Category Archives: Badder Thoughts

Liberal Democratic Anarchy

Posted on by

In theory, the difference between mob rule and liberal democracy is that the former operates outside of authority, while the latter is limited by a set of principles. The former is operating in the moment while the latter is deliberative. Instead of just doing what feels right in the moment, like exacting revenge, liberal democracy has processes and limits, forcing people to think about what they are doing before they act. It is majority rule slowed to a crawl by the ideals of western liberalism.

The problem is that liberal democracy is an industrial age political philosophy that is unsuited for the technological age. Fifty years ago, information flowed primarily by words on a page, carried around by men. Television and radio sped up the flow of information, but the information still got into those networks by foot. Before it could be on television, someone had to go out to the scene, make video, carry it back to the studio and then edit it. It was still a slow world.

Today, information flows at the speed of light. A conspiracy theory can be hatched and promoted to millions on-line in a matter of minutes. As the old expression goes, a lie is around the world before the truth is out of bed. It is why the race hoax has become a phenomenon of this age. By the time the truth of the incident has been revealed, we are onto the third or fourth race hoax. These stories collectively build up in the system to the point where they cumulatively become a truth of their own.

An easy example is the Chauvin case. There are people absolutely sure he stood on the man’s neck for nine minutes. They were convinced of this by the bombardment of lies they experienced on-line. They never bothered to watch the whole video when it was finally released. Why would they? They knew and everyone around them knew that Chauvin stood on Floyd’s neck until he suffocated. It is just another example of racist cops murdering an innocent black body for the crime of being black.

In a mass media society like ours, there can be no deliberation, so the psychology is that of the mob, not liberal democracy. There can be no concern for limits and process, as we are all forced to decide by those around us on-line. That is what happens in a mob of people excited by some event. As with a school of fish or a flock of birds, each person is responding to the actions of those around him. Mob psychology is an emergent property that transcends the mentality of the members.

A very good example is the behavior of corporate America. Supposedly, the heads of the largest corporations have been plotting to undermine what is left of election integrity in America. They had a “first of its kind” conference call about Georgia. They were compelled to act because, well, everyone around them is sure that Georgia has just reinstituted Jim Crow. They know this because everyone around them knows this and all of those people are good people like them.

We live in an age in which the most powerful people on the planet, some are the most powerful who have lived on this planet, truly feel they are in a twilight struggle against forces greater than themselves. The heads of the big banks think they are the little guy facing off against some invisible goliath. Others helpfully anthropomorphize it with pictures of people waving Trump signs. The insurrection hoax is all about validating the very real fear of the most powerful people on the planet.

This is the psychology of the mob. Whatever drove the people to show up on the street is soon confirmed and becomes the identity of the whole. The individual shows up because he is angry about something. Quickly he is just another corpuscle in the organism that is the collective anger of the members. He is now swept up in the mob, like a cork on an angry sea. Even though he could have real power in his own right, he feels powerless as a part of the mob swarming around him.

This is liberal democracy in the technological age. Democracy cloaks the people who are naturally in charge of society with the concept of the public will. Public policy is not the result of one man or a group of men, it is democracy. The price and supply of goods is not the result of decisions made by specific people, but by the invisible hand of the marketplace responding to millions of silent decisions. In a democracy, no one is responsible, because everyone is responsible, so no one is accountable.

In the slow motion world of the industrial age, this headless system can work reasonably well because people have time to stop and think. In the technological age, where no one can think about anything, cooler heads are trampled into the dust by mobs pushed along by forces external to themselves. Worse still, the mob mentality is amplified, so it is not just a mob, but a deafening mob. Those will real power fear the mob, so they lend their power to the mob.

Critics looking at what is happening, assume the people in charge, the people with real power, see some benefit in the chaos. Like liberal democracy, bourgeois objectivism is an artifact of a bygone age.  In the technological age, the age of instant communication, the mob mentality is what prevails. What is good for the individual is no different than what is good for a liver cell. Individual good is subsumed into the emergent properties of the whole and the mentality of the individual is the mentality of the mob.

So much of what is happening today is just a replay of mistakes made a generation ago, often by people still in power. The assault on law and order is right out of the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. Most of the people in charge today were young adults back in those days. They should have the wisdom to see what is happening, but they care caught up in the moment like everyone else. They don’t feel like they have power, so they act like they are as powerless as the rest of us.

Liberal democracy in the technological age results in anarchy and mob rule. The consequences are inevitable. America is shaking itself to death over problems that could be mitigated with a little deliberation and respect for limits. No one has time for that as there is always another crisis, another mob demanding immediate attention for the object of their rage. Mob rule always ends in blood, either the blood of the mob or the blood of the innocent. This age most likely ends in both.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Wish-Casting

Posted on by

Note: The weekly Taki post is up here. This week I go back to an old favorite of comparing modern day America to Russian, past and present. There is also a cornucopia of items behind the green door. Since so many were vexed with me about my position on crypto, I suggest proving me wrong by sending me your crypto.

Hope and optimism are the two things that propel life forward. Sometimes they lead to disaster, but often enough they lead to good results. Innovation, after all, is rooted in hope and optimism. If cynicism were the default for mankind, we would never have taken a shot on that new thing called the wheel. Risk taking requires a degree of foolish optimism and a hope that this time things will be different. On the other hand, too much optimism becomes escapism, a way to avoid reality.

