A Better Explanation for What's Happening to the Biden Presidency
Game of Thrones was good for lots of practical reasons.
I. What the Hell Did We Just Witness?
Currently, the entire world is frantic - trying simultaneously to understand what President Non Compos Mentis’ performance in the first Presidential debate means, and to predict what will happen next.
I’ve seen some excellent analysis and theories from the bad cat and many others, but, in my opinion, all of them fall at least a little short because the hypotheses lack sufficient complexity. Put another way, people speculate in generalities because (a) they don’t have sufficient familiarity with what really goes on behind the scenes in the halls of power, and (b) lack the time and or creative energy to construct an integrated and plausible story - i.e. a narrative hypothesis - with explanatory power to account for the various aspects we see publicly.
For some sense of the spread, contrast, for example, el gato malo’s “was there ever really any debate” hypothesizing -
to Steve Sailer’s “Deep Cluster: How Influential Elites Actually Make Decisions”:
Both are good attempts that have some explanatory power but, for my money, a hypothesis is only as good as the domain of outcomes for which it provides explanation. This is a big part of the difficulty in simple explanations for the actions of “the regime” in our current Soviet-like existence: there are seemingly inconsistent actions and propaganda by the usual regime actors and mouthpieces all at the same time. Thus we have people “debunking” other people’s pet conjectures by asking, “but if they had that power, then why this?” or “why only now?” and down the recursive rabbit hole we go. For example, on the one hand, Obama Tweets his support of Biden, then Tucker Carlson says shortly thereafter that this Tweet is not the truth and that behind the scenes is something else entirely… (I’ll return to this idea in a bit).
II. Stories Can Have Both Explanatory and Predictive Powers.
One of the most complete jobs of “world-building” in recent storytelling is George R.R. Martin’s epic series of books adapted into the “Game of Thrones” television series.1 For those unaware, Martin’s “world-building” is largely based on English history, right down to: King’s Landing being a very thinly veiled, medieval London of southern England; the Lannister family being a derivative name of the House of Lancaster; the “North” of the Stark family referring to that land where winters come early on the Island, Northumberland; which sits between England proper and, of course, the “Free folk” “north of the Wall” - aye, laddie, yeh be wise to consider those impossibly independent and ungovernable red-heads with red-beards, thick accents, and a gleeful thirst for fighting. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
The portly story-teller mined his fair land’s history for all of the intrigue, incest, murder, political backstabbing that has been the lot of political life since the dawn of Empire. And if you think fiction is impossibly complicated just for the sake of plot twists, you really should read more history. This is also not limited to the denizens of the British Isles by any stretch of the imagination; the fights on the continent for control of the French, or Spanish, or the Austrian throne were every bit as cutthroat and Machiavellian as the Continental writer’s name has now come to signify.2
All of which raises an interesting question: why do Americans seem to operate from a sense that American politics has none of these same qualities? That there is none of the same tribal, internecine conflict that has marked Empire, and human behavior, in every other Age? Are American politicians somehow cut from a finer bolt of cloth than all of the political operators of all of the great dynasties and empires that came before? To ask it out loud is to see instantly its rhetorical nature. One of the Great Lies of the American Experiment, currently being undressed in real time, is that our politicos are otherwise “nice people” trying to do “the right thing” and that they just disagree about “how” to do “the right thing.” LOL.
One other reason Britain and Game of Thrones provides a template for comparison is our relative familiarity with the names and places of our collective American ancestral homeland across the Pond. They’re also generally pronounceable to our tongue, if not always familiar. With that by way of setup, I begin a cursory look at the “factions” that I see in our government and use it to help illumine some of the competing lies we’re being sold.
