Category Archives: Badder Thoughts

The Big Show

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Note: Behind the green door are a couple movie reviews and the Sunday podcast which remains a morning edition for now. Subscribe here or here.

One of the novel things about this age is the role played by carnival acts in reinforcing public morality and shaping public opinion. With the exception of ancient Athens, human societies assigned entertainers a low status. After all, we still have the expression, “run away to the circus”, even though we no longer have the circus. The idea behind that expression is you reach such a degraded state that you literally leave decent society and join the low status world of the circus.

In modern America and the West in general, the circus not only plays a central role in society, but the circus performers also have enormous influence. So much so, in fact, the most powerful people want to be friends with the popular carnies. Every president has a stream of carnies coming through the White House, often attending state dinners with important foreign leaders. Carnies have even turned up in Ukraine, getting a special welcome by the Ukrainian dictator.

Of course, we have just had the biggest circus event on the American calendar, which is the Super Bowl, the title game of the NFL. According to the people in charge, almost all Americans stop what they are doing to watch the spectacle. The Super Bowl party has become something of an industry. Americans spend over $15 billion on parties that host three quarters of all adults. Naturally, all the important carnies seek a way to be part of what is the biggest carnie act of the year.

It is popular to compare the Super Bowl to the Roman games, maybe even dusting off Juvenal’s line about bread and circuses. There is some truth to that, but the Roman games were nothing compared to American entertainment. The games were a distraction for the masses and important people, but the performers were never treated like the modern celebrity or athlete. The performers in the arena were low status and important people made sure they remained so.

This is the great innovation of America. Entertainment has become a church at which the morality of the day is preached to the audience. It is easy to see at the Super Bowl, where moral messaging is everywhere. In the end zones there was a message about ending racism, a hobgoblin of the modern elites. There were ads about other hobgoblins like antisemitism, bullying and Gaia. They have your attention, so they make sure to let you know what you ought and ought not be doing.

Then you have the appeals to unity, by which they mean conformity. At the start of the game, you get patriotic songs. They even have something called the “The Black National Anthem” which is supposed to shame whites and remind them they can never be forgiven for the sin of whiteness. In a prior age, parishioners were told they were at the mercy of an angry God. Today they are told they are at the mercy of angry minorities, which is far more terrifying than an angry god.

When these songs are played at the start of the game, the players, who should only care about winning, make themselves cry and look moved by the program. This is where you see the supremacy of carny life. The star players know this game is really an audition for them to join the media circus or possibly get a brand going so they can be a celebrity past their playing career. Everyone wants to run away to the circus, even people already in the circus.

You see the warping power of the circus with the public romance of Chiefs player Kelce Travis and middle-aged warbler Taylor Swift. She is a super famous pop star, but she can always be more famous, so dating a famous sports star, especially one who gets to perform in the big circus, is good business. The NFL loves it and makes sure to feature this totally authentic romance in their shows. Any bets on whether these two love birds manage to build a life together?

All of this is the product of democracy. In theory, democracy is about convincing fifty percent plus one. In order to do that, you need to get the attention of the public, which is why celebrity becomes the coin of the democratic realm. The only way you can have a chance to influence anyone is by getting on the stage and you do that by getting everyone’s attention. Carnies live to get attention, so it does not take long before they take center stage in the democratic process.

It is why our politicians are mostly actors playing a role. The producers of the political shows are no different from the people who make movies, television shows or produce extravaganzas like the Super Bowl. They select people who can play the role, which often means picking people who will not question the script. Oklahoma senator James Lankford was picked because he is not smart enough to question things. He looks the part, and he reads his lines. That is why he is in the Senate.

It is easy to be critical of mass democracy, but the Super Bowl shows how powerful it is at controlling the masses. More people care about why Travis Kelce wore a suit made from garbage bags than the fact Joe Biden is non compos mentis. More important, it encourages the masses to empty their wallets in order to see the next show that the ruling elite will stage for them. Mass democracy is where the ruling elite charge the masses to be the masses.

For most of human history, carnies were relegated to the fringes of society because the running of society was too important to do otherwise. Today the running of society is over on the fringes, in the shadows where no one looks, because the carnies are now at the center of society. Maybe this is how the great experiment with participatory government is supposed to end. The masses think their voice matters, but in reality, no one cares, just as long as they pay full price for their ticket.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Madame’s Shadow

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Note: For those looking for a good book to read, check out this new novel Faction: With the Crusaders, which is the follow on of the writer’s first novel called Faction.

One of the underappreciated aspects of the French Revolution is how the ruling class system became detached from the overall social system. The people in the ruling class were ignorant of what was happening in the country and not just the social unrest, but the economic changes that were coming. The people were just as ignorant about why their rulers were doing the things they were doing. Pre-revolutionary France was two black boxes left to guess about the contents of the other.

The United States is entering a similar period. Much of what makes up internet political content is either a reaction to some new emission from the managerial elite or an effort to contextualize those emissions. No one can be sure why the ruling class is doing the things they are doing, as it is not tied to anything normal people experience, so the Dirt People are left to produce their own explanations. Dirt People political culture is a debate about what in the hell is going on in the clouds.

The people in charge could very well be holographic projections from an alien world as far as anyone knows. Their actions and statements rarely correspond to their stated interests or the social interests. You see it in this big drama they are staging for themselves over the failed Senate bill on immigration. Somehow, official Washington convinced themselves that bundling Israel money, Ukraine money and open borders money was a winning formular with the Dirt People.

The reason they bundle these things together is one faction decides to make a trade with another faction in what is called log rolling. Congressman X wants money for a project and Congressman Y wants money for a different project, so they agree to support each other’s projects, even if they should be opposed to them. In this case, neocons go along with some sort of border reform, so they get more money for their efforts to start a nuclear war with Russia.

