Category Archives: Badder Thoughts

The Ukrainian Disaster

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In 9 AD the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus led three legions across the Rhine to teach the barbarians a lesson. In what the history books call the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the barbarians ambushed the Romans and wiped them out in what the Romans would call the Varian disaster. This event ended the expansion of the Roman empire into what is now Germany. Other than some retaliatory excursions, the Rhine became the de facto boundary for the empire.

We may be seeing another Varian disaster in Ukraine. This time the empire moving east is the Global American Empire and the battle is the Donbas. This is the disputed region in the east of Ukraine that has historically identified with Russia. They revolted against Kiev in 2014 after the American State Department toppled the Ukrainian government and installed a puppet regime hostile to Russia. The resulting civil war in the east and the south culminated in the Russian invasion in January.

A few months ago, every cable shout show host was festooned with Ukraine flags while spinning tales about the evil Russians. Ukraine was who we were as a people, willing to bear any burden to defend democracy. Every expert assured us that the Russians would revolt against their evil dictator and the Russian army would quit in the field, once they knew the Twitter mob had cancelled them. It was just a matter of time before Zelensky was taking selfies in Moscow.

Like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the Battle of the Donbas is shaping up to be a humiliating defeat for the empire. The Ukrainian army is now trapped in various pockets with limited supplies and no chance to escape. The Russians have maneuvered them into a position where their artillery, what little remains cannot reach the Russians, but the Russian artillery can reach them. The Russians have a lot of artillery and they are incredibly good at the use of it in siege warfare.

No one knows for sure, but reliable estimates going back a couple of months suggest the Ukrainians have been losing up to one thousand troops a day. These estimates are based on known figures for Ukrainian units at various places like Mariupol and then comparing them to areas that have come under Russian control. The Zelensky government has been slowly raising its own estimates, suggesting they are losing close to five hundred troops per day.

Until the war ends and there is an official effort to count the dead, we are left to guess about the casualties, but what is clear is that this is a one-sided war. For reasons no one has yet to explain, the West instructed the Ukrainians to take up positions in fortified cities rather than go out to meet the Russian army in the field. The Ukrainians had more battle ready troops at the start of the war than the Russians and they had the advantage of working on their own territory.

Choosing to fight a defensive war allowed the Russians to maneuver the Ukrainians into pockets around the east and south. They could then pick and choose their targets, bringing superior fire power to destroy the defenders. The West poured in weapons but it turns out that anti-tank weapons are of little use against an artillery barrage from over the horizon. Once the Russians sorted out what the Ukrainians were doing, it has been a turkey shoot since the spring.

Just from a military perspective, this is a disaster. War doctrine says that an invader needs a significant advantage in men and material. Because of the blunders of the Ukraine’s Western handlers, the smaller invading force will end up obliterating the larger defending force. It is not just about taking territory. The Russians are systematically destroying the army so that it can never regroup. This will be one of those events that military historians study for years to come.

The military aspect is the smallest part of this unfolding disaster. The absurd triumphalism of last winter has now given way to panic in Europe. Their economy is in an inflationary spiral that is only going to get worse. The sanctions on Russia have wreaked havoc on the EU economy. Energy prices are ratcheting up and serious food shortages are on the horizon. Compounding it is the fact that the sanctions are just starting to bite. Things will get worse by autumn.

The scene is not much better in the United States. The added element is that the people in charge look like the day room at a rest home. The economic woes have highlighted the fact that the people in charge are old and stupid. People will suffer bad economic time if they assume the ruling class has people who will eventually rise up and put things in good order. What the unfolding economic crisis is doing in America is revealing the dearth of competence in the ruling class.

Things are about to get worse. At some point this summer, the Ukrainian army will cease to exist as a practical matter. Observers think the Russians will wrap up the Donbas in the coming weeks. They will have achieved most of their goals when the conflict started plus a couple of extra items. They will be free to take control of Odessa, thus turning Ukraine into a landlocked country. It will also be an economic basket case entirely dependent on Western aid.

In other words, the West will be saddled with an exceptionally large humanitarian disaster at a time when the West is facing terrible economic conditions. The West may have no choice but to sit down with the Russians to hammer out a solution. On top of the loss in the field and the economic debacle, Western leaders will have to endure the humiliation of shaking hands with Putin. Whatever credibility Western leaders have left will evaporate at that moment.

In the grand scheme of things, the Varian disaster was more of an inflection point than a disaster for the empire. It was the point at which the empire shifted from expansionism to a defensive posture. For the Global American Empire, the Ukraine disaster may be much more consequential. This debacle undermines the fundamental logic of the global American system. In time it could be the point where the Cold War finally ends for the West and a great retrenchment begins.

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

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

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

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

Integral Thoughts

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Integralism is the principle that the Catholic faith should be the basis of public law and public policy within civil society. As with everything political, there is debate as to when the concept was born, but modern integralism as a genuine political movement has its roots in the 19th century. For obvious reasons it has been limited to those countries with a large enough Catholic population to make integralism plausible. That means the Latin countries of Europe like Spain and Italy.

Over the last decade, integralism has become a topic of conversation, largely due to Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule. He is a critic of modern liberal democracy as well as the conservative movement that operates within it. His main work is in the area of administrative law, but his embrace of the integralism concept has attracted others from the traditionalist wing of conservatism. Matthew Schmitz, Sohrab Ahmari, and Patrick Deneen are the notable converts.

In fairness, what is forming up to be American integralism is not what Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre had in mind at the Second Vatican Council. The thinkers and writers coming to the integralism banner share Vermeule’s disgust with modern conservatism and its role in enabling progressivism. Sohrab Ahmari called it David Frenchism, a performative traditionalism that is weak and conciliatory toward the Left. They imagine themselves creating a new Right similar to old European Right.

To be fair there are some serious people within this space thinking hard about how to re-center politics within the Western Christian tradition. To be even more fair, there is no chance of this happening, at least not peacefully. Liberal democracy comes with its own religion and moral code. It cannot tolerate alternative morale codes and it cannot exist within the moral framework of Catholicism. We will need a revolution to go from liberal democracy to some new moral order.

