Local Neglect

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This week, Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, posted a condemnation of the Venezuelan ruler on Twitter. Prince has connections to the inner circle of Donald Trump, so his opinions about such things could reflect Trump’s opinion or may influence Trump’s opinion. He also linked to this New York Times puff piece on Venezuelan “opposition leader” María Corina Machado, which paints her as the Margaret Thatcher of South America.

The quotes around the term “opposition leader” are because there is nothing authentic about María Corina Machado. Like Juan Guaidó, who preceded her as the official opposition leader, Machado is largely a product of the American foreign policy machinery, which produces these figures on demand. The United States intelligence community runs a complex program to select, filter and groom opposition candidates for just about every country on the globe.

That is not to say Machado is not a real Venezuelan, but that like most of these American made opposition leaders, she is more comfortable in an American faculty lounge than on the streets of Caracas. This was the problem with Juan Guaidó, who is now driving an Uber in Miami. The people who select and groom these people select and groom people who are compelling to them, rather than the target audience, which is why they tend not to do so well in their home country.

It speaks to the insularity of the American managerial elite, as well as to the poverty of human intelligence. They never think about why Nicolás Maduro remains popular, despite the conditions in the country. He may not have majority support, it is impossible to know, but he has a strong base of support. The same was true of Hugo Chavez, who preceded Maduro. The American elites just see a thug and assume everyone sees the same thing, so he must be illegitimate.

That is not to say Maduro is a good ruler. By objective measures, he is a terrible ruler, outside of his ability to survive American regime change efforts. Otherwise, his policies have been terrible, and they have helped plunge his country into economic collapse, resulting in a flood of people out of the country. It is a disgrace that the American government has not been able to do anything to address this problem. After all, this is the backyard of the American Empire.

Since President Monroe first articulated it in his State of the Union address, it has been the official policy of the United States to protect and safeguard the countries of the Western hemisphere. At first it was intended to defend them against the colonial powers of the Old World. In the 20th century, it evolved to include protecting the people of the New World from their own rulers. Controlling guys like Maduro used to be a primary mission of American foreign policy.

It is not as if America has not tried to regime change Venezuela. It just so happens that Maduro is better at being gangster than the gangsters in Washington. This gets to another problem with American foreign policy. In the old days, when the people making policy traced their family line to the Mayflower, dollar diplomacy and clever statecraft were used to manage these problems. These days, the people making policy can only think of using force to get their way.

That is where you see other problems turning up in South America. China just opened a massive new port in Peru, which will allow it to service the South American market and buy lots of new friends in the region. Chinese companies have acquired concessions for two of the five ports adjacent to the Panama Canal. China is investing billions into infrastructure projects in and around the canal. Of course, China and Brazil are partners in BRICS and the Belt and Road Initiative.

While The Lobby demands the Levant get all the attention of the American empire, the neocons demand Russia get all the attention and the China hawks demand Taiwan get all the attention, the backyard of the American Empire is ignored. This is in spite of the fact that the two major problems facing the United States have their source south of the Rio Grande. The flow of drugs and migrants into the country is entirely due to neglecting American duties in the hemisphere.

Donald Trump’s focus on immigration suggests he will make the Western Hemisphere a priority again, but it remains to be seen if the foreign policy establishment will go along with it or rethink its tactics. Thirty years of thuggery not working should cause some rethinking, but these are people who struggle to learn from failure. The tone of that tweet from Erik Prince is not encouraging. Perhaps it will take another failed regime change effort to change some minds.

What is happening in South America is a microcosm for what has been happening with the American Empire since the Cold War. Everything close to home is ignored in favor of distant ventures on the periphery of the empire. Policy makers in Washington think more about infrastructure in Ukraine than in the United States. The lack of a response to the hurricane in North Carolina is a great example. If that happened in Armenia, the empire would have swung into action immediately.

In the area of foreign policy, the empire has been doing what it has done with regards to domestic policy. The focus is always on what is furthest away and has the least impact on the citizens. Buckets of tears are shed over “refugees” entering illegally while the millions of Americans poisoned by drugs are ignored. Millions are spent on “securing the safety” of imaginary online communities rather than on the actual safety of the food supply or the physical health of the American people.

The same hollowing out of American culture and the physical homeland has been happening with foreign policy. Trillions are spent trying to change ancient cultures around the globe, while the problems in our backyard are neglected. The Panama Canal matters far more to Americans than Gaza, yet the former is neglected, while the latter is an obsession. As with domestic neglect, there will be a cost to ignoring our backyard in favor of the other side of the world.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

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The Last Zionist

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111

Lost in the excitement of Trump’s proposed cabinet appointment is the lack of neocons in the list of foreign policy names. There are plenty of pro-Israel people, no doubt suggested by the Israel Lobby. It is rather clear that Trump made a deal with The Lobby in exchange for their support in the general election. All his proposed foreign policy people are Iran hawks, except for Gabbard. Otherwise, it is looking like an Israel first foreign policy shop under Trump.

