Turn Off, Tune Out And Drop Out

Posted on November 9, 2022 by thezman

The votes are in and they have been counted. The great red wave that everyone expected never materialized. The expectation going into the election was that the Republicans would score an easy victory, picking up about forty seats in the House and enough Senate seats to gain the majority. Because America is a haplessly corrupt society, we may never know the final results, but someone will assign final numbers and it will be a slim victory for the GOP.

Of course, the flash analysis will come pouring out of the media, most likely blaming the results on Trump and the insurrectionists. You see, just as the media warned, democracy was on the ballot and this time democracy own. The Republican side of the uniparty will happily go along with it. They will expedite their plans to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024 for the good of our democracy. The whole thing is ridiculous but we are ruled by ridiculous people so this is to be expected.

The main question out of this election is about the legitimacy. Should we believe that the brain damaged hobo was the people’s choice in Pennsylvania? This is a good bellwether for this election, because John Fetterman is as close as we have come to putting a horse in a Senate. His opponent is ridiculous by normal standards, but in comparison to Fetterman he is Cicero. We are now required to pretend that a brain damaged hobo won the Pennsylvania Senate race.

The reason this particularly race is key to the legitimacy question is that there is no answer that supports the democratic system. If everything was above board and the people did vote for a brain damaged hobo, then this is proof that the public should never be trusted with such decisions. The openness to voting for a brain damaged hobo should be a disqualification to voting. On the other hand, if the vote is rigged again, then there is no reason for people to bother voting.

Of course, you can shift the question further up stream. What kind of political system produces a brain damaged hobo and a Turkish carny as the two options? Before you even get to the question of election integrity, you have to see that the system has problems far deeper than vote rigging. This turns up all over the ballot. In Georgia, the choice for Senate was between a brain damaged former football player and guy who used to hustle old black ladies for donations.

In Massachusetts, they are celebrating the first openly lesbian governor. Before Maura Healy was famously gay, she was famously stupid. Given the centrality of Massachusetts in the American empire, it is a good representation for how our democracy actually works. Politics in that state have been dominated by drunkards, perverts and degenerates for generations. The system they have imposed on the country selects for increasingly ridiculous candidates.

If we accept wholesale vote rigging is now a feature in many states, there is a limit to how much can be done. Historically, the Democratic machines used to be worth about five percent in the areas they controlled. That is enough in reasonably close elections, but not enough to overcome a wave election. All of the polling and history said this should have been a historic blowout of the Democrats, even when adjusting for the shenanigans that are now a feature of our democracy.

In other words, the results speak to something more than shenanigans. Either people skipped the election, seeing no point in it, or we are now locked into a partisan divide that makes elections pointless. Going back to Pennsylvania, either Oz lost because people thought he was just as ridiculous as Fetterman or partisanship has made elections in the state meaningless. After all, elections pivot on the ability of people to change their minds from election to election.

The current vote totals in Pennsylvania say that about five million ballots were counted in the Senate race. The governors race, which got far less attention, garnered the same number of votes. In 2020, 6.9 million votes were counted. What this says is that close to 30% of the entities that filled out ballots in the 2020 election decided that they had no reason to fill out a ballot this time. This strongly points to the conclusion that voters were given no reason to vote for either party.

Put another way, the polling shows that people are angry about the economy and the culture, but they did not see hope in either party. They were not even moved to strike out at the ruling party. Harry Truman famously said “If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time.” In this age, given the choice between a uniparty zombie and uniparty opportunist, people will choose the zombie.

The people endlessly yapping about democracy will no doubt claim that democracy won this time, but the turnout numbers suggest otherwise. The uniparty offered up a series of ridiculous choices and 30% of the voters stayed home. They refuse to follow the script because the directors showed no interest in the drama. Neither party offered a compelling reason for anyone to vote, so they were left with the partisan zombies and civic nationalist dead enders.

For the people hoping democracy lost the election, this is a good result. The exit polls show that over 75% of the vote was white. Outside of the freaks and crazies, that cohort currently has little or no representation in our democracy. The best thing they can do is boycott the process until they have a party that will represent their interests. Perhaps the midterms were the start of quiet quitting leaking into politics. Turn off, tune out and drop out of a system that has nothing to offer.

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Ivy Day In The Committee Room

Posted on November 8, 2022 by thezman

Note: I will be on the RamZPaul election roundtable tonight. This is for his subscribers, so if you want to be a part of it, pay the man five bucks. If you do not like it you can cancel and you spent less than a Starbucks coffee. It is interactive, so you are not on listen-only mode. You can have a speaking role.

The great day is upon us. It used to be that the media would roll out some long serving geezers to give a lecture about the beauty of democracy. They would wax poetic about the wonderfulness of ordinary citizens doing their civic duty. Even though we may not like the results, we had to respect the process. That was when the results never questioned the elite consensus. These days the media rolls out conspiracy theorists telling us half the voters are actually Russian bots.

That will be the story tonight. The bad guys are expected to take it on the chin as normal people manage to outnumber the dead at the ballot box. The official line now is that the only way to preserve democracy is to have a one-party state. The Los Angeles Times makes this point in their fatwah against the Republicans. The Atlantic tells us that the Republicans will immediately implement a police state after the election, followed by the return of everyone’s favorite uncle.

From a dissident perspective, this is all encouraging. The more that the people who exclusively benefit from the system disparage the system, the sooner everyone will believe them and the whole things becomes unstable. We may be at that point already, depending upon the degree of shenanigans tonight. If we see a repeat of 2020, even the civic nationalists will have to notice. As Tucker pointed out, you will know the election is rigged if brain damaged hobo wins tonight.

Rigging a midterm is much more difficult than rigging a presidential election, so the odds of mass shenanigans tonight are low. In a presidential election, you just have to stuff one ballot box per state. In the midterms, where there are 435 congressional races and up to thirty Senate races, it is a mammoth task. It is why the Republicans gained seats in the 2020 election, despite the claim that Joe Biden was the most popular man since the dawn of time.

