Bridge Thoughts

Posted on March 26, 2024 by thezman

In the 18th century, planners did not have to worry too much about ships smashing into bridges because ships were small and made of wood, while bridges and seaports were massive and made of stone. If a captain made an error and hit a bridge support, his ship would be damaged, but the bridge would be fine. The worst case is it would take a few days to clear the debris of the ship from the waterway. In other words, the seaways were somewhat error resistant.

The news of the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse is an obvious example of how this is no longer the case in the modern world. That ship is massive, relative to anything that existed a century ago, much less the 18th century. The bridge, in contrast, was a slim wisp of thing compared to bridges in the past. When it was completed half a century ago it was the third longest truss bridge in the world. Now, of course, it is a pile of scrap iron after having been knocked off its moorings.

People will naturally rush forward with their favorite pet theory about how this could have happened. None of these claims are about the accident or why it happened, but rather a way to use the event to promote their favorite theory. Steve Sailer has decided to avoid the usual answers and instead go with an insane theory about bombs being squirrelled away on the ship. No doubt the usual suspects are working on a plot where Putin is responsible for the accident.

For those who know how ports operate, especially an inland port like the Port of Baltimore, the most likely answer is more mundane. These ships are piloted by a harbor pilot in and out of the upper bay. These are men who know every inch of the waterway and rely on a large support staff to pilot the vessel. That means the cause is a failure of that system, most likely the ships navigation systems. It lost power and the crew was unable to restore power before hitting the bridge.

Putting that aside, the port is the ninth largest seaport in the country and has certain specialties like the import of cars, which cannot be easily replaced. Until the bridge debris is cleared from the waterway and the waterway is inspected, the port will remain closed, which will create supply chain problems throughout the year. Of course, the bridge is a vital part of the local ground transportation system. Baltimore is surrounded by a beltway system and this bridge was a key part of it.

Replacing the bridge has been debated over the last ten years, but the will to do it has never been enough to overcome the sclerosis that plagues state politics. A project that will not be done until most of the people voting on it are dead or retired is never going to get a lot of support in the modern age. The things that get pols trending on social media is what gets the support, even if the reason to be trending on social media is the ghetto has just lost track of one of its simpletons.

Now they will have no choice but to replace the bridge, but that will take years to debate and then years to get approval and then more years to build. The people who make the economy work will figure out ways around this new obstacle in the meantime, so there will be no sense of urgency to address the bridge problem. In fact, it is entirely possible that the bridge is never replaced. A generation from now people will look at the remaining pillars the way people look at old Roman aqueducts.

If you want to contextualize this accident into something bigger, the best approach is from the angle of complexity. Like everything else in the American economy, our ports have become extremely complex systems with many points of failure. There are millions of people with the word “logistics” in their job title who make sure that some point of failure does not fail in the complex system of moving goods in and out of the country and around the country to your store.

One reason for that is the berserk quest for efficiency. Every manager in the system dreams the dream of that box of Cheerios arriving on the shelf just at the moment you decide to reach for it. Everything in the economy is now geared to reduce the shelf time, warehouse time and transport time of every item. Every bit of extra is cut from the system to maximize profit, but the result is often fragile systems that work well when there are no problems but fail miserably in a crisis.

The complexity problem is turning up in the Ukraine war. Russia, with its massive industrial base and redundant systems, now outproduces the West in terms of military supplies at a fraction of the cost. Western countries with massive GDP’s are faced with impossibly complex economies that cannot be quickly modified to address the need to make even simple things like artillery shells. Like the now collapsed bridge, solving this problem will probably never happen.

That is the other angle to this accident. That bridge was built in 1976 and was out of capacity twenty-five years ago. A second span should have been started at the turn of the century with a third span or another bridge up stream in the works, but these sorts of projects are not popular with modern politicians. Half a century ago, the political class was not obsessed with media attention, so they could think longer term about projects that would benefit those who followed them.

It is popular to blame “democracy” for our present ills, but our political system has not changed in fifty years. If anything, we are less democratic today. What has changed is the explosion of media. We now live suspended in a media solution. As a result, even the lowest person measures himself by likes, follows and media exposure. This has warped the political class the most, turning them into ridiculous carny acts that do nothing but find ways to get attention in the mass media.

In the end, none of this matters. The bridge story will dominate the news for a few days this week, but then the media will be onto the next thing. By the end of the summer the port will be reopened, and the bridge will be forgotten. The bridge is a symptom of a much larger problem for which no one has any answers, at least not answers that get you trending on Twitter. Maybe the remains of the bridge will one day be a warning that a people that does invest in its future has no future.

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The Gangster State

Posted on March 25, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the horrors of living in a town free of diversity and a post about the internationalization of Hollywood. The Sunday podcast was posted early for a change. Subscribe here or here.

Whenever there is a terrorist attack, the main question immediately after it is who conducted the attack. This is not just for the mundane reason of apprehending the people responsible, but also for understanding why they did it. Terrorism, by definition, exists within the context of a larger political cause. A crazy person opening fire at a mall is a different thing than an Antifa member opening fire at a church school. The former is simply crazy while the latter has a political motivation.

After the attack on the Moscow music venue over the weekend, the first thing people naturally asked is who did it. The Russians quickly apprehended the four gunmen and then the question shifted to who sponsored it, as it was clear that these four people could never have done this alone. The Russians have arrested a dozen other suspects they think may have been involved, but the four Tajiks have been identified as the shooters and they have confessed.

The bullets were still flying when the many bot accounts operated by American intelligence started to flood social media platforms with claims that it was Islamic terrorism, which was a red flag. Then Washington rolled out the ISIS-K claim, which is another red flag. No one had ever heard of ISIS-K until now, so that is one problem, but the bigger problem is ISIS is an American creation. Coupled with the recent State Department warnings, it looks suspicious.

