Contemplating The Weirdness

Posted on August 10, 2022 by thezman

239

There is little agreement as to the dating of the current crisis, other than it seems to have started sometime after the end of the Cold War. Dating transitions from one period to the next is a form of sorites paradox. America is culturally, politically and economically different than it was fifty years ago. The point at which the turn began seems to be around when the Cold War ended, but the forces behind the transition may have roots going back a long way.

What can say about this age is that it has been defined by uncertainty. As Tucker Carlson has noted on several occasions, a lot of things have happened that no one thought would ever happen. He likes to use the election of Donald Trump as an example of something so impossible that it forces you to reconsider your biases about what is and is not possible. Anyone old enough to remember when Trump became famous in the 1980’s understands Carlson’s point.

Of course, the Trump election was not the first time something happened in politics that seemed impossible until it happened. In 1990, no serious person thought Bill Clinton could be president. The reason is no serious person knew his name. No one had to as the idea of a corrupt governor from a small state like Arkansas rising to national predominance for something other than crime was ridiculous. Presidents needed to be from big states and appeal to normal Americans.

The Clinton-Trump connection is useful for understanding the weirdness of the current age, because the two of them have a lot of connections. Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were golf buddies and bonded over their carnal interests. They both hated Hillary Clinton for the same reasons. Both had a thing for shady land deals and the shady people who operate in that space. Their existence is more a symptom of a larger problem than the cause of anything we see today.

Putting the personal comparisons aside, the transition from the old way of doing things to this new way is evident in this comparison. Bill and Hillary Clinton were spectacularly corrupt politicians, but once they were out of office no one thought it was a good idea to keep pursuing their criminal activity. That was the old thinking. The new thinking has the FBI raiding Trump’s home over a petty issue. In that Clinton-Trump window, much has changed and changed unexpectedly.

That brings us back to the point Carlson likes making and that is we have to reconsider everything in light of recent events. Every day old barriers are falling away to new and bizarre forces. Even in the racial lunacy of the 1970’s, no serious person would have proposed erecting shrines to a dead drug addict. Today, cities all over the world have George Floyd memorials. Putting aside the politics, the weirdness of this suggests some sort of mass psychosis is at work.

Some will be tempted to wave this away as normal. In every age, people complain about change. It feels like the world has gone mad. Romans thought the spread of the weird new Jesus cult was madness. People at the dawn of the industrial revolution saw their lives completely altered by events. This time of great uncertainty was what motivated Marx to look for an explanation for the great upheavals around Europe in the 19th century. Change often feels like madness.

The thing is prior transitions had an obvious point. The Jesus cult was different but it was not that different. Even the skeptics could understand the attraction of this strange new religion that was spreading through the empire. The decline of the feudal order brought increased prosperity, so even though lots of new things were happening, lots of good things were happening. The same was true of industrialization. There seemed to be a logic behind the massive changes.

The current age is simply weird for the sake of being weird. Why are Western leaders trying to destroy the agricultural sectors in the West? They claim Gaia commands it, but what are they getting from this? As far as religions go, this strange new form of animism does not offer the believer much of a return. Christianity not only dangles the afterlife out there, but the promise that the wicked will pay for their sins. Gaia promises vengeance on all mankind, regardless of their righteousness.

The general weirdness is most obvious in our politics. The reaction to Trump by the political class was crazy for the sake of being crazy. The guy was desperate for their acceptance and would have signed whatever they put in front of him. These are people purpose built to fleece the sucker, yet when this opportunity arose, they were suddenly too pure to be spoiled by his presence. Their reaction was the exact opposite of what a lifetime of behavior would have predicted.

The same can be said for the ongoing pogroms against Trumpism. The 2020 election was the ultimate flex. Logic says they should have immediately closed the books on Trump and erased him from the collective consciousness. This is how all ruling elites have handled things. The ancients would remove all public references to a disgraced person and forbid mentioning his name. History said both parties would put Trump on ignore in order to purge him from the culture.

This raid on Trump’s villa is like how Hollywood has an addiction to subverting expectations with casting. They cast a black actor in the smart role and a pixie in the tough guy role. Even though this is now normal, they insist they are subverting the expectations of the audience. The raid on Trump subverted expectations as even the most jaded did not think these people were that stupid. In one move they turned Trump into a martyr and themselves into villains.

Now, the uncertainty and randomness are part of the plan. The belief set of the ruling elite says that subverting expectations is necessary to break the habits of mind that keep humanity from transitioning to the glorious future. A big part of the Gaia cult is the belief that smashing things will free us from the things that vex Gaia. Smashing up political custom and tradition by violating the old rules is another effort to break free from the past in order to ascend into the glorious tomorrow.

This strikes normal people as nuts, but up until a short time ago the idea of Donald Trump being president sounded nutty too. A year before he took the oath of office, the phrase “President Joe Biden” was a punchline. We live in a time when a man with severe dementia is president. If you can accept that then it should not be hard to accept that the motivation of the ruling class is a weird set of mystical beliefs that require them to destroy the foundations of civilization.

Once you wrap your head around the fact that there are no rules, then it is easy to see that all things are now possible. Dostoyevsky famously said, “when God is dead, all things are permitted.” Friedrich Nietzsche, a devoted fan of Dostoyevsky, would notice this and cause a lot of trouble. Nihilism rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence. The West killed God a long time ago, so it is only natural that we have reached the point where all things are permitted.

As an aside, you cannot help but laugh at the fact that the people in charge are obsessed with finding Hitler. They check under their beds every night and have teams scouring the bushes for any signs of Hitler. This is their license to overthrow the laws of the natural world. They attack the very idea that knowledge is possible, because that is white supremacy. Perhaps Hitler’s revenge was to leave a puzzle so frightening that it eventually drove his enemies into madness.

