The Third Testament

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Yesterday’s post regarding the future of Christianity inadvertently set off a debate about whether the Bible is fake. Is the collection of books we call the Bible, anything like the texts the original Christians used either in written form or as part of the oral tradition while they were forming up in the first century? Most Christians accept the argument that the Bible is the product of a long process that started after the life of Christ and his disciples, while others insist the Gospels are firsthand accounts.

The flash point in yesterday’s post was the line about the Gospels being written roughly a century after the events they describe. This should not be a controversial assertion as the majority of biblical scholars think the Gospels were likely written between AD 66 and 110 with the usual uncertainty. That is not a century after the life of Christ, so that is a bit of an exaggeration, but that has no impact on the general point. Early Christians were not waving around Bibles, because the Bible did not exist.

That does not mean the Bible is fake, but it does mean the Bible as we know it would be a strange thing to early Christians. They would recognize the stories, as the written texts were no doubt relying on oral sources. Most scholars think the stories about Christ and his disciples were part of the proselytizing of early Christians, used to convince their audience that Jesus was a miraculous figure. The stories also served as examples for early Christians facing their own persecution.

The way to view the Gospels is as part of a marketing campaign for the new religion that also formed the basis of the new religion. After all, Christianity, like any human organization, had to answer the question, “Who are we?” and what followed is what must always follow and that is a collection of rules that define who is inside the group and who is excluded. Fundamental to being a Christian is accepting that Christ is the son of God and the symbol of God’s covenant with mankind.

The Gospels as a sales pitch offend some people, but it should not, as close to half the New Testament is exactly that and no one complains. The Letters of Paul are clearly intended to support and grow the Christian audience. While much of the content was written to address specific theological issues in the early Christian communities, all of them contain encouragement to believers in the face of persecution, urging them to live in a godly manner and to spread the faith.

The point being is that much of what we think of as the Bible was written by men to address the issues faced by early Christians. Like Christianity itself, those early stories evolved in their telling and then further evolved as they were written and rewritten as circumstances warranted. Even the first effort at formalizing these written texts did not stop this process. The mere act of writing them in Latin meant the first Bible was different from the first written Gospels.

Of course, the Bible was written by men and then rewritten and edited by men, which means errors and omissions. Figuring this out is impossible. Why was the Gospel of Saint Thomas left out of the Bible? Probably because it was not anywhere near as popular as the Synoptic Gospels. Maybe early Christian scholars thought there was a whiff of gnostic heresy in those alleged sayings of Jesus. Whatever the reason, it was most likely not a question of authenticity.

Not only were whole texts excluded, but parts of the included texts have been excluded and rewritten since the first efforts to write them down. This story about a hidden chapter of the Bible was floating around recently. The media claims are overdone, but it does reveal that the editing process started soon after the writing process began and went on for centuries. Much of what we think of as the Bible is the result of practical decisions within the limits of the age.

This is the primary argument against literalism and sola scriptura. You cannot accept the Bible as the literal word of God when it was clearly written and heavily edited by men, with all the errors that come with man’s actions. Similarly, it cannot be the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice when it was compiled by men who were not infallible. Instead, the Bible is to be viewed as a living thing within a living Church that adapts to present reality.

The counter to this argument is that as soon as people start talking about a document as a living thing, they will soon be trying to kill it. This has been the history of the American republic and the Constitution. Everyone who speaks about the “living constitution” is plotting to stab a knife through some part of it. Once people start talking about the Bible as mere inspiration, it is not long before the leaders are embracing sodomy while the congregation is talking about converting to Islam.

Putting aside that debate, the history of the Bible tells us that like the Church itself, the Bible is part of an evolutionary process. Christianity did not spread around the globe and survive to this day, because it was unable to adapt. The Bible itself, with its errors and omissions, survives because of those errors and omissions. The reason people can debate this is because of those imperfections. After all, evolution is driven by defect which turns out to be superior to the standard.

Perhaps that is what lies ahead for the Church. Maybe a third testament, perhaps a collection of yet unwritten texts, adapting the core message of Christ to the modern problems of a technological society, is in the future. No doubt, there will be people who hate it and long debates about what should be in included and excluded, but in the end a timeless message must adapt to the times. It is how we got Mormons. Perhaps for Christians, there is a Joseph Smith waiting to be born.

