The Death Of Conservatism

Posted on May 24, 2023 by thezman

It is fair to say that American conservatism is dead, at least the version that has been sold to us by the conservative industrial complex. They still rake in millions from corporate donors, but the public audience for this stuff is largely confined to rest homes in the sun belt. Flag waving and tax breaks for corporations is just not the crowd pleaser it was a decade ago, much less forty years ago. Conservatism as a political force is headed to the dustbin of history.

The question is, why did it fail? Lost in the endless stream of outrage, real and manufactured, is the fact that the winners are ridiculous. Conservatism lost to men in sundresses demanding to wave their genitals in the face of school children. They lost to people who think Hitler is hiding under their bed. They lost to childless middle-aged women drunk on cheap wine, complaining about men on Twitter. It took effort to lose to this collection of bourgeois misfits.

One reason conservatism failed in America is that conservatives could never accept that people lie in politics. In fact, lying is an essential part of politics. The reason is you must paint your opponents as the bad guys and your side as the good guys, which means gross exaggeration. Conservatives never accepted this. Instead, they demanded as much factual accuracy from their side as possible. When people on their side would exaggerate, conservatives were there to set the record straight.

This was not the result of stupidity. American conservatism evolved into the 1980’s as the antidote to politics. They used to make this point in the Reagan years. Conservatism was the lack of politics. Instead, it was just problem solving. That was very appealing to people who did not like rolling around on the mud with left-wing kooks, but it was a terrible way to engage in politics. It is part of what made conservatism the beautiful losers described by Sam Francis.

Related to this was the fact that American conservatism embraced the libertarian idea that people are motivated by rational self-interest. For conservatives in the 20th century, people were not spiritual beings, so much as moist robots who naturally responded to incentives, particularly economic incentives. This is why conservatism was the accounting department for the welfare state. The only way they could relate to their audience was through the jargon of popular economics.

Another result of this was the habit of conservatives to rely on charts and graphs in response to moral claims. The Left would demand we do something about some victim group and conservatives would respond with a table of figures showing that the victims were not really victims. It was not that it made conservatism heartless, but that it made them seem brainless. They kept falling for the same traps, eventually succumbing to the moral claims of the Left.

That is the probably the main failing of American conservatism. To this day they insist that politics is about solving problems. This is false. Politics is always about friends and enemies and those are defined on moral terms. No one wants to fight someone for making a math error. Politics is so nasty and feral because the opponents see one another in moral terms. The other guy is the bad guy because he does not love what you love and hate what you hate.

The Left has always understood this. The reason that the demand for Nazis exceeds the historic global supply is the Left always needs villains. Even when their opponents agree with them, they still call them the worst names in their book. Donald Trump would have been happy to make generous deals with the Democrats, but they needed to hate him more than they wanted a deal. This is why the Left steamrolled conservatives on every issue. They work only in morality, not facts and reason.

This inability to understand what drives politics may explain the inability to accept that their opponents genuinely believe what they are saying. Much of what makes up conservative commentary is a claim that the Left does not actually believe what they are saying, but instead they are using it as cover for money and power. For conservatives, everything is reduced to money and power, because this is what motivates the moist robots they imagine as their audience.

This is why conservatives have always underestimated the Left. Because they cannot accept that these people believe what they are saying, they just assume they will stop saying it once they have money and power. Instead, the Left uses their newly acquired money and power to act on what they said and produce more outlandish things they can push onto society. When you think people are moist robots, you stop believing that people can be evil, which is how evil triumphs.

Finally, the great failure of American conservatism will be seen in the Republican primary that kicks off this summer. The field challenging Trump will insist that everyone must rally around cleaning up the mess created by the Left. They will make the oldest of conservative arguments. That is, you must forget about the crimes committed against you by the other side and instead rally with your fellow citizens, even the ones who hate you, to fight for America!

Of course, this requires you to not get anything you want and instead normalize the latest insanity from the Left. You see, it is your duty as an American to sacrifice your interests for the nebulous concept of America. This was powerful magic forty years ago when the country was 85% white and had a handful of foreigners. In a country being overrun by migrants and hyper-racialized lunatics attacking white people, this rallying cry sounds like a suicide cult.

Robert Lewis Dabney famously described conservatism as “merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition.” This was always true, for sure, but it worked for a long time because the radicals were still aspirational, rather than suicidal. The dialectic between the Left and the Right in American was a useful engine for maintaining the ruling class consensus. One side proposed, the other side opposed, and the consensus was some compromise.

This changed just as conservatism reached its peak. The triumph of conservatism in the 1980’s was followed by the descent of progressivism into the dark, suicidal politics of nihilism and Gnosticism. Conservatives have never come to terms with this and as a result have been a steep decline ever since. As America descends into tribal politics that must follow the transition to majority-minority demographics, conservatism will become a museum piece and then forgotten.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb. Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Liberal Theocracy

Posted on May 23, 2023 by thezman

Since the late Middle Ages, political thought in the West has started with the assertion that the point of social organization was to reduce coercion. The ideal society is one in which everyone naturally played their role without being forced into it. The assumption is that forcing people into roles for which they are not suited, or they do not wish to perform is both unjust and dangerous. It is also more costly to compel people to obey the law than if they voluntarily abide by the law.

