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Notes -
"Defense in Depth" means something very different in the cyber versus the traditional military context.
It's a real shame that the term was re-used but then also redefined. So, unfortunately, I think your analysis is confused and self-contradictory not because of a failure of your personal construction, but because the terms and the concepts underlying them can't be swapped out as easily as you may have assumed.
Directly answering your intro question - hard no. Conspiracy theories about the all-powerfulness of the amorphous "intel" cabal of the USA I always dismiss out of hand because the axiomatic assumption underpinning it is that they're all powerful. "Could an all powerful entity do ... stuff!?" Yes, yes it could.
The sad fact of the matter is that the really cooky progressive stuff is the result of a Long March through the institutions paired with the kind of narcissism that can only result from the most prosperous generation of all time (boomers) failing to introduce their children (millennials) to reality. If you grow up richer than all other humans and never leave the suburban never-never land (even into college), tinker belle starts talking about polyamory, and then everyone starts calling your green tights gay, then, yeah, maybe cheering for the Islamic Death Cult helps you work through those emotions.
Phrased differently; social progressivism is make believe that has survived as a political ideology only briefly. Remember, 10 years ago we were in lame duck Obama years and looking at an at the time probable Bush-Clinton 2: Electric Boogaloo contest in 2016. Then the Orange rolled down the escalator and changed the game. 10 years in politics / social ideologies isn't nothing, but it isn't that long. The hard left is dying quickly before our eyes (big caveat here: the overton window has been shifted so much that the non-hard left is still pretty nuts.)
MAGA types are going to take multiple victory laps as the hard left continues to decline, but they've problems of their own. If the hard left is political make believe, the hard right is nihilistic fatalism. We had Walt Bismarck around these parts not too long along. Reading his substack is both worth it and difficult. Worth it in that a lot of his highlighted problems are very real and very well analyzed. Difficult because a lot of the solutions are heavily caveated "...but, even still, I don't think society is recoverable."
Looking in the mirror, earlier this week or last week, I got called out for unintentionally recommending a Benedict Option. That one made me think. Nihilism and fatalism aren't self-sustaining ideologies for obvious reasons. Worse, they don't actually cultivate pro-social and pro-growth behavior in a constituency. I saw a funny thing during the heart of the pandemic; my progressive friends were barricaded in doors wearing their CBRN costumes during zoom meetings - they mostly got a little fat, posted on Twitter more, and got good at home brewing anxiety. My MAGA friends stayed outside, went to spring break --- and got constantly shitfaced without a second thought. They definitely "owned the libs" at their end of the world party. And now, even those who think Trump: Deuces Wild is inevitably going to premier in November walk around very much like a doomsday cult that had their D-Day come and go without the rapture and are now feeling empty, fearful, and unprepared.
And none of this is the real threat to America.
Because that's China.
I’m gonna sort of disagree on the causes, and I think it’s a misunderstanding of how powerful things like culture and education are. I don’t think it’s a cabal deliberately trying to create divisions, but I do think the cathedral is.
Just to take your Islam example. The cathedral wants them accepted because they need worker drones and Muslim immigrants are it. Having other people rag on them for being different is bad for business and national Stability. There’s a lot of ways to go about making Islam less dangerous-seeeming. Put Muslims on TV as good people, or victims. Don’t educate people on what the religion is really like, don’t teach people about the Hadiths especially the violent ones. And add in the culture memes of diversity and inclusion and religion not being a serious thing, and you’ve got kids who think they can simply try out Islam.
I don’t necessarily agree that the right is nihilistic. I think the left has some of those tendencies, but not really on the right. The Benedict Option isn’t nihilistic in the least, in fact the main conceit of the BO is exactly that the white Christian community is worth sacrificing to save. A nihilist would look at a culture like ours not aligned with the good life and not care about it. They wouldn’t care if John decides to become Jill because it doesn’t matter, it’s another life choice in a sea of other unimportant life choices. Nihilism means nothing matter so do what you want to do.
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