That is the theory, but in reality, the bill both parties in the senate thought was a winning compromise was something entirely different. It was the open borders crazies getting support from the blow up the world crazies so they could both get billions to fling open the borders and blow up the world. There was nothing in the bill that the voting factions of either party would want or even care about. No one wants open borders, and no one cares about Ukraine or Israel for that matter.

As soon as the senate bill failed, the demon known as Chuck Schumer told the world that he will be working with Mitch McConnell to come up with a way to give money to the blow up the world faction. This gives us a clue about what was really going on with that senate bill. We already have open borders, so that faction was not getting much from any deal, so the real issue was smuggling in the Ukraine money. Israel has check writing privileges at the Fed, so they get their money automatically.

That explains what was really going on here, but it raises a question. Why are these people so obsessed with Ukraine? We know the Kagan cult has enormous sway in Washington, probably due to their work with Epstein. We know that Ukraine is a money laundering operation and much of the money ends up in the pockets of connected people in Washington. That all makes sense, but we also know that this project is doomed, so why are they still obsessed with it?

The writing has been on the wall with regards to the Ukraine war for a long time, especially after the NATO planned offensive failed last summer. The reason General Miley is fishing now is he promised a smashing success. Instead, he delivered scenes of NATO armor on fire in the fields outside the Russian lines. Self-interest should have told Washington that it was time to find a way out of this mess. Instead, they remain singularly obsessed with this project.

People will be tempted to say it is money and power, as those are simple answers that let you stop thinking, but these people have the money and power. If Mitch McConnell wanted more power, he would never have gone along with this ridiculous bill and instead railed against the Ukraine project. That is good politics, especially in an election year when he could see his party return to the majority. Money and power say the republicans should be doing the opposite of what they do.

That brings us back to those black boxes of the French Revolution. A healthy society has a feedback loop between the people and their rulers. The practical interests of the people feed the rulers through various mechanisms like the media, voting, public protests, and economic behavior. The moral claims of the rulers, the things you ought and ought not do, flow down those same channels to the people so that the behavior beneficial to the elite becomes a habit of mind.

In pre-revolutionary France, this loop was broken. The economic interests of the elite were still based on a feudal understanding of the world, so they could not read the economic activity of the masses, which were shifting from that model. Similarly, elites were blind to what was happening in the newly emerging bourgeois class that was arguing about liberal ideas in salons and public houses. The feedback loop had broken and that left those two black boxes.

We have a similar problem in modern America. The media used to provide signals to the Cloud People about what was happening with the Dirt People. Now the media is poorly tuned repeaters of things said by the Cloud People. For example, they are all chanting the word “chaos” now, as if they received a memo instructing them to weave the word into their public performances. This makes the Cloud People feel good, but it also blinds them to what is happening with the Dirt People.

Similarly, Dirt People continue to get bizarre instructions through the economic and media channels about the constantly changing moral code. For no reason at all the Clouds begin to rumble and some weird new idea rains down on people. One day it is men in dresses falling from the sky. The next day it is Jewish dwarf in a green jump suit demanding money to fight the Russians. When the Dirt People look into the clouds, they now see a funhouse mirror.

There are two ways this can end. One is some people in the Clouds realize what is happening and organize a revolt against the other side. This is mostly what happened in the late-1960’s and 1970’s. One group of Cloud People revolted and ushered in a period of reform. The other way it ends is the Cloud People rally in defense of their position against what they perceive to be a peasant revolt. This inevitably leads to a peasant revolt and the collapse of the system.

What that senate bill suggests is that there is no one in the managerial class aware of the problem, much less interested in solving it. James Lankford, the Oklahoma senator who negotiated the deal with Schumer, should not even be in the senate much less brokering such a deal with an arch demon like Schumer. Lankford should be back organizing swim lessons at Bible camp. If there were any reformers in the system, they would have stopped this before this point.

The question that remains is whether or not the American system is past the point where reform is possible. There are libraries of books describing such inflection points in the French Revolution. The past is always uncertain, so there are lots of debates about when things became inevitable in revolutionary France. In the moment, however, no one seemed to know because no one could know. In other words, we will know it is too late when Madame Guillotine is set up across from the Capitol.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

Plotting The Collapse

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On 24 February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin went on television to announce the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Russia is a legalistic society, so Putin did not declare war or even say it was an invasion, as those terms carry meaning within Russian law that would trigger other parts of the law. We are now fast approaching the two-year anniversary of what everyone involved thought was going to be a quick and largely bloodless path to a negotiated settlement.

For the last eighteen months Russian leaders have talked about the conflict lasting years, as it is now a proxy war between Russia and its partners and the United States and the vassal states of the West. Some have suggested this war is like the Thirty Years War in that it will radically change the moral and political order in Europe, eventually seeing the United States exit Europe entirely. Others see this as another sign that the West is in crisis and headed for dark times.

Putting aside the big picture aspects of the war, things may be running ahead of schedule, at least from the Russian perspective. The first big item to start the year is the stalemate in Washington over Ukraine funding. To the shock and horror of the neocons and their fellow travelers, the public is not interested in the issue, which means there is no risk to opposing more money for Ukraine. The result is money for Ukraine is probably a dead issue for 2024.

That will have enormous implications for Ukraine. The billions flowing from Washington to Kiev do three important things. First, Zelensky uses the money to buy loyalty, as he is Washington’s bagman. This allows him to buy off the various factions in Ukraine and make sure pro-Washington people are in the government. It is why he has faced little opposition to cancelling the elections. Those inclined to speak out against this have either been bribed or jailed by those being bribed.

That brings up the second thing the money does for Ukraine. Those dollars are not just dumped on Ukraine. Instead, the dollars are converted into Ukrainian hryvnia, which are then deposited into the Ukraine banking system. Of course, Ukraine also gets euros from selling energy products and agricultural products to the EU on special deals and those are converted to hryvnia. This is what allows Kiev to pay government employees and mask the money printing to pay the soldiers.

