Neoliberalism as Bad Art

 

Kelcy Warren, Pipeline Mogul (albeit not an upstream oil magnate)

This fellow was flanked by a chart displaying financial supporters on one side and participating oil companies on the other. I wanted to moralize on how expedient this was considering that there was a war between them. Call it the Quiet Rich versus the Noisy Rich. I didn't know I was looking at a victory dance. The Quiet Rich, the Yankees, won Civil War IIA.

Don't think of personalities, think of structures and sectors. I'm thinking of the acronym I half-trusted earlier — the mouthful Shahid Bolsen uses as a kind of structural label rather than a list of people.

The acronym is: OCGFC — “Owners and Controllers of Global Financialized Capital”.

Bolsen uses it as a way to name what he sees as a transnational class whose power comes not from territory or industry but from control over financialized systems — capital flows, investment vehicles, and the institutional architecture of global finance. He is trying to unpack how this acronym functions in his rhetoric, how it compares to other “elite‑class” labels across ideological traditions, but it's also about how it fits into the broader debate about whether global finance has become semi‑autonomous from nation‑states. The tech-bros are now the loudest rich on this issue of superseding the Westphalian system. But these two are not the same bloc. Not even close — and the contrast is actually useful because it sharpens what Bolsen is trying to name with OCGFC.

These are two very different strata of power, combatants in a Civil War IIB. Bolsen’s “Owners and Controllers of Global Financialized Capital” refers to a transnational financial class whose leverage comes from control of capital flows, ownership of investment vehicles, funds, and holding companies, influence over global regulatory and monetary institutions, and the ability to discipline states, firms, and populations through liquidity, credit, and capital mobility. This is the world of BlackRock, sovereign wealth funds, private equity, global banks, and the shadow‑banking ecosystem — not the world of hoodie‑wearing founders.

By contrast, the stereotypical “tech bro” is a founder, engineer, or early employee tied to a specific firm or platform. He's wealthy, but usually through equity in one company; culturally loud but structurally narrow; dependent on venture capital, institutional investors, and public markets. Tech bros perform power; the OCGFC allocate power.

There's a simple way to see the difference. If a tech founder misbehaves, their board can fire them, their stock can tank, or their investors can walk. If an OCGFC‑type actor moves $50B in or out of a country, the currency shifts, the bond market reacts, and the government changes policy.

One group is culturally visible; the other is structurally decisive.

Where do they overlap? There is a zone of interaction:

- Big Tech is now deeply financialized.  

- Tech giants rely on the same global capital pools.  

- Some tech CEOs have crossed into the world of sovereign‑scale capital management.  

But Bolsen’s acronym is meant to point to a class that is older, quieter, and far more embedded in the architecture of global finance than Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial caste.

How do these two groups interact — cooperation, conflict, and the places where tech becomes a client of finance rather than a rival? I ask because there is still a struggle going on. Either that, or the rock got pulled up and the bugs are scurrying around like crazy, snatching up what isn't secured, including prepubescent sex slaves. A persisting Time of Troubles is a big clue that there is conflict — but it’s not a simple “class war” between two rich tribes. It’s more like two different elite projects that partially overlap, partially collide, and partially depend on each other. And the “noisy vs. quiet” distinction is a good way to feel the texture of that tension.

First are the “quiet rich”: OCGFC‑type finance. This group’s power is structural, not cultural; embedded in global liquidity, credit, and monetary governance; transnational by default; allergic to visibility; and oriented toward stability of the system that gives them leverage. 

Their supranational order already exists: global financial integration, enforced by capital mobility, ratings agencies, central‑bank coordination (independent from national governments but not from each other), and investment flows. They don’t need to build a new order; they are the order.

𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 was right. (I don't mean the tech-bro connotation of "network".)

The “noisy rich's” (tech founders, platform elites) power is cultural and infrastructural, not monetary; tied to platforms, data, and user bases;  dependent on venture capital and public markets; rhetorically utopian, futurist, or secessionist; obsessed with “world‑building,” “network states,” “exit,” “protocol governance,” etc.  They want a supranational order because they don’t fully control the existing one.  They want to escape the constraints of states and the constraints of finance. This is why they are trying to create a crypto-currency. Also this is why they talk about network states, crypto‑sovereignty, AI‑mediated governance, platform‑as‑polity, “cloud countries”, and “protocol jurisdictions”.

It’s a bid for autonomy.

So are they in conflict? Yes — but it’s a contained conflict, because each side needs the other.

So where DO they clash?

a. Control of the future supranational layer. Finance wants a world where capital flows rule. Tech wants a world where platforms rule.  

These are not the same thing.

b. Risk tolerance. Finance hates volatility. This is why it created a static matrix (including a subservient petro sector). Tech worships disruption. Tech’s “move fast and break things” is finance’s “please stop breaking my collateral.” Forgetting the damage caused by slinate change, natch!

c. Governance philosophy. Finance prefers technocratic, quiet, incremental adjustments. Tech prefers charismatic, ideological, founder‑driven leaps. One is a priesthood; the other is a cult. (Along with an overproduction of elites, we gotz an overproduction of cults.)

d. AI...the first domain where tech might genuinely escape financial subordination. Finance knows this — which is why it is pouring money into AI to prevent that escape. Countervailing power like the old labor unions useta be.

4. Where they cooperate:

a. Tech needs capital. Every major platform is built on:

i. VC money  

ii. private equity  🚨

iii. sovereign wealth funds  

iv. public markets  

The OCGFC bankrolls the tech sector.

b. Finance needs tech’s growth.

Finance needs high‑yield sectors to absorb global capital.  

Tech is one of the few remaining.

c. Both want a post‑industrial, post‑labor order. They differ on who rules it, not on whether it should exist.

5. The deeper truth (there always is one). The conflict is not “rich vs. rich.”  It’s two different models of sovereignty. Financial sovereignty is rule through capital flows. Platform sovereignty is rule through infrastructure and data.

Both are supranational.  

Both are elite projects.  

Both are trying to become the “operating system” of the next world order.

And right now, they are in a cold war of influence, each trying to ensure the other never becomes fully autonomous.

