Thirty years ago, everyone knew what it meant to be a liberal. They wanted to tax the rich and spend the proceeds on the poor. They wanted to regulate business so they could not exploit their workers or harm the environment. That meant favoring unions in the law. On foreign policy, liberals were the doves when it came to dealing with the Soviets. Of course, everyone knew what being a liberal meant when it came to social issues. The point being, liberalism was a well defined list of policy positions and opinions.
Today, what it means to be a liberal is a complete mystery, even to the people who proudly say they are on the Left. The Netroots Nation was this weekend, so all of the grandees of Progressivism were in New Orleans to pitch their ideas. Take a look at the agenda. Other than the promises to oppose Trump, most of it focused on building traffic for their websites. “Digital Security For Organizers Of Color” sounds amusing, but mostly because it has that familiar paranoia that has come to define the modern Left.
If you bother to watch any of the speeches, the tone is what you would expect from people facing the end times. One after another it was a rallying call for the fight against some monster, real or imagined. At least the ranting about Trump includes a real person, even if the bill of indictment is insane. When you think about it, the Russian collusion business is just an updated version of “cavorting with the devil.” Their argument is that Trump made a deal with the evil one, who magically altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
That’s what liberalism is these days. It is a weird collection of superstitions about various ghosts and goblins like racism and white privilege. Racism no longer means prejudice against another race or even antagonism toward another race. Racism is the evil spirit that is somehow responsible for unequal outcomes. White privilege is just another name for the same mysterious force. It’s how millionaire black athletes can be victims of racism because the white middle class fans stop watching them over the anthem protests.
Another aspect of this is the extreme paranoia. Listen to the Left these days and you get the impression America is now the movie The Purge. The faithful spend every night in their bunker homes. Here is a story from Breitbart about Bill Maher claiming that the United States is turning into Iraq. He does not mean the post-war Iraq. He means the the Saddam version where his Al-Bu Nasir tribe ruled over the nation. In Maher’s version, Trump, the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch rule over Maher’s oppressed majority.
Now, Maher is a cynical provocateur and opportunist. He was a hack comic for a long time until he figured out how to stoke the fears and fantasies of liberal fanatics. It is debatable as to how much he believes any of the stuff he says. In this case, he is clearly trying to appeal to his audience, by naming three hobgoblins of the Left. The fact that Charles Koch despises Trump and Murdoch was a Hillary supporter makes his theory as nutty as the Russian hacking nonsense, but his audience is not rational.
This vision of themselves as the put upon minority is integral to Progressive identity politics. Not only do the constituencies needs to believe they are victims, the Judeo-Puritan project is rooted in a bunker mentality. Their sense of the world is of a righteous people holed up in a New England town, as the imperial forces encircle them, while they pray the oil holds out until the golem arrives to free them. It is a dogs breakfast of both spiritual and mythological strains that make up modern Progressivism.
Again, Maher does this because he knows his audience is stupid and this stuff works on them, but it speaks to something about the modern Left. Conventional conservatives like the go on about how the Left has no ideas now. That is true in the nuts and bolts public policy sense. The Left is no longer a political force. It’s made the turn and is on its way to becoming the Cult of the Supreme Being. Unlike Robespierre’s invention, this version is esoteric, mysterious and oriental. There is no defined supernatural, just a sense of it.
It’s also very feminine. The hysterical shrieking about the hobgoblins that haunt the Left is reminiscent of the old Blondie cartoons, where the woman would stand on a chair shrieking about a mouse in the kitchen. In a more sophisticated age, the readers knew that the woman’s performance was just that, a performance. It was an acting out and reinforcement of traditional sex roles. Today, when the Progressive climbs onto her chair and shrieks, there is no mouse and no man to rush in and comfort her. It’s a lonely act.
This collapse of Progressivism into a feminine mystery cult is why conventional conservatism has collapsed. Conservatism was never a genuine alternative. Their role was as a foil to the Left. That worked as long as Progressives had a policy agenda, but that is not longer the case. Listen to the leading figures of the Left and their policy proposals range from comically ridiculous to vaguely aspirational. Again, you see the feminization. The Bernie Bros are now Bernie gals like Ocasio-Cortez and Sarah Smith.
What this says about what comes next is hard to know. Spiritual movements are a part of the human condition. Anthropologists think belief is one of the earliest modern human traits, co-evolving with language. As Christianity fades in the West, something must replace it. Maybe we are seeing the birth of the next great religion. Alternatively, the ranting and raving against nature could be the death howls of a culture that has reached its terminal point. The end is a people huddled in darkness, afraid of the goblins outside.
The movie: A woman sees a mouse in her kitchen. She jumps on a chair and shrieks for a few minutes. No one comes to help. She jumps down, grabs a steak knife and chases the mouse, slashing wildly. After a few minutes the mouse is dead on the floor. There is blood everywhere, including on her face and hands. The kitchen is a shambles. There is a strange look on the woman’s dace as she surveys the scene. Her eyes are glassy. She steps to the window and looks down. On the street she sees people that look like her, mostly women but some odd looking men. Among them she sees mice scurrying, hundreds of them. She smiles a lurid smile, blood and saliva dripping from her mouth. She grabs the knife and heads out the door.
Up voted for creativity, very nice.
Off topic, but a perhaps a suggestion for a topic for a future Power Hour: Democracy. Democracy with unlimited franchise has proven itself unworkable.
Maybe this is so obvious as to not be worth a whole hour, but democracy is one of the leftist’s articles of faith, along with equality, feminism, multiculturalism, etc. and as such needs to be burnt down.
Excellent analysis.
However the Left doesn’t hesitate to act on it’s fears and agenda. As seen with Google, Facef**k, Apple and Youtube banning InfoWars. (Infowars is just the trail balloon to see what we do. )
They’ve just made themselves judge, jury and executioner for all to see. You know like some have said, we’d get our Harpers Ferry and it looks like we have. Does Trump simply roll over and ignore it – because it’s a direct threat to him if doesn’t. If he does nothing the cabal will shut down Breitbart, Daily Caller and Unz Review. as a start.
It was eye opening for me (sparked by the Z-Man) and others how much this “progressive” cult acts like unstable women I have had the misfortune to know. They find a way to be anxious and victimized and “unhappy but I don’t know why so it must be YOU.” The whole “I’m not talking to you because you voted for Trump,” is something from a middle school girls bathroom or how women deal with any perceived slight.
