Fortune’s Wheel

Posted on September 7, 2023 by thezman

In August 1936, the Soviet Union held the first of a series of trials of former Bolsheviks who had been accused of various crimes against the state. The first group accused were Old Bolsheviks who had been allies of Stalin at one point. They had later sided with Trotsky and been stripped of their positions. By this point Trotsky was in exile and his supporters were all in various states of disfavor. One element of the first trial was the claim that the accused were still in contact with Trotsky.

At the time, the international Left was firmly in the Bolshevik camp, as this was the first successful radical government in the world. Whatever the doctrinal difference within the international radical camp, no one could deny that the Bolsheviks had managed to take power in a large important country. As a result, radicals found a way to justify what was happening to the accused. The cause was more important than any man, so no one dared criticize what was happening.

Even when it should have been clear that the trials had little to do with the alleged crimes, radicals around the world found a way to justify what was happening in the name of solidarity. “No enemies to the left” was never a real thing in radical politics, as left-wing politics has always been defined by endless schisms and disputes among rival factions but as the show trials progressed, it became a useful way to rally support in the face of criticism from outside radicalism.

What followed, of course, was more show trials of Old Bolsheviks, who were found guilty and then shot. A few escaped death and were sent to labor camps where they were expected to die. The show trials were then followed by waves of arrests, executions, and purges of the party. No one knows for sure how many died in Stalin’s purges, but the general consensus is between seven hundred thousand and one million people were killed in the process.

There are a lot of lessons about the nature of human society to be drawn from the Bolsheviks and especially Stalin. Radicalism since the French Revolution has always been about a radical break from the past, but in every case, it turns out be a horrific replay of the worst of mankind’s past. Stalin was the extreme example of the worst Tsar, an industrial strength version of Ivan IV, rather than the leader of a revolutionary movement to usher in a radical new form of society.

Another lesson of the purges was that there is never any appeal to the humanity and compassion of the radicals. Even when Stalin purged the beloved Nikolai Bukharin, radicals found a way to justify it. Stalin’s decision to murder his old friend and most loyal Bolshevik should have been viewed as a monstrous crime that could only be committed by a monster, instead radicals found a way to explain it away. Again, the cause is bigger than any one man or group of men.

Of course, the greatest lesson of all is that when the old rules break down or are willfully destroyed, what is left is a lawless world. Once the law collapses, everyone becomes an outlaw by definition. In a world where everyone lives outside the law, the people who survive and thrive are always the most cunning and ruthless. In the case of the Bolsheviks, Stalin was not the smartest or the most persuasive, but he was the most cunning and ruthless, so he came out on top.

All of this would be ancient history if not for what we see happening in Washington with the show trials being run by the ruling junta. Calling the people in charge the Biden administration is no longer sensible as it is clear that Biden is deep in the throes of dementia and barely able to do basic things. The government is now run by a collection of people who operate in the shadows. They control things through the people appointed to various posts in the administration.

Much like Stalin’s trials, the process has moved from arresting minor figures on trumped up charges to now arresting the former president. It is not inconceivable to think they may exile Trump in order to keep him off the ballot. Of course, the viciousness and cruelty of the show trials grows worse with every turn. A judge just sentenced the leaders of the Proud Boys to decades in prison. The judge used the sentencing hearings as a chance to denounce the enemies of the party.

That is another feature of the Stalin trials that bears attention. In every one of the show trials, the judges were outlandish supporters of the party and the charges brought against the accused. These were men picked because of their uncertain status within the party, particularly with regards to Stalin. The judges in the current show trials seem to feel the same pressure, so they are making sure the cases proceed exactly as the party expects them to proceed.

Of course, the radicals in the cheering sections are following the same script as the radicals who cheered the show trials. The same people who cry salty tears over a black criminal getting shot in the commission of a crime are cheering the harsh penalties handed down to grandmothers in these show trials. The cause is more important than the rule of law and their thirst for the blood of their enemies trumps whatever sense of justice that ever existed in their souls.

The most important lesson of the Stalin years is that the terror that Stalin inflicted ended when Stalin’s life ended. At no point was he talked out of murdering people. He never had second thoughts or pangs of guilt. After his death, a letter from his old friend Bukharin was found in which Bukharin appealed to Stalin as a friend. Stalin kept it in his desk so he could read it from time to time, presumably so he could remember how he outmaneuvered even his closest friends.

Tyranny ends when the tyrant and his supporters end. That last part is the most important part of the process. When Stalin died his supporters were then purged and sidelined, with some ending up in the camps. The party leadership went through a de-Stalinization phase. The reason is the tyrant is always a symptom. It is his supporters in the cheering section who are the ultimate cause. It is only when you remove the fanatics and psychopaths that normalcy can return.

During the Napoleonic Wars, there was a British officer named Sir William Sidney Smith who was particularly good at vexing Napoleon in battle. Eventually, the French captured him and Napoleon had him put in a Paris prison. Smith was able to escape with the help of royalist enemies of Napoleon. In the prison was found a shingle on which he had written a letter. In the letter Smith quoted a passage from Rousseau that should be inspiration for all political prisoners

“Fortune’s wheel makes strange revolutions, it must be confessed; but for the term revolution to be applicable, the turn of the wheel must be complete. You are today as high as you can be. Very well. I envy not your good fortune, for mine is better still. I am as low in the career of ambition as a man can well descend; so that, let this capricious dame, fortune, turn her wheel ever so little–I must necessarily mount, for the same reason you must descend.”

The men and women rotting in dungeons at the hands of the regime are in the very condition of Sir William Sidney Smith. They are in prison because they vex the regime, not because they are outlaws. In a general sense, all of us are in the same condition, just free to talk around until another example is needed. Like Sir William Sidney Smith, fortunes wheel will turn, and we will rise the regime shall fall. Those who cheered the loudest for the show trials will be remembered the most.

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The Spirit Of The Law

Posted on September 6, 2023 by thezman

In the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble is told by the court that the law assumes his wife acts under his direction. Mr. Bumble responds with, “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass – a idiot”. The ass in this case is the donkey, an animal known for its obstinance. Over time the expression has been used to point out that the letter of the law can not only contradict the spirit of the law, but the law itself can contradict common sense and objective reality.

The more important point here though is that the law is an effort to formalize the commonly held moral code, a set of rules that determine what members of a society ought to do and ought not to do. It is not the moral code itself, but an effort to write it down on paper so it is clear to everyone. Fundamental to most ethical systems is the assertion that ignorance of the law is no excuse. You need to know the rules, which is why they are written down so that you can know them.

