Author Archives: thezman

The Arc Of Trust

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In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was running for president, the people planning to vote for him were sure the media was biased against him. They focused only on the bad stuff and ignored the good stuff. The people voting for Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, thought the bias claim was absurd. They thought the media played it as fair as was possible in a matter of opinion. The big media players went out of their way to prove that they were just neutral observers reporting the facts.

It seems quaint today, but if you wrote your local newspaper complaining about unequal treatment, you could expect a reply pointing out the examples in the newspaper of both sides of the debate. If not a direct reply, there would be a length reply in the letters column addressing the issue. Newspaper columnists would often take the time to address the “alleged bias in the media”. Back then, it was important to the media that people thought they were neutral observers.

Fast forward twenty years and the people planning to vote for Bush still thought the media was biased, but by that point, conservatives were so sure of the bias they no longer felt a need to prove it. The center of gravity with regards to the media had shifted after the Clinton years. Even the people who were voting for Gore conceded that many parts of the media were biased, but their new line was that “right-wing” media, like Fox News and Drudge, was just as biased.

In twenty years, we moved from a world in which the consensus was that the media was mostly honest but a little biased to a world in which the consensus was the media was biased in favor of one side. Put another way, a tin foil hat crazy in 1980 thought the New York Times was out to get their guy, while in 2000 a tin foil hat crazy thought Fox News controlled public opinion. By this point, the mass media was no longer trying to prove they were neutral observers.

Twenty years on from the Bush election, everyone to the right of Hillary Clinton looks at the media as the marketing department for the DNC. Further, the only people who think the media is not deliberately lying about everything are the nutters who watch conspiracy outlets like MSNBC or CNN. The most popular “conservative” TV media performer is Tucker Carlson who dedicates a fair chunk of his airtime to pointing out the litany of lies that come from the mass media.

In isolation it is not a very interesting thing, but the media is a canary in the coal mine for the state of the culture. Forty years ago, most people thought they could trust the important institutions of society. Wackos were the ones claiming the government was covering up conspiracies and doing nefarious things in the shadows. The bulk of the population trusted the system, even while acknowledging the flaws. After all, humans are not perfect, so no system is perfect.

Today, the center point on the trust scale is over toward the lack of trust end but it depends upon the institution in question. Few people trust the media, so the center is way over on the skeptical end. Most people think the government is a blend of incompetence and dishonesty, but many still think the system can work with the right people in charge of it. Big business is another institution whose trust has collapsed, especially among right-wing people.

At this point on the timeline, the military, the economy, and technology are the only three institutions that people generally trust. Despite twenty years of failure, people still think the military can defeat any enemy if allowed to do their best. White people still proudly send their sons to fight. That is changing as it becomes clear that the people in charge are rabidly antiwhite and jarringly incompetent. We may be in the midst of a great sea change in white attitudes about the military.

That leaves the economy and technology as the things most people think they can trust to be what they claim. The bad news gets all of the attention, but most people still live pretty well in this country. Inflation and shortages are concerning, but most people accept that it is just temporary and will work itself out in time. Similarly, despite the damage done by the Covidians, people still trust technology to come up with reliable solutions to problems. The vaccination rate is proof of that.

The fact is people can remain content as long as their bellies are full, and they feel secure in their person. The lunacy of the Covid response was annoying, but few people felt it threatened their way of life. People were not being evicted from their homes or going without food. The entertainments were maintained, so they had things to keep them occupied while stuck at home. The Juvenal quote gets overused but that is because it is true. The last two years have proved it.

The question, however, is can a society keep the bread and circuses going when trust in the main institutions is collapsing? Trust in the economic system is a function of its relative performance. If no one trusts the political system or the mass media that promotes it, can we survive a serious economic downturn? Can we survive learning that much of what we were told about Covid was a lie? Can we still trust the economic system when we are ruled by corporate oligarchs?

The point of this is that when you take a long view, relative to a human lifespan, it is hard to see a bright future for the American empire. The arc of trust now bends inexorably toward a world where only fools trust their institutions. The future is a world where no one can trust anything or anyone and the only way to maintain order is through force. If the people at the top of the institutions see it this way, it would explain why they are so enthusiastic for authoritarianism.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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. 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.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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.

Crisis Of Culture

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214

Imagine you are interviewing for a job and during the course of the initial interview you learn that the future boss is a big fan of F1 racing. This grabs your attention because you are also a fan of auto racing, especially Formula 1. You mention this to the interviewer who then tells you he is also a big racing fan. He jokes that he got the job because the big boss is a F1 fan. Eventually you get the job and find out that many of your coworkers are race fans, weekend gearheads and so on.

Now, an interest in motorsports has nothing to do with the work of the company or any of the jobs in the company, but the culture of the company, driven in large part by the big boss, has a strong connection with motorsports. Over time, even those with little interest in the hobby get interested because so many people at the company have a strong interest in the topic and talk about it often. As a result, the selection pressure favors gearheads and boils off those who were not gearheads.

