Shadows on the Wall

Defining 'MAGA' on the Edge of Awakening

Bright Army!

A new year is upon us, and it’s an auspicious one we’ve been told—promised—could represent the beginnings of a new American Golden Age.

And yet, we remain vigilant, as is our nature … as should be.

It’s been a busy time in the Bright Empire, which is why I’m somewhat surprised I put something together to kick off the year. Alas, sometimes the muse strikes me in January.

Such was the case in 2023, with ‘Radiate.’ And then there was ‘We Are Q,’ which remains my most-read feature to date, and which touched down the same month. Oh, and I suppose this publication launched in January in the first place, when the ‘Righteous Russia’ series kicked off six weeks before Putin’s ongoing Special Military Operation in Ukraine circa 2022.

None of this is to set this piece on a pedestal of expectations that it’ll be anything grand. Just that I didn’t plan it like I do so many of my pieces, and like I most certainly did NOT with those mentioned above.

I just wrote it, and I hope you enjoy it.

If you do, consider joining your fellow Bright Army savages by upgrading to a Paid Subscription on this platform (cancel at any time,) or by Buying Me a Coffee, if you fancy. Otherwise, just read and share at your leisure, and know that doing so is appreciated.

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The term “intra-MAGA” has been used with abandon of late, as the sifting accelerates en route to awakening, collapse, or an exhilarating, intoxicating and—at least for me—very much welcome mix of the two. And I must admit, I’ve used the term myself, which begs the obvious question:

What is MAGA?

Apparently, that depends on who you ask, and if the arguments of the last few days are anything to go by, there are quite a few asking.

From where I’m sitting, the people who spent the last week either observing the various Info Ops or putting forth First Principles arguments that are consistent with the long-running foundation of the MAGA agenda are the same people they were before, only even more based.

The people who spent the last week whining about infighting are also the same people they were before, only even more retarded.

Also, the latter is already capitulating.

Just as Donald Trump's tariffs deployments enforce game theory on a manufacturing level, the same principle can be applied to talent, which is to say, men. In other words, if you can’t survive by sourcing in America and hiring Americans, you die.

When these oligarchs talk about a skill gap, they mean skill per dollar. They're talking about profits. They’re counting on foreigners being willing to out compete Americans on a dollar-for-dollar basis because they’re allowed to siphon those dollars back to lands globalism has already ravaged.

The key to rendering the whole argument and those like it moot—which I believe IS in the offing—is to kickstart mutually assured sovereign game theory, with each nation incentivized to produce from within.

America didn’t become a powerhouse by outsourcing. We became weak.

And as many of the best sovereign minds in the movement elucidated this weekend, being America First means being AMERICAN first.

And if a ‘what’ of the MAGA argument can be pulled from the ether, what of the whom? What of the arguers, including men like Elon Musk I have discussed with frequency in these digital pages, putting him forward as a cognitive cypher that sometimes rivals Trump himself in terms of abstract power projection.

Well, whether he meant to as part of a patriot-fueled op—my personal reading—or something else entirely—which it’s all too necessary to consider—it seems to me the chaos is overall pushing the sifting in the right direction: ever onward.

So, who was exposed, if not the court jesters themselves?

How about the commentariate that doubles as a protectorate for the system in all its forms … up to and including the one they want to layer over the America First movement while wearing MAGA skin suits?

Contrary to a growing subversive trend in the now-mainstream ‘alternative media,’ when you have to label yourself an anti-communist while putting forth virtue-signaling threads that always begin with an appeal to the very regime you ostensibly seek to depose, you're revealing yourself to those with the eyes to see it as either a progenitor of the System as it exists or, perhaps more likely, a prostrator to the new breed of intellectual elite looking to ascend in the mass cultural chaos that results in the dissolution of one System and the parallel construction of another.

The problem is, the System we're tearing down was built by faux intellectuals masquerading as the betters of the very MAGA, America First, nationalist 'swine' this new breed of self-described anti-communists has apparently deigned to lead into a Golden Age defined by constant capitulation to legacy power structures and exhaustive appeals to what the great

Chris Paul

refers to as the Party of False Decorum.