Therein lies the main problem with all modern political philosophy. It assumes a blank sheet of paper where the deciders get to decide the type of society they will create and impose on the world. They spend their time working out the political theory and then imagine how it would work, assuming a fresh start. It is the game of imagining your dream home in some idyllic setting. The plausibility of the house and the process to make it happen is just assumed.

Libertarianism is probably the most egregious example. As Hans Hermann-Hoppe explained many years ago, it is not possible to go from modern societies to a libertarian society within the constraints of libertarian theory. Further, there is no way to maintain a libertarian society, assuming you solve that first problem. Despite this obvious reality, libertarianism persists. The adherents are content to imagine themselves living in the Shire with the other hobbits of libertarianism.

Integralism has a strong whiff of this same sort of escapism. Instead of being yeoman farmers trading sheep for shoes, the integralists imagine themselves riding out to face the black knight of liberal democracy in defense of the faith. There is not much thought given to how we could turn back the clock. It is just assumed that something will happen, the current order will fail and this alternative will become the obvious alterative to the crisis of liberal democracy.

In fairness to the libertarians and integralists, they are not outside the bounds of normal political debate with this approach. The post-Marx culturalists who now dominate the American Left believe they just have to destroy the current cultural institutions and from the rubble will rise the egalitarian paradise. The old civic nationalists believe we just need a blank piece of vellum onto which we can copy down the original constitution and America becomes a republic again.

A curious feature of this age is that almost all political discussion operates in the world of forms to the exclusion of practical concerns. This is true in outsider politics on the Right, which has largely been centered on re-fighting the 20th century. Some want to re-fight the 1960’s while others want to re-fight the 1930’s. There is little self-examination about why those fights were lost the first time and no consideration for how re-fighting those old failures will change anything in the present.

The fact that this sort of idealism is popular on the Right suggests that maybe right-wing political theory in a liberal democracy is not supposed to be a serious counter to the prevailing orthodoxy but is a safe harbor for dissent. Historically, the Right exists as a counter to ideology, not as an alternative ideology. The man of the Right is the one throwing cold water on the dream of immanentizing the Eschaton. He focuses on what is possible, not what is desirable.

This is where integralism can contribute. All human societies need a source of authority to justify the rules of the society. “This is how we do things” must be supported with “this is why we do things this way.” Catholicism fused tradition with the supernatural to provide a basis of authority for medieval Europe. The Roman empire had to rely on force to impose its will abroad, but at home it was the traditions and customs of the Roman people that provided the moral authority.

Every human society has an authority. In theory, the authority in a liberal democracy is the will of the people, the consent of the governed. In reality, fifty percent plus one is a fickle master and easily exploited by unscrupulous actors. The crisis in the modern West is rooted in the fact that the system is easily manipulated to profit a ruling class that operates in the shadows of the political order. The gods of democracy are tricksters who revel in the frustrations of the people.

An alternative to liberal democracy must first deal with this reality and propose an alternative authority upon which to base the moral order. That new authority is unlikely to be medieval Christianity, but it will have to be something similar. Some combination of nature, nature’s God and the civilizational interest of the West will be the authority for a new political model. Perhaps some form of techno-feudalism is in the cards for what comes after liberal democracy is thrown into the dustbin of history.

Of course, this means moving from the safe harbor of political escapism into the world of practical solutions to present problems. The real damage done to the American constitutional order has been the deification of the Founders. Their ideas have been turned into holy writ. In reality, the Constitution was a practical solution to present problems hammered out by practical men. It was a political compromise, not the foundation for a political cult.

Whatever comes next will have to start from the same basis. What sort of civil society is possible in the world as it is demographically, technologically and materially? Is a civil society even possible under present conditions? If not, then what must be done, no matter how unpleasant, in order to create the conditions that will make a civil society possible in a post-democracy world? Whatever comes next will not be the work of dreamers, but of practical men solving practical problems.

That is the value in boutique political movements like integralism. It is not a solution, but rather the starting point for a necessary critique of the current order. From that will flow the necessary debate to conjure a plausible alternative. Integralism can be a hammer to crack the walls of modern conservatism, which in turn exposes the soft realty of the liberal democratic order it protects. Integral to an alternative moral philosophy is a rational critique of the present order.

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

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

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

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

Friends And Enemies

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Imagine you are an advisor to a politician facing a difficult re-election campaign in the fall and you are tasked with planning a campaign strategy. If you are a rational person, you would first start with the polling. What are the big issues on the minds of the voters and how do they rank your guy on those items. The best way to get back in good standing with the voters is to show them you care about their issues and most important, you agree with them on those issues.

Now, this is easier said than done. If the top issue with voters is energy prices and your guy has spent his career talking about the need to ratchet up energy costs in order to please Gaia, then you have a problem. The voters are stupid, but there are limits and your guy is a true believer. In fact, you worship Gaia as well, so the idea of speaking against the climate cult is a bridge too far. Still, you have to figure out a way to convince people that Gaia cares about gas prices too.

This is the problem with impractical politics. When public policy is about putting two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot, politicians are free to acknowledge error and change gears to chase the voters. In happier times, politicians were the guys chasing the parade, hoping to get to the front so they could pretend to be the parade leaders come election time. That can only work when the only thing you believe in is being on the good side of the voters.

When politics is dominated by true believers, then the range of choices is limited to what ideology permits. Even worse, disconfirmation, those bits of reality that contradict the tenets of the faith, must be seen as a plot against the faith. After all, to acknowledge reality would require questioning the ideology. Instead, the ideologue is required to attack reality as a challenge to the faith. Politics for the ideologue is reduced to the friend-enemy distinction.

We see this today. The number one issue for voters is gas prices. The ruling class likes high gas prices because it pleases Gaia. They also like it because it harms the Dirt People, which reinforces the friend-enemy distinction. The Cloud People are largely defined by not being Dirt People. It is why administration officials start giggling whenever they are asked about gas prices. It is also why they cannot pivot to take the side of the voters and promote policies that lower gas prices.

Getting back your job of promoting a candidate in bad odor with the voters, this ideological trap is a problem. If the reason the voters are unhappy is an issue like gas prices and your guy is giggling about it in public, then there is no way you can fix his problems on that issue. That only leaves one option. You have to find some other issues on which your guy is good with the voters. With the right “messaging” you can distract the voters from the bad stuff and focus on good stuff.