Given the mood of the country and the staggering incompetence of the regime the last few years, it is going to be a tough night for the regime. The benchmark for bad nights is 2010 when the regime lost 63 House seats. That is probably not what we can expect tonight, as the GOP gained seats in 2020. In other words, many of the seats the regime would have lost were lost in the prior election. On the other hand, people are unusually angry this time so it could be a wild night.

Of course, from the dissident perspective this is just theater to provide some much needed amusement in these dark times. The Republicans will do nothing useful with their victory once they take control of Congress. They will have some hearings that will produce nothing but more fog to cover up the crimes of the regime. They will sign off on more money for the war machine. There will be ceremonial votes on stupid things that have no chance of success.

The way to think of the Republican party is as punishment. When normal white people get fed up with the regime, they vote against the regime. By default, this puts the Republicans in the majority, which they hate. They return the favor by finding ways to punish the people who voted for them. It is as if the regime says, “You do not like what we are doing? Well then, let the punishment begin. The beatings will stop when you people start voting the right way.”

The fact is, the worst thing to happen to white people in America has been the Republican party, with the conservative movement a close second. It was the GOP that flung open the borders in the 1980’s. It was the conservatives who convinced white people to worship corporates America. It was the Republicans who gave us the police state in the Bush years and a maniacal war machine. Of course, it is the GOP that unleashed the virus known as neoconservatism.

Keep that in mind as you enjoy the salty tears from the maladapted mutants rending their garments and gnashing their teeth tonight. It will be a fun time watching them carry on like idiots, but their sorrow will quickly turn to a venomous rage. By the time the cock crows they will be telling the Republican leadership to have their plans for retribution ready for inspection. Even so, you have to take pleasure where you can in the world, so enjoy the sight of the wicked writhing in agony tonight.

All that said, the voting process is not entirely worthless. The game may be rigged in Washington, but it is still fairly useful locally. The lesson of Covid is that local government matters more than national government. States run by civic minded white people had a much easier time of it than the states run by crazies. Ron DeSantis won his election by a handful of votes over Andrew Gillum, who was later found using meth with a group of gay men in Miami.

The thing with the local races is the margin of error is higher. You can live with a governor who is a good government civic nationalist. In Washington, these guys are turned into weapons against common decency. Locally these guys get the potholes fixed and make sure the schools are free of perverts. They may not get the tragedy that is unfolding in America, but they take care of the small quality of life things that make the road to perdition much smoother.

The other benefit of participating in local elections is it allows our people to exercise the long atrophied muscles of self-determination. The nationalization of politics, along with the financialization of the economy and the homogenization of the culture, have turned most white people into passive actors. Choices are presented on the screen. The user selects one option and hopes what pops out is what they like. The system rewards normie, so normie proliferates.

When you get involved locally, you actually have to get involved in organizing and socializing with other humans. Those old muscles used for organizing in self-defense get some use, as well as the ability to express genuine concerns to your neighbors about the issues that matter to them. For dissidents, involvement in local elections is good practice for learning how to organize. It is those who are best organized who will prosper when the system becomes unstable.

Affirmative Musings

Posted on November 1, 2022 by thezman

The upcoming midterm elections are sucking most of the oxygen out of the newsroom and what is left is consumed by the usual drama, but the big story looming on the horizon is the Supreme Court race cases. The court has been hearing oral arguments on two related cases. One involves Harvard’s anti-Asian admission policy and the other involves North Carolina’s antiwhite admission policies. Both schools are fighting to maintain their race based admissions system.

The makeup of the court and prior statements by current justices on the matter strongly suggest these polices are in trouble. In fact, it has been clear that the court has been skeptical of affirmative action for a long time, but the thinking was that legislatures would eventually solve the problem on their own. There is no way to square these policies with equality before the law, if the law says you cannot discriminate based on race, even in private matters.

People who follow the court have thought for a long time that the Supreme Court has been waiting for the right case to junk the whole regime. Now it has two cases and oral arguments suggest the court is looking to do something dramatic. Even the regime toadies on the bench expressed skepticism. The lawyers defending these policies are struggling to justify them. In this corrupt age, one can never be sure of anything, but it does look like affirmative action is doomed.

Most people assume that the court in this area has been struggling to balance equality before the law with the moral claims about race. These policies were based in good intensions to right past wrongs, but they slammed into the basic principle of equality before the law. Punishing someone alive today for things someone long dead may or may not have done is patently immoral. It is a blood libel. It is the central contradiction of what the progressives call restorative justice.

There is some truth to this but the real issue the court will eventually face with regards to this issue is the private versus the public. Where is the line between what a citizen can do as a private citizen and the duties of every citizen. In other words, where does private action end and public duty begin? Put another way, where does one’s public duty give way to private preference? This is an age old question that every human society must solve in some way.

In the case of racial discrimination, no one thinks you should be required to date outside of your race or have friends from other races. On the other hand, it is considered immoral for a restaurant to deny service on the basis of race. If you put up a sign that reads, “No Asians”, you will go to jail. Why is the first example entirely acceptable but the last is not acceptable? Why must you invite people you do not like into your business, but you can bar them from your home?

The answer, in part, has always been that the business is a public accommodation, but that was simply a way to avoid the issue. This bit of civic theology is not applied to most other areas of business. The tech companies and banks actively discriminate against white people and promote antiwhite bigots. The two universities defending their race based admissions proudly discriminate against whites and Asians in the most public of public accommodations in America.

Clearly, the public accommodation principal is a farce. This is why the court decision next spring to junk affirmative action is just the beginning. The court will probably say that the state cannot discriminate based on race. Harvard is a private college, but they get government grants and their students get government loans, so current law makes them a government entity. At least it makes them subject to the same limitations that the law places on government institutions.

Harvard could simply stop taking government money. Religious schools have taken this road to avoid anti-Christian discrimination. Hillsdale College famously foregoes government money. Harvard could do the same and then fight this fight in the courts all over again, but this time as a private entity. The question at that point would be the question at the core of all of this. Where is the line between private rights and public duties with regards to these moral questions?

