The Price Of Sophistry

Posted on December 26, 2022 by thezman

In modern usage, the terms sophism and sophistry are used interchangeably with “inaccurate” or “deliberately misleading.” A sophist is someone who relies upon fallacious arguments or reasoning to win a debate. Someone can be accused of sophistry because they are too stupid to see the flaws in their reasoning. Other times they are accused of deliberately misleading arguments. The motivation is malice rather than stupidity or carelessness.

This negative view of sophistry was not always so. We get the word from the Greeks who used the word to mean teacher. A sophist hired himself out to rich families to instruct their sons in philosophy, math, rhetoric and music. The ability to debate in public was an important skill for an ambitious Athenian, so educating your children to be convincing orators was a primary goal of rich parents. A good sophist was one who was good at making convincing arguments.

Our negative view of this also comes from the Greeks. The reason we know about Socrates is we have the writings of Plato, who tells us Socrates was opposed to sophistry in his day. He thought arguments had to be logically sound and factually accurate, rather than just convincing. Of course, Socrates was forced to drink poison by the Athenians, because he was condemned for undermining public virtue. It turns out that the truth does not always set you free.

The reason any of this matters is that in democratic societies, there is a tension between these same two claims. On the one hand, winning the crowd is vital to democratic politics and the marketplace. This was true in ancient Athens and it is true on social media today. On the other hand, we are a society that believes deliberate deception is wrong, so factual accuracy is important. Winning the crowd through deceptive means is viewed as immoral.

This tension has been at the heart of mainstream conservative politics. One camp, the Straussians, think that winning the argument, which in politics means winning elections, is all that matters. The alternative camp insists that being right is what matters, even if it is not always popular. The former camp is correct that the goal of politics in a democratic system is to win elections, but the other side is also right that winning elections means nothing if the result is bad policy.

This conflict is at the heart of this back and forth between Michael Anton and Paul Gottfried over natural rights and traditionalism. Anton is a Straussian so he is therefore unencumbered by logic and factual accuracy. He simply wants to convince people that a society rooted in natural rights is the only choice, if America is going to hold together for much longer. Gottfried and others point out that natural rights do no exist and therefore they cannot be a foundation for anything.

What you see in the back and forth is that Gottfried in his short responses is describing things with as much accuracy as possible. He makes a descriptive claim, while Anton, in his lengthy responses, makes prescriptive claims. One side describes things as they are, while the other side argues for how they should be. Anton believes he is in the right because his proposition would solve the problem of governing a majority-minority society, while Gottfried is right because he is factually correct.

This conflict between the descriptive and the prescriptive is turning up in the dissident critique of the conservative movement. Conservatives argue that they are upholding the constitution and the natural rights tradition in America. Dissidents point out that no matter how elegant the arguments are in favor of conservatism and its natural rights foundation, the results, to this point, have been disastrous. In other words, the facts contradict the claims, no matter their intent.

The shadow over all of this, of course, is the purging of the paleocons from conservatism by the neocons and their Straussian enablers. Free from facts and reason, the winners in that struggle were able to conjure the history they needed to support their prescriptive claims, which solved a problem for conservatives. Like a python, they swallowed the Civil Rights Movement whole and digested it into their theories of the founding and their natural rights arguments.

That bit of history is what hangs over the back and forth between Gottfried and Anton and it is what hangs over the dissident critique of conservatism. The neocons and their Straussian enablers won the argument, but to what end? What was the point of winning the argument if the result was the present catastrophe? Anton would like to reframe this as the old neocon versus paleocon dispute, but no amount of words can conceal the elephant in the room. His side won the battle and lost the war.

In the end, this is the lesson of sophistry. It can only flourish in a culture that sees winning the argument as an end in itself. This is the curse of democracy, which brought down ancient Athens and is bringing down the New Athens. The truth is like a corpse in that it can never be truly concealed. The sophists think they can weigh the truth down with words, but like the body bobbing to the surface after the spring thaw, the truth eventually reemerges into the life of a society.

That truth in the current crisis is that the clever arguments and complex logical constructs of the last half century contained no truth value. The sophist of our age profited greatly from their arguments, but the result is the ungovernable mess that is modern America. Like Havel’s green grocer, we must now live in the truth which means shedding the sophistry that has led us to the present catastrophe. The truth may not set us free, but it will keep us from being erased from the book of life.

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An Orgy Of Self-Satisfaction

Posted on December 22, 2022 by thezman

Note: This being the time of year when people feel generous, you may be thinking about sending a few bucks to a worthy cause. If you are an HBD fan or a supporter of academic integrity, you should consider kicking in a few bucks to the Bryan Pesta fundraiser that you can learn more about here.

A common theme on this side of the great divide is the growing perception gap between the people in the regime that rules over the Global American Empire and the people who are trapped inside that empire. The relationship between the ruled and their rulers is becoming two black boxes. The people see their rulers perform, but why they are doing what they are doing makes little sense. The rulers look over the walls and see nothing but monsters lying in wait for them.

This growing disconnect was on display in the Imperial Capital, when the dictator of Ukraine arrived to a hero’s welcome. Dictator is not a word the regime members use, even though it is the correct title. Zelensky rules with an iron fist, throwing critics into dungeons and terrorizing the people into submission. The excuse is the war, but democratic countries still hold elections in times of crisis. Tyrants suspend the rule of law when it suits their interests.

For most Americans, Ukraine is a weird place far away that has no bearing on their lives, because it should have no bearing on their lives. Most Americans feel for the common people whose lives are ruined by the war. Most American would prefer it if their government did something to end the conflict. In fact, it is safe to say that Americans wish their government were the global peacemaker. That would be something that could genuinely unite a very divided country.

