No Swim Back

And you'll drown if you do

The late 90s are a special decade. I’ve said it a few times here and there, but I’ll repeat it: Those who were youths in the 90s thing fondly of those days the same way the elderly dwell upon those early post-war years - an idealic age from whence all things got worse. There exists a kind of year zero from whence all things got worse thereafter. For the conceptual Boomers amongst us, the idealism of the 50s crawls into the the early Civil Rights victories to mark the zero year, and everything has declined in stability henceforth. For we younger folks, some people like to place that year zero on the Obama presidency, but it does exists quite some years off from the idealistic 90s.

There are a number of parallels. Both eras were stuck with one foot in the past and one foot in the future. echoes of the 19th century intersecting with the atomic and space ages. For us, in the 90s, only 36% of the population had adopted personal computers. That means 64% of the population was living life little different than their parents had for decades backwards. Those of us standing in the future looked to an exciting age of communication and technology.

How fondly we think upon that infant internet when the learning curve meant that the people using it were inherently of an higher quality stock than the average user today. The Human Genome project hadn’t completed yet, and there was still some mystery to just how our bodies worked, and many a multitude of factions hoped that their worldview would somehow be scientifically proven by it. Was consciousness just a genetic code? Could we cure cancer? Was there some kind of gene for the soul? What of immortality? Many old and new age religions were betting they would get this question squared away and mark it settled science - many of them are still waiting today for that failed omnipotent and omniscient ascension man. We can consider, too, that both the 90s and 50s were right after a global ideological battle. It felt like there was a grand consensus developing that humanity had resolved its primal differences and was finally ready to boldly march into new territory with these ideals. Everyone in those ideal years were convinced the great debates were over and now was the time to commit to proving theory in material reality.

However, one mustn’t forget: This idealism exists in our memories more-so as an idealized fantasy world than a real memory. There is the 90s we remember, and then the real 90s that was far less ideal - the 90s we forget. Just as with the 1950s, all that 90s hopefulness proved to be nonsense.

There exists a unique film from the 1990s that, in my humble opinion, successfully overlaps these two eras and fits them into a teaching story - a kind of warning to the era to come, whispering “It was a lie in the 1950s, it is a lie today in the 1990s, and it will be a lie in the decades to come. This film captures that hopeful idealism of both eras, and boldly shows the crushing consequential reality it will inevitably create, That film is Gattaca. A particular film that seemed aware of both the ideal and the real, and the nonsense.

Gattaca, aesthetically, is the 1990s coated with a 1950s aesthetic. All the best technology had to offer, framed with that gilded age and ford motorcar coolness of grandpa. The juxtaposition is, frankly, telling its own story in the background. Pay attention and you will understand the warning it is giving.

The world of Gattaca is one of genetic idealism - foreseen to be the next great struggle after the political and technological idealisms of the 20th century. The film’s protagonist is a “natural birth” human in a future where the world is ruled by the genetically engineered. He doesn’t have access to a rewarding life or career because his genes were trusted to chance, rather than engineered to succeed. Society cannot tolerate a chance when it now has access to certainties. The Protagonist’s brother, on the other hand, was genetically engineered. The Protagonist is stuck only looking on at what he cannot have as his brother succeeds and he is never given a chance to try.

This protagonist, Vincent, recalls how he raced his brother, Anton, with a swim many times in his childhood. It was a rather choreographed experience, as the genetically perfect brother would always beat his natural sibling. However, one day when they were older, the impossible happens: Vincent out-swims Anthony, and Anthony begins to drown. After saving his genetically perfect brother with his genetically inferior strength, Vincent realizes it was the first time he had really been tested for his capabilities, and he proved the better. He decides to leave the family house to prove himself - discovering newfound confidence that if he can do that, he can do anything - and thus the story begins.

However, this one-off victory over his well-managed society proves to be insufficient to alter his chances. Years go by for Vincent working odd jobs, until he realizes he needs an in - a chance to prove himself past the genetic walls. After meeting with some nefarious actors, Vincent is placed in contact with a crippled genetically engineered citizen, Jerome. They make an agreement that Vincent will take Jerome’s identity to live and work in high society, so long Jerome gets some of the income. After some interviews, he lands himself in a space program on this stolen identity, exceeds on his own merit, gets to space, and become an hero.

It’s a stupidly simple plot, but the morality of the film hit the public deeply. Dig around and ask a few questions, and it turns out this film is often pointed to as the cause for the pause in genetic engineering research in the Bush years, and many transhumanist vehemently hate it for such reasons. It can realistically be argued that an entire history of Eugenics was canceled due to its impact on the public.

