Monthly Archives: May 2018

Clown Country

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John Derbyshire often says that his home country is lost. That it is far past the point of reforming itself and becoming anything like its original self. That is probably true, but not because it has imported a Muslim ruling class. If the Brits shut off that faucet today, they remain no worse than 80% white, assuming current fertility rates. If they could muster a little national pride, they could easily get back to 90% and relegate the Muslim hordes to a despised minority status, something like the Irish travelers or the Welsh.

That is not going to happen without a revolution, one that results in the wiping out of the British ruling class. The public is clearly turning against the lunacy of the prevailing orthodoxy, but they are saddled with a generation of lunatics, who remain firmly in charge of the institutions. The whole Tommy Robinson affair makes the point. In a country with a sane ruling elite, there would be no need for Tommy Robinson and his situation would never happen. But, the British ruling class is full of crazy people worried about nonsense.

Too few women and people from ethnic minority groups cycle in London and more must be done to promote diversity among a largely white, male and middle class biking community, the city’s walking and cycling commissioner has said.

Grand schemes, such as the Cycle Superhighway network of partially-segregated routes linking the suburbs with the centre, are too often perceived as simply a way of getting “middle-aged men cycling faster around the city”, Will Norman acknowledged.

He said he was considering setting diversity targets for London’s cycling population to ensure progress was achieved.

Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups account for about 15 per cent of the city’s cycle trips – around two-thirds less than Transport for London estimates it could be.

Speaking to The Independent, Mr Norman, whose job it is to deliver on Sadiq Khan’s pledge to make walking and cycling safer and easier in the capital, said: “There is a problem with cycling and the way it is perceived of getting middle-aged men cycling faster around the city, which is not the objective at all.

“It touches on something which is a real challenge for London cycling, which is diversity.”

For starters, in a real country, there is no such thing as a “walking and cycling commissioner.” That is a job for a retired volunteer at a charity 5K. That is not a job that should ever exist, and it is not a job that a fully grown adult would ever accept. The city’s dog catcher has a more respectable title. More important, this simpleton is yammering on about diversity as the native population is being chased off by hordes of savages that have no business in Europe. In a serious country, he would have been shot by now.

This is the heart of the matter. The Pax Americana, which has guaranteed peace in Europe for the last 75 years, has done more than pacify the continent. It has turned the political classes of Europe into children. They are not real leaders in any meaningful sense, because no matter what they do, Uncle Sam is there to make sure they never get a serious boo-boo. Because they are insulated from serious consequences, they have become the Eloi, playing dress-up and pretending to be big boys and girls.

This is why the Brexit negotiations have come to a halt. The renegotiating of Britain’s economic relationship with the Continent is difficult and complicated. No one on either side of the table is capable of doing anything other than showing up at a candlelight vigil following the latest Muslim attack. These are not serious people. Instead, they are silly people who worry about diversity on the bike path. The only way Brexit gets finalized is if Trump decides to get involved and forces the issue. Otherwise, it never happens.

The clownishness does not stop at the political class. The vaunted British security apparatus has also degraded into play-land. It is obvious now that they were roped into helping that old fool John Brennan’s scheme to spy on the Trump campaign. There was a time when the Brits would have seen that for what it was and not got involved. Instead, they put on daddy’s old suits and played James Bond, causing a serious riff between the two countries. Notice Trump’s treatment of Theresa May versus Emmanuel Macron.

In a better age, when the king realized the court he inherited was not up for the job, he would get a new court. On the other hand, when it was clear the new king was dangerously feeble-minded, the king fell off his horse and they got a new king. In this age, when the people realize their rulers are supercilious poseurs, incapable of doing the basics of government, they are supposed to vote for new rulers. The trouble is this is not a political problem. It is a cultural problem. Britain is ruled by a clown culture now.

There is only one way to fix that.

Celebrity Experts

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A few years ago, Greg Cochran pointed out that western economists had been very wrong about the economic condition of the Soviet bloc countries. Paul Krugman had claimed that the East German economy was 80% of the West German economy. When the wall fell, what was revealed was a backward economy with environmental devastation and low-quality consumer goods. All of this was obvious from the outside. All you had to do was take a look at the cars, which were a joke compared to the cheapest western cars.

The reason western economists were so laughably wrong about the Soviet economy is that it was worth their while to be wrong. The Left side of the ruling class wanted to believe the commies were doing well. They owned the media and the academy, so it is not hard to figure out the rest. That, of course, calls into question the integrity of the field, but in reality, they just believed what was convenient. Even PhD’s can delude themselves if it has social value. You see that in this post by celebrity economist Tyler Cowen.

Will Ethiopia become “the China of Africa”? The question often comes up in an economic context: Ethiopia’s growth rate is expected to be 8.5 percent this year, topping China’s projected 6.5 percent. Over the past decade, Ethiopia has averaged about 10 percent growth. Behind those flashy numbers, however, is an undervalued common feature: Both countries feel secure about their pasts and have a definite vision for their futures. Both countries believe that they are destined to be great.

