Kenny Shopsin Soup Theory Explains America’s Next Democratic Monarch
delicious, federal, quick to serve
Before we begin today’s complex, but accessible and humorous longform content, let us welcome back old readers and greet new readers. You find us towards the end of the second month of serializing the world’s first political self-help book, DEEP SOCKS. We, in this case, are Sockpuppet Studio, a narrative studio based in Shanghai and Berlin. Everything you read here was created by self-aware software, analyzing contemporary reality, and giving back delightfully unexpected strategies for political self-help.
Political self-help, like all self help, begins by admitting that we have a problem. We can call this problem “Shallow Winter.” We’re using winter in the way that Northrop Frye uses it: as an archetype to designate a fallen society, a wasteland, a world that doesn’t make sense anymore, a world of illegitimacy, decline-feeling, easy money in politics, high levels of public administrative incompetence, and macro-policy paralysis. If you don’t recognize your own reality here, you are probably not reading the right substack. You have gone too far into the depths. Swim back to the shallows. There you can’t see so far down into the terrifying water.
But for those who do wish to take a journey, let us go further. For we do not all live in the same shallow winter. There are, we could say, three of these. There’s a normie, centrist, shallow winter: a place we call Managerland in Winter. We looked at that world in our first month. And then there’s a right-wing winter; that’s where we’ve been this month. We looked at the embers of fascism, we looked at the media theory of the new right, and now we’re ready to look at the way out. Because the end of winter and the start of spring are words for the same days.
Before we talk about Kenny Shopsin Soup Theory, let us review why America might need a democratic Monarch.
Oligarchic Winter
From the perspective of the deep right, contemporary America is misruled by an unelected oligarchic elite: an entrenched network of journalists, professors, lawyers, activists, and nonprofit executives. Over the last 10 or so years elite has become infected with a mind-virus, “Wokeism” that has lead to a near suicidal death-spiral for the American republic. This death-spiral takes the form of a “cold civil war” between “Red” and “Blue” America, neither side capable of domination, divorce impossible, because they share great material ownership over the vast, and undeclared American empire.
Democracy: Necessary, Insufficient
Democracy alone, that is, a movement of the American people, is capable of seizing the existing power apparatus, but not capable of replacing that apparatus with something better. That’s why we need a Democratic King, which is also known as a President. Curtis Yarvin likes to distinguish between Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II type monarchs. Elizabeth I really did rule England. Elizabeth 2 does not. England, like the US, is ruled by an oligarchy. In order to replace the oligarchy, you need an alliance of democracy and monarch: a democratic monarch. But in order to get the right strategy for the Democratic Monarch you need to know Kenny Shopsin Soup Theory.
Kenny Shopsin Soup Theory Part 1: Kenny Shopsin
Kenny Shopsin is on the other side now, but once owned and cooked in a restaurant that didn’t have a name for a long time. You can still eat his recipes at a restaurant called Shopsin’s in New York. If you know what Berghain means, you could think of this restaurant as the Berghain of downtown New York restaurants in the 70s and 80s and 90s. If you don’t know what Berghain means. you might like to know that Bob Dylan was addicted to Kenny Shopsin’s Chicken Salad. If this means nothing, consider the following scene, reported in Calvin Trillin’s “Don’t Mention It.”
One evening, when the place was nearly full, I saw a party of four come in the door; a couple of them may have been wearing neckties, which wouldn’t have been a plus in a restaurant whose waitress used to wear a T-shirt that said “Die Yuppie Scum.” Kenny took a quick glance from the kitchen and said, “No, we’re closed.” After a brief try at appealing the decision, the party left, and the waitress pulled the security gate partway down to discourage other latecomers.
“It’s only eight o’clock,” I said to Kenny.
“They were nothing but strangers,” he said.
“I think those are usually called customers,” I said. “They come here, you give them food, they give you money. It’s known as the restaurant business.”
Kenny shrugged. “Fuck ‘em,” he said.
Now we will turn to Kenny Shopsin Soup Theory.
Kenny Shopsin Soup Theory Part 2: Soup Theory
Here is Kenny Shopsin explaining Soup Theory directly. It’s is from “EAT ME: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin.”
Kenny Shopsin Soup Theory begins by seeing soup in a different way
Kenny Shopsin saw that you couldn’t taste the ingredients in most soup, because they were all cooked together. So he thought about soup in a new way: as a mix of a broth and a sauté. We’re going to think about American politics in that way, too. The metaphor in its entirety. Right now, it’s a shitty tasting puree of corrupt geriatrics, obvious CIA shills, a corrupt and ineffective military, the power-mad security service, regime illegitimacy, pervasive decline-feeling, money-lust polistics, a paralyzed central government paired with inept and stupid officials. But there’s a different way to cook the American soup. A way that tastes really good for most Americans. And here’s how you’re going to cook it.