Despite the law seeming to be an ass, there is a logic to the law. That logic, like all systems, starts from some foundational items. These are the things that everyone in the law assumed to be true. For example, the Bill of Rights is supposed to be a list of starting points for understanding the limits of government. These are not supposed to be up for debate. As far as the law is supposed to be concerned, these are settled truths that cannot be challenged or violated.

This gets to an important point. Every system of oughts, the list of things you ought to do and the things you ought not do, begins with a set of eternal truths that rest on a recognized authority. Christians are free to eat pork because they do not recognize the moral authority of the Muslims and Jews. The prohibition against eating pork rests on the moral authority of those two religions. It is not an objective truth, but a subjective one that works only when you accept it.

The law is a system of oughts and therefore assumes an authority and that authority is supposed to be the Constitution but also tradition as expressed through precedent or the accumulation of court decisions. The Constitution is the starting point for what we all agree is the system of oughts. Precedent is the accumulated decisions over time on the things that were not expressly covered in the Constitution. Combined this makes up the system of oughts that define the morality of our society.

That last bit is what is often missed. Once something is formally put on the list of things you ought not do, it quickly becomes part of the informal list of taboos. The reason for this is that we naturally assume that in a democratic society the law reflects not only the general will but general morality. If the law says it is not allowed, it must mean that it is outside of that which is morally acceptable. In other words, once the court makes it against the law, it quickly becomes immoral.

An obvious example of this in action is homosexual marriage. Up until a few years ago people understood that marriage was about creating children. Since nature dictates how this is done, marriage must be one man and one woman. Then one day some people decided that the laws of nature are up for debate. Two men, it was argued, could be married, despite the biological impossibility of it. This group remained a ridiculous minority until they were able to get the courts to side with them.

In the blink of an eye, the issue of homosexual marriage went from absurd poke in the eye of Mother Nature to settled moral principle. Conservatives who opposed the idea then suddenly defended it. Even social conservatives have dropped their public opposition to homosexual marriage. You can see the change in moral attitudes in the polling on the issue. This absurd mockery of the laws of nature became part of the accepted moral code with the stroke of a judge’s pen.

Another example is the Brown decision. Central to the jihad against white people in this age are the novel moral principles invented by the court. In fact, the court not only created two new moral claims, but made those the controlling principles, superseding even those items written in the Constitution itself. As a result, the constitutional order went from a system of limits on government power to a system of demands on the white population of the country.

The same process is happening with the Bostock decision. In this case a majority of the justices agreed that discriminating against men pretending to be women so they can beat up girls on the soccer field is a form of sexual discrimination and therefore violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As Harvard professor Adrian Vermeule points out, this is a ridiculous claim on its face, but it also opens the door for adding yet another novel principle to the legal order.

As we have seen with other novelties from the court, it will not be long before this one sinks into the moral fabric of society. If you do not want your daughters pulverized by burly men in sundresses on the ball field, you will be shunned from polite society or maybe even suffer legal persecution. The fact that the Bostock decision was written by a so-called conservative judge, one anointed by the allegedly conservative Federalist Society and appointed by Trump is critical.

We used to worry about putting Catholics on the bench because it was assumed they would operate from Catholic morality, rather than the morality of high church Protestantism that informed the political order. It was assumed that judges were like all men, and they would operate from within a moral framework, formally expressed through organized religion until recent times. Catholics had Catholic morality, while Episcopalians had Anglican morality.

In other words, the text of the Constitution and the traditions and precedents that informed it were based on a moral framework that existed outside of it. The political system was founded by and for people who assumed a moral order based in high church Protestantism. It did not prohibit men dressed as women from beating up girls on the ball fields because no Christian people would ever conceive of such a thing, much less tolerate advocacy for it.

Once that morale framework was removed from the system, the Constitutional order was left without a moral foundation. It no longer had moral authority on which to rest the list of things members of society ought to do and ought not do. The political system was left to conjure one to replace it. The Brown decision and now Bostock rest on the moral authority of the new religion that has evolved since the middle of the last century, which promises salvation through universal liberation.

In the end, the law is a formalization of the moral code of a society. That moral code reflects the identity of the people who rule society. The foundation of which is either something outside of the human condition like the gods or the collective identity of the people who control society. Once the American ruling class abandoned Christianity as the moral foundation, it eventually settled on the collective identity of the ruling elite that emerged in the middle of the last century.

The trouble is, that ruling elite cannot settle on an exclusive identity as it is a hodgepodge of people from various tribes. Exclusivity therefore runs counter to their shared reality, so their new identity is the Open Society. It is a polite fiction but all ethical codes contain polite fictions. The new ruling elite is every bit as exclusive and discriminating as any ruling elite, it is just that they assume their calling is to usher in the Open Society, a world of free of discrimination and prejudice.

Musk Versus The Demon

Posted on September 5, 2023 by thezman

Imagine you have a business contract with someone who is supposed to provide a service of some sort to you. They do the work, and you pay them. The contract has conditions for when they do the work and how much you pay them, depending upon what they do and how they do it. There is also a clause that says they will pay you if they fail to fulfill their end of the contract. If for some reason they fail to fulfil or break the agreement, they pay you an agreed upon sum.

Before the contract begins, they notify you that they are no longer willing to perform the work and will be breaking the agreement. You try to get an explanation, but the only thing they say is that they are sending you a check for the stipulated amount in the liquidating damages clause of the contract. Quickly you learn that no other vendor performing the service will take your business. You then learn that some shadowy group is threatening anyone who would do business with you.

Naturally, you will think this must be against the law. This shadowy group is deliberately trying to harm you by threating people with whom you conduct business. That has to be illegal, at least it should be illegal. Even if it is not illegal, it has to be something you can bring to court and ask for damages. After all, this shadowy group is deliberately trying to damage you and your business. That is the only logical reason for their action. Now that they have done quantifiable harm, you should have a case.

Putting aside the corrupt state of American courts, your expectation for compensation and maybe even relief is reasonable. There are exceptions. For example, if the shadowy group in question is a criminal enterprise, like the Mafia, then the civil courts are not the right venue. The judge is probably going to be afraid to rule against them and if you get a jury trial then getting a fair jury will be difficult. The threat of death will overcome their zeal for justice.

You also have the issue of foreign governments who operate in the United States and outside American law. The Israeli group Black Cube, for example, does work for people like Harvey Weinstein, who regularly intimidated his victims. Suing such a company in civil court would be pointless. There is also the strong possibility that they would get the government to intervene on their behalf. Serving them and getting them to appear in an American court would be extremely difficult.

