Quotulatiousness

May 13, 2026

“Electoral authoritarian” regimes

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

eugyppius points out that the reflexive descriptions of the former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government as “electoral authoritarian” fail to note just how authoritarian the rest of the EU’s national governments have become:

this description of an “electoral authoritarian” regime applies far more aptly to Germany than to Hungary. What did Orbán do, defund a few NGOs? meanwhile our police, intelligence agencies & state media have all collaborated for years to keep the opposition out of power.

And after some harumphing from the cheap seats, he followed up with:

Various people are clapping back at this, so let me tell you what is happen in liberal democratic non-authoritarian Germany:

– Getting raided by police, charged with speech crimes, etc. because you post online is a professional risk, I personally know various people to whom this has happened and I live my life with a bunch of opsec annoyances for the day it happens to me.

– State media coordinates with intelligence agencies to smear and harass not only the political opposition but their prominent supporters, for example by doxxing them, getting them fired, subjecting them to harassment.

– The state funds a vast “civil society” network of violent street thugs to intimidate the political opposition and also anybody identified by state-sanctioned ops like those detailed in the above item. Opposition party congresses, other events routinely disrupted by coordinated civil society protests, where the local population is sympathetic (as in many east German venues) they bus in protesters from the west and the big cities to create the necessary atmosphere.

– Domestic intelligence agencies use espionage methods to surveil and compromise the political opposition; among other things they pay informants, tap telephones, read emails, and so on. We’ve had various indications that materials gathered in these operations are then used for state media smear campaigns.

– Yes, domestic intelligence openly coordinates with state media and certain private media elements too. Various aspects of political coverage in Germany are staged by secretive unelected bureaucrats.

– Procedural rules, other laws are routinely changed in ad hoc ways to disadvantage political opposition, though we haven’t had any outright gerrymandering like in the US so that means Our Democracy is safe. 👍

And:

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things. I’ve spent years documenting this shit on my blog and literally none of the present Hungary hyperventilators have ever given the slightest shit. Orbán was a guy who observed the Euro freak show as it is manifested in countries like Germany and tried in a kind of inept half-hearted way to imitate this machine from the right, the results were ridiculous and transparent and like 25% as effective as what the German state gets up to but nevertheless all these clowns confronted with a hint of their own methods started shrieking about FaSciSm.

May 11, 2026

Were the Nazis socialists?

Filed under: Germany, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

If you’re ever bored and want to kick off an argument online, you can take either side of this statement and watch the signal-to-noise ratio drop precipitously. The NSDAP, the Nazis, began as one of the many, many groups of angry young Germans in the days after the end of the First World War. The full name of the party — the National Socialist German Worker’s Party — indicates who the original party founders thought would be the engine of their political rise. They were explicitly anti-communist, as the spectre of the Russian Revolution terrified many Germans, but German socialism was still within the Overton Window of political debate.

Lots of arguments about this one.

Many people assume Nazis could not have been socialists, despite all the time and energy they devoted to jumping up and down screaming “We are socialists!”, because they were “right-wing” and socialism is supposed to be “left-wing”.

Except “right-wing” and “left-wing” don’t have rigid definitions outside the context of the French revolution. In any other context, they’re just a metaphor.

So why did the NATIONAL Socialist German Workers’ Party and the INTERNATIONAL Marxist-Leninist Socialist Workers’ Movement hate each other so much?

It’s pretty obvious when you look at the names.

National.

International.

To Nazis, the race and culture of a people are everything. They are what the state is supposed to represent. Ein Volk, as they would say. The purpose of Nazi socialism is to control capital assets, subordinating them to the will and welfare of the ethnostate.

But Marxist-Leninists seek to abolish all ethnostates. They are a globalist movement, seeking to place all capital assets under the control of a universal proletariat in theory, which is in practice represented by one world government.

Thus, Nazis sought to use socialist policies for the welfare of the German people and Marxist-Leninists seek to abolish “German” as a meaningful distinction, along with all other cultures.

The antipathy between Nazis and communists was a sectarian struggle within socialism. Same methods, but different sacred groups.

Since the defeat of National Socialism by International Socialism in WW2, all modern socialism is pretty much of the international variety.