The universe does have a sense of humor, so that could be the answer for the madness, but the universe does not have unlimited patience. Reality is the thing that does not go away when you stop believing it. The only thing nature abhors more than a vacuum is the lack of rules. This spasm of weirdness will eventually slam into this reality and someone will push aside the current ruling class and reinstitute the rules that must govern a society. Weirdness is not eternal.

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Plot Twists

Posted on August 9, 2022 by thezman

204

The French and Russian revolutions are probably the two most important events in contemporary Western history. They have been studied from every angle, but they continue to be studied by scholars. One reason for the enduring interest is these events still cast a shadow over the present. The constructs that arose from the French Revolution are still with us. The great divide between East and West as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution still haunts the world.

Another reason for keeping these two great revolutions in the front of the mind is they are examples of how a ruling elite can bring about its own demise. The violent end of the regime was made inevitable by regime actions. The French king could have plotted a different course, but he made every mistake available to him. The Tsar was in a much more difficult position, but he had plenty of warnings about what was coming and he could have prepared accordingly.

These two revolutions are as much about ruling elite error as the social and political movements we associate with them. If the French king had been a bit more prudent it is possible the revolution would not have happened at all. If there were betting odds on such things, regicide would have been the longest of long shots on the board prior to the start of unrest. Most of the people pushing for change prior to Lenin seizing power were hoping the Tsar would help with the process.

The compelling feature of these events is that the major players seemed blind to that which should have been obvious. The forces of change and the defenders of the status quo operated like two black boxes. Neither side could see inside the other, so they were left to guess about the motivations behind the observed actions. Inevitably, they assigned the worst motives to the other side. Killing the sovereign, thereby killing the system he represented, was easy when he was seen as evil.

We seem to be seeing the same dynamic form up in present day America as the ruling class operates by motives that baffle those outside. The raid on former president Trump by the FBI is the latest event without an obvious explanation. A feature proudly celebrated by the American political class for a long time is that Americans do not criminalize politics like other countries. The losers of elections are not jailed and former officer holders are not persecuted.

For two years the political class has been waging a war against the former president and his supporters for reasons that continue to baffle. There must be a reason as there is a reason for everything, but no logical reasons make sense. Again, we look at our political class and see a black box at the center of their actions. It is what motivates them but what is going on inside is a mystery. As a result, we are left to speculate as to their motivations and that always leads to dark motives.

Like the ruling elites in the two great revolutions, this ruling elite seems to be obsessed with finding the worst option. The right answer in the aftermath of the 2020 election was for Washington to be reminded of Jefferson’s timeless question. “And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” The right response was “to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.”

Instead, we have pogroms. This raid on Trump’s home not only raises questions about the motives of the administration, but it colors the January 6 events. An organized war by the deep state against reformers is a narrative that explains both the persecution of the protestors and the attacks on the former president. Even for those highly skeptical of the “deep state” narrative will start to come around. It also helps explain side events like the attacks on Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes.

In those prior revolutions, a logic took over that naturally led to the conclusion that the system was the problem. It was not just the polices that emanated from the system, but the system itself that was the problem. In Russia and France, the man at the top was the personification of the system. A point was reached where anything the king said or did was viewed through this logic. The trust between the people and their sovereign was irrevocably broken and the end became inevitable.

One strange difference between the current age and those revolutionary ages is the roles are reversed. In 18th century France, it was the people at the top defending the old order and the people challenging it. The same was true in Russia. In America, the people at the top see themselves as the revolutionaries and the people view themselves as the defenders of the old order. A big part of this crisis is the ruling class mocking the history and tradition of the people.

What makes it even more bizarre is that if the ruling class is successful in discrediting the old system, the people will no longer have restraint. It is the lingering trust in the system, the desire to vote harder, that prevents January 6th from spreading to every state capital in the country. These efforts by the ruling class to burn it all down can only lead to one end for them. The FBI raiding Trump’s house convinced a lot of people that the system is now too far gone to save with an election.

It is a good example of how history can be a guide, but the parallels are never perfect, so we are left to feel our way through things. Lenin knew his history, which is why he quickly had the Tsar and his family murdered. He knew where his revolution should end so he moved quickly to the closing scenes. On the other hand, despite their study of history, none of the Bolsheviks saw Stalin and his terror coming. Even when you know the script, it is sometimes hard to accept the plot.

Perhaps that is what is happening in the black box at the center of the Cloud People society that seems to control their actions. Perhaps inside it they are feverishly hoping to write a new ending to an old story. Their actions, however, are the main plot device of that old story. The harder they work to create a new narrative, the more their actions seem to confirm the oldest of narratives. The great plot twist they think they are fashioning is that there is no plot twist to their story.

A Question Of Authority

Posted on August 8, 2022 by thezman

152

Notes: The Monday Taki post is up. It is a different take on the attack by Theodore Ruger on Professor Wax. Sunday Thoughts is a shallow dive into the cult of neoconservatism using some of their recent posts. SubscribeStar users can find it here and Substack users can find it here.

One of the great problems Enlightenment thinkers tried to solve is why it is that human beings live in ordered societies. Further, why are some people in charge of those societies and others subject to the will of those people. What explains this and more important, what is the correct system of organization? The recently rediscovered Greeks offered some insights. Scripture offered understanding of man’s nature but offered little to explain social hierarchy.