For most people, this film is just another Faustian flick about a hero rising above the social constraints placed upon him. However, this overall plot is not what I wish to write on. I wish to propose a different perspective: That this main plot is actually just background noise. Genetics here could be traded with memetics or any number of topics, and the actual story being told would still be tellable - that is, a story about Elitism.

Vincent is, for all intents and purposes, a client group. Jerome is, for all intents and purposes, a fallen Elite. And only by working together can they actuate a change in society. In this regard, one may even view this movie as inherently anti-left. Rather than the tried and overused class struggle story, this is actually a story about how different classes need each other to affect change in mutually beneficial ways. It can be considered a lesson in how to rightly-reorder society to be better for all.

In fact, the film says as much in its opening scenes when Vincent first meets Jerome:

Consider the actual, functional, reality that is being described. Past the aesthetics and genetics, this is about Jerome falling out of his ability to be in the Elite, and turning over his elite assets and connections to a client - Vincent. Their relationship, although initially material in necessity - Vincent wants to ascend, and Jerome needs income for his living standards - does grow into a well-ordered relationship between the haves and have-nots. A co-dependency that benefits both and, in many ways, operates as a self-contained political block. Vincent and Jerome both provide for each other what they both need to thrive. But it doesn’t happen by chance. It takes work from both of them. Jerome, it turns out, has become a drunk since his accident. None of his blood is actually useful in society’s genetic scanners. They would detect his alcoholism and substance abuse and he would get throw out. Only if Vincent “cleans him up”, will they both be able to succeed. Ever has the underclass have to pull their elite out of their vices for them to be effective, just as ever has the elite had to guard their clients from distraction to meet both their goals - and likewise, Vincent has his weaknesses he must fray from for this arrangement to work. Vincent likes the genetically engineered women, and they have a tendency to gene check potential partners. Both face these risks, but as a patron-client unit, they both stand to achieve.

A large theme throughout the story is commitment as well. When patron-client relationships form, both have to be committed. We are shown the degree to which this commitment must be fortified. To fully pretend to be Jerome, Vincent undergoes skeletal surgery to match Jerome’s height - he must mirror his patron to receive the gifts of that patronage. Jerome has less to sacrifice - a little withdrawal and seclusion, as he provides genetic samples for Vincent to use. However, the thing about commitment is that it is only proven through struggle - and that struggle comes when a murder happens at the space center, and a shred of Vincent’s DNA is found amidst Jerome’s. Instantly, Vincent’s real former identity threatens this venture and the stakes are added when the detective sent to investigate is Vincent’s own brother, Anton, who will easily see through the disguise. Of course, Vincent isn’t the murderer - it was another person altogether. And after the murderer confesses and Vincent’s brother has no grounds to arrest him, they have a heated reunion in which the brother demands a re-try of the race he lost. Vincent agrees, and the two test their commitment to their ideals on the waves of fate. Once again, Vincent’s brother starts to drown as Vincent wins the race. It’s at this point Anton asks how Vincent did it, to which Vincent replies with one of the most profound lines:

That's how I did it, Anton.

I never saved anything for the swim back.

The line is the culmination of the film’s focus on commitment. Vincent is committed, to whatever ends.

Vincent, incidentally, faces one final test. On the day of his launch, he flunks a urine test. However, he has also been brewing something of a client relationship himself, with the facility’s doctor. It turns out this guy’s genetically engineered son had a mutation, preventing him from being a future elite. The doctor’s known all along, and has been telling his son about him to give him hope. The doctor let's him go, and Vincent fully ascends into the position of the Elite, able to form his own patronage with a client.