This does, however, suggest that there is a contrast between National Capitalism and International Capitalism as well.

Which is the source of the current sectarian struggle between elements of the American right wing.

Update, 12 May: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

May 10, 2026

How to Make Nazi Germany Look Normal – Death of Democracy 15 – Q4 1936

Filed under: Germany, History, Sports — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two and Spartacus Olsson
Published 9 May 2026

How did Hitler use the 1936 Berlin Olympics to make Nazi Germany look peaceful — while preparing the country for war?

Berlin, September 30, 1936. Under the Olympic flame, Nazi Germany staged one of the most successful propaganda spectacles of the twentieth century. Foreign visitors saw order, ceremony, technology, pageantry, and athletic triumph. But behind the facade, the regime hid antisemitic persecution, rounded up Sinti and Roma, intensified police repression, intervened in the Spanish Civil War, and moved toward a massive new war economy.

In this episode, Spartacus Olsson looks back at the third quarter of 1936: the Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens’ victories, Hitler’s secret war memorandum, the Four-Year Plan, Nazi propaganda, Germany’s growing involvement in Spain, and the dictatorship’s attempt to sell peace to the world while preparing for conquest.

The Olympics gave Hitler international validation. The Four-Year Plan revealed what he truly intended.

In this episode:
– How Nazi Germany sanitized Berlin before the Olympic Games
– How the regime temporarily hid antisemitic violence from foreign visitors
– How Sinti and Roma were forced out of sight before the Games
– How Jesse Owens challenged Nazi racial mythology on the track
– How Hitler moved Germany toward a war economy
– How the Four-Year Plan tied German recovery to rearmament
– How Germany’s intervention in Spain marked a new stage of escalation
– How propaganda, spectacle, and controlled media helped normalize dictatorship

This is not just a story about the 1936 Olympics. It is a story about how authoritarian regimes use spectacle, national pride, media control, and international complacency to hide what they are becoming.

Never Forget.

May 8, 2026

How Hitler Wasted Germany’s Deadliest Weapon – Nazi Rearmament 01 – U-Boat Type VIIC

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two and Spartacus Olsson
Published 7 May 2026

Early in World War II, German U-boats came dangerously close to starving Britain into submission. The Type VII submarine — especially the VIIC — became the backbone of the Kriegsmarine‘s Atlantic campaign, sinking thousands of Allied ships and threatening to win the Battle of the Atlantic.

But despite its devastating effectiveness, the U-boat war ultimately failed — and not just because of Allied countermeasures.

In this documentary, Spartacus Olsson breaks down how Adolf Hitler’s strategic miscalculations, competing naval doctrines, and direct interference undermined Germany’s most effective naval weapon. From the clandestine development of submarines after the Treaty of Versailles, through Admiral Karl Dönitz’s vision of a tonnage war, to the catastrophic losses of German submariners, this episode examines how Nazi rearmament translated into wartime reality — and failure.

Featuring detailed analysis of Type VII design, production, deployment, and combat performance, this video reveals how industrial limitations, political priorities, and technological shifts turned a war-winning weapon into a death trap.

This standalone episode complements the Death of Democracy series by showing what Hitler actually did with Germany’s rearmament- and why it fell short.

May 3, 2026

How to Declare a Live Person Legally Dead – Death of Democracy 14 – Q2 1936

Filed under: Economics, Germany, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two and Spartacus Olsson
Published 2 May 2026

In Q2 1936, Adolf Hitler consolidated power after the Rhineland gamble, tightening the machinery of dictatorship while projecting strength abroad. As Hermann Göring took control of Germany’s economic lifelines and Heinrich Himmler centralized the police, the regime accelerated its transformation into a fully integrated police state.

Behind Olympic pageantry and propaganda triumphs like Max Schmeling’s victory, the Nazi system deepened repression. Courts enforced the Nuremberg Laws with chilling logic, reducing Jewish citizens to a state of “civil death”, while Joseph Goebbels expanded total control over media and public discourse.

At the same time, Germany’s economy bent further toward war, with dwindling foreign reserves and rising dependence on autarky. Yet domestically, resistance remained minimal as propaganda, fear, and perceived stability drove growing public support.

