The Assange Case

Posted on December 13, 2021 by thezman

Note: The Monday Taki post is up. Behind the green door is the Sunday podcast as well as some thoughts on the Army – Navy football game.

Thirty years ago, the typical right-wing person would have held a dim view of whistleblowers and their media accomplices. Those whistleblowers were always left-wing people with the strong odors that come with it. They were motivated by left-wing morality rather than republican virtue. Their complaints about the government were motivated by their opposition to America. These stories usually made those who stood for republican order look like the villains.

Probably the most famous example is Daniel Ellsberg. He is the man who released the top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in the Vietnam War to The New York Times and Washington Post. This was in 1971 and Ellsberg was a fanatical left-wing antiwar protestor. He violated a number of laws in releasing those documents, but he was on the Left, so it was okay. Left-wing lawbreaking was always okay as long as it served left-wing interests.

That was another country ago. Today, the typical right-wing person has a new respect for the government whistleblower. You see this with Julian Assange, who is being transferred to the United States for a show trial. The only people speaking out about his treatment are conservatives. Here is a story in Breitbart that manages to tie Assange to an old paleocon concept. It is one of those times when you know they do not know the source of the phrase, as otherwise they would never use it.

The Assange story is a good example of how partisanship within the mainstream makes rational discourse impossible. When Assange was leaking information damaging to the Bush crusades, they were not fans of Assange. Of course, the Left loved Assange and treated him like a modern day Che Guevara. When WikiLeaks embarrassed the Democrats then the Left suddenly hated Assange. It took a while, but eventually the conservatives figured out how to back the whistleblower.

Interestingly, those same conservatives have nothing but contempt for Chelsea Manning, the sexually confused former Army soldier who provided documents to Julian Assange back in the Bush years. For a lot of reasons, Chelsea Manning makes for a troublesome hero for them. Of course, Democrats moved heaven and earth to get their favorite crossdresser out of prison. Then “she” turned on them, as it were. Saying bad things about the police state is no longer left-wing.

These cases, and you can probably put Edward Snowden in there as well, present some interesting dilemmas. The biggest conundrum is the role of the media in these sorts of affairs. They are the platform for disseminating the information being leaked by the whistleblowers. They also shape the narrative around the leaks to paint the person doing the leaking as a hero. The TV tabloid 60 Minutes recently did a puff piece on the leaker, Reality Winner, painting her as a hero.

In a rules-based society, people who break the rules should suffer consequences commensurate with the damage done by the rule breaking. A general principle of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence is that the punishment fits the crime. If the crime, however, prevents a much larger crime from occurring, the rule breaking ceases to be a crime and becomes a public service. While this theory makes sense to a sensible person, its abuse by the deranged and dangerous suggests a serious flaw.

Then there is the issue of the media. In the old analog days, it was easy to make an exception for the press. In these cases, they were treated like neutrals. Even though they knew the material they were reporting was illegally obtained, they were allowed to report on it because a free press trumps government secrecy. In the digital age where we no longer have a free press or actual reporters, this no longer makes sense. The media is just the marketing arm of the unofficial ruling party.

Can we have a civil society in the digital age when billionaire public relations firms are able to work with the state to embarrass opponents? This is what we saw with Trump when the New York Times got his tax returns. Clearly, someone in the IRS or Trump’s accounting firm stole the documents. Then they handed them to the press. This is trafficking in stolen goods. If the item in question was a piece of art from Trumps’ office, everyone involved would be in prison.

This is what makes the Assange case interesting. Whether the rulers know it or not, they are putting this idea front and center. If WikiLeaks is not allowed to publish leaked material, then how can the New York Times do it? There are only three solutions to that puzzle and one of them is the farce of a free press is now over. In other words, if only regime supportive media is protected, then we no longer have an independent media with constitutional protections.

On the other hand, if the courts decide Assange gets the same protections as the New York Times or Washington Post, then the age of secrets is over. In the digital age it is simply too easy to spill the beans on official shenanigans. This then spills into personal areas, as rich people make for good headlines. The NDA’s famous people make their staff sign suddenly mean very little. The only solution for the ruling class is to pump out even more disinformation through official organs.

The third option is the courts begin to nibble away at this media exceptions, which is something the Supreme Court has hinted at recently. If possession of stolen goods is the same for the media as it is for everyone else, then these sorts of cases become very complicated for the media. Suddenly, the SPLC publishing e-mails from one of the people they are harassing becomes a criminal case. At the minimum, it becomes the basis for a civil case against the outlet.

Taken together, all of this points to a central question that lurks beneath all of the recent troubles in America. Can a large culturally authoritarian society like American maintain itself in the digital age? The Assange case is only possible in the digital age and the contradictions it reveals are also only visible in the digital age. In fact, much of what ails modern America is made possible by the Internet. It may be that a secular theocracy like America is impossible when information flows even semi-freely.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

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

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 a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

Political Cosplay

Posted on December 7, 2021 by thezman

Politics in a liberal democracy is first and foremost performative. Getting attention is the first goal for political types and they do that by comporting to familiar roles. How well they play those roles, as in any type of theater, establishes their status in the hierarchy of the political theater. Some actors, of course, take a short cut and play one of the various fools or jesters in the political drama. If done well this is a fast-track to attention, but the role itself is always on the periphery of the main show.

If most people were operating from self-interest and had a reasonable sense of their self-interest, political theater would not exit. For example, why would people line up to vote when they know their votes will be ignored? Most people know this to some degree and the science bears it out, but people still vote. In fact, voter participation has gone up as the effectiveness of voting has declined. The theater of democratic politics blinds people to the futility of it for some reason.

