Strategy and Tactics

Strategy and Tactics

by Welmer on October 6, 2009

Rather than writing only about how to advance men’s interests in a practical manner here, I’d like to dive into the rather abstract dialogue we see developing here around the issue of troubles facing the modern, Western man.

First, I’ll note that one thing that still surprises me is how often other writers such as Novaseeker and zed touch on exactly the same issues that have been going through my mind. What this says to me is that there is an objective problem out there, standing like a monolith, that is easily observed by disparate people throughout our land. It really is impossible to ignore at this point, and more and more people are beginning to put some thought into its solution.

However, first we have to start defining the nature of the problem and make an effort to understand what brought it about. Is it Feminism, Social Conservatism or chivalry? These are all problems, to be sure, but what it really comes down to is how they are used. Feminism is used to appeal to women on the basis of equality, Social Conservatism is used to convince men that they have to put up with incessant abuse to earn the right to be a man, and chivalry is used to justify everything from adultery to murder in the guise of “protecting” women.

So why would people use these things, and what kind of people would do so? Wouldn’t there have to be some sordid, malicious conspiracy created by some nefarious group of hidden powermongers to carry all of this out? Of course conspiracy is involved, but not just “a conspiracy,” rather, innumerable conspiracies. People like to discount conspiracy theories as the ravings of lunatics, but they are ignoring the fact that conspiracies are simply how people get things done. Conspiracies are not only carried out by shady men in suits in the halls of power, but also by couple of people working in billing at some small business in your hometown who want to, say, get a rival fired.

Many divorces are conspiracies. Wife gets together with friends and complains about husband, friends offer advice on family law and lawyers, wife secretly hires an attorney, and suddenly husband is served and has two weeks to respond. That’s a nasty little conspiracy, but it’s really at the lowest level. A step above it you have the divorce lawyers, who lobby to get changes made to family law that will be good for business. If you think about family law from a strictly business perspective, there are two ways to increase profits. The first is increasing volume, and the second increasing fees. Essentially, you can have something akin to a fast food restaurant or, on the other hand, an expensive restaurant with $200 bottles of wine. Maybe you can do both, but it’s kind of a hard act to juggle too many different cases at once, according to guys I’ve spoken with who practice family law. If you want to go the McDivorce route, you’ll want the law to make divorces easier to obtain and simpler to finalize so you can plow through them. If you want to do it the other way, you’ve got to raise the stakes by encouraging high alimony payouts and huge settlements. Thanks to tireless work on their own behalf, divorce lawyers have managed to make both options available, so divorce has truly been democratized and rendered quite profitable for those in the business.

Above divorce lawyers there are businessmen and politicians. The politicians can use feminism to shore up their support from women, Social Conservatism to shame men into voting against their own interests and chivalry to excuse unconstitutional laws like VAWA. Of course, there’s money and power – and apparently sex – in all that for them as well. More social programs for women allow for better patronage networks and stronger coalitions that give them an edge in reelections. They have focus groups, lobbyists and advisors who conspire with them to pass the necessary bills and attain the funds.

The businessmen, being all about the money, are constantly competing on the basis of profit. There are a number of ways to increase profit, chief among them being increasing sales and lowering costs. Now, imagine that you could knock down wages by a huge influx of labor (working women), and simultaneously increase sales by pumping up female consumerism. Any businessman who failed to take advantage of this would lose out to those that did. So of course businesses jumped on the feminist bandwagon and started hiring women and pitching as many products to as many women as possible. However, business has started to hit a brick wall, in part due to the very nature of their new workers and consumers. This appears to make business the weakest link in the national conspiracy.

As demonstrated above, plenty of people benefited from the social trends that have increasingly burdened men over the last several decades. So is it at all surprising that so many have struggled – both openly and behind the scenes – to implement this brave new world? If squeezing working and middle class men – a minority of some 25% of the population – meant more money, privilege and power for everyone else, someone was bound to take advantage of that at some point. Aggravating the situation is the fact that America doesn’t face any credible existential threats anymore, so there’s really no reason to appease the men who would defend her.

