A Ghost in the Machine by Daniel D

Despite being over 50 years old, The Camp of the Saints reads as if it was written only yesterday. It’s basically the story of the West since the end of World War II, condensed into a roughly two-month farce, set in the Spring of 1973. It’s not a novel in the traditional sense; it’s more like a collection of sketches and vignettes depicting the reactions (and non-reactions) of various people throughout the West to an impending catastrophe. There are a few recurring characters, but none are really developed or undergo any meaningful changes. The main characters really aren’t any of the individual people depicted in the story, but rather the zeitgeists of two competing cultures: that of the ravenous, locust-like Global South, and that of the decadent and suicidal West.The overarching story is simple. An armada filled with migrants sets sail from India, bound for Western Europe, a land overflowing with milk and honey. The Western countries do nothing but dither and discuss possible responses. What little they do, the Western leaders do half-heartedly, either with a spirit of dour resignation or with the zeal of naive liberal lunacy. The West is like a termite-infested tree, where the termites are either the practitioners of a suicidally “compassionate” churchianity, or the adherents of a suicidally malignant Marxcissism. As soon as the migrants crash like a tidal wave of raw sewage onto the southern coast of France, the termite-infested tree collapses. Then, upon seeing that the West is unwilling to defend herself, innumerable more migrant armadas set sail from the Global South, their hearts set on pillaging the fresh carcass of Western Europe. Soon, a provisional government is established, comprised of murderous migrants and suicidally co-dependent Europeans, and the new government uses the military equipment and the misguided loyalties of remaining troops (who have been conditioned to obey any order from those wearing the emblems of authority) to wage war against the remaining “racist” holdouts. Of course, in The Camp of the Saints, as in our world, the word “racist” means nothing more than a white person who prefers to live amongst those with whom he shares a common culture. Eventually, all the “racists” retreat to Switzerland, the final holdout, but international pressure and internal sabotage from Marxcissists combine to break the country. The novel ends as Switzerland agrees to open her borders.The Camp of the Saints raises some interesting questions. Who organized so many hundreds of boats and made them all available for the migrants to use? Who put the migrants up to it? Who coordinates the conspiracy of silence, and even of outright inversion of reality, adhered to by Western media? (Similar to the conspiracy of silence and inverted propaganda about post-apartheid South Africa that has only recently begun to come apart as the reality has grown too horrible for the Globohomo regime to keep it under wraps.) A “great manipulator-in-chief” is hinted at, but never explicitly named; however, the title of the book, and the passage from the Book of Revelation quoted in its opening pages, make clear who this ultimate rabble-rouser really is:And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city. (Revelation 20: 7-9.)Here’s a tangential consideration. The characters of the book believe themselves to be living in the year 1975, just as we believe it to be (as of this writing) 2025. But we really don’t know what year it is, and we may very well be deep into the timeline described in Revelation 20: 1-10 — i.e., the era of satanic deception.Below is a passage from the book that speaks to the demonic spirit that has been revealing itself with ever increasing openness throughout the past several decades:The world seems to be controlled, not by a single orchestra conductor, but by a new apocalyptic beast, a sort of anonymous, omnipresent monster who has vowed, first and foremost, to destroy the West. The beast has no specific plan. It takes advantage of the opportunities that present themselves . . . Perhaps it is of divine or, more likely, demoniacal origin? Dostoevsky analyzed this unlikely phenomenon, born two centuries ago. So did Péguy, albeit in other forms. As also did one of our earlier popes, Paul VI, after finally opening his eyes in the waning days of his pontificate. Nothing can stop the beast. Everyone knows it. Among the initiates, this lends a certain triumphalism to their way of thinking, whereas those who still struggle within themselves perceive the futility of their fight. A fallen archangel himself, Ballan immediately recognized the lackeys of the beast and offered them his services. (