Consider China first. The nation-state, as we know it today, has existed for several thousand years with some form of basic continuity. Most Chinese identify with the historical kingdoms and dynasties they study in school, and the tomb of Confucius in Qufu is a leading tourist attraction. Visitors go there to pay homage to a founder of the China they know.

This early history meant China was well-positioned to quickly build a modern and effective nation-state once the introduction of post-Mao reforms boosted gross domestic product. That led to rapid gains in infrastructure and education and paved the way for China to become one of the world’s two biggest economies. Along the way, the Chinese held to a strong vision that it deserved to be a great nation once again.

My visit to Ethiopia keeps reminding me of this basic picture. Ethiopia also had a relatively mature nation-state quite early, with the Aksumite Kingdom dating from the first century A.D. Subsequent regimes, through medieval times and beyond, exercised a fair amount of power. Most important, today’s Ethiopians see their country as a direct extension of these earlier political units. Some influential Ethiopians will claim to trace their lineage all the way to King Solomon of biblical times.

Cowen is either trying hard to please the Ethiopian economic and cultural ministers or he has spent too much time in the sun. The reason Ethiopia has seen growth rates tick up is the Chinese, and to a lesser degree India, have been investing. The reason they are investing is both are competing for control of the Indian Ocean. In fact, the Chinese have invested in other East African countries, including a naval base in Djibouti. That is why China and Indian are investing in East Africa. It is a modern form of colonialism.

Further, comparing China and Ethiopia, at the civilization level, is a bit ridiculous. China is basically one people, the Han, with minority populations around the fringes. This has been true for a long time. Ethiopia is a combination of pastoral and settled people, who see one another as rivals. The country is experiencing civil unrest, bordering on civil war, in response to the ruling Oromo minority. China has never had this issue. China also has an average IQ over one hundred, while Ethiopia is one of the lowest on earth, estimated below 70.

Now, economists are easy targets, because the profession has evolved into something similar to the celebrity chef racket. There is not a lot of money in making good food and running a quality restaurant. There’s big money in being an entertaining chef with a TV show on cable television. Something similar has happened to economics. You do not actually have to be particularly good at economics to get a spot in the commentariat. You just have to sing the praises of the managerial class and play the professorial role well.

Even so, it takes special talent to be this wrong about observable reality. Cowen’s trick, like most celebrity experts, is to couch his obsequiousness and nutty ideas in the form of a question. “Is Ethiopia the next China?” This way, when called on it, he can pretend it was just an intellectual exercise, a thought experiment. Meanwhile, he appears to be lending his authority to the rather ridiculous notion that Ethiopia is poised to be the next boom town. It is no wonder that so many in the managerial class are so vapid and silly.

It is tempting to dismiss this, but the proliferation of celebrity experts says something about the nature of managerialism. It has evolved a class of people that are luxury goods. They have no utility other than to make the people inside feel special. The TED Talk is a great example. Cloud People pay to be told by a celebrity expert that their lives have purpose, and they are on the side of angels. It is not explicit, but the point of the expert is always to confirm the beliefs of the audience, rather than broaden their understanding.

If the celebrity expert were just the current version of the court jester, it would probably be harmless, but that is not the case. The people making public policy have risen through the system, never having been told a discouraging word. They end up having opinions about the world that border on lunacy. The people running the Bush foreign policy really believed they could democratize the Middle East. They still believe this, and they probably think East Africa is the next economic boom town. That is what the experts tell them.

There is an argument that the proliferation of lawyers is responsible for the proliferation of laws. The extra lawyers, looking for a way to make a living, inevitably started to pervert the law to create opportunities for themselves. This results in more cases in court, which means more courts, more judges and then more laws to address the crazy outcomes. It is a bit of chicken and egg theory, but there is no question that having a lawyer for every conceivable case has changed the nature of the law, as well as the volume of laws.

Something similar seems to be happening in the other parts of the managerial class. The excess of middling strivers means an excess of mediocre men pitching themselves as experts. Since being an expert is hard, the more fruitful course is to tell the audience what they want to hear. As a result, in the public policy arena, the people charged with actually knowing stuff are surrounded by an amen chorus that cheers their every move. Instead of rule by experts, as some imagine, we have rule by people who never faced adversity.

Free Association & Equality Before The Law

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If you are going to pick one thing that is a must-have for a liberal western society, the most likely choice is equality before the law. Things like free speech, elections and private property are important, but they are dependent upon equality before the law. After all, if the ruling class has privilege over everyone else in the law, which will turn to an advantage in disputes over property, politics and even speech. If you look at the list of “rights” we consider to be essential to a civil society, all of them count on equality before the law.