It gets even more suspicious when internet sleuths figured out that the head of ISIS-K is a person calling himself Sanaullah Ghafari, who used to work at Bagram airfield as a special guard to the vice president of the American backed Afghan government, until that government was ousted by the Taliban. Mr. Ghafari also has ties to NATO as a sanctioned arms dealer. Maybe this is the wrong Sanaullah Ghafari, it is a common name, but it is another red flag.

What we know is that four Tajiks were given weapons that are exceedingly rare on the black market and paid a quarter of a million dollars each to go on a shooting rampage in Moscow and then they fled toward Ukraine. Washington claims they were backed by an organization that was created by Washington and appears to be led by a man with deep ties to American intelligence. It should be noted that Washington is now backing off the ISIS story, which can be interpreted in several ways.

There is another way of looking at this. It is possible that the White House simply has no idea what is going on with Project Ukraine. This would not be the first time they were caught off-guard by a terrorist act. After the Nord Stream attack, the Biden admin jumped from story to story, trying to find a narrative that people would accept, until the CIA planted the story of Ukrainian frogmen using a dingy to float out into the sea and plant the bombs on the gas pipeline.

The Biden admin was also lost when Daria Dugina was blown up by a car bomb in an attempt to assassinate her father, Alexander Dugin. The first story said that there was no way the Ukrainians were behind it. Eventually, they had to admit that it was most likely Ukrainian intelligence behind the assassination. This event was the start of a pattern where Ukraine or friends of Ukraine in the murky world in which the Kagan cult operates do things outside official channels.

Of course, stupidity always plays a role in these things now. Back when all the best people were sure the looming Ukrainian offensive would smash the Russian lines, Mark Milley, told a gathering of top NATO commanders and Ukrainian special forces being trained by the American military, “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night. You gotta get back there, and create a campaign behind the lines.”

Every day for over two years voices of authority in Washington have said that Ukraine must win by any means necessary. European leaders come out daily and say there are no red lines when it comes to beating Russia. France is now threatening to send their troops into Ukraine and encouraging other NATO countries to join them. If you are running a CIA operation in Syria, like Sanaullah Ghafari, you are not going to hesitate to help your friends put together a terror attack in Moscow.

Getting back to the central question of terrorism, the answer here may be that this is the result of the Biden administration losing control of their foreign policy. They are no longer calling the shots. Instead, it is the shadowy world of the usual suspects doing what they like without regard to the political or geopolitical consequences. It is not as if the political class ever had tight control of foreign policy. Maybe now they no longer have any control over what happens in their name.

If you want further evidence that the White House no longer controls foreign policy, you can look at what Israel is doing. Netanyahu is openly defying the White House in his campaign to drive the Arabs out of Gaza. Anthony Blinken has been sent there to beg Netanyahu to stop a dozen times to no avail. If America’s greatest ally no longer cares what the White House has to say, maybe Israel is simply working with people it sees as more important than the White House.

Since the most likely suspect in the Israel case is also behind Project Ukraine, it is not a big leap to think they are working with the Ukrainians to conduct terrorism. It is also not a big leap to think that these same people would turn their weapons on politicians that do not support their projects. Given the direction of the Ukraine war, this may explain why European politicians make daily devotionals to the project. They do not want any Tajiks showing up at their house.

All of this is speculation and supposition, but it fits in with the general breakdown of order we see in the Global America Empire. For the last ten years this has been the defining feature of America. The rules are falling to pieces because powerful people refuse to abide by them or enforce them. This Ukraine fiasco suggests that America is falling into gangsterism. Powerful players no longer care what elected officials say or think as they conduct their private agendas.

Work Until You Die

Posted on March 21, 2024 by thezman

There seems to be a secret plot to inject the idea of cutting Social Security into the national debate for the looming presidential election. This plot is among the slithering lizard people known as the conservatives. It started with the oleaginous Ben Shapiro demanding that white people work until they die. He then went to Twitter to gin up more talk among the mouth breathers in favor of cutting Social Security. Now the Republican Party is promoting the idea in Congress.

It is an odd coincidence that once Trump secured the nomination, his alleged allies started talking up an idea that has no constituency. No one wants to throw their granny into the street, and no one wants to throw their parents into the streets. More important, the tens of millions of retired white people do not want to be thrown into the streets, especially in the name of sending their last pennies to Israel. It is the third rail of politics for a reason, so why are these reptiles bringing it up now?

The most popular reason is they hope to slime Trump with this issue, thus undermining his general election campaign. They assume, and probably correctly, that the mass media will claim he wants to murder your granny in the promised bloodbath this autumn, no matter what Trump says about the subject. So far, Trump has mostly ignored it, only mentioning the problems of fraud in Medicare. Fraud is a massive problem with Medicare, but fraud is a defining feature of America now.

Another reason for this sudden interest in poisoning their election chances is that idiots run the Republican Party. The reason the party has been called “the stupid party” for generations is it is run by stupid people. They are clever and scheming, necessary skills for democratic politics, but they are not as cynical as the the other side. As a result, Republican leaders are the forever Charlie Brown, sure that this time the Democrats will let them kick the football.

Then there is the fact that the Republican Party and American conservatism evolved in the 20th century as losers. The GOP’s natural role is as the cleanup crew for the Democrats, who run around smashing things. For their part, the so-called conservatives busy themselves racing in front of speeding trains yelling “stop” while the rest boast about how their principles forbid them from winning. Conservatism evolved to be the consolation prize for the politically inept.

You can probably take a little bit from each column and produce a mix that explains the sudden interest in snuffing out granny. There is nothing about any of these possible answers that contradicts the others. Ben Shapiro is a skeevy little hobbit man who hates Trump with the intensity of a thousand suns, but he is also a mediocrity who has a habit of stepping on rakes. There is a reason that his handlers make sure to never expose him to adults during his public appearances.

