Category Archives: Politics

Regimeology

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Back during the Cold War, there were people whose job was to figure out what was happening inside the Soviet government. Many were like F.B.I. profilers, in that they were hyped as experts, but just made up stuff to play the role. Others actually tried to read party media to figure out what was happening. These Kremlinologists were well-versed in the “Aesopian language” popular with both dissidents and party officials, so they could connect external clues to internal clues.

One of the many signs that America is authoritarian is that we have to use the same tactics to figure out what is happening with the ruling elite. The uniparty members are mostly just making noises to impress the faction leaders. They are the dancing boys of the American regime. Still, they give a sense of the mood within the factions. The media gives a sense of what is happening with party leadership, especially the semi-permanent elements within the security branches.

This is where the Afghanistan story is useful. There is no denying that it is an embarrassment to the regime. The Biden people were selling this as a smooth transition out of an untenable situation. Instead, they got images of people fleeing for their lives as the Taliban swoops in to capture the capital. The people who say optics don’t matter were once again reminded that they are missing a chromosome. Even in authoritarian regimes, optics count for a great deal, even if it just inside the party.

There is some speculation that elements within the regime were opposed to pulling out of Afghanistan and may have sabotaged the effort. There is evidence that the Pentagon and State Department were opposed, but there are no signs they plotted the collapse of the Afghan government. If they were that clever, they would have figured out how to avoid this in the first place. Instead, this is probably just more of the 4-D chess nonsense that has become popular on-line.

Instead, the media reports suggest those semi-permanent elements within the regime knew Afghanistan was a house of cards and they were prepared to pin the blame on the elected elements of the regime. CNN, of all places, is unloading on the Biden people for their incompetency. The NY Times and Washington Post are taking the neocon line and attacking Biden for leaving the “Afghan allies” to die. This open letter to the White House is like Pravda condemning Kremlin policy in the old days.

The question is why did the Biden people push forward with a policy they knew the rest of the party opposed? This is where you may have some 4-D chess, in that there may be a third man in the relationship. Clearly, the Biden people did not see this coming, so they must have been getting bogus advice from the Pentagon and State Department or at least elements within those silos. Maybe this a way to discredit the foreign policy establishment to justify sweeping changes.

This is the clue in the Biden speech. He made clear that this move was about closing the door on the past to repositioning for the future. That is coded language to mean the old Bush era foreign policy is dead or that is the plan. Coupled with the quiet abandonment of Ukraine, the old neocon obsession with their old demons will no longer be the priority of the new foreign policy. Given the infestation of neocons in regime media, this would explain the media attacks on Biden over Afghanistan.

The new foreign policy will focus on China. Little reported during all the excitement of removing Trump and installing Biden is that the Biden people have embraced the Trump China policy with few changes. They are enforcing the trade polices imposed by Robert Lighthizer during the Trump years and doing so aggressively. They are following the Trump position on the genocide in Xinjiang, which is a big deal. They have also allowed US representatives to travel to Taiwan without special permission.

The stakes could not be any higher in this intra-party conflict. The crusades against Islam have been very lucrative for the military industrial complex, both in financial opportunities as well as prestige. A trade war with China is not as sexy for them and not as remunerative. The State Department, of course, is geared to fight the old enemies so a sea change in priorities is very bad for business. For example, having old relatives in Ukraine is suddenly less important than Chinese language skills.

It is too soon to tell how this will unfold. Old regimes get loud, preachy and impervious to contrary facts. We see that with the American regime. The factions are led by fossils from a bygone era. We see the elected side on television, but the leadership of the other factions is just as ossified. They may be younger than the elected leaders, but their minds are frozen in time. No one in party leadership seems to be aware of what is happening outside the strongholds of the regime.

One possibility is that Afghanistan is treated like the party treated Khrushchev’s handling of Cuba in the 1960’s. The party was happy to treat the affair as a disaster, so they could remove him from office. We are already hearing whispers that Biden’s fragile state is the cause of the Afghan debacle. The disappearance of Harris the last few months is another clue. Taking her out of the spotlight keeps her clean and allows everyone to forget about her being an obnoxious idiot.

All we can know at this point is that the regime is very fragile right now. On the one side is a faction locked in the past and staffed by incompetents. They were the people who spent 20 years creating the new Afghanistan. On the other side is the gerontocracy desperately trying to cling to life. Then you have the new vibrant young guns who want to show off what their learned in grievance studies. There is deep tension within the American ruling regime that promises to get worse.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

Lessons From Afghanistan

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Note: There is new content behind the green door. If you are not signed up, please consider it as it will bring you happiness and save your soul. Sunday Thoughts covers the Afghan situation and some other interesting new items. The Taki post is up and it is about the Afghanistan debacle. There is a pattern here.

Over the last week, the world has watched the great project of the American empire fall to pieces as if it was a controlled demolition. The Taliban has swept across Afghanistan, facing little more than token resistance from the official government. In fact, the official government fled the country without even pretending to care. As of Sunday evening, the U.S. government was scrambling to figure out how to evacuate the people with American citizenship while begging the Taliban for relief.

This week, regime elements will be playing the blame game, no doubt settling on the previous administration as the real culprit. Faced with disconfirmation of their beliefs, the new religion of our rulers triggers a process whereby they are convinced that the latest setback is actually part of the great plan. It is a sort of test of faith and the only way to get past it and continue the flow of history is to believe harder. In time, this will become a bloody shirt in the way Vietnam was for a generation.

Putting that aside, the collapse of the Afghan model reveals some things about the ruling regime that are useful to dissidents. The big lesson is that the Washington regime never felt it necessary to subvert the culture of Afghanistan. Instead, they spent twenty years celebrating it. Sure, they did the superficial stuff like flying the flags of various sexual deviants over the embassy, but they never tried to impose it on the Afghans in the same was we see them do it to white Americans.

If the Afghans were white, the empire would have accused them of Afghan privilege or maybe Afghan supremacy then set about destroying their culture. There would have been gay imams in rainbow colored tunics preaching about how Muhamad was really into sodomy. Of course, there would have been a heavy emphasis on women’s sports, perhaps fielding an all lesbian soccer team. None of that happened because that would have been insulting to the Afghans and their ways.

