One of the truths of democratic politics is that enemies tend to be forever, while friends tend to be temporary. The reason is politics is personal. When someone does something to harm you in politics, you take it personally. You remember it long after the harm has been forgotten. When someone does you a favor, in contrast, it tends to be transactional, as the person doing the favor is acting from self-interest. Favors are impersonal, while harms are always personal.
This is something Kevin McCarthy is learning right now. His climb to the speaker’s chair has been sidetracked by a small group of malcontents. They oppose him becoming the next Speaker of the House because they do not like him. More important, they think he is a shameless liar, so they do not trust him. The reason they think this is that Kevin McCarthy is a shameless liar. To get where he is he had to knife people in the back, because he has no other qualifications for the job.
It will never be said publicly, but his role in knifing Congressman Steve King in the back, at the behest of the donor class, burned up his capital. If he is willing to work with the New York Times to ruin a Steve King, how can anyone in the caucus be sure he will not do the same trick to them? Politics is a sleazy business, but the reason to be in a party is to have the protection of the party. McCarthy broke an important rule so he is a man with few friends, only money to spread around.
Another truth of politics is that when you take a shot at the king you better not miss, which is where the anti-McCarthy forces are right now. They have to hang together or they will hang alone. Just in case that is not clear, the self-aggrandizing sociopath from Texas, Dan Crenshaw, gave one of his typical tantrums to the press, calling the holdouts forever enemies of the uniparty. In Hell right now, Stalin is slapping John McCain on the back why saying, “That’s your boy!”
The unspoken truth of this fiasco is that this would not be possible if the FBI had allowed the Republicans to sweep the midterms. If it had been a red wave, McCarthy would have had no trouble getting the votes from all of those newly minted House members excited to be in Washington. Instead, the FBI only allowed the GOP to gain a small majority to keep up appearances. That gives this small band of holdouts the chance to throw a wrench in the works of the uniparty.
This brings up the question that no one in the media dares ask. That is, why is it just fifteen members of the party opposing this oleaginous snake? For a long time, we have been told that most of the party is conservative, but the leadership is the problem, always cutting deals with the Democrats. If the conservatives could get control of the leadership, then things would change. It turns out that conservatives are as rare as hen’s teeth in the Republican Party.
The truth is, George Washington was right. No man is so virtuous as to resist the highest bidder and that is axiomatically true in politics. Marjorie Taylor Greene switched teams for the promise of some legitimacy. The party promised to let he pretend to be a serious person in exchange for her support of the uniparty. It turns out that those stories about old Marge being a cheap date were true. It is a good reminder that character is your best guide, even in the sleazy world of politics.
Of course, this whole affair is shining light on a truth about our politics. Democracy is just a show to conceal the real power in society. The holdouts know that they will get nothing from this, even if McCarthy steps aside. The guy who takes his place will be dancing the tune the donors call. Again, for the holdouts, this is not really about principle. They just hate Kevin McCarthy so they are taking their shot. In the end they know the Speaker will be a puppet of the donors.
This affair also suggests that the donors and their puppets in the two parties are tiring of the game of make believe. Once it was clear that the people are too docile to push back against things like lockdowns and mask wearing, no one in charge had any reason to worry about fooling the people with the democracy show. They can have this embarrassing food fight in public, because who cares about the public? Certainly, no one in either party or the pirates that control them.
It is why the right way to view it is as just another carny act on the stage that is liberal democratic politics. It is all sound and fury signifying nothing, but there is no harm in enjoying the suffering of the people made to perform on the stage. Given the age in which we live, expect the holdouts to be bought off or threatened by the FBI and this whole thing comes to end today. McCarthy is human filth, but he does what he is told, so the donors will probably save him.
Even so, there is a lesson for dissidents. Politics is always about friends and enemies, not abstract ideas. The goal is to increase your pool of friends, while limiting the pool of enemies you create in the process. Politics is always personal. Those who go out of their way to create drama and stir up conflict are always bad for your politics, so the best course is to avoid those people. You may not always be able to count on your friends, but you can always count on your enemies.
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. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. 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. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.
