On Patriotism

Posted on July 4, 2024 by thezman

Most years the polling services and regime media outlets do polling on patriotism to coincide with the July 4th holiday. This year is an exception, probably because it is an election year, and the regime is at war with itself. Given that the numbers last year were dreadful, no one in the regime was interested in the topic. This was a good decision, given the intrigue swirling around Biden at the moment. No need to remind people that no one else is happy with their country either.

One exception comes from the New York Post, which had one of the young zombies from Conservative Inc. write a post about how her generation is not patriotic because the schools failed them. Seeing this sort of boomer-bait out in the wild is a bit weird if you no longer consume regime media. That post reads like something from the Young Republicans essay contest of 1995. There are few things more jarring than a young person who sounds like an old person.

Objectively, it is easy to see why patriotism is in decline. Most people define “patriotism” with the general happiness of the country. Right now, even those who doing well in the material sense are cranky about the country. Their leaders are buffoons, and the Dirt People continue to not know their place. The Dirt People, of course, are unhappy with the Cloud People for all the obvious reasons. You do not have to dig deep into the issue to see why patriotism is at rock bottom.

Of course, below the surface of those youth numbers lies the demographic reality that an empty vessel like Mx. Schlott is unable to notice. Most young people are not white and not only have no connection to the country’s past, but they have also been conditioned to hate that past as part of their identity. Import enough barbarians, arm them with the tools of cultural destruction and it is no surprise that they make war on the past of the host people and their culture.

It is tempting to hate the barbarians flooding into the country, but the fault lies with the rich people who run the country. The barbarians are just rationally responding to what they are experiencing in the process. They are invited in and encouraged to smash the place up, so from the barbarian perspective, why should they have any respect for the place they are encouraged to smash up? They are literally hired by the overclass to destroy the very idea of America.

Putting that aside, the root cause here is democracy. It is not an accident that the cultural and spiritual decline accelerated with the dramatic increase in the use of the word “democracy” in public discourse. Before this became a feature of our political Tourette’s syndrome, reformers talked in terms of returning to a past ideal, rather than pulling out a clean sheet of paper. Making war on the past was never part of the agenda, even for the cranks on the left.

Starting with the end of the Cold War, this changed. Along with the rise in the use of the word democracy, came the idea that what American needs is a rewrite. Clinton ran on the claim that America was desperate for radical change. This was despite the fact the country had gone through a great economic boom. Obama was even more explicit in his desire to fundamentally reorder the country, because in his view, everything was wrong with the “words on the paper.”

The authority for this program to reinvent the country was democracy, by which they meant the real will of the people. It might seem like people were fat, dumb, and happy with consumerism, but the new democrats knew better. What America wanted was radical change and that is what we have gotten for close to three decades. It is what Biden promises, despite having been in office for four years. Note the critique of Trump is that he wants to take us back to the past.

This is the poison of democracy. In order to win office, you must win a majority to your program, but to do that you must first get public attention. No one gets attention with a program of keeping things the same. Imagine a protest where the speaker calls, “What do we want?” and the crowd responds with “More of the same!” and you can see why democracy selects for change over stability. In fact, the only way democracy can work is as a race to find the most radical path.

Then there is the nature of the people rewarded by democracy. You see it in the interview with Mx. Schlott linked at the top. She has cultivated a disdain for the present, but also an indifference to it. This is the heart of the liberal who is sure she knows what needs to be fixed and how to fix it but cannot be bothered doing the mundane tasks that make society possible. Democracy loves the booshie snob with a head full of impractical, but fashionable ideas.

It is important to note that the issue with democracy is not the mechanics of measuring the general will on an issue. The problem lies with the assumption that everyone has a purpose, so collectively society has a purpose and therefore the point of democracy is to discover that purpose and then reorder society in pursuit of the purpose, even if it means trampling the laws. In a democracy, even the rules of democracy are fair game when seeking to move society towards its spiritual end.

Of course, this is why patriotism is impossible in a democracy. To be patriotic, one has to love his ancestors and their accomplishments so much that he is willing to sacrifice to maintain those accomplishments. This means the natural limits on men of the present is the accumulated wisdom of the past. You cannot have a program of constant change and a love of the past or even a healthy respect for your ancestors. Democracy hates the past and anyone who thinks otherwise.

This is why patriotism is dead. It is not the demographic changes or the material conditions that have killed our love of the past. It is the institutional hatred of the past that has become the state religion. In order to fully embrace democracy, one must not only break free of the past, but turn and face it like an enemy. Despite all the pretensions about the future, our lovers of democracy care little about what comes next, only the next round of ancestor hatred.

This may seem like a grim view of the present, but it is only through the clear lens of realism that an alternative can be formed. Conservatism failed to hold onto anything in the face of this democratic onslaught. That means what comes next must not be a defense of the past, which has already slipped away from us, but a new offensive built around a vision of a new future. What comes next will have to be built on the bones of the democrats, not on what they have destroyed.

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Enjoy The Decline

Posted on July 2, 2024 by thezman

British Prime Minister Harold Wilson supposedly said that a week is a long time in politics, and we have certainly seen that recently. The documents case against Trump in Florida has continue to unravel as the government had to admit that they faked those photos of documents lying on the floor. The Supremes just handed Trump a huge win in the case brought against him over January 6, which came after the other ruling from the Supremes on the other January 6th cases.

Of course, sandwiched in between the legal triumphs was one of the most shocking debate performances in history. Biden’s Captain Pike look was not just bad in the conventional sense of bad debate performances. It made people want to turn away as it looked like an act of cruelty. It was made worse by the reaction of the media and the chattering classes. They went rocketing off demanding a new zombie to lead the fight against Trump only to find they are fresh out of zombies.

Things are looking good for team Trump. He is up in the polls and his opponent looks like he will drop over dead at any moment. The regime media is melting down and fighting with one another, rather than attacking Trump. It was one of the unremarked aspects of the debate, but a critical one. The moderators had to put all of their energy into helping Biden, so they had no time for their usual shenanigans. Trump was able to coast through unscathed.

