The Media Revolution

Posted on July 25, 2020 by thezman

In 2016, the Left was super confident they had the election in the bag. So confident, in fact, they got sloppy. It was around this time that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign, assuming President Clinton would be cool with it. They are just as confident this time, but they probably don’t have the FBI and CIA spying for them. Given what happened in 2016, you would think they would be cautious, but instead they are overflowing with certainty. They know they will win.

One reason for this is they have purged almost all dissenting voices from their preferred media platforms. The Drudge Report is so over-the-top in his anti-Trump antics it feels like a parody site now. There is some speculation that he sold out to Silicon Valley grifters, but Drudge was always a creation of Neo-Conservative Inc. His sources and sympathies were always in that world. That whole scene has fired up the NeverTrump clown car for one more ride through the public square.

Twitter is just a far-left echo chamber. They have been purging so many people from the platform, even the most determined of trouble makers has grown bored with the effort it takes to get back on and stay on the site. Sites like Reddit and 4chan are muted for fear of being shut down like 8chan. That site was shuttered by the usual suspects and had to re-spawn as a weaker version of itself. Other than Gab and semi-private platforms, the internet is tumbleweeds and left-wing cranks.

One result seems to be a soaring confidence of the Left. They are carrying on like Dementia Joe will win every state twice in November. His vote will be so strong it will change the results of the last election. That’s an amusing exaggeration, but it is at the heart of their world view. Installing Biden in the White House will allow them to memory hole the 2016 election, as if it never happened. They will probably instruct textbook makers to skip the last four years of history.

Another result is some former enthusiasts of the Trump campaign are very depressed, certain that their guy will lose and that he deserves to lose. The anti-Semites, for example, are sure everyone is abandoning Trump, because the anti-Semites have been purged from the internet. It’s really weird how those guys on the one hand claim our greatest ally controls the media, but on the other hand they intensely follow the media and accept what they see at face value.

It is a good example of how the intensely on-line can lose perspective. When all of your inputs are from on-line media sources and people who agree with you, often two sets with great overlap, you get a warped view of the world. That’s the irony in what we are seeing right now. The former Trump fans who now hate Trump look at the media and see confirmation, while the people who hate those former Trump enthusiasts see the same media and also see confirmation.

The thing is, normal white people are getting really sick of the hate whitey stuff all over the media. During the last few months, whitey has been finding refuge in watching movies and television shows. Now they are being bombarded with explicit hatred of white people. If you circulate around normal people, it comes up a lot. When it does come up, the intensity is plain as day. These are people who would be Trump voters, so it is not as if this is changing minds, but it is pissing them off.

The puzzle is, with the lack of confirmation, will these people act on their anger and frustration this November. They don’t have anyone but Tucker in the media addressing their anger. They can’t get confirmation on-line, even from dissidents, as they have either been purged from social media, toned it down or now operate in semi-private venues like this one. Tucker having record numbers, however, suggests there is a deep reserve of pissed off Trump voters.

An important tenet of modern mass media is that these big social media platforms dictate public sentiment. The Left used to say, in the before times, that their control of the media was worth as much as 4-5 points in an election. That was probably an exaggeration, but it did seem to matter. They controlled what was discussed, thus always giving the Democrats home field advantage. They are now sure their control of social media is driving public sentiment.

Is the same true of modern media? The 2016 election could be used to argue both sides of that debate. Trump used Twitter to get around and control the media, by forcing them to respond to him, rather than the other way around. On the other hand, he was confronted by a wall of sound from the Left, but won anyway. It is easy to forget, but the Left was every bit as triumphant and nasty four years ago as they are right now, but the voters did not follow along as predicted.

He also had his rallies, which had to be covered by the media. This confirmed to his supporters that they were not alone. They saw lots of normal people enjoying the rallies and they saw the cranks in the media mocking those fellow normies. It was both confirming and infuriating. That’s the thing he needs to work around this time. He needs to let his voters see that normal people are just as angry at the revolution and that the way to express it is to support Trump.

One thing that has always been true about the American Left is they think rhetoric that works once will work forever and in all situations. The word “Nazi’ has been so overused that only far-left cranks respond to it with something other than laughter. Racist is heading in the same direction, as most normal white just laugh at it now. We may be seeing something like this with mass media. The Left has so abused their control of the media that it now amplifies sentiment, rather than alters it.

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The 85’ers

Posted on July 20, 2020 by thezman

Lost in the turmoil of the present revolutionary moment is the fact that one side of the political class remains trapped in a strange time warp. Look through the publications of mainstream conservatives and it is as if they stopped publishing new material somewhere in the last decade. They acknowledge that Trump won the White House, but they refuse to see it as anything but a one-off anomaly. There was no reason for it, other than a bug in the code or a one-in-a-million event.

For a while after Trump took office, they carried on with the anti-Trump stuff, but the money from the usual suspects ran out, so they dropped it. The Israel First wing of Conservative Inc. has setup shop at The Dispatch and The Bulwark, sites that cater to an audience that is similarly lost in time. Both sites look like recycled versions of the Weekly Standard circa 1996 or maybe The New Republic in 1986. What’s left of the old conservative coalition looks like a museum exhibit.

A good example is this post from Kevin Williamson. It feels like forever ago when he was considered an edgy writer for the new breed of conservatives. Read his copy and that feeling is obvious. For the last four years immigration has been one of the main topics of conversation in politics. What it is doing to a state like Texas has been a popular example. Yet, in a post about how Texas is becoming California, in terms of its politics, he does not mention immigration once.

How is it possible to be so obtuse? Granted, Williamson is not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but even the dumbest pundit should notice what people are saying. Of course, Williamson is a good example of another modern phenomenon. Whenever one of these guys gets mugged by the mob, instead of being radicalized by it, they go the other way, desperately trying to prove their prior blasphemy was an anomaly. He’s now a 1985 libertarian, ignoring most of what is happening in the world.

That’s fine, but National Review chooses to publish him anyway. They don’t have to make a trauma victim their lead writer. On the other hand, what else is there? The entirety of Conservative Inc. is in the same panic room as Williamson. At this moment, National Review’s front page has a story about electric cars, a story drooling over an Indian immigrant running for Senate in Tennessee, a story about robot wives and, well, you get the point. Teen Vogue is more serious.

It is not just con-men and grifters from the Conservative Industrial Complex that are trapped in a time warp. This was on Breitbart over the weekend. James Pinkerton used to be a guy who would speak forthrightly about the warmongers in the conservative sphere or the impact of globalization on regular Americans. He’s a libertarian, for the most part, but a rare one, in that he was prone to fits of realism. That post looks like something he wrote in the 1980’s.

Stop and consider where we are at this moment. On the one hand, we have a ruling class that is rotten to the core. They have corrupted every aspect of civil and cultural life in America. They now send gangs out into the streets to attack people and take over sections of cities. Pinkerton’s argument is the GOP must become the defenders of those corrupt institutions, as if this is forty years ago and the Left was making its final assault on the infrastructure of the country.

It is as if the entirely of conservatism has responded to the present turmoil by hopping in their DeLorean and going back to the 1980’s. Instead of reevaluating those old positions in light of new reality, they have reconstructed a new reality that is just ignorance of the present reality. The effects of wholesale immigration, globalization, the rise of the Cult-Marx Left and the populist awakening are all ignored. Instead they are retreating into their Burkean panic room to wait out the danger.

Part of it, no doubt, is fear. To talk candidly about what is happening these days is to risk your job and career. Most of the people in Conservative Inc. are there for the money and lifestyle it provides. They like the social aspects and the easy living. If being a Maoist provided the same lifestyle, most would happily quote from Mao. These are highly remunerated house slaves. The monied interests that underwrite these publications are not looking for candor.

Still, there are people who talk candidly about the current year. Kevin Williamson could at least mention immigration once in a story about how Texas is being turned into California by the flood of immigrants and migrants fleeing the invasion. Even if he can’t bring himself to admit the truth, he could at least acknowledge that people have been talking about it for close to a decade now. Pinkerton could acknowledge that the GOP is just the political arm of global enterprise.

What makes this retrenchment even more strange is the people they used to rip-off are heading the other way. You see it in little ways. For example, the old MAGA types are abandoning Twitter and Facebook for Parler. Many have recently taken the plunge to join Gab, after hearing Andrew Torba on Glenn Beck. Trump’s support is lagging because his voters wanted him to be more of what Conservative Inc. warned about, rather than less of it. They want the Trump the Left promised.

For the boys and girls now huddling in Camp 1985, the world has become a dangerous place, so they are hiding out in the past, hoping it all goes away. Every once in a while they will mutter “Orange Man Bad”, but otherwise, they are sitting out the storm, updating their old posts about the need for Burkean conservatism and how race relations were never better. Conservatism has become a cargo cult. They think if they pretend hard enough, it will be 1985 again.

Covid Capitalism

Posted on July 16, 2020 by thezman

For most people, buying a car is not a pleasant experience. Getting a new car is always nice, even if you are not a car person, but the process of getting it is almost always a hassle due to how cars are sold in America. Getting a used car can eliminate the hassle of the dealership, but then you have to worry about getting hustled by someone trying to unload their lemon onto a sucker. The car market is extreme capitalism, where no one gives a sucker an even break or smartens up a chump.

Strangely, this makes it the ideal place to understand what has happened to our society over the last six months. For example, every car dealership website now has a prominent banner informing the visitor just how much the car dealer cares about the health and safety of their customers. There’s usually a link to their page detailing just how much they care about you, the sap they hope will buy a car from them. All of these mission statements are titled, “Our Response to COVID-19.”

In case it is not obvious, a business built around the phrase caveat emptor is not concerned about the safety of anyone, even the employees. Like every business in extreme capitalist America, the car dealers see an angle in presenting themselves as guardians of public health. At the far end of capitalism, the business must be both rapacious and patronizing. Telling you how much they care about your welfare while stripping you of what they can is the standard business model.

The thing about all of this that goes unnoticed is how predatory economics has not just been normalized, it is now celebrated. Forty years ago, soulless money grasping was seen as immoral. The movie Wall Street presented a morality tale about how extreme capitalism was soul destroying. Today, the ruthless businessman is in the morally superior position, while the person doubting the ethics of his behavior is portrayed as a naive and stupid person, possibly even dangerous.

Maybe it is just a case of monkey see, monkey do with these dealers, but all of their steps to show just how much they care are the same across the board. They have “contactless” car buying, which is a very strange thing, when you consider it. How much physical contact would one normally have with the the car salesman under normal conditions? Of course, since their goal is to screw the customer, maybe this is a strange inside joke or possibly a cry for help.

Of course, all of this is just a racket and everyone gets it, except for the people firmly in the panic camp. They see it as confirmation. In fact, that’s the point of all these ads from giant corporations telling us how much they care about us and the communities they are destroying. It is pure partisanship. On one side there are the people sure this pandemic is punishment for Trump. On the other side are people who are sure the other side is using the virus to advance their ideological goals.

This is the world of today. There are now two camps of people. One camp consumes every event and metabolizes it into fuel for their ideological war. As soon as the virus became news their chief concern was in how to turn it into another weapon in their social war to control society. As soon as the hated Trump declared his side on the virus issue, the Left immediately embraced a set of positions on the virus. Every left-wing and adjacent governor blew up his state to spite Trump.

The second camp are the people who realize that the new issue is becoming politicized and they form up an opposition to the Left. In the case of the virus, they started as curious or maybe mildly skeptical. These were the people who said it was just going to be a very bad flu most likely, but we needed more information. Now they are the people who say the face muffler is the six pointed star of totalitarianism. For them, the facts of the virus no longer matter anymore.

In this environment, there’s no truth or even the desire for truth, as all truth is determined by which side of the line you stand. The car dealers, for example, would have lepers selling cars if it moved more product. It is in their interest to go along with the safety campaign, so they go along with the safety campaign. They would have their people in hazmat suits putting the buyer through a delousing station if that’s what it takes to sell cars. They care, because they don’t care.

Everywhere else, the caring capitalists are either proof that the plague is real and a punishment for the Orange Man or it is just part of the fraud perpetrated by people obsessed with hating the Orange Man. Not only does this make everything extremely simple, it means the simpletons rule the day. If you’re inclined to automatically take one side or the other based entirely on your feelings toward the people on each side of the line, this is a glorious time to be alive.

The car dealership is now the metaphor of our age. The people running it engage in the most extreme form of ruthless transactionalism. They do so while pretending they care deeply about the people they will gladly fleece. Meanwhile, on the lot, one group of buyers is misty-eyed over how much the dealer cares about this plague sent to spite the Trump people. The other group grits its teeth behind its face mufflers, fantasizing about the revolution and that sports car in the showroom.

Flight 93 Crashed

Posted on July 15, 2020 by thezman

The sad story of Jeff Session and immigration patriotism came to an end in the Alabama senate run-off. Sessions was soundly beaten by former football coach and Mitch McConnell sock puppet, Tommy Tuberville. Of course, President Trump was ebullient, as he had campaigned against his old friend and supporter in one of his now typical fits of rage. He blames Sessions for his many blunders early in his tenure. Trump will not have Jeff Sessions to kick around anymore.

It is also the death of immigration patriotism. Sessions was always the best on immigration when he was in the Senate. He actually got some real things done on the administrative side when he was in the administration. Tuberville, in contrast, is just a dope who spent his life coddling black guys who can run fast. Washington recruited him, because they were right about the voters of Alabama. They care more about sportsball than the future of their grandchildren.

Trump and his stage handlers will read this as confirmation that his base is too dumb to care about the issues. They will just fall in behind their orange hero. It is the same madness that happened in the Bush re-election. Bush finked on his voters for four years, but won a second term by pointing at the Democrats. The implication was, “vote for Bush unless you want those terrible people to be right.” The mouth-breathers are doing exactly as expected. They are trusting the plan.

Whether or not this works is hard to know. In 2004, the goal was to get something close to 60% of the white vote. Bush did reasonably well with Hispanics and blacks were not angry about anything in particular. Whites were 77% of the vote, so getting in the high fifties was the goal. Given the partisanship in states in the Northeast, losing those white votes was meaningless unless it hurt with white votes in competitive states. Bush got 58% of the white vote and enough Hispanic support to win.

In 2020, Trump will need to get something closer to 70% of the white vote. That’s due to the declining white share and the fact blacks are super-angry now. Despite his foot-washing for four years, they still think he is an orange supremacist and horrible racist. What does not get discussed in public, but has surely been discussed in private, is the math of this election. In 2016, whites made up 70% of the vote. In 2020 it will be 65%. The actuarial tables are working against Trump and the GOP.

Putting that aside, Trump will feel vindicated in his decision to abandon immigration and could very well swing the other way. He told some Mexican media outlet that he plans to amnesty the DACA people. He just reversed course on the student visa scam. In an age where American college students must stay home and do their college work on-line, the children of Chinese Communist Party members will get student visas so they can attend classes on American campuses.

The inner party, of course, understands the math entirely. In fact, they have been working hard to create this math since the 1960’s. Just as immigrants were used as union busters in the industrial age, immigrants are used as coalition busters in the liberal democratic age. The way for a small group to maintain power is to make sure there are no natural coalitions that can form up and challenge for power. That’s the game in America and it has worked.

Getting back to the Sessions story, it is a great example of how the inner party uses partisanship as a tool. The left-wing crazies hate Trump for no reason other than they were told he is very bad. They hated Bush too. In both cases, there was no real policy dispute at the core of their hatred. They hated Bush because he claimed to be an Evangelical Christian. They hate Trump because reasons. Their rage is just pure partisan hatred of the perceived outsider.

This has the perverse result of turning those outside the Progressive camp into supporters of the thing they hate. Otherwise conservative people fervently supported Bush in the 2004 elections, despite is liberal policies. Something similar is happening with Trump in this election. No one is really going to vote for Trump. They will vote against what they perceive to be the other option, which is street violence, statue toppling and the endless lectures on race from the media.

Regardless, the end of Jeff Sessions marks the end of immigration, nationalism and populism as salient forces in official politics. The 2016 election was called the Flight 93 election, as it was the last desperate chance to save the country. Well, flight 93 crashed and killed everyone onboard. That last desperate dash to save the day failed. The last desperate attempt to save the system in 2016 has also failed. The inner party gained control of the Trump administration and flew it into the ground.

The Logic Of Political Violence

Posted on July 14, 2020 by thezman

Back in the Cold War, one of the things Americans would puzzle over was the political violence behind the Iron Curtain. Most Americans assumed they would resist the state terrorism they heard about from the media. Of course, they assumed such a thing could never happen in America. Today we are seeing just how easily state sponsored terrorism can get going in any country. The reason is there is a political logic to murder that comes as a part of ideological movements.

The logic of political violence is best understood by considering the way Progressives frame their anti-speech pogroms. They keep equaling words and ideas that vex them with violence. For example, someone posting crime statistics on Twitter is accused of posting violent content or inciting violence. At the same time, BLM burning shops and murdering young white mothers is pure political expression. Language they don’t like is violence and violence they like is free expression.

All acts, speaking or physical activity, are judged in purely partisan terms. That person murdering white mothers on behalf of the Progressive cause is morally good by default, as he is sustaining and advancing the interests of the cause. Similarly, the person who stops laughing too soon at an official joke is consciously or unconsciously working against the interest of the cause. He’s a threat. In other words, all actions are judged only in partisan terms, not in relative terms.

Further, making total war on anyone acting against the cause, even by mild simple disagreement, is a form of self-defense to the partisan. The logic here is that someone saying something that contradicts the beliefs of the Progressive cause must be at war with the partisans of the cause. After all, what makes the partisan a partisan is his fidelity to his cause. To invalidate the cause, even by questioning it, is to invalidate him and therefore, striking at the bad speaker is self-defense.

Again, you see this in their language. Before the lock downs, colleges had already implemented a policy of “safe spaces” on campus. These were places where Progressive activists could be totally free of criticism or questioning. The post-modern partisan equates physical safety, not only with the lack of disagreement from outsiders, but the absence of anyone and anything that contradicts the cause. They demand to be insulated from physical reality, as well as contrary opinion.

This conflation of people with ideology into partisanship is why Progressives have always had a somewhat comical obsession with the backlash. A Muslim shoots up a gay club, for example, and the Progressive media writes stories about how Muslims fear a backlash from red necks and Christians. They just assume the Muslim was right for acting on behalf of his cause. Further, they just assumed his enemies, even though they are imaginary, will do the same.

The conflation of the ideologue and the ideology must lead to either political violence or political separation. The partisan looks around and sees nothing but enemies, people holding opinions that contradict the cause. Further, he sees them operating in a system that contradicts the beliefs of the partisan. Hence the concept of systemic racism that is popular with Progressives. They are surrounded by people and a system that is at war with the very essence of who they are.

There can be only two responses, fight or flight. Once the partisan has power, though, the only logical response is fight. Once they gain power, they are not just defending themselves, but now they imagine they are defending society as a whole. Rounding up dissidents and having them executed is not just vindictive cruelty, although there is a lot of that, for sure. To the partisan mind this is an act of self-defense. The bad-speaker is at war with the cause and all is fair in war.

Inevitably, this logic is confirmed by the piecemeal response to the political violence unleashed on the public. Someone realizes that the people in charge are willing to use violence and he or they respond with violence. This small act becomes the bloody shirt the partisans then wave around as justification. Notice how the Progressives still mention Charlottesville as a justification for their pogroms against anyone expressing unapproved opinions on social media.

It is tempting to dismiss these people as insane, but their logic, with regards to the use of political violence, is natural. After all, the death penalty is rooted in the same logic of societal self-defense. The murderer who can never be allowed loose must be killed, not as punishment, but so he can never kill again. There is a blood sacrifice to it, as Joseph de Maistre explained, but the fundamental logic of the death penalty is rooted in the most basic instinct of man – self-defense.

This is why America is probably closer to Soviet-style show trials and political violence than most Americans realize. Most people are not partisans or their partisanship is mostly ornamental. They wave it around when politics comes up, but it usually works to cut-off political arguments before they get started. Many Americans, probably a majority, are still trapped in the old political framework. Worse still, the so-called Right still thinks we live in a rule-based republic.

It is important to note that the Russians never saw Stalin coming either. Some suspected what he was, but most did not. The political violence of Stalin crept up on his fellow partisans on little cat feet. Before they could understand what was happening, he was having them packed off to gulags. The ultra-violence of the French Revolution similarly crept up on the radicals. The great blood sacrifice of radical political ideology is always the destination no one sees coming until it is too late.

The Deluge Of Opinion

Posted on July 13, 2020 by thezman

Bertrand Russel said, “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” It is a pithy aphorism that has now been amplified by modernity into a description of liberal democracy. In every Western country, the stupid drown out everyone else in the court of public opinion, but do so with a breath-taking degree of self-righteous sanctimony. The hallmark of the modern man is to have an opinion on everything, almost all of them wrong.

It is not that the stupid have been made supreme, although it certainly seems that way when you encounter public opinion. It’s that everything has been politicized to the point where every issue, no matter how small, becomes a moral signifier. Where you stand on the issue says something about you and your position in society. If you don’t have an opinion on an issue, it is assumed you are ignorant or possibly in league with dark forces, those who hold the “horrifically” wrong opinion.

For most of human history, few people had opinions on anything. After all, most people had no say in most things, so why bother having an opinion? The farmer working the land had a very limited range of things in which his preferences mattered. The shop keeper in the village or city operated under the rules established by whoever it was that ruled the village or city. Since no one cared what he thought about those rules, there was no need for him to have an opinion on those rules.

In private rule, whether it is a monarchy, dictatorship or oligarchy, opinions on public affairs are limited, as very little is actually public. The king decides and the people abide. Opinion only matters in private affairs, where people have control over their lives. What really matters to people is how comfortable and successful they fit into their social role. Custom, tradition and habit are what matter most, as complying with those is what brings personal and social happiness through the reduction of conflict.

In public rule, like a democracy or even communism, the range of topics up for debate expands well beyond the personal, but the moral significance of them paradoxically becomes highly personal. The theory in democracy is that the people come together, debate the topics at hand and fifty percent plus one decides public policy. In most forms of communism, the general will is expressed through the organs of the party, which has a monopoly of power. Thus, policy is always in line with the general will.

In reality, the public comes to embrace some new moral truth around the issue at hand as almost all issues facing a society are mundane and straightforward. The first truth of democracy is that most issues don’t require debate. The issue is whether or not the people will voluntarily go along with what must be done or they must be compelled. Democratic debate quickly devolves into claims about morality. The new moral truth is determined and everyone is then judged on where they stand regarding this truth.

For example, for ten thousand years marriage was understood to be primarily about creating new people. The male and female are joined and the product of that union is their children. Then all of a sudden, for no obvious reason, the great and good asked the public to redefine marriage to mean two people sharing a bed and rent. They slowly whipped people into believing one side was righteous, while the other was evil, until they got a critical minority to accept the new morality.

In liberal democracy, this this new system for evolving moral truth is extended by casting the new morality backward in time. It is not just a new moral truth, but a newly discovered universal and timeless moral truth. People are then judged by how far outside of this moral truth they were before it was discovered. It is why anyone associated with racism must be erased from the history books, as it suggests this new moral truth about race was not always a moral truth.

The result of this is an expansion of public debate to all aspects of life. No issue, no matter how trivial, is off limits. Even the most private topics must be exposed to public debate, as to do so suggests some things are outside morality. This was true in communist societies, where even your thoughts were open to examination. We are seeing this evolve in liberal democracy where modern day spectral evidence is used to determine if you hold opinions outside the accepted morality.

People naturally respond to their environmental. To be caught outside the newly discovered timeless morality is to live as a pariah. A way to avoid this is to loudly express the proper opinion about all subjects at all times. Those seeking to live in the elevated areas of modern life, the media, entertainment, government, corporations, must always be seen as inside the moral domain. Social media has become the platform on which they display their piety.

Of course, people look up for their social cues, so this endless bellowing about the accepted morality has trickled down to every nook and cranny of society. The suburban mom now feels compelled to ululate about racism on here neighborhood Facebook page, even though her neighborhood is totally white. Millions of YouTube actors repeat familiar chants like “there is no biological basis for race” despite the fact they have not the slightest idea what the phrase is supposed to mean.

We are living in a deluge of opinion, almost all of which is uninformed. Rather than living within a society structured by tradition, custom and habit, people now live in a world structured by mass opinion, shaped by a small group of gangsters at the top, who use the institutions of society to shape opinion. Everywhere the intelligent turn, they are confronted by the stupid and cocksure, screaming the latest opinions on the timeless morality that was invented last week.

It is really quite remarkable how irrational liberal democracy has become in just the last generation. The reason the world feels like it is going mad is that the volume of the stupid and insane has been turned to eleven. The reason for that is the inevitable logic of liberal democracy. If fifty percent plus one determines the truth, whether it is the price of fruit or the level of taxation, it stands to reason that all truth must be exposed to the fifty percent plus one and judged accordingly.

This means today’s truth can easily become tomorrow’s heresy. All it takes in many cases is a few votes to change at the very top. In the case of homosexual marriage, it took just one vote. All of a sudden, two men playing house is a timeless conservative principle of the constitution order. In such a fickle perfidious existence, the self-righteous and stupid must be prepared to loudly proclaim their fidelity to the new truth, as soon as the new truth is on the horizon.

The communist solved the problem of public government by deceitfully privatizing it in the name of the people. The party became the arbiter of truth and eventually settled into a fixed set of rules. While those rules were often at odds with the reality of the human condition, they at least had the benefit of being predictable. Liberal democracy does not appear to have such a mechanism. It is a constant revolution against established truth, so any effort to stabilize it is viewed as a threat.

There seems to be two paths forward for the current liberal democratic order. One path forward is it shakes itself into exhaustion, like a mental patient having a violent break from reality. The necessary mechanisms for a functioning society begin to break down under the assault of the stupid and self-righteous. The collapse of urban police departments is an ominous sign that this is the path we are one now. Imposition of order is being anathematized as irredeemably immoral.

The other path is something like a slow decent into madness. These spasms of lunacy will be followed by periods of relative calm. Just as the sober minded are putting things back in order, another spasm strikes to knock down that which has been repaired and knock down some new items. The result is spasmodic periods of decline until the sober minded are no longer willing or able to serve their role. At this point society tips into an accelerated decline and eventually collapse.

Choosing Sides

Posted on July 12, 2020 by thezman

At the end of last week, the lead writer for the Tucker Carlson show was fired for blasphemy, after it was discovered he was posting unapproved jokes on an on-line forum under a pseudonym. How his blasphemy was discovered is unknown, but the keepers of truth have teams of top women hunting down these people in order to keep their domains safe from unapproved thoughts. This is, of course, a familiar story that is now what the old newspaper guys would call a “standing head.”

Tucker Carlson has not commented on it, but his bosses at Fox News promise he will have an on-air struggle session Monday. Fox News, of course, “strongly condemns this horrific behavior.” By horrific, they mean saying “given how tired black people always claim to be, maybe the real crisis is their lack of sleep” on an on-line forum dedicated to snarky humor. Clearly, such words are so monstrous it is hard to believe a human being could think such things, much less say them out loud.

In all seriousness, one has to wonder what language is reserved for a school bus that rolls over on an icy road or the orphanage that catches fire. This is, allegedly, a news organization, whose job it is to report events. If edgy jokes are now classified as “horrific” then how do they convey the image of a school bus flipped over? How can anyone take seriously their descriptions when they indulge is such ridiculous emotional hyperbole like this? Teenage girls have more fortitude.

You can’t help but notice how the bold, rock-ribbed defenders of truth and civility have adopted the language of the Left. Like the old communists, Progressives now contort the language to such extremes that it is becoming a genre of humor. How long before they force Sean Hannity to call Peter Brimelow a running dog lackey? What adds to the absurdity is the people indulging in the hyperbole are the sorts of mediocrities you find staffing government offices.

We’ll have to see what Carlson has to say about it, but unless he dramatically resigns on-air, the one thing we can know for sure is that when the choice is between his friends on the Left and the people who watch his show, he will pick his friends. His man of the people act is just that, an act. Carlson is super-wealthy. If he walked away from his job, his grandchildren would never have to work a day in their lives. If he gets fired, it means fly fishing in Maine and ski trips to Aspen.

In other words, his former head writer took more risk posting edgy jokes on-line than Tucker appears willing take in defense of his writer. Unless this Neff guy is from old money, he is now going to suffer real harm. He will not only lose his income, but he will suffer internal exile for as long as the revolution rolls on. Whenever he applies for a job, he will have to atone for his crimes against the one true faith. As a practical matter, he may have to change his name in order to live.

This is the sort of stuff Tucker spends every night railing against. He has made his name condemning things like cancel culture. For him to obsequiously go along with his key writer being cancelled makes him a hypocrite and a liar. It means that in the end, his friends and neighbors in the ruling class come before the principles he claims to be fighting to advance. More important, he’s asking you to do what he lacks the testicular fortitude to do in his own domain.

He’s not alone in this. Charles Murray, the former biological realist, thinker and writer has gone down the same path as Carlson. After having got some credit for having stood against the mob, he is now throwing in with the mob. Like Tucker, Murray would rather be with his friends than defend the ideas he once claimed to champion. It will not be long before he is required to burn his own books and condemn his former collaborator Richard Herrnstein. He’ll do it with enthusiasm too.

We’ll see what Carlson says on Monday. You can be sure an army of top people are crafting a speech to keep the sheep in the fold. Most of the people watching Tucker are so desperate for a champion, they will overlook just about anything. This is what Team Trump is counting on in the November election. Opinion does not alter fact. The fact here is that one of his own was dragged out by the witch hunters, put through the ritual humiliation of cancel culture and Carlson did nothing.

This is the reality we must accept. This war the ruling class is waging on white people is not a product of a small cabal within the ruling class. It is all of them. Worse yet, the war has become a profit center for them. Would anyone be shocked if Fox News, after having cancelled one of their own, starts selling “free speech face mufflers” in the Fox News store? Maybe have Tucker pitch them on his show, right after he condemns Blake Neff for his horrific language.

In the end, this revolution will end up where all revolutions end. Everyone will be forced to choose sides and give over their life to the cause they choose. The people living in mansions will find the choice easy. Every day they are reminded of how well the revolution is treating them. For everyone else, it is more difficult, but eventually, everyone will have to become a partisan for their own cause. Everyone will have to be as loyal to his side as Tucker is to his side.

Strange Days

Posted on July 9, 2020 by thezman

Way back in the time before corona, it was conventional wisdom that shutting down the economy would have dire consequences for the economy. Whether you were on the panic side or the skepticism side, you were sure that locking down the economy was going to be bad for the economy. The stock market losing a third of its value in a week seemed to confirm it. No matter the truth of the virus, the consequences was going to be an unprecedented economic depression.

Here we are four months on and the world does not look like anyone imagined it when this all started. The promised bodies in the streets never materialized. The virus has thus far been a sever flu season hyped up by mass media. The promised depression has not made an appearance. The streets are still mostly empty during the work day and many businesses are still closed. Those that are open have all sorts of restrictions and they seem to have fewer customers.

What we don’t have is people out banging their pots and pans demanding the government do something about the economy. A lifetime ago a handful of white people showed up at state capitols demanding the end of the lock downs, but that soon gave way to swarms of blacks and Antifa promising to burn the cities. Otherwise, the productive portion of society seems to have gone back to sleep. Those working from home, work from home and those not working stay home.

The weekly jobless claims say that 30 million Americans are currently unemployed, but no one seems to notice or believe it. Of course, no one should believe the official statistics from the government and other sources. The only thing true about these numbers is they are constantly revised. We do know that 30 million people are still collecting unemployment benefits at the moment, so at least that many people are not working, but would like to be working.

The virus and the economy are a good example of partisanship. The panic crowd, which overlaps considerably with the anti-Trump, Hamilton listening set, was so sure the virus was a plague sent by the gods because of Trump they are convinced the hospitals are overrun and people are dying in the streets. Similarly, the skeptics of modern economics are so sure the system cannot last, they believe we are in a grinding depression that will explode into civil unrest at any moment.

What we are living through right now is probably one of those times when the partisan framework gives way to a new partisan framework. Perhaps in liberal democracy there needs to be a regular molting of the old partisan skin so a new one can emerge and refresh the debate. After all, forty years ago, the Left was endlessly going on about free speech and the dangers of corporate media. Today, it is the Right that champions speech and opposes corporate media.

Putting that aside, what we are seeing in the economy runs counter to pretty much everything we have been told for generations. The government should not be able to manufacture trillions of dollars without causing hyperinflation. This was something everyone, Left and Right, knew was true not so long ago. Here we are with the US debt at 23 Trillion, a number so large no one can imagine it. So large, no one bothers discuss it anymore. No one cares about the debt.

Similarly, we have been told for generations that the US savings rate was so low that the typical American could not afford to skip a paycheck. Small business was so strapped it could not go a month without business. We’re four months into the lock downs and we don’t have soup lines. Instead, Americans are paying down credit card debt at a record clip. In fact, credit card debt is now the lowest it has been in over a decade and headed for unprecedented lows.

One driver of the credit card debt decline is the collapse in spending. This makes sense, given those empty streets and closed shops. Still, people worried about money tend to hoard cash, rather than pay down debt. You can always tell the credit card company to go screw, but you can’t do that with the landlord, the mortgage company or the grocery store. Contrary to conventional economic wisdom, Americans are choosing to pay down their debts right now.

The weirdness in the economy is just one item. No new movies or television have come out since the panic and no one seems to care very much. Sports entertainment has been shuttered and no one seems to care. All of the spring and summer youth sports have been cancelled. This time of year, kids into baseball, lacrosse, soccer and big-time football would normally be in summer leagues. Their parents would be toting them around the country. None of that is happening.

You can probably spend the better part of day listing the things that used to be a fixed part of daily life that are now gone. More important, they are gone and no one seems to notice or care. Talk to people with kids in the summer sports and they will tell you the kids have quickly adjusted. They are doing other things. Parents with small kids are quickly adjusting to life at home with the kids around all day. Kid sounds are the background music of Zoom sessions.

The point of all this is we are like people who have been dumped out of their canoe in the rapids and we are now being swept down river. All sorts of things are happening to us and around us, but we have no way of getting our bearings. The thought of getting back into canoe has long passed. Now it is just a matter of surviving each minute until the river calms or we bash our head into a boulder. We have no perspective and no way to gain perspective until we reach flat water.

That means we really have no idea where this will all end. Maybe that’s why there is a strange calm over daily life. Maybe that’s why people are instinctively paying down debt and hunkering down. It may not make total sense, but in uncertain times, simplifying the household finances becomes a point of stability. Again, it is hard to know, as we are all just being swept along. Still, the one thing we can know is that we are being swept along by forces outside our control.

The American Drama

Posted on July 7, 2020 by thezman

One of the sports leagues announced recently that they intend to get rid of the white national anthem before games and play the black national anthem. Most white people, of course, were surprised to learn there is a black national anthem. Racists were momentarily excited, thinking that maybe blacks now had their own homeland, but that was not the case. Instead, it turns out that the black national anthem is a poem written a century ago by black civil rights activists.

It is an interesting bit of history that is worth considering. The poem itself reads like a call to black unity. The celebration of their new found freedom does not indicate what they hope to do with it, but there is a prayer to God that they will keep on the righteous path to victory, whatever that means. A cynic cannot help but notice that the poem and the musical performance was really aimed at the white Progressives that saw black abolition as their Christian duty.

It is a good reminder that the history of black civil rights can probably be best explained by the phrase, “Now what?” After the Civil War, the blacks were freed, but then everyone, including the former slaves stood around asking, “Now what?” The people who did the freeing did not have an answer, so everyone else was left to sort it out. The people in the Old South, black and white, had to come up with new living arrangements and nature, as it always does, took its course.

Something similar happened after the Civil Rights movement. Legal segregation and discrimination were eliminated and then everyone was left to wonder what will come next, but the civil rights champions had no answers. After a couple of decades of inaction, the final resolution was a few statues of Martin Luther King and a federal holiday for him. The efforts at forced integration were slowly abandoned in all the meaningful areas and we were back to where we started.

The cold-hearted cynics have always said that white Progressives and their fellow travelers just see blacks as another weapon in the Cold Civil War. If they actually cared about the condition of real blacks, they would address the horrific crime levels and social pathology that immiserate blacks in America. Instead, they periodically unleash black crime waves on the bad whites, along with lectures about social justice. In other words, none of this has anything to do with blacks.

That’s certainly true, but it mistakenly asserts a consciousness of action to the Left that probably does not exist. Talk to your self-righteous lefty about the current ructions and they have no idea why they are out in the streets ululating about racism. Like a trained circus animal, they are responding to prompts and expecting certain rewards. You, the racist bad white, are supposed to get vexed with them, so they can feel the dopamine rush that comes from self-righteous indignation.

This lack of consciousness is better observed in something that is less radioactive at the moment. Disney has now added the musical Hamilton to its subscription offering, causing every Progressive in America to sign up for it. The play has become something like the old musical Cabaret. Instead of being a show about Nazis, Hamilton is a show about social justice. The sound track is something like “Horst-Wessel-Lied” for the modern Left. It’s more than a musical for them.

When you press them on why they like it so much, they cannot explain it. A paranoid conspiracy type would be forgiven for thinking that maybe there is a subliminal message in these songs. As soon as a person prone to Progressive fanaticism hears the soundtrack, he spends hours listening to it. A couple of years ago when the soundtrack was released, it became a moral signifier like an Apple product. The good lefty would ostentatiously reveal he was listening to it.

This is where you see the total lack of reason and introspection on the part of Progressives caught up in the ecstasy of these moral panics. Hamilton was not black and he was certainly not a social justice warrior. In fact, he was probably the one Founder who was the least in favor of popular government. He is an unlikely hero for people claiming to be the liberators of the oppressed and the champions of all-inclusive liberal democracy, but that’s where they are.

That brings us back to the black national anthem. Like everything else about race relations, that poem was never about blacks or their disposition. It was written to titillate the good whites in the halls of power. It was their pets obsequiously performing a ritual for them. Similarly, Hamilton is just feel-good revisionism for white liberals. A bunch of blacks perform for their white masters in a way that flatters the master. Race is just another popular theme in the Progressive Dionysia.

There is no shortage of analysis trying to explain the insane behavior of mobs pulling down statues. All of it from outside the Progressive hive misses the point, because it projects reason and consciousness of thought onto the performers. What’s happening is these people are just that, performers. They are unconsciously playing a role, like participants in a pagan ceremony. They are doing so for their Progressive audience, who cheers and sobs after each statue is toppled.

This is the real source of power of the Left. It is not that they control the institutions or control the media. Those are consequences, not causes. Their real power is they control public morality and the expression of it. All public rituals are funneled through left-wing mythology, drawing in friends and foes, all of whom play a role in the great ongoing morality tale of liberal democracy. Like pre-reformation Catholic Church, the Left controls the supply of salvation.

Interview Of Nikole Hannah-Jones

Posted on July 6, 2020 by thezman

The following is a fictional transcript of a negotiation between white people and black people in America over reparations. Representing black people in the negotiations is Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for New York Times magazine. She is the creator of the 1619 Project, which is an ongoing blood libel against white people. Representing white people of America is the typical white person, who has tried in good faith for generations to figure out how to include blacks in civil society.

White Person: Thank you for agreeing to begin this dialogue. Having read your latest, uh, column on reparations, we, and by “we” I mean white people, have decided that it is time to think about reparations. While we in no way accept the claim that modern whites owe modern blacks anything for the alleged crimes of our ancestors, in the furtherance of peace between the races, we are open to discussing reparations.

Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yes, well, as I said in my post, if true justice and equality are ever to be achieved in the United States, the country must finally take seriously what it owes black Americans. It is time for this country to pay its debt. It is time for reparations.

WP: Presumably, when you say “the country” you mean white people. You don’t expect Asians, newly arrived Africans and Native Americans to be part of this.

NHJ: I don’t understand.

WP: What don’t you understand?

NHJ: I don’t understand what “presumably” means.

WP: Oh, I see. Well, I’m here to speak on behalf of white people. I cannot obligate Asians or newly arrived Africans, or Arabs or anyone else to reparations. You mentioned white people 197 times in your column. You mentioned black people 179 times. Asians, Jews, Native Americans, Arabs and so on were mentioned zero times, so this is about blacks and whites, correct?

NHJ: That’s right. As I said in my piece, generations of white violence against black bodies has to be addressed. There can be no peace until white people accept what they owe to black people. Going back to the very beginning….

WP: I don’t mean to cut you off, but I read your piece and I have read all the other stuff in the 1619 project. Like all white people, I have grown up hearing the long list of grievances of black people. That’s why I’m here. We agree. It is time to negotiate a settlement in order to get racial peace.

NHJ: It has been more than 150 years since the white planter class last called up the slave patrols and deputized every white citizen to stop, question and subdue any black person who came across their paths in order to control and surveil a population who refused to submit to their enslavement. It has been 150 years since white Americans could enforce slave laws that said white people acting in the interest of the planter class would not be punished for killing a black person….

WP: Okay, okay, I got it. I read the piece, a few times, in fact. If all you’re going to do here is recite from the list of grievances, then we are wasting our time. I’m here to talk about reparations.

NHJ: If black lives are to truly matter in America, this nation must move beyond slogans and symbolism. Citizens don’t inherit just the glory of their nation, but its wrongs too. A truly great country does not ignore or excuse its sins. It confronts them and then works to make them right. If we are to be redeemed, if we are to live up to the magnificent ideals upon which we were founded, we must do what is just.

WP: Yes, well, that’s fine, but can you tell us what you mean by pay its debts? I’ve read all of your work. I’ve read Ta-Nahesi Coates on the subject of reparations. What seems to be missing is the dollar figure.

NHJ: As I said in my piece, generations of white violence against black bodies has to be addressed. There can be no peace until white people accept what they owe to black people….

WP: Right, I’ll stipulate that. In fact, without qualification, I’ll stipulate to all of the claims in your work. What I’m here to discuss is reparations. What number do we put on the check to make black people whole? What is the debt you expect us to pay?

NHJ: As I said in my piece, until white people atone for their crimes against black people and pay their debt…

WP: Hold up, I just said we will stipulate to all of that.

NHJ: I don’t know what you mean by “stipulate”, but white people need to accept their debt to black people. As I wrote in my piece…

WP: Sorry to cut you off again, but that’s what stipulate means. We agree to all the claims made in your work and in the work of others. We’re not here to debate it or hear another recitation of it. We are here to negotiate the check.

NHJ: Check?

WP: Yes. The check. We are prepared to write every descendant of slaves, even those of mixed race, a check. We’ll pay the debt you feel you are owed.

NHJ: I don’t think a check can cover the pain of 150 years of suffering…

WP: Okay, then what else do you want? Land, like a black homeland? A ride to the airport? What? Tell me what we have to do to close the books on this.

NHJ: As I said in my piece, until white people atone for their crimes against black people and pay their debt…

WP: I got it. We all get it. That’s why we’re here. What do you want from us?

NHJ: We want justice.

WP: Fine. What does that mean? What do we need to do in order for you to have justice? If it is not a check, then what is it.

NHJ: We still want the check.

WP: Okay, how much. What’s the number?

NHJ: But it can’t just be a check. White people have to atone for the crimes they have committed against black bodies…

WP: Look. I’m starting to lose my patience. We agree to all of that. What we want to know is what we have to do, in specific terms, in order for you people to believe you have justice and to believe the debt is paid. If it is not a check, then what is it?

NHJ: As I said in my piece, financial restitution cannot end racism, of course, but it can certainly mitigate racism’s most devastating effects. If we do nothing, black Americans may never recover from this pandemic, and they will certainly never know the equality the nation has promised.

WP: Okay, so what you are saying is there can never be reparations, as there is no way for you to ever feel you have been repaid. Reparations means the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged. It sounds to me like you will never forgive whites, much less allow whites to make amends, so what are you asking?

NHJ: We want what we were promised.

WP: Okay, what were you promised and who promised it to you?

NHJ: The civil rights movement ostensibly ended white advantage by law. And in the gauzy way white Americans tend to view history, particularly the history of racial inequality, the end of legal discrimination, after 350 years, is all that was required to vanquish this dark history and its effects. Changing the laws, too many Americans have believed, marked the end of the obligation.

WP: I see. You don’t really want reparation. What you want is a raise. You want to live on the guilt of modern white people forever, but with the condition you get to demand a raise every generation. In fact, there can never be peace, as that would mean no more raises and maybe no more white guilt. After all, if we feel we paid our debts to you, we have no reason to keep paying you.

What you really want is tribute. I think I can speak for the majority of white people and say we would rather have the Dane. At least with him the issue was clear.