Author Archives: thezman

Do They Know?

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Watch the news, follow politics and pay some attention to the hate community, of which I am a part, and you have to deal with the disconnect. That is the weird feeling you get when watching a newscast, seeing confirmation of something you read on a hate-site and then the newsreader explains it all away with appeals to magic. The rioters hunting down whites are not the racists. No, the newsman tells you. the honkies are the racists, because they failed in some way to do right by the dusky fellows chasing them.

Watch the Olympics and you see the commentators in a life and death struggle with reality, forever fearful that the audience may notice what’s happening in the events. Because reality simply refuses to comport with the approved narrative, the broadcasters create short documentaries to be played during the coverage, explaining how the events you are seeing do not contradict the one true faith. In fact, they confirm it! The black people winning all the footraces really just train hard, despite racism and Hitler.

I’ve been reading Steve Sailer for decades and he loves commenting about the Olympics because it confirms much of what the biological realists have to say about the human animal. Boys are bigger, faster and stronger than girls. West Africans are faster on average than everyone else. He’s right, of course. When the finalists for the 100 meter sprint have all be of West African origin going back nine consecutive Olympics, nature is telling us something. Or at least trying to tell us something.

Sailer has often argued that many in the cognitive elite see the same things he and the other HBD’ers see, but they prudently refuse to mention it. Instead, they rely on esoteric language and alternative social constructs to arrive at the same point, but without openly challenging the prevailing orthodoxy. A guy like Ross Douthat, for example, is not going to throw his career away by pointing out the obvious, so he crafts social constructs that give his coevals a way to express reality within the confines of the faith.

I must admit that it feels like it is true in certain cases. I enjoy reading Mark Krikorian, who does the Lord’s work in the area of immigration studies. He often says things that suggest he accepts the basics of human biology, but he always stops short, way short, of running afoul of the morality police. I follow him on twitter and it often feels like he slams on the brakes as soon as he gets near that electrified fence that divides orthodoxy from heresy. I wonder. Is this conscious or subconscious? Does he know or is he simply trained?

This may not seem like an important question, but it is probably the most important question. The cognitive elite in Europe knew Galileo was right. It was not like he popped out of nowhere to announce his new model for the solar system. The image of the churchman as a narrow minded fanatic is pretty much of the opposite of reality in the Middle Ages, or any other age for that matter. For most of Western history, the church was the storehouse of human knowledge and the engine of intellectual progress.

Progressives have retconned Galileo to claim the Church was too enthralled with oogily-boogily to understand him, but that’s nonsense. They knew he was right, at least many in the Church knew, but they did not know how to proceed with the new knowledge coming from guys like Galileo. The Church, as well as the civil authorities, were primary concerned with civil order and making sure people had food to eat. The practical challenges came before the theoretical ones.

The emergence of genetics, as well as evolutionary biology, which is increasing reliant on genetics, certainly is comparable to the emergence of science in the late Middle Ages. The main point of comparison is that science discredited much of the prevailing orthodoxy about the natural world and genetics is discrediting the blank slate orthodoxy of today. Egalitarianism will only survive if the study of human biology, particularly genetics, is shut down and that’s not going to happen. The question is whether anyone in the cognitive elite knows or accept this.

Watching the Olympics the other might I was struck by the sense of desperation during one of the Girrrllll Power! segments. This is where the males are forced to tell the audience about how wonderful it is that so many women are competing in sports. I concluded that you have to be a true believer to participate in the making of such nonsense. Only a sociopath could fake that much enthusiasm for something they think is wrong. That or the presenters are so dumb they are incapable of self-awareness. Either way, the people in charge are in no way prepared to surrender to reality.

That does not really answer the question posed here. I think guys like Steve Sailer are, despite their chosen fields of study, optimistic about humanity. They hope there are some sensible people in the ruling elite who will, in the fullness of time, find a way to incorporate the reality of biology into their policy making. Any hints that suggests someone is in on the gag, so to speak, is held up as proof. Maybe he is right and maybe their use of esoteric signalling is so advanced that rubes like me can never see it. On the other hand, the shrillness of the screeching from the media suggest they really, really belief their nonsense.

On Being Revolting in the Modern Age

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I was reading something about a battle in the American Revolution and it got me to thinking about what revolution would look like in the modern age. We tend to associate revolutions with mobs in the streets, disobeying lawful orders from whoever happens to be in charge. That’s part of it, for sure, but usually they have more formal elements as well as popular unrest. The American Revolution had a number well organized acts of rebellion like boycotts and peaceful resistance before we got armies in the field.

Revolutions have two forms, at least at the onset. There are the revolts within the ruling class and then there are popular rebellions. The former is more like a civil war played out on the small scale. For instance, a group of soldiers takes over the military and then sacks the civil leadership. The English Civil War is the best example. The latter is when the people get tired of their rulers and rally around a leader or cause (or both) and force out the old rulers. The Bolshevik Revolution is the most obvious example. The American Revolution is unique in that it has both elements.