The trouble for Trump is the election is still months away. The polls are looking better now, but nothing like one should expect. This 538 simulation has it a coin toss, which means Trump is the clear favorite. You have to assume the people running 538 have their thumbs on the scale. Even so, the fact that Trump is not up by forty points over a man who is half dead speaks to the core issue. That issue is the problem of America’s demographic collapse.

Here is a bit of math to illustrate the problem. In the past election, the breakdown by race was in line with past trends, despite the shenanigans. That means the percentage of the voters identifying as white had declined, while the nonwhite percentage continued to climb, especially the Hispanic share. Whites were 67% of the vote, while blacks remained at 13% and Hispanics are now at 13%. Here is what the vote would have looked like if everyone voted for either Trump or Biden.

2020
		Trump		Biden
Race	Vote Share	Win %	Vote Pct	Win %	Vote Pct
White	67	58%	38.86	42%	28.14
Black	13	12%	1.56	88%	11.44
Hispanic	13	32%	4.16	68%	8.84
Asian	4	34%	1.36	66%	2.64
Other	3	41%	1.23	59%	1.77
			47.17		52.83

Biden got 51.3% of the popular vote and Trump got 46.8% of the popular vote, so Biden lost more votes than Trump to third party candidates and none of the above. It should not take a mathematician to see the problem. Trump’s nonwhite vote is just 18% of his total vote and the ceiling is extremely low. He can bump it up a little with the black vote, but blacks see Republicans as the white party. Hispanics see the Democrats as the free stuff party, so the ceiling there is probably 40%.

The main problem for Trump or any Republican is that the white vote is shrinking and shrinking quickly as the baby boomers begin to age off. In 2016 the white vote was 70% of the total vote and in 2012 it was 72%. In the 1980 election 88% of the voters were white which is why the claim that we are going through a repeat of the 1970’s is wishful thinking by old people. Regardless, the white vote will be even smaller this time, which means Trump needs even more of it to win.

2024
		Trump		Block Of Wood
Race	Vote Share	Win %	Vote Pct	Win %	Vote Pct
White	65	65%	42.25	35%	22.75
Black	13	12%	1.56	88%	11.44
Hispanic	15	32%	4.80	68%	10.2
Asian	4	34%	1.36	66%	2.64
Other	3	41%	1.23	59%	1.77
			51.20		48.8

None of this is new math as it has been posted here many times, but the point is to explain how it is still possible for Trump to lose to a corpse. We are reaching a point where the only way a candidate representing the white middle-class can win the White House is if he gains the maximum share of the white vote. That maximum share is 80% as roughly 20% of whites suffer from high mutational load. These are the spiteful genetic defects we call the left.

Of course, there is a lot of time between now and November. The recent setbacks at the Supreme Court probably mean Trump gets jail time next week. In her dissent in the immunity case, Sotomayor spoke for the entire kook community when she said Trump could start randomly assassinating people once back in the White House. For kooks like the judge in the New York case, this means he must use any means necessary to stop the evil orange man from becoming dictator.

In other words, in a week the dogs will bark, and the caravan will move on from Biden’s death shuffle to Trump facing jail time. The regime media will have gotten the memo to stop talking about Biden and refocus on Trump. The fake pollsters will be churning out new fake polls, while the gremlins are printing off ballots. The point is the die is cast and there is no salvation at the ballot box. The most we can expect is some entertaining moments as we sink under the weight of demographic reality.

One Dimensional Chess

Posted on July 1, 2024 by thezman

Note: There is now a cinema behind the green door for those interested in watching me fumble through learning the ins and outs of video creation. There is a post about the Sean Connery classic science fantasy film Zardoz, a post about the economy and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Since the Thursday night debate at which Joe Biden looked like a hospice patient, there have been competing theories about whether it was a setup in order to push Biden out of the way or whether it was just another screwup. Basically, we have two competing theories of the crime. One says it is the work of those mysterious people in the hollowed-out volcano who control the world and the other theory says it is the work of people who are too stupid to run the machine they inherited.

The hollowed-out volcano theory side had the momentum on Thursday night as regime media started bellowing for Biden to step aside. It had the feel of that first weekend of the Ukraine war when every talking hairdo on television had a Ukraine flag lapel pin and was spasmodically saying “keev” at one another. The same people who were telling one another that Joe Biden was as sharp as a tack were suddenly competing with one another to condemn his family for rolling him out on stage.

The weekend was full of fake influencers and insiders assuring the internet that there were secret meetings happening at various places where the volcano people or their envoys would tell Biden to step aside. Bill O’Reilly, who most thought was dead, won the internet with a Seymour Hersh style scoop claiming that the decision to put a pillow over Joe Biden’s face had been made. Why anyone would think Bill O’Reilly has such privileged access is a topic for another day.

As the weekend wound down and the Great Pumpkin failed to rise from the pumpkin patch, the new narrative was that Jill Biden was preventing anyone from gaining access to Joe Biden in order to convince him to retire. Anyone who knows anything about the life of presidents knows this is impossible in the modern age. Since Reagan, the modern president is never alone. They have no control of their schedule. There are guards inside the toilet with them.

Anyway, this brings us back to those two main theories. It is becoming clear that the scheme to have the early debate was not part of a four-dimensional chess ploy plotted by the volcano people after all. It is entirely possible that some elements inside the regime pushed for the early debate in case Biden fumbled, but they did not have anything planned if such a thing happened. It is also possible they pushed for an early debate to get it out of the way, so people forget about it.

The truth is the political class no longer possesses second order thinking. This is the ability to think about the range of possible reactions to an action and then planning possible responses to those reactions. People with the ability to think this way weigh those possible reactions and then select their action in order to get the most favorable response, so they can then make their next move. Great chess players possess the ability to think many moves in advance.

The people running Washington lack this ability. It is why they are so enamored with narratives that often take the place of reality. They can only think about what they want as a final result, so they imagine a scenario that leads to that result and then work backward to some initial first step. It is at this point they launch their caper with their first move, just assuming everything they imagined will follow. Often, they celebrate as they are making that first move in anticipation of the prize.