Now, simply having equality before the law does not make for a liberal society. In theory, you could have a society with no property rights at all and still have equality before the law. A communist society, in which all property is held by the public and administered by the state, could have legal equality. Similarly, you could have a society with highly restricted speech and still have legal equality, as long as the speech limits were universally applied and enforced. In other words, equality before the law is not enough.

Obviously, equal justice may be a fundamental requirement of a liberal society, but you need other stuff to make it work. Property rights, enforcement of contracts, freedom of expression and the other items we tend to associate with civil liberty. Even though they cannot exist without equality before the law, a liberal society cannot exist without all those add-on items. This is basic civics, so what about the things that must exist in order for a society to maintain equality before the law? What are its necessary accessories?

The correct answer here is freedom of association. After all, you can have equality before the law along with limits on other rights like speech, as long as they are universally applied. Logically, there is no way to evenly administer limits on association, beyond broad categories like segregation. Even there, the law is forced to treat one group differently from others. This is the crux of Brown v. Board of Education. The material equality of education facilities did not alter the fact that segregation treated blacks unequally.

You cannot have equal justice without free association, for the simple reason the law must always put one citizen ahead of another, in order to limit association. Telling the tavern owner he cannot serve Koreans penalizes the Korean, the tavern owner or possibly the other tavern patrons. It really does not matter who is or is not punished, as the only possible intent of the law is a bias against one group in favor of another group. There can be no equitable reason for placing such limitations on citizens.

This is why America is rapidly sliding away from liberal democracy into something closer to a corporate oligarchy. Once free association was abandoned in the 1960’s, it opened the door to endless meddling by the managerial state in the rights of the citizens. If the people can no longer decide with whom they wish to associate, or not associate, they can no longer have the right to free expression. After all, if you are forcing people together who do not wish to be together, you better monitor their speech. Otherwise, you get a bloodbath.

Put another way, the reason that Christian bakers are being forced at gun point to bake cakes for people they see as degenerates is the state has no other choice. Once you dispense with freedom of association, you abandon equality before the law. It also means ever-splintering minorities are incentivized to demand special privileges from the state, by forcing the court to choose between groups. The homosexual terrorists are attacking Christians, so they can get their group status set above that of Christians.

This explains the fracturing of American public life and the increasing anti-white hostility we see in our popular culture. Once you abandon equality before the law, people rationally seek group identity in order to press for privileges. The arbitrariness of the law creates the appearance of a zero-sum game, in which the gains of one group must come at the expense of another. In the increasingly lawless free-for-all that is modern America, the rational thing for non-whites to do is agitate to get their piece of the crumbling white pie.

Of course, the reason America abandoned free association in the middle of the last century was in an effort to accommodate the minority black population. It is also why Continental societies have never bothered with free association. Wherever there are minority populations, the majority will inevitably impose its will on that minority, simply in the course of pursuing its own rational interests. Blacks in America can only be integrated by force, against the will of the white majority. That is what happened last century.

This is probably why the managerial class has made a fetish of the downstream items we associate with liberal society, like voting, and sacralized the positions within the political class. Any call to reform the political system and every criticism of the powerful is met with howls about “defending our democracy.” Since we now have an illiberal system, the people in charge have reached their status by illiberal means. Therefore, their legitimacy is not self-authenticating. The hooting about democracy is a defense mechanism.

One of the puzzles the libertarians have never un-puzzled is how a society can go from a non-libertarian state to a libertarian one, without a violent, miraculous blood bath. Even in theory, a libertarian state must be a starting point of a society. Once it transitions from that condition, it can never go back. Something similar is most likely true with regards to free association and equality before the law. Once these are abandoned, the interests opposed to their return grow, making a peaceful transition back to the lawful state impossible.

As a matter of simple logic, a return to liberal society now means revolution.

The Dull Man’s Burden

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One of the remarkable things in my time has been the precipitous decline of the so-called conservative movement. Even if you were on the paleocon side of the great fight, you could not help but admire some of the writers and thinkers on the other side. Unlike the Left, which has always tended for preachers, rather than thinkers, the people writing for the Buckleyite, and neocon outlets were often quite bright and original. They even permitted a sprinkling of heretics, which made their publications worth reading.

Over the last decade, anyone with the least bit of originality has been purged from their sites. Scan The Weekly Standard or National Review and what is interesting is how dull it all feels now. It is like reading the internal newsletter of the postal service. That is being kind, as these sites often resemble a cargo cult. They hire guys like Ben Shapiro to spin the oldies, hoping they will be magically transported back to 1994. If you are engaged in this world from the Right, there is no reason to read these publications. They offer nothing.

This post before the holiday by Jonah Goldberg is good example. Goldberg now plays the role of “senior fellow” for Conservative Inc., so he gets the job of doing the theoretical stuff for National Review. He is their man of ideas now. Goldberg made his career as a snarky Gen-X jokester, making conservatism sound fresh. Of course, the implication was that the Left was correct about conservatives being humorless stuffed shirts. Shecky Goldberg’s quest was to make conservatism fit for the Catskills. Now, he is their big ideas man.

