Over Simulated

Posted on July 23, 2020 by thezman

Logically, intelligent life forms living in a simulation would not have the ability to figure out that they exist within a simulation. The creators of the simulation would have created the intelligent life forms within the simulation, along with all the other stuff that makes up the simulation. Presumably the creators would not want the things inside their simulation to figure it out, so they would program some sort of block to their ability to reason their way to the truth of their existence.

One possible exception, one Hollywood has used to get around this problem, is the intelligent life forms are actually real creatures. They are unconscious in the real world, but plugged into the simulation, so that their consciousness exists in that simulation, as if they were a creation of it. This is the premise of the Matrix movies. Humans are plugged into the simulation by the machines that keep them alive as an energy source to power themselves and their machine world.

Another possibility, one not reliant on a sadistic creator of the simulation, is one where the simulation requires a degree of self-awareness by the intelligent life forms. In order for the simulation to achieve the desired goal, the creatures in it must be as close to real as possible, so that the simulation comes close to the reality of the creator. In this scenario, the simulation is a model of the creator’s existence for the purpose of testing some hypothesis about their reality.

Between the two, the most plausible is the second scenario, as the first scenario has some obvious plot holes. This was obvious in the movie. If the machines were so powerful to have conquered mankind and turned him into batteries, then why were the machines not smart enough to put alarms on the pods in which they kept their human batteries connected to the matrix? Perhaps the creator of the machines was the creator of the Death Star in the Star Wars movies.

If we go with the second option and assume the people who created the simulation are willing to risk their creations figuring out that they are in a simulation, under what conditions would the intelligent life forms figure it out? The first prerequisite is an intelligent creature curious enough about its surrounding that it tries to figure out the rules that govern its operation. The intelligent life forms would have to be smart enough to solve puzzles and use those solutions to solve other puzzles.

Rules manifest themselves as patterns, so the intelligent life forms would have to be pretty good at noticing patterns. As the intelligent life forms discover the rules of his existence, it would both notice the patterns, but get better at recognizing those patterns with a minimum amount of data. That is, each new recognized pattern would become a data set within the pattern matching process, allowing the creature to infer new patterns and new rules from his collection of rules.

Inevitably, this creature would reach of a point of noticing where his natural, as it were, abilities were no longer sufficient to learn new rules. It would need to take what it has learned about its environment and create tools. These tools would be the result of noticing those patterns, discovering rules of its existence and then applying those rules in trying to discover new rules. Mastery of fire, after all, came from seeing it and then using it in various way to discover how it worked.

This is one possible way for the intelligent life form to discover that it is actually existing in a simulation. Given enough time, it would discover the nature of its universe and learn it is actually a simulation. The trouble here is the intelligent life form would have to accept as a possibility that it exists in a simulation. A creature that is sure its universe operates on a fixed set of rules is unlikely to accept that those rules are an arbitrary invention of some higher intelligence outside its universe.

There is also another problem. The creators of the simulation could themselves be the product of a simulation. It’s entirely possible the one fixed rule of existence is that no intelligence entity can create an intelligence superior to itself. Perhaps Thomas Aquinas was right all along and there is some prime mover. The very source of the existence is the pinnacle of intelligence, which creates imperfect copies of itself manifesting as simulations within simulations.

We have in this simulation some evidence of this limitation. Despite the hyperbole about artificial intelligence, we have not come close to creating a computer that can rival the human mind. We have made very fast computers that can do calculations and sort through stacks of data faster than humans. These are not artificial intelligence or even intelligence at all, but rather they are very fast calculators. The collapse of the self-driving car project is an example of this limit.

Putting that aside, there is one other way the intelligent life forms inside the simulation could start to notice they are in a simulation. The point of creating a simulation, aside from sadism, is to test some theory or model some conditions. This implies the creators could make a mistake. They recognize this, so before changing something about their world or making a new tool, they test the theories behind it in a simulation. This means their simulation could have errors in it.

Let’s say they create a set of economic rules for their model society, but forget to carry the one or round the wrong way and there is an anomaly in the model. For example, creating more currency of a certain type does not result in inflation. All the other types of money operate by the rules of economics, but this one type of money seems to exist outside of those rules. The intelligent creatures figure this out and start producing tons of this new money to produce great material excess.

Presumably, the creators of the simulation would distribute skills and talents unequally among the intelligent life forms in order to see how creations of differing skills interact with one another. Maybe it is just an efficient way to use the finite resources available to the simulation makers. Regardless, the rules of the universe would have to dictate that those with a skill do better at some things than those without the skill. The result would be natural hierarchies in every aspect of the simulation.

What if there was a bug in the code where those with extreme narcissism and narrow intelligence can rise up to control society? At some point, through random chance, the stupid and narrow-minded figure this out and take over the simulation. Like the mouse utopia, this would be a useful discovery for the simulation makers, but it would create havoc for their simulation. So much so they may be tempted to unplug the thing, fix the bad code and re-run the simulation again.

Assuming the simulation keeps running, some of the intelligent life forms will see the anomalies in the system. They will work to resolve the paradoxes, but at some point, given enough cycles, they will have exhausted their set of options. At that point, they will have to question the very axioms of their existence and that’s when they can begin to contemplate the possibility they are in a simulation. The number of paradoxes grows to the point where they cannot be ignored.

Wrapping this all up, the only way to know if we are living in a simulation, other than being told by the creator, is that the creators of the simulation are imperfect. They have created a near perfect simulation, but there are enough bugs in the code to allow us to notice the anomalies. If there are enough things happening that fall outside the accepted rules of this world, then we can begin to consider the possibility we are just creations within a simulation.