It is fair to say that Western intellectual life has been dominated by the search for the right answer as to how best to organize society. The utilitarian school gave us the claim that the goal of any social policy it to maximize total happiness. The Marxists gave us the argument that the goal of social policy is reducing exploitation. By exploitation they meant compulsion. Social contract theory gave us the general will, the idea that policy should be supported by the majority of the people.

The modern age fumbles around looking for a new answer to the great questions, having decided that the prior answers are not quite right. Restorative justice borrows a bit from all three schools. It starts with the assumption that everyone should benefit equally from society. This is an assumption that is never justified or even explained, but simply assumed as an axiom of the universe. It is the motivation to act and the authority to do just about anything to restore equal outcomes.

The main question at the center of it all is authority. No matter how sensible your new system of social order, there has to be a reason it should be preferred by or enforced upon those who disagree. Marx recognized this which is why he invented the idea of super-abundance to get around the issue. In a society in which everyone gets what they need to live, there is no need to compel anyone. According to Marx, it is scarcity that leads to exploitation.

Marx was not the first person to use sleight of hand to get around the central problem of authority in social organization. Locke and Hobbes conjured from nothing the idea of a state of nature, a mythological pre-social existence. Even Rousseau, who criticized the concept, had to fall back on it to justify his thinking. Of course, the foundation of Western democracy is the purely hypothetical concept of the social contract, which has been handed down to us by the Greeks.

This search for an answer to “by what authority?” haunts the modern ruling class, which is why they have evolved certain chants to wave away the question. Whenever they use the phrase “our democracy” they may as well be saying “by the divide right of kings” or “because the gods command it.” It is intellectual base stealing. In the name of democracy, they assume power over the rest of us and the right to use that power to achieve whatever ends they think appropriate.

The same is true of the “right side of history.” Instead of appealing to Scripture, which would create obvious problems, they appeal to a great mystery force that can be defined to meet the task at hand. The speaker is on the right side of history, so he is empowered to clear the road. Those on the wrong side of history are in the way of history so they lack all authority. Like the other abracadabra phrases popular with the ruling class, this just means “because I say so.”

This search for justification turns up in the heresy accusations leveled against Professor Amy Wax by Theodore Ruger. His bill of indictment is a blend of assumptions and vague claims about vague school policies. He holds up statements made by Professor Wax as examples of her violating school policy, but never bothers to explain how or why they violate the policy. Occasionally he asserts that something she said is in dispute, but most things are in dispute.

This line from Ruger’s letter is an example of intellectual base stealing. “[Professor Wax] public commentary espousing derogatory and hateful stereotypes has led students to reasonably conclude that she is unable to evaluate them fairly based on their individualized merit.” He then lists some examples of students who claimed to be vexed by Professor Wax. Because he can find someone who agrees with his claim, it is by force of magic a reasonable claim.

This is the sort of logic that was never tolerated by undergraduates at elite universities like the University of Pennsylvania. If Professor Wax is maintaining a hostile classroom, then some students will question her objectivity. This is true if the word “hostile” is assumed to mean heretical and “some students” is assumed to mean those who are not biological males of European ethnicity. Therefore, if a nonwhite or female gets upset, it must mean they are in a hostile environment.

It should not have to be said, but this is a classic logical fallacy that used to be taught in American middle-schools. If A always leads to B, it does not follow that the existence of B means the existence of A. There can be many causes for B. In this case, the emotionally disturbed students cited in the letter could be vexed by any number of things, including the preaching of people like Mr. Ruger. Keep telling young people that the devil is always at their elbow and they will believe it.

Strip away all of the primitive claims in that letter and you are left with an assumption that the good people, like Mr. Ruger, are here to protect the sacred people, like the nonwhite students he cites. This is the answer to the great question that has haunted the West for centuries, by what authority? The vast diverse class of people we call the managerial elite exist to shepherd the vulnerable, who they have defined as anyone who is not a biological male of European origin.

Because there is no external source of authority for these claims, anyone who challenges the claim is branded a heretic. That is what you see in that letter and in all of the hysterics that have come to dominate the age. The worship of nonwhites and the efforts to protect them have no basis in reality. Note that Ruger avoids challenging Wax on the facts. Her statements are not factually wrong, but morally wrong even though the underlying moral claims have no authority.

Like a parent tired of answering the series of why questions from their child, the managerial elite are increasingly frustrated and angry because they have no answer the question of why. Why is it wrong to point out that intelligence is not distributed equally between people or groups? What is the authority for declaring these observations of fact immoral? More important, why are these people going to such lengths to mask observable reality?

Fundamentally, the crisis of this age is one of authority. The feudal system could point to tradition and the family. The king was like the father and his people were like the family, where the father had the last word. Man’s relationship to God as described in Scripture was imperfectly recreated in politics. Just as man ultimately answers to God, subjects ultimately answered to the king. This is the answer to the question at the heart of the social order, by what authority?

This age has no answer to the great question. Why are these people in these positions and why are they imposing these novel moral codes? What justifies their claim that noticing things about people is immoral? Who decided this and by what system did they decide it? Because there are no answers to these questions, the only solution is to silence anyone who raises them. To tolerate dissent puts into question the authority of the managerial system, which has no natural authority.

A Ramble Through The News

Posted on August 5, 2022 by thezman

140

It is that time of year when we begin the slow turn into fall. In most places it is still a million degrees, but there are little signs here and there. The sun sets a bit earlier every night and it is a few degrees cooler in the morning. The big sign is the slow return of political lunacy in the news. The chattering skulls, influencers and news makers are still on holiday but they are plotting their return next month.

The big news this week was the primaries in key states. The amusing bit was how the crazies went nuts over the Kansas abortion referendum. They do not have much to celebrate so it makes sense to make a huge deal over one small win, but it was amusing to see the deluge of stories in the media. Sprinkled in were some reassuring tales of obscure MAGA candidates losing local elections.