If the goal of your political model is to reduce coercion to the absolute minimum, then you ideally want a society that agrees on everything. After all, if everyone agrees that society must have gong farmers and some people are better suited for the task than others, then everyone is going to agree on having gong farmers. Even the guy chosen for the task will agree if it is explained to him. He may not like the task, but he will understand he is playing a vital role in his society.

Straight away you can see the problem for individualism and the natural rights crowd when it comes to organizing society. If we start from the assumption that we are all unique individuals in control of our own destiny, then we are free to not go along with being the town’s gong farmer. Even if all the facts point to that role being best for the person and his community, he is free to reject it because he is an autonomous person free to live his life as he sees fit.

If we assume we have magical rights bestowed upon us by the gods, then it is fundamentally immoral for society to coerce us into anything, much less a profession we do not like. Since coercion is not limited to physical force, the gong farmer who sees himself as a sovereign man with natural rights is going to look at the social arrangements that result in him being the gong farmer as coercion. In other words, he has a right to not be the gong farmer.

You can see the obvious problem with trying to organize a society composed of individuals who think they have God-given rights. Your proposed social order must first convince all of them to accept the results of the system, even if the results favor some members over others. That is a tall order, given that everyone believes that they have the same rights as everyone else. After all, if God gave them the same rights, why would he then not give them the same talents?

Since it is not possible to get even a small community to agree on everything about the particulars of organizing the community, especially when everyone believes they are God’s special little snowflake, you are going to need something that leads these individual snowflakes to voluntarily submit to the social order. They will have to believe that their individual rights rest on their sacrifice of those rights in order to maintain the society which makes their rights possible.

That last bit is what has vexed the natural right crowd for generations. They desperately want to believe that natural rights exist independent of society and the men who create and maintain it, but logically this is not true. The concept of rights, natural, individual, human or any other version, is an invention of man. Rights are a claim on society, a demand that the rest of society protect certain entitlements bestowed upon members in exchange for their membership in the society.

We see this at work all over today. The man who subdued the subway lunatic operated on the assumption that he had a duty to defend the rights of his fellow subway riders from that crazed lunatic. The people who will put him in jail operate under the assumption that they have duty to defend their race against any and all actions by people of the white race. Since the latter group has control of society, the former’s individual rights will mean little in the courtroom.

Putting the particulars of that aside, we see a problem of trying to organize a society based on individualism and natural rights. The first thing that must happen is that such a society exclude anyone who does not accept these principles. Even a small number of people who reject these concepts will create two problems for your society organized around individualism and natural rights. One is they will violate the rights of others and second, they will force society to violate their rights.

Now, science tells us that the closer humans are genetically, the more likely they are to agree on the basics of human behavior. Put a group of random Finns together and they will quickly display the group characteristics of Finns. Put a group of Bantus together in the exact same circumstances and they will quickly display the group characteristics that we associate with Bantus. If you want a society with the least amount of coercion, then you want the least amount of biodiversity.

What follows for the individualism and natural rights people is they must insist on a society composed of people who naturally cherish individualism and natural rights if they have any hope of maintaining these things. Further, they must also conjure an exception to their moral code that allows them to act collectively in order to repel attempts to undermine their individualism and natural rights regime. They end up in the same dilemma as the libertarians.

Hans Hermann-Hoppe observed that within libertarian ideology there is no way to maintain a libertarian society. After all, if John Galt suddenly decides to be a Marxist, what business is it of his neighbors? If others join Galt in his new civic religion, what can the libertarians do about it? The non-aggression principle forbids them from compelling Galt and his followers to remain libertarians. The individualism and natural rights crowd run into the same problem with the defenders of the subway lunatic.

The solution for the individualism and natural rights people is a moral code that transcends individual rights, but also supports individual rights. If you believe that your people have been given rights by your God and those rights are what distinguish you from other human groups, then collectively defending those rights is not only permitted, but also necessary. You have a God-given duty to defend your society which is organized around individualism and natural rights.

What you need to maintain a society based on individualism and natural rights is a folk religion that sacralizes those rights and the people who possess them. The same God that grants your people natural rights commands you to defend the people granted those rights, as well as their society that maintains those rights. Under such a condition, the individualism and natural rights people would be justified in rioting in New York and chasing off the prosecutors in defense of their God and his people.

The missing component for the individualism and natural rights crowd is a moral component that compels the believer to defend these principles. Nature cannot be the moral authority for anything, as natural operates outside the domain of the prescriptive, but God or gods can certainly be that moral authority. God tells us what we ought to do, so if our God tells us we ought to respect individualism and natural rights, then we have a duty to do so by any means necessary.

What all this means is that if you want to live in a society in which individualism and natural rights are respected by everyone, then you need to come up with a folk religion that sacralizes those things. What you want is to live in a liberal theocracy in which dissent from individualism and natural rights is not tolerated. What liberalism needs is not a Karl Marx, but a Moses, someone who lead his people to their promised land where they can create their liberal theocracy as God intended.

The Tyranny Of The Stupid

Posted on May 22, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the paradox of tolerance, a post about the growing Ukraine quagmire and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

In The Past is a Future Country, Ed Dutton and J.O.A. Rayner-Hilles, argue that the West is about to be swamped by an unsustainable wave of stupid people. This is not the result of immigration, but rather the culmination of an evolutionary process that began in the Industrial Revolution. Darwinian selection weakened along with the increase in living standards. The result is a steady increase in narcissistic stupid people who undermine the fundamentals of Western society.