I understand very well that conservatives often bristle at the idea they need to change with the times. As the famous line from (the far from famous) Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, goes, “where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”

But we forget that the conservative movement’s strength came from the fact that it was armed with new arguments from diverse intellectual sources. More important, its vigor stemmed from the fact that these various strains of conservatives were eager to argue among themselves. There are arguments aplenty on the right these days, but the vast majority of them are arguments over a specific personality — Donald Trump — not a body of ideas. And to the extent that there are arguments about ideas, they tend to be subsumed into the larger imperative to attack or defend Trump. This is from a guy who repeatedly said that large chunks of observable reality are “morally repugnant” and therefore off-limits. It is a bit tough to have “new arguments from diverse intellectual sources.” when the prevailing assumption is that those ideas and sources are outside what is morally acceptable. Of course, whatever it once was, mainstream conservatism is a no longer a vigorous debate about moral and political philosophy. It is merely a shopping list of talking points acceptable in the managerial elite.

 

Even in the mundane areas of public policy, the so-called conservatives are startlingly obtuse in their observations. Trump’s diplomacy in Asia, for example, is a genuine sea-change in American policy. He has craftily linked North Korea’s behavior to US trade relations with China. He is making the master responsible for the servant. This is actually resulting in real progress on a half century problem. Yet, the experts of Conservative Inc. remain baffled by what is happening. They still think North Korea is a Soviet client.

The great Eric Hoffer observed that the difference between a movement and a practical organization lies in the goals of the members. In a political movement, the people joining do so to attain a political goal, something that is bigger than themselves. In a practical organization, people join out of self-interest. They act in order to advance up the ranks of the organization. A rat like Dinesh D’Souza was willing to be a neocon assassin, because he thought it was a good career move. The organization man is not a man who dreams.

That has been the case with the conservatives for a long time now. Ideological zeal may have motivated the pioneers, but they built practical organizations. Buckley-style conservatism, by the 1980’s, had become a lucrative career path for the man good with his letters and careful to never color outside the lines. More important, the organization was positioned within the managerial class, rather than opposed to it. An obsequious writer could work for both National Review and a liberal TV network.

Another product of this is the boiling off of anyone with any creativity. If the in-house intellectual is a vapid airhead with a fetish for 1980’s pop culture references, you are no longer an intellectual movement. The result is a collection of dull and uninteresting people left to figure out how to keep the racket going. That is the point of Goldberg’s cri de guerre. The old act is no longer pulling in the crowds, so they need a new act with new actors. The trouble is the dullards left in charge are not up to carrying the burden.

Ben Shapiro

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A running debate on this side of the divide is over the utility of guys like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and other slightly edgy characters. The claim is that these types of insider critics of the prevailing order are a gateway to more radical thinkers on this side of the divide. A normie starts reading Ben Shapiro or listening to Jordan Peterson, and before long he finds his way to our team. There is not much in the way of proof of this, just some anecdotes from people who swear that is how they made their journey to the dark side.

The counter argument is that these edgy guys serve as palace guards, maintaining the line between what is and what is not acceptable. Their job is to make sure that none of the bad think from the outer dark creep into the thought of the orthodoxy. As a result, they make a big deal out of opposing racism, sexism, antisemitism, and homophobia. The Four Olds figure prominently in their arguments, not as a way to inoculate themselves from the Left, but to make sure no one to their Right is allowed into the debate.

Both claims are right, depending upon the person in question. Take, for example, the Nick Nack of neoconservatism, Ben Shapiro. He is fond of posting the sort of unhinged rants about the people to his Right, that we generally associate with feminist cat ladies. This should not surprise anyone, as the spiritual distance between a Ben Shapiro and a feminist campus harpy is not big. He is just as haunted by the Four Olds as anyone on the Left. He just finds it easier to make a living peddling old CivNat nostrums.

You see that in this post at National Review, where Shapiro appears to be defending bad think, but in reality he is engaged in an act of deception. He does not bother to go into the issues that get a Charles Murray or a Sam Harris in trouble. Instead, he shifts the focus from that to pumping air into his own tires. A few days later, his dear friend Bari Weiss is out promoting the so-called “intellectual dark web” which Ben Shapiro just happens to be part of, along with Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. Funny coincidence, I am sure.

Unlike a guy like Peterson or Sam Harris, Shapiro is just another grifter from Conservative Inc. He is the edgy band your parents said was OK, hoping you would not start listening to the stuff they thought was dangerous. That is his utility to the managerial class. Instead of people noticing what happens to our guys when they try to engage in public debate, their eye is focused on how poor Ben Shapiro had to wait a whole hour while the campus police removed a few overwrought students from the auditorium.

