Why They Hate Us

Posted on November 23, 2021 by thezman

Tech Note: The site was down for a period due to a server issue. During the upgrade a canigulator valve got stuck, causing pressure to build up in one boiler. The subsequent rupture injured several of the mushroom people who work in the bowels of the server room, but they still managed to get us back on line. They are heroes.

Back in the Bush years, the slogan they liked to use regarding their race policies was “the bigotry of low expectations.” An army of people no doubt spent months conjuring the slogan and field-testing it with audiences to make sure it hit the mark. They made sure it was completely anodyne while conveying the required adherence to left-wing morality regarding race. The slogan said George Bush cared while also saying the Democrats were the real racists.

In fairness to the civic nationalists, they have a point about the Left when it comes to the issue of race. Despite all the talk about racial justice, they talk about nonwhites as if they are children. For example, they literally argue that black people are incapable of acquiring a picture ID. Even if you want to limit that claim to the population that is dependent on the state, this claim is never made about the whites. You can forgive civic nationalists for being a bit rustled by this.

Putting that aside, there is another element to that old slogan. The underlying claim is not just that the Left treats nonwhites like children but that the Left assumes the nonwhites lack agency and therefore cannot be held accountable. This is not a small thing to say. It goes behind the hoary clichés about racism and speaks to how the Left sees themselves and the world. They see themselves as the puppet masters and the rest of us are just the puppets.

You see another glimpse of this in the Wisconsin massacre following on the heels of the Rittenhouse verdict. The Left was clearly trying to get a riot going. The over-the-top language was intended to inflame the sorts of people who set fire to Kenosha way back when all of this started. When the hip-hop guy ran down women and children at the Christmas parade, the Left was giddy. They thought their rhetoric had triggered the response they thought was appropriate.

Now, it does not really matter if this guy was triggered by the extreme left-wing rhetoric that has flooded our lives for the last few years. It is fair to say he is not watching CNN every night, but his social media activity shows that he is aware of what is going on in the world. It is one of those realities of this age that even the dumbest person cannot escape the media. Unless you live off-grid in the woods, you live suspended in a solution of messages from the mass media.

The causal relationship here is not really important. It is pretty reasonable to conclude that people who do these things are crazy. Whether they are shooting up a school or attacking a Christmas parade, they are not acting rationally. What matters here is what the Left thinks is the causal relationship in these and other events. They clearly think there is one. It is why the less fanatical elements in the media are trying to downplay the Wisconsin massacre. It is bad optics.

This view of the world is behind the censorship regime. The unsophisticated make the error in thinking that the motive behind it is fear of their facts and reason. “They are afraid of our message” is a popular slogan in certain quarters. This is true only in that the Left thinks people lack agency and can easily be manipulated into rebellion or violence. That is what lies behind the claim that language is violence. They assume everyone does what they are told.

In the Charlottesville circus trial this was part of the plaintiff’s case. They brought in the equivalent of tarot card readers to explain the secret messages between members of the alt-right organizers. These so-called experts explained the secret meanings of the jokes and memes and then explained how they are calls to violence. At the heart of this is the assumption that humans lack agency and are so suggestible that they will become savage at the sound of certain words.

Magic word theory can probably be placed alongside magic dirt theory and magic shape theory in the domain of left-wing magic. Magic dirt theory is the claim that the soil upon which one stands controls your actions in some mystical way. People born on bad dirt turn out bad, while people born on magic dirt get all the breaks. Magic shape theory claims that metal and plastic shaped into something scary like certain types of guns makes people violent or suicidal.

This explains the Left’s quest to control all areas of cultural production. When you assume that people are infinitely suggestable, whoever controls the message controls the people, which means whoever controls the message centers, the centers of cultural production, controls the people. From the point of view of the Left, it is not censorship but leadership. They have seized the centers of information production in order to lead the people into the promised land.

At a retail level, this is not important. If the guy smashing you over the head with a skateboard is motivated by a bizarre understanding of humanity or he just hates you because you are white is not doing you much good in the moment. Step back and it is an important insight. That guy smashing people with his skateboard is not operating from mere partisanship. He is not just mad at the victim because they do not agree on tax policy or race policy. He is acting in self-defense.

At the heart of the crisis, at the center of every riot over the last few years, is one side convinced they must use any means necessary to remove the things standing between them and the egalitarian paradise. If that means killing those who do not want to go along, they feel completely justified. After all, their objections are a call for violence to stop progress. The guy swinging the skateboard believes he is acting in self-defense, even when the attack is unprovoked.

The question alongside that central truth is can society go on if some minority of the population is sure they are in a life and death struggle with the majority? The weaponization of the mentally unstable, minorities and fanatics in a war against stability and normalcy is a threat to the very existence of society. If this was coming from a foreign power or organized crime, the answer would be clear. It would me a war of survival against a direct threat.

All human society is an ongoing negotiation around a compromise. Why would anyone seek compromise with those whose opening bid is your death? The middle ground is still horrible. This is why the Left is waging total war on society. The only rational response is to respond accordingly. The compromise is that our commitment to civic nationalism must give way temporarily in order to deal with the threat in the same way chemotherapy is an exception to deal with cancer.

This is not without precedent. In times of war America has suspended the writ of habeas corpus, confined whole populations and commandeered the economy. In times of extreme emergency, free people suspend their distrust of power in order to wield it against the enemy of freedom. At some point, even the most feckless in the ruling class will have to come to this realization. Otherwise, they will be swept away by the same forces being unleashed by their foot soldiers in the media.

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Sideline Men

Posted on November 22, 2021 by thezman

Note: The Monday Takis post is up. Not all that related to this post, but not entirely unrelated either. I like the Taki post this week. The Sunday podcast is up behind the green door for those on the side of angels. I was on for two hours last night saying bad things about lots of people. You can find the replay here.