In the modern west, a military coup is unlikely as the civilian authorities have done a good job over the last few generations of selecting against the sort of ambitious men who tend to lead military coups. In Europe, the military is simply too weak to pull it off. That and the rest of Europe would either send in troops to restore civilian rule or have the US do it. Then you have the fact that there’s not a lot of popular support for the military in much of Europe. A coup would result in massive protests.

The US is a different animal in that we have a big competent military, but it is mostly stationed overseas. That’s not an accident. If the invade the world types are purged from the ruling class, the next step is a great demobilization. There’s simply no way a civilian leadership is going to allow a massive high tech army to be garrisoned at home. Even so, the military culture in the US has long selected against the sort of men that lead military coups. It’s the one thing we have no screwed up yet.

I think if we are going to see a soft civil war or a revolution from within, it will look a lot like what we are seeing with nationalist parties across the Continent. The first wave will be less than professional politicians demonstrating the power of popular discontent, followed by a second wave of real professionals who take control of those new parties and lead a reform movement. This is not so much a revolution or revolt, as a process of internal reform tapping into popular will to overcome internal resistance. It’s not exactly how democracy is supposed to work, but it is not a terrible result if it leads to peaceful change.

There’s good reason to be pessimistic about this possibility. We saw how the Austrians rigged their election and a lot of people suspect this US election could be loaded with shenanigans. Even if Trump overcomes the Clinton crime machine, he will most likely face a ruling class unified against him. In America, we may have crossed the Rubicon in the 1990’s when it became clear that the ruling class could no longer police itself. Their inability to purge their ranks of the Clintons was a sign that the rot had reach a point where reform is no longer possible.

That leaves popular revolt. Certainly voting for Trump sends a message, but messages need a sender and a receiver. If the people on the other end refuse to acknowledge the message being sent, then it’s not really a message. The Olive Branch Petition was the last ditch effort by the Colonist to avoid a breach with the mother country, but the King’s refusal turned it from a message to him into a message from him. That message was clear to the colonials. They could either submit unconditionally or prepare for war. A Trump win followed by a unified refusal by the political class to cooperate would also be clear message.

A few bloggers on our side of the divide have noted that what comes after Trump is, if history is a guide, going to be much worse. Instead of an amateur politician, who still believes in the system, the next guy to rally the troops will be a professional who does not believe in the system. Instead he will be a guy that looks at the system in the same way Turkish strongman Erdoğan looks at democracy. That is, it is useful only as a vehicle for taking the leader to where he wants to go. “If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it,” said Julius Caesar.

That may be true, but it will still require popular support. What we are seeing with nationalist insurgencies in the West is they are running into the massive power that comes from owning the mass media. A little girl skins her knee and there is a news team there to blame Trump in a four hour TV special. Hillary Clinton is caught running a pay-for-play scheme and no one can be bothered to ask her why she went to the trouble of installing an illegal e-mail system in her bathroom. Even the most cynical and savvy insurgent campaign cannot get past this problem.

It may be that the custodial state has reached a point where rebellion is no longer possible. Or, it may simply be that the method of revolt will have to adapt to the modern age. If the rulers no longer have the consent of the governed, then the governed will have no reason to voluntarily cooperate. Perhaps the cord-cutting movement is one of those acts of rebellion that makes sense only in a mass media age. Publishing the private correspondence of rulers, obtained by hackers, is certainly a very modern for of rebellion.

Whether any of it works is open to debate

 

The Tyranny of Race

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There are a limited number of ways to govern a multi-ethnic or multi-racial society. As much as modern elites believe they are wrestling with new problems, the issues the West faces today are common throughout history. The very first settled human societies were multi-ethnic. The “cradle of civilization” was full of tribal people with identities different from one another, often with different languages. One tribe would come to dominate the others, but the subjugated people maintained their identities. They just paid tribute to the dominant tribe.

One way humans have met this challenge is through hard segregation. This is when areas are carved out for specific groups of people and only those people. The governing authority helps the groups defend their turf from any encroachment from the others. One group is dominant, but a big part of how they maintain their dominance is by keeping the peace between the rest of the groups. The Arab world still functions under this model for the most part. One tribe dominates, but the other tribes run their own turf for the most part.

The opposite of this is compulsory assimilation, where everyone is blended into one identity. The English banning Welsh and other local languages from government is an example of how the ruling group can force assimilation. The Romans would settle barbarians in the Empire with the goal of assimilation. This meant sprinkling them around in small groups so they would adopt the local language and customs and lose their native identity. Their inability to do this with the Goths is often held up as one of the causes of the collapse.

The third most common method for confronting the problems of diversity is soft segregation where you end up with a multi-tier social order. The dominant group gets all the privileges and benefits of society. The lower orders are barred from positions of authority and perhaps have fewer legal rights. Muslims prefer this model. Europeans used to treat the Jews as a guest race of people, with limited legal rights. In America, this was the mode employed after the Civil War to manage blacks. In the North it was implicit and in the South it was explicit.