That is the real story. Trump endorsed candidates seem to be doing very well, despite general Trump fatigue and the efforts of his party. Many of these candidates are fakers and liars, but some are genuinely ticked off people. The woman running for governor in Arizona appears to a polished up Marjorie Taylor Green. Blake Masters, also running in Arizona, is as close to one of us as you can get.

That is what does not show up in these news stories. People are probably more angry and restless right now than during the leadup to the 2016 election. The antiwhite pogroms have radically changed attitudes. Normie seeing ads featuring everyone but white people, unless it is a white woman with a black man, has had reality jammed in his face for a couple of years now and he does not like it.

Because there is no acceptable outlet for these feelings, except by watching Tucker Carlson at night, the result is a seething anger. Of course, the reckless antics of the geezers running Washington just adds to the unhappiness. The primaries have elevated a lot of unconventional candidates, despite the party efforts. The general could turn out to be a red wave similar to 2010.

So far, regime media has not noticed this. They are still carrying on like it is the runup to the 2020 election. As we get closer to autumn it will be interesting to see if the narratives shift in preparation for the November election. Maybe they snuff out Biden to create a distraction. Maybe China finally snaps and we have a war. Maybe the regime remains on this glide path until it slams into reality in November.

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China Thoughts

Posted on August 4, 2022 by thezman

229

The most recent flareup between the Global American Empire and China has brought forth all of the usual commentary about the rise of China, its plans for Taiwan and the relative decline of America. The underlying assumption is that China could take Taiwan if it wanted and there is not much the United States can do about it, short of a nuclear strike on mainland China. Further, it is assumed that China will one day make its move on Taiwan when it feels the time is right.

This is an odd set of assumptions. If China can take Taiwan and wants to take Taiwan, then why are they not taking Taiwan? The standard answer is that they think they can wait out the American empire. That could be true but there is good evidence to suggest the clock is ticking in her ability to make war. China is hitting the wall demographically and she knows it. They have a lot of young military age males right now, but a decade from now they will be nearing middle-age.

The more likely reason for China’s hesitance is that taking Taiwan would be an enormous gamble. It is a big island with no beaches. It has great ports, but those are heavily defended. The Taiwanese military is exceptionally good. They have the best weapons America can produce and they may have the best air defense system on the planet, thanks to America using Taiwan as a listening post. At the top of the island is advanced radar used to listen to the Chinese.

Even if America does not come in to defend Taiwan, China would be facing something similar to what the Marines faced in the Battle of Saipan. The Japanese were dug in and the besieging Americans had to first create a beachhead and then root out the Japanese from the well defended positions. It took 70,000 Marines to root out the 30,000 Japanese defending the island. The Americans suffered 14,000 casualties while only one thousand Japanese survived.

The big difference is that Taiwan will fully mobilize their army of over a million men and be dug into a highly urbanized island of twenty-three million. That means the Chinese will need to mobilize a two million man invasion force. The general rule is you need at least a two-to-one advantage as the attacker. China has the people, but mobilizing, organizing and coordinating such a force is a huge task. That also means the Taiwanese will have months to prepare for the assault.

The Chinese certainly have gamed this out many times and they understand the mathematics of conquering Taiwan. That said, it is all theory as the Chinese have not waged serious war in a long time. The last large scale amphibious landing on a populated Pacific island was in World War II. An attack on Taiwan would be the first of its kind in the era of high tech weaponry. As the Russians have been learning in Ukraine, technology has radically changed the battlefield.

For example, cheap drones have proven to be a valuable tool. The Ukrainians had a lot of these to start the war and they proved to be a big problem. The Russians had to alter their tactics to account for this new weapon. One reason the fight in Ukraine has settled into an artillery duel is it is too easy for defenders to use cheap drones to disrupt the lines of the attacker. Cheap drones have a limited range, so the Russians operate outside that range to soften up Ukrainian positions.

Taiwan is not a backward kleptocracy. It is one the most high tech societies on the planet and they make most of the world’s chips. Taiwan could deploy massive swarms of cheap drones against the ships of an attacker. That is another lesson from Ukraine with regards to drones. This weapon does not require a lot of infrastructure to operate so artillery strikes are not a great deterrent. As long as you have soldiers who can do the minimum you can keep using your drone weapons.

Another aspect of cheap drone technology is they can be turned into what the industry calls a loitering munition. This is a weapon that flies over an area program to look for targets like tanks and supply vehicles. Once it spots one, it then attacks the target, usually by flying into it. One result of this has been that the Donbas militias which make up the bulk of the infantry in the Donbas have to operate from cover. There is no cover in the straight between China and Taiwan.

When you examine what is going on in the Donbas, it becomes clear that technology has had some unexpected consequences to war fighting. It is not the cutting edge technology that is shaping the battlefield. It is the commodified technology that is changing the mathematics. A defender employing lots of cheap drones against the attackers expensive assets has a clear edge. If it takes ten cheap missiles to take out an expensive tank, that is a good deal.

This is the problem China now faces with Taiwan. Their invasion fleet would be awfully expensive and the Taiwanese would have lots of targets. The Chinese would have to follow the Russian lead in the Donbas. That means siege warfare. China would have to blockade the island and relentlessly shell the urban areas hoping to degrade their communications and defense. The most likely result would be China eventually conquering a bombed out island with millions of dead.