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.
i can only imagine how aroused the civnats are, over this puppet show. high fives and hand jobs all around.
7
Yeah, first they get Roe v Wade overturned. Then the GOP barely won the Senate. Then they get Title 42 extended. Trump is running again. Elon is owning the libs. Now they got Kevin McCrappy on the skids! Yee-haw!
4
GOP barely won the House and barely lost the Senate
2
I’m enjoying the hell out of this shitshow and I’m hardly a CivNat. It’s like opera for the mentally retarded.
4
Wondering if the attempts of the FBI to entrap Gaetz with a minor has something to do with this also. Rest assured, if McCarthy did what he did to King while sleeping well at night, I wouldn’t put it past McCarthy to be a part of that caper also. At that point, Burn It All down is the only reasonable option left.
The reactions on the right have ben hilarious, the professional pundits are grasping their pearls complaining about all the great things a GOP house could do (lol), while normal people are just laughing at the chaos. They don’t even care who’s speaker, it’s Joker mode all the way down. Such mindsets are contagious too, and this show might be the first cracks to a massive break of legitimacy in all our major institutions.
20
The FBI/DOJ attempt to frame Gaetz looms large here. Probably the worse thing that could happen to McCarthy is to somehow win.
6
It’ll be interesting, watching the Uniparty sic the FBI on the malcontents. Wonder which page of the huge files of dirt they no doubt possess on everyone will be “leaked” first?
I have a question for you; At what point do the security services start thinking they have the whip hand? America really has been exceptional in that our armed forces have been largely apolitical. Even Brazil’s military made some noises when Bolsonaro’s reelection was stolen — they might or might not have supported Bolsonaro, but they were flexing a bit. I’m amazed the AINO military hasn’t tried something similar, especially now that so many troops are pulled back from the latest failed imperial war.
Same deal with the FBI. They’ve always been nakedly political; they just 1) had a better PR department back in the days, and 2) had the good sense to confine their politicking to the Swamp. But now that they’re openly harassing goofballs like the My Pillow guy as Enemies of The Regime, how long before they start openly issuing diktats?
I imagine there’s something very much like a Death of Stalin situation going on in Washington right now, since Brandon is a vegetable, but the masks are dropping rapidly. What’s your take? Will we see the security forces openly creating and deposing “barracks emperors” anytime soon?
11
If the FBI was going to blackmail the holdouts, that would have happened by now. My read is they have no interest in this, other than maybe getting Jim Jordan into the speakership. That would remove him from the oversight committee where he has promised to hold hearings about the FBI.
My read on the FBI is that it is camp runamuck. Much like Twitter, the competent people have been swamped by political cranks, weirdos and trouble makers. The man at the top is just riding the tiger. The people at the top simply care about being on good terms with the White House and DOJ.
11
We saw a DOJ/FBI schism with the raid on Mar-A-Lago. After Garland authorized the raid on Trump’s home, Wray just up and went on vacation while it took place. It’s not like Wray wouldn’t rape and murder a child and then take the pennies out of its eyes, but he understood that raid could come back to haunt him. After all, much of what is going down in the Speaker contest is the result of Wray and Garland going after Gaetz and coming up short. I suspect Garland was the top in that relationship and Wray didn’t enjoy it.
13
Something I find extraordinary is that the FBI/Deep State did take an unsuccessful kill shot at Matt Gaetz, who survived charges against him of banging teenagers. Gaetz is the ringleader in the movement against McCarthy, and the apparent reason is he wants a commitment to destroy the FBI and correctly feels ol’ Kevin ain’t up for it.
It may be kabuki, but man it is unbelievable such could happen in this totalitarian age.
As for the military, it is ready to roll the moment the State decides it is time for the Cossacks to ride. Remember, it was active in the failed impeachment of Trump and refused to follow his orders to put down the Floyd revolution. The next step is obvious.
18
As Moldbug reminded us, Augustus didn’t say he was a king, but that’s what he was. Augustus allowed the Roman people the pretense that they still had a republic even after he had effectively demoted the Senate to an advisory board, and this arrangement proved so useful that it lasted over 500 years, until Justinian finally dispensed with the fiction around the time he opened Haghia Sophia.
