Little White Pills

Posted on May 9, 2024 by thezman

When was the last time you changed your mind? Most likely the answer takes some time as humans tend not to change their opinion on things that much and when they do, it happens over a slow period. Most people on this side of the great divide did not wake up one day and decided to abandon their old worldview. People slowly came to realize that the old way of looking at things was not working and then all of a sudden, they noticed lots of other people noticing the same thing.

That has always been the reality of the red pill experience. It is not so much that the person getting red pilled is going through a sudden transformation but that they are suddenly noticing lots of other people who are on the same road. Almost everyone in the dissident space came here by first running into a writer, YouTuber or social media character that articulated what they were thinking. Then it was another and another until the person was firmly in the dissident camp.

We see this with support for Israel. For a long time, the default position for most white people was to support Israel, mostly for American reasons. Americans love the underdog and Israel seemed like the underdog. In the 1960’s and 1970’s the Israelis had to fend off the much larger neighbors, often working together. The fact that Israel somehow beat the bigger opponent tickled the American respect for the small dog that has the heart of the big dog.

That changed starting with the Bush years. After being pummeled and denigrated for a couple of decades by the American war machine, Americans look at the Arabs as hapless nitwits and Israel as a protectorate of the American empire. The Jews are no longer the plucky underdog, so when they attacked the Palestinians, many Americans wondered if they should be cheering for the people of Gaza. As a result, support for Israel has plummeted over the last six months.

There are still people who think it is 1985 and that Israel is “fighting for its survival” but those people are strange anachronisms. This has in turn damaged the Republican Party as they roll out anti-speech measures thinking these prohibitions against criticizing Israel are popular with their base. Instead, most GOP voters are reacting in the same way they would if Mike Johnson showed up for work wearing a denim leisure suit and sporting a massive afro.

It is not that people are suddenly reading Mein Kampf and becoming antisemites or that they accidentally clicked on a Nick Fuentes video and were red pilled on the reality of Zionism in America. What happened is the tectonic plates of American perception have been slowly moving with regards to Israel for decades. The events in the Levant confirmed these changing perceptions and when people noticed this in other people, a critical mass of new opinion has formed around Israel.

We may be seeing something similar with regards to white identity. The other day, Ann Coulter was a guest on a podcast hosted by former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to do the normal stuff. Coulter opened by stating right up front that she would not have voted for him, despite agreeing with him on many things, because he is an Indian and she does not want to be ruled by Indians. She went on to say that America is a white country and should remain so.

The normally unflappable Ramaswamy was poleaxed. He probably expected Coulter to attack Trump, as that is her current act. He would then defend Trump, as he is a Trump surrogate on the campaign trail. Instead, he was told by a very white woman that she would never vote for a very brown man. To his credit, Ramaswamy did not begin to shriek about racism, but then again, Indians are the most ethnocentric people on earth so at some level he certainly understood her position.

The remarkable thing about this exchange is not that she said it, but that there has been no reaction from the kooks. Further, the sissies of conservatism have not raced off to their fainting couches. In fact, there has been little reaction at all to what in the near past would have been a John Derbyshire moment. A few members of the kook squad have tried to make this a thing, but so far there are no mobs forming up to demand Coulter be cancelled from her various media gigs.

The important thing here is not so much that Coulter said what she said or that it has not resulted in a lynching. The important thing is that millions of normies heard a familiar voice say it is, in effect, okay to be white. It is one of those crystalizing moments for the suburban peasant when he realizes that lots of other people are thinking the same thing and that it is okay to think such things. The ground just shifted but in reality, the ground shifted long ago, and Coulter simply acknowledged it.

Like the changing views on Israel, the changing views on whiteness are the result of the winners overplaying their hand. The Israel lobby has made itself so obnoxious that it has turned natural sympathy into skepticism and even antipathy. The triumph of diversity has now normalized racial tribalism among white people. This Ann Coulter moment has confirmed to millions of normies that it is not only okay to be white, but it is a necessity of their politics now.

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The Looming Chaos

Posted on May 8, 2024 by thezman

There is an old expression in politics that roughly says the most successful politicians are blessed with the right enemies. William Weld, a long time Massachusetts politician, was enormously gifted, until alcoholism got the better of him. He could have reshaped state politics and become a national figure, but he ran into the far wilier Billy Bulger at the local level and the more powerful duo of John Kerry and Ted Kennedy at the national level, so he never lived up to his promise.

We seem to be seeing the opposite with Donald Trump, who has better political instincts than most seasoned professionals, even though his only political experience was at the very top of the game eight years ago. Imagine a fighter stepping into the ring for the first time and the opponent is the reigning world champion. Then imagine that guy winning, and you see the enormity of 2016. Since then, the system has thrown everything at the man, and he is still going.

The main reason Trump continues to move toward the Republican nomination and a general election rematch is he is blessed with the best enemies. The two Federal court cases are now stalled indefinitely. In both cases, the reason for the delay is the chief inquisitor appointed by the Biden administration is proving to be an incompetent fanatic who cannot stop lying to the court. In the most recent example, he was forced to admit the FBI tampered with evidence and lied about it.

A smarter, more sober minded prosecutor would have used the process to tangle Trump up in a myriad of potential scandals that both drained his resources and created a black cloud over his campaign. Instead, the deranged Jack Smith thought he could get into a street fight with a guy who prefers street fights. In the fullness of time, Jack Smith will be remembered as one of Trump’s dumbest adversaries. The guy has managed to turn the power of the Federal government into a liability.

Then we have the locals who seem to have been drawn from central casting if central casting is located at the diversity department of a mental asylum. In Georgia, Fani Willis turned herself into a living argument against affirmative action. In New York, Alvin Bragg has managed to make a sham trial into a daily platform for Trump to do what he does best, which is walking around New York City, sweet talking the locals, who line up every day to see The Man fight the man.

