Something you cannot help but notice, if you spend time scanning the political sites, is the growth of sponsored content. Breitbart will often have stories labeled “Sponsored Content” at the top, but otherwise they look like the rest of their stuff. This is content they are paid to post on their site. In the case of political sites, this content is generated by an industry group or lobbyists, who then pay the site for the opportunity to post the content, much like an advertiser. Hence the name “sponsored content.”
There is also something called “white box” content in the trade, which means it comes without attribution. Someone or some group with an agenda will produce a story and either give it to a site or pay them to take it. Part of the deal is the site gets to claim it as its own work. They will format it to their style and put the name of a writer they claim as their own the byline. The anti-BDS people use this to place stories unfavorable to the BDS movement into so-called conservative publications.
This is dishonest, at the very minimum, but it is a common enough practice that no one seems to care about it. Just how much content on these political sites is produced by concerned interests in Washington is hard to know. The stuff labeled as sponsored content is easy to spot, but the white box stuff is a mystery. Some of this white box content is quietly provided directly to friendly freelance writers, so even the site publishers do not know the real author of these pieces.
For example, how much of Cathy Young’s work is truly her own? Her content is clearly from a very specific perspective. It coincidentally matches perfectly with people like Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Bret Stephens and other neocons. Oddly, these people push an agenda the Left violently opposed not so long ago, yet all of these people now work for far left scandal sheets like the Washington Post. In the case of Young, she turns up in so-called conservative sites and far Left sites. What versatility!
There’s another aspect to the political writing game. This is the part tangled up in the Washington hackarama. This is where political consultants, connected individuals and members of the permanent political class use the political sites as a form of advertising for their services. They produce content for the sites and either give it away or in some cases pay for access on the sly. Instead of representing some anonymous interests, the point is to get their name in circulation.
An example of this is a recent article in National Review. It is a post suggesting Huey Long deserved to be murdered because he was a populist and everyone knows populists are the worst people. The writer is listed as Ellen Carmichael, “the president of The Lafayette Company, a political-communications firm.” A few minutes searching around and you will learn that she started in local Louisiana politics right out of diapers and has now moved to Washington as a consultant.
One way to get her name out to potential clients is to post stories suggesting things about her partisanship, her ideas and so forth in the sorts of sites read by people in the political business. At this point, National Review has no audience outside of Republican politics. It is pretty much a trade magazine now. They are happy to take this sort of content, as it is cheap and it fits in with their model, which is to wield as little influence over American politics as possible, while remaining in business.
Now, this is just one example, but multiply this, the sponsored content and the white box content over hundreds of times a month. It is not unreasonable to think that a large portion of what shows up on political sites is created by the hackarama. A lot of the cable news content is produced this ways, as well. For example, all of the Middle East content on mainstream sites is probably the work of The Lobby. Whether through friendly writers or directly through their own staff, it’s all agit-prop now.
From the dissident perspective, this is a useful starting point when discussing politics with normal people. Most readers of normie conservative sites are unaware of the fact lots of the content is really just product placement. The fans of Ben Shapiro don’t know he is pretty much just an actor, hired to promote certain positions. Instead of harping on the latter, the way to awaken normie is to talk about the former. Your Boomer uncle may love Israel, but he really hates being lied to, so go with that.
This may seem like another good reason to burn Washington to the ground, put the inhabitants to the sword and salt the earth afterwards, but that is a foregone conclusion at this late stage. It is another example of how the political system is corrupt beyond any reasonable hope of reform. Washington is a closed system ruled by a uniparty of permanent residents. It’s the Borg. When parts die off or are expelled as waste, new people are absorbed and assimilated into the system.
This reality of Washington is important to understand when examining the Trump administration. He came to town promising to reform Washington, but the Imperial Capital is beyond reform. It operates like a unitary organism now. Any attempt at reform will unleash antibodies to isolate and kill the foreign object. Those antibodies show up in the media. Washington now exists solely to perpetuate itself. To reform it is to kill it, which is no longer reform, but another word that begins with the letter R.
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We had a state agency that for all the years I could remember was
impenetrable. The only info that came out was their press release and the media dutifully reported it.
It was really quite amazing how they kept their dirty laundry in-house. Even the retired guys would never speak ill of the agency.
Then what would have been a small blip on the radar turned into a full-blown scandal. That was months ago and the fall-out continues.
The cause of all this havoc ? Millennials ! Perhaps this is the only way the DC Beast will be killed. It will have to be an inside job just like all those old hippies infiltrating the institutions years ago.
Until then we’ll be spoon-fed bullshit from globohomo , our traitorous politicians and their lackeys in the media.
Remember : If the situation was hopeless …
Their propaganda would be unnecessary.
👍👍👍
OT: Did anyone else catch this in the news and feel it to be ominous:
“…Trump’s action amends an earlier executive order that former President George W. Bush initially signed after 9/11 by adding clauses to let the State and Treasury departments directly target leaders of suspected terror groups and their affiliates “without having to tie terrorist leaders to specific acts.”