Trump is my fault because I voted for him. I get a lot of that. Hell, I live in California, my vote did nothing for him!
Well, Obama turned into a big bust, and I didn’t lay that crap on anyone around me who voted for that guy. But then, I don’t have any “feeeeelings”.
Trump is my fault because I voted for him. I get a lot of that. Hell, I live in California, my vote did nothing for him!
We should have a cup of Java sometime…
It seems the fems haven’t figured out the whole Electoral College thing – just another irrationality
It seems all three of us live in California. We should meet up and start a movement. Or maybe just play Monopoly.
No Frip I don’t live in CA I just stay there in a Holiday Inn every once in awhile…;) I wouldn’t mind though meeting you as well for a cup also when Im your way…
Getting together with a bunch of the people on here would be a hell of a good time. Might need to break up a fight or two halfway through the deal.
It would be fun Brother and anytime you want to make it happen let me know…I think they’re quite a few Californians on this site…
I always want to ask the nuttier ones “so what is is like having to check under your bed and in the closet for Hitler and Nathan Forrest every night?” They are that crazy around here.
The problem the Left has is their almost instinctive habit of subverting religions. As a result, they tend to subvert themselves. The New Left subverted the old. The neo-Marxists are today trying to subvert the New Left. There are various reckonings coming between women and blacks, blacks and latinos (and gays), movie star rapists vs. the women who want the casting couch on their terms, and soon-to-be-seriously-taxpaying-and-homeowning-Millennials against the insanity they will suddenly start to take notice of.
A few weeks ago, one of the “brown people” on my social media feed (he calls himself and people like him this) started posting more and more of what I would call Libertarianism 101 types of posts about things like taxes and government spending. He is paying taxes now, and it’s suddenly dawning on him that this money is wasted at a level that is nearly incomprehensible to most people. You could light garbage cans on fire filled with money and get the same output as many government programs. He’s starting to see that now. It’s fun to watch. Libertarianism is where people go when they need something that sounds classically conservative, but they don’t have the sack to just come out and say it to their friends. They’re Liberals who don’t like paying taxes and want to buy a gun and smoke weed, so to speak. It’s a start.
I doubt he makes it all the way over to Trump, but from 2 years ago when Trump won to today, the ball has moved decidedly our way. The election in Nov will be a lagging indicator. Maybe the GOP holds the Congress maybe not, but it will NOT be the result of the Left finding their message. Whether the GOP holds the line or not will basically come down to whether the GOP’s voters think they kept their promises. By and large, as evidenced by their continuing fealty to Mueller, they have not and do not wish to.
I still think we’re seeing the evolution of an alternative party in this country. It’s just terribly hard to break through the two-party inertia.
The two party system has essentially been codified into law in this country. That is largely the doing of the progressives. That’s where we are – despite the warnings of a number of the founders of this country about political parties.
One of the advantages of the current hysteria of some of the lefties though – is that maybe a serious effort will be undertaken to break the hold of the two party system. With enough disaffected lefty voters not feeling like they have a place in the now communist Democrat party – maybe they’ll get behind changing some of the laws that basically fence out opposition parties.
Trump and Ron Paul both ran as Republicans because there was nowhere else to go. When I see Republicans bitch about this – I tell them:
It’s your own fucking fault. If you hadn’t manipulated the system for your own perception of gain – then the outliers would go to other parties instead of having to take over the Republican party to get any traction.
The same principal applies to the Democrats. They tried to make a coalition of aggrieved minorities – now those minorities are eating the whole project alive. They deserve every bit of what they’re getting.
So Z Man, can you talk about the banning of InfoWars on your next podcast?
InfoWars is a trial balloon. The Left will be watching our response to this. If we just shrug and say ‘hey it’s just Alex Jones, besides we’re the cool kids, no one will ban us’. It’s full on censorship on rails.
Seriously they are counting on our side to throw Jones under the bus the same way we did on Tommy Robinson.
Seriously they are counting on our side to throw Jones under the bus the same way we did on Tommy Robinson.
Well they have a pretty good chance of being right…We have a habit of doing that…
Throw our fellow travelers under the bus – and then follow Moron ya Simba’s example and invite the only slightly fallen away commies onto the bus to take their place.
Sounds like a real winning formula.
Not.
Maybe Alex Jones is a nutter. I don’t care. He’s turned more people away from blind obedience to the liberal world order than anybody I know. Despite everybody’s whining – he’s also put quite a bit of truth out there. It was Infowars that put out the truth about Benghazi literally AS IT WAS HAPPENING. Then the Clinton fable about the movie came along – and everybody went into Rip Van Winkle mode and forgot about the whole thing.
Then a few years later – the truth comes out once again. Everybody very conveniently forgets that the truth was right there in front of their unbelieving eyes literally as the event was going down. You CHOSE to disbelieve.
Most of the shit that the liberal left shoves down our throats is very easy to disbelieve with some mental programming power washing. As much as I see person after person , and Zman bitching about “libertarians” – it was the Lew Rockwell type libertarians who gave me that mental power wash. Trying to even give the average conservative as much as a light dusting – has proven to be almost futile effort in my experience. And I’ve been trying for close to 15 years now.
The only reason I argue with lefties is because I know that if I can find the magic button – I can usually make them cry or piss them off so much their blood pressure spikes. My hope is to stroke them out. Conservatives on the other hand often deserve to be just insulted for their stupidity and their cuck behavior. At least there’s a possibility of salvage value there. But you have to break thru the wall of blind stupidity many of them operate under.
“and then follow Moron ya Simba’s example and invite the only slightly fallen away commies”
Maybe that’s not what I said you F*cking moron. Read up on what it means to be red-pilled.
And Zelda: link to the past(the better of the two)
It’s because the left is hegemonic. There are no battles to be won so they are desperately trying to invent “issues,” first with the black lives matter, which proved too literally dangerous, and now with the Russophobia nonsense. The transsexual stuff may be similar. There simply aren’t enough of those people to constitute any sort of political force.
Before trump, the only way the right would be allowed power was when it agreed to publicly gouge its own eyes as with the Iraq war. To inflict such political damage on itself with middle America that someone like Obama might be voted in.