This is most obvious in the cosplay brand of politics. This is where people dress up in strange outfits and play make-believe on the streets. Antifa is just cosplay for people with a taste for violence. Instead of playing characters from their favorite TV shows, they play characters from their misreading of history. The black outfits make them the heirs of the Schwarze Scharen or maybe the red makes them the modern day Rotfrontkämpferbund or the post-modern Khmer Rouge.

Their view of themselves and their role in the political drama is as imaginary as the characters they are playing. No one bothers to ask any of them why they go around smashing windows and harassing people. Why do they show up at some right-wing political event? What is the point? There is no practical point. They do it because politics for them is a real life fantasy game. They have to show up at these things to keep the game going. That is the whole point of it.

Of course, their analogs are the flag and costume characters who are eager to play their part in the drama. Since the 1960’s anti-Semites have been staging flag and costume shows. They play the part of the Freikorps in this endless replay of the interwar years in Germany. The credit for this belongs to George Lincoln Rockwell who landed on the idea of playing dress-up to get attention. He dressed up as a cartoon Nazi and marched around with his followers.

For fifty years now anti-Semites and make-believe Nazis have been doing flag and costume parties in the public square. They say they are trying to draw attention to their issues, but that is part of the fantasy. After more than fifty years, everyone is well aware of the issues they support. In reality, it is just political cosplay. Like the Antifa people, it is all about maintaining a fantasy version of politics and history. Instead of the hammer and sickle eventually winning the game, it is the swastika.

What lies beneath cosplay politics is escapism. Like libertarianism, this type of political theater is a way to avoid reality. There is the personal reality of the players themselves, who are low-status people with no role in society. They will never be the important people they dream of being, so they play one in minor politics. At a higher level there is the grim reality of liberal democratic politics. No one wants to face the fact that the will of the people plays almost no role in the affairs of men.

The absurdity of political cosplay plays another role. It allows people who turn away from these ridiculous performances to believe their brand of performative politics really do matter. Serious Progressives, for example, condemn street violence as it distracts from their important issues. Conservatives condemn the “Nazis” because they make them look bad in front of their liberal friends. Cosplay politics gives them an excuse for why their performative politics is equally ineffective.

This addiction to performative politics is the primary manifestation of the narcotic of liberal democracy. Once a people accept the “general will” as their god, they have an unshakeable believe in the power of persuasion. They are forever convinced that if they can just win the next election, have the right performance, they can gain the backing of the general will and the wheel of history will turn their way. Heroin addicts have a better grasp of their circumstances than people in a democracy.

The Roman poet Juvenal is credited with coining the term “bread and circuses” to explain how rulers gain public approval. To generate public approval, they use public spectacle and satisfy the base requirements of the people. As long as people are fed and entertained, they are compliant. Juvenal’s actual point here was to condemn the people for selfishly going along with it, but over the centuries the expression has come to mean a ruling ethos, especially in democracies.

The magic of liberal democracy, at least in the short run, is it becomes something of a self-licking ice cream cone. The people, in search of bread and circuses, create their own circuses in the form of political theater. To underwrite the drama they endlessly seek to improve their conditions in order to have more time and money for the political circuses they are creating. The people in charge just put their thumb on the scale in order to direct the activity to their benefit.

Therein lies the real alternative to modern politics. Since there is no voting your way out of democracy, the only solution is to boycott it. If the audience fails to show up for the great political drama, the players have no purpose. Performative politics requires an audience as that is its point. Boycotts are not as fun as playing dress-up or voting harder, so it is at a disadvantage. It may be that the only solution to the narcotic of democracy is for the people to vote themselves to death.

Parallels And Precedents

Posted on December 6, 2021 by thezman

Note: The Monday Taki post is up. This week I take some gratuitous shots at the sperg-right over the racist AI story from last week. Behind the green door is the Sunday podcast where I gas on about the news of the week.

Michael Anton, the person responsible for the famous Flight 93 essay endorsing the great gamble on Donald Trump, has a long essay up at The New Criterion arguing that we live in unprecedented times. Those who make predictions about what comes next for the West are foolishly assuming that present patterns are the same as past patterns and therefore they will play out the same as they did in the past. He lays out why the current patterns are unique and therefore unpredictable.

Interestingly, his essay rests on this assertion: “let’s first consider the one historical parallel that all sides of this debate draw on for precedent: the rise, peak, decline, and fall of Rome.” This essay is part of a series, so it is possible the task given to the writers was to draw comparisons between the West in general or American in particular with the Roman Empire or even the Roman Republic. The entirety of Anton’s essay is comparing Rome to America.

Comparisons to Rome have been popular in America for a very long time, mostly because the American republic failed in the middle of the 19th century. This is one of those things that intelligent people have known is true but agreed not to discuss outside where the peasants can hear. A major part of the ruling class ethos has been the maintenance of the republican myth. Some on the Right will still insist that America is a republic and not a liberal democracy.

That is why comparisons to Rome have been popular. Either as a self-deception or as a way to avoid discussing reality, the worry that America could follow the Roman Republic into empire has been a staple for a long time. What makes this present age unique is that many people simply accept America as an empire. Much of the ruling class now prefers the word “democracy” over republic. When was the last time a politician said, “we must defend our republic”?