Globally, the quarter exposed the weakness of the League of Nations during Italy’s conquest of Abyssinia, saw Léon Blum’s rise in France, and witnessed the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in Palestine — signs of a world drifting toward instability.

This episode examines how dictatorship consolidates not just through terror, but through law, economics, and consent — and why, by mid-1936, meaningful resistance inside Germany had largely vanished.

May 2, 2026

Cancelled chancellor?

Filed under: Germany, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The German Chancellor’s future looks unhappy, and eugyppius notes that even the lapdog mainstream media outlets who praised him last year are now publishing calls for his ouster:

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, 5 May 2025.
Photo by Sandro Halank for Wikimedia Commons.

Merz has always been just some loser. He’s a third-rate talentless politician and in this much like his predecessor, Olaf Scholz. Both are mere caricatures, what happens when you mimeograph overmuch the last century’s tired political styles. These kinds of chancellors will continue to exist only so long as they can be sold to the geezers of the Federal Republic’s care homes by the amateurish marketing campaigns of a complicit state media as the incarnation of far-sighted competence and (more importantly) bourgeois respectability.

Early in 2025, Merz had the chance to seize a measure of power for himself and make facts. He could have forged a deal with Alternative für Deutschland on the most important questions, established a minority government and set about force-marching the obese German state through necessary reforms. It might’ve torn his party apart, he might’ve failed, there would’ve been a huge fight, but whatever happened nobody would ever forget Chancellor Merz. Instead, the Pigeon Chancellor let a lot of deranged Antifa street protesters and screeching women with parareligious concerns about atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations dissuade him from the only reasonable path. Instead of making history, he chose to spend the first year of his chancellorship making the Social Democrats fat and happy at the expense of the nation. Most don’t even hate Merz, because hate like love has to be be earned. He inspires nothing more than mildly scornful indifference.

Everyone who was not a complete idiot knew that Merz’s mad coalition with the Social Democrats could never work. Yet the man has been lionised in the international press and even in centre-right domestic papers like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as a serious reformer. These people told us Merz would rebuild the Bundeswehr, reduce insane social spending, impose fiscal discipline, solve the migroid problem and restore economic growth. Even if the leftoid half of the German establishment press didn’t embrace all these myths, they nevertheless worked hard to make Merz seem presentable, serious and viable. He was worth a shot, he would do his best, and after the crazy Scholz years Germany was back on solid footing.

Now, in the the space of about two weeks, the entire myth of Chancellor Merz has collapsed. Major papers that used to defend his government and praise his prospects are suddenly saying it’s over. They’re writing front-page editorials in the spirit of stuff I was posting here over a year ago. Merz appears at town-hall meetings where he gets asked how he’s made life better in Germany and before he can answer the audience just laughs at his stupid ass. His coalition partners say he’s doing a terrible job. Back-benchers from his own party are calling his political strategy a failure to his face and leaking it afterwards to the press so everyone knows what they said.

Still worse, people from the Chancellery are talking to the tabloids. They’re explaining that Merz’s government has been hanging by a thread since at least last December; that his party thinks he’s a pushover whom the SPD constantly manipulates; that often Merz just absorbs the opinions of whatever person he last talked to and so his handlers have to limit his contacts to keep him from going off-message in insane ways; that Merz is now almost totally isolated, having burned through most of his close confidants; and that nobody has any solutions or ideas and increasingly everybody doubts that the Chancellor has the talents to save himself.

April 26, 2026

How to Stage (and Win) an International Crisis – Death of Democracy 13 – Q1 1936

Filed under: Germany, History — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two and Spartacus Olsson
Published 25 Apr 2026

In early 1936, Adolf Hitler took one of the greatest risks of his rule — sending German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact. It was a gamble that could have triggered immediate war. Instead, it became a turning point that transformed Hitler from a powerful dictator into a figure many Germans saw as a national savior.

In this episode of Death of Democracy, we examine how the re-militarization of the Rhineland, combined with the propaganda spectacle of the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, helped cement Hitler’s popularity at home while exposing the paralysis of Britain and France abroad. Through contemporary voices like William L. Shirer and Victor Klemperer, we explore the uneasy mix of fear, relief, and growing enthusiasm among ordinary Germans — alongside the continued escalation of repression against Jews and political opponents.