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The Back Of The Hand

Posted on July 22, 2020 by thezman

Establishment types were clucking about the news of Andrew Sullivan leaving his post at NY Magazine. He wrote a typically long winded farewell column, stating that he was being pushed out by the new woke rabble. Whether or not that is true is hard to know, as Sullivan is prone to exaggeration and hysteria, but it was accepted as true by so-called conservatives and the “old style” liberals. It was another ominous sign that the woke revolution is consolidating power.

The details of his case are not all that important, as it lines up with other incidents involving less creative story tellers. The New York Times has been dealing with a public revolt by the woke young staffers. These are mostly emotional young women of various flavors, who start sobbing whenever they hear a discouraging word. Collectively they become a storm of shrieking harpies that manages to get its way. These tantrums are now being spun as the new ideological revolution.

The incident itself offers some insight into how left-wing politics has evolved over the last decade. Sullivan is a competent and productive writer, but his insights are just banal liberal boilerplate. His act was always derivative. He is a reboot of Truman Capote or maybe the literary Liberace. He is a professional homosexual, who says harsh things about normal Americans, but in a flamboyant and flippant style. The establishment subversive always puts style over substance.

Nowadays, the outrageous gay guy act is the leisure suit of public performance. It’s not just out of style, it makes everyone stare at their shoes. In fact, gay males are now totally out of fashion on the Left. They have been replaced in the catalog with hairy Jewish guys in sundresses. In fact, the wide array of imaginary sexual identities has displaced suburban white girl feminism too. In order to get in the Progressive catalog, you better have at least two things going wrong for you.

The Sullivan incident and other similar happenings during this phase of the revolution puts the lie to the whole coalition of the fringes thing. If there was really an intelligence behind this stuff, playing four-dimensional political chess, they would not be swapping out the gays for guys in lady’s underwear. Feminists are also financially and organizationally strong. In reality, it is the old Progressive hatred of tradition manifesting itself as a quest for the novel and bizarre.

That’s the thing about the cultural revolution that gets missed. The communist revolution was serious about remaking society. They wanted to strip it down to the foundation stones and start fresh. They were even willing to tear up the foundation if they thought it necessary. The liberal democratic revolution is more like a redecorating party. They are willing to make superficial changes, but only in the areas that people see. Sullivan was replaced by a new set of drapes and a transgender garden gnome.

The superficiality of this revolution may have been exposed by the maker of an energy drink last week. When he found out his females were going bonkers over the BLM stuff, he fired them. The Red Bull story may turn out to be an amusing turning point in the revolution. You can be sure lots of other corporate executives are looking at that story and wondering if that is not the right course. Just tell these harpies no and show them the door. The rest will pipe down in a hurry.

That was always the truth of feminism. All the bellowing about the patriarchy and male chauvinism was just a desperate cry for a firm hand. College men cruised the women’s studies department for a reason. It was where you could find the six who desperately wanted to hear she was a nine. Professional feminism was just the same thing, but the women were rapidly approaching the wall. Still, the firm hand worked just as well and it may turn out to be the antidote the woke pandemic.

This is the paradox of the cultural revolution. The Bolsheviks could carry on without liberals, monarchist and other types of socialists fighting with them for control. Once they eliminated their rivals, they set about creating their society. The same was true of the Maoists and Khmer Rouge. The old school radicals did not need the constant struggle to justify their existence. They just needed the specter of it to focus the attention of the revolution away from the failings of the revolution.

The modern radical cannot exist without the thing it is claiming as an enemy and it seeks to destroy. Black identity movements are entirety dependent on whites tolerating and indulging them. The old feminist line about a woman needing a man like a fish needs a bicycle was always just a coping mechanism. Feminism can only exist in the presence of normal males. Cultural Marxism is just the over indulged third child that endlessly acts out to get attention from her parents.

This suggests the revolution will continue until it gets the back of the hand. It will not be happy to dominate the institutions and push its opposition to the fringes. In fact, the further it pushes its opposition into the shadows, the angrier it will get, as what it wants is the confrontation. Starved of that confrontation it will grow increasingly berserk as it tries to flush out the opposition. It will endlessly provoke and harass until it gets the back of the hand it so desperately needs.

Simulacra and Simulation

Posted on July 21, 2020 by thezman

Logic dictates that it is impossible for someone to lie to themselves. A lie is the deliberate, and therefore conscious, telling of a falsehood. The person lying is deliberately trying to deceive someone. The only way lying can be successful is if the person hearing the lie believes it. Lying to yourself is an obvious paradox. This is true of self-delusion or self-deception. The real paradox here is that we have these expressions because the phenomenon seems to exist.

For example, the odds of knowing someone who has died from the corona virus is very low, unless you work in a nursing home. For the typical person, you are more likely to know someone who was murdered. In fact, in most of the country, you are four times more likely to know a murder victim than a corona victim. Yet, many people on the Left will tell you they know many people who have died from corona. They really believe this is true and display the appropriate emotions to prove it.

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that these people have had the math explained to them many times by the more skeptical. The same is true about the stories of overwhelmed hospitals everyone hears about, but no one has seen. The nurses and doctors posting TikTok videos of themselves dancing in empty hospitals had no effect on the believers in these claims. Even now, they are sure the “first responders” are nearing exhaustion as they heroically fight the virus.

