Patriots of the Second Dawn

Infinite Players in a Finite Game

I could tell you I’ve had some trouble coming up with time to write in recent weeks, but that wouldn’t be entirely true.

More so, I’ve had some trouble distilling my thoughts into something I feel will be most useful for my own mind to parse, which tend to be the most useful topics for you folks to engage in alongside the ghost of my original intent.

I learned during my off-and-on fighting career and my similar publishing career that, when in doubt, and when facing psychological resistance, no matter how alternatively mundane or existential, the best way to break through the stillness that precedes a fight was to take the first punch, and the best way to write something was to pull up a chair, crack the knuckles and just do the damn thing.

Which brings us to a piece I’ve been thinking about for some time, in one form or another, and one that will likely spin out into future pieces that weave back in and out of this one. After all, as long as you folks have the interest in reading the turnings of this Bicameral Mind, I’ll keep stretching it, and attempting to craft useful Cognitive Cyphers through which to parse the ongoing Information War—the War of Stories, as I often describe it.

On a recent episode of Story Hour, where

Chris Paul

and I discuss new movies each week through the context of the Cultural, Informational, Temporal and Psychological conflict between the forces of Globalism and Sovereignty, we focused our conversation on one of the most direct allusions to the modern conflict we could by revisiting Mel Gibson’s The Patriot.

For somewhat obvious reasons, this is likely one of the favored American films of the Truth Community and those who count themselves among the MAGA movement and America First ideology, and for good reason; it’s well-made, well-acted and—as evidenced by contributor

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry

in recent writings I’ve had the privilege of editing for Badlands Media—significantly more accurate to a telling of the American Revolution than modern, gate-keeping and establishment-serving historians might have gaslit you into believing in the intervening years since its debut.

There’s a LOT to take out of The Patriot, and not all of it has to do with the clear similarities between the Irregular Warfare tactics employed by the first American patriots that are being aped—consciously or otherwise—by the current generation, and by all of us, albeit with a less kinetic, less traumatic and more psychological bent. More so than its portrayal of the conflict between the sovereign American colonies and the British crown itself, what stood out to me most in a rewatch and pondering of the film was its portrayal of the core philosophical differences between its title tyrant—British General Charles Cornwallis—and its titular patriot—South Carolina’s ‘Ghost,’ Benjamin Martin, largely based on an amalgamation of real American patriots who lived during that era, including ‘The Swamp Fox,’ Francis Marion.

It’s easy to wax poetic about the American revolution and to come away from the myth-making and reinforcing of that time period with a modern reduction that boils the one side—that of our forebears—down to freedom and the other to tyranny, and far be it from me to disabuse any of the notion that that is entirely accurate. I believe it is, and I believe many of us have realized just how accurate a description of the conflict between sovereignty and collectivism that binary remains.

That said, some of the most impactful scenes in the film reflect the most impactful—and enduring—legacies of the real war that inspired it, one that both myself and Chris Paul believe did not so much end as transform, as the subversive, would-be controllers simply retreated from the public battlefield for a time and chose to sow their seeds in secret, so that they might regather their strength and reforge the cunning that makes it up.

All the while, patriots have grown weaker of both spirit and cognitive constitution alongside that subversive might, and I do not except myself or my generation, nor those that preceded it from that generalization, excuses be damned. And yet, much like the patriots of that day, we do find ourselves at a crossroads in history, one that will define the tenor and complexion of the next era not just of this nation, but of the world.

As Queen Galadriel informs Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring, we are now balanced upon the knife’s edge of a generational war between the forces of good and evil. Stray but a little, and that quest will fail, to the ruin of all.

As always, we discuss and seek answers to the small questions at Burning Bright, right?

Alas, while that dramatic and even traumatic characterization may seem daunting to some, these days, I feel a great swelling in my breast and in my heart to think on it, to ruminate and to reflect, just as I imagine the patriots on the eve and in the midst of a revolution they didn’t even have a name for did at the time.

As I wrote some months ago, borrowing another line from The Lord of the Rings, these men realized the core truth that still many among our own movement do not, and that is that open war is upon us, whether we would risk it or not.