None of these models are seen as legitimate or moral by modern Western leaders. America still maintains reservations for Indians, but that’s only because no one knows how to get rid of them. The Europeans still have a gypsy problem, but like the Indian problem, no one knows what to do about it so it is ignored. Otherwise, the West has no interest in segregation or compulsory assimilation when it comes to the challenges of diversity. In fact, diversity is viewed as an unalloyed good so any attempt to temper it is forbidden.

That has resulted in the current way of meeting the challenge of diversity in the West, which is Proportionalism. This is where the costs of violating liberal principles are weighed against the perceived benefits from violating the principles. For instance, legal discrimination is wrong as a principle, but quotas and set asides allegedly have benefits that are too valuable to pass up, so the state engages in active racism in hiring. Because the scales are entirely subjective based on one’s point of view and the moment in time, there can be no fixed rules, just a mindset.

A good recent example is the Freddy Gray case in Baltimore. The city charged every cop involved with the highest possible count, even though little evidence suggested they did anything wrong, much less deliberately criminal. The victim was black so the city violated the rights of the cops and ruined their lives because the city thought the benefits outweighed the rights of the cops. In other words, naked racism to counter the consequences of perceived racism was justified based on expected outcomes in this particular case.

The result of this mode of thought, this philosophical outlook, is a thicket of rules and precedents that are incoherent in isolation because they exist only in the moment. America is a land where you can be sued for discriminating against blacks in favor of whites, while simultaneously being sued for discriminating against whites in favor of blacks. Since there are no set rules that apply all the time, you could lose both cases in the same courthouse. It all depends upon the judge and the circumstances.

There’s a word for arbitrary application of the law. It’s called tyranny. That is the inevitable end of Proportionalism because benefits and costs are always subjective. The City of Baltimore looked at the lives of six police officers and said they were not worth another riot. The family of the police officers had a very different valuation of these things. The dozens of dead black guys would probably have a different calculation, but the police went on a silent strike so those black guys got killed and no longer have a say.

The reason tyranny eventually collapses is it devolves into a recursive use of resources in order to maintain itself. Once the law becomes arbitrary, the violations of the law, and the willingness to flaunt flout the law, increase exponentially. The only thing everyone knows is that voluntary compliance has no benefit. This requires an exponential growth of authority to maintain order. Eventually, the cost of order exceeds the resources available to the authority and collapse ensues. It’s why authoritarian regimes tend not to live long past their founder.

The New Cold War?

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One of the more curious parts of the American presidential campaign is the furious side battle over how to deal with the Russians. Many Republicans have adopted the neo-conservative line that Putin is some combination of Stalin, Hitler and that third grade bully who put gum in their hair. They are incapable of seeing Putin as anything but an inhuman evil. This says more about the Republican-aligned publications and think tanks, which have come to be dominated by the neo-cons, than anything else.

Trump has taken a less provocative stance than most Republicans so that has all the professional loonies out howling in the streets. Part of this is simply due to the anti-Trump virus that has infected Official Conservatism™, but it also reveals something about the political class. While neo-cons have always had greater influence over the Republicans, they currently dominate the foreign policy establishment. It was under Obama, after all, that Victoria Nuland helped throw the Ukraine into turmoil.

The puzzle is why the neo-cons have an obsession with the Russians. The Cold War has been over for a long time and the Russians are not much of a threat to anyone. They have a lot of nukes, but what reason would they have to nuke anyone? The Russian ruling class is living like Saudi Royals, mostly from selling natural resources to the Europeans. They control roughly 40% of the natural gas supply to Europe and that accounts for 68% of Russian exports. That means the Russians are in no hurry to stop selling gas to the rest of Europe.

Part of it is good old fashioned professional inertia. People like Frederick Kagan, Donald Kagan and Robert Kagan (husband of Victoria Nuland) have organized their lives around opposition to the Russians. They’re not alone. The whole neo-conservative project, as a political movement, was mostly about opposition to the Soviets. Most of the men who lead the neo-conservative cause these days are old men who started out in life as Cold War hawks. When the Soviets collapsed, they did not find a new career. They simply found new reasons to demonize the Russians.

There’s also an undeniable tribal flavor to it. Almost all neocons are Jews and specifically Russian Jews. There has always been a strong anti-Russian strain within American Jewry that dates back to to when Russian Jews started migrating to America. It’s not entirely irrational, given the way Jews were treated by the Czars. But, there has always been a divide within American Jewry. One one side are German Jews who emigrated in the 19th century and largely blended into the ruling class. On the other side are the Russian Jews who were treated like poorer relations.

