The Managerial Man

Posted on February 8, 2020 by thezman

Every era produces men, who come to symbolize the age or at least some important aspect of the age. Otto von Bismarck, for example, is the embodiment of 19th century European empire building and national conservatism. Ronald Reagan was the full expression of the New Deal ideal that launched the American empire and reordered America in the 20th century. It was not an accident that he was the president to close the Cold War era and start the age of cosmopolitan globalism.

Similarly, a person can come to symbolize some movement or feature of a particular historical epoch. Ernest Hemingway, for example, is the face of the Lost Generation, the cohort of writers and artists who lived through the Great War as young people. Jean-Paul Sartre is what people think of when they hear about existentialism. Whether or not the person is the full embodiment of that movement is not important. They simply possess the important qualities associated with it.

What we may be seeing in the Democratic primary is the pushing aside of the old ideal that still rattles on in the form of Sanders and Biden. Both men are artifacts of the late New Deal period that came to a close in the 1980’s. Sanders still talks about politics as if most men work in factories and coal mines. Joe Biden is running like the friend of the working class, even though his party now hates the working class. These are men of the bygone era, not men of today.

They are being pushed aside by what may be the fullest expression managerial capitalism that accelerated into dominance forty years ago. Pete Buttigieg is both symbolic of his generation and of the class he inhabits. At 38, he is the quintessential millennial, having come of age at the turn of the century. He was 18 years old when everyone was wondering if the Y2K people were right. Of course, he is also a product of the managerial system that now runs society,

Like all managerial types, Buttigieg is a box ticker. He is not a man who actually does things in the world. Rather, he participates in things, gains a credential for having participated in them and uses the credential to advance his career. He was valedictorian of his high school and “won first prize in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum’s Profiles in Courage essay contest.” Then it was off to Harvard and then Oxford for a Rhodes scholarship in Philosophy.

After accumulating all of the credentials he could from his college experience, he went off to work entry level positions in politics and the media, in order to build his resume and network of contacts. Then it was off to McKinsey & Company, one of the major training centers for managerial class strivers. In anticipation of a political career, he joined the Navy reserve for an uneventful turn as an intelligence officer. He finally landed as the mayor of South Bend Indiana.

Buttigieg has the nearly perfect managerial man resume. The only thing that tarnishes it is he may have accidentally done something useful while in the service, like empty a trash barrel or remember to turn off the coffee pot. Otherwise, his is a resume littered with participation medals. From youth to middle age, Pete Buttigieg has avoided doing anything that involves risk or sacrifice. Instead, his life has been like ascending a gentle slope to a position he has always known is waiting for him.

He exists because a system that has evolved over the last half century now selects for men like him. That system’s only purpose is to perpetuate itself, so it selects for people who will never challenge it or even question it. Instead, it populates itself with people, who have internalized the logic of the system to the point where it is habit. The hive mind of the managerial class is the sum of these automatons incapable of existing outside the managerial system.

He is also symbolic of his generation. The generation of Americans, who grew up in the Clinton years and reached adulthood at the turn of the century, are probably the most entitled and effete cohort ever produced. They grew up in the easy years after the Cold War and never faced anything resembling hard times. They came into the world expecting things to turn out well for them. They were also raised by women in a highly feminized educational system and took on those qualities.

The fact that Pete Buttigieg is a genetic dead end is probably the most symbolic aspect of his character. The oriental empires of the ancient age liked to employ eunuchs in sensitive roles. These were men without ambition, as it were, so they were never going to be a threat to the people at the top. The promotion of and popularity of homosexuals in the managerial empire adds a touch of Orientalism and irony to a system that is otherwise sterile and pointless.

It is easy for normal people to dismiss Buttigieg, but he is both a symbol of his age and the system that produced him. He is the full expression of the managerial class that has come to dominate the American empire. His rise is the polls at the expense of the yesterday men like Biden and Sanders is an important moment. The fact that he is every bit as sterile and pointless as the system that produced him could perhaps make him the fullest expression of the Managerial Man.

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What If You’re Wrong

Posted on February 6, 2020 by thezman

A good rule that no one anywhere follows, is to contemplate the consequences of being wrong before doing something. For example, if legislatures had to post a wrongness analysis for every bill before they could be voted on, at least some of the terrible ideas would get stopped before becoming law. Of course, that is probably why such a thing can never happen, at least in a democracy. New ideas are about hope and nothing is worse than dashing the reformer’s hope for the future.

Even so, thinking about wrongness has its utility. For example, many people on the Right still cling to the idea that government cannot keep borrowing money. Going back to the 1980’s, perhaps even further, conservatives have been predicting that there is some limit to government debt. Ronald Reagan ran on this idea in 1980, when the Federal debt stood at $900 billion. Forty years later and the debt is $23 trillion, a number so large no one can imagine it.

Maybe there is no limit to debt. Maybe what conservatives think they know about public debt is wrong and disaster is not around the corner. If this were anything else, that’s how you would bet. If the weather had been sunny for forty years, despite daily forecasts calling for showers, you would have stopped listening to the weatherman a long time ago. Sure, he may be right eventually, but forty years of being wrong still counts for a lot. Maybe conservatives are just wrong about debt too.

Similarly, what if the growth of the state is not going to lead to a citizen revolt against a tyrannical government. This is another chestnut from the so-called conservatives that dates back to the age of Reagan. He ran on the argument that the government was the problem, not the solution. The per capita spending of government, in constant dollars, is close to double what it was in the Reagan years. That’s with the U.S. population growing by more than half in that same period.

Now, in fairness, there has been a negative result to this massive expansion of the state over the last forty years. It’s not that people are angry that it does too much, but that it does too little. This is true all over the West. The populist revolts are fueled by demands that the government do more to address the concerns of the people. It turns out that everyone was wrong about the size of government. The bigger it gets, the worse it gets at doing the basics and that’s what gets people angry.

