Judas’s Priests

Posted on July 27, 2020 by thezman

It is popular in various dissident warrens to characterize mainstream conservatism as a collection of spineless sissies. Sometimes they are drawn as naive idealists who get taken by their more cynical opponents on the Left. Other times they are described as fools operating under a set of “principles” that make it impossible for them to fight the Left effectively. While some of that is certainly true, the reality is conservatism has been a cynical confidence game for a very long time.

Probably the best example of that truth of conservatism is Jonah Goldberg, formerly of National Review and now head of something called The Dispatch. For a couple of decades, Goldberg has played the role of affable right-wing dufus. He was the doughy, easy going every-man, who liked popular culture and goofing off, but was also one of those instinctively conservative guys. He was not going to quote Edmund Burke or even Bill Buckley in his posts. He would quote the Simpsons.

It was a great role for him to play, as he is no one’s idea of an intellectual, but he also has the disheveled goofball look popular in the movies. It was also an effective way to get people to overlook the fact that he was never a natural conservative or even much of a conservative. He was an actor playing a role. He started out in his acting career working for Ben Wattenberg, a far Left radical in the 1960’s and 1970’s, who got on the public television gravy train in the 1980’s.

Wattenberg was associated with the American Enterprise Institute, the symbol of conservative racketeering in Washington. This is the financial engine for the so-called neoconservatives, which means it is staffed with left-wing activists posing as conservatives, in order to promote an imperialist foreign policy agenda. They also peddle libertarian economics on behalf of their corporate sponsors. Ben Wattenberg was one of the first models to roll off their production line.

Goldberg was also a creation of AEI. It was his first job out of college, which is where he was paired up with Wattenberg to be trained as a subversive. Once ready for action, he was installed at National Review. He was then assigned the task of creating their on-line presence, which is where most people became aware of him. His frumpy every-man act became popular with a new generation of conservatives, looking for something more in line with the slacker culture than the Ivy League culture.

This is a good example of how a tiny group of people came to control the conservative establishment in the last century. In order for a conservative writer to get access to a conservative platform, it meant passing muster with a thicket of gatekeepers trained by and controlled by operations like AEI. If you wanted to write for NRO, it meant getting vetted by Jonah Goldberg. To write for the print side, it meant being vetted by some other think tank approved gatekeeper.

Of course, the main source of control was money. AEI and Heritage are the bottleneck in conservative fundraising. AEI brings in over 50 million in contributions each year, while Heritage hauls in close 100 million. They also control the flow of cash into hundreds of smaller, less well-known non-profits. These operations underwrite conservative publications and conservative book writing. They will bulk-buy a book, thus providing the writer with a nice royalty.

If all of this sounds like a racket, that’s because it is a racket. It is more cynical than that though, as the people running the rackets are terrible people. They lie about what they are doing, causing otherwise well intended people to support things that go against their stated interests. They con rich people into giving them money, which gets used to support the lifestyle of these grifters. They also use their power to attack anyone that challenges their hammerlock on official opposition.

A good recent example of this is something done by Jonah Goldberg. Back in 2018, a woman named Emerald Robinson got a scoop that many so-called conservative publications had been secretly taking cash from the tech monopolies. They were being paid to support the tech monopolies stranglehold on political discourse. Payola has always been a problem with Conservative Inc. and this looked the latest example of their penchant for pay-for-play shakedowns.

Now, Emerald Robinson was a reporterette for something called One America News Network (OANN), which is an independent media outlet that aims to serve the grassroots conservative. Their audience is the sort of people who support Trump because he is opposed by people like Jonah Goldberg. They are the talk radio crowd that skews more Huey Long than Bill Buckley. Robinson now works for Newsmax, another one of those types of operations.

Goldberg was dispatched to trash her, which he was happy to do. First, he trashed her personally on Twitter. Then he posted a piece on NRO, smearing her as a “failed-actress-turned-faux journalist” and an idiot. He also claimed she had no real evidence to support her claim. He finished by writing, “Look, I honestly suspect Robinson makes up many of her “sources” and that she’s a fake reporter while claiming to wage a war on “fake news.” That’s a serious charge.

It turns out that Goldberg was lying. Google was giving money to National Review and dozens of other so-called conservative operations. His paymasters at AEI were part of the operations to shower Conservative Inc. with payola, so they would do the bidding of the tech oligarchs. There’s simply no way Goldberg did not know this when he smeared Robinson, so his lies were conscious. They required forethought. He also lied when he knew all of his fellow racketeers knew he was lying.

The truth is, the people running Conservative Inc. are not just idealistic naifs being rolled by the bare-knuckled lefties in politics. They are not excessively principled ideologues playing by a set of rules that prevent them from winning. In reality, they are evil subversives grifting off the destruction of the country. They are selling out the people they claim to represent and they do it with enthusiasm. They are soulless grifters, willing to say and do anything to keep the con going.

What makes them especially evil is that they are preying on the most vulnerable people in the country. These are the average white people who have no representation in the halls of power. Mostly, they are happy to be left alone to live their lives. These are the people who trust the system. They are willing to trust others to look out for their interests in Congress and their state legislatures. The GrifterCons prey on these people like jackals, stealing their money and selling out their interests.

The thing that puts these people in a special category is the audacity of their conniving and grifting. When their perfidy is noted, they carry on as if they are the victims of some new pogrom. The American Right has been consumed by army of Judases swarming traditional America like a plague of locusts. Washington has been their playground, their Garden of Gethsemane, for generations now. The best the Right can hope for now is that these people are remembered as well as their inspiration.

A Sad Note: The proprietor of The Woodpile Report died last week. He was a great promoter of the sorts of content you find here. He had a big audience, so when he linked to someone, he sent a lot of traffic their way. I will forever be grateful for his support in linking to me on a regular basis. Rest in peace Ol’ Remus.