While all of this is interesting background, it is no reason to restart the Cold War and there are some dissenters who think the neo-cons are nuts. Some on the Right point to the fact the neo-cons were outlandishly wrong about the Muslims and should not be trusted with Russia policy. Then there are critics from the Left who also think the neo-cons are nuts, but they mostly think we’re better off doing business with the Russians. Stephen Cohen is the most prominent voice on the Left warning that a new Cold War with Russia is a terrible idea.

There’s another element that explains the neo-con obsession with Putin. Irving Kristol’s brand of conservatism was intended to be forward looking and anti-traditionalist. It’s not an accident that the neo-cons are forever chirping about happy warriors and optimistic conservatism. They see traditionalism as pessimistic and limiting. Whatever else you want to say about Putin, he is very much in the tradition of European conservatism, which is traditionalist and limiting. The state is to defend citizens from one another, not guide them to the glorious future where they can reach their full potential.

Then there’s globalism, which has become something of a religion for western ruling elites. Irving Kristol’s brand of politics has easily folded into the globalist fantasies of American policy makers, because it gives the naked money grab the veneer of humanitarianism. The trillion dollar boondoggle that was the Iraq War was tarted up as an effort to install democracy and liberalism in the Muslim world. It’s a lot easier to loot your country’s middle-class when you are convinced it is to make the world a better place.

Even if the neo-cons continue to dominate the debate, it takes two to tango and there’s plenty of reasons to think the Russians are not all that interested in a new Cold War. Russian per capita GDP is $13,000. The poorest state in America is at $35,000, while the poorest state in the EU is Bulgaria at $18,000. Russia is not Albania, but it is a very poor country relative to the West. It’s also a country with horrible demographics and wide spread drug and alcohol problems. They also have a Muslim problem that gets little attention. In other words, the Russians are in no condition for a Cold War.

Who Killed Seth Rich?

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The internet is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories because it allows the like minded to confirm one another’s suspicions, even when those suspicions are nuts. That’s the way conspiracy theories work. That does mean all conspiracy theories are false. There are actual conspiracies and sometimes the explanation for some event involves shadowy elements working in secret. Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger is known to us because he was involved in a conspiracy that led to the assassination of Julius Caesar.

The murder of Seth Rich, a 27-year-old staffer at the Democratic National Committee at 4:30 AM in Washington DC is one of those events that is catnip for the conspiratorial. Throw in Assange claiming the guy was a source for WikiLeaks and it is not hard to start wondering if maybe there’s more here than just a horrible tragedy. As The Daily Mail reports, a lot of people associated with the Clintons have died under mysterious circumstances, often to the benefit of the Clintons.

What is known is whoever shot this guy did not rob him. They found the victims possessions, including his wallet, on him when they found the body. Maybe he had something else worth killing over that has gone unreported, but there’s no way to know it. The victim was shot in the back so he was either running away or had no idea the killer was behind him. The news reports say the victim had defensive wounds but that sounds like people watching too much television. Since DC does not release autopsy reports, there’s no way to verify it.

Talk to any cop who has worked the ghetto and they will tell you that the victims usually know their killer. Murder is almost always a crime of the moment. Person A gets into a beef with person B, who pulls a weapon and kills person A. Alternatively, there is a money or sex dispute that leads one person to kill their partner or associate. Even premeditated homicide almost always involves people that know one another. Even cold blooded killers need a reason and there’s rarely a reason to kill total strangers randomly selected off the street.

That’s why so many are tempted to jump to the conclusion that this was not a typical crime. This guy was not in the drug trade and he had nothing in his personal life that would indicate a crime of passion. He also lived in a sporty part of town where the cops do a good job keeping the streets safe. Calling it “recently gentrified”, as if it is still dodgy, is just what young urban hipsters like to say so it does not sound like they live in an urban daycare center, which is the case here. This guy was killed in one of the truly safe parts of Washington DC.

On the other hand, murder for hire is not a pointless act. If you just want someone dead, then you want it to look like an accident or a street crime. Otherwise, you are bringing unnecessary attention to something you want to keep quiet. In this case, shooting and robbing the guy would look like a robbery. You do it with a cheap handgun that you can toss in a nearby sewer, assuming the cops will find it. They always look at the local drains cause criminals tend to throw their weapons there, thinking no one will find them.

The thing that leads me to suspect something other than random street crime is the hour. Thug life is mostly nocturnal, but these people are not vampires who go to bed at dawn. They roll out of bed at noon and hang out into the small hours, but they are off the streets by two o’clock, even on weekends. They may still be up partying, but they are not out robbing people at 4:30 AM in a swanky part of town. It’s possible, but it strikes me as implausible. In the ghetto, just before sun up is the safest and most quiet part of the day.

The point here is that there is no obvious answer, based on the facts that are known. When a white bread honky turns up with holes in him just before dawn, it is natural to assume it is something other than street crime. The most probable answer is he was involved with something or someone that got him killed. Maybe it was a jealous boyfriend, a dispute at work or some sort of neighborhood beef that got out of hand, but it was most likely not two thugs trying rob him of his iPhone. It’s possible, but not very likely.