This works if there are issues where your guy’s ideology is popular with the voters or issues outside of ideology. Right there is the problem. Since ideology is political, everything political will fall within ideology. In other words, there is nothing within the political space that falls outside of ideology. You could have your guy campaign on the latest sports scores, but the voters would just assume he lost his mind. They expect him to talk about the political. That is the point of politics.

Since the Cloud People define themselves in opposition to the Dirt People, it means their ideological position on all things political must in someway be in opposition to the very nature of the Dirt People. When hunting around for issues to distract the voters, your guy will inevitable stake out a position that separates him from the Dirt People as a matter of ideological identity. Even when trying to distract the voters you run the risk of alienating them on these secondary issues.

We see this with the current frenzy of gun grabbing in Washington. The Biden people put out word that they were going to distract people from the economy by grifting on the latest school shooting. The problem is the gun grabbers are consumed with spiting normal people who support gun ownership. Instead of the issue being a way to distract voters, it is a reminder that the people in charge hate the voters. The distraction quickly becomes a reminder of why people are unhappy.

The upcoming January 6 show trials are another example. The whole point of this thing is to remind the Dirt People of their place. They could sell some of this right after it happened, as most Dirt People are in favor of order. At this point, when shelves are empty and gas prices are soaring, the Dirt People are starting to wonder if the QAnon Shaman was onto something. This show trial is exactly what the party should be avoiding, but they cannot stop themselves. It is who they are.

Of course, from your perspective as an advisor, none of this matters. If your guy loses in the fall, you will still have a job. You may not be working for an office holder, but you will catch on at a think tank or cable channel. Politicians are just actors hired for the role and the supply is endless. You just have to remember who your friends are and who are the enemies and you will be just fine. After all, friends take care of friends who never forget who is the real enemy.

This is the crisis in American politics. The primary thrust of American politics is defending the prevailing orthodoxy from challenges. This reinforces class identity and that friend-enemy distinction. As a result, public policy is about maintaining the great divide between the Cloud People and the Dirty People in order to maintain ideological and class solidarity. This informs all of their actions. Pragmatic solutions to current problems are seen as apostacy.

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

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

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

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

Quitting The Circus

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Note: The Taki post is up. This week the subject is another take on the subject of today’s post, just from a more serious angle. The Sunday Thoughts podcast is up behind the green door for subscribers.

Politics in a democracy not only devolve into theater, but they select for the sorts of people attracted to the theatrical. The reason for this is democracy is about winning the crowd, which rewards those best at winning the crowd. Inevitably, elite interests will invest in those who show the ability to stand in front the mobs and win them over without making too many promises. After all, if you need to bribe the crowd then why bother investing in a guy trying to win the crowd?

Of course, the best stage performers are the people who are extraordinarily high in extraversion and very low in agreeableness. This person loves being the center of attention and likes meeting new people. A good actor can light up a room full of strangers and come away energized by it. He will also be very low in empathy and see others as either competitors of victims to be exploited. Great performers tend to be horrible people when away from the stage.

This is what you get with democracy. It is rule by the sorts of people who run away to the circus because it is their best shot at a happy life. Liberal democracy is supposed to correct the defects of democracy by bounding the choices of the mob with a set of principles like equality before the law. In reality, these principle are turned into props by the performers to add moral weight to their performance. They are no long winning the crowd, but instead are leading them on a moral crusade.

This is why morality in a liberal democracy gets turned on its head. Society’s least principled people are elevated to the top of the moral hierarchy. Carny folk are made into the priestly class. Naturally, they warp public morality into that which best serves their interests as performers. Like all carny acts, the political class in a liberal democracy is always on the look out for a new act and new bit. The highest moral good becomes the new act that brings in the crowds.

This is why American politics is so shallow. The current gun grabbing show being staged in Washington is a good example. Like a reboot of a comic book franchise, the gun grabbers are performing fan service. They know the slobbering idiots will show up with their t-shirts and home made costumes. It is a low cost way for the performers to get a big audience. The only point of the gun grabbing act is to please this narrow market sector so the performers can get a quick payday.

One of the ironies of this system is the biggest clowns come from the wealthiest and poorest congressional sectors. The obvious example is Nancy Pelosi, who represents one of the richest and most progressive districts in the country. The people who live in her district are rich and presumably have serious responsibilities. Yet, in their politics they go for the most ridiculous and absurd. Their politics are not about serious matters, but about the gestures that control bourgeois life.

That is what liberal democracy becomes at it zenith. It is a form of escapism for the class wealthy enough to escape the consequences of bad government, but not so wealthy as to enter the ruling elite. These are the people who promote pointless nonsense like climate change and gun grabbing campaigns. At the same time, they refuse to even think about practical problems that haunt society. Fixing roads is for poor people, while fixing the climate is for special people.

Another side effect of liberal democracy is the race for novelty. In the 1990’s, the luxury opinion was homosexual marriage. That was the thing bourgeois simpletons waved around to signal their aloofness from practical politics. Since anyone can acquire these luxury opinions, we have quickly moved along the clown line to the point where major corporations are celebrating child molesters. When novelty is the highest moral principle, who has time to worry about the kids?

Some will argue that the circus of politics is an intentional creation by the usual suspects to conceal their grip on society. That is a form of escapism, like all conspiracy theories, to avoid the reality of liberal democracy. Elites do run society, but they do not run the circus of democracy. Their only role is to make sure the actors do not accidentally shoot one another with a prop gun. Otherwise, they let these frivolous freaks do their shows and keep the masses occupied.

This is the beauty of the system, when you think about it. If the only way to fix the system is to get a bigger crowd, that means all opposition must select for greater novelty and narcissism than what is currently on stage. The winners of every election end up with a bigger clown than what was on stage. The losers get the new clown as well, which means no matter the result, you get stuck with a clown. Elections are always heads they win, tails you lose.

Just as the solution to a drinking problem is not more drinking, the solution to democracy is never more democracy. The drunk can only begin to recover himself by quitting the booze. Similarly, a people can only recover from the rule by carny trash by exiting the theater of democracy. Usually, the drunk has to hit rock bottom before he has the will to conquer his addiction. Most likely the same applies to democracy. America will have to hit rock bottom before it abandons the clown-ocracy.