Actually, it is very easy to know what it means to be a “Liberal” today:
“Liberal” = Communist.
And that is Practical Communist. Not Theoretical Communist.
Kill every one of them.
The Left used to always love the concept of “scapegoating” / “scapegoat”, to describe why certain groups were irrationally hated or blamed. They don’t use it so much anymore. We need to co-opt it and start talking about how every aggrieved group is now scapegoating white men for their problems. We were always taught how poor whites in the old South used to “scapegoat” blacks for their problems. The Jews in Germany were always “scapegoated”. Now it’s our freaking turn. The MSM surely won’t use it on our behalf. There will never be a headline in the NYT asking, “Are White Men, Society’s New Scapegoat?”
One thing the netroot nuts are also big on is a lot of seminars on how to score other people’s money, natch.
There was a good one listed on legal marijuana. It seems the Teamsters have some ideas on how they’re going to organize the weed workers. Now that should be a hoot.
I think it is impossible to say what comes next. It is clear that leftie is on an express train ever deeper into mega insania. As they accelerate I expect some will want to get off and some of those will take the red pill and join us.
But we are also in a very contingent-dependent place I think. What if, say, they kill Trump. We know some quite powerful people are getting very desperate. This could happen. We cant predict what happens then, that is totally what chaos theory calls butterfly point, ie that the smallest micro change has escalating mega scale effects. From civil war etc. Same w good contingencies, say Trump really does break the back of anti-white racism and cultural Marxism. Suddenly Overton just came our way and we can start to explain to Mr and Mrs Normie what is going on.
In turbulence, w what chaos theorists call large positive Lyapnov exponents, predictions are futile, only guesses are possible. But keep your powder dry, both the mental, spiritual, figurative and literal powder. B/c we re about to enter Pandora’s box.
Do you really want a person who was so seriously deluded that they stayed on that train for a LONG time – to “join us” ?
I don’t.
We’re not talking about leftists who maybe jumped off the train when Obama got elected because they could see where it was going. We’re talking about people who stayed on that train – and are only jumping off now because there’s obviously lunatics at the wheel. They’re still completely untrustworthy.
Do we really need a Neocon era Part Deux? One of the worst things that happened to the right side of the aisle – was falling for the siren songs of the ex-commies making up the Neocons.
Apparently nobody has learned a goddam thing.
If they jump off the lunatic commie train – how about telling them they made their bed – now they can burn in it. In the meantime – please just STFU while we try to keep the fire YOU helped start from burning down the whole house.
I want us to WIN. That supersedes any snuppish sense of ‘purity’ or superiority among the ‘long-woke’.
If you want to think of the Johnny come lateys as cannon or vote fodder I guess that’s one way to look at it.
You’re not going to win a goddam thing with a bunch of proto Commies as your “friends”. We’ve already been down this road – when the cuckservatives fully sold themselves out to the Neocons.
Look where that got the right wing. Exactly nowhere. I’ve been going at it with “conservatives” over the neocon issue for at least 15 years now. Almost universally – they rose up in defense of neo-conism. Then when Trump got elected – the neocons – like one of those characters in Men in Black, couldn’t keep up the disguise any more. Now they’re almost universally Trump bashers. Duh. Who could have seen that coming!?!?
If anybody was actually paying attention and/or had some grounding in ACTUAL conservative principles they would have seen this coming AT LEAST 15 years ago. But now we’ve got a new crop of idiots who want to suddenly embrace all the not-quite-insane commies who are jumping off the crazy train. You act like they’re suddenly going to become your friends. They’re not. Commies will do what commies do. They will infiltrate and subvert. But by your logic it’s better to have them inside the wire instead of outside.
I say keep them outside the wire – make them live that whole maxim: “maybe your life is just here to serve as an example to others” – as they’ll get eaten by their former compatriots.
Your answer is exactly why I wonder very seriously about the intelligence level of “conservatives”. You sure your screen name isn’t Moron ya Simba and you misspelled it?
Making friends with commies will get us exactly nowhere – at best. At worst it will destroy the whole effort.
Okay, it is very clear that you dont understand what it means to be red-pilled. I am not talking about cuckservatives, they are as blue as they come.
History has a way of being joker..no telling what sort of event might intervene. But in the meantime, one can never over invest in quality optics and focused range time.
A friend of mine has a saying “ammo, something you buy by the pallet” lol
A friend of mine has a saying “ammo, something you buy by the pallet” lol
Cargo Container Brother;)
For an guess as to what the NYT is up to with Jeong, see http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/welcome-to-bad-faith/#comment-363378 :
“FincaInTheMountains August 6, 2018 at 1:12 pm
This Leong-Jeong woman is nobody, and her name is nothing.
But on the part of New York Times, it was a deliberate provocation, either to conduct a RECONnaissance fight, and measure the battle-readiness of the Americans, or to provoke too-early hasty reaction.”
I see a future leftist priest of progressivism selling indulgences against “Racism” by hawking little “autographed” photos of St. Martin of Atlanta.
I believer Sailer referred to this as the Africanization of the west. Oriental mysticism is far saner; ideas like Qi and Karma are understood to be abstractions. This is just pure blameshifting; an entire movement with the collective memory of a goldfish going “well, *we* certainly didn’t eat all the crops and set fire to the village in a drunken haze, so it must be the evil spirits!”
Of course, liberalism was never really a set of policy positions – at least, not for the people in charge. It was merely an ideology to facilitate the transfer of power from royals and aristocrats to liberals and demagogues. But they’re discovering that revolutionary ideologies are like revolutionary individuals; the ones you need to take the state are not the same ones you need to hold it. The lurch to postmodernism is an attempt to establish a permanent ruling class, but they didn’t bother testing it before attempting to deploy it, and we’re watching the system fail in real time.
When considering this type of liberal, one song always comes to mind… “feelings, nothing more than feelings….” every time.
The regressives are getting more insane everyday. Just saw in Philadelphia, Candace Owens (black) get harassed at breakfast by an all white Antifa mob shouting “F–k White Privilege” at her. Then when the black and Hispanic cops showed up they called them racists. LMAO.
Yet they sit around in their parents basement dreaming and believing in this huge blue wave that is coming in November. While nothing should be taken for granted (aka get out and vote), imagine the hysteria is going to get amped up another 50 degrees if they don’t take back the house.
