Author Archives: thezman

The Custodial State

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In The Servile State, Hilaire Belloc argued that industrial capitalism would eventually result in a transcendent regulatory regime. This regulatory regime replaces pure capitalism with a system of duties and obligations. Instead of a pure economic relationship between labor, business and the marketplace, a legal relationship is created and enforced by the state. The state, in theory, becomes the arbiter between the economic parties, balancing claims and adjudicating disputes.

This dynamic works as follows. The state, facing popular unrest due to the natural inequality that emerges from capitalism, sets about regulating capital. In order to do that, however, it must also regulate labor. Every new set of rules on capital requires a change or addition to the rules on labor, resulting in a complex web of reciprocal obligations and duties between the state capital and labor.

The regulatory regime that emerges from this dynamic would blur of the lines between the state and capital. The state would protect the interests of capital, while capital would support the interests of the state. Further, the system would require people to work for others, either as labor or as a paternalistic business owner. The business would have legal duties to its workforce and labor would have no choice but to work within the highly regulated system. Everyone is a servant of everyone else.

When Belloc was writing, he did not imagine that the state and capital would have a third element in addition to the economic and legal. That is the spiritual. A century ago, the spiritual was still the explicit domain of churches, which stood outside the economic and legal relationship between the state, capital and labor. Public morality was to some degree enforced by the state, but it was assumed that morality had its roots in the religious traditions. Religion was the ultimate moral authority.

Today, the spiritual is the domain of corporate giants. So-called “woke capital” is an effort to impose an official morality on the public. State sanctioned oligopolies control access to essential services like the internet, banking and the media. The result is anyone falling outside the accepted corporate morality runs the risk of being fired from their job, losing access to essential services and being socially ostracized. Woke capital not only has economic and legal duties. It has spiritual duties, as well.

A good example to see how this works is in professional sports, where the team owners are not just putting on shows for customers. They are expected to provide morality tales to the public within and around the presentation of the games. Owning a sports team is no longer about owning an entertainment business. It’s not just rich guys blowing their millions competing with one another. The sports team is now a public trust, supported with billions in public money, in order to enforce public morality.

Before and during the games, there are mini-performances that “celebrate our democracy” or “celebrate our diversity.” These little shows have no natural place in the game itself. People at a football game don’t care that the teacher of the month is a one-legged gender fluid person of color. No one cares, except for the people in charge of the show, who see the event as a way to promote their morality. The proliferation of pink, for example, is to display the dominance of that cult.

Then you have the regulation of the game itself. A player gets into trouble and the league will investigate. Think about that for a second. Not long ago, it was just assumed that the police and courts did the investigating. If your employer learned you were charged with a crime, they may ask you to resign or maybe take a leave of absence, but only if it was going to be a distraction. Today, your employer believes they own the whole you, even the parts of your life outside of your work.

What Belloc imagined was a world in which labor, business and the state were tied together by a system of positive laws. The obligations on capital and labor would resemble the ancient relationship between the slave and owner. In the ancient world, slavery was a regulated practice. The slave owner had duties to his slaves, like feeding them and providing them with shelter. Of course, the slave was legally and economically obligated to work for his master under the same regulatory regime.

What we are seeing is a slightly different part of the ancient world, the time when the West was transition from the Roman Empire to the medieval period. In the early middle ages, slave owners were often required to tend to the spiritual needs of their slaves by converting them to Christianity or prohibiting them from converting to other religions, especially Judaism. Jews, of course, saw it as their duty to convert their slaves to their faith, despite the law. The slave owner was his slave’s spiritual leader.

That’s the emerging custodial state. Belloc saw that the industrial age allowed for the concentration of capital and the possibility of a servile state. The technological age is allowing for a concentration of power, not just wealth, and therefore the emergence of a custodial state. The massive power centers based in technology and finance are creating a thicket of economic, legal and spiritual obligations between the managerial elite that control these power centers and the people subject to them

You hear it in the language used by the servants of the tech barons. When YouTube or Twitter stages a purge of “hate speech” they send out women and homosexuals, a sort of priestly class in the custodial state, to explain why they had to protect their people from these dangerous purveyors of hate speech. They are not business owners serving customers. They are keepers of a public trust. They have a moral duty, they even say it, to look out for the emotional and spiritual well-being of society.

This is where the social credit system the Trump administration is planning will differ from what is evolving in China. The Chinese communists are far too practical to worry about the spiritual well-being of their people. They do worry about their social cohesion, especially in difficult times. Their system is about suppressing those who will question the party during difficult economic times. The Chinese social credit system is an entirely defensive system to prevent the organization of political opposition.

What is evolving in America is an offensive system. In order to maintain an acceptable social credit score, people will have to actively display their virtue. It’s not unreasonable to think they will be scanning the crowds at sporting events to make sure everyone is properly enthusiastic for the salute to our diversity. Your participation in the company multicultural celebration will go a long way to determining your social credit score, not just your position within the firm. Passivity will not be tolerated.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Dear Z Man

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If you look back in the archive, the last time I did a show on Friday the 13th was April of 2018 and I named the show Triskaidekaphobia. Nothing bad happened that day, as far as I know, so I did not worry much about doing a show this time. Now, I put the show together on Thursday, so it was not really Friday the 13th when I recorded. Maybe a lot of listeners drove off the road while listening or had men wearing hockey masks stalk them while they were enjoying the content. Happy listening today.