There is another element to this and that is the desire of many people, no doubt many people from the loser party, to get back to debating issues. The United States does have real problems that could quickly become catastrophic problems if they remain unaddressed by the political class. For example, there is a pre-French Revolution vibe to the government’s finances. This post in Chronicles is a good explainer and a good example of the desire to return to real issues.

Now, “experts” have been predicting doom over the national debt for generations and doom is always twenty years off. It is like the collapse of “fiat money” or affordable solar energy in that it is always twenty years away. Unlike the other two, math says there is a limit to how much debt the government can issue. At some point, the appetite for new debt will decline as everyone will be holding as much debt as they need. At that point, new debt comes with new, much higher costs to the government.

As far as how to avoid this debt cliff, the only answer is the one answer everyone agrees must never be debated. That answer is ending the Global American Empire and returning to normalcy. That means reducing the military budget by ninety percent, deporting the tens of millions of freeloaders, and cracking enough rich people’s heads, maybe even lopping off a few of them, to get the economic elites inline. None of that can be debated, so they talk about killing your granny.

For the most part, Social Security runs reasonably well. The big problem, as far as old people programs, is Medicare, which is riddled with fraud, but Social Security is largely free of fraud and waste. Suring up its finances during the great baby boomer retirement should not be a great challenge. If life expectancy continues to decline, then it will be a self-correcting problem. In other words, if you are worried about the looming debt crisis, there are better places to look for answers.

That is what really gives this topic the French Revolution vibe. A big reason for the revolution was the gordian knot of royal finances. France desperately needed financial reform, but the rich people opposed it because they saw no profit in it. The Global American Empire faces the same problem. All the best people agree that we face a looming financial crisis, and they all agree that they will not sacrifice a hair on their heads to avoid it. Instead, they think you should work until you die.

Bourgeois Minoritarianism

Posted on March 20, 2024 by thezman

Edit: A friend of ours, Judd Blevins, is under attack by the usual suspects and could use some help in his fight. He is a good man trying to serve his community, but the freaks and weirdos are trying to ruin it. Here is his story and a way to send him a few bucks.

The weirdness of this age is a constant topic of discussion, mostly due to the fact that every day brings new weirdness. Ten years ago, if you said men would go to jail for defiling the sodomy flag, people would have thought you were nuts, but this is a thing that now happens in America. You can burn the American flag, but if you get caught insulting the sodomy flag you go to jail. A common side conversation these days is debating what new bizarre and deranged thing comes next.

The question that never comes up in any serious way is why the ruling class spends so much time manufacturing these perversions of reality. Why do these bourgeois people who rule over us embrace bizarre social fads when it is clear they would not incorporate them in their daily lives. Notice, for example, that advertising agencies have almost no diversity, but all of their ads are antiwhite. They promote race-mixing even though they go to great lengths to prevent this in their own lives.

The place to start is how these people see themselves. The people at the top of the various institutions that control society do not see themselves as an elite. Instead, they seem themselves as servants of the elite. Claudine Gay, the former head of Harvard College, never saw herself as part of the elite, despite the position, because she has always had a boss, someone with control over her. Even as Harvard president she had to kowtow to the billionaire donors that fund the college.

This is a reality of our managerial elite. Even though they occupy positions at the top level of critical institutions, they always feel like hired help. The angst of the college president is no different from that of the middle-class manager living in a suburb, but the stakes are much higher. Normal people were outraged that Claudine Gay kept her salary, but her loss of status was the real punishment. In a world controlled by bourgeois status seekers, losing face is worse than death.

For normal people, fear of losing a job or looking bad to your peers is a motivation to conform to expectations. For the managerial elite, this curdles into a resentment of the system over which they rule. These people are the resentful house slave who finds small victories in undermining the master of the house. The embrace of these deranged social fads is a way for the managerial elite to tell their bosses that they have some agency and command their respect.

Managerial angst works another way. The system that allows for the managerial elite has as one of its principles that it is open to everyone. If you do certain things you can rise up the system into the elite. When you strip natural talent from the equation, then all that is left is a recipe for success that anyone can follow. This means that the people at the top can always be replaced by the steady stream of strivers below them who are busy ticking boxes on their resume.

This is the other jaw of the vice that squeezes the worldview of the managerial elite and leads to the proliferation of social rules. In a true meritocracy, the only disqualification from reaching the top is a failure to abide by the rules. The proliferation of arbitrary and capricious rules of conduct replaces what used to allow elites to hold onto their position in the face of more talented challengers below them. The elites can still utter, “He’s not our sort”, but the reason is morality rather than bloodline.

This also breeds resentment of those below the elite level. It is clear that a key motivation behind these degenerate social fads is spite. The managerial elite looks around and they see danger from top and bottom. At the top are rich white-presenting people who seem to live outside the meritocracy. Below are white people who wish to work the meritocracy to climb the ladder. Scandalizing white people in general provides a salve to the fragile psyches of the managerial elite.

This sense of being surrounded on all sides may explain how our elites think of themselves as minorities. It is bizarre to see rich people like Nancy Pelosi carry on like she is an oppressed minority. Many have noted that the proliferation of females in the managerial class has brought with it the victim mentality, but it may simply be that females are more sensitive to it and much more willing to find ways to publicly express this sense of being an oppressed minority.

From the perspective of the managerial elite, they are a minority. When they leave their swank residences, they see miles and miles of Potemkin suburbs, cheap copies of their neighborhoods, clustered around synthetic “town centers” that have the big box retail shops popular with the masses. The managerial elites think these are made possible by their efforts, but they also resent that they are not loved for those efforts, and they rage at the fact their bosses in the economic elite profit from these efforts.

What this suggests is that the conditions that must exist in order to maintain the managerial elite in their positions, by maintaining the system itself, must also lead to the petty degeneracy we see today. A system that values equality, democracy and eschews class distinctions, but exists in contradiction to those things produces a special sort of angst among the managerial elite. Their embrace of degeneracy is, in effect, a slave revolt against a system that is spiritually eviscerating.

