He’s full of them, and we’re just waiting for someone to open the basement door and shine a light on the scuttling, slimy critters chittering down there. Here’s one that I haven’t seen on CNN yet: he has a pet Curtis Yarvin aka Mencius Moldbug in that dark cellar.
In 2008, a software developer in San Francisco named Curtis Yarvin, writing under a pseudonym, proposed a horrific solution for people he deemed “not productive”: “convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.”
Yarvin, a self-described reactionary and extremist who was 35 years old at the time, clarified that he was “just kidding.” But then he continued, “The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass. However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide.”
He then concluded that the “best humane alternative to genocide” is to “virtualize” these people: Imprison them in “permanent solitary confinement” where, to avoid making them insane, they would be connected to an “immersive virtual-reality interface” so they could “experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”
Yarvin’s disturbing manifestos have earned him influential followers, chief among them: tech billionaire Peter Thiel and his onetime Silicon Valley protégé, Senator J.D. Vance, whom the Republican Party just nominated to be Donald Trump’s vice president. If Trump wins the election, there is little doubt that Vance will bring Yarvin’s twisted techno-authoritarianism to the White House, and one can imagine—with horror—what a receptive would-be autocrat like Trump might do with those ideas.
Vance has several other “intellectual” peers, but Yarvin is one of the more damaging. He’s the source of this proposed plan to fire everyone in the civil service.
As Yarvin told Vanity Fair in 2022, “The fundamental premise of liberalism is that there is this inexorable march toward progress. I disagree with that premise.” Instead, Yarvin believes that American democracy has denigrated into a corrupt oligarchy, run by elites who strive to consolidate their power rather than serve the public interest. The solution, Yarvin argues, is for the American oligarchy to give way to a monarchical leader styled after a start-up CEO — a “national CEO,” [or] what’s called a dictator,” as Yarvin has put it — who can de-bug the American political order like a computer programmer de-bugging some bad code.
Vance has said he considers Yarvin a friend and has cited his writings in connection with his plan to fire a significant number of civil servants during a potential second Trump administration. “There’s this guy Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things,” Vance said on a conservative podcast in 2021, adding: “I think Trump is going to run again in 2024 [and] I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”
There’s a rich vein of disturbing sickness in the Vance basement — Yarvin, but also Rod Dreher, the Claremont Institute, and a whole host of bizarre conservative Catholic goons. Keep digging, everyone! It’s the creepy season!
I thought it was just Irish babies we were supposed to “consume”?
Aryan children are best used for working in the corners of the mines the grownups cannot reach.
Now I’m morbidly curious what he deems productive and unproductive behavior.
One of the kids in South Park had an interesting plan inspired by his dad’s expression ‘gods and clods’. Like with immigrants, it involved camps.
It’s odd how someone can go from the premise “American democracy has denigrated into a corrupt oligarchy, run by elites who strive to consolidate their power rather than serve the public interest”…which I agree with…to the conclusion that what we need to do is install one of these oligarchs as a “national CEO” or a dictator or king or some such. Yarvin’s assumption is that the “national CEO” will be a benign, selfless dictator making decisions for the betterment of all. Of course, it’s been proven over and over in human history that dictators are almost never benign and selfless, particularly if they pass their position on to children.
As messy and inefficient as it is, democracy is generally better. What I think we need to do is defang the oligarchs, reducing their power, and get more people involved in governance at every level.
That is, in fact,…true!!!
The problem here is that Yarvin is psycho and clueless.
He, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and the right wingnut techbros of Silicon Valley are all part of that, “corrupt oligarchy, run by elites who strive to consolidate their power…”
The Federal civil service is in their way of gaining yet more and more power.
Yarvin is part of the problem not part of the solution.
Vance used to appear as “George Santos”
“denigrated” -> “degenerated”.
That annoys me a lot.
I think most people will agree with the assessment.
Is the proposed solution that sounds batshit insane.
I have come to the understanding of why Trump picked Vance as his VP choice. Trump has many faults that can be extensively spoofed by his opponents, comedians and even the general public. But with Vance, the mocking of his weirdness goes way past anything Trump can muster. Vance’s kookiness makes Trump look normal. Throw in Vance’s maximum Trump Kiss Ass abilities and you have Trump’s VP choice.