That does not mean Hillary Clinton did it, but that’s no more or less possible than the street thug theory. If you are going to murder people or have them murdered, political power is a pretty good reason, maybe the best reason. That said, people at that level can afford well trained and qualified hit-men. They don’t need to rely on amateurs who make it look like an assassination. Even crack hit-men have bad days so it is possible, but it just strikes me as slightly less plausible than the random street crime theory.

The Misinformation Age

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For most of human history, the natural state of people was to be uninformed about the doings of the great and powerful. Amenemhet the Stone Carver could easily have spent his life chipping glyphs into stones, without ever knowing why or what they were supposed to mean. He was just one of many assigned to work on the latest project commission by Pharaoh. More important, he probably did not care. He had a good job chipping glyphs into stones, which let him have a nice house and send the boy off to chariot school.

For his part, the Pharaoh was not all that concerned that Amenemhet was indifferent to the doings of the state. He wanted his people to do his bidding and remain loyal, but that mostly meant maintaining the grain supply, defending the borders and holding religious festivals where the people were reminded that the Pharaoh was a god. In other words, Pharaoh did not have to invest a lot of time bullshitting his people. Even if wanted to, it was simply not practical, so it was never a part of the ruling toolkit.

Writing the post the other day on millennials, it occurred to me that they are the first mass media generation. In my grandfather’s youth, for example, having a radio was a toy for rich people. He got his first TV in the 50’s. My parents grew up on movie theaters and then later television, but they got their first TV in their late teens, I think.  I had TV as a kid, of course, but I also had outdoors. With just three channels, TV could not compete with outside for the attention of a boy, so I did not spend much time in front of it.

Young people are floating in a sea of mass media and they have never known any other way. It’s perhaps why millennials are so demanding and entitled. Watching TV is a passive exercise. It is up to the show or movie to entertain you, the viewer. There’s no reward for loyalty to a channel, a show or a personality, so there is no loyalty. Consuming mass media is a purely transactional exercise. With so many channels competing for your attention, you have every right to be demanding. Kids raised on TV are certain to be transactional in their daily human relations.

The thing is, our mass media culture is mostly fabricated nonsense. Most of what the news people “report” is made up. As soon as you see the word “sources” you know what follows is invented. Even when someone is named as a source, nine times out of ten we learn that the named source did not actually say what he was claimed to have said. The other day, the news people were claiming Trump got in a fight with a baby at one of his events. It turns out he made some harmless jokes about a crying baby.

It’s tempting to think it is just the ideological bias of the media and that certainly plays a role, but even sporting news is often made up nonsense. Sites like Bleacher Report and SB Nation exist to pump out made up news from writers who never leave their couch. The “legitimate” sporting news is similarly riddled with tales where the word “sources” is featured prominently. The people in the business have to know everyone is just making stuff up, but no one ever says anything. It’s just the way it is.

The question that comes to mind is what this does to the culture. The passive cynicism of the millennials may simply be a result of living in a world of fiction. If most of what you see and hear is bullshit, you’re going to assume everything is bullshit. It is also impossible to have trust in people that lie all the time, so this sea of mass media is self-defeating as a propaganda tool. The Russians during the Soviet era assumed everything told to them was a lie, which made an already cynical people into the first no-trust society.

Something similar may be happening in America as the people producing media feverishly try to break through the noise with ever more outlandish nonsense. Sites like Gawker are simply the logical end point of all mass media. Consumers of mass media are not seeking to be informed, because they assume it is all nonsense. They just want to be entertained. It’s probably why Trump is one nominee and Clinton is the other. Everyone is looking forward to the brash bully tearing into the corrupt old cow. It may be awful for the country, but it will make good TV.

The dynamic since the advent of participatory government has been to increase the number of informed citizens while increasing the franchise. That’s not where we have ended up. The franchise has been expanded to the point where we are now handing ballots to foreigners, but the public is probably less informed than at any time in our history. In fact, it is close to impossible be well informed. That makes popular government nothing more than an entertaining roll of the dice. The characters best able to keep the public’s attention wins, even if she is a sociopath, who kills people.

Doers Versus Talkers

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The other day in the comments, there was a brief exchange about the difference between people that do things and people that say things. Nixon used to divide the political world into those in the arena and those who talked about those in the arena. He even wrote a book about it. This is the same formulation you see in sports. Athletes complain all the time about the press, pointing out that few of them ever played the game at any level, so they can only imagine what it is like to be a player.

Another way to think of it, one that I prefer, is the 18th century salon, where men in elaborate costumes boasted to elaborately costumed women about what they would do if they were ever called to action. These were the guys who were “well schooled” in the art of war, but never made it out to camp, much less a battle. Meanwhile, out on the streets, men of action did the hard work of civilization, including the defense of it. These men had no use for theory because they were judged and they judged others by deeds. Doers versus talkers.

