CRYPTO ORDER is still my favorite musical discovery of 2020 and The Age of Demoralization, their first drop for 2021, continues along the same path that caught my attention to begin with. The title may also be the perfect title for our generation. Sitting here in the perpetual newsfeed watching people grasp desperately for the shreds of their old narrative and senses of order and security… watching the flashes of violence play out… the accusations, the scapegoating, the fury, the desperation… What are we not at this moment in time but demoralized when it is so hard to suss out what’s true and what’s been a stream of bullshit for decades? You can’t make something true by shouting the lie at a higher volume. You can’t beat a lie into someone. The best you can hope for is fearful submission, and that hasn’t been working for them either. We are awash in conflicts over conflicting narratives. Where is truth?

Imagine the conflicts put to music and you’ve got Crypto Order. You’ve got The Age of Demoralization. It’s beautiful, not in a conventional sense, but in the way a building on fire is beautiful.

The atmosphere has been somewhat more peaceful in the last few days. The torrent of hate has slowed down to a dull roar. We are between battles maybe, but there is still a sense that the real ugliness is yet to come. I’ve been watching statements from people arrested after the Capitol riots and their lawyers. There are lies. There is denial. There is anger. There is also a sense in a few of them that they have frightened themselves, like they weren’t entirely aware that they were capable of the violence they acted out, or the raw, animal hatred. A few seem stunned that they let themselves be so carried away. And yet they were, and it’s not an uncommon story. They’re probably just not used to seeing it play out here. We’ve done a surprisingly good job of dehumanizing people from other countries and cultures when we discuss what makes people resort to extreme violence. We’re just not used to seeing ourselves through that lens, despite that there is zero evidence that we should be immune to radicalization. Recent levels of outrage and hate and desperation are simply not sustainable. A percentage of people caught up in it are going to act out in very ugly ways. Demoralization eliminates rational thought and breaks down sound decision making processes.

But we can’t just let it go. People do have to know that there are dire consequences to crossing certain lines. The problem is I believe that once a person has crossed a line into violence of this sort, because this is not domestic violence or economically driven crimes, is that it is logical that it would be easier to cross again. This wasn’t circumstantially driven criminal behavior. This was identity driven. People say, oh this is not who we are. This is not who I am. Well, perhaps it wasn’t who you are, but it sure as shit is who you are now. There was zero remorse from most of these people as they proudly posted their selfies and videos on social media, souvenirs of their treason. The remorse didn’t come from any of them until they were arrested. Now with a couple weeks to reflect, to the degree that they are able to reflect, a few of them do seem frightened of their lack of control over themselves.

Demoralization. Self-demoralization too, to a large degree. Many men and women shed their old skin on January 6, 2021 and revealed who they are beneath their ranch houses and jobs and family vacations and brunches. It is not pretty.

And it has a fucking soundtrack!

The spoken word bit in the 1st track, by the way, is an excerpt of an interview by 70s KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, explaining the role of psychological warfare and disinformation/propaganda on breaking down social order. He was a rabid anti-Marxist himself, so it’s especially interesting to see the parallels in his old interviews with how disinformation is used against us now. The clips are worth looking up and exploring at length. He was talking about timeframes that were relevant to how quickly disinformation could be disseminated at that time. They were talking about 15 to 20 years to move through Step 1, which is Demoralization. I’d venture that with New Media, the process has been cut to a fraction of the time. Demoralization, rather than taking a generation of calculated programing, could perhaps take only several years. It’s not specific to any set political philosophy either. I’d say with the ability to take an idea to viral status in days, it works better for an open market with no restrictions on what can be said.

Something to think about.