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.

Evolutionary Christianity

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Note: Behind the green door I have a post about how the best path to a healthy life is to ignore your health, a post about the bastardization of the college football postseason, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

One of the most important dates on the Christian calendar is Christmas, the day set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. There is a 1-in-365 chance that Jesus was born on December 25, but no one knows when Jesus was born. The date is of no great significance to the life of Christ. What matters is he was lived and died, and his life and death are the root of the world’s most important religion. To Christians, the life of Jesus is the most important event in human history.

Whether Christianity is still the most important world religion is the most important part of that first paragraph, given the state of Christianity in the world. In Europe, where Christianity evolved and flourished in the Roman empire, Christianity is no longer an important part of the culture. The trappings of Christmas remain, largely for commercial reasons, but otherwise Christianity is just about gone. Islam and managerial liberalism are the most important religions in Europe.

In the United States, Christianity remains under assault by the usual suspects but remains an important part of the culture. Even in the secular regions, the cultural framework of Christianity remains in place. God has been replaced by “the tides of history” and Scripture with the latest slop from progressivism, but these things are just filling the hole left in the Christian framework. In the more normal parts of the country, Christian churches still dot the countryside.

There is no question that Christianity is on the wane in the Western world and that spells trouble for the Church globally. It is tempting to wonder if Christianity has a future at all, but the better question is what will it become in the future? The story of Christianity is survival and evolution. What we think of as Christianity today is nothing like what the early Christians experienced. Even medieval Christians would find modern Christianity to be weird and heretical.

For example, early Christians would be puzzled by the reliance on Scripture by many modern Protestant sects. The Gospels were not written until roughly a century after the life of Christ and his disciples. The first “Bible” was assembled by St. Jerome around A.D. 400 and included 27 books of the New Testament. In 382 A.D., the Council of Rome finished the process of determining the 73 books of the Bible. There were probably millions of Christians before there was a single Bible.

Then you have the fact that the Christianity that emerged from the Levant and began to spread around the Roman Empire ran into both Roman paganisms, but also the much more potent paganism of the Germanic barbarians. Many of the things we associate with Christianity were borrowed from these pagans. James C. Russell argues in his book, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity, that the culture and religion of Germanic pagans shaped Christianity.

Of course, there are “Bible believing Christians” who reject these claims, but these people are practicing a form of Christianity that could not exist if not for the evolution of the Church into the late Middle Ages. It was the revolution within Christianity that gave us Protestantism and to some degree its secular partner liberalism. The dynamic between the two is a hot topic today in dissident circles. There would be no “Bible believing Christians” without this evolutionary process.

This evolution of Christianity also helps explain why it survived at all. A handful of radical Jews changed the course of human history, by creating something that has motivated men to die for their belief in it. In 303, the Roman emperor Diocletian issued a series of edicts rescinding Christians’ legal rights, setting off a decade of persecutions, just as the early Christian were beginning to codify their faith. Despite this, the Church not only survived, but became much stronger.

There is a good argument to be made that the success of Christianity was due to its struggle in the face of persecution. Early Christians had to be smart, courageous, and resourceful to maintain their religion. This selected for the sorts of people who were willing to take on the enormous challenge of maintaining, spreading, and developing a fundamentally new moral and cosmological outlook. The early Christians had to be to the far right of the bell curve.

Another way to think of it is that Christianity was a new mind virus that quickly evolved to spread among its new host. It then had to evolve even faster once it broke out of its original population. When efforts to eradicate it came, it once again evolved rapidly to adapt to the changes in its host population. Like the common cold or the flu, there are lots of variant of the original Christian virus now. In the end, they all promise the same thing for those infected.

Still another evolutionary way of thinking about how Christianity survived and thrived is that it is a mutation in human thought. Until Christianity, monotheism was limited to Jews and Zoroastrians. Universalism did not exist. These two mutations combined in Christianity and spread through the life, struggle, and death of early Christians until it became a dominant trait. The irony here is that some Christians dispute evolution, but they would not be here if evolution were not real.