The great mercy we have at this stage of history and in the complexion and manner of modern war—for better and worse—is that, while the Founding Fathers and their families saw the fighting in its literal, bloody, gun-powdered form greet their own fields and scorch the timbers of their own homes, scar the bodies of their wives and mar the psyches of their children, our generation of the Republic—of humanity—has seen its very psyche terrorized through quiet, subversive means, rendering us alternatively frozen in the grips of fear and spinning in the chaos of engineered reaction. We have been puppeteered on marionette strings, dancing to a tune we cannot hear and guided along by wills we cannot see.

Or could not, until now.

This piece isn’t meant to be doom-tinged or black-pilled, nor even hopeful, but rather resolute, as befits the key teaching of The Patriot to me, and of the Founding Fathers, which does not concern the nature of the enemy—we have Donald Trump and his patriots to thank for that education, as well as a certain letter of the alphabet I thanked in my most-read feature to date to kick off another pivotal year in the war—but rather the means through which we might rise up and defeat them without visiting fire in our fields and blood on our porches this time around.

We have been given the gift of foresight in this era not so that we might strike where the enemy least expects it, nor rally our fellow man to reductive, simplistic and ultimately destructive calls to arms and action we often see by more sensational figures describing themselves as modern-day patriots, but so that we might render the enemy as paralyzed, fearful and ultimately, inert as they once rendered us.

While I believe the prime strategy employed by modern-day patriots during what some call a mostly peaceful, psychological version of a Second American Revolution is akin to a Reverse Hegelian Dialectic I’ve written about extensively in this publication, Benjamin Martin’s character has an equally-interesting and strangely congruent solution to the problem the System of Systems presented to that generation of would-be heroes.

And make no mistake, that IS the enemy we face today, which is just a different persuasion of the same enemy our forebears fought 250 years ago. The System. And all its permutations.

But it is worth ruminating on what makes the System up. More so than the leverage we often discuss, the financial burdens thrust upon the plebs and the exploitation of their opposite by the so-called ‘elites,’ and the cultural, political and legal theaters of Fifth-Generation Warfare this community has been educated—has educated ourselves—regarding in a crash course that would put any Prussian education module to shame in its breadth and scope, it is the rules-based approach to the formation and continuance of that System that Benjamin Martin recognizes in the film, and that he communicates clearly to his would-be superior in General Cornwallis, that stands as both that System’s greatest strength and weakness.

In the end, the System of Systems operates on a game board of its own making, but what this betrays—and what Martin and the Founding Fathers and American patriots that inspired the character recognized clearly—was that the key strength of the Prussian player on the game board was the existence of the board in the first place, as the presence of a board implies the presence of a game. And the presence of a game carries with it the supposition—the assumption—of rules.

This is the Rules-Based order myself and Chris Paul often discuss in our writings and public commentary, and while we have different flavors of dressing the topic in, at its core rests a fundamental recognition that to operate from the enemy’s framing—to play by the enemy’s rules—is to concede the advantage to that enemy from the outset.

One of the core, foundational tenets of an understanding of the concept of Game Theory is the recognition that there are only two types of players, and that each is defined by temporal elements: the Finite Player has a Finite number of moves on the game board, while the Infinite Player has set the board in such a way that, relative to his opponent, he has an Infinite number of moves.

While this may seem like the magic of incorporeal thought experiment on the surface, when passed through the lens of the Deep State’s System of Systems and applied to much of our shared history, we can see how accurate and diabolical Game Theory is when the Infinite Player controls the game board.

You see, by setting the rules of the game in the first place, the Infinite Player is free to move about with initiative, and he who moves with initiative is doing so while exercising free will, thereby trapping the unwitting Finite Player into a series of reactions. This traps the Finite Player in a paradigm of examination and ‘following’ from which there is no true escape, so long as the Infinite Player controls the rules of the game, and understands the lay of the board by having access to more information—in this context, more resources—than the Finite Player even knows is in play.

In many of the modern Forever Wars the Deep State has thrust upon an unsuspecting, lazy and reactive (Finite) populace over the decades, they have done so not by backing one side or the other as is a common—and needlessly simplistic—view of the history of war, but rather by backing the war itself. In this respect, the rules of the Great Game the subversive, elusive enemy has played from the advent of World War 1 and the ensuing century of unbridled—and highly profitable, for some—century of chaos relies simply on the continuance of the game in the first place, rather than a set ‘winner’ being declared based on hard-set conditions from the outset.

