Errand boys and grocery clerks

If you can see them, they are probably slaves.

I came across a note from

Neoliberal Feudalism

where he made a great observation about Kash Patel, the current head of the FBI. He was cornered on a podcast and asked about the Epstein files.

Patel refused to be drawn in, although his discomfort at the question was obvious. The subject was forbidden despite his apparent seniority.

This is not uncommon. The people we see, those in positions of authority like Patel, are playing a part to provide cover for those who make the decisions behind the scenes.

They pretend to be politicians, entrepreneurs and leaders. But if they step beyond their assigned role and attempt to exercise real power their career and their future may be at risk.

You can find out more about the episode here:

Our leaders are followers

Appointees like Patel almost never act with the kind of authority we are told they possess. Their actual power is minimal which is why they seem more like followers than leaders.

This explains why today we see a steady supply of public figures who ignore the public interest. When cornered like Patel it often becomes obvious many are puppets with no capacity to act independently despite their ostensible authority.

Power corrupts, but power also controls. And some are easier to control than others.

There is much talk of compromised people with murky pasts and unhealthy appetites held to ransom by shadowy forces. This is no doubt true. But blackmail is scarcely needed with some.

Many are controlled by a narcissistic drive for glory or to be seen as successful. They usually retain enough awareness to understand their position in the pecking order (i.e. near the bottom, performing so the masses think democracy works).

That is all the Patels are. Actors pretending to be important for a little while. They seem superficially plausible but can rely on media silence to ensure minimal scrutiny so the act can be more easily maintained.

All this for their fifteen minutes of fame, for a public spectacle they know is fake.

Patel demonstrated clearly in his interview he understands he is a front man only. Others make the serious decisions, especially about sensitive issues.

These are our leaders. Hand-picked apparatchiks of the power structures that make the actual decisions. Is it any wonder everything is falling apart?

Broken people

Some individuals always look outside themselves for assurance as they cannot generate self-esteem internally. These make ideal puppets for the powerful.

Many public figures are among the worst affected by the need for external approval. This makes them easy to manipulate.

It is a good system for the exercise of power. The image of democracy, liberty and adherence to constitutions is retained while the real decisions are made out of sight.

Even very senior people are caught up in this circus

President Trump, for instance, has disappointed many. His election promises are unlikely to be realized in any meaningful sense. Is he just a puppet of the powerful, or are we witnessing a sincere person thwarted by a bureaucratic machine?

It can be hard to say, but history and common sense would suggest he is as much an appointee as the others even if he did have to win an election to get there.

This is probably also true of Musk. His recent tantrum showed how little political clout he possessed and how quickly things can change if someone oversteps the mark. Patel is even lower down the totem pole. There are many like him too, desperate for status and some semblance of superiority.

Puppet show

We are frequently disappointed in our leaders. They seem unable to effect serious, lasting change.

Worse, they often enact policies their constituents despise. Trump is still bragging about his disastrous Covid response.

Musk’s insistence on increasing immigration from India angered many with his tone-deaf pronouncements despite ostensibly jumping on the MAGA bandwagon.

We must recognize those who seek these posts know beforehand they have no power or have only limited scope to act within narrow areas.

It is a pantomime. They are being rewarded for playing their part well. A kind of inane supervanity must be at play. Selling your soul for a position on the public stage that can accomplish little real change, and to cultivate applause from even less important sock puppets pretending you are impressive.

Occasionally when one of them slips up and tries to exercise real control they are quickly corrected or removed, revealing at least some of the currents power travels along.

Musk is perhaps at this stage having unwisely forgotten he is meant to be convincing the public he is Tony Stark and not Murray Rothbard.

Patel let the cat out of the bag too. If he can’t discuss sensitive cases supposedly managed by the FBI then who can? A more adept performer would not have been cornered so easily.

The more this happens the more the attentive realize how much of the game is rigged.

In Western societies a good rule of thumb is, the more visible a person is the less actual authority they probably possess. The real power is behind the throne, the rest is theatre despite how plausible some of it seems.

In Western countries the powerful must maintain the facade of representative democracy since the alternative is brute force which they seek to avoid as it would trigger a response.

It is always worth bearing this in mind when we see the next emerging superstar or celebrated tribune of the people, and to remind ourselves almost all of them are not just slaves to their need for fame and glory, but literal slaves to the actually powerful.

When the next important pivotal character spends their tenure accomplishing almost nothing of value we must remember that is entirely the point. They are there to shuffle the deckchairs and ensure you ignore the iceberg.

As Neoliberal Feudalism points out in his analysis, they are like the errand boys and grocery clerks Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz mentions in Apocalypse Now. Those who do the bidding of their masters have no real autonomy. Nobodies controlled by the somebodies who make the real decisions despite how it looks.

This system has worked well for a long time and for good reason. It is superficially plausible. It is difficult to believe presidents, billionaires and famous people have no real say in anything serious. But that seems to be how it works most of the time and many of us fall for it.

We remain focused on the frontmen and cannot see the power structures propping them up, the ones that never change, so we canvass hard to replace reds with blues or blues with reds. The circus continues as we clamour for more people to lead us into someone else’s future.

The ruling class must be laughing all the way to their central banks.

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