Category Archives: Weird Stuff

A Flower In The Parking Lot

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Note: Events are taking me on the road before the cock crows, so today the post is something from behind the green door. This post is from a a week ago when I had to rent a car. Something similar is happening this weekend but for entirely different reasons, so the post is appropriate.

We are expecting the white death this weekend and my car is useless in the snow, so I booked a rental for the weekend. God’s country is expecting five to eight inches of snow on Saturday and the tiny roads will not see a plow until late Sunday, so I needed something that could give me a chance to get off the mountain. I booked what the web site said was a front wheel drive Volkswagen or similar.

The key words are always “or similar” with rental cars and “similar” turned out to be a Jeep Gladiator, which is like a Jeep with a pickup bed on it. It did not cost more and they were happy to see me take it, so it worked out for the best. I can now haul some junk from Lagos to the new place. That and the thing is pretty much a tank, so I should have no trouble in the snow.

Standing in the lot waiting for the rental car guy to do his thing, I looked around at the cars and struggled to tell the models. I am not a car guy, but I used to know a Toyota from a Ford without much trouble. Car companies all had their distinctive styles, which was one way they differentiated themselves. Cars are a utility good, but aesthetics are what gets people to sign on the dotted line.

I was reminded of something a crazy guy told me when I was a teenager. He said that by the time I was his age, all cars would look the same. His reasoning was that the drive for efficiency would lead to a singular shape that was the most efficient both in terms of aerodynamics, but also in design cost. All the car maker’s efforts were converging on a singularity of sorts and all cars would look the same.

Crazy guy was mostly right. In the economy and mid-market range, it is hard to tell one model from another. It is not just the exterior. Inside they are all the same too. Options vary, but the options list from Toyota is no different from the options list at the other makers and the pricing is the same. Like the rental car page, we are reaching a point where cars are just small, medium, large and similar.

There are exceptions to this process. The Jeeps are outliers. Ford is selling a Bronco that is supposed to compete with the Jeep, but the best I can tell the Bronco is more like the other SUV’s on the market. The Jeep is a genuine off-road vehicle, even in this age of safety compliance and standardization. Driving this thing around is not quite like a pickup truck and nothing like an SUV.

Of course, there are sports cars. I stopped to grab the mail and there was a Corvette in the parking lot. Like the Jeep, it fills a category unique to itself. It is not in the same league as a Porsche or the high-end BMW’s and Audis. It is not a supercar, but it is not a muscle car either. I see a lot of the new models around so they must be popular with people who are not conformists.

I used to joke that if a man fell asleep in 1965 and awoke in the modern age, he would walk around a parking lot thinking the commies won the Cold War. The aesthetics of this age are dreadful and they are getting worse. That Corvette I saw in the parking lot was like a singular flower blooming against a black and white scene. The dreary cars around it threatening to snuff out the last bit of beauty.

The raises the question of why the car makers are not doing as they did in the past and making weird looking cars. The main reason is the economics of car making have stamped out all signs of adventurism. Every automotive executive knows the story of Saab and its last years making cars. The engineers and managers wanted to make cool cars, but that brought risk and that meant added cost.

General Motors owned Saab at the time and they were not interested in taking risks so they finally shuttered the Saab brand. When you learn about the story of how Saab died you cannot help but think that it was more than just economics. The ugly people at GM could not tolerate the free thinking that was the spirit of the Saab brand. They were the gray background swallowing up the colorful flower.

Of course, there needs to be a market for risk taking. America is no longer a place for young risk takers. It is a place for old fuddy-duddies who live in constant fear of risk because risk could mean the icy hand of death. America has always been a business and now it is a mature business with little tolerance for risk, so even if you wanted to make a funky car for the masses, the market would be small.

At the new place, I noticed that everyone seems to drive a Subaru or a pickup truck with most drives have one of each. The Subaru is great for bad weather driving on hilly country roads and the pickup is good for hauling stuff. I am not ready to be a Subaru man, so maybe I will like this Jeep enough to buy one. Maybe buy a red one so I can be that flower blooming in the grayness for a little while longer.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Tunneling Into The Clouds

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By now everyone has seen the videos of weird looking Jewish men popping up from sewer grates in New York City. The men were popping out of underground tunnels built by the Chabad cult in Crown Heights. The city discovered them in December and was attempting to fill them with cement, when the Chabad members rioted in an effort to thwart the city’s efforts. The cops were forced to arrest many of the members and physically clear the facility of Chabadists.

Needless to say it was the best day ever for the antisemites, who naturally looked at the scenes as confirmation of their claims. It was also a great day on social media as the jokesters had some of the best material ever. The images of soiled mattresses being pulled from the tunnels reminded many that this subculture has long been accused of hiding terrible things. Of course, the scolds were out wagging their bony fingers at the world for noticing what was happening.

Lost in all of this are the questions about who these people are and why are they allowed to operate in this country. Most news sites just called the facility a synagogue but it is the world headquarters of the Chabad cult, which is an international movement that aims to influence government through the conversion of secular Jews back into what the cult thinks is the authentic Judaism. This group has centers in every Western capital and many major cities.

Imagine if white nationalists bought a building in New York City and declared it their international headquarters. Imagine they imported men from around the world to live in and around it. The videos online of the riot tell us that many of these men at this location are foreigners. Instead of white nationalists, imagine it was supporters of Palestine doing this. It is a good reminder that providing special status to groups of people comes with downstream consequences.