If it were possible to measure hope and optimism, specifically misplaced hope and optimism, in a society, it would probably be a useful metric. A people unrealistically hopeful for the future are probably filled with dread, because their current situation is seemingly hopeless. Instead of grimly facing the reality of their situation, many choose to cast their hopes and aspirations onto someone or something. The popularity of wish-casting increases as the situation declines.

An example of this would be the Obama presidency. Few people talk about him these days, even though his term ended just five years ago. When he ran for office, however, his fans talked about him like he was Jesus. Despite his embarrassingly thin resume, they projected onto him the image of black Lincoln. There was little reason to think this man would do much of anything, given his nature and the people around him, but his fans were sure he was going to usher in the golden age.

It feels like a long time ago, but it was a very strange phenomenon. The people who had heralded Hillary Clinton as the new model woman suddenly treated her as the locus of evil in the world. Their new champion defeated her in the great contest and then he ascended the throne. Party stores had special Obama themed items produced so believers could have their Obama parties on inauguration day. For millions, it was the rapture, except it happened entirely in their imagination.

Something similar happened with Trump at the end of his term. Unlike Obama, he did not immediately develop a cult following. He won mostly because the alternative was so unpleasant that anything had to be better. It was during his term, as it became clear he was never going to do what he promised, that he developed a cult following. By the end, he was Trump the guy with a secret plan to win the election. When the shenanigans hit home, he became a superhero with a secret plan to overturn the result.

The Trump and Obama comparison offer an insight into how this wish-casting phenomenon works in liberal democracy. The people disappointed by Bill Clinton and then disaffected by Bush, turned to the escapism of Obama. The same sort of thing happened with Trump, except it required his victory in 2016 to trigger the process, as he was too much of a known quantity in 2016. Obama was a blank slate, while Trump’s slate needed a lot of scrubbing to clear some space for the wish-casting.

The Q-phenomenon is another good example. What started as an internet prank on the MAGA people became a weird fantasy cult. It combined the elements of conspiracy theory with the essentials of wish-casting. Every event was turned into proof that the prophesies would come true and the faithful would be rewarded. The size of the Q-cult was exaggerated by the media, of course, but a lot of people preferred that fantasy over the reality of the present, which says a lot about the age.

The crypto cult is looking a lot like the Q-cult all of a sudden. This one combines the silly promises of Austrian economics, the reality avoidance of libertarianism, with a form of techno-futurism. Bitcoin is going to usher in the anarcho-capitalist future, where the power of the state is broken and all of the bad things about the cultural war are rolled back to some happy place in the past. How this will happen does not matter, as what matters is the dream of a new reality, free of the present.

You can probably fit the insurrectionist fantasies of our political class into this phenomenon as well. Rather than face the reality of their situation, they focus on bizarre conspiracies about invisible white supremacists. Reality is we live in a tripartite system of corporate interests, radical cultural interests and the state. The result is a doddering old man as the face of a nation slowly tipping into crisis. Instead of facing that, they are obsessed with secret conspiracies about white people.

That last bit becomes more interesting when you put it in the context of the cult of Obama and how it ended. The lunacy that erupted on the Left when Trump won in 2016 was never about Trump. It was about the final end of the Obama fantasy. Not only was he not black Jesus, he was never the savior. The people who worshipped him and hated Hilary, had transferred their love for him onto Clinton and their hate for her onto Trump during the 2016 election, especially toward the end.

What all of this suggests is we are moving further into a collective psychological crisis as the cultural situation degrades. Rather than face the reality of a fading empire that should have been dismantled thirty years ago, people are escaping into these aspirational cults. Even the political class is embracing escapism. There is always a bit of irrational exuberance. Progress requires a degree of optimism. What we are experiencing today is closer to systemic mass delusion.

This may not be entirely without precedent. Historians debate why the Athenians waged the Peloponnesian War as they did. The decision to attack Syracuse is a legendary blunder that defies reason. Perhaps it was the result of the same phenomenon that we are seeing today. A thoroughly democratized people, unable to face the reality of what that entails, indulges in wish-casting, placing all hope into a person or a plan. What lies at the other end is a shocking corrective that breaks the spell.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Time For A Divorce

Posted on by

Elections in America have always been contentious things, as the point of them is to get all sides as agitated as possible. If you wanted to find the point at which our elections turned ugly it would be when the concept of turnout became the focus. The surest way to get your guys motivated to vote is to convince them that the alternative is pure evil, the worst thing imaginable. Since one side will always lose, it means something close to half the country is always angry at the result.

The thing is though, it was always a game and most people got it. The candidates would say the vilest things about one another, but then carry on like old pals during a debate, showing the world they did not really mean those things. In fact, this is why the Left has controlled the country. Everyone else has always been sure the Left was not really serious about what they were saying. Despite it all, many people remain convinced that the Left today is just putting on a show.

That may be one of the factors creating the current crisis. The eruption of mass media over the last couple of decades puts the Left in our face all the time. There is no escaping politics today, which means there is no escaping the Left. Watch a sporting event and there will be lefty political preaching. Check the weather for your trip to the beach and you get a lecture on global warming. Go outside and you see people wearing three masks in their car, letting you know they are in that cult.

Of course, social media is like standing in front of a firehose. Even if you only want to follow something banal like entertainment news, you will be drenched in political commentary, almost entirely from the Left. The carnies all fashion themselves as philosophers now. The athletes have made politics a feature of their act. These are the dumbest, crudest people in our society, but they are sure you need to know what they have to say about current events.

There is another part to this. Along with not being able to escape the left-wing crazies, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no living with them. Politics, regardless of the system, is about compromise. The opposing sides find some middle ground that they can accept or some combination of their proposals that prevent either side from feeling cheated by the other. In a democracy, compromise is based on the understanding that both sides want what is best.