““While most financial institutions would not have done business with designated terrorists even before this new authority, this action makes clear that the U.S. Treasury is willing to take serious steps to punish those financial institutions that do,” Lorber said.”
https://www.apnews.com/494e2bf8c77a4aee99382dcacbaa58b9
“Our thing” is already being labeled “terrorist” in the left-liberal elite class’ “mainstream-media” propaganda outlets. The left-liberal elite are on the cusp of gaining total, indefinite control of the Executive Branch. If MAGA refuses to go away, or, God forbid, if the peasants get still more restless, it seems to me that this is a precedent for censoring, and perhaps much worse, everyone even tangentially related to “our thing”. Trump is already, essentially, a “Nazi” to these lunatics, and to what extent is even George Will already being labeled “Nazi”? To the Progressive coalition, NOTHING, including overthrowing the rule of law, is impermissible in the fight against “Nazis”. The left-liberal elite who control the West have created for themselves a secular religion with an army of millions of utter fanatic True Believers, and with millions upon millions of others either apathetic in the face of it, or too fearful to do anything to stand against it. This elite, and their fanatics, are about to seize indefinite control of the Executive Branch of the most powerful and technologically advanced force in history, correct?
Speak of the Devil. John Robb is a very well known, intelligent, and respected military analyst/theorist (check out his wikipedia page):
https://twitter.com/johnrobb/status/1171524964714831874
This website, https://warontherocks.com, “National security.
For insiders. By insiders.” looks to be important and influential*:
https://warontherocks.com/2019/08/the-fight-in-the-right-it-is-time-to-tackle-white-supremacist-terrorism-globally/
I’m curious, just who, and how many, would the “conservatives” and “CivNats” be willing to throw to the wolves to help save their own hides? Related to this, just how much has that “Nazi” mythology (which logically categorizes the vast majority of Allied soldiers as “Nazis”) infected their minds?
* “Among our 70+ regular contributors are people who have worked on every continent in the world (aside from Antarctica, so far). They have commanded ships, bargained with militias, led patrols, managed alliances, called for fires (ten of them are combat veterans), and negotiated treaties. They include former diplomats, officers, NCOs, intelligence professionals, and some of the most established scholars in the world studying war, conflict, and international politics. We have seen the worst battlefields of our times. And we have studied war at some of the world’s greatest institutions of higher learning.”
https://warontherocks.com/about/
The article you linked regarding “white supremacists” was written by a Robert Levinson.
This is why I will never support a Republican Presidential candidate again. Trump has thrown his own supporters under the bus time and time again, now he’s building on Shrub’s legacy to finish us off. If a Democrat were doing these things, the retard right would be up in arms. Instead it’s “MAGA! President Balls!” More like President “Oww, my balls!”
Also Zman, just a heads up, as a daily reader I wouldn’t mind if you took money for content or whatever. As long as it is DISCLOSED and understood, I have absolutely no problem with the idea. It is this lack of disclosure and crap hiding in the shadows that is abominable. The names of all these “organizations” are almost impossible to follow, layer after layer of obfuscation. Also, just look at the Borg’s family life. The husband and wife almost always HAVE DIFFERENT LAST NAMES, thus it is impossible to spot the bias until someone points out that two people are married.
For example, Peter Strzok is married to Melissa Hodgman, who I kid you not, is a muckety muck at the SEC with jurisdiction over investigatory activities of the CLINTON FOUNDATION. Borg indeed. Trump probably should have just fired everyone, but everyone reading this knows that’s completely unrealistic and frankly Trump didn’t have that much of a bench anyway, it’s why so much family is kept around.
Probably more than 9 out of 10 government employees could be eliminated outright, never replaced and nobody outside DC would be inconvenienced in the slightest.
You can’t take money from such sources—it will always corrupt you. When you take such funding, you inevitably become dependent (to a greater or lesser degree). Then they have you. The threat of pulling their funding becomes existential, and from there the temptation grows to comply with “minor” compromises—in the interest of the greater good of course.
No, better to solicit funding from the readers or seek “donations” elsewhere.
I’d mind.
It seems to me that Oswald Spengler discerned the racket that Zman describes, with shocking prescience, a full century ago. I believe these quotations from him merit close study, reading and rereading, to fully comprehend what he is describing:
“…it must be concluded that democracy and plutocracy are the same thing under the two aspects of wish and actuality, theory and practice, knowing and doing. It is the tragic comedy of the world‑improvers’ and freedom‑teachers’ desperate fight against money that they are ipso facto assisting money to be effective. Respect for the big number—expressed in the principles of equality for all, natural rights, and universal suffrage—is just as much a class‑ideal of the unclassed as freedom of public opinion (and more particularly freedom of the press) is so. These are ideals, but in actuality the freedom of public opinion involves the preparation of public opinion, which costs money; and the freedom of the press brings with it the question of possession of the press, which again is a matter of money; and with the franchise comes electioneering, in which he who pays the piper calls the tune. The representatives of the ideas look at one side only, while the representatives of money operate with the other.”
“The press to-day is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty.”
“To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object’s sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed.”
from ‘The Decline of the West’
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oswald_Spengler
The politics of the Western world, of liberal “democracy”, are overwhelmingly intra-Money squabbles. It’s the Koch Bros. vs Soros. Since the interests of Money and the interests of the white populations of the West (and the interest of preserving/rebuilding Western civilization/culture) are now diametrically opposed, the liberal democracy racket is a “heads I win, tails you lose” affair for Western man/civilization.