In this post, Ed Dutton makes the point that liberal female politicians are getting dumber, as a result of this process he outlined in his book. He relies on two examples, Sanna Marin of Finland and Angela Rayner of Britain, to make his point. Both women are on what we insist on calling the Left and both women are morons. Not only are they stupid, but they appear to have come from stupid parents. They are Nth generation morons who have risen to the top of politics.

It is an amusing and satisfying read for people who think of themselves on the Right, even if he is making sweeping claims from just two examples. For as long as anyone can recall, the people we call the Left have claimed that their opponents are unsophisticated morons who should be dismissed. Having this turned on its head with the use of the human sciences is good fun, but it may be missing the real cause for the great dumbing down of Western politics.

The ideal politician in a liberal democracy has an extremely high verbal dexterity along with an extremely low degree of self-awareness. In fact, the best politicians of this age are glib narcissists who have never done anything useful. Much of the panic over Donald Trump is due to the fact he worked in the dreaded private sector. Having had anything other than a ceremonial position in the real economy is so strange in politics that the political class naturally views it as a defect.

The reason for this is despite the fact we insist on calling it politics, there is little in the way of politics happening in a modern liberal democracy. Everyone in the political system agrees on the moral claims. As Marx noted, when you get the morality settled, there is no need for politics. Put another way, once everyone agrees on the goal, then you are left with a debate about how best to achieve it. The barrier to entry in modern politics is the moral questions.

As a result, the selection pressure in politics is for people who will never color outside the lines and always promote the latest thing. The more natural someone is at conforming to the prevailing orthodoxy, the less likely they are to question what is demanded of them. Of course, if they are especially good at appearing enthusiastic about the latest thing, then all the better. The people in charge are always on the hunt for the glib toady who can really sell the latest thing.

As we see with actors, a lack of self-awareness is key. Someone who is painfully aware of how they look to others, or worries about how they look to others, is not going to be a particularly good performer. Humiliating yourself for laughs or applause works best when you cannot imagine the concept of humiliation. It is why the narcissistic moron is a well-known type in the entertainment world. An idiot who thinks highly of himself, but never questions the script is an ideal actor.

Just as an actor who easily “believes in the project” is always in demand, the politician who is always ready to run with the latest thing is always rewarded. His donors will make sure he is kept in the lifestyle he thinks he deserves. His party will always rely on him to take point on the latest thing. Joe Biden made a long career in politics being a narcissistic simpleton, despite stealing everything in sight. Joe Biden is the perfection of modern democratic politics.

It is not just electoral politics where we see this process, but the politics of the managerial elite as well. David French is a goofy looking buffoon but he has risen to the top of the political media because he has no shame. He will say whatever he needs to say in order to shine amongst the other simpletons. French is the combination of oleaginous rumpswab and narcissistic simpleton that has come to define the chattering classes in the United States.

All of this is the result of democracy. Not the mechanics of voting, but the belief that the general will is the moral authority. Once a society accepts this claim, turns the mob into a god, then moral conformity must follow. After all, if there is no agreement, the general will is unknown, then the people are left with no moral authority. Therefore, the solution is to impose a moral consensus and religiously oppress dissent. The only way democracy can work is if everyone agrees.

This is why Western societies are now policed by a volunteer army of simpletons, prodded along by the autocrats. Democracy collapses if there is not a perceived agreement on the moral questions. Even though the people who rise to the top are stupid, they understand the need for consensus. This is why they so enthusiastically impose the latest thing on the public. Who they are depends upon the belief that everyone supports the latest thing.

None of this is to say that Dutton is wrong about Darwinian selection pressure declining with material prosperity. That is certainly true. Smart people made society safer for stupid people, which allowed the stupid to multiply like tribbles. The reason the stupid are dominating politics, however, is that democracy selects for stupidity because stupid people are much more likely to support the moral consensus. Poverty would not arrest our descent into democratic imbecility.

Random Nonsense

Posted on May 19, 2023 by thezman

Yesterday, Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey and some other generic senators from the Democratic Party held a presser with John Fetterman at which they demanded Joe Biden use the Fourteenth Amendment to raise the debt ceiling. Fetterman is unable to form coherent sentences and he is unable to dress like an adult, so he stood around in ratty gym shorts and a hoodie.

The reason Fetterman was invited is he is a rock star in Washington. As the first severely brain damaged man to win a senate seat, he is a trail blazer according to the carny politics of this age. Because he is mentally incapable of doing anything but utter random words, he is a unique act on the political stage. His extended time in the lunatic asylum only added to his novelty.

Politics is nothing more than a carnival act now. The game is to find some novel way to stand out from the crowd but do so in such a way that you can plausibly claim to be part of a designated victim group. For a white guy, the options are limited, as you are assumed to be part of the oppressor class. Fetterman’s crazy act lets him be a victim and lecture the rest of as a white man.

That is something we have to consider. His inability to string a sentence together could be an act. Aphasia is a real thing with stroke victims, but sociopathy is far more common with politicians than aphasia with stroke victims. It is possible Fetterman is overdoing the Sling Blade act as a way to boost his standing. His extended time in the asylum could simply have been rehearsal time.