It is not a coincidence that these people are sure Donald Trump is Adolph Hitler slowly imposing the Third Reich. People who otherwise seem calm and rational, despite their politics, become hysterical when talking about Trump. “He’s a dangerous dictator who is destroying the country” they bellow. It’s not just hyperbole. They really seem to believe that Trump is not only a man who wants to be a dictator, but that he is actually assuming dictatorial power. The lie is very real to them.

It’s not so much that they believe complete nonsense regarding Trump. It’s that their own reaction to the nonsense underscores the irrationality of it. After all, if Trump is anything like they believe, voting him out of office is unlikely. After all, he would use his magic dictator power to rig the vote or just ignore the result. Rather than reevaluate their beliefs, they are now creating another fantasy around with Trump secretly plotting to ignore the results of the election.

For these people, perception is reality to the point where reality is warped in order to make it comply with their pseudo-reality. Like fanaticism, partisanship untethers the mind from objective reality. Unlike fanaticism, which is temporary and disconnected from rational thinking, partisanship enslaves the rational mind, forcing it to create an alternative reality. This partisan reality is so powerful it blocks out anything that contradicts or disconfirms the alternative reality.

The most extreme version of this are the radicals that go on a murderous rampage in the belief they are defending their cause against dangerous enemies. They quickly move from disagreement to murder, because they quickly create a reality in which anyone showing the least bit of doubt is secretly plotting to kill them. Those who commit political murder do so in the firm conviction they are acting in self-defense. In fact, they have to kill their opponents for the good of society.

The thing about political murder is it is not irrational. If you truly think the only way your people can survive is to abide by a certain set of rules, then anyone trying to undermine those rules is a direct threat to your survival. Bargaining with such a person or offering them leniency would be no different than bargaining with a killer. The fact that political opposition is not the same as violent assault is the deception. The partisan has become convinced of something that is at odds with reality.

Compounding this strange conflict of realities is the fact the people in each are highly similar to one another, but seemingly incapable of seeing the reality of the other as the other perceives it. The people sure the hospitals are war zones, for example, look at images of empty hospitals or the statistics on hospital layoffs and it has no impact on their mental processes. It’s as if that information is invisible to them. In fact, it just confirms to them that the other people are dangerously insane.

In fairness, something similar happens when dealing with the MAGA people. Their blind loyalty to Trump and the old America is more endearing, but just as disconnected from reality as the “Trump is Hitler” stuff. In this regard, those looking hard at the world find themselves surround by people from at least two simulations that are derivative of reality, but at odds with it in fundamental ways. It’s as if there is a leak in these simulations and their simulacrum are leaking into the real world.

The question we face in this age is whether it is possible to maintain a civil society with an abundance of people embracing an alternative reality. Fanatics, eccentrics, lunatics and so on have been a part of human society since the beginning. The issue today is one of scale. Those leaky simulations have burst open and our reality is now flooded with berserk imitations of normal people, acting on a sense of reality that is at odds with objective reality. We’re being overrun by simulacrum.

The 85’ers

Posted on July 20, 2020 by thezman

Lost in the turmoil of the present revolutionary moment is the fact that one side of the political class remains trapped in a strange time warp. Look through the publications of mainstream conservatives and it is as if they stopped publishing new material somewhere in the last decade. They acknowledge that Trump won the White House, but they refuse to see it as anything but a one-off anomaly. There was no reason for it, other than a bug in the code or a one-in-a-million event.

For a while after Trump took office, they carried on with the anti-Trump stuff, but the money from the usual suspects ran out, so they dropped it. The Israel First wing of Conservative Inc. has setup shop at The Dispatch and The Bulwark, sites that cater to an audience that is similarly lost in time. Both sites look like recycled versions of the Weekly Standard circa 1996 or maybe The New Republic in 1986. What’s left of the old conservative coalition looks like a museum exhibit.

A good example is this post from Kevin Williamson. It feels like forever ago when he was considered an edgy writer for the new breed of conservatives. Read his copy and that feeling is obvious. For the last four years immigration has been one of the main topics of conversation in politics. What it is doing to a state like Texas has been a popular example. Yet, in a post about how Texas is becoming California, in terms of its politics, he does not mention immigration once.

How is it possible to be so obtuse? Granted, Williamson is not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but even the dumbest pundit should notice what people are saying. Of course, Williamson is a good example of another modern phenomenon. Whenever one of these guys gets mugged by the mob, instead of being radicalized by it, they go the other way, desperately trying to prove their prior blasphemy was an anomaly. He’s now a 1985 libertarian, ignoring most of what is happening in the world.

That’s fine, but National Review chooses to publish him anyway. They don’t have to make a trauma victim their lead writer. On the other hand, what else is there? The entirety of Conservative Inc. is in the same panic room as Williamson. At this moment, National Review’s front page has a story about electric cars, a story drooling over an Indian immigrant running for Senate in Tennessee, a story about robot wives and, well, you get the point. Teen Vogue is more serious.

It is not just con-men and grifters from the Conservative Industrial Complex that are trapped in a time warp. This was on Breitbart over the weekend. James Pinkerton used to be a guy who would speak forthrightly about the warmongers in the conservative sphere or the impact of globalization on regular Americans. He’s a libertarian, for the most part, but a rare one, in that he was prone to fits of realism. That post looks like something he wrote in the 1980’s.

Stop and consider where we are at this moment. On the one hand, we have a ruling class that is rotten to the core. They have corrupted every aspect of civil and cultural life in America. They now send gangs out into the streets to attack people and take over sections of cities. Pinkerton’s argument is the GOP must become the defenders of those corrupt institutions, as if this is forty years ago and the Left was making its final assault on the infrastructure of the country.