If the court were to say that a private college is free to select students by whatever criteria they choose, then they would have overturned the entirety of antidiscrimination laws, including things like hate speech and hate crimes. On the other hand, if they extended the prohibition against discrimination to the private sphere, then that would mean no one can express their preferences in private. Your dinner party would be subject to claims of discrimination.

This gets back to the public accommodation issue. Is a private college really a public accommodation when it is designed for a narrow purpose like religion? How about private clubs, which have been banned due to discrimination? Would a male-only club be allowed if it is private? At some point, a clear line has to be drawn between what is private and what is public. The real issue in these race cases is where does that line exist and how best to codify it in the law.

This raises a much larger issue, in that liberal democracy relies on morality as the spring to motivate the citizens. Aristocratic systems rely upon the desire to attain greater rank and privilege, bestowed from above. Authoritarian systems rely on fear of the people in charge of the state. A republic relies on the willingness to put the interests of the institutions ahead of private interests. Liberal democracy relies on the submission to a common morality.

If there is a line between the private and the public, it rules out a commonly held moral code to which all must submit. After all, simply going along with the latest thing to avoid trouble is different from embracing the new morality. We see this all the time with the various social fads. Being indifferent to antisemitism, for example, is unacceptable because it suggests you may not be enthusiastically opposed to it. You have to show your opposition in a public way.

If all of a sudden, we have a clear line between the public and private, it means you can oppose public morality in private, but play along when out in public. This makes public morality a polite fiction. The fact is morality only works if people either believe it or fear falling outside of it. One does not do the right thing when no one is looking if one does not think it is the right thing or fear it may be the right thing. Simply put, acknowledging the private sphere undermines democracy.

That, of course, leads to another problem. If all of a sudden, colleges have to use objective criteria to select students, everyone knows what will happen. What happens when fire departments and police departments are forced to follow suit? Even if they fashion a way around it, the implication is clear. It means that all men may be equal in the eyes of God, but they are not equal. Some are smarter, stronger, bigger, faster and this tends to track with sex and race.

The entirety of the affirmative action regime rests on the assertion that people are amorphous blobs that can be shaped into anything. Overturning affirmative action exposes this nonsense to public view. All of a sudden, the quest for diversity is nothing more than a private preference masquerading as a public good. It has no basis in reality and often contradicts reality. Another piece of the liberal democratic moral superstructure is yanked away.

No one should be deceived into thinking the court will swing a wrecking ball through the liberal democratic order. Even if they overturn the concept of affirmative action, which seems likely based on the current court, all they will have done is tip over the first domino in the process. Even so, it does suggest we may be nearing an end point to the last surviving ideology of the 20th century. Like the others, its internal contradictions will eventually succumb to the realty of the human condition.

Democratic Police State

Posted on October 27, 2022 by thezman

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If you are over the age of fifty, you remember a time when you would have been corrected, if you said America was a democracy. Conservatives would interrupt you and say that America is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Liberals would say that America is a fascist police state, not a democracy. That is a small exaggeration, but the liberals were always going on about the lack of democracy. Both sides of the mainstream agreed that America was not a democracy.

Somewhere along the way, this reversed. Both sides of the increasingly narrow political consensus calls America a democracy. In fact, they compete with one another to be the most outraged by threats to our democracy. Proof that the universe has a sense of humor, our rulers would no doubt condemn all of their prior statements about America not being a democracy. This would never happen as no one would dare bring this up to them, but the point remains.

Of course, when they say democracy they mean liberal democracy, rather than direct democracy, which is impossible outside of small exceptions. By definition this means elections between distinct political parties, the rule of law, open debate about the issues of the day, a market economy, private property and the equal protection of the natural rights of all citizens. In other words, liberal democracy is representative democracy bounded by the natural rights of the people.

That last part is the critical piece. The point of the system is to not only give the people a say in who governs them but to make sure the people in power respect and defend the natural rights of the people. Otherwise, there would be no point in having elections for representatives to a parliament. It would be like giving the condemned the right to choose their executioner. The word “democracy” as currently understood means the defense of your rights.

The thing is, as the use of the word democracy has exploded, respect for the basic rights of citizens has sharply declined. It is not just the in the areas that can be debated, but the most fundamental rights of people. There will always be a debate about the use of private property at the fringes. For example, an you build a factory on your property located in a suburban neighborhood? That is a different matter from your basic right to own your labor and the fruits of your labor.

Take for example voting. Back when we called America a republic or a fascist police state, voting was orderly and mostly above board. You showed up to vote on the day of the election, identified yourself, voted and that was it. Maybe you had to stand in line for an hour if you went at the wrong time. Now that we have democracy, voting is a mess and the results are not known for days, sometimes weeks. Worse yet, no one can trust that the results are on the level.

Probably the greatest violation of our rights in this new fangled democracy is in the area of speech, which is under attack by the people preaching democracy. Kanye West is being systematically destroyed by the defenders of democracy because he says things they do not like. The defenders of democracy tell us we are supposed to cheer their coordinated assault on the man’s ability to exist, because he is a threat to democracy for foolishly sharing his opinions in public.

This war of speech has led to a war on property. PayPal recently announced a scheme to steal the property of their customers if those customers said anything that PayPal does not like. They had to backtrack on that scheme, but the mere fact that they thought they could do it is the point. They are not alone in this. The federal government thinks it can willy-nilly take money from employees of regulated firms if those firms fall afoul of the accounting rules governing public firms.

Before anyone thinks that this extrajudicial seizing of property will not withstand court challenge, take a look at the courts. The high profile police cases in Minnesota provide a clear understanding of how the courts have been corrupted. All similar cases involving police shootings. The results make clear that the foundational liberal concept of equality before the law no longer exists in our democracy. One can find hundreds of such examples that are now the rule.

Of course, the most basic right of all is self-defense. In most of the Western democracies self-defense is now illegal. This is a typical example of how protecting your life in your home is prohibited in Europe. Americans assume this cannot happen here, but Kyle Rittenhouse is a free man only because he drew the right judge and happened to be in one of remaining civilized parts of Wisconsin. If that had happened in a place fond of democracy, he would be on death row.