One of the great innovations in American politics introduced by libertarians is the ability to turn the sidelines into the moral high ground. In order to avoid taking on the Left, especially with regards to morality, libertarians became expert at finding a neutral position that worked like a cloaking device. Because the libertarian position offered no threat to the Left, the Left ignored it. This allowed libertarians to pretend to oppose radicalism while never threatening it.

This cloaking strategy took the form of them finding some “principled position” that was often so unrealistic that it did not bear considering. A good example is the homosexual marriage debate. Normal people understood that what the crazies were doing was attacking the very concept of the family. The exclusivity of family offends the core concepts of the open society. Reducing marriage to a handshake agreement open to anyone eliminates its exclusivity.

Instead of confronting the reality of this, libertarians took the position that the state should have no interest in marriage at all. In other words, the libertarian answer to the assault on the institution of marriage was to advocate the elimination of the legal concept of marriage entirely. This allowed them to subtly agree with the Left while claiming to stand on some abstract principle. The libertarian moral high ground was just a way to stand on the sidelines and do nothing.

This habit of mind soon infected Conservative Inc. A strategy that allowed them to tell well-meaning rich people that they are fighting the good fight, while never upsetting their friends on the Left was manna from heaven. One manifestation of the this is the “conservative case for…” strategy where they find a way to make the left-wing position into a right-wing principle. Another is the agree and amplify approach. The Democrats are the real racists is the most popular example.

Over the weekend the so-called conservatives were trying to pair the Andrew Coffee case with the Kyle Rittenhouse case. Coffee is a drug dealer who was involved in a gun fight with cops at his drug den. His girlfriend was killed in the gun fight. The state charged him with her murder on the theory that he initiated the gun battle, so he was culpable for her death. He was acquitted on the grounds that he had a right to defend his drug den from the cops and black lives matter.

Now, the Coffee case is interesting for a number of reasons and one can argue that his acquittal was justified. It is in no way analogous to the Rittenhouse case. Comparing the two is a way to defend some abstract principle of self-defense while not taking on the reality of the Rittenhouse case. It was a purely political prosecution. If he was black the Left would have made him a hero. Because he was white and his attackers were antiwhite, they wanted to murder him.

Another example of this is the CRT business. It is explicitly antiwhite and the people pushing it are not afraid to make that point. The response from so-called conservatives is to claim that it was an assault on black people or Asians. They scoured the land for examples willing to play along. Christopher Rufo, the guy turning the issue into a career, went out of his way to beat back the antiwhite angle. The reason he opposed calling it antiwhite is it offended the Left.

Conservatives have been hiding under their beds for the last five years as the Left has run various antiwhite pogroms. First the excuse was Donald Trump made them sad, so they had to stay in bed. Then they not-so-subtly blamed the people who voted for him, those insurrectionists white supremacists. Now that Biden is as popular as rectal cancer, they feel the coast is clear so they can crawl out from under the beds to pretend they are leading a political movement.

House mouse Rich Lowry has a post wagging his finger at “woke culture” in which he, wait for it, says the Left are the real racists. You see, the response to the antiwhite pogroms of the last half dozen years is not a rigorous defense of white people, but rather a declaration of race denialism as a conservative principle. Meeting the Left head on would be wrong. Instead, they will find some comfy place on the sidelines where they can smugly pretend they have the moral high ground.

It is tempting to think this stuff is intentional, but guys like Rich Lowry lack the intellectual agility to think this way. He is just an obsequious dullard. Instead, the reason behind this approach is instinct. To be a conservative in the modern sense of it is to assume the Left is the moral superior and they are on the side of angels. This is the starting assumption on the so-called Right. Therefore, to oppose left-wing morality is to become the bad guy in the political drama.

Since the conservative ecosystem selects for the soft and the cowardly, it is full of people unwilling to look their superiors in the eye. That has been the great gift the libertarians have bestowed upon them. It was the entry fee for libertarians to join the coalition of cowards knowns as conservatism. Whatever the Left proposes, the Right will find some morally ambiguous space from which they can pretend to be standing on principle while offering no resistance.

While frustrating, events of the past few years have made this clear to most people and this trick is losing its magic. The odious David French, a man so soyish he makes Rich Lowry look butch, condemning Kyle Rittenhouse in a far-left website is now met with howls of laughter. Current events are providing much needed clarity. In this time for choosing, the cowards who choose the sidelines can be condemned and ignored while the business of beating back the darkness can begin.

Thieling It

Posted on November 18, 2021 by thezman

For a very long time, there was a zone of acceptable behavior in politics that was bound by both political coalitions. One side of the political class established the right side and the other camp established the left side. Within those two boundaries is where you found acceptable political discourse. If someone on the right side started noticing things, they were thrown over the wall into the void. Similarly, if someone called shenanigans on the liberals, they were marginalized.

Most people noticed the barrier on the right side as it was the tallest. Those gatekeepers also made a big deal out of being gatekeepers. In retrospect, conservatism was nothing more than a gatekeeper’s handbook. On the left side, the grandees did their policing more subtly, with a sense of shame. People like Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich were tolerated as long as they knew their place. They got to pretend to be real socialists as long as they never threatened the established order.

The story of the last decade or so is the collapse of both walls. Donald Trump swung a wrecking ball through Conservative Inc. What started as a vanity campaign set off a populist rebellion first aimed at the gatekeepers on conservatism. Forgotten in all of this is the way Trump humiliated the Bush wing of the party. The mediocrities running conservatism did the rest. The whole thing collapsed under the weight of its own stupidity, corruption and perfidy.

Something similar occurred on the left side. The Bernie Sanders challenge to Clinton in the 2016 campaign exposed a massive crack in that foundation. His 2020 run forced Liberal Inc. to blow up it up to prevent Sanders from winning. In retrospect, the 2020 shenanigans should include the rigging of the Democratic primary. The result was a collapse of the gatekeeping on that side. This is an underappreciated part of the whole effort to install Joe Biden as president.

