By John Kennedy
August 19, 2026
Introduction
America lives inside of a glass castle, and it will be its destruction. This destruction will be as much the people's fault as it will be its leaders. About 130 million Americans, or 54% of the U.S. population, cannot read at a 6th grade level. It's true that this statistic is no doubt diverse, dispersed among Blacks, Hispanics, and rural whites scattered around the country, but what excuse do American bureaucrats, elected officials, and commanders have in times like this ? The greatest problem facing America at this current moment is that it is lost in a dream; it is trapped in a glass castle of what it thinks it is, convinced by its own propaganda and technological terrors. Even if American military commanders were to read about the Punic Wars and the mercenary uprising against Carthage, they would be too institutionalized to even consider such things as possible in their time: "Not in my army!" So when the sailors of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, who are being sensationalized on social media for jumping off the ship, complain about low morale and rations, what are the reactions ? Secretary of Defense Hegsteth reassures the families that their warriors are being well maintained; the president says they will be replaced but that they were not out there nearly long enough. But the attitude of the system and its maintainers can be placed in a single sentence: "You signed the contract; suck it up." With this their fate is all but sealed; they would rather reduce their military to that of mercenaries than face up to the problem facing the country.
Mercenaries and Revolution
Military commanders do not see it like this, the generals and admirals are completely invested in their duty to the American state, with the highest ideal being the defense of the constitution; of course, any abuse by elected officials are simply evils of the particular time and not at all decades long conspiracies. In his great book "The Prince," gifted to the Magnificent Lorenzo Di Piero De'Medici, Niccolo Machiavelli warned him about the use of mercenaries, warning (p.44):
"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are at once useless and dangerous, and he who holds his State by means of mercenary troops can never be solidly or securely seated. For such troops are disunited, ambitious, insubordinate, treacherous, insolent among friends, cowardly before foes, and without fear of God or faith with man. Whenever they are attacked, defeat follows; so that in peace you are plundered by them, in war your enemies. And this is because they have no tie or motive to keep them in the field beyond their paltry pay, in return for which it would be too much to expect them to give their lives."
So what keeps the soldiers and marines, as well as the sailors onboard the Lincoln, in line ? It's fear. Fear of losing their pay and their benefits, fear of the paperwork that will follow them until they die. Through this fear comes the system's greatest strength; it portrays itself to be this omnipotent kingdom on Earth. What was before was before, and never shall those things occur here for no other reason than because we say so. Yet it is also the system's greatest weakness, because as the states will and wish to dominate all aspects of life becomes too abhorrent to conceal, the population begins to mirror the actions of the state, and eventually the liberal state becomes unmasked for what it always was, a mechanism for domination and tyranny, and the newly awakened spirit in the population; ambition, insubordinate, and violent, and not wanting to be controlled, will destroy the previous power structure. What prevents this from happening now is the aforementioned power of the system to make potential rebels fear their perception. One sailor on the Lincoln had jumped overboard; why would he do such a thing ? In fact, why have so many Americans, not just veterans, decided to either kill themselves or murder somebody well away from a combat zone?
First, the situation: an individual, a soldier or civilian, will debate within their minds if what they're doing is truly worth it, a crisis of identity. They know they have a duty in this present time, but eventually, they overcome their mind. Next in line for state defense are friends, family, and the church. These people and institutions encourage and ridicule the individual that this is all there is and the only course of action is calm and continued duty in their role; they too will be overcome. In a soldier's case, they will begin to have a mercenary state of mind as they realize that suffering for their original cause is not worth it; from this point comes the man of authority who threatens all manners of jail cells, white clinics, and financial horrors that will befall him and his family. It is at this point the hour of decision will come; some will simply force themselves to carry on, others may choose violence as a means to overcome the situation they considered doomed, and others will take their own lives to regain a sense of control. These decisions are seen every day; Luigi Manigone gunning down a healthcare CEO was his decision in overcoming the age, and the sailor on the Lincoln jumping overboard was his. He probably assumed that jumping into the ocean was easier than mutinying against the captain. The suicidal tendency of unsatisfied people is a great strength to the American state; people see the states seeming omnipotence and decide to take their own lives instead of committing to open rebelion. This is the reason no real popular revolt can take place in America that isn't supported by the state itself. The present American mindset is defeatist when it comes to the state; the violent actions that do occur, mass shootings, police shootings, etc., are small, contained outbursts quickly snuffed out. These events will only become more frequent as the state becomes more belligerent; this means that further crackdowns on the population through surveillance will be necessary for state security.