The final piece of the puzzle is the corruption around converting dollars and euros into weapons that can be used in the war. Even regime media has been forced to admit that a lot of the weapons have ended up on the black market. No one knows how much has been stolen or who is doing the stealing, but Ukraine is a pirate’s cove now, with privateers, official and unofficial, stealing everything they can. Even Kiev is getting worried about the degree of theft.

If the flow of dollars stops or even significantly declines, all three legs of the Ukrainian side of the racket will snap. We may be seeing the first signs of this in the drama between President Zelensky and General Zaluzhny. It has been known for months that Zelensky wants to fire Zaluzhny, but so far, he has not been able to do it. Zaluzhny simply refuses to cooperate by resigning or taking another position. Instead he posts pics of himself with the leader of the ultra-nationalist faction.

When the president of a country wants to fire his top military officer, the officer usually resigns in order to save some face. In some cases, the civilian leader will fire the man in order to make a point. Truman fired MacArthur in order to send a message and underscore the subordination of the military to the civilian government. When the civilian leader cannot fire the top military commander and that commander is openly challenging the civilian leadership, there is a crisis.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the head of the Wagner organization repeatedly challenged the authority of the Russian government. He even went so far as to stage a ceremonial march on Moscow. The Russians foolishly thought they could tolerate the behavior of Prigozhin until that point. They realized their error and it was not long before Prigozhin’s plane was falling out of the air in pieces.

You also have to add in the fact that Ukraine is a lawless, corrupt kleptocracy now flooded with weapons and soldiers. Last year, one of Zaluzhny’s lieutenants was blown up by a grenade hidden in a gift intended for Zaluzhny. Someone tried to poison the head of the secret police, Kyrylo Budanov, but missed and poisoned his wife and some of his staff instead. Of course, the Russians mysteriously got the coordinates of Budanov’s location and tried to take him out with a missile.

In such conditions, it is not hard to see how the end of dollars from Washington could set off a political crisis. If that is not enough, the war is going poorly for Ukraine as the Russians slowly ramp up the pressure on all fronts. According to Ukraine, they need thirty thousand new recruits a month to keep up their numbers, which means they are losing a thousand men a day in this war. Many of those men are trained, experienced soldiers who cannot be replaced with raw recruits.

As of this writing, the Russians have broken through one of the biggest strongholds in Ukraine, a place called Avdiivka, or often spelled Avdeevka. Since 2014 the Ukrainians have been building this place up with tunnels, bunkers, mine fields and heavy weapons, to be an anchor point of the front line. Reports from Ukraine say the Russians have entered the city and have trapped Ukrainian forces. That would mean a starving out operation will be followed by a surrender.

There are similar stories around smaller fortifications along the front and all of it is due to the shortage of men and material. According to Ukraine, they have mobilized close to a million men so far and they have plans to mobilize half a million more. Those kinds of losses are added pressure on a political system that has major cracks. If the money runs out, it is not long before some factorions think about what sort of deal they can cut with the Russians to end the war.

Collapse is like the famous Hemingway line about bankruptcy. It happens a little at a time and then all of a sudden. Armies collapse slowly over time then they begin to surrender in great waves. Governments collapse over a period of time, punctuated by crises until the principles either flee or end up dead in a final crisis. The current crisis in Ukraine could be just one chapter, but not the final chapter. Maybe the Republicans will produce the money and save the day.

Regardless, all of this points to a catastrophe down the road and probably right around the November presidential elections, which will make for great drama. Eventually the reality of Ukraine will come home to Washington, no matter how hard they try to pretend it does not exist. Like all bankruptcies, the failure of imperial foreign policy proceeds a little here and a little there, all leading to a point when the whole project collapses, maybe taking the empire with it.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Witch Hunters

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In 1692, nineteen people were hanged for the crime of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, the first of whom was Bridget Bishop, a woman who had been married three or four times and previously accused of bewitching one of her husbands, leading to his death. She was hanged after the court determined that she was a witch because she was a promiscuous liar. There was also the claim that she had a third nipple that mysteriously disappeared upon examination.

Witch trials were not unique to the colonies or to the Puritans. Witch hunting became a thing in Europe during the 15th century and lasted into the 18th century. It corresponded with the great upheavals that occurred with the breakup of the Catholic Church and the wars that followed it. It was a terrifying time in Europe and people naturally looked for reasons as to why it was happening. Naturally, they assumed it was the result of supernatural forces unleashed by the religious convulsions.

We like to think we have moved past this sort of superstitious madness, but superstitious panic is part of the human condition. In the 20th century America experienced the satanic panic. This was when over ten thousand people were accused of participating in satanic rituals in which children were abused. The panic was set off by a Canadian psychiatrist not named Jordan Peterson and his patient who claimed to have recovered memories of satanic abuse.

Eventually this led to wild claims about the sexual abuse of children at daycare centers around America. There was the McMartin preschool case where the operators were charged with all sorts of heinous crimes. There was no physical evidence, and the charges were eventually dropped after thirteen years of court cases. There was the Fells Acres case in Massachusetts, not far from Salem, oddly enough, where the owners were jailed for the satanic abuse of children.

The point here is that superstition is still with us. You can see it in posts like this one from what amounts to a modern witch hunting operation. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism could just as easily be called the Global Project Against Witchcraft and Sorcery and make more sense. The words “witchcraft” and “sorcery” have an agreed upon meaning while “hate” and “extremism” are reduced to nonsense words by the modern-day witch hunters.

Instead of Old Scratch tempting the morally weak into doing his bidding, the modern witch hunter tells us it is white kids using magical incantations to introduce evil spirits into the gaming community. You see, exposure to certain ideas can cause you to build a death camp, so Old Scratch has his minions use special magic words and phrases in the chat rooms of video games. Exposure to these words and phrases can cause the morally vulnerable to succumb to the charms of Old Scratch.