How about multiculturalism? An axiom in dissident politics is that diversity plus proximity equals conflict. Many of the same people saying that were wrong about the deficits and the growth of government. Maybe they are wrong about this too. Maybe they are wrong in entirely different ways. What we know so far is the importation of fifty million barbarians has not caused the empire to collapse. It’s made society more fragile, for sure, but collapse is not in the cards, at least so far.

How about something closer to home? Many people on this side of the great divide, especially the former alt-right, are sure Trump is going down to defeat in the 2020 election. They argue that his pandering to civic nationalists, non-whites and Baby Boomers is alienating his real base. Further, they argue that he won in 2016 by getting racially aware whites out to vote. It is a gratuitous assertion, for sure, but it is a common argument on this side of the great divide. What if it is wrong?

Trump, despite his many faults, has proven to be a natural political athlete, one we have not seen in a long time. This is a guy who does everything wrong, according to political convention, yet comes out smelling like a rose. Remember when everyone said WW3 was upon us when he droned the Iranian general? How about those predictions about impeachment? He begged the Democrats to follow through with impeachment and here he is more popular than ever. Maybe he knows something.

It is very possible that Trump does know what he is doing with all the pandering to blacks, Hispanics, one-legged lesbian Elvis impersonators and so on. Further, maybe the votes of the alt-right, white nationalists, racially aware whites and so forth really don’t count for a whole lot in elections. It may be an uncomfortable thought, but in a wrongness analysis, it has to be a possibility. The evidence is pointing in that direction, so maybe all of these folks are wrong about Trump.

Inaction is largely based on the belief of some inevitability that no one dares question, because it is comforting. Generations of conservative white people voted Republican, based on their assumptions about debt and the size of government. That vote was not action, but inaction. They comforted themselves in the belief that inevitability would be the ultimate cure. It turns out that nothing is inevitable in the affairs of man. Things happen because men make them happen.

The other side of this, the people trying to harness the forces of society, never stop to wonder if they are wrong. As they work to gain control of events, they are so certain in their righteousness they resemble fanatics. They never wonder if they are wrong. They know they are on the right side of history. As Bertrand Russel put it, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

That is the place to start for all dissidents. What if we’re wrong? What if all of the critiques of and arguments for cosmopolitan globalism are wrong? What then? That’s start of the journey in search of an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy. It is not only the questioning of conventional wisdom, but the questioning of the critics of the conventional wisdom. Maybe the reason for the current crisis is that everyone was wrong about the new world order that emerged after the Cold War.

The Babylonian Captivity

Posted on February 4, 2020 by thezman

Every age has its defining characteristics. Often one of those characteristics is used to make a handy name for the period in question. The Jazz Age, for example, is the name given to the period before the Great Depression. Alternatively, one event is used to label the age, like the Woodstock era, for the late 60’s. These are not all-encompassing definitions, but shortcuts that spawn images in the mind. If one were to conjure a name for this era, a good option would be the Age of Conspiracy.

For starters, we are just wrapping up the impeachment fiasco, which was based on a popular conspiracy theory with the Left. They think Trump secretly works for the Russians or maybe their hated enemy the Ukrainians. No one is really sure who it is he conspires with, but they are really bad. This conspiracy theory also gave us the Russian hacking hoax and the Russian collusion hoax. Of course, the Left also thinks Trump secretly conspires with white nationalists too.

The Left is in charge, not always officially, but they run things so naming this era the Age of Left-Wing Conspiracy could work too. The irony, of course, is that they always accuse their enemies, real and imaginary, of being conspiracy theorists. Every idea they hate, even stuff from science and math, is tagged as a conspiracy theory. The demographics of crime, for example, are a race conspiracy by racists. Another good name for this era would be the Projection Era.

The Opposite Rule of Liberalism age would work, but it is a bit wordy. It does cover the main feature of this age. The people in charge always say things that turn out to be true, but in an alternative way. In the case of the Ukrainian collusion stuff, they were right about Ukrainians meddling in our politics. It was just that the Ukrainians were bribing Democrat politicians. There’s that opposite rule at work. What they say has some truth to it, just pointing in a different direction.

Of course, another reason why The Age of Conspiracy would work is the inner party is actually behind some rather important conspiracies. For example, the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election. The Benghazi fiasco and cover-up. Clinton’s mysterious e-mail server and the shenanigans around it. How can we forget old Jeffrey Epstein, the mysterious character, who apparently died by magic? Note that months on and the FBI has not charged anyone with anything regarding his death.

Now we come to the best caper so far. The party appears to have rigged the Iowa Caucus, in order to deny Bernie Sanders a victory. They will have results, eventually, but there will be no big live rally or press conference for him. Maybe they post the results wherever they place the obituaries now. The results don’t matter anyway, as the media will now pretend the Dancing Queen is the savior. Who knows, maybe they rig the results to declare him the official winner.

It may sound a bit conspiratorial, but a reasonable person is now forced to consider conspiracy as an explanation for everything in politics. There’s no doubt the Democrat Party tried hard to rig the vote against Sanders in 2016. They admitted as much while it was happening. They have been quite clear about their loathing of Sanders this time. This technology they decided to use to count votes is the product of a party insider. Their app is called Shadow.

That’s another thing about this age. The inner party likes a dash of irony with their conspiracies and the resulting theories. For example, accusing Trump of colluding with Ukraine is rather rich, given the number of inner party members on the payroll of a Ukrainian oligarch. In this case, their new technology would ensure accuracy and prevent shadowy forces from meddling in the vote. Naming it Shadow and then using it to meddle in the vote is a nice touch.