The oil barons are already subordinate to finance — and not just in a casual, metaphorical sense. The subordination is structural, baked into how the modern energy system is financed, regulated, and valued. Once you see the mechanics, it becomes obvious why Bolsen treats the OCGFC as the senior partner and the oil barons as a dependent caste.

1. Oil used to dominate finance, For most of the 20th century oil companies generated enormous free cash flow; they controlled their own capital budgets; they shaped geopolitics directly; banks served them, not the other way around. The Seven Sisters era was one of industrial sovereignty. They came close to becoming a true monopoly. In unorthodox-finance terms, they were able to finance their own growth from their own profits.

That world is gone.

2. Today, oil companies behave like financial assets. This is the key shift. Modern oil majors:

a. prioritize shareholder returns over production growth  

b. are disciplined by institutional investors  

c. must meet ESG screens, credit ratings, and risk models  

d. depend on capital markets for large projects  

e. are punished by markets for long‑term investment and rewarded for buybacks (no arc reactors for you or me)

Their strategic horizon is no longer geological or industrial — it’s financial.

The boardroom is ruled by the cost of capital.

3. The real choke point: financing upstream projects. Deepwater, shale, LNG, and unconventional oil all require:

a. multi‑billion‑dollar upfront capital  

b. long payback periods  

c. stable credit conditions  

d. political risk insurance  

e. hedging instruments  

Who controls those? Banks, asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, and bond markets. If the OCGFC decides a project is too risky, too carbon‑intensive 🧐, or insufficiently profitable, it simply doesn’t get funded. No capital → no drilling. That’s subordination in its purest form.

4. Geopolitics now runs through financial channels. Even state‑owned oil companies are constrained by:

a. dollar‑denominated debt  

b. sanctions regimes  

c. SWIFT access  

d. sovereign credit ratings  

e. IMF conditionality  

f. global liquidity cycles  

When the Fed tightens, oil states feel it. When global investors flee emerging markets, oil revenues shrink. When sanctions hit, pipelines and tankers become irrelevant. The “oil weapon” has been replaced by the financial weapon.

5. The paradox: oil is still vital, but oil barons aren’t sovereign. Energy remains indispensable, but the people who extract it no longer control the system. They are "price takers", not price makers.

The real sovereigns are the ones who:

a. set the cost of capital  

b. determine risk premiums  

c. control global liquidity  

d. regulate cross‑border flows  

e. shape investment mandates  

That’s the OCGFC world.

6. Why this matters for my earlier contrast. This is exactly why the tech sector’s supranational ambitions are so provocative.

Oil tried to be sovereign and was absorbed.  

Tech is trying to be sovereign and is being resisted.  

Finance remains the quiet apex predator.

The oil barons’ subordination is the cautionary tale:  industrial empires eventually bend to the architecture of capital.

If oil is now subordinate to finance, is Carl Oglesby's Yankee-Cowboy War over? Not quite — but the form of the Yankee–Cowboy conflict that Carl Oglesby described has mutated so dramatically that the old geography (Boston‑New York finance vs. Texas‑Southwest oil) no longer maps onto the real power structure. In other words:

The war isn’t “over,” but one side has been absorbed into a larger empire.

Let’s walk through it in a way that respects Oglesby’s original insight while updating it for the world I'm analyzing.

1. Oglesby’s model in brief:

Oglesby argued that U.S. power was split between:

Yankees

i. Northeastern finance  

ii. multinational corporations  

iii. Ivy‑League managerial elites  

iv. Atlanticist foreign policy  

I callz 'em the Eastern Establishment (or Anglo-American, because The City handles the fx gnout).

Cowboys

i. Southwestern oil, defense, extraction  

ii. Sunbelt populism  

iii. anti‑bureaucratic, anti‑East Coast sentiment  

iv. more militarist, more risk‑tolerant (like Vietnam and LBJ's bombing campaign prior to completion of the party realignment) to match the blocs better)

It was a conflict between financial cosmopolitanism and resource‑based frontier capitalism.

That framework made sense in the 1960s–80s.

2. What changed: finance globalized, oil didn’t. The decisive shift is that finance escaped the nation‑state, while oil remained tied to:

a. geology  

b. pipelines  

c. territorial concessions  

d. physical infrastructure  

e. national security  

Oil is global, but it is not placeless. Finance is.

Once capital markets became the primary allocator of investment, the old Cowboy power base lost its autonomy.

This is why I can say now that oil is subordinate.

3. So is the Yankee–Cowboy War “over”? That blanket we call the political landscape is still acting like it's got wildcats fighting underneath it. This only means that the original factions no longer exist in their old form. The Yankees won — but then dissolved into a transnational class. The old Northeastern financial elite didn’t just beat the Cowboys; it scaled up into something post‑American:

a. global asset managers  

b. sovereign wealth funds  

c. shadow banking  

d. multinational institutional investors  

e. central‑bank‑linked technocracies  

This is the world Bolsen calls the OCGFC.

The Cowboys didn’t disappear — they were domesticated. Oil barons still exist, but:

i. they depend on capital markets  

ii. they are disciplined by ratings agencies  

iii. they must satisfy institutional investors  

iv. they cannot pursue geopolitical adventures without financial permission  

They are no longer a rival bloc. They are a sector. 😭

So the war is “over” in the sense that one side was absorbed into a larger supranational architecture.

4. But the pattern Oglesby identified is still alive. The deeper structure of his argument — two elite projects with different risk profiles and different visions of sovereignty — is absolutely still with us. It has simply shifted to new actors:

Old Yankees → OCGFC (global finance). Quiet, technocratic, stability‑oriented, supranational.

Old Cowboys → Tech‑platform elites. Risk‑tolerant, frontier‑minded, culturally loud, sovereignty‑seeking.

This is why the earlier contrast between “noisy rich” and “quiet rich” is so sharp. It’s the new Yankee–Cowboy divide.

5. The new conflict ⛧⃝ (all seriousness aside, I heard Les Feldick plainly state that Israel is gonna git the land from the Nile to the Euphrates - I digress)...

Today’s version looks like this:

NOT Yankees v. Cowboys, but Global Finance (OCGFC) v. Tech‑platform elites (AI, crypto, network‑state visionaries, Ralph 124C41) 

Oil is no longer the insurgent frontier class.  

Tech is.