When the mass media and education, two institutions which Money controls, fails to get the peoples of the West thinking and voting “correctly”, Money can operate behind the scenes to thwart them (as in the thwarting of MAGA and Brexit), and to ultimately undo their “incorrect” thought/behavior. These measures of “undoing” include dialing-up the propaganda (as in the circus of the mass media since Trump was elected), and opening the borders to Democrat voters to drown-out and disempower the “incorrect” whites.
Although the latter move, importing Third World voters, may well prove troublesome for Money in the future, it is a calculated move to defeat a prime enemy. In the past, the liberal elite allied with Stalin to defeat their then prime enemy, “fascism”. Once “fascism” was defeated, they could move forward with defeating their next target (in this example, communism, which they ultimately accomplished). This is a process that will either be stopped, or will envelop the earth, as predicted by Kojeve and Fukuyama, and lead to a world spanning, and nightmarish, cultureless Money dystopia.
This is how I understand our predicament.
I really do believe that DC cannot be reformed. Globohomo can brook no dissent. Its tentacles are in the seat of power, in all of media and entertainment, schools, big tech is fully converged and increasingly being waged by corporations. It’s actually kinda scary when you really think about it. Now they are going full on to subvert the churches. Trump is doing what he can, but let’s just say he may be a rallying cry for whatever comes next.
Related read yesterday’s FT on Eurofi. It’s a twice a year private no press bank conference in the same city as the meeting of EU finance ministers. They lobby pay for play the ministers who all get bank jobs after their government stints.
This is a truly prescient blogpost. Yes, the federal government has morphed into a living thing, and like all living things, it places it’s own survival above all other considerations. The Borg is an excellent analogy. Now ask the question, how do you fight this megalopolis? Will talking based persuasion work? How about voting out the parasitic vultures in Congress, will that work? Or perhaps a conventional revolution, like in 1776, will that work against the force of the federal government?
Personal, individual secession, one decision at a time. This is distinctly different from a boycott, because with a boycott you’re trying to apply pressure so your adversary will compromise. Secession, however, recognizes that reform is an impossibility, but you refuse to be a partner in the farce.
There’s really no fighting it either, not in the conventional sense. I can tell you how I fight it though … I don’t participate in the circus that they call elections, I stopped watching “news” and “sports”, and backed away from Big Ag and Big Pharma. I wear out everything I buy, and I only buy what I can’t fabricate or grow myself. If you want to be fight the Borg, you have to question every iota of conditioning you’ve received from the Borg. And if you have kids, get them out of government schools yesterday. Start with those things before talking revolution.
Marching around and waving a flag is just asking for trouble. Quietly doing what you can to thwart the other side, and privately teaching others how to do so, is the thing to do. We are not strong enough, and too easily micro-targeted, so we must be smart and clever about things.
Photon torpedoes.
What is the best way to stop kudzu from spreading?
Don’t plant it in the first place.
Yet there’s all sorts of “conservatives” – who …. even though the kudzu has overtaken their entire yard and swallowed their house – will still insist they want to just cut the kudzu back a little and then they’ll be able to control it.
All because they like the shade it provides.
Some people never learn.
Indeed, which is why the founding fathers were so contemptuous of democracy and letting every retarded moron who can fog a mirror vote.
I read somewhere that the Men’s Wearhouse employs writers to compose newspaper-formatted articles about how suits are coming back into style. They give these articles to reporters, inviting them to slap on their own byline, submit it to the editor, and take the rest of the day off.
The reporter would probably spend at least 10 minutes “localizing” the pre-fab story, calling a couple of local clothing stores to get a quote from the manager, who is happy for the free plug. This helps disguise the canned nature of the material and the special-interest agenda.
“To reform it is to kill it, which is no longer reform, but another word that begins with the letter R. “
Another Black Pill moment from The Range. The civil war ain’t starting back here in Utah. Maybe Lineman up in Montana is closer…but not here. People here in Utah are so gaslighted and protected from the turd cities and conditioned to love their neighbor. Their brain stays blind pozzed, they wake up to Mitt Romney in their bed and yet even he looks like Scarlett Johansson. This state is a version of the man in the gorilla suit. Mr. Gorilla walks through a room of busy people, waves, and walks out. Nobody saw him. Their brains only saw what they were directed to focus on.
Love your neighbor is good only to the limit of lovingly inviting in pozzd barbarians, invading jungle hoards, Ilhan Omar’s relatives and demanding the church go all rainbow flag, which is gradually coming. When Deseret Books goes all in on costumed trannys reading to the kiddies, time to start the revolution…but it won’t start here. The church would have to overplay their hand and side with the Poz on gun control before people here would rumble. Then only half of them. The revolution will have to start some where else. This is the land of the Borg.