It is important to note that the neocons are not part of The Lobby. They may have a lot of things in common, but they are different gangs with different agendas. The neocons are not Zionists. In fact, they come out of the anti-Zionist intellectual sphere with roots in international communism. The neocons are happy to work with the Zionists and the Israel Lobby when it suits their interests and vice-versa. As we saw under Biden, they are also happy to work against the Zionists as well.

To some degree, Trump’s victory is due to the Biden administration making the strategic blunder of prioritizing Ukraine over Israel after October 7, 2023. Israel looked at that Hamas attack as the opportunity to settle issues dating back to the Six-Day War, when Israel controlled much of the land that the Zionist consider part of Greater Israel but was given up in order to make peace. Netanyahu also imagined a regional war, drawing in the United States to topple the Iranian regime.

Instead, the Biden admin worked to prevent a full-blown regional war, often choking off support to Israel, at least in the view of The Lobby. It turned out that the “arsenal of democracy” did not have enough arms for both Israel and Ukraine, so the neocons running the Biden administration chose to favor Ukraine. Further, The Lobby thought the Biden administration failed to handle the anti-Israel protests that broke out at elite college campuses after Israel launched war on Gaza.

The result was The Lobby backed Trump over Harris and Trump committed to prioritizing Israel over all else in his foreign policy. This is one reason the neocons are escalating in Ukraine and will continue to do so. They think it could tie down the Trump administration in Ukraine and prevent them from delivering on Iran. Again, there is no love lost between the neocons and The Lobby. Contrary to what some believe, these are not two faces of the same collective hive-mind.

This does not change the fact that the neocons are headed for the political wilderness come January. While legacy conservatism would welcome them back, the future of what we call the right is anti-neocon and increasingly anti-interventionalist. The neocons have slithered back to their home on the side we call the left, but they will run into the same problem they now find with the so-called right. The groups in that coalition have little interest in the neocon agenda.

Despite Trump’s commitment to the project, it is not all good news for Israel, or the vast support network called The Israel Lobby. The main problem is the political instability within Israel that could blow up before Trump takes office. Protests against Netanyahu are a regular feature in Israel. Netanyahu is slowly losing the judicial fight surrounding his many corruption probes. Then you have the hardliners in his coalition, who are gaining power as he struggles to maintain his position.

Making matters worse is the fact that it may no longer be possible to bully Iran with the threat of military strikes. The tit-for-tat between Israel and Iran revealed serious flaws in Iranian security, but it also revealed newfound military prowess by Iran. On the one hand, Iran’s missile and drone program is far more advanced than what had been assumed until this exchange. On the other hand, her air defense capabilities are also much better, largely due to Russian assistance.

Then you have the withering of support for Israel in America. The Lobby has roots going back to the middle of the last century, where it capitalized on certain events in the Second World War to build a vast network of support for Israel. Much of this rested on the sense that the Jews deserved special consideration due to what happened to them in the war. Demographic change and the actuarial tables are slowly eroding this base of support, both politically and morally.

Taken together, the ground is shifting underneath the feet of The Lobby, as the state of Israel succumbs to its own demographic revolution and the conditions in the Middle East change to reflect the reality of the multipolar world. The Lobby might not fear the sight of an American carrier on fire in the Persian Gulf, but the Trump people certainly do, and they will have to adjust to this possibility. As with many other things, Trump may be a transitional figure regarding American Zionism.

Put another way, the Zionists may be about to follow the neocons into the political wilderness, despite having their guys in the White House. American Zionism, like neoconservatism, is a creature of the last century. It evolved for conditions that are slowly fading into the history books. Like so much of American politics, it has failed to adapt to the new reality. Just as the Biden administration was the last gasp of neoconservatism, Trump may be the last gasp for American Zionism.

That does not mean the end of Israel or The Lobby. Unlike neoconservatism, Zionism and Israel have a future. There is no interest in the “destruction of Israel’ within the Arab world or among its new friends in the multipolar order. Israel can maintain itself, even without the unlimited support of America. Zionism and The Lobby simply must adapt to the reality of the multipolar world and the changing role of the American empire as it slowly returns to being a normal country.

While Trump could turn out to be the last Zionist in the old school sense of it, he could also become the first Zionist in the new sense of it. On the other hand, if he fumbles the problem of Iran, he could simply be the last American Zionist. The images of an American carrier on fire in the Persian Gulf would signal then end of public support for Israel and The Lobby. Either way, Donald Trump is most likely the last of the old school Zionist presidents and the last gasp of this version of The Lobby.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











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Trump Foreign Policy Trap

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Note: Behind the green door I have several posts about my trip to Nashville, a post about the culture of fraud and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Word leaking out of the Biden White House is that the people actually running foreign policy got the old man to sign off on the limited use of ATACMS missiles inside the borders of pre-2014 Russia. The Ukraine press immediately began to lie about this, as that is what they always do, claiming that this now means they can launch unlimited strikes into Russia using American weapons. The Ukraine lobby makes the Israel lobby look candid and transparent by comparison.