Otherwise, the typical American has no interest in this war. If provided the facts, they would be appalled at the actions of their government. The Ukrainians took delivery of High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) from American and immediately used them to target residential areas of the Donbas. War is always an ugly business and brother wars are the worst in this regard. Even so, the typical American would want nothing to do with the deliberate targeting of civilians.

The fact is, the typical American, regardless of political affiliation, would wholeheartedly agree with John Quincy Adams when he said “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Anyone living in the world of normal Americans knows this. Despite this, the regime put on a prime time show in which the dictator of Ukraine, dressed like an extra from bad war movie, gave a weird speech to Congress. In that speech he demanded more money from the average American and gave the strong impression that he thinks the average American is not pulling his weight in terms of sacrificing for a country he cannot locate on a map.

What made the spectacle grotesque was the fawning over this belligerent midget by the regime leaders. It was a vulgar display of the disconnect that now exists between the regime and the people. Mitch McConnell came out and said that his number one priority, to the exclusion of all else, is shoveling untold billions into the rat hole that is the war in Ukraine. Imagine being a guy struggling to pay his rent in Kentucky having to listen to that lecture.

What makes the whole thing revolting to the average person is that everyone knows much of the money is being stolen. Even though the FBI has been working long hours to suppress the facts of the Hunter Biden laptop, the typical American knows the Biden family is as crooked as a ram’s horn. They know all of these people are corrupt, yet they have to watch these people celebrate their alleged moral purity over shoveling more cash into the Ukraine money laundering machine.

In other words, the growing gap between the regime and the people is not simply a gap in understanding or a gap in priorities. It is a moral gap. Every day the people inside the regime imagine themselves on higher moral ground than the day before, while the people looking on see their leaders sinking into a swamp of moral depravity. It is not just that there is a gap, but that the gap is rapidly widening. Each new outrage by the freaks of the regime lowers their standing with the people.

Few commentators have noticed the parallel between Washington’s support for Ukraine and the support for Vietnam sixty years ago. It is a good comparison because the cause is the same. The people running Vietnam policy were every bit as deluded about their intelligence as the people running Ukraine policy. In fact, Victoria Nuland and the rest of the Kagan cult are setting new standards for Dunning-Kruger. Mx. Nuland is an unfathomably stupid woman.

The important parallel is deeper than just shared stupidity. Vietnam undermined the trust people had in their rulers to the point where serious people became concerned that the country was headed for a breakup. That was in a relatively homogenous and prosperous country. Today’s America is an irreconcilable collection of fractious and deracinated people with no reason to hang together other than convenience and fear of an increasingly hostile ruling class.

If the economic chickens come home to roost in 2023 as the economic experts tell us, this erosion of trust and respect for the regime will quickly become a crisis. People may look back at this shameful orgy of self-satisfaction, at the expense of the people, as a tipping point in the relationship between the regime and the people. Watching that show, it would take a heart of stone not to hate these people. It was the point when even the most faithful civic nationalist began to hate.

The Gracchi Principle

Posted on December 21, 2022 by thezman

Note: This is the time of year to be generous to those in need, so if you are looking for a place to give, here is an option. Most certainly know the story, but for those who do not, here is the background.

A feature of a ruling elite in decline is that they no longer respect the rules they have in place to govern their own behavior. Every society has a ruling class and within that ruling class there is competition. Despite what the natural rights proponents argue, there is a natural desire for hierarchy. Some people want to be at the top, while others aim a bit lower. Humans will compete for positions on the status tree in every form of human organization.

That is why ruling elites need rules. These rules are about governing the natural competition that will exist inside the ruling class. These rules also govern how one can enter the ruling class and how one can be expelled. As is true of all human organizations, the first question every ruling class must answer is “who are we?” and the answer to that question is a set of rules that define who is in, how you get in and how you remain in the ruling class.

In a healthy ruling class, as with any healthy human organization, the rules are more of a state of mind than a written set of laws. The early Roman republic had rules and those rules were the spirit that animated the republic. Brutus did not have to be told the rules, with regards to his sons actions in the Tarquinian conspiracy. He stood and watched stoically as his sons were executed for their crimes against the republic, thus making Brutus the ever lasting symbol of republican virtue.

Over time of course, human nature takes over and people begin to nibble away at the spirit of those rules, which inevitably results in some sort of formal codification of the rules, if for nothing else than to make it easier to handle disputes. The spirit of the law gives way to the letter of the law and the enforcement of the rules by the people benefitting from the present interpretation of the rules. It is that last bit that leads to the final phase of every ruling elite.

When the rules are first written down, everyone agrees on the meaning of the text, but over time that comes into dispute. On the one hand, people at the lower end of the status tree seek advantage in any ambiguity. If they can get everyone to agree on some new meaning of a word or phrase, they can maybe arbitrage that ambiguity to their advantage and move up the status tree. On the other hand, the people at the top want to stay at the top, so they soon engage in the same practice.

The fact is, once the ruling elite begins to question their own rules, the ruling elite is dead in spirit, because there is no turning back from this phase. The reason is they no longer have a shared spirit of the rules. The written rules were an effort to recapture that spirit by throwing a net of words over the hole, but that inevitably leads to people looking for holes in the net. Outsiders use the holes to sneak into the elite and insiders use the holes to oust competitors from the elite.

We have a real world example of this happening. The House has dumped Donald Trump’s tax returns into the public. This is probably their final act of spite against Trump, as the Republicans take over next month. Spite is the correct word here. The reason for doing it is they hope something in it will embarrass Trump. This is a remarkable thing in that these people have obsessed over Trump for going on a decade and they have yet to learn that you cannot embarrass Donald Trump.

Putting that aside, it has been a rule in America since the 16th Amendment was passed that a citizen’s relationship with the federal state with regards to his taxes is a private matter, unless a dispute arises about taxes owed. At that point, the matter goes into a court where the necessary evidence is presented. The IRS does not distribute personal tax data and the individual is under no obligation to publish his tax data. In fact, anyone publishing someone’s tax data is breaking the law.