Note: 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 like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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The Back Of The Hand

Posted on July 22, 2020 by thezman

Establishment types were clucking about the news of Andrew Sullivan leaving his post at NY Magazine. He wrote a typically long winded farewell column, stating that he was being pushed out by the new woke rabble. Whether or not that is true is hard to know, as Sullivan is prone to exaggeration and hysteria, but it was accepted as true by so-called conservatives and the “old style” liberals. It was another ominous sign that the woke revolution is consolidating power.

The details of his case are not all that important, as it lines up with other incidents involving less creative story tellers. The New York Times has been dealing with a public revolt by the woke young staffers. These are mostly emotional young women of various flavors, who start sobbing whenever they hear a discouraging word. Collectively they become a storm of shrieking harpies that manages to get its way. These tantrums are now being spun as the new ideological revolution.

The incident itself offers some insight into how left-wing politics has evolved over the last decade. Sullivan is a competent and productive writer, but his insights are just banal liberal boilerplate. His act was always derivative. He is a reboot of Truman Capote or maybe the literary Liberace. He is a professional homosexual, who says harsh things about normal Americans, but in a flamboyant and flippant style. The establishment subversive always puts style over substance.

Nowadays, the outrageous gay guy act is the leisure suit of public performance. It’s not just out of style, it makes everyone stare at their shoes. In fact, gay males are now totally out of fashion on the Left. They have been replaced in the catalog with hairy Jewish guys in sundresses. In fact, the wide array of imaginary sexual identities has displaced suburban white girl feminism too. In order to get in the Progressive catalog, you better have at least two things going wrong for you.

The Sullivan incident and other similar happenings during this phase of the revolution puts the lie to the whole coalition of the fringes thing. If there was really an intelligence behind this stuff, playing four-dimensional political chess, they would not be swapping out the gays for guys in lady’s underwear. Feminists are also financially and organizationally strong. In reality, it is the old Progressive hatred of tradition manifesting itself as a quest for the novel and bizarre.

That’s the thing about the cultural revolution that gets missed. The communist revolution was serious about remaking society. They wanted to strip it down to the foundation stones and start fresh. They were even willing to tear up the foundation if they thought it necessary. The liberal democratic revolution is more like a redecorating party. They are willing to make superficial changes, but only in the areas that people see. Sullivan was replaced by a new set of drapes and a transgender garden gnome.

The superficiality of this revolution may have been exposed by the maker of an energy drink last week. When he found out his females were going bonkers over the BLM stuff, he fired them. The Red Bull story may turn out to be an amusing turning point in the revolution. You can be sure lots of other corporate executives are looking at that story and wondering if that is not the right course. Just tell these harpies no and show them the door. The rest will pipe down in a hurry.

That was always the truth of feminism. All the bellowing about the patriarchy and male chauvinism was just a desperate cry for a firm hand. College men cruised the women’s studies department for a reason. It was where you could find the six who desperately wanted to hear she was a nine. Professional feminism was just the same thing, but the women were rapidly approaching the wall. Still, the firm hand worked just as well and it may turn out to be the antidote the woke pandemic.

This is the paradox of the cultural revolution. The Bolsheviks could carry on without liberals, monarchist and other types of socialists fighting with them for control. Once they eliminated their rivals, they set about creating their society. The same was true of the Maoists and Khmer Rouge. The old school radicals did not need the constant struggle to justify their existence. They just needed the specter of it to focus the attention of the revolution away from the failings of the revolution.

The modern radical cannot exist without the thing it is claiming as an enemy and it seeks to destroy. Black identity movements are entirety dependent on whites tolerating and indulging them. The old feminist line about a woman needing a man like a fish needs a bicycle was always just a coping mechanism. Feminism can only exist in the presence of normal males. Cultural Marxism is just the over indulged third child that endlessly acts out to get attention from her parents.

This suggests the revolution will continue until it gets the back of the hand. It will not be happy to dominate the institutions and push its opposition to the fringes. In fact, the further it pushes its opposition into the shadows, the angrier it will get, as what it wants is the confrontation. Starved of that confrontation it will grow increasingly berserk as it tries to flush out the opposition. It will endlessly provoke and harass until it gets the back of the hand it so desperately needs.

Simulacra and Simulation

Posted on July 21, 2020 by thezman

Logic dictates that it is impossible for someone to lie to themselves. A lie is the deliberate, and therefore conscious, telling of a falsehood. The person lying is deliberately trying to deceive someone. The only way lying can be successful is if the person hearing the lie believes it. Lying to yourself is an obvious paradox. This is true of self-delusion or self-deception. The real paradox here is that we have these expressions because the phenomenon seems to exist.

For example, the odds of knowing someone who has died from the corona virus is very low, unless you work in a nursing home. For the typical person, you are more likely to know someone who was murdered. In fact, in most of the country, you are four times more likely to know a murder victim than a corona victim. Yet, many people on the Left will tell you they know many people who have died from corona. They really believe this is true and display the appropriate emotions to prove it.

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that these people have had the math explained to them many times by the more skeptical. The same is true about the stories of overwhelmed hospitals everyone hears about, but no one has seen. The nurses and doctors posting TikTok videos of themselves dancing in empty hospitals had no effect on the believers in these claims. Even now, they are sure the “first responders” are nearing exhaustion as they heroically fight the virus.

It is not a coincidence that these people are sure Donald Trump is Adolph Hitler slowly imposing the Third Reich. People who otherwise seem calm and rational, despite their politics, become hysterical when talking about Trump. “He’s a dangerous dictator who is destroying the country” they bellow. It’s not just hyperbole. They really seem to believe that Trump is not only a man who wants to be a dictator, but that he is actually assuming dictatorial power. The lie is very real to them.

