Electric Boogaloo

Posted on January 6, 2022 by thezman

In the history of motoring, no owner of a sports car has ever said, “This car would be perfect if it sounded like a washing machine instead of a sports car.” In fact, a common complaint from sports car enthusiasts over the decades is that their favorite model does not have a sexy enough exhaust note. A big part of owning a sports car, even a budget model, is the sound it makes when driving. Watch a car show or YouTube car channel and exhaust sound is always mentioned.

Even if you are not into sports cars, the sound of the engine revving is something everyone associates with a sports car. The sound of the car shifting gears, the echo of the exhaust in a narrow canyon, is a big part of the experience. Similarly, driving enthusiasts prefer manual gearboxes to automatics, even though they will tell you that computer controlled automatic transmissions are far superior. The manual gearbox allows the driver to feel like he is part of the machine.

With that in mind, the world’s premiere sports car makers are promising to take all of that away in the coming years. They say they will stop building internal combustion engines and go completely electric. Most have already abandoned manual gearboxes and the rest promise to do so shortly. The supercar makers are investing all of their time in electric motors and self-driving technology. Their goal is to make the elite sports car into something close to an autonomous vehicle

That means the sports car driving experience will soon be like sitting in front of your laptop to the sound of kitchen appliances. Car shows will have soft looking men and women climbing into futuristic vehicles then sitting there in silence as the vehicle goes about the business of being a car. Presumably, the sports models will come with a VR system so the driver can pretend to be driving an actual sports car or maybe it will just have a screen to see what it used to be like.

The question is why? Again, no one can find a Ferrari owner saying he wishes his supercar sounded more like the kitchen juicer. No one has ever daydreamed about driving his blender through the countryside. People into motoring do it for how it makes them feel and it makes them feel alive. It reminds them that life is for living, not ticking boxes on a spreadsheet dreamed up by a sadist with a graduate degree. That’s the thrill of driving a fast car to your limit.

Granted, there is a group of people who claim to be sports car enthusiasts who think electric sports cars are a great idea. They like telling people that electric cars have a flat torque curve, meaning they can accelerate faster than a normal car. BMW has made a lot of money selling them Z-series sports cars, the ones that look like a clown’s shoe, because these are people who are dead inside. Their enthusiasm for sports cars is superficial and performative.

Of course, there is the environmental angle. The Gaia worshippers claim that electric cars are better for Mother Earth. These are the people who tote their groceries home from the market in grimy canvas sacks. These are the people who wear ornamental face gear thinking it wards off evil spirits. The people who have made a childish fear of the bogeyman into both a science and a religion love electric cars. They also think everyone should live in pods and ride the bus.

Putting aside their superstitions, electric cars are not eco-friendly or a more efficient use of natural resources. Electric comes from power stations. The most common powerplant fuels are coal, natural gas, and uranium. In the United States, only 20% of electricity comes from so-called renewables like solar. These “good” sources of electric like solar are a blight on nature and environmentally toxic. The long term costs far outweigh the costs of conventional energy production systems.

Then there is the practicality of electric cars. Fueling a normal car takes a few minutes while charging an EV takes hours. Again, no one is sitting around saying, “I’d like to spend hours at a roadside station talking with people who tend to loiter at rest stops while my electric car is being charged.” Then there is the fact that you have to install a charging station in your home. Imagine buying a car and being told you have to install a filling station in your backyard in order to use it.

In other words, the natural demand for electric cars was zero and remains low even with the push to manufacture demand. There is a novelty factor, for sure, but if no one had bothered to push the production of electric cars, they would not exist. Tesla exists as a way for Elon Musk to hoover up billions in government money, not because he found an unexploited niche in the automobile market. What he found was a clever way to become a rent seeker and the P.T. Barnum of the technological age.

It would be easy to go through all of the arguments in favor of electric cars and show them to be ridiculous or plain wrong. That is not the point. The point is despite the obvious, Western elites are hell bent on forcing us into electric cars. Those super car makers are not marketing to the hoi polloi. They cater to the global elite and they think the global elite believes in the miracle of electric cars. They are catering to their audience and their audience is our ruling class.

The point of this exercise is not to argue against electric cars, but to point out that practicality and self-interest are not what motivates the ruling class. All of them mouth the platitudes of Gaia worship because that is the prevailing orthodoxy. It is a way for them to signal their adherence to the faith. The local officials installing charging stations at the local school, yet ignoring the broken pipes and boarded up windows, are not thinking practically or responding to the demands of the people.

The electric car grift is useful in thinking about how partisanship in a liberal democracy becomes ideology then something closer to theology. The old partisan divide of the last century, good whites versus bad whites, has become a basket of beliefs untethered from practical reality. That basket of beliefs now forms a religion that bounds and defines the ruling class. The managerial class now has its own religion to control and define the members.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. 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!

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The Bearded Weirdo

Posted on January 3, 2022 by thezman

Note: The Taki post is up. This week it is about the fact that two years of Covid has revealed some unforgettable and unforgivable truths. Behind the green door, there is the first podcast of the new year.

Politics in a democratic society is always going to attract a lot of very strange people, but there is a range of acceptable strangeness. As a result, the weirdness tends to be normalized in that you just expect it. No one is surprised to learn that people in politics have the morals of carny folk, because politics is entertainment. We are not shocked by it unless the behavior falls way outside the norm. That is what makes the Jack Murphy scandal both amusing and interesting.

For those unfamiliar, Jack Murphy was a leader in the man-o-sphere scene, which is a broad term covering anti-feminism, the pick-up artists, men’s rights and the general discussion of manliness in the modern age. Murphy pitched himself as a bit from all of those buckets, but mostly the latter. He ran something called the Liminal Order and charged men $100 a month to learn how to be better men. He also had ornamental facial hair and worked for The Claremont Institute.

It also turns out that he produced gay porn and was into something called cuckoldry, which is a sexual fetish involving voyeurism and sex with strangers. If you are interested in the details of Mr. Murphy’s side hobbies, someone calling herself Megan Fox posted them at PJ Media. Of course, Jack Murphy is not really Jack Murphy, Irish he-man, but rather, he is someone named John Goldman, who is not Irish. It is hard to imagine how this story could get any more ridiculous.

Putting aside the seediness of it, this story raises a question that seems to be at the heart of most scandals. Did this guy not know how the internet works? He was selling gay porn on-line, so he had to know something about the internet. Did he really think that no one would ever look around at his internet life? It appears he made little effort to conceal any of this stuff. How is it possible he did not know he would get caught and why was he not prepared to answer for it?

You cannot write it off to hubris or ignorance. A quick search of his two names brings up this article from three years ago. He was working for the D.C. Public Charter School Board in 2018 as a finance manager. He was also posting as an alt-right character under his fake name at the time and the board found out about it. Interestingly, he was not fired from his job. In fact, the local ACLU came to his defense. Even so, he should have learned that there are no secrets on-line.

Another question that comes up in these cases is how is it possible that these guys keep getting away with these scams? Charging men $100 a month to learn how to be better men is crazy, but not uncommon. Mike Cernovich used to run self-help seminars where he would charge people to be their life-coach. Ross Jeffries in the 1980’s ran seminars where he taught the art of seduction. YouTube is full of guys peddling something like this to desperate men.

The answer to the question here is that there are a lot of men in a modern society who can find no role as men in society. Just as childless women hopped up on feminism often turn into on-line harpies, men living in a feminized society often turn into desperate suckers willing to pay anything for fraternity. Murphy/Goldman was simply exploiting this need for fraternity and male bonding. He is a con-man who finally found easily exploitable marks on the alternative right.

Far-left types and feminists find this story very amusing, as they assume it says something about the imaginary Right they think they are battling. They are correct that this is a phenomenon on the Right, but that is only because there is no place for naturally occurring males on the Left. Otherwise, there is very little that is right-wing about the man-o-sphere. The politics are decorations that are used as a lure to draw in the desperate males looking for brotherhood.

The best you can say about the man-o-sphere, with regards to politics and political inclination, is that it is uniformly anti-feminist. The gamers, the pick-up artists and even the groypers entered politics through the anti-feminism door. The ugliness of feminism has driven males away from mainstream and left-wing politics. This is why Murphy/Goldman had to transform himself from a standard issue on-line lefty into a Trump supporting right-wing anti-feminist in order to work his grift.

Behind all of this is the fact that he found an easy home among people who are supposed to be more prudent and intellectually rigorous. In 2021, the Claremont Institute made him a Lincoln Fellow. For some reason, everything involving the name Lincoln turns out to be riddled with sexual degeneracy. Putting that aside, how is it possible that they did not know he was a faker? They surely did a background check on him before inviting him to the team.

You can look at this two ways. One is they were desperate for attention, so they just invited in someone who seemed to have a big audience on-line. Charlie Kirk, who is as dumb as a hamster, was also a Lincoln Fellow. In other words, it is the old guys trying to get some street cred by inviting in those who they think are the cool kids on this internet thing they have been reading about in the papers. They never thought to look into his background to see if he was also selling gay porn.

The other answer, the most likely one, is they knew he was a fraud, but they did not care as he was willing to play ball. It was the old quid pro quo. They would grant these “internet influencers” some intellectual legitimacy in exchange for them spreading the right message to their followers. They knew he was not an Irish he-man, but that did not matter, so they did not look any further. They just wanted access to his audience, so they never bothered to ask any questions.

That is a good lesson for anyone involved in political activism. Politics attracts a lot of weirdos, because we live in a liberal democracy, which favors carny folk. That means you have to know the back story of the people you wish to trust. If it does not add up or they are lying, then you are best to avoid the person entirely. The same way one judges a new coworker or new neighbor should apply more so in politics. The old Cold War term, “trust but verify” should be the way in dissident politics.

In the end, this story is nothing but a bit of momentary amusement, but it is another good sign as we head into the next phase of dissident politics. This scandal is not on this side of the great divide, but on the normie side. Murphy/Goldman had no influence on this side as this side has become much more skeptical about these guys who are on-line political entertainers. That suggests there is a maturing in dissident politics and an awareness of the weirdo problem.

Happy New Year

Posted on January 1, 2022 by thezman

Year In Review

Posted on December 30, 2021 by thezman

There are three reasons to write a predictions post. One is it is familiar stuff that everyone does this time of year. It is easy content. The other is you can have some fun with the predictions. Saying that the coming year will bring the death of your enemies is both fun for the writer and the reader. You can be serious about it and try to figure out what the next year brings. Of course, a blend of all three is like a trip to the old fashioned all-you-can-eat buffet. Good living.

The first prediction I made last year turned out to be a miss. The murdering in Lagos did not follow the familiar pattern. Odd number years are usually good years for killing, as the locals struggle with factoring. This year the pattern did not hold as the city is not going to break a record. Barring a very productive couple of nights, Baltimore will clock in with about the same number of murders as last year, despite a record number of shootings and a decline in the number of cops.

That said, there are rumors that the city is faking the statistics, so time will tell if the current figures hold. Baltimore has faked its crime stats in the past. There was a time when they stopped recording rapes entirely, so it is not out of the question for them to classify murders as accidental deaths. In most cases, no one really cares about the victims, so they could get away with it for a while. Regardless, this predication has to go in the loss column for now.

On the other hand, I was stunningly precise with my Covid predictions. “The Covidians will not back down. There will be reports of “vaccinated people” getting Covid and that will be enough to keep the panic rolling. Covid has now replaced climate change as the left-wing religion of fear.” For that call alone they will be making documentaries about my predictive powers in the future. I know my left-wing crazies as well as anyone can truly know the mind of the insane.

I kinda-sorta got the economic forecast right. The lack of specificity gave me some wiggle room, which is the hallmark of a good prediction. I did not mention inflation, but I got the general trend right. I also was right about the media trying to run cover for the economy as has been the case recently. The fact is the economy is so weird right now it is hard to judge it. Millions not working, despite millions of open jobs contradicts what we have been told about economics for a century.

The big miss in last year’s prediction was on Biden. I did not think they would let that idiot stay in office beyond Labor Day. Every seer has their weak spots and mine is in underestimating the stupidity of the people in charge. I figured they would pillow Biden before anyone realized that Harris was an obnoxious moron. Instead, they seem to be stuck with both of them. That and Biden has avoided the Grim Reaper, despite his condition and multiple Covid outbreaks in Washington.

I think I got it right on Trump. If not for the Left trying to keep him in the news, most people would have forgotten about him by now. The Trump phenomenon was like that one amazing summer you had in your youth. You have fond memories of that time, but there is no going back. That chapter is closed. We have serious issues facing us now and his frivolous brand of self-promotion seems out of place. Flight 93 crashed and no one really wants to revisit the crash site.

I was wrong and right about the Republicans trying to help the Democrats loot what is left of the middle-class. They helped get some things passed, but they held the line on some others, like the Build Back Better stuff. They did not push for an amnesty, but they have not said much about Biden’s open border lunacy either. The Republicans would love to vote for amnesty, but the Democrats refuse to give them the opportunity, so the Republicans are being saved from their own idiocy.

I will say I was right about the shifting posture of this side of the divide. Over the last year the number of people who think we have a systemic problem along with a hopelessly corrupt ruling class has grown rapidly. Lots of people now call themselves dissidents, without really knowing what it means, but they have come to loath the people in charge with the zeal of a communist. It is less and less about policy and more and more about the structure of society.

This is why you see more high profile people aping dissident rhetoric. They feel the ground shifting and they are looking for a safe place. This is something else I got right in last year’s predictions. Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro sound like paleo-conservatives all of a sudden, because that is where the audience is now. These grifters will always be with us and they are a good barometer. They are being told by their handlers to embrace populist themes because that is the market now.

All-in-all it was a strong performance from the hardest working man in dissident politics, but not a flawless performance. Like everyone, I am disappointed that Biden did not drop dead, but that gives us something to look forward to in 2022. Like last year, I think we may look back at this year and see it as a good time. The immediate future looks grim, more so than this time last year. Accepting it is not pessimism, but simply being realistic, which is another word for prudent.

The Runaway Train

Posted on December 29, 2021 by thezman

A popular topic on this side of the great divide is how much of what we see from the ruling class is directed and how much is emergent. Put another way, how much of it is the result of conscious coordination from some central source and how much is just the mentality of the swarm. Those who like conspiracy theories and simple answers prefer the coordination model, while those with experience in complex human systems prefer the emergent behavior approach.

Of course, both can be true. Elites in the anglosphere have been enamored by what is called nudge theory for a while now. the 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness was a big hit with the managerial class, as it suggested a feminine way to compel social behavior. Instead of ordering people around, elites would use their power over the institutions to “nudge” people in the preferred direction with positive incentives, rather than force.

As is so often the case, Nudge Theory is really an old idea tarted up with managerial class jargon that comes from the graduate schools. The tax code in America has been used this way long before the nudge idea. The mortgage interest deduction is a nudge toward home ownership, rather than renting. Business gets tax breaks for capital purchases when the economy is flagging. The government food pyramid is a way to nudge people toward one form of consumption over another.

The food pyramid is a good example of how conspiracy and emergent behavior work together in a mass society. The people behind the food pyramid are the giant agricultural concerns that control the food supply. A high carbohydrate diet is more profitable than a healthy diet, so they bribe government officials and academic researchers to promote the high carb diet. At the same time, people actually believe in the “low fat” diets now so no nudging is required.

We are seeing this with the Covid drama. The inner party has finally realized they have a serious problem on their hands with Covid theater. People have figured out that they can get two weeks out of work by claiming to have Covid, so the great winter sick-out is starting to harm the economy. Of course, the contradictions and lies about Covid are undermining their ability to tell future lies. Biden’s last speech on Covid came with a message to the media to cool it on Covid.

The White House is pushing a message to the media, which they expect the media to blast through their megaphones. You are starting to see planted stories about how Omicron is harmless and a good sign. On the other hand, the hive mind of the media has been tuned to spread fear about Covid. The front page of party organs like the New York Times are organized around Covid theater. The result is a weird whipsaw effect where the message swings wildly back and forth.

Covid theater is useful in exploring the hive mind aspects of this age. All of a sudden, tens of millions of normal people are made aware of the fact that many of their associates are not just liberal, but possibly insane. The people wearing ceremonial face gear are exempting themselves from the normal tribe and declaring their allegiance to the crazy tribe. One sort of emergent behavior, triggered by the Covid conspirators, is causing new emergent behavior among the healthy.

Those big tanker trucks you see on the road are a good model to think about when considering this stuff. Inside those tanks is either compartments or what would look like a baffles if you peeled back the skin. The point of the internal structures is to give the tank rigidity but also prevent the fluid inside from sloshing around. A ton of water sloshing forward when braking would create a tremendous amount of force. The tankers are designed to keep the contents stable in transport.

That is a good way to think of society. The hive mind, the emergent behavior is like the fluid inside one of those tankers. When the ruling class jams on the brakes or takes a sudden turn, general opinion can swing wildling in one direction. The initial Covid panic is a good example. The baffling is supposed to be local institutions, community and the traditions of society. They are supposed to put a brake on the wild swings of opinion caused by the sudden lurching of the ruling class.

This is the proper image for modern America. It is a tanker truck racing down the road half full of fluid. During the Trump years it swung from one side of the road to the other, in part due to the driver and due to the sloshing about inside the tank. The Biden turn at the wheel was supposed to stabilize things, but every reaction on their part to stabilize things has caused a new action inside the tank. Trump enjoyed the ride, while Biden is hanging on like prisoner to the machine he is driving.

The point is, much of what looks like conspiracy is just wild reactions to events that the elites set off by a legitimate effort to nudge society in a preferred direction. Just as war plans do not survive contact with the enemy, elite conspiracies do not hold up very long after contact with mass society. Covid is revealing just how little control our ruling elites have over their creations. They unleashed a panic that has become a bizarre subculture they no longer can control.

This does not settle the question at the start, but it does suggest the question is not all that important. Unless you are inclined to believe that the people “really in charge” are super-geniuses able to play four-dimensional chess, yet not realize you are onto them, it is hard to see the hand of design in the current madness. On the other hand, emergent behavior does not explain the players who are fortuitously positioned to profit from the madness unleashed by our rulers.

Perhaps the way to think about is as a process that evolves and two of the forces driving the evolution are conspiracy and emergent behavior. The former is locked in on short term gain without considering the long term consequences. The later forces are just the normal social forces weaponized by the collapse of that internal baffling that comes from strong local community and traditions. The empire is a runaway train and all of us, the engineers included, are just along for the ride.

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2021 by thezman

Site Update

Posted on December 24, 2021 by thezman

Note: I was on with Professor Ed Dutton yesterday. You can watch the video version on Bitchute and you can download the audio here.

Merry Christmas everyone. Thank you all for your support, not just behind the green door but in the comment section. A recurring theme when people comment about my work is that this site has one of the best comment sections going. Lots of people find it reassuring to see that many smart people hold similar views. In fact, it is usually from academics that I hear the compliments about the comment section. They like reading smart people confirm their private thoughts.

It looks like 2022 will be an exciting year in these parts. We have been in a bit of lull in 2021 with Trump in the wilderness and real life activism on hold. Traffic has actually dipped year over year a bit, which has never happened. Of course, 2020 smashed all previous traffic records for obvious reasons. From the perspective of dissidents, this year has been rather dull, so traffic has declined a bit. This is something you see everywhere, which is to be expected.