2020? Forget it, Trumps wins, cities will be trashed beyond what any NBA city did when their local team won (or lost) a championship. Or Vancouver after the Canucks lost in the Cup finals some years ago.
The solution is martial law and firing squads till order is achived but a hotelier isn’t up for that.
As an aside Candace Owens has more guts than basically the entire GOP establishment. She takes a lot of heat doubled because she is an attractive Black woman
There’s a Stephan Molyneaux interview with Candace Owens on Youtube that is very illuminating as to why she got red pilled. If I remember correctly she was trying to get some sort of anti-bullying effort or something like that going. Sounds like she was sort of babe in the woods and just thought it was a good idea. Then she started getting attacked for it and the attacks just seemed crazy. I don’t recall the details – but it had some connection to the Gamergate insanity if I remember correctly. Anyway – that whole incident really pulled her into the morass that is leftwing thought these days and is what set her off on the path she’s on now.
My take is that this is an example of “you might not want war – but war wants you” . And she’s decided to fight. For that I give her a lot of credit because from what I’ve read she’s under constant attack for her position. But – if some of the stuff I’ve read recently about black support for Trump is any measure – maybe the worm is turning against the lefties …… slowly.
I’ve maintained for a LONG time that if blacks were going to broken away from the Democrats it was going to have to be blacks that did it.
Black support for Trump is apparently rising. And I keep seeing #Walkaway videos popping up on Youtube. This is all something that would have been almost unfathomable just 2-3 years ago.
I think we have the radical leftists to thank for that.
Agreed. I have plenty of co-workers who are black who were staunch leftists. Completely uneducated about how Democrats really look at them and take them for granted. When Trump won, they walked around for months, couldn’t shut up about Trump is stupid, Trump will destroy the country. You could not say anything to them, especially as a white guy because they didn’t want to hear it or believe it.
Then Kayne West spoke out. They got some some exposure to Diamond and Silk when FB suspended them and a big stink was made. Plus other things. A few of them don’t talk about Trump anymore, still don’t like him, but they for the first time are bad mouthing the Democrats and won’t vote for them now.
Exactly like you said, if blacks were going to leave the Democrat Party, it was going to be other blacks that got them to leave. Of course the Republican party should be really pushing to get them in the tent, but since the RINO cuckolds would rather be a minority party and be ruled over (since its easier not to have to make decisions), they waste another opportunity to crush the D party for some time to come.
Oh now you do wanna work w those who woke up after you?? You re like a girl om PMS
Maybe it’s time to let these people burn their own houses down. Get all “Korean shopkeepers on the roof” if they try to come to your neighborhood or mine. If they can’t deal with it, let them marinate in the outcome.
This Candice Owens incident illustrates why the “Dems aRe the Real Racists” strategy fails. She believes if she makes this incident about race then people will see that progs are the real racists and join her side. This strategy never persuades the progs because the principle animating them is not anti-racism but anti-white-ism. As for the non-progs, most realize that they get no credit for being color-blind. DR3 fails because most people in the world are tribal and the whites who try to pretend otherwise always lose. Color-blind conservatives are like people who oppose gravity due to some noble principle.
Given their “arc of craziness”, I’m more worried about 2020 or 2024 if a Democrat does get elected president again.
Civil war is probably inevitable by the mid 2030’s which is less than two decades off. I’ve talked to, forumed with a lot of people who share this consensus
It may come sooner though. Be ready.
I see NetRoots has a “BASIC INCOME CAUCUS.” UBI is the latest manifestation of communist insanity in the left and left-Libertarian circles.
I get a daily newsletter from medium.com. I call it “My Daily Liberal Insanity Newsletter,” because though there are a few people on the right who contribute, it’s largely full of far-left ranting.
A fellow named Robert Johnson posted a long article full of vague, numberless hand-waving about how “Basic Income is EASILY affordable.”
The article was basically talking about equations without plugging in any actual values and asserting that because it was theoretically possible to get good values out of the equations that means that it would necessarily be easy in the real world to get good values out of the equations.
I challenged him to come up with some actual numbers:
“Have you done the math on this? By your description, there is some breaking point income level where the amount of additional tax paid exceeds the UBI. Have you estimated what the size of the UBI will be and what the tax rate will be? Will it be a progressive tax rate? At what level of income will that breaking point occur? Which federal and state programs are you proposing to end and replace with the UBI?”
He responded:
“Obviously, there are many possibilities for what level Basic Income could be set at and exactly what tax changes could be made. My point, however, is that BI is easily affordable from the point of view of fundamental economics.
“You ask what ‘federal and state programs’ I would be proposing to end. Perhaps you live in the USA. I, however, do not. And my article is not country specific. I have a good idea what I think should be done in the UK, but I am certainly not an expert in the schemes you have over there in the US.
“Have a good one! :)”
In other words, “no, I can provide no real-world numbers to back up my hand-waving.” It’s ever like this with leftists. It’s religion, not reason.
“Obviously, there are many possibilities for what level Basic Income could be set at and exactly what tax changes could be made. My point, however, is that BI is easily affordable from the point of view of fundamental economics.
“You ask what ‘federal and state programs’ I would be proposing to end. Perhaps you live in the USA. I, however, do not. And my article is not country specific. I have a good idea what I think should be done in the UK, but I am certainly not an expert in the schemes you have over there in the US.”
translation
“I said it’s affordable, period. Discussion ended.”
“Don’t bother me with details.”
I’m active on the basic income subreddit from time to time.
The problem with BI is that no society can collect the amount of taxes needed to pay for it. It would mean that in the US the Feds would have to collect half the GDP and while they can distribute this very efficiently (Social Security is from what I can find out roughly 93% efficient ) they can never get that much revenue . our society can manage around 20% (its called Hauser’s Law)
What would happen is the nation would simply decide what BI is, mint that much money and inflation index it.
This whoever would basically mean that a lot of trade is not possible which is fine for the US, we don’t need much of anything but other nations don’t have that option and getting it would essential require economic ultra nationalism of a Left wing strain
The net result is as computers (and you don’t need robots) knock out more and more rungs on the economic ladder, the nation will get poorer.