It’s not so much that they believe complete nonsense regarding Trump. It’s that their own reaction to the nonsense underscores the irrationality of it. After all, if Trump is anything like they believe, voting him out of office is unlikely. After all, he would use his magic dictator power to rig the vote or just ignore the result. Rather than reevaluate their beliefs, they are now creating another fantasy around with Trump secretly plotting to ignore the results of the election.

For these people, perception is reality to the point where reality is warped in order to make it comply with their pseudo-reality. Like fanaticism, partisanship untethers the mind from objective reality. Unlike fanaticism, which is temporary and disconnected from rational thinking, partisanship enslaves the rational mind, forcing it to create an alternative reality. This partisan reality is so powerful it blocks out anything that contradicts or disconfirms the alternative reality.

The most extreme version of this are the radicals that go on a murderous rampage in the belief they are defending their cause against dangerous enemies. They quickly move from disagreement to murder, because they quickly create a reality in which anyone showing the least bit of doubt is secretly plotting to kill them. Those who commit political murder do so in the firm conviction they are acting in self-defense. In fact, they have to kill their opponents for the good of society.

The thing about political murder is it is not irrational. If you truly think the only way your people can survive is to abide by a certain set of rules, then anyone trying to undermine those rules is a direct threat to your survival. Bargaining with such a person or offering them leniency would be no different than bargaining with a killer. The fact that political opposition is not the same as violent assault is the deception. The partisan has become convinced of something that is at odds with reality.

Compounding this strange conflict of realities is the fact the people in each are highly similar to one another, but seemingly incapable of seeing the reality of the other as the other perceives it. The people sure the hospitals are war zones, for example, look at images of empty hospitals or the statistics on hospital layoffs and it has no impact on their mental processes. It’s as if that information is invisible to them. In fact, it just confirms to them that the other people are dangerously insane.

In fairness, something similar happens when dealing with the MAGA people. Their blind loyalty to Trump and the old America is more endearing, but just as disconnected from reality as the “Trump is Hitler” stuff. In this regard, those looking hard at the world find themselves surround by people from at least two simulations that are derivative of reality, but at odds with it in fundamental ways. It’s as if there is a leak in these simulations and their simulacrum are leaking into the real world.

The question we face in this age is whether it is possible to maintain a civil society with an abundance of people embracing an alternative reality. Fanatics, eccentrics, lunatics and so on have been a part of human society since the beginning. The issue today is one of scale. Those leaky simulations have burst open and our reality is now flooded with berserk imitations of normal people, acting on a sense of reality that is at odds with objective reality. We’re being overrun by simulacrum.

Our Primitive Ugliness

Posted on July 18, 2020 by thezman

Something that is easy to miss in the insanity of the current age is the fact that the people running the revolution are not just mediocre people, but they have the most mediocre dreams. Unlike revolutionaries of the past, they don’t speak of moving past this age of trouble and strife to a new age of man. There’s no sense that mankind can ascend to a higher level of existence. Instead, all of their energy is directed to that which touches on the imponderables of the human condition.

The assault on Confederate symbols is the most obvious. There’s no thought given to why these statues were erected by the people living in these communities. What little thought there is to the people who erected them is simplistic and childish. In fact, the need to know anything about the statues was so vexing and offensive to the people assaulting them, they quickly moved from attacking Confederate symbols to attacking all symbols that were connected with the past.

There’s certainly a strong anti-white element to this. They have to deny it for partisan reasons, as to do otherwise is to give the other side a victory, but only Progressive ideologues and their conservative enablers can deny it. The appeal, however, is in the simplicity, as it requires so little from the partisans. This is why they have moved so quickly from Confederate iconography through “symbols of whiteness” onto all items with a nuanced connection to the past.

This vulgar dullness is often read as just fanatical violence by rich kids seeking attention or authenticity within their movement. Others want to see it as just decorating common street criminals with politics. The thing is though, many of the rioters and statue topplers are the children of ruling class types. Just as the left-wing radicals of the sixties were the children of the bourgeoisie, today’s street radicals are children of the managerial elite. These are bourgeois revolutionaries.

The blandness of this revolution reflects the tastes and sensibilities of the people who produced the ideology and the radicals themselves. Look around at the creations of our modern rulers and the remarkable feature is the ugliness. If someone had dozed off in the 1960’s and been revived in this age, they would be sure the communists had won the Cold War and imposed their aesthetic on the West. Relative to the post war years in America, the modern aesthetic is offensively ugly.

The synthetic ugliness of the current year West surpasses the ugliness of communism in that it is the product of material excess. The dreariness of communist architecture, for example, could be explained by scarcity. They had to make do with what they could produce, which meant concrete and steel. The modern West is brimming with material excess, but insists on an aesthetic that captures the hopes and dreams of the career civil servant. Today’s style is depressed postal clerk.

This is, of course, the fruit of egalitarianism. When a society embraces the natural hierarchy of man, even the people at the top are looking up for inspiration. They are sure there is something better and more beautiful a little higher than where they currently stand. There’s no limiting principle to capturing the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. The aesthetic of such a society is one of increasing beauty and complexity in the art of the people.

In an egalitarian society, this is thrown into reverse. Everyone is discouraged from looking up, as that may suggest apostasy. Instead, the best only look up in order to get a better grip on the self-imposed ceiling, which is always pulled down. Everyone else is compelled to look down for a new lowest common denominator. Only in the most vulgar and debased can everyone be included. The result is a community that looks like film noir, but is awash in pornography and degeneracy.

This makes perfect sense, as egalitarianism inevitably flips the natural order on its head, elevating the bottom over all else. The ideological enforcers in the human resource department are no different from the ideological enforcers in communism. These people are not selected for their skill, but their stupidity. They are too stupid to contemplate what they are doing. Instead, they puff out their chests and stiffen their backs for having memorized the latest party fads.

