Category Archives: Progressives

The Intersectional Intifada

Posted on by

So, you have decided that you will lead a revolution and overthrow the government, but you don’t know the first thing about overthrowing the government. Lucky for you, Washington & Lee University is offering a three credit course titled, “How to Overthrow the State.” In that class you will learn how previous revolutionaries managed to overthrow the state, how they dealt with the aftermath and how they rewrote history in order to justify their rule.

Now, Washington & Lee is like every other liberal arts college these days, in that it has been overrun by the Left. It is staffed with the same dreary mediocrities you find at every other liberal arts colleges. The only interesting thing about this node on the Progressive Borg is that it retains its white supremacist name. At this late date it should have changed the name to something more fitting, perhaps a collection of pronouns or unpronounceable symbols.

The topic and structure of the course are revealing. These are people who think they are leading a revolution against the system, when in fact, they are the living embodiment of the system. This college and all the drones inside it exist because the system created them. The system created them to perpetuate itself. Liberal arts colleges are indoctrination centers. If the nation’s academic elite really want to overthrow the system, they would start by committing suicide.

Another revealing fact about this course is they just assume they will be the heroes, the good guys in the revolution to come. They are not studying the many monsters who slaughtered in the name of the people. They are not looking at the failed revolutionaries for examples to avoid. What drives people into Progressive politics is self-loathing and self-doubt. What the Left offers them is reassurance. They are on the right side of history, the heroes of the future to come.

This is something that does not get enough attention. The people out in the streets think they are overthrowing the system. Whenever the media bothers to interview one of these people, they make noises associated with left-wing revolution. The academics and college students participating in this stuff mouth the words and phrases of 20th century left-wing revolution. None of them notices that they are the creation of the system and dependent upon it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what if the protesters got their wish and the cops were not only pulled off the streets, but they were disbanded? Let’s just take Portland as an easy example. Starting this week, there are no more cops. The most likely result is heavily armed Patriot Prayer people enter the city and it is open season on the Left with no bag limit. Most likely, a lot of cops would join in. That would be their path back to full employment as a cop.

In the case of the academic revolutionaries, they may get to see what happens when the system breaks down. The economic foundation of higher education is crumbling and it has been made much worse by recent events. Private liberal arts colleges are starting to fold and state systems are laying off workers. In the not too distant future, the gal asking you for your drink order will be a former assistant professor with a PhD in intersectional studies.

The irony, of course, is that if outsiders really wanted to overthrow the system, they would look for ways to get the system to attack itself. In all cases, a unified enemy with a clear sense of purpose is a challenge. On the other hand, a disorganized enemy hobbled by internal dispute is always beatable, even when they have numerical or institutional advantage. If you can sow discord in the enemy ranks, you have a chance to use their strength to your advantage.

One approach is to get their young people taking college classes with provocative titles like “How to Overthrow the State.” Maybe convince the opponent’s young people that their ancestors were monsters. Throw in some wacky ideas about their penis being a figment of their imagination and you have the makings of unsustainable turmoil in the enemy ranks. This intersectional intifada in the ruling class is exactly what the real revolutionary would want.

On the other hand, if you are the ruler and you have a lot of restless youth in your ranks, pushing for aggressive action on behalf of the cause, getting them to fight one another is always a good plan. If you know you don’t really have to worry about some outsider trying to topple your rule, keeping the people busy fighting with one another is a good tactic. This is what Yassir Arafat did in the late 1980’s. He got his street fighters out wasting their energy throwing rocks at Israelis.

This may be why the Inner Party leadership is being patient with the rioters, even though it is helping Trump in the election. They know they can handle Trump, but they would like their radicals to exhaust themselves a bit more. The truth is, the people in charge think this intersectionality stuff is insane too. They would not mind if the people behind it discredited themselves. That would simply mean no more talk about pronouns and photo-ops with men in sundresses.

The Palestinian Intifada was cast as an organic revolt by Arabs in the occupied territories against Israel. That’s how it was sold to the kids throwing rocks at tanks and the cell leaders organizing actions. In reality, it was about power relations at the top of Palestinian society. Yassir Arafat and the PLO were in a power struggle with Hamas and other Islamic groups. The Intifada was about who would enjoy the spoils of being Israel’s puppet in the occupied territories.

That is probably what is happening now. The Inner Party is run by old people nearing their expiry date. The question on the Left is who fills those roles. One camp is the rainbow coalition of intersectional warriors, raised on multiculturalism. They think it is their turn to rule. The other side is the Judeo-Puritan elite that have been in charge for generations now. They are rolling the dice on this intersectional intifada in the hope that the other side weakens themselves.

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

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!

Their Summer Of Discontent

Posted on by

One of the stranger parts of the summer of left-wing violence is that no one has bothered to think too much about why the people are rioting. Sure, the official Left says it is an organic uprising over something or other. The official Right says these people are communists doing communisms. That’s the same old tired sloganeering we hear from the political class all the time. Neither claim gets to the question of why these people are out in the streets every night in certain cities.

Initially, the Black Lives Matter stuff was just the semi-organized Democratic Party street activism we have come to expect before an election. BLM was organized by the Obama administration on the college campuses. Then it bled into the legacy racial grievance rackets. The statue toppling after George Floyd overdosed in police custody was mostly paid for by the party trying to whip up black support. Then it gave way to the anarchy we are seeing in places like Seattle and Portland.

