Category Archives: Badder Thoughts

The Renter Society

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Anyone who has rented a car, or an apartment knows it is a different relationship from owning a car or especially a house. Drive through a working class neighborhood and you can easily spot the owners from the renters. The houses with overgrown lawns will usually be the renters. Of course, everyone knows the jokes about rental cars. Even the most conscientious renter tends to be more reckless with a rental car. You just do not have the same connection with it as you own car.

Another thing goes along with this. People with old beat up used cars tend not to be as careful as people with new cars. This has been tested. Take that old clunker and fix it up or replace it with something nice and the driver gets more conscientious about his driving and how he treats the car. The same thing probably happens with houses or even neighborhoods. What is the point of having a great lawn if every lawn in your neighborhood is a trash strewn, overgrown mess?

The point here is that the relationship one has to the property at his disposal is controlled to some degree by the ownership and condition. For this reason, it has been an article of faith with conventional conservatives that the way to lift people out of poverty is to get them into a house they own. The theory is these people will invest in their community, because they own a house in it. They have skin in the game, while the renter can just pick up and leave if things get bad.

This is not something that gets much attention now. While homeownership rates are about where they have always been, few people really own their house. They have a mortgage that they may never pay off. Each generation of American is poorer and carries greater debt. The policy to inflate home prices means younger people will carry a mortgage much longer and carry a much larger debt load in general. America is a land of debtors falling deeper in debt with each generation.

Then there is the general erosion of property rights. You may own your home and your car, but some company is tracking your use of them. That information, which is your property, is bought and sold without your consent. If you have a smart TV, it is spying on you, maybe even listening to your conversations. Just as the landlord can come into your apartment at any time, corporate America can poke around in your life whenever it feels the need to harvest information about you.

It is not just in our private lives where we see the transactional arrangement supplanting the ownership society. Businesses are increasingly moving to technology platforms that are pure services. Instead of owning the accounting system and running it on your server, you sign up for a web-based option. You pay monthly and agree to their terms of service, like all the other services that now dominate our lives. Increasingly, a business is just a temporary set of rental agreements.

This is something that cannot be overstated. if you look at the firms behind the apps that pop up in our lives, there is nothing to them. They have assembled a collection of licensed products that they have given a clever name. They work out of temporary offices and rent server space from Amazon. The employees are contract labor from somewhere over the horizon. The traveling circuses of old had deeper roots than the typical tech startup. They at least owned the tents.

There is something else that relates to this change in our society. Drive around and the infrastructure is looking shabby. Streets are full of potholes. Utility lines are a cluttered mess, often looking like something from the third world. Schools are old and shabby, even in nice middle-class areas. People think about the tyranny part of anarcho-tyranny, but it is the anarchy part that has the greatest impact. There is a general shabbiness to our lives that erodes our civic pride and commitment to community.

Taken together, the engine for creating social capital has slowly fallen into disrepair, to the point where we have adopted the renter’s mentality. The only time politicians speak of community is when they are discussion artificial or imaginary communities like the “trans community” or the “Asian community.” Even more bizarre is that most people think about their on-line groups when they think of community. The typical millennial has a stronger relationship to other gamers than his neighbors.

The other thing about the renter’s mentality is the owner of the rental property does not invest more than necessary. The landlord does not install granite counter tops in a rental unit and the car rental place is not waxing the cars between rentals. The software as a service vendor is cutting costs on development, because that is his only way to increase his profit margins. Eventually, these savings have to be balanced out with a capital infusion, but often after the property is sold.

This cannot work in a society. There is no way to replace the social capital that is not being created due to the lack of community. We see this with the attempts by Washington to inject money into the economy. What is not stolen by the pirates that prey on the economy has no impact on the people. The $1,400 check is never going to be the same as a job at a local business, run by one of your neighbors. Once the money is spent, there will be a new cry for more checks.

America is a rentier economy populated by people with a renter’s mentality. Every relationship is transactional. Once the transaction is over, the parties go on their way until the next transaction. One result of this is the country now looks like a neighborhood full of rental properties. No one, not even the government, sees a reason to invest in anything other than their immediate needs. The last functioning institution is the military, and it is succumbing to the same mentality.

It is tempting to call this feudalism, but feudalism had a strong ownership component and a well-defined set of reciprocal responsibilities. Modern America is becoming something different. A tiny group of people own everything, either directly or through the financial system, with no relationship to anyone other than through the rental agreement, the terms of service or the short term contract. The vast majority are just passing through society like renters.

Whether or not this is sustainable is an open question. The only societies we have ever created without social capital are penal colonies. Even in those, the inmates build bonds with one another. A prison cellblock has more social capital than a gaming community or social media network. We are into uncharted territory. Can a society sustain itself in a crisis, even a society post scarcity, when none of the members feels any connection to the other members? It seems unlikely.

On the other hand, maybe one part of the post scarcity society is there is no longer a threat of a genuine crisis. The great crises of the last few decades have been imaginary or exaggerated. There is a strong sense that things like the Covid panic are due to the political class not having anything to do with their time. These fake crises give them a reason to demand our attention. Maybe the renter society is a natural response to the elimination of real threats to society.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Free To Choose

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Note: I am posting regularly behind the green door on more casual topics like movies and personal topics. The latest is a review of the 2012 movie Dredd. This week’s Taki post is up and somewhat related to this post.

