One of the segments of the show this week is a topic that seems to be difficult for smart people to grasp. This is something that comes up in the discussion of conservatism and where to go now that Buckley-style conservatism has failed. All of the debates just assume some starting point without thinking much about it. They talk about Burke and Locke as if they were gods, rather than men. We have to respect what they said because they are the authority of all political knowledge.

A political theory is a lot like a proof in mathematics. In math, a proof will rest on axioms of mathematics and certain constants like the speed of light. You start from these fixed things that are always true. From there you derive knew truths or new solutions to problems of the universe. Political theory works the same way. The Founders started with Locke because they started with Natural Law as their authority. This was the universal constant upon which they built their politics.

This sounds rather esoteric and pointless at first, but the biggest question in all politics is by whose authority? When put to left-wing politics, few people championing things like critical race theory or antiracism could provide an answer. They just assume they are our moral superior. They do not know that the stuff they absorbed in college or had fed to them by coreligionists in their political cult come from some rather bizarre theories of history and human relations.

Not that it matters, as a practical matter. These people are quite dumb, but simply asking the question puts them on their heels. From our perspective, the effort to build an alternative politics has to start from this question. It is why things like “common good conservatism” must be viewed as a distraction, possibly a deliberate one, aimed at preventing genuine analysis of the current condition. They want to avoid any discussion of the authority for their claims.

This is obviously a big-brained topic that gets boring for most people, but it has important practical implications. That is the point of the show today. The practical questions that naturally arise from these theoretical issues are useful in dealing with the political crazies, but also in dealing with allies and converts. Being able to talk sensibly about the practical application of politics, segment three of the show, is probably the best thing anyone can do to change minds.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

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

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount 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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• 00:00: Opening
• 03:00: By Whose Authority?
• 23:00: To What End?
• 43:00: How Do We Do It?

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

This week I have been pressed for time, so the shows I have in the planning stages had to be shelved for something that fit the schedule. Since the schedule has little free time right now, that meant I turned on the mic and spoke for an hour off the top of my head about whatever was on my mind. I did no editing and I stopped only once or twice for a drink as I was recording, so it is pretty much a first draft. All things considered it is not the worst noise you will hear this week.

Upon reflection, I probably have more to say about the trucker protest in Canada than I said in the show. One thing that comes to mind as I type this is that it reveals just how controlled the mass media is now. They have been told to ignore it other than some approved narratives and that is what they have done. Look at the Canadian media and there is zero sympathetic coverage of the protestors. They are making no effort to meet with these people and give them a hearing.

The American media has brought down the cone of silence. Drudge has a government issued warning to Canada at the top. The New York Times and Washington Post are busy peddling their latest Russia fantasies. Soviet media was more informative that the American media is now. If you want to know anything about anything you have to dig around in Substack and independent sites. The American media is now a blanket of darkness thrown over the public square.

The other thing that comes to mind is how blatant the authoritarianism is now. I see the Canadian dictator just ordered the funds for the truckers frozen. He just made up some new rule apparently or his handlers did. Trudeau is most likely illiterate, so he has to rely on others to do these things. The US government is flying surveillance aircraft over the protest to intercept communications. They will then “share” this intel with their “partners” in the Canadian secret police.

This is the new game now. We saw this with Trump. The CIA asked Australia and Britain to spy on the Trump campaign. That got around the rule against the CIA spying on Americans and gave the FBI an excuse to do their own spying. Five years ago, they made up a phony story as cover, but now it is out in the open. We live in a country that has secret police that spy on people with impunity. America is becoming East Germany with better consumer goods.

That last bit is always the undoing of authoritarians. You can run a police state or you can have a happy productive society that has nice things. With posted inflation approaching double digits and real inflation much higher, the economic reckoning is quickly approaching. There is no easy way to tame inflation. It always means a recession and usually an ugly one. People are unhappy now. Imagine where things are when the economy is in the dumper.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

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

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount if you use this link. Types in HAPPY ZALENTINES DAY at check out to get free shipping through Valentine’s Day. 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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Truckers
• GOP Crackup
• Rogan
• Black Stuff
• Conservatism
• Music

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

One of the fun parts of studying the ancient world, even for an amateur, is that you see that the problems of the human condition are immutable. The issues we face today have new characteristics, but they are not new to man. The Ancients had the same sorts of problems because they had the same sorts of people. Then as now, there were people who lived to create trouble. There have always been people nibbling at the support cables of society, hoping for disaster.

