The Return Of Chesterton’s Fence

Posted on February 11, 2025 by thezman

One of the things lost in the excitement of the first month of the Trump administration is the pending reform of the FBI. When Kash Patel was grilled by the Senate, he repeatedly made clear that reforming the agency was his top priority. This is one reason Senate Democrats are stalling his nomination. This paramilitary wing of the Blob is calling in every favor to preserve itself. That lawsuit seeking to prevent the DOJ from getting the names of the J6 agents is a similar move.

There is little questioning the underlying premise of the reform cause. The FBI has lost all credibility with the public after a string of scandals. Framing people is a terrible thing but creating elaborate traps for not-so-bright people, as we saw in the Michigan kidnapping hoax, is monstrous. Most people do not know this has been common practice for decades, but many people know it. Of course, you have the outlandish behavior of the FBI during the first Trump term.

The topic of reform starts with looking at how an organization reached the point where reform is required to save it. That is where the FBI is now. Many people think it might be best to just close it down entirely. The few necessary things it does could be transferred to other agencies or maybe to a new agency with a severely limited portfolio, something like an FBI-lite. When forty percent of the agency was used to go after the J6 people over the last four years, the agency is rotten to the core.

The number one reason the FBI is a mess is that it, like most police forces in the country, was turned into a paramilitary unit. After the North Hollywood shootout, where two heavily armed bank robbers tried to shoot their way through a police cordon, every police department has been transformed into a paramilitary unit. They got money for military grade weapons, body armor and tactical training. They also tapped into the military for equipment and the sort of men who enjoy military life.

The result is the police now function like British soldiers patrolling Northern Ireland during The Troubles or American Marines patrolling Afghanistan. No law enforcement organization group has been deformed more than the FBI by this. Years of selection pressure has resulted in agents who not only look at the general public with contempt, but look forward to confrontations with them. They arrive in full battle gear and have a hostile attitude to arrest mothers holding their children.

It is not an accident that the things the FBI is supposed to do have not gotten better over the last thirty years. Whenever some well-known crazy goes nuts and shoots up a public place, we always learn that this person was “known to the FBI.” We also learn they did nothing about it. Over the last thirty years, the FBI has been transformed from the nation’s top law enforcement agency into a heavily armed gang of thugs who only care about pushing around the average citizen.

You see this in the collapse of standards for FBI agents. A common video online is two portly agents, dressed like they are going to watch their kid’s t-ball game, paying a visit to a citizen over a social media post. The grotesque lack of professional standards jumps off the screen. People now expect higher standards from building inspectors and parking attendants than from FBI agents. The ones not playing soldier are slovenly couch potatoes with the disposition of a postal clerk.

The image of the FBI is a good example of the interplay between the aesthetic and the spiritual that we used to understand. The poorest man used to have a suit for going to church and for when he was buried, because the formal things in life were the important things in life, so it was reflected in your appearance. The Medieval scholar Erasmus, paraphrasing Quintilian wrote, “To dress within the formal limits and with an air gives men, as the Greek line testifies, authority.”

This is where to start with reforming the FBI. The first thing that should happen is every agent must pass a physical test, controlled for their age and sex, within the first ninety days or be fired. At the same time, the agents start wearing suits and the corresponding for female agents. Get rid of the casual clothes and you get rid of the casual attitudes they have toward their jobs. For most, showing up to work dressed like an adult will be terrifying, but maybe they should find other work.

Along the same lines, there is no reason for FBI tactical units. Agents get a standard sidearm that is locked up at their office when they are off duty. The automatic weapons, body armor, flashbangs, etc. all go back to the military. The guys who signed up so they can bust down doors will not like it, but they need to think about either going back into the military or signing up with an international security contractor. Free people do not tolerate paramilitary units operating in their society.

Of course, this will result in most agents leaving the FBI. The PT will eliminate a good chunk of them and the new dress code will filter out many more. The goons playing soldier will find the new culture intolerable. That opens the door for the next reform, which is a return to the old education standard. It used to be that the FBI required a degree in accounting. Then it is expanded to computer science. Now the ranks are littered with criminal justice majors.

In this age, the role of the FBI is to investigate technical crimes, like computer trespass, electronic fraud, corporate crimes, and other crimes that require intelligence. You not only need smarts to do this work, but you need technical skills. Reestablishing educational standards, like bringing back the dress code, is as much about fixing the culture of the organization as raising the quality of people in it. Smart people who take pride in their work tend not to beat up old ladies.

In the end, the problems of the FBI are a microcosm of what has brought managerialism to the brink of collapse. They simply stopped caring about their core function and stopped caring about their own standards. This opened the door to mischief and the sorts of people who feed on mischief. It turns out that those old standards had a purpose after all. The lesson here is Chesterton’s fence. The reform of government starts with revisiting all the old, abandoned rules.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

The Great Reckoning

Posted on February 10, 2025 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door, there is a post about the importance of enjoying the moment, a post on urban dependency culture, a video from my creek and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

As expected, the lawsuits are quickly piling up as the regime tries to buy time to regroup after the initial attacks from the Trump administration. There are multiple cases involving the Treasury, all aimed at preventing Trump appointees from doing their jobs, at least without permission from the court. There is one case involving the FBI, where the judge is asked to stop the Justice Department from looking into J6 cases. There is at least one case challenging the buyout system.

All these cases have been launched by activists trying to halt the Trump agenda, but they all have something important in common. They revolve around a set of core questions about these executive agencies. Who controls these agencies, by what means do they control them and by whose authority? The activists are challenging the Trump admin on the claim that these are independent agencies. They do not report to the President, so he cannot take these actions.

The trouble with that is there is nothing in the Constitution defining a fourth branch of government under which these agencies are organized. At best, it is a bit of make-believe Washington has indulged since Nixon. The mythology of Watergate says Nixon used these agencies to terrorize his political opponents, so he was driven from the temple of the people. Ever since, permanent Washington has waved around the bloody shirt whenever they did not like what a President was doing.