The point of all this is not to rustle the sensibilities of those Christians who think the reason for the Church is it is the will and word of God. The point is that Christianity exists at all because it has adapted and survived far worse that the commercialization of Christmas and the “happy holidays” nonsense. Christianity is facing a new challenge in the West, one to which it will have to adapt, while maintaining the thing that has allowed it to survive, which is the hope and courage it provides the believer.

The reason the West is in crisis is the new religion, that which the managerial class struggles to understand, even while they are preaching it, is not able to provide an answer to the questions Christianity has always been able to answer. Those questions are “Who says?” and “Why should I listen?” Men will live and die in defense of the answers to those questions. Whatever Christianity becomes on the surface, it will thrive because it answers the most important of man’s questions.

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 December 20 2024

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m51s Drone panic
  • 06m55s This land is their land
  • 11m05s End student visas
  • 16m28s Zero-based immigration policy
  • 21m43s Chauvin gets a break
  • 24m22s How they spend our money
  • 26m14s VDARE’s Christmas message
  • 26m58s Signoff: Not a Christmas song?

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air for Christmas! That was the voice of the great American soprano Leontyne Price giving us Hark! The Herald Angels Sing; this is the voice of your suitably genial host John Derbyshire with reflections and commentary on the week’s news.

First, those mysterious drones. Continue reading →

Twenty Questions

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The final show of the year is a double album set. That means two hours of the dulcet sound of my voice jumping through twenty topics. There were a lot of good questions this time, so rather than try to figure out which ones were the best, I decided to do a two hour show and cover them all. There were some left out only because they were duplicates or not appropriate for a family show.

A few will become full shows in the new year. While I was talking about Strauss it occurred to me that it would make for a good trio of shows. One hour on Strauss, one hour on the neocons and one hour on Claremont. All three are tangled up together and all three are relevant to the next administration. There are more than a few people from the Jaffa cult in the Trump team.

Another thing that occurred to me while doing the show is a good feature of the new site would be a way to submit show ideas and questions/topics for these multi-topic shows that people seem to like. Over the holidays I am hoping to make some progress on the new site and maybe have it done next month. If anyone has ideas feel free to post them up in the comments

Otherwise, this is the final show of the year, other than the green door show. There will be a Sunday show and maybe some video experiments. That is another project on the drawing board. I did some experiments from the back of the truck the other day, so I might test those out over the holiday break. On the other hand, if they are terrible, I might save myself the trouble and scrap the idea.

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
  • Liberalism
  • Black Pilled
  • Leo Strauss
  • Dissident Art
  • Our Bolsheviks
  • Juvenile Politics
  • AI
  • Cunning & Evil
  • Music
  • Marriage & Family
  • Civilizationalism
  • Jewish Lobby & Christian
  • Profilicity
  • South Asians
  • Populism Versus Dissident Right
  • The Fuentes Business
  • Video & Writing
  • Christianity & Liberalism
  • Israel & Jews
  • Be Not Afraid

Direct Download, The iTunes, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee

Big Top Politics

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The internet is having a good laugh at the release of police bodycam video from an incident that occurred at the home of Nick Fuentes last month. The police were called when Fuentes allegedly pepper sprayed an old Jewish woman and then threw her down the steps of his house. In the bodycam video, the police officer inexplicably asks Fuentes if he is a white supremacist and he responds by telling the cop that he is a Mexican, so he cannot be a white supremacist.

Fuentes is a media savvy character, so it is entirely possible that he said this old joke knowing the video would end up on the internet. Back in his early days as an online influencer, he would often claim to be a Mexican or a multiracial person as a joke but also so he could avoid being called a white nationalist. Like all cult leaders, Fuentes takes every opportunity to signal to his people by using insider language, so it is likely that he said this to the cops for that reason.

According to news reports, Fuentes has been charged with assault and will start the legal process this week with his first court appearance. This is the reason the local prosecutor released the bodycam video. One of the ironies of the bodycam phenomenon is that it was to prevent cops from framing innocent black bodies, but it is now mostly used by prosecutors to sway public opinion. They routinely dump the video to make the accused look bad.

