trump or Biden wins a court case, which could decide a state but would still leave the result in doubt should other cases continue. It's close to the December cutoff. Whoever loses concedes on the grounds it would deny their fellow citizens their voice regardless of who they voted for, even as it prevented fraudulent votes from being counted. The other guy accepts, promising to respect the best ideas and honor the enthusiasm of the other side. After the last four years of shenanigans, both know how to collaborate and get rid of the vipers waiting to take whoever wins down after the election. Long shot, yes, but if we pray and work for grace it might just happen.

Thanks for this place, JMG!

-Gollios

I certainly think magic has had profound impacts on this election cycle, but most of it has looked like poorly executed thaumaturgy fueled by the never-ending resource of "magical" thinking. The overall result has been ridiculously weighted towards thoughtless braying in order to buttress reassuring resentments through perpetual projection.

I don't know that very many people tried any real theurgy, since most people who know how to also know that election magic is a fool's errand. All the Resistance workings you so effectively deconstructed seemed in the end like little more than weak propaganda. "Buy in and you too will get god on your side, plus a brand spankin' new deus ex machina. But that's not all -- your enemies will be smited, and your breath will smell minty fresh!"

Perhaps the slow-motion train wreck we see unfolding all around us has less to do with the malignant ravings of advertiser-wannabes in Harry-Potter hats, and more to do with our collective denial of the seismic shifts shaking our once stable worldview to smithereens. That collective denial is definitely being nurtured by all the propaganda blaring 24/7, but it first had to be conjured up in each individual soul through its own dark magic. We have to sell out -- to crave ease and comfort over living -- before the shiny carrots they dangle before us can distract us into the cul-de-sacs of denial.

Knowing that our fading elite would never voluntarily give up their privileges, we knew that they would use every technique they could to drag out their interminable decline. What better use of their degraded thaumaturgy than to call ALL legitimacy into question? Once we had begun loudly and publicly doubting their unquestionable legitimacy, the only defense they had left was to delegitimize everything else, especially our representatives. And they have very effectively done that. Trump will be as shackled in his second term as he was in his first, if not more so. His deplorables have been neutered and will be hectored forever for their multitude of sins... or so the elite fantasize in their privilege-pickled minds.

One thing that really entertains me about our beloved elites is how consistently they confuse the dismantling of their own control structures with the withholding of resources from the rest of us. They have destroyed the school system they imposed on everyone, based on the class-reinforcing Prussian system. “Ha, ha, take that you uneducated plebes!” Did they forget that schooling was how they washed out creative, diverse minds to obtain a uniformity of opinion? They want to defund the police because elites can always afford private security. “Cower in fear, you unprotected plebes!” Have they forgotten how they once transitioned from private Pinkerton's men to public police forces because it was cheaper and more effective for protecting their own interests? Now they have delegitimized the election process so painstakingly written into our Constitution. “Feel your impotency, you disenfranchised plebes!” Are they forgetting that the landed gentry wrote those elaborate rules specifically to protect their own power and possessions? What's next? Will they take corporate, industrial farming from us? Oh, no! Or how about guild-controlled allopathic medicine? Not that briar patch! Please, please, Mr. Elite, don't throw me in that briar patch!

I think it is safe to assume that privilege-pickled minds will continue rehearsing their never-ending triumphs the whole time that they are slipping obliviously into self-inflicted irrelevancy. Any subtlety of thought, any conflicting viewpoints will be ruthlessly cancelled to maintain the highest standards of ignorance. Eventually their disinformation-purged safe spaces will become the most exclusive and restricted of echo chambers, and they, the only inmates.

Anyone trying to make sense out of the muddled political morass we're stuck in will have to grope along tentatively for fear of being sucked into a quicksand of easy answers. The moment anyone optimistically tries to brush away any obscuring overgrowth of distracting talking points, the trap gets sprung, and a miasma of meaningless memes engulfs the poor fool. It really is like a horror film. And the drama is just beginning...

- Christophe

Stevie said this 47 years ago and it's just as topical now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoPMJNqyExA

- Cicada Grove

I have to say that this result feels exactly right.