How do you reach a compromise with someone who thinks invisible men from a faraway land used mind control to change an election? On top of that, they were perfectly willing to destroy the country over it. If one side is sure the other side is evil, there can never be a compromise. The best you can get is a truce in the hostilities, but eventually one side will attack again. After all, any compromise with evil is immoral on its face, so the only more thing to do is confront it.

Take a look at this tweet from a man who is the former Director of CIA & NSA. He is convinced that we need to round up citizens and put them in concentration camps because they said things he does not like. The regime has already imprisoned dozens of people on trumped up charges. America is now a country with political prisoners being tortured while in prison. This ghoul wants to institutionalize the persecution and torture of Americans who disagree with official policy.

How can you compromise with a person who literally wants you dead? Even if you dismiss him as a fanatic, look at the responses. The people replying to him are both demented and delusional. It is not unreasonable to say that many of them are suffering from a form of mental illness. If you think the capitol protests were an insurrection or comparable to a terrorist attack, you need to be institutionalized. There is no reasoning or compromising with someone in this condition.

The thing is, of course, is the majority of the ruling class truly believes they are confronting an invisible army of white supremacists. If you polled the media, you can be sure that the overwhelming majority think the protestors are getting off easy. At the same time, they think the two blacks who killed the Uber driver in DC were given rough justice, because racism. We live with people who think it is fine for blacks to murder people, but you cannot question the results of the last election.

The old civic nationalist response to this is “well we just have to make sure to vote for the Republicans in the next election.” Even if conservatives were something other than apologists for their masters on the Left, it does not change the fact that close to half the country wants to murder you. They are not going to lose an election and then think, “Geez, maybe I don’t need to murder that guy with the Trump flag.” Instead, they are going get even more deranged and murderous.

Again, politics has always been contentious, and the Left has always thought they were on a holy mission against the forces of evil. The pretty lie that made it possible to live together was that we all wanted what was best for the country. Like a couple realizing they no longer love one another, we have reached the point where we know we can no longer live with that 20% called the Left. The only possible compromise is with ourselves, which is just another way of describing surrender.

If there is to be a solution to the current crisis it will come when enough white people give up on this relationship with the Left. The people living in whites-only neighborhoods chanting about antiracism are beyond reason. The people demanding the state torture citizens who question official policy can never be trusted. The only peaceful solution is peaceful separation. The only compromise is how best to divvy up the property and even that is only to expedite the divorce. It is time to move on.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Who Is Behind This?

Posted on by

Most Americans have always understood that their politicians are not really in charge of the government or even their own offices. The secret hand of “special interests” guide the daily functioning of the state. In the old days this meant rich guys from the world of business, local interest in the home state of the representative and powerful people with connections inside government. These days it is those things plus government unions and foreign powers like Israel and China.

Despite the role of special interests, people still participated in the democratic process on the assumption that everything has a limit. Those special interests manipulating the system would have to yield to popular will eventually. After all, those politicians have interests too. If they keep finking on their voters, they will find themselves on the losing end of the next election. Even the most craven politician would eventually have to draw the line with the money men telling him how to vote.

A regular plot in movies and television is the politician who has a crisis of conscience over some issue and he turns on the money men in support of the people. Alternatively, and now quite amusingly, a heroic member of the press exposes the shady backroom deals to the public. The public, having been informed of the shady dealings, turns on the participants. Sometimes it is a combination of these plots, but in the end the public will triumphs over the shady backroom dealers.

When you stop and think about it, the way in which politics and the media are presented in movies and television is a masterful bit of propaganda. On the one hand, it fully acknowledges the corruption of all democratic politics. The people in the system are always bad people. On the other hand, the bad guys always lose to the good guys, the voters, so it is proof that the system works. In other words, political corruption is turned into proof that the system works. That is some real 4-D chess.

If you want to take the 4-D chess idea further, you can add in the occasional arrest of a shady politician for political corruption. These scandals are always turned into morality tales by the authorities and the media. The FBI starts dishing dirt about the target to stenographers in the media. Then they coordinate with the media for the big day when the scoundrel is hauled away in chains. Often, the story is then forgotten, as it has served its purpose in reinforcing the narrative of democracy.

Of late, something seems to be broken with the system. It started with the governor of South Dakota, who vetoed a bill banning men from playing girls sports. Krisiti Noem, despite spelling her name like a stripper and looking like the antihero of a country music video, was being prepped for a national role. Then all of a sudden, for no clear reason, she decided to support men playing girls’ sports. She was forced to go on Tucker Carlson to humiliate herself in service to the “trans” agenda.

Just this week, this same bizarre pattern repeated itself. Asa Hutchinson, the neocon governor of Arkansas, vetoed a bill that would have banned the mutilation of children, whose hysterical mothers believed were another sex. Even if you think men should be allowed to mutilate themselves with sex change operations, subjecting children to things like chemical castration is monstrous. Yet, Hutchinson vetoed the bill and then went on Tucker to humiliate himself in service to the “trans” agenda.

It is not unreasonable to ask what in the hell is going on here? Normally this is the sort of issue that politicians love. They get to pretend to heroically oppose something without risking any political capital. After all, only deviants and sadists support the mutilation of children, so opposing it is risk-free. It is not as if there is a lot of votes in the transvestite community or some philosophical point here, like with drug legalization. Transvestites are few and most are poor due to their mental illness.