This is the background for what could be a very big story. The last few days Elon Musk has been making noises about suing the ADL. He is claiming that the ADL has been threatening advertisers as a way to control social media platforms. Further, he says that the ADL is intimidating his potential advertisers with the claim that Musk is an anti-Semite, and his platform supports antisemitism. As a result, he may take them to court for defamation and dump their private communications.

Assuming Musk is confining himself to American courts, he is most likely wasting his time with the defamation claims. American courts have decided that connected people like the ADL can say anything they like about people who are currently out of favor with the beautiful people. The New York Times just about admitted they lied about Sarah Palin and did so on purpose with malice of forethought. The judge told the jury to rule in favor of the Time because Palin has cooties.

Musk would get the same treatment, but he has another angle. He could argue that the point of the ADL’s campaign against him and his company is to harm his business by interfering in the contracts he has with advertisers and partners. If he can show that their claims of antisemitism are a threat against anyone who would do business with him, which is probably not a hard thing to do, given the behavior of the ADL, then he may have a case against the ADL.

Further, Musk is an extraordinarily rich man with lots of rich friends. There is no question that some of them have had run-ins with the ADL. He could put out the call for others to join the case if they have similar claims. Imagine if his buddy Mark Zuckerberg was willing to support Musk in confirming that the ADL uses gangster tactics to threaten social media platforms. It is unlikely for obvious reasons, but there are millions of potential victims of the ADL’s gangsterism.

This brings us back to those exceptions. Putting aside the grotesque corruption in the American legal system, there is the Mafia and foreign player issue. The ADL operates like other organized crime groups. They use intimidation of government officials as a way to avoid the law. They have their tentacles wrapped around state and federal government agencies. Getting lawyers to take the case, much less getting a judge to hear it is an enormous hurdle for Musk.

Then you have the outlaw nature of the ADL. In a Twitter space on the subject, someone pretending to be a Canadian named Vivian Bercovici was exposed by Keith Woods as an agent of Black Cube. She tried to deny it, but when that was impossible, she dropped off the call and then deleted her Twitter profile. Elon Musk and everyone around him can be sure that these people will unleash all of their intelligence assets against any effort against the ADL.

In the end, the best Musk can hope for is a successful public relations campaign against the ADL and their tactics. For generations, the ADL had exploited the sense of fair play that is a central part of the American character. Their central message is they just want for Jews what everyone else gets, a fair shake. If Musk can expose that as a fraud and expose their gangster tactics, then they lose their moral standing, which is the only reason their tactics are effective.

There is more to it, of course. As we saw with Jeffrey Epstein and Robert Maxwell, these people play the hardest of hardball. Maybe things have reached the point where the ADL decides to send a message to the rest of the oligarchs by making an example of the world’s richest man. Maybe this is all theater by Musk and the ADL to shift focus away from more pressing matters. If one is looking for a little hope, this Musk versus the ADL is a nice bit of sunshine to brighten the mood.

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The Coming Crackup

Posted on September 4, 2023 by thezman

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We tend to think of wars as isolated stand-alone events, but in reality, most wars are a part of a long process. A new power is on the rise and seeks to exploit its new status at the expense of other nations around it. The eventual war formalizes its new relationship among those nations. Wars can also reveal an underlying change in relations among nations that is not easy to see until there is war. That is what we are seeing with the war in Ukraine, which is well into its second year.

With the war in Ukraine, Americans fall into three buckets. The vast majority of people are not particularly interested. If they think of it at all it is in the context of another political boondoggle. Then you have the regime toadies who reflexively support giving the store away to Ukraine. These are hyper-partisan people who think what the party tells them to think. The final group are the realists who see the war as another neocon project that promises to end in disaster.

In Europe it is a far different matter. The pro-EU camp is the majority and totally onboard with the Ukraine project. They see this as an extension of the EU project to bring all of Europe into the post-nationalist world. Then you have the conservatives who are small in number and sound like American dissidents. They are skeptical of the Ukraine project and see it as another power grab by the EU elite. These are the voices calling for dialogue and negotiations.

There is a third group, the nationalists, that are unique to Europe. These are people who are opposed to the European project on strictly nationalist grounds. In the small countries, these people are fanatically behind Ukraine, mostly because they are spasmodically anti-Russia. It is not so much that they support Ukraine in the war but that they hate Russia. They see Azov as an example for themselves. For them, nationalism has become opposition to Russia.

There is a big caveat here. The nationalists from the traditional major powers, countries like Britain, France, Italy and even Germany, are more like American dissidents in that they see the war in nationalist versus internationalist terms. For them, Ukraine is just another project of the Global American Empire. The EU is tagging along because it is what they always do when they see a chance to grow their power. They also have a sympathetic view of Russia in this conflict.

The gap between these two camps within the European nationalist space reflects a much larger divide that cannot be closed. This post by Scandinavian nationalist Frodi Midjord gives a sense of it. The tone and content are what an American expects from the neocon critics of dissidents. The content operates in a reality that it is outside the reality of even pro-Ukrainian supporters in America. Frodi’s starting place is an entirely different conception of the reality of the war.

That starting place is the moral framing. Small nation nationalists, like Frodi, see Russia as the only villain. For no reason at all, this multi-racial empire invaded Ukraine in order to crush their nationalist dreams. Large nation nationalists, like American dissidents, see the war as another globalist project. They point to the many regime change operations over the last decades and see Ukraine, which also got the regime change treatment in 2014, as a continuation of that trend.

This explains the nasty, hyperbolic tone of that post. From his point of view, Tucker represents that other side, the nationalists and American dissidents who view Russia as just another country dealing with the empire. For him, it is not about facts and reason, but about the moral framing. If you see Russia as anything but the locus of evil, then you are on the wrong side of the issue. You see the same tone from Greg Johnson, who is close to the small nation nationalists.

Again, this difference in moral framing with regards to the war in Ukraine is reflective of much larger differences in general. The most obvious is between American dissidents and European nationalists. The nature of America means that European style nationalism is an alien concept. American nationalism is impossible for obvious reasons, but even white nationalism is unworkable. There is simply too much diversity within white America to make it work.

Here is a reality that is hard for Americans to accept. America, as in North America or even the New World, is not Europe. North America, to limit things a bit, is a different civilization than Europe. It was built by Europeans, but by and for a different sort of European than exists on the continent. While there is a lot of shared culture and history, it is not enough to overcome the differences. Europeans cannot understand North American civilization because they are not us.

In Europe itself, we see a similar gap between the small nation nationalists and the big nation nationalists. The former group’s identity as nationalists is always in the shadow of the latter nations, which have a history of invading them. Survival for small nations is always about navigating around the large nations. For the large nations, survival is never really the question. Instead, their nationalist impulses are directed to their relative status among the great powers of the world.