This is why you see the phenomenon of accrued joy. This is when the managerial class creates a narrative that leads to their desired end and then pulls forward the happiness they will feel for that event to the present. Here is an example where the person is feeling joy over an imaginary choo-choo train project. This will never be built and will probably never get started. He can imagine it happening though, so he pretends it will happen and celebrates as if it has happened.

Putting that aside, this inability to think more than one step ahead is augmented by the fact that these people are unable to think about anything other than their own desires and how to achieve them. They never think about what comes next. We have seen this for over two years in the Ukraine war. Every move by the regime is just assumed to be a game changer and there is never any thought given to how the Russians will react or what will happen after this game changer.

That is most likely what we are seeing with Biden. The people who run things knew he was a vegetable back in 2020. They picked him because they hated Trump and just needed a compliant body for the election. No thought was given to how they would manage a man with dementia, much less run him for reelection. Now they want to be free of him and his crooked family, so they let him stagger out on stage and make a fool of himself in that debate Thursday night.

Again, no thought about what comes next, just the first move. It is as if they assume that the world will magically fall into place for them and produce a young vital candidate who can appeal to the public enough to rig the next election. Instead, they will be left to choose from zombies like Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. Neither of whom have support in the party or the general public. Of course, Biden has yet to step aside and very well may choose to stick it out, despite it all.

This lack of second order thinking has another strange result. The system now seems to select for people who prefer chaos over order. If you cannot plan more than one move ahead, then a world where planning ahead has no reward, a world of random chaos, reduces the benefit of that ability. In other words, the mediocrities are creating an environment in which having a mediocre mind is an asset. Their impulsive behavior creates conditions that reward first order thinking.

What all of this points to is a random walk to the Democratic convention. Over the coming weeks the various tribes of the regime will make their game changing move, float their preferred narrative to the media and create more chaos. Given his condition, Biden could drop dead before the convention or, if Allah wills it, drop dead a week after the convention thus leaving Harpo Harris as the nominee. Chance has a sense of humor, but it always favors those with a prepared mind.

You Can Never Hate Them Enough

Posted on June 27, 2024 by thezman

To great fanfare Julian Assange struck a deal with the American government whereby he would be allowed to leave a British jail and return home to Australia. Reportedly, the deal he accepted was to plead guilty to some charges in exchange for a sentence of time served in the British jail. The full details of the deal have not been released, but most likely he gave the government information they wanted or sufficiently demonstrated that he was not in possession of it.

This was always the primary issue. Secret documents and information leak out of the government all the time, but the government knows who leaked it. Most of the time the leaks are official leaks. Someone with authorized access to something hands it over to someone in regime media to publish. Once in a while the people at the top of the regime get mad about this habit and demand to know the source, and the regime reporter puts on a show of resisting but gives in at the end.

Generally speaking, what the regime cares most about in the case of these leaks is the source of the leak and the method they used. If regime information is getting into the public through unknown channels or by unknown figures, it can not only lead to things in the public the regime does not want made public, but it threatens the legitimacy of the regime for the people inside the regime. Blackmail, for example, only works when the victim is sure the blackmailer has control of the information.

A big part of what makes the managerial system of the Global American Empire work is the trust the people in the system have in the system. The yawning gap we see between the confidence of regime figures and their ability is due in large part to their trust in the system. For them, the system works, so they naturally assume their elevation inside the system is due to merit. A loss of control of the system could lead to a loss of trust and the whole thing spins apart.

Putting that aside, the only good thing about Assange getting released is that the worst people can no longer wave around that bloody shirt. For close to two decades, fringy irritants have been using the Assange case to demonstrate their moral purity and to defend the crackpot idea that journalism is a priesthood. Their defense of Assange always rested on the dubious claim that journalists have special rights and therefore must not be subject to the laws governing the rest of us.

You see, once you call yourself a journalist, you get to ignore the rules of decency, the laws governing private property and declare yourself a moral authority. You get to betray confidences and deceive people about your intentions. You also get to steal the property of others and use it for personal gain. All the while, you get to wrinkle up your nose as if you caught wind of a bad odor and lecture the rest of us about your moral goodness and our moral failings.

The game here was to hold Assange up as a paragon of virtue because he was upholding the highest standards of journalism. He was doing the same thing major media does all the time, namely revealing secrets about the regime. In reality, Assange was just trying to avoid an American prison. Like every other person calling himself a journalist, Assange was a dirtbag and a thief. He trafficked in stolen goods for personal benefit and when he got caught, he tried to avoid punishment.

If you are clear headed about this, the correct response to the Assange case is the opposite than that of the moralizers. Information is property and people who traffic in stolen information should be treated like any other thief. In fact, they should be treated more harshly. Stolen property can be replaced, but stolen information is often irreplaceable and the damage that ensues from its theft can last a lifetime. Information thieves should be killed on the spot.

In other words, the right response to the Assange case was not to treat him as a hero but to demand that all journalists get the same treatment. Imagine a world where doxers have to flee the country and hide out in embassies to avoid being sent to prison and you will immediately see the logic. Imagine if the people who stole Trump’s tax returns and gave them to the New York Times were sent to the gallows along with the people who agreed to publish them. Nice thought, isn’t it?

The defense of journalism has always been a moral perversion. The worst people a society can produce end up in journalism. The fact that they from time to time do harm to terrible people is not just used as a reason to elevate these garbage people, but a reason to sacralize their gutter morality. Journalists are good people, so the reasoning goes, because they are more degenerate than politicians. Assange was celebrated because he represented the ideal of this gutter morality.

Those calling themselves journalists, but lack a place in regime media, have noted that regime journalists have been silent on Assange. The main reason is regime journalists are moral nullities. They envy the attention Assange is getting, so they use the only power they have to smite him. The main power of regime media is the power to ignore, so they were happy to ignore Assange. There is no honor among thieves, so the thieving weasels of the media can never honor one of their own.