I did not do anything on the superstition this week, but I did spend a considerable amount of time discussing the nature of media. That is, the difference between watching content, listening to content and reading content. It is a topic I have thought about from time to time. In fact, whenever I watch a YouTube show I inevitably look at the views, the subscriber counts and start to wonder about the real impact of video. The same thing happens when I look through someone’s Twitter feed.

I’m one of the apostates on this issue. I think Twitter is a waste of energy. I think it is an echo chamber for the most part. The Left gets some benefit as their media, which is all media, monitors it for trends, but otherwise it is screaming into the void. I suspect YouTube is also a waste of resources. Video is a passive medium, so even though a video can get a lot of views, people forget what they saw as soon as they are done watching the video. As a result, video is the least effective medium.

There’s also the issue with the nature of the audience. My guess is smart people tend to read more than watch or listen. Dumb people make up the bulk of the video audience, which has been true of television since forever. Therefore, if you want to influence stupid people, video is the way to go. If you want to impact society in a meaningful way, then you need to persuade smart people and that means the written word. Those YouTube stars are just making money off dummies.

Now, there are exceptions to every general rule. There are smart and clever television shows and there are smart and clever YouTube stars. Stefan Molyneux and Paul Ramsey were pioneers in the field of internet video. They make smart and clever videos on important topics. They would be the exception that proves the rule. The vast majority of YouTube creators are not smart or clever and their audience tends to drool a lot. I doubt the fans of RamZPaul move their lips when reading.

That said, even smart people have been trained by the internet. If you want to influence the culture it means making your ideas consumable on a mobile devise. That’s not to say smart people consume ideas only through their phone. It’s just that like everyone else, their attention span has been diminished by the internet. Smart people are not reading one thousand page books that require hours of quiet contemplation to fully understand, which means a good writer needs to be pithy and economical.

Again, I could be all wrong about this. Whenever I bring it up, I get push back from people who insist we need to go back to quill pens and velum. Then there are those who swear the kids only watch short videos, so that is the future. Both points can’t be true and maybe neither is true. Maybe the reason the pamphleteer has been an indispensable part of politics since the printing press is that the most effective way to change someone’s mind is with a short explication of your position.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 02:00: Diversity
  • 10:00: Medium & Message
  • 23:00: Mexico
  • 27:00: Good Writing
  • 30:00: The Wammins
  • 35:00: The CQ
  • 39:00: Metal
  • 45:00: Industrial Policy
  • 49:00: No Principles
  • 50:00: Thank You

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

Reformers, Restorers & Revolutionaries

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American politics is often cast as a battle between wreckers and restorers, taking turns at the helm of state. The wreckers are the do-gooders on the Left, who push through a bunch of ill-considered, by well-intentioned reforms that end poorly. The restorers are the so-called conservatives on the Right, who come in to clean up the mess and restore things back to order. Political history is often described in these terms, even by the people on the Left, who focus on the good intentions.

It is, of course, another example of how both sides of the Progressive orthodoxy serve the interests of the whole. The Left side gets to fashion itself as the good-hearted reformers, but are in too much of hurry to save the world. Their colleagues on the Right, of course, get to play the daddy role, coming in after the mess was made to be the sober minded restorer of order. It’s the classic sit-com model of the funny, scatter- brained wife with the frustrated husband as the straight man.

The funny thing about this model is the base of both sides never accepts this dynamic, instead seeing themselves more as revolutionaries and romantics. The hard Left dreams of flattening the global order to build a new world order around Gaia worship or possibly a matriarchy. The popularity of Ocasio-Cortez is based in the assumption of her followers that she is anti-white and will therefore usher in a world without white people. They clearly seek a radically different world than the present.

On the Right, something similar is true. The base conservative is not looking to fix the mess made by the Left. They want to roll back the last fifty years of cultural revolution, getting back to an America that looks like the 1950’s. If you asked most of the so-called movement conservatives, they would say they want to roll the political order back to the 18th century, the way the Founders intended. These are romantics, not restorers. They want to go back to another age, not live in this one.

Pillow talk to their base, while playing both sides against one another, is how the American political class has functioned for the last three generations. The Democrats figure out how to get a majority and push through some reforms, which never work as intended or satisfy the base. The majority falls apart and the Republicans come in to preserve the real reforms, while cleaning up the collateral damage and telling their base they plan to roll all of it back. This never happens, of course.

The health care reform package passed under the reign of Obama is a pretty good example of how this works. The bill was supposed to fix the American health care system, by lowering everyone’s costs, giving free care to everyone, who needs it, while giving everyone on the supply side a raise. This was lunacy, but it passed and the wheels came off the cart quickly. The republicans promised to repeal it, which they never did, despite have two years under Trump to do it.

Again, it was all a charade from the jump. The original bill was about punishing Christian organizations, hated by certain elements of the Left, while taking care of the wealthy interest profiting from their health care monopolies. The so-called reforms by the conservatives stripped a few onerous provisions from Christians, but kept all the goodies for the monopolists. Health care reform tuned out to be a bipartisan scam on the public that profited the health care rackets.