The same is true of the volunteer auxiliary police patrolling the public space for unapproved thoughts. Imagine the dullness and ugliness of someone who takes the job of Facebook moderator. It is no wonder so many of them are South Asian. The Indian subcontinent’s primary export is the narrow-minded functionary, best fit for the ticket window of the train station. The fact that suicide is not common among the staff of social media firms confirms the dullness of them.

At first blush, it seems like a paradox that a system capable of marshaling human effort to produce such spectacular material excess also produces such mediocre men. It’s as if the engine of material progress uses the creativity and passion, the hopes and aspirations of the people as fuel to make consumer goods. Just as the failed materialism of communism denuded the land of culture and beauty, liberal democracy is doing the same, just with high tech materials.

If it were just ugliness, one could think that perhaps the next phase of man is a post-beauty world, where the aesthetic is defined by efficiency. That’s not so, as the people are also made vulgar and simplistic as well. What passes for intellectual endeavor in the modern academy is striking for its narrowness. The innovative thinker is one who manages to lop off some new bits of human knowledge. The goal of intellectual life is to reduce the stock of human knowledge.

This is most evident in politics. The market place of ideas that is supposed to be the wellspring of liberal democracy has resulted in a bazaar full of weirdos all selling the exact same goods. The defining feature of the modern elections is their pointlessness, as no matter the result, policy never changes. In modern politics, innovation is treated like superstition. Anyone suggesting something different is treated like he has been possessed by a demon or is in league with Old Scratch.

Perhaps liberal democracy has reached a point where a small number of capable people can keep everything running, while the mediocre and stupid run riot. Maybe that is the world at the end of history. Given the recent madness, there is a strong case to be made for this argument. On the other hand, history says man cannot live without beauty, even the simplest expressions of it. The inexplicable beauty of the world has always demanded our attention. Will we want to live without it?

Covid Capitalism

Posted on July 16, 2020 by thezman

For most people, buying a car is not a pleasant experience. Getting a new car is always nice, even if you are not a car person, but the process of getting it is almost always a hassle due to how cars are sold in America. Getting a used car can eliminate the hassle of the dealership, but then you have to worry about getting hustled by someone trying to unload their lemon onto a sucker. The car market is extreme capitalism, where no one gives a sucker an even break or smartens up a chump.

Strangely, this makes it the ideal place to understand what has happened to our society over the last six months. For example, every car dealership website now has a prominent banner informing the visitor just how much the car dealer cares about the health and safety of their customers. There’s usually a link to their page detailing just how much they care about you, the sap they hope will buy a car from them. All of these mission statements are titled, “Our Response to COVID-19.”

In case it is not obvious, a business built around the phrase caveat emptor is not concerned about the safety of anyone, even the employees. Like every business in extreme capitalist America, the car dealers see an angle in presenting themselves as guardians of public health. At the far end of capitalism, the business must be both rapacious and patronizing. Telling you how much they care about your welfare while stripping you of what they can is the standard business model.

The thing about all of this that goes unnoticed is how predatory economics has not just been normalized, it is now celebrated. Forty years ago, soulless money grasping was seen as immoral. The movie Wall Street presented a morality tale about how extreme capitalism was soul destroying. Today, the ruthless businessman is in the morally superior position, while the person doubting the ethics of his behavior is portrayed as a naive and stupid person, possibly even dangerous.

Maybe it is just a case of monkey see, monkey do with these dealers, but all of their steps to show just how much they care are the same across the board. They have “contactless” car buying, which is a very strange thing, when you consider it. How much physical contact would one normally have with the the car salesman under normal conditions? Of course, since their goal is to screw the customer, maybe this is a strange inside joke or possibly a cry for help.

Of course, all of this is just a racket and everyone gets it, except for the people firmly in the panic camp. They see it as confirmation. In fact, that’s the point of all these ads from giant corporations telling us how much they care about us and the communities they are destroying. It is pure partisanship. On one side there are the people sure this pandemic is punishment for Trump. On the other side are people who are sure the other side is using the virus to advance their ideological goals.

This is the world of today. There are now two camps of people. One camp consumes every event and metabolizes it into fuel for their ideological war. As soon as the virus became news their chief concern was in how to turn it into another weapon in their social war to control society. As soon as the hated Trump declared his side on the virus issue, the Left immediately embraced a set of positions on the virus. Every left-wing and adjacent governor blew up his state to spite Trump.

The second camp are the people who realize that the new issue is becoming politicized and they form up an opposition to the Left. In the case of the virus, they started as curious or maybe mildly skeptical. These were the people who said it was just going to be a very bad flu most likely, but we needed more information. Now they are the people who say the face muffler is the six pointed star of totalitarianism. For them, the facts of the virus no longer matter anymore.

In this environment, there’s no truth or even the desire for truth, as all truth is determined by which side of the line you stand. The car dealers, for example, would have lepers selling cars if it moved more product. It is in their interest to go along with the safety campaign, so they go along with the safety campaign. They would have their people in hazmat suits putting the buyer through a delousing station if that’s what it takes to sell cars. They care, because they don’t care.

Everywhere else, the caring capitalists are either proof that the plague is real and a punishment for the Orange Man or it is just part of the fraud perpetrated by people obsessed with hating the Orange Man. Not only does this make everything extremely simple, it means the simpletons rule the day. If you’re inclined to automatically take one side or the other based entirely on your feelings toward the people on each side of the line, this is a glorious time to be alive.

The car dealership is now the metaphor of our age. The people running it engage in the most extreme form of ruthless transactionalism. They do so while pretending they care deeply about the people they will gladly fleece. Meanwhile, on the lot, one group of buyers is misty-eyed over how much the dealer cares about this plague sent to spite the Trump people. The other group grits its teeth behind its face mufflers, fantasizing about the revolution and that sports car in the showroom.