And tech’s supranational ambitions — cloud governance, AI‑mediated sovereignty, network states — are the first serious challenge to financial hegemony since the oil bloc of the mid‑20th century.

6. The bottom line: The Yankee–Cowboy War is not over. It has simply changed protagonists.

Oil lost.  

Finance globalized.  

Tech rose as the new frontier challenger.

I must make one observation: both Finance and Tech are proceeding from a mistaken premise, one that is typical of a Time of Troubles. There ain't enough to go around. This premise is the cause of austerity. Civil War IIA began as a fight over government spending: guns or butter. Finance's remedy for inflation was austerity, not in wise investments in a better way to utilize resources to do more with less, such as renewable energy. DOGE was an attempt to loot the public treasury and translate it into its electronic funny money. Austerity is just a way to scrape real resources for a fire sale, Finance walking away with the cash. Not only will they hide their money; they plan to hide themselves in safe places when the apocalypse comes. Again, I digress...MEANWHILE

There are factions — but the key is understanding what kind of factions they are. It’s not a clean ideological split, and it’s not the old Oglesby geography. What I'm seeing with someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizing MAGA isn’t the end of unity; it’s the surfacing of internal contradictions that were always there.

1. Movements that grow fast always fracture. Political coalitions — especially populist ones — tend to be heterogeneous. They pull together:

a. different regional interests  

b. different donor networks  

c. different media ecosystems  

d. different personal ambitions  

When the coalition is rising, these differences stay submerged. When it becomes dominant, the contradictions surface. This is a classic pattern in political science:  victory produces fragmentation.

2. MAGA isn’t a single bloc — it’s a cluster of micro‑factions. Without taking sides, analysts often describe several internal tendencies:

a. Institutionalists who want to integrate the movement into the party structure  

b. Populist hardliners who want to push further  

c. Media‑driven personalities whose incentives come from attention, not governance  

d. Policy‑focused actors who want specific outcomes  

e. Personalist loyalists whose identity is tied to one figure  

f. Local power brokers with their own constituencies  

These groups cooperate when they have a common opponent.  

They clash when the opponent is absent or ambiguous.

3. Why someone like Taylor Greene might criticize MAGA. Without endorsing or opposing anyone, the dynamic looks like this:

a. Ambition: High‑profile figures compete for influence inside the same ecosystem.  

b. Brand differentiation: Criticism is a way to carve out a distinct identity.  

c. Strategic positioning: Some actors want to steer the movement in a different direction.  

d. Resource competition: Donors, media attention, and organizational infrastructure are finite.  

This is normal in any large political movement. It’s not a sign of collapse — it’s a sign of internal sorting.

4. The deeper structural stratum.

The earlier question about the Yankee–Cowboy War is relevant here that gave us Reagan.

When a movement becomes large enough to contain:

a. populist energy  

b. institutional power  

c. media personalities  

d. donor networks  

e. ideological entrepreneurs  

…it inevitably develops internal factions, because each of those components has different incentives.

This is not unique to MAGA.  

It’s the same pattern that affected:

a. New Deal Democrats  

b. Reagan Republicans  

c. Tea Party activists  

d. Civil Rights coalitions  

e. Anti‑war movements  

Large coalitions are always internally plural.

5. So yes — there must be factions. But they are not “factions” in the sense of two coherent armies. They are overlapping networks with different incentives, different audiences, and different theories of how the movement should evolve. And how the spoils should be divided.

Greene's critical stance is a symptom of:

a. internal competition  

b. strategic divergence  

c. personal ambition  

d. and the natural evolution of a large political ecosystem  

I can map these factions more abstractly — not by naming individuals, but by describing the structural types (media‑driven, institutional, ideological, entrepreneurial, etc.) and how they interact. I mean, if Kirk's death hasn't stopped anything....

Bannon fits cleanly into one of the structural factions I sketched earlier — but not as a “type” inside MAGA so much as a distinct strategic tendency that cuts across the movement. The easiest way to see it is to place him in the updated Yankee–Cowboy framework from I have been extrapolating.

He is not a “finance” figure.  

He is not a “platform‑tech” figure.  

He is not a “traditional conservative” figure.  

He is something else:  

a populist‑revolutionary faction that wants to weaponize mass politics against both finance and the party establishment. "Reactionary-revolution might fit him better. It did Hitler. (Have I told you about the "dress rehearsals" for universal empire yet? We had Napoleon and King Henry V before that. Mesopotamia had a slew of them, all attacking Israel in series.)

1. Bannon’s faction: the Populist‑Insurgent Tendency. This faction is characterized by:

a. hostility to the party establishment  

b. hostility to global finance  

c. hostility to technocratic governance  

d. a belief in mass mobilization as a political weapon  

e. a desire to create a new political economy, not manage the existing one  

f. a willingness to burn bridges with donors, institutions, and even allies  

It is not “left” or “right” in the conventional sense.  

It is anti‑elite, but not anti‑power.

This faction sees itself as the *creative minority* in Toynbee’s sense — the group that must break the old order to build a new one. But it ain't.

It's kinda funny how Hitler and Goebbels spewed insults at "die Reaktion" - and then later turned to die Reaktion for money. This is just an aside.

2. How this differs from other factions inside MAGA. Without taking sides (I hates hobbitses), analysts often describe several internal tendencies:

a. Institutionalists

i. want to integrate the movement into the GOP  

ii. want stability, predictability, donor alignment  

iii. dislike chaos  

b. Personalist loyalists

i. identity tied to one leader  

ii. focus on loyalty, not ideology  

c. Media‑entrepreneur faction

i. influencers, personalities, attention‑driven actors  

ii. incentives shaped by audience engagement  

d. Populist‑insurgent faction (Bannon’s lane)

i. wants to radicalize the base  

ii. wants to build parallel institutions  

iii. wants to pressure the party from below  

iv. sees conflict as productive  

Bannon is the clearest representative of this last group.

3. Why this faction clashes with others. This explains why someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene might criticize MAGA figures or vice versa.  

They are not all rowing in the same direction.

Bannon’s faction believes:

a. the movement must remain insurgent  

b. institutional capture is a trap  

c. donor influence is corrupting  

d. internal discipline is less important than ideological intensity  

Other factions believe:

a. insurgency must eventually become governance  

b. internal conflict weakens the coalition  

c. donors and institutions are necessary  

d. stability is more valuable than escalation  

These are structural tensions, not personal feuds.