Self-defense arises from the bedrock belief that you own you. The entirety of the liberal tradition rests on this assertion. Even Karl Marx, a man not fond of private property, argued that the basic right of every man is that he owns himself. The past two years people were forced to take medicines against their will in the name of protecting our democracy from Covid. If you no longer have the right to control your body, then you have no rights at all.

None of this should be surprising. For most of human history people understood that democracy was a nice word for mob rule. In a mob, you have no rights other than those provided by the mob at any one time. You are always subject to the whims of the mob and those who can manipulate them. Therefore, as the talk of democracy has increased, the respect for basic rights has decreased. It turns out that democracy and a police state look a lot alike.

Some Regimeology

Posted on October 26, 2022 by thezman

Regimeology is a concept that needs much broader interest, as it is becoming an essential tool to understanding the current age. As the regime blacks out its windows and boards up the exits, the only way to understand what is happening inside the black box that is the ruling elite is to analyze the actions and media statements to then tease out some explanation for what we can observe. Like Kremlinology, it is the only tool we have to understand what is happening inside the system.

We have something new to analyze. The so-called progressive caucus sent a letter to the White House and the senior members of the inner party suggesting they were not onboard with the Ukraine war. They were careful to not break with official dogma on the war, but they were signaling to their supporters that they may at some point begin to question Ukraine policy. It was a very tepid bit of pushback, but they made the letter public so their fans could see it.

The reason they did this is the antiwar left is freaking out about the war and the fact that no one in the party they support is opposing it. The Bernie Sanders wing is supposed to be opposed to these wars and the machine behind them. Yet in this case they are silently nodding along with the warmongers. A group of antiwar people ambushed Sandy Cortez at an event where she was spouting neocon lines about the war and the resulting video was a huge embarrassment for her.

It was a nice little peak inside how the regime uses the far left to manipulate the various tribes that make up the Democratic coalition. They let these people speak against regime policy as a pressure release, but the unwritten rule is they can never threaten to block regime policy. It is the same theater the outer party uses to keep conservatives showing up to the polls. The guys at Trump rallies wearing tricorn hats are not the only chumps exploited by this system.

The interesting bit here is how quickly the hammer came down. The Biden White House and senior party members held an emergency meeting and then threatened the progressive caucus with death if they did not recant. We do not know the exact nature of the threats, but the speed with which the apostates recanted and their groveling tone suggest genuine fear. Whatever was said to them was serious enough to have them groveling in public within hours.

Just in case anyone missed the point, the regime then sent Bernie Sanders out to chastise the progressives for being wrong. Sanders has spent his life railing against the military industrial complex. He has opposed every military action, even those sponsored by his party. Now he sounds like Bill Kristol after a few too many drinks. Bernie is not just supporting the war; he is supporting the war dogma behind it. He felt he needed to get that out into the public domain.

The old internet meme about knowing who is in charge by thinking about who you are not allowed to criticize works here. If you want to know what it is important to the regime, think about what cannot be questioned. It is clear that they will tolerate no dissent on Ukraine policy, not even from the people they use to manipulate the left-wing activist class. In other words, they are willing to lose the support of their activist base in order to defend their Ukraine policy.

This is why the outer party has been silent on the war. There is no support for the Ukraine war policy, so the opposition party should be waving this around as part of the argument against their opponents. Most Americans would like to see a negotiated settlement to a problem they do not think is our problem. Despite the overwhelming support for a moderate position, everyone in the outer party is just as extreme as everyone in the inner party.

The question is why has the ruling class pushed all of their chips into the middle of the table on this issue? Objectively it is a bad bet. Ukraine is a backward and deeply corrupt country with no real chance of winning this war. The only reason it has gone this far is some version of why Bolshevism succeeded. The old line was that communism was the result of Jewish brains, Latvian swords and Russian stupidity. This war is the product of neocon paranoia, American arms and Russian stupidity.

That may be one clue as to why Washington is obsessed with this war. It is the last stand for the post-Cold War consensus and the neocon place within it. A settlement with the Russians on Ukraine would lead to a settlement on many other issues, like the wars against Syria and Iran. If you can make a deal with the Russians in one area, then there is no reason to not make a deal in other areas. In other words, the neocons need Russia as the eternal enemy in order to exist.

Another possible reason is the general paranoia of the aging leadership. Old people in power naturally get suspicious of the next generation. Look around Washington and across the board you see ossified geezers locked in place. Rather than the paranoia of one or two fossils it is a culture of paranoia among a gerontocracy. The Ukraine war just happens to be the issue through which they are exercising their intolerance of dissent, but it could be any issue.

Of course, there is always graft. Hundreds of billions are flowing into what is now a giant money laundering operation. This is the bust out of all bust outs and every serious player in Washington is getting a taste. The only place more dangerous than the area between a principled conservative and money is the area between a committed progressive and the same pile of money. As the saying goes, never mess with a man’s money or his women. Got that Jack?

Regardless, it suggests that the regime sees this war as one they cannot afford to lose, much in the same way Washington viewed Vietnam fifty years ago. Back then, that worthless backwater was the hill to die on for reasons no one could explain, but no one was allowed to question until it was too late. It is ironic that a generation that was born in the protests against the Vietnam war is closing the show by making the same errors policy makers made with regards to Vietnam policy.

Midterm Musings

Posted on October 25, 2022 by thezman

The midterm election is two weeks away and we are seeing the predictable pattern in the polling and news coverage. Whenever there is a Democrat in the White House, the regime media works feverishly to convince everyone he is the next Lincoln, but the voters think otherwise. Fake polls are released claiming the president is more popular than sex and the media is full of stories about doomed Republicans. Then autumn hits and everything swings the other way.

This pattern started in 1994. Bill Clinton was some weird mash up of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Al Goldstein. Supposedly, everyone loved Bill Clinton, even most Republican voters. In fairness, most people probably did like Bill Clinton as a picaresque character. They feared and loathed his deranged old lady, so they ran to the nearest Republican at the first opportunity. The GOP picked up eight Senate seats and 54 House seats in a sea change election.