The question is where will all of this lead. It is a mortal lock that Trump is convicted of whatever it is they claim he did wrong. It is also a guarantee that the third world judge sentences Trump to jail time. He has threatened Trump with jail over Trump talking publicly about the court case. This judge is stupid and insane, so we are most likely going to see a situation in which the Secret Service faces off with the State of New York about how to jail a former president.

It remains to be seen how this plays with the public, but no one in power actually cares about public opinion. They just use it as a fig leaf. It is safe to assume that the people running the Republican Party would love to dump Trump, so this might be their chance to remove him from the ballot. The trouble is, that means the end of the party and even the dullards of Conservative Inc should be able to see it. Then again, “conservative” is just the long spelling of “retarded.”

This is where Trump’s luck may come into play. The guy thrives on chaos and what will happen this summer with regards to the nomination is chaos. In other words, his opponents are creating for him the conditions in which he does best. By doing nothing more than existing, he will put party leadership in a vice. One jaw is defending him against rogue state courts and the other jaw is the people who call the shots in Washington, demanding the party remove him from the ballot.

It gets better, or at least more amusing. Joe Biden is clearly a mess physically and mentally, which will not get better with time. The other day he was leaving the White House, and it appears he soiled his diaper. Even former NFL players are laughing about Biden’s physical and mental health problems. Biden’s growing incoherence will not be helped by black sports stars making diaper jokes about him. The precious black vote follows the lead of their black stars.

The solution to the Biden problem is to remove him from the ballot at the convention and swap in someone new. Biden is told to stand aside at the convention, maybe have him deliver one last speech in which he “graciously” steps aside for someone new, who then picks a running mate that is not the butt of jokes. In other words, the solution to the Biden problem might be the chaos option. Upend the whole race at the last-minute hoping that something good arises from the chaos.

None of this should lead anyone to think Trump will win the general election or be allowed to assume office. The people in charge have other more effective ways to block Trump if these efforts fail. The way to bet right now is that the Republican Party removes Trump from the ballot at the convention, as he will be sitting in a jail somewhere in New York or maybe under house arrest. Even so, that will be just one log on the bonfire of chaos that is coming.

In the end, Trump is lucky in that he is getting exactly what he needs to thrive politically, but what he is, and always has been, is a wrecking ball. His role in the late empire political process is to fulfill another old expression, those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason. Trump makes the managerial class insane, which results in chaos, the thing on which Trump feeds. That cycle of chaotic madness is now heading to a climax this summer.

WW3 Watch

Posted on May 7, 2024 by thezman

The first week of May has brought fresh worries that the war in Ukraine will lead to the third and final world war. On Twitter, “WW3” has been trending on and off as various rumors hit the system. Currently, the driver is statements from Russia that any attacks on Russia by Western troops operating in Ukraine will be viewed as an attack by that country on Russia, which means war. Russia also announced that she will be testing tactical nuclear weapons to underscore the point.

To understand what is happening we have to go back to the big funding bill passed by Congress at the end of April. The political class in Europe and the United States came away thinking this would turn the tide, but soon learned that the bill was about paying off creditors, not funding new weapons. There are no new weapons to send, at least not until after the November elections. The $60 billion was about paying the MIC and the bankers for money invested in Project Ukraine.

Of course, there are events on the battlefield. The Russians have broken through the center of Ukrainian defenses in a major way. All along the line of contact the Ukrainians are on the backfoot, but in the center they are at risk of collapse. The Russians managed to do this without committing large numbers of troops. It is assumed they will now commit to exploiting this gap in the Ukrainian lines with the half million men they have in reserve, waiting for better weather.

In light of these two factors, the Europeans have been making noises about introducing troops into Ukraine. The truth is, NATO has had people in Ukraine for ten years and ramped up their presence at the start of the war. These have been contractors or government employees operating as contractors. Some contractors just happen to employ former soldiers of NATO countries. Even so, it is enough of a fig leaf for the Russians to pretend they are not NATO soldiers.

Then there is the rumor that the French Foreign Legion was dispatched to Ukraine and possibly hit by Russian missiles. Regime media was dispatched to deny this claim, which means it is most certainly true. While technically not French troops, it is unclear if the Russians will buy it. They summoned the French and British ambassadors to repeat what has been said in the past, which is any attacks on Russia by troops from these countries will result in retaliation on these countries.

The final piece of the puzzle is Victory Day. This is when the Russian people celebrate their victory over the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War. Rumors have been swirling that Ukraine, with help from Britain and France, will launch attacks on Crimea as a way to embarrass Putin this week. For a week, NATO surveillance drones have been in the area and Ukraine has been sending drones to map Russian radar. The rumor is this is in preparation for a massive attack on the Kerch bridge.

The fact is the only way the Ukrainians can attack this bridge is by using NATO missiles like the British Storm Shadow or French Scalp. These would have to be launched in large numbers along with other missiles and drones. The Ukrainians lack the expertise to operate these weapons, so it means they will be operated by British and French personnel, either officially or unofficially. The Russians know this, as they recorded the Germans discussing this over the winter.

Put all of this together and you have a scenario in which NATO is growing desperate over what is happening on the battlefield and Russia is losing patience with these pipsqueak countries doing the bidding of the neocons in Washington. From the perspective of Russia, the only reason NATO is not coming to the table with a deal is they just want to see as many Russians die as possible or they are plotting an invasion after the November elections.

Despite the growing desperation in Europe, there remains this weird delusion about Russia that is at the root of these escalations. Since the start of the war, it has been assumed that at some point the Russians will blink. For three years NATO has upped the ante in terms of weapons and rhetoric, always assuming that this new wonder weapon or new threat will cause the Russians to back down. This never happens, but the belief remains unshakable.

The question is what happens when the Ukraine army begins to collapse? The signs are everywhere right now. Elite units are refusing to fight. There have been mass surrenders of newly deployed conscript units. The ideological units now spend their time making stylish videos, rather than fighting. The Russians are preparing for major summer offensives, which may cause the line of defense to collapse. This would leave the Ukraine army broken into pieces.

When the unthinkable begins to be reality, what will happen to that unshakable confidence that all it takes is one more escalation? Can the West accept defeat in Ukraine, or will they have no choice but to go bigger? The evidence to this point suggests they will think they have no choice but to go bigger, maybe declaring a no fly zone over Western Ukraine or introducing troops to guard the Dnieper. Maybe they take control of Odessa and dare the Russians to attack.

One glimmer of hope for those who do not want to see the world end in nuclear annihilation is Chinese ruler Xi Jinping Ping visiting Europe. His first stop was France to flatter the megalomaniacal Macron. The point of Xi’s trip is to convince the Europeans that their interests lie in finding a settlement with Russia. Making Macron the first visit suggests the Chinese know he is a simpleton who is easily flattered, but also the driving force for escalation in Ukraine.

What the Chinese could offer the Europeans is a way out of the trap they have built for themselves with the Russians. They can get to pretend to be important figures by cutting a deal with China to end the war in Ukraine. Of course, this would mean breaking with Washington, so it is a long shot. Maybe it is enough to get Macron to retreat on the escalatory rhetoric. That could be enough to prevent another round of escalation and avert the end of the world.

The FUD-Packer’s Ball

Posted on April 24, 2024 by thezman

Throughout the Cold War years, it was a standard claim from the people called the left in America that the intelligence services manipulated domestic politics. This did not come from the mainstream left, but the fringier left-wing activists. For its part, the right in all its forms simply ignored the claims. Eventually, the mainstream right became the primary defenders of the intelligence agencies. They were viewed as the first line of defense in the Cold War and thus were lionized.

Of course, the claims about the intel agencies were not without some merit. In the late 1960’s a communist student publication called Ramparts reported that the National Student Association, which was a federation of student governments, was funded and controlled by the CIA. Later it was revealed by the Church Committee that many newspapers were cooperating with the CIA. Operation Mockingbird was one of the CIA programs used to manipulate the media.

The Church Committee is an interesting bit of history as it might be the last time Congress did anything useful in terms of oversight. The final report was massive and you can still access it on the Senate website. One reform that resulted from this event was the establishment of the permanent US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which has been thoroughly captured by the CIA. Members of this committee participated in the Russian collusion hoax, for example.

Putting that aside, the headline item at the time was that the intelligence agencies were spying on Americans, experimenting on Americans, and manipulating the media by placing assets at media companies. In the fullness of time, the important revelation was that this practice was thoroughly normalized in the agencies. The intel agencies saw nothing wrong with what they were doing. That means we can assume they continued doing it despite the revelations.

Again, the Russian collusion hoax is a good starting point. If the intel agencies were comfortable in trying to overturn the 2016 presidential election, then it is safe to assume this behavior is normalized inside these agencies. That returns us to the Church Committee and the scale of operations fifty years ago. In the analog days, the intel agencies were comfortable with subverting newspapers, so what sorts of things will they be comfortable doing in the digital age?

For example, would the intel agencies pay social media influencers? If they were paying student groups in the 1960’s how opposed would they be to paying social media characters to push certain themes? It is not as if anyone bothers to look into the background of bigfoot influencers. These characters seem to appear from nowhere, gain a big audience and join the ranks of influencers. Inserting intel agents into this space is a low-cost, high reward activity.

Look at someone like Michael Tracey, who is a bigfoot influencer on Twitter with over a quarter million followers. According to Twitter, about 15% of their users have more than one thousand followers. Only one percent of American users have more than three thousand followers. That means someone with a quarter million followers is in a ridiculously small club of users. This assumes the follower counts are accurate and the followers are not purchased from a bot farm.

Michael Tracey has no job and no obvious source of income. He lives in New York City, one of the most expensive places in America. He regularly travels the world to pester government officials at press gatherings. His Substack mostly gathers dust, in terms of readership, and he never posts monetized content on Twitter. Maybe he has a rabbi that underwrites his activity, which is not unusual, but maybe that rabbi is tied to one of the intel agencies, which would not be unusual either.

Note that Tracey spends most of time doing FUD-packing. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Right now, he is flaming the Trump world right now with claims that Trump is responsible for the war funding bills. It is a weird claim, but coming from a major account it does seep into the public consciousness. This is new for him, as he usually spends his time attacking progressives. In fact, he built his following on the right by FUD-packing the people on the left.

Now, Michael Tracey is probably on the level, but there is no way of knowing it, which is the point of this example. In a world where people are more likely to get their information from anonymous and unexamined characters on social media, how hard would it be for the intel agencies to manipulate this system? Build up a network of influential FUD-packers and you can control the unhappy portion of both political parties by saturating them with misery.

Here is something else to consider. These days, the intel agencies do not have to actually buy the FUD-packer. They can simply manipulate him though the various donations options most people have these days. When they like the FUD-packing from an influencer, they can send a bunch of small donations. They can also use their bot farms to boost that guy’s FUD-packing. In other words, a FUD-packer could be compromised without even knowing it.

The point of thinking about FUD-packing is that we live in an age where it is much easier for the intel agencies to do what they habitually were doing fifty years ago, so it is wise to assume it is as common now as it was back then. The digital information space is now a wilderness of mirrors manipulated by people who are drawn to the work because they love FUD-packing. As a result, our information space is a FUD-packers ball where nothing should be taken at face value.