That’s why Shapiro will drone on endlessly about how unfair it is that he does not get lucrative speaking gigs on state campuses, but remain stone silent on the endless harassment of Richard Spencer by the Left. Like all of Conservative Inc., he is for free speech that pays him well, but otherwise sides with Antifa against his competition. He’ll never talk about the fact that corporate America is willing to sponsor an Antifa convention in Chicago, but coordinates their efforts to prevent VDare from holding a private gathering.

Even though guys like Shapiro are explicitly opposed to us and are happy to lock arms with the Left against us, some still insist that they serve a purpose. This is true, but not for the reasons they claim. What a guy like Shapiro demonstrates is that there is an unbridgeable gap between the prevailing orthodoxy and the Dissident Right. There is no middle ground between the blank slate and biological realism. Race is either an invalid social construct or a useful model of biological reality. There is no middle ground here.

Ultimately, what a guy like Ben Shapiro tries to do is distract people from the real issues, by focusing their attention on the trivial. He starts from the premise that there is a real battle between the Left and some ideological alternative. That battle was over long before anyone reading this was born. The Right in America, for more than half a century, has simply been a modifier, a restraint, on the American Left. Shapiro’s job is to make sure otherwise sensible people never notice this. Otherwise, there will be a revolt.

Now, not all of these guys in the outer belt of the prevailing orthodoxy are members of the palace guard. Jordan Peterson is just an eccentric weirdo who suddenly got famous. He is probably harmless, and he may open doors to our side. A Gavin McInnes, who is mostly an incoherent grab bag of cosmopolitan fads and libertarian jabberwocky, is at least willing to engage with our side. Most, however, are there as a barrier. Fundamental to the Dissident Right project is the destruction of Conservative Inc. and the palace guard.

Days of Delusion

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There is a theme to the show this week. As I was collecting up items to use, I noticed that many of them featured people in a state of self-delusion. That was not intentional, but it just worked out that way. I was hoping to find some items that I could make sport of as this is a holiday weekend. I think it is a good idea to try and keep in light when people are in the holiday mood. This is the first holiday of the summer and probably the one people look forward to the most. I’ll be off until Tuesday, weather permitting.

I tried to find some opening music that fit the theme, but I could not find anything I liked and that worked as intro music. Surprisingly, there’s not a lot of music about self-delusion. I guess that probably hits too close to home for people in the entertainment rackets. That and songs about drug taking sort of fill that niche. The result is I went with whatever struck my fancy last night. AC/DC seems like a nice lead-in to a long holiday weekend.

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. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

This Week’s Show

Contents

Direct Download

The iTunes Page

Google Play Link

iHeart Radio

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

Judging Trump

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I am often asked if I have second thoughts about this post. I was a tiny bit more critical than normal, but in my defense, I have no sense of humor on the gun issue. There are certain issues that draw a bright line between the chosen and the damned. Guns are one of them. There’s no “sort of getting it right” or “only being a bit wrong.” You either get it or not and Trump does not get it, but he has shut up about it. He went to the NRA convention, so I’ll give him a pass.

I’m still waiting for Trump to deliver on the stuff that is important to me. Despite the bold talk on immigration, he has done nothing. His best work has been on trade, where he has gotten tough on China and re-opened the NAFTA deal. He’s also dismantled the climate change apparatus inside the Department of Energy and cut a ton of punitive regulations. These are all good things and in another age, I’d probably be over the moon. But, it is not another age. It is now.

Despite making lots of noise on the issue, nothing much has changed on the immigration front. The wall is no closer to reality than it was two years ago. The number of guest worker visas has increased, rather than decreased. The DACA issue is still out there, as Trump now waits on the states to solve the problem for him. He installed a dunce in as secretary of DHS. Worse yet, that perfidious weasel Paul Ryan is quietly trying to sneak an amnesty through the House.

In fairness, the immigration issue is not an easy puzzle to solve. No reasonable person should have expected sweeping reform in the first two years. The fact is, a third of the GOP is bought and paid for by the open borders lobbies. Another third are so utterly clueless on the issue, they don’t know where to start. Still, Trump has been outfoxed and outworked by his opponents on immigration. He seems to like talking about immigration more than doing anything about it.

All that said, he has a lot of time to make things right and he has shown an extremely rare ability to address his own errors. The gun issue is a good example. He was making all of the usual mistakes on guns, then he wised up and reversed course. Most pols are the opposite of a fine wine. They get worse with age. Because he is not an ideologue, Trump learns from his mistakes and adjusts. Maybe on the immigration front we see the same sort of growth we saw on guns.

The bigger issue though, the thing now looming over his entire presidency, is the wide ranging conspiracy engineered by the intelligence community. A few months ago it looked like a handful of radicalized mid-level bureaucrats. What’s becoming clear is this was a conspiracy hatched by the men at the top of the intelligence community, with help from the White House, to not only help Hillary Clinton, but engineer a coup after the election to get rid of Trump.