Despite his position at the bottom of the moral hierarchy, Assange was useful as a regime irritant, thus proving no life is entirely meaningless. Hopefully, his final contribution is to sink quietly into obscurity. The moralizers who have used his name to elevate the worst profession and the worst people will have to find a new bloody shirt to wave around in defense of the despicable trade. The rest of us can return to hating the worst people, because you can never hate them enough.

Veepstakes

Posted on June 26, 2024 by thezman

Note: I am doing a Q&A type of show this week, so if you have any small topics of interest, pass them along in the comments.

Between now and the start of Donald Trump’s debate with the CNN hosts on Thursday night we will learn the name of his running mate. Trump said that his pick will be at the debate, so it has been assumed that person will be revealed at that point, but Trump is being cagey about it. He has invited various people to stand around the backstage area during the debate, so maybe the suspense will continue. There is no audience for this debate, as Joe Biden is now easily startled by loud noises.

It used to be that the running mate selection was one of the first big tests of a party’s candidate because it spoke to the strength of the candidate. In 1976 Jimmy Carter picked Walter Mondale to balance the ticket geographically and to assure Washington insiders that he would not cause any trouble. Reagan did a similar thing in 1980 when he picked former CIA head George Bush. In both cases, the running mate pick suggested the candidate had enough insider support.

For establishment candidates, the running mate was about geographic balance or shoring up a party constituency. In 1988 George Bush had all the Washington support he needed, but the party base found him to be a bit weird so he went with Dan Quayle from Indiana on the theory he would win over heartland voters. In 2004 John Kerry picked John Edwards to add geographic balance and add some personality to a ticket featuring a man who appeared to be made of wood.

The running mate pick has lost its luster of late. No one remembers who Hillary picked for her running mate. He may be dead now for all anyone remembers. Trump picked Mike Pence, mostly because Pence is so boring. He was not expected to add anything to the ticket but serve as Trump’s emissary to the uniparty. George Bush II picked Dick Cheney because the people who picked George Bush II told him to pick Dick Cheney so he could run things from inside the administration.

The funny thing about the running mate job is it has always been the death sentence for a political career. Vice Presidents rarely go on to win the top job. Fifteen vice presidents went on to become president, but eight of those got the job when the president died or was assassinated. Only four of those won an election in their own right. It is one of the other rarities of the 2020 election. Not only did a man with dementia become the most popular man in the country, but he was also a former VP.

This may be about to change with Trump. Since he is limited to one term, his running mate will be viewed as the guy who inherits the MAGA movement and gets the Trump endorsement for running in 2028. We are about to have a great die off in both parties, so it will be a scramble over the next decade among the toadies and flunkies to see who gets to pretend to be in charge of things. Being a second or third banana is going to become a coveted position.

You can see this with Biden. His people picked a cackling simpleton as his running mate because it was seen as life insurance. Installing a moron like Harris as president is too much even for the psychopaths running Washington, so picking her as the VP meant no one was going to put a pillow over Biden’s face. That was a fine plan for the Biden family, but now the party is stuck with a guy who soils himself in public while staring blindly out into space during public events.

This is what will make Trump’s pick interesting. Has he managed to learn anything about his moment in the timeline? If he picks another stooge or someone dictated by the party, then it is another reminder that Trump is not a historical figure as in a man who is shaping history, but rather he is a feckless ignoramus who just happened to be swept up by the tides of history. If he picks someone expected to continue the fight, then maybe Trump has learned something.

Ten years of Trump says the way to bet is that he picks the worst possible option as his running mate, which would be someone like Glenn Youngkin. He is a less masculine version of Liz Cheney. He has Washington support, is loved by the neocons, and has deep ties to the economic elites. If Trump picks him, it means the regime has decided to let him win and then wear his administration as a skin suit. In effect, the populist rebellion will have officially died.

Of course, the main problem for Trump picking an heir is that his MAGA movement has zero institutional support. It is why every candidate in the primary was a zombie from the plant where they produce Republican politicians. The only guy who sounded like Trump was Vivek Ramaswamy and he was probably faking it. Then you have the fact that you cannot let South Asians anywhere near power in a white country. Just look at what is happening in Canada and Britain.

In this regard, Trump’s final big decision as a player on the political stage reflects the reality of the system. It is beyond reform, so that means there is no solution through the normal functioning of the system. You cannot vote your way out of the problems of democracy because the point of democracy is to prevent it. “Our democracy’ is a rigged game in which the house must always win. In the end, that will be the lesson of Trump and the populist rebellion that produced him.

The Dangerous Game

Posted on June 25, 2024 by thezman

During the Cold War, planners concluded that nuclear war would most likely result from two closely related factors. One was the breakdown of communications between Washington and Moscow at all levels. It was not just the red phone between the Kremlin and the White House, but communications across both systems. The other factor that would lead to war was uncertainty about the other side’s intentions. This fear could result in runaway escalation ending in nuclear disaster.

The remedy for this was to maintain communications at all levels of government with the other side so that both sides knew the nuclear posture of the other. The American military had a range of contacts with the Russian military. The spy agencies had contacts with one another across a range of issues and regions. Members of Western media and the academy developed contacts with their analogs on an unofficial basis on behalf of the intel agencies.

The main reason the Cold War did not end in nuclear annihilation is that the two great managerial systems institutionalized communications in such a way that it became a specialty with career opportunities. In Russia, being an expert in some aspect of America meant a good life as a member of the new class. In America, having some expertise on Russia meant a comfortable life in the clouds. The Cold War standoff became a jobs program for both sides.

The selection pressure on both sides was for second and third order thinking, as both sides had an investment in the status quo. Foreign policy advisors in America thought about the downstream consequences of their recommendations because it could have a direct impact on their employment prospects. Similarly, on the Russian side, the pressure was always there to think about how the Americans would react as getting that wrong could mean being posted to the Urals.

This is what makes the present so dangerous. Washington’s proxy war with Russia lacks both the incentives to prevent escalation and the sorts of people who see it as their purpose to prevent escalation. Washington has cut off communications with Moscow and works to prevent others from developing their own channels. Europe has little contact now with Russia. The primary goal of Washington is to isolate Moscow, which means isolating the West from the world.