In the case of Noem, she was responding to demands from the NCAA, who threatened to pull their events from the state. One of Noem’s donors owns facilities that would profit from these events. That just leads to a further question. Why does the NCAA, which promotes the hell out of women’s sports, want to support the destruction of women’s sports by transvestites? What is their interest here? In a way, they are being put in the same humiliating position as the politicians.

The answer seems to be corporate America. In the interview with Asa Hutchinson, Tucker asked him repeatedly if the mega-corps in his state like Walmart had pressured him to support the mutilation of children. Hutchinson got very uncomfortable, as if he suspected Tucker knew the answer before he asked. The governor denied he talked to any of those companies, but the viewer was left with the impression that he was being forced to do what he was doing by those companies.

The trouble with blaming corporate America is they have less of a reason to support these monstrous policies than the politicians. The political class is largely insulated from the voters these days. Over 95% of incumbents win reelection. The number of contested seats in the House, for example, is 25-50, depending upon the election and who is in the White House. In other words, the pols can afford to embrace boutique ideas, like allowing men in drag to play girl’s field hockey.

Corporations, in theory at least, are not insulated from the public. A boycott of Walmart is not going to bankrupt them, but it can impact the business. Even if they are not worried about that, what is the point of embracing this madness? It is not going to increase business. Surely, they have to know it. The fact is though, it appears that the engine of revolutionary social change, like the ritual mutilation of children, is being driven by global corporations.

The motivations at work here are important, but the issue at the moment is that this naked display of power is breaking the old myth of democracy. Suddenly, those “special interests” are not a force to be checked by popular will. They are not operating in the shadows, fearing exposure. They are right out in front. Using these cases to tell the people their opinions do not matter. It does not matter what they think. The people in charge are the mega-corps and they will do as they please.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Truth Versus Justice

Posted on by

Note: If you missed the livestream of me and Frodi discussing the great Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, then you can catch the replay here. It was a very good show, even if you are not a movie buff. It was mostly about ideas that our side should discuss more often. The more views it gets the more credits he accumulates, so check in for a few minutes, even if you are not a big into movies.

In his essay Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Ever since it has been a useful dismissal of the pedant, but it is also a useful way of understanding American politics. One side in the political fight spends all of its time fussing about inconsistencies of the other side, while the winning side is happy to dismiss their own hypocrisies. As Emerson understood, it is the latter who always has the edge over the former.

It is the Right, of course, that spends all of its time fussing about inconsistencies on the Left, while the Left just wins every fight. The American Left, unlike the European Left, grew out of that peculiar form of American Christianity that has informed its worldview since the 19th century. Filled with self-righteous fury over the inequity of the world, the righteous are free to do as they please to right the wrongs of the world. Even their own past statements are no impediment to them.

Of course, in 18th century America, radicalism was still bound by Scripture, if not literally then morally. Those new Prometheans springing up to oppose things like slavery were relying on a moral framework they inherited from the past. Today, free of that moral framework and free of factual reality, those old urges have curdled into petulant and nasty partisanship. The American Left is now just a hysterical tirade against anything or anyone that represents order.

You see this in the reaction of the court taking up a case regarding the power of the tech monopolies to control public discourse. This Slate writer flew into a purple faced rage on Twitter about the alleged inconsistencies of Clarence Thomas in comparing these sites to common carriers. He then followed that up with an amusingly unhinged essay in Slate titled, “Clarence Thomas’ Attack on Social Media Companies Is a Paranoid Marxist Delusion.” That is a man detached from reality.

Not to be outdone, this guy, looking for attention, posted his condemnation of right-wing hypocrisy on Twitter. His claim is that only through giving a handful of corporations absolute control of the public square can we have genuinely free expression. It is an interesting mix of fascism and Orwellian language. It shows how the Left’s response to any effort to rein in these companies, will be whatever they think will work, even if it means condemning their own words from yesterday.

The facts here are important only in that they help us understand the mentality of the people who are closing off the public square. The explicit intent of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 was to curtail censorship. The tech companies argued that they did not want to moderate their forums and that it was practically impossible for them to do so. In order to encourage free expression, Congress carved out a special exception for them in the law.

Now, if you point this out to the Left, they will laugh in your face. After all, they are defending our democracy. They are not going to be bound by the words and intents of people long since gone from the scene. There is that old Emersonian inclination at the core of the American Left. Tradition and custom can never be a restraint on man in his pursuit of justice. For the Left, the law is always whatever it needs to be at the moment, as theirs is an ends justifies the means world view.

On the other hand, the Left is endlessly fussy about the tiniest of inconsistencies in their opponent’s positions. If none exist, they will make some up. You see that in the claim that there is some contradiction between allowing a baker to express his religious convictions, while preventing a trillion dollar company from crushing dissent. There is no contradiction here, but that is not important. The righteous man is free of mere facts, so he is at liberty to find inconsistency where he must.

The Right, of course, responds to this with long recitations of fact, which have no impact whatsoever on the debate. Politics in a democracy are always about morality, which is why the Left is endlessly yapping about it. They see themselves as the fullest expression of democratic morality. Each of them is a finger on the reified hand of the public will, so the more democratic the society the closer it is to achieving that ideal of the public will. They are the instruments of that public will.

You can no more reason with someone who thinks they are the sword of a secular god than you can reason with someone who thinks they are a god. On the other hand, the people will naturally side with those who they see are morally correct. When Ocasio-Cortez famously said being “morally right” is more important than being “factually right”, she was expressing the very essence of liberal democracy. People will go along with the most insane things if they feel their gods demand it.