This is not an uncommon phenomenon. Every company has a culture, even the largest corporations, and it usually stems from the founding stock of the company. A big part of mergers and acquisitions is to assimilate the acquired company into the culture of the purchasing company. In the case of a genuine merger, one culture eventually dominates the other. Truly merging two cultures is impossible unless they are so close that the differences are superficial.

Something like a company-wide interest in motorsports is a useful way of understanding the much deeper aspects of organizational culture. The sorts of people who into car racing are going to have a set of common personality traits. Race fans will tend to be more risk tolerant and more interested in problem solving. If the big boss was a woman into her church, the company culture would reflect the nature of women who are active in their church. That company would be more conservative.

The culture of an organization is ultimately about how the organism as a whole goes about solving the problems for which the organization was formed. In the case of a company, the primary challenge is profit, but every industry has peculiar challenges when it comes to holding down costs and maximizing sales. The culture of the company evolved to meet those challenges. Successful firms have evolved internal processes upon which it relies to solve these daily issues.

This is important in understanding the nature of a crisis. In business, there are good years and bad years, no matter how well run the firm. The business cycle is immutable, it seems, and it is often industry specific. The firms with a good company culture are built to ride these waves, minimizing losses on the down swing, and maximizing profits on the upswing. The not so well run firms face a crisis in the down years, struggling to hold on, but party like rock stars during the good times.

There are two types of crises. One is the normal challenges that face every organization regardless of its culture. The down times feel like a crisis to the well run business, but they have the tools to manage it, so it is a situational crisis. Getting through it is simply a matter of execution. For the firm lacking a culture prepared to address the down years, the crisis is structural. Their survival does not depend on their execution, because they lack the necessary tools. Instead, it relies on fortune.

Put another way, the crisis that truly threaten the existence of the firm is one with roots that go back to its origin. If in the case of the well-run company the nature of the business changes dramatically, it will face a genuine crisis for which it may not be equipped to solve. It then has a crisis with roots to its founding. The crisis that threatens the viability of an organization is always going to be one that started long before it was noticed and is a symptom of a systemic problem.

This is a useful way of thinking about how the managerial elite of the American empire is prepared for the future. The culture of the elite is, in many respects, a product of a bygone era in the empire. During the Cold War it was a bipolar world, but in reality, it was a unipolar world from the 1970’s until the end. The Soviets had turned conservative and were no longer a realistic ideological threat. The party was just holding onto power by minimizing risk. America was the center of the universe.

What this means is that for a few generations now, the system has been selecting for people who will serve an established system. In the early part of the 20th century, the system selected for creative people, risk takers and those willing to reconsider the old way of doing things. The old order was giving way to a new order. America was on the cusp of becoming a global empire and it needed talent at the top to help reorganize domestically and solve the challenges globally.

In the present crisis, the culture of the ruling class is lacking the tools to address the problems, but it also lacks the sort of people who will look outside the system. It has been selecting for highly conservative people, with respect to the culture of the managerial class, for generations now. It is why the system violently vomited up Donald Trump and continues to dry heave over the memory of him. The culture of the ruling class is built around adversity to change.

The old Hemingway line about bankruptcy is overused, but it reveals the truth about the dynamics of a collapse. In retrospect, the signs were all there, but the modes of thought at the time made it difficult to detect. The collapse of the Soviet Union is a great example of the Hemingway quote. It was happening a little at a time starting with Khrushchev and then happened all of a sudden under Gorbachev. The culture of the system prevented it from meeting the challenges of the age.

This may be what we are seeing today. The culture of the American ruling elite began to adapt to the unipolar world in the 1970’s. That is when the great outsource of the industrial base began as part of the financialization of the economy. It was formalized in the currency arrangements of the 1980’s and has remained static ever since. It is an old system built for an age that no longer exists. The crisis is the conflict between their view of the world and the reality of the world.

It is easy to see that America has a culture problem, but it is not what people think of when they hear the term. It is much deeper than the bourgeois degeneracy we see in the mass media. It is the structure of the ruling class. Their understanding of reality is rooted in a world that no longer exists. Its culture of problem solving is no longer compatible with present reality. Like the poorly run firm hoping to weather a downturn in the business cycle, they are counting on luck to save them.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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. 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.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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.

The Shadow State

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214

Imagine if at your place of work, you began to suspect that many of your coworkers were members of a secret organization. At first you notice that when one has an idea, all of them suddenly adopt it. One day one will use a turn of phrase and then all of them are using it, as if on command. They display no outward expression of membership in a secret group, but their behavior suggests they are controlled by the same source, or they are coordinated by some unknown actor.

This would have been the experience of Donald Trump when he took office. He knew, of course, that many of the people he inherited were loyalists to the Bush crime family or the Clinton crime family. That was part of his campaign, rooting out these people as bad for the American people. What he did not understand is that even the people who appeared to support him in Washington were part of an informal club. The Bush and Clinton clans were just manifestations of this secret club.