This issue of privacy with regards to tax data is mostly a ruling class privilege, but like all elite privileges, it has been turned into a moral principle. You see, the rich people gaming the tax system do not have to make this public because it is a sacred principle of America that your taxes remain private. Whether this is a good idea is debatable, but for over a century, everyone in power agreed it was a good idea. So much so they ran Nixon off for merely questioning it.

Now, the people releasing Trump’s tax data are not worried about this happening to them if Trump wins the White House in 2024. First of all, the key states have been fortified for democracy, so everyone knows the 2024 result. What they should be concerned with is someone in the system now using this new loophole to leverage their way up the ladder. Normalizing the release of private tax data is a high price to pay for exacting revenge against Trump.

That is the danger of exceptions. They have knock on effects that are not always easy to assess, but they also do something else. Normalizing this sort of gainsaying erodes trust in the rules. If every comma in the law is now up for interpretation, what is the point of having rules? History tells us that the answer to that question is a man on a horse choosing to cross a river. In other words, the rules based society collapses and something or someone replaces it.

In the fullness of time, the historians will look at the Trump business as an example of the steady decline of the American empire. Trump may be cast as the Gracchi brothers, not for what he did but for what he came to represent. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus normalized the use of violence by the elite in defense of power. The grotesque abuse of power by the regime to counter the populist surge represented by Trump has yet to go that far, but there is still time until the next “election.”

Democratic Wars

Posted on December 19, 2022 by thezman

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about the JFK assassination, a review of the movie Rebel Without A Cause and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack. Note also that Michael Anton penned a foam-flecked rant about my post on the myth of natural rights. I will respond in time.

Note #2: If you are looking for a book to read, you may want to buy the book A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story. It is a first person account of the events by a couple of good guys who deserve your support. It is a great Christmas gift.

It used to be said that democracies do not go war with one another, even though democracies are often in the center of wars. This has always been the argument for promoting democracy. In theory, if all the world is organized into democracies of one type or another, there can be no war. Another take on this is the claim that countries that have a McDonalds will not go to war with one another. People who embrace liberal democracy have no reason to fight one another.

Of course, democracy is a loaded term that can mean just about anything. Ireland is a democracy where they put Christians in prison for violating the speech laws. Syria treats its Christian population better than most democracies, but it is not a democracy, so the biggest democracy in the world, the United States, feels entitled to bomb its cities and demand regime change. Norway is threatening to jail a woman for reading a dictionary, which is becoming the norm in democracies.

Strictly speaking, there are no democracies in the world. The so-called democracies have some form of representative government. Issues are not put before the voters or even discussed with the voters. As the late Robert Dahl explained, the so-called democracies are actually polyarchies. Power is invested in multiple people, who are charged with implementing what they perceive as the general will. This is done through a set procedures and institutions.

Dahl further argues that this form of government is the creation of the United States and to a lesser degree France. During the twentieth century, this form of government was imposed on Western Europe and parts of Asia, after having been conquered by the United States in the Second World War. After the Cold War, the collective West then imposed this on the former eastern bloc countries. Therefore, Western democracies are a collection of polyarchies.

This helps explain why the Western democracies are so aggressive. It has been roughly thirty years since the end of the Cold War and in that time the Western democracies have been waging war on the world. The term “regime change” is a term everyone in the world understands, because it is always attached to a war of aggression by Western democracies, usually led by the United States. The current war against Russia by the West is all about regime change in Moscow.

The reason the world’s great champion of democracy has been waging war on the world for the last three decades is that the United States has always been an aggressive warrior country. Since the founding, America has been either at war with some other people, at war with itself or creating the conditions for the next war in the name of spreading democracy. It is fair to say that the reason America exists, as a practical matter, is to make war on the world.

The United States is a country created in war. Integral to the founding was the war for independence, which is central to the American identity. Of course, as soon as America was independent, it refused to repay the French for their help in the war, the result being the Quasi-War with France. Right after that it was the Barbary Wars against Muslim pirates and then the War of 1812. American barely existed for a generation before it was declaring war on the world.

The 19th century was one war after another. In addition to the three wars above, there was the First Seminole War, the Texas Revolution, the Second Seminole War, the Aroostook War, the Mexican–American War, the Third Seminole War, the Second Opium War, the Pig War, the First and Second Cortina Wars, the American Civil War, the Second Samoan Civil War, the Spanish–American War, the Philippine–American War, the Moro Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion.

All of those wars took place against the backdrop of the endless war on the Indians, as America conquered the continent. If you accept the argument from most conservatives that the real founding of the country was the Civil War, the so-called second founding theory, then it is reasonable to say that the point of American democracy is to make war on the world in order to impose American democracy. This explains the 20th century, which was nothing but endless war.

This brings us to the present. The United States is leading the Western democracies in a war against Russia and its allies. Washington openly talks about regime change in Moscow and Beijing. It has not mentioned regime change in New Delhi, but you can be sure that is on tap, as the Indians move closer to Russia. None of these countries want war with America, but they do not want to be fortified with democracy at the point of gun, so they are fighting a war for survival.

America is a country of roughly three hundred million people in a world that is around nine billion people, give or take. That is three percent of the global population, but responsible for at least half the war mongering in the world. If we add in the population of Europe, then we get to roughly 13% of the global population. It is reasonable to wonder if the rest of the world is going to continue to tolerate this 13% of the population being responsible for over half of the wars in the world.

Putting that aside, the violent nature of American democracy raises an important question about cause and effect. Is it the moral spring of democracy that causes America to wage war on the world? This need to impose her values on the world naturally leads to war. On the other hand, is it the natural fanaticism of the people that leads to the embrace of both the secular religion of democracy and the impulse to impose its values on the world?

