Mencius Moldbug is back with a thoughtful series of essays on how liberal democracy actually works. He calls it “the four stroke regime” with two stories and compares it to classic totalitarianism which is “the two stroke regime” where everyone believes one story. Both regimes rule the masses through Orwellian methods of thought control.

American Mind:

“The turn-of-the-century Italian School of political science—whose leading figures were Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto, and which James Burnham summarized in his best book, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom (1940)—taught that all states are ruled by elites who subdue their subjects with illusions.

Mosca called these illusions “political formulas.” A political formula is any narrative element which makes its host prefer actions that objectively stabilize the regime. The peasant in ancient Egypt might submit to his Pharaoh to avoid offending the latter’s father, the sun.

Political formulas are cousins of stage magic. Stage magic works by presenting true facts in a pattern that suggests a false story, and obscures a true story. To act politically is to act on a stage beyond our lives and senses. No one can perceive unmediated reality. We act within a story. We read that story as reality: present history. …

The staff does all the real work, but not even the staff writes actual bills. Congress has two sources of legislative input: activists and lobbyists. The activists come for power; the lobbyists, money.

Activists are Democrats; lobbyists are whores. Either is more than happy to write any “language” that any staffer needs.

Congress manages Washington by coordinating activist and corporate power with the agencies themselves, following the inspiration of the press, the judgment of the academy, and the generosity of philanthropy. This real constitution is written nowhere.