Tonic Discussions Episode V

A most thoughtful and anxiety-reducing discussion on the possibility of WWIII

During my recent crucible I didn’t have the bandwidth to follow a conversation like this. Less busy now, coming to it a bit late, I listened to this while I weeded garden beds. It is the most thoughtful discussion I have heard on the topic of WWIII: from the Tonic Seven at Deimos Station. It is obviously not a light topic, but anxiety breeds in a lack of information, and in the onslaught of fear porn, while these guys talk about it like the listener is intelligent enough to make his or her own determinations. There is even an optimistic tone throughout, that hubris is doomed, and so are our elite, in their over-weaning opinion of their epic genius.

It seems an appropriate topic, with Independence Day approaching.

Each of the crew had substantive things to say on the topic. John Carter had a lot to say about the raw will to power and the desire to rule the world, and how that relates to geopolitics currently. Grant Smith, Army Major, speaks clearly about the hubris of military leadership and of our elite generally, and how the elite of all nations today do not control the spiritual domain. Harrison Koehli spoke about the psychology of elite, and how important it is to have asabiya, or the spiritual unity of a people, if you hope to win a war, and how the lack of it can destroy a country. Daniel D spoke with clarity about woke madness in corporations and the military. L.P. Koch spoke from a European perspective about the stupidity of Western elite and their spiritual bankruptcy. Mark Bisone has insight on weapons and magic. That last bit is what interested me most, war and how it relates to magic. That, and the fact that America has no asabiya/spiritual unity to wage a world war, the lack of it more likely to destroy America.

Are Western elite evil, or just incredibly ambitious and equally dumb, or are they evil, wickedly so, do they really want to destroy America in order to rule the global technocratic state? Are they assembling a multicultural trans military less to fight China and Russia than to be turned inward, to keep we Americans from deposing them, to enforce their digital tyranny? Are the “magicians” at DARPA about to unleash hybrid, beyond 5th generation warfare, opening up their pandora’s box of bioweapons and drone/autonomous swarms of death dealing, because they gave all our conventional weapons to Ukraine and the Taliban (and our carrier fleet is obsolete and our main fighter jet is a 150 million dollar paperweight?) Are we already in WWIII and losing? Is there really no appetite among the masses anywhere in the world, to die for the idiots running the world? Are the elite of America so insane they are about to blunder by way of assuming they are invincible, into the collapse of the American empire?

I think our elite are so insane, they will blunder into a war no one will win, but it very well could destroy modernity as we have known it. But the elite cannot do that alone, they are in fact aided by the left in America, who from a spiritual perspective are very much in a destructive mood, ready to destroy America, it’s traditions, the law going back to the beginning of the West, and the Constitution, that they might rule society making up reality as they go, whatever they are feeling in the moment.

It goes deeper than that. Democrats and the left generally have come to see the whole world and just about everything in it as a threat. They seem ready to fight the whole world to make the entire world into the image of themselves. Also, white liberals in particular feel so much guilt, about racism, bigotry, misogyny and white supremacy, they think nothing but the total destruction of the existing order and throwing the whole history of the west into the proverbial dustbin, will assuage that guilt. No shortage of BIPOC/LGBTQI+ folk are ready to accommodate, not wanting equality, but equity, which is to say, they get the indignant satisfaction of tearing society down, without much in the way of spoils for anybody including them, but thrusting everybody into a greater poverty.

I have been warning liberals since 2015, your incessant obsession with Putin and Russia threatens WWIII, a war no one will win. You are unwitting stooges of the neo-cons. The neo-liberals have you bamboozled, Russia is the crown jewel in regime change ideology. You might imagine how that has gone over - Putin stooge. Ukraine, they have salivated over thee cause, so very bloodthirsty, they will be with you unto the very destruction of your nation and people, in the hallowed name of democracy. Their antidepressants are not enough, they are assuaging their various neuroses and depressions with the narrative righteousness of the battle of the eternal, purest good against Putin-Trump-MAGA.

Mark Bisone talked about something John Carter said, iron rules gold. Mark disagreed slightly, pointing out that if one has a lot of gold and someone else has a sword, soon one will have a lot of gold and the sword. But magic rules gold, he says, and by that he means something like dark magic, and by that he means the nuclear weapon in a previous period, now AI, drones, bioweapons etc. The problem, Mark says, is that the magicians are all “totally batshit insane.” He thinks WWIII will not be an extension of the first two world wars but something wholly different, “an extreme example of asymmetric warfare.” But the Magicians he says, never rule iron long. Iron overcomes magic eventually.

I would rather say, the dark magicians never rule magic long. You don’t fight dark magic with iron, you fight it with the magic of light. He alludes to that with the hope of a “transnational spiritual movement,” against Davos Man, GloboHomo.

Dion Fortune wrote a book about that, The Magical Battle of Britain, about Nazi air raids over Great Britain. She organized a national magical work, rituals to combat the Nazi’s. But the rituals were not about harming Nazi’s or the Nazi cause, but about empowering the British people to withstand the Nazi onslaught and fight back.

Magic is about more than building weapons. In the beginning was the Word; the Narrative is a magical working, the narrative of the elite about the world, aka imperial propaganda, backstopped by major media, big tech and institutions of every kind public and private. The elite control the narrative, it is dark magic it is so founded in coercion and manipulation; building an alternative narrative, more honest and reflective of reality, would be like the magic of light.

That is what the tonic seven are up to (Doc Hammer was not available for this one), building a new narrative, giving voice to an alternative and more honest view of reality. They are all magicians of a kind, if not necessarily conscious about it - writing and verbalizing creatively is a magical act, a thing to change consciousness, they are all excellent writers and podcasters, working a kind of magic to embolden and empower their readers and listeners.

In light of Independence Day, wouldn’t it be nice if we Americans left and right could come together and build a spiritual narrative to depose our pathological elite, before they destroy the country and perhaps the world with their incessant war making?

I am feeling a good bit less anxiety about World War, after listening to this podcast. I am inspired to help in the making of a more honest narrative. Many thanks.