This pattern did not hold in 2002, when newly minted president George W Bush went into his first midterm. The media spent a lot of time carefully explaining how this mumbling fellow was Hitler, but no one fell for it. His endless slobbering over Israel was probably the clue. That and the fact that his administration had more Jews in it than an accounting convention. The Republicans actually picked up a few Senate seats and lost just one House seat.

Fast forward to 2010 and they are back to the old tricks. Black Jesus is in the White House and the media is carefully explaining to white people that voting against his party was the most racist thing you could do. Of course, the Republicans agreed with them because that is what they always do. In a rare example of white people breaking from their conditioning, they risked being called racist and voted Republican. The GOP picked up seven Senate seats and 63 House seats.

Here we are with another Democrat in the White House and it is looking like another example of the pattern. The races that were allegedly competitive, like the Florida governor’s race, are not going to be close. Ron DeSantis is going to cruise to victory and probably carry a lot of Republicans with him. Firebrand girl boss Kari Lake was supposedly a long shot, but now it appears she will win that race. In fact, Arizona may go all Republican this cycle.

Then you have the weird races. In 1994 and 2010 there were races in areas no one thought would be competitive that were suddenly competitive. The same thing is happening this time around. Tiffany Smiley is neck-and-neck with grizzled hag Patty Murray in Washington state. The Oregon governor’s race is getting tight and the Michigan governor’s race could be close. The narrative makers are struggling to convince their core audience that the narratives are true.

What all of this points to is a big night for the Republicans and a glum night for the regime toadies and sycophants. The question is the numbers. Demographics and vote rigging probably limit the damage. The best estimate for the Republicans is 40-50 seats in the House and a one or two seat majority in the Senate. Given the condition of the president and the world, this red wave should dwarf the previous red waves, but there is no getting around the demographic issue.

As the New York Times helpfully points out, this election is a rear guard action by white America in response to the Great Replacement. The same people who repeatedly demand you say that demographic replacement is a conspiracy theory are consoling their readers with the knowledge that white people will be gone soon. Of course, their readers are uniformly white, but that is a detail. Hating white people is too important to worry about such trivialities.

They are not entirely wrong, of course. The white portion of the vote is in sharp decline and will be a minority of the vote in a generation. It will remain the biggest bloc so if it becomes racially aware, then it is big trouble for the regime, which is why they are so invested in preventing that from happening. In order to keep this system running, they need whites on opposite sides. That way the other tribes become the deciding vote and they are easy for the regime to manipulate.

There is another thing that is becoming clear. The quality of the options, like the quality of popular culture, is in steep decline. Pennsylvania is leading the way, with a Senate race featuring a brain damaged hobo and a Turkish carny. Georgia is not far behind, featuring two black guys with “colorful” histories. Serious adults are starved for serious choices at the ballot box, so they are left with symbolic ones. Voting Republican is now the same as voting none of the above.

From the dissident perspective, the election results are meaningless, as the first step along the dissident trail is realizing the game is rigged. Elections in a liberal democracy are always heads they win, tails you lose. The Democrats are “heads” and the Republicans are “tails”, reflecting the relationship of the parties. It is another example of how the universe has a sense of humor. White people vote Republican only to be finked on by the Republicans whenever they win an election.

Even so, there is the entertainment quality. Over the next two weeks the narrative shops will be tasked with producing new versions of reality. Fragile old geezers like Nancy Pelosi will be sent out to stumble through the latest message. Joe Biden will be sent out to shake hands with invisible people and fondle little girls in public, while reminding everyone he should be in a home. Democracy is a theater that always ends in the theater of the absurd.

That said, there are little green shoots from the dissident perspective. Guys like J. D. Vance and Blake Masters have managed to shrug off the racism stuff, which suggests it is losing it power over white people. Doug Mastriano is probably as close to a dissident candidate running and he is doing well, despite being called all the usual scare words by the usual suspects. The election results will not matter in the short term, but they point to positive long term trends for dissidents.

The Political Vice

Posted on October 20, 2022 by thezman

The British oddsmakers are not giving new prime minister Liz Truss much of a chance to survive the year, putting the odds at 1-in-8. They are posting wagers on her probable replacement, which is a good sign they are confident they will have plenty of action in the near term. You can wager on just about anything in Britain but the point of posting odds is to attract action. If the oddsmakers are posting odds on the next prime minister it means there is a demand for it.

From an American perspective it is a bit amusing because of the over-the-top way in which the media talks about these things. It is like how British sports announcers turn a mundane sport like soccer into life and death drama. Every player heroically passes the ball to some other hero, who courageously passes it back. They are doing the same thing with the political squabbles within the Tory party. They are carrying on as if the island will flip over if they pick the wrong person.

The British are in political crisis because the people who actually run the country never forgave Boris Johnson for supporting Brexit. The fact is, the elites in Britain all wanted to be fully integrated into Europe. They loathed the very idea of Brexit and detested the people who supported it, which is the majority of the people. Just as everywhere else, British elites, and those who think they are elites, define themselves by the degree to which they hate the average subject.

The elites shoved old Boris over the side without thinking much about who would replace him because of another quirk of modern Western elites. They never think more than once move ahead when on the attack. When scheming to line their own pockets, they are masters of eight dimensional chess. When they get their feelings hurt, they tend to blindly and maliciously strike out while howling in pain. They never think about what happens after they get their revenge.

This is what is happening in Britain. They got revenge on old Boris, but then they had no suitable replacement, so they were stuck with Liz Truss. She is a simpleton, so this has quickly blown up on them. Now they have to find a way to push her over the edge and find a different empty suit to play the role of PM. The odds are the next person will be terrible and this will force new elections. The other party will be declared the winner and then the drama comes to an end.