The truth is, the American political system has evolved to prevent both the revolutionary and the romantic from ever getting power. The one thing these two types have in common is they are at war with the present. The former wants to race into a glorious future, disconnected from the present. The latter wants to go back to a glorious past, but a radically different past, one where they possess the foresight their ancestors lacked. It is a past with a better future.

This is precisely why the people reigning over the neo-liberal political order are in such a panic over the rise of dissident politics. The numbers may be small, but the dissident right legitimatizes the radical Left. Put another way, by marginalizing radicals and anathematizing an authentic Right, the political class saps both sides of legitimacy, therefore maintaining a monopoly on legitimacy and political power. An authentic Right results in an authentic Left and the end of the present orthodoxy.

This is, perhaps, why the interwar years in Europe hold such a fascination with modern political thinkers, despite the lack of relevance. After the cataclysm that was the Great War, the old order had lost its legitimacy. Into the void rushed Bolshevism, the radicals, and Fascism, the romantics. The commies wanted to build their glorious future on the ruins of the past. The Fascists wanted to wind back the clock, recapturing the glory of the past, but with the lessons that led to the horrible present.

Another way of viewing that period is as a battle between Bolshevism and Fascism for how best to rule the industrial West. The communist embraced extreme egalitarianism, in theory, while Fascism embraced extreme hierarchy, in practice. Liberal democracy was not an alternative to Bolshevism or the enemy of Fascism. It was a compromise between the two. In theory, liberal democracy combines the virtues of egalitarianism, the democracy, with those of hierarchy in the form of meritocracy.

What we are witnessing and to a small degree a part of, is the decline of the old democratic order, as both an alternative Left and an alternative Right emerge from the shadows of post-Cold War America. Just as Fascism and Bolshevism were a battle over how best to rule the industrial West, the coming fight will be about how best to manage the West in the demographic and technological era. The reformers and restorers will be sidelined, while the revolutionaries square off to decide the future.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Brought To You By The Letter R

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Something you cannot help but notice, if you spend time scanning the political sites, is the growth of sponsored content. Breitbart will often have stories labeled “Sponsored Content” at the top, but otherwise they look like the rest of their stuff. This is content they are paid to post on their site. In the case of political sites, this content is generated by an industry group or lobbyists, who then pay the site for the opportunity to post the content, much like an advertiser. Hence the name “sponsored content.”

There is also something called “white box” content in the trade, which means it comes without attribution. Someone or some group with an agenda will produce a story and either give it to a site or pay them to take it. Part of the deal is the site gets to claim it as its own work. They will format it to their style and put the name of a writer they claim as their own the byline. The anti-BDS people use this to place stories unfavorable to the BDS movement into so-called conservative publications.

This is dishonest, at the very minimum, but it is a common enough practice that no one seems to care about it. Just how much content on these political sites is produced by concerned interests in Washington is hard to know. The stuff labeled as sponsored content is easy to spot, but the white box stuff is a mystery. Some of this white box content is quietly provided directly to friendly freelance writers, so even the site publishers do not know the real author of these pieces.

For example, how much of Cathy Young’s work is truly her own? Her content is clearly from a very specific perspective. It coincidentally matches perfectly with people like Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Bret Stephens and other neocons. Oddly, these people push an agenda the Left violently opposed not so long ago, yet all of these people now work for far left scandal sheets like the Washington Post. In the case of Young, she turns up in so-called conservative sites and far Left sites. What versatility!

There’s another aspect to the political writing game. This is the part tangled up in the Washington hackarama. This is where political consultants, connected individuals and members of the permanent political class use the political sites as a form of advertising for their services. They produce content for the sites and either give it away or in some cases pay for access on the sly. Instead of representing some anonymous interests, the point is to get their name in circulation.

An example of this is a recent article in National Review. It is a post suggesting Huey Long deserved to be murdered because he was a populist and everyone knows populists are the worst people. The writer is listed as Ellen Carmichael, “the president of The Lafayette Company, a political-communications firm.” A few minutes searching around and you will learn that she started in local Louisiana politics right out of diapers and has now moved to Washington as a consultant.

One way to get her name out to potential clients is to post stories suggesting things about her partisanship, her ideas and so forth in the sorts of sites read by people in the political business. At this point, National Review has no audience outside of Republican politics. It is pretty much a trade magazine now. They are happy to take this sort of content, as it is cheap and it fits in with their model, which is to wield as little influence over American politics as possible, while remaining in business.

Now, this is just one example, but multiply this, the sponsored content and the white box content over hundreds of times a month. It is not unreasonable to think that a large portion of what shows up on political sites is created by the hackarama. A lot of the cable news content is produced this ways, as well. For example, all of the Middle East content on mainstream sites is probably the work of The Lobby. Whether through friendly writers or directly through their own staff, it’s all agit-prop now.

From the dissident perspective, this is a useful starting point when discussing politics with normal people. Most readers of normie conservative sites are unaware of the fact lots of the content is really just product placement. The fans of Ben Shapiro don’t know he is pretty much just an actor, hired to promote certain positions. Instead of harping on the latter, the way to awaken normie is to talk about the former. Your Boomer uncle may love Israel, but he really hates being lied to, so go with that.