We either control tech and create work or our middle class nations will devolve to a favella . I’m pretty sure we’ll choose the later, we already have street shitters in Cali and there is a heavy economic and governing component to that
My personal opinion is that we richly deserve our fate. You can’t people a nation with the flotsam of humanity and all the most truculent uncooperative people and expect that to work. The more complex a society grows the more voluntary cooperation is required and we’ll never get enough of it to win the red queens race
The upside is fertility is dropping so baring mass import of Africans and we’ve drained Africa of most of the useful ones save the White ones the dystopia won’t last long
The logical long term action since we can’t get society to work is to encourage the low fertility trend till we die back enough that the society can be sustained and that there is enough social capital
Fighting off the Profit Now crowd and the Christians on these grounds though is the political challenge and outside of Peak Oil/Deindustrial People and Malthusian Greens no one wants population decline even the Left needs someone to lord over
That said we are still getting it the US fertility rate and if I read this right number of babies born haven’t been this low since 1974 and we’ve had 65% population growth.
Basic income won’t be possible until mass automation. Prior to that, the First World should strike a deal to pay Third World citizens to stay put rather than go Camp of the Saints. 3WBI could also be reduced based on the number of children born. We could also pay BI to resident invader populations on the condition that they return to their homelands.
A.B.Prosper, the problem with BI is that once you go that route, the path to greater wealth is begging/threatening the powers that be for a bigger handout. Not much different than the kid asking for a bigger allowance. The current, jobs oriented path to wealth is job change, impress the boss, or build your own business. Going the BI route breaks the cycle, and introduces the inevitability of the Venezuelan outcome.
There is truth in those words but a fertility rate of 1.8 or lower isn’t any good either.
We’ve had wage decline (measured as percentage GDP) since 1973 and we had a huge period of wage decline from the Great Depression till the late 40’s baby boom and in every one of those periods we had economic constraints
Its not a moral issue, no fault divorce wasn’t common till the 80’s and it wasn’t the pill. The Great Depression has low fertility without basically any birth control and severe laws and taboos against non reproductive sex as well.
One thing all these periods, the 1931-1946 and the 1973 till current (45 years minus one blip a tiny bit above) had in common was wage and job pressure
Hell wages as percentage GDP have declined by half since 1973 actually a bit more!
It seems that in a developed society without stable work and a decent chunk of the pie you get fewer babies and essentially never above replacement
There are no moral or religious hacks that have ever worked on a societal level and frankly even LDS and evangelicals who have a bit above average fertility aren’t that high and have poor retention
The only people who are not part of the mainline community being Orthodox Jews and Amish , especially Amish (5-7 kids is common)
This means if we want more White people we have to pay for it either in higher wages or lower costs and have stable employment
If we can’t do this we may have to eat the moral hazard of BI and risk Venezuela otherwise you can enjoy permanent low fertility and even a complete ban on immigration and repatriation won’t do jack
Hungary and Poland are not very diverse , are nationalist and religious and but they have lower fertility than White Swedes or Danes .
Now in fairness a population decline if we can live with it won’t be bad if you don’t mind an end to most small towns and general decline of cities large and small
Its possible to get rid of unneeded architecture if we are willing to spend a few dollars and its certainly cheaper than BI . we don’t have to live like pigs or leave building to rot
The US if we deported enough foreigners and controlled trade might have enough jobs for population around 200 million or less with some expected c9ontinuous decline do to automation
We’ll probably drop to what we had in the 30’s or 40’s, 125-150 million maybe half now which is plenty so long as we manage the borders
Anybody who knows anything about what has happened to college tuition costs since they started giving away school loans like candy – should know damn well why UBI is an exercise in futility.
Doesn’t anybody understand how wealth is built any more? WTF?
UBI isn’t going to happen for decades and the US doesn’t have that long.
I’ll note I’m about preserving the West I don’t care about capitalism and it can fuck off it its going to kill us off by lack of babies
The West was after all still the West under feudalism
The current system isn’t building wealth either. all gains, every penny has gone to 1% of the population and 10% have just barely kept up with inflation . Our infrastructure is falling apart. life expectancy plummeting and so on.
Spending creates wealth whether its private or public and while there are limits, no spending, no wealth
Highly socialist Northern and Western Europe is not in worse shape than the US really , its better in health and infrastructure and longevity and has more social capital. This won’t necessarily work for the US but minus refugees and virtue signaling idiots works well enough there for average people
Also note the fertility rate is below replacement in the entire developed world . Every nation, all of them. Its mostly the same 1.5 to 18 or so
If you do not get wages up you will never have even a stable population.
The only other option is mass importation Chinese Africans and Muslims to keep businesses solvent . Do you want that ?
If it takes even more massive wealth distribution, money printing or control of technology even at the cost of the lower GDP and somewhat higher poverty to make sure people have babies and the culture continues so be it.
You do not have other choices other than societal extinction as there are no moral hacks, no religious hacks that work in any society on any scale. It has been tried for decades on end and has failed.
Pay good wages or die
You do get to choose the form of your destroyer though population decline or population replacement . Choose wisely
if societies are stuck on stupid or the US imported too many uncooperative people it will end up 3rd world so be it.
Sow Reap
Somewhere along the line I answered a question on Quora. So now I’m on the email list. One day I saw somebody post a question about UBI – and it peeved me off – so I went in and answered the guy’s question with a ” why the hell do you think universal income has any chance of working – where the hell is the money going to come from”.
I got a bunch of upvotes. And now I get the occasional email “since you answered a universal basic income question – can you answer this one”.
So I do. In the same manner as the first one. It’s usually some variation of ” why are people even asking this question? Is everybody so ignorant of basic economics that they think there’s just free money out there somewhere? How about doing a little research and using your damn brain to try and figure out where the money is coming from FIRST – and then maybe you’d have the answer to your question …….”
I usually get a few upvotes. Even on Quora.
At least that tells me not everybody is insane.
Is it time to republish Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style of American Politics and just switch the terminology around? https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics&ved=2ahUKEwi9l8mu7djcAhVIR6wKHWXSDMUQ5OUBMAh6BAgCEAE&usg=AOvVaw0mz5ekCeytGgru3cP8onRS
What all this boils down to is this: it’s time for the Puritans to find a ship that will take them to a safer place, where they can practice their beliefs free from the interference of the iniquitous culture surrounding them.