Escape From Talos IV

Posted on April 18, 2024 by thezman

One of the underappreciated aspects of political discourse is that the person arguing for a particular theory or ideology starts with a set of assumptions. Often, the assumptions are part of the arguer’s conditioning to the point where he no longer thinks about them, so he never mentions them. Progressives, for example, now assume equality is a morally good thing and an obvious goal of policy. They never bother to mention this, as from their perspective, it is manifestly obvious.

The exceptions to glossing over the assumptions are always on what passes for the political right in America. You see it in the back and forth between Christopher Rufo and Curtis Yarvin in that IM1776 post. Early on in his reply to Yarvin, Rufo states, “My conviction is that there is a logical structure to human nature and, consequently, a structure of political order.” This is a familiar claim to those familiar with the natural rights argument popular in some circles.

The basic argument is that there is human nature, by which they mean things that are true and observable about all human beings. Therefore, there must be things that are universal and true about how human beings interact with one another. Therefore, if we tease these truths out about the human condition, we can fashion a political order that results in the least amount of friction between the citizens. The assumption is that the closer we are to our nature, the happier we will be.

Like most assumptions that form the basis of a political theory, this assumption about human nature is never examined. Are there objective, quantifiable behaviors that are universal to all humans? Obviously, this is true. All humans, for example, work together for food and safety. We do not have written records for the hunter-gatherer phase of human development, but what we have tells us that humans cooperated within kin groups to collect food and defend the group.

It seems obvious that there are not only physical properties of humans that are universal, but that there are behaviors that are universal. Of course, this is also true of canines or arachnids, but no one would make these observations the basis of a political theory or a moral framework. In other words, even at this level, there is an unexamined assumption that we can create a list of things you ought to do from the things we can observe about the general nature of humans.

Putting that aside for a second, think about the things that are true about canines that define domestic dogs as a species. While there is a collection of properties that define the domestic dog, no one would confuse a Doberman with a Poodle. Everyone can quickly understand the difference between a border collie and a similar looking mutt from the local shelter. Even though the herding dog has the physical properties of a domestic dog, it is different from the other dog breeds.

If the domestic dog world ever produces the dog equivalent of Thomas Aquinas, he will have to contend with the fact that the herding dogs will be scandalized by sheep wandering around unattended, while the hunting dogs will think this condition to be the best way to order dog society. Even though both groups share a common dog nature, they will have naturally different views on the sheep question. This is a silly idea, but you can probably see where it is going.

This gets to another assumption that you see in the Rufo response. He asks, “What is the telos of your political system?” The assumption he is making is that any political system and therefore any political theory must include as a foundation item an explanation for the purpose of human society. This is an unexamined assumption inherited from Christianity. Humans have a purpose so human society must have a purpose and this is a measure of any political system.

What science tells us about human nature does suggest that there is a purpose to all human societies. That purpose is to increase the odds of the individuals in that society making it to sexual maturity and reproducing. Cooperation is all about safety so that the young can one day reproduce and pass on their genes, the genes shared by the group, onto the next generation. The cause and purpose of human society is the preservation and propagation of our genetic material.

How that is done is not universal. Again, this is observationally true. Humans around the world have evolved different ways of organizing themselves to increase their safety and security, just as their physical form evolved to their environment. Africans do not have black skin for no reason. Just as the environment selected for certain physical features over others, it selected for different organizational behaviors. The telos was the same, but the implementation cannot be the same.

There is something else science can tell us about human nature. Once humans started to settle down and distinct groups started to cooperate with one another, the selection pressures changed. As Greg Cochran explained in The 10,000 Year Explosion, settled life rewards and punishes different human behaviors than pastoral life and especially hunter-gatherer life. That means the organizational behavior is not entirely learned, but a part of our genetic code that defines every human.

This is the logical defect of the natural rights argument. The fans of this make assumptions about nature that are counter to what we actually know about nature and what we know about nature argues against their universals. Therefore, the assumption upon which they rest their arguments are false. This leaves them with denying biology, replacing nature with the Christian idea of God, or arguing in favor the strict segregation of people based on race.

Note that the egalitarians face the same dilemma. Whether it is Marx or the new head of NPR, their assumptions about the natural equality of man run counter to what science tells us about human nature. The communist got around this by blaming economics for oppressing some and elevating others. Today’s woke crowd takes a much simpler route by defying biological reality. The transgender stuff is a way of denying biological reality by denying fundamental properties of humans beings.

Also note that natural rights arguments should be placed alongside things like Marxism, libertarianism, and anarchism. What all of these share, in addition to the denial of biological reality, is the egalitarian assumption. Lurking underneath all of these political systems is the assumption that all men are naturally equal. They also assume that something unnatural is the cause of the inequality. The point of their systems is to restore equality by restoring the “natural” order.

The final point to be made here is that all of the political theories of the last three hundred or so years suffer from the same defect. The theory always rests on assumptions that either go unexamined because they cannot be evaluated, or they go unexamined because the result would negate the theory. The last three centuries of Western thought has been a game of finding a suitable replacement for God as the telos of human society and the results have been as predicted.

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A Lesson In Managerial Imbecility

Posted on April 17, 2024 by thezman

It appears the end times have been avoided as Israel has been forced to take no for an answer and not escalate her war with Iran. The Iranians put on a show of force, apparently as part of a deal with Washington, as their answer to the Israeli attack on their consulate in Damascus. Israel has been making noises about “retaliation” but for now it appears they are not getting any support for it. At least for now, it seems the prospects for a regional war have ended.