For the American military, since the pay doesn't seem to be enough, the benefits are fickle for long-term motivation, and duty isn't a good enough hook. American leaders have reduced to threats and contractual obligations, which proved throughout history to be a failure. Trillion-dollar defense budgets do not bend the reality of the situation, a situation that, if not fixed, will lead to their downfall. One needs to look only at the end of the Russian Empire, where soldiers by their thousands deserted and flooded the cities, ignoring the threats and demands of military officers to disperse and go back to the front; it was in this chaos Trotsky would succeed in his revolution. This has been covered in other essays; the facts have been established, but facts and data can only go so far. Sometimes a story can be the final piece needed to understand the puzzle. In Boris Pasternak's 1957 Russian epic, Dr. Zhivago, a man named Petrov is assigned by the Bolsheviks to join the Tsarist Army in World War 1 to sow dissent and help spark the revolution; his experience was as follows:
"The party looked to the conscript of peasants, most of them wearing their first good pair of boots. When the boots wore out they'd be ready to listen. When the time came I was able to take three battalions with me out of the front line, the best days I ever did. But for the moment there was nothing to be done, there were too many volunteers like me, mostly mere hysteria. But there were men with better motives, men who saw the times were critical and wanted a man's part. Good men, wasted. Unhappy men too, unhappy men in their jobs, unhappy with their wives, doubting themselves, happy men don't volunteer. () The ones who got back home with the price of an arm or a leg, there were the lucky ones, even comrade Lenin underestimated both the anguish of that 900 mile long front and our accursed capacity for suffering. By the second winter of the war the boots had worn out, their greatcoats fell to pieces on their back, rations were irregular, half of them went into action without arms led by men they didn't trust. At last they did what all armies dreamed of doing, they began to go home, and that was the beginning of the revolution."
Soldiers have the accursed capacity for suffering no matter the generation, but suffering for what ? What right do American leaders have to send men to their deaths without myth, without reason, and without promise?
Violence and Myth
It was Napoleon who urged those to see how long and hard a soldier will fight for a piece of colored ribbon, but Napoleon, along with the great and violent men of history, are demonized in this country by academia. Despite this, it is the ruling class, the snoozy liberals like Clinton, warhawks like Graham, bureaucrat generals, and enslaved rulers like Trump who expect young men to fight and die for them out of the same sense of duty with just as much, if not more, fervor than the soldiers who conquered Europe under Napoleon. The sailors on the Lincoln, clearly not showing this fervor, disrupt the glass castle illusion the American ruling class has spent decades building; so veterans of past wars come in to discipline and shame the "soft" generation of soldiers. Fox News' own Afghanistan war veteran, Joey Jones, "slams complaints" over the conditions of the ship, saying:
"How weak are you ? On TV complaining about tuna and noodles. I'm sorry you volunteered to serve your country. () If this is a representation of who our military is, and there's at least enough for some of these trash rags to reprint about it. If that's who we are, we're just Rome waiting to burn. It makes me fumed, if he sits there and say, "we didn't have enough clean water to drink, we couldn't take a shower," well I didn't take a shower for about six months but still."
Other veterans, wanting to join the suffering measuring contest, post on social media demeaning the sailors and the new generation of soldiers. They harken back to American marines on Peliu fighting on coral reef rock, to the jungles in Vietnam, and to the 72-hour battles with stripped MREs during the Battle of Fallujah. These veterans stepping in to discipline the new generation of soldiers is similar to a family intervention of someone going off the deep end; this is done else the state has to step in. These veterans want the young soldiers to be like them; they want them to accept their role as tools of youthful energy to be used for the benefit of the ruling class. Many of these same veterans question their place in history; the American system has had great use for youthful vigor but is adamant in containing their violent impulses unless used as a weapon on their behalf. The men who conquered the West, who died when fighting the Indians, who suffered in the cold and died in agony from diseases, are now demonized, not just by "woke liberals," but the very violent and ambitious spirit that had done the conquering is not acceptable by polite society. In films like "The Shining," the Overlook Hotel and its bloody history are symbolism for America and its "evil" past, undertaken by their "evil" caretakers. What place does an actual warrior, a killer, have in a civilization other than a quick use and toss ? The soldiers in Vietnam were spit on upon their return, and even decades later they mutilate themselves by saying "mae culpa mae culpa" for their role in the war. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are much the same; they admit well enough they might've been "duped" to believe and fight in the war, that they were stupid to believe the lies, and that's that. They don't feel bad about it; they will just question their judgement until they die. A self-defeating mindset that seems to be a part of the benefits package.