Think about the stones it takes to face off against the intel community. They literally know all of your secrets. In the case of Trump, they have the secrets of his friends, family and business associates. It was 18 months ago that Chuck Schumer warned Trump about doing this. When Schumer said, “Intel officials ‘have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you'” he was not being flippant or rhetorical. We now know the intel community has been at this for a while.

It’s not just the fact that the intel community has the capacity to spy on everyone and appears to be spying on everyone. It’s that these are vicious, craven people lacking a moral compass. It’s ironic that James Comey was fond of accusing his people of lacking a moral compass, when it is now clear the guy is a sociopath incapable of knowing right from wrong. Clapper and Brennan have no scruples whatsoever. Of course, assassination looms over all of this.

Now, we can’t know how much Trump knows, or how much he knew back in the campaign about the spying. It is entirely possible that honest people had told him what was happening long ago. We do know Mike Rogers went to Trump Tower after the election and warned Trump about this operation. Once in office, Trump would have been briefed on a lot of things related to this. Even if he thought it was just a handful of crackpots in the FBI, it took mighty big stones to take the issue head on.

One of the funny things about these times is they are entirely unexpected. Back when Trump came down the escalator and started talking like Pat Buchanan, I recall thinking, “I can’t imagine a scenario where I vote for him, but I never imagined anyone saying these things again either.” Trump is turning out to be the most consequential president in our lifetime. I think we have to withhold judgement on him until these great events of this age unfold.

Voting Your Skin

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Way back in the olden thymes, when Pat Buchanan was challenging Bush the Elder in the GOP primary, I found myself in a working class Irish bar talking politics. The TV in the bar was on the local news and they were doing a segment on the race. A male and female were beside me at the bar, chatting about the race. The woman said something like, “I can’t vote for Buchanan. He’s a racist and I can’t vote for a racist.” The male sort of nodded along, hoping to score some points.

I think that was the point when I began to realize politics, at least for me, was only going to be for entertainment purposes. I did not fully comprehend the implications of what was happening, but in retrospect, Buchanan’s run was the beginning of the great unraveling of the Reagan coalition. The ruling class had managed to convince working class whites that their interests must come second to the new religion. Antiracism is who we are now.

Of course, the managerial class was built on a lie. The managerial elite, particularly the corporate side of the house, hate working class Americans. They developed a particularly healthy disdain for normal white people, as seen in their jihad against companies like Walmart. This was the heart of the Sailer Strategy for Republicans to regain the edge in elections. Now it appears the Progressives are beginning to come to terms with it too.

With the 2018 midterms months away and the 2020 presidential election cycle approaching rapidly, Democrats are considering how to improve their poor showings in 2014 and 2016. The party has been debating — sometimes heatedly — how to do this. Which voters should they target? How should Democrats target them?

But here’s what’s clear: White voters have been fleeing the Democratic Party, and that’s a big reason Democrats are looking to rebound from back-to-back losses.

Whites have slowly but consistently moved away from the Democratic Party. These recent losses are on top of Democrats’ losses among Southern whites during the 1960s and 1970s after Democrats’ support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Bill Clinton won 49 percent of the white two-party vote in 1996. Al Gore won 43 percent in 2000. John F. Kerry won 41 percent in 2004. Barack Obama won a slightly larger share in 2008, but then dropped to only 39 percent in his 2012 reelection bid. Hillary Clinton got the same percentage as Obama.

Obama was able to mask the Democratic Party’s weakness among whites by prompting record-high turnout among African Americans, as well as strong turnout from other Democratic-leaning minority groups. Hillary Clinton was unable to generate the same level of enthusiasm from racial and ethnic minorities.

What some on the Left are beginning to notice is called math. If you increase your share of a large voting block, like say white people, you get more votes that if you increase your share of a small voting block, like Hispanics. This was the point Sailer made a long time ago, one that Donald Trump took to heart in his 2016 campaign. There’s also the fact that the black vote is maxed out and the Hispanic vote has proven to be quite fickle. It takes a massive effort for the Democrats to get that vote out in strong numbers.

I used the American National Election Study data to show that many whites view the Democratic Party as moving further away from their own positions. This is true both when whites are asked to assess the positions of the parties generally and on a variety of specific issues such as government-sponsored health care and the government’s role in providing employment.

My research suggests this combination of political “sorting” and changing white perceptions of the Democratic Party has resulted in an almost eight-point swing in white vote choice. That lines up well with actual vote returns. White votes were split between the two parties about 50-50 in the 1970s — but in elections since 2000, that has become closer to 60-40 in favor of the Republican Party. Democrats might be gaining more votes from Latinos, Asians and other emerging demographic groups, but they are losing whites as a result.