It is as if the entirely of conservatism has responded to the present turmoil by hopping in their DeLorean and going back to the 1980’s. Instead of reevaluating those old positions in light of new reality, they have reconstructed a new reality that is just ignorance of the present reality. The effects of wholesale immigration, globalization, the rise of the Cult-Marx Left and the populist awakening are all ignored. Instead they are retreating into their Burkean panic room to wait out the danger.

Part of it, no doubt, is fear. To talk candidly about what is happening these days is to risk your job and career. Most of the people in Conservative Inc. are there for the money and lifestyle it provides. They like the social aspects and the easy living. If being a Maoist provided the same lifestyle, most would happily quote from Mao. These are highly remunerated house slaves. The monied interests that underwrite these publications are not looking for candor.

Still, there are people who talk candidly about the current year. Kevin Williamson could at least mention immigration once in a story about how Texas is being turned into California by the flood of immigrants and migrants fleeing the invasion. Even if he can’t bring himself to admit the truth, he could at least acknowledge that people have been talking about it for close to a decade now. Pinkerton could acknowledge that the GOP is just the political arm of global enterprise.

What makes this retrenchment even more strange is the people they used to rip-off are heading the other way. You see it in little ways. For example, the old MAGA types are abandoning Twitter and Facebook for Parler. Many have recently taken the plunge to join Gab, after hearing Andrew Torba on Glenn Beck. Trump’s support is lagging because his voters wanted him to be more of what Conservative Inc. warned about, rather than less of it. They want the Trump the Left promised.

For the boys and girls now huddling in Camp 1985, the world has become a dangerous place, so they are hiding out in the past, hoping it all goes away. Every once in a while they will mutter “Orange Man Bad”, but otherwise, they are sitting out the storm, updating their old posts about the need for Burkean conservatism and how race relations were never better. Conservatism has become a cargo cult. They think if they pretend hard enough, it will be 1985 again.

Our Primitive Ugliness

Posted on July 18, 2020 by thezman

Something that is easy to miss in the insanity of the current age is the fact that the people running the revolution are not just mediocre people, but they have the most mediocre dreams. Unlike revolutionaries of the past, they don’t speak of moving past this age of trouble and strife to a new age of man. There’s no sense that mankind can ascend to a higher level of existence. Instead, all of their energy is directed to that which touches on the imponderables of the human condition.

The assault on Confederate symbols is the most obvious. There’s no thought given to why these statues were erected by the people living in these communities. What little thought there is to the people who erected them is simplistic and childish. In fact, the need to know anything about the statues was so vexing and offensive to the people assaulting them, they quickly moved from attacking Confederate symbols to attacking all symbols that were connected with the past.

There’s certainly a strong anti-white element to this. They have to deny it for partisan reasons, as to do otherwise is to give the other side a victory, but only Progressive ideologues and their conservative enablers can deny it. The appeal, however, is in the simplicity, as it requires so little from the partisans. This is why they have moved so quickly from Confederate iconography through “symbols of whiteness” onto all items with a nuanced connection to the past.

This vulgar dullness is often read as just fanatical violence by rich kids seeking attention or authenticity within their movement. Others want to see it as just decorating common street criminals with politics. The thing is though, many of the rioters and statue topplers are the children of ruling class types. Just as the left-wing radicals of the sixties were the children of the bourgeoisie, today’s street radicals are children of the managerial elite. These are bourgeois revolutionaries.

The blandness of this revolution reflects the tastes and sensibilities of the people who produced the ideology and the radicals themselves. Look around at the creations of our modern rulers and the remarkable feature is the ugliness. If someone had dozed off in the 1960’s and been revived in this age, they would be sure the communists had won the Cold War and imposed their aesthetic on the West. Relative to the post war years in America, the modern aesthetic is offensively ugly.

The synthetic ugliness of the current year West surpasses the ugliness of communism in that it is the product of material excess. The dreariness of communist architecture, for example, could be explained by scarcity. They had to make do with what they could produce, which meant concrete and steel. The modern West is brimming with material excess, but insists on an aesthetic that captures the hopes and dreams of the career civil servant. Today’s style is depressed postal clerk.

This is, of course, the fruit of egalitarianism. When a society embraces the natural hierarchy of man, even the people at the top are looking up for inspiration. They are sure there is something better and more beautiful a little higher than where they currently stand. There’s no limiting principle to capturing the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. The aesthetic of such a society is one of increasing beauty and complexity in the art of the people.

In an egalitarian society, this is thrown into reverse. Everyone is discouraged from looking up, as that may suggest apostasy. Instead, the best only look up in order to get a better grip on the self-imposed ceiling, which is always pulled down. Everyone else is compelled to look down for a new lowest common denominator. Only in the most vulgar and debased can everyone be included. The result is a community that looks like film noir, but is awash in pornography and degeneracy.

This makes perfect sense, as egalitarianism inevitably flips the natural order on its head, elevating the bottom over all else. The ideological enforcers in the human resource department are no different from the ideological enforcers in communism. These people are not selected for their skill, but their stupidity. They are too stupid to contemplate what they are doing. Instead, they puff out their chests and stiffen their backs for having memorized the latest party fads.

The same is true of the volunteer auxiliary police patrolling the public space for unapproved thoughts. Imagine the dullness and ugliness of someone who takes the job of Facebook moderator. It is no wonder so many of them are South Asian. The Indian subcontinent’s primary export is the narrow-minded functionary, best fit for the ticket window of the train station. The fact that suicide is not common among the staff of social media firms confirms the dullness of them.