This may sound like an exaggeration, but it is right at the top of that post. They have a warning to readers that reads, “Warning: This analysis contains highly offensive and potentially triggering language and imagery.” They literally assert that words and images can have a physical effect on some people. The assumption is the effect must always be bad, which explains the warning. The only thing missing here is a reminder that the reader should make sure to wear her special amulet.

The entirety of the hate hunter industry rests on the assertion that certain opinions must lead to certain actions, not only by the person holding the taboo opinion, but by those who are exposed to the opinion. At no point will you see these people argue that the opinions are inaccurate, beyond some chanting of abracadabra phrases like “race science” which is supposed to protect the chanter from the opinion. They never explain how opinion must lead to action.

The closest you get is what amounts to the modern version of spectral evidence which they call “stochastic terrorism.” This is a novel concept that claims, “the use of mass media to provoke random acts of ideolog­i­cally motivated violence that are statistically predictable but individually unpre­dict­able.” In other words, get enough bad words into circulation and people will do bad things in response to the bad words, but there is no way to know who will do the bad things.

Since there is no way to know who will do the bad things in response to the bad words, the only remedy is to eliminate the bad words. Oddly, the witch hunters cannot know who will be triggered by the bad words, but they know exactly which words will do the triggering and who possesses those bad words. We are right back to examining women for third nipples by self-declared experts in a field that has no rational basis, only moral certainty about their own righteousness.

The graybeards will talk about something they call the great interregnum, a time when interested intellectuals and commentators could speak openly about subjects like race, intelligence, sex, demographics, and immigration. This was in the 1980’s and 1990’s when America was feeling confident. The ruling elite was talking about the end of history, by which they meant their final triumph of all mankind. The Cold War was over, and they would lead humanity to the promised land.

The great interregnum ended as Western elites began to sense they were not leading humanity into the golden age. The rest of the world was stubbornly refusing to go along with this end of history stuff and Western critics began to question the sanity of the end of history business. In other words, just as witch hunting in the late Middle Ages was a response to the collapse of the old moral order, the modern witch hunting is a response to the collapse of elite moral order.

The Reformation was the result of an institution that had evolved down a dead end because it evolved for a world that was beginning to recede. The social and economic relations that made the Church possible were giving way to new social and economic relations, so a new moral order rose up to challenge the old moral order. American liberalism is facing the same crisis. It evolved for a world that no longer exists and has unleashed the witch hunters to find the cause.

That is why efforts with grandiose names like the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism attract money from the elites. They promise to find those responsible for challenging the moral order and suppressing them. The gaggle of petty Torquemada’s that have been unleashed are a rearguard action by an elite that sees itself in crisis and is terrified by the prospect of an alternative moral order. The modern witch hunters are part of the death throes of a dying system.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

Political Onanism

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Note: Behind the green door is a post about the classic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a film I did not like, a post about code-switching and the Sunday podcast which remains a morning edition for now. Subscribe here or here.

Carl Schmitt famously said that “the political is reducible to the existential distinction between friend and enemy.” The shorthand you hear in dissident circles is that politics is about friends and enemies. You can see this in your own life when it comes to some issue with which you have been on the opposite side of a friend. That person may now be a former friend if the issue was important at the time. It is why families often avoid talking about politics during the holidays.

A practical aspect of this reality is that political activism should always seek to harm the opponent and boost your side. An action that makes the other side look bad is good activism and it is even better activism if it also makes you look good. Of course, bad activism is that which boosts the enemy and harms you. The Charlottesville rally in 2018 turned out to be disastrous activism for the alt-right. It rallied their enemies and gutted their support in the broader community.

Life is not always so cut and dried. Generational politics, for example, often feels like good politics to the people doing it. Whether it is young people moaning about old people having had it easy or old people moaning about young people having it easy, the people doing it always feel good about it. A Nick Fuentes feels like a hero when he makes fun of adults for being adults. He thinks it is good politics because it brings in money and gets his young fans excited.

Of course, this goes both ways. Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire often makes fun of Zoomers for being whiny and soft. Recently, a young girl posted a video of herself crying about having to work forty hours a week and still not having money to live like she did in college so Matt Walsh made sport of her. The young people who always complain about the boomers then piled in to tell him he was a horrible person for not empathizing with the young girls in the video.

At a personal level, generational politics is good as it makes money for the people doing it, but at another level it is bad for their overall political mission. The only people engaged in generational politics are white people who are either in white identity politics or aligned with it. Nick Fuentes casts himself as a white identitarian, but he spends a lot of time mocking white people. Matt Walsh opposes antiwhite politics, but like Nick Fuentes, he spends most of his time attacking white people.

You will note that the people who control the culture are fine with this sort of politics, despite it coming from people they hate. In popular culture you will never see a young black guy calling his grandfather a boomer. You will not see an old Jewish guy laughing at his grandson’s student loan debt. For the people who control the centers of cultural production, generational politics is only for white people. It is one part of their antiwhite pogroms that have come to define popular culture.

Generational politics is not politics at all but a form of political onanism. It is not only a fruitless activity, but it also discourages the sort of politics that could bear fruit. It is no different from the war of the sexes business, where feminists and anti-feminists seek to pit white males against white females. Whatever the truth of the mutual critiques, it is not an activity that can lead to anything other than temporary ecstasy. It is a form of politics that can never lead to good activism or any activism.

For example, look at the recent trend of attacking Reagan. Critics correctly note that he signed off on immigration reform. He also ushered in economic reforms that now feel like bad ideas, especially for young people. This critique of Regan usually ends with angry shouting at boomers for having enjoyed the good times that followed the reforms of that period. The boomers are bad people for having enjoyed a good stock market and low interest rates over the last forty years.

Let us assume that Reagan and his supporters were evil people who knew what they were doing would harm their grandchildren and great grandchildren. Let us also pretend that the boomers all agreed it would wreck the country for their children and grandchildren who they would live to see. Even if you could prove this, what would be the point of doing it? The most you get from it is the momentary satisfaction of shaking your first at an imaginary version of the past.