The Logic Of Political Violence

Posted on July 14, 2020 by thezman

Back in the Cold War, one of the things Americans would puzzle over was the political violence behind the Iron Curtain. Most Americans assumed they would resist the state terrorism they heard about from the media. Of course, they assumed such a thing could never happen in America. Today we are seeing just how easily state sponsored terrorism can get going in any country. The reason is there is a political logic to murder that comes as a part of ideological movements.

The logic of political violence is best understood by considering the way Progressives frame their anti-speech pogroms. They keep equaling words and ideas that vex them with violence. For example, someone posting crime statistics on Twitter is accused of posting violent content or inciting violence. At the same time, BLM burning shops and murdering young white mothers is pure political expression. Language they don’t like is violence and violence they like is free expression.

All acts, speaking or physical activity, are judged in purely partisan terms. That person murdering white mothers on behalf of the Progressive cause is morally good by default, as he is sustaining and advancing the interests of the cause. Similarly, the person who stops laughing too soon at an official joke is consciously or unconsciously working against the interest of the cause. He’s a threat. In other words, all actions are judged only in partisan terms, not in relative terms.

Further, making total war on anyone acting against the cause, even by mild simple disagreement, is a form of self-defense to the partisan. The logic here is that someone saying something that contradicts the beliefs of the Progressive cause must be at war with the partisans of the cause. After all, what makes the partisan a partisan is his fidelity to his cause. To invalidate the cause, even by questioning it, is to invalidate him and therefore, striking at the bad speaker is self-defense.

Again, you see this in their language. Before the lock downs, colleges had already implemented a policy of “safe spaces” on campus. These were places where Progressive activists could be totally free of criticism or questioning. The post-modern partisan equates physical safety, not only with the lack of disagreement from outsiders, but the absence of anyone and anything that contradicts the cause. They demand to be insulated from physical reality, as well as contrary opinion.

This conflation of people with ideology into partisanship is why Progressives have always had a somewhat comical obsession with the backlash. A Muslim shoots up a gay club, for example, and the Progressive media writes stories about how Muslims fear a backlash from red necks and Christians. They just assume the Muslim was right for acting on behalf of his cause. Further, they just assumed his enemies, even though they are imaginary, will do the same.

The conflation of the ideologue and the ideology must lead to either political violence or political separation. The partisan looks around and sees nothing but enemies, people holding opinions that contradict the cause. Further, he sees them operating in a system that contradicts the beliefs of the partisan. Hence the concept of systemic racism that is popular with Progressives. They are surrounded by people and a system that is at war with the very essence of who they are.

There can be only two responses, fight or flight. Once the partisan has power, though, the only logical response is fight. Once they gain power, they are not just defending themselves, but now they imagine they are defending society as a whole. Rounding up dissidents and having them executed is not just vindictive cruelty, although there is a lot of that, for sure. To the partisan mind this is an act of self-defense. The bad-speaker is at war with the cause and all is fair in war.

Inevitably, this logic is confirmed by the piecemeal response to the political violence unleashed on the public. Someone realizes that the people in charge are willing to use violence and he or they respond with violence. This small act becomes the bloody shirt the partisans then wave around as justification. Notice how the Progressives still mention Charlottesville as a justification for their pogroms against anyone expressing unapproved opinions on social media.

It is tempting to dismiss these people as insane, but their logic, with regards to the use of political violence, is natural. After all, the death penalty is rooted in the same logic of societal self-defense. The murderer who can never be allowed loose must be killed, not as punishment, but so he can never kill again. There is a blood sacrifice to it, as Joseph de Maistre explained, but the fundamental logic of the death penalty is rooted in the most basic instinct of man – self-defense.

This is why America is probably closer to Soviet-style show trials and political violence than most Americans realize. Most people are not partisans or their partisanship is mostly ornamental. They wave it around when politics comes up, but it usually works to cut-off political arguments before they get started. Many Americans, probably a majority, are still trapped in the old political framework. Worse still, the so-called Right still thinks we live in a rule-based republic.

It is important to note that the Russians never saw Stalin coming either. Some suspected what he was, but most did not. The political violence of Stalin crept up on his fellow partisans on little cat feet. Before they could understand what was happening, he was having them packed off to gulags. The ultra-violence of the French Revolution similarly crept up on the radicals. The great blood sacrifice of radical political ideology is always the destination no one sees coming until it is too late.

Choosing Sides

Posted on July 12, 2020 by thezman

At the end of last week, the lead writer for the Tucker Carlson show was fired for blasphemy, after it was discovered he was posting unapproved jokes on an on-line forum under a pseudonym. How his blasphemy was discovered is unknown, but the keepers of truth have teams of top women hunting down these people in order to keep their domains safe from unapproved thoughts. This is, of course, a familiar story that is now what the old newspaper guys would call a “standing head.”

Tucker Carlson has not commented on it, but his bosses at Fox News promise he will have an on-air struggle session Monday. Fox News, of course, “strongly condemns this horrific behavior.” By horrific, they mean saying “given how tired black people always claim to be, maybe the real crisis is their lack of sleep” on an on-line forum dedicated to snarky humor. Clearly, such words are so monstrous it is hard to believe a human being could think such things, much less say them out loud.

In all seriousness, one has to wonder what language is reserved for a school bus that rolls over on an icy road or the orphanage that catches fire. This is, allegedly, a news organization, whose job it is to report events. If edgy jokes are now classified as “horrific” then how do they convey the image of a school bus flipped over? How can anyone take seriously their descriptions when they indulge is such ridiculous emotional hyperbole like this? Teenage girls have more fortitude.