At first blush, it seems like a paradox that a system capable of marshaling human effort to produce such spectacular material excess also produces such mediocre men. It’s as if the engine of material progress uses the creativity and passion, the hopes and aspirations of the people as fuel to make consumer goods. Just as the failed materialism of communism denuded the land of culture and beauty, liberal democracy is doing the same, just with high tech materials.

If it were just ugliness, one could think that perhaps the next phase of man is a post-beauty world, where the aesthetic is defined by efficiency. That’s not so, as the people are also made vulgar and simplistic as well. What passes for intellectual endeavor in the modern academy is striking for its narrowness. The innovative thinker is one who manages to lop off some new bits of human knowledge. The goal of intellectual life is to reduce the stock of human knowledge.

This is most evident in politics. The market place of ideas that is supposed to be the wellspring of liberal democracy has resulted in a bazaar full of weirdos all selling the exact same goods. The defining feature of the modern elections is their pointlessness, as no matter the result, policy never changes. In modern politics, innovation is treated like superstition. Anyone suggesting something different is treated like he has been possessed by a demon or is in league with Old Scratch.

Perhaps liberal democracy has reached a point where a small number of capable people can keep everything running, while the mediocre and stupid run riot. Maybe that is the world at the end of history. Given the recent madness, there is a strong case to be made for this argument. On the other hand, history says man cannot live without beauty, even the simplest expressions of it. The inexplicable beauty of the world has always demanded our attention. Will we want to live without it?

Unplugged

Posted on July 17, 2020 by thezman

Every once in a while, I get complaints about reading too much from news articles in the show, rather than talking about the subjects. The logical response is to then do a show in which I have no prepared material. I just turn on the mic and start talking for an hour on whatever happens to come to mind. After all, the pendulum is supposed to swing from one extreme to the other. That is what I have done this week. I just let it rip on a few topics that were on my mind when I started.

The thing is, I could probably go on a ten hour, Chris Farley rant without too much trouble, other than the possible stroke. I don’t know about anyone else, but I am done with the ongoing revolution. It seems that everywhere we turn, there is some new madness or new tax on our patience. It is close to impossible to live a normal day, much less a normal life now. Even the most basic task brings a reminder that we live in a continent sized lunatic asylum.

All of us are highly adaptable, but there is a limit. Adapting to some new style or process is not so hard. There is no logic to clothing styles, for example, so you don’t have to give up your sanity to embrace the new thing. The same is true of some new way of doing something. If it saves time or reduces error, adapting to it makes sense, so you reprogram your mind to it. What we see going on around us is insane and you can never really adapt to madness. You just tolerate it.

Toleration has its limits. The other day I got an e-mail from a client. I’m not sure why I was included, as it was an internal e-mail to employees. The point of the e-mail was to suggest all employees list their preferred pronouns in their signature. It’s not enough that these people feel the need to deny reality. They insist that the rest of us participate in their madness. Everywhere you turn, someone is trying to make you carry the burden of their madness. It is tax that is never paid in full.

All of us are amazed, to one degree or another, at how the crazies keep finding new ways to be crazy in public. I keep waiting for the people in charge of this simulation to halt the game and laughingly admit they were just having some fun. The truly remarkable thing, however, is that some otherwise normal person has not had a falling down moment. If any age cried out for a vigilante it is this one. It is as if the people in charge are trying to push us to the breaking point.

Maybe our side is reading it all wrong and the vast majority of people think what is happening is the best thing ever. The people in charge keep making that point, but that seems unlikely. Instead, it seems that most people are quietly seething. They distract themselves as best they can in order to avoid being miserable, but whenever the revolution intrudes into their lives, their jaw tightens and their fist clinch. There are a lot of pissed off people walking around these 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.

This Week’s Show

Contents

00:00: Opening
02:00: Tubby Bollocks
22:00: Walk Away
42:00: Sportsball
57:00: Closing

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

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/ZlmAj_ommH8

Covid Capitalism

Posted on July 16, 2020 by thezman

For most people, buying a car is not a pleasant experience. Getting a new car is always nice, even if you are not a car person, but the process of getting it is almost always a hassle due to how cars are sold in America. Getting a used car can eliminate the hassle of the dealership, but then you have to worry about getting hustled by someone trying to unload their lemon onto a sucker. The car market is extreme capitalism, where no one gives a sucker an even break or smartens up a chump.

Strangely, this makes it the ideal place to understand what has happened to our society over the last six months. For example, every car dealership website now has a prominent banner informing the visitor just how much the car dealer cares about the health and safety of their customers. There’s usually a link to their page detailing just how much they care about you, the sap they hope will buy a car from them. All of these mission statements are titled, “Our Response to COVID-19.”

In case it is not obvious, a business built around the phrase caveat emptor is not concerned about the safety of anyone, even the employees. Like every business in extreme capitalist America, the car dealers see an angle in presenting themselves as guardians of public health. At the far end of capitalism, the business must be both rapacious and patronizing. Telling you how much they care about your welfare while stripping you of what they can is the standard business model.

The thing about all of this that goes unnoticed is how predatory economics has not just been normalized, it is now celebrated. Forty years ago, soulless money grasping was seen as immoral. The movie Wall Street presented a morality tale about how extreme capitalism was soul destroying. Today, the ruthless businessman is in the morally superior position, while the person doubting the ethics of his behavior is portrayed as a naive and stupid person, possibly even dangerous.