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

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

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

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

Ideological Capture

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Image that you are a management type and you get hired into the third tier of management at a good sized firm. The top tier is the executive staff like the CFO and CEO who control the overall direction of the firm. The second tier is the policy making tier, like vice presidents and regional directors. They take the vision of the top tier and turn into company policy. The tier into which you have been hired is tasked with implementing and enforcing these company policies.

Further, let us assume you are an enthusiastic follower of a management style that is called “management by committee.” You think the best way to run any organization is through committees that debate amongst themselves and then create reports that some other committee turns into directives. Your new job is in a company that is still in growth mode, so they are not burdened with management philosophy. The third tier is just supposed to get the job done.

Soon into your new job you find other fans of the MBC school and you form a clique within the company. None of your bosses are MBC types, but they are not hostile to your ideas, just as long as the job gets done. One of the ideas you talk them into is having managers in the third tier incorporated into the hiring process. Candidates for management jobs will sit before a committee of middle managers who will then pass on their assessment to the people making the hire.

You are a committee guy so you make sure to be on this committee and you get your buddies in the committee subculture on the committee as well. This is exactly the sort of innovation you have been seeking. The “promise” of this new step is that people hired in will fit the general culture. As a practical matter, it means the committee will select for people who like committees. It does not take long before adherence to the management by committee philosophy is a selection criterion.

Since there is a decent amount of turnover in the middle and lower management ranks, it does not take too long before most managers are committee men. This new selection process, controlled by committee men, selects for committee men or the type who could be groomed into committee men. A big part of the management by committee philosophy is grooming normal people into the committee lifestyle. Being a committee man is a de facto requirement for employment.

The second tier of management has far less turnover than the third and fourth tier, as these are important posts that pay exceptionally well. By their very nature there are few of these jobs in any company, so there is not a lot of circulation, but from time to time a spot does open in this layer. Ideally, the executive layer selects from the third tier of managers to fill these roles. Presumably, these are people who know company culture and have been vetted through trial and error.

Because you and your fellow committee men have been selecting for committee men in the ranks of management, the options for the executive staff when it comes time to fill a vice president slot is all committee men. The management by walking around guy who ran the West Coast division retires and there is no one like him to bump up into his position, because that type does not exist on the bench. That means hiring from outside or elevating a committee man into the second tier.

The executive staff of the company is now faced with a crisis. While they were busy with setting the general direction of the company, they have been infested with a new management style that now limits their range of motion. If they want to change the company culture, say reduce the number of meetings and standing committees, it means making wholesale changes in the ranks. Alternatively, it means finding a way to make this new management paradigm work.

Now, if instead of starting point being a middle manager from a management cult it is a homosexual priest, a climate change crank or a neoconservative. The homosexual priest gets into the ranks and starts to agitate for his people and before long you have a lot of homosexual priests. This is how climate change cranks have infested the ranks of energy and environment to the point where they control these areas in the managerial class, publicly and privately.

The neocons are front and center at the moment and they are the most obvious example of this process. Over time they have infiltrated every nook and cranny of the foreign policy establishment. When the Democrat president takes over for a Republican, the neocons who infest Republican ranks move out to think tanks, while the neocons who infest Democratic ranks take their positions in government. When the parties swap again, the neocons swap again.

If like the executive management of the hypothetical company, you are the new president with a rational vision for foreign policy, you will be faced with the problem of finding anyone who is not neocons. Everyone with any experience in the State Department, foreign service or national security is going to be a member of the bizarre cult that has taken over these fields. Before you could do anything, it means a revolution within these areas of government.

Something similar is happening with energy. Putting together a rational energy policy is impossible because everyone in that sector is now committed to the “green agenda” which embraces irrational energy policies. Notice that the response to the war in Ukraine is a series of policies that harm normal people in the West by furthering the agenda of the environmental movement. The war in Ukraine has given license to the people making war on climate change.

This is why elections are now meaningless. So meaningless, in fact, that they will slowly go away entirely. The ruler of Italy, for example, was not elected. He was installed by Brussels, which is not elected either. The response to Russia is being crafted in Brussels, not the capitals of Europe. Closer to home, elections are now just an orgy of absurd corruption like ballot harvesting, mail in voting and so on. Why try to convince people when you can just make up the results?

The collapse of elections is just a reflection of reality. You can vote yourself bloody, but the people holding office are faced with the same dilemma as the executive managers in the above example. They must fill their staff from the pool of true believers that exist in the Washington policy establishment. They are set upon by true believers from think tanks and lobbying firms, who actually write the legislation. They are swimmers trying to change the direction of the ocean.

What we are witnessing is ideological capture. This is where a small, but committed group can wield majority power, as long as the majority is divided into smaller groups or not bound by an alternative ideology. The homosexuals could infiltrate the priesthood because the Church was not explicitly anti-homosexual. The normal priest worried about the issue would be outnumbered by the pink mafia and have no internal structure on which to rely for support in the fight.

The priest problem is good example of how you cannot solve the problem of ideological capture with rules or systems. The Church had rules against raping altar boys and fornication, but that did not deter the homosexual priests. Instead, they organized to take over the system in order to get around these prohibitions. It turns out that rules and principles are no match for a dedicated minority that has no respect for the spirit behind those rules and principles.

This is the problem faced all over the managerial class. Any reform attempt must start with the removal of the infestation. In the case of foreign policy, it means a decapitation of the neocon establishment, both in government and outside government. You would have to fire everyone, remove their security clearances and maybe put a few in jail to publicly discredit the cult. Given the scale involved, that may not be possible, even if a president was committed to it.

The same process would have to happen with the climate cranks who have infested energy and environment. The regulatory state is now stocked with people who think their lawnmower is out to get them. The same holds for the Department of Justice and the FBI, as we saw in the Trump years. The managerial class has been captured by what should be described as a cult. Across the system, members of this bizarre new religion now wield power and control policy.

This is the truth of ideological capture. Once the infection sets in, the rules are slowly turned to the favor of the ideologues. Therefore, any effort to use the rules to disinfect the system ends up profiting the ideologues. The people vote for George Bush and they get Lyndon Johnson. They vote for Barak Obama and they get a different version of Lyndon Johnson. They vote for Trump and they get Nixon. The outputs no longer reflect inputs, because the rules no longer matter.