On the surface this looks like a rare occurrence of realpolitik from Washington, as they used diplomatic channels to head off a major conflict. That or the hotheads who always want war were finally told no by the few remaining sober minded people left in the foreign policy establishment. Alternatively, it could simply be that Iran had other motivations in addition to avoiding war. In other words, dumb luck saved Washington from a catastrophe in the Middle East.

Evidence for the latter was on display during and after the attack. The first thing that was reported was an impressive number of drones put into the air from a variety of locations in Iran, northern Iraq, and Yemen. Israel had no trouble taking out these drones, but that is not the point. The point is Iran can fill the sky with cheap targets for the extremely expensive Israeli air defense system. Modern war is fought on the balance sheet and Iran can now fight on that front.

It was not just a drone attack. The Iranians launched a variety of cruise missiles mingled in with their drone swarms. This is a tactic the Russians used to deplete the Ukrainian air defense systems last year. They filled the sky with drones. This often overwhelmed the air defense systems, but also exposed the location of radars and launchers, which were targeted by missiles. The Iranians demonstrated the ability to coordinate this sort of attack, which is an ability they lacked to this point.

The third interesting bit from that attack was the use of liquid fueled ballistic missiles, which were able to penetrate Israel air defenses. These were the strikes that hit the airfield in the Israeli desert. To this point it was assumed the Iranians did not have the technology for this sort of missile. As far as anyone knew, they had solid fuel rockets, but now they seem to have taken the next step in rocketry. It also means their chemical industry has also made big strides.

The final item of interest is the accuracy of the attack. To this point it was assumed the Iranians did not have the ability to precisely target their missiles or guide them in flight, but it appears they now have the technology. Presumably, they now have access to GLONASS, which is the Russian GPS. It also means they have the ability to use this information in real time to adjust flight paths. The Russians most likely supplied this at some point over the last two years.

This is why the “dumb luck” option makes the most sense. The reason the Russians are willing to help the Iranians with this is the gross mismanagement of American foreign policy over the last decade or more. In the past, Russia and China avoided these sorts of technology transfers, in order to avoid sanctions. Now that the West has imposed every conceivable sanction on Russia, the Russia are free to act in ways that they never would have considered five years ago.

Of course, the fact that sanctions failed to dent the Russian economy has made the threat of sanctions into a barking chihuahua. The Chinese have been transferring technology to Russia, despite the threat of sanctions. The reason is they see how the Russians got around those sanctions. This also means the Chinese could be helping the Iranians with their missile program as well. Iran, after all, revolutionized the drone game with the Shahed 136, so have things to share too.

All of this is the result of mismanagement by Washington. The sanctions war on Russia was poorly conceived and executed, but the biggest mistake was not considering the downstream consequences. Iran now has the ability to make anti-ship missiles that the American navy cannot defeat. No one knows if they have taken this step, but now we know they can take that step. This would most likely not have been possible if not for the sanctions war on the world.

This incident between Iran and Israel is a good example of how the decline in aptitude accelerates in a managerial system. The selection pressure inside the foreign policy establishment has been in favor of conformity to orthodoxy over strategic thinking, which has resulted in an ecosystem in which people like Victoria Nuland rise to the highest reaches of the system. Like everyone else, she rose up the ranks due to her fidelity to established orthodoxy in spite of her incompetence.

You can be sure the collection of dullards and mediocrities that run the Biden administration are celebrating themselves for defusing this situation. Instead of recognizing what really happened, they come away thinking they are master chess players on the international stage. That is another thing about managerialism. Every failure is somehow turned into confirmation of their expertise. The result is a system packed to the gills with overly confident imbeciles.

The question that arises from this is when will these imbeciles run out of luck and do something from which they cannot be saved? The Soviets had the Afghan war debacle and then the Chernobyl meltdown. Taken together, these failures by their managerial class drained all trust from the system. Most likely it will take something similar to collapse American managerialism. People might want to look up the nearest nuclear power plant and make sure you are not downwind.

The End Is Nigh

Posted on April 16, 2024 by thezman

Since it became clear during the 2016 election cycle that Conservative Inc no longer had any influence on the Dirt People, there has been an effort to reconstitute a New Right that will fill the void left by the now Old Right. This being the mass media age, one part of that effort is to promote certain online personalities as spokesmen for a particular point of view. You see an example in this debate organized by a site called IM1776, which is “a magazine of cultural and sociopolitical analysis.”

It should be noted that IM1776 is the product of a not-for-profit called The Art & Literature Foundation, which appears to be the brainchild of an Italian guy named Mark Granza, who had his political awakening in 2016. You can read a lengthy interview of him in this English language Hungarian site. For the sake of clarity, IM1776 is financially supported by Claremont. It is always wise to know how someone pays his bills before assessing his political opinions.

That aside, what you see in this back and forth is the same specter that has haunted Western political thought since 1789. That is the specter of ideology. Both men are in their own way ideologues. They have an image of how society ought to be organized based on how they think men ought to act toward one another. While their ideal society is something of an end point, it is, in fact, the starting point for them. In other words, they begin with the end in mind.

For Curtis Yarvin, the end is a form of monarchy not because he thinks it is the best in the abstract sense of the best society, but that only through an absolute ruler can the things he likes about Western society be defended from the dark forces that seek to unsettle our cultural norms. Rufo, on the other hand, is a natural rights republican, who thinks the ideal society is based in individual rights. It is only through reaffirming our natural rights that we can restore the republic.

While there is a lot of overlap between what both see as the ideal society, they clearly have different visions for how to achieve it. Yarvin thinks we have to wait for the great man to emerge and topple the present order. Alternatively, the present orders collapses, and a great man emerges. Rufo thinks the way forward is to nibble away at the civil rights order by attacking it fruits. His current project is to hold the diversity hires in the academy to the alleged standards of the academy.