For this unfamiliar, ATACMS stands for Army Tactical Missile System. This is a supersonic tactical ballistic missile that can be fired from mobile launchers and has a range of about 200-miles. This is a precision guided weapon, which means it relies on the American military global positioning system to reach a precise target. It can carry a variety of warheads, including nuclear, chemical or biological. Those last two officially do not exist, but they do exist, and Russia knows it.

That is why the United States has not “allowed” Ukraine to use these weapons against targets inside of Russia. Ukraine is not actually operating these weapons systems because they lack the cognitive and technical ability. Ukraine operators can do the minimal to operate the system, but the targeting and guidance is done by the American military hidden away in bunkers in Ukraine. It is a thing everyone knows is true but pretends is not true to avoid nuclear war.

Despite the lie machine saying otherwise, the latest escalation is limited to the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an ill-fated attack inside Russia. Their forces are now bottled up there, getting hammered into bits. This limited use of ATACMS there may be in preparation for a retreat or just another crackpot scheme to continue a project that has no chance for success. It also created a problem for the Trump administration, which will inherit the Ukraine mess in two months.

That may be the real motivation. The Kagan cult is sure that Trump will make a deal with his bosses in Moscow to abandon those freedom loving Ukrainians to the Kagan’s ancient enemy to the east. They have two months to throw sand in the gears in what they imagine will be the Trump Ukraine strategy. This is one reason Trump has refused to say anything about his plan for Ukraine to this point. He seems to have figured out that the people responsible for this war are insane.

Of course, the point of permitting Ukraine to use these weapons is to bait the Russians into responding. This is a standard neocon tactic. They provoke a target into responding and then claim it is an unprovoked “act of aggression” against them. Coincidentally, this is the standard operating procedure for Israel. They did everything possible to provoke an attack from Iran, so they could then claim to be the innocent victim and then call in the United States to wage war on Iran.

That is the real concern between now and January. If the neocons running Biden foreign policy continue to poke the bear, the Russians can always take the restraints off Iran, which would like to send another volley of missiles to Israel. The Russians have no illusions about the Ukraine war. They talk about it as a NATO proxy war against them and have repeatedly warned about NATO escalation. They have made clear that their responses will not be limited to Ukraine.

This is where the geopolitical game of chess comes into play. The Kagan cult may also be looking to set a trap for Trump. By escalating in Ukraine, they may think Russia will escalate in the Middle East, perhaps leaving it on the brink of war. Trump’s plan to stack his foreign policy team with Iran hawks is read as a plan to be especially tough on the Iranians this time around. The schemers running foreign policy at the moment would love to see Team Trump step on that rake.

Note that the one of the things the foreign policy establishment does is make it impossible for presidents to negotiate. Every issue around the world is cast in extreme moral terms and every rival is Hitler. This means any deal is akin to Neville Chamberlain ceding the Sudetenland. To even suggest making a deal to resolve a dispute is to acquiesce to evil. Team Trump looks primed to fall into this sort of trap when they take over Iran policy, but we shall see.

It is not hard to imagine a scenario in which the Trump administration is dealing with spiraling of attacks between Israel and Iran. Then the warmongers in the GOP will be demanding war with Iran. The press will be full of reports of how the Russians are supplying Iran with weapons. That means any effort to make a deal with Russia over Ukraine gets the Chamberlain treatment. For the neocons, this at least buys time to keep Project Ukraine going.

Of course, the Israel lobby is fine with this. They want war with Iran as they think the American military will easily defeat them, which will lead to a collapse of the Iran government, paving the way for Greater Israel. It is a good example of how the neocons draft on the Israel lobby to keep their various schemes going. If they can pin down the Trump admin in the Middle East with another proxy war with Russia, then according to their logic, there can be no deal over Ukraine.

There are, of course, many other schemes bubbling up in the fever swaps of the neocons and the Israel lobby. They have two months to poison as many wells as possible, in anticipation of a Trump administration that would prefer to wind down the foreign conflicts. It is why no one should be optimistic about foreign policy under the next Trump administration. He will inherit a foreign policy establishment that is hopelessly corrupt.