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

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

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

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

Perpendicular Parallels

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For those old enough to recall the 1970’s, the present economic turmoil looks a lot like the stagflation from fifty years ago. Just like a half century ago, we have a mix of inflation, economic stagnation and incompetent leadership in Washington. Joe Biden is not exactly Jimmy Carter, as Carter was an honest man, but like Carter, the public sees him as a man out of his depth. Like Carter, he wound up in the job due to a crisis within the political class over a previous president.

It is a comforting parallel for many people, because if the pattern holds, it means there is a Ronald Reagan coming after Biden. The saner elements in the ruling elite will rally to a sober minded governor who can withstand the progressive crazies. Many people are looking at Ron DeSantis as the man who can save the system. Trump running in 2024 could throw a wrench in the story, but maybe the ruling elite has a plan to get that element out of the script so the story can continue.

This problem with the script is a reminder that historical parallels are like all generalizations in that they are a starting point. They help frame the times to better understand the details. We know the general plot of one side of the comparison, so it allows us to infer things about the other side. From there we have a basis from which to analyze the present. In this comparison, however, the observable similarities have different direct and root causes.

For example, the current energy crisis is different from the crisis in the 1970’s, which was mostly driven by the currency war and an oil embargo. The collapse of the post-war currency arrangements not only gave us inflation, but it also created havoc in commodities, which are sensitive to currency fluctuations. The big driver was the Arab oil embargo over US support for Israel. The embargo was always a short term strategy to get a better deal from the West.

The present energy crisis is primarily systemic. Generations of mismanagement are finally showing up in the price. The United States was the largest exporter a few years ago, but then the government reversed course and exports have collapsed, making America a net importer again. Europe is smashing its energy system in an effort to make the Russians look bad on Twitter. There is more than enough energy to go around, but the system to distribute it is collapsing.

In the 1970’s, the solution to the energy crisis was to make a deal with the Arabs so they would end the embargo. There were lots of new energy schemes launched to take advantage of the crisis, but the final solution was a deal with the Saudis. This current energy crisis does not have a simple solution. In the West, energy policy has been corrupted by the same cranks who have corrupted the culture. It will take a revolution to fix that problem in order to fix the policy problems.

Systemic problems are also at the heart of the inflation crisis. In the 1970’s, the issue was the old fashioned Econ 101 problem. There was too much money chasing too few goods, resulting in inflation. This time, the issue is more about systemic problems in the global monetary system and in the global supply chain. This is where dumb people like to say, “it is as simple as…” and then finish with their favorite bromides from the Mises Institute, but the current inflation crisis is not a simple one.

For starters, the monetary system that was put in place in the 1980’s assumed a few things that are no longer true. One was that the excess dollars created by Washington would be absorbed and laundered by low cost counties. This worked while Asia had an infinite supply of cheap efficient labor. Extra dollars could flow into these countries as economic investment. The extra from developing countries would then return in the form of assets like treasuries and equities.

That system is breaking down for two main reasons. One is China is becoming a mature industrial nation, which means labor is no longer cheap. The Chinese understand this and they are shifting policy to encourage domestic consumption rather than focus on exports. All of a sudden, those extra dollars are no longer as welcome in China as in the past. Instead of returning as assets to America, they hang around the system chasing too few retail goods.

Another cause is the breakdown of the dollar system. The dollar itself is doing great, but the rest of the global currencies are not doing so well. Their strength has been pegged to the health of the system based on the dollar being the global currency. As this system shows signs of crisis, the weaker currencies are in free fall. The Euro, the secondary global currency, is falling sharply. Of course, the ruble is booming, due to the crackpot policy response to the war in Ukraine.

The point is the solution to the current inflation is different from what happened fifty years ago because the causes are different. In the 1970’s, the Fed could tighten the money supply, wring out inflation and force a corresponding correction in the system with a deep, but short recession. This time, simply raising rates will not be enough to address the inflation problems. It could also trigger a crisis in the financial system, which is built on the assumption of free money from the Fed.

There are more comparisons like this, but the bottom line is that the crisis of the 1970’s is similar to this crisis, but the causes are different. Back then, America was a healthy business in need of new management. The demographics were good, the social capital was still strong and the working population was young. More important, the ruling class wanted a strong America and saw it as their duty to deliver it. A few tweaks to the system would unleash the economic power of the country.

The current crisis is driven by different forces. This is an end of cycle crisis as the American empire reaches its terminus. Critically, the demographics are much worse, the productive population is old and the social capital has been spent trying to prove Mother Nature wrong for fifty years. More important, the ruling class is now populated by feckless grifters and ridiculous people. They see their duty as throwing fuel on the fire in order to prove how little they care about the country.

What this comparison between this crisis and that of fifty years ago reveals is that this crisis is different in nature. There are general parallels, but the underlying causes are vastly different and that means the results will be different. New management may walk through the door in the next election, but unlike 1980 they will be taking control of an enterprise that needs bankruptcy protection. It may even require a fire sale to clear out the unproductive segments at the top.

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

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

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

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

The Game

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There is an argument that we live in a novel political environment in which the mass media is the political authority. They get on an issue and the political and corporate classes respond to it. We saw this with the George Floyd story that was orchestrated by the big media operations. On the other hand, political actors will seed the media with fake stories hoping they will put it into their megaphones. The Russian collusion hoax cooked up by team Clinton is an example.

A couple of weeks back, Tucker Carlson observed that most Republicans wake up in the morning and go to the New York Times. They and their staff read the thing over breakfast, because it is their guide throughout the day. This is true of mainstream conservatives as well. What passes for the Right in America is entirely controlled by the Left, which is controlled by the media. Old school liberals sound like Trump people when they complain about how the media runs their party.

There is a lot of truth to the media-ocracy claim. The backers of the Ukraine fiasco have been feeding the media nonsense tales about Ukraine. They handed them Ukraine lapel pins they had made up for the occasion. Note no one in the media looked into who supplied everyone on television with those pins. Instead, it was a unified media voice, a wall of sound, selling the Ukraine story. Washington and the political class in Europe were swept up in this unfolding disaster.

The thing is though, the Russia hoax makes clear that the media does not have a coordinated center. The details of the hoax have been supplied in the court case against Clinton crony Michael Sussman. He relied upon confidence men like Franklin Foer, who exist to inject false narratives into the media echo system. Once these fake stories get loose, they rocket around the system, repeated by the sociopaths who are attracted to life in the media echo system.

