Note: I will be on the Restoring Order podcast tonight at 7PM Eastern time. The show will run for about 90 minutes. You can watch it here. I also have a new post up behind the green door. This a review of the political movie Duck Soup.
The 2020 drama The Courier is one of those films that is remarkable for what it does not do, rather than what it does do. It is a straight forward drama unburdened by Progressive politics. It sticks fairly close to the original story, without inserting magical people or performing a sex change on the principals. In fact, all but two of the characters are white males. The two females are supporting roles. In today’s climate, that is something close to a miracle.
The story itself is familiar to those who grew up in the Cold War, even if you are not familiar with this particular story. It is the story of Greville Wynne, a British salesman turned spy, who traveled in and out of the Soviet Union in the 1960’s for business, but he was also carrying top-secret information. We get the familiar cat and mouse stuff that is a staple of spy movies, along with the human drama that comes from a reluctant civilian caught up in the spy game.
It is a solidly told spy drama with competent acting and directing. What makes it remarkable is what it says about the current age. There are people alive today who recall the events portrayed in the movie. Most Americans alive today lived through some portion of the Cold War. Despite this, that era feels as familiar as the Middle Ages or Ancient Greece. The Cold War West, at least the English speaking portion, is not just a different time. It is a different world.
The weird thing about the Cold War is that as soon as it was over, there was no reminiscing about it or how it altered society. It was so quickly forgotten that young people could be forgiven for not knowing it existed. Young people in America know more about civil rights stuff and certain events in World War II than they do about what happened just a few decades ago. Even the collapse of the Soviet Union has been hurled down the memory hole.
It is an odd thing, given that the Cold War was the longest American war. It lasted roughly from March 5, 1946 to November 9, 1989. Most people date the start to the speech given by Winston Churchill at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri during a tour of the United States. This is when he uttered the famous words “Iron Curtain” which became synonymous with the Soviet Union. The end, of course, is marked as the day the Berlin Wall came down.
For close to half a century, the United States was on a war footing. Rather than demobilize after the defeat of Japan and Germany, America retooled the entire nation to fight communism in general and the Soviets in particular. For two generations it was the superstructure of society. The economy, the culture and politics operated within the struggle against Russia. It is the American empire’s Peloponnesian War, except this time the democracies beat the Spartans.
One reason why this event was so quickly forgotten is that it appears to have been a necessary restraint on the worst elements in American democracy. Like a dog that got off the leash, there has been no turning back for those elements, suddenly freed from the restraints of the Cold War. The crusades against the Muslims were an attempt to put the crazies back on the rope, but it failed. Those crazies are now threatening to take over the whole country.
Every society has a portion that is mentally unstable. They are functional and can be put to good use, but they need structure. Religion has been the primary way to keep the unstable on the straight and narrow. With the decline of Christianity, mass movements in America have been the alternative. The various social reform movements in America, dating back to the 19th century were a way to give the unstable the structure they needed and put them to good use.
Of course, without a limiting principle, mass movements quickly turn into a disaster as the fanatics never know when to quit. They always look for some next step in their quest for salvation, The obvious example is how the temperance societies turned into outright bans on alcohol. Reducing public drunkenness was a worthy goal, but banning alcohol completely was lunacy in stilts. We are seeing this happen today with crazies rampaging through the streets, howling like lunatics.
That really is what the Cold War was for America. Without it, if the Cold War had never happened, America probably would have descended into anarchy and civil war by middle of the 20th century. The threat of thermonuclear annihilation forced the responsible to keep the unstable in their cages. It also gave these unstable people options into which they could express their fanaticism. The obsession with ancient grudges, for example, could be expressed as neoconservatism.
You could write the story of America as the story of fanaticism. The first waves of fanatics landed in what is now New England to build their paradise in the wilderness of the New World. They eventually conquered the rest of the continent in the name of one cause after another. Then they conquered the rest of the world, first in the name of democracy then to free the world of competing lunacy. With no more worlds to conquer, the fanatics are destroying themselves.
If you look around at the various tribes of lunatics in the pantheon of modern leftism, the quest for structure is clear. The Antifa goofballs are motivated by alienation and atomization. They are urban consumers with no purpose other than to consume. The females howling about male privilege are unmarried and childless, thus lacking the structure in which a woman can blossom. The Left is nothing but stray dogs looking for home, longing for the leash.
