/lit/ - Literature

>>12661656
>the divine right of kings really isn't such a crazy idea, in a sense. having one guy that people look to when things go wrong, a guy responsible for the patch, means that power is diffused and de-romanticized, so that governance is a thing that makes sense.
i guess i should explain this. what i mean is a couple of different things. ideally, your leader is really just the CEO, or more appropriately the CFO. for Moldbug and others the DRoK seems to be appealing because when you put a crown on someone's head, Shit Is Now On Them, and they cannot simply vanish into clouds of party rhetoric. if things go well it's good, and if they go badly it's not, but either way people have someone - *you* - to hold accountable. one guy, making decisions, and perhaps quaking in fear and trembling for the awesome responsibility he has. said guy is hopefully going to surround himself with people who know things, such that things are as sensible as they can be. this also is good. but ultimately, heavy is the head that wears the crown.

and yet because of this it stands to reason that the ideal of governance would be not much more interesting than a board meeting, except with the caveat that said board meetings don't in the end become Shadow Cabals of Secret Power and other stuff that drives adventure-pulp novels. we seem to have in us some attitude about governance that is hard-wired to think politics means revolution and that that is the point of it. it's very weird, but it's almost like if power *isn't* being abused or isn't becoming intoxicating then something has gone wrong.

the CCP is for that reason kind of interesting, because it's like an arms race of mediocrity. this book is boring as fuck to read, which suggests to me that Xi really has a handle on what he is doing, because when you make things really boring i think it's way easier to get people to do what you want than by trying to seduce or excite them with romantic fantasies. this isn't to say that he doesn't have Big Plans, it's just that he isn't *talking* about them, because to talk about them and give impassioned speeches is to set people up almost inevitably for disappointment. and so you get a nice little boring team of other guys, and kind of put a pleasant face on it all. ofc i'm pretty sure there is in fact plenty of intrigue going on - see Bo Xilai and others - but that's not the look you want to present to the shareholders, ie the people.

owing to the way we are in the West this may simply not be possible, esp given the present political climate. Trump offered the 1980s redux and people liked that. Bernie is offering the 1970s redux and next year people may want that. we are always seduced by nostalgia. what to my mind would be the best of all would be the demythologization and disenchantment of politics in general, such that we might take a greater interest in a post-political world altogether...

Has anyone read it?

I have an interest in reading it.