That seems farfetched, but take a look at this post in Politico about what they call “the secretive consulting firm that’s become Biden’s Cabinet in waiting”. The short version of it is that a “consulting firm” operated as a shadow administration while the Democrats were out of power. When Biden was installed, in was from this shadow government that he picked key appointees. The source of funding for what amounts to a secret society is not mentioned, but it is not hard to guess.

In many respects, Biden represents a return to a trend that began under the first George Bush and has become more obvious over time. That is, the president is a figure head representing a faction within Washington. Up to Ronald Reagan, new presidents tended to bring key people from their home state, who took up key positions and helped vet new hires in the administration. Over time they were assimilated into the Borg, but initially they offered a fresh perspective and a change in direction.

With Bush I, that started to change. His administration was from the Borg as Bush no longer had ties to normal America. The Bush family’s closest relationships were not to local elites in America, but to the Saudi royal family, Mexican drug cartels and the American intelligence agencies. Bush was the first post-American president. He was followed by Clinton, whose administration was filled with members of the semi-permanent ruling elite based in Washington.

Bush II and Obama were basically spokesmen for organization that existed in the shadows, like the one stocking the Biden administration. They were also the most shallow and unaccomplished men to reach office. Neither had done anything to that point that would warrant local attention, much less national attention. They could have been hired from a talent agency and trained to play the role. Obama famously used a teleprompter for all public utterances.

One reason the imperial capital revolted when Trump was elected is he was a break in the long evolutionary chain. By 2016, the people who actually run the government had come to see the president as window dressing to appease the masses. The real work of governance was done by the thousands of people who live, work and socialize in the world’s largest small town. From their perspective, he was a threat to their democracy, because their democracy had become one party rule.

A good current example of how things really work in American democracy is the case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. The judge in the case is Christopher Cooper, who is married to attorney Amy Jefress. She represents key players in the FBI Russia hoax like Lisa Page. Sussman’s lawyers are long time legal insiders serving the Democratic Party. The Lawfare Group, which was deeply involved in the Russia hoax, is helpfully providing commentary to the media.

The reason that there could never be a legitimate investigation of the FBI plot to overturn the 2016 election was everyone involved is connected to everyone who would investigate or prosecute the case. Washington is a separate society that is independent of the country over whom it rules. Again, if you imagine it as a secret club, politics makes a lot of sense. The part we see, campaigns, politicians, elections, is controlled by the part we never see, the semi-permanent ruling class.

There is also reason to suspect that many of the people working in politics are just as gullible as the people voting Republican. The FBI-organized protest last weekend looks like it was more for the people inside the wire than outside the wire. They wanted the rank and file in Congress to see the storm troopers cracking skulls and flag waving barbarians screaming for the cameras. The whole thing was an amusing flop, but it kept Ocasio-Cortez up at night, which was the purpose.

Long ago, Pat Buchanan observed that local politicians are often quite sensible, which is how they get bumped up to the House of Senate. The people supporting them hope they will be a sane voice for their interests. When they get to Washington, they quickly go native and become just another voice of the ruling class. Buchanan wrote it off to social influence, which is certainly true. The newly minted Congressman is quickly socialized into the culture and is then assimilated into the Borg.

Another reason though is the shadow government. These vast global consulting firms that operate in every western capital but are based in Washington operate like a secret society. They produce the people who get appointments in every administration, and they produce the candidates for spots on the bench. They don’t write regulations and legislation, but they develop and curate the people who do. They have evolved a system that is immune to the virus of elections.

What this means is that voting has become pointless. A system that is immune to voting is not going to be fixed by more voting. In fact, voting provides a false sense of legitimacy to the system. The dynamic of liberal democracy is that voting not only strengthens the system, making it even more resistant to elections, but it also encourages more voting. The more that people participate, the less their voice matters and the more shadowy the true ruling elite pulling the strings.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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. 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.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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.

Public Tyranny

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Note: The weekly Taki post is up. This week is a return to a topic that cannot be stressed enough, it seems. More important, the editor there insists on using lower case for Left and Right, which seems wrong to me. The word left is a direction, while the word Left is a proper noun for a political philosophy. Clarity seems to require capitalizing these words. There is also the Sunday Thoughts podcast up behind the green door. There are no grammar disputes in this week’s show.

Imagine if all of a sudden you were transported to a place where all of the walls are clear and no one was allowed any clothing, other than that which is completely transparent, like the walls of every structure. Everything about you, even your most intimate habits are on public view. Obviously, this would also mean that everything about everyone else is on public view. Further, your thoughts can be read by anyone and everyone, so that even inside your head is now public.

It makes for an interesting science fiction plot, because for most people such a world would be a nightmare. Even the most freakish exhibitionist has some need for privacy in his life. According to the Bible, the first thing man did when he became self-aware was cover himself. The story of Adam and Eve was created in a time of minimum privacy, yet people at the time understood that there is a natural human need to maintain a domain of life away from public view.