That aside, this event does touch on some more serious issues related to politics in the mass media, technological age. Thirty years ago, Nick Fuentes could not exist, and we know this because David Duke had ceased to exist. Duke was Nick Fuentes for the analog age and had a media run in the late-1980’s. That was before the internet when the media had tight control over who was and was not on the main stage and the many smaller stages that relied on the main stage.

Duke got the attention of the media in 1988 when he ran in a special election in Louisiana for a vacant state house seat. Reagan was about to leave the scene, and the usual suspects were looking for a new electoral strategy. They hoped they could make Duke the face of conservatism, so this local character was turned into a national figure when he managed to win the special election. For a few years he would get called to do national media until the media got tired of him.

Fast forward to this age and Nick Fuentes is doing a similar act, but instead of getting the attention of national media, he has used a mastery of new technology to insert himself in the new media that is the result of the new technology. First it was as a live streamer within the alt-right ecosystem and then as a street activist and number one fan of Donald Trump. Once he got a following, he leveraged this to get noticed by other online characters with large audiences.

There is where the parallel ends. Once the media got tired of David Duke, his fifteen minutes were up no matter how hard he tried. In this age, internet personalities can force their way into public consciousness, even when the major media operations choose to ignore them. That usually requires being outrageous in such a way that they trend for a day on social media. Of course, that means all these characters are in a race to see who can be the most outrageous.

That is why Fuentes is now going to court. His antics attracted local loons to his home and his response, probably designed to get maximum attention online, has him facing assault charges. This is not unique to Fuentes. Non-political influencers rely on the same strategy to increase their clout. Andrew Tate exists because he packaged old man-o-sphere ideas in an outlandish package. The modern influencer is famous mostly because they are good at getting attention.

Therein lies the problem. Andrew Tate is a great example of how the attention seeking crowds out everything else about him. Few people who recognize his name know anything about his act. Whatever issues he is trying to promote are lost in the carnival atmosphere that must exist around him in order for him to retain clout. You see the same thing with Nick Fuentes. The engine of the online influencer must constantly be fed with new ways to get attention.

This is why mainstream politics have become ridiculous. To get into politics, you must show an ability to get attention. Then you must be willing to play the role required to hold office. This selects for people who either lack authenticity and dignity or are willing to trade those things to win office. The result is a politics dominated by two-dimensional profiles controlled by the producers who underwrite their role in the great drama that is American politics.

Another thing about this Fuentes business is it presents people with a political dilemma because the reason a Fuentes exists is because he elicits strong feelings for or against the character he plays online. If an actor gets attacked at his home for playing a villain in a film, it is an easy call. People know he is an actor. The trick of the online influencer is to strongly link the character them play online with their real self. It is not as easy to separate the fictional Fuentes from the real Fuentes.

Putting aside the fictional Fuentes, it is easy for people to side with the guy who must put up with kooks banging on his door. Gassing an old Jewish woman may not be the best response, but it is understandable. In a sane world, the cops would tell the old woman to stop harassing Fuentes. They would warn Fuentes about gassing old Jewish women who knock on his door. Both would have been forced to apologize to one another and the matter would be put to bed.

Of course, in a sane world, Fuentes would not exist and the crazy people who need him to exist would not exist. Perhaps, as a step toward a return to normalcy, the judge will make the old woman stand on the street corner wearing a sandwich board that reads, “I like to harass Mexicans.” Fuentes could be made to stand on the opposite corner with a sandwich board that reads, “I beat up old women.” Just imagine how many impressions that would get on Twitter!

It is tempting to look at this seedy affair as proof things are terminal. Politics is now overrun by carnies, so nothing serious can be done. Yet, things are happening in Washington primarily because the world’s biggest shit poster happens to be the world’s richest man and pals with another shit poster, Donald Trump. They attacked the spending bill in Congress and then support for it collapses. Perhaps even in the circus of American politics good things can happen with the right ringmaster.

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.

Promethean Thoughts

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A popular argument in certain circles is that Christianity is to blame for the decline of the West, because it is blamed for various ills in the West. Individualism is often blamed on Christianity, because within most Christian sects, the individual has a unique relationship with God that is not dependent upon his relationship to his society, ethnic group or tribe. Another complaint is that Christianity demands openness, which invites in the sorts of elements antithetical to social solidarity.