In a modern prison, the prisoners are quickly conditioned to have a reason for everything when asked by a guard. They are prisoners and they have no freedom, so they need permission for everything. On the other hand, prisoners have a lot of time to work the system, so they get good at the rules. With the help of lawyers on the outside they hold the prison system to their own rules. As a result, everyone working in the system knows they need a reason for everything they do.

The prison is the ultimate expression of a world without choice. This is a thing to keep in mind when looking at what is happening in America. It is no longer acceptable to say “because I want to” when asked about a preference or choice. You have to have a reason for your choices. The sources of authority are the prevailing dogma on human relations or science, which is just another word for the dogma. Science has become a deity of sorts for the true believers of the modern age.

One example of how this played out was the homosexual marriage debate. The people pushing it flipped the debate by demanding to know why homosexuals could not get marriage licenses. All of a sudden, everyone was scrambling around for a reason to standby the default position of humanity. Since the official dogma asserted that anyone opposing the homosexual agenda was a bigot and therefore dismissed from the debate, there was no acceptable reason to defend natural reality.

The important part of that debate in regards to the permission society is how quickly normal people went along with it. Once the Left framed the issue as a question, normal people scratched their heads searching for an answer. They just assumed they needed a reason to defend biological reality. Critically, public opinion was no longer justification for maintaining normal marriage. A majority preferring to keep the old ways was not a good reason. Group preference was no longer acceptable.

Public policy is not the only area where choice is being stripped from us. In fact, having a preference is immoral. White women can no longer say they prefer to date white men, for example. That violates the official dogma. They need to find some other reason to not date outside their race. Something similar is being pushed with homosexuals and transvestites. Even the most intimate and personal of choices are subject to examination and you better have a good reason for them.

What kicked this off, of course, was the war on free association. In the quest for racial equality, white people were stripped of their freedom to associate with whom they wanted in daily life. If a white person chooses not to hire a nonwhite, they know they need to record an acceptable reason. If asked, they must provide this reason. The same is true of renting an apartment or asking about the schools. In the permission state, you are guilty until you provide your permission slip.

In this conversation between Christopher Caldwell and Andrew Sullivan, they discuss why many people oppose what they call globalism. Caldwell thinks it is because these people are not capable of competing, while Sullivan assumes these people are ignorant of the glories of diversity. There is an assumed lack of agency. The possibility that people simply prefer to live in more traditional communities is alien to them. There must be some reason that fits within the prevailing orthodoxy.

The prohibition on personal preference is a paradox of liberal democracy. In theory, the system is supposed to reflect the accumulated preferences of the people. That is the point of having an election. The people vote their choices, and the preference of the majority carries the day. The people do not need a reason to make their choices, because in a democracy the will of the people is the finale authority. That is the point of democracy, but now we are at the exact opposite position.

This is another great parallel between communism and liberal democracy. In the former, the dictatorship of the proletariat was supposed to result in the full expression of the public will but ended up with a dictatorship of a tiny minority. In liberal democracy, the election process and open debate are supposed to get consensual government, but in reality, it is something closer to a theocracy. In both cases, the ruling minority appears to despise those they rule but cloak themselves in moral authority.

It turns out that preferences and moral authority are conjoined. When moral authority resides with the people, in their traditions and customs, they maintain the freedom to choose within the broad outlines of those customs and traditions. Once moral authority shifts to some arbitrary ideology, then moral authority shifts to a tiny elite. A similar process happened with the Catholic Church in the middle ages. Church dogma replaced tradition and culture as the moral authority of the people.

That suggests the remedy for liberal democracy is a reformation. In this context, the reformation was about restoring moral authority to the people, by rooting their faith in their local customs and traditions. Lutheranism reflected the nature of the Germanic people, while Anglicanism reflected the sensibilities of the English. For liberal democracy, this means restoring national sovereignty, so that the will of the people can be expressed in politics and public policy.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Systemic Failure

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Complexity in human systems often results in properties that have no obvious relationship to the people in the system. The example used when trying to explain complexity is the ant colony. A single ant is not a terribly complicated thing, but the ant colony is highly complex. Further, the actions of a single ant appear to be random, but all of those ants together look like a highly coordinated effort. You cannot learn much about an ant colony by studying a single ant.

Complexity in human systems often results in a disconnect between the user inputs and expected outputs. People who work with large software systems run into this when making changes to the system. If the system has been around for a while, it often has been modified many times by many hands. New changes often result in strange and unexpected downstream consequences. Every new change means the next change will be more costly in testing and error correction.

Ants and software can be interesting, but they are not the best example to use when thinking about the human system known as society. We don’t have the ability to completely stand outside of society, like we do with an ant colony, and objectively observe the emergent properties as a whole. We live in society. Unlike a software system, we don’t have a design spec or documentation. We have to infer the design from the actions we observe, which creates its own complexity.

We have some examples of this over the last year. The great election fraud was not the result of a master plan from grand strategists operating in a secret lair. Like the ant colony, it was the result of thousands of individual actions by people motivated by years of conditioning from the ruling class. For the bulk of the managerial class, down to the entry level clerks, opposing Trump became a religion. Stopping him through any means necessary became part of their collective mindset.

The weird cultural revolution being imposed on the military offers an example in the present to see how this works. The military is a vast, complex machine. Most of what it does is enable a relatively small number of people to wage war. It is a rule based, male dominated system. It is being turned into a chaotic, feminine system. As thousands of men flee that system, the system will change in ways no one can predict. Whatever it becomes, it will not be the world’s most powerful military.