The more important question, however, is why has the ruling class allowed this bizarre international cult to setup shop in the United States? This cult formed in the 18th century in what is now Poland. They remained there until the Second World War when the head of the cult relocated to New York City. The circumstances at the time probably prevented careful scrutiny, but since then the ruling class has had plenty of time to figure out whether these people should be allowed to remain.

Immigration is always a tool of the ruling elite. This was true in the Roman Empire and it is true in the American empire. Outside of some very narrow exceptions, immigration is a tool of the ruling class to weaken domestic opposition. In the 19th century it was used to suppress wages and prevent unionization. In the current age it is used to maintain the power of the managerial class by diluting the demographics of the country and disrupting the formation of natural community.

How does Chabad fit into this scheme? They do not work in the normal sense which means they are useless in suppressing wages. This cult operates within the Hasidic community, so they are like an economy within an economy. They self-segregate, outside of their recruitment of secular Jews, so they are not showing up in your suburban subdivision to create problems with the neighbors. What they mostly due is recruit secular Jews with access to power in order to influence the elite.

Again, this cult has centers in every Western capital. They operate near the centers of power in the West, so that means they have facilities in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a member of the Chabad cult. Given the scrutiny on Trump, one has to wonder why the media never did a deep dive on why and how this cult was able to place a member at the center of global power.

None of this should suggest that Chabad is evil or at the center of an international conspiracy to destroy the world. The point is that this extremely bizarre and alien religious movement is allowed to operate unfettered in a time when Western ruling elites are increasing paranoid about internal threats. One would think a cult digging secret tunnels under New York City streets would produce more concern than some grannies wandering around the capital waving Trump flags.

What all this points to is two things. One is the dynamic of American society, especially within the managerial class, is a non-linear system. It is not a top-down system where a small group engineers everything from the shadows. Instead, there are a lot of players jostling with one another seeking advantage. The paranoia we see from the ruling elite is not due to fear of a peasant revolt, but genuine fear of a palace coup that uses a peasant revolt as a pretext.

The other thing this Chabad business tells us is the ruling class is not thinking far beyond one move on the board. A strong ruling class would have packed the Chabad guys off hours after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not that Chabad is evil, but that no smart ruling class tolerates a cult it cannot control. Instead, the managerial elite seems to be blind to this weird movement. It helps explain why foreign governments find it so easy to manipulate the political class.

All of this is a good reminder that America has never been a country in the conventional sense, but rather something like a large distributed network. The nodes on this network are the power centers that wield influence in certain areas. These nodes are often networks themselves, like the news media. The New York Times is the major node within the news media, which itself is a node on the ruling network. These nodes influence one another and jockey for power with one another.

As a result, no one is ever really in charge, like we see in Russia or China, where the state is the dominant power and controls all the power centers. We saw this with Trump when he was thwarted by the various nodes within government. When he overcame those problems, he was stymied by the judicial and corporate nodes operating within the general network of the managerial class. The ruling elite of America is a mesh network that operates atop society.

The Chabad people understand this, which is why they recruit members who can infiltrate these nodes. Most Chabad members do not look like those guys scurrying out of underground tunnels. They look like anyone else in society. Foreign governments see this is well, which is why Israel can have so much influence. China, despite enormous wealth and willingness to buy politicians has less influence than Saudi Arabia because the Saudis understand how America really works.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

2024 Predictions

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It is that time of year again when I slaughter a goat, examine the entrails, and reveal to the world what will happen in the coming year. Given that last year’s hit rate was spectacular, the entrails tell me you should send a donation to the Seer of Lagos for providing this valuable service. There is no “black swan” prediction in the mix as by definition any such prediction would no longer qualify as a black swan event if it were to happen, so 2024 will be white swans all the way down.

Trump Will win Iowa and Ron DeSantis will finish second with Haley finishing a disappointing third place, tied with Ramaswamy. In New Hampshire, Trump will win the state with DeSantis finishing tied for third place with Ramaswamy, who will start talking about himself as having momentum. Trump meanwhile will win South Carolina and Michigan with more than half the vote. He will demand that the other candidates drop out of the race, with Ramaswamy being the only one to do so.

In the spring the convictions will start to come in from the various kangaroo courts accusing Trump of being a big meanie. This will have no impact on his polling, but the media will begin to form a narrative where the party feels it has no choice but to disqualify Trump and expel him from the party. The Supreme Court will take one of the 14th amendment cases, but hold off on delivering a verdict, giving the Republicans time to figure out how to expel Trump and relieve the court of this burden.

This will create chaos in the party as voters will accuse the remaining candidates of being in on this new round of election rigging. Someone will stand up at a Haley campaign event and caller her a rigger. With the remaining candidates so unpopular, the party will look outside the field and ask Glenn Youngkin to join the race. He will be quietly guarantied the nomination, as the party will control the Trump delegates and their own super delegates, thus having control of the nomination…

On the Democratic side, Biden will win the early primaries, mostly because he is running unopposed. In the spring he will have a serious episode that calls into question his fitness to hold office. This will be something more egregious than his shaking hands with invisible people, a thing he now does often. It will be something that the media cannot ignore. This will lead official Washington to intensify calls for the GOP to nominate Youngkin as a unifying candidate.