That is where we are now with our democracy. We have a guy like John Fetterman who could be a brain damaged hobo with no business in the senate. He could also be a faker, pretending to be a brain damaged hobo. Either way, the carny freaks that dominate politics think it is a great act. No one dares say that he is an embarrassment to the system because none of them are embarrassed by him.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

Fox News (Link)
DeSantis (Link) (Link)
Party Poopers (Link)
The Myth Makers (Link) (Link)
Durham Report Cope (Link) (Link)
Our Cicero

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee

Radicalizing Ron

Posted on May 18, 2023 by thezman

Memorial Day is a little more than a week away and it is both the unofficial start of summer and the start of the presidential campaign season. Look for Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis to make it official with a kick-off event over the long weekend. Tim Scott may also jump into the race, as he set up an exploratory committee in April, which usually precedes an official announcement. That will bring the field to nine on the Republican side and two on the Democratic side.

In theory, when you run for office, you are running on a platform that you think makes you the best man for the job. In reality, the first step is to run for the nomination, which revolves around being the best chance to win the general election. You may have a great plan for the office, but if you have no chance to win the general election, the voters are not going to support you in the primary. This is why Vivek Ramaswamy will be this cycle’s Andrew Yang.

Normally, the out of office party has a scramble in their primary, where the candidates make their case for being the nominee. It is one part personality contest and one part argument for beating the incumbent. In the case of the Republicans, this would normally mean who offers the best shot to beat Biden. If it is an open seat where both parties are seeking a fresh face, then the primaries tend to devolve into who has the most institutional support in their respective party.

This is what made the 2016 presidential election so rare. Both parties should have had a scramble, but the Democrats rigged their primary in favor of Clinton. The Republicans were ready to rig their primary for Jeb Bush. That way the party insiders could relive the 1990’s with a Bush – Clinton rubber match. Trump wrecked that for the Republicans by changing the calculus of the primary. He made the race into a no confidence vote for the party and the political establishment.

Fast forward to the upcoming Republican primary and the party has the same problem plus additional problems. The base of the party is still very salty with regards to the party leadership and the political establishment. That turned up in the midterm where turnout was tepid in many races. Last week the Republicans lost a sure thing election in Colorado to a random African. They just lost the Jacksonville Florida mayor’s race, despite having huge advantage in money.

Of course, Trump is even more of a middle-finger to the system now than he was in 2016, which strengthens his appeal to disaffected primary voters. The people the voters hate have been waging jihad against Trump since he left office. No one talks about what he did or did not do in office, because the media is full of threats and warnings about Trump and the people who support him. When Biden warned about white supremacy the other day, every Trump voter got the message.

That is the new element to this cycle. Donald Trump is a rich man who could retire from politics and enjoy himself. He could spend his time doing what he truly loves, which is real estate schemes. Whatever you think about the man, he is really good at real estate schemes, and he has a passion for it. Instead, he chooses to be a martyr in a political fight against the full force of the regime. The sorts of people who keep the country going are naturally sympathetic to what Trump is doing.

This is why none of the other options in the Republican primary have a chance to win the nomination, barring extraordinary events. Dreary dullards like Asa Hutchinson, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence can operate only as avatars for what Trump the political symbol represents, which is a rejection of the establishment. The party would be better served by putting cardboard cutouts of various party hacks on stage. Trump making fun of a silhouette of Mitch McConnell would make good television.

Interestingly, the one candidate who seems to understand what is going to happen is Vivek Ramaswamy, who avoids talking about Trump. He has a lot of money which is how he buys his way onto Fox News interviews. In those appearances, he is careful to avoid the Trump issue. Instead, he repeats Trump issues and makes an entertaining complaint against the system. Again, he has no chance, but he seems to get the problem the GOP field is facing.

This is the problem DeSantis faces. He is the only plausible alternative to Trump, but if he attacks Trump, he will sound like the establishment sissies and media rage heads who have been attacking Trump for close to a decade. On the other hand, his path to victory is to argue that he has a better chance of winning the general election than Trump and that is going to require a direct comparison between himself as a candidate and Trump as the well-known public figure.

One clue as to how Team DeSantis is going to try and square that circle is by staking out positions to the right of Trump on things like immigration. He just signed a bill enforcing the states labor laws with regards to migrant workers. The new law requires employers to use E-Verify when hiring. This is something that sets DeSantis apart from the party establishment, but it also puts him to the right of Trump, who keeps doing the legal versus illegal immigration thing.

This is just one issue. DeSantis has already made himself a champion of children with his tough stance on the groomer issue. He has come under fire from the degenerate community over this stuff, with the libertarians leading the charge against his policies toward the Disney corporation. As a political matter, if you have the rainbow warriors and the libertarians attacking you, then you will get a fair hearing from the sorts of people who vote in Republican primaries.

This may be why the regime is worried about DeSantis. His only path to victory is to move the Overton window away from where the regime wants it. Inevitably, Trump will seek to outflank DeSantis on these issues. Imagine Trump taking on the trannies and you can see why Washington is worried. Throw in the opportunistic and entertaining Ramaswamy and the gap between the Cloud People and the Dirt People could become an impossible to ignore chasm by 2024.

