A Tale of Two Realities
The Regime’s successful creation of a system of separate realities – one for their supporters and another for those who defy them – has opened a catastrophic fissure in our social fabric.
One thing most Americans agree on is that we are in decline as a society, culture, and nation. You can look at metrics like life expectancy, birthrate, and debt, or you can simply take a walk among the dirty and crime-ridden streets of our largest cities to witness this accelerating fall from grace. In a normal world, this might cause some introspection and soul-searching on the part of both the public and society’s elites to chart a new course. After all, if you are on a sinking ship, your first instinct would be to bail out the water. And if you are in a burning building, you would call the fire department. Now imagine: what if the fire department’s prime directive was no longer to fight fires, but rather to enforce the preferred reality of their political commissars?
Modernity is anything but normal. We live in the “upsidedown” where good is framed as evil; where obedience is presented as freedom; where men pretend to be women; where neurotic geriatrics and preside over public health; where the mutilation of children is presented as an act of mercy; where doctors are paid to kill their patients; where the press advocates for censorship; where the corrupt imprison the innocent; where the billionaire is coddled and the worker is humiliated; where the warmongers never see a day of combat; where inflation is handled by increasing inflation; where those who fought for the country are denigrated; where those who seek to protect the innocent are thrown in jail; where law enforcement targets the law-abiding; where corruption is not only excused, but celebrated. The Regime – that is, the ruling interests of the powerful and their supporters among the public, driven by monstrous chimera of leftist politics, hatred of traditional society, neocon foreign policy, and corporate economic interests – has made it abundantly clear that they will stop at nothing to enforce this strange new set of rules upon the public in their infinite quest for power.
Along the way, the Regime has taken a machete to our once thriving birthright. Good jobs and home manufacturing were eliminated to chase GDP. Marriage and the family were destroyed so that women could be wage slaves to large corporations. Trillions of dollars were shipped overseas while our society languished at home. Property ownership and self-sufficiency has been made impossible in much of the country. Entire sovereign nations were obliterated and thousands of our own soldiers were killed, simply to satisfy the ghoulishly insatiable the pride of our elites. They eviscerated public trust so that pharmaceutical companies could increase their sales numbers. Public safety has declined significantly in the name of pet causes of the left like “equity”. They imported millions of military-aged men from areas of the world with hostile values, causing untold suffering.
Everything is backwards. Social norms no longer apply. People don’t trust each other. No one is ever held responsible. This is because the Regime has created one reality for themselves and their supporters, while maintaining a harsh and humiliating reality for their enemies. Everything you know about the world has been tossed aside to make room for their hoarding of power.
You may hear familiar phrases such as “rules for thee, but not for me”, “go woke go broke”, “imagine if a Republican did this”, or “the tolerant left” bandied about quite frequently. Such homilies are mere coping mechanisms for a population that does not realize it is already living in a different reality. For example, companies may face backlash for their hostility to their customers, but they don’t care. Ultimately, this is because corporations are not designed solely for profit: they are patronage schemes which are used to develop the careers of elites and reinforce the supremacy of the Regime. This is why, while the Bud Light boycotts were initially successful against AB InBev itself, no one involved in the decision will face serious punishment. The marketing executive in charge of the stunt was only fired when distributers demanded it. The corporate leadership team had no intention of firing her themselves. There is a significant chance that she will be back in another major corporate boardroom or an NGO leadership position before the end of the year, making the same decisions – at a higher salary. This is because the reality most people would face in such a situation doesn’t apply to her, since she occupies the Regime-created alternate reality.
The two-realities paradigm is where we see much of the legal malfeasance littering our political landscape. Former President Donald Trump can be indicted for mundane tweets by a biased jury, in a Democrat-dominated district, by politically motivated prosecutors with premeditated agendas, all while laughing with their toadies in the press about how they’re getting away with it. They may even just remove him from the ballot altogether. Meanwhile, President Biden can be directly implicated in a bribery scheme to the tune of tens of millions of dollars as part of his foreign influence-peddling corruption, and the Department of Justice will simply ignore the issue. Even with hard evidence and willing witnesses in the case of the President’s son Hunter, the Biden-controlled DOJ simply can appoint witnesses to positions that bar them from testifying without consequence. They can leverage their influence in friendly states to get charges dropped, and no one will be held accountable. They can rob Peter to pay Paul and brag about it.
Remember: the law only matters when everyone agrees to adhere to it faithfully – when everyone agrees to the same reality. Remember too that the law is enforced by those with power. When one side chooses to accumulate power and wield it against their enemies and the other side chooses to deny the shifting sands beneath their feet, the results are plainly evident. The Regime can do this because they have successfully split reality itself in two.