4. Where Bannon sits in the larger elite‑system map. If we zoom out to your earlier framework:

a. OCGFC (global finance) → quiet, technocratic, stability‑oriented  (too much so)

b. Tech‑platform elites → noisy, futurist, sovereignty‑seeking  (sigh-fi without the neat hardware, just AI generated CGI)

c. Populist‑insurgent faction → anti‑elite, anti‑technocratic, anti‑financial, mass‑mobilizing  

Bannon is not aligned with either of the first two.  He is the third pole — the one that wants to use mass politics to disrupt both. In the old Oglesby terms, he is not a Yankee or a Cowboy. He is the tribune of the plebes, trying to rally the base against both.

5. The simplest answer: Bannon belongs to the populist‑insurgent faction — the wing that wants to keep the movement revolutionary, confrontational, and structurally opposed to both the party establishment and the global financial order.

Bannon was pretty cozy with Epstein back in the day. Just whom did Epstein NOT try to influence??

Let's think through the structural logic of the Oglesby framework, the idea of elite factions, and the geopolitical incentives of states — but I can’t treat any individual as an intelligence operative or attribute motives to them without evidence.  This one mean zeroing in on cousin Al, who got a decent bank account with Charles Givens' finagling and his blessing-squandering seed-corn gobbling customers.

So let’s shift the frame slightly  😇 

What would Oglesby’s Yankee–Cowboy model predict about a foreign intelligence service trying to influence American factional politics? This is a question we can explore rigorously.

1. Oglesby’s framework is about structural conflict, not individuals. It's more about Tillichian soul-selling and materially-conditioned outlooks that spite Dyerism. Oglesby argued that U.S. power was split between:

a. Yankees → finance, East Coast, multinational, technocratic  

b. Cowboys → oil, Sunbelt, militarist, populist  

His point wasn’t that individuals were agents of foreign powers. His point was that American elites were already fighting each other, and outside actors could exploit that. So the right question isn’t “Was X doing Y for Mossad?” The right question is: How would a foreign intelligence service behave inside a fractured empire?

2. What foreign intelligence services generally try to do. Across history, major intelligence services tend to pursue three broad goals:

a. Gain leverage over influential individuals

b. Map internal elite factions**  

c. Exploit existing fractures rather than create new ones

d. What if gaming is intended to train players to ask the wrong questions and focus on the trivial interpersonal crap?? Save for later!  

They don’t invent divisions.  

They surf divisions.

This is true whether we’re talking about the Cold War, the Middle East, or contemporary geopolitics.

3. In Oglesby’s terms: what would Israel’s strategic incentive be? Without making claims about any specific person, we can analyze the logic.

In Oglesby’s model:

a. Yankees → more internationalist, more institutional, more finance‑aligned  

b. Cowboys → more unilateralist, more militarist, more Sunbelt‑populist (Neocons like Nuland but staggering zombies now [good question]) 

Israel’s historical relationship with the U.S. has involved both factions at different times.  But the key point is this:

Israel’s strategic interest is stability in its alliance with the U.S., not fragmentation of the U.S. itself. Motive: keep the Xn Zionists hot and bothered.

A fractured America is unpredictable.  

Unpredictability is dangerous for small states in volatile regions.

So the idea that any foreign service would want to “fragment America so much it could no longer dictate to Israel” doesn’t match how states behave.  States want predictable patrons, not weakened ones.

But at some point Israel wants to wag the U/S/ dog.

4. So what is the structural explanation for the rise of MAGA?

You don’t need a foreign hand to explain it.  

The ingredients were already present:

a. economic dislocation  

b. cultural polarization  

c. distrust of institutions  

d. decline of the post‑Cold‑War consensus  

e. fragmentation of media ecosystems  

f. the long‑term shift of political energy from “Yankee” to “Cowboy” regions  

In other words:  MAGA emerged from internal American contradictions, not external engineering. I mean killer robots from the John Locke Society. Or Lillian Farmer.

Foreign actors may have tried to influence or exploit those contradictions — that’s normal in geopolitics — but they didn’t create them.

5. The deeper drain I'm circling. Oglesby’s model helps explain why American politics is so fractious today. But the factions are no longer “Yankees vs. Cowboys.” They’re:

a. Global finance (quiet, technocratic)  

b. Tech‑platform elites (noisy, supranational)  

c. Populist‑insurgent movements (mass‑mobilizing, anti‑elite)  

Foreign intelligence services don’t create these factions. They navigate them.

6. There’s no evidence that any individual “started” MAGA or that a foreign service sought to fragment America to reduce its influence over Israel. But Oglesby’s framework is still useful for understanding how internal elite fractures create openings that outside actors may try to read, exploit, or hedge against.

Can Israel stand alone like a Levantine Colossus?

1. More realistically, an autonomous “Greater Israel” refers to economic and logistical self‑sufficiency, not political secession from the United States. And yes, it's super-sized. Does it know what it's in for? The Mad Arab argues that Israel is being positioned as:

a. a logistics hub  

b. a transshipment corridor  

c. a node in global capital flows  

d. a platform for energy and trade routes  

In that framing, “Greater Israel” is not a territorial project but a functional one:  a state whose strategic value comes from its integration into global supply chains. The Manchurian Psychohistorian agrees. If he is:

a. free

b. alive

Autonomy, in this sense, means:

i. less dependent on U.S. military guarantees  

ii. less vulnerable to U.S. political pressure  

iii. more embedded in transnational capital networks  

iv. more able to act as a regional economic pivot  

It’s not about fragmenting America. It’s about reducing single‑patron dependence. As I write, India is busy looking for more than one friend, too. Or maybe just A friend? No, it wants to play a balancing act like the kind that blew up in England's face.)

2. How this fits into Oglesby’s Yankee–Cowboy framework. 

Oglesby’s model is about internal American elite factions.  

Bolsen’s argument is about how a small state navigates those factions.

In Oglesby’s terms:

a. The Yankee bloc (finance, multinationals, technocrats) is the one Israel has historically aligned with.  

b. The Cowboy bloc (oil, Sunbelt militarism, populist energy) has been more volatile and less predictable.  