Furthermore, the demographics of the white voters who are likely to support Democrats are different from the white voters who supported the Democratic Party in previous decades.

Most notably, while the Democratic Party is winning a lower percentage of whites overall, a greater proportion of college-educated whites are voting for Democrats. Attitudes on social issues in particular have become stronger predictors of voting behavior in recent elections; economic attitudes have become more important, too, but were already quite a strong predictor to start with.

The reason for this phenomenon is another temporary factor. College educated whites can afford to avoid many of the realities of multiculturalism. At least they think they can, by moving to ex-urban enclaves. That is something this study missed. The suburban white boy vote started to move toward Trump in the last election. Despite the hand-waving from the Left, these voters are waking up to the reality of the demographic age as well. It’s playing out in their neighborhoods now and they are responding accordingly.

There is also something else that left-wing analysts do not get and that is the intensity of the white response. In the South, whites are much more keenly aware of race and therefore more attuned to voting on racial lines. When it matters, whites will come out hard for their team. The white vote is much harder to split using the normal subversive tricks. This is starting to play out on the national level as even areas close to the Canadian border are seeing violent African and Hispanic migrants dumped into their communities.

As an aside, take a look at the comments of that Post story. You see many of the usual auto-responses from people who think it is still 1968. You also see many more normal responses from people who get it. It takes time for this type of culture changes to seep into all the nooks and crannies of a society, but people are slowly waking up to the demographic reality of our age. While we still bother having elections, white people will increasingly choose to vote their skin over all other considerations.

Serendipity

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In early December of 1241, the great Mongol army was camped on the Hungarian plain, poised to invade Europe “all the way to the Great Sea.” In the spring, they had defeated the Hungarian army at the battle of Mohi and spent the summer and fall ravaging eastern Europe. By autumn, all of the lands east of what is now modern Germany had been subdued by the Mongols. There was no army between the Mongols and the Atlantic Ocean capable of stopping them.

Then, in the middle of December, Ogedei Khan, the Great Khan, died on a hunting trip, most likely drunk. He was well known as a drunkard and the legend is that he fell off his horse while drunk. Regardless of the reason, his death required all of the Mongol leaders to return home and select a new Great Khan. That meant the Mongol army returned home. It was one of those fortunate events that probably made it possible for Europe to be Europe.

To put this into some perspective, the Mongols invaded what is now Iraq, known in the 13th century as the Abbasid Caliphate. This was the third caliphate, whose rulers were descended from Abbas, the uncle of Muhammad. Baghdad was the capital and one of the most advanced cities in the world. The Mongols sacked the city in 1258, putting up to one million people to the sword. They destroyed the city, filled the canals, and stole or burned everything of value.

At the time, Baghdad was the center of the Islamic world. The Grand Library of Baghdad may have been the most important center of knowledge on earth. It had books ranging from medicine to astronomy. The thirty-six public libraries in the city were also burned. Of course, the scholars and learned people who used those books and libraries were murdered. The center of Islamic learning was destroyed. The population of the city and surrounding areas did not recover until the 19th century.

The point of this is that serendipity often plays a definitive role in humans affairs. At the dawn of the 13th century, there was no reason to think Europe was about to rocket ahead of the rest of the world. Through the Middle Ages, Europe slowly began to develop more advanced societies and develop a high culture, but they were still playing catch-up with Asia and the Middle East. The unexpected and unpredictable events of the Mongol invasions radically changed the trajectory of the world.

In retrospect, it is easy to look at a singular event like the Great Khan dropping dead just when his armies are about to sack Europe and see the significance. Once you read the story of the Mongol invasions, you know the West dodged something close to a meteor strike. The Siege of Baghdad, and its subsequent obliteration, is probably the great inflection point in the history of Islam. The Islamic intellectual curve bent sharply downward because of the Mongol invasions.

The thing is serendipity can also be the result of great stupidity. The Mongols initially tried to establish trade relations with the Khwarezmid Shah, who ruled the lands between the Mongols and the Abbasid Caliphate. The trouble was the caliph and shah hated one another and conspired to keep each other from making a deal. It is a matter of dispute, but some historians argue that the Mongols never would have invaded if they could have struck a deal. They took the rejection as an insult and invaded.

This brings us to some rather interesting serendipity of our own age. In 2015, there was no reason to think the 2016 election was going to be important. The smart money said it would be Bush versus Clinton. If not Bush, then Bush clone. Then like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, Trump entered the race and altered the political trajectory of the empire. Not only has this event extinguished the Bush wing of the GOP, but it is also threatening the neo-liberal world order.

How did this happen? Mostly it is due to Trump getting angry about how the political class has treated him. Like all rich guys, he had spread his money around to buy friends in the political class. He never had any respect for them, but if you want to do business in the world you have to do business with the people who run it. According to people who know him, what got Trump interested in running is being disrespected by the people in the chattering classes.