They have achieved this feat by a three-pronged approach to command and control:
Language Control: by owning the means of production of words, the Regime has been able to wield language itself as a distinguishing tool to craft these separate realities. For example, when the left criticizes a Republican, they will use soft language such as “questions”, or “challenges”, framing the criticism as a positive action. But when the right criticizes a Democrat, suddenly the language becomes filled with negative connotations, using words such as “pounce”, “seize”, and “rail”. They can also shift nomenclature or change words to mean whatever they wish via controlled enforcement of their meaning. Take for instance, the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” which had absolutely nothing to do with inflation but everything to do with climate change and increasing the deficit by printing more money. Through language manipulation, they successfully seeded the presence of alternate meanings and definitions, thereby laying the groundwork for their separate reality. Gender-neutral terms like calling women’s genitals “bonus holes” are another example of the Regime’s ability to create meaning out of thin air and blackmail the public into accepting the change.
Narrative Control: the control of language leads to sophisticated and tight narrative control, which you can see form in real time during moments of crisis. COVID was a prescient example of how narrative control can shift to comply with the needs of the Regime’s alternate reality at any given moment: we went from “Being worried about COVID is racist”, to “Not being worried about COVID is racist”; from “Vaccines will cure COVID and if you don’t get them, you should die”, to “We never forced you to take the vaccines”; from “If you go outside you will be arrested”, to “We never advocated for lockdowns”; from “Questioning the origins of COVID makes you a conspiracy theorist”, to “COVID lab leak proven true”, etc. They do this by controlling press ideology and online algorithms while working with tech companies to ensure that anyone who questions their narratives is censored, shadowbanned, or punished with demonetization. For example, performing any basic news search on Google, the world’s largest search engine, will yield only left-wing or Regime-friendly publications and sites for multiple pages. Finding an opposing viewpoint is quite literally like a needle in a haystack, though in this case the haystack is an unrelenting stream of Pravda. It gives prospective readers the feeling that the world outside doesn’t exist, and only the Regime-created reality is real.
Institutional Control: the use of narrative command and control ultimately reinforces the Regime’s institutional power, by creating a perverse incentive system that ensures compliance with the Regime-created distinction of realities. Those who adhere to the Regime’s preferred reality are rewarded with promotions, teaching jobs at Ivy League universities, donations, and government contracts. Those who adhere to that other reality – truth itself – are punished. Those who fail at their jobs in the eyes of the public are rewarded for their failure. Loyalists, especially those in elite circles, become central to maintaining a wider adherence to the Regime’s new reality by incentivizing self-enrichment. In this way, there doesn’t need to be a central conspiracy to create this system of two realities, but only faithful adherents to maintain the vapors of its existence. You can see this in the political proclivities of academics, teachers, journalists, bureaucrats, tech leaders, financiers, and more. Breaking the law for the advancement of the correct Regime-approved agenda or people becomes incentivized, while success becomes dependent on adherence to the new reality, creating a self-repairing and reinforcing structure that becomes difficult to break.
The false reality of the Regime exists so that elites can promote themselves and grow their influence, power, prestige, and wealth in society. Once it becomes pervasive and easy enough (proven by their success in manipulating large-scale events like COVID or the 2020 election to their will) Regime supporters become emboldened to accelerate their kowtowing. This portends a Soviet cycle of collapse, where government ceases to function due to the twisted incentive systems the alternate reality has encouraged. Ritual displays of loyalty become increasingly byzantine, leading to a mystifying competition for distinction in a zero-sum game of power accumulation. Complex systems cannot be maintained in a society that has entrenched this dual-reality system and you can only run on the fumes of past competency for so long before you begin to see consequences. In places like South Africa, where the reality has become hard coded along racial lines, the results have been disastrous. But even in the face of such stark malfeasance, the Regime’s system accelerates its devilish churn.
To see the devastating effects of this spiral, one need only look westward to paradise itself: Hawaii. Maui recently had a devastating fire that has already claimed well over 100 lives, with over 1,000 people still missing (in a fire of this intensity, the missing will quickly become listed among the dead). The historic town of Lahaina was destroyed in the blaze. A significant number of children are among the missing. People were wondering exactly how such a terrible fire could have occurred and why the response from the state was so anemic. Enter the two realities system.
During the fire, emergency response was hampered by at least two significant failures (that we know of so far). First, sirens were not utilized to warn citizens of the impending fire. Hawaii has a robust early warning system for tsunamis, so it seems a bit strange that the sirens were completely silent during this massive fire, which could have given ample time for citizens to evacuate. But Maui Emergency Management Agency Administrator Herman Andaya stated that he had no regrets about his decision to refuse using the siren system. Despite being fired, he will not face any charges of negligence, malfeasance, or even mild accountability. Whoever they hire next will be cut from the same cloth, since they will be hired by the same people.