Further proof of the passive nature of the media system is the war in Ukraine, a place few in the media can find on a map. There are three observable trends in the coverage of the war thus far. One is there are few Western reporters trying to cover the war on the ground in Ukraine. They went over for the photo-ops when it started but made sure to stay in Kiev. They quickly went back to their countries and left the reporting to contractors and interested think tanks.

That is the other thing about the media response to the war. The work-at-home war correspondents now do their reporting from press releases issued by outfits like the Institute for the Study of War. Alternatively, they rely on Ukrainians on the payroll of the American of British intelligence services. In both cases, a five minute search on-line would reveal these sources to be entirely fake. Instead, they just pass on the information without bothering to question any of it.

The lack of original reporting and reliance on single sources with narrow agendas has resulted in a uniform opinion in the media. Even the so-called conservative media, which took off their American flag pins and put on the Ukraine pin, repeated the same stories from the same sources as if it was holy writ. What the Ukraine story reveals is the media echo system operates like a murmuration of starlings, rushing through the news cycle in response to external stimulus.

This reality will lead some to assume this system is controlled by a tiny cabal of deep state actors in a hollowed out volcano. In reality, the people trying to inject their special brand of poison into the system are often tangled in the system. The Covid panic is the perfect example. It was people hoping for media recognition who kept injecting ridiculous claims into the system. These were not deep state players, but often just ordinary people hoping for fifteen minutes of fame.

The “frontline workers” posting their made up tales of woe on social media is the perfect example of how small players can move the media swarm. Hoping for attention, nurses and doctors started positing on social media stories that made them look like selfless heroes trying to save Covid victims. This psychosis, and it was a form of psychosis, was picked up by the media and amplified. These fake stories became fact, which spawned new fake stories made up by media members.

The Covid hoax, and it is fair to call it a hoax at this point, was not the result of clever scheming like the Russian collusion hoax. Instead, it was something like a stampede over a cliff. Unlike the animals in the herd, the people in this media stampede could question the rush over the cliff, but like the animals in the herd, they feared being trampled more than they feared the end result. As a result, fantasy became holy writ and Covid turned into a bizarre mass media religion.

In a way, the berserk obsession with disinformation and misinformation is not entirely motivated by malice toward the general public. The people running the New York Times and Washington Post still cling to the old myths about the media. They think they should be the cynics not falling for their hoaxes. They sort of get the problem, but they lack the proper perspective from their position inside the swarm to see that it is the nature of the swarm, what makes it possible, that is the problem.

It is tempting to think that at some point the public will get wise to the fake news and this madness will come to an end. If no one believes what is in the media, then the media’s ability to shape the news comes to an end. The trouble with this theory is most people have already figured out that the news is fake. The Ukraine war is a prime example, as most people never cared enough about it to listen to the story. Public apathy and skepticism have not changed the behavior of the media.

Instead, what we may be heading to in the short run is a world in which the mass media operates like an on-line role playing game for the managerial class. They get to play the various quests that get created in the media echo system. Since they live in a consequence free world, as in they never pay the price for their error, they are free to explore their dreams within these fantasies. Once the quest is over, they transition to a new quest or maybe play a different character.

We see this happening with Ukraine. As it becomes clear that this story will not end well for Ukraine or the Europeans, the players are looking for a new quest. Joe Biden’s heroic management of the economy through the Putin-Trump inflation spiral looks like a fun new expansion pack. Maybe they play the China as dangerous dragon add-on that came with the Covid edition. Maybe someone is about to release something entirely different and inject it into the media echo system.

The result is we are headed to a world in which the normal people go about their lives as best they can. Every once in a while, they will take notice of the streaming role playing game that keeps the managerial class busy. That will usually happen when the role players mistake their world for the real world, gas prices and baby food shortages being two current examples. Otherwise, the managerial class is becoming a virtual world, a metaverse to occupy an otherwise worthless ruling elite.

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

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

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

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

The Rocks Of War

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Wars often turn over rocks exposing truths about the age that have either been ignored or hidden from the world. Old tactics, in the case of the Great War, were exposed as obsolete by modern weapons. Sometimes it is in war that the hollowness of a great power is exposed. This was the case of the Soviets in Afghanistan. That war exposed the internal weakness of the regime. The war in Ukraine is similarly exposing problems in the collective West.

The first lesson of this war so far is that Western intelligence has been exposed as useless in understanding modern Russia. At every turn, the information provided to political leaders about what Russia is doing and planning to do has turned out to be more fantasy than reality. The West has been operating on assumptions that may have been true twenty-five years ago but are no longer true today. The result has been a total political failure in response to the invasion.

The big example of this was the claim that the Russians could only support their army in Ukraine for a couple of months. Western strategy was built on the assumption that the Ukrainians just had to hold out for a month or two. They would dig into fortified positions and wait out the Russian assault. Instead, a highly mobile and patient Russian assault is slowly decimating the Ukrainian army. Three months into the conflict and the Russians are on the cusp of victory.

This is another rock turned over in this war. The West has been preparing for a war with a Russian army than has not existed since the Cold War. The Soviet way of war was something called deep battle doctrine. This is based on a highly mobile, combined arms approach to fighting. The Russians would find a weak spot in the enemy front, concentrate forces there, break through the lines and then flood the zone with armor and infantry, creating chaos in the enemy rear.

The Soviet approach required large numbers of men. It imagined millions of men mobilized to fight in the West. This is not the new Russian way of war. The Russians, like everyone else in the West, have been living in the age of low fertility and rising standards of living. Mobilizing millions of men and throwing them into battle like Stalin did against the Nazis is no longer acceptable. Instead, the Russians have organized around reducing casualties to the minimum.

As a practical matter, what those hunkered down Ukrainians have been facing is something like what the Mongols brought to the fight. Instead of one massive army centrally controlled from the rear, it is a collection of small units, self contained and self-directed toward narrow goals. These units combine infantry, armor, mobile artillery and air support, along with the use of drones. This is combined arms warfare reduced to small units working independently.