It seems that some of the empire’s rich people have noticed that the walls are down, so they are coming up with solutions. One is a new university in Texas that will gather up various exiles from the establishment into something of a think tank. Their stated claim is they will challenge the orthodoxy of the academy. The money for this is coming from a guy calling himself Joe Lonsdale. He is part of the Peter Thiel network, so it is safe to assume that Thiel money is involved too.

When you look at the list of people involved, it is basically civic nationalism gathering the remaining troops for one last stand. The “left-wing” people involved are the old liberals who never embraced cultural Marxism. The “right-wing” types are mostly people who never had a chance to work at AEI or Heritage. The one thing all of these people have in common is they are exiles from the establishment foundations. This project is an effort to create their own version of Heritage.

The problem with challenging the established orthodoxly is you need to do so from an alternative moral order. Civic nationalism has never had a moral order at its center, so it was never much of a challenge to the ideologues. This is stunningly clear now that cultural Marxism is off its chain and running wild. What does Conservative Inc. say about the corruption of the law we see in the Rittenhouse trial? Their advice is you should throw your guns in the nearest lake and stay home.

Into this moral void is flowing the integralists. These are mostly Catholic revanchists who think the answer to the present is to rewind the clocks. They keep turning up in the pages of the American Conservative. Here is Sohrab Ahmari explaining why he has joined the new university. Here he is explaining their new moral order along with some fellow revanchists, also involved in the new university project. Buchanan’s old publication seems to be part of the new gatekeeper operation.

Interestingly, it appears that Rod Dreher has not got the memo about the new direction of his platform. Here he is reacting to a post by Patrick Deneen, another Catholic revanchist, lumping Dreher in with David French. It is an excellent observation as both men are cafeteria Christians. They pick from the vast menu that is Christianity to create for themselves a religion that suits their needs. Dreher takes issue with it, but he should have read it as a warning. His days are now numbered.

Another interesting fact is the Catholic revanchists are involved with the Yoram Hazony project, which is also funded by Peter Thiel. We have one oligarch and some lesser allies working to fund a new building project. The new walls on the right will be built on a new brand of nationalism, stripped of the icky parts, and a civic nationalism rooted in a desire for the old throne and altar conservatism. It is a do-over of sorts, starting someone in the middle of the last century.

Taken as a whole, the Theil project is an interesting play by one of the most important and ambitious oligarchs. Unlike many of his fellow oligarchs at the table, he seems to get that a storm is brewing. If they wish to avoid the national razor, they better figure out how to create order from the chaos. Unlike the other oligarchs, people like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, Thiel is not trying to curry favor with the cultural Marxists. He seems to get that they are the problem.

The trouble, of course, is that this is a rearguard action. In order to rebuild those old walls, there has to be a ruling class consensus to defend. That was always the point critics missed about Conservative Inc. It was created as part of the ruling class consensus that formed up after the Cold War. One reason it is in ruins is the consensus no longer exists. Into that void is flowing the demographically driven identity politics that so frightens the civic nationalists.

That is another thing missed by the civic nationalists. You see it in that Deneen post about his new brand of conservatism. Defense of the liberal order, which is the heart of civic nationalism, was itself a creation of the post-Cold War consensus. Without that political center, civic nationalism is nothing more than armed men defending a city that has already been put to the torch by the radicals. The Rittenhouse story is not just a young man on trial. It is civic nationalism on trial.

While it is wise to assume the worst from these new projects, the fact that they exist should be read as good news. When the oligarchs are sensing that things are heading into very dangerous waters, it means they are ready to stop playing make believe and engage in serious politics. Cultural Marxism poses a greater threat to them than it does the common people. If the oligarchs start to question the prevailing moral orthodoxy, it opens the door for a legitimate challenge.

The Real Supply Chain Crisis

Posted on November 17, 2021 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a long post on the Star Trek franchise. I have been watching these off and on for a couple of years and have some thoughts on how the series evolved foreshadowing today’s events.

A popular plot in science fiction shows is that the human stars of the show discover technology from an ancient race. In trying to figure out how it works, they set off a reaction that puts them at risk. They realize they have to figure out the ancient alien technology in order to save the day. Usually, the moral of the story is that humans are infants in the universe. They may have conquered interstellar travel, but they are nowhere near ready to handle the complex stuff.

It is a popular storyline in science fiction shows because it allows the writers to cook up exotic technology without thinking about how it works. The technology can operate like magic to make the plot happen. It also lets the writers do some finger wagging at the enemies of Hollywood. The white cast members are humbled to learn that they are not at the top of the humanoid hierarchy. Mostly it is just an easy way to grind out a script for a television series like the Stargate franchise.

This concept is not without some parallels in this world. There were people in the early Middle Ages confronted with the same issue. They inherited things like aqueducts from the Romans but lacked the social capital to keep them going. The ancient Greeks assumed the Mycenean ruins were built by a race of giants. They could look at the ruins and imagine what they were at their peak, but they had no idea how they were built or who had built them. It was beyond their knowledge.

America may be entering a similar period. One of the growing complaints in the dreaded private sector is the lack of talent. The mass media notices the labor shortage in things like retail and hospitality, but the real scarcity is upstream. Finding people with the cognitive ability and work ethic to fill important roles is not easy. Often the choice is one or the other. The person has the talent but is unreliable or they are reliable but maybe a click below what the position demands.

The main driver is demographics. The Baby Boomer swan song is upon us, and it is showing up in the payroll registers of American companies. The first wave Boomers are in the prime retirement range. Covid has led many to clock out early. The second wave is in their early sixties, so they are planning to wrap things up. Generation-X is a much smaller cohort, and the Millennials are not ready for prime time. The talent – work ethic dichotomy is very obvious with Millennials.

Of course, it is with Millennials where the glories of diversity appear. They are the second least white generation. The Zoomers are mostly nonwhite. That talent – work ethic dichotomy is exacerbated by “the tax”. The cost, in terms of human capital, in hiring the younger generation is much higher, which means the talent for other things is decreased even further. Basically the private sector is facing a smart fraction problem that promises to get much worse in the near future.