The interesting thing about the dissident areas of Southern California is that they are close enough to rub shoulders with the poz, in all of its manifestations. That keeps you very sensitized to seeing the gorillas passing through the rooms. SoCal dissidents have no illusions about what we are up against. Watching your six is not a concept, it is a way of life around here. Some people find it exhausting or demoralizing. I find it energizing, and it keeps me constantly doing the “fly on the wall” thing to keep my mental and physical reflexes constantly exercised. Also, since the media distorts everything, it is good to walk the streets and see for oneself what is really going on (hint, generally awful with a thin veneer of decent normalcy).
“Dissidents are close enough to rub shoulders with the poz, in all of its manifestations. That keeps you very sensitized to seeing the gorillas passing through the rooms.”
That’s interesting observation, Dutch. Your dissidents are right on the edge of Poz land, and you and yours see the gorilla crapping on the sidewalk. That’s beneficial as it keeps you aware of what you are dealing with, and it keeps you alive. Good for you!
I did not expect to find the high level of blind blinkered here in Utah. These people are getting fairly easy to flip now, with the exception of very small agricultural communities.
–Modern Others don’t like Mormons because LDS are an insular tribe, they claim that by baptism into the church-doing temple work and binding together the family post-veil, then they get a better seat at the post-veil action….and you don’t. Even back here, Basic Husband had to bark at the missionaries to quit constantly pestering us.
–Because they have history of being chased around and hung, they have the history of polygamy, and because they have a history of no blacks until 1978, Mormons are Very sensitive to what The Others think of them. They want more than anything to be liked by The Others….they will grovel to disavow having been Bad Whites. They are turning culturally left very rapidly, waving their arms to virtue signal they are now Good Whites and all that Bad White stuff is long gone…they are now post-modern Good Whites. Mormons celebrate diversity…hate polygamy so they don’t talk about that Bad White phase of their history in polite company…..love the Rainbow people so they can virtue signal to other Good Whites…patiently love and ignore the antics of Cool People of Color because their Whitey White is culturally tainted and uncool. So please look favorably on Mormons….pretty please…wah!
–Follow The Prophet….Love One Another/Don’t Judge Another has been misunderstood. Unfortunately, they have lost their survival instinct because they are taught to Never Judge Always Love no matter what…including making survival judgments. Altruism run amok. When they visit relatives in the crap psycho camp cities of California, they blinker up and refuse to see the turds-needles and psychos. Truly amazed more aren’t killed by lack of survival instincts, i.e. the 2 LDS co-eds at Uni of Utah/Logan who hooked up with Vibrants and quickly became Dead Beckys. Their survival instincts are few and continue on a decline.
I sometimes envision the Utah-Idaho Mormon world won’t wake up until a plane load invasion of 1,000s of Orcs and Jungle Orcs are dropped all across the state with accompanying guns, rocket launchers and missiles. By then the Mormon world will be mostly stripped of firearms by their own young people…because guns are not nice! Nope—no revolution here!
Range Fault, the situation here in Utah isn’t perfect but it’s better than a lot of other places. Some of the older generations are hopeless but – at least in rural Utah – there are a lot of younger kids who get it.
I have a son who was getting pretty down on Mormon culture from reading a lot of the negativity on d right forums. I pointed out to him that there are very few communities left where a young man can find a good looking, white, virgin wife who wants children. And on top of that, find one who will respect him instead of resent him for being a provider and making it possible for her to be a stay at home mom. Almost all of those communities are closed to outsiders – he was just lucky enough to be born into one. Utah isn’t perfect, but for a few more years there is still a vestige of traditional America.
Now if we could just keep the dang Californians and Las Vegans from invading.
Mormons, the community that gave America, two fine upstanding Senators in Reid and Romney? No, thanks. Mormons would vote for Ilhan Omar if she converted to Mormonism.
Sure, their communities are clean and crime-free, but looks like they are OK with shoving the poz down the necks of their countrymen.
KUDOS!!!
I poked around a bit for information on this Ellen Carmichael, and her “Lafayette Company.” From all appearances, this is a one person show (no physical address, only she is mentioned under “Who We Are,” etc.), and she does exactly what Z Man describes. From her “company” website:
“Skilled media relations (story placement, television/radio bookings, story pitching)”
The journalist Lee Smith did an expose on this hired-gun “new journalism” at The Tablet in 2017. The piece starred Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS/Russiagate fame. It is well worth the read:
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/241381/news-of-the-news
The TLDR is that news organizations are bleeding money, so big money individuals and organizations are hiring former (and fake) journalists to “investigate” and promote stories favorable to them. News organizations run the pieces based on the “reputation” of the “investigators” and the fact that they can’t afford to do any real investigations of their own.
This Carmichael carbuncle seems like a very small fish swimming in these very dirty waters…
I was into national review for a little while, but the last couple of issues I perused seemed to have devolved to cover to cover anti abortion and pro Israel, the two safe issues wherein conservatives can never be called racist. The terrain is changing so quickly on identity issues that they are fearful where to step.
When they finally come out with “The Conservative Case for Abortion,” will their last subscribers finally understand whose agenda they’ve been pushing all along?
Max Boot. Jennifer Rubin. Bret Stephens. Cathy Young. To say nothing of Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, Charles Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Adam Schiff, Jerold Nadler, Rod Rosenstein, Jeffrey Goldberg, one really could go on all day.