The big thing that the empire did not do that they are doing in their alleged home base of America is replace the people. A big part of the war on whiteness is the importation of millions of nonwhites into white countries. It is part of the dialectic made real, where mass immigration is the negation of white culture. The empire could have done this in Afghanistan with no trouble. There are a billion Africans looking for a better deal, so they could have imported some of them to celebrate diversity.

That really is the telling feature of the twenty year occupation. The rules in place over there were the exact opposite of the rules in place over here. There was no systematic statue toppling, no mass media campaigns against Afghan culture and no chanting about diversity being a strength. One could be forgiven for thinking that the people in charge of the American empire have more respect for Afghan culture and Afghan people than they have for the American people and their culture.

These are things most people probably knew, if they took the time to think about it, but the events of last weekend provide a good reminder. In the weeks to come, the ruling class will care more about the fortunes of people in Afghanistan than the victims of their opioid crisis they inflicted on rural America. They will work harder to preserve the “rights” of collaborators left behind in Kabul than the rights of American being held in dungeons around Washington. They hate us that much.

The useful lesson in all of this is these people have once again revealed that they really do believe their own nonsense. The old paleos remain convinced that the elites know their preaching is all nonsense, but the Afghan debacle is proof that they do get high from their own supply. The plan was to celebrate the exit on 9/11 as “mission accomplished” and then forget about the whole thing. Biden would get credit for finishing Obama’s project and ending the Bush war.

Over the weekend, their lack of preparation was on display, as the regime media was not provided with a script to follow. Instead, they were allowed to think for themselves, a dangerous prospect under ideal conditions. They sent Biden out to take questions not vetted in advance and it was another humiliation. The sight of an eighty year old man struggling to do the basics is symbolic of the empire. Like Biden, it is old, senile, and operating on the fumes of past glories that never really happened.

This is not the first time the ruling elite have fallen for their own rhetoric. Back in the Obama years, they were sure the summer of 2010 was going to be “recovery summer” for the economy. They even had a campaign all ready to go. That ended the same way the Afghan withdraw ended. Recall that Biden promised this summer would be the end of the Covid panic. Everyone would get to party again. The prophesies of the new religion have a bad habit of never coming true.

Of course, the big lesson in all of this is that a small, dedicated minority can win against all odds if they refuse to surrender. The irony of the American foreign policy establishment not remembering the story of David and Goliath is one of those things that tells us something about the people in charge. They are just so sure they are on the right side of history, that they never take a moment to consider their role in it. They were the Goliath this time and the Afghans were the David.

Granted, the American military would happily abandon the rules of engagement they labored under in Afghanistan when it comes to whiteness. You can be sure General Milley has a speech ready about how white rage is really a part of some secret connected between white people and the Taliban. That said, men living as they did when Alexander the Great was in Afghanistan fought the mighty U.S. Military to a draw and then drove them from their lands. An inspiration to us all.

In the end, this is how dying empires look from the inside. The people at the top fear self-examination, so they commit to a zealous form of the mentality that made the empire possible in the first place. The empire and their place atop it are the center of their belief system and no disconfirmation will shake that belief. They will die with the empire that makes them possible. What comes next is up to the people who survive the inevitable collapse in order to fill the void of empire.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

The Real Pandemic

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It is very difficult to assess what is happening in a revolutionary moment, because things seem to change so quickly. Looking back, the French Revolution is easier to understand, because we know how it ended. We can look at the events in the context of Napoleon or the Terror. The same is true of the Bolshevik Revolution, that came to a similar end. In fact, putting the two together makes it possible to understand things about both that the people at the time could never know.

This is a useful thing to keep in mind in this age, as the radicals push the revolution forward, for reasons they don’t comprehend. Legacy conservatives will keep trying to jam these events into the obsolete world view, blaming things on the lust for power or a desire to take your money. Others will blame it on nefarious actors like George Soros, because that is the easy thing to do. Blaming a a single bad actor or groups of actors makes things simple for the simple-minded.

In reality, in revolutionary times, men are like people swept up in a great flood, carried along by the forces of nature. They look for things to hang onto in order to escape being swept away, like their own ideological mindset. The revolutionaries are no different in this regard but they convince themselves they are the ones driving the river, when all they have done is unleash the floodgates. They are as much a victim of their own zealous lunacy as the people they oppose.

An example is this story about the city of Charlotte. The city is passing a nondiscrimination ordinance that will protect “gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation and natural hairstyles.” Since all of those things are meaningless word salad, they have, in effect, banned everything and nothing. The term “natural hairstyles” is a cult-Marx term for black women with afros, but otherwise the rest of it just means whatever the mentally ill can conjure next.

The people behind this stuff know that these words and therefore the law is nonsense, but they also know that is the point. They have been trained up in the latest cult-Marx dogma which says they must subvert expectations and undermine the prevailing cultural orthodoxies. They may or may now know what any of that means, but they know enough to know chaos is the order of the day. These terms are all moral signifiers, justifying an all-out assault on cultural norms.

Again, the usual suspects will try to assign specific rational explanations for why they are trying to sow chaos, but that sort of reductionism misses the point. The chaos is the point of all this, as the goal is to smash the cultural orthodoxy. Essential to Nth wave Marxism is the belief that culture is what prevents the natural rise of socialism, so if you destroy the culture, a new socialist order will arise. More important, a new socialist man will rise from the wreckage of white supremacist society.

Like original Marxism, this is nonsense. It is worse than nonsense, in that it is an esoteric religion that flatters the believer by replacing their reality with the promise of special insight. Once you come to believe that wrecking the present order will usher in the great revolution of mankind, you are now in a special club of people who have found the answer to the great question. The irrationality of it is the draw. It appeals to that natural need to believe that is a key trait of man.

What we are living through is a revolution pushed along by people who are sure they are creating conditions for the great liberation. The details of that great liberation and how it will come into existence are just assumed. This was always the appeal of the original Marxism. It provided a childish vison of a glorious future, onto which the believer could project his fantasy vision of the future. Then it supplied a story of history that claimed the glorious future was an historical inevitability.

This the core of Cultural Marxism. Because of the demographic changes in the West, it has been repackaged along racial lines. Instead of destroying bourgeoise culture they are set on destroying white culture. This has obvious appeal to people who came to the West for the free stuff but find that the cost of that free stuff is the abandonment of their old ways. For blacks, of course, it means they get to taste the vengeance that has been promised to them since the last century.

In the lab, this stuff sounds appealing, but when you go around smashing the culture, there is no guarantee what will happen next. The culture tends to restrain the worst passions of the people who produced it. Once those restraints are gone, those passions are released to mix with the passion of the zealots who did the smashing. Imagine an Antifa rally without police protection. All of a sudden, the people who defunded the police discover a truth hidden in their revolutionary furor.

This is why making sense of the revolution is only worthwhile as a way to get a glimpse of what comes next. History shows that the people driving these events are like the coronavirus of the present moment. All efforts to mitigate it result in a mutation that gets around the mitigation. All you can do is prepare for what comes after it has done its worst to the host population. Then maybe you can have a chance to rebuild with an eye on preventing any future outbreaks of this pestilence.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

Irrational Losers

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Note: The weekly Taki post is up. The topic this week is something I hope to dive into on the podcast this week. The revolution from above will be a new favorite phrase. There is also the Sunday podcast up behind the green door.

One of the distinguishing features of conservatism is the habit of attacking its own side during conflicts with the Left. In fact, these self-criticism sessions are usually triggered by left-wing criticism of the Right or in anticipation of such criticism. Somewhere in the middle of the fight, usually when things are looking up for the good guys, conservatives will attack their own team over some small issue. The claim is that the people in error are undermining the fight against the left with their bad ideas.

A recent example is Heather MacDonald taking to the pages of a center-left platform to criticize vaccine skeptics as knuckle-dragging primitives. You see, there are people opposed to the Left who do not hold the same opinions as Heather MacDonald with regards to the vaccines, so those people must be corrected. Sure, things are going badly for the Left on the Covid issue but removing that fly from a friend’s face with a hatchet is too important to wait until after the fight.

There is no question that many people opposed to the strip-mining of what is left of our liberties over the Covid issue are wrong about a lot of things. Some think the vaccine changes your DNA. Some think the vaccines are entirely fake, part of some plot to control society. If you look hard enough, you can probably find people who think the vaccines are an alien technology developed at Area 51. Covid is a ruse to experiment on the public with this new extraterrestrial technology.

America is a big country, so you can find just about every crazy idea imaginable if you look long enough. Why does Mx. MacDonald think these people are worthy of a public tongue lashing? The stated reason is those vaccine skeptics are acting as irrationally as the people they oppose. Some of them think vaccines in general may not be all that safe and are refusing this vaccine. Imagine that? People in the middle of a heated partisan fight putting aside reason to score points against the enemy?

Presumably, Mx. MacDonald thinks these people are harming the cause in some way, so they must be silenced. The claim appears to be reason. You see, by tolerating the unreasonable on her side, it would harm her claims to being the most reasonable person in the room. Therefore, reason compels her to root around the ranks of the people opposed to the Covid madness, looking for the unreasonable. Tone police the unreasonable and then reason will triumph!

Of course, the question is, unreasonable to whom? Politics is always a partisan business, so the central questions are who? and whom? Only unreasonable people think politics can be a right answer business. In most cases, there are many possible right answers, as right is determined by preference. In a democracy, right is determined by convincing the people wielding power behind the scenes that the mobs will be sated with one approach or another. All politics is partisan.

Mx. MacDonald thinks these knuckle-dragging anti-vaxxers are making her look bad to someone, so who is it? That is the key to understanding conservative perfidy and failure over the last half century. What matters most to them is the people in the managerial class and their place in it. It is very important to someone like Mx. MacDonald to never be associated with someone like Alex Jones, who thinks vaccines are making frogs gay and lowering the sperm count of American males.

What reason tells us is that defeating the forces of darkness that have launched the revolution from above is the only concern. If that means siding with people who line their clothes with aluminum foil, so be it. Nothing can come before the destruction of radicalisms in all its forms. This is what reason demands. Otherwise, if the radicals get their way, these people fetishizing their rationality will be keeping the rest of us company in the reeducation camps.

Politics is an ugly business under ideal conditions, because people inevitably assume that the other side of the fight is filled with bad people. After all, they have the wrong opinions and refuse to change them. That means things are said that are not true and not very nice about the other side, but that’s just the nature of it. This is something the people who never stop talking about their rationality should know by now. Reasonable people understand the reality of the human condition.

In the case of the Covid war, there are people making wild claims about the vaccine, mostly to get attention for themselves. That is an argument against social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These platforms made it easy for stupid people to get on-line and have an opinion. This drew in the sorts of people who look to exploit the mob for their own benefit. This is also the argument against democracy, as laid out in Federalist Papers 10, but here we are anyway.

The thing is, Alex Jones claiming the vaccine will alter your DNA is no nuttier than much of what is in the mass media. In fact, a ridiculous claim is far less harmful than the plausible, but inaccurate claim. Few people will think the vaccine will turn you into Big Foot, but most people will believe we need to make kids wear masks. Far more people have been harmed by official lies than by goofballs on the internet. Again, this is something the “rational conservatives” should understand.

None of this is to say that there can never be criticism of allies or even a break with people who harm the cause. This has always been the problem with outsider politics, which tends to get overrun with weirdos. The issue is timing and intent. Privately chastising an ally for screwing up is reasonable. Dismissing wackos who are harming the cause is prudent. These are exceptions to partisanship that are required in politics, but conservative have made them their purpose.

This is why conservatives always lose. The main principle of the conservative is to conserve their reputation at all costs. No cause is ever so dear as to lead them to spend a penny of their reputation on it. Put another way, for the conservative, there is never anything worth fighting for, so they are always willing to cede the battle to the other side, no matter the cost. The Left sends thugs carrying bats and knives, while the Right sends out dandies dressed like interior decorators.

The test in these matters is this. Is the world better or worse with a small group of people who think vaccines alter your DNA? The obvious answer is the world is not affected in the least by people with crackpot ideas. Is the word made better or worse by allowing the evil of progressivism triumph? The answer is obvious. People fetishizing their rationality should be able to grasp this. Instead, for generations they have come to the opposite conclusion and lost every fight.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

Trivial Thoughts

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Sayre’s law states that “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” Another form is, “Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” This is often attributed to Richard Nixon or sometimes Henry Kissinger. Intellectual history is full of famous battles between rival camps over small differences. For example, two warring camps of Straussians do battle over their understanding of the political philosopher Leo Strauss.

This is not just true of the academy. People within in any organization tend to give more weight to small issues than to the larger issues. The famous example of this is the people designing a nuclear power plant will have vicious disputes over where to place the employee bike shed. Anyone familiar with corporate life knows that the major source of tension between people is the trivial items. This is often referred to as the law of triviality, but despite the name, it is a big part of organizations.

This is something to keep in mind when examining the behavior of actors within the modern political drama. Since the end of the Cold War, the rancor has steadily increased, while the policy debate has steadily narrowed. If you had no idea which political party was ascendant, you just examined the policies coming from Washington the last thirty years, you would be hard pressed to identify the two prevailing ideologies that allegedly control both parties and the disputes between them.

This is where we see Sayre’s law at work. What emerged after the Cold War is a general consensus on the big issues. The ruling elite is in favor of open borders for both cultural and economic reasons. They favor a global trade and economic regime that places the management of these issues outside local legislatures. They embrace democracy as a sort of civic theater, a drama that is never intended to impact policy, but instead reinforces the prevailing morality of the elites.

Within this political structure, there is very little room for any dispute, much less disputes over consequential matters. Our political class, which includes the mass media, the commentariat and the donor class, is left to fight pitched battles over trivial issues, often invented for the purpose. In the case of the media, the selection pressure over the last thirty years has resulted in a collection of performers highly tuned to personalize trivial issues and express those emotions on the stage.

It is why the Trump years were a cacophony of hysterics. This is how everyone responds to everything. In the case of Trump, the entire dramatis personae just happened to be on one side. Note how none of the claims about his administration were rooted in policy. They never engaged in policy disputes with him. It was all highly personal and ridiculously petty. Seventy years ago, when Sayre made his observation about the academy, this was the sort of thing he had in mind.

One reason for this is that whenever serious issues cannot be discussed, the void is filled with heated debate of unserious issues. The result is everyone is looking for a boutique thought to distinguish herself from the mob. Everyone in politics at all levels believes they went into the game to change the world. Instead of accepting their role as another anonymous face in a chorus of actors, they embrace strange, but pointless ideas to distinguish themselves from the crowd.

This is a very feminine instinct, which underscores just how feminized our politics has become over the last half century. The reason the military is always adjusting its uniform policy for female soldiers is they are biologically tuned to signal their fitness to males in competition with other females. The male soldiers are happy to wear the uniform that is assigned to them. Females instantly seek to make small trivial changes. This is the nature of our politics, where everyone wants to be a special snowflake.

One result of this is that all political positions are positional goods. Positional goods are goods that people value because they convey standing within society. For example, South Asians like to wear gold as a way to advertise their wealth. In African cultures around the world, display items like expensive cars are common. In northern European cultures, counter-signaling wealth is a form of positional good. The trust fund guy who drives a twenty year old Volvo, for example.

In politics, especially left-wing politics, positions on issues and the hierarchy of one’s issue list is a positional good. For example, the forgiveness of student debt is an issue for those who stake out the far-left position today. There is no plan as to how to execute such a scheme. They do not appear to understand who holds the debt and what it is used for by the system. The impossibility of forgiving college debt is probably its chief appeal, as it lets them espouse something cost free.

If you go down the laundry list of left-wing political positions, what you find are aspirational and notional items. For four years the Democrats could have struck a deal with Trump on roads and bridges. They were too busy complaining about Hitler to engage in fruitful discussion. In other words, to transform the notional into the practical would have stripped the issue of its value. Something similar happened with immigration, where Trump was willing to give the store away.

Mainstream politics is entirely about positional goods. This is true to some degree of all politics, especially outsider politics, but we now live in an age in which official political discourse is nothing more than a personal spat in the faculty lounge. The difference between what goes on in the academy and in Washington is that the latter revolves around a central set of tenets that contain the ruling consensus. The disputes, however, are every bit as trivial and pointless.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

The Death Of Burke

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A key contribution of neoconservatives to the conservative movement launched by Bill Buckley in the middle of the last century was the assertion that conservatism is a means justifies the ends ideology. Unlike the Left, the Right will accept less than optimal outcomes as long as they are the result of a just process. Further, conservatives are not reactionaries, instinctively defending order. Instead, conservatism is the defense of liberal processes against the assaults of the illiberal Left.

One reason that these former members of the Left and the emerging new Right found agreement is they both agreed with Edmund Burke on key points. One was Burke’s description of revolution. The liberals who would go on to become neoconservatives did not see themselves as revolutionaries. Like their new conservative friends, they viewed themselves as defenders of liberal order and the liberal process that is contained in and constrained by tradition and institutions.

In his observations about revolutionary France, Burke noted that revolutions seek to cut themselves off from the past. The desire for an entirely new beginning must lead to a repudiation of the past. This divorce from the historical timeline means they have no sense of themselves and their place in history. This is the source of their inherent instability, and why they become murderous. For those who see themselves as defenders of liberal order, this is what makes revolution dangerous.

The other broad area of agreement between these former leftists and their new friends on the Right was on institutions. Burke’s great contribution to the Anglo-Right is his defense of institutions and traditions as constraints on power. Traditions give meaning to daily life, but they also play a key role in shaping the people. The voluntary associations like churches, clubs and so on maintain and nourish the social capital of the people and provide a balance to sovereign power.

Even today, you hear the legacy conservatives talk about Edmund Burke as their ideal conservative stateman. Yoram Hazony, the ultra-Zionist political theorist, named his think tank “The Edmund Burke Foundation”. Modern neoconservatives like Ben Shapiro love quoting Edmund Burke. It is one of the few things upon which traditionalist conservatives agreed with the former leftists. They saw Burke’s philosophy as the center of their understanding of conservatism in a liberal society.

The idea that conservatism is the defense of the existing processes has had a powerful impact on the arc of American society. By elevating process over ends, conservatism built into their defense of tradition and order vulnerabilities that the radicals have been able to exploit for generations. In other words, the very nature off conservatism as the bulwark against radicalism has as part of its design a set of contradictions that must always lead to its retreat in the face of the radical onslaught.

The first of those is the unequivocal defense of process over results. What this has meant, in practice, is the conservative defense of every radical gain. Once the Left can find a way to warp the process to support their ends, they turn their opponents into the most strident defenders of this new order. Abortion is the obvious example. Once the radicals changed the law through the courts, the conservatives agreed that it can only change again through the courts.

This has been the motivation for conservatives to get as many of their judges on the court as possible. The trouble is, in order to be a conservative judge, one must pledge to defend precedent and the traditional functioning of the courts. It is why every conservative judge nominated to the high court must sit in front of Congress and swear to never question the precedents used in support of Roe v Wade. It is why this current court will defend radicalism against all challenges.

The other vulnerability that the radicals have exploited for several generations is that the conservative fetish for means over ends prevents them from questioning the morality of radical goals. Since Marx, the central claim of radicalism is that they are trying to achieve a more virtuous and moral society. Because a just society is such a worthy goal, it justifies radical measures, including violence. Those who stand between now and the better world deserve what they get.

By focusing solely on the means in which political goals are achieved, the conservative must accept the morality of those ends if they are the result of the liberal process, which is the root of their political morality. This is why the “conservative case for…” is an internet meme. Since compromise is always the goal of Burkean conservatism, the first step is in figuring out jhow radical goals can fit into the conservative process. If trannies can be the result of the liberal order, trannies are conservative.

More important, this myopia means the Right can never question the morality of the Left’s stated goals. In fact, they are allergic to it. You see this with the reaction to the Critical Race Theory issue. Conservatives recoiled in horror when it was pointed out that CRT is explicitly antiwhite. The idea of addressing the morality of radical ends is anathema to the conservative mind. Instead, they had to frame it is bad process in pursuits of a worthy goal.

Edmund Burke wrote from the perspective of a man standing on the walls of an old social order looking out over Europe struggling to maintain order. His defense of the British social order was perfectly rational, especially in contrast to the horrors that were unleashed by the French Revolution. Like the social order he once defended, the Burkean conservatism is no longer relevant. The current order is inherently immoral and at odds with anything that a man of the Right should defend.

Further, Burkean conservatism prevents the actions required to overthrow this current order and institute a new moral order. If one is prevented from declaring the current state of things immoral and the goals of its champions as grossly immoral, then there is no way to fight the gathering darkness. If the preservation of the West and the people that make it possible must be sublimated to an abstract process, then conservatism can never conserve anything. It is part of the problem.

This is why the first order of attack for the dissident is conservatism. As long as people are willing to accept “well we have to respect the election results” as an excuse for not opposing evil, there is no escaping the gathering darkness. It is only when the opponents of radicalism commit to its utter destruction through any means necessary that the tides of war will change. That necessarily requires consigning Edmund Burke and his followers to the ash heap of history.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

The Show Trials

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Note: The regular Taki post is up. This week it is another dive back into the Covid pool, with an eye to what is happening to the official narrative. Behind the green door is another world class episode of Sunday Thoughts, in addition to a review of Clarkson’s Farm and the detective series Bosch.

In authoritarian societies, the people have no real way of knowing what is happening inside the ruling class. The media is controlled by the regime, so they are not reporting on what is happening internally. Instead, they are broadcasting the official truth from the regime or elements within the regime. Often, regime elements have their own media platforms through which they speak to other regime elements. This is a form of signaling to avoid open confrontation between regime elements.

Otherwise, the public is left to guess about what is happening inside the regime, even when the policy is clear. During the Cold War, Kremlinologists would study what was happening in Russia to try and guess what was happening in the party. If someone stopped showing up to public events, a mountain of narratives would appear building on this one event. We see this with North Korea today. When one of his uncles is missing from the team photo, it is assumed he fell out of favor.

In America, this opacity is complicated by the grand delusion of liberal democracy, which blinds people from the reality of the political arrangements. The trappings of popular government add another layer to party rule. It often means that the signals coming from inside are warped by the pretensions of openness and transparency in party media. The need to pretend the system is working as advertised means that decrees must be dressed up as the result of consent.

With that in mind, the ongoing show trial for the January 6th protests gives an opportunity to do a little regime analysis. Nancy Pelosi has forced through a series of hearings about the protests, despite nothing new to reveal. The right-side of the party engineered their way out of the process. They knew it was a loser for them, so they are now on the sidelines commenting about it. The left side is forging ahead, with the first round wrapping up last week.

The term “show trial” has been with us since the 1920’s, but gained wide currency during Stalin’s purges in the 1930’s. By definition, a show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The point of the trial is to serve as a warning to political opponents of the regime, but also to serve as an expression of power by the dominant elements within the regime. It is all about violence capital within the ruling class.

From the outside, the show trial looks like a display of absolute power. After all, the condemned is usually required to confess to crimes that everyone, including his accusers, know he did not commit. The condemned is forced to humiliate himself as a way of showing his submission to power. Similarly, the people administrating the show trial must pretend to be enthusiastic believers in the proceeding. One element of the show trial is the manufactured appearance of unity.

In reality, show trials are an indication of conflict within the ruling regime, where the dominant camp feels the need to display their power. The point of it is to advertise the violence capital of the side holding the show trial. The reason Stalin had to kill so many old Bolsheviks was he needed to establish himself as the most violent member of the party, the one member willing to kill in order to maintain power. Stalin was making himself into the most dangerous man in a dangerous world.

The thing with Stalin’s purges and show trials is they were not just about his rise to one-man rule of the Soviet state. There were real policy disputes within the party in the 1920’s that are relevant today. The left side of the party, represented by Trotsky, was the accelerationist wing. They wanted rapid adoption of socialism. The right side was the incrementalistic wing, represented by Bukharin. They wanted socialism to evolve over time with party guidance and motivation.

Initially, Stalin sided with the right. In retrospect he chose this course because it gave him time to solidify his hold of the party organization. Stalin was not a theorist or a strategist, but he was an adept organizer. The slow and steady approach, while not living up to the ideals of Bolshevism, meant he could stock the growing bureaucracy with his people. By the late 1920’s when it was clear that the slow approach was far too slow, Stalin switched sides and embraced the accelerationist approach.

The party purges and show trials of the 1930’s coincided with what amounted to a genocide of the Russian peasants. Forced collectivization, execution squads and mass deportations wiped out close to half the agricultural output. Confiscation of crops resulted in widescale famine. It was all part of the revolution from the top in order to turn Russia into an industrial nation. in that regard, it worked. Manufacturing soared and whole cities were created to produce industrial goods.

The point here is the show trial is the bit of the iceberg we can see from outside the ruling regime. The part we don’t see is the party struggle over how to move forward with their stated agenda. In the age of Covid, which started with the chants of “build back better”, it is not unreasonable to see the current show trials in this light. The new rounds of Covid panic, which are a prelude to an autumn lockdown, suggest there is a power struggle inside the party as to how best to force the great reset,

The 18-month campaign against Covid has seen trillions shifted from the white middle-class to elements of the ruling class. The tech oligopoly has profited wildly from the massive changes in society in the name of Covid. Small business has been devastated, much in the same way the kulaks were crushed by Stalin. On the other hand, similar to Stalin’s revolution from above, the great reset is not going to plan. The purge of Trumpism did not end resistance to the party.

Another clue here is the slow maneuvering to pass what is being called an infrastructure plan but is in reality the end of the two-party charade. The $4T plan working its way through the Senate will lock in the gains made by the Left over the last year and foreclose any electoral resistance. The show trial appears to be an effort to whip up support on the left in order to force some elements of the right to sign onto what amounts to their own death certificate.

In our sissified age, the show trial is more about the show than the trial. In this case, men with guns were sent out to arrest the protestors and lock them away in dungeons around the capital. The party leaders lack the courage to bring these people in for a show trial, so they remain incommunicado. Instead of having them shot and air brushed from the history books, they are a silent voice in the proceeding, a reminder to the right side that behind the performance is a will to power.

This is why people should not be fooled by the collection of sissies they rolled out in the first phase. Sure, the those mall cops reading speeches provided to them by the party were ridiculous. One of them was barely literate. The typical mall Santa sees tougher action than these wimps saw on January 6th, but that was never the point of this highly orchestrated drama. Stalin’s show trials were not about public support. The public supported the victims. It was about party politics.

That is the other parallel worth considering. The victims of Stalin were on the side of policies that enjoyed broad public support. Stalin was easily able to overcome this by having control of the instruments of state power. This is why voting harder is not a path out of the current crisis. Your vote does not matter. Instead, what comes next is always what comes next when a ruling elite believes they are the embodiment of the revolutionary dream. The revolution from above will continue.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

Sino-America

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Back in the early days of the internet, some people noticed that the emerging tech sector was helping the Chinese Communist Party use new technology to increase their hold on the people. Specifically, the American tech companies were working on two areas of technology. One was building the “great firewall of China” which prevented outside information from entering China. They were also building out what would became a digital extension of the surveillance state.

At the time, there were few people concerned about this washing back into the West, because after all, that is not who we were. There were people worried that American business was being changed culturally by with China. After all, if profit can cause people with liberal values to overlook slavery, torture and oppression, it means their allegiance to liberal values is up for bid as well. In other words, the concern was over doing business with monsters, not becoming monsters.

There were signs of the latter as far back as the Bush years. Thomas Friedman, the far-left activist at the New York Times was very fond of China. He started writing columns about how China’s one party rule was much more efficient than the sloppy and chaotic democracies of the West. Given that he was installed on an inner party platform, it suggested a change in how the managerial elite was thinking about themselves and their relationship to the people over whom they ruled.

Here we are a decade on and the American regime is slowly transforming itself into something like the Chinese regime. Deng Xiaoping famously said that China will have socialism with Chinese characteristics. Economically this has meant state capitalism where large state enterprises dominate the economy. They have some freedom to operate, but they must answer to the party. A vast thicket of private enterprise is tolerated, but the party keeps a watchful eye on them.

Whether by nature or by design, the managerial class of America is taking on Chinese socialism with American characteristics. Instead of state capitalism in the Marxist sense, it is state capitalism in the corporate sense. A small number of massive corporations dominate the economy. They allow the political parties some freedom, but politics must always serve corporate interests. Private enterprise is tolerated, but it operates in the shadow of the corporate giants.

It is on the political front where this is becoming more obvious. What the tech giants learned helping China build the surveillance state is the logic and spirit that it takes to operate it effectively. Gone unnoticed is the absence of whistle blowers from companies like Twitter and Google. One would expect regular document dumps revealing the internal workings of these firms. We have more defectors from North Korea than from Silicon Valley. The CCP has few defectors as well.

Of course, we are seeing the rollout of a social credit system like that implemented in China, except it is being done by corporations. Mastercard maintains a special blacklist of people who cannot use the credit card system. This was originally intended to combat criminal fraud, but it has now been turned to combat dissent. Note how it is becoming normalized. This is the trick they learned from China. That which is institutionalized quickly becomes part of the public psyche.

Another example of how the American regime is implementing Chinese authoritarianism with American characteristics is in how they are restricting speech. In China, the role of the party is explicit. The language is explicit. In America, the inner party is hidden and the delusion of self rule is their cloaking mechanism. Instead of hunting down violators of party orthodoxy,  the regime is “combating misinformation” on-line. Note how this new term has been repeated by regime actors.

Ten years ago, most people accepted that there was a lot of nonsense on-line and people would often joke about it. That was the point of a free speech zone. Anyone could say what they liked. Today, the usual suspects are cowering in fear at misinformation on-line. Joe Biden claimed that people are being murdered by misinformation, suggesting they have anthropomorphized the concept. In America, misinformation is the deviationism of the ruling regime.

A good example of how politics has taken the second chair to state capitalism is the latest spending bill in Congress. The Senate just voted in favor of a bill that exists only in the realm of forms. It’s not words on a page, but rather a concept that has yet to be given any specifics. What is happening here is the corporate interest are telling the empty suits in Congress to get it passed and they will then supply the text of the bill when the times comes to make it official.

What this means is our clues for what the American regime will do next lies in what China is doing now. For example, the Chinese imposed a law on Hong Kong that allows them round of dissenters and send them off to slave camps in China. The first has been convicted under the new law. The American regime is trying to pass similar laws so they can do the same thing. That is the point of the current show trial being held in Washington. They want to justify new laws against dissent.

The hundreds of dissidents being held incommunicado by the regime are a good mile post when measuring just how far the regime has moved toward this Chinese style of authoritarian rule. It also shows how the media has been completely subverted by the security apparatus of the state. Within living memory the media would have been all over this story, painting the victims as heroes. Today, few in the media bother to notice them at all. When they do, it is to cheer the regime.

There is another lesson from China that applies here. When she tried to apply Marxist-Leninist ideology, it was a disaster. The main reason for that is political-economy is culture specific, so this foreign political-economy could never fit China. The political-economy of China is similarly a poor fit in the West, particularly America. In China, the iron rice bowl still control regime thinking. In America, the seething contempt for the masses prevents such a social contract.

Liberal democracy evolved as a solution to the violence that arose when elites were no longer willing to hold up their end of the bargain. It was a feedback mechanism to signal course changes and reform efforts within the ruling elite. What we think of as liberal government was always a solution to the problem of violent regime change that had been the mode in the West for millennia. The current regime is now back on the road that will inevitably lead to the gallows.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

The Partisan State

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It was Lenin who popularized the term partisan, as in someone who is party-minded or exclusively concerned with the interests of his political party. He coined the term to explain why socialists should abandon objective analysis of politics. In a society of antagonistic classes, the owners of property versus the laboring classes, class interests and material conditions of existence determine political outlook. Therefore, all claims to objectivity are delusional or self-serving.

We see this in the dynamics of American politics, but not in the way in which Marxists imagined the concept. The left side of the ruling elite imagines themselves as the vanguard of society. They are the ones leading social change in order to achieve their not always well-define ideals. As a practical matter, this means they are the champions and caretakers of the interests of minority groups or in the language of the moment, “the under-represented and historically excluded groups.”

The opponent is always cast as the face of established interests. After all, the power dynamic would not make a lot of sense if the opponents of the oppressed were powerless or inclusive. In partisan politics, it is always David versus Goliath, even when David is all powerful and Goliath is powerless. For most of the last half century, the American Left has had total control of the high ground in America, but they are sure they are the underdog and the Right controls everything.

What this means is that the power relationship is the keystone of the moral dynamic within partisan politics. The underdog, the oppressed, the excluded, must always be the moral superior. Otherwise, it is possible that the oppressed are being oppressed for good reasons or worse yet, the partisan is in fact the oppressor. We see this today where massive global corporations destroy the lives of ordinary citizens while simultaneously claiming this is being done in self-defense.

In Marxist theory, once the working class conquered the capital class, there would no longer be a need for politics. The workers would usher in a classless society. Without classes, there could be no class conflict and therefore no need for politics. In reality, the partisan needs an opponent to exist. The very definition of the partisan is rooted in the existence of the opponent. If one wanted to identify the inflection point of the Soviet Union, it would be when Brezhnev toasted Nixon.

In America, this problem has been solved by generating an organic opponent, custom made to play the role of oppressor, while never threatening the real power. In the middle of the last century, the American Left was in total control. The New Deal was confirmed by the fact that progressives conquered the economic depression at home and conquered fascism around the world. The best the Republican Party could do is promise to be just like the Democrats, which was pointless.

The birth of conservatism solved a massive problem. Buckley style conservatism began as a revolt against the war socialism that lingered on long after the war, but quickly became a usable opponent when debating the next great crusade, the long twilight struggle against the ancient opponent to the East. Conservatism was quickly packaged as the face of the oppressor, the tool of corporate interests. Soon, every Republican was pictured as the little guy from the Monopoly game.

Back then, the coalition of the oppressed championed by the Left reflected the demographics of the country. It was mostly white urban working class people and rural whites, with blacks as a silent partner. The silent partner grew less silent over time, but the demographics of the country grew darker as well. The original opponent was the white middle-class and has remained so. As the complexion of the coalition has grown darker, the nature of the opponent has grown whiter.

The trouble is the old Buckley conservatism discredited itself after the Cold War and no longer makes for a useful opponent. The system has been desperate to create a new enemy, but so far, they have only come up with cartoon villains. The persecution of the January 6th protestors is as much out of frustration as anything else. The Left is so angry that they cannot find real bad guys, they are taking it out on grandmothers who had the temerity to walk into the people’s house.

The ridiculousness of the new bogeymen does not mean the partisans have thrown in the towel on the project. There are efforts to create a new right-wing, which they have helpfully called the New Right. Members of the Old Right are looking for a reboot, so they are happy to join the project. The heirs of Trotsky are hard at work trying to sort this problem as well. They helped the Old Right avoid putting their ideas into practice for 70 years, so they are hoping to repeat this with the New Right.

Therein lies a critical part of the partisan society. It must always be partisans versus objectivist, with partisans having the power. The partisan puts his ideas into practice, while the objectivist is content to describe the world. The main reason for this is that as soon as the objectivist tries to act on his ideas, he is ruined. We see this in dissident politics, where you can analyze what is happening, but if you hint at any action, the C-suites of global capital are alive with ideas on how to crush you.

The thing is, the partisan state relies upon all parties believing that the struggle is real, not just theater. In America, this has meant that the upper-middle-class radicals must believe the enemy has real power and is willing to use it. On the other side, the perpetual losers must think they can win. Politics in the partisan state is a game of zebras versus lions. The zebras win most skirmishes, but in the end, the lions win the battle, and they only need to win once. The lions control every outcome.

The question is what happens when people stop believing this fantasy. Dissidents see the growing ranks of people who no longer see a point to conservatism or even conventional politics. In a world of rigged elections and grotesque levels of political corruption, voting is an insult. Something similar is happening on the Left, where the disaffected Bernie Bros are questioning the game. They already have a new party that is on the ballot in over twenty states.

The Soviet Union provides a little insight as to what happens when the struggle stops being real for the people. The 1920’s and 1930’s provided the Bolsheviks with enemies they could use to justify themselves. The war provided the ultimate enemy for the system, but then came the peace. The Khrushchev years were about making the dream of socialism real, but when that failed, the partisan state ceased to exist. Instead, it was a generation of oligarchic rule with the tattered trappings of socialism.

It can be argued that the détente with the West is the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from collapsing much earlier. The American empire needed the Soviet Empire, so it was happy to help the Soviets keep their system running. The American empire has no enemy to serve this role. The Chinese are too smart to be trapped into a new Cold War and the Russians are too weak. The instability we see is a partisan state that has run out of enemies and therefore, lost its moral authority.

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

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

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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

Corona Warning

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It is becoming increasingly clear that most of what the ruling class has been telling us about the corona virus is false. The virus is real, and people have died from it, but everything else we have been told has not been 100% true. The origin of the virus is the most obvious example. Trump called it the “China Virus”, so the managerial elite denied that was the case. They made claims about it possibly originating somewhere else and just showing up in force in China. That was a lie.

Of course, the big lie to this point is that the measures the government imposed were rooted in science. Mask wearing was about preventing the sick from spreading the virus to the rest of us. Alternatively, it was about keeping healthy people from inhaling the virus as it buzzed around in the air. The social distancing stuff was also supposed to be science! None of the measures turned out to be rooted in anything more than superstition and a desire to abuse the population.

The reason that most people went along with these measures initially was that the official word about the virus was that it was Black Death. It is easy to forget, but the regime circulated images of bodies in the streets over in Wuhan. They used similar images when the virus hit Italy. Then they used images from horror movies claiming they were from overrun hospitals. They sold the virus as a potential extinction event, so even the most cynical prepared for the worst.

Corona has become the very definition of the big lie. The warnings about the virus were “lies so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” One should take a minute to appreciate the amazing bit of irony in all of this. Hitler is credited with coining the term to describe the people he saw as his natural enemy. Today, the people relying on the big lie to sustain themselves are making themselves mad looking for Hitler.

Putting all of that aside, we may be arriving at a point where those previous big lies start to shrink down in size and look reasonable. The number of people testing positive for the corona virus, despite being fully vaccinated, is becoming an issue. In the UK, they are reporting that between 40% and 60% of patients hospitalized with corona have been fully vaccinated. There is some confusion about the number as they originally reported the higher figure, but then the media made them change it.

We are seeing something similar happening in Israel. They have been one of the most aggressive countries on the vaccination front. They started early and were the most effective at getting people into the program. As a result, they are one of the most vaccinated countries in the world. They are currently reporting that over 60% of their severe cases are people who have been fully vaccinated. Moderna executives may want to hire food testers and people to start their cars.

In the United States, it is unlikely that these sorts of numbers will be reported as the government and media are simply too dishonest. We do have other ways of seeing if the pattern is the same here. Sports teams, for example, are the most vaccinated populations and they are seeing people come down with corona, despite having been fully vaccinated. They are young and strong, so the cases are mild. Nancy Pelosi’s staff just reported corona infections, despite being fully vaxxed.

Largely ignored by the media thus far is the fact that the vaccine makers think booster shots in the fall may be required. It is hard to know if this is just another lie to keep the money flowing or it is an admission that the vaccine is not as advertised. It could also be a way to sell another panic in the fall, when the normal flu returns. We have reached the point where the only thing we can trust is that whatever we are being told is a lie, but the motivation for the lie is a mystery.

There are a few things going on here. One is that the fanatical testing that should never have been put into place is turning up many false positives. This sort of testing is supposed to err on the side of the false positive. It is not supposed to be used on the population as a whole. It is supposed to be used when there is a serious medical condition that requires treatment. A vaccinated ball player with a runny nose should not be tested for the corona virus or anything else.

The bigger issue, however, is that the vaccines are not as claimed. Past experience with vaccines for corona viruses has shown that these approaches were not highly effective, and they were short lived. Even natural immunity fades with time, but with these vaccines it seems to fade quickly. That is fine if you want to create artificial herd immunity to eliminate the virus from a herd of cattle, but it is not so useful for human population in large diverse societies not fully vaccinated.

What may be happening is the vaccines are highly effective in the short term, but the immunity fades during the first year. This may be the reason for the booster shot stuff that will arrive in the fall. It could also be that the vaccine is narrowly effective for the initial variant, but not for subsequent variants. Given the lack of testing before the roll out, we can only guess. There is also the possibility that the vaccine is a trillion dollar boondoggle that has very little utility at all.

When public trust collapses, the truth no longer has meaning. What carries the day is the most compelling narrative. This should have been the lesson of Hitler, who came to power because he provided the most compelling narrative. Repeated and unnecessary lying by the managerial class regarding Covid means that the facts are quickly losing their value. Instead, it will be the best narrative that carries the day. No amount of censoring will prevent that from happening.

It is fairly clear that we are well past the public health concern with Covid. The treatments for those with severe cases are now highly effective. Most of the population has natural immunity. The variants appear to be less severe than the first wave of the virus, which is not uncommon in pandemics. In other words, we are at the point where we can live with Covid, just as we live with the flu. The question now is whether we can live with the people who have spent two years lying about it.

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