The only reason this is interesting is that it will be a story we see all over the West in the coming months, even in America. The midterms are shaping up to be a disaster for the Democrats, so they will be forced to address their Joe Biden problem. He is not going to go quietly, because his handlers need him to stay. Joe Biden is a shuffling husk, but the people holding important jobs in the administration need him in the job so they can hold onto those important jobs. Dementia Joe is useful.

Regardless, the people who actually run Washington will conclude that they have a Joe Biden problem after the election. The trouble is the next in line makes Liz Truss sound like Cicero, so pushing Biden over the edge will just create new problems, but wounded animals do not think that far ahead. We could very well see a replay in Washington of what is happening in London. Biden is forced out for health reasons, then Harris is forced out because everyone remembers that she is an idiot.

Of course, as the political turmoil in the West heats up over the next year, the popular explanation will be that it is due to bad economics. Inflation, shortages, recession and energy prices will get the blame. You see this happening in Britain where inflation is getting blamed for the crisis. It is complete nonsense. The Bank of England is undermining the Tory government, not popular unrest. The Tories have no reason to care about public opinion. They do care about elite opinion.

That is the real source of the crisis that is slowly spreading in the West. In theory, government exists to exercise the will of the people. The “general will” is defined though the democratic process. The parties compete for support by offering up policies to address the issues the voters think are important. The Tories are in power because they supported Brexit and they implied they would do something about the problems that naturally stem from post-national cosmopolitan globalism.

There was never any chance of this happening because the people who actually run Britain never wanted those things. Those people are not subject to elections and have no concern for public opinion. That is the cause of the crisis. The political process and its results lie between public opinion and elite opinion. The two sides are natural opposites that operate like the jaws of a vice. As they close, the political process is squeezed until it eventually bursts.

The fact is the West has reached a point where we cannot have both an avaricious ruling elite and a prosperous middleclass. Either the elites are brought to heel and are subject to the political process or the middleclass collapses. The new world order is an effort to consolidate power and impoverish the population. Populism and various forms of nationalism are middleclass efforts to fight back against elites. The West is now entering the survival stage of liberal democracy.

It is tempting to think that numbers matter and the people will eventually win out and bring their elites under control. Covid should disabuse anyone of that notion, as it is clear that most people would rather die than speak out against the most humiliating abuses of the elites. If you can make people wear their underwear around their heads, you can make them do anything. Of course, an elite willing to mutilate children is never going to be susceptible to appeals to their humanity.

On the other hand, no one was really at risk during Covid. People got sick but people always get stick from something. Covid policies did not put the general wellbeing in danger, at least not right away. When people are worried about paying their rent or keeping the doors of their business open, they stop worrying so much about offending the sensibilities of rich people. Western people seem to accept no limits on their humiliation, but maybe there is a limit.

Regardless, the West is clearly entering a crisis phase. Unlike past crises in Greece, Spain or Italy, this one is occurring in the heart of the West. People expect political turmoil in Italy, but not in Britain. People expect the Spanish economy to be on the edge of the abyss, but not the German economy. Washington is supposed to be the same regardless of the party in power. This crisis is in the core of what made the post-Cold War order possible. Soon, all of it will be up for debate.

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The Energy War

Posted on October 6, 2022 by thezman

The golden rule states that the man with the gold makes the rules. In this age, gold is energy in its various forms. The world as we understand it runs on electricity, which comes from fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. If you happen to sit upon a lot of these things, you get to be important and have a lot of money. If you do not have these things, then you are dependent upon others for your welfare. There simply is no way to have a modern society without cheap energy.

In case the West forgot this reality, OPEC+ sent a gentle reminder this week by committing to a large cut in production. Over the next two months they will reduce supplies of crude to the market by two million barrels per day. The stated reason is to bring market prices back in line with the target of $100 per barrel. The unstated reason was to remind Washington that they are not the only voice in the room. The Saudis were sending a message to Washington.

Since Biden took office, there has been a sharp decline in relations with Saudi Arabia, due, in part, to Biden’s reckless language regarding the Khashoggi affair. He was the CIA operative pretending to be a Washington Post reporter. The Saudis decided to have him chopped up at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. This became a major scandal, as the events were leaked to the press, most likely by Washington. Biden has called Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a murderer.

There are also the recent efforts by the Biden administration to manipulate the energy markets through various means. It is clear that the administration has been faking gasoline demand numbers to suppress the futures market. Then there was the promise to buy 200 million barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia at $80 a barrel in exchange for OPEC not cutting production. The Biden admin has reneged on that deal. The Saudis have good reason to not want to play ball with Team Biden.

The larger issue for the Saudis and every other country outside the collective West is the issue of regime change, which has become a fetish for Washington. MBS looks at Biden’s reckless words regarding the Khashoggi affair and sees it as a potential first step on the regime change escalator. Whenever Washington decides they want to blow up a country, they anathematize the leader, by claiming he is in violation of the moral consensus and thus fair game.

The Saudis have become closer with the Russian over the last year and the main driver is the regime change issue. The OPEC countries, Russia, China and even India are coming to understand that Washington sees them as lackeys. As long as they do what they are told they can keep some of their stuff but get out of line and Washington will install someone new. The willingness of Washington to try regime change on a nuclear power says that no one is safe from this policy.

Of course, the Russians are a member of OPEC+ and they have their reasons for supporting a production cut. The EU is still plotting an oil price cap on Russian oil, which is mostly a face saving measure. They will set the cap at a price well above what Russia will find acceptable, so they can act tough while importing as much Russian oil as they can handle. This announcement by OPEC will make sure that the Europeans do not get creative with their math.

There is something else here. It is the first sign in the Middle East that the major players are thinking about a post-America world. The Saudi – Russia relationship has grown stronger over the last year to the point where the Saudis have been circulating a Ukraine peace plan in Europe. They have agreed to join BRIC’s, which is the political alliance formed around Brazil, Russia, India and China. Interestingly, Iran has also said they wish to join, despite their relationship with the Saudis.

Some observers suggest that Russia is playing peacemaker between Iran and the Saudis, with China and India supporting the effort. Getting these two regional rivals on the same team would be a sea change in regional politics. It is the sort of thinking that imagines a world where America is not a major force. It is also the sort of thinking that comes when all involved fear the same enemy. The sign outside their clubhouse will read, “No Regime Change Allowed.”

