Know Your Enemy

The German philosopher Carl Schmitt observed that politics is about the friend – enemy distinction, played out in public. Everyone has people they call friends and people they think of as adversaries or enemies. This only becomes political when others outside these relations are called upon to pick sides. Politics is about groups of people opposing one another in public and forcing others to pick sides. The winner is the one whose group dominates the others.

The thing is, it is never easy to know your friends in politics, but the only way to survive is to know your enemies. Those would be the groups whose very existence depends upon your demise. Friendships are transactional as they are situational. When your interests align with those of another faction, you are friends while you have some common interest. When conditions change, the friendship ends. Enemies are always enemies because who they are the negation of you.

This is why conservatism has never amounted to much in America. They insist that politics do not exist and instead public policy is decided by factual accuracy and the best ideas to solve problems. While the people we insist on calling the Left run around playing politics, the conservatives spend their days making impressive charts and graphs explaining why they are right. Occasionally they win an election, only to be outclassed by their opponents once in office.

You saw this clearly with Trump. Despite all of his faults, and he has many, he is a guy who completely believes the civic nationalist creed. He is the living embodiment of those School House Rock civics lessons. When he won in 2016, he just assumed everyone would have to respect the will of the people. After all, this is how our system is supposed to work. Instead, he was routed by the schemers, conmen and deviants that dominate Washington politics.

We are seeing the other side of this with the neocons. They do not care for Ron DeSantis, but they can work with him. He was a reliable vote for their warmongering when he was in the House. He has the endorsement of the House of Bush, so even though he opposes their domestic agenda, they can work with him on their larger plan to blow up the world. More important, he can be useful in undermining support for Trump in the coming Republican primary.

In other words, they do not necessarily see him as a friend, but he is not an enemy and because they share his current enemy, they can quietly work with him towards the goal of toppling Trump. The trouble is DeSantis has a very thin skin, so he could not resist taking cheap shots at Trump with regards to the indictment business. He also flip-flopped on his Ukraine statements, probably fearing that he may have jeopardized his support from the Kagan cult.

As an aside, Russia, the war in Ukraine and the subject of peace is becoming a central issue for the Republican base. This is a carry over from the Bush years when the party lied about the Iraq invasion. Since then the party base has become increasingly skeptical about foreign policy. Republican voters also tend to be practical, so they question spending hundreds of billions on foreigners when the country seems to be falling apart from decades of neglect.

In the 2016 election, the litmus test issues were immigration and trade. Trump went one way and the field went the other. It was a strange thing to see when logic said the field, or some of it, would be smart to follow Trump. We are now seeing the same thing with foreign policy issues. Opposing the neocons is a good vote getter, but bad for making friends in the regime, so the field, including DeSantis, is racing to sound like Lady Bugs Graham, while Trump sounds like Pat Buchanan.

Putting that aside, the friend enemy distinction sounds simple in the abstract, but in practice it is very difficult. Most people make the fatal mistake of looking for friends, rather than identifying their enemies. Note that conservatives have said for years that you should vote for someone not against them. This is part of the conditioning to keep their voters from focusing on the enemy. It is a clever trick that has allowed them to profit from finking on their voters.

Politics, at its most basic, turns on accurately identifying the enemy. Friends may turn out to be unreliable or stupid, but the enemy is always the enemy. The surest way to identify your enemies is to look for those who demand that you place your interests second to those of some alien group of political actors. For example, the people telling you that Ukraine should come before your kid’s school or that you must impoverish yourself in the name of climate change. Those people are your enemy.

For dissidents, and a growing number of Americans, the system itself is the enemy because it is based on denying you any benefits from the system. In fact, the system has evolved to harm the bulk of the population. That means you participating in it profits the forces that are committed to your destruction. In this regard, the Ron versus Don charade being put on by the mass media is another way for the enemy to lure decent people into supporting their own demise.

In the end, the simplicity of the Carl Schmitt formulation is the place to start when looking upon the looming election circus. First identify your enemies, then look for anyone that promises to harm them. The goal of politics is always to harm the enemy and profit your cause. If the enemy is not obvious, then the process itself is the enemy and you are best served being an amused observer. Not participating is the most political of actions, because it declares the process the enemy.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Escaping The 20th Century

It is 2023 and middle-aged conservative pundits around the country are wondering if maybe today is the day when they bring back the sock tie. Perhaps break out that “Gipper” lapel pin they got in college. After all, it is high time that this country be reminded of the greatness of the Reagan years. Then they think better of it, as they do not want to ruffle any feathers. After all, that is not who they are. Conservative principle requires conforming to current norms.

A bit ridiculous, perhaps, but it is not far off. This post by conservative pundit Jeremy Carl on Twitter is a good example. Ronald Reagan has been dead for close to twenty years and he has been out of public view for thirty years. For the tens of millions of people who entered the country after Reagan opened the border, he is at best a guy in their history books, no more meaningful to them than the other long dead white guys responsible for the scourge of whiteness, they are told.

In other words, Reagan and the politics of his time are about as relevant to this age as those old clothing styles in the closets of conservative pundits. Reagan and his movement were a product of the 20th century, primarily the Cold War. What we call conservatism was just a radical approach to fighting communism. Note that Reagan’s lasting influence is all negative. Corporatism, open borders and a massive military are what he passed onto the 21st century.

It would be unfair to lay the present crisis at the feet of Reagan as he was a man of his time dealing with the issues of his age. He could not know that his military buildup would lead to decades of reckless and pointless violence. No one imagined that his economic reforms would lead to the financialization of the economy. Global capital with the reach we are seeing was unimageable in the 1980’s. The world “trillion” was an abstraction for most people.

Even so, it is not hard to make a case that in the long run, the world would have been a better place if Carter had won in 1980. The neocons would have been cut off at the pass, thus sparing the world of their senseless violence. We most likely would not have got the same currency, banking and regulatory reforms that we got under Reagan, so we may have avoided the blossoming of global corporatism. This is all speculation, but you can make an argument for 1980 being the inflexion point.