Greetings and salutations! This episode is about pride and identity, and the fact that pride based on an unstable or unhealthy identity is 100% of the time the kind of pride that “goeth before the fall,” if it’s not dealt with. Of course, Life has a way of dealing with that kind of pride, sometimes gently dropping hints, other times knocking you on your ass, and of course that’s always unpleasant in the moment, but it’s definitely a blessing in the long run. Think about what an insufferable asshole you would be if you had always gotten all the validation and rewards you ever wanted!I’ve been thinking about both healthy and unhealthy forms of pride, as well as the kinds of identities that people take pride in. It’s a big, very important topic that is fundamental to so many other issues, and one that I plan to address more fully in a proper written post I’m working on. For now, this podcast episode is me thinking out loud on this topic, a rough audio draft of an upcoming essay. Some of it’s humorous and satirical, some of it’s contemplative and somber, some of it’s me blackpilling about the state of our civilization, and some of it is me finding hope and meaning the extremes of both (1) the small-scale and personal and (2) the ultimate reality of the True God, whose light and life somehow do shine through even the darkest nights of this fallen world. Hope you enjoy it. (And stay tuned for a fuller discussion of this theme.)A Ghost in the Machine is a reader and listener supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aghostinthemachine.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to another episode of the regular A Ghost in the Machine Podcast. As many of you already know, I’ve started doing a separate podcast series called “Paging the Everlasting Man,” in which I read chapters of G. K. Chesterton books, starting with Heretics, and give some commentary after each reading. If you like Chesterton, check it out. While not reading Chesterton, I have I recently read (or rather, listened to the audio books of) a couple of vampire novels: The Delicate Dependency, by Michael Talbot (who also wrote The Holographic Universe), and Dracula by Bram Stoker. I figured Talbot would infuse the story with esoteric symbolism, and he delivered on that expectation in some interesting ways. For better or worse, it is a thoroughly Gnostic-ish novel, but while I am sympathetic to some aspects of the Gnostic perspective, I have noticed that Gnosticism has a dark side: it has a disturbingly high correlation with LGBT-adjacent perversions and inversions. (Speaking of, I guess it’s Pride-Goeth-Before-the-Fall-Month now.) Case in point, the Wachowski sisters, formerly known as the Wachowski brothers, directors of that most explicitly Gnostic-themed movie of them all, The Matrix. While I think you can certainly adopt a Gnostic perspective without becoming a tranny or a fruitcake, the correlation is nonetheless there. And although there is nothing explicitly gay about The Delicate Dependency, there are definitely gay-ish overtones, with male vampires being depicted as youthful in appearance, physically attractive, and androgynous — something that appears to have become the norm in contemporary vampire literature (because what could possibly be more romantically appealing than a parasitic entity that drinks blood and avoids sunlight?). There’s a spirit behind the LGBT movement and lifestyle that represents an inversion of Human Nature, that takes what is bad and false and ugly and tries to pass it off as good and true and beautiful. Talbot was openly gay. He wrote thoughtfully and artfully, but there’s a bit of that unnatural spirit that permeates The Delicate Dependency.So I reread Dracula. I know people have argued for an interpretation of Dracula as an allegory for Bram Stoker’s supposed struggle with his identity as a deeply closeted gay man. (Sure Stoker was married, but he managed a theater, which is basically the same thing as sodomy; plus, if you want to get published in literary journals and get tenure and all that, you can’t go wrong by reinterpreting nineteenth-century novels like Dracula through the postmodern lens of “queerness.”) Be that as it may, Dracula was refreshingly clear and orthodox in its morality. That’s not to say that the vampires aren’t compelling and well-developed characters in the novel, just that they’re not meant to deceive us into calling good “evil” or evil “good.” They may strike their victims as enticing, but it is a sinister kind of allure that is unmistakably evil and will lead to ruin. To clarify what I mean, consider narcotics instead of vampirism. The contemporary treatment of vampires as elegant and attractive is like making a movie of a 70s rock band on tour, partying, snorting, and shooting up, and making it all look so glamorous and carefree, but never really showing what that kind of lifestyle can (and often does) lead to. Dracula, on the other hand, is like showing an addict’s life spiraling out of control; maybe there are moments where the rock-and-roll party lifestyle seems alluring, but we see the devastating ruin that awaits people who venture too close to the edge. Anyway, as I thought about the evolution of vampire literature from Dracula (1897) to The Delicate Dependency (1982) and beyond (it appears to have gotten more inverted since then), I was struck by the way in which the trend in vampire literature maps onto the trend towards moral inversion in the culture more broadly.With all that being said, I still would recommend reading both The Delicate Dependency and Dracula. Each novel is engaging and thought-provoking on its own, but they are really profound when taken together.A Ghost in the Machine is a reader and listener supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aghostinthemachine.substack.com/subscribe

