Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto

Posted on September 2, 2024 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door I have a post about our robot overlords and a post explaining how you could have won millions on sports betting over the long holiday weekend, but the was no Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here. Instead, I was on the Coffee and a Mike podcast and the J. Burden Show.

The title of this post comes from On the Laws, a Socratic dialogue written by Marcus Tullius Cicero toward the end of the Roman Republic. The title is from Plato’s famous dialogue, The Laws. In this work, Cicero creates a fictional conversation between himself, his brother and a friend about the law and social harmony. Salus populi suprema lex esto is a famous line that means, “The health of the people should be the supreme law”. Sometimes “health” is translated as “welfare.”

It is a famous phrase that turns up all over America. You can often find it in the official seal of cities and towns. Manassas Virginia has it in the town seal. A number of states have it in their official seal. It is not just in America where you will find it. All across the English speaking world this line turns up in the official branding of tiny villages, big cities, and important institutions. This concept of the ruling class being duty bound to the welfare of the people is near universal.

The reason for the ubiquity is it turns up in the foundational works of what we have come to call Western liberalism. It is the epigraph of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, arguably the most important influence on the Framers. Hobbes and Spinoza, influences on Locke, also used the phrase and embraced the concept as presented by Cicero. The Roundheads in the English Civil War also embraced the phrase and the meaning behind it.

Despite most Americans never having heard of Cicero, the spirit of this age is animated by the simple concept behind that Latin phrase. It is what lies behind the urge to censor speech online, for example. The welfare in question when demanding you get booted from social media is the psychological health of the people. The censors assume that they are the guardians of the mental peace and tranquility, so they must make sure that deviationists like you are silenced.

It is what lies behind the persecution of protestors in America and the UK. The striking similarity between the draconian punishments handed out by the UK government against those protesting immigration and those being persecuted in the United States over January 6 is not an accident. The people doing this are sure they are defending “our democracy” from hooliganism. They can think this because they assume their position requires them to defend the welfare of the people.

Of course, Cicero would have been baffled by what is happening in this age, especially since he was murdered by agents of the Second Triumvirate, for the crime of speaking out against the tyranny of Mark Antony. The modern notion that the state must safeguard the moral health of the people to the point of jailing those who dare question public policy would have baffled the ancients. From the perspective of the ancient world, what we are seeing today is the worst form of government, democracy.

As for John Locke, he was a man of his age and in his age the state, in the person of the king, was responsible for the material wellbeing of the people. It was the duty of the state to defend the lands of the people from outsiders. It defended the people from internal threat through the execution of the laws. The spiritual well-being of the people was in the hands of the church. John Locke would have been as baffled as Cicero at the Roundheadism of the current age.

In fairness to the modern age, the collapse of the Christian churches leaves a void as far as the spiritual guardianship of the people. Even a century ago, most Americans would have shared the same ethical outlook, because their ethics would have come from the Christian churches. Doctrinal differences aside, the ethics of the New England Congregationalist were not all that different from an Appalachian Presbyterian, a Southern Baptist, or a Midwestern Methodist.

The collapse of Christian institutions in the twentieth century meant something had to replace them as far as the ethical instruction of the people. Being the most powerful institution, it was natural that the state should take on this duty. Of course, the state was also responsible for the destruction of the churches. The peculiar composition of the post-war ruling class made Christian ethics a bit of a problem, so the ruling class slowly replaced those Christian ethics with a new set of ethics.

It is why it is important to understand that what we see happening is not merely the desire to hold power, but a religious revolt against the people. The bizarre outbursts we see are on the one hand an effort to demonstrate the weakness of the old ethics and the religion behind it, but on the other hand an effort to clear the path for the embrace of the new religion and its new ethical code. Woke is nothing more than proselytizing on behalf of the new religion, even if they do not realize it.

This is why the state has reacted with increasing ferocity at resistance to the cultural revolution from the top. Your efforts to reason with them or point to tradition are viewed by the ruling class as a radical rejection of their primary duty, which is to safeguard the welfare of the people. In the minds of the people in charge, they are on the side of a long tradition dating to the ancients. It is you and your weird adherence to out of fashion faith and custom that is subversive.

In the end, the present ruling elite of the West will not be judged by how well they upheld the traditions and ethics of the ruling class they displaced. It will not be their authoritarianism or anti-Christian bigotry that is their undoing. It will be how well they safeguard the welfare of the people. Since they have taken on the spiritual wellbeing of the people, they will be judged at how well they perform their priestly roles and the reasonableness of their new religions edicts.

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Bourgeois Minoritarianism

Posted on March 20, 2024 by thezman

Edit: A friend of ours, Judd Blevins, is under attack by the usual suspects and could use some help in his fight. He is a good man trying to serve his community, but the freaks and weirdos are trying to ruin it. Here is his story and a way to send him a few bucks.

The weirdness of this age is a constant topic of discussion, mostly due to the fact that every day brings new weirdness. Ten years ago, if you said men would go to jail for defiling the sodomy flag, people would have thought you were nuts, but this is a thing that now happens in America. You can burn the American flag, but if you get caught insulting the sodomy flag you go to jail. A common side conversation these days is debating what new bizarre and deranged thing comes next.

The question that never comes up in any serious way is why the ruling class spends so much time manufacturing these perversions of reality. Why do these bourgeois people who rule over us embrace bizarre social fads when it is clear they would not incorporate them in their daily lives. Notice, for example, that advertising agencies have almost no diversity, but all of their ads are antiwhite. They promote race-mixing even though they go to great lengths to prevent this in their own lives.