That’s an aspect that gets very little attention. The violence we are seeing is in mostly white cities by mostly white people. Minneapolis is 19% black. Seattle is 7% black and Portland is 6% black. Kenosha is 10% black and close to 80% white! Note that super-black cities like Baltimore, St. Louis and Detroit have had no riots. Los Angeles, which just had a police shooting, could not get a decent riot going. They tried, but they lack the white kids with back packs needed to do it.

The truth behind these riots is that they have nothing to do with local issues or legitimate grievances. They are simply a happening that is drawing in the disaffected white youth that provides bodies for Antifa. Get up close to an Antifa crowd and what is striking is how unimpressive they are individually. The males are skinny and awkward, while the females are loud and ridiculous. These are young whites who have no place in the neo-liberal order, so they end up in Antifa.

What being in the anarchist underground gives them is the same thing you see in other types of anti-social subcultures. They get a sense of purpose, but also a community in which they have a clearly understood place. They go out and protests or riot with their mates and then have that to bond over afterward. It is not all that different from the hooliganism you see around European soccer. The difference is the Antifa kids come from the middle-class, rather than the working class.

Now, calling them kids is not entirely accurate. The guy who murdered the Trump fan in Portland is a middle-aged man. Still, he is a good example of a larger phenomenon that is fueling anarchism and also fueled the alt-right to some degree. This is a guy who has no place to go in life. There’s no role for a low-normal intelligence white guy with a taste for action. He’s probably too dumb for the military and there is no working-class community for him, so he drifted into anarchism.

The cities that are experiencing the anarchist unrest should be models for the modern liberal democratic order. They have very low crime. They are prosperous, bourgeois urban areas based on the new economy. The young people have access to college and jobs, while living in carefully curated hipster areas. Portland is what east coast cities aspire to, in terms of demographics and urban renewal. The whole point of gentrification has been to look more like Seattle than The Bronx.

The problem is these cities are entirely synthetic. Walk around hipster parts of these model cities and they seem very nice, but they also feel like the suburban town centers developers create for their housing developments. You can’t put your finger on it, but something is missing. Granted, visitors can’t truly judge these things, but the constant civil unrest by the younger people suggests they are not happy with the paradise in the wilderness either. Progressive Whitopia is not working.

Related is the flight out of places like San Francisco and New York. The plague is being blamed for it. The man-made panic shutting down these cities is forcing people to find greener pastures. Note, however, that the people who flocked to these urban oases for the culture, lifestyle and urban living are unwilling to fight for it. Instead of taking to the streets demanding more from their mayors, they are just packing the Subaru and heading for the suburbs. It was all fake and temporary for them.

What we may be seeing this summer has nothing to do with the tired clichés from the worn-out political establishment. Instead it is one of the consequences of trying to turn America into a Potemkin village. Replacing social capital with likes on social media and pointless employment in the new economy is not working. The generation that created it is committing suicide at record numbers. The generation that is faced with living it would rather watch it all burn than participate in it.

A truth of the human condition is men need purpose and fraternity. Maybe it is the military and family life. Maybe it is a frat at college and then a career. Maybe it is the job site and the local pub. Women need community and companionship. The nuclear family was created for them. The liberal democratic world order does none of these things for people. Living atomized, pointless lives among constantly shifting groups of strangers is a recipe for disaster, not paradise.

What’s now happening on the Left is a reflection of what has been happening in the white working and middle-classes. Progressive politicians cheer it on, because at some level, they wish they could be in the streets too. The mayor of Portland is living a pointless existence and he knows it. The difference is these anarchists get to express their unhappiness outside. Working class whites are ignored and the white middle class is threatened into remaining quiet.

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

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!

Our House Of Cards

Posted on by

Adolf Hitler once said, “There is nothing new under the sun. There are just new ways of expressing the same ideas.” There is some truth to this, which is why we have so many ways of saying that history repeats itself. At least we like to think it repeats itself, as that’s a comforting thought. It means the answers to today’s problems, no matter how vexing, exist in the past. All we have to do is rummage around in the past for a similar time and take a look at the solutions from that period.

There are exceptions. The French Revolution is one of those novel happenings that had no precedent in the known past. The Bolshevik Revolution looked a bit like the French Revolution, but turned out to be something different, mostly because the Bolsheviks were students of the French Revolution. Sometimes things are different enough to be treated as totally new. We may be experiencing one of those times where the conditions are unique enough to feel as if there is no precedent.

Older pundits are fond of comparing the current cultural revolution to the cultural revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s. They make the comparison because they were around for the first one and they go in for nostalgia. They also see that the people cheering it on in the halls of power are often people who participated in the cultural revolution of the past. You can be sure that many oldsters on the Left think what is happening today confirms their forever youth.

There are some big differences though. For one, the rebels of the past were actually rebelling against something. They did not have unlimited corporate and institutional support. The cops were told to beat the crap out of the rioters in the 1960’s by the political class, both Democrat and Republican. Today, the political class, both Democrat and Republican, is on the side of the rioters. We saw that in New York, Washington and now Portland and Seattle.

There’s also the fact that the rebels of the past had an agenda. It may have been childish and silly, in a college sophomore sort of way, but it was an agenda they could talk about in public. They wanted more personal freedom. They wanted the war in Vietnam to end. They wanted public aid for poor people and blacks. The current rebels talk about nonsense like social justice and privilege. All they can muster is pointless slogans they heard on-line.

A couple generations ago, the Silent Majority could look at the situation and imagine an end game. For example, they could connect ending the Vietnam War with ending the anti-war protests. That meant voting for Nixon in 1968. They could see a connection between loosening social mores and clearing the streets of hippies. On the other hand, they could imagine law and order politicians instructing the cops to clear the streets of the hippies and protesting students too.

