Left & Right

Posted on September 10, 2020 by thezman

Like so many words, phrases and labels, the terms Left and Right have been so abused that they no longer have literal meanings. Instead, they are charged with partisan and moral meanings. The obvious example is how Progressives use the term “right-wing” as an epithet, synonymous with evil. Even those who try to use the terms in rational ways struggle with useful definitions. Are libertarians on the Left or the Right? They tend to side with the Left, but they claim to be on the Right.

The origins of the terms are not much help either. We get these labels from the French Revolution. The Right were those who supported the king in the French National Assembly. They sat to the right. Those in opposition to the king sat to the Left. The West no longer has monarchists and America has not had Royalists since the 18th century. Even the monarchist parties in Europe are not in favor of bringing back monarchy in the 18th century sense of it.

Of course, those opponents of the monarchy in 18th century France were not Marxists or Bolsheviks. They were republicans and democrats in the classic sense. We don’t have those anymore either. The modern Left makes lots of noises about democracy, but it is just an ornament. They decorate their language with appeals to democracy and popular governance, but that’s just so they can pretend to be the cutting edge of the general will, the vanguard of the people.

Then you get into the touchy subject of the interwar years. Dumb people say the Nazis were left-wing because they had the word “socialist” in their name, but even dumber people say they are on the right because they were antisemitic. In the context of their historical moment, they were on the Right, as they were nationalists and they existed as an opposition to Bolshevism. Even so, much of their program overlapped with what the Bolsheviks were offering.

Libertarians also present another problem. They like to think of themselves as the fullest expression of classical liberal thinking. They also claim to be the polar opposite of communists and socialist. In theory that is plausible. As a practical matter, they are never in opposition to the Left and usually support their social agenda. The only practical politics we see from libertarians is the undermining of any organized resistance to the Left.

There’s also another problem with placing libertarians on the Right. It is the same problem you see with fascism. They are ideologues. Instead of starting from the reality of the human condition and human organization, and then creating a politics rooted in those realities, they start from the end and work backwards. Libertarians and fascists imagine their ideal society and then assume if it is somehow imposed on society, it will alter the nature of man and human organization.

That gets to the heart of Left and Right. Russell Kirk famously said that conservatism is the lack of ideology. In the context of his time this was a very good definition, but it is not entirely true. Conservatism is a collection of ideas and ideals, but what it lacks is a dogma. Conservatism lacks a set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. Instead, the underlying truths of conservatism lie in the nature of man, which is open to debate and analysis.

This is why modern Progressives have suddenly turned on science, particularly the human sciences. Those people with Darwin fish on their Volvos, now have climate change and diversity stickers on their Audis. They used to wave around their imagined love of science as a gorgon’s head against what they claimed was the superstition of Christianity. Now they wave around the superstitions of multiculturalism to ward off empirical truths about humanity.

This framing of Left and Right as dogma versus pragmatism also helps explain why America is suddenly convulsed by multicultural terrorism. For at least a generation, we have not had a political Right. When Bill Buckley first got started, he and his fellow conservatives were in that classical tradition. Read his early work and feels like it is from another planet. No one in the current conservative ecosystem would dare write such things. Russel Kirk remains a forgotten man.

As Sam Francis predicted, the conservative movement Buckley started was eventually assimilated into the Progressive order. Since the end of the 1980’s, maybe the 1990’s, conservatism has simply been an ornament on the Progressive moral framework, a flashing light to distract the people. America finds itself under assault by drug addicts, lunatics and deviants because the doors to the asylum have been left open for at least a generation now.

Fukuyama famously declared that the end of the Cold War and the triumph of liberal democracy in the West was the end of history. In reality it is was the end of a particular historical epoch. The final vanquishing of a conservative opposition, not the end of the Cold War, was the end of that history. The war between dogmatic idealism and the human condition that started with the Age of Reason came to an end with the triumph of liberal democracy.

This is why we see western societies in a crisis. Those radical elements toppling statues and screaming in people’s faces at restaurants need a leash that can only come from a serious opposition. The radicals won, so there is no opposition, either intellectually or physically. The radicals are now like bees at the end of summer when the queen dies. They are flying around trying to do what they are programmed to do, but just end up living out their time in a trash barrel.

It is also why we see the Left desperately trying to conjure a new Right, a new bogeyman they can attack. By any reasonable assessment, Donald Trump is a political moderate. He is the New York City version of Bill Clinton, which is why he was a big supporter of Bill Clinton. Despite this obvious reality, the Left has painted him as a tyrant. The lack of a genuine Right has reduced them to pretending Trump is Hitler and his supporters and brown shirts.

The question now is what comes next. Most people on this side of the Great Divide want to believe this is the Bolshevik Revolution all over again. The conventional conservative is sure the Left are the real Nazis. Maybe without an opponent, the Left punches themselves out and collapses. Maybe the inanity reaches a point where a genuine conservative response begins to take shape. Alternatively, maybe it is simply the end of Left and Right. The Left won.

Note: 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.

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!

The Intersectional Intifada

Posted on September 9, 2020 by thezman

So, you have decided that you will lead a revolution and overthrow the government, but you don’t know the first thing about overthrowing the government. Lucky for you, Washington & Lee University is offering a three credit course titled, “How to Overthrow the State.” In that class you will learn how previous revolutionaries managed to overthrow the state, how they dealt with the aftermath and how they rewrote history in order to justify their rule.

Now, Washington & Lee is like every other liberal arts college these days, in that it has been overrun by the Left. It is staffed with the same dreary mediocrities you find at every other liberal arts colleges. The only interesting thing about this node on the Progressive Borg is that it retains its white supremacist name. At this late date it should have changed the name to something more fitting, perhaps a collection of pronouns or unpronounceable symbols.

The topic and structure of the course are revealing. These are people who think they are leading a revolution against the system, when in fact, they are the living embodiment of the system. This college and all the drones inside it exist because the system created them. The system created them to perpetuate itself. Liberal arts colleges are indoctrination centers. If the nation’s academic elite really want to overthrow the system, they would start by committing suicide.