We see how this works in the recent beach attack in Crimea. Washington provides Ukraine with long range guided missiles. Ukraine lacks the ability to use them, so the American military provides the targeting and guidance of them, while the Ukrainians operate the ground-based launchers. Over the weekend, one of the missiles, which was armed with cluster munitions, hit a busy beach, killing half a dozen civilians and wounding hundreds of others.

This was most likely an accident. Either the targeting was wrong, as there is a military base nearby, or the missile malfunctioned. It is possible the air defense system knocked the missile off course instead of destroying it. It is also possible that the Ukrainians, in league with their neocon handlers, did something to target the missiles at civilian infrastructure, which has happened in the past. There is the rumor that the real target was the big Orthodox cathedral nearby.

The point is no one knows and more importantly, no one in Moscow knows what the intent was behind this attack. The Russians have stated that they think it was deliberate and they blame Washington. Moscow summoned the American ambassador, presumably to deliver a warning about future reprisals. Putin made clear that Moscow will retaliate, and it may not be against Ukraine. Everyone is left to guess as to what they mean but the empire has targets all over the world.

What has developed is a game of chicken in which the Biden administration keeps escalating, daring the Russians to respond, while the Russians try to figure out what Washington is actually trying to achieve. There is no benefit to the Russians in escalation, so they seek to avoid it. Logically, there is no benefit to the West in escalation, but they keep escalating, so Russia is left to guess as to what is the real motivation behind these escalations.

Where this leaves us is a place that is the reverse of the Cold War. There is no communication between the two sides and neither side knows what the other side is thinking or planning. On the surface, the Russian position is clear, but Western propaganda has anathematized accepting it at face value. The coordinated attacks on Nigel Farage from the entire political class is a good example. Merely pointing out the obvious gets you called a traitor.

It is easy to see how this can end horrifically. If the Russians, for example, declare a no-fly zone over the Black Sea, it is likely that Washington will keep sending drones toward Crimea and the Russians will have to knock them down. Washington will then send manned aircraft or maybe a British ship to threaten the Russian fleet. Such a situation could easily spiral out of control because one side thinks it can do anything it likes, and the other side knows it has to draw the line somewhere.

That gets to the heart of the matter. Over the last thirty years in the absence of that old Cold War system, the neocons have taken control of the foreign policy establishment to the point where there is no dissent in Washington. The system is now controlled by fanatics who lack second order thinking. Like all fanatics, the neocons see only that which satisfies their fanaticism. As a result, they imagine every move is furtherance of their goal of destroying their ancient enemy.

There is also the fact that America is a fading empire that still assumes Francis Fukuyama was right and this is the end of history. Thirty years of selecting for people good at enjoying the fruits of victory has left the managerial class in the West stocked with obsequious, narrow-minded dullards. A Jake Sullivan is in his position because he never asks questions and never has an original thought. These people are easily manipulated by the psychopaths of the Kagan cult.

The ultimate question that is being answered at the moment is whether the Global American Empire will go out with a bang or a whimper. In the fullness of time that will be the real history of this age. The emerging great powers of the world are trying to manage the decline of the West and the transition to a multipolar world, while the people running the West play a game of chicken. The reckless management of the Ukraine war suggests it will not end well.

American Paradox

Posted on June 24, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a short video on the best way to dispose of body, a post about why you should believe conspiracy theories and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

One of the things about the modern age is that the public statements from the centers of cultural production and the institutions are often contradictory. The most obvious are the statements about “defending democracy” which almost always come when an election goes against the beautiful people. Their preferred candidate or party loses and all of a sudden, the democratic result is declared a threat to democracy. It happens so often now that people no longer bother to laugh at it.

There are these sorts of contradictions everywhere. For example, our betters continue to use the language of rights to define society. Even the most fevered social justice fanatic would not say the government should assign you a mate. You get to decide who you date and who you will marry. On the other hand, if a group of white people start a club and say it is for European people, the full force of the managerial state will come down on them for exercising their right to free association.

You see this with the people we call the left. Every once in a while, one of them will write a confession piece about how they have no black friends. In fact, it is rare for a white progressive to have any association with nonwhites. One of the amusing truths of this age is that the whiter or blacker a congressional district, the more likely the representative is to be a kook. Black districts select hilariously insane black politicians, and all white districts get the hardest thumping lefties.

The lived experience of white progressives is closer to the dreamed of life of white nationalists, but the progressive sees no contradiction. You see, they have a right to live where they like and among whom they like. At the same time, they can wag their boney finger at you for your whiteness, even if you live as a minority in a majority diverse part of the country. You see, there is no hypocrisy as they are just exercising their right to live where they choose to live.

What this gets to is a central paradox of progressivism. An individual has rights, including the right to be free of discrimination. These are contradictory assertions as the only way to prevent discrimination is to infringe on individual rights. If one is to be free of discrimination then it means forcing everyone else to act in ways they otherwise would not act, as in not associating with someone. Your right to not associate with a potential employee must yield to her right to not be oppressed.

Within the progressive morality is a paradox. An individual has rights that must be respected, as in the dating example. Two individuals or three individuals also have these same rights. At some point, there are a number of individuals that flip from judging them as individuals to judging them as a group. The person renting a room in their home can discriminate as they please, but if that landlord is operating a rental property, they must abide by the codes governing group behavior.

At what point does a collection of individuals become a group? If one white person can exercise his right to free association, how many white people constitutes a group and therefore they lose their right to free association? This is the paradox. There is a number at which a collection of white people loses their rights and fall under the supervision of the moral authorities. The trouble is the number cannot be defined, which is a form of Sorites paradox.

This is the paradox where you start with grains of rice. You start placing grains on a table and they remain some number of grains until at some point you have enough grains to declare it is a pile of rice. Logically, there is a number where you go from a collection of grains to a pile, but it is impossible to define the number. You can arbitrarily decide it is one hundred grains or one million grains, but there is no mathematical proof that locates the exact number.

