What I thought was a simple effort to polish the failed turd of Buckley Conservatism morphed into one of the most vile futures yet proposed for the Deep State Global Empire, Inc.
Arthur Herman: How to think like a Viking in the age of COVID
Failure only made the Vikings stronger and wiser
Pretty sure that was “sadder and wiser”. Once again, we couldn’t even get to the article before the facepalms began.
h ttps://www.foxnews.com/opinion/think-like-viking-age-covid-arthur-herman
By Arthur Herman, 4 August 2021
Who dis? Some pink-bottomed poli sci drone being given a tryout for controlled-opposition “influencer” of the 21st Century? *checks* Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute…. He’s a Jesuit-aligned, established academic.
The COVID pandemic has been the great tragedy of our time, not just for America but for the world. In America’s case, however, the pandemic’s wake has exposed a landscape overflowing with other toxins, from mindless lockdowns and defunding the police to Antifa, critical race theory, social media censorship, Big Lies, and fake news.
Americans are ready to hit the reset button. But how?
The Plandemic is not a tragedy, the tyranny of our rulers is not an environmental problem and I’ve never heard of lynching bioterrorists being called a reset button. I don’t believe he is speaking to Joe Normie.
We find ourselves in a chaotic and uncertain world from our city streets and schools to the Delta variant. The old rules no longer apply — the new rules have yet to be written. We navigate these dangerous and volatile seas at our own risk.
This is a Cuckservative speaking to his fellow Cucks about their existential threat: the ‘Murican Empire is failing!
It.s time to think like Vikings. Those formidable sea warriors from Scandinavia learned how to not only survive but thrive in the chaos of postmodern er, Dark Age Europe. They offer us some powerful lessons on how to navigate our post-COVID rapids, and how to renew the American experiment in a fast-moving high-tech age.
1. Learn to see chaos and disruption as opportunity. While Europe was dissolving into chaos after the death of the emperor Charlemagne in 814, the Vikings sought out their enemies. weaknesses and exploited them to the full.
Take a number and get in line, Herman. As in the days of Charlemagne, pirates, thieves and grifters are everywhere in modern life! I really don’t think there’s any room left for you at that table.
Their seaborne approach to warfare was entirely non-linear and seemingly random. This allowed them to take advantage of uncertainty in order to strike where they were least expected, with the force necessary to decide the issue.
In other words, the Vikings. shock and awe tactics relied on the volatility of the Dark Age ecosystem to generate opportunities: first to raid and plunder, eventually to trade and exchange goods with their former enemies.
Behold Magic Dirt! They set foot in the British Isles to loot the place and just like Jewish banksters, quickly become model citizens on their new land!
The relentless rollout of new technologies from AI and machine learning to quantum and nanotechnology, for example, offers myriad opportunities for today’s Viking-minded American entrepreneurs: but only if we give up thinking that stability is safety, or that uncertainty will be the exception not the rule.
All Progress Is Good Progress! You didn’t really want that quietly prosperous land of traditions and families! Embrace the New Normal of robbing the innocent in the dead of night!
2. Stop worrying about past mistakes and errors. It didn’t matter how many battles the Vikings lost, what mattered was winning the final one. Failure only made them stronger and wiser.
You can see how I first thought this was an effort to whitewash Buckley Conservatism.
The Norse sagas are filled with characters who make bad choices such as choosing the wrong spouse…
I was unable to verify if Herman is divorced.
…or antagonizing the wrong king or fighting on the losing side…Human beings are made to fail, and to learn from their mistakes. The secret is keeping the mistakes small and reversible; then opportunities to renew our fortunes present themselves as the tempting booty for the future.
“Present themselves as the tempting booty for the future”? Conservatism’s century-long unbroken losing streak was a disturbingly appropriate context for that sentiment.
3. Keep it small and agile: be “the tip of the spear.”
The disturbingly homoerotic images of conquest continue.
Probably no military in history had a shorter logistical chain; a longship with 20 or 40 warriors on board was all it took for a Danish or Norwegian or Swedish chieftain to “go Viking.”
That was piracy, not military.
The first significant Viking raid on the English coast at Portland in 783 consisted of only three ships. But because the Norsemen were non-linear in their planning and operations; and because they were free to appear suddenly wherever they pleased and where their opponents never imagined they could strike (like deep upriver from the sea) until it was too late; the Vikings were able to turn their relatively small numbers into a powerful advantage.
Sure, Goober. All you have to do is find an undefended New World ripe for the picking, and then you’ll be SMART and leave as many allies behind as possible.