The place to start is how these people see themselves. The people at the top of the various institutions that control society do not see themselves as an elite. Instead, they seem themselves as servants of the elite. Claudine Gay, the former head of Harvard College, never saw herself as part of the elite, despite the position, because she has always had a boss, someone with control over her. Even as Harvard president she had to kowtow to the billionaire donors that fund the college.

This is a reality of our managerial elite. Even though they occupy positions at the top level of critical institutions, they always feel like hired help. The angst of the college president is no different from that of the middle-class manager living in a suburb, but the stakes are much higher. Normal people were outraged that Claudine Gay kept her salary, but her loss of status was the real punishment. In a world controlled by bourgeois status seekers, losing face is worse than death.

For normal people, fear of losing a job or looking bad to your peers is a motivation to conform to expectations. For the managerial elite, this curdles into a resentment of the system over which they rule. These people are the resentful house slave who finds small victories in undermining the master of the house. The embrace of these deranged social fads is a way for the managerial elite to tell their bosses that they have some agency and command their respect.

Managerial angst works another way. The system that allows for the managerial elite has as one of its principles that it is open to everyone. If you do certain things you can rise up the system into the elite. When you strip natural talent from the equation, then all that is left is a recipe for success that anyone can follow. This means that the people at the top can always be replaced by the steady stream of strivers below them who are busy ticking boxes on their resume.

This is the other jaw of the vice that squeezes the worldview of the managerial elite and leads to the proliferation of social rules. In a true meritocracy, the only disqualification from reaching the top is a failure to abide by the rules. The proliferation of arbitrary and capricious rules of conduct replaces what used to allow elites to hold onto their position in the face of more talented challengers below them. The elites can still utter, “He’s not our sort”, but the reason is morality rather than bloodline.

This also breeds resentment of those below the elite level. It is clear that a key motivation behind these degenerate social fads is spite. The managerial elite looks around and they see danger from top and bottom. At the top are rich white-presenting people who seem to live outside the meritocracy. Below are white people who wish to work the meritocracy to climb the ladder. Scandalizing white people in general provides a salve to the fragile psyches of the managerial elite.

This sense of being surrounded on all sides may explain how our elites think of themselves as minorities. It is bizarre to see rich people like Nancy Pelosi carry on like she is an oppressed minority. Many have noted that the proliferation of females in the managerial class has brought with it the victim mentality, but it may simply be that females are more sensitive to it and much more willing to find ways to publicly express this sense of being an oppressed minority.

From the perspective of the managerial elite, they are a minority. When they leave their swank residences, they see miles and miles of Potemkin suburbs, cheap copies of their neighborhoods, clustered around synthetic “town centers” that have the big box retail shops popular with the masses. The managerial elites think these are made possible by their efforts, but they also resent that they are not loved for those efforts, and they rage at the fact their bosses in the economic elite profit from these efforts.

What this suggests is that the conditions that must exist in order to maintain the managerial elite in their positions, by maintaining the system itself, must also lead to the petty degeneracy we see today. A system that values equality, democracy and eschews class distinctions, but exists in contradiction to those things produces a special sort of angst among the managerial elite. Their embrace of degeneracy is, in effect, a slave revolt against a system that is spiritually eviscerating.

Put another way, the the system of values the managerial class must embrace as they rise up the ranks increasingly comes into conflict with the reality of the system as they rise higher in the system. The middle-manager gets the praise of his boss by a selfless devotion to his work, but the people at the top got their position by a ruthless exploitation of those below him. It is this conflict that leads to the boiling hatred of the system that makes the managerial elite possible.

A strong society has a strong elite that works within the set of values embraced by the elite and is manifestly obvious to outsiders. A warrior elite will value the attributes that make a great warrior. An aristocracy will value those qualities that define the aristocratic class like bloodlines. Managerialism, in contrast, has a value system that is in conflict with the requirements of the managerial elite. It is this internal and unresolvable contradiction that leads the elite to attack their own system.

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The Witch Hunters

Posted on February 6, 2024 by thezman

In 1692, nineteen people were hanged for the crime of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, the first of whom was Bridget Bishop, a woman who had been married three or four times and previously accused of bewitching one of her husbands, leading to his death. She was hanged after the court determined that she was a witch because she was a promiscuous liar. There was also the claim that she had a third nipple that mysteriously disappeared upon examination.

Witch trials were not unique to the colonies or to the Puritans. Witch hunting became a thing in Europe during the 15th century and lasted into the 18th century. It corresponded with the great upheavals that occurred with the breakup of the Catholic Church and the wars that followed it. It was a terrifying time in Europe and people naturally looked for reasons as to why it was happening. Naturally, they assumed it was the result of supernatural forces unleashed by the religious convulsions.

We like to think we have moved past this sort of superstitious madness, but superstitious panic is part of the human condition. In the 20th century America experienced the satanic panic. This was when over ten thousand people were accused of participating in satanic rituals in which children were abused. The panic was set off by a Canadian psychiatrist not named Jordan Peterson and his patient who claimed to have recovered memories of satanic abuse.

Eventually this led to wild claims about the sexual abuse of children at daycare centers around America. There was the McMartin preschool case where the operators were charged with all sorts of heinous crimes. There was no physical evidence, and the charges were eventually dropped after thirteen years of court cases. There was the Fells Acres case in Massachusetts, not far from Salem, oddly enough, where the owners were jailed for the satanic abuse of children.

The point here is that superstition is still with us. You can see it in posts like this one from what amounts to a modern witch hunting operation. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism could just as easily be called the Global Project Against Witchcraft and Sorcery and make more sense. The words “witchcraft” and “sorcery” have an agreed upon meaning while “hate” and “extremism” are reduced to nonsense words by the modern-day witch hunters.

Instead of Old Scratch tempting the morally weak into doing his bidding, the modern witch hunter tells us it is white kids using magical incantations to introduce evil spirits into the gaming community. You see, exposure to certain ideas can cause you to build a death camp, so Old Scratch has his minions use special magic words and phrases in the chat rooms of video games. Exposure to these words and phrases can cause the morally vulnerable to succumb to the charms of Old Scratch.

This may sound like an exaggeration, but it is right at the top of that post. They have a warning to readers that reads, “Warning: This analysis contains highly offensive and potentially triggering language and imagery.” They literally assert that words and images can have a physical effect on some people. The assumption is the effect must always be bad, which explains the warning. The only thing missing here is a reminder that the reader should make sure to wear her special amulet.

The entirety of the hate hunter industry rests on the assertion that certain opinions must lead to certain actions, not only by the person holding the taboo opinion, but by those who are exposed to the opinion. At no point will you see these people argue that the opinions are inaccurate, beyond some chanting of abracadabra phrases like “race science” which is supposed to protect the chanter from the opinion. They never explain how opinion must lead to action.

The closest you get is what amounts to the modern version of spectral evidence which they call “stochastic terrorism.” This is a novel concept that claims, “the use of mass media to provoke random acts of ideologically motivated violence that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.” In other words, get enough bad words into circulation and people will do bad things in response to the bad words, but there is no way to know who will do the bad things.

Since there is no way to know who will do the bad things in response to the bad words, the only remedy is to eliminate the bad words. Oddly, the witch hunters cannot know who will be triggered by the bad words, but they know exactly which words will do the triggering and who possesses those bad words. We are right back to examining women for third nipples by self-declared experts in a field that has no rational basis, only moral certainty about their own righteousness.

The graybeards will talk about something they call the great interregnum, a time when interested intellectuals and commentators could speak openly about subjects like race, intelligence, sex, demographics, and immigration. This was in the 1980’s and 1990’s when America was feeling confident. The ruling elite was talking about the end of history, by which they meant their final triumph of all mankind. The Cold War was over, and they would lead humanity to the promised land.

The great interregnum ended as Western elites began to sense they were not leading humanity into the golden age. The rest of the world was stubbornly refusing to go along with this end of history stuff and Western critics began to question the sanity of the end of history business. In other words, just as witch hunting in the late Middle Ages was a response to the collapse of the old moral order, the modern witch hunting is a response to the collapse of elite moral order.

The Reformation was the result of an institution that had evolved down a dead end because it evolved for a world that was beginning to recede. The social and economic relations that made the Church possible were giving way to new social and economic relations, so a new moral order rose up to challenge the old moral order. American liberalism is facing the same crisis. It evolved for a world that no longer exists and has unleashed the witch hunters to find the cause.

That is why efforts with grandiose names like the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism attract money from the elites. They promise to find those responsible for challenging the moral order and suppressing them. The gaggle of petty Torquemada’s that have been unleashed are a rearguard action by an elite that sees itself in crisis and is terrified by the prospect of an alternative moral order. The modern witch hunters are part of the death throes of a dying system.

The Clash Of Visions

Posted on January 24, 2024 by thezman

The New Hampshire primary turned out about how most sober minded people expected, with Trump cruising to victory. As expected, regime media and those in the anti-Trump cult have quickly moved onto other things. Even though the narrative on this election has been wrong so far, these people were sure the gods would deliver them from the terrible Orange Man in New Hampshire. Now they will update the script for the South Carolina primary in a few weeks.

Even though the New Hampshire primary was not a surprise to normal people, it does have a few things worth noting. One is the turnout. In 2016 when all of this was new and exciting, about two hundred and sixty thousand people voted on the Republican side, with Trump getting one hundred thousand votes. This time, with the results known in advance, three hundred thousand voted on the Republican side and Trump got one hundred and sixty thousand votes or fifty-four percent.

Further, exit polling says that only about a third of the people voting would call themselves “MAGA”, by which they mean part of the Trump movement. We do not have similar polling from 2016, but it is reasonable to say that most of Trump’s vote during those crazy days would declare themselves part of the movement. You also have to consider the fact that even Trump’s most loyal fans would find it weird to ask them if they were part of the MAGA movement, as if it is a club.

Even so, it says that people were voting for different reasons this time. Various anti-Trump groups poured money into the state to boost other candidates. Mikki Haley spent over twenty million on ads. The DNC spent millions last year getting their voters to switch to undeclared so they could vote in the GOP primary. About half of the Republican primary voters were undeclared, so it is reasonable to assume many will vote Democrat in the general.

What the regime tried to do with a fair bit of success is turn the Republican primary into a general election by flooding the voting booth with Democrats. It explains why Haley dropped her “tough conservative gal from the South” routine and morphed into “I want to speak to the manager” feminist hero. Her people had her go out and praise Hillary Clinton because they knew that half the voters probably voted for Hillary over Trump and would like to do it again.

It also tells us something about the dynamics of this election. This is not the 2016 election where people voted for Trump for the same reason the drunk guy in the crowd mooned the king or shouted derogatory things at him. In 2016, Trump was for many voters a harmless protest vote. In 2024 it means something different because things have gotten much worse since then. Note that for the first time primary voters put immigration at the top of their concerns.

There is something else here that may be driving a new dynamic in this election and that is the open shenanigans in this process. Think about the sort of person who schemes up a plan to get Democrats to vote in the other party’s primary a year in advance in order to subvert the will of the voters. This is a level of sociopathy that few people think is possible. Serial killers are not this devious. The people claiming to defend democracy are now out front with these schemes.

Of course, such a scheme only works if there are people willing to do it. Years of interacting with people who put up signs on their lawn promoting the latest thing is slowly changing how normal people see things. Thirty years ago, the typical suburban peasant thought they just needed find the right person to say the truth the right way and these people would see the light. Today, the typical suburban peasant thinks the woman with the BLM sign might be better off in another country.

What the typical suburban peasant is waking up to, even though he cannot articulate it, is that we are living in a clash of visions. The people on the other side of that sign explaining all the things that go on in that house have a view of the world that is completely different from most people. That vision often assumes that the people without such signs are what stands between them and the future. The vision of the self-anointed says the benighted are the problem.

This is because when they talk about “democracy” they are not talking about the mechanics of picking office holders. They imagine a society in which all of the moral questions have been solved. The only thing left is figuring out how to quickly attain diversity, inclusion and equality. Further, they assume that everyone must want this, unless they are evil, so the only reason we have not “made progress” is that these evil people are using shenanigans to confuse the masses.

In contrast, the typical suburban peasant imagines a world where he has a job he enjoys, friends to grill with and watch ball games and a chance give his kids a better life than he got from his parents. For him, democracy is about picking the best office holders who will take turns buggering through the problems. In most cases, the typical suburban peasant prefers the guy who will do very little, as things could always get worse so best not to rock the boat too hard.

It is not just that one vision is radical and utopian and the other conservative and pragmatic, but that the former sees the destruction of the latter as a proper and necessary part of their program. What we are seeing in this election could be a sign that the typical suburban peasant is waking up to this reality. It is not just that the middle-aged white woman with the BLM sign is wrong, but that she represents a danger to the life and welfare of the typical suburban peasant.

Whether or not this awakening among the typical suburban peasant is happening can be debated, but we can be sure he has yet to arrive at the solution. There can be no compromise in this clash of visions. When the ends of one side are the destruction of the other, the only plausible response for the other side is to seek the same. As more suburban peasants wake up to the reality of sign lady, more will inevitably arrive at the only solution that guarantees their survival.

DIE Another Day

Posted on January 8, 2024 by thezman

Note: There was no Sunday podcast this week. I got back from the new house and was simply too tired to do it. I may put the Sunday show on ice until I get the house finished, which means doing something else in its place. Behind the green door, there were two written items this week. A post about my trip to the witchdoctor and post about the aesthetics of modern cars. Subscribe here or here.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the massive food fight that erupted among the worst people over how the allegedly best people cheat like crazy. Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard, was supposed to be a proof of concept for the egalitarian blank slate religion of the Cloud People. In reality she was as synthetic as their empathy for people of color. Claudine Gay was a modern lawn jockey. Instead of standing on their lawn with a lantern, she held up her diplomas.

Then we have Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund guy who started this when Gay made unpleasant noises about Israel. He first threatened to withdraw funding and when that did not work, he went after her credentials. In a world of credentialism this was a declaration of war on the system. Soon the internet dug into Gay’s background and found examples of alleged plagiarism. Harvard then demoted her to being a million dollar a year political science instructor.

In response, MIT decided to get into the fight, and they leaked dirt to Business Insider about Ackman’s wife, who supposedly had a cut and paste problem too. It is ironic that people who are immune to the charge of hypocrisy thought they could use the charge of hypocrisy against people famously immune from the charge of hypocrisy. It is an example of how the hive mind operates. Once Ackman was declared outside the hive, he was no different from Trump or Hitler to the hive.

For his part, Ackman has declared a jihad against MIT. He is asking for volunteers to scan the academic work of everyone at MIT. He has also offered to fund the use of technology to expedite the process. Interestingly, the MIT president said all the same things as the Harvard and Penn presidents about Israel, but she has been immune from criticism to this point. Perhaps she thought the force field was not enough to protect her, so she launched this preemptive strike.

Again, it is hard not to enjoy this poo-flinging contest, but it obscures a reality at the heart of the whole thing. That is the logic of the egalitarian religion must lead them to these self-destructive ends. The reason for that is there is no way to reach the stated goals of this new religion without dismantling the standards and practices of the Western society that made the modern university possible. In other words, to dismantle whiteness they must dispense with the rules of whiteness.

The only reason Claudine Gay can exist is if the rules of the academy are changed to make it possible for her to exist. All along the way her mostly white advisors cut corners for her so she could move along through the system. They do this because it was the path of least resistance, but also for self-interest. They could subtly mention how they were once the advisor of this shining example of the new religion. This is social capital an academic can use for status seeking.

Systemic rule breaking is not confined to the grievance studies areas. The need to acquire totems of the new religion is everywhere on campus. The chemistry department at Rice University, for example, spends scarce resources on thirty different diversity and inclusion programs. The department now offers a for-credit course in Afrochemistry, which is taught by this woman. She will no doubt be lifted up on the shoulders of academics and socially promoted into a leadership role.

This all sounds fine except that when you populate your new system with people who are both incompetent and entitled, the results of that system will reflect this. The long running discussion about the decline of elite universities is centered around the fact the graduates are often astoundingly incompetent. The truth is, they may be incompetent at traditional things, but they are stars at the rules of the new system. The products of dismantling whiteness are good at dismantling whiteness.

The reason we have a crisis of competence in America is the managerial system is slowly being taken over by people who are only good at gaming the system to produce diverse, equitable and inclusive results. The managerial system is slowly being bent to the goal of denying its own existence. No one would dare hire Brooke Johnson to do chemistry, but she plays a role in who gets hired to do chemistry. Get enough Brooke Johnsons and Claudine Gays and the system begins to fail.

All of this was inevitable as soon as the moralizers of the mid-twentieth century declared a fatwa against nature. Once it was immoral to notice natural inequality and the fixed nature of people, the old system was doomed. The only permissible explanation for the persistent inequality was to blame the system and that meant destroying the system was the only moral path forward. The social promotion system is about maintaining the myth of egalitarianism.