Even though privacy is something that exists to some degree in every settled society, we can be sure that it did not exist before humans settled down together. A group of humans hunting and gathering within a range would have no privacy. They would do everything as a group. Of course, this would have bound them together, as sharing is the nature of human relations. Since these groups were blood relatives, the lack of privacy probably helped them survive in the wild.

What this means is that the concept of privacy probably evolved along with human settlement, which means it is an asset for settled people. Once groups of humans began to cooperate so they could operate in groups larger than the Dunbar number, they must have evolved traits that maintained the small group cohesion, while preventing conflict between groups. The first private moment was one group not sharing what they truly thought of the other group.

It is not hard to see how privacy was an asset for people living in relatively close proximity in small villages. Lots of unrelated males, for example, would be cooperating, but also competing for mates. Similarly, the females would be weaving the social fabric of the village, while keeping an eye on one another to make sure they did not lose their mate to another female. The privacy of home life probably evolved as a way to avoid the poaching of mates within the community.

Even if we put mating aside, the creation of a private domain separate from the public domain is an obvious peacekeeper. In a small group, disputes can be solved by the leader imposing his will on the group. Once you get past a certain number, that is impossible and small disputes could easily become big disputes. The private domain is where Grog can tell the missus what he really thinks of Trog, without creating a feud with him and possible drawing in the whole community.

Another point in favor of the essentialness of privacy in large societies is the fact that authoritarians always seek to violate privacy. The communists, for example, would listen in on citizens and rummage through their lives. For this reason, the Founders put in the Bill of Rights the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” What constituted reasonable in this context was a direct threat against the security of society.

As a narrow tool of terror, violating the privacy of citizens is effective, but very expensive to maintain, which is one lesson of the Soviets. It is not just the practical cost of mass spying, but the cost to social trust. In a world where anyone can be a conduit for the state to listen in on your life, the willingness to trust strangers drops to zero. The only people you can trust are blood relatives and associates who have everything to lose by violating your trust. Criminal gangs did well under communism.

There is another angle to privacy. Privacy is the key to one’s identity. It’s why militaries march recruits around naked so much in their initial training. Criminal gangs, like some motorcycle clubs, will do the same thing to prospective members. Take away a person’s privacy and they can no longer stand apart from the rest. It’s hard to hold yourself distinct from others when they know even the most intimate things about you, which is why authoritarians love violating the privacy of others.

This may be one key to understanding why modern America appears to be having a nervous breakdown. The microprocessor revolution has had many consequences and not all of them have been good. It has made it cheaper and easier for authoritarians to pry around in the lives of others. Everyone lives in a world where they are tracked by agents of the state, who also act from private interests. They are even trying to tease out our thoughts from our internet activity.

Not only has technology made it easier for the state to violate your privacy, but it also has weaponized the worst elements in every society. People who call themselves “extremist researchers”, for example, are just busybodies encouraged to violate the privacy of their fellow citizens. For most of human settlement, there were rules to keep this type under control, because they endanger social cohesion. The gossip is a greater threat to the whole than any criminal, because they undermine social trust.

There are many things that are causing American society to crumble, but one big one is the inversion of privacy. The lives of citizens are put on display, but the facts of public life are routinely hidden in waves of lies. Activist organizations like CNN threaten to ruin private citizens if they refuse to be props in their charades, but also tirelessly work to prevent the public from knowing the truth about public policy. The collapse of privacy is turning America into a large-scale prison camp.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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. 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.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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.

Unplugged: Dissident Sentiment

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241

An old and mostly true observation about revolutions is that they end up where they started with a new set of rulers doing pretty much the same things as the rulers they deposed in the revolution. Stalin was the Tsar decorated with the ideological trappings of the revolution. Napoleon was a secular version of the Sun King. The people hiding behind razor wire and armed men this weekend in the imperial capital are the authoritarians they claimed to have deposed last election.

One reason, maybe, for this is that changing the culture that created the old leaders is not as easy as the revolutionaries imagine. The character of a people is the product of many generations. The unwritten rules of society are simply second nature, habits of mind that no one needs to consider. Changing a lifetime of habit is not easy with one person but changing a population’s lifetime of habit is impossible. The best the revolution can do is change the people at the top.

That is what we are seeing in America. The long march through the institutions has not produced the glorious revolution, because altering the character of the people is not simply a matter of blasting new culture from the institutions. It turns out that the cultural Marxist were wrong, and culture does not emanate from institutions. The institutions are the product of the culture. Even adding lots of new people fails because those people bring their culture with them.

That does not mean the cultural revolution is harmless. For example, they have turned patriotism into a weapon. Our choice is flag waving, which means supporting the destructive ends of Conservative Inc., or flag burning, which means supporting the monstrous ends of Progressive Inc. Of course, the point of patriotism, the preservation of our land and people becomes increasingly impossible. What is natural and good gets twisted into a weapon used against the patriotic.