The other part of the Emerson quote is “With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.” That right there is American politics in a nutshell. One side sits staring at the wall, certain they are right, while the other side speaks hard words in pursuit of justice.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Liberal Majoritarianism

Posted on by

The truth is like a body. No matter how clever you are in trying to conceal it from view, it eventually turns up. One truth that keeps turning up despite great efforts to bury it is that humans are naturally hierarchical. Another is that in any human organization, someone has to be in charge. This is the body that liberal democracy desperately tries to conceal, but it keeps popping into public view. The result is the people in charge spend an enormous amount of their time trying to rebury the body.

Democracy, of course, is majority rule. Liberal democracy, in theory, is majority rule within a framework of principles, like equality before the law, separation of powers and human rights. A proposition is put forward and it carries the day if fifty percent plus one supports it. Its rightness is therefore determined by the majority, not by some intrinsic quality it possesses. The majority is the legitimizing authority in a democracy of any sort, including a liberal democracy.

This is an important defect. Since it is universally true that humans are naturally hierarchical and every society has someone in charge, it means the ruling class is the result of natural factors. In other words, the most important part of a human society exists outside the legitimizing power of majority rule. Instead of invalidating the idea of truth being the result of popularity, liberal democracy flips things around and demands that the majority, real or imagined, grants legitimacy to the rulers.

It is a good example of the immutability of belief. When a person or a society comes to believe something about itself, reality is willed in support of that belief. That which confirms the belief is held up as proof, while that which contradicts the belief is ignored or disputed. It is why a disbeliever is always the prey for believers. The destruction of the disbeliever not only validates the belief. It validates the believer. This is why democracy breed fanatics operating in the name of the public.

This great conflict in liberal democracy spins up over time into the frenzy we are seeing unfold in front us. The people in charge need the validation of the majority to bestow legitimacy on their position. It is why they go berserk whenever they lose an election or fail to get their way in a public policy fight. On the one hand, it is a threat to their image as the will of the people. On the other hand, it means there are enemies of democracy that must be hunted down and defeated.

The logical end point for one man rule is that the king, the pharaoh, or the emperor eventually comes to think of himself as the embodiment of the people. He is the physical manifestation of the people, but also their moral purpose. The king becomes a god and is therefore self-validating. In liberal democracy, the ruling class comes to think of themselves as the embodiment of the public will. They exist because the majority created them, and their existence is validation of the public will.

This was clear after the last two elections. When Trump won, the ruling elite was compelled, it was their moral duty, to get rid of him at any cost. He was a threat to “our democracy” because he was viewed as a repudiation of the elite. They had a moral duty to defend democracy from him. On the other hand, the manufactured majority for Joe Biden, with all of its absurdity, quickly became a point of public morality. The elite demanded their opponents publicly admit it was a legitimate election.

This is why people are sent by their employers to reeducation camps to learn the latest social fads. It is not enough to comply with these edicts. People silently tolerating in public the edicts of the rulers could be privately rejecting them. Since those edicts are by default the will of the people, it means there could be millions of silent enemies lurking in their homes and offices. The only way to make democracy safe from these silent enemies is to root out dissent.

It also seems that the hunt for dissenters provides a useful distraction for the people in charge, allowing them to pose as part of the mob. Note how the most powerful people in our liberal democracy carry on as victims. By playing the role of David, while being Goliath, they hide from themselves the realty of their position. Instead of being at the top of the social hierarchy, with all it entails, they see themselves as the guys at the front of the mob, chasing off the enemies.

As with communism, the civic religion that evolves to perpetuate the falsehoods of the system quickly becomes a delusion the ruling elite needs to perpetuate among themselves in order to carry out their role. The rulers of a liberal democracy come to see a natural majority for everything they do. Whether that majority exists or is the product of imagination is immaterial. They believe it does exist or that it would exist if the enemies of democracy were not preventing it.

We are at the point in liberal democracy where the majority is the source of all truth and the arbiter of morality. When no majority exists, one is manufactured through propaganda or coercion. If that fails, then one is simply invented. Since no source of legitimacy exists outside the majority, liberal democracy starts to look a lot like every other totalitarian system. Everything in the public will, nothing outside the public will and nothing against the public will.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Lawless And Chaotic

Posted on by

The main difference in form between a liberal democracy and a republic is that the latter is defined by a fixed set of rules. The former, in contrast, is formless as it is defined by the will of fifty percent plus one. The republic has clearly defined roles for itself, including limits on its power. In a liberal democracy, there are no limits, because truth itself is just a simple majority, so the roles and limits of the liberal democracy are whatever the people want at the moment.

When the truth is defined by the majority of the mob, this must inevitably lead to chaos, as we can no longer live in a world of fixed rules. Present experience suggests that rules themselves are seen as the enemy in a liberal democracy. We see this in the language used by the most pious of liberal democrats. They want to disrupt the status quo, break barriers and open everything up to the world. The end of this project is never mentioned, as it does not matter. They just like smashing things.

We see this most clearly in the transformation of the mass media. A generation ago the core of the media was a tool of the ruling class, but it had lots of tentacles that functioned as a check on the ruling class. There was a relationship between the media and the ruling class. The media could be very useful in promoting the interests of the ruling class, but it could also turn on its masters. The media needed to maintain some distance as the fourth estate in the republic.

That old set of arrangements are gone now. Today, the media operates like the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution in Iran. Their job is to hunt for heretics and witches, which they currently call white nationalists. Whether real or imaginary, they exist to root out these evil doers and expose them to the world. They have lots of names for these evil doers, but white nationalist is the official name, the one they chant when they seek to summon forth the arch demon of their faith.