One of the big eye-openers from Trumpism is not just that Republicans are willing to sell their souls — we already knew that — but just how cheaply the Republicans are willing to sell their souls. Next time I have a dinner party I’m going to pick up a dozen Republican souls for fifty cents each and give them away as party favors.
Vance is a big supporter of Project 2025. Vance has written the forward to a book by Project 2025’s architect, Kevin Roberts. This book, “Dawns Early Light” lays out the vision for project 2025. This may be a problem for Vance / Trump when this book comes out in September. I suspect a few advanced copies are floating around now. By coincidence, Trump’s sentencing for 34 felonies is also in September.
It may be that “weirdo” won’t be Vance’s big label problem. But “Project 2025 supporter” will.
yarvin has ripped off Swift and the Wachowski’s for his ideas. probably didn’t even know it.
what’s next?
Soylent Green is Liberals!!11!!1!
@2: “Now I’m morbidly curious what he deems productive and unproductive behavior.”
The market decides that… if you have money, you have obviously earned it; if not, you’re antisocial scum refusing to serve.
I’m despairing of what conservatives mistake for thinking, I might be on board with culling them all, and then socialise them correctly… one kidney at a time.
Kevin Roberts is a Catholic extremist. He is associated with the Catholic group Opus Dei.
Vance is apparently some sort of Trad Catholic, the right wing extremist wing of the Catholic church.
Trad Catholics make up 5.6% of the US population and are disliked by a lot of other xian groups including a lot of Catholics.
I should clarify that last post, in case someone does not see the irony…. I was mirroring Yarvin’s fantasy into something left-wing-flavored. While I like the logic a little better, it would be a violation of basic human decency though.
The latter is a thought those on the right are stopping clear of lately in their pipe dreams…
Vance is some sort of Trad Catholic.
From what we know now, he seems to be in favor of a xian-Catholic dictatorship running the USA.
This isn’t going to go over too well with the American people.
Trad Catholics are religious extremists and a small part of the population at 5.6%.
I’m not seeing that the rest of us are going to tolerate a dictatorship by a small minority of xian extremists. Outside of the US South and midwest anyway.
@9 stuffin: It also occurred to me that Trump might have selected Vance for distraction value. It’s hard to come up with another one and any vetting at all would have turned up some of these issues. There are a couple of problems with the distraction value idea. First president and vice-president candidates are a single package. The stuff that makes Vance look weirder then Trump might get Trump a little relief in the press but it hurts his election chances. Second, it’s a US VP, as soon as anything important for Trump comes along Vance will get pushed aside by the press. Third, Vance is angering women voters on a grand scale. Men think he is weird, women are looking at somebody that thinks women have no value beyond the number of children they have.
Trump may still have gone with him for distraction value but it’s looking like he is going to pay a big price for it.
My working theory at this point is that Vance was selected because he has the best glamour photos.
I keep thinking of Jay Bilzerian from Big Mouth (had an ongoing relationship with his couch pillows) but that’s not fair to Jay.
It’s a lot simpler than that.
The Nazis and HItler not only advocated for it and carried it out.
The first victims of the Holocaust were mostly Germans. Specially the disabled, both the physically and mentally disabled.
They were labeled “useless eaters” and killed.
More from Wikipedia
Yarvin is an unoriginal hack.
It isn’t hard to follow exactly in the footsteps of the Nazis.
Anyone with a slight amount of human decency avoids doing this.
I really wish J Vance didn’t share a name and an initial with one of the better science fiction writers of the 20th century.
Also see: A comprehensive guide to J.D. Vance’s views on women and children 😱
This is why I prefer to follow in the footsteps of the teratocracy (rule by monsters) of the Balkan state visited by Herr Doctor Cabal in the books by Jonathan Howard.
Cabal is no jingoist, his mistress is a spider demon from Hell, and quite lovely. Maybe we need a necromancer in congress? It can hardly be worse than some of the current members.