Another example that is still playing out is the Covid panic. Over the last year the main thread of the story has been the political class trying to contend with the unintended consequences of their actions. The reason their story keeps changing is their inputs never have the desired outputs. They have to keep going back and rewriting the story of their actions to fit the present reality. It turns out that throwing wrenches into the gears of human society was not the smartest play on their part.

The big new stimulus bill to try and patch up what they have wrecked is another example of system complexity. The final cost of this relief bill is about $15,000 per household or $6,000 per person. Obviously, everyone is not getting a check for those amounts or anything close to it. Most of the money is going to the kleptocrats who run the uniparty system. People who made less than $75,000 will get a check for $1,400 per person in the household, with some exceptions.

The hope is the money will be spent as soon as it gets into the hands of the people, but that is not a guarantee. That’s not how the first round of checks played out. People used the money to pay down debts. Over the last year, a strange new behavior has emerged with the American people. They are paying down debts and saving money. Instead of rushing out to buy toys with those checks, they paid off bills. There has also been a wave of debt consolidation exploiting artificially low interest rates.

There is a good chance the new round of checks accelerates this trend away from consumerism toward saving. While the propaganda machines are telling the people to spend the free money, the people are hearing concern. The rulers would not be handing out cash if things were solid. They must be very worried about things they are not mentioning in public, so people are preparing for the worst. This is a good example of how complex human system are difficult to manipulate.

There’s also the fact that the rulers radically altered, without any obvious reasons, the habits and customs of society. All of a sudden, we have these new religions requiring people to wear codpieces on their faces and go through struggle sessions over zoom about their privilege. People working from home are not the same people who used to gather around the water cooler or have a drink together after work. This big complex system is suddenly very different. The old rules no longer apply.

This is what makes the revolution imposed from above so dangerous. The people who initiated these changes in American society are not working from a grand plan or a set of ideological goals. There is no point to what they are doing. Instead, our managerial revolutionaries are swept up in forces they do not understand. It is a strange, recursive and reactionary revolution from the top. The best they can muster for an explanation is, “we’ll know where we are going when we get there.”

Just as no one can know what will happen with the latest round of stimulus, no one can know what will happen as a result of the “great reset.” The millions flooding over the border suggests some form of collapse is in the future. Complex systems, however, tend not to collapse. They seize up in one area and the system responds to that failure, which triggers new unexpected failures elsewhere in the system. The result is an increasing level of chaos within the system.

What most likely lies ahead is spasms of disorder, followed by increasingly ham-fisted efforts to impose order. Those efforts to set things right will set off new spasms of disorder elsewhere in the system. The razor wire barricades in Washington are a good example of how this will work. The solution to the problem they created is going to set off a bunch of new problems. The main feature of this age will be men racing from one station to the next, trying to keep the plates spinning.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Éireannach Diúltach

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Today is St. Patrick’s Day, which is when people around the English speaking world celebrate having driven the Irish from their community. Businesses dust of the old “Irish Need Not Apply” signs and post them up. People mock the Irish by getting drunk and starting fights in public. Everyone wears green. Going out for corned beef and cabbage is a big thing, even during the pandemic. The meal is capped off by leaving a small tip in the tradition of the flintiest people on earth.

This is not true, of course, but it would probably be a better way to respect the Irish people than the current way of celebrating the day. St. Patrick’s Day in America is mostly just another version of Cinco de Mayo. That is, a reason for restaurants to roll out some themed specials and college kids to wear silly outfits. The difference is the college kids will not get in trouble for making fun of the Irish or for culturally appropriating them by wearing stereotypical Irish clothing.

The Irish are, however, a good topic for dissidents to study. Ireland struggled through a long and unpleasant occupation by a people who sounded a lot like them and looked like them but were not them at all. The Irish were ruled for a long time by clever, resourceful aliens. Crushing Irish resistance became an obsession with the British at times, even when it was not in their interest. This is, of course, the situation for white people in America now, just without an armed resistance yet.

How the Irish fought the British and how the British fought back is something highly relevant to modern America. The Irish eventually won their independence by driving up the cost of occupation. This came at a heavy cost to the Irish, as well. There are more people of Irish descent in America than in Ireland, because the long battle with the British made living anywhere else better for most Irish. There is also the fact that Ireland was never and will never fully united under the Irish flag.

Ireland is also a great example of how negative identity can destroy a people much faster than a conqueror. The Irish during the struggles became a people defined by their hatred of the British and their long history of oppression by the British. This made them wholly unequipped to go into the world as a full independent people. Ireland was immediately consumed by globalism. First it was the boom-bust of global economics and then it was the homogenization of global culture.

Starved of its ancient enemy, the Irish had no reason to exist, so the Irish ruling class joined the global ruling class, in spirit if not actuality. What that means for Europeans is embracing a plan of self-eradication. They elected a gay Indian as their ruler and set about importing as many nonwhites as they could find. Ireland’s Project 2040 promises to import a million Africans. If you do the math, they plan to make the Irish a minority in Ireland in this century. It is a plan for national suicide.

There is a popular meme where you see American soldiers disembarking on D-Day being told their kids will be trans or some other equally vulgar fad. The idea is that if our ancestors knew what defeating the fascists would lead to in a few generations, they would have refused to fight. One suspects that if Michael Collins could have seen Leo Varadkar, the gay Indian prime minister of Ireland, he and his compatriots would have turned their guns on their own people.

It is no surprise that the Irish have often called themselves the blacks of Europe, as they share the same sense of identity as American blacks. The Irish think the comparison works because they are both musical people, but it works better in the context of negative identity. Both the Irish and American blacks are defined by their long struggle, real and imagined, with another people. Without that struggle, the Irish have ceased to exist in a meaningful way. Like their memories, Irish is history.