In present day America, being a white nationalist is just about the worst thing you can be, as it includes all of the worst heresies of the age. It means primarily that you hate all of the things a good person is supposed to love. If you are accused of being a white nationalist, whether you are one or not, you are subject to the worst punishments we currently have now. You can be proscribed. This is a form of internal banishment in which you are treated as a pariah by society.

White nationalists don’t like this for two reasons. One is that they don’t think there is anything immoral about being a white nationalist. They point out that black nationalists do not suffer from this moral prohibition. Jewish nationalists are celebrated. The other reason white nationalist object to the current use of the label is they correctly point out that the definition used by our betters is a lie. White nationalism is just nationalism for white people, not a bundle of hatreds against others.

None of this matters, as the accusation is enough to cause real harm to the life of the person accused of being a white nationalist. This is why VDare sued the New York Times last year. If the label sticks, it basically places the accused outside legal protection, which at this time is limited to financial and cyber-attacks, but in the near future it may include physical attacks as well. How long before “he was a white nationalist” is a justification for intentional homicide?

Now, the VDare case was dismissed and in that dismissal we get a glimpse of why the truth has no place in a liberal democracy. The Times, you see, never accused Brimelow and VDare of being heretics. They repeated the claims made by others. This is how the game is played. A pipsqueak outfit like the Daily Beast circulates the accusation and then it is repeated by a major publication. The Times just has to pretend they are reporting the charge and they get away with libel.

This sleight of hand turns up all over the media. Mark Steyn, in his often amusing deposition in the Michael Mann case, pointed out that National Review is now claiming they are not a publisher. You see, because they allow highly filtered and censored comments, they now qualify as a public platform. They are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This means they are free to libel anyone they like as long as there are some comments allowed on the post.

Of course, the big social media players have been exploiting this new truth for a long time now. They do all of the things that a publisher would do, like promote content, edit content and block content, but that is now proof that they are not a publisher. For example, they accuse rivals of having malware on their sites by posting warnings to their links. If you click the BitChute link in this tweet, for example, you are given a warning about BitChute’s shady technology practices.

What’s happened to the media in America is the result of living in a world where the truth is fifty percent plus one. In a world where the truth is defined by a majority, all the incentives shift from truth telling to persuasion. Facts become sparingly used props in the argument to persuade the public. Facts are sprinkled in to give the argument authenticity in order to trick the audience. The truth is therefore defined by who wins the argument and winning by any means necessary is now a virtue.

We now live in an age in which we are awash in mass media, but the only truth is that nothing in the media is true. Even provable fact is positioned as to be in service to some lie aimed at deceiving the public. Of course, a world without truth is a world without rules, which is a world without limits. Anyone can do anything to anybody if they can convince a simple majority of it. The law, which is about limits, ceases to exist because in a world where everything is possible, there can be no limits.

Perversely, every new law, every new effort to limit the assault on truth becomes a weapon against the truth. We see that with Section 230. A law to place limits on these platforms and their potential opponents, is now a license for the platforms and their former adversaries to wage war on the truth. The mass media is a defamation machine in service to the most gifted liars in society. Liberal democracy has become a theocracy in which the lie is the god and truth is Satan.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Darkness From Above

Posted on by

Note: The regular post on Taki is here. I decided to dive back in the ancient Rome comparisons, which is always a good time. Of course, there is content behind the green door for those supporting the cause with their wallet.

A big part of the ongoing crisis in America is that both sides of the political debate agree on one main point. The people are responsible for the mess. Joseph de Maistre gave us the phrase, “Every country has the government it deserves.” The American ruling elite has turned it into their raison d’etre. Because they have nothing but contempt for the people over whom they rule, they feel they have an obligation, a sacred duty, to be every bit as contemptable as the they imagine their subjects.

The general shabbiness of the current ruling class relative to those of the past can be seen when looking at the oligarchs of the prior age. Great technological advance brings great changes in economics. There are winners and losers and some portion of the winners become something like royalty. The industrial age gave America a class of super-rich who were every bit as powerful as old world aristocracy. They controlled the economy and finance, and thus the country.

These were the robber barons. The term itself actually comes from the feudal age, when a class of knights would shake down travelers for money. They would charge tolls for goods crossing through their lands, even though they had no authority to do so, and the roads were intended for public use. A robber baron was someone with status who maintained it though unscrupulous practices. Surprisingly, it was the New York Times that first used the term to describe modern industrialists.

The robber barons were accused of exploiting unethical monopolies over natural resources like coal and oil. They maintained these monopolies by bribing politicians and threatening those who challenged them. They squashed their competition, which let them suppress wages. If that was not enough, they operated financial scams on unsuspecting investors, often by manipulating the markets through fraud. The robber barons were high status crooks.

If that sounds familiar, it should. The oligarchs of the modern age make the robber barons look like pikers in terms of wealth and immorality. They are not hiring private armies like the Pinkertons to murder their workers. Instead, they are unleashing waves of foreign peasants who create mayhem in your community. They finance terrorist groups like Antifa and BLM to attack white people. Of course, they have their tentacles wrapped around the economy like a kraken.

When you look back at the men who were the oligarchs of the prior age, they are not very different from the current crop of oligarchs. Look at their biographies and they are familiar to a modern eye. Getting a monopoly on oil, like Rockefeller, is no different from having a monopoly on operating systems, like Bill Gates. James Fisk got rich through stock fraud, which is no different from what we see from the gangsters in the financial class today. We just have more of them.