That also means there is no way out for these elite colleges. Bill Ackman can expose all of them as plagiarists, cheats, and fools, but nothing will change because nothing can change as long as the core tenets of the faith remain. Unless Bill Ackman has a new religion for these people to embrace, they will burn the whole system to the ground before abandoning diversity, equity, and inclusion. This means the collapse of the university system is inevitable.

Good Times

Posted on December 14, 2023 by thezman

Note: For those into literary fiction, there is a relatively new publisher in Texas that would like your attention. They asked me to post a link to their site. Presumably they know what they are asking, so here is their site. With Winter Solstice upon us, maybe there is a gift for the literary person in your life.

It would take a heart of stone not to enjoy the current moral panic that has enveloped the elite monasteries of the country. For those unaware, the presidents of MIT, Penn and Harvard were called to perform at a Congressional morality play regarding pro-Palestinian protests on the college campus. Important Jewish people have demanded an end to these protests, so Congress swung into action. They called these three girl bosses in to explain why they had not ended these protests.

Hilariously, these three girl bosses managed to fumble what everyone assumed was an easy role for them in the show. The way these things work is the politicians make a speech, put on their serious face, and ask the witness to respond to a loaded question that can only have one answer. The witness then puts on her serios face, gives a speech and confirms what the questioner asked. Somehow these girl bosses did not know this, and they gave nuanced answers.

Now, nuanced answers are good when the questioner is pretending to be one of the bad people who claims to speak for the Dirt People. In these cases, the nuanced answer is a way of saying that the Dirt People are too stupid to understand the topic, without coming right out and saying it. In this case, the questioners were literally speaking for the Jewish supporters of Israel. Therefore, the nuanced answer was seen as the worst form of heresy.

What that means in the American theocracy is all three girl bosses were condemned as antisemites and expected to resign. Being girls bosses, raised on the narcotics of feminism and multiculturalism, they refused. “How dare these small hat wearing weirdos challenge our nuanced answers?”, they surely thought to themselves. For their part, the small hat wearing weirdos started pulling their money from these colleges, threatening a larger boycott unless the girl bosses get fired.

To no one’s surprise on this side of the great divide, the only girl boss to get shown the door was the white lady, Penn president Elizabeth Magill. The weird look black girl boss of Harvard and the Jewish girl boss of MIT have the full support of their board and refuse to resign. This has created a problem, as to notice this is to notice the truth of the liberal project, which is the greatest taboo. On the other hand, to not notice this means letting the protestors say bad things about Jews and Israel.

What is making this even more amusing is the Jewish donors are focusing all of their energy on Harvard’s black girl boss and totally ignoring MIT’s girls boss, thus making it near impossible to not notice things. Steve Sailer had to be rushed to the emergency room for an overdose of noticing. On the other hand, the people making a lucrative career out of never noticing have not noticed any of this. They are preparing to fold their tents and declare a moral victory.

That is the conservative golden bridge. Whenever it is time to take the fight to the other side, they gather up their best principles and build themselves a bridge over which they can escape the battlefield. You see, this Jew-hating, black plagiarist will have to live with the knowledge that people know she is a fraud. The fact that this woman has managed to live with this her whole life does not register. They will comfort themselves knowing they held the moral high ground over on the sidelines.

Of course, the people backing black girl boss may have won this battle, but they are in for a long war as the other side never takes no for an answer. They are rather famous for that, so the war will continue. They are now going after black girl boss on the grounds that she is an academic fraud. She did her PhD in how to efficiently use Word’s copy and paste feature. Apparently, she felt entitled to the work of others. How in the world did she get that idea? Oh, right.

Conservatives, of course, are already assuming this signals the end of the revolution as the revolutionaries set about eating their own. They are preparing to celebrate themselves for having hidden under their bed long enough for the bad guys to have burned down everything worth burning. “The diversity warriors have done it now! They have angered the Jews and there is no recovering from that. The Jews will vote Republican in the next election, and we win!”

This is nonsense. The reason these girl bosses exist, regardless of their form, is they are a rebuke to the unifying enemy which is the white man. The sole reason Harvard hired this ridiculous woman as president was because she was ridiculous. It was both a rebuke to the pale penis people and a booshie goof. She has no real power or authority, so no harm can come of it. This makes her hiring like so much of what happens in this region of the clouds. It is a pose, a gesture, a signal.

If the pale penis people out there in the places where the Dirt People live start causing any trouble, the Cloud People will quickly put aside this tempest in a teapot aside, lock shields and wage jihad against their common enemy. No matter how much the various factions of the permanent revolution may hate one another, they all agree that they hate you more than they hate anything else on this earth. That is because you are the living rebuke of everything they claim for themselves.

Even so, you take your joy where you find it. This is a long fight with many dark days, so any fun you can have along the way you must enjoy to the fullest. Watching these credentialled fraudsters claw each other’s eyes out is great fun. It is also a useful reminder that the progressive is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

A Warning From The Past

Posted on November 7, 2023 by thezman

On August 30, 1918, Vladimir Lenin had just given a speech at the Hammer and Sickle arms manufacturing facility in Moscow. As he was leaving, a woman called out his name and he stopped to see who was calling to him. Why he would have done this is unclear, as by this point Lenin was the most important man in Russia. He had lots of people who wanted a minute of his time. Nonetheless, he stopped to address the woman, who produced a pistol and shot Lenin three times.

The woman was not just any woman. She was Fanny Kaplan, who had been involved in radical politics since she was a teenager. She was a member of the SR’s, a very radical group that had been aligned with the Bolsheviks at times. She had spent time in a Siberian labor camp for having taken part in terrorist bombing attacks in Kiev, as well as other activities. She had been released by the Bolsheviks after the February revolution and gone right back to radical politics.