What no one will discuss in public is that Youngkin has deep ties to the military industrial complex, the neocons, and the intelligence community. He is this generations version of George H. W. Bush, a guy who does what is required to satisfy the rubes in fly over country, but is primarily loyal to the permanent ruling class. What Youngkin represents is a final attempt to claw back some order from the gathering chaos. Conservatives will rally to this idea, as they are this stupid…

The Federal Reserve, having convinced itself that inflation is not real, will relent to pressure from the usual suspects and begin a program of cutting rates in the first quarter of the year. By summer it will become clear that inflation is real, and it never went away just because the Fed stopped believing in it. People will begin to compare Jerome Powell to Arthur Burns, who fell into the same trap in the 1970’s when he failed to raise rates enough to control inflation…

By summer Argentina will collapse under a combination of social unrest, political unrest, and economic chaos. Javier Milei was a fun protest vote, but Argentines will soon learn that having a clown in charge is actually worse than having crooks in charge and they will begin to protest the government. The political class will use its real power to undermine his government. The economy will crater as foreign investment vanishes and the cost of borrowing soars…

In the first reported sighting of the heretofore mythical Ozark Mountain Shark, Paul Ramsey will be attacked by said shark while tending his property. He will not be injured, but the shark will warn him that if he does not paint those pink walls in his studio, he will come back with friends, and it will not be pretty. Faced with having to repaint the studio, Paul will abandon the format and instead start a new YouTube cooking series in which he only uses the microwave…

On the sporting front, the Lagos sportsball club will win the annual sports bowl, prevailing over the club from San Francisco. Both of the Japanese stars the Dodgers signed over the winter will have season ending injuries. The sporting god are never kind to the big spenders. In the other football, the one played with feet and round balls over in Europe, the Premier League, which is the highest level of the English football league system, will file for bankruptcy…

The Israelis will keep trying to escalate the Gaza war in order to draw in the United States, but the Iranians will not take the bait. Russia will start to upgrade the Syrian air defense systems as a way to both defend against Israeli attacks and to open another front in the proxy war with the Global American Empire. The Saudis agree to move forward with Russia and China on developing their nuclear program, signaling an end to the Saudi-American relationship that has defined the region…

The concept of antiwhite will become mainstream as the media continues to push the culture war in advance of the elections. Normal white people will begin to talk publicly about the war on white people. The “great replacement” will go mainstream, and the usual suspects try to scream it down with the usual language, but normal white people will shrug off these tactics. For the first time in generations, the claim of racism will not terrorize normal white people…

The entertainment industry will have its worst year in memory as the combination of antiwhite content, reduced inventory due to the 2023 strikes and changing habits results in a lower box office and accelerated cable cutting. Not only will people cut the cord, but the internet services will see a drop in subscription numbers. Content owners are insulting their customers and pricing them out of the market. The market for video content is tapped out and will begin to decline.

The Biden administration will intensify efforts to confiscate Russian assets currently frozen in Western banks. The stated goal is to free up money for Ukraine, but the real point is to bring Russian to the table. The administration wants to avoid a total collapse in Ukraine by “freezing” the war. The Russians are not stupid so they have no interest in that idea, but the West thinks the threat of confiscating Russian assets could force the Russians to reconsider their position.

This will fail as the Russians will see it as an opportunity to remind the rest of the world that their money is not safe in Western banks. The Russian army will continue to grind down the Ukrainians all along the line of contact. Yulia Tymoshenko, the “gas princess”, will become a serious threat to Zelensky as Washington quietly backs her play, which in turn leads to a political collapse in Kiev. By the end of the year, Zaluzhny will give his Mannerheim speech, which he spoke of last year…

My book will be the number one Christmas gift in 2024…

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Looking Back At 2023

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It is that time of year again when I look back at all of the things I got wrong and promise to do better next year. Well, not all the things I did wrong, just the things I got wrong in last year’s prediction post. Everyone loves making predictions, because everyone forgets about them, but few take the time to revisit their predictions. An iron law of the universe is that you learn more from your mistakes than your successes, so it is a good time to take a look at those mistakes.

As far as the effects of the sanctions on Russia and what it will do to Europe, I was amazingly on target. Gasoline in Germany is about ten dollars per gallon and is expected to go higher in 2024. On the other hand, India and China are experiencing an unprecedented boom in cheap energy. On top of that, the Indians are reselling their refined crude to Europe at a premium. The European economy is in recession now and it is all due to waging war on its energy supplier.

As far as America, I was wrong about how inflation would play out. It seems we got a pause and now it is picking back up again, just as the Fed signals it is ready to start cutting rates in 2024. I still think we end up in the Arthur Burns trap, but the timing of it may be a bit different. I was wrong about interest rates, and I was wrong about the economy as a whole. At least on paper, we have not gone into recession, which seems to be due to relatively cheap energy.

I nailed the Trump story from the start. The lawfare against him has played out as I have been saying since 2021. The party did try to rally around the sacred black man, but he turned out to be too ridiculous even for the Republicans. Instead, they have gone all in on the brown woman. They are trying to fake poll her into contention or at least make her a credible looking loser. War Karen is at 25% in New Hampshire, so they can pretend she is the winner when Trump is gone.