Maybe we should start a Kickstarter for them.
MtnExile, it is not about their practicing their beliefs free from us, it is about their forcing their beliefs on us and making us like it. That’s what drives them.
The original Puritans — from whom our modern-day Puritans are descended (in more ways than one) — chose to leave their country and start over elsewhere. I’m only suggesting we should help our Puritans make the same decision. Is it likely? Hell no…it was just a joke. [cue rimshot]
I started looking through the NetRoots events list. It reads more like some sort of multi-level marketing group conference.
Then I came across one event, “FREEDOM TO PROSPER SALON,” and I thought, “Wow, a pro-freedom event at NetRoots! Let’s check this out (click). Oh. “Join us for an evening of community, conversation—and cancelling student debt. Sponsored by Freedom to Prosper.” (Emphasis mine.)
Freedom to not pay your debts. Sigh.
About half the country votes for progressives. Sigh.
“We’re Doomed” — John Derbyshire
Maybe the thing to do is go up to the front of the bus and become the driver. If this is inevitable, maybe the best thing to do is to decide who gets screwed when the deed is done.
I see no sign that there is an actual driver, nor that we’re likely to get one pre-crash. Diversity + Proximity = War. I’ll let you know who’s driving after the war.
Maybe the thing to do is go up to the front of the bus and become the driver.
Ahhh that would mean replacing the existing bus driver which is gov. co… Which I don’t think anyone is prepared to do that…Now you could get off the bus and go start building your own bus but like I said before the pain hasn’t been enough for people to want to do that…
“This collapse of Progressivism into a feminine mystery cult is why conventional conservatism has collapsed.” Well, something sure has collapsed. I always thought of myself as a conservative but now with the lunatic left coming out of the closet as a full-blown communist cult/religion I don’t know what I am. I guess an ultra-conservative. Yet I haven’t changed my belief in individual Freedom, the value of Liberty, my respect for the Constitution and my love of God but somehow seem lightyears away from any modern “liberal”. I haven’t moved. They have. So what am I? The Republicans left me years ago when they gave me choices of leftist-light as candidates and called for “compassionate conservatism” and how we had to ruin the free market to fix it. RINO’s and todays neverTrumpers are not conservative nor Republican. Quislings? But where does that leave guys like me?
But where does that leave guys like me?
It leaves you in a position of where if you’re not on war footing you’re going to be conquered…
Lineman, have a real world skill set and stay away from crowds. That’s half the battle right there.
Half the battle of round one. The problem w prepping, to me, is ‘how far into the future do you want to plan for?’ Eventually you will run out of anything that cant be made from immediately natural materials. Then what? And the country collapses, FEMA isn’t coming, whether you think that’s good or bad.
Still, worthwhile to have some plan to take you for some time as you try to figure out what to do then.
The problem w prepping, to me, is ‘how far into the future do you want to plan for?’ Eventually you will run out of anything that cant be made from immediately natural materials.
That’s why my focus has always been on Building Community not just prepping because I know that no man is an island and will always need others if we want to survive and thrive…
Agree completely, building a community is key.
Well there is always room for doctors up where I’m at here in MT;)
Appreciated, for real 🙂
“The fact that Charles Koch despises Trump and Murdoch was a Hillary supporter makes his theory as nutty as the Russian hacking nonsense, but his audience is not rational.”
It’s this kind of stuff that makes discussion fruitless with even a normie liberal, much less a hyperventilating prog.
Take Obamacare. Blue World got nearly all of its wishlist fulfilled as it was enacted; it was the greatest thing since Emancipation. About the only actual change of significance that happened since Tangerine Hitler used Russian tanks to invade the White Man’s House was the elimination of the individual mandate. That’s how bogus and insincere the GOP always was regarding repeal of the PPACA. However, to hear Blue World talk about it, since January 2017 you would think no one in the nation who isn’t a Koch brother can get medical treatment. See? The Murdoch and Fox stormtroopers control everything!
When you cannot even agree on some of the most basic facts in plain sight, discussion becomes pointless. It might be more fun to ask proggies “Nature vs. Nurture: Who was worse, Hitler or his parents?”
Now go one level deeper. What attribute is foundational to the Progressive Tribe? What is their essential motivation for behaving as they do? What never changes even when their ranting and policies and boogeymen morph into any convenient variant that suites their current mood? I submit that it is the imperative of the parasite. They need a host to feed on and government is the largest and most reliable host in the modern environment.
Yes, Tom, but this parasitism is disproportionately female.
Third Wave feminist women have perfected the art of playing the victim, see e.g. https://FabiusMaximus.com/2018/06/10/why-cant-women-HATE-men/ .
Also, see some of Whiskey’s writings, e.g. at http://whiskeys-place.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-women-hate-nice-guys-and.html :
Nowadays “both White women, and non-Whites, are generally aligned in interests. Their interests are in EXTRACTING the maximum amount of money from TAXPAYERS, to fuel children (family as defined as single mom, plus kids by various sexy bad boys) and family formation….
But those societies throughout history and now, that allow sexy men, the dominant bad boys, and women to run things, are typically very violent, and primitive. Male cooperation goes entirely out the window….
Everything has its price, and the price for Sexy Men for Western women is basically, the end as we know it, of Western civilization. With something approaching Dark Ages kingdoms, or Mad Max as its replacement.”
Perhaps the motivation is simply to eliminate all the isms and from the ashes, government scientists will construct a purely rational morality, non adherents will, of course, be somehow eliminated. In the mean time, the other global isms will stand by patiently and wish them well.
TomA, it’s always “show me the money”. Capitalism did a better job of spreading the wealth around, but the rich got powerful and decided to take most of the pie for themselves (ridiculous CEO pay, offshoring of jobs, encouraging the hiring of illegals for domestic and low pay jobs, and so on). The “gimmes” are seeking socialism, because instead of the rich becoming powerful, the powerful become rich. Notions of racism, sexism, etc, are considered little nodes of power that can be converted to wealth in a socialistic system. It all circles back to the money.
The government is always the enabler of parasitism. Without a bigger boot on your neck – you’re always free to resist the efforts of the parasites. When the rich get powerful and “decide to take most of the pie for themselves” – this is ALWAYS in concert with government in some form or fashion. There is ALWAYS a bigger boot on your neck preventing you from shooting some corporate cocksucker who just stole your retirement savings.