Lenin survived the assassination attempt, although he was never quite the same physically or psychologically. This was terrifying to Lenin and his inner circle not just due to the attack itself, but what it represented. The Bolsheviks were no longer the revolutionary force from the left, but the established order that had to contend with threats from all corners of the political space. The Bolsheviks had real power so that meant wielding that power to maintain that power.

There was also the issue of how Kaplan was able to get so close to Lenin in order to take a shot at him. Lenin had security, but it became clear that the SR radicals had friends and sympathizers in the security apparatus. The Cheka was filled with people who were not entirely loyal to the Bolsheviks. Many had been aligned with coalition partners, like the SR’s. If revolution was going to stay alive, it meant the system had to be purged and that meant unleashing political terror.

This was an important step, especially given the fact that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were students of the French Revolution. They knew how the terror worked out for the Jacobins and they were determined to avoid the same fate. Yet from the perspective of Lenin lying in a bed with a hole in his neck and a bullet in his shoulder, the only logical path forward was to unleash the forces of political terror. The same logic would eventually motivate Stalin to follow the same course.

The reason this matters at all to those living in this spot on the space-time continuum is that the people in charge of the empire are facing similar choices. In fact, they have been in this spot since the 2020 coup. In the fullness of time, that election will probably be looked at the same way as other radical coups in revolutionary times. Maybe Trump is actually our version of Kerensky, the radical liberal reformer who tried to head off the radical socialists but was eventually defeated by them.

Putting that aside, what mattered to Lenin as doctors patched him up was his perspective on the situation. The same can be said of the regime in the aftermath of the January 6th protests. Like Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the people who engineered Biden into the White House suffered from a similar lack of confidence. They had pulled off the great coup, but they were still unsure of their position. People climbing barricades brought to mind people more radical than themselves.

In other words, the people now in charge of the system see themselves as radicals, facing threats from all sides as they seek to consolidate power. This may sound a bit nuts but radicalism is powered by strong belief. Even when they have total control of the state, radicals will believe themselves to be the underdog, fighting a much more powerful enemy. You see that in this advertisement by a former J6 prosecutor, who seems to think he is David facing the Goliath of MAGA.

Mr. Rollins sounds deranged and delusional, but he believes what he is saying not because the facts support those beliefs. He believes because there are no better beliefs for him to hold at the moment. That is one of those things about political believers that normal people struggle to grasp. These people genuinely believe what they say, and they will not drop those beliefs when you present facts and reason. They will only abandon those beliefs in favor of better beliefs.

This is why it is foolish to think that the people we call the Left are running out of juice or having second thoughts. This is not how the revolutionary mind works. Those polls we now see showing Biden losing to Trump in the key states are not intended to boost your spirits, but to terrify the radicals. It is a reminder that there is always a Kerensky, or a Trump in this case. More importantly, there is always a Fanny Kaplan, so the radicals better not lose focus or let down their guard.

This is why they continue to persecute the J6 people. Almost three years on and they are still hunting for new victims. It is why there will be renewed efforts to eliminate Trump from the ballot. The bizarreness of the New York court case against Trump should be a reminder that that the radicals will never let something as petty as facts or the law get in the way of their efforts. Every setback is a reminder that they must renew their efforts to complete the revolution.

The regime is Lenin, lying on a couch with two holes put there by someone with help from the inside. The reality of that thinking is not important. What matters is the belief that the revolution is in mortal danger. Our revolutionaries are just as aware of the past as the prior revolutionaries, but they are just as trapped by the dynamics of revolution, so they will be compelled to follow the same path. What lies ahead is not a break from the madness, but a renewed assault by the radicals.

Our Democracy

Posted on September 11, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the creative problems in the making science fiction television, a post about the the Hitchcock film Rear Window, and the Sunday podcast which is a rant about fate women. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

The phrase “our democracy” has become a popular chant among the political class, always used as an excuse for anti-democratic action. You can be sure they will be saying it like they have a weird form of Tourette’s when the time comes to bar Donald Trump from the Republican nomination. “For the good of our democracy, we are going to remove the most popular guy from the Republican ballot.” In his place they will appoint someone with little or no support.

Of course, this will be met with howls from the usual corners. They will jump up and down demanding everyone notice the hypocrisy. What “hypocrisy” means in the sector we call the Right is “they are doing that which we would never have the courage to do even if allowed.” When the group we call the Left uses this word they mean, “We have found some minor contradiction in the criticism of us, so we are now free to ignore all of that and continue on with our work.”

This difference in language is important to understanding why the political class has become so fond of the phrase “our democracy.” For normal people, democracy is a process by which the policy preferences of the majority win out. In the crudest form it is understood to mean majority rule. For most people, however, it means a process by which the voters select representatives who then haggle and bargain over public policy in legislatures while following an established set of rules.

Democracy can have things that are not majority rule. The most obvious is the Electoral College system for electing a president. Normal people understand that this is not majority rule, but a way to protect the interests of small states against the interests of large states within the democratic process. The Senate is another example of something that is not democratic in the narrow sense, but part of the democratic framework of the system to maintain balance.

There used to be a time when students were taught that the American system was not a democracy but a representative republic. Democracy is mob rule and mobs can be very fickle, especially under stress. The system of checks and balances in the system is to slow the mob so that the will of the people can mature. The people may not get what they want initially, but after a series of elections the will of the people wills out and we get public policy that reflects the general consensus.

