Necromantic Cope

In a recent interview with Benjamin A Boyce I made a claim that I felt needs to be elaborated more in a written format. I mentioned that the demographics and politics of the United States today is actually more similar to the Confederacy of the 1860s than the Union of the 1860s. What did I mean by that?

Demographics: The Confederacy hovered somewhere around 60% White, while the Union was about 95% White population. Today, the United States is about 60% white. Probably a little higher if we include White Latinos. This is far more similar to the Confederacy than the Union.

Law: You probably recall back in the Biden era, many Republican states simply nullified Federal laws and mandates ranging from Covid restrictions to border enforcement. Of course, in both Trump eras, Democrat states do the exact thing with regards to ICE operations and such. This is, in functionality, a confederate model. States are acting nearly autonomously, but still paying taxes. This, of course, is far more similar to the Confederate model than the Union model. We can extend this view on any number of other issues like Abortion, Gun Control, Education, LGBTQ stuff, and even some voting laws.

There are consequences to this.

There has been an ongoing question of “what happens when they’re back?” both from the right and left. Both have this sense that their opposition will go full “Turbo America” for the kind of America they want - essentially, reconstruction and/or denazification applied to their political opposition. However, most people fail to comprehend what you need to do that. The only reason the Union could do something like Reconstruction onto the South, or later Denazification onto Europe, was because the Union of those days was homogeneous, unified, and had a shared sense of values, direction, goals, etc, etc. When you’re 95% the same thing, it’s easy to do things. However, when you’re not, you can’t - or at least, you will be a shadow projection of the power you thought you had. Now, that’s not to say such shadow projections are “safe”. You’re still going to suffer under them, inasmuch as the average Iraqi or Afghani suffered tremendously under the haphazard wars the United States fought in those lands. The bite still hurts, it’s just not lethal.

A a thought experiment, Dear Reader, have you ever asked yourself if the reason the Confederacy lost wasn’t because it had bad values or bad soldiers, but because had bad demographically and was politically compromised? If we are more like the Confederacy today, we will render similar results to the Confederacy back then.

My argument on Mr Boyce’ show was simple: In order to do something a particular people did in a particular time, you have to mold yourself and your people into that particular people and time. You have to become like those people were. In reality, if the Democrats come to power and try to reconstruct MAGA America, they will find themselves incapable of achieving their goals fully, because they will be going about it in the body of something like the Confederacy, rather than a body like the Union. Oh sure, they will try to go for it, and many people will suffer, but it will fail. Just as MAGA is failing to “Put the Woke Away”.

In order for any administration to do things like reconstruction and denazification, they have to first, in essence, “Terraform the Noosphere”. What do I mean by that?

Consider the Earth’s Geosphere. It forms by the movement of materials in any give era. You can basically say that each organism and rock of any given era represents units of interactions. Molecules in a system. Periodic extinction events divide layers in the Geosphere, almost acting like chapter markers when one normative organization ends and another begins. If we were to magically take the fossils of one era and bring them back to life in another era, it is unlikely the species could survive. Perhaps the oxygen content is incompatible, or the Earth was colder, or hotter, or wetter, or drier. This holds true even for the minerals of each era. Minerals that form in wet ecosystems can’t form in dry ones. Minerals that require high oxygen content can’t form in eras with low oxygen content. You can tell a lot about each era by what can exist in it, and what cannot.

Similarly, the Noosphere contains layers of normative organization for each era of human history. If you imagine your mind, and other’s minds, as molecules in a system, then the interaction of minds constitutes a normative organization in any given era. That complexity, and the way in which it is organized, informs us of what can, and cannot, exist in any given era. These eras are similarly divided by various “mass extinction” events - not of species so much as concepts. The Bronze Age collapsed was the extinction of Bronze Age normative organization, and the so-called Dark Ages were the extinction of Roman Imperial normative organization. These force the Noosphere to recompile itself for new normative organizations. Civilization is at the mercy of these norms, and the models of civilization from one era cannot simply be transplanted to a different layer - anymore than the organisms and minerals we find in one geological era can be brought into a different era and expect to survive.