We see the same thing with the progressive view of rights and responsibilities. At some point, a collection of individuals becomes a group and therefore they transition from the rules judging individuals to the rules judging groups. A solitary white man has a right to associate with whom he chooses but get enough white guys together and at some point, they lose their individual rights in favor of group responsibility. The number must exist, but no one bothers to define it.

This works in reverse, as well. Progressives have long argued that whites as a group owe blacks, as a group, reparations for slavery. California has been debating such a scheme for years. The trouble comes when the white plumber is told he has to send money to the black sports star. Collectively the morality of reparations is somewhat justifiable, but once it is applied individually it becomes an abomination. In theory there lies a middle ground, but no one can define it.

The source of this paradox is the fact that the progressive moral framework starts with the group and works backward. Since the Greeks, people have worked the problem in reverse by starting with the rights and obligations of the individual. This meant carving out a well-defined space where the individual is free to act as he sees fit. In old Norse, for example, there was a word for private habits and a word for public habits because it was understood there was a clear line between the two.

In fact, an individual’s obligations to the group were all within the context of what is best for the group, which was always tied to group survival. There was no collective moral purpose, only a collective practical purpose. Socrates did not flee Athens because it would bring shame to his family or to Athens. He remained and faced his punishment because it was good for Socrates the individual. He upheld Athenian law, even if it meant death, because it was his duty to the survival of the whole.

For a long time, since before Gettysburg, progressives have determined that there is a moral purpose to America as a collective entity. Therefore, everyone as an American has an individual duty to further that collective moral purpose. Since the good of the many must outweigh the good of the individual, the moral purpose of society must inevitably chip away at individual rights. Thus, this paradox we see with regards to rights slowly gives way to collective morality.

In a way, the hyper-moralization of mass culture and the transformation of the state into an explicitly moral structure, is an effort to resolve the contradiction. If the point of America is to impose a new moral order on the world, then it must follow that the point of being an American is to dedicate your life to that cause. Individual rights, which imply choice, must fall away in favor of universal moral duties. In this new paradigm, the Bill of Rights becomes the bill of moral duties.

Theocracies have a poor history primarily because men are not angels. This means the moral authorities must either accept something less than the ideal outcome or exhaust themselves making the people comply. This is why our mass culture sounds like a deranged church choir. The ruling class cares far more about you having only the right thoughts in your head than making sure Boeing builds safe planes. At some point, practical necessity requires the people to overthrow the priests.

Gradually And Then Suddenly

Posted on June 19, 2024 by thezman

The Brits are set to have an election on July 4th, ironically enough, and everyone expects it to be a terrible result for the ruling party. The Tories have been in power for a long time and have managed to break every promise they made when they gained power and make everything worse that they promised to improve. On top of that they have gone through a series of ridiculous people as Prime Minister. The current person in the job is an Indian little person who has never run for office.

The reason the Conservatives called what the Brits call “snap elections”, is the people who actually run Britain are worried about new right-wing parties. Snap elections are those called on short notice in some parliamentary systems. The logic behind it is that the ruling party can more easily rig an election when they are out of favor by limiting the time for the opposition to mount a campaign. Democracy depends on institutional skullduggery to maintain its legitimacy.

According to current polling, which is as fraudulent as everything else in the West these days, the Conservatives are at 21%, which is their lowest rating ever. This is why there is a campaign called Zero Seats. The argument is that the only way to break the corrupt system is to eliminate one of the two main parties. Since the Tories are as popular as rectal cancer, they are the best target. While unlikely, it is possible to see a scenario in which they become a fringe party.

It is not all bad news for the Conservatives. Their historic dance partner, Labour, is polling at just 41%, which is terrible given the status of the Tories. Like America, the game of see-saw the parties play says that when one face of the ruling class is unpopular, the other face is popular. Right now, in the UK, both faces of the ruling class are unpopular, which is why they forced snap elections. No respectable person wants to see a new party rise up and challenge the system.

Just in case, the regime has brought Nigel Farage back from America where he was committed to stumping for Donald Trump. Farage is now the leader of the Reform Party, which is the heir to the Brexit Party. He created that after he successfully led the winning side in the Brexit referendum. The party was created to force the regime to follow through on the referendum, which they did not do. It is one of the reasons UK politics are such a mess now.

The only reason any of this matters is it is a good way to see how the system adjusts to defend itself from public discontent. The British regime is just the mini-me of the American regime, so it is a microcosm of what happens in America. The scale is smaller, and the system is slightly different, but we see all the same tricks used by the regime to make sure it is always heads they win and tails you lose. One of those tricks is to co-opt discontent into an acceptably pointless channel.

You can see how it works in the program the Reform Party posted on Twitter, now stupidly called X, the other day. They put immigration at the top because this is one of the top issues that is rustling the voters. To the untrained eye it all looks good, but to the trained eye the fraud is quite clear. The point of their program is to not question the moral claims behind immigration, but to put a fence around that morality so the question is how to best manage mass immigration.

Look at the first point. “Freeze non-essential Immigration.” The only reason to have the term “non-essential Immigration” is if you have “essential Immigration”, which is a moral claim held by the people Farage claims to oppose. Who decided that any immigration is essential and essential to whom? Was it the bankers who actually run the country or was it the managerial elite who adopted it as a luxury belief? Who decides what is and what is not essential about immigration?

Here is another example. “All asylum seekers that arrive illegally from safe countries will be processed rapidly, offshore if necessary.” Logically, the UK should never receive any asylum seekers as by law and logic, asylum seekers go to the nearest safe country for temporary refuge while the home country is in turmoil. The UK is a set of islands bordered by countries that are stable “democracies” so there can never be a case where anyone seeks asylum in the UK.

The point of this weaselly language is two-fold. One is it is the natural obsequiousness that infests all Western right-wing parties. They have the slave mentality, which means they are always bowing and scraping before the people they pretend to oppose with regards to the moral claims of the ruling elite. The other reason is it tend to work as people just see the headlines and never think about the qualifiers. Owning the libs is a universal concept in Western democracies.