This is not the first time we have seen this. After the assassination of Seth Rich, the young DNC staffer, they put a plaque in his honor up at the door used by young party staffers at the headquarters. They claimed it was a coincidence, but in the Age of Ironic Conspiracy, one has to assume otherwise. In fact, given the howling about rigged elections the last three years, in is safe to assume Iowa is just the start. The 2020 election will probably be the first entirely corrupted election.

The civic nationalist types will be tempted to conclude that this will be the downfall of the Left or maybe even the inner party. After all, Americans like rules and expect the powerful to play by the rules. It is important to keep in mind that there is a strong oriental influence on this age. That culture really likes conspiracies. The entire Middle East is controlled by a tapestry of conspiracy theories. Chasing them down keeps people too busy to do anything about the people really running things.

That is how things in the Empire run now. It is like the ancient empires, in that politics is in the shadows, conducted by secret conspiracies. The people just hope to bugger on and avoid being a victim of it, but at the same time spend their leisure time puzzling through the various intrigues. Maybe that’s a good name for this age. It should be called the Babylonian Captivity, as the natural ruling class has been captured by an ancient mentality. That’s a label that has something for everyone.

The Guns Of Resistance

Posted on January 20, 2020 by thezman

Today is the big pro-gun rally in Richmond Virginia. The rally is in response to the gun grabbing proposals by the newly ascendant Democrat party in the state. For the first time in a long time, Democrats gained control of all three branches of government in the last election and immediately set about implementing their fantasy agenda. Their first order of business was a series of vindictive, retributive proposals aimed at the normal population of the state, starting with guns and gun owners.

What’s going on in Virginia is a glimpse of what is coming for the country as a whole as we descend into the multicultural paradise. Virginia was a solidly normal state over the last seventy years. The politics were usually uneventful. Most issues were controlled at the local level. The state government was limited and usually run by the sorts of people, who thought that was a good thing. Once in a while a colorful governor would get his name in the paper, but otherwise politics was sober minded.

Decades of immigration have done to Virginia what it did to California, with the addition of massive Federal growth in Northern Virginia. Manufacturing and agricultural concerns have championed the importation of millions from Central America. Government has imported people from all over the country into Northern Virginia. The result has been the same sort of political shift we saw in California. The sprawling urban areas control state politics, which means the Left controls politics.

Like California, the normal population of the state did not think much about the massive influx of non-white immigrants. No one thought about the long-term impact of a million or so left-wing suburbanites from liberal strongholds moving into Washington suburbs for their government jobs. Anyone who mentioned it was hooted off the stage, if they were even allowed on the stage in the first place. It is only now that the link between demographics and politics is becoming obvious.

This dynamic where the newly arrived take over state politics will be something we see all over the South and Southwest in the coming decades. While whites will remain the majority in some cases or the largest minority in others, white solidarity remains forbidden, both practically and spiritually. As a result, the usual suspects will divide the white vote making whites the least powerful group in these states, even as the newly ascendant non-whites pass explicitly anti-white legislation.

You see some of that with the Virginia rally. The organizers are more concerned with looking good for the far-Left media covering the event. They have been telling participants to not bring things like Confederate flags to the rally. The 2A people still think abiding by liberal morality is paramount. Inevitably, the FBI will have some of their crisis actors at the event, so the media can get photos and video. The organizers will then invest their time apologizing for it.

This is a great example of the challenge dissidents face in dealing with the mass of white people in America. On the one hand, the civic nationalists make optics more important than the message. The racists and old school race-realists look at these events as a chance to reinforce the walls of their ghetto. They show up in their silly outfits waving flags in order to offend, rather than persuade. Both sides are simply acting out their Progressive conditioning.

That’s what makes effective activism difficult. These gun proposals by the Democrats are clearly aimed at spiting white people. There’s no practical point to these laws, other than to stick a finger in the eye of the sorts of people who don’t support the Left. The attacks on AR-15 ownership, for example, are about sticking it to white people, who are the people who own these sorts of sporting guns. That should be the salient point, but the emotional conditioning of whites makes that difficult.

You’ll note that there is no longer any discussion of crime on the Left with regards to gun grabbing. Even they have accepted the fact that gun crime is largely a black problem and now a Hispanic problem. Blacks and Hispanics shoot one another with handguns, not expensive sporting rifles. Despite this, the victims of these gun grabbing proposal would rather gnaw off their own arms than admit it. Generations of conditioning in anti-racism have had their desired effect.

Make no mistake about the intent. The newly formed ruling class of the multicultural South and Southwest will first disarm the white population. They don’t care about blacks and Hispanics shooting one another. They do hate white people. That’s why Virginia wants to forbid the private transfer of firearms. That’s the obnoxiously dishonest “gun show loophole” nonsense. It is the precursor to licensing and then confiscation. When every gun is accounted for, they can easily be confiscated.

Another thing you see in Virginia that will apply to the country at large is the stubborn refusal to accept reality. The people organizing resistance to these gun grabbing proposals still think America is a rule-based society. They think if they carefully abide by the rules and mobilize their supporters, they can win the political game. There’s that old civic nationalist blind-spot regarding their enemies. They think they can reason with the other side. The other side will be unmoved by all of this.

Another important angle to this is the silence from Conservative Inc. over what is happening in Virginia. Site like National Review and the Federalist have not talked about it much at all. That’s because Conservative Inc. is staffed by the urbanite bugmen that staff Progressive operations. They think guns are scary, so the issue is not relevant to their project. They are more concerned about getting Twitter followers. It’s another reminder of which side they will ultimately support.

