Kratman vs. Lind

Edit: Kratman weighed in and busted some major delusions in a comment below. I left a reply and apology down there, which you can read if you’re some sorta creepy voyeur for feelz.

Aside from this preface, the post has not been altered.

There has been a great deal of tension recently between Vox Popoli commenters represented by intellectual heavyweights William S. Lind and Tom Kratman. Lind never comments at VP, but Kratman does occasionally, and always with such technique and aggression as to outclass the rest of the commentariat. He’s sharp (probably has a neurotypical IQ in the 160 range) and he has an obsession with war and a burr in his saddle. Contrarily, Lind is a live-and-let-live type, prefers strategy to tactics, and is a genius in the older tradition of an intuitive originator of paradigm-shifting ideas. This is not to say he’s ignorant of details like the ballistic ranges offered by various tank models, nor is Kratman ignorant of strategy. Much the contrary. The contrast between them is in cognitive style: Kratman memorizes and applies the encyclopedias of war, whereas Lind writes them.

Lind represents the Anglo conservative contingent such as it still exists, with whom I find sympathy. He promotes purely defensive war according to 4GW principles, strong borders, and long-term economic outlook. His general advice for the Big Stupid is similar to mine: find like-minded sane and productive people, stake out some borders, and let the unproductive SJWs eat each other as they starve. Eventually, they will band together for some good, old-fashioned aggro, partially because they hate superior and non-aggressive people, but mostly because they are incapable of growing food, mining taconite, clearing the paper jam in the copy machine. The proper response to this is to encourage a “don’t touch, hot!” sensibility among the aggression-inclined and production-impaired, according to 4GW theory. These are parasites on existing civilizations, and their large numbers are unsustainable without a heavy admixture of neaderthal genes and middle-class sensibilities to be ruthlessly exploited. For training manuals on Lind’s methods, read his Castalia House offerings: Victoria (a novel), On War, and The Four Generations of Modern War.

Kratman represents the very best of the neoconservative contingent, whose arguments are compelling, practical, and ultimately flawed and self-destructive. For instance, he argues that torture can be a useful source of intelligence when it’s done correctly. I couldn’t agree more. But I still consider it immoral (see the thread), whereas Kratman is a utilitarian at heart. In the end, the problem with utilitarians is that they elevate their emotions to the status of morals (psychological unrest being the definition of economic utility), and then proceed to act out their neuroses in spectacular fashion. We can see this in the structure of his ongoing Carrera series, the first of which I’ve recently picked up.

A Desert Called Peace starts with an emotionally intense Space 9/11, wherein the protagonist’s wife and children are killed. (The protagonist is the author- portrayed in a highly self-flattering light, but my observation indicates it is also pretty accurate.) The protagonist boo-hoos for a little while, and then decides to co-opt the resources of his host country- Space Mexico- to build an army and single-handedly destroy Space Islam. The rest is mostly military logistics porn and reads like an Xcel spreadsheet, though admittedly Kratman makes it a fairly interesting one. There is also an interlude every now and then taking the perspective of one of Carrera/Kratman’s pawns for eventual religious genocide, a poor, indeterminately brown Space peasant recruited as cannon fodder. The series looks to be shaping up as a battle plan cum training manual for Kratman’s 9/11 revenge fantasies.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, Kratman is an American Ashkenazi. Remember when I said “utilitarian” and “neuroses”? Let’s talk about that. He seems to have zero concept for people who aren’t poor, brown farmers, corrupt bureaucrats/politicians, or trust-fund kids. There is not a single rich person in this book who doesn’t have a trust fund, including Carrera/Kratman, although Carrera/Kratman does distance himself from these (ran away to the military, actually) and is disowned by his dysfunctional, trust fund-supported family (surprise!). His fiction reads a lot like nonfiction, and vice versa (Lt. Reilly is Lt. Kratman, in case you hadn’t figured it out). He seems to have led an extraordinary life; all evidence points to an underappreciated soldier with a Spartan’s heart and Rommel’s brain. (The mutation accumulation of the last five hundred years seems to have skipped over this particular Jewish group.)

It’s too bad, because even the very best neocon can’t be trusted as an ally in the Big Stupid. Despite the “Old Earth” folks standing in for the melonhead overwatch (showing exceptional insight), he is ultimately a user and an abuser. Despite all the crying fictional Carrera/Kratman does for “every dead soldier”, they are still dead because he decided to spend their lives on his personal revenge fantasy. Could have been an isolationist and left well enough alone, but his neurosis won’t allow it. Other Ashkenazi characteristics on display are information asymmetry, ruthlessness, national rootlessness, and a curious conception of how espirit de corps works. I’ll expand on the latter two.

“National rootlessness” means Kratman has zero respect for national borders or existing civilations, and merely considers which ones are Good (to be lived in and exploited) and which ones are Bad (for The Tribe) and fit to be exterminated/tortured/enslaved according to one’s present feelz. Contrast this with Lind’s Victoria, where we see the people of Maine extricate themselves from federal/world meddling and build a self-sustaining economy. We see this was always the point of Lind’s civil war: prosperity for the nation’s citizens. There is no such sentiment in Carrera. As for espirit de corps, this seems to be a combination of brainwashing and an outlet for the brown young men to act on their natural desires to kill, march in straight lines, and wear uniforms. Edenists may see one or two familiar psycheprints in this description. Lind’s espirit is dependent upon the desire to defend home and hearth, and thereafter let bygones be bygones.

To finish up, I’d like to expand on the area where Kratman’s exposition is quite superior to Lind’s: the melonhead overwatch hypothesis. Lind nods at this obliquely by suggesting that One Worlders oppose national lines in principle, whereas Kratman includes it explicitly in his plot development. This has strategic, operational, and tactical ramifications that really need to be spelled out. Lind’s 4GW absolutely depends on information symmetry, where dissenting opinions, news, and video feeds can be distributed over the internet. And yet, if there really are 200-IQ occultists running the show under the strategic direction of a transdimensional psychic octopus from space, then they may well be capable of overcoming economic and logistical obstacles that we naively presume to have the predictive strength of physical laws. In fact, Kratman may even number among them, considering that the structure of his fictional universe is quite parallel to the Gnostic spiritual conception, as explained by a lady who once tried to convert me to Gnosticism (through some sort of hypnosis; it’s an interesting story I’ll have to tell sometime).