Put another way, the the system of values the managerial class must embrace as they rise up the ranks increasingly comes into conflict with the reality of the system as they rise higher in the system. The middle-manager gets the praise of his boss by a selfless devotion to his work, but the people at the top got their position by a ruthless exploitation of those below him. It is this conflict that leads to the boiling hatred of the system that makes the managerial elite possible.

A strong society has a strong elite that works within the set of values embraced by the elite and is manifestly obvious to outsiders. A warrior elite will value the attributes that make a great warrior. An aristocracy will value those qualities that define the aristocratic class like bloodlines. Managerialism, in contrast, has a value system that is in conflict with the requirements of the managerial elite. It is this internal and unresolvable contradiction that leads the elite to attack their own system.

The End Of the Line

Posted on March 19, 2024 by thezman

In his farewell address, George Washington cautioned against the habitual hatred or the habitual fondness toward other nations. The former is easily understood, as hatred for other countries can lead to wars that are against the interest of the people. The latter is less well understood. Having strong relations with another country seems like a good thing, but if taken too far it can easily lead to compromises that harm the people and also create animosities with other countries.

If your country is predisposed to trade with Country A under favorable terms, but not with Country B, the latter is going to assume this is due to some animosity and maybe consider you to be a hostile adversary. On the other hand, the friends of Country A will naturally assume they deserve the same consideration as Country A. The adversaries of Country A, of course, will naturally assume you to be their enemy. When a country makes an ally, it assumes the ally’s enemies.

This was the crux of Washington’s message. relations with other countries must always be measured against the yardstick of national interest. A temporary alliance with another country is good business if it is good for the people and it does not bring with it long term complications with other countries. Open-ended alliance by definition will bring long term complications, which is why they must be avoided. This is where the phrase “entangling alliances” originates.

We may be seeing this play out with the open-ended relations America has had with Israel for the last half century. Both political factions in Washington find themselves lashed to an Israel government committed to a policy in Gaza that most of the world sees as a genocide of the Palestinians. The defenders of Israel will dispute this, but that does not alter the political problem for Washington. Most of the world opposes American support for Israel’s continued attacks on Gaza.

Last October, both factions in Washington were tripping over one another to show limitless support for Israel. Then the growing Muslim population in the United States, imported by the two factions in Washington, started to rebel against the Democrat side with protests and boycotts. The Republican side found that their voters were not all that interested in this project. In fact, there is a growing anti-Israel faction developing within the populist grassroots of the Republican coalition.

That may be why Chuck Schumer just gave a speech condemning Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, demanding new elections in Israel. This is something that was thought impossible six months ago. The Israel lobby’s lock on both parties is such that no one would have dared speak out this way. Clearly, concerns about the impact on the coming election in places like Michigan is part of it. Schumer is trying to split the Israel lobby by isolating and attacking Netanyahu.

Joe Lieberman was quick to condemn Schumer for his “attacks” on Israel. Amusingly, Lieberman is defending the grotesque double standard applied in favor of Israel by claiming that Schumer is not applying the same standard to other countries like Ukraine and Britain that he is applying Israel. Of course, Donald Trump, hopelessly trapped in the last century, is attacking Schumer thinking this pleases his base and it will get Israel money flowing his way.

The trouble for both sides of the political class is exactly what Washington warned against in his farewell address. This open-ended commitment to Israel creates unnecessary enemies and strains necessary alliances. The most important country in the region is not Israel, but Saudi Arabia. Support for Israel in this war in Gaza may be the final nail in the coffin for this long profitable relationship. The petrodollar is the cornerstone of American hegemony around the world.

For a long time, this open-ended relationship with Israel was sustainable because the United States was the lone superpower. Everyone had to do business with the Americans, even if they did not like it. The Saudis needed American protection and financial support, so they had to turn a blind eye to the Israel problem. The rest of the Arab world saw what American power could do in Iraq and to Iran and wanted no part of that, so they looked the other way as well.

The world is quickly changing, and this open-ended relationship is now becoming another liability for the American empire. In fact, Israel is making Washington look feeble by refusing to back off their war in Gaza. The rest of the world sees a pipsqueak country leading a supposed superpower around by the nose. In other words, this is not just bad for business in the Middle East. Washington’s Israel problem is becoming a global embarrassment for the American empire.

This is the problem with empire. Empires function as protection rackets, which means defending weaker powers. Those weaker powers, however, must be tightly controlled or otherwise they will pick fights that must be fought by the empire. We got the Second World War largely due to Britain making an open-ended commitment to Poland, which went out of its way to pick fights with Russia and Germany. Israel is now threatening to start a wider war unless it is allowed to wipe out Gaza.

It is also a great example of what Washington warned against. The habitual fondness for Israel has made America a slave to the policy preferences of Israel. Worse yet, it has institutionalized foreign lobbying in Washington. One reason politicians care more about foreign countries than America is it is far more lucrative. Our “friend” Israel is happy to shower your representative with cash if he puts the interests of Israel ahead of the interests of you and your community.

Washington wrote, “The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.” America has been a slave to Israel for a long time, but even a slave will revolt when his survival is at stake. That may be what we are seeing with the Schumer speech. This open-ended relationship with Israel is threatening American hegemony in the world. Having the most Jewish man in America give this speech was a signal that the slaves are about to revolt.

In the end, this Gaza affair may be the bridge too far. Americans are sickened by the footage and offended by the defense of it. Now the elites are fearing that this affair could undermine their position. Once the politicians see that there is no penalty for opposing this stuff, then the whole arrangement will begin to unravel. Israel’s control over Washington and the public debate over this relationship may have reached a tipping point and may no longer be tolerable.

Our Democracy

Posted on March 18, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about living in a world where you can be jailed for holding the wrong opinions and a post about my used car lot. The Sunday podcast was posted early for a change. Subscribe here or here.