I’d imagine that’s more or less the plan for us. The people who are really in power are perfectly willing to pay 535 stooges a fat paycheck to be the ones to take rotten vegetables to the face when the angry peasants get fed up. I doubt that anyone important is in a hurry for that arrangement to change.
20
That seems like a good plan, but it wasn’t real smooth in the Roman case — for instance, that whole “century of nonstop civil war” thing in the 200s.
And that’s exactly what precipitated the “Crisis of the Third Century” — the security forces asked themselves why they bothered with the “legitimate” succession procedure when they could just create the Emperor from among their own.
It’s wiki, I know, but I’ll just leave this here:
“The situation of the Roman Empire became dire in 235. Many Roman legions had been defeated during a previous campaign against Germanic peoples raiding across the borders, while the emperor Severus Alexander had been focused primarily on the dangers from the Sassanid Empire. Leading his troops personally, the emperor resorted to diplomacy and accepting tribute to pacify the Germanic chieftains quickly, rather than military conquest. According to Herodian this cost Severus Alexander the respect of his troops, who may have felt that more severe punishment was required for the tribes that had intruded on Rome’s territory.[12] The troops assassinated Severus Alexander and proclaimed the new emperor to be Maximinus Thrax, commander of one of the legions present.”
You’ll have to make allowances for everything being so ludicrously Fake and Gay now, but the parallels are obvious.
5
“Fake and gay” wouldn’t even begin to describe an Emperor Lloyd Austin.
4
Whoever, maybe Wray, is the Beria in that show should remember how it ended for him. You have to believe that eventually they will start eating each other.
The regime leadership is weak, relying on the self-defense mechanisms of it’s “blob” to keep everyone in line. That certainly isn’t “nothing”, but it doesn’t keep some faceless Putin-style GAE agent from pondering some interesting possibilities.
Of interest is the twenty guys the Germans thought might overthrow their government. On one hand it’s ridiculous to think that not even two dozen guys could overthrow a western government, but on the other hand, it kind of wouldn’t have been very surprising either.
1
I shamefully haven’t followed it closely, but was the alleged German coup attempt just another 1/6 puppet show or the real thing? I thought it was the former because of the humiliation the United States inflicted on Germany by blowing up NS II and the fuel and food shortages that will materialize over the Ukraine war.
Even the most brutal dictator can’t rule by force alone. To use the phrase our rulers have been out there parroting, there needs to be a stochastic element. Too much killing and all of the generals band together out of fear of the randomness of the leader coming for them. Too little killing and they start to think it might be wise to take a shot at the king while he’s weak. Saddam’s Comrade’s Massacre/ Public Purge in 1979 was a pretty good example of letting the politicians know it could happen to you but didn’t have to. It was also less creepy than seeing Zelensky unfurl the flag in Congress while wearing his green pajamas.
I really wish Trump had been all of the horrible things that his critics hallucinated he was. If he had a shot—the human capital or at least a moment to strike when the system was most vulnerable—he blew it with the January Six protest, which became a coup for the system after the feds lured those suckers into the kill zone. I imagine, though, there is enough military brass—and agents in the various alphabet bureaus—disgusted enough that they’re watching and waiting, and hoping, just like us. Sane communiques keep accidentally leaking out of hotbeds of madness, from the university to Silicon Valley.
Nobody ever wants to be the first person to charge a hill, and you can’t blame them. Ashley Babbitt’s crime was crawling through a broken window and the Dindu who snuffed her got a metal.
21
I still have visions like the Braveheart moment when the people storm the local governor’s stronghold. Not that it would be physical in nature but an “archers to the towers” moment on Capitol Hill would be quite pleasing.
Actually we should direct our attention more on the FBI headquarters.
9
Something else this reveals is the end of the Republican Party even as controlled opposition. Something to bear in mind is the it already was dead at the conclusion of the George W. Bush administration. By sheer luck Trump kept the plug from being pulled.
The GOP will cease to exist as a national thing come 2024 despite the State’s best efforts to keep the controlled opposition intact. Will there be a rush to mandate voting? That could backfire spectacularly.