Another revealing fact about this course is they just assume they will be the heroes, the good guys in the revolution to come. They are not studying the many monsters who slaughtered in the name of the people. They are not looking at the failed revolutionaries for examples to avoid. What drives people into Progressive politics is self-loathing and self-doubt. What the Left offers them is reassurance. They are on the right side of history, the heroes of the future to come.

This is something that does not get enough attention. The people out in the streets think they are overthrowing the system. Whenever the media bothers to interview one of these people, they make noises associated with left-wing revolution. The academics and college students participating in this stuff mouth the words and phrases of 20th century left-wing revolution. None of them notices that they are the creation of the system and dependent upon it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what if the protesters got their wish and the cops were not only pulled off the streets, but they were disbanded? Let’s just take Portland as an easy example. Starting this week, there are no more cops. The most likely result is heavily armed Patriot Prayer people enter the city and it is open season on the Left with no bag limit. Most likely, a lot of cops would join in. That would be their path back to full employment as a cop.

In the case of the academic revolutionaries, they may get to see what happens when the system breaks down. The economic foundation of higher education is crumbling and it has been made much worse by recent events. Private liberal arts colleges are starting to fold and state systems are laying off workers. In the not too distant future, the gal asking you for your drink order will be a former assistant professor with a PhD in intersectional studies.

The irony, of course, is that if outsiders really wanted to overthrow the system, they would look for ways to get the system to attack itself. In all cases, a unified enemy with a clear sense of purpose is a challenge. On the other hand, a disorganized enemy hobbled by internal dispute is always beatable, even when they have numerical or institutional advantage. If you can sow discord in the enemy ranks, you have a chance to use their strength to your advantage.

One approach is to get their young people taking college classes with provocative titles like “How to Overthrow the State.” Maybe convince the opponent’s young people that their ancestors were monsters. Throw in some wacky ideas about their penis being a figment of their imagination and you have the makings of unsustainable turmoil in the enemy ranks. This intersectional intifada in the ruling class is exactly what the real revolutionary would want.

On the other hand, if you are the ruler and you have a lot of restless youth in your ranks, pushing for aggressive action on behalf of the cause, getting them to fight one another is always a good plan. If you know you don’t really have to worry about some outsider trying to topple your rule, keeping the people busy fighting with one another is a good tactic. This is what Yassir Arafat did in the late 1980’s. He got his street fighters out wasting their energy throwing rocks at Israelis.

This may be why the Inner Party leadership is being patient with the rioters, even though it is helping Trump in the election. They know they can handle Trump, but they would like their radicals to exhaust themselves a bit more. The truth is, the people in charge think this intersectionality stuff is insane too. They would not mind if the people behind it discredited themselves. That would simply mean no more talk about pronouns and photo-ops with men in sundresses.

The Palestinian Intifada was cast as an organic revolt by Arabs in the occupied territories against Israel. That’s how it was sold to the kids throwing rocks at tanks and the cell leaders organizing actions. In reality, it was about power relations at the top of Palestinian society. Yassir Arafat and the PLO were in a power struggle with Hamas and other Islamic groups. The Intifada was about who would enjoy the spoils of being Israel’s puppet in the occupied territories.

That is probably what is happening now. The Inner Party is run by old people nearing their expiry date. The question on the Left is who fills those roles. One camp is the rainbow coalition of intersectional warriors, raised on multiculturalism. They think it is their turn to rule. The other side is the Judeo-Puritan elite that have been in charge for generations now. They are rolling the dice on this intersectional intifada in the hope that the other side weakens themselves.

Looking From The Left

Posted on September 8, 2020 by thezman

One of the lessons of 2020 is that the near future is every bit as unpredictable as the past, perhaps more so. Six months ago, no one would have predicted a replay of the disastrous Black Lives Matter stuff from the Left. Similarly, few would have predicted that the Democrat Party would have installed a dementia patient as their candidate, after he had been rejected by their voters. Therefore, trying to look out from here to predict how all of this will unfold is no easy thing.

We can, however, look at the possibilities. The future may be unpredictable, but the range of options is not unlimited. We can further limit the scope by eliminating things like meteor strikes and accidental nuclear exchanges. Just sticking to the political, there are a number of ways the current situation can go. The first step in narrowing that list further is to consider what the Left will do over the next six months. The one thing that is clear is the Soros wing is driving events now.

One possibility is they realize this has turned the public against them and they pull the plug on their lunatics. This is what happened in 2016. When BLM started assassinating cops, the party quickly moved to defund them and instructed the media to stop talking about them. That could happen this time, as Biden is now running ads lying about his position on this stuff. He and the Bitter Bindi are pretending they have been for law and order all along. So far, the Left is not listening.

The other option is this is just the start. The civil war on the Left is now going to continue until the radicals seize control of the party and the institutions. The people running woke capital have the resources and confidence to keep going, so this looks like the most likely scenario. They could very well rig the election in November, without regard for how it looks. Appearances have not stopped them so far. We could be witnessing a woke version of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The first decision point therefore is what happens on the Left. As much as so-called conservatives want to make it about their ideas from the 1980’s or Trump fans want to make it about their guy, the real driver is internal left-wing politics. The fact is, the anti-white radicals have taken over the corporations and the academy. Now they are looking to take control of the Democrat Party, which of course will give them control of the government institutions controlled by the party.

There’s no reason, at this point, to think the Inner Party old guard has the sense or energy to fight off this assault from their radicals. The leadership is a collection of septuagenarians and octogenarians. Nursing homes have more vitality. Their underlings were selected for their stupidity, so they would never be a threat. The proof of this is their inability to contend with the anarchist unrest in their own cities. The idiot mayors in places like Seattle and Portland have no idea what to do.