The reason to care about the past is to understand how you reached the present and to have some sense of what comes next. Understanding the politics around the Reagan era immigration policies is about understanding the nature of the people behind the just proposed immigration reform bill in the senate. Chuck Schumer put that together because he hates you and he has always hated you. There is no talking him and his allies out of hating you. He is the forever enemy.

There you see the problem with generational politics. The young people trembling with anger over the thought of Ronald Reagan are focusing on their grandparents rather than the people who finked on their grandparents, the same people who are now trying to close the door on America, by opening up the borders. It is a politics that turns old friends into imaginary enemies and enemies into fans cheering the people attacking one another in the arena of generational politics.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Arc Of Managerialism

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In March of 2021, the FBI conducted a raid of a company called U.S. Private Vaults located in Beverly Hills, California. The company offered safe deposit boxes to clients seeking privacy and security. Banks have rules about what can be kept in their safe deposit boxes and often require disclosure of the contents. This company did not place such restrictions on their clients. As a result, it was assumed its clients were criminals or people who would like to circumvent government surveillance.

For this reason and no other reason, the FBI got a warrant to inspect the company’s records, presumably to confirm that criminals were using the service. The legality of this was not questioned by the judge who signed off on the warrant because judges no longer question warrant requests from agents of the state. The FBI could hand a judge a drawing of stick figures in fingerpaint, claiming it is surveillance video of criminal activity and the judge would accept it.

Putting that aside, the warrant made no mention of opening the safe deposit boxes or inspecting the contents for criminal activity. On the day of the raid, the special agent in charge of the raid ordered his agents to pry open the boxes, inventory the contents, bring in drug sniffing dogs to sniff the contents and collect fingerprints from the boxes and the inside of the facility. Then the FBI decided to seize tens of millions in property on the grounds that they could do it.

At this point, the FBI had produced no evidence of a crime. They were probably right that criminals would like to use such a service to hide cash, valuables they bought for money laundering purposes and other things. It would also be attractive to foreign nationals working on behalf of a foreign government. Mossad, for example, could use a company like this as a dead drop. Space aliens could also use it to hide their ray guns and the keys to their flying saucer.

Again, there was never any evidence of wrongdoing. The FBI lied to the court about their intensions, and they willingly violated the law when they decided to not only pry open the boxes, but also steal the goods inside them. The owners of the stolen property sued the FBI to get back their property. The court initially ruled in favor of the FBI because the courts are almost as corrupt as the FBI. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed the lower court’s decision.

In its ruling, the court called the raid an egregious violation of the owners fourth amendment rights. They also noted that the FBI clearly intended to steal the contents so they could use what they found in order to go after other people, perhaps raid other private security services in a similar fashion. The government tried to settle the case before it reached this point, suggesting they knew they had willingly violated the law, but they hoped to avoid the court making it official.

Presumably, the FBI will return the property to the owners, but the owners will have to sue the government in order to get back the cost of having to litigate this in federal court for the last three years. The government will probably settle so as to avoid another potential court loss, but the harm can never be fully cured. The company went out of business and who would trust a similar company in the future? If the secret police can willy-nilly raid a private business, what is the point of the service?

More importantly, none of the people involved in this raid from the government side has faced any punishment. The agent who ordered the raid was not fired. The agents and lawyers who lied to the court to get the warrant were not fired. There will be no criminal charges brought against any of these people, despite the fact they committed some of the worst abuses of power in our system. The Ruby Ridge and Waco cases tell us that the agents involved here will get promoted.

In the managerial state, no one is ever held accountable because accountability requires two elements missing in managerialism. One is a moral duty to the stated goal of the institution. If the people inside the FBI were motivated by an aristocratic spirit, the agents involved would all resign for having shamed their leaders. If they had a republican spirit, they would resign for having shamed the institution. Instead, they have a managerial spirit, which means no shame is possible.

The other element for accountability is clear responsibility. Managerialism is primarily about shifting responsibility from individuals onto collections of managers with a shared interest in controlling the organization. It is the magic trick of managerialism that collective error is never the fault of anyone in the collective. Managers socialize failure onto the abstraction that is the system, while privatizing the benefits onto the individuals within the managerial system.

This is why reform of managerialism is impossible. Reform starts by holding people responsible for the results. Managerialism evolved to prevent this so the reformer is either repelled by the system or consumed by it. This is why public companies that fail must be taken private. Elon Musk bought Twitter, took it private and became the man responsible for the company. He then fired half the staff and started holding the rest accountable for their work. He overthrew the managerial system.

Of course, this means the large social systems that control American society will never be reformed either. Everyone in Washington knows the FBI is a disaster, but no one can be held accountable, so not one tries to hold anyone accountable. This means the managerial state will follow the arc of all public companies in that it will reach its end phase and either collapse entirely or be taken private, as in private rule, so the system can be scrapped along with the managers.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

Who Does The Measuring

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In the 1980 campaign, Reagan would regularly say that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. It was a pithy line that got at something that was always missed by the politicians at the time. That is, the economy is not the same for everyone. You can have a good economy but there will be people who are not doing so good. The reverse is also true. Even in the Great Depression, there were people doing fabulously well.

That is the problem facing the political class this year. According to their court wizards, the economy is growing at a blistering pace. The fourth quarter of last year saw growth at over three percent and inflation falling down to two percent for what the wizards call personal items, while overall inflation was under two percent. The definition of “personal items” is one of those things that makes sense to the people doing the counting, but not to anyone who is doing the actual spending

Does it feel like the economy is growing at a blistering pace? Most people do not think the economy is great. In fact, most people think we are in difficult economic times, despite relatively high employment. This was one of the top reasons people voted for Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire. Under Trump, people perceived the economy as strong while under Biden it seems to be weak. The main reason is inflation. Every trip to the store sees prices higher than the last trip.