Joseph de Maistre famously observed, “False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.” We get a sense of that in the weekend media drama over Trump using the word “bloodbath” in a speech. He used the word in reference to what would happen to the auto industry under a second Biden term, but the media left out the part about the auto industry.

The result was a media frenzy based on the false claim that Trump was promising some sort of homicidal revenge if he did not win the election. One media pinhead after another went to their favorite platform to repeat the claim. In some cases, they did so on video platforms as the video of Trump giving the speech in which he used the word was playing in the corner of the screen with the sound muted. So much for the second half of that de Maistre quote about honest people perpetuating the crime.

It probably would have gone like so many other fake media narratives in that normal people without access to the megaphone would have spent days clarifying what was said but by that point the media would be onto the next lie. This time the world’s richest man noticed and posted about it on Twitter. Joe Scarborough deleted his post about it, but others kept up the lie. Nancy Pelosi made the rounds stammering through the claim that Trump is promising a homicidal rampage.

There is nothing new about this, of course. The entirety of the Trump administration was spent this way, where the media would make up obvious lies and people would spend days correcting the lies. The difference now is the world’s richest man has suddenly started to notice things like this. Elon Musk is an eccentric guy, but when he notices something the world notices it with him. Musk seems to be taking aim at the legacy media this cycle, so it will make for some good drama.

This misses the larger issue we see with this story. The person who initiated this drama over Trump using the word “bloodbath” lied and she knew she was lying when she claimed he said, “there would be a bloodbath if he lost.” Her bosses surely knew she was lying but went along with it because it would get attention. The rest of the media who piled on also knew it was a lie. In other words, everyone involved knew it was a lie, but they kept on lying, even when everyone knew it was a lie.

In theory, the media is supposed to be the arena of public debate, where the political combatants argue for their proposals. In imagination land, the media is just a referee, but in more sober telling the media is a collection of competing entities fighting to gain the trust and attention of the market. The marketplace for information should correct for this constant lying, much as it prevents the one airplane maker from filling up on diversity hires and building planes that fall apart in midair.

Therein lies the problem. Just as Boeing is pretty much a monopoly, the media is also a monopoly and for the same reasons. Over the years, Boeing was able to make the best of friends in government, so that it was able to buy up the competition. Similarly, the media has coalesced around a critical mass of flatterers who have exclusive access to permanent Washington. If you want to buy a commercial plan you go to Boeing and if you want to reach the public, you go to the media.

Just as the free market always seems to end up with a few players controlling the marketplace, democracy seems to end up with a few players controlling the marketplace for ideas. The reason a nonsense story like the Trump “bloodbath” comment runs wild is that the media is a monolith. The people in it speak only to each other and the people in it are selected for their ideological compliance. The media is a massive hive controlled by the uniparty.

Of course, the fact that we have the expression “uniparty” and everyone understands exactly what it means speaks to the reality of “democracy.” Instead of it being the marketplace of ideas, it collapses like all markets into monopoly. Reformers like Trump are treated like upstarts in any industry dominated by a few players. If a collection of rich guys tried to challenge the duopoly of Airbus and Boeing, they would quickly cease to be rich guys, as they would be crushed.

That is the plight of anyone who seeks to reform democracy. The desire for reform comes only when it has evolved to its natural state of oligopoly, which often appears to the people as a monopoly. Like the upstart challenging the major players in an industry, the reformers get crushed, unless they have friends in government. To get friends in government means making the same deal as the major players. The path forward is always a deal with the devil or death by his minions.

Joseph de Maistre said, “To hear these defenders of democracy talk, one would think that the people deliberate like a committee of wise men, whereas in truth judicial murders, foolhardy undertakings, wild choices, and above all foolish and disastrous wars are eminently the prerogatives of this form of government.” That was two hundred years ago before any nation foolishly set about proving him correct. Every day the media reminds us that there is no reforming democracy.

Suicidal Thoughts

Posted on March 13, 2024 by thezman

The French National Assembly approved the security accord with Ukraine struck by Emmanual Macron last month. The vote was largely symbolic and as much to do with the summer elections as policy with Ukraine. The mythical “far-right” has been doing well in the polls due to immigration and the economy, so Macron hopes to make the election a referendum on supporting Ukraine. The opposition sat out the vote, so the bill passed with a wide margin.

The security agreement means little, as it is mostly about sending equipment and money to Ukraine, something France has been doing for ten years, along with the rest of the NATO countries. The new thing here is that it opens the door for France to send troops into Ukraine with the approval of Kiev. Macron has been talking tough about doing this, but he has been cagey about if it will happen. So far, he has been trying to round up support from other NATO countries.

Meanwhile, the Russians have made clear that anything used by Ukraine in their war effort is fair game for Russian strikes. Putin recently made it clear what that means in an interview with Russian media. He said, “It would be right for Macron to remember how it ended for Napoleon and his soldiers, more than 600,000 of whom were left lying in the damp earth.” Obviously, Putin is referring to the famous defeat of the French army by the Russians that brought down Napoleon.

A reasonable question is just what the French could bring to the table if they choose to send troops into Ukraine. The French military is equipped with all the latest high-tech gear and it has over one hundred thousand people, but that includes the Foreign Legion and reserves. Realistically, the French army is about ninety thousand regular military, but how many are combat ready is unknown. France also has troops stationed around the world in former colonies.

Then there is the division of labor. The French military is split in thirds among the Air Force, Army, and Navy. There would be no role for the French navy in this war, so that leaves about sixty thousand people. Of course, they could bring in the Foreign Legion, which has most likely been operating in Ukraine since the start of the war and France can call up its reserves, so using the base of one hundred thousand is about right, using publicly available figures.

Realistically, what this means is the French could put twenty thousand ground troops in the trenches after months of preparation and assembly. Most of the French military, like every military, does not fight. Instead, they support the fighting units, with logistics, equipment repairs, planning and intelligence. To put that number in perspective, Ukraine is losing about thirty thousand men per month and that is according to the optimistic figures provided by Western sources.

