Every time I write one of these, I say I will make it a regular feature. That never happens for some reason. The “collection of small items” has been a staple of magazine writing for generations because it is easy to produce and popular with readers. It works well for blogs like this, as it lets the blogger address all of the small items that don’t warrant a longer post. For some reason I have not developed the habit. My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening thru a cosmic vapor of invention…..
Looking at the server logs, I was surprised to see continued growth in traffic. January of 2018 saw a 9% increase in traffic versus January 2017. February, on the other hand, has been a little flat, relative to last year, but February has always been the slowest month for some reason. July is the second slowest month and that makes sense. July is the biggest vacation month in the US. Even adjusting for the lost days, February has been the slowest month for this site since I started. I have no answer for it.
I’ve always assumed there is an upper limit to one man blogs. I could be wrong about it, but that’s my hunch. The reason is there is only so much anyone has to say about the world. Eventually, even the most expansive writer starts to repeat certain themes. Read anyone long enough and you notice it. Of course, some writers limit themselves to one topic, so they hit that point quickly. I have not read Robert Stacy McCain in a long time, as he said everything about blue-haired cat ladies that needed to be said….
The podcast is steadily ticking up in traffic. The funny thing about it is the growth has followed the same pattern as the blog. Obviously, I do nothing to promote myself. I don’t have a rich uncle bankrolling this operation. That means people discover this site and the podcast mostly through bad fortune. Word of mouth growth seems to follow a pattern. At first there is slow growth, then it takes off, but plateaus for a while, and then another period of rapid growth. That’s what’s happening with the podcast.
People have suggested I try some promotion, but I don’t know anything about promoting a podcast and I’m not all that interested in learning. Self-promotion is not something that comes naturally to me. A guy like Mike Cernovich is a natural self-promoter, despite the fact he has nothing to offer the world. Even though he is a nullity, he can attract a crowd, thus proving the power of marketing. That and the world has never been short of stupid people willing to give an mendacious clown like Cernovich an audience…
I got a few e-mails asking my thoughts on the Florida shooting. I’m in the John Derbyshire camp on this one. There is a reason these things happen, but it has nothing to do with any of the reasons we see the loonies shouting about on television. This time the Progressive nutters have enlisted a group of child actors, but the Left has been exploiting children this way since forever. This time it feels new, only because it has been a while since the last “what about the children” stunt, but otherwise it is the same show.
My hunch here is that “school shooter” has become a thing for the same reason “going postal” was a thing once. In a mass media society, certain things gain currency simply because they travel well on the mass medium. School shootings make for good TV and good scream show fodder. If you are a troubled kid seeking attention, the world is showing you the path. Eventually, some new nut will come along and do something else to be famous and that will be the thing everyone puzzles over for a while.
I will note that mass shootings adhere to Moynihan’s Law of the Canadian border. Someone plotted these events on a map and it is quite clear. The more diversity, the more likely you are to have these types of incidents. That’s not surprising. A mentally unstable person in a land of strangers is not going to get much help and they are going to feel even more alienated. It’s also why crime is higher in more diverse parts of the country, but it is a small prize for you to pay so Tyler Cowen can have kebabs on Wednesday…
Speaking of diversity, this story on the best states was amusing. Our Progressive rulers try very hard to make these things look empirical, but in the end, they prefer to live where there are not a lot of non-whites. Iowa is the fifth whitest state in the country and its non-white population is packed into well defined areas. Look at the whole list and that pattern is clear. The one exception is West Virginia, but Lefty hates hillbillies almost as much as he hates black people. Hill country will never be gentrified…
I got banned from Twitter last week for calling Piers Morgan a bad name. It is a seven day ban that expires on Friday. This is the second time this has happened and both times it was for directing unpleasant thoughts at a famous person. The first time I got zapped was for saying something mean about Dale Earnhardt Jr., believe it or not. From what I gather, the quickest way to get tossed from social media is to insult a famous person. You can promise to murder a member of the hoi polloi, but don’t dare insult a rich or famous person.
This is a trend we are seeing all over. The other day, some hockey fans were thrown out of the arena for being mean to one of the players. Heckling the players has been a tradition at hockey games since forever, but now feelings, especially the feelings of rich and famous people, count for everything. I suspect we are not too far from this becoming law. We will see rich people acquitted for killing a staffer, because they will contend the staffer insulted them in some way. Insulting a rich person will become a serious crime.
As un-American as this sounds, it is the norm in human societies. For most of human history, vexing someone in the ruling class was a good way to end up in the dungeon or on the scaffold. That is, to a great degree, the motivation behind the crack downs on speech in America. It’s not that the alt-right is spreading heresy or subversion. It’s that what they say makes the cat ladies sad. It’s why the people in charge are so viscous about this stuff. Hell hath no fury like a cat lady scorned…
The other day, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from the administration on DACA. This is a standard thing the court does to try and force the lower courts to act properly. In other words, it is a process thing that sucks for the plaintiffs, but is good for the courts. The media trumpeted this a massive setback for Trump in his efforts to end the DACA program. Every news site, even Drudge, presented it as the beginning of the end for Trump, even though it is nothing of the sort.
It is, though, another reminder of the staggering dishonestly of our media. If the Washington Post printed my name on their front page, I’m getting my birth certificate out, assuming I have been wrong about my name for fifty years. I don’t even trust the date printed on news stories anymore. I suspect I’m not alone in now assuming all news is fake news. This can’t be a good thing. Maybe it will fix itself in time, but I suspect a big part of what troubles our society is just the endless lying of the people in charge…
Finally, it is easy to look around at the world and get depressed. Most days, the bad news outweighs the good news by a factor of ten. We are ruled by suicidal lunatics. Further, time is running out on doing something about it. One more click of the ratchet and future generations will be living in the rubble of our society. To use a sportsball analogy, it is the late innings and the olde towne team is behind. But, it is not all bad news. This post by J’Onquarious is a good reminder that the good guys are making up ground.
Maybe it is too late. Maybe all of us are doing nothing more than leaving a record so the robot historians will know that not all of us were mad. Until that is clear though, it is important to keep fighting. Maybe this thing can be turned around in time to leave a better world for those who come after us. Slowly, white Americans are waking up to what faces them. In that regard, the momentum is on our side. We just have to keep chipping away at it and maybe one day the lunatics will be sent back to their asylums…