There is one big area of departure in this comparison. The robber barons of old had some sense of shame, which led them to take some of their ill-gotten gains and put them back into society. Maybe it was just a way to buy public approval or maybe it was a genuine sense of duty, but they did underwrite things public works projects, colleges, and museums. In fact, most of the remaining culture we have that is worth the name was paid for by the robber barons of the industrial age.

The current robber barons appear to have no shame. Instead of using their money to build cultural monuments they are trying to blot out the sun. That is right, Bill Gate is using his wealth on a plan to block the sun. Feudal man got great cathedrals from his rulers, while industrial man got great museums. Technological man is getting crackpot schemes to plunge the world into permanent winter. By comparison, our oligarchs are super villains compared to those of past ages.

This is not just a one-off example. Gates is fairly typical of the modern robber baron, in that he seems to have a fetish for schemes that cause more harm than good. He poured money into African relief programs that were doomed from the start. He has bankrolled education schemes that make a mockery of what we know about how to train up the young generation. He has been making an ass of himself on the Covid issue, spouting one kooky idea after another.

Part of this, of course, is the modern moral framework. The robber barons of the prior age were working within the Christian moral framework. They may not have been believers, but the public was still Christian. If they wanted to be seen as pious men, they had to commit public acts of piety. Modern man is far more primitive in his beliefs, so pleasing the earth goddess or fighting evil spirits is the way to salvation. Even the hacks in the political system get in on the act.

Perhaps de Maistre was right. The people in the prior age would have had the good sense to hang someone promising to blot out the sun. If a governor stood in front of a pothole filled road blaming in on the gods, he would have been tared and feathered as a lunatic, if not a blasphemer. Today, out best and brightest indulge in the onanistic religion of climate change with the same fervor as the loons promising us they can control the sun. We have the rich people we deserve.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Lessons In Identity

Posted on by

One of the reasons conservatives preach against identity politics is they believe it contradicts republican virtue. In a republic, people are supposed to be supremely loyal to the institutions of the republic. The men that hold office are not what matters, but rather, the office itself. You are supposed to respect the office, even if the man in the office is not respectable. This is why preventing low character people from holding office is important, as it diminishes the respect for the office.

Identity politics, in the conservative formulation, is tribalism and that means the tribe comes before everything else. A person who puts his tribe ahead of all else will sacrifice the office he holds or the political system itself, if it is good for his tribe. This is why conservatives moan about identity politics. They think it is un-American. They are not entirely wrong on this point. This is clear with the Jonathan Pollard case. His primary loyalty is to his people, so he spied for Israel.

For obvious reasons, conservatives will never use a case like this when moaning about the dangers of identity politics. Instead, they direct their anger at the white people who have been supporting them for decades but getting ruined as a result. Alternatively, they will gently chastise the Left for firing-up the blacks with fantastical claims about supernatural racism. They are not directing their wrath at the blacks, of course, but at the white people they say are responsible for it.

The Pollard case, however, is an excellent example of identity politics, both the positive and negative manifestations. Pollard claims that “If you’re outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable.” This is a version of, “if they are going to call you a Nazi, you may as well be a Nazi.” In other words, Pollard believes Jews have no choice but to be unreliable and subversive in their hosts countries, because that is the role carved out for them.

This is a great example of negative identity. Pollard thinks all diaspora Jews are defined in their opposition to their host population. This means a big part of who they are is controlled by exogenous forces. If they are in Asia, then their anti-Asian attitudes will come to define them, but if they are in America, it is un-Americanisms. Pollard is defining diaspora Judaism in the same way Woody Allen defined it in the movie Zelig, in which the main character was nothing more than a chameleon.

On the other hand, Pollard points out that to be a Jew is to first and foremost have a loyalty to the tribe and to Israel. In fact, it is this loyalty to Israel that defines the Jew wherever he may find himself. This is a positive identity. Loyalty to Israel and maintaining the cultural habits of the Jewish people, no matter the environment, is what defines the Jewish person. If all the non-Jews died tomorrow and there were only Jews left on the planet, this would still control Jewish identity.

This duality to identity points out something important. If all non-Jews did die off, then that positive Jewish identity would quickly weaken. After all, loyalty to Israel would not mean much when there is no longer a threat to Israel or the Jewish people. Without some comparison and competition, this identity would grow weak. As those familiar with the Hebrew Bible know, the great threat to Israel was always internal. Those secondary identities are what come to dominate in such a condition.

On the other side of the coin, a strong identity turns negative when the group is surrounded by an alien identity. For example, Pollard’s casual assumption that Jews must be seen as unreliable by host populations. Therefore, being a good Jew means working to undermine the host population. What he is suggesting, at least in the case of Jews, is that being a minority population is unhealthy. A minority group with a strong group identity will inevitably become self-destructive.

This duality of group identity is why Europe, despite massive efforts to the contrary, maintains national identity. Net out the tens of millions of alien immigrants and the majority of native people are strong nationalist. The reason for this is Europeans are close enough to one another to notice the differences. There is plenty of competition between European people to maintain the group identity. It is why immigration is important to the European project. It dilutes nationalism.

In North America, identity in the form of nationalism never gained a strong purpose until the 20th century and that was largely artificial. What it means to be American was never a topic of conversation until the 20th century, because it never needed to be. Your local identity was much more important. Even racial identity was never strong, because blacks were small in number and never a real threat. This is why white identity never developed in North America. Non-whites were never competition.

