The Insidious Drift
Marching Ourselves into a Corner, Are We?
Imagine an ancient battle. Rows of soldiers, shields locked, ostensibly charging straight ahead. History tells us they had this peculiar habit: the whole damn formation would slowly, almost imperceptibly, drift to the right. Why? Each man, seeking just a fraction more cover, would instinctively lean into the shield of the soldier beside him. A tiny, understandable act of self-preservation, multiplied by thousands, steering the entire war machine off course.1
We also make small, sensible adjustments in our choices and behaviors. We lean a little, seeking a bit more safety, a touch more approval, a quieter life. We don’t want to be the nail that sticks out. We tell ourselves it’s just common sense, this slight angling away from friction. But multiply that by millions, and where does our society end up? Not where most of us consciously aimed.
This isn’t just about ancient battles. This is about the modern state, the ballooning bureaucracy, the ever-expanding list of things someone, somewhere, has decided are too dangerous for us to think about on our own. Each “sensible” regulation, each new committee formed to “protect” us, is another soldier leaning in. The result? A state that doesn’t just govern but begins to define. It intrudes, not with a bang, but with the relentless creep of a thousand well-intentioned nudges, until it’s telling you what information is “true” and which thoughts “safe”.
What happens to actual experts, the independent thinkers, the journalists who ask the uncomfortable questions? They get squeezed out. Their space shrinks. What’s left are the echoes, the parrots chirping a pre-approved script. The real kicker is that much of this starts from a place that sounds good. The “well-meaning welfare state”, perhaps.
A system that grows unchecked, fueled by our collective drift towards the path of cowardly compliance, doesn’t stay well-meaning. It morphs. It becomes a machine that feeds on our conformity to function, and tyranny, make no mistake, is simply the final, perfected stage of that machine. It’s a world painted in black and white, because nuance is the first casualty of absolute control.
It’s a quiet sort of suffocation. We become like fish, oblivious to the water we swim in, unable to see the currents of conformity shaping our every move, our every unspoken fear. “It’s always been this way,” we might think, or “It’s for the greater good.” That’s the drift talking.
So, the next time you feel that tiny urge to lean in, to soften your words, to nod along just to avoid the hassle, ask yourself: which way is the army marching? And who decided on the destination? Because once we've all leaned our way into a corner, it’s a hell of a job to turn the whole formation around.
This description is blatantly stolen from the excellent “Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History” podcast, episode “Mania for Subjugation II” published on Jan 3, 2025.
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