The Murder Itself Phase

Posted on December 14, 2022 by thezman

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A year ago, when the Russians began to assemble forces along the Russia – Ukraine border, Western planners were sure that whatever the Russians were planning could only last a few months. They simply lacked the resources to put an army in the field, especially against a heavily defended opponent, for a long time. The Western response to the Russian advance into Ukraine was predicated on this. By now, the war should have been over due to a Russian withdrawal.

This short time frame thinking is clear in the economic sanctions that were levied against Russia when the war started. It did not require an advanced degree in economics to see that these sanctions would hurt the West. Cutting off a critical vendor has to have a negative impact. Western countries basically went to war with their most important supplier of energy. They were willing to do this because the war would be short and Russia would surrender to the West.

On its face this always looked like a crazy decision, but it was based on two assumptions that have turned out to be even nuttier. The first assumption was that Russia was nothing but a giant gas station run by drunken peasants. Western economic sanctions would send the country into economic turmoil and those drunken peasants would quickly revolt against their stupid rulers. Back in the spring, predictions like this were placed all over Western media.

The second assumption was that China and India would eagerly jump aboard the sanctions train. This has turned out to be the biggest error. China and India have not only refused to join the sanctions regime, but they have also moved closer to Russia and are now integral partners in the anti-Western bloc. More critically, OPEC+ has also moved closer to both Russia and China. Saudi Arabia recently signed critical deals with China, despite Western pressure to the contrary.

These horrible blunders by Western planners have resulted in a long brutal war on the doorstep of Europe. The Russians have slowly reconfigured their systems for a long war, both economic and military. On the battlefield, they are relentlessly pounding Ukrainian positions while minimizing their casualties. The battle for Bakhmut, for example, is being called a meat grinder. The Ukrainians are losing a thousand men a day defending this one place in the Donbas.

No one in the West cares at all about the lives of Ukrainians, but they have to care about the growing economic cost to the West. In parts of Europe, energy costs are five times higher now than before the war. An economic system based on cheap energy is not going to hold for long when the energy costs start to rise. Europe is just at the beginning of this energy crisis, with 2023 promising even bigger price hikes. How much longer before this spills into the political arena?

People who have seen the battle space in this war have described it as something like the trench warfare of the Great War. The Ukrainian army is dug into massive fortifications, surrounded by trench systems. In places like Bakhmut, two thousand artillery shells a day will fall on the defenders. The defenders fire back, but their artillery lacks the range of Russian systems. Even so, much of the fighting is the sort of artillery duels that were common in the Great War.

There is another parallel between the two wars. There is no path forward for a negotiated end to the fighting. In the Great War, both sides were locked into a mode of thought that prevented the necessary compromises. For both sides, the war became an end in itself. Something similar seems to have gripped the West, which has categorically ruled out a negotiated settlement. Repeatedly, Western leaders have declared there can only be one result – total victory.

As if to make sure the Russians also forgo all hope of a negotiated settlement, the West sent former German chancellor Angela Merkel out to tell the world that her prior dealings with Russia were a trick to buy the Ukrainians time. Until that interview, Merkel was one of a few Western leaders Russia thought she could trust. Now they must assume that they can trust nothing from the West. Therefore, Russia can never expect to get a deal from the West at the bargaining table.

All of this leads to another important comparison between this global conflict and the Great War a century ago. A century ago, the British Empire was effectively destroyed by the totally unnecessary war in Europe. Something similar may be waiting for the Global American Empire in this war. Instead of surrounding Russia with enemies, the war will end with the West being surrounded by a league of regional powers committed to defending themselves from color revolutions.

The question that must follow is can the economic and political model of the Global American Empire survive when it is confined to a minority of the world? The West is a little more than a tenth of the global population. How will the GAE function if the EU is in economic ruins? Can the petrodollar survive if the largest energy producers are comfortable dealing in alternative currencies? These are questions that get to the core logic of the American empire.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the same thing that happened to the British Empire at the start of the last century. The Global American Empire is not dying because it has run its course, but because it is run by stupid people who keep making critical errors in vitally important areas of imperial business. Adams famously said of democracy that it “wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” Perhaps this is true of democratic empires and America is now in the murder itself phase.

Custodial Musings

Posted on December 13, 2022 by thezman

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Wawa is a local convenience store chain in the Mid-Atlantic. The typical store is a big gas station near a major road, along with a store selling the sorts of things working people would pickup during the day. Their big draw is a sandwich shop that makes a decent cold cut at a very good price. It is not gourmet eating, but it is far above what you would get from a fast food joint. Of course, being a convenience store, they have the quick items you would expect.

Another take on this is a chain calling itself Royal Farms. They have copied the model used by Wawa and many other chains. They used to be strictly a convenience store chain, but they have been building big gas stations. Many are something like a small truck stop, providing services to the big scary truck people. Like Wawa, they have a sandwich shop, but their hook is fried chicken. They claim to have the best take away fried chicken on the planet.

One interesting difference between the two chains in the Greater Lagos area is that Wawa hires mostly white people, while Royal Farms hires black people. Wawa will hire the occasional nonwhite, but the stores are 90% white. Royal Farm is 100% black at their stores. This turns up in the customer base too. Go into a Wawa at lunch time and it is all white working people. Go to Royal Farm and it is lots of black people, along with some Hispanics and white working-class people.

The one thing both chains have in common is a labor problem. Royal Farm is the most amusing in this regard. It is entirely possible to order a turkey sub and be handed a roll with just the condiments and then be told they are out of turkey. Alternatively, it is possible to order something but you get nothing or someone got tired of waiting and simply took your food when you were not looking. Of course, this all assumes the ordering kiosk is working, which is not always the case.