So what is the modern soldier, sailor, and marine fighting for ? They're reminded every day that they're just puppets for Israel. During the course of the Iran War, numerous memes have come out, showing drawn faces with neckbeards in military uniforms being blown up, and on their chest a ribbon that says "died for Israel award" or "thought they were gonna make it home award." So clearly they will not be fighting for a grateful nation. This sort of discourse will only become more detestable with the advent of drones on the battlefield. US Command policy, a piece of the Glass Castle, is that the identity of a fallen soldier is withheld until the family is notified, but in future wars, the family will see their son's death on social media when redditors post the face of the soldier as a drone blows up in their face. This is exactly what is happening to the Russians, Ukrainians, and the Israelis. Furthermore, the soldiers see, while visiting their hometowns, the number of foreigners: Somalis, Hindus, West Africans, Haitians, Jamaicans, and endless other peoples that now reside in their city. Their mayors and representatives are Arabs who gained their positions just a few years after arriving in the country. What does Peilu, Vietnam, or Fallujah mean to these new arrivals ? And truth be told, what do these battles and events mean to the average white American ? Every ten years America changes its personality; the 50s and 60s, the 70s and 80s, and the 90s and 00s all take a different shape so that America itself becomes an incoherent blob of experiences. These young Americans, like mercenaries, have no tie to the land; they're divested of all they have been, their origins, and the battles of the past, are as remote as their destiny.
The Dance: Toward the Abyss
The destiny of the post-war order of the United States is set; somewhere along the numerous decades there was a misstep, which misstep it was, no longer matters. This time we live in "the system," the "liberal state," the "technocracy," whatever it's called, is at this moment not a monolith. But in the state's inherent need to dominate no matter the ideology, will consolidate closer and closer in order to maintain its position; the flock cameras are just a small piece of this. In this consolidation the state will squander its greatest ability to forgo a shape in which inner threats could target. They will take on a more coherent shape while in firm belief they can continue as is and simply walk, news-cycle by news-cycle, without consequence. And here their glass castle will face an intruder, an enemy that cannot threaten nor pay off; its trillion-dollar budget will be rendered meaningless. In their pride they will be confronted, caught off guard like King Louis or Tsar Nicholas. In Cormac McCarthy's book "No Country For Old Men," this meeting of fate can be visualized when the cowboy hitman, Carson Wells, encounters Anton Chigur, a being he cannot fathom, the American system, meeting much of the same (pg. 172-179):
Carson: "I'm a daytrader, I could just go home. I'd make it worth your while. Take you to an ATM. Everybody just walks away. There's about Fourteen-grand in it. Good payday"
Anton: "I think so. Getting hurt changed me, changed my perspective. I've moved on, in a way. Some things have fallen into place that were not there before. I thought they were, but they weren't. The best way I can put it is that I've sort of caught up with myself. Thats not a bad thing. It was overdue."
Carson: "It's still a good payday."
Anton: "It's the wrong currency."
Realising the lunacy of the nature of the man before him, he can do nothing but accept his fate:
Carson: "Do you have any notion of how goddamned crazy you are ? The Nature of you."
Anton: "If the rule you followed led you to this, of what use was the rule. Every moment of your life is a turning and everyone a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. You can say that things could have turned out differently, That they could have been some other way, but what does that mean ? They're not some other way, they're this way."
Anton shoots Carson, and his memories end up on the wall:
"He closed his eyes and he turned his head and raised one hand to fend away what could not be fended away. Chigurh shot him in the face. Everything Wells had ever done known or thought or loved drained slowly down the wall behind him. His mothers face, his first communion, women he had known. The faces of men as they died on their knees before him. The body of a child dead in a roadside ravine in another country.
Is this not the end result of every civilization ? The forgotten and the one day soon to be forgotten. The U.S.S. Lincoln will one day be forgotten, but this seemingly meaningless event in just another news cycle reveals the fate of the current state of things. Who will be the strange creature sitting on the opposite end of it, shotgun pointed towards its face like Anton had done to Carson ? Perhaps a member of the ruling class looking to gain power, perhaps some old enemy back from the dead, maybe it will be that third option, who in his hour of decision decided to continue on, and now, all these years later mirroring the belligerence of the state, reveals himself like a strange spirit seeking revenge. Whoever it is, a hand will be raised to fend away that which could not be fended away, and the memories of the system will drain slowly down the wall behind it: the fighting on the rocks of Peliu, the jungles of Vietnam, the planes at the World Trade Center, the house to house fighting of Fallujah, will become a remote and forgotten memory to future men, just as the slaughter of the Gauls by Caesar and the mercenary revolt of Carthage, is remote to us.