This may seem like another good reason to burn Washington to the ground, put the inhabitants to the sword and salt the earth afterwards, but that is a foregone conclusion at this late stage. It is another example of how the political system is corrupt beyond any reasonable hope of reform. Washington is a closed system ruled by a uniparty of permanent residents. It’s the Borg. When parts die off or are expelled as waste, new people are absorbed and assimilated into the system.

This reality of Washington is important to understand when examining the Trump administration. He came to town promising to reform Washington, but the Imperial Capital is beyond reform. It operates like a unitary organism now. Any attempt at reform will unleash antibodies to isolate and kill the foreign object. Those antibodies show up in the media. Washington now exists solely to perpetuate itself. To reform it is to kill it, which is no longer reform, but another word that begins with the letter R.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

The Louder He Talked Of His Honor

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Last week, Catholic University hosted a showdown, of sorts, between David French and Sohrab Ahmari. Their dispute started when Ahmari posted this piece on First Things, declaring jihad against Frenchism, which he described as a passive-aggressive approach to the culture war with the Left. It got a lot of attention in conservative circles, mostly because they were happy that anyone was talking about them at all. Here is the video of the show down and here is a summary from American Conservative.

The event itself was typical of the pseudo-academic culture you see around conservative politics at this level. There is the superficial collegiality and the carrying on like this is a meeting of two intellectual giants. An essential element of this culture is the displaying of credentials, as well as the recognition of those credentials. That’s why the opening was like dogs sniffing each other’s butts at the park. Ahmari brought a gift to signal his submissiveness to French, who he considers a superior.

This is, of course, why French agreed to the thing in the first place. He was certainly told that Ahmari is a light weight, who could land a few punches, but was incapable of delivering any hard blows. Ahmari appears to be a guy, who has sampled dissident writing, but is not well versed in the arguments against Buckley conservatism. As a result he was left to flail around while French was able to safely keep the conversation to theoretical topics, rather than the failings of Buckley conservatism.

That is, of course, a game the Buckleyites learned from libertarians. When the conversation is about practical issues, like fighting the Left over cultural turf, they shift the focus to theory. When confronted on theory, they take a deep dive into the weeds of some narrow policy topic. That’s what French was doing with Ahmari. He kept shifting the topics to legalism and constitutional theory, in order to avoid talking about the fact that conservatism has been a colossal, multi-generational failure.

That’s what was a bit disappointing about Ahmari’s performance. A better equipped debater, a dissident for example, would have turned French’s arguments back on him with relative ease. His claim that the Founders wanted a neutral public space, for example, is laughable nonsense. The Founders were white Christians, who assumed they were founding a white Christian country. More important, they were practical men who understood what was required to maintain their people.

Think about it. These were men who revolted against the prevailing order, against centuries of tradition, in order to impose their way of life on their lands. Not only were they willing to overthrow centuries of tradition, they were willing to kill their countrymen in order to found their nation. They were also quite explicit in their motives. They founded a nation for their people and their posterity. By the definitions of today, definitions David French supports, the Founders were white nationalists.

Of course, the neutral public space argument is a justification for not fighting the Left over cultural turf. By claiming a principled claim in support of an open and neutral public space, it rules out doing anything that could actually win the fight. After all, defending the public square from complete domination by the Left, means pushing them out of some portion of it. That would violate the sacred principles of principled conservatives, so they not only refuse to do it, they prevent others from doing it.

Something that never gets mentioned by dissidents is that this line of reasoning contradicts basic Christian teaching. To cede the public space on principle is to agree, in advance, to not proselytize. To preach and proselytize means staking out space in the public square, regardless of the consequences. The very founding of the Christian faith was on the bones of those, who martyred themselves to spread the word of Jesus Christ in the face of violent opposition.

That of course, raises the question as to just how sincere David French is in his religious conviction. He waves his Christian faith around almost as much as he waves around his military service, yet he is not willing to risk much for it. The Gospels are pretty clear on this point. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus instructed the rich to give away their riches and follow him. Surely, salvation is worth some principles.

This is where dissident Christians can find a niche in dissident politics. There is a long tradition of Christians preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of fierce opposition from authority. To be a dissident is to reject the authority of the prevailing orthodoxy. To be a dissident Christian is to know the source of all authority. The way forward to a society built around natural association is also the path to a society where Christians can proselytize and lead their fellow man to salvation.

This is what the backers of Frenchism fear. A militant, optimistic and aggressive Christianity would be wildly attractive to disaffected white youth. Imagine young guys in camo flash mobbing public events, while reading Scripture. Imagine them employing the protest tactics of the Left, but in favor of faith. That’s why millions are poured into Christian groups to advocate the surrender model. Their leaders get very rich while leading their flocks away from the public space.

None of this is new material, which is why David French has become the clown nose of Buckley conservatism. It’s not about ideology or theology with this guy. David Frenchism is about celebrating the choices of David French. From his adoption of an African to his JAG service, it’s always about his public acts of piety. That’s what jumps out from the video of that event. Watching him in action, the line from Emerson comes to mind. “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

The Collapse Of Authority

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The cancer eating away at the modern West is a lack of authority to which people can point to judge public policy, public debate on those polices, as well as the reactions to those policies and debates. As a result, debate has degraded into various camps striking poses, usually by signaling their unhappiness with the pose of other camps in the public sphere. The lack of an agreed upon authority means there is no way to judge the merits of any claim. Instead, it leaves force to resolve disputes.