Power must have a balance – I believe this was what the founders of this country tried to achieve. Unfortunately the history since then is a tale of constant manipulations and tweaks and subtle changes – all of which brought the government more in line with aggregation of power and against distribution of power. Now we’ve got a government that prevents you from driving out immigrants from your communities – and also actively funds the settlement of said immigrants INTO your communities.
Come on – we’re not so far removed from the history of the 19th and even the early 20th century – which are chock full of stories of people driving other people out of their communities – when they didn’t want those outsiders around. Are you guys all like 20 years old? The woe is me story told by progressives of how mean people drove the black people out of town (or insert your favored minority group here) – and therefore the wonderful Federal government must “do something” about it (remember the whole “we have to do something” go-to line? It seems so quaint now).
My point here is: It’s the growth of government that is enabling all of this. And that growth has been fed largely by the left IMHO, but has been supported mightily by the right. But yet it seems that nobody wants to acknowledge where that boot is coming from on your neck – that is FORCING you to accept all the BS of the current age.
For a couple years now I’ve been saying that Progressivism is the religion that replaced Christianity in the West. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and all the other dreaded isms and phobias are simply “sins” under the modern cult that rules our society. As recently as the 19th Century, no one had ever heard of those sins. Doesn’t matter. The superstitious run roughshod over everyone when rational people fail to mount sufficient opposition.
The crazy leftists remind me of the Junior Anti-Sex League and the like from 1984. They were the outer party. The inner party called the shots.
Maybe there’s more going on today than just ghosts and goblins.
I think the inner party has lost control of their pet lunatics.
I kinda think the inner party is the outer party and they’re all lunatics.
“Trump made a deal with the evil one, who magically altered the outcome of the 2016 election.”
“Racism is the evil spirit that is somehow responsible for unequal outcomes”
You are a quote machine. I will be using them.
Yesterday I watched Millie from InfoWars interviewing Trump protestors in Ohio. Shrieking is all they did. Now that I think about it, it’s all shrieking. That’s what it’s come down to. I can’t help but think about what comes next.
Infowars will soon be gone, and up next will be Breitbart. The left will wipe us out one by one, and all we seem to do is complain. No riots, and at best a few token lawsuits. And any complaining we do is interpreted as whining, and we cannot signal weakness. Trump could change it all by just tweeting “Nationalize” in the same sentence with either “Facebook” or “Google”, but will he???
We need alternative ways to make cyber communities. B/c you re right, they want to break up the focal points and communication channels, they want to deal w 200 million individuals, not a huge, communicating mass.
No social platform is sustainable without ad revenue. A subscription based model has not been shown to work, does Gab even have 1 million users, let alone 100K pro members?
We know who dominates the ad industry, and we know the power of outrage mobs to get corporations to get woke. Marketers only care about those 18-35, and that bracket is screaming for more Sarah Jeong and less PrisonPaul.
Sounds right but as Overton, and the political mood, changes, there will be an ad market for real right ppl
Moran ya Simba, you are more optimistic than I am. The Right simply ignores or does not patronize advertisers oriented to the other side. But the other side sues them, protests them, and burns the place down if they advertise on our side. Given that big business (not small) is already oriented towards our adversaries’ way of thinking (their priorities align, somewhat), we are out in the cold. I’m getting used to it, and treat it as a badge of honor.
If I’m an optimist, we’re in dire straights indeed.
But information will find a way to filter out. The nazis or commies couldnt prevent illegal printing presses. We have the internet for pete’s sake. If we can t get information out, we re not trying hard enough, we re pussies then. B/c ppl are gonna get desperate and a lot are gonna want to know ‘what’s really going on’
In a Machiavellian sense, the chans should start a false flag outrage mob trying to get Cernovich banned.
Exactly…wake up Sessions and start rattling those anti trust chains, and watch the fun!
I have long mused on what the Left would look like without the conservative foil, thinking the Left would collapse once they really started winning. I think your observation regarding conventional conservativism’s co-dependent relationship with the Left is right on the money. As to what comes next, therapy.
Without at least the token resistance offered by the right, they would proceed along the same arc as all leftist movements. Because of the size and wealth of the U.S., the collapse would be even more spectacular and bloody than Venezuela, Cambodia. China, Russia…
“The end of white Christian America” – very interesting read. It’s been heading this direction in Europe for decades. Immigration will only make matters worse.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/20/end-of-white-christian-america
Christianity wasn’t defeated or taken away from it’s adherents but surrendered by them.
Leftist (and to a much lesser degree, Rightist) politics as a replacement for traditional religion is so plausible that an entire army of scientists should be investigating the subject. But, as so many of the intelligentsia are Leftists, they can’t begin to conceive of such a notion.
Since the Chinese, Japanese, and Russians don’t appear to be participating in this leftist death cult, having already survived their own versions, I think the resulting collapse will be confined to the US, Canada, and western Europe….I think, however, that heavily armed American dissidents will prevent the worst excesses of these lunatics.
That Rachael Maddow is still alive seems proof that “heavily armed American dissidents” will continue to do nothing.
You may want to go easy on that kind of talk.
My TV was left on HBO, and when I turned it on Maher was on talking to some loony professor (middle aged cat lady division) about how the right wingers control everything. It was interesting to see that kind of idiocy in plain sight.
Communism was their next religion after, uh, religion. I reckon this new thing they’ve got is going to turn out just as great.
You honestly believe Christianity hasn’t made it through harder times?
Paganism still has adherents. Just not anywhere that matters. The only religion that matters is the one that inspires the rulers or inspires their replacements. Christianity is the faith of the people replaced long ago. Maybe Christianity evolves, so to speak, into something else and sweeps the world. It could happen, but I see no signs of it.
then unfortunately that would be islam
Replace the mullahs and their fanatic followers with feminists, and you aren’t too far off. Same story, different faces.
but the same mustaches.
Don’t forget the beards!
The problem w islam is, you cant run anything with it, it kills technological etc progress.
Christianity seems to be on fire in China, so I suspect it’s just the death of the culture, stripped of its foundation.
Perhaps I think so because I’m a Christian, but I’ve noticed that no new religion has sprung up in Europe; the Soviets didn’t even manage to get any sort of real buy-in to Marxism, and no one is building temples to the EU.
