Save The Future, Kill The Past

Posted on March 16, 2023 by thezman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Crisis In The Clouds

Posted on March 13, 2023 by thezman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Culture Of Corruption

Posted on March 7, 2023 by thezman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Internal Monologue

Posted on March 6, 2023 by thezman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Election At The End Of Time

Posted on March 2, 2023 by thezman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Coming Crisis

Posted on March 1, 2023 by thezman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Final Boss

Posted on February 22, 2023 by thezman

Since the concept of the “red pill” got going, there has been a debate about the progression one takes in the awakening. Logically, this implies that there is a final boss on this journey, some belief one must drop in order to finally become fully aware of what is happening behind the façade of life. Once you defeat that final boss, you see things as they are, not as they are presented. Of course, the nature of this final boss almost always reflects personal bias.

Strangely, the real final boss in this process may be the crux of the whole normie belief structure that gets ridiculed by dissidents. That last belief may simply be that the political class cares about public opinion. Even the most cynical among us still thinks that the people in charge worry about public opinion. They may have ways to fortify democracy against the voters, but they still worry about the voters. After all, no democracy can be completely fortified.

The reality is, they probably do not care at all. The people controlling the politicians certainly do not care. The unanimity of opinion among this group is why the two parties are barely distinguishable from one another. What is the main different between Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer? The people who animate the politicians have their aqendas and they do not care about public opinion. Most people get that, but they still think the pols care and they need to care.

The trouble is, there is no evidence of this. For example, it was rather obvious that the Republican Party threw the 2018 midterm to spite Trump and his voters. They could do this knowing that they would not suffer in any meaningful way. Sure, some back benchers in the party would have to transition into lobbying jobs or (gasp!) the dreaded private sector, but 90% of the caucus would do just fine. In fact, the bosses could expect to be rewarded for throwing the fight.

The last midterm was a similar display of indifference. If the parties really cared about the result, they would have pulled out all the stops. On the Democrat side, it was a chance to prove those election deniers were wrong. Joe Biden really was the most popular man in history. On the other side, the Republicans could have got their red wave of rebuke. Instead, both sides worked to make sure none of the populists got the support they needed to beat a system candidate.

The indifference of the political class is most obvious with what is going on in the town of East Palestine Ohio. There was a time not so long ago when the place would have been crawling with Democratic politicians, including the President. They would bring the media to show how much they care about the people. Instead, Pete Buttigieg is antiquing in Vermont and Biden is in Poland promising the people of Ukraine that he will take care of them forever.

Of course, the media could cover it on their own. It is the ideal story, ripped right from one of many movies over the years. We have a small town being victimized by a mean and indifferent corporation. It is as if someone decided to make a real life version of the movie Erin Brockovich. Instead, the media cannot be bothered and the reason is the political class does not care about it. More important, they do not care that the people might think they do not care.

The fact is, the political system in America reached a point where elections make no difference to the system. Over 95% of incumbents win reelection and those who lose land in cushy jobs. John Boehner now makes seven figures selling weed, after a disastrous run as Speaker. Paul Ryan makes seven figures sitting around one of the banks, making calls to Washington on behalf of the bankers. When the losers get rich the winners do not fear losing.

In the bigger picture, even a wave election does little to change the makeup of the political parties in Washington. If forty House seats change hands in a wave election, it means close to 400 remain safe. Look at the last twenty years and you see that maybe 60 Congressional districts can be competitive. Most years only about twenty seats are genuinely up for grabs. American Congressional elections are ceremonial. It is a big expensive show that means nothing.

What appears to have happened over the last thirty years is the political class has internalized this reality and they no longer care about elections. The contempt we see is not so much about public opinion, but about the lingering need to keep up appearances with regards to elections and public opinion. The leaders of both parties are increasingly irritated that they have to pretend to care about your opinion. They have better things to do than take questions from the slobs.

This reality is hard for Americans to accept. Central to the American identity is the invincibility of the marketplace. The “go woke, go broke” business reflects the enduring belief that public opinion matters. The fact that none of the woke are going broke does nothing to alter this belief. Something similar is in play with elections. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, people still cling to the idea that public opinion not only matters, but it matters to the politicians.

Even people on this side of the divide cling to this belief. The concept of the psy-op rests on the idea that the people in charge care about public opinion. In reality, the secret police just like their work. The same can be said for the busy bodies that police the internet for bad think. They are not shaping public opinion. They simply enjoy playing hall monitor. Contempt for the public and public opinion is now the coin of the realm in the ruling class.

That is the final boss. You can be red pilled about race, ethnicity, history or conservatism, but still believe public opinion matters. You only become fully aware when you defeat that final boss and realize that the people in charge are indifferent to public opinion and often contemptuous of it. The reason elections change nothing is the entirety of the political class is in agreement on most everything. Mainly, they agree that they are in charge and your opinion does not matter.

An Imperial Disaster

Posted on February 16, 2023 by thezman

One of the most studied and debated events in human history is the decision by the Athenian empire to send an expeditionary force to Sicily. This happened in 415 B.C. during the middle of the Peloponnesian War between the Delian League led by Athens and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Athens decided to send military support to allies on Sicily who were opposed to the dominant city state of Syracuse, which also happened to be an ally of Corinth.

The Sicilian Expedition is one of those events that offers something for everyone interested in the ancient world. The politics involved in the decision to send the expeditionary force are fascinating. Then you have the military side of things, which is one of the first examples of politics undermining military effectiveness. Of course, the political psychology around the war to that point is also important. Much of Athenian politics had been shaped by war.

The decision to send the navy to Sicily would turn out to be the turning point in the war with the Spartans. The expedition was a spectacular failure. In fact, it is on the list of great military disasters in human history. The defeat not only permanently weakened the Athenians militarily, but it also crippled their political culture. The politics of the region quickly moved against Athens, leading to the overthrow of the democratic system and the eventual defeat to the Spartans.

Like all great events in history, if you ask ten people with an interest in the topic, you will get eleven theories as to what happened and what it means today. Academic careers have been made studying the war and the events surrounding it. There is also the fact that Athens, despite losing the most important war in human history, continues to cast a shadow over the West. Sparta, on the other hand, is largely remembered for being a cartoonish version of a warrior state.

It matters to us today because the Global American Empire models itself after the Athenian empire. The Athenians had a moral certainty about themselves and what they did based on their form of government. Their system was superior, therefore whatever they did to spread their system must be righteous. Of course, spreading their system often meant overthrowing the rulers of neighboring city-states and installing their system, led by people friendly with Athens.

We see the same thing with the American empire. In fact, it has become a defining feature of the system. For the last thirty years, Washington has been trying to overthrow governments around the world in defense of democracy. There is even an organization called The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which works with various tentacles of the American empire to overthrow governments around the world. The business of America is not business. It is regime change.

Like the Athenian empire, the American empire has found a way to embroil itself in a war with a land power. This proxy war with Russia over Ukraine has little to do with the facts on the ground in Ukraine and everything to do with the politics that drive the expansive polices of the American empire. Like the Peloponnesian War, this is just the latest phase of a war that goes back to the defeat of fascism, which is the analogue for the defeat of the Persians by Athens and Sparta.

Like all historical analogies, this one is far from perfect, but it does provide a lens through which to view current events. Looking at this fight with Russia as a continuation of the Cold War helps explain the actions of the people involved. For the people driving American foreign policy, the main enemy was always Russia. In fact, they were at war with Russian long before they set foot in the new Athens. World War II was just another chapter in that long fight.

This might seem like a stretch but look at the people running foreign policy for the American empire. The people named in Seymour Hersh’s piece on the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines is a who’s who of neoconservatives. All of them are members of the same club, which is led by Robert Kagan. The wife of Robert Kagan is Victoria Nuland, who runs Ukraine policy for the empire. She is also the person who engineered regime change in Ukraine in 2014.

Proof that the universe has a sense of humor is the fact that Robert Kagan is the ideological leader of the war party. He was born in Athens Greece. His father was Donald Kagan, “the Sterling Professor of Classics and History Emeritus at Yale University and a specialist in the history of the Peloponnesian War.” His book on the Peloponnesian War is excellent. His book on the Sicilian Expedition is also quite good, but more aimed at an academic audience.

Robert appears to have read none of his father’s books, as his cult has led the American empire into its own version of the Sicilian Expedition. The decision to bet on Ukraine is turning into a catastrophe. Instead of sending triremes to aid a supposed ally in order to undermine an opponent, as Athens did when she sent that expedition to Sicily, Washington has sent its prestige and military production capacity to Ukraine in a futile attempt to undermine Russia.

Much like the Sicilian Expedition, the Ukraine war has become a dynamic all its own, sweeping up everyone in the empire. The Europeans, which should know better, have gone along with Washington. In the process, they have revealed themselves to be nothing more than a collection of flunkies serving Washington. The rules-based world order that Washington has claimed to defend has also been exposed as a rigged game to serve the interests of the empire.

Probably the biggest parallel between these two events is how the political class in both cases failed to consider failure as an option. When news of the disaster reached Athens, no one believed it. No one had prepared the Athenians for the possibility of defeat, much less a catastrophe. Once reality sunk in, panic gripped the people as they processed what the disaster meant for the war. Everything about the Sicilian Expedition assumed victory was inevitable.

Something similar is brewing for Washington. For a year the war party has been feeding the political class stories about the Russians running out of weapons and Russian troops being forced to fight naked in the snow. Political leaders are given scripts with big talk about total victory and the dissolution of Russia. The public has been told nothing about the reality of the war. Once news of this disaster makes itself fully known, we may see panic and disbelief in Washington.

Again, historical analogies are never perfect. At best they help contextualize current events by providing an objective viewpoint. Washington is not Athens. Robert Kagan is not Alcibiades and there is no one playing the role of Nicias. Instead, the empire is led by spoiled children of the managerial elite that rose along with the American empire in the aftermath of Word War II. The disaster for this empire, however, will be just as real as it was for the Athenian empire.

The Coming Election Show

Posted on February 13, 2023 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door is a post about the chess game between Moscow and Washington over Ukraine, a post about the great neo-Nazi threat to Lagos and the Sunday podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

It is hard to think about it, but the first presidential debate of the next cycle will probably happen in the late summer, which is about six months off. Assuming the Republicans stick to the old calendar and do not follow the Democrat plan to rearrange the primary schedule, the first votes are less than a year off. That means the candidates are now preparing to kick off their campaigns. Whether we like it or not, another presidential campaign show is about to get started.

At this point, the action looks like it will be on the Republican side, as no one is prepping to challenge Joe Biden on the Democrat side. He may be a vegetable, but the people running the government think he is a useful vegetable. If the secret document business was supposed to push him aside, it did not work. Bernie Sanders has been bought off, so they do not have to worry about him causing trouble. The only plausible alternative is Gavin Newsom, who has done nothing so far.

That leaves the Republicans to put on a show for us. Of course, we know Trump is running and is the favorite at the moment. Mike Pompeo lost a bunch of weight to look better on television, so he is running. John Bolton says he will run as the blow up the world candidate. Nikki Haley has thrown her panties in the ring. Tim Scott is now preparing to announce soon. Amusingly, the yesterday men of conservatism think Scott and Haley provide ideological diversity.

The guy everyone is waiting on is Ron DeSantis. He has put on a good show in Florida, especially with regards to the cultural stuff. He gave Disney the business over their grooming stuff, so he has won over a lot of normal people. He recently stepped in to halt the AP Afro history stuff that amounted to little more than an antiwhite lecture, so he is not just picking low hanging fruit. In another age, DeSantis would be the ideal candidate to lead the Republican ticket.

What we see shaping up is a repeat of the 2016 primary. You have a collection of zombies that have no business in politics, but they are acceptable to the people who actually run things. Then you have Trump and DeSantis, who will be filling the Ted Cruz role in this performance. In 2016, the party could have rallied early to Cruz and maybe had a shot at stopping Trump, but they waited too long. This time many see DeSantis as the key to preventing Trump for a third time.

The trouble with that is most of the people running the Republican party are as delusional as everyone else in the managerial elite. They really think the voters are waiting for Captain Diversity to ride in and save them. Tim Scott is like catnip to these people, so they will be drooling all over him. Of course, Haley is a strong diverse female and everyone knows the world cannot get enough of strong diverse females, so she will get lots of support as well.

The wild card is whether the party will fortify the process for democracy. Politics is monkey see, monkey do, so the Republican party leadership is no doubt working on a way to fortify the process for democracy. Joe Biden was made the nominee when the party stepped into to fix the process and get around all of those voters who thought anyone was better than a senile old man. You can be sure the most devious rats in the GOP have been working the problem for 2024.

For all his faults, Trump is the prohibitive favorite. Tim Scott may be diverse, but his trophy case is empty. He sold insurance for a few years until he signed on to be a political performer and he has spent the last three decades being the diverse Republican at various levels. Nikki Haley is a strong diverse female, who spent eight year criticizing the South as the governor of South Carolina. She will go over well in Silicon valley and New Delhi, but nowhere else.

The only plausible challenger to Trump is DeSantis, but boring people tend not to do well in national politics. That and the uniparty does not like him. He has the same trouble as Ted Cruz, in that he exists somewhere between the populist base of the party and the elitists leadership of the party. Leadership sees him as a potential threat, while the voters see him as a potential fink. Given his personality and Trump’s name recognition, it is a tough spot for DeSantis.

None of this matters all that much. If you look at the map you can see right away the problem for the Republicans. When you tick off all of the states that the democrats have fortified for democracy, they start with a lock on the election. For any Republican to win in 2024 it means flipping states like Pennsylvania that have already cast their votes for Joe Biden, whether the voters know it or not. Many do know it now, so they will not bother showing up to play make believe.

This election presents the people in charge with a dilemma. On the one hand, Trump losing in the primary would let them claim that the popular unrest has been quelled and it is back to the old ways. The trouble is, they have fortified the general election for democracy and there is no way to explain it. If DeSantis is selected as the nominee and loses to Joe Biden, who is going to think that is legitimate? Even the people at National Review will start to question the result.

On the other hand, if they install their dream ticket, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, the voters will be too busy laughing to bother voting. Worse yet, they will get smoked in the general election thus discrediting the diversity scheme. The New York Times will demand that the Republican Party disband because its voters are so racist, they would not vote for diversity against dementia. It would be a hilarious result, but it feels too ridiculous, even for the Republicans.

You can see the problem. Having a vegetable atop the Democratic ticket when the election has been fortified for democracy quickly leads to absurd results. Once they started down the road of fortifying lections for democracy, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the pretense of legitimacy. In the fullness of time, the robot historians will say that the great mistake was in not coopting Trump. Reckless fury led to reckless actions that have made elections into absurd spectacles.

The End Is Nigh

Posted on February 8, 2023 by thezman

A popular narrative among libertarians, gold bugs, doomsday types and other pessimists involves the end of the dollar. Because of the structural flaws in fiat money, the abuse of the dollar’s reserve status, excessive money printing, the prettiness of gold or other factors, the world will one day decide that it no longer wants to use dollars and the dollar will collapse. Peter Schiff has built a media career using a combination of these causes to predict the end of the dollar.

There is an old joke about the market pessimists having predicted ten of the last three market crashes that applies here. The people predicting the end of the dollar, or the petrodollar as many prefer, have been making this prediction since Nixon closed the gold window fifty years ago. All of the predications have turned out to be wrong, but that has had no impact on the dollar pessimists. It turns out that there is good money to be made in being wrong about the dollar.

There are a number of reasons why the dollar remains the global currency, despite the abuse of it by the Global American Empire. This post on Revolver by an anonymous former U.S. Treasury official covers some of the major ones. The simple elevator speech on why the dollar remains the reserve currency is that the major powers of the global economy prefer it for now. China, Russia, India and the OPEC cartel continue to use the dollar as they work on the coming alternative.

That last bit is an important part of understanding what will come in the next decade with regards to global currency. The unipolar world controlled by Washington is slowly slipping away, being replaced by a multipolar world. For ideological and practical reasons, Washington is fighting this with all of its might. It is a losing fight as a unipolar world was an accident of 20th century history. It turns out that Samuel Huntington was right and Francis Fukuyama was wrong.

The great challenge of this age, it turns out, is that the emerging civilization centers of the world are emerging into the unipolar world. On the one hand, they need to remake the world order to reflect this new reality. On the other hand, they still depend in significant ways on the old structures from the unipolar order. They cannot overthrow the old order without incurring significant costs. Of course, there is the Global America Empire, which stands athwart history yelling “stop!”

In this regard, the dollar is a symbol of the current crisis, because it is the symbol, the primary tool, of the old unipolar order. Just as removing the dollar as the reserve currency would bring about significant economic costs, removing America as the center of the global order brings serious risks. Not the least of those risks is an increasingly unstable political class armed with nuclear weapons. Joe Biden prattling on about nuclear war does not inspire confidence.

The result is the emerging new power centers are becoming extremely cautious as they proceed down the path toward a multipolar world. China could take Taiwan by force if it chose, but that brings risks it is unwilling to assume. It is not just the cost of war, which would be significant, but also the cost of victory. The sight of an American carrier, on fire, sinking into the Pacific could collapse the American empire. That would take the dollar with it and everything that counts on it.

Similarly, the Russians could have hit back at the West over the economic sanctions, but instead it has simply chosen to avoid them. The reality is, every European country is looking for ways around the sanctions. These workarounds are costly and they are hollowing out their economies, but they are the better than alternative. For Russia, the sanction regime is mostly a nuisance, but it buys time as they and the other emerging global power centers build their infrastructure.

In a way, we are seeing a real world example of what Joseph Tainter described in his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies. Collapse is only possible if there is no supporting structures surrounding the society. The Western Roman Empire collapsed because there was nothing around it. It was a complex society in isolation, as what surrounded it was a collection of tribal societies. America, in contrast, is deeply connected to the other complex societies.

Instead of collapse, what we are seeing is a controlled demolition. The Russians, for example, would welcome the return of rational governance in Europe, they would prefer to avoid radical change. An economic crisis could easily trigger a political crisis and unleash sudden political change. The last two times this happened have not been good for Russia. The first time brought Napoleon to Moscow. Of course, the last time it brought Hitler to Stalingrad.

China, India, the OPEC countries and even Brazil have similar concerns with what lies between the present order and the multipolar order that is coming. The Global American Empire, including its control of the global reserve currency, is an obstacle that lies between now and then, but it is a problem that must be carefully managed. The efforts by Washington provoke a crises in Asia and Europe are viewed as an effort to derail the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar world.

This brings us back to the dollar. If the world avoids catastrophe, then it will avoid the sudden uncontrolled collapse of the dollar. Instead it will be a slow transition to a world of multiple trusted currencies that rely on separate financial systems. Those currencies will be linked to the only true global commodity, which is energy. The relative strength of each currency will reflect the trust and accuracy of the corresponding financial systems that make transacting in the currency possible.

What this means is the petrodollar will slowly become the petro. All the large global currencies, including the dollar, will be pegged to the supply of energy, plus or minus the relative trust of the political systems of the issuing society. Again, this assumes the world avoids catastrophe. If a controlled demolition of the Global American Empire proves impossible, then all of those off-grid living videos you watched will suddenly and explosively come in handy.

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