Racket Street

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Arguably, the greatest newspaper columnist of the modern media era, or at least the newspaper era, was H.L. Mencken. He’s ignored these days because he was a realist about the great questions of his day. He opposed entry into both wars and he was a race realist. Back then, the ruling class still debated this stuff and the commentariat welcomed all views. America was still a country that trusted itself. Today, deviationists are hurled into the void because the people in charge are petrified of anything resembling dissent.

The opinion writers in the modern mass media are all pens for hire. Their job is to sell the glories of their masters. For example, all of the NeverTrump loons that turned up in so-called conservative publications were being payed by a couple of billionaires. They never bothered to admit it, but it is the thing everyone knows. The left-wing Progressives are similarly funded by billionaires, with the most obvious examples being the New York Times and the Washington Post. The news business is just a PR department now.

Like so much of modern America, the business of selling the public on the glories of the plutocrats has become a racket. A good recent example is something called the R Street Institute, started and run by someone calling himself  Eli Lehrer, who is something of a universal man. He has published in far Left publications like the Huffington Post and on so-called conservative sites like National Review. Even in our corrupt age, it seems like a stretch for someone to have an audience in both publications, but there we are.

R Street pitches itself as a free market think tank, hoping people will mistake them for libertarian or conservative. An amusing bit of their pitch is this line on their site. “To maintain its independence, R Street accepts no government funding.” This is part of the grift being run on the public these days. If the entity depriving you of your rights or robbing you of your income is a private entity, then it is all good. After all, only communists oppose private enterprise! As long as you are not murdered by the state, it’s all good.

Of course, The R Street Institute is just another racket. That may be why they picked the name, as a nod to the fact they are running a grift. When you start to dig around into the background of the place, it is not long before you stumble upon neocon grifters like David Frum and Marni Soupcoff. These people are like a drug resistant virus. No matter how many times they are chased off the stage, they keep coming back. It seems America will have to be tented and fumigated before these pests are finally eradicated.

That’s really the way to look at them. Over the last year or so, mainstream publications have been posting stuff from writers with the R Street label. This one on the American Greatness site is a good example. That site is famous for having hosted Michael Anton, the guy who wrote the Flight 93 column. The subtext of this article is that the sorts of people attracted to nationalism and populism are very bad people, but they’re losers and going the way of the dodo so stop fighting the poz.

The writer is a hired pen for a globalist front group called the Institute for Liberty, which was one of the establishment operations that crushed the Tea Party movement. Once it became clear that the natives were restless and ready to try something new, all of the establishment rackets swung into action to “help” the grassroots organize. To the surprise of no one, but the sincere people forming Tea Party groups, these establishment groups co-opted the whole thing and made sure they were never a threat to the orthodoxy.

You see the same sort of shenanigans with the R Street racket, except it is a neocon front group, rather than a Republican racket. Since neocons are toxic everywhere but Washington, they are now trying to fade into the background of left-libertarianism, where they can try to subvert nationalism and populism, without being obvious. Still, it is a stable of pens for hire who will provide content for cable shows and websites, all with the subtext that serves the interests of their paymasters. It’s a racket for the opinion rackets.

To circle back to where we started, a century ago America could have a raucous and combative press corp, along with razor-tongued columnists like Mencken, because the people in charge were confident. Today’s ruling class is so culturally disconnected from the North American economic zone that they live in fear of what is brewing below the cloud line. They hire armies of propagandists and censors to police the Dirt People for deviationism. The result is a commentariat that speaks to no one for no one.

It’s easy to get down over the endless censorship and obnoxious proselytizing we see in ads and entertainment. It’s important to keep in mind that they are not doing this because they are confident. They are doing it because they are afraid. If their product could sell itself, it would not need enforcers and pitchmen. The Cloud People in their castles are living in fear that the natives may becoming aware. Otherwise, they would have no reason to be pushy dragoons to attack anyone who dares question the orthodoxy.

60 thoughts on “Racket Street”

  1. Pingback: Mistrust the elite prophet. – Dark Brightness

  2. Hey, asshole? I was one of the founders of the Tea Party movement. I spoke at the first Tea Party event in DC in February of 2009, organized the Tax Day Tea Party event in DC (and gave organizational support to the Annapolis Tax Day Tea Party) on April 15 (couldn’t be in 2 places at once) and assisted the major Tea Party movement organizations as they were getting started.

