Category Archives: Politics

The American Drama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Interview Of Nikole Hannah-Jones

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

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

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

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

NHJ: I don’t understand.

WP: What don’t you understand?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NHJ: Check?

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

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

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

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

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

NHJ: We want justice.

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

NHJ: We still want the check.

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

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

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

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

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

NHJ: We want what we were promised.

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

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

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

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

NHJ: I don’t understand.

WP: We know.

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!

Right-Wing Marxism

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There was a time when conservatism was defined as a lack of ideology, by which Russel Kirk meant ideology in the Marxist sense. The Marxist defined ideology as a set of beliefs that were assumed to be true, but were, in fact, the product of economic and social conditions of the time. The ideologue, whether he knew it or not, believed in a collection of things he assumed were true in all times and all places, but were only true in his time and place. Conservatives rejected this argument.

That was a long time ago. For generations now, conservatism has succumbed to that old Marxist understanding of ideology. What that usually meant is the so-called conservatives would figure out the position of the Left on some issue and then take an alternative position. Not necessarily the opposite, as they have always been careful to avoid being called reactionary by the Left. This is, of course, evidence that they are reactionary, but reactionaries have some self-awareness.

A good example of this is this piece in the American Conservative. The writer is someone calling himself Charles Marohn, but his friends call him Chuck. He is the president of something called Strong Towns, which promotes itself as an advocacy group in support of rebuilding local community. Of course, it is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Here is their tax filings. Their language and choice of media outlets suggest they are conservative or right-leaning.

The best one can say about it, however, is it is a mix of misguided libertarianism and Breitbart-tier reaction. Consider this line. “After all, there is no greater distortion of the market than local zoning codes, and there are few bureaucracies doing more harm to property rights and freedom than local zoning offices.” This is right out of libertarian market worship. An actual conservative would ask, “Do these local zoning laws reflect the attitudes and customs of the local community?”

Nowhere in the piece is there any discussion about what the local people may want or how these zoning laws fit in with local customs. Instead, the author is frazzled over the prospect that the market, peace be upon it, may be vexed with these laws. Even more vexing, suburban voters have somehow managed to get the Federal government to back these zoning laws. In this case, it means rules against building tenements and trashy commercial development in white suburbs.

In other words, his definition of conservative simply means opposing anything that impedes the marketplace. Further, he points out that these sorts of zoning laws started in the New Deal years. There’s where you see the Pavlovian aspect of modern conservatism. Instead of judging the thing in question against a set of accepted principles, they just ask if Democrats were for or against it. Conservative Inc. better hope the Left never takes a strong stance against suicide.

That’s where you see that conservatism, rather than being a rejection of ideology as the Marxists define it, has become an ideology, one that compliments and supports the prevailing ideology of the Left. In the case of single-family zoning laws, there is no consideration of their efficacy. The writer does not bother to ponder why these laws exist in the first place. Instead, he just assumes they are bad because the Left once supported them and they violate market absolutism.

Of course, he does not address why we have zoning laws prohibiting the demolition of the suburbs with tenement blocks. The Left destroyed those old white ethnic neighborhoods in the cities, by unleashing a black crime wave starting in the 1960’s that drove whites from the urban areas. Twenty years ago, the legendary quantitative blogger, La Griffe du Lion, pointed out just how quickly blacks began to prey on urban whites as their population grew.

At least with the Obama administration, they were honest about why they wanted to destroy the white suburbs with tenements full of blacks. They hated white people and they hoped to reclaim some urban real estate. The game is to change the zoning laws in these white suburbs, so builders can erect apartment blocks. The Federal government, coordinating with the local Democrat machine, then fills them with blacks from the nearest city, using Section 8 housing vouchers.

Toward the end of the piece, he writes, “The progressive left has discovered that single-family zoning has racist underpinnings. That’s great, because we should now have no problem finding common cause for repealing this most distorting of regulations, one that the federal government never should have forced cities to adopt to begin with.” Instead of using this observation to discuss why these zoning laws exist, he falls victim to the fallacy of Chesterton’s fence.

There is another part to the Marxist definition of ideology. Once one accepts that beliefs are shaped by conditions, you no longer have to think too much about the truth content of political beliefs. Your opponents are simply the victims of false consciousness, while your ideas reflect the interests of your side. This inevitably leads to both close-mindedness and fanatical zeal. Any questioning of your side is heresy, while the other side’s arguments are assumed to be without merit.

This is where conservatives find themselves today. They are confined to a moral ghetto created for them by the Left. On the one hand, any new ideas, especially those from the Right, are rejected out of hand. On the other hand, they are completely defined by their opposition to whatever the Left is doing at the moment, but snugly within the confines of the moral orthodoxy. Conservatism has been completely stripped of the ability to question and debate political reality.

