Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're looking
at a report called the Architecture of Stasis.
And I have to say, the central idea is, well,
it's pretty cynical. It is cynical, but the source
argues it's also incredibly functional. Functional
how? The argument is that the intense red versus
blue conflict we see everywhere is... effectively
a simulation. A simulation. Yeah, like a live
fire exercise. And it's designed for one reason,
to neutralize the political will of the bottom
90 % of the population. So the gridlock is a
containment strategy. You keep the 90 % fighting
each other so they can't challenge the top 10%.
Exactly. And the report breaks down two main
ways this is done, the division of labor and
the division of subsidy. Okay, let's start with
the division of labor. The report goes way back
to 1894. The Pullman strike. Right, with George
Pullman, the rail car guy. And he hires African
-American men, many of them former slaves, to
be porters. But it wasn't just about filling
jobs, was it? No, not at all. The report says
he was intentionally creating a racialized service
caste, a hierarchy. Which set up the wedge. The
perfect wedge. Because when the white railway
workers formed their union, they actually wrote
it into their constitution to exclude the black
porters. So when they went on strike for better
wages, Pullman just he used the excluded black
workers as strike breakers. He turned them against
each other. It's that idea of the psychological
wage. Exactly. The white workers got paid less
in actual money, but they were paid in status
and whiteness as property. They chose that over
economic solidarity. And the report argues we
are still running that same playbook. Which,
I guess, leads to the second mechanism, the division
of subsidy. Yeah, this is about what the report
calls the upside down welfare state. Okay, break
that down for me. It's pretty simple, actually.
The people who need government help the least
get the most. It's just branded differently.
You mean like social welfare versus corporate
welfare? Precisely. So if you get something like
SNAP benefits, it's very visible. It's stigmatized
as a handout. It's dependency. Right. But then
you look at something like the mortgage interest
deduction. Which is a huge subsidy for homeowners
who are generally more affluent. A massive subsidy.
But we call it tax relief. It's seen as smart,
not dependent. And that makes the working class
angry at the poor for taking their tax money.
Instead of looking up at the massive wealth extraction
happening above them, it keeps the 90 % fighting
over crumbs. Which creates what the report calls
the twin four fives. The engineered 45 % versus
45 % deadlock. So neither side can ever get a
real majority to change the system. And the report
uses an allegory for this that I actually remember.
The old web series, red versus blue. Yeah, it's
a great metaphor. The setting is a place called
Blood Gulch. The box canyon. Mm -hmm. And you
have these two teams of soldiers trapped in this
canyon fighting an endless, pointless war over
a flag in the middle. A flag that has zero actual
value. None. And then you get the twist. They're
simulation troopers. The whole thing is fake.
The war is being orchestrated by a figure they
call the director. Representing the top 10%.
Exactly. As long as red hates blue and blue hates
red, no one ever thinks to look up and ask who
built the canyon. Wow. That is a bleak image.
So if we're all just soldiers in the box, does
the report offer any way out? It does. It points
to what it calls a third force. The exhausted
majority. The 90 percent, the people who are
just tired of the simulation and are ready to
stop fighting. It mentions reclaiming the white
stripe on the flag. Right. Not as the empty void
of capital, but as a blank slate, a space for
real solidarity. A recognition that most of us
are on the same team, economically speaking.
At the end of the day, yeah. Well. That is a
lot to think about. I guess we'll just leave
you with this question then. The next time you
find yourself angry at the other side, ask yourself,
are you fighting for the flag? Or are you just
running drills for the director? Thanks for diving
in with us.