Maybe it is just a case of monkey see, monkey do with these dealers, but all of their steps to show just how much they care are the same across the board. They have “contactless” car buying, which is a very strange thing, when you consider it. How much physical contact would one normally have with the the car salesman under normal conditions? Of course, since their goal is to screw the customer, maybe this is a strange inside joke or possibly a cry for help.

Of course, all of this is just a racket and everyone gets it, except for the people firmly in the panic camp. They see it as confirmation. In fact, that’s the point of all these ads from giant corporations telling us how much they care about us and the communities they are destroying. It is pure partisanship. On one side there are the people sure this pandemic is punishment for Trump. On the other side are people who are sure the other side is using the virus to advance their ideological goals.

This is the world of today. There are now two camps of people. One camp consumes every event and metabolizes it into fuel for their ideological war. As soon as the virus became news their chief concern was in how to turn it into another weapon in their social war to control society. As soon as the hated Trump declared his side on the virus issue, the Left immediately embraced a set of positions on the virus. Every left-wing and adjacent governor blew up his state to spite Trump.

The second camp are the people who realize that the new issue is becoming politicized and they form up an opposition to the Left. In the case of the virus, they started as curious or maybe mildly skeptical. These were the people who said it was just going to be a very bad flu most likely, but we needed more information. Now they are the people who say the face muffler is the six pointed star of totalitarianism. For them, the facts of the virus no longer matter anymore.

In this environment, there’s no truth or even the desire for truth, as all truth is determined by which side of the line you stand. The car dealers, for example, would have lepers selling cars if it moved more product. It is in their interest to go along with the safety campaign, so they go along with the safety campaign. They would have their people in hazmat suits putting the buyer through a delousing station if that’s what it takes to sell cars. They care, because they don’t care.

Everywhere else, the caring capitalists are either proof that the plague is real and a punishment for the Orange Man or it is just part of the fraud perpetrated by people obsessed with hating the Orange Man. Not only does this make everything extremely simple, it means the simpletons rule the day. If you’re inclined to automatically take one side or the other based entirely on your feelings toward the people on each side of the line, this is a glorious time to be alive.

The car dealership is now the metaphor of our age. The people running it engage in the most extreme form of ruthless transactionalism. They do so while pretending they care deeply about the people they will gladly fleece. Meanwhile, on the lot, one group of buyers is misty-eyed over how much the dealer cares about this plague sent to spite the Trump people. The other group grits its teeth behind its face mufflers, fantasizing about the revolution and that sports car in the showroom.

Flight 93 Crashed

Posted on July 15, 2020 by thezman

The sad story of Jeff Session and immigration patriotism came to an end in the Alabama senate run-off. Sessions was soundly beaten by former football coach and Mitch McConnell sock puppet, Tommy Tuberville. Of course, President Trump was ebullient, as he had campaigned against his old friend and supporter in one of his now typical fits of rage. He blames Sessions for his many blunders early in his tenure. Trump will not have Jeff Sessions to kick around anymore.

It is also the death of immigration patriotism. Sessions was always the best on immigration when he was in the Senate. He actually got some real things done on the administrative side when he was in the administration. Tuberville, in contrast, is just a dope who spent his life coddling black guys who can run fast. Washington recruited him, because they were right about the voters of Alabama. They care more about sportsball than the future of their grandchildren.

Trump and his stage handlers will read this as confirmation that his base is too dumb to care about the issues. They will just fall in behind their orange hero. It is the same madness that happened in the Bush re-election. Bush finked on his voters for four years, but won a second term by pointing at the Democrats. The implication was, “vote for Bush unless you want those terrible people to be right.” The mouth-breathers are doing exactly as expected. They are trusting the plan.

Whether or not this works is hard to know. In 2004, the goal was to get something close to 60% of the white vote. Bush did reasonably well with Hispanics and blacks were not angry about anything in particular. Whites were 77% of the vote, so getting in the high fifties was the goal. Given the partisanship in states in the Northeast, losing those white votes was meaningless unless it hurt with white votes in competitive states. Bush got 58% of the white vote and enough Hispanic support to win.

In 2020, Trump will need to get something closer to 70% of the white vote. That’s due to the declining white share and the fact blacks are super-angry now. Despite his foot-washing for four years, they still think he is an orange supremacist and horrible racist. What does not get discussed in public, but has surely been discussed in private, is the math of this election. In 2016, whites made up 70% of the vote. In 2020 it will be 65%. The actuarial tables are working against Trump and the GOP.

Putting that aside, Trump will feel vindicated in his decision to abandon immigration and could very well swing the other way. He told some Mexican media outlet that he plans to amnesty the DACA people. He just reversed course on the student visa scam. In an age where American college students must stay home and do their college work on-line, the children of Chinese Communist Party members will get student visas so they can attend classes on American campuses.

The inner party, of course, understands the math entirely. In fact, they have been working hard to create this math since the 1960’s. Just as immigrants were used as union busters in the industrial age, immigrants are used as coalition busters in the liberal democratic age. The way for a small group to maintain power is to make sure there are no natural coalitions that can form up and challenge for power. That’s the game in America and it has worked.

Getting back to the Sessions story, it is a great example of how the inner party uses partisanship as a tool. The left-wing crazies hate Trump for no reason other than they were told he is very bad. They hated Bush too. In both cases, there was no real policy dispute at the core of their hatred. They hated Bush because he claimed to be an Evangelical Christian. They hate Trump because reasons. Their rage is just pure partisan hatred of the perceived outsider.

This has the perverse result of turning those outside the Progressive camp into supporters of the thing they hate. Otherwise conservative people fervently supported Bush in the 2004 elections, despite is liberal policies. Something similar is happening with Trump in this election. No one is really going to vote for Trump. They will vote against what they perceive to be the other option, which is street violence, statue toppling and the endless lectures on race from the media.

Regardless, the end of Jeff Sessions marks the end of immigration, nationalism and populism as salient forces in official politics. The 2016 election was called the Flight 93 election, as it was the last desperate chance to save the country. Well, flight 93 crashed and killed everyone onboard. That last desperate dash to save the day failed. The last desperate attempt to save the system in 2016 has also failed. The inner party gained control of the Trump administration and flew it into the ground.

The Logic Of Political Violence

Posted on July 14, 2020 by thezman

Back in the Cold War, one of the things Americans would puzzle over was the political violence behind the Iron Curtain. Most Americans assumed they would resist the state terrorism they heard about from the media. Of course, they assumed such a thing could never happen in America. Today we are seeing just how easily state sponsored terrorism can get going in any country. The reason is there is a political logic to murder that comes as a part of ideological movements.

The logic of political violence is best understood by considering the way Progressives frame their anti-speech pogroms. They keep equaling words and ideas that vex them with violence. For example, someone posting crime statistics on Twitter is accused of posting violent content or inciting violence. At the same time, BLM burning shops and murdering young white mothers is pure political expression. Language they don’t like is violence and violence they like is free expression.

All acts, speaking or physical activity, are judged in purely partisan terms. That person murdering white mothers on behalf of the Progressive cause is morally good by default, as he is sustaining and advancing the interests of the cause. Similarly, the person who stops laughing too soon at an official joke is consciously or unconsciously working against the interest of the cause. He’s a threat. In other words, all actions are judged only in partisan terms, not in relative terms.

Further, making total war on anyone acting against the cause, even by mild simple disagreement, is a form of self-defense to the partisan. The logic here is that someone saying something that contradicts the beliefs of the Progressive cause must be at war with the partisans of the cause. After all, what makes the partisan a partisan is his fidelity to his cause. To invalidate the cause, even by questioning it, is to invalidate him and therefore, striking at the bad speaker is self-defense.

Again, you see this in their language. Before the lock downs, colleges had already implemented a policy of “safe spaces” on campus. These were places where Progressive activists could be totally free of criticism or questioning. The post-modern partisan equates physical safety, not only with the lack of disagreement from outsiders, but the absence of anyone and anything that contradicts the cause. They demand to be insulated from physical reality, as well as contrary opinion.

This conflation of people with ideology into partisanship is why Progressives have always had a somewhat comical obsession with the backlash. A Muslim shoots up a gay club, for example, and the Progressive media writes stories about how Muslims fear a backlash from red necks and Christians. They just assume the Muslim was right for acting on behalf of his cause. Further, they just assumed his enemies, even though they are imaginary, will do the same.

The conflation of the ideologue and the ideology must lead to either political violence or political separation. The partisan looks around and sees nothing but enemies, people holding opinions that contradict the cause. Further, he sees them operating in a system that contradicts the beliefs of the partisan. Hence the concept of systemic racism that is popular with Progressives. They are surrounded by people and a system that is at war with the very essence of who they are.

There can be only two responses, fight or flight. Once the partisan has power, though, the only logical response is fight. Once they gain power, they are not just defending themselves, but now they imagine they are defending society as a whole. Rounding up dissidents and having them executed is not just vindictive cruelty, although there is a lot of that, for sure. To the partisan mind this is an act of self-defense. The bad-speaker is at war with the cause and all is fair in war.

Inevitably, this logic is confirmed by the piecemeal response to the political violence unleashed on the public. Someone realizes that the people in charge are willing to use violence and he or they respond with violence. This small act becomes the bloody shirt the partisans then wave around as justification. Notice how the Progressives still mention Charlottesville as a justification for their pogroms against anyone expressing unapproved opinions on social media.

It is tempting to dismiss these people as insane, but their logic, with regards to the use of political violence, is natural. After all, the death penalty is rooted in the same logic of societal self-defense. The murderer who can never be allowed loose must be killed, not as punishment, but so he can never kill again. There is a blood sacrifice to it, as Joseph de Maistre explained, but the fundamental logic of the death penalty is rooted in the most basic instinct of man – self-defense.

This is why America is probably closer to Soviet-style show trials and political violence than most Americans realize. Most people are not partisans or their partisanship is mostly ornamental. They wave it around when politics comes up, but it usually works to cut-off political arguments before they get started. Many Americans, probably a majority, are still trapped in the old political framework. Worse still, the so-called Right still thinks we live in a rule-based republic.

It is important to note that the Russians never saw Stalin coming either. Some suspected what he was, but most did not. The political violence of Stalin crept up on his fellow partisans on little cat feet. Before they could understand what was happening, he was having them packed off to gulags. The ultra-violence of the French Revolution similarly crept up on the radicals. The great blood sacrifice of radical political ideology is always the destination no one sees coming until it is too late.

The Deluge Of Opinion

Posted on July 13, 2020 by thezman

Bertrand Russel said, “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” It is a pithy aphorism that has now been amplified by modernity into a description of liberal democracy. In every Western country, the stupid drown out everyone else in the court of public opinion, but do so with a breath-taking degree of self-righteous sanctimony. The hallmark of the modern man is to have an opinion on everything, almost all of them wrong.