Of course, the Ancients could not afford to indulge their fantasies about themselves or the world, so their solutions were to the point. An office holder who betrayed his duty to the office was forced to commit suicide. People who committed crimes, even small crimes, faced rough judgment. Much of what ails the modern age is the unwillingness to deal with the problems of society. As a result, they have metastasized to the point where they seem intractable.

Even so, it is settling to read about how the Ancients worked through the problems of society as it is a reminder that this is a constant. It is also comforting to see that even the most brilliant people of the age got things wrong. Just as troublemakers and subversives are a fixture of human society, wrongness is a universal constant, even among the most brilliant of the age. It is a good reminder that appeals to authority are often an excuse for not questioning authority.

For the show this week I plucked out a handful of not so famous Greek thinkers and did a short segment on who they were and what we can learn from them. As I said in the opening, the show is a bit of self-indulgence on my part. I like reading about this period in Western history, so I like talking about it too. I usually like to keep the show somewhat related to the issues of the day, but every once in a while, it is good to do one for the sole purpose of making the host happy.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

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

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount if you use this link. Types in HAPPY ZALENTINES DAY at check out to get free shipping through Valentine’s Day. 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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• 00:00: Opening
• 03:00: Lycurgus
• 13:00: Solon
• 23:00: Draco
• 33:00: Zaleucus
• 43:00: Parmenides
• 53:00: Democritus

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

While doing homework on the Army – McCarthy hearings, I was reminded of two things that seem to come up regularly. One is that the people causing the mayhem in our society are lacking in self-awareness. The term McCarthyism has dropped out of use of late, I cover this in the show, but most people are old enough to remember when it was popular and what it meant. The new McCarthyites are totally unaware of that rather easy comparison between themselves and McCarthy.

The other thing that comes up repeatedly is that the people causing trouble have a weird blind spot about the internet. Often, they will make a big bold moral statement and then sometime later make another big bold moral statement that is the exact opposite of the previous statement. Even crazier is they will do this on Twitter. Not long after, people will post screen caps of their prior statement alongside the new statement, easily revealing the contradiction.

You are left with the impression that these people are unaware of the internet, despite using it for their political drama. You really see this with the January 6 show trials they are cooking up. The claims they are making against these people are for things these people have done in the recent past. Adam Schiff spent four years claiming the 2016 election was illegitimate. Now he is tormenting people for the crime of questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

What lies at the heart of this is the problem presented by McCarthy. The sorts of people attracted to these moral crusades are without the normal sense of self that mentally healthy people possess. They need a foil, someone they can point to as bad in some way, so they can claim to be good by virtue of opposing that person. It is why their politics are highly personal. Liz Cheney cannot stop obsessing over Trump because she is a moral nullity who needs a villain to feel like a hero.

That is what makes the January 6 commission worth following. These people are so morally obtuse they could very well set themselves up like McCarthy. None of the people on that commission are sympathetic to the public. None of them seem to be smart enough to see this. They are so sure they are on the sign of angels, because they are certain their opponents are evil. That is how these people eventually find themselves on the other end of the inquisition.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

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

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount if you use this link. Types in HAPPY ZALENTINES DAY at check out to get free shipping through Valentine’s Day. 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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• 00:00: Opening
• 02:00: Background On The Hearings
• 22:00: The Morality Of McCarthyism
• 42:00: The New McCarthyites

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

This week’s show is a continuation of last week’s show. The point of the effort is to describe the various aspects of the ruling regime. We don’t have a good name for this form of rule and one reason for it is it just sort of happened. Unlike various forms of socialism, there is no one guy at the center of it. It is the combination of historical and economic events over the last two centuries. The great contribution of Karl Marx was having a last name that made for a pithy label.

In last week’s show, I thought the segment on managerialism was the best, but it is also the most studied aspect of the system. We have 80 years of writing on the growth of the administrative state. This week I think the two segments that are most important are Custodialism and Quadripartism. This growing sense by our rulers that they need to take care of us is rising from and encouraging this blending together of the power centers of the American empire.

