Political Realism

Against cynicism and idealism

There are two ways you can evaluate a political policy: whether it ‘ought’ to be that way, or whether it ‘can’ be that way. It would be nice to construct a White ethnostate in America or Europe. However, the amount of coordination necessary to achieve this state of affairs does not exist. Therefore, it is a bad idea to advocate for ethnostates in the first place, as it will not result in meaningful change beyond the reduction of your reputation.

Many prominent White Nationalists have abandoned the project explicitly or implicitly by no longer associating themselves with the movement. In the case of Richard Hanania, he explicitly states that he began to support liberalism because its enemies have failed:

I’ve come to firmly believe in classical liberalism, due to a process of elimination as much as anything else. Since I’ve started paying attention to politics, we’ve seen Iraq, the financial crisis, the rise and fall of ISIS, the continuing growth of China, the increasing relevance of social media, the Great Awokening, the Trump movement, covid-19, and now the Ukraine War. Having gone through all that turmoil, America’s economy remains strong, and for all our problems, each of the potential alternatives from Chinese technocracy to Islamist theocracy to Putinism has to be considered an utter failure. The Year of Fukuyama, or as everyone else calls it, 2022, only confirmed the direction I was already leaning in.

It’s worth mentioning that there are reasons beyond cynicism to abandon White Nationalism - eugenics through embryo selection exists as a more realistic alternative to what it accomplishes. Not only can it generate greater returns than an ethnostate, but it also requires very little political coordination - only the bare minimum to keep the process legal.

Regardless, there is a mucb better political strategy than cynicism: that your political views on policy should not be constrained by the amount of political coordination which is available at the moment. Instead, they should be contrained by a realistically attainable amount of political coordination, which is a dictatorship that lasts for 5 years.

Cynics ignore that support for political policies generates a lot of political coordination. In fact, voicing support and opposition for political policies is one of the greatest topics of conversation in political spheres. So much that even low effort signals of political policy support are given attention.

Cynicism is also very self-defeating. If nobody was willing to consider political policies that do not exist at the moment, then political policies would never change. However, it can be plainly observed that political policy changes, so abandoning cynicism must work in some cases.

The notion of what ‘is’ and ‘ought’ can also get very murky concerning various political issues. For instance, I support the taxation of the wealthy, but only if this money is used for useful political policies. Unfortunately, the government of the United States currently spends 1/6 of its budget on a pyramid scheme; another 1/5th on healthcare, which is way too much; about 1/8th on defense in a country which is surrounded by two allies and two oceans; and 1/10th on education, which is a scam.

There are policies that could overcome this lack of efficiency in government spending, such as UBI. Unfortunately, Western governments are not even willing to try it.

A word of advice though - you don’t have to share all of your political views! So if you are secretly a supporter criminalizing homosexuality, I would strongly recommend not attaching that opinion to your face and name. And even if you aren’t doing so, AI may improve to the point of being able to connect the writing of an anonymous individual with their identity, so it might not even be a good idea then. The only actionable alternative is Straussianism, which is to write in a way that is concealing your true beliefs from your enemies, while revealing them to your friends.