Even if his team is sober-minded and realistic about he various hot spots they will inherit, they will be inheriting problems that have been caused by successive administration who have burnt up a lot of political capital. That means they walk into a world full of traps. Some have been set on purpose, while others are just the result of mismanagement over the last thirty years. Simply making to through the next four years without a war will be an accomplishment.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











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Radio Derb November 15 2024

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m13s Trump’s personnel picks
  • 20m09s Fertility and feminism
  • 26m59s Righteous dismissals
  • 30m59s RIP Timothy West
  • 33m14s Churchill’s return
  • 36m17s A very Japanese project
  • 38m42s Signoff with Gracie
  • 00m00s Signoff

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

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Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners, from your precipitously genial host John Derbyshire with some observations on the week’s news.

Today’s podcast will depart somewhat from the usual format. My custom has been to offer five or six longish segments and then a miscellany of shorter items. The way it came out this week was as one lo-o-o-o-ng segment followed by five much shorter ones. Unable to make that fit into the customary format, I shall present each as a segment of its own, with no closing miscellany.

So first, the long one. Continue reading →

A New Hope

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The first couple of weeks after an election, the winning side spends the time imagining all the good things that will come. The euphoria fades as political reality sets in with the roll out of nominations to the new administration. We see this with Trump, as he announces who he plans to nominate to certain posts. The good feelings are now giving way to varying levels of concern.

The big area of concern is his foreign policy team which looks like the amen corner of the Israel lobby. The only skeptic of foreign adventurism is Tulsi Gabbard, who he will nominate for the director of national intelligence. This should not come as a complete shock since Miriam Adelson provided a third of his campaign budget. She is the widow of Sheldon Adelson, who is buried in the Mount of Olives.

A reality of political life in America is that the Israel lobby wields an enormous amount of power, going back to the Johnson administration. Even Truman complained about these people, when they were in their infancy. Since the Six Day War, Israel has played an outsized role in American politics, which means being in good standing with the Israel lobby has been essential to victory.

It is not all bad news. Trump has sidelined the neocons, which are not a part of the Israel lobby, despite what some people claim. The neocons have drafted on the Israel lobby at times, but as we saw in the Biden administration, their agenda can fall afoul of the Israel lobby. Prioritizing Ukraine over Israel is probably what spelled the end of the Biden presidency and the defeat of Harris.

Trump also seems to be serious about swinging a wrecking ball through the corrupt Department of Justice. Nominating Matt Gaetz, a guy with good reason to seek some retribution, says bad times are coming for the crooks. His pick for the top assistant and the solicitor general is also a good sign. If fixing the Justice Department means more of the same in Israel, that is not the worst trade.

That is the show this week. I am heading out for the weekend, so it means everyone and his brother has demanded time from me this week. As a result I had not time to prep a show, so I just did an out off the top of my head on the trade-offs were are starting to see in Trump 2.0. That is the thing to understand. It is all about trade-offs that can advance the ball down the field.

Edit: I am told that Adelson did not come up with the full $100 million, but Tim Mellon, of the Mellon family, kicked in $170 million. I checked this and I cannot verify the former claim or the latter claim, but Mellon did give at least $100 million. This post from the NYTimes lists the major donors. Regardless, the Israel lobby played a major role in getting Trump elected, so they get paid. That is politics.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Intro
  • Appointments Signal Priorities
  • Political Reality
  • The Issues
  • The Road From Here

Direct Download, The iTunes, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

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The Consolidation – Disaggregation Cycle

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A recurring dynamic within the ongoing technological revolution is the process in which the forces of centralization sweep up the various nodes within a particular area into a dominant organization or industry. Centralization follows the initial success of some new technology or use of a technology. Once a set of dominant players control a market, the forces of decentralization kick in and pick away at it. It is like the expanding and contracting of the universe.

In the early days of computing, you had big machines maintained by an army of engineers at special facilities. As more computers were created, the next step was to network them into the first distributed network. What followed was the age of the mainframe and midframe, which centralized all the users of an organization into one main computer, which they accessed via terminals. The original internet was a consolidation of these machines.

The PC started to nibble away at this structure. Instead of the user storing all his data on the central machine, he kept it on his local machine. He shared his data with others by copying it onto a disk and then walking it over to that user using what was eventually called sneaker-net. Soon, the local area network allowed the office to share resources and disconnect from the mainframe. The internet then allowed those offices to share data with one another in a distributed network.

Of course, the forces of centralization roared back as servers came to dominate the office network and then the organizational network. As quick as everyone had a personal computer, they were soon forced to make it fully accessible to the impersonal network and then make it little more than a terminal attached to the organization’s network of servers. This soon led to the return of the mainframe era, which was pleasantly renamed cloud computing.

This consolidation – disaggregation cycle is a pretty good model for the history of human civilization, so it makes sense that it plays out in technology. In the disaggregated world, there are those who see a benefit, personally, morally or philosophically in bringing the disparate parts under one roof. At some point in the consolidation process, there are those who begin to see a benefit, personally, morally or philosophically in breaking the blob into pieces or creating alternative pieces to the blob.