That may be the ironic twist to the effort to stop Trump. Ron DeSantis is supposed to be Trumpism without Trump, but in the end, he may be a radicalizing agent that shifts the party base further toward a revolt against the regime. In order to avoid being called Neocon Ron, DeSantis will have to be Radical Ron and in so doing he will help legitimize a radical rejection of regime morality. Opposing the regime moves from instinctive reaction to a radical imperative.

Narrative Collapse

Posted on May 17, 2023 by thezman

The overused cliché about the truth being the first casualty of war is an overused cliché because it is so obviously true. Wars are the result of rulers on both sides seeing advantage in the suffering of their people. That means producing a story to explain to the people why they must sacrifice for the ruler. The war in the Ukraine is no exception, but it may be the first war to be turbocharged by the narrative industrial complex through the internet.

For several months, the usual suspects have been promoting a narrative framework with regards to a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Tens of billions of Western arms have been shipped to Ukraine, along with plane loads of cash. This has been done to great political fanfare in every Western capital. Slowly, the story evolved into the great spring offensive in which a newly formed Ukrainian army using Western super-weapons would smash through the Russian lines and send them fleeing.

The explanation for how this would work or why it should be attempted was never provided, but a good story is worth skipping over the details. Russia has about half a million men in Ukraine at the moment. They have air superiority, and they have a growing advantage in firepower. How a seventy-thousand-man attack force could smash through their lines was left to the imagination. That is where people like Edward Luttwak filled the void with serious sounding plans for the attack.

In the age of narrative, facts about firepower and troop strength are no match for a really good story. The story was so good, in fact, that last week the internet was full of rumors that the Ukrainians had launched a counterattack in Bakhmut, sending the Russians fleeing. The prophesies were true! It turned out that it was nothing more than a faint to try and evacuate Azov fighters trapped by Wagner forces, who continue to grind down the remaining forces in the city.

Eventually reality does prevail, and we may be entering a phase of the war in which reality slowly overcomes the current narratives. We are a month from summer and there is no sign of a counter-offensive. Zelensky has been on a tour of European capitals, demanding more weapons and money. He says they lack the weapons to conduct an offensive and his advisors are echoing his claims. Even Washington is starting to back off the spring counter-offensive narrative.

The reason for this is those facts on the ground. For close to a year the Russians have been launching drone and missile attacks on the Ukrainian energy grid. It was assumed that they were trying to turn off the lights, but in reality, they were exhausting the Ukrainian air defense system. They determined that Ukraine had a finite number of surface-to-air-missiles. The West had no replacements, so once that stock was exhausted, the air defense system would collapse.

This is where things are now. The Russians are now using their air force to attack high value targets in Ukraine. The Russian hit a large warehouse facility where Ukraine was stockpiling weapons. The resulting mushroom cloud revealed that it was a massive facility, perhaps holding depleted uranium shells supplied by Britain. The increase in gamma radiation seems to confirm it. Some reports claim half a billion dollars in weapons were destroyed in that one strike.

A few days ago, there was another missile strike on Kiev aimed at a high value target, this time a Patriot missile system. The West has supplied two of these to defend Zelensky from a decapitation strike. A Russian missile struck in or around the system, after it expended all of its missiles to defend itself. Even CNN had to concede that the video of the strike was real. Reliable reports say one launcher was destroyed, one launcher was severely damaged, and one launcher survived.

What we are seeing over the last month is both an increase in the use of the Russian air force over Ukraine and their greater success. The Russian are now hitting high value targets with increasing regularity. One theory for why there has been no Ukrainian offensive is the Russians keep blowing up their equipment. Some of the shiny new Western equipment has been turning up in Bakhmut, suggesting Ukraine has had no choice but to repurpose this material.

There is something else lurking over all of this. The West is out of ammo. All of the old Soviet era stockpiles have been depleted. The stockpiles of Western weapons have been run down as well. The thirty Patriot missiles Ukraine fired off the other night cost five million a copy. The waiting list for new ones is over a year. Just as Russia is getting better at destroying Ukrainian weapons, the supply is running low. It is not hard to see what will happen in the not-so-distant future.

Since the war started, there was a gap between what the narrative industrial complex was emitting and what was happening in reality. That gap was concealed by media perfidy and the glacial pace of the war of attrition. Those slow changes in the battlefield were easily obscured by the tsunami of storytelling in the media. We are now entering a phase where that gap cannot be concealed. We can see what is happening on the ground does not match the current narratives.

The expression “narrative collapse” is most often used with regards to a political scandal or a scandal with famous people. The story offered to explain things is slowly undermined by reality. At some point, even the creators of the narrative have to admit it is not reality. The release of the Durham report is a case in point. The Trump haters like Jonah Goldberg have had to finally admit they were lying. Their Russia collusion narrative had finally collapsed.

We are about to see something similar with the Ukraine war. We are now entering the narrative collapse phase. The sharps are already heading for the exits, while stupid people like David French wait for the signal. It will not happen overnight, but the process has begun and by the end of the year, the brooms will be out in the media, assigned to sweeping the whole thing under the rug. Like prior failed narratives, this one will be deposited in the memory hole.

