The Age Of Covidian

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Note: I have a new post up behind the green door on the fourth season of the television series Fargo. I suspect it will be my last post on the series.

An old Ronald Reagan joke from the 1980’s was that the closest thing to immortality was a government program. The first time he said it was in his 1964 speech, A Time for Choosing and it was not intended as a joke. By the 1980’s he had mellowed and the line was so obviously true it made a great punchline. In one of life’s great ironies, the conservative movement actually proved the maxim correct, by never cutting a single program in their time in control of government.

It is a good thing to keep in mind when thinking about the end game for the Covid-19 panic that is entering the ninth month, depending upon who is counting. The great and the good are telling us the prophesied second wave is upon us. Britain is back in lock down, even though all the evidence says it does not work. The Welsh are banned from buying clothes and snacks. The Scots saw their pubs closed. It’s all a big drama to prove that the prophesy was true.

You’ll note in all of this that the thing driving it is the health care industry complex and the army of armchair generals it has spawned. The politicians are simply responding to what the self-proclaimed experts have said. The fact that these experts have been wrong at every turn does not matter. In a modern liberal democracy, expertise is not about factual accuracy or respect earned through hard experience. It is having the right credentials and, most important, having the right friends in government.

There is another old-time expression that applies in this Covid drama. This one is from Eric Hoffer. “What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.” In the case of Covid, the panic is becoming all three. It has turned into a mystery cult for many, a jobs racket for others and a money maker for global capital, which has not allowed this crisis go to waste. Rather than a plague from the gods, Covid-19 is manna from heaven for the ruling class.

The cult side of it obvious now. The Covidians are the next turn of the wheel for the people we used to call Gaia worshipers. The whole “earth is about to burn or freeze because you refuse to walk to work” stuff never really worked as hoped. They could inflict small miseries on people, like the use of grimy canvas sacks to tote groceries home, but the cult could be safely ignored. It was also becoming a bit of joke, like being a vegan or a libertarian.

The Church of Covid is a real breakthrough for the sorts of people who need the rest of us to believe they are sacrificing for society. They get to decorate themselves like Star Bellied Sneetches with their masks and endless hand rubbing. Even better, they get to be public scolds, telling the rest of us to be safe. The best part is they get to push people around for their lack of enthusiasm for the rules. In fact, that is quickly becoming an official government position.

The communists were fond of inserting ideological enforcers into the nooks and crannies of life, to keep the rank and file in line. It was a weird admission that most people really did not believe the nonsense from the party, but people would go along with it if they thought they were being watched. Today’s ideological enforcers will be dressed up like surgeons, prowling the streets looking for anyone not sufficiently enthusiastic for the Church of Covid.

Of course, this brings us back to that old maxim about government. All of these people making money from state enforcement of Covid laws are not going to kill the job by calling off the panic. You see, Covid will be with us forever and you will be required to cover your face forever. The same people who say Amy Coney Barrett will force women to wear cloaks in public are demanding everyone cover their face in public. No one will ever accuse the Covidians of being sophisticated.

This brings us to the business side of things. For global capital and government dependent industries, Covid promises nothing but boom times. Small business has been eliminated in much of the country due to the lock downs. Those that have not be crushed will be forced to comply with a thicket of Covid rules. After all, we’re all in this together and regulatory capture is just the price we must pay to be safe.

The public health excuse has allowed the tech firms to justify their takeover of the public space. The popular YouTuber, Paul Ramsey, was suspended for questioning the one true faith. Even mild criticism of official policy is now forbidden on-line. The tech oligarchs have quickly moved from suppressing “disinformation” to crushing even mild dissent from orthodoxy. More important, censorship on-line by anonymous and unaccountable commissars is now completely normal.

This normalization of censorship has been a long-term goal of the tech oligarchs and the Church of Covid now legitimizes it. Another goal of our oligarchs has been to force science to comply with their beliefs. They gained some ground with the Gaia stuff, but Covid is proving to be the kill shot. Researchers are learning that even mild questioning of these bizarre edicts is forbidden. These researchers should investigate a career in food service, as their science careers are now done.

In retrospect, fear of carbon taxes and green initiatives seems kind of quaint compared to what has quickly become the norm in the Age of Covidian. Toting around grimy canvas sacks seems pretty nice compared to masks. Just as facts and observation had no effect on the Gaia worshipers, facts and reason will have no impact on the Covidians, so it means this will be with us until they find a new fear. We’re all Covidians now, whether we like it or not. It the religion of our rulers.

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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***@*********************ns.com.

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

The Oogily-Boogily Men

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A foundation item of modern Gospel scholarship is something called the Q-document, which is a hypothetical manuscript of Jesus’ sayings. The gospels of Mathew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels, because they include many of the same stories, which suggests they share the same source document. There is a theory that all three writers relied upon this unknown source document. The Q-document is the collection of common stories in all three of these Gospels.

It is an interesting theory because it rests upon some things we know about human behavior, in addition to the textual evidence. For example, we know that the first written texts were based on oral traditions. The stories and legends that were passed from one generation to the next were written down at some point. We know the Gospel writers were not firsthand witnesses. The Q-document allows scholars to fill in some missing pieces of the puzzle based on what is known.

A similar sort of detective work can be used in this age to try and understand the beliefs of our ruling class. At first blush, the things they say and do run counter to the normal explanations for political behavior. Often, what they say runs counter to their own interests, suggesting some unknown motivation. Of course, many of the popular fads with the great and good are best described as superstitions. They have no justification other than a primitive fear of the unknown.

The place to start is with the Russian conspiracy myth. What started out as a ham-fisted way for the Clinton campaign to shift the focus from the e-mails being leaked on-line, quickly manifested into a raging conspiracy theory. The FBI and CIA knew there was nothing to it, but it was a useful cover for their shenanigans. This patina of authority, however, allowed it to become something of a cult phenomenon among the chattering classes and their followers. Russia was the bogeyman.

What no one stopped to consider is what it was the alleged conspirators were plotting to do way back in 2016. Supposedly, they were interfering in the election, but how exactly was that supposed to work? No one ever said, but what we can infer is that the plot was designed to prevent the Left from getting something important. It went well beyond Hillary Clinton, as the plot is an ongoing enterprise. The conspiracy is part of a great hidden battle between the forces of light the forces of darkness.

Now we have the panic of the QAnon phenomenon on-line. The various tentacles of the Left are trying to remove all references of it from the public square. People into this hobby are being thrown off social media platforms. Media airheads are demanding politicians denounce QAnon. The Left has anthropomorphized QAnon into a sort of super-villain running a secret army. In fact, Q is now an international super-villain, organizing the bad guys all over the world.

Like the Russian hoax, they never explain what they think this is or why anyone should be concerned about it. To normal people, it is just one of those weird things like believing in space aliens that people do for some reason. To the Left, it is the gathering of all the dark forces in the world into one great heathen army. This dark army intends to stop the Left from achieving their goals. This is why the Left has always been at war with QAnon and must defeat him in the end.

A goofier version is their obsession with the Boogaloo Boys. This is supposedly a secret cabal of men wearing Hawaiian shirts, no kidding. They are supposedly plotting a second civil war for some reason. Of course, the government dutifully feeds into this nonsense, but never bothers to explain how supposed Boogaloo Boys turn out to be members of left-wing groups like Antifa. The power of the Hawaiian should never be underestimated.

The same thing happened with the Proud Boys. The left has been obsessing with these guys for years now. This fan club for Gavin McInnes has been transformed into an invisible army the Left is sure is lurking around every corner. Amusingly, the group is full of gays, Jews and non-whites, but they are called white supremacists. Like the power of the Hawaiian shirt, mere membership in this group can turn a gay Puerto Rican into a Neo-Nazi terrorist. That’s some powerful juju.

Slightly different, but related is the Covid panic. The public’s initial concern was warranted as the media exaggerated what was happening and the government was as inept at handling it as they are at fixing the roads. People were wise to be a bit cautious and take steps to limit their risks. Then, as the reality of Covid became clear, normal people relaxed and the Left turned it into a supernatural force. The same people living in fear of Gaia now check case numbers three times a day.

The Covid panic on the Left combines strains from the other items mentioned into something of a morality play. You see, Covid is not just a manageable virus like so many others that are a part of our world. It is a sign, perhaps even a punishment, sent to cleanse the land of evil. The Left is convinced that voting out Trump will relieve the land of this great plague. Covid is now another manifestation of the great evil opposing the great and the good in their quest to reach the Promised Land.

What these items and many others have in common is a belief on the Left that they are in a great end-time struggle with a mysterious and sinister force. It has the ability to change how people vote and turn them into enemies of their own interests. Like George Soros, ironically enough, it uses its power to turn small groups into powerful armies in the war against the great and the good. The great enemy of the one true faith is not people with different ideas, but evil itself.

Eric Hoffer said, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” Having conquered all known enemies on earth, the Left is now without a natural opponent. It is forced to invent supernatural ones in order to maintain that necessary fiction required of all mass movements. Having rejected Christianity and Western tradition, they are creating an ad hoc set of myths and legends to explain the world and their role in it.

Interestingly, this new oogily-boogily is mystical in an oriental way. The great evil at the center of it is never spoken of directly. It’s as if it is taboo to mention it. Instead, they focus on the manifestations of this evil. What gives the dark forces such power is they cannot be quantified with language. Instead it is just assumed to be the origin of all that they fear. The Left is now bound together by a mystical belief in something they cannot describe, but they are sure exists.

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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***@*********************ns.com.

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

The Rule Of Knaves

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Note: I have a new post up at Taki this week. I think that will be a regular Monday thing for a while. I also have a SubscribeStar post on the #100 movie of all time, Yankee Doodle Dandy. I’ll be doing a few movie and TV posts there every week, just as a change of pace. I’m going to work on the top-100 list of great movies and the long list of terrible movies, plus other stuff.

It is an axiom of liberal democracy that the best way to distribute anything is through the mechanism of the marketplace. Everything from consumer electronics to pollution credits are subjected to the power of the market, under the belief that this is the best way to determine value. Of course, if everything is subjected to the marketplace it means everything has a price. That means something only has value if that thing can be turned into money in the marketplace.

While it may not seem like it at first, this is a very radical idea. For most of human history it was assumed that the most valuable things were those that could not be purchased at any price. Loyalty, honor, virtue, patriotism are just a few examples of things that have value, but you can’t put a price on them. You cannot put a price in your good name, for example, but you defend your good name, because it has value so dear that it cannot be purchased. It can only be given away.