This is also why conservatism has turned into a racket. The people inside this maze of right-wing institutions have been imprinted by ideology. They can only see the world in terms of partisanship, a term coined by Lenin, by the way. Of course, the same is true of left-wing institutions. They treat their enemy as an indefatigable foe that is always right there ready to pounce. In reality, both Left and Right are exhausted ideologies and exist like two drunks leaning on one another for support.

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!

And Don’t Come Back!

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In another highly coordinated effort, the tech oligarchs ritualistically banned a bunch of people and groups from their platforms yesterday. Of note, Reddit banned the Donald Trump fan club from their site. YouTube banned American Renaissance and Stefan Molyneux from their platform. Something called “Twitch” banned the Trump campaign team from its site. All of these people and groups have been accused of impiety by the people in charge of public morality, so they have been punished.

Of course, many of the proscribed have responded according to their role in the great morality play of the Left. They found somewhere on social media to express their outrage and hurt over being kicked off a left-wing platform. There were the denunciations of left-wing hypocrisy and the calls for free speech. The chorus played its role, amplifying the outrage of the proscribed. At this point, the only interesting thing about these rituals is the targets they select for punishment.

Reddit, for example, made an example of the TERF community. Those would be radical feminists who exclude men in sundresses. They were purged for the crime of accepting biological reality. Stefan Molyneux, who has refashioned himself into a street corner philosopher, was banned from YouTube allegedly for advocating violence. In reality, he was selected because YouTube has run out of popular heretics. They have so broken their site that even heretics are losing interest in it.

The important part of this is not the targets, but the ritual. As you see with Molyneux, they will claim a milquetoast libertarian actor is Hitler in order to fill the role in the morality tale. It’s not important that he is not actually Hitler. What matters is they have someone to parade around as a heretic on whom they can ritualistically heap their scorn and then chase from their midst. For all it matters, these recently proscribed people could be macramé enthusiasts or bird watchers.

That’s what people outside the halls of the one true faith fail to grasp. The people deciding to ban Jared Taylor spent no time listening to what he has to say or examining his videos for violations of their morality codes. They are physically incapable of being around those who dispute the tenets of the faith. Jared is just a blasphemer, an agent of the great evil against which they fight. The same is true in varying degrees for all of the people thrown off these left-wing sites.

For the people doing this, the only time they bother to listen to the damned is after the fact, when the condemned are complaining about their banning. Progressivism is a sadistic faith, fueled by the suffering of its enemies. You can be sure the various committees and working groups tasked with finding this round of heretics were replaying Moly’s Twitter performance over and over as they gratified themselves. He was playing his role like a legendary thespian at the peak of his ability.

It is the biggest problem facing those opposed to the new religion. Instead of accepting it as a religion, opponents insist on imposing their own sense of logic and reason onto the actions of these people. “They are banning us because they are afraid of what we have to say!” No, the people conducting these rituals have no idea what someone like Molyneux says in his videos. He could be speaking in tongues for all they care. He is not a person to them. He is a character in their morality play.

The rock heads and cranks on this side will dispute this, because that is what makes them rock heads and cranks. They will keep imposing their sensibilities on the other side, despite generations of evidence to the contrary. Worse yet, they will insist that these left-wing platforms are vital ground. We have to exhaust ourselves fighting to get on these platforms. Of course, that just means a steady supply of people ready to play the role of the damned in the next morality play.

The proper response to all of this is to simply leave these platforms. The argument is that these platforms are the public square, but that’s not true. No one goes on Twitter to have their mind changed about anything. People go on Twitter to have their opinions confirmed by people they already like. The same is true of YouTube. If you really enjoy Moly’s performances, you can always go to his site. This is how it worked up until about ten years ago. It’s how this site works.

Further, the proper response to de-platforming efforts is to ignore them. When you go public and moan about the attacks, the Left is exhilarated. They see the suffering as a trophy that keeps cheering for them. Sure, it is no fun to go through. No one wants to waste time moving servers or changing domain registrars, but publicly complaining about it does not make the burden lighter. It just encourages the people doing it to keep looking for fresh victims. It stimulates them.

Ultimately, our side joins the fight when we finally wake-up and accept the other side for what it is. The Left are not reasonable people. They are not operating from a set of fixed rules that can be mastered by an outsider. There is no beating them at their own game or on their platforms. These are evil people who are only motivated by the suffering of decent people. They feed on your frustration and your complaints. When you engage with them, you are giving them oxygen

The way forward is to reduce the number of contacts between them and us. Instead of going inside the walls of their domains to be fed upon like cattle, make them scale the walls of our domains. No, that does not mean building a new internet. It just means not going onto their platforms. Sure, they can attack Molyneux by going after his registrar or hosting company, but that is time consuming and often futile. It makes them work hard for the dopamine rush of tormenting the condemned.

That’s ultimately the battle we face. There’s no defeating the Left in the conventional sense of a fight. Instead, the goal is to exhaust them. Since a big part of what sustains them is the attention they get from their victims, not giving them that attention increases their cost of operation. The trouble is, many on our side is like a battered wife. They can only feel love when they are being pummeled. They have been conditioned to take the beating and then come back asking for more.

When our side sits it out, the results are impressive. Look at the riots. The Left was sure these riots would draw out “right-wing extremists” they could then use as a foil. When that did not happen, they tried inventing them, but failed to make it work. It’s hard to convince people that the black guys beating a white guy with a skateboard are actually white nationalists. It just underscored the fact that the only people in the streets are left-wing agitators and their pets from the vibrant community.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that is why they have started banning people from their platforms again. The riots have been a terrible disaster for them. They fully expected a dozen Charlottesville-style events, with lots of bad guys they could parade around on their media platforms. Instead they got semi-literate savages and potheads claiming part of Seattle as a new country. This should be the model for all future interaction with the Left. Engage them in the shadows, never in public.

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 Flynn File

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The General Flynn case, after years of judicial stalling, may be finally coming to an end, as a Federal appeals court ordered the presiding judge to dismiss the case. The presiding judge could appeal the ruling to the full court or even take it to the Supreme Court, but his chance for success is negligible. Most likely his appeal would be refused, but it would buy some time. He could also refuse to comply with the writ of mandamus or stall for time so his prosecutor can file his claims.

The case has been a microcosm of what is going on with our ruling class. The sheer pettiness of the process reflects a cultural attitude that exists in the ruling managerial elite that is not seen among the commoners. This meanness is all over the current revolutionary spasm. Mel Gibson was just cancelled again for something he may have said 25 years ago. No people hold a grudge like the chosen people and that sensibility is now an identifying feature of the managerial class.

In the Flynn case, whatever insults he committed against the Obama administration appear to be so minor that no one is sure they exist. Even the neocons are struggling to manufacturer an explanation for this years-long jihad against Flynn. Note that the torments they have inflicted on him were designed to keep the torment going for as long as they could do it. Instead of putting him in jail for a year, they were seeking to keep his case alive forever. Our ruling class is full of sadists.

Of course, there could be other reasons for trying to keep Flynn in limbo. This case has revealed the breathtaking corruption of the ruling class. We now know, for example, that Joe Biden and his son were extorting the Ukrainian government. Biden admitted as much several times. He threatened the Ukrainian government with loss of support if they did not allow his son to work a grift with their energy monopoly. Another feature of the managerial elite is shameless personal corruption.

There are other hints here that the delaying action in the Flynn case is an effort to cover up other things. The recently released notes from one of the conspirators in the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election point the finger at Obama. Maybe keeping Flynn in legal jeopardy is part of a scheme to keep him quiet. That’s the other thing about this rotten ruling class. Nothing is ever on the level with these people and no grift is too small. They see us as suckers and chumps.

Another feature of current year America is on display here. That is the complete and total corruption of the law. General Flynn was framed. That is abundantly clear, but it will happen in any legal system. The issue here is that the judge has deliberately and maliciously dragged this case out as a form of torture. Judge Sullivan is more like an inquisitor, trying to extract a confession. The system bankrupted Flynn and ruined his life, mostly because he has come to be viewed as a heretic.

All over the court system we are seeing judges not only abandon their role as neutral arbiters of the rules, but aggressively promote their ideology. The judge in the Roger Stone case, for example, is an ethnocentric sadist. Compounding it, the managerial class is celebrating this new judicial temperament. The Wall Street Journal, an allegedly conservative operation, is celebrating the rise of racial paranoia and vengeance among the black members of the judiciary.

The Flynn case is not all bad news. It costs money to fight the system the way Flynn has done, which means someone is paying his bills. They are not just paying his lawyers, but also supporting him while he is in limbo. Since he has been de-platformed like every other enemy of the state, it means a rich guy is underwriting this long battle with the system. Not every plutocrat is happy with what is happening. A balkanization of the ruling class is slowly underway.

There’s also the fact that the people running this particular scheme and many of the others associated with the scandal are not very smart. The prior generation of rulers would have found a more efficient way of dealing with a problem like Flynn. They probably would have bribed him with a position in the system. No man is so virtuous as to refuse the highest bidder. The Keystone Cops now running the FBI and CIA are simply too stupid to be effectively crooked.

Of course, as is often the case, this issue reveals the yawning divide between the commoner and the ruling class. The commoner looks at this and sees it for what it is and is happy the appeals court upheld their rules. The ruling class, in contrast, thinks the application of the law is a violation of the rule of law. In the madhouse world of the managerial class, the consistent application of the rules is somehow a violation of the rules, undermining the principle of the law.

It is a good and necessary reminder that the ruling class is well beyond reform, because they have been afflicted with a strange new religion. They are angry at the Flynn result on moral grounds, not legal ones. For them, those laws written on paper are your laws and subordinate to their laws, their moral laws. In this case, they just see a heretic and blasphemer escaping punishment. That must be wrong. The managerial class is becoming the domain of howling lunatics.

Finally, what the Flynn case reveals is the fragility of the elites. Their constant lashing out at the public is driven by a deep fear that they sit atop a house of cards. Their lunacy is really just a manifestation of this constant terror. The managerial elite is a bourgeois elite; thus, it suffers from bourgeois angst. That angst has now metastasized into a neurosis masquerading as a moral code. The Great Panic we are witnessing is another indication that the managerial elite is in crisis.

That’s why the book White Fragility is an instant success with the ruling class. On the surface, the message to white people is “stop being so insecure and face up to your own racism.” Below the surface, there lies the fear, “My good, if they ever find out the truth, we’re all dead.” The endless white-lashing is a defense mechanism by people who see themselves standing on the trapdoor of the scaffold. One day, perhaps soon, their fears will be realized and the trap door will swing open.

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 Paradox Of The Market

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An axiom of liberal democracy is that the more open the system the more choices there are within the system. A market for widgets, if it is an open market, will have the maximum number of widget makers and widget suppliers. The marketplace of ideas, if it is open to all, will have the full range of ideas. Similarly, as long as the demand side is unrestricted, the full spectrum of demand will be represented. Every widget buyer will have the chance to demand his type of widget.

This is the starting point for modern societies. It is no longer a point to be debated and certainly not questioned. This is obvious in the non-debate over tech censorship. Any effort to discuss what is going on with companies like Google and Twitter is met with a wall of sound about the sanctity of private firms operating in the market. “Build your own platform” has become the top single in the amen chorus. The marketplace is now a god that provides what the people need and deserve.

In theory, the chorus should be right. If everyone who wants to make widgets is allowed to make widgets, then there should be a widget maker for every type of widget demanded by the public, assuming the widget can be produced at a profit. Even people wanting free widgets could be supplied by charity. Outside of the extremes, if there is a way to make a profit by meeting even the most bizarre demands for a product or service, someone will find a way to meet that demand.

Something similar should happen in public discourse. If the public space is open, then everyone can present their ideas. If everyone is free to listen, or not listen, to those ideas being offered up, the marketplace should develop in the same way as it should with a product or a service. The insane ideas will have a small audience, while the sensible ideas will gain a larger audience. The marketplace of ideas will sort and stack the ideas on offer based on the preferences of the audience.

This is a bit redundant, but it is important to think about this axiom of liberal democracy while considering current reality. If the market place for goods and services functioned as believed, then we would have more than two mobile phone makers. There would be more than one search engine. We would have lots of small car makers, rather than a handful of global operators. In fact, General Motors should have gone out of business decades ago based on market principles.

In the realm of ideas, we should have a dozen political parties flourishing to one degree or another at the state and national level. For example, there is no obvious reason why there should not be political parties that operate just as the state level. According to the axioms of liberal democracy, there should be state parties that focus just on state and local issues, maybe operating as a feeder to a national party. Yet, we have just two parties that are really just two faces of a single party.

It is a paradox of markets that the internal dynamic of the market leads to fewer choices and maybe even no choice. Take the desktop computer market, for example. The only choice is the color and the label of the Chinese slave camp that produced it. Inside, the parts all come from the same source. Alternatives to the standard PC are fringe options that exist for hobbyists and weirdos. You see this everywhere you look around the marketplace. Our markets are oligopolies now.

It goes beyond market consolidation. Another aspect of this is that as some dominant players emerge, they begin to insulate themselves from demand. In fact, it is possible that the quest for market domination is actually an effort to insulate the supplier from the pressures of the marketplace. The players initially experiencing success shift from competing for clients to competing to wall off their share of demand in order to prevent others from competing for that market share.

You see this with sports. The NASCAR phenomenon is assumed to be driven by the edicts of this weird new religion that has gripped the great and good. That may be one aspect of it, maybe even the primary aspect, but there also seems to be a desire to get rid of their own audience. That is, NASCAR would be fine with not having a live crowd and depending entirely on television money. Then they no longer have to be responsive to the demands of the customers.

The temptation here is to say that the fans will not watch, but in the realm of television these days, ratings matter very little. ESPN, for example, gets the bulk of its revenue from mandatory cable fees. If you have a TV sub through the local cable monopoly or a service like Hulu, you pay ESPN eight dollars per month. It does not matter if you watch, you pay the fee. All cable channels work off this model. Once again, the glory of the market place is to result in a monopoly and no market.

This dynamic where the dominant suppliers seek to eradicate the demand side is evident in politics. Both faces of the uniparty are now onboard with vote by mail, for example, which eliminates the pesky demands of the voters. This form of voting makes for unlimited fraud, so we will end up with Stalin’s maxim. “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” Since picking one party or the other has no effect on policy, voting will soon be entirely ceremonial.