All that seems to replace Christianity is sort of a vague, hedonistic and yet self-hating slow death cult.
The normal practice is pre Christian Europe was folk religion. Often these faiths had similar or the same Gods but religion was a local thing for a people, by a people
The Romans didn’t even interfere with this so long as you acknowledge their Gods were stronger.
Its just Christianity that wanted uniform and universal adherence directed from Rome or wherever.
This clearly isn’t working for Europeans and attempts to replace Christianity with another universal strain isn’t wanted and despite what the Deus Volt crowd or the Muslims think needed,
My guess is Europe will either secularize or more likely expel most Muslims in not that many years and will go back to what it did for centuries, have many folk religions (New Age, Wicca, Spiritualism, Asatru . Odinism whatever)
Attempts to channel the impulse into the State won’t work unless its nationalism, no one loves foreigners
This is fine and not having that Old Tyme Religion is only a short term problem for Europe . Most f the rest of its issues are related to crowding, urbanization and overshoot of its carrying capacity
They aren’t religious issues.
The US will go down a different route, the US White people in a few decades will be more Christian, Latinos a bit less and Blacks and Asians about the same
How this plays out long term is dependent on if there is a civil war and on immigration issues.
In theory in the long term, a century and change the US won’t be especially industrial as the highest fertility rates are Amish. Other groups Orthodox Jews, LDS and some Evangelicals are loosely above replacement but no where near as high
This along with ecological overshoot suggest the long term future isn’t space ships or future dystopia but 1910 or so tech with schizo tech add ons, whats called a post industrial future
This will correct the morale issues and the future people will be far more religious in one form or another.
If Prophet Musk and Bezos were stopped from building their spaceships… it’s not gonna be from made up crap like “ecological overshoot,” it’s going to be from a political act from the Turd World invaders and those who worship the Turd World invaders.
If environmentalism isn’t a religion, what is it?
I’ve been supposing this for many years now: the inefficacy of Christianity against the modern world. It is no longer a credible belief system for elites and rulers. Too many of its claims break down against natural science and basic reality.
The Christianity that is personally credible (experience of the risen Lord) usually ends up getting trapped in useless dogmas.
Therefore, what belief system is credible for the ruling class? Their utopianism is anti-life, a gnostic death cult in the end, but what is an alternative for them? There is none. it is all a gotterdammerung for them in the end.
What emerges from the catastrophe? Perhaps a reformed Christianity that is credible for the elites.
Or maybe the gnostic elites don’t make it through the catastrophe…
(1)
“Paganism still has adherents. Just not anywhere that matters.”
Like, for example, the internet? Take a peak – if you dare – at the extensive and amazing stuff posted over the years by John Michael Greer, until recently an arch-druid and currently posting at ‘Ecosophia’. Greer does his homework, writes beautifully, and goes to the trouble of editing out egregious spelling and grammar errors from his text, as a courtesy to his readers.
If JMG doesn’t matter, then do you?
(2)
“The only religion that matters is the one that inspires the rulers or inspires their replacements.”
Ok, tell that to Decius, to Aurelian (with his ‘Sol invictus’ bit until he got knocked off by his troops), to Diocletian and his soothsayers, to Julian ‘the Apostate’ – the Donald Trump of late antiquity.
Christianity was ignored, then ridiculed, then persecuted, then embraced, by the Roman ruling elites. What you are saying is that until Constantine openly declared Christianity as ‘state ideology’, “it didn’t matter.”
I hate to put it like this, but that’s like Obama saying – to the three centuries of everyday Christian believers who made it all possible – “You didn’t build that!”
(3)
“Christianity is the faith of the people replaced long ago”.
I have no idea what this means. But I can tell you this: Christianity is the faith of people who are Christian. Very esoteric…
We may not matter, as our Faith doesn’t fuel the spirit-force of the rulers, but we’re out here, millions of us, all over the world.
(4)
“Maybe Christianity evolves, so to speak, and sweeps the world. It could happen, but I see no signs of it”.
Just a thought, but maybe Christianity doesn’t evolve, and sweeps the world anyway. Look at the numbers of our people in India, China, Africa; of course now we rub upon the ‘racial solidarity’ issue – and that’s a real concern for us who are race-aware and also Christian. Extreme example: a SF homo marching against ‘meat’, or whatever, a white kid who speaks English and grew up in the suburbs, versus some Ghana-born Roman Catholic… which team am I on?
When the final battles come, who/whom won’t be so easy to figure out after all – even for us who “care” about all the issues examined here at the Z-blog.
When the final battles come, who/whom won’t be so easy to figure out after all – even for us who “care” about all the issues examined here at the Z-blog.
It will be if you know them on a personal basis and have broke bread with them…
I predict that somewhere, another thousand years from now, groups of people will gather to celebrate the Eucharist and listen to the Gospel, when all the other programs and systems for human sanity have broken down, all the libraries burned, all the infrastructure of current-year Empire has vanished under the cinders and dust of global fiasco.
So I remain cheerful.
Almost all white Christians alive today will go to their graves as anti-whites. The only reason that Christianity was compatible with white people is because the individual relation with Christ comports with the individualism of whites.
Do you support a wholesome nation for your family or a platform for getting Tyrone into heaven?
The Western civilization will not and cannot be restored without Christianity, because the Western civilization is Christian at its very core. If Christianity cannot be restored, then the Western civilization will die. If you tried restoring it with something else at its core, then what you’d get would not really be the Western civilization, but something else. The reason that historians invented the term “Byzantine” to describe the empire run from Constantinople (who referred to themselves as “Romaioi”) was precisely because, even though they called themselves Roman, their civilization wasn’t centered on paganism and ended up becoming something else that wasn’t really Roman in any meaningful sense.
I want to restore Western civilization, of which I am quite fond. If any of you agree, then you’d best do what you can to promote Christianity.
Join the discussion…I agree. The future will be Christian or Muslim. everything else is just not credible as a societal resource. Many here seem to discount the muslims past successes. they have been a conquering force for a 1400 yrs. they had some defeats, but they never ever quit . They are in-group preference personified . as a catholic, I worry .
a good listen to bill werner is a good start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wugWj42pLI
To be more specific: western civilization is The Catholic Church’s canon law.