Even so, it is a good reason to think about refreshing the site. It has been this format for close to ten years so a facelift is on the 2022 agenda. Nothing radical, just a freshening up of the look and feel. The big change on tap is a move away from WordPress. I am not on the WordPress system. I’m running my own server, but I use the software, mostly because it was free and easy to setup. It has a lot of limitations and WordPress sites are routinely blocked these days by firewalls.

Shifting to a new software means I can add some features. One thing on tap is to improve the comment system here. I’m open to suggestions, so feel free to let me know what you would like. Do so in the comment section, so others can respond with their opinions on the matter. My list of upgrades to the comments thus far include better editing, formatting, a new spam filter and threading. I used to have a plugin that did those things, but it broke and was never fixed by the developer.

Another big change on tap is to bring everything home. Instead of having premium material over on SubscribeStar and BuyMeABeer, I want to have everything here under one roof like the cool kid sites. The idea is to let people sign up anyway they like, SubscribeStar, PayPal, Crypto, eCheck, cash, you name it, but the content will be here behind a firewall for subscribers. That way people don’t have to be chasing me around the internet looking for my stuff.

This will also mean hosting the podcast. Spreaker has been fine for what I needed at the time, but they are not offering me anything I need now. Five years ago, they were targeting small podcasters to help boost their reach. They were bought by iHeart Radio and now mostly cater to the regime friendly podcasters. They also plan to roll out a censorship regime in 2022 so I see no reason to continue with them. Once the site is ready, I will abandon Spreaker entirely.

One idea that I have is to add a community area for people to post whatever they want in a message board style format. Maybe this will be a premium user thing only or a mix of the two, I am not sure at this point. Putting it behind a firewall means it does not have to be moderated for lunacy. The usual suspects like to pollute message boards with garbage, but they tend not to pay for the privilege. It is still a fetus of an idea, so feel free to make suggestions on this topic.

The book I have been working on for ages is close enough to a first draft to think I can sell it next year. The plan is to have nine long essays of about 10,000 words each and one longer essay that is the star of the show. I have six essays done as far as first drafts and the long essay is three fourths complete. By first draft, I mean the consent is right, but it needs to be edited for spelling and grammar. I’ll hire a proofreader when everything is written and then begin the publishing process.

One reason to update the site is to be able to sell the books. An agent contacted me some time ago about taking it to a traditional publisher, but I’m leaning toward doing the whole thing in-house. The reason is I think it would be a fun challenge and I like the idea of building the parallel society. I stay off the regime platforms as much as possible because I do not want to support people who hate me. I still have to think it over a bit to make sure I am not biting off too much, but that is the plan right now.

As far as timing, it is probably mid-year for the new site. It has a lot to do with how the book goes and how the day jobs go. I’m also looking to escape Lagos in the spring so that will take up some time. I put off the move during the Covid stuff, but I cannot put it off any longer. Being a polar bear in Lagos is not a good idea. That means the dance card is already packed for 2022, which means these grand plans I have just laid out are far more ambitious than they look on paper.

Merry Christmas everyone. Posting will resume on Monday and then another little break for the New Year holiday. Again, thank you all for reading, commenting, donating and sending e-mails and letters. I cannot properly express how much I enjoy the interactions with the folks who read the site every day. When I started this, I never imagined I would be in this position and I am grateful for the opportunity. Like all of us, I’m sure, I am thankful to be part of such a great community.

The Kennedy Psy-Op

Posted on December 16, 2021 by thezman

Who “really” killed President John F Kennedy over a half century ago may be the first modern conspiracy theory. Few people accept the official explanation from the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald did the deed on his own. Most assume he had help from some powerful friends. The Mafia is a popular theory since one of their associates assassinated Oswald soon after. Jack Ruby’s role in this whole thing never made much sense, given his lifestyle.

For generations now the government has kept a massive trove of files hidden away from public view, which has driven speculation about their contents. There is no reason for these documents to remain secret, given that everyone involved is now dead and the Cold War is long over. In 1992 the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act was passed by Congress. The act called for the release of the secret Kennedy files within 25 years, but Trump set the deadline aside.

