Category Archives: Politics

Strategy, Tactics & Discipline

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One of the longest running debates on this side of the great divide is about how best to work through the thicket of taboos created and maintained by the ruling class. Because so much of observable reality is now off limits, it is nearly impossible to contradict the prevailing orthodoxy and maintain a position in the public square. For example, there can be nothing interesting said about crime, because no one is allowed to discuss the demographic reality of crime. The facts themselves are taboo.

One side of the debate argues that the only way to break a taboo is to break a taboo, so the only way forward to is to talk frankly about these things. In the case of crime, for example, the dissident must always interject the demographic facts about crime into the debate, even if it makes the beautiful people shriek. Since most people know the facts, the shrieking by the beautiful people actually advances the cause. This line of reasoning is extended to all taboo subjects universally.

The other side of the debate points out that the taboo breakers always end up in exile or condemned to some ghetto. In fact, their deliberate breaking of taboos ends up reinforcing the taboo, as no one wants to end up like the heretics. Instead, this camp argues the dissident must come up with clever language that subtly mocks the taboos, but narrowly adheres to the rules. The recent use of the word “jogger’ is an example of complying with the taboo, while undermining it.

The taboo breakers counter that this just results in an endless search for approved language to hint at unapproved things. It is just a form of self-deception, where the clever think they are in revolt when in reality they are just asking permission. The optics guys counter this by pointing out the obvious. The taboo breakers are removed from the process, so in reality their tactic is just quitting the game. Rather than take on the system in a meaningful way, they mutter epithets in their ghetto.

The heart of this debate is the paradox of the marketplace. Contrary to popular mythology, markets eventually end up with a limited number of choices, unless some external agent, like the government, intervenes to maintain a balance of options on both the supply side and the demand side. In the case of the marketplace of ideas, it means the range of acceptable opinion eventually collapses into a narrow range. Inevitably, what the market decides is who will control the market.

Anyone alive in the early years of the personal computer will recall that a walk through the computer section of a department store meant a dizzying array of options. There were dozens of computer makers. It was not just different labels for the same hardware and hardware standards either. The technology was different from one maker to the other, with different operating systems and peripherals. Many companies were searching for the right solution for the home computer.

Eventually, the marketplace “decided” that Microsoft and Intel would control the market place for personal computers. They colluded with one another to drive most everyone out the business. The government did not step in to prevent their collusion, preferring to let the market work its magic. Today, all personal computers are the same. Sure, you can be a weirdo running Linux or Apple, but that is a tiny fraction of the marketplace that is tolerated because they are no threat to the dominant players.

Political opinion in western liberal democracies works the same way. Over time, a few parties have come to dominate, becoming the mainstream. They are not identical with one another and they do have real fights for power. They have simply agreed to a set of rules that will regulate their fights for power. Put another way, they have come to define the marketplace of politics in such a way that ensures they will be the dominant players in that marketplace. Democracy put them in charge – forever.

Now, this is usually when a certain type of critic jumps in and claims this group or that group secretly controls things behind the scenes. Personalizing a process is like anthropomorphizing your pets. It is satisfying because it takes something complex and makes it simple. In the case of pets, the owner gets the satisfaction of thinking his dog loves him for how he treats the dog. In the case of politics, personalizing the process avoids thinking about the systemic issues, which can be complex.

A good example of how the marketplace of ideas operates in a liberal democracy is in this story from Germany. The AfD has been forced to purge one of the leaders of the radical wing, because of his associations with a taboo group. Technically, he is being forced out over not being honest in his statements about those past associations, but in reality, it is about acceptability. The moderate wing wants to engage in respectable politics and that means following the rules.

This is exactly the problem conservatives in America faced in the 20th century when they sought to participate in politics. In order to participate in the marketplace of ideas, they had to follow the rules and remain respectable. In the case of the Buckley crowd, respectable meant agreeing to the prevailing moral orthodoxy. They had to embrace the open society, egalitarianism and the blank slate. Any of their members who refused had to be tossed out in order to maintain respectability.

The taboo breakers look at the optics guys and say, “See, when you agree to the rules you eventually come to defend them against the rest of us.” That AfD story is a pretty good example. In time, the system will eliminate one member after another from AfD until the party is indistinguishable from the main parties. At some point, the party will become respectable. The paradox of democracy will result in the “alternative” for Germany being indistinguishable from the status quo.

The optics side will note that the reason the radicals get purged is they almost always lack the necessary discipline to participate in much of anything. They say and do things impulsively and fight stupid pointless battles. In the case of the AfD guy, if he was as smart as he imagines himself to be, he would understand how this works and be prepared for it, but instead he refused to comport with reality. This is the story of taboo breakers everywhere. They always lose site of the goal.

In reality, there is no voting your way out of the inherent defects of liberal democracy, so the taboo breakers are right to reject conventional politics. On the other hand, politics is always about persuasion. You can only persuade people by addressing them where they are, not where you hope them to be. That means maintaining enough respectability to be able to address them in the public square, even if it is in the shadows. In fact, the edge of the public square can be an attraction, as people like intrigue.

The key to any alternative politics in liberal democracy is that it must be both a critique of the system and operate on the moral high ground. This requires the discipline to sublimate tactics to strategy. It also means policing the ranks to weed out those who simply refuse to place the strategy before their own personal desires. Strategically breaking taboos, in anticipation of the response, can be good outsider politics. Similarly, maintaining enough respectability to remain viable is essential.

In the end, alternative politics in a liberal democracy comes down to attracting high quality people, disaffected by the short comings of the system. If there is a genuine alternative, then there is a genuine choice. This has always been the defect of outsider politics in western liberal democracies. The alternatives are unreasonable and therefore attract the marginal and the unstable. A real alternative will maintain discipline and sublimate tactics to the strategy of being an authentic alternative.

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Petty Tyranny

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One of the stranger things about the current age is that very few people talk about the Cold War or the events that drove it. For people living from the 1950’s through the 1980’s, it was the central topic of politics. When the Soviet Empire collapsed, it was if everyone decided to forget about the whole thing. If it is mentioned at all it is usually a conservative trying to remind people that socialism does not produce high quality consumer goods or not enough choices in the cereal aisle.

The great ideological battle between socialism and liberalism has been reduced to a battle between market economics versus command economics. The winner was the one that made better home electronics. Yet, right up to the end of the Cold War, the battle was not about economics. Sure, the lack of blue jeans and rock music was a popular way to mock the Soviet system, but even there it was not about the products, but the reason why they existed in the West and not the East.

The West opposed communism not because of GDP numbers or cheap consumer goods, but because communism was not just immoral, but evil. Controlling the granular details of people’s lives was monstrous. Communist countries did not allow their people to voice their opinions or choose how they lived. They could not even choose where they lived, as the government assigned apartments. The image of the “iron curtain” was to compare the Soviet system to a penal colony.

On the other side, the Soviets were fond of pointing out how blacks in America were treated poorly. There was also the urban squalor and poverty. Some Americans might enjoy blue jeans and rock music, but millions lived in squalor. Of course, the existence of super rich living in mansions was immoral on its face, given that so many people were living in poverty. The communist could privately concede that their system was not making equal consumer goods, but it was still morally superior.

It’s strange how the great ideological struggle of the last century is largely forgotten or reduced to a contest over breakfast cereal selections at the market, while the short fight between liberalism and fascism is cast entirely in moral terms. The West won the fight with fascism on material grounds. America could make more planes, guns and tanks than the fascists. There was the normal wartime propaganda about the evilness of the fascist, but it was never an ideological struggle.

The battle with communism, on the other hand, was always a about the basic moral difference between the two systems. There was never any doubt that the communist could match the west militarily. In fact, a frequent theme of American politics in the Cold War was how we had to rededicate ourselves to liberty in order to keep pace with the Soviets in missiles, the space race and technology. Again, the material aspect was just a part of the much larger moral argument against communism.

Higher morality has largely disappeared from modern political discourse. There is the superficial and often nonsensical moralizing about individual dignity and inclusiveness, but that is just crude factionalism. The relationship between the citizen and the state or the relations between different groups of citizens no longer a topic. In the Cold War, this was a central topic, as it highlighted the difference between the systems. Even hack politicians could wax poetic about liberty or freedom.

Notice how the debate about the virus has been reduced to economics. One camp is minimizing the health risk because they want the economy open. The other side is wildly exaggerating the health risk to keep the economy closed, not because they care about public health, but because they hate modern economics. Amusingly, they don’t even understand what it is they hate about global capitalism. It’s often just a crude jealousy of those who enjoy the fruits of modernity.

If anyone cared to notice, this pandemic has proven that there is no hint of republicanism left in modern America. There are no protests against the impositions on our liberty, just protests about restaurants being closed. No politician is giving speeches against the tyranny of these restrictions. Instead it is either about the most primitive sense of safety or about the right to consume product. To speak of personal liberty is as anachronistic as speaking in favor of free silver.

The great conservative polemicist Joe Sobran pointed out decades ago that the colonists revolted against a king, who was a very mild tyrant compared to the American government at the time. The founders would have been horrified to see what their creation became in the 20th century. Something similar can be said about the men who set out to oppose communism. If they could see what has become of the West, they would probably rethink their opposition to communism.

In the decades since the end of the Cold War, the West has lost any sense of a higher morality. There was a time when religion would fill that role. It provided a transcendent purpose to life. In other times, the secular rulers would provide the purpose. Maybe it was modernization or public works projects. In the case of the 20th century, the fight against communism was the higher purpose. Today that is all gone and we’re left to squabble over the crudest of desires like safety and food.

Perhaps the reason for all of this is that liberal democracy was never a rational and complete political philosophy. Rather, like libertarian, it was always an ad hoc reaction to and critique of socialism. It first replaced republicanism in the economic crisis of the early 20th century, then it blossomed in the fight against fascism. Finally, it evolved into a containment vessel in the Cold War. Once that purpose was lost, what was a left was a massive economic and cultural machine with no reason to exist.

As a result, liberal democracy is devolving into petty authoritarianism. The people, stripped of their republican virtue, no longer have the means to resist. The ruling class, armed with a monopoly of force and need to legitimize themselves, is taking on the habits of the deranged tyrant. They push people around not because they want to, but because they need to in order to feel their own existence. What defines them is pushing people around, so they seek out reasons to push people around.

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The Minority State

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Thirty years ago, as the Cold War was ending, the big question for the West was what was going to come next? The great struggle between liberal democracy and communism was over and the clear winner was liberal democracy. The only real question, in terms of politics, was just how quickly the rest of the world embraced what was clearly the only rational politics. The question political theorists will be pondering in the future, is what went horribly wrong with liberal democracy?

There really is no other way to frame things at this point. In 1990, there was a long list of things that no one thought would ever happen in the West. Most of things on that list were things assumed to be common in the Soviet Empire. The police arresting someone for holding the wrong opinion was the symbol of everything that was wrong in the communist system and everything right about liberal democracy. Yet, thirty years on and this is exactly what we see happening all over the West.

This story from Kentucky, of all places, is a good example. Two children and two adults have been arrested for racism. That’s not the specific charge. Instead the state has invented a novel new crime called “harassing communication” which means it is against the law to upset the wrong people with your public utterances. Since there’s not official list of people one must avoid upsetting, the state is free to arrest anyone for their speech on the claim that someone may be upset by it.

At this point, it is tempting to make a comparison to the Stasi or maybe Stalin’s KGB, but that would be a slander against the communists. They were always quite clear about who you could never criticize and what you must never dispute. When Stalin’s boys dragged you from your home, you knew exactly why you were being hauled away by the police. Every man in the gulag knew why he was there. The novelty of liberal democracy is in keeping everyone in the dark about these things.

Another novelty is that in communism, everyone also knew to avoid taking the side of the accused and they knew why to avoid it. That was another thing Westerners would brag about during the Cold War. In America, when someone was bullied by the state, lawyers would volunteer to defend the accused. A common phrase used by Progressive civil and political rights activists back then was “I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it.”

It turns out to have been a complete lie. Not only will no one fight to the death to defend speech, the great and the good line up to condemn anyone for speaking out. Where is the ACLU in these cases? Certainly not rushing to defend children against the crime of saying mean things. No, the ACLU is too busy ratting out heretics and blasphemers, who dare question the liberal democratic ideology. In one of life’s great ironies, all of the civil rights groups now work to limit your civil rights.

Notice also how the concept of rights has changed. Thirty years ago, even left-wing political actors accepted the old definition of rights, as limits on the state. Your right to speak out against the government was really a hard limit on the state to police the speech of the citizens. Today, rights are just demands from an increasingly minoritized population for things to which no one can have a right. In this Kentucky case, they demand the community celebrate their mating decisions.

That should be the story here. This family moves to the community and begins making demands on the community. The white mother and her mulatto daughter start harassing the school about the racial complexion of the curriculum. The father demands the teachers change their classrooms to satisfy the demands of his children. This mixed-race family instantly became a cancer on the community, by making an increasingly narrow set of demands in the name of their rights.

This is one of the new realities of liberal democracy. Instead of people fearing the secret police and their many spies, the people fear the civil rights activists and their auxiliary army of novel weirdos. A mixed-race couple of trannies moves into the neighborhood and everyone is gripped with fear. It not only means everyone has to play make-believe with the lunatics, but must live in fear of upsetting them in some way. The agent of terror is the bespoke weirdo and its crazy demands for acceptance.

As an aside, this may explain the popularity of movies and television shows based on Stephen King books. One of his formulas is the nice, quiet small town that is suddenly beset by a demon that exploits the innocence of the locals, often the children. Everything is just right until the monster arrives. Further, the real terror in this formula is that there is no reason behind the demon. It’s just evil for the sake of being evil. That’s what the people in the Kentucky story are experiencing right now.

It is tempting to think that the people will tire of this terrorism by weirdo phenomenon, but the lesson of communism is that people will tolerate pretty much anything in an ideological state. The old rule about people revolting unless they are well fed and entertained turned out to be untrue in the Soviet Empire. The people often lacked the basics and the pleasures of life were highly rationed. Communism was not overthrown by an unhappy people. It just ran out of social capital to burn.

That is the secret sauce of popular government, whether it is some form of communism or some form liberalism. Both rest on the concept of the general will. The ideology of the state and the actions of the state are in the name of the general will. Everything that is done is done in the name of the people, as if fifty percent plus one is a god that must always be pleased. People will revolt against a king or despot. They will revolt against an aristocracy. People will not revolt against themselves.

That really is the paradox of liberal democracy. In the name of the people, the will of the people must be thwarted in the name of minority interests. We saw this with homosexual marriage. The champions swore they were fighting for the people, even when the people kept rejecting these proposals. It is why increasingly narrow minority groups are so popular with the ruling elite. If they can find just one weirdo to champion, they have a license to do as they please.

This fetishization of obscure minorities is leading inevitably to the West being dominated by minorities to the point where there is no majority. America will be non-white in two decades and Europe will be swamped with Africans by mid-century. Not only is there no effort to prevent this, all efforts are made to accelerate it. Paradoxically, the end point of majority rule is minority rule. Mature liberal democracy is a collection of minority groups demanding stuff from the state, like children at a candy store.

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What Lies Beneath

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An axiom of politics is that scandals are about sex or money. The politician at the center of a scandal got caught with a live boy or a dead girl. The public loves those stories, so it becomes a scandal, even when the politician is from the inner party, as was the case with Bill Clinton. Alternatively, the politician confused his money with public money or someone else’s money and someone blabbed. This is almost always the heart of local political scandals, where political machines run on graft.

It’s something to keep in mind as the years long FBI scandal has apparently entered a new phase during the lock down. The General Flynn cases was surprisingly dismissed, after a document dump by the Department of Justice revealing gross misconduct by the FBI and DOJ. Everyone sort of knew Flynn was setup, as is always the case when people are charged with lying to the FBI, but the extent of the entrapment scheme appears to lead to the inner circle of former President Obama.

Then there is the release of the transcripts of testimony to the House committee investigating the Russian collusion hoax. At the time, everyone in official Washington was required to pretend it was legitimate, so the House brought in over 50 people to answer questions under oath, behind closed doors. Those mostly unredacted transcripts have proven to be revelatory. Everything about the official narrative, according to the sworn testimony of the people involved, was entirely fake.

Probably the most amazing thing in those documents thus far is the fact that all of these people have been able to maintain a complex series of lies. The old adage about three can keep a secret if two are dead does not apply here. It’s not just the people at the core of the story either. Peripheral people, who have plenty of reasons to run to the media and tell their story have maintained a rigid discipline not seen since the heyday of the Italian mafia. Even now, they still refuse to rat out their friends.

That is the part of this that need special emphasis. Why are all of these people risking their freedom to maintain an obvious lie? Take, for example, the story about the Russians hacking the DNC e-mail system and handing the contents to Wikileaks. Just a few months ago they were repeating the claim that they were brought into investigate the crime and found that the Russians had gained access to the server. Yet, they testified under oath that they found no such information.

Putting that aside, the question is what was driving all of this from the start. Sex and money are not the motivators. The other thing that drives political scandal is power, which makes some sense here. The Clinton campaign, like the Nixon campaign in the 1972 election, was not content to just win with their massive advantages. Instead they decided to cheat with help from their friends in the intelligence services and apparently people in the White House. That may be the starting point.

The trouble with that theory is Team Obama really never liked Hillary Clinton all that much and did little to help her campaign. While it is possible that the people in the FBI and CIA were happy to help, it seems unlikely that the White House was going to be enthusiastic for such a caper. The bizarre Susan Rice e-mail to herself regarding the Flynn entrapment scheme suggests the White House really hated Flynn and was willing to do anything to keep him from re-entering government.

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that the DOJ in their filing to dismiss the Flynn case left breadcrumbs leading to that memo. There was plenty of information of general misconduct by the FBI and the DOJ, as well as Flynn’s original defense team, to warrant dropping the case. The government could have done one of those dramatic “to protect the integrity of the system” announcements that would leave open the issue of Flynn’s guilt, but close the issue from further discussion.

One possibility here is the Obama administration had been exploiting a workaround to the limits on domestic spying. By making Flynn the target of an investigation, the FBI could monitor his electronic communications and track his movements. This means they could know who he was meeting with as a member of the Trump team and monitor what he was discussing with them. In other words, the entire fraudulent Flynn case was just a way to spy on the campaign and later the transition team.

This would be the second and possibly third example of this play. It is quite clear that they used the same tactic on Carter Page. They faked up a case for him being an international spymaster, so they could monitor him and everyone in contact with him during the campaign. They may have been working the same angle on George Papadopoulos, the low-level foreign policy adviser. In other words, this may be a pattern of behavior that was standard operating procedure.

This ultimately may be what the Durham investigation is about in the end. A domestic spying system had evolved in which private companies worked with public officials to get around domestic spying limits and put the results to use for the inner party. The FBI and CIA would make raw information of their legitimate surveillance available to private contractors, who would leak it to the press or party members. Those press reports were then used to obtain warrants for wider domestic surveillance.

That could be the power motivator behind this. The reason for the Russian collusion hoax was to cover up the operation from the Trump administration. Team Mueller could threaten anyone making the wrong noises about it and the whole thing would remain hidden from the administration and the public. Still, that does not explain the amazing discipline of the conspirators. At this stage, a private party like Crowdstrike should be looking to cut a deal with the Feds. Yet they are sticking to their story.

One possibility is that there really is something much bigger at the heart of this conspiracy than simple spy games. Maybe the Seth Rich assassination looms larger than anyone realizes. Maybe that secret e-mail system running out of Hillary Clinton’s spare toilet is involved. Maybe it is simply ideological fervor. We know from their private communications that most of these people were fanatics. Their Trump hatred was just one aspect of their zeal to serve the inner party.

Government will always be corrupt, as men are not angels. Whether it is the lust for power or the temptations that come with power, corruption is part of the human condition. A much more serious problem is a government overrun by fanatical ideologues. That may be the heart of this scandal. The long march through the institutions has been followed by a radicalization of the institutions. The inner party now operates like a religious cult, rather than a political operation.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

The Ruling System

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There are a variety of ways to hold power. Some are better than others and over the history of man everyone one has been tried with varying degrees of success. By far the most effective way of maintaining power is to get those over whom you hold power to think their interests lie in you remaining in power. If you can get your subjects to think that their very survival depends upon you remaining their ruler, not only will they obey your orders, but they will volunteer to defend your position.

Of course, convincing even a majority of this can be expensive and difficult, so a better way to work this is to convince the people at the top. Every society is hierarchical, so if you get the ruling class to think their interests are your interests, then your interests become their interests. Not only will they defend your position, but they will seek to strengthen it when they can, as it benefits them. With everyone’s interest commingled, opposing the king means threatening the system itself.

The best example of this is probably the court at Versailles under Louis XIV. He not only brought the nobility of France under one roof; he created a social milieu for them that transcended their existence. To be a noble meant having a place at court. Your position in the ruling class was defined by your position and status in court. The aristocracy of France, in effect, became a society in itself, isolated from and distinct from the people over whom it ruled. It was a society atop a society.

If you examine the run-up to the French Revolution, it is clear that the system that evolved to that point had overtaken the people in charge of it. It was clear to most everyone that reform was needed. The finances of the king were a disaster and the nobility were being overtaken by changes in technology and economics. Yet, all reform efforts failed as reform was a threat to the nature of the system. Like a sentient being, the system conspired to thwart all reform efforts.

A similar problem vexed the Soviet Empire. The long terrifying reign of Stalin triggered an evolution in the system. Instead of one man ruling with an iron fist, a collection of men at the top of the party would hold power. The man at the top would depend on the party for power and legitimacy, while members would depend on the party for their power within the system. It’s what allowed Khrushchev to outmaneuver Malenkov, but also what led to the fall of Khrushchev and the reversal of his reforms.

One very interesting thing about the Soviet system that evolved after the revolution is how the party became a social organ, rather than a technocratic one. To rise in the party meant to rise in the narrow communist society that ruled over the larger empire, much in the same way the French aristocracy ruled over France. To be outside the party was to be no one. That threat alone was enough for most party members to wake up every morning thinking about how best to serve the party.

The social aspect cannot be overstated. Like Versailles, party members lived among one another and socialized with one another. Their children went to the same schools and eventually married one another. In the case of the Moscow elite, they lived in the same building. The ruling elite was not just a separate class of people, but a separate and distinct society. If it had carried on for long enough, the communist party would have been a separate race of people.

We see the same thing has evolved in the American Empire. If you take time to read up on the Flynn case or the much larger plot around it, you see a large cast of people with one thing in common. They all live together as a social class. Some were having sex with one another. Others had been friends since college. Others developed their relationships when they came to Washington. All of these social relationships transcend the formal positions and titles of the people.

For example, one thing the plotters liked to do is plant stories in the community paper, the Washington Post, which they would then use as evidence of something needing official investigation. This was possible because the people in the FBI had old friends at the Post, who they could grab a bite with and pass on the information. The “reporter” was happy to oblige, because he had the same interests as the FBI man. They were friends indebted to the same system that made their lives possible.

Throughout the scandal, you see people happily going along with what they know is against the rules, possibly even illegal, because they just assume it is the right thing to do for the system. The righteous indignation from these people when questioned is not an act for the cameras. These are products of a social world that defines who they are as people. They see their actions as a defense of a system that makes it possible for them to exist. They think they are heroes.

In a way, they are heroes. The very core of western civilization is the Greek notion of the citizen, as a man defined by his relationship in his polis. In his final hours, Socrates explains to his old friend Crito that he must accept his fate, as to do otherwise would make him an enemy of that which defines him. To flee Athens and escape death would make him an enemy of the law. That would make him an enemy of Athens, and thus no longer part of it and no longer Socrates.

Now, none of the people in the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election are Socrates or even capable of pronouncing his name. That’s not the point. It’s that they see themselves as members of a community. That membership not only provides for their material existence, it defines who they are as people. To defend it from a threat, even a duly elected threat, is to defend who they are as people. Even the slightest change in the system, no matter how necessary, threatens their existence.

This is why Trump has run into a stone wall as president. The entirety of the system, like a living organism fighting for its life, has organized itself against him. His failure to grasp this reality has made him entirely ineffective. It’s also why the investigation into the scandals will go nowhere. The system cannot testify against itself. It’s also why the Clintons were protected for so long. Once they were assimilated, they were another node in the system to be defended at all cost.

The lesson from the French Revolution is that once a ruling class becomes a ruling community, reform is no longer possible. The only way to change the system is to decapitate it. The lesson of the Soviet system is that technology can perpetuate the community until it exhausts itself. That is what happened with the Russians. The party eventually was overrun with people willing to ride in the wagon, but desperately short on men capable of pulling the wagon.

How the American system will end is anyone’s guess, but it will not carry on forever, as no organism lives forever. The low quality of the people involved in the FBI shenanigans suggests they are reaching the same point as the Soviets in the 1980’s. No matter how cleverly designed, a system needs capable operators. If John Brennan and James Comey are the elite, the community has a serious inbreeding problem. Still, the fact that it staggers on despite this speaks to the power of societal inertia.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

The Negative Mind

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For a very long time, the radical conception of politics was the struggle between the radicals advancing society forward and reactionaries trying to block the way. In this formulation, the radicals push for reform and the reactionaries concoct an argument against it and the resulting struggle advances society forward. The result is imperfect, so the ideal solution from the radical perspective is to eliminate the reactionaries, who stand in the way of the project and the path of human destiny.

Strangely, the modern Right has also embraced this view. This was not always so, but the conservatism that evolved in the 20th century fully embraced its role as the dancing partner of radicalism. Bill Buckley made this clear when he said, “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” Note also the need do the yelling when others are not inclined to do any yelling.

Superficially, this was an effort to own the insult, a pose to signal indifference to the self-righteousness of the radicals. There’s a bit of self-dealing there, as it assumes a bravery on the part of conservatives that has never been observed in the field. At the core, however, is the acknowledgment that conservatism as Buckley and others imagined it in the 20th century could not exist without radicalism. Conservatism was just one prop on a set that was built to feature the radical agenda.

Of course, this is an entirely negative identity. There is no internal mechanism to define Buckley-style conservatism. In isolation, it is like a pathogen looking for a host. It can only be kept alive through artificial means. This reality means that Buckley-style conservatism could never defeat the radicals, as to do so would be to sign their own death certificate. In time, this evolved into a sort of battered wife syndrome, where they needed the radicals to win every fight in order to feel alive.

The thing is, the radicals were not entirely self-determined. If we assume the birth of radicalism was the French Revolution, what defined it at its conception was an opposition to the established order. Radicals opposed tradition and order, seeing those as superstitions and cowardice. The way forward was to abandon those things in pursuit of human destiny, so naturally the radical must always be opposed to convention and orthodoxy. The radical was born to be in opposition.

In the 20th century, as liberal democracy became the norm in the Anglosphere and the nations under its dominion, radicalism blossomed into its own negative identity. To be on the Left meant opposing normalcy. Whatever normal people were doing, the radicals had to oppose and try to wreck it. This is explicit today in the grievance studies rackets, where they endlessly go on about disrupting and overturning what they imagine to be their oppressors. It’s all about opposition to normal human relations.

Modern politics is a dynamic between two co-dependent worldviews that must oppose one other to exist. This dynamic between two entirely negative identities has come to define modern liberal democracy. The radicals search around for things they must oppose and the conservative are constantly examining the radicals for what it is they plan to oppose. Once some novelty is discovered, both sides feverishly engage in well-established dance that always ends in the same place.

Take, for example, the issue with Joe Biden. He has a long reputation for being a guy who gropes women, often in public. He seems to get off on it. He’s not a rapist or a sexual predator. He’s just a weirdo who likes to grope women. According to the current sensibilities of the Left, he should be torn to pieces and fed to the dogs. After all, women have come forward with specific complaints and his behavior. In the Kavanaugh hearings, they said we must believe all women.

Of course, the Left is not all that interested in this. The conservatives are up in arms at the alleged hypocrisy. How can they support the absurd claims about Kavanaugh, while ignoring the quite believable claims about Biden? Predictably, the conservatives are putting on their outrage faces and doing the self-righteous indignation act. Soon, they will be outraged that the Left is not shamed by their own hypocrisy. That’s always the next phase of these political dramas.

The thing is, the Left is not indifferent or ignorant to the obvious hypocrisy. They are energized by it. Seeing the conservative apoplexy is what makes them feel alive, because it means they have disrupted and subverted the status quo. Who they are, what makes them what they are, is entirely dependent on the outrage and anger of the people they oppose. When the conservatives put on their angry face and appear to be confused, the radicals have become self-actualized.

What may have happened over the generations is liberal hypocrisy has evolved into a form of caudal luring. The radicals naturally embrace hypocrisy as it lures in the conservative, causing them to act in a way that validates the radicals. Unlike a snake or shark that uses its tail to lure prey, the radicals are not hoping to destroy their opponent, but rather they are sustaining themselves. As an entirely negative identity, they need the outraged conservatives in order exist.

This dynamic between two co-dependent negative identities that has come to dominate liberal democracy may be at the root of the crisis in the West. With no positive vision of the future and the endless struggle between two political forces with no natural reason to exist, nihilism becomes the default. At some level, both sides feel the despair that must come from knowing the pointlessness of their existence. The result is a manic quest to plumb the depth of cultural despair.

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A Racket, A Cult And A Corporation

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In the fullness of time, future historians will write books on their theories about why liberal democracy came to behave so much like Soviet communism. The hallmark of Bolshevism was its intolerance of dissent. It was willing to sacrifice everything in order to prevent individuals or groups from questioning orthodoxy. This is becoming the defining feature of liberal democracy. In the name of individual rights and dignity, western governments are methodically turning into police states.

Take for example this story out of Germany. State media, with a reassuring confidence, has reported that a citizen is under surveillance by the state for holding unapproved ideas and positions. Götz Kubitschek has been labeled “the whisperer of AfD right wing Björn Höcke” so he is officially on a list of people good citizens should avoid. The point of the story and the government action is to anathematize the man in such a way that regular Germans will be afraid to be in his presence.

Notice the language. “The Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified him and his institute as extremists.” If anyone’s is curious, here is the German constitution. It is 74 pages long. Article five reads in part, “Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources.” As is true all over the West, this part of the constitution was destroyed to “save” the rest.

Of course, harassing citizens is not about protecting anything. The Right often makes the mistake conservatives have made for generations in assuming the Left has a practical reason behind their actions. Ideologues do not need a practical motive like money or power. In fact, worldly goods are not motives for ideologues. Rather, they are means to an end. The ideologue seeks power and influence in order to advance his agenda, which often just means crushing his opponents.

That was a feature of communist societies. The people at the top of the party apparatus could count on fanatics and zealots down the ranks to enforce party discipline. It’s why the military had ideological officers in the ranks. this was an innovation discovered by the radicals in the French Revolution. One fanatic willing to report a close friend for unapproved thoughts is worth ten thousand police. Once no one could be sure of even their closest relationships, no one dares speak out.

This is what we see with the West. When the state, in the case of Europe, or Big Tech, in the case of America, declares someone a heretic, it is with the assumption that the auxiliary volunteer army of fanatics will take over the policing. You can be sure that Götz Kubitschek will get the treatment. Germany’s version of Antifa will stalk him, his family and acquaintances. Radical media will use him as an example for endless scare stories about extreme right-wing extremist. AfD will be expected to purge him.

Another feature of the modern liberal democracy and the communist states is in the role of official media. Let’s assume Herr Kubitschek is a potentially bad guy and the state has a legitimate interest in him. Why would they inform the media? They would not do this if he was smuggling women or running a heroin ring. They would do the opposite and not say a word to the media. In the case of ideological offenses, however, the media and the state become partners in policing.

This was a feature of communist societies that has been forgotten. What little is remembered about the Soviet Union, is jammed into the Orwellian narrative of the police state. In reality, the communists figured out that it was cheaper to use soft power than hard power. Sure, they still arrested people and sent them off to camps, but their most effective weapon was the control of official truth. Fear of falling outside of official truth was more than enough to control most people.

As an aside, notice how that whole period is now officially forgotten? Even people offended by the sorts of things happening to Herr Kubitschek will not make a reference to the communist systems? Instead, they may reference you know who, but never the people who perfected the use of terror in an ideological state. The official narrative has slowly removed all references to the Cold War and the role of ideological fanatics from the collective consciousness of the West.

Something that ties the amnesia about communism and the increasing emulation of it by liberal democracy is something Eric Hoffer observed. Ideologies can get along just fine without a Utopian vision, but they must always have an opponent. In the Cold War, liberal democracy could justify its many compromises by pointing to communism. Once communism died, it served no purpose. The new devil is populism and nationalism, so liberal democrats are willing to ape the communist to beat them.

Hoffer also observed, “Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.” That was in 1967, so he can be forgiven for not imagining something that was all three of those things. That is what we see in America. Liberal democracy is a racket, a cult and a corporation. The political class operates a racket, the media runs a cult and woke capital systematizes the whole thing.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Liar’s Poker

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The case of General Flynn, which has dragged on for years now, may finally be reaching a denouement. He was charged with and pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI during the Russian collusion hoax. For reasons that have not been clear, he was never sentenced. Now it appears he may never see jail and will instead see his case dropped and his guilty plea vacated. New evidence shows he was framed by members of the FBI and Department of Justice.

As is standard procedure in this age, state media has been silent on the matter, but alternative media sources are reporting on the release of classified documents hidden by the government from Flynn’s defense team in violation of the law. Thousands of documents held by his former defense team and hidden from Flynn and his new attorney’s until now have also been released in what appears to be a damage control operation by the law firm Covington & Burling.

What these new FBI documents reveal is the FBI and Department of Justice carefully planned to entrap General Flynn by tricking him into making inaccurate statements about his activities during the campaign. They did this because they wanted to remove him from his post in the White House and hoped he could be manipulated into making accusations against other administrative officials. Then they systematically lied about what Flynn said to them in his interview with the FBI.

Compounding this is the fact that the FBI and Departmental of Justice systematically withheld all documents that could be used by Flynn in his defense. One way they did this was to hide them in the special counsel operation. This prevented anyone, not just Flynn’s defense team, from discovering the plot. The sudden release of long withheld documents by Covington & Burling suggest they may have been part of the plot to entrap Flynn and get him to plead guilty to a crime.

At this stage, only a partisan fanatic thinks the principals in this whole Russian collusion caper were operating in good faith. You could make the argument that their behavior was unethical, but not necessarily illegal. Even if their actions violated the law, you could argue they did so in the belief they were within the bounds of the law. With these new revelations, it is clear they knew they were breaking the law in an effort to frame General Flynn as part of a much larger conspiracy.

One thing that is now confirmed with these new revelations is that the Special Counsel was always just part of a larger effort to cover-up this conspiracy. In fact, that was the whole point of it. The FBI and DOJ officials involved in the conspiracy would hide all of the evidence inside the counsel’s operation. This would make it impossible for the defense lawyers to access and very difficult for Congress to access. It would also prevent the administration from looking into it.

Another outrageous aspect to this case is that it appears that Flynn’s original defense team, Covington & Burling, may have been in on the plot to frame him. It’s not all that clear at this point, but the best that can be said of their actions on behalf of their client is they are the worst law firm in the country. They exist because they have resources and know how things work in Washington. Despite this, they made the sorts of errors TV writers would find too ridiculous for a legal drama.

There’s also the fact that this sort of behavior by the FBI and DOJ is business as usual, which underscores the corruption. This is not a couple of renegades. This is just how things are done by the government. They frame people for crimes then work to prevent them from getting a proper defense. The FBI has a long history of framing the innocent, but it was always confined to the field offices. Now it is clear that the institution is rotten from the head to the tail. It is hopelessly corrupt.

It is also increasingly clear that the weaselly Rod Rosenstein was the man tasked with orchestrating the cover-up after the election. He manipulated Sessions and Trump into firing Comey and then agreeing to the Mueller charade. The only purpose to that operation was to cover up the illegal spying. Then there is Comey, who claimed under oath to be the guy who ordered the Flynn investigation. He may have arrogantly admitted to initiating multiple Federal crimes.

Of course, the big question in all of this is whether Washington is so hopelessly corrupt that none of this amounts to anything. In banana republics, the judge in the case would be assassinated or intimidated into ignoring the facts and sentencing Flynn to jail. We may not be there yet, but the lack of any substantive investigation into the FBI corruption suggests no one will be charged with anything. The principals in this scandal are now in high six figure positions in Washington, living the good life.

Now, it is possible that Bill Barr was not prepared for the scale of corruption that has been revealed in this case. He may have truly thought it was a few bad apples that went off on their own. Once the scale of the corruption was known, he had to change course and bring in outside help. It’s just as possible that he is part of the problem. He is friends will most of these people. His role in this could simply be part of the how Washington is neutralizing Trump and preparing him for expulsion.

There is one puzzle that gets no attention. Why would the government keep delaying Flynn’s sentencing after he agreed to the deal? They said he was cooperating, but he had nothing to offer them and they knew it. Perhaps he was just a prop to maintain the greater narrative of the Russian hoax. By dragging out his process they could feed fake news to state media, claiming it was from Flynn. That’s seems to be a too cute by half, given the reality in Washington, but it is possible.

Ineptitude is always a possibility. There’s also the fact that highly corrupt institutions tend to have lots of internal intrigue and conflict. The old line about thieves sticking together is a myth. The corrupt man has no honor. As a result, the last stage for the corrupt institution is when the people inside beginning to scheme against one another to the point where they undermined their mutual efforts. Maybe that’s where things are in Washington now. It’s just one big game of liar’s poker.

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The Narcotic Of Outrage

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The legacy right-wing media is working hard to breathe life into the story about Joe Biden sexually harassing a women decades ago. Tara Reade has been turning up on conservative chat shows to tell her story. Evidence to support her claims has been circulating around the internet. One can’t help but be impressed by the effort to locate old television show clips and old acquaintances familiar with the event. That, of course, raises suspicions about who is behind this effort.

As usual, the so-called conservatives are flabbergasted to learn that the media is working hard to ignore the story. The same people who were hyperventilating about the goofy old women accusing Bret Kavanaugh are now too busy fabricating stories about hero nurses to bother with politics. Here’s a piece by Reason Magazine wondering why the media is ignoring the story. Here’s a post by National Review about the media’s double standard. They are shocked by the hypocrisy.

Most people on this side of the great divide no longer pay attention to this stuff, as it is like watching an old movie that you liked at the time, but you now realize was not very good after all. The Legacy Right has not aged well. In fact, a lot of people struggle to admit that there was a time when they were really into this stuff. The truth is though, almost everyone on this side of the great divide used to be really into these tales of left-wing hypocrisy. It mattered for some reason.

That’s the thing though. Why is anyone still fascinated with this angle of attack at this point in time? If you are under the age of 90, the so-called double standard has been a feature of politics your entire life. The complaining about it has been a staple of your politics until you made the journey over the great divide. The complaints never change and they never have the desired impact. It turns out that the people in charge are not swayed by appeals to their virtue or appeals to their sense of fairness.

It is one thing to play the long game. It is quite another to keep performing the same rituals over and over expecting some miracle, only to see nothing change. Even the truest of true believers starts to doubt after a while. Yet, the Official Right never seems to waver on this stuff. When Brett Kavanaugh was being assaulted, they did the same things they did when Clarence Thomas was assaulted. In fact, they were giddy. It was like they were working from a script.

It’s not an age thing either. It would be understandable if the people performing these rituals were old guys who spent their life doing this dance. The Reason writer is in his 20’s according to his bio. The National Review writer looks like he may still be in high school, but is probably fresh out of Hillsdale or Yale. If you are over 50, you have seen three generations work from the same script with the same results. A cynical person would suspect that this is not entirely an accident.

There’s no doubt that the people paid to stand around yelling at trains perform these rituals because they are told to do so. The people funding the Official Right are the same people funding the Official Left. This level of politics is intended to be theater to sustain the illusion of choice. You, the active citizen, are supposed to pick a team, put on their jersey and yell at your television every night. The political-entertainment complex has its formulas just like television and movies.

The puzzle though is why so many people fall for it. You can be sure that the people who read Breitbart will be fully enraged by the hypocrisy. The comment section there will be full of ritualized grunts and groans to signal unhappiness over how this poor woman was treated by old hairy legs Biden. They will be in ecstasy when Trump retweets a story about this or maybe likes a Tara Reade tweet. The campaign probably has that event on the calendar for this summer.

It may seem pointless to wonder about this, but any effort to alter the political dynamic must first start with breaking this conditioning. Simply pointing out to these true believers that their outrage is wasted does not work. If you went into the comment section of Breitbart and pointed this out, you would get shouted down as some sort of commie liberal. The same is true with social media. Confront these people on Twitter and they will just block you. They are programmed that way.

For a very large swath of right-wing people, even many on this side of the great divide, valiantly losing is a powerful narcotic. That’s at the core of the “let it burn” chorus regarding the coming economic depression. There’s some deep-seated belief that only through utter destruction can the sins of the modern age be washed for the collective soul of the people. It’s the other side of following the hypocrisy script. Instead of shared outrage, it is shared despondency.

That probably is the real narcotic of these quixotic battles we keep seeing. They provide a sense of security and community in a world where being “right-wing” means being an isolated individual in perpetual competition with his fellow citizens. The alternative to the Left has always been the lonely isolation of individualism, with the exception of these outrage rituals. Like solitary woodsmen coming into the village for a festival, it is a time to reestablish their humanity.

This is the trick of alternative politics. It’s not about grand plans or sophisticated meta-political discussions. It is about offering an alternative community. Libertarians, despite the ridiculousness of their cause, hang together because membership in the community provides a sense of belonging and bestows upon them a sense of dignity. That sideline they imagine to be the high ground is not a lonely place. Imagine a similar movement built around something based in observable reality.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!

Wither The Bernie Bros

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Lost in all the excitement of the government crackdown this past six weeks has been the fact that the Inner Party crushed the Bernie Bros. The party did not just outmaneuver them like they did in 2016, but they humiliated them. Their champion was forced to endorse the first Alzheimer American to run for president, while hiding in one of his mansions during the crackdown. The party made clear that they will not tolerate any more nonsense from the Bernie Bros going forward.

It was an impressive performance by the Inner Party. Once they decided it was time to end the Sanders nonsense, they wheeled around after the South Carolina primary and eliminated everyone but Alzheimer Joe, forcing each candidate to endorse Biden in a well-choreographed media blitz. They also had the media ready to promote each event through all of the official channels. Compared to the fumbling and bumbling of the Outer Party performance in 2016, it was a masterful show.

From the establishment perspective, the matter is resolved. Much as the Outer Party believed they had eliminated Buchananism forever in 1996, only to see themselves eaten alive by the cancer of Bushism, the Inner Party is sure they have put their crazies back in their boxes for good. They will tolerate brown bomb throwers like Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, because they are useful decorations. In the new, hip Inner Party, Maxine waters is replaced with wacky New Arrivals.

That said, what Sanders revealed in his two presidential runs is there is a substantial portion of the Democrat coalition that is uninterested in neo-liberalism. Like many people flying the White Nationalist banner, these people don’t like modernity very much, but have no way to look past it for an alternative moral framework. Instead, they look backward to a long gone past for an alternative. For them, it is industrial age socialism. They dream of being serenaded by folk singers as the rally against capitalism.

Unlike the people drawn to the former alt-right, the Bernie Bro world is much more colorful and culturally diverse. The alt-right was almost exclusively suburban, middle-class white boys. The Bernie Bros are disaffected young working-class whites, left-wing Jews and educated New Arrivals. The New Arrivals have benefited greatly from the current system, but are frustrated that they are slated to be nothing more than decorations for the Inner Party, so they are looking elsewhere.

The Inner Party is betting the New Arrivals will choose to stick with the plan, as being relegated to the outer darkness of political obscurity does not pay as well. People like Rashida Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez are not giving up the endless attention to lock arms with the dumpy and depressed children of old white working-class America. Instead, they will be the party spear throwers. The Inner Party will feed them new ideas to champion and they will sell them on party media platforms.

The radical Jews in the Bernie Bro movement are small in number and easily dealt with, as they are a permanent feature of the American Left. That leaves the white working-class element. Like the hard-core greens, who followed Nader out of the party, but sort of drifted back in, these voters seem less willing to fall in line with the Inner Party mandates. Many voted third party in 2016 or voted for Trump. This time most of these voters will simply abandon the election entirely

Now, the numbers for this cohort are not easy to figure, as there is not much in the way of polling to determine the size and characteristics of these voters. Since the Inner Party just wants them to die, the polling outfits and media are not allowed to look too closely at their issues. We’re left to guess by using what we see on social media and from the primaries in 2016 and 2020. Against Clinton, Sanders got 16 million votes. In 2020, he got half that in a truncated crowded race.

That means the size of the cohort is between those two numbers, but once you strip away the New Arrivals and adjust for other factors, the real range is between 5-10 million people or about 3-6% of the total vote. In other words, it is not an insignificant portion of the voting pool. It’s why Trump continually makes overtures to those voters whenever he talks politics or economics. It’s also why the Inner Party is now anathematizing the Bernie Bro media personalities.

That’s probably the best way for the Inner Party to handle these people. If they marginalize their leaders and media personalities, they have no rallying point, so they cannot organize themselves. All of those “dirt bag left” YouTube characters better get familiar with D-Live and other fringe social media platforms. They also better get ready to be treated like lepers at the Democrat convention. They will be purged from all sanctioned platforms. The valley of the damned will be getting crowded.

Now, it must be mentioned that the kookier elements of the now defunct alt-right think they can build a red-brown alliance with the Bernie Bros. Counter-Currents did a long post on the ridiculousness of these ideas. The “wignats” as the author calls the remains of the alt-right movement, are delusional. Too much of what defines the Bernie Bros is an opposition to crackpots embracing fascism. The grand Red-Brown entente is as likely as a Muslim – Zionist grand bargain to rule the West.

One amusing aspect of the Brown overtures to the Red side is the Browns are using the language of Marxism to do it. They try to explain to the Red that they are suffering from a false consciousness and need to examine who really controls their lives. It’s not a lot different than Breitbart types trying to own the libs by showing how much more anti-racist they are than the Democrats. Instead of “Dems Are The Real Racists” it is “White Nationalists Are The Real Socialists.”

In the end, the most likely result for the Bernie Bros is the same that we have seen with the patriotic white working class. Unable to move in any direction without compromising something vital to their identity, this group has just faded from the scene. Trump brought them out of the shadows to some degree in the 2016 general election and may do so again in 2020, but after that they will disappear from the electoral map. The Bernie Bros will follow the same path into obscurity.

The reason for this is that political movements based only in grievances are short-lived and ones based in incoherent grievances are even shorter lived. That is the common thread to the proposed Red-Brown alliance. Both sides answer to “what are you rebelling against?” is “what have you got?” They don’t know why they are unhappy and they don’t know what they want if not the present, so they rummage in the past for the trappings of meaning, fraternity and purpose.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. It turns out that you can’t live on clicks and compliments. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks, rather than have that latte at Starbucks. Thank you for your support!