It is why micronations like Estonia and Finland are boiling with passion about beating Russia in the Ukraine war. They have thrown their lot in with the EU, which means the Global American Empire. They see the world as a choice between masters, so their nationalism is about picking the best master. French nationalists, in contrast, see the choice as between a master and no master. They have no fear of Russia, but they do see the Global American Empire as a real threat.

As the Global American Empire continues to decline, the gap between American sensibilities and European ones will become too big to ignore. This will become apparent in the next year as the war weighs on Europe. At some point, European elites will have to make a choice. They can continue to follow the Americans into the abyss or make a break and look out for their own interests. The concept of the West existing on both sides of the Atlantic will come into question.

In Europe, the logic of the EU will come under pressure. How reasonable is it for France, Italy, and Germany to take advice from Estonia? Why is Poland enjoying the benefits of the EU when it is Germany and France that make it possible? Why is Hungary in the EU and Britain outside of it? Why is Germany bankrupting itself over Ukraine just to pacify Latvia? The war is exposing the vast difference in world view between small Europe and big Europe.

In the end, the coming crackup of the West is really just a return to the natural order of things that should have happened in the 20th century. The Continent has always been defined by France, Germany, and Italy. As the American empire recedes, those three nations can reclaim their place atop Europe. The smaller nations will return to doing what they must, and the periphery will return to the periphery. The great crackup will return the West back to its natural order.

I’ll Drink To That

Posted on September 1, 2023 by thezman

About two months ago I had my annual physical, a thing I have come to hate mostly because it is a waste of time. The theory behind getting a physical every year is that it may catch some terrible disease you have before it gets to the point where they tell you to get your affairs in order. The belief is that if they catch it early, they have a better chance of curing it. At the extremes this is obviously true, but in the main it is one of the many myths that keeps the system awash in your cash.

This time I learned, to the immense joy of the staff, that my blood pressure was out of whack and my cholesterol was getting high. The reason for the cheering and celebrating was that it meant pills. I would need pills, lots and lots of pills. This is the best of times at a doctor’s office. The average American now takes four different prescription medicines. Humans made it into the 20th century with no pills, but we left the 20th century addicted to them.

Instead of giving my future over to the pharmaceutical companies, I decided to take a hard look at my lifestyle. I have always been someone who has more on the schedule than time permits. This not only means plenty of stress, but it also means I often stay up late getting things done. Lack of proper rest is probably the worst thing you can do to yourself as you get old. Of course, being overly busy means not eating properly and not exercising on a regular basis.

It did not require an intervention to know that I had allowed by schedule to take over my life, so the trip to the doctor was more of an excuse to reorganize things than a “come to Jesus” wake up call. The last year has brought a lot of changes and one of them was seeing the numbers on the scale get bigger every week. The late middle-age life reorganization has been in the back of my mind for a while now, so the trip to the doctor was an excuse to finally get serious about things.

One of the first things I decided to do was cut out alcohol. This is not a big deal as I have often cut out booze to lose weight. For me, losing weight has always meant cutting carbs and beer is nothing but carbs. Even though drinking lowers your blood pressure initially, regular drinking tends to drive up your blood pressure. It can also drive up your cholesterol, which was the other issue from my physical. I need to lose weight anyway, so dropping alcohol was the obvious first move.

Something I never thought about until now was that in the past when I cut beer from the diet was that it was situational. I would stop having a beer with dinner or on weekends, but if I had a social engagement I would go ahead and have a beer. The point was to cut out the calories that come with beer, not cut out the beer. This time the plan was to cut out beer entirely, which meant no beer at social events. I did not realize it, but I was going to be that guy at the party.

That guy, of course, is the person at just about every social event who has to tell people that he is not drinking. This usually happens a few times before his last name turns into “who is not drinking.” I have become that guy. Worse yet, I have had to explain the blood pressure business a million times now. In retrospect, I should have made up a story about how the terms of my parole prohibit drinking. At least people would not feel the need to look like they are interested in the answer.

The other part of the diet and exercise plan is obviously exercise. I used to lift weights regularly and cycle, but nagging injuries got me out of the habit. Before heading back down those roads, I decided to research the topic a bit. I am not a kid anymore and we are awash in aging baby boomers. I assumed that there was a mountain of information on the best exercise for old people. I was surprised to learn that it is pretty much the same stuff they have been peddling for years.

Odder still, the fitness rackets are not aiming at the geezer demographic. This seems like a logical market if you are selling exercise plans or gym memberships. Imagine a gym that caters to old people. You have to be an AARP member to join. That way the old people do not have to see those young and fit people while they are pretending that age is just a number. Maybe there is a local chain working this demo, but it looks like the fitness rackets are still aiming for the young and fit.

I wonder if the issue is not cultural. Marketing fitness to old people means telling them that they are old, and that age is more than a number. Baby boomers are not going to react positively to being told that they are as old as feel. This is one of the consequences of youth culture. Everyone has to lie to themselves about getting old, which means everyone with something to sell to old people lies to old people about the undeniable reality of getting old.

The one exception to this is the weightlifters. There are lots of old guys with YouTube channels talking about their weight training. The reason is this is the one thing you can do until you die. It turns out that strength training is probably the one thing old people can do to hold off father time. The man with the world’s strongest grip is a 73-year-old Norwegian dude named Magnus, of course. Here is a great video of him explaining what he does to remain strong into old age.

None of this matters as the Grim Reaper is undefeated. The best you can hope to do with regards to your health is to take Father time into the late rounds and remain as fit as possible to the end. My clash with the sphygmomanometer was nothing more than a reminder that I have a choice. I can make the best of the time I have, or I can just mark time like a prisoner in an aging body. It also means that life is for living, so have a beer on me over the long holiday weekend.

The Star Chamber Phase

Posted on August 30, 2023 by thezman

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Note #2: I was invited on to chat with Peter Quinones about the Republican debate, the courage of Trump, the Tucker interview and many other things. For those missing the sound of me droning on each Friday, you can get your fix here.

The term “star chamber” has fallen out of use over the last few decades, but it was a common term used by the American Left in the 20th century. They would use it when arguing that the courts were acting arbitrarily. Other times they would use it in the context of public opinion when one of their guys was in trouble. The point was that the media was being unfair to their guy. Star chambers were bad so anything with those words associated with it must be bad too.

The Star Chamber was a real thing. It was an English court setup in the 15th century to oversee cases involving socially and political important people. This court was staffed with advisors to the king. This way the judges would not be intimidated by the status of the accused. No one knows for sure how it got the name “star chamber” but the most popular theory says it comes from the decorations. The ceiling was painted with gold stars on a blue background.