All of this is quickly changing. The invasion from the south will intensify nationalist identity in Europe to the point where whites preaching against it will be laughed off the stage by white Europeans. The weakening of the European consensus is clear when you look at what is happening in ruling class politics. Here and there the view of immigrants and their role in Europe is changing. Denmark and France are two recent examples of where the consensus is starting to shift toward nationalism.

In America, the white population is so beaten down by decades of anti-white agitation that the recovery is much slower. Whites have been conditioned to never take any side, especially their own, but that is changing. The latent sense of identity is flowing into proxy issues like populism and gun ownership. These issues lack an explicit white identity, but they have a strong implicit one. They are white identity with training wheels and in time these will become more explicitly white issues.

The truth is like a body. No matter how well you try to hide it, it eventually turns up, usually at an unexpected time. Ethnic and racial identity are truths of the human condition, so they can never be forgotten, no matter how well buried. That is the truth of the Pollard case now floating to the surface. Identity is about trust. A people can only trust their own people. As racial and ethnic distance grows, the trust declines, which is why peaceful separation is the natural order of mankind.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.

Sanctimonious Morons

Posted on by

Given the fanaticism of the managerial class, most political topics are useful only in sorting people into political buckets. Liberals support “taxing the rich” while conservatives oppose “socialism”. The only thing that matters in these “debates” is which side you are on as nothing is ever debated. In fact, the debate around the topic looks more like a distraction. The point of the debate is to provide cover for what is happening behind the scenes between pols and their handlers.

While those ceremonial debates are useless, there are some issues that are useful, because they reveal truths about the system and the people in it. Firearms policy is one of those issues. The 2A community in America is large and extremely well informed on the topic of guns and gun laws. Knowing the rules is an important part of every subculture within the gun community. Knowing the local laws is often a prerequisite for entry into the community, so the members are highly informed.

This is one reason the Left struggles with the issue. The Left wins when they can claim the moral high ground, because that means Conservative Inc. will fold up like a cheap tent and beg for forgiveness. Part of seizing the moral high ground though is claiming a thoroughgoing knowledge of the issue. The reason the Left is festooned with barnacles claiming to be policy experts is so they can claim a mastery of the topic. This lets them say “we know best” and push through their policies.

With guns, this is not possible. All of the facts work against gun grabbing. Whether it is the mythological gun show loophole or the assault weapon ban, any discussion of the issue quickly reveals the Left knows nothing about guns. In fact, it is like they make a point of not knowing anything about guns or gun laws. They say insane things that even the sympathetic find cringe inducing. One result is the people in favor of gun grabbing tend to come off as ignorant fanatics.

The gun issue is useful in another way. All of those normies on the other side of the divide think that facts matter when dealing with the Left. Gun grabbing is a great issue to show them that facts really do not matter much at all. No matter how many times they explain the facts of firearms to these people, they will keep chanting the slogans from their cult about guns. The reason for that is the Left is about morality, their morality, not facts or reason. They are the anointed, so facts do not matter.

Here is an example of how a sense of moral superiority is what really matters, rather than factual accuracy or rational debate. Taken at face value, it would mean Arne Duncan knows nothing about guns or voting. There has never been a time when voting was more difficult than buying a gun. In fact, voting has always been easier than doing pretty much anything. The most difficult part of voting today is not vomiting all over the voting booth when looking at the choices on offer.

Now, Arne Duncan is not just another airhead on Twitter. He is a very special airhead, who is the executive director of something called the Emerson Collective. This is a not-for-profit founded by the widow of Steve Jobs. They are another monastery in the ruling class theological framework, promoting the usual stuff. Amusingly, Arne Duncan wrote a book titled, How Schools Work, which is his firsthand account of how he was a terrible Secretary of Education during the Obama years.

Note his Twitter profile. He has a picture of himself with a gaggle of black people, which is supposed to tell us he is a member of the anointed. He is such a good guy; black people just want to be around him. Sure, he lives in a gated, whites-only neighborhood with a bunch of other rich white people, but the brothers just love him. The picture would be better if he were wearing a pith helmet and a safari outfit. His act is the modern version of the white man’s burden, without doing any heavy lifting.

That was the point of his tweet. In fact, it is the point of his entire life. He and his fellow travelers on the Progressive carny circuit are all about their virtue. He does not have to be troubled with facts about voting and gun laws, for example. Those are for the servant class to quarrel over. Arne has a dream, a dream where everyone gets a ballot, even the imaginary, and those votes are dutifully ignored. The point of democracy is so worthless layabouts like Arne Duncan can express their moral superiority.

For the most part, it is a pointless waste of time for dissidents to engage in the nuts and bolts of political discourse. Most issue are of the first type, where the debates are about signaling your team affiliation. Some issues, like the gun issue, are useful in that they can be used to reveal to the open minded, the reality of liberal democracy. After all, what is the point of engaging with someone like Arne Duncan, who is a noxious blend of breathtaking stupidity and sanctimonious codswallop?

It goes beyond that though. The people behind these ridiculous operations like the Emerson Collective are not interested in making society better. The widow Jobs just wants some grace on the cheap. She has plenty of money, so she can underwrite this stuff, because it makes a nice addition to her moral charm bracelet. Nothing about the Emerson Collective is about helping people. It is about boosting the ego of the people involved, by letting them pretend they are on the side of angels.

A new year brings new changes. The same is true for this site as we adjust to the reality of managerial authoritarianism. That means embracing crypto for when the inevitable happens and the traditional outlets are closed. Now more than ever it is important to support the voices that support you. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you prefer other ways of donating, look at the donate page. Thank you.

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.