It is always tempting to confuse a paradox with a contradiction. Critics of modern capitalism, for example, will claim that the oligarchs are not really capitalist in the free market sense. They are corrupting the system. Similarly, people will claim that the problem with politics is that a small group of highly corrupt people are subverting the democratic system. In other words, the axioms of the market place are true, it’s just that the current systems are not adhering to them.

The trouble with this line of reasoning is it suggests that the marketplace itself selects for the sorts of people who seek to subvert the marketplace. Everywhere we look, the great experiment in open markets has had the same result. Whether it is finance, technology, ideas or politics, the result is small club that controls everything, not only to their exclusive benefit, but to the detriment of the people they allegedly serve. It is almost as if the market selects for sadists who despise their customers.

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!

Systemic Collapse

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Note: I will be on with Joseph Cotto and Paul Gottfried this evening to discuss big-brained stuff. The show is scheduled for 7:00 PM. This is a link to their YouTube page, but I’ll add a direct link when it is available. One topic will be my post about America and Athens, but there will be other topics as well.

One thing that seems to be true of all civilizations that are in crisis is they have a period in which the laws are no longer respected by the people in power. It is not exactly a period of lawlessness, as in chaos. That certainly does happen when the crisis reaches the point when the official authority can no longer project power. Before that, there is a time when the people charged with enforcing the laws simply stop doing it on a consistent basis. The law becomes arbitrary and selective.

A good example of this is what we see with the civil unrest. Mobs of people go into the streets looting and rioting, with very little push-back from the police. The politicians carry on as if they are in support of the rioting. It’s not as if these mobs are that large or all that fearsome. The police, if given the chance, could end the riots in a few hours with a minimum of trouble. The people pulling down statues could be arrested, charged with lots of crimes and sent to a prison. Yet, it does not happen.

Part of it, for sure, is that the local politicians are taking some weird pleasure in seeing their cities destroyed. They would like to join in on the mayhem. That is obvious with the child mayor of Minneapolis. In other cases, the local politicians hate the police and refuse to let them do their jobs. Still, in many cases, the local government is paralyzed by fear and incompetence. In Atlanta, the police are in open revolt against the local authorities over the corruption of the law by the politicians.

Lost in all struggles to advance a preferred narratives is what is happening on the ground in these cities. If you are a shop owner in these areas or a resident, you now live in a lawless age. Again, it is not entirely lawless, but the law is no longer clear and predictable for you. If you, as a shop owner, shoot someone looting your store, maybe you get arrested. Maybe the looter gets arrested, if things fall the right way, but you can’t know. The law is no longer clear.

A more ominous example is what we see happening with the Silicon Valley oligopolies now controlling the public square. Recently, Google threatened to end the advertising revenue of the Federalist and Zero Hedge. They did this at the behest of NBC, who called them up and asked them to do it, because NBC did not like that they allowed users to post comments on the stories. Google does not like people expressing their opinions either, so they happily agreed to threaten both sites.

There is a term for this. It is called extortion. Using the threat of force or property damage to obtain something from another is illegal in every state. What Google and NBC did to these sites is no different than what the Mafia used to do with local business. NBC said, “that’s a nice business you have there. Shame if something were to happen to it.” Then Google came in and smashed a few things to make sure both of them knew they were serious about it.

What’s even more amazing about this story is both NBC and Google have publicly bragged about what they did. They don’t dispute that they essentially muscled these two sites like gangsters. Their public utterances are enough for the FBI to arrest the people involved and charge them with multiple counts of extortion. They could probably even begin a racketeering case against Google. There are laws on the books for exactly this situation, yet the government is silent on the matter.

A less egregious example is what we see with the tech companies de-platforming people accused of impiety. In a better time, one-way contracts were strongly discouraged and highly scrutinized by the courts. It was assumed there was an unequal relationship between the company and their customer. The court tried to balance that relationship by heavily scrutinizing the contracts involved and the actions of the company issuing the contracts. The court defended the customer.

The reverse is now true. In every area of life, people are confronted by terms of service that run contrary to our legal traditions. Domain registrars, for example, willy-nilly break their contract with users like VDare. There is no remedy, as the courts simply no longer enforce large swaths of contract law. In fact, as we see with the Supreme Court, they invent new laws and re-imagine history to justify it. The courts are now something less predictable than a flip of a coin. It’s chaos in the law.

It is tempting to explain all of this as part of some highly orchestrated plot by the usual suspects, but in reality, we are in a period of lawlessness. The people charged with enforcing the rules either refuse for factional reasons or they simply can no longer project the power they theoretically possess. In the case of the courts, it very well may be fear from people with real power. John Roberts, for example, is most likely being extorted or intimidated by powerful people.