Today, there is no silent majority. The great demographic changes that have been wrought by those ascendant rebels of the 1960’s has reduced the white population to about 60% now. About 20% of that population is on the side of the rioters, just as long as they stay away from their mansions. Some portion has walked away from politics entirely, due to the aforementioned changes wrought by the rebels. The Silent Majority is just a bitter minority now.

That’s an aspect to this that gets little attention and makes this very different from the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. The geezers cheering their grandchildren burning Starbucks keep expecting the jackboots of the Silent Majority to show up like they did the last time, but those jackboots are now on golf courses in Boca. No matter how much they provoke their imaginary enemy, there is no response. This reboot of the 1960’s is missing the thing that made it possible, that Silent Majority.

Another novel item is that the now silent minority has nowhere to turn for the solution to this cultural revolution. What is it that they can give to the people burning and looting the cities to make them go home? How does one answer the call for social justice or the end of systemic racism? What would those things look like? These chants and incantations have no practical meaning. They are moral signifiers borrowed from the grievance studies programs on the college campus.

More important, there is no electoral option either. The Democrat party is actively cheering on this lunacy. Joe Biden is running an extortion campaign, where a vote for him means an end to the violence and Covid lock downs. How realistic is that when his party is cheering for the mayhem, promising to take it to a new level after they win the final election. It is not hyperbole to say that a Democrat sweep in November means the end of elections. What would be the point?

Of course, the Republicans are revealing themselves to be entirely bankrupt. Their response to the unrest is nothing. They are too busy crafting yet another giveaway to their corporate paymasters. Trump is nowhere to be found. He occasionally tweets something stupid, but otherwise he looks like a beaten man. In fairness, he is a beaten man, beaten by a political class that is corrupt beyond reform. For that silent minority, there is no political option to end the current madness.

This is a novel problem for Americans. If you are a white person in a place like Seattle, what are your options? If you abide by the law, you have your property destroyed and possibly your life threatened. People are being shot in their cars now as they try to go about their business. Gun sales are booming, but the people buying the guns imagine themselves defending their life and property within a system of laws. What happens when they realize there is no system of laws?

If you read about the deliberations of the decision-makers in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the thing that stands out is their sober mindedness. They were very worried that America was on the cusp of social collapse. The decision makers of today, that means political and corporate leaders, seem to think American society is an indestructible object they can abuse without consequence. They are carrying on like reckless children, incapable of imagining any consequences to their behavior.

Social collapse comes when the majority stops accepting the legitimacy of the system and the authority of those in charge of it. The one result of the street rioters and their corporate and political sponsors is they may get what they want. The majority may stop accepting the legitimacy of the system. That silent minority may lose all faith in the system and the people running it. That would be us one step from the edge, when all respect for authority collapses and takes society with it.

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

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!

The Media Revolution

Posted on by

In 2016, the Left was super confident they had the election in the bag. So confident, in fact, they got sloppy. It was around this time that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign, assuming President Clinton would be cool with it. They are just as confident this time, but they probably don’t have the FBI and CIA spying for them. Given what happened in 2016, you would think they would be cautious, but instead they are overflowing with certainty. They know they will win.

One reason for this is they have purged almost all dissenting voices from their preferred media platforms. The Drudge Report is so over-the-top in his anti-Trump antics it feels like a parody site now. There is some speculation that he sold out to Silicon Valley grifters, but Drudge was always a creation of Neo-Conservative Inc. His sources and sympathies were always in that world. That whole scene has fired up the NeverTrump clown car for one more ride through the public square.

Twitter is just a far-left echo chamber. They have been purging so many people from the platform, even the most determined of trouble makers has grown bored with the effort it takes to get back on and stay on the site. Sites like Reddit and 4chan are muted for fear of being shut down like 8chan. That site was shuttered by the usual suspects and had to re-spawn as a weaker version of itself. Other than Gab and semi-private platforms, the internet is tumbleweeds and left-wing cranks.

One result seems to be a soaring confidence of the Left. They are carrying on like Dementia Joe will win every state twice in November. His vote will be so strong it will change the results of the last election. That’s an amusing exaggeration, but it is at the heart of their world view. Installing Biden in the White House will allow them to memory hole the 2016 election, as if it never happened. They will probably instruct textbook makers to skip the last four years of history.

Another result is some former enthusiasts of the Trump campaign are very depressed, certain that their guy will lose and that he deserves to lose. The anti-Semites, for example, are sure everyone is abandoning Trump, because the anti-Semites have been purged from the internet. It’s really weird how those guys on the one hand claim our greatest ally controls the media, but on the other hand they intensely follow the media and accept what they see at face value.

It is a good example of how the intensely on-line can lose perspective. When all of your inputs are from on-line media sources and people who agree with you, often two sets with great overlap, you get a warped view of the world. That’s the irony in what we are seeing right now. The former Trump fans who now hate Trump look at the media and see confirmation, while the people who hate those former Trump enthusiasts see the same media and also see confirmation.

The thing is, normal white people are getting really sick of the hate whitey stuff all over the media. During the last few months, whitey has been finding refuge in watching movies and television shows. Now they are being bombarded with explicit hatred of white people. If you circulate around normal people, it comes up a lot. When it does come up, the intensity is plain as day. These are people who would be Trump voters, so it is not as if this is changing minds, but it is pissing them off.

The puzzle is, with the lack of confirmation, will these people act on their anger and frustration this November. They don’t have anyone but Tucker in the media addressing their anger. They can’t get confirmation on-line, even from dissidents, as they have either been purged from social media, toned it down or now operate in semi-private venues like this one. Tucker having record numbers, however, suggests there is a deep reserve of pissed off Trump voters.

An important tenet of modern mass media is that these big social media platforms dictate public sentiment. The Left used to say, in the before times, that their control of the media was worth as much as 4-5 points in an election. That was probably an exaggeration, but it did seem to matter. They controlled what was discussed, thus always giving the Democrats home field advantage. They are now sure their control of social media is driving public sentiment.

Is the same true of modern media? The 2016 election could be used to argue both sides of that debate. Trump used Twitter to get around and control the media, by forcing them to respond to him, rather than the other way around. On the other hand, he was confronted by a wall of sound from the Left, but won anyway. It is easy to forget, but the Left was every bit as triumphant and nasty four years ago as they are right now, but the voters did not follow along as predicted.

He also had his rallies, which had to be covered by the media. This confirmed to his supporters that they were not alone. They saw lots of normal people enjoying the rallies and they saw the cranks in the media mocking those fellow normies. It was both confirming and infuriating. That’s the thing he needs to work around this time. He needs to let his voters see that normal people are just as angry at the revolution and that the way to express it is to support Trump.

One thing that has always been true about the American Left is they think rhetoric that works once will work forever and in all situations. The word “Nazi’ has been so overused that only far-left cranks respond to it with something other than laughter. Racist is heading in the same direction, as most normal white just laugh at it now. We may be seeing something like this with mass media. The Left has so abused their control of the media that it now amplifies sentiment, rather than alters it.

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

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!

The Logic Of Political Violence

Posted on by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

The Inner Party Revolution

Posted on by

One of the difficult things for people living in an ideological society is that they are suspended in a solution of propaganda. All of the information they receive is warped by the currents of the prevailing ideology. Everyone has some interest in shaping opinion, so all effort is put into promoting one thing or another. Since all parties are advancing a cause at odds with reality, truth becomes an enemy. The normal person trying to figure out what is happening is left to swim in a sea of lies.

That’s what makes the current events hard to decipher. Why has the death of a drug-addled black felon at the hands of the cops set the world on fire? Why is the institutional Left so exhilarated by the rioting? Why have the corporate oligarchs rolled out an information campaign in support of the revolts? For sure, the oligarchs are all members in good standing of the new religion, but there is an uncanny valley vibe to it. The whole thing is like a well-choreographed performance.

When normal people, not infected by the rage virus that seems to be the root of the new religion, look at scenes like this they are disgusted. Why is the mayor of that city exhilarated by it? What possible reason could he have for promoting it? Why are white people literally worshiping black people? That’s probably the most bizarre aspect of this entire circus. It’s like these white people have secretly joined a weird UFO cult and they think blacks are the visiting space aliens.

Again, in a world of lies and propaganda, it is very hard to know if any of this is planned or spontaneous. The entire apparatus of the Left is promoting and facilitating the protests. Make no mistake, that apparatus is a vast and extremely well financed operation. Still, the scale and absurdity to what we are seeing goes beyond what the Left normally can muster. It is clear that the new religion that has swept the country has these people thinking something big is happening.

Now, there is something else that gets little attention. A part of what’s going on is a push by the non-white elements in the new religion trying to make their move on the old white and Jewish people at the top. The Old Guard has run the Left since the 1960’s and the party since the 1990’s. The new swarthy guard thinks it is their time to run the show and this is their chance to make their move. These choreographed events are about showing the Old Guard who controls the rank and file of the party.

This is not just about far-left theatrics. The well-orchestrated moves by people like General Mattis, Mitt Romney and Secretary of Defense Esper suggest elements within the establishment think inner party leadership has been too soft with Trump. Mitt Romney may not be down with Team Brown, but he hates Trump and the people who voted for Trump with a passion. Leadership promised Trump would be removed long ago and here he is running for reelection.

Those are some subplots, but it is also clear that something very strange is happening within the upper reaches of the ruling class. The top editor of the Philly Enquirer was chased off by a woke mob for stating the obvious. The NYTimes is being overrun by far-left crazies. One of their top editors was forced out. Andrew Sullivan, a long time darling of elite society, has been put on mute. It’s increasingly clear that the inner party elite is scared of the woke monster they have unleashed.

What’s happening in the big media operations sheds some light on what has been going on for two weeks. All of the groveling and cheering by liberal politicians may not be entirely genuine. They may think it is their only way to avoid being another victim of the woke army they helped to create. That’s clearly what’s happening in the media centers and probably elsewhere. The strange willingness to indulge these mobs is really about a panic rumbling through elite society.

The street riots of the 1960’s were a training ground for the New Left that would eventually march through the institutions. What we are seeing is cheesy replay of that process, where street violence forces the establishment to appease the new element rising up in the inner party. Fifty years ago, people like Nancy Pelosi were the future of left-wing politics and eventually the leadership of the inner party. Today, the grotesque non-whites we see on-line are the future of the inner party.

The future will come fast. The forcing out of old white looking males from big media will now accelerate. The same will happen in the academy. One reason the police are being targeted is that even in brown cities, the cops are mostly white. That’s why they are plotting to dismantle the police. They want all of those white men out of their cities and this is the fastest way to do it. Look for every city to start competing with one another to see who can be the most woke in dismantling their police departments.

The paleocons and civic nationalists will, of course, try hard to find good news in all of this by making excessive comparisons between now and the 1960’s. Steve Sailer is all over stuff like this from America’s chosen rapper. “See? They are eating their own now. The fringes are falling apart!” That’s a fine coping strategy for those on the back nine of their lives, but it is not relevant to this age. Frankly, Mr. Cube is no longer relevant to this age, as he is a museum piece from a country that no longer exists.

The radicals of the 1960’s inherited a country and a ruling apparatus that was high functioning and manned by highly capable white males. The country and ruling apparatus of today is hollowed out and manned by incompetents. The radicals of the 1960’s were the sons and daughters of high IQ achievers. The radicals of today are the sons and daughters of peasants elevated into their potions by a system evolved to assuage the guilt of the old white people running it.

The Covid-19 panic gave us a glimpse of what is too come. The exaggerated incompetence of the politicians and the system itself was a preview of what lies ahead this summer. Rather than operate like public officials with a duty to their positions, local officials will be responding to the radicals with bizarre press conferences and a competition to see who can be most dramatic. Like the Covid panic, we are about to see a spiral of make-believe over the woke insurrection.

Having gotten a taste of blood, the radicals will be out in force this summer, especially at the party conventions. You can be sure Antifa and Black Live Matter are prepping to burn down Trump’s convention. That assumes any city will agree to host it. There is a good chance this will become the new fashion. Woke cities refusing to hold Trump events like rallies and the convention. Corporations will stop hosting GOP events until they renounce Orange Man and his wicked whiteness.

Read the biographies of Nixon people and you will find that one deep concern in the Nixon White House was whether a real revolution was afoot. It was a genuine concern, but the revolution, it turned out, was mostly within the inner party. The country was strong enough to contain it. Today, that old containment vessel is rusted and full of holes with no one around to repair it. The revolution within the inner party will surely break contain and contaminate the entire society now.

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!

The Good White Bible

Posted on by

A strange thing that used to be more common a decade ago, but still persists to this day is the use of the book Guns, Germs and Steel as an escape hatch. That is, when a conversation with good whites turns to biology, they will at some point attempt to change the subject by bringing up this book. Always, it is in the form of “A great book on this is Guns, Germs and Steal. Have you read it?” After all these years, it remains the one acceptably dangerous book they have read on the subject.

In this context, dangerous means that the book sort of accepts the fact that human populations are not exactly the same everywhere. The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have defined the story of man, while arguing against biological reality. For good whites, merely acknowledging that sub-Saharan Africans have little to show for their time on earth is scary. Even though Diamond is a biological denialist, the book is still a dangerous read.

Of course, it is acceptable because of that denialism. The thesis of the book is that serendipity and ecology explain why some human populations have advanced beyond simple farming, while others have not. Diamond makes many claims about different food stuffs, weather and pathogens to explain why Europeans, in particular, have risen to the top of the human hierarchy. The basic claim, in a nutshell, is they got lucky and really don’t deserve their spot at the top of the hierarchy.

This is a familiar theme for those who have read the writings of Ben Shapiro and Yoram Hazony, both of whom make similar claims. In the case of Shapiro, he argues that Europe was the creation of Hellenize Jews, who arrived with the Romans. He is not that honest or explicit, but that is his claim. Hazony takes a similar approach, but credits the Romans for imposing culture on the people of Europe. He also credits dumb luck in explaining why Europe is not the Levant or Mesopotamia.

This makes sense from the perspective of Zionist Jews. They view life as a great struggle between people, particularly their people, the Chosen People, and the rest of the people of the world. They don’t have to think too hard about why they are superior to Arabs, but Europeans are another matter. The Jewish people don’t have a big trophy case like the people of the Occident. They credit this to dumb luck in order to maintain the fiction that they are still God’s favorite people.

Now, it is important to note that the Diamond book is riddled with errors of fact and logic that undermine the central premise. In fact, there are so many of these errors it has to be assumed the author knew he was making false claims. For those with some time to kill, Ryan Faulk made a two hour video going into the details of Diamond’s claims about agriculture and animal husbandry. The best you can say about Guns, Germs and Steel is it is a masterful display of modern sophistry.

Now, ecology did play a defining role in shaping the people of Europe, just as it did the people everywhere on earth. Fundamental to the human sciences and dissident politics is that people are different. The people of Europe are different because they had to be in order to survive and thrive in their environment, which is radically different from the environment of Africa. They also mixed with archaic people, just as East Asians mixed with a different archaic people. Human biodiversity is real.

The appeal of the Diamond book, the intent of it actually, is to turn this reality on its head in order to supplant biological reality with the egalitarian fantasy. The impression Diamond tries to leave on the reader is that he is accepting the premises of the realists, while coming to a more parsimonious explanation. This is a similar approach taken by Nathan Cofnas in his critique of Kevin McDonald’s book. It is a form of abductive reasoning meant to persuade, not explain.

Similarly, a book popular with the same crowd twenty years ago was Why Nations Fail, which attempted to solve the same problem. It makes the claim that the reason the West has raced ahead to lead the world is that they have inclusive institutions and that economic prosperity depends above all on the inclusiveness of economic and political institutions. This magical inclusiveness just fell from the sky and landed in the West, explaining why the Occident has dominated.

The popularity of these books, and in the case of the Diamond book its enduring popularity, speaks to the power of the egalitarian faith. People in modern democracies, particularly bourgeois people, need to believe that all people are born with the same innate talents and abilities. The belief is so powerful it can overcome the absurd circular reasoning in a book like Why Nations Fail and raise Guns, Germs and Steel into the gospel of modern liberal democracy.

There is another element to this. The premise is that the “superficial” differences in people are due to environment, but the people themselves are all the same, once those environmental issues are removed. This sort of thinking allows the believer to feel shame for his privilege, while lamenting the fact the poor browns were not blessed with better stuff or the divine magic of liberal democracy. The good white can indulge his natural self-loathing and proselytize for his way of life.

This is a very Christian dynamic. The good white, like the good Christian, embraces the fallen state of mankind. For Christians, it is man’s obvious sinful nature. For the good white, it is white privilege, the undeserved blessings of serendipity. Like the believing Christian, the good white sees the path to salvation in spreading the faith. Instead of observable reality leading to an acceptance of the human condition, it drives a desire to rectify it and overcome the forces that have shaped it.

This is probably why a book like Guns, Germs and Steel remains a popular text with the good whites. It is literally written to flatter the reader and offer an alternative narrative to explain observable reality. White people are not evil because of their nature, but because of their failure to acknowledge their privilege and put it to good use in saving the rest of mankind from his plight. To be a good white means embracing one’s undeserved place in the world as fuel to reform the world.

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!

Binary Thinking

Posted on by

In the movie The Usual Suspects, the wily main character utters one of the most memorable movies lines in recent times. “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” The line is allegedly lifted from the 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire. According to the Quote Investigator, versions of the line have been used by Christian ministers before Baudelaire. That seems plausible, given the inclinations of reformist Christian ministers.

Something similar can be said for radicalism. Perhaps its greatest trick is to convince the world they did not win and rule the West for the last century and a half. Instead, the radicals go from triumph to triumph, convincing their adherents that the fight must go on, as well as convincing their opponents to fight future battles in a way that is guaranteed to result in their defeat. It really is a remarkable thing, when you stop and think about the past century or so of political conflict.

One trick the Left has used is to alter the shared consciousness in such a way that everyone is a binary thinker. That is, every issue, not matter how trivial, is assumed to be one thing or the other. Whatever the issue, there are only two options, so if one is made invalid, the other is the right answer by default. Therefore, everyone participating in political discourse is forced to defend one side or the other. Further, they think they advance their side by discrediting the other side.

The classic example of this was the homosexual marriage debate. Before anyone knew what was happening, the beautiful people were insisting that anyone opposed to the idea must hate homosexuals. In fact, anyone not embracing everything about the homosexual lifestyle must be a hate-filled bigot. This binary thinking has now extended to men dressed as women. The only options for the debate were one extreme position or the other, which obviously worked to the advantage of the Left.

Another example is the current debate over the pandemic lock downs. The alarmists insist that the choices are lock everyone in their homes until there are no more sick people or allow people to die in the streets from the virus. Most people have happily accepted this framing, so that anyone questioning the lock down is viewed as a dangerous nut. The idea of a third or fourth position is no longer possible, as those are lumped into one extreme or the other by the two sides.

Yet another example is one that has turned up in fringe politics. Those opposed to the current economic order are cheering the lock down, as they assume it must be bad for those they blame for the current economic order. This urge to harm their perceived enemies is so intense, they seem willing to harm themselves and their friends in an economic collapse, if it harms the bad guys. Any questioning of this is characterized as a defense of the current order, possibly even a betrayal.

Probably the clearest example of this binary way of thinking is something you see from the intelligent design people. They assume if they can discredit evolutionary biology, their preferred explanation of life must be true. They make no effort to prove their claims about a great designer. They just assume that if they discredit the alternative, they must be proven correct by default. It is why they invest all of their time and energy into attacking evolutionary biology. Theirs is an either-or worldview.

There’s almost always a strong moral component to binary thinking. Side A looks at Side B as immoral, perhaps evil. We see this now with the lock down. Those questioning the policy are accused of being indifferent to their fellow humans or even putting lives at risk with their crazy ideas about going outside. The same moral signaling was at play with the homosexual marriage debate. In the binary worldview, there are only good guys and bad guys, black hats and white hats.

This hyper-moralized binary thinking can have some bizarre results. The Left is endlessly mewing about the danger of right-wing authoritarianism, but cheers what can only be described as authoritarianism during the lockout. Right-wing opponents of cosmopolitan globalism are now embracing left-wing schemes to crash the system, like rent strikes and overloading the welfare system. The so-called hard-right now sounds like a bunch of leisure suit wearing Progressives from the 1970’s.

The reason for this is the hyper-moralized world of binary thinking must necessarily be detached from anything resembling fixed truth. If all that matters is opposing the bad guy, then the only truth that matters is they are wrong and therefore the opposite of what they say is the truth. In a world of binary thinking, everyone is defined by who they hate and what they oppose, not by objective truth. In the great dance with the Devil, he leads by simply existing in the mind of his partner.

That is the great trick of the radicals. By convincing the world that politics is a constant struggle against some enemy, the corrective of factual reality has been abandoned in favor of binary logic. Since radicalism itself is rooted in the endless revolution against something, societies in a constant struggle to find some new devil to oppose must always embrace radicalism. The very identity of a radical society is rooted in the constant struggle to move past some evil onto the next.

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!

Optical Delusions

Posted on by

This post from last month drew a lot of responses, mostly from people who did not want to go along with the conclusions. Someone made a 20-minute response to it on YouTube, making what they call the defense of the big tent. In light of the recent controversy over Nick Fuentes getting banished from YouTube, it is a good time to revisit the whole issue and the topics that surround it. Fuentes is probably the best known purveyor of the good optics argument, so that is highly relevant to this.

For starters and to clarify a few things, the creator of that YouTube response makes some mistakes that are common in these discussions. The first one is to frame the issue as between a big tent and presumably a smaller tent. That was not the point of the column and that is not the issue at hand. One can have a broad-based movement that also excludes people who think they are Roman emperors. Even the biggest of big tent claims have limits on what is and what is not accepted.

The second claim is to conflate the term dissident right with other sub-cultures that may or may not have claims to being right-wing. It is a form of binary thinking to define right-wing as anything not tolerated by the Left. The goat blood drinking pagans calling themselves Roman emperors may not be liked by the Left, but that does not automatically qualify them as dissidents or even right-wing. The left is not all that fond of scientists these days, but most scientists are not right-wing.

Then there is the use of the term dissident. In a generic sense, sure, lots of people would fall under the definition. Anti-Semites, for example, are in dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy on antisemitism. That’s most certainly true. Would that put them in the same club as someone like John Derbyshire, the guy who coined the term dissident right twenty years ago? How about Steve Sailer? Calling all of these people dissidents is as useful as calling them mammals.

The fact is, what distinguishes the dissident right from the conventional right is not just opinions on the human condition and biological reality. What ultimately divides the two camps is the lack of ideology among the dissident right. It is the old Russell Kirk observation about Right and Left. Conservatism is not a set of ideologies, but the rejection of ideology. Conventional conservatism has embraced the Left’s ideological views on human nature, which is the roots of the dissent among the dissident right.

This divide also exists within dissident circles. Anti-Semites, ethno-statists, fascists, third positionists and so on are ideologues. The root of their dissent is they have a different vision of the model society from prevailing orthodoxy. Similarly, they are never in doubt about the possibility of it. Like the Left, to quote Kirk, “they see politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society.” That is an important difference between them and the dissident right.

Now, in the YouTube clip, the narrator makes some of the common claims about optics and “punching right” that are popular in certain parts of dissident politics. For example, he claims early on that the alt-right was ruined by the media, who highlighted weirdos and lunatics in their coverage. In reality, the alt-right was doomed when the face of it became a narcissistic dilettante, incapable of organizing a one car funeral. A serious movement never would have tolerated Spencer as the leader.

The whole Spencer fiasco puts the lie to the claims by some that optics are unimportant in their politics. The sole reason Spencer rose to become the face of the alt-right is he looked good on camera. He presented an appealing face to the cause, so he quickly became the face of it. The reason why some of his former followers stick with him is they think he makes their cause look good. It is nothing more than a coping strategy to pretend appearances don’t matter. They always matter.

Another point that needs emphasis is that the whole “no punch right” business was the creation of people trying to sneak into more legitimate politics. You never hear this from people who can function among normal people, despite holding heretical views. It was the dubious claim that a right-wing movement cannot have legitimacy unless it is tolerant of people who have not updated their views since the 60’s. It was, in the end, an effort to co-opt dissident politics by the 1.0 crowd.

Then there is the issue of taboos, which is raised at about the ten minute mark of that YouTube clip linked above. Unsaid, but implied, is the claim that excluding certain people from dissident politics reinforces left-wing taboos on certain opinions. The claim is that excluding people, who are bad for the image of the group, automatically gives legitimacy to the left, by reinforcing left-wing taboos. In other words, trying to present a good image is playing by the Left’s rules on politics.

This is the error of all reactionaries. Instead of developing an internal logic that naturally results in a set of rules and standards, the reactionary simply responds to what he perceives to be his opponent. To be a reactionary in a society run by ideologues is to be a rebel without a cause. Whatever the people in charge of for, the rebel is against and whatever is taboo, the rebel embraces. The modern reactionary is someone who puts a leash around his neck and hands the other end to his opponent.

It also relates to the optics debate this way. Imagine a society that has been ideologically tuned to associate the color purple with heresy. There are regular ceremonies where the bad people are dressed in purple and defeated by the good people. To go around wearing purple would certainly challenge the taboo, but it would also convince most people you are nuts. Unless you have the power to dispel the taboo, breaking them just gives the people with power the chance to reinforce that taboo.

The irony of the reactionary is that ultimately, he embraces the core starting point of all ideologues and that is the binary universe. The ideologue sees the world as white hats versus black hats, good guys versus bad guys. You are either inside the walls with the good people or outside the walls with the bad people. Those taboo breaking reactionaries, with their disdain for optics, embrace the same view. You either break the taboos or you must embrace them. There is no middle ground.

This is why reactionaries fail. Most of life is in the vast middle ground of exceptions, conditions and contradictions. Most people get that. They get that politics is always about trade-offs, half-measures and compromise. You don’t win them over by being as fanatical as the people you oppose. You win them over by juxtaposing your apparent reasonableness against the fanaticism of the prevailing order. You do that by making concessions to their morality. You don’t wear purple.¹

There is the final point worth making here. Those who deny the value of presentation always say, “The Left is going to demonize you anyway.” They mistakenly think optics and presentation are about winning over the Left or abiding by their rules. Again, this is the mind of the reactionary. Good presentations and subtle compromises to convention are about winning over the vast middle. The point of politics is about controlling the field between the various sides.

Yes, the Left will call us Nazis and fascists no matter what we do, but that can only be turned to our favor if it looks absurd. Spencer was easily demonized because he embraced the role of prep school Nazi. Nick Fuentes is not so easily demonized, because he reminds most white people of their kids or grand-kids. He may be a smart-alecky twerp at times, but calling him a Nazi violates bourgeois sensibilities. To put it another way, it is very bad optics for the Left.