In the end, the Virginia Democrats will pass what they like and most people will go along with it. The value to this side of the great divide is in opening up the 2A issue as another entry point to dissident politics. What’s going in Virginia would not happen in a homogeneous stable society. It is the inevitable result of cosmopolitan globalism and multiculturalism. White people don’t fear white people owning guns. It’s the people ruing over white people, who fear white people owning guns.

Litigating the Blood Libel

Posted on January 15, 2020 by thezman

Is the term “white nationalist” a slur? How about “white supremacist?” The general definition of a slur is “an insinuation or allegation about someone that is likely to insult them or damage their reputation.” For “white nationalist” to be a slur, the term itself would have to be generally accepted as immoral or derogatory. It would also have to be used in a way that incorrectly labels one a white nationalist. Calling Greg Johnson, a white nationalist, for example, is not a slur. He embraces the label.

The interpretation of the term white nationalist is just one interesting aspect of the lawsuit brought by Peter Brimelow, editor of VDare. He is suing the New York Times, according to Brimelow, for falsely labeling him a white nationalist. He not only denies being a white nationalist, he claims the company deliberately labeled him as such in an effort to damage his reputation, even after he made many good faith attempts to point out the error to them. He is seeking $5 million in damages.

That is the first interesting angle to this case. Intent is always a central part of defamation cases. The defendant must be shown to have intentionally libeled or slandered the other party. The statement must have been made with knowledge that it was untrue or with reckless disregard for the truth. Simply making an honest error is not defamation, which is why newspapers have always posted corrections. It allows them to show the false claim was an honest error.

Another interesting bit of this is the unspoken dispute over what exactly makes someone a white nationalist. Greg Johnson, for example, has written a book describing white nationalism. He calls himself a white nationalist. Peter Brimelow, in contrast, has never used to term to describe himself and has been generally negative toward the use of it as a label. No doubt both men share similar opinions on many matters, but they have many important differences as well.

Yoram Hazony has written a book promoting nationalism. He is a proud Zionist and an ethno-nationalist. Large swaths of his book match up well with the arguments made by Greg Johnson in favor of white nationalism. In fact, strip away the references to Israel and the Jews and Hazony’s book is the same argument made by Johnson. Does that make Hazony a white nationalist? Is white nationalism just another manifestation of nationalism, like Zionism or black nationalism?

If this case ever makes it to court, it would be an easy task to show a jury that the term white nationalist is undefined. Its meaning is entirely controlled by the intent of the person using it. When used by the New York Times, the intent is purely negative, perhaps even a synonym for evil. When used by normal people, it is more benign, maybe even positive. In other words, the definition is entirely one of context, which is the heart of the lawsuit against the Times.

That would be an amusing part of this case if it gets to the deposition phase, as everyone involved would have to define white nationalism. Brimelow would have no trouble giving an objective definition. The Times writers and editors would have to figure out a way to craft a definition that puts someone like Peter Brimelow at the same table as Johnson. That’s a circle that cannot be squared, without first asserting the promotion of white interests is negative.

That really is the secret that lies beneath all of this. The underlying assumption of the beautiful people at the New York Times is that white people have no right to promote their interests. Jews, blacks, one-legged trans-lesbians of color, all of these groups have interests and a right to promote them openly. Whites, according to the sorts working for the Times, have no group interests. Therefore, white nationalism is the assertion of something false, for malign purposes.

Now, there is yet another twist to this. From the perspective of someone like Greg Johnson, Brimelow’s suit against the Times can be seen as damaging the cause of white nationalism. The basis of the suit is that the Times deliberately libeled Brimelow by applying a derogatory term to him and his work. In other words, a putative ally is agreeing with the enemy that white nationalism is immoral. That further anathematizes the term and the issues associated with it.

In reality, that train has left the station. In fact, that is another important issue involved in this case and many others. The media is not simply an institution for disseminating factual information about people and events. No sane person would make such a claim, as the media repeatedly states otherwise. The mass media defines the public debate and largely defines public morality. When they pronounce something forbidden, like white nationalism, it usually becomes immoral and off-limits.

That brings us back to intent. There simply is no way the Times can claim they did not intend to libel Brimelow when they called him a white nationalist. There only hope is to conjure a definition of white nationalism that includes Brimelow along with other people, who sharply disagree with him. The only way to accomplish that is to broaden the term to mean any white person, who thinks white people have interests. In other words, merely being white makes you guilty enough in this case.

Finally, this case can be a useful on-ramp. These people are clever, in that they talk about whites in a negative way without directly addressing white people. In this case they have turned the phrase white nationalism into a purely negative term that they liberally apply to white people questioning orthodoxy. They don’t say whites are evil, but they regular claim “whiteness” is evil and that promoting it is immoral. They condemn the thing by condemning its nature.

In the end, this case can only be a net positive, assuming Brimelow and VDare don’t embarrass themselves in some unforeseen manner. Cases like this are a good way to raise this issue. The more people talk about how the Left systematically anathematizes the natural characteristics of white people, the more people will notice the blood libel at the heart of this case and the general war on white people. The reason the Times hates white nationalism is they hate white people.

The Virtue Of Impeachment

Posted on January 14, 2020 by thezman

According to official media, the House Democrats are finally ready to send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate for a trial. Assuming it actually happens, the trial will be a circus to allow the various crackpots and show ponies to perform for the cable news audiences. Everyone will pretend it is serious until the ratings come in from the polling operations and then the show will close. The only people who think otherwise are the cranks and weirdos on the Left.

That said, the inner party has permitted this charade to happen for more than just theatrical reasons. They have an election show scheduled for this year and that will provide plenty of entertainment. The Iowa Caucuses are a little over two weeks away and the New Hampshire primary is three weeks away. That’s more than enough entertainment to keep people from noticing too much. The question then is why are they bothering with this straight-to-video impeachment show.

Every society has certain codes of conduct that may or may not be formalized in writing, but are accepted by everyone. These codes may be amplified or prioritized by personal codes of conduct, but the general morality is accepted as the public morality. In many cases, it is assumed the morality of one’s society is a universal morality that applies to all times and places, but that is a confusion in terms. Codes of conduct that apply in narrow conditions are different from general social codes.

In the West, public morality says the people should be sovereign and pick representatives the people occupying public offices. The will of the people should be expressed in the law. In the Arab world, public morality is defined by the Koran, not Enlightenment philosophy. Therefore, government should be run by righteous Muslims, according to the rules of Islam. These are different codes of conduct, not expressions of a universal morality, like the prohibition against murder.

In current year America, the ruling class is now fully detached from the society over which it rules, so it has begun to acquire its own moral code. You see this in the Democrat primary where candidates are running around preaching about the plight of transvestites or lecturing on white privilege. To normal people, these are bizarre fetishes that have to salience. Inside the ruling class they have become important moral signifiers, rooted in the common morality of the ruling class.

That brings us back to impeachment. The official narrative says he has been impeached because the political class thinks he violated his oath of office in his dealings with Ukraine. The official alternative narrative is the Democrats did this out of spite over losing the 2016 election. Those are the two sides of the official sandwich regarding impeachment. Within that framing, both sides are expected to scream at one another through the proxy of cable news programs.

Then there is the official outsider view that says this is part of some grand chess strategy over the seditious plot conducted by the security agencies. The inner party is using impeachment to stall the investigation into the that and the many other corrupt projects during the Obama years. While there may be some truth to this, it is clear that Bill Barr is willing and able to cover all of this up on his own. Still, there may be some people in the party who would like the assurance that the caper is properly buried.

There may be another reason why this impeachment thing will not die and that is the evolving morality of the ruling class. They hate Trump, not because of what he does or even what he says. They hate him for who he is and who he represents. He is the rejection of their morality. The Democrats could make a spending deal with him in a heartbeat, but they refuse because to do so would legitimize him and what he represents to them. They simply cannot do that.

If you think about the last four years, the main argument against Trump by all sides of the political class is that he is lacking in character. Maybe the point of entry is his womanizing or his crude statements. The neoconservatives have endlessly lectured on his moral failings. The Israeli first zealot, Ben Shapiro, has repeatedly said he opposes Trump on moral grounds, despite giving the Zionists everything they ask. It turns out that “who they are” is not Trump and what he represents.

The one thing the ruling class gets right is that the American experiment is unique in world history. No society has tried to combine extreme egalitarianism, the blank slate and democracy into a civic religion. Since two legs of that stool are in direct conflict with human nature, that leaves two choices. One is the traditional radical approach of exterminating everything that does not fit the new morality. The other is to redefine one of the legs of the stool to solve the conflict.

What impeachment suggests is the leg in for redefining will be democracy. The new definition of it will be something like Henry Ford’s choice of colors. The people can vote for whomever they like, as long as the candidate comports with the public morality of the ruling class. Rules will evolve to make sure no one like Trump can every gain access to official Washington. The political elite will become a closed system with a unique set of moral codes.

That may be the real point of impeachment. People like Adam Schiff appear to be insane, but he is just one of the berserkers of the emerging new morality. The point is not to remove Trump, but to codify him in such a way that his presence reinforces the new morality. Inside Washington, impeachment is already a moral signifier. The looming impeachment show will give the faithful in the ruling elite a chance to publicly display their virtue to their coreligionists inside the ruling class.

Note: Some have asked why comments end up in moderation. This is the doings of the spam filter I’m using. It is often triggered by epithets, certain links and mysterious word combinations. These messages get flagged as possible spam. Now, in half a dozen years it has blocked over 3.5 million spam messages, so it is trade-off I accept. It means I check the moderation queue once an hour or so. I approve the real comments and trash the spam. Otherwise, there is no moderation.

Answering War Hysteria

Posted on January 5, 2020 by thezman

According to just about everyone, we are either at war with Iran or about to go to war with Iran. The droning of the Iranian general at the Baghdad airport has unleashed a lot of pent up war hysteria, as well as anti-war hysteria. The neocons are dreaming of another pointless war in the Middle East. The paleocons are warning about how the Iranians will enact vengeance. The anti-Zionists are completely off their leash, making the usual claims about who is really behind all of this.

The truth is, we are not at war with Iran, at least not a conventional war. We have been in a cold war with them since the 1970’s. The temperature rises and falls as domestic politics requires, but it never gets too hot. The main reason for that is Iran is run by fairly competent people. Iran is also much more cohesive than the neighboring countries in the region. Persians have a strong sense of identity that transcends the tribal alliances that dominate in the rest of the Middle East.

Of course, the Iranians now have important ties with Russia and China. The Russians are helping them build nuclear capability and the Chinese are providing them with conventional military technology. Both countries are in bed with the Iranians because Iran sits on large oil and gas reserves. China is starving for oil and the Russians are a player in Europe because they control the gas supplies. Those are strong incentives to prevent a US – Iran war.

At the same time, America is in no position to launch another war in the Middle East, at least not a ground war. Trump can call in drone strikes and maybe air strikes from subs and carriers, but that would be very risky. To get a ground force together would require prepping the public and getting Congress to sign off on it. It would also mean talking Trump into something he has opposed. War is always bad politics. In an election year where his prospects are even money at best, that’s a foolish gamble for him.

History is full of examples where countries bluffed themselves into a war that neither side wanted, so it is not completely out of the question. Israel could blow something up and the neocons running the State Department could talk Trump into believing the Iranians did it. Some rogue element in Iran could do something foolish. Then there are the many guerrilla and terrorist groups supported by Iran. One of them could do something provocative and set us on a path to war.

Even so, the odds are very low that this current crisis lasts more than a week, other than some hotly worded tweets from Trump and bellicose rants from Iran. This raises a few questions. One is why the anti-war people have flipped out as if they were just waiting for a reason to get back in the streets. They were not going crazy when Trump lobbed missiles into Syria. They were silent when Venezuela was on the brink. It’s as if someone flipped a switch and reactivated the anti-war people.

The bigger question is why Trump has decided to take this step. It’s clear he has no interest in starting a war. He has been trying to get troops out of the Middle East for three years now. Taking out this general is a high risk move that could lead to terrorist attacks this year. The White House is warning Congress that retaliation in the next weeks is a possibility. Even if a full blown shooting war with Iran is unlikely, it does not mean there will be no fallout from this venture.

One possibility is that Trump is just dumb and he got bamboozled by the neocons into attacking Iran. They cooked up a story about how this general was plotting a terror attack and he fell for it. This is popular with the anti-Zionists. They believe the neocons are like super-villains, able to hypnotize politicians. They have finally figured out how to maneuver Trump into going along with their schemes. It’s possible. The distinguishing feature of Trumps’ time in office has been incompetence.

The trouble with this theory is that Trump has been pretty good at dodging the neocon war plots thus far. This is not the first time they cooked up a plot to attack Iran. He has even joked about guys like John Bolton wanting to bomb the world. He also avoided the various traps they set with Syria. Trump may not be very good at governing, but he seems pretty well aware of how the neocons operate. He has been as good at shining them on as he has the immigration patriots.

Another answer is that Trump saw this as a chance to break the deadlock over nuclear negotiations with Iran. Think back to how he broke all the protocols in order to get the North Koreans to the table. All prior presidents refused to meet with the North Korean leader, but Trump not only agreed to meet, he pushed for it. His erratic and unconventional management style is an extension of his negotiating style. He likes to throw over tables and create chaos as a prelude to deal making.

Evidence of this is his tweet after the droning of the general. In addition to the boiler plate stuff, he made the point that he preferred to negotiate and the Iranians should prefer it too. In other words, this high risk, high stakes gambit is about breaking the stalemate and getting all the various players to rethink their position. Trump is a legendary bluffer and this is basically a big bluff. He’s threatening unconditional drone warfare unless they come to the table.

The other side of this is he gets a boost with his base who love the fact he took out this general with a drone strike. Despite what the anti-Zionists think, this is a winner for him with his core supporters. If nothing comes of it, he will be able to say he has tried to bring the Iranians to the table, but they will not budge. He played the same cards with North Korea. As a political matter, he gets to be both the tough guy, who drones bad guys, and the peacemaker seeking to talk rather than fight.

Finally, there is the possibility that this is tied into the impeachment process that will get going again this month. Senate Republicans like Mitt Romney and Ben Sassy are wholly owned by Jerusalem. In order to get their vote in the impeachment fight, Trump may be forced to give into the forever war crowd. This attack and the subsequent bluster about more attacks may be the real quid pro quo. If anyone thinks this is too conspiratorial, just look at the anti-BDS campaign.

The likelihood of this scenario leading to war, however, is low as the impeachment lever has a clear expiry date on it. There is an election brewing and Washington needs to dispense with the impeachment issue by February at the latest. That’s enough time to do some drone strikes and saber rattling, but not enough time to gin up support for a war with Iran. Instead it will just make negotiating with Iran impossible for the remainder of Trump’s tenure, which may be the real point.

The Great Cover Up

Posted on December 24, 2019 by thezman

Joe diGenova has been talking about the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election for at least a year, maybe longer. Unlike a lot of the people commenting on this in the mass media, he is not using it to sell books or boost his cable career. He also knows how the FBI and DOJ works from a practical matter. Being knowledgeable makes him a rare guy in the commentariat. Most of the people brought on as experts for the cable chat shows know very little about their alleged areas of expertise.

Regardless, he has been one of the most hawkish people on the Barr investigation, claiming that it is a real investigation with real criminal targets. In this recent radio interview he goes into the details of both the Barr investigation and the ongoing impeachment fiasco. He is a Trump partisan, so his opinions on impeachment are predictable, but his thoughts on the conspiracy are interesting. He probably has access to information from the Trump White House.

The interesting thing about all of this is just how widespread the conspiracy was during the 2015-2016 period. In that interview he talks about former NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, who is allegedly cooperating with Barr and Durham. What makes the Rogers issue interesting is that he was the original whistle-blower. He is not treated as such, because the media hates Trump and anyone associated with him, but Rogers was the guy who blew the whistle on the spying to the Trump people.

What’s also interesting about Rogers is he seems to have been a good guy, who decided to put an end to the shenanigans with regards to access to top-secret data by FBI contractors. He closed off their access at some point in 2016, which put him in bad odor with the Obama administration. He was eventually pushed out, which suggests the conspiracy has roots into the Obama inner-circle. That may explain why the easy cases to be made against the FBI conspirators are on hold.

That’s the other thing about the Rogers case. As CTH explains in that post, his addition to the story reveals that the use of the NSA database by political contractors working for the Democrats goes back to at least 2012. It is an axiom of white-collar crime that the practice always goes back much further than the evidence initially reveals. Anyone who has done forensic accounting knows this. You find the first evidence of a crime, but it turns out that the pattern goes back much further.

That may be what lies beneath all of this. The great puzzle thus far has been the lack of prosecutions, despite ample evidence. The FBI agents are all guilty of crimes that have been detailed in public documents and the IG reports. There is now proof that Comey perjured himself many times. Just from a public relations perspective alone, rounding up these guys and charging them with corruption seems like a no-brainer. Almost a year into his tenure and Barr has charged no one with a crime.