A good model for this is the internet community. The first “social media” was the BBS created in the early days of computing. The Bulletin Board System was modeled after the old-fashioned bulletin board. The main difference was that when someone posted something, others could post replies and then others could reply to those replies for as long as the topic required replies. Sites like 4chan are pretty much just the old BBS with a cheap graphical interface.

The problem with the BBS was that it did not take long before the topics grew too diverse to organize, and the users started to hate one another. Soon groups of users started to spin up new boards for their specific topic or to get away from a rival fraction they used to war with on the old board. The central board broke into a million bespoke boards organized around the tribal instincts of their users. It is not hard to see how humans spread around the globe once you understand this.

What we now call social media has been defined by the consolidation – disaggregation cycle that is the nature of humanity. Just as the centralized BBS splintered into many small communities, subsequent technology followed the same pattern. Big email groups eventually broke into small email groups. Usenet, a technology that aimed to solve the limitations of the BBS, went from a set of large channels into an impossible to track number of small channels.

The message board, which made it easier for the tens of millions of new internet users to be herded into communities online quickly followed the same pattern. The big forum for sports soon broke into forums for specific sports and then forums for specific teams and then rival tribes within the team fanbase. The main driver was always the inability of any group of people larger than the Dunbar number to interact with one another inside an internet community without conflict.

We are now seeing another round of this with microblogging. After the election, the doxers, deviants and lunatics that came to dominate Twitter in the pre-Musk age have jumped ship to something called Bluesky. They have all sorts of reasons ranging from technological to conspiratorial, but the main reason is they cannot face the reality of their moral turpitude, so they are seeking shelter among the like-minded, in a similar way described in the study, When Prophecy Fails.

In one of life’s amusing ironies, they can thank Andrew Torba for the opportunity to create their own fever swamp. The tireless efforts by Torba to keep Gab going, despite the relentless attacks by the crazies, was the first step in the disaggregation phase of the modern social media platform. Gab became a fun refuge for those excluded from Twitter, something like Alfred’s fort at Athelney, from which he waged his heroic resistance to the great heathen army.

Gab surviving and thriving in its inimical way was a proof of concept that opened the door to the coming disaggregation. Mastodon and now Bluesky are hoping to attract niche communities that seek an alternative to Musk’s Twitter. The people into “right wing” conspiracy theories first tried mastodon, but found it too challenging, so they have landed on Bluesky, which is easier for them to navigate. They can now share their conspiracy theories in a “safe” environment.

Twitter will remain the dominant player, owing to the fact it is owned by Musk, and he is besties with the new president. Advertisers are returning to the platform, so it will probably start to turn a profit or at least break even. The ascendent economic interests want one central platform, so they will support it, but those forces of disaggregation will keep gnawing away at it. Nature, at least human nature, does not like centralization, at least not the reality of it, so disaggregation always prevails.

That is the engine of history. Whether it is family dynasties, empires, authoritarian regimes or the unipolar world order, the desire to centralize and control always crashes into the rocks of disaggregation. The tribal nature of man, evolved over millions of years, has not been completely beaten out of after ten thousand years of civilization, so conflict and separation are baked in the cake of human organization. Separation, peaceful or violent, is always the end of the story.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











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Of Two Minds

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Everyone in every time has thought that his time was crazier and less predictable than the times that came before him. Much of this is due to recency bias, but another cause is the sense that things were better in the past. This sense that the past was better is a part of the human makeup. There is not only a nostalgia for the our own past, but for the past we never experienced. That is because the past seems more certain than our present age and the near future.

People who lived through the Great Depression and the Second World War looked back at those days with fondness. These were people enjoying 1950’s America reminiscing about one of the worst times in American history. Many even lost family members in the war, but those war years felt like the best of times. Our minds seem to have evolved in such a way that we cannot remember pain. That means what we can recall about our past is only the good feelings we experienced.

It also depends upon who you are at the time as well. If you were a black person in the 1950’s then it was a wild time to be alive. The civil right revolution was getting going and the role blacks were given was to riot in the streets. The typical white guy living in California was just enjoying his time. On the other hand, the war years were a good time to be black in America as the war economy needed labor. Millions of black people found lucrative work in northern cities.

That is something to keep in mind while watching present events. It certainly seems like it is a crazy time to be alive. The whole Trump thing is wild, just from the perspective of American politics. People also seem nuttier. This was evident during the Covid panic when millions of otherwise normal looking people revealed themselves to be bitter paranoid cranks. Now the anti-Trump loons are going into hiding, by which they mean the latest alternative to Twitter.

It is not just the usual suspects losing their minds over the election. The British tabloid The Guardian has announced on Twitter, oddly enough, that it is stomping off in a huff, presumably to set up shop on the alternative to Twitter. They claim it is because of the “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” That means a publication that traffics in conspiracy theories about the imaginary far-right and racism is abandoning the one place they are sure such things exist.

