The Four Vectors

Trump's Shock and Awe is going to hell in a basket.

I’m going to miss tomorrow’s massive protest march (I was tear-gassed in 1969, so I’m good). As an act of service, I have retreated to my cabin, where I take calls to talk people off the cliff.

“Remember your feet, and now breathe.”

My friend Don kept me sane after Karen passed, so now it was my turn. Don had stumbled upon Peter Thiel, the PayPal Mafia behind J.D. Vance, and the “Dark Enlightenment” that seeks to control the world.

Here’s the Facebook post that freaked Don out:

If you're a little confused about what Musk is trying to achieve with DOGE, here's the breakdown:

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel cofounded a company that became PayPal.

Other executives at PayPal went on to found or lead other huge tech companies including YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Affirm, and many VC firms.

This group became known as the PayPal mafia because they exerted an outsized influence on Silicon Valley.

Peter Thiel mentored a young JD Vance and helped him get set up in his first VC firm.

Peter Thiel and the PayPal mafia funded JD Vance's successful Senate run. Amazing because he had absolutely zero political experience.

Thiel and Musk all but forced Trump to choose JD Vance as VP in exchange for funding his presidential campaign.

The three of them, plus a lot of other tech billionaires subscribe to an ideology called the Dark Enlightenment espoused by this super weird, creepy dude: Curtis Yarvin aka Mencius Moldbug.

Yarvin preaches that the media and academia represent "The Cathedral" that secretly controls power and must be dismantled.

He advocates for a corporate run, monarchy, led by a CEO-Dictator.

Says that Democracy is an "outdated software" and openly opposes it and that:

- Government agencies should be dismantled and The U.S. should be broken up into "patchworks" controlled by tech oligarchs.

- That the elite tech billionaires should rule because they have the intelligence to "fix" society

- That the "masses are asses" too dumb to govern themselves.

The strategy is to gut the government via R.A.G.E - Retire All Govt Employees to make government incapable of operating.

Then to replace government with private corporations.

To eliminate elections because they are "obsolete"

To use distraction and chaos to prevent public resistance.

Trump is their useful tool to be disposed of as soon as they can wrest control.

This is why Elon wears a black MAGA hat. They are not Trump supporters, they are "Dark MAGA"

This isn't a hypothetical. The plan is already in motion:

- Musk, Thiel, and their network are actively dismantling democratic institutions.

- JD Vance, the “MAGA heir,” is being positioned to help implement this transition.

- The public is too distracted to realize what’s happening.

- If successful, democracy in America will be permanently replaced by a corporate-run authoritarian state.

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DON: “Bruce… Unfortunately, this post makes total sense! But how to stop them? I can’t see a way out short of divine intervention.”

At least once a day, I pull out my handy Four Vectors diagram:

BRUCE: “Don, you’re just looking at one vector, Malice. Yes, the pain and suffering are horrifying. Remember, the shock-and-awe was designed to overwhelm, but their ammunition is running dry.

“In every political moment, there are four vectors: Malice, Resistance, Incompetence, and Hazard.

“Initially, Democratic Resistance looked like a deer in the headlights. But within a few days, there were thirty lawsuits. Today, we are at 167 suits against Trump’s agenda. Further, something flipped this week when Cory Booker stood at the Senate podium for 25 hours.

My friend, Cindalou, wrote me tonight:

CINDI: “Oy vey, my friend. Craaazzy-ass upside down times these are! Can’t wait to catch up. Maybe you can talk me off the cliff of my near-constant state of existential crisis 😵‍💫.

I gave my stock response.

BRUCE: “Cindi, the “four vectors” is how I talk people off the cliff. Everyone is freaked by the non-stop exercise of Malice, but three other forces conspire in each moment. Initially, Resistance was nowhere to be seen amid the capitulation, but now people are showing up (federal lawsuits, Sen. Booker, protests).

“Musk will retreat any day with his tail between his legs because his plummeting stock risks a life-changing margin call on all his TSLA-backed loans. And why? Mothers with placards and strollers showed up at all 276 Tesla dealerships, making buying one of his cars all but impossible. A little bit of vandalism didn’t hurt. And don’t forget, the New Year was ushered in with a Cyber Truck blowing up in front of Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. In the movies, this is called foreshadowing:

“It’s all changing so fast. We think of time as a minute hand going around a clock, but the experience of time is an expression of the collective psyche. Humanity doesn’t have the appetite for a four-year grind through the fuckery — one shoe after another will quickly drop.

In the last few hours:

“JP Morgan says a global recession is imminent, Vietnam wants to deal, a judge ruled research grants must continue, California’ hopes to bypass the federal government with its own trade agreements, China is retaliating with a 34% tariff (up from current 7.5%) Judge Boasberg will hold the Trump administration in contempt, Pete Hegseth will be investigated by the Pentagon, Trump started re-bombing Houthis today to distract from the stock market, Sen. Grassley will sponsor a bill to give Congress authority over tariffs (a little late?), the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to block Canadian tariffs, a new app warns migrants of ICE activity (and ICE is not happy), Trump’s deal to save TikTok collapsed by pissing off China, Sen. Rand Paul went against Trump (we’re cheering Rand? I’m confused), it was revealed that the Trump folks use Signal for lots of sensitive communications (whoops), and according to tech insider, Kara Swisher, “Several sources tell me a passel of high profile tech and also finance leaders is making a trip to Mar-a-Lago to read Trump the riot act.”