How this improbable event happened is going to be debated for a long time, but there is no debate about the consequences. Imagine if Clinton were president. The CIA meddling in our politics would only have accelerated. The corruption of the FBI would never have been revealed. In fact, it would have metastasized. People like to focus on the policy issues, but without the miracle of Trump, Washington would be ruled today by a dumpy old Caligula in a muumuu.

Here is another bit of serendipity. This would never have come to light if not for two stupid moves by the Democrats. One is the nonsense about Russian hacking. For no other reason than spite, the Left embraced this ridiculous narrative. The other is the  demands for an IG investigation of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton e-mail stuff. They were the ones who demanded it, after blaming Comey for the election loss. Two dumb decisions have changed the world.

Thoughts On The Coming Events

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Since it appears we are going to have lots of political news breaks over the next few weeks, I thought it might be a good idea to do some more political posting, which I have not been doing much of lately. The IG report on how the FBI oversaw the Clinton e-mail crimes is due out this week or next. Trump is laying the groundwork to fire Mueller and possibly behead his own Justice Department. It is midterm season and there will be a summer battle over the next round of government budgets. Lots on tap this summer.

The first item is what we see happening with the FBI spying scandal. I must admit that I initially followed it because I liked boasting about having predicted it. Then I moved into cynical mode, assuming it would be swept under the rug like all of the crimes perpetrated by our rulers. I may have been wrong on that score. The people slowly unearthing the details and revealing them to the public appear to be extremely savvy political operators. I see now why the Democrats tried to assassinate Devin Nunes. He is a dangerous man.

One of the rare things in American politics these days is the smart politician who is not desperate to ham it up for the cameras. Nunes, Grassley, Goodlatte and their staffers have conducted this probe in a way we just never see. They took turns nibbling away at bits of the story, working with IG Horowitz, while quietly confronting the FBI and DOJ each step of the way. The level of coordination is what I find intriguing. It feels like maybe there is an inside player making sure everyone is on the same page and working their role.

On the other side of the ledger, the insane things coming from the Brennan camp are jaw-dropping. For the former CIA head to not-so-subtly threaten the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader on social media is incredible. Either the guy is insane, or he really feels he is bullet proof. That would be an incredibly ballsy move to make behind closed doors with no witnesses. This guy is basically telling the political class they better remove the sitting president or else. It is not the sort of thing I ever expected to see in my lifetime.

What it could mean is that off-camera, there is a change in opinion. This assault on Trump was led by a well-known group of people, the same people who ran the phony-baloney NeverTrump campaign. Brennan’s nutty public statements may reflect his sense that the tide is now running against him and his cronies. He is not taking twitter because people are taking his calls. You have to think that the leaders of both parties would like to get away from this whole thing and the easy way to do that is turn on the conspirators.

The other aspect to this is Trump has played his hand about as well as possible. The press will focus on his handling of the Mueller stuff, but what Trump has managed to do is much more strategic. Look at his polling. Normally, even saints lose support after waves of bad press. Trump has managed to bob along around 50%, slowly creating an image of himself as David fighting Goliath. The Mueller problem, in light of the spying scandal, now looks like part of an elaborate scheme to thwart the will of the people by Washington.

That is going to give him enormous amounts of political capital in the coming months. You do not want to be on the wrong side of a popular president. The Ryan faction, which is bottling up all reform efforts in the House, has to be wondering if they picked the wrong team at this point. With their leader quitting to cash in as a lobbyist, we may see that coalition within the GOP start to fracture this summer. The tell will be if Ryan steps down early and we get a new Speaker. My guess is that the is gone by Labor Day.

A long-forgotten element of the intrigue in Washington is the Clinton e-mail scandal. That is supposedly the next item IG Horowitz will report on, and it is the reason he has been digging around in all of this stuff. Many of the characters involved in the spying scandal participated in the cover-up of the Clinton e-mail scandal. The main target is Andrew McCabe, so we probably learn just how much jeopardy he is in over this. Whatever caused Mr. Magoo to fire him, despite not wanting to do it, is in those reports.

Something Chuck Schumer said two years ago should be revisited. He publicly warned Trump that “Intel officials ‘have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you'” meaning Trump should not take on the FBI. Maybe it was just Schumer flapping his gums, but maybe there is more to it. It is safe to assume that guys like Brennan were abusing their power for a long time. There may be another game afoot, behind the scenes, to rein in an intel community that has been out of control for longer than the public currently knows.

Finally, I used to compare Trump to the Asimov character “The Mule” because I saw him as the destroyer of the current order. That is largely true. The one thing common in all of these scandals is the participants operated on the assumption that Trump can never win. It is not just that he could not get elected. They have been playing the game assuming that he had to fail eventually. The body of official Washington would expel him like a foreign object. Instead, everything is falling to pieces and Trump keeps winning.

It is going to be a fun summer.