You can’t help but notice how the bold, rock-ribbed defenders of truth and civility have adopted the language of the Left. Like the old communists, Progressives now contort the language to such extremes that it is becoming a genre of humor. How long before they force Sean Hannity to call Peter Brimelow a running dog lackey? What adds to the absurdity is the people indulging in the hyperbole are the sorts of mediocrities you find staffing government offices.

We’ll have to see what Carlson has to say about it, but unless he dramatically resigns on-air, the one thing we can know for sure is that when the choice is between his friends on the Left and the people who watch his show, he will pick his friends. His man of the people act is just that, an act. Carlson is super-wealthy. If he walked away from his job, his grandchildren would never have to work a day in their lives. If he gets fired, it means fly fishing in Maine and ski trips to Aspen.

In other words, his former head writer took more risk posting edgy jokes on-line than Tucker appears willing take in defense of his writer. Unless this Neff guy is from old money, he is now going to suffer real harm. He will not only lose his income, but he will suffer internal exile for as long as the revolution rolls on. Whenever he applies for a job, he will have to atone for his crimes against the one true faith. As a practical matter, he may have to change his name in order to live.

This is the sort of stuff Tucker spends every night railing against. He has made his name condemning things like cancel culture. For him to obsequiously go along with his key writer being cancelled makes him a hypocrite and a liar. It means that in the end, his friends and neighbors in the ruling class come before the principles he claims to be fighting to advance. More important, he’s asking you to do what he lacks the testicular fortitude to do in his own domain.

He’s not alone in this. Charles Murray, the former biological realist, thinker and writer has gone down the same path as Carlson. After having got some credit for having stood against the mob, he is now throwing in with the mob. Like Tucker, Murray would rather be with his friends than defend the ideas he once claimed to champion. It will not be long before he is required to burn his own books and condemn his former collaborator Richard Herrnstein. He’ll do it with enthusiasm too.

We’ll see what Carlson says on Monday. You can be sure an army of top people are crafting a speech to keep the sheep in the fold. Most of the people watching Tucker are so desperate for a champion, they will overlook just about anything. This is what Team Trump is counting on in the November election. Opinion does not alter fact. The fact here is that one of his own was dragged out by the witch hunters, put through the ritual humiliation of cancel culture and Carlson did nothing.

This is the reality we must accept. This war the ruling class is waging on white people is not a product of a small cabal within the ruling class. It is all of them. Worse yet, the war has become a profit center for them. Would anyone be shocked if Fox News, after having cancelled one of their own, starts selling “free speech face mufflers” in the Fox News store? Maybe have Tucker pitch them on his show, right after he condemns Blake Neff for his horrific language.

In the end, this revolution will end up where all revolutions end. Everyone will be forced to choose sides and give over their life to the cause they choose. The people living in mansions will find the choice easy. Every day they are reminded of how well the revolution is treating them. For everyone else, it is more difficult, but eventually, everyone will have to become a partisan for their own cause. Everyone will have to be as loyal to his side as Tucker is to his side.

The Beginning Or End?

Posted on July 8, 2020 by thezman

Way back in the before times, whenever the topic of Soviet propaganda came up, inevitably someone would mention that it was necessary in order to keep the people from revolting against the system. There was an assumption that the propaganda worked to some degree in convincing the public. The truth is, it was never particularly effective on the masses. Instead, the real value of propaganda is in keeping the believers from questioning their beliefs.

We see this today with the massive propaganda barrage from the ruling class media organs regarding the race war. They endlessly wave around claims about how much public support there is for toppling statues, assaulting old white people on the streets and perpetrating race hoaxes. It is the oldest and dullest form of persuasion. “All the other kids are doing it. You don’t want to be left out, do you?” It’s so crude and clumsy it often feels like it is an inside joke at times.

For example, this piece rocketed around the sports media sites. The claim is car racing, especially newly woke NASCAR, is getting record audience numbers. They don’t make the claim explicitly, but clearly the intent of the post is to suggest wokeness has been good for car racing. Of course, TV ratings are entirely fake and have been for a very long time, but even taken at face value, NASCAR is as popular right now as a moderate YouTube star or OnlyFans bimbo.

If you are running a billion-dollar sport and you can only draw a million fans when no other sports are permitted to operate, you have serious problems. That’s the world of facts and reason. In the world of wokeness, a slight bump after a series of embarrassing public relations blunders is a triumph of the will. It is all the proof the great and good need to convince them that turning NASCAR into an endless lecture on the horrors of white people was a great idea.

What we will not see, of course, is a similar story a year from now when the sport is struggling with half-empty stands and dismal TV ratings. That’s not the sort of thing that keeps the true believers energized. In ideological societies, truth is a very dangerous thing, not because it gives the doubters ammunition. Truth is dangerous because it undermines the zeal of the believers. That’s the real motivation behind this race war unleashed by the ruling class. They needed to inspire the faithful.

This need to constantly tend their own garden is why the rulers are now banning harmless people like Stefan Molyneux from the internet. Whatever you may think of his performances, Molyneux is pretty much just a garden variety AnCap. He sprinkles in some crime data and facts about race on occasion, but he has not done much of that in a long time now. Instead, he has retooled himself into a street corner Socrates, but he was banned from social media anyway.

People on this side are tempted to think his banning is due to his occasional flirtations with race realism, but if that were so he would have been zapped years ago. In reality, the people in charge are running low on people willing to go onto their stages and play the villain for them. Twitter is all house broken conservatives and Progressive cranks, with the latter outnumbering the former 100-to-1. After years of human sacrifice, the stock of sinners is running low, so they are creating them.

Therein lies a significant difference between what we are witnessing today and what went on in communist countries. At some point after the war, communist propaganda shifted from promoting the glorious future that was at hand to promoting the glories of the here and now. That is, the point of communist propaganda was to endlessly remind the people in the party that there was no need for change, just constant vigilance against the remaining reactionaries.