There are many variations on this general theme and all of them have some kernel of truth to them. It is the heart of the rather silly argument behind the “woke right” nonsense promoted by crackpots like James Lindsay. He has created a new political scale where one end is any form of exclusivity, which he calls “woke” and the other end is complete openness, which he calls “classical liberalism.”  It is mostly nonsense, but it does illustrate the anti-Christian claims about liberalism.

Professional Christians do themselves no good in this regard by embracing and celebrating nation wrecking ideas like open borders, diversity, the worship of nonwhites and an obsession with Israel. Most low-church ministers sound like the tourism minister from Israel fused with the HR manager at a major corporation. Of course, the more traditional churches are in deep with open borders, often getting government contracts from people who would like to stamp out Christianity.

In the final reckoning, the Christian churches and their entrepreneurial advocates will have much to answer for over their role in the crisis of the West. The question is whether this is the logical result of Christianity, or is it a novelty that grew from the spread of liberalism, particularly the American form of it. After all, 18th century Christians were not in favor of open borders, and they certainly did not think the worship of Israel was their reason to exist.

For those looking to absolve Christianity, that is the starting point. From the conversion of Europe into the 16th century, Christianity fit neatly into and was an integral part of the feudal order that ruled Europe. The Church provided a moral framework for the secular rules, but also provided a moral authority for them. The Church was the ultimate answer to the question, “who says?” whenever it was not obvious that the king was the person with final authority in his domain.

It is only when people started to question the set of reciprocal obligations and duties that defined the European political order that we see changes in the relationship between Christians and the prevailing social order. The Protestant revolution was as much a result of the weakening political order as it was disputes over the traditions and practices of Christians. In other words, the changes in the political order can be blamed for the revolution within Christianity.

Further context is the fact that the Church was a different thing in the later Middle Ages than what it was at the end of the Roman Empire. The Christianity that evolved to flourish and survive within Rome, had to further evolve after Rome. It continued to evolve to flourish within the new feudal order that defined Europe. Once the feudal order began to collapse, the Church evolved to adapt, often with localized versions to meet localized political changes.

The same framing can be applied to America. In the New World, the old religion was free to evolve and do so under unique circumstances. The Calvinism of the Old World arrived in New England, along with Anglicanism and Presbyterianism. Soon, every Christian sect of the Old World was setting up shop in the New World, quickly evolving and splintering into new versions to meet new conditions. America was a great experiment for more than just self-government.

What we call progressivism has its roots in this Christian experiment. A century ago, progressive literature was riddled with references to Scripture. The reason for that is it had its roots in Christian movements like abolitionism, social reform movements and the Social Gospel movement. The argument against slavery that animated the Civil War were not economic or political in nature. The abolitionists were acting upon their sense of moral justice informed by their Christin faith.

The way to understand America since Gettysburg is to think of it as a religious crusade masquerading as a country. The covenantal form of nationalism that still turns up in our politics has roots in the founding the country. Northern nationalism in the Civil War, for example, was linked to America’s alleged destiny to free the world. It was not enough to celebrate self-determination. America had a duty to help all people free themselves from domination and that started with the South.

This is the error people make when trying to blame liberalism for the current crisis or blame Christianity for the liberalism. American liberalism of the type the Framers embraced was replaced by a variant that borrowed the modes of thought from Protestant Christianity but eventually left out God and Scripture. The hole of authority has been filled with vague concepts like the “tides of history” and other expression that can be replaced with “the side of the angels.”

This creates a dilemma. It is clear that Christianity in the Old World evolved to meet the challenges of the changing political order, driven by the spread of Old World liberalism, but it is also clear that the new forms of Christianity informed that liberalism, and in the case of America, created a fusion of the two. That new ideological and theological cause, dressed in the garb of reason and pragmatism, then dominated the West, at the point of gun, until we have reached this point.

In the end, blaming liberalism or Christianity is a fool’s errand. The root cause probably goes much further back. For example, universalism is only possible in a cosmology that has just one God. In a world of many gods, there are many sources of moral authority, so therefore no one can claim a single moral order. Then you have the curse of reason that was given to us by the Greeks. If there is one God and one morally correct way of living, then our reason should be able to discover it.