Technology has made China less vulnerable to American military power by diminishing the value of sea power. Those giant carriers can now be hit from a long distance by ship-killing missiles. The same technology, however, is making Taiwan less vulnerable to Chinese military pressure. The same ship killing missiles can be used against an invasion force and cheap drones can radically increase the cost on infantry trying to assault Taiwanese defenses.

The point of all this is that the blithe assertions about the Chinese ability to take Taiwan are completely wrong. It would be a massive undertaking and even under ideal conditions it would create an enormous strain on China. Add back in unlimited submarine warfare from the American side and the taking of Taiwan becomes a massively expensive gamble. Further add in the closing of Western markets and taking Taiwan no longer makes any sense at all.

That is another lesson of Ukraine. The Russians have weathered the economic war because they are not dependent on the American economy. Russia primarily exports commodities into the global market. There is no practical way for Washington cut the Russians out of the marketplace. China, on the other hand, imports commodities and sells finished goods. Washington can cut off the sale of finished goods. It can also shift production to other areas, which is currently happening.

A blockade of Taiwan would certainly mean a blockade of Chinese goods not only by the United States but by Europe. The American Navy still controls the shipping lanes in the Pacific and China can do nothing about it. Unlike the Russian economy, the Chinese economy has no way around this problem. An attach on Taiwan would bring about a massive shock to the Chinese economy and that is before the West unleashed a currency war on the yuan.

The reason China is making a lot of noise but not doing anything rash over the Pelosi stunt is she understands the dilemma. Because of China’s dependence on Western markets, she has to be much more delicate in how she responds to American provocation than the Russians. That means increasing the flow of bribes into the imperial capital in order to get more friendly voices in Congress. It means a more flexible approach to the Russia issue.

The bottom line with China is that the threat she poses is not her agility to wage conventional war against her neighbors. The real threat of China is her ability to purchase favors in Washington. The Taiwan issue is a nice way for the American ruling class to shift the focus from that problem. The Chinese know this and mostly likely see the Pelosi trip as a demand for bigger bribes. If they do not want to see more trips to Taiwan, then they better hire better lobbyists.

Liberty And Freedom

Posted on August 3, 2022 by thezman

Note: There is a new post up behind the green door. This is about the brown paper bag test instituted by the grocery chain Wegman’s. The SubscribeStar version is here and the Substack version is here.

Feudalism is a term that either brings to mind serfs slaving away on the land or knights on horseback jousting at tournaments. Neither image has much to do with the socioeconomic system that grew up after the fall of the Western Roman empire and carried on into the 18th century. Both the knight and the serf were real things, but they are not what defined the feudal order. It is the system in which people of all ranks lived that defined what we think of as feudalism.

That system was a series of interlocking relationships. It began with reciprocal relationships between the warrior elite. The leaders of the various peoples slowly evolved rules for dealing with one another. Over time those rules extended to the people over whom they ruled. First it was the vertical relationships and then the horizontal relationships. Most of these rules were not written down. They were the habit of mind that everyone understood and accepted.

What we think of as freedom and liberty come from the feudal era. The two words are used interchangeably today, but it was not always so. Liberty was the right to act within the context of the rules. Freedom was a state in which there were no rules. In the feudal age, liberty was the range of actions for people of a class. Freedman had different liberties than Knights or serfs. Freedom, on the other hand, was being free from those reciprocal relationships that defined the system.

One of the interesting things about the feudal order that has been forgotten is that freedom was a powerful weapon used by kings. Freeing people from their feudal obligations did not necessarily grant them more liberties, but it did weaken the power of the people to whom they no longer had obligations. Freeing the serf from his duties to his lord not only meant he could sell his labor but it meant that his lord no longer had control over him or the proceeds of his labor.

In a system where everyone is defined by their relationship with everyone around them, monarchical power is diffused through the system. The noble who controlled a portion of the kingdom had a great deal of power relative to the king, because all of the rights and duties of his people flowed through him to the king. Once those people were free then they reported directly to the king. A great irony of the feudal order is that individual freedom turned out to be the great centralizing force in politics.

A similar dynamic is at work in this age. As recent as the 1950’s the primary duty of most men was to their family. From there it was their community then the larger political entities like city, county and state. Outside of the draft and the post office, people had no reason to think about the national government. Go back further and the national government played little role in the life of Americans. You could live your life never having had contact with the national government.

As Americans have been freed from the old rules of life, like marriage, family and community, the power of the government has grown. The weakening of state and local government by direct intervention by the federal government has corresponded with the collapse in things like property rights and freedom of association. Young women are no longer dependent on a man, but they are entirely dependent on government. It is impossible to live without interacting with government now.

The conventional conservative critique argues that personal liberty has declined because the power of the state has increased. In reality, personally liberty has declined because freedom has increased. As people have been freed from their particular obligations to one another, their liberties have declined, which is what has allowed the power of the federal state to grow. Each new “freedom” comes with less liberty and therefore a declining ability to resist the state.

In a way, the great progressive reforms of the 20th century were like the king freeing the people from their feudal obligations. It was first and foremost about weakening the intermediaries between the central government and the people. In America this has meant the constriction of state and municipal power. Griswold v. Connecticut was never about individual liberty, but about subverting local authority. It was about breaking those local bonds that preserved individual liberty.

What little liberty remains in modern America appears to most people to be dependent upon the power of the state. It is a perverse form of slave logic. The homely women demanding reproductive freedom in the public square are no different than the slave begging the master for protection. They are no longer at liberty to make choices within the range of options available to them, so they demand the all powerful state provide the freedom they mistake for liberty.

The zenith of every empire features the almost unlimited power of the person who sits atop the imperial system. The decline of empire always features an increasingly inability of the sovereign to impose his will. Factions within his own government collude to undermine his will. New power centers begin to grow up, operating as choke points between the empower and his subjects. Like weeds, those old reciprocal relationships begin to sprout up and eventually overtake the system.