So viewed from a strictly objective perspective, our pain was their gain [This is one reason Social Conservatism has been such a thorn in our sides -- our pain was elevated by this mutant philosophy to some kind of Sacred Duty, despite all manner of treachery and abuse]. However, there always comes a point where things just start to break down. You work a horse too hard and he might get a stress injury that cripples him for life. You beat the living daylights out of a dog on a regular basis and he’ll start to bite. The same can be said for men who have too much weight on their backs. In fact, I am convinced that this economic stimulus is simply cover for the dimishing returns we are getting from heaping ever more on the backs of America’s men. It’s a stopgap that won’t work, because this country has become a money pit where investments get you little more than landfills brimming with discarded women’s shoes and last year’s cell phones.

All of this came about because this was a strategy pursued by a grand coalition. It may not have been articulated clearly by one source, or even coherently articulated anywhere, but it was in fact a success, and it has only recently started to fray a little bit around the edges. But it is starting to look a bit shabby – especially to men – and there are hints that it could unravel in earnest.

So far, men have responded to a strategic war waged against their interests with tactics. Game has emerged as possibly the most effective tactic of all, and has started to put the brakes on the complete subjugation of masculinity in the Anglosphere by serving as an effective tool for release as well as parrying the barrage of assaults on masculinity. In this sense Game is necessary, but it isn’t enough. There are other tactics, to be sure, but mostly they consist of dodging the frontal assault — avoiding marriage, strict contraceptive practices, and beating the quick retreat have become de rigueur for the quick-witted man with an eye to self-preservation. However, we are, for the most part, entirely lacking in strategy.

Men are still reeling from the body-blows inflicted by feminism, backed up by complicit politics and spirituality. On the one hand you have a Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy or Joe Biden with perfectly coiffed gray hair, and on the other you have a Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker who are cut from the same cloth. At this point it would be entirely reasonable to assume that the tactics of self-preservation and gratification are all that is left to the typical man.

However, there is one very important factor that has been ignored by pretty much everyone involved: the ultimate destruction of the male economic and political base will undermine America’s ability to project economic and military power across the world. A nation of emasculated, impoverished men that is run only by the likes of Oprah, Obama and Hillary Clinton is a true paper tiger. In time, it will become so weak that even the crushed men under its jurisdiction will have renewed power, if only because they have been entirely disenfranhcised and therefore have nothing left to lose. Whether they have the will to do anything about it is another issue, but the opportunity will definitely present itself.

The question this presents is what strategy men will begin to pursue. Will it be endless self-gratification, hedonism and dissipation until the entire edifice crumbles around us? Perhaps, but given what we’ve put up with so far it doesn’t seem as though that is a true expression of our nature. In fact, I’m pretty sure that many of us will rise to the occasion and redefine what our civilization means. It certainly won’t be a walk in the park to do so, but men crave challenges, and I think there are still enough of us up to it. And either way, imagine the spoils of victory. What man in his right mind would deny the fruits of a better society? Certainly neither alpha nor beta.

Fortunately, we have already done the hard work. Men have gone the extra mile, we have given up the shirts on our backs, and we have turned the other cheek. We have lost our wealth, our labor and our very pride. As bitter as the process may have been, we have gained something far grander than these ephemeral marks of stability and respectability: true freedom of will. We have finally rubbed the sand out of our eyes and started to see that many of the duties demanded of us are impossible (not to mention undesirable) to fulfill, and that there are other options.

This suggests a very simple and effective strategy: Spread The Word. As more and more men wake up to the fact that they have better choices, the old attitudes and coercive systems designed to keep us in our place will prove to be little more than a bump on the road rather than the invincible walls so many of us see them as today. In fact, more and more of us have begun to adopt this strategy, and this should be very encouraging; a revolution always starts with The Word.

Our goal – emancipation of men – is already clear, and the fog is beginning to lift and reveal the path toward that goal. All that remains is to put on our boots, strike camp, and get on our way.