For the sake of comparison, the last time Americans experienced significant retail inflation was in the 1970’s. The court wizards back then used different rulers for measuring things like inflation, but everyone agrees retail inflation was higher than what we have experienced the last few years. The economy also grew at a faster rate most years during this time. The recession of 1974 was followed annual growth of near five percent the following years.

Five percent growth in 1976 did not keep Gerald Ford from losing to Jimmy Carter and it did not keep Reagan from beating Carter in 1980. The reason is GDP is not a great way to measure the economy. The formula for calculating GDP is Consumption + Government Spending + Investment + Net Exports​. If inflation is roaring, consumption and government spending will also be roaring. You can have a growing GDP while people are seeing their budgets ravaged by inflation.

Of course, we live in the managerial age and managers can always be counted on to do one thing very well and that is lie about what they are doing. In the case of the economy, the court wizards keep tinkering with how they measure things like inflation to make the number look smaller. Shadow Stats keeps track of these changes and reframes official economic numbers in the old way of measuring them, so that we can compare today with the past.

When we take an honest look at the economy over the last few years, we see that inflation was comparable to the 1970’s, but not quite as high. People who buy food will tell you that prices are rising again, despite some relief last year. In the end, we could replicate the 1970’s in terms of the pattern and duration, even if overall inflation figures are not quite the same. The reason people think the economy stinks, despite the official numbers, is that is does stink for people who buy things.

That brings us back to that Reagan quip and another key point. The American economy over the last thirty years has transformed into something that is really good for people in finance, government, the academy and corporate governance, but it has not been great for people who make things and fix things. The nurse practitioner, which is really a government job, is doing great, but her patients who work in the honest economy are finding it hard to pay those health insurance bills.

Returning to that magic formula for measuring GDP, if the Investment side grows, but consumption remains flat, then GDP rises. Since government always grows and that growth is fueled by the Fed creating debt through the banking system, GDP is just about guaranteed to grow every year, even if the economy is in recession. Put another way, debt-driven government growth not only corrupts the nation but it corrupts the way in which we can measure the corruption.

This corruption has been highly effective. The typical American has barely noticed that it requires two incomes to have the life that used to be possible on a single income, at least for the middle-class. The baby boomers grew up in one income, intact two-parent homes, but they lived as adults in two income, often broken homes. The relative material prosperity came at the cost of social capital. The new way of measuring things masked the real trade-offs that came with the new economy.

We may be reaching the end of the line with the new way of measuring things, which is why people are not buying the official numbers. Those bulging baby boomer portfolios cannot mask the fact that their kids are saddled with debt and are struggling to maintain a lifestyle the parents took for granted. Of course, the next round of young people will enter adulthood in debt and looking forward to paying the pensions and health care costs of eight million retired people.

What all of this gets to is that measuring is necessary, but it is not how things are measured that matters. It is who does the measuring. That was the subtext of that Reagan quip half a century ago. Americans are pessimistic about the economy because it is not good for them. It may be great for the people doing the measuring, but that does not change the fact the typical American is not experiencing great times. That is because of who is in charge, not how they got there.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Setting Sun

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According to news reports the United States is about to get more directly involved in the slowly evolving regional war in the Middle East. The Biden administration is planning to authorize attacks on Iranian assets in response to the attacks on the American bases in northern Iraq and Syria that killed three American soldiers. The nature of the attacks on Iranian assets is unknown, but reports suggest they will focus on militia groups that operate in the Iraq and Syria, allegedly backed by Iran.

Most of the analysis suggests that this is part of a game by the neocons running Biden policy to instigate a war with Iran. They want this game of tit-for-tat, hoping Iran will take the bait and do something the administration could then use as a reason to launch a full-scale attack on Iran itself. Others suggest the administration will avoid hitting anything important in order to avoid escalation. The United States is not prepared for war with Iran, so will try to avoid it.

This raises an important question. Could the United States ever reach a point where it could have a winnable war with Iran? Conventional wisdom does not contemplate this question, as conventional wisdom remains stuck in the 1990’s when the American military was able to blitzkrieg the Iraqi army in Desert Storm. Since then, it has been assumed that every opposing army is no better than the Iraqi army and the results would be the same if they messed with the U.S.

The war in Ukraine should have dispelled that myth. Modern war is not much like Desert Storm, especially when it comes to powerful countries. Iran is a powerful country in the region and she can project power well outside her borders. The fact that the Houthis are firing relatively inexpensive missiles at Israel all the way from Yemen should give everyone pause when thinking about a war with Iran.  The Iranians have a vastly better missile program than the Houthis.

In other words, missile technology has changed modern war. The Israelis are finding this out in the now bogged down war in Gaza. They are able to take out most of the rockets and shortrange missiles with their air defenses, but not all. The cost of defending against these missiles is very high, while the cost of producing rockets and missiles is relatively low. That is the major change in modern war. It is about the relative cost of technology between weapon systems.

This brings us back to the dreamed of war with Iran. The dream says it will not be a regular war with an invading army but a massive air assault. The dream of the shock and awe campaign never dies. The trouble is the Iranians have very good air defenses that can take down cruise missiles. Again, this is a lesson from the Ukraine war where the Ukrainians were initially able to defend against Russian missiles. The Iranians would not be able to defeat every missile, but many of them.

This is where things get tricky. The Russians learned that the only way to effectively use their missiles was to first defeat Ukrainian air defenses. They did this by flooding the system with missiles and cheap Iranian drones. Those attacks on Ukraine energy facilities were about draining the stock of Ukraine air defense missiles. Once the Russians depleted the Ukraine air defense, they then started attacking the launchers, radar stations and command centers.

It took the Russians about a year to defeat the Ukraine AD system. They launched an estimated seven thousand missiles of various types and massive numbers of cheap drones that they now produce on their own. The United States has about four thousand cruise missiles it could throw at Iran. It does not have cheap drones it can use to flood the Iranian air defense system. It is not clear how many dummy missiles the United States has for attacking air defenses.