In response to legitimate power failing to act, illegitimate power is starting to step into the void and enforce its own rules. We see this with so-called private companies trying to impose the new religion on people. The NCAA, for example, is trying to force the state of Mississippi to change its flag. Again, it is resorting to extortion and doing so without regard for the law. A big part of what they are doing is displaying their power level by brazenly threatening the duly elected government.

What we are witnessing is not a revolution. The Left would love for people to believe that, which is why they have instructed conservative media to sell that idea. Instead, we are seeing the breakdown of order. Government, either because of corruption or ineptitude, is no longer able to enforce the laws. Private power centers, no longer respecting the spirit of the laws or the legitimate power centers, are beginning to fill this void, like gangs trying to impose order when the cops are gone.

The public sees this only from the outsider point of view. The legitimate power centers like state and local government, appear to be functioning, but for some reason they are randomly failing in their basic duties. Corporations and newly minted religious authorities are suddenly able to push people around without consequence. To the average citizen it does look like a revolution, and maybe that will come, but for now it is the slow breakdown of order. The system is collapsing.

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Total War

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The general pattern in American politics, at least from the perspective of normal White people, is that the Left gets carried away with itself, then there is a snap-back followed by a calm period of putting things back in order. For example, by 1985, most normal White people thought the books were closed on the cultural revolution of the 1960’s, even if the irritants had not been removed. The culture had developed the necessary callouses to carry on with the important functions of life.

Margaret Thatcher called this the ratchet effect. The Left would push society to the left, there would be a click and that’s where things would stay for a while. Everyone would get used to the new normal, finding a way to make things work. There was never a return to the old ways, as roll back was always impossible. For the Left, what they have, they keep, so rollback requires a continuation of the bloody war that the normal white people seek to end. There is never a rollback.

This pattern has always been a secret solace to normal White people. You see it with the current ructions. They quietly seethe in front of their televisions and post their displeasure on-line. The underlying assumption is that “they have gone too far and they will pay for this.” The Democrats will pay for it at the ballot box and the sports leagues will pay for it at the box office. It is a coping strategy that the Left now takes for granted, allowing them to operate with impunity.

Paradoxically the restraint and sobriety of normal White people may be the cause of this total war that has been unleashed on them. It is a total war. Everywhere White people are finding themselves threatened for the smallest indiscretion. A White presenting man was fired for holding his hand in an impious position. He may be the first Mexican fired for White supremacy. A Vermont school principle was suspended from his job for an insufficient enthusiasm for his new black masters.

Of course, our corporate tyrants are getting back in the game. They are feverishly rushing about looking for signs of Whiteness to erase. Of course, the insanity of the revolution dictates that spiting Whitey means removing black images like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben from products. Nothing says racial vengeance like erasing black faces from food products. Perhaps black people should just boycott food altogether, since the entire food chain is the legacy of slavery.

All of this retail madness being inflicted on normal White people puts national politics into a better light. This revolution at the top is not really about Trump or his political opinions, but rather about what he represents. It is easier to hate a symbol than a person, so he has been turned into an avatar that haunts the fever dreams of the mad men of the revolution. For them, he is pure evil and there can be no compromise with evil, no bargain struck with evil, no sympathy for the devil.

This is a total war. Before the 20th century, war was assumed to be separate from civilian life. Armies marched out into the field and fought one another outside the cities and towns. There was always spill over and invading soldiers are never polite, but there was some understanding that targeting civilians was immoral. The ideological wars of the 20th century changed that. The whole of society was organized around fighting the war and that meant the whole of society was a target of war.

We are seeing that with the Left now. This is a total war on White people. This means the symbols, the habits, the structure of society itself. This total war is not just fanatics in the streets smashing things. This is a total war launched and funded by the people in charge of American society. As we see with what’s happening in Atlanta, it is a war motivated by vengeance. Blacks and their enablers feel they are justified in whatever they do to harm White society. There are no limits.

Despite normal White people trying hard to ignore what’s happening in the hope it will peter out and they can joyously clean up the mess, it may be impossible to hide in that dream this time. Unlike the past, where the people in charge pulled back after things went too far, the people in charge are now leading the charge into madness. Big tech is pushing this stuff hard. Look at this promoted topic on Twitter. They are promoting this as well, hoping to keep the savages extra angry.

The fact is, there is no compromise with people who think this is true. The usual suspects have spent generations conditioning blacks to hate White people for the crime of stealing their identity, accomplishments and labor. They did not do this because they found it politically useful. They did it for the same reason abolitionists hoped freed slaves would rise up and murder the White population of the South. These people hate you and will not rest until you are dead.

Their commitment to the cause is right there in the promotion of the “White Strike” stuff on Twitter. The dummies behind it think it is clever, but it is just another way for the usual suspects to lure White people into a trap. No doubt frustrated Whites will post about it on their social media, which will then be used to fire them. There will be Whites who call in sick and end up on a list of potential heretics. Total war requires a total commitment and the usual suspects are totally committed.

