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Everyone should internalize Chor Pharn Law: “If you know who you are, you get a civilizational war, if you don’t know who you are, you get a culture war.” Single most useful idea for analyzing contemporary geopolitics I’ve encountered in years. Now I think it’s equally useful for domestic politics.
We’re seeing this get fractally extended to US domestic level in real time. We’re no longer in “culture war.” At least on Trump-Musk side, there’s a phase shift to civ war, because they now “know who they are.” Democrats are still figuring out who they are, and so are in an ineffectual, tired culture-war mode. Sitting ducks. Still fighting Trump 1.0.
Civ war is more literally war-like. Culture war really isn’t “war” as such. It’s low-intensity endemic, opportunistic conflict focused on optics theater and social humiliation, not targeted gains. Heightened noise/chaos level. A kind of combative slacktivism where both sides are still hoping to avoid an existential war but keeping up cross-border skirmishes that don’t penetrate deep. War proper is more disciplined, focused, and calm, since persuasion and trash-talking are now secondary to serious, planned assaults and “military work” deep inside “enemy territory.”
My old Internet of Beefs essay is no longer an appropriate frame. We’re past that and into modern total war.
Nils Gilman recently argued we’re headed towards Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. I don’t think this is quite right. There will be way more than the 6-7 true civilization scale combatants. What we’ll see is civilizational war tone but fractally across scales, with hundreds of weakly coordinated combatants, not 6-7. Including domestic. It is possible to have a “civilizational war” at the scale of a town hall. The last war of this sort was probably the 30 years war, with feudal courts choosing between Protestant and Catholic confessions. Low-grade “culture war” (pamphlet war) spiraled into all-on-all military conflict along a civilization-to-town-hall span schism.
But the mode of conflict is different. Imagine if Protestants in the 30y war had adopted high-tempo Golden Horde tactics. Bullshit and knightly posturing get replaced by deliberate lying/feints (= light cavalry maneuvering) for tactical deception. Assaults on USAID and universities (via obscure vulnerabilities like indirect costs) etc resemble events like Hulagu destroying Nizari (“assassin”) base at Alamut or destroying the library at Baghdad, not superficial Twitter beefing. Casual skirmishes get replaced by calculated construction of piles of severed heads (= mass firings) to horrify other cities into submission. Entire rivers are diverted (funding attacks). Foreign policy reduces to implacable demands for surrender.
John Robb’s “open-source insurgency” entity is now in steppe nomad conquest mode. It’s no longer cross-border raids. It’s like a Genghis or Timur campaign across a global institutional landscape. Complete with a supply chain (project 2025).
We’re reading about steppe-nomad empires in my book club right now, and the parallels to Musk/doge tactics are uncanny (though Trump is no Genghis). One analogy that occurred to me: The internet is the steppes, and the warriors are under continuous partial inebriation. Nomads were perma-buzzed on qumis (fermented mare’s milk). In the case of the doge forces, it’s social media feeds. Calling it “disinformation” or “conspiracy theories” is to miss the function. It’s neither about inbound intel nor outbound FUD. It’s qumis to stay buzzed and motivated while you move fast. Orientation by alcohol.
Not surprisingly, several people have recently pinged me wanting to talk about OODA/Tempo. Those are the right tools, except the defenders mostly don’t realize they’re in a civ war yet. There’s a lot of ludicrous “culture war” misanalysis on display. That constitutional checks/courtroom defenses are holding. That the flurry of action and reversals proves its action theater rather than action. That podcasts matter.
Posting on substack because it’s at least uneasily neutral. Regardless of your sympathies, this is going to be a purely negative sum war. It can’t be stopped but perhaps shortened and damage-controlled.