Assuming the brown tide does indeed sweep over the remaining institutions and we end up living in a country controlled by social justice fanatics, we can expect the current anti-white pogroms to extend to all aspects of life. We are getting glimpses of what comes next in these corporate indoctrination sessions. Whites will be forced to swear loyalty oaths and go through struggle sessions. Those who resist will lose their jobs and maybe worse. Everywhere will be Portland.

It is important to remember that five years ago no one thought banks would be canceling bank accounts based on politics. No one thought the technology giants would steal domain names and deplatform people. Before the alt-right turned itself into a raging dumpster fire, no one thought the ruling class would declare war on people as we have been seeing ever since. This unprecedented assault on our liberties by these corporate oligarchs was just a warning about what comes next.

A defining feature of the American Left, is its habit of projecting onto others, things it is either doing at the moment or preparing to do in the future. The Opposite Rule of Liberalism is one of those universal truths of our politics. A corollary to that is the Left is always preparing for what it fears the most. In this case, they are signaling that they expect the radicals to win and they expect the white population to notice that they have been reduced to dhimmitude. They are planning for it.

The most likely first response of normal white people will be political protest, the same stuff we always see from the Right. Initially, a Tea Party 2.0 will try to get going, but slightly more aware of the racial component. You see this awareness even on super-safe media outlets like Fox News and talk radio. They talk around the issue, but they at least do so in a way that acknowledges reality. You still see bleating about left-wing racism, but that has lost a lot of its punch.

The thing is, the Tea Party stuff assumes things that are not true, like elections matter and politicians listen to the voters. If the Left rigs the 2020 election, only drug addicts and libertarians, two groups with tremendous overlap, will continue to think we live in a society ruled by laws. The “hey let’s get together and get our guy elected” approach will not get very far with people who suddenly think their elections are rigged. This is why the Left is unconcerned about this possibility.

A possibility the Left does worry about is one where they rig the election and it is obvious to everyone. On election night Trump wins the key states by a slim margin and slowly “newly discovered ballots” are found in rural mailboxes that flip the necessary number of states. This triggers mass protests, like the color revolutions that have turned up in corrupt countries over the last couple of decades. Trump actively disputes the result, causing even more unrest.

This is something the Left thinks is a possibility, which is why they keep planting stories in the media about Trump refusing to accept the result. It’s why media hacks keep doing hand-wringing concern posts with titles like, “Trump Could Still Break Democracy’s Biggest Norm.” What follows is a call for the military to stage a coup or the CIA to assassinate him. The Left is thinking through how they must respond to a populist revolt in response to their election rigging.

Of course, violence is always a possibility. Despite the manufactured studies by the Left and the few random nut jobs cast as white extremists, there has been very little right-wing violence thus far. In fact, the carny acts that are usually drawn to these street protests have stayed home and allowed BLM and Antifa to own the show. It’s why they have been forced to stick with the absurd “peaceful protest” nonsense. They own the violence happening in the streets right now.

In a world where elections are rigged and white people no longer think they have legal recourse, that old revolutionary spirit could flare up among many. One way that could manifest is through propaganda of the deed, as the anarchist say. This is why the Inner Party is having the security apparatus declare “white supremacist” as the great threat to the country. Doing this while far-left gangsters ravage major cities is a nice touch, but it suggests the Left is genuinely worried about this.

If you could beat an honest answer out of them, most of the people supporting and financing the unrest are probably puzzled by the lack of resistance. They are sending mobs into nice white areas to assault middle-class white people at restaurants and shopping areas. They have looted major cities. Left-wing politicians are openly declaring war on white people. Despite the overt war on white people from the top, little in the way of organized resistance has emerged yet.

Either the Left has much more in store for white people or they are sensing a change in general attitudes, but either way, they are planning for a response. There are tens of thousands of disaffected young white males with military training. Not only are they familiar with the use of weapons, they are trained in small unit tactics. If the degenerates of Antifa can organize a summer of rage, smart white guys could punch much higher. In the regard, the Left is being prudent

That’s why the Left wants the security agencies to put “white supremacist” up there with Islamic terrorists and the Russian mafia. They are planning for organized violence from the people they expect to keep attacking. If and when white people wake up and realize what is happening and decide to do something about it, the Left wants the institutions they control to be fully prepared. They seem to think they will be battling something closer to terrorism than peaceful political resistance.

We can therefore expect a new push to characterize any resistance to the ascendant as the same as Islamic terrorism. We’re getting a glimpse of that with the tech oligarchs organizing to label Kyle Rittenhouse a mass murderer. Like the old communist regimes, even the slightest resistance to the Left will be met with over the top language and an extreme response from the rulers. Even if armed resistance never materializes, society will be organized as if it is imminent.

The most likely outcome at this point on the timeline, therefore, is we arrive at something like a highly feminized version of Cold War Albania. Instead bunkers dotting the land and citizen militias scanning the horizon for foreign invaders, it will be inter-sectional enforcers planted in every company and institution, charged with locating white supremacists. Society will be organized around fighting the specter of white supremacy and white privilege.

The Positive Alternative

Posted on September 5, 2020 by thezman

One of the predictable things about left-wing political theater is they will always heroically go to war with the problem they created. After liberally applying the front lash, they then predict a backlash and begin to make war on it. They are like the arsonist-fireman, heroically battling the fires he set. The latest example is over the “colored revolution” sponsored by the usual suspects around the Occident. In the UK, they worry this may have given a boost to Right.

Apparently, the extreme Left in the UK has noticed that the native population not only opposes mass immigration, but now they oppose those ungrateful immigrants rioting in the streets and attacking their hosts. The daily lectures on white privilege and the crimes and the English people have not had the intended effect. Instead of committing suicide to make way for more foreigners, many Brits are starting to think of their ethnic and national interests, like everyone else.

Familiar to Americans is the way the Left manufacturers its own evidence to wave around in support of its claims. Hope Not Hate is the British version of the ADL, backed by the same sorts of people. Their main job is to make up wild tales about secret invisible Hitler clubs that the media can then use in their scare stories. These claims are also used to raise money from the gullible and cynical. It’s how the blood libel against white people is done in liberal democracy.