All of this is a reminder that while ideology plays a huge role in the current crisis, it is energy that has been the driving force. America’s presence in the Middle East has always been premised on the claim they are guarding the oil supply. The long war on Iran has been as much about keeping the Persians out of the energy markets as it has been about containing Islamic radicalism. The Iranians will not play ball with the West over energy, so they must be isolated.

This brings us back to the golden rule. Washington’s power lies solely in the power of the dollar, which is pegged to energy. The real reserve currency of the world is the BTU and the dollar is the physical manifestation of it. The war on Russia, like the war on Iran, is as much about protecting the control of energy as it is ideology. What we are seeing is that the countries with vast energy wealth are starting to figure out that they are better off as partners rather than as competitors.

Where all of this leads is hard to know. Washington is sure they can win a war of attrition against Russia, a people famous for their endurance. A lot will depend upon how much suffering Western Europe is willing to absorb. Washington is willing to fight the war in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian. Maybe they are willing to fight the energy war to the last European. As winter approaches, we will soon learn who is better equipped to survive the first energy war of the 21st century.

The Moral Hazard Society

Posted on October 4, 2022 by thezman

For the last couple of weeks, there have been whispers that some large banks may be in trouble due to the rising dollar. The strength of the dollar is due, in part, to the Federal Reserve’s effort to fight inflation. It is also due to the decline in both the Euro and the British pound. Economic conditions in Europe are deteriorating quickly because of poor management at every level. The relative strength of a currency is the relative strength of the managerial elite that issues it.

Recently, the gossip has turned to Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, both of which have seen their share prices collapse. The former has lost about 60% since the start of the year and the latter is down around 50% off its recent high. Credit Suisse could be at risk of imminent collapse, due to its deteriorating credit condition. Banks need credit to function and right now, no one is excited about extending credit to a bank whose CEO is telling employees that the bank is not about to fail.

Some are calling the Credit Suisse crisis the Lehman moment. This refers to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, which triggered the financial crisis. Banks are dependent upon one another, so if one fails, it can set off a chain reaction where the next weak bank fails, then the next weakest bank. Get enough banks unable to make payments to other banks and the whole system crashes. This is why everyone is worried about the banks all of a sudden.

It is also why the market boomed on Monday. The stock market is wholly dependent on central bank policy now. Loose policy means lots of money creation in the banking system, which means lots of money flowing into markets. Tight central bank policy means the money gets fussy about where it flows. It can even sit on the sidelines and wait until things appear more stable. The robots are betting that Jerome Powell blinks and ends his tightening to save the banks.

This is similar to what recently happened with the Bank of England. All of a sudden, there was no market for the long dated British bonds. This is why the British pound declined in value. This in turn created a crisis for British pension funds, as their collateral started to evaporate. The BoE had to step in and buy long dated bonds to guarantee their price and save the pension funds. As a result, the gilt and pound have stabilized over the last few days.

The weirdness of this age is right there in that action by the BoE. On the one hand, they are trying to fight inflation by reducing the money supply. They do this by raising interest rates, which reduces bank activity. This slows the creation of money, thus reducing the supply of money relative to demand. As relative demand increases, the relative value increases, which is what brings down inflation. In reality, it means a recession, which does the hard work of cratering demand.

Where we are now with the BoE, and probably the Federal Reserve, is that the bank is trying to reduce the amount of money in the system relative to demand. At the same time, they are trying to increase the money in the banking system in order to prevent the banks from running out of cash. Put another way, we may be in a situation where central banks are injecting and withdrawing money at the same time, which is one of those things that is supposed to be impossible.

The current crisis is due to the choices facing central banks. They can provide liquidity to the system or they can fight inflation. If they raise rates to fight inflation, major players who got sloppy with interest rate swaps, for example, are suddenly facing an extinction event, which threatens the whole system. On the other hand, if they protect the system by leaving rates alone, they face the political fury of governments contending with double digit inflation and energy shortages.

There is a bigger issue. The energy problems, the supply chain disruptions, inflation and the fragile credit markets are due to political incompetnace. Over the last three years, Western governments, led by Washington, have found every bad decision possible and then made it with furious enthusiasm. People cannot be blamed for thinking it is deliberate, because that is the best answer. The odds of rulers being this dumb this often strikes most people as impossible.

This is a time when Occam’s razor does not apply. They are this dumb. Liz Truss came to power promising to give rich people free money to boost the economy. This was a moronic plan that nearly blew up the economy in her first weeks. Truss is a simpleton who has no business in politics, so she thought it was a grand idea. She is in office because her predecessor was a bloated party boy who saw Churchill whenever he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

Go back through British PM’s and it is one buffoon after another. This mirrors what has been happening in America. Joe Biden is in the late stages of dementia and he will be on the ticket for 2024. His predecessor was a carny act. The guy before that was a formless nobody who was willing to act the role created for him. The guy before that was a simpleton controlled by his father’s friends. You can do this in every Western country going back decades. They are as dumb as they act.

The crisis of competence in the managerial elite is not the root cause. The real first mover is the moral hazard economy. Going back to the 1970’s, the Western political system has come to rely on a handful of clever bankers to save the political class from their own idiocy. Starting with Paul Volcker, central banks have been the mother hen of political economy, always right there to kiss the boo-boo of the politicians or the pirates in the financial system when they stepped on a rake.

This safety net under the political economy of the West has warped the selection pressure on the people in the system. In a world of no real risk, feckless airheads like Liz Truss can rise to the top on promises to the powerful. After all, if she breaks something, nothing really bad can happen. The result of this risk-free political environment is that it rewards reckless behavior. The bigger the claim, the bigger the media splash, which means bigger political clout.

The same selection pressure can be seen in banking. In a world where bankers go to jail and lose all of their money if they screw up, there is a low tolerance for people who are reckless and foolish. In a world where the Fed steps in to not only save your bank but save your golden parachute and those of your colleagues, why would you not take the most dangerous risks? For over thirty years central banks have created a moral hazard, which in turn created a culture of reckless disregard.