Even putting aside the natural bias described at the start, this is crazy behavior that did not exist just ten years ago. The crazy times ten years ago were both sides meeting in the streets to point fingers and maybe scuffle a bit. More important, the people we call the left had institutional support, so they controlled the battlefield. This fact has been true for as long as anyone has been alive, so seeing them abandon the battlefield and go into hiding qualifies this as a crazy time to be alive.

Of course, the reason this is happening is the big election victory of Donald Trump and the temporary ascendency of his party. It was not just a big win for Trump on Tuesday, but also a big win for the movement that made him possible. The reason that movement exists is the growing insanity of the people we call the left. In other words, we probably do live in a crazy age, even when people have the ability to step back and look at it from a distance. This really is a crazy age.

The thing about this crazy age is that not much is happening. The exciting times a century ago revolved around the Great War. The mobilization of America for war in Europe was unprecedented. The war itself was unprecedented, and its aftermath was also unprecedented. Enormously important things were happening. In this present age, everything happens on the internet and slightly affects events outside the digital space, but only in superficial ways.

Put another way, we live in a crazy time because this new virtual reality we created called the internet has sucked into it many of our least stable people, empowering them to unleash their craziness in this virtual realm. Imagine a version of the past twenty years in which the crazy people were denied access to the internet. Imagine if all the foreign policy debates since the Cold War had been conducted online by people like John Mearsheimer rather than crazies from the Kagan cult.

What makes this a crazy time is we are living in a unique period and what makes it unique is this virtual realm we call the internet. Everyone is forced to one degree or another to live with two minds. There is the mind that exists in the virtual realm and then there is the mind that exists in the physical realm. Note that you rarely discuss with people in the physical realm your life in the virtual realm. These are two distinct worlds that require two distinct minds.

On the other hand, the growth of this new virtual world has had the effect of collapsing the two minds for some people. The crazies online are made crazy, in part, by the invasion of the private space by the public space. Prior to the internet, these people could only do politics by participating in it publicly. Most just avoided politics and remained privately nuts, but free of public politics. Plugged into the internet, the public rushes into the private and the private becomes public.

This may explain the phenomenon of the seemingly stable person heading off into crazy land as they get increasingly online. People like James Lindsay or Keith Olbermann are good examples of people who started out a bit odd, but not so odd that you questioned their sanity. They steadily evolved into crazy people online. When there was separation between their public and private mind, we did not see the madness, because it existed outside of public view.

In the fullness of time, people may look at this time and think it was the calm waters before the terrible rapids. Maybe they look at this is as a gentle adjustment period between the Cold War and whatever comes next. it is also possible that it is the crazy time when people had to adjust to the two-mind problem. The growth of the virtual realm created a need for an entirely novel mode of thought, the mind you activate when inside the internet, along with a way of isolating it from the other mind.

It may be that we arrive at a new way of judging people. At the top of the hierarchy are those who master both minds, deftly balancing them to be high status in both the material world and the virtual world. At the bottom are the people who allow the virtual realm to take over their mind entirely, making it seem that they are as crazy in real life as they seem online. In the middle are the vast majority who struggle to balance their internet mind with their material mind.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











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Trumponomics 2.0

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The next few weeks will bring a flurry of news regarding various names for jobs in the next Trump White House. Some of it will be gaslighting from people who just make things up for regime media. Some of it will disappoint Trump supporters hoping to get something from their efforts this time. One area that has gotten no coverage, but will be one of the most important, is the economy. Trump appears determined to fundamentally change how Washington controls the economy.

That is the first thing to understand. The United States is not a free-market economy or even close to one. There are millions of lines of regulatory code covering every aspect of economic activity. It is not exactly a command economy and in no way a centrally planned one, but it is a tightly controlled economy. Washington has its tentacles in every nook and cranny, even the black markets. Therefore, a president’s view on how to control the economy matters a great deal.

When it comes to economic policy, the placed to start is former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Trump was a fan of Abenomics, in addition to be on very good personal terms with him. Trump has often spoke highly of what has come to be known as Abenomics. Reportedly, Trump has talked to Scott Bessent about a position in the administration, maybe even Treasury Secretary. Bessent is also a proponent of the “three arrows” approach to the economy.

The “three arrows” term is how Shinzo Abe described his approach. One arrow or prong was loose money. Get as much money into the economy as quickly as possible, even if it creates inflation. The second arrow is to direct that new money into areas of the economy that either need revitalization or startup capital. If this means growing the budget, then so be it. The third arrow is to encourage (compel) private investment in the domestic economy over yield chasing.

Applied to the American economy, it probably means a blend of loose money, the slashing of regulation and tariffs to direct investment into the domestical economy, especially the supply chain and industrial base. One obvious lesson of the Covid panic, one entirely ignored by Washington, is complex supply chains, especially those flowing through Asia, are highly fragile. The growing rift with China makes untangling those supply chains even more important going forward.