Putting that aside, conservatives are not the only ones trapped in amber. The people they pretend to oppose are also spending every night at the museum. After the Cold War, what we call the Left went back to put on their old 1960’s radical outfits so they could relive their salad days, but this time as the man. For the last thirty years it has been a revenge tour by the culture wreckers who thought they got short changed when they rioted in their youth.

It went unnoticed, but in the Obama years, it was if they were working from a list of slights they endured over the prior decades. The Iran deal was about avenging the “arms-for-hostages” issue. The Russian reset that everyone now forgets was about avenging Carter. When they were not revisiting past defeats, they were reviving old causes like black radicalisms and sexual liberation. Just like their conservative buddies, the so-called Left is trapped in the 20th century.

This weird dance through the halls of the museum of the 20th century is most obvious with the war in the Ukraine. This post by Thaddeus McCotter at American Greatness is emblematic of the mindset. The triumphalism following the fall of the Soviet Empire froze everything in place. No one on either side of the political class can think beyond the point when the West declared the end of history. Therefore, nothing can be allowed to change from that point in time.

Alexander Dugin has written about how the end of the Cold War was a disaster, which strikes most Western readers as sour grapes. It certainly was a disaster for Russia, but who cares about Russia? She deserved it for losing. Of course, what he meant is that the Cold War provided a moral framework for the world. When it abruptly ended, that moral framework ended with it. All of a sudden, there were no rules and what has followed has been chaos from the Eurasian perspective.

From the Western perspective, it has been worse than chaos. “If God does not exist, everything is permitted” is a common Russian expression. In fact, it greatly influenced the thinking of Nietzsche. For the West, the requirements of the Cold War filled the role of God, limiting the excesses of the ruling class. When those restraints were removed, what followed was an orgy of excess leading to the current crisis, made worse by rulers who are trapped in the past century.

Max Planck famously said, “Science advances one funeral at a time” and that may be what must happen for the West to escape the current crisis. As the geriatric class of leaders fades from the seen, they will take their antiquated worldview with them, leaving open the possibility for a new world view. Whether the West is governable as currently composed will be the defining question, but it will not be answered by those old men with their sock ties and Reagan memorabilia.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


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Ron Versus Don

On social media, a mini-war has broken out between the pro-DeSantis faction and the pro-Trump faction. An example of the former is Pedro Gonzalez who spends his days on Twitter insulting Trump supporters. An example of the latter is Scott Greer, who also spends his days in Twitter, but insulting DeSantis people. Both may be paid “influencers” but that is not entirely clear. The DeSantis people are mostly anti-Trump people, while the Trump people are mostly pro-Trump.

That last bit is important. DeSantis has mostly attracted the on-line influencers who feel insulted by Trump for some reason. Most were superfans of Trump in 2016, doing the whole god-emperor thing, but then soured on him for some reason. Ann Coulter is the queen of this crowd. She now has the same enthusiasm for DeSantis as she had for Trump, Romney, Christie and George Bush. If history is a guide, Queen Ann will one day be trashing DeSantis on the Bill Maher show.

The basic argument from the DeSantis partisans is that he has a chance to win the general election, while Trump has no chance. More important, DeSantis knows how to govern, which he has proven in Florida. There is no doubt that he has been a great governor for Florida. He also has a very friendly state legislature, which makes it simple for him to get things done. There is no data to suggest he has a better shot against Biden than Trump, but that is the claim.

The truth is electability has never been a factor in these races. Most voters are not like most Republican politicians in that they do not negotiate with themselves. They vote for the candidate they like, not the candidate that a conservative commentator swears will be acceptable to the Democrats. Even if their preferred option has no chance in the general, most voters will go for the guy who speaks to them. It turns out that most people are decent and honest, not scheming weasels.

That is the argument for Trump. Despite his faults, and he has many, he represents those decent and honest people. He is a symbol, more than a candidate. Supporting Trump is about opposing the people who rule over us. It is as close as we get in America to class warfare. Trump’s voters are the great unwashed, the forgotten Americans who hate what has happened to their country. Trump is not the solution, but he makes noise on their behalf. That is enough.

Both camps are right in the same way that two people who have different favorite ice creams are right, even though they disagree. There is no empirical argument in favor of either guy as it is purely a matter of opinion. Pedro Gonzales is mad at Trump for not being the savior he hoped for in 2016, so he is has jumped on the DeSantis side, while Scott Greer still loves Trump and now hates DeSantis. Their arguments in favor of their guy are cognitively meaningless.

That said, we can assess the electability claim. The place to start is the 2020 election broken out by electoral votes. All of those national polls that people wave around are meaningless as we pick presidents by indirect election. In the last election, Biden won 303 electoral votes, while Trump got 235. The threshold to win is 270. There were a lot of shenanigans in the 2020 election, but they were repeated in 2022, so we have to treat them as a feature, rather than a bug.

The next step in assessing the electability claim is to ask which states are they mostly likely to flip into the Republican column. You can quickly rule out WA, OR, CA, CO, NM, ME, VT, NH, MA, CT, RI, NY, NJ, DE, MD, VA, HI and IL. That leaves NV, AZ, MN, WI, MI, PA and GA. There are eighty-seven electors in those states. A Republican will need to flip some combination of states to gain thirty-five electors. He will also have to hold the states that Trump won in 2020.

The state most likely to flip is Georgia. The Republican Party there has started to figure out what is happening to them and they have adjusted. The 2022 election was a small wake up call for the white vote in the state. That gets the Republicans halfway to their goal, but then things get dicey. Arizona and Nevada appear to be fortified for democracy now, as we saw in the 2022 election. Pennsylvania, of course, is heavily fortified for democracy, as we saw in the Fetterman race.