This quarter reveals a crucial dynamic: how foreign policy success, propaganda, and public sentiment fused to elevate Hitler into something approaching a political messiah — while simultaneously closing the space for resistance.

History is not inevitable — but moments like this show how easily it can be shaped.

April 25, 2026

QotD: Goethe, the lost German master

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

This was the atmosphere in which I discovered Germany. It was a minor act of defiance to choose German instead of Latin for O-level, but with hindsight I was extremely fortunate to have the choice. There were two German teachers in my grammar school of just 600 pupils. Today, even the best state schools seldom offer the subject; not one of our four children has had the opportunity that I had to study German language and, especially, literature up to the high standard that was then expected at A-level.

Today, the texts are almost all recent and appear to be chosen partly with the film of the book in mind. In particular, Goethe has disappeared from the syllabus, presumably because the language is considered too archaic. Yet I recall the immense pleasure and satisfaction of mastering a Goethe play — Egmont. The story of the dashing Dutchman and his martial defiance of the sinister Duke of Alba, the courage of his beloved, Klärchen, who fantasises in song about how wonderful it would be to be a man and fight the Spaniards — “ein Glück sondergleichen ein Mannsbild zu sein“. Somehow I even obtained an LP of Beethoven’s incidental music for Egmont: seldom heard apart from the overture, but brilliantly evoking the grandeur of the drama.

Like Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, Goethe belongs not just to German literature, but to world literature, Weltliteratur — a term he coined. I am told that even in German Gymnasien, Goethe is little studied now. He is certainly a rare bird in English schools — or even universities. It is tragic that educated people, including students of literature, so seldom encounter the greatest of Germans even in translation. We might get on better with Germany if we did.

Daniel Johnson, “How I discovered Germany”, The Critic, 2020-08-02.

April 22, 2026

“Finally authorities gave up and decided to let Timmy the Whaletard die in peace”

Filed under: Germany, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The German media has been breathlessly covering the story of a wandering whale who seems to delight in getting stranded on sandbanks along the northern coast of Germany in the Baltic Sea:

Timmy
Photo from eugyppius

Timmy is the name the German press have given to a confused humpback whale who got himself caught in a fishing net off the coast of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in early March.

Authorities cut Timmy free in the hopes that he would swim back to the Atlantic like a good whale, but instead he continued to poop around off the German Baltic coast where he does not belong, finally stranding himself on a sandbar near Niendorf like a complete fucking retard.1 An intensive rescue ensued – breathlessly livestreamed by the German press and regrettably also live-tweeted by myself. Ultimately the effort succeeded and Timmy swam free, only to strand himself again, and again, and again, and still again.

Finally authorities gave up and decided to let Timmy the Whaletard die in peace, but soon a whole raft of philanthropists and “whale whisperers” (this is literally what the press called one of them) descended on the problem and the drama of Timmy continues to this moment. The latest subplot unfolded yesterday, as our whale saviours prepared a complex scheme to lift Timmy via air cushions onto a tarp, tie him to pontoons and tug him around Denmark back into the North Atlantic. Alas, a rising tide loosened the hapless Timmy from his sandbar and he swam free, escaping this indignity at least and leaving all the whale-whispering shitheads with nothing to do but give more pointless media interviews. For two hours children across the Federal Republic jubilated as Timmy lurked aimlessly in shallow coastal waters, until of course he beached himself again, provoking a whole new narrative epicycle.

The case of Timmy the Retard Whale is oddly captivating. Most obviously it illustrates the naiveté and neotenous emotional incontinence of Germans today, many of whom have countered the pervasive secularisation of society with an exaggerated and childish faith in the overarching sacrality of the natural world and its creatures. The media have constructed a perverse Disney plot out of the endless ups and downs of Timmy’s plight: Now the whale is free! Now he is dying! Now he must be rescued! Now he is free again! Now he is stranded! Now there is hope! Now he is dying! Not only children but plenty of adults have lost themselves in this transparently repetitive drama. At one point a gaggle of dumb women even protested to demand that authorities do more to save our unsaveable humpback – who is of course merely one of perhaps 100,000 humpbacks across the world, the vast majority of whom will die in complete obscurity with nary a news article.