18
Apparently McCarthy took the holdouts to a room after the first vote and read them the Riot Act, and got an additional defector for his troubles. The fact that clown thought he could intimidate the Reps shows his lack of anything resembling leadership.
For some reason the scene in Rocky where Creed’s trainer shouts “He doesn’t know it’s a damn show he thinks it’s a damn fight” comes to mind.
16
McCarthy is stupid as well as sleazy. Regardless of how this shakes out, he’s toast.
4
Rule #1 of leadership:
Never give an order that won’t be followed, or you can’t force someone to follow.
8
For dissident politics to make any headway, the Republican Party must destroy itself first. This shitshow in Tubman is showing how threadbare the Vichy Right is, and I applaud it.
At this point, I wouldn’t rule out a reprise of the threats and fistfights or a full on Preston Brooks style beatdown of the 1850s US Congress, only fake, gay and geriatric.
17
These clowns are too old to wield a cane and too stupid to see it is coming. Win/win. The oligarchy needs younger and smarter help, but the oligarchy ain’t what it used to be, either.
It is remarkably similar to the 1850’s, and Z is onto something with the TR analogy, too.
4
McCarthy also backstabbed Madison Cawthorn for showing up in DC and talking in public about the place. I felt bad for the kid as they destroyed him.
21
It really was “Mr Smith goes to Washington”, without the happy ending.
13
What’d really be hilarious is if the jogger hakeem jeffries somehow shucked and jived his way to the speakership. Don’t know if that’s actually possible, but a dem speaker with a gop/e house majority would probably be a s*** show.
18
Maybe we have reached our Crisis of the Third Century stage. Obviously, the voters are no longer in charge, if they ever were, but who wants to run the show and who do the other power players feel comfortable letting run the show.
The interesting thing about the crisis period was that the system was falling apart, but there wasn’t really another system or group that everyone felt comfortable replacing the current system with, so it just staggered on.
Quite obviously, looking at Biden’s cabinet, we know which group runs the show on topics which they care about, but I’m not so sure the small hats really want to run the whole show. Middlemen going to middle, so to speak. OTOH, they’ve definitely taken off the mask for foreign policy, finance and the media.
What’s going on with West, Musk and others is very open.
However, are the other factions – agencies, military, non-choosen billionaires, etc. – ready to completely hand over the keys to the tribe. I’m not so sure, especially on something like Ukraine which can get us all killed. And, again, I’m not so sure the tribe really wants to all of the keys. You think they care about transportation policy.
But no other group in Washington has more power and could take over the show, nor am I sure that they really want to take over. They want control over their area, but there’s no grand plan.
Then, there’s the fact that this is a huge – like, really, huge – country. Washington can’t control everything, everywhere.
The system staggers on with various factions controlling different parts, but nobody in full control, in part because nobody could take full control and in part because no faction really knows what it would do with the system if it was in control. Nobody has some big plan for the way that they want the country; they just want to control the parts of policy that they care about and to protect that control.
16
1
This is pretty spot on. Every once in a while we get a whiff of internal divisions, but who is who and why is murky. The political/administrative figures are puppets and dutiful whores, obviously, but there seem to be divisions among the oligarchs who control them. For example, the small hats seem pissed that China won’t let them run the show, and the Bezos types want to make nice with the PRC.
It cannot and will not hold like this, but that doesn’t mean one group doesn’t eventually get the upper hand. I hope to see Gulfstreams heading for Tel Aviv, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the best possible outcome, either. As you write, this country is vast and we already seeing cracks and divisions among the jurisdictions. That’s probably the best hope, a peaceful and relatively bloodless separation.
9
The tribe cares about the Middle East, Israel, Russia, Wall Street, real estate, Hollywood and turning the US into a multi-everything bazaar where no group is powerful enough to threaten them.
That’s pretty much it. Sure, they enjoy a good hate-whitey escapade here and there, but they still want to live around us.
They have no grand plan for the US, so they’re happy to let other groups run the actual store outside of their areas of concern.