Of course, like all government power, it was soon abused by the people wielding it to first attack their enemies in court and then to suppress dissent. The main reason it was subverted into an instrument of oppression is it lacked due process. There was no appealing the decisions of the court and since it operated by its own rules, there could be no appeal to a fixed set of rules. This allowed the king to use the system to persecute his enemies and stamp out dissent.

It is why up until the last few decades, the American court system was based on a fixed set of rules that governed all courts. This was ensured by an appeals system that ended with the Supreme Court. Forgotten today, the primary purpose of the Supreme Court was to make sure the court system followed the rules, the primary source of which is the Constitution itself. The courts being open to the public was an additional check on abuse of the legal system by the powerful.

The reason “star chamber” has fallen out of fashion in America is the Left has seized control of the institutions, including the centers of cultural production. They no longer look at the abuse of power as a problem because they have all the power so by definition all uses of power are justified. Note that their objections to the secret courts created after 9/11 were ceremonial and halfhearted. In reality they welcomed this new tool they could use in pursuit of their agenda.

Note also that the only thing we know about these secret courts is they were used against Donald Trump in the 2016 election. To date no one has produced an example of how these courts prevented terrorism. The documented abuses of these secret courts by the FBI have gone unaddressed. Because the courts are secret, we have no idea what goes on inside them, so there is no way to know they are not being used against dissidents in the same way they were used against Trump.

Putting that aside, the court system we can see is also going through a transformation toward the Star Chamber model. Again, Trump provides some examples. In his Florida case the court has warned him about making public statements. There is the threat of a gag order hanging over him. In Washington, Jack Smith has asked the court for what amounts to a gag order on Trump. In Georgia, Trump cancelled a press conference about the case for fear of retribution from the court.

Since we get our information about court proceedings from the media and the media is now an agent of the state, it is not hard to see why proscribed people would want to have their say outside the courthouse. The only chance for fairness in the courtroom now is for the accused to make his appeals outside the courthouse. Naturally, the courts now wish to stifle such conduct. If they can gag the accused, he cannot shine a light on the abuses inside the court through appeals to the public.

This is not just a phenomenon in high profile political cases. Increasingly, local judges and prosecutors are doing the same thing. Here is a case of a famous college football player accused of heinous crimes. If you read between the lines, he was framed by the cops but was forced to remain quiet in order to get out of the case. He comes from money and his father is famous, but none of that matters in a court system that is increasingly the tool of arbitrary state power.

The difference between the rule of law and rule by men is that the former has a clear and precises set of rules open to the public, while the latter is based on the momentary whims of the people who wield power. The proliferation of laws along with a proliferation of ways to interpret the laws has made everything illegal. No one can now list all of the federal crimes on the books. As a result, most people are breaking the law every day of their life without knowing it.

The reason this matters is one of the predicates for social upheaval, like civil wars and revolutions, is the collapse of trust in the law. The Star Chamber system, for example, ended with the English Civil War. The American Revolution was, in part, a response to the collapse of legal authority. The American Civil War was due, in part, to a collapse in trust by both sides in the courts fairly dealing with the slavery issue. The legal system no longer provided a solution to disputes.

When no one trusts the law or the legal system, no one has a reason to obey the rules, much less respect the system that creates them. Put another way, when everyone is in violation of the law, then everyone is motivated to live outside the law. This is the fundamental definition of the outlaw. He is an outlaw because he rejects the system of laws and therefore exists outside the law. This is also the starting place for every revolutionary and revolutionary movement.

In the end, the test of a legal system is the test of a society. That is, how much protection does it provide to those with the least power. A society that provides only protection to the powerful is a tyranny. A legal system that provides no protection to those without power from those with power is also a tyranny. The Star Chamber became the symbol of tyrannical rule because it was the instrument of tyranny, just as our legal system is today.

The BRIC Bat

Posted on August 29, 2023 by thezman

Imagine one morning you wake up to the news that the dollar has lost twenty percent of its value against the other major currencies. Throughout the day, the dollar continues to fall as governments and banks dump dollars and treasuries. By midafternoon, the news is all about emergency meetings in Washington between the White House, Congressional leaders, and the Federal Reserve. The dollar has lost half its value and treasuries are now flooding the secondary market.

By that evening the public is starting to understand what the collapse of the dollar will mean for them, so they have shut down the internet in an effort to buy gold and silver from online dealers. The next day, retail gold and silver dealers, pawn shops and coin brokers are all closed. There are rumors of jewelry shops being looted as people look for anything of intrinsic value. By the second day of the crisis, all businesses have closed as state and local government declares martial law.

This is the dream scenario of the goldbugs and doomsday types that you find lurking around websites sponsored by precious metal dealers. Since Nixon closed the gold window, these people have been predicting the demise of the dollar. Peter Schiff has made himself rich telling people the dollar is about to collapse. The reason these predictions have not happened is this will never happen. This sort of collapse is simply not possible in the modern age.

The main reason this cannot happen is the rest of the world holds trillions in treasuries and dollars in their reserves. About seventy percent of what the world has on its balance sheets is denominated in dollars. Of course, the world’s most important and most traded commodity is energy and it is traded in dollars. There can be no collapse in the dollar like this because there is a buyer for every dollar. As soon as anyone starts to dump dollars, someone is right there to buy them.

That does not mean the dollar is a permanent feature of global commerce or that it can never lose value. The dollar rises and falls like other currencies because currencies are valued relative to one another. It just means that the dollar will disappear only after a long process by which it is replaced by something else. That process will take a long time and it will happen in fits and starts. In fact, the process has already begun and yet there is no panic in the currency markets.

One part of the process is the BRICS summit last week, where Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates were added to Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. What started out as a handy way for traders to identify emerging economies is now a loose confederation of countries promising to cooperate with one another on global matters. Most importantly, they are working to trade with one another in their home currencies, not dollars.

This is not a small thing. These countries are some of the biggest economies in the world and they have a lot of people. About 40% of the world’s population are in this group of eleven countries. Most importantly, they control about eighty percent of the world’s energy supply. If they decide to trade energy products in something other than dollars, a slow-motion version of the scenario at the start of this post will begin to take shape as the dollar loses its primary benefit.

The way things have worked for the last fifty years is you needed dollars and dollar equivalents to trade energy on global markets. The reason for that is the big oil producers only accepted dollars for payments. The Saudis led the way on this back in the 1970’s when they agreed to use only dollars in exchange for security guarantees from Washington, as well as technology assistance. If you want to buy oil it means first getting the dollars you need to buy it.