This talent shortage is showing up in strange places. College football coaches are not considered super-smart guys, but it is a challenging job. They run what amounts to a mid-sized business with hundreds of employees. They also have to master the complexity of a game that has reached its peak in complexity. Here is an example of one part of a college football playbook. Finding men with the required skillset to run a college football program is becoming increasingly difficult.

The solution in sports like football is to simplify things. This is the new trend in the game to reflect the demographic reality. Instead of complex passing plays the offense just gives the ball to a fast guy and lets him run around with it. One of the top young quarterbacks in the NFL is Lamar Jackson. He scored a 13 on the Wonderlic test, which is what you would expect from a janitor. Lamar is not working a Rubik’s cube in his off hours nor is he studying a complex offensive system.

The dreaded private sector is going the same way. Automation is the way to reduce the need for talent. Using robots is one way to do this in manufacturing. Another way is software systems to atomize and control the required tasks. In the office, software is doing more of the analysis and decision making. Dispatchers, for example, are being replaced by software that routes field personnel. Those people in the field have mobile devices that fill in the blanks of their knowledge.

Part of what is driving the ruling class is the belief that technology can replace those retiring white Baby Boomers. The dream of the multicultural paradise, free of white power structures, assumes the robots will take over from the white people. No one thinks much about who is going to code, operate and maintain the AI. That is the fatal flaw in the plan. There will never be a time when the machines become self-sufficient and anything but super-racist.

The fact is, there is no escaping the ramifications of the cognitive decline. We have created a society that requires an average IQ of about 97. The distribution of smarts provided sufficient talent at each layer of society. The smart fraction was large enough to carry the rest. Now that IQ has dipped below that threshold, we are starting to see problems like the supply chain issues. This is just the beginning of a systemic collapse brought on by the lack of social capital.

That is the real supply chain crisis. Each generation is supposed to build on the next but starting in the middle of the last century this system started to break. The Baby Boomers did not create enough replacements. Worse yet, they did not train them to take up their positions. The waves of immigration have watered down the system further, creating shortages that will only get worse. Soon, Americans will be like those humans in the sci-fi shows, unable to operate ancient technology.

Rittenhouse Trial

Posted on November 16, 2021 by thezman

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial has gone to the jury after both sides presented their closing arguments and the state presented its rebuttal. Wisconsin stacks the deck against the accused by not only allowing the state the final word but giving them a chance to address the closing argument of the accused. That means before the jury got the case, they had to sit through a long day of the state making unfounded claims about their case as well as the case of the defense team.

Putting that aside, the trial has not exactly riveted the country, but it has become a symbol of the problems facing America. For example, there were the howler monkeys of the new religion writhing in agony whenever the judge enforced the basic rules of criminal procedure. Immediately they labeled the judge a white supremacist fascist and issued a fatwa against him. The death threats came pouring in and he is now under police protection. Welcome to America.

Twitter sponsored people on their platform calling for volunteers to show up at the court and get the names and faces of the jurors. This is not an official Twitter position, but as a publisher, they chose to allow their members to post these calls. In a sane society they would be liable for the people they boost on their platform. In present day America corporations are immune from all consequences. As long as they are true believers, they can do as they please.

On the other side of this you have people slowly waking up to the reality of the situation, who are glued to the case. They hold out hope that the jury does the moral thing and clears Rittenhouse of all charges. They do not want to see an innocent man condemned for holding the wrong opinions, but mostly they do not want to see the ugly reality of this age piled onto the head of a baby-faced young man. This trial offends the decency of the remaining honest men in this society.

For those who have had their awakening long ago, this trial is a continuation of the trend that now defines society. On the one hand we have America descending into a great terror aimed at the white population. The new religion is all about vengeance against white people. Juxtaposed to this are the people who see it, trying to find some way to wake up the rest of the people. This trial is another example of the aware desperately trying to warn the world.

Of course, that brings up the confused audience in this tragic drama. Most white people are trying to avoid looking at this trial. The grotesque nature of it turns their stomach, as it should. The ugliness of the human condition is on display. There are the savage calls for mob vengeance and the cruelty of fanaticism. This trial is a human sacrifice carried out by a mob of fanatical lunatics. Most white people thought we had evolved beyond this sort of thing. Welcome to America.

It is a good reminder of something said by John Stuart Mill. “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”

This has been the story of the last five years. The overwhelming majority of people in America, regardless of race or national origin, just want to live quiet lives enjoying the benefits of their circumstances. They are Burkean conservatives in that they do not want to flip over the tables and begin anew. That understandable and justifiable desire for stability and normalcy easily gives way to passivity in the face of evil. The story of the last five years is a nation of good men doing nothing.

This trial is probably a pivot point. The good men looking away do so with the certainty that their fellow citizens on the jury will do the right thing. They still trust the system even though they see the systemic corruption. If the jury sends this young man to prison many more eyes will be opened to the reality of this age. Not all, as some people put all of their efforts to remaining blissfully unaware. Theirs is a life of willful ignorance and a selfish disregard for the suffering of others.

On the other hand, the just verdict will allow most people to extend their holiday from reality a bit longer. They will comfort themselves in the belief that the system still works, despite what they have seen. Like a high wire performer who miraculously survives a fall and returns to his act, these people will learn nothing. Thoreau was right about most men living quiet lives of desperation. It is just that most men desperately wish to live outside of the great currents of history.

For those who have made the journey to this side of the great divide and see things as they are, this trial is just another opportunity. If the jury does the right thing, then the issue is why this kid was persecuted by these ghouls. If he is found guilty then the issue is the grotesque injustice at the hands of a savage mob of fanatics. The dissident is an opportunist, using every event to press a partisan case. The Rittenhouse case is just one more story in a long struggle for Western civilization.