There is a lesson here for dissidents across the West. It is not enough to hate the ruling class and hate the liberal democratic system that sustains them. Hatred is a powerful motivator and a powerful rallying cry. It can only be a tactic in the larger strategy for national independence.  It may feel good to hate a person or a group of people, but it can never come to define you or your people. By rooting identity in the relationship with another group, you become that group’s slave.

This is why Jews have survived as a tiny minority, often among people who hate them, without having to assimilate. Jewish identity is a positive one. It is largely the same in all times and all places. They adjust to the host population or in the case of Israel, the relative strength of her neighbors. Otherwise, Jewish identity in 19th century Russia is the same as in 21st century Manhattan. The people and places change, but Jews and the complaints about them remain the same.

This is why “Yes, But Is It Good for the Jews?” is an old punchline to jokes. Jews are famous for always thinking first about whether some situation, even a disaster, is good for them and their people. They joke about it among themselves. No one ever asked, is it good for the Irish, but plenty of Irish wondered if it was bad for the British. They were, in effect, putting the interest of the British ahead of their own. Because they have a positive identity, Jews never think this way.

If the pubs are open in your part of the hellscape that is Covidian America, enjoy a green beer and some inauthentic Irish culture. Everyone, even the Irish, are entitled to have some fun when the chance arrives. In between points of green beer, think about why Irish has been reduced to a trashy holiday and how best the fight for national sovereignty can avoid the fate of the Irish. If freedom means infinity Africans and gay Indian prime ministers, what is the point of the struggle?

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Storytellers

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People in the modern age tend to think of people in the prior ages as being primitive or unsophisticated in their understanding of the world. This is mostly a modern thing, something that arose along with science. Once man started to understand the material operations of the natural world, those prior explanations for natural phenomena started to look rather silly. One reason for the primitive – modern dichotomy is a sense of embarrassment that our ancestors were so ignorant.

The truth is, of course, those primitive beliefs about what makes the leaves change color in the fall or why certain people refuse to live by the rules of society were useful and often quite clever. Stories about nature not only helped people understand and predict natural phenomenon, but they also provided a moral lesson. One thing science is telling us is that people are natural story tellers, because we have a natural preference for abductive reasoning over indictive or deductive reasoning.

The primitive – modern dichotomy is not just a battle between rational explanations of the world versus beliefs about the world. Various forms of Christian belief, although not all, are modern relative to prior forms of belief. The Christian logic of man’s relationship with God is very sophisticated compared to ancient belief systems. It was a great leap forward that became a foundation of Western civilization. The belief that the world operates by fixed rules is an axiom of the modern age.

Christianity has been subject to the primitive – modern dichotomy by radicals since the French Revolution. With the rise of science, all religion has been gratuitously lumped into with privative beliefs. Ironically, this is a primitive belief itself, as humans are biologically wired to believe. Belief is one of the oldest modern human attributes that probably coevolved with language. Like language, belief facilitates knowledge by providing a way to efficiently containerize abstract concepts.

In this regard, radicalism is best seen a primitive reaction to the advance of our material understanding of the world. The French Revolution may have started as a reasonable objection to the aristocratic system, but it quickly led to the Cult of Reason, which looked like a Bronze Age pagan festival. Today we see the same thing, but the pagan god at the center is called science. People are wearing codpieces on their faces and using grimy canvas sacks because science.

Notice how the primitives are saying that the rush to the border is caused by climate change, rather than the infantile tantrums of the new President. It is not excuse making or a distraction, at least not entirely. The people saying this nonsense know that tens of millions of people believe Gaia is angry at our lawnmowers, so they are happy to heap their troubles on the goat of climate change. If we just repent, Gaia will relent and lift these terrible plagues from us. Oh, save us Gaia!

This is not just rank and file oogily-boogily. The people at the top of our society are more like shamans and soothsayers now. The high priests of Progressivism are blaming the Covid panic on climate change. It is no surprise that this stuff is belching out of Harvard, as it has been and continues to be the primary training ground for the high priests of the Progressive faith. Founded by Puritans, it is the most prestigious indoctrination academy of the Judeo-Puritan ruling elite.

The ruling class embrace of increasingly bizarre forms of animism is not without its amusing aspects. In less sophisticated times, the court would have had an astrologer or wizard to impress the court with magic and soothsaying. Today, the court magician is little Italian fellow named Anthony Fauci, who is better suited to play the role of court jester than court magician. Modern paganism has become self-parody but combining the clown and the priest into a single role.

Another hallmark of primitive thinking is the person charged with finding those responsible for angering the gods. Currently, the name for those in league with Old Scratch are called conspiracy theorists and the tool for unleashing sin in our community is disinformation. We now have “experts” charged with analyzing how Old Scratch uses disinformation to trick us into sin. The similarity between this bit of oogily-boogily and the use of spectral evidence in witch trials should be obvious.

Of course, you cannot have witch trials without some witches, and you need witch hunters to supply those witches. This is where the cast of dingbats and airheads employed by C-list news sites find their place. These otherwise useless people roam the countryside looking for “haters” who knowingly speak blasphemy and spread heretical thoughts. Instead of an actual witch trial, the mob goes to social media, points, and ululates at the sinner until they go away.