Pierce R Butler @ 20
While the late author Jack Vance had some odd views and did not like homosexuals (many if them featured as villains in his books), he hated the concept of torture which sets him apart from Republicans of the W era and onwards.
We’ve seen what getting rid of the midlevel bureacracy will do – the aftermath management of Katrina. A friend of mine, and a great many of his colleagues left FEMA after it was placed under DHS. These are the people who know A) what to do, B) how to do it, and C) get sent to the right places to do A and B.
Soylent Green was never going to be a profitable product. It would be more economic to use slaves to attend to beef cow ranches (the South would absolutely have tried, if not horses had been needed and thus made escape easy).
DataWrangler @ 23
In Britain the mid-level civil servants were tasked with preparing Brexit, while the unit tasked with preparing for a pandemic – which the conservative government had identified as the number one security threat just years earlier – was left without any staff whatsoever.
Incompetence kills.
Spoiler alert: the major horror in Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers is the use of people and pets as biofuel. It’s a great read and one of my favorite King books.
what’s wrong with Opus DEI?
they have had Diversity, equity and inclusion in their name since 1928.
birgerjohansson@25
In general, you’re right. In the case of you example, it’s conservatism that kills. Performative cruelty…
Tangential to the subject: I’m still amazed at what magat cult sheople say when asked why they support tRUMP/Vancehole. They invariable talk about how tRUMP/Vancehole ‘tell it like it is’ ‘support us, the middle class’ ‘tell the truth’ and other such crap. I don’t think these irrational minds can be changed no matter how may facts and actual video clips of the insanity they are shown. The divide between rational, caring people and the irrational, delusional maga cult is growing larger by the day. I wish there was a quiet peaceful small city where we could live with less fear of the violent, unhinged magats.
@5 raven wrote: Instead, Yarvin believes that American democracy has denigrated into a corrupt oligarchy, run by elites who strive to consolidate their power rather than serve the public interest.
That is, in fact,…true!!!
I reply: YES! Thanks for pointing the finger at the ‘scrotum 6’ and repugnantcant congress critters. Of course, we need to include billionaire monsters like the elongated muskrat and corrupt underlings like judge Loose Cannon, etc.
Yesterday, one of our org. members was brave enough to have a discussion online about the tRUMP/Vancehole position that the old, the progressive and childless cat ladies should be destroyed. We laughed our asses off when the tRUMP/Vancehole cult member said they (tRUMP/Vancehole) weren’t pushing for ‘youth in asia’.
I wonder if the evangelical MAGA hats are aware of the Catholic flavor of a lot this stuff being pushed on us. I’m fairly sure there are lots of protestant evangelicals who will kill before they bow to the bossman in Rome.
I don’t know if Trump’s actually clever or forward-thinking enough to deliberately select Vance for distraction purposes. Frankly, after what happened with Pence actually having a spine, the primary purpose of Trump’s VP selection this time around was always going to be in line with his usual preferred methods, which is basically ‘how clean is my footwear after the bootlicker is done debasing himself’. In other words, how much does it seem to Trump like the guy selected will follow every order with no shred of resistance or conscience. (I mentioned this over on one of Mano’s posts, and somebody else said that Trump had pretty much already admitted that, that he selected Vance because Vance ‘liked him’ more than anybody else.)
As far as Yarvin is concerned, yes, he’s a straight out Monarchist and technocrat. The smart people should be in charge, and he thinks he’s one of them. Whereas anybody who actually pays attention has seen loads of evidence that the people who believe they are the best very often aren’t even close. Smart very much does not equal ‘knows what they’re doing’.
Not to mention that the problem with any dictatorship is ‘who gets the power next’. Even if you somehow do get a benign dictator (which is a massive selection problem to start with and keeping them benign is a full-time job), well, you’ve created a confluence of power that will attract everybody with interest in power, many of whom won’t be benign, and you just have to look at the way the Republican party has been going to see how easy it is for horrible people to drive out anybody with any shred of decency. Even if a dictatorship started off with someone good, it would only take a couple of generations at most for somebody to abuse it and start driving things into the ground.