In my more delirious moments I wonder if Timmy is not also an omen from on high, a metaphor from the heavens to illustrate for us the ridiculous, circular farce that Germany has become.

  1. He was named Timmy for Timmendorfer Strand, where he beached himself for the first time. My efforts to christen him Horst have not caught on. I know the good Timmy is probably disoriented due to illness or injury and not actually retarded but this is how I have chosen to maintain emotional distance from the fate of this particular incorrigible mammal, who is beyond all human capacity to rescue but unfortunately not beyond all of my sympathies.

Walther’s Forgotten SMG: The MPK (and MPL)

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Dec 2025

Walther began developing a modern stamped sheet metal SMG in the late 1950s, and it entered production in 1963. It was an open-bolt, simple blowback gun available in a short (MPK; 6.75″ barrel) and long (MPL; 10.25″ barrel) version. It was cheap and simple, but well thought out with a number of quite good features.

The standard design was just safe/full, but a semiautomatic selector position was available if desired by the client. An excellent safety sear prevented the bolt from bouncing open and firing, and the charging handle was both non-reciprocating and capable of also serving as a forward assist if needed. The sights were a bit too clever for Walther’s own good, with a 75m notch and a 150m aperture, both of which were not really great.

Faced with competition from contemporaries like the Uzi and MP5, the Walther never really became massively popular. It did get enough small and medium sized contracts (German police, South African police, Mexican Navy, Portuguese Navy, US Delta Force, etc) to remain in production until 1985 though. Overall a solid and reliable gun even if it failed to really stand out from the other options on the market.
(more…)

April 19, 2026

How to Tank the Economy for War – Death of Democracy 12 – Q4 1935

Filed under: Economics, Food, Germany, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two and Spartacus Olsson
Published 18 Apr 2026

Nazi Germany in late 1935 was becoming more ruthless, more militarized, and more dangerous. In this episode, Spartacus Olsson reports from Berlin on the final months of 1935, when Hitler’s regime tightened its grip through food shortages, propaganda, rearmament, and the continued implementation of the Nuremberg Laws. As ordinary Germans faced rising prices, scarce meat and butter, and mounting pressure to sacrifice for the Reich, the Nazi state pushed its “guns before butter” economy even further. We examine the “fat gap”, Winter Relief, Eintopfsonntag, and the growing burden placed on German families while resources were diverted to war preparation.

At the same time, the First Supplementary Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law gave the regime a bureaucratic definition of who counted as a Jew, accelerating exclusion, dismissal, and persecution. Courts, police, and the Gestapo increasingly enforced the racist order, while Goebbels’ propaganda machine worked to normalize hardship, suppress criticism, and intensify antisemitism.

Against the backdrop of Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia and the paralysis of the League of Nations, Hitler found new room to maneuver internationally while consolidating dictatorship at home. This episode explores how the Third Reich turned scarcity into discipline, prejudice into law, and national pride into obedience — bringing Germany one step closer to catastrophe.

Never Forget.

April 18, 2026

The First M60 Prototype: FG42 + MG42 = T44

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Dec 2025

The FG-42 caught the attention of a lot of countries at the end of World War Two. The British and Swiss both used it as the starting point for some developments. The US went one step simpler, and simply cut up a captured FG-42 to make into the T44, the first prototype of what would become the M60 machine gun.

This project was done in 1946 by the Bridge Tool & Die Company, who spent about six months reinforcing an FG42 and adding an MG42 feed system to it to create an unholy hybrid kludge of a gun. It was, however, successful enough to justify continuing the project. Only this one example was made before moving on to much more practical models built from the ground up instead of hacking up captured German guns.
(more…)

April 12, 2026

How to Legalize Scapegoating – Death of Democracy 11 – Q3 1935

Filed under: Germany, History, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two and Spartacus Olsson

Published 11 Apr 2026

Nuremberg Laws explained: how Nazi Germany turned antisemitic street violence into state policy in 1935. In this episode, Spartacus Olsson reports from Berlin on the third quarter of 1935, when the Kurfürstendamm riots, Goebbels’ propaganda campaigns, and Hitler’s regime culminated in the passage of the Nuremberg Laws.