As with all models, it is an artificial construct used to better understand the world. George Washington was both a doer and talker. In fact, he was probably better at talking than war fighting. Washington was not a very good general, but he had a knack for saying the perfect thing at the perfect time in order to get other men to act. Most modern politicians do nothing but talk so calling them doers is a bit of a stretch. Paul Ryan, for example, has spent his life in Washington politics. The only thing he has ever done is promote himself up the ladder of party politics.

Even so, The model of the doer versus the talker is a useful one for understanding the world today. A century ago, almost all men in America were doers. In fact, it was hard to be anything but a doer. Even politicians started out as lawyers or businessmen. The scions of rich men could skip the doing and get to the talking, but there was not much of it. Status for men was tied to deeds so even rich guys joined the military, got into business or argued cases before the court. 32 US Presidents had some military experience.

Today, few of our politicians have ever done anything resembling useful work. Those who did some time in the service were almost always JAG officers, meaning the greatest danger they faced was a paper cut. The commentariat is even more divorced from the world of deeds. Look up the resumes of these folks and you see nothing but stops in think tanks and media jobs. Some spent time in government. As Tucker Carlson put it, these are stupid rich kids largely clueless about the world in which the rest of us live.

The American ruling class now resembles that salon where oddly costumed people engage in elaborate ritualized competitions. Deeds mean nothing, because no one does anything in the conventional sense. Instead, status is achieved by accumulating credentials, occupying government positions and winning verbal jousts with the other members of the meritocracy. Barack Obama is in the White House entirely due to his ability to talk about doing stuff. The meritocracy admires him so much, because he is one of them.

It’s also why all sides of the chattering class are in a lather over Donald Trump. He is not a member of the talking class. For all his faults, he is a man, who does things. He has risen to the top of a rough and tumble field that only rewards doers, particularly doers who like risk. Every day of Trump’s life has been about winning deals and making things happen. While Barack Obama has a trophy case full of participation medals, Trump has a trophy room celebrating the buildings he has built and the casinos he started. He even has a trophy wife and a trophy ex-wife.

There’s another aspect to this. In a world in which deeds count for nothing, words count for everything. Every sentence is packed with multiple layers of meaning, because there are no other ways to signal status, piety, achievement and so forth. The great athlete does not have to be a wordsmith because everyone know his status. The guys talking about the great athletes have to establish status by words. The guys talking about guys talking about guys talking about the great athletes are in a world where every comma carries great import.

A guy like Trump, who lacks these verbal skills, is an easy target of mockery from the talking class. The coin of Trump’s realm has no value in the world of modern American politics. Guys like Trump are supposed to write checks and remain silent. In the view of the meritocracy, Trump is a crude vulgarian. He is poor in the things they value most, even though he is rich in deeds. To make matters worse, Trump seems to get this and take some pleasure in vexing these people. He does not respect them and they know it.

It’s easy to admire men of action, but history is full of such men, who came to bad ends. Politics has always been about words at some level. George Washington’s political acumen counted for more than his military prowess. Conversely, the British generals he faced, lacked the political savvy to take advantage of their superiority in arms and material. Similarly, Trump’s stumbles in the game of words could very well unhorse him in the fight against someone’s wife. It’s why the talkers are so invested in his defeat. For most of them, it will be the only thing they have ever done.

Millenial Solipsism

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Complaining about the millennials has become something of a pastime over the last decade. It probably started in the 1990’s when people began to notice that the young were acting a little weird compared to previous generations. Raised on video games, good economic times and technology, young people coming out of college in the late 90’s seemed to lack anything resembling humility. By the time we got to the 2000’s, someone had come up with a cool new moniker for the next generation and everyone was bashing the millennials.

I noticed the same things as other people noticed about the kids, but my bet was reality would beat the stupid out of them as it has every generation. The fact is, every generation has had it a bit easier than their parents and that means each successive generation has come into the world a little less prepared for reality. My generation certainly had it easier than my parents and grandparents. My grandfather used to tease me by saying his generation was wooden ships and iron men, while my generation was iron ships and wooden men.

The millennials are now in their 30’s, at least the leading edge is in their 30’s, and it does not appear that reality has had much of an impact on this generation. Talk to employers about them and they start reeling off stories about the problems they have had with their young people. I know a number of business owners who have thrown in the towel and no longer hire anyone under forty, even if it means paying above market rate. These are companies that used to hire college graduates and train them for their specific work. Now, they let others do it.

Time waits for no one so whether anyone likes it or not, the millennials will be in charge soon enough. Look around the mass media and you see lots of boys and girls in their late 20’s and early 30’s offering up opinions and commentary about how you people screwed up the world. Since being a chattering skull requires little in the way of talent, it is no surprise this is where millennials are making their first impression. TV skulls just have to read their lines and look concerned. The on-line types just need to do the social justice warrior act.