    I didn’t co-opt jack shit. I was at the fucking vanguard.

    I have no idea who you are or where you were, but you certainly weren’t trying to push back against the idiocies of the Obama administration.

  4. It’s time that the white male put more than words into this fight for our very existence against the international parasite that is home nowhere and everywhere. (((They))) have parlayed the spreading of shekels to influence the outcome in a way that white Americans won’t. Time to use that beer money to help see your grand children into the next century.

  6. The thought that can save you from the depression of being red and black pilled is asking yourself, what is really worth saving? Life isn’t that great.

  7. Off topic, but I liked Z’s observation that we need our own William Kunstler to do battle with the enemy. He would be the one to represent Alex Jones and try to pull down a few pillars at the same time.

  8. I am genuinely confused about where my loyalties should be cultivated in modern America. On the one hand, I am an “elite” white man based not only on educational attainment and my professional career but also because I despise the ignorant or opiate-addicted useless-eaters of the white lower SES. Yet on the other, I am an angry Traditional Catholic of reactionary political views living in a sparsely populated, conservative, predominately white enclave of a leftist-controlled coastal state where my vote or opinion is openly condemned as hateful and of less than no value. I certainly do not have the wealth or income of a 1%er, or even a member of the highest quintile. I voted for Trump because he was not HRC, who I find abhorrent, and because the federal presidency has only one truly consequential role in our current system, which is appointing life-serving justices to SCOTUS. In this regard, even if for no other, Trump has earned his place in history. I am also gratified that Trump seems hell bent on dismantling every initiative of BHO, as if his eight-year folly was of absolutely no consequence to history. Still, my hatred for leftists, NAMs and illegal aliens does not translate directly into ethno-identification with the many loser whites among the Deplorables. Frankly, I don’t trust them to do anything worthwhile except maybe die like cannon fodder if (when) the civil war goes hot.
    What should I do in the midst of the cultural decay in American society other than dedicate myself to my immediate family and friends?

    • “I certainly do not have the wealth or income of a 1%er, or even a member of the highest quintile.”

      Hate to break the news buddy, but if you’re not in the upper quintile (household income over $92k per year), then you’re nowhere near “elite.”

      The rest of your post comes across as a bad concern troll. If you haven’t figured out yet that every group has low achievers, then you’re too short for this ride. There will always be poor and stupid white people, but the rot we see among the lower orders now is a million times worse than it has to be. Look at England: the men who used to power the world’s greatest navy have become chavs.

      No, the people you smugly dismiss as useless eaters are your countrymen. Their ancestors built this country. In a healthy society, the vast bulk of them could and would find a respectable role to play.

      I’m far less confident about the innate quality of all of the various foreign groups imported by our ruling class. How bout you?

      The funny part about this issue is that the most harmful useless eating tends to go on among the elites, and would-be elites. Does an Appalachian guy who lost his job and got addicted to opiates really concern you more than the countless sharply dressed rent-seekers in D.C.? How about all of the useless propagandists in Z’s post? Or for that matter, all of the lower level urban bugmen who think they’re intellectuals because they got a blogging gig at Huffpo?

      We produce nothing, anymore. It’s parasites all the way down. Why don’t you worry about that larger problem instead of picking on the only group that the Leftist establishment regards as an acceptable target?

      • “Look at England: the men who used to power the world’s greatest navy have become chavs.”

        No they haven’t; if you look at crime rates, drug problems or life expectancy then Working class English are far from chavs.
        Maybe you’ve been consuming the “woke” British media or you’re a fan of Neo-con Theodore Dalrymple but I wouldn’t believe the propaganda. Like the US the wrong sort of whites are to blame for everything and the narrative will be told regardless of facts.

        • Yes. Of course the extent to which lower class whites have degraded, both in the US and in Britain, is overstated by our relentlessly hostile media elites.