One of the more amusing witch hunters is a dingbat name Megan Squire, who is employed by a university as a full-time witch hunter. Her formal title is professor in the computer science department, but it would be more accurate to call her the chief inquisitor of the one true faith. It is a nice bit of irony putting a raving lunatic in the most rational of fields. Maybe Gaia likes a good joke once in a while. Regardless, Squire’s job is as an increasingly deranged witch-hunter for the Left.

Using the old primitive – modern dichotomy, it is tempting to think we are descending into a primitive madness. This age is riddled with people no better than wizards, warlocks and dervishes who would have easily found work in the most primitive of times, just using different jargon. Megan Squire would have read entrails instead of “data” to explain why the village boy is a witch. Instead of Gaia causing the plague it would have been, well Gaia. Some things never change.

The truth is though, human progress has always been a struggle between the rational and the irrational. When the rational and spiritual correspond, we see rapid advance not only in material knowledge, but in spiritual understanding. The so-called dark ages left us with the most stunning of architecture for a reason. When they are at odds, we get a war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. Usually, the lie beats the truth, because the liars are better storytellers.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Cosmopolitan Empires

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Note: There are some new items up behind the green door. As I’m getting more serious about the site redesign for this year, I will be posting updates and comments about it there, along with pop culture items. There is the usual Monday post up at Taki as well, which dovetails a bit with this post.

During the Cold War, few thought of the Soviet Union as an empire. At least the claim was not part of propaganda campaign against them. The communists, of course, liked to hurl around the term “western imperialists”, but no one thought of the West or America as an empire. That was just part of the rhetoric used in the ideological war fought between the two sides in the third world. Empires fight to conquer land. East and West in the Cold War fought to win hearts and minds.

Looking back, it is easier to see that the Soviet Union was an empire, because it is so obvious that America is an empire. We are also seeing more parallels between the two sides as the American empire enters its end phase. Like the Soviets at the end, the American empire is run by a collection of ossified geezers, clinging to a past for no other reason than they have no future. What happened to the Soviet Union thirty years ago is now happening to the American empire.

An important similarity is both sides were cosmopolitan in their structure, organizing their people around a set of ideas. Traditional empires were organized around the conquering people, who imposed their will on those they conquered. Both the Russian and the American empires sought to assimilate the people brought into their orbit through ideology, rather than force. The captive people of both empires participated in the maintenance and defense of the empire, often as equals.

An interesting point of comparison is that in the formation of both empires, Jews played an outsized role. Jews were a major part of the Bolshevik revolution. They were integral to the party and the formation of the Soviet state. It was only after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 that Jews lost power. Stalin grew worried that the Jews would be more loyal to their ancestral homeland than the party. It was from the purge of Jewish intellectuals that we get the term “rootless cosmopolitan.”

Of course, Jews were right there at the creation of the American empire. By the time FDR and the New Dealers took office, Jews were entering the ruling class. After the war against the fascist, Jews were firmly established in the elite. As Yuri Slezkine points out in his book, The Jewish Century, Jews not only took up positions at the top of American institutions, they also transformed the country into a Jewish country. As with the Soviet Union, Jews played a key role in creating the American empire.

This is not surprising, given that European Jews are the product of empire. The Jews that helped form the Soviet Union were formed in the Russian empire. The Jews that helped create the American empire were formed in the Habsburg empire. Later, Jewish refugees from the Russian and Soviet empire led the fight against communism during the Cold War. Most of the neoconservatives traced their roots to the pale pf settlement and still harbor ill-will toward the lands of the ancestors.

The cosmopolitan nature of these two empires is probably the reason both will have short shelf lives. The Soviet Union barely outlived its creators. The empire phase started after the war and lasted about forty years. The American version has proven more durable, but the signs of collapse are everywhere. Washington has become a fortress city, because the ruling class now lives in terror. They are sure an insurrection will happen at any moment and they are probably right.

The problem with cosmopolitan empires is they erode the justification for empire in the effort to integrate the empire. If all peoples are the same, if nations do not really matter, then why is one people at the top of the system? The logic of cosmopolitan empire turns against the creators of it. In modern America, the Judeo-Puritan ruling class can no longer explain why they should be in charge. Like their Soviet analogs, the only reason is they like the perks that comes from being at the top.

The demise of the Soviets may provide clues as to how the American empire eventually comes to an end. The Soviets quickly disaggregated into the constituent parts once it was clear the ossified ruling elite was no longer willing to defend itself. The end of the Soviet Union was like a great awakening or maybe a slave revolt. It as if all of a sudden everyone realized that the people in charge had no power. It was not a long bloody fight to uproot the old system. Like bankruptcy, it just happened.

For the Soviets, the triggering event was Afghanistan. The failure of Soviet leadership there was the final nail in the coffin. For the American empire, it could be the incompetent handling of the Covid pandemic. What should have been a routine public health emergency has been turned into the Vietnam of pandemics. They cannot explain how we got into this and they cannot come up with an exist plan. The many lies are starting to become a problem for the regime.

One difference worth noting is that unlike Russia, America is not a stable nation with a clear identity as a people. Like the Soviet Union, America’s possessions can easily break away and stand on their own. Europe and Asia should have been set free a long time ago as they are rich now. The American homeland, however, is a demographic mess and may not survive the dissolution of empire. At least is may not be as peaceful a transition from a cosmopolitan system to a normal system.