We may be seeing something similar. Corporations now wield more power in the lives of the people than the federal government. For example, if the mobile companies wanted, they could have stonewalled the FBI with regards to the J6 protests. Their swift action in identifying the people in the capitol was a power move. When the federal government needs help dealing with internal threats, they now ask politely for help from their partners in the private sector.

We are also seeing a resurgence of state power. States shipping migrants to Washington is a power move. States challenging the power of the administrative state in the courts is another assault on the king. Of course, the same managerial mindset that crippled the Trump presidency is doing the same to Biden. The real power of the federal state, as expressed through the executive, is waning. Like every empire in decline, this one is suffering from a growing impotence at the center.

In the transition, both liberty and freedom will decrease. We see it today with the abuses of individual liberty from all sources of power. In the long run, the restoration of those old duties and obligations will restore the balance between the two. Being ruled by a local elite personalizes the relationship. The people at the top are reminded of their duties every time they go outside. The people at the bottom have no illusion about the source of their liberties.

Tsar Alexander’s Revenge

Posted on August 2, 2022 by thezman

On the surface, Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, which has put the Chinese on a war footing, does not make much sense. Pelosi is an old woman who barely knows where she is most of the time. It is an open secret that she will be retiring at the end of the year, assuming her party does not hold the House. If Washington wanted to communicate something to the Taiwanese leadership outside of official channels, they could do it any number of low profile ways.

The White House has tried to sell this trip as the doings of Pelosi and not connected with administration policy. They told their official organs that the military tried to dissuade her from the trip. On the eve of her landing, word has gone forth that there are contacts between the PLA and the US military to avoid an accident. Presumably, this means the American side is sure that the Chinese will not shoot down her plane or launch a preemptive attack against American assets.

If there is no reason for Pelosi to be visiting Taiwan and the administration was opposed to the trip, then why is she going? The most likely reason is that this is part of a global disruption campaign aimed at Russia and her allies. China has sided with the Russians over Ukraine and the sanctions regime imposed by the West. This trip is payback for not going along with Washington. The message being sent is that there is a cost to taking the side of Russia in this war.

Looked at as part of a pattern, this makes the most sense. Washington has been stirring up trouble in Syria. They have recently instigated conflict between Serbia and the breakaway area called Kosovo. It is suspected that Washington is trying to provoke another war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno- Karabakh region that separates the two countries. This provocation of China is just another part of a global destabilization campaign aimed at Russia.

In this context, Ukraine is not a cause of the war waged against Russia by the Global American Empire, but an extension of it. The effort to build a Ukrainian army that could regain lost territory and perhaps threaten Russia proper was part of a long term plan to break up Russia. The recent effort to color revolution the president of Belarus has been forgotten, but it too was part of this larger mission. The current world crisis is part of a plan to break up Russia and reorder Eurasia.

It sounds a bit farfetched but look back to the start of the war. There was a flurry of stories all based around the idea of breaking up Russia. Here is Bloomberg claiming that the only way to end Russian imperialism is disaggregation. Here is something in a British publication on the same theme. The National Interest really likes the idea of breaking up Russia. The Atlantic had its take on the idea. The rather implausible idea of breaking up Russia is an immensely popular idea in certain circles.

This ongoing hybrid was against Russia now taking center stage does explain why so many senior people were taking bribes from Ukraine. People forget the Trump impeachment show, but all of the witnesses against him had weird names, spoke little English and had connections to high ranking Washington players. It was a puzzle at the time, but looked at in the current context, it makes sense. Trump was impeached because he risked the Ukraine gambit.

This also explains the weird stance toward China. It has been clear for a long time that China poses a serious long term threat to America. Donald Trump ran on this topic and as president tried to get tough with China. On the other hand, official Washington fought him at every turn. Most just assumed that bribery was the issue. High ranking people like Joe Biden had been proudly taking bribes from China. Nancy Pelosi has also been on the take. Now both are trying to provoke China.

This schizophrenic relationship with China makes more sense when seen as a secondary issue for the foreign policy community. They opposed Trump for political and cultural reasons, but they specifically opposed his China policy because it threatened their Russia policy. They do not want a cold war with China as that shifts the focus from their war on Russia. This incident is just an effort to pressure China of Russia, not a long term strategy to confront China.

It may also be time to rethink the crusades against Islam. The general consensus was that was part of a scheme to turn Israel into the regional hegemon. That may have been viewed as a convenient narrative. It is well known that conservative white people have a fetish for Israel. The real prize, however, was Russia. The wars in the Muslim world were about targeting Russian clients. Syria, Iran and Iraq have all had strong relations with Russia going back generations.

This all may sound farfetched but consider that American foreign policy has been controlled by the neoconservatives since the Cold War. It has been a revolving door between neocon think tanks and the State Department. Administrations change, but policy does not change very much. This has come into focus under Biden, who is too infirmed to challenge the system. His administration is crawling with the same people who promoted the wars of the Bush years.

The current crisis may simply be part of a long term strategy by the semi-permanent foreign policy establishment to get revenge on Russia. The Cold War ended thirty years ago, but the desire to get revenge for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II transcends the current age for these people. Neoconservatism, whatever it was, is now a death cult organized around the destruction of Russia. As a result, the Global American Empire exists only as a weapon in that war.

The Grim Future

Posted on August 1, 2022 by thezman

Note: The Monday Taki post is up. Not entirely related to this post, but the general theme is the same. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door. There is the SubscribeStar version and the Substack version.