This is something that people have known for millenia. The original Roman Republic had no standing army to make coups difficult, and the original setup of the Senate was basically a place where all the rich families who thought they should be running things had a place to argue with each other so they could be kept distracted from messing up the day-to-day operations, though they did have a way to appoint a temporary dictator to deal with critical events. Julius Caesar was actually pretty close to being a benign dictator, he really did want to fix Rome, he just couldn’t even with the power of a dictator and refused to admit that… and the people who took over after him were rather less benign. Octavian/Augustus started his reign with a propaganda war that led into a physical war with Egypt get rid of rival Mark Antony and claim the full title of Emperor for himself.
…Instead, Yarvin believes that American democracy has denigrated into a corrupt oligarchy, run by elites who strive to consolidate their power rather than serve the public interest. The solution, Yarvin argues, is for the American oligarchy to give way to a monarchical leader styled after a start-up CEO — a “national CEO,” [or] what’s called a dictator,” as Yarvin has put it — who can de-bug the American political order like a computer programmer de-bugging some bad code.
This is straight-up Tsarism, imported straight from Putin’s Russia and Putin’s ideologues. And it’s exactly how Putin keeps his country, and its elites, under his control: purge all the upper-class people who don’t support the Tsar (calling it an “anti-corruption” crusade), and give their assets and positions to those who do. It pretends, in the name of the people or the common good, to oppose, restrain or replace a corrupt oligarchy, while in fact doing nothing more than replacing one set of corrupt uncaring oligarchs with another.
And here’s why very few Republicans will step up and question this scam: this is the intended, expected conclusion of their pro-business, libertarian political-economic ideology the whole time. They’ve always wanted to destroy our democracy and take away our ability to regulate big business; but when you do that, big business can no longer be controlled by anyone other than a dictator, who would then be selected by big business since the rest of us no longer have a vote.
jenorafeuer@33,
That was me, and I later found the exact words Trump used of Vance:
<> Yarvin believes that American democracy has denigrated into a corrupt oligarchy, run by elites who strive to consolidate their power rather than serve the public interest. <>
Who are these “elites” Yarvin blames for the corruption of American democracy? It doesn’t seem to be the actual elites, namely his buddies Vance, Musk, and Thiel, who have all the money and power in this capitalist shithole. I got a feeling they’re using the right-wing definition of “elite:” People who have more intelligence and expertise than Joe/Jane Beercan and, again, upper class shits like Vance, Musk, and Thiel.
birgerjohansson @ # 22: … Jack Vance … did not like homosexuals (many if them featured as villains in his books)…
{sigh} Hadn’t remembered that – thanks! (The biggest Vance fan I ever met was gay, fwliw.)
KG @ # 35, quoting Trump on Vance: he liked me more than anybody liked me
It didn’t hurt JD’s chances that, reportedly, everybro who attended David Sacks’s $300,000/seat-$12M total San Francisco fund-raising dinner for Trump pushed “Vance-Vance-Vance” all night long.
I see you are discussing malignant narcissists. Here is the soundtrack.
“Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=J2MdJKYsapg
None of this is going to matter though – we are past the days where people would look at Sarah Palin and think who would want this specimen in the white house ? People who are undecided on who to vote or may possibly switch are used to the weirdness and / or the extremism and shrug their shoulders as long as they think it wont affect them personally.
The topics are still Immigration/Crime, Economy and jobs and perhaps women’s rights. The Democrats are not doing a good job at all on the PR needed for the first 2. So many people had stated how the stock market would crash when Biden was in power and how the economy would tank and how taxes would be so high – None of it happened but even then people think Republicans are good for the economy.
I’m still trying to get the couch story straight.
Did JD Vance allegedly fuck a couch?
OR
Did JD Vance allegedly NOT fuck a couch?
Asking for a friend.
I do not know enough history to say for sure but what these hard core reactionary types, these maggots seem to be advocating for an American Lord Protector resembling Cromwell as the solution to their grievances They sure do not seem in any way like they would be reluctant to begin the beheading . And I would expect the Spanish Inquisition
#22 @birgerjohansson:
What’s that about Jack Vance? I can’t at the moment recall a single gay character, much less a gay villain. The closest I can think of is the suggested homosexual, pederastic sadism in the culture of the Demon Prince Lens Larque. Is that what you call “gay”? Asking for a friend.
birgerjohansson @38
Thanks for the heads up on Ladytron. Never heard of them before. Wikipedia calls them electropop, whatever that means, but “Destroy Everything You Touch” is dark. I like electronica going back to Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra. I added Ladytron to my music app playlist! Learn about something new every day.
