Excerpt:

Well, 2023 is almost in the books, and things couldn’t be going better for the New Normal Reich. It’s been a long, strange seven years, but we’re finally back to the Global War on Terror, which, as you may recall, was abruptly preempted in 2016 by the War on Populism, which, as you may recall, was abruptly preempted in 2020 by the Apocalyptic Pandemic, which, as you may recall, was what ushered The New Normal Reich into being and brought us full-circle.

Anyway, here we are, back in The Global War on Terror, or the War on Horror, or The War on Whatever … Islamic terrorism, Russia, Trump, disinformation, racism, hate speech, conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, anti-vaxxerism, transphobians, Communists, cultural Marxists, radical wokesters, the Cult of Musk, neo-Covidians, Zionazis, climate-change deniers, decapitated baby rapers … it doesn’t really matter. Pick an enemy and join the Roman Orgy of Hatred!

The schizotocracy couldn’t care less which side of whatever you think you are on.

Yes, that’s right, “the schizotocracy.” I’ve coined a new name for the supranational network of global corporations, nominally-sovereign governments, non-governmental governing entities, media conglomerates, oligarchs, etc., that comprise the global-capitalist system that is driving the course of events in our time. I’ve coined this new name for those of my readers who suffer apoplectic seizures whenever I write about “global capitalism” (or “GloboCap,” as I sometimes jokingly call it) and its predictable evolution into “The New Normal Reich.”

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Now, let me tell you about the schizotocracy. Or, rather, let me tell you about schizophrenia, which is really just a fancy name for psychosis. I want to do that because that’s where global capitalism (or crony capitalism, or the corporatocracy, or the New Normal Reich, or cultural Marxism, or whatever you want or need to call it) is inexorably taking us, i.e., into a state of societal psychosis, so it would probably be a good idea to understand how psychosis works.

What happens when you become psychotic is, you lose your ability to participate in “reality.” It’s like being in a country where you don’t speak the language. Or trying to play a game that everyone else is playing when you don’t know the rules, or the point of the game, and no one will tell you. See, normally, “reality” is just, well, reality. It doesn’t take scare quotes. It’s just “the way it is.” But it isn’t. Reality is manufactured. Which is why what is “real” has changed throughout history. (Of course, those earlier versions of reality were wrong, and our current reality is right, and future generations will never look back on our reality as we look back on the reality of people in Medieval Europe, or ancient Rome, or Mesopotamia.)

In other words, reality is a fiction … a fiction that we all agree to believe in. But that doesn’t make it any less real. On the contrary, it is absolutely real, and absolutely necessary. It is an absolutely necessary fiction. It is what makes communication and cooperation possible. It is what makes all human society possible. As long as we forget that it is a fiction. As long as we don’t perceive it as a fiction.

Which is the problem for psychotic (or “schizophrenic”) individuals. They are unable to not perceive reality as a fiction, a work of ontological fiction in progress. They have forgotten to forget that it’s all made up — which is the price of admission to our communal “reality” — so they desperately try to interpret everything … literally everything, everything that we don’t have to interpret and just take for granted.

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OK, so back to the schizotocracy, which is where The New Normal Reich is taking us, which I described above as societal psychosis. And, yes, we need to talk about capitalism. We need to talk about what it does to society when people let it run amok.

Now, I want to be ultra-clear about this for those of my readers who go totally ape-shit every time I write about capitalism. I have no problem with capitalism per se. I’m not an economist. For all I know, capitalism may be the best economic system in the entire history of economic systems. I am not calling on the proletariat to rise up and seize the means of production. I am writing about capitalism as an ideology, because it’s the ideology that has become our reality, the reality of the planet Earth, which it is transforming into one big marketplace.

See, what capitalism does, if you turn it loose, when it isn’t restrained in any real way by any sort of dominant value system — e.g., a religious, or cultural, or social value system — what it does is, it transforms societies into markets, and turns everything and everyone within them into commodities. It strips societies of all other values — i.e., impediments to the free flow of capital — until nothing remains but the marketplace, where exchange value is the only value and nothing has any real value in itself, or any real meaning in itself.

And the kicker is, what capitalism does next, when it’s allowed to go hog-wild on society, is it sells the desiccated husks of people’s values back to them as lifestyle commodities. Identities, religions, political parties, sexual orientations, left, right, capitalist, anti-capitalist, whatever. They are all just interchangeable commodities. Consumer products. Leisure activities. If they aren’t, if you attempt to actually live your life according to non-global-capitalist values (like, just for example, Islam, or Christianity, or communism, or any other values that impede the unbridled flows of capital), you will quickly find yourself branded an “extremist.” Go ahead, those of you who call yourselves Christians, try this … give everything you have to the poor, chase the money-changers out of your churches. See how fast you are branded “terrorists.”

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We end up with societal psychosis. We end up ruled by a schizotocracy. Our reality changes from day to day, as does who we thought were our allies and adversaries, depending on the fluctuations of the market. The ideological market. The “reality” market. One day we’re all “free-speech” champions, and the next we’re screeching for censorship of speech. One day people are demonizing “the Unvaccinated,” and the next they are screeching that they are being demonized. Comparing anything to Nazi Germany is anti-Semitism, until it isn’t, and wasn’t, until it was, and then wasn’t again. Trump is Hitler. Putin is Hitler. Hamas is Hitler. Netanyahu is Hitler. Anyone who calls anyone Hitler is Hitler. Men are women. Women are Hitler. The Hamas terrorists are worse than the Nazis. Israel is worse than the Nazis. Masks work, and they don’t. Stand with Ukraine. Stand with Israel. Stand with Whatever. Listerine kills the germs that brushing can’t. Have it your way. You’re in good hands. Fly the friendly skies. And so on. Nothing and no one can be trusted. No one has any values or principles, so we’re just shrieking gibberish and slogans at each other, like corporations advertising their products on a television network that no one is watching.

And, of course, just like the psychotic individual, who desperately attempts to impose a new “reality” on the terrifying chaos of the obliterated reality from which they have been exiled, many folks are going full-blown fascist and trying to ram their “truth” down everyone else’s throat in an attempt to reestablish something, anything, resembling a functional reality … a reality that isn’t up for grabs. Other people are switching off, and withdrawing from society, overwhelmed by it all. Others are searching for someone to tell them what is really going on and what to do about it. “Leaders” are coming out of the woodwork, delivering speeches and holding seminars, explaining the problem … and who “our enemy” is.

I think you know how the rest of this story goes.

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