Ellipsis …¶
Populo:
Attack! Attack! The time for action has come. Resistance!
Struggle! We have to do something, and do it now.
Enough with these endless streams of words!
Crypton:
Still shouting in the name of silence, Populo?
Populo:
Hardly silence, Crypton. Not at all. Even the contrary. In the
name, rather, of the voice of true men, rediscovering their pride
and fortitude, and joining together to make a stand against
intolerable abuse.
Crypton: Ah yes, that.
Populo: So what brings you here Crypton?
Crypton:
I was rather hoping we might continue our little chat about the
Deep
State.
Populo:
Terrific! That’s a topic close to my heart, as you know. Those
slithering parasites hidden beneath the rotten log of the
Cathedral. It’s time to expose them, denounce them, burn them
out!
Crypton: They’re the enemy then?
Populo:
Of course they’re the enemy! They run the Cathedral, don’t they?
Try not to sophisticate matters beyond all common sense.
Crypton:
Did you find time to take a look at that little Daniel Krawisz
article
I mentioned?
Populo:
Yes, it was vaguely interesting, I suppose.
Crypton: So you didn’t like it much?
Populo:
Frankly Crypton, it reminded me of the side of you I like least,
and having downed a few horns of ale, I’ll be double frank — it
had a whiff of … well … treachery about it. To
spend so much attention upon the subtleties of potential
defections, it’s unmanly, somehow.
Crypton:
That’s excellent Populo, because I was going to suggest that
gaming-out Deep State defections is the
only practical strategic topic worthy of NRx
consideration. It seems that we have our conversation plotted for
us.
Populo:
Agreed, a fine joust! But let me start by telling you something
about yourself Crypton, which I’m not sure you clearly see.
Ironically, as you would no doubt say, your
attraction to this shadowy topic is driven by psychological
motivations that are as bright as a beacon. It’s clandestine, by
nature, and therefore necessarily passes into ellipsis. That makes
it an excuse for abstraction. Squalid actuality is unmentionable,
so that the conversation is steered inevitably into the virtual.
In other words, it tends by subterranean design to be a flight
from action. That’s perfect for me, of course, because by crushing
you in this argument through unimagined neutronium-densities of
humiliation, I will be serving the noble cause of public
resistance, implicitly, even though that’s the last thing you want
to talk about. So make your case.
Crypton:
Maximally compressed it’s this — in the near future, only
crypto-conflict is serious. Public politics is purely for the
popcorn industry.
Populo:
So we’re already diving under the rotting log?
Crypton: If that’s your preferred image.
Populo:
And beside these occult transactions, nothing matters?
Crypton: Precisely.
Populo:
But then, by the very nature of the thing, we have no idea what
we’re doing, or who we’re trying to communicate with. We have
nothing to offer them. We don’t even know whether they exist … Oh
do stop it Crypton, your eyes are gleaming.
Crypton:
Don’t you catch even the slightest aroma of
basilisk?
Populo:
By which, I’m assuming, you don’t mean merely
involution into psychosis?
Crypton:
More specifically: acausal trade, and transcendental games.
Populo:
There you go! Utter, ineffectual abstraction, within two
sentences. Let’s start somewhere else — with the alphabet
agencies.
Crypton: OK.
Populo:
You’re proposing some kind of cryptic alliance with them — or
elements within them — or you’re not proposing anything at
all.
Crypton: Fair. At least, that’s part of it.
Populo: And the rest of it?
Crypton:
You know I’m a skeptic on enumerative methods.
Populo: Some of it, then.
Crypton:
It seems impossible that the AAs could know what they ultimately
are, teleologically — what they are becoming. These organizations
include some very smart people, with a taste for puzzles. Is it
likely they could not be intrigued by their institutional
destiny?
Populo:
As usual, I have no idea at all what you’re suggesting.
Crypton:
There is a properly cryptic plane of
communication with the Deep State, that does not conform to the
political plaintext of conspiratorial engagement. It concerns the
keys of fate. Concretely, there is an implicit alliance around the
escalation of cryptographic technology — as also, one even more
implicitly against it, and against the AAs
as such, on those fundamental grounds. If crypsis
— camouflage — is a hidden end, and not merely —
as it superficially appears — a means to the fulfillment of vulgar
or exoteric goals, then the pact is sealed somewhere outside the
AAs themselves. The AAs have an occult cosmic purpose, far
exceeding their national security functions. Not that these latter
are uninteresting …
Populo: So let’s, please, talk about them.
Crypton:
If there’s any place in the social structure where such matters
are entirely detached from questions of demotic ideological
legitimation, popular politics, or even merely public relations,
it has surely to be the Deep State. Is the Deep State, then, in
this regard, not already a model of Exit? It has departed the
public political sphere, for the shadows, at least, if it has
managed to obtain the operational liberty from democratic
accountability, of which its critics so vociferously accuse
it.
Populo:
You don’t think the NSA has diversity monitors?
Crypton:
If it has, America deserves to perish, and it’s our task to
explain why.
Populo:
You’d give up on the American people because the NSA has Otherkin
bathrooms!?
[To be continued …]