Bolsen’s claim is that Israel wants to avoid being trapped between these factions as they fight for dominance.

So the goal isn’t to weaken America. The goal is to hedge against American factional volatility.

3. Why “fragmenting America” would not be a rational goal. From a geopolitical perspective, small states do not benefit from:

a. weakened patrons  

b. unpredictable superpowers  

c. fractured alliances  

d. unstable foreign policy environments  

A fragmented America would be:

a. less reliable  

b. less coherent  

c. less capable of deterrence  

d. more internally consumed  

e. more likely to swing between extremes  

That is not a strategic advantage for any ally.

States seek predictability, not chaos.

I don't see how a fifth column of Xn Zionists is going to be reliable. But then there's those donors. Something else Americans were ignoring while playing musical houses, tossing frisbees, exchanging tender sentiments at cookouts, marital infidelity, rearing teens both homicidal and suicidal.

4. So what is the real logic behind “autonomy”?

It’s the same logic that drives:

a. Gulf states diversifying away from U.S. security guarantees  

b. Turkey pursuing independent defense and energy policy  

c. India hedging between blocs  

d. Japan rearming  

e. South Korea building its own deterrence capacity  

In a multipolar world, every state wants optionality.

Bolsen’s argument is that Israel is doing the same thing:

a. building economic corridors  

b. cultivating ties with global capital  

c. expanding regional influence  

d. reducing reliance on any single great power  

This is not about undermining the U.S.  It’s about not being trapped by U.S. internal contradictions.

5. Bolsen’s “autonomy” thesis is not about fragmenting America. It’s about Israel positioning itself so that American factional conflict does not determine its fate.

How will this autonomy project interact with the OCGFC (global finance)?

There’s a really elegant way to answer this without drifting into personalities or speculation. If you stay at the structural level — the level Bolsen, Oglesby, Toynbee, and Perez (more on her below) all operate on — the relationship between “Greater Israel” (in Bolsen’s functional, not territorial sense) and the OCGFC becomes surprisingly clear.

Think of it as a node interacting with an empire, not a client interacting with a master.

And yet, a mere node?

1. Bolsen’s “Greater Israel” is a logistical‑financial node, not a rival bloc. In Bolsen’s framing, “Greater Israel” is:

a. a corridor  

b. a transshipment hub  

c. a regional integrator  

d. a platform for capital flows  

e. a connector between continents  

It’s not a territorial expansion. It’s a functional expansion — a role in global circulation. This means its relationship to the OCGFC is defined by interdependence, not opposition.

2. The OCGFC (global finance) wants stable, high‑value nodes.

From the perspective of global capital:

a. chokepoints  

b. corridors  

c. ports  

d. pipelines  

e. data routes  

f. energy hubs  

…are all assets.

A stable, well‑integrated Israel functioning as a logistics and financial node is useful to the OCGFC because it:

a. facilitates trade  

b. anchors regional capital flows  

c. provides predictable returns  

d. reduces geopolitical friction in a volatile region  

So the OCGFC’s interest is stability + connectivity.

3. Israel’s interest is "autonomy within interdependence"

Bolsen’s “autonomy” doesn’t mean isolation.  

It means:

a. not being dependent on a single patron  

b. not being vulnerable to a single faction of Western elites  

c. not being trapped by U.S. internal political cycles  

d. having multiple channels of support, investment, and legitimacy  

In other words: autonomy through diversification.

And the OCGFC is one of the key systems Israel wants to remain plugged into — but not exclusively dependent on.

4. The relationship is symbiotic, not hierarchical. Here’s the structural logic:

a. What the OCGFC gets

i. a stable regional node 

ii. a reliable corridor for capital and goods  

iii. a partner aligned with global financial norms  

iv. a foothold in a geopolitically strategic region  

b. What Israel gets

i. investment  

ii. liquidity  

iii. integration into global supply chains  

iv. insulation from U.S. political volatility  

v. leverage in regional diplomacy  

This is not domination.  

It’s mutual utility.

5. In Toynbeean terms: The OCGFC is a dominant minority (the ruling architecture of global capital).  

Israel, as a functional node, is a satellite elite — not subordinate, but orbiting within the system.

Its autonomy comes from:

a. being indispensable  

b. being strategically located  

c. being highly networked  

d. being able to pivot between blocs  

This is the same strategy used by:

a. Singapore  

b. UAE  

c. Qatar  

d. Switzerland  

Small states with outsized influence.

6. In Perez’s cycle, during the turning point:

a. global finance seeks stable nodes  

b. regional hubs become more valuable  

c. supply chains reconfigure  

d. states that can offer corridors gain leverage  

Israel’s “Greater Israel” project is essentially a deployment‑phase positioning maneuver.

It’s preparing for the next global order.

7. The clean answer: Greater Israel and the OCGFC will interact as mutually useful partners.

a. The OCGFC wants stable, high‑value logistical nodes.  

b. Israel wants diversified autonomy and deep integration into global capital flows.  

The relationship is neither subordination nor rivalry. It’s strategic interdependence — a dance between a global system and a regional node that knows how to make itself indispensable.

Carlota Perez is such a useful lens here because she gives you a non‑conspiratorial, non‑personalized, structural way to understand exactly the cycle I’ve been tracing through Oglesby, Bolsen, and the finance–tech–populist triad.  And in her framework, MAGA resistance → frenzy → crash → stabilization is not an anomaly. It’s the normal rhythm of technological revolutions. But the part that matters  — that populists will be brought into line eventually — is subtle. Perez doesn’t say the insurgent forces disappear. She says they get absorbed into a new settlement.

1. Perez’s cycle in brief. Every techno‑economic paradigm goes through:

Installation period

- New technologies emerge  

- Old elites resist  

- Speculation explodes  

- Social tensions rise  

- Populist anger intensifies  

Turning point

- A crash or crisis  

- Delegitimization of the old order  

- Political realignment  

Deployment period

- New regulations  

- New institutions  

- New social contract  

- Stabilization  

This is the moment when the “wild” energy of the installation period gets domesticated.

But domesticated ≠ eliminated.