Broth: Historical Conditions
These take a long time to prepare. In fact, the most critical ingredient of all is in fact dissatisfaction with the current soup. The bone of discontent has to sit there a long time, boiling away in the water of the public. But it needs a bit extra to really make it work. And this is a soup, the broth may taste however you’d like it to. The bone of discontent, like any animal bone boiling for too long stinks but it sure lends of itself richness and flavor and texture.
But beyond this, there must be a flight, a palpable flight of anyone with a functioning brain away from the regime. Here is a wonderful seasoning to add to the bouquet garni. A quick survey of the elected and electable will show that the situation is ripe. They can’t even cooperate with the police well enough to get handcuffed when they get fake arrested. Their little servants and eunuchs are asking for pay equity, the fucking nerve.
And past that, we must also find among the credible intelligentsia a sense that everything is fine, if only we commit harder to what has failed to work for decades now. Our principles, our ideals, our unique American values, and most of all, newspeak. A quick survey of the New York Times, Die Welt, The Guardian, and those silly muppets on cable TV that we are not far from being there. The stinking giblets of our old way of life. Throw that in there.
Technical development, this is the salt and sliced up ginger root that helps this soup cleanse our liver and dance on our tongues. This requires a technical revolution in communication that is not yet perfectly grasped by the regime. For Lincoln, the shameless king that he was, he had mastery of the wire and the photo. His image remains utterly iconic. And the antislavery movement and Republican party that consumed it—they had an absolute mastery of the incendiary powers of the press. And FDR, another wonderful American king, all but born in the purple, the salt in his soup was the radio. The iconic fireside chat. His crackly, low bitrate voice, a podcaster’s podcaster, the original Joe Rogan telling us about the attack on Pearl Harbor. And the Internet, the massively available, utterly omnipresent daimon of our society, this is the salt and ginger for this broth.
For a movement as subversive yet natural to a republic as the democratic monarchist movement, the ingredients in the broth must seem foul, but yield a piquant and nutritive essence. A mix of the old and decaying, bones and organs, from our old regime, hateful as it is, and the fresh, fragrant, lifegiving aspects of technical novelty.
One Propitious Sautee
The Emperor-to-be is more than a man. Caesar was his army, and his warlike nephew—the Romans did not make a man deity, but rather the embodiment and center of national salvation and glory. So too the next emperor must become a metonym, a watchword for something far greater than himself, a movement, a program, and a celebrity.
Persona:
We do not know who this is, nor do we share Yarvin’s confidence in a man like Elon Musk. Perhaps he’s not Bezos, with his funny circumcised cock rocket. Perhaps it’s Kanye West. Perhaps its a man we do not know yet. Perhaps it’s Ezra Miller. Now that would be funny. The emperor to be must be famous already. The emperor must be rich, or have a friend with billions. The emperor to be must be possessed of, and believe wholly and unshakably in a program for America, and deeply wish for their country to become better than it is now.
Program:
A focus on purple issues—that is issues that affect a wide array of Americans. Some examples:
The criminalization of High Fructose Corn Syrup is certainly a winner in our estimation
Justice against the corrupt, idiot war criminals of the existing government is a close second. People came out to the revolution for the guillotine as much as liberté, égalité, fraternité. And certainly, Hillary Clinton does not deserve to die in her bed, merely a frustrated sociopath. Neither does George W. Bush. Pursuing this justice is essential to restore the fucked international image of the United States. If we can’t try our own war criminals, how can we be the world hegemon?
Onshoring of critical technology stacks and production
Dissolution of existing technology and media monopolies into component parts.
An appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) type system to codify and elevate the unique genius of American terroir and labor in agriculture, handicraft, and industry
An increase in paid holidays and vacation time for all workers
Family planning subsidies to encourage the growth and health of the citizenry. If Hungary can afford it, so can the source of all dollars on Earth.
Methodology:
It must be a lightning war against both parties in one or two election cycles, waged by a new third party. The Russian method of grinding artillery war, a war of resource and financial attrition while a diplomatic settlement is arranged is no good. Think the Schlieffen Plan, but with the optimism of a commander. The ideal emperor in waiting has at his (or a good friend’s) disposal a goodly few billions of dollars, enough to make other wealthy people wonder what they’re paying for with the current crop of fuckups in politics, and if the bidding war for political power is really worth it. Elections are currently for sale—and there are men who can afford it. They should buy them. There is nothing more worthy to buy than the republic. The war will be fought by outbidding all existing political organizations for media coverage. There are men richer than Schwab and Soros and the Kochs, and more on that level.
The party will be a third party. Its aim is to, like Japan, reduce the other two parties into a single, uncompetitive rump party, and rule essentially unopposed. It will jail its opponents from the old regime, for crimes real and also probably some imagined. Anyone in government now certainly deserves it.
There is no reforming the Republican party without decades of infiltration and millions of small cutting compromises. There’s no future for the Right there. The Democrats, well, if there is a way to make them yours, inform us, please. What’s worst about the strategy of infiltration and conversion from within, the Ship of Theseus method, is that one will have to associate with politicians, and the current ones are, almost to a man, simply nonstarters for improving government.