A good recent example is the neocon opposition to Trump. These people are entirely defined by their hysterical reaction to Trump. There is no substantive issue around which they base their opposition. They are not pointing to ideological authority, tradition or even rules within the party. Their opposition to Trump rests on no authority other than their emotional reaction. That’s not an appeal to authority. It is a tantrum, the sort of thing you expect from toddlers. It is also the norm in the public space.

Now, there are two types of authority. One rises from objective knowledge accumulated over time about the natural world. An authority on engineering is someone, who has been trained as an engineer. His credentials are determined by meeting a set of objective criteria, like engineering exams, but also by remaining in good standing with other engineers. The same is true of all areas of expertise. These are the authorities on what is or what is not empirically true about their area of expertise.

In this regard, the West is in surplus. No matter the specialty, you can find someone who knows the material and can explain what is known about the topic. If you have an interest in statistics, you can find books written for every level of reader. You can find on-line courses covering just about any bit of knowledge you seek. If you have a desire to read Homer in the original, you can take on-line courses in ancient Greek. When it comes to what is factually true about the world, we have a surplus.

Where there is a shortage is in the area of what ought to be. What is true in the world is a very different thing than what ought to be true. What is true does not rely on a human authority to make it true. It does not need a supernatural authority to validate it. Two plus two will always be four as long as the universe exists. What ought to be true, however, relies on people, either as the authority or the voice of authority. This is the basis of moral codes, hierarchy, dissent and the collective action of society.

For most of Western history, religion was the authority upon which society relied to determine what ought to be. In the early Middle Ages, there was a great debate about the nature of that authority. That finally was settled and the Catholic Church was the worldly manifestation of that authority. After the Reformation, that authority was eroded, but replaced with Scripture as the source of authority. The story of the West, until the Industrial Age, was the story of Christian authority over man.

Of course, Christianity is a relatively new thing, so there have been other sources of authority in the West. The authority of blood is a universal. The great men of a people rise to the top of society. Their descendants, having inherited their great qualities, are assumed to be a source of authority. The king may not have done anything other than be born to the right father, but he has the magic blood. If it turns out that it did not take or the magic has lost its power, someone new must come along.

That’s where tradition fills in the gaps. The king’s heir may be less than the king, but the institutions that rose up around the king are now invested with authority. The reason the heir should be king, the reason he and no one else ought to have final authority, is this is how it has always been done. Tradition is probably the most powerful source of authority, as it assumes the is, as well as the ought. The custom, through trial and error, is proven to be the best, so it ought to be maintained.

In the current age, normal religion has been sidelined, not only as a source of authority, but as a legitimate part of public discourse. Fifty years ago, a public discussion of morality would have had representatives of various faiths to discuss what ought to be according their religions. A century ago those representatives would have provided authority for the current morality. Today, no public debate about moral issues, about what ought to be, includes religion, much less priests or theologians.

Tradition, of course, is by default eliminated from consideration. Much of what is passed off as public discourse is really a debate about how best to tear down the remaining traditions of society. The entirety of Progressive thought can be symbolized by the toppling over of statues on the college campus. The only thing they insist ought to be true is that truth itself must be overturned. Progressive morality, such as it is, is both the negation of moral truth and the denial of objective reality.

A world without authority, especially an agreed upon authority, is anarchy, but humans naturally retreat from anarchy. This is because anarchism is just mob rule. The ideal of anarchism is the mob mutually and magically agreeing to not murder one another, while the reality of it is the mob demanding authority to bring order. It is why democracy, which is just mob rule, is always a transition state. It is the period between the respect for natural, hierarchical authority and authoritarianism.

An example of this from history is the slow collapse of the Western Roman Empire, first into constant warfare, then into chaos and finally into the anarchy of local authority in the early medieval period. The end of the republic was not the end of a natural authority in Rome. The rulers still had to respect the gods and traditions. It is when those sources of authority collapsed that the end was clear for the Empire. The subsequent rise of the West was the rise of authority, Christian authority.

The modern West is undergoing the same sort of collapse of authority. Christianity, like the pagan faiths of the ancient world, has receded to the fringe. Tradition and hierarchy has given way to mob rule and force. What’s missing from the analogy is a new religion that provides a coherent order to the gathering chaos. Progressivism is an anti-religion, in that does not provide order to the natural world. Instead it preaches a denial of order and the denial of reason. It’s a primitive revolt against the natural order.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

A Call Up To The Bigs

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I had the honor of guest hosting FTN this week. McFeels was off attending to some personal issues, so I joined Ethnarch to discuss the news of the day. It is hard to know for sure, but FTN could be the most popular show in dissident media. Stefan Molyneux has a huge YouTube audience, but it is hard to compare video to audio. The two mediums attract different audiences. Just in terms of overall audience though, FTN is in the conversation for the most popular dissident show.

I don’t do many guest appearances and I’ve never been the co-host in this sort of format, so I was unsure how I would do. There is a skill to being a guest, a skill I do not have in abundance. Working with a partner not only requires guest skill, but it requires good chemistry with the partner. Ethnarch and I worked together quite well, at least from my perspective, so I think the show came out OK. Usually I’m tired after doing a guest spot, as I have to be on edge the whole time. This was rather relaxing.