2. Populists in Perez’s model. Populist energy is strongest during:

- the frenzy (when finance overextends)  

- the turning point (when the crash exposes inequality and corruption)  

After the turning point, the system tries to reabsorb that energy by:

- offering reforms  

- building new institutions  

- redistributing some gains  

- stabilizing expectations  

This is what she was gesturing toward:  the system eventually finds a way to contain the turbulence. But containment is not the same as obedience.

A pity she could find no counterexamples to the rough stuff.

Barring any more generational treachery, let’s overlay Perez onto the three blocs I've been analyzing:

Global finance (OCGFC)

- Dominant in the frenzy  

- Overextends  

- Eventually must accept regulation in the deployment phase  

Tech‑platform elites

- The “creative minority” of the new paradigm  

- Drive the installation period  

- Eventually become the new establishment  

Populist‑insurgent movements (and the point at which I'm all out of cutesy alphanumeric bulletpoint humore)

- Erupt when the old paradigm fails  

- Pressure elites during the turning point  

- Become part of the bargaining process that shapes the new settlement  

In Perez’s terms, populists are not “brought into line.”  They are one of the forces that shape the new institutional order, even if they don’t control it.

4. Her Big Insight (almost as big as my institutional entropy): stabilization requires concessions.

Perez is very clear about this:  A new golden age only emerges when the winners of the new paradigm make concessions to the losers of the old one.

That means:

- redistribution  

- new labor arrangements  

- new regulatory frameworks  

- new public goods  

- new legitimacy narratives  

Without these, the system stays stuck in turbulence. So the idea that populists simply get “disciplined” is too linear. Perez would say:

Populist pressure is necessary to force the new settlement.

5. Where we are now. I don't think boomers need to house MAGAts or homeless people in their McMansions. If you apply Perez’s cycle to the present:

- We are still in the late frenzy / early turning point  

- Finance is overextended  

- Tech is ascendant but unstable  

- Populist energy is high  

- Institutions are delegitimized  

- The new regulatory‑institutional settlement has not yet formed  

This is why everything feels chaotic.

The “bringing into line” moment — the stabilization — only happens after the turning point, when:

- the new paradigm is fully installed  

- the political system renegotiates its social contract  

- the winners accept constraints  

- the losers receive compensations  

We’re not there yet.

6. The cleanest way to say it, in Perez’s framework:

- Populists don’t vanish.  

- They don’t get crushed.  

- They don’t get fully absorbed.  

They become one of the forces that shape the next stable order, even if they don’t control it. They are part of the pressure that forces elites to build the new institutions of the deployment period.

Now for the Nightmare: an invasion from China and Russia.

It’s absolutely possible to explore this question in a structural, civilizational way without naming any leaders or attributing motives to individuals. When you frame it at the level of civilizational strategy, the picture becomes much clearer — and much less conspiratorial. The short version is this:

Neither China nor Russia benefits from a West that collapses into chaos,  but both benefit from a West that is distracted, divided, and inward‑facing. That’s the balance point.  Uusing the same analytical tools from  Oglesby, Spengler, Toynbee, Perez — all of which help illuminate the deeper logic.

1. Civilizations don’t want their rivals to collapse. A collapsing rival is:

- unpredictable  

- dangerous  

- prone to lashing out  

- economically unstable  

- diplomatically incoherent  

No major civilization wants that.

A West in total breakdown would create:

- financial contagion  

- military unpredictability  

- supply‑chain shocks  

- refugee flows  

- nuclear risk  

So exacerbating the West’s Time of Troubles to the point of collapse is not a rational goal.

2. But they do  benefit from a West that is distracted, a West that is:

- internally polarized  

- politically gridlocked  

- economically preoccupied  

- culturally fragmented  

- unable to form coherent long‑term strategy  

…is a West that cannot project unified power abroad.

This is the sweet spot:  not collapse, but distraction.

It’s the same logic great powers have used for centuries:

- Britain balancing continental Europe  

- France exploiting Habsburg–Ottoman tensions  

- The U.S. exploiting Sino‑Soviet rivalry  

- India hedging between blocs today  

Civilizations don’t need rivals to fall.  

They need rivals to be busy.

3. In Spengler/Toynbee terms, the West is in what Toynbee would call a Time of Troubles or what Spengler would call late‑civilizational turbulence. Other civilizations have two strategic options:

a.  Accelerate the turbulence—not to break the West, but to keep it inward‑focused.

b. Manage the turbulence to prevent spillover that could destabilize the global system.

In practice, they do both simultaneously:

- exploit Western division  

- avoid Western collapse  

This is the classic “controlled burn” approach.

4. In Carlota Perez terms, we’re in the turning point between installation and deployment of a new techno‑economic paradigm. During this phase:

- populism rises  

- institutions lose legitimacy  

- elites fracture  

- geopolitics becomes volatile  

Other civilizations don’t cause this cycle — it’s endogenous — but they can:

- ride it

- buffer against it

- take advantage of Western distraction

- avoid being pulled into Western crises

They are not trying to “break” the West.  

They are trying to navigate the West’s transition.

5. In Oglesby’s terms, the West’s internal elite factions (finance, tech, populist insurgency) are already in conflict. Other civilizations don’t need to exacerbate this.  They simply need to:

- understand it  

- avoid being trapped by it  

- exploit the openings it creates  

- hedge against its outcomes  

This is the same logic  with Israel’s pursuit of “autonomy” in Bolsen’s framing.

6. China and Russia do not want the West to collapse.  They want the West to be divided enough that it cannot impose its will,  but stable enough that it remains predictable.

They want:

- a West that is inward‑focused  

- a West that is less interventionist  

- a West that is less unified  

- a West that is less capable of shaping their internal affairs  

But they do not want:

- a failed West  

- a chaotic West  

- a financially collapsing West  

- a militarily unpredictable West  

Their strategy is best described as:

“Encourage fragmentation, avoid implosion.”

-Any large‑scale invasion of a major Western power risks nuclear escalation.

- Nuclear weapons exist precisely to make territorial conquest between great powers irrational.  

- The cost of miscalculation is civilizational, not just military.

So at the level of basic survival, invasion is a non‑starter.

2. The age of profitable conquest is over. In a pre‑industrial world, conquest could bring:

- land  

- resources  

- tax base  

- labor  

In a hyper‑financialized, networked world:

- value is in knowledge, infrastructure, capital flows, and trust, not just territory.  