This is the general conceptualization of the Noosphere as written by by Vladimir Vernadsky, and later developed by the Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It was a very useful way to understand different eras, and why we have to understand our own era in terms of limits and abilities. You cannot simply re-invent the Roman Empire, French Revolution, or Reformation in a different layer of the Noosphere, because the ecosystem does not select for those normative organizations of civilization to survive. You have to deal with the realities of your own era, and design your civilization in accordance with the normative organizations of it. Else, it is doomed - like a fish transported into a desert.

When people do attempt these transportations from one layer to another, what we get is a Ghost Dance, or as the title here says, a Necromantic Cope. None of these attempted resurrections have a hope in hell in competing in a Noosphere they were not adapted to.

We live in a peculiar era. There is a mass extinction occurring, in which the - let’s call it the Nuremburg ecosystem - is collapsing. Civilizations naturally selected for this ecosystem are under enormous evolutionary pressure to begin adapting to changes, or go extinct.

To borrow the words of one oddly accurate feminist author author:

“What, then, can we expect in the near term? Absent a secure hegemony, we face an unstable interregnum and the continuation of the political crisis. In this situation, the words of Gramsci ring true: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear,”

-Nancy Fraser

Nations are sick, because they are waking up to the reality that they have lost the ecosystem in which they thrive. Strange trees have sprouted up, and their leaves have sprinkled a new chapter in the Noosphere. The nations must adapt to it, or die.

These moribund symptoms are all around us.

One of the examples I brought up in the Boyce interview is the difference between material right-left distinctions, and structural right-left distinctions. Mr Boyce spoke of a very pro LGBTQ community he passed through in the Pacific North West, but I pointed out that this community, despite the material left wing appearance, is structurally far-right.

How can this be?

A small town, mostly white, very progressive, and containing within it a small economic engine, is for all intents and purposes, an ethnos. It believes in borders like any far-right community, just with regards to keeping MAGA folk out. It believes in close-knit communities in the form of all their little rainbow coalition clubs. It has war chants and ancestor songs the same as the most far right pagan cult you can imagine. It has a set of religious beliefs in the form of progressive creeds, religious icons in the farm of civil rights heroes, and religious ceremonies and sacraments in the form of child mutilation and abortion. This constitutes a local ethnos that will strive for its own preservation. It will seek in-groups, and keep out out-groups. In some instances, it may even have a local militia of transsexuals ready to defend their tribe and land. It is, structurally, far-right. No matter how many rainbow flags and civil right leaders it worships, it is a far-right cult in structure.

Compare this distinction with, say, a Christian Nationalist community in the deep south. Change the rainbow flag for a Maga flag, change the progressive creeds for traditional one, and change the civil rights leaders with preferred pastors or theologians, and you haven’t actually changed anything structurally. You have only changed the skinsuit. It’s, structurally, the same thing.

Ideologically divergent groups increasingly mirror each other structurally, even while maintaining surface-level antagonisms.

I call this Ethno-Localism. Why? Because it is ethnically homogeneous, local, and will keep out non-local ethnoi. Oh sure, the progressive iteration may even worship foreigners and migrants, but do any actually live there? Probably not. It is a far-right cult, just with a left wing skinsuit.

Ethno-Local phenomena represent what I said earlier: A United States which behaves more like the Confederacy than the Union. Each of these tribal affiliations sets up its own norms, its own standards, and in some instances their own laws - many refuse to enforce federal laws they finds disagreeable. Whether it’s red communities refusing stand down orders at the border, or blue communities refusing ICE entry, it’s still a move towards decentral confederate models of civilization.