The good news for the Christians is that the religion has shown an ability to adapt that no other faith has managed. Judaism has survived for longer, but only as a folk religion serving a tiny minority. Christianity has survived as a majority religion, through the ups and downs of Western civilization. Despite its current condition, it will most likely adapt and once again give cause to the flourishing of Western people. The same fate probably does not await liberalism or progressivism.

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.

A Radical Departure

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An interesting subtext to the election of Donald Trump is one that has been largely ignored by the usual sources. It was not cultural issues, foreign policy or the ineptitude of Kamala Harris that drove the election. It was the economy. Widespread anxiety over the economy is what drove down support for Harris, despite the billion-dollar campaign and the billions spent in media gaslighting. No amount of jawboning could convince the public that the economy is doing as good as claimed.

There is a good reason for this. As some have predicted, inflation has been creeping back up after having moved down for a period. The American economy is experiencing what happened in the 1970’s. Contrary to popular belief, inflation did not rage for the entire decade but ran in spurts. There were periods where inflation rose, plateaued and then fell to a tolerable level. The latest data on the CPI and the PPI indicate the current economy is stuck in a similar pattern.

Regime media dismisses this as a minor blip in an otherwise glorious economy, managed by the wise and noble Biden administration, but that has not convinced anyone who buys things. The government does not measure inflation the same way it used to measure it in the 1970’s, so no talk of stagflation. If they used the old methods, inflation would be a daily feature. Of course, you also have the fact that the government now lies about all of the economic data.

This is why the gaslighting failed so miserably in the election. One of the secrets to trick people is to overcome the expectations gap. This is the difference between what people expect to be the basis of the argument and the actual basis of the argument. If you confirm what people think is true and make your argument from that basis, you can convince people of most anything. If you start from an alternative reality as your basis, then you have little chance, no matter how clever the argument.

That does not alter the fact that the economy may be in worse shape than the government and media are willing to admit. There are systemic problems that go back a long way that may finally being coming to the fore. Twenty years ago, everyone talked about what would happen to the labor force when the baby boomers started to retire, but no one talks about it now that they are retiring. Of course, no one dares talk about is replacing those baby boomers in the workplace.

For his part, Trump talks about the need to reform the economic model away from everyone doing each other’s laundry back to building things again. Part of his approach to China is to bring back important parts of the industrial base. Trump is committed to a form of Abenomics which means massive new spending to attract private capital, along with policies to coerce those investments. He will come to office just as government spending is setting new records.

This sort of worked in Japan because they have a strong industrial base that supports their export economy. They also have a homogenous culture with a commitment to self-sufficiency and a savings rate to prove it. For America, this can only work with low interest rates and that can only happen if the dollar returns to its dominant position in global trade and investment. It is why Trump is threatening to nuke any country thinking about going off the dollar.

The trouble is, people will trade in a currency if it is backed by something accepted everywhere like gold or the issuing country produces things that the rest of the world covets, like food, manufactured goods and energy. Alternatively, as has been the case for decades, countries will transact in a currency if it is viewed as a stable store of value by the rest of the world. The dollar has been the reserve currency because of the petrodollar and because it came with a stable set of rules.

Constant rule breaking by Washington has depressed the trust in the dollar because the rules behind it have collapsed. The only reason that the BRICS countries are working on an alternative payment system is they fear dependence on the dollar makes their governments unstable. Added to this is the fact that the Saudis have not renewed the petrodollar agreement signed in the 1970’s. This has not resulted in a change in policy, but China just sold dollar-denominated bonds in Riyadh.

This is one reason the foreign policy establishment is committed to creating chaos in the Middle East. The United States is not just the world’s banker. It is also the world’s protection racket and the countries that need protection the most are those near places with lots of instability. You can be sure that the collapse of Syria is keeping the sheiks in Riyadh tossing and turning at night. Here you see the connection between foreign policy and economic policy. In the end, it is always about money.

This is what Trump will inherit next month. On the one hand, the economic model of the American empire relies on the world being a dangerous place. This is what makes the world willing to put up with Washington in exchange for protection. At the same time, that model is slowly hollowing out the American middle-class. The imperial model works just fine if American citizens accept being mere subjects alongside the rest of the world’s population. Clearly they do not like this.