This has had an interesting effect on the dollar. Because there has always been excess demand for dollars somewhere in the world, Washington has been able to create as many dollars as it needs to maintain the domestic economy and operate a global military empire, without inflation. Since the U.S. treasury is the best collateral on earth, it has meant unlimited low interest borrowing for American governments and for global corporations doing business in dollars.

Ultra-low borrowing rates are the result of a complex form of seigniorage. This is the difference between the cost of creating money and the value of the money, Put another way, it is the profit from having the monopoly on the currency. In the old days, the king took a profit from minting coins. Since everyone in his realm had to transact using coins with his face on them, everyone had to buy his coins in order to do business with him or anyone in his realm.

In this age, the profit Washington gets from having the world’s reserve currency comes in the form of low borrowing rates and low inflation. This in turn has allowed the domestic economy to grow, despite massive borrowing. In fact, it is borrowing that has inflated the economy over the last decades. In a weird way, borrowing has become the business of America because those treasury bills are used throughout the global economy to facilitate commerce.

That is about to change, and it is already changing. When the Russians decided to accept only rubles for payment, they did so to defend their economy against the sanctions imposed by the West. When it worked and the ruble stabilized, it showed the world that there can be life after the dollar. The world needs Russia oil, gas, agricultural products and increasingly its manufactured goods. If they demand rubles as payment, then it means the world needs rubles too.

This is why BRICS is moving from a label to an organization. If the Russians can do this, then the other countries can do this as well. The West is even more dependent on China and India than they are on Russia. Brazil is a massive exporter of energy products and agricultural products. The plan by Western environmentalist to shut down all domestic farming cannot happen unless the West can make itself dependent on food imports from countries like Brazil.

By adding these six new countries, BRICS is laying the groundwork for an alternative currency to be used for international settlement. Given the makeup of the group, this will most likely start with energy. The Saudis will be the first to accept Chinese and Indian currency for payment. The Russians are already doing this with regards to oil exports to these two countries. Once the Saudis take this step, the dollar will be joined by the yuan and rupee as petro-currencies.

What this means for King Dollar is not much right now. Demand for dollars has already been declining, which is why inflation has been high the last two years. According to the Fed, inflation remains a problem and they will continue to hike interest rates in order to achieve their target goal of two percent. In other words, as the demand for dollars declines globally, the Federal Reserve will have to reduce the supply of dollars, which means borrowing rates will keep rising.

It is important to keep in mind that the countries involved in BRICS do not want the dollar to collapse or even sharply decline. The entire world economy depends on the dollar, including their own economies. What they are aiming for is a slow transition away from dollars that lets them lead the way in de-dollarization. The dollar and its goofy little brother the euro will remain major currencies in the end, just working next to other major currencies in international trade.

The big question is whether Western leaders understand what is happening and what is about to happen to their economies. In a multipolar world with multiple currencies, each currency is judged by the underlying economy, not through the clever legerdemain of Wall Street bankers. An economy that does not make things or possess natural resources is not going to have a strong currency. This does not bode well for Western economies based on services.

Then you have the elephant in the room. The global American Empire is facing a choice over the next decades. Do we fund the old age of the swelling retired class or do we spend money on the war machine. In the Republican debate, all but one was in favor of slashing Social Security to fund Ukraine. Given the racial makeup of the retired class, you can be sure the Democrats are onboard with that as well. It is not hard to see where this is heading over the next decade.

On the other end, rising interest rates mean the young will be shut out of the housing market in most of the country. New car prices have gone up 30% over the last three years and that is before the higher cost of borrowing. In other words, it will not just be old people made poorer by this process. The young, diverse, and technically deficient will also be made poorer. The cost of politicians celebrating their generosity to foreigners is about to rise as the dollar falls.

Phase Change

Posted on August 28, 2023 by thezman

Note #1: I was invited on to chat with Peter Quinones about the Republican debate, the courage of Trump, the Tucker interview and many other things. For those missing the sound of me droning on each Friday, you can get your fix here.

Note #2: Behind the green door is a post about how everything is gay, a post about the terribleness of Tennessee Williams, and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

The war in the Ukraine is about to go through a phase change as the Ukrainian initiative comes to an end this autumn. For most of the year, the war has been characterized by Western initiates, along with Ukrainian military action. Planning and publicizing the Ukrainian spring offensive dominated the first half of the year, while the last three months have been dominated by the offensive itself. By all accounts this will run out of steam in the next few weeks.

According to Western media, the point of the counter-offensive was to use NATO trained brigades using Western equipment and tactics to break through Russian defenses in the south and create a corridor to the Sea of Azov. This would split Russian forces and isolate the Crimea. The assumption was that the Russian army would abandon their positions rather than fight. This in turn would create a political crisis in Russia, perhaps forcing a withdraw from Ukraine.

What happened instead was the newly trained Ukrainian units charged headlong into massive minefields while being slammed with Russian artillery. The internet was full of videos showing burning NATO equipment and desperate Ukrainian soldiers trying to escape the minefields. Western sources indicate Ukraine lost a third of this force in the first weeks of the offensive. This map of the southern defensive lines shows how little progress the Ukrainians have made in three months.

In addition to the big push in the south, the Ukrainians tried to retake Bakhmut, which they had lost in the spring. By all accounts this was a total failure and they ceased trying to retake the city. Those forces have been diverted to the south for one last shot at making some progress. Right now, the Ukrainians are putting their last Western units into a final push to capture a tiny village called Robotino. This appears to be the final battle of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.

On the public relations front, Ukraine has been launching small drone attacks against buildings in the Moscow suburbs. They have also launched attacks against Crimea using their remaining Storm Shadow missiles they got from Britain, as well as the small, improvised drones they have been using on civilian targets. These efforts have no military value, but they are seen as moral boosters. The images are quickly spread around by Western media.

The long and short of this is the West appears to be in a panic over the results, especially in the south. The narrative said that Russia is a paper tiger, and the army would break at the first sign of Western equipment. At this point, the Ukrainians were supposed to be bathing in the Sea of Azov. Instead, billions in NATO gear lies in ruins in a place now called Bradley Park. It is called that by the Ukrainians because it contains so many bombed out Bradley fighting vehicles.

There is now a growing concern that the Ukrainian army is running out of men and material to continue fighting. That speaks to the horrific losses they have taken in this ill-fated counter-offensive, but also the long toll of the war. As a result, Ukraine is stepping up mobilization efforts. There are rumors that that Zelensky will call for a full mobilization of Ukraine, which means that every available male will be called to service and maybe even the females of military age.