On the Democratic side, I was all wrong. If you want proof we live in a simulation run by sadists, look no further than Joe Biden. The mere fact that this deranged simpleton is president is proof enough. The fact that the party has not removed him from office and found a better actor for the role suggests the simulation is broken. Unless something wild happens in early 2024, it looks like Joe Biden will be on the ballot. The robot historians will never be able to sort this one.

I got the Kanye West stuff mostly right. He is not in bankruptcy, but he must be running out of money as he is now groveling to the usual suspects in Hebrew. You just know that he will be seen in front of a pile of shoes soon. I was wrong about Cozy getting nuked, but they have no traffic now, so close enough. Ethan Ralph was the last guy on there with an audience and he is now on Rumble. Maybe my 2024 prediction will be Cozy shuts down for good.

I did not finish my book. I learned a good lesson on this front. Writing a book is like any other project in that you have to see it through to the end. If you take a break there is a good chance you will never come back from break. I got about three quarters through it and realized I wanted to revisit some of it. I thought maybe I was rushing things, so I took a break and before long other things filled that time slot. One thing I am doing now is setting aside time in the schedule to finish it in 2024.

My Ukraine predictions were a mixed bag. I was wrong about Ukraine pulling back to more defensible positions, even though that was the sensible thing. I was also wrong about NATO escalating by introducing “advisors” into Ukraine. Washington has sent a three-star general to take over planning and there are rumors of NATO people operating in country, but nothing has been confirmed. Putin mentioned Poland maybe taking parts of Western Ukraine, but the Poles have not mentioned it.

It is too soon to tell how all of this will play out in Europe, but the landscape looks bleak for the pro-America parties, so this is an incomplete. The West did try to regime change Serbia this month, so I can take a win on that one, but otherwise I was ahead of my skis on how this plays out politically. I will take the win on the failure of American weapons and what it does to the reputation of the MIC. Western wonder weapons were a colossal failure in Ukraine last summer.

I was joking about human sacrifice being the next social fad, but boy did I hit it out of the park on the Alex Jones stuff. The guy is now facing over a billion in fines for offending some degenerates in Connecticut. That case is a great example of how managerialism and mass media converge create an alternative reality. The mass media has ignored this case, so few people are aware of it, even though it is the most egregious corruption of the law this country has ever seen.

On a positive note, I nailed my escape from Lagos prediction. It was a close call as I closed in December, but it still counts as a win. I have a bunch of things to do before I can live in the house fulltime, but those are progressing. As is always the case, every small project turns out to be more involved than expected. Given that what comes next will be the 2024 predictions, I may write those up in the new place. If you are going to make predictions, do it from atop a mountain lair.

The lesson every year when I look at these predictions from the past year is that the safe bet is that current trends will continue. Something unexpected has to happen for a trend to stop or change direction. Those “black swan” events are rare, which is why we have the expression. Of course, it is all about perception. Many people saw the mortgage crisis coming, but the bankers did not and they were the driving force behind that trend so we got a crisis.

The things that are nearly impossible to predict are the stupid things that take on a life of their own, like the Ukraine war or Covid. The people responsible for these things passed dozens of warning signs and ignored the obvious choices in order to find the worst choice possible. It is not in our nature to think people can be this willfully stupid and destructive, so we cannot imagine such things. Yet, these are the people who rule over us, so they will determine what happens in 2024.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Green Door Content: Annie Hall

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Note: By the time this posts, I will be on the roof of the new place with the chimney man getting things ready for the new woodstove. I had the flue inspected and that is fine, but the cap needs attention and I am having the flue cleaned just to be sure. The following is a post from behind the green door to hold everyone over until I return, assuming I do not fall off the roof. If there is no Friday post, it has been fun.

If I were tasked with writing a summary of the classic Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall, I would be hard pressed to get past a paragraph. It is film starring a neurotic Jewish man, played by Woody Allen, and a mentally unstable woman, played by Diane Keeton, who wander around New York for ninety minutes speaking to one another as if they swallowed a 1970’s pop-psychology textbook.

The movie reminds me of the old quip about the James Joyce novel Ulysses. “A Jewish man who wanders around Dublin and nothing happens.” That is not a criticism. In fact, it is the best thing I can think of to say about the film. There is a chance that Allen was inspired by the Joyce novel and was attempting to recreate it for a New York audience, from an entirely Jewish perspective. Joyce is mentioned in this scene.

I did some digging around to see if maybe that was what Allen was doing with this film, but I found nothing to suggest it. Despite its status as a classic film and one of Allen’s best works, there is not much in the way of critical analysis. That is because there is not much to examine when it comes to things you expect in a story. It is just two neurotic Manhattanites wandering around for ninety minutes.

The film is classed as a romantic comedy, but it is probably better to call it a character study or perhaps an anthropological study. It is primarily about two people, presented as representative of the cultural elite of the time, as they struggle with their various insecurities and disconnectedness. Comedian Alvy Singer, (Allen) and Annie Hall (Keaton) are struggling with alienation in the modern age.

Alienation is the subtext of the film, but it is not entirely clear that Allen had the self-awareness to know this. Alvy Singer is the typical Jewish character struggling with his otherness in a world dominated by non-Jews. Allen hams it up quite a bit to the point where Alvy Singer is a satire of the Jewish guy who is sure that around every corner there could be a gang of Nazis ready to haul him away to the camps.