This is why the so-called conservatives wanted the war against the Muslims to be the new Cold War and why they rant about Russia today. As the late John McCain used to say, they want to be part of a cause bigger than themselves. A holy cause provides a reason to instill discipline. It may be what is behind the ruling class paranoia about imaginary white supremacy. It gives them a purpose and therefore a structure to their otherwise disorganized minds.
Like the Muslim panic, these new panics – and Covid can be viewed in this light as well – will fail due to a lack of reality. The Muslims were never a serious threat to anyone but themselves and maybe their neighbors. White supremacy is a figment of the fevered imaginations of liberal women who read too many bodice rippers. Even China is looking like a poor stand-in for the Devil. These are not real threats, so they can never be the organizing issue of a new American creed.
What may be happening is the end of one plot line in the American story. The fanatics who conquered the wilderness to build an empire are in the last chapter. The rest of the country is now tasked with how to wrap up this story line. Maybe it will be a new religion for the fanatics to join. Maybe it will be a reactionary response that relies on force to subdue the fanatics. Maybe it is a Hobbesian end for a people who suddenly realize they have no reason to be in the same country.
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This is where the Greens always make me laugh – you people can only exist, literally, because of the internal combustion engine. Historically, the biggest check on fanaticism was the organic community. Every group larger than a baseball team will have its fanatic; they are a universal human type. In times of great stress the fanatic might get a few temporary converts (e.g. a witchcraft panic), but mostly he’s kept in check by the community – having known him all our lives, we know better than to let Steve run anything.
Then the Great Mobilization happened. Now fanatics from far and wide could communicate with each other, at the same time organic communities were collapsing. By the time his “neighbors” (defined only by geographic proximity) figure out Steve is a loon, it’s far too late… and, having grown up in the Great Mobilization, don’t know how to read people anyway.
If the Greens get their way, we’ll all be tied to the manor again like serfs… and then our Greens will be locked in with us. Witchcraft panics work both ways, ya dig? That’s so ironic, I bet Alanis is wondering if someone dropped Viagra in her venti soy chai latte.
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There are simply no more (or at least enough) sober minded people in positions of power to put any curbs on all this lunacy. Communities at large will take no action either. The one sided propaganda spewed by the media at all levels as well as the linking of the fanatics via social media seems almost too much to overcome -no matter how obviously insane the rhetoric and ideas. Something will give sooner or later, but as I’ve mentioned before, reality is taking its sweet time showing up.
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Eat your greens suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.
I was just reading about our latest initiative in the county to shut down the coal plants and go “green” by 2030. The pressers on such progress are straight out of the Orwell print shop.
Self congratulatory statements by the council members about how proud of themselves they are, interrupted by “facts” [edit: lies] that justify ejecting what has worked for decades and replacing with [TBD] “green”.
The latter being the key. There is nothing about how destroying a system that works will work be replaced. Just green. Carbon dioxide footprints. And other disembodied taglines. A ship of fools.
When the Surgeon General says on national media that never been tried before experimental not-vaccine provides more robust immunity than natural exposure and local councils are suiciding cheap reliable infrastructure for feelz, it is long past time for the societal immune system to kick in and remove the mind virus from all stations of power and influence.
The late hour of this task and the potato in chief turning into vodka in real time has me coming back to an event(s) of serious discomfort and distraction before the leaves turn.
I wonder if American politics isn’t following the same trajectory as the mainstream media…fewer and fewer are paying attention, so the hysteria and hyperbole is ramped up to grab attention. But there still are a great many people who’ve been conditioned to consume “current events” and are susceptible to the hysteria (i.e. boomers) and that are too young to have memory and perspective (i.e. left-leaning twentysomethings) and these are the core demographics of “current events”. I see the madness of the political class as a kind of white pill: they are losing influence, and need ridiculous causes to attract the midwits. At some point, politics is bound to get boring again, like how all those Latin Americans shrug their shoulders at the fantastic corruption and shameless peacocking of their ruling class.
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I’ve thought for a long time that the increasing volume and irrationality is a quest for attention. That is the coin of every democratic realm. In ancient Greece, the sophists were known for their attention getting antics. The growing pointlessness of the state means the pols have to make a greater racket to get noticed.