To some degree you can understand why permanent Washington has reacted to Trump and the populist movement that has made him possible with such fear. They understand the risks that come with putting the American people first. It is not just the cultural stuff or the paranoid fear of the past. It is the understanding that the imperial economic system cannot prioritize Americans over the others getting protection. Protection rackets must protect everyone inside the racket.

Whether or not Trump understands this is a mystery, but he is committed to an American form of Abenomics. It was not an accident that he hosted Abe’s widow last week at Mar-a-Lago. Scott Bessent, Trump’s pick to run Treasury, is known as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of Japan” because his hedge fund made billions from Abenomics by understanding it in great detail. Whether it can work in America is unknown, but we will know soon enough.

That is the irony of the Trump election. He was elected in large part to fix the economy, by which people mean lower inflation and increase wages. Republicans have done this with tax cuts and corporate giveaways and Democrats have done it with spending programs and corporate giveaways. The Trump plan is to restructure the economy, which will require massive spending and a considerable amount of pain. It is a radical departure from what people have come to expect.

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.

Deep State Nemesis

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Note: Behind the green door I have a post about how the primary goal of American foreign policy is to create chaos, a post about the challenge of buying an old truck, and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

One of the more difficult things for people to accept is that sometimes things happen that benefit no one and for reasons under no one’s control. Other than natural disasters, people just assume that everything happens for a reason and someone wanted it to happen because they gain to benefit from it happening. Conspiracy theories are born when it is not clear who made something happen. This need to know the who and why for everything gets filled by the conspiracy theory.

The collapse of Syria is a great example of this. Everyone just assumed this was another American regime change operation. Then we got stories about how it was the Turks who backed the rebels and wanted Assad gone. Once the Israelis started grabbing land, the usual suspects came in with their usual theories. There is even a theory that the Russians wanted Syria to collapse to create a quagmire for the Americans to manage in the Middle East.

All these theories make some sense, if you ignore the things that make no sense whatsoever, like the dangers of creating chaos in the region. The Israelis might be happy Assad is gone for emotional reasons, but having a bunch of Islamist warlords operating on their border just added a lot of new costs to their budget. The United States now has a new problem to manage. Guarding those Chevon oil fields suddenly got more expensive and more complicated.

Then you have the fact that there are many players on the Syrian board. Before you get to the big players, you have six factions within the rebel coalition. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, called HTS in Western media. They are backed by Turkey, Qatar, the CIA and led by a guy who looks like the main character from the move The Dictator. He wants to create an Islamic state in Syria. This group used to be called ISIS of Syria but now is pretending to be a kinder, gentler ISIS.

Remnants of the Assad Regime are now forming up in the Alawite areas they still control and presumably they will get support from Russia and Iran. Then there is FSA/SNA and allied groups, that have been supported by Turkey, Qatar, the U.S. State Department, and the CIA. The Kurds, called SDF, have the protection of the American military operating in the region. ISIS still exists, with backing of pro-Islamic forces, along with regional tribal and Islamic groups.

What we now have is an area a little bigger than the state of New York controlled by a collection of war lords that do not like one another very much. The most likely outcome of this arrangement is a civil war between the groups. The only reason anyone would want such an outcome is if they have no exposure to it. In other words, there is no reason to think that anyone wanted this outcome, at least none of the countries exposed to whatever comes out of Syria.

This brings us back to that default formula. Everything happens in the world for a reason because someone stands to benefit from it. The cost-benefit for everyone with an interest in Syria is already negative and promises to get much worse as things travel their natural course. In the end, someone might make something of it, but right now it is a chaotic mess. Who would want this result? The answer is no one because no one saw it as a possible outcome.

Instead of a game of four-dimensional chess, Syria is an example of the lack of second order thinking by the Turks and Americans. Since 2011 both sides have supported anti-Assad groups for different reasons. Erdogan is obsessed with the Kurds, who operate in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The United States backed anti-Assad group because Assad was tight with Russia and Iran. Their goal was to put pressure on Russian and Iran with a slow bleed of Syria.