One obvious explanation is that Barr is running a long con on Trump and the rest of the country, on behalf of the inner party. Robert Mueller was supposed to use his investigation to hoover up all the data so it could not be made public, in addition to harassing the Trump White House. His incompetence meant Barr took over the job and is now hoovering up all the information on the various parties. That way, everyone has an excuse for not doing anything about plot.

One bit of evidence in support of this is the handling of the James Wolfe issue. He was the Senate staffer caught leaking classified information to one of the prostitutes hired by the Washington Post. Big media hires good looking young women to sleep with flunkies like Wolf in order to get access to information. Wolf was caught and charged, but instead of getting a couple years in jail, he got two months. He will come out and land into a six-figure job as a reward for being a good soldier.

An alternative explanation is that what started as a straight forward political corruption case bumped into a long pattern of behavior. In the course of investigating that pattern, the trail went much further back than the 2016 election. If there is evidence of abuse going back to 2012, maybe it goes back further. It was the Bush people, after all, who pushed for the creation of secret courts and secret warrants. Maybe Dick Cheney was listening to your phone calls after all.

It is not just the linear aspect of this. The sheer number of people involved in just the FBI scandal is phenomenal. There are at least 20 FBI people named and dozens of bit players in the media and DOJ. So far, the “contractors” with access to the NSA database have not been revealed, but that could be hundreds of people, given that it seems to have been a free-for-all. The corruption may not only go back a long time, but cover a wide swath of official Washington.

That may be the answer to the great cover up. That’s what we are seeing. This is a great cover up of the biggest scandal in American history. To date, no one has been charged with a crime, despite hundreds of crimes being documented. Many of the principals are now enjoying high six figure lives, based on the fact they were part of the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election. Instead of the scandal of the century, it is the celebration of the century for the inner party.

One of the signs of ruling class collapse is when they can no longer enforce the rules that maintain them as a ruling class. When the Romans started making exceptions to republican governance, it was a matter of time before someone simply decided the rules no longer applied to them. Perhaps the robot historians will consider Obama our Marius or Sulla. Maybe that person is in the near future. Either way, the rule of law is over and what comes next is the rule of men.

The Value Of Dumb Ideas

Posted on December 23, 2019 by thezman

Dumb ideas are a feature of democracy. The main reason for this is the majority of people trusted with a vote are average or below average. Democracy works on the assumption that people work in series. Connect enough of them, no matter their intellectual capacity, and you get enough brain power. In reality, people work in parallel, so the more you connect, the faster dumb ideas flow through society. Democracy is the form of government with the lowest resistance to dumb ideas.

Another aspect of this is that dumb ideas never die. At the risk of mixing science and superstition, dumb ideas are like demons from Hell. They are never killed. They can be exorcised and sent back to the pit, but they always find a way out. Like a demon, they inhabit a new body and employ new tricks, so the dumb idea often looks like an entirely new dumb idea. That’s what you see with the universal basic income. It is an old dumb idea that has come back in a new disguise.

Dumb ideas are not without their utility. Until they are revealed to be dumb, people debate them and that debate says something about the people. The homosexual marriage debate, which feels like a lifetime ago, revealed that the left side of the political class was going insane, while the right side had quit on its stool. In the fullness of time, the surrender on homosexual marriage will be seen as the point where conservatism entered the death spiral. That’s the power of dumb ideas.

In the case of the UBI, Andrew Yang becoming a household name based on his promotion of the idea underscores the bankruptcy of the Left. The reason Yang got so much attention is he is the only guy talking about policy. His idea may be silly, but at least it is an idea. People can hear the proposal and think about what it would mean to them if it was enacted. The rest of the candidates emote about intersectional grievances and social justice. They may as well be speaking in tongues.

Of course, the intellectual bankruptcy of the Left is not a new idea. In the 1990’s it became clear that the American Left had run out of practical road and was veering into the side roads of the bizarre. Conservatives used to crow about how they had many more plans for having the government do stuff. The thing is, the American Right was always just the straight man for the Left. It was never intended to be the star. Their job was to respond to the hijinks of their Progressive partners.

Another side benefit of the UBI is that it resonated with young people on the Right, who tweeted Yang onto the big stage. They were attracted to that promised allowance of a thousand bucks a month. It was mostly a joke, but it revealed a truth about the people moving from conventional politics. That is, there is a slow re-discovery of the fact that the point of government is to serve the people. Public policy is not about pleasing the economy, but about improving the life of the people.

The UBI debate has also leaked into adult conversation. The paleoconservatives are coming around to the idea that the economy is a false god. That wing of conservatism never went down the libertarian dead end, but they did get lost in the wilderness of foreign policy fanaticism. For a long time, they have focused solely on the endless wars and to a lesser extent the slobbering obedience to Israel. This post in the American Conservative suggests that is changing.

Again, the UBI is a dumb idea. Giving everyone an allowance of some figure simply makes that allowance the new zero. Whatever initial benefit people experience will soon be gobbled up by retail inflation as the new money hits the streets. You don’t fix massive inequality by dropping cash into the ghetto. What matters here is that people are starting to think again about government playing an active role in defending society, rather than acting as the great paladin of the economy.

Probably the most important observation that comes from the UBI discussion is that it has no impact on elite opinion. The Democrat candidates on stage look at Andrew Yang and fail to connect his presence with his ideas. Instead, they continue to pose in bizarre ways about intersectional politics and grandiose reform schemes. You would think that at least one of them would notice that a simple idea took an unknown Jackie Chan body double and elevated him to the big stage.

What this reveals, maybe underscores is the right way to put it, is that the political class, particular the inner party political class, is beyond reform. It is just a collection of carny folk hired to perform by the oligarchs. Those oligarchs look at America society in the same way raiders look at a coastal village. They are focused on looting as much as they can as fast as they can. If there is going to be reform, it will come after the current ruling class is wiped out and replaced by natives.

Impeaching Democracy

Posted on December 19, 2019 by thezman

The world does not have much experience with democracy. What we know of it comes from the century or so the West been tinkering with it and, of course, what can be learned from the ancient Greek experiment with it. Unlike monarchy or various forms of despotism, democracy has had a relatively short run. We have more real world experience with various types of totalitarianism than we do democracy, so it stands to reason that we are just coming to understand its benefits and liabilities.

One thing we are learning about modern democracy is that it is a myth. The people are not in charge. They get to vote on things and select representatives, but those representative don’t actually represent the interests of the people, who voted them into their positions. The office holders in a modern democracy represent the interests of the money-men who sponsored them. Politicians in a democracy are like prize fighters, in that they are controlled by a management team.

Like a price fighter, one of the demands placed upon a modern politician is that he must at all times seek the attention of the public. Much of what we see in our modern democracies is false drama, designed to gain attention. This is why women have proven to be so successful as politicians. Women are naturally gifted with the ability to get attention, especially through false drama. It turns out that democracy is a form of governance modeled on the beauty pageant.

This is the point of the impeachment fiasco. The Democrats are the party of girls and gay men, so they naturally seek drama. Trump’s great sin is that he is a great showman, so he gets all the attention. Impeachment allows the vagina party to one-up him and force him to pay attention to them. If you look at the people celebrating in the streets, it’s lesbians and middle-aged woman. They are not celebrating because they hate Trump. They are happy someone is noticing them.

Another feature of modern democracy is its insularity. Again, this impeachment fiasco offers some insights. Outside of the rage heads on the Left, no one cares. It’s not even interesting as a civics lesson. Months of marketing this thing by the ruling class media has just dulled interest in the subject. Like the new Star Wars movie, the word it out and the public is not being suckered in by the hype. Impeachment 3, Blowhard With A Vengeance is a box office flop.

Despite public apathy, the ruling class continues to put on their show as if they are in front of a roaring crowd. Besotted old Nancy Pelosi staggered out in a funeral dress, thinking she was giving Mark Antony’s funeral speech. The flunkies, coat holders and seat warmers all took turns delivering their best lines, mostly to one another and the panting press corp. If this were a movie, the critics would give it five stars, while the public would give it two stars and the cold shoulder.

That’s the thing about the French Revolution that is germane here. The Jacobins and the aristocracy were black boxes to one another. At several turns, the King and his supporters in the old order could have avoided disaster, but always read things wrong and made the wrong mistake. At the same time, the rebels could not discern the forces controlling the old order. Both sides were left to guess as to why the other was doing what they were doing. The result was revolution.

That seems to be true with impeachment, as well. The public and some parts of the GOP establishment are baffled as to why the Democrats are doing this. The Republicans are grasping about at the approved list of answers, but none of them make much sense. The public seems to be baffled by it all. Even Trump, who has been trying to use this to drum up support is struggling to make sense of it. The workings of the inner party are a black box, even to the people in Washington.

One reason for this, in addition to the insularity, is the fact that modern democracy needs a ruling ideology to legitimize itself. In this regard, it is no different from communism, which claims to be the most democratic and egalitarian of modern political models. If everyone is in charge, then no one is in charge, so ideology sets the rules and legitimizes the process. Just as with communism, the ideology eventually intensifies and burns itself out, usually in a blood bath.

Now, one always has to consider the nefarious in these matters. That is one of the defining features of modern democracy. The people assume that vice is the primary motivator of their public servants. Greed, sexual perversion, gluttony, envy and so on are the default assumptions when analyzing democratic politics. It is one of the ironies of democracy. The system that boasts of being morally superior to natural hierarchical rule is assumed to be driven by the seven deadly sins.

In this case, many assume, and not without evidence, that this whole charade is a complex move to cover up the Ukraine scandal. Team Trump had stumbled onto evidence that many Democrats were on the take by Ukrainian oligarchs. In order to prevent this from becoming a public issue, they manufactured this phony Ukraine collusion story to then hold impeachment hearings. It is a version of 4-D chess to explain the bizarre behavior of the Left.

In fairness, there may be truth to it. Pelosi was dead set against impeachment until she had a secret meeting with the Lawfare people, who ran the Ukraine scam. Suddenly she was in favor of impeachment. Now they seem to be pushing her to stall sending the articles to the Senate, in order to prevent a trial next year. Ostensibly, they don’t want Team Trump presenting evidence or calling witnesses. The fear is, so the story goes, his team will dish dirt on them and their Ukraine dealings.

That’s a bit conspiratorial, but after learning that the FBI, CIA and the Obama administration orchestrated a wide ranging plot to overturn the last election, it is no longer responsible to dismiss conspiracy theories. It is clear that the ruling class is no longer operating by the official rules. Instead, it is like as a gangster state. Wealthy interests buy favors. The politicians scheme with and against one other on behalf of their benefactors. It is one big corrupt scramble.

In that same vein, this ridiculous drama could simply be the distraction to push through laws that the public detests. For example, Trump will giddily sign off on a defense bill that gives amnesty to Liberian migrants. The whole point of Liberia was to send our Africans back to Africa. Now we are importing them back. No one knows what else the schemers are pushing through Congress, as all the news is about impeachment and the public is turning away from the whole thing.

In the end, it really does not matter what is behind impeachment. It is just another indictment of democracy as a political system. It is a system in which no one appears to be in charge, because the people foolishly think their votes matter. Instead, the people really in charge are the parasites and pirates that feed off the organic social capital of the people. The embrace of democracy is the embrace of a cancer that will eventually weaken and kill the body of the people.

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