Now, the French could bring in their Rafale jet fighters and CAESAR 155-millimeter self-propelled howitzers, which in theory would help Ukraine. The problem with the howitzers is the fact that there are no shells for them, and many have already been destroyed in Ukraine. The jet fighters would have to operate out of Ukraine airfields, which would need new air defenses and upgrades in order to base these planes there without the Russians destroying them on day one.

If you look at the other militaries in NATO, you see a similar story. In most cases, they would not be able to field anything without U.S. help. Even in the cases of countries like France and Poland that have significant military assets, they are not built for what is happening in Ukraine. If the French were to send troops into Ukraine to actually fight the Russians, they would be wiped out in a month. This is something that military planners have known long before the war started.

Surely the French military knows this, so they must have told Macron that his scheme to send in French troops is madness. On the other hand, generals are politicians and that means they tell the politicians in charge what they want to hear. We saw that with General Milley in the run-up to the Ukraine summer offensive. He told the politicians it would work and when it failed, he retired. That could be happening here. They could be telling Macron what he wants to hear.

Another possibility is that this is a bluff. Again, this new security deal is nothing new accept the Ukrainian permission to bring in French troops. Even that is symbolic as we know French troops have been operating in Ukraine. The Russians put a missile inside the hotel where French “mercenaries” were quartered. We also know that French troops were trapped in Mariupol when the Russians captured the city in 2022, so nothing really changes here other than the language.

If it is not a bluff and it is not just domestic political theater, then the most likely plan here is to try to repeat what was done in Syria. When Washington tried to regime change Syria, the Russians came into support Assad, who was able to weather the storm, but faced a Western backed army in the south. The U.S. then put troops, including French troops, in Syria as a trip wire. The idea was to buy time and hope to wear out the Assad regime.

Just because that failed to work does not mean it is not a great idea, so that could be what is happening here. France and some other NATO countries will garrison troops behind the lines, daring the Russians to advance further. Macron seems to have developed an obsession with Odessa, so parking French troops there would be a red line that NATO would draw this summer. This assumes the Russians would not put a missile on these garrisons.

The trouble with this scheme is that time is not on the side of the West. This has been the fundamental mistake from the start. The reason Boris Johnson was parachuted into Kiev to scuttle the peace deal in April of 2022 was that the neocons were sure that Russia could not sustain a long war. All the Ukrainians needed to do was weather the initial storm and then Russia would run out of gas. Instead, the reverse has proven to be true, and it is the West that is being bled white.

This is one of those times when logic says it must be a bluff or merely a political stunt in the context of the elections. Rational people cannot accept the irrational option, but the history of this war says that is the way to bet. For the last two years we have seen Western leaders pick the worst option, as if they have a death wish. Maybe that is the way to understand this thing. It is a long slow suicide of the West, and they will not be stopped until they bring the whole thing crashing down.

Death Of The Middle Man

Posted on March 12, 2024 by thezman

Imagine you are a rich guy, maybe a banker working at an investment house, and your neighborhood starts to have a crime problem. Maybe you get mugged on the way to your car or perhaps you start hearing about break-ins in the area. All of a sudden, your safe world is no longer safe. You think that maybe it is time to hire some private security to enforce the rules, but you find that they do not exist. All of a sudden, your cash is not all that important to maintaining your lifestyle.

That is the position of Western political elites as they come to terms with the reality playing out on the Ukraine battlefront. The West has lots of cash. They can literally create what they need from thin air. Sure, it has created inflation for the Dirt People, but only a sucker cares about them. Ukraine is what matters. Even though Congress is slow walking the next pile of cash, there is still plenty to send Ukraine. The EU and now the U.S. are plotting to “loan” Ukraine the money.

The trouble is dollars and euros are not much use on the battlefield. What Ukraine needs is machines, ammunition for the machines and men to run the machines, but that is something the West is struggling to produce. CNN has a story up that reports the Russians now produce three times the number of artillery shells as America and Europe combined, which is probably an understatement. The production numbers cited are more theoretical than actual for the West.

The industrial aspect of this war has been a topic of discussion around here since the war started, but like the rich guys living in their fantasy world of wealth and access, the political class of the West has not thought about it. Making stuff, inventing stuff and fixing stuff is for the Dirt People. Cloud People need their time and energy to think about new ways to describe the glorious future or turn bits of invented money into more bits of invented money so they can underwrite their lifestyle.

What the war in Ukraine is doing is reminding the world that the strength of a country is not magical numbers in reports that no one reads, but the hard cold reality of making stuff, fixing stuff, and inventing new ways to make and fix stuff. You can probably throw in food production, which is a form of making stuff, but a unique form, along with digging stuff out of the ground, like energy products and minerals. Countries good at these things will be strong countries.

The West no longer does these things. America and Europe still grow lots of food but the war on food production, as part of the Gaia cult, is threatening to kill off whole swaths of farm production. The war on digging up the ground is mostly about aesthetics, as the Cloud People hate seeing people do dirty work like farming or digging minerals out of the ground. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. has dropped by half over the last half century, despite the population growing by a third.

This is why the West is losing this proxy war with Russia. Despite having a far smaller population and smaller GDP, Russia still makes things and has the facilities and work force to make more things. If you can grow your own food in vast excess, supply your own energy needs, plus much more for export and you make things that people around the world want to buy, you are going to be immune from the machinations of the money changers in New York and London.

It goes beyond this though. China is the world’s biggest manufacturer and the world’s biggest consumer market. India is the second largest consumer market, and it is emerging as a manufacturing powerhouse. Russia is now the fifth largest economy in the world, despite the sanctions. What is happening here is the places where things are made and dug out of the ground are getting rich, which means they can also buy things, like the stuff they make for Western markets.

What we are seeing here is the death of the middle-man economy. For the last half century, America has positioned itself to be the money lender, the regulator, and the facilitator of economic activity, rather than the producer. To finance this, much of the manufacturing base was auctioned off and the economy became reliant on the production of credit to the global economy. To a lesser degree, the EU has done the same thing, as the junior partner of the United States.