Wait a minute, is… is Herman advocating for American foreign policy to LITERALLY practice piracy upon the world? Medical-lockdown everybody then raid the newly-isolated communities? Gather a trusted few of your Deep State cronies and loot some unsuspecting backwater of its last drop of wealth using insider information?
Say it ain’t so.
The same will be true in post-COVID America. We’ve learned “too big to fail” is the formula for catastrophic failure. The key to success is staying lean but scalable, so that a series of agile wins can open new opportunities and horizons.
“Too big to fail” means the ‘Murican Empire. The world has learned to hate us and as they adopted our telecommunications, we Normie Americans began to realize that the reason we couldn’t see that our government is a global rapist is because it kept two sets of books. The Deep State used our tax money to spy upon the world’s secrets, used our military as a private security force for top bidders, financial strip-miners and the all-important petrodollar and then kept all its plunder in offshore banking accounts.
USA never felt like an empire, not on the inside. We were neither its targets nor its beneficiaries. Foreign headlines just kinda happened. Then the Internet gave us unfiltered foreign perspectives and guess what, half the world’s problems… from expansionist China to ISIS to Afghan opium… are the direct, intended results of our own government meddling where it should not have ever been.
Herman wants Con-servatism to shift gears from imperialism to plain old smash & grabs. Like a Viking!
4. Build the team you can rely on and reward them accordingly. Viking raids were “friends and family” affairs, in which the chieftain loaded his long ships with kith and kin whose loyalty was unquestioned while both men and women shared the risks but also shared the plunder (recent DNA evidence shows that Viking women sometimes even led expeditions).
That.s why Vikings were willing to sail to the unknown corners of the earth including America: they were surrounded by people they knew they could count on.
If nobody but your family wants to work with you then maybe that’s because you murder your neighbors. Like a Viking!
Whether it’s founding a business, a restaurant, a church, or an advocacy group fighting CRT…
…or plundering natural resources via bribes to the local warlord, or drone-striking Iran because Israel said frog…
…find your own loyal and trustworthy team, people with whom you.d be ready to row across the Atlantic.and who understand there’s no real success unless everyone shares in the rewards.
So says the pirate code from the Golden Age of Sailing.
5. Leadership belongs to the strong. In the Viking world strong meant those who were proven in battle. Credentials and inherited status counted for little; big promises even less.
Loyalty devolved on those who were able to deliver tangible success whether it was on the battlefield, in trade deals with Greeks or Arabs or Frenchmen, or later replacing the discredited pagan gods of old with the new creed of Christianity.
Herman promises his loyalty to whoever will share their worldly success with him… together with an implicit offer of changing his religion in order to back the strong horse. Ah, loyalty, that greatest of virtues best found in others!
Leadership in our post-COVID world will likewise gravitate to those strong enough to point America in new directions, with proven results. Whether it’s politics or business or renewing our schools and our culture, the Vikings can put us on the right path to making America strong again, and ready for the next great venture into the unknown.
Couldn’t agree more. How disingenuous to hold that the Vikings were mere exploiters of chaos rather than major instigators of it!
Why is chaos so often taken to be a positive thing, a source of creation and progress?
I think it’s due to the conflation of those periods of adjustment which follow beneficial discoveries such as a *better* plough or a *better* sword with the chaos caused by evil actors deliberately stirring the pot and creating division for their own ends.
It’s *de rigueur* nowadays for historians to look sympathetically on primitive societies and the brutal empires of the past. Partly I suppose because such an attitude is necessary in order to study them honestly, for example:
Yet correspondingly there’s a tendency to frown upon well-ordered societies, regarding them as stagnant and conservative, e.g. the ancient Egyptians.
I’d be surprised, however, if the relative stasis of Egypt wasn’t due to the targeting of its priesthood or religion by evil itself.
(Which is cause for comfort, since, whatever form of Christianity emerges from the current chaos, it surely will *not* have a targetable priesthood or central control.)
So murderers, rapists and thieves are now our heros, providing inspiration for our plans for our communities and nations?
Where do I get off this ride? I think I am too idealistic and do not belong. Hey, can I get a religious exemption?
“Why is chaos so often taken to be a positive thing, a source of creation and progress?”
An excellent point. The way lockdown rules change so frequently and inconsistently, it’s clear that our would-be rulers value chaos for its own sake. Or as Herman put it, for the opportunities that chaos creates.
If you want an example to follow, read Hume’s epilogue on King Alfred in his History of England, who dealt with the “Viking” threat in England as a young adult. He was a man of unrivaled valor, courage, wisdom and kindness. Vikings… yeah, rapists, thieves and pillagers. They were swarm of locusts who depopulated regions, and when they had eaten all the food of the murdered moved on to the next region.