Altruism is another virtue turned into a vice. Since white people are not permitted to cheer for their own side, their natural altruism has one outlet. White people are conditioned to link their happiness to the happiness of nonwhites. A visitor from another planet would assume the white people in this area of the planet worship the black people and that George Floyd was some sort of prophet. Altruism has been warped into what John Derbyshire calls ethno-masochism.

These are thorny topics, because most people correctly sense that loving your country and caring about other people are good things. They are good things, but they are channeled toward bad ends by our present rulers. Battling this is one of the most important challenges in this age, but it is easier said than done. These are two issues where there are no simple answers. The best we can do is keep working the problem until conditions are such that an answer materializes from the conflict.

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. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. 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!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 02:00: Patriotism
  • 32:00: Altruism & Envy

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

The Limits Of Vampirism

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Imagine if tomorrow, the Federal Reserve announced that the top ten home builders in the United States are insolvent. They would cease paying interest on debt and probably would default on principal payments. Further, their bonds would be frozen for some period as the Fed sorted through their finances. It is not too hard to imagine as 13 years ago something close happened when Lehmen Brothers collapsed. It started a long financial panic and then a long recession.

Something similar is now happening in China. The nation’s largest developer is no longer able to pay its creditors. The Chinese government announced yesterday that the firm will not make interest payments and probably will default on principal payments, although that remains unclear. China Evergrande has liabilities over $300 billion, but this is China, so no one knows the real number. All anyone knows is they sit at the heart of the Chinese financial and real estate system.

One thing that is universally true in all times and all places, even in China, is that real estate is the base asset. Mother Nature is not making more of it, so it remains a constant and therefore the basis of all value. It is why this development is not just another story of corrupt financial dealings. As in the West, all land in China is leveraged and that leverage is treated as an asset, which means it is leveraged. If Evergrande stops paying its bill, many other firms stop paying their bills.

At this point, the financial world is not all that concerned with what is happening in Chinese real estate, but they were not concerned about the mortgage crisis in the United States until it was a pending disaster. The old claim that financial markets look forward and therefore offer a glimpse of the future was always nonsense, but the Lehman disaster proved that markets are not the future. The world of finance assumes tomorrow will be yesterday but better.

At the minimum, the Evergrande crisis is a test of the new Chinese model of governance ushered in under Xi Jinping. The relatively loose days of Chinese capitalism are coming to a close as the party imposes new rules on the economy and cracks down on its pirates. The focus is now on domestic growth, rather than cheap labor and exports. China is no longer the cheapest or most productive labor market in the world, so it cannot remain an export economy.

No one really knows if China can successfully make the turn from export economy to one driven by domestic consumption. The breathtaking modernization of the country is impressive, but that required massive cooperation from the West. If the United States had a ruling class concerned with the welfare of the American people, for example, the Chinese miracle never would have occurred. The feckless American ruling class cannot help China transition to a domestic demand driven economy.

The bigger question with regards to China and this current financial crisis is can the Western financial model survive the Chinese transition. For the last thirty years the corrupt Western ruling class has preserved itself like all corrupt ruling classes have done and that is with bread and circuses. The Chinese economic miracle has kept inflation down and money printing up. Cheap goods from China have been an essential part of maintaining stability in the West.

Inflation is already becoming a problem in America. In most parts of the economy, the food markets are plagued with supply chain problems and rising prices. Then there are labor market problems, some of which were created by the Covid panic, but others are the result of demographics. Those Baby Boomers taking early retirement due to the Covid panic are not going to be replaced by the magical people that we see on television shows and commercials.

Of course, the great retirement boom that is just started in the US will put massive strain on programs like Social Security and Medicare. Those programs represent trillions in debt that can never be paid in current dollars. Medicare is now projected to run out of cash in ten years. Social Security has been insolvent for a long time now, based on generally accepted accounting practices. Its assets were spent years ago by the government, leaving it with worthless IOU’s.

People are pointing to the current crisis in China as a replay of the Lehman debacle 13 years ago, but in reality, it is a continuation of it. Starting in the 1980’s, the people actually in charge of the world began to transition the global economy away from an asset based system to a credit based system. The great debt explosion that ensued took many forms and the rise of China was one aspect. Without the massive growth in global debt, China’s growth would have been impossible.

The thing with debt is that it has to eventually be repaid. That means there is a hard limit to the amount of debt that can be generated. A system based on the assumption that debt can expand forever will naturally end in a crisis when that that assumption runs into the reality of the debt limit. In this regard, Lehman, the mortgage crisis and now the Evergrande crisis should be seen as warning tremors. One day soon there will be no way to paper over one of these crises.

Step back and look at what has happened over the last half century and what you see is an effort to mitigate the demographic decline of the West. The reason China was so attractive to the West is she was full of young people. China’s utility to the West is in decline because she is rapidly getting old. The massively complex system that is the Western financial modern is just a way to turn the youth of other societies into cash for the Western welfare state. Their vigor is our safety net.

The trouble is the system drains the vitality of all those exposed to it. Japan was the first example of a formerly fecund society drained of its youth and vitality by exposure to the Western economic model. Korea soon followed. Now we see all of the same signs in China as she nears the end of her economic cycle. The only place left with lots of young people is Africa, but even the scheming of Western elites will never be enough to conquer the dark continent in this way.

