Within this tumultuous political storm, many boomer and gen X dwellers in the current corporate/state hierarchies are disillusioned and completely confused by the global events resulting in Trump and Brexit. I would simply describe the situation to them in terms of systems analysis, that it is a war between two paradigms, the legacy hub and spoke model versus the emerging peer to peer model. I suppose that this concept is too broad and generic for the typical citizen to grasp or take meaning of.
To the rescue is Jordan Greenhall’s excellent Deep Code blog on medium.com, which provides a rather informative meta-level assessment that can be understood. In sum, he describes our current global situation as follows:
1) This is a war of “collective intelligence” between the current narrative control structure of the Blue Church and the Red Insurgency.
2) The War is engaged on four fronts:
a) The communication infrastructure. Central broadcasting vs decentralized digital platforms, similar to a blue battleship versus a red swarm.
b) A deep state civil war. The FBI heads, CIA, State, and tech oligarchs against the NSA, Military Intelligence, and the FBI rank and file.
c) Globalism. The possible dismantling of the goals promoted by the UN and Davos; the fulfillment of the TPP, NAFTA, EU, and the Paris accords. It is unclear whether Populists or a different set of globalists are the actual counterbalancing force.
d) The new culture war. As can be observed from current events, this is a no-brainer. ”Pussy Hats, Falcon Punches, ANTIFA, neo-nazis, meme wars, #Resistance, campus struggle sessions”.
3) Notes that Ideologies outside of the Overton window are increasingly becoming immune to Blue Church attacks.( i.e. 4chan)
4) Recognizes that deconstructionism and postmodernism is a big part of the faith in the Blue Church.
5) The Blue Church is an obsolete structure and will most likely be destroyed. The repercussions of this will be an all-out engagement in the culture war.
6) From a tech culture perspective, a dialectic tension exists between Silicon Valley startup culture and the decentralized cryptocurrency revolutionaries. ( Or as Vin Armani says “crypto savages’).
7) Advises that the best way to navigate through these troubled waters is to build real meaningful relationships.
One contention I have with the analysis is the selection of red and blue in the color scheme. The color red implies in people's minds that the followers of Bill Kristol and John “the blood moon” Hagee are part of this insurgency, which is absurd. Having said that, Jeff’s concept of the blue church is similar to the cathedral concept provided by NRx’s Moldbug a decade ago. In addition, the idea of a deep state civil war is also similar to NRx’s concept of blue empire versus red empire.
I also disagree that the Red “Religion” is a coherent force. Multiple ideologies are involved from both the left and the right, with various degrees of overlap between each faction. Nitpicking aside, the series is well worth a read for people to make sense of our current political climate.
Links:
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2018-the-calm-before-the-storm-5a0bd014ec84