These conditions were and are laid out by the controllers to the unsuspecting and reactive populace in the form of a story—in the form of core, foundational truths, and when these truths are inevitably revealed to be little more than base lies—from Vietnam to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq not so long after—the story (the Game Board and its rules,) have already been changed and adapted to suit the new paradigm, the new rules the System has implemented to keep the game in perpetual motion, and the Finite Player in the damnation of perpetual reaction.

During the American Revolution, the British Empire believed it was the Infinite Player on the game board not only because it controlled the very literal majority of the resources deployed in the war, from the soldiers themselves to the weapons and equipment they carried, but more so because it had played a defining role in drafting and then codifying the very rules of then-modern war it thrust upon the rebellious colonies who would dare to challenge it at the game its progenitors created in the first place.

This is a central truth—an advantage—Cornwallis understands and articulates in both his fictional portrayals and the real-life writings he left behind while on campaign, and it is a central truth Benjamin Martin, and the patriots that inspired him, also understand, thereby stripping Cornwallis and the empire behind him of the sole advantage they once possessed on the Game Theory Game Board.

A perfect encapsulation of this epiphany—played as somewhat obvious and face-value for Martin in the film—occurs when Martin and Cornwallis meet at the latter’s command fort in order to negotiate the release of Martin’s American compatriots in exchange for personal considerations and affects for Cornwallis. What Cornwallis does not understand, and what puts him on the backfoot in his ‘negotiations’ with Martin is the assumption he makes that the two are engaging within the same context—within the same ‘rules’ as one another.

This assumption is met not with derision or scorn by Martin when Cornwallis reveals it, but rather amusement and matter-of-fact correction.

When Cornwallis attempts to reset the rules of the game he has trapped the American colonies into playing against him and his countrymen—including but not limited to the killing of British Officers by Martin and his men—Martin flatly refuses, rejecting Cornwallis’ attempts to reframe the issue by simply informing him that he has not altered the rules of Cornwallis’ game, but that he simply refuses to recognize them in the first place.

In this sequence, we see the beginnings of the ‘winning’ attitude and complexion American patriots would nurture in the bitterest days of the Revolution, from Francis Marion to George Washington himself, in that said attitude does not stem from the belief that they—that we—can defeat the Infinite Player on the game board by out-playing him, but rather that we can turn the game board over, reset one of our choosing, and swap roles simply by breaking the game in the first place.

Martin’s constitution and resolve to not only eschew the rules-based order Cornwallis represents, but to implement an ambiguous and constantly-moving set of his own in its stead—one the British have no choice but to accept due to the blunt, existential nature of the conflict—is reminiscent of the heterotox mindset this community carries in our sovereign hearts, and that Donald Trump inspired shortly after he first came down that golden escalator not so many years ago, and announced not only his presence to the modern heirs of the rules-based System of Systems, but his intentions to start the beginnings of a new game by first upending the framework of their own.

One of the great pleasures of the writing and character work of The Patriot that drives this theme and its veracity home is the foil presented by Jason Isaacs’ Colonel William Tavington, who himself has two dialogue scenes with his superior in Cornwallis that bookend Martin’s own exchange with the man.

In the first, Tavington declares his intention to bend the rules of the British Empire’s game so that he might ‘win’ it, to the gentlemanly shock and horror of Cornwallis:

And in the second exchange, following Martin’s sound and continuing defeats of Cornwallis’ soldiers and now-obsolete stratagems, Tavington is able to convince his superior of the need to adapt to the guerrilla tactics and irregular warfare of his American enemies:

The irony that both the heroic, values-based Martin and the sadistic, psychopathic and yet, logic-based Tavington employ the same baseline philosophy against the rules-based system is a clever turn that outlines Tavington as the true foil, rival and villain of the piece, while also serving to underline the reason why even Tavington is ultimately undone by the very rules-based system he purports to be tossing aside in service of presumed victory over Martin and his rebels.

You see, the key failing of Tavington aside from the usual pride and arrogance that mars the psyches of most who occupy significant positions within the System of Systems is that he only believes he has escaped the game because he has modified its rules, and yet, he still ‘plays’ in service to a prescribed set of outcomes the original game had set in the first place, such as the formation of a new American aristocracy.

This drive and desire binds Tavington unknowingly into the role of the Finite Player like Cornwallis before him, albeit a more unpredictable, dangerous version of him, because his goals are finite. In order to ‘win’ the war, Tavington must defeat Martin and his followers, up to and including his two eldest sons, the representations of his legacy according to the rules-based System Tavington hails from.