I’m not even that sure that the tribe care about China outside of China threatening their stranglehold on global finance. You really think the tribe cares about our industrial base and the heartland? No way. China is a threat to the dollar/treasury system, which is the banking system, which is controlled by the tribe.
China/Russia/India is the first real threat to their global banking power in 150 years. Granted, the dollar remains supreme for now and for at least a decade, but you can see how it might be challenged.
People don’t understand that the banks create money, and therefore, control the world. Sure, Western govts and central banks could reign them in, but guess who control them? But the tribe doesn’t control China or Russia or India.
Ukraine isn’t the big threat to the tribe. It’s not controlling the global banking system. That’s always been the foundation of their power and still is.
5
A couple of years back there was a shift in the Tribe’s attitude toward China. Whether correctly or not, that seems to have been the Tribe first felt that its stranglehold on the global banking system was imperiled. The propaganda organs went from Good China to Bad China overnight. Super junk peddlers like Bezos, though, are still on team Good China.
2
Looks like pureblood non-citizens are banned from entering the US until at least April 2023. Novak Djokovic will miss another tournament.
The charade continues from the White House. All of Europe, and even most places in Asia allow purebloods, some with no restrictions, some with a negative test requirement.
7
I thought we (USA) allow non-positives in at this time, but do no require vaccination. Can anyone clarify?
2
Citizens are allowed in and out freely.
Non citizens must provide proof of full vaccination against COVID before boarding a plane, or while crossing a land border. Very limited exceptions apply. Testing is not accepted as an alternative.
It’s on the CBP and DHS websites. Most Americans have no idea this is still in place.
2
The most notable aspect of this clown show is the spectacular lack of talent among this generation of pols. The absolute sh*t has risen to the top. Say what you will about Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, but you cannot compare McCarthy or any of these current GOP jokers with them in terms of brains and talent.
It’s now blindingly obvious that the System doesn’t want anyone talented anywhere near the levers of power. McConnell has at least animal cunning, as did Pelosi, so they were kept in place since it was too much work to get rid of them and it was easier to pay them off. The younger people are total clowns from central casting and this is by design.
Government has been outsourced to lobbyists and staffers. They are very smart; even Maxine Waters has very smart staffers. They write the bills and do the work. The pol clowns preen for the cameras. This is a very convenient arrangement for the MIC and the Corporate overlords. Think WWE wrestling…….
The problem is that the System risks losing credibility, as you would think Joe Griller will never believe that Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden can run the country. So it’s an experiment in how far they can push the outer limits of credibility. AS Neil Howe (Fourth Turning) has observed, eventually you get to a crisis and there’s no talent available to confront it.
14
I totally agree there is a spectacular lack of talent, but don’t think it matters at the moment. The need to keep up a good appearance has passed when the likes of Biden and Fetterman can be used as the face of the Regime. When the inevitable crisis comes and things implode, that may matter greatly, but at least for the present it does not. The oligarchs who control us are living in the moment now.
4
Today’s post is a brutal expose´ of what ails us as a nation and a government. Yes, it’s bad and getting worse. Cocaine Mitch is back in business and proudly backstabbing the dirt people everywhere. Should McCarthy find a way to backstab his way to the Speakership, this will complete the doom cycle that began in 2020. So what is the silverlining in this fiasco? We get to the bottom faster. And that means less harm to innocents and a faster rebound.
Soon politics will become a sideshow to the coming Russian Army offensive that will finally put an end to the Ukraine mess and the mRNA genocide should reach critical mass in the next few months as well. And all the normies will be flabbergasted by the speed with which their world of affluence collapses around them. Reality is about to hit like a 2×4 upside the forehead. I sincerely hope that everyone on this board is well prepared, because it’s about to get interesting.
12
This friends/enemies distinction is only partially true. There’s got to be some glue to hold a dissident movement together. You mention forming local Jared Taylor/AmRen clubs similar to other such clubs that begin with fellowship but are then sustained by common values that transcend selling one’s soul to the highest bidder. The test is what happens to those values when these dissident groups begin to exercise some power however limited in scope.
