America's Counter-Cultural Revolution
The climactic clash between the institutionalized and the instinctual - Yuri's debut in The American Mind
Comrades: This piece was published by The American Mind on October 30 - a milestone first Yuri samizdat post to debut outside of Substack. You can read it on their website here, or keep scrolling below for a version that has additional images/links. Thank you to for editing and publishing an anon on your platform. Hat tip to , , , and for your advice and banter.
America is in the middle of a sweeping realignment. For some time now, categories like Right vs. Left, Republican vs. Democrat, Conservative vs. Liberal have been breaking down. We are now entering a new era in politics and culture: the era of the Institutionalized vs. Instinctual.
Who are the institutionalized? They are the true believers, the strivers, and the useful idiots who have taken over our institutions through cultural revolution. You might also call them the NPC (Non Player Character) PMC (Professional Managerial Class). In a sane world, they would be classified as insane and institutionalized in asylums. Instead, they have subverted our institutions: corporate media, big tech, academia, teachers’ unions, NGOs, and government bureaucracies. The largest institution of all is welfare. Almost half the U.S. population has some connection to the government money printer through direct handouts or indirect contracts.
The institutions have devolved into demoralized ideological fiefdoms - longhouses that operate above the law thanks to incestuous “public/private partnerships” run by crony commissars, who push inorganic narratives from the top down. They are part of a million-headed hydra that slithers around the rotating door axes of The Swamp, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the ivory towers. Without any irony or self awareness, they call themselves “The Resistance”. Here is the terrain mapped out in visual form - all of America’s Top 100 largest employers have employee bases that donate blue except the NYPD and Marines.
What do the institutionalized believe in? Certainly not God or any real principles. Deep down, they only care about individual self-preservation within a conformist collective. That is why they quickly and loudly follow the latest luxury belief in The Current Thing, whether it’s COVID, climate, trans, Ukraine, Gaza, open borders, etc. “Trust the experts”, “follow the science”, and “everything-I-don’t-like -is-misinformation/-ist/-phobic” are flimsy shields against cognitive dissonance. At the slightest brush with reality, they collapse faster than a “Hate Has No Home Here” lawn sign from a light breeze.
The institutionalized love the regime, but hate the country outside of their urban bubbles. They share more in common with their foreign elite counterparts than their countrymen. As NS Lyons noted in The China Convergence, their attitudes and entitlement are similar to CCP Princelings. They have shackled themselves to golden handcuffs and gags. Since they hold bureaucratic laptop BS jobs with negative societal value, the only way they can distinguish themselves is through obedience to The Party and The Narrative. This is not a meritocracy; it is hierarchy of slaves playing a dicey game of chicken in which competitors latch on to an institution that has enough funds to overpay them. The grift can’t last forever, so each fights tooth and nail to keep it going. To quote Chairman Mao himself: “Even after we get to Communism there will be a revolution. It seems to me that there will always be revolution, even ten thousand years from now. Otherwise what will people like us do? We’ll be unemployed.” The rat race compels the institutionalized to cling to their credentials, sinecures, and LinkedIn flexing harder than the peasants they look down upon cling to guns and religion.
The longer they remain institutionalized, the more their critical thinking and communication skills deteriorate into Kamala-style copy pasta word salad. They converse in a different language - Orwellian double speak and nonsensical buzzwords. The day to day existence is full of anxiety, insecurity, and lies. They cannot speak freely to anyone because it would endanger the entire delusion of all their professional and personal lives. Anyone who steps out of line is subjected to struggle sessions.
Imagine an endless, soulless doldrum of TPS reports, meetings, and meetings about meetings. Mindless chatter about rags no one reads anymore, movies no one watches anymore, and degrees no one respects anymore. Despite high salaries, the institutionalized are often living paycheck to paycheck because they “have to” settle precariously in one of a few expensive, crime-ridden cities. The AWFLs and their White Dudes for Harris eunuchs lead lifestyles that would be alien to their ancestors: consooming poor information diets, soggy takeout food laden with seed oils, and heavy doses of Trump Derangement Syndrome, birth control, therapy, and SSRIs make for a neurotic toxic brew that hollows out human instinct. As Roman Roy observed, it’s all bullshit.