Left-Wing Grifters

Posted on November 15, 2021 by thezman

Note: The regular Monday Taki post is up. This week I have some comparisons of our present state to the old Soviet Union. Behind the green door is the Sunday podcast and two movie reviews. If you are a subscriber, thank you for your support. If not, may Allah send the fleas of a thousand camels to nest in your groin.

A popular topic on this side of the great divide is who is and who is not a grifter, a shill or controlled opposition. The general assumption is that the people with perches in Conservative Inc. are working some sort of con. Maybe their racket is to keep people from looking over the great divide. These are the gatekeepers. Others may co-opt a dissident idea and then neuter it. They say things like Critical Race Theory is actually an attack on nonwhites so white people can oppose it.

Often forgotten is that the other side has their fair share of grifters who make a comfortable living working the true believers. Here is an example from the Daily Beast of what can be called woo-woo for the wokies. The writer is telling them that their newly minted hero, Liz Cheney, and an old has-been named Chris Christie, will give Trump a run for his money in the 2024 Republican primary. The Twitter thread on this topic is an amusing window into political mental illness.

The writer is someone calling himself Matt Lewis. He used to play the role of snarky conservative, but that was just an act. At a young age he was harvested and cultivated by the neoconservatives. When the fortunes of the neocons faded, he did what all rats do on a sinking ship. He now peddles his wares as a reformed conservative to a gullible audience at the Daily Beast. It is a trip that so many have made that it has become a stock figure in the American political drama.

As you see with the grifters of Conservative Inc., the left-wing variety sells the true believers the latest items from the one true faith. In this case the item for sale is that Liz Cheney is a folk hero for finking on her party and her voters. She has signed onto the Stalin-esque show trial called the January 6 Commission. This is where the Left gets to claim that normal white people exercising their ancient rights are white supremacist insurrectionists and a threat to “our democracy”.

The main difference between the woke grifters and the conservative grifters is the former works in a world of pure imagination. Say what you want about Ben Shapiro, but he is not wrong about the “constitutional principle” business. If we had a ruling class that enforced the old rules, things would be better for everyone. His grift lies in convincing people that it is still possible with this ruling class. He turns a virtue into the vice of defending the enemies of the people.

Because the left-wing grifter operates in the world of fantasy, he has an easier time of it, but is barred from factual reality. At some level, they must believe the same nonsense as their intended suckers. In the case of neocons like Matt Lewis, he harbors the same hatred for the white people as the true believers. The neocons may be driven by hyperviolent fantasies about world conquest, but they also detest the heritage population every bit as much as the wokest wokie.

It is that blind hatred that allows the crazies to now embrace Liz Cheney. You have to admire the skill with which the neocons have ingratiated themselves with their old friends on the Left. Not long ago the name “Cheney” was spelled H-i-t-l-e-r by the readers of the Daily Beast. He was the master of the Haliburton Hurricane Machine that devastated New Orleans and unleashed hell on the Arabs. It requires a special brand of crazy to do a heel turn like that in such a short time.

Of course, what wads a lot of this together into a slimy ball of hatred for the average American is a sense of class consciousness. The new religion is the religion of the new class, the managerial class that now commands the high ground. The middling celebrities of the commentariat are driven as much by their duty to their own class as they are by genuine belief. To people like Matt Lewis, those Trump voters outside the hive walls are a threat to his people.

It is completely bonkers that anyone would think that Liz Cheney has a future in Republican politics. That is one of those bits of good news, a little green shoot, that should give the good guys a little hope. The people on the other side are increasingly driven mad by the contradictions of their new religion. If the good guys could create and insert chaos agents into the system, Liz Cheney would be a good example. Every time she speaks in public, another dissident is born.

Another bit of good news in stories like this is that the neoconservatives have really fallen on hard times. That cabal now exists on an island off the coasty of crazy-ville, supported by a billionaire Persian who thinks he may be Cyrus the Great. The second generation of neocons squandered the tribal fortune and the third generation makes the Kennedy gene pool like deep. Like so much of the managerial class, neoconservatism now reeks of its own decay.

Concepts of The Hive

Posted on November 11, 2021 by thezman

The opposite rule of liberalism says that whatever the Left is saying, you should start with the opposite and that is where you will probably find the truth. For example, if they are accusing one of their bogeymen of something, most likely the target is not doing it and is not the bad guy. Odds are, it is the Left engaging in the activity. Whether it is latent guilt or deliberate distraction, the Left tends to accuse others of the things they are doing or plan to do in the future.

It is not always simple like we learned with the Russian collusion hoax. The Left is fond of creating elaborate and plausible concepts that they can use to frame issues so that they are the default moral position. Homosexual marriage is an example where they inverted the morality of the issue. Normal people felt the need to explain why we should maintain normal marriage, as if it was a novel concept. The opposite, of course, was the truth but it was hard for people to see it.

The idea of the social construct is a good example of how it is not easy to tease out the truth from what the Left is saying. It is tempting to use the opposite rule of liberalism and say that there is no such thing as a social construct. Something like sex is obviously not an invented thing and people are not assigned sex at birth. While their concept of gender is nonsense, there are gender roles in society. These are closely tied to biological sex and the natural differences between the sexes.

Where the opposite rule of liberalism applies in regard to something like social constructs is that it is not the normal world that is a construct but rather how the Left engages with the world that is a creation of their mind. Like the simple example of the Russian collusion hoax, the Left is accusing Mother Nature of creating constructs of the mind when it is the Left that is doing it. In fact, everything about the Left relies on an invented moral framework that does not exist in realty.

A good example of this is the “hate researcher”. There are people running around now with that title. Another flavor of this is the extremism expert. Whenever the media wants to label someone a heretic and have them hurled into the void, they call on people with one of these titles. The target is identified, the hate researcher provides the “data” proving that this person meets the definition of a hater or extremist, and therefore they deserve to be hurled into the void.