And the biggie: Five million people took to the streets coast to coast.

Get the point? For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.

“This cauldron of spontaneous action and reaction is Hazard - the Law of Unintended Consequences. The whole world, including the penguins on that remote island, suddenly hates the United States.

For an in-depth discussion of Hazard, read my post God is in the Dice.

“Cindi, the rate of change will continue to accelerate until something snaps. Hopefully, Trump’s frontotemporal lobe. I expect JD Vance to invoke the 25th Amendment during our last cocktail cruise in October. 🍹

How do we keep our hopes up?

There’s a difference between wishful thinking and the deeper, sustaining hope that outpaces the ill-fated schemes of shallow men.

My philosophic mentor, J.G. Bennett, called this Objective Hope:

This type of hope births the future. Consider an expectant mother as she gestates the next generation. She’s investing in a future that is bigger than her immediate life. This is a kind of Soul Hope — not Seductress Hope.

She paints the baby’s room, studies cribs, collects hand-me-downs, talks to moms, takes vitamins, and thinks about names. She's creating a space for the future to come in, and that’s why people revere her as she glides into a yoga class with her belly resplendent. She wields the superpower of the literal future. How cool is that?

According to JG Bennett:

“Objective, conscious hope has nothing to do with expectation, thinking tomorrow will be better than today... real hope has no negative.

“It is the dawning in us that a higher power is favorable to us… and this is an extraordinary thing when it really begins to happen to us. Nothing else cures the loneliness of the human being. It is with this that we become aware that we are not alone. This is a joyful feeling or a thankful feeling.

“It is not really possible for our ordinary self to have true hope. But when you know there is cosmic hope, that we have our place in this hope, you begin to be aware that there is a higher power that cares for you and me.”1

The Czech Republic and Ukraine used to be under the thumb of the USSR — way worse than Executive Orders, which go poof.

Remarkably, behind the Iron Curtain, it was theater people who became the lightning rods for Hope.

Václav Havel, Czechoslovakia’s first democratically elected president, also came from the theater. He first rose to prominence as a playwright, creating absurdest works to criticize the Communist system. After several stints in prison for his activism, he played a major role in the Velvet Revolution that toppled the Communist system. He was elected president in 1989 and was re-elected in a landslide.

Havel saw Objective Hope as distinct from wishful thinking and enthusiasm (seductive hope). He wrote:

“Complete skepticism is an understandable consequence of discovering that one’s enthusiasms are based on illusion. This skepticism leads to a dehumanization of history — a history drifting somewhere above us, taking its own course, having nothing to do with us, trying to cheat us, destroy us, playing out its cruel jokes.”

He explained that actively engaging hope takes place in real time:

“If bringing back some human dimension to the world depends on anything, it depends on how we acquit ourselves in the here and now.”

And here is the Havel kicker, where I am trying to live:

“The kind of hope I often think about is, I believe, a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. Hope is not a prognostication — it’s an orientation of the spirit. Each of us must find real, fundamental hope within ourselves. You can’t delegate that to anyone else.”

Consider how these theater people, Zelensky and Havel, carried the banner of hope for their people. It seems odd, but theater people live and breathe the dramatic arc. They understand that the barriers to realization are not imposed by the enemy but rather reside within the protagonist.

Greek philosophers and playwrights understood how life unfolds through shocks, barriers, openings, and transformations — described in drama as exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.

Before becoming president, Volodymyr Zelensky was a theater person.

He created a film production company, which included a TV series in which he played a Ukrainian president.

When theater people become leaders, they know how to plot the long game. Transformation is baked into their view of life. Unlike traditional politicians who only know transactional politics, the playwright has the fortitude to wait for the villain to make his ill-fated move.

The Russian dissident Alexei Navalny understood “long hope.” After a horrific poisoning, he voluntarily returned to Russia to be incarcerated for years in a brutal gulag, where he paid the ultimate price. Navalny will live eternally as Russia’s protagonist for freedom. This is his long game of Objective Hope.

Inspired by Havel, Zelensky, and Navalny, my wish is to carve out a new chapter – to generate value and bring it back to life.

Havel was quite explicit:

“It is this hope, above all, that gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours, here and now. In the face of this absurdity, life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love, and, finally, without hope.”

I recently staged the ultimate expression of Objective Hope — Georgia’s Next Leaders. Without a trace of cynicism, these bushy-tailed young people were fired up to bring an ethical political world into being. You can donate a few bucks here.

My recent Georgia’s Next Leaders event offered a master class in Objective Hope amid the political fuckery of the adults running our country.