Based on the associated media campaign, it is clear the United States and Turkey thought this would be a repeat of past flare ups. The rebels would make some attacks, but the Syrian army would push them back. After all, the Syrian army was a quarter million men with the support of Russia and Iran. The rebels numbered around thirty thousand and lacked air power and modern equipment. Instead, the Syrian army collapsed and Russia and Iran did not come in to save them.

Like all large-scale human societies, Syria was a complex system made more complex by relentless pressure from outside. Those outside failed to appreciate this complexity, so they did not plan for what would come from it once they started making changes to the conditions in which that complex system existed. Like a bomb disposal crew randomly cutting wires, the whole thing blew up and now everyone with a connection to the region is scrambling to adjust to a new reality.

Instead of being an example of the cleverness needed for the popular explanations about why Syria collapsed, especially the more conspiratorial ones, Syria is an example of a lack of those things. No one seems to have understood what was happening inside the Syrian system and no one thought much about what could come from monkeying around with the conditions inside Syria. It is the result of a lack of second and third order thinking, not four-dimensional chess.

The thing about this situation is it should have been obvious to all concerned that collapse was a possibility even before the rebel attack. In other words, this scheme was obviously stupid, but the main players did it anyway. This is not the first time the United States has been this stupid. Libya, Tunisia, Egypt are three great examples of the same poorly conceived scheme. If not for the Egyptian military, the Muslim Brotherhood would be controlling most of North Africa.

It is a good reminder for those who love chanting about the Deep State. The same people who create these debacles around the Muslim world are making decisions about all sorts of things, foreign and domestic. In a complex world, the default assumption about why anything happens is Hanlon’s razor. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence, neglect, or ignorance.” What we are seeing In Syria is a combination of all three.

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 December 13 2024

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m56s Make America Normal Again
  • 06m09s Trump: harbinger of a new age
  • 11m05s Syria is the new Libya
  • 16m50s The West is best
  • 21m48s Immigration roundup
  • 28m39s Spared the Hitler comparison
  • 30m10s Cliodynamics (not sci-fi)
  • 31m30s Moore’s list
  • 32m36s Signoff:  An advertisement for Cultural Appropriation

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners. This is your demonstrably genial host John Derbyshire, back in the recording studio after nine days off the grid. So this week’s podcast is farm-fresh, not frozen and reheated like last week’s.

Mr and Mrs Derbyshire actually spent eight of those nine days in Belize. That, you can be entirely excused for not knowing, is a tiny little nation on the East coast of the Central American isthmus, a British colony until 1981 but now independent. I shall have more to say about our Belize adventure in my Diary at the end of this month.

And now I’m back in the saddle with Radio Derb’s weekly survey of the news. The transition from warm Caribbean air to the frosty New York variety has left me with a sore throat, so I’m going to sound a little hoarse [horse sound], for which I apologize. That aside, it’s business as usual.

So, the news. First, MANA. Continue reading →

Thinking About Collapse

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One of the interesting things about what is happening in Syria is that it is not just the fall of the government but a collapse of Syrian society. When Assad fled, everyone in his government went into hiding. The people running various parts of the system abandoned their posts, leaving no government at all. The money is worthless, so the economy has ceased to function.

Then you have the gangs of lunatics running around, supported by your tax dollars, making sure nothing is working. Now we are getting word that remnants of the military are forming up into war bands. Soon the various ethnic and religious groups will do the same and the result will be a war zone where lightly armed war bands fight with one another for control of increasingly worthless land.

In other words, Syria collapsed and went from a poorly functioning country to something like a fallen Bronze Age society. This is not just the fall of a government but the collapse of everything, which is not something we often see. The last example is Libya, which was not much a society before we killed Gaddafi. The most recent example is the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago.

That is the show this week. Societal collapse is a rare thing, but Syria is a good reminder that it can still happen. The conditions are pretty similar in all the big examples of collapse. Of course, once you start thinking about those conditions, the West begins to look a bit fragile. Syria is also a reminder that collapse always catches people by surprise, even those causing it.

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
  • Syrian Collapse
  • French Collapse
  • Tsarist Collapse
  • Soviet Collapse
  • Collapse & Revolution
  • The American Collapse

Direct Download, The iTunes, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee