I started writing about Curtis Yarvin in December but thought he was too fringe for anyone to be interested in reading about. Then the New York Times profiled him a few weeks ago, and I thought that he’d get a lot of coverage. He didn’t.

The President Grievance administration announced it was freezing all federal funding and that’s what we’ve all been talking about. Then on Tuesday, a weird OPM memo came out:

If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce. At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.

If you choose not to continue in your current role in the federal workforce, we thank you for your service to your country and you will be provided with a dignified, fair departure from the federal government utilizing a deferred resignation program. This program begins effective January 28 and is available to all federal employees until February 6. If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason). The details of this separation plan can be found below.

And when I read that, I remembered what I’d read about Yarvin.

Here’s some of what he had to say in the NYT interview:

Then answer the question. What’s so bad about democracy? To make a long story short, whether you want to call Washington, Lincoln and F.D.R. “dictators,” this opprobrious word, they were basically national C.E.O.s, and they were running the government like a company from the top down.

So why is democracy so bad? It’s not even that democracy is bad; it’s just that it’s very weak. And the fact that it’s very weak is easily seen by the fact that very unpopular policies like mass immigration persist despite strong majorities being against them. So the question of “Is democracy good or bad?” is, I think, a secondary question to “Is it what we actually have?” When you say to a New York Times reader, “Democracy is bad,” they’re a little bit shocked. But when you say to them, “Politics is bad” or even “Populism is bad,” they’re like, Of course, these are horrible things. So when you want to say democracy is not a good system of government, just bridge that immediately to saying populism is not a good system of government, and then you’ll be like, Yes, of course, actually policy and laws should be set by wise experts and people in the courts and lawyers and professors. Then you’ll realize that what you’re actually endorsing is aristocracy rather than democracy.

Where do these people come from? And why are there so many weirdos out there who think they have something deep to say? It’s a problem.

Here’s Yarvin explaining how this OEM buyout program is so important and why it’s needed.

It’s worth watching the whole thing because it’s so fucking weird. Listen to how the audience responds to  him, too.

Here’s a good summary:

For years, Yarvin has consistently held to a number of explicitly anti-democratic beliefs: republican self-government has already ended; real power is exercised oligarchically in a small number of prestigious academic and media institutions he calls the Cathedral; and a sclerotic democracy should be replaced by a strict hierarchy headed by a single person whose role is that of a monarch or CEO.

Which brings us back to the OEM buyback memo. The first thing is that there is no money allocated for this surprise severance payment and it’s unlikely that a bill to appropriate for it would pass Congress.

Second,

Again, I urge you to watch that video all the way through. These people are weird, weird, weird. They live in a nasty, dystopian world and in their misery they want to drag all of us there, too. Think I’m being hyperbolic? Here you go:

In 2008, a software developer in San Francisco named Curtis Yarvin, writing under a pseudonym, proposed a horrific solution for people he deemed “not productive”: “convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.”

Yarvin, a self-described reactionary and extremist who was 35 years old at the time, clarified that he was “just kidding.” But then he continued, “The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass. However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide.”

He then concluded that the “best humane alternative to genocide” is to “virtualize” these people: Imprison them in “permanent solitary confinement” where, to avoid making them insane, they would be connected to an “immersive virtual-reality interface” so they could “experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”

“A humane alternative to genocide”. Mmmmmhmmm.

We need to do what we can to stop these ghouls now, and then at the ballot box in 2026.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Elvis songs, because we could all use a little time spent with our favorite songs.