One of the things Ethnarch and I discussed after recording is just how much time is involved in producing these shows. I was curious as to what was involved in putting together a three hour show about current events. A general rule is it takes 10 hours to produce one hour and that’s the case with FTN. Prep time has about ten hours of time to pull together the news items and the show outline. Recording is between four and five hours and then there is post-production to get the show up.

The prep time is what goes unnoticed by the consumer. For this week’s show, Ethnarch collected fifty or sixty stories. He collated them into categories and then organized them for easy transition from theme to theme. He told me he usually has over 100 stories in the stack of stuff for the show, but this was a light week. The listener just hears two guy talking about the news, but to reach that point means reading hundreds of stories and filtering them into a show outline. That’s a lot of work each week.

Of course, this means FTN is close to a full time commitment for McFeels and Ethnarch, as they do at least two shows a week. It’s why terrestrial radio shows can have half a dozen people in the production side. Three hours a day of airtime is 150 man hours a week in prep and production. Throw in the logistics of operating a studio and the business side of things and your drive time radio guy is a small business. A regular TV show qualifies as a mid-sized business, in terms of people and expense.

That said, for a show to have any import, it has to be a professional production. If it slapped together, the audience will just assume the makers are not serious. It’s like a house with a poorly kept lawn. People drive past and assume things about the owner based on the exterior of the home. Inside could be an immaculate palace and the shabby lawn is an exception, but people don’t think that way. The same is true of a podcast of video show. Poor production implies poor quality.

This is why livestream is never going to be serious. Two or three dudes standing in their respective bedrooms, staring into a cheap camera looks bad. The solo live streams often look like hostage videos. In contrast, guys like RamZPaul and James Allsup produce high quality video, because they know what they are doing. They understand how the viewer consumes video and how they appear in their videos. That requires a skill few live streamers possess. It’s a medium for amateurs right now.

There is a generational issues here, so I could be exhibiting a bias. A Gen-X person grew up with limited video. Cable came on strong in our teen years, but we did not grow up with our face pressed to a screen like today’s youth. Young people love using face time. Someone my age thinks it is weird. Why do I need to see the person I’m talking to on my phone? For young people, the live stream may simply be a natural way of consuming content, so I could be all wrong on the future of live streaming.

I think there is a debate to be had about what is the real impact of various media platforms, with regards to dissident politics. Social media is a closed space. The influence of Twitter and Facebook is entirely dependent on mass media picking up social media trends. That makes them worthless for dissidents. On the other hand, how much impact do YouTube creators or podcasters have? What is the impact of 50,000 views on YouTube versus the same number of readers?

If you look at some of the big YouTube guys, someone like Stefan Molyneux, for example, the ratio of views to subs is interesting. He has close to a million subs, but his videos rarely get 50,000 views. How reliable are those numbers? Who is actually viewing those videos? If his fan base is mostly libertarians, then his impact is negligible, as no one cares about libertarians. I don’t have any answers on this, but it is a topic worth exploring, so I’ll probably explore it at some point.

All that aside, the way forward in dissident media is to keep increasing the quality and the quantity of dissident media. That means not only bringing in new people, but also upgrading the skill base. Every time someone in dissident media gets in trouble, it’s because they relied on non-dissident talent. Laura Southern dropped out of the scene because she was compromised by two video guys she hired. Spencer’s media efforts have always blown up due, in part, to his relying on crazy people.

As far as the show this week, I think it came out pretty well, but I’m not the best judge of these things. The main reason is I do a solo show every week, so I don’t know how to measure myself as part of a duo. We spent most of the first hour covering immigration related items. The second hour we got into trade with China and how that relates to the culture war. We also talked about Bloody Eye Biden and the democratic primary. The link to the show is here or you can listen to it in the player below.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Wammin’s World

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For the first show after the short summer break, I decided to go with a topic that I think is going to be a major theme of 2020. I wrote a post the other day suggesting that the 2020 election will be both one last hurrah for the Woodstock generation, as well as a modern battle of the sexes. We thought the wammin issue was settled when Trump dropped a house on Hillary Clinton in 2016, but it looks like her ideological soulmate will be the nominee for 2020, so the wammin war will continue.

The interesting thing about this renewed war on the sexes is it will no doubt be covered exclusively from the female perspective. Since the media assumes the female perspective is youngish, single and urban, rather than middle-aged, married and suburban, which is closer to reality, the reporting will reflect the feminist lunacy we have come to associate with the issue. Trump did about the same with women in 2016 as Obama did in 2012, but the media assumes women hate Trump anyway.

Where Trump won the 2016 election was with men, specifically white men. He doubled the Obama 2012 margin and did as well as Bush with white men. If you are building a case for Trump winning in 2020, it starts with Warren winning the nomination. Men do not like her and it appears blacks are not enthusiastic about her. Warren seems to poll worse than Clinton with those two groups. On the other hand, she seems to cast a magic spell on professional women. I have a segment on that this week.

The thing about the war of the sexes is that it is really a war on normal women. When you examine the arguments from the Left and from feminists, not a lot of it is aimed at changing male behavior that is beneficial to women. Mostly it is aimed at eliminating the protections a healthy society has for its women. The resulting social breakdown creates more unhappy women, who can then be recruited into the coven of feminism. To what end, other than collapse, is never articulated.