There is something more important behind this. Watergate was the triumph of the managerial class over the political class. For fifty years, an unelected and unaccountable class of experts has been left to run the administrative state, only indulging the President when it comes to appointing agency heads. In most cases, the appointees were from the managerial elite. These people took turns circulating between government and the Blob.

In his first three weeks, Trump has launched a big arrow offensive on this system and the underlying logic of it. Once these cases get to Supreme Court, administration lawyers will point out that there is no fourth branch of government and that these agencies are part of the executive. While Congress maintains the power of the purse, it does not run these agencies. That is left to the executive branch, which means the President and whomever he appoints to do it.

This seems rather straight forward, but the courts are as corrupt as the rest of the managerial system, so there are plenty of judges who will issue crazy rulings to stop the Trump agenda. While the Supreme Court only has a few ideologically deranged judges, it may not be eager to get involved. This is fundamentally a political dispute, and the court prefers to stay out of those. At the minimum, it may wait until they can choose a clean case to make a clean ruling.

The people filing these suits seem to be banking on the courts dragging this out and never getting to a final decision. They think if they drag it out and make it an issue in the midterms, they can win the House and Senate, then impeach Trump. You can already see hints of this in their rhetoric. While this may sound insane, given the public response thus far, these people live in a bubble. That and they have no other options, given what Trump is doing.

Team Trump seems to be prepared for this. In fact, part of the overall reform agenda is to get one of these cases in front of the Supreme Court to argue for the unitary executive theory, which says the President of the United States has sole authority over the executive branch. Even if the Court rules that Congress plays a role in how these agencies are administered, it will be a massive win. It means the administrative state returns to the control of the political class.

Why is this important?

For the last fifty years, these agencies, along with the media, the academy and the vast network of not-for-profits has operated independent of the President. Further, they have used their capture of the regulatory mechanism and the political finance system to control both political parties, thus controlling the legislative branch. USAID used its billions, in part, to control more billions in the budgets of the agencies, which it directed into its political projects, foreign and domestic.

The reason elections have had no impact on public policy is that the people making public policy were not subject to the voters. The political system became a theater to keep the people distracted. It is why the politicians have become increasingly frivolous and absurd. When Congressman and Senators are furniture, props in the theater of democracy, they tend to be theater kids. No serious person wants to subject himself to the humiliation rituals required of elected office.

The hammer blow delivered to USAID was aimed at shattering the financial structure of the Blob by removing the mechanism the Blob used to circulate money. If they are no longer underwriting the vast network of non-for-profits and regime media outlets, those entities will struggle to control the discourse. The DOGE boys examining every disbursements from Treasury is about starving the Blob of money. The restructuring of the agencies removes their power over the political class.

The reason the economic elite is backing this is because they see that the Blob is threatening their interests. It is out of control. When a girl boss judge in Delaware can crater the state’s economic model, and threaten the country’s financial model, the system that makes her possible must be destroyed. A million girl bosses armed with taxpayer money have set fire to the country for the last decade. What we see now is an effort to put out the fire and eliminate the fire starters.

In the end, we are in one of those momentous times when the fundamental questions of every human society are in the balance. Who decides, by what means do they decide and by whose authority do they decide? The Constitution answers all these questions, but it has been ignored for at least fifty years. Trump wants to restore that old political order, while the Blob seeks to bury it forever. Every civil war and revolution have been fought over these questions, so the best is yet to come.

Here Comes The Sun

Posted on February 6, 2025 by thezman

One of the things that is becoming clear to everyone as the USAID scandal unfolds is that much of what has been presented to us over the last several decades, as far as politics, has been an illusion created by the blob. The media was part of the blob, underwritten by the government and cultivated with government access, so they presented a version of political reality that favored the blob. Even the debates over policy were staged by the blob.

That is what is clear in the release of the CBS tapes of the 60 Minutes interview of then candidate Kamala Harris. Calling it an interview is an assault on the language because it was nothing like an interview. It was one part screen test, one part coaching and one part editing to produce what was presented as an interview. Everyone involved knew it was fraud and said nothing. In other words, what we have been seeing is not media bias, but an orchestrated fraud on the public.

As an aside, the corruption was so deep and so normalized that it appears that most people in these media companies were unaware of much of it. The staff at Politico only became aware of who was actually paying their salaries when the USAID money was halted, and Politico could not make payroll. How many people at the BBC knew that USAID was the second largest source of funding to the BBC? Did anyone at the Financial Times know that management were on the pad?

Putting that aside, everyone in Washington certainly knew what USAID was doing, and they remained silent. There is not a single “reporter” in Washington unaware of the fact that the main source for Ukraine news has been an operation run by the Kagan family with funding from the government through various proxies. They all knew it and they played along because their paycheck demanded it. In effect, all of Washington was enlisted as participants in the manufactured drama of politics.

That is probably the biggest part of the scandal. Most political scandals involve a small number of people breaking the rules. Their undoing is the old Benjamin Franklin line about how three can keep a secret if two are dead. What we are seeing is that Ben was wrong about that as tens of thousands were keeping a secret until now. It speaks to the poisonous culture inside Washington that no one dared mention publicly what all of them knew was happening.

This raises another question. What else have they been faking? Think about something mundane like television ratings. They used to be a big topic, but the proliferation of subscription services and cable fees changed the revenue models. Even so, they are still used to gauge the popularity of shows. The more popular a show is, the more likely new people are to give it a go. In the modern sense, it means more people are going to sign up for a Netflix or Disney subscription.

An iron law of life is that if something has value then there will be people trying to steal it or to fake it, so faking ratings has always been a thing. This video from the Critical Drinker where he and his friends discuss the ratings of various bits of bugman content just screams organized fraud. When you are talking about “minutes viewed” rather than actual people watching, it is safe to say you are trying hard to prove the old maxim, “Figures do not lie, but liars figure.”

You can probably look around and find dozens of things that are used as measures or standards that we take for granted but are probably fake. Will the upcoming Super Bowl really break viewing records for the fiftieth straight year? Is the pop star cast to perform at the halftime show as popular as they claim? Is the game itself on the level or is it also a manufactured drama? Speaking of which, how come there are no gambling scandals in sports? Did everyone suddenly get honest?

You can get carried away with this, of course, and begin to question your own grasp of reality, but we are on the cusp of a great questioning. Once the enormity of the fraud begins to sink in, people will naturally start to wonder if what is being presented to them is not part of an ongoing fraud. We already see this with medicine because of the many frauds perpetrated during Covid. Now we are about to see the same process rumble through the rest of society.

In a way, the events of the last three weeks are like what happened in the transition from communism to chaos in the old Soviet Union. On the one hand, there was the mass realization that much of what had been told to the public was an organized lie, but on the other hand an understanding that it was a necessary step to exit the world of lies and enter the period of reform. The American empire is now getting its form of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (transparency).

This should not suggest that success is assured. The blob will fight back, and it has many tentacles, so the fight has just begun. The vast amounts of fraud in the economy support millions of mortgage payments and college tuition bills, so the people benefiting from the organized fraud will not go quietly. With every window that is opened, more sunlight rushes in to expose the corruption. If the blob is to be defeated, it will be through the sorts of transparency we have seen this week.

The End Of Minoritarianism

Posted on February 5, 2025 by thezman

One of the side issues with regards to the USAID scandal is the fact that it was part of a system that has dominated the world since the Cold War. During the Cold War, this same system came to dominate the West, both as a whole, but also within the discrete parts of each member country. In fact, what happened at the end of the Cold War is this system sought to fill the void left by communism. The system was not liberalism, but rather a form of minoritarianism, minority rule.

Minoritarianism is a term coined by political scientists to describe a condition in which a minority has control of key decision-making processes. For example, the U.S. Senate requires a supermajority for certain things, which gives the minority party the power to veto these issues. This is the filibuster that the Democrats complain about whenever they need to placate their voters. In the case of the Senate, this system is to prevent the majority from abusing the minority.

Since the end of the Cold War, it has been official American policy to control the politics of the rest of the world. The endless yapping about “our democracy” is always about imposing Western systems on the rest of the world. After all, we have reached the end of history and there are no more debates about the morally correct way to organize a society, so everyone needs to fall in line. Even though the overwhelming majority of the world’s people disagree, the minority demands it.

This is where programs like USAID and NED are used. Their job, in many cases, is simply to sow chaos in targeted countries. Once it is determined that the majority is unlikely to get onboard with liberal democracy, Western aid programs go in to stir up trouble in the name of helping the poor or promoting rights. It is why they love sponsoring things like women’s rights in Muslim countries. The point is to undermine the unity of the majority in the country.

The same approach is applied to regime change. In Georgia, for example, the majority of the people wanted a patriotic government that would strike a balance between East and West, but that was bad for the people running American foreign policy, so USAID was dispatched to regime change the place. What followed was a year of protests and unrest, until the government kicked out the foreign aid workers. Once the USAID money dried up, the protests dried up.

The funny thing about the regime change operations is they rarely result in a stable government, but that is not seen as a bad result. If Slovakia falls into chaos after toppling the Fico government, that is fine. That is viewed as a better result than having a pro-Slovak government. The goal is always to prevent a majority from forming anywhere, whether it is inside a country or among a group of countries. The goal of minority rule is to keep the majority in chaos.

This makes a lot of sense from an American perspective. The United States is a small population compared to the rest of the world. If the rest of the world, or even a section of it, united against the empire, it would be big trouble. This is why both Israel and the United States work to keep the Arabs fighting each other inside their countries as well as among the countries of the Arab world. As much as Israeli and American politicians talk about peace in the region, they prefer the chaos.

We can probably date the birth of minoritarianism as an essential part of popular rule to the post-Civil War period in America. The ruling elite of Yankee New England became the ruling elite for the new country that was formed up after the war. That became even more explicit with the progressive revolution in the late 19th and early 20th century, culminating in the New Deal. Suddenly, the people making decisions would be educated experts from the best schools, all of which exist in the Northeast.

The story of 20th century domestic politics in the United States is one of discord and friction over race, region, and religion. Over and over one group is pitted against another preventing a majority forming up against the ruling class. Conservatism, for example, evolved so it could prevent a white majority forming up against the social policies preferred by the ruling elite. The many progressive causes were promoted to keep the coalition of fringes under control.

Everywhere there is turmoil there is the crisis of minoritarianism. Europe is in crisis because the big important countries have no role in decision making. Instead, you have girl bosses at the EU calling the shots. Estonia has more say in decision making than France, Italy, and Germany. Of course, the crisis was precipitated by the Ukraine war, which is the result of Ukraine being ruled by a non-Ukrainian with the support of the ultra-nationalist who make up ten percent of the population.

There is something to say in favor of minoritarianism. Most people are average to below average in their abilities. Collectively they are not magically above average. This has always been the fatal flaw in democracy. In fact, the majority tend to operate below the average of the whole. You need the smart fraction to run things, but the smart fraction needs to act in the interest of the majority. Otherwise, you get chaos, which is what we have seen over the last thirty years.

What we may be seeing now is the end of minoritarianism. The rest of the world is figuring out how to defend against it. This is why the American empire is beginning to withdraw from the frontiers. The American economic elite seems to be seeing the danger, which is why they have backed Trump and his plans to dismantle the managerial state. Even the minority, or at least enough of it, is figuring out that they must act in the interest of the majority.

The curse of the eighth decade is an observation that Israel becomes unstable in the eighth decade of its existence, in whatever form it takes. The first Jewish kingdom, led by King David, lasted for 80 years. The kingdom of the Second Temple lasted roughly eighty years before it was conquered by Rome. The modern state of Israel was formed in 1948, which means it is reaching its eighth decade. The current troubles in the Levant are rooted in the growing instability of Israel.

Perhaps something similar is happening to American minoritarianism. In his book, The Jewish Century, argues that the modern age is the Jewish age, by which he means the post-war world created by America. That is a good starting point for when minoritarianism became the defining feature of America. Eight decades of turmoil later and we are reaching the end of minoritarianism. The curse of the eight decade is now coming for the organizing principle of the American empire.

The Blob War

Posted on February 4, 2025 by thezman

The most surprising and most consequential event of the President Trump sequel has been the USAID scandal. No one thought that part of his revenge tour would be a direct assault on one of the main centers of the foreign policy hive. Until now, few people had any knowledge of this entity. Now it is in the center of the news because Trump has shut it down and put Musk and his whiz kids to the task of auditing the organization while the staff paces outside in the streets.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was sort of created by Congress in 1961 as a way to regulate foreign aid. Congress did not actually create an organization to do this. It directed the White House to create an organization, which is how the independent, not-for-profit entity called USAID came into existence and how it has operated ever since. It gets money through the State Department for its various programs, but it also raises money on its own.

To this point, there has been no oversight of USAID. It has been free, for example, to give money to George Soros organizations that do things like back candidates for state prosecutor in the United States. That seems like an odd use of foreign aid, but it really is the tip of the iceberg, which is why Trump is closing it down. That lack of oversight plus decades of existence created an organization that was operating like a government outside the government that financed it.

Of course, much of its activity was aimed at foreign governments. USAID backed the failed color revolution in Georgia last year. It was through the many local operations it supported that it was able to get people into the streets. The reason they did this is the Georgia parliament passed a law banning foreign money in politics. Georgia did not want to be the next Ukraine. The 2005 Orange revolution in Ukraine and the 2014 Maiden coup in 2014 were both underwritten by USAID.

It is why in the Biden years people started tracking the whereabouts of Samantha Power, the then head of USAID. Wherever she turned up, say Hungary before its elections, bad things happened for the local patriots. If you look up the career of Power, it reads like a road map to a position in permanent Washington, but also as a skeleton key for how the deep state operates. The people who actually run things jump from one node to another inside an informal network.

Powers was not running USAID in the Biden years because she brought an expertise in running a large enterprise. She got the gig because she was a trusted member of this informal group that runs foreign policy. She had been at the right stops at the right nodes and been vetted by the most trusted people in the system. She was plugged into the hive mind of this system. Its thoughts were her thoughts. Therefore, she would run this $50 billion dollar entity according to its wishes.

This is what the normies on Twitter fail to grasp. They think this about the money given to characters like Bill Kristol through one of his operations called Defending Democracy Together. Normie thinks in terms of money because he thinks in terms of the stuff he can buy with money. People like Bill Kristol think about the ways they can advance their people’s agenda with that money. As you would expect, the neocons are dug in like ticks in the network supported by USAID.

There is another aspect of the USAID scandal. One of the organizations it funds is called National Endowment for Democracy, which like USAID is an independent not-for-profit that was created by the National Security Decision Directive 77, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981. The alleged purpose is to spread democracy, but in reality, it is just another wealthy node in the informal network of formal and informal nodes that make up the shadow government.

Half of the budget of NED is allocated to the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (AFL–CIO), the Center for International Private Enterprise (Chamber of Commerce), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (Democratic Party), and the International Republican Institute (Republican Party). If you are curious as to why Joni Ernst tried to block Pete Hegseth’s nomination, check out the board of the International Republican Institute.

There you see how this thicket of not-for-profits and quasi-government institutions not only control foreign policy, but domestic policy. Hundreds of billions flow out of the Treasury through the budgets of the government agencies into this massive ecosystem that uses that money to control domestic politics. If you want to know why voting has had no bearing on public policy for decades, there is the answer. What matters to the politicians is this massive ecosystem, not your vote.

This is why the elected officials in Washington have been relatively quiet about what is happening not far from their offices. The party sent out some extras and understudies to perform in front of the USAID building, but otherwise they have remained quiet because they imagine Musk digging through the files, seeing things that they would prefer remain out of the public eye. USAID is just one problem. The DOGE team is analyzing every penny going out the door at Treasury right now.

It is also why the activists are going crazy over this. Most of them had no idea that their paycheck was coming from the government. They got grants and jobs at not-for-profits with important sounding names and “independent media outlets” run by people “passionate for the cause.” It turns out that most of it was underwritten by operations like USAID, which used government grants and corporate donations to control this vast ecosystem of radical activism.

When Trump halted all funding payments from USAID, for example, ninety percent of “independent media” in Ukraine had to close. Most of the pro-Ukraine accounts on Twitter suddenly fell silent. This is just one example, but it points to the enormity of the corruption centered in these quasi-government organizations. Much of what has been presented to the public as “democratic politics” has been theater staged by this swarm of not-for-profits and non-government-organizations.

One of the least surprising aspects of this is the realization that the people endlessly yelping about “our democracy” have been part of a system that works to prevent the will of the people. Similarly, it is no surprise that the lunatics screaming about fascism in the streets were underwritten by a network of organizations funding by the government and corporate donors. USAID was big into “gender” politics, for example. It was all a show, but also a massive fraud on the people.

Time will tell if DOGE is able to dismember this network. It appears to be a top priority for Trump, owing to the fact that it was this system that derailed his first term and nearly got him killed. At the same time, a lot of mortgage payments and ideological projects rely on that system. There will be a counterattack. The glimmer of hope here is that the oligarchs are backing the war on the blob. The blob controls billions, but the oligarchs control trillions and now they control the blob’s billions.

The Destroyer Of Worlds

Posted on February 3, 2025 by thezman

Note: Behind the green door, there is a post about the practical impact of what is called AI, a post about how I encountered Old Scratch in West Virginia, a video from my back porch and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

When Trump first appeared on the scene as a politician, a brilliant observer compared him to a character in the Asimov novels called The Mule. This was a character called the “destroyer of worlds” because he literally destroyed whole worlds, but he also destroyed the conception of the world. In fact, his very existence was a threat to accepted understanding of the universe, because the universally accepted conception of the universe precluded the existence of The Mule.

This has been the issue since Trump arrived on the scene. The people atop the post-Cold War world and the post-Cold War world itself, were all based on the assumption that a political character like Trump was impossible. The days of populist, nationalist and picaresque political actors was done. The present and future belonged to the Davos persons, the boys and girls who were produced by and benefitted the most from the managerial ideology that dominated the West.

What Trump’s success in 2016 represented was the nullification of the managerial order because according to the logic of managerialism, men like Trump had no place in the system, so they could never be a threat to the system. Instead, they were marginalized to the fringes of managerial life, the place where things are made, fixed, and created to keep the mechanics of the world going. They had no place in the world where decisions were made by the great and the good.

It is easy to forget that the best and the brightest smirked at the very idea of Trump running in the Republican primary. They were sure he was just another foolish businessman from the fringes, who thought he understood how things worked, but would quickly learn he was in over his head. Instead, the destroyer of worlds first destroyed the Republican primary. and the conservative ecosystem that controlled it, then he destroyed the system itself.

Like all monster movies, the story of this monster had that period where the good guys think they finally killed the beast, only to find out that it was still alive. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the regime was sure they were done with Trump. Then he reappeared, determined to run again in 2024. It turns out that the destroyer of worlds can never be destroyed because his mere existence depends entirely on his fulfilling his mission as the destroyer of worlds.

Thus, we have entered the final chapter of The Mule. The first two weeks of Trump’s return to Washington have been revolutionary. Things not thought possible are happening on a daily basis. The latest happening is the assault on the financial structure of the neocon war machine. Right now, members of Elon Musk’s team are combing through the records of USAID, the hive mind of the NGO collective that has controlled American foreign policy for decades.

Few appreciate the enormity of what is happening right now with the vast not-for-profit network held together by government entities like USAID. Suddenly, their very existence is threatened due to the suspension of funds from the American government, but also by the revelations to come about what they do with that money. There is a reason Elon Musk is posting about USDAID being a criminal organization. They were doing much more than keeping the Kagan family in donuts.

The vast informal network of formal and informal power centers that make up the real government, the shadow government, is now under assault. This is something that could never happen according to the logic of managerialism. With the owners of American society marginalized and the workers under control of the synopticon, who could possibly challenge this system? The answer is The Mule, the figure who should not exist in the managerial system.

It is hard to imagine it possible, but this is the calm before the storm. The tariff war with Canada and Mexico is just getting started. The system of free trade created forty years ago, which benefitted the ruling elites of all three countries, but was paid for by the people of all three countries, is now under direct assault. It turns out that the great sucking sound Ross Perot warned of thirty years ago was not a sucking sound after all, but an early warning of something terrible to come.

Team Trump is moving quickly to dismantle the post-Cold War world and the understanding of it. Marco Rubio is out giving speeches about how the unipolar world was an anomaly and we are returning to a multipolar world. On the domestic front Trump’s team is quickly working to dismantle and anathematize the bizarre social fads inflicted on the people by the managerial class. When the president blames diversity for a plane crash, the world has truly changed.

It is a bit ironic that the concept of The Mule was created by a man who was the creation of a world that emerged in the 20th century America. The post-national, post-liberal world that arose with the American empire was only possible with the evolution of the managerial ideology. Progressivism evolved to give managerialism moral agency, and together they made the American empire and for a while, came to defined the post-Cold War world, but now that is coming to a close.

What we are seeing is the long-anticipated end of the 20th century. Russia and China have moved into the 21st century, but America and the West have remained moored to the prior century, convulsively resisting any attempt to abandon it. That world, however, is gone and now, thanks to The Mule, it is being destroyed. For now, the destruction is the show, but soon, what comes next is what will matter. Everyone needs to remember that The Mule is the destroyer of worlds, not the creator of them.

The Body Of Lies

Posted on January 30, 2025 by thezman

The confirmation hearings for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services were yesterday and they offered some interesting insights into how the world has changed over the last few years. In many respects, it was a blast from the past, with the more ridiculous performers dusting off their old routines. Elizabeth Warren, for example, did her angry chicken dance in the hallway after she did her raging old crone routine in the committee room.

Warren and the other senators who took the opportunity to make fools of themselves for the cameras during the hearing were a reminder not only that things have changed, but why they have changed. Warren’s act was just an act. It was clear at certain points that she did not understand the words she was reading from her script, but it was clear she practiced delivering them with the correct angry face. If her handlers had required it, she would have accused Kennedy of colluding with Bigfoot.

That is one reason why we are here. The public, at some point over the last few years, began to turn on this sort of performative politics. According to recent polling, the Democratic Party has its lowest approval rating ever. Meanwhile Trump is enjoying his highest approval ratings. The reason for that is Trump, whatever you may think of him, is a candid and sincere form of politics. People like Elizabeth Warren are just paid performers who will say anything for a buck.

Of course, the fact that Kennedy was there at all is remarkable. Not long ago, Kennedy was a fringe character trafficking in “conspiracy theories.” At least that was the accepted narrative around him. Most people no longer accept that narrative. For many, if not most people, he is now part of this general questioning of those narratives. No one benefitted more from Covid than RFK Jr., because all the trusted sources for public health abrogated that trust, thus validating Kennedy’s critique.

Once you start questioning the official narratives, you inevitably start questioning the people responsible for those narratives. In the case of Kennedy, that means the public health establishment, which plays an enormous role in life. In fact, it is one of the key pillars of the managerial system, right there with “first responders.” There have been libraries full of televisions shows and movies about the glories of the public health experts saving the day. People are now questioning those claims.

If you looked closely, you could see it in the hearing. One of the Senate performers mentioned the “conspiracy theory of Lyme disease.” Kennedy has been open to the possibility that it turned up fifty years ago as the result of a lab leak. Not far from where it first made its presence was a military laboratory that specialized in using insects to carry infectious diseases. That is the connection at the heart of the “conspiracy theory of Lyme disease”, which should sound familiar.

Up until a month ago, the “lab leak theory” regarding the Covid panic was a conspiracy theory, one that can still get you banned from YouTube. Now it is the official position of the United States government. Just a few years ago, being open minded about the causes of Lyme disease would have been disqualifying, but it was overlooked entirely in this hearing and Kennedy was even allowed to point out several so-called conspiracy theories that have turned out to be true.

This hearing was possible because the world has changed. Suddenly, as if someone flipped a switch, it is cool to question the narratives. A big reason for that is Donald Trump, who survived one conspiracy after another, including one involving a would-be assassin who just happened to be in a Blackrock commercial. One thing Trump proved is that there is a limit to how many coincidences people can tolerate before they start thinking about alternative theories.

That aside, what the Kennedy hearing reveals is that the moral authority of the people behind the official narratives is crumbling. Elizabeth Warren can carry on like a crazy old church lady all she likes, but no one believes her. In fact, no one believes any of these people because they have lied too much. It turns out Lincoln was right. You cannot fool all the people all the time and once you set off down that road, it leads to a place where you cannot fool anyone at all.

Perhaps one day when the AI historians are writing us stories about the American empire, one narrative will be about how the body of lies necessary to maintain the managerial system simply became unsustainable. It moved from condemning those questioning the more outlandish claims from the authorities to condemning anyone who questioned anything, even when their doubts were confirmed. In such a world, no one can trust anyone and the system collapses.

What probably comes next is asking what else about the past is a lie? Did the CIA sell drugs in the United States to fund covert operations? People like Maxine Waters were condemned for making the claim. It is most certainly true, by the way. They worked with the Mexican drug cartel in the 1980’s to fund the Contras. Here is an interview with a former high ranking DEA agent on that subject. Amazon also did a much longer treatment of this topic last year.

What all this points to is that we are heading into one of those clearings of history in which we exit one forest of lies and must evaluate that time, before we can enter a new forest of lies. The Russians went through this after the Cold War. There was a great reexamining of what had happened under communism. The United States did not have this period after the Cold War but is about to have it now. To close the door on the past, you must revisit the body of lies that is the past.

The War On The Shadows

Posted on January 29, 2025 by thezman

One of the early features of Trump 2.0 is that it is nothing like the first version of Trump and nothing like what his adversaries imagined. Despite the evidence that this version of Trump would be different, his antagonists inside and outside the regime were certain he was the guy they imagined. Therefore, his victory was a shock, but they were sure what worked the first time around would work again. The weird silence from regime outposts is due to having been wrong yet again.

This version of Trump is a very different thing from the original version. We are seeing this in the realm of foreign policy where Trump 2.0 has been executing a plan rather than doing battle with the hydra that is the foreign policy community. It turns out that his refusal to have any dealings with the foreign policy community as a candidate, and his decision not to use government resources for the transition, has provided him with the element of surprise upon taking office.

You see that with his initial appointments. Marco Rubio was an out of the blue pick for the State Department. It seems to have been a shock to Rubio as well. Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon is another bolt from the blue. In the case of Rubio, he is an easily controlled lieutenant running an agency in need of radical reform. Hegseth comes to the job with his own radical ideas about reforming the Pentagon. The semi-permanent staff at the top of both agencies are now in a crisis.

Then you have Trump’s peculiar moves regarding the Ukraine war. He appoints Keith Kellogg as his personal envoy on the issue, but Kellogg is in no big hurry to get the ball rolling on Project Ukraine. He initially set up a tour of Europe and meetings with Kiev but then cancelled all of it. Trump has answered some questions about the Ukraine war but has not had any discussions with Europe about it. In fact, no one in the Trump administration has talked to the Europeans about the war.

At the same time, there is a purge underway of certain parts of the foreign policy establishment with some novel tools. For starters, Trump is cleaning house of neocons by assigning them to new positions intended to encourage their departure. This is an old corporate trick. He has frozen spending on just about everything, pending a review of how the money is being spent. Since all of government exists to spend money, it has thrown the usual suspects into a panic.

What this move is aimed at is the shadow foreign policy community that exists outside of government but is funded by government. These are the think tanks and research shops that live off government grants. They are full of former government officials and future government officials. Their job is to prevent whoever is in the White House from changing the direction of foreign policy. It is in the offices of these places that his first impeachment was organized.

These covens of mischief that were prepared to do their old tricks now find themselves in a crisis as their income is frozen and under scrutiny, while at the same time their friends and collaborators are being forced out of government. It is hard to plot the next regime change operation against Trump when you are struggling to make payroll, which is the point of this funding freeze. It is also a clear signal that Trump 2.0 is prepared to deal with these people.

This extends to the thicket of NGO’s, charities and think tanks that operate internationally, in coordination with the shadow government. Trump had Rubio freeze all work at these operations by freezing their money. The people who make regime change possible through their color revolution schemes are now starved of cash. If they cannot pay “independent media” and “opposition leaders” then those entities cannot organize “spontaneous” rallies against the government.

What Trump 2.0 is doing is attacking the vast shadow government that has evolved to be resistant to electoral politics. The Kagan family, for example, have plied their trade regardless of who is in the White House. They were able to do this because so much of what ends up as a foreign policy item on the president’s agenda is created by entities operating outside of government. Victoria did not retire when she quit the State Department. She continues her work in the shadow government.

Foreign policy is just one example. The chaos of immigration is due in large part to the vast network of not-for-profit entities that make millions facilitating the wholesale abrogation of immigration laws. These entities survive on grants from the government, much in the same way we see with foreign policy. The freeze and review of these programs is part of bringing them to heel. When J.D. Vance mentioned Catholic Charities role in immigration, it was a deliberate warning.

This is why the media response to Trump 2.0 has been so weird. Much of what they produce is handed to them by this thicket of extra-government entities who shape the media narratives around public policy. That extra government ecosystem now finds itself under direct assault by a new administration that did its homework and is now executing a plan of attack on that ecosystem. Compounding it is the fact that the donor class seems to be backing the Trump plan.

What has happened over the last several decades is that the official government of the United States was enveloped by this vast collection of extra-government entities that produce good jobs at good wages for the managerial elite. Since the number of government posts is small, relative to the number of credentialed people who think they deserve them, this network of entities has grown to serve an ever-growing collection of people who cycle in and out of government.

Since these people not only think they deserve the plumb assignments, but they think they know better than the voters and their politicians, the result has been a slow shifting of policy outside of official government into this shadow government. Foreign policy is most obvious, but this process has happened everywhere. No one can say who banned normal light bulbs, for example, because the policy bubbled up from the network of extra-government entities of environmentalism.

It remains to be seen if the Trump effort to defang this shadow government will succeed, but it helps that he has support from economic elites. The shadow government does not live only on government handouts. It also thrives by selling indulgences to powerful people and business sectors. Having friends in the shadow government is better than having friends in politics, because politicians come and go, but the shadow government is permanent.

One reason for the swing to the side of Trump by the economic elites could be that they have grown frustrated with this arrangement. People who think they are smarter than the voters are going to think they are smarter than the donors. Like a business run into the ground by management, the large shareholders are now stepping in with the support of the small shareholders, to clear out old management. Trump is like the old greenmailers; except this time the target is Washington.

The Great Economic Shakeup

Posted on January 28, 2025 by thezman

Imagine a society made up of farmers who produce what they need to live but also trade extra to one another for things they do not produce. This is not the most efficient society, but as long as everyone is self-sufficient, it works. At the minimum, each farm produces enough food for the family, even in lean years. Perhaps like the Amish, they voluntarily come together on larger projects that are shared by everyone and individual projects that require a lot of hands.

One day, someone comes along with an offer to one of the farmers. Instead of that farmer trading with the other farmers, this stranger will buy the excess for what the farmer wants in trade. He makes this deal with other farmers and before long he makes his living as the middleman. He does the trades between the farmers, keeping a little extra for himself in the process. Before long there are others doing similar and they all live in what they call town.

Now, imagine all the farmers decide to quit farming altogether and move to town to be traders and merchants. Obviously, that cannot work as now there are no farmers to produce the things the traders are trading, and the merchants are selling. Some of the farmers can quit, but not all. Additionally, some can begin to specialize to the point where they are no longer self-sufficient. They now rely on the traders and merchants in town to get the things they need to live.

In other words, the original model works just fine, but it is not efficient. The farmers are all just above the sustenance line. The introduction of middlemen makes for more efficient use of farm labor, so everyone can do a little better. Specialization in farming and in trading increases productivity. Somewhere in this model there is a mix of farmers, traders, merchants, and specialization that attains the maximum amount of productivity for this society.

That productivity, however, must benefit everyone. Otherwise, we get the problem of the farmers looking at the townspeople and deciding they would prefer to be a trader, rather than a farmer. There also must be a balance with regards to specialization, as this could make the productive class overly dependent upon the middlemen, who can then maximize their profits from the productive class. A society with a small number of people controlling all the profit is inherently unstable.

Therein lies the problem Trump inherits in terms of the economy. Starting in the 1970’s with the microprocessor revolution, the American economy has been hellbent on maximizing efficiency. Wherever technology can increase the output from labor, it has been done, often overdone. In fact, the data shows that efficiency has gone up far faster than wages, so we tipped past the happy balance long ago. While the overall economy continues to grow, it grows only for a minority of citizens.

On top of that, we long ago blew past the balance between producers and middlemen described in that prior scenario. A couple of generations of Americans have been trained to work in the middleman economy, often doing busy work related to boutique beliefs like diversity of climate change. Meanwhile, the productive sector atrophied or was shipped off to other parts of the world. The American economy is more like a global counting house now, rather than a self-sufficient economy.

The global bank model has run its course. The rest of the world, for various reasons, is disconnecting from the American model. The rest of the world is unwilling to do like the farmers in that model and turn everything over to the middlemen. That town full of merchants and middlemen is noticing that the farmers are not coming to town to trade their goods as much they did in the past. Suddenly, the skim from the work of the farmers is getting too small to sustain the townsfolk.

It is not a perfect way to think about it, but it helps understand the economic problems Trump inherits as president. It is why he is convinced that shifting from a tax system focused on labor to one focused on trade is a winner. It will help shift labor from busy work in cubicles back to doing productive things because the cost of imports will rise relative to locally produced items. Foreign producers will adjust by investing in production inside America.

The practical problem Trump inherits is the American economic model evolved to favor the middleman over the producer. Over time it led to the imbalance we see between producers and facilitators. It also led to a narrowing of profit to a shrinking number of players in the economy. In some ways, the American economy has become a digital version of the Bronze Age palace economies in that everything flows through financial and information centers that operate as skimming houses.

Fixing the imbalances within the rules of the system is impossible. This post by an economist calling himself Jack Rasmus explains how the tools available to government no longer work to address the practical imbalances. The people controlling Joe Biden poured almost four trillion in extra money into the system, but it did nothing to mitigate the problem of shrinking middle-class budgets. Prices keep rising while wages remain static, which means most people are getting poorer.

The only way out of the current trap is through systemic changes. That is why Trump is fixated on tariffs as an economic and policy tool. On the one hand this brings costs back in line with prices, so the market regains some coherence. If the real cost of an item is in the price of the item, then people will reward the genuinely lower cost items. In the current model, the cost of cheap goods turns up in the loss of social capital, delayed family formation and, of course, high crime.

A simple example is prepared food. These are cheap for the consumer but are packed with hidden costs. The refrigeration units used to be made in America, but those plants were shipped abroad by the miracle or tariff free trades deals. Of course, the plants are often staffed with cheap foreign labor, the cost of which turns up in your property taxes, the crowded schools, and the healthcare system. That frozen pizza turns out to be vastly more expensive than the price on the box.

Multiply this out all over the economy and it is easy to see the problem. Fifty years ago, middle-class families could get by on one income. Today, it takes two-incomes which is why there are far fewer families. Ours is an economy that looks prosperous on the outside, but the internals are littered with hidden costs. The only way to remedy this is to bring the costs back to the front of that frozen pizza and that can only be done through systemic change.

There are three challenges. One is the small number of people profiting from the current model will fight reform. That is not insurmountable. Trump having some of the richest men on earth in his corner will help a great deal. The bigger problem is the transition cost, which will come in the form of recession. There is no escape from it. The early 1980’s were the cost of transitioning from the productive economy to the middleman economy, so expect similar as we transition back.

The biggest challenge in this project is a dysfunctional managerial class that sees any change as a challenge to their position. The middleman economy was very good for the sorts of people who have a long list of impressive sounding credentials but view tangible accomplishment as a disqualifier. The army of managers in the managerial state cannot survive a transition out of a middleman economy. Like the aristocracy in 18th century France, they will not go quietly.

The Data Dump

Posted on January 21, 2025 by thezman

Lost in all the excitement of inauguration day, and there was much to find exciting, was something Trump said in response to a question. He said he plans to release everything about JFK, RFK and MLK that is currently classified. He tried to release the JFK material in his first term, but was talked out of it for some reason, but now he seems committed to it and has now added the others. His attorney general nominee pledged to release all the Epstein material.

Given how day one unfolded, it is safe to take Trump at his word. He seems to be sensitive this time to the fact that he got a reputation in his first term for big talk but little action, so on day one he delivered some controversial items. The pardoning of the J6 people without a lengthy review was a welcome surprise. The executive order on birthright citizenship was a stunner. If he is following through on these items, it seems reasonable to think he will follow through on the other items.

The question at the heart of all of these long-held secrets is why this information has been hidden from the public. The easiest one to answer is the Epstein material, which is going to include the names of his friends. Given the activity on that island, powerful people do not want their name attached to Epstein. It is possible that the FBI has been using this knowledge to blackmail people. The corruption in the FBI is so deep, you cannot rule it out.

Given Trump’s new friends in the economic elite, he probably feels safe to dump this out into the public domain. By now, whatever evidence held by the government regarding Epstein’s untimely death or his connections to Israeli intelligence has been destroyed, so there is not much harm in putting it out to the public. At this point, even if they admit that Epstein was controlled by Mossad, the only people who would be surprised by this revelation would be those who live in Washington.

The other stuff is a bit more interesting. What information is the government hiding about Martin Luther King or his killing? About twenty years ago, a bill was proposed to require all remaining MLK documents to be released by 2027. The MLK Records Act has never passed, but Trump could just order it. Supposedly, the government has documents about the assassination. No one questions who did it, but maybe James Earl Ray had friends in the FBI at the time.

The most likely reason for keeping MLK documents hidden away for over half a century is that they are embarrassing to the government. One of the interesting bits of cognitive disconnect is that on the one hand the intelligence services think they are the great manipulators, controlling things from the shadows. On the other hand, they are sure that the public has total trust in them, so they do not want this material released as it would destroy public trust in the agencies.

In the case of MLK, everyone knows that the FBI was bugging his phones and rooms, spying on him and his associates, and trying to create trouble in his organization, as they did and continue to do to any organized opposition. There is a good chance that there is a lot of information that is not flattering to MLK that has been hidden away for political reasons. Again, none of this would shock the public, but the people in Washington think King is a national hero.

Now, the Kennedy stuff is another matter. At this point, the only good reason to block the release of the remaining Kennedy material is that it implicates the CIA or the Mossad in the assassinations. Many of the conspiracy theories revolve around the fact that the intelligence community did not trust the Kennedys. Both Kennedy brothers were Israel skeptics who were at odds with the nascent Israel lobby. Give the direction of Israel policy after JFK left office, this is plausible.

Lyndon Johnson was a super-Zionist. His closest advisers on Israel and the Middle East were Mathilde Krim and her husband Arthur Krim. The two of them lived with the Johnsons off and on throughout his presidency. Mathilde was a convert who in her youth joined Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary organization fighting the British. Swapping out John Kennedy for the compliant Lyndon Johnson would have made a lot of sense to the Israelis at the time, so it is plausible.

The argument again this is that Trump makes all the noises of being as rabid a Zionist as Lyndon Johnson, so if that is the nature of this long-hidden material, it seems unlikely that he would release it. That would not make his Zionist supporters happy. This is what suggests the information is damning to the CIA or the FBI. Given how the CIA and FBI treated Trump during his first term, getting some payback this time around fits in with the theme of this term.

There is also the fact that Trump’s new best friend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is sure the CIA was involved in these killings. Ted Kennedy was a powerful senator for a long time and despite his problems, he no doubt had access to people who had access to the information hidden away by the government. The CIA angle has been the default assumption in Washington, as well. This is the best argument for why this information has been hidden away for so long.

In the end, assuming this data is finally released, it will all point to something that we have known for a long time. That is the managerial state that first took root in the post-war intelligence agencies, has been the real power in Washington. Most of what is presented to the American people has been a lie to one degree or another, because the people in charge think they know best. “Our democracy” has meant “their democracy” for much longer than the expression has existed.

The Z Blog

Sports, Culture and Other Stuff

Category Archives: Politics