Second, the release of water was delayed for more than 5 hours as the fires burned across Maui by a Hawaiian official in charge of the state’s water resources, M. Kaleo Manuel. You need look no further than Manuel’s comments regarding the importance of “equity” in water management to see why this occurred. A former Obama Foundation leader, Manuel repeatedly stressed the importance of “coexisting with the resources we have”, and how water could be used as a key tool in the “fight for social justice”. It is entirely likely that Manuel will become the next emeritus professor at Georgetown or an MSNBC contributor with a six-figure salary for his service to the cause, despite having a direct hand in the death of possibly over 1,000 of his fellow Hawaiians.
In addition, the road out of Lahaina was closed. This is perhaps the most egregious failure on the part of state officials. The stories of people who tried to flee but turned back are difficult to believe. From the Associated Press:
“After running past officers, Vargas said a man on a motorbike took her to the front line of the fire where a team of first responders assured her that the area had been cleared. She said she was told no one was there, and to have faith her son got out. Two days later, when Vargas made it to her devastated home, she discovered Fuentes’ lifeless body hugging his dead dog.
‘He was not as I expected, in ashes. God maintained him like this. So, we knew it was him,’ she said. Vargas’ husband and her son Josue wrapped Fuentes’ remains in a tarp and carried his body half a mile to a police station.”
Perhaps most shocking is the headline from the AP story itself, “In deadly Maui fires, many had no warning and no way out. Those who dodged barricades survived”. Get that? The people who disobeyed the state’s orders survived. This has astronomical implications, but echoes the public’s recent experience with government failures and malfeasance especially when it comes to times of crisis.
These monumental failures on the part of the government serve as important reminders that our national competency is in steep decline. In the first instance regarding siren use, it’s strange that Hawaii had an early warning system but did not develop plans to use them during wildfires. The excuse for not using them was that they are used primarily for tsunamis, and that it might confuse people to seek higher ground rather than evacuate. But Hawaii is no stranger to wildfires, averaging at least 1 federally-declared fire disaster per year since 2004. So why would the state not develop a plan to use the resources they have against other potential disasters? How long would it take to educate the public on a secondary siren cadence for wildfires? Put simply, they didn’t care enough to do so. Under the two realities system government officials have no incentive to perform their duties as written, let alone to innovate beyond their purview. Most are there simply to collect a check, guarantee a pension, find step stones for their career growth, and stay out of the way. Preparing for anything other than their own self-enrichment is beyond the capabilities of the slugs occupying our public offices.
In the second instance, it is quite clear that officials were reluctant to release water for fear of drawing the ire of the high priests of wokeism, a common symptom of American decline. Fear of upsetting the Regime is a paralyzing phenomenon that makes otherwise dutiful employees behave like rats on a sinking ship. It was this particular disease that felled the Soviets, who couldn’t even agree on what to do during the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl for fear of political reprisal. Having a zealot like Manuel in control of state resources creates a climate of fear in government offices. The solution to such fear is blind subservience and minimal effort, which hinders capabilities. In this case, any chance of a rapid response was dead on arrival.
But that wasn’t all. You also have gross mishandling forest management in the name of climate change, President Biden smirking at reporters as he jets off for another vacation while the bodies were still being counted, the Maui Mayor refusing to answer questions about missing children, and the Governor of Hawaii revealing that the state and other investors would likely be snatching up the land from recently deceased and injured victims in the immediate wake of the blaze.
This all seems a bit surreal even by the whiplash standards of today. But in the two-realities paradigm, the Regime and its loyalists have carte blanche to act in any method deemed necessary to serve their power. In a society that has not been cleaved in two, there would be natural opinion formation on major issues such as disasters. But because we have this two realities system, President Biden can compare the potential deaths of over 1000 people with his car taking some minor damage. Yes, you read that correctly. When the President finally finished vacationing and was dragged to visit yesterday, he compared the immolation of innocent children to scuff marks on his car. In the Regime’s alternate reality, comparing the death of innocent children to the inconvenience of car repair is ok, because it has been deemed to be so by the Regime’s command and control system. They will use language control to obfuscate what Biden said, narrative control to change how what he said is perceived by the public, and institutional control to enforce compliance. In case that isn’t enough for you, here is a video of Biden falling asleep at a ceremony honoring the Maui fire victims.