Forget about the letter R. I’m starting to get more comfortable with the letter H.
Like virtually everything else in modern society, the media is just another racket.
“…another word that begins with the letter R.” I apologize to everyone for asking the damned question (no one wants to look stoopid in public), but what is the word? Ravish? Rescind? Rape? Replace? What?
Revolution
Really?
Up to the present, the watchword has been Rationalization.
Or Resignation.
Or Retreat.
Or Retarded.
Rhubarb
thezman said: “Washington now exists solely to perpetuate itself. To reform it is to kill it, which is no longer reform, but another word that begins with the letter R.”
Here’s an excellent half hour Youtube video by “Black Pilled” intitled, “The Nature of Power.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugi3rJAz2CQ
One of the more honest and credible defenses of the failure of the Trump Administration has been that the talent pool they had to draw from was so shallow that they had to include rabid NeverTrumpers, known grifters, shitlibs etc..
Personnel is policy. In their shoes, I would have opted for total neophyte outsiders with the right mindset rather than veteran mercenaries, choosing to suffer the slings of amateur incompetence rather than the arrows of base betrayal. Three years later, given that Trump’s administration obviously suffers from both feckless incompetence and cynical double-dealing, I don’t see how the “ideological noobs” staffing strategy would have turned out worse than letting the Machiavellian foxes keep guarding the henhouse.
The people who staff our major institutions, from government to finance to business to academia to media and entertainment simply don’t know how to judge character or performance like they used to. Even a supposed iconoclast like Trump couldn’t bring himself to promote battle-tested proles over credentialed patricians. His generation long ago wasted its radical credentials on debauchery and excess. If not Last Men, they are at best Penultimate Men.
Because they job-faired the salons of privilege rather than the trade-halls of performance, Trump’s cadre are doomed to be remembered as the guys who blew America’s last chance (perhaps unfairly, as America was likely already too far gone).
Our uberklasse are untermensch. Contra their pretensions, selecting our elites for Wokeness via credentials simonized from the Ephors of academia bears no resemblance to meritocracy. There is no substitute for real world performance in the end. The Empire elites have faked it until they can no longer make it.
Outside the shrinking Imperial boundaries of hard and soft power, strongmen are coming to power through the first and only authentic meritocracy, survival of the fittest. Our modern versions of Crassus, Varus and Valerian are not ready for what’s about to hit them.
When the time comes that the oldest school calls these feebs to battle, we’d better not be marching under their banners, because they’re going to get footstooled again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our new Secretary of Defense, Bill Lind.”
I doubt he’d be dumb enough to take the job.
Ephors of academia. Heh.
“Now, this is just one example, but multiply this, the sponsored content and the white box content over hundreds of times a month.” It’s even worse when you get to the local news level, just more subtle. Not too long in the past, I used to work on the technical side of your local TV news. Approximately 50-90% of the news stories begin as press releases that are sent to the newsroom. The assigned reporter or producer will then write the story essentially verbatim from the PR, then go visit them for a sound bite to include on-air (10-15 seconds max for a 30-45 second story; the effective spokesperson will have been trained in talking in sound bites). Minimal effort is expended and what is presented is exactly what the PR sender wanted. Usually, the reporter lacks the time and/or basic knowledge to ask interesting questions and the follow-up questions are supplied by the subject.
This isn’t really any different from the article types Z-man describes, except that money rarely changes hands. After all, there’s no need. The news organizations are more than happy to provide this public relations content for free, as it’s so much easier and cheaper than actually going out and looking for news. It also doesn’t tax the very limited intellectual and cognitive resources of the typical “reporter” or “journalist”.
That’s how crap little groups with a fax machine, an agenda and a fancy name — like Southern Poverty Law Center, Public Interest Research Group and Center for Science in the Public Interest — become big, powerful household names.
The thing about people in Washington is that most of them believe what they’re writing so, in their mind, what’s the difference if they get paid by some lobby or government to write it. Even better if someone else does most of the work.
Most of them truly believe in diversity or Israel or Badwhites or that Trump is evil. Whether they are paid by the WaPo and its subscribers/Bezos or by some Israeli/Jewish lobby or Soros doesn’t matter. They hate us and want to see our world destroyed. In their minds, they’re not breaking some moral code. They’re getting the word out that we’re evil and should have our world destroyed. Simple as that.
In a former job in a former life I was a Military Aide to the President, and often found myself in the motorcade riding along in the “Control” van with a varying host of presidential “advisers” … i.e. spin doctors. They were constantly working the phones with their journalist pals, explaining how each crisis de jour should be refined, processed, manipulated, masticated, and spoon-fed to the mass man. I was a gung-ho CivNat military guy (i.e. naive), but I was observant, so after 2 years of chewing red pills I became who I am today … a curmudgeonly skeptic of anyone pushing a public agenda.
Skepticism is healthful, because I’m never-ever disappointed, and rarely does my blood pressure spike when reading the “news.” Occasionally I’m won over by a blog or reliable news site, which is why I take up residence here.
Thanks for explaining the “white box” approach to disinformation … enlightening but not surprising.
I reckon I’m fortunate to have low blood pressure, because I’m routinely triggered, even though I know better.