- Destroying a rival’s economy or cities also destroys your own markets, supply chains, and financial stability.

You don’t “win” by wrecking the system you’re embedded in.

3. Influence is cheaper and safer than invasion. If you’re a major power today, you can:

- shape trade routes

- build infrastructure corridors  

- influence regional institutions  

- use energy, finance, and technology as levers  

- cultivate media, cultural, and diplomatic influence

All of that is:

- cheaper than war  

- less risky than war  

- more reversible than war  

- more compatible with long‑term stability  

Why invade when you can tilt the board without firing a shot?

4. A weakened, chaotic West is dangerous, not useful. 

- total Western collapse would mean financial contagion, nuclear risk, refugee flows, and global instability.  

- great powers want rivals constrained and distracted, not collapsed and feral.

An invasion would:

- unify the West overnight  

- justify massive rearmament  

- destroy any remaining diplomatic leverage  

- risk escalation beyond anyone’s control  

It would solve none of their strategic problems and create many new ones.

5. The real game is shaping the post‑Western order, not conquering the West. The long game for non‑Western civilizations is:

- build alternative institutions

- deepen South–South ties  

- secure resources and logistics corridors

- reduce dependence on Western finance and technology

- gain agenda‑setting power in global norms

You don’t need tanks in Paris or New York to do that.  

You need time, resilience, and a West that is too inward‑focused to stop the shift.

There is no meaningful strategic purpose served by a China or Russia “invading the West” in the classic sense. The rational objective is not conquest, but constraint:

- a West that is strong enough not to collapse,  

- but divided and self‑absorbed enough that it can no longer dictate terms to everyone else.

1. In dream logic, “invasion” is rarely about armies. In dreams, an invasion usually symbolizes:

- boundary crossing

- loss of control

- unwelcome influence

- a sense of being permeated or overwhelmed

It’s not about tanks.  It’s about porosity.

So if you apply dream logic to geopolitics, “invasion” becomes a metaphor for:

- cultural influence  

- economic leverage  

- information flows  

- narrative penetration  

- psychological presence  

This is the realm of soft power, not hard power.

2. Influence is the modern form of “entering someone else’s territory.” In a globally networked world, the real vectors of influence are:

- media  

- trade  

- supply chains  

- technology standards  

- diplomatic narratives  

- cultural exports  

- financial dependencies  

These are the ways one civilization “enters” another without crossing a border.

So in metaphorical or dream logic, influence is the new invasion.

But it’s not necessarily hostile.  It’s simply how civilizations interact in a porous world.

3. Civilizations don’t need to “invade” to shape each other. This is where these earlier frameworks converge:

Oglesby: Internal fractures create openings for external influence.

Perez: During the turning point, societies are especially permeable.

Toynbee: Civilizations respond to challenges by imitating or resisting each other.

Spengler: Late civilizations become culturally osmotic.

In all these models, influence is not an act of aggression.  It’s a structural inevitability.

4. What would “invasion” mean in this symbolic sense? It could mean:

- a foreign narrative gaining traction  

- a supply chain becoming indispensable  

- a technology standard becoming universal  

- a diplomatic posture shaping local debates  

- a cultural product becoming dominant  

- a financial dependency forming  

- a worldview seeping into the discourse  

- China shaming America to go green while America shames China about racism

None of these require intent.  

None require malice.  

None require armies.

They are simply the normal dynamics of a multipolar world.

5. If you use dream logic, “invasion” can  function as a metaphor for influence.

But that metaphor doesn’t imply hostility or sabotage.  

It simply captures the way civilizations interpenetrate each other through:

- culture  

- economics  

- technology  

- narratives  

- diplomacy  

In a world of deep interdependence, influence is the only kind of “invasion” that still exists.

In dream‑logic, “invasion” is not about force — it’s about entry.  When the unconscious uses the imagery of invasion, it’s rarely imagining tanks. It’s imagining:

- something crossing a boundary  

- something entering a space you thought was private  

- something foreign becoming familiar  

- something external shaping your inner landscape  

In that sense, influence — cultural, economic, technological, narrative — is the modern form of “crossing the border.”

It’s not hostile by default.  

It’s simply how porous civilizations become when they’re deeply interconnected.

A civilization “invades” another when:

- its films become the other’s films  

- its apps become the other’s infrastructure  

- its supply chains become the other’s lifelines  

- its narratives become the other’s vocabulary  

- its norms become the other’s assumptions  

This is not war.  It’s osmosis.

And osmosis is the dream‑logic cousin of invasion.

Dream logic reframes geopolitics as permeability. If you take the literal map away and look at the symbolic one, you get something like:

- Ports of entry → media, trade, technology  

- Territory → attention, imagination, dependency  

- Borders → cultural filters, institutional resilience  

- Armies → narratives, standards, platforms  

- Occupation → reliance, habituation, normalization  

It’s not about tanks rolling in.  

It’s about ideas, goods, and systems taking up residence.

In dream logic, “invasion” is not necessarily negative.  It can also mean:

- being influenced  

- being inspired  

- being transformed  

- being challenged  

- being expanded  

Civilizations “invade” each other all the time in this sense — and it’s often how they grow.

- global interdependence makes boundaries permeable  

- cultural flows move faster than political ones  

- technological standards shape behavior across borders  

- narratives migrate like weather systems  

Now back inside the U.S. and how Cultural Revolutions can get out of hand.

Silicon Valley is not an “offshoot” of the military‑industrial complex (MIC),  but it did grow out of the same soil, fed by the same irrigation system,  

and shaped by the same early climate. It’s a cousin, not a child. Aim it through the  civilizational and systems‑theory lens.

1. Silicon Valley’s origins: the “triple helix”. Historians of technology often describe the Valley’s birth as a three‑way braid:

- Cold War defense funding

- Stanford’s entrepreneurial engineering culture*

- Venture capital experimentation

The MIC was one strand — but not the whole braid.

What the MIC provided:

- early contracts  

- early customers  

- early problems to solve  

- early money  

- early legitimacy  

 What it didn’t provide:

- the countercultural ethos  

- the hacker ethic  

- the libertarian streak  

- the platform‑sovereignty impulse  

- the globalist, post‑national imagination  

Those came from elsewhere.

