Jeff Steele

Die große Politik ist angekommen.

@EKaretny @marzhanel @big_simp Ok, @EKaretny, this is quite the rabbit hole I’m about to follow you down. I started with the tweet below this morning, then found your new Thiel essay, which I’m about to read. Time for another cup of coffee. ☕️

I think some know but are forced to keep quiet about these things. I can tell you that among academics, any mention of NHI will trigger public snickering. In private, the reactions are very different. Smart people wear masks when talking about these things. Their writing is masked all-the-more. Thus, the esoteric traditions.

Thanks to the team at Frontiers of American Reaction for publishing my article on how Peter Thiel's idea about the Antichrist and a potential alien threat impact US foreign policy. illiberalism.org/against-world-…

The Chinese habit of sending tweets with an empty podium always look so funny to me.

@alexpriou you are being summoned.

Yes! GO GO GO!

The habit of asking fearless questions, with confidence that one can learn something by asking them, should not be underestimated. That habit and the zeal for it are simply the basic structure of the life of the mind, ANY life of the mind. 13/x

@JoePaulGians @threadreaderapp unroll

In this time of great change, confusion, and conflict, I want to share what tools I have come upon which afford me clarity and ability to engage with the world successfully. I will likely miss many things, so this is not to be taken as a definitive or exhaustive case, and I would welcome criticisms and challenges. (Especially as my mode of thinking and expressing those thoughts runs into practical limitations in this medium, further exacerbated by the needs of real life, so this is also an ‘isolation exercise’ for me as well.) These tools are born out of my experience in engineering and the military, as well as elsewhere in my life, becoming a broad system of correlating and interpreting data principles of varying complexity and across disciplines and domains. It is as much a memory palace as it is a predictive and inductive system. A linear sequence of events and a Gordion knot of intertwined complexities. Its advantage is in its power to handle very complex sums of data, but this is also its weakness. I have far fewer GPUs running in my skull, and far more children running amok (both my actual and work ‘children’), which makes this broader model unwieldly in some situations. But as I have found that repeated use strengthens and quickens the mind, I’m hoping that this exercise will further this as well. So, to the problem statement which the model answers: If man is to find his way in the world, he must know where he stands in relation to his environment if he is to plot a course from his current point to some destination. All men do this in every intelligent act, though it may not be obvious due to the unconscious systems and models we have in our minds and bodies, and in many cases the various models we each use have been tailored to our particular life needs and desires. This basic process holds for all exercises, whether terrestrial navigation or philosophical musings: we filter out much of the ambient data around us through simplifying heuristics to enable rapid reactions to stimuli. The potency or efficacy (thus the value) of such a system of modeling problems and resolving answers, naturally varies in direct correlation to how accurate that model reflects actual reality about us, and the results thereof. The myriad models we use in different spheres, however effective they may be at large, are showing their limitations in the current day. In most cases, it seems we view the world through either a bell-curve or a bi-modal distribution, which provides a fairly accurate ‘2-D’ representation of things about us, but when the variables we use to describe the world about us become innumerable and increasingly complex, this two dimensional system breaks down. This is no clearer than in the current environment where talk of “5GW” and “Information Warfare” abound. The current ‘2-D’ model of “Operational” (or physical) and “Information” (or non-physical) is one such model that, while fairly robust, overly simplifies key non-physical variables and how they interact with the physical. It is robust primarily because of its efficacy in capturing almost all variables in life for most ‘problem sets’, but as life becomes more and more complex, the tools we use generate ‘higher order’ signals that do not well conform to the simple “2-D” framework. It is my thesis that, where possible, a third dimension is required to allow the proper correlation between different fields, and to maintain the integrity of the variables at play. This will also facilitate the conceptual movement within the broader space, as this additional dimension allows us to clearly see great movement along one plane or another, while from another vantage point we see a single collapsed point. That third proposed dimension would be best described as “spiritual”, representing those phenomena that are not specifically tied to the ‘mechanical’ operation of the mind (however interrelated) or body. Therefore, the 2-D format of “Operational/Information” or “Physical / Non-Physical” becomes more akin to the “Mind-Body-Spirit” conceptual breakdown. I do not believe one has to hold to a particular faith to recognize that spiritual phenomena are real and have characteristics separate from simple biochemical or mental effects (however related). One can not believe in Christianity, say, but it is impossible to say that Christianity does not exist and operates as much as an independent organism or phenomenon as do the individual adherents (so too, Islam and other faiths). As I am most familiar with the current theories and concepts on this subject from within the US, I will start from those terms and try to work this thesis outwards to account for other concepts and views such that the model I posit is both sufficiently detailed to actually be able to provide utility, but also flexible enough to avoid overspecialization. 1/x

@RichardHanania Why is Trita Parsi even tweeting about this?

Levels of horseshoe theory confirmation that shouldn’t be possible.

Brings to mind this essay which differentiates the 2nd century version from the modern. It argues that the modern version, as interpreted by Voegelin and Hans Jonas, produces two seemingly opposite but actually related responses to reality. Jonas highlights the “hermit” posture, withdrawal from a world seen as meaningless or hostile, while Voegelin emphasizes the “revolutionary” impulse to remake the world into a perfected order. Both, however, stem from the same rejection of reality as it is, revealing a deeper modern loss of faith in the cosmos’s inherent meaning. southey.com/writing/revolu…

@millerman I like Voegelin. Not a huge fan of the word Gnostic, which is untethered to the historic, 2nd century meaning of the term.