Trump called the fake news industry “the enemy of the people.” He should expand his definition. At this point, George Washington himself would decline any offer of serving office in Sodom-on-the-Potomac. And at some point in the future, we’ll get another Lincoln who will cynically launch another revolution. Where that lands, nobody knows.
Trade magazines in general are considered just bought and paid for. I never trust an opinion or product review, just look who pays the bills.
The temptation to say the right things increases as to how much of your livelihood depends on staying relevant.
Keep your day job Z.
They provide entertainment for the worker bees. I’ll never forget the time our “boss” appeared on the cover of CIO magazine. More “team building” was accomplished over that article down the local than any HR functionary could ever have imagined.
Mentioning the Borg connected a circuit in my brain, so I’m going to be the nerd for a little bit.
The Borg Queen, having to balance a trillion minds pouring through her head, became dismayed at how boring it all was.
She would sometimes go on assimilation raids of insignificant, worthless species, sometimes at considerable cost to the collective.
When this happened, for a few glorious minutes distinctive thoughts she’d never had would trickle through the hive, although the high was short lived. The hive would also be temporarily disrupted as this new information was given consideration and then prioritized to determine its relevancy in the whole.
I sometimes wonder if a similar effect is at play in the real world, as the progs continuously cater to more and more extreme deviancy.
The extreme deviancy in the Democrat party is the result of pushing conservative Southerners out of the party. They had to replace those voters. What they came up with was the current coalition of the fringes. But in order to keep such a mentally unstable group of voters coming to the polls, the Democrats have to keep ratcheting up the extremist rhetoric. Small doses of political extremism at the outset have given way to large doses of insane extremism. Leftists have become immune to common sense, and their party is now hooked on a drug that leads straight to revolutionary hell should they ever prevail.
Sometimes it appears the left is like the creature from the movie “The Thing”, infecting and converting the victim into an alien duplicate or hollowing out and wearing its victim like a skin suit. Woke capital for example. Other times like in this post, it seems the managerial state has an immune system that sees any dissent from its policies as an infection that gets digested by the 1960’s &70’s moderate liberal antibodies called neocons, hijacking conservatism into a controlled opposition.
As conservatism is more palatable to Ozzie and Harriet Middle America, the people we really need on our side, it might be a better strategy to re-take conservatism or at least the label for now. Give the red pill in small, soft doses.
Even if it did start working, you’d soon get a cruise missile through your window.
Donald, I think we’re all trying to figure a way out of the mess we’re in. My attitude is a little bit of hope and optimism, and a ton of canned goods and ammo.
More like Sir Humphrey Appleby than the Borg.
We should do a group-watch of that show. Thanks to NHPTV recycling every old Britcom on Tuesday nights in perpetuity, I bought the DVD box sets before streaming became a “thing”. Apart from the tech (which has improved dramatically) has any other show stood the test of time as that one did?
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Be careful though, the BBC has taken to removing bits that don’t mesh with modern sensibilities.
It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case, if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and it isn’t so it wasn’t.
That reads like something from the Hitch Hiker’s Guide.
Don’t forget your towel
The writing on that show was both utterly brilliant and completely hilarious, and there is very, very little liberal/left moralizing to annoy the thoughtful viewer. Although the last 6 or so episodes went downhill, I’d say I’ve watched nearly every episode of that series 20+ times (perhaps far more), and I still watch them all at least twice a year. Ironically, although it displays, brilliantly and ruthlessly, corrupt men and systems (“democracy”), it’s almost entirely a show depicting old-time Oxbridge white gentlemen and society, which makes it a wonderful haven from modernity to escape into. I can’t recommend ‘Yes Minister’/’Yes Prime Minister’ enough.
I want to add that the writers of the show got many of their ideas from real life events. According to an interview with one of them (in the DVD extras), they took many high level British government officials to expensive lunches (which included alcohol), who would, off the record, often become candid and honest with them, recounting some the absurdity and corruption they’d witnessed (or perhaps engaged in).
You might very well think that, I couldn’t possibly comment 😉
Perhaps you could use the “Rhodesia Solution”, you could write me a note which is susceptible of misinterpretation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGJH_-S_MGs
My conservative friends believe the system can be salvaged if we just force everyone to obey the originalist Constitution. My liberal friends believe the system can be salvaged if we just ruin the lives of all Trump supporters.
Political separation sounds like a moderate position compared to the R word to which Z refers.
My “unrealistic” friends are the only ones who see the world realistically.
Sounds like a great opportunity to explain HBD to your conservative friends!
People are conditioned from the cradle to resist that, though. Send them over to Pew or any other site that does surveys on social issues. Show them that literally only “heritage America” supports 1A and 2A.
PewDiePie pledged 50K to the ADL. There is a great deal of online speculation why. Blackmail? Protection money?
“My liberal friends believe…”
You have liberal friends? Hmm.
Having Liberal friends is a good way to maintain your cover, if you’re not willing or able to go full Randy Weaver and live in the woods.
that’s kiddie thinking
There’s more to life than politics. (Especially when the choice is between the open-borders, endless-wars, debt-slavery, Israel-first candidate with the “R” after his name and an identical candidate except with a “D.”)