This historical analysis breaks down how the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor stripped German Jews of civil rights, redefined citizenship around “German blood”, and replaced chaotic mob violence with systematic bureaucratic persecution. The video also explores the role of Joseph Goebbels, the SA, the coming 1936 Berlin Olympics, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, worsening shortages in the Nazi economy, and the collapse of democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression in the Third Reich.

This episode is essential viewing for anyone interested in Nazi Germany, Holocaust history, antisemitism, Nazi propaganda, the rise of fascism, and the origins of World War II. It shows how legal language, public conformity, and state power combined to normalize persecution long before the worst crimes were fully visible.

April 5, 2026

How To Let the People Pay For War – Death of Democracy 10 – Q2 1935

Filed under: Germany, History — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two and Spartacus Olsson
Published 4 Apr 2026

June 1935: Adolf Hitler reassures the world with promises of peace — while secretly accelerating Germany’s path to war. In this episode of Death of Democracy, we examine how Hitler manipulated international diplomacy and domestic opinion in the second quarter of 1935. From the collapse of the Stresa Front to the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, foreign leaders were drawn into a dangerous illusion. Meanwhile, inside Germany, antisemitic violence escalated, press censorship intensified under Joseph Goebbels, and economic realities worsened under Hjalmar Schacht’s policies.

Drawing on firsthand accounts from William L. Shirer and Victor Klemperer, this episode reveals a society caught between fear, propaganda, and growing dictatorship.

How did Hitler convince both his people and world leaders that he wanted peace – while preparing for war?
Watch to understand how democracies can be misled – and what happens when we fail to act.
(more…)

April 2, 2026

QotD: Growing up behind the Iron Curtain

Filed under: Education, Europe, Germany, History, Quotations, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Ever met someone who grew up behind the Iron Curtain? You’d expect a mouse, right? You know, with the secret police and all? But they’re the exact opposite of that. People who grew up under the KGB’s iron heel are fucking obnoxious, because they’re utterly shameless. It’s not “give ’em and inch and they’ll take a mile”; it’s “they’ll start by grabbing a mile, then demand ten more”.

Which makes sense if you think about it. When everybody’s snitching on everybody else, shameless is the only way to live. Everybody’s guilty of something, so own it — being, of course, perpetually prepared to snitch anyone and everyone else at a moment’s notice if someone drops the dime on you. Also, if you have to stand in line six hours to maybe get a few potatoes, damn it, you’re gonna get those potatoes. It doesn’t matter if you like potatoes, or have any possible use for potatoes at the present time. You’re going to take every single spud you can get your hands on, plus steal anything that isn’t nailed down, because you never know when you’ll get another chance.

As it turns out, overabundance creates the same conditions. When you’ve been standing in line for six hours with 1,000 of your new best friends just to get some tampons — and you’re a guy, you don’t need tampons, but you can always barter them for something — you’re not going to scruple to do anything and everything to get them. Indeed you want people to know Ivan’s got some tampons, because that’s how the black market works …

… anyway, as I say, we’re not in line for six hours, but we are perpetually at least under the threat of surveillance. And not from the Feds — just as Ivan’s not worried about the KGB, but rather his neighbors, so we don’t have to worry about the Feebs monitoring us. Instead, it’s that Basic College Girl with the iPhone. She’s not filming you, of course, she’s filming herself, but there you are anyway, in the background, doing whatever. Under those conditions — and when everyone’s volunteering the most intimate details of their lives on Fakebook and Twatter — shameless is the only way to live.

In other words, thanks to constant social media “surveillance”, it has gone in the blink of an eye from “It didn’t happen unless someone caught it on film” to “It’s all on film anyway, so fuck it, I’m gonna get mine”. I used to see this all the time in class. Basic College Girls will lie straight to your face, for any reason or no reason. They’ll do it on spec, just to see if you bite. More importantly, they’ll tell you such obvious, easily disproven whoppers that you start wondering if they’re having a schizoid break. You have to know I know you’re lying, right? That Dead Grandma Story is very sad, but you have pictures of yourself all over Twitter drunk at the sorority formal, when you told me you were at Nana’s funeral.

It’s not that they don’t know. It’s that they don’t care. Because somehow I’m the asshole for not believing them, despite the evidence of my own lying eyes.

Severian, “Friday Male Bag”, Founding Questions, 2022-06-03.

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