In this context, what is happening in China is a sign that the system of endless credit expansion is really the implementation of a system that converts civilizational vigor into cash for a tiny minority. The natural limit on the expansion of credit is set by the limit of young people available to be consumed. China’s future was written in her one child policy and ultimately that would set the end times for the West. Once we run out of kids to convert to credit, the plates stop spinning.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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. 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.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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.

The Blessings Of Covid

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Long before the Covid panic, it was obvious to many on the dissident right that the main problem in the West was a core of true believers. These are fanatics who are immune to facts and reason, driven by a desire to pull the roof down on society. On every issue, they seem to come down on the side of the society wrecking option. The Covid panic has brought this into stark relief The Covidians are more deadly than even the exaggerated version of the virus.

The Covidian is a useful case study in how the believer engages with the world. Since this started back in the spring of 2020, the true believers have shifted positions, often contradicting yesterday’s deeply held position, without explanation. The cult leaders seem to have moved along an authoritarian scale, which at least provides some rationale for their actions. The rank and file believers, however, have flitted from one position to another like a murmuration of starlings.

The most recent example is their view on vaccines. In 2020 when Trump was promising to accelerate the development of a vaccine for Covid, the true believer was sure vaccine meant “deadly Hitler poison”. Their cult leaders were on their media platforms swearing to Gaia that they would never take the Trump serum. After all, there was no way a safe vaccine could be developed in such a short period. It was just another effort by Trump to destroy our democracy.

Within hours of Biden being installed, they shifted to swearing that these vaccines were a perfect defense, an impenetrable defense, against Covid. If the bulk of the people were vaccinated by spring, the pandemic would be over as we would quickly hit herd immunity or pretty close to it. Everyone could go back to normal. The skeptics with whom they agreed just minutes ago were now QAnon conspiracy nuts. All good people would be vaccinated and only the crazies would refuse.

There you see the mind of the true believer at work. Theirs is not a world of facts, reason, and a vast area of uncertainty, as it is with normal people. Instead, their world is those inside the walls and those outside the walls. The walls are an abstraction created by the good people who lead the faithful. Those who are inside the walls are the good guys, the faithful, while those outside the walls are the bad guys, the undifferentiated other that is always at war with the faithful.

This hive mentality is not easy to maintain in the face of reality, so the faithful need a constant stream of reinforcement. In a prior age, this came from physical gatherings where the believers could affirm their convictions and have those convictions confirmed by fellow members of the collective. Churches have always been social groupings as much as spiritual ones. For those committed to an ideological faith, the need for spiritual and social reinforcement is no different.

In this age, mass media provides the steady stream of affirmation. It is not an accident that the hardest thumping crazies on the Left are also intensively on-line, obsessed with things like Twitter. Social media is their tether to the collective. The more they remain connected, the more intense their need to feel connected. The swarming effect of crazies on social media platforms is not an accident. Like a fish in a school, the believer gives herself over to the collective whole.

Here is an example of how the mass media feeds the true believer. Note the exaggerated language like “hyper-contagious”. The true believer operates in extremes, so this necessitates the over-the-top description of things. In this case, describing the variants as increasing dangerous is a way to maintain the fervor. You see, you must remain vigilant. The evil one is always out there. If you let down your guard, he will get you with one of his hyper-contagious variants!

Note also how the definition of vaccine has changed. Since the advent of vaccines, the concept has been a binary one. If the vaccine worked, your immune system would be ready to handle the specific virus and prevent infection. If not, then you would get infected by the virus. Now a vaccine is something like an amulet. If you are exposed, it protects the faithful from the workings of Old Scratch. You still get infected and are contagious, but your soul is pure so you will be safe.

This line is instructive. “Even the sky-high efficacy rates of mRNA vaccines during clinical trials left a little window of imperfection — and those trials happened long before this virus evolved to replicate quicker, spread faster and infect even more unsuspecting human hosts.” You see, no matter how vigilant you are, there are others who may let their guard down and give the evil one a chance to strike the innocent. This is not about you but about the community as a whole.

This is why Joe Biden said the other day that his administration would protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. The tether to biological reality has been cut and we are now in the world of the true believer. The words vaccinated and unvaccinated no longer have a medical definition. To the true believer, those words now mean the anointed and the benighted. The elect are those who have laminated their vaccine cards and wear eight masks in the car while driving alone.

This is why pointing out the fascism of Covid passports has not effect. The true believer needs that display item. They desperately want the affirmation that comes from holding up their iPhone to be scanned and the god in the machine confirming that they are one of the chosen. This is why they celebrate the death of those the mass media claim were ant-vaxers. Their blood extirpates the evil from the land in the same way a public sacrifice washes away the sins of the guilt in the blood of the innocent.