Like many take out chains, Royal Farms was an early adopter of the self-service kiosk in order to solve the quality control problem. Quality control in this case means the staff, who struggle to do the basics. Mother Nature does not always get it right and the defects end up working at Royal Farms. This problem has turned up all over the retail space, but Royal Farms seems to get the worst of the worst. There is a World Star Hip-Hip vibe to their hiring decisions.

No one is immune to the retail staffing problems and as a result these two competing chains have been in a technology war. The self-service kiosk for ordering was the first logical step to reduce errors in food orders. Both aggressively push their app and the use of delivery services. Both now have self-checkout kiosks that blow away the ones you see at the big retail chains like Home Depot. The goal, of course, is to reduce the staffing to the barest minimum.

What this points to is something that people have been warning about for decades and that is the great robot take over of the workplace. Go into one of these chains and you can easily imagine a time when you order your sandwich from the screen and a robot assembles it, wraps it up and delivers it to a pickup area. You pay for your items at a self-checkout kiosk using your bank app. The only interaction with a human is the guards who make sure you paid your bill.

This is not limited to retail. The mass layoffs at Twitter confirm what many people have suspected for a long time. There are lots of people sitting in office cubicles who have no real purpose. Maybe they are there to tick boxes. Maybe they perform some function mandated by the government, which could be automated. Maybe the marketplace has stopped functioning, allowing for massive overstaffing. That clearly has been the case at the giant tech firms like Twitter.

The people who have been warning about the automation revolution have always asked the question, what happens to the displaced workers? The teddy bear conservatives cling to is the great invisible hand of the marketplace. Sure, the robots will replace the people, but the magic of creative destruction will save the day. Look around the retail space and that is clearly not happening. It will certainly not be the case for the tens of thousands of people fired from Big Tech.

Even if the magic beans of capitalism are not the answer, it does not follow that there will be a neo-Luddite revolt against the machines. Again, you get a glimpse of the future in these retail chains. Go into a Wawa and people are happy to interact with a robot to get their food and checkout. Everything about that experience, in fact, everything about their lives has been reduced to a transaction. As long as people can get their extra large drink and snacks, they will not complain.

That is the lesson of Covid. Those fired Twitter people were in make work jobs and they knew they we in make work jobs. Here are some examples from conservative media that have been making the rounds. The reason these people liked working at home so much is they were not doing anything at work. Covid allowed them to pretend that goofing off at home was real work. The reason firms are struggling to get people back to work is many of their workers have no real purpose.

How big of a leap is it to slash the pointless people from the workforce and then give them busy work at home? Some parts of the country spent close to two years experimenting with this idea. It was like the old gag around Washington whenever there was a big snowstorm. Nonessential workers were told to stay home, which meant everyone working for the government. Something similar happened during Covid and we learned that most people were not essential.

Of course, Covid came with rules to make sure the suddenly idle were not going outside and getting into trouble. Short of a revolution, we will never know why the rulers all got on the lock down bandwagon, but one likely answer is they feared millions of idle people milling around looking for something to do. Making sure they stayed in their huts, plugged into the internet was a primary goal. The robot revolution will no doubt come with something similar to pacify the masses.

Stand around in a place like Wawa and it is not hard to see where this is all heading and then wonder if it can work. We are about to tip into a world with lots of useless people, kept busy by a custodial state. They will be given credits to buy the things they want and kept busy through various means. Some will be assigned busy work, while others will simply be amused into a catatonic state. Still others will be used to police their fellow inmates in the custodial state.

From the perspective of the managerial class, this seems like a great challenge that will give purpose to their lives, even though many will be assigned to busy work. Can a people live like this is another question. Note that during Covid there was not the predicted baby boom. It turns out that lots of idle people at home did not let nature take its course after all. Maybe such an unnatural way of living does not put one in the mood to bring new life into such a world.

Welcome To The New Rome

Posted on December 12, 2022 by thezman

Note #1: I have multiple goodies up behind the green door this week. The schedule going forward will be two written pieces a week and one podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Imagine you agree to play a game with someone and the first rule of the game is that your opponent sets the rules of the game and he can change the rules whenever he likes for any reason he likes. That would mean that no matter your mastery of the rules, you must always lose the game because your opponent will simply change the rules whenever necessary. You would spend all of your time learning rules that keep changing to put you at a disadvantage.

Similarly, imagine that you decide to build a house on another man’s property, without getting a fixed agreement on your use rights. Since the landowner could at any time tell you to remove your house or even deny you access to it, the focus of your life must be making sure that you are in good standing with the landowner. While technically the house is yours, in reality he sets the rules for how you use it. Like the game example above, your life is about complying with changing rules.

This is the situation for professional Christians. They have agreed to allow their opponents to set the rules of the moral framework. Like the guy building a house on another man’s land, they have built their church on progressive land. The professional Christian must always get permission to use his church. Or like the game example, he must spend his time making sure the tenets of his faith comport with the changing morality of the prevailing the moral framework.

You see it in this rather bizarre post at First Things. There are two main assertions made in the post. One is that racism, and the mythological concept of white supremacy, are the worst things possible. The other point is that it is the duty of Christians to purge those accused of these sins from the ranks of the political Right. To make this point, he piles on a guy named Thomas Achord, a headmaster of a private classical Christian academy, who was accused of blasphemy by the Left.

A feature of professional Christianity is to not only abandon a fellow Christian attacked by the enemies of the faith, but to also rush to the front of the line of bigots taking turns kicking the accused. Here is the execrable Rod Dreher taking some self-righteous shots at Thomas Achord. Like David French, Rod Dreher never misses an opportunity to promote his own virtue. He is who Emerson had in mind when he said, “The more he spoke of his virtue, the faster we counted the spoons.”

Note that Christian mercy never comes up when the Left starts howling for the blood of a Christian accused of violating the progressive faith. Professional Christians are like a pack of wild dogs. As soon as they sense a member of the pack is weak, they pounce on the poor fellow, tearing him to pieces. One cannot help but wonder if this behavior is solely to please the Left. Many of them, like Dreher and French, seem to take pleasure in these sadistic rituals.

