Virtuals vs the Physicals

The "thinkers" are at war with the "doers". The working class versus the elite. Both have enough ammo to win battles, but the outcome is uncertain, and the result will change how we view our world.

Those with wealth and power despise the little guy. They look forward to the day when he and his buddies can be automated out of existence.

That’s one of the many observations put forward by N.S. Lyons. According to commentator Hugh Hewitt it’s a pen name for a fellow who works for a prominent think tank but uses the name so it won’t conflict with the mission of the enterprise.

He recently penned a highly sourced, long form briefing on what is happening across the world in regard to the chasm in western societies.

In a recent Upheavel story, Nelson compares the assets and liabilities of two distinct groups and tried to determine who will come out on top. There is a pitched battle going on in much of the world between the ‘Virtuals’ and the ‘Physicals’ and it’s on full frontal display in Canada.

The Virtuals are basically the elite…the thinking class. They don’t have much in common with the Physicals. They work with knowledge. They build and manage abstract institutions and systems of organizational communication as a means of control. They are informational middlemen. This class can therefore do their job almost entirely from a laptop, by email or a virtual Zoom meeting, and has recently realized they don’t even need to be sitting in an office cubicle while they do it.

The Physicals have been a part of human civilization for a really long time. These are the people who work primarily in the real, physical world. Maybe they work directly with their hands, like a carpenter, or a mechanic, or a farmer (or a truck driver). Or maybe they are only a step away: they own or manage a business where they organize and direct employees who work with their hands, and buy or sell or move things around in the real world. Like a transport logistics company, maybe. This class necessarily works in a physical location, or they own or operate physical assets that are central to their trade. They are not typically political and rarely put themselves out there, when it comes to the electoral battle field.

The Virtuals are now unambiguously the ruling class. In a world in which knowledge is the primary component getting ahead or being somebody, they have been the overwhelming winners, accumulating financial, political, and cultural status and influence.

But the Virtual ruling class can be had. They have a big problem that it has not yet been solved. The cities where they occupy mundane physical reality, require a whole lot of physical infrastructure and manpower to function: electricity, sewage, food, the vital Sumatra-to-latte supply chain, etc. Ultimately, they still remain reliant on the physical world.

Leave no doubt about it, the Physicals have power – a lot of power. In the middle of a supply chain crisis, those truckers represent the total reliance of the ruling elite on the very people they find alien and abhorrent. To many of the Virtuals, this is really scary.

Police move in on Truckers

So when the Physicals protested vax mandates, the Virtuals did what they do best. They used all of the Virtual systems to pounce on and disparage the enemy. Trudeau originally called the truckers a “small fringe minority with unacceptable views.” But when that didn’t work, he went for narrative and informational control. He went for the whole enchilada. He went to his list of toxic phrases and came at the truckers harder…”misogynistic”, “waving swastikas”, “racists flags” and then of course, “terrorists”. The Liberals in Parliament jumped on board and basically tried to stamp out the protest by okaying Trudeau’s request for emergency powers. That meant freezing bank accounts, imposing curfews, impounding the trucks, siccing local cops on unexpecting drivers…all while the bootlicking groupies in the media did everything they could to please the prince.

But has it worked? No matter how desperately Trudeau has scrambled to drive the narrative, he may not have succeeded. Despite maintaining his emergency powers to punish the truckers, more than half of Canadians now oppose continuing to mandate vaccines, and two-thirds now support removing COVID-19 restrictions. Five provinces moved to end pandemic restrictions, including Ontario, during the protest.

Justin Trudeau

Eventhough Trudeau has gone nuclear, he didn’t change the hearts and minds of those he had hoped to. The way he handled it will forever leave a scar on a nation that once prided itself on freedom and democracy. Trudeau’s Liberal Party has viciously turned on the working and middle class and many think this will be a harbinger throughout the world when it comes to handling groups with a righteous cause. If he had courage, all Trudeau really had to do was jump in a truckers cab and ask how we can work this out. But instead he tried to send dissident Canadian’s a lesson. A clever Twitter user added this, “physically weak and cowardly men are more likely to support authoritarianism because they can outsource their aggression and ‘dirty work’ to agents of the state.”

And today, a trucking convoy is making its way across the US. Expect the Virtuals of the ruling class to double down on trying to exert control, moving with all haste to develop new and innovative methods of information management and coercion (censor, cancel and boycott) to try to eliminate every human vulnerability from the machine. Self-driving truck startups are about to have an excellent next funding round.

But at least in the near term its Physicals like the truckers, who may have the advantage. The Honkening of 2022 will be remembered by all those who relate to the plight of the worker. With an alliance of road builders, steel workers, and farmers, they’d be a formidable foe. They are the ones with the real leverage, and now they know it and you can expect they’ll learn from this and come back stronger.

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I’ve said more than once, that it wouldn’t take a lot for the left in America to manufacture grounds to declare an emergency of their own. It might be a natural disaster, war, climate change…all could be used by Biden to sell the country on an emergency declaration. After watching how Trudeau has used those powers, Biden and the left can envision what can be done under the guise of an emergency, to enact change they could not pull off by going through the legislative process. Freezing bank accounts pale in relation to changing election rules and civil rights abuses. With the prospects of maintaining power in Congress looking dim. don’t think the Democrats aren’t reviewing all options and possibilities right now.

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