Of course, putting an entertaining clown like Farage up as the front man is a great way to distract from this reality. People are mad and lack the sophistication to understand the issues in detail, so Farage provides a vent for their frustration by pretending to be on their side, when in reality he fully supports the moral framework that is the root cause of their frustration. Farage and his Reform Party are what James Carville once called “boob bit for the bubbas.”

The genius of the trick is it will work. Reform is now polling within a few points of the Tories at 16% in the government polls. In other polls they are in a statistical dead heat with the Tories. If they overtake them, then the people angry at the system will claim victory for having knocked out the Tories. Meanwhile, gangs of Muslims are chasing their daughters through the streets. If Reform flops, then they can focus their energy on being angry at Labour for a few years.

For Americans, this should sound familiar. The usual suspects co-opted the Tea Party to become a subsidiary of the Republican Party. What could have been a threat to the system was quickly neutralized. The current populist groundswell has been slowly co-opted by oleaginous grifters who run around wearing red caps and talking about Trump like he is Orange Jesus. Meanwhile, Trump’s platform is now no different from what Jeb Bush was offering in 2016.

This may sound black-pilling and depressing, but the white pill in what is happening with populist parties all around the West is they are gnawing away at the legitimacy of the system by forcing these reactions. The dullards in the UK fall for Farage, but there are lots of people who have gotten wise to this stuff by watching him work. In the U.S., the Trump phenomenon has opened the eyes of many to the reality of the system, simply by seeing the system react to Trump.

In other words, the process by which a system loses its legitimacy is through its various mutations to defend itself from challenges. The number of people wondering if the system should be saved is a measurable number now, thanks to the struggle the system has undergone to defend against even mild reform. The same is true all over as people increasingly notice the unwillingness of the system to give an inch on critical issues like immigration and culture.

The old line from Hemingway about bankruptcy being gradually then suddenly applies to all complex systems. Failed populist uprisings and Potemkin opposition movements are the gradually portion of the show. With every failure to get even a tiny concession from the system, the system loses legitimacy. At some point, and no one ever knows when it will happen, the suddenly part of the show begins. In order to get there, you have to work through the gradually part first.

The White Fortress

Posted on June 18, 2024 by thezman

It is fair to say that Detroit was one of the first victims of the civil rights revolution, given what happened to it relative to where it was pre-revolution. After the war, Detroit was the most prosperous city in the country. In 1950 the city had 1.8 million people and the highest per capita income in the country. Then the civil rights revolution unleashed hell on the city, leading to a collapse of its economy and population. Motown is now roughly a third of its peak size and gripped by urban poverty.

Despite remaining the symbol of the urban decline unleashed by the civil rights revolution, Detroit is not the worst city in America. St. Louis continues to sport the highest murder rate in the country at 66 per 100,000. Baltimore is always the bridesmaid in the murder Olympics at a respectable 56 per 100,000. Detroit is third, but the murder rate is 40 per 100,000. That is still ten times worse than the most dangerous European cities, but well off the pace in America.

Detroit has also stabilized to some degree. A few super wealthy men have tried to rescue parts of the city from the locals. The billionaire Dan Gilbert spearheaded the revitalization efforts in the city that have carved out some green zones that host business and the sports and entertainment areas. The Ford family continues to play an outsized role in the city. The result of these billionaire efforts has been to arrest the collapse of the city and slowly claw back some civilization.

It was not just the generosity of some oligarchs that saved Detroit from total collapse but also the recognition that the locals cannot be trusted. The state of Michigan stepped in and suspended the lunacy of democracy in the city. The city was ushered through Chapter 9 bankruptcy and an administrator was appointed. Many local politicians were arrested so they could not interfere in the repair efforts. Ten percent white Detroit continues to have a white mayor.

When you walk around Detroit now, you can get a glimpse of what lies ahead for majority-minority America. Like Brazil, Detroit is three cities. There is the war zone that has been cordoned off as best they can. Then there is the area where the more stable black population lives and then you have the economic zone. A weird balance has been struck where the more stable black population works in the economic zone and does not get rustled by the measures required to maintain it.

Walk around Greek Town on a Friday night and the thing you cannot help but notice is the lack of local color. This is the tourist part of the city located near the big sports arenas and the large office towers. It is called Greek Town because it was populated by Greeks before the savages were unleashed by the civil rights revolution. Like everything created in America over the last half century, Greek Town is named after what was destroyed in order to make the new thing.

The reason for the lack of local color is the police presence. It is not just cops milling about like you see in less violent cities. This is the sort of policing that is intended to be an unwelcome mat for a specific group. At all of the entrances to the area are cops who man metal detectors. They select who must go through the detector and then get the pat down once it inevitably sounds the alarm. One can guess as to who they select for this special form of inspection.

In fairness, Detroit is not the first city to take this approach. Baltimore was a trail blazer in this regard, having condemned the area around the harbor and then handing it to developers and urban pioneers in the 1980’s. The deal was that pioneers and developers would build a white fortress to serve as an entertainment and tourist zone, while the city would provide security. This meant aggressively policing the border between the green zone and the black zone.

Detroit appears to have used Baltimore as a template, but also learned from Baltimore how not to screw it up. Got to Baltimore today and it is a mess. The Inner Harbor is vacant and the former tourist areas are overrun by locals. Nature is reclaiming that which was carved out of the urban jungle decades ago. Detroit, in contrast, is holding the line and that is mostly due to elite support. The oligarchs are not going to let their investment be swallowed up by the jungle.

It is too soon to know if Detroit can survive with this model. The upper middle-class white population escaped the city and refuse to return, unless it is for a ball game, concert or for work. On a Friday night when there is no major event, Greek Town is a well-guarded ghost town. You can walk into the best restaurants and get a seat at what is usually their prime hours. The pricing reflects the fact that the entertainment industry is built around the major events.