What the war on Russia is revealing is that in a street fight, the banker has no chance against the guy who works on a factory floor. Sure, the banker has a Brazilian Jujitsu trainer and access to the finest steroids, but the working man knows how to fight and win, so it can never be much of a match. Further, in the contest of countries, it is the rules of the street that matter, not the rules of the boardroom. The competition of nations is always a street fight.

Long ago, the paleos made the point that you cannot have an economy based on everyone doing each other’s laundry. The great transition from an industrial economy to a service economy was cheered by the Cloud People but people like Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot warned that it was unsustainable. A generation on and the world is learning that those old guys were right. A country that does not make things, fix things, and invent things is no longer a serious country.

Twenty years ago, Yuri Slezkine observed in his book, The Jewish Century, that the American economy had been transformed into one that primarily served the interests of the facilitators and middle-men. Jews, he argued, were unusually skilled at these tasks and that is why they have been so successful. According to the Atlantic, the golden age of American Jews is ending, and probably taking America with it. It turns out that the middle-man economy is not sustainable.

Burn The Boats

Posted on March 11, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the Super Tuesday results and a post about my thoughts about moving from Lagos. The Sunday podcast was posted late, as I was tied up on some projects. Subscribe here or here.

One of the things the paleos missed when they began to flesh out managerialism in the last century is how it assumes the qualities of democracy. This is something Robert Dahl picked up in his analysis of American government against the standard of democracy he developed. While the institutions of America were not democratic and could never be democratic, the people in these institutions were motivated by a democratic sense in that they wanted to act according to public will.

This explains, in part, how our institutions have grown increasingly authoritarian over the last three decades, while the people running them have become obsessed with defending what they call “our democracy.” They do not view democracy as a process, but rather as a goal. The truly democratic society is open, and the people freely exchange the right ideas. Defending democracy in this sense means dragging the people to this place, by force if necessary.

This democratic sensibility within democracy is important in understanding the reckless behavior of the people running the institutions. If one were to pick a single word to describe the cause of the current crisis it would be “reckless”. Whether it is reckless foreign policy adventures or poorly conceived domestic fads, the ruling class seems to take pleasure in reckless projects. They operate like gamblers with unlimited credit that they assume will be repaid by others.

The Ukraine war is the latest example. When the Russians threatened war, it was over the Minsk agreements not having been followed. They had a specific set of claims against Ukraine, and they wanted help from the West to enforce those claims, but instead they got bellicose threats from Washington. In retrospect, we now know that the West wanted war with Russia. Deliberately picking a fight with the world’s biggest nuclear power is about as reckless as it gets.

For two years the West has steadfastly refused to have any dealings with the Russians, instead demanding total surrender. Every few months the West seeks some new “red line” to cross, hoping to provoke the Russians. Now the French are recruiting the micronations of NATO to send troops into Ukraine. The whole point of this is to bait the Russians into responding in a way that will then let NATO pretend they are being attacked by Russia so they can invoke Article 5.

Project Ukraine is a pointless and risky adventure, but even as the Russians gain the upper hand, the Western managerial elite remains addicted to it. Like drug addicts, they crave only the next hit of foolish risk in this thing. So much so that they look for new ways to make it so they cannot change course. There is a burn the boats mentality to this project, where they seek out policies that further commit the West to the project in such a way that no one can apply the brakes.

This burn the boats mentality is everywhere. The immigration crisis is not simply about border management, something that could be fixed. It is aimed at making it a permanent crisis, a permanent project for the managerial class. Tens of millions of illegals now roam the countryside, raping and killing Americans. Even if a new president wants to fix the problem, he will still be left with the tens of millions of criminal aliens unleashed on the cities and towns of America.

One of the defenses of aristocratic rule is that it is naturally cautious. The king has an investment in his country and people in that he directly benefits from them. Who he is as a king depends upon the health and welfare of the people and the land on which they live, so he is not going to be quick to risk either of those for novelty. In fact, he is going to be cautious of change, especially in domestic affairs, because he has everything to lose and little to gain.

This is not true in democratic systems where the rulers have no investment at all, as they can be replaced at the next election. Hans Hermann-Hoppe noted that in democratic systems, the people holding office often despise the office they hold, as they gained it only as a steppingstone toward some other goal. The people have nothing but their vote, so they are willing to take great risks. The result is a system that is willing to take enormous risk for theoretical and ephemeral gains.

America is not a democracy, but a sense of democracy is there in the institutions controlled by the managerial class. What we have is a managerial polyarchy, where the elites use the institutions to chase the mirage of the democratic society. Because the goal is not real, it is maximally alluring. This is why the elites are willing to trample the democratic process to defend “our democracy.” What they are defending is not a real thing but the imagined end point of history.

It is that democratic spirit that makes them so risk happy. This burn the boats approach to public policy comes from the sense that this condition of society is temporary and therefore the positions held by the elite are temporary. In a real sense, those positions are temporary, as all managers keep their resume up to date for a reason. Throw in the fact that failure never comes with consequences and the result is a ruling elite that operates like a desperate gambler looking for a score.

The great lesson in democratic risk taking is Athens in the Peloponnesian War where the Athenians were determined to spark war with Sparta. It was the Athenian decision to roll the dice on an invasion of Syracuse that led not only to the end of the war but the destruction of Athens. Given the similarity between America and Athens, it is fair to assume the same fate awaits the American empire. Democratic empire will turn out to be a suicide pact crafted by people addicted to risk taking.

Three-Legged Blob

Posted on March 7, 2024 by thezman

The abrupt retirement of Victoria Nuland caught everyone by surprise as she was just recently in Kiev promising to blow up the world. Naturally, everyone assumes there must be a clever reason for her sudden departure. The statement put out by Anthony Blinken reads like the statements that come from ball teams when they fire a manager, which has led to speculation that she was sacked. Alternatively, some suspect she is just the first rat off the sinking ship that is project Ukraine.