The implication to this axiom of liberal democracy is that something only has value if you can put a price on it. Taken to its logical conclusion, it means those things that we used to assume you could not put a price on either lose all of their value or they get cheapened so they can be bought like any other item. This is the subtext to the Hunter Biden laptop from Hell. It’s not about the salacious material being dumped on the internet, but about what is says about the political class.

There’s no need to pretend there is a mystery here. Hunter Biden was selling influence and access to foreign players. He was hired into a no-show job by a Ukrainian oligarch so that oligarch could get special treatment from the Obama administration. He cut deals with Chinese Communist Party front men for the same reason. More important, there was nothing all that secret about his dealings. It was well known in Washington that he was trading on the family name. It was expected.

What the Biden story reveals, or maybe underscores, is that in Washington, everything has been for sale for a long time now. Those things that could not be sold to the Chinese or the Saudis or the Israelis simply had no value. This is something the Chinese have understood since Charlie Trie was a bagman for the Clintons. They have been buying up everything Washington has to sell ever since. This post on how the Chinese are buying up America details many of the lesser known deals.

The temptation is to write this off to normal human failings. After all, political corruption is the second oldest profession. That satisfies the need to reduce things to the personal and avoid looking at the larger picture. In this case, Hunter Biden is a degenerate grifter who traded on the family name and his father went along with it. If this were an isolated example, that may even be the right answer, but this is not an isolated case. It is just another example of a long running phenomenon.

For example, when Hillary Clinton was at the State Department, millions of foreign dollars flowed into the Clinton Foundation. No one ever asked about this or thought it was an odd thing. Even after she setup that e-mail server in the family toilet, no one questioned what was happening. It was just how things were done. Note that nothing happened to the Senators who made millions trading on Covid information that was not available to the public. It’s just the way Washington works.

Circling back to the Hunter Biden story, what has been revealed thus far is that the political class did not think it odd for the son of the Vice President to be cutting deals with shady Chinese nationals. That raises the question. Who else has been willing to make a deal with the Chinese? It’s quite obvious that Hollywood sold out to them and Silicon Valley, but what about Washington? If the Chinese will give crack head Biden millions, what will they give someone important?

Again, it is tempting to reduce this to personal corruption, but a guy like Joe Biden was not always this corrupt. He was a blowhard and a braggart, who often made a fool of himself, but he was not a crook. Nancy Pelosi, who is getting implicated in this Hunter Biden scandal, was not a crook. She was an ideological berserker, but not the sort to sell her office for a quick buck. Over the last three decades, even the ideologues have come to believe that everything should have a price, even them.

What is becoming clear is this is beyond personal corruption or even a culture of corruption in the political class. It is a new moral order that has arisen. Since the market decides value, that means everything has a price and those things that cannot be monetized no longer have value. All of those things that are required to make popular government work, like loyalty, honor, virtue, patriotism, have seen their stock collapse and they have no value to the political elite.

Montesquieu argued that the force that made aristocratic government possible was the love of honor. In despotic states, it was fear. In republics it was virtue. Modern theorists argue that morality is the spring of democracy. It may be that the driving force of liberal democracy is the absence of any moral code. The liberal democratic ruling class is one without scruples. The heart of the empire is an open air market where everything is for sale.

The question that naturally follows is how a society can function when it is rooted in perfidious treachery and the rule of knaves. What reason would anyone have in remaining loyal to a system where the people at the top of it are willing to sell your loyalty? Worse yet, they are willing to use their power to crush anyone that questions the propriety of putting everything on the auction block. Rule by knave quickly begins to look like the worst form of despotism.

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

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***@*********************ns.com.

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

The Polling Problem

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Notice: I have a new item up behind the green door. This is a post about the movie Avatar and how it relates to the increasingly fantastical world of the Left.

It is becoming popular on the Right to dismiss polling as nothing more than another part of the endless gaslighting from our rulers. Like the news, it is assumed that the polls are fake, at least regarding Donald Trump. For sure, there are a lot of bogus polls and even more bogus poll stories. Like everything else in this age, the quality of polling has steadily declined. That said, there may be some other issues beyond deceit that are undermining the utility of political polling.

One obvious problem is the demand side. The media has always liked polling because it is cheap content. It allows them to discuss the results of an event, like a presidential election, for months before it actually happens. Polling stories are just a way to pretend the election already happened. Then as the polls change, and they always do, the media can talk about those changes. That also opens the door for so-called experts, who can provide “expert” commentary on the polls.

Of course, supply naturally follows demand, so Gallup was followed by other polling outfits supplying opinion surveys to the media. The explosion of media over the last thirty years has caused an explosion in demand for polling. One reason we have so much bad polling now is the same reason we have fake news. There is only so much good quality material, so the void is filled with low-quality material. Fake news has replaced real news and fake polling is crowding out good polling.

Polling is a business. These companies don’t just do presidential polls every four years. They make the bulk of their money doing work for the political establishment and corporate clients. If you want to know if your new slogan resonates with the public, hire a polling firm to test it out in key markets. If you want to know if the deceptive name for your amnesty bill will fool the public, have a polling company do a survey of your voters to find out if they fall for it.

This is where polling may be running into trouble without really knowing it. They no longer have many different clients with different requirements. In reality, the big polling outfits have one client, Politics Inc. One of the ironic aspects of the liberal democratic age is politics is now big business. Billions are spent on elections, which means there is a political industrial complex serving that industry. Consultants, policy experts, money-men, organizers and so on live off politics.

When the Democrat party went all in on the Russian conspiracy hoax, major news outlets created divisions just to perpetuate it. The New York Times reorganized their “news room” just to promote the hoax. All those “reporters” sitting in cubicles grinding out content needed material, so the vast political-industrial complex was happy to provide quotes, rumors and anecdotes to make it happen. The Russia hoax quickly moved from conspiracy theory to being a jobs program.

This dynamic in which politics is a vast economy of its own may be breaking the old political polling model. Instead having lots of clients that change every election cycle, the polling industry has one big client – the political industrial complex. The candidates and issues may change from election to election, but the people hiring the vendors is always the same. It is the same consultant class, the same media class and the same organization men. There is one client now, Washington.

An interesting example of this is the Trafalgar Group. This is the polling outfit that predicted a Trump victory in 2016. They have been getting a lot of attention this year, because they are once again predicting a Trump win. All the other polling outfits are predicting a Biden landslide. Naturally, Trump friendly media is now all over these guys as they are saying what they like to hear. To a lesser degree, Rasmussen remains a fan favorite, as they report positive polling about Trump as well.

According to the Trafalgar Group, 2016 was the first time they did presidential polling, as polling was a small part of their business. After 2016, political polling became the biggest part of their business. If they turn out to be right in 2020, it is safe to assume that polling will be their only business. That means their only client will be the political industrial complex. Business is business and in business, the customer is always right, so it is not hard to see where this will lead.

Something similar happened to the credit agencies. For the longest time they made their money supplying a wide range of clients with objective credit analysis. Banks would rely on them to provide credit reports on borrowers. Investors would rely on them to rate corporate and government bonds. Government and corporations would use them as part of their evaluation of employees in sensitive positions. A spy agency, for example, does not want a man with money problems.

Then a funny thing happened in the 1990’s. The Wall Street investments firms started to become the dominant customer. The proliferation of investment vehicles meant a spike in demand for credit analysis. Soon, Wall Street was crowding out all the other business, as they cooked up more and more exotic instruments. It also meant a much closer working relationship between the two sides. The customer is always right and everyone does a solid for a friend in need.

By the time the mortgage bubble was ready to burst, the credit agencies were just slapping AAA on everything that crossed their desk. The clients were happy and no one was complaining about the fees, so why not? The same thing may be happening with the polling outfits. They supply polling results that make the client happy and they get paid well for it. Note that none of the polling outfits that got 2016 completely wrong suffered as a result of their errors.

The goofy TV pollster Frank Luntz made a startling admission the other day on Fox News when he said the polling industry is dead if they are wrong this time. In other words, if Trump wins in two weeks, polling becomes fake news. In a sane world he would probably be right, but as long as the political industrial complex is in business, they will be gaslighting the public on behalf of their client. That means they will want polling, even if it is based on wishful thinking.

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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***@*********************ns.com.

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

Change Log

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The old expression is that change is constant, which is true, but the rate of change is anything but constant. Material progress goes in fits and starts and cultural change is anything but guaranteed. The great cultural revolution that begin in America after the second industrial war is an anomaly. These sorts of sweeping cultural changes are not the norm in human existence. if within this unusual period of change, there have been quiet times when things have not changed much.

For example, the 1980’s were a relatively quiet time on the culture front. In fact, lots of people assumed at the time that the crazy changes of the 60’s and 70’s had finally run their course and things would return to normal. Aesthetically, the 80’s look much more like the 50’s than the 60’s and 70’s, so it made some sense. Then in the 90’s the crazies started getting wound up again and we entered another period of change. In fact, we are still in the second cultural revolution.

The thing is, people talk about the stuff that is easy to see like clothing styles, material goods or technology, but that’s not real change. Sure, cars are incredibly complex technology platforms now, but they still do the same stuff as previous cars. People have more stuff their homes, but their home is still their home. Our living arrangements have not changed, other than we have more adults living with their parents and fewer married women than previous eras. That’s the real change,

Oddly, the people who notice these changes the least are the people who have lived through the rapid change. It just gets normalized. Young people, on the other hand, can look at the past from a purely objective set of eyes and see the gaps. Again, it is often in the obvious stuff like technology and fashion, but as we see with the Zoomers, they notice the other stuff too. The dissident youth look around and wonder why in the hell their ancestors created the present.

Of course, the people in charge in the 1980’s were not sitting around thinking, “this is a nice lull in the action, but let’s get going on the tranny stuff.” The weird thing about the great cultural changes we have experienced since the end of the Cold War is that no one alive today asked for any of it. Like the foreign invasion, the cultural changes were planned behind closed doors by the people in charge. The facade of democracy is exactly that, a facade. The people were never asked.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

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

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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***@*********************ns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: The Long Hello
  • 12:00: The Media
  • 17:00: The Workplace
  • 32:00: Politics
  • 57:00: Closing

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/FSzZGDx03Jo

Our Gang

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In the Depression era Our Gang comedies, a recurring gag was for the kids to get adult sized costumes and put on a show. The joke was the sight-gag of the kids wearing the oversize clothes, but trying hard to play the roles in their show. It was made in a time when there was a clear line between childhood and adulthood, so the audience understood that it was not just using kids for cheap gags. It was also a way to make sport of current issues without being too obvious.

The man behind the Our Gang series was credited with using children in a natural way, so they came across as real kids, not adult actors playing children. The authenticity of the roles, a group of poor children in the depression, often pretending to be adults or what they imagined it was like to be adults, allowed the adult audience to laugh at themselves and the foolishness of adult pretensions. The best comedy is that which allows the audience to approvingly laugh at themselves.

It makes for an interesting contrast to the modern day. The most popular movies in this age feature adults dressing up as children’s comic book heroes. They engage in the sorts of fantasy stories featured in comic books. These movies are not made for children, but for adults. The median age of the American comic book consumer is 34. The point of the movies is for the adults to escape anything resembling adulthood and engage in the sorts of flights of fancy normally associated with children.

Movies have always been escapism. In the Depression, people went to the theater to get some relief from the daily grind of hard times. During the war they went to be reassured that they were on the winning side. In the Cold War, movies often reminded people that they were on the side of angels in the great struggle with communism. Alternatively, they were a cautionary tale about the foolishness of war in a nuclear world. Movies reflect and shape the shared public consciousness.

That’s what makes those old Our Gang skits about kids in adult clothes relevant in the age of comic book movies. We live in an age in which fools and knaves dress up as serious people and perform serious roles. The typical politician is a dangerously stupid simpleton, but he can play his role well, so he gets the part. He is no different from the kids dressed up in adult clothes. The difference is you could laugh at the kids, but the modern version is nothing but horror.

Just look at the absurdity of the Covid panic. All over we see adult children cast in the role of political leader, playing a real-life action fantasy game where they are heroically fighting the Covid monster. Mario’s Cuomo’s oldest, currently staring as Governor, commissioned a book about himself fighting the Covid. It’s a wonder he did not have it titled My Struggle. Like so many other reckless idiots holding high office in this country, he lives in a fantasy land where he is always the hero.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but much of the outrage over Trump is that he is an authentic human being, not some airhead hired for the role. The long arc of our presidential candidates has reached the point where the Inner Party candidate is a man who could very well be dead right now. He stays locked in a basement. We are a click away from the next candidate being a concept or maybe a holographic image created by the special effects people in Hollywood.

That’s probably why the super hero genre has become so popular. In an age of mediocre men dressed up to play important roles, it is natural for the common fantasy to revolve around some great leader emerging to transcend the dreary blandness of the age and carry us forward into a heroic age. The foil for these heroes is always a group of people who are too small minded to appreciate whatever it is the hero is bringing to society with his super-natural or super-human skills.

It’s also not surprising that these emergent heroes are psychologically flawed in some way that will prevent them from fully realizing their power. The audience is supposed to see the foolishness of anyone trying to transcend this age. In the end, there is no escaping the dreary blandness of the egalitarian age. The subtext to these films is that only mentally flawed people think anyone should seek something more than material prosperity and temporary happiness. It is nihilism for a nihilistic age.

Another juxtaposition worth considering is that in the dawn of Hollywood, movies were a break from the labors of life. The audience was serious people engaged in the serious struggle of life. Today’s audience is composed of grown up children escaping the boring drudgery of life to pretend for a little while to be serious adults. They don’t desire a great leader to carry them to something better. They just think it would be cool to fly around in magic underwear for a while. Small men. Small dreams.

Joseph de Maistre said, “Every country has the government it deserves.” It is a popular quote with modern critics of liberal democracy, but they miss the larger point. The government is the reflection of the society’s elite, which in turn is a reflection of the people and culture that produced that elite. It is no wonder that modern leaders are grown up toddlers dressed up in adult clothes. They are the elite we deserve, because we are no longer able to demand more from ourselves.

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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***@*********************ns.com.

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

Insurrection Then Revolution

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A popular fantasy among the more edgy conservatives is that one day, the Left will get the civil war they claim they want and then they’ll get it good and hard. In this fantasy, those gun-toting, constitution-loving conservatives will show Lefty why the right to bear arms was enshrined in the Constitution. It is a popular fantasy on-line, because revenge fantasies are fun and they provide relief for well-founded frustration. In reality, the great conflagration will never look like the fantasy.

Civil wars are when two sides in the ruling class cannot find a middle ground and refuse to give into the other side. The English Civil War, for example, was a fight between those elites who supported the King and those who supported Parliament. Sure, commoners were in the mix and rose in status, but it was largely a war between two factions within the elite. The same was true of the American Civil War. Slavery was the pretext, but it was largely an extension of the English Civil War.

Revolutions, on the other hand, are when a new elite overthrows the old elite, because the old system offers no way for the new elite to join the elite. The French Revolution is often framed as a peasant rebellion, but the Jacobins who led the revolt were educated and capable men, a new elite for a new age. The Bolshevik Revolution was similar, except there was competition for who would be the new elite. The communists won, so they got to name the revolution after themselves.

In modern America the ruling class is as unified as it has ever been. Look around at the high ground of Imperial life and it is hard to find any dissenters. The revolt within Washington against Trump is a good example. Factions that have claimed to be opponents work naturally together to thwart the people’s choice. In fact, genuine dissidents are presented with a shield wall guarding the high ground of the empire, a sign of elite unity that is deliberately intimidating.

That said, no ruling elite is as unified as what is being presented. In fact, these histrionic demands for unity are a sign they fear a lack of will and unity. The tech oligarchs censuring a mainstream media site is one of those signs that maybe all is not well on the other side of the walls. The elite media may be focused on defeating the evil orange man right now, but they see the danger in what is happening. There are frictions on the other side that could one day be fissures.

No matter how unified a ruling elite may be, they have certain duties they must perform in order to remain in power. The reason people allow themselves to be pushed around is the order provided by even the worst rulers ensures they have shelter, food and a predictable amount of safety. Freedom ain’t worth a damn if you cannot attain the essentials to sustain your life. The big talk about preferring liberty to safety is just that, as people always choose safety over freedom, if those are the choices.

When people begin to sense that the invisible bargain between the people and the ruler is breaking down, that the ruler is not holding up his end of the bargain, that is the beginning of an insurrection. After all, if the ruler cannot provide the basics, like food and safety, what’s the point of having a ruler? Those rooftop Koreans during the Rodney King riots were the stirrings of insurrection. The militias guarding property in Kenosha were the flicker of insurrection among the middle-class.

Every ruling elite relies on legitimacy. The people over whom they rule must accept them as the sovereign. Otherwise, the ruling elite must rely on force and that is the most expensive form of rule, draining both the elite and the subjects from whom they extract that which sustains them. Rule by force is unsustainable. It is why the ruling class must maintain its legitimacy. The crisis we see today is a crisis of legitimacy, where a growing portion of the public questions the legitimacy of the system.

If we are ever to get to anything close to that fantasy of those gun-toting, constitution-loving conservatives, it will first start as an insurrection. Here and there, people will look around and realize the state cannot or will not perform its basic functions. If the cops, for example, refuse to do their job, then people take up arms. If the state cannot run the schools properly, people pull their kids from them. Individually these acts are trivial, but collectively they change the public consciousness.

It is not just among the Dirt People that we are seeing signs of insurrection. We see states refusing to abide by federal law. We see cities in open revolt against the national and state government over policing. Federal judges are refusing to abide by the rules of the court, over ruling legitimate actions by the President. This revolt of the elites is more like an insurrection within the elite. They no longer accept the legitimacy of the system that allows them to be an elite.

This is the soil of revolution. On the one hand, you have the people seeing a breakdown of that invisible bargain between themselves and their rulers. Basic things like road maintenance, policing and public order are not being done. On the other hand, you have members of the elite who no longer accept the authority of the system in which they function, causing that system to further breakdown. American is a machine that is breaking down and no one wants to repair it.

There is a small caveat to that. There is a core of heritage Americans who do want to fix the machine, but they are now treated as an enemy by the elites. The civic nationalists calling for reform are treated as subversives, enemies of the state, by the people controlling the apparatus of the state. Increasingly, the people are viewing them as fools for thinking there is any way back to the old normal. The civic nationalist is quickly becoming the royalist of this age.

Not all insurrections result in revolution. Insurrections are quelled either by the firm smack of authority from a unified and confident ruling class or through the careful reform of that ruling elite in response to the insurrection. This is the crossroads in which America now stands. Will the elite unify and crack down on the people or will they begin the process of imposing long overdue reforms on themselves? Or, has that ship already sailed and we headed for insurrection then a revolution?

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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***@*********************ns.com.

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

The Awakening

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When Finnish nationalists get together every year to socialize and organize, they call their event The Awakening. It is a great term for them to use as it has multiple meanings in this context. One is the obvious awakening among Finns of their long dormant nation pride and identity. The other is the growing awareness of what globalism and multiculturalism means to them as a people. It can also mean the growing awareness of liberal democracy and what it is doing to the people.

The image of a man waking up or snapping out of a daze is a good one to use for all Western people, especially Americans. In the provinces of the Empire, there has always been a bit of skepticism about America, so they never fully succumbed to the narcotic effects of the American empire. In the heart of the empire, the combination of American mythology, civic nationalism and patriotic nostalgia have kept most Americans in a narcotic fog, unable to fully grasp what is happening to them.

There’s also a very American aspect to this concept. The Great Awakening is a cycle in American culture that dates to the founding. A mostly northern phenomenon, these periodic spasms of moral and civic reform have defined our politics. The ruling class may have abandoned Christianity generations ago, but the people are still controlled by those same biorhythms. Therefore, Americans are still prone to periods of excessive moralizing about the fallen state of society.

Amusingly, the current ruling class has bastardized the term to use it in their current anti-white pogroms. The “woke” people waging jihad against white people claim to be suddenly aware of white supremacy, white privilege and male privilege. In reality, they just gobbled down the latest batch of hallucinogenics issued from the global human resource departments. The full expression of false consciousness is middle-aged childless women claiming to be woke on the patriarchy.

As an aside, it is rather symbolic that the ruling class would embrace the concept of an awakening to decorate their latest enforcement efforts. It is the hallmark of the global ruling class to take naturally occurring phenomenon and destroy them in an effort to squeeze a few dollars from them. It is appropriate for a parasitic class of rapacious vermin to try to monetize and politicize the awakening concept as they try to prevent people from waking up to the reality of that parasitic class.

All that aside, there is an awakening going on outside the big stages and production houses of America popular culture. No one in corporate media is allowed to mention it and most are happy to comply with that edict, but it is a real thing that will define the near future, possibly the election. Like most social change, it is happening slowly in many little ways, so it is not obvious. Even for people on the edge of the awakening, the changes can be frustratingly subtle, but it is happening.

People are waking up to the reality of race in American politics and culture. You see that with the collapse in sports viewership. Before the Left unleashed the latest anti-white pogrom, white people loved their sports. Then it went away and then it came back decorated with the latest political slogans. Suddenly, what it was, what it always was, was clear to many people and they have abandoned it. It’s not just the politics in the games, but the politics around all of us.

Another area where people are becoming more aware of the reality behind the illusion is in the mass media. The “fake news” stuff is a nice partisan chant, but even the most partisan Trump people have been clinging to the belief that the media going woke would cause them to go broke. The Biden corruption story is waking many up to the reality of our mass media. It’s not a business at all, but one of the many tentacles of the ruling class, used to keep certain people in power.

The thing that the people behind this story probably don’t get is how this puzzle piece suddenly brings into focus a picture that was not all that clear for many. The media claiming this Hunter Biden story is Russian propaganda is like a bucket of ice water on the heads of many people. The outlandish dishonesty at work here cannot be explained as mere partisanship. The whole Biden story, his dementia and now his corruption, is a stunning eye opener for many Americans.

Again, it is easy for even the most cynical to miss it. “Oh, normie will go right back to his sports ball” was what we heard months ago from the most cynical. That did not happen and now seems unlikely to happen. The spell has been broken. The same is happening with mass media. The center of gravity for normal people moved from the assumption of bias to an assumption that what is in the news is a lie. There is a palpable breakdown in trust between the people and the ruling class.

This Hunter Biden story may be another inflection point. Many people are looking at this and wondering just how deep the corruption goes. After all, the FBI has had this material for months and never followed up on it. In fact, they appear to have been actively concealing it from Congress. Were they planning to blackmail Biden with it if he won the election? When people can plausibly start to wonder such things, they have lost all confidence and trust in their ruling class.

Like most things, cultural awakenings are not neat and tidy. The pedantic cannot appreciate that these things happen in fits and starts. Often the real action is happening in private conversations between friends and family. A catalyzing event brings those private conversations into the public, but it was a series of minor little things that nudged people along in the private deliberations. In the fullness of time, 2020 may be known as the year of the American Awakening.

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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***@*********************ns.com.

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

Klepto Joe

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Media Note: I have a new post up at Taki Magazine about the effect of narrative on the ruling class. No, I did not write the head line. I also have a post about a modern classic on the pay site. I will be doing regular content on the SubscribeStar site for the donors going forward. That will be almost exclusively pop culture commentary. I’m working on a way to do the same for PayPal and P.O. Box people.

One of the more famous political dirty tricks is attributed to Lyndon Johnson, who allegedly spread false rumors about an opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying sexual relations with his barnyard animals. When told by one of his campaign aides that no one would believe such a crazy rumor, Johnson allegedly said, “I know, but let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.” That’s the key to a good political trick. It forces the other guy to select between two bad options.

That comes to mind with the Biden scandal. Joe Biden is famously on tape bragging about how he bullied the government of Ukraine. He threatened to withhold a billion in aid money unless they fired a prosecutor Biden did not like. It was the classic bullshitter moment, in which the story is supposed to make the person telling it look like a tough guy who really knows how to handle his business. The audience was supposed to come away thinking that Biden was a man of action that other men feared.

The problem at the time was that there was never any context to the story. Why did the administration think this prosecutor was such a problem that Rambo Joe had to be choppered into to deal with it? Because Biden only appears in front of slobbering sycophants, no one bothered asking any questions at the time. No one in the press looked into the background to see if the story was true. Instead, the media promoted it thinking it helped their guy in some way.

Now we get the leaks from Hunter Biden’s laptop. Those e-mails answer the question that no one bothered asking back when Rambo Joe was bragging about his bullying the Ukrainian government. That prosecutor was investigating Biden’s son, who was in a no-show job paying fifty grand a month. Suddenly, that video of Biden bragging about his prowess takes on a new meaning. He’s not Rambo Joe, righting wrongs around the globe, but Klepto Joe, shaking down foreign governments.

That’s what makes this October Surprise so good. Like the LBJ opponent forced to talk about bestiality rumors, there is no way for the Biden campaign to engage this story that does not look bad. They can say Biden’s bragging about getting the prosecutor was just Joe bullshitting people about his prowess. Or, they can say Biden was just helping his drug addict son avoid jail, but Joe Biden did not get paid to do it. The other thing they can do is go underground and try to avoid the story.

There is another angle to it that shows real skill. The story was teased with the salacious images of Hunter Biden high on drugs. People love seeing famous people in a bad way, so it was sure to get a lot of attention. Then you get the details about the Ukrainian shake-down scheme and the juxtaposition of the guy we see in the media and the guy getting the $50,000 per month contract becomes stark. Joe Biden’s motives suddenly become obvious to everyone.