III. Meet the Dramatis Personae
Let’s start with a cursory examination of some of the various camps making themselves known in the aftermath of President Angry Dementia Patient’s performance. First, and easiest to detect, are Biden and his True Supporters - those who support Biden NO MATTER WHAT (and, indirectly, his puppeteers). They continue the Cope that this was just a single bad debate performance, or a cold, or his stutter, or, or, orrrrrr -
Let me take a moment to note that this group includes a number of different fellow travelers, including people who may have no personal love for FJB and his criminal family, but they hitched their fortunes to him and if he goes down, they could be in big trouble. (Steve Sailer’s article points, for example, to the First Crackhead, Hunter, being in Joe’s ear, along with Biden’s “family”, whom we all know were the recipient of Joe’s criminal sale of his office to various nation-states with whom the US - ahem, to put it mildly - has not always been a close compatriot.3 OF COURSE they’re telling Joe he has to keep running. Like Ned Stark before Robert Barratheon’s death, Hunter and Family’s well-being directly depends upon Joe Biden, Third of His Name, Slayer of CornPop (and you know, the Thing!) remaining in power.
There are other Great Houses vying for control of the Iron Throne, as well, and not just Trumpus Maximus, the Orange Leviathan, Breaker of Indictments, First of His Name. I’m talking about the real Great Houses, like House Pfizer and House Moderna, Injectors and Transfectors of Genes, also aligned with House DoD, Failer of Audits, Prostitute of Weaponmakers. Sitting behind it all is the Master of Lies - no, not the bald eunuch, Varus, ironically one of the more honorable of the whole lot in the show - but Gina Haskell, or Victoria Nuland, or whatever nest of war-mongering vipers you want to include from House CIA/State, Fuckers of Foreign Policy and Exporters of Color Revolution.
I’m being only slightly tongue-in-cheek because it would behoove every American who considers themselves a “serious” thinker on any of these issues to abandon whatever chic, pet psychological theory and -ism they believe in and recognize that the sole reason that Game of Thrones, and other such stories, command our attention is because of how precisely and plausibly they portray the full gamut of human behaviors, particularly the bad ones, in pursuit of power and influence on a national and world stage. The specific web of alliances and allegiances and House names aren’t particularly crucial for the moment - those can be teased out by the internet over time. What is critical, however, is to first break the chains of political naivete that surrounds how Americans think about their government and recognize it for what it really is: propaganda. It’s only when the veil is lifted that you can begin to have any sense of what’s going on in the Imperial capitol and begin to tease out exactly who’s zooming who.
It would help immensely if we had real Media, but we do not. Just like in the television show, we have those who hold power doing everything they can to control what information the people have - the Truth being the most dangerous of all. And we have Media organs that are paid for by government and those aligned with government. For two examples, do some research on just how much money the various media conglomerates all got under the pandemic legislation for repeating the tripe about the mRNA gene-therapy products, or how much money hospitals got to declare someone died “with covid” vice “because of covid.”
Now that we all know that Hunter’s laptop is true, however, does Littlefinger owning and running a whorehouse that he leverages into becoming Lord Peter Baelish really seem at all farfetched to you? Does Ashley Biden’s diary recounting how she felt as a teenage girl showering with “Pedo Pete” really seem like some Q-inspired conspiracy theory anymore? Does HERR DOKTOR JILL’s desire to be and remain FLOTUS seem at all like it’s not genuine in the same way that Cersei’s desire for power is?
Now analyze what you see in American politics in light of what you saw on HBO every Sunday, with the same exacting eye, and get back to me in the comments. I’d love to hear what people come up with.
I’ll just get this retardation out of the way right now: “ZOMG!!1!!1! WHYCOME U POINT TO DRAGON-ZOMBIE STORY FOR KNOWLEDGE?!??!”
Before that was Rome - which gave us both Caesar and Caligula - and before that were the Greeks… and the Persians, and the Phoenicians, and - (you get the picture).
In this regard, Joe follows the lead of the Clintons, the greatest political profiteers in history, through their “Foundation” among many other criminal enterprises.
Very nicely framed. Not a viewer of GoT but makes the point very well. Americans seem to lack some of the cynicism exhibited by those more familiar with a monarchy, and thus other forms of power.