The one area where Ukraine has had some success is in the Black Sea, where they have been using sea drones to harass Russian shipping. There is speculation that they are using Romania to launch and control these British made drones and maybe there are British contractors helping them. American Reaper drones are also active in the Black Sea, suggesting they help locate targets. Regardless, the Black Sea has become a problem for the Russian navy and Russian shipping.

The question is what comes next. There are rumors that the Russians have been plotting an offensive of their own. This may simply be echoes from the Battle of Kursk, which took place eighty years ago in the same location. In that battle, the Soviet army stood their ground against a massive German offensive, then counter attacked, leading to one of the biggest tank battles in history. The Russians are obsessed with their history, so this may be the source of those rumors.

On the other hand, the Russians have been advancing along the northern part of the line of contact, to the point where Ukraine has evacuated the strategic city of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region. This has led to speculation that Russia may be planning to capture Kharkiv city, which is the second largest city in Ukraine. They could also swing south and cut off supply lines to the Ukrainian army in the Donbas. The Russians supposedly have over 100,000 men in this area.

The other possibility is that the Ukrainians had to strip this area of men and equipment in order to supply their offensive in the south. As a result, the Russians are taking advantage of the situation to capture these important transport hubs. In other words, they are simply filling a void left by the Ukrainians, and it has nothing to do with their plans for the fall and winter. Either way, the collapse of this part of the Ukrainian lines supports the lack of manpower claims.

This leads to the topic of what comes next. As this phase of the war reaches its end over the next few weeks, the ball will now be in the court of the Russians, who have spent a year building up forces in Ukraine. They could go on the offensive or simply continue to grind away at the Ukrainian army. They could also begin to work on the Ukrainian infrastructure as a way to weaken their resolve. Of course, a major winter offensive is also a possibility.

There is also the question as to what the West does now that their great Ukrainian counter-offensive narrative is in tatters. For now, they seem to be contenting themselves with a blame game focused on the Ukrainians. The neocons are blaming the Ukrainian general for not following their orders, while the Pentagon is pointing the finger at Zelensky for meddling in the military planning. Out of this will come a new narrative, but its details remain a mystery at this point.

Then there is the election calendar. The Poles have elections is October, which will be an interesting look at European public opinion. There is no anti-war party in Poland to speak of, so it is going to be a more subtle read on how the ruling party has managed the war to this point. In June, the Germans have an election. The AfD is an anti-war party and they have jumped in the polls. So much so that the German government is threatening to ban the party entirely.

Of course, the American presidential election cycle has started. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the anti-war option on the Democrat side. The regime has banned any serious polling on him, but they must be worried as they have pulled Bernie Sanders out of mothballs to campaign in New Hampshire. Then you have Trump who is the enemy of the neocons and the military industrial complex. His swarthy mini-me, Vivek Ramaswamy, has also taken a strong anti-war position.

The bottom line is there is no path to victory for Ukraine. This phase of the war which has gone on for close to a year makes that abundantly clear. While the Ukraine army has fought heroically, they are outmanned and outgunned. Now that the West is out of weapons to send to them and Western domestic politics is about to take center stage, Ukraine will be faced with some grim choices. The big question is how a Western defeat plays out over the next year.

The Singularity Of War

Posted on August 25, 2023 by thezman

Note: The following is green door content. I am posting here as a reminder that you can support my efforts with more than just your pithy comments on the site. You can sign up for a green door account here or here. I am just shy of 700 subs and it would be nice to push through that barrier by the end of summer.

One of the fascinating parts of the Great War is how the sides adjusted to the changes in military technology. At first, they did not adjust at all. They continued to use tactics that they used before the invention of machine guns and high explosives. This was despite seeing the power of these new weapons in the various Balkan wars in the years preceding the Great War and the Italo-Turkish War in 1912.

That changed quickly once both sides figured out that the new weapons had made the old tactics suicidal, but they did not have a good answer. After the German advance stopped, both sides had the same idea, which was to outflank the other side to the north, which became the famous race to the sea. Once both sides reached the sea, what came next was years of trench and attritional warfare.

The curious thing about the stalemate is that it took both sides so long to figure out how to solve the trench problem. The first use of tanks was two years into the war, and they were a long way from being determinative. It took another year for the Allies to figure out how to use them properly. Neither side ever developed tactics for breaching entrenched positions without suffering heavy casualties.

The armored vehicle and the airplane solved the trench problem. Airpower could suppress opposing artillery, allowing armored vehicles to enter the defensive zone, which allowed infantry to follow behind the armor. Mobility suddenly made fixed defenses a liability. The German sweep into France in the Second World War was proof that mobility trumps even the best fixed defenses.

The war in the Ukraine has now brought us full circle. The Russians crossed into the Ukraine and ran into a series of heavily fortified defensive lines. Those lines included artillery and surface-to-air missiles. In front of those defensive lines, they found obstacles and mine fields organized like a maze. The Ukrainians also had a fairly good air force, including a good supply of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 attack drones.

There was no way for the Russians to use their superior tanks and armored vehicles to break through the Ukrainian lines. By the time they got to the minefields the Ukrainians were attacking them with artillery. The minefields and obstacles slowed the assault, giving the Ukrainians time to bring up reinforcements to meet the attack. The choice was heavy losses or retreat, and the Russians chose retreat.

The Russians made an assault against a town in the south called Vuhledar, also known as Ugledar. They thought they could roll up on the Ukrainian positions by first taking the surrounding dachas and turning them into a staging area to assault the town. Instead, they found themselves in a maze of minefields. Then the Ukrainians unleashed their artillery on those stranded units.

Of course, this works both ways. After the Russians settled into the war, they started building their defenses. They brought in their artillery and surface-to-air missiles to solve the problem of the Ukrainian air force. They quickly figured out how to knock out the Bayraktar drones using electronic warfare. Their one innovation was the use of modern mines to create vast and complex minefields.

This is why the NATO-planned offensive has been a disaster. They still think mobile warfare beats even the best defenses. They sent armored columns at the Russian lines, only to be attacked with drones that destroyed the mine clearing tanks and forced the rest of the armor into the minefields. These highly mobile units were quickly made into immobile targets the Russians could easily destroy.

It is clear that the West has no answer for this problem. They could give Ukraine F-16’s with contract pilots, but they are not much use against Russian air defenses. The West could bring in their own air defenses to neutralize the Russian air advantage, but that still leaves the trench problem. There is no answer to crossing minefields and attacking fortified defenses without air superiority.

The Russians have the same problem. Once this Ukrainian offensive burns itself out, they will have to figure out how to break the Ukrainian defenses. They will have air superiority and a huge edge in artillery. They also have a growing selection of drones they can use to knock out Ukrainian artillery, but they still have to cross those minefields while Ukrainian defenses fire on them.