As such, leaving Mind-Movers like Donald Trump, Elon Musk and yes, even Vivek Ramaswamy to the side for the moment and focusing instead on those who comment ON them, if you're wondering how to spot those currently positioning themselves as your intellectual superiors, look out for the following problem signs:

• Arguments purporting to be America First that begin with apologies for forwarding those very ideals.

• If and when the opportunity presents itself to defend an aspect of the System, that opportunity being taken; if not, it being created.

• Counter-arguments being met with reputational threats.

The good thing is, YOU get to decide what defines the America First ideology, because it's defined by AMERICANS ... not those who seek to lead them by redefining what they are.

To wit, Donald Trump, our chosen totem would not dare tell Americans how they should define themselves.

Because they already know what they are.

He exists as a provocateur OF and representative FOR their sovereign will, which is to say, mandate.

Observe with interest those who think they know better.

As for Trump himself, God Emperor Trump isn't one of the most enduring memetic images of the modern MAGA zeitgeist just because it's funny, but because it's true.

Because the valedictorian class have never been leaders of men, but advisors to them.

So yes, while I do believe leaders can be molded, guided and bettered through a combination of experience and reflection, most of the great leaders throughout the history of Man are born. There is something in them that struggles against ... whatever it is they aim their will at, whether it be some great endeavor or the defeat of those that would oppose it.

In recent days, the most consistent and signal-based commentators in the America First movement have pushed back on the notion that 'Revenge of the Nerds: MAGA Edition' is the best way forward for this country.

And so, in the aftermath of a supposed intra-MAGA 'split,' it's worth reflecting back on the signal we received on the eve of the deployment, when we saw Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the two prime Mind-Movers in a war largely defined by them projecting the media's attempt to split the movement by optically splitting them.

Of course, depending on your perspective, Musk made a series of asinine statements that actualized the drama, earning necessary pushback by the sort of first principles thinkers this country needs to reforge the Republic, while those with a follower mindset called for appeasement and launched communistic accusations of 'muh racism' that are as tired now as they were coming from avowed leftists.

Through it all, Trump remained deafeningly silent ('sourced' MSM comments be damned,) only posting a pair of images, including one amidst sparks, which serves as the header for this piece.

So, what’s going on? Your guess is as good as mind. But from where I’m sitting, the chaos—the sparks—are a feature, not a bug of the America First sifting.

Trump 2.0 is about public mandate, which is to say, sovereign will.

That isn't assigned TO you ... it emanates FROM you.

So, let the chaos do its work, and help it along, if you wish to.

As for the lessons inherent in the ongoing debate over the soul of Americana, and who leads it into a reforged future? You do, by putting your weight behind ideas, and yes, sometimes behind the men who embody them.

After all, you don't ride into battle behind the one with the best plans, Sun Tzu pontificating aside; you ride into battle behind the one you know would ride beside you, directly into the fray.

This is leadership. This is strength.

It is something inherent, not something to be acquired or decreed, and this quality is present in the American spirit perhaps more than any other of the modern age because the nation was founded by myriad men who made the choice to leave, to start again, and to fight and defend that choice, not qualify it.

The American is not feared by his enemies nor envied by his friends because he is strong and smart. But because he is strong and GOOD.

So it has been. So it will be again.

In other words, doing the "right" thing has always been 'smarter' than doing the "smart" thing, and this is why picking alphas to lead your tribe has always been a better play than picking low-T embittered valedictorians, which isn’t to say you can’t have both.

Humanity learned this long ago.

Apparently, some have to re-learn it.

Altogether, what the year-end deployments both from within and without MAGA have demonstrated is the continued presence of the central paradox at the heart of the Info War, where disinfo is necessary, and where only half watching the play know they are observing shadows on the wall.

The initial part of this awakening means waking to the lies we have been told and sold for generations. But the deeper awakening occurs when one keeps the thread going, and traces the shadows to different hands … those ostensibly with our collective good in mind.

And while that progression may sound foreboding to you, I’ll not judge you for believing it to be true—the altruism of some hands, that is … some shadow-makers. And yet, isn’t the point of the Op, the point of the awakening, to turn away from the shadows on the wall at some point, to keep from digging and delving in the deep and dark, and to turn around and see not just the hands and the minds that animate them—no matter whose they be—but more so, to glimpse the brilliance of the light that carves the real and unreal from both the figures making and the figures made?

A light we might call truth? Reality?