          The point is that, regardless of their present dysfunction, our lower orders come from the same stock that built civilization. And that dysfunction arises, in large part, from the cultural rot and spiritual vacuum that is modern consumerist society, along with all of the various direct attacks by our ruling class (e.g. opioids, offshoring, mass third world immigration). The dysfunction is imposed, rather than innate.

          • The dysfunction is a product of the degeneracy of the higher orders, except those of a modest income lack the ability to pay off the consequences of the rot.

    • I don’t think you understand what we mean by elite…To put it simply since you’re here your not the “elite”…The elites meet at Davos and the Bilderberg Meetings…
      http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants.html
      Also why be confused are your loyalty belongs to those who want to see you alive and prospering…Any that don’t want that for you should be treated as enemies…Pretty Simple…
      What should I do in the midst of the cultural decay in American society other than dedicate myself to my immediate family and friends?
      Build things that will last through the coming chaos whether it be your relationship with God, Family, Tribe or the physical and mental aspects of preparing…

    • I went to school with those “losers”. I would want one of them in my foxhole, as opposed to someone like yourself.

    • It seems to me that you’ve answered your own question. You may have a low opinion of the only people who don’t hate you, but they don’t hate you.

  9. Terry Teachout, a talented writer, wrote the last big book on Mencken. As I recall he wasted about a fourth of it on delving into the question of Mencken’s supposed antisemitism. Like anyone but he and his neo-con cohorts really care.

    • Terry Teachout is a Janissary* Jew.

      Dan Kurt

      *Janissary: they began as an elite corps of slaves made up of kidnapped young Christian boys who were forcefully converted to Islam.

    • Haven’t seen that name since I stopped reading Commentary about 8-10 years ago. Outside the neocon circle no one reads or quotes him.

  11. Well, the rulers have never felt so secure that the commentariat welcomed all views. The Overton Window is real. The acceptable discourse band has moved (and maybe shrunk) but it was always there.

    The qualitative change I think we face now is the abandonment in the commentariat of even the pretense of rational argument. Whether or not one believes the rulers were sincere they once at least pretended to care that acceptable discourse was factual and consistent. Now it’s just “Who?Whom?” all the way down. …

  12. I remember the late 1950s and early 1960s. There was a Narrative then. The Cold War narrative. Things could be made unpleasant for those who deviated from approved line. I remember making myself unpopular with the well-meaning but none too bright young female teacher of my high school senior (1963–64) civics class when I ripped into the obviously pro-USA, anti-Soviet textbook. I was a Young Republican Goldwaterite at the time, but the book was such blatant propaganda that I had to point it out. I shouldn’t have noticed, and if I did notice, I should have kept my mouth shut. But I’m a noticer, and when I see something, I say something.

  13. “These people are like a drug resistant virus. No matter how many times they are chased off the stage, they keep coming back. It seems America will have to be tented and fumigated before these pests are finally eradicated.”

    Virus? Tented and fumigated? Careful, there, old pal, the Archons may be listening….

  14. I agree with Zman. The cloud people have no arguments or case to make. They just have tactics; abuse, threats, street violence, censorship, doxxing, deplatforming, defunding, life ruination etc. This is not the strategy of people who believe they are winning. The ontology is strictly defensive.

    Also, It was interesting to note how the lefties sought to justify the orchestrated banishment of Alex Jones from the internet with…muh private companies. They have readily adopted the libertarian trope as a rubric of control. This reinforces two truisms: (a) that the left have no principles and only the lust for control, to be achieved by any means necessary and/or convenient and (b) the libertarian movement has served (unwittingly maybe) as its patsy. I have witnessed a few self-identified “free market” types actually agreeing with them openly.

    It does make me glad that I ran away from that movement. I am kind of embarrassed that, I too, once believed that freedoms would only be safe once the government was removed from the picture. I was wrong. Turns out that the “free market” is really just East Germany with logos.

  15. I would like to inquire as to the going rate and application process. Seriously. Because this seems like a wonderful pressure point to exploit. Would a horse’s head (hypothetically, NSA, hypothetically) in Williamson’s bed be enough to drive the going pundit-for-hire rate high enough that it would cost the Ruling Caste some real money? Or do these people all join the same frat at Choate, such that poz-pushing is part of the hazing process? If so, maybe the pens for hire at the local rags caught up in the Boston Globe’s op-ed Gleichschaltung could be “talked to” (again: hypothetically).