The Modern Mirsky

Posted on May 16, 2023 by thezman

In 1904, Prince Pyotr Mirsky was appointed Minister of the Interior by Tsar Nicholas II, after the previous Minister of the Interior, Vyacheslav von Plehve, had been assassinated by Jewish revolutionaries. This was a volatile time in Tsarist Russia, as trust in the system was at a low. Liberal reformers wanted what they thought the West had in terms of political freedom. Revolutionaries were conducting terror campaigns in order to undermine the tsarist system.

For his part, Mirsky was both a reformer and loyal to the Tsarist system. In his role as Governor-General of Vilna, which is modern day Lithuania and Belarus, Mirsky implemented liberal reforms like granting political rights, ending the pogroms against the Jews, and allowing a degree of autonomy to ethnic minorities. In his role as Minister of the Interior, he granted freedom of the press, freedom of religion and increased the power and authority of local self-government.

Mirsky was not a reformer because he had dreams of creating a liberal paradise to replace tsarist Russia. He was a reformer because he worried that the lack of reform would result in more radicalism, like the sort that had claimed the life of his predecessor and the life of the Tsar’s grandfather. For Mirsky and his supporters within the system, liberal reform was a way to address some of the issues of the people, while also maintaining the legitimacy of the tsarist system.

Uncertain times always product men like Mirsky. He was not the only reformer around Tsar Nicholas before the revolution. There were others but all of them failed to arrest the process that eventually led to revolution. Reformers were around the King Louis XVI and among the aristocracy prior to the French Revolution. They failed for the same reason Mirsky failed. There were men who feared reform would go too far and there were those who feared reform would not go far enough.

This is what should come to mind while watching Elon Musk try to navigate his way through the current crisis. Musk is a reformer at heart. He bought Twitter because he thought it was drifting away from its essential purpose which is to allow for free and open debate about the issues of the day. His inhospitable takeover of the company was driven by a genuine concern for what is happening in the West. Like all reformers, Musk fears what could happen if current trends continue.

It may seem a bit odd to compare Musk to Mirsky or any of the other reformers who existed in revolutionary times. After all, Musk is the world’s richest man. In the managerial age, however, that only buys a seat at the table. The nine other men in the top-10 richest list are worth five times Musk combined. Apple has a hedge fund that is ten times the wealth of Musk. Blackrock controls trillions in assets and has unlimited access to the highest reaches of government.

While Musk may be the world’s richest man and the most famous of the plutocracy, he is just one voice among many. The managerial elite is thousands, and the managerial class is millions of people. This new class is analogous to the aristocratic classes that existed in 18th century France and 19th century Russia. The best Musk or any liberal reformer can do is influence the people in the system. This is what Musk is attempting with his mild reforms of Twitter.

In this illiberal age, Elon Musk has appointed himself to be the minister of speech on-line and is attempting to roll back the reactionary controls that were put in place by the ruling class over the last decade. While Twitter is not the internet of old, Musk has rolled back much of the censorship. He still bans certain accounts, mostly as a way to tell the reactionaries that his reforms will not go too far. Otherwise, he has had a light hand on the censorship of his platform.

This is where that old revolutionary vice shows its jaws. The side that fears the reforms will go too far has successfully organized an advertising boycott. State sanctioned pressure groups like Media Matters have organized other pressure groups to harass companies that were advertising on Twitter. Those companies dropped their ads, resulting in a fifty percent decline in ad revenue. Musk has been forced to hire a girl boss approved by the reactionaries to be his new CEO.

Meanwhile, the other jaw of the vice sees what is happening and assumes Musk will eventually be brought to heel. Open sites like Gab continue to flourish, building on the alternative platform model. Amusingly and a bit ironically, the hard-core censors are abandoning Twitter for the opposite reason. Mass media companies, no longer assured of artificial reach on Twitter, are also jumping ship. Musk is facing the same dilemma all reformers face when taking the middle position.

On January 22, 1905, soldiers of the Imperial Guard fired on demonstrators in Saint Petersburg as they marched towards the Winter Palace. Hundreds were killed and thousands were arrested in what came to be known as Bloody Sunday. Mirsky denied having any role in it, but he was blamed by his conservative opponents, as well as the radical opponents of his half-measures. Mirsky did the honorable thing and resigned from his office and retired from politics.

In the end, Mirsky was like all prior reformers in that he was both right and wrong about what was happening. He was correct that radicalism was spreading due to the inability of the system to address the issues of the times. He was wrong in thinking that the solutions to the problems of the system could be found in the system. Just as there was no saving King Louis XVI and the old order, there was no saving Tsar Nicholas II and the system that made him possible.

This is where liberal reformers like Musk find themselves. On the one hand, they are correct in fearing a rising tide of radicalism. He rightly sees that it is driven in part by the abuses of the ruling class, of which he is a part. The trouble is the system cannot withstand open debate. It cannot risk questioning the shibboleths that sustain the moral framework at the heart of the managerial system. In the end, reformers will be crushed by that old vice that has destroyed prior reformers.

We Deserve Better

Posted on May 15, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about my travel woes, a post about the ungovernable country and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

The ancient Greeks had a rule at one time where anyone proposing a change in the current laws did so with a rope around his neck. He stood in front of the people with the noose around his neck and made his appeal. If the people adopted his idea, then he removed the rope and went on his way. If his idea was rejected, he was hanged using the noose that was around his neck. Needless to say, this reduced the demand for change to that which was obvious to the vast majority.