Counterintuitively, Covid may have been a salvation. The fever-rage of opposition to Trump was channeled into a ridiculous but so far mostly harmless identity cult built around the coronavirus. We saw the destructive power of lunatics in a full rage allowed to seek their own satisfaction. Covid probably saved the country from endless riots and urban warfare. The real blessing of Covid is that it has given our crazies a way to get their fix without blowing up the world in the process.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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. 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.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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.

Political Weather

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Depending upon where you live, the news could be full of dire warnings about how the virus is still raging and you must remain vigilant. Alternatively, the news may be about how those heretics somewhere else are being visited by an extra wave of the virus for mocking blessed Covid. It did not take long for the panic to become a racket. The Covid industrial complex is like a public works project. Everyone involved is committed to one thing and that is never ending the job.

Of course, there is always time for a reminder that the secret invisible army of Hitlers is out there in the shadows. Everyone needs to be on the lookout for white supremacy and all its manifestations. Every once in a while someone utters a discouraging word in the earshot of a minority, so the local news team rushes into investigate. Sometimes the national scandal monger chopper in a team to investigate something, which gives the locals a reason to put on a show about it too.

Many people have dropped out of media consumption for this reason, but they cannot escape the constant reminders that you better be afraid. It is impossible to live in the modern world without being exposed to some of it. The only means of escape is to unplug from all mass media, including the internet. Even that is not enough, as your friends and family will still be connected and some of them will be there to remind you of the various things that are supposed to keep you up at night.

Short of doing a Ted Kaczynski and relocating to a cabin in the wilderness, there is no escape from the reign of media terror. No physical escape, at least. The thing is, few people want to remain in this hyper-emotional state, so they find ways to filter it out and get on with what matters in life. You see this with the Covid lunacy. It is as if people are thinking, “okay if I wear this ridiculous mask around in public, I can be left alone to do the things I need to do so I’ll just wear the mask.”

Similarly, the latest vaccine mandate is being met with ignorance by most people as they have checked out of the Covid drama. They simply ignore the Covid news now, so they missed it. Employers will probably ignore it as well, as the last thing they need right now is another way to hassle their workforce. The bureaucracy could very well ignore Biden’s orders as well, as they are permanent, while he is temporary. This reality was made plain under Trump for four years.

One reason people are not in the streets demanding an end of this stuff is they have found a better solution. They just ignore it. Look around the dial over the weekend and you see that the sportsball arenas were packed with fans. They were not wearing masks or social distancing. It was like none of it had happened. You can be sure that television ratings were back to the prior levels. As far as most Americans are concerned, it is football season. Covid season is over.

The same can be said the bombardment of race in mass media. Spend a few minutes watching one of those sportsball shows and you quickly see that every ad is some version of hate whitey. Most people, of course, have long ago developed the ability to not see ads of any kind. Even ads that are attention getting, like the ones created for the Super Bowl, are forgotten the next day. Humans in a mass culture develop a force field to block out the things they dislike.

This is why the Soviet system staggered on for so long. The oppression under Stalin was unsustainable, but Stalin died before than could be tested. Instead, they got a decade of feverish experimentation under Khrushchev. That failed and threatened the stability of the system, so he was pushed out and what replaced him was a new normal in which most people were left to live as best they could within the rules. People ignored the craziness of communism so they could live.

In the current age, things move faster than in the prior age, so we may be living in an accelerated version of this. In the Soviet Union the joke was, “they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” Perhaps the new normal in America is “They pretend to rule over us and we pretend to play along.” The rantings of the current old man in the White House become background noise. People pretend to notice, but otherwise get on with their lives and don’t make a fuss about it.

After all, much of what our political class seems to be doing of late is best explained by an effort to get attention. Sandy Cortez showed up at some swanky gala wearing a dress with the slogan “tax the rich” on it. The only reason this horse-faced barmaid is in Congress is she is good at getting attention. No one really cares what she or any of these people have to say about anything. The only reason to notice them is when they do something stupid like this.

We may be in the phase of the Soviet system where the empire is now on autopilot and the people in charge are just playing make believe. Similarly, the people they are supposed to rule are playing along on the surface but are going about their lives as best they can despite the noise. Unless and until there is a genuine crisis, politics is just an increasingly freakish carnival act. Since the pols are locked out of the cockpit, they are left to gain our attention by other means.

What we may be at the tail end of is a holiday from reality. Since none of these crises ever amounts to much, people pay attention if they need to feel some excitement, but otherwise tune it out and just live as consumers. There are minor ups and downs, but nothing important really happens, so no one feels the need to be too worked up for too long about anything. Like the weather, if you don’t like what is happening, just wait and things will change on their own.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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. 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.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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.

Modern Faulkner

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At some point in the future, the ape historians may look back at this time and call it the Bush – Clinton period of the American empire. The period started with the first Bush presidency in 1989, roughly corresponding with the end of the Cold War and concluding sometime around now. It is hard to know if this period is at an end or if it will stagger on for a while longer. It would surprise no one if Hillary Clinton or one of the Bush clan takes one last stab at the presidency in 2024.