This is where a certain personality type stands up demands a detailed, ten-point plan of action to fight the Left. That too is a trap. That just prevents the truly woke from shaking their people from their slumber. Instead they are turned into character in the morality play controlled by the Left. In total war, the first step is to get the people aware of what is happening to them That means not comforting them with a solution. The only way forward is for White people to rediscover themselves.

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 Morality Of The Madhouse

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In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu outlined the motivations that drove citizen behavior in the three types of political systems known at the time. In republican forms of government, love of virtue is what motivates the people. In monarchies, it is the love of honor that motivates the actions of the people. In despotism, the people are motivated by fear of the ruler. He argued that the political system must match the inclinations of the people or it would not last.

Although Montesquieu did not address it, it certainly seems that these principles have a hierarchy of their own. Honor, for example, will give way to virtue, once the people begin to think they have a choice. Throughout history, monarchy has given way to democratic rule as the people abandoned honor in favor of virtue. Similarly, virtue has never been much of a match for fear as a motivator. Authoritarianism, the soft or hard variety, tends to overcome public virtue once the rulers realize it.

Montesquieu was working with the materiel at hand, so he could not contemplate the nature of liberal democracy. He knew of democracy, but only in the limited experiments among the ancients. Democracy on the grand scale as we see today was beyond the realm of plausible at the time. Similarly, liberalism was in its infancy. Liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law were purely theoretical concepts at the time, so he and other theorists had no working knowledge of them.

Almost three centuries on, we have a much better sense of what liberalism and democracy produce. For several generations now, the West has been ruled by the ideology of liberal democracy. Further, the West has worked hard to impose this moral philosophy on the rest of the world. Trillions have been spent, for example, trying to plant the seeds of liberal democracy in the Muslim world. South America has been forced to embrace the rituals and ceremonies of liberal democracy.

What we can now see that Montesquieu would not have been able to see is that something unique motivates the citizen in a liberal democracy.  There is no willingness to put the interests of the community ahead of private interests. There is no desire to attain greater rank and privilege. There is fear, but not of a ruler, but rather fear of falling afoul of the general will. The collective morality in a liberal democracy works like an invisible fickle tyrant that terrorizes the citizenry.

We see this in the current turmoil. The citizen is now suddenly faced with a whole new moral order, as if the ruling class all converted to some new church. People who are slow to pick up on the morality are shamed and harassed. You can lose your job for refusing to use the right pronouns, for example. Two members of the Supreme Court just converted and declared that the Founders were actually sodomites in dresses, therefore sodomites in dresses are sacred beings.

Just as fear of the tyrant is a more powerful motivation than a sense of sacrifice to the needs of the community, morality is a much more powerful motivator than virtue or even fear of a powerful individual. Look at Donald Trump. He is incompetent, for sure, but his office has real power. Yet, fear of falling afoul of the new morality leads the converted to risk everything to destroy him. The needs of the new morality are pushing the followers to bring the country crashing down to please the new gods.

Unlike the motivations behind monarchy, republicanism and tyranny, there is no structure to liberal democratic morality. There is no sacred text or body of philosophical work to provide authority. Like a school of fish, morality shifts on a dime and that new direction is assumed to be the general will and therefore the proper course. Morality in a liberal democracy is a riot with no real purpose, other than to feed the need of the people to feel they are the virtuous actor in the great drama of life.

Without a controlling doctrine, morality in a liberal democracy has no limiting principles to contain the excesses. Everything worth doing is worth overdoing. No matter how pious someone is, someone else can be more pious. Each new fad becomes a race to the absurd, which is how we quickly went from tolerance of homosexuals to declaring transvestites sacred beings. You can be sure the pedophiles and polygamists are getting ready for their elevation into the ring of honor.

It turns out that fear, virtue and honor are no match for morality in the great battle of organizing ideas. Honor is an individual characteristic. It is something you give yourself through your own decisions. Similarly, the virtue of the man willing to sacrifice for the good of the institution is largely an individual creation. It has a collective component, which makes it more powerful than honor, but it is still individualistic. Fear, of course, is about saving your own skin or that of your family.

Morality, in contrast, pivots on the collective sense of identity. The chants of “who we are” resonate because it implies a choice. You can be inside where it is good or outside where it is bad. In reality, it reminds the people that they have no choice. To stand against morality is to stand against destiny itself. Those who resist the new morality are first anathematized then invisibilized. Liberal democracy maintains an invisible gulag for those who refuse to bend the knee to the prevailing morality.

The defects in monarchy, democracy and despotism are well known. The next in line to the throne can be a lunatic or a simpleton. Democracy eventually murders itself. The tyrant eventually dies, leaving a battle for power. It seems that the defect of liberal democracy is that it has no way to control the fanatic. They are not just allowed to run free, but they are encouraged to fully explore their fanaticism. Liberal democracy eventually becomes a madhouse run by madmen.