In refusing to accept a fate Tavington and his ilk surely would have under such circumstances, however, and in choosing to fight on in service of an ideal and a belief system rather than a finite endgoal following the deaths of his sons, Martin occupies the role of the Infinite Player on the Game Board—the ‘Ghost’ of the American Revolution—and demonstrates why victory over the British empire and the Prussian powers behind it, however temporary, is and was inevitable.

Martin does not need to kill Tavington or even Cornwallis to win the game. He simply needs to keep playing, because the terms of American victory did not then and do not now rest upon the defeat of an enemy or his routing, but rather in the recognition of that enemy in the first place, and the resolve to fight, and to endure.

Under such a framework, the rules-based order cannot survive, as the American way—the Sovereign way—is infinite by definition, just as the truth cannot but win out over its antithesis.

Largely due to Donald Trump’s influence and the genius of the patriots behind him, the American public has once more been given a crash course not only on who their collectivist enemy is—from the political to the financial to the cultural, and everything in between—but we have also been given a front-row seat to a demonstration of how their game works, what their rules are, and how simply refusing to play has set us on a path toward the Great American Restoration via the Great Awakening Trump has long teased, and that lies just over the horizon, if only we have the eyes to see the first rays peaking up over the dawn’s curtain, and the wills to carry us step by step, unerringly toward their guiding light.

As Chris pointed out in our recent conversation, Trump is an apostate—a religious maverick and rebel—of the rules-based System, just as each and all of us are apostates in the Info War—heterodox, unorthodox thinkers unbound by structured paradigm and allergic to attempts at control.

This is why Chris and I so regularly condemn fraudulent, ignorant and short-sighted calls for ‘unity’ with those who would seek to undermine the path Trump has started us on, and will see us through into 2024 and beyond, as calls to unify with those who oppose a vision of sovereignty, freedom and truth without exception or concession can only lead to defeat and bondage within another Finite Game, as such concessions represent the tacit or direct endorsement of the very rules-based System we are in the process of tearing down.

And that is not the game we’re playing.

While we ARE on the cusp of a new era of American unity and identity, one that is not just bipartisan on the surface, but is so defected from the concept of partisanship and political identity-coddling from the outset that such a world will seem foreign and boarish to us by comparison, unity will not come because of calls for it, nor some artificial framework or new set of rules designed to bring it about in a controlled manner, but rather it will radiate outward from the unified philosophy of shared sovereignty that MUST make up the foundation of the new world—so much like the old one our Founding Fathers hoped to lay down the stones in service of.

I discussed this concept with my friend and peer,

Just Human

in another recent conversation that explored our divergent and yet, strangely parallel paths from opposite ends of the faux political spectrum the System of Systems presented to all of us, until we broke free from that matrix and reached the same endpoint … which is really the beginning.

And so many of us have these stories. So many of us ARE these stories.

Our Founding Fathers knew that Sovereignty radiates. That it is self-defining and self-affirming. That IT and the truth that underlies it is the Infinite Player on the game board, and that no set of rules, no matter how well-thought or defined, can bind it forever.

They knew that, if they showed the example of how to throw off the yoke of tyranny once, that template of no template—that building by breaking—would echo through eternity. That such a foundation of founding could only be buried, but never lost. Could only be slowed, but never stopped.

Could only be wounded, but never killed.

Just as the setting of one sun heralds the rising of the next, our forebears knew what it is our duty to ensure our heirs remember:

As long as one single patriot remains in this world, patriotism can never die.

Let’s prove them right.

Until next time … stay Positive, stay Based and most importantly … stay Bright.

---

(Note to Readers: Below, I humbly ask for the support of those willing and able to spare it as I continue to try to carve out a path for myself and my family that will allow me to focus on the life of the Truthful Tiger more completely.

As always, the best and most consistent way to support my writing and research is to upgrade to a paid membership on this Substack platform for $7 per month or less. So far, Substack has rebuffed ‘Cancel’ and ‘Pressure’ Campaigns launched against citizen journalists.)

---

Burning Bright’s goal is to provide a valuable resource for Truth, Discernment and Logic-Based Positivity. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a Free or Paid Subscriber.

Want to submit a one-time donation? You can do so by buying me a coffee!

Paid supporters allow me to devote the time and research necessary to make this publication unique. All members of the growing Bright Army are appreciated.