    • Or simply encourage them not write squat. These are not tough guys but bubble grown man-babies. Writer like Goldberg, Lehrer, etc. They are pantywaists. Some are physically bizarre like Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias.

      Just prank them hard enough and enough times and they will either lose their game or quit.

      Start by putting ads in Craigslist under personal services, like seeking large hairy men to give massages to. Or come to my house, such and such a day for a block party, free beer and brownies!!.

      Put a Trump sign in their yard and a Trump and Pepe bumper stickers on their car. Let their fellow Lefties deal out some justice.

  16. Perhaps being “red-pilled” and in a deep blue state, my perspective lacks rigor; nevertheless I wish I could believe Codevilla’s country class were becoming restive and aware. Certainly Trump won 2016, but only just. As the saying goes, culture precedes politics, yet when we look at culture it appears to be only headed further leftward. On the other hand, the Left controls much of culture. Is there a way to espy cultural trends that are not directed by Lefty? Or rather, what parts of culture remain beyond its control?

    • More important, the Left controls the vote fraud machines in every major city…LA County, for example, admits that registered voters were 150% of eligible voters, which means that millions of Hillary votes there were fake…same everywhere.

    • The Left controls much of culture, but people are rapidly turning away from the culture-creating institutions the Left has created. As but 1 example, the NFL season-opening had lower ratings than the lowest ratings in the past decade or so.

      The internet is what remains beyond their control, with websites like this 1 being a prime example of the damage that can be done to them. This is why the Left is rabid to institute hate speech laws, & other ways to control what is said on the internet. Just look at their stooges like Marco Rubio try to explain why conservative principles demand censoring memes on the internet.

  17. “…..what is brewing below the cloud line”.

    Greatest turn of a phrase ever, Z-man, and you’ve had some doozies. That might be the theme for a recurring post, namely what are the dirt people up to now below the cloud line? Stirring up the dirt is a good thing indeed.

    • I agree that it’s a great phrase, evoking the clueless superiority of the Laputans on their floating island in Gulliver’s Travels.

  18. The ZMan has his reasons for not saying it out loud, but someone needs to:
    Eli Lehrer is Jewish.
    David Frum is Jewish.
    Marni Soupcoff is Jewish.
    The Neocons are (mostly) Jewish.
    The Never Trumpers are (mostly) Jewish.
    The R Street Institute is Jewish.
    Wall Street is Jewish.
    Academia is Jewish.
    The News Media is Jewish.
    Hollywood is Jewish.
    Liberalism is Jewish.
    Libertarianism is Jewish.
    Our conflict is tribal. Jews are a separate tribe, that thrives by living among other tribes & exploiting their trust. They really don’t care whether this happens in a system called monarchy, democracy, capitalism, socialism or communism.
    All that matters is that nonjews allow Jews to establish the moral, legal, intellectual & cultural norms. In European monarchies, Jews bribed kings to give them special privileges. In Bolshevik Russia, the Jews ruled the nation by dominating the communist party. In America, they control our norms by their influence over our academic, media & legal institutions. In a libertarian AnCap paradise, the people setting themselves up as the arbiters of the NAP would doubtlessly “happen” to be Jewish too.
    Focusing on political differences makes you miss the real picture. Blood is thicker than ideology.

    • I was in a conversation with a couple of guys recently and they began talking to each other across me like I wasn’t even there. After finding out where each other were from and where they went to school one said, It looks like we have a lot in common. The other said yes, and I think we are both of the tribe. They then shook hands and went on talking. A real educational moment for me.

      Six gorillion upvotes on your comment.

      • I was actually told by a jewish employer that I was born to serve jews. Really. I so wish I had that moment to re-live, as I would have cursed him for insulting me and my ancestry and quit on the spot. Many Christians are naive and blind to this disdainful jewish mindset, while jews are comfortable and secure in their arrogance and superior position.

      • I worked in Israel for two months on an acquisition. The jews were nice enough. However, they loved to go on and on about their history and religion, but would just stare blankly if you mentioned anything Christian. I finally asked one of them why they were so disinterested in dialogue, and the response was, “Jesus was a hippy troublemaker who betrayed his faith.” So I keep that in mind anytime I am tempted to put the obligatory “Judeo” in front of Christian tradition.