2. The Valley’s “rebellion” against its own parentage. By the 1970s–80s, Silicon Valley had developed a personality that was:

- anti‑bureaucratic  

- anti‑hierarchical  

- anti‑Pentagon‑style command structures  

- pro‑individual autonomy  

- pro‑disruption  

This is why the personal computer revolution was framed as a revolt against centralized power — including the MIC. So even though the Valley’s early funding came from defense, its cultural DNA diverged sharply.

3. The key distinction: MIC is hierarchical; platforms are networked. This is the real fork in the road.

 MIC logic:

- command  

- secrecy  

- hierarchy  

- national interest  

- territorial sovereignty  

 Tech‑platform logic:

- networks  

- openness (at least rhetorically)  

- scale  

- global reach  

- post‑territorial sovereignty  

These are fundamentally different visions of power.

This is why the Valley eventually produced a class of platform oligarchs who think in supranational terms — something the MIC never aimed for.

4. So what is Silicon Valley in the grand scheme? Not an offshoot of the MIC, but a mutation that emerged from the same ecosystem.

If you want a metaphor:

- The MIC is the rootstock.  

- Silicon Valley is the grafted branch that grew in an unexpected direction.  

- The platform oligarchs are the fruit — sweet, strange, and not at all what the original gardeners intended.

5. In the Oglesby‑Bolsen‑Perez framework this fits beautifully.

 Oglesby:

- MIC = part of the old Yankee/Cowboy industrial‑military bloc  

- Silicon Valley = a new frontier elite that escaped its parent faction

 Bolsen:

- MIC = embedded in the national‑security state  

- Tech platforms = aspiring supranational technostructure

 Perez:

- MIC = infrastructure of the previous techno‑economic paradigm  

- Silicon Valley = installation‑phase driver of the new paradigm

 Toynbee:

- MIC = dominant minority  

- Tech = creative minority (at least in its early phase)

6. Silicon Valley is not merely an offshoot of the MIC.  It is:

- born from the same environment  

- funded by the same early patrons  

- shaped by the same Cold War pressures  

- but ultimately divergent in culture, ambition, and worldview  

The platform oligarchs are not MIC barons.  They are the first elite of a new technological order, one that the MIC helped midwife but could never fully control.

These two elites now coexist — sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing, sometimes eyeing each other warily across the institutional landscape.

This set me on a search for an obscure paragraph that stuck with me for years. I was pretty shocked when I found the book it came from. First I dug up an old book about the evolution of art in Western Civilization and the psychological toll of creation. Miller's 𝘉𝘰𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘢 didn't tell me what I needed to know. Next was Ernest Becker, who provided the framework for such things as FDR's reluctance to reform capitalism completely. The New Deal could be considered a flawed work of art because it didn't go far enough. The artist lacked total commitment.

This turned into another triple helix, with me spiraling down three separate but thematically linked threads—Wandervogel → SS, the “artist manqué,” and the psychological arc that turns youthful idealism into authoritarian hardness. They connect, but they come from different sources. First, the kicker.

1. The Wandervogel boy who reappears in an SS uniform... This is a real passage. It comes from Hannah Arendt, in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘛𝘰𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘮. Right now this is everyone's favorite book. Arendt's newest fans are too selective in what that quote, however.

She recounts a woman’s story of meeting a young man in the Wandervogel (the German youth hiking/folk revival movement of the early 20th century), full of romantic idealism, nature‑worship, and anti‑bourgeois rebellion. Years later, she encounters him again—this time in the SS, transformed into a disciplined, ideologically hardened instrument of the regime.

Arendt uses the anecdote to illustrate how:

- Romantic anti‑bourgeois youth culture  → can mutate into authoritarian, hyper‑disciplined political identity when the surrounding society collapses. It’s one of her most haunting examples of how idealism without political maturity can be captured by totalitarian movements. This is the passage I was reaching for.

2. The “artist manqué”: This phrase is older and broader, but the specific usage I'm remembering is almost certainly from Ernest Becker. Becker uses “artist manqué” to describe a person who:

- has the inner structure of an artist  

- but lacks the courage, discipline, or opportunity to actualize it  

- and therefore becomes vulnerable to resentment, nihilism, or authoritarian seduction

For Becker, the artist is the one who creates symbolic worlds. The artist manqué is the one who cannot, and therefore becomes spiritually dangerous—to themselves or to others.

This is exactly the psychological category that explains Arendt’s anecdote: the Wandervogel youth who cannot sustain his romantic self becomes ripe for absorption into a totalizing system that gives him structure, meaning, and a uniform.

3. How these two threads connect in a civilizational pattern:

A. Youth movements of idealism and nature‑romance

(Wandervogel, bohemia, counterculture, protoculture)

B. A crisis of meaning or failure of symbolic self‑creation (Becker’s “artist manqué,” the collapse of personal myth)

C. A turn toward authoritarian or totalizing structures

(SS, fascist youth movements, ideological militancy)

D. The Boomer turn toward yuppy hyperconformity and corporatism, the Cyberian turn to the Dark Enlightenment

This is the same pattern Toynbee calls the “detachment of the creative minority” and the rise of the dominant minority, Spengler's creative exhaustion.

It’s also the same pattern Miller traces in 𝘉𝘰𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘢: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘕𝘰𝘸, though he doesn’t theorize the psychological collapse as explicitly as Becker.

I'm triangulating:

- Arendt → political metamorphosis  

- Becker → psychological failure of symbolic selfhood  

- Miller → cultural ecosystems where alternative meanings are attempted  

And the Wandervogel → SS anecdote is the perfect hinge.

4. The Wandervogel youth is a prototype of the failed initiate:

- He seeks transcendence in nature and fellowship  

- He cannot stabilize a symbolic identity  

- He is absorbed by a structure that offers certainty, hierarchy, and mythic belonging  

- He becomes a shadow version of the artist he once imagined himself to be

- Update to the fate of the Counterculture

- a figure who abandons the creative loom and submits to the iron mask.

The “artist manqué” is the psychological name for the same archetype. If I want to go further, I can compare Becker’s symbolic failure to Toynbee’s creative minority collapse - into Neoliberalism.