From time to time, as in a crisis, they would pass a rule with regards to whatever course of action they agreed upon to address the crisis. Anyone who questioned the agreed upon approach or offered up a change to it, was killed or banished. The point of these extraordinary measures in times of crisis was to prevent the minority from undermining the will of the majority and thus the agreed upon policy. Once the majority agreed upon a course of action, the time for debate ended.

While the idea of our current legislators offering amendments while wearing a noose is amusing, we should be able to see why the Greeks did this. In this age, all everyone talks about is change. The way to show your virtue to the rest of those desperate for acclaim and affirmation is to demand change. The managerial elite and their flunkies in the managerial class spend so much time producing new changes, none of the basic things are getting done.

This is because the spring of democracy is morality. In a democratic society, even if it is not actually democratic, the thing that motivates people is the desire to be seen as moral, which means on the side of the people. When moderns say they are on the right side of history, what they mean is they are on that leading edge of change that is carrying the people toward the goal of the general will. They are turning the wheel of progress toward the promised land.

We have no information to suggest the Greeks viewed it this way, but they clearly understood that those always demanding change were a menace. Even in a genuine democracy, someone has to be in charge so that things get done. That person or group of people could not function if they were constantly fielding criticism or adapting to new policies pushed through by the change artists. The noose was the way to limit this impulse and prevent the chaos we are experiencing today.

In this age, this would start with the Federal bench. The executive branch of government is now hobbled by judicial fiat. Trump could get nothing done because crazy judges kept inventing novel reasons to block him. Some of his stuff eventually made it through, but the courts ran out the clock on most of it. The same thing happens with governors. They are constantly blocked by judges who just make up reasons to block their policies.

A simple way to stop this is to institute a three strikes rule. A judge who is overturned three times is removed from the bench. In a short time, this would clear the court of most left-wing judges, who are overturned on a regular basis. What would remain is judges who adhere to the point of their role. Further, judges who are removed from the bench are barred from practicing or teaching law. While banishment would be the best option, removing them from the law is good enough.

A similar problem is in the legislatures. All across the country, deranged state legislators have crafted new gun laws. These laws will be struck down by the courts but create mayhem for years. These legislators cook up these laws knowing they will not pass muster with the courts. This is performative legislation. The point of it is to show the intended audience that the legislator is on the right side of history, mostly by tormenting the normal people who are the victims of these laws.

While hanging is the right course here, a less entertaining option is to impoverish the people who vote for laws that are overturned by the courts. For example, when the courts overturn the latest gun grabbing from the New York legislature, the people who voted for it have all of their assets confiscated. They are immediately barred from politics and practicing law. Instantly, the legislative calendars will be free to work on the practical things that are currently neglected.

These small, common-sense changes are not a panacea, but what they would do is reintroduce the idea of a limiting principle. The current civic religion starts with the assumption that anything is possible. If anything is possible, then your version of Utopia is possible, which means it should happen right now. After all, what could be the argument against having paradise right now? There has to be a way to anathematize that impulse and thus curtail this behavior.

Of course, this would require a ruling class that sees the danger. The Greeks were often blessed with an elite that knew society could tolerate only so much debate and so much criticism, so they found ways to limit it. Instead, the current ruling class celebrates the resulting chaos that comes from a culture of critique. They somehow think that paradise is a world where nothing is beyond the destructive forces that lie at the heart of this endless demand for change that animates our age.

Joseph de Maistre famously said, “Every country has the government it deserves”, but this is always misinterpreted to blame the people for bad government. This is the thinking of the mind poisoned by democracy. Joseph de Maistre was not a democrat, so it is incorrect to think he was blaming the people. Instead, he was laying the blame at the feet of the ruling class. The elite get the government they deserve and they take the people with them, even if the people deserve better.

Crazy River

Posted on May 12, 2023 by thezman

I expected to be traveling this week, so I planned the show in advance, but some unexpected misadventures changed my plans. I liked the show so rather than do something new I kept it. The only thing I regret is I was not able to talk about Trump destroying girl power on CNN this week. It was a masterful performance that was reminiscent of his 2016 campaign.

The crazy thing about it is the people at CNN seemed to think that girl power would be able to handle Trump. What were they thinking? Megyn Kelly was ten times better at being girl power and Trump wrecked her career in one show. Kaitlan Collins is supposed to be CNN’s new star and now everyone is laughing at her. Even the crazies have turned on her and CNN over this event.

The destruction of girl power was not the best part of the show. The audience was laughing right along with Trump. There was one shot of the crowd where older women were holding their hands over their mouths as Trump described his recent court case with the crazy woman. They were laughing so hard they were afraid their dentures would fly out, so they had their hands over their mouths.

Again, what in the world was CNN thinking? Reportedly they just let people in who wanted to be in, rather than hiring actors as is now standard. Those normal people were there because they at least think Trump deserves a chance. That meant he had a chance to win the crowd. It was if someone at CNN decided to stack the deck against girl power so she came off looking ridiculous.

This was also bad news for Team DeSantis. This was the old Trump, the guy who won in 2016 mocking the establishment and their pieties. He did not do that in 2020, because he thought he had to be restrained as president. He is not president now, so he seems to think he can be himself. That and he seems to have no illusions about winning any friends in the establishment.