Once you get past the hyperbole, you get to the essential reality of the Jewish condition, at least as Jews see it, which is that they are always a people who dwell alone, regardless of where they find themselves. Who they are is defined by their outsider status so they must remain as outsiders or risk losing their identity. It is the essential contradiction at the heart of Jewish identity in the diaspora.

Alienation takes on a different form with Annie. She is presented as from a standard issue white middle-class family. At one point, Alvy jokes that she grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting. She is the modern atomized female, a creature of both feminism and the modern economy, who sees a therapist and spends most of her time dwelling on trivialities to escape from the loneliness of her life.

The two of them sort of fall in love, but their relationship does not work because of the self-absorption rooted in their alienation. Alvy only thinks about sex, while Annie has no interest in sex. In both cases, this leads to endless self-examination that is entirely superficial and pointless. These are two people who are alienated from themselves, so it is why they cannot have a normal human relationship.

Sadly, that analysis is far more interesting than the film version. Both characters are boring and self-indulgent. There is no reason to care about them because you have met these stock figures loads of times in film and real life. Annie is a neurotic dingbat who every man over thirty has met a thousand times. Allen is the classic Jewish guy who thinks his endless complaining makes him seem interesting.

That is the main problem with the film. It wants to be a social commentary, but it has nothing to say about the things featured in the film. You get some pithy commentary from Alvie who breaks the fourth wall throughout the film, but those are just gag lines that Allen used in his stand-up. Otherwise, you have no reason to care about the people, so you have no reason to think about their dilemma.

In this regard it is like other movies of this decade in that they were made by people who held themselves in high regard, so they just assumed anything they did or said was important by itself. They made films that were supposed to lead the horse to water, but it was hard to care about the horse, so the water never came into focus. Whatever Allen was trying to say about his time and place in this film remained unsaid.

That said, the film is visually interesting. Even after fifty years it feels like you are there in Manhattan with Alvy and Annie. You often think you can smell the stench of the urine-soaked hobos, which were a feature of the city at the time. This may be why the film shows up on the top-100 list, rather than other Woody Allen films which were graded higher at the time in terms of artistic merit.

In the end, Annie Hall feels like a professionally made film school project in that it is self-indulgent and the person doing the self-indulging is not that interesting. Woody Allen’s hang-ups and insecurities are interesting to no one but Woody Allen. A film about them, not matter how well done, is still just a film about a boring Jewish man who spends ninety minutes walking around Manhattan with an equally boring shiksa.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Happy Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving is arguably the greatest American creation, despite being the one thing we have not tried to export. Around the world there are American outposts selling degeneracy of various sorts, along with the supposed ideals of the American empire, but you will never get a sales pitch on Thanksgiving. It speaks to the nature of the current ruling elite that gratitude is not something they think about when trying to change the minds of people abroad.

Regardless, the long holiday that is upon us is special. It is a long weekend of doing little more than giving thanks for what we have as individuals. We do not give thanks to our overlords for anything. We do not give thanks for our stuff. We do not even give thanks for the great fortune of being an American. It is much simpler and more honest that all of that. It is a day to be happy that you are alive, you have friends and family and you are able to enjoy those things.

What makes the holiday better than most is that it is at least a four day weekend and is slowly becoming a weeklong affair. Within living memory most people had to work Friday if they wanted to get paid for Thursday, but that is long gone. Most employers give their people Thursday and Friday off, except retailers, of course. Many offices now close up early on Wednesday. All week offices are light on staff as people use their personal time to extend the holiday.

If we had any sense as a people, we would make the whole week a national holiday, maybe even shutter retail for a few days. Friday is the start of the Christmas shopping season, so giving the retail people a few days off in advance would be the decent thing to do, but our greed heads will never go for it. Big box retailers now force their staff in on Thursday night to get ready for Black Friday. After the revolution, the people doing this will be hanged first.

The funny thing about Thanksgiving is it does not celebrate any of the things that have come to define America. There is no soulless gift giving. Christmas has been turned into an orgy of material self-indulgence. It is reasonable to say that what goes on in this country around Christmas is grotesque. Our other holidays are civic affairs designed to celebrate the government or warmongering. Usually, they are on a Monday so we get a long weekend, but they have no meaning.

Thanksgiving is unique in that it is about you as a person taking time to think about the good things in your life. The big traditional meal with friends and family focuses the mind on those human relationships. Even in these easy times, life is hard, so taking time to count your blessings is a gift you give yourself. Being grateful is one of those odd things that just makes you feel good. Having a long holiday to eat traditional foods and be grateful is an amazing thing we have created.

It is the gratitude part of it that gets to the heart of the current crisis. All around us are people doing nothing but showing their ingratitude. America is filling up with ingrates who do nothing but complain. One can possibly understand the ingratitude of black people, but the endless complaining from new arrivals is maddening. Even worse is seeing useless weirdos freeriding on society complain that the rest of us are not thanking them for being parasites.

Joe Sobran put it best. “The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn’t conscious of it. And, superiority excites envy.” That is the heart of the matter and probably why we invented Thanksgiving. It is our nature to build and create, which is why we are naturally grateful for what we have. A people who built a great civilization out of nothing have a lot to be thankful for, so having a long holiday to take our time and be grateful makes a lot of sense.

Even now, with all that is going on, we have plenty of reasons to take the next few days to count our blessings. The Good Lord in his wisdom has provided us with enemies who possess none of the qualities we respect. They may have inherited power, but they lack the ability to wield it responsibly. Like men on death row, our betters walk around with an expiry date on them. It is a long struggle, but we know that in the end we will prevail and for that we must be thankful.

Of course, we also have the community of dissidents that is slowly forming up to provide fellowship and support as we struggle though this age. Those of you who were at AmRen last time certainly know what I mean. You come back from such things humbled and grateful, because you have been reminded of how fortunate you are to be alive in this time. To be blessed with a life of struggle, to have a reason to be better each day, is the greatest gift of all.

I want to thank everyone who comes to this site to read what I have written or listen to the Friday shows. Special thanks to the many people who fill up the comments every day with commentary that is often better than my posts. This is one of the best comment sections on the internet. It is something people often say to me. Posting will be light the next few days, but the comment section will be open as always. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and thank you for all that you do.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Came For Dinner And Never Left

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Note: More housing shenanigans today, so this is an item from the early days of the green door when I got the idea to review the AFI top-100 films.

Some movies are on the top-100 list because they are great stories told very well, while others are on the list for their great technological breakthroughs. Some are on the list for their cultural impact. That is the case with Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a comedy about race mixing from 1967. The film had two legends, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, and a big star at the moment in Sydney Poitier.

The film was viewed at the time as groundbreaking because it featured a mixed-race couple in a positive light. Right around the time the movie was released, the Supreme Court had struck down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving v. Virginia. Of course, the civil rights movement was at its peak, so this was just what white liberals wanted to see, which was white liberals being celebrated for their goodness.

The movie itself is pretty simple. It opens with the couple in question, generic rich white girl and her much older black boyfriend, Sydney Poitier, getting off an airplane and strolling through an airport like lovers on a walk in the park. Keep in mind that this is 1967, but no one in the airport notices, because you see, this is the glorious future where race no longer matters, so get used to it you terrible bigots.

I was not around in 1967, but I was around in 1977. I was around in 1987 and 1997 as well, so I have some idea what it was like in 1967. I know in 1987, a mixed-race couple would have drawn a lot of stares. It was an extremely rare thing. In 1967 you can be sure the people in that airport would have been dumbstruck, but the story needed everyone to be cool with it so the rest of the story would make more sense.

Anyway, the couple arrives at the mansion of the white girl’s parents. The black maid, played by Weezy from the Jeffersons, is predictably flabbergasted by the site of the master’s daughter bringing home a black man. The two blacks are uncomfortable for a moment, until Poitier asks to use the phone. He goes into the den to use the phone, where there is a bug picture of FDR on the desk. That could be important.

The first parent home to meet the new man is the mother, who is uncomfortable, but tries to play it cool. This is where we begin to learn that Poitier is not just a black guy, but a special black guy. He not only knows exactly how the mother is feeling, but he knows exactly how to break the tension. Unlike the rest of the characters, he alone can rise above the situation and see everything from every perspective.

Next home is the father, who is home early to get ready for his golf outing. For some reason he is not surprised to find a middle-aged black man in his home with his daughter, so he just makes small talk for a while. Eventually, he notices there is a middle-aged black man in his home with his daughter and that is when they tell him that his daughter is planning to marry the middle-aged black man.

This is when we learn that Poitier is the most successful black man on the planet, as he is a famous doctor and world leader. Because the world depends on him, he is going to fly to New York to visit smart people and then head off to Geneva to run the World Health Organization. He has a plan to save Africa by teaching the smart African kids how to do stuff so they can make Africa great again. No kidding.

This is what sets the plot in motion. The parents have a day to give their blessing to the marriage or Poitier will break it off, as he is so noble and kind that he will not come between the white girl and her people. You see, he is not just the most accomplished black man on the planet, he is a numinous Negro. He is the saintly black character who exists to help the whites make their journey to enlightenment.

For a while Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn fret over what to do. Then a priest arrives and hams it up as the stereotypical Irish priest, accent and all. He thinks the whole thing is wonderful and this is where we see he is supposed the be the audience in this drama, enjoying how the rich white liberals struggle with their hypocrisy while trying to get with the times and accept the race mixing.

The catch phrase that is the title of the film comes when Tracy learns that Poitier’s parents are coming for dinner. Tracy is at his wit’s end over having been put in this situation when Hepburn says, “guess who’s coming to dinner?” Then she explains how Poitier’s parents are flying up from Los Angeles. Then the priest invites himself to the dinner, because he is the voice of the audience and needs to be there.

At the big dinner we learn that the black parents are opposed to the race mixing, but the mother is more open-minded to it than the father. We now have the predictable setup of the females trying to bring their stubborn husbands along. At some point the women commiserate and agree to work on the men. Poitier tells off his father, not so subtly implying that old blacks were responsible for keeping blacks down.

Finally, the black mother has a heart to heart with Spencer Tracy and he finally sees the light and agrees to bless the marriage. He then gives a big speech that sounds like it was written by the ad hoc committee of the revolutionary council on race in the 1967 people’s assembly. I actually felt sorry for Tracy having to say such stupid things in what would be his last movie before he died. It was ten minutes of cringe.

You have to judge movies in the context of their age, but even making big allowances for the age, this is a bad movie. It is ham-fisted, predictable, and preachy. The main characters are shallow and basic, with little to no development. Poitier is not even a real person in this movie. He is just a ridiculous version of the Magic Negro. The only character with any depth is Tracy and that is not much.

That said, the movie belongs on the top-100 list for its cultural value. It made $54 million in 1967, which is $420 million in today’s money. That is a massive success, which tells us that whites were enormously gullible and stupid back then. Sure, the movie had big stars and it was intended to be a comedy, but the fact they could not see that this was nothing but anti-white propaganda does not speak well of them.

There is also the fact that fifty years ago the usual suspects were pushing the idea that the only way for white men to be saved was to allow their daughters to run off with non-white males. The reason that white people face a long war to regain dominion over their societies is because it has been a long war against them. The people on the other side played the long game. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a good reminder of that fact and therefore worth watching today.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Midnight Cowboy

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Note: Today is a house hunting day, which means I am out at the crack of dawn to head off to the hills in search of a new lair. Instead of rushing something in the few minutes I have before leaving for the day, I am re-posting a green door item. This is a film review I recently did that feels like a nice break from the usual routine.

The concept of the antiwhite is new to most people, but it has been bubbling under the surface of American culture for a long time. In movies, it often turns up in the “moral complexity” of quintessentially American characters. The prototypical American cowboy, for example, is also a villain. Alternatively, the American dream is turned into a nightmare for the protagonist of the film.

It is not a direct racial assault on white people, like we now see on movies and television, but more of a bank shot. Some aspects of society are criticized, often by inverted reality, as in the case of Easy Rider. Normal people are turned into violent monsters, while two bums are the heroes. The Searchers introduces the concept of racism as a defining feature of American society.

By the late 1960’s, there was no need to obscure the intent. American life was portrayed as seedy and degenerate, the result of the original sin of some “ism” or maybe the falsity of the founding myth. There is the sense that the general terribleness of the period was deserved. Cities were festering sewers riddled with crime and degeneracy because that was the real America.

Probably the peak of this seedy realism was Midnight Cowboy. It is the story of a young guy from Texas named Joe Buck, played by Jon Voight. He quits his menial job and takes a bus to New York City for reasons that are never explained. He immediately decides to make a living as a male prostitute, targeting middle-aged women. His first efforts fail, but he gets the hang of it and finally gets lucky.

This totally naive guy from Texas is shrewd enough to become a hustler but not smart enough to make money at it. He also gets suckered by a crippled conman named Rico, played by Dustin Hoffman. Rico introduces Joe to a pimp, for a finder’s fee, but the pimp turns out to be a religious fanatic. Joe flees this situation and goes looking for Rico but is unable to locate him.

Joe runs out of money, so he gets tossed from his apartment and decides to let a gay guy give him oral sex in a movie theater, thinking that the gay guy is going to pay him for the privilege, but that is now how things work. Joe eventually finds Rico, who lets him stay in his condemned apartment. They become partners with Joe slowly taking care of Rico, who has some sort of respiratory disease.

Eventually the two of them decide to leave New York City for Florida, so Joe picks up a gay guy and murders him for his cash. They use the cash for a bus ticket to Florida, but Rico is now extremely sick. At some point Rico soils himself, so Joe buys them new clothes at a rest stop, but Rico has died. The close of the movie is Joe hugging his dead friend as the bus trundles along toward Florida.

The message of the film is clear. White America is a myth, just as Joe Buck’s cowboy act is a myth that he created for himself. In realty, America is a faker, a fraud, a hustler that can only be redeemed by dropping the act and turning gay. This is a movie made by and for people who hate themselves, their country and would have been better off killing themselves and their intended audience.

That is the main reason the film is on the top-100 list. Another reason is it started the process of normalizing sodomy. It is not just an antiwhite, anti-American film, but it is a homosexual film that seeks to normalize homosexuality, by making Joe Buck a victim of a system that is intolerant of homosexuals. If midcentury bourgeoise decadence could have come to life and made a film, this would be it.

It is impossible to express how much I detest this film, but it is not the worst film on the top-100 list and it probably does belong here for artistic reasons. The message is vulgar and degenerate, but the production and acting are extremely good. Despite the obvious plot holes, Jon Voight makes Joe Buck believable. Dustin Hoffman plays himself, so he is quite credible as a skeevy hustler.

Like Taxi Driver, which I also hated, Midnight Cowboy is important because of what it represents on the historical timeline. When the robot historians attempt to retrace the steps that led to the collapse of the American experiment, they will no doubt look at the popular entertainment of this period for clues. Within a single generation, America went from the pinnacle of cultural achievement to the world of Midnight Cowboy.

That said, if you can avert your gaze from the political messaging and step outside of our current political context, it is a good film. Joe Buck has a story to tell, and we get enough of it to fill in the rest. He is a tragic figure, but he is not without redeeming qualities and we get the sense that redemption is possible for him. That is a lot to do in a film and that speaks to the skill of the people behind it.