Obviously, that is nothing like reality. One part of becoming a dissident is accepting that this stuff you learned in school is at best naïve and at worst a lie. The two-party system that we have is designed to prevent ideas outside the consensus of the two parties from entering the political debate. It also works to prevent the ruling class from having to address the concerns of the people. The “democratic process” is a fig leaf used by the ruling elite to subdue any resistance to their rule.

Now, the right side of the political class does not think about this as those people are generally selected for their stupidity. Their job is to wave their pom-poms at the suburban peasants while the system celebrates itself. The left side, on the other hand, does think about it and they have a different definition of democracy. Their definition of democracy begins with what they think the will of the people ought to be if it is completely informed and allowed to blossom.

You see, you can only have democracy when the people are equally informed and allowed to fully participate in the debate. In order to do this, the citizens must fully understand their own interests and to do this they must come to understand their purpose within the framework of society. Until you can fully know yourself, you cannot fully participate in the democratic process. As a result, most people are tricked into voting against their interests or the interests of society.

One part of defending democracy is to prevent this from happening. The defenders of “our democracy” are always seeking to shape the public space so that the people can discover their true purpose and act on it through the process. This cannot happen if there are people out there spreading disinformation or misinformation, so one job of the democracy defenders is to root out the bad actors from the public square. You cannot have democracy if everyone is allowed to speak.

What is important here is that the defenders of democracy are not defending a process but the idea of the true will of the people. Since the process can be corrupted, it can result in undemocratic results, like the 2016 election. In a true democracy bad people like Trump and his voters do not exist, much less win elections. In order to defend democracy, the defenders of democracy were forced to use any means necessary, even undemocratic ones, to stop Donald Trump.

Now, the defenders of democracy assume certain things about the purpose of society, its natural end point, which means they assume certain things about the purpose of the people who will one day populate the fully flowered democracy. The most important foundational item is the assumption that once everyone is fully democratic and fully understands her purpose, everyone agrees on the purpose of society. This means politics withers away as there is nothing to debate.

Since the defenders of democracy understand all of this, the presence of people who oppose them means society is not democratic. The larger project requires that these people be removed by any means necessary. As long as these enemies of democracy are standing in the way of progress, the defenders of democracy have a right and an obligation to do what is required to defeat them. It turns out that you can only reach true democracy through authoritarian means.

That last bit is critical. The defenders of democracy assume that once the conditions for democracy are firmly and unquestionable in place, the people in the system will have no choice but to realize their true purpose as democratic people. At that magical point, politics collapses as all moral disputes are gone. There is no need for elections and the rule of law because everyone at all times agrees on everything. There is no coercion because there is no dissent from the moral order of democracy.

This is why there can be no compromise between the people who see democracy as a process and those who see it as a moral conclusion. The former group not only tolerates dissent but sees it as proof the system works. The latter group sees dissent as proof the system is failing. This contrast in moral visions makes it impossible for the two camps to coexist in the same society. If you want a democratic society, you can never tolerate people who want a democracy.

The Tyranny Of The Stupid

Posted on May 22, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the paradox of tolerance, a post about the growing Ukraine quagmire and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

In The Past is a Future Country, Ed Dutton and J.O.A. Rayner-Hilles, argue that the West is about to be swamped by an unsustainable wave of stupid people. This is not the result of immigration, but rather the culmination of an evolutionary process that began in the Industrial Revolution. Darwinian selection weakened along with the increase in living standards. The result is a steady increase in narcissistic stupid people who undermine the fundamentals of Western society.

In this post, Ed Dutton makes the point that liberal female politicians are getting dumber, as a result of this process he outlined in his book. He relies on two examples, Sanna Marin of Finland and Angela Rayner of Britain, to make his point. Both women are on what we insist on calling the Left and both women are morons. Not only are they stupid, but they appear to have come from stupid parents. They are Nth generation morons who have risen to the top of politics.

It is an amusing and satisfying read for people who think of themselves on the Right, even if he is making sweeping claims from just two examples. For as long as anyone can recall, the people we call the Left have claimed that their opponents are unsophisticated morons who should be dismissed. Having this turned on its head with the use of the human sciences is good fun, but it may be missing the real cause for the great dumbing down of Western politics.

The ideal politician in a liberal democracy has an extremely high verbal dexterity along with an extremely low degree of self-awareness. In fact, the best politicians of this age are glib narcissists who have never done anything useful. Much of the panic over Donald Trump is due to the fact he worked in the dreaded private sector. Having had anything other than a ceremonial position in the real economy is so strange in politics that the political class naturally views it as a defect.

The reason for this is despite the fact we insist on calling it politics, there is little in the way of politics happening in a modern liberal democracy. Everyone in the political system agrees on the moral claims. As Marx noted, when you get the morality settled, there is no need for politics. Put another way, once everyone agrees on the goal, then you are left with a debate about how best to achieve it. The barrier to entry in modern politics is the moral questions.

As a result, the selection pressure in politics is for people who will never color outside the lines and always promote the latest thing. The more natural someone is at conforming to the prevailing orthodoxy, the less likely they are to question what is demanded of them. Of course, if they are especially good at appearing enthusiastic about the latest thing, then all the better. The people in charge are always on the hunt for the glib toady who can really sell the latest thing.

As we see with actors, a lack of self-awareness is key. Someone who is painfully aware of how they look to others, or worries about how they look to others, is not going to be a particularly good performer. Humiliating yourself for laughs or applause works best when you cannot imagine the concept of humiliation. It is why the narcissistic moron is a well-known type in the entertainment world. An idiot who thinks highly of himself, but never questions the script is an ideal actor.

Just as an actor who easily “believes in the project” is always in demand, the politician who is always ready to run with the latest thing is always rewarded. His donors will make sure he is kept in the lifestyle he thinks he deserves. His party will always rely on him to take point on the latest thing. Joe Biden made a long career in politics being a narcissistic simpleton, despite stealing everything in sight. Joe Biden is the perfection of modern democratic politics.