There is a feudal aspect to this arrangement. People think of feudalism as knights saving damsels in distress. That makes for good story telling, but it was really a fully integrated social control system. The reciprocal relationships between the warrior elites evolved into a set of customs governing all of society. The duties and responsibilities the warrior elite had with one another became a model for society. The life of every person was defined by his duties and responsibilities.

Something similar is happening with the power centers of the empire. They are working out the rules with which they regulate behavior towards one another. At the same time, they are working out rules to govern those within their domain. Instead of a code of chivalry it is terms of service. Like life in feudal Europe, people are either compliant or non-compliant. The compliant get the privileges and protection of the system while the non-compliant are fair game.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

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

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount if you use this link. Types in HAPPY ZALENTINES DAY at check out to get free shipping through Valentine’s Day. 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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• 00:00: Opening
• 03:00: Quadripartism
• 18:00: Custodialism
• 33:00: Universalism
• 48:00: Revolutionary

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

One of the things that plagues opposition to the ruling regime is a poverty of language to label what is happening. The bad guys have a million ways to label their enemies, but the good guys are lacking a language to categorize the other side. The paleocons got close when they coined the term managerialism. This is both accurate and simple, but it only describes one aspect of the current system. Managerialism is one result of an ideology that has evolved over the last century.

When people hear the word “Marxism” or “communism” they immediately think of a set of economic arrangements. They may not know much about Marx or Marxism, but they know that it means the end of property and the rule by a party of ideologues. It is a simple and effective label. The same is true of communism or socialism. These words have connotations that make for effective shorthand. Even capitalism, a thing that may not actually exist, carries meaning for people.

We don’t have a label like that for the current political regime. Liberal democracy is probably accurate, but it has positive connotations. Democracy is supposed to be a good thing and liberal government is peaceful and accommodating. There are examples of things that are good separately but horrible together, like fish ice cream, but that is not really the same thing. When people in the public square use the term liberal democracy, they tend to use it in a positive way.

This conundrum is the inspiration for the show. Instead of trying to come up with a clever label for the current political order, maybe the better starting place is to just describe some of the big attributes. After all, the word “Marxism” did not come into use until the thing itself existed in some form. Once we can come up with a description for what we are experiencing, then maybe a label comes into focus. At the minimum, it starts the process of thinking about it beyond platitudes.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

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

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount if you use this link. Types in HAPPY ZALENTINES DAY at check out to get free shipping through Valentine’s Day. 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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• 00:00: Opening
• 03:00: Managerialism
• 23:00: Pluralism
• 43:00: Democracy

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG-2Ynb2YvM

This week the Power Hour makes its triumphant return just in time to celebrate one of the newest, but most solemn festivals, Insurrection Day. Given the way they have been carrying on for the last year, it is surprising that a congressional idiot has not suggested making it a federal holiday. Then again, that would make it more difficult to brainwash school children into thinking that this is the time when orange Nazis tried to burn down the Reichstag Capitol and seize power with Big Lies!

The absurdity of this ridiculous drama conceals something interesting about the psychology of the political class. They seem to require an Alamo-type event to rally their minds around as they lash out at their enemies. Charlottesville, another trivial affair, has been a rallying point for them. They got three years out of that one, so January 6th will probably be with us through the next presidential election unless some new political tragedy is engineered by our good friends at the FBI.

Part of it is the fact that the ideology of liberal democracy does not provide the sense of struggle required to keep everyone engaged. Like communism, liberal democracy has evolved into a revolutionary mindset without a defined end. It is just a process that goes on until something magical happens and we reach utopia. The commies came up with perpetual revolution to solve this problem. Liberal democracy is evolving a culture of permanent crisis to keep the believers engaged.

Charlottesville and now January 6 are legends that can be told around the campfires as reminders of the struggle. They both have the same elements. The cause was the good people were not vigilant, which allowed the bad guys to form up. Both stories have a point where things could go either way. Both have the point when the righteous swept the villains from the field and triumphed over evil. Both have their martyrs, although the January 6 martyrs are imaginary.

Of course, the more you examine it the more you see that the overlap between ideological zeal and insanity is quite large. These people cannot exist in the world as it is, so they have created a fantasy world. This world of imaginary villains is one where they can pretend to be on the side of angels in the great struggle. By itself it would be harmless, but this madness comes with a fanatical drive to control society. These people are crazy and highly motivated to take over society.