Modern America has entered the madhouse phase of liberal democracy. Just how far along we are in the journey is unknown, but the journey has begun. Evidence of this is the wanton destruction of civil society. The pointlessness of it is the point. No one in power is willing to defend the institutions and customs that defined old America. No one in power is offering an alternative, other than more fear of the mob. The only questions now are the timing and terror of the eventual collapse.

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Athens In Winter

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It has been popular on the Right for a long time to compare modern America to the Roman Empire. Often the point of the comparison is to support the claim that America is an empire, rather than a republic. Alternatively, the point is to warn of an imminent collapse, just like what happened to Rome. The so-called conservatives, of course, reject the idea, because the Left requires it, but most Americans still cling to the idea that the country is some sort of democracy.

The comparison to Rome is a popular one because it is a well understood story and it has a clear end. The Romans lost their republic and became a dictatorship and then an Empire that dominated Europe. America, as the story goes, has lost its republic and is now an empire that dominates the world. The analogy is not intended to tell us anything about the dynamic that has led America to this point. It is more of a self-serving warning of an inevitable end dictated by history.

The thing is, Rome is not really a good analogy. The better comparison is with ancient Athens, which went from a democratic city-state to a democratic empire. Unlike Rome, Athens avoided the transition to authoritarianism. It remained a democracy even as it came to dominate the region and operate as an empire. Unlike Rome, it never accepted itself as an empire. The spirit that animated the democracy as a city-state remained as they came to dominate and control the other city-states.

That is something we see with modern America. The typical American, regardless of political cult, does not think of himself as a subject in an empire. In fact, most stubbornly cling to the old democratic ideas. Most white people, for example, think the constitution still plays a role in the law. They think elections make a difference. Even non-whites think elections matter, which is why they are organized. They want their guys in office on the assumption that their guys will act on their behalf.

Like Athens, America is an empire that does not know itself. Further, it is an empire that is blind to its own authoritarianism. Many are shocked, for example, at the widespread and coordinated response from the corporate oligarchs to the riots. They are baffled as to how they have these propaganda campaigns ready to go as soon as the riots were started in Minneapolis. They struggle to process why people are forced from their jobs for not cheering loud enough at the struggle sessions.

That really is the distinguishing feature of the modern American empire. No one can accept that it is both an empire and authoritarian. This is a society that bans books, throws men in jail for their politics and has created a form of internal exile for those found to be guilty of impiety. These were things that happened in Athens. Similarly, America is a financial empire, more than a military one. Athens became an empire when their currency became the default in the region.

Like Athens, the American Empire struggles to control itself. On the one hand, the economic prosperity allows it to generate great wealth, while on the other hand the internal incoherence leaves it staggering around like a blind giant. Twenty years in Afghanistan, for example, is every bit as insane as the Greeks invading Sicily in the Peloponnesian War. Democracy demands a unifying purpose, so that becomes the point of the democracy, finding some unifying cause.

The one difference, of course, is Athens was blessed with a neighbor that could defeat it in war and strip it of its empire. America has no enemy that can do that or even wants to do it. The Soviets were as close as we came, but the analogy does not work because Americans and Russians do not share the same heritage. The Spartans and Athenians were Greeks and saw one another as Greeks. No such relation existed in the rivalry between communism and liberal democracy.

The American empire lost its one rival in the 19th century. America became an empire when the Yankee north conquered the Tidewater south in the Civil War. At that point, the Athens of America became a continental empire. After conquering its great spartan rival, it then moved west, conquering the rest of the continent. In time, it expelled the European powers from the hemisphere. Then in the 20th century, the American empire conquered Europe and Asia.

Instead of reliving what happened to the Western Romans Empire, what we are experiencing is what would have happened if the Athenians had prevailed over the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War. Instead of the Athenian democracy being contained, it would have spread like a virus around the region. It is hard to know, but Hellenization would surely have been more widespread and more democratic than what eventually happened. The result would have been more familiar to us.

That means we can only speculate as to how the American Empire ends. It may be that it does not end until some military power rises up to defeat it. What was at the core of Athenian democracy is what is at the core of liberal democracy. That is, an absolute certainty that this system is the only one that can work. The intolerance of democracy is not rooted in fear, but in an unbridled confidence. Only a defeat in war can shatter that confidence in the democratic system.

Maybe the future is the present forever. On the one hand, the people at the top make sure to keep the food and fun flowing to the people, even turning protest into a form of spectator sport. On the other hand, it is one spasm of virtue after another, finding new villains and new victims of those villains. Maybe the only way a democratic empire can end is to be defeated by an external force. Maybe the end of history is what we are seeing today replayed over and over forever.

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!