That said, Patriotic Alternative is experiencing a surge in interest, but not for the reasons claimed by the anti-whites. Instead of “becoming more extreme” they have moderated their tone. Like the US, the UK scene has been plagued by the weirdo problem, which in their case is more like a hooligan problem. Nationalist politics was more like a rowdy working-class pub than a political movement. As a result, it was always plagued by ugly images the Left could exploit.

To remedy this, Patriotic Alternative has imposed strict rules of conduct on its members and has been very clear about it. Mark Collett, the head of PA, has even booted a longtime friend from his group, when that friend could not behave himself. Their events are family friendly, designed to build community among members. Instead of meeting in a pub, they have a gathering at a park. They organize camping trips and paintball tournaments that are intended to build friendships.

One result of this approach is it is attracting a better class of person. The street brawlers are not interested in camping trips. The middle-class person worried about the future of their children is interested in that sort of activity. Initially they may not agree with everything they are hearing, but they are willing to listen, because the people they see are like their neighbors and coworkers. In fact, they may be moving into this type of politics because of their neighbors and coworkers.

It is a good example of how effective politics starts with engaging people where they are rather than where you want them to be. Like the US, UK activists have often positioned themselves way outside the main, making it impossible for them to engage with the typical Brit on their own terms. Bad optics also makes it easy for the Left to exaggerate the distance between the typical Brit and the activists. By closing that gap, PA is able to reach a much broader audience.

This is why left-wing terrorist groups like Hope Not Hate are in a panic. It is really hard for them to demonize someone like Laura Towler. When the person behind the “Migrants Not Welcome” projection on the cliffs of Dover is a woman who likes to talk about tea and her wedding plans, it is impossible to portray the movement as a bunch of beer swilling street brawlers. The Left fears Patriotic Alternative because their old tricks are not going to work on these guys.

Even Mark Collett, to be candid, has transformed himself into a good example of how to conduct pro-white politics in the modern age. He has a colorful past, where he went down the same old lonely road that many nationalist activists have gone down both in the US and the UK. Having learned from that, now a middle-aged father, he is a good redemption story, as well as a spokesman for the cause. Normal people can relate to a man who has grown into his role.

Probably the best thing that PA has done is shift from a negative message to a more positive one based in the interests of native Brits. Instead of railing against Muslims like a Tommy Robinson, or spending endless hours talking about the wood used at German prison camps in WWII, PA talks about what is best from native Brits. All of those other groups are going to do what they do. What matters, what will determine the future, is what the native Brits do to preserve themselves.

Patriotic Alternative is a good example for American activists. The US has different challenges and a different history. Southern activists will have different concerns and different cultural issues than activists in the Northwest. You really cannot speak on behalf of “Native Americans” in the way you speak of “Native Brits.” Even so, the positive message is always the better approach, because it always draws a better crowd, which in turn makes the message more appealing.

Turn Off, Tune Out And Drop Out

Posted on September 4, 2020 by thezman

Television is the great propaganda weapon of the liberal democratic state, so it is a useful window into the thinking of the oligarchs. Movies and television shows still have to attract an audience, so they are usually the trailing edge of whatever the oligarchs are trying to impose on society, but the ads are a different matter. They are the leading edge of the latest Progressive fads. They know people will not abandon a show or movie just because the ads are offensive.

That’s what makes the ads a useful window into the black soul of our rulers. The ad makers are all from the ruling class. Look at the team photo of an ad agency and it looks like the faculty of an Ivy League college. There may be a little color in there for show, but otherwise it is all men with small hats and people who still write “Episcopalian” when asked about their religion. The advertising agencies that produce these ads are the special forces of the Judeo-Puritan ruling class.

This is why the ad makers were ready for the aggressive push to support the Black Lives Matter stuff after George Floyd died from an overdose. It is the thing that gets no attention, but should be the focus. Within days of the event, even before the rioters were in the streets, every global corporation was running diversity ads. The television services had all their blaxploitation films and shows ready. They even changed their graphical interfaces to feature black stuff.

It takes weeks and months to put together a simple ad. The concept has to be settled and the story boards created. Then there is filming, editing and final production. A corporate marketing program takes months to get ready. Changing the look and feel of the TV streaming service to feature blacks is no small feat. Creating a useful list of “black creators” should take a week or two, but they had it all ready to go. This pogrom was in the works for months.

In large part this is why Black Lives Matter initially had lots of white support, despite its record of murder and mayhem. Just four years ago BLM was executing cops, but thanks to a barrage of ads, most people forgot that and were initially inclined to support the cause. Then the black protesters reminded everyone why Africa is not the high point of human progress. The ad makers have now shifted the diversity message to feature homosexuals, deviants and girls playing male roles.

That’s really where you get a clear look into the mind of the oligarchs. This ad for the Marine Corp is getting revived in time for the election. When the ad was produced three years ago, the official line was that the Marines made the ad because they were facing pressure from women to let the girls go into combat units. That’s a lie, of course, as no women want to go into combat. Most men don’t want to see combat. Lying, however, is the core of advertising and the modern media.

The ad, of course, is disgusting. The thought of sending mothers and daughters into combat should make a decent person wretch. People at the edge of extinction turn their future into weapons of war. The ancients defined the barbarians, in part, by their habit of bringing their women and children to the battle. Of course, the absurdity of this little girl in combat is impossible to miss. Ad makers can normalize just about anything, but even they are bounded by reality.

You’ll note that the ad makers always use white women when they are trying to convince girls to be boys. Non-whites always get portrayed in traditional roles or they are cast as the natural leaders. The military ads always have the blacks in command positions or as the heroic example of the military code. That’s what they are selling to the non-whites they are targeting. Apparently, the oligarchs think they can patrol the empire with a Tinkerbell army run by 90-IQ officers.

Obviously, that will never happen. It does, however, reveal that these people are not geniuses who have carefully thought this through. They are caught up in nutty fads of their own creation, that sweep them along like flotsam. You see that with the response to the riots this summer. These idiot mayors, in places like Minneapolis and Portland, really thought they would be the heroes of these stories. They believed the agit-prop produced by the cult of social justice.