How can a federal government actually manage these Ethno-Local tribes? Each one creates its own laws and norms, and rejects iterations of federal power it finds unfavorable. It cannot. In fact, in order to even attempt to do this, a federal power would first have to “Terraform the Noosphere” somewhere to establish a homogeneous, neutral, disaffiliated power center from which to crush, reconstruct, and denazify or decommufy these Ethno-Local phenomena. The Federal Government lacks the auroa of neutrality required to do this at this time. The Federal Government is either red, or blue, so it is not neutral. It is full of competing interests between parties, so it is not homogeneous. It seeks extreme policies from its foot soldiers - the terminally online right and left more-often than not - so it is not disaffiliated.

In Late Antiquity, the Catholic Church could be these things, and often played this role. It was able to placate different dynasties and entertain new and inventive power structures to gradually rebuilt central power and “Terraform the Noosphere” of Europe into what we now call the Medieval Era. The Federal Government of the United States is not this.

Thus, any idea that this Federal Government could go about reconstruction at a national scale, much less denazification of MAGA, or decommunification of Blue Wave Dems, is farcical. It will get knotted up in the mess it has. However, there is potential for the Federal Government to induce this, gradually over time.

In Gaul, after Roman Imperial Power faded, this was the role the Merovingian dynasty played. They were neutral, disaffiliated “Rockstars”, as I called them in the interview. That is, regardless of someone was a Gaul, a Roman, a Frank, a Goth, an wealthy lord, or a poor peasant, the Merovingians were popular. They would put up duels in public and draw crowds, or settle disputes with Papal authority. They had all that jazz that makes someone an icon, but they also had no real political power. That role went to the Majordomo of Gaul - a kind of local Prime Minister often held by remnants of the Romano-Gallic State. Over time, when the people grew to understand the Merovingians were the figurehead, and the Majordomo were the real power, they were able to present themselves as like unto the Merovingian’s: Neutral, disaffiliated with confederate partisanship, and homogeneous in-so-far as they were various mixed lineages of Franks, Goths, Romans, and Gauls. Gradually, they were able to find one of their own, in the form of Charles Martel, and set him up to inherit the Throne from the Merovingians, and with formal papal agreement, unite the figurehead and the real power into one office: The King of France - later the Holy Roman Emperor. They were able, in this way, to slow-cook an ethnogenesis of what we today call France, and Germany to a lesser extent.

These processes take time, but they can be done. We already saw one potential Merovingian figure in the form of Elon Musk, because he was - for a time - able to cross between the confederate tribes of America and be that Rockstar. Unfortunately, he was a “False Dawn” - that is to say, someone in the shadow of the figure but fails to live up to the task. However, we at least have a general sense of what that Archetype needs to be in America, now. We may even call this a Musky figure in our contexts - but please don’t let that become a term. Our Merovingian dynasty will have to be this billionaire rockstar who engaged with the public. Someone who puts up duels and shows for the public to feel like they have some shared ownership, and gradually reengage the population to be a singular nation. He doesn’t have to be President. However, his role can mold the President into something like the Majordomo - a position that once again has real power. In time, the Rockstar and the President can become one. Trump was close to that, but he never had the grace from our own Vatican, the Media. Indeed, the moral role the media plays does model closely to the church’s role in the so-called Dark Aged.

It is my hope, that we will avoid Necromantic Copes by trying to fit this figure into leaders from dead eras. We don’t need a new FDR, nor a new Nixon, nor a new Johnson. We need a Rockstar. Someone tailored to our particular age - and even then, he is only a Merovingians. One to stabilize so that a Charles Martel can rise, and later one a Charlemagne figure. Granted, these are names from yet another dead layer - however, it’s just to give the idea.

These are things to merely consider for now, and hold in the back of your mind. For now, we’re headed for a Dark Age, and all the could-have-been and should-have-been figures that could have been these archetypes have proven False Dawns. MAGA is a False Dawn, Trump is a False Dawn, Elon Musk is a False Dawn. So is Newson, so is Kamala, so is pretty much everyone “known” out there. However, again, we know the archetypes now, so keep looking on the Horizon for a True Dawn.

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You can watch the interview here: