What Lies Beneath

Posted on September 13, 2023 by thezman

Imagine a world of perfect candor where any hint of deception or inaccuracy is considered a blot on a man’s character. Everyone is raised to answer every question as honestly and forthrightly as possible. When the wife asks the husband if he thinks she is getting fat, he tells her he does think she is getting fat. Instead of getting upset and running into the bedroom, she excitedly hugs him because he was perfectly honest to her regarding an extremely sensitive matter.

This Vulcan-like candor would alter social relations. For example, stores would seek the best way to show their customers that they are completely honest. When they put something on sale, they would say it was because no one liked it or that they mistakenly bought too much of it and now need to unload it. The sign at the customer service window would read, “The customer is usually wrong.” Clerks would never say “have a good one” to customers.

That would still leave room for deception, so the stores would insist the product makers use candid labeling for their products. Frozen pizza boxes would read, “It tastes like cardboard, but it is cheap and easy to heat in the microwave.” Ingredient lists would include all of the ingredients, even the ones that cause cancer and those would be highlighted so the customer could see them. Organic food would not exist as everything about it is fake and therefore a lie.

Keep in mind that this imaginary world is not enforcing honestly at the point of a gun but as a matter of cultural preference. For some reason, the people in this society came to believe that only through perfect honesty can they have moral society. Therefore, the customs, folk legends and religious practices are all geared toward enforcing this idea that honesty is the highest virtue. Because honesty comes with status, everyone in public engages in honesty signaling contests.

It may seem ridiculous at first, but every human society selects for subjective qualities and against other qualities. The English prefer interesting over boring, which is why their popular figures appear eccentric and weird. Americans dislike phonies so popular figures try hard to look sincere, even when lying. There is no objective reason to prefer interesting over dull or sincere over inauthentic. Preferring these qualities is not more or less strange than celebrating candor.

Now think about this in the American context. Walk into any grocery store in America and the first thing you will experience is a lie. Typically, the produce section is located at the front of the store. There will be piles of fruits and vegetables labeled organic, but as a practical matter there is no such thing. Even if the fruit is grown according to the rules of the organic cult, the suppliers lose track of it long before it reaches the store, so there is no way to know what is organic and what is inorganic.

The stores know this. They put the best-looking stuff on the table marked organic and jack up the price to reinforce the lie. The suppliers know this, and the growers know it too, if you can get them to be honest about it. Everything about that organic tomato you bought is a lie, including your belief that it is better than the other tomato. You reward yourself by accepting the lie. You reward the store for lying to you and the store rewards its suppliers for lying to them. It is liars all the way down.

You have made it a few feet into the store, and you are deluged with lies. Venture further and you are swimming in an ocean of lies. The packaging of food is carefully designed to trick consumers. Tens of billions of dollars have gone into figuring out how to trick people into buying things. Of course, everything about the American diet is a lie perpetrated by the government at the behest of agribusiness. A man from Planet Candor would be horrified by the frozen food section.

Now, think about what sort of government would work best in a society run on the principle of complete candor. Monarchy could work, but it would be less than honest to claim that the son of the king is the most qualified to rule. A ruling council of the most honest citizens, maybe picked by the people, would probably be best as it would reward candor with the highest office. Candidates for seats on the council would prove their worth through campaigns of total honesty.

In fact, democracy would work well on Planet Candor. One of the foundational principles of democracy is that “all members must have equal and effective opportunities to learn about the consequences and alternatives of a proposal.” In a society where honesty is the highest virtue, the pressure to make sure everyone is as well informed as possible would lead to the most informed citizens. You would not have to worry about voter fraud or ballot stuffing on Planet Candor.

This is where you might think something is wrong. America is more democratic than any society in history and it is riddled with lies and corruption. The man holding the highest office recently claimed he was at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He repeatedly tells outlandish whoppers like this about himself. He is in office because he was the beneficiary of the most corrupt election in American history. That was made possible by a tsunami of lies from the mass media.

We seem to have a dilemma. On the one hand, the society of perfect honesty seems like the ideal place for democracy. On the other hand, democracy in practice results in a society ruled by the least honest people. When you think back to how our marketplace operates on a foundation of lies, it suggests any open market, whether it is for goods and service or ideas, becomes an elaborate game of liar’s poker. The marketplace rewards deception, so you end up with a lot of liars.

There are some possible solutions to this dilemma. One is that humans naturally want to live in a society controlled by liars. We have steadily become more democratic because mankind is slowly reaching its desired end. Alternatively, democracy and the marketplace turn even the most honest people into liars. If someone unleashed democracy on Planet Candor, it would quickly devolve into Planet Deception and come to resemble modern America.

There is a third option. Let us suppose that Planet Candor operates on perfect honesty because long ago a powerful force came to their planet and told them that unless they stamped out deception, their planet would be destroyed. Over time this belief in the risk of deception became a central part of who they are as a people and who each person is in relation to society. Put another way, honesty has become a religion for them, one that leads to salvation for themselves and their posterity.

Under such conditions, the acid of democracy and the free market would land on a society immune to its corrosive effects. All those snakes selling organic apples in the produce section of the grocery store would find no takers. Similarly, the fig leaf makers would have no reason to exist. After all, those they did manage to tempt would be selected out of the gene pool due to low status. In time, democracy would be a mechanism to select against the dishonest.

John Adams said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Outside of the various forms of authoritarianism, this is true of all governments. You cannot have an honest monarchy if the people over whom it rules are immoral. You cannot have a benevolent dictator if his people are liars and crooks. Morality is what ultimately controls the behavior of the people and what makes good governance possible.

That is the source of what plagues us today. The structures we inherited assume a specific moral foundation. When the ruling class that emerged with the American empire in the middle of the last century exiled the principles that made up that moral foundation, society was left without any protection from the temptations that lie in the marketplace for goods and ideas. The endless haggling over what we ought to do is only possible when there is no moral authority.

It also explains the panicked frenzy by the ruling class to conjure a moral framework to justify their behavior. The endless chanting about diversity is not intended to convince anyone that it is a strength, but to prevent anyone from asking who gave them the authority to fill our communities with strangers. The weird sexual fetishes they have unleashed are squid ink to prevent anyone from asking them upon what moral authority they are basing their sweeping claims about society.

The great critic of the Enlightenment, Joseph de Maistre, famously said, “Every country has the government it deserves.” Most people think this means the people deserve punishment for supporting unscrupulous politicians. What de Maistre meant here is the morality of society determines the type of government. In the case of France, stripping away the Catholic Church and the monarchy left French society without a moral foundation for government. Tyranny is what followed.

That is what we see happening in the West. The American empire jettisoned its moral foundations a century ago and the result is an empire that imposes cultural and spiritual chaos on the West. Democracy and the promiscuous lying that we see are just symptoms of the moral hollowness of the empire. The West is now ruled by moral nullities who demand to be treated as moral arbiters and in the end, they are left to operate as dictators holding power by force.

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Our Democracy

Posted on September 11, 2023 by thezman

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The phrase “our democracy” has become a popular chant among the political class, always used as an excuse for anti-democratic action. You can be sure they will be saying it like they have a weird form of Tourette’s when the time comes to bar Donald Trump from the Republican nomination. “For the good of our democracy, we are going to remove the most popular guy from the Republican ballot.” In his place they will appoint someone with little or no support.

Of course, this will be met with howls from the usual corners. They will jump up and down demanding everyone notice the hypocrisy. What “hypocrisy” means in the sector we call the Right is “they are doing that which we would never have the courage to do even if allowed.” When the group we call the Left uses this word they mean, “We have found some minor contradiction in the criticism of us, so we are now free to ignore all of that and continue on with our work.”

This difference in language is important to understanding why the political class has become so fond of the phrase “our democracy.” For normal people, democracy is a process by which the policy preferences of the majority win out. In the crudest form it is understood to mean majority rule. For most people, however, it means a process by which the voters select representatives who then haggle and bargain over public policy in legislatures while following an established set of rules.

Democracy can have things that are not majority rule. The most obvious is the Electoral College system for electing a president. Normal people understand that this is not majority rule, but a way to protect the interests of small states against the interests of large states within the democratic process. The Senate is another example of something that is not democratic in the narrow sense, but part of the democratic framework of the system to maintain balance.

There used to be a time when students were taught that the American system was not a democracy but a representative republic. Democracy is mob rule and mobs can be very fickle, especially under stress. The system of checks and balances in the system is to slow the mob so that the will of the people can mature. The people may not get what they want initially, but after a series of elections the will of the people wills out and we get public policy that reflects the general consensus.

Obviously, that is nothing like reality. One part of becoming a dissident is accepting that this stuff you learned in school is at best naïve and at worst a lie. The two-party system that we have is designed to prevent ideas outside the consensus of the two parties from entering the political debate. It also works to prevent the ruling class from having to address the concerns of the people. The “democratic process” is a fig leaf used by the ruling elite to subdue any resistance to their rule.

Now, the right side of the political class does not think about this as those people are generally selected for their stupidity. Their job is to wave their pom-poms at the suburban peasants while the system celebrates itself. The left side, on the other hand, does think about it and they have a different definition of democracy. Their definition of democracy begins with what they think the will of the people ought to be if it is completely informed and allowed to blossom.

You see, you can only have democracy when the people are equally informed and allowed to fully participate in the debate. In order to do this, the citizens must fully understand their own interests and to do this they must come to understand their purpose within the framework of society. Until you can fully know yourself, you cannot fully participate in the democratic process. As a result, most people are tricked into voting against their interests or the interests of society.

One part of defending democracy is to prevent this from happening. The defenders of “our democracy” are always seeking to shape the public space so that the people can discover their true purpose and act on it through the process. This cannot happen if there are people out there spreading disinformation or misinformation, so one job of the democracy defenders is to root out the bad actors from the public square. You cannot have democracy if everyone is allowed to speak.

What is important here is that the defenders of democracy are not defending a process but the idea of the true will of the people. Since the process can be corrupted, it can result in undemocratic results, like the 2016 election. In a true democracy bad people like Trump and his voters do not exist, much less win elections. In order to defend democracy, the defenders of democracy were forced to use any means necessary, even undemocratic ones, to stop Donald Trump.

Now, the defenders of democracy assume certain things about the purpose of society, its natural end point, which means they assume certain things about the purpose of the people who will one day populate the fully flowered democracy. The most important foundational item is the assumption that once everyone is fully democratic and fully understands her purpose, everyone agrees on the purpose of society. This means politics withers away as there is nothing to debate.

Since the defenders of democracy understand all of this, the presence of people who oppose them means society is not democratic. The larger project requires that these people be removed by any means necessary. As long as these enemies of democracy are standing in the way of progress, the defenders of democracy have a right and an obligation to do what is required to defeat them. It turns out that you can only reach true democracy through authoritarian means.

That last bit is critical. The defenders of democracy assume that once the conditions for democracy are firmly and unquestionable in place, the people in the system will have no choice but to realize their true purpose as democratic people. At that magical point, politics collapses as all moral disputes are gone. There is no need for elections and the rule of law because everyone at all times agrees on everything. There is no coercion because there is no dissent from the moral order of democracy.

This is why there can be no compromise between the people who see democracy as a process and those who see it as a moral conclusion. The former group not only tolerates dissent but sees it as proof the system works. The latter group sees dissent as proof the system is failing. This contrast in moral visions makes it impossible for the two camps to coexist in the same society. If you want a democratic society, you can never tolerate people who want a democracy.

Fortune’s Wheel

Posted on September 7, 2023 by thezman

In August 1936, the Soviet Union held the first of a series of trials of former Bolsheviks who had been accused of various crimes against the state. The first group accused were Old Bolsheviks who had been allies of Stalin at one point. They had later sided with Trotsky and been stripped of their positions. By this point Trotsky was in exile and his supporters were all in various states of disfavor. One element of the first trial was the claim that the accused were still in contact with Trotsky.

At the time, the international Left was firmly in the Bolshevik camp, as this was the first successful radical government in the world. Whatever the doctrinal difference within the international radical camp, no one could deny that the Bolsheviks had managed to take power in a large important country. As a result, radicals found a way to justify what was happening to the accused. The cause was more important than any man, so no one dared criticize what was happening.

Even when it should have been clear that the trials had little to do with the alleged crimes, radicals around the world found a way to justify what was happening in the name of solidarity. “No enemies to the left” was never a real thing in radical politics, as left-wing politics has always been defined by endless schisms and disputes among rival factions but as the show trials progressed, it became a useful way to rally support in the face of criticism from outside radicalism.

What followed, of course, was more show trials of Old Bolsheviks, who were found guilty and then shot. A few escaped death and were sent to labor camps where they were expected to die. The show trials were then followed by waves of arrests, executions, and purges of the party. No one knows for sure how many died in Stalin’s purges, but the general consensus is between seven hundred thousand and one million people were killed in the process.

There are a lot of lessons about the nature of human society to be drawn from the Bolsheviks and especially Stalin. Radicalism since the French Revolution has always been about a radical break from the past, but in every case, it turns out be a horrific replay of the worst of mankind’s past. Stalin was the extreme example of the worst Tsar, an industrial strength version of Ivan IV, rather than the leader of a revolutionary movement to usher in a radical new form of society.

Another lesson of the purges was that there is never any appeal to the humanity and compassion of the radicals. Even when Stalin purged the beloved Nikolai Bukharin, radicals found a way to justify it. Stalin’s decision to murder his old friend and most loyal Bolshevik should have been viewed as a monstrous crime that could only be committed by a monster, instead radicals found a way to explain it away. Again, the cause is bigger than any one man or group of men.

Of course, the greatest lesson of all is that when the old rules break down or are willfully destroyed, what is left is a lawless world. Once the law collapses, everyone becomes an outlaw by definition. In a world where everyone lives outside the law, the people who survive and thrive are always the most cunning and ruthless. In the case of the Bolsheviks, Stalin was not the smartest or the most persuasive, but he was the most cunning and ruthless, so he came out on top.

All of this would be ancient history if not for what we see happening in Washington with the show trials being run by the ruling junta. Calling the people in charge the Biden administration is no longer sensible as it is clear that Biden is deep in the throes of dementia and barely able to do basic things. The government is now run by a collection of people who operate in the shadows. They control things through the people appointed to various posts in the administration.

Much like Stalin’s trials, the process has moved from arresting minor figures on trumped up charges to now arresting the former president. It is not inconceivable to think they may exile Trump in order to keep him off the ballot. Of course, the viciousness and cruelty of the show trials grows worse with every turn. A judge just sentenced the leaders of the Proud Boys to decades in prison. The judge used the sentencing hearings as a chance to denounce the enemies of the party.

That is another feature of the Stalin trials that bears attention. In every one of the show trials, the judges were outlandish supporters of the party and the charges brought against the accused. These were men picked because of their uncertain status within the party, particularly with regards to Stalin. The judges in the current show trials seem to feel the same pressure, so they are making sure the cases proceed exactly as the party expects them to proceed.

Of course, the radicals in the cheering sections are following the same script as the radicals who cheered the show trials. The same people who cry salty tears over a black criminal getting shot in the commission of a crime are cheering the harsh penalties handed down to grandmothers in these show trials. The cause is more important than the rule of law and their thirst for the blood of their enemies trumps whatever sense of justice that ever existed in their souls.

The most important lesson of the Stalin years is that the terror that Stalin inflicted ended when Stalin’s life ended. At no point was he talked out of murdering people. He never had second thoughts or pangs of guilt. After his death, a letter from his old friend Bukharin was found in which Bukharin appealed to Stalin as a friend. Stalin kept it in his desk so he could read it from time to time, presumably so he could remember how he outmaneuvered even his closest friends.

Tyranny ends when the tyrant and his supporters end. That last part is the most important part of the process. When Stalin died his supporters were then purged and sidelined, with some ending up in the camps. The party leadership went through a de-Stalinization phase. The reason is the tyrant is always a symptom. It is his supporters in the cheering section who are the ultimate cause. It is only when you remove the fanatics and psychopaths that normalcy can return.

During the Napoleonic Wars, there was a British officer named Sir William Sidney Smith who was particularly good at vexing Napoleon in battle. Eventually, the French captured him and Napoleon had him put in a Paris prison. Smith was able to escape with the help of royalist enemies of Napoleon. In the prison was found a shingle on which he had written a letter. In the letter Smith quoted a passage from Rousseau that should be inspiration for all political prisoners

“Fortune’s wheel makes strange revolutions, it must be confessed; but for the term revolution to be applicable, the turn of the wheel must be complete. You are today as high as you can be. Very well. I envy not your good fortune, for mine is better still. I am as low in the career of ambition as a man can well descend; so that, let this capricious dame, fortune, turn her wheel ever so little–I must necessarily mount, for the same reason you must descend.”

The men and women rotting in dungeons at the hands of the regime are in the very condition of Sir William Sidney Smith. They are in prison because they vex the regime, not because they are outlaws. In a general sense, all of us are in the same condition, just free to talk around until another example is needed. Like Sir William Sidney Smith, fortunes wheel will turn, and we will rise the regime shall fall. Those who cheered the loudest for the show trials will be remembered the most.

The Spirit Of The Law

Posted on September 6, 2023 by thezman

In the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble is told by the court that the law assumes his wife acts under his direction. Mr. Bumble responds with, “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass – a idiot”. The ass in this case is the donkey, an animal known for its obstinance. Over time the expression has been used to point out that the letter of the law can not only contradict the spirit of the law, but the law itself can contradict common sense and objective reality.

The more important point here though is that the law is an effort to formalize the commonly held moral code, a set of rules that determine what members of a society ought to do and ought not to do. It is not the moral code itself, but an effort to write it down on paper so it is clear to everyone. Fundamental to most ethical systems is the assertion that ignorance of the law is no excuse. You need to know the rules, which is why they are written down so that you can know them.

Despite the law seeming to be an ass, there is a logic to the law. That logic, like all systems, starts from some foundational items. These are the things that everyone in the law assumed to be true. For example, the Bill of Rights is supposed to be a list of starting points for understanding the limits of government. These are not supposed to be up for debate. As far as the law is supposed to be concerned, these are settled truths that cannot be challenged or violated.

This gets to an important point. Every system of oughts, the list of things you ought to do and the things you ought not do, begins with a set of eternal truths that rest on a recognized authority. Christians are free to eat pork because they do not recognize the moral authority of the Muslims and Jews. The prohibition against eating pork rests on the moral authority of those two religions. It is not an objective truth, but a subjective one that works only when you accept it.

The law is a system of oughts and therefore assumes an authority and that authority is supposed to be the Constitution but also tradition as expressed through precedent or the accumulation of court decisions. The Constitution is the starting point for what we all agree is the system of oughts. Precedent is the accumulated decisions over time on the things that were not expressly covered in the Constitution. Combined this makes up the system of oughts that define the morality of our society.

That last bit is what is often missed. Once something is formally put on the list of things you ought not do, it quickly becomes part of the informal list of taboos. The reason for this is that we naturally assume that in a democratic society the law reflects not only the general will but general morality. If the law says it is not allowed, it must mean that it is outside of that which is morally acceptable. In other words, once the court makes it against the law, it quickly becomes immoral.

An obvious example of this in action is homosexual marriage. Up until a few years ago people understood that marriage was about creating children. Since nature dictates how this is done, marriage must be one man and one woman. Then one day some people decided that the laws of nature are up for debate. Two men, it was argued, could be married, despite the biological impossibility of it. This group remained a ridiculous minority until they were able to get the courts to side with them.

In the blink of an eye, the issue of homosexual marriage went from absurd poke in the eye of Mother Nature to settled moral principle. Conservatives who opposed the idea then suddenly defended it. Even social conservatives have dropped their public opposition to homosexual marriage. You can see the change in moral attitudes in the polling on the issue. This absurd mockery of the laws of nature became part of the accepted moral code with the stroke of a judge’s pen.

Another example is the Brown decision. Central to the jihad against white people in this age are the novel moral principles invented by the court. In fact, the court not only created two new moral claims, but made those the controlling principles, superseding even those items written in the Constitution itself. As a result, the constitutional order went from a system of limits on government power to a system of demands on the white population of the country.

The same process is happening with the Bostock decision. In this case a majority of the justices agreed that discriminating against men pretending to be women so they can beat up girls on the soccer field is a form of sexual discrimination and therefore violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As Harvard professor Adrian Vermeule points out, this is a ridiculous claim on its face, but it also opens the door for adding yet another novel principle to the legal order.

As we have seen with other novelties from the court, it will not be long before this one sinks into the moral fabric of society. If you do not want your daughters pulverized by burly men in sundresses on the ball field, you will be shunned from polite society or maybe even suffer legal persecution. The fact that the Bostock decision was written by a so-called conservative judge, one anointed by the allegedly conservative Federalist Society and appointed by Trump is critical.

We used to worry about putting Catholics on the bench because it was assumed they would operate from Catholic morality, rather than the morality of high church Protestantism that informed the political order. It was assumed that judges were like all men, and they would operate from within a moral framework, formally expressed through organized religion until recent times. Catholics had Catholic morality, while Episcopalians had Anglican morality.

In other words, the text of the Constitution and the traditions and precedents that informed it were based on a moral framework that existed outside of it. The political system was founded by and for people who assumed a moral order based in high church Protestantism. It did not prohibit men dressed as women from beating up girls on the ball fields because no Christian people would ever conceive of such a thing, much less tolerate advocacy for it.

Once that morale framework was removed from the system, the Constitutional order was left without a moral foundation. It no longer had moral authority on which to rest the list of things members of society ought to do and ought not do. The political system was left to conjure one to replace it. The Brown decision and now Bostock rest on the moral authority of the new religion that has evolved since the middle of the last century, which promises salvation through universal liberation.

In the end, the law is a formalization of the moral code of a society. That moral code reflects the identity of the people who rule society. The foundation of which is either something outside of the human condition like the gods or the collective identity of the people who control society. Once the American ruling class abandoned Christianity as the moral foundation, it eventually settled on the collective identity of the ruling elite that emerged in the middle of the last century.

The trouble is, that ruling elite cannot settle on an exclusive identity as it is a hodgepodge of people from various tribes. Exclusivity therefore runs counter to their shared reality, so their new identity is the Open Society. It is a polite fiction but all ethical codes contain polite fictions. The new ruling elite is every bit as exclusive and discriminating as any ruling elite, it is just that they assume their calling is to usher in the Open Society, a world of free of discrimination and prejudice.

The Star Chamber Phase

Posted on August 30, 2023 by thezman

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The term “star chamber” has fallen out of use over the last few decades, but it was a common term used by the American Left in the 20th century. They would use it when arguing that the courts were acting arbitrarily. Other times they would use it in the context of public opinion when one of their guys was in trouble. The point was that the media was being unfair to their guy. Star chambers were bad so anything with those words associated with it must be bad too.

The Star Chamber was a real thing. It was an English court setup in the 15th century to oversee cases involving socially and political important people. This court was staffed with advisors to the king. This way the judges would not be intimidated by the status of the accused. No one knows for sure how it got the name “star chamber” but the most popular theory says it comes from the decorations. The ceiling was painted with gold stars on a blue background.

Of course, like all government power, it was soon abused by the people wielding it to first attack their enemies in court and then to suppress dissent. The main reason it was subverted into an instrument of oppression is it lacked due process. There was no appealing the decisions of the court and since it operated by its own rules, there could be no appeal to a fixed set of rules. This allowed the king to use the system to persecute his enemies and stamp out dissent.

It is why up until the last few decades, the American court system was based on a fixed set of rules that governed all courts. This was ensured by an appeals system that ended with the Supreme Court. Forgotten today, the primary purpose of the Supreme Court was to make sure the court system followed the rules, the primary source of which is the Constitution itself. The courts being open to the public was an additional check on abuse of the legal system by the powerful.

The reason “star chamber” has fallen out of fashion in America is the Left has seized control of the institutions, including the centers of cultural production. They no longer look at the abuse of power as a problem because they have all the power so by definition all uses of power are justified. Note that their objections to the secret courts created after 9/11 were ceremonial and halfhearted. In reality they welcomed this new tool they could use in pursuit of their agenda.

Note also that the only thing we know about these secret courts is they were used against Donald Trump in the 2016 election. To date no one has produced an example of how these courts prevented terrorism. The documented abuses of these secret courts by the FBI have gone unaddressed. Because the courts are secret, we have no idea what goes on inside them, so there is no way to know they are not being used against dissidents in the same way they were used against Trump.

Putting that aside, the court system we can see is also going through a transformation toward the Star Chamber model. Again, Trump provides some examples. In his Florida case the court has warned him about making public statements. There is the threat of a gag order hanging over him. In Washington, Jack Smith has asked the court for what amounts to a gag order on Trump. In Georgia, Trump cancelled a press conference about the case for fear of retribution from the court.

Since we get our information about court proceedings from the media and the media is now an agent of the state, it is not hard to see why proscribed people would want to have their say outside the courthouse. The only chance for fairness in the courtroom now is for the accused to make his appeals outside the courthouse. Naturally, the courts now wish to stifle such conduct. If they can gag the accused, he cannot shine a light on the abuses inside the court through appeals to the public.

This is not just a phenomenon in high profile political cases. Increasingly, local judges and prosecutors are doing the same thing. Here is a case of a famous college football player accused of heinous crimes. If you read between the lines, he was framed by the cops but was forced to remain quiet in order to get out of the case. He comes from money and his father is famous, but none of that matters in a court system that is increasingly the tool of arbitrary state power.

The difference between the rule of law and rule by men is that the former has a clear and precises set of rules open to the public, while the latter is based on the momentary whims of the people who wield power. The proliferation of laws along with a proliferation of ways to interpret the laws has made everything illegal. No one can now list all of the federal crimes on the books. As a result, most people are breaking the law every day of their life without knowing it.

The reason this matters is one of the predicates for social upheaval, like civil wars and revolutions, is the collapse of trust in the law. The Star Chamber system, for example, ended with the English Civil War. The American Revolution was, in part, a response to the collapse of legal authority. The American Civil War was due, in part, to a collapse in trust by both sides in the courts fairly dealing with the slavery issue. The legal system no longer provided a solution to disputes.

When no one trusts the law or the legal system, no one has a reason to obey the rules, much less respect the system that creates them. Put another way, when everyone is in violation of the law, then everyone is motivated to live outside the law. This is the fundamental definition of the outlaw. He is an outlaw because he rejects the system of laws and therefore exists outside the law. This is also the starting place for every revolutionary and revolutionary movement.

In the end, the test of a legal system is the test of a society. That is, how much protection does it provide to those with the least power. A society that provides only protection to the powerful is a tyranny. A legal system that provides no protection to those without power from those with power is also a tyranny. The Star Chamber became the symbol of tyrannical rule because it was the instrument of tyranny, just as our legal system is today.

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Phase Change

Posted on August 28, 2023 by thezman

Note #1: I was invited on to chat with Peter Quinones about the Republican debate, the courage of Trump, the Tucker interview and many other things. For those missing the sound of me droning on each Friday, you can get your fix here.

Note #2: Behind the green door is a post about how everything is gay, a post about the terribleness of Tennessee Williams, and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up for a green door account at SubscribeStar or Substack.

The war in the Ukraine is about to go through a phase change as the Ukrainian initiative comes to an end this autumn. For most of the year, the war has been characterized by Western initiates, along with Ukrainian military action. Planning and publicizing the Ukrainian spring offensive dominated the first half of the year, while the last three months have been dominated by the offensive itself. By all accounts this will run out of steam in the next few weeks.

According to Western media, the point of the counter-offensive was to use NATO trained brigades using Western equipment and tactics to break through Russian defenses in the south and create a corridor to the Sea of Azov. This would split Russian forces and isolate the Crimea. The assumption was that the Russian army would abandon their positions rather than fight. This in turn would create a political crisis in Russia, perhaps forcing a withdraw from Ukraine.

What happened instead was the newly trained Ukrainian units charged headlong into massive minefields while being slammed with Russian artillery. The internet was full of videos showing burning NATO equipment and desperate Ukrainian soldiers trying to escape the minefields. Western sources indicate Ukraine lost a third of this force in the first weeks of the offensive. This map of the southern defensive lines shows how little progress the Ukrainians have made in three months.

In addition to the big push in the south, the Ukrainians tried to retake Bakhmut, which they had lost in the spring. By all accounts this was a total failure and they ceased trying to retake the city. Those forces have been diverted to the south for one last shot at making some progress. Right now, the Ukrainians are putting their last Western units into a final push to capture a tiny village called Robotino. This appears to be the final battle of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.

On the public relations front, Ukraine has been launching small drone attacks against buildings in the Moscow suburbs. They have also launched attacks against Crimea using their remaining Storm Shadow missiles they got from Britain, as well as the small, improvised drones they have been using on civilian targets. These efforts have no military value, but they are seen as moral boosters. The images are quickly spread around by Western media.

The long and short of this is the West appears to be in a panic over the results, especially in the south. The narrative said that Russia is a paper tiger, and the army would break at the first sign of Western equipment. At this point, the Ukrainians were supposed to be bathing in the Sea of Azov. Instead, billions in NATO gear lies in ruins in a place now called Bradley Park. It is called that by the Ukrainians because it contains so many bombed out Bradley fighting vehicles.

There is now a growing concern that the Ukrainian army is running out of men and material to continue fighting. That speaks to the horrific losses they have taken in this ill-fated counter-offensive, but also the long toll of the war. As a result, Ukraine is stepping up mobilization efforts. There are rumors that that Zelensky will call for a full mobilization of Ukraine, which means that every available male will be called to service and maybe even the females of military age.

The one area where Ukraine has had some success is in the Black Sea, where they have been using sea drones to harass Russian shipping. There is speculation that they are using Romania to launch and control these British made drones and maybe there are British contractors helping them. American Reaper drones are also active in the Black Sea, suggesting they help locate targets. Regardless, the Black Sea has become a problem for the Russian navy and Russian shipping.

The question is what comes next. There are rumors that the Russians have been plotting an offensive of their own. This may simply be echoes from the Battle of Kursk, which took place eighty years ago in the same location. In that battle, the Soviet army stood their ground against a massive German offensive, then counter attacked, leading to one of the biggest tank battles in history. The Russians are obsessed with their history, so this may be the source of those rumors.

On the other hand, the Russians have been advancing along the northern part of the line of contact, to the point where Ukraine has evacuated the strategic city of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region. This has led to speculation that Russia may be planning to capture Kharkiv city, which is the second largest city in Ukraine. They could also swing south and cut off supply lines to the Ukrainian army in the Donbas. The Russians supposedly have over 100,000 men in this area.

The other possibility is that the Ukrainians had to strip this area of men and equipment in order to supply their offensive in the south. As a result, the Russians are taking advantage of the situation to capture these important transport hubs. In other words, they are simply filling a void left by the Ukrainians, and it has nothing to do with their plans for the fall and winter. Either way, the collapse of this part of the Ukrainian lines supports the lack of manpower claims.

This leads to the topic of what comes next. As this phase of the war reaches its end over the next few weeks, the ball will now be in the court of the Russians, who have spent a year building up forces in Ukraine. They could go on the offensive or simply continue to grind away at the Ukrainian army. They could also begin to work on the Ukrainian infrastructure as a way to weaken their resolve. Of course, a major winter offensive is also a possibility.

There is also the question as to what the West does now that their great Ukrainian counter-offensive narrative is in tatters. For now, they seem to be contenting themselves with a blame game focused on the Ukrainians. The neocons are blaming the Ukrainian general for not following their orders, while the Pentagon is pointing the finger at Zelensky for meddling in the military planning. Out of this will come a new narrative, but its details remain a mystery at this point.

Then there is the election calendar. The Poles have elections is October, which will be an interesting look at European public opinion. There is no anti-war party in Poland to speak of, so it is going to be a more subtle read on how the ruling party has managed the war to this point. In June, the Germans have an election. The AfD is an anti-war party and they have jumped in the polls. So much so that the German government is threatening to ban the party entirely.

Of course, the American presidential election cycle has started. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the anti-war option on the Democrat side. The regime has banned any serious polling on him, but they must be worried as they have pulled Bernie Sanders out of mothballs to campaign in New Hampshire. Then you have Trump who is the enemy of the neocons and the military industrial complex. His swarthy mini-me, Vivek Ramaswamy, has also taken a strong anti-war position.

The bottom line is there is no path to victory for Ukraine. This phase of the war which has gone on for close to a year makes that abundantly clear. While the Ukraine army has fought heroically, they are outmanned and outgunned. Now that the West is out of weapons to send to them and Western domestic politics is about to take center stage, Ukraine will be faced with some grim choices. The big question is how a Western defeat plays out over the next year.

TV Time In Tiny Town

Posted on August 23, 2023 by thezman

Whether anyone likes it or not, the 2024 election kicks off officially tonight with a debate in Tiny Town between eight midgets vying for the Republican nomination. According to the strict standards for selecting the performers for this show, the cast will be Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott. These eight campaigns claim to have met the requirements set forth by the producers of the show.

This will be the first time anyone has seen Doug Burgum, whose name is often pronounced “bugman” by less scrupulous commentators. He is the current governor of North Dakota, a place few Americans can find on a map. Similarly, Asa Hutchinson will be introducing himself to the world, despite having spent the last half century in politics, mostly in Washington. He is the former governor of Arkansas and the man who championed the mutilation of children.

There used to be a time when the pundits would handicap these things in terms of what each candidate must do to help themselves in the debate. The game was to pretend all of them had an equal chance, so if they took the advice of the pundits, then they could become more equal than the others. For political people, this used to be a fun part of the process, but now that we know our elections are like professional wrestling, normal people have no interest in pretending otherwise.

Then there is the orange elephant in the room. There should be a fifteen-foot orange elephant on the stage with Donald Trump’s face on it, so the performers keep looking over at it as they read their lines. That would be both wildly entertaining and an honest presentation of what is really happening. The eight dwarfs are auditioning for the role of not-Trump, because they have been told that the real Trump will soon be behind bars or disqualified from the party’s nomination.

Given that all of the performers know this, the first reason to watch is for any clues as to the timing and circumstances of Trump’s removal. With the exception of Ramaswamy, none of these guys are working math puzzles in their free time. One of them is bound to say the quiet part aloud in the heat of the moment. The betting favorite in this regard is Chris Christie, who is playing the jilted lover role. He is there to trash Trump and eat donuts and they will not be serving donuts onstage.

That brings up another good reason to watch. Team DeSantis let slip that their guy was going to attack Ramaswamy in the debate. DeSantis is a career politician and he has proven himself adept at handling hostile media. He no doubt thinks he can take this young whipper snapper down a few pegs. Ramaswamy is an unusually smooth operator on his feet. Maybe this is where DeSantis shows himself to be a skilled debater or maybe this is where his campaign ends.

Of course, none of this is ever on the level. Fox News is hosting this show and they were just busted stacking the audience. There is little chance that the general audience is a true sampling of the public. We will get of the post-debate narrative by the reaction of the actors placed in the audience. Their job will be to cheer the planned winner and jeer the planned loser. The betting window remains open for your bets on who will be declared the winner, regardless of the results.

Right now, the oddsmakers have Ramaswamy as the betting favorite to win the crowd, but the smart money is on Tim Scott, followed by Mike Pence. The reason is the narrative will be about gravitas, the abracadabra word the media uses to anoint someone without having to explain it. The narrative will be about how normal the debate was without Trump and how we got to see the gravitas of the guy they are trying to sell as the winner of the evening’s performance.

This brings up the side bets, which are always fun. Which of these idiots will be the most cringe tonight? Which one will get caught in a loop and repeat his/her catch phrase over and over to no effect? Which one will be programmed so poorly that you expect to see a question mark appear over his head? Amusingly, the betting favorites here are also Tim Scott and Mike Pence. These two would make for a fun episode of robot wars, so they are good bets.

Then we have the wildcard action. In a sign that maybe the narrative writers are struggling to pick a winner from the cast of Tiny Town, the story of tonight could be that none of them are fit for the role. Instead, the story will be a totally authentic call for a savior, someone like Glenn Youngkin, who is the governor of Virginia and pals with all the right people in Washington. You would have to be a very cynical person to think that the usual suspects are plotting such a thing.

In the end, the main reason to care about this ridiculous farce is that Tucker will be interviewing Trump at the same time this show is happening. Clearly, Tucker and Trump are doing this to spite Fox News. It will be interesting to see the numbers for the Tucker show on Twitter. Fox will lie about their rating because that is what they do, but we will get a sense of it from the Twitter numbers. If Twitter shows more than five million views, then it was a very bad night in Tiny Town.

A Surprise Ending

Posted on August 16, 2023 by thezman

The latest indictments of Donald Trump are a good example of how narrative is a controlling feature of the managerial state. This is the fourth batch of indictments and arguably the most ridiculous. The players on the side of the regime are like characters from a racial satire. The fact that they accidentally posted the results before the grand jury vote is what we have come to expect in the crisis of competency. It is as if the regime is trying to prove the critics are right.

Putting aside the idiocy of it all, the interesting bit is how narrative drives the actions of the elites even when the narrative is false. They come up with a scenario for how things will unfold in their favor over some period of time. This gains circulation among the elites and their key servants in the managerial class. Those key servants then announce the narrative to the media, who then scurry about repeating it in various ways until it becomes the consensus.

We see this with the Trump indictments. Before the first indictment, there were rumors about the Department of Justice looking into Trump. Then we had some stories about pressure on Merrick Garland to appoint a special investigator to look into Trump’s role in the January 6 stuff. It was at this point the key servants arrived to deliver the narrative on the Trump indictment. They wrote op-eds and appeared on cable chat shows to explain to the media what will happen.

What would happen is this. Trump would be indicted for mean words and one of three things would follow. He would be disqualified under the 14th amendment. He would drop out of the race. The Republican Party would disqualify him. All of this assumed that once he was indicted, his support would collapse. The only people supporting him would be QAnon weirdos and election deniers. This could then be used to pressure him if pressure were needed.

Once the official narrative was announced, the race was on to be the star of the show that got the ball rolling. The affirmative action guy in New York pulled the lucky ticket and indicted Trump for the crime of paying his bills on time. The excitement among the media was as if they were waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. They were about to see the fulfillment of the narrative. Trump showed up, got charged and then continued campaigning as his popularity spiked up.

It took a little while for the media to figure out that the narrative was not playing out as they had been promised. CNN had a townhall hosted by their new you-go-girl that was supposed to be a roasting of Trump over his legal issues. To their horror, you-go-girl was not as good on stage as on the couch. Trump all but put her over his knee for a good spanking. Worse yet, the audience turned on the bimbo and laughed along with Trump at the idiocy of the whole thing.

Instead of backtracking on the narrative, we got two sets of Federal indictments of Trump, along with the same story lines from the prior indictment. The only thing missing was a Greek chorus chanting, “We got him this time. There is no way he escapes the narrative after this indictment.” Of course, in both cases Trump’s polling has gone up as people begin to see him as a victim of a malevolent system. At this point, the official Trump narrative should have collapsed.

Instead, we have a fresh batch of indictments. There is also word that other states with crackpot governors are looking to indict Trump. It is becoming something like the iPod craze back in the before times. All of the fashionable people in the provinces now want an indictment of Trump like the cool people have in the big cities. At this rate, the Europeans will be indicting Trump. Maybe they can drag him to the Hague for crimes against humanity for eating his steak well done.

Note that in each effort to push the narrative along the focus has been on humiliating Trump in the process. In this new show from Georgia, the first thing they did was announce that they will mugshot Trump and spread the pic online. The fact that they continue to think they can humiliate this man by making him more popular is a staggering indictment of these people. Trump will be selling shirts with his mugshot on them to raise millions for his campaign.

The Trump business is just a recent example. The war on Russia has been controlled by elite narrative framing. It is the same process. They created a narrative of Russian collapse and instead of updating the narrative in the face of disconfirmation, they reinvent the narrative with new features, like a counter-offensive or now the new spring of 2024 Ukrainian offensive. No matter what reality is doing, the narrative must be protected, even if it could bring disaster.

This is something to keep in mind as the economy falters this autumn. People in the dreaded private sector will tell you that things are not great in the economy, and it has all the signs of a recession. Inflation is not defeated, despite claims to the contrary, and oil prices are rising just in time for the heating season. The rise in the cost of money is starting to have its effect on the economy. Now China is admitting that it is headed to recession, due to slack demand from the West.

This is happening while the regime prepares to run the corpse of Joe Biden as the man who not only saved the world from Trump, but the man who singlehandedly saved the economy from disaster. The key servants have been out instructing the media on the new narrative about the economy. This means we will be flooded with stories about the economic miracle just as the economy is tipping into recession. Such a disconnect is the sort of thing that causes revolutions.

That is what may be the death of our regime. The people at the top of it live in a world of narratives that are independent of reality. They are so sure they can compel reality to fit their version of reality that they cannot imagine an alternative ending. The Tsar, no doubt, could not imagine an alternative ending to his narrative. The many people who met the national razor never were shocked by the end to their narrative. Our rulers may be in for a surprise ending too.

The Cult Of Nick

Posted on August 15, 2023 by thezman

A few years ago, the fans of Nick Fuentes were no different from the fans of any of the other internet personalities that inhabit the video space. They liked his work and felt like they knew enough about him to like him personally. This is the unique aspect of video compared to audio and the written word. There is always a stronger emotional connection with the audience in the video format. Otherwise, Nick Fuentes was just another popular YouTube guy.

Since then, much has changed. Fuentes has inserted himself into the Trump story in ways that other political entertainers have avoided. He participated in the “Stop the Steal” rallies after the 2020 election. He was at the infamous J6 rally. He was by far the most enthusiastic supporter of Trump during that process. He also transformed from a commentator to something of a guru for the Zoomers. He was not just a YouTuber, but the cult leader of a youth political movement.

That is the way to think of the Fuentes operation now. His group is a cult of personality driven by people who believe in Nick Fuentes. He is not an entertainer or a political commentator, but the spiritual head of a movement. It is not just his followers who speak in these terms but Fuentes himself. He regularly reminds his followers that one day soon they will take over the world and remake it in their image. They are the change they have been waiting for, to quote a past cult leader.

In the modern age, the word “cult” conjures images of a lunatic leading a collection of naïve or desperate people. The words “UFO” and “suicide” tend to be attached to the word “cult” when describing an undesirable group of people. Neocons, for example, are often compared to a suicide cult. Then you have the image of the cult leader who is always a charlatan or crackpot preying on fools. The cult leader is never someone doing good things or operating from good intentions.

This was not always the case. The ancient world had many cults, and no one thought it strange for someone to be in a cult. Often, a cult would organize around a place where something special happened. Then you had mystery cults like the Eleusinian Mysteries, which dated back to the Greek Dark Ages. The Norse had cults that often revolved around personal or household gods. Of course, the ancients had many cults of personality centered on a charismatic figure.

That is how we need to think about the Fuentes phenomenon and other cults of personality that we are seeing. The ancient Greeks did not have political parties as we think of them, but personality cults that played a similar role. In the Roman Republic, politics revolved around strong popular figures. The more a society embraces the democracy idea, the more inclined they are to look to individuals who can lead the people in the direction they want to go.

Look back at American politics and you see the trend. Reagan was a highly charismatic figure whose support was mostly personal. Clinton was another highly charismatic guy whose support was entirely personal. He was compared to the acronym figures of progressive lore, as if he was the return of the king. Obama was obviously black Jesus for progressives. He never said anything of substance, but his followers would swoon when he spoke. Trump, of course, is a similar figure for his followers.

This is where we pick back up on the Fuentes story. To his followers, he is the young Trump or maybe the heir to Trump. While Fuentes never says this explicitly, his presentation suggests he understands the connection being made. He often talks about Trump as an imperfect messenger, which naturally implies that Fuentes is the new and improved version who can see the flaws, but still support the man. The cult of Nick is sure he will be president one day.

This may seem a bit weird, but it is important to keep in mind that this generation thinks about things wholly in the context of the internet. Clout is the currency of this world and that comes in the form of audience. That audience does not have to be in favor to count for clout points. You can have clout when lots of people oppose you. This is why Nick claims to be the most censored man on the internet. What he is saying is that he is the most important man on the internet and thus the world.

Because of our interconnectedness, the cult-like aspects of the Nick Fuentes movement jump out when you interact with it. For starters, all of his fans say the same things about why they like Fuentes. He has clout, of course. He also gets the message out to the biggest audience. He is the most successful leader in the history of “the movement” which is never explained. To what end is never addressed. What matters is that Nick Fuentes is famous, so he has clout.

That is where you see this as a cult of personality. Question the members and you will find that they have no agenda beyond supporting Nick. Press further and they do not know Nick’s agenda or even think about it. They trust Nick. The closest you will get is he wants to restore America to a white Christian nation. By Christian they mean Catholic, only because Nick Fuentes says he is a Catholic. He also wants to remove the Jews from power, even though he has Jews in his movement.

The Jewish aspect is a big tell, as far as whether this is a cult. Go to a Fuentes event and you will find Jewish supporters. The most committed Fuentes followers will welcome them without much thought. Key figures in the Fuentes operation are Jewish, despite Fuentes railing about Jews every day. This weird contradiction is the sort of test of faith you always see in a cult of personality. The truest believers easily accept the obvious contradictions and still love their leader.

Similar to the Jewish issue is the political issue. When pressed, the followers of Nick will say they are the only force opposing the system. In order to overthrow the system, they plan to take over the system through conventional means like elections or participation in mass media. In other words, they oppose the system by supporting it and they will overthrow the system by taking it over and using it to impose their vague version of a white Catholic democracy.

This is where things get interesting. If you manage to pin down one of the more intelligent members on these contradictions, they shift gears and tell you why it is important to not have a coherent agenda. They will say that ideology is the enemy because it is Jewish or liberal or some other scare word. This comes from Nick Fuentes who says this whenever he is pressed on specifics. In other words, the followers closely mimic their leader to avoid thinking about it.

In fairness, there is nothing going on here to raise alarm. This is not a suicide cult or terrorist cell headed for disaster. Nick Fuentes is not Jim Jones. Most of the followers are primarily drawn to the irreverence of Fuentes and the movement. If you press hard enough, the most committed will confess that much of what they are doing is sort of a performative lampooning of society. The Cult of Nick is bathos and pathos to create an emotional experience that is the only real point.

This explains the appeal, despite the many missteps of Fuentes. The young males attracted to this are from a common demographic. They are from white middle-class suburbs outside the South. Most were raised by women, and their play was exclusively online in the form of gaming. The intensity of the “groyper movement” provides something real compared to the synthetic reality of their upbringing. It also is largely free of women, which makes sense in this context.

Ironically, it also has the intense youth culture aspect that drove the 1960’s counterculture youth movements. The Boomers did not trust anyone over thirty and the Zoomers agreed with them. This is not Peter Pan syndrome, but a sense that their unhappiness is due to the failings of adults. The Boomers blamed the adults for squandering the promise of America on war and money making. The Zoomers blame the Boomers for doing the same thing.

That brings us to where this is headed. It has been assumed that Fuentes will follow the same arc as other e-celebrities. In time he would do things to ruin his clout and end up on the bench with people like Richard Spencer. That has not been the case. His wacky adventures with the mentally unstable Kanye West only made him more popular with his young fans. It got him attention, so it got him clout. In this regard, Fuentes is a unique figure in that all publicity is good publicity.

The challenge for this cult is time. Fuentes is twenty-four and his typical follower is in his late teens and early twenties. In five years, Fuentes is no longer a kid. His core followers will be entering the work world. There will be new young guys hunting clout with Generation Alpha, perhaps using Fuentes as a foil. In other words, the Cult of Nick will need to transition from the Neverland of internet culture to the hard reality of the material world that has all of those nasty adults.

This assumes the material world remains the controlling factor. Just as the Zoomers are an inflection point in history, the Cult of Nick could be an inflection point in how politics are conducted in an internet democracy. Fuentes may feel like a stranger in a strange land to those anchored in the analog world, but he could be the leading edge of the digital age that will sweep away the analog age of politics. Perhaps the Fosterite Cult of Nick becomes the Church of All Worlds.

The Crisis At The Window

Posted on August 10, 2023 by thezman

For about six months, starting last winter, Western media talked about a Ukrainian counter-offensive that was supposed to change the direction of the war. These stories coincided with stories about the delivery of various types of equipment, along with expert opinions from retired generals. Late in the spring Washington sent reliable toadies over to Kiev to see the plans and then talk to the media about how the Ukrainians were preparing to deal a death blow to Moscow.

As we get into the heart of August and the third month of the offensive, it is clear to most everyone that it has been a disaster. First came the images of Western armored vehicles trapped in minefields. Images of burning tanks were then followed by video of Ukrainian soldiers struggling to escape the same minefields after their armored vehicles were disabled by mines. Then came weeks of reports in the West about revised tactics that achieved nothing along the front.

As things stand, the most enthusiastic Ukraine supporters say that the counter-offensive has managed to capture about ten square miles. In reality, the Ukrainians failed to make it through the security zone of Russian defenses. This is the area in front of the first defensive lines that are used to slow an attack. In the south, Ukraine managed to capture a few abandoned villages, but relentless Russian attacks from artillery and airpower turned those into Ukrainian cemeteries.

At the start of the offensive, independent observers and Russian sources said the Ukrainians had enough resources to continue their offensive into August. At that point they will have exhausted men and material. At that point, they would have no choice but to stop offensive operations and fall back into defensive positions. Otherwise, they would be forced to cannibalize their lines and leave themselves open to Russian attacks in other areas along the line of contact.

That may have been a generous assessment. Over the last couple of weeks Russian forces in the north have steadily pushed the Ukrainians back. Ukraine has just moved their northern headquarters west to get clear of the Russian advance. They have also ordered the evacuation of Kupyansk, an important town located on the bank of the Oskil River in the Kharkiv Oblast. Reports suggest the Ukrainians simply lack the manpower and equipment to defend the area.

Washington is in a panic because they promised everyone that the Ukrainians would easily smash through Russian lines in the south. The plan was to rush through to the Sea of Azov, thus severing the land bridge between Russia and Crimea. Once that happened, attacks would begin on Crimea. The Russian army would either revolt after the humiliation or simply collapse, causing political chao in Moscow. It is hard to believe, but this was the official narrative.

Interestingly, the narrative was not just another pack of lies from the Kagan cult, but an official assessment from the Pentagon. It has been Western military doctrine that the way to defeat the Russians in a land war is with a rapid, concentrated attack on their defensive lines using armor and infantry. Here is a paper on the topic from 2017 and here is a recent video discussing it in connection with this war. This strategy actually goes back to the Cold War days.

The short version is that Russia organized its army around groups of 800 to 1000 men that operate independently within the defensive formation. These units have, tanks armored personnel carriers and artillery. The NATO strategy was to send overwhelming force at these units, forcing them to retreat in order to preserve their equipment. Russia is known for trading land for resources. They did this in the Kharkiv region last year and in the Kherson region last spring.

What Washington did not notice is that the Russians have moved away from the Battalion Tactical Group to more flexible arrangements based on the situation, terrain, and their own resources. In the south when Ukraine launched its main attack, they did not face battalions, but divisions. Further, the Russians had prepared complex defensive positions designed to trap advancing armored columns. In other words, the Russians read that paper and were ready for it.

Another thing Washington did not notice is that the Russian army has changed in other ways since the Cold War. They have a wide range of electronic warfare systems that work well against modern weapons. They also have incorporated drones in massive numbers that are highly effective against Western armor. The internet is full of videos where a Lancet drone takes out a Ukrainian armored vehicle. The Russians have quickly become the masters of drone warfare.

The main reason the Ukrainian offensive is a catastrophe is the side with the trillion-dollar annual budget has not updated their understanding of the Russian army since the last century. They have not bothered to notice what has been happening on the battlefields over the last eighteen months. Instead, the world’s most expensive military has gone along with the crackpot plans of the Kagan cult, either not understanding what is happening or indifferent to the inevitable results.

The Ukraine war is becoming a microcosm of the crisis of competence. It is not just the scarcity of talented people in the ranks. They still exist in sufficient numbers to keep the system operating reasonably well. The issue is the selection pressure at the top is for true believers and sycophants. The only way to get in the room to discuss the Ukraine war is to be fully on board with the dream of destroying Russia or be willing to humiliate yourself by telling these people what they want to hear.

Imagine the tag team of Victoria Nuland and General Milley replicated throughout the managerial system. Nuland is the maniacal imbecile in charge for no other reason than zealotry, while Milley is the oleaginous flunky with the credentials to provide legitimacy to the rantings of Nuland. The competent are driven from the room, leaving this combination to chart public policy. The general decline in competence that is driving demographics, is driven by this combination at the top.

In the movie Braveheart, Longshanks returns from France to confront his son who was charged with putting down the Scottish revolt. His son has his “advisor” with him, who makes the mistake of speaking out of turn. This is what has happened in the West, except Longshanks died of a heart attack and his son is in charge. The advisor now busies himself telling the son what he wants to hear. Meanwhile, outside the castle walls, the kingdom rattles toward collapse.

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