Кто кого опередит?
Kto kogo operedit?
Who will overtake whom?
Trotsky shortened the question to Kto kogo? ‘Who, whom?’
Stalin used that short form in 1929:
The fact is, we live according to Lenin's formula: Kto–kogo?: will we knock them, the capitalists, flat and give them (as Lenin expresses it) the final, decisive battle, or will they knock us flat?
Clearly the capitalists won. Lenin and Stalin’s state wasn’t just knocked flat; it ceased to exist.
Years after the end of the USSR, Steve Sailer of the winning USSA recycled Lenin’s question in a new context:
As Lenin said, the key questions in public affairs are: Who? Whom? (You can fill in your own transitive verb.)
Google’s AI filled in the missing words in a Sailerian context: “who is crushing whom” or “who is getting to do what to whom”. Back to Sailer:
Back in February [2005], blogger Matt Yglesias made a frank point about how American ideological allegiances are often driven not by ideology, but by kin connections.
By who (kin connections) rather than what (ideology).
While kin connections are what interest Sailer (and myself) and are a powerful driving force, they’re not the only kind of who that matters. Innomen wrote,
Honestly, what is said never matters. Only who is speaking. If a nobody says something, nothing will happen. Seek power and status first, by any means necessary.
We live in an anthropocentric world of кто kto ‘who’ (has “power and status”) rather than что chto ‘what’ (ideology). Concrete people rather than abstract notions.
If I say something, nothing will happen, because of who I am. A nobody without power and status. Social constructs that overrule biology. Not even my own kin will listen to me! I am the dethbreather, the unmasked, uninjected bringer of the dethplague. Worse than zero - a negative public health menace who must be shunned. Unlike our Lt. Gov. (and now Gov.) Dr. Josh Green, MDeeee (The One Party), who kept them terrified informed during our species’ close call with extinction.
When Green and other Hawaii leaders were maskless and less than Six Feet Away, I doubt my kin were upset with them.
Because being a hypocrite ‘proves’ that one has status and power. The little people like it when their masters don’t obey rules for slaves. It demonstrates how ‘superior’ the masters are.
Green and other holy men were protected by their Auras of Leadership. Well, ackchually, Green and Caldwell supposedly got CONvid too …
… but nobody got on their case for dethbreathing in perilous proximity.
Meanwhile, I never got CONvid, and nobody cares. Because I’m nobody.
I’ll close with an example of the power of who over what.
Last week I heard someone who is anti-A give A a pass.
Why? Because they admitted their favorite authority gave it a pass. Even though that authority should be the last person who would give A a pass.
What A is doesn’t matter.
All that matters is authority.
Get it, and you can get people to betray their supposed principles. Happily.
The principles are just decorations to be removed when the prince says so.
That is how opposition is controlled.
Pose as an opponent of A.
Win over an audience with your ‘authority’.
Then praise A.
And watch the seals clap …
“Clap for the NHS”
I would so love to be wrong. But really, virtually everything we do is an appeal to power. This is the basis of correctness itself. There's a universal principle in there somewhere. Like what makes reality preferable to myth? Power. This is probably central to why the only thing that seems to spread in human culture is technology/technique, and why the only thing nature cares about is what works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyhfHQ_7Skg