Communism eventually sidelined the fanatics. That is largely what happened when the Brezhnev faction deposed Khrushchev. The more sober minded saw that rule by true believer would get everyone killed. They were still left with an unworkable system full of logical contradictions, but they were able to stabilize it for a generation. It remains to be seen if liberal democracy can pull it off. Biden is the closest analog to Brezhnev and he is a doddering old fool incapable of doing anything.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-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.

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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Insurrectionism
  • NYT: Another Far-Right Group Is Scrutinized in Effort to Aid Trump – Link
  • NYT: Jimmy Carter: I Fear for Our Democracy – Link
  • NYT: Prosecutors Move Quickly on Jan. 6 Cases, but Big Questions Remain – Link
  • NYT: One Single Day. That’s All It Took for the World to Look Away From Us – Link
  • Daily Beast: The Real Tragedy of Jan. 6 Is That It’s Still Not Over – Link
  • Bulwark: Did the January 6th Coup Fail? – Link
  • Salon: Republican voters don’t actually “believe” the Big Lie about January 6 — they’re in on the con – Link
  • Mother Jones: A Key Reason Jan. 6 Rioters Aren’t Facing Sedition Charges: They’re White – Link
• Martyrs
  • AP: Ashli Babbitt a martyr? Her past tells a more complex story – Link
• Paranoid Delusions
  • Boston Globe: The coup is still underway – Link
  • WaPo: If American democracy is going to survive, the media must make this crucial shift survive – Link
  • Salon: Mussolini seized full power 97 years ago: Does Donald Trump long to follow suit? – Link
  • NyMag: Conservatism and Fascism Are Not the Same Thing – Link
• Authority Appropriation
  • Twitter: Doctor Hailey Banack – Link
• The Pigs & The Farmers
  • New Republic: Inside D.C.’s Rowdy New Progressive Scene – Link

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/JmZEOvjQe-0

In my youth when we hunted the mammoth and sabretooth, it became clear to me that a lot of jobs in corporate America are pointless. I was working at a big company that had to go through a round of layoffs. They called is Reduction In Force, which quickly became RIF. People were riffed rather than fired or let go. The banality of evil lies in corporate jargon. As a low level functionary with computer skills my job was to keep track of who had been riffed by their job function.

The first thing I noticed is management did not seem to know what many of their positions did for the company. The managers could talk about their direct reports, but the people creating the titles and roles were often unsure about the reason the positions were created in the first place. Most jobs seemed to evolve into an all-around staff assistant after they were created. Assistant accounting manager was just an office clerk that worked in a cubicle over in accounting.

The other thing that became clear is the work being done by the people riffed was not all that important as no one missed it. Some tasks were moved to other people, but most of it was just busy work that was eliminated with the person. The 20% cut in office staff did not result in 20% less work. It just reduced the number of meetings and the volume of paper moving around the office. The truth was, many of the remaining jobs were just make work as well.

When you read the work product of the academy, the thing you see right away is much of it is nonsense busy work. These are people with no useful skills and nothing to do so they fritter away their time in a game of make believe. They imagine themselves as academic and intellectuals. Their specialty is basically a hobby of their own creation, which is an offshoot of their mentor’s hobby. You could eliminate the social science and humanities and no one outside the academy would notice.

The other thing you notice about these nonsense fields is the struggle to apply these boutique theories to anything resembling reality. Queer studies makes perfect sense within the extremely narrow scope of academic queerness. Outside of that narrow scope it makes no sense whatsoever. Much of what is produced in these pseudo-intellectual fields – that is a generous description – is a desperate attempt to apply these crackpot theories to real world situations.

The financial structure of the American university system is unsound and serious cracks are starting to appear. There has been a 15% decline in public university enrollments over the last two years. Some of it is due to the Covid panic, but that is just an accelerant in this trend. The higher education Ponzi scheme cannot withstand drops in enrollment without it creating very serious financial problems. Demographics is only going to make this issue more obvious.

You have to wonder if what lies over the horizon is the biggest reduction in force we have seen since the collapse of the buggy whip industry. Colleges will be forced to cut costs and the low hanging fruit is the nonsense studies. It is not hard to imagine a university system riffing entire departments. We may be seeing the peak of bourgeois decadence in higher education. What lies ahead is a massive contraction that eliminates these sorts of fields entirely.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-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.