This means a Republican will need to win Michigan or Minnesota and Wisconsin, something has not been done in generations. In 2016, Trump won Michigan and Wisconsin, but lost Minnesota. It was close, so it cannot be ruled out entirely, but it is not the way to bet. Realistically, the only path to victory for the Republicans is to take back Georgia and then win Michigan, but they will still be short four electoral votes, so they have to focus on one other state as well.

What this tells us is the odds for a Republican win are awfully long. They have to win states that are mostly in the other camp by default. Then they have to defend their own states, some of which are trending the wrong way. The Yankee invasion of North Carolina is turning the state into Virginia. Texas is slowly becoming California as those weirdos arrive in droves. Barring some sort of black swan event, Joe Biden will cruise to victory in 2024 no matter his opponent.

What this says is that the choice for Republicans is not centered on electability, but who they prefer to see lose in 2024. The neocons and conservatives prefer to see Trump lose, but they are so full of hatred of white people now, they will root against him in the primary, even if it works against their interests. The DeSantis fans are coming around to the same view, thinking that Trump is some sort of bad juju that must be exorcised in order to return to the 1980’s.

For dissidents, it is a different question. DeSantis is a good governor and it would be better if he finished the job and set an example for others. We do not need another too nice to win loser presidential candidate. Trump is a crazy man who sends the bad guys into paroxysms of vengeful hysteria. He was a lousy president, but he has proven to be a great wrecking ball. His revenge tour, especially if he is indicted, will be the mother of all crap shows. A good time will be had by all.

On the other hand, DeSantis losing the general after the party swore he was better than Trump, discredits the whole process and drives home the point that we live in a one party system now. Many will assume that he was the victim of more democracy fortification, while others will read the map, analyze the demographics and see that there is no path forward in the current system. Reasonable Ron losing could be worse for the system than Demonic Don losing again.

In the end, it is probably a coin flip. Those who have yet to wake up to the present reality will place their hopes according to their desires. To paraphrase the American transcendentalist Theodore Parker, we should not pretend to fully comprehend the political universe, because the arc of history is long. We can only see a bit of it and make calculations accordingly. While the arc of liberal democracy is long, we can be sure that it bends towards civilizational disaster.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


We Are Argentina Now

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about stupid people, a post about those rotten kids and their pivot tables and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.


The Federal Reserve and European Central Bank have for a long time now been wrestling with a problem that is truly novel. They find themselves in an interest rate trap, which means they need to restore borrowing rates to something close to the historic norm, but doing so puts the global banking system at risk. The political class is just as hooked on cheap money as the bankers, so their is no appetite for a Paul Volker like approach to solving the money problem in the West.

For a long time, the problems were abstract. Everyone knew that near zero interest rates would one day create big problems, but in the here and now they made all of the important people happy. The reckless and insane response to Covid by Western ruling classes moved the problem into the domain of reality. Massive spending by government put enormous amounts of cash into the hands of regular people, not just the bankers, and those regular people started spending it.

Compounding this was the decline in global demand for dollars. Since the 1990’s, the Chinese economy was able to soak up extra dollars and euros. Other parts of Asia could also be counted on to take dollars in the form of investment. The massive liquidity in the banking system was, in effect, sequestered from the retail economy of Western countries, so the impact was low. That and the rest of the world was happy to hold euros, dollars and bonds in those currencies.

Covid was an accelerant in many ways, but one very important way was in regards to the Chinese economy. Central to the long term plans of China is to boost domestic demand and reduce her dependence on exports to the West. Lock downs and the subsequent decline in global commerce accelerated the process. China came out of Covid with far less demand for Western investment. Those extra dollars and euros are retuning to their makers.

It is looking like the insane response by the collective West to the war in the Ukraine is another accelerant to a process that was slowly building steam. Cutting Russia off from the “rules based international order” was a wake up call for the large, non-Western economies of the world. China understood right away that the dollar was Washington’s primary weapon in international affairs. The Saudis also came to see the problem with depending upon Washington to abide by the rules.

More important, the Russian economy survived the assault by Washington and she successfully defended the ruble. When Russia demanded payment in rubles from Western nations and they went along with it, the world changed. All of a sudden, the multipolar world with multiple competing currencies came into focus. China, Russia, India and the OPEC countries have now set off on a path where the dollar and euro no longer have a special place in global trade.

The enormity of this politically and economically cannot be overstated. This week the ruler of China is making a visit to Moscow. Generations of American policy makers have worked to avoid this meeting, but the current crop in charge of American foreign policy wrecked all of that and now we have an alliance between Russia and China. The world’s largest economy is now a strategic partner with the world’s biggest nuclear power, in opposition to the Global American Empire.

The global realignment does not stop there. The Russians have been brokering a peace between the Turks and the Syrians. The goal is to squeeze out the Americans, who are in Syria stealing Syrian oil and gas. China has brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which promises to reorder the region. The oil producing hub of the world is suddenly in the orbit of China and Russia. Economics follows politics, so it is not hard to see what this does to the dollar and euro.

For the last year, the Fed and ECB have been facing a problem. There is far too much money in the system and the demand for their money is in decline globally, which means they have to remove money from the system. They tried to ignore the problem by spinning yarns about inflation being transitory, but rocket high food bills made that story impossible to maintain. The politicians demanded the Fed “fix” the economy for them, so the Fed started to raise rates.

That is what brings us back to the interest rate trap. The entire Western banking system depends on exclusive access to cheap money. This is their margin. They no longer provide much in the way of essential services. Much of what the banking system does could be automated at this point. The profits come from operating a casino in which the house arbitrages the difference between what it pays for money and what the suckers on the other side pay for money.

If all of a sudden the price the house pays for money closes with that which the suckers are paying, then the casino goes bust. That is what we are see now. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were just money laundering schemes for plutocrats. Once interest rates went up just a little, they were no longer viable. Credit Suisse was just bailed out by the Swiss National Bank for the same reason. These banks could only exist in the world of free money to the banks and their clients.

Over the weekend, the Fed with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank announced a global bailout of the Western banking system. They are offering unlimited cash in exchange for the illiquid assets on the bank’s books. The reason they did this is they know that every bank in the West has the same problem as Credit Suisse. That is their liabilities outweigh their assets so they are effectively broke.

Of course, you cannot fight inflation while showering the system with cash, which means the effort to rein in inflation has come to an end. The Fed will try to limit the swapping of bad assets for cash by substituting treasuries, but this sort of legerdemain is just so they can continue the game of make believe. High inflation is now the new normal in the West because it is impossible to raise rates. The West has turned itself into Argentina through bad policy and worse politics.

For generations now people have warned about the long term cost of living on borrowed money, but they were mostly wrong. Living on borrowed money is self-correcting in that the lender eventually stops lending. What the West faces is a problem where the lender cannot not stop lending. The only way to sustain this now is for the people to be impoverished through systemic inflation. Inflation is now the banker’s friend, because it promises to keep the cheap money flowing.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Save The Future, Kill The Past

Montesquieu observed that each form of political system had what he called a spring, but what we would call a mindset, that animated the people. For example, in aristocratic systems the people were motivated by honor. You wanted to please the man you served, so you were loyal to him. In a republican system, the citizens were loyal to the institutions and processes. You served the office, rather than the man. Tyrants, of course, relied upon the fear of the people.

Democracy was not mentioned and liberal democracy as we understand it did not exist, so Montesquieu did not have a spring for these. What we think we know about Athenian society tells us that morality was the spring of their democracy. The people were motivated by what they understand to be the shared beliefs of the people. In fact, Socrates was put on trial for impiety. He questioned the generally held beliefs of the people, which was viewed as a threat to order.

Managerialism was not something Montesquieu could discuss, because it did not exist until long after his time, but we can see it operates a lot like democracy. As with democracy, there is the need for consensus. Dissent is viewed with suspicion as it calls into question the majority’s sense that they are acting in the best interests of the whole of society. Therefore, everyone seeks to be viewed as pious, the more pious the better, so it is a race to the center of the consensus.

The thing is, this is not a front brain activity. People are not looking around on every issue, counting noses and anticipating the majority. Instead it is an instinctual thing, arrived at by interacting with the people in close proximity. It is why the metaphor of the hive is so important. Like drones in a hive, the people in the managerial class do not know why they believe what they believe. They just know everyone they know supports men in dresses, so it must be the right thing to do.

We have a couple of good recent examples from the courts. In theory, this is where kooky beliefs like transgenderism should slam into reality. The courts exist only because they operate upon fixed rules. Even the subversives of the legal profession acknowledge that it is a rules-based system, even as they gnaw away at those rules with clever manipulation of the language. The law is rules and without rules there is no law, so this should be the graveyard of belief.

In the case of the Proud Boys, who are being charged with trying to overthrow the government, the FBI accidently revealed that they had been actively working to destroy exculpatory evidence and frame the defendants. In most cases, this would have resulted in the case being dismissed with prejudice. In some cases, the defense would simply use it to destroy the credibility of the state. In this case, the judge is preventing the defense from using this in their defense.

In a related case, Douglas Mackey, the man behind the infamous Twitter account Ricky Vaughn, is on trial for being funny at the expense of Hillary Clinton. The judge in the case has denied the defense the right to confront his accuser. There is a secret witness that the defense is barred from knowing about in advance. More importantly, the judge has laughed off a clear case of witness intimidation by the state. Apparently, prosecutors had the SPLC harass a defense witness.

This is not the first time we have seen federal judges throw the law out the window in order to persecute people with beliefs contrary to the ruling consensus. The judge in the Michael Flynn case went to the Supreme Court demanding the right to be both judge and prosecutor in that trial. In fact, this is becoming so common it is right to view the federal system as something like Sharia courts. The written law and the traditions behind it are unimportant. Managerial morality is the standard.

The reason for this is the people who exist in these systems feel they must be seen as pious by everyone else in the system. If you are a judge providing a fair trial for the Proud Boys or Douglas Mackey, you are suspect. Your friends and associates in the system will begin to question your commitment. After all, everyone knows these are bad people who must be punished. A judge that allows for these bad people to avoid punishment could be viewed as a bad person.

The way to understand what is happening is to imagine a religious cult taking over the primary institutions of society. Imagine if the Scientologists gained control of the judiciary and started demanding thetan readings in court. The irrationality of thetan levels is unimportant. The people who believe it are not about to be talked out of it and even if that was possible, the selection pressure favors believers. Therefore, faking it has far more benefit than questioning it.

This is why facts and reason have no role in our debates. The people in charge either believe the current fads or they are pretending to believe them because that is what is required for membership in their portion of the polyarchy. Judges burn law books, carnies burn Bibles and politicians burn the Constitution not because they are destroyers, but because the system requires it. If the system needs the Bible, then they will quickly become Bible defenders.

Another troubling fact about the current crisis is that the existence of this hive mentality atop the system shows that the current structure of our cultural, political and economic universe is what makes this outcome possible. Make a small change in how America evolved in the 20th century and we get a vastly different result. What this means is changing the people gets more of the same, even more extreme results, because the system is tuned to produce the hive mind.

Much in the same way that the end of the aristocratic order required the French Revolution and the American Revolution, the end of this crisis in the West means erasing the history that made this system possible. Revolution puts a period on a historical process and begins a new process. The end of managerial polyarchy requires the repudiation of the history that created it. The system and the process that created it is the enemy, not the people in it.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


Crisis In The Clouds

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about Kanye West, a post about the nuts and bolts of this bank crisis and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.


Note #2: The White Art Collective is putting together a film and they issued a casting call for those interesting in acting. They have crowdfunded the project and produced a trailer for the film. Details on how to contact them are here.


Note #3: Some may have noticed that my Twitter account has been restored and I have created a Rumble channel. I doubt I will do much with the Twitter account, but I am kicking around the idea of doing some live shows on Rumble.


One of the underappreciated properties of managerialism is how the managerial elite begin to look like the elite of a bureaucracy. The people at the top of the various pillars of power begin to think like the people in charge of the Post Office in that they care primarily for the power and privilege’s of their power center. We are getting a glimpse of this with the evolving financial crisis that was set in motion by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week.

The bank started to run into trouble when the Federal Reserve started raising rates in order to combat inflation. Rates have been near zero for so long that it became the new normal, leading to  activity that otherwise would never get financed. When money is cheap, the appetite for risk-taking is high. When money has been cheap for a generation, risk-taking is no longer seen as risk-taking. It is simply how things are done, until money stops being cheap, which is what is happening now.

Despite the bizarre devotion to the cult of diversity by the people running SVB, the bank itself does not appear to have been poorly managed. To date no violations of the law have been suggested. Instead, the bank was the victim of changing conditions that suddenly made their model unworkable. In the world of banking, when your model becomes unworkable it means you are running out of money. A bank without money is an abandoned building.

SVB’s clients were mostly startups, tech companies and their corresponding venture capital firms. The bank helped facilitate funding for new companies and existing companies that are growing. Private investors kept their money at the bank and the firms they were bankrolling also kept their money at the bank. Because borrowing rates were near zero, the bank could lend to the customers of their preferred customers, the private investors, at attractive rates.

When the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates to combat inflation, everything based on cheap money was thrown into crisis. Those private investors suddenly had more attractive options than startups. Those startups suddenly found it hard to borrow money at tolerable rates. The startups then started to draw down on their cash reserves and the private investors began to move their money to more profitable places, thus creating a cash crisis for the bank.

That is the second problem, the very serious problem, that has broad implications for the entire system. To raise cash, Silicon Valley Bank first elected to sell assets like treasuries and mortgage backed securities. In the near zero interest rate world, these were as good as cash. In the time of rising rates, these very low yield instruments are not in demand, so they had to be heavily discounted. SVB had to take a two billion dollar write down when they sold these assets.

Since every bank in America, possibly the Western world, holds treasuries and long dated mortgage backed securities, it means every bank has the same problem as this bank in that they have assets with a book value above market value. Some estimates suggest there is a trillion dollar gap in the system due to this problem. In 2008 when the system came close to collapse, the problem was about a trillion and half, so you can see why the bankers are in a panic.

This is where we see the bureaucratic nature of the system. Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

That is what we see with the bankers. The people running the system care only about the system, not the alleged goals of the system. No one ever asked if near zero interest rates was good for the economy. They do not care. What mattered is what is good for the financial system and the people running it. When inflation promised to become dangerous to their position in the system they raised rates, but now that raising rates is threatening the system, they will stop raising rates.

We are about to have another banking crisis because no one in the system bothers questioning what happens in the system, outside of those things that threaten the position of those atop the system. Cheap money underwriting you-go-girl capitalism makes them feel good, so they do it. If the polices warp the overall economy and puts the middle-class at risk, they do not care. All that matters is the internal dynamics of the system and how it impacts the people in it.

Replicate this silo mentality across the empire and you can easily see why the ruling class appears to be out of touch with reality. The reason is their reality is not our reality, but the artificial reality of the system. Right now, banking regulators are telling each other they are heroes for working the weekend to stem a bank run, while the rest of us see another trillion getting printed up and handed to the greed-heads who have been looting the economy for generations.

Of course, none of these silos of power are independent. The political silo will get in on the act when Joe Biden mumbles something about it this morning. Expect to hear lots of statements beginning with “we did…” from various political operatives, claiming that they are the real heroes of this crisis. The media will adopt their usual bunker mentality, defending the people who control their scripts. Here is an early example of what we will see this week from the content creators.

What all this means for the rest of us is the grocery bill will rocket up this year as the bankers are bathed in free money to save the system. We will get new narratives from the Cloud People about how the food bill is a conspiracy theory or maybe it is the work of the Chinese, who are the new bogeyman. The people at the top will sleep well knowing they have once against defended the system from the barbarians of reality who threatened to crash through the gates.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


A Culture Of Corruption

What we think of culture is a system and a system is a collection of rules for how interdependent group of items interact with one another. This results in the whole possessing a set of unique properties. An accounting system is a set of formal rules based on the accepted standards of accounting. The habits of the accounting department, the culture of the department, is an unwritten set of rules for governing the behavior of the people in the department.

Most of life is governed by the unwritten rules. You can see this in something as simple as driving a car. In the United States, the written rules of the road are the same from state to state, but the unwritten rules are quite different. In Texas, drivers will stand on the brakes to let someone merge into traffic, while in Massachusetts people regularly drive on the shoulder to prevent it. The driving culture in New England is different from the driving culture of other parts of America.

Cultural shifts, changes in those unwritten rules, happen when key players within the culture decide to violate those rules. Maybe it is self-interest that drives the change, or maybe it is simply the declining utility of the old rules, but important people begin to violate those unwritten rules. Because humans are social animals, the rest follow the lead of the important people and the culture changes. The fashion industry has counted on this reality since its inception.

A classic example of a cultural shift was Watergate. The sorts of shenanigans done by the Nixon people during the 1972 election were considered normal and then all of a sudden they were declared beyond the pale. Prior to that time, the FBI was prohibited from getting directly involved in politics. Then all of a sudden, they were plotting with the Washington Post to overthrow the president. Those unwritten rules of political conduct suddenly changed and Nixon was removed.

Another example from politics comes from the 1990’s. Current affairs programming followed a set of unwritten rules. It was supposed to be a calm exchange of views, hosted by a moderator who pretended to be objective. The Clintons showed up in Washington and this changed. All of a sudden Clinton people were flinging their pooh at the moderator and anyone else on stage. It did not take long before this became the new normal and now all shows are pooh flinging contests.

This week, Tucker Carlson is doing shows on the hidden surveillance tapes from the Capitol on January 6th. These tapes had been hidden from public view by the Democrats until the Republicans took control of the House. Kevin McCarthy, the new Speaker, let the production team of the Tucker Carlson Show review the 40,000 hours of footage and this week they are reporting on it. They also have permission to show clips of that hidden footage in their reporting.

So far, nothing earth shattering has been revealed. The guy who showed up wearing animal skins, the QAnon Shaman, is seen being given a guided tour by the police, who seem to be having a blast leading the guy around the building. The QAnon Shaman is now in prison, doing four years for allegedly leading a violent insurrection. He was not allowed to have access to this footage in his defense, because in America the accused are no longer entitled to defend themselves in court.

This is where you see one of those cultural shifts. Most people reading this remember when such a thing would be a massive scandal. The judge and the prosecutors would have been reviled as fascists for denying this man a right to a defense. Of course, the media would have been demanding the footage from the beginning. Instead, they are up in arms over Tucker having access to the material. They fear he may create a “dangerous narrative” using these tapes.

The media was always biased. We used to be more mature about this and accept that politics is about friends and enemies. In the colonial times, everyone knew the bias of the newspapers and thought nothing of it. Then all of a sudden there was a culture shift and we were supposed to pretend the media was neutral. They were the fourth estate, speaking truth to power. We have just experienced another culture shift. The media is totally corrupt, using power to obscure the truth.

Another example of the culture shift is in the tapes. Tucker showed a scene from the J6 show trial in Congress. One of the politicians showed a clip of Senator Josh Hawley running from the building like a little girl. It turns out that the video was heavily edited by the Democrats. Hawley was with a group of other pols being herded out by the police and he was the last guy to leave. In other words, the Congress doctored a video and presented it under oath to the public as fact.

Everyone has always accepted that politicians lie. The reason they lie is to get elected, avoid scandal, or avoid responsibility. In other words, self-interest. This is the nature of all human activity and everyone accepted it. Doctoring video and presenting it as fact in order to promote a crazy narrative is something different. In a prior age, the people involved would be facing criminal charges. After all, they charged Roger Clemens for lying to Congress not so long ago.

More importantly, they doctored video to make a sitting Senator look like a sissy and then used the hearing to broadcast it to the world. It appears they worked with the media to promote this lie. Ten years ago, this was so beyond the pale that no one would have considered it. Now all of a sudden, the culture controlling the House and Senate has changed and this is now the new normal. How long before they move onto assassinating one another?

None of this is startling for people on this side of the divide, but it underscores an important point about the current crisis. The corruption at the top is so deep and so pervasive that the time for reform has now passed. How can the system reform itself when the people running it are so thoroughly corrupt? How could a genuine reformer work with people who are so corrupt? How can you fix the rules when the culture has evolved to reject the very idea of rules?

In the fullness of time, the ape historians will look at the 1980’s as a time for choosing, when the political class struggled to redefine itself. They could have gone down the road of reform and prepared for the word after the Cold War. Instead they signed on with the Clintons and the road to perdition. That has led to the flowering of a culture of corruption at the top of the political order. That is why J6 terrified them. They have known this long before that protest.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


The Internal Monologue

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, a post about terrorism and technology and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.


Note #2: The White Art Collective is putting together a film and they issued a casting call for those interesting in acting. They have crowdfunded the project and produced a trailer for the film. Details on how to contact them are here.


Note #3: The Pepper Cave is joining the group of supporters you see at the bottom of every post. They were kind enough to send a care package with various spice blends they produce. I will be doing a longer post about it this week, but if you are a chili head, check them out here.


The looming presidential primary season is about to be a good test case for the claim that the system is inward looking. That is, what we get in the national media with regards to politics is for internal consumption by the political bubble. They are not trying to sway public opinion, but rather signal things to one another. Like fireflies at dusk, the various nodes of the system use the media to blink to one another. Those outside just happen to see it but are not the intended audience.

This post in Breitbart covering CPAC is an interesting example. Mike Pompeo is running for president, so he shows up to give a speech. In his speech, he promises to throw old people off the Social Security and Medicare system. The reason he wants to do this is he says these systems cost too much. You see, with all the baby boomers retiring, the costs are starting to rise quickly. Therefore, the logical solution is to start throwing old people off the programs. Problem solved!

To a normal person, this sounds as sensible as coming out in favor of slapping children of killing puppies. There is no constituency in favor of cutting Social Security or Medicare funding or even limiting access. Further, old people are the biggest voting block in the Republican Party. Look around at CPAC and you see more gray hair than gray hoodies. He would have been better off giving the speech in Klingon. A reasonable person may think Mike Pompeo is insane.

He is not insane. He is simply a man who has lived his entire adult life inside the system, so he has no idea how normal people sound. He is used to chatting with friends in the system about the need to reduce spending on Americans in order to spend much more on Ukrainians or illegal aliens. For him, this is perfectly normal. He would probably be shocked to learn that there is no constituency for this. After all, everyone he knows thinks something must be done.

Now, Mike Pompeo is a ridiculous person by the standards of normal people, but he is typical of the political class. He is what passes for serious in that world. You see it in the media that serves the people in the system. Real Clear Politics gives him a big thumbs up for being courageous in his call to throw old people into the streets. Time Magazine says he is just the man the Republican Party needs. They are signaling to the system that this is what is good and proper.

If our mass media cared at all about the hoi polloi, the headline in the Washington Post would be, “Jobless Rando Shows Up At CPAC, Rants About Old People.” The New York Times would ask, “Why did CPAC let this weirdo speak?” No serious person, not even the people in the system, thinks Mike Pompeo should be president. No one thinks he has chance to register in the polls. That is not the point. The point is to participate in a debate among the political class.

Speaking of jobless randos, Nikki Haley also showed up at the event to give a speech in favor of killing white people and sending their stuff to Ukraine. She was not quite that explicit, but like Pompeo, she is deeply concerned about people on the other side of the world, but not so much about people in America. Even though she must know this is a losing hand with the voters, she knows it is a winning hand in Washington. Like Pompeo, her campaign is about internal politics.