The rivalry between the Bush family and the Clinton family mirrors the rivalry between the Compson and Snopes family in the William Faulkner novels. The Compson family represented the old Southern order that emerged from the wreckage of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Snopes family represented the new, white trash culture that was slowly overtaking the old order. It was order and dignity at the end of its time versus an emergent disorder and lack of dignity.

In the American context, the Bush family represent the old WASP order that cannot update its thinking to the present. They are built for the old America that was confident and ascendant, but they find themselves at the end of empire. Desperate to maintain their status and position, they aligned with shady characters like Mexican cartel members, the Saudi Royal family, and the neoconservatives. This toxic blend of anti-American interests would shape the empire for decades.

The Clintons are far less grandiose. Like the Snopes clan, they represent the new order that is not really order at all. Instead, it represents the vermin that infest the dying old order, doing anything and everything to get an edge on the other rats. Unlike the Bush clan, they don’t seek power for prestige. They seek power for profit. They cut deals with China in the 1990’s for campaign cash. Then Hillary was auctioning off state secrets from her perch in the State Department during the Obama years.

The analogy breaks down a bit as the Clinton family was not productive like the Snopes family, so there will be no second and third generation. On the other hand, they did unleash the new breed of Baby Boomer politician. While biologically unrelated to the Clinton family, the entire political class has been shaped by them. The Poppy Bush type is nowhere to be found in modern politics, but the political class is thick with women who admire Hillary and men who think like Bill.

Just as the Faulkner novels play out in the shadow of the old order represented by the Compson family, American politics continues to play out in the shadow of the Bush clan and their efforts to remain at the top of the old order. Even though the 20-year debacle in Afghanistan has ended, it remains a big player in politics. Of course, the neoconservatives are still embedded in the system. It was their brains and the gross stupidity of George Bush that made Afghanistan possible.

The Bush family, like a drug resistant virus, will not go away. George Bush gave a speech to on 9/11, as Joe Biden was cognitively unable to do it. Of course, he took the opportunity to remind everyone of his contempt for ordinary people. He said of the January 6 protestors that “they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them.” Despite his inability to string a sentence together on his own, that perfectly captures the sentiment of the ruling class.

Taken together, the last thirty years have been a decaying ruling elite willing to strike any deal necessary to maintain their position. This includes allowing a rapacious vermin-like Clinton clan to gnaw away at the social fabric. One side looks at the American society as fuel to be used for the imperial engines, while the other side just sees America as a host on whom they will feed until it dies. Nowhere in the struggle between the two sides are the interests of the people.

No analogy is perfect. Donald Trump is certainly a member of the Snopes side of this fight, but hated by the clan nonetheless. He saw his opportunity for some personal gory in 2016 and he seized it. He had no grand plans or even a desire to reform the system, so he spent his time on personal projects. In a way, Trump was the new and improved version of Bill Clinton. It is a nice bit of narrative irony that Hillary was defeated by one her husband’s old golf buddies.

An important potential parallel between this age and the Faulkner novels is that the story preceded the upheavals in the American South. The new South that emerged in the late 20th century was not like either side of the struggle. The world of Faulkner is a distant memory now. Similarly, the old imperial order represented by the Bush clan and the grasping thievery of Boomer politics represented by the Clinton family is not going to survive the dissolution of empire.

What emerges from the inevitable turmoil that comes when these two modes of politics collapse under the weight of their own immorality is unknown. What is certain is a period of upheaval where the empire contracts in fits and starts, staggering from one crisis to the next. Each crisis shrinks the empire a little more until the very concept of empire is no longer tenable. The people will be spectators as the dying elites savage one another for their share of the declining profits.

The lesson from the Faulkner tales is that elites must be replaced by elites. The Snopes clan either had to evolve into an elite or be replaced along with the old elite as represented by the Compson family. That means the Bush side of the struggle will not last, but neither will the Clinton side. Rapacious thievery can never be the foundation for  a new elite. A generation from now, the people at the top of whatever comes of America will be nothing like the ruling class of today.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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. 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.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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.

Taki: Living in Isolation

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In the American political system, the president is the symbol of the democratic process, the embodiment of the general will. With few exceptions, he gains office by winning a majority of votes in what is close to a national plebiscite. If the radicals get their way, it will soon be a national plebiscite, as they hope to eliminate the electoral college so that large urban states can dictate to the rest of the nation.

The reward for winning the favor of the people is to be locked away in a museum called the White House, surrounded by the most complex security system on earth. The president is the most isolated man in the nation. He experiences everything through intermediaries in the White House and the Washington media. Everything he thinks he knows about the people over whom he rules comes to him thirdhand.

Thirdhand may be generous. His staff lives in the same sort of isolation as the president, without some of the high-tech security. They have spent their lives in the system and have no firsthand knowledge of the country. Many have lived so long in the biggest small town on earth—Washington, D.C.—that they may as well be aliens. Even their language is beginning to drift away from that of the rest of the country.

Read more here—->Taki