It is not just electoral politics where we see this process, but the politics of the managerial elite as well. David French is a goofy looking buffoon but he has risen to the top of the political media because he has no shame. He will say whatever he needs to say in order to shine amongst the other simpletons. French is the combination of oleaginous rumpswab and narcissistic simpleton that has come to define the chattering classes in the United States.

All of this is the result of democracy. Not the mechanics of voting, but the belief that the general will is the moral authority. Once a society accepts this claim, turns the mob into a god, then moral conformity must follow. After all, if there is no agreement, the general will is unknown, then the people are left with no moral authority. Therefore, the solution is to impose a moral consensus and religiously oppress dissent. The only way democracy can work is if everyone agrees.

This is why Western societies are now policed by a volunteer army of simpletons, prodded along by the autocrats. Democracy collapses if there is not a perceived agreement on the moral questions. Even though the people who rise to the top are stupid, they understand the need for consensus. This is why they so enthusiastically impose the latest thing on the public. Who they are depends upon the belief that everyone supports the latest thing.

None of this is to say that Dutton is wrong about Darwinian selection pressure declining with material prosperity. That is certainly true. Smart people made society safer for stupid people, which allowed the stupid to multiply like tribbles. The reason the stupid are dominating politics, however, is that democracy selects for stupidity because stupid people are much more likely to support the moral consensus. Poverty would not arrest our descent into democratic imbecility.

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Willing Accomplices

Posted on January 3, 2023 by thezman

If one were looking for a reason for why the conservative movement failed so completely you would be spoiled for choice. Most people would point to the fact that despite having billions of dollars and majority support on key issues, conservatives managed to conserve nothing. Others would point out that many of the people claiming to be conservative were more concerned with maintaining good relations with their friends on the Left than advancing conservative policy.

Often this is where you hear some form of the Hoffer quote about great causes becoming religions, corporations or rackets. It is a great observations and certainly true, especially with regards to the conservative movement. Any system that produces a sanctimonious simpleton like David French has long since stopped being a serious political movement. Most of conservatism is a racket, while the rest is just a jobs program for philosophy majors.

While true, these are symptoms rather than causes. The real cause of conservative failure was the race issue. Once they conceded the moral high ground to the Left over the issue of race, the Right was forced to embrace the blank slate and egalitarianism in order to make any sense of it. You cannot agree that unequal results are immoral if you also claim that Mother Nature does not distribute her gifts equally. You have deny nature in order to embrace the moral claim.

Once conservatives accepted the starting premise of the Left, they condemned themselves to forever embracing the Left’s conclusions. You can see this in the fight of the antiwhite pogroms called CRT and DEI. This recent National Review post claims that conservatives can win the race debate. That sounds good until you read the actual text of the post and see that the secret formula for winning is another version of the internet meme, “the conservative case for…”

Here are the key lines. “We must see racial disparities where they exist and acknowledge racial trauma as real, because for many Americans, it is real. Responding to the trauma of racial discrimination by simply expressing a commitment to a race-neutral ideal is a bad move.” In other words, the so-called conservatives have to accept the premise of the Left. They see winning as proving to their masters on the Left that they are properly trained on the issue of race.

Now, the author of the piece is an interesting character. We can be sure that his ancestors did not arrive on the Mayflower. He is an example of what conservatives tell us is the new model American. His people arrived recently and as if by magic they are not only as American as everyone else, but they now have a duty to criticize the errors of your ancestors and explain how you can make things right. South Asians have embraced the skins game with a passion.

There is another name for this. Isaac Willour is a fine example of the Ingrate-American, a new arrival who does nothing but lecture white people for not having done enough to make his stay comfortable. White Americans could be forgiven for wondering why in the hell they need to listen to this interloper about anything. Maybe instead of lecturing us about our ancestors, he should be thanking us for a life that the civilization of his ancestors could never provide to him.

Putting that aside, once you concede that racial disparities require your attention and that they are the fault of white people, you sign onto whatever pogroms the Left launches on white people. There can be no salvation for white people until those disparities are gone, but since that is an impossibility, the only choice left is a forever war on whiteness, which is a war on white people. This is the logical end of the conservative embrace of the blank slate.

One you concede that people are amorphous blobs that can be made into anything, the cause of observable disparity shifts from the individual to society. Once you buy into the idea that all men are created equal, you concede that any observed inequality must be the result of some malevolent force in society. Once conservatives signed onto these two concepts, they committed themselves to a war on the majority population in the name of equality, equity and justice.

This is how conservatives went from Bill Buckley arguing with James Baldwin over the issue of civil rights to a world where recent arrivals lecture the white population about the crimes of their ancestors. After all, if all you have is the claim that all men are created equal, endowed with natural rights, what argument can you have against some guy getting off his flying carpet and claiming to be your equal? As your equal, does he not have the right to judge you and your ancestors?

Of course, this degenerate thinking pollutes everything. After all, how can one oppose open borders when you owe such a huge debt to the world? How can one question the economic arrangements when the world is counting on your sacrifice? How can you oppose community wrecking policies when you wanting to live a peaceful life among people like yourself is clearly white supremacy? Once the blood libel gets going, it becomes the universal weapon.

This is why conservatism has been a failure in America. Once they signed off on the blank slate and egalitarianism, they had no way to dispute any of the claims made by the Left, so they were reduced to being their unwilling accomplices. Eventually, their masters lost patience and now conservatives compete with one another to see who can be the most enthusiastic for the latest progressive fad. Conservatism is a shadow that cheers as the Left flits from one cause to the next.

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