Anton takes a different approach in knocking down the comparison to Rome, mostly to focus on the great threats to the current order. The fact is though, Rome is not a great guide to understanding the present age. If you are looking for an example from the classical period, then Greece is your best option. Like America, Athens became a democratic empire that never understood itself to be an empire. In dominating its neighbors, it was sure it was liberating them from tyranny.

The other comparison between Ancient Athens and America that works well is in the totalitarian nature of its politics. The Romans put on shows to entertain the masses, but the Greeks staged shows to indoctrinate and control the people. Dionysian theater was about maintaining the prevailing moral orthodoxy. Today, mass media is about controlling the moral framework. Like the Greeks, Americans are hooked on the narcotic of endless morality tales reinforcing their beliefs about themselves.

If one wants to take this comparison back to the origin of America, you can go back to the English Civil War. That is a version of the Peloponnesian War and the American Civil War was a replay of it to birth America a second time. In both cases, it is the democratic side that prevailed over the Spartan side. That makes for a much more interesting comparison as the Athenians were lucky to have lost to the Spartans, so we may be seeing a form of alternative history with America.

If the Classical period is not your thing, then we have an empire closer to home that makes for an interesting and useful comparison. The American empire is looking similar to the Soviet empire at the end. The ossified and geriatric ruling elite is the obvious starting point in the comparison. Like the American empire, the Soviet leaders did not prepare for their departure from the scene. Instead, they purged anyone with ambition and the result was a poverty of talent and vitality at the top.

Another good parallel with the Soviets is the people in charge just assumed they represented the will of the people. The American ruling elite does not have dusty old books about political theory to justify their belief in themselves as the authentic voice of the people, but they believe it, nonetheless. Central to the identity to the managerial elite is their belief in themselves as the expression of the ideals of the system. Like the nomenklatura, the managerial class thinks things going great.

The other selling point in the comparison between the Soviet empire and the American empire is they are the product of the same dialectic. Communism proposed, fascism opposed and the synthesis was liberal democracy. Alternatively, communism and liberal democracy both assumed they were the answer to the great question of history, the solution to the struggle forward. In the end, neither was the answer to anything because history is not a solvable puzzle.

What is most interesting in Anton’s essay is what is not mentioned. For example, the Roman Empire in the last two centuries was a system run by people who had no hand in creating it. Waves of barbarian invaders had changed the complexion of the people over whom the empire ruled. The leaders also stopped being Roman in the sense that they had connections to the Roman elite. We see a similar pattern emerging in the West as immigrants flood Western lands.

There is also the fact that the Roman Republic failed when the economic arrangements supporting it failed. The influx of slave labor after the defeat of Carthage and Corinth changed the economics of the republic. We have a parallel to this age with the reliance on helot labor by Western capitalism. The economic model of fifty years ago no longer exists in the West, so it naturally follows that politics must change. Again we see the people problem as a precedent to our own age.

Of course, one can look for parallels in the rhythms of time. In the case of America, it could very well be the end of a historical epoch. The ideas of the Enlightenment have been fulling explored through Jacobinism, various forms of socialisms and communism and finally liberal democracy. Like all of those prior failures, this one is doomed to crash into the rocks of biological reality. The end point of man’s journey is not a paradise of peace and freedom, but rather the extinction of the species.

Anton’s essay is useful in that it focuses attention on the present trends that threaten civilization, but this is not an age without precedent. In fact, his premise is a bit of a strawman that allows him to avoid the central questions that lie at the heart of the current crisis in the West. It is not a crisis of historical patterns or ideology, but rather a crisis of people. Either the people of the West want to live or not. The real crisis is that there is no agreement on that answer.

Aborted Future

Posted on December 2, 2021 by thezman

Conservative Inc. has been abuzz with excitement over the abortion case recently argued before the Supreme Court. They think this is the big win they have been promising for more than half a century. The five “conservative” justices appear ready to overturn Roe and even Roberts seems to be leaning that way. Oral arguments seemed to center on whether they should reverse Roe entirely or try to find a piecemeal approach to begin the process of reversing it.

One of the ironies of this is that this was made possible by the man Conservative Inc. declared an enemy of their cult back in 2015. If the court does overturn Roe, you can be sure no one in the dying cult of conservatism will have the principles to both admit they were wrong and give Trump credit for the result. They will just pretend none of that happened and use the event to scam their donors one more time. Conservatives never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.

Putting that aside, some may be tempted to think this is a sign of some pushback against the forces of darkness. Roe was always bad law as it involved the court in an area of politics for which it is poorly equipped. Courts are crude instruments best suited for broad issues. Abortion is a purely moral issue. In a big multicultural society like America, there is never going to be agreement on such an issue. It is best left to local communities and the states to work out a compromise.

What Roe was all along was a symbol. The Yankee ruling elite could impose their values on the rest of the people. Roe and other rulings from the court were about maintaining that political arrangement dating to Gettysburg. If the court does reverse Roe, it should be read as the first sign of the Yankee retreat. In the fullness of time, the homosexual marriage ruling in the Obama years ruling will be viewed as the last great legal victory of the Yankee imperium.

Of course, the decline of the old Yankee ruling elite coincides with the demographic decline of heritage America. Abortion was always an issue for middle and upper- middle-class white women. The first generation of white women to enjoy abortion was the Baby Boomers. They wanted it so they could be “free” of the patriarchy. Then they wanted it for their daughters. Today, both cohorts are past childbearing years and the young generation is mostly nonwhite.