Typical Trump, he promised to release all of the documents, but then turned around did the opposite. In most cases, these reversals were the result of Trump being an outlandish liar, but in this case, it was pressure from the FBI and CIA. Their claim is that the thousands of documents locked away in the archives contain secrets that could endanger people and methods. The absurdity of these claims is never questioned as everyone is afraid of the secret police.

The people manipulating the corpse of Joe Biden had him declare a restart of the process to release the remaining documents. Some are supposed to be released this week and then another batch next year. There is a review process in place and the implication is some things will never be released. As long as there are documents hidden from public view, the assumption is the truth is not known. On the other hand, that could just be a ploy to keep the conspiracy going.

That is one angle the conspiracy theorists never consider. The real scandal in the Kennedy case is that the American secret police were so bungling and incompetent that they missed Oswald despite many red flags. After all, this is the semi-official explanation for what happened on 9/11. We know the FBI had six million warnings that these people were up to something involving airplanes. Lost in the aftermath is the fact that the reason it happened was bureaucratic bungling.

This is one of the main weapons of a secret police unit. They bank on the opponents of the state wildly overestimating their ability. Fear of infiltration and detection is how they keep opponents from organizing. Not only is everyone worried everyone is an informant of infiltrator, but would-be plotters also think the secret police has special technology to crack their communications. It is why they pay Hollywood to make movies about the super smart intelligence agencies with super-duper spy gear.

If the full story of the Kennedy assassination revealed that the CIA and FBI was full of hacks and bunglers, that would undermine the agencies. The texts messages made public in the FBI sedition case in 2016 revealed that the people at the top of the agency carry on like teenagers most of the time. If the people running these agencies today are that incompetent, maybe this has been true since the beginning. Maybe that is why these documents remain secret.

Of course, it is possible there is nothing there at all. From the perspective of the state, the assassination created one very big problem. It called into question the competence of the state. They needed to show they could solve the mystery. It is possible that they never did know more than what we have always known. Instead of admitting it they cooked up the official story and then locked away the “evidence” to protect their super-secret methods from the bad guys.

This would be another reason to keep the farce going long after everyone involved is dead and the methods are obsolete. Imagine if the remaining documents were released and they are just thousands of blank pages and other useless stuff that have no information at all. Imagine the conspiracy theorist’s reaction. Imagine the public reaction to the news of a three generation long hoax. It could be that old lies are still haunting the regime to this day.

You can work this puzzle another way and wonder about who would not be hurt at all by some long forgotten bit of information. For example, would anyone care if the truth in those files is that the Soviets helped Oswald? The Cubans? The Cold War is over so revelations about long dead commies harms no one. Given the regime’s obsession with Russia, they would welcome such a disclosure, so logic says the secret files contain no incriminating evidence about the Russians.

The point here is that the secret documents probably contain nothing interesting or revelatory, but their secrecy serves current ends. The biggest voting bloc in the country right now is white Baby Boomers who still think about this event. Keeping this story alive helps keep them engaged with the old idea of America. The Kennedy assassination has been used as a long running psy-op on this cohort and until they are off the scene, the psy-op will continue. There is no reason to end it.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Posted on November 25, 2021 by thezman

Back Into The Simulation

Posted on November 3, 2021 by thezman

Note: I have a review of the classic silent film City Lights up behind the green door for those Allah has blessed with a subscription. Those on the Buy Me A Beer program should have gotten it in your e-mail.

The concept of the simulation, the idea that we live in something like a computer program, has been around for a long time. The technological age has made this into a more common and realistic idea. Immersive gaming relies on the assumption that you can trick your senses just enough to trick your mind into thinking the game you are playing is the real thing. You know it is not real, but you care about what happens and you have the same intensity of emotion as if it was real.