    • I agree with you, but don’t we face an interrelated problem? Z’s post yesterday discussed how constitutional conservatism died in 1861, before the arrival of most the chosen tribe.

      Do agree that whites also have a problem with naive, imperialist universalism? In other words, some significant portion of our people has egalitarianism and communism imprinted in their souls, which manifests during times of affluence.

      We have two problems to solve. The chosen manipulate the whites so that’s probably the problem to consider first.

      • Are you kidding? Jacob Franks was here before the revolution. He was, I believe, the first Jew allowed to own property in America. He was also the one who pushed for citizenship rights for Jews in America. He also owned 3 slave ships. And he wasn’t alone, his family and many others were here.

    • Want a laugh?

      Check this out, wherein I express disagreement with the propriety of a “conservative” Jew trying to pretend that the term “The Resistance” belongs to (((them))).

      One of the few times I’ve found myself sort of defending leftists, but, damn it, the arrogance and self-righteousness was just offensive. And right on schedule, we find out that any criticism of a Jewish position is anti-Jewish.

      https://disqus.com/home/discussion/pj-media/end_the_term_quotresistancequot_for_rosh_hashanah/#comment-4088377161

      • its not a nice thing or acceptable thing to say but depite the obvious https://www.bitchute.com/video/eNzJyxijObN1/
        mongoloid moments of certain individuals, for every Thomas Sowell there’s a thousand Souljah Boyz. For every Curtis Yarvin/Paul Gottfried there’s a hundred Tim Wise. One of the last smart pieces of legislation in Ireland was by our Justice minister in 2004 ending automatic citizenship to anyone born on the island of Ireland, as to put it bluntly we were doing quite well economically, so dem dindu’s gone chase dat dindu geld, so the definition of citizenship movied to a jus sanguinus system.The main opponent of this move came straight out of Alt Right central casting
        https://www.google.ie/search?q=ivana+bacik+jewish&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit7t-n1rHdAhXSY1AKHamvB94Q_AUICigB&biw=1094&bih=510
        Tribe? Check! Feminist? Check! Overwhelmingly P.C? Check. I get that a diaspora ethnicity will try to advance its own interests, but legitimatley why do Chinese/English/Hindu/Polish (any of Irelands main ethnic minorities) never consistantly push for immigration policies that are disastrous for the native population. Why is this pattern repeated throughout Western Civilization.

  19. Yes. Population replacement is the first ace the Leftist Establishment holds. The second is control of the media.

    Neither is impossible to overcome, but doing so requires understanding that we have to change the rules of engagement. We can’t fight a demographic flood or media saturation with arguments, or at least with arguments alone. A successful strategy against the “soft” totalitarian state must consider structural factors.

  21. You see this disconnect between the inside the gate “elites” and Trump. They’ve played the we got Trump this time, he’s done for sure this time, aaaaaaand fly over country doesn’t care. It must be getting frustrating. It’s like the lever in the cage that always used to dispense crack stopped working.

  22. They may be afraid. But they are winning the demographic battle and, in the end, that’s the only front that matters in this war.

    • They can have it Brother. Us dirt people don’t care. Trump was because the Tea Party, because Lois Lerner, because “Bitter Clingers”, because “you didnt build that” because Waco, because the same FBI put the hit on LeVoy Finnicum, because they had the goods on the Clinton crime syndicates Uranium 1 racket, because the Bundy’s and Hammond’s, Randy Weaver’s boy and Wife both executed by the FBI, because margin of vote fraud, because the Clinton’s corruption, because the largest alien invasion in history, because “Trump is our murder weapon”, because “The Great Fuck You”, because 65 million dirt people said so. Because they can have their hollow phirric victory, a demographic that also has no idea of the unintended consequences they have set in motion.
      In the end I believe they won’t matter because of this war.

    • Demographics are only the deciding factor if you think voting will get us out of this. I’d rather have a nation of 10% whites, all of whom recognize each other as co-ethnics, than a nation of 60% whites with a significant chunk of them being anti-white.

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