Because these units are smaller, they are more intolerant of personnel losses, so they are more cautious. A unit that loses its tanks is no longer effective as a unit, so the premium is on reducing losses. The goal is to use speed and mobility to find weak spots in the enemy and quickly exploit them, with minimum losses. Overall, this is a much slower approach to fighting, but once a weakness is exposed, it can be exploited much faster due to the improved mobility and flexibility.

This is on display in the Donbas. The Russians used artillery and airpower to break down the Ukrainian defenses at Popasnaya, which is a strategic town in the middle of the contact line. The Russians were then able to rush units into this breech and employ the modern version of deep battle doctrine. These small units combined to turn the contact line into a series of pockets surrounded by Russian units. Now the Russians are pounding these cauldrons with artillery and air power.

The result is the West, primarily Washington, prepared the Ukrainians to fight the wrong war against the wrong army. Instead of a short defense against a Soviet siege, they are getting a war of attrition against a highly mobile and flexible army using the right weapons for such a fight. That is another aspect of this war that should be a wake up call to Western planners. The Russian weapons are better and more useful than the Western weapons supplied to the Ukrainians.

In line with the new way of fighting, the Russians have developed weapons that can be incredibly useful with small, combined arms units. They do not require a complex information grid so that commanders in the rear can direct the action. Modern technology is used to make it easy for these small units to fight effectively on their own or quickly combine with other units on the fly. The Russians have also done their homework and have evolved effective counter measures.

This is why the many “game changers” the West has sent to the Ukrainians have failed to do much damage to the Russian forces. The javelin has been a bust. The Man-portable air defense systems (ManPads) are worthless. The Russians have made these weapons obsolete. The big shock is their drone defense. The kamikaze drones and the Turkish TB2 have not been the game changer that was promised because the Russians have evolved effective jamming tools.

Probably the biggest rocks turned over in this war are economic. The assumption of the West when they instigated this war was that the Russian economy had not changed since the end of the Cold War. For a long time, the West has looked at Russia as a gas station masquerading as a country. It was a version of Venezuela, wholly dependent on selling natural resources to the West. If the sale of those resources slowed just a bit, then the Russian economy would collapse.

This has turned out to be wildly wrong. Now, part of this failure is due to the raging bigotry of the neocons behind the war. Their seething hatred for the Russian people has blinded them to many things. The economic revolution that has taken place in Russia is the biggest one. It turns out that the Russian economy is much more resilient and flexible than anyone in the West realized. As a result, the sanctions regime has turned out to be a disastrous failure.

That has turned over another economic rock. The European economy has been revealed to be a house of cards. The sanctions regime is creating havoc for the Europeans, because their economy was based on the assumption that the Russians would always supply them with cheap necessities. The EU is a mommy economy where Mother Russia makes sure her babies are warm and fed. Shortages and spirally prices are bringing this reality home to Europeans.

In total, what the war in Ukraine is revealing is that the collective West has been living in a fantasy world for the last few decades. Without a real challenge, they have been allowed to indulge in whatever fantasies they liked. Like trust fund babies raised in insular opulence, Western leaders are unprepared for a world where they have to perform their role as elites. The war is exposing them as a toxic blend of self-indulgence, stupidity and ignorance.

The truth about war is that the rocks that it turns over cannot be turned back over to hide the truth underneath. The West will now have to face this new reality, especially on the economic front. The grand schemes for creating a new world order in the image of Western elites will now have to give way to this new realty. What has been revealed is that the new world order is one in which the West must compete in a multipolar world of civilizational equals. That means a new elite for this new age.

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

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

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

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

Sociopath Or True Believer?

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Outside of the progressive hive, there has been a long running debate, going back to the 1980’s, about the awareness of the people in the hive. Left-wing people say things that are clearly not true, but they seem to believe what they are saying. They have some of the facts and seem to grasp certain concepts, but they come to conclusions that are obviously false. The question is whether the people in the hive really believe what they say or do they know the truth?

The default assumption, popular with mainstream conservatives, is that progressives are well-intentioned, but wrong on the facts. These are reasonable people who can come to the right answer if you slowly explain it to them. Conservatives have built their entire movement around the assumption that there is some way to explain things to the Left that will trigger a revelation. They will see their error, throw down their weapons and embrace the conservatives as brothers.

Along with conservatism, this view is fading from the scene. It is a generational thing as conservatism and most conservatives were formed in the post-war period. Most people have now concluded that the Left knows they are lying, but they are consumed with partisanship, so they are fine with lying. Far-left cranks will claim men can get pregnant because it advances their interests. The blank slate is central to their program, so they defend nutty ideas like the trans business.

In a way, this is a coping strategy for conservatives. They cannot accept that there are people not driven by facts and reason. To do so would mean the whole facts and reason approach is a waste of time. If the hive is immune to reason, then there is no point in reasoning with them and therefore no need for conservatives. Instead, they fall back on the mendacity claim. That way, if they can expose the lie, the liars will have not choice but to admit the lie and receive the truth.

There is no doubt that self-interest drives mendacity in politics, but this only works at the personal or small group level. Politicians lie for personal advantage. Their staff and allies will join them in the lie if it benefits them. It was clear that Jen Psaki knew she was lying and she knew everyone knew she was lying. It was her job and the path to a television job where she would make big money. This is how things work in entertainment and politics and everyone knows it.

The behavior of the hive, in contrast, is not for petty advantage. It looks more like a religious duty. People in the hive now declare their pronouns and claim people are assigned sex at birth as an act of faith. The motivation to put pronouns in an e-mail signature is no different than the motivation to wear a crucifix. It is way to signal your membership in a religion. In fact, religions have often required these displays as a way to separate the faithful from the rest.

Here is an example of how this works. This article in the Atlantic is about how dog breeds are a social construct. It is based in a shoddy bit of social science that was concocted to address the dog breed line used by people who question the blank slate arguments of the hive. Dog breeds are used by critics of the hive as a proxy for the human family and human diversity. Just as there are different breeds of dogs, there are different breeds of humans with different characteristics.

The first thing to note is that this was an organized effort. On the same day, the Washington Post had the same story about the dog breed study. This was then picked up by small sites that republished it. That is how it works in the hive. The second thing to note is the Atlantic writer is someone with impressive academic credentials. Mx. Wu has a PhD in microbiology from Harvard. She did her undergraduate and masters at Stanford. Box ticking aside, those are impressive credentials.