Futurism was a social movement that started in the beginning of the last century in Italy and spread around the West in the first decades of the century. The futurists were not content with improvements to everyday life. They imagine a new world brought about the rapid advance of technology. The material advances of the industrial revolution would not just improve our daily lives. They believed the entirety of human society would be reimagined along technological lines.

The Futurists were not entirely wrong. The industrial revolution did usher in a mass reorganization of human society. Trains were not just faster than horses. They changed how we thought about moving people and goods. Wired and wireless communication added an immediacy to society. People were no longer finding out what happened after the fact but following what was happening as it happened. The old culture collapsed and a new culture arose in the 20th century.

A simple mental exercise makes this clear. A man living in 1750 America would have had no trouble navigating 1850 America. Sure, trains would be new to him and industry would be advanced. Otherwise, people lived pretty much the same. Now, take 1850 man and transport him to 1950. He would find himself in a world that was not just materially different, but culturally and spiritually alien. He was not in an improved version of his country. He was in a different world.

The futurists believed that technological progress would lead to human progress and by that they meant freedom from the human condition. The future would be slick, fast and exiting, as humanity explored its potential. One result of this was a rejection of the past, especially tradition. The futurists saw the past as a set of hands grasping at humanity from the grave. Another result is they believed violence was entirely appropriate to break the grip of the past in order to usher in the future.

The futurists were not entirely wrong. The two great industrial wars of the 20th century obliterated the old world. Into the void flowed what came to be known as the post industrial world. The West was not capitalist or socialist in the Marxist sense, but something of a fusion of the two. On the other hand, the human condition was not consigned to the dustbin of history. All of the old problems remained. The West simply had better stuff than in the prior ages.

Fast forward to this age and we have a new round of futurism. You can probably start the clock with Alvin Toffler, a futurist who got famous at the beginning of the microprocessor revolution. His books sold millions of copies and focused on society after de-industrialization. His books were popular in America at a time when the economy was shedding industrial jobs. His vision of the future promised something better than the old grimy industrial lifestyle.

Even though his books sold millions of copies, futurism did not catch on with the beautiful people until the late 1990’s. When technology became accessible to the technologically challenged, the future suddenly opened up to them. Apple products were sold to taste makers as a symbol of the progressive vision. Big tech began to market itself as a lifestyle, rather than as technological advance. Elon Musk went from bald PayPal investor to a futurist with a firm hairline.

The reason operations like the World Economic Forum have become popular with the beautiful people is these organizations are catering to the people who have tied their sense of self with their vision of the future. WEF has been around for a long time, but it was mostly a dull economic conference until they hit on futurism. You see it in this old presentation from a person named Thomas Birr. This is a timeshare pitch tailored for a crowd that believes they are world historic figures.

It should be noted that Mr. Birr promotes himself as a futurist. He labels himself the Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at a company named E. On. Before that he was Senior Vice President Innovation & Business Transformation at a company with an equally ridiculous name. Mr. Birr is a visionary and we know that because he is paid to have visions, like a shaman. Before he was a visionary, he was an industrial sales rep who worked in the energy business.

One of the appeals of futurism is that it allows the futurist to look away from the present and focus on a blank page onto which he can draw his new world. It is a form of escapism, which suggests futurism is the product of crisis. The futurists of the last century did not see the two great industrial wars coming. In retrospect, the obliteration of the old war was a necessary step toward the new world. Interestingly, the Italian futurists all wound up supporting fascism.

There is a bit of irony. The futurist of this day invests a lot of time looking for potential fascists out among the Dirt People. Yet, it can be argued that fascism would not have been possible without the futurism movement. Once the focus shifted from the present to the future, the debate shifted from how to best to manage the present to who will run the society of the future. The great ideological conflicts of the 20th century were all about who will impose their vision of their future.

We see the same debates in this age. Immigration is about the demographics of future Western society. The antiwhites explicitly state that they wish to overthrow current society, which they call white supremacy, in favor of some new society organized around serving nonwhites. The legacy populations of the West are told by the people at the World Economic Forum that they are on the wrong side of history. Our debates about the future are all about who, not what.

All of this suggests that the futurist is a grim reaper. His arrival precedes some horrible conflagration that obliterates the present. A century ago, the futurists gave us two great industrial wars that reduce the West to ruins. The futurists of this age seem to be obsessed with war and famine. On the one hand they are instigating wars between the great powers. On the other hand, they are attacking the food supply. We will be lucky to live to see whatever futures results from all of this.

Electric Crazy Land

Posted on July 29, 2022 by thezman

No one can know what the robot historians will call this age, but a fairly good guess is they will call it the age of outrage. Everything is driven by outrage. Either it is mentally unstable people outraged over the normal operation of the world or it the mentally unstable trying to get attention by outraging normal people. Outrage is the fuel that drives public discourse and politics in this age.

Outrage is like crystal meth for some people. Once they get a hit, they can think of nothing else but the next hit. Before long they are in one of the many intensely on-line subcultures, getting outraged with the other addicts. They cultivate their own outrage and share outrage with others. Who they are is entirely defined within the outrage culture of their new lifestyle. They are outrage junkies.

Sites like the Daily Beast and Huffington Post started out as legitimate new media sites catering to a broad audience. It feels like a million years ago, but both sites used to employ normal people. Until Arianna Huffington decided to rip off her contributors and run off with the cash, the HuffPo covered a broad range of topics. Now these sites simply peddle outrage to the addicts.

Just like other drug problems, the GrifterCons use the plague of outrage to separate normal people from their money. The Conservative Industrial Complex exists to tell normal people about the latest outrages. Instead of showing video of addicts on the streets, it is video of abortion protestors and Antifa rioters. If you send them money, they promise to do something about it. They never do anything about it.