One media note. This weekend I will be filling in on the FTN weekend broadcast. I will be co-hosting with Ethnarch, covering the news of the day. I’m not sure if Allsup will be on, but it could just be the two of us. The whiny millennials, who always moan about Boomers will be treated to some rugged Gen-X posting.  Maybe it will toughen some of you sissies up a little bit. The site is here and I’ll post a link to it here once they post it up on their site. It should be up Saturday evening.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 02:00: The War On Wammin (Link)
  • 12:00: Warren Wammin (Link)
  • 22:00: A Return To Normalcy (Link)
  • 32:00: Wammin’s Work (Link) (Link) (Link)
  • 42:00: One Less Airhead Work (Link)
  • 47:00: The Crotch Warrior (Link)
  • 52:00: Wamminhood (Link)
  • 57:00: Closing (Link)

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

Conspiracy

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In America, conspiracy theories have always had a negative connotation, despite being the heart of most Hollywood thrillers and action films. The conspiracy theorist is someone, who is excessively distrustful, yet willing to accept massive leaps of logic to explain everyday phenomenon. They will also be very paranoid. After all, anyone who is onto the grand conspiracy is going to be seen as a threat by the conspirators and the powers that be, so the conspiracy theorist is always under threat.

It’s a funny dynamic, when you think about it. The elaborate, often ridiculous, conspiracy is the heart of so many popular movies and TV shows, yet the conspiracy theorists is a wacko and threat to society. Alex Jones had to be removed from the internet, due to being a conspiracy monger. Added to this is fake news spread on social media, which is a form of rumor designed to create conspiracies and conspiracy theorists. This trope is now so real, the US military has been assigned to tackle it.

Of course, fake news and conspiracy theories are a matter of perspective. For the Left, a conspiracy theory is any explanation that does not support their agenda. Trump secretly colluding with invisible Russians to mind control voters in the 2016 election is a perfectly rational explanation for his victory. People wondering why senior FBI men were colluding with foreign intelligence agencies to spy in the Trump campaign is a dangerous conspiracy theory, probably started by Russians.

Now, many, if not most, conspiracy theories are nutty and designed to get attention for the conspiracy theorist. That’s why Alex Jones exists. He figured out that if he entertainingly talked about conspiracies, he could generate a big audience willing to pay to see him perform. Red Ice, the popular alt-right YouTube show started life as a conspiracy theory outlet. Their stock and trade early on was space aliens and the paranormal. As Hollywood knows, conspiracy is good box office.

A funny thing about most hard core conspiracy theorists though, is they don’t have a lot of interest in genuine conspiracies. There are, after all, real conspiracies. They are common in politics, as politics is the business of plotting in secret to undermine opponents. Without conspiracies, there is no politics. Boris Johnson just learned this the other day when some of his colleagues plotted against him. These sorts of plots, however, have no interest to the conspiracy theorists.

Think about the two big conspiracies of the current year. We have the seditious coup plotted by senior elements of the security agencies. Then there is the on-going cover-up involving two attorneys general and two FBI directors. This is Cassius and Brutus plotting against Caesar, in terms of import and drama, yet the popular conspiracy mongers are not all that interested in the story. You would think the conspiracy guys would be all over it, just as proof that conspiracy are real.

Another conspiracy that seems to have gained little traction with the conspiracy community is the strange life and death of Jeffrey Epstein. Probably the most bizarre and salacious story in half a century, involving shadowy figures in the over class, has generated little interest from the conspiracy mongers. The weird thing about the Epstein case is it got more attention from the conspiracy theorists when he was just a shadowy fixer, than when he was the victim of a conspiracy.

You could easily write a couple of books on the conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks. If you google “dancing Israelis” you get page after page of links to sites covering that angle. Ryan Dawson has done dozens of videos on it. These guys are examining beard hair patterns in grainy photos to prove their claims. Philip Giraldi has written extensively on the subject. This two decade old story still gets plenty of attention from the conspiracy community, but current conspiracies get none.

This suggests a couple of things about the sorts of people who become obsessed with conspiracy theories. One is they like the leaps of logic required to tie the various facts together in the narrative. It’s like a solving a puzzle for them. Finding a picture of Person X in the same room as Person Y, who they have already connected to the event, allows them to “solve” some great riddle. The fact that person X and Person Y have no known connection, other than the photo, makes it all the better.

The other thing about the conspiracy people is they eschew certainty. The typical conspiracy theory has lots of ambiguity and uncertainty. On top of that, it has multiple explanations operating in parallel. Where one narrative runs out of road, another narrative picks up from there to connect to another narrative. In a real conspiracy, like the FBI scandal, there are real facts. If all of the classified documents are ever made public, which will never happen, everyone will know what happened.

That’s the funny thing about the critics of conspiracy theories. They claim that these theories are popular because people like simple answers. That is probably a conspiracy there itself. People don’t like simple answers. If they did, Hollywood thrillers would feature no plot, just stuff exploding in between sex scenes. The truth is, people hate simple answers and conspiracy theorists really hate simple answers. The people who prefer an orderly world with no ambiguity are the critics of the conspiracy theorists.

