A Kinder, Polite, Establishment Type

Steven Cleghorn
4 min readJul 19, 2024

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Underneath the stylized bluster of the current Republican zeitgeist, it’s business as usual, and if their guy gets reelected, things will carry on much as they are now.

Rinse and repeat at the Democratic National Convention.

Apparently, this is what political focus groups, when asked if they would vote for someone other than Joe Biden, said they wanted:

1. A Centrist
2. A stabilizing, non-chaotic force
3. A decent and civil person

In other words, a firmly “establishment” candidate who supports the agenda of the usual corporate power players and their “agency” protectors who run the country. How does this solve any of the problems that persist administration after administration?

Some of us refer to the disastrous circumstances we have been in for decades as the metacrisis, characterized by war, anthropogenic climate change or earth ecosystems destruction, growing economic inequality, the powerlessness of people, a potentially catastrophic artificial general intelligence arms race, energy crisis, limited material resources, looming world war three, a new global nuclear arms race, mental health and on and on.

We are far from the best of all possible worlds. Oh, and too many of us believe aliens or God Almighty are waiting in the wings to save us at the last minute after decades, no, thousands of years of horrific trials and tribulations. Modernity’s tortures are simply more addictive and entertaining and make us feel more comfortable and self-righteous—if we are lucky, i.e., born in the right place, time, and circumstances to take advantage of all the bells and whistles.

Has there not been enough horror, and is there not enough atrociousness now?

The problems we are facing are structural and systemic. We are living in a crisis in education and our worldview. We have lost our connection with GREAT NATURE.

Groupthink and motivated reasoning characterize The Players and their Professional Clerks and Minions. To The Players, the Plebs and Proles are simply a nuisance to be toyed with.

And let me be clear, The Players know not what they do anymore than you do, they are only “Lucky” as stated above. They were born with opportunities and eventually encountered pathways to Club membership.

The Uber Wealthy want Transhumanism, “The Singularity,” Accelerationism, and a rewilded “Country Club Earth” without so many deplorable, useless consumers. Their ethics and philosophies require them to gamble the fate of solar systems and not merely terrestrial material resources, cannon fodder, and ecosystems while playing the geopolitical Great Game Reboot. The war, disease, and distraction economy is just a means to an end.

They want to replace biological life with machines. How ironic that people in the Age of Discovery and The Enlightenment thought all life save human life was “mechanical,” that humans were endowed by their creator with a soul, and that all the living systems we depend on were only sustenance to be exploited by elites endowed with divine rights.

And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

Ultimately, the arrogant fools who purport to lead us desire immortality and the opportunity to compete among themselves in a luxurious, well-mannered Greater Game where they still risk little as they measure their elite status—the only quantity that matters.

I would be happier with a benevolent and civil leader willing to take the world in entirely new directions.

Our way of life no longer produces courageous leaders who understand deeply how the world works.

Our culture has so poorly conditioned people that they no longer have the consciousness to recognize what they need. People don’t understand how pathological business as usual is.

We need to suck it up and find the courage to change some of the ways we do things, or the future is going to be unfathomably painful.

Unfortunately, the kinds of leaders we need now are not allowed to play in our current political system; they would never be admitted to the club.

We need a new culture, the development of which is the most challenging endeavor imaginable.

We have all the tools to reengage with Great Nature and create a new world with a culture subservient to and in harmony with it. However, in all its glory, Great Nature is a complex emergent system that few are willing to comprehend.

No one listens anymore.

Turn away from the clown show and its audience of addicts and embrace a new, exciting, and life-affirming adventure of building a healthy new culture everyone can participate in and be proud of.

Somehow, we must show the establishment that we are doing something else.

I have a dream.

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Steven Cleghorn
Steven Cleghorn

Written by Steven Cleghorn

I'm an autodidact, skeptic, raconteur, and a former producer at The Muse Films Ltd. I learn from nature while I can. I love Life.