In the end, it is all about the main question. If you have not seen this film, should you take the time to watch it? Even though I hate this film, I do not regret having watched it twice now. There will be no third viewing, but if you can stomach the politics and the ugliness of it, it is worth watching for historical reasons. At the minimum, you come away with a sense of the time and place in which it was made.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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

Numbers

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If you were a young person in the 1980’s and caught up in the swelling conservative movement, you needed to know the numbers. Conservatism, to a great degree, was about making rational arguments which meant starting with the numbers. Things like the budget deficit, economic growth, crime rates and inflation were a common part of the conservative counter to progressive claims. At its most basic, conservatism was rational while liberalism was emotional.

For a while it seemed like the conservatives had carried the day on this issue as the public discourse slowly mirrored conservative discourse. When public figures talked about politics and social issues, it was about the numbers. The media would make a day of covering the latest speech by the Fed chair. Alan Greenspan became a rock star who gave speeches to huge crowds. Every politician made sure to have the Congressional Budget Office bless his latest idea.

Through the Bush years, economists took the place of the court astrologer, providing empirical authority to every normative claim. This reached its peak in the first Obama term when they said that every dollar spent by the government created more than a dollar of economic activity. A line of people with impressive sounding credentials provided the math of this claim. This was the argument in favor of the massive spending program unleashed by the Obama administration.

It was not just politics that got the numbers treatment. After every Super Bowl, the media would spend a day or two crunching the numbers to prove that you were the only weirdo who did not set aside the day to watch the big game. Television ratings were a mainstay of media coverage. The stock market became the central measure of social happiness, with cable channels dedicated to telling us the numbers and what the numbers meant for your happiness.

Today, no one discusses the numbers. Someone arguing for a policy on the grounds that it is good the economy sounds like someone arguing for free silver. In fact, it is the primary criticism of Conservative Inc. They do not care about crossdressers chasing your son around the playground or the tidal wave of brown people pouring over the border into your neighborhood. They care about the carried interest deduction and locking in tax cuts that few experienced or remember.

What is the current projected federal deficit? Without googling it, few people would know, and most people would not bother to do it. The same is true of the total federal debt, which used to be a headline topic. How much does the Federal government owe and to whom do they owe it? Washington is embroiled in a huge drama right now set off by the Federal budget debate and no one bothers mentioning that about forty percent of what they spent is borrowed.

One reason no one talks about the economic numbers is they have become inconceivable large, so they have no impact. People can grasp a million and they can sort of grasp a billion. Being a millionaire would be nice and being a billionaire would be awesome, but trillionaire? It is probably better than billionaire, but what is bigger than anything you can imagine? The thirty-plus trillion federal debt is a meaningless number because it is outside of what most people can imagine.

There is a bigger issue that applies to all the numbers. Decades of lying about the numbers have made all of them suspect. The totally fake economic data pumped out in the Obama years sunk the credibility of the court wizards. When those people with impressive credentials put on their serious faces and said that taking money from you and giving some of it to your neighbor would grow the economy, even the most innumerate started to question the math.

It is not just the big stuff where lying has undermined the trust in the numbers that used to be the guideposts of society. Television ratings are obviously bogus or not as meaningful as claimed. If the people making the content cared about ratings, they would not have smeared their feces all over popular content. Ad makers would not have replaced most of the white people with nonwhites. They certainly would not have every white woman paired with a black guy.

Probably the most egregious offender of the numbers are the tech companies, who clearly fake all of their numbers. How many users are really on Twitter? No one knows but we know the official number is a lie. We can clearly see that the follower counts and impressions are fake. Before buying Twitter, Elon Musk made the rather obvious claim that the site was riddled with bots and fake accounts. Once the deal closed, he stopped talking about the bots and fake accounts.

There is more to the general fakery than the unreliability of the numbers. It is that it reflects a collapse in trust. When the government claims inflation is under control, but you keep seeing your expenses climb, you are reminded by the numbers that the people in charge cannot be trusted. When some new personality bursts on the scene claiming to have a huge audience, but no one you know heard of the guy until last week, you cannot help but wonder if it is a lie.

The numbers of life are not supposed to tell us what we ought to do, but to be a measure of what we are doing. If we cannot trust the numbers or the people issuing the numbers, then we cannot know what they are doing. We have no way of judging what is being told to us or if it is on the level. The only logical response is to assume the numbers are fake and the people issuing them are lying. A society with unreliable numbers is a society run by unreliable people.

Of course, this is most clear in politics. The most important numbers are the votes counted on election night. The logic of democracy is that everyone gets their say, then everyone votes and the side with the most votes wins. Along the way polling tells us how the various arguments and people are doing. If all of these numbers are fake, then what is the point? If the numbers at the soap box and the ballot box cannot be trusted, you are left with the numbers in the cartridge box.

Since the end of the Cold War, American society has travelled along an arc that started with a trust in the numbers and the people behind them to a place where no sane person trusts the numbers or the people behind them. That is probably why it feels like this pirate ship of a society called America is sailing into dangerous waters. Odds are just numbers, and the odds say that in a world without reliable numbers, the most likely outcome is the ship eventually sinks.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

The Pepper Cave produces exotic peppers, pepper seeds and plants, hot sauce and seasonings. Their spice infused salts are a great add to the chili head spice armory, so if you are a griller, take you spice business to one of our guys.

Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that roasts its own coffee and ships all over the country. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start.

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