The fact that there can be no such thing as a hate researcher, or an extremism expert is never questioned. Hate is an entirely subjective term as used by the Left. It does not actually mean an intense or passionate dislike. Instead, they have created a new definition that means something close to unorthodox and taboo. Most of the people accused of being a hater do not, in fact, hate anyone. They simply disagree from the prevailing orthodoxy with regards to the human condition.

Of course, “extreme” is and must be an entirely subjective term. Extremes are relative, so it all depends upon your perspective. People into “extreme sports” are not all that crazy to the people in those sports. Someone holding an extreme opinion is only considered to be an extremist in relation to others. Researching extremism, beyond explaining the subjectivity of the term and how it is used, is like researching UFO encounters or Big Foot sightings.

What the Left has done is create a moral framework. Inside the framework are the acceptable truths and outside are the taboo ideas. Wrong and right are not determined by factual accuracy but by the rules of the moral framework. Accepting the facts of table 43 of the Uniform Crime Report is wrong even though it is factual accurate. When the Left accuses the world of creating social constructs, it is because everything about their understanding of the world is through a social construct.

The hate expert and extremism researcher are similarly inventions that can only exist within the rules of the moral framework. In actuality there is no such thing and can be no such thing without the warped moral code of the Left. What the Left is doing, what they are expert at doing, is creating the required social constructs that allow them to anathematize things that contradict their current beliefs. It is how something can go from taboo to virtuous in the blink of an eye.

Another good example of this is the concept of “racism”. It is another invention that does not exist in the real world. The Left defines this as prejudice plus power and power is only held by white people. The reason for that is society is a social construct made by and for white people. This mean the lowliest white guy has power, while Barak Obama is his powerless victim. Therefore, by definition, the only people who can be racist are white people, because they have power.

It is only in the matrix of the Left’s fantasy world that this idea can seem real. The moral concept of racism would have been baffling to people a century ago. Prejudice was certainly something people have always known. They also considered it perfectly normal as tastes are subjective. Some people hate lima beans while others love them, but that says nothing about the nature of lima beans. The same applies to people’s taste in other people and other tribes.

This is why clarity of language is such a powerful weapon against the Left, even when wielded by crude people. When a leftist uses the term “hate speech” and someone corrects them with “you mean taboo speech” they will get very nervous. At some level, the Left knows the moral world they inhabit is a fiction. Using clear language to turn the lights on and expose the fiction is horrifying to them. Their fantasy world works only when they can commit to it totally.

Maintaining this fictional moral universe may be why the Left is so prone to accusing others of what they are doing. It is a defense mechanism. By shifting the focus to outside their safe zone, they get to avoid see the reality of their world. It is an extension of their natural self-loathing. The fictional world replaces their hated sense of self and the projection onto enemies of their own fears about themselves provides a necessary distraction from the reality of their condition.

Revanchism

Posted on November 10, 2021 by thezman

Revanchism is a political movement based in the desire to reverse territorial losses after a war or cultural upheaval, like a revolution. The term originated in France in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. Nationalists wanted to avenge the French defeat and reclaim the lost territories of Alsace-Lorraine. It is often mingled with irredentism, the desire for lost territory based on legend. Israel’s territorial claims in the Levant are an example of both concepts.

In the West, revanchism is generally associated with the Right and especially with nationalist politics. The revanchists wish their nation to reclaim lost turf on perhaps fulfill its destiny by reclaiming its ancient territory. It can also mean a reassertion of the old culture and traditions, rolling back the current culture which is seen as foreign or illegitimate in some way. Revanchists want to go back to some point in the past where they think the break occurred in the culture.

An example is this American Conservative post by Sohrab Ahmari, Gladden Pappin, and Chad Pecknold. It is titled, “In Defense of Cultural Christianity”, an apologia for the traditional Christian order. It is not a defense but rather a call to reassert a pre-Reformation Catholicism and the political and social elements required to do it. Theirs is a “throne-and-altar” conception of conservatism that seeks to restore the Church as the partner of the secular state.

This wing of the Revanchist Right is responding to the modern Gnosticism of the Left, especially its view of the material world. Since the modern Left does not believe in an afterlife or God, their view of the material world as being hostile to the sacred essence of man leads to a war on the material world itself. Rather than transcending this life, like the Gnostics of old, the modern Progressive seeks to conquer nature and transform it into the tool of the fully self-aware man.

These Catholic revanchists are not the first to note the utopianism of modern liberal thought or its connection to Gnosticism. Conservative gadfly William F. Buckley popularized Eric Voegelin’s phrase “Don’t immanentize the eschaton!”, which became a conservative slogan in the 1960’s. Immanentize the eschaton means trying to bring about the final, heaven-like stage of history in this world. Hans Jonas, a century ago, noted the link between Gnosticism and modern thought.

This link between Gnosticism, Progressivism and the Catholic response to ancient Gnosticism is clear in the essay. “The thoroughly anti-gnostic Augustine, moreover, viewed Catholic cultural Christianity as an elongation of the Incarnation. It was its incarnational, anti-gnostic realism about our social and political nature that lent the Christian order of Europe its radiant vitality, its longevity and strength.” In other words, the proper response to the modern is the ancient.

The authors go on to point out that the secular state that subordinates all religion inevitably leads to a deracinated, gnostic form of Christianity. You can enjoy your faith in total private, but it can have no place in the culture or society. In the modern context, Christianity becomes just another hobby that can have no impact on this world or the people in it. You are left with a form of Rod Dreher-ism, in which you must retreat from the material world and wait for salvation in the next.

As an aside, it is interesting that this essay is posted on the American Conservative website, where Rod Dreher promotes his bespoke Gnosticism. He does not sell it as such, but that is what he is selling. His form of orthodoxy is just the special of the day at the cafeteria of Christianity. From the point of view of the revanchists, his call to retreat from this world is just another manifestation of the deracination and degradation of man by the liberal moral order.