I was pretty sure Trump was going to win in 2016. For the same reasons that Brexit passed against universal opposition and by a similar margin to Brexit. Hat tip JMG.

I didn't know what was going to happen this time. My intuition came up empty. I thought through several metrics, arguments, lines of thought, historical analogs... nothing. I could see it going 350 electoral college votes for either candidate, or exploding in a giant mess.

We didn't get what anyone was expecting, but in retrospect it was obvious that the country is very deeply divided right down the middle. But it also seems pretty clear that a lot of those divisions are fairly needless and could be resolved by refraining the debate in constructive terms instead of letting the debate be framed in terms of hyperpartisan rhetoric.

I forget which post it was, but JMG said at one point that a politician could do very well by claiming the wide open middle, and I think that is exactly correct.

The challenge today is to address the problems facing us in a constructive way that actually garner a lot of support. In that sense the situation hasn't changed since last week, or even four years ago. We are repeating the lesson because we got a failing grade in 2020, 2016, and for a while before that. If we don't learn anything from it this time it will come back in even starker terms.

I'll start with two examples. Illegal immigration and health care.

Illegal immigration - the actual problem here is an internal conflict between business who want cheap labor (and consumers who want cheap products) and workers who want good wages.

So, the way that these competing forces has been set up is to get punish the immigrants for getting caught while simultaneously making it easy for them to find work that will hire them. This has been framed in such a way that the debate is over enforcement, but solely on the immigrants. It could be reframed as punishing the employer. If business start paying heavy fines for the practice they will stop doing it, job opportunities for illegal immigrants will go away and and the incentive to leave their home country will be greatly diminished. They aren't going to take the very great personal risks if there isn't any pay off.

Of course, strawberries picked by migrant workers are cheap and a pint of strawberries picked by Americans will cost you $12 a pint, but that is the sort of consequence that we need to be talking about if we're being honest about it and not looking for easy answers that hide unpleasant things from sight.

Health care - there are dozens of countries that have better health outcomes, better public health, lower infant mortality, etc. AND lower health costs.

The problem here is that all attempts to fix this problem focus on health insurance which guarantees high prices to a bloated, bureaucratic, expensive healthcare system with poor outcomes. The proposed fixes are trying to make it affordable while simultaneously guaranteeing huge profits to the healthcare industry. And that, quite simply, can't be done.

Reframe this as copying countries that work by doing it the way that they do it down to the last little detail. If you dial down into the details of, say, the 10 best countries you will find a lot differences that reduce the quality and increase the cost. Focus on those things instead of trying to keep our system the way it is, but somehow shifting the bill until it is magically affordable.

Our problems aren't intractable and the people on the other side of whatever diving line you are standing on are neither stupid nor evil, but the problem has been framed in such a way that it cannot be resolved.

This is actually pretty simple. Take the binary problem and think it through until you see the trinary. Then approach the matter in good faith and be prepared to compromise were mutual gains can be had.

Be creative, be radical, brainstorm, think deeply about what is really at stake vs what political turf has been staked out. For example we can basically solve 90% of the abortion debate by making reversible male birth control (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_under_guidance#:~:text=Reversible%20inhibition%20of%20sperm%20under%20guidance%20(RISUG)%2C%20formerly%20referred,Dr.%20Sujoy%20K.%20Guha.) mandatory, but men can choose to undo it when they are ready to have kids, after the kids, back on the birth control. Men aren't going to mind, honestly, ask them.

And then, after you've been creative sit down with the opposition, the stake holders, the politicians and work toward something productive. I know that people have been walking on eggshells for years afraid that talking openly will cross a red line and cause an explosion. NOT TALKING ABOUT A PROBLEM IS NO WAY TO SOLVE IT. But if you are going to bring something up be prepared to be reasonable yourself and don't double down on a rigid ideological position when you hit a rough patch, explore the reasons for the rough patch and work on finding a trinary solution.

Back to the magical dimensions of this post, I suspect that mixing magic and politics is regarded as a bad idea because politics requires open and honest communication and magic is supposed to be kept silent and secret.

Thanks,
Tim