You can quickly see the problem. The way to attack a modern air defense system is not with super smart and super expensive missiles. The air defenses simply keep pace so the cost-benefit ratio never changes. The way to defeat the Iranian air defense system is the way the Russians defeated Ukraine’s system. You throw masses of relatively cheap missiles and drones at it until they run low on ammunition and then you attack the air defense system itself. The U.S. cannot do this.

Then there is the reverse problem. The Iranians have built up their anti-ship systems to the point where they could hit U.S. surface ships operating in the Persian Gulf, which presents an obvious problem. American ships have sophisticated air defense systems but they are not equipped with unlimited missiles. Iran could throw waves of drones at these ships, much as the Russians did to the Ukraine system. This is also what the Houthis have been doing in the Red Sea.

There is a bit of irony to all of this. The long-forgotten Iran – Iraq war was a foreshadowing of the future battlespace. Both Iran and Iraq had relatively expensive aircraft they could deploy against enemy positions, but they dared not risk them against relatively inexpensive air defenses. Iran in particular was able to neutralize the superior Iraq air force this way. The result was something like we are seeing in Ukraine where both sides relied on artillery and massive mine fields.

The microprocessor revolution has allowed air defenses to catchup to even the best air assault weapons in terms of effectiveness. More important, it has allowed air defenses to surpass air power in cost effectiveness. On the other hand, cheap technology has resulted in cheap drones that can evade and overwhelm expensive air defense systems with the result being a stalemate in the air. Like land war after the introduction of the machine gun, air war is now a war of attrition.

The post-Cold War assumption was that American technology was such a force multiplier there was no need to focus on the production of cheaper weapons, especially cheap air weapons. America’s high-tech air force and missile systems would own the skies in any war. The result of this technological revolution is that American air power is no longer unchallengeable and that means the American military is no longer an unstoppable force that can bully the world.

One final change makes war with Iran unlikely. In the two Iraq wars, the United States could muster forces in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In the first war they also had forces in Turkey, but the Turks refused in the second war. This created a logistical problem leading to a much slower invasion. In a war with Iran, the Saudis would not host American troops and the Turks would certainly not do it. In other words, America no longer has the local support for a land war in the region.

This is why there will not be a war with Iran. Even if the United States does something stupid and attacks Iran itself, the Iranians know time is on their side. America cannot maintain those bases in Iraq and Syria much longer. Iran can use local militias to attrit those facilities until they must be withdrawn. In the next decade the United States will not be a player in the region. This is why the Saudis are in BRICS and why Iran can bide its time and avoid a war with the United States.

The Biden administration will put on a show by attacking caves and bunkers in Iraq and Syria, but avoid hitting anything important. There is a good chance they warn Iran in advance in order to make sure nothing bad happens. A flunky from the administration will come out and explain why these attacks were important and the slobbering toadies in regime media will dutifully repeat it. Meanwhile the sun sets a bit more on the American empire in the Middle East.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Year Of The Fink

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Note: The Sunday podcast is back as a morning performance this week, but could shift back to evenings as needed until I get settled in the new place. There is a post about firing old white guys and post about rug merchants. Subscribe here or here.

If you are one of the many schemers in Washington, or you dream of becoming a schemer in Washington, this is a troubling time. By now Trump should be in exile, having had to quit the presidential race due to his many legal troubles and the collapse in his support due to those legal troubles. A more acceptable candidate was supposed to have emerged and pushed Trump out of the race. This was the narrative the schemers in Washington have lived by for over a year.

In what is becoming a regular feature of our politics, the narrative did not turn out as written and the scramble is on for a narrative update. There are still the court cases in Georgia, New York, Florida and Washington. The last two are in Federal court, but the Mark Steyn case tells us that we may all be dead before they get going. The Georgia case may fall apart due to racism. Apparently, racism made the DA turn the case into a chance to give her lover public money.

Of course, the big hole plowed through the narrative was the first two contests of the primary season, where Trump won easily. By the time Iowa came around all but three non-Trump candidates had quit the race. After Iowa it was the neocon offering, but she was trounced in New Hampshire, thus leaving Trump as the presumptive nominee, assuming nothing untoward happens this spring or summer. Few in Washington expected this to be the state of affairs at this point.

This is what makes the Texas border showdown an interesting thing. All of a sudden, we get word that Mitch McConnell is telling his party that the politics of immigration have flipped and they need to rally to Trump on the issue. Then Greg Abbott finds his inner confederate and defies the Feds with regards to the razor wire he had installed in a public park that sits along the border. Finally, we have every Republican governor rallying to his side in this fight with the Feds.

The first thing to consider here is that the Republican Party is the party of scheming perfidious finks, so whatever they are doing is not on the level. This is a party that selects for people who live to fink. They should just rename the party to “The Fink Party” but that would be a degree of candor no fink could muster. That also means that their sudden embrace of immigration and Trump’s position on it is not on the level. They are up to shenanigans because it is their nature.

One angle is that they suddenly realize that immigration is important to the voters despite the best effort of regime media to anathematize the issue. Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire listed immigration as a top concern. This never happens. Voters always put economic concerns at the top, because people are practical. This means immigration has leaked into the domain of the practical. All of a sudden, the Republicans have to pretend to care about immigration.

There may be something more perfidious afoot. Those court cases are still ongoing and one of them is scheduled to start in March. That means Trump is still in legal jeopardy and could be removed from the ticket. The issue is timing. They could not conjure an alternative in the primaries, so maybe they are looking to get a replacement ready, perhaps as his running mate. In other words, maybe word went out that there is a casting call for who will be Trump’s future replacement.

From the scheming weasel point of view, this is a good save to the official narrative that had Trump dropping out by the end of 2023. He cruises along winning delegates, picks a regime approved running mate and then is convicted in the summer. The party then does some hand ringing and decides to expel him from the party and tab his running mate as the party nominee. “We really hate to do this but with Trump facing jail time, we have to go with his top choice to replace him.”