In the end, cosmopolitan empire will prove to be the worst form of empire. Impersonal and transactional, it destroys the creator quickly, by robbing him of his reason to exist at the top of the empire. The empires of old never lost sight of who was in charge and why they were in charge. The great experiment in transnational cosmopolitanism, communism, and liberal democracy, is proving to be not much of a match for the realities of human biology. It is headed to the dustbin of history.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Lefty Devil

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One of the most important things the Left in America does in the culture war is convince their opponents to play the role of devil for them. The American Left operates like a religious movement, but one without an inherent purpose. That purpose must be supplied from outside the movement. It is like a beehive without a queen, always searching for a queen that will define the threat for them, so they can act on their nature and attack the enemy in what they believe is defense of the hive.

That is what these causes are for the American Left. The cause itself is meaningless, because that is just a plot device in the story. It is why they can be so callous to the people they claim to be championing. The Left is now attacking feminists who oppose allowing men in dresses to play girls’ sports. Progressives used to talk about girls playing sports like it was the most important thing ever, but men in dresses are now providing the devil, so trannies are what matter most.

This is something right-wing people of all types have never been able to accept, because right-wing people are wedded to bourgeois objectivism. There must be some practical reason for why the Left is doing something. Alternatively, in the case of the tranny-feminist conflict, the Right starts hooting about hypocrisy, as if that has ever mattered to the Left on anything. If facts and reason mattered to the America Left, the American Left would not exist.

What the American Left is all about is the devil, the great tempter. That last bit is the important part, because it gets to the heart of the matter. People join causes out of necessity, self-defense for example, or self-loathing. The former is a temporary condition forced on people by circumstance, like an invasion or some terrible natural calamity like an earthquake. The latter is a permanent state of mind. The true believer is always running from himself.

You see this in the latest left-wing fetish for disinformation. They have created a new form of shaman called the disinformation expert. The job of this shaman is to point out targets for the Left to attack. Disinformation, of course, is false information issued by an institution, like the media, which is intended to mislead. To be an expert in this craft is to have been in an institution practicing it. In other words, the point of this disinformation fixation is to shift the focus from the people responsible for it.

That is another thing that the Right has always missed. The reason the Left is always accusing others of things they are doing or have done is they desperately want to avoid having to even think about themselves. They are expert at deflection, because the Left is composed of people riddled with self-loathing. These are people who have organized their lives around avoiding any conversation about their nature. They instinctively shift the focus from themselves to others.

This is why a rich guy comfortably ensconced in the system can go on jihad against a 22-year-old young man on Twitter. Wajahat Ali issuing fatwas on Twitter against a kid working from his basement is ridiculous on its face. Ali works in Hollywood; he writes for the major broadsheets like the New York Times. Fuentes, on the other hand, is a kid working from zero institutional support. Yet, Ali and his wealthy audience are sure Fuentes is powerful and they are weak.

Now, Ali is just a grifter who should never have been allowed in the country, but his marks in the ruling class are true believers. They are rich and powerful people, holding positions of authority in the managerial class. His patrons, who use him like a shaman to direct these people, are also true believers. These people need an enemy, a devil onto whom they can focus their gaze. Otherwise, they are left to contemplate their loathsome selves, which is a fate worse than death for them.

This is why the tech platforms seem so incoherent in their censorship. They ban some people but leave others alone. It never makes a lot of sense until you realize that they want their enemies coming back on the platforms. They need their enemies in the same way normal people need oxygen. They keep creating new versions of their platforms in order to get more devils to attack. The chat site Clubhouse is the latest example of a site created to manufacture more devils to fight.

The reason our side keeps losing is our guys are stupid and keep playing the role of bogeyman for the Left. “They are going to call us [fill in name of bogeyman here], so we may as be [fill in name of bogeyman here]” is the mantra of the perpetual loser. It is the fuel the Left needs to survive. Whether it is responding to left-wing media or playing the role on their platforms, the right-wing response to the Left has been conditioned to feed into the innate desires of the Left and give them purpose.

Counterintuitively, the best weapon against the America Left is to speak clinically of the Left and about what motivates them. It seems like these lefty scolds want attention, but in reality, they fear the spotlight. The last thing they want to do is defend their motivations and actions. Alternatively, the best defense against these left-wing provocations is to ignore them. If Fuentes had not taken the bait, Wajahat Ali would not be flying around on his carpet right now as the coolest djinn on Twitter.

That is the thing the successful right-wing movement will accept. The currency of the Left is the attention from the Right. The Left needs an enemy, a devil, in order to have purpose to their lives. These are starving souls looking for grace, which comes in the form of attention from their enemies, real and imagined. The successful right-wing movement uses this reality to turn the tables, putting the leash on lefty’s neck, using his desire to be a good boy to its advantage.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Theatrocracy

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Religion in a liberal democracy is a funny thing, in that most everyone is sure they understand what it is, but few people recognize it all around them. The people who think of themselves as religious in the conventional sense think they live in a fallen world where most have abandoned their faith. On the other hand, those who are sure they have advanced beyond the primitive need for religion are sure society is full of religious fanatics, except in their social circles of course.

The reality is religion in liberal democracy is nothing like this. The people in charge of society are closer to fanatics on the belief scale, while the people embracing traditional religion are somewhere in the middle of the scale. Christianity no longer draws the fanatic like it used to. Instead, the fanatics are drawn to the secular faiths like the various forms of environmentalism or biological denialism. As a result, the managerial class functions more like a theocracy than a bureaucracy.

You see this in the Megan Markle – Prince Harry drama that has been foisted on us by the media -entertainment complex this week. There is no reason for Americans to care much about this story. Markle is an American, so the tabloids have a reason to cover her, as the Cinderella story still sells to women, especially feminist women. On the other hand, she is boring, and her prince is the booby prize of the family. There was never a lot to sell here on the fairytale front with Megan Merkle.