Of course, the reason that professional Christians rush out these condemnations whenever one of their own has violated progressive dogma is to let the people holding the other end of the leash know they are a good boy. For professional Christians, what matters is remaining in good standing with the Left. These ritualized condemnations are a public act of piety – progressive piety. It is an affirmation that Christian piety must always rest on the moral foundations of the Left.

Another example of this sort vulgarity is this self-published video from Anglican priest in Nova Scotia Canada. If not for the collar, one would be forgiven for thinking Father Ed Trevors is a weirdo from the grievance studies department. In the description of this tantrum, he makes sure to post his pronouns. One thing missing from his public act of piety is a reference to Scripture. Like all Anglican priests, he is probably unfamiliar with the foundation text of his church.

Putting aside the vulgarity of these displays, the premise of the argument in that First Things article is anything but a Christian argument. Jesus Christ had plenty of chances to state his opinions about racism and white supremacy. He had nothing to say on the matter. His disciples wrote and spoke about the full range of the human dilemma but never bothered to mention anything about racism. Scripture is silent on the issue of race and the moral claims around it.

The reason for this is that these are entirely novel concepts conjured in the last century for purely political reasons. Even those on the winning side of the American Civil War lacked the racism concept. Lincoln famously said, “there is a physical difference between the white and black races that will for ever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality.” He repeated these claims throughout the Civil War to audiences on his side.

Now, there are people who will cherry pick lines from Scripture claiming that Jesus was very much opposed to racism. Never mind that the concept did not exist in the age of Jesus and his language lacked words for the concept. Even if one can make these leaps of logic, the reason for doing so is to make Christian morality match progressive morality, in order to please the people controlling public morality. Those who bothered to read their Bible should be thinking of Matthew 6:24 right now.

In fairness, the professional Christian can argue that Christians must live in this world and that means navigating around secular moral claims. That is clearly not what we are seeing with these people. Instead, their Christianity is just part of the sales pitch they use to convince Christian people to embrace secular morality. Once you accept this new class of sins as far worse than those in your theology, you have subordinated your theology to those creating the new class of sins.

Arguably the most challenging thing is this age is to be a Christian. Your enemies control the commanding heights of Western society. Your friends are always looking for a way to profit from their alleged defense of you. It is a good reminder that all moral frameworks must stand alone. In the case of Christianity, it means the logic of the faith must stand outside of and often opposed to the prevailing orthodoxy. Christianity now finds itself where it started. Welcome to the new Rome.

Mask Dropping

Posted on December 8, 2022 by thezman

Michael Kinsley famously said that a political gaffe is “when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” The important part of that quip is that the truth is obvious but everyone pretends otherwise. The word for it is mokita, which means things we know are true but agree to never discuss. It is not really an agreement, but more of a convention that is enforced from the top down. Every once in a while, someone with power screws up and speak the truth.

That is what you see with this recent Dennis Prager column. He declared that anyone questioning the current facts about the holocaust is evil. He specifically singled out Nick Fuentes, who has been in the news because of the Kanye West business. The two of them have been making the rounds, with West saying uncharitable things about Jewish people and saying nice things about Hitler. Fuentes has been mostly a bit player in the show, as West is the headliner of Ye24.

Why Prager singled out Fuentes would be a good question to pose to him. Kanye West is the guy praising Hitler. Milo Yiannopoulos was instrumental in kicking off this traveling carnival, but Prager did not mention him. Another player in this drama is a hip-hop performer named Sneako. They recently added the weird internet gadfly Ali Alexander to the performance. Fuentes is the only white Christian in the crew and not the main player, yet Prager focuses on him.

Putting aside that bit of mask dropping, Prager has made himself rich selling creedalism to the salt of the earth white people who make up his audience. This is the claim that anyone can be an American as long as they embrace American principles. If you accept the basics of the American creed, then you are as American as a guy whose family came over on the Mayflower. America is an idea, or a collection of ideas, rather than a physical place for a specific people.

Lots of white people are flattered by this, but most people also notice that the people peddling this idea tend to take Saturday off. It is not a coincidence that this new definition of American has no benefit to white Christians but is a huge bonus to mercurial people from outside the European Christian tradition. Prager is one of the leading advocates “America is a set of ideas’ and most people understand why, even if they politely ignore the elephant in the room.

One of those creedal ideas is freedom of expression. In fact, it is one of the most cherished principles of American morality. The right to speak one’s mind without fear of retribution is the cornerstone of the republic. Not only do you get to say what you like, but others get to hear you without fear of retribution. Free speech is established in the first amendment to the Constitution because you cannot petition the government for the redress of grievances if you need permission to speak.

Until the last decade or so, “I may disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it!” was a common refrain from leftists. Most right-wing people knew that what lefty really wanted was the right to send porn to your kids, but the civic principle was worth the risk and the lecture. You cannot have self-government and a civil society without the free exchange of ideas. More speech, even stupid or obnoxious speech, is better than less speech.

It was not just sloganeering. In 1978, the ACLU defended a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through a Jewish neighborhood. There was no question that the intent of the neo-Nazi group was to be offensive. They picked the neighborhood for their march because it was full of Jews. The ACLU successfully argued that even though the Nazis picked the neighborhood because it was full of Jews, they still had a right to speak their mind in public and the public had a right to hear them.

Foundational to American morality is that you are free to speak your mind not because you have the right to speak, but because others have the right to hear you. Shouting people down is explicitly un-American. You let the person be heard and then you can be heard in response. This is the exact opposite of what Dennis Prager is doing with regards to people like Nick Fuentes. He wants Nick Fuentes to be silenced, so you cannot hear what he has to say for himself.