For most people this sounds logical. You start every project with the end in mind and you see that is the Yarvin – Rufo debate. In fact, that is the primary appeal of both Chris Rufo and Curtis Yarvin. They hold up this image of a possible future and if you like what you see, you support their program. This has been how political debate has been framed in the West since the French Revolution. You are presented with two images of the future and asked to pick one of them.

The problem with this, the reason that ideology must always fail, is that it never considers if the end is possible or even plausible. This is not because the ideologue is incapable of doubting the ideology. It is because ideology must always rest on the assumption that all societies are intentional societies. What we see is the product of human labor, therefore the goodness or badness of society reflects the goodness or badness of the people who made it.

Good people not only follow a certain code, but they must constitute the telos of the society of which they are a part. No ideology ever concludes that the ideologue must disengage with society, other than if it helps him engage with fellow ideologues in plotting to overthrow the present order. Ideology assumes you must be engage in the project of moving society toward the desired end. Otherwise, you are assumed to be working against those who are doing so.

To think that society is anything other than the fruit of human labor would be a nullification of ideology. If society is the product or random chance, for example, then what we ought to do to improve society is meaningless. It makes no difference what we think we ought to do, as the result is just a random walk. If what we see is the best we can muster from the material at hand, then the ideal, what we ought to seek, is actually a hindrance to creating a harmonious society.

As an aside, this explains the rejection of biological reality. The popularity of the trans business is one way of denying biological reality and the limits it must place on what is possible for human society. The New Right rejects biology as it undermines their claims about the nature of man. As soon as you accept biological reality, most arguments about how we ought to live become superstition. You are left with the question of what can we do with the material at hand.

Another thing you see with all of the participants in the New Right project is that none of them are looking forward in the sense that some novel vision of the future is leading them to question their own assumptions of the past. Their prize is something like what the French philosopher Jacques Derrida called hauntology. The New Right is sentimental for a promised future that never materialized. It is why they focus so much on the “wrong turns” of the past.

What all this leads to is the fact that we are seeing the end of ideology. It is easy to forget, but ideology is a relatively novel thing in the history of man. The Franks did not have a governing ideology. The Greeks were not ideologues. Rameses did not govern with a vision of the future in mind. For all of human history, how we ought to organize society was a practical question, not a moral one. Ideology is an invention of Western man, the weeds that grew out of the rubble of the Thirty Years War.

Taxes & Conservatism

Posted on April 15, 2024 by thezman

Note #1: Behind the green door is a post about the classic comedy, Dr, Strangelove, in which I reveal that I am a humorless dullard, a post about how O. J. Simpson was framed by the Clintons and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

Today is Tax Day in America, a day when millions of Americans drop tear-soaked checks into the mail, along with their many tax forms. Of course, for most Americans it is now just another day. Their taxes are simple, and their tax is paid by their employer throughout the year. The resulting decline of Tax Day and the tax issue is a good entry point for examining how our politics have changed over the last decade and a good place to start when thinking about the death of conservatism.

Half a century ago, the run-up to Tax Day was a big party for the people we call conservatives, as it gave them an excuse to go out into the streets, banging their pots and pans about the unfairness of the tax code. Taxes were not only too high, but they were also far too complicated. Rarely said, but often implied, was the claim that a complex tax code allowed special interests to game the system and avoid taxes or bribe their favorite politicians to get special tax breaks.

You never hear this sort of talk now. Taxes were the bread-and-butter issue of so-called conservatives since Barry Goldwater, but no more. One reason for that is tax simplification was passed under Trump. For most Americans taxes are a few clicks on the computer and that is it. Business owners, rich people and the self-employed still have to go through the game of guessing what the IRS says they owe, but the typical suburban peasant is now free of this burden.

Interestingly, a central theme of so-called conservatives in the 1970’s and 1980’s regarding taxes was that if people knew how much they really paid in taxes they would revolt against the welfare state. There were schemes back then to make taxes a quarterly affair, so everyone was always be aware of their tax burden. Instead, they went the other way and made taxes simpler, so that their voters no longer cared about the main issue for the so-called conservatives.

Of course, the main reason so-called conservatives have forgotten about the tax issue is they have done with it what they have done with so many other issues and that is embraced the position of the people they oppose. The fiscal conservative is like a guy wearing a denim leisure suit in Washington. It is so rare to hear anyone talk about the nation’s finances that when it happens it brings back memories of those halcyon days when the Gipper was shaking his fist at the Soviets.

This raises another truth about so-called conservatism. They were sure that if you starved the system of taxes, it would have to cut spending. Despite history saying otherwise, they were certain of it. Instead, they habituated their minds to ever growing deficits and an incomprehensible national debt. Per capita debt is about five times higher than under Reagan and about four times higher as a percentage of the GDP, so it is safe to say they were all wrong about this one.

There is a demographic aspect to this as well. When the baby boomers were in their prime working years, it was good politics to promise them lower taxes and greater returns from their investments. Now that they are retiring in droves, the tax ploy no longer works, so no one discusses it. Instead, it is good politics to create more money from thin air to pay for the entitlement programs. Like everything else about conservatism, taxes were nothing but a good marketing ploy.

This raises another tax-related issue. Tax collections are at record highs, but the deficit is also at all-time highs. The federal deficit in 2023 was $1.7 trillion. The rosiest of rosy scenarios says that federal budget deficits be $20 trillion over the next decade and federal debt held by the public will reach 116 percent of GDP. Given that these projections always turn out wrong, it is not hard to see why no one in Washington is talking about taxes or the state of the budget.

This is why so-called conservatism is headed to the dustbin of history. It was never really a conservative political movement, but more of a money laundering scheme masquerading as a political movement. The response to progressives promising to rob your neighbor and let you have a piece was so-called conservatives promising to rob the progressive and let you have a piece. Taken together we got a half century of systemic looting of their American economy.