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Why a boycott of them is required
We need to watch their heads explode. Their knowing that no one cares what they do will drive them over the edge. And from there their illegitimacy will be obvious to the world.
I just hope all of us here remain disciplined and do not get sucked back into politics.
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That was my exact reaction to this column Steve Sailer posted about Lin-Manuel Miranda having to apologize for not having enough afro-latinos in his new movie. Does anyone from the Caribbean living in the U.S. care about this stuff? Twitter makes the problem much, much worse as it gives an audience to people who would otherwise be dismissed as cranks by those they interact with in real life. So much of online news coverage now is a “reporter” simply posting a series of tweets and writing a few comments on them.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/eduardo-norteno-in-american-history-n/
Maybe Frederick Jackson Turner was right all along. Viewed in the light of this historiography, this Martian mania makes a bit more sense.
Without challenges, Man is a lazy animal. Laziness being a Deadly Sin, we see the results.
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You are a few weeks early. This is “pride” month. Our host already set aside July for “sloth”.
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The threats you mention have actually grown even more ridiculous and fanciful as time goes on. Even the muslim threat way back in the mid 90s and early 2000s (seemed to be all the rage then) was wildly played up. Of course, muslim terror rode on the back of the 9/11 branding, which, whatever the causes, was the singular most spectacular event (in a bad way) of the last what? 20-30 years? Sure, here in London I think we had some ‘poor man’s’ 9/11 on the Underground (can’t even recall the dates), but really, the majority of the schemes were ham-fisted and the panic overblown.
That said, the mainland Europeans have had some pretty nasty affairs with the Musslemen: Bataclan, Hebdo &c, but still, the threat was pretty overblown. I remember speaking with somebody about this… they were most concerned with ragheads blowing stuff up and were happy to give our creepy government more and more power. But these were the sort of people who’d walk down a busy London street, earphones in, looking at their phone only to have it stolen by a lad on a bike. Talk about wrong priorities in the ‘risk assessment’ department.
Now we’ve got the Covid, Anti-Whiteness and all sorts. The Covid threat, as in actual threat of death to the extent freedoms must be crushed, is trivial. Yet here we are. It’s just another in the long line of Mencken’s hobgoblins.
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7/7. Can’t remember the year, either.
I have heard that with hives of bees that if you kill the queen, one of the lower order caste drones will metabolically and endomorphically change into a queen and replace her.
So it goes with demons. Race reality will dictate that it won’t be Whitey. My money is on Jews. They have experience and they’re predisposed to it.
Maybe their big cause will be to rein in black violence ?
Or the sudden rush of desire to preserve western civilization from the mestizos?
Or to clean up the streets and the homeless and graffiti?
Crazier things have happened. Unlikely however.
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When I’m breathing my last I think my only real regret will be in not knowing how the plot line develops. I was born in 1957, and my lifespan has probably seen one of the most peaceful periods of human history, especially if you go by body count compared to population. Why this is I have no idea. I do feel certain it’s not due to the stellar capabilities of the world’s political leadership.
As is typical for a grumpy old guy, I look around and can’t see how any of this can last. We are at the precipice and the slightest ill wind can push us off. But I say typical because I know the grim reaper is wandering around in the woods on my farm. Haven’t seen him yet, but knowing he’s out there is a helluva bias for interpreting current events.
I’ve been saying since the big steal that if by this time next year things are still basically the same, and I’m still free and wealthy enough to be able to complain about it all, then I have to seriously consider that my world view if somehow wrong. At that point I think I’ll shut up and just watch, because I’ll have nothing meaningful to add to the conversation.
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My impression has been that the exaggerated threat of the Russians expressed by the regime is driven primarily by the exaggerated influence of the Khazars within it. I suppose human nature being what it is there had to be some boogey man at all times but China seems like the obvious candidate since it poses the more realistic challenge.
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Yes, so much of this is the manifestation of lunacy and paranoia inherent within the khazars. They are remaking the country in their own paranoid schizoid image. I guess now we know kinda what it’s like to live in the mind of a (((lunatic, serial killer, cross dresser, etc. ))))
And we are all finding out we don’t like it one bit
I wonder how long before there is a real backlash against them
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Khazars? Hmm. I was thinking of calling them White Supremacists, T- Tribal Division.