In The New Science of Politics (1952), Eric Voegelin identified six criteria that characterize gnostic political movements from Marxism to National Socialism. This diagnostic measures the degree to which your thinking follows that pattern. voegelin.millermanschool.com

It’s finally here — the world’s most advanced, realtime China intelligence dashboard. A side project 2 years in the making. I’m calling it “Digital Embassy.” Now it’s yours, for free. Here’s how it works: 🧵 1/10 digitalembassy.net

The “CIA did it” myth just won’t die. Reality: Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah, not elected by the people. His government collapsed amid authoritarian moves, economic crisis & domestic opposition. CIA helped finish it; didn’t create the failure. History isn’t a comic book.👇🏻

@johnmilbank3 Cusan learned ignorance > Kantian limits of knowledge.

‘it is no more absurd to say that God creates himself and all other things than [it is to say that] God sees himself and all other things.’ (Nicholas of Cusa) In the lineage of Plotinus, Victorinus, Eriugena and Eckhart (but not Augustine), Cusanus affirms God as causa sui.

@LisaDNews “Unanimous”

BREAKING. The Senate just passed funding for most of DHS for the rest of the fiscal year. The bill funds all but ICE and *Border Patrol* This was by unanimous voice vote. It now goes to the House, which is still in town and can vote later today. The bill contains no reforms. It comes after POTUS pledged to fund TSA, removing a key pressure point.

The comments calling me a traitor for revealing Army deployment secrets are absurd. You cannot load dozens of massive US Merchant Marine cargo ships and still maintain OPSEC. It is impossible. That is exactly why, from WW2 until 2025, the US Army relied on preloaded ships packed with tanks, munitions, and heavy equipment, prepositioned around the world and ready to go. Ships fully manned, loaded and ready to slip anchor and disappear in the night. I don’t think anyone deserves to hang but… General Randy A. George, US Army Chief of Staff, was the man who signed off on cancelling those prepo ship contracts last year. So if you want to arrest someone for treason, start here 👇👇👇

On April 7, at the Harvard Kennedy School, Michael Anton, Former Director of the State Department's Office of Policy Planning, will join former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan for a debate on American foreign policy. Learn more here hks.harvard.edu/events/foreign…

Many of our modern political ills can be improved by more Tocqueville

@Fingolfin200 @Old_But_Gold50s Perfect Symphony is the name of the song.

@Old_But_Gold50s What symphony? There are two singers and an orchestra. No symphony.

Matteo Bocelli and father Andrea Bocelli singing together! 🥰🎙️ PERFECT SYMPHONY 🎵🎶💞👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨🎶🎵

Thank god for nuclear weapons. Ofc they don't make war impossible. They don't eliminate proxy conflicts, cyberattacks, economic coercion, gray-zone campaigns, or dangerous accidents/escalation ladders in a Taiwan crisis or South China Sea incident. But they do make unlimited, direct, existential great-power war between the two superpowers the least rational outcome imaginable.

Prisoners' dilemma predicts war. Thucydides' trap predicts war. All human history predicts war. So, how does it really end?

For the first time in human history, the world is dominated by two powers in true deadlock. Neither can defeat the other. Neither can exist without the other. Neither can afford to fall to second place. You blink, you lose.

Deneen's early peak oil phase (2007–2010 blog posts) presaged his postliberal turn by diagnosing liberalism's core flaw: its denial of limits (anthropological individualism, faith in endless progress/growth) depletes moral, cultural, and ecological foundations, thriving only on temporary abundance (fossil fuels then; later abstracted to broader depletion). This set up the unsustainability critique central to “Why Liberalism Failed” (2018), initially with a regretful, localist focus on bottom-up moral renewal. Mark Lilla, in his June 2024 NYRB essay on the postliberals "The Tower and the Sewer", describes Deneen’s evolution to “Regime Change” (2023) as a sharp shift: from mournful diagnosis to more radical, revolutionary tone, explicitly calling to "overthrow the liberal ideology of progress" via "aristopopulism," with elite "class traitors" guiding the demos through Machiavellian means for Aristotelian ends. Lilla attributes this radicalization to Vermeule's 2018 review ("Integration from Within," American Affairs), which praised the book but critiqued its quietism/localism and urged aggressive institutional capture to defeat liberalism outright, pushing Deneen toward top-down power assertion over patient percolation. archive.ph/Nkq0I

@Jeff__Steele Thanks! Good find.

🧵When did the Postliberals start using the word "postliberalism" to refer to themselves?🧵 Turns out it was surprisingly recent.

The first usage by Deneen I’m aware of is an influential 2012 First Things essay where he says: “Thus the liberal experiment contradicts itself, and a liberal society will inevitably become “postliberal.” The postliberal condition can retain many aspects that are regarded as liberalism’s triumphs…” firstthings.com/unsustainable-…

Patrick Deneen was the next adopter. He picked up the term no later than October 2014 in a lecture that he reprinted a few months later as a blog post. abc.net.au/religion/after…