It is not that the stupid have been made supreme, although it certainly seems that way when you encounter public opinion. It’s that everything has been politicized to the point where every issue, no matter how small, becomes a moral signifier. Where you stand on the issue says something about you and your position in society. If you don’t have an opinion on an issue, it is assumed you are ignorant or possibly in league with dark forces, those who hold the “horrifically” wrong opinion.

For most of human history, few people had opinions on anything. After all, most people had no say in most things, so why bother having an opinion? The farmer working the land had a very limited range of things in which his preferences mattered. The shop keeper in the village or city operated under the rules established by whoever it was that ruled the village or city. Since no one cared what he thought about those rules, there was no need for him to have an opinion on those rules.

In private rule, whether it is a monarchy, dictatorship or oligarchy, opinions on public affairs are limited, as very little is actually public. The king decides and the people abide. Opinion only matters in private affairs, where people have control over their lives. What really matters to people is how comfortable and successful they fit into their social role. Custom, tradition and habit are what matter most, as complying with those is what brings personal and social happiness through the reduction of conflict.

In public rule, like a democracy or even communism, the range of topics up for debate expands well beyond the personal, but the moral significance of them paradoxically becomes highly personal. The theory in democracy is that the people come together, debate the topics at hand and fifty percent plus one decides public policy. In most forms of communism, the general will is expressed through the organs of the party, which has a monopoly of power. Thus, policy is always in line with the general will.

In reality, the public comes to embrace some new moral truth around the issue at hand as almost all issues facing a society are mundane and straightforward. The first truth of democracy is that most issues don’t require debate. The issue is whether or not the people will voluntarily go along with what must be done or they must be compelled. Democratic debate quickly devolves into claims about morality. The new moral truth is determined and everyone is then judged on where they stand regarding this truth.

For example, for ten thousand years marriage was understood to be primarily about creating new people. The male and female are joined and the product of that union is their children. Then all of a sudden, for no obvious reason, the great and good asked the public to redefine marriage to mean two people sharing a bed and rent. They slowly whipped people into believing one side was righteous, while the other was evil, until they got a critical minority to accept the new morality.

In liberal democracy, this this new system for evolving moral truth is extended by casting the new morality backward in time. It is not just a new moral truth, but a newly discovered universal and timeless moral truth. People are then judged by how far outside of this moral truth they were before it was discovered. It is why anyone associated with racism must be erased from the history books, as it suggests this new moral truth about race was not always a moral truth.

The result of this is an expansion of public debate to all aspects of life. No issue, no matter how trivial, is off limits. Even the most private topics must be exposed to public debate, as to do so suggests some things are outside morality. This was true in communist societies, where even your thoughts were open to examination. We are seeing this evolve in liberal democracy where modern day spectral evidence is used to determine if you hold opinions outside the accepted morality.

People naturally respond to their environmental. To be caught outside the newly discovered timeless morality is to live as a pariah. A way to avoid this is to loudly express the proper opinion about all subjects at all times. Those seeking to live in the elevated areas of modern life, the media, entertainment, government, corporations, must always be seen as inside the moral domain. Social media has become the platform on which they display their piety.

Of course, people look up for their social cues, so this endless bellowing about the accepted morality has trickled down to every nook and cranny of society. The suburban mom now feels compelled to ululate about racism on here neighborhood Facebook page, even though her neighborhood is totally white. Millions of YouTube actors repeat familiar chants like “there is no biological basis for race” despite the fact they have not the slightest idea what the phrase is supposed to mean.

We are living in a deluge of opinion, almost all of which is uninformed. Rather than living within a society structured by tradition, custom and habit, people now live in a world structured by mass opinion, shaped by a small group of gangsters at the top, who use the institutions of society to shape opinion. Everywhere the intelligent turn, they are confronted by the stupid and cocksure, screaming the latest opinions on the timeless morality that was invented last week.

It is really quite remarkable how irrational liberal democracy has become in just the last generation. The reason the world feels like it is going mad is that the volume of the stupid and insane has been turned to eleven. The reason for that is the inevitable logic of liberal democracy. If fifty percent plus one determines the truth, whether it is the price of fruit or the level of taxation, it stands to reason that all truth must be exposed to the fifty percent plus one and judged accordingly.

This means today’s truth can easily become tomorrow’s heresy. All it takes in many cases is a few votes to change at the very top. In the case of homosexual marriage, it took just one vote. All of a sudden, two men playing house is a timeless conservative principle of the constitution order. In such a fickle perfidious existence, the self-righteous and stupid must be prepared to loudly proclaim their fidelity to the new truth, as soon as the new truth is on the horizon.

The communist solved the problem of public government by deceitfully privatizing it in the name of the people. The party became the arbiter of truth and eventually settled into a fixed set of rules. While those rules were often at odds with the reality of the human condition, they at least had the benefit of being predictable. Liberal democracy does not appear to have such a mechanism. It is a constant revolution against established truth, so any effort to stabilize it is viewed as a threat.

There seems to be two paths forward for the current liberal democratic order. One path forward is it shakes itself into exhaustion, like a mental patient having a violent break from reality. The necessary mechanisms for a functioning society begin to break down under the assault of the stupid and self-righteous. The collapse of urban police departments is an ominous sign that this is the path we are one now. Imposition of order is being anathematized as irredeemably immoral.

The other path is something like a slow decent into madness. These spasms of lunacy will be followed by periods of relative calm. Just as the sober minded are putting things back in order, another spasm strikes to knock down that which has been repaired and knock down some new items. The result is spasmodic periods of decline until the sober minded are no longer willing or able to serve their role. At this point society tips into an accelerated decline and eventually collapse.

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