The thing that you can’t help but notice with this generation is the strange solipsism that is their most highly developed feature. You see this in debates on-line as well as in the media. It usually takes the form of “explain to me why….” and assumes the thoughts and emotions of the person on the other end have no value. Their only reference point is their own feelings toward whatever it is in question. If the counter argument to whatever is under discussion makes them blue, it must be wrong, regardless of its factual accuracy.

This piece by a young writer named Mathew Sheffield is a good example of the new brand of millennial journalism we can expect. Sheffield turns up on mainstream conservative sites so I suspect he is being groomed to be the next big thing. His article features the abundant use of pseudo-data that is popular with millennials, but the distinguishing aspect is it is mostly a long treatise on how conservative media is not paying enough attention to people like Mathew Sheffield. After all, if Fox News is not catering to him, they may as well not exist.

On his twitter profile, you see the catch phrase popular with young educated people. “If you can’t defend your opinions, perhaps you need better ones.” Some formulation of that pops up on social media and internet forums and it is always uttered by a young person. They can’t imagine why someone would not be eager and willing to explain and defend their opinions to them. On twitter you often see old people respond with, “I’m not google. Do your own research.” The response to that is always some form of  “Your unwillingness to indulge me means you must be wrong.”

The thing is, this generation is just as smart and educated as previous generations. You could argue they are better educated. More young people have had exposure to college material than ever before and all of them graduate high school. I grew up with guys who dropped out at 16 and then went into the army when they turned 18. That’s unheard of today. The difference is that the millennials were trained to focus their curiosity inward, rather than outward. Instead of trying to understand the world, they focused all their time understanding themselves.

This very well may be the inevitable consequence to the post-scarcity world. We live in an age when poor people are fat and have gaming consoles and 60-inch flat screen televisions. For middle and upper middle-class young people, the risks in life are not physical in the form of hunger and violence. The risks in life are all emotional in the form of lost status and hurt feelings. Once again, it turns out that Huxley got the future more right than Orwell. In the post scarcity world, everyone is focused on self-actualization, because otherwise life has no purpose.

My Trouble With Libertarians

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I was out on my bike, riding through the countryside, when I came upon a group of deer grazing near the edge of the road. I was riding where it is mostly woods and fields so there’s not much car traffic. As a result, the woodland critters are often in plain sight. I took the opportunity to stop, drink some water and enjoy the magnificent beauty of nature. At these times it is easy to see why men believe in a just and loving God. I was also reminded of why I hate libertarians.

To be fair, I don’t really hate all libertarians. As is the case with “conservative”, the word “libertarian” has been expanded to include things that the original libertarians never would have imagined. The word itself was coined by a French communist from the word libertaire, to mean an advocate or defender of liberty, especially in politics. The guy most consider to be the founder of libertarianism, Claude-Frédéric Bastiat, was a classical liberal in the line of John Locke and Adam Smith.

It used to be that libertarians were property and contract guys. They argued that the state existed to protect property rights and enforce contracts. These were the neo-classical liberals, who believed government had been created by individuals to protect themselves from one another. Since all property was either owned by an individual or owned collectively, the state existed to protect property and sort out disputes that arose over property. There’s really nothing wrong with this as an argument against socialism and communism.

The trouble is that somewhere along the way, this rather sensible rebuke of socialism curdled into a weird fusion of Cultural Marxism and laissez-faire globalist economics. To be a libertarian today means to abandon the field as soon as the Left assaults the culture in some new way. They always have some excuse for hiding under their bed when the Left goes on a rampage. At the same time, they fall into lectures about pencils as soon as the topic of global capitalism is raised. Listen to a modern libertarian and you get the sense they really think the point of life is cheap consumer goods.

Ironically, modern libertarians are fond of talking about the Founders and they even argue that early America was a libertarian country. That’s ridiculous, but it also misses a critical point. The American colonies were doing well economically and the taxes and levies the King wished to impose were minor. Despite this economic realty, the colonies revolted anyway. It was early proof that homo economicus has always been nonsense. Humans as not rational and narrowly self-interested agents. Humans, individually and collectively, are biological.

When the Brits went to the polls and decided to leave Europe, they did not do so with economics in mind. That was part of it, but patriotism, identity, class and other non-economic factors were at the front of their mind. The winners were not waving the Union Jack because it happen to be handy. The Brexit forces were not talking about sovereignty and self-government by accident. Libertarians are so blinkered they could not comprehend what was so blazingly obvious. They remain convinced that humans are just moist robots.

It used to be that libertarians understood this. Murray Rothbard cooked up something he called Right-Wing Populism, which was a not so subtle attempt to hook libertarianism to biology. Guys like Ron Paul and many Paleo-Conservatives embraced something that is the foundation of the emerging Alt-Right. That is, the chain of causality, which is shorthanded this way: Biology->Culture->Politics->Economics. Iceland has the culture of Iceland because it is full of Icelanders. Nigeria is the way it is because it full of Nigerians.