Who are the instinctual? They are the builders and producers who affirm their humanity through constant contact with reality. The graph below shows the contrast between laptop jobs and real jobs that require participation in the feedback loop of live interaction. Homemakers, truckers, construction workers, mechanics, pilots, business owners, and farmers all make a living by making our society function with their hands, sweat, and blood. They hone their instincts seeing the direct result of their labor, sometimes in life-or-death situations. Their survival depends on paying attention to what's happening around them at all times and adapting. They apply common sense and will never rely on an institutional "goodthink" mediator to tell them what to think (e.g. McKinsey consultants showing slides about why DEI/ESG will lead to synergistic stakeholder alignment). And this habit of paying attention to reality, of responding to it, is not only discouraged by the institutionalized: it's punished. That is why many instinctuals have left the institutions to build anew, subverting subversion as class traitors.
What do the instinctual believe? They trust their guts and their God. Some call it street smarts or hillbilly wisdom. They uphold the American foundational values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With quiet dignity, they take their families to church and seek self-sufficiency. They speak plainly and shake hands firmly. All colors and creeds are among the instinctual. Polling data shows their numbers are swelling because they share the common ground of reality in an era of insanity.
If something feels off, they know it and will say it to your face with strong eye contact. Why do you want men in women’s locker rooms and sports? Why are you trying to talk to young children about sex and race? Why are we judging people by the color of their skin, not the content of their character? Why are you forcing more expensive and less reliable wind and solar energy on me? Why are you funneling our tax dollars to endless foreign wars and endless streams of migrants, but leaving scraps for us? As Tucker would say, What is this?
The instinctuals are far happier and healthier in every dimension because of their closeness with family, community, and reality. They would love nothing more than to be left alone. But as America turns 250, the institutionals have weaponized the institutions against the instinctuals. They have backed the instinctuals into a corner as they seek to sneer, sloganeer, and demographically engineer their way to permanent power.
The 2024 Election is the climactic clash between the institutionalized and the instinctual. Kamala is the pinnacle of DEI institutionalism, regurgitating the same copy pasta teleprompter script as her senile predecessor. She and her baizuo manchurian VP candidate Tim Walz have never worked in the private sector a day in their lives. They have been institutionalized from the moment they entered kindergarten until now - indoctrinating, lecturing, prosecuting, taxing, and cajoling their inferiors. Any instinctual will instantly see through their fake astroturfed brat joy folksiness. Kamala’s coalition is well represented by two institutional Dicks: Neocon warmonger Dick Cheney and trans Admiral Rachel “Dick” Levine. Put them together and you get American bombs dropping around the world and dicks in every women’s locker room. This is not an umbrella; it is a sewage basin full of America’s foulest dregs and opportunists.
In stark contrast, Trump and his hillbilly apprentice JD Vance are instinctuals. The former grew up in the rough and tumble sh*t-talking outer boroughs of New York City. The latter was raised in dirt-poor Appalachian poverty. They don’t need teleprompters, preferring to speak off the cuff and riff jokes with their fellow Americans. The affection is mutual. Their shared communication style is old-school, shoot-from-the-hip. As shown in the bubble charts above, theircareer trajectories passed through the few remaining instinctual red zones: The Marines, business owners, construction. Although they both attended Ivy League universities, they were always outsiders.
The institutionals still maintain a vice grip on information control through education, media, and tech. What they lack in talent, they make up for in organization and repetition. They will artificially manipulate the marketplace of ideas and the Overton window. And they are willing to play every dirty trick to subvert instinctuals who try to push them back. Every tyrannical step forward becomes harder to reverse. After a half-century Long March, they stand at the precipice of total control.
Our country was founded and forged by instinctuals. These explorers, pioneers, and settlers built the institutions that the institutionals are now looting. 250 years after the founding fathers declared independence, a new band of patriotic instinctuals is coalescing to restore the republic. Have they awakened enough of the country at the right time?
Remember, remember, the fifth of November…
There is a whole class of people whose job can be described as “muffin meetings”. You sit in a room with 20 people and talk about whether a button should be on the left side or right side of a web page while eating the gluten free catered muffins that are brought in. Then you go to the next meeting and do the same thing to justify your 150k a year job.
Most of this “work” could be done in a short 10 minute conversation between 2 rational people instead of hours and hours of meetings with 20 people 18 of which are doing nothing meaningful besides eating their muffins.
The muffin meeting brigade should be terrified of someone realizing they serve no purpose as Musk realized at Twitter. They are the barnacles on the ship, the fat clogging the arteries, and are usually big supporters of team leviathan.
Congrats on the piece.
Great synthesis of the sociopolitical trendlines.
Can’t find a hole in this argument.
Well done.