Putting that aside, the revanchists are correct for the wrong reasons. They correctly see that the throne and altar are inevitably linked. They seem to think this is a Catholic innovation, but that is incorrect. The joining of the supernatural with human hierarchy is as old as human society. Every ruling elite needs authority, and that authority comes from legitimacy. There is no better way to solve this problem than to claim the ruler or ruling elite are the will of the gods or actual gods.

Once belief is understood as a natural part of man’s nature, like intelligence or the desire to reproduce, the question becomes, what should man believe? This has been the engine of human conflict and human progress since the beginning. The Catholic Church was a late comer to this battle for the soul of man. Modern liberalism may have roots in the ancient past, but it too is late to the party. It displaced that old order the revanchists seek to restore.

That is the central problem of revanchist thinking. It is not hard to make a compelling case in favor of the old throne-and-altar but there is a reason why it was abandoned in favor of the liberal order. Simply dismissing that reality as a wrong turn in the arc of history or a sign of moral decline avoids the issue. The Catholic Imperium has a defined beginning, the conversion of Roman emperor Constantine the Great in 312 CE, and a less well define end, possibly the Treaty of Westphalia.

To make the claim that this is a universal or timeless moral framework has to address why it did not exist for most of human history and why it was pushed aside. This is a problem shared by all cultural revanchism. In its reaction to the present, it blinds itself to the failings of the past. As a result, it becomes a form of escapism, where the past becomes fantasy literature. In this case, the Catholic integralist gets to imagine what it would be like to live in Medieval Europe.

The anti-Gnostics, however, should not be dismissed. Their observations about modern liberalism are useful, if incomplete. What we see with liberal democracy is an effort to solve its own internal conflict. It rejects the supernatural, but like all political orders, it needs an external source of legitimacy. It is trying to evolve one that only hints at the supernatural by leaving out large swaths of reality that can only be filled in with an undefined faith in the present order.

This is why the term “woke” is popular. These people are aware of their eternal identity, which is analogous to being aware of their divine essence. The great war between those “defending our democracy” and the so-called fascists is a rework of the old Gnostic dualism where the material world is evil, and the god is pure good. Critical theory then becomes the logos connecting the two. Modern Gnosticism is the quest for legitimacy and authority in a secular world.

In the end, revanchism can only be a starting point to model a new moral order that incorporates the old while recognizing its flaws. A new moral order will have to appeal to people as they are in this deracinated modern state. That means what comes next must be a continuation, rather than a rollback. That is both difficult and frightening, which is why revanchism will grow in popularity. Even so, the path is always forward. There is no going back to a prior age, no matter how much we desire it.

The Radical Middle

Posted on November 9, 2021 by thezman

Note: For those who Allah has blessed with a soul, there is a review of the near classic Western, Dance with Wolves up behind the green door. Those without a sub, condemned to a life of darkness, may Allah have pity on you.

For generations, one of the ironies of American politics is that the rank and file of the two main factions never get what they want but they stick with their side. The recent election is a good example of this as the “winning team” was immediately finked on by their party. They thought the message they sent to their leaders and the rulers is they are done with the craziness. The Republican leaders promptly supported the Democrats in generating more crazy.

It has been noted before that for the people who call themselves conservative and support the Republican Party, their best president was Bill Clinton. His was the most conservative administration since Eisenhower, according to the modern definition of conservative. The worst president was George W. Bush, the guy the Republican Party claimed was the epitome of conservatism. Conservative voters still hate Bill Clinton and mostly ignore Bush.

The Democrat side is not much better. The typical Democrat thought was Bush was Hitler reimagined, but he gave them almost everything they wanted. They opposed his crusades against Islam, but only because he was leading it. They forgot all about their antiwar rhetoric when their guy was installed to lead the crusade. Their most recent hero, Barak Obama, delivered on none of his promises to them. Instead, he catered to the party’s ideological and financial interests

There have been many attempts to explain this. The ideological march to the Left has been described as the ratchet effect. The political dynamic is the Left proposes, the Right opposes, and the synthesis is 80% of what the Left demanded. The cycle repeats with each election to one degree or another. The result is that America has become increasingly ideological in its politics and increasingly left-wing. The subsequent policy changes reflect the ideological march to the Left.

This may have been true in the Cold War with regards to domestic policy and perhaps the muscle memory remains but there is something else. Since the end of the Cold War, the American Left embraces cultural Marxism. The old liberalism, which was very lightly decorated with Marxist rhetoric, has given way to a politics of critical theory and Gramscian cultural politics. The Left is now purely about agitation and menticide in order to undermine and collapse the dominant culture.

This has led to a change in what conservatism sells to its side of the fight. The subplot of Republican politics is now stability, safety, and normalcy. The constant crisis of corruption that marked the Clinton years was replaced by the patriotic normalcy of the Bush years. The Republicans are now selling this as an antidote to the uncertainty and instability of the Trump – Biden years. The Virginia election was all about a return to normalcy so conservative voters could go back to grilling.

The new dynamic, new as in the last thirty years, is a clash of visions divorced from actual policy disputes. The one side promises to subvert, disrupt, and confront the prevailing order. The other side promises to supply stability, safety, and a sense of normalcy to society. One side wants to shake the snow globe until is it destroyed and the other side wants to place it back on the shelf so it can settle. Both sides agree on the shared premise of their position.

That shared premise is supplied by the Left. The core assumption of the modern Left is the Marxist assumption. Man is naturally communistic. The old Marxists thought it was the economic arrangements of capitalism that locked man into a competitive struggle with himself, rather than settling into his natural communism. The new Marxists think the villain is culture. They have seized control of the means of cultural production so they can liberate man from bourgeois society.

The so-called conservatives, perhaps unwittingly, accept this premise. They seek to prevent the Left from shaking society apart with their endless disruptions. Their defense of the status quo is not so much a defense of the natural order, something they now fear uttering even in private. Instead, their defense of the present order is simply to provide them with a role in the process. The Left proposes and the Right opposes is now the Left disrupts and the Right cleans up the mess.