A smart man would be pressuring Shadypants to make a huge statement about his sudden decision to step down from the ticket due to personal reasons.
Of course, he would likely claim that antifa/ communist/liberals/deep-state childless cat ladies are threatening his family’s safety.
Hopefully the orange one will stay true to form, ignore any criticism of his choice, and double down on his choice of a misogynistic couch-diddler as his running mate.
Recursive Rabbit@2:
I expect the answer is the usual conservative position, aka “anything, if you’re rich; otherwise, only that which enriches the rich”. So, basically, you’d be either rich, or spend every waking moment being “productive” (think “Amazon warehouse worker”), or Soylent Green. Wait, he walked that back a bit from “Soylent Green” to merely “stuck in one of those pods in The Matrix”, which in turn would last exactly as long as it took someone to point out that “remanded to an IOI Loyalty Center” would be more profitable. And then we’re basically back to “Amazon warehouse worker” except with a treadmill and goggles.
The upshot: look for the GOP to try to bring back debt peonage in red states if they lose the federal election; if they win, it’ll be closer to IG Farben’s Monowice and nationwide, right up until the day some people decide that Mad Max would make for an exciting change of pace and then turn a pair of keys.
woman@10:
Why on Earth would any of the guests want the filthy things?
BB:
Presumably, you intend to express that Republican souls are filthy things, but that not all souls are filthy things.
BTW, anyone making that alleged choice is on obviously on Earth.
(Otiose redundancy, but makes the effuser imagine they sound orotund)
The ultimate endpoint of the ide athat everyone must do something with their lives rather than just being “allowed” to be someone. The idea that we have a purpose rather than a right to simply be?
I think the whole “weird” thing needs to be dropped. I can promise you they aren’t bothered by it, what they are bothered by, and so am I, is that everyone is repeating it. It’s like when everyone defended Biden until the debates because they were told too, in lock step. Than the debates, everyone said he should step down, in lockstep, then they were told not to say that, and they changed, in lock step. Then Biden stepped down, everyone agreed, in lockstep. Then Harris apparently became president, some how, (not officially but come on)no one questions, then she gets the nod for the candidacy, without a primary, if you question it, you like trump and are hurting American democracy. Then Harris wasn’t in charge of the boarder, even though there are dozens of interviews with her and Biden about it. Now it’s “they are weird” and every repeats its. Yeah hardcore democrats will go with it, but center America, the ones who actually elect the president won’t. People can’t stand trump, but people really can’t stand how democrats act.
ducksmcclucken@50,
What a load of fucking nonsense.
How do you think you know that?
There was only one debate and no, “they” didn’t change in lock step. That’s why it took three weeks to persuade Biden to step aside – many people (including here, but also among top Democrats) continued to say he was fine and should continue.
No, she didn’t. If Biden isn’t still doing the presidential stuff, it’s his staff stepping in, not Harris.
Nope.
It’s spelled “border”, and the claim was that Harris is “Border Czar”, a position that doesn’t exist.
I see. That’s why the polls have already shifted markedly against Trump, is it?
It’s always interesting when people claim they’re willing to commit to gargantuan, impossible projects like building The Matrix from that movie The Matrix in order to end poverty, homelessness, etc but at the same time they refuse methods which are both cheaper and demonstrably effective, like housing-first programs, basic income, socialised medicine, drug decriminalisation, public education and so on. It’s almost like they care more about the cruelty than either saving money or actually solving problems.
He then concluded that the “best humane alternative to genocide” is to “virtualize” these people: Imprison them in “permanent solitary confinement” where, to avoid making them insane, they would be connected to an “immersive virtual-reality interface” so they could “experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.
Oh, silly Yarvin. People won’t have to be forced into the virtual world. When it gets good enough and cheap enough, millions, maybe billions, will voluntarily cocoon themselves permanently.