As is always the case with regime-ology, the answer is going to be a guess from a set of possibilities, rather than a clear answer. In this case, Nuland is a senior member of the Kagan cult, by virtue of her marriage to Robert Kagan. The entire foreign policy establishment is controlled by neocons. Her now former boss, Anthony Blinken, is a neocon, and her replacement is also a neocon. Whatever the reason for her departure, it is not because the administration has turned on the neocons.

The place to start is with the reality of American foreign policy, which is not controlled by the political class but by three distinct parts of permanent Washington. The most important part is the foreign policy establishment, centered around the State Department, which is where the Kagan cult is based. They control the foreign service and the thicket of think tanks and quasi-academic outposts that recruit and develop those who will serve in the foreign policy establishment.

Nuland’s career is a great example. She started out working for Strobe Talbott in the Clinton administration then worked in the Bush administration. She got bumped up in the Obama admi8nistration where she ran Ukraine policy. She took a holiday during the Trump years, but came back when Biden was installed. Notice that the changing of administrations had no impact on her career. Note also that her replacement is also a protege of Strobe Talbott.

Next you have the military industrial complex which is based in the Pentagon and represents the interests of the military and the vast array of companies that make weapons for and supply services to the military. Their primary concern is to keep the flow of money coming from the taxpayers. If war is good for business, they are in favor of war, but if war is bad for business, they oppose war. Unlike the foreign policy establishment, the MIC is mostly free of ideologues.

Finally, you have the intelligence community. Like all bureaucracies, they have succumbed to Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy. Their primary concern is with maintaining the flow of money and avoiding political oversight. They are happy to help the Pentagon and the State Department in their endeavors, but always do so in a way that serves the narrow interests of the intel community. Like all intelligence services, this is the most cynical and calculating of the three.

Project Ukraine has always been a State Department operation. The Pentagon has gone along with it as it meant more money, but the events of the last two years have strained this relationship. The flow of weapons to Ukraine has drained the armories but has not resulted in new cash for suppliers. Similarly, the spooks have supported the project because a return of the Cold War is good for business. No one writes novels about James Bond spying on MAGA people.

Until now, the three legs of the blob that controls American foreign policy have been working together on Project Ukraine. They were happy to tell the political class what they needed to hear, at home and abroad, in order to get the political cheerleading they wanted for the project. Six months ago, the Pentagon told the pols that the great counter-offensive would smash the Russian lines. A year ago, the spooks said the Russian were in political disarray.

The events of the last six months have put the lie to all of it. The Russians have broken through Ukrainian lines and have the initiative everywhere along the front. Ukrainian losses have spiked higher as Russia gains control of the air space. We are now hearing Ukrainian leaders talking about evacuation of major cities this summer, expecting a major Russian offensive. Two years of grinding away at the Ukraine army is showing results and the tide is now turning strongly in favor of Russia.

The first sign of trouble was the stalled package of aid which House Republicans refuse to pass that would hand sixty billion to the Pentagon. This money would be laundered through Ukraine back to the Pentagon and then the arms dealers, but the MIC’s favorite political party has been stalling. The reason is the cupboards are bare, so the MIC is not going to get much from this scheme. The only reason the Republicans are stalling is they have the full support of the MIC on this.

Last week, the CIA planted a long piece in their favorite regime outlet, the New York Times, in which they made clear that they have gone well beyond what should have been expected with Project Ukraine. The article detailed all of the great work they have done inside Ukraine going back to 2014. Not long after, we get the leak of the German military plotting a strike on Russia. The source of that leak is probably based in Asia and could very well have ties to American intel.

That leaves the foreign policy establishment, which remains committed to the project for ethnic and ideological reasons. The trouble is they are now left holding the bag for a project that could turn into a massive political crisis. For two years the politicians were told this will be a huge win for the good guys. Instead, the bad guys are about to win, and it is putting the political future of the collective West in jeopardy. Losing the first global conflict of the 21st century will not go unnoticed.

That brings us back to Nuland. Given that she is part of the Kagan cult, which is a subculture within the greater neocon subculture, it seems unlikely that she was fired for performance, even though her departure is out of the blue. Further, she is a fanatic and fanatics see only that which supports their fanaticism. It is unlikely that she looks at what is happening and sees failure. At every failure in the project, she and the rest of the neocons have found reasons to plow ahead.

Instead, what this suggests is that things are much worse for Project Ukraine than anyone is letting on in public. Anticipating political panic in Washington this summer, the neocons have decided to stash the architect of the disaster in retirement, thus making it hard for the Republicans to subpoena her. This makes it tough for the Republicans to lay the blame at the feet of the White House. The new guy will be given some latitude because the Republicans are this dumb.

On the other hand, there may be some unknown unknown at play. In politics, people who suddenly retire do so for a cash grab or to avoid scandal. The fact that someone was able to put that recording of German officials in the hands of the Russians suggest there could be other material of a similar nature. It is not as if Nuland has ever been careful about talking about her schemes. It may be that she was caught on surveillance again, perhaps when she was in Kiev last month.

There is always the possibility that she looked around at the politics in Washington and decided that there was nothing more to gain. The neocon war against their historic enemy is a long-term project. It is a forever project and Ukraine was always just one chapter in the long story of their struggle. They could have decided that all the juice was squeezed from this lemon, and it was time to move on. She will return to the hive and begin plotting the next project for a future administration.

What all of this suggests is that behind-the-scenes things are far bleaker for Project Ukraine than has been revealed to the public. The game now is what we always see in managerialism and that is blame shifting. The CIA fired the first shot with that Times article and now the neocons are scurrying for cover. As always, the goal of this blame game will be to leave the politicians holding the bag. Perhaps Biden’s usefulness all along was to be the fall guy.

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