Of course, CPAC itself is part of the same system. It bills itself as the convention for conservative activists, but in reality it is mostly a tradeshow for the grifters and confidence men who populate the conservative ecosystem. They decorated the event with yokels from flyover country in order to give the impression that they have genuine support among the hoi polloi. In reality the point has always been to promote internal dialogue and signal to the rest of the political system.

The curious thing about all of this, and it jumps out at you with CPAC, is that Trump did the system a huge favor in 2016. CPAC would have gone bust by now without the Trump victory and populist surge. Even with Trump running in 2024, CPAC struggled for an audience this year. The speakers talked to more empty chairs than people, judging from some of the pics people have posted. Without Trump, they are left with zombies like Mike Pompeo to sell tickets.

The same can be said for the entire system. Imagine how insulated and cutoff they would be at this point if Trump never came down the escalator. The Republicans would have selected a goofball like Jeb Bush. Maybe he beats Hillary, maybe not, but the result would have been the same. Large swaths of voters would be wondering what in the hell is going on, but with no way to tell the system. Without Trump, national politics would be even more bizarre than it is now.

That said, the persistence of this internal monologue that is presented to us as democratic politics says nothing really changed. The internal monologue has been more shouty and angry since 2015, but it remains an internal monologue. Once the door is shut on Trump and his voters this election, the internal monologue will return to sounding like an opioid laced talk show on National Public Radio. The people inside it will drift off into the dream world of their own making.

It may already be happening. Chris “Thanks Dad” Sununnu went on the far-left chat show Meet the Press to announce that Trump will not be the nominee. Maybe he was telling tales out of school, but most likely he is stating the general consensus within Washington with regards to the primaries. It brings to mind what Talleyrand famously said about the Bourbons after they were restored to power, “They have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing”.

What the Republican primary is going to be this time is an argument between the party establishment and the rest of Washington. The former will be insisting that all the Trump stuff is over and it is time to get back to looting the white middle class, while the later keeps pointing to Trump saying, “He’s still here.” Put another way, the voters are now a guest that refuses to leave the party. The political class is debating how best to make them leave and go home.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


The Election At The End Of Time

The first Republican debates for the 2024 election will be in about six months, which means the field will be shaping up in the next few months. Trump has already declared, along with zombies like Nikki Haley and John Bolton. Tim Scott is supposed to join the zombies shortly, along with Mike Pompeo. There is rumor that former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is contemplating a run. Team zombie will be well represented on the debate stage next fall.

The big name everyone is waiting on is Ron DeSantis. He is doing all of the things that a presidential candidate does when he is seriously thinking about a run. He has gone on tour to important states to give speeches. He has a book out about himself and what he claims to believe. This being the social media age, he has a team for that and a collection of paid influencers. That last bit is unspoken but it is becoming common for so-called influencers to sell their services.

Of course, the unpaid influencers and clout chasers are jumping into the act, siding with Trump against DeSantis or DeSantis against Trump. It speaks to the ridiculousness of the zombie wing of the party that their influencers are all retirees down at the Villages who still have National Review subscriptions. Putting that aside, you have the usual on-line suspects doing their thing to get attention for themselves while ostensibly getting attention for their preferred candidate.

It has been an article of faith that winning the social media war is the same as winning the fight in the real world. There is no evidence to support this, other than post hoc claims about the role of influencers. Douglas Mackey is facing ten years in prison based on the claim that his mocking of Hillary Clinton caused her voters to think they could vote for her by text message. There is no evidence to support this, but people now think social media is a form of magic.

Putting that aside, the evidence suggests that the virtual world of Twitter is disconnected from the world of reality. How often has someone mentioned to you in real life something they saw trending on Twitter? The fact is, unless you are really into Twitter, Twitter does not matter. Facebook groups and local on-line groups matter somewhat, but people join these groups because they already agree with the general theme of the group, so it is about confirmation bias.

We are already getting a taste of this with Trump-DeSantis. There is a large on-line vote that is still angry about Trump not being their God-Emperor. Ann Coulter is their queen and various influencers are vying to become the king of this group. Then you have the tribe that always goes for the latest thing, so they have their claims in favor of new and hip DeSantis over the old and tired Trump. Of course, the finks of conservatism are pretending to like DeSantis.

So far none of this matters. All of the polling shows Trump has a huge lead over the field in the key demographics. He comes with the built in advantage of answering the two essential questions every candidate must first answer. “This is who I am and this is why you should vote for me.” The rest of the field has to answer both of those questions, which is not easy in a crowded media world. DeSantis has the shortest road, but he is still an unknown to most of the voters.

This is where another question will be answered. The Republican leadership has been sure that Trump is done for a while now. They threw the midterms as proof that Trump no longer has influence over voters. It is a good example of how they get high off their own narratives. They are playing nice with DeSantis thinking he can be the final nail in the Trump coffin. Trump voters will be tempted to accept the compromise of DeSantis in order to get support from the party elite.

This probably would have worked in 2016. If the party had rallied to Ted Cruz early in the process, he most likely would have won. This time it may be the opposite where any support from party leaders is toxic. We are already seeing populist paranoia about DeSantis on key issues like foreign policy. DeSantis and the field may be faced with an additional hurdle. That is, they will have to prove to voters that they are not going to fink on them like every other Republican has done for generations.

Put another way, this may be the crackup of the Republican Party. A sizable chunk of their vote no longer trusts the party. The party leaders and donors no longer trust the voters, especially the Trump wing. If the gap is large enough, it means no candidate can stand across it and get the trust of both sides. Any effort to do so creates doubts on both sides of the divide. A couple generations of finking on their voters may finally have cracked this coalition of the desperate.

Of course, the shadow over all of this is the sense of futility. As more people come to terms with the electoral map, the less enthusiasm there is for the process of finding an electoral solution to our problems. With key states having been fortified for democracy, it is just about impossible for a Republican to win now. This is why the political class is not vexed with the Democrats running a vegetable. They put John Fetterman in the Senate, so they can re-elect Joe Biden.