Despite those credentials she has never worked in the human sciences. Instead, she has been a small time contributor to on-line sites. Her role here is to give the fake study legitimacy by having someone with credentials endorse the study. This is what the lawyers would call mens rea. The rollout of this fake study says they know they are promoting a fraud. They selected the sites and authors in order to best promote what they know is not true.

On the other hand, where is the personal advantage? The problem with the conscious mendacity angle is there is no personal advantage for the people involved. It is not as if Mx. Wu gains something from this. It will not boost her career in science, assuming she wants a career in the human sciences. The Post used a random dingbat on the staff for their version of the story. Instead, Mx. Wu is selflessly sacrificing her credibility to show her commitment to the progressive faith.

The camp that argues that self-interest is what motivates these will point out that Mx. Wu could be working from self-interest. People with her credentials who promote crackpot ideas like the blank slate are quickly elevated in the hive. Credentials count for a lot with the Left. If a credentialed person says the moon is made of cheese, the faithful will believe it. Therefore, Mx. Wu is simply gaming the system in the hope of being quickly elevated to high status in the hive.

That brings as back to where we started. It is clear from examples like Mx. Wu that there can be no reasoning with these people. A woman with her training should see right through that study. She chooses to promote it, ether because she is a sociopath or she is a true believer. In either case, facts and reason will have no purchase on her mind or the minds of the people like her. What motivates members of the hive is either sociopathy or faith, neither of which yields to reason.

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

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

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

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

An Empire Of Lies

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An informal metric for measuring the stability of a society is the distance between reality and the official truth of the ruling regime. The more lies the regime tells, the less stable it and the society over which it rules. Official lies are a good proxy for the degree of authoritarianism within the regime. The degree of authoritarianism is a good proxy for the level of official insecurity. The more thuggish the regime the less support it enjoys, thus the more it needs to lie to the people.

At the extreme end of this metric is a place like North Korea. The regime is deeply paranoid about everything. The Kim family does not trust anyone in the ruling class and no one in the ruling class trusts anyone, especially Kim. The one thing everyone agrees upon is they cannot trust the people. This is why they get images of the tubby Kim in heroic poses or stories of him making ten holes in one playing golf. The regime feels it needs to present him as a god to intimidate the people.

On the other end of the spectrum, you get a place like Switzerland that barely has a government relative to the rest of Europe. Many Swiss residents do not know who is currently holding the position of president. It is a rotating position currently held by someone calling herself Simonetta Sommaruga. The Swiss government has no need to turn her into a rock star or make while claims about her. The official truth of Switzerland is easy for everyone to see, so they have no need to lie.

Obviously, it is an informal metric that is subjective. An extreme case like North Korea is easy to use, but where would France or Germany fall on the scale? They are closer to Switzerland than Ukraine or the United States, but not so close that anyone in France would say they believe their government. In fact, that is the story of the West since the end of the Cold War. Every Western nation has moved down the scale of honesty toward the North Korean pole over the last three decades.

Lying has consequences. One lie begets another lie which then requires more elaborate lying to cover up the previous lies. This lowers trust in the state, but it also lowers trust in institutions and eventually lowers social trust. Step one is the lies erode faith in the ruling class of the country. Step two is people lose faith in the institutions for not having punished the liars. The final step is the people who wake up to the official lies lose trust in those who keep falling for the lies.

You see this with the school shootings. Generations of lying about the nature of crime and the role of guns in these school shooting, have made it impossible to have a civil conversation about the issue. The bodies were not even cold after the latest school shooting and the usual suspects were out in public telling the all to familiar lies about the causes of these crimes. The only thing that comes from this is normal people grow to hate these liars a little more than they did yesterday.

How many people watched President Biden speak about the Texas shooting? The answer, if it was possible to get an honest one, was close to zero. Joe Biden has been a promiscuous liar for generations. Now he is an incontinent zombie barely able to read his script. That script is written by the same collection of sociopaths than have infected politics since the Clintons blew into town. Even the sociopaths have lost interest in the production of these ridiculous theaters of mendacity.

Tragic outliers like a deranged lunatic going on a rampage are just part of the human condition, but can something be done to limit it? It feels like this stuff happens more often now, but who can know? The even bigger question is why are these obviously deranged people ignored by the people around them? The Buffalo shooter was ignored by everyone, despite the obvious signs. The liars fill the space with lies about the subject so that getting a straight answer is impossible.

Of course, the reason the liars exist is they keep people off balance. Official lying has been outsourced in what may be the most cyclical public-private partnership in human history, so that the rulers can just nod along with the symphony of lies. Biden’s script writers just go to one of the websites of the many organizations who exist to produce official nonsense and jot down a few of their lines. The mass media, of course, then blasts this and their own lies to the public.

One of the underrated aspects of Orwell’s Animal Farm is how the pigs used deception to create doubt among the animals. It reached the point where the animals could not trust their own memory. The other day, the Washington Post claimed George Floyd was shot by police. How long before school children are taught that he was hanged by the Proud Boys? More important, how many people will tire of correcting the record and this lie becomes official truth?

The official lies are not just about keeping the public confused. It also serves to keep the managerial class huddled together. On the topic of official lies, the classic Vaclav Havel essay, “The Power of the Powerless” comes to mind. Amazingly, the people who shower the public with disinformation, the official lies, claim to be fighting against disinformation, often citing Havel’s essay. The lying is an important part of their identity as a besieged group defending “our democracy.”

In the final years of the Soviet Union, the general public no longer believed anything said by their government. The people in government were every bit as cynical about the official truths, but they were paid to lie so they lied. What held it together is both sides were sure the other side believed the lies, at least enough of them that the rest dared not question the lies. The collapsed came when everyone realized that no one believed what they were forced to say or forced to hear.

Havel opened his famous essay with this line. “A specter is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called dissent.” He then explained, “It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity.” That was almost fifty years ago in a world that is largely forgotten by modern people, yet terribly familiar to us now.

The final sentence of that opening paragraph is, “What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures.” One paragraph from a dissident operating in an alien system from the past captures the current moment in America. A decade later that system collapsed. That is what the sea of lies from our rulers tells us about what lies ahead. A regime built on lies always ends in collapse.

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