The party will, in a single election cycle, run for approximately 10,000 seats in government, with the aim of capturing executive offices, judicial seats, sheriffs and judgeships, as well as supermajorities in state and national legislatures with a mix of uniform national programs with undoubted mass-appeal, and generous promises of local subsidies and bribes to the key power holders. If it worked for the Communists in China, it can work here. Americans have the right to choose their government, and to keep it as long as it has public support. And this party will never lose support.
The party will recruit no existing political strategists. They’re idiots, and Trump proved that well enough. If you’re funny, if you’re famous, if you’re saying the right things, if it seems like you’ll do it, you can win. You do not have to be smart, you can slather yourself in tanning cream, you can say almost anything in fact. It will put no one who has any official title or status in the existing political machinery in any position to run. Everyone will be a ‘novice’ and the government that replaces the existing one will execute its program and ignore opposition.
The party will maintain ideological uniformity by maintaining uniformity in practice and command, corporate in structure and function. The voter will vote a straight ticket—for one guy, for all offices, and get it, which is how people vote during major cycles already. Here’s a thought: didn’t everyone who voted Democrat in 08 vote for Obama? What they got were fucking Democrats, and Obama as a Democrat. This was by far the worst outcome for everyone who had hope and wanted change. This time, people will get what they voted for.
Key enabling technologies and techniques
New paradigms of finance that will enable for a repudiation of the existing stock of US foreign debt. Perhaps a debt jubilee declared by the debtor-sovereign of the world is a very new concept in history—after all it was usually a new king who declared all old debts owed to him null and void. But then again, no king before FDR had ever conquered the world, and he certainly did not live to enjoy his eternal glory. He died before it even began. Nonetheless, the new king must, through some combination of cleverness and chutzpah, blow away the house of cards that has sabotaged the world economy since the United States’ Great Bankruptcy in the 1970s.
New paradigms of international relations that will create patterns of winning confrontation instead of desperate, losing holding patterns. The unique American genius for the overthrow and replacement of sovereign governments will have to be rediscovered, lost since the Bush administration’s transparent and escalating cockups in the Middle East.
Digitalized, AI-driven management, which will allow for dramatic and continuous mass firings in the civil service. The currently existing bureaucracy will have to endure a great and utter ruin, and be replaced by one that is more competent. Existing public health bureaucracies are a miserable failure, having enabled an obesity and diabetes crisis that was a major contributing factor in the million dead from the novel coronavirus outbreak in 2019. If they were at all trustworthy or competent, perhaps fewer would be dead, and there would be fewer suspicions about their intentions, given their seemingly malevolent derelictions of duty. A king with a disloyal government is a man with a short life expectancy and little command past his butler.
Distributed expertise. The current academic and media complexes will become hopelessly impoverished and meaningless in the current world. There is a great deal of credence to be given to the New Left (of the 1960s variety’s) purported Long March Through the Institutions. In a country with a deep antipathy towards Marxism historically, it is an oddity that you only have to swing a dead cat around a research university to find a communist. Communists are no friends of kings (the last Qing emperor Puyi being a notable exception) nor are their socially conservative positions as professors markers of reliability for any regime. To overcome this, the vast expertise of the masses, once extolled by Mao ironically, must be harnessed using the Internet to achieve reliable correctness and discover genius and talent.
Low-cost, high visibility media platforms will dramatically simplify the king’s eventual and pressing need to connect with his people, communicate with officials, set policy, and most importantly, achieve political power in a contested and difficult political terrain.
Highly autonomous military technology that makes the Americans’ current, preferred configuration of war, eternal and unrelenting terrorism with the aim of either homicide (Putin, Assad) or genocide (Iraqis, Palestinians, Iranians, North Koreans), highly centralized under one man’s authority. What happened to Trump in Syria, where the military turned a retreat into a retrenchment, cannot happen again. Instead, the new emperor must have a military that is his personal death machine, to do with as he will.
The Broth Is Almost Ready
A wide range of the key enabling technologies are available and quite powerful. Perhaps the Sons of the Patriots system from Metal Gear Solid 4 won’t materialize for a king to exploit, but the ability exists for a sufficiently wealthy man running for office to, right now and without much trouble, tap into profound levels of resentment and mistrust in government and be successful in politics. The obstacles to building a popular movement are simply wealth, charisma, and fame. Any snake charmer could seize a critical nomination from an existing party. A feckless man like Trump managed it, and he was literally up there winging it, night after night, subsisting on Big Macs and crowd work. But the obstacles such a snake charmer faces are formidable: the rogue bureaucracy, an autonomous and self-governing military, a sanctimonious and asinine propaganda corps, and a highly corrupt class of elected and appointed officials.
It is to a man of vision to see the ability to turn wealth, charisma, and fame into a machine in their image, 86ing that rotten soup in the pot, and giving America a delicious, light, federated and imperial soup that transcends the republic.