Trump has made it clear that he wants to use tariffs to redirect investment into the domestic economy. Another name turning up as a possible addition to the Trump team is Robert Lighthizer, who is both a China hawk and the architect of Trump’s trade policy in his first term. It is important to note that the changes Trump ushered in were not rolled back under Biden. Taken together, it is a clear sign that Trump 2.0 will be much more hawkish on the trade front.

Those familiar with the regulatory world remember the wild ride it was in Trump’s first term as they went on a deregulation spree. Expect Trump 2.0 to be even more aggressive, especially on the environmental front. His nominee for the EPA is Lee Zeldin, who the Gaia worshipers detest. Trump made it clear with the announcement that his job will be to clear the dense thicket of environmental regulations that make it hard to put a shovel in the ground for any reason.

Trump 2.0 will be helped by the courts in this regard. This year the Supreme Court ended what had been termed the Chevron deference. This was the rule that said the courts should defer to the regulatory agencies whenever there was ambiguity in the laws passed by Congress. Of course, this meant that everything passed by Congress was as vague as possible, to give total control to the agencies. This has been turned on its head by the courts.

What we are likely to see is a three-pronged assault on the administrative state in Trump’s second term. One prong will be the aggressive slashing of regulations that we saw in Trump’s first term. The second prong will be a flood of litigation aimed at the vagaries of the enabling legislation. There are many cases in the system. The final prong is an effort by Congress to clean up the language to both limit the agencies, but also reassert oversight.

Where things get interesting is fiscal policy. Inflation remains an issue, despite claims to the contrary, but the Fed is signaling cuts in interest rates. Will Trump demand big new spending on infrastructure? This would be one way to soak up some of the extra money being generated by lower interest rates. Anyone who goes outside knows there is a desperate need to rebuild the infrastructure. Go to an airport and you are suddenly embarrassed to be an American.

All this stuff is boring and does not get the same attention you see with some of the other stuff allegedly on Trump’s agenda. Catapulting left-wing crazies into the sea provides a much bigger dopamine rush than deregulation. On the other hand, Trumponomics is the most radical part of his agenda. Those old enough to remember Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan see the point. Trump is repudiating half a century of conservative economic dogma.

The Trump economic agenda is not without its problems. In Washington, every mortgage payment, college tuition bill, access to elite schools and universities depends on nothing changing in Washington. Trump 1.0 was largely undone by his own party, who is as invested in the status quo as the Democrats. The lawfare industrial complex is also gearing up for round two against Trump. Maybe his team is ready this time, but even if they are prepared, it will be a long slog.

The bigger question is if it will work. What Trump is proposing sounds a lot like old fashioned liberal economics from the last century. Instead of tax and spend it will be print and spend. The difference is the deregulation and tariffs. The point of this approach is to redirect investment back into the American economy and direct it to tangible things like supply chains and manufacturing. It is the approach we saw with growth economies last century.

Another thing he has on his side is the economic elites have come around to this approach to the economy. Investors love cheap money and deregulation, but Wall Street also sees it needs a replacement for Asia. The days of getting rich from the China trade are gone. If the United States replaces China as an investment option, they will get onboard with it. As we saw with the election, it is always good when the rich people are backing your play.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











.

The Restoration

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Note: Behind the green door I have a post about the weird noises coming from the regime after the election, a post about the odd quiet that we are seeing after Trump swept the field and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Legend has it that at the start of the trial of English King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell saw the king approaching Westminster Hall and realized he had a problem. He quickly warned his fellow parliamentarians that the king would ask a very straightforward question at the opening of the trial. He would demand to know upon what authority was he being brought to a trial. This is, in fact, what happened. Charles refused to enter a plea on the grounds the court had no authority over him.

The drama about Cromwell seeing the king’s approach and then suddenly seeing his problem is apocryphal, as the parliamentarians had been debating this issue since the end of the Second English Civil War. According to English law, the king could not be tried for breaking the law. Logically, the king was the law. The king was the sovereign and therefore the embodiment of the nation and its laws. Putting the king on trial was putting the system itself on trial.

Cromwell and his pals got around this problem by simply wielding the power they had, which was the force of arms, to override objections from members of parliament, the House of Lords and the king himself. When Charles asked “I would know by what power I am called hither. I would know by what authority, I mean lawful authority”, the parliamentarians decided that “the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern.”

In other words, the long-held principles both sides claimed to support, over which they fought two bloody wars to that point, gave way to political expediency. Cromwell and the New Model Army had power, and they were determined to keep it, which meant killing the king and what he represented. If it meant trampling a thousand years of tradition and the law itself, they were prepared to do it. The trial proceeded as if the Charles confessed his guilt, and he was soon executed.