Politics is always about keeping the ends in mind and making the necessary compromises to further those ends. Politics is a means to an end. Ideologues always fall into the trap of thinking politics is an end in itself, which is why ideological states are always unstable and usually short lived. Successful outsider politics has to be practical in its application in order to win ground in the vast area that is always up for grabs between the orthodoxy and those challenging it.

¹Anticipating the response from certain circles, the Nazis winning the street battles with the Bolsheviks in Weimar Germany is an exception, not the rule. The middle had collapsed in Weimar Germany, along with the old ruling order. The Right and left, as understood at the time, were not fighting to win over their fellow Germans. They were fighting to fill the power vacuum that resulted from the collapse of the middle.

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!

Progressive Whites

Posted on by

Yesterday’s gun rally in Richmond Virginia was a great success, at least as a public relations item. You can tell that by the relative lack of interest by the Left. Nothing about the event fit into their narratives, so it had to be ignored. Fanatics see only that which confirms their fanaticism. In this case, they wanted to see white supremacists dressed in Klan robes and Nazi regalia, terrorizing poor black bodies, while Antifa battled them in the streets. None of that happened.

The question that never gets mentioned in all of this is exactly why the newly ascendant radicals in Richmond are attacking gun owners. If you look at what they are proposing, none of it has much practical value. All the talk of confiscation is belied by the actual bills they are producing. One limits handgun purchases to one per month. Another bans private sales of regulated firearms. One vindictively targets the NRA shooting range in Northern Virginia. These have no practical purpose.

The answer here lies in understanding how American Progressive’s view society and their role in it. Contrary to popular opinion, the people behind this stuff are not communist, motivated by Karl Marx. They are not controlled by hand-rubbing lizard people living in a secret volcano. They are not triumphant browns. The people pushing this stuff are white people. There are a few Jews and browns tossed in, but the main body of the Left is still white and formerly Protestant.

The white American Progressive has always imagined society as a fully enclosed community, that is judged as a whole. A popular slogan among them is that “society is judged by how it treats it weakest members.” This is an explicit expression of communal judgement, which is the traveling partner of communal salvation. The white Progressive looks at society as an organism that moves forward as a whole. If some parts lag behind, the whole thing slows to a halt.

Further, the white Progressive believes in the unitary reformer. That is, the reformer is not just focused on one area of society, but the whole of society. Even if their efforts are in one area, those efforts support the whole community. A reform effort that does not promise to move the whole of society forward is of no interest. For white Progressive reformers, society is the flock and they are the shepherds. Anything that threatens their effort to guard and guide the flock must be eliminated.

It is this spatial understanding of the world that helps explain these largely symbolic attacks on the Second Amendment. In the hive mind of the white Progressive, people who own guns are outside the domain of the righteous. Therefore, they must be marginalized from society. Much in the same way they anathematized smoking, white Progressives seek to make owning a gun disqualifying. Symbolically, these measures are aimed at putting gun rights outside the whole of society.

This territorial thinking is why Charlottesville remains an important symbol for white Progressives and why Richmond will be erased from their memory. In the former, the righteous chased the threat to the flock from the field. The physical place of society was literally reclaimed by the good guys. Richmond, in contrast, was when the dark forces of society were permitted to operated unmolested. The bad guys did not win. The shepherds were forced to hide their flocks.

There is another aspect to this. White Progressives are aroused by the thought of the Charlottesville riots, because the radical mind needs violence in the same way the body needs food. While many white Progressives reformers are sincere, if deranged, others are in it for the blood. They need to terrorize and attack the enemy. In the same way the bully needs to terrorize the nerd in order to be a bully, the white radical needs the enemy of the cause in order to maintain his identity.

Therein lies the other reason why Richmond will be forgotten, while Charlottesville will be a regular story in the 2020 election. It was there that the need to terrorize the enemy of the flock was fully actualized. They not only chased the evil doers from the field; they drew blood and they had a sacrifice. Notice they always remember the fat women, who died, but not the cops. That’s because she was a blood sacrifice to the cause, while the cops that died were just collateral damage.

This is how to understand these pointless gun grabbing efforts, as well as many other Progressive fads we see today. In Virginia, these proposals are like the winning side erecting a trophy on the field of battle. The good whites have recaptured the heart of the Confederacy, the home of the bad whites. They did not eliminate the enemy, however, as they are still out there in the counties that refused to support the Progressive reformers. The fight must continue.

This is why facts and reason have no effect on white Progressives. They see themselves as defenders of the innocent against the attacks of those who seek to destroy the whole by corrupting the weak. Against such delusions, facts and reason are wholly ineffectual. Appeals to their humanity, on the other hand, are infuriating, as it calls into the question the point of their existence. It is why they are most vulnerable to moral arguments. It cuts to their sense of identity.

Of course, the Left is not just white Progressives. There are other parts, but their motivations are different and mostly modifiers to the whole. These other groups operate from ethnocentric motives. Blacks want free stuff and easy access to white people, while Jews want what is best for Jews. The newly arrived non-whites want a short path to the material assets of the white majority. The bulk of the Left, however, are white Progressives, who provide the power and authority.

The thermal exhaust port of the Progressive death star is their sense of moral purpose, not factual accuracy or even the relationships between the tribes of the Left. The white Progressive sees contrary facts and internal divisions as challenges the righteous shepherd must overcome. Call into question the moral standing of the white Progressive and the very center of the Left begins to collapse. Self-righteous certainty of purpose is the main tent pole that holds Progressivism together.

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!