3
I think all of this is theater. The holdouts will soon give in and McCarthy will be speaker. Business as usual in Washington.
6
The holdouts have to be bought. It seems clear at this point they aren’t going to cave just from threats. The fact that this is the first time this has happened in 100 years is notable.
3
“ It is why the right way to view it is as just another carny act on the stage that is liberal democratic politics. It is all sound and fury signifying nothing,”
Perhaps. No argument with your conclusions, but they seem a bit nihilistic. Andy Biggs is our Congress critter. He is often on the air here in the State. He was on the air here this morning. He was questioned as to the current situation. His answer was succinct and simple. He described the current problem with the Rep’s and especially the front runner for speaker McCarthy—basically that McCarthy is a swamp animal who is way too friendly with the opposition, Dem’s. He ended quickly with another simple conclusion, if you want change you start at the top. Biggs promised to never vote for McCarthy.
Now I don’t argue with your observation, Z-man. Only to point out that, as foolhardy as it may be, there are in Congress 20 representatives who seem to recognize the problem and are willing (at this point) to sacrifice their Congressional careers and die on that hill. (And they are putting their careers at risk as they are threatened directly with retaliation.). Biggs states that there has to be a compromise Speaker candidate that can be found among the 238 Rep’s in the House.
I agree with him, but am not overly optimistic. The trad Rep’s on the air are fuming over these few “malcontents”. They also prove your observation Z-man, that the Parties don’t care about the voters. Hugh Hewitt has gone so far as to call these Rep voters who support the “rebellion” as ignorant and not to be listened to. In short, marginalizing them.
There is no joy in this observation for me, only a teaching moment.
2
Progess is evident. The “risk” of the anti-McCarthy gambit is that some Republicans could be induced to defect and support Jefferies, and he becomes Speaker while there is an R majority. The progress is that the base and the GOP holdouts correctly recognize that this isn’t a risk at all. A mere 10 years ago, taking such a “risk” would have been unthinkable.
Another in a long list of Brutal Truths by Z Man. What makes this current situation even more vitriolic than 1860 is the racial/ethnic stew that has been stirred up over the past 50 years. That guy you merely hated a hundred years ago is now someone you want buried alive. This is getting uglier by the day. The New Class don’t play by the old rules.
3
“Once it was clear that the people are too docile to push back against things like lockdowns. . .”
In some defense of the people, they were starting to push back on lockdowns and the “flatten the curve” nonsense.
But then the other hammer was dropped and the media/government unleashed the Floyd rights to smack them back down. Nothing less than ruthless state-sponsored terror. This is what we live under; it’s what we’ve *always* lived under.
1
I followed that link to Eyepatch Dan. Here is what is interesting to me. What I saw there is something you see more and more of. Maybe it was a coincidence. You have Crenshaw and his size 1, snow white assistant, and then from the reporters to the security guards you have Haiti and Bangalore. It is an apt visual.
The radical transformation is well advanced. What is interesting is how this shows how disposable people in the system are. The Hive wants to change color, the order goes out, and faces and the color of them change.
Crenshaw is always the pot calling the kettle black. Last year he was calling his, “enemies”, performers as they took out Liz Cheney and he prepared another on camera lone-wolf Navy Seal Marvel Comic Congressman super hero skydive. Now he is calling them narcissists. I spent a bit of time watching the Claremonters preparation for this. They clearly are housing the faction that does not want McCarthy in and they have some activists very riled up about the FBI abuses.
America got bulldozed and so did the GOP along with it.
I thought these people would be hapless as the economic situation unraveled and expected a three ring circus. I never would have thought that they would have declared themselves illegitimate by calling the nation illegitimate and going after the heritage population with daggers. In prior crisis at least the rhetoric called out to our founding and heritage as sacred and called the people to rally together.
This thing is a suicide mission. I guess those smug and vile vapors of evil that emanated from Obama should’ve been a warning heeded. What is going on here is incredible. The managerial class has given up. It is fitting that the boomers final act is just a re-enactment of the draft/responsible evading, flag burning, anti-American, self-indulgent hippie love fest having college tantrums that they ushered themselves onstage with 6 decades ago.
2