That was until she played the religion card. Megan Markle is an octoroon, apparently, so she gets to carry on as an oppressed woman of color, despite coming from a rich family and marrying into the British royal family. In the new American religion, all blacks, no matter how fortunate, are noble oppressed people. The big interview that set this drama in motion was conducted by Oprah Winfrey, a woman worth over a billion dollars, who regularly claims to be the victim of racism.

The absurdity of the premise should be enough to get the story laughed off the stage, but in our modern theatrocracy, facts are not important. What matter is how much the story stimulates the moral outrage of the true believers in the audience. Because the heroine ticks the right boxes and her nemesis ticks all of the right boxes, this story is To Kill A Mockingbird for our true believers. The audience is divided into those who support Markle, the good people, and those who doubt her.

This is not just an American thing. The great export of the American empire is the effluvia of Progressive cultural norms. This has settled on the Western world like a noxious fog, causing them to ape the moral preening of Americans. As a result, the Brits are having the same drama over this ridiculous woman and her claims to special status as a member of the oppressed. The odious carbuncle, Piers Morgan, has gotten himself in trouble for taking the wrong side on this.

Morgan is a vulgar carny with the IQ of a hamster, but he is well above average at getting attention. This is why he has had a long television career in two countries, despite being famously stupid. Success in theatrocracy is about getting the audience to focus on you as the center of the moral conflict, but only outraging the worst elements of the audience, so you get some sympathy from the rest. You see that here with the reaction to Morgan casting doubt on Markle tale of woe.

That Variety piece underscores the religious fanaticism at work. According to the story, 41,000 people complained to the official censor about Morgan. His crime was to doubt the story of the sacred black woman. For these people, and most people in Britain probably, not completely trusting a black person is no different than questioning the divinity of Christ in the medieval times. On its face it is a sin against the people and their faith, and the sinner must be sent to the tower, no questions asked.

Morgan is professional carny trash, so he no doubt plotted this whole thing as a way to get attention, but the fact that it works is what matters. The English speaking world has now descended to the point where the managerial class is animated by the worship of nonwhites, in the same way primitives would deify a shaman. The mere presence of well-behaved blacks is enough to cause orgiastic paroxysms among the beautiful people and those who emulate them in the lower classes.

American blacks, of course, are an ideal god for these people. No matter how wonderful the life of a black person, they are always complaining. American blacks are the most bitter and ungrateful people to ever walk the planet. Megan Markle is the full expression of that ungratefulness. She has lived the very definition of the charmed life, but she is a vinegar drinking shrew, living to make those around her miserable. She is the ideal black goddess for a people riddled with self-loathing.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The False Choice Society

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The false dichotomy, sometimes called the false choice, is one of the most popular rhetoric tricks used in liberal democracy. The point is to frame the debate in such a way as to either avoid some unpleasant topic or narrow the scope to the benefit of one party in the debate. “We either do X or we allow this terrible thing to continue” is an effective way to compel action. After all, everyone knows that doing nothing in never an acceptable action. Only monsters choose that option.

It is fair to say that our political system is built upon the false choice. Every election we are asked to choose between the two offerings put forward by the parties. In most cases, one option is ridiculous. That is why over 90% of incumbents win reelection. In races with real competition, the options put forward are nearly identical. Both parties offer up a plank of wood spouting whatever slogans are popular at the moment. The voters select between two robots programmed by the same people.

The reason this is a false choice is there is at least one other option. The voters could stage a boycott of the election. Maybe demand some reforms as a condition of rejoining the charade of democracy. Of course, the voters could riot at the polling stations, hurl the voting machines into the river and burn the ballots. They could vote for a third party candidate as a protest. Picking from one of the two options offered up from the uniparty is a false choice, because there are other options.

Of course, people do not select the other options because they are constantly reminded that those are all bad options. No rational person votes third-party. Even the most cynical critics of democracy say the third party option is a waste of time. Similarly, boycotts are dismissed as pointless. Rebellion, of course, is dismissed out of hand, despite the fact the country was literally founded on rebellion. The one thing everyone seems to agree upon is you have no choice but to pick from the two parties.

Another example of where the false choice is the foundation of liberal democracy is in the current Covid panic. The reason the rulers took a wrecking ball to society is they were sure they had just two options. It was either the wrecking ball or do nothing and we all know that doing nothing is never an option. They had to do something, and all of the choices were bad, so they happily went with the bad option. When you eliminate the best option, you are always left with the worst options.

The false choice plays out in more subtle ways too. Unwilling to leave well enough alone, the rulers are now trying to impose a vaccine passport. The idea is to require this for travel or to attend public gatherings. Given that liberal democracy looks a lot like fascism, businesses and banks are making noises about requiring the vaccine in order to have a job or use the financial system. You can get the vaccine, the choice is yours, but you may not be able live in society.

People are rightly upset about this turn of events. House broken conservatives are banging on about how the vaccine passport if just like when their grandparents made the Jews wear gold stars. The point of the yes/no debate on the vaccine passport is to distract from the real problem. The people in charge of public health are incompetent and have turned a minor public health problem into a disaster. Worse yet, they seem to take some pleasure in being incompetent at it.

Not so long ago, proof of vaccination was a common requirement for travel. People were given a card that showed their vaccinations. This was before computers when the people in charge were somewhat competent at their jobs. People went along with it because they understood it was for public health. They could trust the people in charge enough to go along with it. The people who cured things like polio and smallpox were proud of it and the policies that made it possible.