That does not appear to be in the cards for liberal democracy. It is a constant revolt against the present, even when the present is the creation of the people doing the revolting, as we see today. That’s why the propaganda gets more intense and more absurd with each click of the ratchet. It’s as if the faster they chase after the glorious future, the further it recedes into the distance, so the only solution is to run faster and that means more sacrifices and more witch hunting.

It is tempting to conclude that they cannot keep up this pace for long and will at some point exhaust themselves. That is probably true, but that point may be well beyond where we stand now. Look at the way they have reacted to the rioter in Seattle being run over and killed. Instead of sobering them up, it is becoming something of a blood sacrifice. The new religion has no limiting principle, so the limit of their fanatical zeal may turn out to be physical reality.

The point of all this is that this may be the early stages of the revolution. It is popular with the older crowd to compare now with the 1970’s, when the cultural revolution of the 1960’s collapsed into anarchy. In other words, it is 1974, Trump is Nixon and Joe Biden is Jimmy Carter. In reality, it could be 1968 and Trump is Johnson. He certainly spends like Johnson and dithers like Johnson. We may be living through the good part of the revolution and things will get much worse from here.

The American Drama

Posted on July 7, 2020 by thezman

One of the sports leagues announced recently that they intend to get rid of the white national anthem before games and play the black national anthem. Most white people, of course, were surprised to learn there is a black national anthem. Racists were momentarily excited, thinking that maybe blacks now had their own homeland, but that was not the case. Instead, it turns out that the black national anthem is a poem written a century ago by black civil rights activists.

It is an interesting bit of history that is worth considering. The poem itself reads like a call to black unity. The celebration of their new found freedom does not indicate what they hope to do with it, but there is a prayer to God that they will keep on the righteous path to victory, whatever that means. A cynic cannot help but notice that the poem and the musical performance was really aimed at the white Progressives that saw black abolition as their Christian duty.

It is a good reminder that the history of black civil rights can probably be best explained by the phrase, “Now what?” After the Civil War, the blacks were freed, but then everyone, including the former slaves stood around asking, “Now what?” The people who did the freeing did not have an answer, so everyone else was left to sort it out. The people in the Old South, black and white, had to come up with new living arrangements and nature, as it always does, took its course.

Something similar happened after the Civil Rights movement. Legal segregation and discrimination were eliminated and then everyone was left to wonder what will come next, but the civil rights champions had no answers. After a couple of decades of inaction, the final resolution was a few statues of Martin Luther King and a federal holiday for him. The efforts at forced integration were slowly abandoned in all the meaningful areas and we were back to where we started.

The cold-hearted cynics have always said that white Progressives and their fellow travelers just see blacks as another weapon in the Cold Civil War. If they actually cared about the condition of real blacks, they would address the horrific crime levels and social pathology that immiserate blacks in America. Instead, they periodically unleash black crime waves on the bad whites, along with lectures about social justice. In other words, none of this has anything to do with blacks.

That’s certainly true, but it mistakenly asserts a consciousness of action to the Left that probably does not exist. Talk to your self-righteous lefty about the current ructions and they have no idea why they are out in the streets ululating about racism. Like a trained circus animal, they are responding to prompts and expecting certain rewards. You, the racist bad white, are supposed to get vexed with them, so they can feel the dopamine rush that comes from self-righteous indignation.

This lack of consciousness is better observed in something that is less radioactive at the moment. Disney has now added the musical Hamilton to its subscription offering, causing every Progressive in America to sign up for it. The play has become something like the old musical Cabaret. Instead of being a show about Nazis, Hamilton is a show about social justice. The sound track is something like “Horst-Wessel-Lied” for the modern Left. It’s more than a musical for them.

When you press them on why they like it so much, they cannot explain it. A paranoid conspiracy type would be forgiven for thinking that maybe there is a subliminal message in these songs. As soon as a person prone to Progressive fanaticism hears the soundtrack, he spends hours listening to it. A couple of years ago when the soundtrack was released, it became a moral signifier like an Apple product. The good lefty would ostentatiously reveal he was listening to it.

This is where you see the total lack of reason and introspection on the part of Progressives caught up in the ecstasy of these moral panics. Hamilton was not black and he was certainly not a social justice warrior. In fact, he was probably the one Founder who was the least in favor of popular government. He is an unlikely hero for people claiming to be the liberators of the oppressed and the champions of all-inclusive liberal democracy, but that’s where they are.

That brings us back to the black national anthem. Like everything else about race relations, that poem was never about blacks or their disposition. It was written to titillate the good whites in the halls of power. It was their pets obsequiously performing a ritual for them. Similarly, Hamilton is just feel-good revisionism for white liberals. A bunch of blacks perform for their white masters in a way that flatters the master. Race is just another popular theme in the Progressive Dionysia.

There is no shortage of analysis trying to explain the insane behavior of mobs pulling down statues. All of it from outside the Progressive hive misses the point, because it projects reason and consciousness of thought onto the performers. What’s happening is these people are just that, performers. They are unconsciously playing a role, like participants in a pagan ceremony. They are doing so for their Progressive audience, who cheers and sobs after each statue is toppled.

This is the real source of power of the Left. It is not that they control the institutions or control the media. Those are consequences, not causes. Their real power is they control public morality and the expression of it. All public rituals are funneled through left-wing mythology, drawing in friends and foes, all of whom play a role in the great ongoing morality tale of liberal democracy. Like pre-reformation Catholic Church, the Left controls the supply of salvation.

Interview Of Nikole Hannah-Jones

Posted on July 6, 2020 by thezman

The following is a fictional transcript of a negotiation between white people and black people in America over reparations. Representing black people in the negotiations is Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for New York Times magazine. She is the creator of the 1619 Project, which is an ongoing blood libel against white people. Representing white people of America is the typical white person, who has tried in good faith for generations to figure out how to include blacks in civil society.