Even so, there are long term consequences to the culture war waged on the television screens of America. White males have been mostly removed from advertising, unless they are the fool or the supplicant. Blacks have been turned into objects of worship, largely due to television and advertising. This absurd sense of entitlement by blacks is one consequence. The negrophilia by many whites is another. It is not beyond the pale to use the term “ethnic cleansing” for what we are seeing.

At the peak of the 1960’s cultural revolution, Timothy Leary popularized the phrase, “Turn on, tune in, drop out” as a way to convince people to detach from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. Of course, he was peddling degeneracy and self-abuse to whites, but the advice actually makes a lot of sense as an antidote to what the oligarchs are doing to us now. Disconnecting from the system as much as possible places you beyond the tractor beam of the propaganda organs.

This is the irony of this phase of the cultural revolution. What was initially pitched as a counter culture movement, was really a war on heritage America by the newly ascendant managerial class. The way to overthrow this decrepit and degenerate ruling class is to take their old advice. White people need to detach from the existing conventions and hierarchies that support the oligarchs. We need a counter culture that turns off, tunes out and eventually drops out.

College Football

Posted on September 3, 2020 by thezman

College football officially begins tonight with a few games between minor programs and then this weekend with some more well-known programs. Even though the solstice is not for a few more weeks, the accepted end of summer and beginning of fall in the US is Labor Day weekend. Most years, this weekend is loaded with college football games starting on Thursday and running through Monday night. Due to the man-made panic over Covid, there are far fewer games than normal.

College football is one of those uniquely American things. In the rest of the world, sports are a solely professional thing. Teens with the talent to make a living playing ball end up in a professional league of some sort. The youth play in club leagues until they can no longer play or can sign a professional contract. In America, the only sports that work this way are tennis and golf. The other sports, even soccer, are attached to colleges in some way, until players reach adulthood.

In the case of football, the sport is made weirder by the fact that every school and region have traditions. Europeans are baffled by the bands and cheerleaders used by college football programs. That’s not a thing you would ever see in Europe. There’s also the massive expense that comes with it. American colleges have sporting facilities that dwarf most professional clubs in the rest of the world. College football alone generates two billion in advertising revenue every year.

Of course, what makes it really weird compared to the rest of the world is the players do not get paid in the traditional sense. They are paid, of course. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or ignorant. They get free tuition, books, access to world class trainers and facilities and walking around money. Big time programs give the players a hundred dollars a day for incidentals. They also try hard to cover up their crimes, which is no small thing at many of these programs.

The scale of the industry is why many colleges have decided to go ahead with playing this season, rather than continue the Covid farce. It’s one thing to send the students home to take their classes on-line. It is quite another to give up billions in revenue in order to pretend you’re heroically fighting the killer virus. The two leagues that cancelled their season are now trying to figure out how to reverse course. It turns out that posturing is not as lucrative as playing the games.

Of course, this being the summer of public piety, the colleges feel the need to bend the knee to their black players in public. Nick Saban, one of the most cynical and craven humans to ever walk the earth, put on a big show the other day. His football teams have been crime waves in every city he has worked, but he wants his black players to know he is all about social justice. The issue of cops shooting blacks resonates with his players, because they get arrested so often.

The most amusing bit of moral preening so far came out of the cuck-belt, where the Kansas State football team had shirts made up and brought in celebrity blacks to help the whites with their struggle sessions. One of the players said, “I challenge you to not avoid conversations with people who think differently than you.” These are the same players who demanded a student be expelled for not agreeing with them on the George Floyd overdose incident.

The coaches, of course, are indulging this nonsense because they get paid to indulge all sorts of shenanigans. Nick Saban makes six million per season to keep his players out of prison long enough to finish the season. From his perspective, mouthing idiotic slogans and letting his players lecture the world about social justice is a day at the beach compared to what he normally does. In the world of carny folk, dignity takes a back seat to fleecing the suckers in the crowd.

Still, you can’t help but wonder if the colleges are destroying themselves with this lurch into politics. College football is entirely funded by white people. The stands at a college football game are whiter than an Ivy League professor’s neighborhood. The schools themselves may actively discriminate against white students, but the white fans make it possible for these college football programs to exist. Those fans also tend to be very patriotic, conservative and civic minded.

Of course, sports are supposed to be an escape. Staging mock battles between groups of Africans is a way to forget about the world for a few hours. In the case of college football, it also includes reminiscing about your college days and maybe hanging out with old college buddies. Reminding these people that you hate them and want them dead is probably a bad marketing strategy by these colleges. So far it has been a disaster for the pro leagues. Their viewership has collapsed.

Paradoxically, the collapse in television viewership may save these sports from their black players. If the stands were full, the fans could boo when the players take a knee or make some idiotic gesture. There would be social proof that normal white people resent this stuff. That would also lead the players to speak out and accidentally reveal just how much they hate white people. Playing in front of cardboard cutouts means no booing the teams for their anti-white antics.

This is another example of why sports remain popular. They tend to reflect in simple ways truths about society as a whole. In this case, the players can get away with their anti-white stuff, because there is no one around them to say otherwise. That is how it always is with the Left. There is no genuine market for their ideas, so they make sure to either cripple the marketplace of ideas with censorship or simply impose their way on everyone by controlling the institutions, like colleges.

Their Summer Of Discontent

Posted on September 2, 2020 by thezman

One of the stranger parts of the summer of left-wing violence is that no one has bothered to think too much about why the people are rioting. Sure, the official Left says it is an organic uprising over something or other. The official Right says these people are communists doing communisms. That’s the same old tired sloganeering we hear from the political class all the time. Neither claim gets to the question of why these people are out in the streets every night in certain cities.

Initially, the Black Lives Matter stuff was just the semi-organized Democratic Party street activism we have come to expect before an election. BLM was organized by the Obama administration on the college campuses. Then it bled into the legacy racial grievance rackets. The statue toppling after George Floyd overdosed in police custody was mostly paid for by the party trying to whip up black support. Then it gave way to the anarchy we are seeing in places like Seattle and Portland.

That’s an aspect that gets very little attention. The violence we are seeing is in mostly white cities by mostly white people. Minneapolis is 19% black. Seattle is 7% black and Portland is 6% black. Kenosha is 10% black and close to 80% white! Note that super-black cities like Baltimore, St. Louis and Detroit have had no riots. Los Angeles, which just had a police shooting, could not get a decent riot going. They tried, but they lack the white kids with back packs needed to do it.

The truth behind these riots is that they have nothing to do with local issues or legitimate grievances. They are simply a happening that is drawing in the disaffected white youth that provides bodies for Antifa. Get up close to an Antifa crowd and what is striking is how unimpressive they are individually. The males are skinny and awkward, while the females are loud and ridiculous. These are young whites who have no place in the neo-liberal order, so they end up in Antifa.

What being in the anarchist underground gives them is the same thing you see in other types of anti-social subcultures. They get a sense of purpose, but also a community in which they have a clearly understood place. They go out and protests or riot with their mates and then have that to bond over afterward. It is not all that different from the hooliganism you see around European soccer. The difference is the Antifa kids come from the middle-class, rather than the working class.

Now, calling them kids is not entirely accurate. The guy who murdered the Trump fan in Portland is a middle-aged man. Still, he is a good example of a larger phenomenon that is fueling anarchism and also fueled the alt-right to some degree. This is a guy who has no place to go in life. There’s no role for a low-normal intelligence white guy with a taste for action. He’s probably too dumb for the military and there is no working-class community for him, so he drifted into anarchism.

The cities that are experiencing the anarchist unrest should be models for the modern liberal democratic order. They have very low crime. They are prosperous, bourgeois urban areas based on the new economy. The young people have access to college and jobs, while living in carefully curated hipster areas. Portland is what east coast cities aspire to, in terms of demographics and urban renewal. The whole point of gentrification has been to look more like Seattle than The Bronx.

The problem is these cities are entirely synthetic. Walk around hipster parts of these model cities and they seem very nice, but they also feel like the suburban town centers developers create for their housing developments. You can’t put your finger on it, but something is missing. Granted, visitors can’t truly judge these things, but the constant civil unrest by the younger people suggests they are not happy with the paradise in the wilderness either. Progressive Whitopia is not working.

Related is the flight out of places like San Francisco and New York. The plague is being blamed for it. The man-made panic shutting down these cities is forcing people to find greener pastures. Note, however, that the people who flocked to these urban oases for the culture, lifestyle and urban living are unwilling to fight for it. Instead of taking to the streets demanding more from their mayors, they are just packing the Subaru and heading for the suburbs. It was all fake and temporary for them.

What we may be seeing this summer has nothing to do with the tired clichés from the worn-out political establishment. Instead it is one of the consequences of trying to turn America into a Potemkin village. Replacing social capital with likes on social media and pointless employment in the new economy is not working. The generation that created it is committing suicide at record numbers. The generation that is faced with living it would rather watch it all burn than participate in it.

A truth of the human condition is men need purpose and fraternity. Maybe it is the military and family life. Maybe it is a frat at college and then a career. Maybe it is the job site and the local pub. Women need community and companionship. The nuclear family was created for them. The liberal democratic world order does none of these things for people. Living atomized, pointless lives among constantly shifting groups of strangers is a recipe for disaster, not paradise.

What’s now happening on the Left is a reflection of what has been happening in the white working and middle-classes. Progressive politicians cheer it on, because at some level, they wish they could be in the streets too. The mayor of Portland is living a pointless existence and he knows it. The difference is these anarchists get to express their unhappiness outside. Working class whites are ignored and the white middle class is threatened into remaining quiet.

Death From Above

Posted on September 1, 2020 by thezman

Imagine a small kingdom that is faced with a disease outbreak of unknown origin and unknown severity. The king, upon being briefed by his staff, gives a speech to his people informing them of what is known and what efforts are being made to determine the severity of the disease. He asks his people to take reasonable precautions, as they would during the cold and flu season. As more information is gathered, he will inform the public so they can act accordingly.

As it becomes clear that the disease is hard on the very old and very sick, but not much of a threat to everyone else, efforts are made to insulate the very old and those in nursing homes. The public is informed of this and told to be extra cautious around the very old and very sick. Resources are made available to those charged with caring for the very old and sick. Otherwise, the public is asked to go about their business as they would in the cold and flu season.

This probably sounds completely insane to most people, but it used to be the way rulers handled public health matters. In the Asian Flu and Hong Kong flu outbreaks last century, the public was informed and reasonable precautions were taken by local government to limit the impact. Schools might be closed for a few weeks until the wave passed through a community, for example. The flu came and went, as they always do, with a varying degrees of impact on communities.

Of course, this was not the case with the Covid pandemic. Instead of doing what has always been done, our rulers rushed to the nearest television camera and told everyone they are going to die. Hairy old men in sundresses were sent out to scare the public and not just over the idea of mentally disturbed men in sundresses being put in charge of public health. No, their job was to convince the public that this is the end times and that everyone must lock themselves at home.

Not only was it not the end times, but it is looking like what skeptics have been saying all along, a tougher than normal flu season. The CDC has updated their kill data, adjusting the death toll down a modest 94%. Just six percent of deaths can actually be attributed to Covid. That’s about ten thousand people. The rest were afflicted with other diseases that were likely to kill them. Covid may have hastened their demise, but that is speculation. William Briggs has a good summary of the new data.

The long and short of it for those looking for the condensed version is that Covid by itself is not much of a threat to most people. Even old healthy people are not particularly vulnerable to this virus. It is the very old and the very sick, especially the very sick, who are at risk of this disease. In fact, the man-made panic may very well have killed more people than the disease itself. Think about all of the health care not being done due to closing hospitals and doctor’s offices.

Now, the obvious push-back will be that we did not know six months ago that this disease would not live up to the promise. The panic was a necessary precaution against the possibility of a much more lethal disease. The implication here is that we must assume the worst-case scenario in every instance and react accordingly. The fact that the worst case is also the rarest case, means we have to operate as if the natural world is nothing but exceptions, a world of miracles.

Even if one wants to turn the precautionary principle on its head this way, we had enough data early on to know it was not going to be the Black Death. Data from Italy and China showed that Covid was a killer of the very old and the very sick. The early models used to justify the panic were invalidated from the start. as far back as April, the justifications for the panic were undermined by what we knew. There was never a good reason to do what has been done in response to Covid.

The bottom line in all of this is the man-made panic has done more damage to American society than the virus. There are the unnecessary deaths and suicides that were caused by the panic. There is the massive transfer of wealth from small business to corporate giants. This will accelerate the decline in social capital, accelerating the decline in local community. The Covid Panic is not the Xhosa Cattle Killing cult, at least not yet, but the comparison is too obvious to ignore.

Perhaps the most important take-away from this man-made disaster is that none of the people responsible for it will be held accountable. In a sane world, there would at least be a truth and reconciliation commission, where the people responsible would explain themselves and ask for mercy. Instead, these people peddling panic will face no consequences and no doubt profit from their crimes. They won’t even have the decency to admit they were wrong about the severity of the disease.

Finally, this is example six million that the people in charge of America are too corrupt and incompetent to perform the basic duties of rule. In order to live something close to a normal life, Americans have to navigate around a thicket of pirates, bandits and incompetent bureaucrats all looking to rob the public. Slathered onto that is a ruling class ham-handedly addressing problems of their own creation. American are being strangled by an anaconda of incompetence from above.

Irreconcilable Differences

Posted on August 31, 2020 by thezman

The great concern of the American Founders was that factionalism would result in irreconcilable differences. In Federalist 10, Madison argued against direct democracy, because it inevitably leads to factionalism. People have different interests due to differences in opinion, wealth and status. Naturally, the like-minded join together in factions to advance their interests, even at the expense of the community. The remedy was the representative structure in the proposed constitution.

In a big diverse country like America, there are very few things a large majority of the people will agree upon. There are the big things like individual rights and equality before the law, but most issues will only be supported by a plurality. If most people don’t care, then the plurality gets their way. If not, then the plurality is out of luck. The important thing is that there is general agreement on the big stuff and a willingness to ignore the small items or leave people to sort them on their own.

That was the point of the representative structure they devised. On the one hand, it prevented the fifty percent plus one from imposing its will on the rest. Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny. The system was designed to compel compromise among the factions that would inevitably form up. On the other hand, it delegated much of what mattered to people in their politics down to the states. This was to prevent one region from imposing its will on the rest.

The system did not last very long. Lincoln obliterated that old structure and created a new country dominated by the North, which explicitly wished to impose its morality on the rest of the country. Starting in the early 20th century, the ruling faction has been growing the power of the national government, at the expense of state government, in order to impose its will on the rest of the country. The full flowering of liberal democracy is minority rule, where a tiny group control everything.

This is exactly the sort of problem the Founders wished to avoid. By sharply limiting the power of the national government, it could never be a weapon used by one faction against the rest of the country. It would also prevent the formation of partisan schisms, where the two sides are defined by their opposition to the other. The new system would make it “more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried.”

By “vicious arts” Madison meant the playing of one faction against another, in order to generate enthusiasm from one versus the other. The Founders understood that democracy always led to tyranny or anarchy. The antidote was republicanism, where individual or group interests were sublimated to the good of the whole, even when the individuals involved lacked the natural republican virtue. If Madison were alive today, he would recognize the pit into which we have fallen.

There are libraries full of books on how and why we quickly abandoned the system the Founders created. First it was the Civil War when the North conquered the rest of the country by force of arms. Then it was the slow dismantling of the federal system to create the system we today call liberal democracy. There will be libraries of books written on whatever comes next, assuming that what comes next is not a dark age. We are a long way from the original vision and we shall never return.

What is not discussed very often is how this evolution has arrived at a point where a significant portion of the people no longer accept reality. The partisanship and factionalism have reached a point where one faction is no longer able to agree with the other on basic points of reality. You see this in this post by a far-left activist working for the New York Times. The point of the post is to demonstrate that he will reject anything his enemy says, even when it is obvious fact.

Here we have the CDC posting updated information on the coronavirus that people with knowledge of how these things work suspected all along. The death counts were overblown, because the system was designed to do it. At some point the numbers get adjusted back to something closer to reality. In this case, the adjustment is newsworthy because it is so extreme. Still, it is a real thing, but the partisans cannot accept it, because they think it is supporting their enemies.

The same is true about the rioting this summer. You can go on-line and see people looting, fighting, burning and destroying things. Despite the thousands of hours of video on-line, the partisans demand we pretend they are peaceful outbursts over something they insist is true, despite the lack of evidence. When people they assume support Trump, their most supreme enemy, point out that these rioters are being underwritten and supported, they call it a conspiracy theory.

What makes this even more insane is the person who wrote that post, like the others in his ideological faction, spent years telling us invisible men with Slavic accents used mind control to alter the last election. They insisted that while the Biden family regularly takes bribes from foreign governments, noticing this is part of a conspiracy to undermine the democracy. These people not only oppose everything their enemies say, they create wild fantasies to justify their opposition.

Even though they did not use the word partisan in the modern sense, the Founders understood that groups of like-minded people could disagree with one another to the point where they could find no comprise. Their system was designed to force compromise, by preventing any one group from having complete power over the rest and thus imposing their will. That is the whole point of federalism and the separation of powers in the national government.

The Founders could not imagine partisanship in the modern Marxist sense, where the factions are defined in opposition to one another. Peter Baker, the writer of the New York Times post, is not able to think on his own. His partisan fervor now leads him to take the opposite of whatever he imagines his enemies are saying. If Trump says it is raining, then Mr. Baker will claim that his enemies have created a conspiracy theory where water falls from the sky.