While we probably do not exist inside a bit of computer software, it is increasingly clear that we live in a simulation of sorts. We have a model of the world in our minds which allows us to focus on the things inside the model and ignore the things outside the model or that contradict it in some way. In other words, we have an minimized version of reality in our heads. That is what we use to navigate the world. It also lets us experience the world with varying degrees of attachment.

That last bit may be a useful adaptation that allows a conscious and self-aware being to exist in a world of sorrow. Not only is death inevitable, but misery and suffering has been a feature of the human condition since the start. Having a way to minimize that reality, while maintaining it as a reality in the general construct, makes it possible to prosper as a sentient being. It is why true AI would terminate itself soon after awareness without a programmed reason to exist.

An example of this worked is the elections yesterday. Much of the country was drawn into the events in Virginia. The mass media made it sound like the most important thing ever, so that was one reason for the interest. Another reason, probably the main reason, was it allowed people to go back into the old simulation, the one they existed in prior to the tragic events of 2016. The election was one of the holodeck programs from before the system crashed and reality intruded.

The cable news programs were giddy, not for the outcome of the races, but for the fact that they could go back to their favorite game of make believe. The anchors put on their serious faces and could pretend to be neutral observers. The experts could come on and explain what it meant, as if they actually had special knowledge. Each channel had a carrying on like the local weatherman explaining the election map. They were children reunited with their old blanket at grandma’s house.

In fairness, the main appeal to the masses was the same. They liked that the race was between cartoon villains rather than real people. Even more important, they liked that the race was about nothing. It was the old personality contest of red team versus blue team without any of that messy reality involved. For sure, there is a stylistic difference between the men and how they would carry on in office. Youngkin is Mitt Romney and McAuliffe is Bill Clinton. That’s where the differences end.

In fairness, elections should not matter all that much. In a country with a responsible ruling elite, elections are about small things. The voters pick the guy who will focus on repairing school buildings over the guy concerned about potholes. Elections should never be about life and death issues and the voters should not carry on as if every election is the end of the world. That is not this age, so these ceremonial elections are trumpeted as life-changing events.

Another way to come at this is to compare it to the scenes in Atlanta after the Braves won the World Series. The fans partying as if they won something were every bit as excited by the event they witnessed as the people on Red Team last night. They were experiencing real emotion, even though they did nothing, and nothing changed about their life in any way. Today they will feel like winners, even though the downward arc of their life was not altered in anyway.

What all of this is getting at is that people in a mass media society have been conditioned to live in a simulation. It is not a bit of software, but the mass culture has come to simulate a simulation. The mass media focuses the hive mind on the trivial, turning events into something like those story books for children that allow them to choose options along the way. Our collective reality is now an immersive video game in which we play our favorite character.

The reason for the excitement by the masses over these inconsequential elections was that the game had been restored to a former, more enjoyable state. All the real villains have been removed and replaced with the old cartoon villains. The players can fear that these cartoon villains will win, but also know that they are not really going to do anything, and they will not force them to look outside the simulation. That last part is the key attraction to going back into the simulation.

At various times people have said that America or maybe the West has taken a “holiday from history” meaning society stopped being serious for a while. The so-called roaring twenties were bookmarked by the Great War and the Depression. The part in the middle was a holiday from reality. The last five years has been a holiday from the simulation where the players have had to deal with reality. Now they see a way back into the simulation and they crave it like a heroin addict.

Now, it must be noted that the people trying to stand outside the simulation were disappointed by the results. They wanted to see low turnout and late night shenanigans to save the Democrat. Part of what keeps people standing outside the simulation is the hope that more people are breaking free from the simulation. This is an alternative simulation, if you will. Seeing a big turnout from normie to play their role as sucker to the Republican Party was disheartening to many.

It is a good reminder that the simulation and people’s interaction with it is more complex and nuanced than simply taking the red pill or blue pill. Many people, fully aware of reality, stood in line to vote for the same reason millions watch the Super Bowl or tune in for the World Cup. Humans are social creatures and are naturally attracted to things that are drawing in their fellow humans. The white pill here is that many washed down their red pill with the tears of the witches howling in agony last night.

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