You are more likely to hear some Very Serious People give their takes on the new tax bill that now seems very likely to pass once the house and senate versions get merged. But I present you with something else.

The Republican Party, like the Democrats, is largely just a giant incompetent monster that hoovers up donor cash and spews forth priorities based on that with a few hot button issues thrown in as an afterthought in order to maintain the facade of freedom of choice among partisans. Like below:

What the above misses, however, is that the Democrats actually seek to maintain the status quo through just enough (often topical) maintenance that it can at least survive enough to stave off civil war. The Republicans, since Reagan anyway, are under no such pretense. They want full Late Imperial Russia of the 1890s-1917 while forgetting what happened to that state. Full speed ahead until a collapse is inevitable. If you think about it, they are taking an enormous bet that they can turn the bland neoliberal status quo that democrats love so much and ramp it up into a type of globalized neofeudalism where corporations become landlords over an increasingly serf-like labor force (with no doubt some jus primae noctis thrown in for the libertarian wing). Now, this plan could totally work if they paired it with a guaranteed basic income, some social service giveaways, full support for universal access to VR, and full drug legalization. But as usual, the hubristic codgers are want of imagination or long term strategy and think only of short term gains no matter the costs to themselves or especially their children. Considering the ramifications of Reagan era tax reform are largely the decay of infrastructure, the erosion of non-partisan civil society, the massive growth of largely parasitic defense contractors who double the defense budget but without doubling the results of the spending, and the entrenchment of American power as a fragile thing based on arms sales and not internal strength, a second round may just yet bring about its collapse.

So if one was to assume that the GOP leadership is rational (I don’t, but lets humor ourselves here), one must assume that they are in fact Revolutionary Vanguards participating in Accelerationism. As Lenin said, ‘Worse is better.’ He did of course, mean for him, not for the Tsar. Still, with Reagan having made America into a nation defined solely by its empire and business interests, and whose contradictions became most apparent when Dubya signed into law massive tax cuts the same year he started a war in Iraq that soon proved bankrupting in more than one way, its quite possible that America will not survive a further bout of supply-side policy. The irony is that in making the state solely about business and empire that supports only said business rather than a more general national and geopolitical interest, these lawmakers have only guaranteed that if the empire loses legitimacy as the prime force of the state then the entire system will also lose it subsequently since no other institution that makes policy does so with civic responsibility for all citizens. Ibn Khaldun would diagnose our society as having entered the terminal stage where a decadent and incompetent ruling class of the spoiled generation has sabotaged any future for its state by removing all the bonds of group-feeling (assabiyya) necessary for societal cohesiveness and loyalty. The future is thus made by the next regime, whatever that might be.

Big business is already extremely unpopular. But the military remains a bedrock of public support. Defense contractors, however, when exposed to the light do not retain such veneer. Interventionism was dealt a major blow by Iraq, leading it to be more covered up like a dirty secret, though its popularity has never returned to 2003 and before levels. With our society going to end up increasingly hollowed out as money is distributed upwards and social mobility withers on the vine to the increase of social alienation, the question of future political partisanship remains only to which revolutionary party and/or Mad Max style gang of post-apocalyptic bandits one wishes to sign up for. We are just one more disastrous interventionist war away from having to choose. And the wise Accelerationists of the GOP have gladly offered up their own lives in the coming class revolt as the first sacrifice to make a bold new tomorrow. For surely, in the utter impotency of the two party system to deal with climate change and properly harnessing technology and infrastructure, only a clean break could offer us some future. And make no mistake about it, a clean break will come for them and their donors first.

Its just a question of timing at this point. For years I feared this outcome and wanted to do anything possible to stave it off, but now I think I am quite coming to welcome it. Even if it does not come in my lifetime, it surely will come. And we must all prepare to be accelerationists of one stripe or another as strategists if nothing else. The Revolutionary Vanguard of the GOP has forced the issue, choose the future or die like a dog!

Otherwise we’ll end up just as more self-justifying tools unwittingly digging their own graves, like Paul Ryan, lanyarded policy wonks…or the Warboys. But having to chose, maybe we should chose to be Furiosa instead? The decision has been forced on us, why not revel in it?