That is the trade-off to politely working around the problem instead of rudely going after the roots of the problem. There is a lack of authenticity to Greek Town. It feels like the Potemkin “town centers” that are now part of the suburban white fortress that is getting attention from the kooks. They do all the things that you expect from the organic urban centers of old, but they lack that hard to describe sense that can only come from the produce of an authentic community.

It is tempting to think that maybe that is the compromise that will define the future, but these transactional communities have a poor record. The reason is the cost of maintaining them is much higher due to the lack of social capital. People in a new development have only the investment in their home. They have no investment in their neighbors, who come and go. Eventually, everyone finds a newer, cleaner white fortress because the old white fortress is beginning to crumble.

That is what makes Detroit worth watching. It was the first victim of the civil rights revolution, and it may be the last chance to figure out how to maintain an urban area within the moral construct of civil rights. If like Baltimore it collapses under the pressure of diversity, then there are no arguments left for maintaining the moral framework of civil rights, but if it survives as a post-modern apartheid city, then it can be the model for how to maintain civilization in a majority-minority America.

Modern Youth Politics Inc.

Posted on June 17, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about my experiments with time travel and a series of daily travelogues about my time in Motown for AFPAC, which was much more interesting than I expected. Subscribe here or here.

Symbolism is one of the aspects of all politics, regardless of political system, which tends to get missed by political people. This is especially true of those we call the right, who are often deep in the weeds of ideology or theory. They are like experts on paint who are more concerned with the type of paint used by the great artist than the actual painting he created and its larger meaning. You see this with the reaction to the Nick Fuentes movement that just had its big party this past weekend.

Since he started to gain a following, critics have struggled to find a good way to attack him, as they often get tangled up in the symbolism. He became a national figure during the 2016 MAGA movement, but shot to the top with the 2020 election, where he toured the country holding rallies in the “stop the steal” days. He would gather up young fans and give speeches via bullhorn outside of state capitols. It was reminiscent of the radical protests of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

That was the point, more than the actual content of the protests. It is a form of guerilla marketing in which the counter to the well-financed and carefully choregraphed messaging from the regime is the apparently organic rejection of that message and the people behind the messaging. In other words, the point was not what they were saying at these events. The whole point of the event was to tell the world they exist, despite the mass propaganda from the regime.

This has always had another function for Fuentes. It tells the disaffected youth that there is a place they can go to be with other likeminded people. They see these things happening on their preferred platforms. They get talked up in the online spaces these young people frequent and most importantly, they get criticized by the sorts of people who make good foils for Fuentes. Like all good political animals, Fuentes tends to attract the sorts of critics he needs to make his points.

It is important to note that it has been a long time since someone has come along with the skill of Fuentes in terms of generating excitement. There is an electricity around his events that you never see at other political events. He understands his audience because in reality, Fuentes is his audience. He is trying to create the sort of excitement he and they learned about in history class. He is building a youth movement that mirrors what he thinks it was like in the Reagan or Kennedy years.

This is why the marketing of Nick Fuentes and American First looks like it is put together by profession marketing people. He and his entourage arrive at their impromptu rallies wearing the American First gear, which you can buy at the AF store and the crowd always has the same look at feel. He is always surrounded by guys holding up their mobile device who are surrounded by young men in blue blazers chanting the familiar chants that have become a defining feature of this thing.

While it looks like great marketing, it is genuinely organic. Much has been said about the fact that this generation is the first to be socialized online, but they are also the first generation to be saturated in and socialized by marketing. To old people, the thoroughly commercialized culture of today feels alien and weird. To the young people raised in it, it feels normal. It is simply a habit of mind. The people you see at a Fuentes rally are just falling into the role that fits them best.

In a way, it is as if life has become a video game. They play the character that they feel comfortable playing. Instead of being the barbarian character in the online game, they are the guy holding the cell phone up next to Nick. The archers fall into the role of standing in the back yelling the familiar slogans at Nick. Of course, there are the Leroy Jenkins characters at these things. That would be the black guy dressed as Playa Maga or the has-been grifters like David Duke.

This is what trips up his “right-wing” critics. They see the assorted kooks and weirdos that turn up at these events and then fashion an argument against Fuentes and his followers that often reduces to petty jealousy. Fuentes is doing what many of them said was impossible, mostly because they lacked the skill and courage to try and do the things that Fuentes is doing in terms of public demonstration. Calling Fuentes a grifter is a way to feel good about losing.

When you talk to the people at a Fuentes event, and in Detroit they were everywhere Saturday evening, they will tell you that people like Sneako are not really part of the movement but something like the court jester. They lack the sophistication to explain it, but they sense that the point of these colorful characters is to decorate the public face of the movement as something like an inside joke. The critics do not get it, which is why they are not in it.

Therein lies the genuine problem for this thing. It is like everything else in the modern mass media age in that it is just a thing you do until the next thing comes along. It is why Fuentes has had to keep shifting the focus and changing the characters in what is more like a long running reality television show than a political movement. Every season you get a new character and some new issues. It is not that it is a grift or he is not serious, but rather this is what this generation thinks is serious.

Another way to think of it is the films from twenty years ago where the walls between virtual reality and reality break down and you have a character from the digital world enter the real world or vice versa. This is what is happening for a generation raised on mass media, mass marketing within the context of virtual reality where the worst thing that can happen to you is your character dies. The politics of this generation are the politics of the internet, not the meat space.

Politics as professional wrestling is fun for the twenty-somethings who are naturally drawn to it, but in time they will have to have real lives. You see this transition in some of the older young people who are now working and on their own. Standing outside a Nick rally yelling those slogans feels foolish to them. That is the most likely way this thing unfolds over the next few years. The youthful excitement and superficiality will give way to more mature and serious politics.

This raises the question of the expiry date for Nick Fuentes. All pop stars who court the youth audience run into the same problem. There comes a point where their act goes from opportunistic to weird. They get too old for their market. Fuentes looks like he is a teenager, so he has time, but at some point, he will have to follow his older audience into a more mature form of politics. The question that remains unasked and unanswered is whether he will lead them or follow them.

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