Modern libertarians appear to embrace the Progressive claim that humans are a blank slate so the chain of causality is reversed. They run out of the room as soon as biology is mentioned. Talk about crime, for example, and they break into a sweat and start looking for a way to escape. When it comes to culture, the modern libertarians are too quick to come up with some bit of dogma that prevents them from facing off with the Left. Usually that means another lecture on why we need to legalize weed and prostitution.

Like most sensible people, I like low taxes and limited government interference in my life. I’m a maximalist when it comes to personal liberty, but I also understand that human society is about trade-offs. I give up some liberty in exchange for the benefits of living in a society to my liking. My liking and that of my fellow citizens is not always going to be logical or fit into a tidy economic model. I also know that a certain segment of the population is going to require extra help and extra restraint. That requires trade-offs too.

Those rolling hills where I sometimes ride may one day be slated for development or a chemical plant. Maybe I’ll be all for wiping out Bambi’s playground or maybe I’ll be on the other side. My arguments will be no more rational than why I prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla. The people on the other side will be just as irrational. That’s the way it goes in politics. It is two sides fighting over what to love more and what to hate more. It is about who we will be, together, as a society. It is what we want our kids to remember about us.

Libertarians have nothing to say about any of this, but like a pebble in your shoe, they keep finding a way to be an irritant. In the current crisis, they have plenty to say, but they refuse to pick a side. They have their principles and their well crafted arguments, but most of it feels like a call to inaction. They clearly believe, but faith without works is dead. A faith that can never work because it runs counter to biological reality deserves to be dead. That’s how I feel about libertarianism.

Breaking: Heretic Apprehended

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In case anyone thought the muzzling of dissent was a Continental problem, here’s a story from Britain that is worse than the German story.

An online troll ended up in the dock after posting comments ‘grossly offensive’ to Muslims on a police website.

Dad-of-seven Stephen Bennett, 39, made inflammatory remarks on Greater Manchester Police’s Facebook page, in response to an appeal for information in a sex case with an Asian suspect.

I’ll just note that the internet term “troll” has now been redefined to mean “people who refuse to shut up.” It used to mean “someone trolling for attention.” Now the Progs have defined it to be “the scary little man shouting hate think at the bridge to paradise.”

One comment he made concerned Asian women, another was likely to be offensive to Muslims.

Bennett, of Wythenshawe, also wrote: “Don’t come over to this country and treat it like your own. Britain first.”

He made the comments despite his mother-in-law and sister-in-law being Muslims, his lawyer told the court.

The response sparked outrage from Facebook users who feared his remarks would set people against each other.

When Bennett was arrested by officers in an 8am house call, he said: “Is this about that Muslim thing on Facebook? I’m getting locked up for sticking up for my own country.”

Notice how the writer is astonished that this monster does not like Muslims despite the fact his in-laws are Muslims. In the New Religion, diversity is our strength so there must be something really wrong with this guy. He’s getting a full dose of diversity at the dinner table, yet he remains a racist! Some people are beyond repair so I hope they put him down mercifully. Wouldn’t want his sort infecting others!

Bennett later admitted an offence under the Malicious Communications Act.

His Manchester Crown Court sentencing hearing was told that he was a dad-of-seven who was finding it ‘difficult to cope’ at the time because of the loss of his job, but was now back in work as a cleaner.

His lawyer added that his mother-in-law and sister-in-law were Muslims, and that he was not racist.

But web users who read his posts felt his remarks would fuel tensions.

One Muslim witness told police he was concerned the ‘irresponsible’ comments would ‘incite hatred’ and be a ‘potential tool for radicalisation’.

Another Muslim personally offended by the remarks challenged Bennett online, telling him ‘act your age’.

People in the wider community were also offended, prosecutor Gavin Howie told court, with one female Facebook user describing his remarks as ‘offensive to all women’.

Orwell deleted things like this from his own work as he assumed no one would believe it, even in fiction. The suspension of disbelief can only go so far. We used to mock primitives for carrying on like this. We still do. The accused would be charged with black magic and his accusers would claim to have been given the whammy by the accused. The judge would then consult the court shaman, who would read some goat innards or his star maps and offer up an opinion.

The religious aspect of this is clear. In the New Religion, the happiness of the dusky people is the sign of collective morality. If the muzzies are vexed, then it must be the fault of the honkies for failing to embrace diversity. It’s why the good thinkers take the side of cop killers. Even through the cop is doing an important duty, the unhappiness of the killers, the black ones, is a sign the void where God used to be is unhappy with the people.

You’ll also note that one can be indirectly “offended” by a heretic. Why else include in the story that one Muslim was “personally” offended? It means one can be transitively offended, in the same way one can feel shame for the sins of your society. The concept of “offense” has taken on a spirit form like a jinn. How long before the theocrats demand we affix hex signs on our homes and wear talismans to ward off the racist jinn?