You are allowed to believe there is darkness in this world; after all, you would not be here had you not seen it, perhaps experienced it in large doses or small helpings, none of them welcomed, all of them perhaps necessary in a grand cosmic sense, for such is the way of explaining such large things when you’re very small.

You’re also allowed to believe there is good, and outside of yourself, that there is good with a plan whose overall shape you’ve been told in advance, and whose parts you follow and track as they spin webs others are caught fast in.

And yet, there is the third option, and that is to reject the hold of each over the engine that animates you, and the mind it animates … that being your soul, a core piece of God none can take the full measure of, perhaps not even you, but that many seek to persuade, which is to say, control.

And so, my personal way of reconciling the abstract power projection—the storytelling—of even those with very good—the best—of intentions as to the story the shadows on the wall are acting out with the very nature of the charade and its effects on free will is to use the word ‘provocation’ in light of deception alone.

Provocation of the dark, and yes, provocation BY the light and to creatures born of and borne by both.

Patriots are lying to us. Perhaps. Perhaps not in the way we always think. Perhaps not that it matters much in the end. Perhaps that it does.

And yet, you are not a ship to be guided in a sea at storm, are you? But one whose banners were called, perhaps by these patriot sirens—these cognitive cyphers I have spent years now in these digital pages chronicling, glimpsing many things for the truth of the lies they spin while getting many more wrong due to tricks of the light or dark as they war using spells that are stories and stories that are spells.

So, who guides you? Who provokes you? Who needles you with deployments and rhetoric, and if so, in which direction?

Are you watching the sifting take place, or are you yourself being sifted along with the whims and wiles of others, even those … with your best interests at heart?

Perhaps there is a middle ground between passive observation of the play and acting as a part of it. Perhaps we can learn something from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who seem at once the least and most brilliant of the named figures in Shakespeare’s grand tragedies … pawns moving at the whims and ways of kings, queens, bishops and knights … and yet, pawns who know they exist on a board, captive as the others are, and yet, freed by the knowledge of being trapped.

It is a strange space to occupy, seeing that a play is on, guessing at the writers and the producers, gaming out the future machinations and directions of the plot, playing guessing games with the actors on stage, and yet, turning with a mix of wonder and horror out at a crowd—some caught fast in the liar’s sleep, others believing they have awakened because they’ve seen this movie before, or else, have forgiven themselves for enjoying it because they have been told one version of its ending which doesn’t require their activation, only their attention. Their moral passivity in place of confused activity.

It is a position I find myself in often of late, my eyes darting back and forth between the story on the stage and the many audiences in one, splintered along inter and intra-party and movement lines, often distinguishing themselves based more so on memetics than virtues, platitudes than principles … knowing I am sometimes in the crowd, watching the same play, other times climbing the rafters and the ropes, hanging from pulleys and peering into the dark corners, playing at guessing the progenitors of the game, and doubting all the while.

What is one to do, then, when one’s mind is at once alone and myriad, at once free and controlled, and sometimes by those ostensibly seeking to do the freeing?

What am I to do, from the edges of the stage, where I linger and double back, occasionally whispering sweet nothings to the principal cast, but most of all, where I lurk, observing the audience observing the play except but for to continue searching for the strings, and tracing them up and away into the shadows, hoping to catch a glimpse of the hands that guide them, for better or worse?

And if not all the while, then every so often, reminding myself that the stage is a stage, and the actors are shadows, and the audience are wraiths.

And that my mind is mine, and my soul is God’s, and that onward is the only way forward, and that the only way out is through, no matter how much I appreciate the story, and no matter what I’ve been told of its ending, a proposition that is itself a paradox, since the movie we’re watching—the one of reality, of the future—never ends, and so, cannot be pre-written, no matter what well-meaning and genius ‘plans’ we track and point to that posit as much.

Are Rosencrantz & Guildenstern truly dead … or did they simply stop playing the game? Have they passed on, or ascended?

It was always going to take you. It was always going to take me. It was always going to take us.

We are in a cave, at the end of the day, and the light is growing brighter, making the shadows long, stretching them to the point of breaking spells, which is to say … stories.

At some point, we need to turn around, and glimpse the truth of the greatest story ever told. One I suspect we were born with the buried memories of, and that we took into a sleep that very much felt like waking.

But then. Don’t listen to me. I’m just another shadow who knows.

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

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