The organized effort to bury the story by social media made it something more than just the typical political scandal. People naturally assume the effort to cover it up is proof that there is some truth to it. It reveals once again that the woke army is not populated with great minds. Within living memory the left-wing media would have known how to knock this down without looking like vinegar drinking scolds. Instead, the response reminded lots of people of what is really at stake.

It also reminded people why they rolled the dice with Donald Trump back in 2016, when all the best people said otherwise. The FBI has had this material for months. They were asked by the House and Senate about it and stonewalled them. In other words, the reason it is coming out now and through the tabloids is the best people tried to hide it, rather than do their job. It reinforces the underlying narrative of this election. It is us against them and they are not good people.

Perhaps the best part of this caper is that Bannon had this material for a long time, but held onto it for just the right moment. The best dirty tricks are done when people are ready to pay attention. Before a big debate or in the final days of the campaign is when it is best to do it. Not only are people paying attention, the other side does not have to time to create an alternate reality. Unleashing this stuff now means the story the rest of the way is about the air of scandal around the Biden family.

A bit of true genius or maybe just dumb luck is that the Bannon was the guy behind this, according to his own testimony. Giuliani, on the other hand, was the surrogate sent out to discuss it with the media initially. The Left then pounced and claimed that anything that comes from Giuliani is invalid by default. Now we see it is Bannon behind this caper, so the original denouncing looks extra stupid. Again, it could be dumb luck, but the way this has ben rolled out is looking brilliant.

That’s another indication that the Inner Party is short of talent. They had the Trump tax returns, which had some salacious stuff in them. Nothing really all that bad, but they required a response. They also had the Melania recordings. Instead of dumping this stuff in the summer when no one cares, it should be coming out now. They could have exaggerated the contents and forced Trump to shift gears to address it. Instead, it has all been forgotten as old news.

The question about these capers is whether they change minds. After all, if you are sure Trump is a punishment sent by the gods, then you don’t care about this. If you are a Trump fan, then maybe it makes you a bit more enthusiastic and a bit more confident, but it did not change your vote. That said, voter enthusiasm is a very strong undercurrent in every election, which is why campaigns work so hard to get their side super-excited for their guy. See for yourself.

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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***@*********************ns.com.

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

I Have Questions

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Over the last five years I have kept circling back to something the neoliberal pundit Mickey Kaus observed during the 2016 GOP primary. He said they could easily have co-opted much of the Trump vote if the candidates had moved just a little bit in his direction on immigration and trade. Instead, their reaction to his rather mild observations and proposals was to race in the other direction. It made the gap between Trump and the rest of the field much more obvious to the voters.

The question he had then, one that still resonates today, is why did they do the exact opposite of what politics demands? The spergs come in at this point and provide charts and graphs on the cheap labor lobbies or how immigrants are turning states like Texas into California. There’s that old right-wing need to believe that all people are rational, so there must be a practical explanation for all behavior. In the case of the 2016 primary, it means the donors made the candidates go the wrong way.

That’s just wishful thinking. A defect of the conventional Right is that is deeply believes they will one day find the combination of words that unlocks the secret of the Progressive mind, making it amenable to reason. One day, some bright conservative will say something so profound that the Left will stop, throw down their weapons and twirl their mustaches in astonishment. Then they will embrace their conservative brothers in a fellowship of reason and republican virtue.

The current year should put that to rest. Look around and it is hard to find any evidence of rational self-interest at work. We have a legitimate drug crisis in America and the people in charge refuse to even discuss it. It’s not because they have good reason to ignore it or they are afraid to address it. Trump mentioned the subject and they began to hiss like demons being shown a crucifix. It was if he violated some sacred taboo by pointing out the very obvious problems we have with drugs.

It is not just the drug issue, which certainly has some uncomfortable facets to it for a society steeped in multicultural oogily-boogily. Free speech used to be one issue that all sides of the political debate would defend unconditionally. Even those who thought adult material should be restricted to adults opposed bans on speech. Today, it is hard to find anyone in any corner of the political debate defending speech. The free-speech champions are the people called Nazis by the beautiful people.

You can go around the wheel of practical politics and issue after issue reveals that our ruling class and a big chunk the public has gone insane. The Biden scandal is a great example of the lunacy. Major news outlets are now weaving conspiracy theories in which Russians are behind this laptop. Within living memory the defense would have been, “What can you do? His kid turned out to be a loser.” Today, the defense is a bizarre conspiracy that reads like a movie script.

It is possible that this is just what societal breakdown looks like from the inside when you are experiencing in real-time. Maybe Russians looked around at each other at the end, wondering if their rulers had lost their minds. Maybe French peasants begin to wonder if their lord was possessed by the devil. No one records the thoughts and ruminations of the Dirt People. History is the story of Cloud People. This could just be what it is like to be a peasant at the end of days.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

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

Promotions: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.

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***@*********************ns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00: Opening
  • 02:00: What About The Opioid Crisis?
  • 17:00: Why Do We Need Immigrants?
  • 32:00: What’s Wrong With The Left
  • 47:00: What In The Hell Happened?
  • 57:00: Closing (Link)

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Amazon

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/PWHe5Qgjc5c