Wow, this thing is starting to turn into a real podcast! This time, I even have a real guest, Mark Bisone !Mark writes the always interesting and incredibly insightful blog The Cat Was Never Found. If you haven’t read his work, you’re missing out, so subscribe already! We have a fun and thought-provoking conversation about Christianity, the recent infighting between Christians and pagans on the “dissident right,” spiritual warfare, the search for Truth in a world of deceptions, etc. Hope you enjoy!If you’re listening to this on a podcast app or streaming platform, be sure to visit the post for this episode on Substack, so you can share your thoughts in the comment section!A Ghost in the Machine is a reader and listener supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aghostinthemachine.substack.com/subscribe

If Friedrich Nietzsche is the “Gamma Philosopher,” as Vox Day called him in a recent post, then G K Chesterton is the Anti-Gamma Philosopher. This isn’t to say that Chesterton was an Alpha or Sigma — he definitely wasn’t. To all appearances, he was not especially virile; he was nerdy, unathletic, and could be a bit slovenly in his everyday appearance; he definitely wasn’t handsome or any kind of ladies’ man; and although he eventually married, his wife was a thoroughly plain jane rather than any kind of beauty queen. Chesterton clearly had gamma potential, but he appears to have ended up a good-natured, well-adjusted, and highly successful man. For that reason alone, Gammas and potential Gammas should read him.How did Chesterton avoid becoming a Gamma, when he didn’t lift, didn’t become a deadly MMA fighter with an intimidating aura, didn’t become the captain of his school’s football team with the prettiest cheerleaders all vying for his attention, and didn’t become a skilled pickup artist with a long list of enviable conquests? I think his secret lies in his witty observation, “Angels can fly, because they take themselves lightly.”The tl;dl (Too Long; Didn’t Listen) of this episode is that Chesterton took himself lightly; Nietzsche did not. You could easily imagine Chesterton being roasted by a panel of comedians and laughing more than anyone else. You could imagine Chesterton thoroughly enjoying the jokes being made at his expense and then topping them, both with self-deprecating humor and by giving as well as he got and roasting the very people who were roasting him, and it would have all been done in a spirit of expansive cheer and friendly fun. Chesterton had a quick and nimble wit and a jovial spirit and could have won any audience over to his side. He was not a gamma-esque “secret king,” so he would have been free of the need for others to give him the honor and deference due a king.You can imagine Chesterton rolling with the punches and having a deep belly laugh at his own expense. You can hardly imagine Nietzsche doing the same. Nietzsche held too many grudges and nursed too many resentments and took himself far too seriously to ever truly let himself go and cheerfully laugh even when he was the butt of the joke. Nietzsche was too smart and thought too highly of himself to live a normal Delta life doing normal Delta things. He was the “secret king” incarnate, and he seriously “believed in himself” like the maniac Chesterton describes in the second chapter of Orthodoxy (in which he recounts a conversation with a publisher friend of his about whether it is good to believe in oneself):I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness.This passage cuts straight to the heart of the matter. “I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men.” And what secret kings would Chesterton and his friend have found sitting there, atop these “thrones of the Super-men,” in the imaginary castles nestled in the dismal corners of a dilapidated insane asylum? Nietzsche and his ilk. What answer does Chesterton give to this solipsistic monomania? Not logical arguments, where the flawed premises of self-worship and bitter resentment are left intact, but rather a complete shift in attitude and perspective: renouncing one’s secret kingship and embracing one’s status as a human being, subject to the laws of Nature and Nature’s God.The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation cover