All of this leads to the conclusion that the best way to keep prying eyes from looking to close at your shenanigans is make it look like a conspiracy. Make sure to have a few villainous looking characters and lots of contradictory elements. This will attract the conspiracy people looking to make bank on it. This will then attract the anti-conspiracy people, looking to debunk the conspiracy theorists. The back and forth will allow you to get away with your scheme and enjoy a quiet retirement on Nantucket.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

The Fraud Of Democracy

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One of the features of the current year is the regular reminder that western style democracy is a complete fraud. According to the political class, democracy allows for public policy to reflect the will of the people. The parties put forward candidates offering various policy proposals and the public signals their preferences by voting for one or the other candidates. The winners then set about trying to implement the policies they proposed. That’s how we’re told representative democracy works.

In reality, nothing like this happens. Instead, the parties put on a show for the voters, rarely intending to actually do what they claim. Instead, they manufacture differences between one another, so they can pretend the choice before the voters is stark. Once the election is over, the politicians go back to living their lives of leisure, waiting for instructions from the people who actually run things. The politicians are like robot actors, brought out for elections, then put back in storage.

The obvious example of this is the most recent American presidential election in which Donald Trump scored a stunning upset on the promise to reduce immigration, crackdown in illegal immigration and address the gross inequality resulting from globalization. So far, none of that has been done. Instead, he spent most of his presidency fighting a seditious coup to get him out of office. In fact, Trump’s three years are pretty much what Jeb Bush promised when he was running in the 2016 primary.

Notice that hardly anyone in either political party is terribly conce3rned about the FBI plot to overturn the election. Sure, there are a few lonely voices on the Republican side asking questions and demanding transparency. They have no support from leadership. On the Democrat side, they are actively colluding with the plotters to cover up the affair. One would think the people subject to the voters would care about the integrity of the process, but you would be wrong. The revealed preferences are on full display.

An ugly as the Trump era has been, it is civil and decent compared to what is happening in Europe. The Italians are now watching their political class submarine the will of the people in an egregious series of deceits by the Five Star Movement. The Italians voted for a populist, anti-EU coalition. Instead, the Five Star Movement cut a deal with the internationalist, pro-EU party to sabotage the nationalists. The result is the exact opposite of what the people voted for in their last election.

In Britain, the government put a choice before the people back in 2016, as to whether remain in the EU or become an independent nation again. The public chose nationhood by a respectable margin. In any democracy, getting 52% of the vote, particularly in a highly popular election, is a solid majority. Here we are, more than three years on, and the political class is still debating whether to accept the election results. In other words, the elected officials are deciding whether the election results matter.

To make matters worse, you now have members of one party actively colluding with members of other parties to undermine the orderly process in Parliament. Up until this week, the “remainers” could plausibly claim they are operating within the democratic process, despite thwarting the will of the people. Britain is not a pure democracy, so the pols have some leeway. Now, they are in active revolt against the system that they are sworn to uphold, in an effort to upend the result of the Brexit referendum.

In all of these cases, the question that never gets asked in the media is who is bribing these people to carry on this way. The most likely reason Five Star finked on its voters is the leaders too bribes from Brussels. In Britain, the “remainers” are certainly on the payroll of global enterprise. Those paymasters are most likely foreign. In the United States, of course, both political parties are wholly owned by the donor party. No one in the media bothers looking into it, as they are owned by the oligarchs as well.

The tell is that these shenanigans always work one way. You’ll never see the party of the globalist suddenly have a crisis of conscience and defect to the nationalists. It’s always the other way. There are no “remainers” siding with the Brexiteers in order to respect the will of the people, despite their own misgivings. In Washington, no globalists have switched teams to support Trump. In the charade that is democracy, the fink is always played by the same character in exactly the same way.

The reason we never see a politician break ranks in order to support the popular will against his own side is that western democracy is a fraud. Elections are a beard worn by the oligarchy to fool the public. The public space is filled with drama and outrage, drawing in the public. It is the circus half of the bread and circuses. Meanwhile, the oligarchs, most of whom are now foreign to the people over whom they rule, exercise the real power of the supposedly national governments of the West.

In the United States, both political parties are funded by the same people. For example, anyone questioning the endless wars for Israel gets pilloried, because Israel runs a massive lobbying operation to buy off both political parties. They work this racket in other Western countries as well. The tech giants operate in violation of the laws and civil order, because they own the politicians of both parties. Of course, the commentariat is being paid by the same people to maintain the fraud.

Every society has an elite. This is the natural state of mankind. In a democracy, this reality is concealed from the public. Instead, it is one man, one vote. The people decide public policy. In reality, it is a handful of men and your votes mean nothing. Worse yet, those oligarchs pulling the strings are wholly unaccountable. They don’t have to answer to the public. Instead, they pay flunkies and coat holders to do it. Democracy is a fraud to distract the public, while their society is looted by oligarchs.

The worst part of it is the public, instead of peering behind the charade to see the string pullers, vents its anger on the actors. In 2016 the public voted against the status quo in the form of Donald Trump. Angry at that result, they voted for his opposition party in 2018, as a punishment against his party for their intransigence. In 2020, the public will probably throw Trump out for someone promising something different, but the result will be the same. The result is always the same. Democracy is a fraud.

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. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. 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. 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, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!