White Person: Thank you for agreeing to begin this dialogue. Having read your latest, uh, column on reparations, we, and by “we” I mean white people, have decided that it is time to think about reparations. While we in no way accept the claim that modern whites owe modern blacks anything for the alleged crimes of our ancestors, in the furtherance of peace between the races, we are open to discussing reparations.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yes, well, as I said in my post, if true justice and equality are ever to be achieved in the United States, the country must finally take seriously what it owes black Americans. It is time for this country to pay its debt. It is time for reparations.

WP: Presumably, when you say “the country” you mean white people. You don’t expect Asians, newly arrived Africans and Native Americans to be part of this.

NHJ: I don’t understand.

WP: What don’t you understand?

NHJ: I don’t understand what “presumably” means.

WP: Oh, I see. Well, I’m here to speak on behalf of white people. I cannot obligate Asians or newly arrived Africans, or Arabs or anyone else to reparations. You mentioned white people 197 times in your column. You mentioned black people 179 times. Asians, Jews, Native Americans, Arabs and so on were mentioned zero times, so this is about blacks and whites, correct?

NHJ: That’s right. As I said in my piece, generations of white violence against black bodies has to be addressed. There can be no peace until white people accept what they owe to black people. Going back to the very beginning….

WP: I don’t mean to cut you off, but I read your piece and I have read all the other stuff in the 1619 project. Like all white people, I have grown up hearing the long list of grievances of black people. That’s why I’m here. We agree. It is time to negotiate a settlement in order to get racial peace.

NHJ: It has been more than 150 years since the white planter class last called up the slave patrols and deputized every white citizen to stop, question and subdue any black person who came across their paths in order to control and surveil a population who refused to submit to their enslavement. It has been 150 years since white Americans could enforce slave laws that said white people acting in the interest of the planter class would not be punished for killing a black person….

WP: Okay, okay, I got it. I read the piece, a few times, in fact. If all you’re going to do here is recite from the list of grievances, then we are wasting our time. I’m here to talk about reparations.

NHJ: If black lives are to truly matter in America, this nation must move beyond slogans and symbolism. Citizens don’t inherit just the glory of their nation, but its wrongs too. A truly great country does not ignore or excuse its sins. It confronts them and then works to make them right. If we are to be redeemed, if we are to live up to the magnificent ideals upon which we were founded, we must do what is just.

WP: Yes, well, that’s fine, but can you tell us what you mean by pay its debts? I’ve read all of your work. I’ve read Ta-Nahesi Coates on the subject of reparations. What seems to be missing is the dollar figure.

NHJ: As I said in my piece, generations of white violence against black bodies has to be addressed. There can be no peace until white people accept what they owe to black people….

WP: Right, I’ll stipulate that. In fact, without qualification, I’ll stipulate to all of the claims in your work. What I’m here to discuss is reparations. What number do we put on the check to make black people whole? What is the debt you expect us to pay?

NHJ: As I said in my piece, until white people atone for their crimes against black people and pay their debt…

WP: Hold up, I just said we will stipulate to all of that.

NHJ: I don’t know what you mean by “stipulate”, but white people need to accept their debt to black people. As I wrote in my piece…

WP: Sorry to cut you off again, but that’s what stipulate means. We agree to all the claims made in your work and in the work of others. We’re not here to debate it or hear another recitation of it. We are here to negotiate the check.

NHJ: Check?

WP: Yes. The check. We are prepared to write every descendant of slaves, even those of mixed race, a check. We’ll pay the debt you feel you are owed.

NHJ: I don’t think a check can cover the pain of 150 years of suffering…

WP: Okay, then what else do you want? Land, like a black homeland? A ride to the airport? What? Tell me what we have to do to close the books on this.

NHJ: As I said in my piece, until white people atone for their crimes against black people and pay their debt…

WP: I got it. We all get it. That’s why we’re here. What do you want from us?

NHJ: We want justice.

WP: Fine. What does that mean? What do we need to do in order for you to have justice? If it is not a check, then what is it.

NHJ: We still want the check.

WP: Okay, how much. What’s the number?

NHJ: But it can’t just be a check. White people have to atone for the crimes they have committed against black bodies…

WP: Look. I’m starting to lose my patience. We agree to all of that. What we want to know is what we have to do, in specific terms, in order for you people to believe you have justice and to believe the debt is paid. If it is not a check, then what is it?

NHJ: As I said in my piece, financial restitution cannot end racism, of course, but it can certainly mitigate racism’s most devastating effects. If we do nothing, black Americans may never recover from this pandemic, and they will certainly never know the equality the nation has promised.

WP: Okay, so what you are saying is there can never be reparations, as there is no way for you to ever feel you have been repaid. Reparations means the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged. It sounds to me like you will never forgive whites, much less allow whites to make amends, so what are you asking?

NHJ: We want what we were promised.

WP: Okay, what were you promised and who promised it to you?

NHJ: The civil rights movement ostensibly ended white advantage by law. And in the gauzy way white Americans tend to view history, particularly the history of racial inequality, the end of legal discrimination, after 350 years, is all that was required to vanquish this dark history and its effects. Changing the laws, too many Americans have believed, marked the end of the obligation.

WP: I see. You don’t really want reparation. What you want is a raise. You want to live on the guilt of modern white people forever, but with the condition you get to demand a raise every generation. In fact, there can never be peace, as that would mean no more raises and maybe no more white guilt. After all, if we feel we paid our debts to you, we have no reason to keep paying you.

What you really want is tribute. I think I can speak for the majority of white people and say we would rather have the Dane. At least with him the issue was clear.