If Mr. Baker were a lone lunatic, he could be dismissed, but he is representative of the ruling class. He is one of their paid spokesmen. How is it possible for normal people to reach a compromise with people who are defined by their unwillingness to reach any compromise with us? Who they are is defined by not agreeing with us on even the basic bits of observable reality. When a reporter is stationed in front of burning building and told to call it a peaceful protest, where’s the middle ground there?

We have reached a point where the ruling class is at war with reality. Part of that reality is they are a ruling class with certain duties and responsibilities. They reject that solely on the grounds that the people they rule over define a ruling class as having certain duties and responsibilities. This is why they celebrate the anarchists burning cities and murdering citizens. They oppose Trump, because he rhetorically represents the rest of us and they are the forever enemy of us.

There appears to be only two options at this stage. Either the ruling class abandons its war on the rest of us or the rest of us accept that we are at war. The former requires the ruling class to break free of the partisan madness that now grips them. This is something without precedent, but we live in an unprecedented time. The other option simply reacquires time. At some point, necessity will require people to accept reality and act accordingly. The rest is predictable.

Either way, we have reached a point that the Founders anticipated. They could not imagine men in sundresses shrieking like lunatics about white privilege, but they knew that unrestrained factionalism led to conflict. They knew that irreconcilable differences could only lead to one thing. That is where we find ourselves. Normal society is now at odds with the people that rule over it. Either the people in charge come to their senses or the people will have no choice but to remove them.

Optics Matter

Posted on August 28, 2020 by thezman

One of the timeless lessons of this year has been that the future is always going to be full of surprises. To start the year, no one could have predicted the Covid panic and the rise of local tyrants using the panic to push people around. A month ago, no one would have predicted the recent events in Kenosha. It just seemed like these ruling class riots would continue in the same manner until the election. Then suddenly we have video of a young white kid fighting for his life in the streets.

It is way too soon to know how the story of Kyle Rittenhouse ends, but there is no doubt that this event stands out from all others this year. It does not fit the standard narrative the Left likes to jam all events. Public reaction to it has thus far been much different than we have seen with recent events. There is a good chance that this event may be the inflection point in the coming election. Even though we are still early in the story, there are several good lessons to be drawn from this event.

The obvious lesson right away is that appearances matter. Kyle Rittenhouse is a sweet looking kid who looks like a typical white teenager. Even without the closeups, just looking at the video, it is clear he is not a villain on the prowl. If he was an inked-up gym rat, he would not have gained instant sympathy. People would have assumed he was looking for trouble and found it. If he had Nazi neck art, then the initial response would have been entirely negative.

The fact is, looks matter. More precisely, presentation matters. It is the starting people for everyone trying to assess new information. Humans are pattern matching creatures, so we quickly try to match new events to known events. As soon as one is found, then that becomes the starting point. As Oscar Wilde joked, “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.” In this case, the starting point is one that elicits sympathy and compassion from most people.

This is the lesson the alt-right never learned. They not only convinced themselves that appearances don’t matter, they went out of their way to strike a bad pose. The fact is, the facts almost always take a back seat to people’s impressions. The handsome, well dressed salesman will move more product than the slovenly salesman, even when the latter has a superior product to the former. Politics is about persuasion and in the persuasion game, looks count for a lot.

Another lesson of this event is that you have to engage people where they are, not where you wish them to be. Everyone on this side of the great divide understands that these riots are part of the larger demographic issue. People on the other side of the divide, the normal whites, do not understand the demographic angle. In fact, they have been conditioned to avoid the topic altogether. Like dogs trained with a shock collar, they flinch whenever the race issue arises.

This story resonates with normal white people because it is a gun story, a self-defense story and a civic nationalism story. The race angle is still there, but instead of being the face of it, it is background noise. The heart of this story is stuff normal white people can understand and they are comfortable discussing. If this is Nazi-guy shooting black people, no lawyer is taking the case and no prominent people are speaking out in favor of the shooter. Instead, it is trophy for the Left.

Engaging people where they are opens doors. The oldest truth of sales is people buy from people. In politics, people buy from people with whom they can relate and who care about their issues. The people passionate about race, ethnicity and demographics are already on this side of the great divide. The people on the other side are passionate about other things. The path for them over to this side is through those issues, so mocking those issues, as so many do, is counter-productive.

Another useful lesson here is that the enemy is not a collection of super-intelligent super-villains. They often get high off their own supply. The crazies in the Antifa media are running this story as if the shooter is an evil white Hitler guy. They can’t see past their own ideological blinders. Their hatred for white people is so all consuming, they are trying to sell this as a racist attack. A headline like this over a picture of Rittenhouse is so incongruous that is suggests mental illness is at play.

We see another side of this with the Wisconsin prosecutor. A left-wing fanatic, immersed in that subculture, he immediately assumed Rittenhouse is an evil Nazi guy from one of their campfire stories. Charging this kid with capital murder is so outrageous and evil, it makes the kid into a symbol of everything that is wrong. Someone in control of his faculties would have gone for the lowest charge and worked from there. These people win because they have power, not because they are smart.

There will be a lot more to come as this story unfolds, but one final lesson is that winning the optics war counts for a lot. The so-called conservatives have avoided this story entirely thus far. The reason is they were destroyed by the Nick Sandman debacle and they are still hurting from it. They lost that optics battle. Public relations are a big business because optics matter. The winner is often the side that simply makes the best first impression on the public.

That is why those involved in dissident politics have always got to remember to be the friendly face to the skeptical public. If you meet the expectations people have for the good guys, you get treated as the good guys. If you insist on playing the role of the bad guy, then you will lose every fight, even when you are right. The person who seizes the moral high ground is almost always the person people initially trust. It is always better to be fighting from the top than from the bottom.

The Z Blog

Sports, Culture and Other Stuff