The French Revolution gets all the attention when it comes the crisis of liberalism, but it is the English Civil War that presents the problem plainly. By what authority can a parliament rule over a people? The answer always given is the people, but by what authority do the people have to pick their rulers? Where is it written that the people are the moral arbiter of society? Modern people think the answer is obvious, but for most of human history people thought the opposite.

The reason we have that story about Cromwell looking out of the window of Westminster Hall and suddenly realizing his dilemma is because people at the time understood the power of authority. The king was just a man, but what he represented was earthly dominion over man. No one looked at the king as just a man because he was the final authority, the one man who was an exception to the law, while being the embodiment of the law. He was the sovereign.

It is why after Cromwell’s death, the monarchy was restored. Despite it all, Cromwell was never able to answer the question posed by Charles at his trial. The authority of Parliament is in the law, but the authority of the law is in the king. Without a king, those in control of Parliament were left with force as their authority. It is easy to see why Mao famously said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The question of authority has haunted the world since that famous trial.

We are getting a glimpse of this with the election of Trump. Fifty years ago, the managerial class staged a coup against Nixon. Like the Rump Parliament that deposed Charles I, they acted extrajudicially but claimed to be doing so in defense of the law, which is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. They rid themselves of the imperial presidency, reducing the office and the rest of the political structures to committees controlled by the managerial class.

Then as now, the central question in the crisis is who says? Much of what constitutes the crisis of the American empire is people shouting from screens, demanding you must do this or must stop doing that. Everywhere you turn is a digital preacher, waging her bony finger at you and lecturing about your sins. The Roundhead ascendency that began with Watergate climaxed with men in dresses calling normal people sinners, but always the question remained. Who says?

The restoration of Donald Trump is an answer of sorts. Whatever his faults, Trump is a man who commands attention and respect. When he enters a room, the room changes because he is larger than life. He persevered over the last four years of official persecution through force of will. He returns to Washington as the leader of the victorious side in the cold civil war that has gripped the country. He also returns with an agenda and a mandate to execute it.

None of this is to say that Trump is the monarch or our moral authority. The point of the comparison is that the executive exists to replicate that role in a democratic system that lacks a moral authority. Without energy in the executive, the president cannot play the role the system requires to function. The last fifty years has seen the rise of rule by committee, and no one builds monuments to committees. Just as Parliament needed the king, Washington needs Trump.

It still leaves open that question. Monarchy solved the problem by making the king the sovereign and the answer to who says? In America, Christianity was assumed to be the answer most of the time. The exceptions required a strong executive to make the hard decisions and force the legislature to act. First the melting away of Christianity then the toppling of the strong executive left us with rule by committee and the fanciful chants about democracy to answer the question of authority.

Trump will not reign forever, so the question will return. Perhaps the managerial elite sees the problem and supports the return of the imperial presidency as a solution to the internal contradictions of managerialism. Maybe the economic elite supports the strong executive as a proxy for their supremacy over the managerial class, much in the way the king was the leader of the aristocracy. Maybe Washington falls into chaos again, as managerialism reaches its end.

In the end, political systems rise and fall on the question of authority. The moral questions in every society are either answered by the gods or by the people though their traditions and customs. Centuries of experience in self-government says we simply cannot accept “because we say so” as an answer. You either have a strong executive with the power to impress or you have a shared religion that answers all the important moral questions. Managerialism has neither.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at

sa***@mi*********************.com











.

Radio Derb November 08 2024

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 02m57s Victory for the normies
  • 08m59s Bonfire of the talking points
  • 14m32s Window of opportunity for troublemakers
  • 18m21s The squirrel election
  • 25m37s Compulsory voting? Strewth!
  • 32m50s Landscaper wars
  • 34m49s Sci-Am editor speaks
  • 38m03s The Amish vote
  • 40m21s Signoff with the Chairman

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     Yeah yeah, I know: it’s a little early for Christmas. I just wanted to come in with jubilation, and there’s nothing quite as jubilant as the Hallelujah Chorus. That was the London Philharmonic conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, whom I once saw conduct in person.

This is of course your jubilantly genial host John Derbyshire, on the air with edition number 970 of Radio Derb. The previous 969 podcasts — audio and text transcripts both — are all archived at my personal website johnderbyshire.com. From the “Navigation” box on my home page just click on “Opinions” and then, at the “Opinions” page, click on “Radio Derb.” There they are, hours of happy listening.

As Master of the Metadata I can in fact tell you precisely how many hours: 621, plus 39 minutes and 22 seconds. Sit back and enjoy!

Also on my home page are instructions on how to support my work using snail mail, PayPal, or crypto, or via Zelle direct to my bank. To make a tax-deductible donation, earmark a check with my name and mail it to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759. Thank you!

The occasion of my jubilation is of course the triumph of my party, the Republican Party, in this week’s general election. I shall open with some comments about that.

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