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Why am I writing about this? Because, all civilizations are built off this patron-client relationship. For the past odd 60 years, the defining patron-client relationship of the United States has been between Left wing elite and their special interest patrons. This has primarily worked by extracting wealth and power over the native population, who for those same 60 odd years have convinced themselves that all forms of collectivism and hierarchical relationships are evil communism and you have to make it on your own. However, this is, quite frankly, a asthmatic impossibility. Let’s say you make minimum wage. Even if you saved every dollar you made from age 20 to age 60, and somehow magicked away the cost of food, housing, and children, you would only have $600k. The vast majority of American “individualists” will live poor, retire poorer, and die even more poor. Without a patron to ensure their good life, opportunity, and care, they have absolutely no hope in even an enjoyable life. They are doomed to suffer from the day they are born until the day they die. Someone like me? A man of moderate income and support? Even if I saved every spare dollar until I retired at 60, I would only have $2M saved up. Enough for a small house and a fixed expenses of about $2k a month until a die - which is basically what I have right now. That means no matter how hard I work through decades of living, I will only ever achieve exactly how I am living right now. My university degree, masters, partial PhD, years of experience, careful sacrifice so that I have no medical or education debt, and everything else that went into my life results in barely breaking even for retirement - and mind you, I know full well I represent perhaps the top 15% of the nation. I can’t fathom how poorer or less well off people deal with this fact. I am depressed knowing all my years in university and training meant absolutely nothing for getting me ahead in life. How the have-nots manage knowing they will only ever be worse off for all their labor is beyond me.

So why write this? Because I need you to understand that the old patronage network is pissed. Trump, fool that he is, represents the native population expressing independence from the extraction scheme they’ve been working for 60 years now. They want vengeance and if they get back into power, they are going to make your status quo life a nightmare, and I am not convinced you, Dear Reader, have thought about this. But there is opportunity here nonetheless.

The country is in a shakeup period. Many long-held beliefs of the country are suddenly dropping below 50%. Support for Israel dropped below 50% in Feburary 2025. Support for Free Trade dropped below 50% late last year. Support for big business has dropped below 50% for several years. Support for oil and gas drilling dropped below 50% late last year as well. These hint at the collapse of long-held Boomer Truths, and it should be no surprise! In 2019, the aging Boomers lost their title of largest age group to the Millennials, and likewise it is projected there will be 10 million fewer boomers alive in 2028 than are alive today. The entire Biden Presidency was a kind of last gasp of Boomerism. With that last gasp, they showed just how against they are at forming client relationships with the native population. For the foreseeable next few years, much of the external-gazing tendencies of the Boomers will be losing majority vote share, which means the first political party to focus internally on problems here and now will be the most able to form new Client relationships, and form them quickly. How that patronage forms will define US politics for decades to come.

Now, many people hoped that Trump, an Elite down on his luck, may have been the patron that could open the floodgates of opportunity for younger people. I remain quite doubtful. His continued preference for external problems with China and entanglements with Israel’s demands hints that his reign is really more a pause from the left wing’s dominance rather than a reversal. We mustn’t get lazy and imagine the path of vengeance the left will be on isn’t coming. Should they reacquire power, it will be unprecedented in all likelihood. Consider their perspective - a perspective which includes many of the aging boomers, but increasingly radicalized millennials - they lost their empire to the chaotic behavior of a clearly defined client group that is convinced they are not clients.

It seems to me that both the right and left of this nation imagine that if things get too crazy, they can simply swim back to their idealism of the past. To those Obama years when the right was respectful and the left was assertive, but everyone got along. This is as delusional as the boomers who thought they could always go back to 1950 if progress went too far. There is no swim back. One side is going to drown, and the other is going to make it across.

The right, by this calculation, has some work to do if it doesn’t want to be the one that drowns. It has to acquire a kind of group consciousness that ignores culture war slop, walks over weak opposition from corrupt sources, and acts for its collective self interest. It can’t believe the lie that it can just swim back if this doesn’t work out. By electing Trump, flawed fool that he is, this country’s native population took a path it cannot go back from. There is no magic reset button. Too much has been lost by the left. Boomers both left and right still seem to think they can swim back, maybe even to 1950. But you, dear youth, need to open your eyes. You are never going back to 1990, let alone 2008. That time is too far back. You have to commit to the swim to something new, or you are going to drown.

That’s a big ask for a country that has convinced itself it is temporarily embarrassed millionaires. I would ask, nay beg, please do the math of your income and expenses and ask yourself honestly: Will I ever be what I keep dreaming I could be? If the answer is no - if there is no mathematical solution to your income magically making you better off, then I’m here to tell you the facts: You need a Patron to get you there. More likely, you will be punished for even dreaming it, worse if you expressed this desire publicly. You are not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. You are delusional fool convinced you can swim back to childhood. You are, in fact, about to drown.

The best mental space you can be in right now is having a timer set that constantly reminds you just how many months until the next election. Because in all likelihood, in 45 months your life is going to become worse than you could ever imagine, and if you can’t swim the distance, you are going to drown.

So why did I write this? Because the commitment between Patrons and Clients necessary to achieve anything of value for you and your future, and the future of your offspring, requires exactly what Vincent decided: Not saving anything for the swim back.