Prager is careful to not call for the arrest and execution of Nick Fuentes, but it is clear that he would not be offended by it. After all, Prager declares that questioning the holocaust is the epitome of evil. Those who do this, according to Prager, will spend eternity in Hell. Given his cult’s ambiguity about the existence of Heaven and Hell, this is a curious claim. It means that he wants you to believe that holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes are outside of your Christian mercy.

That is what makes the Prager column a massive gaffe. He is essentially saying, “That civic nationalism stuff applies to you people, but my people have other priorities and so we get to operate by separate rules.” By elevating his Jewish identity over everything else, he contradicts the entire civic nationalist argument. Again, this was obvious to many people, but it largely went unsaid. By demanding everyone submit to the myths and legends of his people, Prager is saying it out loud.

The column itself is a remarkable example of Kinsley’s quip. The truth is, in a majority-minority society like America, what matters is your tribe. This is the truth that the people in charge are not supposed to say. They get to be in charge as long as the biggest tribe does not decide to tribe up. The minoritism that rules modern America only works if white people buy into the creedalism stuff. Dennis Prager just told his fans that creedalism is nonsense. It is tribe that matters most.

The Great Delusion

Posted on December 6, 2022 by thezman

Note: If you are wondering what to buy the little woman for Christmas this year, consider something from our friends at Minter & Richter. For the ladies, giving the man in your life something cool he can wear in public lets the hussies know he is taken.

Imagine you are the CEO of a large corporation and you have to make a big decision about a critical issue facing the company. Your team in the C-suites have been busy putting together all of the information they can about the issue. There have been meetings and presentations on all aspects of the issue. Experts have been brought in to explain various aspects of the issue. After having digested all of the information on the issue, it is now time to act. What do you do?

Obviously, the right answer, even without knowing any of the details about the issue in this hypothetical, is to put it up to a vote. First, you will have the various sides on the issue make their case to the employees. Maybe have a series of Zoom debates and let the parties put up posters around the offices. Perhaps the principles representing the various positions will have an all hands on deck meeting. At some point, you have the employees log in and cast their vote.

Of course, this is ridiculous. No company would ever do such an insane thing, at least not in this age. In the 19th century there were some efforts to create socialist companies, but they ended poorly. Usually, these democratic companies were part of a utopian society. In the modern age, no one thinks the principles of democracy have any place in something important like a corporation. The truth is the commies were right about American business. It runs on fascist principles.

It is not just major corporations that avoid democracy. There is no military in this world that embraces democracy. The nearest thing to democracy in warfare was the pirate ship, which often voted on where to plunder. Even on a pirate ship, there was a captain who made the big decisions. His men might “vote him off the ship” but they would quickly elect a new captain. Otherwise, every military on the planet has a vertical chain of command and no democratic principles.

A good rule of life is that when any organization reaches sufficient size to employ a full time leader, it employs a full time leader. A small group of men working to a common goal might operate from a consensus, but even in small groups someone is the de facto leader to whom everyone looks for the final decision. It is fair to say that an organization without a leader is unnatural. Human beings, even women, always organize around a leader, even when everyone is agreement.

This natural lack of democracy is most evident in science. If someone comes along claiming that he has discovered a new element, the science men do not call together a meeting and vote on the claim. The claim must be backed with proof and that proof is analyzed and challenged to verify it. Despite what the Gaia worshippers say, consensus only exists within science where proof is not present. The word “consensus” is a signal of doubt, not proof of the claim.

A good rule of life is that anything important is excluded from anything resembling the democratic process. No business runs on democratic lines. Armies do not run according to democratic principles. Those two areas are arguably two of the most important bits of any human society and they run according to fascist principles. Even family life avoids democracy as much as possible. The expression “head of the household” exists because households naturally have a leader.

If one wants to understand why voting is a pointless waste of time, you just have to ask why no important things are ever put to a vote? Immigration is arguably the most important issue facing the country. Politicians avoid it like the plague. Even the “good politicians” speak in tongues when the issue is raised. Meanwhile, they scheme in private to do what they know is against the interests of the people. No one voting for it will dare mention it when on the campaign trail.

The fact is our elections are meaningless. The candidates speak in vague terms about abstract items. It is all in-group/out-group signaling. “We have to secure our southern border” is just echolalic babbling used to titillate a certain population. “We need affordable healthcare for all” is emotive noise for different people. None of the things candidates say while campaigning has anything to do with how they will vote once in office or the policies that will become law.

You could easily replace the people with colored blocks of wood. How would the current Georgia senate election be any different if the choice were between red block of wood and blue block of wood? Alternatively, the candidates could be replaced with lights that flash different colors in response to different noises. Say the word “immigration” and one light flashes green and the other flashes red. The expensive humans could be replaced with cheap robots.

The reason our elections are meaningless, of course, is that no human society ever subjects important things to democracy. The old joke about if voting mattered, they would not let us do it was funny because it is true. There is no correlation between public opinion and public policy. This study from 2014 went through 1800 issues and found no link between what the people told the politicians they wanted and what the politicians eventually did.

If nothing important is ever subjected to democracy and democracy never results in the public will manifesting in public policy, then why are people hooked on the act of voting and why is democracy an object of worship. Based on observation it appears there is no argument that can be made to convince the bulk of the people to end this absurd charade we call voting. Suggest a boycott of the process and the typical suburban peasant gives you a sermon about democracy.

Compounding this bizarre worship of democracy is that most modern people live a third of their lives as fascists. The self-employed person has almost disappeared from the labor market. Small business is following the self-employed into the abyss as big business dominates the marketplace. That means most people work in companies that operate along fascist principles. If half of your waking life is committed to fascism, how in the world has democracy become an object of worship?