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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro and Holiday Schedule
• Identity Politics
• Whitey & Whiteness
• Xirls and Xims
• Our Glaciers, Ourselves

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/81ZbxfjlpdA

The show this week is on a topic that comes up here in different ways from time to time but will become more of a focus in the future. That topic is the intellectual and spiritual underpinnings of the new religion. Our side has the bad habit of judging this stuff by objective standards, which has some minor utility, but is of no use in developing suitable defenses or an alternative moral philosophy.

The first step in that process is the same as in war, which is to reconnoiter the enemy in order to understand his strengths and weaknesses. In the sense of the culture war, that means going into the enemy’s intellectual territory to understand how they think and get a grip on their code. Every subculture has its own language and the new religion is not an exception. They have their own jargon which we have to learn.

This parallel language is not just something they use in private with other cult members, but part of their everyday lives. What makes it effective is that the objects of their wrath are ignorant to the secret meanings. The enemies of the new religion still rely on dictionaries for words like race and sex. As a result, normal people are ignorant of the scheming that is often happening in plain sight.

As an aside, this is why the hard-thumping believers spend a lot of time cooking up imaginary code words used by their imaginary enemies. In the Charlottesville trial, the plaintiffs brought in a psychic to explain various internet memes. Projection is a big part of the new religion, so they assume that their enemies, real and imaginary, are speaking in coded language just as is done by the Left.

That said, dissidents do rely on coded language and esoteric language to communicate in the public square. Otherwise, the usual suspects would have an easy time of rounding up their opponents. In fact, every post here contains coded messages embedded in the text, along with the key for decoding them. The key, of course, changes every day and is why there are no Saturday posts.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-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.

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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• 00:00: Opening
• 05:00: Me Talking A lot

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/7TzWrXBarQE

I wanted to keep the shows light this month because it is the time of year when we should be in high spirits. This is my favorite time of year. We have the holidays and the year is winding down. We have the start of a new year to look forward to and the culmination of another year. It is a good time to take stock of things, count your blessings and gear up for what comes next. Plus, it gets dark early and the weather is turning to winter. This is the best time of year.

With that in mind I scanned the news sites looking for material and I was struck by a couple of things. First off, the people in charge are miserable. Everything is going sideways for them and they have no idea why. Reading the news items about the economy makes clear that they are in deep denial. We have inflation, shortages and a totally screwed up labor market. This is making their Build Back Better scheme look dangerously ridiculous to the public.

It is not just the economy. These idiots not only created a new cold war with the Russians but may be on the brink of a hot war. This Ukraine fiasco is entirely the fault of official Washington. They got in bed with the Ukrainian crooks because they liked the bribes and they picked a fight with Putin because of Trump. Now the Russian army is on the doorstep of Europe. The Ukrainian people deserve better, of course, but the blame largely lies with the incompetent idiots in Washington.

Everywhere you look, things are crumbling for the regime. The best and most amusing part of it all is that Team Biden is telling the party that they plan to run his corpse again for president in 2024. Of course, the party cannot push him aside because next in line is Kamala Harris, a woman less popular than rectal cancer. The whole thing is a disaster for the inner party and they seem to know it. Given the troubles on the horizon, 2022 promise to be nothing but misery for them.

As I said in the show, the GOP will probably benefit, but people are starting to smarten up a bit regarding their act. Read the comments of their party organs and you see lots of bitterness toward the party. You see this in daily life as well. The old red team/blue team stuff is falling apart quickly. I have heard more than a few civic nationalist types lament the fact that they no longer have a party. I suspect GOP voters are going to be looking at primary challengers in many races.

It is not all puppies and kittens. When the rulers screw up the people suffer and there is going to be plenty of suffering in 2022. Inflation means higher interest rates and that means big trouble for the economy and the stock market. It has been forty years since that has been necessary. Millions of retirees are not going to be happy with how the rulers fix the economy over the next 18 months. The short term is going to be a difficult time for normal people.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a 15-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.

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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

• 00:00: Opening
• 05:00: The Cloud People
• 25:00: The Worst Person
• 45:00: Be Happy

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/2GGoSPkbChw