It is this sense that no harm can ever come from error that is leading the West into a crisis from which it may not survive. It is this mentality that is leading to the game of chicken with nuclear weapons. The West is now led by a collection of mentally unfit bullies who think they own the school yard. At some point, like all bullies, they will get punched in the nose and see their own blood. In this case, it is reality that will do the punching and the bankers will not be their to kiss the boo-boo.

This raises the serious question. Bullies learn their lesson in the schoolyard because that lesson is not lethal. In the present age, how can the ruling class suddenly feel the pain of their own stupidity, without blowing up the world? How can real risk be reintroduced to change the selection pressure without risking collapse? The moral hazard society may have reached a point where there is no solution. The phrase that may be needed here is creative destruction.

Economically Pondering

Posted on September 27, 2022 by thezman

A feature of this age is words and phrases have fluid definitions, rather than the old, fixed definitions from our dark history. Vaccine used to mean a preparation to simulate the immune system in order to prevent infection. Now it means the sponsor of the regime friendly cable chat shows. Recession used to mean two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, but now it means a thing that never happens. After all, who can really say what words really mean anyway?

It looks like we may be getting a new definition for bear market, which used to mean a prolonged decline in equities. The rule of thumb is that a long decline that reached 20% off the previous high is a bear market. Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached that point when it dipped below 29,300. It is now off 20.4% from the high in January 2022 when stocks rallied after the end of Covid. The index is now below the level it was at when Biden took office.

The main reason the market is in decline is the global economy is a mess and Western finances are even worse. The wild spending during Covid was always going to come with a hefty cost, but the assumption was that the economy would just turn back on and everything would be fine. Western government could then stretch the cost of Covid policies over a long period of time. Instead, we have inflation, war and a global energy crisis that is demanding government action.

The post Cold War economic model, the New World Order, is based on the assumption that conflict between major states was a thing of the past. America was the last remaining superpower, who would police relations between the major powers of the world and prevent minor powers from getting out of line. Disputes would be sorted through the various international organizations. The business of the world was no longer ideology. It was business.

That turned out to be a grand bit of self-deception. The ideological fervor of the West, particularly the Global American Empire, was the main driver of Covid policy and is now the main source of economic chaos in the world. Western rulers saw the pandemic as a chance to launch their Build Back Better schemes. This not only led to massive shutdowns of the economy, but the scrambling of global supply chains. It turns out that the magical replacements did not just appear as assumed.

Then we have the war on Russia and to a lesser extent China. This is a two phase war, with one phase public and one phase private. The public phase is the vast array of sanctions levied against Russia and any country aiding Russia. The private phase is the currency war being waged by Washington. The booming dollar is supposed to curb domestic inflation and protect the petrodollar. There are also acts of economic sabotage like the recent attack on European gas lines.

The question that is never asked, but may turn out to be the most important, is why has it taken so long for economic data to turn sour? Shuttering wide swaths of the economy to fight the flu should have triggered a massive recession. Expanding the money supply through massive credit creation should have resulted in massive price hikes and many asset bubbles. The policies of the last three years should have brought disaster, but here we are with only the threat of disaster.

One thing the last three years has revealed is that the people who think they are indispensable to the running of society are not that important. The managerial elite made one terrible decision after another but the system carried on, because the people who actually work found a way. Businesses figured out a way to keep the lights on, despite the best efforts of government. Their people figured out how to get their work down, even with the lockdowns.

One possible source of the paranoid terror we see in the ruling class is the unspoken understanding that they are unessential. Their pompous self-regard is a mask concealing a deep fear that the Dirt People might figure out that the Cloud People are just an expensive ornament. Joe Biden is a dementia riddled vegetable, which makes clear that the job of president is ceremonial. Next in line is a former prostitute with the IQ of a goldfish. These are not serious jobs.

Another possible reason the economic data is defying economic theory is that the numbers are not what they claim. An iron rule of life is that anything with value will be faked or stolen. Economic data has value to the ruling class, as it is seen as a tool of control, so faking the numbers is possible. For example, many people think the Biden people have been giving us fake gasoline demand data. This would be an effort to jawbone down gas prices.

This is an old game that was popular in the Obama years. Every month the Feds would release rosy economic data, only to revise down the numbers at some point in the future when no one was paying attention. How much of this is going on today is hard to know, but we can use inflation as a guide. Anyone who has been to the grocery store knows that inflation is much bigger than the official government stats. We can probably assume similar manipulation everywhere.

Even so, you can only fake this stuff for so long. Providing fake data and false narratives is like check kiting. It works initially, but eventually the gap between reality and the false narratives gets too broad to maintain. This is what we see with immigration in Europe, where the it has toppled two government recently. Those romantic stories about how immigration enriches society do not hold up when the subway station is a warzone controlled by African gangs.

The other question, now that reality seems to be catching up with Western governments, is how bad will things get economically? The Europeans are just at the start of the long dark winter promised by Joe Biden. The British pound is in crisis and members of the ruling party are revolting against the new PM. The Euro is not doing much better, having fallen to ninety-six cents on the dollar. Of course, the dollar is soaring as people flee to the reserve currency for protection.

The soaring dollar creates a dilemma for the Federal Reserve. If they continue to withdraw dollars to fight inflation, they risk a currency crisis. If they back off the tightening, they risk a fresh explosion of inflation. Because of the dollar’s relationship to energy markets, it would also trigger rising energy prices. Then there is the politics, which is already turning up. Bad political environments tend to result in bad economic decisions, which make for more bad politics.

That is the final question at this stage. Can the managerial elite of the Global American Empire talk their way out of this? A central belief of the ruling class is that if they can create a plausible narrative and talk about it enough, it becomes reality. Can they convince the world that this is all just transitory and what lies ahead is the promised utopia they have been plotting for decades? They talked their way out of responsibility for the Covid vaccines, so anything is possible.

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