Societies can have moments of madness. The 1970’s saw America embrace leisure suits and disco, while cities were turned into war zones. Much of that period has been politely forgotten because no one can make sense of it. Maybe this age and its fetish from democracy is something similar. The chanting about democracy and obsession with politics is another fit of madness. Instead of afros and sideburns we have brain damaged hobos in the Senate and black Nazis.

Alternatively, this great delusion about the importance of participating in elections is a form of escapism. As people become more dependent on the system for the basics of their lives, they need to believe they have some say in how the big machine that is the modern society runs their life. Democracy and the various identity cults are a way to feel like you have control when you are effectively living as a prisoner. Democracy lets the inmates feel they are in charge of the asylum.

White Sambo

Posted on December 5, 2022 by thezman

Note #1: I have multiple goodies up behind the green door this week. The schedule going forward will be two written pieces a week and one podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

In the novel Invisible Man, an important bit of symbolism is a paper doll, called a Sambo doll, that was popular in the middle of the last century. It was often a paper doll made up with exaggerated features of back people. In the novel, black street sellers would attach the doll to a string and include a stereotypical song and dance performance as a way to sell the dolls to passersby. Of course, the passersby were white people who bought the dolls because it appealed to their racism.

Obviously, the black people selling the dolls were profiting from the promotion of what the writer saw as a negative stereotype. One interpretation is that the reason black stereotypes persisted was that some blacks profited from them. The black people selling the dolls made money from the suffering of their own people. They were willing to degrade themselves and their people to make a few dollars. These selfish acts were a part of the problem facing blacks in America.

It was not cut and dried for the narrator. He could see that the black men profiting from these stereotypes were simply adapting to reality. They made money for themselves and their family, which by extension benefitted the community. Black stereotypes, in effect, created a moral dilemma for back people. On the one hand, they kept black people down relative to white people. On the other hand, profiting from these stereotypes allowed black people to prosper despite their condition.

Later on the novel, the narrator tries to burn one of the Sambo dolls for heat and finds it difficult to do, symbolizing the difficulty of overcoming the stereotype. He is eventually able to burn the doll. In the process he realizes that it may be difficult to overcome the cultural framing that the Sambo doll symbolized, but it is possible if one accepts the reality of his condition. The individual can only transcend his condition by creating and maintaining his own individual identity.

Invisible Man was written seventy years ago, but the problem facing black people described by Ralph Ellison has not changed. You see it in this interview of Jared Taylor on the Young Turks channel. Dr. Rashad Richey is playing a stereotypical black character, which has been lampooned for generations. He gets to make a nice living doing it, but like the characters selling Sambo dolls in the novel, he is profiting from the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of black people.

An extreme example of this is the Kanye West story. His career has been built around selling the stereotypical black cultural items, things like sneakers and expensive lifestyle items, to an audience primarily of white suburban youth. His own struggle with this reality seems to have broken him. His most recent interviews suggest he is a man rolling around in a struggle with own personal Sambo doll, one that he created and that looks striking like Kanye West, despite the name change.

This moral dilemma applies to anyone who exists outside the moral consensus and this Kanye West stuff is an example of it. Nick Fuentes has signed onto what he used to mock just a few years ago. He was the guy in the so-called optics war who insisted that presentation was important. He mocked the alt-right people for praising Hitler and throwing Roman salutes. He is now flying around with a guy who praises Hitler and makes the alt-right sound philosemitic.

Fuentes, faced with the dilemma described in the novel Invisible Man, the choice between playing the stereotypical role for money and attention or rejecting that role in order to create and maintain an individual identity, has chosen the former. Like so many before him, Fuentes is volunteering to play the role of cartoon Nazi that the system he claims to oppose needs in order to perpetuate itself. Like the character in the novel, he is perpetuating a stereotype for profit.

The counter from his fans is that these publicity stunts get attention and therefore expose people to this material. It brings attention and resources into the community that lies outside the moral consensus, which helps the community. In this case, by signing onto the Kanye West circus, Fuentes raises his profile, which he then uses to promote the ideas and opinions of his followers. Like the character selling Sambo dolls in the novel, Fuentes is degrading himself to support his community.

Here is where the comparison breaks down. Black people in the middle of the last century faced genuine economic hardship. A man trading his dignity to feed his kids is making a rational choice. Similarly, refusing to trade his dignity, even if it means his family suffers, is also a rational choice. That is the moral dilemma. Both choices are rationally defensible. Playing the cartoon Nazi for the mass media, on the other hand, lacks rational support.

The reason is the argument in favor of “getting the word out at all cost” has been proven false over and over for generations. George Lincoln Rockwell got the word out by dressing up as Hitler. David Duke was the preppy Klansman and got a whirl on the big stage in the 1980’s. Most recently, the alt-right was front page news for a while and nothing came of it. No minds were changed. It was just another version of the white Sambo act for the benefit of the people in charge.

Like the narrator in the novel, the only way forward is to step outside the moral framework and create a new and independent identity. In the political context, this means a stand alone argument in favor of some alternative future. There is the list of complaints about the current system, every cause has a bill of indictment, but it is followed by a plausible alternative. There is a vision of a future independent of the current moral framework, not just opposed to it.

Blacks in the middle of the last century were faced with a choice. They could find a way to live within the system or find a way to live outside the system. The choice was the former, which has often required a sublimation to the same sorts of stereotypes that allegedly motivated the civil rights movement. Agreeing to be one of the forty-two black people living in the white nationalist enclave of Brattleboro Vermont is no different than selling those paper Sambo dolls on the street corner.

In this age, white people are faced with a similar dilemma. One can simply play the role of suburban peasant until that is no longer permitted. One can play the white Sambo role pretending it is something other than theater. Alternatively, one can seek to live outside the world of racial coercion, looking to a world free of racial coercion. That is a genuinely break from the past and present. It leaves the Sambos and the enablers to the dustbin of history.

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