As America transitions into a one-party authoritarian state, this election will have the feel of a final chapter. The old folks will get to reminisce about how these things used to matter and lament the passing of an age. The rest will find a way to fight the inevitable frustration over the lack of anyway to do something about it. Many, of course, will pretend that it is all on the level. They will blame the voters for electing a political class that is corrupt and feckless.

This will be an election at the end of time. Not the end of all time, but the end of this phase of the American experience. The current political and cultural arrangements are not working and that is becoming increasingly clear to people. This election promises to be ridiculous enough to drive home that point. It will also become increasingly clear that the older generation is just hoping to run out the clock. The rest will soon be left to contemplate what comes next.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

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

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.


The Coming Crisis

Every war is a part of a larger story of relations between the nations that fought in the war and the war in Ukraine is not an exception. This war started a year ago, but it is part of the story that started in 2014. of course, that chapter was preceded by the aftermath of the Cold War. In the case of the neocons driving American policy, their portion of this story begins during the Trial of the 193. Like all stories, the war will end and what will follow are more chapters to close out this story arc.

Within the war itself there are chapters. In the case of Ukraine, the first chapters could be called the pre-awakening. Both the Russians and Ukrainians, assumed this would be a short affair ending in rounds of talks. The Europeans, in contrast, thought it would be a short affair as well, but instead ending in a Russian collapse. They had been assured by their American handlers that Russia was a hollow country. Once the sanctions hit them, the peasants would revolt.

Interestingly, all parties kept on believing their version of the plot even after it should have been clear they were wrong. The Russians kept pressing for negotiations, even after Ukraine told them Washington would not allow it. The Europeans kept pushing new sanctions packages, even after it was clear the Russian economy was not going to collapse and there would be no peasant revolt. For a few months last spring and summer, everyone stuck with the old script.

It appears that it was the Russians who were the first to realize that the script was wrong and that they needed to rethink things. The mobilization of reserves along with a reorganization of their military structure in Ukraine followed. The Russians figured out that this is a long war of attrition between Moscow and its allies versus the American Empire and its allies. What we have seen for the last six months is a slow, deliberate grind of the Ukrainians by the Russians.

We are about to see the final closing of one chapter of this war and the opening of a new chapter due to developments on the battlefield. The first and most important bit of news is the encirclement of a town called Bakhmut. If you look at this pro-Ukrainian deployment map, you see the line of contact in Ukraine. In this case, pro-Ukrainian does not mean pure propaganda. It simply relies primarily on Ukrainian sources to assemble the map and unit positions.

If you zoom into the area dead center of the line of contact, you will find the town called Bakhmut and see a large grouping of Ukrainian forces. They have been throwing everything they can into this town in order to hold it. The Russians now have the town surrounded, with tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops inside it. It appears that Zelensky has instructed the forces inside this cauldron to fight to the last man, much as he did last year with the Mariupol garrison.

There are two primary reason Zelensky and the general staff are sacrificing tens of thousands of men for this town. One reason is strategic. It is the keystone to this defense line in the Donbas. If it falls, the Ukrainians will have to fall back to their last line of defense east of the Dnieper River. That last defensive line is not as built up as the current defensive positions. The Ukrainians are buying as much time as they can in order to build up that new defense line.

The other reason for this massive sacrifice of men and machines is the general psychology of the war on the Ukrainian side. They have been told since the start that they just needed to hang on until the Russians crumbled. Then they were told to hang on until the West could provide wonder weapons. Now they are hanging on because they have no other option. For Zelensky, this war is about buying time while hoping for some change that will save him from his fate.

Another reason for the great turning of the page that is coming in this war relates to that waiting strategy of the Ukrainians. They are running out of supplies. Reports keep coming in from Ukrainian sources that they are out of ammunition. The reason they are out of ammunition is the West cannot get ammunition to them fast enough. The reason for that is the West is running out of ammunition as well. After a year of ground war, the Western warehouses are now empty.

The issue has become so critical that the people running foreign policy had Biden sign “a presidential waiver of some statutory requirements (Waiver) authorizing the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to allow the Department of Defense (DoD) to more aggressively build the resiliency of America’s defense industrial base and secure its supply chains.” This is the first step in transitioning the economy to wartime, which means prioritizing defense over civilian items.

Something similar is afoot in Europe. What the West has come to realize is they were all wrong about the Russian economy. It has performed better over the last year than the European economies. They were also wrong about Russia’s standing in the world, particularly with other major powers like China and India. They have not been willing to go along with Washington’s war on Moscow. Eighty percent of the world’s population now supports the Russian side in this conflict.

Another piece of this is a bit of reality Western leaders have ignored for so long they stopped thinking about it. That is, the industrial base of the West no longer exists as a practical matter. Generations of offshoring and global supply chain management have left Western countries with a tiny manufacturing base. China now has more manufacturing capacity than the U.S. and Europe combined. Throw in Russia, Brazil and India and you see the problem.

The shape of the next chapter in this new global war is still unclear, but one storyline will be the looming political crisis in the West. The sanctions regime is simply unsustainable for Europe so it must come to an end. It cannot come to end until the war in the Ukraine has come to an end. The trouble is European political leaders have ruled out any end other than Ukrainian tanks rolling through Moscow. Europe has created an unsolvable problem for itself.

Another part of the story could be a change in China. For a long time the Chinese have viewed their relationship with Washington as purely economic. If they did good business with Washington, everything else solved itself. Beijing now sees that things have changed and so they are changing. All of the war talk over Taiwan has finally convinced the Chinese to adjust their position. Sino-American relations will no longer be about business, but about great power conflict.

Of course, all of this will be happening against the backdrop of a political class in Washington that looks like the shuffleboard courts in Boca. Everyone who wants to be Pericles in this war is too old to say the name clearly. Of course, Washington is full of potential Cleons among the younger generations of politicians, but none of them are bright enough to understand it. As this war enters the crisis chapters, the West is desperately short of men who are good in a crisis.


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