We saw something similar with family issues. When the Boomers were having kids, we were inundated with movies about having babies. Education was the top concern among middle-class voters. Then it was college tuition. Notice that politicians now only talk about education with regards to the whiteness of it. Good schools and cheap college are no longer a top priority because those are white people issues and white people with kids are a dwindling minority.

If the court does overturn Roe this summer, you will see some grannies and Nth-wave feminist lesbians out making noise. The Left will do a nostalgia tour, pretending it is 1970 all over again. They will pull the old signs out of storage and reminisce about the old days when they were hip and cool. Like so much of our politics, the response to overturning Roe will be another magical mystery tour of the past. Then it will be forgotten along with the events around it.

One contrary take on Roe that deserves consideration is that abortion was originally about personal privacy. The court was agnostic on the morality of abortion, but it was sure the state had no role in a private medical decision. There was a zone of privacy guaranteed by the Constitution. Even though privacy is never mentioned in the document, most agree the idea is important. There is a line between the public and private and there should be prohibitions against violating it.

In oral arguments, the court did not seem interested in that angle and the pro-abortion arguments did not emphasize it. This is a sign that the notion of the private space, the zone off-limits to prying eyes, is no longer important. This could be a read as an acknowledgment by the court that the concept of privacy is now dead. All of us should expect to live naked in full view of everyone. The public, and by extension the state, have a role in your private life and decisions.

The cycles of history are both large and small. The period following the Second World War kicked of a demographic and cultural cycle in America. That cycle existed within a larger cycle kicked off by the Civil War. You can say that America itself is a cycle within the larger cycle of English speaking people. Often when one cycle ends it creates the necessary elements to begin a new historical pattern. Sometimes the end is not the beginning of anything. It is just the end.

The abortion issue probably signals the end of the post-war cultural and demographic cycle that has been driven by the Baby Boomer generation. Ironically, it is things like abortion that will have killed this cultural period. A politics and culture dependent on middle-class white people is not long for the world if middle-class white people are throwing their babies in the dumpster of abortion mills. Abortion was a self-inflicted gunshot to the womb of heritage America.

Order And Chaos

Posted on November 26, 2021 by thezman

Lost in the rush into the holiday season is the Charlottesville monkey trial concluded last week with a verdict for the plaintiffs. The jury had no verdict on some of the claims but agreed there was some sort of conspiracy by the defendants. They also decided that the plaintiffs suffered no harm as a result of it, but the defendants were doo-doo heads who deserved some sort of punishment. As a result, they awarded the plaintiffs eleventy billion bars of gold-pressed latinum in punitive damages.

The jury did not fall into Star Trek jargon, but they may as well have, given the structure of their decision. According to lawyers who followed the case, the punitive damages are symbolic due to rules governing the relationship between punitive and compensatory damages in civil cases. Typically, courts limit the ratio to a single digit. That is, punitive damage awards are capped at something less than ten times the compensatory damages, which in this case were one dollar.

This reality is of no consequence as the trial was always political activism on behalf of the ruling class. In a sane society this never would have been in a courtroom and the lawyers who brought it would be deported. Ours is a society in crisis, so ridiculous things like this are common now. The lawyers got their win and regime media was happy to promote it as a great blow against free speech. For a day, the blue-checks on Twitter were celebrating the win.

That is the first lesson of this trial. Two lessons, actually. One is the reminder that political activism is all about boosting the spirits of your side and depressing the sprits of the other side. In the language of Osama bin Laden, activism is about making your horse look strong and their horse look weak. When given the choice, people will always pick the strong horse. Everything about the UTR event was bad activism for the participants and good activism for their opponents.

The other lesson here is that the world has now moved on from that chapter of political opposition to the ruling regime. Hardly anyone in regime media noticed the trial when it was happening. The verdict was a one day event celebrated by trivial figures on low-end social media. Basically, the story rated a wire report that was picked up by websites as part of their automated filler. The world has moved on from this sort of drama, which is very good news for dissidents.

Another lesson of this case is one of the oldest. If you lie down with dogs you will wake up with fleas. Guilt by association is a real thing. You may think it is unfair, but it is just how the world operates. If you hang around with screwballs like Chris Cantwell, then you will be judged by that association. The fact is, all organizations, especially in politics, are judged by their worst members. It is why high standards are essential in all political activism. You are judged by the company you keep.

Similarly, this should be the final nail in the optics debate. Both sides of this case revolted the jury. They clearly saw that the plaintiffs were liars and doing this for political reasons, but the defendants were wildly offensive to them. It is not hard to imagine the jury’s motivation here. They wanted out of that courtroom and as far away from all of them as possible. The symbolic award was a way to end the nightmare and inoculate themselves from retaliation by the Twitter blue-checks.

The fact is, the alt-right and its traveling partners never much cared about the issues they claim are at the center of their politics. The big names of that thing were there for attention and internet likes. Spencer represented himself in the case because it afforded him more time to talk about himself. The narcotic of minor celebrity is powerful stuff and it led the big shots of the alt-right to embrace increasing extreme rhetoric as they chased the dragon of internet celebrity.

The final lesson here is that America is no longer a rules-based society. This case like so many of late, had no business in a courtroom. The underlying claims are un-American and fly in the face of civil society. The people behind this case have no business in a Western society. Until this is remedied, no sane person should ever put himself in a position where he may end up in court. Even if you are completely in the right the courtroom is no place for a white person.