“…live in the woods.”
Well, let’s hope it hasn’t come to that. Though with comrade AOC in the White House, who knows?
To return to the Constitution there needs to be a population that wants it. The USA is the “poem on a statue” country now (where it’s not out-and-out anarcho-tyranny.)
More like you would need a population capable of it. The problem is America is loaded with non-Americans.
Absolutely. And no signs of that abating at all. You’d think that after 9/11 they would have implemented IIRIRA 1996 (Visa entry/exit tracking for those of you out in RR.) It would have been cheap and easy compared to the endless-war machine, just as mandatory E-verify would be cheap and easy too. After a while one has to stop pretending and face up to the facts.
The Establishment is determined to force diversity on the rest of us, even if it requires the use of tyranny.
They will never ever ever go for separation. They understand they’d lose their tax cattle and create a space where a very powerful rival would rise and be forced to crush them to stop the endless chaos bleeding out of the shithole we leave behind. Their goal is to destroy us no matter the cost to themselves…as long as it’s them ruling the rubble.
We have one and only one path forward.
One must never raise the issue of why neither emulation nor preservation was possible after the founding population was replaced (Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, et al.) It makes everyone uncomfortable. /s
Up until recently, I thought getting a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court could save us. But there will always be a conservative who becomes the swing vote, and the other conservatives will not overturn liberal precedents. Stare decisis is a one-way ratchet to Venezuela.
The American Conservative mag. Is almost ok…
how does it compare to American Greatness?
They both occasionally post dissident content for the normies (as well as usual propaganda.)
I relied on TAC in its early days circa Eye-raq II. It was the only right-wing publication (that I knew about) that was anti-war. That was when Saint Pat was still part of the operation. There’s better stuff out there now, but I definitely appreciated it at the time and still occasionally catch a post there when one of our guys links it.
When I looked through some op-eds of John Bolton I noticed that same sort of commonality with old articles written by Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. It was all invade, rape, pillage, lather, rinse, repeat… Anyway, I guess we’ll start seeing them again from Bolton soon, but I think Khan and the Hun are both retired now…
Khan and Attila were men. They fought alongside their soldiers, much like Alexander, and did not commit their men to any engagements they themselves would not commit to.
The only fight John Bolton ever took part in was probably with chronic constipation, caused from swallowing Pentagon hubris, while his pimpled arse atrophies in some suburban gated community.
Wow. I had no idea that the Comedy Police included Mr. Khan and Mr. Hun in the list of people that can’t be mentioned in a (perhaps failed) attempt at humor. I offer my sincere apologies to both of the memories these fine gentlemen, their descendants and the acolytes. I certainly won’t make that mistake again!
No one was attacking you. Unless you’re John Bolton.
So, have you been approached with offers?
It’s a matter of time. Their increasing feeling of insecurity, which is based in reality I think, dictates that they broaden their stable of whores.
It would be very tempting to take the goodies and it’d be a pretty easy gig.
And speaking of whores, what about pewdiepie eh? Businesses is businesses I suppose.
Pewds was extorted. ADL ran the Jesse Jackson 2-step on him.
Felix is not an ideologue and wasn’t willing to give up his career for principles.
This PewDiePie episode was a gift.
Whether it really was extortion, business or misplaced virtue-signaling is one thing. What matters right now is all the young dudes asking “What is ADL?”.
We shall see. (I’m not sure that Pewdiepie’s demographic is all that interested in politics. Yet.)
I get offers several times per month. They fall into two buckets thus far. One type of offer is the white box stuff. They give me free content and then pay me a commission based on traffic stats. The other type is they will pay me to post their content with links back to some other site.
A while back I used to get hit up for sponsored links. If I used a link to one of their sites, I’d get money. I have not gotten one of those in a while. This is a take off on the old payola scam. The guy who run The Federalist got caught in one of these. He was writing for the Post and was taking money from foreign government to write nice things about them. Instead of a pen for hire, you become a linker for hire.
Thank you for saying no to the money!
I think if your reason for writing about politics is to live a nice life in the Imperial Capital, taking the money makes perfect sense. I get why the practice is so common. Because it is so common, no one narcs on anyone about it. Washington is like a dirty police precinct in that way. It the same reason no one in the media calls out the phony sources stuff. Everyone uses fake sources now, so no one speaks against it. Similarly, no one talks about how most “scoops” in the Post and Times are actually placed by the relevant government agency. The seditious FBI plot relied, in part, on reporters from the Washington Post repeating what was handed to them by the FBI. Yet, no media person points this out.
I’m not interested in joining the Borg, so the money is not tempting.
Are you talking about Sean Davis?? He’s come along quite hard but he blocked me on twitter when I told him to wait for the Michael Brown facts to come out before disparaging the cops and stop being such a cuck. LOL
What you have written about in this column (paid-for fake news) – is exactly why I don’t have a problem with “conspiracy theorists” (which you also wrote about recently)..
Trying to find the actual truth of a matter – in a pile of paid for bullshit and lies, takes investigative chops and some amount of intuition. Since much of what is written is lies anyway – what does it matter if you mix in the opinions of a few people who might be lunatics – trying to figure out what is actually the truth?