It sounds like 4-D chess, but these are people who traffic in finkery. Shenanigans are like water to a fish or oxygen to a human. We know the collection of flunkies who ran in the primary did so becasue they were told Trump would be removed. They admitted as much during the debates. It is not unreasonable to think word has gone out to the governors that there will be a new casting call for players in the updated version of the Never Trump narrative that remains a hit in Washington.

Then you have the fact that what Texas is doing is mostly a show. This area they are walling off from the Feds is a tiny portion of the border. The park itself remains wide open to the Feds. If they wanted to do it, they could take down the razor wire, but thus far they have not done it. As for the states voicing support and sending national guard units, this is a cost-free gesture. They risk nothing in doing it, as even the national party thinks it is okay to sound butch on immigration.

One other factor suggests there are shenanigans afoot. There was the rumor that Trump might consider Haley as a running mate. This seems to have come from Washington and probably has a kernel of truth to it. The party may be offering to support Trump in his legal and political fights, if he agrees to a running mate that is on good terms with the regime. There has no doubt been discussions about this between the party and the Trump campaign.

All that said, Trump has proven to be one of the most resilient and lucky political figures to come around in generations. He is probably shrewd enough to avoid picking a running mate that could be his replacement. That just means the shenanigans will take another turn this spring. The regime hates Trump with the intensity of a thousand suns so they will never relent. What the first month of the political year tells us is that 2024 will be the year of the fink.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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.

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 sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Death Of Pop

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Heard a good new song lately? Given the demographics of this site the answer is most likely negative but there are some young people here. If their answer is yes, it is going to be something from the hip-hop genre. Of course, given the demographics of this site they would probably not admit to it. This was the number one hip-hop song last year, in case you are curious. This one was number two, suggesting that the worst form of music has managed to get worse.

When it comes to what most people reading this would call popular music, the results are not much better. This was the most played “rock” song of 2023. One cannot help but wonder if it was created by AI due to its generic power-pop sound. This is the second most played “rock” song, which is not terrible, but it sounds more like a country tune than a rock song. In fact, it was number three on the country charts. This song was the most played song on the country stations.

You can go through the music charts and listen to the top-10 in each category each year and find songs that are pleasant and songs that are hilariously terrible. Miley Cyrus should cut back on that five pack a day habit and spend the savings on some people who can write music that make some sense. The fun part about scanning these music lists is there are many comically stupid entries that got pushed into the top-40 by the mega corporations that control the music business.

When it comes to what most people reading this consider rock-and-roll, the landscape has been barren for a long time. Who is the best guitar player in a rock band that is under the age of forty? No one knows. He probably does not exist because rock music does not exist as a genre anymore. If you want to hear that sort of music you are going to be buying or streaming stuff from thirty, forty or fifty years ago. Even young people who want that style reach back to the oldies.

The question is why has the popular music landscape become a barren desert of corporate product? There are still plenty of young whites who would listen to knew guitar music. Blacks still like things like soul and rhythm and blues. Even blues music could have an audience if anyone bothered. This post by Brian Niemeier goes into the reasons why popular music, especially rock music, has collapsed. He did an earlier post on the same topic discussing different reasons.

Not discussed is the culture of the managerial class. The people running the music business are no different from the people running the other centers of cultural production in that they have had the antiwhite bug for a long time. The music industry went all in on hip-hop in the 1990’s. Part of it was the belief that it was a fresh market and part of it was cultural. For managerial types, hip-hop was cool because it was not white, while rock-and-roll was pale, male and stale.

One result of the money drying up for all forms of music that appeals to white people is white people stopped making that music. They stopped learning to play instruments, stopped forming garage bands and stopped cutting their teeth at clubs. Elementary school bands are full of Asian girls playing violin. There has been a steady decline in the sale of musical instruments over the last few decades, even though technology has made it easier to record at home and make it sound good.

For rock music, this has killed the feeder system for generating new sounds and new acts that made the genre possible. Even if young people were still dreaming of being a rock star, the clubs where they would learn how to perform have dried up. The culture around going to club to find new sounds and new acts has also dried up. When the music industry shifted to hip-hop and corporate pop, they also shut down the development system for creating various genres of rock music.

We are starting to see this in other areas. The military is worried that white guys from the South are no longer signing up as in the past. This decline in white participation is due to the same factors as the decline in white music. If you make your institution openly hostile to white people, they will politely avoid your institution. Before long, you will lose the ability to win them back. A good rule of life for institutions is that once you go black the whites are never coming back.

Race is not the only reason for the decline of rock music. As those Niemeier posts explain, the industry is suffering from systemic failure. There lies another useful example that applies elsewhere. The federal government failed in its duty to maintain a marketplace for music. They allowed corporate players to monopolize radio stations, which coincided with the consolidation of the music business. The result is a narrow system that operates as skimming operation.

We see this in tech. Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems and office productivity products. Innovation is non-existent in this area. Apple and Google own the mobile telecommunications industry. Despite the hype, there has been nothing interesting in mobile computing for a decade or more. The whole tech space is consolidating to the point where every business will be forced onto one of a few clouds of the cloud computing leviathan.

Of course, all of this can be chalked up to the end of empire. Empires are the result of failed societies, not successful ones. The Roman Empire grew out of the rubble of the failed Roman Republic. For half of its existence the Roman Empire operated like a mafia bust-out operation. The same is happening with the American empire, which grew out of the republic that died at Gettysburg. The main difference with the American empire and prior empires is speed due to the state of technology.

The shame of it is that like the remaining passengers on the Titanic, most Americans would enjoy some good tunes as the empire sinks under the water. That is not looking like it is going to happen, given the state of music. Who knows? Maybe Miley Cyrus will get lucky and made a good song for end-stage America. Or more likely, maybe a cage full of monkeys with some instruments will be the new Oliver Anthony and create an authentic anthem for this age.

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