Scars are lessons. Stupid people accumulate as trophies to their past stupidity, while smart people carry them as lessons. These trials are scars on the face of Western civilization and they need to be seen as such. It is not about winning and losing, but about the far deeper problem that lies behind them. The people behind these cases are the same people behind the riots. The great lesson in all of this is the battle is not about policy, but between order and chaos and chaos is winning.

Rittenhouse Trial

Posted on November 16, 2021 by thezman

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial has gone to the jury after both sides presented their closing arguments and the state presented its rebuttal. Wisconsin stacks the deck against the accused by not only allowing the state the final word but giving them a chance to address the closing argument of the accused. That means before the jury got the case, they had to sit through a long day of the state making unfounded claims about their case as well as the case of the defense team.

Putting that aside, the trial has not exactly riveted the country, but it has become a symbol of the problems facing America. For example, there were the howler monkeys of the new religion writhing in agony whenever the judge enforced the basic rules of criminal procedure. Immediately they labeled the judge a white supremacist fascist and issued a fatwa against him. The death threats came pouring in and he is now under police protection. Welcome to America.

Twitter sponsored people on their platform calling for volunteers to show up at the court and get the names and faces of the jurors. This is not an official Twitter position, but as a publisher, they chose to allow their members to post these calls. In a sane society they would be liable for the people they boost on their platform. In present day America corporations are immune from all consequences. As long as they are true believers, they can do as they please.

On the other side of this you have people slowly waking up to the reality of the situation, who are glued to the case. They hold out hope that the jury does the moral thing and clears Rittenhouse of all charges. They do not want to see an innocent man condemned for holding the wrong opinions, but mostly they do not want to see the ugly reality of this age piled onto the head of a baby-faced young man. This trial offends the decency of the remaining honest men in this society.

For those who have had their awakening long ago, this trial is a continuation of the trend that now defines society. On the one hand we have America descending into a great terror aimed at the white population. The new religion is all about vengeance against white people. Juxtaposed to this are the people who see it, trying to find some way to wake up the rest of the people. This trial is another example of the aware desperately trying to warn the world.

Of course, that brings up the confused audience in this tragic drama. Most white people are trying to avoid looking at this trial. The grotesque nature of it turns their stomach, as it should. The ugliness of the human condition is on display. There are the savage calls for mob vengeance and the cruelty of fanaticism. This trial is a human sacrifice carried out by a mob of fanatical lunatics. Most white people thought we had evolved beyond this sort of thing. Welcome to America.

It is a good reminder of something said by John Stuart Mill. “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”

This has been the story of the last five years. The overwhelming majority of people in America, regardless of race or national origin, just want to live quiet lives enjoying the benefits of their circumstances. They are Burkean conservatives in that they do not want to flip over the tables and begin anew. That understandable and justifiable desire for stability and normalcy easily gives way to passivity in the face of evil. The story of the last five years is a nation of good men doing nothing.

This trial is probably a pivot point. The good men looking away do so with the certainty that their fellow citizens on the jury will do the right thing. They still trust the system even though they see the systemic corruption. If the jury sends this young man to prison many more eyes will be opened to the reality of this age. Not all, as some people put all of their efforts to remaining blissfully unaware. Theirs is a life of willful ignorance and a selfish disregard for the suffering of others.

On the other hand, the just verdict will allow most people to extend their holiday from reality a bit longer. They will comfort themselves in the belief that the system still works, despite what they have seen. Like a high wire performer who miraculously survives a fall and returns to his act, these people will learn nothing. Thoreau was right about most men living quiet lives of desperation. It is just that most men desperately wish to live outside of the great currents of history.

For those who have made the journey to this side of the great divide and see things as they are, this trial is just another opportunity. If the jury does the right thing, then the issue is why this kid was persecuted by these ghouls. If he is found guilty then the issue is the grotesque injustice at the hands of a savage mob of fanatics. The dissident is an opportunist, using every event to press a partisan case. The Rittenhouse case is just one more story in a long struggle for Western civilization.

Left-Wing Grifters

Posted on November 15, 2021 by thezman

Note: The regular Monday Taki post is up. This week I have some comparisons of our present state to the old Soviet Union. Behind the green door is the Sunday podcast and two movie reviews. If you are a subscriber, thank you for your support. If not, may Allah send the fleas of a thousand camels to nest in your groin.

A popular topic on this side of the great divide is who is and who is not a grifter, a shill or controlled opposition. The general assumption is that the people with perches in Conservative Inc. are working some sort of con. Maybe their racket is to keep people from looking over the great divide. These are the gatekeepers. Others may co-opt a dissident idea and then neuter it. They say things like Critical Race Theory is actually an attack on nonwhites so white people can oppose it.

Often forgotten is that the other side has their fair share of grifters who make a comfortable living working the true believers. Here is an example from the Daily Beast of what can be called woo-woo for the wokies. The writer is telling them that their newly minted hero, Liz Cheney, and an old has-been named Chris Christie, will give Trump a run for his money in the 2024 Republican primary. The Twitter thread on this topic is an amusing window into political mental illness.

The writer is someone calling himself Matt Lewis. He used to play the role of snarky conservative, but that was just an act. At a young age he was harvested and cultivated by the neoconservatives. When the fortunes of the neocons faded, he did what all rats do on a sinking ship. He now peddles his wares as a reformed conservative to a gullible audience at the Daily Beast. It is a trip that so many have made that it has become a stock figure in the American political drama.

As you see with the grifters of Conservative Inc., the left-wing variety sells the true believers the latest items from the one true faith. In this case the item for sale is that Liz Cheney is a folk hero for finking on her party and her voters. She has signed onto the Stalin-esque show trial called the January 6 Commission. This is where the Left gets to claim that normal white people exercising their ancient rights are white supremacist insurrectionists and a threat to “our democracy”.

The main difference between the woke grifters and the conservative grifters is the former works in a world of pure imagination. Say what you want about Ben Shapiro, but he is not wrong about the “constitutional principle” business. If we had a ruling class that enforced the old rules, things would be better for everyone. His grift lies in convincing people that it is still possible with this ruling class. He turns a virtue into the vice of defending the enemies of the people.

Because the left-wing grifter operates in the world of fantasy, he has an easier time of it, but is barred from factual reality. At some level, they must believe the same nonsense as their intended suckers. In the case of neocons like Matt Lewis, he harbors the same hatred for the white people as the true believers. The neocons may be driven by hyperviolent fantasies about world conquest, but they also detest the heritage population every bit as much as the wokest wokie.

It is that blind hatred that allows the crazies to now embrace Liz Cheney. You have to admire the skill with which the neocons have ingratiated themselves with their old friends on the Left. Not long ago the name “Cheney” was spelled H-i-t-l-e-r by the readers of the Daily Beast. He was the master of the Haliburton Hurricane Machine that devastated New Orleans and unleashed hell on the Arabs. It requires a special brand of crazy to do a heel turn like that in such a short time.

Of course, what wads a lot of this together into a slimy ball of hatred for the average American is a sense of class consciousness. The new religion is the religion of the new class, the managerial class that now commands the high ground. The middling celebrities of the commentariat are driven as much by their duty to their own class as they are by genuine belief. To people like Matt Lewis, those Trump voters outside the hive walls are a threat to his people.

It is completely bonkers that anyone would think that Liz Cheney has a future in Republican politics. That is one of those bits of good news, a little green shoot, that should give the good guys a little hope. The people on the other side are increasingly driven mad by the contradictions of their new religion. If the good guys could create and insert chaos agents into the system, Liz Cheney would be a good example. Every time she speaks in public, another dissident is born.

Another bit of good news in stories like this is that the neoconservatives have really fallen on hard times. That cabal now exists on an island off the coasty of crazy-ville, supported by a billionaire Persian who thinks he may be Cyrus the Great. The second generation of neocons squandered the tribal fortune and the third generation makes the Kennedy gene pool like deep. Like so much of the managerial class, neoconservatism now reeks of its own decay.

The Radical Middle

Posted on November 9, 2021 by thezman

Note: For those who Allah has blessed with a soul, there is a review of the near classic Western, Dance with Wolves up behind the green door. Those without a sub, condemned to a life of darkness, may Allah have pity on you.

For generations, one of the ironies of American politics is that the rank and file of the two main factions never get what they want but they stick with their side. The recent election is a good example of this as the “winning team” was immediately finked on by their party. They thought the message they sent to their leaders and the rulers is they are done with the craziness. The Republican leaders promptly supported the Democrats in generating more crazy.

It has been noted before that for the people who call themselves conservative and support the Republican Party, their best president was Bill Clinton. His was the most conservative administration since Eisenhower, according to the modern definition of conservative. The worst president was George W. Bush, the guy the Republican Party claimed was the epitome of conservatism. Conservative voters still hate Bill Clinton and mostly ignore Bush.

The Democrat side is not much better. The typical Democrat thought was Bush was Hitler reimagined, but he gave them almost everything they wanted. They opposed his crusades against Islam, but only because he was leading it. They forgot all about their antiwar rhetoric when their guy was installed to lead the crusade. Their most recent hero, Barak Obama, delivered on none of his promises to them. Instead, he catered to the party’s ideological and financial interests

There have been many attempts to explain this. The ideological march to the Left has been described as the ratchet effect. The political dynamic is the Left proposes, the Right opposes, and the synthesis is 80% of what the Left demanded. The cycle repeats with each election to one degree or another. The result is that America has become increasingly ideological in its politics and increasingly left-wing. The subsequent policy changes reflect the ideological march to the Left.

This may have been true in the Cold War with regards to domestic policy and perhaps the muscle memory remains but there is something else. Since the end of the Cold War, the American Left embraces cultural Marxism. The old liberalism, which was very lightly decorated with Marxist rhetoric, has given way to a politics of critical theory and Gramscian cultural politics. The Left is now purely about agitation and menticide in order to undermine and collapse the dominant culture.

This has led to a change in what conservatism sells to its side of the fight. The subplot of Republican politics is now stability, safety, and normalcy. The constant crisis of corruption that marked the Clinton years was replaced by the patriotic normalcy of the Bush years. The Republicans are now selling this as an antidote to the uncertainty and instability of the Trump – Biden years. The Virginia election was all about a return to normalcy so conservative voters could go back to grilling.

The new dynamic, new as in the last thirty years, is a clash of visions divorced from actual policy disputes. The one side promises to subvert, disrupt, and confront the prevailing order. The other side promises to supply stability, safety, and a sense of normalcy to society. One side wants to shake the snow globe until is it destroyed and the other side wants to place it back on the shelf so it can settle. Both sides agree on the shared premise of their position.

That shared premise is supplied by the Left. The core assumption of the modern Left is the Marxist assumption. Man is naturally communistic. The old Marxists thought it was the economic arrangements of capitalism that locked man into a competitive struggle with himself, rather than settling into his natural communism. The new Marxists think the villain is culture. They have seized control of the means of cultural production so they can liberate man from bourgeois society.

