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Vlahos Blog


Is America Becoming Rome Versus Byzantium?
This article was originally published in American Greatness, October 13, 2021. To read Michael Vlahos' reply, click here:...

Victor Davis Hanson
Nov 6, 20214 min read


In the Footsteps of Rome... to the Bitter End
Americans, sadly, often know little of their own history. Yet it is far worse to lack historical imagination altogether. Hence trying,...
Michael Vlahos
Oct 31, 20216 min read


Elites “By Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet”
In a time and place where reality itself has nowhere to put down roots, how many of the “serious” words we use now have no definition?...
Michael Vlahos
Oct 21, 20218 min read


A Ruling Caste on the Edge of Forever?
Have you heard the news? America’s elite (according to The Atlantic Monthly), the entrenched aristocracy of 9.9%, have created--like all...
Michael Vlahos
Sep 29, 20215 min read


Are We Rome?
As if a gathering literary trope in the Forever War, American commentators have come to ask: Are We Rome? You see, this nation has not...
Michael Vlahos
Sep 11, 20215 min read


Imperial Succession as Imperial Damnation
A republic ensures the transfer of power through constitutional rules. How does an executive-ruled state transfer power? What is its...

Michael Vlahos
Aug 23, 20213 min read


Empire — Eternal Suspension of Disbelief
The essence of empire is self-deception. Imperial metamorphosis imposes a prolonged cognitive dissonance in political consciousness: The...

Michael Vlahos
Aug 21, 20214 min read


What Does Transitioning From Republic to Empire Tell Us About America's Future?
[This short post is intended to set up a discussion series on the long-term consequences of a transition from an American republican...

Michael Vlahos
Jul 30, 20214 min read


Can Fireworks Make Defeat Sweet?The Art of Selling Victory
On April 27, 1749, in Green Park, London, 12,000 Britons were party to an historic happening: A celebration of the peace of...

Michael Vlahos
Jul 11, 20217 min read


Against the Prospect of Thermidorian Relief: A Less-hopeful counterpoint
Three core questions — each existential and unanswerable — in the Church of Woke are these: Why is the New American Religion so invested...

Michael Vlahos
Jun 18, 20214 min read


Will A Woke Cicada Spring Make Way For Thermidorian Relief?— A hopeful point —
Originally published at The American Conservative Thermidor was the 11th month of the French revolutionary calendar, falling between the...

Michael Vlahos
Jun 9, 20215 min read


The Church of Woke: Heresy or Sect? The distinction will decide our future
Our American crisis can only be understood within the framework of a religious struggle. It is a war for ownership of the True Faith, and...

Michael Vlahos
May 10, 20214 min read


The Doom of the Elite feat Michael Vlahos
Michael Vlahos is interviewed by Around The Empire on his latest piece, "The Doom of the Elite: The Rise and Fall of Elites Shapes Our...

Michael Vlahos
Apr 29, 20211 min read


Old Civil Wars Never Die: Like Zombies They Are Raised By History to Devour Us
For those who worry over civil war, Spain hovers on the edge of memory: history’s blood-red incandescence now sold as essence of...

Michael Vlahos
Apr 20, 20214 min read


The Doom Of The Elite
The rise and fall of elites shapes our history and can be predicted.

Michael Vlahos
Apr 7, 20218 min read


There Will Be Blood: Beware the Ides of March!
His immortal cry of betrayal echoes today from 2065 years ago: "And you, too, Brutus!" The long knives that felled Caesar finally...

Michael Vlahos
Mar 15, 20215 min read


RV Nomads Today, Red Guard Tomorrow
It is exactly when disparate groups share an oppressor and feel truly threatened, that they mobilize. This is when real insurgency begins.

Michael Vlahos
Mar 7, 20214 min read


Our Civil War Moves to a New Stage
In military strategy it is important not to confuse silence with stability. Below the surface, new and very unstable dynamics may be brewing

Michael Vlahos
Mar 2, 20216 min read


Show Trial: Bellows of Civil War
Show trials are convened as a form of religious ceremony to secure the sacred symbols of power and legitimacy in politics.

Michael Vlahos
Feb 16, 20216 min read


Civil War Histories’ Direct Message to Us
Last week’s post — Civil War History Shows Us What We Don’t Want to Know — described a topology: Can many different civil wars through...

Michael Vlahos
Feb 5, 20219 min read


Civil War History Shows Us What We Don’t Want to Know
History dangles so many internecine conflicts in front of us, yet each is different... How can we tell what is relevant to us today?

Michael Vlahos
Jan 28, 20216 min read


“America: Imagined Community, Imagined Kinship”
Kinship drives culture, and imagined kinship is the foundation of national community. Why imagined? “It is imagined because the members...

Michael Vlahos
Jan 20, 20211 min read


Civil War: Death Match between Continuity and Change
That compressed tension between continuity and change is the mainspring of History. Societies characteristically work to balance...

Michael Vlahos
Jan 6, 20214 min read


Civil War Has Yet to Go Critical
We are “skirmishing our way to civil war.” A house divided may not stand. Yet it may still go down a winding, rocky road before the fall.

Michael Vlahos
Dec 22, 20204 min read


Our Way Ahead: Insurgency, Revolution, and Civil War
Societies sinking into an era of civil strife will experience different and sometimes very distinct conflict phases and dynamics.

Michael Vlahos
Dec 2, 20205 min read


Heresy and Hate: Why Woke Needs “Truth and Reconciliation”
Where Church claims State, however, heresy quickly rises to first choice. No longer must the non-believer be persuaded — he can be compelled

Michael Vlahos
Nov 18, 20206 min read


Liberty to Therapy: Don’t Worry Over Civil War, Worry over the Transformation of American Life
The still-yet-to-be-legally-proclaimed President Elect, while claiming the title of “moderate,” has also promised "Transformation."

Michael Vlahos
Nov 9, 20205 min read


The Impending Election. Third Question: Can We Fight a Decades’ Long Slide Into Empire?
American is transforming from a republic into an empire. Talking about civil war is so urgent now because there is still enough of the...
Michael Vlahos
Nov 2, 20204 min read


The Impending Election. Second Question: Does A Cynical Ruling Class Always Win?
This is a path, which I would expect in the wake of a Biden victory, that would potentially push Red into very active rebellion.

Michael Vlahos
Nov 1, 20203 min read


Three Questions to Consider In the Impending Election. First Question: Are We Rome?
The question we have been pursuing: Are we now in civil war? 2,000 years ago the Romans invented it, then spent the next century reflecting.

Michael Vlahos
Oct 31, 20203 min read


Some Informal Fieldwork on Trump Derangement Syndrome
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) should in fact be spelled-out with capital letters, as a clinical diagnosis, on medical merits...

Michael Vlahos
Oct 18, 20204 min read


Our Hysterical Blindness Will Be Our Epitaph
Hence the really interesting question is not about civil war at all. It is about why, on its very cusp, we still cannot have an informed con

Michael Vlahos
Oct 5, 20204 min read


The Stahlhelm Under the Stairs
the anger and rancor in the country — and the stress it puts on the nation as a whole — is arguably at late-Weimar levels.

Michael Vlahos
Oct 1, 20204 min read


Announcing a new paper — Church of Woke: Next American Religion?
The heart of crisis in history lies in collective shifts in consciousness. Physical dynamics act as triggers, but big change in history...

Michael Vlahos
Sep 24, 20202 min read


Has the Court Too Been Sucked Into Civil War? (Et Tu Tribunus?)
The pacifier of strife has now become the agitator of strife.

Michael Vlahos
Sep 20, 20203 min read
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