But Khazars works. Only they and those in the know will understand the term, as it should be.
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> but China seems like the obvious candidate since it poses the more realistic challenge.
China knows they can just buy off the Americans and rule us financially. The only threat American can inflict on China is cultural poison, which it seems the Chinese are more genetically resistant to, at least for now.
Becoming more convinced the left hates Russia because Russians know the exact rhetoric that hurts the ruling class. Putin just asked about the cop who killed Ashlii, and some prominent Russians are explicitly calling out the anti-whiteness of Washington D.C. You can’t help but see in social media how even mild dissidents are saying that Putin cares more about Heritage Americans than our own government,
That Putin is doing this cynically is immaterial, the point is that Putin is saying things that resonate more with your average Joe more than our political leaders. As Darren Beattie says, “They will welcome us as liberators”
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One thing I noticed, before Hollywood imploded, is that films heavily influenced by Chinese money were far less pozzed than similar Hollywood productions.
Take, “The Meg,” for example. The film clearly shows a woman being bailed out by a masculine male after getting into trouble. The sole vibrant is limited to the role of a comedic minstrel. The value of family is repeatedly mentioned.
Anyone else like me old enough to remember school drills where you had to practive getting under your desk to avoid the a-bombs the Russians might drop? Kruschev pounding a shoe on the podium at the UN? Basement fallout shelters?
Good times – or at least less insane times than now.
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Great points. The need to be pushing forward toward some great – and moral – goal was part of America from the founding. Americans never seemed content to just be.
As you mention, the closing of western frontier was the point where America could have said “enough,” but it wasn’t enough. As soon as the frontier closed, we started poking around both externally and internally, looking for a moral cause to chase.
That’s the thing about Progressives: They can never quit. They are defined by being morally in front of the rabble. If the majority of people accept a Progressive’s stance – either because they change their minds or are forced to do so – the Progressive is no long in front of the crowd and thus no longer more moral. And for these folks, that’s the entire point of their life. After all, they are Progressive.
They then start looking for a new cause or to push a current movement farther so as to move away from the crowd. Once Whites accepted that they shouldn’t judge a person on their race, the Progressive moved to judging White on their race and history, something White chaff at, which makes the Progressive happy. If White accept (or say that they accept) that they have White privilege, the Progressives will push for more. They have to.
Progressives are like the Terminator. They will never quit. Ever. Like a shark has to swim to breath, Progressive must always push for more than the crowd accepts or the Progressive will lose their oxygen.
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You could write the story of America as the story of fanaticism. The first waves of fanatics landed in what is now New England to build their paradise in the wilderness of the New World.
Carl Bridenbaugh’s great book Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590–1642: The Beginnings of the American People (1968) explains how the English Puritans, disgusted with the fact that London was the world capital of prostitution and alcoholism and the ever-present threat of being subdued by Catholics, moved their joyless operation to a place that was a “wilderness” only in the sense that it hadn’t been fenced into parcels and wasn’t overrun by domestic livestock. Their fanaticism went on display with the hanging of witches and the murder of native Americans bold enough to reject the Puritan theology, just as they did with the Catholic Irish.
Many of the Puritan ideas survive to this day in one form or another and their legacy will probably endure for centuries more with the continued existence of their flagship, Harvard University, the epicenter of evil in the western hemisphere and a place that should be bulldozed into the Charles River.
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Freedom is just the space between the walls. Those walls are crumbling. Long story short, too much freedom is a dangerous thing.
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Airbnb bust out time: Those fun loving Khazars at it again. Notice the names here, and they’ll all be involved in the lawsuits that are clearly pending against Airbnb. Former head of Airbnb crisis management [aka pay off rape/murder victims] Shapiro – damn Anglos ! – who used to work for the CIA will, will be appearing in the class action lawsuits certainly coming against Airbnb. Rape, murder, dismembered corpses…Airbnb has it all.
https://www.tbsnews.net/analysis/airbnb-spending-millions-dollars-make-nightmares-go-away-261235
Somehow the bust out never gets old; create a problem, loot the chumps, turn around and sue into oblivion everyone involved except your own, etc etc. I’m firmly convinced that the Famous Triangle Shirt Fire was arson and arson+murder for the insurance money, for example.