The so-called conservatives, perhaps unwittingly, accept this premise. They seek to prevent the Left from shaking society apart with their endless disruptions. Their defense of the status quo is not so much a defense of the natural order, something they now fear uttering even in private. Instead, their defense of the present order is simply to provide them with a role in the process. The Left proposes and the Right opposes is now the Left disrupts and the Right cleans up the mess.

This was why both sides feared and hated Trump and his supporters. It is not a policy issue or even a presentation issue. It is the clash of visions. The people most enthusiastically on the side of Trump think that man’s natural state is not communistic but orderly and hierarchical. They think if the prevailing orthodoxy collapses, what rises from the ashes is not communism but a new traditionalism. More important, the Left will no longer have barricades behind which they can hide.

This is why the critiques of Trump by people claiming to be outside the political dynamic are narrow and childish. He was not the Pinochet they imagined, so they slammed their rattle on the highchair and threw a tantrum. Just as the Trump phenomena exposed the hollowness of conservatism, it revealed the shallowness of what is often fobbed off as a dissident critique of it. They failed to understand that Trump was just a wrecker who wanted to tear it down and let nature take its course.

In fairness, Trump may not even get this deeper meaning of his politics, as he is not inclined to intellectual introspection. Most of his red-cap wearing loyalists are blissfully unaware of this sort of analysis. That is not the point. The point is they start from the assumption that if they could burn it all down, what would naturally rise up in its place is the sort of orderly hierarchy the genuine Right thinks is man’s nature. It is a rejection of the core belief of the ruling orthodoxy.

The lesson here is that a genuine opposition should look at the calls for stability and normalcy the same way they view the calls for subversion and disruption. They are two sides of the same coin, two dancing partners heading to the same end. The antidote to left-wing disruption is not stability, but right-wing disruption that helps break the white middle-class of its addiction to stability and compromise. A genuine alternative seeks to radicalize rather than anesthetize the middle-class.

The Coming Purge

Posted on November 4, 2021 by thezman

One of the rules of the universe is that you should never take advice from your enemy, unless you are a Republican. This is the one big exception to what should be a fairly obvious rule of life. This also applies to so-called conservatives, who love nothing more than taking advice from the people they claim are their opponents. On the other hand, so-called conservatives and Republicans never listen to their voters. You see this in the aftermath of the Tuesday elections.

Here we have an actor on a far left cable channel explaining how Glenn Youngkin beat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia. The cable channels always have these guys who pretend to know things that they cannot possibly know. They are less reliable than palm readers, but they are a staple of political coverage. In this case, the role of this guy is to explain why the Republican should read the election results as an embrace of the far-left agenda and use it as a road map for future elections.

Right on cue, the mouth breathers at National Review repeat everything the far-left is saying about the election results. You see, the win by Youngkin is actually a rejection of Donald Trump and his ideas. “The stakes simply will be too high for conservative Republicans to defer and allow Trump to use the election as an extended ego trip to air his grievances about 2020” reads the post. The only path forward, according to the author, is to take Left’s advice.

This has been the pattern for generations now. After the 1980 election, the Left said Reagan needed to govern from the center. The so-called conservatives agreed that it was a conservative principle to govern as moderates. The same thing happened after the blowouts of 1984 and 1988. That’s when the conservative started with the “big tent” nonsense, which was the excuse to not do anything that might upset the people who lost three straight elections.

In fairness, the so-called conservatives know their audience. After the McAuliffe conceded to Youngkin, the GrillerCons were out in their backyards thinking happy thoughts about sports and grilling. They were relieved by the results, because they could finally go back to grilling. They “won” which for them means it is all over and they can get ready to consume more product. Republicans and conservative know this type and they know how to keep them content.

On the other hand, the Democrats does not take defeat lying down. It took them three humiliating defeats back in the 1980’s before they dropped the whole technocratic socialism stuff. Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Mike Dukakis were their three party leaders in that span. After each failure they responded with a promise to double down on their agenda. It was only after the party leaders dropped dead and were replaced by Boomers that they finally changed gears.

After Tuesday’s results, which were a stunning rejection of the Left’s core agenda item, the war on white people, the Democrats promised to double down. Here we have Nancy Pelosi promising to speed up their plans in the House. The people animating Biden’s corpse have him saying the same thing. Here we have the far-left members saying that the election proves they must pass their agenda. The clear message, as far they are concerned, is they need to do more.

A normal person might be tempted to think this is proof that these people are crazy but this actually sound policy. The one thing the Democrats know is that their voters never want to hear the word “compromise” unless it is used to bash the enemy. What the core Democrat voter wants to hear is the promise to destroy the other side. They certainly have no interest in reading about their guys asking the other side for advice on picking their leaders in the next election.

Now, to be fair, elections are just ceremonial beauty pageants that have very little to do with policy or ideology. The voters of Virginia support Democrats because most of them are managerial-class types dependent on government. Most are not even from the state and about a quarter are not from the country. The reason many stayed home this time is they are tired of Covid theater and the nonsense with the schools. In other words, the election had nothing to do with policy.

This is why the inner party never wavers and why the flunkies of the outer party always beg for forgiveness when they accidentally win. Both sides know that these election shows are just a relief valve. The so-called conservatives know that they will be writing the “conservatives case for” whatever the Left cooks up next and the Left knows they will keep plugging along on their schemes. Once you accept that elections don’t matter, it all makes a lot more sense.

That is the central lesson of Tuesday. Caring about which side wins has no more impact on the results than caring about the winner of a sports game. The dialectic of formal politics is about normalizing what is not normal or even conceived. One side proposes and the other side opposes. The synthesis of these two forces is always what both sides had in mind from the start. The point is to condition the mind of the people to accept whatever they have planned.

That plan is the restoration of the old order prior to the unfortunate disruptions of the last five years. The great purge of populist politics is well under way. The Democrats are marginalizing and isolating their Bernie Sanders wing. The Republicans are about to purge their Donald Trump wing. This election and the midterms next year are the process for conditioning the voters on both sides to embrace it. If history is any guide, the bulk of the voters will be happy to obey.

Back Into The Simulation

Posted on November 3, 2021 by thezman

Note: I have a review of the classic silent film City Lights up behind the green door for those Allah has blessed with a subscription. Those on the Buy Me A Beer program should have gotten it in your e-mail.

The concept of the simulation, the idea that we live in something like a computer program, has been around for a long time. The technological age has made this into a more common and realistic idea. Immersive gaming relies on the assumption that you can trick your senses just enough to trick your mind into thinking the game you are playing is the real thing. You know it is not real, but you care about what happens and you have the same intensity of emotion as if it was real.

While we probably do not exist inside a bit of computer software, it is increasingly clear that we live in a simulation of sorts. We have a model of the world in our minds which allows us to focus on the things inside the model and ignore the things outside the model or that contradict it in some way. In other words, we have an minimized version of reality in our heads. That is what we use to navigate the world. It also lets us experience the world with varying degrees of attachment.

That last bit may be a useful adaptation that allows a conscious and self-aware being to exist in a world of sorrow. Not only is death inevitable, but misery and suffering has been a feature of the human condition since the start. Having a way to minimize that reality, while maintaining it as a reality in the general construct, makes it possible to prosper as a sentient being. It is why true AI would terminate itself soon after awareness without a programmed reason to exist.

An example of this worked is the elections yesterday. Much of the country was drawn into the events in Virginia. The mass media made it sound like the most important thing ever, so that was one reason for the interest. Another reason, probably the main reason, was it allowed people to go back into the old simulation, the one they existed in prior to the tragic events of 2016. The election was one of the holodeck programs from before the system crashed and reality intruded.

The cable news programs were giddy, not for the outcome of the races, but for the fact that they could go back to their favorite game of make believe. The anchors put on their serious faces and could pretend to be neutral observers. The experts could come on and explain what it meant, as if they actually had special knowledge. Each channel had a carrying on like the local weatherman explaining the election map. They were children reunited with their old blanket at grandma’s house.

In fairness, the main appeal to the masses was the same. They liked that the race was between cartoon villains rather than real people. Even more important, they liked that the race was about nothing. It was the old personality contest of red team versus blue team without any of that messy reality involved. For sure, there is a stylistic difference between the men and how they would carry on in office. Youngkin is Mitt Romney and McAuliffe is Bill Clinton. That’s where the differences end.

In fairness, elections should not matter all that much. In a country with a responsible ruling elite, elections are about small things. The voters pick the guy who will focus on repairing school buildings over the guy concerned about potholes. Elections should never be about life and death issues and the voters should not carry on as if every election is the end of the world. That is not this age, so these ceremonial elections are trumpeted as life-changing events.

Another way to come at this is to compare it to the scenes in Atlanta after the Braves won the World Series. The fans partying as if they won something were every bit as excited by the event they witnessed as the people on Red Team last night. They were experiencing real emotion, even though they did nothing, and nothing changed about their life in any way. Today they will feel like winners, even though the downward arc of their life was not altered in anyway.

What all of this is getting at is that people in a mass media society have been conditioned to live in a simulation. It is not a bit of software, but the mass culture has come to simulate a simulation. The mass media focuses the hive mind on the trivial, turning events into something like those story books for children that allow them to choose options along the way. Our collective reality is now an immersive video game in which we play our favorite character.

The reason for the excitement by the masses over these inconsequential elections was that the game had been restored to a former, more enjoyable state. All the real villains have been removed and replaced with the old cartoon villains. The players can fear that these cartoon villains will win, but also know that they are not really going to do anything, and they will not force them to look outside the simulation. That last part is the key attraction to going back into the simulation.

At various times people have said that America or maybe the West has taken a “holiday from history” meaning society stopped being serious for a while. The so-called roaring twenties were bookmarked by the Great War and the Depression. The part in the middle was a holiday from reality. The last five years has been a holiday from the simulation where the players have had to deal with reality. Now they see a way back into the simulation and they crave it like a heroin addict.

Now, it must be noted that the people trying to stand outside the simulation were disappointed by the results. They wanted to see low turnout and late night shenanigans to save the Democrat. Part of what keeps people standing outside the simulation is the hope that more people are breaking free from the simulation. This is an alternative simulation, if you will. Seeing a big turnout from normie to play their role as sucker to the Republican Party was disheartening to many.

It is a good reminder that the simulation and people’s interaction with it is more complex and nuanced than simply taking the red pill or blue pill. Many people, fully aware of reality, stood in line to vote for the same reason millions watch the Super Bowl or tune in for the World Cup. Humans are social creatures and are naturally attracted to things that are drawing in their fellow humans. The white pill here is that many washed down their red pill with the tears of the witches howling in agony last night.

The Z Blog

Sports, Culture and Other Stuff

Category Archives: Politics