For the last half century, the white middle-class has been the kid getting bullied at school for his lunch money. Progressives, representing the financial elites, threatened to shove the suburban peasant into a locker. So-called conservatives kept upping the lunch money they had to pay to avoid the wedgie. Now those suburban peasants are too old for school, so those financial elites are looking to prey on their children and grandchildren to keep the plates spinning.

Another legacy of the so-called conservatives with regards to tax policy is the sacralization of rich people. Part of their sales pitch for tax changes was the claim that our noble rich people were paying more than their fair share in taxes. This was always nonsense, but it convinced most white people that it is immoral to question the motives and behavior of the rich. One result is a perfidious and destructive ruling class that seems hellbent on pulling the roof down on all of us.

In the end, the disappearance of the tax issue from public debate is a good reminder that we are at the end of a long cycle. That means we are about to start on a new political cycle, so the past framing of things is of no use to us. The old ideas and arguments from the last century, things like tax fairness, need to be sent to the dustbin of history along with the people who championed them. In some future Tax Day, no one will have a reason to think of so-called conservatism.

A Very American Scam

Posted on April 10, 2024 by thezman

For fifty years abortion was a part of the national political debate due to the fight to overturn Roe v. Wade. Those who opposed abortion sought to overturn this court decision, thus returning the issue to the people. The pro-life side assumed they could win the argument and get laws passed to end most abortions. The pro-abortion people obviously fought to prevent this, even though they always claimed the vast majority of the people saw abortion as a holy sacrament.

Abortion was always a good money maker for Conservative Inc. because on the one hand, they only had to pay lip service to the moral issue. It was not as if they could pass legislation or change a regulation to meet the demands of their voters. The courts would just strike down those changes. On the other hand, the only path to victory was getting a majority of pro-life people in office, especially the White house, so the courts could be stocked with pro-life judges. That meant voting Republican.

The way the two party grift has worked since the middle of the last century was that the Democrats conjure novel ideas and find creative ways to normalize them with the progressive segment of the population. Once these ideas gain circulation, the Republicans pretend to oppose these new ideas. Both sides squabble over it, thus narrowing the options to their preferred positions. Then they aggressively fundraise off it as the novel ideas are slowly implemented.

The genius of this arrangement is the elites get what they want, while both parties protect themselves from outside threats by sucking all the oxygen out of the room in their endless media debates. With the oxygen comes the money, which keeps both camps in the lifestyle they think they deserve. Just as important, none of that money goes to anyone who has a third opinion. The political rackets rest on every issue being reduce to a binary choice.

Here is where you can see why the ruling class hates Trump. When he ran for office, he went to the pro-life crowd with a rational offer, rather than the old offer they have always got from conservatives. He told them he needed their vote and even though he was not one of them, he would deliver for them because he needed their vote. Social conservatives, outside of the professional ones, saw this as a rational offer and maybe better than what they have gotten for the last fifty years.

In office, Trump did what he saw as the rational thing and set about appointing pro-life judges up and down the system. From his point of view, this made perfect sense as he would need the support of these people in the next election. If he could show he delivered, then they would come out in droves. His good fortune was that things broke in such a way that the court finally overturned Roe. Both parties hate him because of things like this that disrupt the political rackets.

Putting that aside, the overturn of Roe was a disaster for Pro-Life Inc and the elite of the social conservativism rackets. They no longer had this issue to use in their fundraisers, other than to wage battles at the state level. Since the leaders of these rackets live in swanky homes around the imperial capital, heading out to the wilderness to help the Dirt People wage political fights is horrifying. This idea is equivalent to Pol Pot sending the intellectuals out to the rice fields.

Since the court sent the issue back to the states, the people running for national office no longer have a reason to primp and preen about abortion. If the national candidates stop talking about abortion, the associated money rackets no longer have a reason to raise money to help “their candidates.” That means the money givers no longer have a reason to give money to these guys. Suddenly, thanks to Trump, a billion-dollar industry is threatened with extinction. What to do?

This is why we now have the mass media claiming abortion is the most important issue on the minds of voters. If a Democrat wins a race for dog catcher in East Podunk Missouri, the Washington Post has a pic of young females standing in line to vote, with the claim they are there because of abortion. The political experts, who are always wrong about everything, rush in to explain how this is a threat to Trump as women too busy in their cubicles to have sex are furious about abortion.

It is all nonsense, but despite the fact the media is nothing but a firehose of lies, people still fall for these tricks, especially people who call themselves conservative. Integral to being a conservative is accepting without question the opinions of your enemies while endlessly tone policing your supporters. If the New York Times announces that the cool kids are now wearing flowerpots on their heads, conservatives will swear it is true and produce the conservative case for flowerpots.

This is where Conservative Inc. has swung into action on abortion. Their new scheme to re-nationalize the issue is to champion a national ban on abortion. You see, their big idea now that the courts sent the issue back to the states, something conservatives argued for since Roe, is to take it back from the states and pass a bill that bans all abortion at the federal level. Of course, they cannot do this without your support so make your check out to Conservative Inc.

The only way such a scheme could ever happen is if the Republicans had a huge majority in the House, a super-majority in the Senate and had a pro-life president in the White House. Thanks to Republican support for open borders and election rigging, this is now impossible. Even if it did happen, the Bush years tell us that they would fink on their voters anyway. Remember fake evangelical George Bush nominating pro-abortion Harriet Miers to the court?

Abortion is a good example of why moral issues cannot be decided through any sort of democratic process. Even if the process is legitimate and the participants come to the issue in good faith, you will not get universal agreement. If such an agreement were possible, it would have happened organically and then the only politics around the issue would be about the best policy to support the moral consensus. Otherwise, there is no debating someone out of their sense of right and wrong.

This is why the scam that is the American political system loves moral issues like abortion, because they can never be solved politically. This means they can frame it as two sides with neither side ever having a chance to fully win. Roe was manna from heaven for Conservative Inc., but now the overturning of Roe is manna from Gaia for the aging spinsters running the feminism rackets. They can finally stop talking about men in dresses waving their genitals at children.

If one is looking for a white pill in these dark times it is that the abortion issue has finally returned to its natural place. Like all moral issues, it is one that must be decided by the collective agreement of likeminded people. This means it is a local issue. States and localities can then treat abortion the same way they manage other thorny moral issues like the location of gentlemen’s clubs. In the end, sanity prevailed, and abortion has become something for communities to resolve on their own.

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The Real World War

Posted on April 2, 2024 by thezman

Note: As everyone probably knows, VDare has been under assault by the regime for years and may finally be forced to close down. They have been de-banked so the only way to send them money at the moment is GiveSendGo. If you can spare a few bucks, they could sure use it.

Over the last two years most people who bother paying attention to the world have figured out that the American Empire is waging a proxy war on Russia. The primary proxy is Ukraine, but lesser proxies are also involved. Armenia used to have good relations with Russia but has now been turned into a Western catspaw for the purpose of stirring up trouble in the region. America overthrew the government of Pakistan two years ago so they would not cooperate with Russia.

We could be seeing another front in the war. Israel made the outlandish decision to bomb the Iranian embassy in Damascus. Reportedly the target was a high-ranking Iranian general who was at the facility holding meetings. It could be the other people were the real targets or it could just have been a target of opportunity as Israel tries to draw Iran into a war. Regardless, targeting an embassy in a third country violates centuries of precedent and custom.

Embassies are technically the territory of the country operating them, so this attack on the Iranian embassy is the same as an attack on Iran. That is how the world will view it and certainly how Iran sees it. The Middle East is a dirty place and all of the players, especially Israel, are dirty players, but this is well beyond the norm. There is also the fact that Israel is bombing the capital of Syria, even though there is no state of war between the two countries.

The way to think of this is to imagine if the Russians hit the American embassy in Poland with a missile. Russia is not legally at war with Poland or America, even if both countries are aiding and abetting Ukraine. If the Russians attacked Poland, then it is war, and everyone understands this. Somehow, Israel and her supporters in America seem to think this rule does not apply to Israel. Both China and Russia have come out with strong statements condemning the attack.

One of the worst kept secrets on earth right now is that Israel wants a war with Iran, and they assume this will draw in the United States. The Israelis wanted this war back in the Bush years during the Iraq war. They assume Iran would lose such a war and the regime would be toppled as a result. Israel foreign policy is based on the idea that if the Arab world is in chaos, there will be no organized resistance to Israel. Of course, Iran is also working on getting nuclear weapons.

The question now is what happens next. The Biden administration does not want a war with Iran as the military is stretched thin. Presumably, they will try to make some sort of backroom deal with Iran to defuse things. Russia is the chief sponsor of Syria and has air defense systems in the country. To this point they have not shot down Israeli jets, but that could change now. Russia is also a partner with Iran so the Russians will need to do something to show support for both countries.

China has been making inroads into the region, primarily by helping to facilitate a reproachment between the Saudis and Iran. The peace that now exists between the Houthis and the Saudis is largely a result of this effort. Iran sponsors the Houthis, and they agreed to make peace with the Saudis as part of this warming relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Note the Saudis have not allowed America to use its airspace to attack the Houthis.

In other words, this is not twenty years ago when Iran was alone and largely isolated from the world due to American sanctions. Iran now has two enormously powerful allies, and it is slowly rejoining the Arab alliance led by Saudi Arabia. Iran now has options that it did not have two decades ago. Instead of retaliation we will probably see an effort to win a diplomatic war against Israel, with the help of China and Russia, as Israel is, for all practical purposes, a tentacle of the American Empire.

This is where the real war is being waged at the moment. The American Empire is based on the assertion that the post-Cold War world is a rules-based one led by the United States, who enforces the rules. The repeated violations of the rules by Washington are what drives both Russia and China. Their argument in favor of a multipolar world is that Washington cannot be trusted to follow the rules, so Washington letting Israel violate important rules is a proof of sorts.

There is also the obvious fact that Washington can no longer control Israel. You get to be the lone superpower when everyone has to obey. Israel thumbing its nose at Washington over Gaza is a problem. Israel bombing embassies in third countries is a humiliation of Washington. The Washington led order rests on everyone, including Israel, accepting that order. If Israel does not respect that order, then it will not be long before the rest of the world follows suit.

Of course, what we are seeing in this new world war is chaos all along the borders of the American Empire. Washington’s plan for Russia for the last three decades has been to create chaos around the borders of Russia, believing this would slowly sap her economic and political strength. This is what is now happening to the American Empire, which is forced to race around the world dealing with crises, many of which are the result of its own actions, like we see in Ukraine.

This is what may prevent a regional war in the Middle East. Russia and China know that time is on their side. As a result, Iran also can play the waiting game. At some point, the American Empire will have no choice but to give up on the region. It has largely been driven out at this point. There are American troops in Syria and Iraq, but the cost of supporting them will soon be prohibitive. Instead of Iran retaliating against Israel, she can wait and deal with Israel at a later date.

What we are seeing is the world organizing not for a great final war with the American Empire but the world organizing to manage the decline of the empire. Washington stirs up trouble hoping to preserve itself by unsettling rivals and Israel hopes to start a regional war before her patron is too weak. Meanwhile, the rising powers of the world are trying to avoid a real war with the declining American Empire. The real world war is a war to survive the end of the last empire.

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