Today, of course, no one trusts anyone. There can be no public pride in collective accomplishment because we have accomplished nothing, other than putting men in dresses and desecrating some statues. This is why half the public is skeptical of the vaccine and the passport business. Instead of dealing with that reality, we choose to have a debate about the passport itself. The false choice here is whether to get the vaccine or not. Whether to have a proof of vaccine or not.

The promise of democracy is that public policy is no longer set according to the narrow interests of a small ruling class. Instead, the marketplace of democracy will set the priorities and select the polices based on majority will. In reality, democracy is a mass delusion where the public debates pointless issues and selects from identical options, all in order to avoid facing reality. Say what you will about aristocracy, at least everyone knows who is in charge and who is to blame.

The Covid hysteria underscores how the false choice society staggers on through inertia and dumb luck. Faced with a real crisis, the current regime would collapse in a pile, with the people bickering with one another over how best to celebrate the pile once the dust settles. The false choice society is a society built on lies the people tell one another in order to avoid reality. The trouble is reality is the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Great Challenge

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Note: The weekly post is up at Taki. This week it is about the school system in Lagos and how it relates to right-wing politics. I had some additional thoughts on the subject, which are posted behind the green door on the form of song.

In the West, the state tends to reserve its harshest punishments for those who break the law on purpose, with malice of forethought. The murderer that carefully stalked and killed a guy who insulted him at the bar gets a longer sentence than the guy who flew off the handle and killed a guy in a bar fight. The underlying assumption is that the former will kill again, because he chose to kill, while the latter is unlikely to kill, because he did so only under unique conditions.

This seems obvious at first blush, but there is a counter argument. The guy who flew off the handle and killed another man is not a rational person. He killed for no reason, while the other guy thought about his crime. Would you rather be in a room full of people who can fly off the handle at any time and kill you or in a room full of men who kill under specific conditions? In other words, committing a crime on purpose may not always be worse than committing a crime through negligence or impulse.

This is why so much of a criminal trial is about the motivations and the circumstances of the crime versus the plain facts. The verdict and the punishment are about public morality, not the facts of the crime. The guy who thought about his crime before committing it may have had good reasons to commit the crime. While we do not want people taking the law into their own hands, we can understand it in the cases where the crime comports with the moral code of society.

This sort of moral puzzle turns up in our politics. Last week the House passed an election “reform” bill. The point of the bill is to nationalize the chaos and fraud we saw in many states during the last election. The game of “pallets of ballots” showing up in the middle of the night will become a 50-state phenomenon. The Democrats think that because they have anathematized any discussion of election fraud, they can now institutionalize it at the national level.

The motivation for this is the salient question. Some argue that it is so they can win every election. This will give the Democrats and presumably the institutional Left absolute power. Others argue that the Left already has absolute power over the institutions, so the better explanation is ideology. They truly believe they are in a twilight struggle against the enemies of democracy. These reforms are part of the battle against the dark forces that allegedly subverted the 2016 election.

For most right-leaning people, the first answer is more pleasant, so it is the default option, even though the latter answer is more logical. Right-leaning people have been conditioned to think about politics in practical terms, even though left-wing people view politics in partisan terms. Conservatives just cannot let go of the belief that people operate from material self-interest. This mode of thought also leaves open the possibility that the Left is correct or at least partially correct.

This conundrum gets to the heart of the problem with the political system. It has always been a trick played on the majority. By convincing the majority of white people that the Left is always acting from cynical self-interest, the implication is that there is a deal to be struck. If the facts are made clear, then the Democrats will be reasonable either to avoid being seen as acting from cynical self-interest or because they see their interests lay in a bargain. Deal making is the highest virtue of the Right.

This gets back to the moral question at the start, Conservatives have concluded that logical evil is better than illogical evil. Part of their reason to exist is to sell the claim that the Democrats and the Left are rational actors, rather than partisans. They can promise to cut a deal with the rational actor, no matter how cynical the motives. There is no deal to be had with the partisan. The only deal to be made with a partisan is one that he sees as advancing his partisan interests.

Just like the motivation question regarding murder, the morality of the choices is not always clear when you look at the whole picture. The default position in politics is that the Left knows it is acting in bad faith. This self-awareness can be used to cut a deal, but why would anyone want to cut a deal with them? At least with the partisan, there is some chance they can be tricked into thinking a deal advances their interests or maybe their interests actually have a positive outcome.

If you go back to the beginnings of conservatism, it started with the premise that the other side was irredeemably wicked. If you watch Reagan’s speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater in 1964, Reagan sounded like he was talking about pure evil when he describes the politics of the Left. It is partisanship from the Right, in which he reduces politics to good guys and bad guys. More important, he excoriates his audience to be the good guys and be a partisan. That is the point of the speech.

This is the great challenge in fashioning an alternative to conservatism. The starting point must be that the Left, however defined, is unreasonable. There can be no bargain with them, because bargains are between reasonable parties. The point of right-wing politics is not defending the established order from left-wing attacks. The point of right-wing politics is to dispense with the moral distinction made by conservatives and focus on removing left-wing politics from society.

It is tempting to dismiss the recent past, particular that of the conservative movement, but there is a lesson to their failure. Whether by choice or by subversion, they moved from the original partisan position to a bourgeois rationalist position. Dissident politics must return to the original position of the Right, armed with the knowledge that anything undermining that binary view of the Left is as evil as the Left itself. The solution to conservative obsequiousness is right-wing radicalism.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.