It is not an unsolvable problem. Like the Great War, the winning side will be the one able to maintain the fight. Biden said the quiet part aloud the other day when he said NATO is running out of weapons. The Russians figured this out last year which is why they have been waging a war of attrition. They know if they wait long enough, the other side will collapse just like the Germans did in the Great War.

That still leaves us with the same problem. Assuming the West could ramp up its industrial production and match the Russians, it simply means that we are back to the old trench warfare problem. As drones get better and militaries get better at using them, this problem will only get worse. The Russians are now experimenting with drone technology in old tanks to use them as decoys.

This problem could also apply to naval warfare. The Russians were able to use a hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile to take out a Patriot battery. That same weapon can be used to take out a ship. Those cheap drones that take off from Russia and hit targets all over Ukraine can do the same thing to surface ships. It is not hard to see how new technology could turn the ocean into a version of the trench.

War has always been about innovation. A new weapon or tactic results in a new counter measure, which forces the development of new weapons and tactics. You have to wonder if there is a limit and maybe we have reached it. Short of nuclear weapons, the West cannot hope to beat the Russians on the battlefield and the Russians cannot hope to beat the West. We may have reached the singularity of war.

This applies to China as well. There is no doubt that Russia is helping China build out its missile and drone technology to defend against the American navy. If the US navy cannot get carriers within striking distance of the mainland without suffering catastrophic losses and the Chinese cannot blockade Taiwan for the same reason, then the long planned war with China over Taiwan become mutual suicide.

What is the answer to a hypersonic missile striking a carrier? They can put air defenses on the carrier, but they are not able to defend against these missiles at this time and the missiles will keep getting better. Like the tank, the aircraft carrier is losing its value due to changes in technology. If opposing navies are afraid to get in range of one another, then we have a standoff on the seas.

Of course, we always have nukes. Maybe the answer that the empire lands on is the use of nuclear weapons to solve the problem. The regime talks about them incessantly with regards to Ukraine. Maybe the plan for China will be sub-launched nukes to disable her coastal defenses. That is the history of war. Every new defense is met with a new offense crafted by a bloodthirsty lunatic.

Covid II: Revenge Of The Experts

Posted on August 24, 2023 by thezman

In the fullness of time the ape historians may refer to this time as the age of reboots because everything seems to be a remake of the past. It is not just movies and television shows that are constantly rebooted. Must of our politics is a replay of the 1930’s, the 1960’s or the 1980’s. Every villain is Hitler or Bull Connor, and every victim is Ann Frank or Emmet Till. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to hear that the people in charge are planning to reboot the Covid franchise.

Despite a mountain of evidence showing that none of the Covid mandates made a lick of difference when Covid was a real thing, we are seeing them comeback as we get a glimpse of what we used to call flu season. A few cases of the sniffles have school systems cancelling classes and installing plastic bubbles again. A college in Georgia has brought back all of their Covid restrictions. Fake TV doctors are out pitching the latest Pfizer products, just in time for the holidays!

The “experts” who told you to tie your underwear around your head and stand in little circles painted on the floor at the grocery store are now saying there is a new variant with a really cool name. The Eris variant, perhaps the result of the Evropa Project, is spreading like an untended Hawaii wildfire. The “experts” say it spreads much faster than the prior variants, which must be bad. That is why we must act now as we only have a few weeks to flatten the curve.

Thankfully, the drug dealers have a cure for what ails you. Just in time for cold and flu season, they have a new batch of vaccines. What makes a reboot so attractive is they already have the IP established. They do not have to invest in making the public aware of the new thing, so those savings drop to the bottom line. In the case of the vaccines, they still have millions of doses of the last batch, so it is just a matter of slapping on some new labels and handing out some new bribes.

You are probably thinking that there is no way that they can reboot the Covid franchise so soon after the original finally ended. After all, public opinion has moved hard against the nanny state nonsense that defined the original Covid run. Companies are still struggling to get their people back into offices. Most of the hard thumping Covidians now pretend they never fell for it. Despite is all, it looks like the Biden administration is moving ahead with plans to reboot the franchise.

The conspiratorial minded suspect that the regime is plotting some new shenanigans and forcing people off the streets with Covid mandates is part of the plan. If you are going to put one of the presidential candidates in jail, for example, having a ban in place against forming up crowds would be useful. That way the regime would not have to worry about another January 6. If protests broke out, they could unleash the dogs and firehoses in the name of public health.

The more likely answer is that Covid was just one giant leap in the direction of security tyranny that is all around us now. The health care system is now full of people who think it is their duty to push you around for your own good. Every business now has a safety manager who thinks like a paranoid helicopter mom. Public health officials have the same attitude as the staff of a prison. They see themselves as your perpetual guardian and you as a problem they must solve.

That last bit is the vital part. The more people pointed out the idiocy of the Covid polices the more determined the Covidians were to hold the line. Just as the managerial elite have come to define themselves in opposition to the masses, our army of experts define themselves in opposition to the people pointing out their mistakes. The more the evidence stacked up that the Covid regime was a sham, the more determined the Covid experts were to hold the line on the mandates.

Since so much of what animates our ruling class is a redress of past grievances, this reboot of Covid could be an effort to do it right this time. The experts will proclaim a public health emergency over Covid. The public health managers will claim they are better prepared this time and launch into rounds of public health theater that prove they are on top of things, while countering the “disinformation” about Covid. It sounds crazy, but we live in a ridiculous age.

There is also a weird psychology involved in the reboot lifestyle. We see this with the repeated reboots in Hollywood. Even when it is obvious that the planned remake of a classic is going to fail, they forge ahead anyway. Hollywood released a Terminator remake with a decrepit Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a geriatric robot interior decorator named Karl. Clearly there is some form of psychosis at the heart of this berserk desire to reimagine the past.

The big question is whether the public will fall in line again. There are reasons to think they will not go along with it. The novelty of working at home has passed, so that carrot is no longer available. The public is far more cynical about this stuff now, given the endless stream of official shenanigans. Only the dullest of zombies believe anything coming from official sources now. This reboot would look like a farce, even to people who enjoyed the original Covid theater.

On the other hand, cavalier disregard for public opinion is becoming a charm on the purity bracelets of the political class. If you are willing to offer Biden’s crackhead son a sweetheart deal with blanket immunity then appoint a family friend to be the special investigator after the deal blows up, you might look at a Covid reboot as a way to show your friends you really do not care what anyone thinks. Spiting the ungrateful masses with a Covid scare is just the ticket.

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