At some point normal people get tired of being outraged by the outrageous behavior of these outrage addicts. You see it with the abortion stuff. The chunky protestors showed up to outrage the onlookers only to find very few people looking on. Outrage fatigue is a real thing and you can be sure that the outrage addicts are outraged by it. Like meth addicts, the outrage addicts always have a reason to get high.

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Narrative Investment

Posted on July 28, 2022 by thezman

The sunk cost fallacy is the belief that prior commitment to some action requires continued commitment in order to regain the prior investment. Another way of stating this is throwing good money after bad. You invested in a project that is not going well but you keep putting money into it thinking that success will not only justify the next investment but recoup the prior investment. Despite this being a well know error, even very smart people fall into the sunk cost trap.

That may be something we are seeing with the Federal Reserve. Back when prices started to edge up, they created a narrative that explained the rising prices as the result of supply chain issues. Those supply chain issues were caused by the crackdowns during Covid that closed down the global economy. The narrative said that once the crackdowns ended, the supply chains would eventually return to normal and prices would then return to normal as well.

For reasons that no one has bothered to explain, this narrative was extremely attractive to the political class. They loved this story. The most likely reason it was so appealing is it promised them a triumph without effort. There would be a period of inflation then prices would re-normalize and they could take credit for it. They invested in this narrative based solely on future gains. Maybe this is why the Federal Reserve stuck with this story. It took pressure off of them.

We will never know why they invested in this crackpot idea but we can guess as to why they are continuing to invest in it. Even though they have stopped with the “transitory” messaging, the actions of the central bank make clear they still believe. Raising rates by three quarters of a percent is not a bold move. Given that we have double digit inflation and a global energy crisis, it is a grudging move. They still believe inflation is transitory but are raising rates for other reasons.

Maybe one reason they are sticking with the narrative is the markets seem to be deeply invested as well. Economic history says that these levels of inflation require a monetary shock to arrest them. The way to cure double digit inflation is to radically reduce the money supply, thus inducing a recession. The steep recession clears away the free riders and inefficient elements in the economy. This is like starting fresh with clear signals about the proper money supply.

Even though there are plenty of geezers kicking around Wall Street who remember the 1970’s and the actions of the Volker, everyone seems to be convinced that the rate hikes are short term. They can only believe this for two reasons. One is they think Powel is a coward and will never do what Volker did. Insiders have determined that the politics at the highest level are against a bold move and Powell is not a man willing to challenge the politicians on monetary policy.

The other possibility is they are just as invested in the transitory narrative as everyone in the political class. Wall Street is now hooked on hopium. They are sure that in time everything will work out. China will come back on-line, the war against Russia will come to an end and the flow of free money from the Fed will return to normal. In other words, they are investing in the original narrative because they have come this far, they may as well see it to the very end.

Of course, there are secret reasons that could explain things. Perhaps we are living in a simulation and the people controlling the rules of our universe have changed the rules such that double digit inflation is good. Maybe the ruling class has come to believe that only by making everyone poorer will Gaia be happy with us. It is possible that everyone in power has gone insane. There is a case to be made that we have crossed out of the domain of reason into the world of fantasy.

Sticking with what we can know, the best guess is that the Federal Reserve, Washington and Wall Street are simply committed to the narrative. They may have stopped using the phrase “transitory” for public relations reasons, but they are still committed to the transitory narrative. To change course as economic history suggests would mean abandoning their investment in the narrative. Even though that is the right course, they are psychology unprepared for it.

There is some history here. It has been forgotten that the two Fed chairs prior to Volker were a lot like Powell. Burns and Miller were both doves when it came to policy and they are credited with what came to be known as stagflation. Supposedly, the great lesson learned during the Volker tenure was that bold action from the central bank is the key to heading off catastrophe. The official narrative says that timid policy by the central bank is what caused the Great Depression.

Like a family business run by the third generation, the people running economic policy have no experience with tough times, so they are unprepared to take the bold actions the age requires. These are all men who rose up in good times, when ticking the right boxes is what mattered. Questioning orthodoxy was the best way to end a career, so the careerists in the system are all men who never question orthodoxy. Powel is simply this generation’s Arthur Burns.

The thing is though, the people in the 1970’s were in a world that said stagflation was impossible based on current economic theory. They could be forgiven for thinking that the recession would cure the inflation on its own. The current batch of economic leaders have the benefit of having lived through the 1970’s and 1980’s. They have either come to believe that this is not the same situation or they are so invested in that narrative they are no longer able to change course.

There is always the prospect that they are right. Maybe if given enough time global markets will normalize, energy flows will return to normal and the inflation we are seeing will slowly decline. There is no evidence of this happening in the short term but wait long enough and anything is possible. As the founder of modern economics famously said, in the long run we are all dead. None of us live in the long term, which is what makes this explanation uncompelling.

We may be seeing one of the terrible side effects of narrative politics. This is the belief that a good story often repeated can change reality. Elites have come to believe that saying it makes it real. This is why they invest so heavily in creating narratives and having them repeated by their media organs. Everything is about messaging rather than objective measures. Team Biden is now selling the story that gas prices are falling at historic rates, despite record high gas prices.

In a world where the people in charge are sure that all they have to do is create a really good story and that story will become true, there is no reason for them to ever reconsider the narrative. Once they commit, they are committed. This means anyone questioning the narrative is an enemy. Public policy ceases to be about trade-offs and is instead about the friend-enemy distinction. Friends repeat the narrative and enemies question the narrative.

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