This was why both sides feared and hated Trump and his supporters. It is not a policy issue or even a presentation issue. It is the clash of visions. The people most enthusiastically on the side of Trump think that man’s natural state is not communistic but orderly and hierarchical. They think if the prevailing orthodoxy collapses, what rises from the ashes is not communism but a new traditionalism. More important, the Left will no longer have barricades behind which they can hide.

This is why the critiques of Trump by people claiming to be outside the political dynamic are narrow and childish. He was not the Pinochet they imagined, so they slammed their rattle on the highchair and threw a tantrum. Just as the Trump phenomena exposed the hollowness of conservatism, it revealed the shallowness of what is often fobbed off as a dissident critique of it. They failed to understand that Trump was just a wrecker who wanted to tear it down and let nature take its course.

In fairness, Trump may not even get this deeper meaning of his politics, as he is not inclined to intellectual introspection. Most of his red-cap wearing loyalists are blissfully unaware of this sort of analysis. That is not the point. The point is they start from the assumption that if they could burn it all down, what would naturally rise up in its place is the sort of orderly hierarchy the genuine Right thinks is man’s nature. It is a rejection of the core belief of the ruling orthodoxy.

The lesson here is that a genuine opposition should look at the calls for stability and normalcy the same way they view the calls for subversion and disruption. They are two sides of the same coin, two dancing partners heading to the same end. The antidote to left-wing disruption is not stability, but right-wing disruption that helps break the white middle-class of its addiction to stability and compromise. A genuine alternative seeks to radicalize rather than anesthetize the middle-class.

The Eloi State

Posted on November 8, 2021 by thezman

Note: The weekly Taki post is up. It ties in with the post this week. Sunday Thoughts, the weekly podcast for the elect, is up behind the green door. If for some reason you did not notice it, I was on with RamZPaul Saturday and you can listen that here.

A truth learned from the study of economics is that competition between suppliers tends to create better products and services. Better in the economic context does not always mean more innovative or better quality. Sometimes the better product is simply more cost effective than the alternatives. The Wintel computer was never the technologically superior option, but it was the most cost effective. Competition often arrives at the solution that is merely good enough.

On the other hand, when companies or industries are able to shield themselves from competition they tend to decline in quality. The prices creep up as the quality and selection declines. The domestic car makers in America experienced this in the middle of the last century. By the 1970’s, their cars were silly and unreliable. Competition from overseas forced them to compete and that made for better cars. Competition is the economic equivalent of accountability.

The time traveler in the H. G. Wells novel The Time Machine observed that “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.” A corollary is that responsibility and a sense of duty is the compensation for accountability. A natural consequence of accountability is a duty and obligation to the rules under which you operate. When you are held accountable for your actions, you act in private as if the world is watching.

We see this in the whole “go woke, go broke” meme. The fact that none of these woke firms go broke is the important piece. That is the reason corporate America is rushing to embrace the most absurd things. They know they will never be held accountable for their actions, so they have no duty to the rest of us. The people who made the perverted Twix commercial did it because it costs them nothing. Mars is a massive global enterprise immune from the marketplace.

The tech sector is the most obvious example. They have spent decades colluding with one another to suppress wages and deny people their civil rights because they never have to worry about consequences. They may compete with one another at the fringes, but in essence they are a cartel with monopoly power. It is not as if you are going to build your own internet. The market forces we think should exits to hold these firms accountable no longer exists, so they do as they please.

This has been true of politics for a long time. The CIA put out a report in the late 1980’s claiming that the Soviet Union is getting stronger due to the massive success of the Gorbachev reforms. A few months later the Soviet empire collapsed. No one was ever held accountable. In fact, it is fair to say that the power of the Soviets had been overstated for generations. No one was ever held to account, so this was pushed aside with the other lies and blunders.

More recently, many of the same characters were involved in selling the world on the great Muslim threat. The West was turned into a police state because the Muslims wanted to impose Islam-o-fascisms on us. Trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives were spent on a problem that never existed. Since no one would ever be held accountable for the result, not one felt a duty to be right. They just made up whatever would benefit them at the moment.

Even closer to home, there was a local election last week that got national attention as a referendum on the parties. The Virginia governor race was a big success for the Republicans, who immediately used their new political capital to fink on their voters and support the other side. They did it because they know they will never be held accountable for it. Politics is now entirely immune from the marketplace of ideas, so there is no accountability and therefore no responsibility.

We see the same thing in the media. For half a decade they sold the Russian conspiracy hoax to the public. The recent indictments shows that they knew it was a lie when they were selling it. Everyone involved knew it was fake. No one will resign in disgrace or offer a tearful apology. They simply laugh and move onto the next hoax they are told to peddle. There is no shame because there is no accountability. What are you going to do, build your own mass media?

The lack of shame is perhaps the final stage. A reckless disregard for duty can still elicit shame, even if the person knows they will never be held accountable. Once this lack of accountability is normalized, morality collapses. Without morality, there can be no shame, which is what we see with the media. They are shameless because the people in the media no longer possess the normal moral coding. If they have a moral code at all, it is based in a disdain for the rest of us.

The central question posed by The Time Machine is whether life can go on without struggle and if so, should it? The two halves of future humanity, the Elois and Morlocks were scarcely human. They had reached a point where they had conquered the necessary conditions of human civilization. Once struggle had been eliminated, the skills to win the struggle atrophied. What the time traveler observed was not the apex of humanity, but the end of it.

A similar question can be asked about the collapse of accountability. Can a society survive when the people in charge of it are no longer responsible for it? The climax of the Enlightenment project appears to be a world in which the people at the top have finally been insulated from all accountabilities. Oddly, they are the Eloi ruling over the Morlocks, feckless children oppressing what they view as the lesser beasts. Is this the apex of Western civilization or the end of it?

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