To my way of thinking conspiracy theories are just alternative readings of a situation – which quite often turn out to be true if you just sit around and wait long enough.
So – since the sit around and wait strategy has proven so many of the conspiracy theories to be true over time – you had damn well better consider them in the here and now when trying to evaluate what is really going on in the present.
Because – as you point out – so much of what you’re going to get fed to you about events is just going to be lies anyway.
The Federalist guy’s reward was to marry McCain’s daughter. I wonder if he has any second thoughts. I’m sure Z can resist temptations like that.
I can’t get that drunk.
or that black.
Daaam! Way visual! Blew my coffee out. Yep…..drunk only lasts a few hours. Have heard Guys talk about the dreaded Morning After. Get through that door minus Joy Behar. Stagger to a safe place. Decontaminate family jewels. Wonder how alcohol can shapeshift a loud-mouth ugly harridan into Scarlett Johansson. Then the hair of the dog. Nature is brutal.
Rural Humor…..how to handle the Fatal Attraction one night stand…..
http://www.rural-revolution.com/2019/09/want-to-contribute-to-my-windchimes.html
Meghan McCain is the token conservative on The View.
She has such a pretty face that it’s a shame that she’s so fat. She miscarried a few months ago. Obese women are more likely to.
Petty female thing to say. Meow meow meow.
On another note, checked the link that Zman helpfully provided to BS’s twitter statement regarding John Bolton’s dismissal. The responses to BS are quite entertaining.
The thing about token conservatives is that they are never actually conservative. Of course, nobody with any integrity or self-respect would want to be the whipping boy of the progressive majority. So you end up with cucks and leftists pretending to be right-wingers.
It’s amazing to see so many young women who are morbidly obese.
I can see the hottie buried under the fat suit and it makes me sad.
Men typically like women with curves, but not that curvy. I think it likely that her husband would prefer a slimmer woman. Stop exercising your elbow, Meghan!
Even high school cheerleaders are chubettes nowadays. When I was in high school, back in the Dark Ages, cheerleaders where slim.
Obesity is so rampant, especially among Blacks, that landwhales feel free to wear skintight clothing and miniskirts. Also, clothing manufacturers flatter women with size inflation. What would have been a size 8 30 years ago is a 6 now. I have a few items of clothing from the late 1980s that are a size 8, but now I’m a 6.
There seem to be more size 16s on clothes racks than 6s.
Landwhales also take the trouble to get fancy manicures, even girls working as a cashierist in a dollar store. Priorities. Sheesh.
Try this if you are over 55 or so. Get out your old yearbooks. Look up the fat people you remember. They likely wouldn’t qualify as fat any more. They will look like TV talking heads and advertising models.
I do sports physicals from time to time. I’ve had spherical teenagers bending the exam table who were there because they swim or run!
Our local college came back into session a couple weeks ago and from seeing the frosh girls about town, all I can say is I’m glad I’m not an undergrad today. They are, with nearly no exceptions, fatted and tatted. Rather than being ashamed of it, they seem to revel in their ghastly appearance. No longer do they have to worry about finding a fat girl to hang out with in order to appear slimmer. They’re all fucking fat.
KGB, think of it as “truth in advertising”. Given the campus attitudes, on balance, a good thing for our side. Our side always seems to get the attractive ones anyway.
Defining deviancy downward. A variety of attitudes and behavior that were considered unacceptable as little as 40 years ago no longer exist, such as obesity and tattooing.
A friend was knocked up by her boyfriend in high school, but they married. She was pregnant and married when she graduated from high school, but wasn’t allowed to graduate with the other kids. There was a little ceremony just for her. That was only in 1980.
Another friend interviewed for a teaching job in an inner-city Atlantic City school back in the early 1990s. She was told that “we have a daycare center for our students!” My friend replied, “You’re proud of that?”
And naming them as fat, now has a term: “fat shaming.”
[cue shrill voice] “You can’t call me ‘fat!’ That’s shaming me! And I will NOT be shamed!”
The pendulum has swung so far in the other direction, that this falls under that category of simply “naming / noticing what is true” and it’s BADthink.
He would end up overdosing on opioids.
Enoch thought she was a sapphist. Considering Domenech, he’s actually not wrong,
I’d cuck for Tiana Lowe, maybe
Well, have to hand it to Ben, he took Senator McCain’s solution to economic recovery—“Everybody marry a beer heiress”—to heart.
Fat Meghan! She got that way eating all of her father’s many sins. AKA “Mudflaps McCain”
Shit, if that whale is the reward, I’d hate to see what the threat was.
From a foreign government? Pray tell, can you tell us which one?
Thank you for your honesty.
Hey, I heard you wondering Kevin Michael Grace’s whereabouts. He’s been doing Luke Ford’s podcast for quite awhile now. Excellent movie and book reviews on Thur. and Fri.
“This is dishonest….but he (she) really hates being lied to, so go with that.”
I didn’t need all the stuff in the middle. That’s pretty much my entire operating principle right now
The one I have been going with for a good many years now is:
“Why do you go out of your way to be a traitor to your own country?”
That usually gets them good and mad.