People tend to needlessly overcomplicate things. I find that the perennial mindset does a lot to simply things. In short, there are archetypical forms that are ever-present in the world. The veneer can change, but the essence of much of our life remains the same. So, once you learn the essence of things, you essentially adopt a system of heuristics that you can then apply to shine light on any confusing situation.
Let’s take a look at the power situation in the West. It’s really not that complicated.
You have your Liberal Oligarchs. You have your security state (Siloviks, if you prefer). And you have the cultural establishment, funded by the Liberal Oligarchs and overseen by the Siloviks. That’s pretty much the triad of power thats running the West.
This triad fears and loathes the hapless population that it rules over.
That is why it pursues policies that undermine the population. It works to undermine the middle class (yeoman) with its policies. They import foreigners to undermine the native culture, so that the cultural cohesion of the peasants and proles is broken, and their wages slashed to boot. The triad fears the threat of populism - of the people rising up and installing their champion in the highest post in the land. They prefer Liberal Democracy, which is a system the curbs the power of the people, and their avatar - the much-feared strongman lurking in the shadows.
To change anything, the people need to fight and defeat the triad.
Organization, however, is a prerequisite for fighting. The Siloviks prevent the peasants from organizing with their constant swooping down on dissident leaders before they gain any steam. I have argued that dissident groups ought to put some distance between themselves and the long arm of the security state if they want to organize in peace.
Then, the media and the culture that is created by them works to divide the people over made-up ideological disputes. The peasants are stupid enough to turn against their own families over silly non-relevant cultural causes. Take transgenders and Ukraine, as your example.
Finally, the Liberal Oligarchy funds controlled opposition politicians that corral the population into accepted political positions.
Not all countries are the same, though.
In some countries, the security state (consisting of the secret police/spooks/glowies) are at odds with the media or the military or the oligarchs. There are different coalitions in power and different coalitions in the opposition. Parties, so far as they matter at all, are just representatives of these coalitions. Their names and their colors and their stated ideologies matter little when this heuristic is applied. Learn what castes the parties represent and you discover the true picture of power faster than if you would have spent that time analyzing the speeches of politicians.
People get lost in the details. They want to endlessly pour over them. I find this tedious, to be quite honest. The power-wrangling between castes is a far better explanation of what happens on a macro scale and behind the scenes in a society.
In other systems, you have a different power coalition ruling society. So, in an Authoritarian system, you have the autocrat - who is the avatar of the people’s will - a surrogate spiritual father, if you will, ruling together with the military caste. The military can either be professional or sourced from a class of land-owning aristocrats (non-Liberal Oligarchs). There is no need for a massive media operation in an Authoritarian system because oligarchical party politics doesn’t exist. Elections, which are proxy civil wars fought by factions using money and propagandists to sway the peasant masses don’t exist either. Because there is no need to control the opinions of the masses to keep them participating in the system of oligarchic factional politics, there is no need for a sprawling net of ideological police. And, if there is a state religion, the secret police will simply take the form of a heretic-hunting inquisition instead.
Seeing as power castes aren’t going anywhere, the real question is which power arrangement we want to see come out on top.
Everything else is just utopian thinking. Depending on a country’s geopolitical position, its political history and the goals of its natural elites, the ideal arrangement will be different. I believe that the Authoritarian model is a system that benefits the great nations the most. Liberal-Oligarchy, whenever it manifests, tends to parasite off the people that it takes over, eventually driving them towards dissolution. Authoritarianism, in general, has a better track record of not cannibalizing the population that it rules over.
But, seeing as we live in a Globalist system, that’s simply the ideal and far from the norm.
The same Liberal-Democratic caste structure applies to the Globalist model, only we have a transnational oligarchic caste, a transnational cultural product and an integrated global spook apparatus run out of Tel Aviv, London and Langley.
Ideally, we would have sovereign states pushing back against the globalist project. But, we don’t really have that though. Most states are Liberal Democracies, which means that the people who rule them are all-for integration into the global Liberal Democratic one-world order.
We need at least a couple Authoritarian states pushing back against this system if it is to be defeated externally.
Russia, Iran and China are constantly portrayed as an Authoritarian threat against the Globalist Liberal Democrat project. But, the truth is a little more complicated, as I hope to have proven with what I’ve written so far about Russia, at least.
Within countries that are already enmeshed in the Globalist paradigm, resistance will be quite difficult. There don’t appear to be any organized forces within Western society capable of resisting. The masses of peasants are at each other’s throats over hoaxes like #MeToo, #BLM, Global Warming, and so on. Organizing a populist movement from among them, without the support of any other caste, appears to be a pipe dream. The middle class, such as it is, hasn’t shown itself to be capable of doing much either. They are too emotionally invested in the morals and values of the current system, even as it turns against them.
But, if a capable organization were to emerge, it would need to have clear goals. To have clear goals, there must be a clear understanding of who the enemy is and how they control the country. Taking power, then, is about destroying the centers of power that the enemy occupies. It means taking on the security agencies, the media, and the oligarchs who fund it all. Focusing on the politicians is a myopic approach. Rotating out the politicians won’t lead to total victory, even if it were accomplished. If those politicians focused on tackling the spooks, the media and the oligarchs, that would be a different story.
Most people, however, are not willing to even consider what I am saying. Libertarians believe that their beloved captains of industry are demi-gods and so, taking them on would be the equivalent of sacrilege. Normie conservatives still believe in the state security structures and think that “the patriots are in control” - a narrative fed to them by the very same security structures, no doubt. And, finally, there are people who would balk at the idea of doing away with Liberal Democracy because they have been told their entire lives that this is the only moral form of government and that all other forms are “Fascist” and deserve to be bombed into oblivions by the arsenal of democracy.
More than anything else, the ideologies that the people have rattling around in their own minds are the fetters that keep us all subjugated. Those who speak truth about power are met with howls of indignation from the very people they are trying to help.
The picture that I am painting is bleak, but, at the very least, it is not very complicated.
Excellent distillation. If only more people could face up to it.
I agree that there's little prospect of rebellion by the people here in the US against the Oligarchy (and to simplify your formula even further i see the security state, the political class, and corporate class as one Oligarchy but functioning as a criminal cartel, both nationally and internationally). This will continue until the cartel finally exhausts the nation it preys upon and we have a collapse. Indeed, collapse seems to be the next stage the oligarchs aim for in order to better implement a fully totalitarian society. Here is where the people may finally rebel and a strong man emerge. In a best case scenario, multiple strongmen will emerge to carve up the US into various states or regions where differing degrees of freedom exist and people can sort themselves to taste.
A thoughtful, well-written framework for analysis. It's not Plato's Republic, but it;s not hundreds of pages, either!