For some reason, even those who are aware of the problem seem incapable of accepting the existence of the two realities, choosing instead to believe that all we need to do is vote one more time and this will all go away. But take a moment to ask yourself: if Democrat governors simply remove your candidate from the ballot, or if state intelligence agencies target your political party simply for presenting a different opinion, how exactly is voting going to save you? Many mistakenly believe that we can go back to pretending it’s 1994 again when people occupied a (relatively) similar frame of reference for the reality of the world and society our forefathers built. They think this will end with us using “facts”, “logic” and “reason” to convince people who occupy a different reality to accept ours once more. That is not how disputes over reality have worked out in the past. Would the Spanish conquistadors have been able to use facts, logic, and reason to convince the Aztecs to stop ripping the still-beating hearts of children from their live chests? Similarly, how can we convince people that the reality they occupy isn’t real when they refuse to believe the evidence of their eyes and ears?
Hawaii will be a quintessential example of this refusal to accept the truth, as it is nearly guaranteed that the blue state will vote overwhelmingly for the exact same people who put them in this devastating position in the first place. They will overwhelmingly vote for the President and party that scoffed, vacationed, and disrespected their own dead children. They will do this because the two-realities paradigm demands their undying loyalty, in perpetuity, if they wish to have any sort of comfort in life. I wrote previously on how the forgotten and reviled areas of America are first on the chopping block, but it is increasingly clear that even blue strongholds that once thought themselves insulated from the consequences of their political ignorance will face a similar fate so long as the two realities system persists. The gravitational pull of the Regime’s alternate reality is so powerful and self-sustaining that even death itself cannot shake minds free from its well.
Joe Biden could personally burn every square inch of Hawaii with a torch in hand and a smile on his face in broad daylight: Hawaiians would still vote for him. The Regime would spin it as a worthy sacrifice upon the altar of climate change, or photoshop Trump’s face on his shoulders to convince them that it was all part of the plan. Through their language, narrative, and institutional control, they could say whatever they wanted. Those of us living in true reality laugh at such absurdities, but we are there in many cases already, such as when Lincoln Project staffers dressed up as fake white supremacists to try and torpedo Republican Glenn Youngkin’s campaign in perhaps one of the most audacious false flags in political history. There is no shame and no limits to their avarice so long as they occupy their own reality.
Perhaps more intriguing than all of this is that there will be many people who look at the state of the nation who say, “things were always like this”, “it’ll all blow over” and simply shrug it off. People just want to sit at home and grill, after all (if you haven’t had a chance, I recommend you read my previous piece on societal trust and chaos for context on how we arrived at this strange dynamic). But the consequences of inaction already surround us, whether it be in something as basic as the ignorance of the public, or in something as grave as the ashen shadows of corpses across western Maui.
In some ways, they are correct. Evil has always existed in this world and it has always threatened civil and stable societies with its insidious lure of power and pleasure. Perhaps too, it is the nature of man to think of himself as living in uniquely evil times. The key difference is that in the past many of these evils were managed and actively fought against or, in the least, recognized as a danger to be guarded against. But we have willingly spread evil into the world and smashed the taboos that once so vigilantly contained it in trying to “get along” with people living in a different reality.
Reality itself has been cleaved in two, unleashing chaos upon the world. And there are certain beasts that, once unleashed, are not so easily re-bridled. Maybe, in the end, we have simply swapped one type of evil for another. Maybe society will physically split in half along the lines of these two competing realities. Maybe America is just another nation in a long list to commit harikari for the sake of its most parasitic inhabitants - those leeches and worms who would dare to claim sole ownership of her. The only certainty is that allowing this to continue along its current trajectory will be disastrous. This is not a conflict we can sit out and watch from afar.
To oppose the Regime requires will. It’s easy to allow yourself the morphine drip of ignorance and compliance. It’s so tempting to give into the constant barrage and harassment, and so alluring to be a part of the club of Regime loyalty. True dissidents must fight every day, in ways small and large, to resist the two realities system. Simply opposing the politics of the left, or advocating for common sense foreign policy, or reigning in corporations will not suffice. These are half-measures that treat the Regime’s alternate reality as something to be accepted. We must not engage them on their ground: rather, we should reject their premise outright and struggle tirelessly for its destruction. They would tell us there is only one reality: theirs. For decades, we have carelessly indulged them to keep them from shrieking, throwing tantrums, or punishing us. Instead, we should finally tell them no.
Posing a true threat to the Regime requires us to learn how to utilize power to slay their many leviathans, including the two-realities paradigm. This is a battle for the future of the nation and the world itself. To cede control of true reality and live wholly within the monstrous alternative they have created would be a fate worse than death. That is why dissidents must build the framework for resistance within themselves, their families, and their communities. Reclaim your power and enforce your values daily. Find even small ways to oppose the Regime’s alternate reality at every available opportunity. If we fail to learn this lesson now, the flames of Maui will have served only as a preview of the destruction that is to follow.
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
― Cormac McCarthy
If it can't go on it won't, but the not going on could be a real problem.
IMO a brilliant essay that needed to be written and needs to be widely read.