The Play's The Thing

Wherein I stray into tinfoil hat territory.

(First, old business: Brothermouth has worked out the T-shirt/merch situation, and I’ll try again with a new drawing among paid subscribers for a free piece of merch from the store- the winner for March never got back to me anyway. In the meantime, all readers, paid or unpaid, smart or stupid, can pop onto https://checkmyprivilege.co/ and use the code BUTTHOLE for 10% off everything, in perpetuity. We have mugs now. And the Don’t Shed on Me design. Which is spiffy. I apologize for what an awkward, shambling shitshow the initial rollout was. Moving on.)

Here’s some photos for you to look at one by one, because I haven’t figured out how to make Substack arrange them in a row:

Pictured here: These fucking people.

That last one is Dr. No, from a James Bond movie from before I was born. The only thing he doesn’t have in common with the others is he is 100% fictional.

Take a look at these pictures, and include in your reaction whatever experiences you may have already had of them making public appearances where you’ve seen them speak and gesture.

Would you describe any of the real ones (and anyone else you might add to this list) as competent speakers, strongly charismatic, or even just personally intimidating, evoking a sense of power and authority? Which pair more likely describes your gut emotional response to them- fear/respect or anger/irritation?

I’m writing this odd little post because for the millionth time, I’ve written a comment about one or another of these fucks (after you’ve finished reading, please feel free to suggest other big names on the current stage in the comments that fit this profile and I’ll add them) on someone else’s more respectable stack and a fellow commenter described them as “like Bond villains”- meaning they’re so cartoonish in their evildoing, so disconnected from the way normal humans talk and interact, so apparently clueless as to how to communicate with the public, and… awkward and weird.

They don’t exude the charisma and authority of other famous evildoers like, say, Adolf Hitler, who rose to power by basically becoming a rockstar to his fellow Austrians.

Note that every single one of them is also associated with the WEF.

There’s been a lot of talk about “the elites,” especially in the past two years, as we discover more and more that the community we consider “the elite” are an increasingly unified and globalized group of asshats with big plans for our lives and our world, mainly involving ramming things we really, really won’t like down our throats through absolute power and authority.

Pictured here: WEF Young Leaders induction ceremony, circa 1995. Many Bothans died obtaining this picture.

I mentioned in my first post that I find power “interesting,” because, well, it is interesting- it’s something that washes over all our lives as social animals. We are all affected by the power of others and accomplish much of what we do in our lives by exerting the power we have ourselves (or by borrowing the power of others).

Powerful people and organizations are interesting to me, and if you’re studying them like an anthropologist, to have a properly scientific mind, you have to suspend moral judgment and emotionality. We don’t spend time yelling onto microscopes at deadly diseases- we methodically test and understand their behavior and evolution so we can learn how to combat them.

Pictured here: A NIAID scientist saving millions of lives by denouncing the white privilege of the SARS-COV-2 virus. Properly chastened, the virus retreated into obscurity.

So, as a hobbyist student of power, there’s one thing I’ve noticed that may seem an obvious or pedantic point, but it’s really worth making here: people and organizations that are truly powerful and able to have sustained power have to be competent and smart. Before you start shouting your objections, emphasize the “truly powerful” and “sustained power” parts to yourself. Then sit on your thumb for a minute and let me finish.

Why is it that the people our side routinely (and justly, by the way) refer to as “tyrants” look and act so- well, cartoonishly like tyrants?

You don’t build and maintain power if you splutter and lose your cool in front of a microphone, if you don’t know the basic facts (or at least the version of the truth that your agenda requires you to represent) of the situation you’re representing, if you don’t know how to wield personal magnetism, body language, rhetoric, how to look imposing or lovable, and so on. Big, powerful institutions have existed since society first organized in cities, and elites have built upon the lessons of history for millennia. When they’re not up to the task, they’re quickly unseated, either by their subjects or by more effective elites that seize their power base.

So why are so many of our leaders, elected or otherwise, so seemingly inept at, well, leadership?

At this point you might say, “come on, Guttermouth. Millions of people love Fauci, Wen, and company, even if you/we don’t.” I don’t really see that- I see them loving the position that person represents and simply canonizing the appointed voice of that position- I don’t think anyone in the Covidian church watches Fauci or Wen or Ardern or Walensky dissemble and babble at Congressional hearings or interviews and say “look how skilled they are.” They’ve simply rallied behind the leaders they’ve been given, and would have made dolls and votive candles of an anthropomorphic can of beans if it was head of the CDC telling them fetuses need vaccines now.

The real proof of an effective big-time leader, good or evil, is that they’re persuasive. Hitler had terrible, evil, unforgivable ideas that he sold to growing, adoring crowds. Do you know anyone in the skeptic camp that rethought their life after hearing Walensky butcher stats and deliver outdated talking points? Conversely, more than a few Covidians have left the cult over the past two years and become skeptics as the narrative failed to remain convincing. I don’t know of any noteworthy stories of skeptics joining the cult.

I’ll get to my points now. These are simply things I’m wondering and working on in my mind, and are not necessarily final positions:

1. The idiots in the pictures above, and others like them, are not real elites. They’re more socially powerful than us and have power over us, but they are not actually directing the course of their policies or behavior. They are puppets in the most traditional sense of the metaphor.

2. An extremely tried-and-true power game is installing a weak leader, allowing that leader’s incompetence to enrage subjects and make them clamor for change, and sweep in to solve the problem by deposing that leader and gaining enormous social cache and credibility in the process. Typically these weak leaders are military leaders with no political experience and poor skills at leadership outside of military command or intellectuals with deeply-held and inflexible beliefs that can be made to parrot ideas.

   2a. What if so many of these shitheads look and act like Bond villains precisely because their caricatured identity makes them annoying and increasingly unlikable as their appointed narratives gradually fail to prop them up? Is it so they’ll eventually be thrown under the bus to great applause?

   2aa. I especially don’t like this line of thinking, but notice how many fall into the broad stereotype of “shrill annoying woman bullying you in a Karen-like manner, usually with a fake smile plastered on her face- the ‘evil mom’ archetype?” Like it or not, this is a stereotypical character that REALLY triggers people, both men and women, and political analysts and campaign strategists have known it forever.

3. If the people selected by true elites to form the vanguard of massive, unpopular societal upheaval are disposable scapegoats, who and what kind of person will succeed them? When an army of polished, attractive, well-spoken politicians show up all at once, able to actually deliver emotional anecdotes and rebuff criticism with humor or wit, you’ll have your answer.

Unpopular leadership happens all the time, but it isn’t sustainable and competent leaders know it. You need to sprinkle bread and circuses in with your unpopular mandates, and you can’t have stuffy professors babbling about postmodernism and ugly, mean-faced generals being public figureheads forever.

What do you all think?