Trump is not going to win the 2024 election and may be forced out of the primary by party shenanigans, but it was good to see the old Trump again. He was always best as a wrecking ball, mocking stupid people like girl power. What made Trump fun in 2016 is that he revealed these people to be feckless airheads. That is what we need more of, so it is good to see the old Trump again.

This Week’s Show

Contents

The Bugman (Link)
It’s The Fuzz (Link)
Migrating Trees (Link)
Bad Schools (Link)
Racist Cables (Link)
Rebel Pronouns (Link)

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

Full Show On Rumble

Imagination Land

Posted on May 11, 2023 by thezman

One of the strange and unnoticed aspects of the modern age is how much time is spent debating imaginary things. In fact, most of our public debates are about things that may happen or could never possibly happen. The things that are actually happening get very little attention. In some cases, like the ongoing criminal operations of the Biden family, the only people discussing them are “conspiracy theorists”, a term that has been transformed to describe imaginary villains.

In fact, much of what passes for public debate is the shift from things that are real and observable in the present moment to things that do not exist. Crackpot libertarian congressman Thomas Massie spends most of his time warning about a highly unlikely problem with E-Verify, so that his voters do not notice the waves of migrant invaders filling up their cities and towns. He is not alone. Every politician is an illusionist now, making reality disappear behind a curtain of deceit.

What has happened to modern American society is a form of the Peter Pan syndrome, in that society prefers to live in a world of make believe, rather than face up to the tough choices that come with adulthood. Libertarian kooks would rather think about a world governed by the non-aggression principle than think about the problems that the current world is presenting to us. Ten thousand migrants a day cross the border, but libertarian guy is concerned about theoretical abuses of state power.

It is not just libertarian kooks who avoid reality. It is a system-wide phenomenon that now defines our public life. Trillions are being spent on climate change, which probably exists as a concept. We know the earth’s climate is always changing. As a real threat to humanity, however, it exists only in the imagination. Given the rampant fraud in the world of science, it is possible that everything about climate change is a lie, yet we are pretending that it is a real as a rose bush.

To fight climate change, governments are putting mandates on carmakers to force them to make electric cars. The people who produced this mandate have no idea if this makes any sense or is even possible. In fact, it is not possible. We do not have enough lithium, for example, to make the required batteries. Our power grid will have collapsed long before that is an issue. In fact, it is already happening. We are spending trillions on climate change while the power grid is failing.

Imagine a politician running on a platform of upgrading the power grid. He promises to improve reliability and toughen it against storms. Many of the lines will be put underground to improve aesthetics. This could never happen because his opponent would instead promise to use the money for “gender affirming care” or maybe combat racist road systems. She would win in a landslide because who cares about the power lines when imaginary problems need our attention?

Imagination land is so powerful, it even warps the mundane things. Here is a story about a sportsball coach who used salty language in public. It was rude and he apologized for it. In the world of real things, this would be enough, but in the world of imaginary things, he must be punished. Imaginary people were traumatized, maybe even physically harmed by his words. According to his boss, the imaginary people now have scars that cannot be seen, because they are not real.

Much has been made of the public apology in these matters. It is a weird ritual that never has the intended effect. The coach just got fined millions of dollars for harming imaginary people, despite his real groveling. What gets missed is these apologies are always directed at people who do not exist. In the material world, you apologize to a person who you can identify as a victim of your actions. In imagination land you apologize to imaginary people for imaginary crimes.

Last month, Douglas Mackey was found guilty in Federal court of violating the civil rights of people who do not exist. The government claimed that his tweets mocking Hillary Clinton voters in 2016 harmed these people. They produced no one claiming to have been harmed by these tweets. They did not establish that such a harm was even possible, but that did not matter. In imagination land, anything is possible. When anything is possible, you go to jail for imaginary crimes.

Another example of how imagination land now crowds out the world of reality is the Bud Light marketing fiasco. The people who cooked up the idea were sure that there are millions of crossdressers desperate for a beer that appeals to them, so they created a campaign around a crossdresser. The fact that in the real world there are more left-handed ginger midgets than men who wear dresses did not matter. In imagination land, the crossdresser is the future.

Everywhere you look in the modern age, the imaginary is crowding out the real, as if everyone is now terrified of reality. The media fills the zone with terrifying stories of disinformation campaigns and hate speech be imaginary actors, while ignoring the tsunami of lies that comes from the government. More time has been spent trying to pretend a brown guy is a white supremacist than looking into the very real problem of the Biden family taking bribes from foreign governments.

The usual suspects rush in at this point and claim it is all a plot by the “deep state” or some other catchphrase to get money and power. As ridiculous as this age has become, one has to leave open the possibility that we live in a simulation controlled by men living in a hollowed-out volcano. Alternatively, maybe Wells was right when he noted “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.”

Generations of easy living, living outside the world “change, danger, and trouble” has turned us into Eloi. Our triumphs over the material problems of human existence have left us incapable of dealing with the reality of human existence. If we just wish hard enough, they will go away. If not, then we just fill our minds with the pleasing conflicts that exist only in imagination land. We are a society of helpless children determined to remain children regardless of the demands of reality.

The Z Blog

Sports, Culture and Other Stuff